[Anarchist Fiction #1: Chapter 1]

Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, I put up a poll on the LUA Publications Fascistbook page, asking for opinions on the subject matter of my second book. The options at the time were a book on vonu and crypto-anarchy or a direct action guide. The latter overwhelmingly won, but I’ve decided to try my hand at a piece of anarchist fiction instead.

The following is the first draft of Chapter 1. It could look radically different in its final iteration, but hey, who knows. I don’t even have an idea of what the title might be, so this shitty post title will have to work for now. Please enjoy and let me know what you think. -Shane

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Chapter 1

Adam raised the AR-15 up to a ready position, looked down the iron sights, and focused on his breathing. This latter step wasn’t entirely necessary since this wasn’t target practice, but good marksmanship is habit by now.

Bang, bang, bang! Seven or eight shots rang off and then…click…click…nothing.

“Fuck,” Adam muttered to himself calmly, “I wonder what broke this time.”

Adam started trudging back to the house from the shooting range, the gun slung over his shoulder. He entered the slight clearing which formed the trail between the two destinations. The smell of sassafras was quite pungent and a hard-to-pin-down, musty smell lingered and then went away. Adam always just attributed this scent to the constant process of decay and life out here in the wilderness.

He stepped over a few dead, decaying oak trees and around a spot on the trail that was always a mud hole, regardless of whether the summer was extremely wet or as dry as the desert. The house came into visible range and the trail expanded to the width of four wheelers and side-by-sides. Before he began The Outpost, this land was only utilized for entertainment – that is, riding, camping, and partying with friends and family. While that still happens numerous times throughout the year, now, it mainly serves as a semi-permanent autonomous zone, a meet-up spot for radicals of all stripes and flavors, as well as a place to build freedom, whether it take the form of converting vans to liveaboard rigs, hacker spaces, or for manufacturing the means of self-defense (Ghost Gunning).

The latter was on Adam’s mind, as he entered the front gate to the house. His four-legged friends that double as early alert systems greeted him. He ran inside, grabbed his GhostPad (a custom computer built with privacy in mind), fired it up, and quickly typed up a message in Signal, an encrypted messaging app. He returned outside with the laptop and took a seat on the porch swing.

“Dmitry, I tested out the newest AR model I’ve been messing around with. I’d posit a guess on what I think is wrong, but you know I’m an amateur at this shit.”

“Adam, nice to hear from you,” Dmitry quickly typed back. “Send me over the updated CAD files and I’ll take a look. As an aside, how can you live in that cesspool known as Illinois while being such a lover of guns?”

This was a question Adam got frequently, and rightfully so. Since he and Dmitry only became recent acquaintances, they haven’t gotten these obligatory questions out of the way yet. “Listen, I know the criminal tyrants up in Shitcago and Springfield like to scratch a lot of oppressive shit on paper, but they can’t come after what they don’t know exists. And I’m not about to voluntarily get fucking fingerprinted.”

While he awaited another response from Dmitry, he got out a mason jar full of marijuana and rolled up a joint. This was always a favorite part of his day. Sure, he enjoyed smoking, but he loved this country, wilderness view that he now called his home even more.

Just a year ago, he acquired this 22-acre plot of land in rural southern Illinois. The closest “neighbor” is half a mile away, and, from the porch, all that can be seen is thick trees surrounding 80-85% of the property and cornfields or bean fields near the main entrance. Since he moved here, he’s been busy converting it into as self-sufficient piece of land as possible; a permaculture farm produces much of the food, chickens and assorted livestock provide some of the meat and eggs, a well on the property administers fresh, unfluoridated drinking water, and an array of solar panels fed into 38 deep cycle batteries electrify the property most of the year round.

Since Adam found out about a freedom strategy called vonu a few years ago, a setup like this has been the dream. The idea of vonu is to become as invulernable to coercion as possible by adopting radical lifestyles, off-grid homesteading being somewhere in the middle on the scale of “radical.” A more further out dream he had was a safe haven for radicals; a place where traveling vonuans could get shelter, supplies, and camaraderie – but, he didn’t expect things to take off so quickly, both good and bad.

