The Last Invasion

Chapter Two

For the next day and a half, they went with their neighbors to and from the Missouri river to get water. Although the Chinese soldiers had not yet arrived, everyone was afraid to drive lest they were to suddenly show up. Chairman Wu had greatly emphasized the penalty for any America caught driving a vehicle. That meant death.

It was two miles down to the river, a four mile round-trip. Martin got Marci’s old bike out of the shed and tied four large containers to it. He would wheel it to and from the river. The residents of Riverview carried as many vessels as they could find and did it time after time to the point of exhaustion. Everyone spent all of one day and most of the next walking to and from the river. The water had to be boiled and distilled before use. The river was so polluted and full of agricultural pesticides, pcbs, bacteria and who knows what else, they all immediately began to get stomach trouble even after boiling and distilling the “brown brew,” as some started calling it. No one could ever get it completely clear, even when it was highly filtered. No one got deathly sick from it and after some experimentation, they found much better ways to make the water drinkable. Everyone feared Cholera. Some of the neighbors took charge of sanitation. Latrines were dug.

On the afternoon of the second day, the postman brought the booklets and put them in every mail box and slot. Everyone in every household had one. Extras were given away to be absolutely sure that everyone would have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with their Chinese conquerors. Most everyone began to read their booklet immediately, as soon as it arrived.

Martin opened the first page. It was very simply composed. In the center of the page it said, “Rules.” On the next page they were listed.

1) You will obey without question those in authority over you.

2) The present priority is for every hand to begin to grow food in every place possible. This goal cannot be met now until next spring. From now until then, you will prepare the land in every way. High tech greenhouses will be set up during the winter months to maintain some food production. Our advisors and technicians will oversee those operations. Sacks of staples will be distributed throughout the coming months. You are all required to work together in harmony to produce the highest quantity of grains, fruit trees, livestock and vegetables. And, they must be of the very highest quality as well. Our expectations are high. You will be given advanced equipment to help facilitate your progress, such as plows and rototillers, shovels, fertilizer, tools, building materials and anything else you may need. These power tools use permanent magnet motors and need no fuel of any kind. We will supply them to you. Every man, woman and child will participate in this endeavor. Those among you who know agriculture or gardening will share everything you know with all those around you. We want efficiency, quantity, quality and ease of local distribution. We will provide vehicles and all the equipment needed to assure agricultural success. The restriction against driving any automobile will not apply to the use of farm equipment. All produce not requisitioned by us will be for your local consumption only. Nothing goes outside without permission. Each community will become as self-sufficient as possible. This will keep transport of commerce to a minimum. For a period of time, there will no longer be anything but very bare necessities coming into public markets and those will not be enough to feed the whole population. Thus the need for temporary government assistance until you become self-sufficient. So, you are doing this for your own survival and the survival of your children. Good luck and do well. If you need any organizing help, please drop by our offices which will be located in the town squares.

3)Any disobedience of the following edicts will result in immediate disintegration.

A) all citizens must be in their homes by 9 P.M. every night. Curfew ends at sunrise.
B) all citizens will memorize every point of this booklet.
C) all citizens must walk to their town square for DNA registration and inoculation within the next two weeks.
D) all citizens must remain within ten miles of their work. F) all citizens will work every day from dawn until dusk and will have thirty minutes throughout the day to eat or drink. Breaks are allowed every two hours for five minutes.
G) anyone too sick to work will be liquidated.
H) anyone too disabled to work will be liquidated.
I) Each citizen will be assigned a single day to spend entirely writing their own life story, which will then become a permanent part of their citizen registration file.
J) all citizens are required to start attending educational classes four hours per day. These will be either twice or three times per week. These will be held in governmental facilities. Mobile teaching stations will also be established. In this curriculum there will be periodic tests to ensure that all are grasping the material. These classes are for men, women, boys, girls and are for both the young, old and middle-aged. Everyone must participate without exception.
K) No pregnancies will be allow for the next five years. After that time, a married couple may apply to the government in order to become parents of a single child, no more. Birth control methods and advice will be freely given. Abortion is the cure for all sexual mistakes and all birth defects.
L) Any citizen who receives a summons to appear for any reason must immediately come to their local courthouse and bring full registration identification. The penalty for delay is immediate disintegration.

And there you have them, dear citizens, the rules. Are these all the rules? No, not my any means. However, these are the ones of most immediate importance for the good of all. The others will be gradually introduced over time. Good luck to you and we will be constantly checking on you to be sure all things are going well. We fully expect them to. And, thank you one and all for your fine efforts and support. This booklet will be updated from time to time as management sees fit.

Martin shook his head and thumbed through the rest of the booklet. It contained vast information about how to do almost anything with little or no technology. It was a cornucopia of do-it-yourself with scrap, junk and throwaways. He then suddenly realized that these masters were not intending to turn the power back on anytime soon. He wondered how they intended for the people to get water to their crops next spring. He didn’t know but he was sure they had already thought of it in advance.

“Oh my,” said Laura after reading her booklet, “this is really going to be tough on those of us who are disabled and have bodily pains.”

Martin nodded. “We will all just have to do the best we can and help each other out however possible. That’s really all we can do.”

