The Revolution: Chapter One
An introduction.
opened his eyes and was immediately assaulted by the needles of the sun. Little did Jackie Hodgeson know that today would be the last day of normalcy that he would ever know. Of course, in the weeks and months following there would obviously be the requisite "The signs were there moment" where all the red flags of the past several years would come rushing into his head, but as his therapist always said, "there are things that can be changed, and things that can’t."
As he sat up in his sparsely decorated room that was rented for a price that left little room in the budget for things such as actual decorations, he looked around and internally gaged how much he was going to regret the alcohol he consumed the night prior. After doing his morning self-assessment, he came to the conclusion that he needed only two pain pills instead of three or (heaven forbid) four that usually followed the painful waking up ritual.
The shrill ringing of his alarm sounded twice as loud as it usually did, causing Jackie to curse audibly at his stupidity as to hit "snooze" instead of "dismiss." The sudden silence of the alrm’s dismissal fell quickly and heavilly over the room. Jackie decided to up the dosage of his pain meds. The second pill was particularly hard to swollow, his morning acid reflux threatening to empty his stomach.
The first crisis of the day dealt with, Jackie swung his feet over the side of the small bed and immediatly knocked over a pile of cans of various cheap (both in price and in alcohol content) forms of malt liquor. Today is already turning out to be a peach, Jackie thought to himself, coldly.
A sharp growl from his guts cut through the fatigue and brought Jackie back to the task at hand. Gotta find some food and get to work.
Jackie looked over at the clock hanging on the wall above the single burner electric hotplate and suddenly realized that he was already late for work, no time for food, but that meant he would have to buy some food. Hopefully, he had enough money for that. Another meal at the café meant another hour of wages wasted.
Jackie lived in a kind of dormatory, floor upon floor of single rooms with nowhere near enough communal bathing areas dotted among the living quarters. Jackie had lived on the third floor for a couple of years after a friend at a former job had found an opening. Real estate was limited in the city and to find a spot in a neighborhood that had enough amenaties within walking distance was a fair trade off he thought.
As a financial data analysis, Jackie's life was numbers, long complicated strings of numbers that he had almost learned to see as strings connecting the financial world rather than dry spreadsheats of stock movements. There were times when Jackie thought he saw those strings on the periphery of his vision, like the occasional floating cloud in his vision. There were other analysists, dotted here and there, but as far as Jackie knew, none of them really knew each other.
Jackie worked most days down at the Beverage Bar in the lobby of the building, as it had the only really reliable network connection within a mile, and more than that was just too far for Jackie to wrap his head around, just some little wiggle in the back of his mind that the inconvinience would just be too much to bear.
To Jackie's intense dismay, a sign on the door of the Beverage Bar read, "Metanet connection down, hard currency only," meaning not only would he not be working from the building, but since all he had was his credit chip, no food either. Time for plan B.
The one bright spot of the long walk to the next best metanet connection was that the day was one of those cool spring mornings where Jackie had to admit to himself that Gaia was actually rather beautiful. The crisp, cool air felt exhilarating in his lungs, and the song of the Flyers sounded sweet over the sound of Flux engines during traffic hour. If it weren’t for the bit of fatigue still clouding his consciousness, he may have noticed that the traffic was light.
"It’s strange," Jackie had once remarked to his therapist, "in a city where we’re packed in like sardines, it’s surprisingly lonely." The therapist looked down at her pad and scribbled something, only half listening.
Jackie was born on a small farm a couple of states over, a couple of his brothers showed an aptitude for growing things and had stayed and taken over, but Jackie had always had his eye on the big city. He wanted to go somewhere up north, but his professional path had taken him to a city not far from home and had through the process of a couple of years created a rut for himself that while efficient and spartan, was not really what Jackie would call fulfilling.
The sound of a woman screaming shook Jackie from his reverie, and he was mildly interested in the group of people gathered around a shop window, crowding the entrance. It was a split second decision to walk closer for a better look, maybe the Planetary Minister was making a pronouncement or sports event or some other mundane minutia, and any other day, he might have walked the other way. But today... today he felt compelled to walk toward the group.
As he closed the distance, he could feel an otherworldly sense of dread, a sense that something bad was happening. He noticed that the crowd seemed agitated in some way, each face showing a mixture of emotions. Many had tears streaming from their eyes, and some had clenched jaws and fists--anger. And they all verbalized this agitation in a heavy roar, all of the voices mixing together.
