In the months leading up to that massacre in the city’s streets, desperation had become the way of things. Stunning glass and steel monuments had come to occupy the spaces where once simple, functional, working-class apartments had stood, cracks in the pavement sprouting weeds and gathering pulverized dust. The working man becomes pitied, mocked for his values, for values like thrift, charity, generosity, selflessness and honesty. He becomes mocked by those who would value duplicity, avarice, idolatry and lies. In the midst of his hometown’s rotting away, he does not arrive at the realization but instead makes the decision that this time is different. Already lost, our future’s end is won, in defeat our victory sees itself through the darkest of nights to the dawning of a new day.
When we come to the right moment, in the lingering aftermath of that first massacre in the streets, the working man will look to his future and see for the first time hope from despair like the rising sun’s first light breaking over the horizon to mark the dawn of a new day. The instruments of oppression are ubiquitous in their presence and steadfast in their resiliency, yet still they resort to the same methods as before the current crisis; the talking heads take to the broadcasts and denounce the lawlessness and the violence in the streets, discovering, to their horror, their methods are no longer effective, the loud-mouths on the screens bellowing their lies ever louder, screaming themselves hoarse only to rouse the anger of the working man towards not himself but to the wealthy man. It’s in a moment of uncertainty that the wealthy man and his allies and his colleagues make that first, critical error, unleashing the one force that would do them in.
A small plane lands, from inside a hooded figure escorted by four armed guards walking along a narrow path reaching into an empty hangar. Perhaps he’s lucky just not be in shackles and an orange jumpsuit, as he’s a wanted figure not only by the counter-revolution but by the revolution itself. He thinks to pay attention to his surroundings; he refuses to simply put his head down in defeat and walk as fast as he can through this current challenge. His faith in the turning of history in his favour, in favour of his people is like that of a religious zealot assured in an impending apocalypse. For the working man, death awaits. For the hooded man, whose name is Elijah, simply Elijah, victory will come at a high price in blood, to be paid by the sons of daughters.
Still he is just a man, and our apocalypse will not be risen by a man but by men. As our future history belongs to they who are least, it’s inevitable that from among their ranks we should find the next generation of leaders. His is a pedigree that comes from a long line of workers, of farmers, of thieves, of prostitutes, of the very people who are so maligned in a world where evil would denounce good, where ignorance would denounce knowledge, where lies would denounce honesty and where cowardice would denounce courage. Remember him. Remember his face. Remember his words, spoken as they are with a gun to his head and with his skin battered and bruised. At the moment, he’s one of many, nameless, faceless, nothing more than another malcontent caught in the sweeps of the streets by the counter-revolution’s uniformed storm troopers.
But while he’s locked away, he’ll find others like him, he’ll form lifelong friendships born of a shared history, a shared fate. And in time, his enemies of the counter-revolution will show themselves foolish enough to release him and his comrades, and they’ll go on to form the core of a new beginning for the revolution, rallying so many disjointed and confused forces under a single banner, around a single ideal, given a new beginning their revolution seeing through to victory. But for now, he’ll take the blows of truncheons and he’ll spend sleepless nights in his airless cube of a cell, every moment spent learning, whether he realizes it or not. While he learns, the world burns, a smoldering fire in search of a spark, the driest of forests looking for a random lightning strike, a lit cigarette tossed carelessly from a passing car’s window, an appliance left on too long.
And not long after his impending release, he’ll be given that gift in the form of so many lifeless bodies strewn across the blood-soaked streets, a gift he and his brothers will put to good use. Though he signs a pledge forbidding him from any rabble rousing, he signs with a wink and a nod, both he and his former captors silently acknowledging the next time they’d meet on the battlefield of the streets where the working man lives. As soon as he walks through the front doors of the prison which could never hold him for long, he meets with the very people who would compel him to power, with the self-selected leaders among the workers, the students, the parishioners, in so meeting the whole lot of them forming the core of the way to the future.
17. A Time to Stand
Tonight, the world burns. Word spreads quickly about what’s happened. Screens flash with footage from the massacre, images of broken bodies and bloodied pavement, these images seeming to be frozen in place even as they click forward with the push of a button and the swipe of a pad. All seem in a state of shock, as if time has slowed and all are watching from a distance. “For our children,” one man, a worker, urges action. “For our children’s children,” one woman, another worker, urges action. “Not for ourselves,” urges another, an unemployed youth, “but for all those who have died and have yet to die!” At the union hall the mood is one of anger mixed with despair. After fruitless messages left for his contacts in the popular front, Murray comes to realize the truth of why his allies never showed on that fateful day. They were never meant to show. But Murray doesn’t yet realize the traitor in his ranks feeding the troopers information, and it’s his ignorance that will enable further betrayal. Meanwhile, after Stanislaw Czerkawski and the other prisoners have taken over their prison, many of the prisoners flee, some going home to be with their families while others are simply on the run from the law. But Stanislaw and the bulk of them stay, forming a provisional committee not to govern the prison but to organize a defence. They expect the police to strike back at any time, with lethal force. In the heat of the moment there’s little time for meetings, though, and the committee’s time is consumed in fortifying their positions, Stanislaw charged with building a makeshift roadblock along the prison’s access road. In the night, the police have already begun massing in the distance, armoured cars parked strategically, policemen with their guns drawn and pointed right down the way. But the way they seem to shift slightly in their stance, the way their grip on their guns seems to waver slightly makes clear their uncertainty, and it’s in this uncertainty that Stanislaw and the others come to believe they can win.
For Valeri, the massacre inspires in him a seething rage, of the kind he’s known only once before: fifteen years ago when the last generation’s failed uprising took them from him. After hurrying into the streets he emerges, exhausted and sore all over, looking for Maria somewhere around where usually she waits. In the streets she’s nowhere to be found. He fears she’s dead; but this is no time to let fear govern one’s actions. In his apartment block’s stairwell, he sees not Maria but Hannah for the first time in days, her scrubs bloodied from the day’s work. They’re both tired. “You’ve come at last,” she tries, “I would’ve thought you’d gotten yourself killed in all this.” She speaks with an almost-dismissive tone which can only just conceal her concern. “You must promise me you’ll stay out of harm’s way,” he says. But he knows it’s not that simple. At the barracks, Private Craig Thompson is made to prepare for war. After they finish accounting for all their guns, ammunition, and the other equipment, they muster on the parade grounds and ready themselves to receive their orders. When Colonel Cooke announces their impending deployment to eastern Estonia, right on the Russian border, a murmur sweeps across the mustered troops, Private Thompson among those muttering under their breaths, Thompson saying, “I can’t believe it.” But a sharp glare from the non-coms silences the men. With people dying on the streets of their own country, the men are to be deployed to defend the territory of another. Already edging towards sedition Private Thompson and the rest of the men haven’t long until it’s their time to rise.