Looking Back [2014WC]

We’ve heard so many different versions of what is eluded to be the truth by now, I could no longer even begin to tell you what is fact, and what is fancy.

This I can tell you though, the mantra for the new world has become, stay hidden, stay safe. Our liberties were taken away ever so slowly, we not only barely noticed them being stricken from our lives, in some regards we even applauded them. After the devastating attacks on the world’s major cities, seeing New York, Russia, Sydney and even London burning, how could we not surrender our freedoms and band together as a race? Full disclosure my withered ass.

We cheered proudly as a country, and mindlessly clapped our hands together as our politicians stood upon their podiums and shook their fists like the hands of God. While they declared another supposed hidden enemy had began to oppress us, we listened intently, that we simply had to stand together for peace and liberty, lest our great nation fall to these evil beings. Nowadays the few remaining elders joke about what that threat really was. Aliens? Muslims? Despots? Who knows. Even I can’t remember, and I am among the oldest here.

Luckily for me I saw what would happen before the rest of the world did, how they would use the ultimate blinders to steer us in the direction they wanted, to introduce their totalarian state so completely we had little choice but to accept. It seemed the conspiracy theorists were right. Pity they shut down the internet right after that event at the end of 2012, and made the many sites dedicated to the truth and the conspiracy illegal. I still remember watching on live TV as they rounded up the site owners and mercilessly gunned them all down for treason, all in the name of peace and liberty, to stop the “terrorism from within” as they liked to call it.

One of the first rules was to declare “prepping” and food hoarding illegal, as an act of supporting terrorism. My neighbour was one of the first to find out just how much the government wanted to keep us helpless, when the tanks and soldiers just rolled up his driveway like they were arriving for a Sunday barbeque. How they marched him and his family out into the front yard while they loaded his year’s worth of supplies onto a truck. I remember distinctly as one of the leaders muttered “run,” and then screamed out to the troops he and his family were getting away. For all I know the bodies may still be there. For me, I knew that night, as the soldiers searched my house and my yard for any foodstuffs, that it was time to disappear.

And so I did. Luckily for me, I did it at the right time, as the chips came soon after. Embedded in the neck, they promised us it was just a way to keep a track of the terrorists, who would naturally refuse such a thing, because, well, they were terrorists. Guess that made me a terrorist then. I prefer to think of it as someone who refused the mark of the beast.

Others had the same idea, I don’t know if I was lucky or just had the right idea, as new off-the-grid colonies began to spring up. People left their homes, their jobs, their lives and simply vanished into the wilderness, tired of the way things were being run. They began to band together for mutual survival. To me, it was just like shooting fish in a barrel.

For months the drones scoured the skies, looking for these new terrorist cells, while the big cities emptied or just became manual labour factories for the new war machine. The bigger colonies were bombed out of existence by the government, always in those damn unmarked craft, so it looked like our opressors had done it. TV endlessly played their demise over and over, so it burned in the minds of those who thought they were still free. Just like September 11, they made sure we never forgot the ruthless ideals of the terrorists, that they would play over and over just how bad these people were, how we had to continue the war effort to stop them. One by one countries suspected of harboring terrorists were invaded. Funny, it seemed the military never ran out of resources, even when petrol hit $4 a litre.

For the time being we live a nomadic existence, hidden by the livestock we herd across country. The government doesn’t seem to be bothered with a bunch of wild cows, they never seem to look close enough to see there are a couple hundred people in amongst them. We cross paths with other herders every so often, and hear tales of the outside world. How the cities have become the only bastions to live, locked up like a fortress, tiny cameras following your every move, the chips endlessly tracking your spending and living habits. Such is the nature of freedom I guess, give with the left, take with the right.

Sadly, now I grow old. Too old to keep up with the herd it would seem, and you know what happens when an old lion can no longer keep up with the pack. I am one of the last who remembers what it used to be like, when you could ride your bike down the street without fear of some psycho or child molester dragging you off into the darkness, never to be seen again. Where you could engage in a discussion about the ills of the world without being thought of as a terrorist or worse. Where your every move, your every thought and desire were not data mined by corporations to give them your every habit and idea.

Where liberty and freedom actually mattered, and were not just bywords for slavery and oppression. I leave it to you now, my children, to keep that dream of freedom alive.

Despite everything we have suffered, as long as a single idea is given credence, freedom can truly never die.

reply to post by 74Templar


Glad to see you writing again. Hope life is treating you better.

SnF.

You have captured the essence of an all too realistic scenario with this one, wrapped up in excellent grammar, and presented with a chill of inevitability. '

Very satisfying to read, I liked it.

reply to post by 74Templar


Nice.

reply to post by 74Templar

Where liberty and freedom actually mattered, and were not just bywords for slavery and oppression. I leave it to you now, my children, to keep that dream of freedom alive.
Despite everything we have suffered, as long as a single idea is given credence, freedom can truly never die.

Those last words actually brought tears into my eyes.

I love it.
S+F