17

Lost in thought, Katherine was unexpectedly struck across her face. Startled by the gently meandering butterfly, she followed the indigo flash of iridescence till she realised she was near a communal kitchen as they were preparing midday meals. Men were scrubbing vegetables as women were winnowing rice in bamboo trays, the chaff drifting away with the breeze. Katherine saw a young girl pluck a beetle from the grain she was sieving and admired its flight from her fingers. To quiet her worries, she decided to offer a hand.

                               

As she entered the space, Katherine passed a scribe briefly paused from her work to squeeze the feet of her baby, burbling in a basket of cotton. She also passed a toddler, digging a hole in the soil with a wooden spoon, and a young girl playfully dragging her little brother by his feet as he feigned death.

Katherine was lathering her palms with red ash leaves and water from a hanging gourd when a little lady, with plaited hair so long that it brushed the ground, saw her. ‘Aha! Kumusta ka na Katherine?’ beamed Sonya heartily.

‘Ito, uh… buhay pa,’ blushed Katherine as she donned an apron and dried her hands.

Sonya, an unassuming and tireless woman who had raised four children, laughed warmly at Katherine’s reply, saying, ‘Ah, you are learning!’

The toddler nearby had begun enthusiastically explaining something with roughly formed words, to a man stopped to deliver food. Listening to the child with mock astonishment was Mar, a tough and once misguided smuggler.

‘What’s she saying?’ asked Katherine, as men behind Mar began appraising the fresh array of dark leafy plants and tubers now being drawn from his hessian sack.

‘He’s telling me about this fellow,’ stated Mar confidently as he pointed to a worm amid burrowing beetles –then shrugged aside as if to say actually, I have no idea!

‘Katherine,’ grinned the youthful Kiara in greeting as she balanced a large terracotta cooking pot, etched with a Song Dynasty dragon, on a much larger empty iron paella pan.

‘Kiara,’ smiled Katherine as she imitated suspiciously inspecting the cooking pot for forbidden items. Once an arcane archivist, Kiara’s permanent loans from the Alecsee Library for the Greibarians had since made her a young outlaw. Sonya chuckled as Kiara peeked over her eyeglasses with a quiet nod and continued her business.

‘Hey! Stop dragging your brother around like that!’ blustered the distant voice of A’tia as a vagrant feline found the now empty cloth sack behind Mar lying on the ground –it stretched at length and warily curled up to nap.

Katherine sighed with amusement at the cat before Sonya explained, ‘Ah the rice we are doing now, and some herbs we are preparing –rosemary, lavender, thyme and tarragon…’

‘I can do that,’ declared Katherine as she pulled a bramble basket of thyme sprigs towards herself. Sonya nodded at Katherine before turning to praise Mar. ‘Thank you Mar,’ sang Sonya as she squeezed him wholeheartedly. ‘Go rest now before dinner.’

Mar furtively admired Kiara as he happily departed empty handed, unwilling to disturb the sleeping feline.

At the fireplace outside the kitchen, Kiara placed the huge heavy pan and clay pot on a trivet; hung another iron cooking pot on a crane, and swung it aside to prepare the fire.

Around her, Katherine could hear girls talking about people, and boys discussing an event.

‘I think it should have gone for longer.’

‘Yeah, for how much time they spent organising it.’

‘Did you notice that one serving near the end?’

‘What was with them? They weren’t with it at all.’

‘So, you know what happened with those two?’

‘It was only a matter of time.’

‘That friend!’

‘I know right, but like did you hear…’

Katherine focused on separating leaves from their stems, and determining their scent amidst the aromas of other herbs mingling around her.

‘Are you worried?’ asked Sonya as she walked around collecting things.

Katherine realised she’d forgotten to retrieve something to place the separated leaves in, so she started looking around.

‘Are you worrying?’ repeated Sonya as she neared, offering Katherine a wood burl bowl. ‘Katherine?’

They were both suddenly distracted by the harsh sound of a child wilfully brandishing a metal spoon against the cast iron pot hanging by the fireplace.

Kiara was covering her ears as a flustered parent rushed over to apologetically carry them away.

‘What you worrying?’ pressed Sonya.

Katherine realised Sonya was addressing her as she took the bowl in hand.

‘Me? Nothing,’ assured Katherine to herself as she dropped her handful of leaves into the bowl and lovingly admired its natural edges with her fingers. Momentarily, she thought someone was watching her, but she glanced around to find everyone occupied as Diana slept soundly on Mar’s empty sack –and was comforted.

Sonya placed herself opposite Katherine on the folding wicker table, with her own wooden cutting board carved with all chemical symbols. She garnered several more bunches of different herbs from cloth sacks sitting on the ground by her feet, and placed them upon the table. As she untied and scrutinized the contents of some separate cloth bundles, Katherine recognised coriander and cumin seeds. ‘You think we can make a difference?’ asked Sonya as she drew an olivewood mortar and pestle from her backpack hanging off their table.

‘Would we be here if I thought we couldn’t?’ replied Katherine in gentle earnest. ‘I doubt great change will happen overnight, but it will happen,’ she deemed. ‘Lavender?’ questioned Katherine.

‘For Sirona, probably a sleeping potion,’ guessed Sonya.

Katherine nodded understandably as Sonya put them aside for the elementalist and healer.

Wood was being added to the fireplace, and water was being poured into cooking pots as Katherine pinched a head of lavender and closed her eyes to centre on the aroma.

‘Jullee seems it can happen overnight,’ remarked Sonya as she tweaked the amounts of seeds being sprinkled into the mortar and added the separated leaves of thyme.

Katherine smiled as she opened her eyes, but squinted in the suns glare. ‘We’ve needed her ideas, her optimism. I guess in theory one could very well set a date, plan, prepare, and make it all happen at the drop of a hat –but incremental change is still change. Not everyone feels the way we do,’ trailed Katherine as the charm of a birds warbling stole their attention. Two sharp beaked black and white birds roved by, curiously scrutinising the humans occupied in their makeshift shade.

Sonya dare not say maybe they never will, but called out to the birds, ‘come back in half an hour.’

Several people now turned to regard the birds as they ambled, poking at things concealed in their terrain.

‘Yes, best we grow easy,’ agreed Sonya, catching her pestle as it rolled off the table and adding, ‘like flowers through the rock.’ With a circular motion, she began blending in the mortar.

Freja, a curious teenager, approached them with cleaned vegetables to chop. As she neared, Katherine politely shepherded her around a moth discreetly resting on a shaded edge of the table, and also gave her a heads up about the web behind them of an Orb weaving spider –lest she disturb it unwittingly.

Minding the moth, Freja placed fare on the table and removed her knife from its scabbard concealed within her floral tunic dress. She leaned around and wiped it on Sonya’s clean apron, before setting about slicing some purple and gold roots with the keen-edged blade.

Having sorted the herbs, and lastly adding some sunflower seeds to the mortar, Sonya dusted her hands on her own apron before asking young Freja of her family and health.

As Sonya and Freja talked gaily, Katherine considered the smile lines in Sonya’s bright complexion and the elaborately handstitched patterns in her clean apron. She imagined Sonya as a girl of Freja’s age, clad in rags, scrambling around sprawling mountains of rubbish where her shanty of corrugated metal and plastic had been built. Katherine pictured young Sonya scavenging piles of medical and household waste, digging through broken glass, used nappies and dead animals, for things of the slightest value to sell for a pittance.

Sonya had been an Amacite descendant called Little Pebble before she was brought to an Ashen city. Valued by the colour of her eyes, she was forced into adoption by an affluent Uetzcayotl family. Expected to serve and denied the tutelage she came to want, Sonya ran away.

While chopping, Sonya turned her head and cleared her throat with a stifled cough.

Katherine imagined herself having to walk, amidst the smell of decay, through dark plumes of thick smoke from the spot fires of spontaneously combusting trash.

As Sonya’s cough deepened, Katherine now imagined Sonya as a young woman, inhaling the fumes of various experimental liquid concoctions, in the stifling air of a den within the bowels of a labyrinthine clothing factory.

Returning her thoughts to the present, Katherine took a deep breath of the fresh aromatic air around her as she shyly gauged the focus of other people within the kitchen to their task.

There was white powder in Sonya’s bowl now, and a faint sweetness in the air that reminded Katherine of wild roses; such as grew on the mountain overlooking the Bay of Turtles. She wondered of the state of it, only twenty-three days of uninterrupted but sleepless travel away. Across the Eastern Paper Plains and over the Great Dividing Range… but she knew her place was here for now, and hoped that the reward for her efforts these long years would be that she return to find a ghost city abandoned by the Ashen and overgrown, ready to be loved by rising Sol’s.

Kiara interrupted Katherine’s daydreaming. Kneeling at the readied fireplace as she tossed aside her glasses and drew a steel blade from her utility belt, she called for someone to throw her some flint.

~

Standing under the keystone of its arch, Ant was using flint to light a fire within a towering doorframe of obsidian blocks. He activated a nether portal for returning to an earlier level of his game –an options menu appeared.

In the backseat of the small white traveling pod, Alysia’s little brother Ant was wearing a virtual reality head-mounted display fitted with headphones. His hands were resting cupped upon his knees, fingertips moving almost imperceptibly as he pushed processor keys set into his kneepads; his avatar scrambled through a barb wire fence into a field of wheat to the sound of crickets on a hot, dry, summers day.

Grey and Alysia could hear white noise as they travelled.

Alysia was strapped into the front passenger seat, gazing through clear crystal windows at the southern citimites. The faulty projection of a rainbow flickered in the far distance. She noticed a shopping hub screen in the near distance playing a dated action film, of military wielding nuclear weapons against contrived alien threats.

‘We’re slowing down,’ noted Aly absently about the speed of their pod.

‘Why?’ asked Ant without removing his VR-D.

In the driver’s seat, Grey was unlocking the manual steering panel with an ID and a password. ‘To avoid us contributing to some chaos ahead… side effect of our self-regulating network,’ explained Grey as he then pulled his own steering wheel out of his bag at Alysia’s feet, and fastened it to the dashboard –a timer counted down to him gaining control. ‘I’d rather take the scenic route than slam into traffic and arrive at the same time anyway.’

Intuitively, Alysia activated the nav-map for Grey.

‘Our time seems so limited,’ reflected Alysia.

‘But?’ pressed Grey.

Aly shrugged as they passed deeper into a field of daisies –part of an expansive holographic perfume advertisement stretched across the Mainway.

‘They ever talked about the attention economy at your school?’ began Aly tentatively as she regarded Ant, his eyes smoothly covered. ‘Like how companies compete for your time by exploiting your natural desire for feedback, employing persuasive techniques to hold your conscious attention for as long as possible? Attention engineers are a dime a dozen nowadays.’

‘Works for me; good game design keeps players playing,’ conceded Ant.

‘Hooked: dopamine; driving desire,’ added Grey theatrically as he veered them off the Mainway and down another road. He glanced the bag at Alysia’s feet.

‘Are you hungry?’ asked Alysia.

‘Is there enough for a snack?’

Alysia sat up in the passenger seat, ‘Of course. Um, did you bring a knife?’

Cebuan’s streets were fraught with more colourful characters than the composed Bunurong sector they’d just exited. Steering manually down a lane now as it began to wind left and right, Grey didn’t look away from the road this time as he said sorry and shook his head.

‘Oh don’t worry about it,’ smiled Alysia as she placed some grapes in his free hand. She wondered at Grey, his equitable figure filling the rather small vessel they were driving. Grapes… how’s a man that size sustain himself on grapes? Shouldn’t he be eating lasagne or something? I wonder what he eats at home… veggie quiche?

‘Thanks,’ said Grey, snapping Aly out of her stupefaction. ‘They’re good, can I have more?’

‘Yeah,’ said Aly quickly, passing more and looking ahead as she searched her thoughts for shareable content. ‘They call them short-term dopamine driven feedback loops,’ continued Aly.

‘Dope loops,’ quipped Grey.

‘Some people claim they can negatively affect how society works,’ said Aly glancing Ant.

‘By causing people to focus on the wrong things?’ suggested Grey knowingly.

‘Well, in the past,’ began Aly as she leaned towards Ant, ‘combined with the fact that people didn’t tend to cooperate or hold constructive discourse with one another in certain social media spaces, that type of brain hacking, over time, caused complex things to get less attention. Pockets of people were ill-advised and unwise because they were spending their time on senseless things delivered in brief bites, like fake news instead of erudite articles.’

