In life I was a letter-writer in Rouen. Keeping a desk on the corner of Rue Massacre, in the shadow of Gros-Horloge, I penned the stories and secrets of the illiterate. Flies swarmed to the smell of meat from the abattoirs, carried on a breeze which buffeted my parchment. There were better writers on the banks of the Seine, merely three blocks away, but I was cheap. The blood which ran between the cobbles was ichor to a swift fleet of rats. When we were besieged in 1418, the rats were joined by the starving, lapping up nutrients.


It is our nature to reminisce. There was a beauty and simplicity to that time, and yet, we have not changed. There was corruption. There was greed. War, famine, peace, and prosperity. Love and death. All was as all will be. But, where humanity prevails, balance falters. I have seen tyrants and I have seen uprisings. I have sparked revolution and I have caused suffering. Never before has one been without the other. Now? Scales of wealth to make Croesus weep. Unlimited firepower and nonexistent empathy. Rates of destruction to effect a human autogenocide, and no rallying cries through the streets.

There have always been prisons, militia and power. The new machine is complacency. You feel so powerless you do not even need to feel afraid. What is the point of resistance when its futility can be felt with every headline we read and every infographic we share? There is a purpose to that feeling. It is a seed which was planted in you from childhood, and it has been cultivated by your schools, your television, your centrist governments... You have been individualised. It has made you small. It has made them powerful. But never forget that we outnumber them 99:1. You are not powerless, you have a mind. You are not powerless, you have fists. You are not powerless, you have community. Use them. Take back what is ours, no matter the cost. Because the alternative is a death so final that we relinquish this planet back to the mercy of raw, chaotic creation.