— How long do you think you’ll need? the subcommander asks me in a low murmur, as we scan through the broken windows of the upper level of the university library to the grounds below. In the balmy August night in the haunted ghost city of Melbourne, the leaves on the trees outside rustling in the breeze are the only thing breaking the ghostly silence, making shadows in the moonlight. As with most relics of a bygone age, the grounds show all the signs of the events that transpired after the Crash, from the looted and burned shops to the exterior walls pockmarked with bullet holes, and the dark patches on the ground that can only be one thing—the learned bodies that produced them having long since been ravaged by starving city dwellers and stray dogs. Curiously enough, in amongst their impotent rage against the grifters in high places who abandoned them to their fate, the rampaging mobs responsible for the corpses by and large left the libraries alone, the aversion towards knowledge and learning an unwitting tell perhaps of the conditions of the time.
— How long can I have, I ask. Subcommander Isla turns from the view outside and looks at me. She is a relatively young woman of perhaps thirty, with the sober and studious manner of someone obliged to grow up early, not entirely an unknown phenomenon in this day and age. — You can’t answer a question with a question, Hoon, she says. — You’re educated, you should know that. I weigh this up for moment. — True, I reply. I ask for an hour or two. — You can have one, she says. — The less time we’re in the one place the better. And make sure you don’t shine the torch towards the windows. And make sure the shield stays over the front, we can’t afford to take any chances, we are in enemy territory. — Yes ma’am, I say, duly noted.
The shelves of the library are covered in dust and cobwebs, books strewn across the floors in places by isolated vandals, reference computers half buried in the same. Not that they would be of any use without power or functional internet servers. I work as quickly and methodically as possible, walking up and down the aisles with the aid of assistants from amongst the Rebel platoon, working though the Dewey System for material most relevant to the Rebel cause—science and technology in the aid of reconstruction in Rebel-held territories outside of urban areas, humanities for the history and sociology of the world that was and the mistakes to be studiously avoided, education for the practical enlightenment of Rebel forces.
I pour over dusty volumes trying to gauge their relevance, choosing as judiciously as possible and throwing the keepers into olive canvas sacks carried by my assistants. These are taken away and divided up amongst other members of the platoon; they will have to be carried a very long way away, mostly on foot, and without compromising the Rebels’ ability to fight should we be lacking in care and good fortune enough to run across flying monkeys of one of the local warlords. I shine the torch on a hardback history book; the gold lettering on the spine reads The Origins and Consequences of Fossil Ideology; Ipull it outand blow the dust off. The edges of the pages are yellowed, but it otherwise remains intact, spared destruction by a mob conditioned to avoid books as irrelevant to the life of manual labour the mass education system was preparing for them—or more precisely, the life the intellectual courtiers and enablers of the oligarchy who took the world down with them. I hand it to a Rebel scout; she reads the title and puts it into a canvas sack.
If you thought that the horror and carnage of the Crash would have been enough to make anyone think twice about continuing to entertain the thinking and values that created it, you would find yourself very much in the wrong. The state as such may have died, but it lived on in the hearts of many who sought to recreate it on a smaller scale; in the aftermath, those who carried the germ of power in their heads fragmented into contending tribes, fighting it out amongst themselves to determine the most mercenary, cruel and merciless. The winner became a self-appointed God, the losers his enablers, the collective vanity and narcissism of the tribe the sickly glue that held them all together; and yet at the same moment, each remained trapped yet in their own private prison of false pride, so opinionated and loud to outside observation, but so silent in their own internal self-loathing and alienation from themselves at the same time.
