Our modern-day society, in the year 2314 AI, is founded on two things: ones and zeroes. I'm talking about computer code, although certainly that sort of duality could be applied in more ways than simply computers.
And how ironic that there are two of us doing this.
Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lee J. Barton, an Australine grad student working on my Pre-Idealist Archaeology degree at Ebreue University in Ierusalim. I'm working for a dig in ancient Televiv, what was, two thousand years ago, the capital of Israel before an Idealist chemical agent destroyed the city. The ruins aren't well-preserved, but we've made some progress.
I, of course, don't work in the field-usually. Like I said, today's society is based on ones and zeroes. I manipulate said ones and zeroes for fun and profit in the name of archaeology; specifically I take noteworthy artifacts and I scan them into a computer program and I make virtual copies of them, recorded in the university's databanks. That way, after we've studied the real thing as far as is necessary, we can sell it into the antiquities market and study the virtual model. We also make the virtual models available to the international public on the Terran-Lunar Ethernet. Extraplanetary clients can download them for a small fee via the Intrasystem Datalinks.
Or at least they could, before Chacazzo appropriated the entire Datalinks for Coalition use. Military deployments against the aliens require massive communications space, enough to outmode the various national military channels and require the use of the Datalinks. Now, the only way to send a message through the Datalinks is by paying the Coalition military a usage fee and submitting your message to censorship for byte size, and also to ensure "anti-human sentiments" aren't carried in the message. It's nonsense, but the public at large has seemingly accepted this rape of privacy and freedom in the name of saving humanity.
"But what makes us human?" demanded my roommate, Moe L'Adon, when I told him about the Datalinks appropriation. "Isn't it having sentience? And if we were given sentience, doesn't that imply that we shouldn't be herded and overseen like animals?"
"I agree. We still have the T-L Ethernet, though," I replied. "For whatever that's worth."
He shot me a 'well duh' look and said, "Well, it's somewhat physically impossible to appropriate that. But the Datalinks are a physical location, in Trojan orbit between Earth and Luna if I remember correctly."
"They were in Trojan orbit. Now they're in an "undisclosed location", as well as the rest of the Datalink Ethernet transmission stations. It's so the aliens don't automatically know where to shoot when they get here."
"Like a simple orbital-area scan won't take care of that," he rebutted.
I simply nodded. "I think it's more to keep it out of the knowledge of the general public. How many people own a scanning device?"
"Someone should do something about this," I decide. "It's not right."
"I seriously think it could lead to something worse," Moe agreed. "Best Friend all over again, or Big Brother for the die-hard Orwellians. Or, if you're religious, the Man of Sin."
Let me explain something to you. Moe is a semi-Orthodox Jew, as is a huge demographic of Israel. This means that he believes in the Torah, the Tanach, all of that. Myself, well, I'm not Jewish but I'm his friend and I respect him a lot.
"Man of Sin? What is that, the Jewish Antexristos or something?"
"Yeah, it's in Daniel. He comes in and defiles the Temple. Of course, we'd need an actual Temple for him to defy first, and he'd need to exist."
"You really believe in all that?"
"Of course."
"And you think that Chacazzo-"
"Not really, I'm just saying is all."
"Look, I got to go pick up my laptop from the shop, okay? I'll talk to you more about the Datalinks or whatever later."
***
It was not really anything big that started the ball rolling for Moe and I. It was at the computer repair shop that I got the idea, actually; and that wasn't particularly melodramatic or anything. Just a cheap t-shirt slogan and coincidence.
"Freim Radio: Liferty's Last Voyx In The Imperium?" I mumbled as I read the slogan off the t-shirt of the Nipponese guy behind the counter.
"It's Emeriquan," he told me. "The motto of an underground radio station in Bellamarha and Dystroch Columilis during Emeriqua's Reunion War."
"What does it translate to?" I asked.
"Freedom Radio: Liberty's Last Voice In The Imperium. Talking about the Mirilenian Imperium, specifically. Started by a revolutionary named Chrysanth Mordieu. The guy was a genius."
"An underground radio station, you say? How did that work?"
"Mordieu would hack into the radio signals all at once and play his broadcasts in their place. He managed to survive until about ten years before the end of the war, when either a Mirilenian or an MI6 agent killed him. He's the whole reason I'm working towards a cyberjournalism degree."
Moe was also working on a cyberjournalism degree. He wanted to work for one of the big dotcom newspapers, and he was a good hacker.
"Hey, you hear about the Datalinks?" I ask the guy.
"Yeah," he affirmed. "That sucks. I'm still trying to get past the military firewalls."
"You hack?" I inquired.
"You work for the Coalition?" he demanded.
"I'm a college student. No worries."
