GUIDESTAR

Chapter 2 'The Core'

'The Core'

            A pretty, freckled-faced girl tried to enter the lecture theatre as quietly as possible so as not to disturb its occupants. She was dressed in pale blue dungarees and wore a hefty pair of vibrant purple army boots with multi-coloured laces. However, it wasn't the dungarees, the boots or the laces that caused the wave of whispers and fidgeting to spread out across the steeply inclined room, it was her hair. She had the most amazing blonde dreadlocks with what must have amounted to hundreds of brightly coloured rags and beads woven within it. It formed a dazzling cacophony of colour that left the occupants of the lecture theatre, quite literally mesmerised. The scale of the distraction was such that it demanded some form of interjection from the man standing at the lectern and sure enough, it came.

"Very nice of you to join us Miss Pemberton, this meeting started well over an hour ago, is it really worth attending the last five minutes do you think?" The tone of his voice was sarcastic but the girl calmly and gracefully took a front row seat before turning around to scan his audience. She proceeded to issue her cutting retort in a loud, confident manner.

"Five minutes is usually more than enough where you're concerned Carrick so you'd better get on with it before anyone else falls asleep!"

A roar of jeering laughter engulfed the lecture theatre as two hundred students saw the speaker stumble for words and look to the ground for the very first time that evening. Carrick finally looked up and smiled at Miss Pemberton before expelling just one, softly spoken word.

"Touché"

The speaker quickly regained his composure, looked away from the disruptive girl and gave his audience a cold, haunting look.

"You've heard our cause, you've seen that this planet cannot, and will not survive as we know it

if we allow these weapons of mass destruction to be made, stored, studied, transported or, God forbid, ever used."

"You've seen proof of the devastating effects that even low-level nuclear radiation can have on generations of human beings backed up by hard, scientific fact. We. The Anti-Trident Alliance cannot, and will not, wait for another major nuclear accident in this country before people wake up to the dangers of these lethal installations."

"What we need to do right now, is to take a stand and implement large-scale pre-emptive direct action against these installations before they kill tens of thousands of innocent people."

"Those that simply do nothing are just as guilty as those that dump the waste or stockpile the weapon in the first place. History has proved time, and time again, that the only way we can stop these things happening is through highly effective, highly disruptive, highly organised protest and most importantly, direct action. The Anti-Trident Alliance is here to give you, the people, the back office organisation required to carry out such protests but we can't complete our mission without you."

"Brothers. Sisters. Comrades. Let us make a stand together, make your stand right here, right now. Sign this petition to the Government for the abolition of all Weapons of Mass Destruction and join us on the sixth of August, let's give them hell! Thank you for listening, Peace."

            As Carrick looked to the floor hanging his head in grand theatrical style, the room erupted violently once more as the large gathering of fresh-faced idealists rose to their feet to cheer the charismatic anti-nuclear rhetoric that bordered on revolutionist poetry from the triumphant, enigmatic Carrick.

            Several disorderly queues of eager and blindly excited students began to form at the front of the vast, tiered lecture theatre to sign up to the visionary cause and reek youthful disenchanted havoc against the establishment.