We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in; machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much, and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say: “Do not despair”.
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish…
Soldiers – don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder!
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, You are not cattle, You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate – only the unloved hate! Only the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty!
- Charlie Chaplin, An excerpt From "The Great Dictator" 1940,
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*The following is the unabridged Journal of Jeremy Edwards. An honored patriot during the last decade of the 2104 - 2139 period of civil and military strife perpetrated by the fascist, Frederick Hartley. Presented to you in its entirety, unabridged from the Stockholm archives.
(Hash Code: #23-423-8642-1)
This is not a happy book.
This was not a happy period or a bright spot of humanity.
This will never be anyone's "Golden Age".
This was merely the survival of the human race while under great oppression of soul, mind, and body. People struggled, starved, killed, and died under brutal regimes that were the same, no matter how many times they were overthrown.
Millions died, and for what reason? So the inept leaders of an enslaved people could continue in their lavish life styles, insulating themselves against the stark reality they had created for their people. No, subjects, not people. They didn't think of us like that. We were scum. Fodder for their wars and slaves to their whims. Not that we knew it at the time.
We believed we were fighting for a cause, "For the Younger Generation." So that our children would have a life free from the chaos and death that we had experienced. By defending our borders from the loose elements of our society, people portrayed as anarchists and cannibals.
When in reality, they were enlightened. They were the first ones. The ones who learned the truth, who were already fighting for our people. I am Jeremy Edwards. This is the story of my people’s reclamation of their former glory.
They caught me two blocks away from my lay-up hole.
I had been walking through the local grey market. One of many places where semi-legal goods were bought and sold within the residential sectors. Mine spanned roughly one city block, was gated, and had sentries that provided cursory fore-warning against government raids.
Because of that forewarning, it was one of the less dangerous places in the city. Vendors plied their wares, calling out prices and produce, the smells emanating from a booth selling fried potato cakes mixed with the smells coming from a soup vendor’s cart. As I walked through the gates, I nodded to Will, one of the friendlier guards. He waved at me and yelled, "Hey, the soup's on sale!" I waved at him in thanks and got into the line for the vendor he had pointed out. I slowly counted out the money I had earned for acting as a courier for the people in the city that needed it. I would have just enough. I bought a small bowl of a thin vegetable soup with the wages I had earned last week, 150 Ameros. and headed back toward my home for the current day. It wasn't much, but living in a un-used culvert was a better home then some had.
I guess the guards were bribed or threatened to sell us out or maybe we were just that lucky. Either way, as I walked past a stand selling simulated meat pasties, enjoying the smells, sights, and sounds of the market, the northern gate shut and government soldiers poured through the other entrances. I panicked, the screams of the marketgoers in my ears and tried to run to a seemingly still open gate as did everone else, and started pounding and clawing on the doors all the while pleading, beseeching, Will.
"Open the door man! Come on please! Don't let us go this way!" He was supposed to protect us, to open the door, to save us, but He just stood there and watched, with tears streaming down his face as soldiers followed by several armed transports moved through the southern gate. They stopped just inside and disgorged more soldiers. And I hated will as they pushed and shoved us toward the wall. Several people were arbitrarily shot for “resisting.” they would still be alive if Will had opened the gate. Their bodies were moved casually to the side to be cleaned up later by the locals. Most of the time, the family members of the deceased did that job since nobody else would.
I was still several years away from eligibility for conscription and they were already asking for identity cards. I already had my little grey card out when the Government Records official approached me with his escort. The official was a short, portly man in his early 50s at least. His one man escort was a grizzled veteran of roughly the same age. It was kind of hard to tell and I had obviously more important things on my mind.
I gave him my card and waited nervously as he scanned it into his portable database. The device gave a small beep and he returned my card. He moved on, and I relaxed a bit. That is, until I noticed his escort hadn’t moved with him. The offical noticed that too and walked back. Noticeably more tense than before.
