On the big action day, an autumn Wednesday in 2057, on the office floor of the BHA sector headquarters in B City, those who had spent the night on the floor all waked up very early. Some of them were waked up by the earliest round of the landline phone ringing, and others were waked up by the noise made by those who got up earlier. But all of them got into the mood for the action very soon. Most of those who went home in the previous evening also came early on this Wednesday morning. Some of them even helped to clean up the floor, making it back to a working space.
Linda prepared the breakfast in the previous evening so that the team members could finish eating and get ready soon after waking up in the morning. But she also left a note on the door of the kitchen room: Please come to pray together first in the morning, and then we can have breakfast together.
After the prayer meeting, Jessica went to the kitchen with all others. She picked up some food and had herself a cup of coffee, and then went back to her office. She needed to attend a conference call with George and other sector headers across the world. The security team of BHA had fought a tough cyber war against BMA’s hacking to maintain a secure VPN for its leaders to communicate with each other remotely.
During the conference call, George told the attendees that, according to BHA’s source from within the military forces, all the servicemen had been given a clear order that no one would be allowed to leave his own base or position without the permission of the special military police squad that had taken control of the complete defense force of the country since Tuesday morning.
“That’s very strange,” Someone commented. “It sounds like they are more worried that the army might join our protest than intending use the army to deal with us.”
“But we never attempted to stir up the army to fight with us since that could be condemned as a coup,” Jessica chimed in.
“Maybe we made a mistake for not doing that,” Someone else remarked. “What is going on with the military forces right now might actually be a reminder that we should have done that.” Jessica recognized it was Tony, the head of the company that was previously owned by her and now a secret factory to provide BHA with all kinds of hardware.
“A military coup has never been in our plan,” George responded. “Not only because the impact of a military coup is very different from a peaceful protest, but also because we don’t have that kind of capacity at all.”
“But at least it is good news if the military forces will not be used against us today,” Jessica said.
“I’m not quite convinced that what is going on with the military forces is to prevent them joining our protest.” That was Jimmy the ‘ghost’, who had been a key member of the intelligence team of BHA.
“Why do you think so?” Someone asked.
“Well, the discipline of the army is very tough so that it’s much easier for them to mobilize the army against us than for us to get the soldiers to protest together with us unless there would be a thoroughly planned coup. We know this, so does BMA.
Based on our intel, BMA is very confident with their own intelligence force since they have their informants in every corner of this world, including the military forces; therefore, the chance for them to curb the army for something that has never planned by anyone is very small.” Jimmy reasoned.
“Then what are they up to in your opinion?” Tony asked.
“I am not sure yet,” Jimmy replied. “But we need to be very careful and not just take what they are doing with the army as simply a good sign.”
“Jimmy is right,” George seconded Jimmy. “Based on what they have been doing against our members across the nation since yesterday morning, we need be very vigilant. But meanwhile, no matter what, this is going to be a big day for us, for the country, and for the whole world. Let’s fight in solidarity with each other, and the final victory will be ours.”
After exchanging some other info with each other, the meeting ended around 8:00am.
When Jessica stepped out of her office, she found that most members were chatting outside her office, waiting for her command to set off.
“Okay,” Jessica clapped her hands to get attention from everyone. When members stopped chatting with each other and the room became quiet, Jessica spoke to the team, “Now the moment of truth is coming, for which we have been preparing during the past weeks, and as a matter of fact, it is the moment that we have been waiting for since the beginning of this year. Most importantly, this is the moment we stand out to defend our humanity, our civilization, our human culture, and our rights of survival.”
The team responded with one minute long hand claps.
“According to the information we collected during the past days, today we might have up to two hundred thousand people join us in this city alone. Many of them are brothers and sisters of BHA, but also many outsiders. What binds us together is the fact that we are all human beings who do not want to be replaced by machines or biogenetic products.”
Another round of hand claps.
“But since most of the protesters, no matter our BHA members or outsiders, do not know the details of our plan, each one of us in this room right now would play a critical role for the action, we are the soul of this action. Can we make it?”