The Good First: Every week, a handful or so vonuans/anarchists would visit; some would stay a night or two, others would stay for months at a time and work on the farm in exchange for food and other supplies. And, since Adam already had a high quality 3D printer, a Ghost Gunner, and other crypto-anarchist hacking tools, The Outpost naturally turned into a safe haven for building too: fully-functioning, reliable plastic rifles were nearly perfected, steel 80% receiver lowers were milled out and guns completed, and hackers would develop tools for privacy, whether relating to bitcoin or just other free and open source software more generally.

But, The Outpost wasn’t open to just anyone. The activities that happened there were oftentimes outright illegal and explicitly subversive. Secrecy was a must and every individual who visited was already thoroughly vetted by either Adam or one of his trusted allies. Practicing strong security culture is a must in order to keep he and his associates out of a government dungeon (public coercion), or as easy prey for some other violator of person or property (private coercion). They haven’t had any problems yet and would like to keep it that way.

The Bad: The central planners in the servile society are making life miserable for most everyone. Cash, gold, silver, and bitcoin were banned in the USSA a few months ago, meaning that government fiat money is now purely digital. This was the main reason for the necessity of The Outpost; privacy-minded individuals were now forced entirely underground if they were to avoid the surveillance state and have any semblance of freedom; namely, via barter and bitcoin.

Similar to the Chicom’s social credit system, obedience and subservience were now hard-coded into the statist protocol, and, to this point, there hasn’t been much resistance, thanks to the $1,000 USDD (US Digital Dollar) given monthly to each citizen – apparently, that’s the price for pacifying the entire population. Thankfully, some of the more consistent militia-type Patriots have refused to put up with this shit, but that’s more so the exception, not the rule.

Despite all of this, bitcoin is still flourishing and the price is now sitting at $100,000 per bitcoin. The bitcoin blockchain is highly monitored, meaning that most transactions happen off-chain via the lightning network with the highest possible security/privacy possible; of course, the State uses it to settle international payments with other governments, but laws are only for the peasants. The State has been hard at work trying to nab criminal bitcoiners, and they have been quite successful considering most people have terrible security culture.

On the bright side, some smaller countries in Europe, namely Liechtenstein and Switzerland, have spontaneously made bitcoin the default medium of exchange; “spontaneously” meaning this wasn’t a top-down mandate. These smaller, more passive governments have adopted it too and actually encourage the use of privacy-enhancing bitcoin technology. Of course, it’s not out of the goodness of the lawyers’, politicians’, and bureaucrats’ hearts, but rather, they want to ensure their citizens are protected from the surveillance dragnet that has taken over the entire world, fore fronted by western governments.

Adam heard a *ding* come from the GhostPad.

“Alright, there’s the updated CAD file. That should work,” Dmitry replied. “Oh, I know, I’m just giving you shit. It’s not much better here across the Mississippi. I’m sure you have your reasons; maybe you can run me through them when I come visit in a couple days?”

“Yeah, we can discuss that in-person, not over Signal. But hey, let me get back to you later. Looks like the LiberVan crew is here. Thanks for fixing that file,” Adam said in a rush.

“Yessir, we’ll talk later. Let me know how it goes.”

***

Adam closed the GhostPad and walked out to greet the new arrivals with an already-lit joint. Three vans in total were ahead of him, but only one had begun to spew passengers out of the sliding back door.  “I’m sure you guys, and gal, could use this after the journey. Any problems with bludgies?”

Benjamin jumped down from the liveaboard Sprinter van excitedly and grabbed the joint. “Hell yes, I could use that. No, no problems with bludgies. We would have been screwed without CryptoNav, though. Someone reported a massive checkpoint on I-70, but we took the backroads. We should check the DeepNet to see if there’s any footage uploaded. The fucking gestapo is out of control. They shut down an ENTIRE Interstate to check for papers.”

Juliette, who still had not gotten up from the kitchen table inside the Sprinter, chucked an empty beer can furiously. “It’s really, really annoying that since basically the entirety of humanity failed to learn from history, we still have to suffer with them.”

