Pandora Red

Chapter 7

Chapter 5

Maria Chapman moved along the aisles of chairs in the busy windowless community hall and took her place alongside the other people who had come to hear John Rhodes speak. At the front, there was a raised platform that acted as a stage with a long table set back near the back wall. The audience included a wide span of ages, races, and gender, a typical selection of a London community.

An Afro-Caribbean man and a woman went and sat down at the table, as a white-headed figure adjusted a microphone.

The murmur of conversation in the hall hushed.

“Good evening, gentlemen and ladies,” he said and gave the audience a warm smile and applause rose through the small hall.

He held his hand up. “Thank you for coming, everyone. Today’s meeting is a forum, not just for me but everyone here. We are all affected by the marching globalisation and criminality that casts its shadow and we all need to be involved as one voice.” Rhodes took a sip of water and cleared his throat in the hushed room.

“It was the science fiction writer, Philip K. d**k, who said, ‘There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on me’.’”

There were chuckles from the audience.

“Today, we are living in a society that is on a slippery slope to a modern type of totalitarianism, where the governments are using deception and manipulation to create the society they want. One that deals in the trade of perpetual death through the Industrial military complex, a society that creates wars for profit.”

Rhodes put on a pair of glasses that hung around his neck on a chain and opened a sheet of paper from his pocket.

“I want to quote a speech by an American president, just several years before his assassination.”

Rhodes cleared his throat before continuing.

“‘We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.’”

Rhodes took off the glasses and returned his gaze to the crowd.

“Although J.F Kennedy was speaking in 1961, and referring to the system at the time in the US, I believe we are facing the same enemy today. They have not gone away. Closer to home, the surveillance culture is increasingly creeping into our lives. Nearly four million CCTV’s in the UK shows how far we have gone towards an Orwellian reality. The dark shadows behind government know they can’t bring in mass surveillance overnight. No, that would, or at least should, ignite a revolution. Instead, they wait, boiling the frog degree by degree over time whilst slowly dismantling our civil liberties, brick by brick. Soon, they may try to engineer some terrible event; the finger pointing at a convenient foe to advance their agenda. They’ve done it before, countless times, and will probably do it again.”

Rhodes walked up and down the stage, moulding invisible circles with his hands.

“All around the world, there is a sense that something is not right. Growing anger and discord is rife. We live in troubled and changing times where the gap between the populations and the global controllers, whether they are governments, corporate and banking interests, or the military apparatus that serves them, grows ever wider. There is an increasing suspicion, not just here in the UK but across the western world, that democracy is an illusion and a rigged game, designed to keep us in line within a system that benefits only those controllers.”

Rhodes had stopped pacing the stage. “Bush talks about the big idea of a New World Order but let us talk about the big idea of resistance against that order. What was it H.G. Wells said? ‘Countless people…will hate the new world order….and will die protesting against it.’”

He waved his hand in the air to emphasise his point and then took a sip of water from the table.

“We are pawns, fodder even, in a dangerous game that is not only making us all poorer but more worryingly, controlled and surveilled. Should we lie down and accept this? Will we wake up one day and realise we have allowed something terrible to happen…that we have allowed them to get away with it?”

Rhodes started to pace the stage again, looking around the room, mixing eye contact with gestures and a steady voice, raising and varying his tone like any good orator. He let out a huge sigh.

“So what does this have to do with us? We’re busy. Trying to scratch a living, pay the bills. Are we not already walking around free in a democracy? Free to do what we want, within the ever increasing laws, of course.” Chuckles.

“And what is Liberatus? What can we, as ordinary people with busy lives struggling to scratch a living, do anyway? So many questions, so little time.” A few murmurs of agreement from the audience.

Rhodes leaned forward, his hands clutching the back of a chair.

“My vision for Liberatus is a common cause that rejects capitalism, feudalism, and the interests that promote destructive globalisation. Instead, we look to the construction of local alternatives: an organisational philosophy based on decentralisation and autonomy. A system that is based on sustained communities, linked around the globe. A self-efficient, self-governing entity that is prepared to defend itself.

A community that is based on mutual respect, not a society where war seems to be the ongoing instrument to boost the economy. A system that is self-sustaining rather than sucking the world’s resources dry like a swarm of locusts. A future that benefits all of mankind and the planet, not the current Ponzi scheme of the stock market that we’ve all been suckered into!

And freedom! Freedom from being watched by the Global surveillance powers that do not have our best interests at heart. That is the way we need to move forward. That is the society we must have!”

He stood straight again, holding out his arms as if reaching out to the people in the room. There was a crescendo of rapacious applause from the crowd. Others had filtered in at the back and joined in clapping with the occasional loud whistle and shout.

A beaming Rhodes gave a wave and sat back down. A woman sitting at the organisers table leaned into her microphone, clapping along with the audience.

“Thank you very much and thank you, John Rhodes,” she said.

After the clapping died off, she turned to face a smartly dressed middle-aged Afro-Caribbean man on her left.

“Okay. Now I think we’re going to have a question and answer session, is that right, Marcus?” The man nodded and leaned into his microphone.

“Yes, if anyone has questions, please hold up your arm and we’ll take them one at a time.” A sea of hands rose and the session lasted a further thirty minutes.

Following the Q and A and a call for volunteers, a small group of people made their way to talk to Rhodes. Maria felt invigorated and excited. She had not felt this inspired since she had been involved in a human rights protest group in Amsterdam.

Maria squeezed through the bodies to sign up and then she had decided to talk to Rhodes himself. She had been profoundly affected by his speech and wanted to get involved. Everything he said had resonated with her at every level of what she believed in and she wanted to be a part of it.

“Hello there, did you enjoy the meeting?”

Maria turned to the direction of the voice and found herself looking at a short, chubby man with dark brown eyes looking pointedly back at her. His black hair was shiny with grease and mounded into a cow-lick at the front.

“Oh, yes, I certainly did,” she said, smiling politely. She made to move ahead through the crowd.

“Forgive me, I didn’t introduce myself,” came the voice again. “Nigel. Nigel Harrison.”

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I’m Maria. I was just looking to speak to John.” He shook her hand limply. “Please let me introduce you to him myself.”

Maria nodded uncertainly. “Right. Thank you.”

She followed the figure through the crowd.