“Yes!” The instant loud response from the team made the windows vibrating.
“Do we have the buses ready?” Jessica asked Linda.
“They are all waiting nearby,” Linda responded.
“Good.” Jessica then asked the team, “does anyone still not have the protest route plan?”
No one answered.
“Does anyone still not know what he or she should do?”
No one answered.
“Alright, now we will go to take the buses to our rendezvous point at the south corner of the central square. Our processions will all set off from there. On our way to that place, every one of you still could contact your friends to confirm their participation or get them out if some of them have not been contacted.”
Jessica then said to the team, in a loud and firm voice, “Let’s go!”
John’s group was near the east end exit to the stairway when Jessica was giving the speech. Therefore, once the team began to move, they were among the earliest to get downstairs. Doug was already waiting at the gate of the building to direct members to the parking location of the buses.
“Did you get a handheld speaker?” Doug asked when he saw John’s group.
John took a look at his group members, and none of them had a handheld speaker. “I guess we all forgot. Thanks Doug for reminding us.”
“I will get it.” Peter, one youngster in John’s group, was about to go back for the handheld speaker.
John stopped him, “Hold on, Peter. I go get it and you guys get on the bus first. I will join you soon.”
Like John and his group, many other groups were also using the stairways instead of the elevators. John had to push his way against the flow of people going down. When he got back to the headquarters, only a few people were still there. The door of Jessica’s office was open, and John could hear Jessica talking on the phone.
Instead of going to get the handheld speaker, John walked towards Jessica’s office.
…...
John had not forgotten the handheld speaker. Even before he went out of that exit door with his group, he had a glance at the location where he kept that handheld speaker Jessica gave him the previous evening. He didn’t take it because he had something more important left in the headquarters, which was his heart. He could not leave the headquarters without a formal valediction with Jessica. Among all the members of the headquarters, John was the only one who had the first hand experience of dealing with BMA. He knew what they might do, especially after talking to Bob over the phone the previous day. The sudden catastrophic change of his life a few weeks ago was still a fresh memory to him. He did not know what kind of catastrophic change might happen on this big action day. He knew that he could not change anything at that moment, but at least, he should not leave the headquarters without giving Jessica a hug either.
When John paced to the door of Jessica’s office, Jessica just ended her phone call and stood up from the chair.
“John,” Jessica was obviously very glad to see him. “I was looking for you to see if you have everything you need.”
“Yeah,” John replied. “I forgot to bring the handheld speaker with me, and I come back to get it.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Yeah…No…Yeah..yeah,” John stammered a bit. “I…I mean, actually I came back to say goodbye to you.”
“Oh, John. I was trying to say the same to you as well.” Jessica quickly walked out from behind her desk.
“Actually, I came to give you a hug.” John stretched out his arms.
Jessica stepped up hugging John with her arms and whispered at his ear, “You take care of yourself, and we will see each other tonight.”
John held the body of Jessica tightly for a few seconds. Then he whispered at her ear before he released his arm and turned away from her, “You take a great care of yourself. I love you.”
John trotted to fetch the handheld speaker from where he hid it without looking back, leaving Jessica at the office door watching his back with a pair of red eyes.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When John’s group led a procession to set off, it was already around 9:15am. John, wearing a red hat and holding the handheld speaker, was walking ahead of the whole procession; on his hat, it was painted with gold color “BMA” on the left side “K Corp” on the right side. Ten BHA members, all wearing red hats, walked behind him holding a long banner. Two lines of words were painted on the banner. The top line was “Our Mind Is Not Open To BMA”, and the bottom line was “Our Soul Is More Valuable Than Artificial Life”.
They left the rendezvous point and walk towards south along a major avenue of the city, heading to a perpendicular major avenue several blocks away, and planning to circle the half of the neighborhood surrounding the central square and then come back into the square at its north side. There were about 20 thousand people followed John’s group, forming a procession stretching out a distance of many street blocks.
