The Revolution: Chapter Two
“The end of the world as we know it”
This is a work in progress draft of a novel. The first chapter is here.
The Pangea General Assembly compound was originally designed to "serve as a shining becon of hope across a war stretched land," and for a scant few years after its inception, it was. The final Flux War had drained the land of its young men, its culture, and even its spirit. In more recent times, it stood as an example of the deepening division and the fragile peace between 7 disparate governments.
The idea that the Founders had thrown off the yoke of technological oppression in the pursuit of a better collective of humanity had somehow been warped into a system of human capital designed to place an abundance of wealth in a few accounts, the owners of which would rather see their available balance increase despite what the overworked men and women further down the hierarchy would be able to stomach without a toll being taken mentally and physically.
The higher up the social hierarchy a person rose, the more luxurious life became. While many in the public worried where the next meal might come, the owners had little such worries, and a market arose around wealthy people telling the less advantaged outrageous "secrets" to become wealthy.
The typical voting consisted of three ayes and three nays with a seventh vote usually going either way. The northern states (to be named eventually), having a strong tradition of rights for the workers in the notoriously hostile Flux mines, often brought about legislation which would increase the stability of the common person, usually paid for from corporate taxes. The Southern States (Grandville, Mount Vesio and Sharsville), the more corporation focused (often under the guise of "being concerned about Government 'overreach' between the lawful operations of the States") often vehemently opposed any legislation which would harm profits in anyway for the energy companies, the largest of which, DSI (nobody really knew what the initials stood for) was the state government for Shapsville. The representative for the state of Scarsmon, the state which actually housed the General Assembly had historically been seen as a "neutral vote" in the Assembly, although more recently it seemed that John Romb had been courting the ear of the energy lobby, notably DSI public affairs chairperson, Thea Randolph.
Four of the representatives were publicly elected, although the DSI representative was elected via shareholder vote and also was subject to recall at any time. The others were appointed manly by the Executive Officer of the state of these three Governers, none of which were subject to electoral challenges.
While votes were undertaken by all 7, a Grand Moderator officially tallyed the votes and created order among the representatives. The Grand Moderator made rulings based on a very structured and well legislated series of rules governing decorum and time limits for debate and such to create "as fair of a legislative process as possible."
The current battle ground was the Workers Freedom Act, a bill designed to raise the wage of workers in designated "dangerous jobs," the cited example of which being "miners, transporters, and sellers of flux." At one time, it had been a bill that would have lifted a sizeable chunk of the population out of poverty. Through a months long series of debates and compromises, the bill was now a shell of its former self. Fewer people would see far fewer benefits. The original author of the bill, Robert Rangler, had to cash in every political favor he had left to finally force a final debate and vote on the bill. The vote looked once again to fall to Romb, who had been a major driving force in the slashes made to the bill, all in an effort to "make it more palatable to the voters."
"Yes, Governor, I am intimately aware of what this vote means for my career," Councilman Robert Rangler said quietly into the phone. Somehow, the wood paneled walls still echoed his words back at him in a semi-accusatory tone.
"I’m just saying, Robert, polls are showing that if we can’t get this done, it’s not just your head they’ll want. Metaphorically, of course." The governor chuckled from the other side of the continent.
Rangler swallowed the words he wanted to say back and instead croaked out, "Thank you, sir, for your reminder. I will endeavor to do my best, but I’m headed into session right now," and ended the call.
He inhaled quickly to center himself in the empty corridor. He reached for the door handle and turned.
For all the public bluster about this bill, there was surprisingly little in the way of public attendance. There were a few reporters and camera crews around, but nowhere near the circus that Rangler expected. He couldn’t really blame the apathetic response. He strode across the public seating area to the Governance Area, a pompous name Rangler had always thought.
They were still waiting for the Grandville representative, a boorish man who was seemingly always late to official votes. The official start time was elapsed by five minutes when the man finally made his presence known through his trademark prayer, "Gaia is my friend and I am hers." Rangler rolled his eyes.
