S
Shoveler
Guest
“Where the Streets Have No Name”
City 17. A metropolis. An ant hill. A tomb. Most were dark days. Dark days for the people. The ants. The slaves. Most days were the same. Arrests. Executions. Misery. Here it was the slow death, the murder of the human spirit was taking place.
City 17. Ruled by the totalitarian Dr. Wallace Breen. Abhorred by the oppressed masses. And yet the masses were impotent to remove him. The fear of OverWatch pervaded any dissenting thoughts of revolution, or more insidiously, resentful thoughts of government.
Civil Protection. Metro Police as they were referred to carried out the cold will of Dr. Breen’s regime, through the terrible fascistic command of OverWatch. And OverWatch had been on high alert since before midday. Most days were the same. But not this day.
The city was like a convulsing, shuddering beast; the tiny creatures within it fighting, struggling against one another. The citizenry had been galvanised to join the resistance, like the awakening of the basic instinct of all living creatures when cornered by some predatory beast.
Those of the city chosen for Civil Protection service were an ungentle folk; a filthy, jeering lot. The kind that could be seen many hundreds of years ago shouting gleefully at a public execution or the burning of some heretical witch.
They were, for the most part, vastly unintelligent. Citizens who were completely illiterate and utterly subservient to the state. Perfect drones for OverWatch’s purposes. However, some served despite their intellectual advantages. And almost all did so voluntarily. At some point the omnipresent barrage of the propagandised virtues of state service co-opted their sense of self loyalty. Some were cynical. Some were afraid. And some were simply evil. Rotten souls who could fulfil sadistic fantasies and disturbing criminal lusts in the service of the OverWatch.
And yet there were some looking for a way out. A way to oppose the OverWatch. Unfortunately, life expectancy for them was unhelpfully short. Most would be found out. Odd behaviour was scrutinised and reported feverishly. Although, some found their way into the Underground; a term for the insurgency of City 17, which had, until today, lay dormant. But now erupted like a force of nature. For what is resistance to tyranny but a force a nature? All oppressed beings have a breaking point. Some die. Some fight.
OverWatch. The government branch responsible for the Orwellian nightmare the people of the city endured sleeplessly. Cameras and directional microphones on every street corner. Strange mechanical probes twice the size of a human head floated about the streets photographing anybody engaged in suspicious activity; suspicious meaning everything and nothing at the same time. The militarisation of law enforcement. The Gestapo-like arrests of people in their homes. The terrorisation of the people.
There was no longer any intelligence agencies. No military. No police force. No judicial system. There was only the OverWatch. Its armed thugs roamed the streets night and day beating and arresting anybody. All were presumed guilty. No hope of proving one’s innocence.
OverWatch and Dr. Breen’s command center were located within the Citadel; an enormously tall, slender, monolithic structure climbing impossibly high into the air. It would cast an immense oppressive shadow across City 17 in the afternoons and birds would not sing during those hours where the shadow remained.
The Citadel lay at the very center of City 17 and was the only structure of its sort other than the menacing unassailable walls which enclosed it in a ring of impenetrable iron.
City 17 was a depressing sight. It was a rather flat, decrepit cluster of old eastern European townships. Where in Europe nobody could tell. Maps and education systems had been, as Breen had said at one time, “purged contentedly as items and ideologies created by those who sought to plunge mankind into anarchy.”
There was a four storied stone building which was part of the square of the old township. At one point it was a museum or government building and here now it stood just outside the walls of the Citadel. The type of building raised at a time when one could not imagine how its architects accomplished such a feat. It possessed an archaic brilliance, though sullied now as OverWatch had taken it as a command post and fortified it with strange wrought iron and steel appendages and equipment.
It was also the one place which controlled the opening and closing of the walls ringing the Citadel. And it was being wrathfully contested. Many of the resistance had massed in surrounding buildings mobilising an assault.
Blake peered through an empty window pane into the square below, the sunlight casting mournful shadows across the courtyard. The sun shone here but it did not carry with it any warmth. Almost as though it dare not visit this place. Perhaps, he wondered not completely doubting the absurdity of the thought, that OverWatch had the means to deprive even the sun of its natural power.
He was part of a Civil Protection squad, of which there were many operating upon the same objective, moving carefully from building to building clearing out resistance fighters. Seditionists they were called by OverWatch, terrorists.
Much gunfire could be heard from surrounding buildings and there was the rhythmic ever present throbbing vibration of the Striders.
The Striders were horrifying to behold. As tall as the building Civil Protection was defending, heavily armed and looked as if they had escaped out of a nightmare. They had three legs; jointed and spider-like. And what appeared to be a singular, pulsating blue eye which in reality was a powerful particle weapon used to eviscerate concrete structures.