At the rendezvous point, Mary was giving away flyers to the participants, with the slogans that John was going to chant on his way of protesting. As he was marching on, John was alternatively chanting several slogans and his group members would lead others behind to follow by something written in the flyer that John prepared during the past couple of days.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Some slogan chants were quite simple. For example, when John shouted “K Corp sells the red hats”, others would follow with “BMA peeks into your heads”; if John shouted “BMA is a thief of mind”, others would follow with “Watch your head and watch your mind”, and so on.
But some other slogan chants would need more sophisticated team cooperation. For example, when John shouted “My head belongs to my own”, some members would shout “BMA”, and then some others would follow with “Boo”, which would then be followed by “Take your hand off my head” by others, and so on.
If someone in the procession did not understand the meanings of the slogans, BHA members around them would explain to them, or ask them to wait for John’s speech after circling the targeted urban area.
……
On the north side of the central square, there was a high stage platform about two meters above the ground. It was normally open to the public for renting. On holidays and weekends, there were usually all kinds of shows on that platform played by artists from various communities.
Since the big action day was not in a weekend, it did not take BHA much effort to reserve that platform a couple weeks ago for the big protest. The first thing Doug and Jack did when they arrived at the square with the buses was to set up the platform so that members of BHA could give speeches on the platform during the protest.
When John came back to the central square at its north side after an hour long protest march, the entrance into the square was already jammed by protest participants. Local police officers had to make road lines to maintain a path for people to get in and out the central square. Even before John entered the square, he could already hear that Jessica was giving a speech, which was obviously broadcasted not through the ordinary sound system used in a normal meeting or party, but through something much more powerful.
When John finally managed to get onto that high stage platform as planned, he was surprised by what he saw: a few normally mute commercial LED panels were turned into loud TVs and broadcasting Jessica’s speech.
“I thought those LED panels do not come with sound systems,” John said to Jack who stood beside him.
“They don’t.” Jack pointed to some racks holding arrays of speakers around the square, “What you hear are from those speakers. Both the LED panels and the speakers, as well as the mic she is using, are all operated through a central computer system.”
“You guys made all these work?” John asked.
“No,” Jack replied. “The commercial company that owns those panels did for us.”
“Is that expensive?” John asked.
“Free,” Jack smiled. “They are doing this as their support for our common cause.”
John smiled as well. When he looked down to the square from the platform, he could see that the whole square and those streets connected to the square were all full of protesting people, most of them holding protest flags or banners.
“How many people do you think we got here?” John pointed to the crowd.
“I heard from a police officer, who is helping to maintain the order around the platform, that there should be half a million people in the whole square and the nearby area,” Jack responded.
“Wow, half a million!” John exclaimed with his right hand thumb up.
“Is that your phone ringing?” Jack pointed to John’s pocket, inside which something was jumping.
“Yeah…thanks...let me pick up this call.” John put on the headphone with a mic and answered the call.
“John,” It was Bob again. “Are you okay? Your background sounds very noisy.”
“Yeah, I am okay. I am standing on a platform and people are all around. I am using a headphone with mic….otherwise, you might hear more noise,” John explained.
“That sounds like Jess’s voice…is she talking?” Bob asked
“Yeah, she is talking to the crowd right now,” John responded.
“It sounds like you guys are all safe?” Bob said in a questioning tone.
“We are okay. How are things going on your side?” John asked.
“Oh, it’s horrible…bloodily horrible…that’s why I am calling you to check if you guys are okay,” Bob sounded horrified.
“What’s going on?” John started to worry.
“A lot people got hurt… some were sprayed, some were hit by high pressure water, some were deafened by the sound bombs, and some were even beaten up to bleed…even in the street outside my clinic you could see blood on the ground… my clinic is full of people injured,” Bob answered.
“What?” John could not believe what he just heard.
“I was told by my patients that it is actually already on some news channels,” Bob said.
“Which one?” John asked.
“Hold on,” Bob said, and John could hear someone in the background groaning and others were talking loudly.
