City of Dis
It all happened on one day.
One day was all it took to change everything, well; I suppose it had to have been more than a day. There would have been months or maybe years of planning and they must have planned it; it all happened so perfectly. Of course if you were to ask them how long it took they wouldn't know. If you ask them they've always been here, it's always been this way and if you ask them you probably won't make it home.
I was young when it happened, only eighteen or nineteen but I still remember the Free Days - the way things used to be. I honestly couldn't tell how long it's been, when the calendars changed it got difficult to keep track of things like that, but it's been long enough.
When they took over no-one ever thought it could last more than a few days or even a week at most. It seemed like any other terrorist action or activist's protest but slowly we began to realise - they were everywhere and controlled everything. There was no-one to stop them. In the first few years there was the occasional uprising, attempts to reclaim a one city or another, but they never got far. Even the ones which lasted long enough to be noticed where put down before they made any real impact. One thing that has survived is the underground media. It began once people realised the old days weren't coming back anytime soon. That's how this is getting to you; well unless we were successful, in which case you could be reading this as some relic in your history book...we can only hope.
You see: we've been planning for months now and tomorrow we will act. Each of us is writing a message to leave behind, so someone will know what happened. I suppose mine hasn't really been very helpful so far…
I suppose I should do the whole history lesson bit, then tell you who I am, who we are and just what it is we've been planning. If you're part of my generation or older you won't need the history lesson but there are people these days who believe the proproganda, who don't know any better, who don't remember the way things used to be. I suppose there must be a proverbial "bliss" to that ignorance. Maybe it would be simpler to just give in and let them have their way, I'm sure there are people who have. Just given up, given up remembering, given up fighting, given up hoping. I tried for a while, to live their way. I followed the rules, the laws, the edicts and decrees, I paid the dues to the "enforcers", the taxes to the "operators" and the levies to the "distributors," I stayed in my district, I obeyed the curfew, I attended the readings, I worked in my assigned job but I could never give in, something inside me refused to give in.
I hadn't left the ten square mile "District 4 North" for five years. This is the extent of their control, you're given a number, the number tells you where you live, work, eat, shop and socialise, hell, they even tell you how to do all of those. Bananas were made contraband last year, bad for the economy or something like that. On that night I was on my way home from work and some kid grabbed my standard issue messenger bag, the hooks that held the straps on were cracked, I'd asked for a new one but had to wait till the end of the month. The kid grabbed it and ran, the stolen property report would take weeks to be processed before I could even apply to replace what I had in that bag and the fees would starve me for a month. I chased the kid. He was heading towards one of what they call the "Quarantine Zones" but I really needed my bag back.
This is how I met the resistance, the freedom-fighters, the dangerous terrorists and criminals that threaten our glorious society. The kid ran into one of the derelicts in the QZ and there was a group of men and women standing around a dimly lit table studying something. It reminded me of something out of an old movie; back when people made them for money or for credit, not for the government. This would be the scene where our heroes were planning the big heist or the jail-break, the camera would probably spin around behind them. It turned out this is how they recruit people, being willing to run into a QZ was a test. They told me who they were and what they were about, they showed me their plans, they told me the dangers and even some perks. The deal was that they had chosen not to live the way the government told them, they had decided that the old society was better, no matter what the propaganda said. These people believed that freedom was more important than the economy, public order, the health service or the buses running on time. It was more important than their lives. I was given a lot of information in one go and they left me alone to think about it. They said I could either join them or be sent home with enough of some chemical cocktail in my blood to blank out my memory of meeting them. They left me there for a few hours, well, it could have been longer, maybe even less; sitting in an empty room by yourself doesn't do much for your perception of time. I told them I'd made my choice and I became one of them. Since then I've been outside that room more than a few times waiting for people to make up their minds, more often than not they join us, it's reassuring.
Most of the day to day work with the resistance is simple stuff. Helping people out, giving them money when one of their many taxes is due, repairing something that would take months to requisition, hiding or supplying some contraband. It's simple stuff but it makes people's lives easier. One of our biggest projects is the library, finding, recreating and protecting the old literature, it's important to save stuff like that, gives people something to hold onto. I worked with the newspapers for a while too, paper-boy is one of the most dangerous jobs we do. Moving the illegal print out of the QZ where we operate and into circulation. There are hundreds of places it could go wrong; at least one guy a month gets caught. Another big problem for us is that the government are constantly moving the quarantine zones around. See, there's no real need for the QZs. They're just for effect; fear is a big thing for autocrats. Every few months a QZ gets reclaimed and a new one is marked out, when that happens we have to wipe-out any trace that we've been there and set up shop somewhere else quick enough to not screw up any of our essential services.
Behind all this, behind the housekeeping and paper routes is the grand scheme of things. Our master plan isn't to take back the city, we've seen people try that and fail, the soldiers are too well trained, the buildings too well fortified, we know that won't work. Our plan is to show the people of the city what they can do if they so choose, because that's what the government have taken from them, their choice. We are choosing to risk our lives to expose the weakness of our masters and the strength of their slaves. Choice is what this all about, the choice they took away from us.
So tomorrow, I and many others like me will risk our lives to show you what can be done. Hey, maybe we'll get lucky and this will end up in some history book or maybe we'll all die heroic deaths on the steps of City Hall. That is, until our bodies are ignominiously destroyed and propaganda names us all as degenerates and criminals. Either way, when I leave my house tomorrow it won't be as a slave or even as a begrudging collaborator, I'll be a free man, I'll have made my choice and stood by it. So be it.
