Democracy vs Corporatocracy

Chapter Forty: Twenty Years Of Rebellion

June 10th 2061

It was a cold night in Providence. Thousands of people were sleeping in tents in alleyways because they could not afford proper housing and their jobs paid them barely enough for food and clothing. In one alleyway alone there was one thousand people and they were all very cold, tried and hungry. Ever since the Corpos took over, the poverty rate had risen dramatically. The Corpos had made it so only they got the fruits of everyone's labour and America was now on the brink of Civil War. The government was made up of representatives who were merely corporate puppets, public healthcare and education was extinct in America, college education had become a privilege that half the population could not have, healthcare was next to impossible to receive and the police barely ever did anything about criminals. Some people had given up and simply sought to survive. Since a rousing speech made many years earlier, these people had been referred to as "scardies". Many others still held out hope and sought to change things. These people were passionately referred to as "dreamers" by the public. over the last ten years there had been protests galore against MegaCorp, mainly because a rebellion had revealed their misdeeds in New York City. But it had gotten even worse, when a high ranking MegaCorp executive was released from prison after just a year upon being sentenced to ten years for child abuse. Albert Krieger was now a high ranking executive in MegaCorp and was seen as a cruel dictator. While the people still voted for who represented them, MegaCorp controlled the government from behind the scenes and most of the laws passed were ones that benefited the Corpos. The people truly despised Krieger and wanted a change. But they felt there was little they could do. That was when the people in one of the streets heard the sounds of buses. One of the children peered out of his family's tent to see buses appearing on the roads. These buses were painted a dark black and were barely visible. There were at least ten buses, all of them large enough to carry fifty people and there were men with rifles inside. The door on one of the buses opened and a few people came out. There was a woman among them in full soldier gear and she was looking right at the child. People in the tents started waking up and coming out to see what was going on. The buildings that the alley separated were each as long as a football fields and had MegaCorp's logo on it. All two hundred of the people came out of their tents to see the five soldiers. Two of them were in their thirties, the other three were in their twenties however. A twenty six year old woman with the rank of Private was among them and she had a familiar looking flag stitched on the upper sleeve of her uniform. Although it was dark, the people could see the top blue half, the bottom red half and the white star of the Freedom Banner of Democracy.

That was when they realised that this was the Freedom Democracy League, the anti- corporate resistance group who were trying to ignite a Second American Revolution and take control of America. The woman's name was also sewed onto the chest area of her uniform, it was PVT. J. Libertad. That was when one of the men realised who it was and said "Its Julia Libertad, sister of Marcus Libertad!" The people gasped in shock as she removed her helmet, goggles and bandana to reveal her face. She had short hair that had been dyed blue, tanned Hispanic skin and a small star tattooed on her right cheek. Julia then stepped forward and said with pride and courage "Every day you go of to work and labour for twelve hours straight, with no breaks and barely any payment. Then you come back to your tents, have barely enough food to keep you alive and go to sleep. This is the cycle that happens every single day here in Providence and countless other cities like it. But not in our home. Where we are from you work for up to eight hours and no more than is needed, you get paid a fair amount and you get a roof over your head. All of you have a choice: You can stay here and continue to be exploited by the Corpo-Fascists who have ruined our country, or you can join up with us and start new lives with the Freedom Democracy League. So what do you choose?" The people looked at her with hope in their eyes. They had all heard about the League and how they had taken down many corrupt Corpos across America. They had also heard about how the League had attacked Corporate properties more frequently in recent years. They had raided Corpo warehouses and stolen food, water and medical supplies and then distributed them to the people who needed it. They had attacked Corpo boarding schools and exposed how badly kids were treated there. The League had also prevented a multitude of conflicts breaking out overseas by sabotaging a gas weapons deal almost twenty years earlier. The F.D.L also recruited many people to their cause and rumours of the much better lives they lived had spread to all fifty states. Realising that she had a better chance at life, a widowed woman took her four children and got on the bus. About half of the others quickly packed their essentials and boarded the bus as well. It of course took a few minutes for the rest to work up the courage and get on board as well. As they did so, they saw people from another alleyway entering the buses and getting strapped in for the long journey ahead. When all two hundred people living in the alleyways got on the buses, the doors closed and the drivers started up the engines.