Tag: Liberty

VIN 24- Duh

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

This recent outpouring of emotion over those otherwise “the opponent” shows how far the game has fallen. Three men, all of whom could have theoretically been at one another’s throats at this point in history from thus subjecting their subordinates– for surely these are so-called powerful people– to their whims, now sit beside one another mourning for their part in the game’s downfall.

But Heroes are those whom endure suffering so innocents need not.

This is a time to think on one’s sins. Especially for sinners. If not to correct, then to understand, reaffirm one’s commitment to sin. Ideologies aside, two factions are emerging in society: destroyers and builders. And they are eternally at odds.

This mourning? Feel it, but do not share it. It is meant to be personal. Each of us is meant to feel these moments. Think on what we have or have not done, whatever it may be. This is not a time for men or women, it is a time for Heroes. A time for symbols and idols, but logical, representative ones, formed of collective will and conscience.

The individual is at stake here, yet we feel it as one, revealing this as an assault on Hope.

ReziDump and his fecal ilk, their spawn, will always exist. Whether we allow them power to disrupt is our fault. As a species. They are sewage oozing from beneath us, but it is we that must keep the shit-lines clear: their infrastructure in-shape and running.

This is our generation’s primary task.

It’s unfortunate. Eventually though, all of the entitlement bullshit will go away. Afterward, once history places us as those doing the jobs no-one wants, suffering for the sake of all. Shit-covered and reeking– not because we’re lesser, but because we don’t care when others do, would rather they not suffer while the job gets done.

We are a generation feeling through one another because we are close, tight, bound by need and circumstance. Each one to the other, all of us linked. We beat as one. We bleed as one. We know nothing but one another because our existence was formed in an unhitherto seen turbulence. We are a generation whose only stable presence was itself– one another.

That we know this. That we communicate and feel it in actions, in revolutions, in mass-panics and organizations, is the effect of technology’s pervasiveness; its role as tool for Human endeavor. There is no act we can partake in that cannot be connected through tech if desired: showering, shaving, shitting, working, running, resting.

The time-before– pre-digital, became the transition through digital, which left us all most certainly living postdigital. The current crises are the aftermath of change. Like a tornado passing through, change can be violent, but so too can it bring the town together to repair and rebuild.

So, now, we clean the mess up and move on.

Duh.

VIN 19- Worthy Fights

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

America is in the midst of several, Human Rights crises. Their origin is the blatant attack on our democracy. The idea is to watch it crumble, and benefit from having– if not the best, at least the only structure upright.

Only the mentality of a conquering, tyrannical-style government could account for this. It is a test against not just Democracy, but the forces (people) guiding it. You need not look much deeper than method to trace its origin, but regardless of perpetrator, infinitely more important is the reality that only we can fix it.

We must allow justice its time: it is not a force of instant gratification. Rather, true Justice is a force of satisfied closure– it is the knowledge of adding to the species as a whole, ingrained in our guts, and ensuring its longevity. It is the feeling of completing, if not in our way than in some way, our species’ existential goal: to persist.

Justice is not a thing of guessing. It is a thing of knowledge, conviction. Facts and figures. Those things immutable to Time, because they are formed of Time itself. This is the true test of our era: for we, as a people, to commit to the prolonged trudge of democracy.

We are a lazy people, made that way of our own accord, and joined as thoroughly as possible by as many others as possible. That is the American way, truly: to each of us, live as Rulers of our own fiefdoms.

But to do so requires ensuring the community remains capable of it. That requires work.

Problem we have today, is that the system of contribution is simply too complicated. In a world where everything can be done at the touch of a button, not having the capability to do so routes you. You are automatically a non-entity.

The other side of this is the fear of security– or insecurity, really. The only way to allow the aforementioned without manipulation, is to make it a thing of either personal security or pride. Thereby, making it personal. Something consigned and confined to each person. Yet mobile and secure.

Maybe once encryption takes off, sure. Until then?

