The Industrialist

The cave was filled with silence, the cold breeze whistled outside freezing the rebels inside. The stares between Jefferson and Lance were a tug-of-war, the defeated will be the first to release.

"Kid, you live in a world of perfection and idealism. What you are saying to me that what happened was cruel because of the lives lost? We live in a cruel age, Lance. Everything you see is cruelty. The Rebels are formed because of that cruelty, because of that tyranny that only the privileged are served by the Government and the Corporation, neglecting those below them.

Treating the Commoners like rats."

"If the Rebels would be absolutely moral, how can we fight against the true evil? How can we stand firm against the Corporation? It is not the question of who is good or bad, Lance. It is based on the perspective and we are the lesser evil. And the lesser evil will do our very best to take down the true evil that governed this city."

"The only question is," Jefferson added after a few moments, "Are you with us or with them? If you do not choose who you are, then you choose to be neutral. A citizen without true purpose. We fight for the cause and we fight what’s right! Therefore, we seek the truth and expose them to what they are. That is our absolute purpose, evil or not, that is our end goal."

There were small affirmations from the crowd. Looking at Jefferson, he was like on a pedestal delivering a motivational speech. And Lance was not only the recipient of such a message, but the entire group.

Lance was speechless. He could not respond. Deep inside, something was still boiling, a burning confidence ready to be released.

Jefferson turned his back and ambled away from Lance’s circle. "It is you. You let the Wolf inside the wall," Lance said meekly. But his words were clear.

Jefferson halted and released a deep sigh. "You rest, son of Erik. We have a long way ahead tomorrow. You are just tired. And I have no energy to argue with you either."

Then Jefferson continued his walk and the show was over. Everybody kept their belongings, gathered their trash, and slept. Nobody uttered a word after that.

’The end does not justify the means,’ Lance thought over and over again. Replaying the words of Jefferson in his mind. Finding hints. ’He did not answer my question. It was probably because he did it. He let the wolf in.’

Then he slept.

***

It was morning and they were back in the Convoy again. He slept well, fortunately. But still, the words of the Rebel leader resonated in his head. He was ready to answer back, to justify that cruelty is not the answer to cruelty.

No.

He shrugged off the thought and set his mind toward the goal, of mining salt.

As planned, the convoy would take them to the Mining site before lunch. Then they would finish mining after a few hours then back to the boundaries of Asphodel forest to where they settled in for the night.

That is if there are no mishaps during the mining.

They brought mining service robots; the rebels had the liberty to just ’borrow’ from the police warehouse about two of them.

Beautiful inventions, Lance thought about them. Bravo to those who had invented this. It will make their life easy.

He set his eyes through the windows of the cabin. It was the same as always. Dead trees, flat bends of lands, dark overcast, hot and cold breeze, and a rocky terrain.

What was new was a village before the tree line of the boundaries of Asphodel Forest. It was an abandoned village, whitewashed, and rubble everywhere, tested through time and of course by the blast of Nuclear warhead.

Lance had imagined the Nuclear World War. What it was like. He could not imagine that such bomb would decimate the whole world. How would a few bombs destroy 95% of the population?

He imagined it among the village, green flames creeping on the ground like tsunamis and passing on that village, decimating anything that was made of wood and flesh. And what was left were dead bodies and the stonewalls.

There were no cries. There was only thunder, sudden quakes, and a snap. Everything was lifeless. Dreams and hard work were destroyed suddenly in only seconds.

’That is absolute cruelty,’ Lance thought.

"Few miles from here we will arrive in the mining site," The driver said.

Their vehicle started to decelerate as the terrain became challenging again. Steeper, indication of another mountain climb. There were no trees anymore, only logs comically spread throughout the mountain bed and mantled with white ash.

Luckily, the salt deposits don’t settle on the mountain’s peak but in mid-range. Their cargo vehicles could not suffice the more challenging terrain up ahead, the outcroppings of rocks seemed to be more random, making no way for a road.

Broadridge Mountain was very steep mid-section up, like almost a cliff, but the steepness tends to be gradual halfway down. Empty river beds were strewn along the roadside, manicured by crystallized small rock formations.

’Salt’ Lance thought upon the sight of the natural crystallization.

The Salt must be mined underneath the rocks, where toxins of the biological warhead had not contaminated.

"How do you know this kid?" Damian asked.

"Back in Bay City, the WWMDs also used Salt to make the water soften be supplied to the drinking filtration stations," Lance responded. "And an opening of an old salt mine was just up ahead."

After a few hours, Lance gazed at his holographic watch.

1215 H

It was lunchtime. They were later than scheduled, as expected due to a worse terrain than what they had as they approached Asphodel. Their vehicles started decelerating down to 20 to 30 miles per hour as they started climbing at the mountain foot.

1730 H the groundlings attacked them yesterday. The sun had retreated early behind the mountains, casting mountain shadows on the neighboring forests, hence, giving the Abominants courage to hunt.

Looking from the portcullis, due North from the Broadridge was the Asphodel hills, separated by a foggy and gloomy forest running miles away, hours of travel, and on the East, separated by bends of dead lands, beyond the thick swarm of unsettling atmospheric dust, was Bay City.

As they reached the opening, all of them disembarked their vehicles.

Then at the third cargo truck, two mining bots were also disembarked, each unit was carried by 4 people down to the ground.

The mining bots had their tracks, with 3 small roadwheels on each side, like that of a tank, and with four robotic arms attached to the chamber where salt would be stored after collection.

Whirring sounds emerged as the two units of mining bots started to press on inside the mining portcullis.

They scanned as the moment they stepped inside the tunnel, broad lasers illuminated the expanse of the cavernous walls. The Rebels were behind them, bringing their mining tools.

The robots pressed on further inside the tunnel, luckily the tunnel road was still intact making the robots easy to pass on.

As the Robots scanned, a brighter laser would tag the locations of significant lumps of salt deposits. If not the robots would collect them using their robotic arms, the Rebels would.

The mining was faster with the robots, filling their chambers with rock salt. The soil that came along with the salt was filtered out by the use of fast-paced sensors in the filtration tubes.

The rebels moved fast, in unison, they mined the scanned portions of the walls. Others were left behind at the opening of the tunnel as lookout.

Lance was calibrating the robotic miners, checking on the scans from time to time, to ensure that they wouldn’t mine a portion with some crystallized forms other than salt.

The pace was expectedly normal, and the robots contributed their use more efficiently than manual collection. However, the filled chambers were then transported back towards the cargo trucks outside the tunnel and then back, giving the robots time to wait for their chambers installed back to their bodies.

That’s when the downtime occurred. The collection was fast but because their cargo trucks stayed farther, it would take time for them to push the chambers manually back and forth.

The lack of equipment had provided them with precious time delays. As they go deeper towards the tunnel, the farther they were from their cargo trucks with the same pace and the same process.

Therefore, the delay increased.

Lance squinted at the time.

1500 H

Two hours travel back to the Asphodel Cave and the three cargo trucks were not yet filled up.

’We had to stop right now,’ Lance thought, calculating the speed and the distance. But he already calculated it on their way in Broadridge from Asphodel.

Darkness will be creeping like a mantle of death as they raced towards Asphodel’s embrace.