Crusade Against the Machines

by Franklyn Santana

  »Come on, sir. I hauled the cursing senator and his secretary into a waiting Capitol Police van. Then I locked the door of the van behind us and told the lieutenant who had come with us, where he should take us.

  The inside of the police personnel carrier was quite uncomfortable, with only hard benches on both sides and a few tiny bulletproof windows to the outside. Looking through the windows, I convinced myself that we were far enough away from any protesters. O’Neil was still cursing. Mrs. Hitch was completely intimidated and said absolutely nothing as we drove away.

  O’Neil started talking to the lieutenant now. »I want to know who’s responsible for this mess. We’ll set up a Senate subcommittee and hold him responsible. There’s gonna be some heads rolling, all up to the very top. I promise. How is it possible that all these people were let through to the Capitol? Don’t we have any surveillance, any security? You should have seen this coming. Doesn’t anybody around here have his brain working in Capitol security?«

  The officer tried a defense: »The people were all quite peaceful, almost in a festive mood. There was no sign that...«

  »Peaceful? They’re vandals! A mob without the slightest respect for the democratic institutions of our nation!« O’Neil interrupted him.

  I had to agree with O’Neil about one thing. »It’s a bit unusual the way security was handled on Capitol Hill,« I said. »It was obvious that some kind of manifestation was planned here. Surely so many people would not come to the Capitol by pure coincidence.«

  O’Neil remained silent for a moment, thoughtful. Then he said somewhat more calmly: »But it would have made sense to let people come up here un purpose. Someone might have had a certain interest in a massive rally in favor of the Human Dignity Bill. And that someone did not expect it to fail in the Senate. So there was no reason to expect violence. What was expected was a celebration that could have been shown to the public in the news. But then suddenly things took an unexpected turn.«

  »And who is this someone?« I asked.

  »Well, the whole al-Rahman administration, of course,« O’Neil replied. »All the cabinet around the President today expected a successful approval of their reform program.«

  O’Neil received a call on his smartphone. From his reaction I could tell that it was an important call. I was not that interested in it. I only listened in casually. Apparently it was the majority speaker of the Senate who was now slamming O’Neil and accusing him of treason. He held him partly responsible for the turmoil on Capitol Hill. O’Neil first tried to defend his position a bit meekly. But then he got more and more annoyed and finally abruptly ended the call. »Idiot!« he growled when his interlocutor couldn’t hear him anymore. Then he made a few calls, all of which seemed to be extremely important.

  I also reached for my smartphone and made a phone call. I checked with Will Snyder of the security staff of O’Neil’s apartment that everything was quiet and peaceful there. Then I contacted O’Neil’s car and remotely instructed it to drive to his apartment as soon as the roadblocks around Capitol Hill were lifted.

  On the way to O’Neil’s apartment I saw a shop window smashed through one of the crew car’s windows. However, the young rioters fled when they saw the police car coming. But our car didn’t stop. We were already outside the jurisdiction of the Capitol Police. The lieutenant was just passing on a radio report to the D. C. Metropolitan Police.

  Apparently there seemed to be spontaneous outbreaks of violence in other places in the capital. But by and large the streets were quiet. Traffic was normal. The police were still in control of the situation.

  Chapter 7

  New Detroit, 2111

  A stone that struck against the log beside me woke me from my thoughts. The Brutes down there in front of the palisades became more and more aggressive. But even here in the present the militia had the situation under control. More and more men had arrived and manned the balustrade. And the thick trunks would easily withstand any onslaught of Brutes. They had no means with which they could penetrate the strong wall, and I saw no siege ladders among them either. I wondered why they had come and what they were up to.

  The wooden rampart around New Detroit stretched as far as my eyes could see, which however didn’t mean much as my eyesight had deteriorated over the years. But I knew that the village was a few hundred yards in diameter. The wooden wall was between fifteen and twenty feet high. Four high trunks alternated with four lower ones, so that defenders could take cover behind the higher trunks, while they could shoot over the lower trunks with their crossbows when standing behind the balustrade. In front of the rampart there was a moat filled with sharpened poles. And further in front of it, the forest had been cleared about hundred feet to create a clear field of fire. Some of the Brutes had ventured into this open area. Others were still hidden in the forest and bushes behind.

