„Outsourcing“ was one of the infamous terms of globalization, which had broken loose with all its power at the beginning of the 21th century. Now Frank had also been outsourced somehow. He had left the administrative sector „Central Europe“ and was “stored” elsewhere.
The old airplane flew over the area of the former state of Poland, over the city of Kaliningrad, the old Königsberg, which had meanwhile fallen into ruins, and finally was on its way to the Southern Baltic, in order to land in a rural area north of Vilkija, in a little village called Ivas.
The five men were exhausted and hardly noticed the landscape below them beyond the windows. Frank was still disturbed and could only occasionally understand, what was happening to him. He suffered under strange muscle cramps and was, despite his constant fatigue, not in the condition to sleep for longer than half an hour.
His eyes were always half open and he felt, as if someone had put a bag full of cement on his head. After the airplane had landed, Alf helped him to step out and led him to an rundown house.
„Can I sleep somewhere, or just lie down?“, asked him Frank.
„Yes, don`t worry! I have found a place to sleep for you!“, answered Alf and pulled the young man into the building. „We have to discuss something, Frank. You can rest here – see you later!“, said Alf and showed Kohlhaas an old bed in an untidy and halfdark room with a dark red, peeling wallpaper. Frank turned to the side and tried to sleep. He hardly made it, but nevertheless, the young man had the feeling that he already felt better. After he had been in a condition of dozing for some hours, he finally nodded off. He did not dream about anything. It was just black in his head. As black as it had always been in the holo cell, in the eight artificial hours of the night.
Next day...
„We have escaped the next cops by the skin of our teeth, as I think. I feel sorry for Rolf Weinert, a good man, only 29 years old“, said Alf to the others. „Thank you, that you have delivered me from this hell. I know, I always seem to be hard and tough, but I was also close to the end in “Big Eye”.
That other guy is simply wasted, but it would probably be the same with us all, if they would cage us in a holo cell for eight months. This Frank is a poor creature!”
„We haven`t planned the liberation of a second man, Alf!”, remarked a young man with red hair.
„So what? What should have been done? Would it have been right, to let this Frank just die? He would not have survived one more week in “World Peace”, got it?”, returned Bäumer.
„Well, actually the fate of an unknown man is not interesting for us. The only important thing is our own thing, okay?”, said another man sternly.
„I will care for him. What will he do? Call the fucking Lithuanian police?“, grumbled Alf with an angry face.
„This is a real problem, Bäumer! If the guy becomes a safety risk, we must kill him. You know about our rules!“, said a blond man.
„I know that, little boy! You don`t need to tell me our principles! I have already joined our fight in a time, when you were nothing but a panty wetting baby!”, hissed Alf in the direction of the young fighter.
„Peace, people! You were successful and you are still alive! Meanwhile, only the big armored busses are used for prisoner transports since two years. This has been an exception! The fact that they have used an outdated transport van this time, was just because only two prisoners had to be transferred to Bonn. And a bus would have exceeded the budget for such an unimportant trip. These new tank-like monsters are not so easy to stop. You need a rocket launcher or something like that, to bring them to a halt!”, said a tall man in the background. He was perhaps about fifty years old.
The man had come later to the small group. His name was Thorsten Wilden, a former businessman, who had fled to Lithuania some years ago. Slender, gray haired, with an oblong face and a remarkable pointed chin. The man seemed to be very rational and impersonal, and gave the impression that he had already gone through a lot of hardship in his life.
„However, the boy is right. Tomorrow I want to become acquainted with this Frank. I hope, he won`t make us problems here, otherwise we have no other choice than silencing him”, said the tall man, who apparently had a leading position is this group of men.
„He won`t make problems! Nevertheless, the boy is totally exhausted!”, meant Alf and rolled his eyes.
„Where is he now?”, asked Wilden.
„In my house. Thus, I mean, in John`s house. He is sleeping!”, muttered Alf. “I will keep him in sight and I will also bain for him. Is this enough now?”
“Okay, men!”, shouted the leader of the group. “In the next days, the good old routine in our village will return for you all. We have to resow and to do a lot of other work. Alf can help this new man to recover and I want you, to leave him alone with this task. By the way, HOK told me, that the release operation has been on TV in “Central Europe”, yesterday evening. We should watch this report, HOK has recorded everything!”
“Yes, have fun with it, I go home now and want to be alone for the rest of the day”, groaned Alf and left the room.
Dusk was falling and Frank lay between some unwashed pillows. A great burden slowly fell from his soul and his mind, which had swollen like a red, throbbing growth. Now the pain began to fade away. In the next room he heard a rustle, shortly thereafter loud smacking and the sound of cutlery on a plate. Some minutes later, his sponsor entered the room. „You must eat something! Here!“ Alf presented him some slices of bread and two fried sausages.
