Enjoy!

Life in Communism 2.1.

Food for Everybody – Food for All

By Carla O’Gallchobhair

“Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat what is for you and be silent.”

Epictetus, Stoic philosopher

“To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.”

François de la Rochefoucauld, classical philosopher

“There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them but in the form of bread.”

Mahatma Gandhi, Indian independence hero

“First give us food, then we’ll be moral.”

Bertolt Brecht, Communist writer

“From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.”

Karl Marx, revolutionary Communist philosopher

“Solidarity is the tenderness of people.”

Che Guevera, Latin American Communist revolutionary

Table of Contents:

Preface in Saint-Denis. Food for Everyone, Food for All

Chapter 1. Food in the Revolution

Chapter 2. The Big Trefoil Hack of Year 20-21

Chapter 3. Don’t tell us the Matrices are hacked as well?

Chapter 4. Appearance of the Shadow Dealers

Chapter 5. Food in the Harp

Chapter 6. Aimeran Logistics

Chapter 7. Jobs as a Means of Extortion

Chapter 8. The New Planning App

Chapter 9. Chasing the Shadow Dealers

Postscript in Illyria and Saint-Denis. Year 21 – Intifada – Revolution, Gasping for Air. In the Name of the Peace Dove?, Year 22 – Revolutionary Accounting, Les Jours Heureux. Wonder Cattle, Year 23 – The Metalmongers, and Year 24 – Kindergarden Manifesto 2^nd edition

Preface in Saint-Denis. Food for Everyone, Food for All

Saint-Denis and Illyria, Autumn, Year 20-21 of the Revolution, 2021, year of the World Revolution being Year Zero

Comrade Sarah, bottom left, begins her presentation with experts behind her, first row, top left, from the left comrade Aini, market stallholder, comrades Lénina, Robespierre, Sylvain, Philippe computer, robotics, and planning experts, second row from the left, Sarah’s father, comrade René, doctor, comrades Pascal, Hisham, and Rim, economists and statisticians, Peter Gar, or Pierre le Gars, as he is known in the French lands, senior security expert, comrade Faroukh, Sarah’s boy-friend and expert on peace and Palestine, and comrade Jérôme, security expert, in the tree house, comrades Maksim, Zhenya, Danya, Jean-Wadi, Zafira, Jean-Saïd, and Natalie observing the fascos, to the right, the fascos in their lair, debating counter-strategy, and in the ball, the two Mali brigades, for security, comrades Noah, Seth, Saïd, and Rodion in the top row, and in the bottom row, experts on the march of the tree, de-construction, reconstruction and the intranet, comrades Josip, Rosa, Maher and Karla, by Sarah’s friends, comrades Antoine, Murielle, and young comrade Zac

“Capitalism sets things up in such a way for the exploited that in order to obtain any of the other comforts of life, a decent roof over your head, hygiene, good clothes, furniture, books, computers, other toys, education, transport, and so on, you will need to save on food. Love passes through the stomach, yet when food is scarce or threatens to become scarce, people start to begrudge each other their rations. Ensuring plentiful rations may be the first task of the revolution, before housing even. This is why we Communist anarchists must urgently and always realise the principle; From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs,” Sarah had barely begun and already Jérôme interrupted her.

“My apologies, dear comrade Sarah, but I have urgent news from Novgornyi. We told you we have a brigade in a tree house close by, observing the latest lair of the fascos, short for fascists or Nazis whom we are up against. Comrades Maksim, Zhenya, Danya, Jean-Wadi, Zafira, Jean-Saïd, and Natalie are on site. The fascos call themselves the Hacking Hexagon – with its known members, Barron Trumpel, Thorben Kriegsbeil, Knut Reiche, Ryan Mc Leary, Pat Handsome, and Fritz II April. They put the original name of their old Hacking Octogon workshop ‘Beams and Bots’ on their sign again, by the way. It turns out, now that we have insulated our housing swap app with sufficient bio-thicket, they have focused their criminal attention on two further revolutionary apps we harpists have developed: the trefoil app, also known as pentafoil or freefoil, as well as the job app. Harp of course refers to the network of humans, animals, robots, and plants. Both trefoil and job app are now available for free as brain apps for everybody’s minds, cell nuclei or other decision-making centres of particular species and individuals.

The trefoil or freefoil, by Bashir and Zelim-Philippe

The job app allows humans, other animals, including time-travelled dinosaurs, and plants to quickly locate readily available socially necessary work as well as ample opportunities for creative work. The trefoil app enables free distribution in every village and all over the wide world, simple sharing, revolutionary barter, order from a workshop, close by or even far away, and if all else fails, such as in a situation of natural emergency or fasco attack, distribution by voucher.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Sarah laughed. “Food is not important, just chasing terrorists. Let me say this…”

Chapter 1. Food in the Revolution

How capitalism spoilt food and our lives

How capitalism spoilt food and our lives, by Bashir and Zelim-Philippe

“The Communist revolution starts with two great promises, bread and peace. All other achievements of the revolution are built on this foundation, and without these two, they will crumble. Yet before I get to the way the revolutionaries of the first hour implemented the promise of plentiful supplies and the way we ensure that we shall always uphold this commitment, let us gather a few problems around food under capitalism. Tell me, comrades, what were the most glaring shortcomings?”

“It was artificial, sold in supermarkets!” ventured young comrade Odile.

“Sold in supermarkets is one point, but what do you mean by artificial?” asked comrade Che, ecologist-agronomist. “That can mean many things.”

“Well, for instance, laced with synthetic fertilisers,” said comrade Zafira. “Harming the plants as well as soil quality. The counter-revolutionaries propose to use them again now in Mali, where we – Jean-Wadi and I –, have recently been to help launch the march of the trees and the regreening of the savannah and even the desert. Ostensibly, the fascos want to promote it as well. In reality, they want to wreck it.”

“Overly processed, and too many synthetic thickeners and other chemical additives,” comrade Maher continued the list, speaking intraline from Mali.

“And too sweet!” supplemented comrade Rosa.

“Or too salty!” complemented comrade Karla.

“Poisoned with pesticides as well,” added comrade Marius. “That harms the plants and is dangerous to human health as well. And they are trying to spread bad GMOs much more dangerous than the wonder-cattle I am working on. The Mali crew have asked our school lab at Complexe Scolaire Jean Moulin to examine the seeds, and they are nefarious. Trees that will pretend to walk very fast, so that they get chosen for the march of the trees above all others, but then lose their strength after a couple of hundred kilometres already. You know that they need lots of will-power to enable them to extricate their roots from the ground and use the strongest of these roots to start to walk to where they are needed. After the walk of the trees, the birth of my wonder-cattle will be the real beginning of the jours heureux, happy days. Wonder-cattle will be non-voracious as well as cheesy like a goat, milky like a cow, woolly like a lamb, strong like a horse, docile like a donkey, eggy like a chicken, attentive like a dog, cuddly like a cat…”

“Oh, you nutty old inventor!” said comrade Danièle, his permanent critic. “You will never manage to do it, and if you did, it would not be ecological!”

“I am almost ready with it. Give it a couple more years, then I will stand there like Sarah and give my university entry project presentation. You shall see!” pouted Marius. “And in contrast to humanoid goats like you, our wonder-cattle will be lovely, highly useful, and friendly at the same time.”

Danièle started to cry. “Sorry,” said Marius, and together with her partner comrade Olivier and his boy-friend comrade Jean-Luc went up to her, shook her hand, and presented his apologies.

“We shall get back to that in Year 22-23 then at the latest,” said Sarah who had raised her hand to be allowed to take over the moderation. “Let’s continue with the problems of food under capitalism first. We have mentioned seven so far: toxic fertilisers, toxic pesticides, overly processed, chemical thickeners and other additives, two sweet, too salty, bad GMOs. Oh, yes, supermarkets, that’s eight.”

“Not only supermarkets were the problem, but the way capitalists processed foods in huge agro-businesses, with long logistics chains,” Jean-Luc who was still assisting Marius in comforting Danièle, threw over his shoulder.

“That’s two more, ten!” Sarah noted.

“Its production was based on the exploitation of small farmers and farm workers,” said comrade Georgette.

“And the all-but slave farm workers in the global South!” added comrade Josip.

“As well as the exploitation of animals,” noted comrade Julie, next to Danièle Illyria’s most ardent ‘Animal lives matter. Plant lives triumph’ advocate. “Not only as beasts of burden for pulling ploughs and carrying loads, but also as space savers in mass stables and minuscule cages. You could call that concentration camp internment followed by genocide if you will.”

“And even outside in the yard or on the pastures, the large industrialist capitalist farmers often violated the minimal space requirements,” added comrade Zelim-Philippe.

“And they practiced mono-cultures. They ruined half of the Amazone and the Congo rain-forest before we revolutionaries could come in and save the animals and plants,” added comrade Jean-Fidel, ecologist and Latin America expert, son of comrades Jean and Claudia.

“That’s sixteen already!” cheered Sarah. “Twenty more, and we’ll have each named one.”

“Well, even before the only supposedly ‘green’, meaning synthetic fertiliser and pesticide revolution and mono-cropping, we had excessive mechanisation of agriculture!” said comrade Jean-Vladimir, peace researcher. “I remember reading, the Palestinians used to blame the Jewish immigrants to Palestine for that. It dried out the soil, they said.”

“The ultimate elimination of small family farms and pauperisation of the peasants,” 12-year-old young comrade Zamir added earnestly, still full of his recent first course in Marxism.

“Not only of farms, but also the elimination of small family restaurants,” added comrade Mao, “many Chinese among them.”

“Instead we got fast food,” said her boy-friend, comrade Malik, comrade Noah and Michelle’ son. They were keenly aware of the problem, being anthropologists-ecologists and North America experts, engaged in a long-term project of bringing the buffalos back to the prairies.

“The capitalists used food tariffs as a means of war,” added comrade Lénina, mathematical planning expert with a special interest in South America, being that she was Jean-Fidel’s girl.

“Wars were fought over agricultural land,” noted comrade Guillaume. “And chemical weapons such as Agent Orange and White Phosphor were used to poison crops.”

“And starvation to kill people, especially, but not only in Africa,” said comrade Lulu.

“Also in the Caribbean,” added Jean-Fidel. “And spraying of crops was one of the factors in global warming.”

“Twenty-six now,” rejoiced Sarah. “You are doing great, comrades. Just ten to go now.”

“Capitalist agriculture and safaris, animal hunting, for that matter, contributed to the elimination of many wild animals,” said comrade Adilah. “In fact, we are still struggling to bring back such all-but-extinct species back to their natural habitats. And so far some can still exist only in nature parks, almost like our time-travelled dinosaurs, because they have to wait for the march of the trees to get a food guarantee in the wild.”

March of the trees, by Jean-Wadi and Zafira

Bringing back the animals, by Adilah and Jean-Vladimir

“The heat, what the capitalists euphemistically called global warming had terrible health effects, so had the bad food processing, causing diabetes, heart and circulatory diseases, cancer, and neurological problems. What else?” wondered Lulu’s partner, comrade Maurice, who himself had been the victim of a poisoned omnibus early-childhood vaccine before the revolution. “Food-related mental disorders, I suppose, gluttony, anorexia, lethargy, what not.”

“Bad conscience the capitalists instilled in people for over-eating and the exorbitant health costs they were thereby causing,” said comrade Murielle, budding expert on mental illness in capitalism. “Leading to schizophrenia, paranoia, depression… Not their fault. Why were the food businesses producing such junk, and why were the supermarkets putting it on the shelves?”

“Well, related to that, the designer food viruses,” continued Maurice, now a medical student to become a doctor, “stomach and others, the capitalists in Big Agro and Big Food were admitting. Against these their colleagues in Big Pharma then felt called upon to produce vaccines and counter-medicines, also toxic, but exceedingly profitable.”

“I don’t quite know how to put it,” said comrade Alexandra, also an anthropologist, but with her interest centred on Europe. “One thing is sure. Food was used as a class-status symbol. Just a few examples. Remember the dossier in l’Humanité. In the past, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the first sugar canes were just imported from Cuba, just the kings and big aristocrats were privileged enough to afford sugar. They got big and fat, while the peasants starved on the land and in the early cities. In late capitalism, capitalists use excess sugar as a way to kill poor people. Instead, they themselves became vegan.”

“Not only that, but when by themselves, they also had new or rediscovered luxury foods, such as baby and other human meat,” added her partner, Jean-François, training to become an expert on fasco terrorism in line with comrades Jérôme and Michel.

“You are disgusting!” comrades Danièle, Julie, Natalie, and Sevim shook themselves. Then they realised their mistake and apologised. “Not you, comrade Jean-François, the capitalists!” comrade Natalie said.

“But it is true!” piped up comrade Olivier, emerging expert on capitalist terrorism. “They practiced cannibalism. I read about it when I did my university entry project.”

“Even the post-revolutionary underground capitalists and fascos still do it,” added comrade Jean-François, “and they do paedophilia and bestiality,” remembering young comrade Thomas’ experience, who had ended up becoming a trans and joining the North American Indians to escape Ebwasser and his lot. “That’s a form of animal exploitation as well. Imagine to then ask a member of such an abused species to continue giving milk or laying eggs.”

“And there was also very bad teaching on food under capitalism,” noted comrade Sevim, young education expert. We no longer call them teachers, since teachers are integrated with kindergarden kids, pupils, and school students in mixed brigades with rotating student brigadiers and curriculum, books, other materials, and grades all decided collectively, sometimes with an advisory role for parents and academic experts. “The teachers, books, and even the internet did not warn the kids adequately against the dangers of overly processed, sugary, fattening, and excessively salty foods.”

“And there wasn’t only fast food,” added comrade Bashir, another of Illyria’s young economists, “but Uberism, the delivery, usually not of fresh, but of highly processed junk food, often on bikes by poor migrant workers having to struggle with big city traffic and air pollution.”

“By the way, the car, tarmac, and concrete civilisation has harmed soil quality and will have lingering toxic effects on our food for centuries to come,” noted Jean-Wadi, robotics and intranet specialist. “We also harmed food quality by big water works in the Alps and other mountains, huge water basins in agricultural areas instead of decentralised water capture, and polluted water from the mains, bad chemical air pollution, and also electrical pollution, my territory, too much static, and internet pollution, excessively strong EMR waves in the air. Nowadays, we no long have big water works, nor these basins, we are restoring wells even in the centre of Paris, we have abolished private cars, and public transport and free taxis, all electrical, are quite environment-friendly. And of course, we have introduced the intranet, based on low-frequency neural waves of 100 Hz maximum, instead of a minimum of 5 GB, 50 million times that amount, in late capitalism, and transport it by natural wifi towers without any need for metallic towers or cables.”

“Our yellow transport beams functioning only on will-power are also very environment-friendly and energy-neutral,” added his brother, Jean-Saïd, also physics and intranet student, who was developing the yellow transport beams for daily usage. “Although their safety may depend a little on having good food always, and in particular before travelling by beam. After all, not only do you have to summon the beam, give it your exact destination and possibly details of intended route, you’ll have to disassemble all the way down to molecular state and then reassemble as you approach your final destination.”

“You will need protein, I suppose,” said Sarah. “Does it mean only meat eaters will be able to travel by beam?”

“Not at all,” Jean-Saïd laughed. “Remember when we discussed the march of the trees, I showed you these minuscule green sparks that begin to form below the roots as the trees extricate and begin to march? They are quite similar to our yellow beams. They allow you to move and lighten your weight as you do so. Trees don’t eat meat either.”

“Yet up to very recently, capitalism’s totally misguided food policy has made it exceedingly hard for us to reestablish good relations with the animals and plants,” comrade Renée, a specialist on the various venues in communism and nascent anarchy – brigades, neighbourhood, village, and workplace assemblies –, had the last word. “Luckily, now we are using our robots and other devices to learn nature-speak, which is a sort of lingua franca for all living beings, working mainly by neural waves, and also the much more elaborate natural languages of the various species. Just like the exploited workers and peasants, animals and plants will always remember the way capitalism all-but genocided them, and almost destroyed the whole of humanity as well. Luckily, we came up with the harp brigades and assemblies, where humans, animals, robots, and plants, the so-called harpists, work in mixed brigades always counting at least one human, one plant, one robot, and one plant. Sometimes we also call our robots harpoids or haproids as we humans like to give our robots, laptops, and phones or nowadays, plushbots, plushtops, and plush phones the shape of harpists. Plushbots, plushtops, and plush phones we call them, because on the intranet, they don’t overheat and can be covered in fluffy natural fibres. Hence we give them the shape of various harpists, including dinosaurs, and sometimes also the shape of intranet-capable things, such as a beautiful stone or a locomotive. The harp assemblies may teach us humans to live in the forest and, more generally, in nature again.”

Food in the Revolution

“Maman already died on a holiday in Africa, when I was a very small baby still. She was a very quiet woman, always at home, taking care of me and the apartment, while papa ran around between home, 76 rue de Lorraine, in other words the neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove, Illyria, his policlinic in Saint-Denis and his policlinic in Aimeran near Illyria. Comrades Marie and Fabienne knew him best before the revolution, because being a paediatrician, he had treated young comrades Monique and Maurice. They told Omsinbaba and Fofana that they had not even known he was married before I came.

My papa, comrade René, studied medicine in Senegal and the French lands, and before Maman died, we went back a last time to show me, the toddler, our real country. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember any of it, not even that Maman died. Papa told me it had been a bad stomach virus, similar to Ebola, and he suspected the counter-revolutionaries to have planted it to kill all three of us.

When we were back, he continued to share his time between the two policlinics. I was already at the crèche in the Youth Club of Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove, where I grew up with Antoine, Murielle – she joined a bit later as Antoine’s buddy –, Emmanuel, Laurence, Jean-François, who was mainly at Illyria back then already, and Faroukh.

Papa had no problem serving in mixed brigades in both of his clinics and being brigadier only once a week, because he is not vain, he says, and also because it enabled him to pick me up when the kindergarden finished and teach me some more at home. I knew that was bullshit. I was important, but not the top thing on his mind. The two most important things were his patients and the revolution. He told me many stories about the revolution, and to make sure I know exactly what is what, I questioned him again the other night like I did all other comrades in the house and even some Illyrians. I also asked him specifically about the role of food in the revolution. Let us take things one after the other!

Omsinbaba and Fofana already told you the story of how he saved them and Little Lulu in Fofana’s stomach as well as many other migrants from being brought back to their refugee hostels on the first night of the revolution. The security people who came to pick them up at Papa’s cabinet – back then, he did not work in two policlinics yet –, argued that they were only concerned with their safety, that they wanted them to stay in the migrant home, and that they would be evacuated if things got violent. On the other hand, Papa’s migrant patients, most of them black, had a completely different take. They were afraid they would be held hostage in the home under extra-severe surveillance, maybe to be exchanged for counter-revolutionaries the revolutionaries would capture, or that they would be deported and or even killed if things got nasty. Papa tended to understand their fears rather than fall for the assurances of the security guys. If the lives and the security of these refugees, migrants, Manouches, homeless, sick people, such as recovering druggies and alcoholics, and so on were so important to them, why had they not been more respectful to them before the revolution started? Papa and his nurses came up with excuses for about twenty small patients, most of whom had their whole families with them, as to why everybody had to stay at his cabinet overnight or go to a private address to await further developments. In comrade Fofana’s case it was that she might have to go to hospital to give birth, which ended up being the case, so Papa had not even lied, and there were nineteen other cases of families he and his colleague-nurses took care of in similar ways.

In other words, from the very beginning, papa was a hero for the revolution, especially also for comrade Fabienne, whose son Maurice he had saved from dying from a poisoned vaccine from Roger Sabiani’s Sabmed or similar private company. Therefore, they begged him to live at Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove where most of the Cellule 14 members were already living back then. Cellule 14 was the red cell that had emerged on the basis of one of the last executive committees of the PCF whose members resigned collectively so as to be able to devote all of their time to fostering the revolution, comrades Georges, Jean, Hélène, Mina, Alain, Patrick, Denis, Pierre, Marine, Frédéric, Annie, Fabienne, Marie, and Jana. Then, about another 1-2 years later, many members and friends of Cellule 14 took the decision to move out into the old farmhouse plus stables that comrade Patrick and they had renovated already before the revolution. They hesitated a little bit, because after all, counter-revolutionary stooges had already burnt down their clothes and furniture workshops once before in 2020. Yet then again, comrade Jana, whom the fascos had employed to pull the trigger had repented, shown true remorse, and had been coopted into the executive committee of the PCF and Cellule 14. She was now living with comrade Youssef. Surveys showed already back then that way over 80% of the French people enthusiastically approved of the revolutionary project. In revolutionary hotbeds such as Saint-Denis, Nanterre, where our economists – Philippe, Pascal, Hisham, and Rim –, were studying, or the 5ième, where comrades Marie and husband Daniel, comrade Salma and her daughter Nicole, and comrades Omsinbaba, Fofana, and Lulu were staying, it was over 95% approval. We can say that already back then, the zealous capitalist, bourgeois, or even outright fasco sympathisers numbered no more than 1 or 2% of the population. These days it is even fewer, one or two in every two thousand, and they are descending into crime rather than trying to convince more people. That does not mean that the revolution did not have any worries, and one of them was the food issue.

The workers of the economic organisations – be they former state or private enterprises, or social organisations such as schools, hospitals, public transport, utilities such as water, electricity, and so on – were splitting them up into self-managed organisations of no more than 500 workers, soon to be no more than 50 workers so as to allow for better self-management without any hierarchies. My papa joined the policlinic in Saint-Denis closest to our house. Instead of salaries, the about 50 people working there – no more than 50 allowed for a policlinic as per decision of all the Saint-Denis quarter assemblies –, got vouchers for food and other basic goods, such as clothes, toys, and also needed medication, papa always stresses that. Instead of super-large differences between doctor’s, nurses’, medics’, carers’ and other support workers’ salaries, they were now all receiving the same amount of vouchers. Some of them were for specific goods, others for broader categories, so as to allow for the variety in tastes.

Some, but very few of the doctors were offended no longer to be primadonnas – not many, because Saint-Denis was left-wing, as papa already said –, and quit, maybe for a private underground clinic like the underground capitalists and oligarchs have them until this day, now in the framework of pals, short for policlinics, amusement clubs, logistics stations, and sports studios. The remaining doctors grinned and said things like: ‘Good, I never liked money anyhow!’, ‘Swell, now I get to go on the diet I always needed!’ Some of the nurses, medics, carers and other support people also said that, but some of them worried that the rations would be too strict. ‘I hope, they have enough chocolate vouchers. I sometimes need something sweet before I go in to a difficult patient!’ Others even broke down and said: ‘Oh, my God, it’s vouchers now. What are our children going to eat?’ ‘Don’t worry,’ papa told them. ‘After all, we determine the size of the rations ourselves in our neighbourhood assemblies, brigades, workplace assemblies, and village assemblies. Just raise your issues there!’

“Well, there we are discussing how we shall avoid dirtying our house when coming in from the earth roads, after we have pulled up the pavement and tarmac.” “Oh,” said my papa. “That’s easy. At Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove, we practice the rural ways our comrades are learning and trying out at their cooperative Illyria in Aimeran. We wear rubber or other heavy boots after rain and snow or when coming in from deconstructing the pavement as you said, and leave them downstairs in shoe racks next to the main entrance. Some comrades run up to their rooms in socks, others leave their house shoes downstairs to slip in immediately. Whichever way, the corridors and stairways won’t get dirty, the environment and especially the soil will be saved, and believe it or not, walking on the natural ground is much better for your feet than dragging them over pavement and tarmac.”

Shoe rack in Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove on 76 rue de Lorraine in Saint-Denis, by comrades Antoine, Murielle, and young comrade Zac

And to further clarify the trefoil he invited a market stallholder to his brigade meeting. It was not comrade Aini yet, because she had barely associated with Cellule 14, but somebody he knew from Senegal, and she explained things even better than he could have. To the nurse who needed more chocolate than normal, she explained that vouchers came in broad categories such as bread, cereals, vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, and other milk products, sweets, spices and other condiments. Yet even if the sweets vouchers were gone, she said, there was a number of general vouchers that were not organised by food groups but by expiration date. Food vouchers were generally for a day or two, a week, a month, or even for a year depending on the good. Chocolate typically had a one year validity. So you could get several bars of chocolate with these general food vouchers that might also get you salt and other spices, let us say, garlic powder. According to Papa, none of them said, ‘You revolutionary bastards, you want us to choose between chocolate and garlic,’ because they knew that would have been a manifest untruth. Rations were ample. There were three official vouchers a week for chocolates, sweets, cakes and desserts already. Adding a few of the general food vouchers for items with a longer durability could get you up to ten or more bars per week, of course if and only if you really were a hopeless chocolate junkie. Most nurses aren’t, says papa, because while the cocoa is fine for energy, the sugar in the chocolate makes you too jittery.

“’Naturally,’ said Papa. ‘The vouchers were still a bit demeaning to people, as if they would take the whole market or share point if there were no vouchers. So, a couple of years into the revolution, after the failed coup, the village assemblies one after the other or simultaneously began to implement the even better organisation in which everything was free. And if on that basis, you did not get what you wanted at your usual stall, you could always go to the next stall, or to a share point, or to a near-by workshop, or if the workshop that had what you needed, let’s say, not food, but something rarer, a book, a specific household item, or clothing, was a bit further away, you could order that good online or, nowadays, intraline. In the revolution, we transport goods long distance by sail- and solar-powered freighter and electrical train. There are no longer any big airplanes either, just small wind- and solar-powered research and rescue and emergency planes. Locally, Logistique Yvelines or another revolutionary self-managed logistics organisation will run small transporters to deliver over the final stretches. Both the product and the delivery are free of course. Other workers get their food and other things through the economic circuit just like you do. Alternatively, you could simply share things with your neighbours, friends or at a share point, or you might barter with an acquaintance, or as a matter of fact, have your village assembly barter for you, let us say, apples from Illyria against lemons from Spain. If you wonder why our market stalls have bananas, although they grow only in Africa and South America, that is how we get them, we send down a team of revolutionary barter correspondents with cherries and they bring back the bananas. And the reason this works is because comrade Philippe and others pull up matrixes and make sure all inputs are there to produce anything anywhere and distribute it, share it, or barter it. Also because the farmers and workers have their usual suppliers and patrons, make sure they get the things they need, produce the things they are supposed to produce by the plan-contracts they have signed, and get them to the recipients in time, for free of course and having passed all required and possible material checks. Remember, in the revolution, any individual and any group can raise a material check, for anything, at any time, there is never an end to them. And the same with hierarchy checks. And now with emerging anarchy, the initial brigadier, chairman, or moderator has to yield immediately if somebody has a better idea and lifts his hand, but then the same thing holds for this somebody as well, on and on, until consensus is reached on an issue or detail.

“According to Papa, the people in his brigade were very happy with the food situation. None of them was missing anything, they had their personal arrangement with their market stall and share point by which they got everything they usually took without even having to pre-order it and things they needed or wished to order in addition with only a few days delay maximum. Their house or apartment had become their personal property, and if need be, they could swap it, or conclude a contract with construction brigades to build a new one, also simply on the basis of need, not money. There was nothing you could not get in sufficient supply via free, simple sharing, or revolutionary barter, except for goods most village assemblies had declared illegal, such as harmful drugs, weapons, sex services, or excessive luxuries, such as private vehicles. Yet if you needed to get somewhere fast, you could always take public transport, or a free taxi – after all, taxi drivers are driving for free in the revolution as they get their taxi kept up and their needs fulfilled as part of the economic circuit as well. Yachts, planes, jewellery, expensive art, antiques, and so on – producing and selling things like that against crypto was also illegal from the outset of the revolution. Yet most people, including Papa’s brigade colleagues, had decided they did not need ‘that crap’ anyway.

That part of the revolutionary story was the same for Faroukh’s parents, Marwan and Rebecca, he being a robotics expert, and Rebecca a house-wife and Middle East expert, sociologist-anthropologist, not at Sorbonne Nouvelle, like comrades Mina, Youssef, Laurent, Frédéric, and Jean-Vladimir, but an independent writer. She says, the Illyrians had read her work and liked it. You all know the stories of how Marwan and Rebecca were psychologically tortured and wound up against each other whenever the fascos were trying out their hate beams or particles. This is the story that they told comrade Faroukh about their experience during the first few days of the revolution. Go ahead, Faroukh!”

“Merci, mon ange, because comrade Sarah is really the angel in my life, being outside of the whole Palestine conundrum as she is. Well, you know that Maman and Papa met in Palestine, then were separated because he got arrested and she went to the French lands, but she travelled to Palestine later on to visit him in prison, and when he got liberated already during the revolution, or maybe a couple of years or months before, stories diverge on that, he got on a boat and joined up with Maman, and then in Year 2, they had me. Yet during the revolution, they got two visits, the first from ‘Middle Eastern rebels’ they introduced themselves, who said they should join them, because the revolutionaries were going to take all their property away, both from Maman’s, Rebecca’s family who were Jews and Papa’s, Marwan’s family who were Palestinians. ‘Well, isn’t that good?’ asked Maman, ‘that way property will be more equally distributed. Everybody gets to keep only the house or apartment he is staying in, the rest he or she has to get rid of. Imagine the hassle of selling it. In the revolution, he or she can simply gift it people who need a place. My family will moan a bit, but they disapproved of my marriage to Marwan and my peace work, so as far as I am concerned, they deserve the trouble they may get.’ Papa knocked on the table in approval. ‘My family does not mind the revolution,’ he said. ‘They are paupers, Palestinian proletariat. They stand to gain from it, actually, They now own their houses – there are my parents, several brothers and sisters, we are a huge family –, they get food and all other basics for free, education is free, jobs, both socially necessary ones and creative ones are plentiful.’ The visitors lifted their brows in disdain, and left. Those were the former Israelis.

Then the next day, a few Arab types showed up. ‘Well, you see, comrade Marwan, you were right, the Intifada has ushered in the World Revolution. Without Intifada, no revolution, don’t you agree?’ ‘Of course,’ Papa said. ‘They hang together like a Muslim prayer.’ ‘So, please come back to Palestine and help us. There is still a lot of Zionist resistance.’ But Papa said ‘No! I have already sat in an Israeli prison, and I did not like it. My first wife and I,’ he meant Maman, obviously, ‘are planning on a child, within the next few years, we are bound to have it. And then our lives will turn around it. My wife thinks he or she will be a scholar, and I think he or she will be a fighter. Chances are we’ll both be right. Yet we don’t want our child to die in a war. We are happy that the jours heureux have arrived, aren’t you?’ The Palestinian emissaries looked dissatisfied. ‘Yes, of course,’ one of them finally said. ‘But Palestine is not the French lands, we have these Zionists digging underground and wrecking the revolution.’ ‘Then make it impossible for them to do that, have mixed brigades, get all the reasonable Jews on your side, and have spontaneous militia search every centimetre of land. It should be possible to uncover them, shouldn’t it?’ They left, angry. They felt Papa had copped out. Yet what should he have done? Leave Maman alone, have no children, die from a Zionist bullet? I understand my papa, don’t you, comrades?’” Faroukh took a breath. “Anyway, they will both come visit me in Palestine, when I do my research next year. Then we shall see.”

“There aren’t any food shortages any longer in Palestine, are there?” asked Sarah. “No, and there has only been one so far since the revolution. That was when the fascos had practised weather warfare and had deflected the rain clouds over the Mediterranean. But the dearth held only for so long, then the rain came, and everybody, Jews and Palestinians, could eat and drink their fill again.”

“That was when they sold both sides the DU ammunition as well?” asked Sarah.

“Yes, in Year 15, the dearth sabotage was related to that, the fear for the crops, and then the hunger and thirst were supposed to wind up the groups against each other,” explained Jean-Vladimir who had been there at the time.

“But that worked in only a few isolated instances,” said his father, Laurent, author of a major study on conditions for peace.

“After all, there was already so much cooperation, for instance, in the triangle of cooperatives, Red Palestine, Palestinian Refoundation, and State of the Reconciliation,” added Jean-Vladimir who had researched these cooperatives in detail.

“And there were already too many well-functioning mixed brigades,” added Jean-Saïd who had been there only a few years later to work with such a mixed brigade of young Palestinian and Jewish physicists, who were researching the yellow transport beams like he was.

“Anyway, we can come back to these issues when I give my presentation,” suggested Faroukh. “For now, let my angel continue with the food topic.”

Mathieu and Sebastien planting, by Emmanuel and Laurence, in the background, from top left, Faroukh and Sarah, Sebastien’s wife Brigitte, and Mathieu’s wife Claire

“Yes, let us ask Mathieu and Sebastien how they lived the revolution and specifically the food issue, guaranteeing plentiful food, being gardeners as they are.” “Back then, we were both living and working as gardeners on Osip, Fyodor and Cathérine-Elisabeth Rothschild’s estate South from here,” said Mathieu. “We had a bad experience. Although tolerant, they would not let us go. Lucky for us, their mercs came, the first time, to flee from prosecution by their own village assemblies – since the revolution, there has been no more written law, and each village assembly decides every case anew –, and later on, to do their house arrest. Then, finally, they allowed us to leave, because the boys, Olivier, Silien, and their pals were too rough. Talking about Palestine, Olivier has married Sam Bayer’s wife Judy, comrade Jason’s mother. Sam Bayer used to be an American-Israeli oligarch. Olivier and Judy’s son Samu is a friend of the Illyrians, a budding cosmologist – cosmonaut like toddler Comet, son of Guillaume and Renée. Let’s hope their friendship will further their dad’s rehabilitation.”

“Since we have moved to Saint-Denis we have been extremely busy as urban gardeners,” Sebastien took over from his friend, “giving neighbourhood and village assemblies advice to deal with their green spots, whether the soil is good enough to be arable or serve as pasture, or whether it still needs to recover from centuries of pressure from buildings, pavement, and traffic – maybe as a park or a wild garden. It is wonderful work, and of course, we make sure that we advise people to grow food and keep animals wherever nature permits. We are urban farmers as well as gardeners.”

“Dominique and Aurélie, your experience of the revolution, especially as relates to food?” “I have always been a green and peace activist,” explained Dominique. “And matters of allocation and distribution have not concerned me. However, I am a single father taking care of my daughter Laurence, born in Year 4 in a wild fling, and I must say, getting things on a market or at a share point or even at a workshop or delivered from a farm is much more fun than chasing after them with money, and then having to chase after the money again. In the revolution, my position as a peace activist was clear, we welcomed the revolution, since it stood for peace, and especially the Communists had always supported us. The green activists, on the other hand, did not agree with all the measures the revolution or at least the speed at which they were happening. Not as far as the ciao to cars, tarmac, and concrete monstrosities and high rises were concerned. They had to go. That was clear. Yet about the subsequent steps, they were divided. Some of them wanted deconstruction -reconstruction and dispersion of the megalopolis to go faster, others more slowly, be it only to avoid collateral environmental damage. In a way, that has to do with the food issue, because it decides how much land is available for cultivation and animal husbandry, but I haven’t studied this issue like you Illyrians have. However, my daughter, Laurence, has chosen a topic on air quality for her university entry project. Maybe when she will present it, in the Year 22, I shall be able to touch base on these issues.”

“As you know, I am as fervent a trade unionist as Dominique is a peace activist,” comrade Aurélie took over immediately. “The trade unions, especially CGT of which I am a member, had no issue with the revolution, least of all with the abolition of money. We know it is the fiercest weapon of exploitation, and we will never be fully free until its last underground remnants are gone as well. At the same time, I became interested in what seemed to be a new loose network of workshops, producing processed foods such as breads, cakes, salads, among other things, as well as sandwiches and pastries in their take-along bakeries, the so-called ateliers nouveaux, new workshops. The idea seemed a bit suspicious though, why did they want a network of workshops, why not leave each of them as a local share point? The women in the neighbourhood would then carry their homemade stuff there, making sure it remained vibrant. When I joined the workers’ assembly, I met comrade Pauline, she worked at another branch, further East, and both of us immediately made the same discovery. The products were not that good, with dodgy over-sweet and over-salty relishes, as you noted already, hygiene was not assured, the quantities produced were excessive for a share point, and soon enough, it became clear why, because part of them were sold against old money and crypto-currency and not only to individuals but to other supposedly revolutionary workshops and social organisations, such as schools, and policlinics as well. Moreover, Pauline and others were able to establish that at least in some New Workshops, the workers were working for crypto and producing illegal vaccines in clandestine labs. Finally, self-management principles were not upheld either, the role of brigadier did not rotate, instead secret bosses came to visit from afar. Grosso modo, a counter-revolutionary, capitalist outfit, belonging, we found out, to the Huntzigers, one branch of the New Vichyites associated with the pre-revolutionary right-wing Think Tank Limarna, for Liberté Marché Nation. We reconquered the workshops for self-management as you know, but we did not catch the Huntzigers until later. Now we have got them, daddy is in prison, and sonny is repentant, but new generations of crypto-capitalists have emerged ever since. And quite often they touch at matters related to food, not only food-processing , but also farming, synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, GMO, lots of horrible stuff like that. As my son Emmanuel has told you in his presentation, we have made a renewed effort to set up red trade union cells to counter their subversive brown cells.

“Their brown cells, directed to a degree by Arthur Arrolle, a right-wing agitator, as you may know, urge recentralisation of the remaining water mains, energy grids, and public transport networks, as well as hierarchy, work for crypto, all of which would ultimately lead to a subversion of self-management, renewed exploitation of the workers, basically a return of capitalism, be it not by a violent coup, but more gradually.”

“Luc, Bertrand, and Clément, based on your long revolutionary experience, how do you advise to deal with such developments, apart from forming red cells?” asked Sarah.

Our Huma brigade, Luc, Bertrand, Clément, and Patrick, by Jean-Luc and Marius

“Chase them until the end of the world, if need be,” replied Luc, grandfather of Jean-Luc. “Ultimately, these capitalists and fascos are ordinary thieves, that’s all that needs to be said about them. I am a material accountant, Bertrand and Clément are peace and anti-vaccine activists respectively as well as production workers and reporters. You want to know, young comrade Sarah, how we lived the revolution. It was very stressful. We knew that money was going to go, and we were fine with that, because we had never had any money, neither we, as workers, nor l’Huma, the newspaper. And being the organ of the PCF, we had already been self-managed before the revolution.

“In the wake of the revolution, my role as accountant was to set up plan-contracts for all the basics, paper and other printing supplies, antennae for radio and TV, as well as a wifi tower for our media channel. Lately, we have deconstructed all of that, since we are now on the intranet and transmit our text edition, bio-TV, and bio-radio via natural wifi towers such as humans, trees and other plants, large cattle, deer, and other animals, small and large, including dinosaurs whom we have managed to move forward from the past via time tunnel, harpoid and haproid robots, as well as intranet-capable materials.”

“While Luc was counting and planning in the office,” Bertrand took over at this point, “I, myself and my buddy Clément went out and made text reportages, audios, and videos from the main venues of the revolution – strikes, walk-outs, rallies, blockades, meetings of brigades, neighbourhood, workplace, and village assemblies, as well as, most importantly, visits to government offices at all levels and large businesses, advising them on how to dissolve and reconstitute as self-managed organisations, usually with quite a different profile. D’accord, schools remained schools, be it that they now had mixed student-teacher brigades and no hierarchy between them, hospitals became policlinics with mixed nurses- support staff- doctors brigades, but for instance, weapons producers, mines, large energy works, banks, and so on had to downsize and change their profile completely. We also struck and blockaded quite a number of food producers, as well as department stores selling food, and of course many shopping centres and supermarket branches all over the country. They had to dissolve and yield their place to farmers’ and artisans’ markets and share points. These share points as well as restaurants and bistros work with mixed brigades of seven members maximum, with the roles of cook, waiter, and kitchen support rotating daily, and the brigadier also changing once every day at least. Restaurants and bistros also typically run as share points, meaning any house-wife from the environs can bring dishes in and take some away. Obviously, apart from criminal cases like the New Workshops Aurélie has talked about, there are no fast food chains anymore, just as there are no more supermarkets. There are just the artisanal workshops associated with food production, such as bakers, butchers, fromageries, fishmongers, and confiseries, almost hundred percent of them small family businesses whose production is like homemade. Some of their more processed products, such as cakes and tarts, sausages, cheeses, soups, confectionary, and cookies, most of them vegan of course, are also distributed at the markets and local share points, and in exchange, the artisans get the equipment, tools, and inputs needed to put out their taste marvels.

“We from l’Huma have also early on reported on cases of shadow corners and dealers where exchanges continued taking place for money. Nowadays at most one or two fellows in a thousand or two-thousand are willing to work as shadow dealers, and even fewer people are willing to go to them. This is because in order to have the crypto to pay for the mostly illegal goods, like weapons and weapons training, drugs, sex, construction of a villa in a remote place, private vehicles not licensed by the village assemblies, and so on, you need to be either able to print it or get a loan, and the latter you will only get if you slave for these fascos, either as a soldier or other security thug, shadow dealer, cryptoleak avenger, meaning you kill people who betray crypto-deals, or you might even rise to become a crypto-baron or sponsor who can print crypto and order others around. At the same time that you enter this shadowy, ever darker world you lose contact to your comrades, maybe even your family, and become their creature. Nothing anybody in their right mind would go for that, because it is suicide, and we need to dissuade people early, through education, information, propaganda, whatever helps.”

“We consider ourselves as much more than reporters. We are guardians of the revolution,” added Clément. “And jolly good that we are,” said comrade Patrick, one of the editors with them. “We are needed. Listen to what has happened…”

Chapter 2. The big trefoil hack of Year 20-21

Before the Hack, by Che and Georgette

“Something terrible has happened, look, all the food on the market has spoilt. What a disaster!” Huguette, already in her seventies, after Arthur, her husband, who was seventy-eight, and Georges, who was over eighty already, the third-oldest resident of Illyria Garden Colony Manouche camp pointed at her plush phone in disgust. “Insects crawling on the vegetables, mould on the bread and cheese, and worms in the meat of the butcher’s stall. Maybe a thunderstorm in coming?”

“That can’t be!” said Misha. “The weather is good, and Yvonne and I have been at the market at lunch-time still, when she picked up the children and me at Complexe scolaire Jean Moulin, everything looked just fine. In fact, we brought some tomatoes, look how fresh they look.”

“Let’s ask papie!” said Odile. “He is there now.”

“Bullshit,” said Peter Gar, Pierre le Gars, as soon as they had reached him intraline. “I bet it’s a fasco hack again. That’s how it looks on the phone app, and look, now I send you a picture of how it looks in reality.”

Fake versus Reality, by Zamir and Odile

“At some stalls, there are fewer things on display than in the morning and at lunch time, obviously. Even Aini is already packing up, it will soon be closing time, but you may still come, comrade Huguette. Here is comrade Aini now intraline!”

“I assure you comrades, this is another one of their not so funny jokes. Everything is fresh here. They must have replaced the pictures with their disgusting feed. What should we do?”

“Take some new pictures, send them, and we at the robot lab shall upload them immediately,” suggested comrade Robespierre.

“Yes, but no,” said comrade Aini. “I tried to upload them from here. They immediately spoil again once they are on the app. Look!” And she bio-messaged them a short video. Robespierre uploaded it. It started with a fresh impression, then suddenly insects started to crawl on the vegetables, mould developed on the bread and cheese, and worms began to crawl out of the meat.

“Wait!” said comrade Colin. “We need to build up some more bio-thicket.” And he began bio-messaging birds, trees, and other harpists, including even the time-travelled dinosaurs living in the forests around Illyria, to redouble their efforts to recreate insulating, so-called “white” noise. Such white noise need not be audible to the human ear, it can travel subliminally on delta and theta waves, but it will creates protective layers around revolutionary communications.

“I don’t think that it’s only a hack,” said Josip from Mali. “It must be a virus, something that enabled them to rewrite the programme. Let me ask you some questions. Are any of your other apps, e-mails, or documents, videos, or audios affected?”

“Wait, let me run a check!” said Sylvain. It took the Chinese Wall Security Suite with its digital hounds just a few minutes to go through all of the Illyrians’ bio-clouds, so-called because some of them were already no longer stored on devices, but in the memory cells of other humans, animals, and plants, for ecological reasons as well as for greater safety of course. “No, fortunately, this seems to be an isolated hack!”

“Does it affect both the device as well as the phone app?” This time, to save time, Robespierre asked the Illyrians to check their brains, as well as their harpoid robots, human size, plushtops and plush phones.

Intranet devices, new generation, by Colin and Petit Pierre

Here the news was bad, the saboteurs had been able to infect both the device-based trefoil as well as the trefoil brain app.

“So, they must have worked the same way they did in Mali,” said Maher, bio-chemical engineer, “meaning they inserted a biological virus into our brains, as well as its robot version onto our devices. Any flu virus, such as Covet, Coflu, LEP-AL – short for Lymphatic Encephalitic Pulmonary Syndrome -Asymptomatic Leprechaunitis, or MA – Moral Atrophy, can cause hallucinatory symptoms like that.”

“You and Karla can check for the bio virus and Rosa and me for the digital one,” suggested Josip.

“Wait a minute!” asked Peter Gar. “Don’t tell me they have managed to hack the trefoil apps in Mali as well?”

“Unfortunately, they have. Just give us half an hour.”

“Well, while Maher, Karla, Josip and Rosa do their work in Mali, Maksim, Jean-Wadi, and Jean-Saïd are intraline from Novgornyi. What have you found out?”

“They have hacked the trefoil app here as well, and we think the bio virus is a virus version of MK…”

“The chemical drug they used to give to U.S. soldiers in the Iraq and other imperialist wars to make them willing to commit acts of cruelty?”

“That’s the one… Of course, a little Moral Atrophy is in it as well. That way we are sensitised to a point where we imagine our food infested with insects, mould, and worms.”

“The digital virus is just an old pre-revolutionary IV, imaging virus, similar to the one they used to make people believe that a plane had crashed through the world trade centre. Of course, we know now that they, be they police or violent revolutionaries, did the deed by explosives placed in the cellars, ground floor, and a few of the upper floors of the towers. Yet if that had come out, people would have rightfully asked why security was so lax and come around to suspecting the forces of order themselves.”

“Any way to get rid of these beasts?”

“Not without shutting down the app. In fact, we recommended that action to the residents of Novgornyi, and to 99.99%, maybe Kotov, the ex-oligarch, abstained, but he is very quiet, they have voted yes.”

“Shut down the app?” Comrade Aini drew a sour face. “But how are we going to let people know what’s available at the market?”

“We need to flush out the virus though!” said Jean. “It is dangerous to our health as well as that of the other harpists. “How would they have inserted it?”

“At the user-device interfaces. Let’s imagine, you are sitting with your device or focusing on your brain app and contemplating. First question is, what do I want to do at the market today? We have said a lot about the free leaf already. If you click that, you will want to see what’s available at the market, whether it’s fresh, and is there enough of it to take some more, and so on. Then, instead of a picture of wholesomeness, they show you one of rottenness, or even a video of decay.

“Let’s say you want to share. You want to see pictures of your local share point and think about what you might bring in and take out. Again, where usually the shelves are cracking with clothes, household items, tools, electronic devices, toys, and food, their pictures will look as if nothing was there, and the usually so happy store will look lonesome and boring.

“Same if you wanted to order from a revolutionary workshop. Where typically, they would either have your order available for immediate pick-up or deliver it in a couple of days – if necessary via boat, train, and Logistique Yvelines for the final stretches –, or custom-make it for you in a few days, it will now seem that these processes will take weeks, even months. Where usually a brigadier or member of a spontaneous management brigade would be available intraline or on bio-call to discuss things, there will now just be busy signals or deafening silence, if not bogus crypto-bargains.

“And finally, if you clicked the revolutionary barter leaf, you’d usually get two lists, one of goods you have bartered or want to barter, and one list of offers that might interest you. With the hack and the virus, you’ll just get crap offers, or offers against crypto. And how did they do it? By just reprogramming a few lines, such as maximum number of offerings, quality of offerings, adding a line for price, and then uploading all kinds of nonsense. Sylvain just found an umbrella on offer that supposedly belonged to Empress Ulla, you know, the old Ursula van der Leihen.”

“So, it seems we need to suspend the app unless we want comrades to go mad!” said Jean.

“Not only that, but we could stop the hoax immediately,” continued Robespierre. “People world-wide would realise it is counter-revolutionary sabotage and the credibility of the revolution would not suffer.”

“We’ll need local votes, however,” said Josip. “Our results are similar to those of the Novgornyi comrades by the way. A version of IV, let’s call it IV-20, for the computers, phones, and robots, and MA-21 for the bio virus. We explained the result to the residents of comrade Noah’s family on the Niger, and they have already voted for suspending the trefoil app. It will go down any minute now, as a matter of fact.”

Support for Suspension, by Josip and Rosa

“Hi, here are Mazanape and Wagmu Chikala, we are at the train station to pick up Malik and Mao.”

“Why is that?” asked Cato. “They were supposed to help in Mali, weren’t they?”

“They couldn’t stand it, Josip and Maher doing all the work, so they sailed over to New Orleans, already a couple of weeks ago actually,” explained comrade Quan, Mao’s mother. “I hope they’ll arrive safely.”

“We do as well, but this is not why we are butting in…,” said Wagmu Chikala. “Here they are intraline now.”

“How come you did not take any security with you?” Ronggang spoke even before Malik and Mao even had a chance to say a word.

“Because it was urgent,” said Malik, a bit rattled. “We are fine with Josip and Maher doing their bit, that is not why we left. No, the reason for coming is, they have the virus here as well, the ex-U.S. capexogarchs also use the mixed MK-MA variant, and in fact started the IV-sabotage even earlier, and we were afraid for our Indian and buffalo friends. As you know, they are trying to restore the old life-style of the prairies. Yet any incident like that can destroy the trust in the revolution, especially as the material balances and input-output tables are also affected.”

Philippe nodded. “We shall come back to that in a moment.”

“Yes, but for now, let me tell you that all residents of the Twin Farm Cooperative around comrades Rory and John as well as the associated Indian villages Foot of the Mountain and Falcon’s Home further up in the foothills have voted yes to the shutdown.”

“In fact, we are delighted,” said young comrade James. “The Indians hope, we as well, of course, that this will improve our cooperation with nature within the harp,” added his pal Tony.

“Same rationale, same action in our South American Assembly of Village Assemblies and Friends of Illyria network,” reported Evo from his Bolivian village cooperative Simon Bolivar. “Cumbrecita, Medio de la Pampa, Porto Allegre 05, Caracas 14, Pueblo del Desierto, Havana 27, and so on have all voted for shutdown, or what we call pausing, pausa, of the trefoil app.”

“So have we African cooperatives, friends of Illyria. The Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Muammar Gadafi and associated village cooperatives, such as my village in the Congo, and Omsinbaba’s in Senegal have all voted for an interruption,” said comrade Mamadou. “We knew it was a hoax immediately, by the way. Intranet and bio-wifi travel fast in the forest.”

“The Gandhi twin cooperative in Mumbai and Kolkata have voted for suspending the app as well,” added young comrade Adhip.

“As well as the Almond Tree Brigade cooperative in Beijing and associates,” supplemented comrade Junfeng.

“And of course, the Lenin kolkhoz branch of the Moscow Recycling Hounds,” concluded Dima. “We always synchronise our discussions and decisions with the Recycling Hounds in Novgornyi.”

“In light of the temporary closing of the trefoil app being best practice world-wide already,” said old comrade Georges, who was moderating. “Should we vote yes on comrade Josip’s motion?”

The assembled Illyrians and Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove members all said yes, or waved their hands in sign of consensus.

“We should launch local and regional referendums for the Aimeran-Guémeron area and then the Yvelines region as well,” said Pascal. “To speed up things.”

“D’accord, but let’s wait until over 95% of the Yvelines villages have voted yes,” said Hisham.

“Good idea!” said Jean. “The comrades need to have a good think about the pros and cons. Of course, it is strange to lose such a long-established and usually so trustworthy daily companion, but as several comrades have said, we have the harp now. We can pass the gist of it via bio-message.”

“There is no question of abandoning it,” said Rim, mother of budding economist talent Bashir. “We biochemists, economists, plushtop, plush phone and haproid robot engineers shall immediately get to work to develop a new and safer version, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we should put a call for talent on the l’Huma feed!” said Patrick. “I think we should be very fast in getting the app live again so as to prevent people from losing confidence. After all, the trefoil is one of the mainstays of the revolution, isn’t it, comrade Sarah?”

“Not only one, but the mainstay, especially the free leaf!” Sarah stressed. “Because it guarantees you your free goods. Even the housing guarantee is only second, or at most, they are on the same level.”

“You did a very good survey of food as an instrument of exploitation under capitalism, and of the food issue in the revolution. What does the hack of the trefoil app make you think in relation to all of that?”

“That we have not fully eliminated the remnants of capitalism yet,” said Sarah. “That is no wonder. Even Marx and Engels stressed that would take a long time. And there is also the nefarious legacy of the ecological destruction capitalism wrought. It will still take at least 40 years, maybe up to 100 years until the march of our comrades trees will have overcome the deserts and restored forests or at least savannah everywhere in Africa and in the rest of the world. And until then, heat, cold, or other seasonal and weather phenomena and even capitalist sabotage can bring famine everywhere.”

“Not this hack, however,” said Hisham. “We will be able to overcome it via communication in the harp.”

“What if they come up with something else, though?” warned Pascal, himself the son of an old-régime bureaucrat associated with the ex-oligarchs whom fasco mercs had simply killed when he would not do their bidding. “They are capable of anything. As a matter of fact, what about the size of our planning matrices reverting to original size automatically, isn’t that cause enough for concern?”

Chapter 3. Don’t tell us the Matrices are hacked as well?

The Great Matrix Hack, by Maher and Karla

“Don’t tell us the matrices are hacked as well?” asked Marine, prize-winning mathematics teacher, and author of a book ‘For a revolutionary mathematics’ that had introduced many a student even beyond Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp at Aimeran and Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at Saint-Denis to the material balance plans, input-output tables and other matrices used by revolutionary economic planners, such as her son Philippe.

“As a matter of fact, there is cause for concern,” Philippe had to smile about his Maman despite the bad news he had to reveal. “They are all too big. In the beginning, we thought that was just a left-over from the time our village assemblies were still larger and down-sized and adjusted them. Yet we didn’t manage to keep that equilibrium stable. The tables automatically jump back to their larger versions, designed for villages of 600 residents at least.”

“Let’s say, the old input-output matrix for Aimeran had 20 sectors plus the Block energy works (abbreviated BEWs), but Illyria has only four sectors: farm, clothes workshop, furniture workshop, and robot workshop and testing lab. Because of an inflationary virus – we call it that way because we have got no better word for it, the matrices keep getting bigger, like the prices under capitalism –, whenever we try to load the new four-sector model, the table jumps back to the 20 sector-model or now that we have started to fix things, a twelve sector model. And it does so time and time again. Of course, larger economies have larger labour, energy, and other counts. So, they are trying to make the revolutionary economy, and the new smaller rural or already dispersed communities – dispersed into the countryside from the huge cities, Paris, London, Berlin, Moscow, and so on –, look less viable.”

“In other words, same goal as the brown cells had? Make SNCF and ÉdF, for instance, huge, centralised companies again, instead of decentralised, self-managed train, station, or switching hubs in the case of SNCF and transformer slash grid monitors in the case of ÉdF, correct?” asked Emmanuel.

“Correct!” said Philippe, swiping his temple. “Well spotted, young comrade. But it is even graver in the case of food, don’t we all agree? If they manage to convince us that we cannot produce and distribute food and other basics on a small scale, from small farms and workshops, and via small, decentralised logistics organisations, not huge distribution networks and supermarkets, we will have lost the fight for the moneyless economy and Communist self-sufficiency. No doubt there can and should be sharing and revolutionary barter across villages, regions, whole continents and around the world, but on the basis of local planning matrices that exactly match supply to needs. You may ask, why is that necessary? Why can’t we rely more on cross-regional sharing and barter? One reason is that we risk exploiting the workers in other regions and on other continents, especially those producing luxury goods we all crave like oranges, lemons, and other citrus fruits, cocoa, coffee, bananas, and so on. For those of us old enough to remember how our parents shopped in capitalist supermarkets, remember how the shelves were bending with Italian melon, Indonesian pineapple, New Zealand kiwis, Malaysian mango, and other exotic fruit, while the apples were scarce, sold out quickly, and weren’t all of the desirable quality. Keywords, synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. We want to people to be able to eat and drink with their head held high and their spine straight, sure that they are getting their fill and yet are not taking anything from comrades either local or far away. Think of our Illyrian Garden Colony Manouche Camp and Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove potluck suppers like we are having one right now. I take a plate and see all of you, dear comrades, take a plate, and the fact that you are eating makes me just as full, happy, and satisfied as if I had eaten even more, even more so, as a matter of fact. Thanks to mathematical planning, we are all eating our plates which we have well deserved by first doing our socially necessary work on the farm, for instance, watering and organically fertilising our comrades plants, then hopping on the train and sitting in Nanterre at the lab doing our creative work, in other words, trying the fix this matrix inflation problem we have been having. I feel no jealousy whatsoever, on the contrary, as I said, I feel we are all working and eating double and triple. Contrast that with the feeling we grown-up comrades remember from capitalism, when the rich bourgeois kid always got an ice cream after school, whereas we children of workers or poor exploited intellectuals could only have one a few times a year, if at all. Jealousy, as comrade Maher has brilliantly analysed when discussing revolutionary chemistry between people, is an awful, painful and debilitating feeling, and it comes from not being able to afford what the object of your jealousy has, typically because of privilege.

“That is why we have all but abolished marriage and all other exclusive partnerships in the revolution. Anybody can make love to the object of his affection, even if the other has a stable buddy already. The result is apparent to all of us. We are all sexually more satisfied, and at the same time, nobody has to fear that they will go hungry and or lose their home just because their friend is fancying another, like it was often the case under capitalism. Everybody will get their food, housing, and other basics, regardless of who they sleep with at the moment, to put it bluntly. If your love abandons you, you may feel sad for a while, but others will console you, and eventually it may come back to you.

“And what holds in tricky love relationships, is bound to be even simpler when food is concerned. As long as there is enough, and everyone has equal access to the table, nobody will suffer hunger, and there may even be ways to support your diet if you need one, by just watching your friends enjoy food and forget about any cravings or dislikes you might have.”

“Better food, natural, not too sweet and not too salty, and not too bland either, not too fattening and fresh from the fields or orchards or from the cooking pots or oven is also a way to reduce the quantity you will need to make you happy and satisfied,” added Sarah.

“Exactly. Eating intelligently is an art, as La Rochefoucauld put it. As a matter of fact, comrades Pascal, Hisham, Rim, and I have already tried for days now to fix our planning algorithms. It turns out we need help from you, Illyrian computer and robot experts, at least those of you who are here and not chasing after the Hacking Hexagon in Novgornyi, Mali, the Sioux lands or wherever. At the moment, that seems to be Robespierre, Sylvain, Josip, Rosa, and Lénina…”

“You should have said something earlier,” said Josip, grinning. “That’s what we are here for, to save us from the fascos! I think they must have fiddled with the normal size of your matrix. For those of you who are not planners, you know, it would be like stipulating the normal size of a page, A4 or letter size, or the normal margins, so that you can no longer alter them.”

“True, but how to fix that, how to make sure that we can change the size of our matrices again once these fascos have had a hand in there?” asked Rim.

“Not necessary to rely on their set-up, just draw up an all new one, five-by-five matrix and take it from there,” said Robespierre. “Base it on the need signals from animals, humans, and plants, on the one hand, and the production signals from these same comrades. Have the signals travel on low energy signals hard to read for the class enemy and surround them by digital hounds and bio-thicket so as to make them even more resilient. I am sure, your matrices will no longer inflate.”

“But before you start everything from scratch, we have good news,” Jérôme butted in, not able to hold on to himself. “A spontaneous militia brigade from Guémeron has caught one of the new shadow dealers, driving one of Logistique Aimeran’s, Fabien’s new nemesis’ transporters. It’s a French fellow, who gives his name as Thierry. Comrade Jean and I are already here at the holding cell in Aimeran, ready to question him. Don’t you want to listen in?”

“Of course,” they all shouted.

“Then let us fill you in on the story first. Comrades Sarah Faroukh, and Jérôme, you have seen them already.”

Chapter 4. Appearance of the Shadow Dealers

The New Shadow Dealers, by Faroukh and Sarah

“Look, over there are the new shadow dealers,” Aini explained, when Faroukh, Sarah, her, Jérôme, and Michel arrived at the market for their fact-finding mission. “They have uploaded their own app now, I mean it is intraline like ours, and since ours is now down, for the time being at least, some people think they are the only game in town, especially, if they order only intraline and don’t come to the market. Yet you can see, our produce is still fresher and better than theirs.”

“They look nice enough!” said Sarah. “Faroukh, come with me, I want to interview them.”

“That’s risky,” said Michel. “They may suddenly pull a weapon on you or hit you with a brown beam. Let us come with you as well,” added Jérôme.

They walked over in a foursome. Sarah put up her nicest smile and said, “Oh, you have lovely carrots. I adore carrots. May I have a bunch?”

“And also these green beans look great,” said Jérôme. “What farm are you from? We have never seen you here before.”

“Oh, we are independent operators. My name is Thierry, by the way. We pick up produce from all the farms and sell it here,” said one of the five. “Maybe you are interested?”

Faroukh put up a broad smile and asked: “What does sell mean?”

”Well,” said another of the five, visibly angry at his colleague and probably reprimanding him via a subliminal bio-message. Nothing got through to them though. “It means giving against crypto. You give us your produce against crypto – I have seen you have a rich stall over there –, and we give it against crypto to others. That way, your women do not have to stand in the heat all day.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Michel. “In the Chinese lands the men do that as well, helping the women out. I am originally from the Chinese lands, so are several other Illyrians, and we have many comrades and friends there as well as in Indochina. But why ask for money? You’ll get your goods through the economic circuit, so will the farmers and the regulars at the market, and if ever the proportions don’t suit, we go the share point, look over there, with the blue roof and red circle on it, and throw things all together, share and barter, until they do. Why punish us all with a crypto-charge?”

“But the free produce is rotting, just look at the app,” said a third dealer.

“Not true!” said Faroukh. “You said yourselves that comrade Aini’s stall looks good. Just help the farmers get it to market and look for other socially necessary and creative jobs at the same time. I am a university student, a bit crazy grant you, I am only getting my university entry project out now to harmonize with my girl-friend’s here. So, it’s probably going to be called my bachelor thesis as well. The way I do it, I did it at school already, is to divide all my subjects into socially necessary and creative ones, and then find reasons why they are both at the same time. That’s more interesting than counting crypto, don’t you think?”

Two of the shadow dealers looked at him with open disdain, the other three with a bit of a grin. “Look, we’ll think about it!” said the one called Thierry. “But at first, you’d have to repair your trefoil app. There are hardly any people at the market any longer.” Which was true. Only very few people had bothered to come, where it was usually packed at this time of the day, late afternoon, where people were getting out from their jobs. “Take your carrots and green beans for now, you don’t have to pay, and here is a card with a bit of crypto on it, in case you want to talk to us again.”

“We have enough to book them,” comrade Denis scowled at their evening strategy meeting at the youth clubs at Illyria and Saint-Denis. “Why did you not demand a quorum for a spontaneous militia brigade to arrest them right then at there?”

“We did, Papa, remember,” said Jérôme. “Only not to arrest them, or not just yet, but to follow them to wherever their lair is.”

***

It was late at night. Rebecca was looking for Faroukh and Sarah and found them sitting arm in arm on the house steps, imitating the way people did in Illyria. She could not blame them. After a rather hot day, the night was balmy. The périphérique that had poisoned the atmosphere in the area with car exhaust before the revolution was long gone. Where it had been, there wasn’t even a tarmacked road any longer, only the somewhat elevated tracks of the hyperloop that ran in a ring around the Paris metropolitan area and was linked to the RER, métro, and electro-bus network to make every point in the city and in its surroundings accessible via public transport. Apart from that, only trees, gardens, even small vegetable plots where the ground was good enough again already after the long abuse by buildings and tarmacked roads. The occasional small logistics transporter, electric, of course, and no larger than a Peugeot transporter, speeding home to the country-side from an inner-city market.

“Come on, sweetheart, you are done with your university entry project,” her son was teasing Sarah. “You are ready, and we should start to prepare our field work in Palestine.”

“I still have a few points to make, food in the harp, make sure that the trefoil continues to work and will work for humans as well as animals and plants…,” said Sarah, putting her head on his shoulder. “And how to fix the inflating matrices. And I have good news!” Rebecca had to access subliminal bio-message on delta waves in order to even hear what she was saying. “Papa examined me the other day. I am pregnant, Fucker.” That’s what she called Faroukh most of the time when they were alone, but it was meant as term of endearment. “I will give you a child.”

“That’s formidable!” said Faroukh and hugged her.

“In a way, it’s bad news as well,” Sarah sounded worried all of a sudden. “Do you think I can go to Palestine with you that way?”

“Of course,” Faroukh laughed. “Ask comrades Jean-Saïd and Natalie, Jean-Vladimir and Adilah, Olivier and Danièle as well, and the others who have been there… A least half of them were pregnant. We have excellent medicine. Not only the Jews, mind you, but we Palestinians as well.”

Rebecca had to smile. Even with his 100% Jewish mother, her son insisted on being a Palestinian. To her, he was like a Prince of Light, a prophet, all but the Messiah, being the consummation of her partnership with Marwan, fervent Intifada fighter and now a living symbol of the reconciliation between Palestinians and Jews. Now on top of it, Faroukh was about to extend the aura of peace to North Africa as well with his marriage to comrade René’s daughter Sarah.

“Well, papa wants to come along for part of the time as well!” said Sarah, “just to make sure nothing happens and we are fine,” and Faroukh nodded.

“Of course, he is welcome!” Now his father, Marwan, materialised next to Rebecca.

“I am afraid, comrade Sarah, your story is not yet over. Comrade Michel,” bio-terrorism expert, buddy of Jérôme, “is intraline. The Illyrians, or rather Fabien who lives in the garden colony and works at self-managed Logistique Yvelines, have discovered a new capitalist logistics station near Aimeran. Come in and listen to his story intraline. They are quite brazen, actually.”

Delivery of the tractor, by Cédric and Charolaine

“’Oh,’ the guy said,” Fabien was just reporting their conversation with one person who had dealt with the new crypto-merchants. “He was a farmer who had ordered a new solar-powered tractor developed by comrade Léon and his brigade at Ponts et Chaussées.”

“Not the details,” interjected Léon, “Just the basic model, solar-driven, with just a small battery for back-up and bad weather, and quiet, just like the small excavator for pulling out the layers of tarmac.”

“’Oh, here you are already. Merci, the tractor looks great,’ the guy said when we were rolling the tractor out of our transporter and made him sign the receipt. ‘By the way, I also called a new logistics enterprise, Logistique Aimeran – Aimeran Logistics, have you heard of them? I thought they were maybe affiliated with you, are they?’ ‘No, we have no idea who they are,’ we said.”

“Then I researched the issue intraline,” continued Fabien, “and found out that they are based somewhere South-East of Guémeron in a new forest area already created by the recent experimental march of the trees. They call themselves Logistique Aimeran making people believe that they are just a branch of ours, meaning a bona fide self-managed, revolutionary logistics organisation like Logistique Yvelines. Of course, the comrades get disabused of that notion once they ask for things to be picked up and delivered and the ‘nice’ agent, looking at his watch to please his boss, asks for crypto. And people report cases where these creeps keep on pretending that they are a revolutionary outfit and that only because of the severity of the situation do they have to ask for money.”

“You say people, how many people have they cheated already?” asked Jean.

“Quite a few, a couple of dozen at least have ordered something, then had to smash the door on the delivery men when they wanted crypto, and a few people have incurred crypto-debt even, so they may be asked to do something for the fascos sooner or later. You know how it works, just like with housing, be it on a smaller scale. They tell you: ‘Oh, we are sorry, there is a small fee, but you don’t have to pay it yet. Here is a card with some credit on it. You can order a few more times for free, then we shall charge you.’ And to the farmers: ‘For now, you may barter with your produce.’”

“It was the same with these shadow dealers at the market. And we have an idea who they are, and you may be able to identify them. We’ll get to that in a moment.

“’Why do you have to charge us?’ our poor comrades may ask them.

“Then they come up with various excuses. ‘We are new to the area!’ They are all strangers by the way, like your shadow dealers, or: ‘It is so as not to disturb the march of the trees. We are driving huge detours, and that takes a lot of energy.’ Then we say: ‘But you don’t have to pay for energy, it comes for free from a Block Energy Works near you.’ Now that we have them embroiled in contradictions once more, they try another tack: ‘It’s because the trefoil app is down.’ Crap like that, to wind up the comrades against the revolution at the same time or using the havoc they themselves have caused against us to defraud us.”

“All this said, we may have discovered a new clique. Does Ross McInnes ring a bell to you pre-revolutionary comrades, or would you rather be dinosaur comrades?” Sarah asked.

“Of course he rings a bell,” Pierre, the maverick nodded. “But call us contemporary comrades. Ross McInnes was chairman of the third or fourth-largest French defence, or better call it military company, depending how you count it, after Dassault and Thales and comparable to Airbus Military.”

“Exactly, his son, or somebody using McInnes’ avatar, Ross, is one of them.”

“I know him,” said Yannick Dassault, who had recently repented and was now rehabilitating from his crimes by helping the Illyrians Garden Colonists Manouches catch the fasco criminals. “He is similar to me, an illegitimate son of the old Ross McInnes, like I am of Rudolphe Dassault, maybe with a pro even, just like myself, and he was still a small boy when the revolution happened in 2021, he has had most of his education in communism. He might not be an altogether hopeless case for rehabilitation. And he is a computer geek like me.”

“D’accord, next names are two Germans, possibly avatars as well, not real Krupps and Thyssens, although they seem to be good with weapons technology, Jens Krupp and Klaus Thysssen. And two more Frenchmen, I forget their names, but they are either Arrolle and Stérilé in person or mercs hired by them. The original Arrolle and Stérilé in turn are former associates of media tycoon Vincent Molloré, but who, they say, is old and confused and wants nothing to do with the Cause anymore.”

“D’accord, then Ross, Jens, Klaus, Arnaud, and Édouard they will be to us. They all switch names and village IDs every day anyway. What would be important would be to get their pictures, and an approximate idea of their bases and moves. Do they look anything like the five shadow dealers we have encountered at the market? I noticed two of them did not say much. Could that be the two Germans? Has somebody seen people who fit the bill of these five move around at Logistique Aimeran?”

“Don’t call it that way!” Fabien pulled his hair. “People might get this bourgeois hellhole of exploitation confused with Logistique Yvelines.”

“D’accord, mon pote, but still we have to find anyone who works there who can give us more information?” asked Jérôme.

“Well, let me turn this question around, who gave you these names?”

“I did,” said Jean. “And I have got them from Markus Nah and consorts. Apparently, they approached him and asked whether he would be interested in making up with the revolution. They said something like ‘The Hacking Hexagon in the Russian lands and the new French Hacking Pentagon are working together already. We may get the world-wide Cause or Future movement running again.’ Marcus said, ‘No way! After being beaten up by Rutte and Gunpump and forced to produce a murder weapon – a syringe with a lethal dose of a virus –, in the middle of the night!’ Then they pressured him. He should take their offers seriously. He should join or at least recommend a young biochemistry expert, not older than forty, because they need to be fit to run, his contact explained it with a twinkle of his eyes.”

“That is their main shortcoming, of the Hacking Hexagon, and of this new group as well, it seems,” said Yannick. “They are computer experts and weapons specialists, but to sabotage brain apps, for instance, they need active knowledge of human biology, molecular chemistry, and the action of live viruses and their own toxic pharmacological vaccines on the body.”

***

“Let me hold it there, the pal we caught or who surrendered to us as a matter of fact, may already be such an expert. You studied in the BC section, didn’t you, comrade Thierry?” In the revolutionary lycées, you could choose among many sections or concentrations. LP was centred on literature and philosophy for budding teachers, anthropologists and harp experts, MP focused on mathematics and physics, for emerging computer scientists, robotics, and intranet experts, BC was for those to be biologists, chemists, and doctors, and ES for future economists and statisticians. “Yes, that’s right. And I studied for a few semesters already before Arnaud hired me.”

“And by Arnaud you mean Arrolle, the agitation expert?”

“Yes, there is also Édouard, he owns some counter-revolutionary media channels. They are big buddies.”

“Parbleu,” Jérôme was baffled. “So, they must have come back from Africa without us even noticing. Any evidence of that, you old and new Sahel experts?”

Chapter 5. Food in the Harp

Harp assembly at Illyria, by Che and Georgette

“Planning food in the harp assemblies and for all harpists is a similar leap of faith to the one we made after the revolution,” Sarah began next evening’s presentation. “Back then, we simplified this jump by passing through a voucher stage. The vouchers which came to you either on paper via post, or were easily accessible to you on your phone ensured that every family and household member could eat their fill at every meal and that people had access to some treats from the share points and fresh produce markets every day, even if they lived in the inner cities. I wonder, could we have vouchers for animals and plants as well?” asked Sarah.

“Not needed, but we can link them up with our economic circuit,” said Zélim-Philippe. “They work, on the farm or in the forest as hunter-gatherers, so they may eat.”

“Of course, but we should do better than that. Just as our stables, coops, pastures, and outside chicken runs should be adapted to the animals’ needs and please them, their food should give them pleasure as well. They may develop an appetite for a while, but ultimately, they will eat less again, just as we humans do, don’t we, when we are in good company?” asked Sarah.

“True, just like Philippe explained, the comrades make us forget about the food, and we don’t need so much either. Under capitalism, some people often overate because of stress and frustration,” noted Melanie.

“… While others ate less, and in fact lost all their appetite,” remarked Murielle.

“That’s right, we should not generalise. The stress can act in both directions. Anyway, in communism, we don’t have either, neither overeating nor loss of appetite, “ emphasised Sarah. “Instead, we have the constant pleasure to be able to talk to our family, comrades, and friends at meal time and also their support when it is needed. And what we said about the stables and pastures remands us to the housing question. We need to create good conditions for our animals and make sure they are with their friends.”

“We might start a big survey of humans, animals, and plants,” proposed Rim. “Ask them what they eat, how much, where they like to eat, at what times of the day, together with whom, and what makes them eat more or less, sources of stress and sources of pleasure, what else they do in terms of socially necessary as well as social and creative work. We should repeat this survey as often as we can, extend it, until we have ultimately asked every human, animal, and plant in the whole région parisienne.”

“The fasco sabotage has meant that for the moment, we have had to get away from the apps and the matrices altogether and rely on the harp. We do that by signalling. Every member of the harp, from the tiniest mouse to the biggest dino, passing by the humans, the lion, and the elephants registers their needs and their production, in case of humans, other animals, and plants working in agriculture or as hunter-gatherers. We add up, see whether the quantities match, and whether they are available at the right place. If not, we must get them there and we must make sure they match. That’s a material balance already, and we can convert it into an input-output matrix and make it impervious to hacking if only you give us a little time. At every step, we must make sure, of course, that needs are respected. What if, for instance, the food the mouse needs is in the hands of a fasco?

“It is the ultimate test of the trefoil,” concluded Sarah. “For humans it worked, because we produced enough, processed less and in healthier ways, so that people were able to hold back better, share, and barter. We no longer have to consume cocoa every day, and not bananas either. That has meant an enormous relief for our African and South American comrades with whom we barter for these treats.”

“Let us continue,” said Josip. “There are three types of harp signals: the first type is self-identification of their needs by the harpists. The reason we ride around on that point of self-identification is that we have seen enough of the case where domineering humans decide for other humans, animals, and plants, deemed too young, too old, too sick, too dumb, racially, genderwise or species-wise inferior, and so on, and so forth, the list of inferior beings for these dictators goes on and on, where such Satanic types want to decide over other living beings’ needs. And the latter includes haproids and harpoids by the way, meaning our live-size robots, plushtops, and other intranet-capable devices. That is why we insist on every harpist’s absolute right to either articulate his, her or its needs verbally, or to be observed by mixed brigades of other harpists for a long enough time to reveal their needs exactly.”

“Well, there comes my fear, what if they live in the depths of the forest or savannah?” asked Guillaume.

“We can send out research brigades, of course,” answered his half-brother in the quadrangle. Pascal was their father, but Guillaume’s mother was Sophie, and Josip’s Emilia.

“But we risk upsetting them.”

“Maybe,” said Josip. “Or we can estimate their needs rather precisely on the basis of other members of their species whom we have had occasion to observe closely, for instance, in a wild-life resort, better not a zoo, because their condition of captivity would twist the picture, wouldn’t it?”

“But what to do with cattle then?” asked Marius. “Should we release all our cows, chicken, sheep, goats, and so on into the wild? They would not survive, would they?”

“No, and I don’t think that we should ignore the zoo experience either,” said senior comrade Jana, farming and self-management expert, from Bosnia. “D’accord, in a zoo or on a farm, animals are not exactly self-managed. On the other hand, they are closer to us humans. We farmers understand them and they understand us. The same probably holds for zoologists and zoo attendants. We can conduct interviews with them in nature-speak and nature language, recorded by harpoids, and use these as a baseline also to extrapolate to individuals, as well as to wholespecies in thewild. For instance, goats may help us understand wild deer and so.”

“D’accord, what to do about predators?” asked Danièle. “They eat our friends, cattle and deer.”

Marius laughed. “You are really full of hatred, comrade Danièle, aren’t you? Remember the impressions comrade Adilah and her brigade brought back from the march of the animals. Remind her, comrade Adilah!”

“Well, yes, as I recapped you earlier, we were trying to bring animals back from the Kenyan savannah to the Horn of Africa where they had been decimated by global warming. We had our cute green transporter and the tame animals, giraffes, zebras, gazellas, monkeys, even elephants and, further North, camels joined and kept close to it. The predators, lions, leopards, cheetahs, desert wolves and so on, kept at a distance but moved along as well. Sometimes, by mistake, we humans came too close to them. Yet they left us alone, we were their friends. And in general, just like the veggie animals, they just ate when they were hungry. Sometimes they lost the caravan because they had to hunt in a different direction, but they caught up with us. So did the rhinos, crocodiles and fish by the way. They had to find a water way, and sometimes they lost us, but then via intranet, they notified other members of their species to come with us further up the way. It was a very moving experience, let me tell you!” Adilah had tears in her eyes as she retold the story. “It convinced us, Jean-Vlad and me, Noah and Seth, and our comrades from what is now the Desmond Tutu cooperative that the harp community of animals, humans, plants, and robots is based on mutual tolerance, generosity, and respect and can thrive. Our only natural enemies were the fascos.”

“Well, let’s hope this works in post-capitalist and still quite greedy Europe as well,” said Sarah. “Our meeting tonight shall start somewhat earlier and finish somewhat later and be a full harp assembly where we shall try and get our pets and our cattle, our grains, vegetables and fruit and as many wild animals and plants of this area as possible to reveal their needs.”

Dogs and wolves, by Jean-François and Alexandra

“Well, I must say, just like you humans, I don’t like processed food either,” said Andrei, one of the Illyrian Recycling Hounds named after their comrades, the Moscow Recycling Hounds. A little bit of the chopped beef for your stew is best for me. I do not need snacks. We dogs eat once or twice a day, three times only if we are on a really long trip. And plenty of water, that’s all we need. And I can make you a great compliment. We love to play with your harpoid dogs, especially now that you have made them fluffy. We love you humans for your inventiveness.”

“Let me butt in,” said Father Wolf from the wild. “and say that we much maligned wolves are actually very similar to your favourite companions. In fact, we can go even longer without food, several days, and would only break into your farms if we are either very hungry or our companions are pregnant. We humbly ask for your understanding.”

“In that case, don’t break in, just howl, we’ll share with you as well as with the dogs,” said Fabienne. “Most of us are vegans anyway.”

“We eat similarly to our arch-enemies, the dogs and wolves, except for the fact that, being smaller, we eat smaller portions,” said the cat. “Once a day is enough, and we can eat chicken, we can even stand it processed with some veggies. And as you know, we love milk. As much as you can spare, if it is not too much to ask.”

“We like all types of grain and we only need water,” said the chicken brigadier. “We are not that demanding, and if you feed us enough and let us roam in the yard or at least in the enclosure, we will be strong enough to scare you stupid cats, won’t we?”

Cat and chicken stand-off, by Marius and Jean-Luc

And the two arch-enemies stood opposite each other, purring and crowing, with their hair or respectively feathers standing up, like enemies or like lovers, it was hard to tell.

“Oh, just give us grass in summer and hay in winter and we shall be o.k.,” said one of the cow brigadiers of the day. There were three cow brigadiers every day as Illyria Garden Colony Manouche camp had twenty cows.

“What about sileage?” asked Che. “It is a little bit processed.”

“Good question,” said the second cow brigadier. “Some of us like it, others don’t. You’ll have to play it by ear, or by volume and smell rather.”

“D’accord, one last question, we can see you want to feed. What do you prefer, pasture in summer and stable in winter, or pasture all year round.” “Pasture and stable,” mooed some. “Pasture, stable only when the weather is really bad or when giving birth,” lowed the others. “Thank you for that informal survey, we will come back to ask you for your individual opinions when you are less hungry. And the cows, except for one of the three brigadiers, double-backed to their pasture.

“They are trying to get plenty of the last fresh grass,” explained Francine. “Like us, they know when autumn is coming.”

“We as well, by the way,” bickered the goat brigadier. “The comrades have sent me only, and I can tell you, despite our voracious reputation, we are much more economical than cows. We eat harder plants as well, not just grass, but even small twigs, and we can do so even in winter. Just give us our part of the stable in case the weather gets really nasty.”

By contrast, several sheep were in attendance. “Don’t be afraid to admit it, dear dollies,” Marius teased them. “You eat a little more than goats, but soon you’ll become wonder sheep, who’ll feed less, but still give wool, excellent milk for cheese especially, and in the future, you shall even lay eggs, all this while being cuddly at the same time…”

“Stop it!” shouted Danièle. “You wizard of Satan.” And for the time being, Marius stood down with a mischievous smile.

“We may eat somewhat more in summer than the goats,” the sheep brigadier of the day explained. “But in winter we can stand as much if not more deprivation because of our woolly cover. If you want to shear us in the fall though, you must keep us in the stable in the winter.”

“On the basis of statistics, we are working on the correct wool and cotton balance for our clothes, don’t worry!” comrade Salma, brigadier of the day of the clothes workshop assured them. “We shall try to keep your interests in mind.”

“Well,” said Father Rabbit. “We rabbits eat almost any plant, leafy greens, carrots, and so on. But we also sleep a lot in our burrows underground, we can go without food for longer periods as well, like your dogs. Only request: do not slaughter all of us and feed us to the wolves, dogs, and so on. Remember, we eat some of your weeds as well. We can help keep your gardens clean and fertile, and in a totally organic fashion.”

“We red robins and other birds of the forest eat grains as well, and we have become a lot healthier since you stopped all that processing. And a scare crow will keep us away, though not necessarily the crows, remember, they are meat-eaters.”

“Even we are not as bad as our reputation,” said the crow brigadier. “We eat less than pigeons, and we are not as dull. We come in a variety of colours, black, grey, brown…”

“You humans of Illyria Garden Colony Manouche camp are alright, you like us,” said the first squirrel and ran away up the next tree. “We only wish you would plant more nut trees,” added the second and stood there for a moment awaiting a positive answer. When Danton nodded and said, ‘It shall be done!’, it chased up the tree after its partner.

The speakers of the deer assembly, a handsome stag and his bitch stood at the edge of the forest, ready to run at the slightest sign of danger. “Excuse our distrust,” the deer bellowed. “But we have had cases recently where your rogue fellow humans, fascos you call them, shot at us out of the blue. We have enough feed in the forest, so the faster it spreads, in other words, the faster you go with the march of the trees, the better it will be for us. And one last note of caution. We are a little bit worried about your understanding with the wolves. If they restrain from hunting your tame animals, they will probably focus on us.”

“They have reached no understanding with us,” screamed the foxes. “We shall continue to hunt your fawns as well as their chicks.”

“Then that’s a great worry,” said Father Hare.

“Didn’t we tell you, we don’t need as much?” the wolves growled from up the forest.

“And we shall warn you, even at night!” promised the owl.

“We are glad that you came back from all this monoculture,” one of the wheat brigadiers of the day noted.

“And of course the organic fertilisers, especially from the dinosaurs and cows, are much better for us,” added a rye brigadier of the day.

“We are happy that you are growing more oats lately and organically of course,” complemented one of today’s oat brigadier. “without pesticides. But beware of the birds. The fact that we grains are no longer toxic makes us much more attractive.”

“Now it’s my turn,” one of the grass brigadiers of the day yelled.

“Yes, please speak up!” said comrade Carla who was moderating.

“Why do you keep mowing us? The cattle need us a bit taller, the insects and birds as well, not to speak of small wild flowers, who need us around them for protection. But your idea of a nice meadow is still a flat green surface, like a golf course under capitalism. Remember that for us small plants to grow healthy, you may cut off at most a third of our length at a time. So we should be over 10-15 cm if not taller, before you even think about touching us.”

“We are also glad that they no longer grow us as a mono-culture in the global south,” said the cotton brigadier of the day. “I appreciate that Illyria wants to grow as much of the cotton it needs to clothe its people itself. But we need lots of sun, yet not too much heat. The French climate is difficult on us, also the residues of toxins in the soil. So give us and the other more exotic grains and vegetables you may grow a bit more time.”

“As for exotic, we don’t mind growing in a polyshed,” said the pepper brigadier. “But please keep them aired.”

“And in general, what do you vegetables and fruit trees say? I hope you are not too crammed?” asked Che. “No, we are fine,” said their brigadier of the day, a cherry tree. “But watch the birds, as was said already, and the insects and parasites as well. Especially now that you are treating us organically, you need to react promptly to any infestation.”

Among the flowers of Illyria Garden Colony Manouche camp, the poppy was brigadier of the day. “We can’t complain, we have enough space, enough light, and you water and feed us enough. You Illyrians like flowers, we can tell.”

“They don’t like us shrubs though,” sighed the bushes. “Your kids constantly upset us, hiding in them. And you don’t give us enough fertilisers, except for the dinos, of course. They are generous.”

Now the survey gradually advanced deeper into the forest. “Illyrians are tree lovers of course,” said the brigadier of the chestnut brigade, and we can’t complain, “but the comment of the fruit trees was quite à propos. We chestnut trees still suffer from the parasites that were nurtured by capitalist pollution and overheating and you need to help us.”

“Same for us oak trees,” nodded the oak tree brigadier. “Yet we place great hopes in the march of the trees and the return of the forest. Once we trees reign nature again, we shall cure each other as well as the soil and the air as well as protect you humans against cold and flu. An occasional small vehicle running on electricity passing through us will no longer harm the air quality which thousands and millions of trees shall keep clean.”

“Once the forest returns, you may return to having live trees in your homes again for Christmas and Easter,” said a small fir. “Only request, don’t cut us, just dig us out and replant us in a pot, then we may live longer and if we survive, you may then even replant us into the earth outside.” “Thank you, Small Fir,” said Robespierre. “That was a very good suggestion that we shall certainly adopt.”

“From Noah’s family’s village in Mali, and from Novgornyi, we have a few species that feel underrepresented in your assembly,” said Maher.

“You are paying insufficient attention to the fact that animals are social beings like humans, you consider them individuals and want to determine their diet individually. But think, this individualist approach makes humans greedy and lonely, so it is likely to have the same effect on animals,” said Father Chimpanzee. “Monkeys love bananas, but they need an adequate quantity of them, otherwise the individuals will run away with theirs, and they may even fight for them. There should be enough food to go around. That should be your first priority, hence no more desertification. Please go ahead with the march of the trees!”

The Donkey in the Desert, by Maher and Karla

“Under feudalism,” said Grandpa Donkey, “not everybody in the desert could afford a camel, so they had donkeys. Under capitalism, they acquired vehicles and many of us starved. Now that we have abolished vehicles again except for the occasional freight or passenger train on the tracks along the Niger or electrical transporter to supply remote villages, donkeys are coming back into vogue. But let us ask you, are you going to exploit us again as you did under feudalism and early capitalism?”

“No way,” said Marius. “You can supply the plough-pulling and load-carrying element in the wonder-cattle, but we shall make you strong like a horse, so you won’t mind the weight. And anyway, most of the time, the electrical tractor will do it.”

“We shall keep electrical tractors and, as you say, the occasional transporter,” said Léon.

“And then, maybe in the next millennium, we shall carry everything by beam,” added Jean-Saïd. “You donkeys shall just be with us as pets for our kids, all of them slim and healthy of course from all the good food the harp provides.”

“And we camels may be wild again?” ventured the camel brigadier of the day. “Yes of course, so may the donkeys. We shall all be wild and free again… As long as we don’t eat each other,” cautioned Sarah.

“Now from Novgornyi…” “Well, harping on right on that point, we bears don’t eat meat and we only attack when attacked. We are shy and withdrawn and won’t disturb anyone. Yet we need our families to remain intact,” said Mother Bear.

“We shall bring back the forest with the march of the trees,” promised Maksim. “And the bio-wifi in the forest is one of the best in the world, it will warn you of any potential aggressor.”

“We storks, on the other hand, would not be so happy with just a forest canopy. We have lived in symbiosis with humans for more than two millennia now. Would it be possible to have the occasional meadow with a telegraph post sticking out for us to build nests for our young and land there safely?”

“Absolutely,” said comrade Danya. “I am researching the village of the future, novyi mir in stork language, and we’ll have enough meadows and enough posts sticking out, old electricity posts, unused windmills, and if all else fails, we can erect some new posts. Don’t you worry, comrade stork, you have always belonged to our region like the sea and the pine trees.”

“So have we lupines, but the capitalists have decimated us as weed!”

“That is unacceptable!” shouted Danièle. “Lupine patches wherever possible.”

“Darling!” said Olivier. “You must leave this decision to the comrades of the Novgornyi Recycling Hounds cooperative.”

“Of course,” said Danièle, with a shy glance at Marius who had sat down next to one of Illyria’s lupine patches and was folding his hands in prayer.

Illyrian dinos with Danton, by Inès and Little Ramón

“Hello,” said Poekilopleuron. “I have the great honour to be one of the speakers of Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp’s two dinosaur brigades, not all of them on comrade Inès’ and Little Ramón’s picture. Apart from me, the two brigades consist of Compso, Struthius, Ampelo, Arcovenator, Caletodraco, Dacentrurus, Hypselo, Loricato, Obeli, and shaking hands with comrade Danton, my colleague brigadier, Rhabdodon. I can only repeat what my fellow dinos have stressed on many occasions. Some of us may be big and need a little more feed at times, although we try to restrain like the other species as well, but on the other hand, we have numerous talents. We can speak to humans without prejudice because our extinction antedates the anthropocene and capitalism in particular which has done so much harm to this world, animals in particular. We remember the humans as small crawlies along our way, well, I am exaggerating a little bit, but who did nothing to us, be it not much for us either. We have travelled down from the past via time tunnel and are even thinking about staying here, because it is interesting here and we can help you in many ways. We can help transmit bio-wifi as natural wifi towers, we can store water, fertilise and water, we can help deconstruct and reconstruct, hunt fascos, many other things, without breaking our backs like the poor camels and donkeys, since we are big and strong. Of course, we want a little freedom as well.”

“Of course,” said Sarah. “You should be as free as the Megapnos in the Sahel, to become Savannah again. You only come in occasionally to give us good advice, Megapno, isn’t it so?”

And the final screen of the bio-video taken of this occasion showed Illyria’s dinos with a Megapno nodding down gracefully at them from a bio-screen.

Chapter 6. Aimeran Logistics

Aimeran Logistics and Beams and Bots workshop, by Guillaume and Renée

“Let me go in to them with Thierry,” Faroukh said bravely. “He is repentant, he wants to help. We’ll spring their stupid Logistique Aimeran fake.”

“But Fucker, you are about to leave for Palestine for your bachelor project!” wailed Sarah.

“Leave it to me! You can start to pack. When I come back, we’ll leave in short order!” Faroukh retorted proudly.

***

Thierry and he did feel a little bit anxious as they approached the new Aimeran Logistics station which now carried an additional sign, ‘Beams and Bots’ workshop. “They are dangerous!” Thierry warned him, “especially the Germans, Klaus and Jens. Ross as well. They are weapons producers and merchants, what do you expect? Arrolle and Stérilé less so, especially the real ones, they are right-wing intellectuals, but they have avatars as well who sometimes show up, and they are real hitmen.”

They crossed the last clearing to the gate in silence. Thierry rang. What had to be another merc opened the gate and smiled when he saw Thierry. “You are back!”

‘That’s Paul!’ was the bio-message Faroukh received from his new friend. “He is not too bad. He may join us depending on how the situation develops.”

“Yes,” Thierry said. “And I brought you a new one. Fucker, what’s your real name again?” He had picked up the nickname from Sarah.

“Yassir!” said Faroukh, thinking at the same time that this would be an excellent name for their child to be born, Yassir or Yashira. He would have to bio-message that to Sarah when he had a moment.

“D’accord, Yassir! What’s your speciality. We need bio-chemists above all.”

“I am a bio-chemist, I am in my third year now,” lied Faroukh. He had taken biology and chemistry as an elective and done well, and if ever he had a question he would bio-message Maher. “Of course!” Maher was already there on delta waves. “Your brain is my brain.”

The five bosses were already sitting around the kitchen table with the door to the lab open. Faroukh noticed that there was hardly any food on the table. No wonder, these fascos were not up to farming, and they probably did not have the courage to shop at the markets and share points they were trying to wreck, not even in disguise.

“Thierry is back. And that’s one of the new ones he is bringing in,” said Paul. “His name is Yassir.”

“D’accord. For the moment, you’ll just drive. You know how to drive, I hope?”

“Not so well,” said Faroukh. “Just a few lessons in school as part of the spontaneous militia training.” Good revolutionary kids usually rejected driving, just those who aspired to become functional vehicle, public transport, taxi, or pick-up and delivery drivers did more lessons. And even they typically took their first lessons with their dad or other relative or friend who was already in the profession and only later did a full training course.

“But he is a bio-chemist,” said Thierry. “Maybe he can work in the lab.”

“I am not sure,” said Arthur Arrolle, because it was him. Faroukh recognised him from the bio-videos from the Sahel. So the agitator and his media magnate friend, Édouard Stérilé, sitting next to him had really returned from their failed coup in Niger and started all over again. Instead of repenting and leading a good life in the revolution. The idiots! “That would require a higher clearance, wouldn’t it? What is your motivation?”

“I want to become a crypto-billionaire,” Faroukh heard himself mutter. Of course, that was exactly the right thing to say. Still, he was surprised at himself.

“What is your idea of a perfect democracy?” asked Édouard. Faroukh had to think of the true answer before he came up with a lie. Of course, bourgeois democracy was not the answer. The parties would nominate their candidates at party congresses themselves constituted of delegates, so there already was a double hierarchy built in. Plus there were the famous negotiations in the back chambers where the party grandees decided on the most suitable candidates beforehand. Then these ran in a rigged campaign depending on money donations against the candidates of other parties who promised their supporters posts in the new government or parliamentary offices. Those elected and their staff then became imbued by the spirit of the parliament they worked in, which depended on the electoral majorities of course, but also on the enshrined customs of the place. The way you had to formulate a question, a motion, a law, it was all bureaucracy.

Comrades Patrick, Jean, and the other seniors had told them on many occasions that even the Communist deputies, councillors, and mayors, let alone ministers under capitalism had been affected by the corruption of their places.

“Representative democracy!” Faroukh crowed. “That way the experts decide.”

“Good answer!” said Édouard, but the other four barons looked a bit quizzical.

“Do you speak Russian?” asked Klaus, and Faroukh was able to answer in the positive. He had chosen it as a third language at the lycée after Arabic and Hebrew.

“Let’s send him up there as liaison then,” said Jens who seemed to have understood what his partner had intended with this question.

“Good idea,” concurred Ross. “Let them vet him, see what they can do. They have more patience than we do.”

“And we are safer!” said an English-accented voice, probably speaking intraline from Novgornyi, either Barron, Pat, or Ryan. “You are sitting on a powder case there. When they rang, I already thought they were coming to lift you.”

Faroukh wondered whether the comrades were intercepting this conversation already. He for one, as a natural wifi tower, was doing his utmost to send it back.

Now there was another person, even outlined on screen, asking him a question. “One last preliminary. How would you spread the MA virus?” “Well, there is injection, infusion, ingestion, diffusion, but the quickest and most effective would probably be spraying, in a concentrated way rather than just diffusion. Too bad, you don’t have any planes or drones anymore,” added Faroukh in a sudden inspiration. “I would build you some.”

“Oh, but we’ll get some,” said a figure next to the guy. “The old Pappberger has hired some new people who will do it. My father is helping them,” added a third. That had to be Fritz II April, which meant that the other two had to be Thorben Kriegsbeil and Knut Reiche.

“Do you know how to beam?” said another English-accented voice. Barron, Pat, or Ryan?

“Yes, I do,” said Faroukh. “I’ll come right over. Beams and Bots, Novgornyi.” As the beam materialised next to him, he had asked for a fasco orange rather than a revolutionary yellow beam so as not to raise their suspicions, his body already began to disassemble. He felt the typical crumbly feeling you have when you gradually disintegrate into molecular state. Then a moment where you were fully disassembled and felt literally nothing.

The fasco lair near Novgornyi, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

And bang, already he had landed rather hardly on the forest ground in front of the fasco lair near Novgornyi. Thierry was there as well, and they gave each other the high five. He had not expected Thierry to come along as well. Yet maybe the gangsters had thought he was too well-known already from his stint at the market, or they suspected him as well. Jean-Wadi, Jean-Saïd and the others had to be somewhere around observing, but for now, there was no sign of them, not even the slightest subliminal delta wave bio-message. He did not know why, but he felt an unusual fit of anger mount in him. Instead of his comrades, it was Pat, Ryan, Knut, and Thorben who came up to him. Fritz II and Barron were waiting at the door. “Hi!” Faroukh said. “I am Yassir, and this is my pal Thierry.”

“The New French Pentagon needs help,” he heard himself again, speaking like a stranger, the words coming from his mouth weren’t even his. “They don’t have enough drivers, and they don’t even have food.”

“Well, we can see what we can do about it. “The kitchen here looked totally different. The shelves and cupboards were bursting with food Viesturs Volt’s people had to have brought in, and the 3 D printer was churning out crypto notes, coins, even cards, whereas in the lab near Aimeran, there had been no printer activity at all.

“But maybe they told you, we’ll have more weapons soon,” said Thorben once they were sitting around the table drinking tea, coffee, milk, and vodka, and eating Russian style zakuski, appetisers and desserts – borshtsh, blini, pelmeni, vareniki, pirogi, and syrniki. Lots of snack veggies as well, carrots, pepper, garlic, lettuce, and tomatoes, as well as other sweet fruit, apples, pears, cherries, and even grapes. As Thierry was thanking their hosts, or rather the oligarch Viesturs Volt behind them, Faroukh received the long-expected bio message from the Moscow, now Novgornyi Recycling Hounds. It was senior comrade Sergei instructing him. “Your comrades in the French lands are in place around the Aimeran Logistics ‘Beams and Bots’ branch as well. Listen what we want you to do… Don’t worry, we’ll wait until Thierry and you are out there safe. Otherwise, they would most certainly kill you.”

“We need to learn from the revolutionaries,” Knut was just saying as Faroukh tuned in again. “Form brown cells like their red ones and create pals hubs like this one to spread the MA. Then we can neutralise all of their revolutionary apps: they have suspended their trefoil app, and there are votes going on, at least in the Chinese lands and the rest of Asia to suspend their job app as well. The Russian lands and the Baltics are not as populated, so around here, we can rely on live conversations within the cooperatives, in the neighbourhoods, or at the workplace to hire people.”

“What about these Novgornyi Recycling Hounds observing us?” asked Fritz, now on subliminal delta waves. “Can’t we neutralise them as well? The two new ones are good beamers. We take them, Knut, Thorben, Pat and Ryan, and myself. Barron, you can stay here to hold the fort.” From strategic planning he had come right back down to violent crime.

Luckily, it was not only Faroukh who had not appreciated. “Aren’t we supposed to lie low?” asked Barron. “We have eliminated the trefoil and the job apps basically. Even if they restore them, we can hack them again, can’t we? Let’s finish printing our dough, and then starting tomorrow, we can work on multiplying the MA virus for further hacking apps. By next spring or so, they will have brought out the new planes and drones in the German lands. Then we go for the air scare.”

Faroukh was just about to wonder what was meant by the air scare when Barron made another proposal that required his full concentration. “Pat, Ryan, I, and the two Frenchmen can go explore their set-up in Novgornyi. Apparently, they have set up in a simple farm house, even a wooden one. They have an intraline hub that can catch transmissions as far away as Mongolia, North America, South America, Central Africa, India, and the Chinese lands. Or rather, this is where the other hubs are. They collect the transmissions in their area, in this case Europe, and broadcast them all over the world. As a result, a software engineer in China may have breakfasted with the news of our hacking the trefoil and the job apps. We need to stop these transmissions for good since they may use them to develop counter-measures. You, Fritz, Thorben, and Knut, can stay here and hold the fort.”

“And how do you intend to stop these transmissions, pray tell?” asked Thorben, visibly jealous not to be part of the attack team.

“Oh, just brown beams, full force, the usual,” said Pat. “If you want to you can take a pistol as well. The two new ones, do you know how to reinforce brown beams with your phone, or shall we explain?”

“You’d better explain it one more time,” said Faroukh. It was probably best to pretend to have taken a course at a pals sports studio already, rather than to play the complete novice. “D’accord, let’s see, you summon the brown beam by pure willpower first and say, ‘Direct at X!’ Then it will target the one you are looking at, correct?” Faroukh knew that because the red beams, from whom the fascos had taken over their procedure for brown beams, functioned the same way. The only, yet major difference being that the red beams only functioned against a clear aggressor in self-defence, and only neutralised this enemy for about half an hour, time to get the minimum quorum from the pertinent village assembly to form a spontaneous militia brigade – no more police in the revolution, naturally –, and for this brigade to show up.

“Correct, and on the phone, you call up the defence app, remember even the revolutionaries used to have one in the old days before the intranet, press brown beams, say reinforce, and that will reinforce a gallium-sulphur-nitrate solution that will augment your willpower to the extreme. On some phones you can even choose ‘lethal’ to make sure the beam gets that strong.”

“Did you get that?” asked Barron once they were outside the house. “Here is the phone! Try it on Thierry. Imagine he is a traitor. He must die.” Faroukh was absolutely outraged and desperate at the same time. A revolutionary phone would have a moral imperative or at least a no-weaponisation protocol installed that would block pressure like that. Yet with these fasco phones, there was absolutely no way to pretend technical failure. In the worst case, they might take over the phone and execute the order for him.

“O.k.,” Faroukh shouted aloud and bio-screamed at the same time. “Duck away!” And pressed the reinforce button. As expected, Thierry jumped to the side, and the beam went right past him into a tree, leaving a black and smouldering wound in its trunk.

“Sorry, comrade tree! I had to do this,” Faroukh implored the tree via bio-cry. “You could see, they were about to kill both of us.”

The tree rustled and sent a very faint bio-message. “Wait comrade, we shall help you. Just be very alert and flee while there is still time.”

They travelled by orange beam and landed on the road past Stanislav’s and Lavrenty’s former houses which led right into the neighbourhood assembly of the Novgornyi Recycling Hounds.

“Two buddies of us used to live here,” Viesturs Volt himself had popped up intraline to wish his pals luck. “Even had a lab set up and everything. Tried to convince the neighbours to swap, so they would no longer be sandwiched between two parts of their hamlet.”

‘Stanislav and Lavrenty,’ thought Faroukh. ‘That’s the reason they wanted the swap so much. I have to tell that to Evgeni and Tanya.’

‘But it was also about recreating a money, or at least crypto-based real estate market!’ Evgeni popped up right away in his brain.

‘Watch out,’ bio-messaged Faroukh, trying to plunge even deeper into subliminal delta mode. ‘We are a band of killers, and we are on the way to get you.’

‘We know,’ replied Maksim. ‘Just be prepared to run and beam. Now!’

A lucky fall, by Danièle and Olivier

And bang, a rather big tree smashed into the road right in front of them, almost hitting Barron who was in front, grazing Pat and Ryan, who came after him, and burying Thierry and him under it. When the fascos got over their shock and were ready to look whether Thierry and he were still alive, it would be too late. ‘Abort mission!’ Thierry heard the murmured bio-message from Faroukh next to him. ‘Both of us to Tanya and Evgeni’s kitchen! It’s an emergency.’” Usually, you landed in front of houses so as not to cause immediate disturbance to the inhabitants, hence the excuse.

Faroukh expected the comrades to be baffled, but they were not. They were all cowering behind the windows already, with Evgeni, Maksim, Danya, Jean-Wadi, and Jean-Saïd ready to use red beams. “Take our place!” Jean-Wadi murmured to Thierry and him. “We’ll take the upstairs windows. And Jean-Wadi and Jean-Saïd ducked down and almost crawled to get across to the staircase and upstairs where the bedrooms were. When they arrived upstairs, they could already see the three fascos entering though the front gate. Upon spotting Jean-Wadi’s figure emerge briefly behind the window, one of them immediately threw a brown beam, which missed luckily. Jean-Saïd’s red beam, on the other hand, stunned one, then they were out of their scope of vision.

Evgeni, Maksim, and Danya kept waiting for the other two, but they never materialised. They had probably beamed away when the first of them fell. And wow, when they went out to get him, he had disappeared as well. They had to have dragged him onto one of their orange beams and extended their wish for disassembly to him as well.

“D’accord, no cause for celebration, we must resume observation,” said Jean-Wadi. “Thierry and Faroukh, I hope you won’t mind standing in for Zhenya, Zafira and Natalie?” The three thus relegated started to protest of course.

“No, me ladies, don’t protest, this has now become too hot for you!” comrade Maksim supported his Illyrian comrade.

“Of course we don’t mind,” pouted Faroukh, and immediately received a bio-hug as she called it from Sarah.

“Fucker, I told you it would be a waste of time. We are also trying to bring down Aimeran Logistics ‘Beams and Bots’, and it’s dragging already. Why don’t you come back and we go for some Mediterranean sun?”

“The worst is over for you already,” Faroukh heard Evgeni tell Thierry and him overlapping with Sarah’s plea. “You are no longer under cover.”

When the six young comrades had beamed over to their tree house and were settling in, they could already hear the noisy debate going on at ‘Beams and Bots’. Viesturs Volt had even appeared on screen to reprimand the hexagon. “You tried to take out the Novgornyi intranet hub with just three people? You must be mad.”

“Well, we were five but two of them apparently got slain by a falling tree or something,” said Barron.

“What a coincidence!” Fritz II mocked him. “Probably one of their harp buddies helped the two of them escape.”

***

“The tree by the way was able to lift up again on some of its roots,” Olivier whispered to Danièle at home in Illyria. “The training for the march of the trees had helped him, it claimed. ‘We marching trees have developed stronger roots.’”

“Thank God,” Danièle purred back gratefully.

***

“I almost got one of them with a brown beam and then passed out. What happened?” asked Pat who was just waking up. “Why are we back at the station?”

“Insane!” Viesturs pulled his hair. “And now at the latest they have found a reason to get at you with spontaneous militia. Up to now, they were just observing, because you had done nothing in this neck of the woods yet. But now these two will complain about you mistreating them and harming trees. I told you, the pals security guarantee only works when there is no violence. Now I am afraid I can’t help you any longer. Look, there they are already.”

Apparently, Viesturs also had surveillance on the place. Now they could see, on the screen, where he had been, fourteen, nay twenty militiaman from a quarter-based village of Marijampole – deconstructing and dispersing like all other agglos in the world, using the already existing garden colonies as green vectors as the people called them –, crossing the lawn from the front gate.

“The comrades are not keeping to proper security protocol!” wailed Maksim. “What if these bastards now get them with firearms or throw brown beams?”

The real outcome was less frightful, luckily. By the time the militia knocked at the door and, when nobody answered, entered, all of the Hacking Hexagon members had fled, leaving not even a laptop behind. All there remained was the 3 D printer, with no more printed crypto cash, cards, or coins coming out, however. There were still some syringes and petri dishes in the fridges of the lab which would maybe yield an indication of the future biochemical hazards the fascos were planning to cause. There also was not a single vehicle around. That was amazing for a pals logistics stations. “Probably they used them for their escape.”

And indeed, while there weren’t any footprints in the immediate vicinity, which meant that the fascos had to have started their journey by beam, Faroukh and the others from their tree house observation point intercepted a conversation taking place in a driving vehicle about 20 km away. “That was good thinking, Thorben, parking the transporter so far away in the forest. Maybe that will confuse them in the beginning,” said Knut.

“Not bad,” even Barron admitted with a grunt. “Yet fact remains, the managed to spring us, and we have barely finished the trefoil hack job. Yet we had all these other jobs on our plate.”

“I wonder what Ross and the others were thinking, sending us these traitors,” grumbled Fritz. “At least Jens and Klaus should have known better.”

“They were probably glad to have hired them. Remember, Arrolle is an agitator,” Ryan explained, and everybody was looking at him askance. Did this Irishman want to claim leadership privileges now that both Fritz and Barron had failed? “We have two choices at this point,” Ryan continued. “Either we ask Viesturs to give us another location, or we go back to the French lands. We can toss a coin.”

“No need for that,” said Barron. “This French Pentagon has set us up. Let them stew in hell for that. Let’s bio-call Viesturs!”

Chapter 7. Jobs as a Means of Extortion

The New Harp-based Job app, by Bashir and Sevim

Usual job app categories, by Jean-Fidel and Lénina

“Already when discussing Jean’s, Raphaël’s, and Abram’s presentations on housing and even earlier during the coup in Niger, we mentioned jobs or rather the perks that come with them as means of extortion. The fasco barons promise the comrades working for crypto goods of value to them, usually a house, or a luxury limousine as a private vehicle, even with a fake village assembly license as a delivery transporter coming with it. Yet if they then try to whistle-blow on their crypto-earnings, not only do the gangsters withdraw the promise, but they send so-called cryptoleak avengers after them to punish them, in cases of serious betrayal, with death. The cryptoleak avengers find willing recruits among the other workers, not only those at the main job, let us say a logistics station or other pals, but also those building the promised houses or vehicles on the dark side. This way they manage to uphold the omerta.

“We have to tell fellow harpists, not only human, obviously, to blow the whistle on crypto contracts as early as possible, if at all feasible before they even enter in them. I say, ‘if at all feasible’, because often enough, the gangsters already force our comrades to enter them at the point of a gun.

“And now they have managed to hack the job app that our Chinese comrades developed to tell people about socially necessary jobs in their area and also to give them ideas for their creative and social work.”

“How did they do that?” “Oh, the same way they did the housing app. Remember, they scrambled the categories, spread misleading information, and even – ultimate outrage –, offered houses and apartments for sale as under capitalism. Same with the job app: they twisted the job descriptions so as to make the jobs seem dreadful, added far away or outright unsuitable ones, and then, when the desperate users were looking for an alternative, led them onto a dark page with jobs for crypto.”

“To avoid hacks such as those we have experienced, the new harp-based job app shall be map-based. You see every harpist as a green dot at the activity he, she, or it is doing at the moment: school, study, main job, household chores, before- or after-work creative and social activity, and so on. Once he or she starts to move from that activity and clicks the app for something else to do, the job app will show other socially necessary activities the individual might be interested in in red, creative activities in a different shade of green, or social activities in yellow or orange. There are filters which allow to adjust the alternatives to the interests of the individual. The job app will show you the way to the new activity via the Aurora pathfinder app. We Illyrians have not used this app a lot, because we have our school or main job assignment and our creative and social activities typically take place at Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp or Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove. We basically know where we will be going for days, weeks, and months at a time.

“We in China call that the peasant mode.” Comrade Longwei speaking from the Almond Tree Brigade cooperative in Beijing sounded an embarrassed laugh. “But we tell our comrades, they have to be flexible. Sometimes something else may take precedence, an emergency, such as water duct or electrical wire to be fixed, and then those who can do it, should go there fast, or a child that needs minding because the mother is ill or has to go somewhere. Of course, comrades will look around first for comrades already at hand, but what if there aren’t or they are too busy?”

“No doubt, it is a good idea,” said Patrick. “We’ll run a feature on it in l’Huma. Has anyone at Illyria Garden Colony Manouche camp or Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at 76 rue de Lorraine already used it?”

“Yes, and I have been promoted from peasant to flying helper,” Alain laughed. “My old workplace ÉdF uses the app. You know that Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp and Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove, like most neighbourhoods in the Paris region and the French lands as a whole, get most of their electricity from their revolutionary block energy works. They usually consist of several solar panels, a small wind mill, a water turbine if an appropriate stream is available, and a small well-insulated rubbish incinerator. Sometimes, these block energy works or some of their components may fail and need supplies from the remains of the central grid. Then we remaining ÉdF engineers need to report to the transformer station and adjust currents accordingly. ÉdF used to notify us by e-mail, phone, or bio-message, but lately, it has been using the job app, and I bet you, we shall do these help jobs with even more pleasure now that the app will be map-based. That way, the stand-by engineers such as me will not only know which transformer station to report to but also how to get there.”

“I am a volunteer prison worker for fasco criminals as you know,” said Jean. “The high-security prison Fleury-Mérogis has also taken to the new app. We prison workers are on stand-by like Alain and the other energy engineers, or maybe a doctor at a policlinic as well. If we get a call that a prisoner has a need to talk over and beyond the usually scheduled appointments, we decide whether we can drop everything where we are, at home or at the factory,” Jean was a semi-retired tyre engineer, “and go there or whether we have to leave the job to somebody else.”

“You said doctors,” said René, Sarah’s papa. “Nurses and support personnel in policlinics as well sometimes need to be summoned to the clinic very quickly. We have had a debate both at our clinic on rue de Lorraine as well as here in Aimeran whether to use the job app for that purpose and, fortunately, we haven’t, because it has turned out not to be safe, but with this new safe, harp- and map-based one that you have been describing , I could imagine it.”

“One thing I can tell you,” said Jérôme. “Is that we won’t form a spontaneous militia brigade on the basis of the job app. After all, it first requires a quorum of the village assembly, 20%, 40%, or even over half of the residents, to agree intraline for it to be formed and then, in cases where we want to arrest fasco criminals, they need to be kept as secret as possible.”

“We in China shall use the new job app for the spontaneous militia as well,” said young comrade Junfeng, comrade Longwei’s son. “Once the people have voted the quorum, volunteers can report via the job app, and as your comrade Alain has said, immediately find directions on where to report on Aurora maps.”

“Well, eventually, we might use it as well,” said comrade Michel Wang, himself a French Chinese who could relate to the Chinese comrades’ enthusiasm at their new invention. “But what if it gets hacked again? Then criminals, even dangerous fascos will know immediately we are on to them.”

“We are still working on better security, not only for the job app, but for all the standard revolutionary apps, trefoil, housing swap, material check, hierarchyleaks or no-hierarchy, cryptoleak app, village forum app, homework app, and so on. There will be a new version of the revolutionary Chinese Wall Security Suite reinforced by Digital Hounds and Bio-Thicket coming out soon, won’t there, comrade Colin?” “Yes,” said Colin. “Comrades Longwei and Junfeng in Beijing, Sergei, Timur, Evgeni, and Maksim in Moscow, Murmansk, and Novgornyi respectively, as well as young comrades Tony and Jamie at Twin Cooperative Sioux Village in the prairies near the Little Bighorn Mountains, and many other computer scientists and robotics engineers all over the world are helping us with it. The security gaps, we think, arise from the fact that most of our apps, including the Chinese Wall Security Suite were developed when we were still using the metal-cable and tower-based internet, at least for some of our communications. The only way to mend these gaps, we think, is to transform all of them to full intraline and even brain apps. That takes time!”

“But can’t the fascos hack the brain apps as well?” asked Pierre, the maverick. “They did so with the trefoil app.”

“Yes, of course, and at the same time that we work on the apps and the Chinese wall security suite with digital hounds and bio-thicket, we must also fight the biological viruses that they use to attack our brain apps. Maher and Karla are on to that, but they are in Mali.”

“Josip and Rosa, as well as Natalie and I will go back there and then Maher and Karla will have a turn at resting or as it turns out, working here,” Jean-Saïd assuaged him.

Maher and Karla could be heard laughing intraline from Timbuktu. “Don’t give up, comrades,” said Maher. “Just work on strengthening the Chinese wall, the digital hounds, and the bio-thicket. In fact, the task may even overlap with the preparations for the march of the trees. A thicker real forest everywhere will mean a thicker bio-thicket for our communications as well better auto-immune protection for our bodies as well. Don’t worry!”

“Oh, I don’t worry,” said Colin. “Just so glad to know you, comrades.”

“We developed something in the prairies that may help you,” said the young Sioux Mazanape, speaking from Twin Cooperative Indian Village at Little Bighorn. “We call it the grass stalk principle. For really serious conversations via bio-thicket, we imagine we are talking to each other through a very long glass stalk. The Chinese wall is around it and the digital hounds are sniffing the communications inside and around it. That way we want to prevent our communications being diverted.

The grass stalk principle, by Mao and Malik

“It is an excellent idea,” Malik added his voice to that of Mazanape. “We have also cooperated with comrade Mamadou in the Congo on it, by the way.”

“But don’t they do their hacking at the user interfaces?” asked Pierre le Gars, Peter Gar. “Didn’t you comrades say, it was when we asked questions to the app, like show us availability at the Aimeran market that it started to trick us?”