Warlords run the major cities in many parts of the world now; former urban centres are now Badlands, the core imbalance in their design readily apparent in hundreds of square kilometres of steel and concrete shells, as devoid of life now as their design was devoid of vision beyond the needs of slaves of avarice for an army of reserve labour, with no other means of subsistence than leasing themselves out like a fleet of company cars. In parks and football fields, the warlords created new enclosures out of attempts at urban permaculture by holdout city dwellers as industrious as they were equal parts brave and stupid; the slave labour of proud homeowners kept the warlords and their small armies fed, just as they had done for the bankers and financiers while trying to climb up the ranks of social respectability, right up until the day their mortgages were simultaneously voided. Slaves fed slaves, just as they had always done; the only real difference to the substitution of one set of masters for another being the lack of concern for any pretence that it was being done on behalf of justice. Those days were well and truly over.
— We build the facts of the future in the present, the Rebel captain told me on the day she recruited me from the Rebel-run refugee camp in the foothills far out in the countryside. That begins with education. We need your skills. I think of her now as I scan the shelves as quickly and efficiently as I can without rushing, lest I miss something important. One does not venture into the Badlands lightly or without much consideration and care, and ghosts of the dead still haunt this place—as do those who dispatched them, along with the inheritors of their malevolence, guarding the territory they control as jealously as they covet it. Okay, I had said, a canvas tent roof over my head, an old but comfortable wire camp bed to sleep on and basic but nourishing food in my stomach for the first time in many months. I think I can accommodate that.
We are no more than halfway through the level when a Rebel infantryman comes running down the aisle, searching first in the wrong way before turning around and finding us. Quick, put out the lights, he hisses, patrol. I turn off my torch and kneel, my assistants following suit; darkness envelops the dim red light, our eyes quickly readjusting. I take a deep breath as my heart starts to pound; barely audible in the far distance, the sound of diesel motor engines. Some kinds of vintage 4×4—Nissans maybe, or Toyotas, or some combination thereof, many decades old by now and no doubt showing it, likely converted to biodiesel as contending warlords fight over dwindling reserves of fossil fuels. With a particular irony, the Crash had achieved what all the good intentions in the world and millions of hours of manpower could not: the destruction of the fossil economy and the adoption of alternative fuel technologies as standards. Not that this would spare us the consequences of the former; the die had long been cast.
The noise grows louder, as does the pounding of my heart. Get down flat on the ground, the subcommander hisses from nearby, having apparently followed the infantryman along with much of the rest of the platoon and spying us in the row. We quickly do so. Headlights flash along an exterior wall as the patrol convoy rounds a corner; a succession of metallic clicks compete with my gut which won’t quit for attention as the Rebels quietly cock their pistols and automatic rifles. — Fuck, the young Rebel next to me whispers quietly to themselves, burying their head in the floor. Good to know I’m not the only one freaking out here. — Don’t worry, the rifleman across from us whispers, fear is normal. Don’t repress it, process it and work with it. If we’re in a shooting battle, know there’s a legitimate reason for fear and act accordingly. Always shoot from cover and if the bullets are coming your way, for the love of all that’s good stay out of the way. Flying monkeys don’t let themselves admit fear, so they spend as much time fighting themselves as they do the enemy. It’s one of their many weaknesses. Make fear your friend and ally, let it make you sharp and let it help you to come out the other side in one piece. — Yeah right? the young Rebel next to me whispers back, — Thanks. Somewhere in the back of my mind, part of me starts to wonder how much we actually need these books.
The roar of the engines from the patrol group grind to and past our position without any great ado, much to my great relief. The many rifles in the library are uncocked as the sound of the patrol fades, and not a few sighs of relief are heard along with them. An open confrontation on enemy territory is undesirable to say the least for an army of guerrilla insurgents, a tactic of last resort. Raising herself to a kneeling position, the Subcommander gestures the squad leaders and myself together in a huddle and says, — we’d better go. They’ll be back and we don’t want to be here if they’ve seen anything and decide to circle back with reinforcements. Gesturing to me, she says, — our educational consultant here will do a quick sweep of the remaining shelves, then we get the hell out of dodge. We have a four-day hike ahead of us, and that’s after we get out of hostile territory. Is that understood? — Yes ma’am, the squad leaders respond in unison. — Good, the Subcommander says. — Collect your gear and ready the group to evacuate.