When he could finally get a look at the building, he saw it was a simple electronics store, the kind that had vid screens for sale in the front window. The store itself also seemed to be filled to the brim with human bodies of all shapes and sizes.
A more horrified scream than the one that got Jackie’s attention came from inside the store and the mass of people seemed to flow as one person pushed their way outside and immediately threw up on the shoes of a well dressed, rotund man. This is not good, Jackie thought, terrified.
This allowed Jackie to see for the first time what was making everybody so upset, and there was nothing on Gaia to prepare him for the images it showed.
Flux. Fire. Gaia’s breath. There were many names for the substance, but it was undeniable that it was the life blood of the planet called Gaia.
Gaia was a small world connected to a small star, second planet in a six world system, mostly disconnected from the machinations of the overarching galactic society.
Due to the small size of the world, there was only one continent with a few small, inhospitable islands, surrounded by a sea of saline water. Before the continent (deemed Pangea by the locals) was industrialized, stories told of a giant Forrest that spanned the entirety of the continent. Great trees thousands of meters in the air stabbed skyward through the canopy. Some parts of this Forrest still survive in several "protected" areas of Pangea.
Sitting on some server planet somewhere are the original files of the original colony vessel, but from what has passed down into legend, a group of humans from a sect of religious fanatics saw the sin and depravity of the galactic society and chose Gaia as a place far enough out of the way of prying eyes. They destroyed the technology that brought and just worked the land in harmony. But as with all legends passed down through the years, the original founders' vision was corrupted into a cudgel used to make money for a few and control the rest.
The discovery of the Flux deposits under the northern tectonic plates caused an explosion in technology and commerce far beyond the scope of what the founders intended when they set up the original Gaia colony.
Eventually, a religion sprang up around the seemingly mystical properties of the Flux, deemed fire or Gaia’s breath by the clergy of the Friends of Gaia, also assimilating the Founders distrust of technology in their writings (treated as a holy book by adherents) and things deemed too far from "basic reality" becoming sinful.
Eventually, through the centuries, seven autonomous governments formed, and after a century and a half of long, bloody wars over the borders of each state, the Pangea General Assembly was formed.
The Pangea General Assembly was a council of elected officials from each state. It was formed as a compromise to hopefully keep some semblance of peace, but the reality of politics caused a thick crust of bureaucracies formed to insulate the relatively cushy positions of power from the public at large.
Politics and the Friends of Gaia became comfortable bedmates, finding the combination of post death uncertainty and fear of technology a particularly efficient cocktail to build a legion of devoted citizens.
Three of the southern states had governments with explicit religious ties, the Southernmost state, Grandville, was ran by the highest official of the Friends of Gaia by law, and was also the official capitol of the church itself.
An unfortunate side effect of Pangea's insatiable lust for Flux was the consolidation of usable deposits of the fluid into the portfolios of a few wealthy business people, who then leveraged their access to the lifeblood of the planet to acrew more wealth and access to the various politicians and powerful people of Pangea.
They then found it a mere trifle to influence legislation by leveraging their influence to scare the population into electing officials that they could more easily control. They were able to hide their movements efficiently by splitting their empires into pieces, sprinkling their wealth between numerous smaller corporations, each seemingly autonomous from each other legally, but these shells all operated under one goal--to make money.
As of this writing a large amount of Flux is concentrated in the North, but due to a backdoor in the tax code many of the more powerful corporations were headquartered in the three southern states. And current rumblings suggest that the states where the heaviest Flux concentrations exist are becoming tired of most of the purchasing power being shipped away from their states.
In recent years, a growing consensus of data that the heavy use of Flux has began a process of destabilizing the climate of Gaia, causing harsher weather events. Other information of questionable validity then flooded the metanet by the Flux corporations to confuse and distract the populous. Their publicly stated goals were to foster a debate in public, even though any strong scrutiny was able to see the nitpicked data sets and biased framing of the studies. Both sides of the debate have their adherents and this has further exacerbated an already fractured populous. It's not known as of yet if this deepening devide may demolish the fragile peace between the states, and if Gaia may again feel the flames of war.
There's a sign just outside my window that reads, "The War Machine Bleeds Flux," and I often feel like something is going to happen soon.
Data entry: GaiaX1865
Rotation:2034
Rebecca James had been awake for 20 hours and knew that her day was just beginning. She balled her hands into fists and tried in vein to rub the fatigue from her eyes. She pushed away from her desk, stacked high with blue and red and green folders filled to the brim with papers, with the intention of finding some BeanBrew. A few files fell off the desk and onto the floor, and Rebecca mumbled a curse under her breath. A split second of deciding which was more important, stimulants or being neat--the warm brown beverage won out in the end.
