HONG KONGSPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE OF THE PAN-ASIATIC STATES
Sunrise. The vibrant business centers of Hong Kong had all but closed-down at this hour. In the sleepy areas of the Kowloon of the metropolitan, apartment complexes seemed to be but specks of light amidst a dreary night, like man-made stars gazing at you from the horizon. A dismal mist seemed to blanket the distant harbor.
A gendarme transportation van punches through the empty roads at the reckless speed anyone would make driving through an empty expanse. The sirens of the vehicles are silent, and of course, they rarely were. Parking at its assigned police precinct the crew of the operation disembarked to go home to their respective state-assigned families. Emerged from its tinted doors were those members of the Asian Federal Gendarme, the People's Police, who had carried-out specific tasks that night, those tasks which by their nature are not known among even the policemen of the precinct. These men, these zealous crusaders of communism, covered their faces with masks that hide their humanity. Those who talked about them and their craft to even a single individual seldom lived to tell another.
"Cantonese brats..." muttered one of the so-called "People's Policemen".
These wolves of the Pan-Asiatic States, still wreaking of the scent of gunpowder, were, in fact, members of the Ministry of State and Public Security (MSPS), selected personally by the Supreme Commissary for their dedication to the Asian Communist Party. They would, however, consistently branded themselves (if there ever was gossip about them) as handpicked members of the Asian Federal Gendarme, so that if any fault were to occur, it would not be placed on the incompetence of the Ministry. As in any black ops task force, dead agents were branded as rogue civilians: mercenaries, elements of the Yakuza, or simply common criminals.
Despite the false facade, truly, these messiahs of death were not the masterminds of the scapegoat initiative which had secretly blanketed the Pan-Asiatic States in order to mobilize its citizenry into a more ideologically-inclined position - they were the scapegoat themselves. In times of terror, justice was nothing but a complex array and system of scapegoats designed to compartmentalize any doubts or investigations that could be made by the public if something were to go... terribly wrong.
Crickets emanated from the nearby park. The smell of smouldering ruin, broken glass, molotov cocktail stains, and juvenile sweat could still be sensed to have been dispensed upon the streets of Hong Kong, an aftermath of the nearly tireless protest of the Cantonese democratic factions in the city.
The last operative to exit the police van wore no mask, opting instead for a set of aviators and a trenchcoat. A slender woman with blue eyes and an Outer Mongolian accent lit a cigar, took a seat across the precinct building. She stretched her arms and looked to the sky. Not a bird was in sight. Nothing but the orange eminence and cool winds of the Pearl of the Orient could be felt by her bleached skin.
In the distance, a small convenience store began to open its doors. A bald old man in his 60s wiped away the dew in his glasses, put it on, and lifted the corrugated iron door which veiled the shop's exterior. The creaking was of the rust between the iron and the slider was the only sound that could be heard within its immediate radius. Smiling, the senior turned on an old radio set by the counter. The set began to broadcast a press statement by the Beijing government regarding the events of yesternight, addressing the bellicose proclamation of the Canton Democratic Forces, and belittling the provocations dealt by "the unruly black-clad mob".
The North Chinese woman put-out her cigar, listening closely to the words coming out of the radio. The voice of the Supreme Commissary of the Pan-Asiatic States echoed from the hollow store. The woman's ears slowly began to ring, her senses began to dim, and she could not move her body. All she could do was listen to the voice, hear the distant waves crashing upon concrete harbour pillars, and reminisce in trauma the unspeakable acts she had just committed.
SUPREME COMMISSARY REN CAO SPEAKING
... 五千年前我们和埃及人一样面对洪水 ...
Five thousand years ago we faced the flood like the Egyptians...
KOWLOON GHETTO5 HOURS EARLIER
♫ THEME (OC) ♫
"Alright this is it boys, get out, get out, get out!" shouted the woman.
Vans, motorcycles, and half-tracks stopped in and around an entire portion of the Kowloon Ghetto. Beneath the starless skies and clandestine moon, it was here that the State held little to no control over the going-abouts of society. In this space barely 7 city-blocks large, people were free to think for themselves, be with whom they choose, and live the way they want.
This made its inhabitants dangerous to the majority of the city and the People's Federation. As soon as the protestors in the city-centers dispersed, so came the rolling of the mist and the coming of the "peacekeepers". It took no longer for the so-called Democratic Forces to scatter than it did for the order to seek and destroy "oppressing doubters" of Party ideology to come directly from the Supreme Commissary himself.