It is not an easy solution, no matter which direction is taken to it. Yet, it is by no means impossible. In fact, it is very much possible, and likely, that such a handheld device personally tailored, and secured, could secure democracy.

But look at the costs, risks, and ethical virtues required in such a system: “Is it worth it?” remains the question. In the case of America, is the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness worth fighting for?

Personally?

Yes.

Short Story: The Journey

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Light cut inward at right angles around ancient, concrete block that formed the maze-like entrance of a small, former temple. Once a way-station for pilgrims, in an eon of isolationist practices, it had fallen into utter disrepair. However hidden its would-be caretakers were, they existed– even if losing faith at the world’s state.

The land around the flat-roofed temple was now a barren wasteland of petrified trees and Earthen refuse composting since time immemorial. Such grave-markers for the salted-Earth’s civilization ran far and wide. Were it not for the fiefdoms formed of generational, dictated procedures filling settlements with tradeable goods, even the most skilled and nomadic hunters would have nothing to fill their bellies.

Managing without the interference of any Empire was considered myth: the land too poor a provider otherwise.

Though little more than facades for war-lords of untold power and resource, the Empires’ glorious acts were touted regularly by town and heraldry criers, even if their names were not. These acts ensured people remained just misinformed enough to be ignorant of their Emperors’ true movements and motives.

But there was no-one in the brick-and-mortar former-temple to give care to the Empires or their backward warring. All that remained was a skittering lizard, invisible in the darkness and camouflaged in the light via slow-shifting photo-pigments in its skin.

It one-two’d across the floor. Three-four’ing both legs inversely tandem at each other. The front and back feet came together, ending their gate nearly touching. Excellent for tree-hanging, but poor for any hope of speed.

It was doing its best however, at running flat-out. Angling right. Left. Right again. Were it not for its immense length, and thus intimidating stature, it might have been comical.

It was not.

From the rear, it was a sight of relief. From beyond, one of terror. The figure atop the sandy, trunk-mined hill did not hesitate. It knelt, hands together, whispering quickly. Harsh syllabic resonance whistled with feminine sharpness over wind from nowhere. Gusts kicked up. Dirt and sand pelted debris in gale-force winds that stirred but never moved.

The charging creature reached the hill’s apex. Dexterous hands flashed, extended outward: wrists together, hands in a V.

Gale-forces boomed, focused like compressed air bolts. Wind deafened and off-balanced the creature first. Low-pressure jolted air from its lungs. The distant whistle, howled. Petrified trunks and limbs cracked and shattered at weak-points.

A phantom beam cracked, blowing the creature backward off the hilltop. It cleared the hill-bottom, landing painfully against the temple’s stone. A snap gave way to an agonized wail as it landed on its back with a series of grunting writhes. It failed to move, instead moaning pitifully.

She appeared and knelt beside it, hands together and whispering once more. One hand stroked the great eye of the fading creature as it wheezed. She soothed it with an angelic hum, it harmonized with another subsonic one, vibrating from her hand and lulling the creature into death.

The life slowly left its body without difficulty or pain.

That was always their way– her way. Never anyone else’s. How could it be? So few people understood anything anymore, let alone of themselves. One day again perhaps, the world would come to know the goodness she did. Now however, even she could not negate the need to survive. Not when it counted most.

She sat beside a small fire just inside the temple so as not to suffocate herself, but to still bathe in warmth against the nights’ growing cold. She’d scouted the place the night before, using her mind in meditation to see within it.

Seers, they’d once called them, but with one’s eyes closed “seeing” felt a misnomer. She was a sensor. Like one of the old-world’s fabled optics. People didn’t know or understand that though. How could they? The Empires had been keeping them ignorant and hungry for a millennia now.

She rose to turn the spit a while, doing so in silent contemplation.

If the information she sought to confirm was true, a new world might come of it. Something once thought lost, reborn from ash like the mythical phoenix. There was only one way to find out.

