Excited Delirium Chapter 71: Aftershocks (Get Garamond)
Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 71 of the my online book “Excited Delirium”. Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index.
It was Monday morning, four days after the quake.
The smell of bodies and burning in Beijing and surrounding areas was starting to reach a peak. Most people could barely stand up, let alone stand the stench of the reminder that crews had to work more quickly, dispose of victims and rebuild the city.
The initial phase of rescue work had passed and thousands of military officials, be they guards or generals, started to wash into the areas like a green tide at dawn, green being the colour of the Emergency staff uniforms. They swarmed buildings, one by one, and dragged the helpless and the weak into compounds and other detainment areas that offered food, heat and clothing.
China’s head was starting to re-grow, like a decapitated hydra, with hundreds of young survivors vying for the position of President and Chairman. The original intent with the planners in the West was that a young protégé of Western economic theory and practice, but what happened stunned leaders from the rest of the world.
A young woman was chosen the lead the country out of oblivion and into recovery. Her name was Liqiu Yuan-Xi . It is pronounced a little like “Like You Wan She”. Literally, her name translated loosely to something like “beautiful autumn brings Shining Peace”, but most people simply said it meant “Bringer of the New Age”.
She had worked in the President’s office for years and was brought up on Communist doctrine, but with an air of reform focused on social democracy. She believed in co-ops, worker organizations and the people of China. She didn’t believe in profits before people, had a low tolerance for corruption and a basic progressive tax system that would ensure proper income distribution.
Like thousands of other bureaucrats, she was appalled by the level of manipulation by Western companies that had started in the 1970s and represented a new wave of youth that were devoted to the implementation of democratic reforms and the institutionalization of the state.
Finally, she believed that the massive investment fund should be spent within China and that all people should profit from the excessive consumption of the West.
Yuan-Xi rose like a phoenix from the ashes, supported by the people of Beijing as she visited devastated sections of the City, greeting people, hugging them on many occasions and promising them that Beijing would come to symbolize a great resurrection.
It was Yuan-Xi who formally declared that only UN-endorsed non-profit non-religious organizations would be allowed to enter borders of China to assist with repair work. Many people with the Univist Church of Restoration, World Vision, the International Catholic League and other groups pleaded for the opportunity to help, but she relented and held strong to the position that she did not want the weak and desperate to be treated as an audience for a sales pitch for the religions of the world.
With that declaration, a flood of UN peace-keepers and organizations flooded the City within a few days and immediately turned to returning it to a level of civility.
The armada of religious charities, businesses and other organizations that had ties to manipulation of other economies, were left standing at China’s gate, palms out, but empty.
Borders were closed to all trade. Chinese officials promised they would open again soon, but for many in the West, it wasn’t soon enough.
Trade zones and almost all production came to a halt.
The flow of funds on an international scale stopped, a little too abruptly for many. Nearly $2 trillion in cash that the Chinese Investment Council held in reserve was formerly invested in various projects around the globe and now the managers had put a stop on the flow of funds, expecting that it wouldn’t be long before there received instruction to direct the funds to repairing their once great home.
The measures taken by the new government invited a series of retaliatory threats, but China had all the right cards. They had secured resource ownership and partnerships with countries like Iran, Pakistan, Russia and the rest of Asia in the previous years and no embargo could stop them from restoring their country’s pride.
If that wasn’t enough, a formal investigation was immediately launched into the cause of the quake a few days following the return of government in China. Researchers and investigators scoured the area and by August 13, it was easily proven that the Univist Church, with ties to the OMNINet, a large US multi-national corporation that never officially had operations in China, was ultimately responsible for the most destructive earthquake in human history.
(Note: “Excited Delirium” is a work of fiction. Any person, place or thing depicted in this work of fiction is also a work of fiction. Any relation of these subjects or characters to real locations, people or things are an unintentional coincidence.)
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Excited Delirium by Liam Young is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License .
Based on a work at www.exciteddelirium.ca .