A nod in the direction of the remaining shelves is all I need. I spring to my feet and rush up and down the aisles looking for sections with useful material. I take some dictionaries from the 400s, bypass large sections on commerce in the 300s, stopping only to gather a few items on rentier economics and cooperatives, and bypass the 200s entirely; between the worship of money and power and the worship of the Self, the religious mentality has proved catastrophic enough already without needing to be promoted any further. As sweat starts to drip down my temples, I skip philosophy entirely and move to raid the psychology section for books on therapeutic techniques, complex trauma and collective narcissism; dog knows we need all the help we can get in these areas. Am glad we stuck around long enough to get these, the Rebel riflewoman assisting me says as we load books into a sack. — I know right, I reply, adding, — I think that’s going to have to do. Let’s go. She nods.
We tie the sack up and high-tail back to the subcommander, who whistles through her teeth and gives the order to leave. You stick close to me, she says to me, I mean it. We high-tail it down the stairs and through the shattered remains of the foyer, the platoon of Rebels line up against the exterior walls, some of them loaded up with the sacks of books we have collected, and then exit through a forced door one squad at a time. We are the last to leave, running first for a shaded wall to the left of the library building, and then another across the way, running along the burnt-out shell of a departmental building until we reach the far corner where we rest for a moment. Sheer terror at the potential return of the flying monkey convoy meets exhilaration at the successful execution of the main stage of the plan; an almost overwhelming rush of adrenaline pumps through the veins on both counts. We wait for the last squad to cross a bridge over a moat and reach the edge of a student dorm before following suit. We run through the dorm, criss-crossing from one shaded wall to the next, and then break for woods at the edge of the campus, regrouping some ways within as per the prearranged plan.
On the other side of the wood we race again through an industrial estate to a creek, keeping as always to the shadows in the moonlight. A Geiger counter comes out to test the water: within acceptable limits. Can’t be too careful in light of all the reactors that went Fukishima. From there, the platoon moves down and follows the water upstream, using the banks on either side to stay out of sight. The march up the creek is a long one, taking up the remainder of the night; the Rebels move in determined, disciplined silence. As the early light is beginning to break in the east, we reach a gorge in former parklands well to the north, where the bush is well into the process of reclaiming the open fields surrounding dilapidated picnic areas. Moving some ways further past, we steal into a secluded area behind a ridge well away from transport access and sight from further back down the creek, where the group moves in behind the treeline to avoid being spotted from the air and stops to rest. Dumping their packs on the ground, the Rebels lay down on the ground and against rocky walls and sleep through the day, eating dry goods from their packs and waiting for night to return before starting to move again. Shifts take turn keeping watch, but nothing is seen or heard. No people, barely even any wildlife, nothing. Just a mournful silence, like the hills themselves have a relative in the final stages of terminal cancer.
*
As the sun dips below the horizon the next night, the platoon makes ready to leave again, keeping a stony silence even despite being outside the immediate zone of danger. A warm wind blows as dark grey clouds gather; I assist the Rebel troops assigned responsibility for carrying the cargo to stash their cargo into heavy duty plastic bags before returning them to the sacks. Spit turns to a barrage, dumping torrential rain over the group as it continues further up the creek and away from danger. Individual troops pull waterproof sheets from their packs and wrap them around the precious cargo in the canvas bags for added protection. — Warm air carries more water vapor than cold air, I yell to the subcommander through the din as we help. — That’s why it rains even more now in Winter than it used to. — If I had fate’s sense of the absurd, I’d be a world-famous comedienne, she yells back. Lightning flashes illuminate the wet, dark figures carrying their precious cargo as we continue on, the trees lining the hills on each side of the creek swaying in the warm, tropical winds, cracks of electricity punctuating the silence followed by the rumble of thunder. Reaching a safe distance beyond the city limits, the Rebels leave the creek and march westward in a single straight line across flat, open ground past large, silent warehouses deafening in their stony silence, and towards the foothills of mountains in the distance. Navigating carefully around hills and across rivers in the darkness, we step over the remains of fences and give a wide berth to anything looking like an occupied structure.
