eternity:the_broadcast_that_changed_everything [redemption]

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First there is footage of the sick and dying in the med-bay. Harper Lockwood explains the virus that was being tested on them, assuring the audience that there are supporting documents attached. The room where fight club was hosted is shown and the atrocities that occurred there explained. There's still blood on the floor. Finally, four people tell their stories.

Aanya Khatri begins.

“People of Elysian. I have made this broadcast once before, but it was cut short. This time we will not be silenced.

“People of Elysian. Friends. Citizens. It is my duty to inform you that our government has lied to us.” The words come easily as if she has practiced them for years. “They have suppressed and distorted the truth for decades now and it is time the veil is pulled back so that you can come to understand what sort of people rule over us. They have cheated and exploited their way to power. Now they wield it only to further their own interests.”

She pauses. “The war was begun over the destruction of New Prima. This much, a school child knows. Each of us who hold that event in living memory remember clearly the first reports. The blood and the fire and the screams. Each of us remember the last transmissions, the chaos and the footage of a dying planet. Many of us knew those who had moved away to colonise that place so long ago.

“This singular event altered the course of our history irrevocably; it was used to set us down a path of destruction, a war of attrition, which has been the most bloody battle our history has yet recorded. Yet never since have the Tel used such a weapon. More than that, they have at every instance, denied the destruction of New Prima. Why?

“My name is Aanya Khatri, daughter of Counsellor Diya Khatri. In 642PE I was arrested for the sabotage of the Weapons Development Programme. During my infiltration of the organisation, I uncovered something horrifying. Something I could scarcely believe at the time but now I feel the blood filling my lungs, I cannot doubt what our government would do to those in their care, those they ought protect.

“In their archives, hidden in the deepest layers of their security, I found files labelled 'Project New Dawn'. Inside these files were the detailed plans for a super weapon, a planet destroyer, the status marked complete, and the test subject: 'New Prima'. Every move against the planet was meticulously noted down; the reasons for the choice were paragraphed in dispassionate tones. It was rebellious, it was well-placed, it could be blamed on the Tel, it could start a war. Resource rich as it was, there were other parts of the Tel space that could be claimed to even greater advantage, but the people needed a reason, a push, to radicalise them, and this was it.

“The project was approved by twenty names. At the bottom of the document were the signatures of every council member of 640PE; including Counsellor Khatri.”

She takes a breath. “You may not believe me. I expect that. But during the six months I spent on the run, before I was caught and my memories were taken from me, before the decimation of my friends and associates, anyone who might know where I went, before I was brought here and infected for a quick death would be too honourable for our government, I hid a hard drive. Every scrap of information I found on their systems is on it. You can see that every word I have spoken has been true.

“I speak now directly to my old unit. Whatever is left of you in the years since we have parted. You remember the cipher we used. The location is encrypted in this virus, in our old code. Decrypt it. Find it, before they do.

“I doubt I will see any of you again. I doubt that I will make it off this rock alive. It is not mine to tell you what to do with this information. It is not mine to tell you what world you might shape with it. But ask yourselves; do you really wish to serve under a government that slaughters millions of its own to start a war killing countless more, over resources we have never needed?

“Good luck.”

Env Do Jhyl Dri is the next in front of the camera.

“My name is Env Do Jhyl Dri. My home, Asteroid-F8767NR, was occupied by Elysian forces many years ago. I watched my family and friends suffer from them. I was falsely arrested for the murder of an Elysian guard.”

He begins to speak in Telbau now.

“When I first came here, I was fit and healthy. I was able to run miles and lift great weights. I was in the peak of health. Though I was sent here for a crime I did not commit, I was capable of productive work terraforming this planet, for people I hate. On the whim of cruel guards, we were ordered to fight for entertainment. We could not refuse. We wear collars that can freeze us or hurt us. They put collars around us like dogs. But I fought and I was capable of beating those who tried to harm me. I was a prime specimen of Tel humanity.

“But now, I move; I cough blood.” He coughs into his hand to demonstrate and convulses again, finding it harder and harder to stop. 

“Env Do Jhyl Dri?” Aanya's voice asks from off screen.

He looks up at those behind the camera. “It's alright. I can continue.” He holds his hand up to the camera to catch the blood he has coughed up and then begins to speak in Telbau again.

“I shake. I faint. I feel nausea. And why? All because I saw the official prison doctor. I know not whether I will live or die, but it matters little: what matters is that is known what was done here, so they can find the strength to fight it and defeat this vile experiment!”

He pauses, seeming unsure how to end this. “Thank you.”

Next up is Imogen Childs.

