The Light Brigade

by Kameron Hurley

They said the war would turn us into light.

I wanted to be the light: the savior, the hero, sure. But more than that, I wanted the enemy obliterated.

“I don’t want to kill men,” I said. “I want to kill aliens.” “I heard they were human once,” the girl from physics said. “Bullshit,” the other kid said. “No human would do what they did to São Paulo.”

How do you preserve a way of life that’s unraveling on all sides, descending into lawless anarchy? Everyone likes to pretend they’d be high and mighty about it, but how would you govern five billion people? They turned us into light.

That’s how I decided which side of the war to be on. 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.

No praise for performing the expected. They saved the praise for the killing.

“The enemy is going to do a lot of terrible shit to you,” the drill instructor said. “It’s our job to prepare you for that. That’s why we’re going to do the terrible shit to you first.”

I’m not going to tell you about the torture modules. Not yet. I’m going to say it was three days of shit. I’m going to say: Immersive experiences are pretty fucking immersive. I’m going to say: They should have sent us all to a shrink, after. But they didn’t.

We kept going. Because that’s what war is. You keep going until it’s over. Or you’re dead.

“What’s the difference between a communist and a socialist?” Jawbone said. We waited, thinking there was a punch line. “You serious?” Jones said. “Sure. I mean, I know they’re bad, but people use the names the same.”

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.

“It’s them or us. You want to end up a communist?” “Starting to think communism is better than being dead.”

it. S: They won that war, is all I’m saying. They started losing when they forgot how to be decent. 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.

She said there’s this thing called escalation of commitment. That once people have invested a certain amount of time in a project, they won’t quit, even if it’s no longer a good deal. Even if they’re losing. 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.

When information was scarce or siloed. People would believe whatever you put in front of them,

“We urge anyone with flu-like symptoms to report to the nearest corporate wellness center.

What I learned, as I looked back on those times, was that the lies are what sustained us. The lies kept us going. Gave us hope. Without lies we have to face the truth long before we are ready for it. Long before we are prepared to fight it.

The corporations fucked us over. He was right. All their scheming and manipulating, all the propaganda and fearmongering led by people like Norberg. And yeah, me. I was part of this too.

But it turns out most of us don’t want truth. We want stories that back up our existing beliefs. Flood the world enough with information, and I will pick out only those bits that uphold the virtue and rightness of whatever corp I’ve been taught to love.

There is no bloodless revolution, only necessary revolution, when a system becomes so deeply broken you can’t affect change from the inside.

Damn

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.

Preach!

The corps tell us each individual should reap the profits of “their” hard work. But the reality is the corps made their fortunes on the backs of laborers and soldiers paid just enough to keep them alive.

The shareholders and upper management sit in their glass towers and drink liquor spiked with our blood. Instead of sharing that wealth with those who broke their backs t...

Any human power can be changed by human beings. That is a truth, a constant. Humans can’t build power structures that cannot be d...

There was a time 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 ...

Truth is a point of view. S: So says every great tyrant.

"Alternative facts"

You mistake the interpretation of a truth with the truth itself. There is still objective truth. The truth that the sun comes up in the east. The truth of gravity, which keeps us tethered to this spinning ball of space stuff. Those are truths. The rest is made up.

“Sir, does that mean lethal force? On our own people?” “They aren’t our people,” Andria said, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Most are paid protestors. We’re doing a job, just like they are. They were told to disperse or face force. They know what’s coming.” “They aren’t even armed,” Omalas said.

How real this feels after 2020.

We advanced, we advanced . . . and I found it easier if I saw this as a collective action. A “we” and not an “I.”

But it truly was not until that moment, after I had destroyed everything still good in this world, that I realized I wasn’t a hero . . . I was just another villain for the empire.

“A lot of people ask how you can be a paladin and be a soldier,” I said. “Even if you take an oath of vengeance. But you’re committing to fight the greater evil. It doesn’t mean you won’t sometimes do some evil yourself. It doesn’t mean that you aren’t sometimes fighting for the empire. It just means that in the end, you do the right thing.” She leaned forward. “But that’s the vital question. What is the right thing?”

hope for a free future in this solar system. We gave our lives to the corporations in exchange for clean air, clean food, infrastructure, shit we could have collectively done for ourselves. We forget that people are power. It’s why they work so hard to control us.

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.

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.