I blew up a factory.
That’s not something I would have ordinarily done, mind you.
I’m an accountant. I work on the books for big companies.
I saw how those companies manipulated their numbers. I saw how their leaders enriched themselves. I saw how they got favors from the government, from the judges, from the authorities. I saw how they enriched those people in turn.
I knew this was wrong. It was a violation of the principles of accounting, sure. But it was also a violation of fair play. If some people didn’t play by the rules, then the rules just became a punishment for the poor, or the unlucky, or those who valued the rules.
Most people are poor, because that’s how wealth works. It flows toward those who already have wealth.
Many people are unlucky, because that’s how life works. My wife has to take medication to have energy, to stay healthy, to not be reduced to a bed-ridden, sobbing mess. This isn’t some moral failing on her part. She didn’t choose to be this way.
Most people do value the rules. I think many people don’t always agree on what the rules should be. Some people think the rules should be “whatever gives my group what we want”. Others think the rules should be a shield for the common man. But the point of a rule is that everyone abides by it. Rules should rule.
Rules exist because most people just don’t have much power. If the rules are followed, people don’t need power, because they don’t have to fight against anything. They can trust the people in power will obey the rules.
When the rules break down, all we can do as people is exert that little power we have, to try and get back to a place where the rules work again. Where enough people care about the rules working again.
I blew up a factory.
I can’t do it again, because I’m here in prison.
The secret police found me out, of course. They interrogated me in painful ways. I kept as silent as I could. I gave some people up - I’m an accountant, not a spy who can endure anything. But someone else gave me up.
We’re all weak. I accept that. I hope the people who are caught because of me will forgive me for that weakness.
But I blew up a factory.
I blew it up because the corrupt leader of a corrupt corporation bet their wealth on it. They invested their money, prestige, and political capital in it. Now it’s gone.
If I’m lucky, they’ll go down.
They won’t take the whole system down. They’re one person of many. But they’re one person.
The factory made the medicine that keeps my wife healthy.
I’ve taken myself away from her. I’ve made her life miserable.
I did it to try and do my part, to make the system fair again. I sacrificed my time, and her comfort, and much else.
I’m no hero. I don’t even have the small luxury of a grand, epic death, fighting back against a corrupt establishment.
Instead, I’m in this prison. Every day, they bring me something to eat. On some days, it’s food. I’ll never see sunlight again. I’ll never talk to another human being who cares about me. Only these cackling hyenas wearing human skin, the ones who feast on horror and pain.
I still have work to do.
Every day, I wrestle with that question of, “was it right?”
Blowing up a factory is against the rules too.
The heroic story is that a single brave figure takes down the system. That won’t be the case here. Indeed, the system may not even be taken down, in my lifetime, or ever.
I can dream of the doors opening, comrades standing outside, friends saying “oh yeah, you blew up the factory, I remember, good job”. I can imagine what it would be like to walk into the sunlight again. To see my wife again.
I can’t count on that. Not at all.
Nobody will know what I did. My jailers knew when they got me in here. I doubt it matters to them any more.
All I can do is pray that the one thing I did was worth the price we’ll all pay for it.
God, how dangerous hope can be.