Insurrection
It was a pity that the children had to watch this. The execution amphitheater had been designed in such a way that no matter where one was placed he could see the execution. At 6’5”, 250 pounds, small by Arbeit standards, Ahmud was still able to clearly witness the carnage over his eight-foot associates. Around his spot, Ahmud saw at least fifty children, all of them naive to the level of atrocity that they were about to witness. Earlier Ahmud had tried to stow a few children behind an energy converter, but a Monarch sentry had spotted him and they fled. He might be up on the platform with the convicted.
Though convicted was not the proper term as they had been condemned to death without trial. The five on the execution platform were all members of the UR, the Underground Resistance, the only hope for the Arbeit race. They had been caught the night before and were condemned for violation of the association standard, which states that no more than three Arbeits may be together at a time. It had been later discovered that they had been part of a botched escape plot. Now they were tied up, naked, on posts on the platform. They were being covered in mashe a combination of waxes, petroleum jelly and magnesium flakes. The mashe was specifically designed to burn slowly. The condemned were about to die the worst death possible, slow burning, a punishment reserved by the Monarchs for the worst violating Arbeits. Ahmud had seen at least fifteen mashe burnings in his time, and he could handle the anguish that followed witnessing such a horrific event. The children though would not be strong enough to handle it.
Ahmud saw some of the Monarchs in the upper mezzanine begin to rise and cheer as the hooded executioner approached the platform. They, the Monarchs, considered this some form of entertainment; The executioner was a celebrity in Monarch culture. The executioner climbed the stairs to the poles and spit on each of the condemned. When the last of the condemned, a Arbeit named Constall who had been the head of the UR (unknown to the monarchs), attempted to speak to the crowd and was pistol whipped by the executioner’s hand flamer. The executioner stepped back onto his performance platform, and went through his standard display for the enjoyment of the Monarchs before he finally ignited the poles. Screams emanated from the platform which appeared so far from but so close to Ahmud. Soon the Arbeit part of the crowd began to rise up in protest and the sounds of tasers and homing bullets were heard sporadically amidst the screaming. These executioners usually lasted forty minutes.
Horrific as they might be, the Arbeits usually , reluctantly, enjoyed the two hour break that was associated with executions or other punishments. It meant a time to breath and to pull away from the sixteen hour toil of working for the Monarchs. As it had been for centuries, the Arbeit were required to work as slaves for the ruling Monarchs. Control was achieved by fear and resistance was always crushed. Morale among the Arbeits had degenerated to the point that they no longer prayed, for there was no use and in their eyes, no God. Their hope was the underground resistance. The UR had been around for three hundred years but only in the last fifty had they begun to win battles against the Monarchs. At least two hundred Arbeits had escaped and were continuing the campaign from the outside of the Monarch capital city. Also, it was rumored that the Monarchs of the southern region were sympathetic to the plight of the Arbeits and had been searching for a peaceful resolution. As an Arbeit, it was a time of fear but of hope. Freedom was closer than it had ever been before.
That night Ahmud returned to his hut tired, as normal. The Arbeits were required to return to work after the execution to make up for the extra time they had “wasted” at the execution. For Ahmud that meant back to the sulfur processing plant where he operated a sorting computer which valued and sorted different grades of sulfur for gun powder and explosives. He was smaller than most Arbeits who were genetically altered at conception to achieve the best worker possible. Ahmud had been of illegitimate birth, not regulated by the state, and his parents were killed because of it. Ahmud had fought to achieve a job where he would be able to use his intelligence rather than his incapable muscles. The Monarchs feared Arbeit intelligence because knowledge always leads to rebellion. Because of that, Ahmud tried to keep his intelligence covert. The Arbeits’ work was always hard, whether they worked at the sulfur processing plant, the gun factory, or the indoor agriculture center, and they were always tired. This allowed the Monarchs to have reason to execute the Arbeits for their incompetence at work. Decimations were common place at factories. Security had free will to beat who they desired. The Arbeit home life was no better. When Ahmud returned home, he went immediately to bed. There were fourteen Arbeits stuffed in a ten foot by ten foot cubicle called a clan house. To prevent conspiring, the rooms were bugged and every fifteen minutes the mechanical walls shifted places in the clan house. This was the only time the Arbeits would dare to talk.