‘No chance of me missing the big things with you around,’ hushed Ant, blindly waving his hand forward into the air as if to push her away.

Grey nodded distantly. ‘Bites of misinformation for the simple-minded. ’

‘To create the simple minded,’ corrected Aly as she avoided Ant and turned around to watch where they were driving again. She regarded the scaleular patterns made by the cubic dwellings high above and away from them. ‘Like how does one obtain wisdom,’ she lamented, ‘when wisdom has been reduced to knowledge, knowledge reduced to information, and information reduced to data?’

Grey turned a corner and they began zig zagging along a series of very short streets. After a time he said tiredly, ‘because we’re less likely to see the whole picture when our focus is kept short and narrow.’

They soon entered a wide avenue lined with cherry trees, looming ahead in the far distance was a raised bridge over a river. There were high domiciles to their left and Citi views over low domiciles on their right.

‘So,’ urged Grey, drawing them back to an earlier conversation. ‘You reckon that helped him get elected.’

‘Well –save an aneurysm elaborating the rise of the mediocre man –not entirely.’

‘And are you wondering how we’re going to stop people getting stuck in dope loops?’

‘No,’ conceded Aly. ‘They’re part of the game. Who are we to choose what others may indulge in? Who are we to judge –moralists, dictators?’

‘But judge a little we kinda have to, I mean what if your pleasure causes harm? We’re not nihilists,’ prodded Grey.

‘We’re not,’ assured Alysia. ‘Don’t worry I’m with you.’

Ant raised his VR-D and brushed his wrist to scroll through his music history folder, glowing against his right forearm. He stumbles upon an empty folder labelled tropical mix. ‘What’s a nil…list?’ asks Ant as he presses the pyramid play button.

‘Someone with a will to nothing,’ replied Grey quickly.

‘Nice time to join us,’ smiled Alysia. ‘You want this one?’ she entreated Grey as she opened her palm device and began scrolling.

‘Someone who thinks life is meaningless and pointless, I guess,’ continued Grey. ‘And it’s a worry when existence is senseless and values are baseless because you’re potentially left with someone who isn’t capable of seeing right from wrong.’

Alysia looked surprised by Grey’s explanation for Ant.

‘Like the opposite of a Gondorian?’ supposed Ant. ‘Who are those err, ah, other arian’s?’

‘Krathorians? No. That’s a clear adversarial moral system they abide by,’ replied Grey. ‘The direct opposite of Gondor’s rules. To a nihilist dark and light matter would be just exactly the same, no difference –I am oversimplifying here. Then there’s the light side of the dark, and the dark side to the light to grasp,’ elaborated Grey hesitantly.

On her palm device, Aly showed Ant a retro-meme by #dprssDpsimist of a dolphin with the words life has no porpoise.

‘Are you using Icasia?’ wheedled Grey. ‘You know Netech Security Agency had direct access to Baltar servers for their Resource Integration, Synchronisation, and Management planning tool,’ he added dryly.

‘PRISM? Yeah, relax,’ Alysia wordlessly reached into her jacket and exposed a section of headphone cord. Grey glanced it.

Amused, Grey returned to conversing with Ant. ‘Anyway, Ant…a standard nihilist would be a negative sceptic that reckons no opinion is right because everything is subjective experience. Um, if everything is subjective and nothing is essentially better than any other thing, it leaves room for you to deny the existence of genuine truth and, consequently, things like genuine moral values.’

Ant rubbed his brow as he contemplated. ‘So like I could…like do stuff, and…’

‘You could do anything and argue it’s not really bad,’ rushed Aly. ‘For some people, doing evil to achieve a goal isn’t really bad –but we know better now, that it matters not only what we do but how we do it because everything has a way of coming back around.’

‘But what if I killed someone that’s really bad?’ asked Ant.

Aly bit her nails tensely, mumbling, ‘like I said, you gotta understand how energy works to get why violence begets violence.’

Their t’pod stopped at a pedestrian crossing to wait for a family of four to pass, right to left. The young sister pushed her older brother for pulling her hair, and they were both scolded by their Father as their Mother, walking slower behind them in heels, observed.

Grey spoke up. ‘We have the rule of law to replace the code of vendetta and abate anarchy; and it’s with good reason that judge, jury, and executioner are disparate. That aside, a strong nihilist would insist you shouldn’t make judgements or judge other people –well that’s not entirely true,’ stressed Grey. ‘We exercise judgement based on our beliefs and values, the morality grown from our social nature, grown from our right to speak freely when discussing how to solve problems and make improvements. Good criticism helps us create and set standards that we can measure things against. Standards, criteria, make clear the comparisons we’re making, and help us figure where things fit…such as what works best, and what is good rather than bad.’

Grey allowed the vehicle to set off again as the roadway was now clear. Alysia wondered what the Mother was saying as she overtook her partner and squabbling children, before the family continued to walk together.

Removing his hands from his knee pads, Ant felt some indentations in the seat cover like square finger holes breaking the surface. He fidgeted with the little tabs of material dismissively as he posited, ‘so nothing is essentially good or bad but thinking makes it so? Doesn’t that negate your idea about things having meaning or something?’

They pass a graffitied wall; dotted with illustrations of innumerable antiquated household objects and random fruit.

‘You are the creator of meaning in your life Ant,’ sighed Aly. ‘And you’re born into a world filled with things that already possess inherent meaning; like objects, and non-material things, like actions, that already have some significance to someone or all. Things that have become symbolic of ideas and notions, past and present. Sometimes an apple signifies knowledge, sometimes it’s just an apple –or is it? It’s a mined field.’

They begin to pass by domiciles, their minimalist design unblemished by colour or texture. ‘So, Ant, for you to exist in a pointless vacuum of meaninglessness, you would have to reject all values and principles –whether they be profane, or sacred and ethical. For example, a person who chooses not to embody moral values could say something to get one thing, but do another thing to get yet another thing.’

‘Like, be a liar?’ declared Ant.

‘In a nutshell,’ praised Grey.

‘Or sociopath,’ admitted Alysia in a whisper as she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘Just another product of a commercial culture empty of essential values.’

‘A careless, uninvested attitude, makes for someone without integrity,’ affirmed Grey. ‘Someone erringly deceitful…and without trust things start to fall apart, come undone, the fabric holding us together begins to unravel.’

‘Sociopath?’ pressed Ant, confronting Aly.

‘Someone insensitive and willing to disregard or violate the rights of others,’ explained Grey hotly. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he took Aly’s hand in his other, and she gazed out the window.

‘Like a narcissist,’ murmured Aly but Ant heard.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Oh no, sorry let’s not go there,’ sighed Aly as they approached the bridgehead. She glanced how fast they were moving because she wanted as much time as possible to enjoy the view of the water below once they reached the deck. ‘Whatever happened to the golden rule?’ she mused.

‘The rule of gold,’ lamented Grey.

Grey felt Ant’s silence and glanced his confused expression as he sat alone in the backseat of the travel pod.

‘A narcissist,’ said Grey after a moment’s reflection, ‘is another sort of person that seeks admiration needfully, and tends to exploit or hurt others because their self-centredness means they lack empathy and humility. I’m generalising, they’re not all alike –there’s a scale too,’ he mused with dark humour. ‘But don’t worry, worst case scenario, it’s pretty unlikely you bump into someone that lacks empathy and remorse, is also manipulative, and even takes pleasure in your suffering.’

‘Now that’s a dark triad,’ said Aly firmly for Ant.

‘Unfortunately, ego centric people tend to continually overlook their short-comings because they’re so defensive,’ admitted Grey. ‘Very resistant to change…because their ego is afraid of the unknown, and dying in some way, and therefore it’s always trying to protect itself.’

‘What’s an ego?’ asked Ant as they now traversed the multiuse bridge. It was a mixture of truss arches and suspensions intermingling to hold purposed community areas, attached above and below, into a stable floating construct.

‘Your idea of self… your created identity - I,’ said Aly. ‘A sense of self is necessary so you can protect and nurture yourself, and have a point from which to observe your world. Problem is the self-centred egoic mind of content and structure tends to over identify with things (my shirt, my shoes, my past) separating itself from actual creation as it builds its own identity within not of it. When you buy a T-shirt based on its psychological value because you think that an identity will be magically appropriated to you by it…that’s your ego mind at work.’

‘Anyways, people defending an ego, like bad ass Narcy’s, ‘ll have a total conniption when questioned or criticised,’ finished Grey. ‘And they’ll insist it’s everyone else’s fault. You made me do it! They’ll cry like children when they lose self-control. Anyway, what did we say earlier about criticism and standards?’

‘We need them?’

As Aly and Ant measured the artificial lake surrounding them, Grey eyed the road ahead, ‘too right, across the board.’

‘Anyway, speaking of bad eggs,’ said Aly sounding slightly brittle, ‘can we really say it was the competitive, self-interested, individualists of an egotistical culture being spoon fed misinformation in their little bubbles…’

‘That created such a shallow democracy?’ completed Grey.

‘Or was it inhumane systems designed foremost to generate profit and not serve living beings that successfully confined them into intellectual poverty and debt serfdom in the first place? Them being too time-poor for seeking self-love and alternatives from the machinations making them physically and mentally sick?’ accused Alysia.

‘I think people are self-interested but naturally want to help others,’ said Grey. ‘So if they’re successfully led to believe their choice will help themselves and their kin…but it doesn’t…well, who can blame them?’

‘Led,’ contemplated Aly.

‘Bubbles?’ measured Ant.

‘Every step you take, every move you make, is used to create your interface,’ explained Grey. ‘It recalls and pre-empts your future indulgences based on your past; like how your next song choices are made for you.’

‘But that’s great,’ cried Ant.

‘For choosing music when you’re feeling lazy and optimistic, and you’re happy to go with the flow… but what about your newsthreads? Remember, you are essentially allowing someone else-’

‘An AI,’ submitted Ant.

‘That’s been programmed by humans,’ reminded Aly.

‘To direct your thoughts. Someone, something, else with their own agendas,’ continued Grey, ‘through those programs, can proffer things, expose you to things in succession, based on their own standards of artistic or monetary merit… or truthfulness.’

‘For us to consume,’ said Aly. ‘Whether we like it or not.’

‘So I use ad blocks and browser privacy extensions,’ shrugged Ant.

‘Does nothing,’ confirmed Grey. ‘That won’t help you in the long term when using some applications where, say, things are omitted from your feeds but are seen on others, and vice-versa. Basically, the bigger issue is that you are led to believe you are participating in a shared social field with a greater collective but really you’re just operating in a space that’s tailored to you alone…you’re in a bubble,’ finished Grey. ‘Not a world wide web but your own web.’

‘Divided and conquered,’ whispered Aly.

‘And while you’re in that bubble,’ commented Grey, ‘again, I know what you like, and can pose things through that. I could easily make like your favourite band supports my cause. Or make a person, in truth you’d loathe… seem more than agreeable –even likeable.’

‘So, in the past,’ began Aly, ‘through simple exposure, technology allowed time-poor debt-serfs to support regressive, nationalist, and often religiously aligned people’s parties.’

‘In other words racist social degenerates pretending to be morally competent,’ interjected Grey. ‘Plain undisputed criminals.’

‘Usurping the social status of God,’ nodded Aly, ‘for a time became as common a practice as usurping the auric power of a wealthy businessman or famous woman.’

‘Auric?’ frowned Ant.

‘Your aura is your presence, your energy field. Some people have it more than others –the power to affect reality,’ drifted Aly.

Ant could tell there was more to it, but allowed them to steer the conversation, trying to keep up.

‘Once upon a time Ant there was this idea of the pure people versus the corrupt elite,’ pressed Aly. ‘In that context, a leader would present himself claiming to care for the problems of the ordinary person over the stereotyped big crooked rich elite person. So citizens would repeatedly vote for the strong figurehead presented to them, a charismatic leader that spoke in the layman’s language, like common folk. People were also easily influenced to vote in reaction to a moral panic –usually contrived by that same figurehead.’

‘But didn’t people realise they were just reacting out of fear?’

Aly tilted her head. ‘Eventually. So now we know through media you can be emotionally manipulated over time to identify yourself with certain others and feel belonging, and you can equally be misinformed about what services are being distributed to you and why.’

