If and Only If

Chapter 13 - Then

I was going to die in a week. The Coordinators had sentenced me to death for disturbing peace and for threatening to start a rebellion.

You heard it right. As soon as I got home, I grabbed my sensor and started to make a video to spread the news. To write an article to warn the world. To do something, and I had to do that something quickly and make sure it would last long enough to spread.

I could not just die in vain; someone had to know that our world was falling apart so that they could fix it. To come up with a better solution than hide behind a fence.

Hiding behind a fence never solved any problems. (That fence isn't even completely solid. It has gaps in between the links. Not that problems and worries are physical things that occupy space and need room to travel but....I digress. In short, a fence is stupid.)

I set up the recorder gently, feeling the importance of my actions. I was the first person to start a rebellion in over a century. And I would pay dearly for that.

I eventually decided to record my story. Not in a book; though books are not hackable, they are easily lost, hidden, burned, destroyed. But if I recorded it, I could duplicate it, spread it, and easily share it. I had been recording my findings in journals, to avoid having people hacking into my system. I grabbed those journals, deciding that I should read some of them to digitize the information I discovered. In the journals, I had recorded some of what had happened, like a diary, so I figured it was as close to a script that I would get.

But then, I knew what had happened and how it happened pretty well; I don't think I could ever forget.

I set a chair in front of the recorder, pressed record, and then sat in the chair, journals on my lap. The recorder blinked red at me, indicating that I could start speaking. But I didn't know what to say. I just sat there, looking straight into the red light, wondering what I could say that could possibly make a difference.

Possibly help someone else pick up the torch I have borne and continue the mission.

Possibly help someone in the future understand my plight, and why I chose to do what I did.

I eventually decided to start in the most cliche way possible:

"If you are watching this...."