Thus when Ahmud returned home he used the first of these changes to comment on how he would take the punishment quietly, as not to ignite the crowd. Riots, he figured, only harmed Arbeits more. By the fifth of these wall changes, he learned that his clan head had been killed at the execution; He was found with taser burns and three bullet wounds. And finally before the fell asleep, Ahmud learned that he had acceded to the position of clan head and was required to meet at the UR meeting the following night. This last piece of news troubled Ahmud, as he feared the consequences of activity in the UR. He may have talked big about handling an execution but he was fearful because he was small. But in the back of his mind, as he later realized in his dreams, he felt that he possessed the leadership that could carry the Arbeits to victory. By the time he had processed all of this, the morning shockers went off (electric shocks built into their hammocks to awaken them) and the Arbeits everywhere all rose to do their work (All work was done at the same time, and all time was coordinated with that of the capital city, so some Arbeits on the other side of the world from Ahmud, were awakening in the middle of the night to do their work).
The day passed uneventfully, or as uneventfully as an Arbeit might expect. At least two hundred Arbeits had died in Ahmud’s plant that day and across the street, two thousand were killed in a routine decimation. That night, after the seventh wall change, Ahmud slipped across the door scanner and slid into an air shaft. He followed the shaft until it reached the large power generator in the center of his sector. The noise there was sufficient as to drone out any noise produced by the UR representatives. The representatives were from each clan house and they were all very anxious now that their ministry had been executed. They debated about what their next action should be. Some were for open rebellion while others spoke of a peaceful resolution. The wisest of them, in Ahmud’s eyes, felt that the first plan of action was to appoint a new leader. However, none of the members were brave enough to accept the position.
This was when Ahmud spoke up for the first time that night (Ahmud had been just observing, taking in with astonishment, the structure and overall feeling which embodied the UR). He said, “The Monarchs will search for the leader, but not for his underlings. If we attempt to portray a fraudulent leader, the monarchs will devote all of their efforts to finding this figurehead. With their lowered security we could begin to stockpile weapons to support an eventual interior revolt.”
The other members of the UR council were astonished by their new member’s insight, but due to their situation they immediately endorsed his plan without an after thought, adding all the details to it that they thought would be needed. It soon crossed Ahmud that he had assumed the lead of the UR and that for once in his life, he had the advantage on the other Arbeits. His leadership was needed to support the eventual independence of the Arbeits. This realization filled him with a sense of power, but as an Arbeit he had never felt such a feeling, and he took it more as a feeling of apprehension. As the Arbeits left the meeting, each taking their own route home , through the air vents. As Ahmud left he saw in the sky, star shells, from the exterior UR artillery. They were shelling the city that morning. “We will help you soon,” Ahmud thought to himself as he turned to slide down the shaft. But he did not immediately shoot himself into the shaft, for he saw something that had been foreign to him. In the distance, across the cityscape, slowly penetrating the dawn sky, an orb unlike anything Ahmud had seen, arose. He had heard of the sun, but he as most Arbeits had never witnessed its glory, for they were always shut in their hovels or factories. It was a beautiful sight and Ahmud thought, it was rising. . .
* * * * * *
It had been six months since Ahmud’s plan had been proposed, and the OhmPlot as it had been classified, was near its completion. Each part of the plot had unfurled as it had been planned. The Monarch security forces chased after an imaginary leader, called Ohm, while the Arbeits fabricated and stole whatever weapons that they could. When Ahmud wasn’t planning the next deceptive trick to make Ohm appear as real (such as creating a fake home for him in an abandoned hovel), he was running packages of homing ammunition, pulse laser mounts or makeshift stun axes to the Arbeit stockpile. The UR had chosen the stockpile site carefully and wisely. It was in the Arbeit graveheap, a place in the capital city where no Monarch in his right mind would dare to go. This was the place where the dead Arbeits were thrown to rot. They were brought in by hovertank or aerial transporter. These were the only Monarch contact that the stockpiling Arbeits had to fear. The only downside to the hiding place was that the weapons tended to rust among the decaying bodies.