"Sit down, Mister Andrews, none of us have time for your bluster today," the Grand Moderator at the front said. The man hurried to his seat."
The Grand Moderator shuffled his robe a bit to settle the fabric and then turned to the assembled representatives, "this session of the Pangea General Assembly is now in order. Today, we are entering into the final debate for GA1386.3, The Workers Freedom Act. There will be ten minutes for each representative to make their final cases before we take a final vote on its passage. Is this agreed?"
All seven agreed.
"Fantastic. Now, the author of the bill has requested to say a few words before we begin. Mr. Rangler, the floor is yours."
Rangler rose to his feet and looked down at the stack of drab statistics and anecdotes that he hoped would sway one vote. He took a deep breath and began.
"Th--" was all he could get out before the explosive device hidden in his desk detonated. He didn’t even feel the increase in temperature.
The feed showed only static, and the feed director immediately smashed back to studio footage which showed the distracted newswoman, Stacy Fairgold, talking to her metanet stream, chatting with some user across the continent, and thinking the speech would have been longer.
Episode director David McKinsie snapped backstage at the poor feed director, "What just happened?"
"Uh, we lost the feed. We’re working on getting it back."
"Shit, wake up Miss Influencer out there and tell her to stretch for time."
The Technical Director was the next to speak. "The cameras are gone, I think. I don’t know if I can get it back."
"Well, do your best plus fifty percent. Get them back," the newsroom phone began ringing, "Somebody get that."
On the feed, Stacy jumped to attention and stared at the camera. A muffled voice said something unintelligible, and she nodded. She then began to make the boilerplate excuses for technical difficulties.
"David, I’m getting reports of explosions at the General Assembaly from Frank outside. He can be set up in 2 minutes," the feed director yelled across the room.
For a split second, McKinsie processed that news and steeled himself. "Tell him to make it one, and launch any unmanned cameras as soon as possible, get me footage."
The FD looked for just a second too long.
"Relay the order or get out," McKinsie boomed. The FD nodded and began talking into the phone. McKinsie turned to the rest of the newsroom crew, "I need you all to do what I tell you when I tell you, and we’ll all be remembered for this moment. I apologize in advance if I come off as a dick."
The FD hollered over McKinsie’s attempt at a motivational speech, "Frank is uplinked and ready to go live!"
"OK, cue it in"
Stacy Fairgold touched her ear when her instructions were being barked over her wireless. She tried her best not to show the emotion the news she was now getting was illiciting. She was not entirely successful.
Her voice broke a bit, and she flipped a bit of hair out of her damp eye as she said, "We’re getting reports at the General Assembaly building of explosions. We have Frank Brownstone just outside of the compound."
"Cut to the drone footage first," McKinsie whispered.
The feed cut to the corpse of the General Assembly Building. The dome had collapsed in, and many of the walls were burning. Rubble was strewn across the well manicured lawns, and the state’s flags had flown in several directions like spears. Frank was set up near the legislative offices off the north side of the compound.
The Tecnical director cursed under his breath, and the sound of a sob came from some other corner of the room. McKinsie said in his most steady voice, "Oh my god."
"Are we live? Studio, am I live?" The commanding voice of Frank Brownstone said over the live feed. This seemingly snapped the control room out of their trance. The feed shifted to the reporter’s live feed.
"Frank, what are you seeing?" Stacy croaked.
"This is Frank Brownstone coming to you live from the Pangea General Assembly where violence has erupted during a vote on the worker protection act. Several explosions have reduced this once awe inspiring building to burning rubble."
"Cut the editorializing, Brownstone," McKinsie hissed.
"We haven’t seen any authorities on the scene, so there is no way of knowing what the real damage is. We don’t know how many injuries or fatalities we may see here."
"Stacy, keep him talking." McKinsie said curtly. Then to the Research Director, "What is the research division doing right now."
The RD looked up from his netpad and said, "We’ve put put a few searches on the metanet, and we’ll let you know if there is anything. If there is even a hint of who did this, you’ll know first."