“Yes, but with the grass stalk principle, they might no longer be able to locate us and hack our bio-IPs, because that is how they do it at the moment,” explained Junfeng. “No, it’s o.k., we also think our American Indian comrades are on to something there.”

“There is also the idea to have bio nanobot versions of the digital security hounds for our brain or cell nucleus apps,” said comrade Assad. “They may be programmed to absorb the live viruses like MA that they infect us with and digest them. I am working on that, and comrades Michel and Jérôme are also studying that problem at Institut Pasteur. You may ask them as well!”

“As long as they don’t harm us,” noted Peter Gar. “I am not a great fan of nanobots crawling all through my body.”

“We can return to the general security and health and safety features, when we discuss the new trefoil and the new planning apps,” promised Josip. “Back to the job app for now. So, it’s map-based. That makes it a bit more specific already. How could we make the job descriptions more impervious to being scrambled? And how in hell did they get in these links to the dark web, offering crypto-deals? That must mean they were able to access the underlying programme code, even overwrite the moral imperative, because crypto certainly does harm, it has not been approved in any material check, and it is definitely not best practice in any revolutionary village in the whole wild world.”

“Not necessarily, your concern for your moral imperative programme in honour, but it looks like that is intact. They simply added the link to the crypto-web onto the descriptions of house, apartment, market or product, and socially necessary versus creative and social activity,” explained Jean Wadi. “By the way, they have even offered creative and social activities for pay, you will buckle over with laughter, there is counter-revolutionary programmer and agitator. They are obviously also trying to hire workers for their pals, and mercs – they call them security agents –, for their wrecking activities.

“We just have to prevent them from adding to the programme code. As for scrambling the categories, there you are right, comrade Josip, they did have to rewrite the basic programme for that, and we must prevent them from entering that deeply into our pages. The grass stalk principle may be one way of doing that.”

“Back to these security agents,” asked Peter Gar. “Have they been able to hire any that way?”

“That is a good question!” said Jean, and it seemed to Pierre le Gars that there was a quick exchange of glances between him, comrade Hélène and comrade Mina.

“Frankly, I don’t know!” said Jérôme. “At least I do not know of any cases here in the French lands.”

“It is usual practice in the ex-U.S. and Canada,” said comrade Jason from New York. “They used to have their separate crypto-job exchanges when we were still online, and with the intranet, they are using our job app. Now that we have officially suspended it, they even have blatantly obvious ads around, like ‘Looking for intranet programmer to join our Brown Cell New York 404.’’Security agents for private bank needed.’ I mean, come on, ‘brown cell’ gives it away, and there are longer any banks around in Communism, not even public ones, except for the postal service cum savings banks in some regions that allow money and crypto savings to be exchanged against vouchers to grandmas with a savings booklet or to ex-fascos who want to come clean. Yet here in North America we don’t even have savings and loans anymore, because they were so discredited under capitalism already, the postal office handles such requests if needed.”

“In China, they do hire soldiers and other professionals via job app as well,” said Longwei. “That was one of our reasons for even creating a revolutionary job app.”

“For the Russian lands, we don’t know of any cases of the revolutionary job app or even counter-revolutionary job apps being used until the recent hack,” said Sergei. “And we find it a quite troublesome development.”

“What about the German lands, comrade Misha? Any evidence of Pappberger hiring people with our job app?” asked Robespierre with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Before I address that question, I wasn’t there yet when you discussed potential uses for the new job app, it would also be great for substitute teachers like me. Right now, I share my time as a history-geography and German language teacher between Lycée or Complexe scolaire Paul Élouard in Saint-Denis and Complexe scolaire Jean Moulin in Aimeran. There are other flying teachers like myself, for instance, comrades Marie and Marianne who are Spanish teachers, comrades Sophie, Emilia, and Inès who are literature teachers, and even comrade Marine, math prof, when she was still teaching. The jobs to do could be shown on the map, let’s say a couple of weeks or at least a week in advance, and we should know where to go every morning.”

“I am telling you,” said Bashir. “There are uses for the job app, and even for teachers, but you have to keep to the no-hierarchy principle, obviously.”

“Even the worst student is as good as you, and has got something to say!” triumphed Sevim.

“As creative writing teachers,” said Sophie. “Inès, Emilia, and I know that very well. That’s why we are so afraid for our jobs we try to stay put in one school, Complexe scolaire Jean Moulin.”

They all laughed. “The job app in Germany – I am just checking intraline –,” continued Misha. “It has been functioning and has now been suspended just like here in the French lands. There is an interview with Pappberger here on a dark media channel. The fasco reporter is asking him how he is recruiting workers these days to build his weapons, mainly planes and drones, tanks being too difficult to hide, and how he thinks he will find soldiers to man them? And his answer is, ‘We are using all methods available, person-to-person as well as intraline, and – you will laugh now –, there are cases where we have found workers via their revolutionary channels.’”

“Wow,” commented Misha. “That the German revs allow him to give cheeky interviews like that from house arrest. Their national character will never change.”

“Well, yeah, they even allow him to keep contact with the Uberytes – Henri Uber, Louis Deshalles, Fernando Deliverando, Larry Flink, and Viesturs Volt…,” said Olivier. “Remember, he and the other German ex-oligarchs slash politicians helped the Hacking Hexagon escape.”

“Well, that may have been to get them fighting amongst each other,” commented Jean-François.

From Ubermensch to Ubermensch, by Malik and Mao

“Then I have a question to our American comrades,” said Pascal. “How do the Uberytes recruit their Ubermenschen?”

“You mean those driving the transporters or pedalling the bikes for their new logistics stations or slaving in their policlinics, amusement centres, and sports clubs? Mainly person-to-person in the ghettos, be they black, Hispanic, or Asian. You know the brown cells do a lot of underground digging there,” comrade Malcolm answered the question. “Some of them via job app as well as comrade Jason has already told you. Above you can see one of their recruitment videos, underground of course, because it idealises exploitation or at least makes it appear benign.”

“Talking about person-to-person and brown cells, they have tried more of that lately in South America as well,” said Emmanuella from Porto Allegre. “Wouldn’t you say, comrades from the Assembly of Village Assemblies?” Founded by Evo from Bolivia, remember, that is the Illyria’s main network of friends in South America.

“Yes,” laughed Gustavo from Columbia. “Although they are taking a great risk of hitting either upon genuine drug dealers or true revolutionaries. In both cases, they will be busted, in the first case, they may even die.”

“We are still working on generalising the intranet,” said comrade Ramón from Argentina. “But where it works well, in the big cities, on the sierras like here around Cumbrecita, or in the Chaco, the fascos use it as an instrument of hiring of course.”

“That’s true in Venezuela as well, in Caracas and in the rain forest, that is where we use it,” added comrade Hugo.

“Generally speaking, do you use it lot or are you South American revs peasants like we are in the French lands?” asked Jean-Fidel.

“We desert peasants use it hardly at all, and we are working on better insulation, what do you call it bio-thicket?, so that the remnants of the North American diablos cannot hack it,” said comrade José from Pueblo del Desierto, Mexico.

“We in Cuba don’t mind it,” objected comrade Ernesto from Cuba.

“We are split in the middle, like we Nicaraguans usually are,” joked comrade Daniel from Managua. “Some use it, some don’t.”

“Oh, we do, although our priests tell us we should not use the brain apps all that much, that they are Satanic,” said comrade Guillermo from Santiago de Chile.

“We use the job app to attract workers to work at the canal,” noted Pedro from Panama.

“And to revolutionary workshops as well,” added Pablo from Costa Rica.

“And to mines,” concluded Dina from Peru, “although they have mostly robot attendants these days. No more heavy mining work for us humans, animals, and plants anymore. And we don’t pay crypto obviously, that’s all a thing of the past. Workers get their life sustenance and other goods as well as the equipment and inputs for their workplaces through the trefoil and economic circuit.”

“And the fascos, do they still operate mines?” insisted Hisham who knew about Dina’s past as a woman oligarch.

“There is comrades Enrico,” she replied. “He is a German, he knows of a case.”

“Yes,” said Enrico with an engaging smile. “But we have already gotten a quorum for a spontaneous militia brigade and we are about to get them.”

***

“We know about the Sahel and Djibouti from our field work. In other African regions, comrades, do you use the job app?”

“Yes, in the forest and on the savannah, where we have natural wifi towers, yet sometimes lack humans for urgent jobs, definitely!” said Mamadou.

“We are trying to phase out the mines altogether,” Pel from Angola said proudly, “as the intranet with brain apps will allow us to radically reduce the number of devices, so we can stop the last vestiges of that type of exploitation. And local people can work in local workshops. No need for cross-regional ads.”

Comrade Nelson from the Muammar Ghaddafi cooperative near Mbombela, South Africa scoffed. “Well, let’s hope you succeed in that and the fascos don’t throw a monkey wrench into it.”

***

“And now you want to ask us,” laughed Santoso from Indonesia. “We are like Chinese, we work with the job app all the time.”

“So, do we Vietnamese,” said Nyugen.

“And we Thais,” roared Sam Hawkes, actually a repentant ex-U.S. fasco who had married a Thai comrade, Pak Pao, retired to Thailand, and foresworn U.S. imperialism forever. “With a vengeance. And the intranet travels very well via water, and the fish and even the crabs pick it up as well.”

“We have cooperated in developing the job app,” said Mayumi from Japan.

“And we Koreans are now contributing to make it fasco-proof,” said Kim. “Specifically, we have introduced user identification in the new app. We have conceived it mainly by sound, so that other harpists can use it as a brain as well as a cell nucleus app. The sound gets transmitted intraline via the harp like the rest, and bang, we will know who is wrecking our economic circuit.”

“Oh, yes, before we forget, the job app, like the trefoil app, and a few other economic apps, such as the housing swap app, and the material check app, will be part of the new planning app,” said Adjip, originally Indian, now staying with Okuhle either at the Nelson Mandela cooperative on Lake Chad, or with Nelson and Dulcie and Okuhle’s parents Sipho and Thobe at the Muammar Ghaddafi cooperative near Mbombela. “We are cooperating with the Illyrian robot brigade, comrades Jean-Saïd, Robespierre, Sylvain, Jean-Wadi, Josip, Rosa, and Lénina as well as with our Indian comrades at the Gandhi 2.1 cooperative in Mumbai and Kolkata, young comrades Ho, Sub, our Palestinian comrades Yassir, Yitzhak, and so on at the triangle of cooperatives, and the Moscow and Novgornyi Recycling Hounds of course. We want to link the ID with the transport beam so that whoever shows up via beam to do a job can be identified as the one who applied for it via the job app. If they come by train or boat, we could link it his or her village ID. Not to be dictatorial, you see, but otherwise, they will send us fasco wreckers via the job app, you see, especially in over-populated Asia.”

“My God,” said Annie, pulling her hair. “All the problems, these devils are causing.”

Chapter 8. The New Planning App

Preliminary Harp Balance Model, by Josip and Rosa

“Bear with us, not everything in this chapter will be quite intuitive. This is both a new theory, input-output balances in a harp world where humans, plants, and animals are producers and consumers with equal rights, as well as new technology, because it is based on harp signals rather than statistics and or surveys. Nevertheless, some things are very good about this app already.

“First thing that is good, the new planning app automatically calibrates the matrices to the size of the village on the basis of harp signals. These constant live signals, whenever an animal, plant or human feeds or eats, override any reverse the fascos might try to build into the app. The app will ask for authentication and, tough luck for them, the Nazis will be out.

“Second, the pictures in the trefoil app have been replaced everywhere by a live feed also transmitted by bio-wifi, obviously. Even if the Nazis managed to hack that, it would continue to reproduce and create automatic overrides.

“In the job app as well by the way, we have added pictures and videos showing people working on a job or similar jobs earlier, and this includes both socially necessary as well as creative work. That way, the comrades will get a realistic, hard to fake impression of what a particular job or activity is like.”

“And in the trefoil as well the housing and job app we have built in grass stalks guarded by digital hounds and bio-thicket to prevent them leading us into the dark web,” added Josip. “We came back from Mali by the way to do that. Rosa and I may travel back there with you, Faroukh and Sarah, via Palestine if you permit.”

“Oh, you are more than welcome,” Faroukh said intraline. “Be ready though. We are ready to leave any day now.”

“The other senior comrades,” said Philippe, “may remember the fasco hack of the autocorrect feature of our planning models which back then already caused a great imbalance in our predictions for Christmas and New Year consumption and was supposed to create shortages and make people angry right around the holidays.”

“And then they abducted you, honey, don’t forget, creating a great emotional imbalance that we only remedied by comrades Camile and Zelim rescuing you from captivity,” said comrade Anisah, a bit tongue in cheek, because it was on that occasion that Philippe had begun his affair with comrade Camille, which had lasted until this day, it was rumoured, even though Camille was much older than he, and had even produced a child – Zelim-Philippe, nominally Zelim’s, but in fact, Philippe’s son and Anisah’s daughter Renée’s half-brother.

“Papa, may I explain, or must Bashir do it?”
“Just, do it, son!” Zelim’s strict voice overrode Philippe’s who even smiled to himself with a certain relief. At least the comrades were not going to hammer him to the cross eighteen years after the fact.

“So, on the picture above you see the animals first, then the plants and then the humans, the humans still producing and consuming quite a lot, but at least they are now being compared to the animals and plants, which will hopefully make them more humble already. Y = Xis the consumption equal production vector by humans, animals and plants, this equality holds by definition, otherwise we harpists are in trouble. For example, x₃₁ is animal inputs, x₃₂ plant inputs, and x₃₃ human inputs in the production of X₃, the food output of humans. Y₃ is the food consumption of humans. Similarly x₂₁ is animal inputs, x₂₂ plant inputs, and x₂₃ human inputs in the production of X₂, plant output or production, and Y₂ their final consumption of nutrients. Finally, x₁₁ is animal inputs, x₁₂ is plant inputs, and x₁₃ human inputs in the production of X₁ , animal food output or production of animals. Y₁is animal food consumption. Only the overall equality of consumption and production, Y = X must hold, in the intermediate stages Y₁ – animal consumption – may well be larger than X₁ – animal production_, X₂ – plant production larger than Y₂ – plant consumption_, while Y₃ –human consumption – again may be larger than X₃ – human production.”

“There you go,” Danièle cheered. “Plant lives triumph again, animals and humans are just spongers.”

“That’s easy to say, but humans and animals make valuable contributions as well,” said Zelim-Philippe. “Anyway, in the harp, it is not important that one or the other species be self-sufficient, or more productive, it will suffice if they can all survive together and respect each other and also the androids or rather harpoids.”

Zelim-Philippe looked into the round questioningly. “I know this is hard to understand. And that is not even all about the new planning app. Now we shall first describe the other apps that make up the menu of the planning app, then we shall come to the decision-making app that this food matrix is a part of, and then we shall get to the adaptive security features, the new autocorrect. Is everyone with us so far?”

Peter Gar shook his head. “I don’t quite understand yet. So, I am a goat. I send out signals about the amount of thistly flowers I consume in lieu of grass, the latter being reserved to the cows and sheep. So, that’s my y₁₂ then, correct? But what is my x₁₂, in other words, my production?”

“Your milk mainly, or anything else that goats may yield, skins, horns.”

“That makes sense,” Pierre le Gars nodded. “Got it! That’s easy enough! I already thought you wanted to sit down this poor old goat behind a work bench.” They all laughed.

“Still, you notice, that we humans and some of the other cattle are exploiting you in case you are really not getting anything but thistly plants to chew on.”

“I guessed that much,” Peter Gar looked bitter. “Now you may continue.”

“We have subsumed the trefoil app, the housing swap app, the job app, the hierarchy and material check apps, the cryptoleaks app, and the decision-making app, which is basically the old planning app that comrade Lénina designed, under the name planning app, because all of them are based on harp signals, and that means that from the day on we vote this planning app into practice, all of us will be planners, not only the mathematical planners in Nanterre…”

“Glad to be off the hook,” underscored Philippe.

“Yes, we know you are not a dictator by nature, not by a long shot, neither are you Pascal, Hisham, Rim, or even cheeky young comrade Bashir… Anyway, not you shall be planners in chief and not even the village assembly, but all of us and our partners in the economic circuit as well as our partners in revolutionary barter world-wide.”

The new planning app and its menu, by Jean-Fidel and Lénina

Simple Trefoil

Let’s go through the menu points one by one. If you click trefoil, you will usually be offered a choice between free, simple sharing, and revolutionary barter. Some village assemblies instituted two separate leaves for goods available locally at the markets or share points, and those that have to be ordered from a workshop further away, for free of course. Others have left a voucher leaf in case of emergency. Clicking free usually shows you all goods available for free. Simple sharing those that can be obtained by sharing, for instance at a local share point. Going to a local share point and getting some coffee and even some food does not mean that you have to bring in its equivalent in labour time immediately, only that you may bring in a dish of yours, for instance, in the not too distance future. By contrast, revolutionary barter usually does require an equivalent in labour time or use value, and labour time clocks and use value gauges are available to facilitate revolutionary barter. The app is still the same but for the fact that you now send an intranet signal instead of clicking or typing.

Housing Swap

Instead of formal ads, we have based the new housing swap app on harp signals like the trefoil. Long chains of sequential swaps like in the picture are the result of tracking the harp signals from the first exchange, let us say red against grey house, to the last, brown against red house.

Jobs

One peculiarity of job ads is that signals may come not only from humans, animals, and plants but also from harpoids. On this icon, the humanoid harpoid wants its new keyboard installed, which is well nay impossible for the harpoid itself, but only requires one or two handling steps for a human. Our comrade Peter Gar, or Pierre le Gars as we know him in French, is friendly enough to help it. Both he and the harpoid will send a signal that the job has been completed.

Material Check

The material check as well will from now on be registered as a harp signal and may come from humans, animals, robots, or plants. On this icon, plaster is crumbling.

Hierarchy check

The mere picture of a hierarchy does not identify the harpist, human, animal, robot, or plant who has placed the hierarchy check via harp, for their own protection, since the violator or violators of the no-hierarchy principle could be nasty humans who may try to take violent revenge.

Cryptoleak

This holds a fortiori for a cryptoleak, whereby a harpist usually a human harps that either he or a fellow human has been offered or received crypto in violation of the prohibition of money by all village assemblies world-wide as well as several local, regional, continental, and world-wide referendums. The underground capitalists and fasco barons typically punish such leaks by pursuing the whistle-blowers with so-called cryptoleak avengers who have the order to kill or at least severely maim them.

Decision-making app

“Finally, the decision-making app reconfigures comrade Lénina’s regression analysis to base it on harp signals. Comrade Lénina can explain the best how she did it. Please, comrade Lénina, explain!”

“My planning app of old had two versions, one which calculated the relative weights for a number of factors in a real-life outcome. Let’s give you the example of the input-output model.

“You have a set of equations for the human, animal, and plant participants – symbolised by the yellow, red, and green coloured strands –, in the economic circuit and want to estimate the regression coefficients of which relative contribution each of them makes in overall production and consumption as well as the production and consumption of each of the harpists, humans, animals, and plants. All you will need are the harp signals about their production, in the case of cows, for instance, their milk yield, in the case of grain, its growth, and their consumption of water and other liquids, food, fodder, or nutrients from all the individual harpists which you can then add up and calculate the matrix of regression coefficients. Theoretically, if you get all of them to respond, you will no longer need statistical samples at all. For the time being, we may still need them of course.”

“The other version was the planning of a certain outcome, let’s say, still taking the input-output matrix as the model, food production by humans. Then, knowing the coefficients that you calculated on the basis of real outcomes, you can calculate the yields and growth you will have to ask from a group of comrades animals and plants to achieve that outcome. Of course, you will be careful not to overstress them.”

“Which will come easier to us, as we said, because we shall be living in harp communities – including predators, dinosaurs, and yes, humans even –, who will all respect and like each other and therefore experience the others’ enjoyment like our own,” added Lénina’s partner Jean-Fidel, ecologist, expert on the rain forest, and father of baby Evo.

“Wow, let’s hope that works!” said Pierre, the maverick. “You know me, former CIA agent, I am a bit sceptical, not only as far as predators and dinosaurs, but especially as far as humans are concerned.”

“Well, I am optimistic,” said young comrade Bashir. “As far as the humans are concerned because of revolutionary education, and as far as animals and dinosaurs are concerned because of the natural self-restraint of the strong.”

“Let’s hope you are right. Tell us about the adaptive security features then!”

Adaptive security features: the harp feed, by Bashir and Zelim-Philippe

“Well, think of it this way. The feed of what happens at the market will no longer be based on what a camera records but on the original signals about their state by the harpists, plants mainly, grains – wheat, rye, oats –, potatoes, vegetables – carrots, peppers, lettuce, tomatoes –, and other fruit. Even if the fascos manage to disrupt, phase, or alter the feed at one point, a new status report will immediately override them. The lettuce will be green again, the tomatoes without mould, and the potatoes without any sprouts. They will not be able to stop the positive reports of harpists coming from all directions, and from all over the world. The autocorrect will work in such a way that even if the fascos manage to produce images of decay and emptiness for an instant, the next instance of the feed will restore health and abundance again.”

“They may still pretend there are local shortcomings, shortages or supply delays at least if not decay.”

“Yes, but with 999+ people in every thousand on our side and not dissuaded from going to the market, who is going to believe them?”

“Comrade Bashir is right,” said Sevim. “People will understand that these are lies and wait for a moment until the image changes for the true one again or in the worst-case scenario some really rotten product gets replaced.”

“Exactly, that is what I wanted to tell you,” said Aini. “The people at the market will be able to disprove the negative reports. That worked even with camera feeds and will be even easier when we have a harp feed. Even with the camera feed, the people at the market could tell that most of the alleged decrepitude was based on inflated minor shortcomings. After all, we market stall attendants are doing our utmost to uphold plentiful and healthy supply not only for the next customer, but all the time, throughout the day and throughout the season and the whole year round. That is our pride, and as a matter of fact, the plants – the grains, the potatoes, the veggies, and the fruit –, are helping us achieve that genuinely good image. A good image will lead to more of them getting planted, which means that even if this year’s harvest will be gone, the species will most certainly survive, and that’s what we harpists thrive on, even we humans think that way. If we don’t survive, our children and grandchildren at least will and may do better than we.”

“So, the idea behind this harp autocorrect is that even if something really goes wrong, future supplies will make good for any problems with momentary availability, correct?” asked Pascal. “But what if that leads to shortcomings turning out at the next market.”

“It won’t happen,” said Lénina. “Remember what I told you about the adaptive input-output model. We planners calculate the coefficients, most of them the real ones, not even statistical regression coefficients any longer, on the basis of harp signals and make sure that every individual in every village locally, in a region, and world-wide gets what they need. The world supply lines are a closely interwoven mesh of local states of abundance, and supply adjustments in the harp take place almost instantaneously.” “In the worst-case scenario, you may get Kerr’s Pink instead of Maris Pipers, but you will still get the potatoes you need, is that it?” asked Carla.

“Yes, but what about delivery times?” wondered Hisham.

“In Communism, let alone anarchy, we do not transport food around the globe any longer to make a profit as the capitalists did,” explained comrade Annie as the logistics expert.

“Supplies bubble over from the next stall or the next market, and the ball is saved again,” added Jean-Fidel, using a soccer analogy.

“We cater to people’s needs, not to their wallets,” Sarah concluded. “And because people live in harmony with each other and with nature, in other words, with all the other harpists, animals, robots, and plants, they are much less greedy and they enjoy their natural food much more. That is what is meant by the title of my project, ‘Food for everybody – food for all.’ It means the true realisation of the principle: From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs. In fact, we and our comrades world-wide are grateful for plants and animals offering themselves or at least some of theirs as produce, and would pray for their lives just as our ancestors did in Europe and our contemporaries still do in Africa today, who eat most meats and many grains, vegetables, and fruits only at harvest time. I want to thank you for bearing with me so far, and let’s hope comrades Jean and Hélène come back soon.”

Everybody could see comrade Mina blush. “What do you mean come back soon?” Annie fulminated. “Have the fascos now hexed them like they did the veggies?”

Chapter 9. Chasing the Shadow Dealers

A Strange Couple, by Olivier and Danièle

“Well yes, it is a mess. As you know, to our great chagrin, the Hacking Hexagon members have escaped us,” Jérôme took over here. “However, we may be able to catch a number of shadow dealers and, if we are lucky the New French or rather American-French-German Hacking Pentagon, consisting of Ross, Arnaud, Édouard, Jens and Klaus. Jérôme, Michel, Faroukh, Thierry… Aini and the other comrades involved, please tell us what we had planned!”

“Well,” started Faroukh. “When Thierry and I signed up with the new French Pentagon at Aimeran Logistics, we noticed that they had literally no food on the table and looked hungry as well. Hence the first idea, we should give all markets stallholders in the environs the idea to watch out for people, men or women – because Anne Dalgo and Marion, Arnaud’s and Édouard’s partners are helping them –, who act suspiciously, for instance, get suspicious amounts, try to pay in crypto, that’s illegal anyway, drive in a suspicious transporter with either Aimeran Logistics on it or covered over, and immediately contact the village assembly via the village forum app once they spot something like that.”

“Of course, we can’t be sure, they could have sat around an empty table because they did not want to give you anything and wanted to send you on to the Russian lands hungry whatever you said!”

“Oh, the bastards!” said Faroukh. “Merz hares, all of them!”

Jérôme laughed. “We know who they are. Anyway, we have the place under observation of course, and we have noticed that they have solved at least some problems of theirs. They have brought in an excavator and dug a well, so they have water. They have brought in some solar panels, and an electrical windmill, you know, not on a wooden structure but one like they used to be before the revolution, metal and concrete, and with a metal wheel on it. Probably custom-made for them by some other clandestine workshop, most likely in the German lands. And they have installed a charging station. They have received several deliveries of what we think was lab equipment and chemicals, for their synthetic fertilisers and neurotransmitters for trees so as to wreck the march of the trees, live viruses and chemicals such as MA and MK to wreck our brain apps, and similar horror substances. They could have brought along some food for the barons on these missions, but we are not sure.”

“Back when I worked there, we left part of the food we got from the farmers with them,” said Thierry.

“You see, that is the sign that they are experiencing a real food crisis,” said Faroukh. “They also asked me immediately whether I could drive, because then I could have driven out to the farmers like Thierry and brought in more food.”

“So, it is rather likely that they are going to the markets and share points in disguise. Comrade Aini, have you noticed anything?”

“Several times I have noticed a man and a woman buying loads of stuff and loading them into a transporter.”

“Always the same man and woman?”

“No, at least as far as I could tell, always different-looking. But they did not come to our stall, so I did not get a close look at them.”

“Next time try to give them a good look, even if you have to leave your stall for a moment. Maybe lure them with a treat?”

“I shall. But I talked to the other stallholders and they say, they were wearing sun-glasses, even they could not swear whether they were the same or not. Yet at no time did they offer crypto. So, if it was our crowd, they were smart enough not to do that.”

“Did they always come in the same transporter?” “No, always a different one. Even with different signs in different writing on it.”

“Well, that means nothing. They could have sprayed these on.”

“Anyway, we shall have a Logistique Yvelines transporter parked at the market the whole day long. Hopefully, when they come, they will do something that will reveal their real identity.”

Two days later, comrades Annie, organiser at Logistique Yvelines, and Fabien, driver, brought the good news. “Can you imagine that, they brazenly rented a transporter from me?” Annie began.

“A man and a woman, exactly like comrade Aini told us. They went to the market with it, parked it in a respectful distance of ours, went to a few stalls, including Aini’s this time.”

“Yes, because I waved around with a beautiful stem of Brussels sprouts,” Aini smiled. “I thought these fascos all adore would-be Empress Ulla, who tried to become empress of Europe in Year 1-2 via a counter-revolutionary coup, later a.k.a. Ernestine Leylan, would-be European militia ombudsman. She is associated with Brussels, so I waved with a branch of Brussels sprouts. To this day, she and the other ex-oligarchs hang out in this secluded élite village in Zeebrugge.”

“But they are all under house arrest,” said François, a.k.a. Nude, Georgette and Che’s friend from the Belgian lands. “They are hardly able to go out.”

“Well, serves them right after what they did,” scowled Denis. “Anyway, comrade Aini, what’s your verdict? Was it our friends from the logistics station.”

“The woman was dark-haired. It could have been Anne Dalgo, although she might have been dyed, of course. The man looked non-descript. It could have been any of them.”

“What colour hair?” “Dark like hers.” “Well, could have been Édouard with his hair dyed.”

“True. Did both of them say something?” “Yes, they sounded native. I asked, had they moved into the area. They said yes, although not to Aimeran centre, but to the dispersed houses East of Guémeron. That’s more or less the direction in which this logistics station is located, isn’t it?”

“Yes, indeed.” “Anyway, there wasn’t any reason not to serve them, right?”

“Of course not,” conceded Denis, “on the contrary, if they are beginning to come clean, stop their violence, stop their crypto-deals, they will be very welcome.”

***

“Here is your daily load,” the dark-haired man said as he and his partner unloaded the Logistique Yvelines vehicle and handed the food baskets and crates – no more plastic bags, that ran against the revolutionary villages’ vote against synthetics and for rubbish prevention –, to Klaus and Jens who carried them in.

“But, you see, I don’t know how to put it, but it is getting more difficult. They are on to us. We may have to lie low and play revolutionaries for a while.”

“Well, do that, and come in for a drink and a snack, you brought us enough there for a week or more. Arnaud or Édouard will give you your dough. Would you prefer crypto-francs or crypto-Euro?”

“Oh, well, you see, we’d rather not.”

Jens and Klaus looked at them with suspicion all of a sudden. They were doing so much for the Cause or the Future as the counter-revolutionaries called these days called their movement, yet they did not want anything, no crypto, no food. What kind of March hares were they?

“Well, come in anyway, you can discuss it with Ross and the others.” The two of them obliged and were sitting with the crypto-barons at the kitchen table where Thierry and Faroukh had stood not too long ago.

Ross, who was huge, son of a former chief executive officer of Safran, a major pre-revolutionary French arms producer counted out several thousand crypto-Euro and put a credit card next to it. “Here that should last you a while. The cash is for pals or shadow dealers. The card is for ordering intraline at luxenligne.com, getwhatyouwant.com and other sites in the dark web. How long do you think you will be forced to lie low?”

“Not more than a week, ten days,” said the man, while his mind was calculating feverishly. How long would it take to stun all five of them via revolutionary red beams, just for half an hour, until spontaneous militia came? Not more than a few seconds if they did well. She could take on two, and he the remaining three of them. ‘Go,’ he bio-messaged his partner, who nodded and fired her first beam, he fired his own as well of course. Success, two down! Second round, two more, Ross and one of the German guys, he never knew who was who. ‘If the last one throws his, bend away,’ he bio-messaged her again, and she bio-replied ‘yes’. Now both of them targeted the last one. But merde, all of a sudden, he had a two-pointed brown beam in his right hand, and threw it before they had time to fully raise their red shields. Their two beams went past or respectively over the enemy’s head.

As she sank down, the woman recapitulated what she knew about brown beams. They could be cranked up to a lethal dose with the help of a phone that fired gallium-sulphur-nitrate as a booster. However, the man had not held a phone and he had thrown two beams from the same hand, hopefully diminishing the charge in each one. Then she hit the floor and all went foggy. The man sent a last bio-message: ‘Comrade Yannick, this is Jean. Hélène and I have gotten ourselves in a nasty mess. Please help!’

***

Moments later, Yannick stumbled through Misha and Yvonne’s kitchen, in from the porch, where he had been sitting with his pal Iwan and the two neighbours’ girls: Charolaine and Cécile, and on into Peter Gar’s and Carla’s room, where Carla and their son Misha were working on editing last night’s protocol of the joint session at Illyria’s and Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove’s youth clubs, mainly on food, but also on the new planning app that was going to make food distribution through the trefoil even easier and safer. Carla was checking the text, Misha the video, and both of them the audio.

“They’ve got Jean and Hélène!” yelled Yannick at the top of his voice as well as sending an urgent bio-message to all Illyrians. “You must go get them before they can get away and take them.”

***

“They signed up through the job app, no way of knowing it was them for us who don’t know them,” said Klaus, as he felt their pulse. “Look how thick they got the mascara on!” And he swept his finger over Hélène’s cheek. No sign of life! She did not move. “Anyway, they are not dead. The two half charges wouldn’t have been strong enough. What do we do with them? They will be here any minute? Take them or leave them?”

“Well, they would be a valuable bargaining chip in our hands, wouldn’t they?” said Ross. “I am for taking them.”

“Leave!” said Édouard.

“Leave,” Arnaud concurred with him. “We’ll tell you why. Two German fellows, or Dutch, who knows, took this Jean fellow on, just a few month ago, Thomas Rutte and Ronald Gunpump, that was just an alias. Fired at him with a blowgun spiked with MA. And while the revs are usually quite lenient, they dragged Thomas and Ronald before their village court and gave them a life-long sentence, prison and house arrest, unless they honestly repent. Which these two are not really capable of doing. They are rough boys, if you know what I mean. We’d incur these Illyrians’ serious wrath if we took these two, even a woman this time, and even more if something happened to them if you know what I mean.”

“What about you, Klaus and Jens?”

“Take them with us!” said Jens. “They are too valuable a prey to leave behind.”

“Take them with us. Don’t kill them. Just quiz them on their plans and their technology, they are bound to know a lot, and then release them somewhere in the Taiga or the desert, wherever we are going.”

“O.k.,” said Ross. “That is the majority. We have invitations from the Hacking Hexagon – who are the Baltics now or in the Russian lands. They had to abandon their place in Lithuania, I am not sure where they are now –, to Russia or to Israel, beg your pardon Palestine. ”

“Palestine!” This time the vote was unanimous. “Autumn and winter are coming and it will be too cold up there on the Arctic coast,” said Arnaud, he and Édouard having experienced Siberia already. “After all, it’s no longer global warming.”

Taking prisoners, by Zamir and Odile

“The anthropocene is over.” They were joking as they went to the backyard, Klaus and Jens carrying Jean and Hélène. When they were silent for a moment, summoning their orange beams, two of them, Klaus’s and Jens’s extra-strength, so they could carry the two prisoners, they could hear a quiet thud from the front yard. “That’s them already landing,” said Jens. “At least twelve of them judging by the volume. Let’s go fast now!”

Yet they went slower than normal, probably because they were worried. The orange beams worked like the revolutionary yellow beams, you summoned them by willpower and they would carry you almost anywhere. Only drawback of both beams, you could not travel intact like on a golden beam, you had to disassembly to complete molecular state, then reassemble before landing to keep the energy count as low as possible. The original orange beam had even had one additional drawback. The heightened energy expenditure made you very angry at times. A revolutionary physicist, Maksim from Novgornyi, had given them the tip of developing a positive attitude, and they tried to remember this now, as they dragged Jean and Hélène onto the beams. “These two are worth gold!” thought Ross. “Never been to Israel!” Klaus dreamt. “I wonder what we’ll find there.” “Glad to be out of this rotten hole where we needed the revolutionaries to feed us!” was Jens’ assessment. “Everything will be better than freezing in the Taiga again!” thought Édouard, only Arnaud was nostalgic. “Again I failed in agitating the French lands. What’s wrong? Have we lost touch?” And then, when they were already close to molecular state again, he suddenly remembered about the dangers of this trip. What if there was a storm over the Mediterranean like the other day? What if they dropped into the waves or smashed onto a Sicilian rock, never to come again…

Peace Doves and Young Pioneers, from top left to bottom right: Sarah, Faroukh, Laurence, Jean-Luc, Zamir, and Odile, by Emmanuel and Laurence

“Sarah, any last words on the food issue?” “Yes, in my studies of economics and planning at Nanterre, I want to continue focusing on the food issue, not least because it is such a towering problem in Northern Africa where my family is from. I want to follow the evolution of the harp signals and matrices and develop them so as to make sure no human, animal, or plant falls through the cracks. As a matter of fact, no robot, plushtop or plush phone either, they also need their intranet charges. While Faroukh and I are in Palestine, I may do a historical study of the way the Zionists starved the Palestinians before the revolution as a genocide attempt never to be repeated anywhere.”

“Well done, comrade Sarah,” said Rim who was moderating and handed her a pin. “What’s that?” asked Sarah, then her eyes got wet with joy and she hugged Rim and the other members of the Nanterre brigade: Philippe, Pascal, Hisham, Rim, Bashir and Zelim-Philippe, then comrade Faroukh as well. “They are coopting me in their brigade, just on the basis of my university entry project, do you believe it, Fucker? It’s a great honour!”

“It sure is, bunny,” said her dad, comrade René, who was moderating at Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove. “But now you have to yield to the next candidate. Comrade Faroukh, you will be leaving for Palestine tomorrow?”

“Yes,” said Faroukh. “Escape the winter cold here in the French lands. Over there, it is still balmy 21 degrees. As you know, my research will be partly historical, the way the Intifada served as a catalyst of the world revolution of 2021, and this not only in Palestine, and also contemporary, what is the status of Zionism today, is it still a threat? In the past, even when they were not active murdering Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank and other Muslims in Lebanon, Iran, and so on, the Zionists tried to win the public opinion battle by turning the Antifascist movement into a sort of Zionist defence league. Not every antifascist in the whole wide world complied, of course, you senior Illyrian comrades, for instance, have always held a middle ground, even comrade Frédéric…”

“Just a minute,” said comrade Frédéric. “ Why even? I am among those who coined the term Antifada.”

“And certainly comrades Jean, Georges, Patrick, also comrade Alain – the LGBTQIA movement as a whole has been very sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians…Yet many people did support the Zionists, and it against those that we founded the Antifada, roughly speaking, a pro-Palestinian Antifa who branded anti-Semitism also when it was directed against Palestinians, Arabs, and other Middle Easterners and especially when it came from North-Western capitalists, bourgeois, and fascist sympathisers who have got a lot to learn even today.”

“D’accord,” said Alain, who was moderating at Illyria. “You’ve got it nailed, comrade Faroukh. It will have something to do with the revolutionary movements forming a united front against what has certainly been one of the most outrageous cases of discrimination in the whole of human history, don’t we all agree, comrades?”

“Yes, we do!” said comrade Frédéric.

“Bravo, comrade Faroukh,” said comrade Mina who had taken over the moderation in lieu of comrade Jean. “Full speed to you! Over to you, comrade Laurence.”

“It will be an antecedent study to the examination of revolutionary air quality that our children will continue,” said Laurence. “For the time being, our air is still poisoned by the left-overs of mining, industrialisation, and big energy works, car, lorry and other combustion and jet engine traffic, as well as the more modern emissions from biochemical and big pharma production. And even after the revolution, the capitalist underground has still managed to add to the count by explosions, some of them even under the guise of allegedly ill-conceived revolutionary de-construction jobs, as well as big pharma and other biochemical emissions, carried by nanobots. And they may have a major attempt with these latter ones up their sleeves, remember the ‘air scare’ they talked about up in the Baltics, something that will force us to wear masks, even to carry oxygen tanks, that will cause weather turbulences, hurt the other harpists, and bring us as close to a counter-revolutionary takeover as we haven’t been in a long time.”

“Oh, mon Dieu,” said Annie, “That sounds creepy.”

“Absolutely Satanic,” concurred Pierre le Gars, Peter Gar, who had taken over the moderation. “Comrade Jean-Luc, your topic is revolutionary accounting. But you are no longer counting money, are you?”

“Oh, no,” said Jean-Luc. “Already in the Soviet times, planners had moved beyond money. Yet we revolutionaries want everybody to be a planner, not just comrade Sarah and the other Nanterre luminaires.”

There was roaring applause both in Illyria as well as in Saint-Denis.

“Say no more!” said Peter Gar. “I am looking forward to that.”

“I am not a luminary, you are,” said Sarah. “Jean-Luc, with your knowledge of mathematics, material balances, and input-output models you are going to help me and all of us achieve food justice in the harp, I am sure.” There was roaring human applause again, accompanied by the chirping of birds, miaowing of cats, barking of dogs, the bleating and the snorts of cattle and wild deer, the screams of foxes, and still further away, the howling of wolves.

“We will be able to create wonder-cattle,” said Marius. “And I know this has been an on-going dispute between me and the other Animal lives matter. Plant lives triumph activists. Yet there are two reasons to go ahead with my type of research and to take it seriously, first of all, we do not want to leave it to the fascos, who might produce unethical monsters like the world has never seen. Second, we now have the harp at our side which allows us to communicate not only with robots and computers, but with animals and plants as well. They will be able to object to and guide my research, and as soon as they come alive, my wonder-cattle will have its say too. It may really turn out a major step towards the jours heureux, the happy days, where we are all equal and understand and harmonise with each other perfectly.”

“We’ll give you a chance!” grumbled Julie and Danièle.

“Marius loves animals and plants just as much as I do and we all do,” said Zamir, championing his comrade’s cause. “Nothing he will do will come even remotely close to what the metalmongers – I call them that, because they base their wealth on the exploitation of metals and other natural resources –, to what the capitalists have done to our planet.”

“That will be fascinating,” said Peter Gar. “Then my genius granddaughter, young comrade Odile will follow with the second edition of the kindergarden manifesto, crammed with tips for our senior, active, and growing teachers I am sure.” “Yes, and I shall be the last of the peace doves of Saint-Denis and Illyrian young pioneers on the picture to speak, then it will be on to some interludes until the new 4^th generation of Illyrians and friends come off age starting with Ramón a few years from then in Year 30-31, but hold your breath… Remember that during comrade Véro’s presentation of the Kindergarden Manifesto’s first edition, the fascos abducted our junior soccer team, the whole team from comrade Jean-Wadi via comrades Malik, Maher, Jean-Fidel, Josip, Guillaume, Jean-François, Jean-Saïd, Zélim-Philippe, Bashir, all the way to comrade Olivier. And the fascos have become better with beams. Let’s hope nothing happens!”

“And let’s hope we can liberate comrade Jean and Hélène soon,” concluded Mina. “It seems that they have taken them to where comrades Faroukh and Sarah are going, to Palestine, with what nefarious designs in mind, we don’t know yet.”

The discussions and adventures of our comrades in Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp near Aimeran, Yvelines, Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Doves at 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis, and their friends world-wide shall continue in Year 21 with Intifada – Revolution and Gasping for Air. In the Name of the Peace Dove?, Year 22 – Revolutionary Accounting and Les Jours Heureux. Wonder Cattle, Year 23 – The Metalmongers, and Year 24 – Kindergarden Manifesto2^nd edition

Map of Illyria and Aimeran at the time of comrade Sarah’s presentation “Life in Communism 2.1. Food for everybody, food for all”, in early autumn of Year 20 of the Revolution, by Marius and Jean-Luc

Maps and Plans of our rural cooperative Illyria, Yvelines, and our neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove on 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis, state in the autumn of Year 20 of the Revolution during comrade Sarah’s presentation “Life in Communism 2.1. Food for everybody, food for all”, there are 17 three-room apartments with the bedrooms occupied as follows, 3^rd generation Young Revolutionaries marked in italics, 4^th generation Young Revolutionaries in bold italics:

Apartments in the old Farmhouse

Apartments above the Robot Workshop

Apartments above the Stables

Apartments above the Furniture and Clothes Workshops

Dark blue: furniture workshop, light blue: clothes workshop

Inhabitants of the Garden Colony and the Manouche Camp

Neighbourhood Assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis

Yellow: first floor, youth club; Green: second floor; Red: third floor; Blue: fourth floor, and violet: fifth floor. 2^nd and 3^rd floors: Casa Latina Russki Dom, 4^th and 5^th floor: Peace Dove.

Other books by Carla O’Gallchobhair you will enjoy:

Life in Communism 2.1. The Housing Question vol. 1 A place for everyone, vol. 2 Homeless in the revolution vol. 3 The Housing swap. In principle, the revolution has solved the housing question. A homeless individual or household will get an apartment or house. An individual, couple or household who already has a place automatically enjoys full ownership rights of it and may swap to acquire a more suitable place. If, because of the remnants of the housing shortage on the conscience of capitalism, due to rent and real estate speculation, an individual or family cannot swap into an adequate place immediately, suitable buildings, including former government or corporate offices, get deconstructed-reconstructed into apartment buildings or family houses. That is the general view. Comrades Jean, Raphaël, and Abram tackle the fine detail in the spirit of Marx and Engels.

Life in Communism 2.1. Minutes, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. Carla, Peter Gar’s mousy, yet meticulous ex and mother of comrades Misha and Tanya lives in the garden colony next to Illyria, busy editing the minutes of the weekly if not daily meetings of Illyria’s and the Saint-Denis neighbourhood assembly Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Doves youth clubs. One fine morning, she wakes up to find that the protocols have been infected by a malicious virus and AI tool that has turned all of their content into its opposite: right has been turned into wrong, Communism into fascism, and the goals of the revolution into their opposite. For a moment, Carla suspects maverick Pierre or maybe the young Illyrians to have played a nasty prank, but no… What seems at first like a minor drama affecting only comrade Carla’s work allows the revolutionaries to advance communications via intranet and bio-wifi and to expand their discussions with the other harpists and harpoids – animals, including time-travelled dinosaurs, robots, and plants, and devices in their likeness.

Life in Communism 2.1. Anarchy and other urgent tasks of the revolution, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. The revolution is still experiencing trouble in overcoming the last remnants of capitalism and eliminating its violent branch, the capitalist sponsors and fasco barons committing crimes with weapons and toxins produced underground. This makes comrade Jean deduce that the revolution needs a new boost, a move from socialist direct democracy to complete anarchy. In anarchy, we revolutionaries shall not only abolish the state and rotate all position of authority, including fore(wo)men, chair(wo)men, moderators, managers and accountants and so on but abolish these positions altogether just as we abolished politicians, armies, and police services in the world revolution of 2021, Year Zero. And apart from hierarchy and material checks, we shall also develop a spontaneous trefoil check for the harp community – humans, animals, robots and other intelligent things, and plants –, to make sure everybody gets what they need. While the Illyrians start to discuss the details, the African capexogarchs, American Uberytes and their Pappbergeryte mercs are trying to stop the regreening of Timbuktu, providing ample evidence of the challenges facing permanent revolution and anarchy.

Life in Communism 2.1. African Trilogy vol. 2 The Coup by Carla O’Gallchobhair. It is the sweltering summer of Year 20 of the Revolution. Comrade Seth and the other members of the Niger brigade help thwart last-ditch efforts by the capitalists, their military barons and even Islamic jihadi to reverse the revolution and reinstitute capitalism and imperialism in Seth’s home country of Niger, and Peter Gars (Pierre le Gars) and Égale get involved in similar efforts in Sudan, trying to wind down the capitalist quislings.

Life in Communism 2.1. African Trilogy vol. 1 On a rubber dinghy, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. It is 2020-21, Year Zero of the Revolution. The book begins with Omsinbaba and Fofana’s moving story of their dramatic journey to what they dreamt would be safety and a good life in the French lands. Yet capitalism is still running amok when they arrive and some people accuse them of just coming in on a rubber dinghy to force pity and take jobs from the French. Omsinbaba and Fofana as well as many other migrants find they have to make a revolution first along with the French people and the rest of the world. Back to Year 20 of the Revolution, 2021 being Zero. As Omsinbaba and Fofana arrive for their nostalgic journey and to give some advice, their comrades are already undertaking experiments for a fast march of the trees that will allow to regrow the rain forest and even to gnaw on the desert. Yet the foreign capexogarchs are trying to take a ride on the trees at least as deceitful as circumventing customs on a rubber dinghy.

Life in Communism 2.1. Red Cells. Marx versus Machiavelli. The Trade Unions in the Revolution, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. Comrade Emmanuel’s mother Aurélie has prepared her son’s university entry project on the role of the trade unions in the revolution with plenty of good advice, but when the fascos mount their brown cell campaign, and manage to enlist not only workers at the Uberyite underground facilities but also at the self-managing electricity grid transformer stations, as well as at the self-managing brigades on the trains, at the train stations, and at the switching stations to that end, even she and the other senior Illyrians are baffled, and her son is on his own.

Life in Communism 2.1.

The Housing Question

By Carla O’Gallchobhair

Homeless of the world unite!

You have nothing to leave behind but your misery,

you have got a world to win!

Table of Contents

Vol. 1 A Place for Everyone

Vol. 2 At Home in the Revolution

Vol. 3 The Housing Swap

Life in Communism 2.1.

The Housing Question

vol. 1 A Place for Everyone

The Housing Question vol. 1 A Place for Everyone

Preface to Volume 1. A Place for Everyone. Importance of the housing question

Homeless before the revolution, by Cédric and Charolaine

“Before we launch into discussing the housing question, stand back for a moment and imagine this nonsense: we humans invented a whole social system and even a whole ecosystem to protect those humans who to begin with, happen to have more than others of certain luxuries – mainly real estate, but also means of production, money, jewels, vehicles, boats, planes, art, furniture, antiques, etc. –, instead of inventing one to help those who have less,” Jean began. “Yet fortunately, in 2021, humans world-wide stood up against the latest imposition, the Covet laws which were turning even human health into an instrument of oppression. Think about it, we were supposed to wear masks, get tested, vaccinated, work from home, and carry a sanitary pass as the prerequisite for being or going anywhere. And it is quite telling that the revolution broke out over two Covet-related issues also touching at the inviolability of our homes, work from home, and being allowed to leave it. The revolution turned around housing questions in other ways as well, first of all, the prohibitive prices of home ownership, and second, the skyrocketing prices of renting, where rent does not only refer to the basic rate, but all the auxiliary payments, the so-called second rent added on to it. I sat in with you young revolutionaries reading Engels’ ‘The Housing Question’ the other night and was struck once more by his brilliant analysis of home ownership and renting as tools to lead and oppress the working and the peasant class.”

“You mean, the fact that rents were sky-high in the established cities and much more modest in the new industrial centres?” asked young comrade Bashir, one of the rising stars among Illyria’s and Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove’s young economists. “So that the workers had to choose between slaving for the capitalists to pay the rent and or becoming homeless in the big cities.”

“That’s part of it. Another factor is that large landowners bought up the land, forcing smallholders out. The peasants who came to the cities had to sell their farm and also the small industrial workshops some of them had kept for food-processing but also for clothes, tools, household items, furniture, and other basic goods, a bit like the network of rural workshops we have re-established after the revolution and of which our robot, clothes, and furniture workshops at Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp are a part. By forcing the peasants off the land, the large landowners, most of them aristocrats but some of them bourgeois already, eliminated one source of competition to the rising bourgeois industrialists. And once you were in the city as either second-generation working-class or newly arrived peasant family you were doomed: You knew you would never be able to afford your own apartment, let alone house. And the rents kept rising. Buildings in the inner cities became overcrowded, dirty, and ultimately unhealthy. Working class families were forced to move to the outskirts. Yet the new buildings deteriorated as well. And in fact, even faster than the inner-city ones. Building standards became worse with each new generation of houses, especially apartment houses for the poor. While material savings and environmental protection sometimes served as an excuse, we as Marxists shouldn’t be naïve. The capitalist builders were looking after their profits after all.”

Inferior-style construction for the working people, by Maher and Karla

“The profit rate, we all remember is π = c + v + s,” yelled young comrade Zamir, twelve years old, comrade Jean’s fourth son with comrade Mina following Jean-Wadi, Maher, and Jean-Saïd. Mina was Palestinian and a dedicated peace researcher and Communist. Zamir had just learnt about these basic Marxist equations in school. “where π is profits, c is profits from constant capital, v is profits from variable capital, and s is the rate of surplus earned from the workers. And the exploitation rate is e= s/w, where w is the wage rate. So, the more the capitalists save on all three, c, v, and w, the better they are off. Please recall the law of declining profits from constant and variable capital because machines wear out and materials get dearer or as bad as they can get in quality. Yet the capitalists know they can always continue to increase their profits by exploiting the workers.”

“That’s right, son,” Jean had to smile at Zamir’s unusually didactic style. Probably he had been brigadier of his student brigade that day.

“And Engels then goes on to take apart Proudhon’s argument that rent somehow means a sort of home ownership, but of course it doesn’t,” he took over again. “It is just another form of alienation. In the typical case, an apartment house before the revolution used to belong to one capitalist entity, private, public, or cooperative – no difference, they all behaved like capitalist firms –, and the land below it either to the same company or another one just like it. The fact that you paid rent, and even the fact that you put your labour into the cleaning and upkeep of the place did not change anything to your basic situation of a property-less serf, just like doing all of the work on a large farm, in the factory, or social service, such as a school or hospital, did not give you, the proletariat, any claim to that property nor to the surplus your work yielded. You got your basic rates which the capitalists kept down, and that was it.

“And in the last sections of his work, Engels then castigates the one and only solution the bourgeoisie comes up with to solve the housing question, namely, to encourage worker home ownership. Government could do that by direct subsidies but typically does it either by inducements to savings or, even worse, by cheap mortgages. In all three cases, the workers will lose quality of life and job and career prospects by being ‘chained’ to a certain location again. And in the last two cases, working families will even have to sacrifice part of their already mediocre standard of living to keep up with the savings rate or mortgage.

“That’s Engels’ analysis, which was just as pertinent just before our World Revolution as it was in the nineteenth century.”

The Housing Question in the Revolution

Planning the revolution, by Marius and Jean-Luc, upper left-hand side, comrades Robespierre, Sophie, Philippe, Anisah, Martine, and Léon, at the centre, young comrade Lulu, lower right-hand side, comrades Danton, Inès, Monique, Danton, and Nicole

“Jean-Luc and Marius, why don’t you tell us about the revolution, especially as it relates to housing?” The two friends looked at each other. “I’ll start with the background,” Marius said, “then Jean-Luc, being the economist, will take over with the housing question.

“Preparations for the revolution began in 2020 together with the outbreak of the Covet scamdemic. People noticed that their governments were lying, not only on matters of foreign wars, where they could hope that most people had no special expertise, but on day-to-day matters like the flu. The tests for Covet and Coflu – which is a nickname they came up with to pretend that the common cold was just as dangerous as the flu –, actually gave you the disease, the masks made you suffocate, and the vaccines, both the vector as well as the mRNA vaccines, not only gave you a large number of unwanted side effects from fatigue to myocarditis, but could weaken your immune system to the extent that you needed constant boosters to remain functional.

“On that occasion, parents also discovered that some of the omnibus vaccines babies and toddlers received as early as age one were too strong and could lead to severe illness if not death from shock syndrome. We all know comrade Maurice’s, young comrade Bouna’s papa’s story. Comrade Maurice was poisoned by one of Roger Sabiani’s toxic shots and only saved by comrade René’s timely intervention.

“Apart from the immediate health effects, even worse could be the social consequences of the scamdemic. Comrade Jean mentioned work from home. As a matter of fact, that was already a concession by the employers who practiced short work and unscrupulously locked out and fired people who would not comply.

“He also mentioned the plans for sanitary passes which if implemented would have forced us to wear a mask and be tested and or vaccinated and boosted and to carry an up-to-date sanitary pass to go anywhere, school, work, shopping, cultural events, such as concerts, the theatre, the cinema, the sports club.

“In other words, comrade Antoine is right to argue that Covet was one, if not the main catalyst of the uprising. One of the ways in which it fostered the revolution was by giving people time to think, to understand the class struggle hiding behind everything that happens, the evil of capitalism, and to join in small, clandestine cells or brigades to prepare Day R when the revolution would start.

“My papa and mamon, comrades Monique and Anton were school kids back then and were in such a cell together with other children of Cellule 14, meaning the former executive committee of PCF, which had resigned collectively in Year 2020 to have time to prepare the revolution less bureaucratically and more effectively. Maman and papa, tell us about it…”

“I remember, I was sitting with the other kids at comrade Marie’s place, because she had the most space, the senior young comrades Robespierre, Sophie, Léon, Martine, Philippe, and Anisah in one corner of comrade Marie’s living room, and us junior ones, comrade Danton, Inès, Anton, I, myself, and comrade Nicole in the other, with “our” toddler, comrade Lulu, Omsinbaba and Fofana’s kid, the three of whom comrade Marie had saved from the refugee home… crawling around in the centre with both the older and the younger comrades keeping an eye on her. We younger ones mainly drew up general leaflets along the lines, Whatever you are angry about – the Covet-19 rules, the military build-up, the heat and other environmental degradations, high rents, homelessness, regardless whether you are already homeless or just threatened by it, privatisation of education, medicine, transport, etc. –, on Day R, whatever you do, don’t go to work or to school; there will be a general strike, instead go to your closest government or business office, be it a mairie (a village or district mayor’s office), a district, city, regional, or central government building, an international organisation, a bank, a supermarket, a department store, or shopping mall. You can leave out small ma and pa shops, they will organise themselves and become self-managed. Better to go to the larger, bureaucratic entities, and kindly ask the managers to step down and join the workers in a first workers’ assembly to either dissolve, if a certain office is no longer needed, as we shall abolish the state and all large companies, or reconstitute as another needed self-managed organisation, for instance, a hospital as a policlinic with mixed doctor-nurses-support personnel brigades, where the role of brigadier rotates and even an omniscient doctor has to step from their cloud at least six out of seven working days, or a school as a self-administering social organisation made up of all-student brigades with teachers rotating, or mixed brigades composed of 1 or 2 teachers and teachers’ assistants and 5 to 6 students.”

“The older ones drew up flyers on how specifically to transform specific types of enterprises into self-managed firms,” Jean-Luc took over here from his friend. “Let’s say you were visiting an apartment rental company, not a real estate agent, they are typically small offices, and they had to dissolve entirely. Real estate agents had to retrain for other professions. Some of them did, others became revolutionary housing experts and helped develop the housing swap app, among other things. Yet others, a dwindling minority actually, went into the capitalist-fasco underground, more of that later. For now, let us just focus on the rental companies. So, the comrades would walk in and ask, ‘Comrades, are you with the revolution? Because if you are and even if you aren’t, you can leave this dreadful job behind and retrain for a really meaningful job. We are no longer going to rent out apartments in the revolution. Everybody will own their apartments or houses. The homeless will get one, for instance, in a reconverted hotel or in an office building such as this one. Think about it, several one or two-room apartments would fit even into this office, we would have to install kitchens and bathrooms, obviously. Once all existing buildings are filled, we would still provide homes for all the homeless of course, even if houses have to be built from scratch. And there wouldn’t be any hierarchy of those in need, as there is now. Under capitalism, they may still do something for families with three children, but if it is families with only two children, or a single mother, or, horribile dictu, a single man or a trans, forget it! No, we would continue searching for places and building them until everybody is housed adequately, has their village ID, and vouchers for the market and can start a new life in the revolution, like everybody else, as a farmer, manufacturing worker, service worker, in a retraining course, or university-level course of study, whatever floats your boat. And if after a while, you and your family don’t like your place, you can always swap it for something more adequate.’

“Typically, over 50 percent of employees in these rental companies immediately said ‘No problem! We have heard about the revolution on the radio. We were thinking anyway about going home and participating in our neighbourhood assemblies. That is the first step, isn’t it?’

“‘Exactly,’ we agitators would say. ‘Remember, no more than seven households in a neighbourhood assembly. At first, it may take some time to determine the exact composition of neighbourhood assemblies in each house or on each floor. The chairing household changes at least at every meeting, maybe even several times during a meeting, and children over age nine should definitely enjoy voting rights.

“You can discuss anything at these meetings. The burning questions, we surmise, will be the ecological ones. How to borrow the hand-held, solar-driven, quiet drills, which comrade Léon and his colleagues at Ponts et Chaussées invented, as they will be needed to pull up the ugly tarmac in front of your house. Not too many streets in the same neighbourhood may deconstruct at the same time, let alone a whole quarter or arrondissement, because then you’d get too much air pollution. From the beginning, comrades Philippe, Pascal, Hisham and Rim and the other University of Nanterre economists, statisticians, and planners have participated in the effort to draw up schedules for pulling up tarmac for each block, each street, each village, each quarter, each city, and ultimately, the whole big megalopolis of Paris.

“Next questions: How to get rid of your car to save the planet? D’accord, by driving it to the next filling or recharge station for recycling, but how to make sure at the same time that your corner does not get neglected in terms of public transport connections? How to make sure your village assemblies vote for enough free taxis in your area if somebody has mobility issues? How to turn the chestnut trees on both sides of the alley into a park? How to deconstruct your house piece-by-piece from one with five or more levels to one with just a healthy five?

Deconstructing levels, by Danièle and Olivier, with advice from Maher and Karla

“Houses should not be higher than the highest tree. To get rid of excess levels, you must reinforce ceiling and floor above the fifth, best with floorboards or tiles, then metal or wooden rods, bricks, and roof tiles, and then piece-by-piece deconstruct or decompose the walls and floors above the fifth floor with the help of plants, such as ivy, moss, and algae, bacteria, such as leptospirillum for all metals and ideonella for all plastic, deconstruct or at least loosen the concrete with concretum manducans, so that you can then deconstruct it piece-by-piece. The residents of these upper floors should be adequately rehoused in lower floors or already in separate houses or town houses in the country side,” explained Maher.

“This is what comrade Léon and the other deconstruction engineers had to explain to people,” added Karla. “At first there were some doubts, which the capitalists managed to exploit of course, but by now, 99% of people are happy with deconstruction and already preparing for the next stage, the march of the trees and the return of the forest.”

“That’s right,” said Jean. “And now to the more mundane questions. How to organise the necessary work of house cleaning? Remember, no more cleaning companies. We would have gone to those as well and brought them the good news, but they learnt it themselves from the media and from just talking to family, friends, and people in the street. That is the occasion for them as well to start a new life as artisans, workers, farmers, or university students. Most neighbourhood assemblies by the way set one day every week where all households in the neighbourhood assembly do the cleaning together. That way there are fewer reproaches against alleged lazy households, and the work is more fun.

“D’accord, their own revolutionary conviction and a bit of friendly advice and a pat on the back if something went well or not so well took care of the over 50% of workers who were with the revolution to begin with. The others needed more time, discussions at their workplace assembly, in this case the housing company, in their brigade and their red cell, back then they were called trade union cell, as well as at their neighbourhood and village assemblies. More personal discussions with friends and family as well at times. For those among you who are already convinced revolutionaries, such work of convincing, I would not call it propaganda, means explaining again and again how the brigades and assemblies work: brigadiers, chairpersons, and moderators change once a day at least – that’s called rotation. Everybody may and is encouraged to speak to any issue and to take over the moderation if he or she sees the need. Everything gets discussed until everybody agrees or can at least live with the decision taken by the majority. We call that a consensus. Not even a consensus is cast in stone. Everybody can raise the issue again at any meeting and enter new arguments and evidence. Moreover, if a brigade, workplace, neighbourhood, or village assembly has taken a different decision than the surrounding ones, the assemblies will visit each other and hold joint meetings, live or intraline, what used to be called online, until they have reached a consensus that allows all assemblies to move forward in the same direction. And all brigades and assemblies are on the same level, not even the workplace assembly can order a brigade what to do unless all of its members have participated at the workplace assembly and have signaled agreement, neither can a neighbourhood assembly interfere with another neighbourhood assembly, or a village assembly with a neighbourhood assembly, with a workplace assembly, or with another village assembly. There is no hierarchy anywhere in society, and if somebody spots one emerging, he, she or they should immediately call for a hierarchy check. All four venues of interaction – brigades, neighbourhood, workplace, and village assemblies –, are on the same level, and it is our duty to make sure that they remain so.

“Now let’s say somebody is still not convinced by the way we practice direct democracy on a daily and hourly basis. Usually, they have personal reasons for feeling uncomfortable, possibly a mental illness carried over from capitalism. Comrades Melanie and Murielle, do you want to say a few words about that already, since it touches on your topic?”

“Yes, we are both voluntary prison workers, “ started Melanie, “and do counseling both with convicted ex-capitalists who have been caught continuing their business underground and have used money and exploited workers to do so, as well as with their victims, the ordinary mercs doing security and the workers slaving in the secret capitalist sweatshops.

“We find both groups suffer disproportionally from mild to severe cases of paranoia, they feel persecuted by the revolution, the first group, and or by their underground capitalist bosses, the second group. Both groups also suffer disproportionately from schizophrenia, the feeling of living a lie, either as pretend-revolutionaries or enlisted counter-revolutionaries. And because of the insecurity caused by this tendency towards paranoia and schizophrenia, we also find a particular high number of manic-depressives and depressed people in both groups. Sometimes they feel not only safe, but strong, and all-powerful, at other times, they want to just crawl away and die somewhere.”

“Under capitalism,” Murielle took over from her friend. “They would have dismissed these numbers as cases of individual sickness, but with the help of comrade Pascal and the other statisticians at Université de Nanterre we have dug deeper, and found that 89% of the prisoners village assemblies have sentenced to prison sentences since the revolution, have either a traditional criminal background and or relatives who do, are ex-capitalists or relatives of theirs, ex-military or police, ex-state or regional, departmental, agglo(-meration) – meaning large village, town, city, or metropolitan bureaucrats or other ex-state or ex-corporate bureaucrats or relatives of theirs. Thus, since both class and mental illness run in the family, it seems quite likely that class predisposes you to mental illness.”

“D’accord, if traditional crims count among the 89%, what about the other 11%?” asked Jean.

Melanie blushed and began to stutter. I wonder what’s wrong with her, worried her brother Tim, himself a young deconstruction-reconstruction engineer. Could she be infatuated with comrade Jean, he asked himself. What a silly target to choose! What about comrade Cédric, his, Tim’s deconstruction-reconstruction engineering colleague, son of comrade Fabien from Logistique Yvelines? Or even comrade Colin, member of the robot brigade who had chosen bio-thicket as intranet security as his university entry topic, son of Fabien’s sister Sabrine. D’accord, he was maybe a trifle young for her, but comrade Jean was way too old and could have boasted so many mistresses and lovers apart from his steady partners, comrades Hélène and Mina to make your eyes boggle. It was rumoured that he still slept in the same bed every night with comrades Hélène and Mina despite all his philandering, so he wasn’t even that easy to get. His poor sis risked biting her teeth off on him!

“Eh,” said Melanie, obviously grasping for an answer that he was sure she could have thought off in a normal state of mind.

“Maybe there are some people judged for offences that don’t really make them criminal, such as crimes of passion, beating their sweetheart for having a lover or something,” Tim suggested, getting red in the face himself.

“Or petty theft,” said Melanie, who had recovered her countenance, and glowered at her little brother as if he was the mischief maker behind all this. “There is not much left to steal in the revolution, people get their food and basic goods for free. If you covet a famous picture or work of art you have seen at a neighbour’s place you can always order a copy from an art workshop. Even if you steal somebody’s family jewelry or something, it will be hard to sell for lack of money, crypto, and other money substitutes, and hard to recast, because a craftsman able to do that would fear going down as a fellow criminal.”

“Well, let’s think of them as spontaneous criminals,” Robespierre said helpfully. “We have spontaneous militia, so why not spontaneous crims? How many have been sentenced to prison sentences anyway, in the French lands, you don’t have to give me the world-wide number?”

“No more than a thousand, a few dozen every year since Year Zero. Most offenders have only gotten house arrest,” said Philippe. “That is why these fascist plots like the attempt against comrade Jean and the hacking of our minutes, or even the opening of a new Uberyte pals always create such a stir.” Pals was short for underground private policlinic, amusement club, logistics stations, and sports club, the latter two typically also producing and selling small weapons, the first two dangerous medicines and drugs.

From administrative and office buildings make apartments

Fitting the new apartments with bathrooms, by Faroukh and Sarah

“Wait for a moment, before we go into the nitty-gritty of stalwart ex- or would be-capitalists to live happily in a community instead of resorting to crime, let us first recapitulate how the revolution has overcome homelessness!” warned comrade Jean.

“Mainly by converting old office buildings, state and private ones,” Danton, deconstruction-reconstruction engineer, jumped in grinningly. “Especially here in the Paris region which was the centre of the state as well as business. The main problem here, as comrade Jean-Luc mentioned, was how to redraw plans so as to create the right quantity of one, two, three, or four-room apartments. For families who required more than four rooms, we recommend houses in the banlieues – we’ll get to that in a minute. And there is the related problem how to fit these new apartments with kitchens, baths, wall closets, and everything else people need. Some office-buildings were much higher than the maximum of five floors village assemblies imposed for health reasons. In that case, we deconstructed them completely and built new, smaller houses in the outskirts rather than let them stand as ugly landmarks that they were.

“Apart from office-buildings, the second major source of living space were properties taken over from owners who had more than one property, and by the rules the neighbourhood and village assemblies world-wide made, had to give up all of them except the one they were living in. The neighbourhood assemblies did not really expropriate anyone in a draconian way. If you had six houses or apartments but had five grown-up children with the right-size family, you could keep one house or apartment yourself, of course, and distribute the other five among your children. If you had one huge house, the neighbourhood and or village assemblies would suggest to you to invite family and friends to stay there with you, and if you could not fill it up that way, ask you kindly whether you wouldn’t be willing to accept homeless and recent migrants to move into the apartments still empty.

“The revolutionary construction trusts, enterprises, and brigades would of course charge themselves with the task of dividing up your house into smaller apartments and installing kitchens and bathrooms as we said. Just a brief detour, before the revolution, construction trusts could be huge with thousands of workers, but in the revolution, the self-managing workers first split them up into enterprises of no more than 500, later 50 workers, and nowadays, construction workers tend to be organised in single brigades, no more than seven workers, even if several brigades with different specialties, carpenters, bricklayers, roofers, installers, decorators, and so on may work on the same house.

“And the third method was new construction of small one-family and town houses, if possible at all, far away from the centre of the big agglos, especially the big metropolises like Paris, London, Berlin, Moscow, New York, Beijing, and so on,” explained Danton.

“Ensuring ample public transport availability and self-managed logistics organisations for the transport of goods,” interjected comrade Annie.

“Of course. I propose that some of our young experts now discuss each of these methods one by one, maybe comrade Tim the deconstruction-reconstruction, comrade Cédric the new construction, and comrade Colin the role of dispersion of the agglos, march of the trees, and harp communities in them.”

“And of Manouche camps,” added Roman. “After the revolution, all of us who wanted, but we all wanted, got a caravan or other suitable vehicle, electrical of course, to move around in. The revolution did away with prejudices against Manouches, such as that we beg and steal and are too lazy to do work. I mean… tell me about it, you in the garden colony who live right next to us.”

“You are up long before us every morning to clean your caravans,” answered Raoúl, one of the camp’s immediate neighbours. “You are neither lazy nor dirty.”

“We no longer beg and steal because there is no more money. In fact, we only did it to take money from those who were too rich or had bad character,” noted Roman’s son Django.

“I am Orel, the Eagle,” said his son. “I am the best in my class, and Céline’s daughter Isabel is the brightest young revolutionary.”

“He is,” agreed comrade Sophie. “And in my creative writing workshop he is working on a university entry project on the Manouches, their history and suffering that will surprise all of you.”

“And comrade Isabel is a brilliant two-year old,” added comrade Misha. “She helps our son Jean-Michel who is five work on his labour-time and use-value gauges. The gift she has to pick goods that are really useful as well as carefully and beautifully crafted…! It’s amazing!”

“Here is your keys!”

Here are your keys, by Zamir and Odile

“Before we get side-tracked into this, I grant you, super-interesting topic, but we shall get back to it, let us tell each other first how we managed to house all the homeless. In the first weeks and months after the revolution, I and the other homeless activists ran around in the whole big agglo of Paris and suburbs looking up homeless,” comrade Jean continued, “Starting with those who were still suffering in the streets and then moving on to those lodged in the wildly inadequate refugee, migrant, and homeless abodes. Comrades Omsinbaba and Fofana already told you about those in Marseille and Paris.”

“And I remember those in Berlin,” said Carla. “They were terribly oppressive. We were always deemed either too loud, too dirty, too dishonest, or too unreliable. And there was no way to get out of them and back into regular apartments.”

“Yes, they were a disgrace, but let’s start with the poor people really living in the streets. The summer of 2021 had been extremely hot and they were still groggy from it. Imagine having to stay out there under the burning sun, competing with others for the shade, without any adequate place to wash, with not enough food, and with the busy Parisians and tourists rushing past them without any empathy.

“So, before we closed down the shelters, there was a brief period where we turned them into real transitional homes, yet not like those for the migrants and refugees the comrades described, but the revamped, revolutionary ones where people were allowed to stay all day, not only at night, lock up their valuables, partake of water, coffee, and food, all free of course, wash their clothes, get mats, sleeping bags, backpacks, clothes, and other basics in replacement for things they had lost or that had become inadequate, and sleep in a bed of course.

“We also tried to talk to all of the homeless, several thousands of them, ask them for their story, what they wanted to do with their lives now that money no longer mattered, in fact was being abolished, and they were free, and what kind of life-style they would prefer, family, room-mating arrangements with friends or staying by themselves.

“And then, a few months later, once the first government and business offices had been converted, they were put up in there as fast as possible. I remember assisting at many situations, where the friendly care-takers of the houses, or sometimes we homeless advocates did it ourselves, gave them the keys and let them open the door to the first place of their own they had held in years, sometimes decades.

“Sometimes, they just looked confused and did not even really know how to handle a key any more. In other cases, they stormed in and danced around in almost ecstasy. Yet others cried and immediately wanted to leave with us and said: ‘This place is depressing. I won’t be able to stand it here.’ Remember, these were mostly old office buildings or apartment buildings from which families had relocated to greener pastures in the countryside.

“Don’t worry,” we said. “Workers will come and install you a balcony.”

“Some of them, who had asked for shared arrangements, felt awkward with their long-lost partners and kids or were diffident towards their fellows in a room-mating arrangements. We realised that we would have to come back again and again to make sure everybody was alright.

“And spontaneous militia and we social workers kept patrolling the streets of course to see whether anybody had run out of their new place in despair,” Marie remembered. “Then we had to convince them to go back there, no matter how drunk they were, and sit with them for hours sometimes until they got out of their depression.”

Deconstructing-reconstructing unneeded, ugly, or outright toxic buildings

Methods of revolutionary deconstruction, by Maher and Karla

“We said that some of the homeless moved into apartment buildings closer to the centre, while families moved out to the countryside,” Tim began. “Of course, if these apartment buildings were dilapidated and toxic, we did not force anybody in there, or only after the buildings in question had been deconstructed to five floors only, their foundations, walls, ceilings, and roofs strengthened, and their interiors thoroughly renovated. In any event, by the time the homeless, migrants, and refugees had their own place, they were on the same level as other citizens, they owned the place they had gotten and could swap it for something more appropriate just like everybody else.”

“I remember a Syrian refugee lady, a mother and grandmother, asking us, ‘How come you give us these to own?’” interjected Rim, Hisham’s partner. Both of them were members of the Nanterre economists’ and statisticians’ brigade, parents of cheeky, but brilliant young comrade Bashir. “’I thought you Communists were against private property, or at least the French ones. Those in Syria are different, because there are many peasant farms and small villages, people like to own their workplace, and also because we have so many ruins, at least as many as in Lebanon and Gaza. Our Communists know that people don’t feel like joking about their houses.’

“’No,’ we said. ‘We French Communists just like the Syrian Communists are against private property, especially ownership of means of production, or of more than one house, or large villas, but not against family ownership of small houses, small farms, and small workshops, and for collective ownership of small enterprises, and cooperatives, for that matter, large enterprises being abolished altogether. And you should never be stuck to your house, the way Engels describes it, the small peasant and the urban worker not being able to wander and being driven deeper and deeper into misery.’”

“That is why you should always be allowed to swap it, no matter how long you have been there, or how far away it is from the place you want to move to,” said Hisham who was moderating. “Comrade Abram will talk about that later, but let’s first allow comrades Tim, Cédric, and Colin, maybe with some inputs from the senior experts, to continue talking about what’s involved in deconstruction-reconstruction, new construction based on recycling, dispersion, the march of the trees, and harp communities.”

“Before they do,” asked Peter Gar, or Pierre le Gars as he was known in France. “Let me ask you, comrades Jean, Marie, and other homeless activists and street workers, do you believe that you have truly gotten rid of homelessness in the revolution and are doing well by the ex-homeless?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” said Jean. “Because the homeless, just like the Manouches are much more naturally inclined to Communism than let us say, some of the petit-bourgeois bureaucrats whom we had to get to relinquish their offices and retrain. Not only because they have experienced the heat in summer and the cold in winter and how important it is to have a roof over their head, but also because they feel the social cold much more than the latter. ‘My home is my castle!’ the homeless used to joke much more often than the petit bourgeois. The petit bourgeois complained about the loss of one room, while the homeless were truly grateful to be picked up from the street and to have people talking to them.”

“Because they felt recognised as human beings again,” interjected Raphaël. “Under capitalism, this happened rarely if ever.”

“The only problem was that we had to do a lot of lodging and relocating at the same time that we were preparing our agglos for a better future,” Léon said. “All three of our methods of choice, deconstructing buildings piece-by-piece, demolishing or as a last resort imploding them in as environment-friendly a way as possible, or using harmless plants, bacteria and chemicals for their deconstruction, in the short run meant fewer apartments and rooms, adding more families and individuals to the already sky-high numbers of migrants, refugees from all the wars and environmental catastrophes, as well as the homeless capitalism had produced.

“However, a major factor in our favour was that one-family or town houses are much easier to build, even when using ecological materials, than big apartment buildings. And a second factor was that we have gotten better at piece-by-piece deconstruction-reconstruction and environmentally neutral decomposition of residues by plants, bacteria, and chemicals, meaning we’ll have ever less need for air-, water- and soil-polluting implosions and demolitions.

“However, back then, reconstructing the houses with all these new methods took somewhat longer at times and that gave the fascos an inroad to claim the revolution was too slow with deconstruction and with rehousing people. In order to deal us, or rather the village assemblies this blow, they had to pretend to be on the side of the homeless and migrants. Which they did, opportunists that they were.

“Actually, they even embroiled themselves in contradictions by forming an anti-demolition league on the one hand and asking for greater speed with deconstruction- reconstruction on the other,” concluded Léon.

New construction in the Revolution

Dinosaurs helping in deconstruction-reconstruction, by Cédric and Charolaine

“As for new construction,” explained Cédric. “We said it was easier because the houses are not as big, but also because we use wood, stones, some old-fashioned bricks, and ever less concrete and steel. Moreover, we have asked dinosaurs to help us carry and place the beams for these smaller houses and knock out the concrete and other materials we want to replace. Unless they are tired, hungry, or too hot, they are usually very happy to help, and they work very fast.

Dinosaurs destroying the concrete, by Colin and Cécile

“For larger buildings, there is a method called the dinosaur dance where dinosaurs and other large animals move their feet in the rhythm of the building’s own oscillations and can thus bring about a peaceful crumbling. We have experimented with it in Chechnia and are now trying it in La Défence as well.

“Nowadays new construction is closely related to the subject of the next chapter, dispersion, march of the trees, and harp communities. So, my cousin, comrade Colin and I have distributed the task among us. I will talk about all matters relating to construction and Colin about those relating to the intranet.

“There are two forms of new construction in the revolution. One is new construction ex nihilo, if for instance, in a small village, the children of the already established families marry and build new cabins for themselves and their families. In this case, they typically do that with traditional construction materials, stones in the South and West of the French lands and in Ireland, and bricks in the North of the French lands.

“The other case is the dispersion of larger agglos of villages to turn them into smaller village assemblies, 200 participants at most, allowing for more discussion not only between humans, but also involving animals, plants, and robots, in other words, the other members of the harp community. In that case, we either disassemble a house that already existed and build it up at a certain distance to its original location so as to allow more spread between houses and villages, or we have the bits and pieces from a house in a larger agglo or metropolis disassembled by the piece-by-piece method and then use them to build a different, usually much smaller house or town house in a village in the countryside. That will disperse the houses in the centre of the agglo and enliven the village assemblies there as well as out in the countryside.

Dispersion, march of the trees, and harp communities

Dispersion, march of the trees, and harp communities, by Colin and Cécile

Colin took a deep breath. “Dispersion, march of the trees, and harp communities. That sounds like a mouthful now, but with the good preparation the comrades have provided, it is not going to be too difficult. They have already explained what dispersion is. The good thing about dispersion is that people typically move out of the village or the agglo together with their houses or a good part of the material for their houses, so there is no risk of homelessness.

“We, and in this context we means the village assemblies of the world who have in autonomous, fully democratic, even anarchical sessions agreed to that project, pursue short-term as well as long-term goals with this project. The first short-term goal is to improve the ecological balance between agglo and country-side. Aimeran used to be a small village centred around the old village market place. Under late capitalism, it sprawled into all directions with new apartment buildings and ugly shopping centres and ended up with several thousand residents. Since we have dispersed it a couple of months ago, air quality has already improved, water quality is on the way up, and we are in the process of installing wells near most of the houses, which will make us independent of the water mains except in emergencies. Houses will gradually turn into small farms, which will ensure subsistence even in the thick forest which will hopefully grow around us. Soil quality will take somewhat longer to improve than air and water quality, but that is one of the main goals of the march of the trees. Back to that in a moment!

“The second and probably the most important goal of dispersion and of having no village assembly larger than 200 participants is to improve the quality of our discussions, also involving animals and plants. Think about how we lived in the distant past when all of Europe was covered with mixed forest and how we want to live again in the future. Back in the past, villages typically had no more than 10-12 houses, and even if you assume three-generation families with seven or eight children, the number of dwellers in each house would not have exceeded 12-14 occupants . If there got to be too many, the family council would most likely decide on the construction of a new house for, let us say, the family of the eldest son, and ask for the village community’s help with it. Remember comrade Anisah’s presentation! That means typically no more than 100-120 residents in a village, meaning only somewhat more than half of the 200 we have now decided to be the maximum.

“And as a matter of fact, the march of the tree will force us to have smaller village communities. The trees will reconquer the space vacated by the houses, even in the centre of the big agglos. How will they do that?

“You know how you summon red beams to stun an opponent for half an hour until a spontaneous militia brigade can get its quorum from the village assembly and arrive to apprehend the aggressor or aggressors? Or how you summon yellow beams to travel from Illyria to the centre of Paris, let’s say, if you are in a hurry to get to the university? You’d just hop on the beam like you’d hop on a train, disaggregating into molecular state as you go to save energy until you reach complete molecular state and then reassemble to land at your final destination, fully reassembled, within seconds, minutes at most, instead of hours on public transport? Or how you can summon bronze beams to disable conventional fire and blue beams to disable chemical weapons, all weapons except red stun beams and emergency ones such as sticks being forbidden in the revolution.

“Animals, who need it, especially larger mammals, can also travel on yellow beams, and trees can use so-called green beams to slowly extricate their roots from the ground and use the largest of them as legs to walk like humans or mammals would. At the end of the day, they can then carefully reinsert their roots again and even continue to grow and spread once they reach their final destination. Via self-management, so to say, we can save trees the terrible pain of being replanted and yet achieve significant relocation of trees and larger underbrush from thick forest to savannah, steppe, grassland, or even near desert and foster the regreening process in these habitats. The condition being of course that we have actively prepared the ground with water, organic fertilisers, and ploughing, something our comrades dinosaurs and larger cattle have undertaken for us in location as diverse as the French lands, Northern Africa, and Siberia. If the conditions are good, it is even possible for trees to walk in a broad front, hence the use of the term march, not to imply anything military. It is more like a peace march to restore mixed forest, thick savannah, or even rain forest and taiga in much shorter time spans than we have held to be possible up to now.

“We have computed that if the trees really forced their pace, they could march 4-6 metres an hour, 100-150 metres a day, 3-4 km a month, and a maximum of 50 km a year. They will have to cross distances of over 2000 km to overgrow all of the French lands with mixed forest again, for the Congo rain forest to reach the Sahara and even the Mediterranean coast, and to restore the North Siberian taiga destroyed by wood cutting, mining, and industrialisation. That would mean a minimum of 40 years to overcome these huge distances of 2000 km and more each. And they can’t be expected to march at maximum speed all the time. Still, that might mean that 40-100 years from now, the French lands could be covered by mixed forest again. Some of us and definitely our children are going to live in a completely different world. We shall live in small villages as we said, surrounded by meadows with cows grazing and small fields just to fulfil the needs of the villagers with maybe a small excess to be brought to the regional markets and to be sown again for next year’s crop.”

“Maybe in tree houses?” suggested Josetta.

“Definitely, at least in areas where trees are strong enough to handle them such as the replenished Amazone. At this stage, the Amazone has also been harmed by excessive industrialisation and monocropping.

“There will have to be an understanding with the animals of the forest to spare our crops, our animals, and us, which hopefully will not be too difficult for them, if the forests are thick and yield a lot of feed for them as well.

“Anyway, even today and during the whole time of the march of the trees, we shall already live in harp communities. That means houses, school, work, our whole lives shall be constructed around the community with animals, not only tame, but also wild ones, including those of the forest and, to be reincluded among the animals, our friends the time-travelled dinosaurs, as well as the community with wild and also cultivated plants, and harpoid robots, meaning robots in the shapes of humans, animals, other robots, plants, and dinosaurs. We shall conduct our meetings in nature-speak and nature language, have spontaneous as well as mixed moderating teams constituted to equal parts by humans, animals, and plants and facilitated by robots, study, and work in mixed brigades in varying proportions, but always including at least one human, one animal, one robot, and one plant.

The Housing gauge

Housing swap app and housing gauge, by Bashir and Zelim-Philippe

“The housing gauge measures for every village as well as whole regions whether every harpist, human, animal, robot, and plant are satisfied with their place. We will have a challenge a thousand times bigger than housing a few thousand homeless once we try to construct truly adequate stables for all our animals, asking for their opinion, not just cramming them into a barn somehow.

“And beyond that we shall have to wander the forest to observe wild animals and plants, first and foremost the trees, and see whether they are really satisfied with the way the forest has regrown. It will be a huge task. I don’t yet know whether it can be done, that’s why I will be an intranet expert. If the harpists can communicate, things might get easier.”

“Mathematical planning will help,” Philippe comforted young comrade Colin. “We shall measure individual instances of space and comforts animals and plants need and then extrapolate to whole forests.

“Anyway, we finished analysing our survey on homelessness and housing. Would you like us to tell you about it, comrade Colin, or do you already want to say a few words about your favourite topic, the bio-thicket as protection for the revolutionary intranet?”

“No, no, I can wait with that, as long as you can see the connection between human homelessness in the past and our obligation to recreate an ecology with a place for every harpist.”

“Yes, the survey will touch on that as well. It is mainly for humans, but it has a harp component as well, where we asked animals, including time-travelled dinosaurs, and plants about the space they need and whether they are optimistic that they will be able to live together peacefully with us.” And when everybody looked excited, Philippe immediately launched into the gist of the survey. “We asked people how they know about homelessness: from own experience before and or after the revolution, a negligeable percentage below 1%, media coverage before the revolution, around 20%, media coverage after the revolution 40%, from school 39%.”

“The next question is, are people happy with their present housing situation. Around 85%, depending on the region, say yes, around 15% want to swap, more in the agglos, especially Paris, about 20%, less than 5% typically in the countryside.”

“So many?” asked comrade Patrick, one of the editors of l’Huma, taking notes. “Why aren’t they satisfied with their place?”

“No need to panic on that score, for the usual reasons: study, work, family, friendships and partnerships, longing for new experience. Of the 15%, about two-thirds, meaning 10% of the overall sample , say they want to swap because their life circumstances are changing, they are moving out from their parents to train or study, they are getting married or partnered up, they are changing their place of work, and so on. And of the remaining 5%, only about a third, 1 or 2% are really unhappy with their house or apartment or its equipment, while two-thirds, 3-4% of the overall number of respondents say that they just want to live at a different place to get a new experience, not necessarily related to work, study, or love life. A negligeable percentage said they felt oppressed by their neighbourhood assembly and felt they had to move for that reason.

“Did they place a hierarchy check?” asked Jean, worried.

“Let’s hope so!” said Pascal, grinning.

“Or were there some crypto-fascos among them?”

“Before we get to that, I can see Jérôme jumping up and down, but not with joy. What is it? Have the fascos hacked something again?”

“Not yet, but they may soon. When you have finished with this segment, I may play you something we have intercepted.”

“D’accord, the next question we asked them was whether they had any experience with deconstruction-reconstruction. Did they have to vacate their house at any point for environmental reasons – 20% said yes, even more in Paris and banlieue, did its number of floors have to be reduced, 10% and up to 40% and more in Paris and banlieue said yes, was it dispersed – 1% mentioned dispersion as a reason. People don’t have a lot of experience with dispersion yet, since it is a new effort villages are undertaking as part of the march of the trees. They may have vacated their old house to build their new house – 10%, or they may have undertaken major repairs on the one they owned – 20%.

“The next two questions, whether they approved of the march of the trees and of the harp communities, and what special benefits and problems they foresaw as a result, we addressed to equal numbers of humans, animals, and plants. Robby 5, our dedicated survey robot, analysed the results. We had a thousand human, a thousand animal, and a thousand plant respondents, of which 500 were trees. 77% of these trees approved of the march of the trees if it did not become too strenuous, only 23% were sure it would be too exhausting and rejected the idea off-hand. Well, we are not forcing anybody and will take care that trees that choose to stay do not get run over by other trees, cut down by fascos, or anything like that. The proportion of approval for the march of the trees was obviously even higher among humans, animals, and other plants, 85% on average. The reasons for rejecting the idea were interesting. While 75% of the other, non-tree plants welcomed the idea, 25% of respondents feared to suffer in the process and asked for guarantees. 95% of animals approved of the idea, and only 5% had any anxieties about it. On the contrary, they agreed with the 75% of grasses, flowers, bushes, moss and reeds who were positive about the march that the trees, once they had reached their new locations, would provide coverage against the elements, protection against intruders, including nasty humans, and propitious conditions for the young, in other words that the outcome of the march justified some discomforts other plants and animals might experience along their way. Finally, 85% of humans approved of the idea, for two reasons mainly, return to ecological harmony, and better chances for democracy in the harp community because of the greater voice for animals and plants. 15% said no, and in this case the answers diverged widely. On the one hand, about 86% of the nay-sayers, 13% of the overall sample, worried about the health of the trees, including the risk of them being poisoned with synthetic fertilisers, pests and pesticides, counter-productive neuro-transmitters, locked up by fascos looking for extra green around their secluded villas, or even cloned by fascos wanting to create trees that would achieve even greater speeds than those trees can reach with their own willpower. On the other hand, 14% of the naysayers, one or two percent at most of the overall sample admitted to fascist opinions and wrote anonymous comments such as: “If they get through with that, there won’t be any private cars again ever, not even electrical ones.” “They want us to live in the stone ages again.” “In fact, they want us to go vegan and lie with the beasts.” “All because of their silly idea of Communist anarchy and anarchical democracy.” There is no need to panic, those are the usual one or two percent of capitalist and fascist sympathisers we observe in almost any survey on any topic. Some of them may even be comrades who lay it on a bit to make us aware where the revolution may hit resistance. Yet overall, these are very positive, encouraging results, aren’t they?”

“They certainly are,” said Jérôme, when the hoorays of the humans, the bleating, roaring, and chirping of the animals, and the rustling and blossoming of the plants had convinced everybody that the harpists were all on the same note, “but now listen to what I am about to play you now.”

Planning session at the Hacking Octogon

The Hacking Octogon giving each other the high five, by Jean-Luc and Marius

“The revs are deep into discussing their housing question now. It is difficult to even intercept them, such a thick bio-thicket have they put up around themselves. And at this stage, we are unable to hack them. Yet we have our super-nanobots coming up that won’t need to be spread, infused, or injected anymore. They’ll travel by air like nano-drones and will be able to enter devices, humans, and even animals, and plants through any openings and cracks imaginable. They will be able to copy and hack brain-apps, meaning the brain processes the revolutionaries are already able to sync with those of robots and other intranet devices, animal brains, and plant cell nuclei. They will be able to copy and delete bio-clouds, meaning the new intranet clouds for data storage the revolutionaries are building up in humans, animals, robots, plants, as well as other intranet-capable things.”

Then to their horror, the Illyrians were treated to listen to a good part of their recent meetings on the housing questions being replayed by the fascos. Yet the comments that followed were even worse.

“Hey, they pride themselves on having overcome homelessness, don’t they? Then let’s create some,” said one voice.

“And increase drug traffic at the same time,” said another.

“They are so proud of their housing gauge and housing swap apps, let’s hack and destroy them!” said a third.

“That will make it harder to organise their dispersion project as well,” said a fourth.

“And the march of the trees,” said a fifth. “Let’s disable their Aurora maps, and the trees will start to go in circles.”

“Can’t we hack their medical, construction, and agricultural nanobots as well?” asked a sixth.

“They no longer use so many construction nanobots since they have the dinos as helpers. They do things even faster and create minimal refuse as well,” replied the third. “And not so many agricultural ones either, since with their new pact with the animals, they are even deeper into natural-biological-organic, that whole nonsense. But yeah, medical bots, they do use them to transport their natural medicines, we could try to f.u.c.k. those up with our bio-nanobots and then invite patients to our policlinics to get fixed.”

“…Cured from the complications we have caused, hahaha,” laughed the fifth. “On the basis of our medicine and pharmacology, I can see that for flus, respiratory and circulatory, neurological diseases, and cancer. And diabetes as well, as a matter of fact, although there, cases have declined. People eat less sugar and lead healthier lives up in the trees, I must hand the revs that.”

“Where then is the rendez-vous?” A seventh one seemed to be tuning in from further away.

“In Paris, let’s strike right at the centre of the beast!” howled the eighth.

There was a confused medley of voices. “What do you think, pals?” “Are we up to it?” And the bio-audio ended with the sound of the eight monsters giving each other the high five.

From everybody according to their abilities, to everybody according to their needs!

The new use-value gauge, by Zamir and Jean-Michel

“In conclusion, before we get all despondent in light of the latest threats by the Hacking Octogon, let us explain again what the Communist classics meant by the saying: from everybody according to their abilities, to everybody according to their needs!” said senior comrade Patrick, while young comrade Sarah got fidgety in her place, since her turn to address this topic would come soon.

“By abilities, they did not mean money, but real abilities, physical, mental, artistic, magical…,” Bashir was first to answer.

“They have to be put into a position to give their best, and that includes good food, good housing, a good family and good comrades and friends,” Sarah followed next.

“And from earliest childhood onward, our Communist-anarchist education promotes these abilities as well as the children’s participation in all decisions affecting them, and that means all decisions taken in the family, at the neighbourhood assembly, at school, and at the village assembly,” added Sevim.

“Well put. And we said already that both the socially necessary as well as the creative and social labour is done together with others, not alone with an AI monitor or nasty humans checking on performance, but in duos of buddies, or brigades of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7. There can’t be brigades of one, nor neighbourhood assemblies of one, obviously. Although individuals can of course switch brigades and neighbourhood assemblies until they find the one they like best and where they get appreciated. Not everybody can be good at everything, but neither is it likely that someone will be bad at everything.

“In late capitalism, we heard a lot about the lazy unemployed. We PCF and l’Humanité back then coined a phrase: we’d call the unemployed those deprived of a job (‘ceux privés d’emploi’). That put the responsibility for their enforced idleness squarely back into the capitalists’ camp.”

“In the Soviet Union, everybody had a job,” added Aleksei. He and his wife Evgenia had emigrated from Russia before the revolution of 2021, still under capitalism.

“Exactly! And because of that, it would have been easy to begin distribution according to needs. Because of pressure from the West, the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries did not go that way, instead they went for lukewarm proto-capitalist reforms.”

“Well, after the revolution of 2021, we went for distribution according to needs, starting with distribution and allocation by voucher, already supplemented by free distribution and allocation wherever possible,” Jean continued. “And simple sharing in the household, in the neighbourhood, at the workplace or social organisation, at the village market and share points and world-wide between villages with the help of revolutionary barter correspondents. And we used free distribution, sharing, and housing swaps to allocate housing as well.”

“We realised,” comrade Hélène pushed further, “comrade Jean wrote a classic article on it picking up the brilliant argument by Marx that if we wanted true Communism, we could not hold on to money, since in all its three roles, means of exchange, gauge of value, and store of wealth it served to perpetuate capitalism. Of course, in the revolution, people were allowed to enter their monetary savings into revolutionary barter deals, just like vouchers.

”Yet just like vouchers, these savings would lose their value after a certain period. And after that, it would be just free, simple sharing, and revolutionary barter, the three basic leaves of the trefoil. People could be sure to get what they needed and what their workshop or social organisation needed, and in return, they gave their products and services to those who needed them for free. That is called the economic circuit, or material balance planning if you will. Of course, if a workshop that had a good you desired was a little bit further away, your local share point, neighbourhood assembly, workplace, or trade union slash red cell would help you order it for free. There were exceptions like that, where the clout of assemblies and the skills of revolutionary barter correspondents entered the picture. Yet the basic rule held, no money was used any longer anywhere in the economy, and generally, people respected each other enough to get them what they wanted without need for intercedence by others. We at PTT-Caisse d’Epargne made sure of that. To begin with, the stamps people needed were free, of course, and the amount of savings we counted out in goods, especially goods that were longer lasting and rated at least average on the use value scale.

“To perfect our organisation, young comrade Jean-Michel and others are still working on the optimal labour-time and use value gauges,” said Misha and pointed laughingly at his five-year-old son who sat with his favourite toy, a stop watch next to comrade Zamir as he dismantled an old smart phone, then looked admiringly as Zamir fitted the basic parts screen, circuit board, battery, induction coil, etc. into a new natural fibre plush cover.

“Oh, it is a beartop,” Jean-Michel crowed admiringly.

“Yes, and the bear no longer gets as hot, because the phone works on the intranet,” said Zamir. “Here, try it!”

“Yes,” said Jean-Michel. “I can hear fascos blabbering. Now we can catch them !” And he got up and ran round with the beartop in sign of wild pursuit.

Life in Communism 2.1.

The Housing Question

vol. 2 At Home in the Revolution

© Carla O’Gallchobhair, 2026. To Mamon, Cathal, Tanya, Evgeni, Maksim, Zhenya, Misha, Yvonne, Odile, Zamir, Jean-Michel, Vicky, and Nora, and all other true revolutionaries of the 21^st century

The Housing Question vol. 2 At Home in the Revolution

Preface to Volume 2. Homeless in the Revolution

Raphaël, by Tizian

“Raphaël, there is a spontaneous militia brigade in the 16- ième which needs our advice. They have picked up a homeless. He does not have village ID, and he says he can’t remember his address.”

“That’s strange,” said Raphaël before Jean and he summoned the yellow transport beam, then disassembled into molecular state, got on the beam, to then reassemble just before their final destination and reach it within seconds, a minute or two at most even if somewhat further away in the Paris region, more than two minutes only if it was more than 50 kilometres away. “When you, comrades Danton, Mina, and Hélène picked me up in Year 8, I thought I would be the last case of homelessness in the revolution ever.”

When they got off their beam they could already see the seven militiamen standing distressed around a man around 50 years old, but with a face lined from hunger and dirt, in dilapidated clothing and sobbing hysterically. “I don’t know where I live, how often do I have to tell you?” he asked obstinately. Yet when he saw Raphaël and Jean approaching, his face brightened. “These two comrades will understand me, but I can tell, you wouldn’t like it either.”

“Salut,” said Raphaël, gave him the high 5 and squatted down next to him. Jean settled down on his other side. “My name is Raphaël. My comrade’s here is Jean. What’s your name?” “Tizian,” the man said, biting down a sardonic grin, but before Raphaël could call it a bad joke, he had continued already. “I am a painter like you. And he got some cray out of his backpack and drew an impromptu portrait of Raphaël on the pavement before them. “Do you like it? That was how I earned my money before the revolution.”

“That’s very good,” said Jean. “How come you are on the street? We can’t have missed you when we picked up all the homeless after the revolution and gave them new rooms. We looked everywhere!”

“Well, it is because I am a street painter, don’t you get it?” Tizian continued joking, but his furtive glances around showed that he was fearing something. What could it be? Jean signalled the militiamen to form a closer circle around them.

“They are after you,” said Raphaël, knowingly. “Aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Tizian admitted, and got some crypto-cash and coins out of his pocket. Even Jean and Raphaël marvelled at them, for most of the young spontaneous militiamen, it was the first time they saw this Satanic capitalist junk in their whole lives. “But I did not earn enough. You see, I have to sell all of these, and he got about a dozen small packages of something wrapped in white paper and held together with string out of his backpack to show them. Each is worth a hundred crypto-Franc or -Euro, they trade 1 to 1 these days. And I have only sold two so far. I have to sell all of them before they allow me to sleep there.”

Raphaël was baffled. “That was the way they did it with me. Don’t tell me you are being held in Montmartre?”

“Close to there, near the Porte de Clichy.”

“Please take us there!” said Jean. “By tomorrow, we’ll have an apartment for you, or at least a room with all amenities. Do you have family or friends?”

Tizian laughed bitterly. “If I did, you’d hardly see me here. And they took the last village ID I ever had, it was from Seine-et-Oise.”

“You can room with us, comrade Tizian,” said one of the militiamen, who also seemed to understand the kind of extortion racket Tizian was caught in. “It’s a student apartment, we have a room free at the moment, you might not like it, but better than to serve these gangsters. You can later swap it for something better. Wait, I bio-message my buddies, two of them, my girl-friend and my boy-friend, but you can be sure they’ll say yes.”

“Comrade Jean is right,” said another militiaman, who was serving as brigadier at the moment, they could tell from his red star badge. “If you can hold up at all, we would like you to lead us to your dealers. If you don’t come back, they might become suspicious and run away. Then they might continue their sordid business elsewhere.”

They did not go this distance by beam, because they were carrying some heavy gear, in particular two full-size humanoid robots for tricky missions, but boarded a militia transporter, electrical of course, but with good tyres, since most of Paris’ roads were field roads again. Just the big avenues were cobble-stoned or paved with other quaint stones for the enjoyment and convenience of pedestrians. Only public transport and free taxis licensed by the village or block assemblies, fire brigades, ambulances, other functional vehicles, and small delivery vans with special permission were still permitted, in the inner city and in the countryside as well.

“So, tell me about your rapists!” asked Raphaël. “I assume they raped you, at least they raped me back in Year 8.”

“Raped me, all eight of them, hit me, burnt me with cigarette stubs, waterboarded me,” wailed Tizian. “You young comrades probably don’t know what that is even. The secret services of the Western capitalist powers used to do it before the revolution. They tie you up, put a cloth over your face, and pour water on it. “

“I have read about it,” said a third of the young militiaman. “It makes you feel like you are drowning.”

“Or suffocating,” nodded Tizian. “I have to gasp for air even remembering it.” He took a pause. “Well, there are always five of them at the apartment, and three working the streets like we do, or maybe watching us. I hope they don’t already know we are coming.”

“You say there are eight of them?” asked Jean. “I wonder whether it could be the Hacking Eight or Octogon, the ones who tried to ruin comrade Carla’s work, do you know about that case?”

“Of course,” said the militiamen. “Yannick Dassault and consorts.”

Their surprise was great when they arrived at about 50 metres from the apartment of the dealers, and already saw comrades Jean-Wadi and Jean-Saïd standing there and waving, probably barely reassembled after their beam travel.

“We listened intraline and heard you say eight,” Jean-Wadi said. “And thought we’d better come. Too bad that Maher, Josip, Rosa and the others are still in Mali. We need to catch these hackers that almost ruined our minutes and if we can’t arrest them, at least disable their equipment…

“Funny that they should have chosen drug dealing as an auxiliary occupation,” mused Jean. “Maybe they are looking for new ways to sap our morale…”

The hackers party

The hacker’s party, by Jean-Wadi and Zafira

“Two of you? What’s this fellow doing here?” Barron asked suspiciously, as he opened the door. “You don’t want to work with us, grandpa, you are much too old for that!”

“Oh, but I am fit like a 50 year old,” said Raphaël. “And I have done it before.”

“I remember you from the records. Didn’t the revs lodge you somewhere?”

“Yes, but my wife hit me!” moaned Raphaël. Barron’s French pal Yannick laughed and opened the door wider.

“Well, come in then. We shall see what we can do.”

“Let’s first see what this lazy bone has brought in,” said Fritz, and Tizian again emptied his wallet.

“You sold two only? Where are the other twelve? Oh, I see. You’ve still got them. Still, you need to be punished,” scowled Knut, and handed Raphaël a wooden rod. “ Here you go, young blood. Try to beat the shit out of him. We have tried in vain.”

Raphaël raised the rod as if to hit, then hesitated for a moment as if to gather extra strength. The Hacking Eight gathered around him as if interested in the performance. Suddenly, the door broke open and ten spontaneous militiamen broke in, the brigade that had found Tizian as well as well as Jean, Jean-Wadi, and Jean-Saïd who had received a quorum from the Illyrians to form the core of a second brigade.

Immediately, all eight hackers spun around and fired brown beams, some of them still had a phone to reinforce the potentially lethal charge, the stronger ones, Barron, Fritz, and Thorben only used their willpower. In response, the revolutionaries, including Raphaël and Tizian, immediately put up red shields and threw red beams. In contrast to the brown beams, the red beams are just stun beams, they only leave their targets unconscious for twenty minutes to half an hour, until spontaneous militia have taken their guns if any, handcuffed them and generally made them safe enough to be questioned and brought into custody. Fortunately, the red shields, reinforced if necessary by bronze shields that work against fire guns, were strong enough to block other red beams and even brown beams. The opponents were forced to put up brown shields, and following Yannick’s example summoned orange beams to make a quick escape. None of the revolutionaries wanted to risk a life-and-death battle with the fascos, and cause harm to their captives, Raphaël and Tizian. The class enemy’s beams were more harmful, and some of them might still have fire arms.

“We let them escape,” Jean explained to the Illyrians in the evening of that day, since a new day had already started, when the Illyrians Garden Colonists Manouches, the neighbourhood assembly Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove and their friends abroad got together live and intraline to discuss the recent developments in the matter of homelessness in the revolution and the latest crime of the Hacking Octogon, their threat of violence and the abduction of Raphaël and Tizian.

“They look like boys more than strategists, don’t they?” asked Jean.

“Definitely. They may be good at hacking, Sado-masochism, and throwing brown beams, but they are not barons, even being sons or nephews of important crypto-oligarchs or would-be returning politicians like Rudolphe Dassault, Mick McLeary, Rick Handsome, Don Trumpel, Thorben Kriegsbeil, Knut Reiche, Iwan Pistazius, and Fritz Merz, Jr. a.k.a. April. They are just mercs,” nodded young comrade Jean-François, himself the son of two former, now repentant fasco terrorists.

“Let’s ask the French Critics and the Russian Sons or ‘Si Papas’ about them!” suggested Jean. “They may be able to tell us more.”

“They are functioning like mercs,” agreed David, speaking for the French groups, the Critics. “You may have heard of the epic struggle between the Uberytes and the Pappbergerytes. The Pappbergerytes want to provoke civil war, that way hopefully restore the nations again, and then have war between these again until the whole world is reconquered for capitalism. The Uberytes want to bring back crypto, mainly by way of their pals scheme, where p stand private policlinics, a for amusement clubs, read brothels, l for logistics stations, and s for sports studios. In all four joints, people interested have to pay new crypto. They call it new because immediately after the revolution, vouchers, free, simple sharing, help from the neighbourhood assembly, and revolutionary barter replaced money. In Year 18-19, all village assemblies world-wide voted to finally forbid all money and money substitutes, and a series of regional and continental referendums followed up on this to confirm the will of the people. There was a pause when the fascos printed hardly any crypto-currency, cash, coins, and cards at all – they are all printed with 3 D printers these days, no longer coined or pressed. Yet then, at the latest in the second half of this year, Year 20 of the Revolution, crypto production has resumed in all four pals-type establishments, but especially in the logistics stations. While officially engaged in transporting goods and people, all of them are set up with small workshops, and one of their staples is the crypto you have seen with Tizian.

“Well, to make a long story short, to get some crypto, the Hacking Pentagon, and now the Hacking Octogon have sort of joined the Uberytes. I say sort of, because they are still much more violent than the average Uberyte manager. You could tell from the way they treated poor Tizian. Yet then on the other hand even the Uberytes can be considered belligerent. For instance, their sports clubs hold and sell weapons, and some of the logistics stations may even assemble them.”

“You have to distinguish between Uberytes and Ubermenschen though. The Uberytes are the bosses, the Uberytes just pick up and deliver, sometimes not even by transporter, but on bikes, just like during the hay days of imperialism before the revolution. And since they are afraid to go to the revolutionary markets, share points, and workshops after they have done this, they would end up starving unless they managed to make the pals economy ever bigger.”

“What kinds of weapons do they produce?”

“Small firearms, up to the size of a sniper rife or Kalashnikov, but also larger ones like small drones, and even tanks. Remember, for the coup in Niger, they still had tanks. More modern weapons as well. They need preparations of gallium and nitrate for their brown beams, sulphur for their orange beams, white phosphorous for drone charges, and they want to make toxic Coflu, LEP-AL, and MA vaccine boosters, nanobots carrying synthetic fertilisers and neuro-transmitters to block our march of the trees, and so on. There is no end to their list once they set up.”

“I wonder why these ‘German Sons’ are so lost,” said Pavel, speaking for the Russian Sons. “Yannick Dassault, ladno, he is an illegitimate child of Rudolphe. Barron Trumpel probably considers it below his dignity as the son of a former top agent and would-be president to subordinate himself to the Uberytes, who are dominant in North America at the moment. Hence he feels good with the Hacking Five. Ryan McLeary and Pat Handsome don’t like the Pappbergerytes, yet have been sent out by their dads, former heads of Dirtair and Slut Train, to hold an iron in the fire at the logistics stations. Yet what about the four Germans? All four of them, Thorben, Knut, Iwan, and Fritz April, or Frederick the Second, like the famous Prussian king, are from politician, banker, and civil servant families rather than industrial capitalists or builders, like the four others. They may be good at computers, robots and the intranet, but as users or applied engineers at best, not as producers. You Illyrians are way better engineers and scientists than they are. Their parents, the old Klingbeil, Reiche, Pistazius, and Merz, also did not equip them with a lot of crypto, partly maybe so as not to compromise them, so that they could become good revolutionaries if they chose to, partly out of avarice, who knows. That differs from our past, as a matter of fact. Compared to theirs, our parents were generous, and we were swimming in crypto and other private monies. Nevertheless, fact is, the new crowd chose not to, they want to be counter-revolutionaries and live underground, maybe out of loyalty with their parents, maybe because of some fascist, Nazi romanticism. Anyway, they are poor as church mice, and they have to get crypto whichever way they can.

“Apparently, they got some gratitude money from Dassault, McLeary, and Handsome Senior for hacking our minutes,” Patrick noted. “But you are right, that is the last money they have seen.”

Drugs in the Pals scheme

Raphaël empties his bag, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

“So, David and Pavel, you are suggesting that they have become drug dealers to earn crypto just for their own upkeep?” asked Pierre, the maverick. “That is despicable. They seemed like young blood, as they called Raphaël, but that makes them look pathetic.”

“You know what is even more despicable,” Jérôme, who was monitoring the intranet for Illyria’s security, interrupted him. “They are having a discussion at this moment whether to get us for ransom. I am sure you won’t mind listening in intraline.”

“Yeah, why not,” Barron was just saying. “They could ask the French Rothschilds, or rather the Russian Rothschilds resident in France, Osip, Fyodor, and Cathérine-Élisabeth to give it to them. To these revs, money is nothing, they won’t bother giving it back, and that will finally stop these Rothschilds singing their praises. They were at an intraline dinner with dad a few weeks ago, and they joked they wanted to be the capitalists that would sell the Illyrians the rope to hang them on. They said the world was so much more of a moral place since the revolution. Well, let them do it then, let them pay the ransom!”

“Naah,” said Knut. “Not a good idea! Let them slave for it, like we do. Let them sell drugs like Tizian.”

“Well, that would be a great irony if the Illyrians ended up generating the crypto that will topple their free allocation and distribution,” said Ryan McLeary. “But my dad doesn’t think they would do it.”

“Neither does mine,” agreed Pat. They were talking about the underground arms producers Mick McLeary and Ricky Handsome of course.

“Let’s just ask them to stop persecuting us for hacking their minutes, that way we’ll have a little bit more freedom of manoeuvre,” suggested Iwan. “I don’t really feel like going back to Mali, do you, guys?”

“We could stay here, earn some more crypto, and then set up a logistics station,” proposed Yannick. “That way we’d be good with both sides, Uber, Deliverando, Flink, Deshalles, and Volt on the one hand and Pappberger on the other.”

“We should keep the two bastards and let them sell drugs for us,” was Fritz’ suggestion.

“Well, d’accord, let’s have a vote,” said Thorben. “Who is in favour of asking the Illyrians for ransom?”

Barron and Fritz raised their hands.

“What about Iwan’s proposal, ask their village assembly to drop charges against us?”

Iwan, Yannick, Ryan, and Pat were in favour of that.

“And who is in favour of just holding on to the hostages?”

Knut and Thorben raised their hands, but Yannick shook his head. “Too risky. Sooner or later, they will be able to contact the Illyrians intraline and then they’ll make another attempt at liberating them. We have the stronger arms, but they have almost all animals and plants all over the French lands on their side. We might not be able to get away so easily.”

“Let’s do it right away!” Denis, Jérôme’s papa, had been one of the last security chiefs of the French Communist Party, PCF, before it dissolved after the revolution. Now he was getting fidgety in his seat. “There must be a way to find out where they are via delta waves,” the lowest and most secretive intranet wave length in the revolution, only 0.4 to 3 Hz, which allowed to send messages as if in deep sleep, then followed the Theta waves, 3-8 Hz, where you sent them as if meditating, alpha waves, 8-13 Hz, as if on bio-radio, 13-30 Hz, as if at school, and 30-100 Hz, as if computing or broadcasting hot news. “Wait,” said Jean. “We risk endangering the two hostages. But let’s contact them subliminally, see whether they answer.”

“Oh, yes,” said Raymond, who had until recently been a merc as well, but who was now rehabilitating and serving as witness for the abduction of comrades Noah and Michelle in Mali. “I can tell you where they are. And some of them seem to be ready to jump as well, Yannick and Iwan, it seems. I just overheard them bio-messaging. ‘I wonder why it’s taking them so herkin long to go through my computer? After all, it has got all the pals in the French lands.”

“Oh,” said Jean-Saïd. “That’s Yannick’s? We did not know that. We thought it was just a spare somebody left behind so as not to burden the orange beam. Let’s go get it then, and see what he is talking about.”

Yannick’s computer was actually more than a laptop, but a modern intranet plushtop already, functioning on bio-wifi with devices, humans, animals, plants, and other intranet-capable things and materials, and coated in light plush and fluff instead of heavy aluminium or plastic, even mostly natural fibres, like the revolutionary ones. However, Yannick’s plushtop had the shape and colour of a Dassault Rafale fighter jet.

“Can you get him to mention his password, Raymond?” asked Jean-Wadi, and Raymond focused on his intercepting and influencing again. “I appeared as a sort of voice from the off in his brain, joking: ‘Well, probably they did not get at your password, wizard that you are.”

“Oh, it’s just glucoseforenergy,” Yannick answered promptly. “It is still from high-school chemistry. I did not change it for a long time.”

“Here we go,” said Jean-Wadi. “I notice he uses the Aurora browser as well as the revolutionary apps. Maybe that device is just a dud.”

“Let’s get at his email,” suggested Josip from Mali who had gotten into Yannick’s computer via it’s Bio-IP.

“Oh, no,” said Jean-Saïd. “It’s definitely his. Look, it has got hacked versions of our minutes on file, as well as counter-revolutionary as well as revolutionary pages explaining vaccines, neuro-transmitters, fertilisers, and nanobots. So, he was trying to educate himself for sabotaging the march of the trees. Probably realising what you said, Pavel, that they were not even as good as Fritz Schneid in terms of bio-chemistry and not as good as us with robots.

“Oh, yes, and there is a map here. They are not far from here, close to Versailles somewhere in an old villa, Louveciennes. Mind you, it could be a trap. What an obvious place for sons of the old guard to hide. Under the coattails of one of papa’s friends in an old villa.”

“Let’s ask our fellow harpists to pinpoint their location and intercept all of their talk and action. That way we can go in when we are sure we can successfully free Raphaël and Tizian, and not just trip around in the dark,” said Jean. Denis, his old friend, drew an insulted face but did not object.

Housing in the Pals scheme. Villas

The Party goes on in Louveciennes, by Jean-François and Alexandra

“While we look for the exact path to intercept their thread, best is to ask trusted harpists, humans, animals, robots, and plants along the way to focus on it, so we don’t lose it,” Michel said, explaining to the uninitiated how the Illyrians achieved high quality bio-audios and even videos from almost anywhere on the plant. “Let’ summarise what we have learnt in terms of substance. We know now that they use the drug trade to generate and spread crypto. People want the drugs, the Hacking Octogon may give them a first wad of cash or crypto-card as a credit, but then force them to work for them to get more to finance their habit. That way, they get cheap labourers as well as crypto lines, meaning orders of crypto to pay wages and give consumer credits, especially for drugs. That allows them to print ever more crypto. And since drugs are addictive, they know that they will get not constant but growing demand.”

“Other addictive goods they sell are medications and treatments in their policlinics, sex and related pleasures in their amusement clubs, and training and weapons on their sport clubs. And the logistics stations serve of course to transport the drugs, weapons, and similarly useless, even harmful goods fast and secretly, which contributes to the addictive effect.

“Of course, drugs and money are not yet enough to keep people captive. Yet what will is building or renovating a house for them. That requires almost unlimited amounts of money or money substitutes and at the same time makes it extremely hard to wriggle out of the deal. If you try really hard enough, you can drop a drug habit. In the revolution, it is easy to leave crypto and other money behind, since the markets, share points, and workshop outlets offer everything for free. Yet how can you run from a house your fellow fascos have built or refurbished for you without them coming after you to get their due?”

“In other words, they can print more crypto, they can keep you as a merc and hire lots of workers if they will let themselves get hired, and if either you or any other worker ever opts out, you will be punished. And if your work builds or renovates a fancy villa, you ought to be grateful. Listen to Yannick explaining it.”

