When his group of a dozen young men and women crystallised out finally it was not on the basis of any particular political creed. Everyone had been formed by experiences of emotional or physical deprivation, had been directly affected by war. None could do anything but fix the world with a cold, hating eye: This is what you are like. They did not dream of Utopias in the future: their imaginations were not tuned to the future at all, unlike those of previous revolutionaries or religionists: it was not that "next year, or in the next decade, or next century, we create paradise on earth..." only, "This is what you are like." When this hypocritical, lying, miserably stupid system was done away with, then everyone would be able to see...
It was their task to expose the system for what it was.
But they had a faith, and no programme. They had the truth - but what to do with it? They had a vocabulary, but no language.
They watched the exploits of guerrilla groups, the deeds of the terrorists.
They saw that what was needed was to highlight situations, events.
They staged the kidnapping of a certain politician who had been involved in some transaction they disapproved of, demanding the release of a man in prison who seemed to them innocent. They detailed the reasons why this imprisoned man was innocent, and when he was not released, shot their hostage and left him in the town square. This is what you are like was what they felt, as they murdered him, meaning, the world.
The murder had not been planned. The details of the kidnapping had been adequately worked out, but they had not expected they would kill the politician, had half believed that the authorities would hand over their "innocent." There was something careless, unthought-out about the thing, and several of the members of the group demanded a more "serious" approach, analyses, reconsideration.
Our Individual Six listened to them, with his characteristic careless smile, but his black eyes deadly. "Of course, what else can be expected from people like you?" he was communicating.
Two of the protesting individuals met with "accidents" in the next few days, and he now commanded a group that did not think of him as "careless" - or not as they had done previously.
There were nine of them, three women.
One of the women thought of herself as "his," but he refused to accept this view of the situation. They had group sex, in every sort of combination. It was violent, ingenious, employing drugs and weapons of various kinds. Sticks of gelignite, for instance. Four of the group blew themselves up in an orgy. He did not recruit others.
It was observed by the four remaining that he had enjoyed the publicity. He insisted on staging a "funeral service" which, although police did not know which group had been responsible for this minor massacre, was asking for notice and arrest. Elegies for the dead, poems, drawings of a heroic nature were left in the warehouse where the "socialist requiem" was held.
By then it had occurred to them that he was mad, but it was too late for any of them to leave the group.
They staged another kidnapping. The carelessness of it amounted to contempt, and they were caught and put on trial. It was a trial that undermined the country, because of their contempt for the law, for legal processes.
At that time, throughout the Northwest fringes, almost every person regarded the processes of the law as a frail - the frailest possible - barrier between themselves and a total brutal anarchy.
Everyone knew that "civilisation" depended on the most fragile supports. The view of the older people of what was happening in the world was no less fearful, in its way, than that of the young ones like Individual Six and his group, or of the other terrorists, but it was opposite in effect. They knew that the slightest pressure, even an accident or something unintended, could bring down the entire fabric... and here were these madmen, these young idiots, prepared to risk everything - more, intending to bring it down, wanting to destroy and waste. If people like Individual Six "could not believe it," then ordinary citizens "could not believe it" either: they never did understand each other.
When the five were brought to trial and stood in the dock loaded with chains, and behind barriers of extra bars, they reached their fulfilment, the apex of achievement.
"This is what you are like," they were saying to the world. "These brutal chains, these bars, the fact that you will give us sentences that will keep us behind bars for the rest of our lives - this is what you are like! Regard your mirror, in us!"
In prison, and in court, they were elated, victorious, singing and laughing, as if at a festival.
About a year after sentence, Individual Six and two others escaped. They went their separate ways. Individual Six got fat, wore a wig, and acquired a correct clerkly appearance. He did not contact either the escaped members of his group or those in prison. He hardly thought of them: that was the past!
He deliberately courted danger. He would stand chatting to policemen on the street. He went into police stations to report minor crimes, such as the theft of a bicycle. He was arrested for speeding. He actually appeared in court on one charge. All this with a secret glowing contempt: this is what you are like, stupid, incompetent...
He went back to the town he had grown up in, and got an undemanding job, and made a life for himself that lacked any concealment except for the change of name and appearance. People recognised him, and he was talked about. Knowing this gave him pleasure.
His father was now in an institution for the elderly and incapacitated, his mother having died, and, hearing his son was in town, he took to hanging about the streets in the hope of seeing him. He did, but Individual Six waved his hand in a jolly, friendly, don't-bother-me-now gesture, and walked on.
He was expecting from his inevitable rearrest a trial of the same degree of publicity as his first. He wanted that moment when he would stand chained, like a dog, behind double bars. But when he was arrested, he was sent back to jail to serve his sentence.
An elation, a lunacy - which had been carrying him up, up, up, from the moment of truth when he had first seen what the world was like, had "had his eyes opened" - suddenly dissolved, and he committed suicide.
INDIVIDUAL SEVEN (Terrorist Type 5)
This was a child of rich parents, manufacturers of an internationally known household commodity of no use whatsoever, contributing nothing except to the economic imperative: thou shalt consume.
She had a brother, but as they were at different schools and it was not thought important that they should meet, she had little physical or emotional contact with him after early childhood.
She was unhappy, unnurtured, without knowing what was wrong with her. When she reached adolescence she saw there was no central place in the family, no place where responsibility was taken: no father, or mother, or brother - who never had any other destiny but to be his father's heir - imposed themselves on circumstances. They were passive in the face of events, ideas, fashions, expected conduct. When she had understood it - and she could not believe how she had taken so long - she saw that she was the only one of her family who thought like this. It occurred to none that it was ever possible to say "no." She saw them and herself as bits of paper or refuse blown along streets.