“I'm assuming you've heard the core facts several times over by now. New Prima, the bioweapon. You'll know what our government was willing to do, and how you've been lied to. My name is Imogen Childs. I can confirm it's all true.

“But that isn't what I want to say.

“I've spoken to people who… heard this stuff and stuck by the Empire regardless. Because it was all they'd ever known, and they felt at home there, couldn't see where they'd fit in if everything changed. If this rings true, I'd like to address you directly.

“Loyalty is easy. So is complacency. So is - so is shutting your ears and carrying on with your life. The thing is, though -”

Imogen glances down and clears her throat.

“You don't get to opt out of this. I'm sorry, but you don't. Even if things just carry on - which, let's face it, they probably won't - you'll still be ruled by these people. The people who infected thousands of us to win a war. The people who committed a massacre to justify that war.

“The victims of New Prima were civilians like you. They were just living their lives. Their only mistake was being born under a government that decided those lives didn't matter all that much.

“How long until your home is what stands in the way of what they want? What then?

“You have two options. You can ignore everything you've heard, and continue as normal. Or you can stand up and help prevent them from throwing any more of us away.

“Tell me: is it really a choice?”

There is a beat of silence as Imogen stands still as when she started. Finally, Aanya speaks.

“Harper?”

Harper looks at the papers in their hands and then moves over to the front of the camera slowly, deliberately, and starts to speak.

”Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

"Thus spoke a little-known third-century dramatist upon constructing a scene of wild theatrical improbability. Since being assigned to the Redemption facility, I’ve been increasingly surprised that this descriptor was applied to anything other than prison.

"Upon arriving on this grim chunk of cosmic debris in spacefuck murderhell, it became readily apparent that the sickly ironic name belied a welter of sins. Guards gleefully committed acts of violence, abuse and all-round sadofuckery that would have achieved them a life sentence in the same facility they were running rampant in had these acts been aimed at free Elysian citizens. As is, we may as well have been stripped of our basic humanity along with our freedom - then left at the mercy of dangerously unbalanced psychopaths granted unprecedented and inexplicable freedom to realise their every sick desire.

"Case in point - Winter Castell. Now, Castell was a relatively representative specimen: vicious, sadistic, with a mind about as narrow as their deep-seated power complex was immense. I was hauled up in front of them for a graffiti-ing the prison walls - and after a couple of smug bouts of psychological torture, they stood before me and levelled a revolver at my head. When I refused to blame another prisoner, they had me publically shot in the foot. They then followed it up by then shooting my friend in the foot, after she had the temerity to voice her outrage. All of this, in response to non-violent misdemeanour that would have ordinarily been worth perhaps a day in solitary. All of this, to prove a point.

"Of course, this was before all guards were authorised to use lethal force against anyone who so much as spoke out of line. At that point, Redemption ceased to be a prison, and became a war zone. But don’t get me wrong - it was anarchy from the outset. Order was sustained by brutality alone: a gang-ridden dystopia fueled by cruelty, self-interest - and blood.

"When we, the prisoners, rose up and fought, it wasn’t a riot. It was revolution. Not vengeance, but emancipation: the casting-off of the shackles of oppression. It was freedom from the thousand routine tortures we’d come to expect from our jailors - and once the blood-dimmed tide receded, on the opposite shore lay liberation. Real redemption, and not the sick joke that had been perpetually flung in our faces.

"I guess I’m not expecting this to resonate. According to your average arch-conservative Joe, prison is supposed to be hell - and the fact that there are widespread flaws within our criminal justice system is enough of a liberal truism to scarcely conjure up a dribble of pathos.

"But here’s the thing: prison isn't even the issue at hand. Prison the by-product - it's the grimy effluvia of a colossal, spewing machine that crushes the individual into atoms; it's consequence, not cause. You want to know why people commit crimes? Look no further than the government they serve. Look no further than the Council that disowned most of them from birth.

"I grew up off-planet, on a slum station packed full of the sick and starving. Lawlessness was more or less the byword. People like me subsisted on crime. It was, in many ways, very much akin to prison. Everything I ever needed, I had to take, including food, water and basic amenities. Everything, I ever gained, I had to fight to keep. And when I stole from society at large, and clawed my way out of the mire, I did so in the knowledge that society had doomed me from the outset.

"That’s the result of governmental neglect. However, at the end of the day, endemic child poverty pales in comparison to the horrors the Council can unleash when they elect to be proactive. Because not only are the government a collection of apathetic, small-minded plutocrats - they’ve also been actively lying to us for years. And it took intervention on the part of felons for us to learn this.

