21

‘LADIES, SHALL WE paint the town red?’
‘I’d rather paint it black.’
‘Why are you so blue?’
‘He’s been watching too many horror movies.’
‘Have not.’
‘Have too. Last night, something about hacking biological beings to usher in an era of intelligent design.’
‘Did you say beans?’ squinted Prussia.
‘Beings.’
‘It was a doco on how the Aleksi were created,’ defended Mikey.
‘Like she said,’ gibed Harje.
Zyzyva carefully emptied the last drop of red wine from an unlabelled bottle into her glass, adding sourly, ‘their transition was concerted by militarised bureau cats. It was unsurprisingly costly, ineffective, and marked by fatal privations.’
Mikey frowned defensively but hushed Zyzyva weakly as a conceeding afterthought.
Zyzyva said stonily, ‘recouping revenue demands consistent creativity -especially when you’re losing billions to criminal fines and settlements, annually. Hey, are you leaving already? Harje! Have another Grand Marin.’
‘No, I’m done,’ declared Harje. She glanced the underside of her wrist, it was already 2.30am.
‘She’s just wants to get home for quiche,’ muttered Prussia, sipping a chilled cocktail.
Zyzyva raised her eyebrows playfully. ‘Quiche?’
‘Oh, shut up,’ snapped Harje as she continued wandering away from them.
Fondly nicknamed The Library, Melanie’s wine and whiskey bar was set in the centre of a very heavily carpeted library overseen by a large carved wooden Jackalope. The ridges on its spiral horns glinted acutely under a downlight. The ceilings were covered with loosely hanging embroidered fabrics giving the queer sensation that they could be in an extravagant tent, perhaps of Bedouin royalty.
Harje now stood across the room looking at a book pulled from one of the countless floor-to-ceiling shelves; unable to clearly hear the conversation at the bar over the ambient beats coming from a vintage stereo somewhere between them in the fabricated room.
Inherited from her family -two generations of Unida- Melanie’s minimal-to-the-point-of-empty home had an unusual number of rooms as tombs housing famous fine art, but The Library was dense and housed oddities from bygone eras. They were gifts become heirlooms, as eclectic as the echelons of people whose paths Mel’s family had crossed. A Zoathnim rug, an equestrian painting, women’s suffrage memorabilia, antique hand tools, space age board games, video game consoles, a decoy duck, was pocketed away amid abundant rows of special edition books.
‘Mel, Harje needs a pick-me-up,’ yelled Prussia.
‘No! A put-me-down. I’ll have my nightcap now,’ insisted Harje.
‘I’ll get it,’ Mikey said for Harje to hear as he jumped up to get to a small coffee machine.
‘Mikey, where’s that waiter Mel invited to join us?’ poked Prussia.
Mel’s frank voice fell from somewhere high above them. She was groggily eyeing bottles, assessing her options. ‘He probably didn’t want to have to cross Ceres at this hour.’
‘The community gardens?’ pondered Prussia without looking up.
‘You’re making me nervous, please don’t fall Mel,’ said Harje from a distance, scrutinising the feet of a wooden ladder Mel was standing on -it was lodged into the thick pile of some carpet.
‘Because of the milky bar kid,’ said Mikey, as if that explained everything. He inspected Mel’s mix of sticky chai pulled from a freezer. ‘The compost kid,’ he expanded.
Mel murmured, ‘if not compost-ed by now.’
Prussia appeared nonplussed.
Zyzyva sipped her wine and piped up. ‘DNA from a half-composted chocolate bar wrapper was used to convict a kid for blowing up a school computer lab. It’s been all over the news for the last 12 hours.’
Mikey laughed. ‘Oh puhleese, like, it wasn’t the International Space Station,’ he scoffed boredly.
There was a moments silence. Refraining, everyone busied themselves drinking.
‘They claim he used something his mates dredged up from the Sachita River while magnet fishing,’ said Zyzyva. ‘Apparently, they rigged it at Ceres where half of the wrapper was found among other evidence, and where his travatar was detected interchanging before approaching the school. But what I find most interesting is how a little piece of plastic survived a small inferno to be found in all that debri.’
‘You mean foil,’ corrected Mikey.
Prussia looked at Zyzyva, sitting quite still, deep in thought. ‘No, I don’t think she did.’
‘And in tomorrow’s news,’ pretended Mikey, ‘another loose screw...’
‘As in, surviving vet?’ embellished Prussia. ‘Of non-consensual, illegal, human experiment programs the Cebuan Intelligence Agency ran through their scientific office and biological technology labs.’
‘No, from the Guild,’ corrected Mikey, ‘another loose screw from the Guild screws loose.’
‘The Guild!?’ everyone scoffed at the most unlikely, yet possible, scenario. The Guild was considered to be Netech’s most altruistic establishment because it was responsible for educating its highest levels of scholars -assumedly specifically trained to be stronger than bright eyed bushy tailed idyllists until confronted with the working world of compromise, opportunity, and greed.
‘Hey, who’s telling the story here!?’ insisted Mikey.
‘You’re right,’ jeered Zyzyva, ‘your network, your narrative.’
‘With enough loose screws, maybe the whole machine will fall apart,’ jested Prussia as if that would be marvellously entertaining.
From the top shelf of the whiskey library, a solid beam of Bluegum, Mel finally settled on something -a green labelled bottle with the golden drawing of a deer. She began climbing down an ornate wooden ladder.
Mikey put down his empty glass and picked up a cranberry crostini Melanie had provided earlier. ‘Eat,’ he ordered, beginning to pour Harje’s chai.
Zyzyva shook her head politely, Prussia partook, chorusing, ‘Harje, have something to eat.’
Mel sat the bottle she had chosen down, glanced everyone’s drinks, and began making Prussia another cocktail.
 ‘No thanks,’ replied Harje over her shoulder, remembering the hors d'oeuvres she had eaten earlier at another Wakefield Gallery exhibition opening. She passed a shelf, running her fingers over the old leathery spines of books on glaciers, thinking, ‘animals will survive, even if their societies do not. I inherited the ability to store energy well beyond my daily requirements,’ she admitted. ‘But I also inherited the ability to not get sick crawling through caves of batshit,’ hollered Harje,
‘Or people’s horseshit,’ muttered Prussia.
‘-so I’m not complaining.’
 ‘What workplace would you…?’ began Mikey.
‘The zoo?’ shrugged Zy, as Harje was too far away to hear over the sound of music and Mel shaking ice.
‘Another?’ asked Mel as she poured Prussia another cocktail and swept up an empty wine bottle. She carefully placed it in a crate behind the counter of her small circular bar.
‘Thank you darling,’ sparkled Zyzyva as she clinked Prussia’s glass, then flashed Mel an embossed scarlet robin on a cork.
Noting the bird in Zyzyva’s green claws, Melanie took a generous sip of her whiskey neat before turning to a wooden wine cabinet. The whiskeys smoky fragrance of charred timbers took her to an ironbark forest, where the deep matted brown fur of woolly mammoths was crawling with black footed huntsmen. Mel entertained the odd thought of roguish loggers standing in Netech where every tree was accounted for by name and number -some achieving cult celebrity status. Someone wielding an axe -a sharp clunky metal doorstop on a stick- to hack those individuals down, felt romantically medieval compared to the sight of monstrous metal dogs effortlessly strangling forests, ploughing fields of trees as if they were but blades of grass.

