The Song of a Little Ghost, page 17
part #6 of The Silent Assassin Series
The Princess kept listening.
“I can’t treat you like everyone else, because I’ve always wanted you to become humanity’s next Monarch, our Queen. Not that selfish Christopher. Not that dead Maxim. Certainly not that naïve Horlix,” his tone stiffened. “To me you are humanity’s hope of redemption, and my heart shudders every time I remember that you’re the last in-line to the throne,” he clenched his fist. “The very least I can do is to keep you alive. To keep you happy. To keep you cheerful. So even if you can’t make it to the throne, you won’t lose faith in humanity and keep on fighting as Princess of The Crowned Confederacy of Mankind. I’ll do everything to realise that.”
“I…I didn’t know—“
“Your Imperial Highness, my beautiful and glorious Princess, Victoria Scythe Tanuya,” the boy offered his hand. “Let me be your knight, even for just tonight,” he locked his eyes onto hers. “There’s no one I would rather protect now more than you.”
Victoria’s cheeks flushed red. She nodded and lent her hand onto his with a beam of smile. Audi closed his eyes and kissed the back of her palm.
He opened his eyes and stood up. “Are we…good now?”
The Princess nodded. “I’m so...I don’t know,” she fidgeted. “Can you pinch my cheek?”
“Why?”
“Just do it,” she offered her left cheek.
A soft breeze of wind puffed next to Audi’s ears.
“I’ll tear her face apart if you let me help.”
“Shit!” Audi dashed forward and snatched the Princess, pushing her behind him. He flashed his light around, but there was no one.
“I’ve had enough,” Charlotte’s voice echoed through the darkness. “Enough of listening to your chummy disgusting flirtations with damned chivalry knight and princess roleplay bullshit.”
The boy tightened his grip on his pistol. “How the hell did you get in here? There are guards everywhere!”
Charlotte echoed a high-pitched giggle. “The two maids I took silently, and before I kill the Princess, I will make you suffer. A lot.”
An invisible force pulled Audi upwards and hurled him away.
The boy flew in the air and fell back first. He groaned as he picked himself up. “Run away…Princess—“
An invisible hand grabbed him by the mouth and slammed him back down.
“Fu—!”
“Don’t worry,” Charlotte’s voice echoed from the air in his immediate front. “I will tell you when I’m about to kill that bitch. She can rest easy,” she paused. “But you can’t.”
Charlotte lifted Audi slightly, then slammed him down again.
“Imagine everything we did last night and this morning, but instead of pleasure,” a kick slapped Audi’s cheek sideways. “It shall all be pain. Pain that you will whimper. Agonise. Despair from.”
Audi’s sight blurred as vertigo struck him from all sides. He somersaulted backwards and stood almost instantly, albeit his balance still swaying.
“Not bad,” Charlotte chuckled.
“Didn’t…I tell you last night, Ghost Girl?” Audi frowned. “I will do everything I can to protect the Princess, and I will not let anyone hurt her. Especially not you.”
“Aww, how sweet.”
A hook punch struck him.
He groaned. An invisible force pulled his foot and dragged him along the floor. The boy pulled his pistol and fired blindly. Some bullets ricocheted away mid-air. The force slung him towards a table and smashed it with his back.
“I…understand why you want to kill her. Why you want to throw this world into chaos…” Audi winced and coughed. “But you…will not change a thing—you’ll only make things worse.”
“Really now?” Charlotte’s voice echoed. “And why are you so sure?”
The boy frowned as he panted. “As you said…companies, corporations, the commercial class is messing around with people of The Crowned Confederacy. I know this very well…because I work for Nagisawa Corporation, and I’ve seen the indifference of its staffs towards humanity as a whole. They gave no crap for morality, as long as their products are profitable.”
Charlotte kept silent.
“But you’re making a mistake in assuming nobody inside these corporations care,” the boy picked himself up. “My CEO, Nagisawa Chizuru, risked her position by defying her investors’—the directors’ wills. She initiated a corporate reform. An initiative to increase employee welfare by increasing salary, allowing more paid leaves, spending more on corporate healthcare and insurance,” he paused. “She dismantled corporate operations which exploited trends, which encouraged needless consumptions. Corporate profit fell. Shareholders’ dividends plummeted. She was threatened. But did she falter? No.”
A small grumble was heard.
“Her financial strength and her position as CEO was the reason she can resist her shareholders and directors, but not everyone was gifted with those blessed birth conditions,” Audi continued. “Those who are disgruntled most with the conditions of their jobs, the nature of career, the shit reality of their lives are often the ones on the short end of the stick. Those without power. Those without strength. Those without money. They must surrender to the fact that their jobs, the hours they spend from Monday to Saturday, from sunrise to sunset, is dedicated to mere survival, not the greater enrichment of self and others.”
“That is exactly the world I want to destroy,” the girl’s voice circled around the boy. “Even with the best biotechnology of our time, the average life span of human is capped at eighty. Eighty years. Those lucky enough to graduate university must spend years working to pay off their student debt while feeding themselves. Then they must pay rent, or buy a house and mortgage—another debt. How many more years is that?”
