Anarcho-Publican

The clientele of The Fat Badger can be divided into two groups. Those not welcome in any other pub in Hatchfield, and those who don’t want to incur the extra cost of going to any other pub in Hatchfield. Sat in the middle of this Venn diagram, are two star-crossed grassroots niche political movements. The local branch of the Radical Anarcho-Transhumanists, or ‘RATs’ as their social media handles refer to them due to oppressive character limits. And Hatchfield’s own division of the Brotherhood of Anarcho-Primitivists. A name shortened to ‘BAPs’ on the monogrammed souvenir flint axes, available for purchase on the BAPs website. Irony notwithstanding.

Perhaps through misfortune, but more likely because people like to manufacture drama for the sake of having something to be angry about, these two groups happen to meet on the same day at the exact same time on tables quite near to each other, every single week. On the occasions where they do come to blows, no one pays much mind. By The Fat Badger’s standards, unless a fight ends with a trip to A and E to have a piece of furniture surgically removed, it’s not a real fight.

The members of RATs ran a full spectrum of political fervour. From ‘People who think that technology will solve most of the world’s problems and may eventually negate the need for governance’ to ‘people performing home surgeries to give themselves cybernetic enhancements’. One of their more excitable members, would take every opportunity to perform readings of his ever-redrafted manifesto. The gist of it being;  Take violent revolutionary action at earliest convenience, overthrow all power structures, figure out how to convert people’s consciousness to digital information and finally, upload it to a space-faring object called the ‘heaven cube’. (optional) Crash it into the sun if deemed prudent.

“And there you have it lads, I have now transcended the need for a wallet, SmartSquare or indeed any form of card. I have taken the chips from these and implanted them in my fingers.” Said Leo holding up a scar-flecked hand. He in turn held up each finger whilst holding, now redundant cards in his other hand. Listing which chip was in each fingertip. “…and in this one I’ve put my bank card.” Anna, one of the less zealous group members took the card from his hand and examined the square hole that had been hacked into it. She squinted at the card.

“This expired two weeks ago you donut.” She flung the card at his chest like a discus. Leo froze for a second. Piecing the fragments of conversation together.

“Bugger!” He exclaimed and pulled a pen knife from his jacket. The group turned away, trying their very best to ignore the wails of anguish as he dissected his index finger.

“Right…” Said Mira after an uneasy pause. She was the de facto leader of the group, although they were resolute in never acknowledging any titles of authority. She signified her lofty status within the group by semi-ironically donning a chrome zip-up hoodie with a rat motif sewn on the back. “Returning to unresolved matters from last week, we really do need to commit to one initiative to spread the cause. So far we’ve listed, a music and literary festival named… ugh…” Mira winced. “Siliconference. A guerrilla marketing campaign where we tip non-autonomous vehicles onto their roofs at night. Or ‘I dunno, something involving holograms or blockchains or that stuff I don’t really care.’ Thanks for that contribution. Metip.” Metip gave a disinterested mumble as he gripped his pint glass. They suspected that he’d only ever joined the group because they’d at one time occupied a table with a free seat and in The Fat Badger, safety in numbers can be a life-saving tenet.

“We’ve also got our question of the week to get to. This time it’s: At what stage should human reproduction be replaced with an algori…” Mira was cut off by the patrons on the table nearby. The heat energy of their discussion having been converted to ear-drilling noise.

Much like RATs, BAPs were a niche prism of philosophical belief that fractured into a wide range of intensity. At their most moderate, were those who believed that perhaps the industrial revolution was a bad thing and that systems of authority posed inherent ecological threats. At their most extreme was Charlie. He advocated for the immediate destruction of anything he deemed to constitute technology. He’d long abandoned clothes in favour of leaves he’d strung together into complicated garments. He felt that even these deviated too far from nature, but the local police disagreed. And they had tasers. At the pub, he’d only drink from his own wooden cup. He had attempted to exclusively drink from his cupped hands, but Rufus the barman had quite sternly voiced his grievances about the mess it left.

“Look, you’re overreacting. We’re trying to return to a simpler, less destructive form of living. Not literally turn ourselves into animals. Our end goal is to live in harmony with life around us, not shed our limbs and crawl back into the bloody sea you dolt.” Said Siobhan, she’d been trying to demonstrate simple tools that could be assembled from materials that one can find without causing undue harm to animals or innocent floral bystanders, should society abandon urbanised life and return to the forests. But Charlie wasn’t having any of it. In his mind, attaching two things together was a gateway to bad habits like technological progress.

“Oh!?” Charlie exclaimed “We need tools, do we? It’s not as if we were blessed with appendages, developed over millions of years to carry out any task necessary for survival is it!?” He waved his hands in her face. “Although it looks like our friends over there won’t be blessed with them much longer.” He gestured towards Leo who was still causing irreparable nerve damage to his fingers. “You know you’re just as bad as those cyber fascists!” He pointed towards RATs again. “You might be content to stomp all over our principles and insult your body by using aids and enhancements, but MY body is a fleshy temple, and I would never desecrate it!”