~

Melanie is sitting with Nelesia, they are watching an old video together.
Katie is confronting a man. ‘Listen here mate, do you have any idea what you’ve done?’
A group of workers had been charged with marking trees for harvesting. Failing to discern a main site for their source, their technology had wandered the entire forest marking trees to target. A machine had then actively sought and destroyed those trees. The arbitrary damage to other parts of the forest was wreaking unexpected havoc, as they sporadically struggled or collapsed over time. Wetlands, the site of the forests hardest working filter, were overwhelmed and swollen with foreign contaminants brought by the harvesters and their controllers. The Mother tree of the forest, its heart, the site of the oldest and most informative species, had inadvertently been damaged in the process and was incapable of self-repair. Trees that pre-dated the last ice age died in the ensuing environmental confusion, unnoticed.
Footsteps fall on the dusty ground of a ravaged forest, the landscape and its climate no longer able to create rain. A firestorm is coming to extinguish once common animals and medicinal plants.
Young Nel continues filming Katie as they flee The Black Forest fires.

~

Mel returned to her senses. There were silver specks of metal dust glistening on the cabinet ledge. Guessing she must have drunkenly pried and damaged the lock with the muddler another night, she touched it gently with her fingertip. There was condensation from making the chilled cocktail on her skin, Mel watched some particles float in a droplet of water. ‘Last time I had this batch was with Nel,’ she reminisced of the whiskey she was drinking, ‘it’s been a while.’
‘How long’s she been comatose for now?’ asked Mikey as Mel disappeared behind a cabinet door.
‘Ask Harje,’ prompted Prussia lazily.
Wide eyed, Zyzyva shook her head stiffly against the suggestion.
‘Wasn’t it Harje who hospitalised her?’ muttered Mikey.
The others glanced at one another.
‘Well someone had to,’ he added in one’s defence.
Prussia was unanimously given permission to respond. ‘Well, between the chronic fatigue, menstrual disorder, heart palpitations-’
‘Tachycardia,’ corrected Zyzyva.
‘-and several TIA’s that weren’t taken seriously -I’d have been bloody wild too.’
‘TIA’s?’
‘Mini strokes,’ confirmed Zyzyva.
‘Vertigo, loss of balance and coordination. Weakness, numbness in one side of the body -that only happens when there’s a temporary blockage of blood flow to the brain,’ said Prussia. ‘You know how our bodies have several times the worlds length of vascular channels, composed of millions of little muscles that when not stimulated get weak… and that given our clothes and this world we are completely insulated from the elements of nature on our bodies… well Greenfield took light and swam in cold water every day. She was in perfect vascular health one day but fainting halfway into the water the next.’
‘So, she wasn’t just…’ Mikey faltered as Zyzyva and Prussia exchanged unusual regards.
‘What? What were you going to say?’ accused Prussia.
‘Crazy, depressed?’ ventured Mikey tentatively.
‘She stopped swimming out of fear of drowning,’ stated Prussia. ‘Whatever was happening to her wasn’t some emotional reaction, it was a whole heap of very adverse physical reactions. She couldn’t recall the names of objects or people, muddled basic actions like making tea -hell, I noticed her misspelling basic words in her writing. She stopped working because she couldn’t function, couldn’t process things normally -it was like she was drugged or brain damaged.’ Prussia paused and said to herself, ‘It was probably both.’ Prussia waved her hands as if clearing her head. ‘It was like she had dementia, or something else that makes you like not really feel or be able to feel or react properly to your environment.’ Prussia took a deep slow breath. ‘And there’s the aggressive outbursts towards the end…but I mean, that’s to be expected of people when they’re confused, overwhelmed, and scared-’
‘Frustrated, angry,’ added Zyzyva.
‘-isn’t it? But, look, she wasn’t being taken seriously after being exposed to something. Something during a…’
‘Selardor Festival,’ recalled Zyzyva.
‘Apparently. Look, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ conceded Prussia. ‘It was imbedded in the operating system of a T class suit she’d worn.’
‘We can’t prove she was wearing,’ interrupted Zyzyva.
‘Wait, what? Why was she wearing a T suit? What was in the suit?’
‘Something that inflamed her liver, started concentrating in high amounts in her marrow and ovaries, while crossing the hallowed blood-brain barrier,’ said Prussia. ‘Aint nothing supposed to cross that… except maybe this,’ she chirped, swirling the ice in her glass.
‘How?’
‘Tsuits are programmed to deliver -sorry assist- sleep and wake cycle waves with all manner of technologically advanced designer substances we have nowadays that leech through the epidermis into the bloodstream,’ explained Zyzyva.
‘Well, whatever cocktail she received,’ said Prussia, ‘it was clearly not meant for someone like her. Appears to sheer off the grey matter faster than this,’ she raised her glass again, ‘now that’s saying something.’
‘Why was she dressed as a…’
‘Common?’ suggested Zyzyva.
‘- E Class,’ finished Mikey.
‘We think that after Poltauramy died,’ guessed Prussia, ‘Nelesia just needed to get out and have some time to be herself.’
‘Partying undercover?’ pictured Mikey.
‘Wandering Eden in-cognito… maybe for too long,’ sighed Prussia. ‘Whatever it was, it was never intended for our kind.’
‘But the suit manufacturers?’ pressed Mikey.
‘Soup manufacturers,’ quipped Mel as she rearranged bottles of alcohol on another shelf.
‘Indemnified,’ said Zyzyva mutely. ‘Even if we could prove that she had worn a suit that made her sick.’
Mikey shook his head with confusion.