“You’re right Marty and we must all do the best we can to get through this and find a solution.”

“Yes. This can either be a real nightmare or not, depending upon the way we look at it and whether we take action or merely react. We will just have to see how much oversight there is and how strict and brutal they really are and find out what their vulnerabilities are. I guarantee you they cannot prevail for long over America. Who knows, this may be what it takes to get the American people to finally stand up and just say no.”

Laura just sighed. It was going to be long and hard. She knew that.

The following day, the military troops of the People’s Liberation Army arrived in full force. They came in on very large helicopters and dropped down out of the skies. There was zero resistance. One angry man who cursed at them was immediately disintegrated on the spot. That was it.

Martin and Laura were watching everything. They had walked with a crowd to the town square to witness the arrival of the Reds. It was horrible to see a man vaporized and turned to steam before your very eyes without so much as a peep. The Reds unloaded much equipment including the many hydrogen fusion vehicles they brought with them.

They were amazed as they stood in the Riverview town square watching the troops unload and prepare for their occupation. Their efficiency was like synchronized clock work. They were a well lubricated and well maintained military machine.

It was very strange to see all those powder blue uniforms with the big red stars on the caps spreading throughout Riverview. It was a very eerie feeling.

There was no insignia on the uniforms other than the crisp red star on the caps. Even the officers wore no special insignia. But the soldiers seemed to have no doubt as to what the hierarchy was. The commanders, officers and troops must have been together from their earliest training right on up through the ranks.

The Red Chinese flags being used in this invasion were a single red star on a white backdrop and they went up all over town on every building and house. All citizens were required to display it at all times--a rule they soon discovered which had not been covered in the booklet. The flags were even left up at night and later during severe winter weather. When they became soiled, they were replaced with fresh bright new ones.

A few days later when the re-educational hours began, the teacher synthesized all the teaching down to a single element. The Red Star, its symbolism, meaning and function.

Martin and Laura sat with their entire neighborhood, men women and children and listened to the Red Cadre’s lecture. She was an excellent speaker and very thoughtful and intelligent. She had a doctorate from Peking University. She was also very dogmatic. What she was speaking was to be taken literally as the only sane way to be and live. In the Red view, it was the very way of the Universe itself and a reflection of all Universal Laws and Processes. In other words, it was beyond politics and had infolded dogmatic religious indoctrination as well. It was strongly advertised that such correct thinking and action led to the attainment of full life satisfaction. An inner surety would be brought forth about knowing that you were not only correct but right.

Taking notes was demanded and not optional. Notebooks were checked and scrutinized by the ones in charge.

They learned that the red star was the rallying symbol around which the People’s Revolution revolved and it was the nexus of their entire ideology, philosophy, fanatic quasi-religious dogma, culture and life-style.

The five pointed red star represented The People as a vibrant collective, according to the Cadre. Each appendage had it own function. The topmost point was the head. These were the supreme leaders and the top chairman.

The other points were equal in importance. No one of the five points had greater status than the other four. The star was seen as being in constant clockwise rotation so “up” or “down” meant nothing. Continual change was the nature of the Red Star. And the Cadre pointed out that the change was not only a change of position but transformational morphing and evolution. The top right point, as seen in a mirror, were the leaders of society in every field. At the top left point were the artists and craftsmen. The lower right point was considered middle management and the lower left, common laborers of all types. This lower left group ranged all the way from ditch diggers to technicians. It consisted of everyone from doctors and sanitation engineers to economists and farm laborers. All five points were joined as one in the Red center. Red is the color of heat.

“Red is also the color of blood, which is the sub-quantum kinetic life energy materialized into a human bioform,” the Cadre said, "red is not a white hot heat nor is it a brilliant flash. It is a consistent and persistent day to day action, not too fast and not too slow, but steady. And this steadiness represents the practical conscious awareness of balance. The Red Star has an ultimate philosophical meaning. It is diversity in fundamental oneness. None of the five points are more important than another."

Yeah, Martin thought, in its perfection a Marxist Communist Futurama Utopia. In practice, a brutally totalitarian and dogmatically religious National Security State, which never takes human-ness into account.

The teaching, which was obviously brain-washing or “consciousness dry-cleaning,” as the Cadre so well put it, viewed individuals as if they were mechanical machines and nothing more.

Martin could see a huge connection and reflection with what he knew of history and the recent years of dysfunction in the U.S. He could certainly see where these ideas and philosophies arose due to the mostly accepted materialist paradigm. Since Darwin, it had fully permeated the entire world culture of reductionistic scientific materialist-realism and Darwin’s evolutionary theories were extrapolated to cover human culture also. Eugenics had also attempted to give racism a scientific basis. This brought Social Darwinism.

Some interpreted this emerging materialism to mean “God is dead” and even more so, “God is completely irrelevant.” Life was viewed as unbridled no-holds-barred, and often brutal competition to not only survive but thrive. This “thriving” was not an abstract philosophy nor was it an emotion, but was physically proven when demonstrated by increased creative production. Such practical production was the bottom line of all things.