“What’s up, Frank?” he asked with a slightly concerned look on his face,
“Are we sure that this one checks out as underage?” The grizzled soldier replied, with a slight tightening on his weapon.
“Yeah, he checked out. Come on. They start to get antsy when we stop like this.”
“Bullshit. I remember this one. He’s been holding onto this same card for at least two years.”
My heart stopped. Oh God. My card had been renewed every year. And I was not conscription age. But that might not matter to them.
“Geez, alright Frank, I’ll run it again. No need to get pissy.”
I handed him the card I’d never had the chance to put away.
He put my card through the scanner again. After what seemed like an eternity, a soft beep emanated from the scanner.
“See? All good. You're just parano-“
A second beep came from the scanner.
The Official stepped back and drew his side arm
“He’s got flags. Grab him.”
I gathered myself, pushed off the wall, and dove into the official, knocking him down. Then I'm running, the Snow is chrunching under my feet almost in synch with my rapidly beating heart. They're going to shoot me, I just knew it. Some of the other guards grabbed their rifles and I expected to feel my flesh burn as their rounds tore into my body at any moment but, they never came. I ran towards an unguarded door with their eyes watching me.
Still, no rifle fire. I had opened the door and gone halfway through the opening, when a rifle butt came out of the darkness and impacted into my face.
As I lay on the ground, consciousness fading, I heard footsteps from the doorway coming towards me.
“Jesus, they just keep getting younger and younger,” said one.
“Why do they always run? It’s not like they have anywhere to go,” said the other.
“I dunno, Animal instinct? Fuck it, throw him on the truck and let’s get out of here. This shit hole's depressing."
Our country was in the grips of a madman.
General Premier Frederick Hartley. His rise to power was hidden among the chaos of our many sided civil war that gradually subsided with him at the top. His regime bred discontent with its soul gripping control of the minds of his people.
Numerous resistance groups formed from this. But every time one would begin to gain popularity, or their actions began to have an effect on his supply lines, he would mercilessly crush them. Nothing would ever be heard from the group ever again.
If anyone went to investigate the safe houses, they would've found stripped rooms. Just four naked walls; No debris, no bodies, not even any crumbs on the floor. Everything was just gone. Then they’d normally torch the neighborhood in order to force docility from the locals. Those that survived would insure that no other resistance groups would be welcome there.
In the year 2139 I was kidnapped and conscripted by Premier Hartley's "North Western Confederation Infantry Corps.” 8th Battalion, 2nd Regiment.
I was born in 2123. I was raised by the government Child Care system until I was six, as were all orphans, and indoctrinated into the “loving” the governmental system that provided everything for me. I learned to put my leaders before myself, to love order, hate chaos. And that above all, Hartley knew best. No matter what, Hartley knew best. And those that said different, were a danger to the community.
Then, when I was eight, I was moved to a Thermal Manufacturing Unit. Living in a thermal unit was not easy; there were times without food, and although water was plentiful, pure water was rare, almost non-existent. Clothing was also hard to come by. You made due or you didn’t make it at all.
I got out decent enough though. I had an arrangement with the janitors. Once in a while, the administrators had to inspect the janitorial staff for contraband. The janitors would give it to me, and I’d hide it in one of my many hiding spots, and they’d drop me an extra ration once in a while. But most of us didn’t make out nearly that well. Once a month at least, they’d find a body in the pipes and they’d have to stop production. We’d get a rest from shoveling the coal into the furnaces, look over to see if it was anybody we knew, and then get back to work. We would also have a bit of down time for whatever damage to the filters was caused. It was there where I learned to hate my government. Most of my peers assumed it was an acceptable loss but they didn't see the bodies. They didn't have to move them out of the filters, their necks broken, or their throats slashed. They didn't know, they didn't see. All they saw were the black bags as they were carried out. I once saw a supervisor push someone over the edge just on a whim and I couldn't tell them. We were always watched, always monitered. Any groups of over three were broken up, those that publicly displayed discontent, disappeared.