  The village reminded very much of a fort from the time of the American Indian Wars. And it was a fort, after all. But this time it was not to protect us against wild redskins, but against the savage descendants of our own civilization. The Brutes didn’t build houses. They lived in the ruins of what was once the Detroit metropolitan area. It was a vast district littered with collapsed and derelict houses. There was no infrastructure, no electricity, no water, no roads that were not littered with rubble and garbage. It stank of waste, excrement and decomposing bodies. And there were plagues. We from the village didn’t often go to the ruins. And when we did, then only in armed squads. It was dangerous there. The Brutes knew their way around better than we did, and they could lurk anywhere. Furthermore it was easy to become infected with some disease. Before the Crusade, more than seven million people had lived there. I didn’t know how many lived there today, but it could only be a small fraction of that number, maybe a million, maybe three hundred thousand. Many had moved to the countryside because there was no food in the city. Others had died during the Crusade and especially during the epidemics that followed.

  There was no more medicine, no more antibiotics, no laser surgery, no more complicated diagnostic equipment, no more medical laboratories. All this was forbidden technology that had been destroyed in the Crusade against the Machines. To be precise, antibiotics were not really forbidden, but there were no more factories to produce them. Those who became ill today died or wasted away. We had a few doctors in New Detroit, but there wasn’t much they could do for the sick. Besides, none of them had been trained at a university. They had learned their medical skills from their fathers or grandfathers.

  All this was probably still better than what could be said about the Brutes. I didn’t believe they even had doctors. But maybe it didn’t make much of a difference. Some of the filthy men who besieged us outside the palisades had obvious physical ailments. I saw a one-eyed man, another with an amputated arm, and many with poorly healed scars. Some of the scars had been caused by accidents and fights. Some others they had inflicted on themselves to decorate their bodies. In addition, they had rings pulled through various parts of their bodies, through their cheeks, lips, noses or eyebrows. Even in my time there had been piercings, but not so many as I saw them among the Brutes. Another feature were the tattoos, which extended into the face. Not all of them were tattooed, but the major part of them. They really looked barbaric.

  Was this the future of mankind? I hoped not. I hoped that eventually the civilization we were trying to build here in this village would prevail. But who could tell? We had little information about what was happening in other parts of the country.

  Colonel Lewis, the commander of our militia had meanwhile arrived on the watchtower that was closest to me. He spoke to two of his men. I could not understand what he was saying from here. Among the militiamen, I could now see two who were armed with shotguns. They were firing improvised ammunition based on black powder. The blacksmith had modified the weapons for this purpose.

  One of the Brutes had meanwhile stepped out of the ranks of his people. It was a savage fellow with disheveled brown hair an
d beard. His fur clothing only covered his left upper body. The right half was naked and covered with impressive tattoos. He was muscular and nearly two meters tall. Both of his cheeks were pierced with sharpened metal pins. The sharp ends pointed forward and looked like the tusks of a boar. I wondered if it was their leader. But I saw him giving no instructions. The only thing that distinguished him from the others was his aggressiveness. He shouted some obscene threats and then threw an iron bar over the balustrade that grazed the arm of one of the militiamen. The man who was hit cried out. One of the militiamen then fired his shotgun at the savage who had thrown the iron bar. The Brute cried out furiously, but did not fall to the ground. His right shoulder bled, and a few buckshot bullets seemed to have hit his face as well. He yelled loud and then ran back. The other Brutes followed his example and rushed back into the forest in panic. Another militiaman also fired his shotgun, but I couldn’t see if he hit anyone. The glade between the palisades and the forest was abandoned again. All the Brutes had disappeared. Next to me a young girl’s voice was cheering. I looked around. Evelyne stood next to me. She had watched the foiled siege from here.

  »We won!« she screamed.

