OOC: Yes, stil finishing off this much delayed introduction I'm afraid. Tournament specific RP to follow.
“What did you mean by ‘us’?” asked Alexsandr, looking at Jasmine.
“Mm?” asked Jasmine, being dragged somewhat unwillingly out of the reflective period of consideration she’d just entered into.
“Just now, when you were talking to Jos about any trapdoors he may or may not put in to the system he may or may not be about to be asked to make.”
“What about it?”
“You said ‘us’. ‘What about us’. Who is the ‘us’ in that sentence?” pressed Alexsandr, fearing that events were about to overtake him.
“Well, the four of us, of course. Five, now, I suppose,” she added, nodding at Jos.
“Are we an ‘us’?”
“Alexsandr, I know you didn’t
start this, not really. None of us did. But, well; look at us. We’re all here, and we all share the same ambitions for our country. We reject the powers in charge. We reject this future totally.”
“I’m sure plenty of people do, but if they can’t do anything about it I’m not sure what you expect five strangers to achieve,” whispered Alexsandr, conscious of who may have still been around them in the café. After all, four people had so far joined in on his previously private table already.
“Sure, but what do they all lack?”
“Sorry?”
“Think about these groups that I’ve been investigating and trying to find out more about. What do they all lack? The reason I’m here in Bjarnarey in the first place was to give them a voice.”
“Okay, with you so far. And so, this ‘us’, is...”
“Us. We’re that voice. We can provide the unity they lack. Ironically, the one thing that The Party is shoving down the throats of the people is the one thing that all these dissenting voices are missing: unity. The poor, mislead, consenting, blinded population have all been told that what this nation needs to keep us all safe from a perceived Sargossan threat is unity, and they’ve voted for The Party with that in mind for decades. And they’re about to vote away their rights forever in order to keep seeking that safety. But at what cost? It just so happens however that that unity is exactly what we need to topple th-“
“Woah,
topple?!” interrupted Alexsandr, a little louder than he meant to.
“Sure! You can’t tell me that that isn’t what you’ve been working towards? Showing your face in public again, saying not-quite-the-wrong things. Trying to poke your nose in places here and there...?”
Alexsandr looked at Jasmine’s face and pondered. He’d never really thought too hard about the end-goal of what he was doing. He wanted more freedom; sure. He hated what The Party were doing; definitely. He wanted a better future for his country; absolutely. He flat out despised Orion Lund; almost certainly. But, the word ‘topple’ had seemed to cross a threshold in his mind. Whilst he was working on his little schemes and secret texts with Sebastian, he guessed it had all felt a long way away. Easy to chip away at an impossibly big wall and say you tried, without ever having to actually expend too much effort. A token attempt to topple a wannabe dictator. But now he’d been taken off-leash. Jasmine was offering him a ladder up and over the wall, or a battering ram to go straight through it – it wasn’t entirely clear which yet – and he felt himself losing his nerve a little. There were big dogs on the other side of that wall, after all.
“I mean...”
“C’mon, Alexsandr.”
“I guess I just thought we could, y’know, squeeze the edges back out again.”
“Except I’ve seen this happen throughout my career in cases abroad,” pressed Jasmine, nodding respectfully in Jos’ direction, “there is no ‘squeezing the edges back out’. Not with people like Lund. There’s only one logical conclusion to achieving what you’ve started tentatively doing, and that’s the ‘r word’. However we go about it.”
“And that’s... up to us?” asked Federico, chiming in.
“Why not?” asked Jasmine, flatly.
Federico and Alexsandr shared a look.
“What we need is unity,” continued Jasmine, “each individual voice is scared of speaking out, into the darkness; a darkness where you never know who is listening. But if we can give them someone to talk
to, or even just know they’re not the only group talking, I think we can achieve something.”
“You think
we can start a rev-... an ‘r word’?” asked Stina, curious.
“Of course. Look at us. We all can have a part to play, without ever actually looking like we’re doing all that
much. Not really. Not suspiciously. I’ve covered these situations before, and we have the makings of what you need to succeed and make a regime change stick.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for a start, you need a regional situation that won’t really care what we do within our own borders. The Party are hardly best buddies with anyone after three decades of closed borders, so; tick. We’ve got mass frustration in significant clusters of society, and those that aren’t frustrated yet soon will be when they realise what this vote actually means for them, so; double tick. We’ve got a pending economic crisis if what Jos has heard is to be believed – I’d like to see The Party’s message of Unity work when people in the
Polar Islandstates start having to queue for bread and soup - so, treble tick...”
“But what about
us?” interrupted Alexsandr.
