 |
| Ksenia Lanina |
There’s a heavily secured corridor that runs between the flooded Thames south bank at Woolwich New Terminal, itself heavily armed and defended, and the Barracks on the slope of Shooters Hill.
Along its route from the river, uphill to and surrounding the barracks itself, cameras and weapons bristle while autonomous TakDogs patrol with backward jointed legs coiled and gunports shuttering, stuttering, sensors scrolling visual data and threat status stacking.
Just as this area has often infected the sanitised history of London, so The Barracks and its approach road protrude into and infect the land so recently wrestled from the hands of the establishment.
This is bandit country and it has a long history of dissent and outlaw-dom. From Highwaymen at Hanging Wood and Blackheath Village to hijackings at Shooters Hill itself; from peasant uprisings at Blackheath and Deptford Bridge to the duplicity of kings and the decapitation heads of their enemies displayed on London Bridge. It has all been bled out here, slaughtered and buried by history’s empirical bias.
While the burning of Blackheath returned this area to common law, the establishment holds on to the Barracks at great expense, perhaps for the rumoured secret installations located there, perhaps out of spite; out of the aristocracy’s stubborn need to have the last word.
2:30am; dead man’s watch at the CA barracks; Cale watches satellites, losing orbit, streak across the western sky. The hilltop upon which Charlton and further on Blackheath sit, is a dark silhouette against the livid night sky now that these once-suburbs no longer pollute the night with their light.
Cale doesn’t know much about much, but he does know that you don’t get much chance to look up, not when you’re in the Cadet Academy.
Too busy running or crawling or marching the fuck out of a large rectangle of packed dirt.
But then the CA is not for everyone.
Along with the poor kids from wherever who are recruited with the promise of shelter, regular meals, guns and adventure, Transgressive Rich kids from Core London, who cannot expect the mercy of remaining in civilised company, are employed in the defence of that civilisation.
Cale, well aware of his status as a conscript rather than a recruit, knows perfectly well why he has been delivered into the loving arms of the CA: Punishment for having the wrong face for dealing with and dealing in a world that demands a very high level of conformity.
Or so he tells himself.
To his combat fellows he answers the inevitable question, without any hint of irony: “I’m an innocent man”
After the initial shock of his loss of autonomy, Cale realised that this place is made for him.
He knows this as clearly as he knows that none of these fuckers are going to get to him as long as the CA values what it is cultivating here in the confines of these Barracks.
He has learned enough to know that his time to shine will come; a time when every act of bloodshed can be justified in the crucible of battle.
A time when the pieces of the game fit together to form the arena of bloodlust suitable not for those drone gladiators performing for the casino at Covent Garden but for true destroyers; blood warriors performing for love, not money.
The wind gusts a flier over the wall and flaps it against Cale’s chest.
He peels it away and out of boredom reads the text printed below a stylised image of a lidded eye:
“We the privileged, ensconced in these gilded cages of ideological rebellion; we the pampered, well fed and materially engorged with meaningless technology and protein; we are mistaken to believe, in our revolutionary delusion, that these struggles to overthrow, struggles to throw off the yoke, are anything less than the struggles for power.
We the meek but strident defenders of the underdog, we the well-informed, the well-read connoisseurs of history’s lesser-told-tales, we, with hangovers from excess, are mistaken to believe other than that it all boils down to barbarism; to blood and bone so easily spilled and splintered in the pursuit of justice, of freedom, of equality, of anything but the truth.”
Cale scrunches the flyer into a ball and lobs it back over the wall.
Fucking Liberals, all clever talk and no action.
Along its route from the river, uphill to and surrounding the barracks itself, cameras and weapons bristle while autonomous TakDogs patrol with backward jointed legs coiled and gunports shuttering, stuttering, sensors scrolling visual data and threat status stacking.
Just as this area has often infected the sanitised history of London, so The Barracks and its approach road protrude into and infect the land so recently wrestled from the hands of the establishment.
This is bandit country and it has a long history of dissent and outlaw-dom. From Highwaymen at Hanging Wood and Blackheath Village to hijackings at Shooters Hill itself; from peasant uprisings at Blackheath and Deptford Bridge to the duplicity of kings and the decapitation heads of their enemies displayed on London Bridge. It has all been bled out here, slaughtered and buried by history’s empirical bias.
While the burning of Blackheath returned this area to common law, the establishment holds on to the Barracks at great expense, perhaps for the rumoured secret installations located there, perhaps out of spite; out of the aristocracy’s stubborn need to have the last word.
2:30am; dead man’s watch at the CA barracks; Cale watches satellites, losing orbit, streak across the western sky. The hilltop upon which Charlton and further on Blackheath sit, is a dark silhouette against the livid night sky now that these once-suburbs no longer pollute the night with their light.
Cale doesn’t know much about much, but he does know that you don’t get much chance to look up, not when you’re in the Cadet Academy.
Too busy running or crawling or marching the fuck out of a large rectangle of packed dirt.
But then the CA is not for everyone.
Along with the poor kids from wherever who are recruited with the promise of shelter, regular meals, guns and adventure, Transgressive Rich kids from Core London, who cannot expect the mercy of remaining in civilised company, are employed in the defence of that civilisation.
Cale, well aware of his status as a conscript rather than a recruit, knows perfectly well why he has been delivered into the loving arms of the CA: Punishment for having the wrong face for dealing with and dealing in a world that demands a very high level of conformity.
Or so he tells himself.
To his combat fellows he answers the inevitable question, without any hint of irony: “I’m an innocent man”
After the initial shock of his loss of autonomy, Cale realised that this place is made for him.
He knows this as clearly as he knows that none of these fuckers are going to get to him as long as the CA values what it is cultivating here in the confines of these Barracks.
He has learned enough to know that his time to shine will come; a time when every act of bloodshed can be justified in the crucible of battle.
A time when the pieces of the game fit together to form the arena of bloodlust suitable not for those drone gladiators performing for the casino at Covent Garden but for true destroyers; blood warriors performing for love, not money.
The wind gusts a flier over the wall and flaps it against Cale’s chest.
He peels it away and out of boredom reads the text printed below a stylised image of a lidded eye:
“We the privileged, ensconced in these gilded cages of ideological rebellion; we the pampered, well fed and materially engorged with meaningless technology and protein; we are mistaken to believe, in our revolutionary delusion, that these struggles to overthrow, struggles to throw off the yoke, are anything less than the struggles for power.
We the meek but strident defenders of the underdog, we the well-informed, the well-read connoisseurs of history’s lesser-told-tales, we, with hangovers from excess, are mistaken to believe other than that it all boils down to barbarism; to blood and bone so easily spilled and splintered in the pursuit of justice, of freedom, of equality, of anything but the truth.”
Cale scrunches the flyer into a ball and lobs it back over the wall.
Fucking Liberals, all clever talk and no action.
No comments:
Post a Comment