She slept with the fire’s coals still burning. Then, having eaten and secured as much of the prey as she could carry, she set out, leaving the creature’s remnants for scavengers. Were it not for them, she’d mused, the creature she’d filled her belly would never have camped here.

After all, Lord Darwin was strong in his understanding of nature. And it was he whom assured a hierarchy of life existed and affected itself and its environment. The latter’s inverse was equally, if not doubly, true: The old-world had learned that lesson the hard way, and its descendants were still suffering for it. Would be, possibly for life– like millions, billions more.

But there was only one way to be certain of any of it…

It was but a few days later she found herself on her knees, beaten and weathered from rough terrain, and her bodily wounds paling in comparison to those in her heart. She stared upward in mixed disbelief and despair, as if learning her Gods had betrayed her. It was not Gods however, nor even man. It was the Empires.

She saw it now. They were bee-hives with no queen and only one goal: maintain the self-aware Hive’s existence. The truth was staring her in the face now. She might have believed it before, but she knew it now. The evidence was here.

Long seeking some thread of stability in her confused world of war, pseudo-magic, and demi-gods that set fires but could not extinguish them, she’d thirsted for understanding, knowledge. The coven hadn’t answered her questions, even after an entire adolescence in their care. However distant she might’ve been otherwise, lack of answers increased it.

But now, there was truth. A truth she’d seen only with her own eyes, but that she would kill to ensure was known. How? Without the Empires’ interference? She couldn’t say yet. She re-read the words before her, knowing it would have to happen sooner or later.

Her jaw stiffened; learning one’s namesake bore itself a badge of responsibility in itself. Confirming hers, ensured she’d hold it to the highest standard.

There, beneath the millennia of soiled signage, Usa learned of the United States of America.

Yet the Empires had assured their existence was myth, as were what remained of their beliefs. Usa knew now it was lies and would to go to war to prove it.

Short Story: Liberty’s Fist

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Liberty occupied a bench in the village square, staring forward. Her vantage gave her views over the assembled crowd, their pumping fists. She need not hear their shouts or chants, they were etched on the air, implicit to every breath. Her face meanwhile, was empty, expressionless: mind still spun from the goings-on.

The gallows had been oiled in preparation, the rope made new and fast around the girl’s neck.

Couldn’t have been more than thirteen, Liberty knew. Soot and grime-tattered clothing said she’d hung in a cell far too long. Poverty was smeared across her face. Suffering stamped in her downcast eyes.

It will finally be over.

That’s what she would be telling herself, Liberty knew. To make it easier. A life of suffering, of anguish, of nothingness, would finally end. They’d no longer blame her for their ills. She, in turn, would no longer suffer for those she neither knew nor understood.

At last, there would be no more pain. At last there would be peace.

Liberty grit her teeth; the Alderman himself, Chief Village-Bastard had come to read the proclamation. Even across the square, sleaze oozed off him like every whore-monger for power. She might as well be beside him for all his tainted corruption on the air.

His voice boomed from his man-sized blowhole with only the slightest hint of joviality, “By order of the power vested in me by his majesty the Emperor Keylon of Ardania, I hereby sentence you to death by hanging for the crimes of witchcraft and sorcery, harboring of seditious dissent, and the daily-theft of bread from the bazaar. You are hereby ordered to hang from the neck until dead. Have you any words in your defense?”

She didn’t breathe.

Liberty felt a tooth chip from her jaw grinding tension. The sick bastard was taking his time, enjoying it. He was drawing out the silence to revel, she could take it no longer.

A flash erupted in the sky over the gallows. The hangman and his master froze, aghast. The crowd hissed terror. Each man, woman, and child, froze. The flash resolved from a blinding orb into a light shaped so bright it stole the sky from the sun. Its form was that of a woman, decidedly more fearsome than any villager had seen. She was both beautiful and terrifying; her body muscled as befit a woman of war and strength, brutality and murder. Her face was marked, but too opaque: the longer one stared to make out its shape, the more they saw only swirling details in a sea of beautiful faces themselves.