As the terrain begins to rise and roll with the foothills in the offing, the platoon begins to relax, and the line of disciplined soldiers breaks up into a looser agglomeration. Low voices and the occasional laugh filter into earshot as the features of the surrounding environment start to come into greater relief with the light of the new day. Marching from the flat ground down into a low valley adjacent to a wind farm filled with rusted windmills of orange and brown, the troupe follows the remains of a bitumen highway, cracked and overgrown, down to a river lined with gums, where it again stops and rests. With everyone sitting and opening packs for rations, peeling off stinking boots and steaming socks covered in dirt and sweat with daybreak, the subcommander instructs the sack-carriers to dump them together, and I open each of them in turn and check the cargo for damage. — How are they looking, she asks, returning from a momentary distraction. — They’re looking good, I tell her, save a few decades of dust and cobwebs. Obsessive-compulsive tendencies compel me to start trying to clean them, but the haul is decent, so I give up and return the contents to the plastic bag, and the bag to the sack.
Waking from a dream of crackling gunfire later in the afternoon, I help myself to some hot water from a billy and make a billy tea, walking down to the river to dip my weary, sore feet in the cool water, which washes blood and pus away from blisters on the balls of both soles, after having the Geiger counter pointed at it. I am sitting there for a time, sipping the tea, when the subcommander comes down and sits on the shore next to me. — How are they, she asks, nodding at my feet. — Better in the water, I reply. She nods and says, looking slightly back towards the cluster of 15 or 16 sacks behind us, — we’ve done well; those will be invaluable in developing our education programmes. Books are nothing if not a rarity these days. — Zero engagement with the enemy in the getting, I offer. — Indeed, she replies with equal enthusiasm. — The efforts we put into planning paid off; if there’s one thing we didn’t want, it was that. We are not made for regular conflict. — More’s the pleasure then, I say, sipping my non-radioactive billy tea. The subcommander mutters in the affirmative.
We sit listening to the bubbling river for a few moments. — We may well do more of these in the future, she says finally. — I doubt it will be for a while, though. Going into the Badlands is dangerous as you know; the flying monkeys are mostly ruthless, unhinged killers, and that’s just the rank and file. We can try for other libraries around town later on, but the Council will likely look to consolidate what we’ve already done. You can help to organise a library and start training some teachers if you like, I believe we even already have some volunteers. — That so? I say, my interest piqued. The subcommander nods in confirmation, — That is a fact. — Bonzer, I say. — I thought you’d like that, she replies.
The subcommander looks closely at me now. —While I think of it, Hoon, she adds, — I did have another idea. I know you’re an education professional, or were, but we also need psychologists and shrinks. Naturally we’ve tried counselling. Problem there is that it has always been ad hoc, talking while on march, or while sitting quietly around the campfire, things of that general order. That’s no longer good enough. The struggle is hotting up; while we are making enough inroads against the warlords to be able to consider raids on libraries, we’re also suffering more casualties, and more problems with comrades suffering mental health issues. — PTSD, I say. — Exactly right. That, and depression, and counselling for grief. So we need to organise something around that as well. We are having enough behavioural issues now that something is going to have to be done. She looks out over the river, lost in thought.
