The news presenter was crying on his livestream, talking about his childhood friend, who was an enthusiastic tennis player, an always available babysitter, and a lovely person. He was one of the colonial pilots that had recently completed a voluntary tour to go fight in the colonial war. He had died in the recent spate of unexplained deaths, leaving behind a young family.
She navigated away from the news stream and went back to her Yin feed. Colonists and their supporters had initially increased in number after the news of the bizarre and inexplicable deaths had come out, but once Yin had blown the lid on just exactly how rotten the recently departed were – public opinion firmly switched towards the indigenes. The dead made it easy – they had documented their every action from war-crimes to violence to pure creepiness and took pride in declaring how they volunteered to go on bombings or ‘target practice’. And a whistleblower had leaked the sheer extent of the support the national government provided to the colonials a few days ago and had gone into hiding to stay safe. And now as she flipped from post to post she saw less and less of proud colonialists broadcasting indigene terror and more of widespread bullying of colonials and of government personnel by the young and old alike, only interrupted by primary person footage of indigene bravery and engineering creativity under technological limitations. One woman, Ameera was especially sharp in her put-downs of colonist evil. Deema saw a post by Ameera opining that the family of the news presenter’s pilot friend was probably better off without a genocidal maniac in the house.
Her clock rang the hour. Deema looked up from her device, the mail was probably in. As she walked out to the communal mailroom to pick up her mail, she a flash of green out of the corner of her ete. She stopped and looked around but there was nothing. She shrugged and went to pick up her mail. She was expecting something from her cousin travelling across the southern continent and got it. But she also found an interactive news piece in her mailbox, surprising her, since she wasn’t subscribed to that service. She picked it up and went back. She nodded at two of her neighbours fiddling with their vertical gardens, entered her apartment, and pressed the red button to start the news package as she started to cook.
It was a notification from the government’s newspaper of record. The government’s spokesperson’s hologram suddenly appeared. He was a local indigene who could have been adopted into a long line of colonialists for all his deference to and defence of the colonies. “this so-called whistleblower is a traitor to our glorious nation, and his so-called-publisher has violated our laws from afar. Both must stand trial in our courts. We are sure our free and fair judges will make the right decision and sentence them to what they deserve.” The hologram went on to detail the serious charges the whistleblower was hiding from and the publisher was being extradited for. Deema felt a deep rage build as listened to the holographic psycho’s barely restrained glee.
The mood of the nation had changed, coast to coast, but the elites and the politicians remained steadfast in the support of the colonies. The honest ones among them admitted that the colonies were an investment, to keep the colonial neighbourhood always on edge and in a state of constant internecine war. The indigenes were a sad sacrifice, but a sacrifice the government was entirely too willing to make.
Not in my name, she thought. Not in my name. She waved a hand, winking out the hologram. She pulled up her device and signed into those domestic forums she lurked on to see what the enthusiasts of the esoteric and everyone else were up to.
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The forums were ablaze with rage against the colonizers. Any colonists or their supporters were either keeping a very low profile or had been banned for genocide promotion. Deema drank it all in. She wrote up a high-level analysis of the recent situation, about the unexplained killings in Ruritania and the unknown massive protests and hostage taking / civil disobedience by the Ruritani there to stop the mobilization in its tracks, and submitted it. Her post quickly attracted comments and shares and excitement.
People wanted to do something, anything, to stop the genocide. Over the course of two days, opinion coalesced around protesting the ministry of justice or the ministry of colonial affairs. Fervor and passion spread across the public, across real life and alternate media. Millions filled the streets of the nation, an eclectic mix of the young and old – everyone with a heart still beating. Even the ossified official and corporate media realized the direction the wind was blowing and began to put out opinion pieces lightly critical of the colonists, the colonial government, and even the national government.
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It was too late.
Deema and some of the most active members of the forums had come together. They mapped out a meticulous plan to force the national government to stop, to listen, and to end the genocide. They began by taking a leaf out of the Ruritani playbook. They would conduct direct negotiations with the ministers responsible.
