When the flash from the suspect first struck Michael's eyes, Michael fell back into his chair and covered his eyes in pain. Michael's blindness and dizziness lasted for only half a minute due to his distance from the flash. Fortunately, he was able to regain his composure as soon as Nicholas and Alexandra pulled him up. Jay wasn't so lucky. 

Only thirty seconds passed, but it was enough for people's long-restrained resentment towards ArtTech hegemony to boil with their crippling fear of the impending mass poverty, eventually brewing a mixture of negativity fueled a chaos of barbarism that hadn't been seen for decades.

At first it seemed to be the unionists who stood up. For the first three seconds, they just stood there in silence and held their banners high, making a proud and silent protest over ArtTech's new encroachment into another major field of employment. They understood that if ArtTech controlled the art and humanities field, then the remaining ten percent of population who were employed would also suffer greatly. In the end the only career field remaining would be of artificial intelligence construction, and it will definitely be dominated by ArtTech. The inequality would dramatically augment, and all the wealth would be siphoned by the top 0.1% of the population who had ties with ArtTech.

The silence only lasted three seconds when people standing near that suspect unionist was  also harmed by the flash that blinded Michael. Somebody let out a curse word. Then there were some more swearing. The curse words seemed to have ignited a ton of explosives in people's raging chests, for they suddenly began roaring a derogatory rant. The hatred culminated in their voices as years of their suffering in poverty and dangers of society were instantaneously unleashed into the auditorium.

Then the technologists decided to shout back. It was mostly the extreme left and right shouting, but their zealous belief had seemingly inspired the others around them. The technologists also shouted back degrading remarks, only without much swearing. The more educated technologists decided to use profanity as a marker of their social status, though Michael personally thought that calling the unionists thieves, murderers, and rapists weren't a very educated and high-class response. 

Unfortunately there was reason behind that stereotype. Many people who were replaced out of the workforce were unable to find any jobs in the new humanities industries and artificial intelligence sector. The meager welfare symbolically provided by the government and ArtTech could solve only the tip of the gigantic iceberg of the poor people's problems, and, just like an iceberg, the wealthy ones at the top of the hierarchy and unable and unwilling to see beyond the surface into the crises of deeper water. 

Compelled by the desperation to sustain their family's survival, the poor people had realized that the law was no longer by their side — it couldn't even ensure their basic survival. Consequently, many of them decided to give crimes a try. If successful, they could sustain the family for another few weeks, and if not, the worst case was a life sentence in the prison with two guaranteed meals a day. That had been the worst case possible until the technologists decided to arm themselves with more superior weapons and serve as the criminals' own jury, judge, and executioner.

The unionist creed of equality, rights, and welfare undoubtedly fascinated these criminals. Unionists didn't decide to become criminals. Criminals decided to become unionists.

Although there was an understandable reason behind the unionists' crimes, the society didn't deem it anyhow justifiable. The technologists — the wealthy and powerful — made up almost the entirety of the victimhood of unionists' crimes. Therefore, in the auditorium right here right now, it had also been the technologist's last straw. They stood up and rapidly fired back with a cascade of insults.

At that moment, Johnson was standing on stage. Despite his experience with mobs, protests, and chaos, he had never expected nor foresaw an unrest of such magnitude developing right in the middle of an ArtTech facility. He could only follow the usual procedure — extending out his arms, saying politically correct things to comfort people, and telling the guards to be ready to suppress any violence.

The artists in the middle all stood up and cussed at Johnson and pointed middle fingers at him. They gradually shifted their position towards the left side of the auditorium and joined the unionists. On the other hand, the tech students were standing with helplessness and bewilderment. Many of them looked around and didn't know which side to join, but they knew that in a conflict like this, taking the neutral side would mean receiving blows from both sides. Therefore they still moved to the right to gang up with the technologists.

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All these happened in less than a minute.

A radical unionist standing at the front of the crowd was so infuriated that, without any careful consideration of the consequences, he picked up an artist's toolbox and hurled it at the general direction of the technologists. The toolbox travelled through the air over some technologist's head and struck an old man at his shoulder blade. Just one second earlier, the old man was standing there in peace. He wasn't shouting or waving furiously as he had neither the energy nor the political passion to do so, and he — perhaps the most innocent member among the technologists — was struck down with blood seeping down from a gash on the side of his face.