‘Next thing you know,’ continued Grey, ‘civil society is repressed in the name of confronting a supposed enemy, and the powers of governance are so concentrated you have few political alternatives…maybe only two political sides to choose from that really aren’t much different from one another at all.’

‘Political spectacle is a sun that never sets,’ breathed Aly wearily as she let go of Grey’s hand and retrieved her palm device.

Ant fidgeted thoughtfully with the VR Device in his lap.

Sonya’s avatar appeared on Aly’s Palm Device.

‘A human baby learns by imitating and mimicking…’ mused Grey, ‘and that’s basically what most of these social programs were doing in feeding peoples interests back to themselves in the beginning –whatever they thought we wanted to consume. And the steps to singular intelligence continued from there,’ said Grey reflectively.

‘If being a singular mind was a problem why not more than one AI work together somehow, to like balance one another out or something?’ wondered Ant.

‘That’s an interesting idea Ant,’ said Aly with surprise looking up from Sonya’s avatar on her PD. ‘I guess we assumed one machine is powerful enough to do it all?’

‘Like an oversized ego?’ asked Ant.

‘Ha… yeah, I can picture this monstrous net that thinks it’s the be all and end all, and will do anything to protect itself,’ imagined Alysia.

‘Yeah, but imagine Rai and Banaroc talking to one another…programs running to chill the other out,’ suggested Ant.

‘Or gang up together against us,’ thought Aly with excited horror, as Greys mind turned over.

‘Anyway, speaking of feedback loops, political campaigns work the same way Ant, feeding people what they want to hear…creating political truth aside of the truth,’ added Alysia as she read Sonya’s message: Are you in the game right now?

Alysia responded: No I’m with Grey n Ant headed to Eva Championship Series gamer tournament –Ant’s into RPG/RTS.

‘And we must uphold the truth,’ stressed Grey. ‘Falsehoods and misconceptions prevail when people hold the view there is no absolute truth. The existence of various truths, or versions of truth, doesn’t negate the fact there is a truth and its many versions are fictions – wars of opinions are constructed by distortions of the truth.’

‘So I should always tell the truth?’ affirmed Ant. 
'Yes, unless it will cause unnecessary suffering,’ ordered Aly. ‘We mustn’t forget kindness.'

Ant nodded. ‘At least you can’t argue with proof,’ said Ant optimistically.

‘True… mind you, all evidence can be manufactured they will say,’ warned Grey. ‘Big problem in our immaterial digitised world.’

‘Now today,’ said Aly as she turned in her seat to face Ant, ‘the advertising experiences delivered to you have been personalised for you based on the data obtained from one single source of truth.’ She motioned making open and closed inverted commas with her fingers, and waited for Ant’s reaction.

‘But I’m…’ Ant took a deep breath and began again. ‘If I choose…’ he faltered. ‘I could fake…’

Alysia gently smiled as Ant’s comprehension dawned. She now spoke in a curious tone, almost whispering. ‘You are not what the Overman thinks you are, you are not what the Overman tells you you are. At any given moment in time, you are only ever who you know yourself to be.’

I’m... Ant?

Aly patiently watched Ant, sitting thoughtfully.

I’m some 14 year old kid…born in Netech. I live in the City of Cebuan… I wanna be roaming Banarock with Loralei right now. And why’d we make so much stuff anyway? he wondered, looking again to the landscape constructed around them, and suddenly feeling rather small yet paradoxically greater through realising he was part of a species that had created such a vast and complex scape.

‘Welcome to the game,’ implied Grey as the bridge wend through a shopping metropolis, and the distant view of the cityscape over the lake momentarily disappeared. The lighted displays of boutique shops and palatial bars surrounded them like a playground.

Aly reached for Ant’s VR and turned it over in her hand, inspecting some old player number stickers from Ant’s previous tournaments, before returning it to him. ‘First comes the test, then comes the knowing.’

Ant remained very still as Aly turned back around in her seat, glanced Grey, and went back to gazing out of the window. She contemplated the descent of their ancestors into a junk culture through the cultural fraud of economic growth. A time where the complex search for the divine was often replaced with a mundane pursuit of the worldly. ‘Anyway, it’s a pity more people weren’t aware of how they were being manipulated to their own detriment,’ she breathed.

‘And the detriment of Others,’ added Grey.

As they slowly emerged from the sprawling mass of shops and onto a feature length of clear bridge-way, they could look down into the waters of the lake below. Alysia saw scores of fish swimming beneath water lilies –part of a picturesque section of farm incorporated into the urban landscape.

‘I haven’t been here before,’ mused Alysia quietly to herself.

‘Me neither,’ confessed Grey having overheard her. ‘It’s nice knowing you haven’t seen it all really.’

‘And strange knowing you never will,’ agreed Alysia.

As they left Tributary Bridge and returned to a tree lined avenue, they suitably slowed down to be diverted by some traffic control barriers set around workers loping the sick branches from a diseased tree.

Contemplative and conscious they were nearing the end of their trip Ant ventured a contentious question. ‘Grey, how do you think Noriko really happened?’

‘Well…’ frowned Grey. ‘It boils down to clickbait I reckon….and digital systems with markedly capitalist objectives. Imagine, once upon a time you have a channel created by bots, watched by bots, and commented on by bots –a place where your interactions take you on a contrived journey of algorithmic discovery. When algorithmic interbreeding creates ads selling toenail fungus phone covers and an adult diaper worn by an old man with a crutch cell phone cover case it’s weird maybe even funny… but when the probabilistic outcomes of an AI’s algorithms figuring human behaviour inevitably begin automating things tending towards extreme violence and fear it gets less funny. Automated tee-shirts like Keep Calm and Knife Her drew on more than just random words in the system, you know what I’m saying? So at that point, intelligence isn’t programmed, it’s growing. Well eventually branded content, like kids shows and news media from normally trusted sources, gets delaminated too –taken out of its regular known context, their usual places of production. Then this branded content continues to be presented to you with slight alterations, which over time become increasingly radical… so now you’ve basically industrialised the production of nightmares for the sake of advertising. Without content controls, and thanks to some sad individuals, Noriko just…went too far? Noriko wasn’t a proper representation of human nature, it wasn’t totally a receptacle for rubbish…the conditions just allowed more subversive stuff to flourish at the time.

And by the way, I’m not trying to suggest advertising itself is evil somehow, but the persuasive architecture that holds our attention is definitely of concern –remember what we said about bubbles? You see…in trying to net customers, those automated systems not only exploited violence in pursuit of profit (which could be avoided) but relied on deep surveillance (unavoidable); your information was routinely collected, collated, and sold to the highest bidding merchant.’

‘And now?’ interrupted Ant.

‘We’re valued and bought before we’re born,’ deviated Aly bluntly.

‘But talk about having marketing down to a fine art though,’ steered Grey, ‘through such surveillance, AI can detect the onset of mania in an individual in order to sell them goods. The implications go well beyond businesses scamming a few extra pillow cases outta someone shopping for therapy…like what we were talking about before...what if someone can influence your decisions and shape your behaviour, not just through gentle media influence, but direct and personalised manipulation based on such personal information? You can be essentially intentionally demobilised.’

‘Demobilised?’ repeated Ant.

‘Neutralised,’ said Grey. ‘Influenced against taking certain actions. For example, voting in a democracy is a political action, such as voting this way or that…but if you’re misinformed, fearful or apathetic…’

‘What’s apathy?’

‘When you don’t care, when you’re uninterested, indifferent,’ helped Alysia. ‘Apathetic people lack the motivation to do, complete or achieve things. Most depressive people have it –could be emotional fatigue after severe anxiety, low serotonin levels, a sad attitude built on ignorance…or entitlement.’

‘Anyway, on top of deep surveillance,’ rounded Grey, ‘imagine trying to circumvent censorship in a country with only one single channel responsible for the flow of information regarding political, personal, and social affairs. Or a place where acts of online libel are punishable by imprisonment. There were so many problems we faced before multichannel platforms, better network segregation, stricter and uncorrupted governmental involvement, policed privacy policies, and designated system reboots. Fraud, hacking, malware, denial of service were improbable risks in the first small controlled networks, and as our net once grew into a behemoth of billions of users, trust consequently declined. Once upon a time they wanted to build a worldwide wireless internet, instead of decentralised, affordable, locally owned internet infrastructures such as we still use today. Thankfully, politician’s interests change with their donors.’

‘A few scandals aside,’ contributed Alysia, ‘net neutrality has mostly been maintained for netizens by keeping it out of the hands of providers who could abuse their ability to throttle or discriminate – as in secretly slow traffic, or choose what customers can and cannot access.’

Ant sighed with relief, defeat, and concern. ‘Why are people always trying to take advantage of others?’

‘In pursuit of profit? Not always,’ eased Aly.

‘Don’t worry Ant,’ assured Grey, ‘We’re all vulnerable to illusions, self-centredness, and stupidity…but our curiosity and ability to have thoughts about our thoughts, and most of all our sympathy for others, means we keep improving and bettering ourselves and our home all the time. You just gotta keep doing what is right over what is easy, at every opportunity.’

‘And wise men seek more opportunities than they find,’ threw in Aly.

‘You’re alright Ant, you’ve got a good grasp of the three N’s –nihilism, narcissism, and the net – observe the golden rule and you’ll be fine. Let everything we’ve said go, and stay focused on the next good choice or positive impact your about to make today.’

Aly smiled, leaned across and briefly pressed her forehead to Grey’s shoulder; he kissed her head while focused on the tree-lined road ahead.

‘Are you hungry?’ asked Grey as Aly pulled away.

‘Hmm, a little. Here, you want some more,’ suggested Alysia as she drew a grape and put it to his mouth. He bit her fingers with feigned aggression and she yelped with amusement.

Ant rolled his eyes and put his VR device back on.

‘You need to spend less time like that Ant,’ scolded Aly warmly, tapping his VR as he swiped her hand away, ‘and more time with friends, like for real.’

Alysia received another message from Sonya: I think someone’s hacked your avatar...

‘What!?’ moaned Alysia as she watched Sonya’s screen capture.

You’re looting the Central Bank with Gandalf LMAO

‘Someone’s hacked my avatar again,’ she whined in dismay.

SourJuan does not look happy YAASSSS!

‘But that’s not me! All those experience points…all those hours,’ she bemoaned as her character was attacked by law enforcement and exposed to termination. ‘What a waste of my time!’

‘Unless he survives,’ considered Grey as he steered them from the Avenue towards the parkland surrounding Lasalle. ‘I could find a way to retrieve you later,’ he offered, switching off the Nap as the G came into view.

‘Pent up on an island somewhere?’ thought Aly doubtfully as her Wanted Level hit five-stars and her rogue avatar began taking down helicopters with a sniper rifle.

Grey parked their travelpod at a waitstand for the next group of people to use, and disengaged his steering wheel. ‘Well…whoever they are,’ he said, ‘they were smart enough to bodysnatch someone to do their dirty work for them… so who knows, you could get away with this.’

Knowing full well it was a relatively lawless landscape, where punishments were meted out in the form of monetary fines, and fare evaders were processed on the streets in kill or be killed standoffs such as this because there was no such entertainment as a court of law in that game, Grey suggested hopelessly –‘plead temporal insanity.’

Aly’s dismay and Grey’s laughter as they climbed out of the tod, caused Ant to remove his VR Device. Soon they were all paused, in the middle of a busy causeway outside the white dome shaped Gaming Convention Centre, huddled together around Aly’s little screen and taking great pleasure in her players plight.

~

Passing trees in stark white surroundings, Finlee had heard the echoes of their hisses, mews, growls and wails and diverted from his course in search of refuge. Exhaustedly trudging through the snow, a glint of light from a nearby pond of water catches his eye before the sun disappears behind heavy cloud and the snow begins falling again. Pulling the hood of his thick, waxed, coat up over his head, he tries to recall some known tree by the water, but cannot place this pond –he struggles against the truth that he might be lost in this beautiful but unsympathetic landscape.

Cursing himself for being underprepared, Finlee squeezes his empty pockets. Finding only a broken piece of graphite rod, he throws it into the snow with frustration.

