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Us and them (standard:other, 3327 words) | |||
Author: Lev821 | Added: Oct 09 2012 | Views/Reads: 3242/2490 | Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes) |
Can a north-south divide stop temptation? | |||
He couldn't see the top of the wall through the dense cloud, but he knew it was three miles high and one mile thick, constructed purely from concrete, stretching the width of middle England from Skegness to Barmouth. It was, quite literally, a north-south divide. The greed of the upper classes knew no bounds and to the detriment of others a civil war had broken out. Rich versus poor, upper class versus lower. The police and army were sent out to deal with the uprising, but then some began to not understand who they were fighting, and why, and chaos ruled for three years, until a spokesman, or leader of the new underclass declared they could do without the government's help. They could survive without money. Before money was invented people survived quite easily and this reckoning gathered momentum. People unified. It was the rich, versus the peasants, the hippies, the harvesters, and it was a lifestyle they chose, so a ceasefire slowly emerged, with both sides agreeing to a huge wall dividing them. On the south side, money, wealth, and the accumulation of riches would continue, whilst on the north, currency would cease to be used. People would live off the land, would volunteer their services, and generally help out in any way they could. Favour for favour. Two apples for six eggs. Five chickens for one goat. Mend my bike and I will cook you a meal. For two years everybody had accepted it as the case and were happy, until somebody, who had fought in the riots, saw people talking and getting along with what was basically still the enemy. The wall had sentry posts at regular intervals, with armed guards ready to fire on those who tried to get through, although it had happened rarely. There was a large area of grassland spanning the length of the wall on the north side, bordered by a low, wooden fence, and the rich would often venture out as far as it to basically see how the other half was coping. Some of them were very friendly, and on some occasions, a few from the north had been allowed into the south to sample the pleasures of what money could buy. Those people were allowed to stay there if they chose, and they did. Orca, a name he'd given himself was not happy at all at that. He saw it as a slow erosion of their way of life, albeit, an extremely superficial one. Still though, he felt it was his duty to stem the spread, to not embrace their way of life, not to accept the self lifestyle where indulgence was encouraged. He was tall at 6feet 3inches, was almost ‘gangly', wore a bandana, and believed in reincarnation and ancient astronauts. He had gathered together a kind of protest group, or party with the same frame of mind as him, wanting to halt the slow creeping influence of the south. They were camped 80metres from the fence, and had been there for a week. A few southerners had come out to speak to Orca, to understand what the protest was about, and went away saying they would put it to people in higher authority, but he doubted that at all. Sometimes, in their big shining reinforced Jaguars and Rolls-Royces, they would drive out from the wall and venture sometimes five miles out, but the locals didn't care. There was no hostility. The cars were mostly ignored. Orca had a complexion against the rich though, paranoid that perhaps they were watching them with their satellites. Listening in. Heads of state he knew must always be looking over their shoulder, because no matter how good a leader they were in whichever country, someone somewhere hated them with a passion, so much so they would not hesitate to assassinate given the opportunity, but he didn't hate anyone enough for that, no government could be perfect. Not to him, and now that he had got a small group of protestors together, he guessed their paranoia would intensify. He turned away from the fence, and out of the crosshair of a sniper rifle. Further along the wall, at approximately 50 metres up, a balcony had Click here to read the rest of this story (251 more lines)
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