Green Days
by
Ataide Tartari

(approx. word count: 45,000 words)


Riding his bicycle -- the only means of transportation available -- toward the office for 
another workday, the enviroprotector (policeman) Pheasant Jones faces the daily 
challenge of dodging the potholes on the unpaved streets of Crazy Horse Alternative 
Community, his home country. Reaching downtown, he goes to the recycling store
where he left his old alarm clock months before and tries, unsuccessfully, to receive 
his newly recycled one. At work, Pheasant finds some employees cooking chickens 
to eat; he arrests them for enslaving and slaughtering animals.

The community's Natural Leader Mockingbird Revelle is dying; the other members of 
the Natural Leadership are trying to save him. They hire a foreign, brown (the 
antonym of "green") doctor. The doctor says he can't save him, but suggests the 
perpetuation of Revelle for political purposes.

The teenager Pelican Junior and his friends love to watch Star Trek, a forbidden 
entertainment. When they see a foreign aircraft landing on the community, they think 
it is a starship. Going to the airfield to check it out, they find the brown foreigner hired 
by the Natural Leadership.

Pheasant is promoted to Correct (officers who arrest people with EnviroIncorrect 
ideas/behavior) and has to arrest Pelican Junior. He doesn't find him, yet he finds his 
EnviroIncorrect Star Trek tapes. Pelican is warned and escapes; he asks the foreign 
doctor to hide in his plane. Following his chief's new orders, Pheasant arrests 
Pelican's EnviroIncorrect family.

Pelican Senior, who has been arrested because his History classes were considered 
EnviroIncorrect, is in the envirore-education camp. He receives Pheasant's partner 
Spruce, a cynical enviroprotector. Spruce was sent to ask him about his son's 
whereabouts, but ends up as his pupil. Watching the Indian chiefs carved on Mount 
Paha Sapa, Pelican Senior tells him that it was once called Mount Rushmore.

Always working hard to please the system, Pheasant ends up arresting his own 
family. The Natural Leadership likes it and asks him to arrest his chief's children, and 
then promotes him. In his new position, Pheasant offers a reward for any information 
that could lead him to Pelican Junior.

Mockingbird Revelle dies. The politically dangerous rumor that the Natural Leader 
has died begins to spread in the community. The foreign doctor is asked to ready the 
robot Natural Leader.

Going after the reward, the driver who works for the foreign doctor shows up at 
Pheasant's office telling where Pelican Junior is. Pheasant  refuses to accept his 
story, but Spruce believes him. The Leadership asks the doctor to hand the kid over. 
The doctor refuses and flees while the robot Natural Leader, his creature, begins a 
televised speech to  prove he is alive and well. Spruce goes to the airfield with the 
idea of escaping from his community; he meets the doctor and Pelican Junior. The
Leadership tries to stop them, but fails.

Flying away, they hear the Natural Leader pardoning Pelican Senior and other 
envirocriminals: this is the way the doctor found to atone for what he did against the 
country by immortalizing its leader.