After a few steps, he thinks better of it and retrieves it sentimentally, but in the process stumbles and sinks into a deep hole. Unharmed but discouraged, he lay there for a while unmoving –snowflakes melting on his brow. Looking at the branches of trees beside him, now poking out from under a stable blanket of snow, an idea came to him. Struggling to his feet, boots deep, tired and hungry, Finlee stops to consider the directionless white setting. Afraid to use his voice, lest it attract dangerous attention, he drops to his knees and begins to shape walls around himself. When he again hears a distant growl he works faster, compacting and shaping the icy snow until he had built a wall around and a ceiling overhead to make a small dome. Sheltered now from the gently falling snow and growing wind outside, he poked a see-hole through a wall with a stick. At first he thought to dig down into the earth in search of warmth but found he was creating mud, so he broke some branches from nearby trees and dragged them inside to make a mat. Soon the cold cocoon was comfortable enough for him to rest while the weather passed and he regained some energy. After idly etching the inner walls in the fading light, he completely blocked up the way in and fell asleep, buried alive.

After sighting the broken branches, they tracked the irregular depressions to a dome –certain a human was inside.

Now wearing wide plates bound to his feet like them, Finlee found himself walking easily across the crystalline snow covered scenery. At the sight of their number and weapons, he had wordlessly eaten their peace-food offerings and now nervously followed them as they trekked in a line through the forest. The eight men and two women, clad in fitting fur and leathers, carried Ashen weapons such as Finlee had never seen before, though they ignored the birds and deer that Finlee had assumed they were hunting.

After a time, Finlee began to notice strange shapes in the snow, geometric constructions scattered and broken in random places throughout the bush. When he began to realise they were metal machinations he felt himself having entered another’s dream and wondered at the sights to come.

Soon they passed into a stand of trees smothered with plastic bags, bottles, and other things Finlee didn’t recognise –their synthetic colours were lurid against the shimmering white snow. The litter of foreign objects began to thicken into piles of garbage as they neared the voices of children playing ahead.

Entering an expanse patch of deforested land, forty or so children were playing and running around in boots on the downtrodden snow between rows of raised soil beds, neglected at its sides. The children instantly spotted Finlee was alien and swarmed around him rapturously, beaming with fascination and shrieking delightedly with feigned terror whenever they met his eyes –theirs amber, his teal.

Finlee stumbled on something the children had been throwing around; he picked it up as they laughed at him. The way he studied its acicular-shaped leaves, the budding needles, also amused them –it was the first time he had held a pinecone. He ceased dusting snow from it and discarded it when the adults noticed his fascination.

Beyond the tree line on the other side of the open field, Finlee saw smoke rising into the now cloudless sky. As they passed across the field between the children playing and neared the other edge of the field, he noticed snow covered tanks and pipelines, some damaged and others completely broken.

They soon passed back into the trees past a crumbling wall of massive clay jars stacked upon one another. Some children placed found things inside them and roughly broke the jars with sticks as they played –none of the group walking by forbade them.

Following a well-trodden trail to the edge of a cliff, Finlee sees a vast mountainous white landscape stretching into the horizon out of sight.

Wending along past some rotting timber and stone huts with curious folks now staring at him as they passed, they approached a cavernous overhang in a cliff face beside a short waterfall. In the bouldered watercourse beside them, Finlee regarded the remnants of a broken and rotting water wheel. He wondered why they had not cleared it as caught water was beginning to stagnate around it.

Soon they were walking the length of a rocky cragged canyon, which cut back through into a valley harbouring a village called Ambercrest.

Lined with more rundown huts, the village pathways were glittering with shiny little papers that Finlee would later learn were discarded empty packets for food and sweets, cooking and cleaning fluids, powders, and toys. Soon he saw a place from which many people were coming and going with red and yellow bags.

With little discussion between the members of the group, in a language Finlee did not understand, they led him past damaged huts to the largest house in the village.

Removing his boots on a polished timber floor, Finlee stepped onto a roughly knotted rug. He could feel its unevenness through his thin, finely woven socks. Shaking off his clumsily made wet coat, he exposes his layers of travel clothes. It was clear he was an outsider, and the others regarded his neatly stitched patchwork clothing and its brass buttons with fascination.

Looking around the warm foyer, Finlee was struck by the abundance of furniture, the array of indiscriminate statues and figurines of romanticised farmers, and plain tapestries of simple glyphs hung on the walls around them.

In an orderly line, they walked down a long corridor of closed doors to an immense room at the back of the mansion where a huge fireplace was roaring. It was there that Finlee met the elders, seated upon cushions on the floor before the fire. In a great circle, they were enjoying a gambling game involving the throwing of various coloured gemstones across a field of concentric circles drawn with fine sand. Had they any foreknowledge, they would have agreed with Finlee that the firelight upon the stray sands and stones on the dark timber floor gave the impression of dawn upon a galaxy.

A long dining table and many chairs were pushed against the walls out of the way, and there were tall bookshelves filled with dusty ornaments and clothing, people’s bags and belongings. Finlee noticed some children using the few books he spotted as building blocks for a table and chairs as they negotiated for one another’s toys. But his attention was captured by the chasing and repoussé of an embossed copper plate glinting in the firelight –acorns and beetles surrounding a thistle flower.

His interest didn’t go unnoticed as the elders stopped their game; they fell silent as they stood to face him. The ones who had brought him guarded him gently with their weapons.

There was an exchange of words in an unknown language and they argued briefly, as one appeared pressured to speak for them. Diminished in stature, bedecked in stones, the shrewd faced Uñak spoke to Finlee in the language dominated by the Ashen. ‘Friend, you are many far from your home. Very close to the mountain. People who go to the mountain of shadows never come back…why you so close to the mountain?’ His eyes drilled into Finlee, ‘what you looking for?’

One of their members regarding his clothes accused him in a whisper, ‘you are no Ashen.’

Everyone in the room noticeably tensed, aiming their weapons at Finlee, who was reading their expressions and hands as they surmised he was not Ashen. He quickly shrunk to the ground with his hands in the air, ‘Ashen, Ashen,’ he implied.

Another suggested, ‘mine worker?’

‘Mine? Yes, mine,’ said Finlee.

‘You are not allowed here,’ declared another darkly.

‘I’m sorry! I’m looking for the way home…to my family. I’m lost. Help me, please,’ pleaded Finlee upon his knees. ‘I want my family.’

A plump woman with a stock of carved gems upon her head relented. ‘Take him back to the man,’ she ordered in her natural language, ‘and tell him not to come back this way.’

A brawny elderly man at her side, with a fierce scowl and wounded face warned them, ‘don’t harm this one. If you make that Armin come again you don’t bother coming back.’

A man and a woman escorted Finlee to the Eastern Eloxotzin Mine. It took them just over six hours down the mountain with many social stops made along the way. By the end of their mission, the Ambercrest couple suspected Finlee had not come from this way, but hesitantly let him continue into the view of the supervisors at the entrance.

The snow was thinner here, the air warmer, but before Finlee could follow a different current he was caught at the gate.

Treated as a dim gebar, Finlee was easily inducted into the mine as a labourer. He was given a uniform, and a number was tattooed onto the skin of his heel. His number was also etched onto a flat metal tag that was hung around his neck by a chain, and at the end of each day, a clerk drilled his tag with a pinhole. The metal tags, holey and softened, were then rolled into cylindrical pins at the end of each month. He was fed a ration of cornmeal four times a day and slept in one of many log cabins with hundreds of other men and women who worked by day and night.

Finlee learned that to collect payment for ones labour, one must attend an office in the City of Asher a few days travel away. It quickly became apparent that he should guard himself in his sleep, and he began having nightmares about people removing his head as he carried his wealth by his neck.

Fin’s time as a labourer was short-lived, as after only three long weeks a disaster was to seal his favour and fate. When Finlee first warned an imperious foreman about structural defects he perceived and suggested how to rectify them, he was duly ignored. Conscious of the lives that would be lost, Finlee monitored the leaking crease until it could hold no longer. Initiating the evacuation of a large mineshaft one night, he saved many people’s lives. He went on to save more after venturing into unlit sections searching for others left behind in the dark, until he too was trapped by falling rocks.
Spurred on by gratitude and an increasing sense of allegiance to one another, the saved labourers persisted against the foremans orders and succeeded in retrieving Finlee alive.

Waking in a log cabin many nights later, a nurse tending Finlee revealed workers were whispering he had walked in the dark, finding buried people as if he could see. Suddenly people were interested to know who he was and where he was from, but no matter how they would go on to press him he could tell them nothing. ‘I don’t know, I don’t remember,’ was all he could manage quite truthfully.

Having foreseen the mineshafts collapse and saving so many lives, but more for proving he could benefit productivity, word was flown to Asher and he was sent for.

~

‘Richard, we need to release the chairmen. Use them to gather and influence the surviving clans, to bring them in line with your Armin against the Ariod.’

‘I cannot. Their memory has been expunged, overwritten, riding a loop of thoughts that grows stronger with every passing year. He thinks he’s repairing his home; she thinks she’s hanging laundry; and they think they’re playing a game against one another –but really they’re all just holding me up. You see, I’m not entirely cruel.’

Prue ran her hand over the soft and smooth surface of a slowly withering map on the desk, a hodgepodge of borders etched with different inks, dividing their familiar land of three powers –the city-states of Asher, Reagan and Nahul- into five regions of thirty-two unfamiliar territories. ‘Can you not just give them back their memories?’

‘Recall all their stories?’

‘Improvise.’

As he stood opposite Prue at the table, Richard contemplated the effort it would take to plant, replant, or supplant utilisable histories and felt weary.

‘Well they need something –they need an identity,’ insisted Prue. ‘Perhaps if, after you’ve conditioned them, in returning them to their people…they will be more effective…’

From a hole in the floor darted a tiny bird, it sped through the room and out the quake broken ceiling.

‘Bring their people here,’ followed Richard, ‘I will take what I need from the commons, and supplant what serves us in the chairmen.’ He walked over to a broken wall and saw the lizard dragon Amon wearily navigating rubble in a room below.

‘Bring me the new leaders, the oldest elders, the new keepers of memory we’re aware of from the sects we’ve been keeping an eye on,’ resolved Richard.

Prue recalled the repercussions of the hollowing of the Chieftains to make the chairmen, it had happened just before she had been sent to Asher. ‘Even if we could find the new leaders out now –I doubt they’ll come,’ stated Prue.

‘We’re not sending them invitations,’ growled Richard impatiently.

‘Can we not just tell them the truth…that they’re needed, and explain why?’

‘And have everyone flown into uncontrollable panic that the Ariod have returned!? No.'

‘But if it is discovered that you have taken more of their people, some may side with the Raken just to see you fall,’ cautioned Prue.

‘They don’t know about the Raken.’

‘Word will spread, it may have already.’

‘The people will side with us against the Raken –look at the prosperity we provide,’ replied Richard confidently.

‘It’s a risk,’ countered Prue. ‘If anyone sides with the Raken in opportunistic strategy to save their own skins all agony will break loose.’

‘All agony is set to break loose anyway with the Ariod lurking about,’ conceded Richard openly perturbed. Breaking little stride, he continued. ‘Our wait for word of Reagan’s Jona and Milo of Nahul must soon be over –I wonder if they know what is developing,’ added Richard aside as he returned to the table. ‘Until Freeman and Chaise reveal the Ariod’s main whereabouts, we will ready ourselves for conflict en masse against the Raken.’

Richard noted the time and travel worn edges where innumerable hands had touched the map upon his table over the course of one man’s lifetime –his Fathers. Beware the draunken woman, his Father had warned. Is it because the Draunken man follows? wondered Richard.

Prue touches the map. A drawn border smudges under her fingertips and she remembers charcoal rubbings –of glyphs a scout messenger had brought from an empty city some months ago. The lines and shapes suddenly led her to recall the object in the broken stone Jeremoth had presented in the Hall a short time earlier. She remembered Mario had been present when sighting the crude charcoal rubbings, as she had made a show of cursing the expense for returning with such a trivial item. Prue quickly wondered if Mario might still recall the item.

Prue composed herself and carefully began to roll the map around a wooden dowel, etched with rows of scratches and dotted with seemingly random minerals. The soft parchment still had short hairs attached, that of a black boar branded by the Uetzcayotl family.

