No Time For Compromise

We are the Resistance, the last hope. We are the Bohemians. We had a choice, we broke Free. We wanted it all - to be a shooting star, a tiger, to defy the laws of gravity. We wanted to be champions. I am Meatloaf; this is our story. Well, mainly mine actually, but it's of the Bohemians in general.

I don't know how old I was when I realised I was different, but I was young though, very young. And then I met Brit, well, he was Tom then. He was two years older than me, and different too: a rebel, my one link to something resembling individuality. Then Globalsoft came after us, and we ran. We went underground; then we were found by the Bohemians. They took us in – you could never meet kinder people. And they were like us: rebels. So, we became one of them, lived like them, hoped like them, waited like them. For two years, we hoped, and waited for 'The Dreamer' who was prophesied to save us. Save the world. So, two years on is where our story really begins.

Brit and I were out searching for items with which to make instruments. Instruments are our one tenuous link to the past. The past we are trying to revive.

We were in the tunnels, and of course Brit wants to go to the surface. I know we'll find more stuff up there, but it really isn't safe. He looks up through one of the manhole covers, 'It's pretty clear up there Meat!'

Of course it LOOKS clear; it's what the SP's do best – hiding. 'Are you sure the cops have gone?' I know I'm being picky and overly cautious, but we can't afford not to be. The second we're found we'll be arrested, tortured, killed, and god knows what else.

Instead of answering my question Brit tells me, 'I'm going up to the surface!' At times, I swear I could kill him, he's all act first, think later. Or, more often than not, not think at all.

'Well, be careful!' He starts to climb up through one of the covers, 'I'm coming up too!' If he can go up, so can I. I know he won't pay any attention to my warning, so one of has to be on the look out. I'm not being completely altruistic though - the lure of going up to the surface is so strong – we rarely go up, it's too dangerous. I can't really remember the last time I went up, and I want to breathe fresh air; it's stuffy and claustrophobic living down here.

'No! You are so stubborn!' he yells at me as I reach the surface.

'Yeah!' I yell back, it takes two to be stubborn, and I don't see you taking any care up here. But, I will grudgingly concede that it does appear, for the time being to be safe. And any way, 'But that's what you love about me!'

He ignores my comment, and changes the subject, 'So, what we got?'

I sort through the bag of bits we've picked up, 'Not much. It's mainly plastics and hydrocarbons.' And it doesn't look like we're likely to find much more up here, there's an old and rusting broken van, a falling down fence and some other junk. Nothing useful. 'But, we got a sheet of tin that we can wobble. Some pebbles that make a nice rattle, and a bottle we can blow across, and a piece of wire to twang.' Things that make noise! Or, if played right, make music!

'Sweet, sweet music!' Oh yeah! Sweet music! 'If only we could find another bit of wood to bang against the one we've got.'

'Yeah!' That would be nice, really nice. More music! Oooh. What's this? 'You naughty boy! I think I've found a piece of wood right here!' He's insatiable. Not that I mind of course.

'Oh yeah!' He's got that glint in his eye again. Looks like that van'll come in handy. 'No. Your job is to take this stuff back to the Heartbreak.' Or not.

'But Brit!' Take this stuff back to the Heartbreak? What is he thinking? He won't look behind his back. He's needs ME to do that for him.

'No. I travel alone.' I give him my best wheedling look, one that normally gets me whatever I want. He looks slightly guilty, and his tone softens, as though he's patiently explaining something to a naughty child. 'You know that. How can I do the things I have to do if all I'm thinking about is you?'

Well, if he puts it like that. But… 'Sometimes I wish you didn't care so much.' I glare at him, 'Sometimes I wish we'd never even heard of 'the vibe'!' Okay, well maybe I don't completely mean that, but it's bloody hard work missing him. It's very stressful – I never know if Globalsoft will catch him, whether he'll come back to me.

'You don't mean that!' The way he says it makes it sound like I've personally offended him, cut him to the core.

'No, I suppose not.' I say guiltily. 'But I miss you so much, baby – it's tougher every time you go away.' It is, I thought it'd get easier, but it doesn't. When he goes out on his own I keep thinking that each goodbye will be my last to him. Hence why I came with him today.

'I'll be back – I always come back! And one day, I'll bring the Dreamer with me!' Always. Sure, he's always come back so far, but he can't promise that he'll always come back. He doesn't know if Globalsoft have got any further in their search for us. None of us do. But the Dreamer…. At times it seems like he's the Dream. Nothing more than fiction, or our imaginations.

'Sometimes I think it's us that's dreaming. Perhaps the music really did die.' I've been wondering this for a while. We've been looking for the Dreamer for two years, the others for much longer than that. And the Bohemians before them, the ones that got caught, or died. It seems that ever since the music died there have been Bohemians waiting for a Dreamer. And I really don't think he'll come. Not after all this time. But, hope is all we have, without that we're lost. So I, we, have to keep on hoping that maybe we'll be saved one day. That maybe the vibe does exist after all.

Brit smiles encouragingly at me, 'It's only sleeping, babes! It's in a deep, deep sleep. It won't be me that wakes it – but one day, I'll find the man who can.' I hope so. I really hope so. 'And if I could just find it, that lost vibe, then we could share our love with the whole world! And you know what we get then, don't you babes?' Of course I know what we get then! Who doesn't? 'We get it all!'

But who is the Dreamer? Almost as though he's reading my mind, Brit starts to tell me about him. He's told me about him before – it's an old story, but one I like to hear all the same. 'Adventure seeker on an empty street, just an alley creeper, light on his feet.' That's us, and the Dreamer, he's a young fighter screaming, with no time for doubt. Full of pain and anger, unable to see a way out. 'It ain't much I'm asking, I heard him say, gotta find me a future, move out of my way.'

'Listen all you people, come gather round.' I dunno why I'm saying 'all you people' – I'm only talking to Brit, 'I'm gonna get me a game plan, gonna shake you to the ground.' The one piece of advice I remember being given so long ago – 'Knock 'em dead.' I prefer my phrasing though. 'Just give me what I know is mine. People do you hear me, just gimme the sign.' Just a sign, any sign that the Dreamer's going to come, that we aren't living on a futile hope. 'It ain't much I'm asking, if you want the truth.' Brit grins at me, and I know I'm right, he hope's not lost. He's still got it. 'Here's to the future, hear the cry of youth!'

Brit laughs at me, like he knows I haven't given up hope just yet. 'I'm a man with a one track mind,' he sighs. That's definitely true, given his stubborn nature. 'So much to do in one lifetime.' Yeah, find the Dreamer. But I think what Brit wants most is to live, and that is enough to fill a lifetime. That longing makes him the man he is – stubborn, with no time for compromise, and wheres and whys and living lies.

'So I'm living it all.'

'Yes, I'm living it all.'

'And I'm giving it all.'

'And I'm giving it all.'

Yep, we live it all, and we give it all. We give our all to life itself, and we give life to the other Bohemians. I slump against the van, still dejected by the fruitlessness of hope. Brit walks over to me, and whispers to me, 'I want it all and I want it now.'

I was about to suggest that if he wants it now, then the van might be suitable, but we were interrupted. There were voices approaching from behind us, a guy and a girl. Thinking they were GaGa kids, or the SP we hid.