“Charlie, never say the words ‘fleshy temple’ in my presence again.” Interjected Perry. An ecology professor whose main gripe with modern civilisation was all the light admin it entailed. Charlie persisted, he gestured at the whole table. “None of you are any better! You travel here on buses, you support big fashion by buying clothes made by machines in planet-poisoning factories. This place might smell like a swamp, but it’s still a monument to urbanisation. We should be sat around a campfire, not necking stale lager under… ARTIFICIAL LIGHT!” He yelled as he pointed an accusatory finger to the light fixture above them.

Ordinarily, members of BAPs would derail Charlie before he could get to the end of a tirade, but he sounded genuinely impassioned. “He’s got a point you know?” Said Magda, a BAPs member who could be described more as a spectator than a team player at most meetings. There was a pause as the rest of the group looked to her. “Well… We talk a big game, but we don’t really follow our own rules. Maybe we should be leading by example. Maybe we should be kicking up more of a fuss. How many of us can say with a straight face that we’re an advert for the modest means of living that we’re advocating for?” She continued. There was a general murmur of agreement amongst the BAPs members.

“Exactly!” announced Charlie. “Who’s with me brothers!? Rufus!” He turned to the barman. “Turn off the lights! OFF! OFF! OFF!” Rufus was a man of few words and fewer teeth. Being confronted like this came as a surprise. He found the entitlement to be a grave insult, but he admired the audacity and mindless bravery. The rest of BAPs followed. “OFF! OFF! OFF!” they chanted in unison. Rufus didn’t mind the odd scuffle and glassing in his pub. But making demands was inexcusable. He said nothing but made a subtle gesture towards the peacekeeping device he kept below the bar.

In the roughest pubs, a barman might keep a big stick, or in the most extreme cases, a shotgun, hidden in arms reach. Rufus was more creative. He kept Veronica. A sack filled with doorknobs tied to a long piece of rope. When he needed to cool tempers., he would swing it like a flail, wandering the pub making patrons, chairs and bottles scatter. Most of the furniture was made of chipboard so any collateral damage was a small price to pay for a well-earned reputation for medieval carnage.

In their excitement, BAPs did not register the threat. Fortunately, Mira put a halt to the chorus before a doorknob-assisted war crime could be committed.

“Would you moss-eaters show some courtesy and shut the hell up!? Those of us still living in the 21^st century are trying to have a conversation. If you lot want to make all that noise, take your kombucha and piss off to a sacred grove or something!”

“It’s mead you philistine.” Spat Perry in retort.

“You’re awfully pretentious for a man who doesn’t believe in soap.” Said Leo. Charlie did not take kindly to insults aimed at people he saw as his own, even if he had been lambasting them just seconds before.

“Why don’t you head home to your vacuum cleaner, sorry, life partner, before you get hurt little man!?” This hit a nerve for Leo “She’s not a vacuum! She’s a virtual intelligence companionship mannequin! And her name is Delilah!” He squared his shoulders and took a step towards the primitivists.

“You wanna go?” Said Siobhan, rising out of her chair, brandishing one of her tools. It was a sturdy branch with a hefty rock tied to the end. The intimidation factor was somewhat depleted when the rock slipped its bonds. It would have gone straight through the flimsy table had Magda’s wrist not been in the way. She yelped an expletive in agony.

“You see where technology gets you!?” Said Charlie turning on his comrade. One member of RATs had not entered the fray until now. Mitchell adorned himself with so many gadgets that he looked as if he was trying to turn himself into a cyborg via osmosis. Many of these gadgets were, quite visibly, homemade. One such gadget was something that only he himself would describe as a ‘wrist mounted laser cannon’. Whilst BAPs were distracted by pre-fight infighting, he levelled the ‘cannon’ at Charlie and fired. Unfortunately for Mitchell, the ‘laser-cannon’ was nothing more than a laser pen he’d beefed up with a far too potent power supply. Before it could do any real damage, the heat from its bulb melted the plastic casing of the gadget, coating Mitchell’s arm in noxious, boiling goop. He yelled, his knees buckled, and he fell to the floor, groaning.

For the second time in five minutes, Rufus had had enough, he raised Veronica above the bar and prepared for the impending attempted murder lawsuits. Before he could draw back his arm, the two factions stopped. There’s no better way of stopping a fight in its tracks at The Fat Badger than the prospect of watching somebody else get their head kicked in. A fracas had broken out at the other end of the pub.

A vaguely familiar woman who shared many adjectives with a Toyota Land Cruiser was manhandling one of the pub’s regulars. Her movements were odd. Stiff and jolting like a machine, but inhumanly swift.  It culminated in her opponent being held aloft by the throat, in one hand, before being thrown through a table. She then turned and left, without much fuss, only a hint of cockiness in her stride. RATs and BAPs were mesmerised. Their attentions had been caught. But for vastly different reasons.