"Excellent. Get me a list of everyone we can confirm inside. I need something, anything to break before the other news corps do. Has anyone else broke the story?" He was just throwing out ideas.
The RD said, "I’ll get you something," and left.
The TD cleared his throat and said, "I’m patching through the feed of the other news channels now." He pushed a few buttons, and the left most monitor split into the 8 closest competitors' feed.
McKinsie was shocked that no one had picked up the story quite yet, but was bemused to see three in their "Breaking news" cut in screen, and then their drone footage from earlier being splashed across the screen. He was glad he had cut there first. He figured that either the Legal or Financial Departments had their eyes on these channels. He looked back at the live feed to see Frank’s gravelly face on screen.
The next thing he remembered seeing was a flash of light. Frank turned around to see the flash. A giant chunk of flaming brick from the now demolished Legislative offices blew through Brownstone and into the camera, causing the feed to go back to static, flooding the room in white. McKinsie fell back into his chair in shock.
The sheer destruction that was perpetrated on the first day of The Collapse, while staggering, would not hold a candle to the destruction wrought over the coming months as the fragile peace that had prevented outright conflict between the states was now a smoldering corpse. Within hours, the southern governors, fearful of a seemingly inevitable migration of the corporations northward to be closer to the more major Flux deposits in the northern part of Pangea, began scheming of ways to keep the money on their side of the continent. Head of the Gaia’s Breath Industrial Index, Alan Baker, was quick to tell news agencies that there was no risk of this disaster "changing the landscape of already established business arrangements, despite the unfounded worries of a few scared politicians."
This press release did little to placate investors, as the Pangea Stock Exchange would crater to numbers which hadn’t been seen in forty years as investors looked to minimize risk, and as one banker explained, "remain liquid while charting unprecedented times."
The destruction of the Pangea General Assembly caused a surge of consumers buying Flux products as there was no way of knowing how hard it would be to procure more Flux Drive Fuel for example. This lead, much to the celebration of many a businessman come bonus season, to a heretofore unimaginablely high price. This price would seem like the good old days within a week as a crew of Flux minors sabotaged the major mining rig Jasmine off the southern coast of Flandon, a small island a few miles to the north west of the main Pangean continent, slashing the output of Flux by 31.7%.
In a manifesto found by authorities on one of the saboteurs, the group, which called themselves Fire of Heaven, noted that their target was selected due to Jasmine’s notorious reputation of egregious and constant safety violations in the name of more production.
An addendum to the original Fire of Heaven manifesto would be released to the metanet which also took responsibility for the bombing of the General Assembly. And while this addendum was quickly refuted, the use of FOH as a political boogeyman was just too hard to resist in the South, where distrust of the Northerner was deeply ingrained.
In that first month, it seemed as if tensions around the continent were increasing by the hour. Many places in public life began to take on new and more aggressive shapes, from Reverends preaching from their pulpits the stoking the exploitable fears of their congregations; or the news associations choosing stories to run that elicited the most violent emotions from their viewers; or even the rise of graphic graffiti in prominent public locations springing up overnight. It was Mount Vesio, Grandville’s neighboring state to the east, which declared martial law first, mobilizing a military force from among the many trucking unions that mainly were headquartered there to "suppress any deviant behavior among the citizenry," as the text of the Executive Order issued by the Ministry of Governance.
Mount Vesio’s neighbors: Grandville to the west and Sharsburg to the east, publicly affirmed their support for remaining united with the other four states to maintain the peace, but in several marathon policy sessions, they began to invision a plan that would set in motion the most destructive and bloody conflict the continent had ever known.
The office of the High Reverend Joel White was somehow more ornate and impressive than the auditorium. Some of Greg’s fondest memories of childhood took place in this room. As he aged into adulthood, many of his worst memories took place in this room. Greg couldn’t remember the last time the two were alone in the office. He felt small and oddly terrified.