Not that Rebecca--Becks to her friends--had ever been described as neat. At this moment, she had no less than 3 stains on the lapel of her suit. When asked about her messy desk, she often remarked, "My preferred organizational style is 'piles’." Which she often accompanied by making the first two fingers on her hands make air quotes for the word "piles." Usually, the poor recipient of this anecdote would roll their eyes, and Becks would be looking for her exit route while cursing her awkwardness.
She had aspirations of a public political career that was a dream held back by a lack of guts. She was able to read people and figure out the best way to win a debate, but she lacked the personal charisma to make it believable. She was better suited to be a tactical advisor, a position to which she had cultivated a reputation as a bleeding heart, driven by a desire to not see Gaia bled dry by corporations.
After a few glasses of wine, she could be persuaded to admit she had been fairly successful, guiding the debates toward climate stability for the time being.
The deep, husky voice of Councilman Robert Rangler startled Rebecca from her thoughts. She had walked to the BeanBrew machine and who knows how long she had stared off into the void. She spun on her heels and shook her head to snap out of it and came face to face with the Councilman.
"Have you slept, Miss James?" The squat, bearded man asked.
"I’ll sleep when we get those miners of yours better wages," Rebecca quipped.
"What have you got? I feel we will need something to swing Bradford. I have two votes for sure on top of my own, but the Fire Coalition will automatically vote ney."
"I have Shirley running down a rabbit trail of a higher risk of cancer in Flux miners. That might be an in."
The Councilman’s bushy eyebrows went up.
"Don’t get your hopes up. What time do you leave for the assembly?"
"Two hours."
"I’ll have my report to you by then. You know I’m good for it."
"I trust you, Rebecca. Your advice is important to me."
Maybe it was the fatigue making her a bit loopy, but she had to smile at that.
The next two hours were a blur of brainstorming with her small group of data analysts who knew the science and numbers better than she did, her strength was finding the best way to use the data for the most political impact.
The sad fact was that for all intents and purposes the Assembly was deadlocked on issues of the Flux industry. The bill being debated didn't actually matter. This time it was higher pay for Flux miners in Councilman Ranglers state, the northernmost state Icebane. But next time it might be carbon emissions or some other small things.
The northern states, whose biggest constituency block was Flux miners, tried often to make their areas safer for human life. This often lead to Flux Corporations threatening to raise prices. The Southern States would use this uptick in prices to threaten to raise Agricultural prices since the abundance of fertile land was in their states.
It was a give and take that Rebecca found as natural as breathing.
She caught up to Councilman Rangler just as he was about to leave. The light of the day star was just peaking over the sky piercing buildings of the city.
He laughed as she approached, "you do know how to beat the clock, Rebecca."
"I promised I would have you a report and I got you one. I bet you can find some good stuff in this." She handed him a heavy manilla envelope.
"We will save Gaia, Rebecca."
All she could give was a slight nod.
There was a sense of forboding watching her boss leave in the auto transport vehicle. She couldn't quite put her finger on why she felt so off, in the moment it felt like maybe she was forgetting something, some missing piece of the puzzle perhaps. There was nothing to be done, though. If her work was unsatisfactory, then that would be a problem for future Rebecca to handle.
She pulled out a pack of smokes and lit one up for the trip back to her office on the third floor to wait for further instructions. In the mean time, she could get to work on the mountain of other projects that she had.
The minute she sat down in her rather uncomfortable chair, Rebecca succomed to fatigue and rested her eyes. The sleep washed over her and as she felt her conciousness leaving her body, to be replaced by REM sleep, she felt a sense of falling into a warm rushing river. She let herself go.
"Miss James?" A hurried femiminine voice at the door shook Rebecca from her nap. There was the same sense of forboding waiting for her in the waking world.
Through bleery eyes, she looked at the clock above the main entrance to her office. It had only been an hour, and the councilman was probably in opening remarks by this time. The next place she looked was to the source of the voice at the door. It belonged to an intern whose eyes were wide with fatigue and anxiety and whose hair looked as if it had been tugged at roughly. She barely registered it through the fog of sleep, still blanketing her brain.
"What is it, Mrs. Baileywick?" she said, rubbing her eyes.
"You have to turn on the news. They’ve lost it," the intern said with a hoarse rasp as if the poor Mrs. Baileywick had recently been screaming or crying. The tone in the intern’s voice immediately cut through the fog, and Rebecca was awake.
