DAY 26, ATTACKS & PING PONG, book 4, building

 The next morning, Any, head of THE, called Alice. ‘Tensions are rising,’ Any said to her. ‘Nearly a hundred politicians are calling for you to be questioned publicly.’ Alice frowned. ‘And afterwards they want to burn me at the stake?’ Any shrugged. ‘This might be a reaction to the US’s efforts to put pressure on the UK. The US want the UK to stop your project. And some UK politicians want to stone you publicly because you signed a building materials deal with their queen.’ ‘Will they stone me before they burn me, or burn me and then stone me so that it’s easier to scatter my remains?’ Any smiled a little. ‘Keep that spark of humour, however dark. You’ll need it.’ ‘Hm. Not making friends, am I?’ Any grimaced. ‘I have more bad news.’ ‘Hit me.’ ‘Some billionaires and their minions have been pouring fortunes into anti-town campaigns. We had our eyes on some of them, but they were very careful, using inconspicuous people to engineer the campaigns. Twenty-one minutes ago, someone leaked their plans. That’s why I’m calling. Their first wave of attacks will be launched at half past nine.’ ‘Today? In thirty minutes?’ ‘Yes. Sorry about that. My team already sent everything we have to your teams.’ ‘Who are these people?’ Any grimaced. ‘Apparently everyone with an agenda your project seems to threaten. There are fossil fuel lobbyists, unionists, pharmaceutical people, fashion giants, your right wing populists, religious groups, and, as so often, some artists and even some scientists have joined the fray.’ ‘And they are all attacking today?’ ‘I think they will. See, the major campaign will use every possible channel for their attacks, and once that’s underway, I think everyone else will jump on that train, too, including the press who love to be the echo-chamber of populists and controversies.’ Alice frowned. ‘What are these people saying?’ Any grimaced again. ‘OK. I’ll read one comment to you. Just so you get a taste of it. It says here in the leaked script: “Despite the global overpopulation, we don’t have enough people on this planet to defend ourselves against every preposterous proclamation that crazy town project issues. And that’s by design. They flood us with crazy ideas to confuse us. They want to shut us up. Sheer overload. But we fight back!”’ ‘Hm.’ Alice mumbled and Any added: ‘You’ll need a thick skin today, and probably for a good while. Best thing you can do: don’t listen, don’t read. My team will give you and your team everything you need to know for your counters. No need to wade through all the BS yourself.’ Alice nodded and took a deeper breath. Choose which fights to fight. Choose only to know what you need to know. Counter. Counter. ‘I need to speak with my team.’ ‘Yes!’ Twenty-three minutes later, ads and articles against the town project were published online, broadcast on various TV channels, repeated in podcasts and spread on social media. More attacks followed in short order, and several attackers announced that they would keep going until the town project was unmasked as the evil scam it was, a scam which threatened the very survival of all societies and would bring poverty to all. Alice called for an emergency meeting, and the Campaigns & Negotiations Team asked the Media Team and the Alert Team to join them. Together, these three teams decided to add force to today’s town campaigns and to react to accusations and fears with levelheaded responses and clarifications. Rohana and her team kept an overview of the attacks, prioritised which attacks should be countered first and suggested who might be best suited for which response. Meanwhile, the Media Team taped additional interviews with Alice, Jack (film), Rohana (coordination), Navarro (society), Heather (media), Skye (care), Dennie (security), Emine (law) and Robin (education). And Troy pushed his team to create more memes and comic snippets to counter the opposition’s claims. Emine suggested lawsuits against several media outlets for fearmongering, populism and lies. ‘Tempting,’ Alice said. ‘But, and you are welcome to call me too optimistic, but for now I’d rather find ways to lure the press to our side than to put them off us completely.’ Jack shook his head, and in a rare outburst, he said: ‘The press get away with too much! We should demonstrate that Your Powers applies to us, too. And we should use the power we have to hold the press to account.’ ‘You’re right, Jack,’ Emine said. ‘Unfortunately, so is Alice. Our project might just be crazy enough to flip some journalists.’ In the middle of all this, Robin (society) called everyone together for the kick off of the PRESS PAUSE CAMPAIGN, a few minutes before noon, which opened with breathing and meditation offers popping up across London and in twelve other UK cities. ‘Just for a few minutes,’ Robin said, ‘Let’s take a break, too. It’s going to be a bloody long day.’ Some unexpectedly peaceful minutes later, more project team members, including members from the project businesses, from the Building Site Team and from the international teams found ways to counter the baseless attacks, many of which rode along the same lines, like: ‘The town project will destroy our way of life.’ ‘The project will cause mass unemployment.’ ‘The town project is a cult.’ ‘No one will be able to fly any more.’ ‘This project forges chains and sells them as wings.’ ‘I like that one,’ Alice said. ‘It’s a nice imagery. Troy, can you counter that?’ Troy scratched his head, shook it, and suddenly a smile appeared on his face. ‘I can. But I’ll need Kahu for the story. I see a child lost in the jungle of a city with all the freedom to become someone who speculates and destroys whole landscapes for gain, another child with all the freedom to become a drug addict, another child with all the freedom to rape, another child with all the freedom to become a boss and produce rubbish, another child with all the freedom to be complicit in wars. And we end with: “This is the freedom you defend?” And then we do a second comic with kids who live in our town, kids who have the freedom to test whichever profession takes their fancy, kids who don’t have to worry about food because their parents earn enough and have spare time for their kids, kids who find their calling in a craft, in an art, in a science or in a service, and who have the best teachers because we take care of those who teach and make sure that they don’t cause harm. And we end with: “This is the freedom we want to find.” But this idea needs more substance and more subtleness, more depths. That’s why I need Kahu.’ ‘Don’t let me keep you,’ Alice returned. Around this time, Adriana, the project’s head of neurology, opened the second part of the PRESS PAUSE CAMPAIGN with a speech. ‘Change starts in the mind,’ Adriana said. ‘It starts with the realisation that we are not okay, and that we all need to make the troubles of our societies and our planet our business. Change starts in the mind — because our minds allow us to recognise our situation and to develop ways which will make it possible for us and for our planet to heal. The trick will be to be the majority. Be the majority. There are excellent voices out there. But those are swallowed in the whirl of everything that happens in our lives and around us. What if we focused? What if all writers, thinkers, activists, scientists, explorers of our planet focused on creating the narratives, the stories, the visions we need to reshape our world? What if we came together? Not to speak with one voice but with all our many voices, each adding a piece to the puzzle, each with the goal to make a future for us and our planet happen. We don’t need people with answers, judgements and divides on their minds. We need people with imagination, clarity, curiosity and courage, people who contribute their visions. We are the majority — as soon as we decide to become the majority. And as soon as we are the majority, everything is possible. PRESS PAUSE is our project’s invitation to pause everything that occupies our minds and focus, focus on what needs to be done so that we will all have a future. The PRESS PAUSE CAMPAIGN invites you to discover the power of thinking, the power of shaping our minds.’ Adriana’s speech was followed by animated discussions at all event spots, in all twelve cities, sometimes complemented with short meditations and breathing sessions. Meanwhile the attacks on the town project continued. Though, some attacks were so predictable by then that the town team occasionally managed to publish a counter before the actual attack. By six in the evening, some opponents’ indignation about the town project’s ideas, about the queen’s additional involvement, about seven days of conspicuous campaigns, and about the project team’s audacity of publicly preparing the Jellybridge Estate for the start of the building phase was intense, and some attackers got personal, targeting Alice as false prophet, Andy and Jack as traitors to their home country, and other team members by deliberately misquoting snippets from their speeches and statements. But by that time, there were also a lot more people who asked questions, and quite a few people who commented on the exchange of attacks and counterattacks. Some commentators decided to play referee and gave points for each attack and for each counterattack. Around seven, the town project was a bit behind the opposition, but only, as one referee pointed out, because they started later. Most attacks were baseless, but one rebuke got the team talking. A large group of restaurants attacked the Longevity Campaign because of the losses the Let’s Cook in the Streets, Neighbours! events had incurred. ‘It’s a thin line,’ Elio (head of the Longevity Campaign) remarked. ‘Feedback from participants at the cooking spots is super positive, and yet the income losses of the restaurants are real.’ John pursed his lips. ‘But only because we normalised eating out.’ Seth nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s an argument I keep stumbling over. We defend businesses because they secure an income for a group of people. I sometimes think that we keep ourselves from evolving, from choosing better alternatives, because of our dependence on money.’ Isabel (head of campaigns) nodded. ‘So long as everything is about what income it can generate, we’ll keep getting things wrong.’ ‘But how do we get out of that?’ Elio (head of the Longevity Campaign) asked. John straightened in his seat. ‘If our experiments in town suggest that cooking together, in the streets or in the open kitchens we talked about, is the best we can do for the community, then we will find a way to make it work.’ Seth smiled. ‘Have you had a cup of Navarro’s TURN CAN’T into CAN potion?’ John returned the smile. ‘These words have become a permanent presence in my mind. And it helps. It helps to say: I’m not going to bother with I CAN’T. The only thing of interest is to find out how we CAN. We might not get an answer, but it’s still a much more useful occupation for the mind.’ At midnight the project team had caught up with the opponents’ attacks count and received congratulations from several commentators for having won today’s matches by an impressive margin with their counterattacks. When this was announced by ripples news, the Campaigns & Negotiations Team still sat together, and Isabel remarked: ‘Well done us! Only, I doubt we can keep up this pace.’ ‘We don’t have to,’ Troy said. ‘Tomorrow is our day off. I spoke to the Hub people, and they put the Hub Campaign Square on a break, too. And Noel added a button where people can choose to put all their Hub rooms on a break for the day.’ 

© Charlie Alice Raya, book 4, building, 2025