Everything had been breaking down since the 2129 riots. I was too young for most of it, but I remember the stories the janitors would tell us at night. The looting, the food shortages and the disease. But all that was cuased by the economic collapse. The prices rose to impossible heights and jobs became useless. Everything grinded to a halt over a period of three or four chaotic weeks. Tram services shut down, supermarkets were emptied, the first national declaration of martial law, and the violence that followed it.
It was hell, but I lived through. I was welcomed into a small community of people working together for a common cause. The Pursuit of Enough. Enough to sell, enough to wear, enough to eat, enough to live. We would pool our resources and live to see the next day.
But eventually, some of us had gotten greedy. Conflict erupted, and many of my friends were killed. I had to abandon my home and flee to the closest population center, where I holed up for several weeks before venturing outside to find food and work.
I miss those friends sometimes.
I woke up on the floor of a military transport truck several hours later covered in dried vomit. I don't think it was my own. I forced myself up into a sitting position and took stock of the situation I had found myself in. There were eight other men in the back of this truck besides myself, all sporting injuries from the raid. They were staring at me like I was some kind of caged animal. There was room on the end of the drop down benches that lined the inside of the transport, so I forced myself fully upright and half crawled, half fell onto the seat. Nobody said anything and since there were no windows, I couldn’t tell how long I’d been asleep, nor how long I’d been in this truck. I just sat in the dark, steel box, wondering, "Could I have gotten away if I had chosen a different house? Would they have shot me if I didn't go into that one? Were that going to shoot me now anyway?"
Several hours later the truck began to slow and eventually stopped. The door opened, letting blinding light pour into the transport's hold.
We poured out of that damned metal box and were shocked by the terrain. Instead of towering smokestacks, high rises, and other industrial buildings, what met our eyes was an immense pockmarked plane. With the constant dull thump of explosions in the distance. There was an officer waiting for us as we disembarked.
He seemed a bit flustered.
“Alright, Stand in a straight li- I said a STRAIGHT line!”
He herded us into the desired formation, and assigned us our commissars.
“Alright, You’re with commissar Haylvin. He’s a prick. You’re with Commissar Tronson, he’s alright, bit of a wuss though.” And so on down the line, until he got to me.
“And you, what the hell happened to you?”
I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t make that mistake. I could feel his breath of my face.
“Mhmm. Going to play it like that, eh? Alright then, Haylvin for you.”
He stepped away, but the guards forced us to keep the formation until he came back a couple hours later.
“Right, into the trenches, follow the signs into the assembly yard.”
And so we moved through the trenches under guard until we reached an open area filled with machines of war.
Various vehicles moved in and out of the area. Trucks laden with supplies moved closer to the front, while others pulled onto the dirt highway laden with casualties, both alive and dead, to be taken to the nearest surgical hospital. Entire fleets of drones buzzed above our heads, Invisible except for their contrails, which filled the skies. It was hauntingly beautiful.
The dull thumps of enemy shells impacting along our lines and the sharp cracks of our artillery’s response jarred me back to reality.
Those under Commissar Haylvin’s command were grouped together under an out of the way awning. An officer, a different one then before, trotted across the assembly area toward us. He pulled out some papers and began to hand them out while explaining what they were.
“These are your rank and citizenship papers. Keep them with you, don’t lose them. They are one of the only things that will keep you from getting shot outside of your approved areas.” He handed me a pink set of plastic bound books. Tied together with a short length of twine.
We received our equipment. An assault rifle, our brown uniforms, a gas mask, and two days of rations. Then we were directed into the trenches, toward the front.
As we walked through the trenches, through the mud and filth, our small group was joined by others, all moving towards the frontlines. The sounds of our boots gradually grew into a torrent of sound. We made the ground shake, so that the sounds of combat became muted in comparison.
