Archive of Our Own

A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE CAN GO A LONG WAY

A LOT OF PROFESSIONALS ARE CRACKPOTS

A MAN CAN'T KNOW WHAT IT IS TO BE A MOTHER

A NAME MEANS A LOT JUST BY ITSELF

A POSITIVE ATTITUDE MEANS ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD

A RELAXED MAN IS NOT NECESSARILY A BETTER MAN

A SENSE OF TIMING IS THE MARK OF GENIUS

A SINCERE EFFORT IS ALL YOU CAN ASK

A SINGLE EVENT CAN HAVE INFINITELY MANY INTERPRETATIONS

A SOLID HOME BASE BUILDS A SENSE OF SELF

A STRONG SENSE OF DUTY IMPRISONS YOU

ABSOLUTE SUBMISSION CAN BE A FORM OF FREEDOM

ABSTRACTION IS A TYPE OF DECADENCE

ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE

ACTION CAUSES MORE TROUBLE THAN THOUGHT

ALIENATION PRODUCES ECCENTRICS OR REVOLUTIONARIES

ALL THINGS ARE DELICATELY INTERCONNECTED

AMBITION IS JUST AS DANGEROUS AS COMPLACENCY

AMBIVALENCE CAN RUIN YOUR LIFE

AN ELITE IS INEVITABLE

ANGER OR HATE CAN BE A USEFUL MOTIVATING FORCE

ANIMALISM IS PERFECTLY HEALTHY

ANY SURPLUS IS IMMORAL

ANYTHING IS A LEGITIMATE AREA OF INVESTIGATION

ARTIFICIAL DESIRES ARE DESPOILING THE EARTH

AT TIMES INACTIVITY IS PREFERABLE TO MINDLESS FUNCTIONING

AT TIMES YOUR UNCONSCIOUSNESS IS TRUER THAN YOUR CONSCIOUS MIND

AUTOMATION IS DEADLY

AWFUL PUNISHMENT AWAITS REALLY BAD PEOPLE

TRUISMS (1978-1983)
JENNY HOLZER

“District Three is down.”

Beetee types in a search on his data pad for the electric line map. No results for Three, only a gray blotch where his district should be. He types in another search, this time specific to District Three's power grid. He gets an error message. Dread forms in his stomach. He takes a breath to clear his mind. This is most likely a communication malfunction. It has happened before. 

“Has the power grid been disconnected? They should have back up generators.” Beetee asks.

“No. They have been overrun by Peacekeepers from Two.” 

“Ah.” He takes off his glasses and wipes them off. A nervous habit, focusing his energies on the material before him. District Three and Two share a border. It is well known in Three how easily Peacekeeper numbers swell in response to any resistance. “It was a risk we were aware of.” A risk his people accepted when they began to take down information ports and cut off supply lines. They knew how vulnerable they were. There are contingencies for this event. 

Servo, the boy at the port, is one of Lumina’s assistants. Was, he corrects himself. Lumina is seven months in the grave. The Capitol itself confirmed this when they broadcast Capitolite technicians quartering her until she died of blood loss. Servo is crying, Beetee observes. He needs a strong authority now more than ever. 

“They…Silca sent this before their connection cut out.” Servo says, voice wavering. Beetee never could understand why Lumina insisted on taking such young helpers. 

The boy projects the hand scrawled message on the screen at the front of their room: 

Central Command going down- too many here to fight. Will destroy codes, servers. We will hold out but unlikely for long. 

“Can we get a message through?”

“They’ve cut off their connection. It’s a closed loop now.” A girl says. She’s fighting back tears better than the boy, but her lip is quivering slightly. “As per contingency plans, they should be setting explosives around Central now. They won’t receive or respond to anything to avoid accidentally leaking our locations and data pathways.” She lets out a quiet sob. “Forgive me.” She says quickly. “My brother is there.”

Beetee nods, fighting to stay placid and unflappable. It is important. It is important they see this is not the end. One battle’s loss is not the end of the war. Then he turns back to his spreadsheets and maps, drawing a large red circle around Central. His people knew this was a risk. He told them. They knew and took it anyway. Brave people. He coughs and tries to focus. 