Every wall was covered with artwork older than Reverend White’s Great Grandfather’s Great Grandfather. These paintings were a small sampling of many of the "Great Masters" of the Pre Flux Era. Many stylistic artistic choices made in these paintings still influenced artwork to this day. Greg had heard one of his father’s orbiters remark, "No good artwork had been made since these were painted."
A floor to ceiling heavy wooden bookshelf covered the wall behind the Reverend’s desk. Shelf after shelf of religious texts of all types, many of which first editions several centuries old. Greg wondered how long it since any of these had been opened.
The large animal leather chair turned around, and the once formidable Reverend sat and looked Greg in the face. Greg noted that the last month had taken its toll on his father. He looked every day his 95 years at this point. Greg felt as if he was looking at a corpse.
Joel opened his mouth to talk but immediately started coughing violently. He regained his composure and reached into a drawer to his right and found a scrap of cloth he used to wipe the sputum from around his lips.
"Dad? Are you ok?" Greg broke the silence, his voice echoing around the emptiness of the room.
"I’m fine, I’m fine. This cough is not going to kill me." Joel had shed his public drawl that Greg had heard in church for all of his life. Greg noticed that his mouth was suddenly very dry.
"I doubt it. You’ll still be The Lion of Grandville for a long time to come." Greg was trying to appeal to his father’s ego.
"Greg, you idiot, I am 95 years old," the Reverend hissed, "do you really think I’m equipped to lead this state through this emergency?" Another round of coughs racked his body.
"Well, who else is equipped to take us down the path of Gaia?"
A smile crossed Joel’s face. "Who better than blood?"
Greg’s eyes shot open, wondering if he heard that right. He stammered a word that he couldn’t quite get out.
"You are the one, kiddo."
"How is that possible? My political career has just started. Isn’t there a more established candidate? I am excited to spend more time with you, though." Greg said, assuming his father would come back to reality and tell him the real candidate.
Joel put his head in his hands, and his shoulders sagged in defeat. His voice was low, "These things are already in motion."
Greg suddenly knew that this wasn’t a joke. This was real life. His mouth was suddenly devoid of moisture. "How the hell is this going to work? You know I’m not even clergy, and that’s pretty important."
The old man pulled open another drawer and pulled out a small envelope. He slid it across the table to Greg. Greg snatched it off the desk and opened it with his fingers.
The envelope contained a slip of paper, a certificate of clergyship dated twenty years prior. Greg dropped it as if it were made of fire.
"One of the perks, so to speak of my position, is that I oversee who becomes clergy with really no oversight whatsoever." Joel laughed until the mirth turned to wheezing coughs.
"Well, what about Billy Joe, he’s your most senior Boy in Waiting."
"Ahh, old Billy. He’s too fanatical. He doesn’t have the, let’s say, ability to compromise as a politician. Grandville and Pangea need a politician right now. He may be a good tool to use, though."
"As long as I have you to advise me, I should be all right," Greg said, feigning confidence and surrendering himself to the idea of becoming governor.
Joel made hard eye contact with his son, "You will have an advisor, and if you listen to everything they say, you’ll be fine." He reached over to a panel of buttons on his desk and pushed a black circular button on the top right corner.
"Now, Greg, I want you to listen very closely before the chaos of this day takes hold. I have left you a road map to help you get up to speed along with any information you may need. It is being delivered to your house as we speak. You’re an idiot--" Greg tried to interrupt, Joel put up his pointer finger to stop him, "Greg, shut up and listen."
"I’m listening, sir."
"Within the next hour, you are going to kill me. It can’t be helped. Think of it as a kind of statement of loyalty to the order."
Silence blanketed the room as the news fell like a bomb between the two. The entry to the office opened, and Billy Joe entered with a tray of drinks. He silently walked, covered the ground, and placed drinks in front of the father and son and left.
Joel drank his in one drink. "Unfortunately, the High Reverend position is a lifetime appointment. I don’t get to just retire. But i have a plan to make my death mean the most." Greg heard the words, but his brain refused to comprehend.