„Thanks!“, said Frank and ate slowly and leisurely. „You don`t have to worry. Nobody can find us here. We are in Lithuania. Far away from Germany and this „One-World” cage called “Central Europe”. Eat, and then I let you sleep again“, whispered Alf, trying to calm him down.
It was a weird situation. If Frank would have seen Alfred Bäumer in former times on the street, then he would probably have gone to the other side. This tall man really looked boldly and violent, what he surely was, if it had to be. He gave the impression of the typical criminal, who had received a life sentence.
Brawny, with a dark, pointed beard, a tattoo at the neck and a keen look. Frank Kohlhaas looked, however, rather harmless and even still juvenile at first sight, although his body was also sturdy. He had a dear face with a button nose and his good-natured smile was characteristic. Mostly Frank was kind and peaceful.
But in the production complex 42-B, he had lost control over his feelings and this time had been one time to often. His life had almost been destroyed by the consequences of this incident. Compared with Alf, whose face always showed latent rage and frustration, Frank`s countenance could change, in a case of extreme excitement, from good-natured to psychopathic. If Frank was really furious, his green eyes started to gaze into space and he threateningly perked his dark, broad eyebrows up. Then he looked like a fanatical preacher, somehow mentally absent, with an indestructible will and ready for everything.
Only a few people had ever faced this sight so far, but Frank`s angry outbreaks had increased in the last years - slowly and constantly.
Now, however, the former citizen 1-564398B-278843 was just glad to be with Alfred Bäumer. Although it was a man, he didn`t know at all, but who seemed to be a trustable person.
Despite Alf`s aggressive appearance, a honest core seemed to be under his hard shell. A feeling of hope sprouted in the heart of the young man. He clung to Alf`s broad shoulder and murmured quietly: „Thanks, man! Thanks that you have liberated me! You have saved my life!“
Some minutes he mutely cried in Alf`s arms. Then Bäumer pushed him back gently. „It`s okay. You are welcome here!“, said Alf, who was simply overwhelmed with so much sentimentality.
“The others have freed me from this damn prison too. “Big Eye” would have been my doom as well. They put me two years in incommunicado detention, luckily, I had not the pleasure to get a so called “therapy” in a holo cell.
I would have gone to hell there, no doubt. Apart f
rom this, they don`t let you just go, when your time in jail is over. One or two are also liquidated, if their behavior analysis is too negative. These damn holo cells have once been an experiment for perfect conditioning and brainwashing. The former “Mind Control”, which the NSA, when it still had this name, had developed together with many other methods”, declared Alf. “These holo cells will be used against all prisoners with politically incorrect tendencies one day. You have been one of the first human guinea pigs. It has just been interesting from them to analyze, how long you would suffer this torture. Of course, they knew that you would not survive this procedure!"
“Fuck these rats!”, said Frank and tried to banish the thoughts about the terrible time in the holo cell.
“The entire political and historical background can`t be explained in two sentences, above all, if you have never thought about it before”, ended Alf his small speech.
Frank signaled by turning around and pulling the cover over his head, that he wanted to sleep now. It was 21.16 o`clock and the young man was still exhausted and weak. He dozed for a while and examined the shabby, dark red wallpaper, then he fell in a deep and restful sleep.
On the next morning, Frank Kohlhaas felt unusually recovered. He had slept over 13 hours and for the first time since months, he had not awoken with a start in the middle of the night. He yawned and noticed that Alf had put some fresh dresses beside his bed.
Kohlhaas still wore his white prison clothes, which smelled of sweat and were still covered with dark red traces of the policeman`s blood.
Frank plodded out of his room and noticed that it was very quiet in the house. Nobody sat in the kitchen, so that he could look around without ruffle or excitement. Everything looked very poor. Dirty dishes were piled up in a rusty sink and in the corner of the room, an ugly mold spot was on the wall. Indeed, Alf lived in a hovel - if it was his house at all. However, his housemate seemed not to be here. The young man walked over some old wood stairs to the upper floor, where he found only a few empty and poorly furnished rooms. One of them was full of cardboards and wooden boxes, almost up to the ceiling. But Alf Bäumer was nowhere to be found.
„Where am I here at all?“, thought Frank and scratched his head.
Since the escape from “Big Eye”, he hadn`t been in the condition to think about these strange men, who had rescued him. Who were they?
He opened the entrance door of the house and stepped outside, left it open a bit, so that he could come back again, because he had no key for the ramshackle door. When he looked down the street, in which Alf`s house was, Kohlhaas saw a lot of further hovels on each side. Some of the houses seemed to be empty, others had weathered fronts and in the gardens, a sprouting, uncontrolled growth was spreading everywhere.