“So this is the house, big living and dining room, huge study, big kitchen and guest toilet downstairs, 5 big bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms upstairs and three more up in the attic. We can stay here as long as you want.”

“I bet this house belongs to your father. How come the revolutionaries did not confiscate it?”

“Because until recently one of my brothers used to live here with his wife and 3 kids. The only room the village assembly deemed in excess was the study on the first floor. Yet being tolerant, they did not force us to sublet it nor the three rooms in the attic. Anyway, money is not allowed, so I should not have said let, but give it to someone for free. And now that I have finished my studies in Le Havre, I could live here, except that I’d have to get people to move in here. That’s you.”

“And but for the fact that you are on their most wanted list,” snarled Ryan. “Just like we are. And if we change identity, we no longer own the house.”

“We don’t move in here immediately,” extemporised Yannick serving them all whisky on the rocks while they slouched on three big couches and two fauteuils arranged in a quadrangle. “At first, we can all be workers. We say we need to give some rooms a lick of paint, put some wallpaper up in others.”

“Polish the floorboards, clean the carpets, and the furniture,” added Iwan who had quite obviously quit the German Pappbergeryte camp and opened a new front together with Yannick, and if the two of them were persuasive enough, Ryan and Pat.

“We could even have the nature park around it that we discussed in the Vosges,” said Ryan. “Mind you the garden is a bit small for that.”

“And then we could get other people, druggies, but with valid village ID to front for us, while we live here in reality,” said Pat. “I think you have nailed it, pals. I am all for it. Never alone, always together.” And since nobody was moving, he began to move around in the room all alone, giving all of them the high five individually.

“How will we get our basics?” moaned Knut. “The will recognise us at the market.”

“Oh, come on, that’s sillybuggers,” said Ryan. “ We grow beards, we wear Covet masks, we ask others, for instance our frontmen to go there, and if worse comes to worst, we order from a logistics station. Where is the next one around here?”

“Down the road, a ten minute walk at most, in the direction of Versailles is a village market and several share points,” Yannick said helpfully.

“We, meaning Pat and I, were about to invite you to the ex-States where O’Hanley, Hooley and the other bankers are building a trust fund for us and constructing two villas next to each other,” Ryan continued, ignoring him. “But why bury yourselves in the Appalachians when you can be near Paris?”

“There is also nothing to do in the ex-U.S. and Canada,” wailed Barron who, miraculously, was also being drawn in by the idea. “The Uberytes have it all sown up, as I said.”

“And we might get caught sailing over,” said Fritz. “And beaming over the ocean might be a bit risky. What if there is a storm?”

“Have the revs ever tried it?” asked Knut.

“Only with several stops, in Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland,” said Ryan. “My dad poked fun of it just a few weeks ago on European Empire, what you call Empire européen, our counter-revolutionary channel. He called it a Viking crawl.”

“Well, o.k., we could try to hang low here and not to get caught,” said Thorben. “But what to do with these two idiots, Raphaël and Tizian?”

Yannick shrugged. “Nothing, we keep them. In fact, later on, when they overcome their hysteria against us, they can even be two of the frontmen. With fake village IDs of course.”

“I doubt they will agree to that. They seem to be gong-ho revs, both of them.”

“Somebody must always guard their door,” said Pat.

“Oh, I see, that’s why you are sitting just in front of it. D’accord, but we need to guard them, also later tonight. They may try to beam out of here. Do we have an alert in place?”

“Of course,” said Ryan. “If somebody in this building tries to summon a beam, or arrives on one, you will hear a sharp noise in your right ear. It is a gamma alert, very practical. The only problem is, the revolutionaries have got it as well.”

“Maybe we’d better keep the two black sheep in this room?” wondered Pat. They all approved of this motion, and the two were sat down before the cheminée and chained to the grill in such a way that in order to get out, both of them would have to move at the same time and still drag the big grill behind them.

It was one o’clock and time to bed down even for inveterate party lions such as the Hacking Octogon. Knut and Thorben took over the first watch, to be followed by Ryan and Pat, and then Barron and Fritz. The Illyrians looked at each other, scared.

“I suggest we wait,” said Jean. “They are wound up tonight and aware of the danger. Let’s wait one or two nights even if it means incredible hardship for our comrades. Imagine being chained to that grill and guarded by these monsters!”

“What about, we try it tomorrow night,” suggested Jérôme, “when Yannick and Iwan are on? If we don’t succeed, we take the two of them and then try for an exchange against Raphaël and Tizian.”

Raphaël and Tizian at the grill

They almost hanged us, by Yannick and Iwan

“Hello, you are M. Béranger, aren’t you?” asked the friendly delivery man donned with a yellow vest like a spontaneous militia man. It was late next evening. Pat and Ryan had decided to cook for everybody, Irish stew. Barron and the Germans, except Iwan of course, had gotten drunk even before dinner and were by now unconscious. Pat and Ryan were still sitting in one of the living rooms, catching up with them. Raphaël and Tizian were still chained to the grill. Iwan and Yannick were on guard duty.

“No, well yes, what is it you have for me there?” Maybe a delivery from the Versailles or Saint-Germain logistics station? How had they found they had moved in here?

“I have the refrigerator you ordered, but is a bit heavy. I am by myself. Do you have somebody who could help us?”

That made sense. They had found out somehow that they had moved here, maybe via a bio-wifi intercept, maybe one of the other Hacking Octogon members who had been careless with their bio-messaging, and they were now blackmailing them.

“Just a moment, I’ll get my pal!” The two of them followed the young delivery man to the transporter. “Hello, comrade Yannick,” said another delivery man, this one wearing a red star badge. “Hello, comrade Iwan!”

Oh, my God, he had to be stone drunk himself. Here he had been philosophising about the others getting drunk and letting him do the work, while he himself apparently had drunk one too many as well. These were not delivery men dressed as militiamen, but militiamen dressed as militiamen.

“Listen, we want you to help us. The two of you shall now carry the refrigerator in and make a lot of noise for cover. Meanwhile, we take care of the rest… If there is a need to get away, and you want to switch, just summon a yellow beam and say Illyria. We shall welcome you kindly, or how do you say in a chivalresque way?”

“You should have said ‘With bells on!’,” interjected Peter Gar.

Jean-Wadi grinned. “Anyway, they did what I said, and Jean-Saïd and I followed them on tiptoe. We readied our red beams to stun Ryan and Pat, yet they seemed to have gone up. All of them had had too much to drink that night. The house bar had been too inviting. Yannick’s brother had to be a heavy drinker, or maybe he had had his papa the old Rudolphe as a guest who, we know, likes drinking and whoring. As a precaution, Jean-Saïd looked in the neighbouring room, where Raphaël and Tizian had first been kept, but there wasn’t anybody in there. Meanwhile, I was trying all kinds of keys on their handcuffs and chains. The handcuffs had already sprung open, but try it as I might, I did not find the right key to open the padlock on the chain that joined them to the grill. Almost unbelievable! I had brought over twenty, all post-revolutionary models and a few pre-revolutionary ones. ‘Let’s just get you on the beam with the grill,’ I said, they were grateful, and all four of us summoned the beam. At this stage, our bad luck wanted it that Barron stumbled in, a glass in hand.

“For heck’s sake, Pat and Ryan, where are you beaming at this hour? I almost missed the alarm.” Then he saw the four of us, slowly crumbling, and his eyes almost popped out. Especially, the disintegrating grill must have looked quite impressive. Fortunately, Jean-Saïd’s red beam had already hit him before he could pull a gun or a phone with brown wave booster.

“As we disappeared on the beam, disassembled fully, having almost reached full molecular state, and obviously couldn’t either see, or hear, I wondered what had happened to Yannick and Iwan. I hoped sincerely they would take their chance, make a leap, and switch to the revolution.”

***

My fears were justified. By the time, we reached Illyria, the two of them found themselves before a nasty kangaroo court. “Yannick Dassault and Iwan Pistazius, what in hell do you think you were doing?”

“They were threatening us!”

“Not at all!” shouted Thorben, red in the face. “We have the bio-audio of what happened. They were telling you to carry in a refrigerator you had not ordered and suggesting you join the revolution. Unfortunately, there is no bio-video, otherwise we could probably see you nod excitedly at the prospect.”

“They were dressed like militia,” Iwan tried his luck.

“One more reason to get the phone out if you are not man’s enough to brown-beam by sheer willpower, brown-stun them immediately and not let yourselves get entrapped in their mischief,” wailed Pat.

“We did not let ourselves get entrapped, they were threatening us,” Yannick tried to stick to his line.

“Look, how we stand there now, our HQ discovered, the two hostages gone. Is the refrigerator bugged?” asked Ryan, and Pat and he took this as a pretext to flee the living room to the kitchen to examine the fridge.

“I think we should hang you,” growled Knut and raised two sturdy ropes, probably equipment for a Dassault boat, that he had nicked from the garage. “Who else is for hanging these two traitors.” Barron, Thorben, Fritz, and he were the cruellest of the lot, Ryan and Pat being out of the room, there wasn’t a ghost of a chance left that somebody would speak for them. It took Yannick and Iwan only one split second glance to come to an understanding. “Yellow beam, Illyria! It is a revolutionary emergency!” they whispered on delta waves and in less than another split second, the beam had materialised, they had disintegrated, and were gone before anyone of the four henchmen had even had time to whisper a curse, “Cause!”, “Future!”, whatever, let alone follow them on an orange beam.

***

“Oh, look, two people landing on a yellow beam!” said Little Jean-Michel pointing from the porch of his father’s garden house where he, his girl-friend Isabel and their two families were having supper. “Tell us again, comrade Matyas and Céline, what you felt when you and Céline had decided to break with the counter-revolutionaries?” comrade Carla was asking, and everybody was listening to comrade Matyas, who had just said that the idea had ripened in him for a long time, he had felt like a running boy for the Nah brothers, especially Markus, who was very bossy, his brother Stefan, his buddy Ian Fern, as well as his other fellow barons, Hans Liedel, Jürgen Ackermann, Klaus Kleisberg, Volker Dintisch, Jörg Sauer, Dieter Flix, their Benelux fellows Jan van der Greet, Eric Wittouck, Mansur Ojjeh, Kromer Herren, and all their consorts. They say Arnim Pappberger was even worse, doesn’t matter to me, I did not serve with him…”

“Oh,” said Misha jumping up. “Look who just landed. I think these are new comrades, just like you were back then, coming over. Let’s be careful though.” And he went out to greet them together with his father Peter Gar just when Dan, In, Vit, and Ayak, the Cambodian Shaolin martial artists living one cabin down on the other side of the path came out of their house battle-ready in case something happened.

“They, eh, eh, they were a a a a bout to ha ha ha hang us!” Yannick stuttered, still totally caught in the trauma of the death threat he and Iwan had just survived. “My laptop was useful to you, wasn’t it?” he said when comrades Jean, Daniel, Jérôme, and Michel from the old farm house, as well as Jean-Saïd, Jean-Wadi, and Boris from the apartment above the stables arrived from Illyria proper, with the comrades less trained in security as well as the women with children following in some distance only.

“Of course, we might not have found you so quickly at all. For us, Louveciennes is quite off the beaten track.” “Be welcome to stay in the guest room in my apartment,” said Camille arriving from her apartment over the clothes workshop. “At least until comrade Égale and her children come back from Sudan.” Peter Gar made an unhappy face.

“Too bad they can’t stay here,” said comrade Cato, “but this cabin is manifestly too small.” Yannick and Iwan looked puzzled. “You see, Misha, Yvonne, Jean-Michel, and young comrade Odile, when she is here, she stays mostly with comrade Zamir in the old farmhouse though, live upstairs. And downstairs, I live on the left side of the corridor, and Pierre le Gars and comrade Carla on the right, behind the kitchen, but I need a room to myself, because I need to rest often. You see as a trans I get easily tired, the stress from being woke all the time.”

“I understand,” said Iwan soothingly. “I am gay, but I am told it is worse when you are trans.”

“Yes,” sighed Cato. “Much worse.”

“Well, you could sleep in the kitchen, if you don’t mind people coming in at all hours to make coffee or tea,” said Carla. “Don’t you think, comrades Misha and Yvonne, comrade Cato is right, the fact that they landed before our house means something? They are meant to stay here.”

“Absolutely,” said Yvonne and hugged her mother in law. “Thanks for saying yes.” Misha grinned all over his face.

“We don’t mind people making coffee or tea,” said Yannick. “We are glad to be alive. But shouldn’t we go to prison?”

“No, you will be under sufficient observation around here,” said Jean. “You will be judged by the Aimeran village assembly for what you did to comrades Raphaël and Tizian though. We only just got them off the grill before you arrived. As a matter of fact, why don’t you all come with us up to the youth club of the old farmhouse? We can have all kinds of drinks there, something to eat, and you can apologise to comrades Tizian and Raphaël who are resting there. I think that should be the first step of repentance leading to your full rehabilitation, we hope. Don’t you think, comrades?”

***

“Well, well,” said Ryan when Pat and he entered the room and saw the two ropes lying on the floor, Yannick and Iwan gone, and the other four clenching their fists in blind rage. “We’d better make a quick getaway!”

“We should get our backpacks and scamper,” agreed Pat. “Now we’ll soon have spontaneous militia from every hamlet 100 kilometres knocking at the gate.”

“They must have cursed us,” wailed Knut. “I can’t even summon a brown beam anymore.”

“What would you need a brown beam for?” “To kill you two traitors or at least stun you.”

“Just a minute,” said Barron, gladly taking over full command now that his rival Yannick was finally gone . “Now you want to kill Ryan and Pat as well. They just checked the fridge for us, didn’t they? Anything suspicious?”

Pat shook his head. “No, but also nothing that could have made our friends, eh our former friends think that they were counter-revolutionaries. No vaccine syringes, no petri-dishes with neuro-transmitters.”

“But as I said,” said Ryan, with a cocky look at Barron. “They might have been in the transporter still.”

“Don’t you B.S. me!” shouted Barron, sounding almost as bad as Thorben, then calmed down. “We can have this out later. Does everybody have their backpack with them?” No, unfortunately, all of them had to run upstairs and get it. They stood close together in a circle, bending forward like rugby players, discussing in a very sotto voce delta wave discussion where they wanted to go.

“There were two ideas in the air,” said Temujin, Jérôme’s fellow intranet monitor far away in Mongolia near the Gobi desert who had forwarded his intercept to Sergei at the Moscow Recycling Hounds, who had taken a chance sending it via regular bio-wifi – carried in this case by eagles, then storks, then cranes – back to Illyria. “Barron, Thorben, Knut, and Fritz wanted to try their luck hiding at counter-revolutionary friends in the German lands and from there maybe sail on to the ex-United States. Ryan and Pat suggested a much bolder plan, to take a time tunnel, already the Hacking Pentagon has assimilated this idea for the counter-revolution, but not into the lovely pre-revolutionary past, that would be a cop-out, be it a daring move in itself, but into the future. “And just remain there. Never go back!” explained Ryan. “What do you think of that, folks! If we go twenty-thirty years ahead, maybe the counter-revolution will already have succeeded.” Fritz drew a grimace. “And what if it hasn’t? You’d find yourself as a tame revolutionary cleaning the staircase in the morning, keeping your garden in the afternoon, and running to your neighbourhood assembly meeting in the evening. I for one, would rather die.”

“Pathos aside, it’s a bad idea,” said Barron. “The likelihood of the Cause not succeeding is too great, all the more so as it would not command our fervent action to help it triumph. Let’s be reasonable and go to the German lands.”

Young Barons on the run

Ringing at the Kriegsbeil’s, by Jean-Luc and Marius

It was only a few days later until six dishevelled youths rang at Lars Kriegsbeil’s apartment in the poche Friedrichshain area of Berlin. Just like Paris and the other French agglos, it was being deconstructed as fast as possible, the revolutionaries – numbering far over 95% of the population, to the Causists great regret –, had insisted on reducing the number of floors everywhere to five at most, for both health and environmental reasons. Moreover, in some former quarters, now villages, some not so sightly houses were being deconstructed wholly, and the usable pieces moved via transporter and train to the countryside to bring about the dispersion of the agglos and the eventual elimination of the differences between town and countryside that the revolutionaries dreamt of. And that saved the Hacking Hexagon as they now called themselves, because the two militiamen who were guarding Kriegsbeil’s apartment had gone outside to check a loud noise. Maybe a house in the process of deconstruction had collapsed? Then there would have been a need to call the fire brigades. Anyway, the six of them used the momentary absence of Kriegsbeil Senior’s guards to ring the bell. Kriegsbeil and his wife hugged their son and invited all six of them to sit down in their living room for drinks of coffee, tea, or alcohol.

“No alcohol,” said Thorben. “They are looking for us. And we will be homeless like our workers if we don’t find a hiding place soon.”

“I read about these workers in the revolutionary media,” Lars frowned. “They claim you raped them, tortured them Guantanamo style, and chained them to a fireplace… If that’s true, that was very immature of you. You never give the enemy such an easy case!”

“They were asking for it!” mumbled Fritz April.

“Do you still have to wear an electronic foot chain when you go out, papa?” asked Thorben, looking for an argument to assuage his dad.

“Yes, I do, but still no reason to become vindictive. They now claim that we no longer even believe in capitalism and representative democracy ourselves but are descending into mafia.”

“That is because of this fool, Uber,” interjected Barron in English. He understood some German, but was not fond of speaking it. “He is trumpeting from all the rooftops that we counter-revolutionaries will no longer insist on returning the state. After all, we can print our own money. Therefore, we’ll be happy with just private property, money, and private security to guard our élite. And his pals – policlinics, amusement clubs, logistics stations, and sports studios –, obviously look life mafia institutes even to the uninitiated.”

***

“I can remember in European metropolises, Paris, London, Berlin, even Beijing, they already had private security forces like that, parallel to the official police and getting as big as them,” mused Michel, listening from Illyria. “Now twenty years later, they are trying the same thing from the other end. We might end up needing permanent police again just to fight them.”

***

“This is not because of us,” Thorben agreed, red in the face. “The revs respect us, our hack of their minutes, and even the way we used drugs to acquire money.”

“Still, I can’t keep you here,” said Kriegsbeil. “Sooner or later, the guards may come in for some reason, and the Illyrians have two warrants out for you, one for the hacks…”

“Oh, let them suck eggs, they called you Killingaxe,” sulked Thorben.

“Yes, but they are not persecuting you for defaming them, only for stealing and altering their records. And had you just called them names, you would still have rape and torture on your conscience. So, let me finish, Mutti and I can’t keep you here, but you can try with Knut’s mother. She lives alone in a house I hear and has you registered as a resident anyway. In their ways, she keeps your village ID and when somebody asks, claims you live there and have just gone out without it. Your papa, Fritz, the March hare, can’t keep you either,” he turned to Fritz April, “he is under house arrest as well, and anyway, he has just got a small bachelor’s apartment in Charlottenburg. After all, Peter is with the revolution now. Yet he just bio-messaged me, he might have a job for you. Another hack you can do, not so personal, more on the merits, as he puts it, but let him explain it to you himself.”

***

“Did he say Peter?” asked Peter Gar, or Pierre le Gars, red in the face with anger. “I am not a Fritz, am I? Now they want to pretend I am one of theirs? I don’t like their war-mongering, futuristic ways at all,” and Égale and Carla both tried their best to comfort him, from Sudan, having Thwara and Waqi wave to him, as well as in Illyria, taking his hand and stroking his beard.

***

“And once you are done with that, or even while you are doing it, you, Mr. Handsome, Mr. McLeary, and Mr. Trumpel could already voyage to Britain, Ireland, and the ex-U.S. on a freighter we own, or rather our pal Viesturs Volt.”

Barron drew a face. “I am rather disinclined to accept favours from an Uberyte.”

“Well, I tend to agree with Mr. Kriegsbeil, we might have to,” said Ryan. “Unless you want to hang around here on the continent forever.”

“Well, Fritz, the March hare’s proposal is a good one,” Thorben grinned, who seemed to have just received the details via delta message. “Thank your papa for at least appreciating our talent, Fritz, you Easter bunny.”

Fritz jumped up and was about to throttle his pal, had not Lars, the elder Kriegsbeil and Knut held him back. By now, the tea had been drunk, the sandwiches eaten, and Mrs. Kriegsbeil led the four delinquents out through the back door from the subterranean garage.

“Then let us beam over to my mom who lives in Grunewald,” said Knut. “See whether she has got space for all of us, and if not, I know of a cabin in the woods near Friedrichshagen.”

***

Knut’s parental home was sumptuous, be it not quite as elegant as Dassault’s villa in Louveciennes. They encountered Knut’s mother tipsy and in a funk. “These revolutionaries are not as just and generous as they pretend. Remember when you came home in year ten, you were about 13-14 years old? “No,” said Knut, “I did not come home yet, I called you up from my way to the sports club.” “Yes, that’s true. You said, ‘Can you believe it? I improved in biology, mathematics, German, even history, and yet my fellow students and the teacher just gave me a motion ‘Very good. Continue the same way!’”

“Well, what did you want them to say?” asked Barron, slightly irritated. He wondered why the lady was going off on a tangent instead of telling them, point-blank whether they could stay or not.

“Well, ‘Brilliant! No need to lift a finger any longer!’” joked Thorben, and now it was Knut’s turn to try to strangle him.

“Maybe ‘Excellent! Your performance is evidence of talent as well as diligence!’” Mme Reiche tried to answer Barron as well, then she returned to the order of business all of a sudden. “When are going to start on your father’s project then, Fritz?”

“Well, as soon as we are on a safe ship sailing off to a safe haven,” said Ryan. Just like Barron, he did not like Mrs. Reiche at all, nor her slightly mildewy wall paper and carpets.

“If it is about subsisting in the wet, we might as well go to Ireland!” he delta-messaged to Barron and Pat. “My dad has several nice famine period houses we could stay in.”

“You are probably starving,” said Frau Reiche as if she had intercepted the message and two girls, who looked like maids, unless they were Knut’s younger sisters or cousins, brought in a roast, steaming hot potatoes, and green beans in sufficient quantity as to allow every one of them a second helping. “From the market,” she said, smiling. “They let me buy some stuff with crypto and never moan if I take huge quantities.”

***

“Merde,” said Lénina, who was listening intraline from Illyria. “Where we thought we had eliminated all these shadow dealers. Yet you’ve still got them in Berlin,” she addressed comrade Misha as if he was the culprit.

“I bet they need the crypto to go holidaying,” the thus addressed answered. “It is very hard to get out of Berlin. Public transport is always jammed, maybe the fascos even wreck it to make it worse, but the weather gets very cold in winter and still very hot in summer, despite global cooling, so people long to get away. Remember, a few years ago, they proposed crypto-travel agencies as an underground activity catering to the ex-rich. One of the few successes was located in Berlin.”

“Well, we should beam over to Fritz Merz then,” said Pat, careful not to use the nickname March hare, since the climate had been glacial enough during the meal. “Discuss the details with him.”

“Oh, by all means do,” said Mme Reiche. “And your beds will be waiting for you when you come back. “Pending your blessing, we put up Knut with Thorben, Barron with Fritz, and Ryan with Pat.”

Fritz Merz was alone and high on something when he opened them the door. “Taste it,” he said, as he poured each of them an Ukrainian vodka. “Very subtle. Polish is o.k. as well, but never Russian.” And he shook himself. “Much too strong!” Then he continued without giving them the chance to voice an opinion, let alone ask for a soft drink.

“And have some of these tablets with it.” And he passed each of them a blue, a white, and a rose-coloured tablet. Fritz April who was the weakest immediately began to see bunny rabbits hopping innocently around the room at first, then turning around and fleshing their teeth looking just like his dad. “So, how would you go about it?” and when he saw their confused looks, marred by the drugs, Fritz, known as the Merc, or the March are, now under life-long house arrest, added, “hacking their housing swap app, naturally!”

Housing in the Pals scheme. The new homeless counter-revolutionary proletariat

Old and new hotbed of capitalism, by Jean-Wadi and Zafira

“You may go back to your mother, Knut,” said Barron, when they got out of Fritz Senior’s place two hours later, it was after midnight already, and their steps resonated on the cobble stones in the empty street. “But I for one would rather sleep in the park.”

“Pals, I have a good idea,” a voice which sounded like Uber’s announced ecstatically from the off. “The downward spiral of these young clowns, Barron, Ryan, Pat and the three krauts wandering the streets, homeless in Berlin gave me the idea. Spontaneous militia may still close down our pals organisations, but we shall simply rebuild them elsewhere and our loyal workers shall move with us, if only out of fear to end up like them.”

“The bastard,” Barron clenched his fist. “The krauts treat us like dirt, and the Uberytes despise us.”

“I know where we can sleep,” said Knut, who did not seem angry at Barron any longer. “For tonight it can be the old Pappberger factory near Gesundbrunnen, and then in the morning when public transport is running again, I’ll get you out to Friedrichshagen. My mother has a dacha there, but she does not like the woods and rarely ever goes there. She won’t notice we are there. You will love it.”

They arrived at the factory via a free taxi. Taxi drivers like all other workers in the revolution get their goods, the electrical recharge and the upkeep and repairs of their vehicle for free as part of the economic circuit which links every worker in the economy from the remotest farm via the most overcrowded social organisation – school, policlinic, public transport – to the most specialised workshop, and back. “There used to be a public park there before the revolution already, but now the plants are much healthier. And look, there are even some people camping there.”

The Hacking Hexagon strained their eyes, but they could only see two couples of youth taking a late night bath in a fountain. Pat said thank you and wanted to push a few crypto-coins into the driver’s hands out of habit, but he dropped them as if by mistake, said: “Sorry, new order! Got to run!”, jumped into his vehicle and was out of sight before they could say Armin Pappberger.

How great was their surprise when they entered the yard, saw a light in the right-hand side building, and when they peaked through the window, saw none other than old Pappberger himself sitting at a table deep in conversation with another man, both with laptops, even plushbots in front of themselves, both in the shape of tanks, by the looks of them.

Thorben walked in first with a smile on his face. “Hello, Mr. Pappberger, meet the Hacking Hexagon. I am Thorben Kriegsbeil, and these are Fritz Merz Junior, also known as Fritz April, Knut Reiche, Barron Trumpel, Ryan McLeary and Pat Handsome.”

The other man, not so tall, but strong, with black hair and an impressive black beard, got up and shook their hands. “Hello, I am Viesturs Volt. Call me Peter for camo. I may be an Uberyte, but I am not as docile as you may think. I can help you with setting up another headquarter for your app project up in the Baltics, this time in a more remote place, naturally, and then organise you a boat to get back to France or wherever. Yet for tonight, you can’t stay here. The four teenagers you may have seen bathing are spontaneous militia, possibly Illyrians even. You may have heard of their revolutionary cooperative South of Paris that does a lot of research for their revolutionary robots?”

“We know them,” sighed Pat. “In fact, we hacked their Minutes to embarrass them thoroughly, but they have rebounded, unfortunately, and they outed us in Pionerskii, as you well know.”

Armin Pappberger laughed. “Well, we shall get back at them, eventually, no doubt about that. Please follow us to my car though. You can stay in Friedrichshagen for tonight. But tomorrow morning early, you must leave with Viesturs for Latvia, or wherever. Berlin is very unsafe. Look, I had to come here with an electronic bracelet and foot chain.” And he displayed his wrist and revealed his ankle.

When they got to Knut’s mother’s place in the woods, same situation again. Everything seemed calm, but behind the house where the lake was, they could spot a green camouflage tent to the right. “This wouldn’t be your mother’s private security?” asked Arnim.

“Definitely not,” said Knut. “She hates the woods and this place and would not give her dog anything to guard it. Anyway, there are bathing suits drying on tree branches.”

“These are not bathers!” laughed Viesturs. “They would have been warned at both places that ex-oligarchs are likely to drop in. They are spies.”

“I absolutely agree with you!” said Fritz. “Well, Mr. Viesturs, could you take us with you to the Baltics by any chance.

“Hardly,” said Viesturs. “I only have a small transporter, and my driver and security troika have to fit in as well. Yet if Mr. Pappberger will lend us this vehicle.” It was a beautiful grey transporter, large enough to seat 12 and with extendable seats that allowed you to rest if you managed to place your legs next to your opposite’s upper body without disturbing him, maybe with a cover on them.

“Nice, but a bit conspicuous!” said Thorben.

“But then again, not so, because it is based on an old Peugeot model. It is not a Mercedes as you might think!” said Armin. “I think you should take a chance instead of staying in this hellhole.

“I am just getting it via European Empire news feed… Your father, Lars Kriegsbeil, your mother, Katherina Reiche, and your dad, Fritz the March hare all got visits from spontaneous militia. They have asked whether your parents had helped you in any way and what your plans were. They seem to know about your housing swap app project already, so we will have to be ultra-careful with what we discuss intraline, even on delta script.”

***

A workers’ dormitory at a pals logistics station, by Sarah and Faroukh

“So, there they go,” Jean-Wadi stuck his head out of the tent and almost shook his fist at them angrily. “Another five minutes and spontaneous militia would have arrived from the neighbouring villages. One brigade should go to Armin’s place and grill him as to what he was doing in Wedding and in Friedrichshagen after midnight, and another to the old factory. Apparently, they are trying to set up an Uberyte logistics station, possibly with integrated weapons’ workshop, right before the nose of the people of Wedding.”

“Yes,” said Jean-Saïd. “As for the four of us,” his brother Jean-Wadi and his partner Zafira, and Jean-Saïd’s partner Natalie, “we should beam to Novgornyi so that we have our tracking station set up before they get there.”

“You’d be amazed what we discovered there,” the militia brigade from Wedding reported a few hours later when they were already sitting in Novgornyi with Maksim, Zhenya, and their kid, little comrade Misha. Zhenya was now pregnant with Danya’s.

“A large dormitory sleeping twenty workers in little cabins for two, like containers within a container. A real sweatshop was in the making there. We sat the workers down and they decided that instead of a logistics station with attached arm’s assembly, they’d rather found an apple processing plant, producing apple juice, cider, apple sauce, apple tarts, and many other goodies made with fresh apples from the environs. So, at least in Wedding, we have been able to stop the counter-revolution.”

Repentant

“Found two girls, settling down”, by Emmanuel and Laurence

“Found two girls, settling down,” was the laconic delta message both Rudolphe Dassault and Boris Pistazius received from their sons. “We’ll form a quadrangle for more variety. And we shall move into a new house built from deconstructed-reconstructed material somewhere deep in the boondocks of France, so you fasco can’t find us.” Of course, they meant somewhere around Illyria, but best to muddy the waters and make it sound closer to Le Havre. Yannick and Iwan were sitting with their two girls, Charolaine and Cécile, discussing their common future. “While you are still rehabilitating, you can help us with our university entry projects. Charolaine’s is on their brown hate waves. Can you tell us more?”

“Oh, yes,” said Yannick, “first were the ones they used to hack the original intranet when you revs had justinvented it. From there, they took them into different directions. On the one hand, they intensified them to become stronger stunners than the revolutionary red beams. They could even make them lethal if they boosted them with their phones. Second, they played with them until they became transport beams able to carry people, animals, and light luggage on a beam even over longer distances.”

“We gave those beams a golden colour and tried to market them against crypto,” said Iwan. “But only good-natured idiots like my dad ever paid for them.”

“Yes, because by then, the revolutionaries had come up with the yellow beam, which while it required full disassembly into the molecular state, then reassembly, definitely saved the revs a lot of energy.”

“The yellow beam functions only on will power, while the golden-brown beam even required booster stations along the way to charge the travellers up. We were even considering using old decommissioned nuclear power plants for that purpose.”

“That would have been ruinous. In fact, it would have required us to get into power world-wide immediately, or otherwise keep up a clandestine, subterranean network of nuclear power stations. Imagine what that would have cost!”

“So, we dropped the golden beam, and went for a brown transport beam based on hate waves. That is your topic, right?”

“Yes, for a moment I thought you might even have used them for hacking our minutes.”

“As a matter of fact, we did. The Moral Atrophy virus is based on similar drugs, and the MA computer virus works on similar electrical charges. The idea is to make your harpoids lethargic and distrustful.”

“How interesting!” said Cécile and put her head on Yannick’s shoulder to wind him down a bit.

“Yet it did not work, apparently. The brown beam made you so angry you could hardly keep steady, and then, to our great shame, your comrade Jean-Wadi helped us succeed with our orange beam, which like the revolutionary yellow beam is based on a much more positive forms of energy.”

“So, nowadays you only use brown beams for maiming and killing, basically?” asked Charolaine.

“And versions of them for phasing and hacking, yes!” replied Yannick. “I am not involved in this research, but you could imagine a sort of composite brown beam that phases and hacks the intranet and simultaneously finds targets and stuns or kills people over a longer distance. Then Rutte and Gunpump would not have had to shoot at comrade Jean from a blowpipe.”

“Could that be used for destroying buildings as well?” Jean-Wadi dropped in intraline, maybe because he had heard his name mentioned. “We are working on an anonymous link, from you maybe, that this seems to be one direction the Hacking Hexagon are working on. Hack the housing app and then use the locational data it contains to target buildings and people they hate that live in them.”

“That is horrific!” said Cécile. “That people could think up something like that!”

“Yes, well,” Yannick blushed. “As a matter of fact, they did contact me yesterday, asked whether I was really happy with my fate as a show-case repentant and revolutionary clown, or whether I could be made willing to come down to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, or Novgornyi, wherever they are going and design a hack of the housing swap app exactly like you describe it. They would first try to scramble the data –location and profile of houses or apartments whether they are up for a swap or not, then possibly attach prices to them, so that people will begin to think the revolution has gone backward, a bit like our predecessors tried three years go with the trefoil app, and then, if that does not scare them enough to hold crypto again and work with us, the counter-revolution, the Cause, and the Future, we could bomb their fucking houses into smithereens. He said they would pay me millions, later on trillions of crypto if I wanted.”

“Who made you that offer?” asked Jean-Wadi.

“Pat,” Yannick admitted reluctantly. “Or Barron. Maybe his voice was distorted. Or maybe Pat acting on behalf of Barron.”

“You don’t like Barron?”

“He used to be alright, but these three Germans made him way to militaristic, you know, always seizing on violence and destruction as the only solution. He probably thinks he can impress his dad with it, who hates the Uberytes, but I doubt Papa Trumpel would go with the Germans, although he may be one himself.” Yannick took a breath.

“Well, I told him, Iwan and I were really well placed here, hinting that I might spy for them. That way, they might tell me things and you may be able to place false info in their direction that will make them go wrong. I already started with that as a matter of fact. I told them the housing swap app did not yet exist as a brain app which will hopefully prevent them from using Moral Atrophy. And I told them you were relying for its protection mainly on the Chinese Wall Security App and Digital Hounds where in fact you are doing a lot more with Bio-Thicket these days, aren’t you?”

Jean-Wadi nodded. “Yes, merci, Yannick, you are beginning to think like a comrade. Jean-Saïd, Natalie, Zafira, and I have now arrived in Novgornyi, that’s in the Russian lands on the border with the Polish and Livonian lands. There is no sign of their trying to put up another workshop around here, so we must look further. In case you catch anything, let us know, d’accord?”

Yannick and Iwan said they would of course, then turned back to Charolaine and Cécile for more questions. “Maybe you can help me with my topic as well?” asked Cécile. “It’s called One village out, about villages which do things differently from the world community of revolutionary villages. Any idea why the fascos have succeeded so rarely to turn whole village assemblies in their favour, or have they not even tried to?”

“I know only very little about agitation,” said Yannick. “I am only a computer scientist and robotics engineer, so is Iwan. Yet I know what they told Arnaud, when he proposed to start to gradually turn the French countryside back to the counter-revolution again. They said people were actually happy with the revolution, free housing and the fact that the apartments and houses you live in belong to you, free goods, free education, free transport, free culture, free healthcare… and so on, and so forth, discussion of all decisions in brigades, workplace, neighbourhood, and village assemblies, self-management in the farms, workshops, and social organisations, and true democracy and the consensus principle in brigades, neighbourhood, and village assemblies. Lately, there is even the idea to abolish all positions of authority and not even have rotating but spontaneous and constantly changing fore(wo)men and moderators.

“And then, lest that sound too positive and like an admission of defeat they said that people probably feared that if a village assembly was ever out, as you call it, or not in sync with the revolution, they would send spontaneous brigades to bring it to reason. It would create civil war. So, when people like Arnaud Arrolle or Étienne Stérilé came to enlist them, people would ask them whether they wanted everybody killed, thrown into a volcano, or at least under house arrest?”

“That does not make sense!” said Cécile. “The revolution does not allow us to bear arms.”

“True, but they, I mean, our former side would,” objected Iwan. “I know it from the discussions at my papa’s place about rearming Germany. If the fascos ever got a village under their control, they’d set up weapons’ workshops and arm it to the teeth.”

At home in the revolution

Tizian’s new apartment, by Colin and Charolaine

“You like your new room?” Raphaël seized his new friend by the hands and tried to dance a polka. “D’accord, top floor, no balcony. But with a view of the Eiffel tower from the one window and of La Défence from the other. You can start by painting your views from the window.”

Tizian was enthusiastic as well. “Although I won’t start with the views. That’s capitalist touristy stuff. I want to do close ups of the various types of deconstruction, ivy, algae, bacteria, chemicals. It will keep me busy for the next forty years I am sure.”

As a matter of fact, he would be quite relieved to be on his own again, an independent man as he put it to Raphaël. “On the streets before and after the revolution, he had been a capitalist slave, for the last few week’s staying at young comrade Denis’ place, he had felt awkward and afraid to disturb the young people. Yet now he had his own room to keep! The market was around the corner, several share points on the way and in other streets around the house as well, the metro as well, so he could nip up to Saint-Denis, down to Montparnasse, or out to Versailles and take the train down to Aimeran and Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp and see Raphaël and his family and the other Illyrians, Garden Colonists and Manouche. There were several painters there he was friends with there, Raphaël and Pierre le Gars, for instance, although both of them painted portrait rather than landscape and buildings which were his new interest. Comrade Roman, on the other hand, had an interest more similar to his. He painted Manouche camps and caravans and old-fashioned wagons on the road. All of the young Illyrians, apart from the illustrations they did for their presentations at the youth club and their university entry projects, were also into comics and mangas. Comrade Zamira painted still lives, in line with her research topic on the importance of the superfluous. Comrade Camille drew dresses and other clothes for the clothes workshop. Yet he for one now was into buildings. Not only for artistic reasons, but for a very worthwhile goal, as a matter of fact. Any day now, the Illyrians were expecting a hack of their housing swap app. And they even feared, imagine, that the fascos might use the locational data of buildings to bomb them and the people in them with beams, or even drones, bombs, and missiles they still had at their disposal or had produced underground. In that case, it would be very important to have pictures of buildings that showed what revolutionaries were doing to improve people’s living standards as well as the climate, while the saboteurs were just wrecking things.

Revolutionary deconstruction by plants and bacteria, by Tizian, street painter

How long will it take, by Tizian, street painter

‘Terrible what these fasco criminals are capable of,’ Tizian shook his head as he readied his canvas and brushes and started on a close up of one of the towers of La Défence being deconstructed by plant and bacterial methods. These days the children already self-managed themselves and their brigades from kindergarden onward. They were used to listening to each other, discussing issues carefully, and searching for a consensus everybody was happy with until it emerged, and even if it lasted only for a short time. And they were aware especially of the need to include everybody, and have no scapegoats. On the other hand, they were encouraged to start material and hierarchy checks immediately when a good or a situation seemed dodgy. There was no need for money. Goods and people lived, changed, and grew in the community. As a result, to over 99 percent of the population, it seemed that crime had been almost eliminated, in themselves, and in all others as well. The vexing, even cancerous trauma were these less than one percent or one in a thousand of people world-wide who clung to weapons, drugs, money, deceit and sabotage to enrich themselves and their friends while they oppressed and extorted surplus from others, the new fasco proletariat as the revolutionaries called it. Ultimately, the fascos wanted to bring back the system that would make exploitation so much easier – capitalism and bourgeois representative democracy at its service.

Revolutionary deconstruction – reconstruction by dinosaurs, by Tizian

There was hope though, Tizian knew it, and young comrade Denis and his two friends, Raphaël and his family, and the other Garden Colonists, Illyrians, and Manouche camp dwellers agreed on that. There were newly emerging communities of the harp, where harp was short for humans, animals, robots, and plants. And the march of the trees that was going to bring back life to the forest where humans, animals, and plants would be equals and live happily, without money and the jealousies and conflicts it gave rise to, in harmony with each other and in nature. Nowadays, revolutionary deconstruction was not even done by plants and bacteria, let alone chemical methods anymore, but by time-travelled dinosaurs who also had their paws and claws in the short-distance transport of building materials from the local train station or the transporters that had carried them out of the agglo to the reconstruction sites of buildings in the countryside.

March of the Trees ahead of Harp meeting, by Tizian, Zamir, and Odile

The trees would advance from the remaining forests in a broad front and reconquer the whole territory, even in the centre of the agglos, leaving harp villages behind. Life in these harp villages would be organised by humans, animals, including dinosaurs, plants, and harpoid or haproid robots – thus called because we revolutionaries preferred them in the shape of humans, animals, plants, robots, dinosaurs and other intranet-and nature-speak- capable things. We would no longer listen to the arguments of fascos for high rises, concrete, cars, tarmac, rule from above, hierarchies and bureaucracies, for money as gauge of value for the whole world, even the lives of humans, animals, and plants and their most valuable products, and for downplaying homeless and other poor people being tortured, bref, the genocide of people, animals, plants, and life in general.

Life in Communism 2.1

The Housing Question

vol. 3 The Housing Swap

© Carla O’Gallchobhair, 2026. To Mamon, Cathal, Tanya, Evgeni, Maksim, Zhenya, Misha, Yvonne, Odile, Zamir, Jean-Michel, Vicky, and Nora, and all other true revolutionaries of the 21^st century

The Housing Question. Vol. 3. The Housing Swap

Preface to Volume 3. Hack of the Housing Swap App

Abram’s housing swap, by Tizian, Jean-Saïd and Natalie

“The capitalists always told us that money facilitates exchange,” comrade Abram began. “On the contrary, in our world revolution of 2021, we found out that money actually hinders exchanges. In the attempt at favouring the already privileged, as comrade Jean mentioned in his presentation already, capitalism ended up erecting major obstacles to getting the appropriate accommodation, if any. In this final part of our three courses, I want to tell you about my experience with swapping my villa on the Crimea for the little cabin in the woods near Illyria, and then donating this cabin to the robot brigade as a testing lab for their new robots, in exchange for my place in bed in the old farmhouse at comrade Francine’s side.” Everybody clapped, knowing full well that Abram was gay and usually slept on the sleeping couch in Patrick’s living room. Yet that was comrade Abram. He lied and told stories to make people happy. “This last exchange alone would have created almost insurmountable obstacles anywhere you would have attempted it before the revolution, be it in the French, the Russian or even the Ukrainian lands. After the revolution, it was as easy as me and the robot brigade shaking hands and Francine and me kissing. Everybody clapped again.

“Swapping out of Ukraine, as I said, was simple. However, later, to my great chagrin, I found out that my villa had been appropriated by the Ukrainian clandestine oligarchs, Kolomistskii, Zelenskii and their Western helpers, ex-NATO boss Stolzenberg, Pappberger, Rutte, these people. That and the experience of our Russian comrades in Novgornyi, where the two Lithuanian cryptodealers Lavrenti and Stanislav tried to get people to sell houses and land, got us to form a research brigade on crypto real-estate markets all over the world. It turns out that the capitalists do not only try to build secluded mega-villas for themselves to retire in, as if that was not bad enough, but that they are also trying to recreate a real estate market, including mortgage financing and Ponzi schemes, and with towering monetary obstacles to free swapping and thereby truly fulfilling people’s needs. And ultimately, as we heard already, they might use the knowledge they gain from this hack to bomb our villages and kill humans and other harpists.”

“In Sudan you can even buy yourselves positions in the fasco usurper military governments by appropriating, plundering, then selling luxury villas in Khartoum and elsewhere,” interjected Peter Gar, who was no longer in Sudan at the moment, but staying in Illyria with comrade Carla.

“At least while I am waiting for Égale to come back for her feminist projects with comrades Arlette and Işil!” That’s how he had explained his move to comrade Abram.

“Indeed,” said comrade Abram. “And there are many political reverberations of these underground real estate markets in other regions as well. As a matter of fact…”

“Just a minute, comrade Abram, before you launch into your presentation, I have a terrible announcement to make. Just as if to prove you wrong with your praise of the housing swap app, the fascos, probably, the Hacking Hexagon have decided to start their travesty of it. Knowing their skill from what they almost did to comrade Carla’s project, you can bet they have done a good job. First of all, they are trying to reverse many swaps already completed years ago, including yours, comrade Abram. They are making it look as if you wanted back your cabin to swap it back into a villa in Ukraine.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” comrade Abram shouted, tears in his eyes, shaking, fidgeting, and red in his face, so that comrades began to fear for his health and comrade Francine bio-messaged comrade René, Illyria’s family doctor who said he would get on the next train, since he wanted to see his daughter Sarah anyway. “I wouldn’t even set foot in a place they have desecrated. I just looked it up intraline to remind myself how it looked like for this presentation.”

“We knew there was something Nazi about it,” said Jérôme knowingly. “When we read the bit about you wanting to go back to Ukraine. Second, they are trying to substitute unrelated houses and apartments for those people already decided on. Third and most damaging, they are trying a variety of ways to reduce the proportion of reasonable offers, by confusing the search criteria. For instance, they make people look for apartments and houses with two and more bedrooms, and offer them all kinds of unsuitable properties, instead of just listing those with two bedrooms, short and sweet. And they offer help by bogus artificial intelligence, which then leads people into the dark web where they have to pay crypto to even look at an apartment. Robespierre and the other members of the robot brigade as well as comrades world-wide are already trying to fix the bug, but it will take time. We need to find the Hacking Hexagon and stop their nefarious plots. So, excuse us, comrade Michel and me,” said Jérôme, “if we interrupt your presentation from time to communicate news from the spontaneous militia brigades looking for them.”

Swapping out of Ukraine

Abram’s villa on the housing swap app, by Jean-Wadi and Zafira

“I could not immediately focus on my housing swap. First, even while already working with the Illyrians, I had to provide myself with a bit of an Ukrainian identity, so that the village assembly would even recognise my villa as something I could swap. To begin with, I had to get a village ID. What a bureaucratic nightmare that would have been in the ancien régime! After the revolution, it is as easy as going to the share-point, giving them your name, birthday, address, and a picture, and there you go. That is your ID. You can have several even. For the longest time, I had one for my Ukrainian village, one for my first intermediate home in Kiev, one each for my second and third intermediate homes in the German lands, one for my intermediate home in Paris, and one for Aimeran. Until recently, Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp was part of the agglo of Aimeran with 2000 inhabitants. Now we are an independent village with 130 or so residents. Yet real places of residence I had only two, my home village in Ukraine and Illyria.

Comrade Abram’s many village IDs, by Guillaume and Renée

All six IDs were valid, all six of them would have enabled me to get goods at the local market stalls and share points, and none of them led to any violation of my privacy. After all, not a bureaucrat did them, but a local share point holder with a printer. Some of them asked me what my profession was, whether I was already retired. To the Ukrainians I told I was a bio-engineer, because of my cooperation with the Yaroslavl’ Forum and the Gang of Six, especially Valery from R-Pharm and Arkady from the e-mail and browser empire Yandex, Sergei from the Vympel phone company, Ivan from LukOil, Kostya from Mechel steel, and Igor from the X5 processed food plants. Notice that back then in Year Zero, time of the world revolution, the budding fasco refuseniks already did mainly medicine, entertainment, weapon-related, and medical business, just like the pals establishments do today. Anyway, lately, I tell everybody I am a forest grower, and then they admire me of course and ask me what I know about the march of the trees. I inform them about what we are doing at Illyria, having the trees march short distances only and then having them practice reinserting their roots. And that the trees are grateful for the respect. The march of the trees is not about speed, but about reforestation. When I am with trees, I can hear them rustling my name ‘Abram, Abram’, and the birds pick up the sound, and then I feel like a full human at least, if not a full harpist yet. That would be even more grandiose, wouldn’t it?” Abram had tears in his eyes, but the assembled Illyrians could only agree with him and with Jérôme’s hunch. The story about Abram wanting to swap out of Illyria had to be another of their fasco hoaxes.

“Back to Ukraine, Year 1 and 2. Well, I put in an ad in the housing swap app saying I wanted to swap out of my villa, where I had landed by mistake at the time of the revolution. In the beginning, my ad did not find that much resonance, mainly because the house was big, to use an euphemism. It had three floors, more than seventeen rooms if you counted the huge dine-in kitchen, luxurious bathrooms, sauna, big garden with palm trees and terrasse not quite with a view on the Black Sea but close, swimming pool, and so on. Not even Ukrainian families were large enough for it. Comrade Tanya has seen it.”

“It is very large and even when Stolzenberg and Co. were in ransacking the place, it had not yet lost all of its luxury furniture,” admitted comrade Tanya who had been in the house as a captured revolutionary spy when Markus Nah, Pappberger and Company were running their DU ammunition scheme in Palestine. In fact, they had attempted to wind up Jews and Palestinians up against each other, although actually the two groups were already collaborating peacefully in mixed brigades.

“So I decided to convert it into five three-room and one two-room apartment,” comrade Abram continued. “I had the idea to reserve the two-room apartment for myself and to come visit at least once in a while, but that wasn’t to be because Kolomistskii and Co. took over the house, and even rented it out to Stolzenberg and his gang for a while. As you know, I became ashamed of my past as an oligarch already during the revolution and switched sides, especially after I had talked to comrade Jean.

“Now, before the revolution, the needed conversion would have thrown even a grivna or Ruble billionaire as I had been, and I would have lost all of my remaining crypto-currency holdings had I stuck with the fascos. Yet I did not, instead I had friends explain my plan of renovation to a couple of revolutionary construction brigades. They immediately got to work, were ready in two months, and then the house went back online – back then, we were still using the internet –, on the housing app. Within weeks, I had tenants for all six apartments including the two-room apartment. From their correspondence within the app, they sounded like good revolutionaries or at least neutral, no sympathisers of the Cause among them. Therefore, I decided to travel to Ukraine and try to organise my housing swap into France. You see, while I was staying at Illyria, I was actually violating Aimeran village assembly consensus. I should have swapped my house first, and I also so much wanted a little cabin in the woods that I could call my own and retire to.”

“Then you should not have given it to us robot freaks!” Robespierre looked genuinely saddened by Abram’s admission that he had wanted the cabin for himself.

“Not these days,” Abram shook his head emphatically, “I have become much more sociable. I should actually miss you all, my dear comrades, if I stayed there on my own, and I would be afraid of fasco killers getting to me at night, but back then, that was eighteen years ago or so, I was still a different man.

“Actually, the first family I talked to, the one in the two-room apartment, a young couple with a baby, already said they would support me. They would say that I had lived there with them, the apartment had become too small, and both they and I wanted a housing swap to Kiev, also for professional reasons of course. Soon, they moved into a two-bedroom apartment in the suburbs and I into a studio close to the centre of town. Kiev was in full post-revolutionary deconstruction like all other agglos, and housing swaps even into other European regions were very frequent, if not the daily norm. Soon enough, using the housing swap app again, I organised a move into the German lands, to Berlin, comrade Misha’s town actually.

Into the German lands

Wood fair in Grunewald, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

“Well, no longer, I moved out after comrade Cato’s ordeal. You remember she had to take substantial drug injections and a very painful operation from several fasco policlinics to complete her transition to male. I read that the Uberyte policlinics are still into gender-switching operations. I am not surprised, they probably hope to earn crypto with this, although at least some revolutionary policlinics offer them as well. Back then, the private doctors treated comrade Cato for free, because they were using him as an experimental rabbit.”

“As a guinea pig, why don’t you say it like it is?!” comrade Cato cried as he usually did when he had to remember the horror of it all.

“And then we went back, comrades Yvonne, I, and Cato, who had moved out to Illyria by then, when the fascos were trying their big come-back via mock elections for a parliamentary assembly that was to usher in a return of bourgeois government. That failed of course, most politicians, even those who had not turned into fervent Communists and revolutionaries at the latest after the revolution of 2021, used the campaign to undermine the fascos and their ex-capitalist sponsors rather than seek power. Yet for a moment, we were in fear, knowing the conservative national character of the Germans.”

“Yes, I know what you mean, I stayed in a house in the Grunewald, the hotbed of the old élite,” said Abram, “I did not have the whole house, of course, just two small rooms of it, with a kitchen and a bath. It was not much larger than my studio in Kiev, and of course not comparable at all to my former mansion. As a matter of fact, not too far from where Reiche and the other sponsors or idea-givers of the Cause, beg your pardon, Future group are living these days, the families of our Hacking Hexagon in other words. It was not possible to swap directly into the French lands, as very few French wanted to swap into the German lands, for the known reasons, so I tried for a swap within the German lands that would bring me closer to the border.

“The first swap had involved apparently harmless people. A delegation of revolutionary barter correspondents wanted a base in Kiev to visit villages all over the Ukrainian lands including the East and were planning to do the same in the Russian lands. In fact, they asked me on my final night in Kiev how I would suggest they go about that and I gave them comrade Sergei’s coordinates, comrade Sergei’s, part of the Moscow Recycling Hounds, not Sergei from Vympel’s of course. However, the second swap got me embroiled in a fasco network again.”

***

They had travelled for a whole day in the transporter and wondered why they had not switched to an orange beam. “Not safe,” Thorben had decided. “Think about who invented the orange beam? Comrade Yannick in connivance with this Maksim fellow, big buddy of Jean-Wadi, avid follower of the Illyrians. What if they have ways to find out who is travelling on their beams?”

Finally, they had arrived at a small farm house apparently deep in the Lithuanian forest. “The next village is 20 km away and already in the Russian lands,” said Viesturs. “Do you want me to leave you the transporter?”

“Yes!” said Pat. “No!” said Fritz. “That will attract too much attention. We might as well go back to beaming.”

Viesturs’ forest treat, by Maksim and Zhenya

“Anyway, let me know until tomorrow morning what you decide. Look around the house whether there is anything you need.” Viesturs had set up the house for them as workshop and accommodation just like the one ‘Beams and Bots’ in Novgornyi he had provided for the Hacking Pentagon. There was standard equipment made by Elon Deer, now a revolutionary of course, and his remaining fasco successors: a Three-D printer to print cash, cards, and coins, intranet phones able to boost lethal brown beams, and smaller tools and weapons, including syringes and petri dishes, robot arms to fill these with toxic vaccines and other drugs, assemble larger weapons, medical instruments, and robots, microscopes for humans to analyse and fine-tune their nefarious drugs. There was even packing material in the garage for the place to become a logistics station as the network became denser. This made the hexagon decide to keep Pappberger’s vehicle after all, just in case, and for completeness sake. And there was a third room full of computers, desktops and laptops, as well as imitation revolutionary harpoid robots and plushbots in the shape of local animals and birds.

“Do you think you have enough gadgets to hack their housing app with?” asked Viesturs.

“Are all of them intranet capable?” asked Knut.

“And are they capable of dealing with revolutionary security programmes, the Chinese wall security app, the Digital recycling hounds, and the Bio-thicket?” asked Thorben. “Meaning can they hack them and also avert their intrusions, of course.”

Out of Germany

Ex-oligarch apartment with nice view, by Jean-François and Alexandra

“The next swap,” comrade Abram continued his account, “brought me into an apartment overlooking the agglo of Stuttgart which turned to be one of Markus Nah’s hideouts. He was not as prominent in the counter-revolutionary movement as he later on became, and of course he was far from repenting still, but he had several houses and underground workshops. He was cooperating with former bio-technologists and pharmacologists as well as weapons’ producers, computer, robotics, other hi-tech specialists, and bankers worldwide.

“I did not get to meet him, people just whispered that my place, another two-room apartment was sort of in Nah’s cloud, his sphere of influence if you will. ‘If I were you!’ a German neighbour told me. ‘In all confidence, I should swap on and go to the French lands like you say you want to. You see, the German lands are not quite free yet, even in the revolution. The French are much better revolutionaries.’

“’They certainly are,’ I replied, and went about organising my way out.

“How did you get that place even?” Jean asked.

Abram shrugged. “Somebody in Berlin must have recognised me and thought that I was an unrepentant fasco or at least a vacillating revolutionary. I was supposed to swap with a family, but when I came, there was just the caretaker who let me in and gave me the keys, and the place while furnished, looked totally devoid of life, no kitchen tools, only very few utensils, no play corner in the living room, no children’s bed room, just a two-room cage, and by the way, no seeds of harp – no sign of pets, just a few drab flowers on the balcony. Anyway, for me it was alright, since I was staying at Illyria, and was only looking for somebody in Aimeran and vicinity to want to move to the German lands, for work, study, revolutionary barter, for whatever reason. I thought in the still very populated region of Yvelines, finding someone like this would not be so difficult. In fact, I had to wait another year until I managed to swap out of the German lands.

“On my last stay there, I was almost out of the place already, I heard a key turn in the lock. I quickly went out to the balcony, and indeed, there was one of their innocuous black transporters parked in front of the door. I went back inside and heard loud voices from next door. When they were laughing very loudly I slowly, quietly turned the key in my bed room door. Good, at least I was safe for the moment. They would find it dodgy of course that the door was locked, they would be looking for a key, but until they had found it, I would have time to climb from the balcony or I might even be able to beam away. I very quickly gathered my belongings and stuffed them into my backpack. Then I went for a last listen at the door. They were celebrating, eating, drinking, maybe taking drugs and talking about “the greatest coup of all times,” which later turned out the float of a boat carrying a stomach cancer virus on the Seine all through Paris. This would have forced people to buy expensive pharmaceutical medicine they had produced against crypto, and maybe make concessions on assembly democracy, allocation via the economic circuit and the trefoil app as well.”

***

“Comrades, we have got them. Their new place is in a forest near Marijampole, close to the former border with the Russian lands. Nowadays, there isn’t any border at all anymore, just militia controls if there has been a natural emergency, an accident, or criminals on the run. This means that from this seat our criminals have easy access via intranet and bio-wifi, and also via vehicle and beam if they choose to, not only to the Baltics, but also Poland, neighbouring parts of Russia, and can hack themselves into phones as far away as the French and Italian lands.

The housing swap app, before and after the hack, by Jean-Luc and Marius

“Which they did, and look what has become of our housing app. It was all well-organised with plans, pictures, and suggestions where to look further. Now after the hack, it looks drab and has not got any pictures or plans. As we said, it asks meaningless questions, and scrambles the categories. For instance, instead of a straightforward search for three-room apartments, you get lots of approximate and even completely different offers. The whole search ends up not in a move forward higher comfort for the families, as well as overcoming the difference between agglo and countryside, encouraging the move to a small, environment-friendly house and, ultimately, to the forest, but instead the suggested move is to look for something completely different, for instance, two- or four bedroom apartments. And the ultimate insult is the suggestion to buy a fasco villa for crypto, possibly facing a huge mortgage and the need to slave for the fascos either in one’s free time, or even to quit one’s main job and be alienated from the economic circuit, free distribution at market stalls and share points, and even neighbourhood, workplace, and village assemblies.”

“We market stall holders would never have somebody go hungry just on the suspicion that he or she works for crypto!” protested Aini.

“I know that, but working for them makes you ashamed and paranoid. You might no longer go to the market and share points, just because you are afraid you might get refused, not that you would be.”

“Anyway, the worst thing about the hack is that they gained access to the data base of users, this is how they got the information that you, Abram, had looked at your old house. Not only can they use these data for all kinds of slander, but there are also rumours that they are even planning bomb and drone attacks against some houses and even villages, including Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp.”

“Oh, mon Dieu,” said comrade Annie, using her old favourite, being slightly reactionary saying.

“Yes, so we had to shut down the whole data base. People may still do housing swaps with what remains of the app, but they will have to place a search for the owner of the apartment or house intraline and wait for an answer via bio-wifi before they can contact him or her and learn details and see pictures of the house or apartment.”

“Of course, that’s preferable to dying in a hail of bombs.”

“Moreover, we are asking people to tell us about any attempts at selling real estate against crypto. They can then immediately shut down the corresponding page.”

Abram clapped. “Don’t worry. Either we’ll find them, or they’ll lose interest in this hack and move on to other things. You said you had an idea where they are based. Why doesn’t a local spontaneous militia brigade just go in and lift them?”

“Yes , of course it could. Anyway, Jean-Wadi, Zafira, Jean-Saïd, Natalie, Maksim, Danya, Zhenya and a second brigade of students from the area are already hiding in a tree house in the area and bio-streaming everything they do. Bio-streaming means that any harpist can do the streaming, humans, birds and other animals, trees and other plants, as well as devices of theirs we have hijacked. So, we are on to them.

“Yet is a hack a crime? It is the same question we were facing when we tried the Hacking Pentagon for altering our Minutes. We ended up basing our prosecution on the fact that they were robbing our memories, thus attacking our integrity, which is akin to murder. Yet even Yannick and Ivan are repenting mainly for torturing Raphaël and Tizian and contributing in the development of weapons, Yannick insists that the hack of the minutes was just a joke.”

“Well, you can’t force us to wait with the arrests until they attack innocent home swappers!” comrade Denis reacted angrily, but comrade Abram appeased him. “Maybe by the time I finish telling my swapping stories, we will have enough against them. After all, by forcing us to lock our records, they are stealing collective memories as well, this time on a world-wide basis.”

The old Castle in the Marais

The Hôtel de Taizé in Paris, by Petit Pierre and Orel

“So, remember, I had hoped to swap from Stuttgart directly into Yvelines, even the Aimeran area, but that turned out to be impossible. As described by Engels, and as was practice even in the 21st century up to the world revolution, people mainly wanted to swap into or between agglos, for example, back to Stuttgart from Paris, or some of them from Nanterre. They had been researchers at Université de Nanterre or revolutionary barter correspondents and wanted to return to the German lands. However, they had families and their Paris apartments had been too large. I needed a studio apartment, a small two-room or a one bed-room apartment, or a small garden house. Finally, I found a Polish couple with whom it was possible to swap. They had restored some of the old castle-type villas in the Marais and had even lived in one, and wanted to move on to other projects in Stuttgart and Freiburg. So, for a few months, I had the great privilege of living in such a castle, the Hôtel de Taizé as it was known. It even had its own well, where you could get your two buckets of water to take your shower from.

“You would think that even fasco wreckers would not touch beautiful castles like that. Yet during the time I was there, they organised at least two catastrophes. One, a filter of some kind, stopped the well water from rising and forced us to rely on the remains of the central water grid for a few days. “The second was even worse, a fire broke out, and we inhabitants were pretty sure it was arson. Yet let me relate you the two incidents one after the other.

“The water incident was most embarrassing for me as a host because I had invited my beloved comrade Francine, as well as her older daughter Georgette and boy-friend Che with their son, Little Salvador, Francine’s younger daughter Natalie and boy-friend Jean-Saïd, who did not have baby Lina yet, and luckily, we had comrade Marianne’s and Patrick’s or rather Aslan’s son, young comrade Olivier with us for security.

“It smells real mouldy like in an old castle,” Georgette already noted as we entered, and I answered that was strange, because last time I had been there – I had been in Illyria for the last few weeks –, it had been quite dry still form all the hot weather. Then when we entered the apartment, what a shock. In the kitchen, you had the water to your ankle, and while the living room and the bathroom were still dry, there was a big puddle of water in the left corner opposite my bed.

“To our shock, Little Salvador immediately marched into the kitchen and started to throw the water all around him. Georgette was barely able to contain him and then had to take care of him, while Che, Jean-Saïd, and Natalie scooped up and wiped away the water first in the kitchen and then in my bedroom as well.

“I was not even able to thank them properly, because my neighbour was at the door saying: ‘Good that you are there, comrade, we are about to hold a neighbourhood assembly. We have water in our apartments as well, and the well was blocked up, we pulled up this monster.” And he showed a huge metal sieve which for a few days at least had prevented the neighbours from getting water from the well, be it that it had fine holes in it.

“At the house assembly, in the presence of all four neighbourhood assemblies, consisting of six households each, me being one of them, those who had been there the whole time told the story. ‘First, we noticed the blockage of the well. We thought at first that it had natural causes, that the heat had dried up the ground water, or that the little water that there was had been unable to dissolve some plugs on the way up. So, we tried using the water mains. After all, that is why we still have it, in the central villages of Paris, to solve transitional problems while we return to the well mode. Yet now we have this problem. We got similar inundations in our apartments as well, so we called an ÉdF brigade, engineers and plumbers examined the situation and noticed that all of our lead-in pipes had been clogged, some of them even punctured, yours probably as well, but we did not open your door, since we knew you would come today and find out. You see, we did not want to upset you even before you came.’”

The neighbours had always been quite polite, said they liked me, and called me the wise comrade from Ukraine. Yet of course, they had wondered why I was never there. And now, naturally, they were eyeing comrades Francine and the young comrades curiously. Was she my wife? “No, but she is my sweetheart.” “Are these your children and grandchildren?” “No, the two girls are Francine’s, and these two boys,” and I pointed at Che and Olivier, “are her lover’s son and adoptive son.” “Sounds, like you are having a real revolutionary love life at your cooperative,” said one of the men. “And I bet you want to get out of here now. The other day, somebody stopped by for you. He said he had seen your ad in the housing app, and had a cabin in the woods near Aimeran to propose to you. I said you would surely be interested and asked him, when would he be able to move in. He prevaricated on that, and he did not leave his name. Did he get in touch with you, by any chance?”

“No,” I blushed, because I had not told you about this man and my suspicions regarding him yet, but now in the middle of this flood was not the time to discuss this problem. It took the plumbers several days to fix all the pipes and clean the well, and then the Hôtel de Taizé was repaired again and my apartment in particular swap-ready again.

““In the context of deconstruction as well, a series of emergencies made me think that either some of the restorators had not been so good or that fasco wreckers had been at work here as well. In fact, I did not hear from the strange man again for the next few weeks. I say strange because I thought I had heard him mention crypto on the phone or rather intraline, by that time, that was in Year 15, we were already beginning to use intraline a lot. Then all of a sudden, I got a call from the neighbour who had talked to him, and already thought I had misheard, and he was just interested in a normal swap, but it was not about that. The neighbour was all excited and said to come quick: ‘Don’t fall over, but there has been another disaster. We have had a fire. We were able to quell it and it did not touch your apartment,’ which was on the third floor, by the way, ‘but we have had an expert there and he said it had to do with the experiments with implosion, piece-by-piece deconstruction, chemical, plant, and bacterial methods and nanobot carriers. Some people did not like them, and as a matter of fact they did not like the dinosaurs whom the surrounding assemblies had invited next either.

“‘How come they did not reach consensus at their assemblies,’ I wondered, while I was already speed-walking to the train-station, no need to take a beam for this solo mission, I thought, that was the time when the transport beams where only just being invented. ‘Usually, people are just too curious to see all of these methods in action and end up overcoming any petty doubts.’

“’Not recalcitrants,’ my friend from Hôtel de Taizé bio-messaged in explanation. “Criminals, or fascos if you will. Yet in this case, both sides may be fascos. There is a man from the workshop that did the experiments, IPCAN, for Implosion, Piece-by-piece or Plant, I am not sure, Chemical, Animal, and Nanobots. He is trying to convince us not even to wait for the dinosaurs to do their dance, especially as that might harm the old buildings that are still intact like the Hôtel de Taizé, but to sell out or pay crypto insurance. I swear, this was the dodgy alternative, he proposed to us.’”

When I arrived, the assembly was still going on in the courtyard of the castle, it was more like a village assembly, since many of the neighbours of the houses around us were present as well. I immediately joined in, and asked people to wait for comrades Léon and Danton to come and explain their methods better than this comrade from IPCAN apparently had been able to.

“Well, they came, maybe they even beamed in from Illyria or they had been at their college, Ponts et Chaussées, anyway, they were there extremely quickly. They asked where the fire had broken out, and it turned out that it was on the side of the castle opposite to the one where deconstruction had been taking place, and moreover, no implosion or chemicals had been used at all, just piece-by-piece deconstruction, plant, and bacteria.

“You have completed this stage now,” said Léon to the comrade from IPCAN, after having examined the buildings, “and I agree with you, the buildings close by are too old and venerable to be deconstructed, but these ones where the plants and bacteria did the loosening up can be brought down further by the dinosaurs and then the pieces can be hauled to the countryside and used in new houses.”

“What if the trampling of the dinosaurs harms the static of the old buildings?” asked the IPCAN engineer.

“’It won’t,’ said comrade Cédric, who had joined intraline from the robot workshop. ‘We can fine-tune the rhythm to which the dinosaurs move to match exactly with the oscillations of the buildings to be deconstructed. Only that building will crumble, you shall see.’ I decided to stay overnight and witness the dance since I had never anything like it before. By now, of course, we have had several deconstructions just like it near Illyria as well, and I am becoming an expert myself.

“Lo, and behold, next morning, when everybody had gathered in a respectful distance of the two buildings to be brought down, one after the other, by the dance of the dinos, who arrived, even before the sauruses? The man whom my neighbour had seen and with whom I had experienced that strange bio-call the other day.”

To Illyria

The Stranger watching the dance of the Dinosaurs, by Cédric and Melanie

Even as the dinosaurs arrived, began to move their feet to a tune Cédric was generating intraline and that only they could here, the strange guy bent over and whispered into my ear. “I’ve got a wonderful place for you!” And he bio-messaged me a picture of the place you all know, the cabin which is now the harpoid and haproid testing lab. “It is small, but in the middle of the woods like you advertised you wanted it and quite close to Aimeran and the cooperative of Illyria.”

Strange, I thought. Why did we never see the man at the market or share points in Aimeran? Yet I did not want to voice my doubts too openly, so I asked the same question my neighbour had asked. “D’accord, I know Damian,” that’s my neighbour, “showed you the place already. Would you like to see it again in more detail?”

“Oh, no,” said the man, pretending to be horrified by the dinos getting the walls of first the one, then the other building to crumble softly. “I want to get out of here.”

Well, maybe he was just terrified by the sauruses, I thought., so I asked more pointedly. “Well, for when the swap then? When do you want to move in here.”

Then he showed me a crypto card. “Oh, come on, Abram Rasskazovich, we know you, you are a veteran of the Cause, and you have more of those than I do. I am only thirty-two. How much are you willing to pay? Name a figure?”

I did not want to spook him so I pretended to be bargaining while I placed a cryptoleak at the same time. “One million crypto-francs, no, you are right, two million crypto-franc, but not a centime more.” A cryptoleak is something very similar to a hierarchy or a material check. You call, text, or nowadays bio-message your brigade, neighbourhood, village, workplace, whatever venue seems the most appropriate, or all of them if you are not sure or if it is an emergency – in this case, I messaged all of them –, and notify them that crypto is about to be exchanged somewhere or if you yourself are involved, that you are being extorted for some amount. If you are lucky, spontaneous militia will get a quorum from the village assembly fast enough to arrive and arrest the suspect or suspects before they flee. If you are unlucky… you may fall into the hands of the cryptoleak avengers who are reputed to be ruthless. I happened to be unlucky. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to an electro-vehicle, a registered delivery van, so it seemed, it had a little plate on the back of the windshield mentioning a name, that much I could see.

“My neighbour, the one who I had thought was a revolutionary with suspicions about the man, was driving the vehicle. So, two million, you said? Here is the card reader. Just swipe, and you will be through with it.” I hesitated for a moment. “Oh, come on. You will be through with it. We just bring you there, and then you can celebrate all night with your buddies. Or would you like an injection to make you nice and calm?”

“No, no,” I said. “I am fine.” I pulled out an old card. I did not even remember whether I had any crypto still on it, I would have to see to that later, so as not to have the cryptoleak avengers on my case double, for not paying as well as squealing.

“We’ll put money on it,” said the strange guy as if he had read my mind. “You’ll still be a rev, but you will again understand our side a little bit better from now on.”

“Oh, I see,” said Jean. “I always wondered how you had gotten that place. It seemed like a miracle. The old farmer who had owned the barn had moved away, closer to the agglo, to get better medical attention for his mother, and his son had wanted to make a gift of it to us. Yet then the same strange man showed up at his place and paid him crypto to yield the place and not breathe a word to anyone.”

“What did the son do with the crypto?”

“Oh, he brought it to Caisse d’Épargne-PTT,” Hélène said. “But he would not even describe the strange man and your neighbour like you have done. He was very scared of the cryptoleak avengers. Jérôme will tell us about them later. For now, continue your story.”

“Yes,” said Abram. “It was a nice barn, a bit dilapidated, but nice. I had always admired it on my walks, and it was only a stone throw away from Illyria. Yet when I inspected it closely after the two fellows were gone, I got a bad conscience immediately.”

“Why?” asked Robespierre with a grin. He knew what was coming because comrade Abram had told this story often.

“Well, while it looked small from outside, it was actually big inside, with a big living room and a kitchen that could double as chemical lab downstairs and a lot of space to train robots upstairs. So, basically, I made my mind up this evening already. I wanted to give the barn to you, young comrades, as you had complained not to have enough room in the robot lab at Illyria, and only to stay there sometimes, with Francine if she wanted to, or whomever, just for a bit of fresh air. I walked back to Illyria and told you that I had gotten it. And that is the epic story of my housing swaps completed. I went a bit faster than usual, because there are all these fasco hacks and other crimes going on.”

Re-emergence of crypto real estate markets

Reemergence of crypto real estate markets, by Jean-François and Alexandra

“Merci, Abram,” said Patrick. “It is always a pleasure to listen to you, and we’ll have this out as a text, audio, and video on l’Huma before the Nazis get a chance to hack it.”

“I wonder why this M. Strangeguy, as you called him, was so afraid of the dance of the dinosaurs?” asked Cédric. “There is nothing to worry about. We know what we are doing, we measure the oscillations exactly, and the dinosaurs are musical. They enjoy moving exactly in the rhythm we are giving them.”

“I don’t think he was afraid something would happen to any of the people or buildings around,” explained his father, Fabien. “They know the method as well. In fact, it is an old fasco method. The Boches, Nazis if you will, used it at the end of World War II to destroy bridges so as for the allies not to be able to follow too quickly.”

“Yes, only that they used cattle, or musical instruments even, rather than dinos,” added Colin, proud of his older brother’s work. “Using the dinos is a new idea.”

“And that is, I think, what upset M. Strangeguy,” said Jean-Wadi. “They are afraid of the dinos, because they are huge and have power and they are all siding with us. Think of all the things they have done for us already, transported the intranet, stored water, fertilised fields, danced…”

“And lately, they have even carried material, over short distances only, mind you, we are not exploiting them,” said Tim. “But because they are intelligent, sensitive beasts, they can even put roof beams into place…”

“Not only that, but they can help trees, even huge ones, who have stumbled during the march of the trees,” said Julie. “They are amazing.”

“We’ll get back to that later,” said Patrick, who was moderating. “But for the time being, let us talk about crypto real estate markets. We presented two cases already, that of your barn, Abram, and the one of Lavrenty and Stanislav buying you out. Evgeni and Tanya, do you want to talk about it?”

“Yes, actually, they presented it like a swap, but all the while hinted they would make it worth our while. We did not even know what they meant by that, but Sergei and Oleg later on explained it to us. We said, no, we did not want to swap, even though the house is small. We said we liked our neighbours, Natasha and Volodia, Lev and Gala, Olga and Gleb, and Oleg and Anya. Our son Maksim had been born in Pionerskii and had grown up in Novgornyi, and we would miss the place too much.”

“Oh, but you would not leave Novgornyi, you would just move a little bit closer to comrade Oleg as a matter of fact.”

“’Still, we like our farm.’ Their strategy was not clear to us, but somehow they wanted to push us out, so much was clear. Then, when we did not get at all warm, not even lukewarm, they were probably even afraid to raise the matter of crypto, they knew we were good revs, so they came with their insect spray. They almost finished off our young revolutionaries, Maksim, Zhenya, and Danya, and Zhenya may even have been pregnant with Little Misha already. And then when we discovered their lab, they fled and took comrade Jean-François as a hostage.

“Fortunately, Jean-François was able to find other revolutionaries among their mercs, Reigo, Lech, Andrzej, and others, and that way was able to disable or at least temporarily upset their nanobot sprays and their vaccines, their basic computer programme, Selfmade, and their crypto-banking along with their online crypto-shopping platforms, luxenligne, getwhatyouwant, raidliavas, etc. He thoroughly ridiculed quite a few of their barons, predecessors of what the Hacking Hexagon is today.”

“You were a real hero, young comrade!” nodded comrade Sergei, Senior Recycling Hound, from Moscow. “Yet the fascos are still around although they are using much subtler methods these days, pals shops staffed with new Ubermenschen, subtle hacks like of your protocols and the housing swap app, and developments of the brown beam that might relieve them of the need to use old-fashioned weapons, yet be just as lethal with their beams.”

“There are cases of a re-emerging real estate market here in the ex-U.S. as well,” said Malcolm, part of an antifascist movement of building engineers and other experts, mainly from disadvantaged groups, which also included comrades Josh, Miriam, Jason, and Kwanda, who were also active in mixed brigades in Palestine, Jesse, Luis, Barack, and Kamala, the blacks, as well as comrades Lee, Ling, and Masumi, the Asians, Randall, Mazanape, and Tatanka Ha, the Indians, Ernesto, José, Daniel, the Hispanics. And there are many others. The movement continues to grow.”

“Oh, yeah,” Josip cheered from Mali. “Meanwhile, the fascos are constructing villas for Ryan McLeary and Pat Handsome instead of stabilising the houses against the Niger floods. Same old elitism as before the revolution.”

“Not only that. Donald Trumpel has bought back under the table some deconstructing skyscrapers his ancestors owned,” said Ernesto. “And even some buildings in Havana, maybe with view to trying the coup that would fail in the big ex-U.S. there at first.”

“That is a very dangerous development,” nodded Jérôme. “yet let’s stick with the problem of cryptoleak avengers for now. Comrade Michel, you have done a lot of work on it.”

No retreat, no surrender. Cryptoleakers over Cryptoleak avengers

Cryptoleakers over Cryptoleak avengers, by Olivier and Danièle

“Yes,” said Michel, anti-fascist activist of long standing, and trained in China and Paris as a bio-engineer. “The idea of cryptoleak avengers goes beyond isolated attempts to bring back a real estate market. It entails taking revenge on anyone who squeals on fascos, so that you can no longer live secure. Manuel and André were local cryptoleak avengers before they defected to the revolution. Let me ask the two of you, did you have comrade Abram on the list after he had given you money for his hut?”

“Well, technically, he had not given us money, his old fortune no longer counts, you see. The counter-revolutionaries have given him, and as they see it, all of you Illyrians credit towards what is now your robot testing lab,” explained André.

“Unbelievable, the lies they come up with,” sighed comrade Denis. “Don’t they realise that money has been abolished?”

“And yes, they had him on the list for placing the cryptoleak check before they injected him and drove him to the hut.”

“Did they inject you, comrade Abram?”

“Yes, I almost forgot to mention that, they did, they always do that, when they capture someone, don’t they? Noah and Michelle as well, and also Raphaël and Tizian.”

“And this injection always contains not only their latest debilitating vaccine – right now, it is MA or Moral Atrophy –,” explained Peter Gar, “but also nanobots that stay in the body and that they can then charge via spray or beam with other poisons they want us to carry.”

“Why did they not act on it?”

“Because they have had comrade Jean on their list lately. He seems much more dangerous to them than comrade Abram. Remember, they – more precisely Thomas Rutte and Ronald Gunpump tried to kill him twice with lethal vaccine doses administered via a blowpipe.”

“Are Rutte and Gunpump cryptoleak avengers?”

Manuel and André chuckled. “These failed would-be barons? No way. You see, cryptoleak avengers are very special,” Manuel explained. “They train to kill. They do not make plans themselves, they only execute orders, so they are far more effective. With us, pardon with them, the failure and arrest Gunpump and Rutte suffered would not have happened.”

“Then why did they not ask you cryptoleak avengers to kill him?”

André shrugged. “Because Gunpump and Rutte wanted the glory, probably. Look what they have got now? They’ll probably get twenty years at least for attempted murder, beating up Marcus Nah, repentant ex-oligarch who had to make the lethal concoction and drive them to Paris, and threatening the poor ironsmith who had to make them the blowpipe. And the whole counter-revolutionary movement despises them. Look what a mess they made, a true acte gratuit, or should I say, meaningless act that achieved nothing, made heads roll all over the counter-revolution and exacerbated its strategy at the same time.”

“Why is that?” asked Jean.

“Well, the Pappbergerytes have lost to the Uberytes, of course, but that means that the Uberytes now have to finance and direct some of the violent branches of the Cause, or the Future, as the Uberytes call it.”

“Including you?”

Manuel laughed. “No, no, we finance ourselves. We take when we strike.”

“But it’s very seldom that you kill, isn’t it? You seem a very quiet, self-restrained group. One rarely sees you. What do you live on?”

“The markets, share points, nature. We like the idea of the march of the trees and the bio-thicket. It will protect us as well.”

“Well, you talk that way, because you are becoming much more like revolutionaries already. The cryptoleak avengers whom we intercept are much less optimistic. Mainly because they know that they are few, and we are many, in fact billions, trillions, nay quadrillions, nine million species multiplied by their 8 billion individuals on average, meaning 72 quadrillion living beings on earth, all of us moving, talking, singing, and discussing things. Of those, your fasco bosses are only a dwindling minority of a few dozen.”

The Hack resolved: Strengthening the Bio-Thicket

Strengthening the bio-thicket, by Jean-Wadi and Zafira

“Oh, that makes me think, we are gradually going back intraline with the housing swap app. Michel, Jérôme, and members of the robot brigade, please tell us, how can we prevent hacks like this in the future?” asked Nicole, who was moderating, herself being an expert on hierarchy checks in the spontaneous militia.

“It is becoming non-sensical to think of the intranet just as an internet only with live towers and other intranet-compatible towers carrying it, not dirty cables and ugly towers,” said Robespierre. “While the internet is vulnerable when it transports messages and needs elaborate security measures, the intranet creates its own protection along the way, live and non-live. Think of the Chinese Wall Security Suite, which is an intermediate step between internet and intranet protection. It is a literally wall consisting of electrical charges, and even as the messages move within these walls, the white noise created by these charges protects them. At the same time, you have the digital security hounds barking behind the fence, the wall, pardon, and sniffing the messages. Same in the intranet, but naturally. A human forwards a message to a tree top, the tree top to a squirrel, the squirrel to another bird, the bird to a fox, the fox to a cow, the cow to a dog, and the dog to another human. Along the way, the chirping of birds, the rustling of tree tops, bushes, and grasses, the bleating of the deer, the mooing of the cows, human voices, the barking of the dogs, and so on, and so forth, the whole nature chorus protects the message much more effectively than a man-made security suite could.”

“Think of it also this way,” added Jean-Wadi, speaking from Novgornyi. “Not only audible noises create white noise. So does the thinking of humans, and other harpists, especially at the low frequencies the intranet travels by.”

“Delta waves from 0.5-4 Hz travel even in deep sleep and are very difficult to hack,” added Josip, who was still in Mali with Rosa, Maher, Karla, Noah, Michelle, Seth, and Saïd, working as a permanent, rotating Illyrian brigade on preparing the march of the trees from the Congo and the regreening of Timbuktu along the way. “We used delta waves to communicate with comrades Noah and Michelle, when the fascos had abducted them and were able to determine their location and show up to free them without being detected by the fascos until the very last minute. “Again, theta waves, from 4-8 Hz, can be used to transmit conversations, alpha waves, from 8-12 Hz, for theatre, videos, and school settings, beta waves, from 12-30 Hz, for sophisticated presentations, and gamma waves, 30-100 Hz, for news flashes, planning, and instant sync. You need to send some really urgent news via gamma wave? Then insulate it with beta and alpha waves transporting media, school and similarly unrelated and innocuous content, and then still surround it with theta wave conversations not only between humans, but animals, robots, and plants as well. That’s the bio-thicket. It makes gamma waves almost as undetectable as delta waves.”

“How do harpists do the sniffing that digital hounds or traditional virus programmes do?” wondered Monique.

“They examine messages, invite other harpists to comment, and listen to their opinions,” answered Sylvain.

“So, in that sense, having more harpists wouldn’t cause any harm?” asked Monique, expert on education and finding the revolutionary purpose of every young comrade.

“Absolutely,” said Jean. “The one-child policy is a capitalist legacy. We came up with the revolutionary purpose to be able to counter this stricture. Every harpist is welcome as long as he, she, or it is not a fascist.”

“Do you think, we’ll really be able to store our data in other harpists?” wondered Zamira.

“We have stored it in huge, but fragile and easily accessible mainframes for decades. Any squirrel in a park would keep a secret better, I should think,” answered Jérôme.

“Yet from what I understand, the data travel from harpist to harpist in ever larger circles, just like in a web. Can’t we lose our data that way?” asked Leyla.

“Again, just as easily as in a network of remote servers,” Jérôme’s buddy, comrade Michel assuaged everybody. “And remember, some of us even used to pay money to Microsoft, google, facebook, X… What was safe about capitalists guarding your data, using them for advertising, and sometimes even charging for them on top of it?”

Housing Swaps in the World of the Harp

Housing swaps in the world of the harp, by Julie and Zelim-Philippe

“In a way, the hacking hexagon did us a favour. The housing swap app will have to change as the forests return, we return to the forests, and our villages expand to become villages of the harp. We and our chicken shall soon swap coops and pastures as well. Birds shall swap nests, or at least places where to build them, bees shall swap hive locations, ants shall advertise their colonies, rabbits their burrows, and flowers, grass, and even bushes and trees their preferred rooting locations. As we’ll have so many homes to swap, our housing swap app shall have a huge bio-thicket around it. Moreover, it shall be dispersed in brains, cell nuclei, and other memory locations, and therefore much less vulnerable, a bit like our agglos have become less vulnerable by becoming villages again. Our victory is certain! We are the overwhelming majority, they are a few criminals clinging to power. We have nothing to fear.”

The discussions and adventures of the comrades at Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp at Aimeran, the neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis, their friends world-wide, including of course the disabused and rehabilitating fasco proletariat shall continue in Life in Communism 2.1. Food for everybody – food for all, Intifada – Antifada – Revolution, Gasping for Air, Revolutionary Accounting, Les Jours Heureux. Wonder Cattle, The Metalmongers, and The Kindergarden Manifesto Second Edition.

Map of Illyria and Aimeran at the time of comrade Jean’s, comrades Raphaël and Tizian’s, and comrade Abram’s presentation “Life in Communism 2.1. The Housing Question”, in early autumn of Year 20 of the Revolution, by Marius and Jean-Luc

Maps and Plans of our rural cooperative Illyria, Yvelines, and our neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove on 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis, state in the autumn of Year 20 of the Revolution during comrade Jean’s, comrades Raphaël and Tizian’s, and comrade Abram’s presentation “Life in Communism 2.1. The Housing Question”, there are 17 three-room apartments with the bedrooms occupied as follows, 3^rd generation Young Revolutionaries marked in italics, 4^th generation Young Revolutionaries in bold italics:

Apartments in the old Farmhouse

Apartments above the Robot Workshop

Apartments above the Stables

Apartments above the Furniture and Clothes Workshops

Dark blue: furniture workshop, light blue: clothes workshop

Inhabitants of the Garden Colony and the Manouche Camp

Neighbourhood Assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis

Yellow: first floor, youth club; Green: second floor; Red: third floor; Blue: fourth floor, and violet: fifth floor. 2^nd and 3^rd floors: Casa Latina Russki Dom, 4^th and 5^th floor: Peace Dove.

Other books by Carla O’Gallchobhair you will enjoy:

Life in Communism 2.1. Anarchy and other urgent tasks of the revolution, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. The revolution is still experiencing trouble in overcoming the last remnants of capitalism and eliminating its violent branch, the capitalist sponsors and fasco barons committing crimes with weapons and toxins produced underground. This makes comrade Jean deduce that the revolution needs a new boost, a move from socialist direct democracy to complete anarchy. In anarchy, we revolutionaries shall not only abolish the state and rotate all position of authority, including fore(wo)men, chair(wo)men, moderators, managers and accountants etc. but abolish these positions altogether just as we abolished politicians, armies, and police services in the world revolution of 2021, Year Zero. And apart from hierarchy and material checks, we shall also develop a spontaneous trefoil check for the harp community – humans, animals, robots and other intelligent things, and plants –, to make sure everybody gets what they need. While the Illyrians start to discuss the details, the African capexogarchs, American Uberytes and their Pappbergeryte mercs are trying to stop the regreening of Timbuktu, providing ample evidence of the challenges facing permanent revolution and anarchy.

Life in Communism 2.1.

Anarchy and other urgent Tasks of the Revolution, First Edition

by Carla O’Gallchobhair

Dedicated to Jean Moulin

To Mamon, Cathal, Tanya, Evgeni, Maksim, Zhenya,

Misha, Yvonne, Odile, and Jean-Michel,

Vicky and Nora

and all other anti-fascist resistance fighters

of the 21^st century

“No power to anyone!”

Anonymous

“If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he or she would be worse than the Tsar himself.”

Mikhail Bakunin

“I am only free if all other beings are equally free.”

Mikhail Bakunin

“Anarchy is free agreements between individuals and groups.”

Petr Kropotkin

“Democracy is a permanent conversation.”

Willy Brandt

“When politics and home life have become the same thing, we shall be in a state of perfect democracy or anarchy.”

Lev Tolstoi

Table of Contents

Preface in Illyria and Saint-Denis. A Walk in the Woods

Chapter 1. The Revolution that became permanent. It is all a matter of discussion

Chapter 2. Make rotation spontaneous!

Chapter 3. Get rid of all vestiges of authority – hierarchy checks

Chapter 4. Material checks – a matter of pride!

Chapter 5. We must have a spontaneous trefoil check!

Chapter 6. Fully implement the Harp!

Chapter 7. And the march of the trees

Chapter 8. Special difficulties: how to rehabilitate fasco criminals!

Chapter 9. We must stand back sometimes!

Postscript in Illyria and Saint-Denis. A Preview of Minutes

Preface in Illyria and Saint-Denis. A Walk in the Woods

Summer of Year 20 of the Revolution, 2021 being Year Zero

A walk in the woods, by Jean-Fidel and Lénina

He was walking from Illyria in the direction of Aimeran railway station, fondly remembering all the various walks to school, university, work, and social activity he had taken in his life. He was trying to decide which was the most memorable one, the one from his old bachelor’s apartment in Rue la Villette via the Buttes de Chaumont to the PCF headquarters on Place du Colonel Fabien or this one from Illyria to the railway station of Aimeran in order to take the train into Paris to his various activities at Bridgestone, his old enterprise fabricating tyres, at the high-security prison Fleury-Mérogis as a prison worker, at one of the many rallies, and at the many very important meetings. Today’s at the engineering school Ponts et Chaussées, where young comrades Léon, Danton, Martine, and others were active researchers – and at the youth club in Saint-Denis, were going to be on deconstructing the agglos and regreening them, not only here in the French lands but as far away as Timbuktu, Mali. Suddenly, something hit him in the neck, a big insect or a chestnut?

To his luck, he whirled around quickly. The thing fell off. Oh, mon Dieu, as comrade Annie would still put it centuries after the separation of religion and state, it was a syringe of sorts with an arrow tip on it. This was an attack! Somebody was trying to murder or at least poison him. And then his head turned, he lost the force of his legs and collapsed.

Jean’s visitors in the policlinic, by Zamir and Odile

“Comrade Jean, come back, comrade René says you got less than ten percent of the dose, that can’t have killed you, come back!” That was Mina.

“Don’t be silly, it’s only a little MA, Moral Atrophy, it will pass!” That was Hélène.

“Papa, papa, wake up!” That was his twelve-year-old son Zamir, standing next to his bed with his little girl-fried Odile. Three of his four grown-up sons, 19-year old Jean-Wadi, 18-year-old Maher, and 17-year old Jean-Saïd were in the Mali region for the ‘Regreening Timbuktu’ project. They looked fondly and worried at their papa from a virtual intranet-bio-wifi monitor that you could visualise in your brain and also project to somewhere outside, a wall, for instance. Rashida and his son Little Tahir had also managed to squeeze into the picture.

Intranet and bio-wifi of course are the low-frequency way of communication of the world revolution via delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma waves with 100 Hz maximum frequency instead of 5-6 Giga-Hz for the capitalist internet. Intranet and bio-wifi have also eliminated the need for devices as all harpists can transmit it, all plants – trees, bushes, flowers, and grasses, even moss and algae –, all animals, from the largest time-travelled dinosaur to the smallest insect, all humans, and also many intranet-capable materials and things, including water, wood, and natural textiles.

From the door of Jean’s room in the policlinic, comrades Inès and her younger brother Jean-Fidel were waving. Both were comrade Claudia’s, but Inès was Miguel’s, while young comrade Jean-Fidel was his very own, born in Year 2 of the revolution like Maher.

“I did not know the fascos could shoot with poison darts as well,” comrade Jean-Fidel bio-messaged his dad so as not to attract too much attention to them butting in. “But I am sure you’ll get well soon.”

And then to Jean’s special joy, comrade René, the doctor, allowed Inès’ and his 5-year-old son Ramón who already aspired to becoming a doctor, to crawl on his papa’s bed and try his stethoscope and toy thermometer on Jean.

“There is no risk of contagion, is there?” asked Jean. “You said the syringe contained the MA virus?”

“Yes, but we gave you Echinacea and other natural counter-remedies already,” comrade René assuaged him. “They will help you protect Little Ramón as well.”

“Any idea who is behind it?” Patrick, one of the editors of the l’Humanité media channel asked intraline from the Illyrian’s visitors’ apartment at the neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove, 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis. “On the basis of the policlinic’s examination, I mean. Of course, spontaneous militia will do a forensic check.”

“We think it was either Ronald Gunpump, or Flinge, as he calls himself in French, he is ex-Rheinmetall, and or Thomas Rutte, he is just a nasty merc. He runs here in the French lands under the alias of Béranger. The others, especially Édouard Stérilé and Arnaud Arrolle, and the mercs under their control, Jordan, Kévin, and Raymond are not quite as vicious, plus we have grounds to believe we have seen them today in Timbuktu. And Fritz Schneid, now alias Snite, as well…,” said Jean-Saïd.

“Our German comrades call him Schnitzel,” interjected Misha intraline from the garden colony where he was helping his mamon edit the minutes or protocols of Illyria’s meetings. “That is just a fatty, salty piece of meat.” They all had to laugh, relieved that Jean had made it.

“Are you fit enough to start your presentation from here later on tonight?” Jean-Wadi asked.

“Not from here but from Illyria’s youth club where I ought to do it,” Jean growled and as if by magic, comrade Fabien, driver at the free, self-managed logistics organisation near Illyria now showed up at the door with Hélène’s daughter Véro and her boy-friend Laurent. They escorted Jean to the vehicle and drove him the five kilometres from Aimeran centre where the policlinic was located near the train station back to Illyria. Five kilometres that he would have so much liked to finish walking this morning.

“Comrade Noah, while Jean is getting ready, would you like to take over here with the latest from Timbuktu, Mali where we Illyrians are involved in a major regreening effort, aren’t we?” asked comrade Abram, who was moderating.

Chapter 1. The Revolution that became permanent. It is all a matter of discussion

The two Mali brigades, by Josip and Rosa, from top left to bottom right: Jean-Vladimir, Saïd, Rodion, Aslan, Zelim, Muhammed, Noah, Michelle, Jean-Wadi, Jean-Saïd, Josip, Rosa, Maher, and Karla

“Not only me, but all the other members of the two Mali brigades as well, the scientists, comrade Michelle, our survey expert on site, young comrades Jean-Wadi, Jean-Saïd, Josip, and Rosa, physical engineers, young comrades Maher and Karla, chemical engineers, as well as comrades Jean-Vladimir, Saïd, Rodion, and our three Chechen comrades, Muhammed, Aslan, Zelim, and I, peacemakers and security experts. The others, comrades Olivier, Lulu with Little Bouna, Adilah with Little Akila, and Rashida with Little Tahir, are keeping in the background in Tripoli or at the Nelson Mandela coop on Lake Chad to pop in when the need arises.

“And as I said before, I am very glad that comrade Jean has jumped in already. Other comrades as well may go ahead with their presentations, because given the fasco sabotage and also the late effects of capitalist global warming, regreening Timbuktu and Mali and the Sahel as a whole may take a lot longer than we anticipated.”

“What is that grey thing in the sky in your picture, comrades Josip and Rosa?” asked 11-year-old Odile.

“It’s a fasco surveillance drone, a pilotless aircraft, hard to even imagine for you since the revolutionary village assemblies have forbidden all airplanes, even those with pilots, except harmless small rescue and emergency and research planes functioning by wind and solar power only. They are assembling these drones at some of their new workshops, more of them in a minute. Peter Gar and Égale are still in Sudan. What’s the situation over there?”

Peter Gar and Égale in Sudan, by Zamir and Odile

“The strange thing in Sudan is that on the one hand, there has been the revolution. That means we have the brigades, neighbourhood, workers’ and village assemblies all on the same level, and with positions of authority – fore(wo)men, chairing household, moderator, and so on –, rotating on the hour or at least every day. Yet at the same time we have an anachronistic fight over territory going on between the army of the old bourgeois state and some Islamist forces on the one and the reformists and revolutionaries on the other. They even use tanks and heavy artillery that we thought we had recycled already in Year 1 of the revolution. We’ll have better news on self-dissolution of these forces and a peace agreement soon, hopefully. As for now, merci for staying alive, comrade Jean!” Everybody clapped, in Illyria, and friends and comrades as far away as Sudan, Djibouti, Chad, and Mali. “You might as well have stayed here in Africa, comrade Jean,” I, comrade Noah, added. “It turns out you might have been safer in the Sahel desert than in the forest around Illyria.

“Anyway, Timbuktu, our agglo, shall become green if the fascos will only let us. And yeah, we have seen them, Édouard, Arnaud, Fritz, Jordan, Kévin, and Raymond, all of them, even two veiled figures that looked like the two women, Anne and Marion, except for, you guessed it, Ronald and Thomas. Therefore, we assume they were the ones who double-backed to the French lands to execute their long-planned revenge act on you. I bet had you not shaken it off but taken the whole lot, you might be dead now… And they have come up with a new truc or trickalready. This time it is water stations.

The fascos entering a Water Station in Timbuktu, by Jean-Wadi and Zafira

“Oh, we can see on the intraline-feed that papa, eh comrade Jean has arrived and is about ready to start. Before he does, let us quickly explain this latest con of theirs,” said young comrade Jean-Saïd. “The water stations can be considered a special form of the ex-capitalist, so-called logistics stations. These underground stations pick up, transport, and deliver goods just as our self-managed, revolutionary, and free logistics organisations would. Yet theirs do it against pay, in old currency, crypto, tokens, vouchers, and so on. In addition, the water station workers guard a well and or the mains, store and deliver water, and repair water pipes, just like the revolutionary well and other water outlet workers and our revolutionary canal workers and plumbers would. Yet again, we do it for free, while the fascos will only do it against pay, in fake currency, crypto, or tokens, hardly any in vouchers, since the revolution does not issue any vouchers any more. After all, we have the trefoil consisting of free allocation and distribution, simple sharing, and revolutionary barter.

“Having part of the water under control would not only allow them to stop or at least control part of our regreening efforts, the march of the trees in particular, but also to spoil some Mali people and starve others. Those holding the water stations would be dictators, basically. So, we had to help the Malians do something about it immediately. And we used comrade Olivier’s method he proposed in Niamey. We went there, pretending, no actually, acting as who we were, ecologists preparing the regreening and the march of the trees. Of course, we made sure not to go where they knew us or some of us, least of all to the water station our Franco-German fascos have put up camp in. We know what they are up to. They want to confer with the African capexogarchs, the Uberytes in North America and Europe, and even the Pappbergeryte duo, Ronald Gunpump and Thomas Rutte that has attacked you, papa, more of all that later. Let us first tell you about our visit to the water stations.

“We did not say we were cryptoleakers, short for leakers on crypto deals, instead we pretended to be Uberytes ourselves.

“Oh,” Jean-Wadi said to the guard, looking at the sign over the gate. “You are just a water station, we thought you were a logistics station. Come, pals, we must go elsewhere!”

“He used the word pals on purpose, obviously. Pals to the initiated stands for policlinic – amusement club – logistics station – sports studio, the offerings of the Uberytes, as well as for people who use, manage, or work at such underground capitalist ventures. The man cringed. “No, no, we are a logistics station alright, we just don’t want to make it too obvious. Look what it says here.” Maher deciphered the French translation in fine print: “1)Consultancy on water issues, regreening, and march of the trees. 2) Pick-up, transport, and delivery. Well, point 1 is what we are interested in. May we come in?”

The man nodded and led us past a garage with a few transporters parked in the shade into a busy workshop in which people were packing, guess what? Syringes, presumably with Moral Atrophy, White Phosphorus, or possibly neuro-transmitters in them. The blue, white, and rainbow coloured syringes were coming out of two large Elon Deer 3D printers in back of the room. Then three pairs of robot arms marked with blue, white, or rainbow circles respectively filled them with the appropriate liquid containing Moral Atrophy, White Phosphorus, or neuro-transmitters transported by sub-microscopic nanobots. Amazingly, the huge robot arms were dexterous enough to turn around to get flasks, also in blue, white, or rainbow colours from three huge fridges, and then empty the flasks neatly into the syringes.

“Never seen anything like it I bet?” asked who was presumably the brigadier of the day. “By the way, my name is Abdoulaye.”

“Oh, yes,” said Maher. “It’s revolutionary robot technology from the French lands. We have the same in our workshop.” Josip stepped on his toe, but it was too late. The man set up a broad grin.

“Well, welcome to revolutionary green Timbuktu then,” Abdoulaye said. “Here, Moussa, Oumou, Amadou, Ousmane, and Souleymane are our spontaneous militia in this shop. Issa, Bakary, Ibrahim, Mobido, Yaya, Abdoul, and Dramane work with us. We all pretend to be either counter-revolutionaries or interested in their crypto-salaries. We are trying to find out the addresses of all the other water stations in Timbuktu…”

“Oh, we’ve got those!” said Jean-Saïd.

“Are there five on the list beyond ours? Yeah? Well, then it is the list we have already been able to confirm. We can give you some of the unconfirmed addresses, then you can help us do the work. Except for, I have seen you’ve got women with you,” but then his eyes lighted up when he saw our comrades security experts behind us. “Oh, great, you’ve got fighter types as well. You see, there is this one station we would like to smoke out a.s.a.p., because some foreign capexogarchs have arrived there already, and there are rumours in the bio-net that they are going to have a big strategy conference this afternoon and tonight.”

“Well, they know us, so it would probably not be a good idea to show up, at least not all of us,” I, Noah, said.

“But you could do what we did in Niamey,” continued comrade Saïd. “Listen to them intraline, and then as soon as there is enough evidence for wrong-doing, get a quorum for a spontaneous militia brigade to go in from the relevant village or block assembly.”

“We’ve got one, but it is only for reclaiming this one workshop, and their lair would be in a different area of town as well. This one is in a proletarian quarter. But you see, we do not even want this conference to go down in the first place. We don’t want them to come up with ever new ways to block the revolution. But yeah, we can see, if they know you already, it is probably not a very good idea for anyone of you to go there.”

“Send another team like ours, all Malian, but also half-expert, half-security, and say you just want to talk water and regreening,” said Muhammed. “That will also increase our credibility in the other places we might go to.”

“’D’accord,’ they said, they would do that, and they also gave us a list of five other joints that we could go to. Of course, I, Noah, proposed to maybe split up, and maybe for one or two of us to go to the headquarters of the capexogarchs together with the others, but my other comrades in Illyria’s two Mali brigades rejected this proposal.

“We are not here to get killed,” said Aslan, and Josip explained that, “I feel arresting an armed and potentially violent fasco is not a test of valour like a university entry presentation. The latter can be a source of pride, because you on your own have been able to find out something or analyse something. That then gives you a backbone to cooperate with others in research and resist defamation. Fighting on the contrary is something best avoided or done with an 8:1 advantage like the old superpowers used to calculate.”

“So, we all went to another water station instead. There they were slightly more reticent, wanted to know whether we maybe knew some of the Uberytes by name and personally…

“’Oh, yes, we know all of them,’ we said. ‘There is Henri Uber, he does pals in Canada and the ex-U.S. Louis Deshalles and Larry Fink as well, but Deshalles also has stations in the French and German lands based on the old, pre-revolutionary DHL. Larry Fink has them in South America and the German lands based on the old Flink network. Viesturs Volt heads pals in the Baltics and has joints in the German lands, and Fernando Deliverando, that is only a cover name, of course, has them in the ex-U.S. and Italy.”

Their interrogator only frowned. “And Aliko Dangote, Nicky Oppenheimer, and Nasif Sawiris, do they know you?”

“Oh, yeah, of course, tell them, we are those new from the French lands with fresh proposals,” said Maher. “Me and my wife, we are bio-chemical engineers.”

“Oh,” said the man, and his face brightened up a little. “So, you are those who are here for the GMO?”

“GMO?” asked Maher, completely baffled, then continued brazenly. “And fertilisers… As a matter of fact, eh…” Then Rosa interrupted him. “Of course, the fast-growing GMO trees, that’s us.”

All of the Illyrians held their breath. What if she had not guessed right? They might end up on the poles again just as Noah, Seth, Jean-Vlad, Adilah, Jean-Wadi, and Malian comrade Liman had a few weeks ago at the uranium mine in Arlit when they had run into Schneid and Co. Only a marching tree and dinosaur intervention had saved them.

“That is great,” the man said. “Because we’ve got the drones here specifically intended to scout for the water deposits to tap for growing them. Wouldn’t make sense to plant them into arid soil, would it?

“Follow me,” and he led them into a hangar in the backyard almost fully taken up by two drones already assembled.

“They will transmit their pictures intraline to these two computers. And then we may use them again to guide us to the best places to plant or rather sow the trees… My name is Drissa, by the way. Do you have the seeds with you?”

“Yes, we do have some,” said Jean-Saïd, “and we can get more anytime from the French lands, by yellow transport beam, if necessary. But the process is not as simple as you think.”

“We would have to test them in some remote place first as we did in Djibouti and Chad,” added Jean-Wadi, rolling his eyes for fear of betraying anything, “see how fast they grow, before we plant them for participation in the march of the trees here in Mali.”

“Test them for what?” asked Drissa, slightly suspicious now. Some other workers were standing behind him now, looking at us. Yet clearly, they were not allowed to say a word. He was the undisputed boss at least for the day.

“For speed of growth and resilience, first of all,” said Maher, who had now recovered his countenance, “but also for environmental compatibility. How much water do they need? How do they take the Sahel sun?”

“You see, we tested them in the French lands as well, of course, close to our cooperative,” said Karla. “But the conditions are different here, of course.”

“Obviously,” said Drissa, now getting angry with himself. “I just told the local foreign Uberytes you are here, but they can’t place you. Could you repeat your names, please?”

Now Michelle’s, Jean-Wadi’s, Josip’s, and my smart phones, as a matter of fact plushbots already in the shape of various harpists – humans, animals, robots, and plants, Michelle’s, for example, was a pineapple, Jean-Wadi’s a palm tree, Josip’s a rose, and mine an elephant –, all started to ring very loudly at the same time. The four of us started to show the simultaneously distracted and focused look of somebody engaged in an important bio-call. Of course, there wasn’t anybody on the line. Saïd and Rodion, who were good with intranet and old internet phones had just triggered them to ring so as to allow us to bolt.

“Oh, sorry, we have to go, they are expecting us at another water station, as a matter of fact,” said Muhammed, and took the lead running out of the gate and back to our transporter, followed by the rest of us, with me, Saïd, Rodion, Zelim, and Aslan in back to fight them with red stun beams if need be. In the transporter, we only started to talk and bio-message again once we had pulled sufficient bio-thicket between us and the enemy.

Bio-thicket in the context of an agglo in the desert like Timbuktu, or Tombuktu, as it is also known, does not only refer to the “white noise” produced by human, plant and animal conversation as in our forest around Illyria, but also that of humans further away and intranet-capable materials such as stones and sand.

“I think we should go to one more place,” I, Noah, made my pitch again.

“Are you insane!?” asked Saïd. “Do you want to be brought down by an MA-infected arrow like comrade Jean, or even a firearm? We have made them suspicious enough. We found about one sabotage plan of theirs already, namely the GMO trees. What more do you want?”

“Let’s go closer at least to the place where they will meet. Let us take position somewhere like we did in Niamey when they had that poker game for villas and listen to them intraline. The bio-thicket doesn’t protect them, only one in every 2000 Malians has any capitalist or fascist sympathies left. The animals and plants around here don’t like them either, since their imperialist pollution created all the heat that makes them suffocate. And the intranet capable material? The colonialist-fascos don’t respect local ores, why should they respect them?

“I am a gold chain,” something whispered all of a sudden in their bio-wifi. “Go this way!” and it laid out an itinerary on Aurora maps. “Ring at my master’s place. He lives right behind them on a parallel street. From there you will have perfect reception and it has a high wall, they won’t hear you.

“It was true, the comrade and his family were true revolutionaries, calm, but very serious. They immediately allowed us in, and led us to the parents’ backroom where the magic gold chain was lying, unassuming, as if incapable of sending a bio-message, in one of the mothers’ jewellery boxes.

“Made of 100% Malian gold!” whispered our proud host. “It was my parent’s wedding gift to my first wife. I have three. The second and third ones got gold chains as well, no longer so heavy, but also 100% Malian gold, trust me!”

“Merci!” I whispered . “And now what?”

“Then all of a sudden, the room was full of next-door’s conversations. In moments of strong reception, we could even see them not only on the small virtual screen in our brains, part of the Aurora browser brain-app, but also on a huge one on the wall of the room. The sound was so loud then that the babies and toddlers in the neighbouring rooms started to cry.”

“So, remember the thrusts again,” they could hear Aliko Dangote’s voice with his head clearly visible on the screen. “Water stations, sports schools with weapon’s training, -let’s soft-pedal the amusement clubs, Mali is a Muslim region after all –, but go full blast for the policlinics, and add the gold mines.

“Nicky will brief us on those in a later meeting. Yet now, I’ll give the word to Nasif who has more on the Illyrians.”

“Yes, friends,” and we could hear Nasif’s voice, quieter than Aliko’s, but more modulated and confident, and his picture also appeared on the huge screen. “We have heard Ronald’s and Thomas’ report. Unfortunately, they were unable to kill Jean Pontonier. He managed to shake the arrow off in time and only got 10% of the lethal dose of the MA virus. He is now recovering at Illyria and has even started a new revolutionary campaign, which would entail the transition from what they call socialist or Communist democracy, whatever, to full-blown anarchy. Let’s hope their organisation lapses into chaos.”

“Well, we’ll get these fascos before that happens!” I, Noah, shouted and clenched my fists, so as to uphold everybody’s morale, but it was not necessary. The comrades all smiled and drank tea that the host’s wives were bringing us.

“Henri Uber has even signalled that we might contemplate negotiating with them,” Nasif continued. “‘F**k the state,’ he said. I heard him say it, no kidding. ‘They can keep their brigades, neighbourhood assemblies, village assemblies, and workplace assemblies, self-management and consensus principle if they want to. We can print currency, crypto, and what not, produce weapons and hire soldiers and policemen, what do we need the state for?’

“Well, and one way to make them go under faster will be our campaigns to sell weapons – for self-defence, mind you –, but which people can turn against revolutionaries as well of course, and also fast-growing GMO bushes and trees that will provide them with the illusion of a march of the trees but then die quickly and leave the soil about as dry and infertile as before. And we can help this result with synthetic fertiliser as well, of course, which moreover causes cancer in animals and wilting and drying in plants.”

“Oh, no, they are really extremely vicious,” said one of the host’s wives who was bringing in a giant fruit platter for us, followed by her two teenage daughters with two more. “Mohamed,” and she turned to her husband. “You and your friends will definitely have to do something about it.”

“True!” he nodded, and within minutes, the room was full of ten more friends of his, almost two full spontaneous militia brigades. “Well, do we have a quorum?” I asked. “Then we could go in and end their power phantasy at inception.”

It took only five-ten minutes or so to get the quorum intraline, although it was set at 50%. The village or rather quarter had only 600 residents, luckily, and they were all closely connected.

However, by the time we all climbed over the wall and entered the neighbouring house, the reactionary party had dissolved. Food, drink, even alcohol, tobacco, and drugs were still on the tables, some plates and glasses still half emptied, some cigarette and cigar stubs still glimmering, but the criminals were gone. Probably, they had gotten an hint of our mobilisation intraline, and had vamoosed on time.

“Yet, the results of our first day in Timbuktu, you must admit, comrades, are still impressive, “ I, Noah, concluded. “We and similar brigades were able to uncover about a dozen of their water stations, we know about their other plans, as if we hadn’t guessed them, weapons, gold, chemicals and GMO to wreck the march of the trees, and costly private medicine to sap Malians’ morale. Questions we must still ask are: What makes these saboteurs come back? Why are weapons still so attractive to them, whereas we revolutionaries actually could live in peace, as we have no grievances against each other. After all we are equals…?”

“That is the question we have asked ourselves in Sudan as well,” Peter Gar agreed intraline from the Nile.

“Why are money and in the Malian case gold as a money substitute still so attractive where we have the trefoil and everybody can get almost everything for free either completely free at a market, share point, workshop, public policlinic or school, or through simple sharing and revolutionary barter?” wondered young comrade Bashir, inventor of the free gauge.

“Giving a lot of camels or water buffalo for a magic gold chain like that, I could understand,” Peter Gar piped up again from Sudan. “But gold just as a security for crypto, that’s insane.”

“You are right, and finally, why do people still go to these fasco policlinics, where the attack on Jean and their own admissions at their gathering have just revealed again that their medicines and supposed antibodies are the opposite, they are dangerous, toxic and meant to kill?”

Make the revolution permanent, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

“Let us first go back to the time of the world revolution,” Jean took over for his part of the presentation. “And remember, before we lapse into pessimism, I am still alive and Noah and the Mali brigades almost arrested the crims on their very first day in Timbuktu. Venceremos, if we stick with the permanent revolution and yield not a centimetre on democracy and humanity.

“Let’s recall, the world revolution was different from earlier revolutions in France, Russia, China, and other places in that it occurred everywhere in the world at the same time, in summer of 2021, and with the same powerful actors,

the anti-vax movement against the Covet vaccination and the sanitary pass campaign that people identified correctly as just a scam to wash money into the coffers of Big Pharma,

the environmental movement against environmental poisons and other environmental degradations,

the student movement for better, non-hierarchical education accessible not only to the rich, but to everybody,

the peace movement against war and imperialist interventions by the capitalist North-West everywhere in the world,

the movement against social cutbacks and for workers’ rights in the North West and against abject poverty in the Global South,

the migrant movement against racism and anti-migrant policies where people tried to flee from these conditions,

the movement against oppression of LBGTQIA people, against the continued sexual exploitation of women and children, and against patriarchy,

the legitimate grievances of the exploited Middle Classes as represented by the Yellow Vests as well as of the small farmers, risking to be bought out by rich agro-entrepreneurs,

the movement for animal and plant rights, the true green movement for a more natural world… Yet it was not only all these movements that marched on the 14^th of July 2021, but literally everybody, the 99+ percent of the abused and exploited people that up to then had only been a construct in sociological writings. Because the revolution took place everywhere in the world, neighbouring states could not repress or contain it, nor could the police or armed forces within the countries. In fact, most policemen and soldiers laid down their arms and joined the revolution voluntarily. Where they did not and signed up with the so-called White Armies, our Communist speakers such as Russian Communist Gennady Grudinov quickly convinced them to give up and go home.

There were three main reasons the revolution was non-violent everywhere in the world, the first being the over 99 percent participating.

The second was the converse of that fact. Over 99 percent in favour of the revolution meant that at most one person in every hundred would be an active supporter of the reaction or counter-revolution, as we revolutionaries call their capexogarch, fascist movement. They prefer to call themselves by a variety of fancy names, the most widespread being the Cause, writ large, where it is understood that it is the cause of capitalism, bourgeois democracy, and the state. Yet with only 1 percent supporters they would have been far outnumbered and any attempt at quelling the world revolution by force of arms would have failed.

The third reason was the lucky coincidence that Covet being a world-wide health concern, rather than a war or uprising, taking up arms was not something most revolutionaries would have considered normal in 2021.

“And then on the following days, in every country, every region, every city – or every agglo as we say nowadays, because in the revolution we consider a town again a collection of villages –, in every village, families and households formed neighbourhood assemblies of seven households maximum. Village assemblies formed with a maximum of 2000 residents in the beginning, later 600, and nowadays only 200, so as to allow ample discussion. In the enterprises and workshops, workplace assemblies formed, where the old capitalist enterprises, often with 10000 workers and more, had to split up into smaller branches of 500 workers at first, now down to 50 workers, seven brigades à seven members maximum. Again, this is to allow all workers to participate in all planning, management, and accounting discussions and decisions, and to have their say on any dispute, hierarchy or material check that might arise.

“We realised that money was a thorny issue and that it would not do to pay everyone a workman’s wage, because capitalists would still use their old money or new credits they got from crypto-currency bankers to enslave and exploit people. We, that means most neighbourhood, village, and workplace assemblies in a region, often backed by local, regional, continental, and world-wide referendums decided to pass to an organisation of vouchers, revolutionary barter, at times supplemented by help from the neighbourhood assembly or trade union cells. We noticed this last method did not sit well with most people, and we soon replaced it by simple sharing. People share appliances, furniture, tools, household goods, books, toys, even clothes in the households and between them and bring whatever they don’t need to a share point to share with others.