SUPREME COMMISSARY REN CAO SPEAKING
... 四千年前我们和古巴比伦人一样玩着青铜器 ...
Four thousand years ago, we toyed with bronze like the Babylonians...
"Lock and load. Remember, boys... We will resist the terror - together! Crush the traitors! Make an example of these Canton brats! Comrade Abra and Comrade Ren have made it clear - these people are not humans. Our targets are in open collaboration with the Americans, the Bengals, the fucking Germans! Kill every last one of them. Kill your targets and do not be discouraged by collateral damage!" No less than a few minutes into the operation, several gunshots could already be heard coming from one of the buildings. The woman in the group went to investigate the gunshots, tailing the squadron which was infiltrating that building.
The aesthetic of the men of the Federal Gendarme was expository - the stomping of the boots and the storming of the men into any building meant that before the night was over, somebody was going to die. And now there were dozens upon dozens of troops storming the Khrushchyovka architecture apartment complexes which littered the Hong Kong skyline like cancerous tumors.
"Kapitana Chambui!" exclaimed one peacekeeper, holding Machine-Gun behind his neck. "Yes?" replied the trenchcoat-clad woman who seemed to be in charge of the entire operation. Before her was set-out the corpse of a child less than 7 years in age. 7.62×39mm bullets tattered his chest and thighs. "We thought this kid was pulling-out a gun on us—" "I don't want to hear it. Into the truck it goes. No questions asked, no answers given." Medics came to retrieve his body for disposal not long after.
The gendarme knocked hard and loud. Opening the door, a half-dressed Caucasian man with a frightened face. The authorities pointed their rifles at them, shining the flashlight attached to their rifles back and forth the man's one room apartment. In the corner of his eye, one of the intruders spotted something. Another half-dressed man - and nobody else - hiding underneath a desk.
"This won't do. What's your name, sir?"
"G-gavrila.. Alesnarovich."
"You understand that this act of degeneracy constitutes a crime against the Igarashi System, the People's Federation, and the constitution? Where's your Assigned Wif—forget it. Forget it. The punishment is death. Open fire!"
The peacekeepers unleashed a volley of unrelenting bullets, cleansing the room of its degeneracy and filth. Each wound represented the sheer fury of the Pan-Asiatic States' authoritarian ideology - the passion of the Pan-Asian peoples to purge and the will of the established government to destroy.
SUPREME COMMISSARY REN CAO SPEAKING
... 三千年前我们和希腊人一样思考哲学 ...
Three thousand years ago we pondered like the Greeks...
More doors, more knocking. The dispatched peacekeepers of the Pan-Asiatic States pursued, akin to young lions, anyone who looked remotely foreign, had fair skin, spoke Hokkien or Cantonese. Death of the dark fur spotted with pale crosses that slipped ahead of the little lions in the vast mauve sky, palpable and alive, their inalienable right to vengeance against the Western imperialists and their associates.
A great folly tore the gendarme men from their humanity and swept their souls off into the abyss, precipitous and profound like dry torrent beds. Here and there, unhappy lamps in windows taught them to despise the dark. In each magazine spent was the purging not only of the political soul of the ghetto, but of the anxiety of the man who had just taken a life. The perpetrators had been told who to kill, why to kill them, and what their death signified in the eyes of the revolution. God would not forgive these men, but perhaps Mao would.
The thrill of murder made certain that for every designated target eliminated, ten more would be dragged into the afterlife with them. Collateral damage was not a byproduct of this cleansing of the ghetto. It was the aim. Men, women, and children; old and young; rich and poor were all slaughtered relentlessly. This operation was not simply about taking-out the subversive "democratic forces" of the Cantonese. This was about sending a message. Cajoling death preceded the men on every curve, offering her pretty paw and, by turns, lying flat with a jarring clamp of jaws to throw me velvety looks from the depths of puddles. Indeed, they were resisting the terror together. What could a man possibly want more other than power over his fellow man?
SUPREME COMMISSARY REN CAO SPEAKING
... 两千年前我们和罗马人一样四处征战 ...
Two thousand years ago, we fought around like the Romans...