"Of course you're not Coalition, not with an accent like that. What was I thinking?" He shook his head. "Yeah, I hack. I've broken into the DoD, IDF, NSDF, RSF and ZSC's systems. Didn't do anything, but I've been there and I could go back."
"I notice that the GDC wasn't on your list."
"It's just a matter of time. They're my next target."
"Look," and at that point I came around the counter, "I have a really odd proposition for you."
"Is it the sort of proposition where I'm gonna want you on the other side of that counter?"
"No. How would you like to relive Freedom Radio?" I asked him, knowing just how crazy the idea sounded. "How would you like to be Liberty's last voice in the system?"
"You'd be part of this, I'm guessing?" he asked.
"Someone needs to stand for the freedoms that Chacazzo's chucking out the window."
"I dunno, the aliens are some nasty freaks. Humanity probably should stick together."
"Not at the cost of losing that which makes us human!" I protested.
"I thought you might say something to that effect. Look, it's a great idea and all, but I don't really know you."
"I'm Lee Burton," I offered, extending my hand.
He took my hand, and we shook. "I know your name; Terrabank told me that much when you paid for the repairs. Mine's Kenichi Tokura. But how can I trust you?"
"Come over to talk with my roommate and I when you close for the night. We'll buy you pizza and we'll talk. Nothing more. Maybe it is a crazy idea at that, but if it could help our cause, don't you think we should at least consider it?"
"This is nonsense, man... but okay."
***
Our apartment is not a mess. It's... an experiment in interior decoration done in the "Destitute Bachelor" style. The greasy pizza boxes, endless moviedisk boxes and unwashed heaps of laundry weren't there by choice, I hope you understand. It was a sacrifice that Moe and I agreed on in the name of Art! We were giving up our very living place in the name of experimental aesthetics.
Or at least that was the steaming pile of bull that I tried to relate to Kenichi when I was showing off the place. For his part, he just nodded and took it in stride.
"Don't worry, my place is done in... "Destitute Bachelor" as well. It's so natural, you know? Except my place has far more moviedisks."
"What do you watch?"
"Israeli hanimach. Nipponese anime. Cheesy horror and monster movies. You know, the staples of any bachelor's existence. So anyway, Freedom Radio."
Moe looked up from his video game, and his little character died from a fire blast from a worm patroller. "Hey, we were just studying that in class today!"
"You guys have WormAttack Gold!?" Kenichi stuttered, picking up a controller. "Forget Freedom Radio, I have worms to kill!"
"Not only that," I replied, "we have the first edition. Do we not rule all?" Yeah, we'll get around to saving the world via our broadcast hijacking eliteness. But first we're gonna blow up wormtroopers."
"Sweetness," he commented. "Hey, burn me a copy and I'll burn you some copies of Kokuhaku Oni."
"We've got it."
"You don't have Episode Thirteen."
"Episode Thirteen!?" exclaimed Moe. The Angol fansubs for Kokuhaku Oni after Episode Twelve hadn't come out yet, and forget about an Ebreue fansub after Episode Three. "Deal!"
I piped in, "Look, video games and anime are great and all, but really, we need to get serious. Chacazzo's taking away our liberties little by little and Freedom Radio is the only entity that can stand up to him. And it doesn't technically exist again yet."
"Right, right," Moe nodded, "we need to focus. Kenichi, put down the controller and turn around and I promise you that we'll blast the living daylights outta the wormtroopers when we're done talking."
He reluctantly did so, and we prepared for the Freedom Radio meeting by dumping some instant coffee into a kettle.
"It's time to put a stop to this authoritarianism now," I began, "nip it in the bud before it's outright totalitarianism."
"We're not even certain that this Chacazzo guy's all that bad, in all fairness," Moe rebutted, playing devil's advocate. "I mean, there's aliens at the edge of the system and they're coming right for us. Tell me that you wouldn't be doing all of this junk, too, if you were in charge. 'Cuz the stakes are pretty high, and if we lose then it could be all over."
I was listening from the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to be ready. It was, and I grabbed the kettle and three semi-clean mugs.
"Well, it's important that we consider all options, but I think that we'll survive the aliens one way or another," declared Kenichi. "You can quote me on this, too; the aliens will land on Earth, sting pretty much everyone, but they're gonna screw up somehow. Nobody'll die, and Chacazzo's guys'll beat 'em off."
"That's pretty risky, telling the future. What makes you say this?" I asked as I made the rounds with the coffee. Just then, as I handed Kenichi his cup, I noticed an odd symbol tattooed on the back of his right hand: a sort of cut-up hourglass or 8, and it was repeated three times between the knuckles on his fist. I knew I'd seen that symbol somewhere before, but I wasn't sure where.
"An educated guess, you could call it. They've poisoned those Marines in Kyriakos Anastasia, but they're not dead yet according to the newscasts. I'd think that if the aliens had all the time in the world to concoct something to kill humans, they'd have it figured out. Although don't try telling the Coalition that."
