"I can build anything." He said, Clive Clements looking just the slightest bit tired.
While he did technically have a diploma, it didn't mean very much when you couldn't get a job to employ it with. While the arrival of the Coalition as they were known had meant that he was now able to find work… as was everyone else, it being mandated by the conquerors. It also meant that finding the good work was much harder.
Clive wasn't an idiot, or so he liked to think so. That meant he recognized the symptoms, that the governments or rather those that had conquered the governments were making sure that everyone was employed, but only in the jobs that were not critical. If they died then it didn't really matter, it was not as if they were part of the supply chain regarding weapons productions, or tank production, or anything of the like. Or rather instead of them dying, it was them sabotaging things since of course, that was what people would do if given the chance... idiots.
Rather they were doing all kinds of civilian work, doing things like building apartments, building factories that produced appliances, and more. Each job being one that assisted the civilian sector in some way, which no doubt made life for the spies that much harder when they had nothing that they could actually infiltrate.
All of their military tech was being done off site in some way, or they were simply hiding it and not hiring any civilians for their projects. Honestly, Clive didn't know and he wasn't going to ask, that was the kind of shit that NOD picked you up for and this NOD was much more terrifying than some bald guy's NOD.
This one was everywhere and they had informants everywhere that they weren't. Which meant that if you wanted to do something stupid like maybe trying to find out where the Coalition was building their weapons, then it was highly likely they would be paying you a visit in the near future with concerns about your 'health'. Which was quite obviously code for the fact that they wanted to torture you very badly, and they didn't want to be kept waiting for longer than necessary. As it was Clive didn't know anyone who had been actually taken by NOD, but he had heard the stories just like everyone else.
The recruiter had looked at Clive and nodded, giving him access to the keys of the Construction Crane, the same kind used to build the variety of structures that the Coalition had specified needed construction in the cities of Europe. Notably better housing, better libraries, schools, and the like. If Cline didn't know better he could have assumed that the Coalition was trying in some way to uplift them as a society which was rather strange.
It was not as if they got anything out of them being… better. The people were still going to be people, Clive was still going to drift through life and it was all going to be… fun. Probably… He did like having a job, that was something new.
Regardless Clive was looking on at the screen in front of him, the screen that was telling him quite insistently that the placement of the initial base of the building he wanted would not fit. It kept beeping until a voice came out, "My friend, red shape means no building." The speaker systems in the cabin spoke out, a deep male Russian accented voice filled his ears.
"What?" He called, looking around to see if he could identify the speaker in some way.
There was nothing. As he kept looking, Clive considered that maybe he was insane, maybe the Crane was just some kind of device that made people insane, or maybe there was somebody there just watching him or something, making sure he didn't do anything wrong with the crane perhaps?
It was very creepy, the idea that a NOD operative was watching him made it worse.
Clive resolved to not screw up again in the near future lest he be terminated or whatever it was that NOD did to people who screwed up.
As Clive made sure that this time he set up the base of the building on the little square that had been provided for him, he promised himself to do his job properly.
"I command. I conquer. Tiberium." Clive said, his eyes staring listlessly over the vast deposit of Tiberium that stretched out before him. He was conquering it, one tiny little patch of it at a time as he built one extractor after another. Just… one extractor built piece by piece from the pre-programmed algorithm… one at a time.
It had been several months now since he had been assigned to this little patch of Tiberium, tasked with building extractors on top of the patches of green rock, making sure that each one was working before walking off again. His entire job being to very simply to look after a machine that chipped away slowly at giant green rocks that grew because that wasn't fucking weird at all.
Months now of just staring out at a field of green rocks, his eyes misting over as he grew too lazy to blink, his body on the very of giving up and declaring itself independent from its brain. It was just so damned boring. As if someone had simply decided "how can we torture someone to death without ever touching them? And then decided that suicide from boredom was the correct answer.
Every day consisted of the same shit from start to finish, building an extractor, making sure it worked, building another extractor, making sure that worked, building another extractor and so forth. Then maybe building another housing complex for the night so he could sleep in it, or more often than not, taking a piss out the side of the cabin before sleeping in his chair. There was even a portable outhouse at the back of the thing that incinerated his shit.
Hell, the Crane itself moved along a massive track system, the supplies coming in every few days from airdrops. That he had to pick up with his crane… always the fucking crane.
It was just so much damned effort sometimes, and this field was fucking enormous, hundreds if not thousands of hectares at the very least.