A vast pride swelled in the chests of the peacekeepers, that passion to feel themselves standing alone, like lighthouses or vanguard troops, facing the army of enemy that camps in heavenly bivouacs. Alone with the greasers in the infernal engine-rooms of great ships, alone with the dark phantoms that rummage in the red bellies of bewitched locomotives, alone with the drunks fluttering, battering their wings against the walls. Man and machine became one.
Bullets whirred through bookcases, chinaware, and furniture. In one room, an alleged meeting place for revolutionaries where the flag of the so-called "Cantonese Democratic Forces" hung, several people were beaten to death by the stocks of rifles. Manifestos scattered upon the floor, blood and beer both sticking everywhere they spilled. Counterrevolutionaries and innocents were killed indiscriminately, side by side.
SUPREME COMMISSARY REN CAO SPEAKING
... 一千年前我们和阿拉伯人一样无比富足 ...
A thousand years ago we were as rich as the Arabs...
Some of the peacekeepers began fervently looting some of the rooms. Jewelry, memorabilia, cash - all were free for the taking. Nothing was off limits, so long as they didn't get caught. The apartments of foreigners were particularly sought out by those in the rear of the raiding columns. Foreign often meant rich. Hong Kong was, after all, not only a business and diplomatic quarter but also a special economic zone.
Residents sat in fear: many hiding, some running away. But, there were quotas to fulfill and names to cross-off the list.
"Mr. Go, you are charged with anti-Soviet crimes," calmly explained one peacekeeper to a shivering Cantonese man in his pajamas. The peacekeeper's accomplices cocked their rifles and shot him dead.
The raid would continue throughout the night. From the Kowloon Ghetto, the perpetrators moved on to the Western residential quarter. American and German citizens residing in Hong Kong were brutally separated from their belongings if not outright shot dead. The troops unloaded at several points and subdivisions on the outskirts of Kowloon, knocking on more doors and firing more bullets wherever they went. Helpless victims screamed in vain, to no avail. The murderers were the State. The murderers owned the help. But of course in the eyes of the murderers, they were liberators and the dead oppressors that lay on the floor were not deserving of help anyway. No sin was greater than the sin of ethnonationalism, the very idea of identifying as a Cantonese person and not an Asian was abhorrent at best.
SUPREME COMMISSARY REN CAO SPEAKING
... 而现在我们在和美利坚人一较长短 ...
And now we are talking with the Americans...
Worse was to be and identify as an American. The "Anglo-American Imperialists" had already been stratified socially and culturally within the special economic zones themselves. Welfare bureaucracy would often take its toll on any white westerner who identified with any of the Pan-Asiatic States' rivals.
On the trip to the foreign quarter, many gunners in the death squads were slowly running out of bullets. But they weren't going to head back for more. While many of the peacekeepers deeply regretted wasting their munitions, the sun was nearly up. They would make do with what they had.
"P-please, I've got a wife and children b-back in the States, I mean, America - please, I have money, I can pa-" Bang. A single shot from a revolver put a big fat hole through the American's forehead, blood oozing from the wound and staining his business attire. On his table, peacekeepers found chips and dollars. It seems he intended to go out gambling. The men in the platoon scraped the room dry of anything valuable, proceeding to the next house.
SUPREME COMMISSARY REN CAO SPEAKING
... 五千年来我们一直在世界的牌桌上,而我们的对手却已经换了好几轮了。 ...
We have been at the world's poker tables for five thousand years, and our opponents have changed throughout the several rounds we have spent playing.
"This way! This way! I saw 'em running this way!" exclaimed one of the team leaders, pursuing a target into the sewers. They searched every corner. They checked every grate. They turned every stone. Searching for almost an hour, and unable to bear the stench of the underground, the peacekeepers gave up, returning to their posts. The team leader reported back to his commander.
"Status report, comrade?" asked the North Chinese commandress of the team leader before her.
"252. We expect more including collateral damage."
"And the 253rd?"
"Got away."
"Command said not one of them should escape our clutches but, oh well, mistakes happen. We'll strike him through this list anyway. Don't tell a soul, of course."
"Yes, Kapitana," exclaimed the team leader, preparing to move out.
"... Hold on. Just one more thing."
"Yes, Kapitana?"
"The one that got away. I forgot to ask, what was their name?"
"Bah... What was that uhh... Right. Some kid. Joshua... Joshua Wong I think.
What's the harm a kid could do anyway?"