The Light Brigade

by Kameron Hurley

It happens sometimes; they can’t all agree on reality. Listening to the Big Six—when you’re allowed to get media outside your corp at all—is like listening to a bunch of nattering old people at a dinner party trying to remember some esoteric event from when they were kids. Everybody has a different memory. When they get frustrated, they start talking real loud, like that will make their memory more true.

And I was. On the right side, I mean. Nobody ever thinks they chose the wrong side. We all think we’re made of light.

You might be surprised, but it turns out most people don’t want to kill anybody. We aren’t born murderers.

“Nah, you just have to get stories approved by the Corporate Communications Office before you publish. You have a lot of freedom in how you write something, as long as you’re writing about approved subjects.”

There’s a fascinating course of study on the rise of fascist states that posits that they become more popular the more people fear death. And really, most corporate states are fascist, though they would have you believe they’re oligarchies, ruled by tables full of rich old people with humanity’s best interests at heart.

I enjoyed yelling “Papa Martin!” which is such a textbook “Hey, let’s try to have the supreme leader sound benevolent” name that I laughed when I first heard it. Was his nickname your idea?

A human being with hope can continue on far longer than one without. Did you know those who are mildly depressed see the world more accurately? Yet they don’t live as long as optimists. Aren’t as successful. It turns out that being able to perceive actual reality has very little long-term benefit. It’s those who believe in something larger than themselves who thrive. We all seem to need a little bit of delusion to function in the world.

Stories are how we make sense of the world. All of us have an internal story that we have told ourselves from the time we were very young. We constantly revise this story

You give a human being freedom and personhood as some innate right, and what do they have to fight for? Personhood is earned. Residency is earned. Citizenship is earned. If you’re not earning for the company, you are costing it.

People will fight for the idea of decency. They will fight for someone who treats them like people. They fight for beliefs far longer and harder than out of fear.

They don’t pretend military service is some glorious or noble sacrifice. It’s simply about serving the whims of the corporation. It’s always been the rich pushing us around, making up stories about how we’re fighting for a noble cause when it’s just about, what, some old guy insulting some other old guy’s dick, measuring their relative genius based on how many people live stream their breakdown.

the fact is there is no free society on Earth. Everyone is owned by someone else. The resistance here wants to unshackle you, but that’s too frightening for most people. So what does that leave us? Free people who believe they are already free? They think they have chosen their servitude, and that makes them individuals, powerful. Freedom to work? Ha! Freedom to die on the factory floor, behind a desk, pissing in place because they don’t get bathroom breaks. Freedom to be fired at the whim of a boss bleeding you dry on stagnant wages you can only spend at the company store. But the choice of the whip or the chain is a false choice.

War is like that. No one wants to admit they’re losing. To end a war, you have to give them some way to save face, to pretend the sacrifice was worth it.

Reality is a constructed thing. Imagine us all standing in a circle, trying to describe an object to one another, and as we agree on its characteristics, the thing at the center of our circle begins to take form. That’s how we create reality. We agree on its rules. Its shape. Different cultures have created different realities just by all agreeing about the thing they described.

As health care became more expensive, one didn’t even have to offer private transport and free meals. Simply helping pay the cost to cure grandma’s cancer was enough to ensure blind obedience. That’s how you keep them loyal. Foster distrust in the democratic governments that are actually accountable to them. Show them that only the corporations can save them from themselves.

Why did idiots die last?

Staring now at this dying boy, I understood. When you are under the thumb of a corp, they own you. They say you have freedoms, choices. When your choice is to work or to die, that is not a choice.

I shot him in the head—one smooth, instinctual movement. It’s how they train you. No thought. No questions. Action. Killing.

War was all about the annihilation of truth. Every good dictator and CEO knows that.

S: Don’t tell me every revolution is peaceful. Revolutions rely on the tireless work of faceless masses whose lives mean so little individually that their names weren’t known to their movements even when alive. There is no bloodless revolution, only necessary revolution, when a system becomes so deeply broken you can’t affect change from the inside.

I used to believe, as others did, that we could work within the existing system, that moderate change was possible. But when you take away the ability of the people to effect change within the rules of the system, those people become desperate.

And it is desperate people who overthrow their governments.

when human beings believed they were their governments. They understood they had power over them, because they created them. They did not simply wait around for their governments to give them rights and freedoms. They demanded them. People should not be afraid of the corporations. Corporations should be afraid of the people. I: You’re a communist then. S: Let’s say I’m old enough not to be dazzled by Ayn Rand.

Our lives are finite. Our bodies imperfect. We shouldn’t spend it feeding somebody else’s cause.”

People can always be convinced to turn on one another. All you have to do is convince them that their way of life is being attacked. Denounce all the pacifist liberal bleeding hearts and feel-good heretics, the social outcasts, the educated. Call them elites and snobs. Say they’re out of touch with real patriots. Call these rabble-rousers terrorists. Say their very existence weakens the state. In the end, the government need not do anything to silence dissent. Their neighbors will do it for them.

It’s the dark against the light. The dark is always the easier path. Power. Domination. Blind obedience. Fear always works to build order, in the short term. But it can’t last. Fear doesn’t inspire anything like love does.

The heroes were always the ordinary people who pursued extraordinary change. The power of the corrupt governments and entrenched corporations feels inevitable. No doubt so did the rule of the kings and landowners before them. But I know better now. I know there is a greater power, and it is ours. The greater power is us. And that is the world we will build out here, somewhere, when we bring all our pieces back together. A future made of light.