MR David Portlock

Be Nice MR David Portlock

Seventeen-year-olds, Wallis Barber and Janey Typermass, are members of the worldwide youth movement, BE NICE. BE NICE, a kind of planetary Arab Spring, has slowed climate change, halted the troubles in the Middle East, ended racism, curbed religion, solved housing and food shortages, and, as a result, controls the major cities of the world. Along with their teenage friends, John Tom, Becky, Pete, and Abe, Wallis and Janey patrol the streets of Santa Monica, California, brutally enforcing the policies of the movement. Any expressions of racial hatred, religious demagoguery, politics, or the committing of a crime results in severe and often deadly consequences. But when Wallis and Janey begin to question the violent tactics of BE NICE, their fragile and complicated world quickly falls apart. Labeled as angry, emotional, and believers in the old ways, they soon find themselves alone and on the run. Escaping Santa Monica, they head into the American Southwest, where they're shocked to find the old ways of racism, religion, and even slavery are alive and well. After teaming with a group of Native Americans and a Mexican cowboy, Wallis and Janey decide to recruit hundreds of their former classmates and wage war on BE NICE; not necessarily a physical war, but a war mostly fought online; a battle of propaganda and perception. Billions are against them, but Wallis and Janey are determined to take down BE NICE and return freedom to a world that no longer seems to care.