The Rising Dawn

Chapter Four - The Plans of the Ruler

“How quickly things go wrong,” the ruler murmured. “Ah, Matthew, did I make a mistake?”

“A mistake?” Matthew was shocked.

“Look at what I did for them!” he cried. “Look at what I changed! They had no future at all and I gave them hope. That wasn’t enough?”

“That wasn’t enough?” Matthew echoed.

“No,” the ruler slammed his hand down. “It wasn’t.”

The plan had been delightfully simple. The ruler had developed a colourless, odourless, tasteless gas. It had taken him years of work but he had succeeded. He held in his hands the elixir of death.

 He selected the people to eliminate from the equation. He installed the gas, inserted the timers, and awaited. On the exact moment, two-thirds of the world’s population died after a moment of pure and perfect happiness. Gone.

 It was his greatest achievement. It was generous, merciful, relaxed. But it hadn’t been enough and he knew it. He knew he was going to have to act quickly, to shake the world before it could find its feet.

 So the world’s leaders suddenly found that they were taking orders from a man they didn’t know anything about and not one could understand how they came to have desks in the outer office, so to speak. The ruler slid into place like the last piece of a puzzle.

 He confiscated everything. He disabled electric lights and heating. He took all “modern weapons” away. He removed everything that ran on electricity, and everything that symbolised an age of technology. He took the people back centuries in one week.

 Of course, there were downsides to this glorious plan. Communication was now lax. If he wanted to speak to the people, he either had to write notices or truly speak. Transport was slower without cars or planes. Industry failed for a while.

  The ruler created City Lock-Down. It was a scheme that planned to regulate and repair the earth, by monitoring all components. Wasn’t that how they did experiments, anyway? You monitored everything and changed only what you wanted changed. It was logical.

  The cities were divided into segments, with walls and barriers between. They all had purposes. The people outside cities remained outside cities, policed by his people at all times. The farmers had their farms. The foresters had their forests. It worked.

 Except that people found ways to cross the barriers and city people wanted to leave their cities and farmers wanted to directly sell their goods within the city walls and people hoarded technology and it looked set to collapse. But he had repaired it. He had enforced the law.

 Not everyone was happy with it. Not everyone liked it. Some things were still wrong with it, even after twenty years. But the world was starting to repair. Things were starting to heal. Maybe soon he could start to relax City Lock-Down. Maybe soon farmers could enter cities with trade permits and city people could leave with the right papers…maybe…

  Or maybe not. He needed the world to work. You have to be tough to keep things right. Repair one bad thing and another one pops up in its place, grinning and pulling silly faces. You had to fight to the last breath before you gave an inch. It mattered.

 His plan was working. It really was. With careful regulation, the rivers and seas cleaned themselves. The plants regrew. The planet evolved for the sake of survival. He could see it when he stepped outside the city. He could taste it in the fruit he ate.

 Humans, too, were repairing their species. The Hard Years – those first five – had taken them back to their beginnings. Few remained of the spineless, galumphing mounds of fat that had perambulated around on wheels, unable to walk on their strength-less legs. They had grown used to survival.