I rested against a large broken piece of concrete slab, torn loose along with a lot of others from various foundations during some long forgotten earthquake. The entire district was in disrepair. Buildings had fallen to pieces in the years or maybe even decades since they had been used. From the complete blackness provided by the concrete barrier that surrounded me I could see only the city lights that reached down from the heights of buildings and played across the top of rocks opposite me. I placed my left hand on top of one of the concrete boulders and began to lift myself until a tremor of pain ran through my arm. I dropped back onto the ground.
I had extracted the identification implant from the back of my hand with a piece of glass. There was a chance that without it the scanners wouldn’t know to activate my toxin capsule. I threw my right up and dragged myself to my knees. The hand was covered in a cloth bandage I had made, the blue material was wrapped around crudely; the bandage would have to be changed, the blood soaked cloth would bring infection. I looked out from my shelter at the city lights.
"It’s quite a city." The voice had come from behind me, low and sympathizing. I didn’t move. "Jonathan, I know a doctor who would be willing to take a look at your hand."
"What did you mean?"
"Your hand-"
"No…no, about the city, what did you mean?"
"It is quite a city," I could hear him step over the outer wall of rocks and slowly approach, "very large, complicated."
"Complicated?"
He paused momentarily. "Perhaps intricate is a better word. The system which runs that city involves innumerable formal and informal chains of obligation, it’s maintenance requires workers in thousands of professions willing and able to use their skills in support of the existing system. What would happen if everybody in that city decided that they didn’t want to go to work tomorrow, that it was no longer in their best interest?" I could hear him squat down.
"Does it matter? Those people work because they don’t want to do anything else."
"That’s almost right." It sounded like there was a hint of pride in the comment. His voice dropped back down to a whispering and raspy quality. "The important thing is that they don’t want to work, they don’t want to rebel, they don’t want people mad at them…The point is they don’t know what they want. They have no desires, only schedules. They have no driving force. The only reason they do what they do is because they fear not doing it." There was a definite pause this time.
"What happened to your mother?" He waited for a reaction, but seeing none continued. "People are sheep. They have no unifying direction, they mill about until someone pushes them, this way or that it doesn’t matter. Not a good someone, not a bad someone, anyone. The only shepherd these days is an unseen, unknown and seemingly unified government. Things are going to stay the way they are because their is only one force in daily life, government. Look at Newton’s Laws, well, modify them a little, a people moving in a direction, such as the present one, will continue in that direction until some outside force acts upon them. Now, back before modern times things used to be different. There were lots of people telling everyone what to do, everybody knew exactly what you should be doing, you were forced to think at least a little, you had to choose between the many paths shoved in your face, even the majority that refused to think for themselves had to intentionally tune out others."
I turned and looked at him. He was a short graying man with a mustache surprisingly predominant Latin features. I’d never seen anyone as far from being a complete mix of races as this man. He wore the same clothes as any other person on the street. His eyes never strayed, they looked directly back at my own. "What about the other nations, they disagree with us I’m sure." I cringed at using the word us to describe twenty maybe thirty billion people scattered throughout the solar system all flying the same flag and subservient to a incompassionate government that currently wanted me dead.
He almost smiled. "My point exactly, do you even know if the other nations disagree with us. What are their beliefs? Who are they?"
"The Coalition and Atlantic Federation," I began to say with confidence but as I approached the end hints of uncertainty appeared in my voice. I hadn’t thought it through before.
"Yes and no. The Alliance is, and has been for over a century now, in conflict of one kind or another with the Coalition and Atlantic Federation, but their has also been conflict between the Alliance and the Belt Confederation and the Jovian Republic and god knows how many other governments we aren’t even aware of. To my understanding the Jovian Republic is composed of Alliance colonies that revolted. You know what that means? People can learn to think differently if they understand that change is possible, maybe it was Jupiter hanging huge over their heads and they realized that the orders from Earth were coming from people who couldn’t understand what it was like to live beneath it’s grandeur;" he seemed to redirect his thoughts, "it means they are capable of independent thought even if they’ll take every opportunity to let someone else think for them. The people out there are a lot like you. They’ve never known any other way, and they never will. The other nations could have been a source of differing opinions, but none of the governments allow any media of any kind to pass across their borders. For that matter, the governments don’t say much within their own borders. The train incident did not appear on tonight’s news." I was shocked.
"The only method available to each of the governments for winning converts to their way of thought is through military action. Look up." His head tilted back.
I looked up remembering how different it was in the dream. A hundred points of varying brightness moved in different directions.
He didn’t look toward me this time. "You can’t even see the stars anymore. There’s far too much glare from the cities." He looked down at me and then back up. "How would you have known about that," he said very lowly and then waved his hand at the sky. "Before the cities were nearly as big as they are now, one, two, maybe three hundred years ago, the sky was very black at night. There were tens of thousands of suns up there shining away and anybody on Earth could see a practically infinite distance into the universe. Now we can’t see past the moon." He grunted. "All those lights you see up there are military installations. Most are rocks miles across pulled in from other parts of the solar system and tunneled out to make huge three dimensional cities inside of them, but no matter what they are everything you see is dedicated to military production. It used to be that there was a balance between ideas and muscle, each was a way to get ahead, to get control. Not anymore."
I remembered something tentatively, "the pen is mightier than the sword." I whispered. He looked at me, "what the hell is a pen?" He shook his head. "Regardless, somebody has to change things. Something has to be done. Don’t you think you owe those people a chance to think for themselves, to feel the way you and I do."
"I’ve never wanted anyone to feel the way I do." I turned away from him and look back over the rubble toward the city. He had misjudged me. I spent a quiet couple of seconds trying to look past the lights and into the depths of the city, trying to find meaning. "But I do wish they could learn to be real." He sounded as if he had been thrown off balance, he didn’t know where to pitch at me from here. Was he trying to manipulate me toward his own ends, and did it matter?
He took several steps toward me and reached forward. Over my shoulder he extended a weapon. He pointed with his left hand at a projection extending downward. "Rounds feed from here. You hold it like this." He pushed the back end up against his shoulder and placed one hand on the rearmost downward projection and one along the tube. "When you pull back, like this, on the trigger a piece of metal moves up into the barrel. A magnetic field flings the metal clear of the barrel." He grabbed it by the tube and reversed it, holding it out toward me. I took it.
"What do I do with this, do we harm everyone who disagrees with us?" "Killing the entire population is both impossible and counterproductive we’d be doing the governments job for them."
"What do you mean?"
"Population control is one of their largest problems. It’s very hard to feed all of these people and many of them don’t serve any necessary function." He placed a hand on my shoulder. "Work with me. We can let all of them-,"he made a sweeping gesture toward the city, "know what life should be."
I continued to stare at the city. The lights soared miles upward into the darkness. It should have been such an achievement, the city. No one had ever created anything so remarkably intricate, so large, but nature, and I think the creation of this city was her final defeat. I stared at the lights for a long time. I think they could be well described as tragically beautiful.