BXBX NOVEL Chapter 109 - Man As A Cog
The next day Dror departed from the Earth base. Only people close to him knew about this journey.
He was taken out of the base using the same hover vehicle that had taken him in when he first arrived.
After traveling for a while, dror was dropped beside a village.
As he was walking towards the village , the Evil sword spoke up.
" Two idiots have been following you for a while, what are you going to do about this…"
Dror sent his spiritual message back " Let them follow, They are spies that have been arranged by the first prince or the king\'s council, we will just ditch them later..."
After walking towards the village for some time a sand storm approached the area out of nowhere and Dror disappeared into it.
The spies who were following him didn\'t find him even after searching the whole area.
....
Two days later when it was getting dark a silhouette was moving fast through the forested area. He slowed down as he neared a village.
The village guard carefully observed the stranger. It was a middle aged man probably in his forties, he had a bulky build, yellow spiky hair and yellow royal beard. His eyes were black and showed the glint of a businessman.
This was Dror\'s new identity, Mr. Jackson, a trader of animal skins from another planet called Milan.
After checking the identity the guards were very polite and welcoming to the gentleman.
This was because these merchants were a good source of income for the village and they welcomed them heartily.
Dror didn\'t raise any suspicion and behaved exactly like a merchant, he took a room in one of the small hotels and inquired details on hunters and animal skin trading shops.
This was not a punishment village like the violet flower village, but a common village.
But he could clearly see that the conditions of the commoners were not much better here either.
Dror stayed and studied the circumstances of the people for the next 7 days.
He was utterly shocked by the fact that the circumstances were worse than what he had thought earlier.
Taxes imposed by the alliance government were humongous, There was also compulsory recruitment for laborers to the alliance factory in the nearby town.
Most of the people continued to labor in these factories after the mandatory period of 5 years, because the government had reduced the tax rate on people working in their factories.
These were old factories that the previous king had created to support the people\'s livelihood.
With the advancement of technology such manual labor was not much required , but when the previous king saw that there were so many young people who were unemployed and were finding it hard to get a job.
He started these industries to provide them livelihood and a stable income.
When the Alliance government came into power they didn\'t completely dismantle these industries, even though they had started many automated industries.
The Alliance government was a very greedy entity, they never cared about people, they just wanted to suck out as much profit as possible from anything.
So they continuously reduced the wages of the workers and imposed heavier taxes, further the mandatory labor for 5 years was introduced as a law.
Seeing profits the government even created many labor intensive factories of their own.
The alliance government also fully controlled the agricultural sector with genetically modified seeds, which was also made mandatory by law.
The farmers were forced to cultivate these seeds that they didn\'t want to.
The alliance government was like a big greedy monster that was sucking out anything and everything possible from the common people and the planet itself.
The atrocities of the alliance government didn\'t stop here, they
reduced the number of schools and other educational institutions drastically.
The few higher grade educational institutions were completely under their control, they wanted to make sure that more intellectuals didn\'t arise from the commoners.
The alliance government had made it mandatory to register every birth and death, every child born would be given an identification number.
Any one who was found without these identification numbers or other identification documents were punishable under law.
The main purpose of the identification number was not to identify but to gauge the age of the individual.
The alliance government had passed a draconian law called the compulsory tax act.
This law imposed tax on anyone above the age of 16, it didn\'t matter whether the person had any job or income, they had to pay the tax no matter what.
If someone fails to pay up the tax they will be subject to punishment under manual labor.
But even with all this atrocities and wrong doings going on in this planet, what Dror found unable to understand was that.
People have started to get used to this, they have started adapting to their current circumstances as if, all of it was natural.
But as he further scrutinized the situation for a long time he was able to gain a better grasp of the situation.
The Alliance government has been ruling the planet with a heavy hand for the last hundred or so years, there has been protest from the people throughout all these years but the government has completely purged those incidents and killed off most of the protester.
While the new generation was born into this oppressive rule, which they took as the natural thing.
At the same time along with the stick the alliance government also used the carrot of technology to the common people.
Different machines like small robots which helped with daily chores and entertainment related technologies were publicly available.
At the same time the alliance government made sure that no technology that could ever threaten them ever reached the common man, if it was deemed that any technology could be a future threat to them they were completely banned.
The common people of the planet were literally " Man as a cog in the machinery " . Something that was functionally necessary but of only a small significance in the grand scheme of the Alliance government.
Who knows how many people had tried to bring in a revolution like himself and died in the process, the only surviving protesters were the rebels.
Dror could clearly see that the heart of the people had almost gone cold to the atrocities going around them and he wished to ignite the fire of revolution in their hearts, but he was not sure anymore.
The initial confidence that he entertained was slowly disappearing. If he couldn\'t move the heart of the people then the people themselves could become the greatest obstacle to the revolution.
Dror thought " No, that is not right, History of good old Earth has shown that there have always been people in the society who will go against a revolution, these are selfish people who live in the society and think that their interests and profits are greater with the current circumstances.
But people like them can also change their attitude if they saw that it was inevitable that the revolution would succeed… They will automatically support the revolution to preserve their own interests.
But making people believe that the revolution will succeed no matter what, in the current situation is almost impossible.
I can create a smoke screen for sometime, but it could fall apart anytime and if it falls apart things could become much worse than what it currently is.. The people I get involved in this could end up in a far worse situation..."
He was entertaining all sorts of ideas in his mind, for a second he even thought about leaving the planet as he had planned a long while ago, but he strongly curbed it instantly.
There were certain people who did things just for the sake of it.
It didn\'t matter whether their endeavor would end up in success or failure, they did it because they thought it should be done.
It was more than a personal belief in righteousness or justice, it was something much more fundamental for them: it was their Dharma.
And Dror was clearly one of those people, he could feel it inside him like a gut feeling.
The only thing that made him waver was the people who fought with him, he could give his life for what he believed in, for his Dharma.
But it didn\'t feel right to push other people along with himself for his belief or Dharma.
The other possibility was to become so strong himself that he will be able to uphold his own Dharma with his own two hands.
But in his current condition he himself didn\'t know whether he would be stuck in the True warrior realm for the rest of his life. He was truly in a dilemma.
He could only give a long sigh as he thought " Is power everything, am I going at this the wrong way… will I be pushing the people around me to their doom… I don\'t even know how strong the Alliance government is in reality… Did all the revolutionaries and freedom fighters of the Earth go through similar dilemma or were they much more decisive..haaah.."
He could only clutch his hand tightly around the glass of rum and empty it in one gulp.
But as he was feeling depressed and down, he remembered a young revolutionary who quoted the words of an old spiritual leader.
" He alone is a brave person
The one who fights for the underprivileged
He may get cut into pieces
But he\'ll never leave the battlefield
If you want to play the game of love
Then first put your head on your palm "
If he wanted to do this then he would have to stake his own life first and what else could he stake his life for other than his own Dharma.
He knew thinking more on this topic would only lead to more doubts so instead of thinking too much, he resolved himself to study the whole situation more thoroughly than he intended to in the past.