”The share points, recognisable by a red dot on a blue background, soon became extremely popular. Together with the market stalls by local farmers and workshops, as well as the outlets of the workshops themselves, of course, they allow people to acquire almost everything they need, now that we have debunked the vouchers, simply for free. There have been of course a whole series of coups and sabotage attempts since the revolution, but as the gamut of free goods and service has expanded, the number of potential supporters the counter-revolutionaries could draw upon has dwindled from one in a hundred in Year Zero to one in 2000 now, Year 20.

“I noticed that back at the time when we were writing De la Démocratie, together, just as we are writing Anarchie et autres tâches urgentes de la révolution now, we spent a lot of time stating the obvious, that in the wake of the revolution, we had formed brigades and ephemeral councils of rotating foremen everywhere, that workplace assemblies were meeting, that we were doing material checks and practising hierarchyleaks and hierarchy checks and later on cryptoleaks and -checks, that we were organising surveys, repeated referendums and allowing anyone to call for both surveys and referendums…, and that we have been patient enough to debate things in neighbourhood, workplace and village assemblies literally until the cows come home, meaning until the cows join us in the harp assemblies.”

“Did some people call for silly referendums as well?” asked Zamir, and his father, knowing what he wanted to hear, rattled off a number of false metal and other fake environmentalist issues.

“Of course. In year 7, some people asked for a one child policy. In year 8, some people, probably reactionaries, asked for cars and tarmacked roads to be returned. In connection with that, they asked for an increase in the production of aluminium and other metals we’d rather reuse, recycle, or phase out. Several times, they asked for the return of money. In year 17, they asked for a return to the intranet, with cables and wifi towers, the whole armour, because they claimed the intranet or bio-wifi travelling from tree top to squirrel’s head to deer antler, flower or grass, and back to bush, bird’s beak and up to the tree tops was too unsafe. Back then we postered ‘How do you know that squirrels can’t keep secrets?’ Another early manifestation of the harp. And in year 18, some people got seduced…”

“By Van der Leihen and Co…,” added Renée.

“Exactly, comrade Renée wrote an excellent university entry presentation on that topic, ‘Discourse of Venues’, in What is to be done?, building on the earlier work by comrade Nicole, Oligarchs into the Volcano. Anyway, some people got seduced to demand that the militia be armed again, and permanent, that is a standing force, and that regional and interregional ombuds(wo)men be elected as representatives, something the revolution is dead set against. We want at the very least direct democracy via brigades and plenary neighbourhood, village, and workplace assemblies, and soon perfect anarchy if we can, certainly not the bourgeois voting charade.

“Anyway, we were discussing everything in assemblies, rotating our brigadiers, chair(wo)men, and moderators permanently. We were making sure to keep government, armies, and regular police forces well abolished and the militia spontaneous only, and we had held on to self-management until Year 8, the year we produced the second edition of De la démocratie. Hooray!

“And we had abolished money. In fact, cryptoleakers were invited to report on any reemergence of currency, crypto, vouchers, token, and other money substitutes and get spontaneous militia to come and seize it as well as help the workers reinstitute self-management. This because as we well know, the use of money is one of the main reasons self-management principles no longer get respected. Only one boss whom the capitalist robber barons trust handles the money, and the other workers are just potential thieves.”

“How come these crypto-entrepreneurs always resurface?” asked Bashir.

“Yes, we wondered about that back then as well. In fact, comrades Mina, working on self-management in small stores, Nicole, working on the militia, Rim, working on material checks, and others raised a very simple question that back then did not perturb us so much, yet it should have. What if it is not fasco sabotage that thwarts people’s democracy and self-management, both terms meaning permanent discussion of everything with everyone getting involved, but just the diffidence, shyness, and modesty of the overly understanding workers, the people overly respectful of the militia brigadiers, who after all should rotate like everybody else, and of the militia trainers, who are fallible teachers after all as well? He, she or they may then tolerate the undermining of the assembly principle, rotation, material, hierarchy and cryptoleak checks, and so on for weeks, months, and even years. Busy-bodies have taken over and are running the show without them. They don’t even dare complain anymore. ‘After all, it was our own fault,’ they often say, when someone has finally blown the whistle on the abuse, and spontaneous militia appear and help the workers hold a true assembly with moderators rotating and everybody allowed their say and the workshop returns to self-management, no boss, rotation of brigade fore(wo)men every day, and decisions taken in full workplace assembly only. ‘Why didn’t we speak up earlier?’ Remember, we had it just the other day when we restored self-management and revolutionary production at a workshop near Aimeran and Illyria where they were producing weapons, including the Moral Atrophy virus?”

“Yes, they tried to declare it a vaccine or even a cure, but the material checks revealed that it was over 50% the deadly flu virus itself which causes apathy in humans and animals, and drying, wilting, and burnt roots syndrome in plants, just like NPK fertiliser by the way,” explained Fabienne, medicine expert at Institut Pasteur, working on the development of a non-pharmaceutical, natural revolutionary medicine. “The way the counter-revolutionaries used it against you is a sure sign they intended it as a weapon.”

“The infusion Jean got consisted to 100% of the virus, actually!” added René.

“Mon Dieu!” said comrade Annie.

“Yes,” said Jean. “What I was trying to say, we had a certain amount of moral atrophy in our organisation even before the remnants of the class enemy invented the MA virus. Other factors apart from shyness were patriarchy, and also the cult of efficiency, following the motto: ‘I lecture you only to save time!’, jealousy of other whistle-blowers and speakers, for instance, between students and teachers, professors and lecturers, doctors and nurses, as well as resentment of incipient privilege. If privilege ever reemerged for any duration, our revolution would be completely discredited. An especially serious case of resentment of privilege is that of travel. We noticed that people coveted revolutionary barter correspondent assignments and became demure or even hostile when they believed that others were getting better opportunities than they were. In about Year 17 we realised that and developed the concept of permanent revolution, which includes more, smaller, and hence better functioning assemblies. Brigades which are only allowed to have seven members, and neighbourhood assemblies, seven households maximum, are small enough to catch shyness, jealousies, incipient privilege, and other problems to begin with. We tried to make workplace and village assemblies much smaller as well. And then of course, we discovered the intranet, which enables you to follow events from home even without a device, and yellow transport beams which, when fully accessible to everybody, will make even long-distance travel as easy, energy-efficient, and ecological as summoning a red self-defence beam. You can use a red beam to stun an aggressor or aggressors for half an hour until spontaneous militia can get a quorum from the village assembly and arrive to arrest them. Yellow transport beams you also summon by sheer willpower. So as to travel light, and save time, energy, and the environment, you disassemble into molecular state, hop on the yellow beam, let it transport you to wherever you wish to go, and reassemble shortly before landing. You can even take a small piece of luggage such as a backpack which will also disassemble. These two major discoveries – intranet and yellow transport beam –, will in the near future almost eliminate any grounds for jealousy concerning travel, as well as allow us to continue with just electrical trains and sail and solar boats, freighters, and even large ferries, without resorting to big aircraft or private cars, let alone fuel-guzzling vehicles ever again.”

Shyness, jealousies, and incipient privilege, by Emmanuel and Laurence

“As for workplace assemblies, we radically downsized them from 2000, to 500, to 50 at present. Let us note with pride that the average size of enterprises nowadays is hardly larger than 50 in the French lands as well as world-wide. In the process of ecological deconstructing-reconstructing, overcoming the differences between town and countryside, and realising the march of the trees, we radically downsized the maximum size of village assemblies, from initially 2000 residents, to 600, to 200. Here the average is less favourable, the average village size in the French lands as well as world-wide is still around 600 at this point.

Fortunately, there are other factors promoting full anarchy: the veto of one, every single participant of an assembly can hold up the process until or he or she can live with the consensus. Also the sense of justice that these days is instilled in our young revolutionaries already from early childhood. They learn to recognise, avoid, and if necessary overcome slighted egos, scapegoatism, and jealousies. As a matter of fact, let me ask you, young comrades, how would you do it.”

“The shy people we should ask things!” said Odile.

“The jealous ones we should make aware of their jealousies but also of their own strong points, which should make them realise that they have no reason to be jealous at all,” said young comrade Sevim. “And to prevent scapegoatism, well, we would just defend the scapegoat or scapegoats, point out that he or she cannot even get blamed for all or at least most of the things we may inadvertently have accused them of!”

“Exactly. Merci, young comrades Odile and Sevim. A third factor relaunching revolutionary enthusiasm and promoting true anarchy are frequent topical and anniversary rallies, such as the 1^st of May rallies, the rallies for the march of the trees, the 14th of July rallies, and others. A fourth factor are the remaining mass movements, the trade unions, nowadays decentralised movements based on red cells – comrade Emmanuel has told us about them –, the environmental movements, such as Fridays for the Future and Red Robin, the peace movement, LBGTQIA celebrations, and others.

Not all mass movements are necessarily good for the revolution, think of the standing militia and its cumbersome training courses prone to incipient hierarchies. Fortunately, we abolished the standing militia in Year 18, hopefully never to return and replaced it by the organisation of spontaneous militia. Even now we still have problems. The militia must receive a quorum from at least one neighbourhood assembly close to the site of crime. Usually at least 20% of its citizens have to approve. In small villages of around 100-200 people max like you comrades already have them in Chad, Niger and Mali, and we will hopefully have in the French lands in the not too distant future, 20 or even 40 people might be too easy to bribe by the capexogarchs or other underground capitalist entrepreneurs and fasco barons. Therefore, tell us again what you have decided, comrade Dileita and other members of the Desmond Tutu cooperative?”

“In Djibouti and also in Niger, Chad and Mali, as a matter of fact, all over Northern Africa, we have many villages of only 50 or 100 people only, as you say. Therefore, we decided to increase the quorum to 50%,” said Dileita. “Now it turns out that in situations of great heat or other natural emergencies that quorum may be too high because intranet and bio-wifi may be down. This may have prevented us from catching the fascos earlier today in Timbuktu. The robots and other devices may be out of juice, the natural wifi towers, humans, animals, plants, and other things may be tired or weak. And then people show up too late. Sometimes catching the crims is a matter of minutes, nay seconds only. We may have to experiment with different sizes of the quorum until we find a good one.”

“Most fascos escape because of delays in getting the quorum, by the way!” added Sosthene from the Nelson Mandela cooperative on Lake Chad.

“Another problem, aside from delays in spontaneity you might call it, that will hinder the revolution and true anarchy are experts,” comrade Jean continued with a contrite smile. “Illyria has received a lot of reproaches in this regard, because it is literally brimming with experts, only think of comrades Robespierre, Sylvain, Jean-Wadi, Josip, Rosa, Jean-Saïd, and Lénina – robot and intranet experts, comrades Léon, Danton, Martine, Cédric – deconstruction experts, comrades Maher and Karla – chemical engineers, Alain and Pierre – energy experts, Anton – top recycling hound, comrade Zamir – his junior, comrades Philippe, Pascal, Hisham, Rim, and young comrades Bashir and Zelim-Philippe – economists and statisticians, comrades Denis, Jérôme, Miguel, Muhammed, Aslan, Zelim, Noah, Seth, Boris, Saïd, Rodion, Michel, Ronggang, Dan, Ayak, In, and Vit, our three brigades of fully trained security experts, and Jean-François, Colin and others, emerging ones, comrades Marine, Arlette, Véro, Sophie, Emilia, and Inès – kindergarden and school teacher experts, comrades Odile and Sevim – budding teaching experts, comrades Frédéric, Youssef, Mina, Laurent, Jean-Vladimir, Guillaume, Jean-Saïd, Olivier, and Faroukh – peace researchers and Palestine experts, comrades Omsinbaba, Fofana, Lulu, Noah, Seth, Adilah, and Zafira, Africa and Black lives matter experts, comrades Aleksei and Evgenia, Russia, comrades Miguel, Claudia, Jean-Fidel, and Marianne, South America, comrades Michelle, Malik, and Mao, North America, comrades Peter Gar, Quan, and Ronggang, Asia experts, comrades Jana, Francine, Che, Georgette, Anton, Abram, and young comrade Sarah agricultural self-management, agronomy, forestry, and recycling experts, comrades Aini, Hélène, Rashida, and Jean-Luc, management and accounting experts, comrades René, Fabienne, Maurice, Karima, Pauline, Assad, Kaltouma, and Murielle medical and pharmaceutical experts, comrades Peter Gar and Antoine top revolution and Covet scamdemic experts, comrades Georges, Monique, Anisah, Renée, Yvonne, Nicole, Alexandra, Mao, Emmanuel, Salma, Mélanie, Zamira, Carla, Misha, Cécile, and Orel, our three anthropologist-historian-sociologist-psychologist brigades, comrades Felix and Leyla ageism experts, comrades Alain, Bulan, and Cato, LBGTQIA experts, comrades Salma, Claudia, Fofana, Leyla, Evgenia, and Camille couturier experts, comrades Laure and Jeannette chef cooks, comrades Malik, Marius, Danièle, Julie, Natalie, Laurence, and Charolaine emerging ecologists and tree march experts, and last but not least, comrades Marie, Annie, Dominique, Aurélie, and Daniel agitators and cultural workers. Who else, anymore mentions at this stage? I know, there are many more experts in the making. Tell me, dear experts, whether I forgot to mention any of you… Then that only means that you are still emerging. Yet experts attract envy, and many a hierarchy check, oftentimes undeserved, has hit them.

“Another dubious method are referendums. Of course, the campaigns serve to involve people, but they are a bit like old-fashioned electoral campaigns. So as to promote permanent revolution and anarchy, assemblies and rallies are much better.

“Yet another factor that makes referendums and even surveys less interesting these days is that we are linked by the intranet or bio-wifi that works 24/7 without cables, metal towers, or even devices, but via tree tops, bushes, grass, even moss, all animals, big and small, mammals, fishes, reptiles, birds, and insects, and even intranet-capable devices and materials. Therefore, we can have more frequent and often instant informal surveys on every issue, constant and fervent material, hierarchy, crypto and other checks, galvanising rallies bio-broadcast world-wide, even instant, informal global referendums on whatever proposed by whomever, and enlightening media focus also without any need for devices, simply via bio-message. And of course it is not an almighty state or media tycoons that do this, after all, the state is abolished, but pupils, students, workers, market stall and share point attendants, doctors and nurses, teachers and other cultural workers, researchers and engineers, mothers, fathers, and whole families. And now, in the harp, humans, animals, plants, robots and other devices can blow the whistle, reveal capexogarch wrecking, and restore democracy and self-management on a daily basis…”

“Megapno the time-travelled African dinosaur invented the term capexogarch, by the way,” Zafira interjected.

“Exactly, that is again the harp organisation already emerging in Year 17,… revealing capexogarch and fasco crimes much more forcefully already than before.

“Yet as Lenin said, ‘Luchshe menshe, da luchshe.’ Better fewer, but better, meaning we also need to make our organisation better fundamentally, in its very essence, not only add more checks and controls to it. So, what I want to propose in this presentation, is a ten point plan, consisting of,

first, working on our culture of discussion,

second, make rotation spontaneous,

third, not only that, but abolish all vestiges of authority, brigadier, chairing household, moderator, teacher, professor, doctor, let alone ombudsmen, etc., but let there be a free-flowing discussion wherever at all possible,

fourth, make material checks not only spontaneous, but constant,

fifth, same for hierarchy checks, no longer rely on the lone courageous whistle-blower,

sixth, institute a spontaneous trefoil check, to eliminate all remnants of inequality not only between people, but all harpists, humans, animals, robots and other intelligent things, and plants,

seventh, fully implement communication in the harp,

eighth, fully implement regreening of the world and the march of the trees to create the best conditions for its flourishing,

ninth, get all remaining reactionaries to repent and rehabilitate, thereby eliminate the coups and civil wars they sometimes still manage to stir,

and tenth, defend each and every harpist even in situations of war, should it nevertheless occur, as well as in conditions of natural emergency.”

***

Later, before Jean and the others bedded down for an uneasy rest, Zamir and Jean-Fidel in Illyria and he had a last bio-wifi link-up with his sons in Mali. “I was just saying,” Jean-Fidel began. “Papa said he was worried the presentation would not be taken as serious as it should. I told him, people and animals and plants in South America and also in Africa, as we can see, will help us bring it home to everybody. They have more natural interactions there already.”

“Papa, don’t worry. We take it very seriously,” said Jean-Wadi. “We need to give the revolution a new beginning via the harp.”

“And Africa is suffering so much from the inadequacies of the revolution,” supplemented Zafira. “We shall help you push it forward.”

“We must improve the chemistry between living beings to the point of eliminating fascism altogether,” said Maher.

“And we must eliminate the conditions for its reemergence, inequality being one of them,” warned Jean.

Chapter 2. Make rotation spontaneous!

Weapon’s training in every second village, by Guillaume and Renée

A shocking fact has emerged on the bio-web. The African Uberytes claim to have a sports studio teaching young people how to handle weapons in every second village. And apparently, people are flocking to them. I think we must pay these a round of visits as well. Comrade Suleyman gave us a detailed tour of the first one we got ourselves into. It was in the old part of Timbuktu. “The studio has kind of two sections. In the first one, the kids – I say kids, because most of those who come to us are between 10 and 18 years of age –, learn gymnastics, yoga, taekwondo, gentle wrestling, karate, and MMA, red beams to stun aggressors and bronze ones to block them from using lethal weapons – and so on, you know, basic self-defence training. Then, if they say they want to learn more, we lead them into the back of the building.”

The change was quite impressive. Where in the dojos in front, the walls had been chalk-white, here in back they were totally black. The floor was dark grey, and the mats were a stark red.

“Could be an anarchist outfit for all we know!” comrade Saïd joked, but young comrade Suleyman shook his head.

“No chance, from what I know, anarchists reject money as a product of the state and conducive to state-building, but our bosses crave money. In this advanced course, you will learn everything from using firearms, ‘kill-boxing’ I call it or heavy mixed martial arts, jiujitsu, capoeira, kung fu with weapons, lethal kung fu, brown stun beams that you can crank up to a lethal dose with your willpower. You name it, they will teach you. But every course costs heavy fees in crypto-Francs, -Euros, -Dollars, or whatever, so people have to either turn back or turn fasco.”

“What if they just say, isn’t that crypto a bit out of fashion, why can’t I have these more hard-hitting courses for free as well?”

“That’s what I asked,” laughed Suleyman. “And that’s why I am here now.”

“’Well,’ this guy said, speaking French with a German accent, he did not know any Arabic or tribal language, ‘There are basically three ways to earn our trust. You can work for us, either in this joint, or in a water station, or even in a policlinic if you are that type. Until you finish your training here, half of your monthly wage will be put towards training fees. It will take you about half a year to exhaust all the offerings. Then you can start saving towards another course, for instance, medic in a private policlinic, or even doctor, but for that, you’d have to go to the French lands, I suppose. Or you could save for a car. Or, later on, are you married?’ ‘Engaged!’ Souleyman had said. ‘Or you could save for a villa, for later when you get old, on an oasis with a view on the march of the trees waltzing by.’”

“’Wow,’ I said. I was impressed initially, I must confess,” admitted Suleyman, “but then, when I started, less and less so. They had promised us knowledgeable trainers, but the only area in which they knew more than us, ordinary rank-and-file village students, was lethal weapons, you know, daggers, swords, and firearms. In all areas of gym, yoga, and non-lethal martial arts, especially kung fu, we were better, because we had learnt with exchange teachers from the Chinese lands, or Vietnam, just like you in the French lands as well, probably?”

“Oh, yes,” said Jean-Wadi. “And we have time-travelled Vietnamese Shaolin monks living with us now to teach our kids. They came through a time tunnel from the past and stayed.”

“Wow,” Suleyman said again. And they showed them pictures and videos of Little Ramón, Jean-Michel, Bouna, Akila, Salvador, and Zac practising kicks and strokes.

“Those are the six of our fourth generation kids old enough to do kids’ yoga and martial arts already, and their younger buddies are watching…”

Martial Arts Training at the kindergarden in Illyria’s youth club, by Maher and Karla, from top left to bottom right, Évita, Isabel, Soho, Ramón, Jean-Michel, Bouna, Akila, Salvador, and Zac

“Cute!” said Suleyman. “What do they have to pay for it?”

“Zero!” said Maher. “Do we look like capitalists to you? The little girl there in the violet blouse waving at the little boy in gold, that’s Karla’s and my daughter Soho by the way. He, Salvador, is her buddy. Do you have stable buddy arrangements in your schools as well?”

“Well,” said Suleyman. “When I went to school, we had them, but they were just informal…”

“Oh, ours are informal as well,” Jean-Saïd hastened to stress. “We are not fascos, are we?”

“… And now my girl-friend is only just pregnant. Look at her!”

“A Malian beauty!” I, Noah, said. “But look at my son and granddaughter.”

Suleyman laughed looking at young comrade Malik holding Aisha. “Oh, your daughter in law must be Asian. Your granddaughter is very pretty. And I am sure she will be a great female MA practitioner as well. You see, that is why I was so disappointed, because I expected teachers from Asia, experts, you know, and now they were all European or African.”

“Still, you signed on. Don’t tell me you are saving for a vehicle or a villa to watch the march of the trees from?”

Suleyman clenched his fist. “You just keep insulting me, it’s not going to keep you safe either. No, they would not let me go, imagine that! Some people they kept on to work just for having seen these back-rooms. They basically forced them to stay on, even when they said they were no longer interested in the course.”

“Sorry, the comrade just meant it as a joke,” said Rodion. “We knew you would not have fallen for anything like that.”

“How many sports studios like yours do you think there are in Mali? We heard something like, there is one in every second village. That means about 400?”

“Oh no, you are thinking of the 820 pre-revolutionary communes, but they were much too large. Since the revolution, we have tried to split up villages like you have in the French lands to make the discussions in the village assemblies more democratic. If that number of one in every second village is right, and with the average size of a village at 600 like you said the other night…”

“Oh, you listened to us the other night…?”

“All young Malian revolutionaries who could get it intraline or on bio-wifi did… Anyway, assuming that, there would be over 20000 such MA studios all over Mali, but that sounds like a wild exaggeration. Personally, I think it is more like twenty, not a lot more than that.”

Just at this magic moment where Suleyman had squarely admitted to being a revolutionary at heart and in his mind, and maybe willing to blow the whistle, a pal of his shouted from the door, “Comrade Suleyman, are you ready with the pals from Niger, Monsieur Fritz is back, he wants to talk to you.”

“Oh, merde,” said Suleyman and looked around like a caged animal. “I have to get you out of here. There, just crawl through the window here in back. Then turn left to your transporter and go like hell. Don’t care what happens behind you, you must get away. They know you, and you took a big risk coming here. Just go!”

“Of course, we did as we were told, but when we were in a safe distance, we called for a quorum for several dozen militiamen to free Suleyman and his comrades and restore self-management in the sports school.

“I wonder, what do you think comrades, since most of us are young enough to already have had spontaneous militia training in school, there would no longer be a need for these sports schools, would there?”

“Well, at school you learn basic yoga, taekwondo, kung fu which encompasses most branches of martial arts, and red and bronze beams, but you don’t train a whole lot and some people are fitness fanatics even if they are not fascos. So, it might make sense for us to have such sports studios, but of course, making clear to everybody, as they should know, that weapons are totally out in the revolution, and that revolutionary sports schools and studios will not ever, ever charge any fees, obviously.

“And we could offer red cell training, if they ever have to participate in the liberation of a workshop,” proposed Emmanuel. “It is very important to keep them secret, so conduct all conversations only on the very lowest and safest delta wave frequency, and make sure you build up plenty of bio-thicket.”

“And the kids should learn rally awareness,” suggested comrade Marie, expert agitator. “Often these days, fasco criminal are trying to infiltrate themselves in rallies as harmless as the First of May, March of the Trees, or 14^th of July rallies. We need to be able to spot them, approach them, and ask them, are they with us or against the revolution?”

Spontaneous rotation in a harp assembly, by Guillaume and Renée

“So far, rotation procedures have still been clumsy like throwing dice or drawing lots, and even bureaucratic, going down an alphabetical or address list. From now on, it is going to be as simple as raising your hand,” comrade Robespierre began. “In fact, we shall consider raising your hand a triple sign of asking to be allowed to speak, of wanting to take over the moderation, and possibly even of an implicit hierarchy check, especially if the person talking has already talked for a long time, or if the moderator’s moderation has been ineffective, the discussion going in circles, for instance. Fourth, it may even be a demand for a material check.

“So, let’s say you have raised your hand and are now allowed to speak.”

“What if several people have raised their hands at the same time?” asked comrade Sylvain, Robespierre’s partner on wave theory and rival in robot technology. He was interesting in that his father and grandfather had been mean and big-headed Nazis. His mother, comrade Camille had run away from them to the Illyrians. By now, Sylvain’s grandfather has become mentally ill in the effort to reconcile his fasco bigotry to the revolutionary truth, but his father was rehabilitating and had even married his prison worker.

“Robby 1 has the answer. He has given all Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp, Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove residents and many of our animals a small individual tune. If that tune sounds, we shall know that comrade or these comrades want to talk and or moderate and if they all sound at exactly the same time, we can still throw a dice or something.”

“And you could also suggest somebody else to moderate, couldn’t you?” asked Laurence.

“Definitely, and if you are a really good harpist you will remember their tune and send that to Robby 1.”

“D’accord, but what about the animals and plants that didn’t get a tune?”

“Well, did we not agree that for the time being, while animals and plants still feel discriminated, we shall call on all four groups – animals, humans, robots, and plants –, sequentially? One human will always be followed by one animal, then will come one plant, and then one robot. If it’s the animal’s turn, but no animal wants to speak, we shall move on to the next plant, if no plant wants to speak, to the next harpoid – short for human, animal, (classic) robot, plant, or dinosaur-shaped device. Of course, once the forest has really come back and we’ll all know each other, each animal and plant will also have its own tune.

“I don’t know how you would handle it at school…,” wondered Sylvain.

“Same as you just outlined,” replied Véro.

“So, raising of the hand results in a change of moderator? But what if the speaker is making a somewhat longer statement?” asked Emilia.

“The new moderator will bio-message him or her to come to a conclusion just as the old one did. And then when he or she has finished and he or she or the moderator invites comments, there will be a new show of hands for speaking. That show of hands need not but may result in a change in moderation. It will depend on what the commentator or commentators will say. If he says, I am fine with the process and with the previous speaker, allow me to make just a few comments, there won’t be a need to change moderator. If she says, I suggest to approach the issue from a completely different angle, then the moderation should change sooner or later as well – an hour should probably still be the limit on how long the same moderator or moderators may rest in position regardless of flow and content of discussion –, and the new moderator or moderator team will probably recognise different speakers with different opinions.”

“Wait a minute, but up to now we said just one comrade raises their hand, and if it is two, then the start of their tune will determine who takes over the moderation.”

“If there is just one moderator, like the foreman in a brigade or the chair(wo)man in a neighbourhood assembly, yes. If it is a larger team like at a workplace or village assembly, then up to five or even ten can take over, depending on the number of members of the previous moderator team.”

“Whose size has been decided on by the assembly at the beginning of the meeting, correct?”

“Exactly!” Sylvain nodded. “And remember, the number will have to be multiplied by four because you will need all four groups of harpists represented in equal numbers on the moderating team.”

“Right, but what if nobody raises their hand? If they are shy, as you said, comrade Jean,” asked Pierre with a mean smile. It visibly pleased him to be able to use Jean’s own arguments against him.

“It will depend on the assembly,” Jean replied calmly. “If it is a brigade or neighbourhood assembly, the brigadier or chairing household will after all change automatically on the next day or at the next shift or at the next meeting. Here the hand-raising just helps to bring about more rotation if there is a need for it.

“In the case of the workplace or village assembly, the moderating team, two at least for an assembly of 50, five at least for an assembly of 200 or more, will change every hour after all as well.”

“And by what method?”

“By the one the assembly decides on in the beginning. Here in Illyria Garden Colony Manouche we proceed alphabetically by first name and that means, assuming ten humans on the moderating team, everybody, all 160 residents will have a turn at moderating at least every 16th hour, that’s usually every third or fourth day. We do have joint meetings with other cooperatives, especially Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove with its 30 residents, but they will have separate moderators that are allowed to interfere in our moderation and vice-versa. Yet beyond that openness already in the process, you can, by raising your hand, speed up the rotation, and upset the pattern and probably make things more interesting.”

“What if everybody speaks at the same time or gets loud?”

“One possibility is that the moderators intervene to calm things down. In really heated debates, you could also imagine Robby playing the tune or tunes of the troublemakers to call them back to order.”

“I don’t like that!” Pierre le Gars spoke from Sudan, almost wriggling in pain. “That sounds like ‘1984’ or ‘Brave New World’ with people getting called up at work or on the street and told ‘Go home and bed down. You have made enough babies already.’”

Comrades Zamira, Carla, and a few others clapped enthusiastically.

“Or enough mistakes!” complemented Quan.

“Yes, but these totalitarian regimes typically want de-pop (-ulation),” grumbled the Gars.

“Please let’s not get maudlin!” said comrade Hélène, who was moderating, in her typical resolute tone of voice. “Let’s have a show of consensus. Who minds it, just won’t get called upon by this particular method.” All waved their hand in sign of agreement except for Robespierre who explained: “It is not like in 1984 at all. The tune will just be played at the meeting, and note, it is just a nice tune, not a stern voice.”

“In other words, they play ‘Quinta brigada’ and I shut up?” asked the Gars, and had to laugh himself when he saw everybody’s happy, unsuspecting faces.

“What if secret counter-revolutionaries or other power-hungry people rig it so that one of theirs is always chairman, just by always interrupting proceedings before the others get their turn?” asked Renée knowingly. After all, she had written her university entry project on just these issues, the discourse of venues – brigades, neighbourhood, workplace, and village assemblies, all on the same level, all proceeding by free-flowing discussion.

“Hierarchy check! The others immediately raise their hands and dismantle the plot!” suggested Renée’s mamon, Anisah, Illyria’s resident anthropologist. “A lot of the advantage stone-age democracy had over ours was that people could react much more quickly and directly to challenges like this.”

“With a punch in the face you mean,” Guillaume, peace researcher, laughed.

“But remember, no weapons in the revolution!” comrade Renée chastised him and her mamon, who immediately looked stern.

“Not a centimetre yield on that,” Anisah concurred, “but the stone age people were sharp-witted as well.”

“What if Robby is not on, and the other harpists cannot agree whose turn it is?”

“Then they can agree on somebody’s suggestion for a moderator, as you proposed, comrade Laurence, throw a dice, or convene on any other acceptable method. It is not a problem from the point of view of democracy. It just creates delay.”

“What if a meeting gets filibustered by animals, or young revolutionaries, for that matter? Can an adult just raise their hand and call them to order?”

“Yes, of course, and if they don’t calm down, Robby can play them their tunes, and even a hierarchy check may be in order.”

“Volume is a powerful instrument of dictatorship, as Pierre le Gars just noted!” interjected Robespierre who still seemed saddened that not everybody had immediately approved of his latest invention.

“What about the rotation of more complicated tasks, the militia, for example?” asked Nicole.

“Yes, that is a thorny issue,” young comrade Olivier, security expert took on the challenge. “The old rule that no one may serve more than three non-consecutive terms of one month at the longest in any year still holds, but the training no longer counts towards that, since we are now assumed to be getting our training at school already. Before militia are allowed to go in, there has to be a quorum of at least 20 percent of the residents allowing the militia brigade to be formed and go in. And as we already said, here in North Africa, we have had multiple issues with the quorum.”

“At first we thought we could have quorums of only 10% of villagers,” Sosthene reminded them, “Because many of us are nomads and it is hard to find us, but of course we would all agree to send out a militia team to help people or other harpists in distress or catch some fasco criminals. Yet lately, we’ve had the opposite problem. There have been cases of fascos bribing us, so we completely ignored their sabotage. Or, the other way around, they have bribed us to go arrest well-meaning revolutionaries, for instance, during the coup in Niger. So, lately, we have decided to always accompany the call for quorum by a lot of information on the matter, and to demand a quorum of 50% at least. We hope our thinking makes sense to you despite the delays it causes, does it?”

“Of course,” said Denis. “As long as you save the victims of natural calamities and arrest the fasco criminals.”

“And you have to pay attention to one more facet,” said Jean. “Make sure the militia always treat even vicious fasco gangsters fairly. Have a non-militia witness ready who can be people’s assessor. The militia should ask them only for their names and the basic facts surrounding their arrest, such as, what were you doing with the crypto, toxic syringes, synthetic fertilisers, weapons, and what else lying around at the arrest scene? Why were you bossing workers around and not allowing for rotation? What other questions come to mind?”

“Where were you on yesterday at nine a.m. when comrade Jean was hit by a toxic syringe?” suggested Jérôme, but everybody shook their heads.

“No, then the people’s assessor should protest,” said young comrade Orel from the Manouche camp. “They first have to compare the suspect’s picture, comings and goings, and witness testimonies’ with those relating to the perp and only then decide whether it was really him or her.”

“Excellent, comrade Orel. Let’s keep the militia in check, since some potential fascos may be attracted to it. Before they go out, make sure that, if at all possible, nobody has served their 12 weeks already. Sometimes a village may be too small to supply all the fresh militiamen needed, of course, but then it may do good to invite in other spontaneous militiamen from the next village around.”

Lake Chad preparing for the march of the trees, by Jean-Wadi and Zafira

“What about rotation of management and accounting brigades?” continued Rashida speaking from the Nelson Mandela cooperative on Lake Chad. “How to make sure both that there are no permanent managers and accountants, but also that everybody knows what they are doing?

“To ensure the first part of the condition, you’ll just need a list like for the moderators.”

“And everybody should be allowed to raise their hand, so to say, or literally go to the M&A brigade if they know new facts, such as a new product, a failed material check, a broken down piece of equipment, or a need for an investment good,” suggested young comrade Jean-Luc.

“And then one or several members of the sitting management and accounting brigade are just supposed to get up and yield their place?” asked Rashida, slightly flustered.

“Oh, comrade Rashida, please show that background of the Nelson Mandela cooperative again!” begged Zafira. “There seem to be more trees already than upon our last visit. That’s already the beginning of the dinosaur magic and the march of the trees, isn’t it?”

“In the interest of the primacy of self-management and permanent revolution, I should answer yes to your question, comrade Rashida,” said comrade Hélène when the expressions of delight had subsided. She happened to be Rashida’s best friend and able to calm her down. “The sitting members of the management and accounting brigade should just yield to the request to replace them.”

“I mean, you could wait of course until the next workplace assembly and discuss all new developments there,” said comrade Annie, “But that would be awkward. Let’s consider our logistics enterprise, Logistique Yvelines. Better call it an organisation, because we certainly do not pick up and deliver people and goods for money, crypto, or something, but just in response to a phone or bio-call by anyone, individual or workshop, and for free, as part of the economic circuit where everyone produces needed, useful, and interesting goods and services and gets his or her own needs fulfilled from needed, useful and interesting goods and services the others produce.

“Why not wait until the next workplace assembly, you might ask? What if a transporter has broken down, and there is a need for spare parts to get it fixed, or there is a new transporter, but it still needs to be cleaned and the battery charged, yet the water hose has a leak, or the fascos have managed to sabotage the block energy works, as happened to us just the other day, by the way? The best thing is if the worker or workers with the knowledge of the issues just make the necessary changes in the material balance or input-output plans. Meanwhile the worker or workers who have been on the M&A team go back to their main work as drivers or garage attendants, and may be glad to be out of the office a few days or weeks early. Positions can rotate pretty quickly, we just have to make sure that no worker ends up serving in the M&A brigade for more than the week he or she has got to do every year.”

“And you, comrade Annie? Why are you always in the office?”

“I don’t do M&A,” said Annie and blushed. “I just answer the phone, nowadays intraline and bio-wifi, and make sure every order is fulfilled, no user disappointed, and drivers rescued if they get stranded somewhere. I am an expert of sorts, but I don’t have any authority.”

***

Jean raised his hand, and when everybody nodded, immediately took over the moderation. “In the next module, we shall discuss the abolition of positions of authority altogether, but let’s have votes which they are? Some roles like mamon and papa may be just facilitators, they entail no authority at all in the revolution, or do they?” Everybody laughed.

“It’s moral authority,” comrade Jean-Wadi said earnestly from Timbuktu and waved to his daughter, little Sandrine back in Illyria.

“It is involuntary authority,” suggested comrade Lénina. “A case of noblesse oblige maybe?”

“Che Guevara would have said the same about the revolutionary leader,” her partner Jean-Fidel fell in happily with the banter. Jean raised his arms, “Listen to the list, maybe we can discuss them one by one.”

“Starting with the brigadier or fore(wo)man, is it a position of authority and does it need to be abolished?”

“No, it is just a role,” replied Jana, rotund self-management expert from Bosnia, and as sure of herself as always. “And just like the role of chair(wo)man and moderator, it can rotate ever so often. No need to abolish it.”

“Same for membership in the rotating management and accounting brigades, don’t you agree?” asked Rashida who had regained her equanimity.

“Well, in small enterprises and workshops you might decide to decide all planning, management, and accounting matters together in the full workplace assembly, why not?” comrade Patrick involuntarily wound her up again.

“But isn’t managing and accounting a bit like being a market stall holder or share point holder? These roles require you to be a bit of an expert already, don’t they?” Rashida wouldn’t give up.

“I would say yes,” agreed comrade Aini. “You have to know your products, your regular patrons and users and their needs, your fellow markets stall holders and share point attendants to coordinate quickly, the local farms and workshops to be able to order extra goods rapidly if needed. It is complicated, let me tell you,” she explained. “In fact, I shall give a presentation on it soon if you want me to, tying in with Louise’s on her role as a share point attendant.”

“Oh, we can’t wait,” said Patrick. “And we would like to serialise it in l’Huma even, that’s how important it is. Yet is it a position of authority?”

“Not unless you abuse the trust people vest in you,” Aini answered. “I did not like those shadow dealers. I am glad we have eliminated them. Giving people advice on goods and services where they wanted to sell toxic processed foods and drugs, or at least produce treated with toxic fertilisers and pesticides, I found that outrageous.”

“Well, in that sense, private doctors or doctors working in private policlinics are also outrageous,” noted comrade René. “They are,” said Karima-nurse, “and we need to hierarchy-check them very carefully, even though or just because they are experts.”

“Same goes for teachers and professors. Lucky we came up with the model of the mixed brigade, where in a policlinic doctors, nurses, and support staff cooperate in brigades of seven maximum, with no more than two doctors and either two nurses or medics and three support staff, or three nurses or medics and two support staff in one brigade. The brigadier rotates every day like in all other brigades in the economy. At times doctors have complained of course that they could not even be brigadier at the operating table. ‘Does not matter if it isn’t your day,’ we told them, ‘it does not mean the others won’t listen to you, it just means you can’t give them orders anymore.’”

“Same for teachers, the maximum class size being fixed at 21 pupils or students. The first, top-notch model entails brigades of either two teachers or one teacher and one teaching assistant and five students maximum. The second, basic model relies on three brigades of seven students maximum each and at least one teacher and two teaching assistants rotating between them. Same story here as well, in the top-notch model the brigadier role switches between teachers, teaching assistants, and students, in the basic model there is a student brigadier in every student brigade who changes every hour usually. These are the usual model in schools. In universities the standard is a mixed teaching and research brigade of seven in which at least one must be a professor, one a lecturer, one a graduate student (beyond license degree), and at least one an undergraduate (working on his or her license degree), again with the brigadier changing every day at least. And by our new anarchist thrust, the brigadier, be he a teacher with forty, or a senior professor with thirty years’ experience can switch as soon as someone raises his hand. And we need to check militiamen as well, we’ve said that. How to do that? We need to rethink the procedures of hierarchy and material check. Maybe they are still too cumbersome.”

Chapter 3. Get rid of all vestiges of authority – hierarchy checks

Help! Fertiliser and GMO trees sold at all Mali logistics stations, by Che and Georgette

“Yet at this stage, I have more bad news for you from here in Timbuktu,” I, Noah said. “Synthetic fertiliser and GMO trees are being sold at all Mali logistics station as a method to foster the march of the trees.”

“That can’t be,” said Maher who seemed as surprised by the news as the Illyrians at home. “Yesterday, at the second logistics station we went to, they still did not have any GMO trees and believed we were bringing them.”

“Well, we’ll have to start our rounds again tomorrow, putting on disguises this time and see what we can find out.”

“Is there a way we could sabotage their GMO plants and fertilisers?”

“Of course, just ask for proper material checks to be run on them. The workers will realise that they are crap. And let’s ask for hierarchy checks as well, implicitly if need be, like so: ‘But who is the boss in this joint whom we could talk to? Don’t tell me you already have brigades and workers’ assemblies!’”

Already at the very first workshop they went to, these two lines already made workers giggle at first, then angry. “Why don’t we have an assembly with our French guests?” asked one worker, whose name turned out to be Siaka.

“But what if Maddy comes back?” asked his buddy, who introduced himself as Nouhoum. “We just call him that so that our foreign checkers know he is Mahdi, the leader, but this morning he has gone with them to another place, where they want to plant some seeds and make a video, how they grow, how much fertiliser they need, and so on…”

“It would be a good idea, if we did not already know that their stuff is no good,” I, Noah said. “In fact, they said it themselves yesterday at their meeting.” And I played them the bio-audio with video-segments of what we had seen and heard yesterday.

“Unbelievable, their brazenness!” said Siaka and Nouhoum and the others nodded. “Let us call a workers’ assembly and start a proper material check ourselves. You expert guests, could you help us?”

“Yes,” I, Noah, said, “But could you get some spontaneous militia here to protect our dinosaurs and buffalos in case Schneid and Co. show up?”

“Oh, yes,” said another worker, Adam, in French, “I read about that on l’Humanité. The revolutionaries in the French lands fertilise the soil with animal dung like our villagers do as well, if there is water, of course, and if we can feed them. We have two large patches behind the workshop. Let’s try to turn them into a forest!”

The workers cheered in approval and some of them immediately ran to the water tower to get the pumps going.

“Let’s get the dinosaurs and the magic buffalos then. The dinosaurs can travel back into the past when their job is done, we just need little snacks for them, maybe leaves from those palm trees here for the vegans, and if you had some chicken you were going to slaughter anyway for the carnivores? Or we could have some buffalohumans? They can transform back into humans once their job as fertilisers is done.”

The workers look terrified. “That sounds difficult,” one of them said. “We are afraid we won’t have enough to feed them!” fretted another.

“Wait a minute!” said Jean-Saïd and you could see him focus on his bio-message – where to, the other Illyrians wondered? To Senegal, where the Babagidas, Jamie, Lily, Claudio, and Esther were still helping with the preparations for the march of the trees down there? Or into the past to ask for more dinosaurs to come up and help the Malians as well as the Senegalese and the Chadians?

“No need,” said Lurdu, Spino, Cetio, Megapno, Karchar, and Afro, not crawling out of a time tunnel, as they had feared, because it was still difficult to travel back into the past from the future, from the past back into the future was easier. Instead, they just hopped off a revolutionary yellow beam, reassembling as they spoke. “We’ll just beam back to the Nelson Mandela cooperative when we are done here. They have enough food at the moment.”

And then from a second beam, the six African water buffalohumans materialised, first as humans. “You said come fast , so we came as humans,” Jamie explained. “They disassemble faster and put less weight on the beam.” Once Jean-Saïd had explained to them what the workers wanted, help with their return to self-management and running harpist experiments for the march of the trees based on the unity and mutual respect of all living or intranet-capable beings, humans, animals, robots, and plants, they quickly mumbled a spell and immediately began to change. Their skin hardened and became brown, their heads grew bigger and developed bigger ears and horns, their hands and feet became hooves, their bodies grew larger, their arms longer, they developed a tail, and within about ten to twenty minutes, they were able to let themselves down on their front legs and stood before them as full-blown water buffalo.

“So, where are your fields?” they asked, and since Megapno and the other dinos were already working on the first patch, another worker, Yacouba, directed them to the second.

“There is hardly any grass,” Lily mooed, whose colour was lighter than that of the others even in her buffalo shape. “So, I assume you just want us to fertilise? Lucky we had breakfast before we came.”

Soon, both fields looked like a freshly tilled field with the earth black from organic fertiliser up to their remotest corners. “We don’t know how to thank you,” said Adam who had been just chosen as the first brigadier of the day of the new cooperative the workers had created.

“We shall no longer be a logistics and water station, just a free well as we used to be and a cooperative farm. No use being a logistics station when we don’t produce anything.” “Let’s plant karite trees,” said Siaka. “They yield shea butter, that way we can do something for the march of the trees and for our food supply as well.”

“Buffaloshit, you don’t have to thank us,” Papa Babagida, already half back human again, said to Adam. “Claudio, didn’t you summon the yellow beam. Why is it not coming?”

“From now on, always rely on the harp when in trouble,” said Cetio, while she and her buddies were already disassembling into molecules again and preparing to jump on the yellow beams that had already dutifully materialised next to them, and were now getting to the buffalohumans on the neighbouring field as well.

“Why did they have to run so fast?” gasped Aminata, brigadier of the women’s brigade who were just carrying up arms full of dry hay and were accompanied by a few emaciated chicken, still alive.

“Because they did not want to eat our grub, honey,” answered Adam and hugged her. “Nevertheless, it was good of you to come so quickly. They will have seen that from their beam and know we are nice at heart, just poor. And you will tell them as well, won’t you?” he turned to our two Illyrian Mali brigades.

“We shall, but they may have had another reason for leaving fast. Look at the two transporters in front of the gate. They are not ours, ours are parked somewhat more to the left, and what an outrage, these seem to be fuel-guzzlers. So, probably some capexogarchs with an underground oil rig behind them,” said Michelle.

“We do have self-managed oil-rigs, but very few, and they produce special oils for lubricating equipment, not the petrol these outdated monsters would take,” said another worker, called Abdoulaye, like their acquaintance on the first day. “So, that’s these damn fascos back. What to do now? We have not prepared them their seeds. We were supposed to plant them all into little pots to be sold. Instead we have reorganised as a free water well and tree-growing cooperative and started to fertilise our two patches. And by God, it is already almost 4 o’clock.”

“We’ll have to tell them,” said yet another worker, Seydou. “But we have to make sure they can’t shoot at us with firearms or get at us with brown beams. I have learnt about them at the sports studio, they are not harmless stun beams like the red revolutionary ones, they can be cranked up to be really lethal.”

“Hasn’t the spontaneous militia brigade arrived?” asked Aslan, and hooray, seven well-trained comrades immediately followed our security brigade to greet the capexogarch mercs at the gate.

One of the militiaman opened it and let Schneid’s whole nefarious crew consisting of Fritz, le patron, the Pappbergeryte chemical producer himself, followed by the French barons, Édouard and Arnaud, their wives, Anne and Marion, and their security detail Jordan, Kévin, and Raymond enter the yard. With them were two Malians nobody knew, probably from the village Fritz, le patron and Co. had been to.

“We had a good day,” Arnaud said. “We sowed some seeds, fertilised some patches which showed some growth already, and we brought two gentlemen who would like to take some of our seeds with them.”

“How many did you get potted?” asked Schneid and looked around in the workshop. “I can’t see any!”

***

Hierarchy checkers everywhere and anytime, by Jean-Fidel and Lénina

“Now look at these pictures. If you think someone is on top, blow the whistle or raise your hand…

“Originally, we did not make hierarchy checks as laid-back as actually blowing a whistle or raising your hand, but we made sure that it was as easy as touching a button on your smart phone or sending a bio-message. Yet nowadays, with the harp, we need even simpler methods. Animals and plants do not have smart phones, and in fact, many humans no longer have them, only students still learn how to use them to get acquainted with digital devices, the Aurora browser, e-mail programme, and revolutionary apps via their grow-up-with-you robots and plushtops.”

“Well, you said, nowadays you would start them by raising your hand?” asked senior comrade Félix.

“Yes, that will allow you to speak, and if need be moderate, calling on comrades that will support you.”

“That makes it appear as if the acting moderator is sure to be against you. Why?”

“Well, yes, we are conducting a hierarchy check, so we must assume there is either one individual or a clique holding the strings. ‘D’accord,’ he might say. ‘I have to do all the work around here, because you lazy bastards won’t work and don’t have any ideas.’

“’Nothing could be further from the truth,’ a supporter of the hierarchy check might say. ‘We just don’t like the way you and your followers are ordering us about, we wouldn’t mind getting paid in crypto,’ throw in a bit of sarcasm, why not, ‘if there was anything to buy with it, but there is hardly anything. There are no longer any shadow dealers at the markets and share points. These days, you have to know where an Uberyte logistics station is, then find out what goods they have got to sell, drugs, weapons and weapons’ training, in some regions sex and other criminal services, and in the logistics stations, the medley of goods that is part of their current campaign, let’s say vehicles, boats, and planes, luxury villas, dodgy vaccines, dodgy processed foods, dodgy synthetic textiles, weaponisable, but otherwise outdated smart phones, and so on. As a matter of fact, you are forcing us to produce such crap at this workshop, and we want to have a discussion among all the workers who have come together in assembly, on whether to continue in this way or rather to return true self-management and produce useful goods in the economic circuit.’”

“Oh, I know,” says the uncovered would-be tyrant. “You think that I am just a crypto-capitalist, oh, no. I have nothing against you producing ordinary goods and be part of the economic circuit, so you can all receive your food and other basics. Just do a little on the side for us.”

“And how to get the material inputs and equipment for this production?”

“Well, there might be several ways. Either like any self-managed enterprise through the economic circuit…”

“But that would require double book-keeping, in other words, fraud, you would have to get inputs for revolutionary production at least part of which won’t come…”

“You want us all to become criminals.”

“Oh, you are just an unimaginative bunch of bastards. Why not simply give the producers some money, crypto, vouchers, token, whatever for their extra effort…?”

“Because to tell you the truth, monsieur, they would not know what to do with it either, unless they are crims themselves hooked on Uberyte goodies like weapons, drugs, sex, and stuff most village assemblies have found wanting.”

“You might forge the results of a material check.”

“No way, products get checked so many times, by so many workers, brigades, in the producing workshop, by the suppliers, by workshops producing similar products, and of course, by the patrons and users.”

“Then you might give up staying within the economic circuit, our Uberyte networks will grow again, we shall involve more people in the renascent monetary economy, there will be more money, crypto, and so on around, other workshops will start to produce for money again, shadow dealers or maybe we should call them light merchants will appear again at the markets and share points.”

The workers look sceptical. “But this will take ages, and in the meantime, you will boss us around, for useless pay in money, and stuff in kind that is either useless as well or outright criminal, like weapons and drugs.”

“What happens then? Either the tyrant or tyrants flee, or spontaneous militia come in and arrest them. There will be a trial at the village assembly, they either repent, get rehabilitated, and then sooner or later appear again as normal revolutionaries, or they become recidivist, go underground again, and sooner or later, we find them or others using their avatar at another workshop, where workers also complain about incipient hierarchies. The only good thing is that the number of crypto-capitalists is steadily declining, from about 10000 world-wide right after the revolution, to about 2000-3000 eight years later, meaning only about ten per major region, to only about two or three dozen on a global basis these days. And as you know, the number of people willing to serve them as mercs or work-slaves has also shrunk steadily, from about 1%, one in a hundred, to 1 in every 2000 people at most, depending a bit of course on the region, whether it is agglo or rural, and other local conditions, such as the presence of foreign agitators.”

“You make it appear as if all persons hierarchy-checked are underground capitalists or fasco mercs, aren’t they sometimes just megalomaniac busybodies?” asked Frédéric.

“Or maybe true criminals who want to divert some of the work into drugs, weapons, sex products, private and or fuel-guzzling vehicles, villas, and other luxury products?” added Peter Gar from Sudan.

“And the difference between these megalomaniacs or true criminals and underground capitalists and fasco barons would be, what do you think?” Jean asked, with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes, turning to the young revolutionaries.

“Well, the latter two would be less ideological, while the true capitalists would believe in markets, private property, money, banking, help by the bourgeois state, and so on, and the fascos in the holiness of the nation, racism, bigotry, transphobia, all that nonsense,” ventured Zamir.

“Maybe, we would have to pay attention to that in rehabilitation sessions. Who do you think would be hardest to get to repent?”

Shouts branded up, it was difficult to keep track of the votes rendered. “The fascos. Someone wound them up.”

“The underground capitalists. They want to become crypto-trillionaires even if they can’t spend their money.”

“The capexogarchs. They want to become richer than the European and American capexogarchs, that is ex-capitalists and oligarchs.”

“The would-be tyrants. They are mentally ill jerks.”

“The drug dealers. They are afraid to go down for murder.”

“One of the last to yield will be the weapons’ merchants. They get addicted to their own guns.”

“This Fritz Schneid we are having to do with in Mali, what type is he?”

“A criminal with a whiff of capitalist economic theory on him!”

“And Édouard and Arnaud?” “Just busy-bodies.”

“And Anne and Marion?” “More right-wing than their partners.”

“Ronald Gunpump?” “The kind of weapons’ freak I talked about. And maybe Schnitzel is as well.” That was comrade Misha talking.

“And Thomas Rutte?” “Criminally insane with an inferiority complex. He’s got to be in charge.”

“And Jordan, Kévin, and Raymond?” “Just boring mercs. They’ll be first to come around, then Édouard and Arnaud.”

“Oh, I am not so sure about them. Think about it! There are no more big underground arms producers in the French lands, Dassault, Thales, they have all gone down. Yet, instead of settling down and exercising their busy-body character as chairmen of their neighbourhood assembly every six-seven weeks or so, as brigadiers at work, or even as effusive speaker at the workplace or village assemblies, but without much ideological content, Édouard chose to buy or lease major counter-revolutionary media-channels such as Empire Européen and Le Figaro, and Arnaud tried to recruit followers for the reactionary movement, they call it their Cause in the French countryside. They are not only busybodies, and not even pure crims only, they are ideological freaks,” said Patrick.

“You may be right, comrade Patrick,” growled Denis. “And if that is the case, we will still have to wait for one or two more generations for an entirely revolutionary generation to emerge, don’t you think?”

“Why do you think, comrade Denis, that the reactionaries don’t have any children?” Jean teased his old friend. “They do, and we must make sure that we win their hearts and minds early enough before the fascos and capitalists get them.”

Chapter 4. Material checks – a matter of pride!

Material checkers everywhere and anytime, by Sarah and Faroukh

“After this most interesting and thought-provoking debate on hierarchy checks, we resume our report from Mali at the moment where Fritz, le patron had discovered that the workers in that particular water, logistic and GMO and synthetic fertiliser station had not done any work that day.

“We needed to do material checks first,” explained Adam.

“That is true,” Maddy, or Mahdi piped up who had now entered a little later than the others. “We agreed on that, didn’t we?”

“We told you we had them checked in the ex-U.S., in the French and in the German lands!” shouted Fritz Schneid. “What more do you want?”

“We weren’t sure! We have to check them in Mali as well! We found a team of experts from Bamako UST – University of Science and Technology –, don’t you spit on it, it has become a lot better since the revolution, due to the mixed brigade organisation and better equipment from the French lands.”

Luckily, Adam and his friends had been able to reach the university biochemistry labs before the end of the day, and a brigade of young scientists had already agreed to come over next morning. “We’ll take samples back for examination at our lab!” Adam now projected the bio-call against the wall for the fascos to watch and listen. “I won’t take more than a week. Don’t worry,” and we could hear and see the capital experts laugh at the other end, “The whole process of the march of the trees up from the Congo and through the Savanna and the Sahel will take 40 years at least, we have computed, since even a very healthy forest won’t be able to move faster than 50 km a year, 4 km a month. That means not more than one hundred to one hundred fifty metres a day. So, we have plenty of time to get prepared. ‘The more carefully you check, the faster you will go!’ as one of our engineers puts it. He can come with us tomorrow if you want. We can come by yellow beam,” he offered when he saw the fasco’s faces getting longer and longer. “That will save time.”

“That’s great, you really had them there. What happened?”

“Well, nothing. I mean they left, they did not come back today. The team from Bamako came, took the samples, and now we can go on preparing our karite tree orchard organically while we wait. I doubt they will come back.”

“So, if you raise your hand, you can have request to speak, change in moderation, or hierarchy check. Or you might ask for a material check…,” Bashir summarised, quite happy with the new options. “By the way, if you work at a workshop or at a lab, nothing easier than getting together with a few buddies and starting a material check yourself. Or, you might have friends at a workshop or lab who will help you.”

“Still as comrade Jean mentioned already, there may be a need for experts, that can create the danger of incipient hierarchies, as well as fake checks, can’t it?” asked Sevim.

“My owl of wisdom is right as always. What if Schneid and Co. had shown some courage and said they would only recognise their bogus American, French, and German experts?” asked Bashir.

“Well, we then would have had to prove they are bogus, but that’s as easy as pie,” said Maher. “The French ones would have been former Sabiani, Hunzinger, or Nah and Fern collaborators, we have proven all of them not to be trustworthy bio-technologists but to have been at least cynical fascist criminals.”

“Or if they had stuck around and questioned the team from Bamako?” asked Rosa. “Doubting their credentials. They might be too young, or their revolutionary new equipment overrated, or worst-case scenario, you comrades might have bribed them to get off their fasco crypto-hook, so to speak.”

“We would at first have postponed the stand-off by saying, let us first do our work here,” said one of the comrades from Bamako. “My name is Karim, by the way. Then we would have invited colleagues from the New University of Timbuktu. Ha, you comrades probably don’t even know we have such an organisation, except for Noah maybe. You thought Timbuktu was all mosque and no science. Moctar here is our revolutionary scientific exchange correspondent from Timbuktu. He would have made a show of calling on his fellow-students here who would have come as well and said. ‘Sorry, our lab is not quite ready yet. We are waiting for the latest equipment. Meanwhile, we can testify that the Bamako guys are really the best at this moment in Mali and equal to experts in Mauretania, Niger, Burkina Faso, even Senegal.’ And if then, they had continued defaming us, we, or rather you could still have debunked their experts.”

“Of course!” said Jean-Wadi. “Yet papa, eh comrade Jean is right, there is a loophole there to sap universality and objectivity from material tests. Universality means that any material check carried out in a scientific way, meaning clearly stating methods, tools, and other conditions of the experiment, must be recognised as a valid effort.”

“You are implying that they need not all be done with the same latest equipment?”

“Absolutely not. You can check water in a lab or just by tasting it. If it is poisoned, the second method, spitting it out again in disgust, will be just as valid as the lab one. On Faroukh’s and Sarah’s picture you can see researchers checking synthetic fertiliser and dinosaur manure with various kinds of microscopes, the effect of the MA virus and white phosphorous on trees by observation, traces of nuclear and or synthetic fertiliser contamination of ground water after the recent preventive explosive of fasco uranium deposits in the Niger underground with Geiger counters, as well as by bravely tasting it, and the progress of the tree march with dinosaur poo as a fertiliser. Somebody who looks like comrade Karla is also doing a check of patterns of exploitation comparing the situation in year 20 of the revolution with 2021 – our world revolution, 1968 – the May revolution, 1945 – the end of the war, 1917 – the dawn of the Soviet revolution,1870 – the Paris Commune, 1789 – the French bourgeois revolution. And there is a lot more material checkers do world-wide every day to keep our free revolutionary products up to snuff and prevent the underground capitalists from selling us junk against crypto.”

“And you see, one more way to gain time would have been to tell these fascos, ‘Ultimately, it will be up to the village assemblies to decide whether to accept GMOs and synthetic fertilisers as part of this effort of regreening Timbuktu, not only this one, where we are located, but all, how many are there? 200 village assemblies in the greater agglo of Timbuktu which counts 120000 residents. Sorry, pals, this will take some time. You might as well go home and try to poison some more revolutionaries, instead of getting yourselves arrested here.”

The Cotton Scam, by Faroukh and Sarah

“This is not the only story on fake material checks and playing out experts against each other. It is twenty years after the revolution, most cotton workshops in Mali are self-managed these days and producing for the regional or African market, but some, nick-named ‘export workshops’ produce for crypto. Think about it, there is no more state, so how can there be exports? There can just be revolutionary barter. So, we went to one of them to see how things were checking out on the shop-floor.

“The Mali region does produce quite some cotton, I think it is still the largest cotton producer in Africa, but it produces mainly for the African market. After all, we Europeans, the Americans, and Asians also produce cotton, now after the revolution a lot more than before, since synthetic textiles have been forbidden or phased out, and cotton is the best alternative to sheep wool. Yet the Malian export producers still produce mainly for the world market like in the old colonialist-imperialist time.

“Yet what do they do in dry summers like we are having this year and like we had these past few years and the harvest has not been that great?”

“Let me guess, they compromise a bit on product quality, they weave their material a bit thinner.”

“Or maybe they try to buy, or rather steal cotton from the self-managed workshops.”

“Or maybe they can even try to weave some synthetics in. With Schneid and Sawiris, both chemical fraudsters, cooperating, you wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Exactly, and so we went in to check out what was happening. We pretended to be more or less who we are, revolutionary barter correspondents from Illyria, bringing samples of our clothes’ workshop’s production. From the face of it, this workshop was just as happy as ours at Illyria. While the workers were mainly women, there were young men as well. There were about 20 workers, three brigades, and the brigadiers, Hawa, Kadiatou, and Djeneba said that they were only fore(wo)men for the day. Rotation seemed to be on.

“But you see,” Hawa admitted to the scared and horrified looks of her co-workers. “We report to him, and she pointed to a picture on the wall. He is the boss right now. There are several of them, but they always stay on for a month at least. That’s long, isn’t it?”

“And there aren’t supposed to be any bosses, just fore(wo)men of brigades which change every day,” interjected Maher.

And Hawa’s friend, who said her name was Alima, (wo)manned up and added: “And the boss, whoever it is at the moment, only talks to the brigadiers, not to the rest of us. And he is always there only for a day, and not every week. Sometimes, it takes two or three or even four weeks until he shows up.”

“And the planning?” asked Karla. “How do you do the planning. In full assembly?”

Hawa laughed. “Not at all. We told you, he just talks to the brigadiers of the day on the days he stops by, in that room over there, and she pointed to an office in back, and we other workers are not even allowed to stand around in a circle and listen in like they are doing now.”

“D’accord, that’s the hierarchy check failed. What about material checks? How often do you run them and has the local village assembly approved of your production?”

“Well, how do you do yours?”

“We check our new products first ourselves,” comrade Salma spoke up from Illyria. “I take over here, because none of the young comrades who are with you at the moment really works in the clothes’ workshop. Then, after we are done, we send it to the Paris artisanal school Arts et Métiers. Not all workshops can get their production checked at Arts et Métiers. We have a comrade who works there as a researcher, comrade Martine, she helped us get a standing appointment.”

“Well, we have one in Egypt,” said another worker, Aminata.

“Wow,” said young comrade Malik also intraline from Illyria. “That’s far away. Why not send them to China? You see, my buddy is Chinese, but my parents are comrades Noah and Michelle. Comrade Noah is from Mali, but she is from Haiti and the ex-U.S., and I have been there. It would be like sending cotton from the old Southern states to New York to test. Salma means we were lucky to get a good check-up point close by.”

The workers laughed. “But we only do some clothes. Mostly we mill the cotton and weave it into patterns, and then we send it to other workshops to turn these into clothes, maybe you have heard of the Avanti workshops?”

“Nasif Sawiris’ pals, aren’t they?” I, Noah, asked.

“Yes,” said another worker, Oumou. “And it’s them who material- check our stuff, the cotton for weaving, the already woven designs, and the ready clothes and then process them further. We don’t have to material-check them here, because we are an export workshop after all.”

“And at the end of the day, you are happy?”

“No,” several of them shouted, and another worker. Balla, admitted. “We steal things, wool, and even woven stuff and ready clothes to have enough for us and our families to wear. And we give some to the share point as well, because you see, these capexogarchs don’t pay enough.”

“And you know what the worst is, they don’t even give food,” said Hawa. “At the farms and at the self-managed workshops, you can eat and take stuff home with you, even if you don’t work on your own patch but at a neighbours’, but these Egyptians and North face people just starve us.”

“They certainly do,” sighed Aminata. “So, you said you could help us get back to self-management?”

“Yes, you want to call spontaneous militia? Don’t worry, they won’t harm you, they will come to protect you.” And after they had agreed, we waited for another hour, then Michelle instructed them further. “You’ll just have to tell everything you just told us to the nice militiamen who just arrived, comrades Lamine, Hamidou, Sidi, Moulaye, Boubou, Moriba, and Toumani. They’ve got a quorum from the village assembly and they’ll take testimonies from all of you. You reconstitute yourselves as a self-managed workshop, get your production material-checked and approved for the African market, and next time, one of these would-be bosses shows up, we just can them.”

“You also have to go to the farms,” said Kadiatou, when we were about to stop the bio-wifi conference with Illyria. “You see, normally, Mali farms focus on food and produce only some cotton, but these ‘export farms’ we call them, they are monocultures, they do only cotton. And now, since the fake Franc, crypto, fake vouchers, and so on have been outlawed, and there are no more shadow dealers, the farm workers hardly get any food at the market anymore. They have their garden plots, but they are not enough to feed them. That is why you sometimes hear, maybe even up North there in the French lands, that we here in Africa are starving even in the revolution. That is because we are not allowed to farm as families or as cooperatives.”

“That is terrible,” said Salma. “And since we are still on, one last set of questions before we all go home, as freer people already, we hope, does Sawiris control the farm land as well and does he have a patent on the cotton? And does he sell you GMO seeds? And do you have to use synthetic fertiliser?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Hawa. “Fertiliser is cheap. It comes from China or America, although the capexogarchs produce it. No, the foreign capexogarchs don’t control the land, the land and its fruit belong to all. After all, we have had the world revolution of 2021, but still… Nobody ever checks on these huge cotton farms, nor on export workshops like ours either. You are the first foreign visitors truly interested in our stories since we exist. And is our cotton from GMO seeds? We wouldn’t know. You would have to material-check it at the farms, I suppose!”

“And then the connection to you comrades broke,” explained Jean-Saïd. “We told them to go home and only come back with militia protection. They’ll now have to wait for one of these bosses to shop up. We Mali brigades also beamed home to Noah’s parent’s house and began to prepare our trefoil check.”

“Because the stories of the comrades about hunger and nothing to wear even if you worked in a cotton workshop surely made us think,” added Maher. “Remember Omsinbaba’s updated Africa manifesto. Over 50% of the African population go hungry at times, 20 years into the revolution. That is an outrage!”

Chapter 5. We must have a spontaneous trefoil check!

The Spontaneous Trefoil Check, by Bashir, Zelim-Philippe, and Sarah, comrade Sevim with Little Asma in a sling, comrades Bashir and Zelim-Philippe raising their hands demanding a trefoil check

“Not only market stall attendants, share point holders, and workshop outlet workers can do spontaneous trefoil checks, but every consumer and user at the market, share point, or workshop. The basic question always is: ‘Is there enough available for everyone I know needs this good?’

“How to get the message out? An easy time-tested method is again to lift your hand and report at an assembly, neighbourhood, workshop, or village.

Second, you might communicate your impressions and or even detailed calculations to the market stall attendants and share point holders you deal with.

Third, you might launch a survey on the survey app, with your brain app or on a plushbot, asking whether your impressions or calculations are correct. The questions might be, ‘Is it true, there are not enough oranges offered at the market stalls and share points? Yes or no.’ ‘How many oranges does your household eat a week, a month?, a year?’ ‘Have you contemplated turning to a shadow dealer and pay crypto or other money substitutes when oranges were not available or not available in sufficient quantity at the market or share point?’

Fourth, if all respondents to your survey say no to the first question, then no problem. It may have been a false alarm. If they say yes, they usually also complain about the high price or even the mere fact they have to turn to a shadow dealer just for a couple of oranges a week or, a month, let us say, or once a year for Christmas, let us say. If you feel you have enough people with you in that matter, you can call for a quorum of local villagers to approve a spontaneous militia brigade that will come in and lift the shadow dealer or dealers. At the same time, the village assembly may also approve of a brigade of revolutionary barter correspondents to travel to Spain and barter local products against more oranges.

Or there might not be a shadow dealer, but the oranges may come from a local Uberyte logistics station. Then the spontaneous militia brigade should get a quorum from the village assembly to protect the workers against the capexogarchs and their mercs while the workers’ assembly of the logistics station reconstitutes it as a self-managed workshop or rather logistics organisation.

Fifth, you may help them search for the new shadow dealers if any as well as the managers who run the underground capitalist workshops on behalf of Henri Uber, Luis Deshalles, Fernando Deliverando, Larry Flink, and Viesturs Volt. It used to be Marcus Nah and Ian Fern and consorts, or before that the second generation of the Vichyites, François Pinault and Co., and even before that the New Vichyites tout court, in short, Roger Sabiani, René Huntziger and Co.

Sixth, to make sure that crypto-trade does not come back, it can be very useful to monitor the free or crypto gauge that Bashir and Zelim-Philippe have developed. Using surveys and planning models such as material balances and input-output matrices, it registers for every good the proportion transferred for free – and that includes orders from the producing workshop –, via simple sharing, via revolutionary barter or if any, the proportion that gets traded for money, crypto, vouchers, or token.

Seventh, coming back to the example of the oranges, you may arrange for a team of revolutionary barter correspondents from a neighbouring village assembly or your organisation’s workplace assembly to go out as well. Usually, it is the local village assembly which sends out revolutionary barter correspondents, but sometimes it can be a workplace as well, for instance, in the case of the cooperative of Illyria which doubles as a village. This team or these teams of revolutionary barter correspondents will travel to Spain, let us say, and negotiate for a new deal for more oranges to be sent up to our regional markets. Usually, if one village market asks for more of something, others will join in, and that may make transport by train, for instance, easier to arrange. Yet be careful not to overburden our Spanish comrades. Spanish agriculture has become small-scale, with family farms and small cooperatives – it used to be big farming enterprises, but since the revolution, the farming sector in the Spanish lands has also reconstituted in smaller family farms or small or medium-sized cooperatives just like French agriculture.

Eighth, to save you and your fellow revolutionary barter correspondents nerves, you can use the labour-time or use-value calculators to make goods comparable even if they get bartered over huge distances.

Ninth, if there has been a natural emergency, coming back to the transport problem, villages can form convoys of vehicles and load trains and ships that will bring needed supplies into regions that are starving.

Tenth, to make sure people do not fear for their supplies, especially in a situation of natural emergency, it makes sense to call additional assemblies, let everybody report on their household’s situation, and reassure people of their good standing in the community. That is another way to get people to cryptoleak and or report jobs with underground logistics stations and workshops they may have fallen for. Any other things to do when running or helping with a revolutionary trefoil check?”

After our Gold: Gold-mining as exploitative mechanism 1, Sifting, by Bashir and Zelim-Philippe

After our Gold: Gold-mining as exploitative mechanism 2, Drilling, by Zamir and Odile

“One point I can think of is the correct classification or categorisation of goods in revolutionary planning, especially the goods the revolution does not produce in large quantities but that risk being exploited by the capexogarchs and Uberytes.

“First example, gold, since Mali has a lot of it and the capexogarchs and Uberytes want to exploit it. Gold is used in ornaments, of course. Yet gold is also used as an input in medicine as well, and in that context the fascos have tried to involve policlinics in its mining and sale for use in dentistry or nanobots, for example. And gold is also used in the processors and circuit boards of larger digital devices as well, revolutionary ones like harpoid robots and plushbots, but also in the weapons the class enemy still produces as well. Fourth, gold can be used as money equivalent or in crypto-coins, and to back up cash, other coins, or cards.

And soon enough we will be led back to our ten points, and especially the need to uncover and liberate Uberyte workshops, logistics stations, sports studios with weapons’ training, amusement clubs, policlinics, and yes, gold mines, and bring them back to self-management.

“We have talked at length about logistics stations and water stations and their involvement in the distribution of synthetic fertilisers and GMO trees, as well as exploitation in cotton workshops and on cotton farms. So, let’s take the example of our Malian policlinics then and their involvement in the gold scam. Policlinics in the desert or the dry savannah can’t be research hospitals. Too often, there isn’t any water or electricity. The hospitals do not have enough food and or medications for their patients even, let alone for elaborate research. Modern technology, even if available, can break down easily. It’s enough for a bit of sand to come in. Comrade Miguel tells me it is the same in the Mexican desert and the Argentinian pampa even. Yet some Malians as well as Mexicans and Argentinians trust the for-pay policlinics because they hope to find better conditions there than in the regular revolutionary policlinics. Nothing could be further from the truth! Instead, they risk having to work for their own gold fillings in a gold-wash basin or even underground in the Sahel heat, with 99 percent of their production going into weaponry, mostly sophisticated digital steering mechanisms for tanks and drones and maybe some dental fillings and other ornaments for the rich.”

After our Gold: Gold as Input and as Bank, by Jean-Vladimir and Adilah

“We have nothing against free allocation and distribution, and nothing against self-management, and that means no more positions of authority, and constant hierarchy and material checks either,” said one of the miners we talked to. “We want you to help us fight for our rights, but that maybe entails the right to earn crypto as well. After all, why does Mali have gold!?”

“Fine, we could mine some gold to make beautiful rings and necklaces or for use in electronic devices,” I, Noah said, thinking of what you, the Gars, had said the other day. “Although we may gradually get rid of the electronic devices as well, since we have intranet and bio-wifi that allow us to communicate with each other and with animals and plants directly, without the need for glass fibre cables, metallic wifi-towers, or even gold wiring in the devices. And what do we need crypto for?” I asked. “You can have almost all things for free at the market or share point or at least via simple sharing and revolutionary barter. Some things will require a trefoil check sometimes. Maybe a team of revolutionary barter correspondents needs to be sent out to a self-managed mine to organise some more gold for a local self-managed jewellery workshop, but why involve money in this, let alone domestic and foreign capexogarchs?”

“Well, do you want us to ruin our health sifting for gold in shifty basins above ground, or cleave it out of the solid rock in a tunnel underground and not get any special reward for it at all?”

“If you were working in a self-managed enterprise, you would have to spend at most your socially necessary working time of fifteen hours a week on these strenuous tasks. Yet I suppose in this case, the fifteen hours could be reduced to a lot less. You could discuss it at home, in your neighbourhood assembly, at your workplace assembly, and at the village assembly. Let’s say, everybody agrees, you should only have to work seven and a half hours a week at most in a gold mine as your socially necessary labour time, and can devote the rest of your time to creative work and leisure. And in exchange, you would get all your basic goods, food, obviously, as a human right, clothes, household tools, furniture, toys, books, harpoid robots and plushbots. In case, you did not know, harpoid robots are flexible robots in human, animal, any kind of robot, and plant shape with expendable frames, skills, and memories, so as to give your child the impression that its robot is growing along with it. Plushbot designers, on the other hand, use the fact that intranet devices get much less hot than the old internet ones. This fact has enabled us to create devices with all the basic elements of laptops, tablets, and smartphones – namely monitors, keyboards, camera, microphone, graphic and sound cards, motherboard, central processing unit, circuit board with revolutionary apps, random access memory, batteries, and so on –, but coated with light natural textiles rather than heavy aluminium and plastic. By the way, the coating has changed, but the basic ingredients may still contain quite a bit of gold and other valuable metals. So, in a self-managed revolutionary mine, you would no longer work for capexogarchs, but for your children. You’d get all the above-mentioned goods as personal property and the house you live in as family or household property. The only things you wouldn’t be allowed to own are houses you don’t live in, as well as all ostentatious and or dangerous things which include personal vehicles – although you can be the driver of your mine’s, farm’s or workshop’s delivery vehicle, drugs and medicines, but also ostentatious jewellery. Not only because it can be sharp and hurt little children, but also because it may provoke jealousy and greed. As part of a family inheritance, old or new, simple and meaningful jewellery is alright, of course. In other words, you can give your wife or your husband a wedding band or your daughter a pearl necklace for her coming of age, but not just to show off, no, as sign of a covenant.

“From this point of view, some comrades even consider tattoos a dodgy thing to have in the revolution. They mean a promise, but what if you just had them done for crypto to show off?

“You also don’t own intellectual property rights. Comrade Salma will tell us about those later, and by the way, they include proprietary knowledge on how to mine gold, and how incorporate it into production of jewellery, digital devices, and medical aids such as tooth fillings. Basically, gold mining is just another relapse into exploitation and literally undermining the revolution.” The mine workers were happy with that explanation and some considered further training as jewellers and robot engineers to put their mining work experience to further use later on.

Chapter 6. Fully implement the Harp!

Full harp assembly 1, by Julie and Natalie

“This looks too simple,” said Peter Gar, reacting to Julie and Natalie’s picture. “On your picture, all these harpists – humans, animals, robots, and plants –, all look like humanised pets already.”

“But they are debating things peacefully!” said Zelim-Philippe, “forgetting their cravings. I like it.”

Full harp assembly 2, by Marius and Jean-Luc

“The second picture evidences potential conflicts of interests…,” noted Marius.

“That sounds too capitalist, why not call it the food chain?” asked Peter Gar.

“Because that would make it sound Darwinist. Darwinism makes it appear as if all harpists are out to eat each other. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real story of nature is symbiosis and harmony. Look, camels and time-travelled dinosaurs can store water for plants and other animals, even if the vegetarians among them eat plants and the carnivores animals. Dinosaurs can fertilise the soil for the march of the trees, even if the vegans among them eat tree leaves, thinner branches, and may, if they are hungry, even devour whole trees. Not only carnivorous dinosaurs, but lions also have to eat. And not to forget, humans often devour plants and animals to the point of genociding them, even though they could also care for them gently and allow them to multiply.”

“We should be able to overcome death,” mused Jean. “Remember Camus, put in the harp, and instead of suicide, put death. ‘Le seul problème vraiment sérieux de l’existence, des choses comme des hommes et des autres harpistes, c’est la mort.’” “The only serious existential problem, be it of things, people and other harpists, is death.”

“Or if it turns out that overcoming death is impossible, maybe your soul might be able to navigate to a new body to keep cells fresh, and or you should at least be able to remember things from your past lives,” said Robespierre. “If only to prevent us from repeating our mistakes all over again.”

They all clapped. “And before we become too defeatist, the biggest mistake we made may have been being too lenient with these ex-capitalists and their new generations!” scowled Denis, the falcon.

“Well, we statisticians agreed with the Gars,” said Pascal. “The first picture of the harp assembly looks too easy, and that is why we asked the dinosaurs, the other animals, as many species as we could, the humans, and the plants, again as many species as we could, what expectations they link to full implementation of the harp. It was one of our first surveys involving all four harpists in equal numbers, be it only those in our area around Illyria, although we asked some zoo animals from Paris, and we went to the botanical garden to ask some plants.”

“And, what did they say?” asked Danièle.

“Well, 95% of all respondents, humans, animals, including dinos, and plants, said they had just one request, for their side to be heard. That was all, no more, no less!”

The Mali “Human lives matter and should triumph,” movement debunked, by Olivier and Danièle

“That may not mean much,” Peter Gar reacted dryly. “Coming from a lion or a Karchar, it may mean, if I have only the faintest impression that you are not listening to my side, I shall kill you.”

“Or if it comes from a fasco! We have an example from Mali,” I, Noah, and the other Mali brigadiers tuned in opportunely. “Imagine that, seeing that their water, fertiliser, GMO, and neuro-transmitter schemes against the march of the trees are floundering, the fascos are trying to resuscitate the ‘Human lives matter and shall triumph’ movement.”

“With them you mean the Uberytes?” asked Olivier.

“Well, their militant wing at least,” Michelle explained. “Those that produce weapons and plan violent plots like confusing the march of the trees in Senegal and Mali, or the coup in Niger. Schnitzel and Co., if you will. Friends of mine and I were able to infiltrate ourselves into a ‘Human lives matter’ meeting here in Timbuktu. The organisers leave out the ‘and shall triumph’ of course when recruiting. The participants were mainly women and kids, some adolescents, and the meeting took place at a sports studio, so they were probably trying to mobilise people for their weapons’ training as well. While the speakers were droning on about the sanctity of human lives and that it needed to be defended by any means possible against silly ideas of ‘All lives matter’ and especially ‘Plant lives triumph’, we, I, Michelle, and the other comrades, ran a survey among participants, via delta waves, asking what they thought of Human lives matter…, sports studios, private policlinics, amusement clubs, and logistics stations, the classic Uberyte ventures, then the slightly more controversial ones like water stations, weapons, synthetic textiles, synthetic fertilisers, GMOs, neuro-transmitters for humans and even for trees, other drugs, and so on.

“The best marks, around 50% approval, were obtained by Human lives matter, private policlinics, and logistics stations. Water stations for pay, sport studios, and synthetic textiles got no more than 10 approval, and amusement clubs, weapons, synthetic fertilisers, GMOs, and drugs only around 1-4%. That’s two people maximum in about 50 respondents. Let me bio-message you the graph.

Then somebody got up, a big mother of three, and said: “D’accord, the palm tree needs water, no need to cut it down, the lion needs to eat once in a while, no need to shoot it, the cotton plants will get ill with too much synthetic fertiliser, especially with the sun on them.” You realise she was a practical woman, not wound up at all, just telling it like it is. “And yet you white folk,” she continued, “humans are eating grilled chicken every day, even while our village is starving, and your lives are supposed to matter more than everybody else’s?”

Of course, the fascos did not want to hear that and the meeting finished early.

Later, we met for a real harp assembly in my parental village near Timbuktu. “Look, before the whole idea of the harp turns into a farce,” Elif Megapno spoke up for the dinosaurs.

“You make it appear as if the animals, including the dinosaurs, and even the plants were all murdering bastards whom you humans had to get to agree not to harm each other. Of course, we understand that we have to give plants a little poo for organic fertilisers and the bigger ones among us may have to store a little water to keep them alive and promote the march of the trees before we can ask them to be allowed to nibble on their leaves and thinner twigs. We are not idiots. All that is needed is a little self-restraint and love of the living.” All dinosaurs, as well as bigger plant-eating animals such as camels, giraffes, gazellas, and water buffalos clapped and cheered. “And the smaller carnivores understand that while we can’t store as much water as let us say, a Karcharsaurus, we can serve as good security against greedy humans, that is for sure.”

“Fuck it,” said the lion. “I won’t touch them, they are too disgusting.”

“No need for that,” grinned Elif. “You just report them via bio-wifi, then we other harpists will take care of them with or without you.” He paused, but only for greater effect.

“As a matter of fact, disdained humans, that brings me to my main point. You make it appear as if we were egotistical humans or self-centred children at best. Yet unfortunately, we can turn that spear around. Instituting full harp won’t burn down to letting animals, including dinosaurs, robots, and plants participate in your assemblies and speak when it is our turn, you’ll have to allow us to decide things with you.

“Let me give you a list of things that will have to change before we can even begin to speak of a true harp assembly:

Your brigades in kindergarden, school, university, and workplace will have to become mixed harp. So will your neighbourhood, workplace or social organisation – school, university, logistics enterprise, and so on – assemblies. That may mean, their optimal size may have to change. Right now, brigades have a maximum of seven members, and let’s grant you that animals, and that includes humans and dinosaurs, and plants are maybe no longer quite as talkative and overbearing as capitalism had made us, but a brigade of 28 members I think, would be huge, so our First Nelson Mandela cooperative dino brigade, consisting of Afrovenator, Cetio, Karchar, Lurdu, me, and Spino, suggests to lower their size to 20, or 24 maximum. In our case, 24 would be the preferred solution, so that the six of us can stay together.

“Same story for household assemblies, we suggest there be eight members, two human and two animal families or flocks, two dino households, and two big trees, small bushes, or patches. As for villages, oh, wow, now Robby is playing my tune ‘I can’t live if living is without you’, and I yield the floor to the next speaker, comrade Robby 3.

“We think the optimal village assembly, which is now set at 200 human, should not be much bigger than that, at most double, meaning 400 living beings, 100 humans, 100 animals, 100 harpoid robots – meaning devices in human, animal, any robot or plant shape –, and 100 plants.”

“Comrade Karite tree, I can see you are almost pulling your roots out. What is it?”

“We don’t need quite so many robots, be they harpoids. Let the optimal size be 400, but the distribution be 150 plants including plant harpoids, 150 animals, including natural animals and dinosaurs as well as animal and dinosaur harpoids, and 100 humans, including harpoid humans.”

The practical mother who had spoken at the ‘Human lives matter…’ meeting and whom we had invited to ours as well, clapped. “Not quite so many robots! True, the robot engineers tell me robots need a lot of water and energy. Not so easy here in the Sahel.”

“Objection!” said Josip. “We don’t know how this will work out yet. A period of experimentation is needed, 40 years maybe, as long as it will take the march of the trees to complete. The reason for the number 40 is that by that time, many of us shall live in a different habitat. Here in the Sahel, there will be lots more trees already, you’ll have a savannah at least, probably even patches of thick forest, and a thick rain forest towards the South. That means that there will be more accessible water sources again as well. In Europe and huge parts of North America, we shall be living in the mixed forest again. In South America, the Amazon and Central American rain forest will have reclaimed huge areas of pampa and desert already. In India and other parts of Asia and Oceania, the jungle will have grown back. Let the local harpists decide then what the best composition of their brigades, neighbourhood, workplace, and village assemblies should be.”

Best size for the village?, by Jean-Wadi and Zafira

Most members of the Malian brigades and the Malian humans, as well as the Illyrians and their friends in the Garden Colony, the Manouche camp, number 76 rue de Lorraine in Saint-Denis, Omsinbaba’s village in the Senegal, the Desmond Tutu cooperative in Djibouti, the Nelson Mandela cooperative on Lake Chad, and the Muammar Gaddafi in Mbombela region, and many of the animals, dinos, and plants present at these venues clapped, others just turned their hands in the air as a sign of sham consensus or looked confused. The matter of assembly size was left open, thus turning them into a sort of organism of living beings themselves. Everybody was glad for it, especially we Malians and Africans, because especially with the eyes of the world turned on our region and continent, it was good that we humans had not taken any throttling decisions.

Chapter 7. And the march of the trees

March of the Trees: Blocked versus real, by Emmanuel and Laurence

“Now look, on the right hand side, you can see the march of the trees like it is progressing naturally, with water and organic fertiliser helping the roots along. On the left hand side, at the roots of the three trees, the blue balls are not water, but synthetic fertiliser drying out the trees and burning the roots, rather than helping its march. The middle tree is already atrophied and has lost its leaves, due probably not only to the synthetic fertiliser, but also to synthetic neuro-transmitters the fasco wrecker is injecting it with. And the first tree is dead already, possibly due to a Moral Atrophy virus injection that has nefarious impact on all harpists. In Mali, apparently, they did not employ white phosphorus yet, that’s another deadly poison for all harpists.

“We must not let their wrecking get in the way of our wonderful idea. The idea is to restore the native forests destroyed by capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism, and with them the primitive Communist and anarchist life styles that used to prevail in them and that brought humans, animals, and plants closer together. Here in North Africa, we computed that assuming maximum speeds of 13-14 metres a day, 100-150 metres a week, 5 kilometres a month, 52 km a year, it will take at least 40 years to advance the borders of the Congo rain forest significantly to the North, and to transform a good part of Sahel and maybe even part of the Sahara into Savannah. You should not imagine this as an army of trees advancing in a broad front South to North. In some places, close to the edge of rain forest, it may look that way. Yet usually, it is going to be a much more relaxed process of trees strolling for a day or a week or maybe several weeks and then striking root again to form a new grove in the Savannah or an oasis if they have already advanced into the desert. The main question in these parts which will decide on whether you will stay somewhere is water. If there is, they may stay there for several years just spreading naturally, and then all of a sudden, start to move again, if for instance, they have made intranet contact with another grove or oasis further North, or if birds and other animals have alerted them of another water source on their way. Some trees will stay back, hold the fort, and keep up the oasis, others will venture into new territory.”

“How do they know that they should always go North?”

“Well, from our deliberations at the harp assemblies obviously. It is our great plan after all. North is the general direction, the idea is to reconquer the Sahel, start to nibble on the Sahara, re-fertilise and reconquer it as well until the trees meet up with the trees that have reached out down South from Mediterranean coast.

“And of course, the march won’t always go due North. We have to take into account two factors that make the process significantly more complicated, namely dispersion and diversion.”

“You have heard about dispersion in my presentation,” said Danièle. “The agglos have to spread out, and the trees have to enter into all the cracks that form, so to say. Yet where that is not possible they, or at least some of them may have to avoid a big agglo and take position around it. You can say that diversion is the opposite of dispersion. Let’s think of the European and North American mixed forest for a moment and of the Taiga. There, the trees don’t have to keep to rare water sources, they can advance in a broad front like the Congo or Amazone trees, for that matter, Jean-Fidel was telling me about them. Yet when this broad front reaches a really big agglo like Paris, only some trees will be able to enter through the cracks, the rest will have to avoid it, maybe with help by us humans and other animals. We have to divert the trees, maybe until they reach the Eastern or Western border of the town, then they can go North again. Yet you were telling me, comrades, that it won’t be the same in Timbuktu.”

“Certainly, not at all. This is because, as we said, on African soil, the question of water takes first place. Now certainly, as you would expect there is a lot more water below the ground of Timbuktu and other agglos close to the Niger river than elsewhere in Mali. So, we shall try to grow trees in Timbuktu and all along the Niger river bend which will then march out towards the North in all directions as they would from a large oasis.”

“But what will happen to the houses?” “Some will have to move, others may disperse with the trees, but of course, leaving plenty of room to the trees.”

“Timbuktu will look a lot different!”

“A lot greener for sure!”

“Not only that, but there will also be more shade, more pollinating insects, more animals spreading natural fertiliser.”

Pierre drew a face. “This sounds like a pipe dream…. In fact…”

“It won’t happen from one day to the other,” Peter Gar interrupted him. “And don’t forget that Timbuktu is close to the river Niger. We are in Sudan at the moment, and we are amazed what a huge water reservoir the Nile is, even in dry season.”

“D’accord,” sighed Pierre, “but the Niger river floods regularly I have learnt. And you do not only want to sustain trees and other plants there, but you also want them to spread and even march purposefully in other directions.”

“Objection, disparaging of animals,” Julie and Danièle raised their hands. “They have decided on this course of action together with us humans, animals, dinosaurs and informed by knowledgeable robots.”

“I know, I helped programme them. Don’t forget, I am an energy engineer. The amount of water and fertiliser you would need… And since the revolution has abjured synthetic fertilisers, we will need many big animals, camels, buffalos, indeed dinosaurs, to provide the soil with extra nutrients. And the animals will need water and cooling as well as the plants. We haven’t even quite overcome global warming yet.”

“But we shall, the march of the tree will help. The increased cover by bushes, then small trees, then real forest will actually contribute to cooling things down,” said Jean-Saïd. “Comrade Pierre, I respect you a lot, you are a senior comrade, and you have more experience probably than Jean-Wadi, Maher, and I put together, but you think like an energy engineer. Yet the trees will march like we send bio-messages, throw red beams to neutralise aggressors or bronze beams to stop their metallic armour, or travel on yellow beams, by focusing on what we want to do, by planning precisely when and how we want to do it, and while we do it, keeping up our full concentration and will-power.”

“So, you think because of their will-power and determination, the trees will need less water, fewer nutrients, and less stability than they need when standing still and yet be able to carry out an unheard-off march into the desert and on all four continents?” asked Pierre.

And I want to be that number, when the trees come marching in…, by Odile and Zamir

“Well, as you know, we have had several very successful dummy runs in the forests and meadows around Illyria already,” said Che, “and Léon and I want to tell you about the latest, because it has been eclipsed somewhat by your adventures in Africa, comrades Mali brigade members. In fact, we tried to implement precisely what Danièle referred to earlier as dispersion and diversion. We did not do a major experiment yet for the whole agglo of Paris or even for a suburb like Saint-Denis or Versailles. We focused on our little neighbouring village of Aimeran. A few years ago, it still had over 2000 residents, and that is much too big to allow everybody to speak, let alone moderate even once in a quarterly assembly. So, we have two reasons to disperse it, the urgent tasks of anarchy and fully implementing the harp assemblies and the march of the trees and the regrowing of our native forests as well.

“First, in their three quarter assemblies of Aimeran Nord, Ouest, and Sud – the East being blocked by the railroads and the neighbouring village of Guémeron –, the residents agreed who wanted to stay in place and who wanted to move their house North, South, or West, only a couple of hundred metres, mind you, to create the cracks in the agglo wall so to speak for the trees to come in. They agreed on a plan, and while you comrades were researching the situation and fighting the fascos in Senegal and Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali, the residents of greater Aimeran with the help of Illyria’s and Ponts et Chaussées deconstruction and recycling brigades Léon, Martine, Danton, Anton, André, Tim, Nasir, and Babacar deconstructed a few hundred houses and moved them by a 100 metres North, West, or South. Some of those who moved South as a matter of fact became closer neighbours of Illyria. Of course, we are glad about the new neighbours, and even gladder that in the process or deconstructing-reconstructing the houses no trees needed to be chopped down, in fact, our marvellous planning in our harp assemblies enabled us to get those trees directly at the sites of the new construction to move early and to take their place in the parts of Aimeran South now free of houses. Of course, we were only able to do this because we had earlier deconstructed the tarmacked roads and are travelling on dirt roads everywhere. That meant that the trees could move through fields or green meadows and, if worse came to worst, pass a few dirt roads with some cobble stones as they got closer to the centre of town. Yet as we know even from old, pre-revolutionary attempts at re-greening, cobble stones and pavement let moss, grass, and even flowers get through them, and even very big trees can stand on a cobble-stoned street or square in a patch surrounded by cobble stones or pavement. They do not harm their roots all that much. The required distance of the march was only three-four kilometres at most, the trees accomplished that in three weeks to a month at most. Now Aimeran Nord, Ouest, and Sud have a hundred to two hundred fewer houses, but about three to four hundred more trees each. And the problem of the village assembly size has been solved at the same time. Aimeran now has ten assemblies, Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp being one of them, each with 200 adult residents maximum. This is a kind of plan you might contemplate in Timbuktu as well. They all clapped.

“Lucky that this Gunpump and Rutte only showed up lately, otherwise they might have been able to ruin that plan,” I, comrade Noah, mused, wondering whether the Global North-West capitalist oligarchs, the African capexogarchs, and their collaborators would ever leave Mali enough of a breathing space for Timbuktu to do such an experiment.

“We planted more trees already,” said comrade Ousmane. “But we have the houses too close together. So, you are right, we must grow a ring of groves around the town and then have the houses march out and the trees march in.”

“We started an experiment in our neighbourhood in Timbuktu already a couple of years ago,” said Amadou. “We planted trees around the school, the soccer field and around as many houses as we could. The school, the soccer field, and our houses are located around a square. And when the trees were big enough, and we learnt about the technology of the tree marches, we tried to convince them to march towards the centre of the square and turn it into a small grove. The trees were very agnostic. They said, ‘It’s going to be too sunny, and what if you stop watering us?’ Well, they were rightfully suspicious. So, we promised them as soon as they had dispersed over the square, we would pull up a transparent tarpaulin between the school and some of the houses like you have in Illyria between the robot workshop, the old farmhouse, and the stables, and we showed them the pictures of how you sit there in summer conducting your meetings even in the middle of a thunderstorm.

“Well, when it’s a big thunderstorm, we usually go in,” Hélène said laughingly. Amadou laughed as well. “Well, we also made our tarpaulin thinner and less transparent, so our trees would not get as hot, you know, adapting your idea to local conditions. That was last year. And lo and behold, they marched, restruck their roots, and lived on, even grew by an additional ten to thirty centimetres each. So, just like you, we are very optimistic. We shall, eventually, regrow the rain forest in the Sahel.” Everybody clapped, the trees on the square rustled, the birds sang. Everybody was happy and optimistic again.

“Of course, overcoming centuries of deforestation and desertification seems like a daunting task,” said Jean-Wadi. “But a few years ago, we also did not think that we would have intranet and bio-wifi passing through humans, animals, plants, and intranet-capable materials, and would need robots, laptops, and phones only as toys.”

“We thought in the beginning that we might give our marching trees natural Oxytocin, Glutamate, and Dopamine to facilitate extraction, speed, and agility, and Gaba and Serotonin in case there was a need for restraint, for instance a diversion around a huge agglo, like comrade Danièle explained,” added Maher. “Now the fascos seem to have thrown the wrench into the works by producing synthetic neuro-transmitters especially in Viesturs Volt’s workshop in the Baltics. Luckily, our comrade Arvo infiltrated himself as a spy there, and was able to report early enough on what they were doing. So, by the time they came to Omsinbaba’s region with their synthetic neuro-transmitters and Moral Atrophy virus, we already knew what they wanted to do, namely, bring our natural neuro-transmitters into disrepute and possibly make all of the trees sick before the march or marches, because of course there will be marches all over the world, from the Taiga to Fireland.”

“You think you will use these natural neuro-transmitters again, maybe here in Timbuktu as well?” asked Hasan.

“Maybe later, first we have to make sure the fascos can no longer conduct any sabotage. And believe you me, there are encouraging signs that their forces are going down,” said Muhammed, the Chechen. “Think not only of the numbers, from 1 in 100 right after the world revolution of 2021, to 1 in 2000 these days, twenty years later, but think also of the many defectors. And these are not simply rank-and-file fascos who gave up but also top barons and gang leaders who were formidable enemies when they were using their minds for crime but who are now our comrades and supporters and turning their faculties and skills to help us.”

Chapter 8. Special difficulties: how to rehabilitate fasco criminals!

The leopard never changes its spots, by Antoine and Murielle

“This for instance is a poster comrade Henri made, yes, the very Henri who almost raped young comrade Murielle when she was twelve, not only to harm her, but to bring into disrepute our whole anti-authoritarian educational organisation based on brigades and discussion between teachers, teaching assistants, and students. Now he is trying to prevent young fascos from raping people and warning the potential victims…”

“During the 20 years of our revolution, we have learnt a lot already about how to avoid war and violence already…”

“Abolish armies and police forces.”

“Abolish weapons.”

“Catch all remaining capexogarchs and fasco criminals. But how to prevent the sponsors and barons from recruiting new soldiers or mercs and have them commit new crimes? When we arrest a fasco criminal, be they top sponsors like Elon Deer and Jeff Kiss, barons like Markus Nah and Matyas Hüttner, or rank and file soldiers like Henri and his buddy Ugolin, we first question them in excruciating detail on all of what they did, their meetings, their planning, how they felt while they were committing their crimes, what ultimately made them give up and allow us to arrest them. Then we show them pictures of the effects of their actions, animals and humans crying and wriggling in pain, plant leaves shrivelling, twigs dying, roots burning. Then when they try to talk themselves out of it, and say they did not want to do it, they were being led by others, we get them to read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and the other classics. We make them realise what role they played in capitalism and in the post-capitalist class-struggle, and allow them to repent.

“Once they do, we give them the revolutionary classics and see whether we can get them to embrace our revolution, our organisation of brigades, neighbourhood, village, and workplace assemblies with fore(wo)men, brigadiers, and moderators rotating at least once a day, at every meeting, or even every hour or half an hour during the meeting. Most of them, I must say, become somewhat overbearing talkers at assemblies. They never stop, and they do not always talk to the subject matter at hand. Well, we let them talk as long as it contributes to their rehabilitation and to overcoming their fasco mindset not only in themselves but in those who listen to them and learn from their mistakes, one of the main ones being talking instead of doing.

Yet some of them have also learnt their lesson, and have not only fully repented and rehabilitated but have assisted the revolution in useful ways, at times with spectacular acts of heroism.

Spectacular cases of repentance, by Emmanuel and Laurence

One example are Elon Deer and Jeff Kiss. Elon Deer considers himself the prime hi tech inventor of the post-revolution, although even we Illyrians with our crummy robot workshop have participated in quite a few exclusively revolutionary inventions, the many revolutionary apps, for example, Aurora browser, E-Mail, and maps, the trefoil app, meaning free, simple sharing, and revolutionary barter as well as the free gauge, housing swap, hierarchy check, material check, survey, referendum, cryptoleak app, village forum, with a special quorum section to vote for or against spontaneous militia deployment, and the Chinese Wall Security Suite reinforced by Bio-Thicket and guarded by digital hounds –, the revolutionary humanoid robot, intranet and bio-wifi, the red self-defence beam, bronze anti-conventional weapon beam, blue anti-chemical weapon beam, yellow transport beam to enable spatial, and time tunnel to enable time travel back into the past and sometimes even forward into the future. And quite recently, we have invented the harpoid real-size and grow-along-with-you robots, where the robot can take any shape, robot, human, animal, plant or dino, and their small plush-coated phone or laptop-size version for work at school or travel. Brain apps allow reliable bio-video watching and bio-audio listening as well as drawing up and working with material and hierarchy checks, surveys, referendums, and what not. Nanobots are disputed these days because of their abuse by the fascos, but they are still used in medicine – to transport medicine and for minor ops –, agriculture – for watering and fertilisation, and construction – to guide harmless chemicals and bacteria to their place of work in a building to be deconstructed, protect them during their deconstruction work, and then escort them out again. These are only the inventions that were already on the tip of my tongue, but the revolution has many more to boast with.

Seeing that he was losing his lead, Elon Deer and consorts came up with one last desperate pitch – counter-revolutionary spacecraft to place satellites in order to revive the old-fashioned internet with. Remember, we already mentioned that they made several desperate attempts to bring back fuel-guzzling cars even, and they were even more keen to revive the internet. It so happened that our South-America brigade was in place, boarded a spacecraft and travelled up to a station to see what was happening. Young comrade Vitya almost lost his life in the process. You can read more on that in comrade Vicky’s presentation on Revolutionary Travel.

Because what did our comrades find? Instead of concentrating on building up their ring of satellites to allow the giga-bytes to smash our health again, they had started to fight amongst each other. They, that means Elon Deer’s outfit Space X, Jeff Kiss’ Blue Origin, and Larry Note’s Froogle World Vu.

So, let me say something about these two ex-underground tycoons as well. Jeff Kiss had originally meant his Blue Origin space programme, which he had launched already before the revolution, as an extension of his Amazon network. In a way, he and not Henri Uber can also be considered the father of Ubereatism.

Larry Note had come up with his WorldVu space programme to help along his Froogle device, browser, e-mail, map, and so on, software empire. One of his security terrorists had thrown Vitya and Vicky off the space craft and into certain death, had not Jeff Kiss’ or Elon Deer’s station saved their lives by throwing a space net in the last minute. This near disaster not only made the two ex-tycoons rescind their alliance with Note but drop the counter-revolution altogether.

During rehab, Elon Deer explained this as follows. Here, watch the bio-video. And already the virtual screens opened, tiny and disembodied in their brains, big like a large pre-revolutionary monitor on the wall of their rooms, and they saw Elon Deer looking up from his laptop where he and Jeff Kiss are working on their latest invention, the catch-the-fascos app. More on that later!

“You see,” said Elon. “Jeff and I, it turns out, were always more hands-on types than Larry. While Jeff and I went travelling with Bill,” Doors, the now retired, ex-computer and software tycoon, “to save markets, private property, and democracy, “Larry but for a few exceptions, always stayed at home in the ex-U.S. and kept his hands clean, almost like a banker. And then his goons almost killed the two buffalohumans,” Vicky and Vitya. “You see I read up on the story later. At about the time of Covet, they had a variant of it, where people not only developed a nasty cough and pneumonia but turned into buffalos. They could be transformed into humans by a magic spell. For a while, only a Russian doctor and shaman, Leonid Besogon, had mastered it. Yet under his guidance in his clinic at the Novosibirsk University Zoological Institute, a group of these buffalo humans mastered the spell and were henceforth able to morph frequently from human to buffalo and back and even into other animal shapes and back to buffalo or human. They were about 20 of them originally, but now they have had children and grandchildren and also have spread the knowledge of the spell. However, there are not too many of them world-wide, and a lot of research still needs to be done, also to establish the link to old North American Indian, African, and subcontinental Indian spells and beliefs. Two of them gone, tragically lost in space, would have been quite a disaster. It made us realise,” Elon swept his brow, it had to be hot up there in Southern France, near the Côte d’Azur, if not quite as hot as here in Timbuktu, “what a bunch of nasties we had been, Jeff and I, the Nah brothers, Markus and Stefan, Ian Fern, the Hunzinger’s, all of us. So, we stopped it all, transferred our assets to other hands, to be used wisely, hopefully to the benefit of the revolution, rather than against us, and as for us, we repented, rehabilitated, and are now engineering researchers 100% on the side of the revolution. We are currently working on a new revolutionary app, “catch the nasties”, we personally call it, because we know that once repentant, nobody wants to be called a fasco, or a Nazi, or even a capitalist any longer. It uses tracking on the basis of old Froogle and new Aurora map and Bio-Thicket technology to follow dangerous counter-revolutionaries wherever they are. And you know how we do it? Simply by using bio-wifi, meaning transfer of low-frequency waves from human to human, to plant, to animal, to robot, or other intranet-capable material, using bio-wifi to extend the range of metal and especially weapon detectors. That way we can sense over hundreds if not thousands of kilometres who carries a firearm, a drone, an old-style counter-revolutionary smart phone that can fire lethal brown waves, anything like that. And now you probably want to talk to Markus Nah in his hospital ward near Stuttgart. Because has he got a story for you!”

***

“Oh, yeah, only not in Stuttgart, but in Illyria , because I had to drive two devils out there, and you know them by their aliases, Thomas Rutte and Ronald Gunpump. Yet let me tell you my conversion story first. You know that my brother Stefan and I, as well as Ian Fern were three of the main developers of the anti-Covet vaccine based on synthetic messenger-RNA. We had a joint near Stuttgart, originally called BioNTech. When we came out with our nefarious ideas, Ian in one of his jocular moods, renamed it TechnotBio. These days we work on 100% organic, biological, natural, and ecological ideas, and he has renamed us BionotTech. As a warning not to slip again, obviously! The idea of our anti-Covet vaccine was to inject the messenger-RNA into the body with the command to produce Covet virus parts, thus prompting the body to produce Covet antibodies. The idea was almost identical to that pursued by the Old-fashioned pharmaceutical empire in America, in other words, an mRNA vaccine, and quite similar to those behind the standard vaccines proposed by Moony Cicero, Jackstone and Jackstone, Sinovac, and Sputnik, which are all viral vector vaccines, meaning that we inject the body with a virus part, let us say, the Covet spike protein, to get it to produce antibodies. Well, you know the story, the people would not suffer the side effects, the costs, as well as the undemocratic accompanying measures by the capitalist states world-wide. We had a world revolution, and the rest is history. We pharma moghuls, Ian, me, my brother Stefan, Roger Sabiani, the old René Huntziger, lots of people who had linked their fates to this devilish stuff, were given the choice by you revolutionaries, or rather the revolutionary village assemblies to either repent or go underground. If we had known what was in coming, we would have repented immediately. Yet we idiots continued producing our stuff underground, starting with further Covet boosters, as well as the Coflu series against the seasonal flu and the cold, the LEP-AL vaccine against a similar infection, Lymphatic-Encephalitic Pulmonary syndrome, with psychosomatic side effects, starting with hallucinations of leprechauns, the Asymptomatic Leprechaunitis, but in then in some cases developing into full-scale paranoid-schizophrenia…”

“Don’t lie. We think, no, we know you produced that disease in your underground labs,” Peter Gar thundered from Sudan.

“Yes, well, the result was, we were chased all over the planet and finally gave up, before the Moral Atrophy virus even, at about the time of LEP-AL.” Markus Nah sighed

“I won’t dwell on the details of our rehab, I know you have presentations by young comrade prison workers planned on it in the near future. What I do want to tell you about is what happened the other night. I was alone in the lab working on a material check of some synthetic neuro-transmitters the fascos have concocted that you comrades sent us from Senegal, we do a lot of material-checking by the way as well, exclusively for the revolution, and we are completely self-managed. Anyway, we are only seven people at the moment, a very small organisation, just one brigade. And we send all our stuff to Stuttgart University’s Gustav Bauernfeind lab for double-checking. They’ve set that up to keep the tabs on us, believe you me. So, the bell rings, I thought, maybe some locals with an urgent material check request, but then, I almost fell over, whom do I see before our door, two pals that I could tell were counter-revolutionaries. They spoke German, they pretended to be locals with a request for a material check, but I could tell they were dodgy.

“So, I sat them down in our lab kitchen, served them some coffee and asked them what was up. ‘Here,’ they said, ‘this vaccine, it won’t do the trick.’ I put it under the microscope, turned around, feigning surprise and said, ‘No wonder, it is an overdose, 100% Moral Atrophy virus. At that level, the toxin gives the body no chance to produce antibodies. What workshop did you say you work at?’” Then I pretended to take a second look at them. “Don’t tell me you are with the Cause!?”

“Don’t play the clown, Markus,” said one of them. “You know us by name at least. I am Ronald and that is Thomas.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought you were in Africa.”

“Look, we need a reason this did not work. How come the patient is not dead yet?”

Well, now I know I was facing two cold-blooded murderers. I said as callously as possible.

“It may have to do with the needle. It needs to get in deeply.””

“It was embedded in an arrow tip. The producers assured us, it would immediately inject the whole content of the syringe on contact with the skin.”

“I think the producers were wrong. There is nothing I can do for you even if I wanted to, I am a biochemist, not a ballistic engineer.” I got up and went to the door, in an attempt to get them to leave peacefully.

“What do you mean by ‘even if I wanted to’?” said Thomas in a threatening tone of voice. I replied: “Just what I said. I am no longer with you, I am with the revolution now. I am a free person, and I ask you to leave.”

Then they beat me up. You can see how my face looks, I lost two teeth, René had to pull them, and then they forced me to drive them all the way to Paris. Half-way along the way, they went to an old ironsmith to fix their syringe to a better arrow.”

“Mon Dieu!” said Michelle.

“That’s why I am under house arrest for the moment,” Jean said with a rather serious face. “Yet you see, we have two more spectacular cases of repentance, and now they are both chasing after Thomas and Ronald for the revolution. Jacques and Matyas, tell us about yourselves.”

“In my case, there is not much to tell. I used to be boss-owner of a medium-sized metal-working company before the revolution. I had to be careful, although I was rich, because I had Hungarian roots and often got disparaged as a Gypsy. I was part of Markus Nah’s gang for a while. We fled the revolutionaries and also tried to set up workshops wherever we could, in the German lands, in the Massif Central, in Djibouti. But then I met Céline, a Roma, who was a refugee in Marseille at the time, forced to prostitute herself for Pappberger and Co. We both had enough of their Cause, and we ran, to a Manouche camp where she said her father and family lived. Her father happened to be comrade Roman, and the camp happened to be the Manouche camp that has become part of the village of Illyria now.”

“You all know me, I am Jacques Henriot. I was part of the first generation terrorists around the New Vichyites who managed the Cause of the counter-revolution in the various parts of the hexagon, Roland Papon, ex-army, for the South-East, Roger Sabiani, ex-pharma-producer South-West, Guillaume Bousquet, ex-police chief Paris Region, Marcel Pucheu, ex-regional bureaucrat, Central France, Étienne Flandin, ex-banker, North West, and René Huntziger North East, Alsace-Lorraine especially, who managed the New Workshops who while pretending to be revolutionary and self-managed, produced all kinds of things, including harmful vaccines, and built up the connection to the German counter-revolutionaries and neo-Nazis. The six New Vichyites had also tried to expand their contacts to other branches of French and global industry and trade, the names Dassault, armament, Rieux, medicine, Pinault, trade, Stolzenberg, NATO, Bill Doors, computers, Larry Note, software, and Elon Deer, hi tech come to mind. To get these luminaries and others around a table, they had founded the Limarna Foundation, short for liberté, marché, nation, which our team me, François Aliot, Béa Meunier, and Gabriel Leguay, and other soldier or merc types were asked to guard. I have not been an angel all my life, I beat up Manouches, rabbis, Muslims and even imams when I was young, I have raped a few people whom I liked and had in my power, but even I was shocked by the depth of baseness our bosses sank to. During the revolution, they had us force ex-president Macron and ex-EU-Commission president van der Leihen to sign their resignation and ask for help from NATO troops to restore order. In other words, they were ready to shoot at the French and the European people to maintain their f**king capitalism and their power. After the revolution, they and subsequent generations of counter-revolutionary terrorists carried out a whole series of wrecking attempts all along the twenty years the revolution has lasted so far, the public transport attacks, electricity disruptions, and water poisoning, soil poisoning with synthetic fertiliser, non-consensual demolitions which they blamed on the revolutionaries, weather warfare, you know, artificial dust-bowls, especially over China, drug trade, production and use of crypto-currencies, fake vouchers, and tokens and other money substitutes, attempts at undermining revolutionary planning and free distribution, sharing, and revolutionary barter, internet and later intranet outages, abductions, even kidnappings, and murder attempts, false epidemic warnings to force toxic vaccines and medicines on people, profit-mongering private policlinics, attacks with nuclear bombs or DU ammunition, with dangerous chemicals such as Agent Orange and White Phosphorus, they have done major computer, internet, and intranet hacks, production of GMO seeds and synthetic, potentially harmful neuro-transmitters to wreck the planned march of the trees to restore nature, the list goes on. I am a gangster, I rob people, hold people, and yeah, in the past, I have killed people, but the last has been Roger Sabiani, pharma-criminal who well deserved it. Their Cause, on the other hand, is aimed against the whole of humanity, animals, plants, well-programmed computers with even a moral imperative installed in them to keep them safe. Their Cause is truly genocidal.

“Now quickly to the matter at hand. For the last two weeks comrades Matyas, François, Gabriel, Bénoît, young comrade Jean-François, and I have been testing Elon Deer’s and Jeff Kiss’ new catch-the-fascos or catch-the-nasties app. It’s not bad. If we had used it a few days ago when comrade Jean was attacked, we could have detected the attackers waiting for him hidden on a tree from down at the Manouche camp where Matyas lives. And now the idea is… permit me to stop talking and follow me on delta waves…”

***

“He has been hiding, the coward. Has not even come out of the house, let alone walked to the railway station. If that goes on for more than a week, Schneid and Co. will want us back in Africa. We could be more useful down there.”

“Well, what if we go in closer tonight? They are holding a meeting outside every night almost. We can hit him there, or even if he hides inside, the meeting will distract people, maybe we can sneak in, maybe we can catch him through a window. Stupid only that his apartment is on the ground floor. With the meeting going on right in front of the window, they are bound to see us.”

“Yes, I see what you mean, and the workshop building is blocking the view from the South. Otherwise, we could catch him from a tree in the garden colony.”

“And that was it, we caught them as they were approaching from the North. The catch-the-fascos app detected the metal in the tube to shoot the arrow, and in the arrow itself. It was only a very faint signal, but it started to move through the forest, West to East, and then North to South in the direction of Illyria. We and the other spontaneous militiamen – with quorum of course, after all, there was manifest danger –, caught them several hundred metres to the North of Illyria. We did not want to take any risks. Five of us jumped at each of them from all directions firing red stun beams, and two let themselves fall down on them from sturdy trees, to make sure they came down even if the red beam had missed them. Rheinmetall has one less sales agent and Stérilé, Arrolle, and Schneid will have two loyal mercs less down where you are. My only fear is that they will take quite some time before they repent, they are hard-boiled fascos and dumb.”

Chapter 9. We must stand back sometimes!

The big Niger river flood of September, Year 20, by Malik and Mao

”Look at the map first. The most floods in Mali occur where the river, going North, bends to form a parabola and turns South to run through Niger and Nigeria towards the Gulf of Guinea. To the South-West of that and including the region of Timbuktu is the so-called Niger Inland Delta. That is the most fertile region of Mali. Yet you know from our pictures of the agglo of Timbuktu which is slightly removed from the river that this fertility, to this day, has its limits, all the more so as crops can easily be ruined and cattle killed if a major flood comes on. The flood season starts in September, meaning about now, and ends in May. That is a window of vulnerability to consider when we prepare our march of the trees.

The other day we had an inkling of what a bad flood can do. What happened exactly? By mid-day it began to rain, and water levels began to rise very quickly. Soon it was entering the houses and the families had to leave them and crawl onto the roofs, most of them made of thin corrugated iron and watch the water rising. On the picture you can see one couple that still has ground under their feet and is trying to save some belongings from their house, three young comrades who are just sitting on the roof, scared, as well as cattle, a camel and a cow, trying to swim or at least tread in the water. Even some houses further inland are also being washed under by the rising waters.

From the other side of the river, rescue boats are leaving to help the people stranded on their roofs or struggling to march in the water. We witnessed really dramatic situations.

We are part of nature and must stand back at times, by Alexandra and Jean-François

Let me tell you how we two Illyrian Mali brigades and some of our friends experienced yesterday’s flood. The waters were high as we said, and later in the afternoon, there was even some kind of thunderstorm. Larger waves formed and swept onto the shore and into our, meaning my parent’s house. We were absolutely terrified. Yet the worst was when after a couple of hours two boats came full of people and the men at the rudder said, ‘You kids get out now. We must pick up our foreign guests first and get them into safety. ‘Non, merci!’ we all shouted. ‘Bring them somewhere safe first, then come back for us. We all must learn to stand back sometime!”

“That is an excellent line,” said Jean. “It does not apply only to poor Illyrians obviously, but also to ex-oligarchs, and to all humans of all regions, all ages, all levels of education, all professions and trades, all genders and sexual orientations, and also to all animals, even protected species, such as lions and time-travelled dinosaurs, and to all plants, even beautiful okra or meat-eating droseras and utricularias.

“Standing back starts when you have to stand back for your younger and older siblings, later on in life it will be fellow students, then work colleagues, and even fellow Illyrians not that close to you. And yet with the new methods of low-frequency bio-messaging that facilitate understanding without having to get loud, the grow-along-with-you harpoid robots and cuddly plushbots that allow you to be alone over longer periods, and then of course the love and respect from your fellow humans, animals, and plants who won’t let you stay alone forever, especially not in dangerous situations, everything should be alright.