Zyzyva began to explain. ‘The Netech Economic Forum controlled by the Reynard’s is a lobbying organisation funded by the most powerful companies in the world. They use PR to mould a public image of themselves, making them look really good, deflecting from the bad things they are actually doing.
Bad things like greenwashing companies that destroy environments, lying about emissions, dehumanising workers, allowing child slave labour, claiming they care about the environment while installing safety nets on their buildings to stop workers killing themselves. These are the industries that were complicit in the destruction of earth and continue to lie about human rights abuses.
When the NEF lobbies governing agencies or the public through special interest groups, they get laws written and passed that will assist their companies to do the business they are doing. They lobby to create an environment for themselves to do the one thing they care about – making more profit. NEF is an economic public relations campaign. Messages to netizens are not there to benefit people, they’re there to benefit the companies. Companies that see people as commodities, not souls that deserve respect. Major greed is behind their major actions. The Reynard’s are groundskeeping our world with a big club and we aren’t in it.
No’skins are made by Mercal, which is in the Reynard Foundation’s little club,’ stated Zyzyva. ‘Consider Mercal’s picture-perfect board of directors for a moment, ethnically diverse from various sectors. Well, behind the scenes, they all have vested interests, or literal investments, in companies connected to Bluerock.
Bluerock is the largest asset management firm in our world. They own a part of everything -stocks, companies, property and more- with the main purpose of driving profit for themselves and their shareholders. They are the biggest shareholder in every bank of every sector. Your pension and insurance credits are invested with Bluerock or in a fund connected to Bluerock in some way. They own every media organisation and social media platform in Netech. They bought as much of the real estate market as they could by paying 50 percent higher than the asking price, thereby driving up the prices of family homes and driving down people’s ability to own them. Their circular ownership of so many companies allows them to have shadow monopolies on sectors without having a direct monopoly. However individualised companies like Mercal would have us believe they are, their core interests support and grow Bluerock’s core interest. It’s in Bluerock’s best interest to support them and vice versa, do you see? With so many players, so many arms, in on the same game, they have the power to create laws-’
‘And exploit,’ nodded Prussia.
‘-more loopholes than…’
‘A crochet blankie,’ suggested Mel.
Hesitantly, Zyzyva allowed the unusual remark. She interlocked the fingers of her hands, twisting them into the angelic clasp of a choirgirl at heart. ‘Multiple directors being responsible for your companies vested interests but really working for the benefit of the same outside corporation, therefore potentially jeopardising the survival of that existing company, having the power to dissolve it from the inside out, shareholders none the wiser, it’s totally unethical and illegal but you can’t prove it on paper or screen. Those particular people suffer intoxicating and stupefying power -literally now.’
Prussia lifted her head, to counter the sudden weight in her mind. ‘Opposed to us muppets performing officialities based on MyME data.’ She rubbed her face with both hands. ‘The Corporate and financial elites that sought to centralise power and conceal the mechanics of power so ordinary Netizens couldn’t intervene in the systems in control of their lives -thereby bypassing democracy- never went away, they just changed face. Forget watertight security from hacktivists, electronic voting polls fluctuate with social dramas -cleverly contrived.’
Mel returned with another bottle of red robin and began opening it with a corkscrew.
Mikey looked puzzled. ‘So, all those rumours -that she went batshit crazy-’
‘Don’t hold back now,’ coughed Prussia with amusement.
‘- after losing her partner, that she caught the virus Poltauramy died from and is being kept in homeostasis until they find a cure- I don’t understand; if it’s just adverse reactions to a Tsuit why not be clear that’s the cause?’
Prussia and Zyzyva gave Mikey ample time to think it over before Mel relented.
‘Better to focus on half-truths, than draw attention to the fact our commons, the Untermensch, are obliged to consume,’ she paused carefully, ‘what we do not.’
Melanie unstoppered the bottle for decanting. ‘Imagine Class E, the emojgen, raised with AI prompted writing after losing their ability to copy and reproduce text they’ve found, and even their own written work… imagine what shape this idea would take in their head.’
‘You means heads,’ corrected Prussia.
‘No,’ replied Mel without missing a beat, ‘I can’t. And what will they do with their discombobulated story when they struggle to string sentences together but can mob and mobilise themselves so arbitrarily -aggressively trolling en masse, hunting down people-’
‘Or abused animals,’ noted Prussia hearteningly. ‘Didn’t they like have people calculate the alignment of stars, and setup sounds, and-‘
Mikey’s troubled expression shifted at the sight of red wine flowing through glass veins. ‘So, Nelesia’s just healing and could be right anytime now surely?’ he assumed optimistically distracted.
Prussia pursed her lips, unconsciously rubbing her chest. ‘We don’t know what’s triggering her most severe reactions, sudden bouts of pain, collapsing at work. Those times were so sporadic, it didn’t make sense -she’s another medical mystery, best protected in her coma. Maybe some inflammation clears, her body heals, and she’s able to speak comprehensibly. If she’s able to speak, then, hopefully, she can help us figure out whatever’s triggering her to have these seizures and prevent further brain damage.’