‘A large scale offensive by the Raken,’ began Prue as she furled their world, ‘could be brought to a halt by smaller united groups in coordinated battle. Despite lacking the resources of our armies, isolated dissenters and Ashen rebels like the Wallaja and Dharanyak are going to be more effective because they don’t recognise our Cayot–Elox agreements and borders. They are always well-organised throughout the areas between Asher and the western lesser cities, as much as they are from here to Kyne in the east. Like the Raken, they are familiar to mountainous, remote, and difficult to navigate territories, which will afford Lonigan to be highly strategic in our advance.’

‘Provided they cooperate with my Armin,’ grunted Richard.

‘They will,’ began Prue as she properly bound the scroll inside a new sheet of waxed cotton. ‘I suggest we play into their subjugated hope for acceptance as a real and unified group of people operating outside the Ashen system, by offering them not only legitimacy but territory. We will award them territorial points for their every victory now, and you will have the next century to…diplomatically take those regions back into your control.’

Richard was engaged by Prue’s words as she held his Fathers map in her hands.

‘I will not give this to Lonigan but have one of my scribes replicate it for him immediately,’ stated Prue. ‘I will return this scroll to the vault in the Alecsee Library personally, and while I am there seek Anastasia for records of historical conflict with the Ariod.’

‘Very well, and in the meantime I shall confirm with Lonigan we are to push west,’ directed Richard. ‘Those that fled the war, and all those damn Wa’forest people will be climbing the walls to get in here if they have to lay eyes on the Raken again. We will get them to side with us because they threaten the peace we have created.’

‘So we are to leave ourselves exposed to the northern threat?’

‘If we can’t subdue the Raken we have no hope against the Ariod, and chances are they are no more connected than we are. That said, if the greatest number of men are concentrated in this region and the Ariod come, there will be no need for any mind games to bind us, all men, together as one... and all in their fear will turn to the leader most fearless.’

Prue suddenly saw herself beholden unto Richard, posed as he had wont to become –her skin prickled.

Richard nodded at Prue.

At once, she turned on her heel and left the boardroom.

Descending a stairwell, Prue quietly sends a servant to rush ahead and fetch Mario Guillermo, with the intent of meeting him en route to the Library.

~

From the top of the fragile ladder the heavy book flies, as Anna drops the volume into Cari’s hands –both were pleased its bindings held.

‘Warned you,’ twinkled Anna as Cari gasped at the weight of it.

While Anna checked the condition of neighbouring books on the high shelves before replacing the cloth dust covers, Cari felt the thumb index notches in the books side and opened it to a random page.

Nursing the opened book like an infant, Cari inspected the slightly skewered print, the dark ink of the type and a detailed etching; subtly raised on the surface of the leafy paper. 

The etched illustration of a skinless creature, with limb sections of usual proportions to one another but fingers elongated and beaded at the fingertip, stares out at her with bizarrely large shiny eyes.

‘What is that!?’ amuses Cari as she reads unfamiliar words from the text. ‘Litoria genimaculata. Ranidae, rana daemeli,’ recited Cari as if muttering magical incantations.

After giggling silently to herself, Cari thumbs to another index and mutters, ‘platycerium hilli, and schizaeaoid ferns? Why don’t they just say water ferns?’

‘I guess because there’s so many differnet ones,’ supposed Anna.

‘Different,’ corrected Cari in a whisper as she sat the book face down on a trolley.

Maybe shrugged Anna after a moment as she began to descend the ladder.

A glint of light caught Cari’s eye as she shifted the books dust jacket, and she was intrigued to find something nestled securely flush inside its solid back cover. There was an intaglio copper etching plate, perhaps left by the books creator to allow others to replicate some of the images already printed inside.

As she stepped off the ladder, Anna noticed Cari fascinating over the etching on the copper plate.

‘I’ve never seen these things before,’ admitted Cari.

‘I have,’ admitted Anna hesitantly, wistfully. ‘In a newspaper once when I was a little girl… but I’ve not seen them anywhere, in any paper, ever since.’

‘Do they actually exist?’ questioned Cari with incredulity.

‘Of course!’ grinned Anna. ‘But who knows where they’ve gone,’ she sighed.

‘You think they’re extinct? suggested Cari.

‘No. I imagine they’re still alive in pockets we’ve been unable to reach,’ admitted Anna hopefully.

Cari looked unconvinced.

‘It’s a wide world Cari,’ assured Anna. ‘As it stands, the Ashen system serves only one species, but there’s literally millions of Others out there, beyond the edges of our known world, still evolving and adapting in the most beautiful, bizarre and ingenious of ways. When the fear and greed at the heart of the Ashen way leads to endemic implosion…hopefully enough of them will remain for us to learn from.’

Anna grasps the book trolley handle with both hands and nudges it forward. ‘Ink is costly and controlled, who would foot the bill for talking about them and why –who would it serve to save them?’

Contemplatively, Cari slowly closes the book saying, ‘weird creatures…’

Anna discreetly swigs a potion from a small vial in her pocket before she spots a familiar figure hunched over some indices –she sighs through gritted teeth. ‘One of Richards’s lackeys…tell him he’s in the wrong section.’

‘Miss Anastasia?’

‘See to it that weasel over there doesn’t hang about too long. We don’t need him learning about anything else he could potentially use against us.’

‘I thought you believed learning leads to en…,’ trailed Cari as Anna scowled.

Cari shifted uncomfortably in the isle, as Anna pulled back the trolley and contemplated another route across the level. ‘He could have been slaving in the fields, but he married a rich widow who paid his way in life, and then he sat around writing something that’s going to be used to oppress generations of people like us to come.’

Cari measured the searching figure at the end of the isle.

‘You know he murdered his spouse right?’ added Anna bitterly as she steered the trolley of books into another isle. ‘His mate Rinehart I mean, bludgeoned her to death. Everybody knows it, but he never paid for it. I’m surprised he hasn’t done that to his daughter yet –I can only imagine what kind of terror she lives in.’

Anastasia glanced the fright on Carrie’s face. ‘Oh don’t worry; his friend over there is a coward. You’ll be safe here,’ assured Anastasia as she straightened a book titled The Third Chimpanzee on the shelf. ‘Go on, tell him this section is closed for cleaning and I’ll meet you at the desk.’

He heard them whispering loudly and looked over at them. Carrie hesitated to move.

‘Oh I really don’t think I can Miss,’ quavered Cari apprehensively.

‘Oh too late, here it comes,’ breathed Anna, turning her back to him as he closed the index he was looking at and approached them with a note in hand.

‘I need help,’ he asserted to a wide-eyed Cari.

‘Clearly,’ responded Anna, desiring nothing more than to walk away but simply unable to leave Cari to her own devices.

Anastasia’s expression was sweet as she turned to face him. He smiled at her loveliness.

‘Don’t expect a free pass from me on the grounds of sensitivity… I reject your summons to intolerance and war Sen Derte.’

‘Excuse me?’ With flawless teeth, he smiled though his eyes did not.

‘Your doctrines are in need of reform because there is warrant for intolerance and avoidance embedded in your text,’ pressed Anna. ‘We should publicly confront, debate, and ultimately reject the violent elements within your work –reforming or disavowing the key beliefs used to justify acts of violence activated by all sorts of vague offences.’

‘A world without reckoning?’

‘Oh there will be reckoning –through commitment to free speech, awareness, and the truth. This is the better path to justice.’

Two Armin appeared, led by a stout librarian. ‘Miss Anastasia! There she is,’ he huffed out of breath.

‘What are you doing in my library?’ growled Anastasia at the Armin. ‘Finally come to burn the place down?’ she mumbled at Cari out of their earshot.

‘Miss,’ interrupted Cari, ‘if you could stop seeing red for just a moment…’

Anastasia looked at Cari impatiently, what are you trying to say?

Anna took a deep breath and looked again at the Armin. She noticed a tan piece of thread on one of their wrists, and gave them a moment to explain themselves.

‘Miss Anastasia, we have business with you,’ stated one of them bluntly, regarding Sen Derte distrustingly as they passed a sealed note to her. Anna recognised the wax seal belonged to May Camelia Delevar.

‘This section is now closed for cleaning Sen Derte,’ said Anastasia caustically as she abandoned the trolley and motioned for Cari to follow her straightaway.

As they broke out of the isles into a foyer, Anna nodded at an Armin reclining and smoking in an armchair by the entrance.

‘This section is closed for the day,’ charged Anna loudly as she passed him by and extracted some keys for the entrance to a locked stairwell.

In the vault, several levels below the ground floor, Cari is reciting the codes of items for Anna to locate. Using a unique lever, Anna is unbolting a complicated metal-in-stone lock.

After reading another long number, Cari pauses to wonder, ‘are you sure we will only need one trolley? This seems to be a decent list.’

‘We don’t know the size of the items yet, we’ll see how we go,’ insisted Anna as she heaved on a heavy stone casket, and it rolled on metal bearings in grooves, out of the wall.

Inside were numerous timber boxes wrapped in felt. Anna checked their numbers, found the pattern in which they had been packed and procured the ones Camelia was collecting personally within the hour.

‘What’s in them?’ asked Cari.

‘Mechanical stuff,’ shrugged Anna as she gently pried the lid off one item to find a lone yoke and magnet –Cari inspected it naively. ‘Harmless bits and pieces on their own,’ commented Anna as she put the boxes together on the trolley.

‘0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,’ read Cari. ‘21, 34, 55, 89, and 1. Then 44, 2 triple 3, double 7, and 6.’

‘Are you afraid to pronounce that sequence of numbers?’ smiled Anna.

Cari looked around the cool stone vault without answering; the silence was piercing.

‘Don’t be afraid, it was used at that time as a code,’ waved Anna dismissively as she procured the last three boxes. ‘And giving form to something and naming it makes it easier to wrestle with in your mind –kind of like giving shape to a number. What does one thing look like, what does no thing look like?’ asked Anna rhetorically as she pushed the heavy casket back into the wall. ‘Don’t be scared of signs and symbols –we give them meaning and influence and we can just as easily take that away,’ she assured as she tightened the lock with the lever.

‘I’m sorry for threatening to leave you on the spot with Derte too,’ apologised Anna as they began making their way to an empty passageway. ‘I just can’t be around him. I feel he’s somewhat responsible for a lot of the suffering that’s been magnified by these fanatics, these self-righteous fools whose beliefs blind them from truly perceiving anything beyond their selves… including themselves.’

‘You think his story had that much effect?’ thought Cari as she carefully organised the boxes on the trolley so as they would not fall off.

Anna seemed to hold her breath a moment, stonewalling herself.

Cari did not notice Anna purse her lips as they set the trolley in motion together, pushing and pulling –it was unexpectedly heavy.

‘Whatever possesses people to create such things, that might have such consequences,’ pondered Cari as they circuited the vault.

They pulled back the veil across the levels exit way and prepared to ascend in a lift beside the stairwell.

Anna acknowledged in a softer tone, ‘I’m sorry. I guess, we are all capable of having misguided intentions…if it was so easy to walk into the abyss and come back with gold every time we’d all be doing it. We have to take the bad with the good too sometimes I guess…sifting as we go.’

~

Jim, a broken hearted poet, was moping by the kitchen when Kiara stopped him.

‘Hey, solid ballad at last night’s session,’ hailed Heather as she rocked her baby.

Jim shrugged awkwardly, as Kiara borrowed his firelighter, and Sonya spotted him.

‘Jim! Come, this we need doing,’ insisted Sonya, leaving her work to drag him over to an unusual looking device.

As Sonya dragged him, Jim overheard Heather’s quiet words under the sound of birds chirping, and people chopping and chatting.

‘Samuel would of have loved it,’ smiled Heather sadly as she set her baby down.

Heather had returned to concentrating on her writing before Jim knew how to reply.

‘This Freja’s invention,’ explained Sonya. ‘Now look, cocoa! All of this we need in here okay?’

Using an old tree log as a seat, Jim tried to look lively as he sat down before the device and a bag of beans. He complimented Freja by saying, ‘neat.’ She shrugged as she ceased chopping and sheathed her knife.

‘Don’t shrug, say thank you,’ scolded Sonya.

‘Thank you,’ said Freja in a courteous manner as she approached Jim.

Stepping over the log Jim was sitting on, Freja rummaged around in a hessian sack before tossing three unusual objects onto the ground, narrowly missing Jim’s feet. After unwrapping one from some cloth, she began to fit the parts onto the device –another cog, a funnel and a turning handle. Then Freja showed Jim where to pour the beans and turn the wheel to grind and mill them into a creamy dark paste.

