The New Resistance
By Barbara
Disclaimer: They ain't mine. I wish they were, but they belong to someone else.
******************
When the Taelons came, the world changed. The knowledge of the existence of aliens caused a fundamental change in religion. You should have heard them, trying to explain how we were God's chosen even though there was other intelligent life out there. My life didn't change too much though. I had always suspected alien life existed, so there weren't any fundamental changes to my beliefs. And the coming of the Taelons didn't make the world much different for me. I still took the Metro to work, still did the same old job. The Taelons didn't exactly change most places. The only change I noticed was the addition of the Taelon embassy to the DC skyline.
Sure, I heard the Liberation broadcasts and propaganda, but who didn't. I didn't think anything of them. There are always nuts out there opposed to anything new. As for the reports of Taelon atrocities, well, I lived in DC. I had seen politics before. People always try to paint their opponent in the worst light. I'm not saying something might not have happened, but I've seen people take one incident and blow it completely out of proportion. So I had no reason to trust the reports. Of course, that didn't mean I was blind. You probably don't remember V. It was a TV show in the 80's where a group of seemingly benevolent aliens come to Earth. After a while, scientists are arrested for conspiring against the Visitors. It starts to remind you of the Jews in 1938 in Germany. And then martial law is declared. Turns out the aliens need humans for food. I remembered that show, and while the reason was rather stupid, the aliens had fooled most people. I wasn't going to be a sheep and put on blinders to the truth, but I hadn't seen anything to make me think the Taelons were truly evil, either.
Then, Doors ran for president. He didn't seem as paranoid when he spoke, and his message did seem to make sense. The Taelons did seem to be involved in a lot more things than they were just a year ago. I wasn't certain I wanted my country dependent on aliens I didn't really know much about. So I was planning to vote for Doors.
And then came the attempted assassination. People reacted stupidly, there's no other word for it. There was no body so why did everyone assume the assassin was Liberation? Sure there were Liberation people there with guns, but they only pulled the guns out after the President was shot. I thought they were there to protect Doors. I could see the Liberation not trusting the Secret Service.
Then Doors's son came on TV and announced that his father was behind the assassination attempt. I've never heard anything so ludicrous in my life. The polls show you're going to win, so you try to kill your opponent? I was really wondering what was happening at this point. Then I remembered that Doors and his son had been on the outs for years. Their reconciliation was in all the papers- after all Doors was running for president. That certainly didn't look like a son who loved his father. There was something going on there we didn't know.
But the declaration of martial law threw me. That's when I realized something wasn't right in this country. I don't think the President had ever declared martial law before, not even in the 60's with all the rioting. Add in the arrest of suspected Liberation members, things weren't right. Come on now, if Doors was behind the attempted assassination, I don't think it was a conspiracy by all his campaign workers. They were even arresting people who had only apparently contributed to the Doors campaign. And that's when I realized, there weren't the actions of a democracy, but of a police state. In a democracy, you don't use the military to arrest the opposition. That is the action of a dictatorship.
There couldn't have been a widespread conspiracy to kill the president, someone would have talked. A conspiracy that big would never have lasted very long. So the reason for martial law was so they could arrest people who were anti-Taelon without having to charge them. And who were the arresting officers? Volunteers. People who had joined supposedly benign Taelon-funded groups, and were now running around acting like they could do whatever they wanted. It reminded me of stories I'd read about the SS in World War II. The Taelons had taken our youth, and manipulated them, and turned them into a military force with no one noticing.
And then it hit me, the entire thing had been planned to bring the Liberation out of hiding and destroy it. Which meant Doors was right. The declaration of martial law proved it. The Taelons were the ones really running this country. I wasn't going to stand for that. I believed in the ideals of this country, and the president had just shown me who was really in charge with his declaration of martial law. Even the revocation of martial law didn't deter me. The president had only revoked martial law because he didn't have enough evidence. The Taelons weren't ready to openly run the country. But I knew the truth, and I wasn't going to stand for it.
I talked to a lot of my friends, and they agreed with me. We couldn't let this country be destroyed without trying to do something about it. So we decided to form our own resistance cell. We made contact with what's left of the Liberation. Apparently, a lot of them disappeared during the crackdown, never to be seen again, but there are enough left to help us. The Taelons made a BIG mistake. They tried to get rid of the Liberation, and in the process showed a lot of people the truth. Those people aren't just going to stay on the sidelines. From what I've heard the new Resistance is bigger than the Liberation ever was. The Taelons showed us the Liberation and Doors weren't lying, and we're not going to stand around and do nothing.
As for Doors's apparent endorsement of the Taelons, he was their prisoner. He would have said anything that would have kept him from being interrogated and betraying the other Liberation members. I don't believe he's really working with the Taelons.
So, what made you join the Resistance?
***************
END