Some of the windows had been nailed up with rotted boards, probably long ago. One house had even a collapsed roof. In addition, here and there, one of the houses had been renovated again and Frank heard the voices of children out of a side street. He could even understand their language, it was German.
Nevertheless, the sun shone on all the roofs, whether desolate or repaired again. But many people didn`t seem to live in this rundown village. Finally, Frank saw two men, who unloaded crates out of a delivery van. A tractor rattled somewhere in the distance and a mature woman leaned out of the window in the house opposite to him.
Frank walked down the road and came to a square, which probably must had been the center of the small village in former times. Weed sprouted out of the cracks between the cobblestones, which covered the whole place. Here, in the center of this ghost town, Frank could see three old houses with big shopwindows. Two of the large windows were broken and the buildings looked dilapidated. The shopwindow of the other house was completely plastered with yellow cellotape. In the center of the square was a memorial stone, completely overgrown with all sorts of grass and bushes. It was surrounded by a wooden fence.
Kohlhaas could hardly recognize the memorial stone and, apart from this, the inscription on it was in Cyrillic, so that the man from “Central Europe” could not read anything.
On the stone, a soldier with a helmet and a rifle was shown. Nevertheless, Frank had already seen this helmet from the old time in a history book. Furthermore, he was able to decipher the years, which had been engraved on the memorial stone: 1941 and 1989.
The young man continued his walk and regarded a moldered church, which stood next to the village square. Its roof was damaged and had enormous holes, bricks covered with moss and lichens lay in front of the rotten, wooden front door, that was adorned with a hardly recognizable picture.
On the tower was a rusted cross of iron. The winged thing on the door of the church, which was completely overgrown with lichens, was probably an angel, that had symbolically welcomed the people at the entrance of the church in the old times.
But in a world, that had been left alone by God, perhaps even this angel had lost his "job" one day. Frank pushed the large wood door to the side and climbed over a pile of planks, in order to reach the inner part of the old church. Dried out leaves, dirt and dust were everywhere on the ground in front of him. The benches of the old building were dirty and everything made the impression of being lost. The altar was also damaged and had small tears and cracks, probably because of the cold of a hard winter. The visitor finally turned his head towards the ceiling and examined the wooden frescos on the walls, which also showed traces of decomposition. Frank beheld some angels, that were fighting against strange looking demons or something like that - creatures from hell. Other frescos depicted mother Maria and Jesus Christ.
“The superstar of Christianity…”, said Frank to himself and smiled cynically. This church appeared old and somehow also sublime. The chapel had possibly been built in the late Middle Age, but Frank did not know it for sure. He knew nothing about history.
But the young man didn`t care about the age of this church. Only one thing was true – the building touched his inner self, although, he never had believed in anything.
Maybe just because it was beautiful and old. In his previous world, he had never beholden an old building. Gray plattenbauten, dirty streets, underpasses and factories were nothing new to him, but he had never looked at old churches or castles. This house of God was just like a memorial of a forgotten time. A time far beyond this dark age.
The church had probably been the heart of this village for many decades or even centuries. At this place, the people had prayed to a higher power, begging it to take care of them. But in the end, it all had come differently. In the year 2028, mankind was alone, and Frank had never noticed a higher power, that wanted to protect its children.
„Father, if you exist at all, why have you left us?”, said Frank quietly to himself and looked at the fragile ceiling of the old building again. Then he went back to the square.
He walked through the hopeless village for several hours. Again and again, up to the other end and back. Around the locality were fields and forests, and only a muddy street seemed to connect it with the rest of the world. The young man sat down on a bank and looked at the sky, when three little children, probably those, who he had already heard before in the side street, ran across the road in front of him. They briefly examined him and smiled, but Frank didn`t take heed of them.
Somewhere a dog barked in a house, which looked inhabited. He stood up and passed some vacant, rundown houses. This village, the renegate citizen had already forgotten its name, was a bleak place, as Kohlhaas thought. Nevertheless, he prefered this village to the rotten, former FRG capital Berlin, his old home. He wouldn`t miss the criminality, the cultural and racial tensions and all the decay, that was typical for the shabby metropolis, where he had grown up. Now he was here. In this strange hicktown...
„Ivas!“ Now Frank remembered the name of the village. Alf had said it several times. Ivas, somewhere in Lithuania. But what was this for a strange village? Frank Kohlhaas was puzzled.
