Challenge #02569-G012: To Join the Common Cause

We have to actively fight for our lives, perhaps our very existence. Thousands of people are killed daily by these beings. So what fraction of our government tries to actively prevent us from fighting back until they can find a way to profit from it? -- Bard2DBone

When they came, they came in promises. They came with generosity. They came with shiny treasures. They especially came with more profits for those already wealthy. They came with bright lights and glittering technology and soft words. The rich left with them, and were never heard from again.

For a long time, we wanted to be selected. We wanted to be taken away. The Earth didn't need more people on it, after all. The Earth needed a break from us. Time and again, year after year, some were selected and never seen again. Yet, year after year, the situation on Earth kept getting worse.

They came with promises of more for everyone. It took us years to realise that they meant more for everyone like them. We still don't know the name of the person who managed to use their technology to show us exactly what happened to the 'selected', but they are -posthumously- a hero. Since that news got out, the whole world turned upside-down. Again. Everything changed. Again.

Those remaining nominally in charge call the rest of us alarmists. They keep telling us that we're overreacting to an obviously fake video that was posted as a joke. To Serve Man is not a cookbook, this is fine, and there is no war in Ba Sing Se. You know the drill. They even arranged for some famous faces to be 'selected' and then return from the void at a later time.

Those nominally in charge did everything they could to prevent the underground from communicating, from assembling arms, from organising into groups, from having medicine, from avoiding the invaders... from doing anything to resist the invaders. They made action illegal. They made inaction illegal. They made it harder and harder for our society to function at all.

Those of us against the invaders chose petty obedience, wilful ignorance, and 'accidents' to fight the good fight. We were unavailable for 'selection' because methods of communication and organisation were banned. We sabotaged every piece of invader technology we could think of. Those of us who were 'selected' and could not avoid it took foul poisons to adulterate the invader harvests.

We made it increasingly costly for the invaders to take us. We made it increasingly costly for them to take our resources, we made it increasingly difficult for them to spill their filth into our clean water and food supplies. We have had centuries of experience in messing things up for the other guy.

We made it so difficult for our invaders that they chose to 'select' the nominal leaders of our alleged government. They would never be heard from again and they knew it. All of a sudden, their relatively cushy position was threatened, their lives were threatened, and everything they held dear was threatened.

In brief, they found out what it was like to be the rest of us.

The order of law collapsed, and the rebellion forces reached one hundred percent overnight. Less than overnight. Less than an hour. It took seconds.

It was the women who had been prepared the longest. They knew the winds of change, the signs of abuse, and what gaslighting smelled like. They had discreetly cached what they could, whenever the opportunity arose. They were ready to bug out, arm up, and fight back at a moments' notice. They had plans and strategies in place.

They were the bridge between leadership incompetence and the true strength of the revolution.

In the end, the true motivation to fight against the forces destroying us was not how the leaders could profit - but what they would lose by supporting them any further.

[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / kwest19]

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