The background music swelled. Harje had found the source of their music, an antique stereo, and was enjoying turning the conspicuously protruding round dial up and down.
‘It’s hard to tell how affected she is after all this time,’ said Prussia, ‘the brain tissue samples we’ve seen don’t make sense.’
‘If they really do belong to her,’ said Zyzyva. ‘Little hard to get to someone quarantined.’
As the volume of music peaked, Prussia covered her ears. ‘Alright, alright!’ she decried loudly.
Harje relented and eased the music to a comfortable level.
‘I heard you and Ronan arguing earlier tonight, what was that all about?’ pried Prussia openly.
‘Reynard,’ replied Zyzyva shortly as she moved to join Harje in looking around the room.
‘For pissing, sorry, not pissing enough in his pockets?’ accused Prussia tipsily as she looked to Melanie for a reaction because they all knew she had recently dined with Reynard’s son.
Mel was distracted, pouring another wine into a spiral decanter and still remembering Nel’s description of a forest as she savoured her whiskey. Now, she was picturing the strange spiral growth of a tree, growing in a significant patch of sunlight piercing the shady canopy of higher trees, its trunk twisting like a corkscrew over time as it followed the sun. Melanie was realising she had never rested under a field of stars so vast she could feel the turning of the world. She had never tracked the moon over treetops or appreciated the sun rising and falling over the course of a whole day of play in the Parklands. Mel felt eyes upon her. She glanced at Prussia; like a mirror, the Jackalope was inspecting her most curiously. With its enormous antlers, upright ears, and pointed face with shiny round black eyes like security camera domes.
Zyzyva drifted away over a Pleiian design rug, wine in hand.
What are they talking about? Ronan and Reynard -oh yes, treasury and treachery… ‘It’s impossible to tell who’s playing who when it comes to those guys these days.’
‘Ronan is worried Thibault will start poking holes in his pockets once he joins his Papa’s board,’ claimed Prussia.
‘That’s nonsense,’ cut Zyzyva, swaying to Prussia’s side. ‘Poltauramy’s passing has made Ronan the most powerful player in Netech, and Thibault has the means to become the highest bidder for his influence.’
‘Thibault doesn’t appear to share his Fathers singlemindedness in boosting credits,’ mentioned Mel.
‘Oh, so he did make an impression,’ cheeked Prussia.
‘Don’t let the Reynard’s philanthropic Foundation fool you,’ cautioned Zyzyva. ‘He’s from the same stock of sapless souls as his Great Grandpappy who spent millions promoting the safety and efficacy of products that earned him trillions-’
‘And injured millions,’ furthered Prussia.
‘Oh, I’m well aware,’ admitted Mel, ‘of the dirt disabling plant killers that endangered bees and beetles…’
‘Yes, destroyed plants immune systems, their ability to protect themselves,’ nodded Prussia.
‘and gifted people with a host of autoimmune diseases and neurological disorders,’ Zyzyva confirmed as if fondly remembering a golden age.
‘Why commit genocide when you can just stop or even rewind the evolutionary clock,’ said Prussia.
‘With targeted medicines,’ said Zyzyva.
‘No targeting,’ sang Prussia, ‘that’s where’s the cha-ching!’
‘You’re safe, you’ve got green eyes,’ joked Zyzyva because Prussia had blue eyes.
‘A defect from Mother’s side -biochemical war eleven generations ago.’
‘Oh, stop it,’ said Mikey.
‘They can’t,’ said Mel.
‘No, it’s okay,’ said Prussia, ‘The darling Reynard Foundation is going to sponsor my treatment -an eye transplant. Drugs and surgery to bring my exterior into alignment with my interior.’ She crossed her eyes.
‘Bless them,’ said Zyzyva, ‘They really will do whatever it takes when-’
‘Making dreams come true,’ they sang together, quoting Reynard Foundation advertising.
‘Though they haven’t gone on any conspicuous taxpayer funded smear campaigns that involved, say, publicly electrocuting elephants to death -you couldn’t put it past them,’ thought Prussia.
‘Well,’ agreed Zyzyva, ‘garnering attention from emotionally muted, confused and distracted consumers in the rotten habitus of vapid values that reality tv and social media built isn’t easy.’
‘Every second counts when you’re trying to bring delusion into reality,’ admitted Mel.
Mikey thrust his empty glass forward as the last of the wine he’d watched like a Hawk completed its spiralling circuit. ‘God, it’s easier catching seagulls.’
Prussia hiccoughed and leaned on the bar, relaxing into the music before retching at the mercy of another hiccup.
Stopped by the stack of vintage stereos and speaker in use, Harje commented, ‘each of these units would be worth an absolute fortune now.’ Recognising a similarly outdated gaming console, she looked to Melanie. ‘May I?’
‘They belong to my niece,’ replied Melanie over the music, waving a hand to say go ahead. ‘She left everything behind when she went to the Guild.’
‘At Petreya Academy?’
‘The one and only,’ confirmed Melanie.
Harje picked up a small plastic handheld device and turned it over in her hands. Seeing the exposed screws, she was tempted to crack open the case and check out the board inside. ‘Students used to make these during “educational” company programs or they wouldn’t receive their course credits, making it impossible for them to graduate.’
‘Forced work experience. Interesting.’ Zyzyva sipped, thinking of the economic benefits.
‘Students labour paid for one company’s success and the others survival,’ accused Harje. She put the gaming device back on the shelf. ‘Melanie, what did your niece study again?’
‘Terraforming.’
Prussia frowned. ‘Did you say-’