Meanwhile, he was tired and his shoes
were completely covered with mud. He finally decided to return to Alf`s house, because the front door was still open, although it was improbable, that the other villagers would steal from them. It was not like in Berlin. Soon the day came to an end. Frank didn`t know yet, where he was here.
„In three days we must leave this house, Frank! I must leave it too, because it is doesn`t belong to me“, explained Bäumer after a meager lunch.
„As I already guessed. Whose house is it?“
„It belongs to another villager, who is currently in Minsk to buy some things“, answered Bäumer. „Wilden has said, that we can live here for a few days. If the owner comes back home, we can surely move to one of the other vacant houses in the village.“
„What is that for a odd village?”, murmured Frank.
„Wilden will explain it to you tomorrow. Actually, he already wanted to talk to you today, but you were not here. You took a little walk, isn`t it?“, said Alf, whose tiredness meanwhile shone in his eyes.
„Tell me, where are you from, Bäumer?”, asked Frank suddenly.
„Well, I was born in Dortmund and have lived in some other cities in the Ruhrgebiet, also in Frankfurt am Main, for four years”, said Alf and took another tea.
„Why have they brought you to „Big Eye“?, Frank became curious.
„My God, you ask a lot. But well, you will have to remain here in Ivas, this is hopefully obvious to you, and therefore, I will tell you a few things about me.“
Alfred Bäumer decided to make another camomile tea and went to the boiler. Then he fetched a cigarette and began with a small lecture about his life.
Frank actually didn`t want to know all the details, but Alf seemed to look forward to a little speech. Now he was awake again.
„I had troubles with the authorities since my 16th year of life. I was active in various political groups, which you don`t know, as I think. Anyhow, they are all forbidden since many years.
I have already been in jail for one year in 2013 – when the political system of the FRG still existed. They have punished me for so called “opinion crimes” - because I have designed a few Internet sites, which were uncomfortable for the state. At that time, I was just 19 years old. My parents have lost their jobs during the great world economic crisis in 2012/13, and have jettisoned me after my term of imprisonment. I have never returned back home again. Afterwards, I have lived with some friends, in various housing groups, and of course also alone. After six years, in 2020, I have joined the Red Moon groups, always trying to live inconspicuously. Nevertheless, it has gone wrong.”
„The Red Moon groups?” Frank looked surprised. „They were terrorists, isn`t it? These guys have burned a hospital in Berlin, right?“
„That`s nonsense! Lies!“, grumbled Alf and gave Frank an annoyed glance.
„I'm sorry. They have said it on television at that time“, remarked Frank and tried to calm down his comrade.
„On television...on television…! Nevertheless, fucking television is even the biggest lie of that world system, man! Didn't you understand this yet?“, grunted Bäumer and felt accused wrongly.
„No offense meant!”, apologized Kohlhaas.
„No, it is a lie, Frank. The Red Moon groups publicy protested against the World Government and united thousands of young people in their fight. Opponents of globalization, free philosophers, patriots and others. After that damn hospital hoax, which the media exaggerated with all their might, we were criminalized. It had been the work of the GSA, the international secret service, there is no doubt for me. It has not been activists of our group! However, the following crusade of the international media, broke the neck of the Red Moon organization. Tell me, why should a group of freedom fighters burn innocent people in a hospital?”, asked Alf with visible rage.
„Do you see the tattoo on my neck? This is the „Red Moon”, the blood-red moon of the fight for liberty – our old symbol!”
„I don`t know enough about all this and I don`t care...”, said Frank. „I only know, that I hate that goddam World Government, that terrible system - from the bottom of my heart!“
„Then Ivas is the right place for you, my friend!”, said Alf and stared at his tea cup, clenching his fist.
„And then?”, asked Frank.
„Then? Then I was still active. After the Red Moon groups were forbidden worldwide, we continued our struggle in the underground. Finally, I was arrested during an illegal, spontaneous demonstration, which I have organized with some of my comrades. I had to go to jail again.
My time in „Big Eye“ began and I can be glad, that they did not find other loading material during the house search at that time, otherwise I would have been liquidated.”
„What material?”, questioned Kohlhaas. Alfred Bäumer looked at him and shook his head.
„You ask very much for a man, who still was flat on his face a few hours ago. Never mind! That would have made me more than just some problems, believe me. So I was sentenced to nine years of detention, only because of the spontaneous demonstration. I would have never endured that. In my time as an activist of the Red Moon groups, I became also aquainted with some of these weird guys from here. They have already told me years ago, that I should escape from the sector “Central Europe”, to come with them to Lithuania.
Nevertheless, I was not willing to give up the fight in my homeland, because it was my aim, to liberate it from this global insanity. Today I say to myself, that it was just stupid to wait for so long. It would have been wiser to leave “Central Europe” in time, because the great enemy is much too strong in the West.”