“So, continue your story, please! Did the boats come back for you eventually?”

“Of course, it took no more than twenty minutes. And they brought us to a landing close to my uncle’s place which stands on somewhat higher ground, closer to Timbuktu as a matter of fact. From the landing, we did not have to march more than two or three kilometres to get there. While waiting for the intranet connections to come back for tonight’s presentation, we wondered what was actually the worse problem for the revolution, the forces of nature or the fascos. I, Noah, remembered that our econometricians and statisticians, Philippe, Pascal, Hisham, and Rim, had already asked this question regularly in surveys in our mini-agglo of Aimeran, in the whole of Yvelines, and even in the whole Paris region. So, Michelle and I decided to ask this question here in Timbuktu, not all of Mali yet, because obviously, we have had the flood, and the communications were still disrupted. Yet we dared to launch the survey from our brain apps and specified that it should be diffused in such a way as to reach as many people, animals, and plants as possible, equal numbers of these three groups if possible. So, we got about 500 responses from each of the three groups, maybe not from a lot of cows and camels because they were still trying to swim to a shore, more likely from birds, and not from flooded crops, but more likely from trees, underwater plants, or grasses, flowers, and crops on slightly elevated positions. Although the rescue teams were still rowing and many people and animals were still stranded or struggling, over 70% of respondents said, neither fascos nor the flood were a problem as long as we got organised and helped each other. 10% said the flood was the worse problem, 30% said the fascos, and a majority of 60%, 900 people, said they were about equally vexing. So, that’s the state of revolutionary optimism in Mali. Do you have comparable numbers for France?”

“Not quite, there are two separate surveys, one we did when the fasco mercs around Arnaud Arrolle tried to spread the moral atrophy virus, just by diffusing it in the air, without any precautions, and another more recent when there where electricity outages because both the block energy works and the main electricity grid were harmed by thunderstorms. As for the fasco sabotage, 50% said it was a real problem, the other half said it was just their last hoorays. They’d be gone soon, especially with the new generation raised in harp communities. Oh, before I forget, this survey was just like yours, 500 people, 500 animals, including dinos, and 500 plants. And on the thunderstorms, 60% of respondents from all three groups said, they had caused real problems, and to be precise around 70% of the animals and plants, and around 50% of the humans. That survey, however, had only 900 respondents, be it 300 from each group. We tested for some sub-groups as well. Especially the trees and the birds said the thunderstorms had been a major problem, around 80%, followed by the cattle, 60%, especially those that had not been in the stables but forced to weather the storm outside. The deer and other forest animals and smaller plants had been least affected, they said they had bent down or hid in safe places, 40%. So, you can see that the march of the trees and regrowing the deep forest will make it easier for our comrades animals and plants, since they will be able to hide under the canopy even if they are on a pasture far from their stable.”

“Wow,” I, Noah, had to admit. “Your survey is much more precise and differentiated than ours. But remember, we launched it in the middle of a storm.”

***

“Anyway, this shows it, the need to stand back applies to my presentation as well,” I, comrade Noah, had to agree. “It won’t make sense to present you the regreening of Timbuktu as a fait accompli now where it is only just starting and moreover being hampered by the constant underground capitalist and fasco sabotage. I or rather we, Illyria’s Malian brigades have decided to wait for a few years, let us say until Year 24 of the Revolution at least, when comrades Zamir and Odile will give their university entry projects. Until then, look forward to our news flashes from Mali.”

“And I would say, you had to take some excursions from your work on regreening Timbuktu as well to help me and all of us with our related task of organising full anarchy,” said comrade Jean, and that brought tears to my old cynical eyes. Michelle and quite a few other comrades cried as well. “Comrade Jean, you are a true anti-fascist, anti-racist, revolutionary legend. I, no, all of us here in Timbuktu and other places in North-West Africa and the Sahel, comrade Omsinbaba’s village, the Nelson Mandela and the Desmond Tutu cooperatives will be delighted to help you any day.”

“And you are a legend as well, comrade Noah. To conclude, I want to suggest a reason why it is sometimes so hard to understand the fascos, let alone, pull them over to our viewpoint. Here is why: They say things like ‘Faced with the choice between being a burden on others and making money, I chose to make money.’ No, comrades, we want a revolution, not a race or game to determine who is the meanest. Since the revolution, we have all lived together, nowadays even in closer proximity to animals and plants, and the well-being of everybody has become the condition of the well-being of us all, and vice-versa. We get the necessary work done, then swarm out to do our creative work, and we take the decisions that will make everybody happy, together. Ever since the revolution, we have organised in brigades and neighbourhood, village, and workplace assemblies. All positions of authority in these, like fore(wo)man, chair(wo)man, and moderator rotate constantly, at least once a day or at every meeting. We take all decisions by consensus only. You may ask me, but what if a band of fascos manages to twist a decision? Well, anybody can overthrow a consensus and start a new debate. Don’t tell me, people may be too shy! Not at this stage, 20 years into the revolution! Are we Communist revolutionaries or are we wimps? If you are afraid of repression in your local context, join with others and form a red cell, hierarchy-check, material-check, whistle-blow on crypto-deals. Sooner or later, you will manage to build a new, better, more democratic, and beneficial consensus and to throw out the old, bad, undemocratic, and harmful consensus. You will have unmasked the fascos that oppressed you, forced them to repent, or if necessary if they committed serious crimes, brought them to the village assembly sitting in court to be questioned, judged, and sentenced.

“And remember, from now on, and in all future, the village assembly and all other assemblies will be composed in equal numbers of humans, animals, plants, and a reasonable number of harpoid robots, big and small. Most brigades shall be mixed human, animal, plant, and harpoid as well. If one of our decisions results in the cutting down of all the trees in an area or the mowing down of beautiful grass, we shall suspect immediately that it must be a fasco-inspired or at least a very bad decision. The harpoids with Josip’s and Rosa’s moral imperative programmed into them will immediately warn us that cutting down trees in large numbers and without reason, and mowing down grass beyond the healthy third of its length are harmful, and many village assemblies have already pronounced themselves against it. In our new anarchical, harp organisations 72 quadrillion living beings will find a common way. 72 quadrillion is an approximative value Robby 7 calculated for us multiplying the about 9 million species living on this earth by their 8 billion representatives on average. Of course, that average is based on very unequal, disparate numbers. We know that some snow leopards decimated by the capitalists have not grown back below a couple of hundred individuals, while some small insects probably number in the trillions. Anyway, this huge number of fervent revolutionary harpists will make it very hard for the capexogarchs and fascos to twist the consensus of any local assembly for any length of time.

“We shall get up every morning full of joy, open ourselves to the world with a Communist heart and an anarchist mind, and together with our comrades we shall live, study, work, play, and rest for the common good without possibly being a burden on anyone, let alone society as a whole.”

“We are not parasites!” interjected Peter Gar from Sudan.

“Exactly, comrade Gars. I meant to say this earlier, when Marx and Engels wrote about parasites and loafers, they meant capitalist coupon-clippers, not the exploited poor person whom they force to be unemployed and who only appears like a burden. We are no longer going to let that happen. There will be a second edition of Anarchy and other urgent Tasks of the Revolution as well, where we will make sure that we have made good progress.Over to you, comrade Carla!”

“Well, we hesitated for a moment whether the trilogy on the housing question should go first or ‘Minutes’,” Jérôme as the moderator interjected. “Of course, lack of adequate housing was one of the main problems under capitalism. Yet as you shall see, our revolution has pretty much solved it. On the other hand, right at this moment, shortly before the end of the old-fashioned digital world and the complete take-over of our communication by intranet, bio-wifi, brain-apps, and harp-clouds, we want to make sure our data are safe and unhackable. And this is what comrade Carla’s presentation will be about. Carla’s experience is a sort of antifascist alert in harpoid space. Her minutes of our meetings, written, audio, and video, although she edits them on an old-fashioned desktop and laptop, are fully intraline and bio-wifi and our minds can read them like a bio-message. Converse of the medal, hackers can also get at our collective memories that way. And this is what has happened.”

Postscript in Illyria and Saint-Denis. A Preview of Minutes

The Minute hack continues, by Zamir and Odile

Comrade Carla was quite surprised when in the middle of the turmoil she was in, she got a bio-call from Pierre Le Gars from the Sudan lands.

“Sorry for waking you up, I know it is late… I hope I am not disturbing.”

“Oh, no, not at all, I wonder whether you could help me,” croaked Carla, audibly at her wits’ ends. “I am having computer trouble.”

“Oh, sure, I hope I can help you, but before I do, I wonder, could you put me up for a few weeks or even months, once comrade Égale and me are back from Sudan? You see, the problem is, comrade Égale and Quan don’t get along so well, and Égale has the kids, Thwara and Waqi. Comrade Ronggang gets along with them, but comrade Quan feels a bit encumbered.”

“Oh, that’s not a problem, either Quan and Ronggang, or Égale and you with the kids could move to the empty guest room in comrades’ Camille, Zelim, Sylvain, and Nicole’s apartment. I am sure they would not mind. We can ask them together if you like.”

“Yes, but you see,” sighed the Gar. “Égale and I also need some distancing. Of course, she and the kids could stay with comrade Camille, but what about me?”

“Well, of course, you are most cordially invited to stay here. I have the big bed, and there is the ivy growing over the window like we had it in Dublin, remember? You liked that, didn’t you?”

“You as well, didn’t you?” “Yes, I did,” Carla blushed, but stumbled on. “And Misha would be so glad to have his papa close by, and his partner Yvonne and our granddaughter Odile like you too. So does Cato, he always says, it would be so comforting to have another trans in the house.”

“Ho, ho, but I am not trans, I am lesbian-by,” said The Gars.

“Well, then another LBGTQIA,” sighed Carla. “And Odile’s buddy, comrade Zamir respects you for your careful handling of metal. Oh, yes, that gets me to my question. Something strange is happening to the minutes I am editing. Read this! Here, instead of Life in Communism, it says in bad French: ‘To hell with the revolution!’ In fact, throughout the texts instead of ‘democracy’ it says ‘dictatorship’, instead of ‘free’ it says, ‘for money’ or ‘for pay’, instead of ‘ecology’ it says ‘de-population’, instead of ‘safe’ – ‘weaponised’, and instead of ‘cultured’ – ‘low-quality’. When talking about persons or groups, it’s turning things around as well, instead of ‘fascos’ it says ‘resistance’, instead of ‘comrade Jean’ it says, ‘Rothschild agent’. And instead of ‘capitalism’ it says ‘communism’ and the other way around. I switched it all back using the find and replace feature and that more or less fixed it, but now watch… Something has happened to the video as well. Comrade Jean instead of his head has Adolf Hitler’s. Some of the other comrades wear the heads of modern capexogarchs and fascos, comrade Robespierre has become Aliko Dangote, comrade Danton Nasif Sawiris, and comrade Pascal Nicky Oppenheimer.

Peter Gar burst out laughing.

“Yes, Big Bunny, you are laughing, but it’s only funny if you don’t have to fix it. Comrade Denis has become Fritz Schneid, comrade Patrick Édouard Stérilé, comrade Marine has become Anne Dalgo, comrade Jérôme Ronald Gunpump, comrade Marie Arnaud Arrolle. To be precise, her head has changed, but she has kept her female voice – maybe because she is also an agitator. Frédéric has become Marion Le Pen – keeping his male voice though, maybe because they are both theoretical minds. And three of our Cambodian fighters Dan, Ayak, and Vit have become Jordan Brothella, Kévin Poivre, and Raymond Barré. I think, those were their original names, weren’t they? The only one missing is in the name carousel is Thomas Rutte. Maybe he is behind it? I tried to use find and replace and restore to previous versions as well as other tricks, even cutting out the original heads and putting them back on their heads, but none of these features seem to work. Could it be… I mean, I don’t want to accuse anyone, but you know I am a bit paranoid at times … could it be a prank by the young revolutionaries against me because I still use an old-style desktop and laptops?”

“Don’t be silly, Bunny! Don’t touch it anymore! Report it to comrades Jérôme, Denis and the other security people immediately! Those who are right now in Mali as well. They are brains as well. It is manifestly not your fault. It is a major hack!”

The adventures and debates of the comrades from Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp near Aimeran and Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove and their friends world-wide shall continue in Life in Communism 2.1. Minutes, The Housing Question vol. 1 A place for everyone, vol. 2 Homeless in the Revolution, and vol. 3 Housing Swap, and Life in Communism 2.1. Gasping for Air, Food for everybody – food for all, Intifada – Antifada – Revolution, Revolutionary Accounting, Les Jours Heureux: Marius’ Wonder Cattle, the Metalmongers, the Kindergarden Manifesto 2nd edition, and African Trilogy vol. 3 Green Timbuktu.

Our North African travel routes

Red: Route taken in 2021, Green: Route taken in Year 20 of the Revolution, where 2021 is Year Zero

Map of Illyria and Aimeran at the time of comrade Jean’s presentation “Life in Communism 2.1. Anarchy and other Urgent Tasks of the Revolution”, during summer of Year 20 of the Revolution, by Marius and Jean-Luc

Map and Plan of our rural cooperative Illyria, Yvelines, and our neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove on 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis, state summer of Year 20 of the Revolution during comrade Jean’s presentation “Anarchy and other Urgent Tasks of the Revolution”, there are 17 three-room apartments with the bedrooms occupied as follows, Young Revolutionaries marked in italics:

Apartments in the old Farmhouse

Apartments above the Robot Workshop

Apartments above the Stables

Apartments above the Furniture and Clothes Workshops

Dark blue: furniture workshop, light blue: clothes workshop

Inhabitants of the Garden Colony and the Manouche Camp

Neighbourhood Assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis

Yellow: first floor, youth club; Green: second floor; Red: third floor; Blue: fourth floor, and violet: fifth floor. 2^nd and 3^rd floors: Casa Latina Russki Dom, 4^th and 5^th floor: Peace Dove.

Other books by Carla O’Gallchobhair you will enjoy:

Life in Communism 2.1. Red Cells. Marx versus Machiavelli. The Trade Unions in the Revolution, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. Comrade Emmanuel’s mother Aurélie has prepared her son’s university entry project on the role of the trade unions in the revolution with plenty of good advice, but when the fascos mount their brown cell campaign, and manage to enlist not only workers at the Uberyite underground facilities but also at the self-managing electricity grid transformer stations, as well as at the self-managing train stations, on the trains, and at the switching stations to that end, even she and the other senior Illyrians are baffled, and her son is on his own.

Life in Communism 2.1. Back to the Woods, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. Young comrade Danièle and her comrades outline ways humans, animals, including time-travelled dinosaurs, plants and their robots might overcome the difference between city and countryside and restore one of the world’s most pristine natural habitats, the forest. Meanwhile, the fascos have wrought new damage in the Taiga using the Moral Atrophy virus and White Phosphorous and are about to launch a new campaign to undermine self-management and a major movement of the revolution, the trade unions.

Life in Communism 2.1. vol. 42-46. What is to be done? What would Lenin have done differently if he were active today? He would have made sure that the revolution triumphs world-wide. He would have insisted on equality, self-management, and direct democracy at every step, working through the organisation of venues: brigade, neighbourhood, workplace, and village assemblies, constant material and hierarchy checks and surveys and, if needed, local, regional, continental, and world-wide surveys. He would have stood for radical de-urbanisation, regrowing, regreening, and respect of human, animal, plant, all living beings world-wide. He would have stood for the prevention of any further wars and armed conflicts by complete de-weaponisation world-wide, as well as blocks on re-weaponisation, and last but not least, he would not have cooperated with capitalists, let alone fascists under any circumstances. Back to Year 18 of the World Revolution of 2021! While the class enemy continues its Satanic work of undermining the revolution, e.g., by creating new gangs of terrorists such as the Critics, the Sons, the Anti-Nanobot League, and the Cryptoleak Avengers, kindling revolution in the ex-U.S., forcing the Rothschilds to bankroll them and returning Ursula van der Leihen or her look-alike from the executioner’s block to launch a new career as an ombudswoman, our comrades in Illyria and Saint-Denis have launched into a super-project: How to do the Communist revolution in the 21st century? In Book 1, young comrade Lénina details what is to be done and presents a revolutionary app that will help us plan things, in Book 2, senior comrade Marie analyses the strategy and processes of the Revolution in the Streets, in Book 3, young comrade Guillaume outlines how to do away with weapons as a prerequisite for conflict avoidance and peace on earth, in Book 4, young comrade Renée discusses how the four venues of the revolution (all institutions of the capitalist state and economy having been abolished), namely neighbourhood assemblies, brigades, workplace assemblies, and village assemblies can be saved from usurpation and sabotage by the ex-capitalist reactionaries, and in Book 5, senior comrade Denis analyses problems that have arisen after a referendum did away with the standing people’s militia, it being a den of incipient hierarchies and weaponisation.

Preview of Revolutionary Trilogy. Volume 3. Oligarchs into the Volcano, By Carla O’Gallchobhair. When an international gang of ex-capitalists and fascos hatches the plan to set off a Zamboni cataclysm, meaning the melting of Antarctica and the Arctic glaciers, it finally sways some village assemblies to convicting a few of them to the death penalty. Yet our comrade-revolutionaries notice that their problems with capital punishment have only just begun. Throwing ex-oligarchs into a volcano might be a good deterrent, but is it really proportionate to their crimes? The road to Mount Aetna turns out to be very long indeed. The ex-capitalists and the fascos role in these and other crimes must be proven, they must be given the chance to repent, and yet the sincerity of their remorse must be checked as well. The stories by foreign comrades on how their oligarchs were dealt with in their regions are helpful, but while some of them may serve as examples, others will have to be rejected outright or at least shelved as either too lenient or too cruel and unusual. Do humans make their own history, or will the world revolution of 2021 (Year Zero) drift with the inherited capitalist circumstances like the revolutions before it? Will the revolution retain its human face in the midst of adversity?

A picture containing map

Description automatically generated Life in Communism 2.1. Jean’s De la Démocratie. Second Edition, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. Rereading Jean’s book on democracy becomes an occasion for the revolutionary Communists of Saint-Denis and Illyria, Yvelines to restrategise the revolution and their struggle against capitalism and fascism.

Life in Communism 2.1.

African Trilogy vol. 2 The Coup

By Carla O’Gallchobhair

To Mamon, Cathal,

Tanya, Evgeni, Maksim, Zhenya,

Misha, Yvonne, Odile, Zamir, Jean-Michel,

Vicky and Nora,

all other permanent revolutionaries

and true friends of Africa

“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

John Emerich Acton (1834-1802)

“Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it.”

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

“If you can cut people off from their history, they will be easily persuaded.”

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Table of Contents

Preface in Niamey, Illyria, and Saint-Denis

Chapter 1. Interviews with Rolling Tanks

Chapter 2. The President versus the Committee

Chapter 3. Competition of the Robber Barons light – Niger-style

Chapter 4. Help from the Capexogarchs in the “New Periphery”

Chapter 5. Competition of the robber barons cut-throat – Sudan-style

Chapter 6. Hierarchy Checkers in Zinder

Chapter 7. Red Cells in Agadez

Chapter 8. Harp Assemblies everywhere

Chapter 9. How the reverberations caught Palestine

Postscript. Some Previews. Anarchy and other urgent tasks of the revolution, Intifada – Antifada – Revolution, The Metalmongers, and Green Timbuktu

Preface in Niamey, Illyria, and Saint-Denis

Tanks rolling, by Jean-Vladimir and Adilah

“Let me fill you in on the basics,” Seth began. “One of the top gangsters in this story is Mohamed Bazoum, capexogarch quisling, whom the top African capexogarchs and their North American and European backers want to instate as president. However, there are also the military and expert barons Abdourahamane Tchiani, Salifou Modi, Ali Lamine Zeine, Salaou Barmou, Abdou Sidikou Issa, and Hassoumi Massoudou, as well as the jihadist groups, Islamic State in the North, Boko Haram in the South, and a smaller group, Jnim – the Support Group for Arabs and Muslims, sometimes also called the Support Group for short, that acts mostly in the West of the Nigerien lands.

“The three top African capexogarchs, Aliko Dangote, Nicky Oppenheimer, and Nasif Sawiris you already know. Dangote’s main specialty now that the revolutionary assemblies have rejected concrete is synthetic fertilisers, he is the African Fritz Schneid, so to say.”

“Or Fritz le Merc, latest edition,” added comrade Saïd. “The fasco actors change more often than we think, they only assume a nom de guerre of one of their heroes to remind their followers and us of their former grandeur.”

“Yes, good point. Nicky Oppenheimer used to exploit South African diamond miners. These days he still trades some diamonds, but he mainly does deconstruction-reconstruction fasco-style, meaning he plays on diversion, asks for money, crypto, or other money substitutes, and uses explosives and toxic methods rather than piece-by-piece deconstruction, harmless chemicals, bacterial and plant-based deconstruction, and contained implosion only as a last resort like we revolutionaries do. You may remember the stories Omsinbaba’s people told us about Dakar. Oppenheimer is based in Southern Africa but forages up to the North and North-West as well.

“Nasif Sawiris began as an underground synthetic clothes’ producer, underground because the revolutionary village assemblies have forbidden most synthetic fabrics just like synthetic fertilisers. Yet Sawiris also does political agitation, that’s how he met our special friends, Édouard Stérilé and Arnaud Arrolle, more of them later.

“Yet let me first introduce you to the Nigerien junta presently controlling Niamey and large parts of Niger, Abdourahamane Tchiani, Ali Lamine Zeine, Salifou Modi, Salaou Barmou, Abdou Sidikou Issa, and Hassoumi Massoudou.

”Mohamed Bazoum is the president the capexogarchs wanted to bring back into power with the coup. He has been working with the global North-West and with multinational organisations already before the revolution. Yet now there is a debate among the barons whether to really have him as president or whether rather to have a kind of collective leadership.

Abdourahamane Tchiani is the baron leading the coup against Bazoum. He is a military trained in Senegal. When our Niger comrades found out about the split between the putschists, we organised a bio-conference call between him and Omsinbaba. They first talked French and Arabic, then Hausa and Fula, and Omsinbaba begged him, in the name of the Niger people, if not the revolution and humanity, to stop the counter-revolutionary attempt.”

“Specifically, I asked him to blow the whistle on Bazoum and on the junta, which would have allowed us to get a quorum from a village or quarter assembly for spontaneous revolutionary militia to find and arrest them,” explained Omsinbaba, already on the boat home to Illyria or maybe immediately to Tripoli where he and many other Illyrians were going to welcome the young revolutionaries back when they had completed their missions in Niger and Mali, as well as Sudan and Palestine. “Then his own and other village assemblies could have judged Bazoum and the junta for undermining democracy, self-management, hierarchy and material checks, for mega-corruption in other words, and – last but not least –, for using violence and weapons against the Niger people. Comrades, you must realise, they are driving Rheinmetall tanks through the streets of Niamey, Agadez, and Zinder, supervising the people with drones, allowing their soldiers to carry firearms. Come on, it’s a miracle we have not yet had a bloodbath in the streets! And this where we have the revolutionary red stun beams. Anybody can summon them by will power only and they can stun a criminal for half an hour until a spontaneous militia brigade gets a quorum from a village assembly to arrest him. Even with the higher quorum of 50% many assemblies instituted to prevent militia abuse in case the putschists rig the vote, that would give spontaneous militia plenty of time to come in and solve the question in the name of the people. Not only abstractly in the name of the people but with a direct and recent mandate to interfere from the village assembly, the 50 or so households of local residents who live in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene. After all, we have the red stun beams and the quorum via intranet, meaning the low-frequency communication via natural harp towers such as trees, animals, humans, robots, and intranet-capable materials, also called bio-wifi. There is no need to carry lethal arms and to supervise situations from drones!”

“And, what did he say?” asked Seth.

“He said he would think about it. Well, that was ten days ago and he is still deep in thought, it seems. We have carried out several tree marches in Senegal and Burkina Faso, we have let the capexogarchs and French-German fascos escape, but only so as to save the trees, the animals, and the people, but up here in Niger nothing is moving.”

“But Monsieur Tchiani is not alone. Let me tell you about the others. We hoped he would have revolutionary sympathies because of his French training in Senegal. In his case, the opposite seems to be the case.

“His closest associate is Ali Lamine Zeine. He is a civilian, actually, and works in the junta as a specialist. The French capitalists trained him before the revolution at Paris I, Sorbonne-Panthéon in neoliberal economics and law, and he seems to have an intellectual passion as well as straightforward material interest in bringing capitalism back to Niger. Before the revolution, when he was working for the economic apparatus of the state, he tried to cheat China out of some money for an oil deal, and he may have tried the same against Russia. And yet those two countries were among the states that were acting the least capitalist and imperialist before the revolution and were exploiting Africa the least, hardly any doubt about that.

Another one of Tchiani’s cronies is Moussa Salaou Barmou. He is really a military man, who rose to the rank of general in the post-revolutionary underground. Not only that, but before the revolution he received training in North America, in what is now the ex-U.S., in Fort Moore close to L.A. and at the National Defense University close to Washington D.C. That is why our caricaturists, Jean-Vladimir and Adilah, painted him well-connected.

“His close friend and fellow general Salifou Modi was trained in Germany, probably also at a U.S. basis, in Kaiserslautern or somewhere like that. These two Western clowns are Abdourahamane’s closest supporters. They have closed doors on Bazoum and want to go with the junta.

Of course, there are waverers among the putschists as well. The first, Abdou Sidikou Issa, is another general, meaning an outright military, from Zinder.

The other, Hassoumi Massoudou is a capitalist associate trained and promoted through the pre-revolutionary international organisations. He calls himself an information specialist and has had contact with our escapees Édouard Stérilé, media magnate, who these days owns his own media channel Smartbox, as well as the counter-revolutionary channels Empire Européen and the conservative-reactionary media channel Le Figaro. And the barons are also in touch with Arnaud Arrolle because of his expertise as a local agitator. We know that because of bio-wifi reports of our friends and comrades the animals and plants who protect our revolutionary communications via the bio-thicket but without fail reveal the class enemy’s, especially when fellow harpists – humans, animals, robots, and plants are in danger.

The African capexogarchs, the Uberyte mafia, and Pappberger and Co. have all wavered between Bazoum and the junta as well. That is a mouthful, so let me explain.

I told you about Dangote, Oppenheimer, and Sawiris, and some of you have met them in person in Senegal and Burkina Faso already.

Then there are the Uberytes – especially, Henri Uber himself, and his close friends Louis Deshalles, Fernando Deliverando, Viesturs Volt, and Larry Flink –, who are busy expanding a world-wide network of underground logistics stations, partly with workshops attached to them, policlinics, sports clubs offering training with weapons – this while all weapons have been forbidden in the revolution. And finally, they also sponsor tasteless amusement centres and brothels. All four of them are functioning on money or money substitutes, forbidden in the revolution as well. They have founded terrorist associations like Nemesis or the new Boko Haram, but Dangote and other rich Africans call them the capexogarchs from the “New Periphery”, implying that they themselves are now the richer ones and that the global North-West has declined.

From top left to bottom right, Édouard Stérilé, Arnaud Arrolle, Fritz Schneid, Ronald Gunpump, Thomas Flint, Jordan Brothella, Kévin Pepper, and Raymond Barré, by Jean-Vladimir and Adilah

And finally, for lack of a better name, there are the Pappbergers and Co., sometimes also called the Franco-German Uberytes, on the picture from bottom left to right, Fritz Schneid, who does toxic agro- and other noxious chemicals, Ronald Gunpump who does metallic weapons, including firearms, their mercs, Thomas, Jordan, and two newer ones, Kévin and Raymond, who seem to have arrived recently from the French lands. And above them in the implicit hierarchy are two of their so-to-say intellectual pacemakers, Édouard Stérilé and Arnaud Arrolle. These stooges don’t know whom to support, President Bazoum or his generals turned junta.

The Niger brigade, by Maher and Karla. From top left to bottom right, comrades Seth, Noah, Saïd, Rodion, Jean-Vladimir, Jean-Saïd, and Olivier in front of Seth relatives’ house.

“Our Niger brigades for now consist of me, comrades Noah, Saïd and Rodion for security, as well as comrades Jean-Vladimir, peace researcher, Jean-Saïd, expert on transport beams, we may need those in tricky situations, and Olivier, still bursting with their insights from their experience at Omsinbaba’s village, the monastery, and the march of the trees.

“Comrades Jean-Wadi, physicist and intranet specialist, Maher and Karla, chemical engineers and deconstruction experts, and other scientists and security experts may join us later in case the fascos reactivate one of their dirty chemicals or other weapons…”

“As they have tried with the synthetic tree tonics and the MA virus,” interjected Omsinbaba.

“Exactly,” said Seth, “where MA stands for Moral Atrophy. Or they may try using any other kind of weapon, all weapons except red stun beams and other non-lethal defensive gear being forbidden by the village assemblies and referendums here in Niger as well, as in the rest of the world. Our first and academic goal here in Niger is to find out how such a major coup could even come about in Year 20 of the revolution and with the revolutionary organisation well in place. The second and practical goal is to help the Niger people overcome this relapse into barbarity in whatever way we can while respecting the non-violence principle of the revolution. Only then can we come back to the urgent tasks of ensuring that we fully meet all needs of the humans, animals, and plants in this region, which as we know, will necessitate deconstructing the agglo(meration)s, bringing back the water, regreening the desert, restoring the savanna, the rain forest, and other wild animal habitats.”

Chapter 1. Interviews with tanks rolling

Against the consensus, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

“Remember that the revolutionary organisation consists of only four venues, all on the same level, meaning that no brigade or assembly can tell any other brigade or assembly what to do. Even referendums serve only to gauge the amount of consensus the people, and these days the harpists – humans, animals, humanoid or nowadays harpoid robots, and plants – have reached in their assemblies. The brigades have seven members maximum with the foreman changing every day to prevent hierarchy. Neighbourhood assemblies have seven households maximum with the chairing household changing every week for the same reason. Workplace assemblies, with the workplace if at all possible not comprising more than 50 workers change their moderating team, 2-3 comrades minimum, at least every hour. And village assemblies, with a truly revolutionary village not comprising more than 200 residents, also change their moderating team, 5 comrades minimum, every hour at least. All five venues, the assemblies plus the brigades, which can pop up everywhere in society to solve problems will discuss all matters of interest until at least a temporary consensus can be reached. People may choose to stabilise this consensus if desired with a local, regional, continental, or world-wide referendum. And everyone can speak at the brigades and assemblies and launch a referendum. There is even a separate revolutionary app to help you do that. There are no more nation-states, obviously. No more courts. Court is held at the village assembly. At a village assembly where 200 adult villagers – over 12, 14, 16, or 18 of age, depending on the local consensus –, are attending, all 200 can be jurors. So when I said earlier that we had forbidden weapons, money and money substitutes, and some other harmful goods such as private cars, concrete, tarmac, and the toxic Covet-Coflu vaccines in the revolution, that is what I meant. Billions and billions of brigades and household assemblies, millions and millions of workplace and village assemblies world-wide and hundreds and thousands of referendums have voted against synthetic textiles and agricultural chemicals, fertilisers and pesticides, fuel-guzzling cars, armies, police, permanent militia, weapons, all sorts of hierarchies and other violations of democracy and the consensus requirement, all sorts of bad materials from toxic foods to weaponisable robots.”

“So, how come that soldiers are marching against their own people?”

“They told them fairy-tales. Talk to them, you will notice some of them don’t even know they are fighting on the side of the counter-revolutionaries. It is like Lord Acton wrote, powerful man tend to be or become evil, and Hannah Arendt wrote, evil paired with apathy is at the root of all dictatorships. And we Marxists would add, make the people poor and powerless, cut them from their own history – and in Niger’s case that history is Communist and anarchist or at the very least community-centred –, and they will be apathetic and gullible. Here are some conversations we had with people in the crowd.

“’From what I understand President Bazoum wants to be a dictator, and the brave officers and experts are trying to resist his ambition,’ says one soldier.

“’No, no,’ says another, ‘he is good, the junta are just good for nothing ex-military who cannot live with the four venues, brigades, neighbourhood, workplace, and village assemblies, they need to be in command all the time. And they are also greedy bastards who can’t live with the trefoil. I can’t understand why they won’t give up. The trefoil is simple and good after all. There are free goods, simple sharing, and revolutionary barter. The people in their brigades and assemblies will use vouchers, ordering directly from the producing workshop, and allocation through the neighbourhood assembly only on an exceptional basis if nothing works with the other ways.”

“’The idea of free extends to ordering from the producing workshop by the way,’ clarified another onlooker, a professor of economics as it turned out. ‘They’ll give you their products for free, and in return, partake for free of the good things you do, for instance, produce other artisanal goods, farm produce, teach, or whatever.’

“’Or you may work at a well, that is a very special profession here in Niamey,’ another onlooker chipped in.

“Tell us, how does that work?” begged Jean-Vladimir.

“There are street wells that people go to. The well brigade just helps people with using the pump and with lifting up the water. They also make sure that nobody takes more than their household’s usual water volume. Not that anyone would under normal circumstances, but these last few weeks we have had some attempts at hoarding. Of course, because people don’t know how the situation will evolve.

“And then there is the central water mains. It supplies people who don’t have a well close by, or workshops and social organisations, such as policlinics, who need water constantly.”

“It is always a sign that we are in dire straits when cryptoleakers tell us that water specialists at a well or at the mains are being offered money or crypto to supply a certain household or workshop with extra water. Lately, we have had several dozen instances of that in our area alone. Same goes for electricity, the very same households, workshops, and social organisations have asked for extra allowances of energy.”

“That is interesting!” comrade Olivier piped up. “Think of who that might be!”

“Yes, your thinking is probably going in the right direction. So, both this Bazoum and this Tchiani and the rest of the junta are criminals who are trying to rip off the ordinary Niger people. What we have had for the last few weeks is a display of the people’s frustration and anger at being ruled by these capitalist and imperialist marionettes. In fact, the situation is far from calm. Certainly, neither Bazoum nor the junta do control it. There are many people roaming the streets of Niamey, going places following rumours that Bazoum is holding council here, or the junta is meeting there. So, you can say once they overcome their initial confusion and maybe apathy, the people will be on the side of the revolution again. The Niamey people want to blockade these buildings and demand answers, but because nobody knows the exact whereabouts of these bandits, we have many groups of spontaneous hierarchy checkers you could say, erring through the streets of the agglo looking for the bastards. The other day, there was a rumour that Tchiani was going to speak somewhere and announce his support for the revolution.”

“Maybe that was after the conversation he had with our comrade Omsinbaba!” said Seth.

“That’s quite possible. Anyway, the place, it was a public park, was full of people, they were pushing and shoving and almost throwing each other over. So, then somebody, I think it was Modi, announced Tchiani couldn’t make it. The angry people stormed the stage and he had to flee. For the whole night, the Niamey people were looking for the members of the junta, even for Issa and Massoudou who had said they weren’t sure whom to support. The public transport network was disrupted, and many fathers did not come home that night.”

“Did anyone get hurt?”

“Nobody fired gunshots, no, but a few people got injured with stones, or broken glass, stuff like that.”

“That’s bad enough. Yet what I was getting at, could not these places willing to pay for extra energy be strongholds of these terrorists, be they Bazoumytes or junta?” asked Olivier. “Couldn’t we just go there and ask them?”

Everybody looked at him astonished. “That is an excellent idea, son!” comrade Aslan spoke up intraline from Illyria. “I think you should immediately get quorums for spontaneous militia to investigate.”

“Yes, but what if they have not done anything wrong, if it is just families with sick people, or policlinics who are falling for these money merchant tricks? Then we would be exacerbating the general climate of hysteria,” warned Saïd.

“Simple,” said Noah, “we just go there ourselves. How many you said there were, a few dozen cases in your quarter?”

“I was exaggerating a little, the number was for several village assemblies or quarters, all of central Niamey as a matter of fact, which includes several hundred quarters, and then there are several dozen reports each also for the East, West, North, and South agglos of villages within Niamey.”

“Well, we do the central agglo, and maybe you know other trustworthy comrades who could do the other part-agglos,” continued Noah. “We can be water and block energy work researchers doing a project. Let’s say we want to plant more trees in Niamey, prepare the ground for when the march of the trees gets here. Comrades Jean-Wadi, Maher, Karla, Josip, and Rosa, now is your chance to join us. Are you all in Tripoli now?”

“We are, so are comrades Michelle and Rashida with Little Tahir and comrade Adilah’s Little Akila, comrades Omsinbaba and Maurice are coming by boat from Dakar, and Fofana, Lulu, and Little Bouna as well. They are in fact in an earlier boat already.”

“And Little Akila can’t wait for her beloved Bouna to arrive,” said comrade Rashida, smiling, and those who had known her stern and strict self before Little Tahir’s birth could not believe her change for the better.

“Well, we won’t ask Fofana, Lulu, and Little Bouna to do the door-to-door in the sweltering heat, but comrades Rashida and Michelle, would you be interested?” asked Seth. “Mind you, there might be bullets or at least stones and glass flying.” He was being polite, he told himself. After all, he had no children with comrade Rashida. Young comrade Adilah, who was his pride and joy – the way she had brought all but extinct species back to Djibouti and had borne Little Akila to comrade Jean-Vladimir –, yet was not his. She was from a prior friend of Rashida’s in Somaliland. And Little Tahir was manifestly comrade Jean’s.

“We’ll be careful,” said Michelle, who was much more definitely Noah’s girl and had given him Little Malik, now a young comrade already. He was fusing his ecological studies and his mother’s experience being throttled intellectually as a Ph.D. student at an elite North American ivy league university into an expertise on North America. Specifically, he and Mao were working at bringing the buffalos and the Indians with their traditional life-style back to the prairies. “And we’ll wait for Fofana and Lulu to arrive for baby-sitting. Yet of course we are interested. Comrade Rashida is a water accountancy specialist after all, and I am a survey expert at least, I can pretend to be entering data into my fluffy pineapple.” Fluff- or plushbots were the intranet successors to the old-fashioned, pre-revolutionary android smart phones and tablets. Because the intranet travels by low frequency waves from 0.4 to 100 Hz only instead of 5 GB or more, and via natural wifi towers, such as tree tops, bushes, grasses, and flowers, birds, insects, humans, camels, stray dogs, even hyenas, and nowadays time-travelled dinosaurs, it generates a lot less heat than the internet. Therefore, modern revolutionary devices can have their main features, screen, keyboard, camera, microphone, CPU, battery, and so on couched in natural textiles and come in a variety of shapes. Michelle, whose family was from Haiti, had chosen her plush-bot to have pineapple shape.

“What about you, comrades Adilah, Jean-Wadi, Maher, Karla, Josip, and Rosa?”

“If you allow us to beam over with a yellow transport beam, we can be with you tomorrow morning,” said Maher.

“Too bad, we can’t come,” said Alain, referring to himself and comrade Pierre, experts on block energy works and the central electricity grid respectively. “Comrades Jean-Wadi, Josip, Rosa, and Jean-Saïd as physicists, Maher and Karla as chemists, and the others for security, will that be enough?”

“Comrade Rosa, can you risk it leaving Little Fabien in Tripoli?”

“Well,” said comrade Sevim, “if comrades Rashida and Michelle hold out a little bit longer, until Fofana and Lulu come, then we’ll have always at least two kindergarden teachers for five kids, Bouna, Akila, Tahir, Fabien, and Soho.”

“No, no,” Karla laughed. “You are right, but I played it safe and left Soho safe with her buddy Salvador in the trusted hands of comrade Georgette, so the ratio will be only two to one. The teachers should not forget to rotate the brigadier role with the kids though. Otherwise they’ll become known as the kindergarden junta.”

“Our awareness is good,” comrade Jean sighed with relief after the laughter had subsided. “But do we have enough security? Four comrades, Seth, Noah, Rodion, and Saïd in Niamey in the middle of a coup, and nobody in Tripoli at least until comrade Omsinbaba arrives. I could beam over, who else wants to come?”

“I shall,” said Aslan. “Maybe comrade Muhammed or Zelim,” the other two Chechens, “or both want to join us?” The Sahel brigade could see the two of them nodding earnestly on the bio-feed.

“Comrade Égale and I could beam over from Sudan,” comrade Pierre le Gars proposed hesitantly. “If there is a need for it…”

“No, no,” said Seth. “You should keep observing the situation in Sudan which is as least as tense as the one in Niger.”

“And don’t forget, comrades Jean-Vladimir, Jean-Saïd and I can be junior security experts as well,” added Olivier who felt slightly disrespected. After all, it was he who had made the proposal for the door-to-door survey in the first place.

“We haven’t forgotten,” added Aslan. “We just want to make extra-sure you boys are safe.”

“It is a good idea,” comrade Jean reassured Olivier as well. “Yet it is a dangerous situation. I wonder how the capexogarchs and mercs have managed to get it to the boiling point like that. Is it the fact that Niger has got uranium, or that they know the march of the trees and transport via beam are coming and that their civilisation based on vehicles and ugly housing, mostly built of concrete, will end forever?”

While he and other deep thinkers and strategists such as Frédéric and Patrick were still pondering that question, the survey teams went out early next morning to get at least some work done before the heat struck. Noah, Seth, Jean-Vladimir, Adilah, and Jean-Wadi were in the first group, and Saïd, Rodion, Jean-Saïd, Olivier, Maher, and Karla in the second.

“Once Rashida, Michelle, Omsinbaba and Aslan come, we will be able to have three brigades,” comrade Seth rejoiced as he and their guide, comrade Liman were about to knock at the first door. “We’ll find out at least what allowed this crypto to resurface, if not the whole coup!”

Door to Door in Niamey, by Jean-Vladimir and Adilah

Then the door opened already. It was a young woman, part-veiled, with two little kids at her sides, yet there were more crying in the background. “We are doing a survey of water and electricity use in preparation for the march of the trees,” said Seth. “Have you heard of it?”

“The march of the trees, yes,” said the woman. “Mahamadou here and Suleyman – he is already at school, in class 5 –, and Hayatt have been learning about it at school. Hayatt, can you explain it to the comrades?”

“The trees are going to come marching up from the Congo rain-forest, and we Niger people will make Niamey, Agadez, Zinder and other places more fertile again so that marches of the trees can start from here as well, and then eventually, the trees will reunite, and we will have trees all over North Africa like in the old times when we had the dinosaurs. We have had a dinosaur at school. He came here through a time tunnel. I painted it in my note-book, look! He or she, maybe it was a she, called Afrovenator or Afrovenus, said some dinosaurs ate meat but not nice young comrades like us. And he or she explained about the intranet. It was in a nature-speak lesson. Do you have dinosaurs in the French lands as well? And do you learn nature-speak and nature language?”

How come she had guessed they were from the French lands? “Yes, we do,” said Jean-Wadi. “We wonder, could you tell us, with so many children…?”

“Nine,” the young woman said. “Fourteen, as a matter of fact, when they are all here. But some of them are my sister’s and my friends’. I take care of them while they take care of the kids’ fathers at the Uranium mine, you know?” She blushed. “You probably want to know why we use so much water and electricity. Well, that is why. And now the other comrade from the French lands came and helped us out. We give some token that our husbands get at work, and then we get more water.”

“Through the mains or from a well?”

“Both, when the water from the mains is off, we go to the well, which is over there, and she pointed somewhere behind the Illyrians, and the attendants help us. You know it is like a share point, but we give them some token. They appreciate that, they also work with this French guy, M. Frédéric Snite is his name.”

“Oh,” said Jean-Vladimir, “that is probably Fritz Schneid. He is German, as a matter of fact.”

“Ah, you know him,” the young woman frowned and immediately was less nice with them, it seemed, at least less natural.

“You don’t seem to like him?” asked Jean-Vladimir, acting apologetically, hoping she would tell them some more.

“No, I mean, yes, he is nice enough, but I, my name is Chamsiya, my sister and my friends fear for our men who work at the mine, especially now that there is the coup. You know it’s illegal?”

“Mining uranium?” asked Jean-Wadi. “It may be approved by the revolutionary village assembly, if it is done in small quantities and needed for scientific purposes. I am a physicist, for example. My brigade sometimes needs uranium.”

“Yes,” said Chamsiya. “But our husbands produce lots of it and it gets sold. It is over a year already that they work there. It is for Ali Lamine Zeine. Maybe you’ve you heard of him? He is an energy specialist like you, and the uranium is for a project to set off explosions deep down in the earth. They will make the water come out again and in that way maybe help with the march of the trees even.”

“But that can’t be!” Little Mahamadou frowned. “In school, they said uranium is radioactive, that is like toxic, so it would spoil the water and the trees, wouldn’t it? Do you also work with the junta, comrades?” He emphasised junta, and almost dropped the comrades, as if to disparage the word. And he set up a beastly smile.

“We certainly don’t!” said Noah, took him onto his arms, and rocked him back and forth. “You are a great young comrade, Mahamadou. How old are you?” “I am seven, but Suleyman is nine already. He knows even more about uranium,” Mahamadou barely managed to squeeze out as Noah was now whirling him around.

“Comrade Chamsiya, at least until tonight or until your husbands come back from the mine, try not to use any of their tokens and don’t take on their water. We shall try to get your husbands back from this mine. They are probably being exploited there. We must run a hierarchy check on it. Can you get us in touch with them intraline?”

Chamsiya nodded and sent them a bio-link directly to their brains, with an Aurora map indicating their husbands’ location. Within split-seconds, the five Illyrians and comrade Liman were connected to comrades Garba, Nouri, Samou, and Usman, probably directly at the mine.

“You are being blackmailed, somebody is practicing an extortion on you,” said Seth. “Tell us honestly, do you feel exploited at your mine?” All four answered yes.

“Are self-management principles respected, for example,

rotation of brigadiers and moderators,

no permanent managers, and if there are, are any of them foreigners from the North-West, Europe and North America,

search for consensus,

planning and accounting done by all workers together in the workplace assembly or membership in accounting brigades rotating,

no use of crypto, money, or tokens, and especially no obligation to use these rather than the trefoil of free, simple sharing, and revolutionary barter at the village markets, share points, or workshops,

only fifteen hours a week of hard chores such as digging, and ample time for creative pursuits,

no obligation to buy the vehicles, houses or other perks they offer you,

no obligation to secrecy,

no pressures exercised on your relatives. We hear, three of you have their wives on site. Are they all treated well enough?” They shook their heads.

“The housing conditions are disastrous,” Garba said.

“Is pressure exercised on your children at school?” And all four of them said, “Yes, the kids call us the uranium diggers.”

“Anyway, you know all these principles, are they all respected at your mine? If not, would you agree to whistle-blow so we can ask the village assemblies of nearby villages to vote a quorum for spontaneous militia brigades to come in and liberate you, meaning restore self-management at your mine?”

All four said No. “It will be too dangerous for you!” Yet our comrades insisted. “Oh, we will beam right in, we shall help you.” And they took a quick leave from Chamsiya and her kids, summoned a revolutionary yellow beam by willpower, got on it disassembling into molecules until they felt nothing anymore, than gradually reassembled before getting off at the other end.

How great was their surprise when instead of their four comrades they were greeted by two men they knew well. “Salut, mes amis! You are here as well to help us against the expropriation attempt by the junta? President Bazoum will be intraline in a minute. In the meantime, settle down. And before the about twenty workers standing around, four of whom might have been Garba, Nouri, Samou, and Usman could lift a finger in their defense, Fritz Schneid and Ronald Gunpump had partially knocked them out with brown beams, in such a perfidious way that they could still follow events as they unfolded, but were too weak to be able to actively participate in them.

Later that day when the heat subsided, the marching trees arrived, lots of them, no end of them to be seen until the horizon. “And look, there are dinosaurs among them!” claimed Schneid, although our friends whom the class enemy had suspended from poles in the sunlight like Jesus were unable to spot them. “We have to split the scene!” a third fasco gangster, probably Thomas Flint warned, and then from a corner of their eyes they could see the gangsters disassemble and take their leave on a brown beam. “What if it was just a fata morgana?” Gunpump wailed as they were already disintegrating, and you could tell they were making an effort to reverse their disassembly and come back. Brown beam will do that to you, it will make you red-hot angry. Yet they did not manage. They disappeared in the sky and instead spontaneous militia brigades manifested from several Niamey suburb still reasonably close, cut them off the stakes and brought them home to Seth’s house where the second brigade was already waiting for them.

Uranium explosions further the March of the Trees, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

While all these events were playing out, the second brigade, comrades Saïd, Rodion, Jean-Saïd, Olivier, Maher, and Karla had entered a workshop, where they asked the two foremen of the day, Boubacar and Elhadji, whether they had experienced any problems with their water or electricity supply. “No, we are getting enough water and electricity, sometimes in tortuous ways, but we do. But if you want to ask us about self-management, don’t ask Boubacar here, because there are so many people named Boubacar at our workshop that he is almost always foreman or brigadier somewhere.”

“But it is not always the same one?” asked Rodion. “Sometimes it is though,” said one of the Boubacar’s himself and would not say anymore. “We are a tyre workshop. As you can imagine, you need very good tyres to get along on our sandy roads, even here in Niamey.”

“Do you harden them with graphene?” asked Maher, remembering the technique his father, comrade Jean, had co-invented.

“Yes, we do, and that is why we always have water as well,” said Boubacar. “The customers for our tyres have links to the junta. Not to Bazoum, he is an old fool, he has too few connections, but to Zeine, Barmou and Modi. These three have links to the French lands, America, and the German lands especially and they help us exchange our tyres for many other interesting things. And they also make sure we get enough water through the mains and from the wells, and enough electricity from the grid and from the Block Energy Works close by.”

“So, you mainly barter, do you?” asked Jean-Saïd. “Or do you also use token, old money, crypto, vouchers, stuff like that?”

“For the water and the electricity sometimes,” said Elhadji, contradicting their earlier statements. “But for the tyres, it is revolutionary barter.”

“Hey,” said Olivier. “We are getting a distress signal from an old uranium mine. The class enemy has stunned some comrades of ours there. Do you know anything about that , comrades? Uranium mining still going on in Year 20 of the revolution?”

Boubacar looked hesitant as if he would prefer not to say anything, but Elhadji nodded. “Yes, there is one mine near Arlit and another one near Akokan. They are both industrial satellite towns of Niamey. That’s the two main ones and they work for Rheinmetall, you know, the German ex-weapon producer. They have bartered some graphene and other minerals against our ready tyres, but I don’t think they produce minerals. They got them through barter from other mines all over Africa, capexogarchs helping.” He interrupted himself. “But you know what’s the really interesting thing? With controlled explosions of this uranium they want to pump up the water to enable the march of the trees. Yet the Satanic idea is not to let it into Niger, but to say in the last minute, ‘No, this water is contaminated after all.’ That way Niger will be free again, I mean, ruled by the junta rather than having to engage in all this assembly crap, brigades, neighbourhood assemblies, workplace assemblies, village assemblies, all on the same level, with no leadership positions, permanent discussion and search for consensus and even decisions by referendum only for the short-term. We’ll reject Bazoum, he is only one idiot, although supported by the Uberytes and their top bankers, Capito, Buckley, O’Hanley, Hooley, Cryptolla, they do their villas, pension funds, vehicles, yachts, and other luxury. Yet no Nigerien has a right to that kind of stuff, not even Bazoum, not even the junta.

“Yet we’ll work with the junta. The people will accept that. It will seem like a compromise between this democratic-Communist-anarchist stuff – assemblies, hierarchy and material check, rotation, consensus, referendum, free allocation and distribution via the trefoil on the one hand –, and one-man rule and capitalism on the other. It will be in the middle somewhere, a sort of collective leadership like under Stalin that got prolonged even after his death. And we shall have money again, lots of money for those who know how to use it, and a lot less ecology, education, democracy, harp assemblies, all this revolutionary garble. We shall get rid of it!” and he leaned himself back satisfied against the white-washed wall of their garage. It was not his fault if the world was bad. The important thing was to survive in it.

Chapter 2. The President versus the Committee

Revolutionary Sabotage, by Josip and Rosa

“In spite of all that, comrades Garba, Nouri, Samou, and Usman organised the explosion that pushed up the water naturally without any need for pumping it. This will eventually, in fifty, hundred years or so, allow the march of the trees to advance in a broad front from West Africa to Sudan and South to North from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria and many oases further North all the way to the Mediterranean. The small march that saved our comrades came from an oasis South of Arlit, quite close to the uranium mine, that is why the trees felt very concerned about the cry for help from Seth and the other comrades.”

“Does it mean that the Nigerien underground is radioactive now?”

“Of course not, the explosion took place at a much deeper level. It just got the layers of rock, sediment, and soil above them moving and helped the water move up and the grass and bushes grow strong fast.”

“What about the trees?”

“They had to apply more willpower but our four comrades talked to those close to Arlit and they agreed to come up super-fast, meaning at 3-4 km an hour, up to 100 kilometres a day. That is the fastest trees can march with the willpower they have available at the moment. There were some dinos there too, who had come up by time tunnel. You may know that you can summon a time tunnel to go back into the past or forward into the future by willpower just like trees can march, humans and animals can send bio-messages and use red beams to stun enemies and bronze beams to block firearms, tanks, drones, and other weapons, and humans and some animals can use yellow beams to travel. So we were very lucky there. From other oases and the North edge of the rain-forest, the process may take longer, but still. The process has been set in motion, and the fascos were not able to do anything about it. Let me hand over the word to Garba, Nouri, Samou, and Usman now. They will tell you exactly how they did it.”

“We overheard our overseers talk about how the channel had to be cleared,” Garba began, “so that a small electro-vehicle about the size of kids cars at amusement parks carrying our capexogarchs could pass without any problems. Soon, they asked us to volunteer, via bio-message on a delta wave, so that as little as possible of our conversations would get intercepted. All four of us volunteered, but only Usman got chosen. Didn’t matter to us, as long as one revolutionary was on the team and would be able to guide us back down there. So, I pass on the word to Usman now.”

“I was not alone, almost all the workers in the brigade felt strongly about the revolution, and they want to remain involved. Look, like the rest of the world, in 2021, we Nigeriens stood up and called it the end of the day for capitalism. We had networked ever since the year 2020, 2019 even, formed brigades and cells and distributed tasks for Day X. We did away with the Nigerien government, including all bureaucracies from the foreign ministry down to job centre, we dissolved army and police, and we now take all decisions in the neighbourhood assemblies of seven households maximum with the inviting household changing every week, and workplace and village assemblies with moderator brigades changing every hour and everybody entitled to speak. This can’t be stressed often enough. Our revolutionary organisation is one of equality of all humans, animals, robots, and plants, of all brigades and assemblies, and a revolution by discussion where no one need raise their voice. Everybody will get their say, and no decision will last if people are not in total agreement with it or can at least live with it. Especially when you time-travel back to the time before the revolution, make sure to tell people this about our revolution. It is much more than a change of government and of the dominating capitalist companies, it is the abolition of governments, dominating companies and capitalism and imperialism as such.

“We split up all big firms into small workshops, and they and even small ma and pa shops went on self-management, which meant that even women and adolescent children could not only help but be brigadier of the day at least once a week. Like you in the French lands, we immediately replaced money with vouchers. Then, in a second step, we tried to do free allocation and distribution, at least of the essential goods like water, bread, local grains, vegetables, fruit, and tea, and of the essential inputs like straw and stones to build houses, oil for the plastic goods the revolutionary village assemblies still permitted, metal, recycled mostly but some raw metals as well, but only if mined by happy, self-managed workers. And then these sheriffs appointed by the three foreign capexogarchs come in and want to contaminate us…”

“You mean Dangote, Oppenheimer, and Sawiris?” asked Peter Gar intraline from Khartoum.

“Yes, they may very well be the richest crypto-oligarchs in the world now that the global North-West is going down and Africa is rising, but I don’t care a f**k, they have no right to rule Niger. I tell you, it was breath-taking work we did to go down there in the canal leading to the uranium set-up. The part of the walls that was sand we had to stabilise with rocks, some of the rock we still had to pierce to make the canal broader, then after some time, lo and behold, we passed by huge underground water deposits. Remember how Muammar Ghadafi told the Americans how Libya could laugh at their imperialism because it had not only oil, but water, in huge amounts, only far below the ground that had become ever dryer first through natural global warming after the ice age, and then, especially beginning in the 17^th century of the so-called Christian Era, exponential world-wide warming through feudalism and industrialisation especially in the global North-West as well as Asia. Your young comrades Adilah, Zafira, Jean-Wadi and others have all written about that in their university entry projects, you know about that just like we simple workers do, only that we have more experience.

“Anyway, the canal led down ever deeper, even past these water deposits, through lots of solid rocks, to an installation that we, although not trained nuclear engineers, could immediately recognise as a nuclear reactor. There were the cooling basins, they need lots of water obviously, then the reactor itself with the nuclear rods in them, deactivated for now, but ready to go off once they were joined, and lots of other equipment that served mainly for measuring and calibrating, our brigadier of the day, Suleyman explained. He knows a bit more about nuclear energy, because he had worked at a reactor in the French lands before the revolution.”

“Ask him whether he knows me!” begged Alain.

“Oh, I did, and he knew your name and that you were a decommission engineer that his bosses were afraid of. Anyway, back in Niger, he had then helped build up this set-up, so I took him aside and asked him, if and only if there was ever a need to pre-empt the fascos from striking, how would he do it. And he led me to a little control cabin that basically had all the levers to pull and buttons to push.”

“Couldn’t it have sufficed to run this set-up as you aptly call it as a nuclear reactor, until the water bubbled up and then shut it down?” asked Alain. “I know some Spanish and Portuguese engineers, Joaquin and Luis, who were working on that. Had the fascos only waited!”

“Yes, there may have been such an option if they had waited for better technology to come around, but the set-up as it was could only bring about the reaction as an explosion. There was not enough cooling. However, comrade Suleyman explained that we could calibrate it at one of at least three levels, very strong, strong, and weak, and he advised us to choose the weak option, so as to prevent any more danger to the environment than necessary.

“So, when you called us from comrade Chamsiya’s house, we were already deep in the canal,” Nouri took over here, “we knew you were making a big mistake and getting yourselves into huge danger, and of course we wanted a bit of the glory of having started the march of the trees in Niger early and with success. So we told you to hold back. When we were about to take the cart to get into the canal, we had four huge heads hovering over us all of a sudden, one red, one black, one kind of blue-violet, and one ochre. Those were the heads of the dinosaurs you can see on Jean-Saïd’s and Natalie’s picture.

“’We can help you fast-fertilise the ground for the trees, but it must have water, and Lurdu, the ochre one, and I must have some grass,” explained the red one, Cetio. “And Megapno and Karchar, the black and violet ones, unfortunately, will need some meat!”

“Well, inform the local village assemblies of the predicament we are in,” said Samou. “If these fasco monsters – much worse than the dinos, let me warn you –, are not stopped, a brigade of brave young revolutionaries will die very soon at the poles, and our Great Nigerien Revolution that has lasted twenty years already will be stopped in its tracks. Instead we might get, if not a one-man dictatorship, then at least a collective leadership composed of military trained in the capitalist North-West as well as corrupt experts, all led on strings by a nefarious trio of capexogarchs, with them in turn backed by the even greedier and more dangerous underground capitalists in North America and Europe, Uber and his pals, Fritz Schneid, Ronald Gunpump, and the other ex-Rheinmetallers, you know who they are.”

How the subterranean uranium explosions and the dinos furthered the march of the trees, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

The dinos said they would inform the villagers, and we went into the canal. It was very steep and several times our vehicle, which was more like a lift than a car, got stuck and we had to get out and push away some rocks that had fallen in the way, and even drill in some places. Luckily, the canal held up while we travelled through. We passed the huge lakes of water, unbelievable the wealth we have got under our feet, be it at several kilometres underground, and arrived at the installation. Usman and I went into the cabin, while Garba and Samou did the monitoring of radio-activity, but it remained contained as far as we could tell. When we were on the way up again, there soon was only the natural level left once more. We also measured other toxins, but there weren’t any. And we gauged humidity to get an idea where the water was going. Yet hooray, as we went up, it got more humid, meaning the water was coming with us and bubbling up. As soon as it came out in places, we did further tests, no contamination so far, certainly no radio-activity. Yet you were telling us before that comrade Maher and his brigade will go out for much more thorough measurements tomorrow.”

“Yes, me, Karla, Jean-Wadi, Josip, Rosa, Jean-Saïd, Jean-Vladimir, and Olivier,” replied Maher, “and also the full security brigade, Noah, Seth, Saïd, Rodion, as well as Aslan, Zelim, and Muhammed who have just arrived.”

“Well, that’s it then,” said Samou. “So far we have beaten them.”

“And you are sure the trees have not had any exposure to radioactivity either?” asked Danièle.

“And the dinos?” wondered Julie. Both were fervent Animal lives matter. Plant lives triumph activist.

“Not at all. For them, like for us humans and other animals, the level of radioactivity generated by an explosion so deep underground is quite normal. Such explosions even take place naturally sometimes. We have had one in year two or three of the Revolution as well, without any humans triggering them to our knowledge. Comrades Maher and the others can do the more detailed measurements tomorrow.”

“In the meantime, we have more good news. Apparently, comrade Abdouraharame has finally made good on the promise he gave to comrade Omsinbaba.” Seth, who was moderating, introduced the next topic.

“He has managed to bring Bazoum and the other members of the junta back to the table with just one topic on the agenda: the relationship they want to have to the revolution.

“Listen to their conversation!”

“You can turn it whichever way, one thing is clear, we have no longer gotten the initiative at the moment. Instead, small bands, or should I say brigades of revolutionaries roam the streets and are agitating the people against the restauration which they refer to as cut-throat capitalism. The people don’t trust us, neither Bazoum nor the six of us. The time has come for all seven of us to accept that and clarify our relationship to the revolution.” They all started to shout at the same time. “Let’s collect everybody’s comments separately first, then have a more organised, moderated discussion.”

“With the moderator rotating, I presume!” joked Salaou, but Abdouraharame ignored him.

“Ali, what do you say?”

“We have lost the two Uranium mines, not only that, but a few ingenuous workers have already set off the underground uranium explosions we wanted to use to thwart or at least compromise their march of the trees. Yes, four of our workers, Garba, Nouri, Samou, and Usman have managed to uncover the small channel another group of workers had dug in all secrecy to permit only us to get to the uranium deposits. They have gone down there, followed the instructions they got through our intranet they intercepted and what they must have learnt from the other expert-workers and just set off the explosion in actually quite a masterful way. It has created a network of points where water is now bubbling up, aiding the trees in their march. Yet it is not compromising the revolutionaries, since they discovered our set-up and have managed to launch the march of the trees, or at least this first stage of it themselves as a measure of prevention.”

“Isn’t there anything we could do?” asked Modi.

“Yes,” sighed Ali, “but unfortunately, if discovered, it would also compromise us, rather than them. And the consequences on human and even wild life, animals and plants, in the region might be quite disastrous. We could radioactively contaminate the water and the soil which is quite clean at the moment and blame it on the revolutionaries.”

“But will the people believe us?”

“It’s worth a try.” At first, the rebels approved this decision with comrade Abdouraharame the only one objecting, ‘Not for scientific reasons,’ he stressed, ‘ I know too little about them, but because I believe that on principle we should refrain from any further support of Bazoum, and also from any aspirations at taking power ourselves, but let the process play out in the revolutionary assemblies as it did before our coup.’ He thereupon walked out of the meeting leaving Bazoum, Ali, Salifou, Salaou, Abdou, and Hassoumi to it. This means that one military is already gone, leaving just Salifou, Salaou, and Abdou. Bazoum, Ali, and Hassoumi are experts, but not scientists, rather governance, economics, and propaganda specialists respectively.”

“Do we have any more footage on what the others still decided or said, and whether there are any signs of disagreement between them already?”

“Yes, indeed. It turned out in a second vote that Bazoum, Ali, and Hassoumi now opposed the attempt at turning the people against the revolution by contaminating water and soil after all. However, the three others, Salifou, Salaou, and Abdou passed a motion to look into it, how it could be done, where Salaou seemed the most positive, whereas Salifou and Abdou basically shook their heads on it and said it would probably turn out to be impossible.”

“Now that the revs have used up the uranium we had and we are forbidden to mine it, where are we going to get new uranium? Will Sawiris send it to us from Egypt, or the Americans from their continent?” asked Salifou.

And Abdou said: “The people will get angry as soon as there is the slightest sign of contamination. It would mean the kiss of death for our coup.”

***

“Well, doesn’t that mean that we are basically off the hook?” rejoiced Noah. “It’s basically five against the scoundrel Salaou, and even he agreed the idea needed investigation first, didn’t he?”

“Yes, and you have to consider the fact that the Reaction, composed of Bazoum and the junta, has already suffered considerable attrition. The news that they held our young comrades from the French lands hostage and that we had to start the march of the trees to prevent any worse damage to be done with this uranium set-up will not really ingratiate the putschists to the Nigerien people, will it? All the more so as they are behaving like the old-fashioned elites, at the beck and call of local and foreign capitalists.”

“I hope you are right, Noah and Seth,” said Jean-Vladimir. “But from being peace researchers in Palestine, comrade Jean-Saïd and I know how hard and deviously the fascos can fight even when they are in a desperate situation. Think only of their managing to sell depleted uranium weapons to both sides in Year 15 and their attempt to stop the Sumut Harp flotilla earlier this year with a line-up of warships.”

“Yes, and there is also the competition between them, for land, wealth, and followers. Pierre le Gars and comrade Égale are reporting it from Sudan as well,” concluded Olivier. “We must brace for worse things to come.”

Chapter 3. Competition of the Robber Barons light – Niger-style

Pokering for Mansions, by Bashir and Sevim

“Look, we can help you,” Henri Uber meanwhile assured the three African capexogarchs, Dangote, Oppenheimer, and Sawiris, as well as Fritz Schneid, Ronald Gunpump, Édouard Stérilé, Arnaud Arrolle, and their merc security detail. Your Nigerien friends need to be incentivised. Why don’t we allow them to poker for some fancy villas, and say they’ll get the one they win in the game if they manage to turn the Nigerien people around?”

“That’s a good idea!” some murmured, others clapped or tapped the tea tables they were sitting at in support. Seth interrupted the bio-feed. “Listen, comrade Abdouraharame! Could you do us one last favour and drop in at that poker session. Say you have had second thoughts, you want to be in the game after all. Then you whistle-blow on a crypto-leak or anything else that’s odd, drugs, sex, whatever, we get a quorum for spontaneous militia brigade from the village assembly, book them, and Bob’s your uncle.”

“But I don’t want to,” wailed Tchiani. “I never want to see them again. I fear they might kill me.”

“The spontaneous militia will be over them before they can do anything. Any idea, where the game will take place?”

“In Hassoumi’s place probably,” Abdouraharame sighed. The revs were bothersome, but the fascos had been worse. He was glad to be with the people again, that was a lot safer, and if he could finagle it in a way that his fellow militaries weren’t harmed, he did not care about the experts, the whole thing would have a happy ending. “Hassoumi already had some kind of a villa before the revolution and was allowed to keep it because it was not too ostentatious and he has a big family. It is also quite safe. It has a wall around it and all. Of course, it is not by a long shot as fancy as the properties they will gamble for.”

“Here, now I’ve got my invitation link. ‘If you still want to bother, come!’, it is comrade Abdou Issa texting, he is a nice fellow, not as conceited as the other two.”

Seth looked him into the eyes, then smiled. “You want to help your friends, comrade, no problem. It means, you are human, not a capitalist devil. Don’t worry, the worst your friends have to fear is trial by their village assembly, then rehabilitation. Their behaviour will just decide on the duration of it.

“All you will have to do, is about twenty minutes before you sense any danger, launch a hierarchy, material, crypto check, anything for which there is evidence. We shall be close, all fourteen of us. One of Hassoumi’s more revolutionary-minded neighbours will allow us to hide at their place, no doubt, and we’ll come in at the latest with the militia, even before if you call us. After all, it can’t be a crime to help a friend.”

“You are very kind,” said Abdouraharame.

Two hours later, he was already sitting in a circle around a card table, a small tea table with tea, food, but also alcohol, be it forbidden to Muslims – cognac, whiskey, and gin –, tobacco products – cigarettes, cigars and pipes –, and syringes and tablets with drugs by his side.

The limousine raffle: black luxury elegance, red racer, blue covert Uberyte logistics cab, green petit bourgeois charm SUV, yellow covert crypto-cab, and grey security cab, by Zamir and Odile

“Let me all welcome you to this joyous event,” Sawiris introduced the meeting. “And before the security relieve the present guards, let us offer them a gift. You can play the first round, and as you are six, we’ll have six prizes. All will be custom-made in one of our African logistics workshops and will have cover papers showing a bogus revolutionary purpose and approval by the village assembly of your home quarter of Niamey or any other Niger village. First is a luxury limousine that can be given out as an ambulance or hearse.”

Abdouraharame shuddered and bio-messaged the Illyrians. “You see, we have barely started, they are already getting morbid.”

The fourteen Illyrians were sitting two houses down at a committed revolutionary’s place who had a big family as well, and therefore, had been allowed to acquire a somewhat larger house via a housing swap just like Hassoumi. He had been glad to host the Illyrians and his wives and older children were bringing in food and tea constantly.

“All acquired free at the market though,” their new friend said and smiled. “I can tell you, the revolution was doing well here before these swine came in.”

“Don’t panic!” Noah told Abdouraharame. “Just bio-whistle, we’ll be there. But give it some more time. We need some harder evidence for the people to give the spontaneous militia the quorum.”

“Next a blue transporter you’ll be able to disguise as a delivery van, you being the holder. Oh, we forgot to mention,” Dangote interrupted his associate. “If you are interested you can all become holder of a logistics station, a sports studio, an amusement club, or a policlinic, and be able to earn hard crypto on any deliveries you make.”

“You’ll have reliable and safe supply lines from Lagos, Cairo, and Johannesburg of course,” interjected Nicky Oppenheimer.

“Yeah, and a bonus on any deliveries you make, any recruits you train, any bodies and minds you spoil, and any paid health services you proffer,” continued Dangote.

“You can also win a yellow cab with papers to be run as a free revolutionary cab, but why not operate it at least part of time against old money?” he meant pre-revolutionary West African Francs, crypto, token, or vouchers. Then we have three cars that you might want to use mostly in secret, because they might attract jealousies, namely the red rover, the green SUV, and the grey security cab, but you may declare them taxis or delivery vans as well of course. The necessary papers are included, as I said. All six vehicles are built sturdy to run here in the desert without overheating, with solid walls to withstand sand entering into cabin and engine, and with appropriate tyres. And all six are hybrids that can run on petrol although you may want to dissimulate that fact. Just connect to a clandestine oil rig close by or found one yourselves. You may wage half of your next wage, don’t worry, we’ll make sure you and your families don’t go hungry. You can take a trial drive with the models that are parked outside after the end of your shift.” Within about twenty minutes, the game was over, and each of the six security man went on duty with the assurance of having acquired a good car they could put to dual use both within the revolution and outside it.

Pokering for the villas would be more of an affair, of course. “Now, you can look at the seven model places on the wall monitor. I know we can look at them on our Aurora brain screens as well, which is definitely more economical, but the pre-revolutionary technology is still so much more impressive, ain’t it?

“Now they won’t have legitimising papers like the cars, and we shall have to build or at least renovate them for you. Some of them are old pre-revolutionary palaces just fallen into disuse for their secluded location. Still, we’ll have to set you up at a remote place, and also ensure all the needed infrastructure: water, electricity, a viable road connection etc. At least part of your wager will be used to finance all these accessories as well as the construction or renovation of the property itself. So, you will understand that half of your next crypto-profit won’t do. No problem, you can be in charge of not only one but a whole network of logistics stations, sports studios, amusement clubs, and or policlinics. You may earn triple the amount of your wager in a year if you join Africa’s emerging Uberytes. We propose you to wager half of your expected life-time crypto earnings.”

“Oh,” sighed Abdou Issa. “Does it have to be that much?”

Dangote waved his arm. “Are all of you ready to participate in the game?”

“Say no, if you are satisfied with your family house you get free in the revolution!” snapped Abdouraharame, pretending disdain, but at the same time, he bio-messaged the Illyrians. “Help! Major crypto-deals going down, even vehicles and houses, nay castles, drugs on all the side tables, even where the guards sit. I noticed that when I went to freshen up. Material quality of all that junk uncertain. And they are giving us hardly any choice to walk out, we are too deeply implicated with them. So, there is a hierarchy check needed as well!”

He also bio-messaged to Abdou Issa, ‘Time to switch back to the revolution!’ Just in case, the bro had not noticed.

Aloud he said: “Oui, bien sûr!” as Bazoum and the other junta members including Abdou Issa had done as well.

“D’accord, hold tight. We are coming!” he heard Saïd’s bio-message. Then the game had begun already.

Again, everything was over in less than half an hour. Each of them had won a property – to their chagrin, none of them in Niger –, and was being bio-messaged beautiful images of its interior and surroundings upon completion, as well as lots of paperwork including the list of required and recommended features, including utilities. All seven of their castles required a separate block energy works, for instance, clandestine of course, to be paid for in crypto.

“Haha,” Fritz Schneid laughed theatrically as they were still struggling through the material. “I am intercepting some revolutionary garble. Apparently, some nutjob among you or among security has blown the whistle on our gathering and is asking for a quorum for spontaneous militia to come in and arrest us. Should we vote yes?” Their minds went blank with horror, including Abdouraharame’s, who had expected anything, even a fistfight with the capexogarchs, African and foreign, but not an intercept.

“I think we should brown-beam to my place!” Bazoum bio-messaged everybody including security on delta wave. “I give you the location on Aurora maps.”

“Good idea!” said Sawiris. “Mohamed, you are thinking! Does everybody know how to use brown beam? Let’s go!”

They all wrinkled their brows in panic, trying to summon the beam, and by the time it arrived and they were disintegrating into molecular state to be able to travel, two spontaneous militia brigades were already storming in, followed by the Illyrians. What had they done with security, wondered Abdouraharame as the beam held him, and he had already gradually disassembled to the extent to have temporarily lost his vision. Had the revs stunned them, had they been able to beam away, or had they manned up to switch to the revolutionaries on time? Why had none of the others been able to do that, not even Abdou Issa and he himself? Had they all been so ensnared by the dream castles the capexogarchs and fascos had managed to sell them?

In a last effort before he fully disassembled, he succeeded in placing a last desperate bio-call to Issa, ‘Once we land, try to run! If you can’t, play their game, but let’s get out at the first available opportunity!’ The answer came immediately. ‘Roger that! Fuck them! Dead men can’t live in villas!’

Then they both overheard to their great horror the messages of the others: Ronald Gunpump sent one to Berlin, Tripoli and Lagos: ‘Speed up the tank delivery!’ Fritz Schneid to Stuttgart: ‘We need more chemicals! Sent them via Egypt, the Avanti Logistics Stations!’

Now all of them felt how their last bits crumbled and reached the state of total disintegration, Point Zero, as it was known in transport beam tech-speak. Yet almost immediately, they already sensed how their molecules came together again, and within minutes, nay seconds, they landed safely on Bazoum’s lawn. A few other worn-out figures stumbled into the house where Bazoum’s ladies and older daughters hastened to treat them to tea and sweets. No alcohol and no drugs though, Thomas Flint noted grimly. And the attrition had been formidable. Only two security had made it, he and Jordan. The four Nigeriens had either been captured or defected. He bio-messaged Kévin and Raymond who had stayed to guard their main lair, no sign from them either. Had the enemy stormed the place? Had they been able to flee?

The three capexogarchs were there, but from the junta, just Ali, Salifou, and Salaou had come along. Hassoumi had chosen to stay back, only the four foreign barons, Fritz, Ronald, Arnaud, and Édouard had taken the beam. And where were Abdouraharame Tchiani and Abdou Issa, the two Abdou’s, as Fritz called them disparagingly?

“I have seen two shadows run the opposite way when we landed,” answered Jordan. “Either they lost their way and will soon materialise or…”

“Let’s bio-message them!” Édouard interrupted angrily, and they all tried to focus on the two Nigerien officers for the message to reach them, and to give their message the needed intensity for them to see their error and return immediately. None of them got an answer!

“Either it’s intranet difficulties, although there can’t be a lot of bio-thicket around here,” snarled Fritz, “or they are really dumping us. Doesn’t matter. We might not need them. Listen to what I have here. Message from Avanti Crypto Logistics, Egypt, your joint, Nasif. “My long expected shipment of chemicals has arrived. If you agreed, we could do some localised poisoning of air, water and soil with that stuff – cyanide acid. Fuck nuclear. It’s dodgy anyway. Nothing better than a little old-fashioned German chemistry. Worked in World War One, worked in World War Two. Only how to get it here?”

“Part of the latest shipment of your drones, tanks, artillery, and rifles, Mr. Ronald, disassembled, mind you, is also already on the way up here through Nigeria, I see it here as well,” said Dangote, and even consulted his intranet-capable smartphone, a sort of counter-revolutionary harpoid, to confirm the veracity of the message. “Of course, my people will do their utmost to get them through here first. Where would we be able to assemble them? Is Agadez ours still?”

“Not all of it. They have had marauding bands and hooliganism just like here,” said Salaou. “But our workshops are still functioning. I just bio-messaged to Boubacar. He is my contact there. He said, they are ready to receive them.”

Chapter 4. Help from the Capexogarchs of the “New Periphery”

Gambling for the Spoils of Victory in the Jaws of Defeat, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

“Excuse me, this is Henri Uber speaking from America. If you wonder who is behind this speedy delivery, it is us, of course, my humble self, Fernando Deliverando, Louis Deshalles, Viesturs Volt, and Larry Fink. While we do not like the idea of stirring conflicts with heavy weaponry in the illusory hope to bring back capitalism faster that way….”

“It seems like the Pappbergification of the Uber concept!!“ interjected his friend.

“Exactly, Louis, I could not have put it any better myself. Anyway, we took on that job anyhow to show everybody, both the revolutionaries as well as the critics in our own ranks what we can do. Here is the bio-video. Sit back and enjoy!”

“First you see the ready tanks, rifles, and other weapons come of the robot-manned conveyor belts at underground Rheinmetall. You have to hand the krauts that, they know how to wage war and how to build up a factory, even an illegal one. Yet now we come into play. Of course in order to be able to deliver them anywhere in the world in the present situation of near-anarchical revolution and extreme ecological sensitivity, we had to take the weapons apart and fit them in as little space as possible, which we did, and then distributed them over dozens of perfectly legitimate revolutionary freighters – you know the type, small, light, and sail-powered assisted by batteries fuelled by solar-panels. We declared them as harvesting aids, tractors and such for Libya and Egypt and unloaded them in Tripoli and Alexandria. In Libya, we have a small but growing network of logistics stations already. From Alexandria we forwarded them into our friend Nasif’s Avanti network. And there you go, they are on the way to you. The first shipments should arrive at the workshops in Agadez the day after tomorrow.”

The capexogarchs and their Nigerien barons could hardly trust their eyes and ears. Henri’s calm and confident demeanour was of course very encouraging after the two major setbacks they had just suffered, first that with the nuclear plot and the second when trying to mend the coalition between Bazoum and the junta. Yet they also had to wonder what had gone wrong. He seemed to read their minds intraline like a book, and that where they had already been celebrating their overtaking him in the crypto-fortune global top 10.

“I can tell you what went wrong and in a moment, I’ll have a suggestion how to fix it. Yet let me first tell you what Robert Capito thinks, you know him, the old ex-U.S. banker who may have lent you part of your capital as well. He told me, ‘Oh, Henri, I fear the boys are making a mistake. Ever since 1945, when we dropped the A-bomb on Japan, we Americans have known better than to touch nuclear. I remember, in Year 8 I think it was, when Sam Bayer tried to get himself and his cronies back into power in Palestine via extortion with a nuclear bomb, it ended up a disaster as well. The murder and crippling of humans, animals, and plants, the total destruction of civilisation and ecology wrought by nuclear explosion and even contamination only will never go through as an act of self-defence or even as an extreme means to a legitimate end. It is entirely despicable. Don’t worry, even the revolutionaries would fall on their noses, were they to try it.

“And the second advice I would have given you, if I had known what you were about to do, is never gamble for the spoils of victory when you are sitting in the jaws of defeat, so to speak. It was too early to gamble, and moreover, you were only seven people maximum, now you are telling me you have lost the two Abdous and Hassoumi. Now you are only four, and you could easily do it like Larry, Viesturs, Louis, Fernando, and my awkward self are doing it, we discuss the way we are going to distribute the cake instead of gambling for it, we call the bankers together, and we even think of ways to make things cheaper for all of us by cooperating in sourcing suppliers for our construction or renovation, let us say in the case of villas, or we construct one secret workshop to build limousines, yachts, and planes for all four of us. And of course, we never, ever compete against each other. Larry here will never venture into Canada, just as I would never set foot into Italy, France, or the Baltics. And if I were, it would only be to help the pals.

The Uberyte Strategy, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

“And now to my proposal.The three of you, Aliko, Nicky, and Nasif, assisted by you, Mohamed, Ali, Salifou, and Salaou take over our pals scheme, where pals not only stands for us all being friends and peaceful by nature, but for our four main lines of activity – ‘p’ for policlinics, ‘a’ for amusement clubs, ‘l’ for logistics stations, conveying goods and services from A to B like the revolutionary logistics organisations would, but against money, crypto, whatever, possibly with small assembly and production workshops attached to them –, and finally, ‘s’ for sports studios, offering weapons training by the way, for those who want it and are willing to pay for it.”

Now finally one of the Africans dared to put in a word. It was Ali Zeine. “Easier said than done, Monsieur Uber. All four ventures you are describing require water, plenty of it. We Nigeriens have 0.02% water surface in our lands, you Canadians have 12%. We cannot be clandestine service providers as easily as you can, we have to bargain for our water with the revolutionaries. We had a scheme where the revolutionary well and water mains attendants would accept tokens we printed. The mint was in Agadez by the way, where your weapons are going now, Monsieur Gunpump.”

“By the way,” interrupted Fritz Schneid. “Comrade Henri, if I may call you that, is there a way, you can let my synthetic fertilisers and other chemicals go the same fast way? We could use them to mess with their march of the trees and regreening in general, either by making the revs indebted to us – after all, they cannot fertilise the whole god damn Sahara with dinosaur crumbs –, or if they get cheeky, by putting in some stuff that will make the trees reconsider their long march.”

“Not your white phosphorus or neuro-transmitters again!” wailed Louis Deshalles. “They have exactly the same ultra-negative effect Henri has described for the nuclear. They harm the trees and nature in general and end up just driving the people away from us.”

“I think Louis is right!” Uber began, but Schneid interrupted him.

“No more white phosphorus, I promise, but harmless NPK fertilisers and beneficial neuro-transmitters – Acetylcholine, Glutamate, and Dopamine to energise, Serotonin and GABA to slow the trees down. The revolutionaries have experimented with those themselves, in the Baltics didn’t they, comrade Viesturs? We got a recipe from up your neck of the woods.”

“I think some shipments of yours are already being handled in our network,” said Louis after a look at his intranet tablet. “They’ll go to Tripoli and Alexandria from Marseille though, not via Genoa, but that should not make a difference. Payment to the usual account at BNP.”

“Wait a minute, but we are discussing strategy here,” said Henri. “I would like us to agree to three very simple principles: Pals yes, but, first of all, no big weapons, second, no war either with the revs nor with each other, because after all, we might all become and already be each other’s customers, and third, at least for the foreseeable future, no more large-scale actions such as this coup here in Niger. You see what a mess it has already caused, people hate us for treading loose civil war, and if the revs had not been so competent about neutralising the nuclear reactor, we might have had a major nuclear explosion on our hands.”

***

“We remaining putschists, that’s comrade Salifou speaking, now revolutionary spy at the Reaction, have now had a separate meeting with the three African capexogarchs, Aliko, Nicky, and Nasif, and they’ve urged us to accept the Uberytes’ offer to participate in the pals scheme.

“We might have a chance to rekindle the coup,” said Nicky Oppenheimer, “but as you appreciate, the outcome is very uncertain. There is a survey out they have published on their French l’Humanité channel, allegedly based on a fully statistically representative sample of several thousand Nigeriens in Niamey, Zinder, Agadez, and out in the countryside, of which 80% on average, with no statistically significant difference along gender, age, agglo or countryside, or even educational and professional lines answered that they opposed the coup, that they approved of the revolution and the brigade, assembly, hierarchy, material and cryptoleak check principles,

of allocation and distribution of goods and services via the trefoil of free, shared, or revolutionary barter,

of right to free food, water, clothing, toys, books, household utensils, other tools, etc. for all,

of right to housing and household ownership of their house, apartment, or dwelling, of the right to swap it with others with needs and likes taken into account and without money entering the picture,

of free education including university and professional training for all,

of the principle of sharing all hard and demeaning work, but to automate it where possible, and to limit socially necessary labour time to fifteen hours a week, with an additional fifteen hours a week reserved for creative, social, and other pleasurable tasks…

“What else? I mean, we can wait until the weapons arrive, parade tank through the streets of Niamey, even fly drones over them, have soldiers with rifles at every corner… Yet I understand only one in two thousand is willing to serve in the counter-revolution, that means no more than 600 sure soldiers for the whole of Niamey. We would first have to print lots of crypto to give them and anyone else who cares to join, of course, and then what else?”

“We got it, we got it,” wailed Ali. “I would like to be overseer of a dozen logistics station then. More than one, if I may!”

“We can lease you two. You can build up more with time, of course!”

“I would not mind to manage a couple of brothels, eh, amusement clubs,” said Salaou.

I, Salifou, opted for a sports school, and Bazoum for a policlinic. “I’ll see how it goes, maybe directing one will be challenging enough and yield sufficient revenue as well.”

“We were ready to go home,” continued Salifou who had ended up being the next to defect, “when Ali got a bio-message that several transporters with weapons had just arrived at one of his two logistics stations, meaning the transport companies that he was the freshly baked CEO of. It was from Kévin and Raymond. So, these two rascals were still free and ready to work even without any offers of fancy vehicles or mansions. ‘Dear friends,’ Zeine continued, ‘Salifou and Salaou, Ronald, Fritz, Thomas, and Jordan, and of course Mohamed, Édouard, and Arnaud, you may also join with your expertise, I invite all of you cordially to come with me and see what’s there, how many workers we have, and so on. Kévin and Raymond said there were about a dozen and for the time being, they had put them to work unloading the vehicles, but remember, the tanks, armoured vehicles, and so on – apparently there are some drones as well –, must be assembled, and the rifles must be loaded at least and distributed. We must try to ascertain how many soldiers we can still recruit at this stage.”

“Only Bazoum said he was tired, the others agreed to come with him. I went as well although I had already decided for myself and told it to you, comrades, as well intraline that I was going to jump ship at the next possible opportunity. The nine of us boarded a transporter, and off we went.

“We went past nice villas, though a lot smaller than those we had pokered for, then small huts with vegetable gardens next to them, some I could see had Geiger counters affixated below the thermometer by their door, but nobody seemed overly concerned. ‘You can get them for free at the market,’ somebody shouted back, when I pointed at it, ‘but everything is alright around here.’ It was early in the morning, about prayer time, some old men-grandfathers were praying, while grandmothers were hanging the laundry, mothers were fixing the breakfast, fathers were lecturing the children on how to behave at school, ‘Ask lots of questions,’ I heard one of them say, and when he saw our transporter breeze by, he shouted the rest of the sentence in our direction, ‘even about thorny issues like the coup. The teachers are not that good, they must answer like the rest of you.’ That is what I love about Niger. People have practised democracy here already before the revolution. There was Allah, Muhammed, the prophet, and the family, everybody else even the imams and teachers played second fiddle. And to think that I almost gambled away my mother and fatherland for a dodgy palace somewhere in the ex-U.S.. D’accord, Salaou has been there, let him go back. I have been to the French and the German lands, it is not too bad there, there are lots of Nigeriens there in some places, like Paris, or Stuttgart, or Dortmund…, lots of work there for proles, in the old industrial centres. Yet they would not allow me a villa on the Mediterranean, no, they wouldn’t.”

The vehicle stopped. The logistics station was nicely located on a hilltop with some trees around it and a view of the surrounding villages and fields, so you could see an enemy approaching. Ali, its future master, seemed very satisfied. We could see the dozen or so workers sit around, eat their sorghum breakfast after almost a whole night of heavy labour that would surely get rewarded.

“We’ve carried all the boxes in and opened them,” said one of their brigadiers. “The tanks we’ll have to assemble one by one, in the big garage and then drive them out, but I won’t… my name is Mohamed.”

“Why won’t you?” asked Ronald Gunpump, puzzled.

“I am a righteous Muslim, I am not allowed to drive,” the man explained. “I’ll take the mini-bus later on back to my village.” “So will I,” said about eight others. That left at most three who were able and willing to drive.

“How many tanks are there?” asked Salaou.

“About fifty,” Mohamed-brigadier said, and Salaou jumped with joy. “That’s not bad. Do any of you know forty-seven soldiers who would work for us?”

“What’s the work?” asked the second brigadier, Moussa.

“Assemble the tanks, and that includes mounting the guns, we shall see about the drones, how many are there?”

“Three.”

“Well, that’s manageable,” said Ali. “The task will be to drive the 50 tanks into town guarded by the three drones. Wait, we might not need 50 soldiers. I can drive one by the way, so can Salaou, what about you, messieurs Fritz and Ronald?”

The two of them looked at each other hesitantly. “Maybe I could,” Fritz said finally.

“Then I might be able to as well,” said Ronald.

Yet Jordan and Thomas shook their heads. “I have never driven a tank in my life,” Jordan said. Thomas said he would prefer to serve in some kind of supervisory capacity. Kévin and Raymond on the other hand said they had done it during their training as mercs and would be able to do it.

“The question is,” Ali asked. “”What are we going to do in town?”

“We could distribute leaflets,” suggested Arnaud, being as he was an agitator in the French lands as well. “Édouard and I could draft one, and you Nigerien friends could make suggestions. How can we catch the attention of the people and how can we convince them that capitalism is the better way?”

I found that my time to make an exit was fast approaching.

“I think we should first get the workers and soldiers here,” said Ali. “Then, while they assemble the tanks and drones, you pals will have plenty of time to draft leaflets.”

***

“I wonder, is it even necessary?” I heard myself ask, and all of them, the resting workers, with Mohamed and Moussa standing closest, the two French oligarchs, the two German weapon and chemical merchants, their four mercs, as well as Ali and Salaou were looking at me aghast. In my memory of that day I see them with their mouths open.

“I mean, the people like the revolution, don’t they,” I scrambled on, knowing full well that I had pushed a totally wrong button by mistake. “We could do what Messieurs Uber and the other oligarchs from the new periphery suggested, just go home and rest. Then I might go to manage my two sports studios, and you brother Salaou might saunter to your amusement clubs, and our friend Ali will come back here from his other logistics station, and Bazoum, I mean our pal Mohamed-putschist might go to his policlinic. You see,’ I explained to the baffled listeners. ‘We’d be pulling up a new kind of capitalism, where people will spend some crypto joyfully for things they like, gift packages, sports training, dance and other amusement, and health of course, and will still be able to profit, I mean partake in all the free offerings in the revolution, at the market and the share points, engage in simple sharing, order things for free even from afar, although Ali’s logistics stations might help you get them delivered, and… eh… the crypto might help to conclude revolutionary barter deals as well…”

“That’s a good idea,” another worker interrupted me. “By the way, I should be one of the brigadiers of the day, these two,” and he pointed at Mohamed and Moussa, “have served long enough. My name is Ismael and Boubacar can be the brigadier in the other brigade.”

“I don’t want to, I have a tooth ache,” said the thus motioned, “but my brother Oumar here, he wants to.” That turned out to be the truth, and the two brigadiers stuck their heads together with their brigades to weigh Ali’s proposal as well as my counter-proposal.

“We’ll try to help you find soldiers,” they reported their decision. “The comrades have agreed that each of us will bio-message ten friends and ask them, are they willing to come up here, assemble these tanks and the three drones, start the drones, and then drive the three tanks into town and distribute leaflets for the coup. Correct? That’s basically what you are asking us to do, isn’t it?”

“Not shoot at our fellow Nigeriens or something,” added Oumar. “Because then, I can tell you, you are not going to get a lot of volunteers.”

“Well, they won’t have to volunteer, they’ll get money for it, good Niger Central African Francs that they can spend at market stalls or share points or workshops that take them,” explained Ali and met with the same baffled expressions and mouths standing open that I had faced earlier. The two youngest workers even broke out laughing. “But there aren’t any stalls or share points that accept these things. Some well attendants have been known to take tokens, but only since the coup.”

“Shush!” Ismael calmed him down. “Just do your bio-messaging, let’s see what comes out of it.”

At the end of the hour, each of them had recruited one additional worker. “That means we shall be about thirty people who can work on the project of assembling the tanks,” said Ali. “And whenever somebody takes a break, he should try to call up some additional soldiers. Do you think we can do it that way?” The workers looked at each other and sighed. Remember, they had been working all night. You could tell they were staying more for the sake of a job to be done rather than out of counter-revolutionary conviction.

“D’accord,” Ismael said. “But two of us should launch the 3 D printer and print some notes, coins, and cards for us to take home, shouldn’t they?”

“We checked,” added Oumar. “There is paper, plastic, and paper in the office cupboard next to the printer. That should be enough to grant us all a decent take.” Everybody cheered and instead of going home as I had planned to, I felt myself pulled in and ended up helping with the assembly of the three drones, then switched to the tank brigades.

Tanks are not click-in furniture, you have to do fitting and welding to make them sturdy, and you need an electrician to check on the electrical connections. Lucky already that we have the intranet and that tanks, on the basis of their electronic steering, have bio-wifi capability and will transmit other harpists’ communications as well as react to bio-messages addressed to them. We could tell how well this worked when a few children and dogs from a neighbouring hamlet came running at about lunch time, after school, and wanted to play. We, or rather the tank brigade whom we the drone brigade had just joined, had only just mounted the gun on our seventh tank. At that rate, assembling the fifty tanks would take four days. By that time, the revs would have found us and convinced the workers to unsettle Ali Zeine and return to self-management. I was about to say so and repeat my pitch for just continuing as a below-the-radar Uberyte outfit, when these kids with their dogs came and talked and apparently bio-messaged the tank, whereupon it lowered its gun pipe and allowed them to climb up and sit on top of it and enjoy the scenery.

“Wow, “ said Ronald Gunpump. “Glad that good old Rheinmetall is doing so well with the intranet.” And I used the spirit of merriment and relaxation that had seized even the most severe of our warriors to make a very portentous and lucky proposal. “What if we put the tanks on auto-drive and allow these children to ride into town with us and others to join them as they drive along? That way we could take in all fifty of them.”

The children’s coup, by Olivier and Danièle

“You mean, a children’s coup?” asked Ismael.

“For more democracy?” asked Boubacar, another worker by that name, who was one of the brigadiers of the additional workers that had turned up. We Nigeriens couldn’t stop laughing, even Ali had to smile, only the four German and French barons and their four mercs remained dead serious.

“It’s a good idea,” Ali said. “And we can distribute leaflets advertising the logistics station, sort of leaving it open whether we shall ask for money, or just be a self-managed logistics organisation like the revs have them.”

“Comrades, I could not believe our luck. The day had been saved, there was not going to be any violence. We did not even bother to load the rifles, let alone the big guns, yet we got rid of all fifty tanks by driving them into town.

The eight fascos, the four barons and their four mercs were angry, of course. In fact, they did not even bother to go on the ride into town with the kids and the rest of us. Instead they threatened to grass us up with the three African capexogarchs and even the Uberytes and their bankers.

“Fucking imperialists!” one worker, maybe it was Moussa snarled, but then these fascos drove away in a transporter and we forgot about them. How the process will play out in the coming days and weeks and not only here in Niamey, but in Zinder and Agadez, and in the country-side of course, we shall have to see.

Our entry into Niamey from the South-West was triumphal. “There are fifty tanks coming, but they are harmless. They are allowing children on to play!” The rumour spread, and by the time we reached the inner quarters of Niamey, the street sides were packed with children ready to greet us. Of course, we would have loved to offer everybody a ride. Yet, unfortunately, right at that time we reached the centre, one after the other of the tanks ran out of battery power and stopped dead in its tracks. Never mind! The children used them as an adventure playground rather than as taxis which was just as good. Our twenty-two workers went home with the crypto they had printed for themselves, which would have any worth of course only if others accepted it, but they did not mind.

“After all, we’ve still got the trefoil – free, shared, and revolutionary barter to live on!” And they flashed their teeth at Ali, Salaou, and me, and one of them muttered, “Idiots, your neoliberalism is not going to get you very far!” Then we shook hands, it was already getting dark. There is a bio-video of us taken by some adolescents who were still playing on the tanks, trying to rip things off. “In a week, they’ll be ready for the scrapyard!” said Ali. “Sand will get into the engines and they won’t move a centimetre anymore.” “Maybe they can be recycled?” wondered Salaou. “If I were you, I’d come early and get some metal for your logistics stations!” I told Ali. “Never know what you might be able to use it for! And that was it, comrades,” Salifou took a deep breath. “For us, or for me at least, the coup was over. Training at our sports studio that I administer together with my fellow trainers, other ex-military, is going to be free like all services in the revolution should be, no need for crypto, and there is not going to be any training with weapons or any violent fighting at our school. You are warmly invited to come and look.”

Chapter 5. Competition of the robber barons cut-throat – Sudan-style

Pierre le Gar and Égale in the Sudan Inferno, by Malik and Mao

“Hello, I am comrade Pierre le Gars or Peter Gar, reporting live from Sudan. The situation in Sudan is similar, and yet quite different from that in Niger. Similar in that some of the actors are the same: the capexogarchs, indigenous and imperialist, as well as various militias. Remember those workers at the logistics station that told comrade Salifou they would not drive because Islam forbid it. They were probably Jnim, or Support Group.

“In Sudan they are called the Janjaweed. Under capitalism, they have fought for the rebellious province of Darfur. You can consider them pro-revolutionary. At this stage, they want the revolution in Darfur to go ahead independently, because they say that the other regions are violating self-management principles and lots of people need to repent and rehabilitate first. Their current speaker is Mohamed Dagalo, nick-named the new Hemedti. He cooperates with the secular Justice and Equality movement, more of which below.

“Yet be careful. Not all Islamist groups are pro-revolutionary. Even Janjaweed members have at times accepted crypto and gold from the imperialists, and the Muslim Brotherhoods under the new Hassan al-Turabi, the original is dead already, support the remaining splinter groups of the Sudanese Armed Forces.

“These remainders of the Sudanese Armed Forces have recently staged a coup similar to the one in Niger, instating the new Abdel Fatah al-Burhan as President

and Kamil Idris as prime minister.

“And then there are secular movements as well, for instance, the Justice and Equality Movement which cooperates with the Communists and will fight the putschists. Their prime military leader is Abdelaziz al-Hilu.

Of course, there are no more parties in the revolution, only movements, but you can say that the Justice and Equality people hold reformist views, which are to a degree compatible with those of the Communists, best known through their speaker Abdul Wahid al-Nur.

“So in Sudan it is basically Hemedti against Abdel just as it was Abdouraharame against Mohamed in Niger. The difference is that here in Sudan, the conflict is not about how to best organise water, or whether to use nuclear, or the march of the trees, but there is real violent fighting going on, with the fascos using firearms, counter-revolutionary lethal beams, and so on.”

“Well, thank Allah we have been spared that,” said Seth. “At least so far. But don’t poke fun at our situation, comrade , we might not be done with the Reaction here in Niger either.”

“I understand,” Peter Gar waved his hands. “Yet so far we have seen a lot more bloodshed here in Sudan than you have. The reason is that both sides have promised their fighters, not villas and limousines, and cushy posts as Uberyte night-club managers upon successful completion of the coup, but power in function of the territory, money, and other wealth, and followers they manage to conquer. As a result, the different figureheads don’t talk as much to each other as yours in Niger, and their soldiers are beholden to them personally, rather than to the whole junta, let alone a lofty idea of capitalism and bourgeois democracy.

“Of course, we support Wahid Al-Nur and the other Communists and to the extent they agree with them, Hemedti and his troops. Yet since they are all individually fighting against each other, that is not easy.”

***

“Naturally, Égale and I wanted to talk to all of them, but since even the two threesomes, the reactionary and the reformist-Communist one, were meeting infrequently, everybody being out for their own gain, we had to talk to each of them separately first and find a very good pretext to do so as well.

The pretext turned out to be Égale’s parental home, which she had found closed off with heavy bars, locks, and chains, even the windows, and without any sign who had accomplished the confiscation. She called it confiscation, because she presumed that the inside had been ransacked and robbed. “I have seen so many houses like that in Sudan!”

So, our first question to each of the six robber barons was whether he or his mercs knew what had happened to Égale’s home and then to gradually turn the conversation to Sudanese affairs in general.

“Abdel Fatah al-Burhan, the counter-revolutionary president the putschists had instated, bio-messaged around and answered that when his troops had passed the house, which was located in a rather remote suburb of Khartoum, it had not been closed off yet. His soldiers had not entered it. In fact, they had not gotten off the tanks at all for fear of missing the rendez-vous in the inner city.

“I asked him whether the tanks were also Rheinmetall. He said no, he thought they were an American pre-revolutionary make, ‘although they may have produced some of them in underground workshops after 2021. I read somewhere that the Americans, Elon Deer in particular, had come up with ways to print out tank parts by 3 D printer and have robots assemble them. ‘Did you hear of that?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, remembering that our fascos in the French lands had used similar technology. ‘But I wonder why would you need tanks for? Anyway, why did you do this coup?’”

“It is part of the reshuffling of global wealth, I think,” said Abdel. “The Americans and the Russians are giving up largely, and the African capexogarchs and Asian Dragon Triads are taking over. Blue dragon stands for weapons, red dragon for luxury, and gold dragon for crypto.”

“Wow,” I said. I have always had great admiration for Chinese technology, pre- and post-revolution.

“And the capexogarchs and the triads are telling you to conquer as much land as possible?” Égale asked.

Abdel looked at us reproachfully. “You really think we are f**king idiots!” he exclaimed. “Everybody knows that land is the best way to store wealth. If there is money, you can sell it if you have to. If there isn’t, you can still exploit it and be a rich man even in the revolution.”

“Next day, we went to Kamil Idris, Abdel’s prime minister. He said his troops had not come by the house as they had entered Khartoum from a different direction. I asked him what would have happened if the revolutionary and reformist forces and the Muslims supporting them had not surrendered. Would Abdel and his troops have shot at them?” He shook his head and tried to treat it as a joke. “Of course not. And we are leaving the revolutionary institutions, brigades, neighbourhood assemblies, workplace assemblies, and village assemblies intact. Who wants to make a profit, joins us, the others can continue to get their free goods, share, or barter.”

“That seems only fair,” said Égale who did not seem to want to offend the young man, an old acquaintance, even a friend of her father’s, she later told me.

She was also quite impressed and not at all questioning when we met the new Hassan al-Turabi, a friendly character with nice eyes. “We as a Muslim Brotherhood are not in the business of disturbing, let alone robbing and looting peaceful citizens’ villas,” he said. “In fact, some of us came by and tried to open the locks again, so as for you to be able to enter when you arrived with your Irish friend,” he said with a broad smile. “You will still find the scratches from our tools on the locks and bars. Yet we weren’t able to open them. You’d have to ask the revs and the refos – for reformists – who done it. Whoever it was, they had very good equipment and material at their disposal.”

“That sends the ball back into Abdel and Kamil’s camp.” I said once he had escorted us to the door and gone back to his praying. “And by the way, your father seems to have been quite an important person. All three of them knew his name, all three of them hugged you like you were their long-lost daughter. Tell me the truth, bunny, your father wasn’t some kind of Sudanese capexogarch, or was he?”

“No, no,” Égale blushed. “As a young man maybe, but by the time I came, I was my mother and his second child, he had changed. He allowed her to raise me and my sisters as feminists, while he taught his sons, our brothers to use force and firearms especially only in self-defence. Let’s go talk to the revolutionaries, they will confirm what I said.”

“And then we can ask them about Abdel’s coup, whether that means that Sudan will go full capitalist.” She laughed. “No way! Sudanese are too anarchical. The region will fall apart into a thousand separate lands rather than yield to the capexogarchs.”

We talked to one of the top barons of the revolution first, Mohamed Hamdan Dalago, known as the new Hemedti, new, because there had been a baron with that nick-name before the revolution already. “I remember your father consulted us in that matter. He seemed to think we had done it and complained. I told him personally we had nothing to do with it. Well he does not seem to be missing the stuff in that house, otherwise he would have gone back there.”

Égale’s eyes almost popped out so surprised was she. “So, you think, my papa might be still alive?”

“Oh, definitely,” nodded Hemedti. “He had so many friends both among us as well as the reactionaries, nobody would have hurt him. Or have you seen his body?”

Égale shook her head. “Certainly not. Yet both he and my mother seem to have been gulped up by the earth since the coup. Nobody remembers seeing them.”

“Talk to al-Hilu, I mean, comrade Abdelazis,” Hemedti suggested. “He and his men were quite active in your area. If anyone has seen them, it would be he and his men.”

Robber baron Abdelaziz received Peter Gar and Égale, by Olivier and Danièle

“Yet Abdelaziz had not seen Égale’s papa either. He seemed to think that her father had barricaded the place himself to keep the soldiers out. “But we were on his side, and he on ours!” Abdelaziz stressed. “Why should he have barricaded himself up?”

“The final answer came from Abdul Wahid al-Nur, the Communist. In fact, he had the keys to the locks, drove us to the house and opened it for us, including all the windows.

Pierre le Gars and Égale at her parents’ place with Abdul Wahid al-Nur, by Jean-Vladimir and Adilah

‘You see your papa had been with the other side, the refos at best, at times even with the counter-revolutionaries. Yet this latest coup he did not want to stomach any longer. He did not want to be found on the side of the capexogarchs, he told us. So he went one last time to his house to sort his belongings, throw out papers and medals that had to do with the counter-revolution and that would only incriminate him. Look around, I bet you’ll find them in the waste-bin if at all.”

“Don’t tell me your papa was some kind of mini-capexogarch,” I tried to ruffle Égale again as we started to make order, but she turned a deaf ear and kept ruminating in his things.

Well, we did make order, and found only pictures of her papa shaking hands with Communists and Justice and Equality militants, including Hemedti, al-Hilu, and Wahid al-Nur. He even owned some medals with hammer and sickle on them. We did find some ashes in the compost bin though, including pieces of molten metal. The papers, photos, and medals these pieces of debris came from might have told a different story, but he had destroyed them.

“How do you remember your dad, please don’t tell me as a fervent national socialist?” I continued teasing Égale until she shouted at me. “He was running away from both sides at least when I knew him, and I hope one of them did not kill him.” Then she broke out in tears. “Anyway, he must have been more of a Communist and mamon a feminist, otherwise they would not have called me Égale.’ I took her into my arms. It felt new. Both Carla and Quan had been more restrained that way, they had always tried to deal with their sorrows alone before they let me come in. Not to even mention Gemma. She was the ice queen compared to Égale. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘we can start to look for him and your mamon tomorrow. For today, let’s rest in one of these beds. Unless you want to go back to the felahs.’ She laughed. ‘On the contrary. I am glad you can be the guest at our house. Let’s bio-call the kids though whether they are safe in camp.’ Égale has a girl and a boy, Thwara and Waqi, Revolution and Justice. You can see them on the pictures where we are running from bombs and hostile militia.

“So, now that the barons of all sides had made our acquaintance, they must have decided that we were good as moderators and invited us to their next meeting, at the presidential palace in Khartoum. We tried to urge them to come back to the revolution. ‘Nothing more nerve-wrecking and conflict-prone than private land ownership,’ I tried to agitate them. It is not my forte, but given you experts were all in Illyria, the garden colony, Tripoli, or Niamey somebody had to talk to the people here. ‘ I think our glorious revolution of 2021 has found the best solution. There is no private land ownership and individuals may not own huge estates or several houses or apartments, but everybody, and I do mean everybody is entitled to own their family home, and if it becomes too large or too small or uncomfortable in other ways, people may swap apartments, houses, including the gardens around them and get the ownership titles for the property and the lease title for the ground. If it is an apartment building, each tenant household owns their apartment or room and is entitled to his or her share of the lease for the ground.

“This is quite in accord with Marxist theory by the way. Marx and Engels condemned the horrors of bad housing in 19^th century England as you know and recommended home ownership as the solution.

“So, we would be going against the people conquering the land from under their feet, you are saying?” asked Kamil Idris and answered his own question. “Then our whole reward scheme based on land territorial conquests does not really make sense.” Abdel nodded in agreement. “We should have stuck with Bin Laden,” added Hassan. “He was a great fellow who was really getting at American and generally North-Western imperialism and let the people live. No wonder the American imperialists killed him.”

Chapter 6. Hierarchy Checkers in Zinder

I’ll show you where the workshop is!, by Jean-Vladimir and Adilah

“Well, let’s hope you convinced them to make peace and work with the revolutionary assemblies. Let us tell you then how we finally got rid of the remnants of the putschists in Niger,” Seth took over from Peter Gar who was beginning to get tired. “Maybe that can serve as a lesson for Sudan as well. One of our informants in Zinder was a beautiful lady in red, and when we followed her, everybody probably thought she was some kind of prostitute inviting us to her house. Instead she led us to a workshop where workers had blown the whistle on an incipient hierarchy as well as dodgy products being delivered.

“We could already see it when we glanced through the door. Hundreds of bags, a whole wall of shelves fully stacked with them, of granulated NPK fertiliser that most revolutionary village assemblies had rejected already shortly after the revolution in Years Zero and One, for causing long-term damage to the plants. Along with them, they had forbidden chemical pesticides as well. Monsatan and other producers had resisted for a while and produced underground and even paid militants crypto for illegally spraying their products, but after a few years the costs of upholding the illegal crypto-economy and the burden of secrecy especially had become too much for them and they had folded production, at least in Europe and the ex-U.S. In China and other Asian countries, production had continued, however, and that is why I say an immense majority of village assemblies had rejected these chemicals and not all of them. Some did allow them, not because they disagreed with the judgment of hundreds if not thousands of university and other research institutes that these chemicals were bad, but typically, because the villagers knew they had a clandestine workshop close by and wanted to be able to monitor its activity until a time where the workers could place a hierarchy or material check and reappropriate the workshop for self-management and harmless revolutionary products.

The bags, comrade Longwei immediately told us, came from a workshop in such a dissimulating Chinese village. “If you want me too, I can ask them to call for a full hierarchy and material check immediately,” he shouted angrily. “These scoundrels are exporting stuff they could not get rid of in China except if they gave people crypto instead of asking it, and now they are exporting it to Africa to kindle civil war.”

“Not exactly civil war,” Noah said, “but in a way, you are right. They want to sell it to villages as a means to stimulate the march of the trees, but which might end up harming the trees’ long-term growth potential, and not only that of trees, but other plants, including food crops as well. As you know from studying the Gobi and other Asian deserts, the main problem we face is not lack of fertiliser, but of water.”

“So, what to do?” asked Longwei’s son, Junfeng. “Get the village assemblies, there are several locations where the fascos produce this crap, some of which did disapprove of its production, to vote against it again and then send in spontaneous militia, or what?”

“Yes, and also try to get these workshops for violations of self-management principles,” comrade Jana, self-management expert from Bosnia intervened intraline. “Are the foremen really rotating, is the workplace assembly meeting regularly, is the membership of the M&A, management and accounting brigade rotating at least once a week or once a month or whatever the rules are, and are its calculations discussed at sufficient length and depth at the full workplace assembly?”

“No need to be so heavy-handed, let local and regional media-channels report on the situation at the enterprise,” suggested comrade Patrick, one of the editors of l’Humanité media channel. “Do a reportage from the shop-floor and expose their bad workmanship or at least lack of plant and animal health concerns, as well as their ignoring self-management principles.”

“Visit the workers at home,” was comrade Emmanuel’s idea. “Get them to form red cells, so that nobody needs to whistle-blow or start a hierarchy or material check alone. That can cause workers a lot of anxiety and fear of repression, and the bad practices risk not being exposed. If a whole cell or brigade does it, no problem.”

“O.k., I, Maher, Karla, and the others are standing in the middle of the shop-floor now,” bio-messaged Seth. “What to do? We asked, was not the stuff in the shelves imperialist junk, and had they ran a material check on it.

One worker said, no, not yet, some of the other workers had objected. Another said, no need to check, this was good revolutionary fertiliser, Organic NPK, he called it, no less, a Chinese import that a foreign team of experts had warmly recommended to them.”

“Well, at least if overused, it can cause brown leaves and wilting due to the ‘burnt roots’ syndrome. Did they tell you about that?” asked Maher.

“No, they did not,” said the first worker. “By the way, my name is Ali. My opponent here is Boubacar.”

“Not only that. Even in small quantities it can further soil acidity, which is a real killer in a dry climate like yours, isn’t it?” Maher probed.

Now a few other workers nodded as well. And Jean-Saïd noticed that even as they had entered the room, those workers that supported Ali had already stood on one side of the room, by the window, while Boubacar and his friends stood in front of the fertiliser shelves, probably in an attempt to protect them. All of them had pulled some cloths before their faces as if to protect themselves against infection.

“Not only that. NPK fertilisers can contaminate ground water and kill pollinators, beneficial fungi and bacteria,” said Karla. “There is nothing organic about them, even if some of the underground producers claim that.”

“I am a medic,” said one of the workers on Ali’s side. “My name is Imarou. We learnt that synthetic fertilisers may cause cancer, thyroid problems, and the blue baby syndrome.”

“I know somebody whose child had that condition,” said another worker. “My cousin’s as a matter of fact. My name is Karim. They brought it to the policlinic. They said it was from low blood oxygen levels and asked whether they had used that NPK stuff!”

“My father told me there was a time in the 1960s where almost everybody in the French lands and all over Europe had thyroid problems,” added Maher. “Later when the capitalists themselves realised their mistake and reduced the amount of synthetic fertiliser they used on their farms, that number went down again.”

The brown cell on the other side of the room stayed silent for a moment. Then one of them grumbled: “Foreigners again telling us what to think!”

“As for those experts who told you that stuff was harmless, I think we know them,” Noah spoke for the security brigade that had secured the perimeter and had now entered the hall as well. “How did they look like? Were they Nigeriens?”

“No,” said Ali. “They were all foreigners. Three were from the German lands, one was tall and blond, one heavy with brown hair, and the third had even darker hair and was a bit smaller. He had a gun. The other four were French. Two smaller ones, one with light brown and one with dark brown hair, well dressed, sort of camo, but well made. They looked like some kind of adventurers. The two others were stronger in real camo, and had guns as well.”

“Did they threaten you?” “No, they distributed more weapons, food and drink, and money, look, there in the corner by the window on the table. We were just debating what do with that.”

“You can tell from your own description that these were not real experts at all. Comrades Jean-Wadi, Maher, and Karla here may be young, but they are studying physics and chemistry and they know quite a lot!” said Noah. “When they tell you, these fertilisers are no good, you can trust them. And the packaging may not even be authentic.”

“The tall German guy is a chemical producer, but he has already tried to stop the march of the trees in Senegal and Burkina Faso,” added comrade Olivier. “He is not even an adventurer, but a true criminal.”

“And the heavy-set one with brown hair is a weapon producer. He is trying to rewind the clock to the constant war and bloodshed under capitalism,” added Saïd.

“That is what I told the others,” said Imarou. “No need to use lethal weapons, we have red beams after all. You are out for half an hour. And when you wake up, the militia is already there to take care of you. Then you can start to repent.”

Repentant Putschists, by Maher and Karla

They all laughed. “Mind you,” said one from the other side of the room and made a move to join his comrades on the other side. “Being repentant is not enough, you have to actively do something to get yourself and your friends back to the revolutionary path. Start by rereading Marx, Lenin, and the other classics. Follow me, my name is Rabi.” Boubacar and a few others tried to hold him back, but he freed himself, and one or two of his friends followed him already, still laughing. The numbers had now definitely changed in favour of the revolution.

When Maher and Karla tested the food and drink the fascos had brought and found they contained heavy sedatives, k.o. spice, Maher and Karla called it, everybody agreed that they had to be thrown out.

“I don’t know what their plans were but they definitely involved drugging you!” said Seth. “What made them leave so quickly? Did they notice we were coming?”

“No, they had left a bit earlier,” said Boubacar. “They said they were visiting all the workshops in Zinder, to tell them what to do with the new products.”

“We also found more bags of NPK as well as heavy cases outside, probably disassembled weapons, aren’t they?” asked Rodion.

“Yes, they wanted us to assemble them, load the rifles, and the NPK was to be used to help the march of the trees, and there are also these cases in the fridges.” And Ali led Maher and Karla to the back room where they found several fridges filled with multiple-use tubes that could be either inserted in a spray can or syringe or poured directly.

“They said these are for plants, to strengthen them for the march of the trees, neuro-transmitters or something like that.”

“That is very dangerous stuff!” explained Maher. “Just as bad if not worse than the NPK fertilisers. You have to calibrate the different agents so that they work well together and there is neither overgrowth followed by weakening, nor excessive restraint leading to stiffness and atrophy. Make sure that you destroy it.”

“They said you were using them as well!”

“Yes, we have experimented with neuro-transmitters for trees,” admitted Maher. “Yet they should be used very carefully, under the supervision of a full team of experts, biologists, ecologists, agronomists, chemists, nanobot experts, you see, because nanobots carry the agents, and applied only very sparingly, if they are absolutely necessary. For instance,” he said and straightened his back. “The other day, when the water bubbled up, several small forests decided to march, one of them succeeded in freeing our comrades who were captives of the fascos in even worse straits than you were, yet the trees did not require any doping. When the harp functions, and humans, animals – in that case dinos –, plants and robots agree on a course of action, we living beings will be able to accomplish the march of the trees and regreen the desert of our own free will. That you may believe me!”

