by Randy Moffat
Hú was certainly ready to lead them. His new brand of “China first” and “down-with-the-wealthy” made him their voice. The irony resided in the fact that even as he preached against the corrupting influences of wealth he found money sticking to his fingers as he climbed the ladders to Chinese power faster than a howler monkey who’d seen a snake. Hú was increasingly ultra-wealthy—primarily from the graft and corruption he preached against. He was an secular Evangelical railing against the forces that led to poverty for his people and then driving away from the Chautauqua in a stretch limousine. Heaping the hypocrisy higher Hú now controlled many of the organs for state that were the very source of the people’s anger. In a practiced act of governmental slight-of-hand Hú now headed the very restrictive bureaucracy that prevented his constituents from traveling towards their dreams. It was a world class marketing job—spin doctors humping 24 hours a day to keep the scent of what he was doing from sticking to him—an effort worthy of any religion.
Signs on buses and billboards declared all over China that Hú was the people’s man of vision who spoke for them. Video images of him ‘helping’ people filled the news daily. A handful were not fooled, but the majority of people believed him. It was the naked power of advertising. Say it often enough and it enters the consciousness of the populace.
Say what you will, Hú had vision of a kind. Nine years before he had stretched his budget and begun to run special camps in the rural regions where disaffected young people were sponsored for jobs on public works projects that improved the rural infrastructure, making conditions nominally better for some of his audience of the destitute through the presentation of the occasional bridge or road created by the groups. The grateful locals were inspired enough by his efforts and apparent goodwill to send their sons and daughters in increasing numbers to more and more of Hú’s camps. Once in the work camps the youth themselves were organized in roughly military organizations and voted to wear a work uniform provided free of charge by the state that was brand new, padded and warm. For many the nicest clothes they had ever owned. They were provided ‘citizenship’ classes that included a wide curriculum of useful subjects but carefully included martial arts using hands, feet and non-modern weapons especially sticks, wooden swords and quarterstaffs. Hú had toyed with the idea of calling them ‘Militia United in Righteousness’ which was what the Boxers and called themselves in another age, but had opted instead for the simple label ‘Militia for Work.’ It sounded properly communistic and could not therefore be faulted by the Party. Eventually he was actually lauded by the party for raising interest in the party and particularly military service among the young. In its simplicity the communist party missed the fact that it was seeing the wrong party.
Hú now had a paramilitary built around the Militia that was loyal not to the communist party but to the notion of China and particularly to him. He had taken the time and effort to organize them and prepare them nationwide until the organization spanned the nation.
Recently he had stopped preparing them and begun to use them.
The Hú formula was surprisingly simple and successful. The Militia rank and file had suckled distrust for the nouveau riche and city people in their mother’s milk. Now Hú began to give them hard targets. He pandered to the government while building his own power. Order and discipline were the gods that the Party worshipped and Hú had the perfect instrument for providing it. During step one, he would identify an officeholder whose office he coveted. During step two his Militia members would then enter the town, village or city where the entrenched party functionary held his power base. The Militia wore civilian clothes and mingled with the locals. Any political meeting where the opponent rallied to show support however would find itself with a large number of strangers who showed up and began to disrupt the meeting—usually beginning with shouting, vocal derision and rowdy heckling. The police would be called, but they were specifically withheld for a time by the Minister of Public Security… busy elsewhere at orders of their Minister’s boss—who was Hú. Then came step three. The rules were defined ahead of time. After the verbal antics got people’s blood up an evaluation was made by the cool heads leading the Militia on site on what path to take.
The ideal path was where Hú’s opponent was clearly outnumbered by the Militia on the site. In that case his paramilitary would then simply pick a fight and the party opponents would be soundly beaten until hospitalized or put out of action. Then the Militia would disappear from the scene. The Militia teams got quite adept at vaporizing and moving out of town before the authorities showed up. Nor was this a random act. The opponent’s people would learn fear from the lesson. Support the wrong man and end up in traction. The Militia action committees had been hand selected to actually enjoy a fight too—a natural extension of their martial arts training where the most pugnacious were promoted to positions of responsibility. The kind of people who got a thrill out of knocking heads came out as top organizers. In the end any opponent of Hú was left without followers… who could still walk.
The next possible path was a situation where the odds were roughly even between the Militia and the local party members. In this case the Militia would still bring on the fight, creating a neat little riot. The militia would usually win these through surprise and training, but even if they got their rear ends handed to them the police riot squad would invariably appear at a key moment to step in and arrest the opponent’s men as the instigators of violence while leaving Hú’s people alone. Most of the press reports would of course present the image of the opponent as the originator of all violence. As a rule the opponents press would not be there to counter that reporting since that night a mysterious burglary would always occur and their media tools, printers and servers would be smashed into bits. The only word that got out after a fight like that was the Militia’s. In the end any opponent of Hú was left without followers.