Jim was happy to help and worked contentedly once left alone.

In several trips back and forth, Freja began dropping handfuls of round slices of gold tubers into the water filled clay pot on the fire.

Kiara, stoking the fire, piped up. ‘Some see our desire to withdraw from using so many things as going backwards somehow. I mean like that they don’t want us to be without good tools and machinery like they use,’ expanded Kiara as she selected some gathered branches.

‘You mean technology?’ helped Katherine.

‘Yeah, they think we’re trying to go backwards into tribal ways.’

‘Who us –regress? And what’s their understanding of tribal though?’ wondered Katherine. ‘I mean tribe literally just means group of people…surely by now we’re beyond the negative connotations originating from colonisers stories about people they subjugated,’ she frowned.

‘Subjawha?’ repeated Kiara.

‘Conquered, dominated,’ explained Katherine.

‘Colonist,’ repeated Jim offhandedly. ‘How poetic is the Ashen language.’

‘Kiara,’ interjected Urja as he finished sifting some rice. ‘These width branches are best for making coals.’

Sonya ceased crushing and grinding with the mortar and pestle briefly, to chop some dark green leek leaves for the stew they had begun building. She left the large rectangle squares for Freja, beside the handfuls of golden roots, round and sliced, for the pot over the flame.

‘Assure your friends,’ said Katherine gently, ‘that we intend to use technology many influential Ashen don’t really want us using.’

‘What kind of technology, and why wouldn’t they want us using it?’ asked Kiara as she added more wood to the growing fire.

‘Go easy Kia,’ interrupted Urja as he poured rice into the pan. ‘That pile’s only a couple hours’ worth.’

‘Don’t worry,’ assured Jullee, who had appeared holding a spoon, ‘we’ve got a few loads of grass briquettes due this arvo.’

‘Quick! Grab a bowl or she’ll eat straight out the pot,’ hurried Sonya.

~

Jade ceased watching driftwood and seedpods caught in an eddy of the river, and returned his attention to Prahla. Clothed as a commoner again, she was watering the tiny green sprout they had planted in an earth filled drinking cup. The cup was fractured and chipped, the handle roughly broken off, but the hand painted flowers of a skilled artisan and its gildings lent it beauty still.

‘I’ve never seen such flowers,’ commented Prahla absently, as she watered and nursed the sprout with her hands.

‘Bread?’ asked Jade.

When Prahla didn’t respond straight away, he noticed her distracted by the Lord and Lady Bons, seated along the Harmin Terraces, overlooking the river high behind them. The sounds of raucous laughter and jeering could be overheard coming from different groups playing gambling games, and a few plastic shekels trickled from above, through the balcony columns.

‘Don’t mind them,’ elbowed Jade. ‘That upper crust…they’re just a whole bunch of crumbs, sticking together.’

Prahla chuckled as Jade savagely ripped their small loaf of grain bread with his teeth. Crumbs fell upon the ground as he tendered her the remains, and to their mutual delight, a bluebird came for the sunflower hearts.

~

‘Joan, you won’t get in to the Channelled Forces,’ said Melanie matter-of-factly, ‘unless we do this.’

‘Aunty Mel, how will you afford your wavetherapy…and the rest of it!?’

‘I have enough.’

‘For now…but what about later? No, I can’t take your credits Aunty, I can’t… I mean you are literally cutting your own life shorter,’ remonstrated Joan gently. ‘There has to be another way.’

‘It’s been arranged. It’s done. You go next thrittnight. I made up my mind, and we shall have no more discussion of it,’ determined Melanie.

Joan gripped the sleeves of the ceremonial Guild uniform she was wearing, ‘I don’t have to do this.’

Melanie stood up and walked over to the cocktail bar in her empty manor, littered with new letters of invitation for herself to different union, league and society events.

‘Joan, I know why you’ve wanted to join the Force full-time,’ admitted Melanie as she placed a cut glass tumbler on the bar and selected a whiskey from the extraordinary collection of unique spirits behind her. ‘That said, combined with your Ebonrose Guild training, I believe you have something special to give –and gain.’

‘What if this is what’s special in me?’ demanded Joan as she raised her forearms.

Melanie poured herself a whiskey. ‘You won’t pass the medical with your condition…being dependant on such extreme intervention.’

Mel drank wholly before continuing in a level tone. ‘If the bones won’t remain frozen in place...’

‘Stop!’ yelled Joan, clutching her head.

‘Dear, synthetic arms rival the functionality of biological limbs now.’

‘Stop talking,’ begged Joan as she looked at her aching hands, perfectly formed. ‘What would they do with me…the pieces of me? Just throw them away!? I can’t do it,’ she shuddered.

‘This is your chance,’ reminded Melanie as she poured another drink, ‘to stop the pain and do something I know you’ve always wanted to do… something you’ve been working towards –in your heart! So why are we arguing?’

‘I don’t know, I’m confused,’ breathed Joan.

‘You’re scared,’ stated Mel as she supped another whiskey. ‘But it’s for the best, in the long scheme of things…and that’s what matters most. We have to keep doing what is best for the most amount of people, not just ourselves.’ Melanie clearly appeared to be steeling herself. ‘My world is populated with two types of people Joan –those who talk of what they’ve done, and those who talk of what they’re to do –and you my dear are neither.’

Mel finished her second whiskey. She paused a moment to see where her lipstick had stained the cut glass, as Joan contemplated her hands, its vessels, and the lines of her palms.

~

Nelesia had finished water colouring a painting of a vase of yellow orchids in their mutc’dom, and had begun rinsing and stacking clear petri dishes in the kitchenette.

Young Ataur entered, carrying the stem cutting of a monstera in a small pot of soil. ‘Mum!’

A petri dish slid off another and over the edge of the bench –splattering watery green paint drops across the snow-white floor. Nel quickly picked up the dish, rinsed it, and allowed the floor to absorb the last droplets before Ataur reached her.

‘Did you water it?’ asked Nelesia as she dried her hands in a heatbow on the wall.

‘Yes, now what?’ asked Ataur as Nel lifted him onto the bench and more closely inspected the healthy leaf.

‘And now… we wait for it to strike,’ twinkled Nelesia.

~

Mario held Camelia’s invitation contemplatively.

He was trying to picture how ninety minutes in the private home of Roderick Mann, listening to the opinion leader Jù Xue speak about Richard Rinehart, would pan out.

Richard, a striking Arik-Shyrat lad had come to Asher years before, as part of a relief effort sent from the neighbouring city-state of Nahul. Baiting surviving inhabitants with food and shelter, Richard’s alliance with Lonigan soon birthed the Armin and strained ties with Nahul. Being well fed and well-armed they swiftly took control of the city-state; destroying all idols and artefacts of Gondor, the Daugn, and Raken in the process. Though Gondorian worship practices were not punishable by law, the new culturally accepted religion became that of the Thebes who discredited the existence of God, gods and deities on the grounds observants caused conflict with their hypocrisy and will to ignorance based on fear.

While displaced residents began returning, able-bodied slaves cleared rubble, and plumbers raced to restore the city’s aqueducts. In the midst of violence and disagreement over what the new city should look like, Richard had gained peoples favour with a unique set of treasures. A series of drawings and paintings by unknown artists that had either accurately recorded or imagined this landscape some indefinite time ago. Mario had gathered that Richard used his gifts to supplant the vision of a great metropolis, within the minds of many powerful families and influential merchants. Richard clearly led the oligarchy now, assuming the title of Lord Mayor in the absence of royalty.

Though Mario welcomed the uniting of so many disparate civil groups with a particular vision, he saw the thirst for profit that would overshadow the delivery of greatly needed infrastructure and services. He wondered to what ends the money Richard was garnering from Nahul was flowing as it passed through the Cua’mo, out of Asher to Reagan.

A group of merchants from Reagan who were in the business of building, and called themselves Cua Mos Kha, had offered to rebuild Ashers council chambers, book repository, an academy, and a temple to the healer-god Minh Ihuicatl used as a place of healing with potions. When many freed-slaves began completing work on behalf of the Cua’mo, its chief executives insisted they be considered as a single body –that there be created a single entity of sorts. This would protect them from being punished personally for mistakes workers might make while their business served the City’s subjects. It would also simplify the businesses payments by the City of Asher’s governance. So the business Cua’mo was granted personhood on paper.

It came to be realised that the Cua’mo held little regard for their labour workforce and none for the environment. When the Sacred Grove Trees of Kourdell were destroyed without consent, and the graves of innumerable workers toiling in dangerous conditions became apparent, the Regalian Council was only just beginning to understand the implications of the Cua’mo’s acquisition of the same rights as a physical human under Ashen law. So while the placement of responsibility and blame was refractory, and councillors continued to disagree over the ways in which the business should be controlled with regulations, the deaths and the damages continued. The situation as the temple was being built, was that Armin stood beside mercenaries, securing the companies worksites and protecting the place of business and its workers. To Mario, it appeared as if the company had such power to protect itself not unlike the state of Asher.

Among other desperate issues, Mario wanted to stop the trafficking of children; a practice he’d had the misfortune of discovering when offered a workforce for one of his mines, many years ago. He dreaded that the problems and issues he truly wanted to raise in the presence of Jù Xue would fall on indifferent ears; further alienating him from the caste whose power he actually needed most for changes to occur. Mario, though almost completely Ashen in appearance, was an Atarah-Amacite, a people whose beliefs and practices were closer to the animism of the Song Dynasty. Atarah’s were generally related to rock fairies and dread faun, and so were regarded disparagingly by Ashen worshipping stone and metals. Because of his heritage, Mario questioned his capacity to befriend the people of governance descended from the Uetzcayotl and Eloxotzin clans who had long ago conquered and settled as Ashen.

When Ashen first seized the lowlands, they claimed the existing tribes did not farm the land, though it was obvious they had organised systems of food growing, harvesting and distribution. Mario knew it to be true that several surviving Song clans, Amacite tribes, Osvaldur monks, and tree-city Amery’s had benefited from complex trade throughout the fertile crescent valley for uncounted generations before the Ashen arrived. The Ashen brought a new order, and suffering and death followed on a scale previously unimaginable. Not only did the slaves building the city perish in great numbers, but so too did Armin and homeless inhabitants that could not adjust to the Ashen order. The greatest loss of life came with the Raken-Daugn war caused by Hadarach retaliating against the Ashen push of Armin run Loaman labour settlements, attempting to expand the Ashen state’s territory overseas.

Foods, which had once been harvested in abundance, became scarce, and hundreds of species of fruit and tubers had disappeared altogether from being improperly reaped or banned by Ashen law. Deprived of their long held food sources, many clans and tribes were forced to adapt to the Ashen system to survive. Cocoa beans, grown in the great wild and mountainous regions Ashen did not favour, were the first currency many tribes tendered to the Ashen in return for food. The proffering of beans was quickly followed by the use of grains as a means for dealing with the Ashen threatening to drive them from their lands. The regular supply of percentages of family’s crops to the governments Armin meant they could keep farming the land. However, the age of small farming passed quickly when the grains of a certain company of men began to take root in all fields. Entire crops were burned under the premise they were stolen property, unlawfully grown without the owner’s permission, and therefore illegal. Mario suspected the move to disregard the pre-existing agricultural practices of the subjugated inhabitants was an economic move, to disadvantage them in the Ashen game of stones to follow.  

As the woodlands disappeared, so too did the materials and fuel inhabitants needed to build their homes and fuel their lives. A new energy was required, and the Ashen provided it in the form of coal and gas mined from the earth.

The new power was accessible only within the City limits, and to enter the city inhabitants were mandated to register themselves as Ashen. It was an easy process, where individuals were issued a document on paper confirming their identity, and then given tokens for the purchase of food, and a bonus of plastic chips slightly higher than the measure of sheaves they brought with them to buy their way into the Ashen system. With that document, people became serfs that could come and go from most gates of the City of Asher, and were entitled to its protection and justice.

Such access to food, clothing and housing further influenced outer tribes to adopt Ashen activities in pursuit of plastic. The decline of skilled artisans and the rise of machines grew in parallel to the hunger for plastic in the face of scarcity and fear for one’s safety.

