Unanswered Testimonies

Picture a busy main street of a modern city; cars driving all along the street. Businesses opening for another Tuesday. People slowly walking into stores as either commuters or browsers like the incoming tide of the ocean. Even nature seemed in synced with this morning system. However our attention should lay upon a coffee shop; a rather humble coffee shop which stands in a sharp contrast to the nearby towering office buildings.

A collection of people have gathered at this coffee shop: from two teenager sharing a coffee with two straws dipped in, a married couple with a stroller containing twins, a pair of senior citizens slowly watching this day awake, and possibly lamenting about how fast paced modern society is compared to what their "youthful days" were like, but instead focus your attention to a young man; maybe only in his early twenties watching with an abnormal amount of curiosity in his drink before him. Suddenly he gasped. A woman with two children had darted in front of a busy intersection, and had almost been hit.

This young man with a rather slender face gazed around the street with slightly bulging blue eyes like two young children gazing out across a landscape covered in snow. Rising his beverage to drink. Which when it collided with his lips a foamy mustache appeared on his face. With a rather childish smirk he quickly extended his tongue to his upper lip and collected this foam into his mouth. However even a cursory glance would reveal something "different" about his face when compared to the average man; he had no facial hair to speak of on his face. As he finished his beverage he gazed longingly into the cup, but sighed; he had ran out of his coffee, but went up to toss the cup into the trash. He was of a rather medium statue, and could easily blend into an average crowd of people. With a quick, and brisk motion he stood up.

This young man started walking. With his hands buried in sweatshirt pockets he went around a corner, but was interrupted suddenly.

"Excuse me sir, but I must request you remove your hood from atop your head, and I must see your I.D," a rather unattractive solider requested of the male in question. Fumbling around in his wallet your character pulled a wallet, and from there after produced his I.D.

Handing it to the solider the man spoke, "my name is James Essex…" His sentence was interrupted by the soldier's banal voice.

"Yes; I can read," the soldier stated with an unnecessary belittling tone, "now then your name is James Essex, and you are 23 years old."

As the solider gave the Identification back to James who quickly placed it back into his wallet James was given one more word from the solider, "now then remember to remove your hood from atop your head!"

Doing as he was told James quickly removed his hood, and continued to walk along the sidewalk. Nothing seemed too different between this city besides the soldiers walking all along the streets of the city. Why if their were no soldiers walking around this city one could easily mistake this place for any large city found throughout the world. Birds whistled. A child would cry from time to time. A car might blast loud music from its speakers, but overall the normal sounds and smells one associates with a large city could easily apply here.

The thoughts of James drifted from topic to topic quite like that of a teenaged boy does with girlfriends: he thought of money, of politics, his life, his current joblessness, and finally to the current state of his country.

A recent Civil War is the major difference setting apart this city from your average one. While most wealthy countries have a stable government-for warfare is not conductive for a strong economy this country has seen much civil strife, and had the scars to tell of it. Entire towns had lost hundreds of men, villages wiped cleanly off the map, tanks roaming cities, sons without fathers, and bonds of families destroyed by what? A war to create a dictatorship, no, not a dictatorship, but a "democracy of the people."

Upon the surrender of the republic's forces the republic was given an official state funeral, and was replaced by a sham of democracy; a place where one only elects a man to receive a salary, and represents where you come from in title only. The president is the true head of the country, and delivers all the important laws of the day.

Who was this President? This usurper of democracy? A humble, and rather unremarkable figure named Paul Frankston. He was a general in the opposition's army, and quickly rose up the ranks, and finally placing himself as the President for Life. Rumors stated that Paul Frankston was a man who just appeared in a position of command, and was granted this by his true superiors. There is some potential reasoning behind this for Paul was a great public orator, and processed a mystical control over the spoken word, but yet seemed to profuse a relative lack of textbook military knowledge.

Sighing James marched on, and seemed to be in a relative state of auto-pilot; slowly walking, staring with a blank gaze, and only seeming to react whenever he might need to make a turn.