„Well, now you are here. And me too. The best thing that could happen to us, Bäumer. This fucked up sector “Central Europe” shall go to hell, it shall rot forever!”, hissed Frank and wiped off some tea drops from his lip.
“We must not let our compatriots go to the hell! It is our country! No, we are not on vacation here! We just relocate our fight. We will only surrender, when the maggots corrode us in our graves!”, answered Alfred and put his foot down.
Frank was astonished and observed his partner, who snatched the teapot with a loud curse. “We are not on vacation here!"
Frank was surprised about this statement, his housemate had shouted out with so much passion. What did Alf mean by that?
Again, Frank Kohlhaas slept well and firmly. He had amazingly regenerated himself, in this short time. Sometimes he even felt euphoric.
„I am not even afraid of the devil!“, he thought then and smiled proudly.
But it was not that simple. The aftereffects of the holo cell were far more malicious, than he could imagine and they were still there, deep in the dark corners of his brain. They just lay in wait and planned to erupt, in order to strangle Frank`s peace of mind, while he was sleeping.
Like the mourning, after the death of a beloved person, usually comes in waves, it was the same with the mental horror, the holo cell had unleashed in Frank`s mind.
The dread had only entrenched itself and waited now, in its fortified position, for the signal to attack Frank again. No, the fright wasn`t gone. But in these first days of his new freedom, Kohlhaas had a peaceful time – so far.
The rain pattered on the corrugated iron roof of the small shed in front of Frank`s window, and the untiring noise made him wake up. It was already after ten o'clock on this wet morning and the young man rolled from one end of the bed to the other. Suddenly Alf entered the room and said: „Good morning, Frank! Please get up! Wilden is here and he would like to talk to you!“
The village boss already sat in the kitchen and sipped his coffee. He welcomed Frank friendly and told him to follow him to his house after the breakfest. Somehow, the situation was unpleasant for Frank, but he tried to avoid problems and obeyed.
„We must talk about some things, Kohlhaas!“, remarked the leader of the village community, who wore a long gray coat and a hat with a narrow brim.
The rain had softened the muddy roads of the village, and
Frank waded behind the somehow authoritarian and impressive Mr. Wilden through the dirt. After a short foot march, they finally came to an amazingly well renovated house, which was even surrounded by a beautiful garden.
„We go upstairs!”, said Wilden.
The former entrepreneur sat down behind an adorned desk of dark wood and remained silent for some minutes. Frank took a seat on a soft armchair of black imitation leather, which smelled cleaned. He looked around. The room seemed to be an office and was in a perfect condition. Everywhere he could see pictures on the wall with the light brown wallpaper: battle paintings, framed photos of some great men from the old times and a lot of other things.
„Well, Frank Kohlhaas. Do you like our village?”, asked the gray-haired man, smiled and tried to take the uncertainty from his young guest.
„Nice!”, was Frank`s short answer.
„Nice!”, repeated Wilden soberly. „I want to make it short, and I will not talk around the bush”, said the village boss and looked out the window.
Then he continued: „This village is called Ivas. It is in the area of the former state of Lithuania, in the southwest part of this actually beautiful country. It is small and insignificant. A small village, that has been abandoned by its former inhabitants under the pressure of the worldwide economic collapse some years ago. A ghost town, as you may know them from North America.
“Aha…”, said Frank.
„This village is so small and so unimportant, that even the sharpest eye must look twice to see it“, explained Wilden.
„Therefore, I am safe here!“, joked Frank.
„Well, security is relative. Particularly in our time, Mr. Kohlhaas. Above all, nowadays!“, said the host quietly.
„But here...“, remarked Frank.
„As I already said, Frank Kohlhaas“, interrupted him Wilden. „Today it is a benediction to be safe. You are here in Ivas, an insignificant village, in an also not excessively important country in Eastern Europe. This village is so unimportant that even the big eye, the eye, which can see the whole world and always wants to see more, did not notice it yet. Do you know, what this village really is, Frank?“
„No! Just tell it to me!“, Frank reacted nervously.
„Then I want to explain it to you exactly. Where you are here, and with whom you are here!“, answered the man with a serious look. „This is no usual village in the contemplative Lithuania and we are no holiday community. We are rebels, who fight against the World Government. Ivas is one of our bases. Some of our men live here, with their families or alone.
A few of these ramshackle houses, I had acquired for relatively small sums from the former Lithuanian state in the period of its dissolution. Finally, my fellows and me settled in this abandoned village. Some more men will still come and we will establish our position here. But there is one important rule: Everybody has to be quiet!”