~

‘Tía! Are you heading to Cebuan anytime tomorrow?’ asked Young Joan as she placed the opened box containing her new guild uniform on the desk. She held up something Melanie recognised as a gaming cartridge. ‘I need to return this -the seller must have mixed up the boxes. I’m waiting on a console Jay’s modifying because of a game that’s not backwards compatible.’
‘Why haven’t they visited lately?’
‘Last week, DNA from an open rubbish bin in a region he regularly travels through was used to criminalise the wrong person for murder.’
Mel waited for a better excuse.
‘Also, his health status was changed when he skipped his last meal at school,’ shrugged Young Joan sardonically.
‘What about your homework?’
‘It’s coming along,’ she shrugged, swiping her hand through the air to reveal another screen with town plans on it. ‘See.’
A printer notification was flashing low on resin and requesting permission to place an order. Melanie cast her eyes over the quaint riverside village with a Long Hut Young Joan was constructing in 3D before printing for assessment.
‘And this land must belong to DNA are us?’ joked Melanie pointing to the surrounding extensive fields of sugarcane. ‘Insulin, growth hormone, useful designer proteins delivered direct to your dom.’
‘DNA from sugar cane,’ pondered young Joan as she rotated through the shelves of her vertical carousel wall cabinet. She caught a stray pinecone as it rolled loose with the movement and fell from a shelf of driftwood, shells and dried seeds; she put it back and continued shelf scrolling.
Melanie admired the embroidered vines on Young Joan’s Guild uniform. ‘Scooping out and emptying a fertile cell, sticking in new DNA, that’s the easy part…the skill lies in putting the DNA back into an organism in order to get it to perform.’
‘Getting it to boot up inside the cell,’ repeated Young Joan out of habit to remember, and politely show she was listening. Pulling a dark box from a stopped shelf, she jammed the cartridge into it. ‘Bingo! I almost forgot I had this one, who knows what else is in these boxes -I should make an inventory.’