Widely and falsely held, was that there was not enough resources to go around, and that people needed controlling for their own safety. The Ashen recreated many standards and became an army of people imposing norms on one another; anxieties deepened by the paralysing mantra what will others think of me? Levels of class and caste came to be, and the higher class determined the common people as helpless and wicked in their true nature –and so, with time, the serfs came to believe it so too. There grew a fear of ones neighbour.

But Mario did not believe in the wickedness of all men, and pondered how the great wheel, this machination of a few men that disadvantaged all Other, could be brought to a grinding halt.

Mario wondered what it would take to make people withdraw their support, non-violently ceasing participation…but they would need clear alternatives that he personally knew not. Mario could only see: the Cayotl cartel that invented and owned the Bank of Stones; the Stone Bank’s branches that loaned to businesses such as the Cua’mo; the businesses that funded politicians such as in the Regalian Council; and the politicians that kept the people. Politicians taxing the populace to cover their own debt plus interest, so various corporations like the Cua’mo could repay their loans of non-existent money to the Stone Bank. A bank that maintained scarcity of the currency, and continually controlled and lowered its value by printing more of it when they saw fit. Combined with the non-volunteer social services of councillors, the Bank of Stones therefore held the greatest influence over the quality of life for all serfs perpetually in debt to one or another.

None were impervious to the new order, though all were obliged to participate many came willingly. Women who acquired plastic received standing, authority, and the right to a personality they had never been allowed before. They developed a sense of individual identity that disrupted existing hierarchies and weakened the control Ashen parents and husbands had typically wielded over them. When men blamed women for undercutting their earnings and pleaded them to return to domestic service, the work they were ‘born to do,’ women asked why they shouldn’t be free to choose their own vocations instead of being as slaves.

Many slaves had been taken from the existing lands, and the shores of Hadarach. Though slavery was officially abolished by the Regalian Council in the end years of the Raken-Daugn War to effect peace –hence labour providing businesses like the Cua’mo came to be. In hindsight, Mario supposed Rinehart saw no need to reinstate slavery when he took power, as a new system of debt servitude was to be instituted as a binding force.

In Nahul, refusing to tolerate further degradation based on the perceived weakness of their sex, it took women many more years to find writers that were willing to champion their plight –so that public opinion could also demand the transformation of sweatshop hellholes into decent workshops, and slave drivers into considerate employers. Meanwhile, with their newfound income, women and men now frequented public spaces in search of amusements, and so participate in the now rapidly expanded consumer economy.

For a time, safeguarded by the rule of law, people became healthy and prosperous. It appeared that human dignity had been restored for the first time since the last attempted genocide, but division and disparity lurked for access to all was not equal –in fact it was growing.

More noticeably in Asher, impoverished of time, and earthly resources, many people no longer determined themselves in distinctive and beautiful ways; a sameness threatened to wash over the landscape and its people. A mental lameness, deepened by the denial of schooling for some and the loss of historical truth for others, stalled the growth of the most spirited of people. True Ashen, separated from the Great Spirit, were insatiable, and many grew in deviance through their search for fulfilment.

Mario did not take his financial freedoms for granted, and his invitation by the socialite Camelia to dalliance with the upper echelon of a society into which he’d integrated with great difficulty, could not be ignored. His desire to understand the men behind the Cayotl cartel was also strong –what drives people to pursue, beyond money, such power? Do they not see the monsters they have become?

‘Let me not forget myself,’ he prayed as he took a pen and ink and began to write: Thank you very much for your invitation to take part …

~

Nelesia wakes in the dark, short of breath, her heart beating rapidly…an inexplicable sense of impending doom. She places her hand on the bed beside her, Poltauramy isn’t there.

‘Are you okay?’

He’s walking through the doorway with a glass of water.

‘Arrgh! Again, for no reason, I just don’t understand…nothing is wrong! I don’t know why this is happening to me,’ bemoans Nel as she clutches her forehead and draws deep breaths.

‘Here…this is what you need to be worried about,’ said Poltauramy as he sat the water next to her and wrapped his arms around her.

‘You’re crushing me!’ cried Nelesia.

‘Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon,’ insisted Poltauramy as he squeezed her even tighter. ‘Now sleep…sleep.’

Nel cried out before she gave up straining against him, and they laughed together as he released her.

~

At work in her own lab space, Nelesia accidentally knocked a full glass of water across the interactive surface of her table. It pooled upon the images of the plant species she was comparing, making for a watery green display. As she hurriedly removed her cotton lab coat to soak up the spill, she noticed her head felt hot and her ears were ringing again.

Walking lethargically into another work section to throw the soaked garment in a laundry bin, Nelesia took a few unusual steps backwards. She bumped into someone scribbling on an amber bottle and they dropped their silver permanent marker in an effort to save the bottle.

‘Nel!’

‘Sorry!’

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, of course.’

They looked at her suspiciously. Only moments before they’d been gossiping about how she was coping with the loss of Poltauramy –she didn’t look as if she’d been crying.

‘My glutathione and melatonin’s down,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I haven’t been sleeping properly…I’ll come good soon enough,’ she shivered in her spine. The noise in her mind receded.

The water soaked weight in her hands dripped on the pristine floor, she felt it through the soles of her feet.

~

Edy picked up another stone out of the water of the little stream, flecked with silver.

‘I invented these myself. They’re the only ones in existence,’ she made-up as she held two of a kind for skimming. She proffered one to Jade and the other to Prahla.

‘Now,’ to each of them she said, ‘you may take one on the condition that you return me two.’

Edy stepped back as Mica retrieved a pomegranate from his bag, and proceeded to cut around its crown with a paring knife.

Prahla went to snatch Jade’s stone from his hand.

‘Hey! Don’t steal! Let’s not fight,’ said Jade.

‘Well could I borrow yours for a minute?’ Prahla asked Jade.

‘No.’

‘But then how else do I get another?’ Prahla asked Edy.

Edy shrugged.

‘We was hoping you’d tell us!’ jested Mica as he broke the crown of the pomegranate off, exposing the ruby-red seeds inside. Mica kept the crown and gave the body to Edy. She broke the fruit apart and tendered Jade and Prahla a section each. ‘And don’t ask for more,’ she cheeked.

‘I’m glad you decided to join us,’ said Edy as they ate.

A strange look fell upon Mica’s face and he looked around.

The large convoy of colourfully adorned people walking towards the city had stopped not far from the walls of Asher. Many were using the rest break to layabout stretching their legs and chatting, while others played card games and some even pitched shelters.

‘What is it?’ asked Edy as their friends Geoldoff and Velda passed by, stooping into a tent.

‘What is that?’ wondered Mica. ‘It’s gone now. Wait hang on…can’t you hear that?’

Edy, Jade and Prahla pricked their eyes, ‘no,’ affirmed Edy.

‘Yeah,’ said Prahla. ‘Like eeeigh,’ she squeaked –Jade giggled at her.

‘Who knows. Say don’t waste the seeds, if you’re not going to eat them, keep them to plant while they’re alive,’ suggested Edy to Jade. ‘Like that sapling on the side of your backpack.’

~

‘How do you know how much to add?’ asked Freja of Sonya who was adding dried pomegranate seeds to her coveted reddukkar mix.

‘A little at a time,’ Sonya explained, ‘until…you know.’

Freja nodded politely at her ambiguous reply, as she and Katherine covertly grinned at one another in agreeance, thinking she’s adorable.

‘Katherine,’ snapped Sonya.

‘Yes, nani?’

‘You’re not happy.’

Katherine saw Jullee with a hand bowl, accepting a ladle of unfinished soup from the pot over the fire. Unconsciously putting a free hand to her back, Jullee straightened up quickly as Heather approach her with a belt of knotted strings hanging from a staff.

As they conversed, Katherine noted Heather’s guardians, at ease some distance away.

Jullee was already bouncing slightly and apologetically walking away as she had to be somewhere else as per usual.

‘Let me help you with those,’ offered Katherine to Freja as she began tearing bulbs of garlic apart and crushing the cloves.

‘Ey!’ prodded Sonya.

Katherine contemplated Sonya a moment before shouting, ‘Whadyu want? Buchakos!?’

‘Ah yes!’

‘And buchakos you shall have,’ swore Katherine as she rained a handful of garlic papers over Sonya. Sonya retaliated by throwing Katherine’s discarded thyme sticks at her, they clung to her hair.

‘Enough!’ barked Freja as she flipped and spun the knife in her hand at them.

Katherine and Sonya leaned away in mock fear, giggling before Katherine asked, ‘what wood is that anyway?’

‘Birchbark.’

‘May I?’

‘Sure.’

Katherine took the steel in hand. ‘Bharavarsha,’ she acknowledged as she considered her mortality.

In control, she saw the first time she had escaped death as a door through which she had passed –somewhere in time she was already dead. As she counted the times thereafter she had passed through that door, a frame in an open field, she felt a splitting, a branching away from herself that back added to her present self. For a long moment, suspended between a terrible sadness for humanity and grateful joy for her life, she tried to gauge whether she felt more dead or alive inside. Living memories came to her of deceased people who had guided her, mentored her, counselled and taught her at different times over the years; they lit the darkness inside her. Here we are.

Katherine thumbed the sharp edge of the blade, and then ran her fingers over the cool, metal surface of its cheek from the heel to the point. The metal looked like marbled water, with black waves in a sea of silver –or were they silver waves in a dark sea?

‘My guardian,’ stated Freja as she took back her blade and quickly started quartering onions.

Katherine looked at Freja, serene in her resentment. The fireplace flared as hulls were thrown into the flames. Where women were consolidating the hulled rice, a woman returned a stray grain to her basket.

‘It only takes one grain of rice to tip the scales,’ deliberated Katherine quietly.

~

Mon Muir to her left and Mon Santos to her right, Prue sat with five members of the Regalian Council. Directly opposite her was the mild mannered Abishek, his thumbnails stained green. He was bookended by the slim bronzed skin horticulturalist Zainab, and the pale plump pastoralist Paul. Prue sat upright in a woman’s chair with her hands folded in her lap, as they reclined in traditional men’s chairs, which were higher and with arms. Two other empty ladies chairs had been pushed aside.

Carrying a jug of water, one of May Camelia Delavar’s petite maidservants entered the living room. She passed by a grand piano close to the doorway as she made her way towards the gathering in the middle of the room.

On the farthest side of the room from the door was an immense writing desk; mahogany, with a green leather top. It was normally quite sunlit by a great window divided into a grid of small panes, very similar to the closed doors of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covering one side of the room. However, the skies were presently grey and it was showering lightly outside; the lack of light in the room was depressing.

Abishek saw a lone fig leaf become briefly stuck against the window overlooking the desk behind Prue, and then noticed an odd pane of glass that was greenish-tinged.

Alone at dusk, Anastasia had raised the wick in the oil lamp to cast more light upon the books and journals upon the writing table. She marked their words, and filled their columns, with the names of suspected ghostwriters.

As sunlight dimmed the lamplight at dawn Anastasia departed, leaving the books open upon the table for Camelia.

This morning Camelia had been casually pacing the room as she perused lists of employees, when something crashed through a windowpane. A red ball rolled to a stop underneath the tea table, and the shouts of children playing outside wafted through the broken opening as she paid no heed and continued reading. However, at a knock on the door she halted, intently scanning the list she was holding until she quickly found a particular name. ‘Come in!’ she called, returning to the desk to jot it down.

By the time her maidservant reached the desk, Camelia had swiftly shut and put away all the books upon the sunlit table –leaving only a note with four names upon it.

‘For Prue,’ she waved as she locked the desk drawers.

Mikaela took the note, folded it and slipped it into her brassiere.

Glancing the fractured remains of the broken pane of glass, Camelia knelt down and began picking up stray pieces. A shard caught by a sunray was casting coloured light upon the ceiling as she called out to Mikaela, ‘and please send someone to fix the window, it’s going to rain.’

In the afternoon as clouds gathered, Prue seated herself on a small chair by a tea table. The absent Mon Delevar’s immense writing desk loomed behind her, situated as it was on a section of raised floor. The desk was bare aside from some writing instruments and a ship in a bottle –a harpoon gun mounted at its bow.

A manservant opened the windows opposite the bookwall, before beginning to refill the lamps in the room with pungent oil.