Frank wondered. „Rebels against the World Government?“, he thought and beheld Wilden with surprise.
„I think, I know, what you mean!”, he said then.
„You came to Ivas and you will stay here. We can`t let you go, because you already know too much and this is a safety risk. Even if you tell just one single word about us and this village, we must kill you! I say it to you not as your foe. This is the situation, in which you are, Frank Kohlhaas!“, spoke Wilden and nodded. „And believe me, we will not hesitate, to wack you immediately, if you endanger our group!”, he said with a cold voice.
„I understand!”, Frank was more than confused.
"But I don`t want to threaten or frighten you, my friend. You had suffered enough and I wish you a good recovering here. Furthermore, I don`t want to force you to join us. Just trust Alf, he is a man with a pure heart and could even become a good friend to you. Moreover, he bailes for you and told me, that you are a nice person”, said Wilden and smiled again.
„I want to rest, as a start, and then I will take a look at your organization. And believe me, I`m really grateful, because you saved my life. Don`t worry, I would never betray you. I give you my oath”, said Kohlhaas to the older gentleman and sounded resolute.
„Trust me, Frank. You are here now, and you will find your peace of mind among us. And on the other hand, there is no turning back for you anymore. If they would ever catch you, you would be liquidated immediately.
You are registered as a terrorist and a murderer, in all worldwide databases of any administration and authority, and a so called “normal life” is an illusion now. Whereby, however, it becomes clear at a closer look that we are the only ones who live a “normal life”, because we are free men and no slaves of this global system, born of terror and oppression”, explained Wilden with a more gently becoming voice.
„I wanted to thank you again…”, whispered Frank quietly. “No problem, my young friend! I am glad about the fact, that Alf and the others didn`t let you die“, answered Wilden with a paternal countenance.
The talk with the founder of this base took a long time and Wilden became more and more kindlier. It seemed, that the older gentleman, who had appeared so cold at first sight, would have a fancy for Frank.
Since 2013, when the great crisis had shaken the entire globe and had driven millions of people into poverty, destroying innumerable existences and finally even leading to famines, this village had been left by its former inhabitants.
The collapse of the economy in Lithuania had caused a mass exodus of young people, who had been driven by the illusion, to be able to find jobs in the countries of Western Europe.
Villages like Ivas, which had lived on retail trade and agriculture to a large extent, had just collapsed, and their inhabitants had moved into the larger cities of the country or to the West.
A ghost town had finally remained and meanwhile the rural areas of Eastern Europe were full of abandoned villages. Thorsten Wilden, the former entrepreneur from Westphalia, had decided in 2018, when the shadows of a global dictatorship had come over the former FRG, to leave his homeland and to acquire houses in Ivas with his last money.
Wilden had already been registered as a political dissident in the databases of the secret service, even at the time of the FRG. He had too often been noticeable. When the entrepreneur had stood for a political incorrect party against the FRG system in 2012, the media had tried to economically ruin him with a big campaign. The German had already thought about emigration in these days. But he had still persevered for a while, although the media had called up to boycott his company and his family had been threatened by incited fanatics. And the situation had continued to become worse. During the great world economic crisis, the entrepreneur had lost the biggest part of his fortune and had become a target for the political police of the FRG.
Thereupon, Western and Central Europe had been shaken by a breakdown of the social system and racial and religious conflicts. Europe had finally been close to civil war.
In the year 2018, Germany had been taken over by the World Government, while Wilden had escaped to Lithuania with his family.
He had offered the rest of his savings and had bought some of the empty houses and also a few properties in Ivas, for relatively small sums from the collapsing Lithuanian state. The dying national state, which had been driven into complete bankruptcy by the crisis, had been glad about each cent that a foreign investor had given.
In the years 2018 to 2020, the World Government had been established. The new rulers had promised the masses to master the great crisis, and had moreover seized the opportunity, to abolish the old states of Europe.
Then a massive wave of liquidations of political incorrect persons had followed. Who had been located as a suspicious person, had been arrested or killed by the ruthless oppressors.
Shortly afterwards, the Lodge Brothers had founded the international secret service, the GSA, to eliminate political opponents. Campaigns of mass arrests, mass liquidations, brainwashing, terror and intimidation had been the order of the day in this years. Finally, the face of Europe
had been crushed to a bloody pulp. Only in the USA, the GSA had still raged more effectively and had executed even larger parts of the population as in Europe.
In this time of terror, Wilden had already escaped to Eastern Europe and had overcome the first onslaught with his family unharmedly. However, many of his political fellows of that time had disappeared in prisons or mass graves. Nevertheless, the terror had reached the countries of Eastern Europe too, but the preparatory work for a perfect surveillance state had only been made half-heartedly and languidly here. Moreover, the registration of the whole population wasn`t as extensive as in the West yet. So the strike of the World Government against the nations of the world, had lost a lot of its power in Lithuania.