“Anyway,” said Seth, when they were in full assembly again. “You will have to help us. We must follow these fascos to the other workshops here in Zinder, if only to make sure that they don’t have any of this poisoned food and drink and give any of these No Plant Kultures and Moral Atrophy-transmitters to the plants. We must also destroy these weapons they are spreading everywhere.”

“And the money!” added Jean-Saïd.

“Exactly. You can almost forget about that already. Nobody takes it anymore. You can be our witnesses and tell them the story of how they tried to ensnare you to follow their orders. And then we might have to go to Agadez and maybe back to Niamey to thwart their plan of setting up what they call their logistics stations and workshops and what you might call their murder stations all over the Nigerien lands.”

Chapter 7. Red Cells in Agadez

Do you want to know what self–management is?, by ChatBot, alias Colin and Petit Pierre

“What the f**k are we doing here?” “Let me consult Aurora chatbot! Aurora, please tell us where in the agglo of Agadez they do not practice self-management!”

“Ah, now it presents us with a list of known logistics stations and other Uberyte joints, and asks a further question: ‘Do you want to know what self-management is? I can tell you… The full workplace assembly takes all decisions and does the management and accounting. Its moderators rotate every hour at least… The workers do their work in brigades. Their brigadier rotates every day at least. If there is a management and accounting brigade, its membership will rotate and will be working for a week or a month at most at a time. All workers, users, and consumers have the right to start material and hierarchy checks…’”

“Forget about that… Look at this logistics station here. CEO vacant. Apparently, the previous boss switched back to the revolution, and it is quite close, only 5 km away, we can go there by beam,” said Fritz.

“But they’ve got a shipment of arms and fertiliser,” said Thomas. “That is odd. With the CEO post vacant.”

“Maybe Sawiris’ people at Avanti did not know that yet. Look, they are in Egypt, we are here.”

“But it is the same chatbot for everybody,” said Thomas.

“I think we should go there. If we see the revolutionaries have taken it, we just skedaddle,” said Ronald Gunpump, who thought of Thomas as a bit too squeamish and preferred to forge ahead with the dare-devil Fritz. And this time they were lucky. The yard was empty, the door to the workshop open. Inside, the same basic set-up as in Zinder. The shelves and walls of the main workshop hall were crammed full of fertiliser bags and big cases with disassembled weapons in them. The delivery agents had not put anything into the yard, obviously, because they had realised there wasn’t anybody there to guard things. In one of the adjacent rooms stood several fridges full of medication and neuro-transmitter flasks. In the other stood the tool they craved most of all, the Elon Deer-designed 3 D printer. Elon Deer was now with the revolution. Yet the 3 D printer was still the technological hallmark of the counter-revolution. Vaccines d’accord, but they had existed for hundreds of years already, the revolutionaries had just found most of them wanting, that was why the underground capitalists these days were almost the only ones producing those still in demand. Robots, o.k., but the revolutionaries had turned out better at designing them, so much so that old Stonefeller’s idea of insisting on patent protection for the counter-revolutionary ones had turned out a joke. The revolutionaries had obviously, if not invented, then at least reinvented low-frequency intranet that allowed humans to communicate with animals and plants and to communicate without devices. Yet the 3 D printer, that was a true preserve of the Reaction. The revolutionaries had not even been all that interested in inventing a revolutionary counter-model. They had come up with one, that red-haired robot engineer from Illyria had been involved, what was his name, Ronald had forgotten it, and they kept it in share points to create village IDs as well as in pharmacies which were usually located in policlinics to print recipes and other medical documents as well as custom-made medication. Ronald had just seen one or two of them in his whole life. They were rose-coloured as opposed to Elon Deer’s martial grey and a lot smaller, only about a quarter of the standard Elon Deer model. No wonder, they had to do a lot less work. After all, the revolution did not print any bullets, any coins, any crypto credit cards…

Fritz upbeat voice pulled him out of his nostalgia. “We’ve got paper, plastic, metal, so we can print ourselves new village IDs, as well as some currency, coins, and credit cards. I think we should start with that in case militia come and want to know who we are.”

“There are some papers in the queue already,” said Jordan. “Look at that, a revolutionary leaflet, or they have had an assembly here and these are the minutes.

“Let me read you this nonsense: ‘Being exploited can be addictive. You may give up asking for rotation or raising a hierarchy check in other ways if you are alone and confused. Therefore, the workers need red cells, even in the revolution, and even in very small, family workshops.’ “

“I have heard of that,” said Raymond. “Red cells is their code word for trade unions. They exist in the revolution, but obviously don’t have a lot to do, with self-management already in place, except in our joints.”

“So, this is probably the reason the boss resigned. They formed these red cells, debunked him, and threw him out.”

“You can do something against it,” said Arnaud. “Form brown cells of workers who will take our side, against extra crypto-payment in most cases, counter-revolutionary fanatics are rare these days. Recruiting them is pain-staking work, and it requires you to be anchored somewhere. I had started the process in the French lands. Then came the silly idea to spread the Moral Atrophy virus. Look at us now, chasing around North Africa! So, tell us Messieurs Les Nazis, where will you take us next?”

“If you want to opt out, there is the door,” shouted Thomas, who was always quick to lose his head when made a fool off.

“Two options: Palestine or Mali?” Schneid said, a lot more calmly.

“Palestine,” said Édouard. “I might even visit some old friends in the media business. Wait ‘til I bio-message them, they might even invite us to stay!”

Clearly, Arnaud thought, his friend had lost his marbles. He did not realise what a group of outcasts they were. “Oh, well,” said Édouard after twenty minutes of trying. “They don’t want to see us, or they are busy.”

“No problem,” said Fritz Schneid. “There are empty logistics stations there where we can camp just like here. Remember, we did it on our last visit.”

“Hmm,” wondered Gunpump. “But that begs the question of what we are going to do there. Last time it was to cause trouble for their transport beam trials and also for their tree marches.”

“This time as well it can be about their tree marches. They must be prevented. That’s really one part of the cause worth fighting for,” said Édouard. “Imagine forests everywhere, very small villages where everybody knows everybody, they have their assembly going on all the time, and hardly any long-distance communication apart their intranet and harp. No way to have independent workshops, logistics station, and to pull up any type of monetary economy. If we did try it nonetheless, it would be like starting up again from the stone ages.”

“And that is deliberate,” said Arnaud. “The revs want to make the animals and plants their equal partners. Imagine how difficult it would be to start a war then. The plants don’t want to fall, the animals don’t want to bleed. They have even less counter-revolutionary fervour than the humans.”

“I’ll be Frédéric Snite, I like that sound, Ronald can be Ronald Flinge, and Thomas, let’s think, you can be Thomas l’Excité, goes with Stérilé.”

“But we won’t be Édouard Stérilé and Arnaud Arrolle this time. Anne and Marion, don’t you have any ideas for us?”

“Well, Étienne Fécondet and Arthur Avanti, those were good names, and you’ve hardly used those cards yet. We gave you the blueprints on a USB sticks, you just plug it in, and you’ll be as good as new. And we can join you in Is…Palestine. Don’t you miss us?”

“Oh, most definitely, Anne darling,” said Édouard. “But I think the risk is too great. These names are too close to our old ones, and we have already used them.”

“I’ll be Alain Arrivé, and you can be Emmanuel Despuits.”

“Why Despuits? Because after Palestine we may go to Mali to propose them alternative solutions for regreening, and they will like that. It is almost as dry as Niger, 1.6% water surface.”

“You’ll be our wives, Jordan can be Jordan Lenôtre, Raymond can stay Barré, and Kévin can remain Poivre. Thomas l’Excité sounds contrived, let’s call you Béranger. There has been a reactionary by that name before.”

They typed the names and other details in and just waited for the IDs to come out. Revolutionary IDs just bear a person’s family and first name, their date of birth, address, and photo. No need for numbers and fingerprints. The chance that a real person with the same name, same date of birth, and same looks will live at the same address as the other is infinitesimally small. And for the rest you just check for inconsistencies. A typical fake ID will always have a feel of something invented about it. Either the name and or the address can’t be found, or the birth-day does not fit the carrier of the fake ID, or the photo no longer fits with the fraudster’s latest disguise. It typically takes less than five minutes to confirm a fake ID and no more than twenty to unmask the real carrier. Of course, there are also lists of cross-regional criminals whom several village assemblies are searching for crimes committed in their area. Yet ID controls are rare in the revolution and mostly perfunctory. And that was the chance the Pappbergerytes or belligerent Uberytes, however you want to call them these days, were taking. They hoped that they would be ignored.

“What else do we need here?” “Maybe a revolver for each of us and two spares for Anne and Marion, pictures of the tanks, drones, and rifles we want to sell them, a couple of medicine flasks, neurolepts, steroids, k.o. drops, amphetamines, Doxythrax, TdC, and vaccine syringes – Covet, Coflu, LEP-AL, MA –, as well as neuro-transmitter cocktails for people and plants.”

“Pardon, what are Doxythrax and TdC?” asked Raymond who was new to the counter-revolution. In fact, he had been recruited as a Nemesis activist already, that was quite a recent creation. “Oh, Doxythrax is a for-pay medicine against anthrax, TdC is a virus that causes stomach cancer. It is named after the boat we used to ship it into Paris down the Seine, Tropique du Cancer. We wanted to sell people the vaccine obviously, not the virus, but it can be good as a chemical weapon against someone we really hate, like…” Fritz Schneid wrinkled his brow.

“That Jean Pontonier!” suggested Ronald. “Even the Uberytes agreed he was a nuisance. He is a 100% Communist, nay anarchist, always harps on about the assemblies and the need for consensus, that way he manages to debunk counter-revolutionary agitators every time. He is a housing activist, wants to make sure everybody gets their house or apartment for free, so that way he debunks our villa scheme. He is very modest, he does not seem to crave either money, or fame, so he is a good example for everyone who wants to prevent the return of money, and he seems to prove by his whole life-style and that of those around him that it is not too much to ask.

“We have tried everything to disparage him. An affair with the Rothschilds, philandering, homosexuality, laziness, old age dottiness, many more, nothing seems to stick. He needs to go… If you want to, we can bio-call the Uberytes, they have said so as well.”

Henri Uber was intraline almost immediately. “You again, Ronald Flinge, with your hatred of that man. Well, I can’t really say he is my favourite cup of tea, but boys, what did we tell you? Nothing violent, nothing cruel, at least as long as our names are attached to it.”

“So now you are going to Palestine and then to Mali?” asked Henri’s buddy, Viesturs Volt. “And when are you coming back to Europe?”

“As soon as possible when it’s time to get that jerk, Jean,“ murmured Ronald but it seemed that only Fritz had heard him.

“You could come to North America as well,” Larry Flink said quickly. “Only always inform us before you do something rash. Old Robert Capito is looking at our fingers, and Ron O’Hanley and Jim Hooley don’t want to be financing murderers either!”

Bonfire of the guns versus Abdou – Arms recycler, by Zamir and Odile

While the Pappbergerytes demoted to Uberyte clowns were thus preparing their next sabotage missions, the Illyrians and their Nigerien friends were considering a much less sordid, but more complicated problem. “You can melt the metal and reforge it, and or you can recycle the digital components piece by piece. Same principle as with deconstruction,” explained Léon, with young comrades Zamir, Petit Pierre – garden colony and others his attentive audience.

“So, we can melt the arms down, carefully though, bonfires cause pollution and then recast them into something else, ploughs, harpoid and plushbots coatings etc. There are two difficulties. The metal may not be altogether clean anymore, and the dirt and rust does not disappear entirely when you melt it. So, the substance you will get will be more brittle. That means that every harpoid robot or plushbots made with recycled metal will be inferior to the generation before.”

“But the piece-by-piece recycling of components might be even worse?” asked Zamir.

“Yes, even worse. The pieces might be dirty, and it might be difficult to get them into shape, so that each new generation of harpoids and plushbots, especially those made from weapons, might not only be more brittle, but actually more unstable, wobbly even than its predecessors. Yet piece-by-piece recycling of components has its advantages. It uses less energy. Some pieces can be reused exactly as they are, others may need only minor adjustments.”

“You see,” said Abdou. “At our self-managed workshop we can do both methods. We Nigeriens have lots of solar energy to heat the fire, that’s not our problem, and we are very patient and agile with our hands, we can put old things together again as new.”

“That is a great idea, but you will need lots of water as well. Not even Yvelines has enough water for all the recycling projects we need to undertake,” said comrade Anton, Illyria’s main recycling hound, so to say.

Abdou’s face sank. “So, how are we going to catch up from our technological backwardness then?” he asked. “Our children want to have grow-up-with-you robots and plushbots just like yours.”

Chapter 8. Harp Assemblies everywhere

Harpoid robots and plushbots for everyone, by Mahamadou and Hayatt

“Where grow-up-with-you robots are extendible robots that will grow with you one or several centimetres as you get taller, and also expand their intellectual faculties along with yours, and plush-bots are small pre-revolutionary laptop and tablet-size devices couched in plush instead of metal or plastic – as they can be, because the intranet or bio-wifi just travels on much lower frequencies, 100 Hz maximum instead of 5 billion Hz. Every child world-wide should have one each of these devices so as to guarantee the scientific advance of the revolution, overcome backwardness, as comrade Abdou has said, and also to get better friends with our friends in the harp communities.

“But what if Nigeriens cannot produce them for their kids for lack of energy and water? Do they have to accept them as a gift or as part of a revolutionary barter agreement?”

“I think, you will have to dig deeper for water. You can design solar-powered excavators. That is already a harpoid more.”

“We large dinos can help you dig. Just pierce a shaft, we will make it broader.”

“We are small, but we can help you find water as well,” interjected the fennec fox. “We live in burrows close to water sources after all.”

“So can water buffalo,” said Papa Babagida. “We buffalohumans can help you talk to the few buffalo that are still left in Niger. We came to help with the march of the trees near Omsinbaba’s village in Senegal – Burkina Faso lands, but we can come up to you as well. As you know, we cannot only morph back and forth between human and buffalo, but we can transform also into a number of other animals, grasshoppers, for instance, and we could fly up to your villages that way.”

“I’ll start to organise it immediately,” said Vicky, daughter of Peter Gar from his marriage with Gemma, and a buffalohuman as well as a travel agent.

“We are not as big as buffalos but we can help you find water as well,” piped up the addax, antelope, and dama gazellas. “Why didn’t you talk to us earlier when there were still more of us?”

“We hyenas and other animals of the desert are not as pretty as the above, but we are like dogs. We are Megapno’s descendants, by the way. We can smell water miles away. If you learn to talk to us in nature-speak and nature-language and with respect, we will help you pinpoint underground water deposits, so you don’t have to drill blind. By the way, do you prefer us striped or spotted?”

“Salut, I am Comrade Eagle. Comrades Falcon, Owl, I myself and many other Niger birds can sometimes see the water through the ground when we fly high. Today it is too late already, but tomorrow we could start exploratory flights if you can wait.”

“We cheetahs can help you hunt fascos, should they ever come back,” said a cheetah, speaking intraline. “I’ll be back in touch later. Now I have to hunt. Maybe comrades Caracal, Civet, Genet, Badger and other cat types can help you out in the meantime.”

“If need be, I can help you both with finding water as well as with hunting fascos,” groaned the lion. “After all I am the king of animals, and the animal kingdom includes you humans. Trouble is that you don’t communicate.”

“Yes, why didn’t you free us earlier?” a camel moaned as well. “You enslaved us for your caravans, the land got ever hotter. Now we are almost extinct.”

“Large dinos, camels, and harpoids shaped like them can help you store water,” added comrade Zafira. “We ran the pertinent experiments in Chad, remember?”

“Back then we had to do with the German-Benelux ex-capitalists, bankers, and fascos,” Seth sighed. “Mansour Ojjeh, Kromer Herren, Jan Wittouck, Eric van der Greet, and so on, remember those bastards?“

“Fasco villains who tried to appropriate the new element Revolutionium we had discovered and tried to turn it into a bomb?“ Maher cringed his teeth. “Never shall I forget those!“

“And if you have the solar panels for your block energy works on one side of the village, the other side can be a cool zone where any water you have will keep longer and you can use it more efficiently,” Jean-Wadi said calmly, in an effort to make his little brother forget his set-back. “It is all in the logs of the Nelson Mandela cooperative.”

“Of course, he is a South African Christian, but we took his name on as a point against racism, sectarianism, and national bigotry,” said Sosthene, speaking via bio-wifi from the cooperative itself.

“We appreciate that,” said comrade Nelson, also named after Mandela, intraline from a cooperative in Mbombela near Johannesburg that he ran with his partner Dulcie, their friends Thobe, Sipho, and others. “I thought you just loved us for who we are. That’s why we named ours after a North African hero – Muammar Ghadafi.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Sosthene’s wife Khadidja. “Of course we love you, even without Ghadafi.”

“We can help you Nigeriens with water-drilling equipment as well,” said Nelson. “Notice we South Africans are so revolutionary, Nicky Oppenheimer had to relocate towards the North. He is no longer so well liked on his old diamond turf.”

“And if you really find no or only very little water only, if the water by the uranium deposits turns out to have been only a fluke, then by all means participate in the drilling in neighbouring regions that have more water, Nigeria and Algeria come to mind,” suggested comrade Jean. “Most likely, they will then give you some of their surplus water, and you will be saved. Don’t consider it a humiliation. After all you will have helped them expand their water resources.”

“And in any case, you will be cooperating with us, the Marwan Barghouti cooperative on advancing the march of the trees,” concluded comrade Omsinbaba’s father from the Senegal. “And all other friends of Illyria in the region.”

***

Jean-Luc took a deep breath. “My presentation on revolutionary accounting is coming up, and I might as well already tell you about its background and relevance to your worries. So far, the ecological problem in mathematical planning has not been that we cannot not plan the whole of nature. We can draw up a material balance or input-output matrix for it like for any other production cycle. Yet the problem has been that our comrades, the animals and plants did not have any strong advocate. The industrial lobby was stronger than the farmers, the urban lobby stronger than the forests, the concrete lobby stronger than the grasslands. So farmland was turned into industrial zones, forests into cities, and the grasslands into highways and parking lots. We must learn how to take surveys from animals and plants and put our heads together with them to design a world all of us would like to live in. Humans will have to make concessions, so will animals and plants, but we shall have a permanent discussion allowing us to draw up what you might call harp balances, in which obviously animals and plants will no longer appear as dead meat or table greens, but as residents, eaters, learners, workers, and players just like the humans. Of course, they will have individual needs just like we humans do, especially, but not only water.

***

“Therefore, comrade Sarah will now have some first words about the fine-tuning, especially of food allowances… We need better surveys, don’t we, comrade Sarah?”

“Surveys are key, of course, to find out about every single plant’s, animal’s and human’s, in other words every harpist’s preferences, but in some cases, they might not be able to articulate their likes because they are small infants still, or sick, or we humans have not learnt enough nature-speak and nature language yet to understand them.

“Therefore, we need to observe their behaviour as well, at the market stall, in the share point, ordering from a workshop, on the pasture, in the stable when fed, in the forest, savanna, or desert when hunting and gathering, on the meadow, in the forest, or on the grassland when growing and multiplying, building nests, burrows, hives, houses, and castles for that matter. One thing I have been struck with when observing harpists, not only humans, but also animals, and plants, and even robots and other digital devices – the way they gently ask for a recharge by way of a small confusion –, is that the triumph of the fully communicative harp assembly would mean the ultimate finish for money and the other mean machinations of the fascos. Animals, plants, and robots are not prone to be criminals and usurpators like humans, they don’t kill except when hungry, they don’t exploit each other for any length of time, they don’t wage war, and above all, they don’t pay each other off. They just cuddle, sleep, eat, play, learn, work, play, eat, cuddle, and rest again… And nature is so beautiful…”

Happy Days. The Wonder Cattle, by Jean-Luc and Marius

“And finally,” trumpeted Jean-Luc, visibly almost as proud of his friends as he was of himself, “allow my buddy Marius a few words about a proposal he would like to make to the Nigeriens.”

“Well, I shall make it short and sweet. Look at this video. What do you see?”

“We see three sheep,” shouted Little Mahamadou.

“Anything special about these sheep?”

“They seem to have the horns of a goat.”

“And the utter of a cow. At least a bigger utter than sheep usually do.”

“Can they open their mouths?” asked Chamsiya. “I would like to take a look at their teeth.”

“Wait a minute ‘til I scroll on,” said Marius. “Here you go!”

“They have bigger teeth than sheep as well. They seem to be something in between a sheep and a goat…”

“And a cow!” triumphed Mahamadou.

“True, Mahamadou, I forgot about the utter! And wait a minute, the third one does not seem to have the bigger horns, it has smaller horns, more like a cow… And then maybe not!”

“Oh,” now it dawned on young comrade Hayatt, “could that be the wonder-cattle comrade Jean-Saïd was telling us about? He said a friend of his was in the process of inventing it, a cross-section between sheep, goat, and cow?”

“You got it in one,” shouted Marius, infected by their enthusiasm, “giving lots of tasty milk like a cow, woolly like a sheep, and non-voracious like a goat. In your latitudes, sheep might feel too warm, but we could make you a cow-goat, non-voracious, and not thirsty, but with tastier milk, would you like that?”

“Are they all the same, or does each one look different, and do they sometimes come out all wrong like the cloned sheep Dolly under capitalism?” the Nigerien comrades asked suspiciously.

“They come out more or less the same, even when we produce them with different methods. For instance, of the three in the video, one is a straightforward cross-breed, the second one comes from crossed DNA and we grew it in a lab, and the third we made from mixed DNA, meaning we produced new DNA strings, cow-sheep-goat, male and female, then crossed those, and also grew it in a lab. Can you guess which of the three is born from which method?”

The Nigeriens asked for the video to be played again, then several times still, but then shook their heads. “No way,” said Garba with a smile. “They all look healthy, and the only difference seems to be that number one has slightly bigger horns, more like goats’ horns, and in number 2, the bigger utter is more noticeable. But they all have big utters, big horns, and lots of wool.”

Now Mahamadou piped up again and said, ‘”May we taste the milk?”, and lo and behold, comrade Jean, who had beamed over just the other day just happened to have some with him. “Tastes like slightly old cow’s milk or fresh goat’s milk,” said Mahamadou, “but that could be because of the rough transport.”

“Definitely,” said Jean. “Remember the milk even had to disassemble-reassemble and now has stood in a cool-box only, not a fridge.”

“Considering that, it’s great,” said Mahamadou. “But maybe I should come to the French lands and give it a second check.”

“You definitely should,” said Marius, now red with joy. ”We’ll be expecting you at the latest for the presentation of my university entry project, let’s see, two-and-a-half years from now at the latest. I am almost 14. Until then, keep thinking out of the box, comrades.”

***

“The kindergardens, schools, and universities of the future will not only have students, teachers, and professors on the same level and authority roles rotating, but each class will have the same number of humans, animals, plants and robots attending. Comrade Odile is working on a concept for that. Over to you, Odile.”

“Yes, it is actually quite simple. No need to conduct classes outside and or carry the potted trees around to where there aren’t any. We can have one small forest bed or two, complete with small trees, bushes, grasses, and flowers in every class-room as well as a wild- or tame-life Biotope for the animals. It need not be the same animals there all the time, then they would be like in a zoo, whereas in a forest, animals may wander. Yet there would always be some, and children would grow up differently, more respectful of animals and plants, and animals and plants would lose their fear of us humans. You know what a grass stalks greatest fear is?”

“To get trampled on?” guessed Marius.

“No, because they can recover from that. There worst fear is to get cut.” Odile nodded earnestly. “It causes them intense pain. Because we humans are beasts, we don’t think of the poor plant’s suffering at all.”

“The future is of course that we shall have teachers, teaching assistants, and students from all four communities, humans, animals, robots, and plants, that our harpoids will help us with the translations into and from nature language while we are still struggling, and that we shall rotate all brigadier and moderator roles as well every hour or every day at least like we do at all other harp workplaces. Once we have reached that stage, it will be impossible for the fascos to pull us back towards capitalism. We shall have well and truly overcome it.”

Chapter 9. How the reverberations caught Palestine

Some escaped and brought their weapons, by Jean-Vladimir and Adilah

Who came? The usual suspects… Fritz , Ronald, Thomas, Édouard, Arnaud, Raymond, as well as Jordan and Kévin– new and younger namesakes of the last two, the originals were still evolving in the American Mid-West with Bob Russell, Annabella Beerbottle, and whoever else ended up there… Volodymir Zelenskii maybe and Igor Kolomistskii.

“And guess what, as soon as they were there, altercations flared up between what people believed were seven, no nine Israelis – Édouard and Arnaud had met up again with their girlfriends, Anne and Marion –, and some night-wandering Palestinian youth. The would-be Israelis were driving a transporter and a tank, then got out of these and started to hit the Palestinians with clubs and chains. The victims got two blue eyes and other bruises from it. And the description they gave of their aggressors matched that of the escapees from Niger to the dot. The spontaneous militia brigade the Palestinians had called went to the usual suspects, the Elders, as well as Isaac Herzfeld, Evsey Vogelsang, Adam Schiff and other potential weapon’s producers, and they all confirmed people corresponding to that description had visited them and tried to sell them arms, modern rifles and even tanks and drones, vaccines against Covet, Coflu, LEP-AL, MA, and Hantavirus – they threw that in, because it was topical –, fertilisers and neuro-transmitters for plant growth and mobility, and other things. The list was too long to remember, comrade Benzion from the Palestinian Refoundation Cooperative who had talked to them on behalf of the Elders told militia. He had advised them to simply pack up and go back to the French lands or Germany or wherever they might have tolerance for their mischief, but here in Palestine the situation was complicated enough without their messing about.

The weapons producers had stressed they were no longer arms producers, let alone weapon users, “and we’re no longer going to be either,” Herzfeld said and stomped away. Vogelsang and Schiff advised them to join the Uberytes, “they still offer some niches to misfits like you, but not here in Palestine,” said Vogelsang.

“Ever heard something of the mixed brigade model?” Schiff teased them. “In each brigade there have to be equal numbers of Jews and Palestinians. If some brigades have uneven numbers, the workshop as a whole at least may not have an uneven number. If it has 50 workers, that means 25 Jews-25 Palestinians, otherwise hierarchy check, bang, and you get closed down.”

“But there are more Palestinians than Jews, aren’t there?” moaned Fritz.

“Well, then you must make sure your enterprise is mixed and sources inputs either from mixed or from all-Palestinian suppliers. Anyway, it is a balancing act, and you idiots, permit me the frankness, are too dumb for it.”

“And then they made total fools out of themselves by trying to acquire airplane tickets from Vogelsang,” Adam Schiff told the story. “Ah, go to Mick Mc Leary, CEO of Dirtair. He recently bought all of Leo Goldwing’s old fleet,” Evsey told them. Of course, Mick Mc Leary was into manufacturing the MA virus now. The fascos knew that from Niall and Seamus, their two Irish goons, so they knew Vogelsang was fobbing them off and turned to Adam Schiff.

“Me?” Adam protested. “Passenger ships or freighters? Never. I have always been a military man. Anyway, don’t you know that good people travel on beams these days? Personally, I don’t like those brown beams, they make you green with anger every time. I just take the revolutionary yellow beams. Why don’t you take the original golden beams, they even allow you to travel fully assembled? Only drawback, they use too much energy. However, with all the uranium people whisper you have put aside in Niger, you should have enough!”

Whereupon Ronald Gunpump broke out in smiles and said: “No problem, we can sell you some.” Yet wise old Adam Schiff had already turned away.

The Zionists become livid, by Faroukh and Sarah

“To make a long story short, our Franco-German Nemesis brigade made the Zionists turn from live to livid. This is something like a brief anticipation of the current state of my topic,” said Faroukh. “Meaning after the triumph of the Intifada. By this image from live to livid, I do not mean that they became virulent fascists, but on the contrary that seeing the European and especially the German Fasco barons trample around on what they consider their sacred soil and their nerves as well, made the old Zionist underground oligarchs and their helpers turn away their wrath from the Palestinians onto a new target, in other words, it made them Antifada. And it was high time for that.”

Postscript. Some Previews. Anarchy and other urgent tasks of the revolution, Intifada – Antifada – Revolution, The Metalmongers, and Green Timbuktu

Preview of Green Timbuktu, Anarchy and other urgent tasks of the revolution, Intifada – Revolution, and the Metalmongers

“I was going to present this project much later,” Jean took over from young comrade Faroukh with just the tiniest inkling of a smile, “but recent events including the attempt at poisoning the taiga, the underground workshop for their Moral Atrophy virus discovered near Illyria, the attempts at sabotaging the tree marches in North-West Africa, and now the coup in Niger have convinced me that the time is overripe. Violent solutions to differences of opinion and shows of contempt are creeping back in, we must exclude them once and for all. We must speed up our permanent revolution, and find ways to overcome the last vestiges of hierarchy, make sure our organisation consisting of brigades, neighbourhood assemblies, workshop assemblies, and village assemblies, all on the same level, functions even without brigadiers, chair(wo)men, and moderators, let alone ombuds(wo)men, standing militia, government, army, and so on. We must internalise the rotation, hierarchy check, and material check principles. They are not a cumbersome routine, they are a matter of pride for all rotation checkers and whistle-blowers and do not imply disrespect, only a friendly criticism of the comrades who might be found in violation. In Communism and anarchy, there is absolutely no need to resolve arguments by violence. After all, we can discuss, then rediscuss things in our assemblies until we find a consensus that satisfies everyone. Even if some cannot articulate their point of view at a given moment, we know about them via intranet and bio-wifi after all.

“We must introduce a spontaneous trefoil check to make sure everybody’s needs are truly fulfilled at all times via either free distribution, simple sharing, or revolutionary barter. We must start with the humans, then do a broader harp check to make sure we have also thought of all animal’s, plant’s and robot, especially harpoid, but also nanobot needs. We must push forward with the march of the trees to create a better habitat for all harpists.

“We should realise there will be problems. For instance, how to go about the rehabilitation of criminals without violating any of the principles of permanent discussion, respect of everybody’s personal integrity and needs, and above all, non-violence I just mentioned? How to respect these principles in a situation of natural emergency and even war the class enemy forces on us? The cultural revolution of our times is that of the harp. We humans can no longer allow ourselves to dominate nature. We must no longer ignore the truth that we humans are part of the whole edifice of nature that is beautiful even without us and which we must keep intact, like Marx said, even if it forces us to stand back at times.”

“We are looking forward to another truly inspiring chef d’oeuvre of yours, comrade Jean,” said comrade Marine, who was moderating. “And I may add that comrade Jean has another presentation in planning on his work as a housing advocate before and even after the revolution, together with comrade Raphael who will speak on his experience as a homeless even after the revolution because he had gotten into the hands of some abusive gangsters and drug traders, and comrade Abram who will speak on housing swaps, based on his personal experience on swapping his luxury villa on the Crimea against a small cabin in the woods close to Illyria which now serves as our robot and harpoid testing lab, while he is happy to share his room in the old farmhouse with comrade Francine.”

“And later on our, Murielle’s and my work on rehabilitating fasco criminals and treating mental illness caused by capitalism will draw heavily on Jean’s example as a prison worker,” added comrade Melanie, and got red with joy and pride when everybody clapped, except Jean, Murielle, and her, obviously.

“You wonder why I come in all of a sudden,” said comrade Carla. “I am just an editor of our minutes. Yet we have indications that the fascos have a major violent attempt against comrade Jean in planning, as well as against Illyria as a whole…”

“Specifically,” said Peter Gar. “We have received an anonymous letter here in Sudan, stating ‘We shall get at your memories!’ “

“Oh, mon Dieu!” said comrade Annie.

“We have received the same here at Illyria!” said Jérôme, security worker, and shrugged. “Which makes us fear that they are somehow aiming at our records that Carla and others are working on!”

“I have already introduced my topic earlier,” said Sarah. “Back to Faroukh’s memories before they steal them!”

“Thank you, my darling honey bee. Intifada – Antifada – Revolution is a dialectical movement leading from the legitimate rebellion of the Palestinian people against the Zionist – and yes, you may say fascist – Reaction in 1948, which we have been able to eliminate only after seventy-three years, to our world revolution,” said Faroukh. “Without the full liberation of the Palestinian people and the overcoming of Zionism, no true anti-fascism, no world revolution, and no liberation of mankind and of nature would have been possible.”

“You are right to stress that, comrade Faroukh,” young comrade Zamir, seven years his junior, nodded eagerly. “Mamon,” comrade Mina, a fervent Palestine advocate, “always says without all those capitalist and imperialist wars over the Middle East, the world got a lot kinder already.”

“Not only that, but humans became capable of overcoming their greed,” Faroukh concluded. “You could see it from the recovered Zionists’ reaction to the Franco-German Neo-Nazi invasion.”

“I know I’ll come later, yet before we get all euphoric about our victories, we’ll really have to reduce our consumption of metal and other resources as we have reduced that of oil,” continued Zamir. “And we’ll have to recycle everything!”

“May I just jump in here on this point on the need for recycling and saving resources,” said Noah, who was moderating. “If there is one thing you have to understand about Timbuktu, and Mali and the Sahel as a whole, it is that it has very little water. And water, as we have just learnt, is desperately needed for agriculture, even more so for workshops, so we won’t depend so much on the Global North anymore, and for life and health in general. We want to find ways to get more water and be able to welcome the March of the Trees when it gets to us, but the capexogarchs and their fasco barons won’t let us. One of the latest ideas, as we have seen, is to replace the search for water with the use of their synthetic fertilisers which they want to sell us, of course. And we have a sneaking suspicion they also want our gold of which we have large unmined deposits in Mali. You can imagine why they would want gold at this stage of the revolution where village assemblies and referendums have forbidden money, crypto, and even tokens and vouchers so many times. Or at least we revolutionaries have frowned upon money, crypto, tokens, and vouchers for such a long time that people have almost forgotten or never learnt what money is and what it does to you. However, that’s precisely when they want to attract new mercenaries and specialised workers to the counter-revolution. Have a good night’s sleep now, we shall continue tomorrow.”

The discussion and adventures of our comrades at the cooperative Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp near Aimeran, Yvelines, the neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis and our friends at the Marwan Barghouti, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Muammar Ghadafi cooperatives in Africa and world-wide shall continue in Anarchy and other Urgent Tasks of the Revolution, Minutes, On the Housing Question vol. 1 A Place for Everyone, vol. 2 Homeless in the Revolution, vol. 3 Housing Swap, Life in Communism 2.1. African Trilogy vol. 3 Green Timbuktu, Food for Everybody – Food for All, Intifada – Revolution, and the Metalmongers. See you around!

Our North African travel routes

Red: Route taken in 2021, Green: Route taken in Year 20 of the Revolution, where 2021 is Year Zero

More upcoming presentations:

Anarchy and other Urgent Tasks of the Revolution (Jean)

Minutes (Carla)

On the Housing Question vol. 1 A Place for Everyone (Jean), vol. 2 Homeless in the Revolution (Raphaël), vol. 3 Housing Swap (Abram)

Food for Everybody, Food for All (Sarah)

African Trilogy vol. 3 Green Timbuktu (Noah)

Intifada – Antifada – Revolution (Faroukh)

The World belongs to all (Salma)

Revolutionary Accounting. Beginnings, Present, Future (Jean-Luc)

Les Jours Heureux. Wonder Cattle (Marius)

The Metalmongers. On Capitalist Exploitation (Zamir)

The Kindergarden Manifesto in Year 24 (Odile)

Herbs versus Spikes (Fabienne)

In the Name of the Peace Dove? Air-rationing ? (Laurence)

Cryptoleakers and Cryptoleak Avengers (Michel)

The Illyrian Recycling Hounds (Jérôme)

When Égale met Liberty. From Whores to Teachers. Women in the World Revolution (Arlette and others)

Behind the Market Stall (Aini)

Hate Services Incorporated (Fofana)

Revolutionary Theatre. Morbidov’s Heirs (Daniel)

Wine, Tobacco, Sugar, and other Fasco crops. For a truly revolutionary agronomy (Francine)

Usefulness of the superfluous (Zamira)

Of Medibots and Brain Apps (Assad)

Revolutionary Medicine on a Backward Continent – Africa (Kaltouma and René)

200 Recipes for the Revolution (Laure )

Holy Water. Life as a PTT-Caisse d’ Épargne accountant (Rashida)

Revolutionary Wards … Wards of the Revolution (Karima and Pauline)

Forum Whispers (Boris)

Enfants pour leurs Parents contre le Covet. Against Ageism (Félix and Leyla)

My Life as a Capitalist Pro (Bulan)

Furniture for the Devil (Saïd)

The Case of Whiterock (Rodion)

Revolutionary Encyclopedists (Jeanette)

Coming in from the Cold, or: How United Russia became Communist (Aleksei and Evgenia)

Wife of an Oligarch (Camille)

The World Revolution of Deconstruction – Reconstruction (Tim)

Nightmares of a Prison Worker and Made Crazy by Capitalism (Melanie and Murielle)

Dancing Dinosaurs and other Deconstruction- Reconstruction Wonders (Cédric)

Hate waves (Charolaine)

Chinese Wall Security Suite fortified by Bio Thicket (Colin)

One assembly out. Lambs Creek, Australia (Cécile)

Plushbots. From soft toys to good comrades (Le Petit Pierre)

We Manouches (Orel)

The Story of l’Humanité 2nd edition. Latest Achievements (Luc, Bertrand, and Clément)

Perfect Crime. Counter-revolutionary Terrorism First to fifth generation (Jacques and François)

Cohabitation: on ex-reactionary arrangements with the revolution (Gabriel and Benoît)

From Fasco to Revolutionary Tattoo Art ( Béa)

Revolutionary Medicine on a Backward Continent – South America (Ramón)

A most Revolutionary Tree House Village (Evita)

In Praise of Labour. The Revolutionary Labour Time versus the Use value calculator (Jean-Michel)

Revolution across People (Isabel)

The Gender Switch and other Robot Delights (Bouna)

The Garden Trilogy vol. 1 Urban gardens, vol. 2 Village gardens, vol. 3 Revolutionary garden ecology (Akila, Mathieu and Sebastien)

The Human Factor. Its Status in Year 30 (Salvador)

How we want to live. Once more on the importance of material checks (Soho)

When the volcanoes got the oligarchs (Zac)

Nature triumphs. Forces of Nature versus Capitalist Sabotage in the New Dark Ages (Caro)

Let the sun shine in. Checking on Africa (Nahel)

Here comes the Sun (Sandrine)

Revolution for the Oceans (Evo)

Harp Psychology, or: The Revolutionary Imperative of Equality (Aisha)

Revolutionary Logistics. Last Frontiers (Fabien)

La Révolution est belle. Revolution is beautiful (Belle)

Comet over Illyria, incl. Into Space, Eradicating war on Mars, Overcoming money on Venus, Re-educating the oligarchs on Pluto (Comet and Sami)

Revolutionary Prophecy (Fatima)

Survival must be Enough. Respect for the Forest (Max)

Northern Lights (Lina)

Pure Air (Tahir)

The Quake and the Principle of Solidarity (Asma)

A Palestinian Trilogy. Vol. 1 A Peaceful Couple (Rebecca and Marwan), vol. 2 Debunking Village Romanticism (Yitzhak), vol. 3 And I come to you with an olive branch…The Rain (Yassir)

Black Lives Triumph. Second Generation. African Rev Rock (Tonyi)

Fait accompli? Animal Moderators (Giles)

Fait accompli? Plants at the Table (Flore)

My Day as Brigadier. Remnants of Patriarchy ( Işil and others)

Revolutionary African Cooperatives. Quorum (Dileita, Sosthene, and others )

The March of the Trees continues and Junglenet (Mamadou and others)

African miners (Pel and others)

Black lives triumph. Final Stretches (Jesse and Malcolm)

The Yellow Revolution (Lee and Ling)

True Communism, or Regreening the Desert at Pueblo del Desierto (José)

True Revolution in Cuba (Ernesto)

The Real Sandinistas (Daniel)

Banana Communism (Pablo)

Stories from a Self-managed canal (Pedro)

Post-revolutionary Imperialism (Hugo)

Post-revolutionary drug lords (Emmanuella and Gustavo)

Smoking out Colonia Dignidad (Raoul and Marti)

Papa Ramón’s Self-Defence (Antonio)

Our Way. The Assemblies of Village Assemblies (Evo Sr.)

Whispers of the Almond Tree (Junfeng and Xiaomi)

Almond Tree meets Gandhi 2.1 (Ho, Uday, and Sub)

The Over-population blues (Toshi, Mayumi, and others)

Communist Samurai. Deindustrialisation in Asia with a human face (Megumi, Ichiro, and others)

Communal Kitchen (Santoso and Jamilah)

Cutbacks as a Revolutionary Catalyst (Jeremy and Basty)

The first Irish Revolution 1916. Lessons from a Defeat (Niall)

Revolutionary Ireland – Country of the Liri and Fili ( Seamus)

Why Bulls like Red (Mao – Madrid)

The Mafia in the Post-Revolution (Marcello)

Belgian Chocolate (François, nick-named Nude)

Mountain Manifesto (Martin)

Agglo of a Million Trees (Marcsi and Ferenc)

When Oligarchs Rebound (Reigo)

The Moscow and Novgornyi Recycling Hounds 2nd edition Latest Achievements (Anton, Sergei, and others)

Novyi Mir. On Communist village architecture (Danya)

Shabashka (Zhenya)

The Broad Soul. Revolution in the Soils (Natasha and Volodya)

A Pruzzen Trilogy vol. 1 Prutens and Vudevuts and the Three Graces (Mikhail), vol. 2 Ramava (Olya), vol. 3 First Chance for the Russian Pruzzens, 1756-63 (Mikhail)

Buffalo Rumble (Tatanka Ha, known as Laughing Buffalo)

Cowbot Romances (Mazanape, known as Ironfist)

Buffalo Moderators (Wagmu Chikala, known as Little Pumpkin)

Friends with the Bear (Mato, known as Little Bear)

Mountain Harp (Chayton, known as Falcon)

March of the Trees… Final Stretches. Regreening the Desert (Bintou)

From Fireland to Paris and over the Beringian Land Bridge by Train (Jean-Jacques, nick-named J.J.)

Revolution in the Beehive (Maya)

Through Africa by Sustainable Train ( Moussa)

Fait accompli? Smoking out the fascos in the Global South (Oumar)

The Permanent Revolution of Illyria ( Léon Junior, nick-named L.J.)

Good and Smart. From Communism To Anarchy (Jiahui)

Intifada… Antifada New Zionism and New Nazism Next Generation (Zakaria)

Fait accompli? Non-violence, or: The Surrender Principle (Vincent )

Fait accompli? Assemblies and referendums of the harp (Aymard)

Fait accompli, or: Are some Harpists still More Equal? (Mariam)

Revolution on the Stars. Next generation (Najma)

Last fascist hoorays? Labour time versus Use value calculator (Robespierre Junior, nick-named R.J.)

Map of Aimeran at the time of comrade Seth’s presentation “Life in Communism 2.1. The Coup”, during summer of Year 20 of the Revolution, by Marius and Jean-Luc

Map and Plan of our rural cooperative Illyria, Yvelines, and our neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove on 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis, state summer of Year 20 of the Revolution during comrade Seth’s presentation “The Coup”, there are 17 three-room apartments with the bedrooms occupied as follows, Young Revolutionaries marked in italics:

Apartments in the old Farmhouse

Apartments above the Robot Workshop

Apartments above the Stables

Apartments above the Furniture and Clothes Workshops

Dark blue: furniture workshop, light blue: clothes workshop

Inhabitants of the Garden Colony and the Manouche Camp

Neighbourhood Assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis

Yellow: first floor, youth club; Green: second floor; Red: third floor; Blue: fourth floor, and violet: fifth floor. 2^nd and 3^rd floors: Casa Latina Russki Dom, 4^th and 5^th floor: Peace Dove.

Other books by Carla O’Gallchobhair you will enjoy:

Life in Communism 2.1. Red Cells. Marx versus Machiavelli. The Trade Unions in the Revolution, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. Comrade Emmanuel’s mother Aurélie has prepared her son’s university entry project on the role of the trade unions in the revolution with plenty of good advice, but when the fascos mount their brown cell campaign, and manage to enlist not only workers at the Uberyite underground facilities but also at the self-managing electricity grid transformer stations, as well as at the self-managing train stations, on the trains, and at the switching stations to that end, even she and the other senior Illyrians are baffled, and her son is on his own.

. Life in Communism 2.1. Revolution live Peter Gar’s Asymptomatic Leprechaunitis, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. A sleepy neighbourhood in Ireland in Year 18-19 of the World Revolution. Eighteen years after Covet and Buffalitis, another seasonal Coflu variant breaks out that the counter-revolutionary ex-capitalists and fascist Satanists use to sell dodgy vaccines against crypto-currency where money has in fact already been overcome and replaced by free allocation and distribution and sharing. AL-LEP, short for Asymptomatic Leprechaunitis – Lymphatic-Encephalitic-Pulmonary Syndrome, draws its specificity from its origins in Ireland and the hallucinations of Leprechauns that the virus or rather the toxic vaccine brings with it. The people already know about the vaccine fraud and have to be blackmailed and forced into taking the injection. And put off by xenophobia, bigotry, and latent violence, five New Irish families from China, India, South Africa, Syria, and Ukraine, their children and some of their friends decide to pack their bags and go to where their talents, work, and revolutionary fervour will be better appreciated. Unfortunately, they encounter counter-revolutionary terror ranging from well-poisoning to carpet-bombing. The Illyrians and other revolutionaries can help.

Preview of Life in Communism 2.1. Revolutionary Chemistry, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. In his university entry project, comrade Maher wants to follow in comrade Marine’s footsteps and explain chemistry in an easily accessible way, yet the ex-capitalist terrorists plan further major counter-revolutionary attacks with the newly discovered highly radioactive 119th element – to be located between element Number 114, Flerovium, and Number 115 Moscovium, or between the said Moscovium and number 116, Livermorium, and called Revolutionium by the revolutionary scientists and Restorationium by the reactionaries.

Preview of Life in Communism 2.1. Green Sahel, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. It is high summer of Year 17 after the Communist world revolution. Zafira in her university entry project in ecology develops a model for local climate change by using heat concentrating around solar panels versus cooling and increased humidity at some distance of the panels. She and her comrades are also trying to bring back the dinosaurs to the Sahel as their larger bodies will be able to store more water and withstand the heat while the climate cools down gradually. Yet at the same time, a few uncorrectable Benelux, Germanic, and North American capitalists and ex-oligarchs (one dinosaur calls them capexogarchs) who have recently been attempting to torpedo Jean-Wadi’s university entry project on intranet-naturespeak-biomessaging are still interested in the region and preparing new crimes.

A book cover with a red and white symbol

Description automatically generated Preview of Life in Communism 2.1. Red Intranet, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. It is summer of Year 17 after the Communist world revolution of 2021, and the revolution has been advancing apace – be it that there are still individual instances of sabotage by recalcitrant ex-capitalist oligarchs and their fasco mercs. From Year 3 to 7 especially, the capitalist enemies ran a scare campaign against the internet, widely used by neighbourhood, workplace, and village assemblies to ensure quorum even if people do not attend physically, as well as for educational and messaging purposes. In Year 15, the fascos even succeeded to knock out the revolutionary operating programme, Aurora, and it took until Year 17 to make the new programme, One World, more impervious to attack. In parallel, young revolutionary engineers have also been pushing research on so-called intranet-naturespeak-biomessaging which operates by healthy green waves and hence not only defies fasco defamation and hacking of EMR, but in the long run, will allow communication with animals and plants as well. Comrades Jean-Wadi and others travel to the Sahel in order to study the potential of intranet-naturespeak-biomessaging in an environment not yet fully covered by the traditional internet. Again, the fascos are there already to haunt them.

A picture containing text, map, poster, nature

Description automatically generated Preview of Life in Communism 2.1. Green Horn, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. It is May of Year 15 of the revolution. Jean-Vladimir has arrived in Djibouti to help Adilah with her project on reversing climate change on a small scale and returning native animals and plants to the Horn of Africa. Yet so have the Belgian, German, American etc. ex-oligarchs who want to exploit tensions between the Afar and the Issa clans to start a new plot against the revolution which involves producing and selling Agent Orange as well as a nanobotted vaccine that will speed up drug absorption and worsen addictions. Will the revolution be able to withstand this new challenge? How can our comrades make the natural African village democracy triumph and ensure renewed respect for humans, animals and plants?

Life in Communism 2.1. African Trilogy vol. 1

On a Rubber Dinghy

By Carla O’Gallchobhair

“Solidarity is the tenderness of people.”

Che Guevara (1928-1967)

“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.”

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

“We need, in backward countries, to give special support to the peasant movement against the landowners, against landed proprietorship, and against all manifestations or survivals of feudalism, and to strive to lend the peasant movement the most revolutionary character by establishing the closest possible alliance between the West European communist proletariat and the revolutionary peasant movement in the East, in the colonies, and generally.”

Vladimir Lenin, Draft Thesis on National and Colonial Questions, 5th June 1920

“Socialisme ou barbarie!”

Rosa Luxemburg (1915)

The African Manifesto in Year 20 of the Revolution, 2021 being Year 0

1) prevent the return of the state, imperialism, and colonialism,

2) distribute world water supply equally, Africa has 16% of the world’s population, but only 9% of the water resources,

3) end poverty. On average across the continent, more than 50% of the African population still has to fear not to get all the food and other basics they need,

4) stop wild urbanisation, deconstruct the agglo-(meration)s, disperse the villages,

5) maintain and revive wildlife,

6) regrow the rainforest,

7) maintain and revive native languages and culture, including dresses, pottery, music, dance, as well as nature-speak and nature language,

8) the refugee problem may continue for a while because of climate change and capexogarch (capitalist and ex-oligarch) wars,

9) stop the still smouldering wars and civil wars, especially capexogarch coups and sabotage,

10) Africa may still need a welcome and some material help from the more industrialised countries for some time to come.

Table of Contents:

Preface in Illyria. On a Rubber Dinghy

Chapter 1. The Revolution of 2021

Chapter 2. The Tree March Experiment

Chapter 3. Year 20, The New Boko Haram Raid – “We’ll wait!”

Chapter 4. Old Centre – New Periphery

Chapter 5. “Let’s take a Ride!”

Chapter 6. The Scam

Chapter 7. A most Horrific Back-Up Option

Chapter 8. MS – the Moral Strength Virus

Chapter 9. Saved by the Harp

Postscript. Discussion and Preview at the Marwan Barghouti Cooperative, the cooperative Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp near Aimeran, Yvelines, and the neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove in Saint-Denis

Preface in Illyria. On a Rubber Dinghy

On a rubber dinghy, by Bouna and Akila

“The reason we called this book ‘On a rubber dinghy’ is that before the revolution, when right-wingers and racists were still roaming wild in the French lands, they often reproached us with landing on a rubber dinghy, supposedly pretending to be heroic adventurers, while everybody knew that people smugglers brought us in large boats to the vicinity of the coast, and only then were we loaded into dinghies.”

“But we had to circumvent customs, didn’t we?” asked Fofana.

And I, Omsinbaba, said. “We had to make sure the smugglers weren’t caught and their boats weren’t impounded.”

Then came the invariable question: “Were they,” the people smugglers, “black or white?”

“Usually Arabs, you know, North-Africans, sometimes Nigerians. It depended on the boat you got.”

“We tried to go with a Senegalese boat first,” explained Fofana. “We would have sailed North along the coast and then entered the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar. Because I might have been pregnant. Omsinbaba and I wanted to do well by me and our baby. But it would have cost a fortune. So, we went the land route, parallel to the coast through former Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. We wanted to take a people smuggler to Chad, but he was very dear. So we went up to the North West again to Mali or Burkina Faso where we had relatives. They had camels and other livestock. We planned to work for them a while, so they would give us money. Then we would have double-backed through Nigeria and Chad to Tripoli. Yet Boko Haram attacked and subjugated our relative’s village. So we fled back earlier than we had thought, meaning right away, and stayed at the monastery we told you about. I don’t even remember where it was exactly, maybe still in Mali, maybe in Burkina Faso, or maybe in Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, or Benin already. It was in the forest, that is why we want to go back there this time as well, to find out whether the monks and nuns can help us with a March of the Tree experiment, which would be one of the first in North West Africa if not the very first, just as Illyria’s was in the French lands. And the March of the Trees is a heroic endeavour of course, because it will bring back the forest, make plant lives triumph, so that animals, humans, and robots can live and their lives matter. We want to enable our children to be true green as well as red revolutionaries.

“The fascos back in 2020 laughed, ‘You must have been pretty drugged up that you don’t even remember the country you were in.’”

“No, we weren’t,” Omsinbaba said, “but we had travelled thousands of kilometres, mostly in vehicles, but long stretches on foot as well. When we arrived at the monastery, the brothers and sisters had a hard time nursing us back to health, so we could even start to work again. Anyway, after a few months, it seemed like ages, we had the money for the desert caravan and the boat trip from Tripoli to Marseille.

In 2021, after the revolution, Year Zero, we took a different route still, through Chad and Sudan to the Horn of Africa, because we were after these terrorists, now our comrades – Jacques, Béa, François, Gabriel, and so on –, but back then they were our enemies. Then we went up to the Mediterranean through Egypt and took the revolutionary ferry the Egyptian revolutionaries had just put in place to get back home. You see, air travel had been abolished. So, all travel around the Mediterranean would from then on be done in ferries. We joked that we would all travel like refugees from now on.”

“But dignified ones,” added Fofana. “It was the dawn of a new era.”

“Tell us first how it was in 2020!”

“I will in a moment, but you see, I told the FN-RN people, the Lepenists, if you will, back then already. ‘Arriving on a dinghy was not a dirty trick to appear poor, it was a way of allowing future caravan and boat people to arrive the same way.’

“And now that the fascos are using the March of the Trees to hide from the revolution and they are even trying to bribe and cajole or force and beat the Africans and their trees to oblige, I cannot help thinking, we were the more moral people already back then.” Everybody laughed. “And the revolution turned us into real angels.” Thus the optimistic tone was set for Omsinbaba’s long-awaited presentation, which would help all of us to get more immersed in the story of Africa, the continent most abused by the imperialists and colonialists, and which therefore needs our help most urgently.

Chapter 1. The Revolution of 2021

Once lucky, Paris! By Lulu and Maurice

“The Marseille authorities put us up in a refugee hostel somewhere not far from the harbour, maybe because they hoped that some of us would still go back. We were about 5 to 12 people in a room, several families, but each room had only one stove, and toilets and showers were down the corridor, sometimes on a different floor even. And I remember, the blinds were always down or the curtains drawn, so that the neighbours in the neighbouring high rises could not look in and see how they kept us. It was a terrible mess to carry a child in.

“At first, we did our own cleaning, but it was impossible to cope, especially because we did not have the appropriate cleaning utensils and no money to buy them. We got barely enough money to eat, and sometimes we were even punished for going out, if there had been a fight in the hostel, or if the Marseille right-wingers had complained about dirty ‘niggers’ begging or going through the rubbish bins.

“So then, shortly before we went to Paris, the hostel managers hired a cleaning service. They were hardly better off than we were, yet they looked us up and down as if we were dirt. If we spoke French, they spoke Arabic. If we spoke Fula or Wolof, they spoke French or Arabic. Anyway, they always tried to be one or two steps above us and turned their noses up when we passed. The cleaning service cleaned from early in the morning until midday, but by mid-afternoon, the staircases and corridors were a mess again already, and then they went on strike, because of impossible conditions and low pay.

“Well, the time came when Fofana was going to give birth. We tried to register her in hospital, but got turned down. As illegal aliens, or sans-papiers, as they called us in French, they could not accommodate us in hospital. There had been cases of women giving birth in the refugee home, with friends serving as midwives, but we were afraid. They were travellers, not Africans, and what worked in their close-knit families and communities did not work in our everyone for him- or herself modern African post-tribal societies.

“Yet one African friend knew that if you joined the police, either the internal police, DGSI, to spy both on fellow-blacks as well as fascos harassing them, the external police, DGSE, to spy on the powers in our countries, or Customs, to at least whistle-blow on smugglers, ‘they might put you on the train to Paris when her time comes.’

“So, we spied for customs, told them some generalities about people smugglers, that they raped women, Fofana even…”

“Was that true?” “Yes, of course, but as I told you before, it would have been impossible to get an abortion, and anyway, doesn’t Lulu look exactly like me?”

“She does,” said Fofana. “And anyway, the customs officers, one man, one women, were appalled, and I remember, one other woman who was cleaning the room, somewhat older already, turned around and said, the same had happened to her, and she had lost her baby.”

“So, they asked us to repeat our testimony in Paris, and we got the train tickets we needed. In Paris, we arrived at another hostel, with very similar conditions…”

“It was a modern house, another high rise – we demolished it after the revolution, that’s how much it stank –, the elevator did not function most of the time, and the staircase was very narrow, it was a nightmare when you were pregnant, and or were carrying things.

“Anyway, we arrived at a very exciting moment, there was going to be a manifestation, a rally for the sans-papiers, and it would have to do with Covet-19, peace, the environment, and plenty of other issues as well. We were going to demand to either get the vaccine and the sanitary pass for free or to be exempt from it altogether. We would also protest the authorities refusing us papers in the French lands and sending us to camps in third countries. I wanted to go, but Fofana was feeling bad, she was sure her baby was going to come any minute. So, another friendly African brother helped us…”

“So, there was some solidarity among Africans after all?” asked Jana, self-management expert.

“Yes, but for everyone who helped you, ten would turn up their noses, especially if they were not from the same region or tribe. Anyway, the brother said, he was going to bring us to a doctor from Senegal, and from our region of all places, René. René did not do births, our guide told us, as he led us through the metro, which was on part-strike, so you could travel free, but he was a paediatrician, he had his own cabinet, where he even harboured some refugees. If anyone could help us get a bed in hospital, it would be he. When we arrived, there were about twenty people, children and their parents, sitting or lying on mattresses in the waiting room, but it was cleaner and everybody looked happier than in the hostel. Comrade René said, merci again for that, brother,” and comrade Fofana started to cry from gratitude and had to wipe her eyes and her nose before she continued, “there was no need for me to go back to the hostel. Since my birth was imminent, I could stay overnight, Omsinbaba as well, and in the morning, he or one of his nurse-associates or their friends would bring us to hospital. It was getting dark already, and we were about to lie down when the police banged at the door, saying the neighbours had reported an unallowed gathering going on and the cabinet, make-shift policlinic had to be vacated. Later we found out that all of Paris was on high alert, because at the rally we had almost gone to, a policeman had wanted to separate another migrant woman and her daughter, ten years old or so, but a Communist street worker had fired a stun gun at him. We all would have to go back to our refugee homes or hostels, even if the little patients were seriously ill. Everybody was starting to shout and yell of course, but then one of the nurses, an African or North-African as well, said for Omsinbaba and me to come with her, didn’t I have to go to hospital immediately?”

“Yes, of course, and she escorted us past René and other nurse-associates who were busy coming up with similar excuses and ways out for all the other children and their parents as well. Then we got into a car, not an ambulance, maybe her private vehicle serving as one, with her fellow driving. Yet then the traffic got too bad, or we ran out of gasoline, ‘the prices have risen exorbitantly because of all the imperialist wars in the Middle East,’ she apologised, so we went into the metro again, Fofana was having birth pangs already, and after one or two switches, and a few hundred metres on a bus, we came to a hospital, ‘We are back in Saint-Denis, don’t worry!’ said the nurse. We did not even know we were in Saint-Denis. She had to stay outside, but she handed us over to a carer who led us through lots of corridors with some doors leading into wards and past other beds just standing in the corridors, until we reached the birth station…”

“Then I had to stay outside,” Omsinbaba took over here, “two carers supported Fofana in, and I waited for, what to me seemed an eternity, but it can’t have been more than a few hours, and then they asked me in, and there was my Fofana, with my Little Lulu in her arms. We hadn’t even known whether it was going to be a boy and a girl. In Marseille, nobody had bothered in the least about Fofana and her baby’s future. And then a young white man came, he seemed very nice though and said, we had to leave the hospital now, because the carers and the doctor had handled Lulu’s coming off the record. But René had alerted him, his name was Daniel. He was a Communist, and he and his wife, Marie, a street worker, had a large apartment in an old house in the 5ième and a couple of rooms free for cases like ours and could help us. “Marie is a hero, she was the one who fired at the policeman who wanted to separate the mother and her daughter, maybe you’ve heard about that?”

“But if they can’t find us at the hostel, they will suspect us of defection,” stammered Omsinbaba. “You see, we are supposed to spy for customs. That is how we even got to Paris from Marseille.”

Daniel laughed. “They will forget about you, I promise,” he said. “It’s a pre-revolutionary situation here in the région parisienne and in France as a whole. I think, we think, sanitary capitalism will collapse because of the Covet-19 scamdemic and not only due to that. There are many other reasons as well, inequality, injustice, police brutality, tolerance towards fascists. And if there is police violence or a civil war between right and left, you will be the safest with us.

Twice lucky, revolution! By Lulu and Maurice

“So, we had lucked out twice, first by getting recruited by customs at the right moment, and then by meeting somebody who knew comrade René. We moved in with comrade Marie. Comrade Salma and comrade Nicole, the mother and daughter whom the nasty policeman had tried to separate, were staying with her already. Nicole and Marie’s daughter, comrade Monique, both around ten, rapidly turned into extremely nice baby-sitters for Lulu. Soon afterwards, all of us moved into a nice medium-sized house, only five floors, at number 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis, and formed the neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina, Russki Dom, Peace Dove. Then, another year later, we resettled into the old farm house at Illyria. Salma and Nicole moved in with comrade Youssef, their fellow Algerian, on the top floor of the old farm house. We stayed with comrades Marie and Daniel, one floor below them, and also got to know comrades Seth from Niger and Noah from Mali, who had very similar fates to ours. Down even to the fact of being police spies, be it with the DGSE. Well, anyway, all these services got dissolved after the revolution, customs brigades are spontaneous these days and their composition rotates between all workers at a harbour or a section thereof.

We participated at many revolutionary rallies, blockades, and assemblies of course. At the same time, comrade Fofana trained as a seamstress-couturier, specialising in fancy African dresses, and I became a flying worker at Illyria. Later on, Noah and Seth brought two girl-friends from Djibouti, Rashida and Karima. Rashida became a material balance accountant and Karima a nurse. I, Omsinbaba, can do farm work, help out in the furniture brigade, and I am also one of the permanent trainers of the Illyrian junior and intermediate-level soccer teams, as well as a permanent coach for the senior team at the Complexe scolaire Jean Moulin at Aimeran.

Even in our small one hundred-member cooperative, comrade Fofana is working with an international brigade of couturiers, comrades Claudia from South America, Zamira from Chechnia, Leyla from the Turkish or Kurdish lands, Evgenia from the Russian, and Camille from the French lands. Comrades Jeanette and Laure also help out sometimes at the couturier workshop, although their favourite speciality is cooking.

As a substitute in our furniture brigade I work with a very international brigade as well. The permanent members are Noah and Seth of course, Aslan, Muhammed, and Zelim from Chechnia, and Saïd and Rodion from Palestine or the Russian lands respectively. Boris sometimes also helps us out, but he is mainly with the computer and robotics, nowadays the intranet and bio-wifi brigade. The three Chechen comrades help out there as well.

There are only six permanent members of the robotics-intranet brigade, one shy of the usual seven. They are comrades Robespierre, Sylvain, Jean-Wadi, Josip, Rosa, and Lénina, but there is a constant stream of temporary members. Even I, although I am not that computer-literate, have already helped programme our computers and robots with African languages and the nature-speak and nature language of our native animals and plants. I am pretty sure that data base will be needed during this journey as well. Other recent substitute members have been comrade Maher, to help fight computer viruses such as Moral Atrophy that work similar to natural biochemical ones, and comrade Jean-Saïd who has helped our robotyags, or robotyagi – that’s what Russians call them, don’t they? – understand the yellow transport beam. More about that later, since we shall also travel on it during our journey.

The members of the farm brigade constantly rotate, so that we Illyrians and people in the garden colony and Manouche camp all gain the knowledge, even the very young revolutionaries from age two onward. The main senior experts are comrades Francine, agronomist from the Belgian lands, Jana, self-management expert from Bosnia, and comrade Abram from Ukraine, who has retrained as a forest-keeper and happens to be one of the few emerging senior experts on the march of the trees. Among the young revolutionaries, there are also several agronomists and ecologists experts on farm-work, in particular, comrade Che, very knowledgeable on all farm work going on at Illyria and a great organiser, comrade Malik, expert on bringing back the buffalos to the prairies, comrade Marius, who works on developing a wonder-cattle, comrade Zafira, expert on solar energy and irrigation, Jean-Fidel, expert on regrowing the Central American rain-forest, the Amazone, and the Gran Chaco, and of course, comrades Natalie, Julie and Danièle, Animal lives matter. Plant lives triumph activists and specialists on the march of the trees and regrowing the forests in the French lands and all over the world.

We natives of Africa have already undertaken several journeys back to Africa, to see how our families and our villages were doing obviously, but also to show young comrades the hardship of the travel we and many others took upon us to escape famine, Boko Haram, capitalist drudgery in the mines and the big agglos, climate change and adverse weather, especially heat and sometimes floods, diseases such as Ebola, which is a stomach flu a thousand times worse than Covet and Coflu, many terrible scourges that had made it impossible for us to stay home. And these FN-RN-types squabble over why we came on dinghies! Anyway, their times and those of the capexogarchs are gone forever, be it there are still some rearguard actions by criminal elements who won’t give up.

At Illyria, we are all the same and all enjoy the same rights to speak and moderate and help work out a consensus. All have the same work duties as well, essentially fifteen hours of socially necessary worktime a week, and another fifteen or more of creative work. Yet all unpleasant duties such as cleaning, picking up garbage and heavy farm work rotate among all workers able to do them, and wherever possible, we employ robots. We are all entitled to shower and wash, we have washing machines to do our laundry, clothes racks to dry them inside, and lines for outside, when the weather permits. While in our revolution, all households again do their own cooking, we have meetings almost every night, and so dinners are usually potluck dinners, where every household brings something, and we can share in many different dishes. That is an African tradition the Illyrians have successfully adopted. In the winter, we take turns following the meetings at the youth club and the others follow intraline from their rooms.

It used to be internet, and this was one of the ways the fascos got at our democracy during the so-called dark ages. Especially we Africans were happy to have found a way of communication that offered our relatives and friends in Senegal, Niger, Mali, Chad, Djibouti, and so on a way of participating in far-away gatherings and become less lonesome and parochial. Of course, the fascos could not suffer that and scared us with the adverse health effects of the internet. We found a way out, we reserved the use of the internet mostly for our meetings and limited it for homework. That way the young revolutionaries, including our daughter Lulu learnt more independently, and we got a way to discuss things with our relatives in North Africa. Everybody won!

These days of course we have the intranet. Even those of its waves with the highest frequency are 50 million times less harmful than the average internet and wifi waves of late capitalism, 100 Hz versus 5 Giga-Hz, meaning 5 billion Hz. They are also very secure. The intranet waves with the lowest frequency, the red delta waves, 0.4-3 Hz, allow subliminal and almost unhackable communication even in deep sleep. The yellow theta waves, 3-8 Hz, are for bio-radio music programmes and interesting bio-calls. The green alpha waves, still with a very low frequency of 8-12 Hz, can transfer almost any theatre, from bio-T.V., for instance the l’Humanité media channel, to assembly meetings on almost any topic, and involve a wide variety of participants, humans, robots, animals, even dinosaurs, plants and intranet-capable things and materials. The nature chorus in the Congo, our African physicists tell me, also travels on that band width. The light blue beta waves, 12-30 Hz, we call the school waves. So we have the secret waves, the radio waves, the theatre waves, and the school waves, which we also use when the seminars at the Illyrian and Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove get really interesting and or complicated, if we talk about the anatomy of lupines, for instance. Finally, the dark blue or violet gamma waves, from 30-100 Hz, are for even hotter news, even more theoretical seminars, and the transfer of sophisticated programme code, for instance, our annual plans based on surveys, material balances, input-output analysis, and mathematical planning. So, guess on which wave length I am talking to you now?”

“Blue waves, I guess,” said comrade Ndeye. “But why is that so important?”

“For us village Africans it is less important, since we have stayed closer to nature than the city dwellers, let alone the average Europeans. But imagine what it meant to our comrades, the Illyrians! They had moved from the cities out into the countryside. For Fofana and me it was like a homecoming. For them, especially the second generation revolutionaries, called the Pléiades, comrades Robespierre, Philippe, Léon, Martine, Danton, Monique, Nicole, and their friends, who had grown up in Paris and Saint-Dénis, even for the Bosnians, Emilia and Anton, who had lived in a small town in Ireland, it was like a whole new world. Suddenly, they realised they could understand and talk not only to their computers and phones but also to the birds and other animals, and even to the flowers and the trees.

“Then they realised they did not need ugly and toxic metallic wifi-towers to transfer their data. In fact, not only their computers and robots via bios, but their own bodies as well as animals, plants, and other intranet-conductors such as water could do it just as well. They could have the revolutionary apps that organised allocation and distribution through the trefoil, hierarchy checks, material checks, cryptoleaks, surveys, referendums – both participating in them as well as launching them yourself –, the village forum that allows you to participate in intraline debates such as ours, and to launch a demand for a militia quorum, for example, … as well as the standard apps such as the Aurora browser, the Chinese Wall Security Suite with Digital Hounds and Bio-thicket for extra security, and the Science and Magic App installed in their brains. The Science and Magic App is new by the way. It facilitates doing scientific experiments and programming, as well as summoning red self-defence beams, bronze weapon-disabling beams, blue anti-chemical poisoning beams, yellow travel beams, and the blue-violet-wave-based time tunnel. These days we can travel both forward and backward in time. It used to be difficult to come back from the future, but our wizard-scientists have overcome this problem…”

“How exactly did they do that?” asked comrade Amadou from Omsinbaba’s village.

“On the basis of experiments. You as a traveller have to force yourself to immediately forget all but the most important things of what you have seen in the future, all but the facts that are relevant to the reason you went there, your mission, in other words,” answered young comrade Moussa, proud to be able to teach his elder.

“Oh, can we go into Africa’s future?” asked Moumin, Bouna’s harpoid robot, more of him later, “just to take a peek,” and after a moment’s reflection, Little Bouna, human added. “Just to see how far the trees will have gotten with their march…”

Everybody laughed and clapped. “You’ve already provided us with a glimpse of it, comrades Moumin and Bouna,” said Modou, another young villager, not quite as junior as Moussa.

“In the spring, summer, and fall, as long as the weather permits, we Illyrians usually sit outside for our assemblies,” Fofana continued Omsinbaba’s and her report from Illyria. “If it is a bit cold still or there is drizzle, we have a water-proof tarpaulin. No way you can get around plastic sometimes, especially as it has got to be transparent, to permit light to get through. We can stretch it out from the robot workshop to the stable and fasten it at the old farm house and the clothes and furniture workshop as well.

Illyria Meeting under the Tarpaulin, by Maurice and Lulu

“So that is where we sat to pick our travel brigade. Security is still paramount, and we had to choose our travel brigade very carefully,” explained Fofana. “Back then, when we first travelled, we wanted to tell them about the trefoil – meaning the three allocation and distribution methods of free, sharing, and barter –, and we asked comrades Philippe, Pascal, Hisham, and Rim from the Nanterre economics faculty to come with us. “Here is the updated drawing of the trefoil and the other revolutionary apps we made with Bouna and Akila’s help to explain it.”

The nine most important revolutionary apps, from top left to right, trefoil app – get goods free, via sharing or barter –, hierarchy-leaks or no-hierarchy app, material check app, cryptoleaks or whistle-blowing on crypto and other money substitutes app, survey app, referendum app, Aurora Browser, Chinese Wall security app with digital hounds and bio-thicket, and magic and science app, including red and bronze self-defence beams, blue anti-chemical beam, yellow transport beam, and blue-violet time tunnel, by Maurice and Lulu, with help from Bouna and Akila

“The survey serving as the cover of the survey app by the way is a Year 2021 or Year Zero survey on car traffic, only 33% of the French people wanted to keep it as it was, 10% wanted to end it entirely, relying on public transport, bikes etc., and their own feet instead. 57%, the majority which ended up shaping the consensus, proposed to keep just free public transport and free taxis, functional vehicles such as fire engines and ambulances, transporters – but just small ones and they need to be approved by the village or quarter assembly –, and to do away with all fuel-guzzlers, making all vehicles electrical.

“Then in Year 17-18, we went to Africa once more with Jean-Wadi, Zafira, Josip, and Rosa to show them the solar panels and irrigation methods, and the intranet and bio-wifi of course. Well, maybe this time we should ask Natalie and Danièle to practice the harp – human-animal-robot-plant communication – with our families and friends, and maybe even the march of the trees,” mused Omsinbaba.

“Only trouble, they are both pregnant,” said Lulu. “And as you said, we’d need better security. It sounds like sexist discrimination, but as with the unsettled situation in Niger due to the coup and the Uberyte capexogarchs trying to gang up with the African ones, we’ll need protection.”

“And we all need to take care of our babies and toddlers, unborn and born ones,” nodded Julie, rocking her baby Giles, who had come only two weeks ago. “But why don’t you take comrades Jean-Saïd, Olivier, and Faroukh? They are knowledgeable on intranet, bio-wifi, and harp as well, and they know lots about the march of the trees, having been to Palestine and the Taiga where it was originally tested. And you’ll have an extra-fast bio-wifi connection to comrades Natalie and Danièle that way, and to comrade Sarah, budding economist and planning expert on food sufficiency.

“Talking about Uberyte capexogarchs,” said Faroukh, who did not seem to mind the idea at all. “They have a new boss, in the ex-U.S. as well as in Europe, apart from Henri Uber for the Uber logistics stations, Louis Deshalles for the DHL ones, Fernando Deliverando for the Deliverando, and Viesturs Volt for the Volt service. The new underground company’s name is Flink. People suspect that Larry Fink Jr., son of the ex-U.S. clandestine banker is hiding behind the outfit.

“Good to know. Well, what about you then, Faroukh, as an expert on the capexogarchs?” asked Noah. “You may help Seth and me track them down also in Niger and Mali.”

“And in Chad and Djibouti as well,” said Jean-Wadi, where Illyria’s partners, the Nelson Mandela and the Tutu cooperative are located. “Sosthene and Dileita, are you intraline by any chance?”

“Yes, but can comrades Jean-Vladimir and Adilah with Little Akila, and comrades Jean-Wadi and Zafira with Little Sandrine come as well?” asked Sosthene from the Nelson Mandela cooperative. “We would miss them otherwise.”

“And Assad and Kaltouma with baby Nahel. Not that we would miss them so much, but they’d miss their home I suppose,” added Dileita mischievously from the Desmond Tutu cooperative.

“Later,” Jean-Wadi grinned. “Sandrine and Nahel are budding ecologists both of them. Look how they dig and plant, and here is a short bio-video of how they crawled after animals and also after trees when we had the experimental march of the trees. They are a lovely team, but they are two years old only. Let’s wait until they are bit older.”

“I’ll have to pass as well for now,” said Faroukh, as if remembering all of a sudden. “I still have to work on preparing my bac and my university entry project. Maybe I can join you later, in the summer holidays. But Jean-Wadi, you can travel, you are already a university researcher, you can come and go as you please.”

Picking the travel brigade, by Bouna and Akila, with help from Maurice and Lulu

Omsinbaba and Fofana were relieved. “That is a good idea,” said Omsinbaba. “Thus, in the initial travel brigade, we shall have me, Fofana, Lulu, Maurice, and Little Bouna – he is only five, he does not count as a full brigade member yet. That means that all three of you, Jean-Wadi, Jean-Saïd, and Olivier, could join us as physicists, ecology and security experts. Maurice, as you are studying medicine, you will be the pharmacist and chemical engineer this time, and not only the victim witness.” Comrade Maurice had almost died from a bad omnibus childhood disease immunisation vaccine before the revolution, in Year 2020, as a toddler of one. Its producer Roger Sabiani later became one of the top neo-Vichyite detractors of the revolution.

“I still think you should take additional security,” said comrade Denis, senior security expert, and his son, Jérôme, expert on digital terrorism, agreed. “We have testimony by repentant counter-revolutionaries like Dorian, Julian, Reinhard, and Stephen that all the fasco barons we have had to do with lately have fled the French lands and are now in Africa.”

“Including Édouard Stérilé and Arnaud Arrolle?” asked comrade Jean.

“Them, and even their bitches, Anne Dalgo and Marion Le Pen, descendant of the Le Pen clan,” said Jérôme’s buddy, Michel Wang, Sino-French expert on biochemical terrorism. “And the mercs that helped them set up the Uberyte logistics station and chemical workshop producing vaccines near Aimeran, Thomas Rutte, Fritz Schneid, a.k.a. Willy, and Ronald Gunpump, who calls himself Flint now, which is a sort of gun in German. His former buddy Stephen Kocho, alias Ice, has told us this and corroborated our information on Flink as a new Uberyte sponsor. Ronald is also doing the honours to him with his new nickname, I suppose.”

“Well, they are not that much stronger than we are,” said Olivier. “Even if we had to fight it out with our hands and red beams.” Red beams were the only weapon allowed to the revolutionaries. Well, there were bronze beams as well to stop metallic arms from bullets to tanks and drones and blue beams against chemical weapons . However, they were somewhat trickier to use.

Yet anybody with some training could summon red beams simply by willpower and stun an aggressor for half an hour until a quorum from the people in the nearest village had allowed a spontaneous militia brigade to form and come to arrest the criminal. The revolution prefers its militia to be spontaneous and ephemeral rather than looming as an additional power centre along with the four only permanent venues of interaction the revolution recognises: brigades, with seven members maximum and the fore(wo)man or brigadier rotating daily, household assemblies, consisting of seven households maximum with the chair rotating weekly, workplace assemblies, these days with a maximum of fifty participants only, and village assemblies, these days with a maximum of 200 participants only, workplace and village assemblies with moderating teams changing every hour.

“Don’t forget that the quorum for forming a spontaneous militia brigade in the Sahel, and soon maybe all over North Africa, is fifty plus percent these days,” said Seth. “Some village assemblies ask for 90% plus approval. People are wound up about the coup in Niger and similar events in Sudan, we want to make sure we keep the consensus.”

The seven travellers started to look a bit worried. “Want to know a synonym of sharing – saharing,” Noah added. “In other words, nothing left.”

“Oh, if you are going to be so cynical,” said Lulu, “I won’t come.” “But dear,” said Omsinbaba, straightening his back. “The class enemy is not there to run away from, you must fight him.”

“May I take Moumin?” asked Bouna. “Moumin is his latest name for his harpoid robot,” explained Fofana. Every child in Illyria, all over the French lands, and world-wide was supposed to get one grow-up-with-you robot that would grow up with you physically as well as learn with you. It could have any shape, human, animal, dinosaur, plant or useful intranet-capable thing. And young comrade Bouna, in a very brave move, had asked for his to look exactly like himself, same size, same skin, same hair, same clothes even if desired.

“Well,” said Maurice. “It’s not out of the question you may bring him. But remember, you would have to charge him. Do you really want Moumin to take the current from our African friends’ block energy works, needed for cooking, charging vehicles and other tools, irrigation, what else?”

“Of course not, papa,” said Bouna. “I’ll ask them.” Then, when on the train to Le Havre, Maurice tried to heave his son’s backpack onto the luggage rack, he had to curse: “What did you take, son? Stones?” “No,” said Bouna. “Just Moumin, partly disassembled and his generator.” On Maurice and Fofana’s picture of the travel brigade you can see it. While the humans are posing, Moumin is pedalling in back to generate the electricity for the next task, exploring Omsinbaba’s and Fofana’s ancestral village. You can see the far-away Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu cooperatives in the background.

Chapter 2. The Tree March Experiment

First experimental march of the trees near Omsinbaba’s village, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

The small villagers beleaguered Bouna and Moumin with questions, how did they do their homework together? Sometimes Bouna listened to Moumin and at other times Moumin to Bouna. What other activities did they do together? Everything from cycling, soccer, farm work, cleaning and organising, flirting with Akila, and playing with the Illyrian Recycling Hounds, some of whom were also harpoids but in real dog shape and could do guard duty. Did Moumin and he also go to bed together? No, when Akila and Bouna had a siesta, Moumin either sat on the sofa recharging, or rested with the dogs.

Meanwhile, the adults were conducting a more serious assembly. “So, we villagers want to propose to you to conduct our first West-African tree march experiment not at the monastery but here, close to our village,” proposed Fatou. “Let us show you the route we found. It is a clearing, South-North orientation, with hardly any trees at the moment but a thick forest at the Southern end. The clearing is about 4 km wide, and 12 km long. We computed that in order to restore the North-African grassland, meaning overcome the Sahel and encroach significantly on the Sahara, if not with rain forest but at least with thick, high grass interspersed with bushes and trees, and within our lifetimes, trees would have to reclaim 40-50 km a year, which would result in them advancing 2000 km South to North in about 50 years. That would mean a phenomenal speed of about 3-4 km a month, about 100 to a maximum of 200 metres a day, maybe 4 to 6 metres an hour.

“You’d literally see the trees moving. Down here in our fertile areas this can be done without requiring significant additions of black earth, water, and natural fertiliser. Further North it will be much more difficult of course.”

“The comrades at the Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu cooperatives are working on it,” nodded Jean-Wadi. “It is a daunting task, but it is not impossible.”

“Yes, but at the very least, it will require this broad front of trees advancing from the South we just outlined. Then you may think about creating rings of woods around oases and thrusts between them. Yet we need to begin here, where there are lots of trees. When our thicket becomes lighter, new trees may grow that will replenish the supply for further tree marches, don’t you think?”

“Definitely,” said Omsinbaba. “The reason Fofana and I proposed to the Illyrians to start at the monastery was that the monks and nuns have connections all over Europe. Many young monks and nuns train as agronomists-ecologists these days. The monasteries have farms and workshops that can produce organic fertilisers and boosters, tools, even sophisticated measuring devices and robots. In comparison with them, you are an isolated village.”

“But we have you, Illyrians,” shouted the villagers. “Your help is worth that of quite a few churches.”

“We can try something at both venues,” said Jean-Saïd. “After all, we need not retrace the whole long march that Fofana and you had to take and during which you contracted Ebola even, didn’t you? We all know about your ordeal, but that was under capitalism, and luckily, that’s in the past, isn’t it?” The villagers jumped up and down, hitting the ground with the poles of their spears and agitating them.

“Yes, never to return if we can help it!” said Omsinbaba.

“We can start the march of the trees here, then beam over to the monastery and begin it there if the comrades monks and nuns agree to host an experiment. And then all villages in the region and further East in the real Congo will have to join the movement of course.”

“We have joined you intraline already, if you don’t mind. I am Brother Lucas. You may remember me, I was a young novice when you were staying with us, Brother Omsinbaba and Sister Fofana. I am the abbot of the day. We have split up in brigades, but we have no foremen, we decided that would introduce too much hierarchy among the thirty of us. Yet we are rotating the office of abbot every day. That way each of us, monk or nun, can be abbot about ten to a dozen times a year. We were very excited about your message the other day and have read up on the march of the trees. Of course, we shall be honoured and delighted to help and have started expeditions to the North to look for a suitable venue to launch it. So, far, we have found three locations.” And he played three short bio-videos. “Which one should we take?”

“All three if you can,” said Jean-Wadi, “and use the nature chorus for exchanging advice on how to proceed. If all goes well, once the process is truly underway, human agency won’t be needed anymore, at least here in the fertile regions of North-West Africa. The trees and animals can agree amongst each other.”

“What can we animals do?” a monkey from the area of Omsinbaba and Fofana’s village immediately asked. “The trees have told us to look for hard spots, where the earth is dry and you might want to water it. Fertilisation we animals can provide by ourselves.”

“Excellent points, dear…, what is your name?” “Coco. And Bobo has a suggestion as well.”

“We don’t know whether you have them in your areas around this village and the monastery already, but have you heard of the new Boko Haram, or in the Global North they call themselves Nemesis as well? They go through the bush and kill everything. They cut down trees, hunt lions and wild elephants, and you know how precious few capitalism has left us of these. Sometimes they even shoot down birds.”

Comrade Olivier immediately bio-messaged the security experts at Illyria, comrade Denis, Jérôme, the three Chechens Aslan, Zelim, and Muhammed, the two Russians Boris and Rodion, Saïd, the Palestinian, Miguel, the Argentinian, Ronggang, the Chinese, and the four Cambodian Shaolin martial artists, Dan, In, Ayak, and Vit, his nominal father, comrade Patrick, one of the editors of l’Humanité bio-media channel – bio-journal, bio-radio, and bio-TV –, as well as the experts already on location, Noah in Mali, Seth in Niger, and Pierre le Gars who was travelling in Sudan with his beloved Égale. “Ever heard of a new Boko Haram or a new Nemesis? Any Russian, South American, Chechen, or Asian equivalents? And do they have anything to do with our Uberytes – Uber, Deshalles, Deliverando, Flink, and Volt –, and their associates and underlings Stérilé, Arrolle, Dalgo, Le Pen, Rutte, Schneid, and Gunpump? Any indication that these could be in North-West Africa, recruiting?”

***

Later in the evening, Marwan, Zina and Mirielle gave an intraline concert from Illyria. Their parents Bouna Sr. and Amunet, Zyed and Cléo, and Muhittin and Marwa were listening from their neighbourhood assembly in Saint-Denis, called ‘Black lives triumph’ by the way, after comrade Lulu’s university entry project, dedicated to their suffering and near death under late capitalism. The best part of the concert was little one-year-old Tonyi beating her mini-drums. “She has got rhythm already,” one villager commented. Young comrade Olivier, who was near tone-deaf, used this respite for gathering further intel.

Fascos do what fascos do, by Olivier and Danièle

His real father, comrade Aslan, who had made him with comrade Marianne, was first to respond. “There are Nemesis groups in Chechnia, but not around our hamlets of Uyutnoe and Iasnoe Pole, and not even in Zumsoi, which is the next larger village close by. However, our comrades at ul. Kadyrova, house 26 in Groznyi, Eldar and the others know of some groups in the larger Chechen agglos, Groznyi in particular.”

Next was comrade Jean, whom comrade Denis had alerted. “Comrades Sergei from Lenin kolkhoz and Evgeni from Pionerskii tell us, there are Nemesis groups in Moscow, Leningrad, and other large cities as well, though not in small towns such as Pionerskii.”

Comrade Zelim who was still debriefing the repentant Russian oligarch group known as the Big Animals confirmed this. “Nemesis is also active in Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk), Cheliabinsk, Kazan’, Rostov, Donetsk, pretty much every agglo still larger than one million.”

“Well, what do they do?” “Wind up the neighbourhood and village assemblies, spread hatred against migrants, form brown cells in the workshops and try to take them over, the usual…”

“Fascos do what fascos do,” Peter Gar slotted himself in from Sudan. “We have Nemesis in Ireland, comrade Sinead tells me they have tried to recruit in her neighbourhood assembly, but Niall and Seamus were not interested, for once. In Sudan, there is the Al-Bara Battalion, which is mainly Islamist, and Janjaweed, which is partly Islamist as well. And I pass you over Ronggang and Quan. They have news from China.”

“There are Chinese Jihadi fighting in Sudan, and also in Niger. Maybe you, Seth, have run into them already? On both sides, it seems, revolutionary and also fasco,” said Ronggang.

“And in the Chinese lands itself there is Etim. They are Uyghurs who feel oppressed by the Chinese even in the revolution,” explained Quan. “They cooperate with fasco barons such as Guozhi used to be. He is a good revolutionary these days, just like comrades Jacques and Co., Silien and Co., Ugolin and Co., Markus Nah and Co., Elon Deer and Co., all these former monster gang leaders. In tandem with the New Dragon Triads, Etim is what Uber and Co. are in Europe, a new and evolving phenomenon, half fasco underground-half mafia.”

“I was just bio-messaging with comrades Josh, Malcolm, Jesse, Luis, and the others on the march of the trees, you know,” said Omsinbaba, “announcing that the African comrades are forging ahead, and they said they have both Nemesis and the Muslim Brotherhood in the ex-U.S. as well.”

“We have had another assembly of village assemblies in the Bolivian Andes, the informal, revolutionary gathering comrade Evo Sr. Morales organises every year,” said Miguel. “And believe it or not, they have had bio-video-clips on not only Uber and Flink visiting South America incognito – people have seen them in Mexico, Venezuela, and Argentina –, but also three African capexogarchs you probably know better than me, Aliko Dangote, Nicky Oppenheimer, and Nasif Sawiris.”

“That is very important,” said Noah. “They are doing mischief here in the Sahel as well. Aliko Dangote does the forbidden, synthetic NPK fertilisers, watch him! Nicky Oppenheimer does deconstruction-reconstruction against money, or crypto rather.”

“He is one of the sponsors of the putschists in Niger,” added Seth.

“And Nasif Sawiris, he has done synthetic clothing, which over 99% of the revolutionary village assemblies have forbidden of course, just like the NPK fertilisers, and he has collaborated with Arnaud Arrolle on organising villagers against migrants. Arnaud did the French, and his buddy Nasif the Egyptians. Remember, for a while, Arrolle called himself Arthur Avanti, that is one of Sawiris’ ventures.”

“Bastards!” Comrade Jacques who was listening in from rue de Lorraine clenched his fists. “If I had a free rein from you, I would pull a Roger Sabiani on them.” In Year 1 of the Revolution, he had murdered the pharma mogul Roger Sabiani who had almost killed Little Maurice. After that, Jacques had ended his career as a counter-revolutionary gangster and repented.

“After the meetings, the three African capexogarchs reportedly took a transatlantic ferry back to Dakar,” Miguel continued unperturbed. He knew he had everybody’s attention. “And some seagulls transmitted a bio-audio to Argentinian spontaneous custom brigades, where the three capexogarchs said they would meet Avanti and the others in Dakar. That’s quite close to where you are, comrades, so be on your guard!”

***

Next morning, our comrades, wary but optimistic, witnessed the beginning of the march of the trees along the thrust the villagers had planned out for them. “Once they have agreed with each other and with the other harpists – humans, animals, robots, and other plants –, the trees can start to march the same way revolutionaries can send a bio-message to a friend, throw a red, bronze, or blue beam at an opponent or opponents, or travel by yellow beam to any destination they have specified.”

“Except outer space?” asked comrade Guillaume.

“Although your and comrade Renée’s son Comet together with our, mine and Rosa’s Fabien will probably change that,” noted Josip.

How trees march, by Jean-Wadi and Zafira

“First you focus on the recipient, target, or destination, that determines the wave length of your beam. Then you concentrate on the content and intensity of the bio-message, the size and strength of the opponent, or the distance of the destination, that will determine the frequency of your bio-message, the force of your red beam – within the limits of revolutionary morality, you are not allowed to kill your opponent –, and the route and obstacles on the way to your destination. Those will determine your length of travel on the yellow beam, including your speed of disassembly and reassembly. Same with tree travel. The trees first focus on their individual finish line. By the way, the neurotransmitter glutamate can help them in that, so if necessary, we can boost our marching trees a bit just as we boost ourselves when we travel on a yellow beam. That will determine the wave length on which they interact with the other trees they march with.

Then they focus on the intensity of their – individual and collective – desire to march, that will determine the relative ease with which trees manage to extricate their roots and their stability during the march. The extrication process and the march cause a lot of stress, you can imagine. It is similar to transplanting a smaller plant, for instance, a flower. You and the flower have to agree on the move. You will want to talk to it, sing to it, protect it against cold, wind, excessive sun, and reinsert the roots with some earth around them very carefully. The only difference is that once the plants learn to march themselves, your support will be moral, rather than physical. Anyway, dopamine can help control that stress, and acetylcholine can help with the signalling between cells, both within the trees as well as between them, so we might think about helping our trees a bit with these two neurotransmitters in the future.”

Now everybody wanted to know the whole day’s story all at once.

“And so what happened, did you succeed in making the 6 metres?”

“Yes, the trees that moved advanced about 6 to 8 metres during the day, and the forest has advanced North by that distance, with the original forest being somewhat lighter as a result of course.”

“How did the extrication work?”

“No problems at all.”

“Had you watered or fertilised the ground or some of it?”

“It is still spring, meaning rainy season, there had been some rain not too long ago, and no, we did not use any fertiliser except for a little natural compost at one or two dry spots.”

“ Did you give the trees any neurotransmitters? Jean-Saïd and his brigade have sometimes used neurotransmitters, Oxytocin, Glutamate, and Dopamine to facilitate disassembly, speed, and agility, Gaba and Serotonin to promote restraint and caution.”

“No, this time we did not, although we might at some point experiment with the ones we mentioned, Glutamate, Dopamine, and Acetylcholine, making sure, of course, both that the neurotransmitters are the natural originals as found in the trees, and that their carriers, the nanobots are out of bio-tissue and entirely natural as well.”

“Any special problems with extrication and reinsertion of roots and stability during the march?” “One or two trees lost some threads from their roots, but they got over that. A few trees lost a few small branches. Not a single tree fell or had to be supported by other trees as happened at Illyria. The African trees at least in this region are very resilient.”

“How did the trees interact with each other?” “Like Communist humans interact with each other, respectfully and supportively. You could hear their rustling as they gave each other advice.”

“Did they get any help from the other harpists, animals and other plants?”

“Oh yes, they were most supportive. The birds and monkeys warned them of large deer or predators. One had the feeling that they sang and chatted to give them strength.”

“Did you use robots to guide them?” “Some of the kids from our and from neighbouring villages already have robots that will grow with you, so-called grow-up-with-you harpoids in tree shape, you know like comrade Olivier has gotten his olive tree robot from Danièle. The kids had brought those along to watch. They did not make any noticeable difference to the general mood of barely restrained euphoria.”

“Did you use nanobots to infuse them with anything, for instance, neurotransmitters?”

“No, and if we did, as we stressed already, they would be 100% bio-tissue.”

“Any sign that somebody hostile observed you, let’s say predator animals or fasco criminals?”

“Yes, and you asked that question, because you probably know already what happened. We are afraid that somebody, or maybe even two people, not kids, but adults, or at least older teenagers hid in one or two of the largest trees that marched. About a dozen spectators reported to have seen them, and they were not drugged, they were from all age groups, male and female. None of them knew them. They were not from our, nor from any surrounding village. We are afraid we may have taken some very cheeky fasco observers for a ride.”

Chapter 3. Year 20, The New Boko Haram Raid – “We’ll wait!”

Free riders in the Trees, by Maurice and Lulu

“Some of us were able to take a bio-snapshot of them, but as we said, nobody from the surrounding villages knew them, not even the market stall attendants, and as you know from comrades Aini, “ Illyria’s most frequent market stall holder, “and Louise,” equally dedicated share point holder, “market stall and share point holders know everybody and their uncle, even the occasional visitors. You can always recognize a share point by the blue sign with a red circle on it. I fear it’s our friends from the French lands…”

Jean gave the bio-photo the brigadiers had messaged him a cursory look and nodded. “No question, look comrades,” they were apparently in full assembly already, although it was only seven in the evening, not yet dinner time in Omsinbaba’s village. “Édouard Stérilé and Arnaud Arrolle, with plenty of make-up on…” “Maybe heightened by a sun-burn, and a few kilos lighter, maybe they had to forego some meals during their escape…,” added his beloved Mina. “And where they are, their flames Anne Dalgo and Marion Le Pen won’t be far away…,” supplemented Jean’s second partner of many years, Hélène. “And that means their protection detail, Fritz Schneid, Ronald Gunpump, and Thomas Rutte, the Boches, will be around as well,” added Bulan. “Wonder whether any of them speaks any Arabic or Fula or Hausa. They should be easy to catch.”

“If not for the fact that they will be armed to the teeth,” noted Alain.

“I’d look for them in your block energy works, by your solar panels in particular, because they will want to recharge their batteries,” comrade Anton said nonchalantly, and the bio-feed from Illyria showed comrade Pierre swerving around to him.

“You mean to suggest…”

“They are robots, and not even well made ones,” Anton nodded. As recycling expert, he had a fine eye for material. “Bouna’s Moumin made in Illyria would leave him for dead. Just blow up the picture above their skin. There, can you see?”

“Metallic-plasticky grains, as on a laptop,” nodded comrade Martine, excellent material scientist as well.

“I would have been surprised if the crème de la crème of our capexogarchs would have climbed on a marching tree themselves without a dummy run,” added Léon. “Because I’ve seen you check the trees on the bio-video from this morning. They would not have risked detection.”

“Let’s not worry about these capexogarchs. You are in great danger!” shouted comrade Misha. “Make sure you immediately install guards all around the village!”

“Not a problem,” said Omsinbaba’s father, these days called Papa for short, since he had made many children, “especially if you Illyrians will care to help us.”

“No problem,” said Jean-Saïd. “Jean-Wadi, Olivier and I will take the midnight to four o’clock watch.”

“Think about it,” mused young comrade Jean-François, budding security expert who had done his university entry project on the ex-capitalist barons and their mercs. “They literally had no choice but to bring robots given their inflated egos. Stérilé, a would-be media magnate, Arrolle, who considers himself a star agitator, Fritz Schneid, him-self a biochemical producer, specialising on synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, Ronald Gunpump, a would-be Dassault or Arnim Pappberger, weapon producer. And Thomas Rutte, well, an aspiring NATO general maybe, not a climber.” They all had to smile despite the seriousness of the situation.

“Can’t you ask some elephants to scare them?” asked Malik and let go of a long elephant whistle that made his partner, comrade Mao laugh so hard little baby Aisha got scared and cried.

“I will look for the closest elephant herd,” promised comrade Ibrahim.

“How can we find out where they are staying?” wondered Bashir. “Ah, I know. They would have left a crypto, voucher, token trail, whatever. Do you know who does them in your area?”

“Specifically, no,” said Omsinbaba Papa. “Workshops with 3 D printers which can do stuff like that, print cash, mint coins, and emboss cards are even rarer around here than they are in your region these days. Most of them are in Dakar, but their sponsor, their Uber, Deliverando, and so on, is one of those you mentioned, Aliko Dangote.”

“That’s dangerous,” said Fabienne, Maurice’s mamon, and expert on natural medicine. “He might collaborate with Fritz Schneid on some new deadly synthetic weed killer.”

Comrade Karla nudged Maher and bio-whispered. “Are you ready to preventively beam out there?” “Anytime you are ready,” was Maher’s delta wave answer. “You may leave baby Soho with her buddy Salvador and his mother, comrade Georgette.”

“I wonder what made them come to your parts,” asked comrade Laurent. “Usually, these capexogarchs on the lam seek refuge in Palestine rather or in Egypt.”

“Maybe they are interested in the march of the trees as well?” guessed comrade Jean-Fidel.

“Would they find support in some village around here?” asked Arlette, fervent feminist, and added herself. “Maybe from Islamists? But what would they say to women like Anne and Marion fighting like men?”

“Oh,” said Sevim, rocking Little Asma in her arms. “I read that most villages in North-West Africa allow schools to teach red beams to girls as well, precisely because of the fasco threat.”

“Make sure you protect the small kids especially,” said comrade Véro. “Fascos love child hostages, remember Years One and Eight.”

“I’ve asked in Novosibirsk,” said Emilia. “It is not elephants, but buffalohumans coming. The Babagidas, their son Jamie, his wife Lily, and their children, Claudio and Esther. They are beaming over right this minute.”

“Oh, that’s lovely,” said Fofana. “Now we finally get to meet Little Claudio and Little Esther. I have heard so much about them intraline.” Within seconds, the six of them had materialised, first as four large and two small African water buffalo. Then they morphed before the eyes of the astounded villagers. Instead of hooves, they developed hands and feet, their tail and head shrunk, their skin became softer, their facial features changed from buffalo to human, and after five to ten minutes or so, they stood upright like humans. Little Esther was almost as heavy as her mother Lily but had auburn hair, while Lily’s was blond. Little Claudio was heavy and dark like his dad.

“We are here,” Papa Babagida said. “What do you want us to do?”

“Well, relax. Have something to eat!” said comrade Cheikh. “Maybe later on you can do guard duty!”

“And make sure you check your water quality!” comrade Jean butted in again from Illyria. “We are going through the minutes of earlier fasco alerts here. Comrades Carla and Sophie are doing the research on an old-fashioned android, but we can bio-message you the highlights.”

“I wish little comrade Evo was ready already,” added comrade Lénina. “He will be the authoritative expert on revolutionary water.”

“And watch air quality as well,” supplemented comrade Rashida. “By the time little comrade Tahir comes on, it will be the last sneer of these poison doctors on air quality, I promise.”

“By that time, we shall be living in tree houses again and be able to sniff their toxic labs from afar with our own noses once more,” predicted Alexandra. “And young comrades Max – Jean-François and Alexandra’s –, and Lina – Jean-Saïd and Natalie’s kid to come in September, will be able to read their tracks in the forest again like our stone age ancestors.”

“Let’s make sure we write a collection of revolutionary literature on all of their exploits,” said comrade Inès.

“Excuse ye me for interrupting your happy dreams,” said Danton, and put his arm around her. “It just occurred to me. They must be interested in the march of the tree, because otherwise they would have stayed in Dakar. So, be careful!”

“Merci, Danton. I just realise, it is 10 o’clock already,” said Jean-Wadi and jumped up. “Jean-Saïd, Olivier and I should take position watching out towards the West. Who is looking out East, comrades?”

Omsinbaba, Fatou, Cheikh, Ibrahim, and young comrade Moussa got up immediately, traditional spears in hand, not to fight, they had rubber blades, but to look like traditional Wolof. Young Moussa brought Olivier, Jean-Saïd, and Jean-Wadi one each as well. If those bastard fake Boko Haram, alias capexogarch mercs really showed up, they would use red beams of course.

“Are we deconstructing-reconstructing Dakar at all, by the way?” asked Tim, budding deconstruction expert, intraline from the garden colony at Illyria.

“Yes and no,” sighed Omsinbaba Papa. “We are trying, but the builders and landlords, Nicky Oppenheimer’s pals, are blocking us. They say epidemics and hunger will spread if people are relocated to the villages too quickly. Of course, it won’t be easy for us if lots of people flock out here, but we have welcomed some already, and they are happy and well-fed. Comrades Abdoulaye and Aissatou, aren’t you?”

“Most definitely,” said Aissatou, who was just offering grilled vegetable sticks to the buffalohumans.

“And we have done our bit as well,” grinned Abdoulaye. “Look over there, that’s my hut. I constructed it myself, with my own hands, debunking the stereotype that we city-dwellers are good for nothing.”

“Don’t allow yourselves to be wound up,” warned Anisah, Philippe’s pal and Illyria’s noted anthropologist, mother of comrade Renée. “Conflicts won’t even arise if we discuss everything in the village harp assembly.”

“And keep these as small and informal as possible,” added her daughter Renée, anthropologist-sociologist. “If everybody is able to speak their mind early on, we will reach consensus faster, and it will last longer.”

“Medicine is not my expertise, actually,” said Zelim-Philippe. “I am an economist. But where is your next policlinic? Close enough, I hope, in case they have planned some vicious attack.”

“Yes, there is, and they bio-messaged they’ve already received a bio-call from comrade René, medicine students Kaltouma, Assad, Melanie and Murielle, and nurses Karima and Pauline who said they will stay awake all night at Illyria or Saint-Denis to advise them with any problem. And they said, you have already got comrade Maurice.” Again, everybody had to laugh.

“Yes, and is everybody up to beaming to the clinic, maybe even with a baby in their arms?” asked Jean-Saïd. “If not, I explain you the procedure again.”

“Do you still keep any weapon stores anywhere?” asked Guillaume, young peace researcher. “Not to use them obviously, we’ve got the red beams, and they are plenty adequate to stun any opponent for the half hour that it may take for a spontaneous militia brigade to get its 50% plus quorum from the village assembly, constitute, and arrive, but just so that they don’t steal them and use them against us.”

“Now that you mention it, there is one, about 30-40 km from here. We were going to use the metal to build a rocket and space station, you know, to explore revolutionary potential on other planets and in other Milky Ways even. We thought that was o.k.”

“Of course, that is o.k. Comrade Renée and I also want Little Comet to become an astronomer and cosmonaut, and comrade Josip and Rosa assure us Little Comrade Fabien will be a logistics engineer able to help him. But for now, that place has to have a 24/7 guard of very strong fighters.”

“Once I remember, and you can read it here in the minutes as well, a few capexogarchs and their fasco mercs also tried to abduct Illyria’s seniors,” said comrade Félix, comrade Alain’s dad. “Do you have a safe hut they can hide in? And don’t forget to take them along if you have to beam out.”

“Anyway, you should have a concept for everyone, young, old, your animals, your plants…” demanded comrade Marine. “Still having to abstract from most plants, unfortunately, for the moment, how many are you?”

“Seventy-seven humans including you visitors, and thirty-six animals, including you six buffalohumans,” said Omsinbaba Papa. “I counted you with the animals, because that way you’ll be able to poke the enemy with your horns maybe?”

“Oh, most definitely,” said Jamie and immediately began to retransform into buffalo.

“Don’t you have any help against these capexogarchs here in North-West Africa?” asked comrade Georges. “Any remnants of the Communist Parties?”

“Or maybe red trade union cells?” complemented comrade Emmanuel, still full of his recent presentation.

“Can’t those ex-capitalists who have become revolutionaries help discipline the remaining fascos,” asked comrade Aleksei. “We did it that way in Russia, all along, from United Russia to the Big Animals. Comrade Evgenia and I are preparing a presentation on that subject.”

“How are the roads around your place?” asked Annie. “I take it is still the rainy season. Are they very wet? Do you have a vehicle, maybe, a transporter to evacuate the people who might be afraid of beaming? I mean, don’t take offence anyone, the disassembly-reassembly bit is scary, so are the heights and the distances.”

“We have one, our village transporter, we Africans keep transporters per village, not per farm or workshop. It is even electrical, and it’s up and running, don’t worry. The rain hasn’t been so bad this season. In general, I must say, while it has gotten cooler by a few dozen centidegrees a year since the revolution, the global cool-down has remained below our expectations, at least here in Africa. And this where we have already reduced the vehicle park by over ninety-five percent, eliminated all big factories and mines, and used ecological methods like harmless, soft, piece-by-piece deconstruction, harmless chemical and plant- and bacteria-based methods for deconstructing the agglos. However, the environmental damage done by centuries of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism all the way from feudalism has been much too great.”

“If these last desperado counter-revolutionaries hadn’t disturbed us, we could be focusing on these real issues,” sighed comrade Frédéric, senior peace researcher. “By the way, has Boko Haram been active here all the time even after the revolution or is its return a new phenomenon?”

“It was in remission for a while, wouldn’t you say comrades?” asked Omsinbaba Papa and they all nodded. “I am afraid the coup in Niger and the visit of your French capexogarchs may be related to its recurrence.”

“Would Boko Haram be for or against the capexogarchs?” asked comrade Matyas, himself a repentant German ex-capitalist who had married comrade Céline and lived in the Manouche camp near Illyria now.

“Good question!” Fatou bio-messaged from his guard stand , to the approving murmuring of Cheikh, Ibrahim, Abdoulaye and others. “As Muslims they would be against them, as venal capitalist bitches they might be for.”

“It is not only about the transporter being up and running,” comrade Fabien Sr. and driver at Logistique Yvelines, a logistics cooperative near Illyria, which allowed surrounding workshops, social organisations, like schools, farms, share points, households, and individuals to reserve transporters and drivers and to transport people, goods, materials, animals, anything from one local address to the other or to the closest train station for more long-distance deliveries. It worked so well, Illyria and many other workshops and social organisations had chosen not even to have their own vehicle, but to rely on Fabien and his friends to get goods and people around. “You must have a good driver close to the vehicle day and night from now on until the alert is over, since some vulnerable persons may need to make a quick exit.”

“Of course,” said Omsinbaba Papa. “Ibrahim has already assumed the first watch by the transporter.”

And they sat together until later into the night still. Comrades Arthur and Huguette and their daughter Françoise from the garden colony told the story on how they found out a lot about the future Illyrians already while they still lived at Saint-Denis. Then they had leased a garden house close to Illyria and continued to observe what was happening and to warn the Illyrians in case of imminent attacks, until after a long time the Illyrians had finally realised that they meant well and co-opted them in their circle of close comrades. The Africans said there were sort of curtain-twitchers in their villages as well, only that they spied not from their windows but through the pearl strings of their doors. “In our case as well,” Omsinbaba’s mamon said. “Beautiful friendships have started this way.” Comrade Melanie told about her work with arrested counter-revolutionaries and how long it took to get them to repent. Her friend Murielle, daughter of Françoise, who had been near-raped as a twelve-year-old by a fasco stooge, comrade Henri, now repentant, said that most of the fascos were victims of capitalism just like everybody else. Her license and doctoral project was going to be on precisely that, the way capitalism caused and exacerbated mental illness, especially in the agglos.

“True,” said Omsinbaba Papa. “Of those who went to the cities, only few have remained sane. You, comrade Abdoulaye, are one of them.”

“I was homeless and lonesome in the megalopolis of Paris,” comrade Raphaël, father of Fabien-driver, explained to the African villagers. “I had lost all contact to my wife, Jacqueline, as well as to our kids, Fabien and his wife Catherine and their children, Cédric and Charolaine, and Sabrine, her husband Charles, and their children, Colin and Cécile.”

“How come you did not get an apartment in the revolution?”

“I was working for counter-revolutionary drug dealers. In return they gave me a place to sleep, but they often hit and raped me, and they threw some illegal money at me, but it was not enough, not to live and not to die on.”

“Do you have tranies in your village?” asked Cato. “I mean transgenders.”

“Not officially, but we make less of an issue of it than you Northerners,” said Omsinbaba Papa, “except for the very religious people.”

“What if somebody wants to get an operation?”

“They would have to go to the agglo, find a policlinic there that wants to do it. It would be difficult.”

“Well, in my case, only the counter-revolutionaries agreed to do it, but while they did not charge me anything, I was going to be their experimental rabbit all my life,” said Cato. “So, I ran. I still have pains sometimes, but I am basically a man. I have a penis, I have a deep voice, I can have a beard.”

“Can you make babies?”

“No, but comrades Misha and Yvonne allow me to play father or nice older friend to Odile and Jean-Michel at least.”

“Comrade Cato is very nice!” said little five-year-old Jean-Michel. “I am his friend. Don’t be mean to him!” And he positioned himself on screen and rattled a broom stick as if he was a Senegalese fighter.

“This is Bérénice, my mother. Everybody says she has a bad name and she is a witch,” said Little Pierre pointing at his mother next to him. “But in fact, she is very nice.”

“We all like her,” comrade Sabrine supported him.

“And now I shall be a success as well, because I shall prevent the fascos bugging the harpoids and the plushbots with comrade Colin’s bio-thicket anti-viral and anti-hacking protection,” little comrade Pierre continued to general applause from Illyria, Saint-Denis, and all the way from Senegal. “You know about harpoids, plushbots are just small notebooks and tablets made with less metal and coated in textile rather than plastic, using the intranet capability of natural fiber as well as the fact that intranet devices get a lot less hot than internet ones.”

“You may hear of our daughter, little comrade Évita one day,” said comrade Raoúl. “She wants to bring back the tree houses.” “I can see on the video-feed that you have tree houses as well,” said Josetta.

“Yes, we are also researching this way of life, but because the climate has been so hot and dry for many centuries, most trees are no longer big enough. But this may change once the march of the trees really begins, and the forest comes back,” said Omsinbaba Papa.

“This may sound like a stupid question,” asked young comrade Orel. “Since we as Communists are supposed to be beyond all these things, but how do you Wolof get along with the Fula, or Peul they also call them my owlbot tells me? Want to see my owlbot?” And he biomessaged them a selfie. Although his name translated as eagle, Orel had wished for his harpoid to be in owl shape, “So I become better at school!”, and now he had a beautiful bird of wisdom sitting on his shoulder almost 24/7.

“Not a stupid question at all! We Wolof tend to be sedentary, the Fula are more Nomadic, a bit like the French and Germanic tribes versus the Manouches,” Fofana immediately explained.

“Well, they have had some village assemblies,” said Aissatou, “debating whether the march of the trees would be really good for them. ‘Will it mean that forty years from now, we shall no longer be able to ride on our camels and horses?’ someone asked, and another joker answered. ‘Oh, we’ll just move by jumping from branch to branch or swinging down on lianas like monkeys.’ Anyway, most of their assemblies agreed that they would wait and take developments as they came.”

“According to my research on Africa, and I have done a lot of it both for l’Humanité as well as for the peace movement, most if not all wars in Africa in the last few centuries were triggered by the imperialists and colonialists,” said Bertrand. “On their own, the Africans would have stayed in their regions and lived happily.”

The New Boko Haram Raid, by Jean-Saïd and Olivier

Just as he bio-messaged that – Lulu was just bringing Bouna to bed in the hut where Moumin, the harpoid had already been charging for several hours –, there was loud yelling from both sides of the village, one could see brown beams whooshing through the night and bullets zapping past them. The dogs were barking like crazy… Now finally, you could see red beams zipping into the night as well. Within minutes, the terror was over. Nobody was seriously hurt, although Jean-Saïd and young Moussa had been scratched by real bullets… Imagine, this although firearms had been forbidden by billions of neighbourhood assemblies, millions of village and quarter assemblies, and thousands of referendums! They both bore their pain with stoic grimaces and were patched up by Fofana and other motherly women.

“We caught one of them. His name is Sidy! He is willing to repent and tell us all the details about their attack. Should we bring him into the circle?” asked Fatou and Ibrahim. “We just drove after him in the transporter. He ran like the wind, but we were still faster.”

Sidy smiled a contrite and winning smile. “Sorry the lads got hurt. I did not fire any of those guns, I just threw a brown beam, which would have just knocked you out for a while, but I threw it with half strength, because I really did not want to hurt anyone. You see I am from…,” and he mumbled the name of one of the neighbouring villages. “I see you every week at the market, I am really sorry I got involved in this, I don’t know what rode me.”

“Are you jealous?” asked Ibrahim. “Do you want to drive a transporter?”

“Oh, no,” Sidy shook his head. “I am not interested in cars. You have seen how fast I can run. But you see, my sister, she has got high sugar, diabetes you call it, and she has got a nasty cough as well. We don’t know what it is, tuberculosis, covet, or just nerves. Anyway, these fellows who recruited me showed us golden or at least gilded coins, as well as paper money, and credit cards, and they said with that we could take her to a Uberyte policlinic as far away as Dakar, a really good one, be it against pay… They said it could even be Covet or any of the subsequent Coflu viruses that may have caused the chronic cough and then my sister needed an omnibus vaccine against Covet, Coflux-2021 and subsequent years all the way to Coflux-20 for Year 20, LEP-AL-18 and following years, and MA-20. Or if she had stomach trouble, then she would need one against Ebola.”

“Oh, no, they tried to catch you with that one,” sighed Clément, also from the neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove, and worker at l’Humanité like Bertrand, Luc, and Patrick as well as a fervent anti-vax activist. “How can a vaccine have a curative effect?”

“They said the vaccine would have both preventive as well as curative effects.”

“Shortly before Égale and I came here, they tried to set up a workshop to manufacture this ominous omnibus vaccine close to our cooperative, Illyria,” said Peter Gar, speaking intraline from Sudan. “The comrades checked it. The vax is totally poisonous. I dare say all that will help against these bastards is the M.S. or moral strength virus. Next time they try to talk to you, for heaven’s and your sister’s sake, walk away!” They all applauded, or at least those who were still awake, or had woken up again after the raid.

“On that occasion, comrades Fabienne, Maher, and I as well went to that workshop to check the vaccine,” said comrade Maurice. “It was just a plastic syringe with divisions, quite permeable, as a matter of fact, and by the time they got into the body, the four agents would have mixed anyway. Maher told them…” “And I told them it could lead to an effect of reverse infection,” Maher continued, “where instead of producing the requisite antibodies, the body will just breed the diseases or at least one of them. And our revolutionary scientists had done prior studies in America, elsewhere in Europe, and in Asia, where it turned out that both the four individual vaxes, Covet, Coflux, LEP-AL, and MA, and the omnibus vaccine were no good and deserved to be forbidden by the village assemblies.”

“Maybe we ought to start a referendum on it, at least for the région parisienne, and then other regions may take it over,” suggested Pascal.

“Good idea,” said Marie. “And Aurélie and I shall organise a rally for the prohibition of these vaccines and to inform people about all the adverse effects from the individual as well as the omnibus vaccines and that the Uberytes are behind it.”

“You know, Dominique and I would like to organise a rally anyway in solidarity with the Niger people victims of the coup in Niger,” said Aurélie. “At the latest on 14^th July. Could we combine the two?”

“Definitely,” said Seth. “After all, we are beginning to find out that the Uberytes are behind this coup as well as behind the vaccine campaign.”

“Don’t you think the two upsets might have passed by then,” asked Dominique. “Shouldn’t we rather focus the 14^th of July events on explaining the march of the trees?”

“That as well,” said Django. “But there are people here in the French lands as vulnerable to their pharma sabotage as in Africa. You know they approached my parents,” Roman and his wife, “they are bit older already, and asked them, why not take the omnibus vaccine? For them, they would have made it free. Fortunately, my parents did not take it serious.”

“Never think about taking it for an instance,” shouted Peter Gar. “Just walk away! They might have killed you with it!”