At this time, Ahmud had created quite the image for himself, one of a resourceful strategist, the next great leader of the Arbeits. For the first time, he felt superior to some of the Arbeits, and this worried him. No Arbeit was any better than any other, and no Arbeit should feel any better than another Arbeit. Ahmud was afraid that he would lose the respect and support of his underlings if he were to allow himself to be consumed by this new feeling. That was not the fear which he should have had.
One day, during an execution of a mechanics crew who had been condemned for sabotaging a hovertank to crash into a large pulse laser, a Monarch officer overheard Ahmud boasting about his value to the Arbeit cause. This was a foolish mistake and one that could have been avoided if Ahmud was a more experienced UR council member. The officer promptly whipped Ahmud with the butt of his rifle and had another Monarch hold him down while the officer tased Ahmud multiple times until he collapsed from pain. Other Arbeits tried to defend Ahmud but were promptly shot or burned by the pulse laser mounted on the wall. The Monarchs, unknown to Ahmud, took him to the holding pen, a one time Monarch prison which was converted into an executioner’s storage facility. The term converted is used loosely here, as it means removing all items from the rooms and replacing them with pools of hazardous, lethal chemicals and robotic implements of death. Needless to say, when Ahmud awoke he discovered that he had a burn on his back from the acid he had been thrown in. It burned but nothing more than that.
Ahmud did not take long to realize the impact that his imprisonment and inevitable death would have on the building revolutionary movement. If he were gone, the other UR council members might not be courageous enough to continue the insurrection that they had been planning. These thoughts were what pushed Ahmud to survive. He had to survive for the Arbeit people to survive. He was not fighting for his life but theirs. And fight he had to. Every hour a new attempt at death would be introduced to him. Armed and armored robots would enter Ahmud’s cell with programming to mutilate him and leave him to die slowly in the pools of acids and chemicals. And each time Ahmud stood ready and defeated his adversary.
When he was not fighting for survival, he contemplated his escape. As the bodies of the former residents of his cell still remained after their expiration, and a mass of rats collected to snack on the remains. Ahmud had utilized them before to chew off the bad flesh on his back. He had also used them as food as the Monarchs gave him none. Now he realized that he might be able to get a message out to his compatriots outside of the holding facility. Ahmud wrote on a piece of one of the destroyed robots and attached it to a rat. If Ahmud’s purpose was truly to free the Arbeits from oppression, the rat would find its way to help and Ahmud would be freed. It took three days but eventually a message returned to Ahmud, once again on the back of a rat.
“The revolution is on seven days from when this is written. A revolt is planned to occur and they will first storm the facility to free Ahmud. Have Faith” read the message. The “Have Faith” excited Ahmud, as faith was never an aspect of Arbeit culture. So Ahmud waited, manufacturing his own weapons out of the smoldering hulks of his robotic adversaries. When the insurrection came, he would be ready he thought to himself.
Time passed. It was longer than Ahmud had assumed. A fear grew in his gut and his mind. While he raced through his thoughts giving different reasons for the delay of the assault, his gut was telling him that all was lost. The revolutionary had died and the UR was being repressed by the Monarch security forces. So he waited.
And it came to pass that one day, amidst a battle with a small flamer robot, he viewed a rush of Monarch elite soldiers past the hall close to his cell. It caught Ahmud by surprise and he was nearly killed by the robot. A feeling of jingo fever exploded in Ahmud and he made short work of the small robot. He then proceeded to collect all of his makeshift weapons and arm himself. Ahmud waited for a security guard to pass him and with a quick jab, Ahmud was free once again. In the distance he heard mortar fire and the humming of the Monarch pulse lasers warming up. They would be a formidable opposition for the rebelling forces.
