Each year we face the same crisis of paralysis. Not just me but almost every one of the fresh-skins, those of us who are less than a century old. Something is not right, it never could be. Establishing an order in which the majority of all those alive vote to maintain the status quo for millions, if not a billion years without a single crack? We just want to know. Were there others before us? Other pod-cities that existed out there in the void of nothing, that void which grows with each year and becomes darker by the second as life is sucked from the lungs of the universe? Do they fear us? Fearing what might happen if we knew the whole truth?
All the intelligence of time and deliberate planning of each microcosm of our lives and they can’t even plug the holes in their story. All we want is the truth. The honest, good-natured truth because without that we can’t have ourselves. No person regardless of their status or ability can live their life to the fullest if they lack the knowledge of what life is. Leaving us as husks which crave change at the edge of violence.
I’ve seen the records. Towering shelves in chambers that go for ages. Information of our past kept tightly under lock and key with complex discs which store entire eons of our past into a single tome. But they are honest, they tell the whole truth. Where they lie is in those which do not exist or are not available to us. The information on the voting is kept strictly by our elders-- close to the chest. In all my digging, forming tunnels that drew connections between one entry and another. Stories that were separated by several dozen centuries of time and millions of miles of distance but shared the same details. Names repeated like serial numbers. Titles given and retracted later. A whole civilization’s worth of complaints and argumentation that doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t believe that we’ve had other cities sunken by bureaucracy because we need a scapegoat to place our faith within, but because I have seen the evidence with my bare eyes and refuse to believe that which I had peered into was false simply as the words above impose onto us.
They are careful but they are alive, living. We all are, that is what makes us special. We are not drones that fulfill the same tasks day in and out, we deserve to conclude choices of our own. That has been stripped from us. For whatever reason I cannot fathom and I do not care. No reason of survival or endurance in the namesake of information and knowledge is worth the slavery we will endure and be expected to place our children into. The ancestors refused to entomb us in mechanical bodies believing that our flesh kept us pure. But by establishing a system of endless death and repetitive cycles they have placed us in agonizing tombs of the living. Forever aware without the power to take advantage of our self-determination.
The next honest question comes not at the call of the institution but from within our ranks. Millions live and die aboard our carefully tuned living spaces and are grateful for the existence they had led. But whether to make them willing participants or forceful insurgents might commit the same sin we levy to the crown. What might it say that we choose for all those millions who know their chains and choose them anyway? Is our right to autonomy and death equal or greater than their right of platitudes?
This is the problem I sit on most often. A small circle of insurgents have become my family now, many who share in our values. But inviting others is a quest that requires not only our own conviction but the hopeful agreement of all those who hear our plea. It keeps me awake to think of it. In fear of what might be the result of our proclamation and desire for independence, if met with a staggering sigh of annoyance from the majority of our peers. We do not live awful lives, just lives of continued mundanity. Whether that numbing existence is enough to rally or to annoy, is where our argument comes to an impasse.
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Our collective is made of two minds. The Radical thinks that fire should come for our chains and split the minds of the people from the system which inhabits their every waking moment whenever necessary. The Diplomat believes that the system isn’t a failure, but simply misguided. They seek to uproot the causal misfirings and reset the voting epochs to a point of honesty and good-faith discussion among our peers. I, the Insurgent, sit between both worlds.
In the mind of fire and death the Radical sees absolution. A sense of justice for so many millions before us dead and forgotten. Even as innocents would perish in the crossfire, to liberate them unto a known death would always be freedom when contrasted with indentured existence that mirrored slavery in all but name. At the end of days when I look upon my calendar and see that the days I’ve been issued ends on the day of my seven-hundredth anniversary alive; a choice made generations ago on behalf of how my lineage has performed long before my time. That is when I agree with the path of fire and the destruction that comes with it. It is cruel and unfair and perhaps too much, but in the face of endless cruelty I wonder if it is possible to be more nefarious than the gods who’ve enslaved us?
On the other position lies the Diplomat where the chains are envisioned as bonds. Not against the will of the greater individual spirit but as a conjoined effort of all those who consent to this world. When things are peaceful and kind, that is when I want to offer my positive optimism to their political aspirations. The idea that the elders may hear us out and allow us to leave their chambers alive is one that sounds too good to be true. To rebuild our civilization as we see fit with nothing more than words of agreement and occasional compromise. But if it were so simple I wonder why that’s not the life we live now. Corruption seems to be a natural fit for a civilization which is built on the hapless endeavors of the society who is consumed by democracy’s facade.
In the center I see my own Insurgency. Action. That which I crave beyond all else. Not just the words of one who wishes to bring endless fire or the longing of another who wants to put pen to paper. That which I seek is progress or in the very least evolution. At the risk of greater harm, a world of slight inconvenience but splattered with our freedom, at the edge of truth, is one I desire most.
We rally our thoughts in quiet tunnels and inter-locking rooms sparse with visitors. As the connective tissue between our organizations the choice upon how to deploy our truth with the rest of the known universe has been deposited at my feet. In one corner stands my Radical with torches ready to burn. In the other my Diplomat who has written and re-written a dozen pleas for our message to be heard aloud and honestly. I feel the weight of truth coming down on me. It is nearly enough to force my mind into a state of paralysis, to join the helpless masses who continue upon their routines without question or contemplation. But I know it is merely a form of cowardice to have such truths rattling within my mind and refuse to act on them.
It’s our duty to persist and maintain our autonomous demands even at the cost of life because if we light the spark, then the flames will follow. Either path leads to likely death and prosecution for us. The question to ask instead is how will we want to be remembered for acting upon those who did not know of our plans? With righteous fury? Or with the calculated steps of the next generation’s rulers? Playing their hands early on a game in which they had never been invited to play.
My knees buckled in the insecure stance I had taken. Skin sweaty with the knowledge that whatever followed would likely result in our deaths in the most common of options. To carry on with this and survive would be tantamount to overthrowing it all. That’s where I stand even now. At the edge of freedom, wondering how we should die.