Audi holstered his pistol and took up a fighter’s pose. “So we need to change it,” he said. “Through strengthening legislation. Through advancing technology. Princess Victoria is secretly fighting in both avenues, in case you didn’t know.”
“What?”
“Exactly,” the boy nodded. “This entire fiasco of meaningless jobs is not a fact of nature, it is a result of Civilian Sector’s policy of deregulation. Increasing deregulation,” he stepped forward and scanned around. “Lack of direction allowed entrepreneurs and companies to create whatever the hell they want without the slightest bit of supervision from those with helicopter view—the government. Nobody can chastise those who pushed wages below humane level. Nobody has the legal power to stop propagation of chaotic corporate structure with useless positions. Nobody can stop propagation of products and services which exploited the savagery of our primal instincts instead of tempering it.”
Silence.
“Technological development can help liberate workers. We can develop systems and programs which would render menial jobs free of human. Construction works and sewage cleanings mechanised. Every mundane report filings and check box ticking automated.”
“And what? Leaving people jobless?” Charlotte grumbled. “How are they supposed to live without a job?”
“Because with machines they can live without one.”
“Huh?”
“Replacing manpower with machines is not stealing jobs from people; it’s liberating them from it,” the boy continued. “You are not changing the size of our economy by replacing the actors, in fact, hard labours and repetitive jobs can be done much more efficiently with machines. The amount of wealth resulting from this increased productivity can be redirected to welfare. People can be guaranteed their survival: food, housing, clothing, energy. Each individual can then search, pursue, and live the true meaning of their existence—to freely dictate their form of contribution to humanity.”
Charlotte kept silent.
“But this is only possible without chaos. With order. Peace. With a strong government,” Audi clenched his fist. “By killing the Princess, you are going to obliterate the very cause you are fighting for. She is the visionary, and you want to eliminate her. Our nation’s stability is paramount if we want to work and realise all these—”
Charlotte laughed.
Audi flinched.
“What an adorable view. What an optimistic vision. I see the merit,” she paused. “Can I applaud you?” she clapped.
The boy grumbled.
A force grabbed his neck and squeezed it tight.
“But there is a mistake in your logic,” her voice softened to a near whisper. “You assume that everyone would just accept this utopian view, that they won’t revolt at hearing such ideas which challenges the status quo.”
“Then why—“
Charlotte tightened her grip on his neck.
“Hard work.”
Audi struggled while groaning, but her grip was too strong.
“All these automation technology. Robotic cleaners. Database programming. We’ve had them for centuries. Twenty second century? Twenty first century? Maybe even twentieth century,” she paused. “But why have we not achieved the utopia you described? Where everyone can be free from menial jobs? If having the science is all it takes to realise it, then we should’ve achieved it since long.”
“That—“
“The answer is simple: people do not believe in it.”
Audi gritted his teeth.
“The culture, the morality that’s been with us for millennia is that one only deserves what one works hard for. There is no free lunch,” she continued. “This morality created some of the worst era in human history, which justified the hoarding of wealth by the rich and powerful. The poor, they say, don’t work as hard as they do. Kings, capitalists, and factory owners dictated that they worked much harder than the regular man and labourers, because their work is…clean—even when they do so from the safety of their throne and office—and thus deserve their wealth more than the dirty, lowly peasants.”
Charlotte laughed and slammed Audi down with force.
“Deserve? Thieves and robbers work hard to plan their heists, but that doesn’t mean they deserve the wealth they stole,” she said. “This morality is eternal. Unchanging. Universal.”
Audi winced. “That’s not…true.”
“Why would you say so?”
“Not all rich and powerful people treat others as such,” the boy replied. “There was a prince in ancient time who renounced his lineage after witnessing the suffering of his people, and spent his lifetime teaching the true ways of living, the middle way,” he paused. “There was a rich merchant in history who found the conditions imposed on the people by his wealthy contemporaries as oppressive and horrendous. He denounced his wealth and rebelled against the power structure, triggering a revolution that created an egalitarian society which gave rights to women, children, and people of other ethnicities.”
Charlotte chuckled. “And there’s your CEO.”
“Exactly,” the boy replied. “So you shouldn’t lose hope—“
“Those stories about the prince and the merchant, I know who they are,” she replied. “But the society they created degraded, didn’t they? The power structure they sought to fight returned, even worse, the teachings by the prince and the merchant are used to justify the old oppressive power structure which they are meant to abolish.”
Audi kept silent.
“Because the problem is not merely with the rich and powerful. It’s with everyone,” the girl continued. “The morality of no free lunch has seeped into everyday folks that we started despising people who live better than they…deserve. We hate seeing homeless people be granted homes, even when their home is much worse than ours. We hate seeing poor people given free meals, even if their meals is nowhere as majestic as ours,” she paused. “You hear them all the time saying: why should we be taxed to feed others? Why should I give my hard-earned money to people I don’t know and don’t care? What do I get? How would I benefit?”
