NOVPUBHow far can human beings be pushed before they break? Before they rise? Do they revolt only when their backs are against the wall, or merely when their comfort is disturbed? Is it truly justice they crave, or just the preservation of their own little corners of peace?
Do the masses cry for truth, or simply for convenience dressed in moral robes?
Alexander Blackwell asked himself these questions often.
For him, this was never just about land or wealth. Not even about the private city-state he planned to build in the heart of Africa. No, Alexander's true mission ran deeper—into the minds, the reactions, the very instincts of the human collective. He wanted to see what they would do. How far they could be bent before they snapped. His goal was not merely empire or legacy. It was total control.
Psychological control.
Because in the end, the real battlefield was the mind.
He knew the most dangerous enemy he would ever face wasn't another elite family, politician, or CEO. It wasn't the boardrooms or backchannels of the 1%. It was the 99%.
The barbers. The teachers. The warehouse workers. The Uber drivers. The single moms. The kids who grew up eating instant noodles under buzzing fluorescent lights. The millions with nothing but a paycheck and a hope. The real people. The ones history turns into mobs when ignored long enough.
That was the threat.
His family, the Blackwells, had risen to power in full view of the world—an anomaly among the global elites who preferred the shadows. They were front-page royalty, not backroom architects. Unlike others who created false idols, corporate darlings, and philanthropic fronts to soak the hatred of the poor, Alexander had no such luxury.
He was known.
He was seen.
And he would be blamed.
His father, Cassius Blackwell, had been the prime target of the global resentment toward wealth. As his riches grew, so too did the venom. His name was etched into every anti-rich screed, every documentary, every desperate scream for wealth equality. Alexander had watched this unfold while finishing his elite education under a legion of private tutors. He studied economics with Wall Street giants. History with world leaders. Psychology with former propagandists.
He wasn't just trained. He was weaponized.
And as he watched the gap between rich and poor grow wider than ever, he understood something chilling:
There will come a reckoning.
A great purge. A global fever. A world choking on its own sense of injustice. He could see it rising from the slums, from the memes, from the student protests and dead-eyed workers.
And he realized:
This couldn't be ignored.
It had to be controlled.
So he asked himself, "How do you stop a revolution?"
And then, the answer lit up in his mind like divine fire:
You don't. You redirect it.
Hatred.
People fear what they don't understand. And fear, when left to fester, morphs into hatred.
Alexander knew the truth: people don't want to be united. Not really. They say they do, but difference disgusts them. Culture, creed, skin, class, language—all of it is fuel. And the fire spreads fastest when stoked from within.
So he'd make them hate. Each other.
He would give them enemies. Fake wars. Petty divisions. Race against race. Poor against poor. Left against right. East against West. He'd hand them hashtags and slogans like bullets, and watch them turn on one another.
While he built.
While he ruled.
A society so lost in its own in-fighting that it forgets the walls closing around it. He didn't need to crush them. He just needed to keep them too busy to look up.
It wasn't just a plan. It was brilliance cloaked in chaos.
Let the world burn in distraction.
And when the smoke clears,
Alexander Blackwell would still be standing.
Watching.
Calculating.
Waiting.
And it had already begun.
With just a little land.
And a little lie.
The plan had been simple.
Brilliantly simple.
And more disturbingly, it had been executed without friction, without resistance, without noise.
It started with a conversation—one whispered in the hushed confines of a wine-dark study lined with portraits of kings, tycoons, and shadowed patriarchs. Alexander told his father, Cassius Blackwell. Cassius, a man whose voice could shift markets and who had seen the world bend beneath his fingertips, understood instantly.
He didn't hesitate. He didn't question. He called the others.
The names on those encrypted calls weren't just famous. They were foundational. The figures the world mistook for self-made moguls, when in truth they were mask-bearers, lightning rods. Public faces for an ancient mechanism of control.
And they all agreed.
They were relieved, even.
For years, those public faces—the billionaires, the celebrities, the tycoons paraded on covers of Forbes and Time—had feared the growing murmur among the people. A storm was brewing: the chants of "Eat the Rich" were no longer jokes on social media, they were war drums. Every wealth graph became a dagger to their brand. Every expose a match to the kerosene of resentment.