Along the final path the militia would be heavily outnumbered by the opponent’s followers. Then the militia would still pick the fight after a few careful coordinating phone calls and some quick trips to the rest rooms to change into their uniforms. The police would appear immediately to break the potential riots up. The Militia for Work were already there. They stood for law and order while the other candidates followers rioted. The Hú party line was that they were there to help the police and the police would manfully accept their help. Arrests were made in all these cases, always the opponent’s people were 9 out of 10 of the detainees. Always the opponent’s were given maximum prison sentences or left beaten and fearful; depriving any opponent of his supporters. Hú lost few people. Hú was a hero. The opponent discredited.
In the end a Hú Militia supporters would win the election in question against an ineffectual opponent now totally bereft of a base or whose base was quivering in fear. The new Militia candidate would assume the opponent’s previous duties and power. The opponent was more often than not quickly found to be guilty of graft and corruption during their time in office after the Militia took over the office. The candidate and his close advisors arrested and put on trial. Methodically more and more offices were held by Hú men. Once in office the Militia candidates then implemented the Militia playbook of implementing serious graft and corruption. Because it was a new form of graft and corruption, not known to the existing investigative organs of state, and because the head of more than half those investigative organs were actually profiting from them, there was an understandable lack of effort to shut them down. Most of the money flowed back to the Militia. Hú’s reputation and influence grew along with quantum leaps as his access to money as head of the Militia grew.
It was clever. He had started at the grass roots rather than the top. It was a strategy exactly the opposite of the less agile Communist Party whose ancestors had begun as lean and hungry guerillas, but now were relative fat cats who had ruled without serious challenge for fifty years. Hú began by building the bricks of his influence and power from the
ground up rather than the top down. His influence had slowly crept from the countryside and into the cities like a rash. In the last year urban Militias had begun to spring up and seize positions of authority there too.
Hú’s latest national scheme had borne excellent fruit. The goal was infiltration of the Military by the Militia. Military troublemakers had suddenly been found and been identified all over China by Hú followers. The vocal zealots with Militia roots in the military ranks had stepped in to quell several occasions of indiscipline among the troops. Indiscipline implemented as protest by his followers. The previous Minister of defense had looked incapable of dealing with this and was relieved. Hú had stepped in and solved the problem almost overnight to the delight of the upper echelons of the party. His actions in returning perfect order to the People’s Army the primary reason he was given the temporary command of the defense ministry.
From outside everything about this appeared to be simply random events—unconnected to each other. Inside Hú’s inner circle, all was according to plan.
As he rode his popularity into positions of national importance and policy making however, Hú made an ugly discovery of his own. Not every place in the world was China. It was an uncomfortable feeling for a local thug made good like him. His local actions might now might have international repercussions. Repercussions outside China. Repercussions not subject to his press releases, not under the influence of his organizations and not subject to his whims. If dawned on Hú that those repercussions must be controlled. Like all charismatic power brokers it became necessary for Hú to find a rook in the great political chessboard to blame for any national policy failures to avoid having any of them attach to him. He needed a nation or a group outside China that could be called up as a bugbear, a bogle and some kind of monster of the Id that his constituents could loath and hate. For a rabid nationalist like Hú an extra-national enemy was a necessary piece of equipment to keep in his gym locker for chance scrimmages in the great game of nation states. He had been puzzled over who to chose. China had long focused on all foreigners. In the last twenty or thirty years of a world shrinking under the lens of the information age it had become more convenient to choose only a few. The Stars and Stripes made a brightly colored and seductive target for most people of the world to aim at. They were at least militarily the most powerful nation on earth and therefore an obvious choice to carry the label of potential enemy. The problem was that the formal government of China had preempted the Americans. The existing party already had the US in its sights as it chief public competitor. It was all talk of course. The public concerns with the US occurred at the same time they were letting them loan China plenty of money. Lots of money. When you hold that much of someone else paper you have to go carefully least the paper prove worthless because of some needless squabble. The existing party was heavily vested in the US and most other first world countries and Hú could not target them without risking the nation’s economic interests. Interests that Hú realized were his own interests. In this odd way then for Hú all the good demons were already taken. Hú needed something original. Something new. Then one day it had come to him in a dream. He needed a small group who were not part of any national consciousness and might elicit organized worldwide reaction. Who better than this newly created organization. This thing called TESS? It had clicked into place easily in the torturous turns of the corridors of the Hú mentality. TESS stood in China’s way. They held technology that was rightfully China’s. They must be guilty of conspiracy against China. Stealing China’s rightful knowledge as the new center of the world. TESS must go. China must have its technology back. Hú’s nationalists could hate TESS.
Of course there were barriers. TESS was legendary. When TESS first evolved the drive and presented its agenda of a goal for ‘all mankind’ the rural Chinese had been as enthusiastic and supportive of the leap in man’s capabilities as the rest of the world. Chinese boys dreamed of escaping their villages, joining TESS and going to Mars as did many of the young around the world.