“I gotta go taking care the injured, I’ll call you later…take care.” Bob hung up the phone.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On Wednesday morning, Bob did not go to join the protest, not because he was scared of the secret police, but because he still had some appointments for patients. Although his clinic was far from the center of the city, but he still could see through the windows of his clinic some protestors march in lines passing by and he could hear their protesting slogans from within his clinic.
It was quite peaceful at the beginning until a few hours later, around the time when John finished his protest march in B City, those within Bob’s clinic started to hear people outside screaming, crying, and hastily running.
Bob and others went out to see what happened. When they came out of the door, they saw some riot policemen in helmets were chasing and beating the escaping protesters, young and old, men and women. They seemed not interested in arresting anyone but just beating and knocking down one and then chasing another.
Some of Bob’s patients were scared and went back to the clinic right away. Bob and Sandy went out to help one victim, who was lying on the ground, to walk into the clinic, and then Dorothy and some other patients went to get more injured into the clinic.
When Bob finished treating those injured whom were let into the clinic, he started to worry about John and Jessica, so he made a quick phone call to check with John and notify him of what was going on in S City before next injured would come into the clinic.
……
Almost at the same time when Bob was helping the injured, those huge military transport aircrafts carrying AH soldiers of the Republic of New People landed in the airbases across the nation, including one near B City.
After those armed AH soldiers got off the aircrafts, they got on the transportation means that were ready for them to take, including trucks, armored military vehicles, and military choppers, with drivers or pilots from the airbases waiting in their positions. Then they all set off at the command of the officers who were with the gray hair general.
……
The representatives in the legislature across the nation, federal and local, continued their intense debates started on the previous day. Later in the morning, the equally matched situation in most places changed decisively, not towards favoring BHA but towards favoring BMA. The reason was that, after a large number of unemployed people all over the nation got onto the street to support BHA, BMA convinced a large percent of formerly neutral representatives that the prevail of BHA would shake the existing political system and thus hurt their political interests.
Most importantly, those politicians knew that they would not be able to help the majority of the protesters to make a change of the trend of replacing humans by robots or AHs in all social areas, which would put them fundamentally in the pro-BMA position. At least, they were not prepared to make a decision to support BHA in such a short time period since they did not have any idea how they could be benefited from doing so. But meanwhile, BMA promised them that their interests would be protected by BMA politically and financially. As a result, they decided to join the pro-BMA force and their actions changed the balance on the battle ground.
The change of atmosphere within the legislature was soon followed by the president of the nation, who came out to support BMA openly and forcefully.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After Bob hung up the phone, John said to Jack, “Something not right. They have started to crack down our protest in S City.”
Right at that moment, John heard Jessica calling his name, “Next, let’s hear the witness of our brother Mr. John Potter, a former BMA executive. He will tell you with his own story how BMA has been systematically ruining humanity through the so-called scientific ways.”
John turned and found that Jessica was waving at him. He hesitated for a fraction of a second because he was just about to tell Jack more of what he heard from Bob, but Jack pushed him towards Jessica, “Go, it’s your turn now.”
John walked towards Jessica. They kissed each other on the cheek, and then Jessica went to the back stage, leaving John in front of the microphone.
“Before you hear my own story, I have bad news to tell you,” John said while his voice was a bit trembling. “Some of you might have already learned the news if you have been checking your social media or surfing the internet or watching TV news, most of you might not be aware of it if you have been focusing on this protest.” He paused in an effort to calm himself down, and then he raised his voice, “They started cracking down our protest. They are beating and killing our brothers and sisters in S City and some other places!”
The anger of the enraged crowd erupted like a volcano. Many of them started to shout, “Down with them, victory is ours!” Many others also started to check their phones to gather info about the crackdown across the nation.
“We will not be intimated by their atrocity! We will fight for our just cause defiantly! We will fight for the continuation of our civilization, for our children and their future, for the survival rights of human beings with all our strength and courage!” John shouted, and his voice was full of anger, pain, and determination.