So when Alexander, barely in his twenties, came forward with his plan, they saw not only escape, but salvation.
Even the ancient elite families—those whose names no longer adorned corporations but foundations, trusts, private capitals—those hidden behind layers of shell companies and public puppets, saw the genius in it.
Divide them.
That was the idea.
Not by brute force. Not through oppression. That would be too obvious. Too expected. No, Alexander would turn their own righteousness against them. He would fracture the world not through tyranny but by triggering its most sacred values.
And so it began.
America. A country proud of its idealism, yet rotting at its ideological core. The U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. To the world, it was a triumph of human rights. A celebration of freedom.
But to those in the shadows, it was a wedge.
It was a crack in the mirror.
Not because love was wrong. Not because equality was undeserved. No. But because of what it would provoke.
The hatred.
The confusion.
The endless screaming match.
Was it truly compassion that moved the top brass of power to lift the ban?
No.
It was opportunity.
Alexander knew something dark, something ancient about human nature. He had studied them. Watched them. The crowds. The families. The tweets. The riots. The memes. The quiet resentments.
Humans were not as complex as they believed.
They were monkeys with mirrors.
Monkey see. Monkey do. Monkey weird? Monkey hate.
They loathed what they did not understand. They feared it. And fear left to fester turns to rage. Turned to a need to destroy. That was the lever.
And the parade began.
And so did the backlash.
It was magnificent.
Not the love. Not the liberation.
But the reaction.
It wasn't just a policy change. It was an emotional bomb. Churches raged. Families tore. States turned against themselves. The nation shook on its own axis.
And all the while, the rich and powerful—Alexander, Cassius, and their global kin—watched from behind glass screens in soundproof rooms. Their names were no longer trending. The pitchforks had turned inward.
But they weren't satisfied.
Because division was addictive.
Once they tasted it, they wanted more.
So they pushed further.
Abortion.
Gun rights.
Police brutality.
Race. Gender. Religion. Masks. Vaccines. Pronouns. Statues. History itself.
They didn't care about the outcomes. The outcomes were irrelevant.
What mattered was the process. The fire.
The endless, looping inferno of outrage, one side pitted against the other in a gladiator arena of hashtags and headlines. The people, they realized, would do anything—everything—except look upward.
The question always loomed: "If the elite hate minorities, if they hate equality, why do they allow it? Why fund it?"
But no one asked with real intent. And if they did, they were buried beneath the noise.
Because the answer was simple:
They didn't have to believe in it.
They just had to weaponize it.
Even if they hated the things they funded, they did it because it worked. Because it made the people argue about toilets and flags instead of inheritance taxes and lobbying loopholes.
By the time Alexander was 26, the plan had spread like a virus.
The United States was no longer a nation. It was a trench war.
State against state.
Brother against sister.
Man against mirror.
And as expected, the European elite families followed suit. Their nations had their own wounds—immigration, monarchy, colonial guilt, austerity. All ripe for exploitation.
They lit their matches, watched their people burn, and updated their portfolios.
And Alexander?
He simply watched.
Watched, as the world unraveled exactly as he predicted.
Not through bombs.
But through ideas.
Controversial. Complicated. Unresolvable.
He had given the people enemies that looked just like them.
And in doing so, he disappeared.
Right into the shadows of history.
Just like he planned.
But it wasn't enough—not for Alexander.
By now, the boy-genius-turned-schemer had laid out his vision like a dark prophet penning his scripture. He had proven the first half of his hypothesis: if you gave people something to hate, something that felt close enough to love to confuse them, they would devour each other with glee. But something still felt off. It was too… fragile. Too easily reversed.
He knew—sooner or later—when the real plan began, they might stop fighting one another and remember who was truly behind the curtain. Their gazes, once filled with rage for their neighbors, could turn on him. All it would take was one moment of clarity, one thread pulled too far.
He needed a fail-safe. Something deeper. Something so embedded it wouldn't just divide people—it would redefine what division meant. So he looked again. Not outward this time, but inward.