The unionist who threw the toolbox just opened his eyes and mouth in pure shock and disbelief. He glanced down at his hands, trying to comprehend what he had just committed — deliberately injuring a sixty year old man. He just stood there with his mouth open and mouthing "I'm sorry" at broken intervals.

The two mobs both froze there for a few seconds. Despite their insults towards each other, none of them had thought of physically hurting the other side — and even if they did, they wouldn't have dared to.

A young technologist about the same age as Michael hurried over to the fallen old man and checked his conditions. He gently ran a finger down the old man's bloodied face to his neck. He rested his hand attentively on the pulse for a while, desperately hoping to pickup any slight vibration of life, but the toolbox had smashed in the poor man's skull. The young technologist, presumably the victim's son, looked up at a woman with a sparkle of tear in his eyes as he shook his head. The woman bursted into desperate tears as she laid by the side of the body and buried her head into the cold, unmoving chest.

"Damn you unionist! You filthy murderer! You will pay for my father's death. I'll rip apart every piece of your skeleton and feed it to your cannibalistic brothers!" The young technologist's shriek shattered the silence.

He sprinted towards his father's murderer while letting out a battle cry of rage combined with sorrow. With a bestial leap, he tackled the transfixed unionist down onto the ground like a panther striking down its prey. The unionist didn't even resist; he was still mentally paralyzed over what he had done.

The crowd didn't respond either. They still found it unbelievable that an act of murder would occur right in front of their eyes right here — right at ArtTech's prestigious conference room.

The technologist rode on top of the unionist and punched blindly everywhere — his nose, his abdomen, and anywhere possible for a fist to land. The unionist seemed to have suddenly waken up and began resisting and blocking, but it was already too late; the technologist had already knocked out half of his life from him.

As if suddenly remembering something, the technologist reached into his pocket and pulled out a pointy object. It was a pen, and he clicked something and a longer blade jumped out. It wasn't weapons of any sorts; it was just an envelope knife. This was something that a sane person would never dare to do — any normal person with a sense of empathy and moral would never think about this — but that technologist had already been so brainwashed by adrenaline, rage, and bloodlust that he no longer cared about the moral bounds. He brought his hand down with the small envelope knife again and again.

The blade was so small that it was incapable of creating any mortal wounds; it was classified as a safe tool rather than a weapon, but it wasn't safe when it was stabbed down twenty times at the unionist's body — the stomach, then the ribcage, then the lungs, then the liver... People used to compare cruelty to punishments in hell, but no hell could serve more inhumane verdicts than this. The unionist writhed in pain and let out cries one after another — weaker shouts every time, as if his breath had leaked out of all the punctures in his bodies. He must have been begging for an instant death. Blood was shooting out everywhere as the unionists gathered around began screaming as well.

Many people had seen murders nowadays, but they were mostly quick and clean. One pull of the trigger, one plasma bullet into the heart, and a fallen body. Period. Many people were completely stupefied by this because they had never witnessed such sadism and savagery. When the crowd realized that they needed to react, it was already too late. The blade had cut away all the life from the unionist, yet he still didn't die. The blade was already completely soaked in crimson, and every time it was lifted in the air, the momentum caused giant droplets of blood to splatter around. The blade seemed to already be blunted by the flesh and bones it sliced against. When the technologist was dragged off the body by the fellow unionists, the victim was nothing but a pile of breathing flesh and bones.

Michael didn't witness all these, for he was still blinded. When he opened his eyes, the guards were already firing warning blank shots into sky to control the crowd. At that moment, the technologist was dragged off the unionist's body, but he was still slashing around with his knife. The other unionists had to subdue him. His wife rushed forward but was blocked by other unionists. Then one of them threw a punch, and more punches ensued. The left and right then charged at each other into a massive brawl in which everybody took out their deepest darkest hate upon their oppositions. Even the most civilized person was now engulfed by a sense of terror and fear that pushed him to his utmost violence. Education no longer seemed to be the solution, fists were.

Until the guard's blank shots reminded people that guns were a better solution than fists.