“Merci, Pierre le Gars, you are a friend. I told that to Manou,” his wife, “and Céline,” his sister, “already,” said Django. “Make sure they can’t spread their propaganda in school. I know from our five-year-old daughter Isabel how open kids are in primary. They want to try everything.”

“We need three things: the referendum, a public awareness campaign in schools, and on Huma news channel, as well as an anti-vax block at the 14^th of July rallies, don’t you think, comrades?” said Jean, and everybody nodded, quite distressed that the latest fasco ruminations that they thought had ended with the termination of their workshop, were not over yet.

“You know what I was just thinking,” said Sidy, who knew a bit of French and had followed the conversation the comrades were having intraline. “From those twelve people who just attacked you, only about half a dozen were Africans or Arabs, at least half of them were whites. Could they be the same group that messed with your neighbours up there in your village in the French lands?”

“Quite possible, how did they look like?”

“So, we were a round dozen, two Arabs, somewhat older, over 30 at least, they might have been young Boko Haram recruits before the revolution, although it would be sort of stretching it calling the whole group Boko Haram just for these two. Then there were four local people, one of them being me. I won’t rat out the others. They are like me, they are probably already at home cursing themselves that they said ‘yes’ and allowed themselves to get hired.”

“And then there were eight more people. They were all whites, you know, European types. Two women, but they stayed back.”

“Can you remember what they called them?”

“Something like Annette and Jeanine, was that it?”

“Were they about the same size, one dark blond, one blond, the blond one slightly taller?”

“Yes, I think that’s how they looked like, although they were wearing veils, I can’t be sure about their hair colour, I could just see the area around their eyes and it was white, and I spotted the occasional strand of hair. I think they would be those you just described.”

“Then they were Anne Dalgo and Marion Le Pen. Now describe the six others.”

“One was of middle height, kind of stocky, black or dark gray hair, quite strong, and a racist.” “How do you know?” “Because he called us ‘the four blackies’.”

“D’accord, that’s clear enough. That was Thomas. Next!”

“A guy with light gray hair and a moustache, maybe with some strands of blond in them, taller and slimmer than the first. He was always laughing, and he was the one who tried to chat me up for the vaccine.”

“Who could that have been?”

“Maybe Fritz Schneid, although he is more of an agrochemical producer by background, but he may have switched tracks lately.”

“Oh, and the third and the fourth had robots looking just like them. One was light brown, the other darker.”

“Like on this photo?” And Jean-Wadi bio-messaged him his memory of the humanoid robots in the marching trees.”

“Exactly like that, at least the robots. The humans were wearing head scarves as well, like the two women.”

“And the fifth one had darker hair, you could say black. He was more heavy-set, they called him Ronald or Ronaldo. And the sixth one was slim and had blond hair. They called him Jordan.”

“Not the Jordan who is now repentant in the North American prairies?” asked Patrick. “No, our Sioux friends, Mazanape and comrades, and our farmer friends John and Rory from the twin farm cooperative say Kévin and Jordan haven’t left the village or respectively the cooperative since ages,” replied Malik.

“We talked to a Jordan on the 1^st of May rally,” reported Jean-Wadi. “He was being warped into a Uberyte clandestine set-up, but he was quite aware that he was being wound up against refugees, migrants, and foreigners, against democracy and self-management and in favour of hierarchy at the enterprise level, and of a return to the state and a hierarchical government structure like before the revolution as well. He was trying to joke it away, but he and his friends, Kévin and Raymond, were being brain-washed, so much is clear. But he was younger than me, sixteen, thereabouts.”

“Oh, no, this Jordan was older than you, in his twenties at least,” said Sidy.

“But the names may be fasco cover names, so that they don’t have to give away their real names to inquisitive revolutionaries. Jordan and Kévin were famous associates of Marine Le Pen before the revolution, weren’t they?” asked Denis, senior security expert.

“They certainly were, and Raymond reminds us older comrades of another famous conservative politician, be it not a fasco.”

“So, there may be at least two more fasco mercs protecting Stérilé and Co. in the background, maybe?” Denis continued asking.

“Could be,” said his son, Jérôme. “At least it is clear that the very same people we thought we had gotten rid of after closing their workshop are now here in Africa to haunt us. Can’t they ever give up?”

“What boggles my mind, is how did they get away so fast?” asked Omsinbaba. “How come we only caught you? And you are such a fast runner! Is there any record of Stérilé and Arrolle winning speed-running contests in secondary school? Or did they play soccer maybe?”

“None at all!” Comrade Patrick shook his head. “We did profiles of them in l’Huma as the rising stars of the counter-revolutionary movement, remember, we did not find any record of sports activities, only media and political agitation.”

“Oh, but they said something about taking a ride on the trees…”

“What do you mean…?”

And immediately, Jean-Saïd sent all participants in the conversation a bio-message to continue on delta waves. Comrade Colin from the garden colony, also an occasional member of the robot brigade, wrought his magic to activate the bio-thicket around Illyria to make hacking if not entirely impossible, then at least much more difficult. And our Africa brigade and their friends did the same in Omsinbaba’s village. It entailed alerting every grass, flower, bush, every tree, including any ivy on its stem as well as every insect, bird, monkey, and even far-away deer, camels and elephants that for the sake of our world-wide harp revolution literally nothing should seep out from the council now to be held in Omsinbaba Papa’s hut as well as in the Youth Clubs at Illyria and 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis. Only when they were quite sure to be safe and insulated did they begin the discussion of the momentous news that had just transpired.

“So, they not only want to escape right before our noses, but they even dare use our sacred trees, who are testing their march to regrow the Congo rain-forest and reconquer the Sahel and the Sahara, as a kind of green elephants or green camels!” Omsinbaba was understandably outraged.

“I have an idea!” said Papa Babagida. The buffalohumans were participating in the council mostly as humans. “We shall now all transform back to buffalo state and once the early morning hours offer us some light, right now it would make them suspicious, we shall start to graze innocently among the trees slated to march today. That way we can earmark the trees they are on and maybe warn them. They are to the North of the village, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they are!” rejoiced Fofana. “That is a great idea, comrades Magic Buffalos. But how to warn the trees? Maybe you should tell the trees to stay back? But what if the fascos start to shoot?”

“Then they might ruin your whole march that you have so carefully prepared,” intervened comrade Jean from Illyria. “And even threaten your lives in the process. No, comrades, I think we should let the march go forward and pick them off upon arrival.”

“What if they harm the trees they are on?”

“We don’t know. Let’s wait what the buffalohumans can find out.”

All six buffalohumans, the two senior Babagidas, Jamie and Lily, as well as Esther and Claudio had already left as it was four o’clock and gradually getting lighter. While the revolutionaries were waiting for their report, another debate arose that almost caused a fight.

“We’ll wait!” by Lulu and Bouna

“I think,” said Omsinbaba. “and I hope you will all agree, you, my heart Fofana as well as darling Lulu and Little Bouna, shush, let’s not wake him up just yet, will have to go back to Dakar and take the first boat home. You can then wait for us at Tripoli with comrades Zafira and Little Sandrine, Natalie, and Danièle, Rashida, and Michelle. You will be safe there, but certainly not here, nor during our trip North to join up with comrades Seth in Niamey and comrade Noah in Timbuktu. For a moment, we considered sending you to the Nelson Mandela cooperative on Lake Chad and even to Djibouti, but the fascos probably know of these cooperatives we are friends with as they knew of this village. You would be too much at risk there as well. I think there is no other way but to stand down.”

Comrade Fofana nodded, with tears in her eyes, comrade Lulu looked slightly disappointed but understanding.

“Comrade Ibrahim, could you take them all the way to Dakar by car?” Ibrahim shrugged.

“That long car journey is too risky as well,” said Jean-Saïd. “I’ll help them go directly to Dakar harbour by beam. It is just a matter of focusing on the destination, then not getting scared while you disassemble, then reassemble. You know the drill from your training sessions at the youth club or at school. First you feel like you are crumbling like a cake. Then there will be a moment when you are completely disassembled into molecular state and feel literally nothing. Yet then you will feel again already like you are growing together and your nerves are working, your blood is pumping, and your muscles are getting ready for you to jump off the beam and be whole again. Tell me, do you remember all of this? Can you get ready to do it, let us say, three hours from now before the beginning of the tree march?”

“Oh,” a tiny voice piped up from the back of the hut. “But I want to see the march of the trees.”

Merde, the little prince had woken up, thought Fofana. What was Lulu going to do? Obviously, she first allowed him to crawl between her legs.

“Has he ever travelled by beam before?” Jean-Saïd bio-messaged Lulu, but before she could even open her mouth, Bouna said: “No, but I want to try!” Everybody relaxed. Now it was not going to be all about missing the march of the trees. “Can Moumin come as well?” asked Bouna. Fofana and Lulu, and even Maurice looked quite alarmed. Moumin was a heavy little monster, especially as he was traveling with a generator.

***

“Yes, of course,” said Jean-Saïd after a moment’s hesitation into which those best at hacking delta waves could read a brief exchange with comrades Robespierre and Josip. “Would you be able to repair him if something went wrong?” “Piece of cake!” was Robespierre’s answer. “Take him apart like you did on the way there, that will make him lighter already and easier to disassemble entirely.” “And if ever something goes wrong, we can make him one just like it within a couple of days,” added Josip. “He won’t even notice the difference.”

“Will it be grow-up-with-you still?” “Of course, the expandable frame will be the same, and we’d just reconstitute him at exactly the point he is now, maybe a centimetre larger than he was when he joined Bouna for his last birthday. And with the same data set as well. He would be able to remember your trip and all your school work prior to it as if he had been there already.”

***

“That’s a relief!” said Bouna smiling. “He is so good at doing sums.” Then after another moment of silence, Bouna asked.

“So, we can’t watch the march of the trees because of the fascis?”

“How do you know?” asked Olivier.

“Because papa just told me. They may sit in the trees and shoot at us with guns and beams, he said. I know beams, but what are guns?”

Maurice laughed. “I just bio-messaged him today’s story. The truth always make more sense than a lie. Let me draw you a gun, sonny. Instead of a beam, it throws bullets.”

Suddenly, the pearl curtain at the door opened, and comrade Esther slid in already in the process of transforming back into a human. “The others still stayed in the field to observe things,” she reported. “They are eleven people, and they are sitting on six tall and strong trees. They picked the strongest ones, let’s hand them that. Papa,” comrade Jamie, “says that probably means they want to make a get-away, not harm the trees or ruin the march, at least at this stage. The fattest one, we think it is that Ronald Gunpump has one tree to himself, the two French politicians, Édouard and Arnaud have another one, Fritz Schneid and Thomas Rutte have a third, the young merc,” Jordan, “and one African have one, and then there are still two more trees with two more Africans each. Now, it comes, we heard them bio-chat…

The Buffalohumans spying, by Malik and Mao

“They are not all going to go all the way. The five Africans will get off first, when the march passes directly by their village at about lunch time, and if we catch them, they’ll want to say they were just trying to get a good view of things.”

“What if Jordan gets spotted?”

Esther went on with her report as if she had not heard. “The others will go all the way with their trees until these strike root again and then get off. That will be in the evening already. Then they have arranged for some Bedouins to pick them up with some elephants and or camels. So, their basic idea is to wait until we have inspected the trees and then get off when it gets dark.”

“Wait a minute? What if we spot them?”

“Then this Thomas said, he is the most violent of them all, we think, he said: ‘Then all bets are off!’”

“How good that Fofana, Lulu, and Little Bouna are getting out,” Omsinbaba sighed with great relief.

“Listen,” said Jean. “We’ll catch these fascos later. When you do your inspection in the evening, ignore the trees the buffalo humans will point out to you secretively. Or just give them a fleeting look. It makes absolutely no sense to risk your and your trees’ lives over a petty act of sabotage like that. We’ll catch these bastards later. You are sure, comrade Esther that the trees they picked will be able to carry them the whole day?”

“Oh, yeah, they are among the strongest of them all,” Esther replied, still with a brownish-red glow in her face, as if her transformation had not quite completed yet, or maybe from pride.

“Just a minute,” said Jérôme. “Be careful but make sure you follow these crims like hawks. I’ve got another bio-intercept comrade Emmanuella sent us. They planned this whole attack, the escape on the marching trees as well as a major scam to follow from it on the transatlantic ferry. Listen to this.”

Chapter 4. Old Centre – New Periphery

Green trees, elephants, and camels, by Lulu and Maurice, with help from Little Bouna

“Before we continue the conversation we started on the boat, tell us quickly how you managed to escape,” said a deep voice, probably Dangote’s.

“Oh, quite easily, the revs checked the trees, but quite perfunctorily, and then we travelled by elephant through the Savannah. Then, once it changed gradually into desert, we switched to camels, and for the last stretch, we took brown beam – you know, our contra version of yellow beam –, it’s just as fast and energy-efficient, also allows you to disintegrate. Only difference, you get red-hot angry at one stage. Apparently, we contras need more negative energy than the revolutionaries do. I say contras because I would have loved to come to South America as well. Anyway, we wanted to travel by vehicle, but it did not come, and it also seemed a bit risky, you know, more people in the know. Anyway, here we are. I’m Fritz, these are Thomas, Édouard, Arnaud, Anne, Marion, Jordan, and Ronald, handsome with a beard. Maybe I should grow one as well again? More from us later.”

“I’m Aliko Dangote from the Nigerian lands. I used to be in the oil business, but for the known reasons, greed, waste, and violent conflict, oil reserves were almost exhausted in the 2020s already. The ordinary people did not realise, but the powers of the Global North were already fighting over them. And when the revolutionaries came along with their plan of replacing combustion with electrical engines, and private cars with electrical ones, most people did not object too much. D’accord, the fuel-guzzlers accelerate a bit faster, but I and many others like the quiet humming of the electrical ones.” The other people in the conference looked at him, but did not say anything yet.

“To my right is Nicky Oppenheimer. He is from South Africa, but he has done so much business up here in North Africa that you can rightfully consider him North Africa- based. What do you do these days, Nicky?”

“Almost everything, but mainly deconstruction-reconstruction. And you?”

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot to mention that, I am into chemicals.”

“You mean, medication and drugs?” asked a slightly hoarse voice. “It’s Fritz Schneid again, by the way.”

“Not so much pharmaceutical chemicals as agrochemicals, fertilisers and pesticides. Same as you, I think. However, my turnover is about triple yours. I dare say the old centre is the new periphery, both Nicky and I are worth a lot more than you at the moment. We can compare net worths later, but for now, let’s proceed with the introductions.

“And to my left, I have Nasif Zawiris, also a crypto-trillionaire from his clothes workshops, and he is now into drugs as well. What was your current interest, Nasif, it sounded fascinating?”

“Combine the omnibus Covet-Coflux vaccines with those against our main North-African scourges, tuberculosis, Cholera, Ebola, and so on. And I also own hundreds, if not thousands of policlinics all over Africa. I think I may have been a Uberyte before your time, Henri.”

“I am not proud,” a youthful confident voice sounded across the Atlantic. “Good ideas always have many fathers. You say, you own policlinics? What about sports clubs, cultural centres, and logistics stations?”

“Mainly policlinics,” Nasif held his own. “We can discuss strategy later.”

“Since you have already gotten into an exchange there, why don’t we continue the introductions with you, Henri?”

“My name is Henri Uber, I am 38 years old, and I remember being impressed as a young lad before the revolution by the valiant cyclists delivering food, drugs, and other goods all over Toronto, where I grew up, as well as New York, where I went to college. The reason I added logistics stations into my portfolio is obvious. It is impossible to do deliveries without secure bases. I am having a bit of a debate with Larry, Fernando, Louis, and Viesturs about whether our logistics stations should also produce goods or at least assemble them, and I agree with them, some production would make sense in the case of products the revolutionaries choose not to produce or only in insufficient numbers…”

***

“For good reason,” grumbled Maurice who so far had listened to the tape, like everyone else, only with mild interest. “Their drugs are toxic.”

***

“… Such as drugs, agrochemicals, as you mentioned, some digital devices, construction materials – Nicky will know more about the concrete angle of that –, and some weapons, although the five of us are not that bellicose. We don’t share the view of our colleagues Pappberger, Rudolphe Dassault, and Ricky Handsome that war will be inevitable if and once the nation-states return. So far we have not needed them against the revolution, and we are developing the sports schools to keep it that way.”

“Nonsense,” said Fritz Schneid. “You make it appear as if the revolutionaries were pushovers. They aren’t. Their red stun beams, their bronze conventional weapons neutralising beams, their rumoured blue anti-chemical weapons beams, and their yellow transport beams as a matter of fact have forced us into a ruinous defensive arms race, don’t you agree?”

“At some earlier meeting like this, another oligarch, I think from Russia asked me whether I wasn’t a bit mafia,” Fernando Deliverando answered first. “One of the so-called Big Animals he was. They are now repentant and rehabilitating, that’s what the revolutionaries call it, recanting and squealing. Grigory was his name, I think. Of course, I replied, not in the negative sense of criminal, but in the positive sense of entrepreneurial and daring. In Italy and also in the agglos of North America where we still have a lot of Italians, we have started a new type of shop, the pizza share point. On the face of it, it is just that. People bring in a pizza they made, share it with others, and get to taste somebody else’s recipe. Yet over the pizza, conversations may start. People might get a vaccine, join a sports school and get training in fighting and use of weapons, go to a cultural centre, or rather its amusement section, and experience sex like they have never seen, let alone had, or they get something delivered through our logistics service. They may even join one as driver, or at least join a brown cell at their self-managed enterprise. I must admit, right now, spring of Year 20, only one in 2000 people has any sympathies for our Cause, as it were, meaning the counter-revolution. I think most revolutionaries are very docile.

“And it is getting worse with every generation! They run to their various brigades, at school, at work, etc., to their neighbourhood assembly, their workplace and village or cooperative assemblies to participate in lengthy debates on almost everything. From early childhood on, they get taught that everything is debatable, and that they must respect not only their fellow-human to the point of self-denial, but even a little insect or a grass stalk. They are all harpists these days, you see. My grandson, Benito is his name, brings the stories back from school. Every month, they have a debate on what books and material to use. Not only the teachers, teachers’ assistants and students participate, but also their parents, their pets, their haproid robots, and their potted plants if they care to. We are all harpists now, get it?

“One book had an informative frame on Benito Mussolini. There was a vote on whether to take that book or another where he just got mentioned in passing. The majority voted for the second book, the argument being: ‘Otherwise young comrade Benito may start to feel bad about his name!’ And not only that, if you work in a self-managed workshop or just do socially necessary jobs around the block, you’ll get everything you need for free, food – including home-made pizzas at the share point, fruit and veggies, meat, cheese, bread and desert –, clothes, including jewellery. Sometimes there will be a little barter involved, but let me tell you, it is hard to get any type of black market going, except maybe behind closed doors at one of our outfits. Books, toys, household goods, furniture, even a newly-built house, everything comes to you for free, just for being civil and discussing everything at the meetings. I am glad that you Africans are a bit more rebellious. At least you started the coup in Niger.”

“As for us,” said Larry Flink. “We have logistics stations, but we do not focus on everything, like Amazon used to, or nothing like you Uberytes tend to, but we are squarely focused on food. You are right of course, Fernando, everything is for free, but sometimes people just want to coil up at home and not have to go to the assembly and not even to the market. Then they might be willing to pay a little money or crypto for the chance. And well, then Flink is for them.”

“In the Baltics, we also want an accelerated march of the trees, but it is not as warm there as here,” said Viesturs Volt. “So, we have collaborated with some revolutionary workshops to create a tree tonic with extra glutamate, dopamine, and acetylcholine.”

***

“He is referring to the one comrade Arvo works at, probably? Are you intraline by any chance, Arvo?”

A comrade in his thirties, early forties, about Misha’s, Robespierre’s, and Pascal’s age, appeared shame-faced.

“I am deeply sorry, I really misjudged these comrades. I did not know they were Viesturytes. The truth only dawned on me, when they offered to sell us, against crypto-Euro, synthetic versions of the neuro-transmitters for our tonic.”

“’Not to do anything illegal,’ one of them grinned, flashing ugly big teeth at me, ’just for you lads to have more tree tonic.’ Of course, we immediately broke off the relationship with them, but the damage has been done, they’ve got the recipe for our tree tonic.”

***

“According to the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian biologists-agronomists-forest keepers who created that concoction,” Viesturs had continued in the meantime, “trees will accelerate their progress by several dozen metres a day if this tonic is added to their water supply via the roots, or sprayed, or even injected via beams or rather waves, because in the case of plants, neuro-transmitters are a lot slower than in humans. They are more similar to waves rather than sparks. Nonetheless, trees will accelerate their progress by up to hundred metres a day.”

“Hundred metres a day! And the revolutionaries had agreed to that?” asked Nasif. “I thought they would have yelled synthetic agent?”

“Yes, some did, but others said, after all, they are all natural agents and carried by nanobots made from bio-tissue. The infusion was, comrade Arvo argued – we know him from running away with Kaya Callous, wife of a local oligarch who worked with us –, similar to the neurotransmitter booster travellers on a yellow beam get to take if they wish to remain whole, or if they need to get somewhere extra-fast and extra-safe. Let us say they want to get home fast if it rains, if they are sick, in order to catch fasco terrorists like us, or in the first three months of a pregnancy. After three months, beam travel is no longer o.k. even with stabilising neurotransmitters. And Arvo and his comrades already balked when we wanted to sell them only partly synthetic agents instead of the fully natural ones.”

Nasif laughed. “Well, never mind natural. That is what we’ll do then, comrade Viesturs, when we want to use their fast tree travel service. We’ll give them a tonic of acetylcholine, dopamine, and glutamate.”

“I don’t think this is funny,” moaned Louis Deshalles. “That way we would be helping them reach their target of 40 years for eliminating the Sahel and encroaching on the Sahara, and they would get all the glory.”

“The glory would be theirs anyway, because we saddled on to their project,” said Viesturs. “We’d keep the bio-coating, but replace some of the chemicals with our synthetic neurotransmitters. That’s the whole difference.”

Aliko, Nasif and Fritz drew long faces. The drug they had been groping for already existed.

“D’accord,” Mort Buckley finally said. “That’s for when they are good boys – Africans, and maybe South Americans, and Asians as well. We’ll sell them some of your synthetics, Viesturs and Co., and the proceeds go into your retirement fund. Jim and Ron have some news on it, by the way.”

“Yes, as of this hour, it stands at 370 trillion crypto-dollars, that is more than enough for a nice villa here in America and a good and safe pension even for those of you, Europeans and Africans, who have contributed to Tino Cryptolla’s or maybe Nicky Oppenheimer’s fund. Our lying low in the past half year and not giving all our hard-earned interest to Arnim Pappberger and Co. for new drones and tanks has paid out. You are all a bit richer as we speak,” said Jim Hooley. They all clapped generously and gratefully.

“One other reason you are getting more, however, is that there has been so much attrition,” moaned Ron O’Hanley. “Especially in Europe. Why is that? We don’t want a soap opera, just the facts, please.”

“Oh,” said Édouard. “There are many reasons. It is hard for us to attract enthusiastic young people because our media channels are no longer as widely followed. One reason is the intranet. People get their news directly from the nature chorus via harp wifi towers, and that technology tends to be pro-revolutionary. The animals and plants and even the robots tend to gain from the humans standing back. Another reason is that young people no longer want a balanced news feed as we provided before the revolution. They say they want the truth, impartial, and without embellishments, and they don’t trust Le Figaro, European Empire, or even Smartbox to give them that.”

“The other reason is that they have a huge advantage in attracting people. They are everywhere and the immense majority. We are few and have to carefully approach people and find out whether they are suitable and even interested in working with us,” added Arnaud.

“A third reason is that Jean Pontonier,” said Ronald Gunpump. “I tell you when we were fleeing on these trees, he simply told the villagers to let us go. We got an intercept via the nature chorus, a bit garbled, but that was the gist of it. The main argument was it would be better for the trees, but also the humans would not suffer. Our African rookies noted that of course, and – you wouldn’t believe it, all six of them have already left us and are back with the revolution. If you are back in the French lands, you must try another attempt against that men. He is like a new Jean Moulin, very clever, wise, and absolutely irreproachable. He and his people convert our followers by the dozens, what do I say, by the hundreds. Small fry, but even big fish, like Markus and Stefan Nah, inventors of the mRNA anti-Covet vaccine, Elon Deer, inventor of AI and space travel for the 21^st century, and even Jeff Kiss, ex-Amazon tycoon. Deer and Kiss now sit in the South of France, somewhere close to the Côte d’Azur and do research on how to detect our logistics stations with an intranet app.”

“Pontonier’s people, I mean his family, friends, and close contacts are also very good,” added young Jordan. “They went into our block at the first of May rally, simply talked to them, got all the hurt out of them, for example, that they have to obey bosses and pay for their things, while the revs can decide everything themselves and get all their basics for free.”

“That is how they discovered our logistics station and also wrecked our regional assemblies for ÉdF – the remaining cross-regional electricity grid –, and SFCF – the interregional train network. Even the brown cells we had been able to form in there got disbanded,” moaned Thomas Rutte.

***

“You’ll have to be very careful this time,” Fritz Schneid told the other tree hitchhikers as they called themselves. “The first time around at the small village that had just been the victim of the Boko Haram raid, they were afraid of us. This time at the monastery they will be prepared. They know or at least suspect we are coming to harm them. We have intercepted something about a special harp network which will go both through the roots and mushroom in between them as well as through the air, and will allow the trees to alert each other and the humans and other animals once we mount them, so that a militia brigade can come and pick us off.”

Conference of the Counter-revolutionaries, by Jean-Fidel and Lénina

“Well, then we’ll have to make it very difficult for them to do that,” said Sawiris. “What about giving the trees some activating neurotransmitters just like they do, Glutamate, Dopamine, and Acetylcholine, but synthetic ones, so we can have more of them ready? And then when the stress shows, some restraints, GABA and Serotonin and white phosphor? The neurotransmitters may confuse them, but they won’t kill them. The white phosphor will finish them of unless they immediately stop themselves in their tracks and start to mend their leaves, if not the whole stem.”

“And the upshot in their revolutionary debates will be that the March of the Trees is too demanding for the trees and the project needs to be abandoned.” Ricky Handsome rubbed his hands in London. “And that will disappoint the whole ecological wing.”

“Not only that,” added Mick McLeary from Dublin. “The ecological thrust is vital to the whole revolution. The assemblies are functioning, democracy and self-management are working, you just need hierarchy checks. The economic thrust is in good nick as well. All goods are free in the trefoil, they’ll need to check on our crypto trade, and that is it. If it weren’t for us, they’d just need to do material checks. Culture – they’ve got to make sure that we don’t turn their free cultural centres into low-brow paying dance theatres and brothels. Come on, that’s nothing for the idealists! And then the security thrust! Make sure the last adherents of the Cause either flock back to them or go entirely criminal and violent, thus discrediting themselves. For a real Marxist, that must be excruciatingly boring! So, without the ecological thrust, and in connection with that, overcoming the last vestiges of imperialism and colonialism, the whole rosy revolutionary future will be grey boredom only. And we may get the state, free markets, and even Mr. Pappberger’s beloved aircraft carriers, drones, and tanks back sooner than you can say Limarna.” Limarna was a counter-revolutionary think-tank, dating from pre-revolutionary times, the abbreviation of Liberté, Marché, Nation.

“Well, but if the revolutionaries are so bored and boring, why are we losing so many people, and why can’t we attract any new ones?” asked Anne.

“Because of their brain-washing,” Marion Le Pen seconded her.

“What brain-washing?” asked Fritz. “They are allowed to raise any topic. The moderators change every hour. They can discuss things until the cows come home.”

“Well,” said Aliko. “The optimistic view of Nasif, Ricky, and Mick does not quite win it but let’s give it a chance. What would you need to make it happen?”

“A super-quick production and extra-fast delivery of the pro-march, activating tonic as well as the slow-down one. I have workshops that could do them in Egypt, but we’d have to get them to the monastery in no time. Boats and vehicles are out of the question, much too slow. My people might search around for some planes, but I can’t promise anything. Fritz, Édouard, and Arnaud, you have mastered these brown beams, correct? Would they be able to transport several heavy cases of dirty chemicals?”

The three barons waved their hands in the air, signalling tolerance, if not total safety.

“We shall try,” Thomas said with somewhat more cheek. “But they would need a thorough material check upon arrival. Is there a lab somewhere close to the monastery? It can be makeshift, but we need good microscopes and monitors as well as testing kits, you’d know Nasif and Fritz, or must we ask that Arvo in Tallinn?”

Chapter 5. “Let’s take a Ride!”

At the Monastery, by Alexandra and Jean-François

“There is lab at the monastery that you could use,” a young, diffident voice popped up somewhere from the off. “It is a medical lab, not a scientific lab, but it might do you just for a quick integrity check.”

“Who are you?” asked Thomas, almost insulted that his request had been too easy to fulfil. “Do you work at the monastery?”

“I am a novice, a young monk, but I know the lab from long ago. I am from this area. When we had Covet-19, we all had to get tested and vaccinated there, I was a baby back then, and my parents already had to get examined and checked against Ebola.”

“How come you are intraline?”

“I am a friend of Nasif’s,” the young man said, and to general consternation, Nasif nodded and said, “Yes, I hired this young man. He is trustworthy.”

“What is your name?” asked Fritz.

“My name is Modou, I am from the area,” the voice reasserted. Unfortunately, there was no picture to be seen, not even an avatar.

“Could you get us a key to the said lab?” asked Aliko. “Or rather not us, but our friends here, from the French and the German lands. We need to test a tree tonic, you know to help the trees during their march. You are going to hold an experimental march soon, aren’t you?”

“Yes, in a week’s time, three as a matter of fact. Two will be standard endurance tests. Number one will be, can the trees advance for four to six metres an hour, meaning about 150 metres a day for about a week, and then strike root again, forming a nice forest just like here by the monastery but a kilometre or so to the North. The second test will be similar, except that it will run for two weeks already, and our experimental trees will strike root about 2 km to the North. And the third and subsequent ones, because we might need a few control runs, will be on the uses of neuro-transmitters. We want to accelerate the march with pro-active neurotransmitters, then slow it down with restraining ones. Just to help the trees cope, obviously, we want to make sure that the trees do not suffer any damage during these strenuous marches. Our biochemical engineers and ecologists, we have some visiting from the French lands just like you, have brought some equipment to test their tonics, so you could probably use that for yours as well.”

“Oh,” said Nasif, “but you did not tell them about us, did you?”

“No,” said Modou. “Not yet. After all, we have only just met.”

“Well, don’t tell them. You see, we are friends, but we want to surprise them. One fine day, they will see us in the lab, and then we shall have breakfast together.”

Modou laughed. “Breakfast is at six o’clock at the monastery, lunch at 12, supper at 7 o’clock. I’ll tell the brothers and sisters on kitchen duty you are coming. When would you like to come?”

Fritz was about to tell him not to tell anything at all to anyone, but then checked himself, because it would be highly suspicious. The whole of equatorial and sub-Saharan Africa, or at least the North-West were getting ready to support these tree marches. It was a question of revolutionary honour. So, why would Nasif and his friends be so secretive?

“We don’t know yet,” he said. “We’ll let you know. We’ll come late at night or early in the morning, do our tests, and then have breakfast with everybody afterwards.”

“Do you have any other guests except our comrades, the Illyrians?” asked Arnaud. Let the young man think they knew each other well. That way he might tell the others less for fear of intruding into a well-established relationship.

“No, just those six,” said Modou. “And how many will you be?” He still seemed to be worried about what to tell the kitchen.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Stérilé. “We’ll bring our own food. Remember, we’ll have worked all night, we’ll have needed some pick-ups along the way.”

Parrot Militia, by Zelim-Philippe and Julie

When they arrived two nights later on a brown beam, there was a sign at the door with clumsy Latin and Arabic hand-writing informing them that the key would be under the stone by the big tree.

“Which big tree?” asked Thomas, angry already. “There are quite a few around here.”

“I think he means the one over there, in the direction of the main square, not one of the trees in the bushes, that would be less safe,” suggested young Jordan. And indeed, following his advice, from under a large stone they managed to pull out a small key that happened to fit the door of the lab. No more security than that. No keypads with passwords, no alarm system, and most definitely, no human guards. There were a number of local parrots flying around though, two grey-scarlet and two charcoal maroon ones. The birds immediately started questioning them in simplified nature-speak that most humans, especially younger ones, could already understand these days.

“What do you seek here in the middle of the night?”

“Are you Illyrians?”

“Are you here for the tonics?”

“Yes, we are,” said Ronald who loved dogs, and therefore, was conversant in nature-speak although he was no longer the youngest and certainly not the most moral. “We just want to give them a brief material-check.”

Fritz stamped on his foot so hard that he howled and sent an angry bio-message: “Don’t you know that parrots repeat everything? Not a word anymore from any of you. We go on delta wave.”

“Roger that!” replied Nicky, more amused than anything. Meanwhile Fritz and Thomas, aided by Jordan, as well as Édouard and Arnaud and their girl-friends, Anne and Marion, who had learned some rudimentary lab skills at the Red flames workshop, got the Petri dishes with the pro-active, marked P, and the restraining tonic, marked R out of the cool-box and slotted them under the microscope. The monitors being on standby – everything looked as if people had worked here recently –, jumped on immediately and began to churn out data.

“Prior tests on these substances have been run already at the following labs…” And there followed a list of workshop, village, agglo quarter, and university labs organised by continent. In Europe, three labs, one each in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had passed both P and R. Obviously, that would be Viesturs Volt’s influence. A fourth lab in the neighbouring Russian lands had flunked them though, with a qualifier, “contains synthetic ingredients forbidden by this village assembly.” If these got removed, it might be a pass.

“Hooray, in Africa, a lab in Egypt, and another one in Nigeria have also passed them,” said Nasif, reading the results from another monitor. “The Egyptian one is mine of course. And thanks, Aliko, for the good offices.”

“And one in Johannesburg and one in Toronto as well,” added Nicky, looking over his shoulder. “That is my steward, Patrick, down south, and probably Henri, Louis, or Larry in North America. I wonder why there isn’t any positive news from Rome?”

“I talked about it with Fernando the other night,” bio-messaged Nasif. “The Roman labs are too well checked. And they have these new red trade union cells, running extra exams, and making it harder to form brown cells.”

“O.k., then let’s see what the friendly robot says in this establishment!” said Nicky who did not seem to take the whole thing too seriously.

“It rejects them!” Thomas read out the result via-bio-message. “For containing unapproved and potentially harmful oil derivatives, witness the brown and grey coloured sections on the transmitters you can see on the picture.”

“Oh, too bad,” said one of the parrots, flapping its wings and feigning sympathy. “Let’s see whether you can come up with an override. Hint: oil derivatives need to be classified as harmless.”

“Merci,” messaged Fritz, and he and Jordan immediately set about looking up the computer’s data bases. While they were working, there was a knock on the door, and five more Africans burst in.

“We and you are all friends of Modou, one of them said. I am Fatou, brigadier of the tree march brigade of,” and he mumbled which sounded like something between Bamako and Ouagadougou. “Ah, we must be in Burkina Faso somewhere,” bio-messaged Aliko. “I just summoned our beam on the bases we had from these French revs intercepts.”

“And these are Ibrahim, Cheikh, Amadou, and young Moussa,” comrade Fatou had continued, ignoring the bio-messages. “We are interested in your tonics and want to invite you to take a ride on the trees with us.”

The other villagers at the Lab, by Che and Georgette

Now, how on earth had these villagers found out about their presence and the scam, wondered Fritz? They had sworn Modou to secrecy. Well, they now knew what to think of his discretion.

‘Step on it,’ he biomessaged his helpers, which included Anne and Marion who had been so astute as to pull out the connecting cable between microscopes and mainframes. “So pleased to meet you,” he said to the villagers. “We’ll be right with you. We just had a false negative here.” No use denying that. They would have seen it still, writ large on the big monitors. “That must have been a mistake. We are restarting the computers, running the check again, and this time it should work out.”

Meanwhile, Arnaud remembered that they had brought along both P and R in various concentrations. “Just take a dish with a lower one,” he bio-messaged Anne and Marion. “And how far are you with the databases?” he turned back his focus to Fritz, Thomas and Jordan.

Édouard had the sang-froid to step into the view the Africans had of the monitor Fritz and the others were working on and to start a diversion. “Bonjour, he said, I am Édouard Balladur. I work with Le Matin media channel. May I take an interview from you? How did you hear about the march of the trees, and what do you think of the idea to use neuro-transmitters to help them along a bit? I won’t say micro-manage because that has a capitalist connotation, doesn’t it? You might say just speed them up where necessary, and slow them down where required, also for security reasons.”

The five Africans had just concurred on young Moussa to handle this question, when Anne and Marion from the monitor reconnected to the microscope, and bulky Ronald peeking over Fritz and Co.’s shoulders also blocking the other monitor, all cheered at the same time. “Passed. Hooray! Our tonics passed the material check.” And as Anne and Marion, as well as Édouard and Ronald stepped out of the way, the five villagers could indeed admire the fake result the capexogarchs had just produced. Material check 20-4-02 approved, it said in green on the monitor by the microscope. Tonic GDA-P passed, tonic GS-R passed. There was still some small print below on having to check for oil-based synthetics, but for the moment the fasco hackers seemed to have succeeded in knocking out that requirement, opening the door to their scamming.

“We’ll tell you more about our idea when we are in the trees. For now, let’s take a ride!”

“Don’t you want to have breakfast first?” Modou asked who had appeared in the background. “You can join the march later!” He looked a little older than his voice had sounded, and not quite like a monk. He even showed some stubbles from having recently shaved off his beard, but the capexogarchs were so happy about their faked material check that they did not really look at him too closely. In fact, they just stormed past him in the direction of the bushes where the trees were getting ready for their exploit by first loosening and then slowly extricating their roots from the ground.

“Let’s take a ride!” by Jean-Wadi and Zafira

“Have you ever travelled on a tree before?” asked Fatou while they quickly organised in five groups of three, each group containing one villager. “You must have, because why else would you be willing to even skip breakfast for it?”

“Oh, yes, it’s marvellous. It is like sailing on a dinghy,” Fritz informed him. “Or riding on a camel’s back. I tried it the other day. Elephant- or horse-riding is not quite the same. With a horse you can go very fast, of course. And good riders tell me they get a feeling of being one with the horse, so I suppose there is something to it. Riding on an elephant, we did it the other day in the grassland, is like taking a promenade on your sofa. You observe the landscape, the plants and animals. It is special alright, but not quite like riding on a tree. Riding on a tree gives you a unique feeling of going up and down that you get on the water mostly, but riding on a tree is akin to it.” Thomas was the third person in their group, and he was his usual morose self, so the conversation soon stopped, and the negotiations on the scam the capexogarchs wanted to run were left to Nicky, Nasif, and Cheikh’s, and Édouard, Arnaud, and Ibrahim’s groups. More about them soon.

Jordan, Ronald, and Amadou’s group got along on a manly level, while the group of four, Aliko, Anne, Marion, and young Moussa had different experiences. All seven of them later on denied anything had happened. “It was interesting to see the various neurotransmitters under the microscope,” Anne said. “I had thought of them as chemical molecules like you study them in school, but in reality they have shapes and colours and they move, a bit like waves.”

“Yes,” said Moussa. “We’ve studied them at school as well, and we have even drawn blown-up versions of the difference between all-natural and partly synthetic tree tonics. The former will get approved in material checks, the latter usually won’t.”

Anne looked into his open, handsome face and wondered whether he had spotted or at least guessed at their forgery. It is the same as in a vaccine. The agents or neuro-transmitters get transported in nanobots so that they can be released at the right moment. Like on this picture. And he bio-messaged her an excerpt from his notes at school. The synthetic ones are brownish and square, the natural ones are like leaves. And now look at this picture of natural versus synthetic neurotransmitters! Can you see the difference?” “The natural ones are all one colour, the synthetic ones have yellowish-brown joints,” said Anne. “They look sick.” “That is because they are,” nodded Moussa. “And they will make animals, including humans sick, and trees as well. So much for pharmaceutical medicine. Sorry to tell you this! You are beautiful. It is not your fault.” And he cupped her face into his hands, drew her close, and entered her with only the slightest resistance from her. “Look at that,” said Aliko. He and Marion were sitting on a different branch fork, slightly below Moussa and Anne who were lighter and had chosen to sit somewhat higher up. “They are really going at it up there in the tree, doing what comes naturally. I think, we should follow their example. Mme Marion, may I make love to you? She got red in the face, shook her head, but did not offer much resistance either when he pulled her closer. The process was lightly more laborious, but in the end-up, he was able to enter her as well. “All is well that ends well!” he sighed, and like the five others Marion and he had trouble making the get-away when the comrades dinosaurs finally attacked in earnest.

Chapter 6. The Scam

“You could organise Tree Safaris!” by Jean-Vladimir and Adilah

“We may be getting ahead of ourselves,” Nicky was meanwhile telling Cheikh. “But since riding on a tree is so pleasurable, you could turn it into quite some business, touristic, for instance. You could organise tree safaris.”

“But you forget, we no longer take money,” objected Cheikh.

“Well, then you could exchange your touristic services against some other good you want from the Northerners. Listen, one thing just occurred to me. You could help us produce our tree tonics,” said Nasif. “We only have one workshop on African soil at the moment and that is in Egypt and that is far away from North West Africa…”

“Let alone South Africa where we also want to organise them to regreen the savannah,” said Nicky. “You see I am from Southern Africa. It may sound parochial, but I also want things to get green again down there.”

“Of course,” nodded Cheikh. “We might think about setting up a workshop close to our village, maybe with the help of the Illyrians, but we should welcome your expertise as well. Tell me, are your neurotransmitters all natural like theirs?”

“Naturally,” said Nasif. “We take them right from the sap of the tree. Sometimes we bridge some gaps with molecules we produce, but we add nothing they would not add themselves. You have to think of these neurons like little worms, they mend themselves, we just help them do it.”

Cheik seemed unconvinced, and for a while the three of them just listened intraline to the conversation going on in the tree marching next to theirs.

“We’ll give you credit!” by Bashir and Zelim-Philippe

“It may not be easy to get all the equipment to do this stuff,” Édouard and Arnaud were deep in their negotiations with Ibrahim. “But we would give you a credit, a crypto-credit, so you don’t have to give up any of your wood, bananas, cocoa, coffee, whatever you trade to get to things.”

“Oh, no way,” said Ibrahim. “No crypto or any other money substitute. That is against the principles of the revolution. It is not needed. All goods travel in the economic circuit. The farm workers produce food for everybody, the industrial workers manufactured goods, including medicine, and I suppose you could consider these tree tonics a sort of medicine. And the service workers provide transport, teaching, medical services and entertainment, and all three groups get the products they need from the two other groups and on the basis of mutual solidarity and trust. We have no need for money!” He stopped for a moment, looking distressed, as if he was being forced to voice an argument he did not want. “Africa does not have that many industrial workshops as Europe and North America, you might say, and its service sector is also underdeveloped still. But we have made giant steps in the past twenty years. Splitting up large enterprises in mining, manufacturing, and also transport into small self-managed workshops with a maximum of fifty workers has been very good for us. It has allowed us to expropriate virtually all foreign firms. It has enabled us to set up small workshops for farm tools or household goods in areas which up to then had simply not had any such tools and goods except for the occasional Chinese import. Now we farm regions can produce all our equipment ourselves. We also produce our own natural medicines and organic fertilisers and pesticides. And the tree tonic would be something in between a tool and a natural medicine or organic fertiliser. We don’t want comrades Aliko, Nasif, or Nicky to tell us what to do. Wherever we find workshops that are not self-managed but under their tutelage, we close them down and reopen them as self-managed enterprises. You said you work for Le Matin, I know your channel, just like l’Huma, has reported on such reappropriations by the working class. They seem to be going on all the time in the French lands. L’Huma has also reported on such cases here in Africa.”

“Look, you should talk to our bankers,” interrupted Arnaud. “They are very nice, not so many Europeans but Americans mainly, except for Tino Cryptolla. Let’s see whether I can get him intraline.”

Tino was there in an instant, sounding constructive and passionate. “We are no longer the old-style capitalist bankers that will lend to a start-up and then ruin it with interest payments,” he said. “We simply make sure that you and your fellow workers have everything you need just like the revolutionaries do with your markets and share points. Well, in our case, the market is a website or intranet page, and then the good gets delivered, usually custom-made, or the house built as a unique gem via a logistics station near you.”

“I don’t know of a single logistics station anywhere in North-West Africa, not here, not in the Sahel, not in Nigeria…”

“Well, to tell the truth, in Nigeria there might be one or two,” interrupted Nicky. “I happen to know because I own them.”

“All your organisations do is exclude us from the normal economic circuit. We can’t use the markets or share points any longer, because we don’t work at a workshop they know. For the same reason, we can’t get treatment at a policlinic anymore, we can’t use red and bronze beams anymore, and we can’t even send our kids to school anymore, or they will get harassed, because their parents work for the class enemy.”

“How do you know that?” asked Cryptolla.

“Oh, because I have talked to Nigerians and also to French people. Their counter-revolutionary workers are just slaves. And when they get sick and old, they can’t get anything anymore.”

“We provide consumer credit in situations like that!” Cryptolla boasted.

“But with whom to use it?” asked Ibrahim. He straightened his back and caressed the branch he was sitting on. “So, even if your tonics were as natural as the revolutionary ones and as good for the trees as we hope theirs are, working for you would place us into the off. As individuals, we would go under, and even if a whole village assembly tried it, the neighbouring villages would have to come and liberate us. ‘You are starving yourselves!’ they would say. ‘To please the capexogarchs. Why?’”

“You’ll make the tonics!”, by Maher and Karla

“Well, then we, comrades Nicky and I, have a good idea for you,” said Nasif. “You make our tonic for us as a self-managed firm, we won’t tell you how to do it, and where to get things…”

“You make it appear as if those were your tonics. You did not invent them. There were many researchers world-wide interested in the march of the trees who simultaneously discovered them or something like them to speed up the march of the trees or slow it down in case it was becoming unsafe.”

“That may be,” said Nicky. “But that is why Nasif is saying, we’ll leave it all to you. You will only get some crypto or vouchers as a bonus for your work which you will do as self-managed entities. That way you need not incur any trouble with the revolution. I use this organisation with my deconstruction-reconstruction workers. They love it!”

“If you are so harmless, why did you or your quislings attack our village? They said it was Boko Haram, but it was you, imperialists-colonialists in disguise. And why are we riding on trees anyway? That is your idea, and we are burdening them down that way. They should throw us off like these water buffalos would, look, which are grazing over there.”

“They look familiar,” said Édouard. “They were there the other night when we escaped as well. Oh my god, and you say that was your village. Friends, we are in mortal danger!” He shouted at the top of his lungs. “These blackies have figured us out. And look, what are these monsters there, coming towards us from behind the buffalos?”

Chapter 7. A most Horrific Back-Up Option

Lurdusaurus nibbling on Nasif’s, Nicky’s and Cheik’s tree, by Antoine and Murielle

As the huge vegan dinos approached the trees and even as they began to nibble on the bark already, the capexogarchs were still trying to explain themselves: “The scam could not be simpler,” said Aliko. “We sell the villages the tonic or tonics, one with Glutamate, Dopamine, and Acetylcholine to boost the trees, the other with GABA and Serotonin to make them desist. As long as you pay, all will be good. If ever you stop, we or our agents will spray some white phosphor. The leaves of the trees will shrivel, the trees will lose their sap, dry out and die.

“Another situation in which we shall push the use of restraining neurotransmitters and of white phosphor is when the march of the trees is threatening to become too successful, not only in the villages that work with us, but in any village. We do not want this idea to triumph. If the revolutionaries ever succeed in it, we could kiss the idea of capitalism and the state good-bye.

“The last vestiges of our accustomed life-style would be out of the window as well. The return of the rain forest would most definitely mean the end of all agglos, roads, vehicles, even trains. Even we, crypto-trillionaires would be forced to live with the revs in their small hamlets and participate in their silly assemblies, because there would be nowhere to hide. Or if there were, no civilisational back-up, no logistics stations to deliver things, no sports clubs to train security men, no private policlinics to get treatment, and no workshops to print money and produce all the other things we need.”

“I have to agree with your sombre assessment. In forty years, my son who was just born a few weeks ago, would have no choice but to be a revolutionary,” Henri Uber moaned intraline. “I wonder why I am working so hard to guarantee him a good life.”

Spino and Cetio, by Faroukh and Sarah

While Lurdu was quite imposing as young as he was, he was not too hungry and just chewed on the bark for dramatic effect, glancing upward into the green canopy to see how the capexogarchs would take it.

Spino and Cetio were a different matter already.

“What’s that?” asked Nicky when a wet something touched him in back. He forced himself to spin around not too fast, so as not to disturb Nasif’s, Cheikh’s, and his tree from marching and was looking into the face of a giant horse, or maybe a rhino? Definitely, something in between a horse and a rhino, but a giant.

“Look what I’ve got here!” he said casually for maybe Cheikh or Nasif to save him should the beast turn out to be carnivorous, but then he saw that Cheikh had already climbed down the tree and was seeking council with some black brothers from a near-by village, probably.

“Well, then look what we’ve got,” Nasif now shouted as well, and when Aliko from a neighbouring tree dared look in his direction he saw his friend being fondled by a giant jaguar with a very long neck, or was it a giant giraffe?

“A Spino,” said Nicky’s voice from behind.

And at the very moment the titanic giraffe was giving Nasif a wet kiss with a mouth that almost covered his whole head, Aliko landed on the branch above him fully assembled. Maybe still euphoric from his making out with Marion, he had been able to use golden beam using will-power only. Bully to him! thought Nicky. If he availed himself of a patent for that, he would make quite a few crypto tokens. Both the revolutionary yellow as well as the counter-revolutionary brown beam required the traveller to disassemble to molecular state, then reassemble. The original golden beam had been discarded by both sides, because while it allowed you to travel even long distances with your body intact, it took quite a lot of energy, not only will-power but supplements of energy from an electricity works on the ground or at least a booster grenade to be unrolled over the beam before you boarded it.

“I think we better make a quick exit,” said Nasif once he could breathe again and immediately started to summon a brown beam. He had not seen Aliko arrive with the yellow beam and had not gotten any ideas nor pangs of jealousy from it. He wanted out of his relationship with Spino, and fast. More laughing than angry, the other two super-capexogarchs began to disassemble just like he did, and all three hopped on the beam when it arrived.

“The super-rich beam away…,” by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

Looking down one last time, before their faces with their eyes like the rest of their bodies crumbled away, the three of them got a temper tantrum as the brown beam usually induced.

A lot of villagers were watching, apparently unperturbed as two large Afrovenators, not as tall as Lurdu, Cetio, and Spino but more toothy were chasing around their eight European associates. One of them had already seized Jordan’s shirt, and the three contras from the German lands, Fritz, Thomas, and Ronald seemed to be taking their time coming from somewhere to pull him out of Afro I’s way.

Meanwhile Afro II seemed to fancy Marion Le Pen. For the moment, he was ruffling up her hair with his protruding teeth as if they were a comb. Anne and her were wailing at the top of their voices. Édouard and Arnaud were also shouting, but so as to alert the villagers and get them to help.

***

For a moment at least, the African crème de la crème crumbled fully and the three of them lost command not only of their eye-sight but felt nothing. When they gradually reassembled and landed, they were already several dozen kilometres to the East in the middle of another tree march, this one not tormented by dinos luckily. “Quick, let’s climb up this one!” said Nicky and pointed to a tall and strong tree advancing briskly towards the North on sturdy roots. And the other two followed, looking around whether there were maybe any attendants around. Luckily, there weren’t. It might have been one of the other two marches organised by the monastery, but which commanded less interest since the capexogarchs wreckers were not in it, or maybe another village band had organised it which was less hands-on than the monks and nuns were. Anyway, for now they were saved.

***

Back to the West, the German and the French capexogarchs had taken the cue from their African sponsors taking off on a brown beam and tried the same trick. They had summoned two beams and were about to get onto them and disassemble as they took off, when all eight of them all of a sudden got a terrible case of nerves.

“We cannot simply let that monster eat our Marion,” shouted Édouard.

The Angry Predators stall the Boches, by Olivier and Danièle

“Please help me, friends, please!” she herself moaned softly, as Arnaud already disassembling sprinted over from the brown beam. She was coming apart as well, because their summoning had included her obviously. Afro II, a bit surprised by the two of them disintegrating into colourful flakes – their clothes and even their backpacks were disassembling with them –, stepped back and let go of Marion’s hair for a moment. That was enough for Édouard and Anne to let their beam take a little curve to the left allowing Arnaud and Marion to jump on it. Then they were already disassembled and up into the sky already. After a moment, they as well reintegrated gradually, came down, and landed several dozen kilometres away to the North West, at the edge of another tree march.

Yet what a nightmare! The spontaneous dinosaur militia pursuing them was already there, this time represented by four small but hungry, carnivorous Megapnosauruses, who looked a bit like giant and very angry hyenas, yet green to harmonise with the regreening bushes and with teeth and jags like crocodiles.

Teased by the Megapnosauruses, by Josip and Rosa

“You humans are as ignorant and callous as you always were,” complained one of these megapnos. “This is why we had to come forward from the past and help our friends the humans, plants, and our descendants, the animals of today.” And he stretched out his tongue and began to lick Arnaud’s forehead as if he was a lolly.

When the eight of them got over a moment of total stupour, they turned around immediately, ran, and climbed into a few near-by marching trees. The megapnos, not lazy, immediately joined the column and followed the march like dogs would a caravan.

Towards the evening, miraculously, they disappeared. Some of the trees seemed to think that they had arrived at their final destination, slowed down, then stopped and began to strike root again. The others continued to advance, but at a much more casual night-time pace. Still, there weren’t any humans to be seen anywhere, until finally, it was almost dark already be it not for the stars lighting the sparsely regreened grassland, several Bedouins appeared on camels and driving four elephants, as if they had known they were there. “You are the patriots who wanted to travel to Niamey, weren’t you?”

“Yes, exactly.” Maybe Aliko, Nicky, and Nasif had made arrangements for them, thought Anne. How thoughtful of them!

“Well, coming to think of it, you can still continue for a while with the trees. Just to save the animals some weight. When the grassland passes into desert by tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, you just bio-message us and we or other fighters close by shall pick you up with elephants and camels. Don’t worry! You are in good hands! Your friends are awaiting you in Niamey!”

And then there were alone again with nothing but the stomping noise of the trees marching to keep them company. As if to belie their new friends’ assurances, another giant pre-historic monster materialised over the star-lit horizon. This time it was a Karchar.

Into the Karchar, by Zamir and Odile

And the megapnos were back as well running around as if to prevent them from getting down from the trees which were advancing inexorably right towards the jaw of the Karchar who seemed to be waiting for them, growling.

“I have a good idea!” said Fritz. “This march of the trees is getting too successful. Let us give them some of the R-tonic, with our synthetic Gaba and Serotonin transmitters. Open your backpacks, each of you should have some flasks of it in there. That will slow them down. And if they don’t, we give them some white phosphor, I’ve still some in my breast pocket, but we should all have some in our backpacks as well.”

Yet when they opened the flasks marked R-tonic and had poured it down branch holes and other fissures in the trees where they would find the sap, something terrible happened. Their trees reacted in exactly the opposite way from the one predicted on the basis of the serum’s composition printed on the flask. They sped up their march and cantered, you might almost say galloped in the direction of the Karchar even faster.

“Merde!” shouted Fritz Schneid. “Hey, what’s that? Stop it, you idiots.” And he hit the branch he was sitting on as if he could stop the roots from speeding that way.

“Could they have switched the labelling of the tonics, maybe while we were fending off the dinos, or maybe even earlier when we were chatting and making love?” asked Jordan.

“Could be,” said Ronald Gunpump. “Why don’t we try the white phosphor then? Apply the one from your breast pocket first, Fritz, to see whether it works at all. They would not have tampered with that.”

Fritz nodded and sprayed the toxin onto a branch not too close, motioning the others to put on face masks. The leaves immediately shrivelled, and the wood the spray had touched immediately discoloured and then began to look a lot older. “Bingo!” he howled. “Do the same with your kits for your trees and those around, then get off and let’s run East. That should be the direction of Niamey. Once we are well of the Karchar’s way, we can bio-message the Bedouins.”

“Why don’t we immediately beam non-stop to Niamey?” asked Arnaud, while everybody got off their trees and sprayed. Édouard, Arnaud, Fritz, Thomas, and Ronald even tried their GAD, glutamate, acetylcholine, dopamine, in other words, the pro-active tonic as well, in hopes that maybe the flasks had been exchanged, and the speed-up tonic would now do the slow-down trick. Then they ran as fast as the rough terrain, which was starting to look more like desert already, as well as the presence of the two ladies would permit.

Thomas laughed a cynical salvo. “Why can’t we take a beam? Very simply, because we don’t know where we are going. Niamey is an agglo of more than a million, and while at this point, it seems to be more or less fully in our, meaning the Cause’s hands, there might be pockets of revolutionary resistance, and what if we like dunces land right in the middle of one of those?”

Oh, no, he had just said that when two giant Karchars surrounded by a band of megapnos appeared right in front of them. “Very good!” one of them said in nature-speak, which miraculously they could all understand even though not trained in it, just from the effect of bio-wifi. “Looks like a good dinner. You take four, I take four! Each of us gets one of the ladies, and I am getting too fat, so I get the lean young man, you can take the big beefy one.”

Desperate, Anne and Marion already said their last prayers, while the men tried to bio-message their recent acquaintances with all their might. Yet the way bio-messaging usually works presupposes having at least an approximate idea of where the recipient or recipients are at the moment. They did not have a clue. Why weren’t the revolutionary Aurora maps available as a brain app? Where was their village, or had they put up a tent for the night?

“It’s hopeless,” Édouard advised the others after a moment’s trying. “Let’s get back to this monk and these villagers we tree-travelled with, Modou, Fatou, Ibrahim, Cheikh, Amadou, and Moussa. We are safer in their holding cells than here in the middle of the desert in the fangs of the dinosaurs. Even if they let us go, we would still have no water, no food. We would die of thirst and hunger, miserably.”

While the bio-messages to Modou, the monk and the other villagers did not have the expected effect of taking them back by beam to the forest of plenty, two brown beams did materialise, and as he jumped on one of them, Fritz simply shouted, following a sudden intuition. “Back to where we were when we sprayed the phosphor! Put your face masks on!”

They did, and after all that had gone wrong that day were surprised to find themselves at exactly the same place within a few seconds. Strangely enough, the trees they had sprayed so voluptuously before were still close, advancing in their slower night mode. In other words, apart from the initial sprint after the wrong slow-down tonic, they had not reacted to either the speed-up or the slow-down one.

And above all, the trees were as green and alive as before the spraying. In other words, the revs seemed to have messed with the white phosphor as well. Moreover, the two Karchars from the desert and the megapnos had travelled with them, or these were different ones, and were growling and howling, getting ready to devour them.

Chapter 8. MS – the Moral Strength Virus

“We saved you, now you give us the tonic!”, by Bashir and Sevim

In fact, the dinos were already snapping for the fascos, when all eight of them suddenly dropped unconscious. Maybe it had all been a nightmare, Jordan thought in his dream. Oh, had he only stayed in the French lands!

He woke up looking into the faces of the other villagers, whom even he and his hard-boiled pals had not suspected to be from Omsinbaba’s village and close comrades of the Illyrians.

“Well, here you go! We saved you. Now you give us what you’ve got left of the tonics and the white phosphor and go back to Europe. And no more business with the march of the trees!” said Ibrahim. “Neither here, nor there.”

“Not necessarily!” said Fritz. “After all, you switched them around and or disabled the tonics, so that none of them would do the trick anymore. The only package that still had some effect was the one I was carrying here, and he tapped on his breast pocket.

Yet then he turned to his backpack as if to pull out some spoiled chemicals to prove his point, and Jordan and the others could hear his clear bio-message via delta waves. “Let’s give them the MA virus. Just spray it right into their mouths if you can. Eyes, noses, ears, also good. At least the MA should give them a heavy flu as well as lethargy and cynicism to stop them from going home even to their wives and children, or to anywhere else or anything that keeps them going.”

“It’s the moral atrophy virus!” they heard Anne bio-whisper to Marion . “I’ve had it myself. It is terrible. It is a bit like LEP-AL, Lymphatic-Encephalitic-Pulmonary Syndrome leading to Asymptomatic Leprechaunitis, remember, the Covet variant from Years 18-19. It will give you nightmares you would not believe you had in you. And it affects animals and plants as well.”

The MA virus, by Maurice and Lulu

“How long is the incubation period?” Jordan bio-messaged the others, while he searched for the packages marked MA in his backpack, and as he dived out of his backpack, several packages marked MS placed close to the opening and one in hand, unpacked, open switch activated and ready for spraying, he heard Fritz groan, in total despair.

“Oh, no, another f**k-up, it is their revolutionary antidote!”

“Mixed-up infusions, first case it ever happened,” The Moral Strength Virus, by Josip and Rosa

For most of the fasco team, Fritz’s lament arrived too late, they were already spraying, and the effect was remarkable. Where a moment ago, the five villagers had been still willing to joke around and tell the hungry dinos to wait, they now looked at all eight of the neo-Vichyites much more angrily, and allowed the two Karchars with the megapnos around them to advance in their direction without any efforts at disciplining them. On the other hand, the dinos in another show of moral strength seemed to have understood that the fascos were their human friends’ prisoners, they just came a bit closer, then settled down, growling, barking, and baring their teeth menacingly.

Modou, the monk also showed up from in back and distributed handcuffs that Fatou and the others applied to all eight of them, even Anne and Marion. “It is the first time this ever happened,” continued Fritz. “A case of mixed-up infusions. We meant to take the MS antidote, to make sure there is no corruption in bartering with these tonics, and no harm gets done to the trees in the effort at slowing them down. Instead we must have taken the enemy’s virus, the moral atrophy virus.”

Chapter 9. Saved by the Harp

“The tonics were the revolutionary ones!”, by Maher and Karla

“Don’t worry,” said Amadou. “And don’t try to joke with us. We should not even have talked to you. We realised the mistake when the dinosaurs were attacking. They are good judges of character. We made sure that all the tonics you carried were the revolutionary ones, and the Moral Strength virus you needed was indeed the one you carried. You had some white phosphor with you, that is more dangerous even than phosphate fertiliser which can have negative effects if applied in excess or when improperly material-checked. White Phosphor is an outright chemical weapon from pre-revolutionary times. They used it in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, if you remember. We don’t know who made it…”

Jordan hoped that they did not have Rheinmetall written all over their faces.

“And why you had it with you. We replaced it with an African flower powder that just smells good.” Fritz who was getting quite desperate, tried to reach into his trouser pockets as if hoping to find some real white phosphor still in them. Immediately, the two Karchars came yet closer, towering over him one in front and one in back, and one of the megapnos snapped for his hands when he pulled it out of his pocket.

“By the way,” he said. “How did you do that, I mean, exchange the tonics and the powder? How come we did not feel your hands in our backpacks? Mind you, we had the dinos as a diversion.”

“Maybe we shall find out about that in Niamey if we ever get there,” said Édouard and sighed. “Do you mind if I bio-message a report on the march of the trees to my channel Smartbox?”

“Oh, yes,” suddenly five other figures, who had remained silent so far in back and whom the fascos had just assumed to be other villagers looking on moved closer to the centre where a fire was burning to fend off the night cold.

“Salut, we are Omsinbaba, Maurice, Jean-Wadi, Jean-Saïd, and Olivier. Our senior comrade Patrick, one of the editors of l’Huma…”

Patrick immediately interrupted him intraline. “You know that now in the revolution, all Huma workers are automatically co-editors, I don’t know how you handle it at Smartbox?”

“In a similar way, of course,” said Édouard who felt very tired all of a sudden. “I was, we were travelling to Niamey to research this coup, actually, we are all journalists. My friend Anne and Arnaud here are from Le Figaro, I am associated with it as well as with Le Matin. You know I am a friend of Vincent Bolloré’s, the pre-revolutionary book magnate, the French Jeff Kiss if you will.” He rolled his eyes. “Marion and Jordan are just friends. And Fritz here and Thomas and Ronald are from, oh, you can’t even pronounce the name, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, that used to be a newspaper like Le Figaro, but now it is a media-channel as well. Is there any chance you could help us make it to Niamey after we have transferred our articles, podcasts, and videos on the march of the trees, I mean?”

He left this standing in the room for a while, as EU grandee Claude Juncker would have said, for it to blow over nicely. The five French blackies as he called them to himself, although Maurice looked quite white, “but, you know,” he explained it to Anne later, “the more you get to do with them, the darker they become. The five French blackies looked nice enough,” and he remembered Ronald Gunpump talking about their comrade Jean, who was like a new Jean Moulin, a vicious anti-fascist, who would not stop until they were all rehabilitated. So, it was maybe worth their while to show contrition early in the game. “Maybe tomorrow?”

“Yes, the dinos did their bit,” said Jean-Wadi, ignoring his pleading. “But essentially we did it via blue beam. A revolutionary blue beam can disable harmful chemical weapons. And now we have found out that if charged well with nanobots carrying the right ingredients, in this case, plenty of glutamate, acetylcholine, and dopamine, it can literally reverse the properties of a serum.”

Amadou looked proudly at the Karchars. “And we made another discovery. These dinos came forward through a time tunnel, which nowadays you can summon like a beam. Jean-Wadi, would you like to explain further?”

“Yes, when our parents grew up, time travel was still a laborious process. You needed to borrow a time capsule which was only kept at some museums and laboratories. You and your fellow travellers had to hold on to it, so as to guarantee you would really land at the same place, you could only go into the past, not into the future, and you always had to limit your travel to one day and bring back the capsule during the opening hours of the museum. Yet recently, we discovered that the blue-violet time tunnel through which the time capsule would take you can be summoned quite without a time capsule only by will-power like the revolutionary red, bronze, yellow, and as a matter of fact, the blue beams as well. When you go into the past these days, you can stay as long as you like. And the time tunnel will even allow you to travel into the future if only you accept the risk of staying there, or to play it safe limit your future-oriented travel to short goal-oriented missions.”

“By the way, one specialty of the dinosaurs is fasco-hunting, as you may know,” said Moussa, “because they know nasty humans from way back, but they have other uses as well in these dry, sparsely populated areas. Dinos can store water, they can serve as bio-wifi towers, especially the large ones, but also the smaller ones, since the intranet can travel at several levels, at tree-top or bird level, at grass level, and even underground. And in the agglos, they can help with deconstruction-reconstruction.”

“In this case, the White Phosphor is just powder, the dinos are back!”, by Maher and Karla

“I have another question,” asked Cécile intraline from the garden colony at Illyria, entirely ignoring the fasco’s presence and Édouard’s lies. “That has a sobering effect,” Édouard remembered later. “It seems as if you are being rehabilitated already.”

“What if comrade Fatou and the others from comrade Omsinbaba’s and Fofana’s village had not been actors, what if they really had pacted with Messieurs les Fascos? Then they might be one, if not the only village out in all of North-West Africa. I wonder because I am researching this question for other continents in the context of my university entry project. Comrades, could you imagine any situation in which you would have really been tempted by their scams?”

“Well, if capitalism had been back fully, not just these few saboteurs, we might have been forced to howl with the jackals,” said Moussa. “And then some of their gadgets, like private vehicles and planes might have looked tempting again. Yet then again, we would have wondered, what is more interesting, to live in the harp with animals, even dinos, plants and many different kinds of harpoids, in the forest, instead of on a highway, get everything for free, instead of having to slave for it, decide on everything, instead of being bossed around, participate in the development of revolutionary technology, instead of being kept busy with dumbing-down chores…”

“Exactly,” said Fofana, “kept busy and dumbed down or forced to immigrate like we were, to the French lands, or obliged to work in a mine down in the South of Africa.”

“In our Communist revolution, we receive everything for free through the economic circuit linking producers, consumers, and users just for the fifteen hours of socially necessary chores, most of which we are trying to automate. And even when we haven’t succeeded in improving the productive forces to that extent yet, we already work in self-managed brigades, and the foreman changes once a day at least. If we are unhappy with an input, tool, or product, we place a material check. If we discover an authoritarian type, we run a hierarchy leak. We have plenty of time for creative activities, we can go intraline with comrades in villages all over the world. Why should a whole village cut itself off? A sick and sorry individual or a small deviant group maybe, but a whole village of over a hundred people, many families? Why should they? Anyway, their problems could probably be solved by talking to others.”

“We had a case once,” said Cheikh. “But it was at the very beginning of the revolution when everybody was still learning the ropes. A village assembly complained that it was starving. We and the other villages sent more food to their market, but next month, they complained again. Then several villages including ours sent spontaneous militia brigades to investigate.”

“It was a case of corruption, wasn’t it?” guessed Arnaud.

“They did not have enough synthetic fertilisers?” supplemented Fritz Schneid, who had himself been an illegal NPK producer, “Because you revolutionaries had foolishly forbidden them all.”

“No, messieurs, you guessed wrong,” Cheikh grinned. “Comrade Cécile, what is your hypothesis?”

“Maybe they were producing the wrong crops, maybe they had been forced to produce only bananas and cocoa before the revolution and lacked bread crops?”

“Exactly, that is the correct answer, très bien, young comrade, they were still the victims of imperialist monoculture. Well, their problems only lasted for one more season. Then they had already changed their product mix, as it were, or the organisation of their fields, as we would put it. And so as for their still somewhat excessive harvest of bananas and cocoa beans not to rot, they concluded revolutionary barter deals with villages in the Algerian and the French lands.”

“There were similar problems until villages had determined the right number of animals for them to keep,” said Amadou. “To do well by the animals as well as by the humans.”

“Oh, don’t worry, we are still experimenting with that at Illyria as well,” said comrade Francine intraline.

“It is normal in self-management,” said Jana. “We all look permanently for the best organisation and methods, and everybody can propose their own ideas without any fear to be put down.”

“Another area where we Africans have had to experiment a lot is self-management of the block energy works,” said Omsinbaba. “Remember, Alain, I asked you about that on behalf of my father’s village in Year 15, for instance?”

“Yes, that was the time when the fascos were running their fake parts scheme to disrupt our block energy production,” Alain replied intraline. “This made us realise the danger that many villages and cooperatives might fall for their fasco scams and order environmentally harmful windmill- and water turbine shafts, solar panels, and insufficiently insulated and filtered rubbish incinerators.”

“Yes, but with your help they did not,” said Omsinbaba.

“Even Marcel Hunzinger, son of the nasty neo-Vichyite René Huntzinger helped us uncover their clandestine workshops,” comrade Alain said. “I wonder how long we will take to make this latest generation of bastards repent. I also wonder who will come over first. Maybe that simple merc Jordan, or even the failed media tycoon, Édouard Stérilé?”

Narrow escape, by Maurice and Lulu

“Well, you all know what happened,” Édouard told the dramatic story of their escape later when they sat in Niamey with Aliko, Nicky, and Nasif, as well as the Uberytes Henri, Louis, Fernando, Viesturs, and Larry, the bankers Robert, Mort, Jim, and Ron following from the ex-U.S. or Canada, and Tino from Vienna, or Berlin, was it?

“They dragged us to the next village, Karchars and megapnos still following to keep us docile. Then later on that same night, our Bedouin friends came. They galloped through the village on elephants. The revs had put us up in the school building, which was the only solid building, this hamlet was too small to have either a policlinic or a mosque. Anyway, the Bedouins got us out of there, sat us behind themselves onto their elephants, and then later on, when we had reached the desert, moved us onto camels. We were already several days hundreds of kilometres away when they even bothered to take off our hand-cuffs.”

“Could have been our guys, could have been theirs,” said Aliko non-committedly.

“Oh, mon Dieu,” said Arnaud. “The moral atrophy in it.”

“Well, they gave us some breakfast, lunch, and supper, they were less suspicious than the villagers and these Illyrians,” said Marion Le Pen.

“They’ve promised to work for us in Niamey as well, getting us from here to there in a transporter, standing guard, and so on, and weren’t loath to take forbidden crypto,” added Anne Dalgo.

“And they defended us against what was definitely a revolutionary ambush,” grinned Fritz Schneid. “It was early next morning. All of a sudden a big lion was blocking the road. Of course, half as imposing as the Karchars.”

“Stop!” said the lion, by Jean-Wadi and Zafira

“I already wanted to shoot him with a gun,” interrupted Ronald Gunpump. “I figured I had a chance. With these dinos in their hard shells, I would not have had a ghost’s in hell. The large ones are like tanks, and the megapnos would have ducked away too quickly.”

“Do you want to tell the story, or may I?” asked Édouard outraged. “One of the Bedouins gave Ronald a signal to lower his gun, then he and a few others started a conversation with the lion half in Fula, half in nature-speak or nature language. The lion’s wife and a cub showed up for a moment as well. After about half an hour, the lion yawned and left. We put down some pieces of meat we had left over from yesterday’s grill.

“He was hungry!” our friends explained. “It’s getting hotter and harder to hunt during the day. We asked whether they had been disturbed in any way by the march of the trees. He said ‘No!’. He and all animals of the grasslands and the savannah, he said, had welcomed it. More trees would mean more shade, maybe eventually more water and more prey as well. We asked whether he got along with the dinos. He just roared.”

“I remember that. He looked like he was laughing,” interjected Jordan.

“He, the lion king,” continued Édouard, “would give part of the meat, if we left any, to the megapnos, he said. They were just scary hyenas or cave crocodiles, something in between. And the Karchars and Afrovenators needed the humans. They were like big zoo animals. ‘As for the Lurdus, Cetios, and Spinos, their fate will depend on how well the march of the trees goes,’ Clarence, lion-king thought, ‘whether they can multiply and restore the forest and the true savannah. And that will depend on global cooling. You humans better keep the vehicles and airplanes well abolished, and the weapons of course, and even the train lines, you must keep them, how do they call it, sustainable? Otherwise all harpists – humans, animal, robots, and plants will be in trouble, and not only we lions!’”

“What a wise statement. Glad they did not kill him,” sighed comrade Annie as she listened to the bio-audio.

***

“One last thing,” concluded Omsinbaba. “The villagers have decided to rename my papa’s village to Marwan Barghouti cooperative, after the great pre-revolutionary Palestinian activist and thinker who spent over 25 years in prison and was liberated only with the revolution. We will be a cooperative similar to the Desmond Tutu cooperative in the Djiboutian lands and the Nelson Mandela cooperative on Lake Chad. And remember our South African friends Thobe and Sipho? You remember them, they came back from Ireland after Covet, Coflu, LEP-AL –that endless snake of vaccines that raised its ugly head during this journey as well, based on nanobots carrying poisons concocted by the capexogarchs.

Thobe and Sipho’s son Enzokuhle now lives in reconstructing Damaskus agglo with his wife Jahida, while their daughter Okuhle is studying agronomy and practicing it at the Desmond Tutu cooperative in Djibouti and the Nelson Mandela cooperative on Lake Chad. Our comrades Nelson, Dulcie, Thobe, and Sipho have finally founded a cooperative as well. And returning the compliments made to Tutu and Mandela, they have named it after a North African hero, the Muammar Ghaddafi cooperative near Mbombela in the Mpumalanga region in the North East of what used to be South Africa. Together with Mamadou’s village in the Congo, we shall promote the march of the trees, the rebirth of the savannah both North and South, the digging for water, the regreening of the deserts, and the fight against all remnants of capitalism, imperialism, fascism and Zionism in the whole of Africa. What do you think, comrades?”

“Not bad, if onlywe had gotten over the coup in Niger yet,” sighed Seth.

Postscript. Discussion and Preview at the Marwan Barghouti cooperative, the cooperative Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp near Aimeran, Yvelines, and the neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove in Saint-Denis

Street-fighting in Niamey, by Odile and Zamir

“Oh, no, a counter-revolutionary military coup in Year 20 of the revolution!” exclaimed Noah, flabbergasted. “That is almost unbelievable! Where did they get all the generals from, let alone the soldiers? Comrade Seth, can you explain?”

“Well, take a guess, they hired them for crypto. As usual, they promised them villas, limousines, river boats, jobs in the bourgeois government they would form, and those who would not get these perks immediately, would get them later on, as a result of the redistribution of power after the next coup.”

“That is the Sudanese model of power distribution,” interrupted Peter Gar intraline from Khartoum agglo. “The power gets divided among militia commanders according to the gains in territory and in goods they make, and when their results change, their position will change as well. They can go up or down.”

“The Niger model is not quite the same. Here, the real string-pullers are the capexogarchs behind the putschists, Aliko Dangote, Nicky Oppenheimer, and Nasif Sawiris being at the top of the list. The Niger, other Sahel, Horn of Africa and Nile people who want to return to capitalism and imperialist governments will have to jockey for positions in these governments. The capexogarchs, mainly foreigners will decide who gets rewarded, how, and for what. It is basically a return to colonialism.”

“That is terrible,” said Omsinbaba. “Any idea what we can do to return Niger to the revolutionary path and to keep the rest of North Africa on it?”

The adventures and debates of the revolutionaries in Illyria Garden Colony and Manouche Camp, the neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove on 76 rue de Lorraine in Saint-Denis, and their friends in the Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Marwan Barghouti, Muammar Ghadafi cooperatives and elsewhere in Africa shall continue in African Trilogy vol. 2 The Coup, vol. 3 Green Timbuktu, and Life in Communism 2.1. Gasping for Air, Intifada – Revolution, and Food for Everybody – Food for All. Stay tuned!

Our North African travel routes

Red: Route taken in 2021, Green: Route taken in Year 20 of the Revolution, where 2021 is Year Zero

Map of Aimeran at the time of comrade Omsinbaba’s presentation “Life in Communism 2.1. On a Rubber Dinghy”, during Year 20 of the Revolution, by Marius and Jean-Luc

Map and Plan of our rural cooperative Illyria, Yvelines, and our neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove on 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis, State Year 20 of the Revolution during comrade Omsinbaba’s presentation “On a Rubber Dinghy”, there are 17 three-room apartments with the bedrooms occupied as follows, Young Revolutionaries marked in italics:

Apartments in the old Farmhouse

Apartments above the Robot Workshop

Apartments above the Stables

Apartments above the Furniture and Clothes Workshops

Dark blue: furniture workshop, light blue: clothes workshop

Inhabitants of the Garden Colony and the Manouche Camp

Neighbourhood Assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis

Yellow: first floor, youth club; Green: second floor; Red: third floor; Blue: fourth floor, and violet: fifth floor. 2^nd and 3^rd floors: Casa Latina Russki Dom, 4^th and 5^th floor: Peace Dove.

Other books by Carla O’Gallchobhair you will also enjoy:

Life in Communism 2.1. Red Cells. Marx versus Machiavelli. The Trade Unions in the Revolution, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. Comrade Emmanuel’s mother Aurélie has prepared her son’s university entry project on the role of the trade unions in the revolution with plenty of good advice, but when the fascos mount their brown cell campaign, and manage to enlist not only workers at the Uberyite underground facilities but also at the self-managing electricity grid transformer stations, as well as at the self-managing train stations, on the trains, and at the switching stations to that end, even she and the other senior Illyrians are baffled, and her son is on his own.

Preview of Life in Communism 2.1. Red Intranet, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. It is summer of Year 17 after the Communist world revolution of 2021, and the revolution has been advancing apace – be it that there are still individual instances of sabotage by recalcitrant ex-capitalist oligarchs and their fasco mercs. From Year 3 to 7 especially, the capitalist enemies ran a scare campaign against the internet, widely used by neighbourhood, workplace, and village assemblies to ensure quorum even if people do not attend physically, as well as for educational and messaging purposes. In Year 15, the fascos even succeeded to knock out the revolutionary operating programme, Aurora, and it took until Year 17 to make the new programme, One World, more impervious to attack. In parallel, young revolutionary engineers have also been pushing research on so-called intranet-naturespeak-biomessaging which operates by healthy green waves and hence not only defies fasco defamation and hacking of EMR, but in the long run, will allow communication with animals and plants as well. Comrades Jean-Wadi and others travel to the Sahel in order to study the potential of intranet-naturespeak-biomessaging in an environment not yet fully covered by the traditional internet. Again, the fascos are there already to haunt them.

Preview of Life in Communism 2.1. Green Horn, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. It is May of Year 15 of the revolution. Jean-Vladimir has arrived in Djibouti to help Adilah with her project on reversing climate change on a small scale and returning native animals and plants to the Horn of Africa. Yet so have the Belgian, German, American etc. ex-oligarchs who want to exploit tensions between the Afar and the Issa clans to start a new plot against the revolution which involves producing and selling Agent Orange as well as a nanobotted vaccine that will speed up drug absorption and worsen addictions. Will the revolution be able to withstand this new challenge? How can our comrades make the natural African village democracy triumph and ensure renewed respect for humans, animals and plants?

Life in Communism 2.1. The Block Energy Works Romances, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. It is still May of Year 15 of the World Revolution. Comrade Alain has begun his long-awaited seminar series on the Block Energy Works. Jean, Mina, and Misha have returned from Palestine only to find that the ex-oligarchs whose reckless depleted uranium plot has just contaminated three sites on the West bank, one in Gaza, and one in Jerusalem, are back already and have launched a new campaign to undermine the Block Energy Works and their self-management and free energy principles by secret workshops demanding capitalist crypto-currency for shoddy workmanship. Yet there is romance in the air as well. While our Illyrian comrades guard their Block Energy Works against an imminent attack, they discuss their life and the revolution in new constellations and with fresh perspectives.

Preview of Life in Communism 2.1. Black lives triumph, By Carla O’Gallchobhair, The real Bouna, Zyed and Muhittin died in a metro duct in Paris trying to escape racist police. Lulu tells an alternative story that might have developed, had there already been the world revolution. She tells the story of how Bouna, Zyed, and Muhittin got sucked into drugs and crime, ended up in prison, and were released into unemployment – everything you would expect given capitalist exploitation and oppression laced with racism. Yet then they get involved with Black Lives Matter and other social activism, participate in the revolution of summer 2021, get sent on revolutionary travel to Africa to spread their experience, help chase oligarchs back at home, and begin to re-educate those behind the false Covet and Coflu vaccines, the cancer ship let loose on Paris, and the rekindling of civil war in Ukraine, among other crimes. Hold on to your seat edge! It’s a cliff-hanger!

Life in Communism 2.1. Part 3. Debunking Misogyny, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. While our women comrades from the Saint-Denis neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina and Russki Dom are ploughing through cases of abuse, exploitation and abandonment of girls and women, gender discrimination, apogees of the women’s movement such as the Women’s March on Versailles in 1789 and the 2020 Women’s Marches in America, and the effects of hyper-capitalism and neo-feudalism on women and harassed genders in general, an international gang of fascist terrorists abducts comrade Peter Gar at his Yoga centre in India and submits him to a series of devastating drug shots. Later these get tested on his fiancé Quan and others as well. To their horror, our comrades find that the fascists are planning a major reactionary coup in which the ‘docility vaccine’ and ‘Empress Ulla’ will play a major role.

World Revolution 2.1. Part 3. Happening, by Carla O’Gallchobhair The revolution is spreading in Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania. Neighbourhood assemblies are being formed, work-place brigades and enterprise or divisional workers’ plenaries instituted. Court is held at village meetings. There will soon be no more hierarchy anywhere in society. Planes, cars, and other fossil fuel-powered engines are being scrapped. All potentially toxic foods, medicines, fabrics, and other materials, products, and dodgy practices are being submitted to popular referendums. People will only have to work 15 hours a week with a maximum of three hours a day. The rest of their time they can spend in voluntary and creative pursuits. Educational systems will be reconfigured and thoroughly improved, culture should blossom. Yet the fascists and their capitalist and other backers are not yet ready to surrender. Using their wealth, connections, and the many possible hide-outs in a world that is after all becoming decentralised and freer, not more controlled, they elude their pursuers in many a breath-taking chase. Be prepared for abductions, ambushes, explosions, chemical attacks, near-arrests, police corruption, oligarch conspiracies, coup attempts, war, civil war, strange encounters, passionate debates and romance…

Life in Communism 2.1. Red Cells. Marx versus Machiavelli. The Trade Unions in the Revolution

By Carla O’Gallchobhair

Preface in Illyria and Saint-Denis

Chapter 1. The Trade Union Question. Marx versus Machiavelli

Chapter 2. In the Revolution

Chapter 3. Red Cells versus Brown Cells

Chapter 4. The Wild Strikes of Spring, Year 20

Chapter 5. Material Check

Chapter 6. Cryptoleaks

Chapter 7. Hierarchy Check

Chapter 8. Boycotts and Blockades, Revolution in Year 20

Chapter 9. Anarcho-Syndicalism 2.1

Postscript in Illyria and Saint-Denis. African Trilogy. Part 1. On a Rubber Dinghy, In the name of the peace dove. Gasping for air, The World Belongs to all, Intifada – Revolution, and Food for Everybody – Food for All …

“Politics have no relations to morals… Power is the pivot on which everything hinges. He who has the power is always right; the weaker is always wrong.”

Nicolo Machiavelli

“I wish to avenge myself against the one who rules above.”

Karl Marx

“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognise traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.”

Nicolo Machiavelli

“Surround yourself with people who make you happy. Everybody else in your life is just passing through.”

Karl Marx

“One of the great secrets is to know how to take possession of popular prejudices and passions in such a way as to introduce a confusion of principles which makes impossible all understanding between those who speak the same language and have the same interests.”

Nicolo Machiavelli

“The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.”

Vladimir I. Lenin

“Men are so stupid and concerned with their present needs, they will always let themselves be deceived.”

Nicolo Machiavelli

“If you can cut people off from their history, they will be easily persuaded.”

Karl Marx

Preface in Illyria and Saint-Denis. How to make a revolution in 10 easy steps

Salut, I am comrade Emmanuel from the

neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina, Russki Dom, Peace

Dove. I am born in Year 4 of the world revolution of 2021, the Year 2021 being Zero. I myself and most of my contemporaries did not witness the revolution of 2021, let alone participate in it. A throwback into capitalist hegemony looks extremely unlikely at the moment, with only one in every 2000 people world-wide experiencing even the slightest temptation to join what the underground capitalists and their fascist mercenaries call their Cause. Yet it cannot be entirely excluded either. Chances are that we may have to continue with our permanent revolution given the way underground capitalists and fasco gangs are still harassing us. Here are the ten steps to follow every time a hierarchy gets built and we suspect exploitation and to remind us of the revolutionary path:

1)Form secret red cells, which will often, if not always be based on trade union networks, distribute tasks

2)On D Day, boycott, blockade, and enter buildings of all levels from the national government down to the municipal or village maire’s office, corporate and bank offices, large department stores, supermarkets, large factories – especially for weapons –, in short, everything that grinds us down

3)Convince the managers at all these places to step down

4)Form workplace brigades with a maximum of seven members, not only at large enterprises, but at all workshops, large and small, up to the last Ma and Pa shop. Let the brigadier in each of them rotate once a day. In family enterprises, involve women and children as well

5)Convene workplace assemblies, in small enterprises let the moderator rotate once an hour, in larger ones, draw a moderating brigade or two depending on the size of the assembly by lot and change the members once an hour at least. If at all possible make sure that every worker gets to be moderator at least for an hour at every workplace meeting

6)Break down large enterprises to smaller ones of 2000 maximum in the first year, 500 in the second, 200 in the third, 50 in all subsequent years

7)Abolish management and accountant positions, in small workshops let the accounts be done in full assembly every evening or at least once a week. In larger enterprises, let membership in the management and accounting brigade, if there has to be one, rotate among all workers. In a workshop of around 50 workers, make sure that every worker serves in the M&A brigade at least once a year for a week and at most two weeks, which should be non-consecutive by the way

8)Run constant hierarchy checks involving individual workers, brigades, foremen and forewomen, workplace assemblies, moderators, suppliers and customers, neighbourhood assemblies, and village assemblies

9)Run constant material checks involving individual workers, consumers and users, brigades, suppliers and customers, neighbourhood assemblies, workplace assemblies, village assemblies

10)Found, recreate, and involve red trade union cells everywhere, also with rotating chairmen and chairwomen of course, as an additional guarantor of the permanent revolution

Chapter 1. The Trade Union Question. Marx versus Machiavelli

Karl Marx and Nicolo Machiavelli

“The other day we had a project in school on the Paris Commune,” Emmanuel began his presentation, wondering why everybody was acting so distracted. No topic more interesting than the trade unions as with the planned fasco undermining of them – recently defected Reinhart Fischer had squealed on their plans –, and the 1^st of May rallies coming up.

“We all focused on the Commune as a precedent for our revolution. One group dealt with the abolition of the monarchy, the other with the reduction of bureaucrats’ salaries to workers’ levels, both of which show how the Commune tried to abolish the state. Another group dealt with the organisation of ateliers equivalent to our self-managed workshops, and another one with the erection of barricades in the neighbourhoods which you can see on the picture below, and which the working group considered to be just a step away from our neighbourhood and village assemblies.

My group dealt with a less successful aspect of the Commune – revolutionary propaganda. We can tell it was unsuccessful since the bourgeois Thiers government seized back power and the bourgeoisie kept it at least until the front populaire in the 1930s.

“Some reactionary historians attribute that to Thiers’ skillful self-advertisement, he is said to have acted in truly Machiavellian fashion. Others, including Marx in his book on the Commune, say that the bourgeois class edifice was still much too strong for the revolution to succeed.

“We decided that the conflict was between the Machiavellian and the revolutionary class, or at least syndicalist view of society. To illustrate it, we wrote a sketch about the discussions within one family. The father is a trade unionist and Communard who wants his wife and his children to man the barricades with him. His wife agrees but wonders whether the uprising will do anything to improve women’s lot. The younger children – three sons and two daughters – also side with the revolution, but the two oldest sons get in a conflict amongst each other and with their father.

***

“We won’t be able to convince all of them, ” the older one, Auguste, says. “Let us see whose interests agree with those of the revolution. D’accord, those of workers, women, students, small shopkeepers who feel the capitalist tax load and have to pay their racket, small peasants and landless labourers as well… Let’s work with them and get rid of the capitalists and landowners. “

“Oh, no, ” said the younger one, Nicolas, “that would be much too limiting. Let’s use their very own bourgeois propaganda weapons to defeat them. Let’s tell them that there is something in the commune for everyone… and later, when the power is ours, we shall help them… “

Nicolas and Auguste fighting, by Emmanuel and Laurence

“What if we can’t help them ? Then we will have deceived them ! “

“At least we won’t have been elitist !”

“Not elitist ! We would have arrogated to a small group of revolutionaries the power to determine who is entitled to the spoils of the revolution… opening gate and door to corruption. “

“And in your system, Auguste, the small group of revolutionaries may even decide for whom the revolution is made for in the first place!”

“But in your case, the revolution may end up benefitting the bourgeois and the landowners, because if you reward everyone and don’t want to hurt anyone, you won’t dare attack yourselves at any of the entrenched interests… It is like telling the slaves in ancient Greece or Rome that you want to help them, but then tell them, whether you finally get the decent meal you crave and get released from your chains, will depend on whether the rich slave owners agree… No, you want to abolish slavery, give the slaves decent meals and free them from their chains, and if it means expropriating the slaveholders and chasing them from town or from their lands, so be it.”

“You risk destroying the very fabric of society and cause more harm than good.”

“Oh, little Nicolas, how petit bourgeois you sound ! And while we are talking, the forces of order are mowing down our parents, our brothers, and sisters… You want to fall for your bourgeois propaganda and Machiavellian promises, I’ll fall for the revolution !” And with these words, Auguste threw himself behind the barricades and seized a spare gun from a comrade.

***

“What happened to them?” inquired Emmanuel’s buddy Antoine, one of the first who had stopped looking distracted and fidgeting. “Don’t tell me they got killed by the bourgeois forces? “

“We don’t know, ” said Emmanuel, “but they are immortalised in history by this legend, and their spirits surely participated in our revolution of 2021 for black lives matter, women’s and children’s rights, against the sanitary laws, for peace and the environment and for self-management that ushered in the Great World Revolution.”

***

“So, you think that the trade unions have been acting Machiavellian?” asked comrade Aurélie. Together with comrades Hélène, who had buckled down at Caisse d’ Épargne, and Annie, who had slaved at Amazon, she was one of the most committed trade unionists among the residents of the rural cooperative Illyria Garden Colony Manouche Camp and the urban neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis. “You sound like comrade Dominique.” He was their neighbour at Russki Dom, father of Laurence. Comrade Aurélie had suffered through many discussions with him.

“But he is a peace activist and a green, not a Communist. He deeply believes that trade unions are rotten to the core, that they mislead the workers at the command of the bosses, especially as far as peace and environmental questions are concerned. I told him look at the history of the syndicalist movement.”

“I sent all of you a short chronology via bio-message,” Emmanuel piped up briefly, not wanting to disturb his mamon’s tirade. The chronology is reproduced at the end of this volume.

“Over the last one and half centuries of its existence, the trade unions have organised nothing but demonstrations against the capitalist wars, against the exploitation of mines and miners, for a reduction in the weekly and annual work time and the retirement age, and so on, and so forth, all of which would end wars and lessen the burden on the environment. No end to the evidence that the colleagues are firmly on the side of the peace and environmentalist movements and not fooled by the patrons or bosses at all.” Comrade Aurélie took only one deep breath, then continued. “What’s Machiavellian about that? Or maybe he thinks that way because I worked in underground workshops, the Nouveaux Ateliers, after the revolution. But that was on purpose – three times underlined – of course, to organise the workers, and make sure we whistle-blowed and finished with Huntziger and Co. before they made us produce more toxic fertilisers, dodgy Covet, Coflu and other vaccines or even drones and weaponised smart phones.”

“No, no,” said Dominique. “I did not want to doubt your personal integrity, nor that of comrades Hélène and Annie whom I know very well from the peace movement or that of comrade Alain whom I met at an environmental rally. Not at all. Yet you’ll have to admit that the trade unions for the longest time have had to mediate and compromise, between stalwart Communists like you were and are on the one side, and super-tough, neoliberal capitalists bosses and the governments they put in place, from de Gaulle via Mitterrand and Hollande to Macron on the other. And the workers have had to squeeze by in the middle and be satisfied with short term concessions by haughty capitalist despots, you might say.”

“Yet you would not throw the workers to the wolves, would you?” his mother had said.

“Of course not, but neither should the trade unions have allowed the workers to fall for the capitalist traps and be satisfied with their short-term concessions. Peace in Indochina, but then came Algeria, big fanfare over the Czech revolution in 1968, but then came our own Western repressions of the student movements against the Vietnam war and the cutbacks in the social sector even during the programme commun,” the 1978 agreement between socialists and Communists.

“They tried to present the workers as over-demanding,” said comrade Aurélie. “And your green friends often participated in that witch-hunt. Yet think about it, what did the workers really demand? They cared about the peace issue, we already mentioned that, of course, about the failure to adapt wages to the rising cost of living, the attempts at lowering social protection such as holidays, health insurance, or lowered bosses’ contributions to unemployment insurance, retirement at 60 which if implemented and upheld under capitalism already would have brought an enormous respite to the environment, other environmental issues such as highway construction, water deposits, family farming, persecution of refugees and other migrants, and then in the end, the Draconian sanitary laws. What, please tell me, in that list has been over-demanding or only for short-term gain?”

“Well, so you haven’t fallen for their traps, but you have allowed yourselves to be gotten by the wolves,” Dominique pressed on. Aurélie shook her head.

“What wolves?”

“Grey wolves, green wolves, white wolves, the whole lot,” Dominique sighed.

“D’accord then, what should we have done?” asked Aurélie.

“Focus on self-management.”

“We did after the war, with the enterprise councils.”

“But their importance petered out.”

“Because France moved to the right. Or rather, the establishment ruled, and the establishment was right-wing. And what could the trade unions on their own have done?”

“Take a more resolute class-based position.”

“But we did!”

“Phew!” said Dominique, obviously dissatisfied.

Then comrade Misha spoke out. “If you think the French trade unions have been lame, consider the German ones. They have been much less political than the French ones, raised even fewer demands for better working conditions and for stopping the reductions in social protection. Yeah, they have basically restrained themselves to asking for annual wage increases of one to five percent and a big march on 1^st May with hardly any specific demands at all. And then they calmed down as if nothing had happened even if their demands were not fully met or not met at all.”

Chapter 2. In the Revolution

“Most of us are born after the

revolution already,” admitted Emmanuel. “However, we are lucky to have here with us many senior comrades who were active participants in the revolution as well as active trade union members, starting with you, comrade Georges! Please tell us how you experienced the revolution.”

Comrade Georges, one of the last chairmen of the PCF before it self-dissolved in the wake of the revolution, was a very old man now, over 80. Yet his eyes were still sparkling, he still had quite some grey hair on his head and a bit of a beard, and he immediately began to talk, cogently and eagerly, as if he had been burning for the opportunity. “We, meaning comrade Jeanette and I were staying with comrade Pierre back then. You young comrades will know that we had the Covet scamdemic back then. Many old people were forced into old people’s or as they called it nursing homes, and they had even threatened to put Jeanette and me into two different homes. That was unacceptable to us.”

“If you want to know more about this and similar Covet and anti-ageism stories, wait for our presentation, comrade Leyla’s and mine,” interjected Félix, comrade Alain’s father.

“I like the term, anti-ageism,” Georges said. “Let’s note after the revolutionary village and quarter assemblies have abolished all old age homes in 2021, Year Zero, old people either live with their families or in room-mating arrangements with other seniors they are friends with or at least get along with well enough. Anyway, comrade Pierre must be an anti-ageist, because he picked up his father as well as us and allowed them to live with him. He was still married to comrade Arlette back then, but they stayed in the living room, so that his son, comrade Léon could keep his room to prepare his bac in, and so his dad could have his own room, and Jeanette and I as well. Later on, he moved in with comrade Marine, and it is almost the almost same story here at Illyria in our flat above the furniture workshop: his father has a room, Marine and he have a room, our Russian comrades Aleksei and Evgenia have one, and Jeanette and I have a room. And we all meet in the live-in kitchen, no separate living room. Yet we are all comrades, and we don’t wear masks with each other, and that’s how you young ones should also keep it, and forever.” There was applause. Comrade Georges wiped the sweat of his brow and continued. “So, it was Day X, we had the revolution, and even we senior comrades wanted to do something. So, we went to blockade the Monoprix in the vicinity, Pierre’s father, Jeanette, Aleksei, Evgenia, and I. Yet, how great was our disappointment when we arrived. A joint cgt-FO team, consisting of three men and two women was already sitting there at a garden table on garden stools with a red parasol over it.

Blockade at the Monoprix, by Rosa and Josip

’That’s for later,’ they explained, ‘when it gets hot.’ Well, they were right, it was July already. They yielded their seats to us and brought new ones. We sat for a while together, discussing the revolution. Then a few unorganised Monoprix workers, three women, and two men arrived and wanted to get past us to open up shop. We all got up. Our cgt-FO colleagues got in their way and barred their way. ‘Colleagues, don’t act dumb,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see that your colleagues are on strike? Just go home and wait what happens. I have a feeling we are in for happy days.’ One of them, maybe a Lepeniste, Rassemblement National thug advanced towards me as if to hit me, but one of the cgt colleagues pulled him aside: ‘Look, he is an old comrade and the fascos have recently abducted and held him for a few days. Let us fight it out if we have to.’ ‘I can see who he is,’ scoffed the RN man. ‘He used to be the chairman of the Stalinist party, and then you have still got the Trotskyites, haven’t you? How are you going to do a revolution that way?’ ‘Not only we cgt, or we Communists, or any other Communist and left-wing party or movement, all of us together,’ I said, ‘because I am also a cgt member, like many of us, starting with Bernard Frachon and Maurice Thorez. But also, you yourselves and your family and everybody will be great revolutionaries. We are all going to be politicians in our neighbourhood assembly, village or quarter and workplace assembly, and decide on all matters together. As a matter of fact, you all work here, don’t you? Why don’t you hold a meeting right here and now, in the sunshine? Jeanette, the other comrades, and I will represent the not so deceived customers.’ ‘That’s a great idea,’ said one of the unorganised women and gave us a wink. ‘I think you cheated customers should have the first word. What do you think should happen with this shop? Don’t you like it at all?’

‘Not much,’ said Jeanette. ‘It looks very dull from outside, and it is the same inside. And the vegetables are never fresh. I think, maybe some of the others will agree with me…’ Of course, we four others started to nod emphatically, we wanted to give comrade Jeanette the support she needed. ‘I think we should pull down the building, we should regreen the place, maybe join it with the little park over there and we should have a farmer’s market here, you know, with vegetable and fruit stalls, a baker’s, a butcher’s, a fishmonger, a fromagerie, maybe a clothes’ and or a toy stall, whatever the people in the neighbourhood care about most.’

‘Does the building really have to go?’ another one of the woman colleagues asked.

‘We can leave that to the village assembly to decide,’ said Aleksei, and when the other trade unionists looked blank, he explained. “Or quarter assembly. You know like in Russia, the assembly of the mir or village community.”

“What will happen to our jobs?” the Lepeniste asked. “I know you are a foreigner. It would never occur to you that you have to work to earn a living. You just come to live on benefits.’

‘That is mega-bullshit,’ said another of the cgt men. ‘ But anyway, you could retrain as a carpenter. I am a carpenter, I could help you, if you cared to learn, that is. We could build up the wooden stalls for the market together.’

The other trade unionists, especially the women, all clapped. The Lepeniste was baffled. It almost seemed he was a bit swayed. Mind you, later on, he turned bad again and called our comrade carpenter a wanderer. Anyway, the discussions continued this way all day, even when the second shift of workers arrived in the afternoon. When customers came, we told them to try a street market that already existed, a few blocks away. Those who insisted, because they had bad legs or feet or thought they did not have enough money, our Monoprix workers let in, and allowed them to pick for free what they needed from the shelves. By the evening, the news of that option seemed to have made the round of the quarter. Maybe also the news from other quarters where boycotts and blockades had turned into looting. That was good, we were all for it, after all, the prices, even for the basics, had been much too high for a long time already. Anyway, some young lads with their girls turned up and said, ‘We’ve heard there is a store to clear out, and we are hungry. Those damn capitalists, you know, they charge our parents too much.’ Well, we did not blame the Monoprix workers for letting them in, and when the five of us went home again to find out what had happened in other parts of town, and especially at the government buildings, the doors of the shop were still open, and more and more people were coming to stuff their bags. When I came home, comrade Frédéric was already there, and we had a conference call with Patrick who was collecting the news at l’Humanité, back then via internet still. Nowadays we would have held the conference via the low frequency, soothing neural wave bio-wifi where the treetops and the birds serve as transmitters instead of ugly, radiating towers.”

“Yes, but before Patrick tells us about the grand picture, why don’t we have a few more vignettes from individual workplaces?” Emmanuel asked. “Senior comrades Jean at Bridgestone, Pierre, Alain at the electricity company ÉdF, Hélène at PTT–Caisse d’Épargne, Annie at Amazon Logistics, and yeah, Frédéric, Mina, and Laurent, you worked at Sorbonne Nouvelle… I suppose that’s also a workplace that can strike and go self-managed. And comrade Marine, you were a prof at a lycée, what nowadays would be part of a complexe scolaire or school complex, with classes all the way up from the six classes of primaire, or all through primary school, to the six classes of the secondaire, or secondary school, all the way to the baccalauréat. And schools are also workplaces as we all know so well.” And he rolled his eyes and dropped his mouth in mock exhaustion.

“Yes, I was at work at our Bridgestone tire factory,” Jean began, “where I was already in the research team working on better tires that could stand field roads as if we organised workers had had a premonition that we would go back to them. Indeed, it turned out a useful job, since the revolutionary villages were about to decide to do away with cross-country highways, périphériques, and all other tarmac and most concrete atrocities altogether. We did like the Monoprix workers had done, constituted ourselves as workplace assembly and SMSed the workers off duty to come in if they could or participate via conference call. We immediately transformed our branch into a self-managed firm to be managed only by its full work collective in assembly. That part of the revolution came easy to us, since Bridgestone headquarters had earmarked us for closure, and we felt not in the least indebted to them. In fact, we cut all links to headquarters and wrote into our plan-programme for the next ten years to reduce our workforce gradually to facilitate self-management. We were about 450 workers back then, now, 20 years later, we have around 40 left. By the way, to come back to the question of Georges’ RN man, we did not fire anyone. Every worker had all the time he or she needed to look around for a new job or a retraining opportunity.

“Didn’t you have any right-wingers in the collective?” asked Emmanuel.

“Yes,” said Jean. “And even later, as others left, new ultra right-wing sympathisers joined when we had major orders. You see,” he interrupted himself. “Even though we have over 95 percent fewer vehicles on the road, just taxis, public transport, and other functional vehicles, such as fire brigades, and correspondingly fewer orders for tires, sometimes we still get big orders, for instance, if a village renews its public mini-busses or ambulances, or a logistics enterprise like Logistique Yvelines replaces a few of its transporters. Then we need help. And on several occasions, we got fasco villains into our brigades who stole materials, for instance graphene, even to weaponise them. They also tried to use us as a base for their private crypto-currency, fake voucher, or other criminal business. No need for cryptocurrencies or even vouchers when all goods are free in the economic circuit.”

“We’ll get back to that,” promised Emmanuel. “How was it at ÉdF, comrades Pierre and Alain?”

“Well, what do you think?” Alain laughed. “We waltzed in and said, let’s be finished with nuclear power, oil, gas, large water works, huge windmill and solar panel parks, and other anti-ecological atrocities in the energy sector. We had votes, then asked whether those who may still have been recalcitrant could live with the consensus. The workers, except for those in the threatened installations themselves, had nothing against it.”

“What about those who would lose their job?”

“We, or rather our local comrades told them, not to worry, there would be other jobs for highly qualified electricians, water, wind, solar, and rubbish incineration experts like they were. In fact, lots of jobs, in research and in the block energy works that were popping up in every neighbourhood all over the French lands. Then we split up in infinitesimally small gridlock repair brigades, just in case a block energy work broke down somewhere and needed help, or if vice-versa, it had an excess and wanted to help other block energy works that might be experiencing a shortfall.”

Gridlock Repair Brigade, by Che and Georgette

“Yet recently, it has turned out you are having inter-village, regional, and even hexagon-wide assemblies anyway. Does that not conflict with the principle of self-management and of small size?”

“It definitely does,” nodded comrade Pierre.

“Yet, since this session is supposed to deal only with the revolution in 2021, let’s postpone this problem until later,” said comrade Fabienne who was moderating. “Let me first give comrades Hélène, Annie, Mina, Marine, and Patrick the word, so as round off our understanding of the role the trade unions played in the revolution.”

“Before you do,” said Jean. “At Monoprix and Bridgestone, the trade unions and especially our cgt-FO alliance played a major part. They were gung-ho for the revolution and self-management, ‘We will even self-dissolve,’ one FO comrade told me, ‘As long as you PCF do the same.’ Only when we were trying to explain to our bureaucrats, now known as M&A, management and accounting brigade that they were from now on going to be rank-and-file workers and as a matter of fact would have to rotate their place in the M&A brigade with all other workers, meaning they would only get to sit in their old office behind their desk for a week a year at most, the CGC members panicked. ‘But we are paper workers, you can’t expect us to work on the shop floor!’ Then some of them said, ‘D’accord, we might try.’ Yet others, mainly women, said, they would get another hands-on job, maybe not in a tire factory, but in a tailor couturier workshop or something. However, one cheeky fellow, not a fasco, RN type, but more the neo-liberal Macronyte type asked, could he and a few of his pals maybe form a flying white-collar brigade that would do the M&A tasks at several workshops. ‘You know, a bit like an accounting firm under capitalism?’ ‘That,’ I replied, ‘is unlikely, since you wouldn’t know anything about the plan and the accounts of the workshops you’d work at. Or rather you wouldn’t know about the material balances and input-output tables, since there won’t be any money anymore soon. I wonder, should we here at Bridgestone allow such a flying M&A brigade access to our books?” There were immediate shouts of ‘No, no way!’, and the vote was 99% negative as well. Only the CGC man who had come up with the proposal and his friends had voted yes.”

“Well, did you not suggest them to come work at PTT-CdÉ, meaning Postal Service and Savings Bank?” comrade Hélène asked. “To some of them I would have,” grinned Jean. “But some others just needed some heavy physical work to get the arrogance out of their heads.”

“Then you did well,” said comrade Hélène, still working and the same resolute person at over 60 as she had been at 45 when the revolution broke out. “We had lots of funny situations at PTT-Caisse d’Épargne Saint-Denis during the heydays of the revolution. At first, we almost dissolved our office altogether. Many of us had other plans. We wanted to help our families cope with the revolutionary situation, you know, find a market, get the vouchers, see whether we got along with our neighbourhood assembly or whether we would have to swap our apartment, questions like that. Others wanted to do research on the revolution, that was my plan, for example. The other senior comrades may remember, I was doing a project with comrade Mina to help small family businesses organise themselves in the revolution.

“Yes,” interjected Mina. “In particular, we wanted to make sure the women and older children got to enjoy equal responsibilities to their husband or father.”

“Exactly, and Véro and the other Pléiades and friends, as the young comrades of the second generation became known, were permanently bringing in new stories about other childhood diseases of the revolution as well and we needed lots of time for thought and discussion. So, I had my head elsewhere, I must admit.

“But a cgt comrade, it was not Aurélie – we met later when we were debunking the Nouveaux Ateliers or New Workshops, they were in fact the first underground crypto-capitalist workshops –, but another nice comrade said, ‘Wait comrades, the other women comrades will also have problems on how to find things, how to get vouchers, how to get rid of their money and hopefully still get something for it, how to swap apartments and avoid falling for cryptodealers. We at CdÉ can be revolutionary councillors.” We all clapped and then a young trainee piped up and asked a question that made us all laugh with tears in our eyes. ‘And also, comrades,’ she asked. ‘People will still need their post-office, won’t they? For letters, even if there won’t be any more bureaucracy, but for love letters and cards, and they might want to send a parcel and or receive one.’ So, as soon as we realised we were still needed, we immediately went to work. We all got nice desks we appropriated from some of corporate office buildings in the centre ville. The government ones were too shabby. We would no longer look at people from behind glass, no need, soon there wouldn’t be any money to protect from robbers anymore anyway. Instead, we printed what we called temporary Stamp and Parcel vouchers. Temporary because soon postal services were going to be free like public transport, we agreed, and all of us promised to bring the demand for free postal services up in our neighbourhood and village assemblies.

Yet the stamps would still have pictures on them and come in artistic or educational series, and they do until this day, actually. At the moment, we have one on the 20^th anniversary of the revolution.”

“Well, at Amazon regional depot, we had fewer qualms dissolving ourselves,” remembered comrade Annie. “We knew we would be able to send parcels via the self-managed post-offices. Or, alternatively, if we ordered, let us say, inputs from a workshop, the workshop could simply put the requested good into a nice, small, ecological, all-electrical delivery van that would bring it to the next train station or harbour. From there it would be forwarded to the train station closest to its destination. And from there it would be brought to people’s home with another nice transporter from the destination workshop or a nice logistics outfit, just like our Logistique Yvelines. In fact, I already knew I was going to co-found it as a small self-managed enterprise with 50 workers max and work there with comrade Fabien and other nice comrades I knew from Amazon.”

“Any problems with fascos at that point?”

“Yes, not that they objected to our self-dissolution, but they tried to steal equipment, maybe for a clandestine logistics enterprise or logistics station, they call theirs, that they were already contemplating. And to tell the truth, we all did some stealing. The goods that were still in the pipeline we forwarded to their recipients of course, but the money that was still on the accounts we distributed amongst all of us workers, since Amazon had cheated us so royally all through our loyal service. Even the CGC paper tigers agreed to that redistribution or late taxation.”

“We at Sorbonne Nouvelle were also trying to get out very quickly,” laughed Frédéric. “We got together in research and teaching brigades, already mixed ones at that. I was lucky to have comrades Laurent, Mina, and Youssef in my brigade. Laurent was still a student, Mina was a lecturer, Youssef was almost assistant professor already, and I was full professor. That meant that if we kept it to the maximum of seven, we would already have the required mix. Then we coordinated with the other research and teaching brigades and decided to call a full assembly of the Middle Eastern faculty.”

“The lot had fallen on me to moderate,” Mina continued the story. “I said, since we had now formed the research and teaching brigades, we might as well go home, or rather into the streets and participate in the revolution. We would then go on with our studies, now with student participation and non-discrimination of women assured, as soon as things settled. In fact, we were all burning to get to Concorde and meet up with the other Cellule 14 members, as we future adult Illyrians were known back then, as well as the young comrades we called the Pléiades, comrades Léon, Martine, Philippe, Anisah, Robespierre, and so on, and blockade the Assemblée nationale together.

“But then some trade union colleagues from the support workers got up,” comrade Laurent took over here. “And said we were the Middle Eastern Department of Sorbonne Nouvelle after all. We were supposed to be the experts on all these wars in the Middle East that had partly brought on the revolution. And now we, the experts, wouldn’t even come out with a declaration where we wanted things to go. I remember we were a bit ashamed that we had not invited any support staff yet into our brigades.

“So, we formed a brigade by lot to draft an initial memorandum. From us Cell 14 comrades only comrade Frédéric was on it, and we could be lucky that his name got pulled even. The brigade immediately went about drafting our faculty declaration.”

“I put in a line that as true revolutionaries and as humans we abhorred war,” continued Frédéric, “and we should immediately dissolve all armies, police forces, secret services, as well as governmental institutions of all levels, multinational organisations and arms-producing corporations or rather accept their self-dissolution. Somebody else had put ‘…destroy all weapons.’ The creation of mixed faculty-student-support staff research and teaching brigades with a maximum of seven members and on an equal level with all other brigades as well as with the full departmental and full university assemblies was already in the preamble. That was important so that the full assembly could no longer ride rough shot over the concerns of the research and teaching brigades.

Revolutionary Manifesto from the Middle Eastern Department at Sorbonne Nouvelle, by Jean-Vladimir and Adilah

“We also included a demand to grant immediate asylum with full citizenship rights to all refugees from wars and other capitalist atrocities, and that included climate change, natural disasters, nuclear, biological, and chemical contamination, economic crisis with lots of unemployment, inflation, and so on. Especially the last point was a broad concept that allowed us, or rather the neighbourhood assemblies to accept anyone who was suffering hardship anywhere in the world. And then there were lots of other proposals somewhat less relevant to war and peace, but nonetheless crucial for the emerging economic, ecological, and democratic organisation of the revolution. They included no more private cars and no more fuel-guzzlers, radical expansion of public transport, pulling up of tarmacked roads, parking lots, etc. and build-down of ugly, unneeded, or toxic buildings as suggested by Fridays for the Future and other environmental movements. Also, the immediate housing of all homeless. The apartment or place you were living in at the moment of the revolution would be yours unless you decided to swap it for something more appropriate. But mind you, swap, no more money involved, no more real estate market. If you happened to own several properties you also could only keep the one you decided to stay in for the foreseeable future. The others we would give to homeless people, as we said. And then we all jumped up and ran out into the streets, as if we were homeless ourselves who could not stand being locked up.”

“Well, in the schools, in my case it was the School Complex Paul Élouard in Saint-Denis where I was teaching at the time,” said Marine, nothing in common with Marine Le Pen, but a prize-winning mathematics teacher, and author of a book ‘For a revolutionary mathematics’, with lots of applications of mathematics to revolutionary problems, “We also formed mixed brigades of students, teachers, and teaching assistants. Not support personnel because we were all intent to get rid of the hated surveillants, censeurs and proviseurs altogether. Students agreed that we’d rather do our own cleaning and cooking than be bullied around by paper shufflers. Or as an alternative to mixed brigades, there would be at least a teacher and two teaching assistants in any class of 21 who would rotate between student brigades.

The student brigadiers would change once a day at least like in the rest of society. If students were in so-called sections to prepare the Bac and did not have all their subjects in the same class, the composition of brigades and brigadiers was bound to switch more often even. You were allowed, however, to have as much time together with your designated or beloved buddy as you liked. As for the school assemblies, we decided to keep them big for a time at least, with a maximum as high as 2000 participants, because we wanted to encourage parents to attend and advise on the curriculum and the learning materials they found best.

Then I and some other teachers and students spoke up. One student said, well, teachers had their trade unions, most of them were in the cgt, some in the cfdt, why not have a student-cgt even for the younger kids in the primaire, and that proposal received roaring applause. And I said, one of our main goals should be making education truly free again, removing all capitalist elements from it, and that meant, definitely, we should abolish private schools. Yet also to see it as creative work, not as a socially necessary chore against which you had to strike. In that sense, I said, being cgt would no longer have to mean as much either to the students or the teachers.

“Yet then another student got up and said with a smirk: ‘But comrade, you don’t understand. You are a Communist. Your day is today already. We are all Thunbergytes, Fridays for the Future, we’ll want to strike for a better environment.’ Everybody laughed and clapped, and then everybody also could not get out fast enough to get into the centre of town where you, to our great envy, were all already blockading the government offices.”

“Over to you then, Patrick. We have seen that the trade unions played their part in the small frameworks – shops, utilities, factories, banks, logistics giants, as well as universities and schools. What about the big picture then?”

“Well, as you have already heard from comrades Marie who talked on ‘Revolution in the Streets’ and comrade Antoine who talked on ‘Covet as a Revolutionary Catalyst’, the trade unions, as important as they were, were only one movement in the revolution. There were the students, the peace movement, the environmentalists, the feminists, black lives matter, and other refugee and migrant groups, the yellow vests, farmers, senior citizens… Without all of them and every individual revolutionary citizen turning out and playing their part, it would not have worked.”

“Were the trade unions at the forefront of changes, or were they lagging behind?” asked comrade Denis.