One day was all it took to change everything, well; I suppose it had to have been more than a day. There would have been months or maybe years of planning and they must have planned it; it all happened so perfectly. Of course if you were to ask them how long it took they wouldn't know. If you ask them they've always been here, it's always been this way and if you ask them you probably won't make it home.
I was young when it happened, only eighteen or nineteen but I still remember the Free Days - the way things used to be. I honestly couldn't tell how long it's been, when the calendars changed it got difficult to keep track of things like that, but it's been long enough.
When they took over no-one ever thought it could last more than a few days or even a week at most. It seemed like any other terrorist action or activist's protest but slowly we began to realise - they were everywhere and controlled everything. There was no-one to stop them. In the first few years there was the occasional uprising, attempts to reclaim a one city or another, but they never got far. Even the ones which lasted long enough to be noticed where put down before they made any real impact. One thing that has survived is the underground media. It began once people realised the old days weren't coming back anytime soon. That's how this is getting to you; well unless we were successful, in which case you could be reading this as some relic in your history book...we can only hope.
You see: we've been planning for months now and tomorrow we will act. Each of us is writing a message to leave behind, so someone will know what happened. I suppose mine hasn't really been very helpful so far…
I suppose I should do the whole history lesson bit, then tell you who I am, who we are and just what it is we've been planning. If you're part of my generation or older you won't need the history lesson but there are people these days who believe the proproganda, who don't know any better, who don't remember the way things used to be. I suppose there must be a proverbial "bliss" to that ignorance. Maybe it would be simpler to just give in and let them have their way, I'm sure there are people who have. Just given up, given up remembering, given up fighting, given up hoping. I tried for a while, to live their way. I followed the rules, the laws, the edicts and decrees, I paid the dues to the "enforcers", the taxes to the "operators" and the levies to the "distributors," I stayed in my district, I obeyed the curfew, I attended the readings, I worked in my assigned job but I could never give in, something inside me refused to give in.
I hadn't left the ten square mile "District 4 North" for five years. This is the extent of their control, you're given a number, the number tells you where you live, work, eat, shop and socialise, hell, they even tell you how to do all of those. Bananas were made contraband last year, bad for the economy or something like that. On that night I was on my way home from work and some kid grabbed my standard issue messenger bag, the hooks that held the straps on were cracked, I'd asked for a new one but had to wait till the end of the month. The kid grabbed it and ran, the stolen property report would take weeks to be processed before I could even apply to replace what I had in that bag and the fees would starve me for a month. I chased the kid. He was heading towards one of what they call the "Quarantine Zones" but I really needed my bag back.
This is how I met the resistance, the freedom-fighters, the dangerous terrorists and criminals that threaten our glorious society. The kid ran into one of the derelicts in the QZ and there was a group of men and women standing around a dimly lit table studying something. It reminded me of something out of an old movie; back when people made them for money or for credit, not for the government. This would be the scene where our heroes were planning the big heist or the jail-break, the camera would probably spin around behind them. It turned out this is how they recruit people, being willing to run into a QZ was a test. They told me who they were and what they were about, they showed me their plans, they told me the dangers and even some perks. The deal was that they had chosen not to live the way the government told them, they had decided that the old society was better, no matter what the propaganda said. These people believed that freedom was more important than the economy, public order, the health service or the buses running on time. It was more important than their lives. I was given a lot of information in one go and they left me alone to think about it. They said I could either join them or be sent home with enough of some chemical cocktail in my blood to blank out my memory of meeting them. They left me there for a few hours, well, it could have been longer, maybe even less; sitting in an empty room by yourself doesn't do much for your perception of time. I told them I'd made my choice and I became one of them. Since then I've been outside that room more than a few times waiting for people to make up their minds, more often than not they join us, it's reassuring.
Most of the day to day work with the resistance is simple stuff. Helping people out, giving them money when one of their many taxes is due, repairing something that would take months to requisition, hiding or supplying some contraband. It's simple stuff but it makes people's lives easier. One of our biggest projects is the library, finding, recreating and protecting the old literature, it's important to save stuff like that, gives people something to hold onto. I worked with the newspapers for a while too, paper-boy is one of the most dangerous jobs we do. Moving the illegal print out of the QZ where we operate and into circulation. There are hundreds of places it could go wrong; at least one guy a month gets caught. Another big problem for us is that the government are constantly moving the quarantine zones around. See, there's no real need for the QZs. They're just for effect; fear is a big thing for autocrats. Every few months a QZ gets reclaimed and a new one is marked out, when that happens we have to wipe-out any trace that we've been there and set up shop somewhere else quick enough to not screw up any of our essential services.
Behind all this, behind the housekeeping and paper routes is the grand scheme of things. Our master plan isn't to take back the city, we've seen people try that and fail, the soldiers are too well trained, the buildings too well fortified, we know that won't work. Our plan is to show the people of the city what they can do if they so choose, because that's what the government have taken from them, their choice. We are choosing to risk our lives to expose the weakness of our masters and the strength of their slaves. Choice is what this all about, the choice they took away from us.
So tomorrow, I and many others like me will risk our lives to show you what can be done. Hey, maybe we'll get lucky and this will end up in some history book or maybe we'll all die heroic deaths on the steps of City Hall. That is, until our bodies are ignominiously destroyed and propaganda names us all as degenerates and criminals. Either way, when I leave my house tomorrow it won't be as a slave or even as a begrudging collaborator, I'll be a free man, I'll have made my choice and stood by it. So be it.