Martin realized that this “Dialectical Materialism” was often shared in the world he knew by both Capitalist and Communist alike. And yet, to be honest, each also had a god. For Capitalism it was the money-god Mammon and for these Chinese Communists it was the Red-Star god with all its symbolism and implications as the Almighty and well functioning National Security State. It was more than “Dialectical Materialism.” It was brutal dictatorial empire. In reflection, Martin remembered that a dialect is a specialization of a language according to distinctive cultural memes. One idea in “Dialectical Materialism” is to have the Materialist/Realism, which really developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, as the world-wide standard “scientific” model of the present paradigm, replace all other religions that might lean toward the Idealist/Monist polarity, such as an Almighty God, a Primal Source or even a religious invisible father-figure in the sky. No Great Mysteries were acceptable because they distracted the workers and slowed production, he was being told.

The “Dialectical” was what gave the People’s Revolution its universal appeal because it so easily morphed into the different views of various local systems. It sponged whatever was necessary to enlighten a particular people according to their variety of cultural backgrounds. Communism as a philosophy appeared to be flexible and yet, as was so blatantly obvious to Martin and Laura, boiled down to unquestioning control over the minds, bodies and souls of its slaves and even its most fervent Cadres. To be a traitor, or even raise a doubtful question, meant immediate disintegration in this occupation.

The deist or theist philosophy and belief system was considered to be dangerous, mystical, unscientific, hallucinatory, fanciful, fantastic, vain imagination, unreal, unprovable, impossible, unlikely, silly, non-pragmatic, non-practical, superstitious, ignorant, a waste of time and most dangerous of all... counterproductive.

“No conscientious leader can allow that,” the Cadre said, “more is always better.”

And she went on to explain how this leads ultimately to the very “best.” And thus, every excellent leader can easily become worshipped as a god and must constantly take measures to prevent that from happening. The best way to do that is through enforced discipline, strictly managed correct behavior, a system of rewards and punishments, manipulation through fear, the use of sticks and carrots and well advertised public charity as photographic opportunity.

The Red solution to protect society from mystical fantastic religion was to simply eliminate it completely. Stamp it out. Wipe it clean like when someone scrubs a spot off the toilet. Disintegrate it. Turn it into non-differentiated primal energy. Recycle it for the sake of the practical and balanced daily lives of all people. And, the best way to do that was to infiltrate it and work from the inside out. Therein was the ultimate righteous fulfillment of all negative non-productive energy. And the final solution? Never again allow the evil dragon to raise up its ugly head.

In order to accomplish that, children must be strongly directed and shown the correct way from birth. To teach the children the correct way, the parents must learn and practice it continually themselves. Teachers are not to be liked, but revered and feared. Each individual owed their allegiance to the best good of all and therefore each citizen must assume personal responsibility. No exceptions.

“And that’s why all of you are here today,” declared the young female Cadre who stood before them.

“Oh joy,” Laura breathed quietly.

As the Cadre lectured on, she ridiculed all absurd silliness. “Fiction,” she said, “is nothing but fantastic lies which pollute and disable the consciousness while destroying society.”

Martin was determined to not allow his critical thinking and reasoning to be overwhelmed but the constant vectored bombardment was rapidly entraining everyone, whether they liked it or not. It was like putting groves into the record of one’s memory patterns. Constant repetition with no objections allowed. This was certainly not a discussion but a very blatant indoctrination.

Highly reductionistic Material/Realism was certainly a large part of the philosophy of the modern world and especially all Fascists, both right and left. “Might makes right” was being preached here and presented as the way the entire Universe operated. Survival of the fittest. The Cadre pointed out that an “us” and “them” must always be carefully maintained to keep an environment of creative tension. Nothing gets done without a deadline. No “them” is completely without merit. This admission holds the “other” in the manufactured “us-mind” as potential converts. This is how the zeal of the People’s Revolution was spread.

The citizens of Riverview were sternly told over and over again that all the weak needed to die and be gotten out of the way. Upward evolutionary movements could no longer tolerate such heavy burdens on a truly progressive society. All miscreants, genetic invalids, puny self-abusers with whining victim mentality, and all mental retards could no longer be allowed to slow down the machinery of evolutionary progress. Like Chairman Mao so wisely stated long ago, “all power comes out of the barrel of a gun.”

“No wonder Mao had a beef with the Dali Lama,” Martin whispered to Laura out of the side of his mouth. “Our friends at the group-home are really in terrible peril.”

The one hope Martin maintained for them was Grace with her huge heart and intuition. “Be careful, dear Grace,” he whispered.

When the time came, the registration process was surprisingly easy. They were given a blood test and an inoculation. They were photographed and given registration cards as a part of their permanent I.D. to have on their person at all times. They were told to start writing down their life stories to become a permanent part of their registration.

Martin and Laura finished theirs quickly, only listing the facts they could remember but not trying to write an autobiography. The Cadres said they were disappointed in them, but accepted their writing anyway. Apparently they were looking for total cooperation.

Always in the back of Martin’s mind was the anxious concern for his friends at the group-home. But each time he became too frustrated and depressed about it, he seemed to see Grace’s beautiful smiling face.

Chapter Three
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