"Whu--whu--," Greg stammered, his dry tongue catching on his dry lips. He grabbed his drink and gulped it down.
"Listen, kiddo, don’t mess this up. You have no choice. This is your life now. Now finish your drink and follow me."
Greg was barely aware of his surroundings as Joel pushed a button on his desk, and the bookshelf behind him unveiled a hidden doorway behind him. As far as shocks go, a hidden passageway in his father’s office was a minor one.
"I said, finish your drink. We don’t have much time. I have a feeling you will need the courage." The High Reverend said in a hiss.
Greg nodded numbly and drank the alcohol as quickly as he could get it down. He stood up and followed like an obedient little puppy.
The passageway was opressively dark, Greg could only see what he could guess was a few feet or so in front of the duo. He couldn’t judge how long they descended into the depths of Gaia. He could feel the walls on his shoulders, and in his stupor, he could have sworn he felt them squeezing in closer, threatening to crush him.
To break the claustrophobia, he quipped, "shouldn’t an old man like you have installed an elevator in your hidden stairway?" He didn’t know why he said it, Joel was notorious for lacking a sense of humor.
To Greg’s shock, there was a slight chuckle in the old man’s response, "I don’t intend to climb back out."
Greg’s mouth started to go dry once more.
They climbed in silence for either minutes or hours.
The passageway finally opened to a gigantic cavern, the damp still air added to the opressive terror in Greg’s gut.
A ways in, 5 cloaked figures stood around a wooden table. "The 5 Father’s of Gaia," Joel wheeled, the descent causing his breathing to become erratic. "They’ll be your council. Take their advice to heart."
One of the hooded people walked up next to the High Reverend and began to help the old man to the table. Greg noticed the gun on the table and felt a sudden tightness in his chest. Joel sat at the head, Greg was then motioned to the foot.
The gun was placed in front of Greg.
"What if I don’t? What if I don’t, you know," Greg looked around at the figures around him, and he whispered, "Kill you?"
"Then we’ll both die. This has been ordained, and as I said, nothing you or I can do anything about it."
"But I can’t be a pastor, let alone a governor."
"I haven’t written my own sermon in over ten years. You just have to set the course like I taught you."
"Whatll happen to you? You can’t just disappear."
"There are plans in place to make my sacrifice have the most impact as possible," Joel began to cough.
"What does that mean?"
"You’ll find out in time."
"So, what? Did you have to do this to become High Reverend? Kill the last one?"
"It’s a lifetime appointment. Often, the faculties go before we can have a natural death, so we do what we must to maintain a continuity of power."
"This is insane! The whole idea of this is insane. I’m going to wake up any time now."
"Greg, you damn idiot. This is a test. Do you have what it takes to lead the spiritual journey of every man woman and child on Gaia?"
Greg broke down into tears.
"I love you, I can’t kill you." Greg sobbed.
"Oh man, up and take your place in history. This is a minor speed bump in your legacy if you would just shoot me."
Greg picked up the gun and turned it around in his hands. He wiped his nose with the sleeve of his shirt.
"In the end of my life, I see what a sniveling little man you are. I never loved you, I just loved the way you followed my every order unquestioningly." He noted the look of hurt that spread across Greg’s face. The High Reverend smiled as the desired effect was being achieved.
Greg looked at the gun and thought briefly about turning it on himself and being unable to do that began to wonder if he could somehow gun his way out of this situation, but that didn’t really sound like a viable plan either.
"Shoot me, or you are not my son. Shoot me, you coward."
"See you in hell, old man." It came from Greg’s mouth, but Greg was unable to process that as he pulled the trigger on the gun.
The sound was deafening, and then there was silence. The gurgling sound of Joel’s lifeblood escaping through the new gaping wound in his neck. Greg dropped the gun to the stone ground, clattering under the table. He quickly stood up right into the waiting arms of one of the robed people.
"Come with me, High Reverend. The hard part is over," the robed person said soothingly into Greg’s ear. He began to sob uncontrollably.
Read Part 3 here.
