I was playing hooky from school when the raiders came.
I know I'm supposed to go. Mommy says learning things makes you a better person. She says that education will always improve your life.
But how would my life have been better if I had been in the school when the bad men shot bullets into it?
Why do grown-ups say things when sometimes they aren't true?
From the hill I could see the entire town.
The robots did their chores, waving at the people they passed.
The Arc II was visiting, and I could see Jonah cabling it to the renewable electric power supply.
In front of the administration building was the line of people who don't work, waiting for their food rations. Mommy says they are good people and we should respect them becuase their lives are hard. One time I told Mommy I wanted to be one of them when I grew up so that people would respect me, and I wouldn't need to go to school because I wouldn't need to learn a job. Mommy was cross with me. I sometimes don't understand grownups.
The bad people came in from all sides of town. They had never come to town before, never like this. Mommy said there had been more and more of them living in the wastelands and making it dangerous to travel. I asked her why we didn't go stop them, but she said it was too dangerous because they all have guns and even if we won the fight some of us would get shot. She said it was much better to wage peace against them than war.
Mommy says the Kriegs and the mutants don't look like we do, and that means we shouldn't be angry when they do mean things. But when I saw them shooting people with guns, I was angry. Maybe if I was better and didn't skip school I would learn how not to be angry.
The robots shot electricity at the mutants that made them fall down and go to sleep. I wanted to go over there and kick them while they were sleeping, but I was too afraid.
When the Arc II started coming to town, we gave Jonah one of our rainbow force fields. He said it was a good way to respond to violence because it would just make the bad people discouraged and make them give up without anybody getting hurt. But they didn't get discouraged. They just started breaking windows on other buildings and throwing bombs in.
The Hate-Crime Response Force came out to try to stop the bad men. Mommy says that a hate crime is the only crime anyone should ever be punished for. But I thought that if you didn't hate people you wouldn't commit crimes.
I was still afraid. There were so many more of the bad men. And the Response Force guns only make people go to sleep. Why can't we have guns with bullets so the bad men will have to be afraid of getting shot? Maybe they would be too afraid to do bad things anymore.
The bad men drove their truck past where Dillon Hunt lives. Dillon fired his gun and made some of them go to sleep. But the rest just climbed on the roof and threw bombs through the skylight.
The mutants yelled and screamed like they were having fun. It was scary.
The Administration Center turned on its rainbow force field too. But the bad men didn't go away. They just grabbed the people who don't work and started doing mean things to them.
The Wise Womyn tried to drive off the bad men with their magic spells. They summoned the spirits of three of our heroes. I recognized them from their pictures in the schoolroom: Barbara Streisand, Michael Moore, and Hillary Boxerstein. I hoped they would make the bad men go away.
The Wise Womyn also summoned Captain Planet. I like Captain Planet. He defends trees and squirrels and cute bunnies. I knew he would defend us too.
Robbie the robot tried really hard to keep the bad men from hurting people. He kept saying "Danger" and "Will Robinson." It's just something he does when he's upset.*
Captain Planet and the three heroes made the bad men very upset. They yelled real loud and shot their guns a lot.
But then they crashed their truck into the administration building, and the three heroes just dissolved into smoke. And then there was a hole in the wall, and the bad men shot their guns through it, and I could hear people screaming inside.
And they all shot their guns at Captain Planet, again and again, until he fell down on the roof and didn't move anymore.
Jonah once told my class you should never run away from difficult things. But he changed his mind, I guess. He almost got out of town, but the bad men shot the Arc II with a really big gun until it stopped moving and smoke came out.
