It was the year 2500, five hundred years after the towers fell, and a hundred years since the People’s Republic of the World came to power. Originally, it started with small scale rumblings and protests, people upset that government and business kept them down by not paying a living wage and how only the Asians were getting ahead in life. As the people saw their standards of living fall, their misery grew, and protests went from peaceful to mostly peaceful.

The deaths of martyrs, ordered executions from high above in business dominated government, did not stop the protests. Instead, it fanned the flames of revolutions. What were small embers destined to snuff themselves out from exhaustion transformed into a living, breathing monster of anger, wrath, and revenge. The People were angry and they would have their revenge.

Decades of fighting resulted in a war-torn land. Cities were toppled. The countryside scarred. The rivers and lakes boiled. The coasts were soaked in blood.

But at the end, the revolution stood victorious.

The leaders of the revolution took stock of what they wrought. Their enemies were dead or missing, but the land was devastated. They came together to build a better tomorrow. The People’s Republic of the World was founded.

It took Herculean efforts but the world slowly went back to normal. Cities were rebuilt. Farms were made fertile and growing. Rivers and lakes became clean.

Things became normal once more.

Or so the People thought.

In their effort to rebuild society once the war ended, the revolution was needed no more, and when their enemies were dead or missing, the leaders of the revolution needed to form government agencies to oversee the rebuilding of the world.

Without much to go on, the leaders put forth a similar system as before. They included checks and balances and put down severe punishments for corruption and people that stepped out of line. If you were raising a stink over something, you were against the greater good, and thus were an enemy to the state. Enemies of the state were rounded up and publicly executed to ensure that others would not follow their lead.

Eventually, they would hand power back to the people.

It was the year 2500, a hundred years after the founding of People’s Republic of the World. And power had still yet be handed back to the People.

Now, this wasn’t overtly a bad thing. The Republic was prosperous. Social and economic mobility, while weak, also didn’t live you in bad places for very long. Life was reasonable. Risk ranged anywhere from minor to moderate, with matching reward levels. People in power legitimately cared about your well-being and strove to put you where you belonged and was needed. Life was pretty good overall.

By our standards, of course. By the standards of the early twenty-first century, we weren’t actually all that far off from the feudal system of twelfth century Europe. The key difference was that there were no overt lords above the vassals and peasants. Just vassals and peasants as far as we could see.

Money still existed, as because it was needed as an exchange medium for work done and relative value of goods. Consumer goods that broke apart quickly due to planned obsolescence were few and far in between. Manufacturers prided themselves on items that lasted a long time with little upkeep. That did mean however that electric cars were rare due to their lack of versatility. Progressive environmentalists were quietly shoved aside by the state.

But there was an underlying suspicion that things were not quite right with society.

Looking beyond skin deep, into the blood stream and muscles, one would find that money also acted as a medium of social credit. Doing things that benefitted the state and its leaders earned you more money and thus social credit. Doing things that went against the state lost you money and thus social credit. The state had a firm grip on the economy even if it wasn’t apparent. The Republic’s so-called free market economy was a very carefully planned command economy that on the surface looked like a normal free market economy.

This all wouldn’t be that bad because on the surface the average person could live, prosper, have a family, and watch that family grow and become the next generation. But if you spoke out, or tried to do something that the government didn’t want you to do, you were swiftly cut down. Even if you managed to avoid being taken by the government, the act of being branded against the greater good meant that the people around you, conditioned by the government to hate those against the greater good, would turn on you and hunt you down to turn you in.

Further, by digging into the nuances of the Republic, one would find that the goods and services done by the People did not entirely return to them. A small amount of resources left the People and the economy and the Republic and was transported to a hidden region deep in the heart of the capitol, which sprawled across what was once the region between D.C. and Boston, to what used to be called New Amsterdam, where the true leaders of the revolution lived.

They lived in lavish luxury, far above the average person. They owned huge penthouses, entire skyscrapers in some cases. They dined on caviar and steak, cooked to perfection by their robotic creations. Any possible good was produced by advanced three-dimensional printer factories and shipped to their door by aerial drone. Any service was done and shipped to them. And if they wanted a person for special encounters, their wish was granted. No matter the age the willing or ... unwilling, participant was.

These were the true leaders of the revolution. The ones that directed it from the shadows. The ones that dictated to the rest of us. The ones hidden from our eyes.

The worst part of it all was that their names were already well-known if one was versed with pre-Republic history.

William Wicket, founder of the H&H Corporation and the producer of operating systems the world over. Stephen Post, the founder of the Orange Corporation and the producer of the modern smartphone design. Nicholas Swabia, the chairman of the powerful financial institute World Finance Market. Yohan Doorsman, founder of the media company Blue Bird. Godfrey Thick-Lipped, founder of the largest shipping company in the world prior to the revolution. Mars Harhsucar, founder of the media company HeadScroll.