As he frowned slightly, his eyes glazing over, Clive turned on the radio. It was the only thing he had that counted as entertainment considering that if he lost track of what was going on, he could cause catastrophic damage to the excavators.
After some idiot somewhere else had layered everything in a sheet of metal instead of actually building an extractor, the rules had been changed and only radio was left as an option. He had wanted to strangle the bastard for that, whoever he was.
Clive looked up and gave a brief sigh as he turned his attention back to the Tiberium field and the little blocks he was constructing, the sounds of soft jazz in the background as he did so.
Clive was sitting inside his cabin, his contract to do the Tiberium fields over, this time he had been sent to Berlin to help them construct their new and massive skyscrapers.
As he sat in the crane's cabin, hand moving fast and accurately, a legacy of the Tiberium fields, his mind was wandering all over the place. More importantly, it was wandering to the recent spate of dead people. It turned out that NOD reacted very badly when you started sniping their men in the streets and naturally they were very very annoyed at that. Annoyed to the point where the entire city was turned upside down and the sniper was hunted down and made an example of in the main city square in front of the Reichstag.
The body was left hanging in the breeze, what was left of it, at any rate, NOD didn't exactly leave much behind when they were done with the man.
As for Clive himself, he didn't really care really. He was a model worker citizen now and he knew it. He made sure the construction was on time, he made sure that everything didn't collapse because of shoddy design, he made sure that the world functioned properly. Or so much that a world like theirs could function. It was not as if he had much time and effort to get things working properly, after all, build one thing, move onto the next. Who cared if one building was done properly, nobody had time for that shit.
He did what was necessary and no more.
He was an apathetic, he was the commander of his crane, he was a hitchhiker of the state.
Just letting life sweep him around on the current or whatever it was that life used to push people around. He didn't really care, he was happy where he was and if that was just doing nothing, well he was doing nothing and happy about it.
Why couldn't the insurgents realise that if they just stopped being idiots, they could actually find themselves in a happier place without all of the death and the explosions and NOD cramming their boots up their asses.
NOD didn't care about their feelings, not really, it was the problem that came when the idiots tried to pick a fight with NOD, something that generally resulted in them being torn apart. Yet for some reason, it just created more insurgents.
Or rather… not for some reason, there was a very obvious reason behind it all in the first place.
Seriously they had everything what did they need to rebel for? They had food, they had work, they had whatever was on television or in the cinemas or on that doohicky they called the internet, all their needs were being catered to, what did they need to rebel over?
Only there had been underground resistance groups that popped up, groups that were more religious than anything else which was rather disturbing in itself. Very obviously funded by Kane if the fact that their leaders didn't have any hair, but it wasn't that much of a black mark against them. It wasn't their fault their leader was an idiot.
Still, the people were gullible enough to believe that they could have a better life if they rebelled against the Coalition. The one that had very effectively eliminated poverty, disease, unemployment, and whatever the problems that their society had. Given them all a sense of purpose, created a network that meant everyone would be treated properly, and effectively offering the world to them.
Which only made it stranger when people thought that the Coalition was evil and believed these underground churches and the like. They were being funded by what was obviously a few very interested people. The kind of people that probably didn't care if all the insurgents died, they could always find more gullible people.
Clive didn't really understand the mentality really, the whole going extremist and crazy bit only really worked if you had something that was lacking in society. He had studied the history, he had studied the archives as part of his university education and it was very obvious that economics played a big role in the rise of hostile public groups that focused on social issues.
Which naturally meant for him that he couldn't understand why these people were revolting in the first place when everything was being provided to them already.
Or maybe Kane had worked out mind control somehow? That could be reason, couldn't it? Would explain why these people were so… terrible when it came down to it.
On the other hand, the idea that maybe they weren't people locally at all but were instead all saboteurs being sent at them from the US and the like. It would explain why they had so much weaponry at any rate, but not really explain why exactly they were doing all of this in the first place. It wasn't like the Coalition really cared if their actions over the last few years had been any indication. They just kept trucking along and doing everything as if it were perfectly normal, only with more blood and dead people.
As for Clive, he was perfectly content building things that needed building and enjoying the fact that his life wasn't being held hostage because he was crazy enough to try and pick a fight with NOD. He had a tentative degree that had become an actual one over the years and he was smart enough to realise what was going to happen to him if he was an idiot, while also demonstrating a very large lack of development to whatever goals the insurgents wanted with his death.
He was too small to do anything important and he wanted to keep it that way.
Tried to title drop. Failed.