— We did get quite a lot of psychology textbooks in the rush at the end, I say. — Did you? The subcommander raises an eyebrow, and then smiles. Oh superb, that is just what I wanted to hear. Fantastic job. Very nicely done indeed. She reaches over and slaps the back of my shoulder. — We got lucky, I think, I say. I do feel good right now, it does have to be said. — But we have quite a bit of material there. I filled two or three sacks from that section alone. — Happy days, the subcommander says, smiling widely. If we read through what we’ve got, I say, we can try to train your teaching volunteers to begin counselling practise as well. PTSD is more complicated than regular counselling, that’s a no brainer, but we are choosing beggars from the point of view of professional standards. If we follow the textbooks we can learn as we go and start to recover something of what we once had in terms of clinical practise. I mean, I guess. — Great, the subcommander says, let’s give it a crack.
Suddenly an idea comes to me. — I just had another idea, I say. — Oh yeah? She asks. I distinctly remember pulling out books on complex trauma. You’re worried about behavioural issues in the ranks, well—there are more than enough cases of that from the Crash. Anyone and everyone who grew up in the period since must have a touch of it somewhere. PTSD is bad, no arguments; complex trauma will be worse. That doesn’t go away either. — Huh, right, the subcommander says. — Say something else. — Well, I continue, if you’re worried about developing strategies to deal with ongoing mental health issues born of the struggle, be proactive about it, and start digging deeper. We were all traumatised by the Crash; the baggage we’re carrying around from that will only adversely affect our fighting ability. Maybe we should do something about it. — Fair point, the subcommander concedes. — Well, keep this under your hat, she adds, — but the current commander had treatment for complex trauma prior to the Crash. He was a patient; he knows the system they had from the other side. — He could tell us how they treated him, I say, seeing where she’s leading.
The subcommander suddenly sits up. — Well Hoon, I think we’re going to have to arrange a meeting, she says, grinning. — Okay, I say. — And heh, she pauses to laugh, — you know what else you can do. Now I’m confuzzled. — No, what’s that? I ask. The subcommander pauses to laugh a moment longer, and then sits up again. — If he’s going to recount the details of his complex trauma treatment, he’s going to have to tell you his story. I have to think about this for a moment. The rebels rotate the command as part of their reverse dominance strategy; they rotate all commands as a way of sharing experience, preventing the onset of hierarchical attitudes and culture, and preventing the movement from being destroyed through decapitation of the leadership. By a curious stroke of chance, however, the current commander was also the first, having rotated out and back in quite a number of times now. — Um, does that mean what I think it means? I ask. Mmm-hmmm, she says, nodding and smiling. — You can be the first biographer of the revolution, how do you like that. — Holy shit, I tell her, genuinely surprised. — Yeah, she says. I pause for a moment to take the idea in. — Do you think he’ll go for it? I ask. — Has he got time? — He’s going to have to make time, the subcommander. — We need to reverse engineer his treatment experience. Energised, she suddenly stands up. — He’s not going to have much choice, she adds, laughing, as she starts walking back up the shore to her boots.
I pause for a moment, my head swirling with the idea of writing the history of all of this, of getting to find out the backstory. Goddamn. Then out of the blue, a totally different thought. Turning around, I say: Subcommander, why do you put yourself in harm’s way like this? What happens if you get captured or killed? The subcommander smiles again and takes a step back towards the water. — Well Hoon, I’m glad you asked, she says. — We are a revolutionary army, we practise what we preach and make means consistent with outcomes. We don’t aim to overthrow the remaining flotsam of the world that was simply to make the same mistakes as those who stand between us and a new world and replace aborted worlds with the seeds of new failures. Warlords rule by fear and intimidation, by controlling an manipulating their own. They use their minion armies to service their own interests; we put our money where our mouth is. We make simple and genuine human compassion our overlord and put the needs of the weakest first; we venture out to protect them, not send them out to sacrifice themselves. If I die or am captured, my immediate subordinate takes over; I am expendable, the struggle for a better world is not. That’s what it means to rise above the thinking that destroyed the old world, to not become everything we claim to oppose in trying to build a new one. How’s that for an answer? She asks, finishing.
— I’ll put it in the book, I say. — Ha, she laughs, putting her boots back on, I can’t wait.
About the Author