She began fishing for the controller for the monitor that hung on the south wall of the office and was able to squeek out the words "who’s lost what?" before finding the remote.
"We don’t know, but it’s bad. Have you heard from the councilman?" the intern asked, worried. Rebecca shook her head.
The monitor flashed to life at the push of the power button. It took a slight moment for an image to show on the screen, but when it did, there was just a silent shot of the assembly building, or rather what was left of the structure. The few walls that remained were lit aflame, the light of the morning showing the remains of a world that now no longer existed.
A hammer rang out, and the best part of Greg White’s week began. The church was a big, gaudy, yet colorless place. Small touches of purple in the long benches were the only thing to break up the opressive white of the interior decoration.
As the congregation seated themselves with near military precision, from the rear came a procession of identically dressed red cloaks down the center of the isle between the pews. Their faces clean shaven, their hair all an identical color, they essentially functioned as a singular unit by design. The procession flowed as if liquid to the front of the auditorium where a large, bearded man in robes colored in the same purple as the pews stood.
The purple cloaked man was The High Reverend Joel White, Greg’s father, and the man to whom he would forever be comparing himself.
When everything was finally in place according to the traditions and bylaws set forth from the Council of the Holy Triumverate over 700 years ago, the Reverend White struck the heavy hammer once more. A few people stirred in their seats.
Reverend White opened the old book on the lecturn, the pages thin and bound in luminescent metal. He cleared his throat and began speaking in a slow, practiced drawl.
“My brothers and sisters, i come to you tonight with a message. A message come beared to you from Heaven himself. We have growned soft. Why i remember a day when a man could comea home from a hard days minin fire to his own fire and the warmth of familiy and that warm feelin inside of a good days work.
"Those days a gone, i feared. Replaced by the cold arm of comfort and satisfaction.
"The Tome of Jerimya states that "all who fear the fire must also fear heaven" and we have grown fearful of the fire indeed. The men from the north come down with tidings of machinery which will do the minin foe us, but my brothers and sisters i must warn you that to take comfort in tose things risks losin what connection we have to heaven.
"There come a time soon my children where the fires of Gaia hers self will cleanse the world of thems who have thrown away their connection with heaven.
"Let us intreat the lord and lady of the realm to hasten that day so that we may have this continent they uh have set asides for their faithful. Amen."
Greg hadn't really worked a day in his life, despite the public facing personality he showed to his constituents. He had recently been elected as his district's Councilman in the Grandville General Assembly thanks to his connection to a political committee run by the Friends of Gaia. He had joined the real family business.
Like many children with the privilege of nepotism, Greg was quickly developing a reputation of not wanting to actually do a whole lot in the General Session. He mostly showed up for votes, always voting with other members of his party.
His other passion was a love of fundraising. There wasn't a weekend that he couldn't be found shaking hands with the owner class of wealthy donors, knowing that as long as the money flowed, and the votes kept coming for laws that benefited the owners, he was a lock for keeping his seat in the Assembly. And as long as he could keep his seat, he wouldn't have to join the stuffy, tradition locked world of the clergy. He didn't really think red was his color anyway.
He did know the words to say from The Book to keep his opponents in line, he had shown great ability to find the sin in the lives of others and was able to leverage it to great success with the voters who seemed almost rabid at the thought of society becoming more in line with the words of the founders. His favorite tactic was talking about the perfect utopia of the founders time, a world he wasn’t sure actually existed, but could with a few rhetorical flourishes could make others believe it. He probably got that talent from his father, although his mother had a bit of it too.
The service let out 45 minutes later than the scheduled time. Reverend White was long winded, but engaging to the full auditorium that came from all over Grandville to see him.
Both the Reverend and Greg posted themselves up on separate sides of the the table in the rear of the auditorium where a selection of snacks and drinks waited for the worshipers.
From behind Greg, a black suited security guard strode up to him. "Sir, we have a problem," he whispered in Greg's ear.
"Can't it wait, Johnson? I'm talking to my friends."
"No sir, we need to get out of here."
Greg turned around to look at Agent Johnson, fully ready to dress the man down, but there was no color in his face, and the shirt under the suit was dripping with sweat. Greg noticed the man was tugging at his side arm, possibly absent-mindedly.
In his memoirs later in his life, when thinking about this moment he would remark, "If I had known the events of that day and the days that would follow, I feel as if I would have lost my mind and ran away and never stopped running."