After his vision Hú had mobilized his media drones and attacked that legend. His bullet points were developed and honed. TESS was filled with technocrats. Technocrats were the rich. Technocrats were the rulers of the world and wealthy. Look at your own lives. Technocrats hate you. They must hate you since you are poor and non-technical. The technology of TESS cost China millions, billions even trillions. Your money goes to support TESS while you starve. Compare and contrast. Look at the facts. They are haves and you are have-nots. Hate them based on facts. Hú’s facts. The spider’s in Hú media teams spun their webs and began the deliberate, systematic shaping of perceptions, manipulating opinion and directing behaviors. Hú studied all the message experts of history and tried to outdo them. He worked hard. The Catholic Church and their Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, the Nazi Reichspropagandaleitung, Wall street and FOX ‘News.’ Spin doctors and propagandists are all about repetitive themes and messages. You had to say the same thing again and again through the choke points of information controlled by the master hand on the wheel. Saying them enough times that others repeat the words without critique. People repeating things again and again makes them enter the mass consciousness where they become true, whether they are true or not.
Hú had actually smiled and reveled in the latest monthly comic book published in local dialects and distributed free in country villages and towns to young people in his name. The super hero in the comic, who looked suspiciously like Hú without his mask on was a friend to the poor. He was engaged in thwarting the collusion of rich capitalists whose tools in TESS were stealing bread from the mouths of the poor people of China. In the comics Hú along with clever village boys contrived to ruin TESS’ evil schemes through their noble actions. The boys joined the Militia for Work organization and supported the mighty Hú. In the Militia for Work the boys learned skills to thwart TESS demons. Diabolical TESS super-villains were no match for the teamwork of cunning boys and Hú. It was working. Current surveys showed a sharp drop in TESS support among Chinese country peoples. A movie was in the works. Hú had read the script. It was about Militia boys who fought against hopeless odds to destroy the dark forces of TESS by stowing away in their ships and blowing them up, sabotaging them or capturing them. It made Hú ‘s contrived nightmare into a daydream shared by millions. A dream of hate.
It was only in recent months that some people in positions of power inside China and the Communist party had begun to develop a sense of alarm and have serious doubts about Hú’s motives. They had slowly begun to put two and two together and solve the mystery of the Hú done it. They had been galvanized finally when one of their agents in the US had given them a clue to the mystery. A realization that Hú was leaning on a lever they had not seen before. Now those few awakening people had begun to appreciate that Hú’s lever ended in a smoking gun aimed at China herself.
CHAPTER 6
A Woo Wow factor—Leveraging the Petrovski effect at the quantum level
Lieutenant 2 Woo of the Terran Exploratory Space Service was squatting in an abandoned room in the Bat Cave complex next to the Mississippi river. Removed from where Antonin Petrovski was wallowing in contemplation of the biggest forces in the universe by less than ten acres.
Not that she spent much time thinking about Antonin. She had problems of her own. Woo was Chief of TESS communications and she had been getting her ass kicked by a technical problem.
TESS had begun as Quantum-Kink, a team working a classified skunk works for the United States of America they had been given the mission to build a means of communications that moved messages instantaneously using spooky action at a distance wherein a change in one particle resulted in an instantaneous change across any distance in its gestational twin. When the Q-Kink team accidentally stumbled on the Petrovski effect they had continued to study the notion of using the new device for that purpose for a short time. The problem was that the harnessing of the effect into space flight had quic
kly overwhelmed the small team’s numbers as more and more of their time went into the work surrounding space flight. Later they had all been wrestling with the resulting explosive growth and building the organization of TESS herself. There was little time for anything else. The communications work had originally envisioned reassigning personnel to it as needed. In reality it had been the task only of Woo and Rivera. Then later, it had been left to Woo alone. Finally it had been relegated to a simple extra duty for Woo. Sometimes great ideas become relegated to paperwork drills. Space flight was a global priority and growing fast. Woo was just as engaged as everyone else.
Woo took her duties seriously though. Even her extra duties.
With anyone else the problem might have languished in grayness indefinitely but as luck would have it Woo had a certain brightness when it came to communications thinking. She had sketched out a theory on paper. She tinkered with it over some months worth of lunches and dinners. Finally she had an approach she felt she could use. She realized early she still needed a drive rig to test it though. She waited patiently. As TESS exploded into a space service that was spending money and gaining new equipment at an ever increasing rate it was finally flush enough to make capital investments. It had begun equipping her ships with the latest materials and some older, less cohesive equipment was finally made redundant. She had gotten appointments and annoyed Bear McMoran regularly in her deferent manner urging him to let her have some of it. He finally felt free to gift her with the original Petrovski apparatus they had used in the original experiments right in the Bat Caves. She was delighted. He had ceded it to her and then promptly forgotten it.