“Well, we policemen were definitely lagging behind,” added his son, comrade Jérôme, like his father, ex-policeman, only that he had worked, not in the Paris police force, but in the infamous DGSI, or domestic secret service. Of course, it had been dissolved in the revolution, and comrade Denis, Jérôme, his partner Michel, as well as DGSI and DGSE affiliates – DGSE being the external secret service –, such as comrades Noah, Youssef, and Seth had put their talents to work to help the spontaneous militia organise itself and defend the revolution.

“You can’t generalise, most cgt and FO members were fervent revolutionaries, but so were some cfdt, meaning socialists and other reformists, and even cftc, meaning the Christian workers. It no longer mattered so much what the trade union executives said since the revolution was organising in a different way. In fact, we revolutionaries had started to prepare months, if not years in advance. We had started by looking at each other and picking members for secret red cells in which we felt confident. These were often based on our neighbourhood, workplace, school, university, party, church or Mosque, but they did not have to be. Cell 14, for instance, was just the former executive committee of the PCF – our senior comrades Annie, Fabienne, Jana, Marie, Mina, Marine, Hélène, Georges, Frédéric, Pierre, Denis, Alain, Jean and myself –, that had resigned collectively in 2020 already to make room for the revolution, and their families, friends, and comrades they were attracting into their circle.

“We, using the resources of l’Huma, but also Pierre at ÉdF,

Jean at Bridgestone, Annie at Amazon, all of us were marking maps with all the places we would need to boycott and pull over to the revolution and self-management: Government offices, corporate headquarters and branch offices, banks, factories, workshops, energy works, train stations, supermarkets, shopping malls, family shops, post offices, restaurants, cafés, fast food outlets. I remember, comrade Clément, who was a decided anti-vaxxer and capitalist conspiracy theorist, doubted that anyone would want to blockade and stalk McDonald’s ‘for fear of catching the virus and the toxic nanobots that carry it,’ he said.

“And anyway, the trade union members were as eager as any of us in finding points to blockade, and there were revolutionary cells that consisted only of trade union members, yet there were others that did not have any unionised members at all.”

“In other words, the trade unions were not the vanguard, but then they never had been, had they?” concluded Emmanuel. “They were just one movement among others.”

Chapter 3. Red Cells versus Brown Cells

The twelve musketeers, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie

The young Illyrian and Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove comrades were preparing the 1^st of May rally. All the various movements were announcing their blocks intraline and via bio-wifi – meaning by the harmless brain waves with a frequency of 100 Hz maximum instead of 5 gigabyte and transported by live harp bio-wifi towers such as humans, animals, robots, and other intranet-conducive materials, and plants. The others decided whether they just wanted to exchange greetings with a particular movement or even plan a common action, a poster, banner, slogan chanting, or even a theatre sketch with a fellow block.

“What is that supposed to mean, the Uberyte block?” asked Laurence, as they were scrolling through them.“Oh, the Ubermenschen, they are great. They are clandestine workers who haven’t dared to whistle-blow on their illegal logistics stations yet. Yet, hopefully, marching in our 1^st of May rally will convince them to come out and tell on the violations of self-management at their workshops. Then spontaneous militia can come in, we can call for a workers’ assembly and turn things around.” Emmanuel did not seem to see any threat in these Ubermenschen at all.

“I don’t know but maybe it is, on the contrary, to prevent us from doing that,” warned comrade Hélène. “It seems fishy they are calling themselves the Uberytes or Ubermenschen as if they have fallen for their bosses’ scam. And it does not seem to be intended as a joke. Otherwise, they might call themselves the anti-Uberytes or the Untermenschen, or at least put Uberytes into quotation marks, yet for some reason they seem to be under a lot of pressure to show devotion to their bosses who should not even exist any longer in the revolution. Remember from the school subjects History of productive forces or Ecology or from the Museums of Capitalist atrocities, the stories of the original Uber, Deliverando, Deshalles or DHL, Volt, and others? They let their drivers steer their bicycles through the prerevolutionary bumper to bumper traffic, sometimes for ten hours a day and over long distances, for miserly wages and with hardly any health insurance, to deliver their silly foods and other stuff to people too lazy or too busy to go out. The Uber-Untermenschen were racially or sexually insulted, many of them were migrants or LBGTHQIA, they got horrible muscle and stomach cramps from driving long hours without a proper meal, and terrible rashes from their saddles. Anyway, it was the mobile, late capitalist version of primitive exploitation. Those drivers were very intimidated by their bosses. They often had to do their work with headphones on, receiving commands the whole time. Maybe those bastard neo-capitalists have found a new way of enthralling their victims via the intranet?”

“Never mind, we can always boycott and blockade their sites like we did during the revolution,” Laurence tried to cheer her up, sensitised maybe by her own work on the peace movement, but also fully on her boy-friend’s wavelength.

“And there is another thing that is fishy,” noted Jean-Saïd. “Why do they stress SFCF and ÉdF workers are welcome? They say that here, and there will be banners praising regional assemblies of utilities. They are not working for Uber and Co., are they?”

“No, we are just self-managed brigades guarding railroad switching stations or electricity transformer or toggle stations. As you know, we sometimes still need the grid to help a block energy works in trouble or to siphon of excess current that may have accumulated somewhere,” said Pierre. “No idea why they are getting familiar.”

“I think Natalie and I will march with the Uberytes. Maybe you should as well, comrades Laurence and Emmanuel?”

“Oh, we are. Maybe there is no need for all of us to show up,” said Emmanuel, and began to fear for his sting. He had wanted to pretend to be a Uberyte or Uber-Untermensch himself in order to find out whether they would try to sell things to him against crypto, maybe drugs, or offer him a job in a workshop. Yet if all of the young Illyrians were going to come along, his sting op or incognito raid as he had described it to Laurence was going to be endangered.

“We shall come with you too,” said Faroukh, referring to himself and Sarah.

“And we can be carrying a banner: ‘The proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains… It has a world to win.’ To a convinced revolutionary, nothing more innocuous than that, but let’s see what their banners read, and what their reaction will be,” suggested Sarah.

“You will need security,” said comrade Marwan, Faroukh’s father.

“Oh, papa,” said Faroukh. “Don’t be silly. This won’t be in pre-revolutionary Palestine, but in the middle of Paris. Lots of people will see us.”

“Not if you are hidden in a throng of Uberyte ruffians, depending on how many they are. Take Pascal and me with you!” asked comrade Philippe, senior Pléiade comrade and economist and statistician at the University of Nanterre. “We can pretend to be interviewing them as background for our surveys.”

“And we can be Uber-Untermenschen from Vietnam,” said Dan, one of the four time-travelled Cambodian martial artists living in the garden colony. The others were Ayak, In, and Vit. We can use golden fist if needed. Golden or iron fist was an ancient Chinese martial arts technique even more effective than the red stun beams that the revolution favoured. Both you summoned with will-power. The red stun beams had the disadvantage that you could not use them at close range, with golden fist that was no problem. And you could stun opponents until militia came just as effectively as with red beams. Golden fist was even known to have smashed enemy swords as easily if not more so than the bronze beams the revolutionaries used against weapons. “And if it gets dangerous, we can all disassemble quickly and disappear on a yellow beam,” said Jean-Saïd. “Promise that if one of us gives the distress signal, the twelve of us will all beam out together. No fighting the Uberytes single-handedly.”

On May First, the rally was supposed to go all the way from République to Concorde. Only a 40 minutes march if you were few and concentrating. Yet in this case, we were going to be several hundred thousand if not a million, carrying posters and banners, talking, shouting and singing, and playing theatre. In fact, the other Illyrians were not altogether happy with the “12 musketeers” as they called them taking on the fascos and forgetting about the educational part of the celebrations. “Well, too bad,” said comrade Philippe. “For us, they will have to be for next year. And we’d best go in pairs and try to chat with people but be in constant bio-message contact in case one of us gets into trouble.”

***

“So, you work at a Uberyte logistic station?” Pascal asked his first acquaintance at the rally. “Isn’t that a bit tedious?”

“Tedious yes, but we are trying to get it recognised as socially necessary work. Then we would get all goods for free, plus our bonus on top of it. That would be neat, wouldn’t it?”

“What’s the bonus?” asked Philippe who could not believe his ears. “I thought we had abolished money.”

“You can have gold or silver, stuff like that, drugs, fitness courses, weapons,” and when he saw Philippe’s and Pascal’s dubious expression, he added, “self-defence weapons of course, only for self-defence. Or you can get attention, you know, people will come to you. The two of us found each other this way, didn’t we, Émile?” His buddy smiled and seized his hand. “I don’t know,” said Pascal. “Is it worth it to slave for capitalism just to find buddies that you could meet at school or at work? And these drugs, and training, and weapons you are talking about, are they any good?”

“You can get opiates and hashish for free in revolutionary share points,” added Philippe.

“Yes, look, but later on you may have your own workshop and earn lots of crypto and get a villa and a nice street cruiser and even a boat!” said Émile.

“But you can get a house on the revolution quite without putting down any crypto!” said Philippe. “You can even just swap it against something much larger or smaller but quainter and claim your circumstances have changed! You say you got together with…, what’s your friend’s name?”

“Honoré,” said the other. “You are right, but then you’d have to grovel with your old and new neighbourhood assembly.”

“And you with your bosses. I assume you have bosses, otherwise you wouldn’t be marching as Uberytes.”

“Yes, we have bosses now, but later on we may become the bosses. I mean, I don’t really like to have people below me either, but I would like to have my own firm or private practice. I might study medicine.”

“And then administer toxic Covet, Coflu, and LEP-AL vaccines and other toxic pharmaceutical medicines?”

For the first time, Émile looked Philippe and Pascal into the eyes. “No, you are right, we are trying to attract attention to our situation.”

“Why not simply inform the local village assembly, throw out your bosses and reconstitute yourselves as a self-managed enterprise?”

Honoré laughed. “I can tell you why. Because we would be dead matter. You’d have your private life drawn through their European Empire radio and Smartbox channel, and then you’d have the cryptoleak avengers at your door to finish you off.”

“Well, couldn’t you tell them that you did not leak any crypto deals? After all, officially, there is not any crypto anymore in circulation anywhere. You just told us that they are trying to hold you with other promises: drugs, fitness, weapons, fancy housing and other luxury goods, even sex and love?” asked Pascal.

“By the way, if it was about driving, you could drive a public minibus or a small logistics transporter, or a free taxi, receive all your goods and your house for free and be just as happy as if you had a limousine. And if it was about being a doctor, there are still some in private practice, although most of them prefer being associated with the local policlinic. D’accord, you’ll be the brigadier of your mixed doctor-nurse-support staff brigade only every seventh day or so, big loss! Are you so vain? Most doctors we know say they enjoy letting the others talk and focusing on the patients.” And he was thinking of comrade René, young comrade Sarah’s father.

While Philippe and Pascal had trouble understanding the motives of the two dreamers, as they called them later, Émile and Honoré, Faroukh and Sarah had to do with an even more hard-boiled bunch: Jordan, Kévin, and Raymond, fans of Anne Dalgo and Marion Le Pen. “You want to be Ubermenschen and do not even know about Anne and Marion?” asked Jordan. “Anne will explain it to you, all of it.” And he frowned. “You see, even today, in Year 20 of the revolution, we have too many refugees, migrants, and generally foreigners in France. They come because it is still too hot and the economy too underdeveloped in their region, or there is war, for instance, the Zionists making trouble in Palestine.”

“You mean the fascists?” asked Faroukh, who had understood that in the interests of peace and international solidarity, this distinction was important after all.

“Fascists – Zionists whatever. Those are the refugees, Anne says. You know we had a meeting of our brown cell, where she spoke.

And then there are the migrants. They are not necessarily fleeing from somewhere, they just like France. Still, they are not French, are they? “

March with the Ubermenschen, by Emmanuel and Laurence

“And then there are the foreigners. They are just in France – or nowadays you’d say French lands, that makes us sound bigger, but Anne and Marion still don’t like the term –, because they work here, or they are married here, or they just know somebody here. All three sorts are a burden. They take houses and apartments, they take socially necessary work, and they take goods.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that,” said Sarah. “There is enough socially necessary work and enough food and other goods to go around.”

“And enough houses as well, if you are willing to move to the countryside and live in a deconstructing building while you wait.”

“So far, yes, there is enough!”

“So, why not in the future? The French lands have become more of an agricultural country than before, and the march of the trees and the dispersion of the villages will only contribute to that. There is going to be even more fertile soil, and more farmers to work it. That means more food for each and everyone. And as for other goods, we have plans based on surveys that tell us exactly what everybody needs and wants from the cradle to the grave. The economic circuit makes it all easy. The farmers get the food to the workers, and the workers produce everything from clothes, tools, equipment, furniture, bags, books, and toys to sophisticated intranet bots for each other and for the farmers as well. And the teachers and other cultural workers teach the kids or entertain all of us. And both peasants and workers are grateful to them and produce food and industrial goods for them as well, no problem. No more bureaucracy, that’s clear! And whether somebody is black, white, brown, red, or yellow or from Drancy, Palestine, or Senegal does not matter a f**k, don’t you think?”

“Well, I must admit, it is not as important to me as it is to Anne and Marion…,” said Jordan.

“Yet, don’t you think that France has radiated around the world with the idea of the grande nation?“ asked Raymond.

“Including the notion that it should be in order, well-organised, and calm,” added Kévin. “Even you Commies want it that way, don’t you?”

“Well, yes, but we organise it ourselves, meaning we achieve good organisation through assemblies all on the same level, where everybody has a say, and we look for consensus until we reach it!” explained Sarah. “Even if gets a bit loud at times, that will better than a dictatorship suffered in silence.”

“Tell me!” Faroukh asked Kévin, Jordan, and Raymond, ”What is the difference between Anne Dalgo and Marion Le Pen? Why do we need two right-wing bitches like that?”

“Oh, among us Ubermenschen they are both very popular, ” said Kévin. “Anne Dalgo is linked to Arnaud Arrolle or Arthur Avanti as he calls himself these days. They want to agitate people locally to throw out the refugees, migrants, and foreigners based on a decentralised consensus, if you will.

“Marion Le Pen is like her whole family, deeply rooted in authoritarianism. She wants to rewind the clock to let us say May 2021, meaning masks, Covet-19 vaccines, sanitary passes, and then hope that the unloved arrivals get back into their rubber dinghies of their own accord and leave.

She has a German equivalent, Alice Wedel – apparently Wedel means broom in German –, who does the local recruiting and advertising for Ronald Gunpump, now Bär, Stephen Kocho, now Eis, and Fritz Schneid, now Willy Schal, you know, to make them sound like socialists or greens.”

”We know, Julian Redswan and Dorian Kopf were almost out of themselves when they heard that.“

“What do you Untermenschen know about these traitors?“ Kévin asked suspiciously, and Sarah stepped meaningfully on Faroukh’s toes.

The conversation took a similar turn between Jean-Saïd, Natalie and two further Uberytes, Janis and Bruno.

“We don’t really know why we joined Henri Uber’s lot. Maybe it won’t be so bad to have a few of these capitalist outfits, for shy and voracious people like us, Bruno, what do you think?”

“Ben oueh, shy and voracious, that sums us up,” Bruno laughed bitterly, and Jean-Saïd shook his head: “You shouldn’t be condemned to slave as an Untermensch just for being shy.”

“And for having a good appetite,” added Natalie. “We are going to have the march of the trees world-wide and the dispersion of cities. Lots of food to go around. Voracious people like you will be in high demand.“

”Buffalo shit,“ said Bruno, ”and if you ask me, the revolution has gone a bit wrong in focusing on all that green stuff. We are counting the years until the trees grow, instead of eliminating the remaining inequalities between people.”

”You think that way and then you work for the capitalists!?” said Emmanuel who had just joined their group with Laurence. “You need not join the trade unions, but definitely, you should be with a red cell.”

“You know what the young comrade over there just told us?” asked Laurence. “The boss slept with her, but the only reason seems to have been to make her join a brown cell. She works at the SFCF as an information agent. Her friend, she says, is a conductor.”

“That’s me,” said Janis. ”I am a conductor. I am often out of town, that’s when it happened, but Dénise immediately told me and we are going to take steps.”

”Like what?”

”Like ask him for an alimony!” Janis said bitterly. “We think Dénise might be pregnant.”

“But if you ask him for an alimony, you might be stuck in the underground sector forever.”

”But don’t you understand, we work for a self-managed organisation, don’t we? The switching station we are attached to is a self-managed workshop. They just want us to join a brown cell, where brown means not adverse to doing a load for a bonus, let’s say a gold coin, or drugs, or crypto, something like that,” said Janis.

”And it also means being a law-and-order type, asking people for village ID and discriminating against foreigners,” added his pal Bruno. “And finally, it may mean being for the recentralisation of SCFC and also the other utilities, like electricity and water. We are supposed to speak out for inter-village and regional assemblies rather than just small, decentralised switching stations or transformer stations slash grid monitors or local village sewage and wastewater treatment. You see that way the demand for recentralisation will come from below. Comrade Claire here, she is with ÉdF, she can tell you.”

“Yes, we spoke to her. She told us all of that already,” said Emmanuel. “But tell us, what does it have to do with Uber, Deliverando, Deshalles, and Volt, those are the real Uberytes, aren’t they?”

“Oh, there is a very simple reason they are interested,“ said Bruno. “It will make it easier for their shipments to piggy-back onto the revolutionary ones, those that are part of the economic circuit that is real, meaning for free.“

“And also, to do electricity and water sabotage like they did from Year One,” explained Claire who seemed to be a red cell agitator already.

“But that’s terrible. Why do you march with these people?“

”Don’t you understand? That way we let you know what’s happening and at the same time make us look more respectable, as if we were already working in self-managed workshops again. Only that we don’t rotate every day, the fascos are serving permanently.”

”So, who are they, not Uber, Deliverando, Deshalles, and Volt, are they? The real sponsors are far away in the ex-U.S., Canada, Rome, and Riga, correct?”

”Oh, they are just nasties who succeed in getting around the rotation rule and manage to be in power permanently,” said Dénise.

“We are twenty-one workers in our workshop,” another Untermensch told them. “There are three permanent brigadiers, Thomas, Willy, and Florian, but they don’t lift a finger, and they have thugs to help them. You’ll have to help us.”

Revenge by the Untermenschen, by Faroukh and Sarah

”Well, why don’t you participate at our meeting at Illyria tonight, you can help us debunk them and the other Uberytes,” said Jean-Saïd, maybe giving away their game that way, but it was time because they had reached a stage where the Illyrians were setting up a play, Revenge by the Untermenschen, about the rebellion of the people they had just talked to.

They saw many of the superior Uberytes bush and try to get away from the rally, while a few others stuck around and asked our Cambodian martial artists, Dan, In, Ayak, and Vit whether they could teach them Martial Arts for free. ”Can you train us?” Our Shaolin comrades said “Of course.” Only when the Uberytes asked them to teach them to fight with weapons did our comrades say no. All they wanted to spread was skillful wrestling and Kung Fu and harmless red and bronze stun beams and Golden Fist based solely on willpower. Emmanuel later held that the first of May rally in the Uberyte block had been a perfect demonstration of how to do revolutionary agitation.

Chapter 4. The Wild Strikes of Spring, Year 20

Meeting with red cell members, by Jean-Saïd and Natalie. From the top left to right, Honoré, Émile, Vincent, Emmanuel, guest from Illyria, Flavel, Hakim, and Ismail

“The idea for our strikes came up during the First of May rallies actually, not only in Paris, but also in other agglo(-meration)s and villages. It was to form red cells once more like we did during the Commune and the revolution. And we founded them not only in the clearly illegal workshops, but also in the utilities and industrial workshops that were recentralising under fasco influence. The clearly illegal workshops were producing drugs, weapons, offering training with weapons, cheap entertainment, sex, or dangerous medical operations ranging from inadequately material-checked vaccines to untested gender ops, such as the one comrade Cato had to suffer.

All dodgy workshops had brown cells consisting of the new bosses, or you might call them permanent brigadiers or constant moderators, as well as unchecked M&A, management and accountant teams. So, why should we revolutionaries not have red trade union cells defending the interests of the cheated and exploited workers, just as we have material checkers, hierarchy- and cryptoleakers, meaning whistle-blowers on incipient hierarchies and crypto use?“

“It became clear to us marching with the revolutionary comrades at the First of May rallies that they did not hate us as our bosses had told us,” added Vincent. “No, they simply no longer knew us because we were no longer on the rolls at a normal self-managed workshop. Some of us even had fake village IDs. We got our fasco bosses that way when we struck wild. We stayed at home and when they, or rather the cryptoleak avengers showed up to drag us back to work, we played naive and said, ‘Oh, we just had to put in a few hours of socially necessary labour time in the neighbourhood or at our old workshop.’ Or, ‘We had to get a new village ID, otherwise they might not longer have known us at the market stall when we asked for our food and other basics.’

Then the cryptoleak avengers or the bosses, in case we got dragged to them, feigned ignorance; ‘Oh, we did not know you were suffering hardship. We could have gotten you something to eat…’ Which is buffalo shit, of course, the Reaction has hardly any farms, clothes and other workshops for basic goods under its control to help out in situations like that. And the genuine revolutionary workshops, market stalls and share points do not recognise old money, crypto, token, or vouchers, all these fasco tools. Anyway, let me tell the story from the beginning, as it happened at our workshop, my name is Vincent by the way.

“So, we met in these red cells with the solid bio-thicket – both real as well as wave-thicket or ‘white’ noise – protection around us, so they would not be able to catch us on bio-wifi. We told each other all the stories of how they were abusing us, the foremen never changed, the workload was getting ever heavier, and the money reward, for which we had joined after all, was ridiculously small. None of us were really gung-ho counter-revolutionaries, so knowing that, the fasco barons should have made more of an effort to impress us. However, the crypto never came, or if it came, it wouldn’t buy us anything. Several of you have commented on how hungry and delapidated we looked at the rallies. Well, that was the reason. Some of us asked to be paid in kind. Yet instead of basics or maybe a transporter that the driving maniacs among us would have liked, we got drugs to get high on and weapons to shoot revs with! What if we did not want to shoot at our comrades?

“So, in these red cells, we came up with a strategy of how to get back at these nasty usurper bosses. First of all, we decided that next time they would bully us, we would talk back and the other red cell members would assist the one in trouble.

Second, we would convince other workers to form red cells as well, and all of us would start to work more slowly and methodically again, not neglecting the material checks at least, even if hierarchy checks were not permitted.

And then, third, if we had all or at least a large majority of the workers on side, we could try a real strike, you know, with people staying home except for any pickets that might rotate.

In our workshop, the golden occasion to test the slow work came the other day when our bosses confronted us with a rush order for Coflu, Covet, LEP-AL, and the Moral Atrophy virus. These are all supposed vaccines that the remaining pharmaceutical producers among the clandestine entrepreneurs have developed, but they do the opposite. They will give you cold, flu, Covet 19, as well as lymphatic encephalitic pulmonary syndrome including hallucinations and paranoia, known as asymptomatic leprechaunitis, because of the visions of leprechauns it involves. And even moral atrophy. That is the worst medicine, quote-unquote, that they have come up with since the stomach cancer virus of Year 8. It can actually make you cynical and lethargic, hence the name, MA, or Moral Atrophy virus.

The idea of Messieurs Uber, Deliverando, Deshalles, and Volt was to produce them here at our logistics station, maybe even as an omnibus vaccine, with several agents in the same multi-stage rocket-type syringe and then use our transporters to get them to private policlinics and private physicians who worked with the counter-revolution.

Those of us who were drivers were moderately enthusiastic. We had joined the outfit because we loved to drive, and since there were no more private cars in the revolution, if you wanted to drive, you needed to drive some kind of functional vehicle. It also sounded like there was going to be some reward at the end, since policlinics and private physicians tended to have crypto and similar money semblances and pay with them. Of course, then there would still be the question of where to spend it. You could no longer ask these crooks to build you a villa somewhere, because self-respecting construction workers would not slave for them.

On the other hand, those of us who were going to man the lab were much less enthusiastic. “There is an old lab on our premises, left-over probably from some other clandestine outfit,” Thomas, who was not very bright, betrayed their true affiliation. “What are you talking about, we are not clandestine!?” Florian tried to save the situation. “We are as self-managed as Logistique Yvelines.”

“I got my drivers’ training at Logistique Yvelines,“ a young comrade said. “I was allowed to be brigadier on my first day already.” I later invited him, his name is Ismael, and two of his driver colleagues, Flavel and Hakim, to our red cell meeting. “But here the foremen have never changed, and this is the first workplace assembly we are having since we started at this joint.”

Thomas’ mouth went open and shut for lack of words, so did that of his pals, called Florian and Willy. Willy was probably the watchdog from the Papppbergerytes in the German lands. He talked with a German accent and looked a bit like the militia photos of Fritz Schneid, be it without a beard. Fritz, a.k.a. Willy approached Ismael as if he was going to hit him. I held him back, gently, mind you, but I am tall, as you can see, so he gave in.

“Anyway,” I said. “I am a trained lab assistant, I did a few semesters of biochemistry at university already, and I know this lab has to be cleaned thoroughly first, especially if we want to try something sophisticated like an omnibus vaccine.”

Cleaning the Lab, by Emmanuel and Laurence

”D’accord then,“ Thomas said. “The rest of today for cleaning the lab! All of you except if one of the drivers is needed for an urgent haul.”

We slaved like madmen. First we cleaned the floor, the walls – luckily, parts of them were tiled –, and even the ceiling, be it maybe not with the recommended revolutionary detergents, then the cupboards, surfaces, sinks, radiators, ceiling lamps, and other fixtures, including the fridges.

Our three slave masters at times made us go down on our knees and often stood right behind us when we were sweeping the floor, wiping the cupboards, and the fridges and cleaning the radiators, ready to hit us if they were not satisfied.

My second fear, next to getting hit by them was that the cleaning agents they had provided us with might not pass a material check. That alone might be reason enough not to pass their omnibus vaccine either, and then what would they do with us workers? Blame us!

It was almost getting dark already, when we put up the equipment again: the small conveyer belt, the robot arms, the microscopes, and so on. We had also rigged up several desktop computers and laptops, mind you, not the small, light intranet plushbots, but the old-fashioned heavy, big-screened ones. “Well, I suppose we’ll still need those for material testing, will we?“ wondered Honoré, but Émile and I both shook our heads. “Where I got trained in Paris, they used humanoid harpoids,” Honoré said. “They will even tell you with a human voice what’s the matter, they have hands to place the samples under the microscope, and they use a third at most of the electricity a laptop uses, a fifth of what one of these desktops needs.“

“Doesn’t matter at this stage,“ I said. ”These syringes and their content will have to get double and triple checked by several competent Paris institutes anyway. They will have the up-to-date robots.“ And I earned a nasty look from Thomas and Willy. It was obvious that they did not want to involve too many experts, who might be potential critics and whistleblowers at that.

“At nine o’clock, it was dark already, a couple of unknown drivers arrived with a transporter full of cooling boxes filled with petri dishes marked in various colours, as well as a dozen large boxes containing empty syringes.

“Look!” I heard Willy explain to Thomas. Thomas seemed to be only the nominal boss, Willy, probably a.k.a. Fritz Schneid knew more. “Blue is for Coflu, red for Covet, green for LEP-AL, and brown for MA. Don’t worry, they don’t get mixed, the syringe has compartments and as the nurse presses the syringe, the medicines enter the human body one after the other. And we no longer have to fill the syringes by hand, the robot arms do that. As long as they are functioning well and those ones we got here are brand-new, we’ll have to just depress a button, have our workers watch them, and they’ll produce syringes to the tune of hundreds, if not thousands a day. They work more accurately than a 3D printer even with complicated measurements.”

”I believe you,” said Thomas. “And then what?”

“Then our drivers will deliver them in these cooling boxes which are just like fridges, they keep them nice and sterile, to policlinics and physicians’ cabinets all around the French lands and maybe all around Europe.“

At that point, I could not bear it anymore and stepped in.

“But won’t we have to get them material checked?“

“Oh, they will pass the material checks,” Willy Schal moved his hand impatiently. ”If each of the individual vaccines has passed them, the omnibus vaccine will as well. After all, the only new addition will be the syringe. And it looks decent enough, doesn’t it?“

“Oh, more than decent,“ said Florian, playing the enthusiast, “it looks very stylish, indeed like a multi-stage rocket.“

”A workshop founded on the basis of the German weapon producer, Rheinmetall, in collaboration with Dassault, I think, has developed it. Ask Étienne and Arthur who will arrive tomorrow with Adèle and Marianne, they’ve recently decided on a deal during a meeting in Siberia.“

***

It was after ten when they finally let us workers go home, because we had to make sure all the Petri dishes had been securely placed in the fridges and the lab was as clean as before their arrival.

Then we revolutionary workers, fourteen of us, seven drivers and several biochemistry or medical students figuring as lab workers still met for the rest of the night in our red cells communicating via intranet protected by bio-thicket.

“Listen, comrades, do not be irritated by their name changes,” said Emmanuel who was visiting our red cell from Illyria. “These fasco barons, Étienne, Arthur, Adèle, and Marianne who will arrive tomorrow are probably identical with the known felons, counter-revolutionary media producers and politicians Édouard Stérilé, Arnaud Arrolle, Anne Dalgo, and Marion Le Pen. And then, I am pretty sure, Willy Schal must be identical to Fritz Schneid.”

“And the two bearded fellows on the transporter who brought the vaccine would be Ronald Gunpump and Stephen Kocho, old hands of Pappberger and Co.,” interjected comrade Olivier intraline from Illyria.

“So, they are all in the French lands now,” continued Emmanuel. “And they are trying to realise their plan of undermining self-management and direct democracy based on assemblies with rotating moderators and the search for consensus with their brown cells. And you notice that these brown cells do not arise from the workers at all. They are creations of the crypto-capitalist usurper bosses, at ÉdF and SCFC as well. We already have cases of permanent moderators at their regional assemblies which will already be undemocratic anyway, because they are too large and they risk being one level above the local.”

“D’accord, but how do we get these crypto-capitalist bosses out again once they have entrenched themselves?” Vincent asked and answered his own question. “I think we should get them via the material check. They will try to pretend they are experts and wave it all through without involvement by the workers, let alone outside institutes.”

The material-checkers from Institut Pasteur, by Maher and Karla

“No problem, you can have us, comrades Fabienne, Michel, Maher, Karla, René, Maurice, and Assad come in to fail them, which is a foregone conclusion since 99 percent of all village assemblies have already rejected the individual agents against Coflu, Covet, LEP-AL, and MA for having serious side effects, for oftentimes infecting people with the disease they purport to prevent, as well as their nanobot carriers being too hard, and moreover, reusable so they could even be reprogrammed to inflict death. Comrade Fabienne can show that they are not natural, comrades Michel and Assad that they or at least their nanobot carriers are responsible for stomach disorders and cancer, comrades René and Maurice that the omnibus methods risk overloading especially young and old patients up to the point of killing them, and comrades Karla and I that they contain chemical drugs like tranquilisers, amphetamines, steroids, and neurolepts that are supposed to affect patient’s psyche and other bodily functions along with the vaccine agents. Mostly, they are used to making the injected docile followers of the counter-revolution. Hence people have sometimes nicknamed their Coflux brand docility vax.

“And the chemical side-agents may be used to euthanise people,” interjected comrade Égale.

“Exactly,” sighed her friend, Peter Gar or Pierre le Gars as he was known in the French lands.

“Very good, you confront them with all of that, and then, if our bosses don’t yield, which they won’t, you quickly beam out of our workshop with yellow beam so they can’t harm you, while we, the two red cells, transport and lab, call for a workshop assembly to stop production. If they won’t allow the assembly to meet, we go on strike. Then what can they do?” And the red cells continued to enthusiastically and carefully plan their strategy of reconquering their enterprise until the wee hours of the morning.

Chapter 5. Material Check

Two types of material checkers, by Emmanuel and Laurence

“Bonjour, here we are, Étienne and Arthur, you know our assistants, Ronald and Stéphane, and our ladies are also biochemists. Adèle and Marianne, please introduce yourselves. And they brought a list of the village assemblies in the région parisienne or Paris region that have already approved the new omnibus vaccine.

“But then about a kilometre from here, we picked up another team that you apparently also invited, what were your names?” “Michel, Fabienne, Maurice, René, Maher, Karla, and Assad, all from either Institut Pasteur or the material checkers at Art et Métiers. The work collective of this workshop asked for our opinion. You are the Red flame biochemical workshop, aren’t you?” asked Michel.

“You see,” said Maher who, just upon one his father’s nice smiles, had received one of the lists of village assemblies from Adèle and Marianne. “There might be a problem these village assemblies have not considered. I see upon recommendation by their policlinics, they have approved the four individual agents against Coflu-20, Covet-20, LEP-AL-20, and MA-20, as well as what the vote by the three policlinics calls the novel idea of an omnibus vaccine…”

“It’s a forgery,” comrade Assad instantly bio-messaged the six comrades. “The names signed do not correspond to any of the staff in these three policlinics. Here I just received the lists of their actual work collectives from the three acting receptionist brigades.” “Great, merci, comrade Assad,” Maher biomessaged back. “In that case, no need to pussy-foot around.”

Aloud he said: “…However, they may have neglected the problem of permeability and reverse contamination.”

“I am impressed,” said Thomas. “A young man able to throw around with big words like this… permeability and reverse infection. Please elucidate us non-experts on what you mean by that.”

“I am a colleague of Maher’s, expert on omnibus vaccines,” said Maurice. “The idea of the omnibus vaccine is that you receive one stage of the vaccine after the other, each being good against one of the diseases you need to get vaccinated against. Yet what if these agents mix before the desired virus or antibody has been created? You can get sick with one or several agents before you are even fully vaccinated against the first one. They need not already mix in the syringe, I know you claim they are pretty good, but building up a defence against a live virus the messenger RNA has told your body to create or against a spike protein that is supposed to bring about production of virus and antibody takes time and strength. Especially young or senior patients might not have either, especially not for four vaccine agents in a row.”

“Have you run all necessary tests?” was Fabienne’s laconic question. “Even under late capitalism already and a fortiori in the revolution, medicines have to be tested in a small sample of a few hundred, then a few thousands, and finally on 5000 patients at least. May we have a look at the report, please?”

“What about the nanobots you use to transport the agent? I assume you use nanobots?” asked comrade Karla. “Some of them proposed by illegal outfits have been found to be too hard on patients’ stomachs, especially those of children.”

“By the way, I have here a study on the problems of permeability and reverse infection our institute has done,” said René. “At least a third of the two-thousand young test persons showed adverse symptoms. Then we stopped designing further omnibus vaccines.”

Echinacea, by Maurice and Lulu

“You may know the revolution is developing a catalogue of natural medicines,” added Fabienne. “Bed rest always helps, drinking a lot of non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated and warm fluids, eating bland foods, breathing in lightly salted water steam, using lightly salted water nasal spray, as well as compresses… And there are special infusions, honey-lemon-ginger tea helps against the cold, multi-herbal infusions and maintaining bed rest – because they may make you wobbly –, help against Covet, oak leaf potion against LEP-AL, and Echinacea against inflammations and MA.”

“You can keep researching, but so far you have not produced a sure cure for anything!”

“Well, neither have you, look at your latest cures against Lymphatic Encephalitic Pulmonary syndrome, asymptomatic leprechaunitis, LEP-AL for short, and Moral Atrophy, MA. The people, and even the animals and plants get sick from them as if you were spreading the disease instead of fighting it. What was the use spraying your so-called medicine, as you did in the French lands, Ireland, and Siberia, tell us? And the Siberian comrades even accuse you to have mixed it with White Phosphor, unless you did that separately, will you tell us?”

At that point, Arnaud, alias Arthur gave a few gorillas who had kept in the background a sign. They threw themselves at the spot where the seven members of the material check brigade had stood just a second ago.

Yet, we, meaning I and the other workers could only see a faint yellow ray with a few little dots on it. Then you were gone, as if by magic. That must have been these yellow transport beams everybody is enthusiastic about. You summon them, tell them where to take you, and at the same time order yourself to disassemble to the molecular state. You will have a crumbly feeling as you disassemble, then nothing for a moment when you are fully disassembled. Yet then your live spirit will already begin picking up as you reassemble before your final destination.”

“We practiced those at school in Phys Ed already,” said Flavel, who was one of the youngest workers. “I can do it.”

“They said on the revolutionary radio, Radio Huma or Lanterne rouge, they would soon have everyone practice them, except pregnant girls, starting in Sixième, sixth class.”

“Yes, but in the meantime, let me tell you what happened next,” said Vincent. “Adèle, a.k.a. Anne, or this time it was Marianne, a.k.a. Marion. Not your comrade Marianne obviously, I met her the other day at the May Day Parade. She is a charming person, very knowledgeable on Latin America, a real working-class Spanish teacher, not her, but Marion Le Pen calling herself Marianne came up with another paper supposedly reporting on tests in the ex-U.S. with several thousand participants, none of whom had shown any serious adverse side effects. I bio-scanned it and immediately bio-messaged it to you. Did you get it?”

“Yes, we immediately forwarded it to our comrades in North America, Malcolm, Jason, Josh, Luis, Martin, Jesse, etc. Let’s call them America’s Deconstruction Hounds, because that is their expertise, but they have friends and comrades who work in policlinics and institute labs, of course. They checked. No record of any such study anywhere in North America, not even in the Canadian lands, where Henri Uber’s outfits have their hub, so that was another forgery. Yet we did not want them to catch you and of course also did not want them to hurt us, so when Thomas and Willy told us, we went to work, set up the first trial production runs for their cursed omnibus vaccine, ten units per hour ‘That’s too few,’ shouted Schal, alias Schneid. ‘We want to sell them all over Europe after all. Make it at least twenty, no one hundred per hour.’ You see, all these fasco, clandestine industrial barons, especially if they have knowledge of Big Pharma and the Covet boom, dream of a repeat of that scamdemic, where they sold millions of dodgy, hence expensive vaccine kits and cheated the people out of trillions…”

“Do we know whether they produce this omnibus vaccine in North America already?” wondered Jérôme.

“Yes,” said comrade Kamala intraline. “And they play down its risks, claiming Coflux which many people have taken even after the revolution was an omnibus vaccine already since it supposedly helps prevent and cure both the ordinary flu as well as Covet. So, quite a few policlinics are buying it. They get a crypto, token, voucher credit for it from the Reaction which they then have to pay back from selling the vaccine to poor patients, who then have to take up a credit as well. It is a real Ponzi scheme that will carry itself as long as some people believe in it.”

“The money from the credulous policlinics and patients will then be used to pay us,” said Hakim. “How shameful being duped like that.”

“Yes,” said Vincent. “But we Red Cells are resisting them. So, once we had set up the machines, for twenty units no more, Hakim and I humbly asked our bosses for a meeting of the workplace assembly.

“What would you need a workplace assembly for, cheeky boys? You should actually be fired for embarrassing us before Édouard Stérilé, Arnaud Arrolle, Anne Dalgo and Co. by inviting these idiots savants from Institut Pasteur. You had no business to do that, did you?”

Fasco hierarchy at Red flame omnibus vaccine workshop, Year 20, by Olivier and Danièle

“But none of your associates are scientists, let alone pharmacologists.”

“Ho, ho, young lad,” said Fritz Schneid, a.k.a. Willy. ”But I am a chemical engineer and have produced synthetic fertilisers and pesticides for over twenty years. Ever heard of Garden Crown and Greentex ? And we have done ecological methods when you lads weren’t even born yet. There isn’t just Monsatan.”

“But Monsatan did a lot of damage,” I mumbled.

“And Ronald and Stéphane are physical engineers, they have designed weapons before that silly revolution forced them to become drivers.”

“We know about the importance of material checks,” said Stéphane in a conciliatory tone of voice.

“However, Anne, Marion, Édouard, and Arnaud are just politicians, media channel operators and local agitators to be precise,” I said. “Yet you claimed they were all biochemists. That was a lie.” “Yes, but Reinhard Fischer was one. He even did medical nanobots. He might have designed the whole omnibus vaccine for all we know. He really won’t come back, you don’t think?” Stéphane seemed genuinely sorry.

“No, he wrote a letter, published on Édouard’s channel, Smartbox, where he said Adieu to us, and said he would dedicate his knowledge to the revolution from now on in.”

“Well, anyway, if I hadn’t invited comrade Maher, I know him from school still, we wouldn’t have gotten material-checked at all!”

“Phew, what did they do? Look at the individual vaccines and the syringe, then say, what did they call it? There might be a problem with permeability and reverse infection. Any evil wisher would have said that.”

“Plus, the individual vaccines had also not passed the material check,” said Flavel, not meaning to be cheeky, only for completeness sake, but now Thomas and Willy and their hitmen were all over us. Four of them jumped at Hakim and me, kicking, hitting, and strangling us until we were black and blue from the neck down to the knees.

Then they turned around to Flavel. “Ah, black boy – amateur driver wants to be a biochemist now, heh?” asked Fritz and rubbed himself against Flavel as if wanting to fuck him. Flavel, tall, strong, and dexterous, gave him a slap in the face. Thomas tried to pull his partner back, but he had already tried to seize Flavel’s privates. As he could no longer hit him in the face, because Thomas was pulling him back, Flavel now lifted his leg and tried to kick Fritz’s leg. Yet now, Ronald and Stéphane pulled him from behind and threw him on the floor. He was lying there, writhing in pain holding his genitals. Ismail rushed to help him, but one of the gangster guards who had finished with Hakim and me pushed him back rudely, so he fell as well.

“Had enough of a meet for today?” Thomas asked me. I said yes and between us, we dragged and carried poor Flavel, who was the worst off, to one of the transporters. Ismail drove us to the policlinic. The two red cells formed by the Red flames logistics station drivers and lab workers, were allowed to hold a joint meeting in the cafeteria of the policlinic, with Emmanuel, Laurence, and a few other Illyrians again in attendance.

Assault against Hakim, Flavel and Ismail, by Emmanuel and Laurence

“That was assault,” whimpered Ismail who seemed almost as sick as Flavel.

“That was because I am black!” added Flavel.

“He is right,” said comrade Denis. He and comrade Jean had come over from Illyria to make sure we were alright. In their presence, we decided that our would-be, usurper bosses had crossed a threshold with this aggressive and sexually demeaning behaviour, not only vis-à-vis Hakim, me, and Flavel, but against Ismail as well, and sickening verbal abuse as well.

We decided to go on strike. We would not need pickets, only a blockade, since all of us except the would-be bosses, Thomas, Florian, Willy, Ronald, and Stéphane and their most faithful thug subordinates were present at the meeting. We would be at home and wait what would happen. If experience was any guide, they would first try to disparage us on their European Empire, Figaro, Smartbox and other channels, even via the intranet if they got other people, animals, and plants to participate in the mobbing. Then, what was worse, they would send us their cryptoleak avengers. You Illyrians promised to help and each of us fourteen got at least one Illyrian security expert stationed at their house to defend us. You know best yourselves what excellent brigades of fighters you have and what a cosmopolitan team you put together this time as well! Comrades Miguel from Mexico, Venezuela, or Argentina, depending which period of his life you quiz him about, Noah from Mali, Seth from Niger, Ronggang and Michel from China, Aslan, Zelim, and Muhammed from Chechnia, Boris, Rodion, and Saïd from the Russian lands or respectively, Palestine-Lebanon, and Dan, In, Ayak, and Vit, time-travelled Shaolin monks from Cambodia.”

“Don’t forget our harpoids,” said comrade Robespierre .

“Oh, yes, each of the soldiers brought a harpoid with him, sometimes also called haproid robot, maybe depending on whether the robot or the plant element in their nature chorus or bio-wifi set-up was dominant. By the way, they call themselves soldiers, always in a slightly deprecatory tone of voice, but that is to make clear that while we are against violent conflict of all sorts, the fascos at times force us to fight.”

“Not only that,” said Laurence’s papa, comrade Dominique, who as a peace researcher knew more about this issue.

“Almost all of your protectors have been fasco mercenaries at one point, some of them have even served in the pre-revolutionary security forces. And you are right. They refer to themselves as soldiers to remind themselves and all of us of the trauma of war.”

“Were soldiers allowed to have trade unions by the way?” asked Emmanuel, happy about an occasion to harp on about his core subject once more. “No way!” laughed his mother, Aurélie. “Remember the sailors going on strike in Russia in 1917? That was the beginning of the first world revolution, or near-world revolution, I should say.”

Emmanuel blushed but bravely asked another question to clear up his earlier confusion. “And why do you sometimes say harpoids, and sometimes haproids?”

“Both are acronyms derived from android, which is another word for robot, to indicate that they need not necessarily have the classic robot shape,” explained comrade Sylvain, with comrade Robespierre, senior member of the robot brigade. “H stands for humanoid robots, a for animal shape, r for robot, p for plant, and d for dinosaur shape. When they are haproids, they do not yet have all the faculties of speech, including nature language and song that would enable them to fully participate in the nature chorus, nor the vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, especially manual and limb agility and strength that would enable them to fully substitute for us humans in all our chores. I must say I for one am pretty satisfied with our latest prototype series. That is why I call them harpoids, almost on a par with harpists, for humans, animals, robots, and plants, where the animal category includes our time-travelled friends, the dinosaurs, and the r for robots may also stand for remaining or rest, meaning the remaining or the rest of bio-wifi capable materials besides living beings and robots. These include water, many metals, minerals, rare earths, and also many things humans use which have taken over some of the human spirit and have therefore acquired bio-wifi capability.”

“So, then, how do you think you be able to protect us against the cryptoleak avengers tomorrow?” asked Vincent.

“It is important that we do not do it for all fourteen of you in the same way,” Jérôme explained, “because they will definitely go from house to house, and even if they have several groups, there won’t be fourteen of them, meaning they will be able to communicate among each other after the first missions. Yet they should in no way see a pattern. We can have tricks of course, but we should vary them sufficiently so that they cannot see through our game. The animals or harpoids can always be there for a surprise effect. A second trick can be that someone will always be with you, not only your family, but we can be other friends, neighbours, or just passers-by who come running in alerted by the noise. Never alone, always together!, as the old scout saying goes. A third surprise can be that you won’t always act the same. Of course, they know that Vincent, Ismail, Flavel, and Hakim are not their flaming counter-revolutionaries, and will be so even less in light of yesterday’s events. Yet you others may be more equivocal, to protect yourselves physically obviously, not to fall for their traps.”

“Don’t we have any idea as to who these cryptoleak avengers may be?”

“Not necessarily,” explained young comrade security expert Olivier, taking over from his senior. “Remember, in the most recent surveys, only one individual in 2000 shows any sympathies for the counter-revolution. That means if they want to recruit their henchmen from not too far away, which makes sense, so they can find all the places and know escape routes as well, that will still mean that they are likely to use individuals from all over the région parisienne, from its Southern part only if they are lucky.”

“A few more facts about cryptoleak avengers,” continued comrade Jérôme, “that are worth knowing. They tend to be motorised. Sometimes their vehicles are outright illegal, sometimes disguised as delivery vehicles or taxis. They are always electrical, since the cryptoleak avengers are well-paid, or have access to lots of perks, given that old money, vouchers, crypto, and tokens are definitely no longer the sort of door-openers that they used to be. They tend to wear long wide and floating coats with gold embroidery, to make them look like something in between Ku-Klux-Klan and wise magician, the latter in case you swing around and become docile counter-revolutionary again. You just play it by ear. You may try to debate them a bit, but don’t get reckless. We’ll be there to bail you out as soon as a bad thing seems bad enough.”

“What if they try to drag us back to work?” another worker asked. “You let us know via bio-message whether you want us to stop the rigmarole immediately or go back there to organise the return of your workshop to self-management. What do you want to become, by the way, a self-managed logistics enterprise, a medicine producer, or something completely different?”

“I think those of us who want to drive would do well just going back to Logistique Yvelines, don’t you think, comrades? It is a very nice site, strategically located between Versailles and Chartres and in the woods, with only field roads all around, not even the parking lot is tarmacked anymore and yet they clean their vehicles squeaky clean with water from the river or from their well. Rotation works perfectly, no one is brigadier more than a day in a row, and the position of accountant brigadier also rotates between all the drivers in a brigade, or rather everybody does their own accounting, he or she only checks what they are jotting down, time spent driving, passengers and loads taken on, battery charges and other vehicle services taken, etc. All strategic decisions get taken in the full enterprise assembly and by consensus only, and the moderator role also changes once an hour.”

“We are fifty people,” explained comrade Annie. “We have moderator teams of five… Our workplace meetings typically last two days, five hours a day. That means every driver or organiser, I am only an organiser, gets to moderate for one hour at least.”

“What, comrade Annie, you don’t drive? I thought somebody with such flaming red hair would be behind the wheel 24/7!” said Flavel.

“Merci, young comrade,” Annie smiled. “But you forget that I am a grandma pensioner already, 65, sometimes I even have young comrade, baby Fabien next to me in his pram, when the crêche is not working and his mamon, comrade Rosa, is busy. Anyway, we need somebody to (wo)man the phone, or nowadays to record all the bio-calls. I invite you all to train with us for a while even if you can’t stay with us. Comrade Ismail has done it. He can tell you what a nice collective we are!”

There were loud shouts of ‘Oui, on s’en doutait’ from the seven comrades in the red driver cell as well as a few ‘If you’ll have us’, clearly addressed to their colleagues at Logistique Yvelines. “Yes, of course,” said senior comrade Fabien intraline from the garden colony, full-time driver at Logistique Yvelines. “We are actually missing three drivers in our contingent at the moment. If all seven of you wanted to join, however, we’d need permission from the surrounding village assemblies, for ecological reasons. Even our fully electrical vehicles cause a little bit of damage. Not for lack of work! We are having our hands full, because many farms in the area, just like Illyria, choose not even to have their own transporter and rely on us to get their food to the market and their tools and inputs from the train. But look, no reason to look sad, there are other self-managed logistics enterprises in the area who’d love to have you. We’ll help you hook up. By the way, anyone of you who does not want to be a driver anymore?” Flavel raised his bruised hands, “I don’t have the guts to drive any of these fascists around anymore. It can even happen by mistake. I’d want to hierarchy check them immediately.”

Emmanuel laughed. “You are right. Otherwise, some of you might want to become taxi drivers as well. Nothing demeaning in that. They are also free in the revolution. The drivers get their goods through the economic circuit, and these days they are mainly for old or sick people, or women with children and too much to carry. In other words, you would normally not expect a fasco to get in.

“Anyway, what about the eight others, including Flavel. If you really decide to quit driving, any ideas of what your two-brigade workshop might become?”

“Yes,” said one of them. “My name is Quentin, but I am not a fasco.” There had been a legendary fasco activist and martyr by that name before the revolution. “It could become a recycling workshop for vehicles maybe, electro-vehicles and bikes, but if I may propose something, mainly computers, robots, even nanobots. That way our microscopes and other lab equipment may still be of use. People tend to keep so much electronic junk at home that they don’t know what to do with – pre-revolutionary internet devices, revolutionary ones featuring the One World operating system, Aurora browser, Chinese Wall security suite, and the revolutionary apps, then the very first intranet devices that we have already phased out. I worked as a recycling worker for a while, and people kept telling me ‘We could open an internet and intranet museum at our place, but so could our neighbours’, and I always had to tell them, ‘Just wait, you are straining at the leash. The proper recycling workshops for this kind of stuff are far away, and there is a waiting list.’ Don’t you think it would be worth having one close by?” The other seven, including Flavel, clapped.

“We could call ourselves March of the Computers, you know like march of the trees, and have a poster and even a little comic strip where all these devices disassemble-reassemble at our place.” Now everybody was ecstatic. “That is a very good idea. And do you have a sufficient number of experts among you?” asked Sylvain. “This is not to make you antsy, on the contrary, there is the robot workshop at Illyria close by. We shall help you, and there is Oranges révolutionnaires which is an intranet phone shop which is converting to plushbots now, you know the small versions of the full-sized and grow-up-with-you haproids, just to do homework and other sedentary tasks? The good thing about them is that because the intranet develops so much less heat than old-fashioned electrical charge and the internet, we’ll be able to make them of lighter material, even soft plush and other fluffy material, be it natural fibre of course. Yet due to their environment-friendliness, they may last longer than their metal-plastic antecedents. And the grow-up-with-you harpoids that can expand even longer of course.”

Three of the red cell members aside from Quentin turned out to be trained computer experts – a boom training course in the revolution, for obvious reasons –, who had just joined the fasco workshop to learn some more. One was even a studied robotics engineer. Two were electricians, which was close enough, and Flavel would be the expert on vehicles. They contacted the revolutionary oranges of Oranges révolutionnaires and convened a first workplace assembly for the earliest possible time once the fascos had been thrown out. Everybody was now only hoping that the visits by the cryptoleak avengers would put everything to a head and things would progress from there on back into the rosy revolutionary future.

Chapter 6. Visit by the cryptoleak avengers

Visit by the Cryptoleak Avengers 1, by Bashir and Sevim

“I am afraid they are forewarned. Look through the window!” Stéphane Kocho was bored. Of course, the revolutionaries would have known that they were coming. Four groups à four persons with Thomas, Fritz, a.k.a. Willy, and Ronald each in charge of one group, while Florian with two security goons was guarding the Red flames logistics station and workshop, and Arnaud, Édouard, Anne, and Marion were staying somewhere safe in Versailles or thereabouts, was it Marne la Coquette ?, monitoring their progress via bio-video. It had been difficult already recruiting the twelve subordinate mercs. Of the six thugs who had served them at the logistics station, three had gone home and even demanded and received a pay-off for not squealing on them. Thomas and Willy had begged the other three to bring them some friends and relatives willing to be trained in as cryptoleak avengers, and Édouard, Arnaud, and Florian had contacted a few more in other regions.

Since all of them were relatively new to the task or at least serving on new territory far from home, they had to give them a pep-talk and even some initial training on what to say, wearing and moving in the cryptoleak avengers costumes, and how to react when encountering unexpected resistance.

In fact, the initial pep-talk, from Édouard speaking via Smartbox had gone something like that. Hopefully, it had not been intercepted by the revolutionaries, since it gave away quite a lot about counter-revolutionary strategy, past and future! “I don’t know whether all of you are even familiar with the history of our glorious ‘Cause’. It started with a group of ex-politicians, bureaucrats, security experts – military and police –and businessmen around the Limarna think-tank, where Limarna stands for Liberté – Marché – Nation, three values and in fact mainstays of our civilisation that the revolution has frivolously forsaken. After the revolution, the founders of Limarna and their successors have not stopped working for their restitution. The names and the methods of our struggle may not be the same, but we keep carrying the flame. We now call ourselves the Pericles group after the wise Athenian leader, and under this name have been able to establish good relations with the North American, Italian, and Baltic Uber groups, with Henri Uber, Fernando Deliverando, Louis Deshalles, and Viesturs Volt and the bankers Tino Cryptolla, Robert Capito and Mort Buckley on the one hand…”

“I hope you don’t want us to deliver things by bike like the old Uberytes,” said one of the newcomer mercs. “Because the little money in it wasn’t worth all the stress even before the revolution.”

“Oh, no,” Stéphane interjected. “You will be independent security agents, something like enforcers or debt collectors in the ancien régime. Your job will be much more hands-on.”

“Yes,” continued Édouard. “And on the other hand, we are in contact with the much more ambitious people you have just heard from, people around big industrial barons such as Pappberger in the German lands, Ricky Handsome in England, Mick Mc Leary in Ireland and what is left of the management of Dassault, Thales, for example, here in the French lands.

“Anyway, we have considered the return to a bike delivery scheme, especially to circumvent the village assemblies’ prohibition on all vehicles except functional ones and transporting for free as part of their revolutionary circuit. We believe that our associates, and you are our associates, should have more of an incentive.”

“You want to give us crypto, token, old money, stuff like that,” sighed another prospective cryptoleak avenger. “Yet where to spend them? Nobody wants to take them anymore. Getting things, even houses and flats, directly from a producing workshop or builder, on the market, or in a share point, which can be virtual, like a housing exchange, is much faster, safer, and ensures better quality.”

“That is because rats have betrayed our deals,” shouted Fritz. “And that’s why we call this battalion of the Cause the cryptoleak avengers, to punish those who have ratted out people who would have otherwise stood to gain from the vibrancy of private initiative.”

“D’accord, how much are you willing to pay?”

Willy, who had the best relations to the bankers, transmitted each of them a sum in crypto-francs via intranet bio-wifi and encrypted with bio-thicket.

“D’accord, that sounds reasonable,” said another of the newcomers. “I only wonder, was it wise to send this via biomessage. Any squirrel on a tree or bird in a bush can pass this information on to the revolutionaries.”

“In that case, we have here for each of you a new village ID with a new name you can use to run and establish a new life elsewhere. The deniability of information passed via the nature chorus is extremely high, trust me! You are familiar with travel via golden, nowadays brown beam?”

“It is like their revolutionary yellow beam, isn’t it? You summon the beam to go somewhere and when it comes you’ll disintegrate into molecular state so as to get fast and unseen to wherever you want to go. And as you land in your final destination, you’ll be reintegrating already.”

“I have used brown beam,” said another recruit. “It is better than golden beam that we cryptoleak avengers used to go on, because they can’t see you and once it’s going they can’t see the beam either. And it does not require any booster grenades. In fact, it is almost as good as their yellow beam, very energy-efficient, except that you get a bit angry as you disintegrate. Well, I am understating, you get super-hot as if you were about to explode. But that is a passing phenomenon. By the time you reintegrate, you won’t feel it anymore.“

“Quite accurate,” nodded Édouard. “Now, those of you Arnaud, Anne, Marion, and I brought in already know about the dresses of the cryptoleak avengers. Can one of you explain it to the others?”

“Yes, it is a long white cloak with gold embroidery to symbolise the value we carry and that the traitor may have criminally betrayed. Like the transport beams, they are a bit magical, in that they seem benign and benevolent to the innocent and dangerous and violent to those who may have switched, voluntarily or under duress, to the side of the revolution. Depending on their reaction, we know what to do, drag them back to task, punish them for their treacheries and if they are really bad traitors, kill them…”

Visit by the cryptoleak avengers 2, by Zamir and Odile

Back to Stephen Kocho, alias Stéphane. “They even have a dinosaur sitting at the table, a Rhabdodon from what I remember from the revolutionary channels. They gave a presentation of all the time-travelled dinosaurs. Did you watch it by any chance? It was very interesting.”

“Focus on your god damn work, will you?” Édouard shouted, who clearly had to consider this praise of the revolutionary channels a disparagement of his European Empire and Smartbox ventures. What was he supposed to have done? Praise the revolutionaries for reinventing time travel and talking to the dinosaurs and animals?

They walked in, where their former worker-slave Akhmed was sitting at the kitchen table with a friend, an Asian, Chinese or Indochinese, Vietnamese maybe or Laotian, together with the dinosaur, by the looks of it a Rhabdodon. “We did not expect you so early,” Akhmed prattled on, who thought it was best if the other comrades had some more time to prepare, at least for this group of cryptoleak avengers. “We have not got all day!” snarled Fritz, a.k.a. Willy. “What were you thinking, simply not showing up for work this morning?”

“We think that your omnibus virus transmitter plus tranquiliser won’t get approved by any village assembly worldwide,” said Dan. “I am from Cambodia, and in my region, they have already rejected any kind of omnibus vaccine ten or more years ago,” he could not give the precise date, because like the Rhabdodon, he had come only recently via time travel from the Middle Ages, the era when the Shaolin monastery flowered and taught everybody in the Chinese lands and surrounding regions, including Indochina, the art of kungfu and non-violent martial arts, “and in this case, the prohibition would hold up all the more firmly since we have found all the so-called vaccines you put into the syringe, Coflux-20, Covet-20, LEP-AL-20, and MA-20 toxic in prior individual material checks.”

“You might as well scrap the production line we set up yesterday,” Akhmed said soothingly to Fritz as if talking to a madman. “I myself have worked for a few months in a policlinic already. I am a medical student, that’s why Thomas and his guys recruited me originally, and I know that no self-managing policlinic would admit your vaccine. Imagine, all the doctors, the nurses or carers, and the support staff would have to approve of your vaccine, although they all have good medical knowledge and the ambition to contribute to the natural medicine we revolutionaries are developing. Moreover, they would have to agree to buying it against crypto, tokens, or vouchers, where they could get it for free at the local pharmacy or order it from the producing workshop. And if they bought it from you they would probably have to incur a debt to finance it. They would have to try to administer it to the patients against payment, where they are already used to receiving all treatments for free. In fact, medicine, like public transport, education, and other public services was one of the first goods to become free or at least acquirable by voucher only, no insurance payment or any other money involved. So, why should people suffer setbacks to this revolutionary entitlement of theirs?”

“I think,” said Rhabdon and Fritz, alias Willy and his companions were amazed that they could understand the rhabdodon although it was talking ice-age nature language or nature speak at least, as if they were revolutionaries already, “it had to do with this MA, for Moral Atrophy virus that you have developed, and that gives humans the flu and makes them cynical, and they don’t want it. They also know about the consequences it has on animals and plants. Small animals may just keel over and writhe in agony, while bigger ones like dogs, cows, and even small dinos may still develop twitching and depression. Plant leaves may wilt more quickly, and in some cases the whole plant may die. And the effects are even worse if you apply MA together with White Phosphor because that can give humans and animals necrosis, kidney, and liver problems, and can stifle even strong trees so they can no longer participate in the march of the trees for restoring the forest.”

“Don’t tell us that is your intention?” asked Dan, but Willy had got back his bravado by now. He motioned his three helpers to seize Akhmed, then the five of them disassembled – the fascists call it disintegrate – within split seconds before comrades Dan and Rhabdon could even get over the pleasure of having made a good point. It did not matter. The enemy had fled and taken one hostage. So, they immediately disassembled as well, then swung themselves on a yellow beam and bolted after the felons. In fact, they were already reassembled at the entrance of the logistics station setting up their blockade when Fritz and the rank-and-file cryptoleak avengers were just disassembling inside to go out again, having just deposited Akhmed at the station.

The outcome of the cryptoleak avengers action was even more favourable to the revolution in most other cases. The fascos had already bruised poor Ismail and manhandled poor Hakim quite roughly as well. Because of the delay Fritz Schneid and his minions had accumulated because of our comrades’ speeches, comrade Ismail did not only have comrade Vit and Struthio, the Struthiosaurus there to scare them, but as soon as Willy had cornered him with the words, “You are already sitting up and seem to feel better. Why did you not show up for work?”, and Ismail had reproachfully shown him his bruises, the doctor, Ismail’s family doctor whom Ismail’s girlfriend had summoned from the local policlinic, had rung the bell, then knocked. The four fascos, obviously afraid that Ismail would tell the good doctor what had happened to him and that they had done it, dropped all pretence and jumped through a window and over the fence. By the time Ismail and his comrade helpers had requested a spontaneous militia brigade, and it had received the minimal quorum of twenty percent of all villagers, Fritz, alias Willy and his fellow gangsters had already arrived at their next stop, comrade Hakim’s house, where Hakim welcomed them in bed, with comrade Muhammed sitting by his bedside playing the concerned friend. “Pack yourself, imam!” one of the cryptoleak avengers scoffed, but just as Muhammed got up, outraged at the religious and racial slur, Hakim’s little daughter came in to say good-bye before school and started to cry. “Oh, papa, papa, why is your face all red and blue and your arms as well?” Fritz and his three helpers, no longer up to chit-chat, tried to pull Hakim out of bed and get him to come with them. Yet, when they summoned the beam it wouldn’t come, instead, Muhammed almost stunned them with a revolutionary red beam, before they managed to floor him with their reactionary brown beams. Comrade Hakim’s little daughter ran out screaming and it was a matter of minutes until the spontaneous militia brigade she and her mother would surely summon, got its quorum, and would turn up to arrest them. In their haste to get out, they did not bother to drag along Hakim. In fact, they were almost brought to a fall by the cheeky chicken band in the yard who did not mind the pain of placing themselves exactly in their way in order to make them stumble. Cursing, the fascos kicked them aside and had to take another beam to avoid militia and to arrive quickly at their next and last assignment, where comrade Saleh was receiving help from comrade Boris, as well as Obeli, the Obelignathus.

“Comrade Saleh is not feeling so well,” Boris informed them, imitating the capitalist lackey style he had learnt during his work at capitalist forums, “too many sugary processed foods he took at your logistics organisation to keep up the crazy pace of work. He told me you don’t even practice rotation and refuse to hold assembly meetings. Is that true?”

“Look, comrade Saleh is coming with us, he is a good chemical worker,” said Willy, a.k.a. Fritz. Two of his three companions had already seized Saleh, who was resisting, by the arms and were dragging him along, when Obeli stopped them at the door, blocking their exit. Obelignathuses are not predators, they are harmless vegans, but even as young as comrade Obeli was, he was quite big and hard to push aside. So, again, our four fasco would-be abductors had to let go of comrade Saleh and leave the premises through a window and on a brown beam. Their mission had ended in a disaster. Apart from comrade Akhmed, they had recovered none of the striking workers.

Comrade Thomas and his team had promised to take on the next four, but when Willy and his band arrived for the second time at the logistics station, they were already expecting them. They still had Akhmed, yet Vit and Struthio, Boris and Obeli, comrade Muhammed and Saleh and even the chicken had joined the blockade outside. And they had recovered none of the strikers, the reason being that Thomas and his crew had arrived late, and the revolutionary guards had been much better prepared.

Comrades Nasar and In had already brought themselves into position when the four of them entered. And next to them stood a big and scary baby Loricatosaurus, again not a predator, but looking more dangerous than Rhabdodon with fangs and jaggy skin. They had to beat a quick retreat.

With comrades Hasan, Zelim, and Compso, the Compsognathus, they had more of a discussion. Hasan was one of the drivers. He was not interested in producing pharmaceutical medicine. “You would be crazy if you were!” said Compso. Then Zelim asked Thomas and the cryptoleak avengers whether they would not rather defect and rehabilitate. Thomas tried to stun him, but Zelim avoided the beam, and the other three cryptoleak avengers looked more agnostic already. Yet, for the time being, they fled again.

Comrade Karwa had comrade Rodion and a horse as helpers. Before the fascists could really grab them, they had got away on their horse.

The fascos had already hurt Vincent, but Saïd and he were agile and also had a small, but dangerous Poekilo Pleuron dinosaur to help them. While comrades Vincent and Saïd got on a beam to join the blockade, the Poekilo Pleuron bit all four fascos in the legs so bad that they shouted from pain. Then the Poekilo Pleuron disassembled as well and got on the yellow beam to join the blockade.

Bruno and Ayak were able to flee to the forest and hide from the fascos using the help of a deer. The three of them later arrived on foot at the logistics station.

So did Marcus and Miguel, who were able to leave the fascos behind, because comrade Fox bit them in their legs.

On the other hand, comrades Pierre, Flavel and Joseph had to go with the fascos. Pierre because he and Aslan were afraid that they would harm his cow. Yet Aslan immediately joined the blockade and all those present vowed to get the kidnapped out of the station fast.

Flavel had his sheep to worry about and went along pretending to be quite weak and meek still from yesterday’s ordeal. As a matter of fact, he was bio-messaging constantly with comrade Noah which gave the revolutionaries a good idea of the situation inside the logistics station.

Comrade Joseph grumbled more than Flavel and his goats tried to push the reactionaries so they would leave him alone, but they were not as strong as dinos, obviously. In fact, the reactionaries threatened to use shotguns on them, so they ran. Yet they joined the blockade like the other animals and plants as well. The plants established themselves as bio-thicket around the fasco logistics station protecting revolutionary communications and delaying the fasco ones.

Finally, comrades Minh and Ronggang were able to floor four fascos with martial arts tricks and take them prisoners. They took them to the blockade in a Logistique Yvelines transporter where they admitted to having felt grave misgivings about the Cause for some time already.

Chapter 7. Hierarchy Check

Getting out of hierarchy with red cells, by Emmanuel and Laurence

“We might start with a workers’ assembly,” one of the hesitating cryptoleak avengers meanwhile proposed to the fasco barons, Thomas, Willy, Édouard and the others inside the station. “At least we have to introduce ourselves to each other. Four of us are already on the other side. Fortunately, we’ve got four of the old workers back, Akhmed, Pierre, Flavel, and Joseph. And then we have you, messieurs Florian, Thomas, Willy, Édouard, or Étienne, whatever your name is, Arnaud or Arthur, Anne or Adèle, and Marion or Marianne. That’s seventeen and should be enough for one driver and one lab worker brigade with two substitutes each if you barons are willing to chip in a little bit.”

“Objection,” said Étienne good-naturedly. “But the four of us barons, if you wish, may have to leave soon because there are regional meetings of ÉdF and SFCF coming up where our presence is required.”

“I thought they were organised by the transformer or toggle stations in case of ÉdF, or the train or switching stations, whatever you call them, in the case of SFCF?” asked Fritz, visibly scared to be left alone with the rebellious workers.

“We might not have time for introductions, let alone democratic niceties like rotation,” Arnaud ignored him. “The revs must have followed us here, even the dinosaurs and the farm as well as some wild animals, and they have surrounded the whole place with their pickets. They have even stopped one driver already. He must have come from another logistics station. I wonder what he was supposed to deliver to us.”

“We are not going to have a separate driver brigade for the time being,” Thomas stopped him. “We must fulfill our obligations towards the Uberyte policlinics that have ordered the vaccine. For the time being, you shall all be lab workers.”

“Not with me!” “Leave me out!” “I came here to drive and not to fill syringes or watch robots do it!” “We are cryptoleak avengers, not drivers or lab attendants.” “Wasn’t there the good idea to reconstitute as a self-managed computer and robot recycling workshop?” That was Flavel asking.

“Well, if you want to that, it’s rebellion!” shouted Thomas.

“Let me tell you something for free,” comrade Pierre yelled back. “From Day 1 you have acted as little dictators here. The two of you have been brigadiers the whole time, you have also done all the M&A which has provided you with additional powers. This is only the second workers’ assembly we have held in the several months of our existence.”

“You have supposedly striven to hire qualified chemical workers or lab workers, including comrade Vincent and me,” said Akhmed. “But you have chosen to consistently ignore our advice. We have begged you to clean the lab first, only yesterday did you condescend to allowing that. We have urged a material check, but then you brought in bogus experts,” and he gesticulated in the direction of Édouard, Arnaud, Anne, and Marion, “and ignored the good ones Vincent and Ismail had invited. In fact, you beat up comrades Vincent and Hakim, as well as comrades Flavel and Ismail, that is violent behaviour on the shop floor that we cannot tolerate.”

“And then you requested cryptoleak avengers,” said one of them. “Yet it has turned out the workers did not leak any crypto deals. In fact, there weren’t any. You, Thomas and Willy had not paid you, you, the workers said. In fact, we cryptoleak avengers have not seen any money either. For that reason alone, Thomas and Willy should be sacked. Don’t you agree?” All ten workers lifted or waved their hands in consensus.

“Now we might as well open the door to the comrades blockading us,” said Joseph, and while they all agreed and just wanted to decide on someone to do it, Thomas and Willy as well as two of the cryptoleak avengers, who maybe felt they had too much on their conscience to let the revolutionaries question them, had summoned brown beams, disintegrated and were gone.

“Just a minute,” said Arnaud. “ I am myself a community organiser. I know how terrible it feels if principles of democracy and social justice are violated. And this can happen even in the revolution.” And he pulled a sad face to make the workers believe that he was feeling with them. “Why don’t you allow Étienne and me six minutes with each of you in private, and we should also invite in the four the revolutionaries have arrested, just six minutes for each of you to find out whether we cannot come to an agreement that will make it conceivable for you to stay with the Cause.”

“In other words, you want to offer us crypto, token, vouchers, one of your crazy money substitutes,” said Flavel. “I for one am not asking for any, I am leaving.” And when he, Akhmed, Joseph, and Pierre left as a kind of united red cell, none of the four cryptoleak avengers who remained made any attempt at holding them back.

When they asked at the strike headquarters that had been established in a large tent under an oak tree, because it had started to rain, none of the cryptoleak avengers already apprehended had any desire to go back to the barons. In fact, they were willing to continue testifying against them.

The red cells constituted as spontaneous militia left the barons half an hour to talk to the four recalcitrants. Then they entered the building. When they came in, Emmanuel, Laurence and a few other Illyrians and Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove young revolutionaries were with them as observers, all four ex-cryptoleak avengers were still there, ready to switch sides, as they said. “These barons were disgusting!” one of them said. “When I became a cryptoleak avenger a few years ago, I thought I was doing it for the benefit of liberty, and that included money, we thought back then, free markets, and democracy. Yet now we know we were wrong. In fact, we were misled by the ex-capitalists and other counter-revolutionaries.

“Freedom to choose, well-stacked markets, and direct democracy in the assemblies are all points on the side of the revolution.”

“I am glad you realise that,” said Emmanuel. “What is your name?” “Mathieu!” “That’s formidable, comrade Mathieu, we have a neighbour at number 76 rue de Lorraine who is also a good revolutionary like you, although he worked with a branch Rothschild banker family as a gardener of their estate, no less, and was probably offered tons of underground money to stay loyal to them. If you want to you can accompany us to our next debate with the fascos at ÉdF and SCFC and tell the workers about your experience. That may prevent them from falling for their traps. Would you and any of your comrades like that?” All of them without exception declared themselves ready to testify against their former masters.

March of the Computers, by Olivier and Danièle

Meanwhile, at ÉdF and SFCF, the fascists were trying to recruit people for their brown cells. “First, they feel you out over a glass of beer or wine, or a cup of coffee or tea if you tell them you don’t like alcohol,” explained comrade Claire. “They are looking for conservative women, you know, who are afraid of strangers, refugees, migrants, and other foreigners especially, and who are too shy to speak up at brigade meetings if something is bothering them. ‘Join our brown cells, we will protect you!’ So, I did, comrade Dénise, Janis’ girlfriend did so as well. We are both information agents, we sit behind what used to be the ticket counter, from the time when you still had to pay to use the train, and inform people about tracks, delays, connections, and so on. The first thing we noticed was that we had to support a fasco as permanent brigadier.”

“But how can that be? Doesn’t the position of brigadier always rotate?”

“It does, but you can get around it. Before I joined an Uberyte logistics station, I worked for ÉdF. At my station we were three people,” said Bruno. “Two, including me, were always ill when their turn came, so that the third, a committed fasco could always be brigadier. He told me the three demands of right-wingers, or brown cell members. You have to love crypto, and other stuff like that, you have to hate foreigners, and you have to be for the centralisation of ÉdF and SFCF, in other words, regional meetings, permanent authorities, meaning bosses also at that level. And this would, our fasco agitators hoped, lead us back to a situation where there would be a state and the government would decide what happens to the utilities. Should they be expanded, or cut back, or maybe privatised?

“Then when I joined the logistics station, it became even clearer to me why they needed both brown cells and centralisation. Let’s say, we wanted to take electricity from the grid because we couldn’t be bothered setting up a block energy works. Some guy either close or far away would help us, but to get help we needed both types. Same when we wanted to transport stuff by train against crypto and without attracting attention to ourselves. Our friendly helper could be local or central, but we needed both types, otherwise our shipment would get stopped somewhere in case of getting through.”

“There is no need for them to play ill,” comrade Dénise commented. “The boss simply pretends to have an affair with you and maybe your friends as well. He does not have to be the official brigadier, as long as he calls the shots.”

“I have heard of cases where they were banging guys,” said Claire. “All they want is to make sure they will vote with them in the brigade and at the workplace assembly. ‘The rule is,’ one of them told me, at least half the brigade plus one have to be brownies, so in a brigade six or seven members strong, four members of have to be fascos or vote with them.”

“It is even better if they take crypto. Then the fascos can simply call them up even if they are in another brigade, and say, we have a project going at this or that site, can you reattach us to the grid? Or, I have an urgent shipment coming up, can you make sure it gets transferred to the right train?”

“Yet, but we noted when at the Red flames logistics station and biochemical workshop, there was a real issue, for instance, cleaning the lab, or producing these vaccines without proper material checks,” said Emmanuel, “the workers voted with the revolution, and in fact, they joined our red cells rather than sticking with their brown cells if they even had been members of one.”

“No doubt of that, at the logistics stations, and also at the Uberyte fitness studios, night-clubs, and policlinics, they flock back to the revolution at the first sign of somebody blowing the whistle. It need not be they themselves or their closest friend to get abused by the bosses for them to say, ‘That is what I have been saying all along. These bossy types are no good. Comrades, let’s blockade the place, so we or our girlfriends no longer have to go there,’” said Janis. “For instance, I thought of myself as a law-and-order type until the boss raped my fiancé.”

“But at SFCF, the situation is a bit different than at the Uberyte places,” said Claire. “The train stations and even the switching stations enjoy a lot of independence, and it is hard for somebody or a group to just come and take them over. Yet they can use tricks, like those we mentioned before, illness or pretend-affairs, and they may send a rep to a regional or hexagon-wide meeting even if only four members of the local brigade are in full agreement with that. And if it is about a clandestine outfit loading some stuff on a train, that need not even be a matter of discussion in the train station brigade, in the train brigade on the train itself, or at the switching station. That type of corrosive activity, also throwing out or at least harassing or ignoring foreign workers can go on without all brigade members agreeing or even knowing about it.”

“Same at the ÉdF toggle stations,” nodded Bruno. “They can be a sort of no-man’s land, where self-management no longer applies, but the workers have not blown the whistle on the brownies yet.”

“And if we don’t stop them, the brown cells may proliferate like a cancer,” said Emmanuel. “Four brownies in every brigade at ÉdF transformer stations and SFCF station, train, and switching brigades. That would be a nightmare. So, what should we do? I propose we remind ourselves of the methods of the revolution. We have had the first of May rallies. Now we can try slow work and other strike forms, as well as boycotts and blockades.”

“As long as we don’t stop the trains and the emergency grid entirely!” warned senior comrade Pierre. “We won’t,” said Emmanuel. “The red cells can take over before that happens! Sleep well!”

Chapter 8. Boycotts and Blockades, Revolution in Year 20

Boycotting and Blockading ÉdF, by Che and Georgette

“Significantly enough, they have scheduled their ÉdF and their SFCF meeting on the same day, maybe so Édouard and Arnaud could attend both of them.”

“Which would mean their sponsors, probably in the ex-U.S., are hard strapped not only for workers and mercs but even for leaders or barons as their followers call them.”

“How then were they able to set up these meetings?”

“On the basis of the brown cells, and some people let themselves be dragged along although they did not quite see what the centralisation would be good for.”

“’Well, that is obvious, it would be good for efficiency,’ they would tell us,” comrade Bruno responded via intranet. “Listen and watch, I am recording a bio-video now. That will give you an idea of how they tick.” You could see Édouard Stérilé and Arnaud Arrolle sit in the first row, ready to get on the podium, together with three other people whom they did not know. Meanwhile the fellow on the podium introduced himself, ‘I am Valéry Lacron, and I shall be the moderator for this hour.’

“Notice they don’t bother pulling lots or allowing hierarchy checks for these moderators. Even electing them like they did in pseudo-democratic gatherings before the revolution would make more sense. That gives you an idea of what you would be getting under the capitalist restauration, just getting talked down to from above.”

Meanwhile Lacron had already started preaching from on high. “Comrade Étienne Fécondet is now going to explain why he and comrade Arthur have proposed these assemblies, not to undermine self-management and democracy but to make them even better.”

“Étienne Fécondet and Arthur Avanti, weren’t those the two class enemies that did not object to three workers being humiliated and beaten up by German fascos just for having urged rotation of brigadiers, material checks, and cleaning work facilities?” a voice shouted from the very last row.

The unelected moderators pretended not to have heard him. “Comrade Étienne, you have the word!”

“There are many reasons we propose to hold these regional assemblies. First and foremost is the fact that electricity, water, the railroads and a few other networks like this are what you’d call in economics, natural monopolies, linked with considerable economies of scale. It does not make sense to break them down to single toggle stations. What if there is a natural disaster?” “But we are not doing that. The transformer stations can all communicate via intranet!” another voice shouted from in back.

“That works especially well in case of a natural disaster,” a woodpecker sounded from outside. “Because we animal and plant harpists will be just as concerned if not more so than you humans. We’ll drum the alarm, don’t worry.” “And we’ll sing it,” a red robin seconded him. “No, need for all of you to travel and sit in a boring meeting.”

“Yet somebody needs to be responsible for the countermeasures we take to maintain the grid!”

“Yes, the workers’ brigades at the basis and their local assemblies.”

“D’accord!” said Arnaud, alias Arthur. “As some of you may know, dear ÉdF colleagues, I have been a community organiser before I became a trade unionist. Let me ask you, where do you think local ends and regional begins?”

“A local assembly of toggle stations consists of the work collectives of seven basic transformer stations maximum, fifty workers. That maximum size for a workers’ assembly has been ascertained as the best, so as to guarantee all the workers a say and make sure everybody gets to be a moderator for at least an hour during a one-day meeting. My name is Patrice. We have meetings like that in the Congo as well to organise the security of the block energy works and electricity supply during the march of the trees. We find any meeting larger than that will be unproductive and stifling. I mean, how many are we here, 300? We can’t even hear you in the last row.” Applause branded up and a few of those attending got up in sign of protest. “If you want to leave with us, please do! We are organising a blockade outside to protest against this meeting which has no legitimacy whatsoever, certainly not in an assembly-based organisation like ours, and not even in a representative system, because tell us, comrades, have you ever been elected delegates by your brigade or your local assembly of transformer station collectives?”

“We certainly weren’t,” a few other followers agreed and got up as well. “This is the wrong crowd here, they are brownies,” another one said. “We thought they were red cells.”

“You don’t even want to listen to our arguments,” Édouard said angrily, and he and Arnaud got up as well. “Too bad, we have to run to our next meeting anyway. We were going to tell you, regional meetings such as this one would be good as well to unmask foreign infiltrators such as those you mentioned and whose criminally violent actions we had to witness.”

“Buffalo shit, you were pacting with them,” noted Vincent.

“You were acting like their bosses, so you were ultimately the ones who got us roughed up,” added Ismail. Yet the two pretend-organisers, would-be dictators had already exited through a back door, jumped into a big black limousine, and bolted off to their next meeting at SFCF.

Boycotting and Blockading SFCF, by Jean–Wadi and Zafira

Yet as they approached, their drivers and security agents, three unrepentant cryptoleak avengers, became increasingly concerned. “I am afraid, messieurs, we are not going to get through here. They are partying around your meeting point, hundreds of them, probably not only the inhabitants of this village, but villagers from the surrounding areas. “Look, there ahead of us, they have built up a grill in the middle of the road. This would hardly have happened when we still had the tarmacked roads, but now that we have the sand and dirt roads, it is comfier to sit down, and easier to light a fire.”

“I suggest we turn around,” said one of the cryptoleak avengers. “I doubt there will be anyone at the conference hall by the time we get there.”

“And, listen, I am just listening to a local radio intraline. Your conference was supposed to take place in the auditorium of a local school complex, but what they are now conducting there are what they call debunking workshops of what they call your anti-democratic conference.”

“That was a good idea, wasn’t it?” said Emmanuel. “I came up with that.”

“You are as strong as a lion, as smart as a fox, and the wolves won’t have you,” his girlfriend, Laurence, praised him. She was in an exuberant mood today herself as well, because she had been able to get her presentation on the peace movement postponed, giving her more time to think, and also upon hearing the happy news that she was pregnant with a little girl or boy she and Emmanuel were going to call Charles or Caroline, for all things square and valuable. And now Emmanuel’s debunking workshops were scaring the most elitist of the contemporary fascos.

“Listen to what they are saying!”

“I did some research on the cutbacks on public transports as one reason for the revolution,” one young comrade, Hasan, was reporting. “At the same time, they were doing the cutbacks, the capitalist pseudo-environmentalist movements were organising a petition for forbidding all unnecessary car traffic in the inner city. The idea was good of course. You would need an exemption such as a pregnant or sick relative to drive your car within the périphérique, and if you did not get it, you would have to get an ambulance or a taxi which still cost money back then of course. That would have encouraged many people to get rid of their private car already before the revolution.

Yet there were pitfalls. First, delivery vans were going to come in for an exemption which the capitalist powers would grant much more easily than revolutionary quarter or neighbourhood assemblies. Second, the authors of the petition claimed that the restriction on vehicle traffic would require several hundred million if not a whole billion of additional expenditures for public transport. And third, obviously, we did not have a deconstruction plan then. The capitalist opponents of the idea would have moaned about what to do now with their beloved tarmacked road and concrete monster parking garages. Would-be signers of the petition were put off by all these internal contradictions and the petition failed, at least in Paris. Luckily, then the revolutionary neighbourhood assemblies came up with the much better conceived plan of everybody driving their car to the next filling station and receiving a life-long free public transport and free taxi voucher in exchange. Of course, there was also a plan for radically expanding public transport. All health services, including ambulances, were now free. And the neighbourhood assemblies could turn to self-managed deconstruction workshops and borrow the quiet, hand-held, solar-powered drills comrade Léon from nearby Illyria and his friends had invented to help themselves get rid of the tarmac and the concrete around their buildings and in the streets. I decided to call this story “All is well that ends well.”

“And there could be a similar story on the fasco plan to re-centralise the SFCF,” Emmanuel continued the debunking. “Instead of just station, train, and switching station brigades and maybe local meetings and if needed long-distance intranet conferences to coordinate actions for instance in emergencies, the fascos wanted to have undemocratic regional and even France-wide assemblies of railroad workers. Not trade union, syndicalist meetings, but something like stock-or as they called it in Davos-forum-type late capitalism, stakeholder conferences. They claimed these would be very difficult to organise without some sort of money, crypto, or some other money substitute. The SFCF becoming national again would also require some sort of national, central government to hold the strings, as they put it. And once the national network was set up again, you could use it to transport big tanks and other weapons to prepare for capitalist wars again. What a nightmarish argument for re-centralisation! How good we are stopping them in their tracks, isn’t it?” And just as this jovial question sounded in their brains and on their limousine’s bio-radio, also running on low-frequency neural waves just like the revolutionary computers and robots, Emmanuel stuck his head through their car window and repeated his question. “Isn’t it, messieurs?” It took them half an hour to prove, on the basis of another set of village IDs that they were neither Édouard Stérilé, Arnaud Arrolle, Anne Dalgo, and Marion Le Pen, nor Étienne Fécondet, Arthur Avanti, with their partners Adèle and Marianne, but just visitors out to take the spring air and celebrate the victory over capitalist recidivists with the others, and that their limousine was a delivery van a local farmer had lent them. He later on had to be bribed with bags of crypto coins and cash to be willing to confirm the story. What was supposed to have been the great revival of public-private utilities had ended in a revolutionary victory celebration. What a disaster for the Reaction, what a triumph for the revolution of the harp!

Chapter 9. Anarcho-Syndicalism 2.1

Spontaneous Red Cells, By Emmanuel and Laurence

We want to build the new anarcho-syndicalism of the 21^st century. We shall have red cells wherever appropriate, and even more spontaneity wherever needed. Yet at first, let us explain what the step from Communism to anarcho-syndicalism entails.

The communist revolution has brought us peace, equality, democracy and freedom.

Peace, because of the abolition of the state, of armies, weapons, and all other things and behaviour conducive to war.

Equality, because of the abolition of private business and money, as well as all inordinate material wealth. Equality means that everybody is entitled to the full satisfaction of his or her needs, but without exploiting others to this end. The farmers, industrial workers, and workers in social organisations such as schools, policlinics, logistics organisations such as railways or any organisation producing other public goods produce their goods for free, provide their services free to all other members of society and in return get all the inputs, equipment, and basic and more sophisticated consumer goods they need for free as well.

Food will be free and local farmers will produce it except for exotic food that the village will acquire by long-term revolutionary barter agreements with villages in the producing region.

Clothes will be free, we’ll make them of natural fibre, except for some synthetics we can still recycle. We shall produce no new synthetics until at least one village assembly, and all of its neighbour assemblies explicitly allow it and then material-check the producer workshop permanently.”

“There is already a role for red cells,” noted Laurence. “Exactly,” nodded Emmanuel. “Red cells shall exist in all farms, workshops, and social organisations to check for hierarchies, quality deficiencies, re-emergence of crypto and other money substitutes or, and – you just said it – observance of environmental standards. Let’s come back to that though. Let me first explain about Communism.

Other basic goods such as household goods, bags, books, toys, small and large furniture, small electrical appliances such as razors and large ones such as washing machines shall also be free and shared within households and between neighbours. There will be no longer the need to steal things. Typical venues of exchange are village markets and share points, or you can order goods from producing farms or workshops. Farmers and industrial workers will be happy to supply teachers, health workers, transport workers, and other service workers with their produce and goods, since they obviously also provide use-values everybody needs and wants.

Housing will also be free. As you know, each household received the house or apartment they were staying at free with the revolution. The neighbourhood assemblies deliberated so that they could house homeless, migrants, and refugees as quickly as possible. We transformed government and corporate office buildings as well as many shops into apartment buildings to make this possible. The revolution did away with orphanages, homeless and similar abodes, mental clinics – all diseases have physical origins and entitle you to medical treatment in a normal hospital without violence and abuse –, nursing homes – old people should be allowed to stay with their families, or if these don’t exist, with other old people in room-mating arrangement and receive proper care at home unless their condition requires them to go to hospital.

Public transport and taxis shall also be free – taxi drivers, like all transport workers, shall participate in the economic circuit –, hence there will be no more need for private vehicles. Taking driving lessons in school as part of my preparation for spontaneous militia duty has convinced me that people don’t crave vehicles as a status symbol but for the pleasure of driving, and to satisfy that need, being a driver in a logistics organisation, such as Logistique Yvelines or the local taxi hub, driving public transport busses or any type of functional vehicle like a tractor, an excavator or crane for deconstruction, a fire engine or ambulance will be sufficient to fulfil the needs of most vehicle lovers.”

“Travelling on a yellow beam is fun as well,” interjected Jean-Saïd.

“Exactly. The pleasure from driving a car under capitalism may have come from the sense of freedom it provided…”

“… Which did not warrant exploiting the poor mining and car assembly workers world-wide and paying exorbitant money for drivers’ licences, insurance, parking fees, fuel, oil, repairs, speeding and other fines, and certainly not the wars capitalist nations fought over the fuel,” Faroukh continued the argument. Everybody clapped.

“That is why the neighbourhood assemblies in their immense majority approved of the immediate abolition of private cars,” comrade Emmanuel took over again, “especially fuel-guzzlers, and most people drove them to the next filling station or garage joyfully and accepted the free transport voucher and the small functional vehicle toys for the kids that we got in exchange.” Everybody clapped again.

“Which brings me to the third thing the Communist revolution has brought us already: democracy and freedom. Not the false bourgeois democracy, but the true democracy we have because of self-management we have at the workplace, and that includes social organisations, such as schools, as well as in neighbourhood and village assemblies. The brigade or red cell is the basic unit of society, but it is not inferior to the workplace, neighbourhood, or village assembly. They are all on the same level, their fore(wo)men change at least every day in a school, university research and teaching, or medical brigade, at least every week in the case of the chair(wo)man of a neighbourhood assembly, and at least every hour in the case of moderators at workplace and village assemblies.

How can we make sure that hierarchies, money, and bad quality, which includes neglect of environmental and harp – human, animal, robot, and plant communication – principles, do not creep back into this perfect quadrangle of self-managed and self-managing assemblies?

Comrade Véro in her work on kindergardens, Sevim in hers on schools, Michelle on universities, Nicole and others in their work on the militia, Pauline and Karima in their forthcoming presentation on mixed doctor- nurses-support staff brigades in policlinics, comrade Louise in her presentation on the undermining of share points, comrade Alain on sabotage at the block energy works, comrade Jana on travesties of self-management in workshops, all those trying to eliminate Uberyte logistics stations and all other kinds of clandestine enterprises have pointed to the delay between the appearance of a problem with hierarchy, the time the first whistle-blowers appear, and the time the workers’ assembly manages to eliminate the problem, meaning chase the usurpers or even kidnappers and reconstitute as a self-managed revolutionary enterprise. This also usually entails changing the product line, because travesties of self-management more often than not entail the use of crypto and other money substitutes instead of free distribution via the trefoil – free, shared, bartered –, as well as the production of dangerous products that the village assemblies and local, regional, continental, and even global referendums have forbidden for a long time, such as weapons, medicines and drugs, synthetic fertilisers and pesticides and other harmful synthetics, sugary or other harmful processed foods, and jealousy-inducing luxuries, such as private vehicles, luxurious villas yachts and even planes, garish jewelry, you name it. This process of material check, crypto- and hierarchy leak checking, and so on often takes much too long. On the other hand, even the spontaneous militia brigades are being criticised for being anti-democratic – the quorums of villagers that have to agree to their forming can be too low or too high. Especially in small villages, the same people may still be serving every time. People may abuse their spontaneous militia access codes to forge village IDs for fasco fugitives, and so on.

So, democracy and freedom, based on self-management and assemblies is never complete, we need to restart it at every assembly, and even a single individual or small group that disagrees with a consensus or leaks a hierarchy, a crypto flow or a material defect will relaunch the whole process once more until everybody in the harp assemblies is happy and satisfied that no more incipient hierarchy, no more clandestine exploitation and crypto, and no more ecological hazard is disturbing the idyll. The revolution needs to be permanent.

And I think, and many people who have worked in red cells agree that red cells can be a way to keep the revolution going. They can exist at any workplace, any social organisation, and in every neighbourhood. They can be like the spontaneous militia, meaning appear at any sign of trouble, and raise a hierarchy storm, whistle-blow on a crypto leak, demand a material check, or point to signs of incipient exploitation…”

“But they may be prone to incipient hierarchies themselves,” objected Sevim.

“Remember, we promised to keep the number of revolutionary venues as slick as possible,” warned Renée. “Back then, I included the trade unions as a movement to be held on to in my presentation on venues, but more for tradition’s sake.”

Emmanuel blushed or got red with anger, it was not sure. “We should have trade unions not only for the sake of tradition. That’s why we came up with the idea of red cells. They are small, with a maximum of seven members. We can make them spontaneous like the militia. In fact, as our Communism plus – where Communism is peace, equality, democracy and freedom –, Communism plus as I just tried to explain…..”

“Hint, hint, before you rudely interrupted me,” Faroukh defended his friend.

“Communism plus means all that plus permanent revolution so as to prevent incipient hierarchies, and crypto and material frauds from re-emerging. Anarchy, or the new anarcho–syndicalism of the 21^st century means spontaneous red cells in every workplace, social organisation, neighbourhood, and village to make sure the process of permanent revolution never stops, and that we strictly observe the principles of peace, equality, democracy and freedom, based on self-management, rotation, permanent discussion, consensus, constant material checks, hierarchy checks, cryptoleaks whenever there are signs of abuse and exploitation.”

There were shouts of, “Next, you will want to re-introduce bureaucracy!”

“We’d better be minimalist.”

Yet then senior comrade Jean spoke some words of wisdom. “I think young comrade Emmanuel is right. Don’t forget, he is from an agglo, Saint-Denis, which moreover is close to an even bigger agglo, Paris. They have a lot more people, more families, more neighbourhood assemblies, more workplaces and social organisations, more village assemblies than we have here in the countryside. It is much easier to miss nefarious developments in a megalopolis although the comrades have done their darndest to break up the workplaces, then the quarters, then to further reduce the size of workshops as well as that of village assemblies. The fact remains that the two venues most conducive to democracy are the brigade, with a maximum of seven members, and the brigadier switching at least daily, in schools and universities he switches much more often, comrade Zamir and Mina tell me,” he was referring to his youngest son, age 12, and his younger partner, Mina, researcher at Sorbonne Nouvelle, “and the neighbourhood assembly with a maximum of seven households, two being the minimum. Any assembly larger than that is already a bit of a travesty of revolutionary, anarchical Communist principles, I agree with you, comrade Emmanuel. Yet until the trees have completed their march, and we truly live back in the woods in minute villages as did our ancestors in the stone ages, and where we know every bushel of grass and every bird and squirrel in the tree so we can easily achieve a true harp consensus…” everybody clapped. “That’s were we must head!” shouted Danièle. “… Until then,” Jean continued grinningly, “it will be better to have spontaneous red cells emerging as we had at the Uberyte workshop comrade Vincent uncovered, at ÉdF, and SFCF where our comrades detected the brown cells, rather than wait too long until individual whistle-blowers emerge or the fascists betray themselves another way, don’t you agree?” “Of course!” shouted comrade Alain. “ Long live the united workers’ front.” “Long live the red cells!” concluded comrade Emmanuel.

Postscript in Illyria and Saint-Denis. To the one-hundredth Illyrian!

On a rubber dinghy, by Lulu and Maurice

“And long live international solidarity!” continued comrade Hélène, who was moderating. “Next it will be for your long-postponed Part 1 of the “African Trilogy. Part 1. On a Rubber Dinghy.”Comrade Omsinbaba, you have the word!” “And Fofana as well, she suffered just as much as I did. Even Lulu in her stomach and later as a baby and a little toddler suffered more hardship than most of you, who are lucky to be born after the revolution, will ever suffer in their whole lifetimes. And it is true what many historians and sociologists writing about that period have stressed, we refugees were really the playball of big and unsympathetic interests: the elites of our countries who got rid of mouths to feed basically, but also other regional powers, religious interests – Muslim versus Christian –, capitalists at the periphery, capitalists at the centre, political parties and movements in these countries, including even refugee and migrant organisations. Fofana and I have already reported on our journey from Senegal to Tripoli’s on the land route, we were not rich enough to sail along the coast like our more well-to-do compatriots were, but now we shall tell you about all the interests involved and especially how the war between capitalist powers affected us, the ordinary people. Not even the other migrants were willing to help us unconditionally. When a boat of theirs fished us out of the water, we were immediately recruited. ‘ You can either be spies for the French internal secret police, the external secret service or French customs. We said customs, because DGSI and DGSE sounded difficult.

We were once lucky to find a way to move from Marseille to Paris. Our daughter comrade Lulu already told you more in her university entry presentation, Black lives triumph, on how the racists ran the police service. You can also read up there and in comrade Hélène’s and others’ Debunking Misogyny on the bare bones of our story before I will fill you in on the gruesome details.

Anyway, we were twice lucky to run into comrade Marie, who back then was a street worker in Paris, who referred us to comrade René, pediatrician, but who, back then already, took care of the whole families of his little patients. That way not only was comrade Fofana able to give birth to Little Lulu under half-way decent conditions, but our voluntary custom’s duty, mind you voluntary, no money or other perquisites Iike that passed hands, got swept under the table and then forgotten. And I can tell you a lot about the forefathers of the present-day fasco barons and mercs, so as for you to realise why they are such a formidable challenge. They had money, lots of people fell for their xenophobic propaganda, they tried to infiltrate the working-class just as they do now with brown cells, bref, it was the same people that we are up against today. And comrade Fofana will tell us more in her presentation on how they tried to undermine the health service. That is why we Africans are with the revolution and the peace movement so fervently, because we know what the capitalists and their fasco mercs can do to you. Over to you, young comrade Laurence!”

“I’ll ask you some questions first. What does the title In the name of the peace dove. Gasping for air, suggest to you?”

“Tariff wars between nations so as to get even the workers and their trade unions involved in their capitalist rivalries,” said Emmanuel in an immediate attempt to support his girlfriend. Everybody applauded.

“The blockade of Cuba before the revolution, and how the Global North-West almost suffocated this brave socialist country had not our revolution come to relieve it?” guessed Jean-Fidel.

Laurence praised Jean-Fidel. “Excellent input, comrade Jean-Fidel.”

“Well, definitely the mask-wearing and other requirements during Covet-19,” said comrade Maurice. “And the Global North-West almost went to war with Russia because it did not want to close its borders right away, with India because they asked to be allowed to reproduce Fishy Moony Cicero and Old-fashioned vaccines for free or at least more cheaply, and even with China for entering into competition with Big Pharma with their Sinovac.”

“Parks and gardens, or least large balconies or roof gardens for the rich versus smog for the poor,” suggested Danièle. “That is the class war over air.”

“Exactly!” said Olivier, her boyfriend and father of her baby to come, Flore, and expert on fasco sabotage and other violent crimes. “As well as plane and drone warfare.”

“Expensive transgender ops in their private clinics,” said Cato. “That is their war to asphyxiate LBGTQHlA!”, and comrades Hélène, Annie, Arlette, Misha, Yvonne, Carla, Alain, Bulan, Saïd, Rodion, Marius, Jean-Luc and others applauded passionately.

“Trying to melt the ice caps on the poles, the so-called Zamboni cataclysm,” suggested Jean-Saïd, thinking of their baby to come Lina, whom Natalie and he wanted to become an ecologist working on the Far North, as they had seen during their work in the Taiga how much there was to do up there. “Shortly before the revolution, president Trumple even wanted to invade Greenland, robbing the Greenlanders of their ecological lifestyle.”

“War for racist reasons, from the Nazi’s Second World War to the colonial wars, to the war over Palestine, with some trouble even persisting after the revolution,” said Jean-Vladimir. “They were strangulating diversity.”

“Wars over drugs in Latin America,” suggested Brazilian comrade Josetta shyly.

“And between ghettos and burbs over more just distribution that comrades Martin and Malcolm were telling us about,” added comrade Tim, budding deconstruction engineer, who had listened particularly intently during comrade Danièle’s presentation on deconstructing the agglos and the fasco attempts at suffocating the march of the trees. “Nothing left to say, comrades!” said Laurence. “You have filled my oxygen tank with your stimulating ideas.”

“Private property is one of the most problematic inventions of capitalism,” comrade Salma. “And it has been one of the hardest institutions to abolish, along with money. Even these days, we still find big mansions hidden in the forest, in the mountains, or in remote bays. We find luxury limousines parked in front of them that we no longer need since free public transport is abundant, reaches into the remotest necks of the woods and even deserts, and can always be supplemented by free taxis for people too ill to walk. We spot small fuel-guzzling yachts in the harbours, and other signs of wealth. We have tried so hard to make people’s life easy in the revolution. Everything is free, no more money. We are providing all basic goods at the markets and share points, producing others custom-made and delivering them, making work, even the socially necessary part, let alone the creative part pleasurable and stimulating, eliminating all reasons for jealousy and fear… and yet the elites still manage to exploit some of us to continue their lavish life-styles, to sabotage our well-being and wind us up against each other.

And as we have heard in this presentation by comrade Emmanuel, there seems to be a never-ending flow of clandestine workshops which usually belong to one individual or a small group and moreover are managed by petty potentates in defiance of self-management. They no longer produce food, clothes and other basics, since those are free in the revolution, but drugs, weapons, and other dangerous goods. This means the workers will starve if they do not manage either to sell this toxic stuff for money, crypto, and other money substitutes or get rid of it in exchange for the actually free revolutionary goods, or to work two or more jobs: their fifteen hours a week of socially necessary working time to get their free goods, and the fifteen hours plus many on the illegal sites. We now learnt from comrade Emmanuel how to deal with that, by forming red cells and launching blockades and friendly take-overs as during the revolution.

The World Belongs to all will focus on another side of the subterranean capitalist war-mongering, the attempt at forcing supposed innovations, then demanding copyright and patent fees, or starting ruinous competitive wars over mostly minor improvements. Comrade Maurice already mentioned how this brought India to the brink of war during Covet or at least impoverished it greatly.

Other related but separate cases are robots and nanobots, first produced by the capitalists, but which we revolutionaries had to take over and make harmless and ecological so as to be able to withstand their capitalist sabotage.

There is also software, such as the infamous revolutionary purpose app which claims to help young people choose their revolutionary purpose, but in fact it is just a revamped capitalist career test designed to pull young comrades into their clandestine sweatshops.

And most dangerous, we have already talked about this at length at comrade Emmanuel’s presentation, is illegally produced medicine that has undergone no or inadequate material checks. How to prevent these devilish inventors from continuing their work and claiming copyrights and patents to prevent us from debunking them?

“Coups in Africa as in South America and Asia have usually pitted different colonialist and post-colonialist, capexogarch – for capitalists and ex-oligarchs –, interests against each other. I, Seth, shall talk about the on-going Year 19-20 coup in Niger in The Coup, with comrades Égale and Pierre le Gars contributing the story of concurrent events in Sudan, and comrades Jean-Vladimir, Jean-Saïd, and Faroukh informing us on the effects of these coups on the situation in Palestine and all of the Middle East.”

“Although my topic will actually be Intifada – Revolution,” clarified Faroukh, “on how the Palestinian revolution led to the world revolution. It is late, and I won’t get into a discussion with you on whether Zionism is the main culprit of war or fascism, they may be two sides of the same coin. Just wait until my presentation, I shall also talk on that question.”

“The idea of Green Timbuktu is this: while we wait for the trees to arrive with their march from the Congo jungle, we should make sure all agglos and more and more villages have constant water and are surrounded with fertile soil ensuring their subsistence,” explained Noah. “So, we know what to do, dig wells, search for subterranean grottos, make sure global cooling continues, meaning no more big limousines, no more large-scale production, attention to needs, and so on. And we were exchanging ideas, such as camel, cow, sheep, and even dinosaur manure as organic fertilisers, when some kind of fasco hothead proposed to bring back NPK, meaning nitrogen-potash-kalium fertilisers, and at least some villagers were swayed. We tried to tell them that these types of synthetics are no good in the heat, that only the capexogarchs were still willing to produce them, since they had flunked all the material tests, and they would demand crypto and enslave us. Now we are having to do with some kind of anti-ecological coup by these capexogarchs.”

“We can wait for Mali villages to come green again by natural methods, since we produce excesses in Europe,” said Sarah. “That is what Food for Everybody – Food for All is all about, about consumer and user surveys, plans, and exchanges until everybody has enough food, and there is enough for all.”

“My presentation will also be about that,” comrade Jean-Luc tried himself in here. “How to use Revolutionary Accounting in the economic circuit to make sure the Gotha principle ‘To each according to his or her needs, from each according to their abilities’ applies in the whole economy, to all useful goods, and all harmful goods get definitely eliminated.”

“Wonder–Cattle is an animal that will be non-voracious, milk-giving, meat-yielding, wool-bearing, egg-laying, plough-pulling, load carrying, guard standing and cuddling, in other words a jack of all trades as well as a good companion and that can then have his robot , haproid or harpoid equivalent as well of course,” Marius introduced his subject. “Yet of course, we first have to produce the live version. There are several possibilities, actual cross-breeding, in-vitro cross-breeding, or creation of live DNA. We’ll pick the best, and make sure we ask the animals at each step what they want their new fellows to be like, and the wonder-cattle itself how he or she feels the happiest. It will be exciting, especially as the fasco producers are after us as well, hoping to beat us with patents and copyrights and restore capitalism that way.”

“The Metalmongers are similar to the Big Pharmacists, another epitome of capitalism. You wonder why in the age of the intranet we are still producing robots and plushbots. Maybe only because the capitalists have created the need for these devices and we have to be afraid if we don’t produce ever-new nifty versions, such as grow-up-with-you robots and plushbots they will,” said young comrade Zamir. “So, we have to make sure we recycle as much as we can, especially metal, minerals, and rare earth, which capitalism has exploited so ruthlessly.”

“Kindergarden Manifesto, 2^nd edition will be a revolutionary stock-taking of how successful we have been with turning all of us into good people, and how our experience may help the fourth generation of revolutionaries, the children whom the Rosy-coloured glasses, Red Star, We shall overcome, Revolution is Love, 5^th International Brigade, Peace Doves, and Young Pioneers have already brought into this world or who will still come later, how we can make them even better yet. Even if the fasco saboteurs don’t want us to!” young comrade Odile concluded brilliantly.

The debates and adventures of our comrades in the cooperative Illyria, the neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis, and their friends world-wide shall continue in African Trilogy vol. 1 On a Rubber Dinghy, In the sign of the Peace Dove. Gasping for Air, The World Belongs to All, African Trilogy vol. 2 The Coup, Intifada – Revolution, African Trilogy vol. 3 Green Timbuktu, Food for Everybody – Food for all, Revolutionary Accounting, Les Jours heureux – Wonder Cattle, The Metalmongers, and Kindergarden Manifesto, 2^nd edition. Enjoy!

History of the “Red” Trade Union Cells before the Revolution

1864 right to form trade unions and strike, foundation of the First International

1869 Bookbinders union created in Paris

1892 First job exchanges created

1895 Creation of the cgt, relying mainly on the railroad workers and on the job exchanges

1904 cgt raises demand for eight-hour working day

Teacher’s union joins cgt
cgt adopts resolute anti-war position
government agrees to the 8-hour working day and in principle to the interdiction of night shifts
strike of railroad workers for nationalisation fails, cgt almost forbidden

1922 cgt joins red trade union international

1920s fight for two-week annual holiday

1930 social insurance law passed, does not stop effects of world economic crisis, unemployment rises along with trade union membership

1930s cgt against Munich agreements, and baffled by Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, excludes new members who would not castigate the agreement

1940s during German occupation and Vichy strikes forbidden, cgt joins the resistance movement

1945 CNR government institutes Enterprise councils, Social Security laws, and Communist Maurice Thorez signs for Public Employee Law, CGT has over 5 million members and is strongest force at Council elections

1947“Red strikes” against economic difficulties and poverty in France, while Germany gets Marshall Plan

1948 cgt fuses with FO

1949-50 strikes against Indochina wars which seals France’s lapse into authoritarianism

1953 General strike across all trade unions against rise in the retirement age

1954-62 cgt supports the Algerian war for independence, and after the war rejects the French repatriated colonialists, the so-called ‘pieds-noirs’

1963 miners’ strike successful, Pompidou government makes concessions on wages and holidays

1966 cgt and CFDT also join forces, which helps the common struggle against Social Security decrees during the

1968 attempt at revolution which fails but leads to resignation of de Gaulle

1969-2021 working class struggles have to go on even during the programme commun of the Left parties, for higher minimum wages, longer holidays, better medical insurance and family benefits, better working conditions, against the European constitution project and the Lisbon treaty, against further rises in the retirement age, neoliberal work laws, until the world revolution of 2021 finally unifies syndicalist red cells with those of all other revolutionary groups against the “sanitary laws”

2021-today trade unions apparently just one movement among others resisting fasco underground workshops, crypto-currencies and other money substitutes, and frequent large-scale sabotage attempts by the very few remaining counter-revolutionaries and eternal reactionaries, adepts of their sinister ‘Cause’ of return to capitalism

Map of Aimeran at the time of comrade Emmanuel’s presentation “Red Cells. The Trade Unions in our Revolution”, during Year 20 of the Revolution, by Marius and Jean-Luc

Map and Plan of our rural cooperative Illyria, Yvelines, and our neighbourhood assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove on 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis, State Year 20 of the Revolution during comrade Emmanuel’s presentation “Red Cells. The Trade Unions in our Revolution”, there are 17 three-room apartments with the bedrooms occupied as follows, Young Revolutionaries marked in italics:

Apartments in the old Farmhouse

Apartments above the Robot Workshop

Apartments above the Stables

Apartments above the Furniture and Clothes Workshops

Dark blue: furniture workshop, light blue: clothes workshop

Inhabitants of the Garden Colony and the Manouche Camp

Neighbourhood Assemblies Casa Latina Russki Dom Peace Dove at 76 rue de Lorraine, Saint-Denis

Yellow: first floor, youth club; Green: second floor; Red: third floor; Blue: fourth floor, and violet: fifth floor. 2^nd and 3^rd floors: Casa Latina Russki Dom, 4^th and 5^th floor: Peace Dove.

Other books by Carla O’Gallchobhair you will also enjoy:

Life in Communism 2.1. Back to

the Woods, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. Young comrade Danièle and her comrades outline ways humans, animals, including time-travelled dinosaurs, plants and their robots might overcome the difference between city and countryside and restore one of the world’s most pristine natural habitats, the forest. Meanwhile, the fascos have wrought new damage in the Taiga using the Moral Atrophy virus and White Phosphorous and are about to launch a new campaign to undermine self-management and a major movement of the revolution, the trade unions.

Life in Communism 2.1. Terrorism

as the Epitome of Fascism, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. You expect boring security theory, and instead what a cliffhanger! For his university entry project – he wants to be a sociologist –, comrade Olivier, member of the 5^th International Brigade, son of comrades Marianne and Patrick, or Aslan rather, will do a sociological analysis of fascist terrorism as of spring of Year 20 of the World Revolution, 2021 being Year Zero. Olivier is working on a comparison of the fasco brown cells with the Red Brigades of the 70s and 80s, reruns of 9/11, Covet, and state terrorism. As if to dissuade and scare Olivier personally as well as all other revolutionaries, the fascos have reinvented one of their original crimes: kidnapping and torture, as well as a new virus, the MA or moral atrophy virus.”

“What a smasher,” comments Peter Gar. “The MA or Moral Atrophy virus will get you, unless you get the MS or Moral Strength one.”

Life in Communism 2.1. Des

révolutions colorées à la révolution rouge, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. (in English) It turns out that capitalist trouble-makers inspired the majority of Middle Eastern part tragic, part choreographed demonstrations and uprisings under late capitalism themselves, just so as to prevent any viable revolutionary organisation to emerge. Yet the grievances and yearning for freedom of the different populations in the various regions were real. Youssef analyses the way true class solidarity finally paved the way for the real Communist revolution. He takes us on a historical journey through Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan, Egyptian, Sudanese, Yemeni, Arabian and Emirate, Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian, and Palestinian stories to show how the diverse currents of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist resistance in the Middle East finally fused in the World Revolution of 2021.

Life in Communism 2.1. vol. 42-46. What is to be done? What would Lenin have done differently if he were active today? He would have made sure that the revolution triumphs world-wide. He would have insisted on equality, self-management, and direct democracy at every step, working through the organisation of venues: brigade, neighbourhood, workplace, and village assemblies, constant material and hierarchy checks and surveys and, if needed, local, regional, continental, and world-wide surveys. He would have stood for radical deurbanisation, regrowing, regreening, and respect of human, animal, plant, all living beings world-wide. He would have stood for the prevention of any further wars and armed conflicts by complete de-weaponisation world-wide, as well as blocks on re-weaponisation, and last but not least, he would not have cooperated with capitalists, let alone fascists under any circumstances. Back to Year 18 of the World Revolution of 2021! While the class enemy continues its Satanic work of undermining the revolution, e.g., by creating new gangs of terrorists such as the Critics, the Sons, the Anti-Nanobot League, and the Cryptoleak Avengers, kindling revolution in the ex-U.S., forcing the Rothschilds to bankroll them and returning Ursula van der Leihen or her look-alike from the executioner’s block to launch a new career as an ombudswoman, our comrades in Illyria and Saint-Denis have launched into a super-project: How to do the Communist revolution in the 21st century? In Book 1, young comrade Lénina details what is to be done and presents a revolutionary app that will help us plan things, in Book 2, senior comrade Marie analyses the strategy and processes of the Revolution in the Streets, in Book 3, young comrade Guillaume outlines how to do away with weapons as a prerequisite for conflict avoidance and peace on earth, in Book 4, young comrade Renée discusses how the four venues of the revolution (all institutions of the capitalist state and economy having been abolished), namely neighbourhood assemblies, brigades, workplace assemblies, and village assemblies can be saved from usurpation and sabotage by the ex-capitalist reactionaries, and in Book 5, senior comrade Denis analyses problems that have arisen after a referendum did away with the standing people’s militia, it being a den of incipient hierarchies and weaponisation.

A picture containing text, poster, outdoor, person

Description automatically generated Life in Communism 2.1. Covet 19 as a Revolutionary Catalyst, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. It is summer of Year 15, and at the same time, in Antoine’s seminar, summer of 2021 again. The anger against the restrictive policies chosen to fight Covet-19 joins with other legitimate demands, such as retain the pension age at 60, finally enact a meaningful youth employment package, stop the discrimination of refugees and migrants and legalise the sans papiers, respect women’s and LGBTQ rights, and hold with the peace movement as well as with the young people of the green movement and Fridays for the Future who are fighting for truly radical and meaningful environmental policies. From just meek demands for referendums, there grows a general strike movement that will usher in the overthrow of the government and the world-wide organisation of no-hierarchy venues of interaction consisting of just brigades, workplace, neighbourhood and village assemblies who take all decisions themselves, sit in court and manage even to overcome the fiercest, most violent ex-capitalist resistance.

Life in Communism 2.1. Jean’s De la Démocratie, by Carla O’Gallchobhair, Rereading Jean’s book on democracy becomes an occasion for the revolutionary Communists of Saint-Denis and Illyria, Yvelines to restrategise the revolution and their struggle against capitalism and fascism.

World Revolution 2.1. Part 2. The Day

after the EU, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. The revolution is gaining hold in Europe. Everywhere, the state is being replaced by small neighbourhood assemblies. Justice will be spoken at town meetings. Firms will be self-managed by workers’ assemblies and work-place brigades with rotating chairmen and women. Radical ecological restructuring is spreading through Europe and the world. The remaining problems of the new society are being inventoried to be addressed. However, all over Europe, fascist terrorists and their sponsors in the élite are mounting ferocious rear-guard actions. This book is Part 2 in a series, Part 1 was entitled Jean in Moscow, Part 3 will be called Happening.

Anti-Communism 2.1. Part 2:

Jana’s Self-Management Course, by Carla O’Gallchobhair. In this second volume of Anti-Communism 2.1., the rightwing terrorists, well connected within the capitalist class and with supporters up into the highest ranks of government, continue their nefarious actions against the friendly and engaging figureheads of the PCF, its youth movement, and French society as a whole. Against all odds, the Communists manage to spread their agenda of self-management in the economy, democratisation of the state, decent housing, good public health, fair wages, scientific and moral education, full employment, collective action, citizens’ rights for migrants and refugees, consistent environmental change, and international peace. Part 2 of a series. Part 1 was entitled International Consortium hunts PCF, next to follow will be Of Missiles and Men.

worldrevolution21.com

The revolution will come intraline