Ahmud made his way to the laser deck of the facility, battling numerous guards and soldiers to get there (the fire in him pushed him to act ferociously, while the desire for freedom pushed him on). At the laser deck, Ahmud did something that only an experienced worker (as all Arbeits were) could do. He rerouted the energy from a power converter so that it would overload the pulse lasers. Once they self disintegrated, hooks came over the walls onto the deck. Arbeit warriors, armed to the teeth, cleared the protective shield atop the wall and approached Ahmud with open arms. The informed him that they had planned a nationwide insurrection and their own local revolt had begun successfully. Ahmud went to the wall and peered out over his soldiers. It astonished him. The grand revolt he had envisioned for all those hours in his cell was a skirmish of maybe a thousand Arbeits. They were doing well in defeating the security guards and Monarch elite who were garrisoned at the facility (in an ironic twist of fate, the Arbeits’ genetically altered bodies made them superior fighters to the Monarch elite, despite their crude and often faulty weaponry), but they would be no match for the arms and armor of the monarch regular army. This lowered Ahmud from the high he had been at when he had destroyed the pulse lasers, but he fought on anyway. In his maturity and wisdom, he realized that if any of the Arbeit rebels were to survive they would need leadership, someone to follow and guide their offensive (and eventual defensive) activities.
The conflict that followed was a blur to Ahmud. It was a mass of images, noises and feelings. Through all of the violence, he and other Arbeits were experiencing feelings of excitement, camaraderie, and jingoism unlike they had ever felt during their bondage by the Monarchs. At the end of the day, Ahmud found himself all alone in a housing complex, fighting off light hovertanks with a remote rocket launcher. The regular Monarch army had arrived with heavy armor and were defeating the revolt. Ahmud had not heard from any other Arbeits for at least an hour, although time had become foreign to him through all of the conflict. The images of his war in the last few hours had been horrific: soldiers being burned by pulse lasers, Monarchs with stun axes in them. Any sensible Monarch would have been horrified by these atrocities, but the Arbeits had been desensitized by centuries of Monarch punishment and oppression. But Ahmud had no time to think. He had just smoked two light hovertanks with rockets and was taking aim at a third. All of a sudden, there was a sharp pain in Ahmud’s back and everything went dark.
“It’s over, scum.”
Ahmud awoke and discovered that he had been tied. The room was dark, but he heard a huge amount of activity from the outside of the walls. He looked around him and noticed that he and the pole that he was tied to were the only things in the room. As soon as he realized where he was, the walls (which were actually a dome) parted, and a harsh light penetrated into the room. Ahmud peered out and saw an enormous crowd of Arbeits, most bleeding and moaning in pain. He was in the execution amphitheater, all alone on the executioner’s platform.
The viewing Arbeits appeared broken and beaten. Their faces exhibited pain and anguish. Their bodies showed evidence of Monarch brutality as any Arbeit was beaten or killed at will after the revolt had been crushed. The atmosphere in the crowd appeared to be one of defeat.
A strange, new smell approached Ahmud’s nose. It was the mashe. Scrubber Monarchs came out and taped Ahmud’s mouth shut. This way he could not yell out to the crowd; he could insight them into another revolt. The smell was overbearing and the mashe began to clog Ahmud’s nostrils. He had to fight to stay awake.
Ahmud did fight and he managed to breathe through the mashe. The executioners appeared. Unlike the usual executions there were numerous executioners for this one. Each was a major power in the Monarch government. The monarch crowd in the upper mezzanine began to chewer wildly. Their emperor was coming out with the flamer to be the chief executioner. Ahmud began to mumble loudly through the tape on his mouth. This aggravated the emperor, who yelled at Ahmud, “What do you want, scum? Think you can talk?”
The emperor was angry that the Arbeits had dared to rebel against him and let his anger overpower him. He began to hit Ahmud and finally removed the tape. Ahmud immediately began to blare out, “Freedom is here! The rebellion can survive! We have proven it! Have Faith! Have Faith!.”
The Monarch executioners yelled at him to stop, and lit the mashe. Through the pain and fire, Ahmud continued to yell, “Have Faith! Unite for freedom!”
This further aggravated the Monarchs who finally slit Ahmud’s throat. It was over. Ahmud the Arbeit was dead.
But still, through the din of the cheering Monarchs and the chanting Arbeits, a quiet announcement was emitted. It was on the Monarch emergency communication system, “Revolts occurring throughout the nation. Arbeits rebelling. The regular army is in defeat. . .”
Note: I apologize for any similarity that this has to Braveheart. I did not realize the similarities until it was too late.
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