This area he walked seemed like a path rarely taken and used only whenever one needed to hide quickly, or to be used by muggers. Mangy rats with raw, unexposed skin covering more of the rat than hair. Trash cans littered the road acting in shape contrast to their purpose to hold trash. A piece of cut iron that which could make a prison weapon. A few dropped cigarette butts. However a poster lay down on the ground. James being curious briskly lifted up and read it.

"Join the National Liberation Front and Restore the Republic! We are the Hope and Voice for Resistance!"

James let a hard scuff before throwing the poster back down onto the ground. While he hated this "democracy of the people" he saw any longer struggles could only lengthen the bloodshed of the world. Besides what has this National Liberation Front done to restore the republic? He met a communist man who fought for the N.L.F. and he clearly did not want a true republic. And what if there was a victory against the government? Would simply the general with the best army proclaim himself President for Life like the current one, Paul Frankston? And then what? Would there be another National Liberation Front? When that man's regime is toppled then what? Another autocratic dictatorship maybe? Could this vicious cycle ever be broken?

James turned a corner; a turn that would forever change his life. Imagine a collection of people standing before James, and holding hands with each other to form a human chain across the street, and standing parallel to them an entire squad of riot police holding shields and batons. With no signs of fear this squad seemed set to potentially break this crowd up with extreme level of brutality. Then a man who was out of eyesight for James came forward, and it was non other than the man who had stopped him earlier today, and asked for James's I.D. This man walked onto a box placed on the street for him, and taking a microphone in his left hand shouted the following order, "if anyone wishes to preserve their life. I must request that you leave this area at once! I am authorized, and fully willing to use force if the need is strong enough! Do you understand me?"

No one broke rank and instead they clamped their hands harder together, and shouted in unison this slogan, "down with Frankston! We demand the Republic is brought back!"

What seemed like only being bark at the protesters as the solider ordered the policemen back, but then a far more sinister force appeared, or rather lack of force, but more of a thing. With a roar of treads rolling across asphalt. The sound of glass breaking below the monster like the crunching sound of bones. The clank and clink of a machine moving approached before suddenly with a deep imposing, and murderous rumble, and then a sudden grind to a stop.

One smaller student opened his mouth to yell a song lyric, "imagine all the people living life in peace!"

With repetition of this lyric the protesters chanted the same lyric over and over again, but this was rather short lived.

A featureless, imposing, bleak tank showed itself before the protesters. With its long barrel designed to fire upon enemies this tank seemed like a monster from the fiery pits of hell. With a deathly grey color acting as a sort of warning to anyone foolish enough to resist this deadly machine; this tank acted as a machine to control the masses. Gasps broke out amongst the protesters, but their resolve remained strong. Maybe these simple protesters; most of whom looked like a collection of student revolutionaries out of a student revolt in the year of 1849 could live on as martyrs of freedom?

With a simple downward stroke of his arm the solider commended to death roughly fifty or so college students. A cynic would look upon this scene and scuff at the wasted resources of these students; for after all these men would simply enter any even larger college of martyrs for democracy, and these boys-clearly who are smart enough to attend college gave their lives to attend this mock college of martyrs.

A more ideological view point would point out that these boys were trying act like a catalyst to kick start an entire revolution. For what was a country without a people to rule? The idealist would state that these men would start the breaking apart of the house of this country, and start its decay.

With a slow and paced lowering of its cannon the tank responded with an emotionless shell. At this point James turned away from this carnage, but the yells and screams of those boys told him everything he needed to know. One voice might cry for a lover. Another yell might call for a friend. Some wanted their mothers to comfort them in this hour of darkness. However no one could answer these calls. Unanswered testimonies to family and friends; only heard by about two dozen police officers, and would most likely be forgotten fairly soon by these men. James turned back to the scene and was greeted by the horrific picture of men lying on the ground seeming to await death. Some of these condemned students tried to assume a prayer position and ask for remission from God. As the police officers descended upon the fallen students like vultures to a slaughter one spit upon the dead body of the smaller student on the ground who had a prayer like position, and said in a mocking tone, "and no religion too." For any surviving boys this could very well be their last day, but for the police officers and the soldier it would probably just be another Tuesday. However James would remember this day; the day that would forever change his life.