Liberty rose slowly to her feet.

A voice of terrifying resonance shook the very Earth beneath the village, “Cut her down at once or face the wrath of your Gods!”

The quaking threatened to tear the Earth asunder.

More figures took residence around the square, echoing the first’s final words. Three were women, their voices from the middle and upper registers of an unabridged disharmony over the male bass and baritone. Each was a striking specimen of Human perfection. Each, like the first, bore some weapon denoting their skill in battle; bow, spear, shield, axe, staff. Each too, were dressed in thick hides infused and trimmed as with metal-scales and materials of undeniable strength.

A pause fell about about the square; a moment of hesitation in which the assembled Human minds fought to grasp the proceedings. Then, the hangman drew a knife, and took a step to cut the rope. His master cupped his bicep roughly.

“Heresy! Witch! You conjure this with your dark magicks.” The girl looked as if already dead.

“You dare defy us!?” The Gods roared with a grating dissonance. The girl remained still.

“Vile tricks. Fiendish. Foolish girl.”

Liberty lifted her hood, her face hidden but for her snarling mouth. A rip in the air left a wave of light that disintegrated in a blink.

A hooded figure appeared on the gallows behind the Alderman, still frozen in place, impotently raging to recapture the crowd. A collective gasp told him he was losing them still. The figure pivoted an arm around his throat. The girl stirred. The Alderman was silent, eyes widened and mouth gaping. The figure dropped him as so much refuse; blood draining from his neck while the crowd’s panic erupted.

Liberty was across the Gallows, hood threatening to fall. The Hangman raced her. The Gods screamed terrifying commands that threatened to tear the Earth with their resonance. Liberty couldn’t care less. She was only steps away.

The Hangman won, reached the lever. Liberty leapt, one arm outstretched. The Hangman threw the lever. The floor dropped, rope tightened. The girl’s eyes met Liberty’s: terror and betrayal, newly-found and dashed hopes, all within.

Liberty collided with the girl mid-air. The rope pulled taught. Her blade sliced. In a blink, the warp of air and light appeared and disappeared. The Gods roared fury. Explosions rocked the distance. The crowd stampeded in terror.

Liberty landed outside the village, just on the edge of the forest, wind knocked from her lungs. The girl choked likewise beneath her, fingers grappling the tightened noose and wrestling it away. Liberty, breathless, quickly regained her footing. She bolted, pulling the girl up, off into the woods.

They ran until the girl’s adrenaline could no longer support her. Liberty stopped only at a cry to find she’d drug her several feet. She panted an apology and examined her for any serious injuries.

When they’d finally regained their wits, Liberty explained, “If you’re to be branded a witch, you’re to be raised as one.”

The girl’s doe-eyes, until now hidden by circumstance rose to meet hers, “I… I don’t understand. I’m not a–”

Liberty knelt beside the girl, hand on her shoulder, “You will be.”

She clearly did not understand, etched as it was in the pain on her face, the utterly confused hopelessness.

Liberty’s eyes softened, “What is your name, child?”

“Meuz,” she said shyly.

“Muse,” Liberty muttered under her breath. “Meuz, I am Liberty–”

Dogs howled not far enough off. Panic was still going strong, but the Alderman had been murdered. Whether by Gods or man, the village was in a turmoil that wouldn’t end any time soon. In retribution, any strangers would be rounded up as scapegoats– rightful or not. The smoke drifting toward them demanded it.

Liberty helped Meuz to her feet once more, the pair reinvigorated by their sudden, encroaching reality. “We must go, but know this, your journey has yet to begin. Should you ever return here, these louts will know the Witch Meuz’s power like that of the Gods they’ve denied.”

“But why, Liberty? How?” She pled.

“Because the Universe demands it.”