When the sound of John’s words was still lingering in the air, those LED panels were switched to news channels, and someone who was controlling the sound system spoke through those loud speakers, “Dear brothers and sisters, sorry for interrupting the speech, we might need first to listen to the news that the president is making some announcement.”
When the president of the nation appeared on the LED panels, the crowd in the square responded with a burst of loud sound of booing so that John could not hear clearly what the president said at the beginning.
The same man spoke through the loud speaker again, “Please calm down. We need to hear what he is saying and then we can protest after.”
A few seconds later, the raucous sound of protesting lowered down in the square and John could hear the speech of the president.
“As authorized by the congress of the country, by carrying out my constitutional rights for protecting the people of this great country, I am now declaring the federal state of emergency for the followings cities and areas...”
B City was the first one in the list for the federal state of emergency, which meant that the federal government would take over the power of public security from the local government, or in other words, the federal government would send military forces to put those areas under its control.
Right after the President, the leader of the federal legislature came to announce that the congress had passed a law to denounce BHA as illegal and thus all its protesting activity would be illegal.
The angry crowd erupted again. Their hearts were filled with indignation. But some scared people started to leave the central square area. That man who previously spoke through the loud speaker announced his personal strongest support for BHA, denounced the congressional decision as unconstitutional, and called on the people in the square, as well as all over the country, to support BHA. His call was responded by the crowd with thunderous applause.
“Thanks,” John said. “Could you please turn off the news channel? I guess we have enough of it.”
“Of course,” The man said. The LED panels were all switched back to the high stage platform for BHA.
But right at that moment, there came the loud noise of rotors from the sky. John looked up and saw a team of choppers lining in a V shape was coming from afar. While the crowd was all shocked by the appearance of the choppers, that previously spoken man shouted, “A troop of armed soldiers wearing red hats is coming!”
One of the LED panels was switched to a street CCTV’s view that showed armed soldiers in trucks and armored military vehicles approaching the central square. More people started to run away from the central square and the nearby streets. The escape was so random that many were running towards the approaching army, and then turned to other directions after they saw the army vehicles.
While John was still standing before the microphone in front of the crowd, Jessica called others who were on the stage to discuss the emergency measure for that sudden happening of the direct interfere by the military force. They decided to withdraw right away.
“John,” Jessica called John to get him away from the microphone while walking towards him because she wanted to give a retreat speech as the leader and organizer of the protest before they pulled out of the central square.
“It’s him,” John shouted in the microphone right after Jessica called him. From the zoomed in view of that CCTV’s screen, he recognized the officer who stood in the front of the first military truck was that Colonel X from the Republic of New People, and beside him was that AH Sergeant Y.
“They are not human soldiers! They are AH soldiers led by human officers from the Republic of New People! I know those two in the front of the first truck. That sergeant wearing a Red Hat is an AH sergeant and his name is Sergeant Y, that man beside him is his human boss, Colonel X. They are from the Republic of New People.” John was yelling, while shocked and extremely enraged. He was so furious and his voice was so loudly broadcasted that the crowd in the square could clearly hear what he was telling them in spite of the raucous noise of the chopper rotors mixed with the angry and scary screaming of the people. They also could see clearly from one of the huge LED panels the excited John pointing to the direction of the approaching army with his right index finger.
“Pam…”, a sonorous sound of gunshot pierced the sky. It was a loud single shot without using any silencer as murderers in action movies would normally use. It was so loud that it surpassed the noise of chopper rotor and any other noise, making a riddle of echoes in the sky above the central square and its neighborhood. Obviously, the shooter did not want to hide the sound of shooting, but wanted everyone in the square and around the world to hear that sound, because it was a sound of warning, a sound of declaration that the time of AH was officially coming.
John was the only one who did not hear that sound. Right after he pointed out Colonel X and Sergeant Y to the crowd, he felt something hit his stomach and something hot and salty surged up his throat. He spurted a mouthful blood, and then completely lost his consciousness.
On that huge LED panel, John fell down with his face upward at that sound of gunshot, in front of the crowd, in front of the world, while red blood was spouting into the air from his mouth.