And there were three of them stamping about the streets protecting the building in the square. Little hope, thought Blake, these rebels have of taking control of that building, not with those Striders about….
His thoughts were interrupted as he followed his squad through a wrecked hallway and down a partially collapsed staircase. They passed into the adjacent building through a cavity in the wall. They all stopped abruptly.
A conversation could be heard in the next room. Much was muffled and inaudible.
“There’s no point in proceeding!” shouted one voice. “We might as well pull back.”
“And forget all the people we lost getting here?!”
“You know I don’t’ mean that. But with those Striders out there, there’s no way we can get inside that building. And if we don’t get inside we can’t get within the wall, and then we’ll be in a real fix.”
As Blake listened intently to all that was said two of his squad members rolled a pair of grenades against the wall as they all took cover. Everything seemed to shake. Cracked and weathered plaster fell from the walls. Door frames splintered and burst. Dirt which lay silently in the cracked ceiling fell in fine streams all about them.
Blake could hear nothing but a piercing ringing in his ears for a long moment after. At once his squad was entering the room through the crumbled wall firing several times. Dust hung in the air. The stench of death.
Once the dust had cleared enough Blake could see that there had been three inside the room. Two of the men were dead. Either killed in the explosion or subsequently by the collapsing wall.
Blake’s squad exited the room through a door opposite. As he too was about to exit he looked down at the body of the third slumped against the wall. It was a woman.
The breath left him and he felt as if a chill wind swept all about him. She was not dead and he could not by force of will pry his eyes from her ashen gaze, a gaze full of memories. The look one might find in the eyes of a beloved pet come to the end of its time. A look not of anger, not of sadness. But of humility and truth. She looked as though she might die any second and Blake thought she was nursing a wound but then realised why she clutched her belly so. She was pregnant!
Her fierce blue eyes burned into his. She was lovely, magnificent, dying, alive. There was blood. Much stained her clothing. She was holding something. A can. With the last of her strength she reached to him with both hands, bearing the can up to him as if it weighed more than all the earth.
He took it from her gently, feeling her cold hands. She was looking up at the wall behind her. He saw now what she had been doing before she had been shot. She had been spraying the wall with red paint. A word it was but an idea also, an idea as old as man himself. And an idea it seemed that her blood was given up for.
Blake stood up unsteadily as the final warmth of her life left her and finished the word she and all the others with her had started; FREEDOM.
City 17. A metropolis. An ant hill. A tomb. Most were dark days. Dark days for the people. The ants. The slaves. Most days were the same. Arrests. Executions. Misery. Here it was the slow death, the murder of the human spirit was taking place.
City 17. Ruled by the totalitarian Dr. Wallace Breen. Abhorred by the oppressed masses. And yet the masses were impotent to remove him. The fear of OverWatch pervaded any dissenting thoughts of revolution, or more insidiously, resentful thoughts of government.
Civil Protection. Metro Police as they were referred to carried out the cold will of Dr. Breen’s regime, through the terrible fascistic command of OverWatch. And OverWatch had been on high alert since before midday. Most days were the same. But not this day.
The city was like a convulsing, shuddering beast; the tiny creatures within it fighting, struggling against one another. The citizenry had been galvanised to join the resistance, like the awakening of the basic instinct of all living creatures when cornered by some predatory beast.
Those of the city chosen for Civil Protection service were an ungentle folk; a filthy, jeering lot. The kind that could be seen many hundreds of years ago shouting gleefully at a public execution or the burning of some heretical witch.
They were, for the most part, vastly unintelligent. Citizens who were completely illiterate and utterly subservient to the state. Perfect drones for OverWatch’s purposes. However, some served despite their intellectual advantages. And almost all did so voluntarily. At some point the omnipresent barrage of the propagandised virtues of state service co-opted their sense of self loyalty. Some were cynical. Some were afraid. And some were simply evil. Rotten souls who could fulfil sadistic fantasies and disturbing criminal lusts in the service of the OverWatch.
And yet there were some looking for a way out. A way to oppose the OverWatch. Unfortunately, life expectancy for them was unhelpfully short. Most would be found out. Odd behaviour was scrutinised and reported feverishly. Although, some found their way into the Underground; a term for the insurgency of City 17, which had, until today, lay dormant. But now erupted like a force of nature. For what is resistance to tyranny but a force a nature? All oppressed beings have a breaking point. Some die. Some fight.
OverWatch. The government branch responsible for the Orwellian nightmare the people of the city endured sleeplessly. Cameras and directional microphones on every street corner. Strange mechanical probes twice the size of a human head floated about the streets photographing anybody engaged in suspicious activity; suspicious meaning everything and nothing at the same time. The militarisation of law enforcement. The Gestapo-like arrests of people in their homes. The terrorisation of the people.