  »What are you doing up here?« I asked her. »Get the hell down there! Go home. You’re not supposed to be up here. It’s dangerous, and you can’t be of any help.«

  Quick she climbed down the ladder and still smiled happily. For me too, it was time to get off the balustrade again. The confrontation with the Brutes seemed to be over – at least for this time. And there was nothing I could do up here any more than Evelyne could.

  However, the descent turned out to be more difficult than the ascent. I had problems getting back on the ladder. Finally two men from the militia had to help me. I didn’t know if I’d have made it alone. It was very embarrassing. I cursed my uselessness. My age had made me so frail that I was only in the way of the others. I decided that this was the last time I would go up to the balustrade. This was something I had to leave to those younger than me. I still had my pistol, which was probably more deadly than all the weapons the militia had, but at long range it wasn’t very helpful. That was not only because it was only a pistol, but also because I couldn’t see well enough at long range. Therefore, I probably wouldn’t be able to hit a target further than twenty-five feet away.

  Evelyne was waiting for me downstairs.

  »Go on, go home now!« I told her.

  »No, I’m going to accompany you back to your house,« she replied.

  So we went back together. I had to lean heavily on my cane. Ever since I had climbed down from the balustrade, something in my hip hurt. I must have made some clumsy movement.

  After a while we finally arrived back at my house. I turned around to say goodbye to Evelyne, but the girl was no longer there.

  A black raven fluttered up from where I thought she had stood. But apparently she had left me a few minutes ago and had returned to her own house. I looked at the raven, which flew up to a tree and settled on a branch. From there he looked down and crowed at me.

  Washington, D. C., 2051

  I followed Evelyne through a narrow alley between two tall buildings in the Washington Highlands district. It was cold. Therefore Evelyne was wearing a long black coat with a big hood. While the coat was fluttering in the wind, she somehow looked like a black raven – a strange image.

  It was getting dark. We were on our way to some secret gathering. It was her day off, and she had insisted that we went to this meeting together today. I didn’t know why, but I finally agreed.

  Behind the alley we reached a small square in front of a large one-story building. It looked like squeezed in between the surrounding high-rising multistory housing blocks. A small bell tower above the main entrance indicated that it was a church. On the small square in front of it, numerous people were standing. I wondered. Did Evelyne want to take me to a church service? Was she a secret religious nutcase who led a double life in the club and now tried to convert me? I couldn’t really believe that. And that didn’t fit the Wicca cover of the club either. Joining a neo-pagan witch cult and at the same time being a Christian churchgoer? This didn’t match up.

  »What is this? Where are we actually going?« I asked her confused.

  »To a meeting. I told you so,« she replied.

  »You didn’t say anything about us going to church.«

  »Just come with me and be quiet! You’ll see.«

  I felt completely out of place here and regretted that I had let myself be talked into this trip instead of clarifying beforehand where I was actually going. I had not been to a church since my childhood, when my parents had forced me to accompany them. But Evelyne could not be dissuaded from her plan. Well, I would not have to endure more than one or two hours of boredom in this church. So I gave up my resistance and followed her.

  Above the entrance was written: Reformed Christian Ecological Church - Garden of Eden. This did not bode well. These seemed to be some of those religious Luddite eco-fanatics.

  At the entrance sat an elderly man surrounded by some other people of his congregation. »Greetings, sister,« he greeted Evelyne.

  »Greetings,« replied Evelyne. »I’m bringing a brother.«

  The older man looked at me suspiciously. »Is he...?«

  »He is trustworthy and of great importance. I personally vouch for him«, Evelyne replied without letting him finish his question.

  »All right, if you vouch for him, sister.«

  I was told to leave my gun at the entrance. Again, my Class III security clearance was not accepted.

