He tapped the fingers of his right hand on his left forearm. The process of becoming a legal persona was such a time-consuming one. And nerve-wracking.

He should have brought a book, but he hadn’t really thought about it. He hadn’t expected the DMV to be so busy in a region with such a small population. Of course, because the population was so small, this DMV was shared by five counties. He should have known better.

A baby started crying, setting off three other babies. He cringed. Why did babies have to cry so much. He was sure he hadn’t cried so much when he’d been a baby. At least, that’s what his mother had told him. Maybe she had lied to him about that. Maybe not. What point would there have been to such a lie?

He sighed, and looked at the table laden with magazines. The table was a stereotype of all its brethren pressed into service in public facilities everywhere - carryovers that had been cheap and utilitarian at least two decades ago. It was too small for its burden, and he couldn’t see any of the actual table beneath the magazines piled almost half a foot deep.

He considered picking up the copy of People he saw peeking out from below several other magazines, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort to walk the eight feet. And then there was the eight feet back. Nope, not worth it.

He glanced down at the plastic sleeve that held all his legal documents that would allow him to register as a driver here in the great state of Massachusetts. He had a driver’s license from Oregon, a passport, a birth certificate, and a vaccination record.

The vaccination record showed so much about him. It showed that he had parents who cared about him, and took him to his family doctor for regular checkups. What it didn’t show was that the smallpox vaccine his father had been so very adamant about had been a ruse to ensure that he was part of the database of possible experimentation subjects.

He tried not to let it bother him that his father had volunteered him to be a part of such an outrage against humanity. It bothered him that his father had been a part of the scheme to draw the population of this planet into an agreement with extraterrestrials, with an outcome completely unknown by him and the rest of the Syndicate. They didn’t even know what they had agreed to - they only knew it wasn’t outright war and destruction.

He wondered again if war would have been better than the drawn-out, painful losses his father had subjected his family to. There were so many other lives affected by the agreement, and the subsequent actions of the dark underbelly of society that pretended it cared about anything but itself. The individual parts didn’t even care about the fate of the others, so separate and powerful was each.

He looked up to see children running through the lobby shouting. His disgust with their parents was colored by his sympathy for the situation these youths would inherit very soon. He didn’t even know if these children would have a chance to grow up before colonization began.

He glanced around the waiting area with renewed interest, wondering if any of these people had any idea what the future held. It was a comfort to think that while the Syndicate did its dirty work, most people were unaffected by its tendrils.

How long it remained that way was in part up to him. He glanced at the number on his ticket - 254. The number on the L.E.D. display was 240.

He tucked the plastic sleeve under his arm, and dropped the forms in the trash on he way out the door. His chest still ached under the bandages that covered his wounds, serving as a reminder of the violence of the organization his father was a part of. He should never have taken the old man’s offer to disappear. The easy way was rarely the right way - his mother had taught him that.

But how could he make a difference? Maybe the rebels needed another.

He was not going to lose his identity. No matter what he did, he was going to remain Jeffrey Spender. And he was going to make a difference in the world, or die trying.

Step 1. Serve
Step 2. Resist from Within