Don't Label Me! by Arwen Jayne Page A

want to. She hung up. “Bugger
it!”
    Severely disgruntled she looked up and spied
her cameraman and soundo having one of those quiet, mostly unspoken
conversations men sometimes have when they’ve worked as a team for
a long time. “Looks like you two won’t have to worry about crossing
the edge of the crater after all.”
    “ Red, you want to do this story don’t
you?” Josh her soundo asked.
    “ Yeah, damn it. Not only is the sacked
mayor of Valeton as close to a friend as I have but what they’re
about is a lifestyle so different to what we have now, so outside
of our failed systems and structures that I think it needs all the
coverage it can get. The world needs to see alternatives like
this.”
    Mike, her cameraman, absentmindedly tossed
his ponytail over his shoulder. Nervous but thinking. She knew her
crew’s tells.
    “ How about we get them more coverage
than a one off thirty second slot on the news would ever give
them?”
    “ How are we going to do
that?”
    “ The alternate news networks online.
We let it out that the story’s been gagged and ask them to get
people to share it. Tell them there’s no copyright on it and we are
inviting people to download it and share it with
friends.”
    “ It’ll cost us our jobs.”
    “ Yeah, so. We didn’t get into the
media industry to be dictated to like this. My dad’s got a bit of
dough. He used to be in a civil rights movement back when he was a
hippie. I’ll get him to extend us a loan and we’ll go freelance.
What you say Red?”
    “ Hell yeah!” They high fived each
other then she rang back her boss. “We’re resigning effective
immediately. We’re doing this story. We’ll go
freelance.”
    “ Always knew you had balls Red. Looks
like those guys with you have too. If there’s anything I can do to
help, unofficially of course, let me know. I don’t like being
dictated to either. I have some contacts. Be in touch.”
    “ Will do.”
     
    Later that afternoon Phoenix paced
restlessly. They’d briefly updated Simon and Tyra on their
situation and the attempt to squash all coverage of anything to do
with Boswell only to be offered the job of Boswell’s new marketing
and communication’s team. Mike and Josh had gone to the next room
to set up for the interview. Waiting wasn’t one of her better
skills. Hell, the boredom of not constantly doing something nearly
killed her.
    “ What you need is some dialectical
behavioural therapy”
    “ Some what?” She glared at Simon who
was waiting with her while Tyra got changed for the interview. Who
thought up such jargon plagued names for therapies anyway? Then she
vaguely remembered where she’d heard something about a therapy
called DBT. “Isn’t that something for drug addicts and the mentally
ill. I don’t need any therapy. There’s nothing wrong with me.” She
glared at him more.
    Simon sighed. “Trian said he thought you
might be ready to deal with your reactiveness. The therapy I’m
suggesting is a secular mindfulness technique I think you’d take to
better than the more spiritual paths. It also teaches radical
acceptance and some interpersonal skills you’d find useful.”
    Reactiveness, now that was a nice way of
putting it. More like fly off the handle and blow up every little
obstacle into a major catastrophe. She suspected he was being
polite. He was right about her not liking religion mired self help
though. She’d had enough of her fundamentalist dad when she was
growing up. Hell, at one point he’d even tried to get her
exorcised. She’d taken that as her cue to leave home and moved in
with some college friends, working in coffee shops in her spare
time to pay her way through uni. Time to change the subject. “Who’s
Trian?”
    “ The voice you sometimes hear in your
head.”
    “ My subconscious doesn’t have a
name.”
    “ He’s not your subconscious and you
know it.” She needed to acknowledge that. “When did you first start
hearing him?”
    She hadn’t