A/N: This is a story that’s been kicking around in my brain for about a year. It’s time has finally come. Oh, by the way, I suggest you don’t expect regular updates. I’m not a regular person. LoL. I do, however, know where I’m going with this – I have the whole plot pretty much mapped out – it’s just a matter or writing the thing. Also, the title comes from the Sinead O’Connor song of the same name that inspired the story in the first place.

Fire on Babylon

Prologue

There was a revolution. The old president was exiled; a new Chief Citizen took his place. He wanted to reform the country, and abolished the military training camps of the old regime. The market being what it was, thousands were left unemployed. The Chief Citizen’s solution was to build monstrous factories throughout the country, put up cheap housing, and send hundreds of workers to each of them.

It was chaotic.

I remember when they told us we were free to leave the camp. The news of the coup had reached us a few days before. All activities were immediately suspended in favour of being ready to leap to the defence of our country and its leader at a moment’s notice. That was our purpose, after all, and it was with tense excitement that we contemplated the possibility of finally fulfilling it. Nobody talked much in those few days. We were all holding our breath.

In vain, it turned out. The call never came. The president, in a move that was widely regarded as cowardice by our COs at the time, bargained for his life in exchange for leaving the country and never returning. The transfer of power occurred smoothly.

The next day, officials representing the new government arrived at the camp. From a podium on a raised dais in the middle of the courtyard surrounded by our barracks, they announced our freedom. They quickly assured us that we didn’t have to leave the army and venture out into the real world if we didn’t want to. But, they added, our magnanimous and considerate Chief Citizen had already set in motion measures that would ensure our employment on the outside, should we choose to leave. Many did. I did. We filled out forms, signed our names. Then we waited.

While measures had indeed been set it motion, they weren’t exactly ready for operation. And so, when the government officials left that day, they took with them only those able-bodied persons with previous experience in construction work of any kind, as well as such things as plumbing, electrical work, and so on. The rest of us were left with the promise that our turn would come soon.

I don’t remember much about my life before the training camp, but I do know that any skills I carried over with me from that time would be of an entirely different sort, and thus wholly useless. I’d been a student, a university student, when I received the message that it was time for me to repay the debt I owed my country. I don’t remember what I’d been studying. Something to do with books, or at least a good deal of reading. But, because there were no books at the training camp, and because the things I’d learned could no longer serve me, any further details were quickly forgotten. I knew only enough to know that they wouldn’t need me at that preliminary stage.

Thus, I waited, we all did, in a sort of limbo, an inert liminal state in which we were all entirely powerless. The days blurred together, and I don’t know how much time passed. I didn’t know what was to come, nor when it would come, and with no real point of reference, I lost track of the days. I no longer participated in the daily training activities which had so fully occupied my waking hours previously. Occupied them to the extent that I hadn’t had the time to develop anything to fall back on – no hobbies, no real friends. With most everyone else in a similar state, a heavy feeling of idleness fell over the camp, and combined with the directionless anticipation. They weighed us down, solidified the walls that our former lives had erected between us. Our lives were effectively reduced to waiting. Waiting on our narrow cots in the barracks, waiting in the dusty courtyard…

Finally, on a dry, light-grey morning, trundling up the road with their caravan of government-issue buses, they came.