There was no longer any intelligence agencies. No military. No police force. No judicial system. There was only the OverWatch. Its armed thugs roamed the streets night and day beating and arresting anybody. All were presumed guilty. No hope of proving one’s innocence.
OverWatch and Dr. Breen’s command center were located within the Citadel; an enormously tall, slender, monolithic structure climbing impossibly high into the air. It would cast an immense oppressive shadow across City 17 in the afternoons and birds would not sing during those hours where the shadow remained.
The Citadel lay at the very center of City 17 and was the only structure of its sort other than the menacing unassailable walls which enclosed it in a ring of impenetrable iron.
City 17 was a depressing sight. It was a rather flat, decrepit cluster of old eastern European townships. Where in Europe nobody could tell. Maps and education systems had been, as Breen had said at one time, “purged contentedly as items and ideologies created by those who sought to plunge mankind into anarchy.”
There was a four storied stone building which was part of the square of the old township. At one point it was a museum or government building and here now it stood just outside the walls of the Citadel. The type of building raised at a time when one could not imagine how its architects accomplished such a feat. It possessed an archaic brilliance, though sullied now as OverWatch had taken it as a command post and fortified it with strange wrought iron and steel appendages and equipment.
It was also the one place which controlled the opening and closing of the walls ringing the Citadel. And it was being wrathfully contested. Many of the resistance had massed in surrounding buildings mobilising an assault.
Blake peered through an empty window pane into the square below, the sunlight casting mournful shadows across the courtyard. The sun shone here but it did not carry with it any warmth. Almost as though it dare not visit this place. Perhaps, he wondered not completely doubting the absurdity of the thought, that OverWatch had the means to deprive even the sun of its natural power.
He was part of a Civil Protection squad, of which there were many operating upon the same objective, moving carefully from building to building clearing out resistance fighters. Seditionists they were called by OverWatch, terrorists.
Much gunfire could be heard from surrounding buildings and there was the rhythmic ever present throbbing vibration of the Striders.
The Striders were horrifying to behold. As tall as the building Civil Protection was defending, heavily armed and looked as if they had escaped out of a nightmare. They had three legs; jointed and spider-like. And what appeared to be a singular, pulsating blue eye which in reality was a powerful particle weapon used to eviscerate concrete structures.
And there were three of them stamping about the streets protecting the building in the square. Little hope, thought Blake, these rebels have of taking control of that building, not with those Striders about….
His thoughts were interrupted as he followed his squad through a wrecked hallway and down a partially collapsed staircase. They passed into the adjacent building through a cavity in the wall. They all stopped abruptly.
A conversation could be heard in the next room. Much was muffled and inaudible.
“There’s no point in proceeding!” shouted one voice. “We might as well pull back.”
“And forget all the people we lost getting here?!”
“You know I don’t’ mean that. But with those Striders out there, there’s no way we can get inside that building. And if we don’t get inside we can’t get within the wall, and then we’ll be in a real fix.”
As Blake listened intently to all that was said two of his squad members rolled a pair of grenades against the wall as they all took cover. Everything seemed to shake. Cracked and weathered plaster fell from the walls. Door frames splintered and burst. Dirt which lay silently in the cracked ceiling fell in fine streams all about them.
Blake could hear nothing but a piercing ringing in his ears for a long moment after. At once his squad was entering the room through the crumbled wall firing several times. Dust hung in the air. The stench of death.
Once the dust had cleared enough Blake could see that there had been three inside the room. Two of the men were dead. Either killed in the explosion or subsequently by the collapsing wall.
Blake’s squad exited the room through a door opposite. As he too was about to exit he looked down at the body of the third slumped against the wall. It was a woman.
The breath left him and he felt as if a chill wind swept all about him. She was not dead and he could not by force of will pry his eyes from her ashen gaze, a gaze full of memories. The look one might find in the eyes of a beloved pet come to the end of its time. A look not of anger, not of sadness. But of humility and truth. She looked as though she might die any second and Blake thought she was nursing a wound but then realised why she clutched her belly so. She was pregnant!
Her fierce blue eyes burned into his. She was lovely, magnificent, dying, alive. There was blood. Much stained her clothing. She was holding something. A can. With the last of her strength she reached to him with both hands, bearing the can up to him as if it weighed more than all the earth.
He took it from her gently, feeling her cold hands. She was looking up at the wall behind her. He saw now what she had been doing before she had been shot. She had been spraying the wall with red paint. A word it was but an idea also, an idea as old as man himself. And an idea it seemed that her blood was given up for.
Blake stood up unsteadily as the final warmth of her life left her and finished the word she and all the others with her had started; FREEDOM.
