What is it good far
Absolutely nothing
~ Edwin Starr ‘War’ 1970
Absolutely nothing
~ Edwin Starr ‘War’ 1970
 |
| Akira 1988 |
Nikos lets the bike cruise down the ramp, hazard lights flashing, leaning inward so that the left-hand side of his body is centimetres from the concrete, then, straightening up as he enters the warehoused suburb, his mind relaxes for an indeterminate instant, relaxes into less boring days. Days of active duty in Switzerland on those last desperate dark ops as the military degenerated into gang warfare on a global scale. How quickly they killed one another off – taking just about everybody with them.
Nikos counts himself lucky to have been recalled and embedded in the Bunker, before the final collapse, before the years of paranoid radio silence, before Bigmark was slowly spawned from the Bunker’s power node.
Nikos considers himself lucky, but bored stupid.
Not that the gangs that found themselves on the inside didn’t continue the warfare, only on a more restrained level, since to go nuclear on your enemy’s head in a confined space is plainly foolish.
Pity the fuckers hadn’t realised that way back, when they tried to bully their way to the goodies; the oil; the water – not content with what lay within their own vast reserves, they wanted control of it all, every oilfield; every damn dam; every fucken power provider.
And the world, overpopulated, narcissistic, deprived of insight, sleepwalked into global war; and then upon waking; raised their smartphones to record from their own personal viewpoint, with wide-eyes and racing heart, the unravelling of a planetary disaster.
Propaganda works fine as long as the broadest strata of society is content, or believes themselves to be content; and when you stop paying your police force in favour of corporate security mercenaries, you’re on the road to nowhere.
Nikos shakes off his inward gaze as he dismounts the bike between the monochromic pair of trophy cars at the entrance to the mock-Tudor monstrosity, his awareness sharpens into the now: the faux-wooden front door is ajar.
This has never happened before.
Nikos counts himself lucky to have been recalled and embedded in the Bunker, before the final collapse, before the years of paranoid radio silence, before Bigmark was slowly spawned from the Bunker’s power node.
Nikos considers himself lucky, but bored stupid.
Not that the gangs that found themselves on the inside didn’t continue the warfare, only on a more restrained level, since to go nuclear on your enemy’s head in a confined space is plainly foolish.
Pity the fuckers hadn’t realised that way back, when they tried to bully their way to the goodies; the oil; the water – not content with what lay within their own vast reserves, they wanted control of it all, every oilfield; every damn dam; every fucken power provider.
And the world, overpopulated, narcissistic, deprived of insight, sleepwalked into global war; and then upon waking; raised their smartphones to record from their own personal viewpoint, with wide-eyes and racing heart, the unravelling of a planetary disaster.
Propaganda works fine as long as the broadest strata of society is content, or believes themselves to be content; and when you stop paying your police force in favour of corporate security mercenaries, you’re on the road to nowhere.
Nikos shakes off his inward gaze as he dismounts the bike between the monochromic pair of trophy cars at the entrance to the mock-Tudor monstrosity, his awareness sharpens into the now: the faux-wooden front door is ajar.
This has never happened before.
| Edwin Starr | ||
| War | ||
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