~

‘I wonder how many of these things are left in the world?’ Harje returned the handheld game console to the shelf contemplatively. ‘Imagine being forced to make and sell low quality products that would require repurchasing every few years.’
‘To continue consumption trends,’ said Zyzyva boredly.
Zyzyva strained to hear Harje mumbling, ‘not long from where it began if you think about it.’
‘What are you talking about?’ frowned Mikey as he steadied his wine glass for the decanted wine.
Harje picked up her steaming chai. Nearing Mikey, she said, ‘planned obsolescence. Contrived durability and the prevention of repairs forcing you to upgrade.’
Mel poured the wine for Mikey and slid a lowball across the bar which stopped at Harje’s fingertips.
‘When everything produced in the economy was artificially made obsolete by the government at a certain date to cause the population to consume more,’ began Harje.
‘It sustained the economy while providing employment and fostering economic growth,’ said Zyzyva.
‘While wasting precious resources and destroying the environment,’ added Prussia acidly.
Mel threw a sugar cube, a splash of absinthe, and dash of bitters into Harje’s glass. She muddled it into a syrup before adding a bourbon as Harje said, ‘how can consumers get out of buying a new version of the same thing repetitively?’
Mikey cupped the weight of his full glass and shrugged. ‘Rent? A long lease, where your product is regularly replaced anyway -that’s clearly a better option.’  
Into Harje’s glass, Mel lowered a giant ice cube engraved with an open winged scarab.
Mikey turned his wrist to see the glowing logo of four stacked congruent cubes under his skin. It was a notification that several automatic software updates had been completed. ‘I mean, what’s the difference between a software subscription and a hardware subscription?’ he added as an afterthought.
Harje attempted to clarify, ‘So, when the ability to own things becomes difficult enough we readily submit to renting?’
‘We have,’ replied Mikey matter-of-factly as he massaged around the device in his forearm.
Harje watched Mel express the oil of an orange twist over the ice, saying all yours before dropping it into the glass as garnish.
‘Gracias.’ Harje lifted the drink to her lips and relished the orange scent.
‘And your happy with that?’
‘I don’t need to own my home, or my means of transport, or my means to communicate with others to be happy,’ stated Mikey. ‘What do I care about owning these things, when I can do what I need to with these things anyway?’
Without taking a sip, Harje lowered her drink and held it against her breast.
Mel leaned into the small circle they had created and asked Mikey. ‘If you don’t own the things that are an extension of yourself, the things that allow you to exercise bodily autonomy, how readily can you maintain sovereignty? How can you really be you, when your property can be seized, your right to using transport revoked, your means to communicate disconnected like -’ Mel snapped her fingers. ‘-that.’ She proceeded gently, ‘Tell me, exactly how much of who you are now is your authentic self? Just how driven have you been to conform -in order to level up?’
Mikey shrugged. ‘I always do the right thing.’
‘Says you. For who?’
‘Everyone.’
‘When?’
‘Always.’
‘Well that’s good. As long as you remember that the right thing is whatever they say is the right thing. And you best keep up, because the right thing today might be the wrong thing tomorrow, and the other way around next week.’
In the stillness, Mikey received another notification. He didn’t move to check it.
Mel passed Harje’s steaming chai and reached for some tea buds, they rang gently against the bottom of the ceramic cup Mel sprinkled them into. She added hot water, pouring it carefully as Harje drank her old fashioned. ‘Times have been and times will come again,’ incited Mel, ‘of unjust laws that lack the input, consent, and recognition of those forced to live with them. We must limit coercive and oppressive totalitarians ability to weed out ideologically non-compliant people. We must safeguard everyone’s ability to express themselves.’
Mikey stared at Mel for a moment, ‘what exactly do you want me to do?’
‘We want you to be, your best self.’
Harje picked up her chai. ‘We have eyes and ears enough in the hacker world, advance knowledge of what’s coming down the pipeline.’
‘You want me to be a spy!’
Mel shrugged. ‘We can take you off the census, so you can move a little more freely. Wouldn’t you like that? I mean, to be able to see whoever you want, whenever you want…?’
Mikey looked at Zyzyva who’d insisted he come here to Mel’s speak easy.
‘I can’t just be a nobody.’
‘But you could be anybody. A bar tender, waiter, cleaner… Once you are recognised as Carbon Class A, no-one will dare question your movements. Every humanoid and machine you meet will be bound by duty to serve you.’
‘And what do you want to know?’
‘The truth about how the community really feels about what is going on. They say the sun shines eternal on the people of Netech and its cities that never sleep -but we know better,’ said Mel, ‘and these fine folk,’ she motioned to the three of the highest elected members of Elthred seated in her speak easy -Min Prussia Catar, the Ida-el for Exploration and Foreign Affairs; Min Zyzyva Nuk, Ida for Economics and Finance; and Min Harje Livete, Ida of Work Practices-, ‘need proof.’
Melanie took a shot glass from under the bar and lifted it for Mikey to see a sun symbol on it. ‘If there’s anything I’ve learned from my family, it’s that you need to talk to one another.’ Mel twisted the glass to reveal a moon on the otherside. ‘In a world of fake news, bots, trolls, social media influencers and memetic warefare – un factual memes that satisfy us with a quick fix and influence us; memes that have been slightly distorted from one to the next, subtly shaping opinions and beliefs, distorting or destroying truths to confuse, cast doubt, and separate us – in such a world the antivirus for fear inducing malware remains to be logic and facts.’
‘And if I’m discovered?’
‘Impossible,’ stated Melanie. ‘Zyzyva will change your credit accounts and histories. Harje, will compose you a totally new work history and prospectus. And Prussia, can get you into any sector.’ Making point of his surroundings, she added some salt, saying, ‘it must be soul crushing to realise you’ve been born into a subset that cannot get…yet here you are.’
‘I’m going to need a shot -or four,’ declared Mikey.
‘No,’ insisted Mel. ‘You’ll bleed too much. You’ve had enough, we’ll do it now.’
‘I can handle it,’ insisted Mikey.
‘Look,’ negotiated Mel as she spun to grab a bottle of Fifth Estate Fireball, ‘you can have this when we’re done.’ She poured a shot in front of him. ‘After you’ve drunk this,’ she added, sliding the steaming cup of tea between him and the shot.
Mikey took a deep breath and looked to Zyzyva. She nodded curtly to say it’s okay.
Pressing something on the Jackalope, Melanie retrieved a package from a secret compartment as she spoke. ‘Imagine being able to see past the lies of division created so we can’t awaken from the fog. Imagine sisters talking to one another to get the whole picture from someone whose been telling them individually disparate stories, playing them off against one another.’
Dropping the package from the hidden compartment on the bar, she unfurled what looked like a canvas brush roll; filled with instruments, each stranger than the last.
‘Imagine a groundswell of people in common, rising up together, like mushrooms fruiting from a hidden rhizome network -appearing everywhere, suddenly, challenging opponents in every field. And imagine civilians and soldiers working together -another rum rebellion.’
Mel pulled out a tube of something and dripped a dark red sticky substance on his skin. She used the brush to spread the liquid all over his wrist and up his inner arm.
‘The problem with mass uprisings is that it becomes harder for mainstream media to do their job of smearing people, claiming discontent voices -such as those of men who’ve been stripped of their rights and means to feed their families- are those of crackpots, racists, misogynists, and Nazi’s. How futile it will be to send out militarised police, deploy the Armin, if we have a popular protest with all sides together.’
Mel dropped the brush into a narrow stainless-steel dish from another pocket.
‘I don’t want to start a protest,’ said Mikey.
‘I think it’s coming whether we like it or not,’ said Prussia.
‘In a way that will avoid making illegal gatherings,’ said Harje.
Melanie poured strong alcohol smelling disinfectant on the inner concave of an open metal wrist gauntlet being formed by joining several parts together. ‘We can still get everyone on the same page in spite of all this noise, the old-fashioned way.’
‘Without incriminating calls, texts, or emails? Let me guess -propaganda posters? Flyers?’
‘All of the above is valid, but this is your weapon of choice now.’ Zyzyva removed a case from a pocket and flipped it open. It was filled with limited credit cards and numerous business cards of different designs for The Gathering.
‘Are you joking!?’
Mel grabbed his other hand and held it down on the bar. ‘Relax, we also have to deprogram what’s in here…’ Mel tapped Mikey’s forehead.
‘Wait!’ Mikey grabbed the nearest bottle of wine as Mel locked the device over his wrist.
‘Welcome to the force -paper boy,’ laughed Melanie.
The bottle was empty, having gone into the spiral decanter. ‘No!’ cursed Mikey as his hand contorted, and colours danced under the skin of his fingers.