“Well, you’re home now. Leave those worries in the city,” Adam reassured her. “Here, hit this joint. That’ll help too.”

The door to the second van, also a Sprinter, slid open. Tom and Regina emerged with one big bag each. “We come bearing gifts!” Regina said warmly, both her and Tom reaching into their respective bags, handing out party favors to everyone in attendance.

“Oh, shit, what do we have here?” Adam said, a little excitement in his voice.

“Well, we know you’ve got the shrooms and the flower covered, so we brought dab-coated chocolates and some Molly,” Regina responded.

Juliette finally exited the van and walked over to hug Adam. “Oh, you know Adam and I stick to psychedelics. Ask us about the Molly later though,” she said laughing.

The weed was kicking in and the world was slowing down. The worries disappeared and the feeling of freedom overtook them all. But, there’s liberty to be built.

Benjamin walked the joint back over to Adam. “I know we’ve only been gone a couple weeks, but what’s new? Did you ever get the lightning network node setup?”

Adam took a couple drags off the joint, taking a moment to a respond. “I’ve got everything installed and the entire bitcoin blockchain downloaded…which, as an aside, is slow as fuck over a multi-hop VPN, if you were wondering…but, the laptop I’m using isn’t going to work. It doesn’t have a solid-state drive. I’ve got another solution in the works, just haven’t gotten around to it.” He passed the joint over to Juliette, his other arm firmly around her. “I had a feeling it wouldn’t work, but it was worth trying at least.”

“Fuck yeah, man. I wish more people were like you – you aren’t afraid to fail. I mean, I was like 12 when I started making those failures, but that’s how you learn; it’s the Trivium method of education – bottom-up learning,” Benjamin said.

Tom appeared behind a cloud of smoke and passed two joints in opposite directions. “That’s exactly right. You guys know I’m a freelance engineer and that I make really, really good money. I know my shit. Do you think I learned that in government schools? Hell no. I learned that tinkering with stuff in my parent’s shed and reading engineering books in my spare time. Anyone can learn anything; it’s just that when humans are forced to do something, in this case, compulsory education, it’s less enjoyable. It also doesn’t help that college degrees are gearing towards specialization; specialization is for insects. You have to examine all elements of the human experience, which means different fields as well,” he explained thoroughly.

“Goddamn, I’m glad you guys are here,” Adam said. “Come on, let’s get your vans hooked up to our power and water. Juliette, would you mind checking the DeepNet for any new videos?”

“Yeah, no problem. Can I use your GhostPad?”

“Of course, it’s on the porch. We’ll be back in a few.”

Adam assisted Benjamin, Tom, and Regina as they moved their vans to the back of the property and plugged into the off-grid setup. The van hook-up spot was nestled comfortably under a patch of thick tree covering preventing any potential overhead surveillance; it also doubled as one  of the coolest spots (temperature-wise) on  the property  in  summer. They began walking the relatively short walk back to the house when Benjamin tapped Adam and Tom on the shoulders.

“No one has any digital devices on them?” Benjamin inquired.

A chorus of “No’s” rang out from the three others.

“Good,” Benjamin replied. “I’ve been let in on something from a close, trusted ally. You’re all probably familiar with him and I’ll tell you in due time. Point is, something’s happening. We need to have a conversation about this when Dmitry and Jason arrive in a couple of days. In the meantime, let’s go meet back up with Juliette.”

***

“Alright guys and Regina, there was one new video, but it wasn’t on the DeepNet. I got pinged through our local mesh network. We’ve got a problem,” she said, turning the laptop towards the others as they walked onto the front porch.

“What kind of problem?” Adam asked, worried, hurrying up to the laptop. As the pixels became clear, it was evident that this was a video taken from a drone. At least a few dozen people were crowded onto a street in some city, all on their knees. On one side, the cops had formed a perimeter about 15-20 feet ahead of the individuals; on the other side, a row of a few dozen cops stood, rifles at the ready. A man with dangerously blinding attire entered the frame and said something that wasn’t picked up by the drone’s internal microphone. “NO!” Adam yelled, as gunshots rang out of the GhostPad.

“30 people were just executed in the streets of downtown Chicago.”