Virtually nobody had been interested in their revolution. What people don’t understand, they don’t care about. They care about terror. Which is why attacks by random fundamentalists take place regularly. After such attacks, people are all too happy to let themselves be x-rayed, stripped, and filmed before boarding an airplane. Nobody has anything to hide. The Friends. Hadn’t managed to mobilize the masses.

Hadn’t deployed an army of bots in the battle for votes over Brexit, hadn’t manipulated, hadn’t distributed false reports, hadn’t set up any fake social media accounts, or done any microtargeting, because they believed in what was right, or what they believed to be right. And now they’re sitting among the rubble, a ruin, and don’t know whether to stay still or fight, and if so, how. Most of the people they know had surrendered, conformed, watching the nationalist revolution taking place in the Western world. Nearly every little country had voted in a right-wing conservative government with more or less cravenly fascist agendas. In nearly all Western countries it was the men who had carried this revolution to victory.

“Right,” said Ben, “the servers are working again.”

The Friends are one of two underground movements still in existence at this particular moment in history. Until a few years before there had still been anarchist youths who demonstrated or squatted buildings, who set out to hunt down fascists, who covered their faces and believed they could turn England into another Freetown Christiana, an area beyond the law where carefree young hippies sat around eating vegan mash. The militarization of the police and outfitting them with machine guns had meant the end of that. Squatters had in some cases been chased from their accommodations with grenades, a few children lost limbs. A demonstration was shut down with armored vehicles and live ammunition. It was quiet after that. Since then there are only a few young people who haven’t submitted to the system. Only a few who don’t believe they live at the greatest moment of all time. The few malcontents who still rap or hack will soon find their place in society, too. And it’s good for them. The only way to partake in the successes of a society is to conform.

Whatever.