“If we want to start something, we
can,” said Jasmine again, attempting to convince the assembled figures of her point by moving round the table in turn, “maybe we won’t finish the job ourselves, but we can provide that unifying figurehead that kicks things off. I can use my contacts to find and put these groups of disgruntled people in touch with each other. I’m a recognisable face. People will trust me. Alexsandr; you’re a god damn hero to the people, you could be the next president if you were ten years younger. The people will do whatever you asked them to. Federico; you can dispel anything anyone says about East Külmsaar that doesn’t ring true to you, and besides which, you’re about to be the national team manager! They’ll love you, after Iosef you will have more or less a free rein with the people for a long time. Stina; you are key to this. You’re in daily contact with fed-up and dissident elites, no? The business managers, the owners, the economic drivers of this country. They won’t want to see their wealth slip away if they think The Party can no longer work in their favour. They can provide plenty of pressure when the time comes. And Jos; oh my, you bring
so much to the table...”
“Except that Tuskol-“ started Jos, before Jasmine held her hand up to silence him.
“...except that it’s all pending for now, understood,” she conceded, “but that doesn’t ruin my point. Fate, or whatever, has brought us here, together. I think we’d be idiots to waste that.”
The four of them looked at each other. They had to concede, Jasmine had been very persuasive. It wasn’t quite an election-winning speech, but, it had been a while since any of them had heard anyone say out loud that things should, no,
could be different. Not just in terms of wishing life away, but in an achievable and tangible way. Maybe they really
could oust The Party, before it was too late.
“So, then what are you suggesting?” asked Alexsandr, feeling a little like he was being talked into what his subconscious had been trying to talk him into for months. A liminal gate had been moved through, his perception forever changed for the journey.
“That we start a movement. Right here, right now.” Said Jasmine, thumping her hand on the table and attracting rather more stares than intended. “Although we do still need to fill some gaps in our knowledge base still, so maybe we should resolve to see if we can do that, first.”
“Such as?” asked Stina.
“Well, we’d need a military expert for a start.”
“A
mil-”
“Calm down, calm down,” cooled Jasmine, “I’m not suggesting we march on the Ensign Tower. I just meant someone with knowledge of how the military itself works. If it looks like enough of the navy are locked in step with The Party no matter what then we’re dead in water before we even have the chance to be dead in the water.”
There were a few more nervous glances at that last comment.
“I’m not talking civil war here, of course, I just think we need to know how many units will choose
not to act if The Party asks them to. That’s all it it takes. Enough units to refuse to do what they're told and mutiny. Then of course,” continued the former television journalist, “we’ve got to get knowledge from inside the police force, for similar reasons, and I’d like to know more about what’s going on inside the OO, too.”
“Well that’ll be near impossible,” scoffed Federico, overcompensating somewhat.
“Not necessarily,” countered Jasmine casually, “spies and officers like that need to have a certain lack of empathy to be able to turn in people that trust them, or even people that they themselves care about. There will be plenty of zealots, sure, but do yout really think they’re
all going to hold their employers in such high esteem that there won’t be
any turncoats? Nah, there are plenty that will be in the OO for their own benefit only. We just need to find one. And then of course, we need some strategy.”
“Strategy?”
“Sure. We’ve got the symbols, now we need the strategy. Alexsandr, Federico and I are well-known enough to provide faces that the people can rally round – although, Federico, I guess in your case it’ll need to be a bit less explosive – but we don’t actually have someone who can plan how we actually go about this.”
“I thought... I thought that’s what you were doing now?” queried Alexsandr.
“Well, in a way, but I’ve never actually run a revol-, an ‘r word’ on the ground, have I? Only observed them. Jos?” she added, looking at the man from Ruland.
“Well...” he answered, screwing up his face and shaking it from side to side slightly.
“Exactly. So we need someone who’s going to get their hands dirty. Someone who can do the illegal legwork whilst we stay clean and say the ‘right’ things at the ‘right’ times. A grass-roots politician or activist or something. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind an actual politician getting involved,” added Jasmine, setting her face in a determined way, “that would give what we were talking about some legitimacy. Alexsandr and I are well known, but we’re not actually politicians. Someone to look to as a ‘future’,
any future, would help enormously.”
“So, how do we get all those? That so-“ started Federico, before he was interrupted by the doors to the café flying open with a crash so violent it seemed to sever him from the rest of his sentence, the words just hanging in the air.
A figure stood there, half-silhouetted in a shabby pea coat, assuaging Alexsandr’s immediate fears that this was an OO raid, and then strode purposefully over to the café counter, smiling as he went.
“I don’t believe it,” smiled Jasmine, “of all the people...”
“Why, who is it?” whispered Federico, twisting mid-lunge, unable to see the man’s face from his seat.
“A
future.”