Hawthorne proposes the response to Central going down: A full bombing of Eagles Pass in Two. It will result in heavy casualties, almost evening out the death toll on both sides. Many of the Peacekeepers who slaughtered Central in Three are stationed at Eagles Pass. It will send a message. But this is not an act of revenge, Beetee tells himself as he speaks up quietly for the merits of the plan. Such an act would be strategic, he tells himself. Such acts are necessary to end this war. In his mind, the ones he has lost over the decades become one continuous ongoing tragedy: Wiress, Edzel, Lumina. His proteges: Eibhlin, Leed, Silca, Pix, Polyma. The children he lost to the Arena. His brother. His people. It’s easier to lay one bundle of loss at the feet of the Capitol rather than catalog dozens and dozens of small deaths and atrocities.

Coin smiles indulgently at him and it’s agreed. They will drop bombs on Eagles Pass in one day with no warning. Then they will press on to the Capitol, which will easily fall with the bulk of the Peacekeeper army wiped out. And then it will all be over. 

Servo, the boy who first relayed the news that Three had been overrun claps at the announcement. The entire room, with a few notable exceptions, all defectors from Two, is celebrating. Yet, he feels he has made an irrevocable mistake in speaking support, however timid, for the bombing. He has always believed in clarity of purpose, and his purpose is to end a cycle of bloodletting and terror he has been mired in since birth. Will more violence serve that purpose? He fears not. 

His purpose is to stop bloodshed. Coin has repeatedly acted to escalate the bloodshed. A corollary: Coin is not dedicated to the same purpose he is. She does not want peace, she wants something else. Power, perhaps. 

He watches her accept congratulations and stores his thoughts away. Now is not the time to voice dissent. Alone without his people, he has only himself to reflect with and must tread lightly. 

Eagles Pass falls. They film it, cut up the footage and send it out. Lyme dies. Claudius dies. Three thousand five hundred and two Peacekeepers die, with an unknown as of yet number of Capitol aligned personnel. Nineteen rebels die, all Two-born. Katniss Everdeen is shot in the chest, although she will survive. Beetee sighs and updates Rebellion maps. He calculates casualties and compares army sizes. Soon, the Capitol will run out of resources to feed their people, much less an army, as was inevitable when supply lines from Nine, Ten, and Eleven were cut off. The thought does not warm him as he compares estimates for numbers to maintain a viable reproductive population. 

The more he looks at his data, the more convinced he becomes that this hell is not the worst to come. There will be a settlement to be reached with their allies in District One, how to distribute power, and, of course, what is to be done with the Capitol loyalists. Winter will come and it promises to be a cold and hungry winter, with Seven not producing lumber, Twelve not producing coal, Eleven and Nine and Ten not producing food. He sits at a crossroads- no, a maelstrom of possibility and is terrified of how to proceed. 

It is much easier to focus on the day to day tasks of warfare than plan for the future, but he knows that the future will arrive soon. He does what he does best: waits and listens. Servo, clever boy, pushes through an encrypted line to the rebels stranded in Four- early on in the War, they destroyed train tracks, cutting off Nine, Ten, Eleven, the majority of the food supply from easy Capitol access. As a result, they were isolated and left fighting an endless internal war. From the rare footage that gets out, the place looks like a wasteland: beaches covered in detritus, towns flattened, and a thin layer of ash coating everything. 

The destruction is nothing compared to what the districts closer to the Capitol have endured: Almost an eigth of District Two’s population has been wiped out or is missing. Seven sits completely empty, most of the inhabitants fleeing south in the face of coal and food shortages during a brutal winter. Rather than allow the Capitol to annex their power stations and genome libraries, District Five destroyed them, flooding the valley their district center sits in as collateral damage. Three has been burnt out as badly as Eight, while rumors and images of district wide carnage in One’s ongoing war proliferate.