After pouring steaming hot water for Mon Muir’s green tea, Mon Santos’ black tea, and Prue’s blooming tea, Camelia’s maidservant placed the jug by Abishek’s spicy cocoa.

Before turning to leave the room, she closed all but one window from the wind and rain. Despite the lack of light, it was warm and muggy; Prue felt it to be stifling, but resisted the urge to pick up a folded hand fan resting beside the tea tables centrepiece –a knotted ball of dried seaweeds.

Abishek felt his cup was still too hot and turned to see Mikaela was gently closing the heavy door of the room behind her.

Prue contemplates the pair of torchères bearing plants on both sides of the closed doorway; the containers did not match. Opposite a ceramic holder, a square grey plastic container appeared out of place amongst the eccentric antique themed décor of the room.

‘They probably didn’t trim the roots in time and the container cracked,’ Muir supposed.

‘Maybe,’ disagreed Prue as she admired Mon Muir’s cravat, embossed with flowers.

‘So, to recap,’ assessed Prue, ‘we placed these living beings on a sliding scale system of value. Objectified and finally monetised, these creatures became increasingly unable to deal with their own basic, even natural, needs.’

Zainab looked from Prue to the other men, unmoving.

‘The first sickness was not from exposure to famine, disease, or climate conditions,’ continued Prue, ‘all of which we know they could have adapted to or evolved from –given time and freedom. No, the deformations are largely due to man’s great interference.’

Upon the table, the flower in Prue’s lone tea slowly unfurled.

‘I agree with Mon Muir, from here on, we must honour universal will towards diversity,’ insisted Prue.

Mon Muir sipped his tea and sank more comfortably into his chair.

‘Exploiting wild populations,’ continued Prue, ‘by selectively reaping according to our economic desires not only destroyed existing mating systems, but in most instances removed them altogether. Creating the conditions for forced mating has clearly changed the course of their evolution.’

‘And potentially ours,’ added Abishek tentatively –unexpectedly.

Defensive, Paul the pastoralist pursed his lips.

Prue avoiding pausing. Armin and attendants stood just outside the only known door to the room, waiting for each of them. ‘It has been of great concern that our labour populations are trying to recover from that disease, as they continue to consume not only equally degenerate but even imitation food, en masse. The selling and consumption of plastic grains left me wondering, is there any farther man can possibly push in his efforts to gain something for nothing? To take without giving? I thought not –but it is with even deeper displeasure, no truly, horror, that this early morning, investigations provided us with evidence of some long held claims against prime.’

Abishek restlessly gripped and tapped the arms of his chair before speaking. ‘It’s long been said that managers must acknowledge the undesirable outcomes exploitation is producing –such as hereditary changes that ironically threaten the very productivity they’re pursuing. Even when guided, when told what to do, the Industry of Prime clearly continued to ignore the production and processing standards the Council set. The input of feed and chemicals was never really regulated,’ remonstrated Abishek.

‘Regulations weren’t enforced due to corruption,’ lashed Muir.

‘And in failing to meet their obligations, the gross negligence of Uetzcayotl Prime has compromised the health of our entire population,’ finished Prue as she lifted her glass. ‘Now, I have heard of survival cannibalism, but…’

A flash of lightning lit the room; its passing drew attention to how dark it had slowly become.

Without taking a sip, Prue set her glass down in the hard silence –the surface rippled over the flower wavering in its watery depths.

They heard the rain beating harder against the glass windowpanes in the wind blustering outside.

‘There will be heavy, heavy penalties Mena Prue,’ assured Paul.

Every drink rippled as thunder rolled through the room. Prue frowned curiously.

‘Yes, dealing with this situation will exact a heavy toll from all of us,’ agreed Councillor Santos. ‘It will be more than difficult to see the stock destroyed.’

They heard footsteps on the roof above them, followed by the sound of a container being set down.

‘Someone tarring the roof?’ supposed Abishek.

‘I don’t follow,’ ventured Zainab.

‘Gentlemen, the stock will have to be destroyed,’ stated Santos matter-of-factly over the sound of sporadic knocking from the roof above.

The councillors stilled in their seats as Prue gently chided. ‘You suggest this problem is no more difficult than burning the crops most unfortunately contaminated with your patented seeds Mon Santos.’

‘Dangerous stock should be destroyed,’ declared Santos. ‘You’ll see to it Paul?’

The councillors regarded Prue’s porcelain expression hesitantly.

She considered the lesions on Mon Santos hands.

‘Can we not let them go somewhere?’ agonised Muir.

‘By the desert?’ proposed Zainab.

‘They could breed or be brought back,’ wrestled Abishek

‘We need to control and contain,’ asserted Paul.

‘Then it is settled,’ closed Santos.

Paul looked around at each of them with a new wakefulness, second-guessing what had passed. Mon Muir leaned forward and furrowed his brow as Zainab stared around in disbelief. Abishek lifted his drink to his lips, but eventually sat it down again without partaking of it.

There was a knock at the door; it was the maidservant Mikaela.

‘Enter!’ called Prue. As Mikaela returned with cool water, Prue stated, ‘we are quite finished here today, thank you.’

Tentatively, the Councillors stood together and pardoned themselves with gestures of respect.

Abishek politely refused any water, appearing queasy.

Prue refrained from asking if he was okay as she took water to cool her tea. She then walked beside Mon Muir to the door, her fingertips pressed against the glass until they were white. As each departed, Muir remained with her in the doorway as she turned to the plants and poured her water into their soil. They contemplated the tea blossom by the wilted plant in the grey container.

‘Our streets have been soaked with the blood of civilians, and our fields with the blood of farmers,’ lamented Mon Muir. ‘May this be the last fatal repercussion of our greed, for we very well know there’s more than enough for everyone’s need.’

Wordlessly, Prue watched Muir leave before returning to her chair to pick up her scarf and fasten it tightly around her neck. She retrieved a note from her pocket as she approached Mon Delevar’s writing desk, and spotted a lone, blue, fountain pen on a wooden display stand. Carefully wielding the pen, she crossed out three names and circled the fourth and last. Refolding the paper, she slipped it through a gap into a locked desk drawer and turned to leave the room; rainwater began soaking the carpet as the wind changed.

~

Idols flitted and clinked, tinkled and tapped where they hung, as the night wind wooed and whistled, rushing through the doorway closing behind him. Into the easing rain he went, heavy boots thunking on muddy pavestones, water gushing from a thousand dark eyes in the wall.

He passes a group of people, huddled under a covered porch outside their home by a small cooking fire, daring their kin to try some food. ‘We love ube; you’re not really one of us unless you love ube. It tastes good, yes?’

‘Yes!’ they nod, their sour expression clearly saying no!

Some children playing with their own shadows cast against a wall start laughing at one another’s feigned fear as a suspicious shadow grew over them. Their Mother approaches brandishing a glowing lamp and they amuse at their disenchantment; the shadow had been cast by a few leaves from a pretty, little, plant. Their Mother struggles to shepherd them back inside the darkened house as they’re eagerly distracted by the colourful patterns now visible to them in the bright light. She eventually coaxes them to follow her away and they trace indentations in the walls appearing and disappearing as they follow the path of her light.

A couple sitting on another porch appears to be arguing. ‘No, they said maybe.’

‘But when we were in the marketplace they appeared to shake hands on it.’

‘A polite formality. And they said I don’t intend, they didn’t say I will not.’

In an open-faced building under repair, a carpenter appeared to be guiding his apprentice who was fumbling with a large picture. ‘That’s upside down, that’s the south side,’ he directs.

‘What’s that mean again?’ squints the apprentice.

‘That’s from the old system, we don’t use that anymore because it’s too easy to confuse with an awning.’

‘I thought we were here,’ he pointed, ‘but now I follow, I see.’

From somewhere in the ceiling, a painted canvas fell behind them and an actor appeared roughly dressed as a Bedouin. ‘Yes!’ he yells up at someone out of sight. ‘Our audience must be led to believe they are in the desert, this backdrop is perfect.’

A whitewashed board is covered with the news of the day: births, deaths, weddings, money received from Regan, some gossip on roguish Bons, and information on an upcoming event in The Arena –a game of Ninefield.

He wipes the rain from his face as he presses by, the little wooden gate to his home ahead.

With the small house enveloped by steady rain, the unoccupied kitchen feels tranquil. Swept and mopped of grain, the warm bedrock floor cradles bare feet. Embers glow dimly in the abandoned cookfire, as the flame from a decorative lamplight wanders over polished timber benches and tap fittings. Upon the kitchen table, beside a lone clay pot, some unused sprigs of different herbs rest in glasses of water. Comfortingly, several giant moths rest against the bark of the ancient acacia around which their home is built.

Everything has the appearance of being in place, with the exception of several threads of thick white string, oddly littered around the room on the floor and some lower shelves –he grins to himself.

Turning now to remove the lid of the clay pot, he finds the bowl empty but for a handwritten note that says thank you and is signed with the picture of a beetle that looks like a little pebble.

~

The curvature at the base of the red canyon began to protrude out overhead, creating a slightly cavernous space and feeling of shelter. As she wanders deeper into the recess, it feels warmer. Glad to find an unexpectedly quiet training ground she passes an unattended sand table, and peers around through sunlit specs of slowly drifting dust. She found a commander, sat absorbed in some work, intently focused on a complex and confusing looking device –metals, wires, and marbles.

Approaching gently, she took a moment to discern his nature and sense his temperament, before garnering his attention.

Realising he was not alone, he promptly finished securing a flat rectangle of dark glass against a tangle of grouped wires. She stopped to brush her fringe from her face and tighten her hairband.

He sprung to his feet to attend her, as she removed something from an inside chest pocket. Stretching forth her hand as he bounded towards her, he was slowly arrested by the visible green wax seal of Captain Mon Delevar. When he hesitated, she insisted with a firm nod.

As he took the letter and began reading, she regarded the number of Ashen weapons surrounding them, lying against numerous timber crates –few appeared broken or damaged in some way.

Turning around, a strip of warm amber light, angling into the open cavern from the lowering sun, fell upon her face. She halted in the heat, worshipfully summoning the fire through her bones.

‘Phaeona,’ he called.
She turned around, at ease that he knew who she was. Looking at him directly, determined that she would do anything for him, she realised he looked strangely startled.

Gathering himself quickly, he produced a pen from his chest pocket. When he glanced the crates, she turned around and patted her shoulder, telling him to use her back.

He rested the letter upon her shoulder blade and hesitated to touch her long dark hair. He gently moved it aside and when it fell back, he brushed it with feigned impatience. When she turned her head to move her own hair away and glance him sideways, it was enough to reveal her profile but not her full countenance. Unsure if he had bothered her and distracted by her eyelashes, he hurried to sign the paper.

When finished, she turned around and took back the paper, noting the handsome lettering of his wet signature. She lifted his arm by the wrist and motioned for him to hold steady, before leaning on it to make her own sign as a witness to his.

By order, the following daybreak, all the weapons in the crates lining the length of the canyon were to be taken to the coast and delivered to the shipping merchant Mon Delevar, whereupon Phaeona would oversee their transportation to Hadarach –her homeland.

She moved away from him and held their signatures to the sunlight as he stood at ease; a light gust of wind blew some dust from the ceiling above them into the ink as it was drying.

Phaeona turned to let him know she was leaving. Breaking their gaze courteously, they stood together for an exceptional time without speaking, before she operatively obliged to turn and leave. Folding the note as she left the cavern into the cooling air of the open canyon, the guarding presence of this acquainted stranger lingered as a blanket threatening to slip away. Walking resolutely, she passed some flowering cacti on the narrow crown of a hill pass in the canyon and descended into a valley of uncanny shadows.

A family’s cooking fire, a great distance away, exposed the round pen of an untamed horse weaving in its stall. Memories of horses rearing, black clouds, and war fires, intruded her ruminations –until a flash of light drew her attention to the sky, where clouds prouded over recoiling carmine cliffs. In the sweep of calm instilled by the enduring landscape, she curiously found herself reliving a series of harmless and brief encounters. The more she revisited these flickering memories, the longer they seemed to glow –effacing the former and causing a discomforting ache. Suspicious of the clouds upon her judgement, she tried to put things out of her mind but found herself travelling and tunnelling the very places she was trying to resist; her will was gently eroding. Unable to turn around, she realised the only way to go back was to get ahead.

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