Apart from this, Russia and the other states of Eastern Europe had become members of the world system in the year 2020, two years after the official takeover of the new rulrs. Here, some air for breathing had still remained. But the Lodge Brothers were willing to make up leeway, in the countries outside of North America and Western Europe.
After these difficult facts and explanations, Frank had never thought about before, he was impressed by Wilden`s talent to elucidate things. Altogether, he was fascinated by him.
Communities of men like Ivas, had some more time to live in peace, but the officials even pressurized the sector “Eastern Europe” more and more, to create a modern system of total control. So also in Ivas, strictest secrecy was increasingly necessary to survive, and Wilden`s village had ever more problems to keep up the image of an unimportant village, inhabited by some farmers. HOK or Holger K., who didn`t betray his surname to anyone, except for Thorsten Wilden, was one of the most important men in Ivas. The former computer scientist was a master in tampering scanchips and to rewrite registration datas of vehicles and airplanes in a way, that they were inconspicuous. After four hours, Frank Kohlhaas finally left the house of Thorsten Wilden. This new world really impressed him and for a man like Frank, a return to his old life was impossible at this point.
When the young man came into HOK`s study two days later, he was welcomed by a thick, burly man. The information scientist sat in front of a big, wireless computer, surrounded by a lot of crates and cardboards, which were repleted with all kinds of things. He looked like the typical computer genius and reminded Frank of a comic figure. HOK smiled and examined Kohlhaas from top to bottom. Meanwhile, he scratched his head and gabbled something.
„You need a new Scanchip? You will get a new Scanchip! He, he!”, said the weird computer scientist and typed on his keyboard.
„Oh! I am HOK! Specialist for electronic questions and other problems in this beautiful village!”
„Hello!”, said Kohlhaas.
„Oh, how good that nobody knows, how uncle HOK is really called. A little joke, I always like to tell“, returned HOK and hastily waved his lower arms. „And soon, also nobody will know your name anymore!“
„I will always be Frank Kohlhaas!“, answered the young man and grinned.
„Sure! And I will be always HOK, even if I am sometimes Mike Weber or Enrico Althaus”, said Holger K. with a philosophical undertone.
„However, you will get a new Scanchip now, because otherwise you are just fucked up in this world.“
HOK let the keys rattle and worked for the next minutes as under hypnosis in front of his computer screen. He visited various servers and data bases and explained, that it could last a while. Anyway, he had to generate a large number of new access codes and this was a lot of work. His virtual attacks on the secret servers of administrative districts and registration banks had remained unnoticed so far, and could not be retraced. The coding and safety precautions, which HOK used, were impressing and reflected the quite entitled paranoia in his head.
„This computer officially stands, from its source code, in Patah Keadan in Malaysia. Sometimes I also attack from Siberia, northern China or Angola. This is always very funny!“, gaggled the cyberfreak and smiled proudly.
„I believe you, man. But I know nothing about computers!“, groaned Frank .
„Code here and code there…”
“No, does not fit…”
“Shit! Why not?”
“Ah...Okay!”
“Well, there we have been landed…”
“He, he, he…”
“Well!”
And: Go!”
“Starting from the data…”
“Great!”
“Copy!”
“Paste!”
“Mist! Elender Mist!”
HOK murmured and continued to swim through a sea of datas and facts in the international cyberspace. He vacantly stared at the screen and Frank was just silent. Then Kohlhaas finally sat down on a damaged office chair, which probably had already suffered under HOK`s weight.
The operation lasted almost three hours. In the meantime, Frank had gone out of the house, to take a little walk through the village. When he returned, the passionate cyber fanatic expected him. HOK grinned from ear to ear. Then he theatrically made a curtsey in front of his new client: „Welcome citizen 08-711369Y-191947, in our wonderful „One-World”! I may call you, nevertheless, here among us and completely unofficially, Maximilian Eberharter, okay?“
„Sounds amusing, but good...”, returned Frank.
„Your Scanchip account has also been topped up again. Congratulations!“ HOK seemed to be very happy. He had done his work like a pro.
Referring to the general defaults for citizen registrations, Frank Kohlhaas was now announced as the proud owner of the citizen number 08-711369Y-191947, living in Graz and working as an underground construction engineer. His wage was not bad too. Over 1300 Globes per month, he had never earned that much.
Who this Maximilian Eberharter really was, Frank did not know and he did not ask. Perhaps the citizen number 08-711369Y-191947 had been discarded, because the owner had died. Perhaps, it was also just invented, rewritten or something else. HOK surely knew, what he did.