And there it was: comfort. The true enemy. The West, as powerful and divided as it appeared, had been built atop wealth. That was the linchpin. America, Europe—these societies had built for themselves a middle class so secure, so padded with luxury and options, that even the poor were given the illusion of mobility. They had safety nets. They had unions. They had strikes. They could shout and scream and tweet their rage without ever truly risking collapse.
That was the flaw in the system.
The middle class—those who had just enough not to rebel, but not enough to matter—were the immune system of the democratic illusion. They could delay revolution with a brunch menu and a weekend Netflix subscription. They had comfort. And comfort birthed hope.
Hope was the problem.
So Alexander turned his mind to the one idea that had simmered on the outskirts of his research for years. One word. One weapon. One miracle.
Immigration.
He didn't need to manipulate the leaders much. The dream of richer nations being open to the world was already a beautiful fantasy—one that made them feel moral, elevated, just. So he fed the dream. Mass immigration campaigns. Liberal media backing. Conservative outrage. He sparked both ends of the flame.
At first, it was perfect. Immigration brought the hope of escape for millions, fleeing war and poverty for something better. But Alexander didn't care about that. What he cared about was what it did to the hosts.
With immigration came cultural friction. Arguments over jobs, over values, over identity. The native poor saw their jobs undercut by cheaper, desperate labor. The middle class, once buffered by degrees and inheritance, found themselves squeezed, suffocated, replaced.
And slowly, almost silently, the middle class began to die. It wasn't dramatic. It was subtle. But over time, the line between the rich and the poor stretched so far it snapped. A two-class world. That was the endgame.
This was Alexander's true masterpiece. He had turned humanity's deepest values into weapons. Kindness became a tool for hatred. Inclusion became a mask for class warfare. While they bickered over immigrants and policies, the elite bought another continent.
Some warned this would spark a revolution. That too much pressure on the poor would ignite the flames of resistance. But Alexander disagreed. He had studied the mind too closely, the tribalism too deeply. He knew: as long as people had something moral to argue about—one issue, one slogan, one opposing camp—they would never unite. All it took was one disagreement on race, gender, language, history, science, belief—and the mob would never face upward.
They would only ever claw sideways.
And now, with every piece in motion, Alexander—the twenty-something-year-old whose mind had become the scalpel dissecting the soul of the world—sat in the shadows, thinking.
Had he done enough?
Would the hatred hold when his true plan began?
And then… he found it.
Not a what. A where.
A place where his theories weren't just applicable—they were already perfected.
Nigeria.
More specifically, Lagos.
Even more specifically—the man who controlled it.
Adewale Tinubu.
Alexander had heard his name long before the elite briefings that brought their children together. Tinubu was different. One of the few men in the entire world Alexander could say he admired. Not for his wealth. Not even for his raw power. But because he had done—on a state level—what Alexander had spent years engineering globally.
Tinubu had weaponized division. Perfected it. Mastered it.
Lagos was the crucible. He had kept control not by ruling—but by watching the people hate each other. Tribe against tribe. Poor against poorer. The middle class? Gone. Faded like a ghost. And still, they didn't rise. They couldn't. Because even the poorest would rather defend the rich than agree with another poor man from the wrong tribe.
Alexander studied it all. In horror. In fascination. In admiration.
When Tinubu became President, applying the Lagos method to the entire nation, Alexander felt a twisted sense of pride. While he had used moral divisions—conservative versus liberal, pro-life versus pro-choice, black versus white—Tinubu had used tribe.
Yoruba hated Igbo. Igbo hated Yoruba. The Hausa resented both, and both resented them back. Even the smaller tribes were caught in micro-wars. Tinubu hadn't created the divisions—he had simply given them clarity. A name. A flag. A reason.
And now, Alexander was here.
Not to admire. Not to praise. But to test.
Nigeria would be his lab. The Nigerians—his subjects.
If they could endure the hatred, if they could fracture deeper and still not look upward—then he would know: the rest of the world was ready.
This would be the trial run. The final crucible.
He looked around the bustling city, teeming with life, noise, passion, desperation. So full of beauty. So full of chaos.
And in that moment, a strange sadness flickered behind his cold eyes.
"Poor Nigeria," he whispered. "You never had a chance."