In short, the War is being won. The Capitol cannot continue to fight on three fronts, threatened from the south by District One, the west by Five and Seven, and now the rebels who spill over the mountains from the north and east. And even regardless of combat victories, they will be starved out in another three months, give or take. There is no victory condition left for them, yet no word of surrender or mediation is forthcoming. 

The reality is ash in his mouth. 

He doesn’t remember how he slipped into the position of propaganda regulator, but it is now his duty to moderate the flow of information to and from the Capitol. This is how he decides that bombing Capitolite children is an acceptable casualty. 

Petra of District Two shouts defiance on a battlefield, the ruins of Eagles Pass behind her. 

“We will never capitulate to the demands of these traitors! We are the law, we are strong, we will endure!” Behind her, a phalanx of peacekeepers cheer in time. 

Violence polarizes. It introduces stakes to words and creates a reality that cannot be ignored or reframed. A person is alive or they are dead. There is not room for much else besides that. With renewed vows of loyalty and vengeance from the remaining Capitolites and their enforcers, the worst of his fears about the effects of the Eagles Pass bombings are confirmed. They will fight to the death, cornered like a muttated rat in a cage. It’s destructive and tiresome, he cannot fathom how they still have this amount of rage left. He wants to go home, whatever that means anymore, and be alone with his ghosts. 

Beetee had hoped Lumina and Edzel survived the fall of the Arena. He needs their counsel, their experience, their perspective. They perceived things in other people Beetee disregarded. He feels their absence strongly now, trapped in this rabbit warren, surrounded by strange underground creatures who speak in languages Beetee cannot comprehend. 

The four of them were a unit, a four pole tent. Now Beetee stands alone. 

“I know how to end the war.” 

Beetee’s ears perk at Hawthorne’s words. Hawthorne, similar to Beetee, has lost everything: his father, his mother, his dignity, his home. Beetee cannot claim to be interested in the complexities of Hawthorne’s relationship to Everdeen, but his feelings appear to be a useful motivator for him. Beetee gestures for Hawthorne to continue. 

“Capitolites will fight to the bitter end for their government. We need to discredit Snow to them.”

Beetee knows this already. “How so?”

“We attack the Capitol disguised as Snow’s forces. We kill in a way so shocking that no one but the most indoctrinated soldier could support Snow after it.”

Beetee has no patience for this obfuscation. “How so?” He asks again, with more force. 

“Snow is using Capitol children as a shield around his mansion. We drop a round of bombs on them. Then, once our medics come in, we drop a second round from hovercrafts with the Capitol eagle. We clear the shield and we discredit Snow in one blow.”

Ah. 

“I pause to support a plan that will result in…underage casualties.”

“It’s collateral damage all the same.” Hawthorne insists, the tension rippling in his tone. He is frustrated with Beetee or maybe frustrated in general. While Beetee can appreciate passion from a distance, he prefers it be kept away from him. Hawthorne registers his hesitation as recalcitrance and storms away. Beetee knows this is not the last he will hear of this plan.

That night, as he fails to fall asleep, he repeats the names of his dead. For many of them, he is the last one left who remembers they were alive in the first place. Polyma, Pix, Asgrid, Silca, Leed, Deevid, Eibhlin. Wiress. Edzel. Lumina. Dead, executed, captured, dismembered-

Lumina was alive for 32 seconds after they removed her second arm from her body. When the technician cut into her arm she hadn’t made a noise, silent in shock from losing both of her legs and her right arm. Beetee’s watched the video enough times he can replay it in his mind on loop. Over and over again he hears her grunt involuntarily as they slice off her left arm, not bothering with removing her fingers and joints first as they had for her right arm. She had been conscious for that. He sees the blood gush, then drip from her dismembered torso. 

Perhaps there is a numbers game at play. Fifty dead children for a future. Fifty dead children will buy everyone else's safety, just as twenty-three dead children and one victor did once. 

He sets a time and date for Hawthorne’s bombing and hopes that there is no afterlife, for if there is, he will not deserve it.