Prompt 1 Response
They came for the arenas first. As I knew they would. Which was why I let them continue, get bigger, more public. Which was why I stacked them with the most bloodthirsty and ruthless-mechs I was not certain I could control unless I convinced them of a larger cause.
My gladiators wanted to see the city burn. I wanted that burn to serve some larger purpose: clearing out the deadwood, bringing an end to rationing. An end to inequality, where the haves do not realize the injustice that we, the have-nots, have felt every day bear down upon us until it has become, in a sense, part of us. Like an extra layer to our armor.
Ironies were not lost on me: that in the arena, I sold my pain at a higher price and higher visibility than I had as a simple miner, when I was doing, in a sense, service to my society. The rich enjoyed our suffering, our death. Combat was an entertainment for them.
For us, it was training, inuring ourselves to pain, honing techniques, practicing with our modifications. They grew softer, sitting in the stands, while we grew stronger, right before their eyes. Grew stronger, funded, supported by the creds they paid in admission, bets they lost. Money that meant nothing to them, that they could throw away on a game, on a few cycles’ entertainment, was the difference between life and death to us.
By the time they realized the danger, of course, it was too late. We were strong enough that even a combined military assault did not end us. Instead, it forced us underground. But we had prepared for even that, our purpose the stronger for what we had all seen of our Council’s ‘justice’. The spilt energon of dead mechs counted more when spilled by soldiers than in the arena itself. We all knew this, at some level too deep to explain. One was a contest, one was vicious slaughter-an attempt to end us, end our very beings. Stamp out ‘the problem’. Yes. Now we were a problem. No longer entertainment. All because we had made the very obvious point that our weapons could be trained at other targets than merely other scum like us.
As long as we kept it to ourselves, it was entertainment. How dare we, they asked, how dare we attack another class? And then they attacked, their class striking against ours. Proving the point of the lesson, or merely that they were incapable of irony.
So they assaulted. And, their greatest mistake, they brought recorders to broadcast the whole thing on live holovid. Their narrative was, of course, shutting down the lawless. I have watched their footage, their reports, endlessly, and this I have learned: actions speak louder than words. Their pretty newsbot could trill and gush all she wanted deploring bloodsport and even mocking the less-than-aesthetic appearances of some of us. What mattered was what was shown. And what was shown was slaughter.
It galvanized my followers, made them realize that fighting as individuals was a quite different thing from fighting with a unit. It made them realize they wanted a leader.
And it made the soft-sparked sympathetic to us, watching us die. Another form of entertainment, this thinly packaged as ‘news’. They saw us die, pitifully, and they thought it was unfair. That we hadn’t deserved it.
I rather suspect we did. But again, that is not the point.
I looked around the underground chamber my fellow mining mechs and I had hollowed out, decas from the arena. The space is crowded with mechs, still shocked, still stunned. And still pliable. Actions speak louder than words, but sometimes…words are the action.
I stepped forward and began to speak.
My gladiators wanted to see the city burn. I wanted that burn to serve some larger purpose: clearing out the deadwood, bringing an end to rationing. An end to inequality, where the haves do not realize the injustice that we, the have-nots, have felt every day bear down upon us until it has become, in a sense, part of us. Like an extra layer to our armor.
Ironies were not lost on me: that in the arena, I sold my pain at a higher price and higher visibility than I had as a simple miner, when I was doing, in a sense, service to my society. The rich enjoyed our suffering, our death. Combat was an entertainment for them.
For us, it was training, inuring ourselves to pain, honing techniques, practicing with our modifications. They grew softer, sitting in the stands, while we grew stronger, right before their eyes. Grew stronger, funded, supported by the creds they paid in admission, bets they lost. Money that meant nothing to them, that they could throw away on a game, on a few cycles’ entertainment, was the difference between life and death to us.
By the time they realized the danger, of course, it was too late. We were strong enough that even a combined military assault did not end us. Instead, it forced us underground. But we had prepared for even that, our purpose the stronger for what we had all seen of our Council’s ‘justice’. The spilt energon of dead mechs counted more when spilled by soldiers than in the arena itself. We all knew this, at some level too deep to explain. One was a contest, one was vicious slaughter-an attempt to end us, end our very beings. Stamp out ‘the problem’. Yes. Now we were a problem. No longer entertainment. All because we had made the very obvious point that our weapons could be trained at other targets than merely other scum like us.
As long as we kept it to ourselves, it was entertainment. How dare we, they asked, how dare we attack another class? And then they attacked, their class striking against ours. Proving the point of the lesson, or merely that they were incapable of irony.
So they assaulted. And, their greatest mistake, they brought recorders to broadcast the whole thing on live holovid. Their narrative was, of course, shutting down the lawless. I have watched their footage, their reports, endlessly, and this I have learned: actions speak louder than words. Their pretty newsbot could trill and gush all she wanted deploring bloodsport and even mocking the less-than-aesthetic appearances of some of us. What mattered was what was shown. And what was shown was slaughter.
It galvanized my followers, made them realize that fighting as individuals was a quite different thing from fighting with a unit. It made them realize they wanted a leader.
And it made the soft-sparked sympathetic to us, watching us die. Another form of entertainment, this thinly packaged as ‘news’. They saw us die, pitifully, and they thought it was unfair. That we hadn’t deserved it.
I rather suspect we did. But again, that is not the point.
I looked around the underground chamber my fellow mining mechs and I had hollowed out, decas from the arena. The space is crowded with mechs, still shocked, still stunned. And still pliable. Actions speak louder than words, but sometimes…words are the action.
I stepped forward and began to speak.