~

Quietly stressed out about the draconian and disadvantageous powers, recently implemented, that from history would only improve the power of existing systems technocratic tyrants were using to introduce measures that would never be rescinded, left Pieter feeling unable to compose himself -let alone a melody that wouldn’t bring whoever was listening down. Instead, he lay on a couch, absorbed in watching majestic big cats. In one of Attenborough’s documentaries, a Mother was fending off another predator.

On the otherside of the mutcdom, Cohen was distractedly waiting for the film’s credits. He was intent on finding a particular song title after the actors, producers, designers, writers, editors, castors, decorators, camera operators, painters, makeup artists, travel and transport coordinators, and visual and special effects people had been noted.
Working from home, he kept a loose eye on the weather as his shift -overseeing the automation of weather tasks- was ending. To the person taking over his shift, he would need to confirm a scheduled partial watering of Eden had begun. The quality of Eden’s manicured jungles was of great importance to wealthy and professional shoppers that might survey them as they dined at top end restaurants after a splurge. Precincts paid good money for humans to oversee and observe changes in plant’s dispositions.
On the side, Cohen scrolled through people’s storyline photos, decoding their columns of emojis. It was revealing when people’s children and increasingly also their partners, had been removed or disappeared in the last five to seven years. He felt queasy to discover many women’s husbands had been replaced by strangers in their own homes. When he hovered over the ‘like’ and ‘share’ buttons under a post collating other people’s posts of loss and whose blurb contained the words special military operation, a pop-up appeared -its symbol warning him against committing a wrongthink by forwarding such content.

Third-Generation human clones had recently been born without warrant by Second-Generation clones. Second-Gen clones had been born to unintentionally fertile First-Generation clones. According to rumour, 3GC’s were being separated from their chosen partners by the corporate designers of their Grandparents, and rematched with D Class silica models known as Kage. After public lobbying, the company Omegacoustics, founded by Albion Avshalom, had long ceased mass production of clones and humanoids for public consumption, and was now reduced to producing models for governing bodies explicit utilitarian requirements. Their cloned -for service- humans, and silica humanoid range, largely populates almost a third of Netech. As the primary producer of class A to D silica humanoids and originator of the First Generation of clones, Omegacoustics asserts it owns all subsequent versions of both. However, as the inevitability of Fourth Generation clones looms, the contentious topic of humanoid rights continues to beleaguer much law surrounding their enterprise.
Unsurprisingly, the data surrounding the affair was unavailable. The tax payer funded company responsible for publicly publishing the data, posted a pitiful disclaimer on their website -leaving the public in the dark. However, other tell tale signs of misconduct were not so easily hidden, such as data showing the fall of a sectors birth-rates by 99.68% within a certain month. Cohen felt failing to fight for clones rights was like failing to fight for women’s rights, which was like failing to fight for human rights.