“You…”
The Ghost Girl released him. She disengaged her stealth and appeared, unveiling her black-clad exoskeleton suit with glowing red light brimming over its surface. The helmet retracted downwards and burst her auburn hair backwards. “I tried for years. Talking to people. Convincing them of everything you’ve said,” she gritted her teeth, but her eyes started tearing. “Nobody understood. They called me lazy. Entitled. I was driven to solitude. No one. Alone. I ran away from home, soaring the stars with nowhere to go,” she paused. “I was punished. Banished by society for caring about them more than for myself.”
Audi stood and stepped back.
“Chrissie and Ray found me and recruited me into Petit Fantome, and there I…realised everything as a mercenary.”
She took a rectangular block out of her back and unfolded it, forming a small rifle.
“That the culture of individualism has seeped so deep into our psyche, both the rich and the poor,” she aimed at Audi. “Laws and regulations cannot change the world, unless the people itself wants the world to change.”
Oh shit. Audi flinched.
“And it’s impossible to change people’s worldview unless we put them under stress. Distress. Torture. Agony,” she shifted her aim towards the Princess.
Audi dashed back.
“Only a shock of catastrophic proportion can change people’s mind as a collective.”
She fired.
The boy jumped in front of Victoria.
And the bullet hit his back.
Blood spurted out of his shoulder blade as he jumped over the Princess, carrying them to the floor. Audi lied on top of Victoria with rapid breathing and loud groans.
“No!” the Princess cried.
Charlotte’s eyes opened wide. She loosened her grip on her rifle.
The Princess sat up and held the boy by her arms. Blood dripped down and bathed her hands. Audi clenched his eyes shut as he screamed in pain.
“Is this…what you want?” Victoria glared at Charlotte. “The suffering of the people…in order to realise your dream?”
The auburn-haired girl kept silent.
“You damned commoner think you’re so smart that you can change the world with the barrel of a gun?” the Princess raised her voice. “If it really works that way then I would’ve already asked the Military Sector to exercise a police state and shoot everyone who disagrees with me!”
Charlotte gritted her teeth.
Victoria turned to Audi and hugged him close. “He grew up poor, you know. Someone who grew up on the shortest end of our society’s stick,” her voice mellowed. “I can tell from his voice, the way he tells his stories; how he went through a life-defining journey. A search of meaning. The purpose of existence. The kind of journey that you want each of us to go through, but denied by the life of work.”
“Don’t act like you’re the only one who knows him, you rich bitch,” Charlotte frowned. “You just met him.”
“Maybe I do know him better.”
“What?” Charlotte clenched her fists.
“Maybe that’s why I can appreciate the moral dilemma he’s facing,” Victoria replied. “He has every reason to resent the rich and powerful. He has every reason to go along with your plan to destroy the order and law bestowed by The Crowned Confederacy to its people. My people. But he held back,” she paused. “Because he understood that there’s nothing such as a simple answer.”
The Ghost Girl frowned.
“The Royal Family underwent a unique education system to study statesmanship. One of the principles we learn is the Three Laws of Social Change, directly analogous to Newton’s Three Laws of Motion.”
“What—“
“First Law,” she raised her finger. “Society has the tendency to not change. Its progress is linear if not interrupted by anything,” she paused. “This is what you’re arguing earlier, that it’s difficult to change people.”
She raised a second finger.
“Second Law concerns change,” Victoria continued. “In order to drive society to change its progress’s direction and to accelerate the rate at which it changes, you need to apply some sort of force into society. The stronger this force is, the faster society will change,” she said. “This is what you’re arguing when you say you’ll introduce a shock. A force so powerful that society will change in an abrupt manner.”
“Trivial,” Charlotte said. “I don’t need to be a royalty to know those.”
Victoria frowned. “But you didn’t consider the Third Law.”
The Ghost Girl listened.
“The Third Law’s statement is very simple, and is a word-by-word copy of Newton’s,” Victoria raised the third finger. “For every action there exist an opposing and equal reaction.”
“That…” Charlotte’s eyes opened wide.
“That means the bigger the force you’re applying, the resistance that will come out of society will be just as great,” the princess continued. “First Law states that society and its people hates change. They are natural conservatives, and tend to rather stick with how things have always worked. So, the more overtly forceful and oppressive your method to change them is, the more likely they are to resist,” she paused. “This Third Law explains why every violent revolutions in history fail. Why every social movements’ successes that was imposed by force were only temporary.”
The Ghost Girl gritted her teeth.
“Members of the Royal Family, the princes and I in particular, have differing visions of a perfect society. Prince Horlix believes in welfare for the poor. Prince Christopher believes in trickle-down economy. The late Prince Maxim believes in direct policing of morality. I believe in basic decency in everyday state policy,” she continued. “But despite these differences, we have one big agreement: that society cannot be driven to where we want through use of violence, threats, and forceful shocks. It may succeed for a year or ten, or at theoretical best a century, but it will simply reverts to how it was—because the people will resist any overt imposition of change at the very depth of their heart.”