The veterans, those who had been there before us, watched in subdued awe as we marched in our glorious formations. But our comrades had other places to defend. And so the sounds began to die, spread out along our battle lines. And suddenly, my small column was once again alone. With only the small sounds of our boots splashing in the mud, and the periodic stabbing sound of weaponry firing. It's a very lonely feeling indeed.
The small tunnel cut into the earth suddenly opened into a wide open
expanse full of craters, carved by the shells of both sides’ artillery. There was no foliage ahead of our lines and as I looked out I saw only the broken bodies of my comrades, punctuated by the few remaining splinters of once proud trees.
There were only thirty of us for this half mile stretch of the line. I was placed under the command of a Captain Emerson, a thick-set man with a sort of stupid look about him. I had never even seen my commisar. We offloaded supplies from a military truck that had arrived just before us, what little supplies there were, in one of the few dry places we could find.
I found a bed that had been cut into the side of the trench, and slept there for the night, since there wasn’t any notable activity along the line.
I was woken the next day by a burst of radio static. I rolled out of my rack, and saw that our radio operator had gotten a connection with his radio to command and had begun broadcasting status reports.
But a sudden burst of static and a stream of obscenities told me all was not well. Nor anything close to it.
The next thing I knew, the corporal was telling me to go up the line to see if the next watch post had any spare parts.
I pulled on my pack and started jogging the half mile to the next Watch Post that might have an extra radio. I jogged through the trenches, around camp stoves and artillery pieces. I was about half way through to the post when I hit a Checkpoint. It was manned by enlisted troops, Volunteers. They took one look at my papers and just waved me through. It took me about fifteen more minutes to cover the rest of the ground to the post. I walked into the outpost and grabbed the attention of the first guy that looked like he had his shit together.
“Yo!”
He changed direction mid stride and was at my side within a couple steps.
“Whatcha need man?”
“Transponder up the road died. I was sent here for a spare?”
“Right, right, I’ll get you set up. Right over there.”
He walked with me to a dugout bunker in the side of the outpost and he even set me up with the Supply sargeant. Just like he said.
As I left the outpost he shook my hand and introduced himself:
“Jeff, Jeff Kinney.”
“Jeremy Edwards.”
“A pleasure.”
He then turned around and headed back up to the S4 and I put the part into my pack and started my return trip back to my platoon.
I was about ten minutes out when I heard the first dull thumps that signified the start of a very interesting day. I could see the arcing contrails from the enemy shells drawing closer. I sped up into a full out run as the ordnance detection sirens went off and the Interception crew armed their systems and orientated their rocket pods towards the threat. They obviously wouldn’t stop them all, but perhaps they could stop the ones headed for the critical systems.
The first shell hit a couple hundred yards away, harmlessly into the DMZ. I stopped and stared for a couple seconds, thinking that is was a isolated incident but the second and third shells hit much closer to me, sending bodies into the air. Then the trenches were filled with chaos, men crying, calls for corpsmen, the launching of desperate interception rockets, and then me, running in the midst of it all with a backpack full of replacement parts.
The shells were falling thick and fast, too many to count. The checkpoint had taken a direct hit and only melted slag and bodies remained as I ran through its wreckage.
As I was running, men began to space themselves along the line. With officers pacing back and forth along the line correcting orders, giving new ones, and generally maintaining order along the line.
Then the order came, "Conscripts, over the top!" I kept running.
An officer stepped out in front of me, on purpose, and we collided and smashed into the muddy ground.
He jumped to his feet, shook his head, and then grabbed by the collar of my camoflaged jacket.
"You, Over the top, Now."
I got out the words: "Radio", and "Platoon" and then pointed at the radio parts that were now spilled over the ground.
He glanced over real quick and then threw me towards the trench the rest of the conscripts were climbing over.
I half turned back towards the radio parts and saw that he had drawn his pistol and was aiming it right at me. Right between the eyes. My eyes.
So I went over the top. Forgetting the parts in favor of saving my own life. For at least a couple seconds.
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