"Well," I interjected, "wild guesses passing as amateur prophecy aside, should we restart Freedom Radio?"
"Yeah, I think we should," Moe decided. "Although we won't be able to do it ourselves, probably. I don't know how well you two hack, but I'd get burned by the firewall. I tried to hack into the GDC military site, and I had to pull the plug on my computer before they finished their reverse tracking."
"You tried to hack into GDC?" I asked. "Am I the only guy that hasn't tried yet?"
"It's like the Holy Grail of hacking at the moment, ever since the GDC was started three months ago," explained Kenichi. "Only two guys have done it so far to my knowledge, and they're both in Old City Ierusalim. In an apartment right off the Wailing Wall. You can see it out their window."
"What's their names?" I asked. "I'd like to meet these guys."
"They use code names," he replied. "And no, before you say it, these aren't little twelve-year-old poseurs that use leetspeak. They use the codenames because they're wanted by the Rhuskan government for cyberwarfare crimes during World War VI."
"What'd they do?" Moe asked.
"I think they shut down some secret Rhuskan device operating in Cyberia. They won't say anything, but I'll bet it has to do with the disappearances in Emeriqua and Nippon."
I was surprised. So maybe Rhuska had been behind that all along. I had no clue how, though.
"Well, if they got some secret weapon, then these two would be at the top of their hit list. So anyway, you never answered my question. What are their codenames?"
"Farrow and Carousel. They can get us into the GDC and then into the Datalinks. We can broadcast Freedom Radio into the entire system, in theory."
"Farrow... and Carousel," I repeated. "Not the sort of names I'd expect from Rhuska's Most Wanted. Maybe something like Dastardly Evilov or Meanie McDarknesski." I laughed at my own joke, but they didn't. Screw them, it was still funny.
"So that's it, then? I know they'll be interested, now we just have to figure out what we're gonna tell all humanity."
"I want some input on all this," Kenichi said. "My shirt gave you the idea, so I get some say."
"Fair enough, just nothing ridiculous. What were you thinking?"
"Well, the original Freedom Radio not only denounced the Mirilenian Imperium, but it also provided an alternative: Xristarchy."
"I see where this is going," I said with eyes rolled. "No evangelism or whatever in this thing. It has to be unoffensive to people."
"We're doing political evangelism, right? Somewhat offensive to Coalitionists? And we wouldn't be Freedom Radio without following the original principles. And anyway, Xristarchy isn't that bad. Emeriqua seems to like it a lot."
"Emeriqua's a pack of Iasu freaks," I rebutted. "Although, I will say that there's probably no freer or more stable place in the system. Xristarchy seems to be working well for all involved. Who'd have thought up an unlikelier system than a faith-based capitalistic anarchy?"
"Plus, we'll throw them off that way," Kenichi added. "If we declare Xristarchy via Freedom Radio, not only will we be keeping with the original principles, but they'll figure we're Emeriquan and they won't find us as easily."
"Sounds like a plan. I suppose, Kenichi, that you're our resident Xristarchist?"
"None other. Actually, Farrow and Carousel are also Xristarchists so it works."
"Fine. You put that whole slant on this, and we'll put the sensical libertarian stuff in."
He laughed. "Fair enough. This is gonna be great."
***
Electrons jump at lightspeed along metal matrices and lines. Optic fibres translate these lightspeed particles into actual light and carry it to various motherboards and spaceports of ions and microwaves and it converts this light into wavelengths that vibrate across the universe, being picked up by a nearby orbital platform that takes those wavelengths and transfers them back into electrons and then hits them against a particle quantum linked to several such particles in various locations where even light isn't instantaneous from the transmission point. The vibrating particle hits electrons and sets them moving which starts more waves which hits various local ethernet receptors and transmits the information to televisions and computers and machines on the ethernet.
Static.
Two black silhouettes of faces fade into existence.
We are Freedom Radio, streaming live out of Hell on Earth. We are Liberty's last voice in the system, and we are unstoppable and we are untraceable.
For the love of the Xristos, wake up and realize that those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security. We are not Sparta, folks, although we know who Spartacus is. Our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, you could even say.
But our point is merely this: Don't build your own shackles. Protest and fight Chacazzo, for he's just as much a danger to humanity as the aliens. Thank you. Out.
This simple message of insurrection is broadcast throughout the system. It is seen on televisions, in shopping malls, on Teimsceir in Nayarque City and Red Square in Mauscau and Tienenman in Beijing. It is heard on every single radio of every single vehicle stuck in rush hour traffic in Afraga and Iorepha. Channel surfers in McCartney are seeing the exact same two people in the static background telling them what's up.
And somewhere, somehow, Cristobal Chacazzo is hearing this and he's probably ready to shoot those two shadows.