"All this time, Elysians have been told that the Tel were to blame for genocide. This kept them angry, focusing on the sins of a scapegoated civilisation, rather than the ineffectuality of their own government - numbed to the ills of autocracy. This kept them pacified, to a certain extent - whilst paradoxically baying for the blood of a distant foe.

"This, as it turns out, was pure fantasy.

"It was not the Tel who were responsible for the remorseless destruction of New Prima; it was our own Council. They chose tactically: New Prima was an area was rife with dissent - and what better way to provoke hatred against the enemy than to manufacture an atrocity for which they could never be forgiven? The Council authorised the development of their new weapon, and then turned its full destructive capabilities against its own people. In one fell swoop, they terrorised the Tel, and radicalised the Empire - thus proving that their viciousness was ever focused, not just on rival nations, but on Elysian citizens.

"If there is one thing the Empire has never tolerated, it’s opposition. And they are indefatigable in their efforts to create new and inventive weapons to cement their rule.

"So we learned, to our detriment, at the Redemption facility.

"Redemption, as it turns out, was not merely a miserable hellhole where all dignity goes to die. It was also a medical experiment.

"Over time, we noticed that certain inmates were beginning to sicken. They would exhibit flu-like symptoms, becoming weak and unfocused. Gradually, they would begin to deteriorate - coughing, choking, drowning in their own blood. Dying. I’ve watched good, valiant people fall prey to infection - watched as liberation turned to grief, and grief to determination.

"Because here’s the thing. Turns out, if you grind people down at every given opportunity - if you subject them to every brand of torture in the book, and then throw the book at their heads to boot, then tell them they’re dying of a hitherto unknown ailment at the behest of a distant cluster of totalitarian fuckheads - then the bulk of them won’t just keel over and cry uncle. Or, if they do, they won’t forever. I am Harper Lockwood of the Coalition of Political Prisoners, and I am sick of subjugation. So, fuck this disease. Fuck every attempt to downplay the multitude of wrongs that have been inflicted on all of us.

"It has been a number of months now, and our newly-liberated colony has become a house of plague. However, we will not die until you learn the truth.

"We have evidence - proof incontrovertible - that this was done to a purpose. If you are listening to this video, you will also soon have access to a plethora of data that display beyond all doubt that this was organised at the behest of the Elysian government. But, to summarise. Prisoners would be sent to Doctor Greco - sociopath and state stooge - only to be injected with an uberpowered, amped-up virus for which there is currently no known cure. They would then be released and covertly monitored, in order to map the trajectory of this hand-crafted malady. All this, on a systematic level; approximately 1500 of us are infected.

"It gets worse. Almost a year ago, a ship carrying a new batch of prisoners crashed on one of our stations, cutting off all communication lines to the outside world. De-encryption of the data from this ship brought us to a single, sickening conclusion: it was programmed to crash from the outset. This could only have been an inside job. Someone wanted us isolated from all outside interference.

"For those of you still struggling to piece it all together, here’s what happened. The Elysian Council, not content with the measly planet-obliterating megaweapon it had test-driven on New Prima, sought to create yet another means of suppression and conquest. Namely, a slow-acting bioweapon to aim against the Tel. And true to form, the testing blow was levelled at both Tel and Elysians alike: the dregs of society, in a far-flung prison colony nobody cared about.

"Not for long, though. For all we know, they could be sending it out already.

"If your first instinct is fear, then I don’t blame you. I’ve been afraid for longer than I can remember. Fear is a natural response when you’re living at the mercy of an autocratic dictatorship with the power to obliterate you and your loved ones in one fell, thoughtless swoop.

"Prison is fear. Prison is that sick, desperate feeling of helplessness as you catch the eye of a belligerent guard; it’s the nauseating starburst of anticipation before they send a shockwave of agony through your collar, and it shadows every step you take.

"I am so fucking sick of being scared.

"Because fear is also what sustains the Elysian Council. Fear is what keeps us all imprisoned - and helplessness is the first tool of any dictatorship; it’s practically Autocracy 101. We at the Redemption facility overcame our fear - and, in doing so, overcame our oppressors. Now, we can stand together, Tel and Elysian alike, in order to take up arms against the cancer at the heart of the Empire. Through peace, we can stand against despotism. In fact, it’s basically tremendously freaking imperative that we do.

"War requires willing combatants. Let’s not be instruments in this concert of tyranny. Let’s rise the hell up, and kill the conductor.

"Because, hey. If a small, unwashed collection of lowlife felons dying of super-tuberculosis in spacefuck oblivion can achieve redemption, then what can two entire civilisations do?

"My guess is, anything.”
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