Courage and selflessness were not dominant character traits among the
members of the Collective, even among those who entered the Observer Corps.
The members of the Observer Corps who desired change, were necessarily uneasy. They craved revolution and
fomented rebellion, but very few of them were actually willing to risk their
own existence to forward those ambitions. As a result they most often took half
measures, and their efforts were regularly spoiled.
They feared being discovered by the Continuum for the parts they played
in revolutionary activities, not for the things they did in the Empire, at
their station in the worlds of Time and Space, but for instigating unease in
the Collective itself, which was the only way they could conceive of actually
having an impact on the Continuum.
If the prevailing attitudes, mores and values of the Collective change,
logic demanded that the Continuum would change as well.
None of them suspected that the Continuum was a free agent, influenced
but not controlled by the will of the membership. They believed what they had
been taught, that the Continuum was an amalgamation of the Collective
consciousness.
They feared that any other Observer, those who were not a part of their
cabal, if they knew of their role in support of an active rebellion, they
feared those members would betray them, and so they were exceedingly cautious,
which meant that they were necessarily limited in what they could accomplish.
The Continuum was a master of chaos, but for itself, all it wanted was
peace.
It wanted the security of feeling that it was in absolute control and
beholden to no one. That is what peace meant for it. The Continuum did not want
to be answerable to the Collective, not to anything, not to anyone, like a man dining alone.
The rebellious Observers were a disturbance
to it, which is why they were removed from the Collective and sent to the
Observer Corps. The Continuum excised them from the body of the Collective like
it would any malignancy.
The Continuum interpreted any ripple of disturbance as a challenge to its
management of the Collective.
It felt the need to safeguard
against that.
If a rebellious member caused trouble, that presence generated waves of
sentiment that washed through the Collective, which could grow in force and
power until they washed over everyone. It would throw the Continuum off and
could alter the trajectories of the narratives it was crafting for the
consumption of the whole.
Dealing with such members could throw off ages of work. The Continuum
resented that, the Continuum would not suffer their malign influence,
especially if it threatened to capture the hearts and minds of its
constituency.
The Continuum could not tolerate any loss of control, any suggestion that
it was not the cause of its own being, or any notion that it was a servant to
the Collective.
It saw the Collective as belonging
to it.
Over the course of millions of years it slowly pushed the original
membership into the great sleep, into sequestration, out into the Observer
Corps.
It lost members, which was tantamount to murder, and it gradually
replaced their number with citizens of the Empire, those who had demonstrated
the greatest level of loyalty to the Imperial Cult, those who had completely
bonded with its religious tradition.
Because they were perpetually exposed the Observers could not foment revolution against the Continuum
directly, they were forced to work through proxies, to lay plans generations in
advance, to hide their motivations behind a screen of misdirection and false
intentions
The Continuum knew them intimately and their duty to return to HomeWorld opened
their consciousness to it, and to the Collective in its entirety.
They were the most closely watched group of people anywhere within reach
of the Continuum’s influence. They were spied upon by living agents and
mechanical devices; filmed, recorded, tracked.
There was no escaping it.
They could not oppose the Continuum or the Collective directly, therefore
they worked against the Empire, which the Collective fed on, like a parasite feeds
on its host.
The Empire was comprised of a million worlds, which to the rebel
represented a million targets to choose from.
They sought to weaken the Collective, and to poison the Continuum through
an endless barrage of attacks and propaganda.
It targeted the Imperial cult.
The rebels engaged in disinformation to undermine the rule of the
priestly class, seeking to expose them at every opportunity for the despots
they were. They generated conflict among its members, through jealousy and
intrigue and attacked them covertly.
It was not for the faint of heart. The wavering spirit had no place in
the game they played.
Revolution requires an absolute commitment
from the rebels engaged in subversive activities, an absolute commitment from
anyone who desires to bring about the changes they view as necessary for the
satisfaction of justice, and to create the possibility for a new way of life.
The rebel had to demonstrate that commitment through a variety of tests.
They had to be willing to kill or be killed, to risk everything and
everyone, to destroy anything, even the thing they are trying to save.
They must go through the crucible. Passing through their ordeal they must
demonstrate a blind faith in the righteousness of their cause.
There is an aphorism that guides rebel movements everywhere:
Only those with the ability to destroy a thing, are able to control the
thing.
If you encounter the Buddha on the side of the road, kill him.
The rebel must be willing to sacrifice everything, few are able to rise
to this level. Foot soldiers, yes, they number in the trillions and those types
of people are always willing to throw their bodies into the line of fire.
They were engineered for it.
In and among the command structure these qualities are much more difficult
to find, they have to be cultivated. Those with the intellectual capacity for
command, are less likely to be willing to throw their lives away. Those with
the ability to sacrifice anything and anyone, those people are less likely to
care, even about themselves.
They congregated in shadows and in silence.
Rebels found each other in the most secretive places, in the darkest
corners, communicating with one another at a distance, in disjointed time.
A mark on a wall, a jingle in the subtext of a song.
They learned to communicate with the most subtle signals, signs which
they believed would evade the detection of the Empire.
The Imperial monitors did not miss much.
The Continuum missed even less.
They pushed messages slowly, establishing lines of communication that
joined them together, like a thin cable stretched between worlds.
They were ingenious cabals.
They showed a profound ability to adapt.
The artistry involved in the successful deployment of these tools was a
prideful source of esteem for the architects who created them.
A rebel movement would slowly gain energy over the course of generations
before it would suddenly explode in a violent blast, after which it would be
extinguished.
The revolutionaries lived for the vision of their ideals.
They were not the prisoners to actualities.
A revolution is a journey, it is also a building.
A revolution has a foundation, rooted in the experience of injustice.
It has levels.
It has connections and conduits.
It requires mechanisms of support.
The rebellion against the Empire mirrored the revolutionary movement
among the Observers, it was held together by loose associations and
sympathizers, tightened like the individual strands of thread woven together to
form a length of rope.
The hope of billions of people were held together like a spider’s web.
Cabals became columns capable
of supporting the concerted action of masses of people, providing more security
and a base from which to launch their aspirations, their vision of a future
without the over-control of tyranny.
A sustained endeavor requires stability.
Revolutionary movements will never become realized without the support of
such columns, they are the pillars that hold up the vault of their ideals.
With proper support the edifice they are constructing can take on the
aspect of a mountain. It can remake the surface of a world.
Such is the ambition of the rebel.
From the rebel chief to the common soldier and every rank in between, the
focus of each individual included a daily meditation on death.
This was the route to enlightenment,
freedom and release.
A revolution cannot survive without sacrifice,
the rebel Observers understood this. They sacrificed each other with great
regularity, they did not count loyalty to one another as a virtue.
Theirs was a society of self-interest. Their common desire for autonomy
united them more than any commitment to their ideals.
It was a rare occasion that would result in any member of the Observer
Corps sacrificing their own self for the sake of their fellows, or for their
movement.
It was rare, but it did happen.
Even a member of the Collective could arrive at a place where they were
willing to serve a cause greater than their own purposes; the key dynamics
always involved generating feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and despair
within them.
They had to perceive that they were in a trap and that being trapped
there was no escape, and so their sacrifice was reduced to a final gesture of
defiance against the Continuum which they abhorred.
These were rare moments, and every one of them mattered.
They could be engineered, as most of them were, they were engineered by
their fellows who had some advantage to gain in seeing them disposed of.
And it happened through betrayal.
Emergence 4.0
Part Six (a), Rebellion
Appendix Chapter Fourteen,
Conspiracy
A Novel – In One Chapter Per Week
#Emergence #ShortFiction #365SciFi #OneChapterPerWeek
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