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A million or more attended the next major protest march. As the crowd swelled and swayed and passed by the Ministry of Colonial Affairs, a young woman from the city’s main temple addressed the crowd. It was Ameera, the online put-downer par excellence.
“Free, free indigene!” She began.
“Free, free everyone!” The crowd roared back. The woman found Deema in the crowd, and smiled.
“We will see, oh yes, we will see
The liars locked, the ghoulish gone.
The killers killed, we will see
We will see, that’s right, we will see
She paused, and the crowd took up the cry. We WILL see. We WILL see. The ground pulsed. She continued.
“We will see, oh yes, we will see
The propagandists popped
The bombers bombed,
the criminals crushed,
the genociders stopped
We will see, oh yes, we will see.
See peace prevail, we will see”
For a moment, everything was still. Then the crowd took up the chant. Deema was among them. So was her family, so were her friends. After a few chants, the young woman motioned for attention. She pointed to the ministry 200m away from her.
“This is where our government supports the genocide. This is where they process all the bulldozers, all the bombs, all the airplanes and all the artillery. This building is where our Minister is hiding. Let’s go say hello.” A few hundreds of those closest to the building began to walk up to it, soon joined by thousands more. The police flexed their batons but faced with a crowd of determined thousands would not take no for an answer. The crowd settled in, started a party. Ameera was still on the stage, telling them stories about some of the martyrs she knew.
The minister, a harried-looking man in his fifties with inadvisably sharply-edged glasses, came out to reason with the crowd. Ameera welcomed him to the stage but stared the ministerial security down. They held no power here. The drones buzzing next to them caught the scene from every angle, broadcasting the stage to the protestors in the area and beyond.
“Thank you for coming, Minister. Do you support genocide?” Whatever he meant to say was immediately drowned out in the crowd’s boos. Ameera motioned for quiet and calm.
“Yes Minister, go ahead. Do you support genocide?” He nodded, no, no, no. Ameera handed him a microphone, but kept its control with her. “Will you end the genocide?”
“Well, you see” and the crowd broke out “We will see, oh yes, we will see.” From her position just behind the stage, Deema saw the minister visibly wince. She smiled. She was the one who came up with the chorus, after all. Everytime the minister started to vacillate and obfuscate and talk in generalities, the crowd bullied him. Deema doubted he had ever been grilled in this manner. He got a call and picked up his phone. Ameera reached out, grabbed the phone, and threw it away.
Deema saw Roy, one of her co-planners, immediately send a couple of organizers to get that phone back. She wondered what sort of dirt would be on it.
The minister cracked. He insisted he had been in government only to temper the unfortunate pre-existing colonist bent. He promised to cancel all exports to the colonial entity. When pressed to end military support to the colonialists and to end the investigation into the whistleblower and the extradition of his publisher, the minister balked and said that was outside of his control.
“No problem, Minister. Let’s go now to the Department of Defense and the Palace of Justice. You’ll take us there.” Roy came and gave Ameera the minister’s phone.
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The other minister’s weren’t as easy to bully. No matter. A few strategic blockades (pipelines, trains, and routes leading to the sea ports exporting arms, ammunition, and energy to the colonists), plus an increasingly powerful belief in karma aided by publicizing the kinds of people who died in mysterious circumstances. They weren’t all bomb-dropping pilots. They were also equipment technicians maintaining bulldozers, graphic designers drafting propaganda cartoons, and other low-lying scum. It was a bad time to be a colonist or a colonist sympathizer.
Kicking and screaming, the government was bullied into dropping its support for the colonists. Not too long after, the colonists blamed all their excesses on a small coterie of erstwhile leaders and claimed to be victims too. Many left to come back to the homeland, some left to go find their way elsewhere in the world, but without having a tyrannical government backing them up, they behaved better and hid from the law.
Deema’s poem was right. They did see peace prevail.