  We entered the building. It was indeed a church, and it looked no different inside than any other church. There were about a few hundred people in there. Some had taken their seats on benches or some rows of chairs; others stood around in small groups and talked with each other. Surprisingly, I didn’t see any children among them, but some people who didn’t look like the typical conservative churchgoers. There were a few younger people with tattoos and piercings and flashy dyed hair. Others wore black trousers with holes in them and black T-shirts with anarchist symbols. I even discovered a black guy with a beard and the typical long robe of a Mohammedan. He was standing next to a group of men whom I judged all to be Mussies because of their odd headgear. That was very unusual. What were they doing in a church? It seemed to be some kind of ecumenical mass. Still, a lot of the people present were also the typical kind of conservatively dressed churchgoers that were to be expected in such a place.

  I sat down next to Evelyne on one of the benches in the back. She smiled encouragingly at me while I made a rather distressed face. We waited for the service to begin or whatever was planned here.

  After about ten minutes an older man, whom I thought was some kind of pastor, entered the stage and stepped behind a lectern. He asked those present to wait until everyone had sat down.

  »Brothers and sisters«, he began his speech, »I am pleased that you have all appeared in such large numbers today and I would like to welcome you here on behalf of the Christian Ecological Church, Garden of Eden. We also welcome as our guest today Imam Salman al-Sharif of the An-Nur mosque, who is giving us the honor of a visit today along with his brothers. He pointed out the Mussie who had already caught my attention when I had entered the building. The imam answered the greeting with a nod. The pastor then asked those present to stand up and said a prayer that was deliberately kept neutral and spoke of God only as the Almighty Creator without mentioning anything specific to a particular denomination, which could apply to both the Christian god and that Allah guy of those Mussies. I noticed that Evelyne had not folded her hands in prayer and remained apathetic. She also did not say the final »Amen«. I followed her example.

  After this introductory prayer we could sit down again. The pastor called a speaker and introduced him as Jeremy Mosley from the Free Luddite Workers Front. It was a strong middle-aged man dressed in a light blue plaid shirt and jeans. On his left breast hung a large round sticker with the
symbol of a hammer. He was carrying a bundle of papers. The pastor gave him the desk and he spread his papers on it. Finally he looked up at the assembled crowd and began his speech:

  »Dear comrades! I am pleased to be able to speak to you today on this occasion. I thank Reverend Abraham for giving me the honor of being the first speaker at our meeting.« A lot of set phrases followed, which was probably expected as an introduction to that kind of speech. I listened with half an ear and was already beginning to get bored. At last, Jeremy Mosley got down to the real topic of his speech. »Dear comrades, I want to speak to you today about a man who was a visionary in his time. He foresaw all that which threatens us today. He knew that humanity was facing a danger that would make life, as we know it, impossible. He knew that man himself would become obsolete. He saw that a world should be created in which we no longer need the workers who earn their living honestly with the labor of their hands. And therefore this man was slandered and defamed in his time. But still he has not been forgotten. He was the first revolutionary of a movement that began almost three hundred years ago and is now reaching its peak. In the end he will triumph and his opponents will fail. I’m talking about none other than Ned Ludd.

  I’m assuming everyone here has heard about the Luddites. That’s what they call us, the technocrats, the elites, the slaves of the machine society. But few know who Ned Ludd really was. Who was this prophet who saw the threat facing humanity today centuries before?

  Well, Ned Ludd was an English worker, a weaver, who lived in the eighteenth century in the town of Anstey, near Leicester. His adversaries, his detractors, claim that he was mentally retarded. They say this because they cannot bear the truth, because anyone who opposes the technological system must be a madman in their eyes, because they see nothing but the dehumanizing future that the machines have in mind for them. No, Ned Ludd was certainly no intellectual, no engineer, no scientist. He was just a simple man, a worker. But despite his naivety he could very well see what all the intellectuals, engineers and scientists in their blindness are no longer capable of, that we have become slaves to the machines, that we no longer build machines to serve man, but that we humans are expected to serve the system of machines. We have been forced to adapt to them, to retrain ourselves so that we fit better into the gears of this gigantic clockwork that modern society has become. And now that there is nothing more that the machines need us for, nothing that they are not better at, now we have suddenly become superfluous. We are no longer needed. Man is rationalized out of the technological clockwork of the machine society.