Indeed, the computer scientist with the weird behavior and the emotional fluctuations, was just irreplaceable in Ivas. He procured official registrations for the inhabitants and topped up their Scanchip accounts, gave them “jobs” and secured their income - at least, as a computer file. This man was ingenious. No question!
Additionally, the village community also subsisted on an own agriculture and various illegal exchanges and commercial transactions. It functioned better, than the new born citizen could ever imagine.
Nevertheless, Ivas was a dangerous place. And only, if all inhabitants kept their mouths shut and never boasted, an inconspicuous life was possible. Regarded from the outside, this village just appeared inconspicuously and its citizens were even good taxpayers, who were not noticeable to the tax authority of the sub-sector “Belarus-Baltic”.
From this point of view, they all were in a favorable situation. It would probably just become unpleasant, if an official would ever examine this place more exactly. But since the financial situation in the sub-sector was catastrophic and the region was in a permanent state of worst poverty, it was improbable, that authorities, which hadn`t enough employees, because of staff savings, would ever send someone to an unimportant village like Ivas. The lethargic officials were just content, if the taxes were paid regularly.
This mentality of indifference, which was far common in Eastern Europe, increasingly annoyed the powerful gentlemen of the World Goverment. Nevertheless, in former Lithuania still existed an administration, but this was not self-evident in other regions of the world.
In Africa, the World Government had never tried to introduce a complete monitoring of the population at all, what was much too difficult. But from the position of the Lodge Brothers, this was not necessary on this continent. The African countries were politically insignificant and it was only sufficient, to recruit parts of the population as cheap peons for the big concerns. Furthermore, the World Goverment held the whole continent in an iron grip of dependence by indebtedness. Occupation troops enforc
ed the rough adherence of the instructions from above. This was enough. Otherwise, the World Government only occasionally intervened, in order to decimate the population. Hunger blockades and even epidemics, made in laboratories, ensured, that the population could not grow too much. Other countries, for example in Eastern Asia, were also controlled from the outside. The new rulers simply used the weapons of financial dependence, the military threat or economic sanctions.
In these regions, including India and China, the Scanchip had been introduced as replacement for credit and identity card a few years ago, but the number of people in these countries was just too big for a close monitoring.
Together with the downfall of formerly high technicalised Europe, the infrastructure in these regions slowly moldered. Nevertheless, the World Government also wanted to accept this challenge. Much still had to be done. At first, the 1.9 billion Chinese and 1.5 billion Indians had to be decimated, that further political steps could follow.
The appropriate plans for this cruel process, were already in the drawers of the think-tanks of the New World Order. They worked on it.
In the last decades, the nations of Europe, once highly developed and sophisticated, above all Germany, England, France and Russia, had successfully been destroyed by a creeping procedure of decomposition by the predecessors of the now ruling forces. Finally, they had brought the Europeans to their knees. Knowing about their inventiveness and their ability to create high civilizations, they had purposefully selected the Old World as their primary target. And soon they had taken control of the Great Powers of the old age.
And it had been the same with the North American continent. These regions had to be taken at first, even if it wasn`t always easy to conquer them. But the hidden power behind the curtains of world policy, had acted intelligently, cleverly, shrewdly. There was no doubt, if one analyzed the past. In the old age, the Europeans had been proud and strong, and had patronized values like freedom or independence. Therefore, they had to be slowly poisoned, as you never attack a powerful lion directly, but put it to sleep or sicken it first.
It would last a long time, to describe all the procedures, which had made the world to the sad place that it was today. But it was nevertheless a cruel fact, that these once great old countries were in just one hand today - without exception. The European nations crumbled, decomposed and were close to total extinction.
Foreign people were brought to these lands, and soon all the big centers of European civilization were a puzzle of different races, cultures and religions. The international yoke of modern slavery and the imperative to consume, preached by all the media of the global system, was the only thing, which connected them. And this had always been the plan.
So the danger was avoided, that united fronts could be formed one day against the world dictatorship, because the interests and purposes in life of the numerous nation particles and cultural fragments were too different. It had worked well, the hidden forces had infiltrated the Old World like a virus.
The plan had been successful and the Lodge Brothers had laid the foundation, for what the Elders of the New World Order had already prophesied long ago: The “Multicolor-Man”. A so called “united” human, without clearly defined origins, torn inside his soul and groundless.
“Will will create the Eurasian-Negroid future-race!”, was the slogan of this new policy. So the powerful gentlemen worked on a creature without an own culture, without a higher intelligence and without an identity - the natural born slave.
World Peace in Ivas?