Cohen noted Newthreads spouting dire warnings about the Bergislog Field Failure, the event overshadowing all others; causing widespread panic and invoking a state of emergency. Footage of unusually large crowds gathered at Rechk Point -beside the window providing a view of outer space to Raintree- showed people standing quietly being rounded up and herded away.
‘What’s really going on?’ mumbled Cohen. ‘Remember Cebuan after hackers messed with the utilities?’ he said a little louder. ‘Martial law has been known to last decades you know. Hell, this could go on forever if the wall is irreparably damaged,’ he despaired.
Pieter shifted uncomfortably, ‘no way, they can’t maintain this, it’s untenable.’ He decided to order food. ‘All of my accounts have been frozen,’ he said genuinely shocked.
‘What!? Mine was garnished again,’ mentioned Cohen. ‘I noticed last night.’ He watched the watering system activate in the leafy southern gardens. ‘But to be stopped all together!? What have you done?’
‘Nothing!’ insisted Pieter. ‘That I know of…’ he added. ‘Could be anything, captured by one of the five hundred cameras that’s recorded me this month.’
‘I heard a woman was fined for incorrectly wearing a seatbelt,’ mentioned Cohen, ‘she shifted it briefly while expressing breastmilk in the car on her way home late from a party to save time.’
‘Well, fool for thinking she had any more privacy than women in a women’s bathroom in Helicut,’ said Aly. She was pacing agitatedly, spinning her hat in her hands after Pieter and Cohen protested she stay put.
‘Well I wear my bloody seatbelt, why are my accounts frozen!?’ growled Pieter.
‘And we thought we’d taken the task of capital allocation off the faction with the best record in the misallocation of funds,’ twittered Cohen while activating frost to a primary growth sector, in order that they communicate to emerging saplings how to cope for future resistance.
‘But it’s still in the hands of a faction with a monopoly on violence without recourse,’ added Aly, glancing the closed clearway.
Their most modern spyhole was like peeking through the eye of a fly on the wall, multiple perimeter cameras revealing Aleksi and drones patrolling outside. ‘The cesspool of sociopaths that spearheaded digital colonialism proved most corporate clowns are excellent at profiteering, not the ethical distribution of wealth,’ said Aly icily. ‘Who knows, this is probably just another contrived drama to gain access to new markets.’
‘Well, whatever happens crew,’ bolstered Cohen, ‘don’t take drugs from convicted felons with legal indemnity.’
‘But soma’s free now,’ joked Pieter darkly and they all looked at one another stalwartly, each knowing none of the other would ever succumb to the addiction of instant gratification that disabled people from giving and receiving real love while being amused to death. Like free range cabbage patch kids obliged to eat trifle from glistening desert glasses, or honey skinned half castes ordered to marry Gondor’s chosen people, rebellion began by saying no thank you.
‘I’ll get you something to eat -if I haven’t been cut off too,’ promised Aly.
‘No, I’ve got it,’ said Cohen as he logged out of work.
Aly watched a woman on her way to her Father’s funeral being ordered to go back home. They proceeded to discredit her when she resisted, and she objected her detainment, saying, ‘we’ll if you’re going to fine me for something I guess I better actually go do that something -I’m off to my Father’s funeral.’ She was then arrested. Aly saw her routinely sedated when she became hysterical at being forced towards a divipod. In the end she walked towards it and seated herself inside calmly and compliantly.
Sporadically, Aly sat down to a screen and tried to reach Sonya with concern that she’d dropped offline. She hoped Sonya might just be concentrating on her children. Quick thinking, she sought the live public footage of Ceres, where Sonya’s family often went. Looking around the gardens, there were children in sight, but no sign of Sonya. Aly checked the time constantly, in anticipation that Grey might arrive despite the sudden suspension of civil liberties. She hoped he was travelling and had not been forcefully summoned by the Channelled Forces.

The front door alarm sounded.
‘I’ll get it,’ announced Pieter, moving without taking his eyes off a screen and tripping over Ebony’s finished wire sculpture of a puma. He moved it next to the free airbooster their local Unida had recently supplied; looking like an oversized handphone, standing disused to one side of their mutcdom, a space and resource wasting appliance, a gimmicky bribe, useful as a showbag of sugar.
‘Is there nowhere to put that thing?’
‘I don’t know why you bothered to unwrap it, how many tonnes of packaging…’
‘Oh, someone came ages ago to collect all our styrafoam,’ mentioned Pieter, straightening his flat cap as he reached the door.
‘Hey, why is there a comms signal coming from that oversized SMART fan?’ exclaimed Ebony as she walked into the mutcdom with her personal tablet. ‘And it’s not even turned on!’

~

From the darkness of the doorway, an imposing giant moved into the full moonlight, revealing a square pale face, clean shaven, framed with short fair hair. ‘You’re asking us for a broomstick at three in the morning?’ he amused, wide eyed. The sound of splashing water and laughter was heard distantly.
‘Your light’s on,’ accused Mica.
‘What are you up to?’
‘We need dowel for a solid timber frame.’
‘Must be pretty bloody solid.’
‘Enough to hold up 250-kilos.’
Light eyes sparkling, he thought, of what?
Eating a cherry tomato from a pile cupped in one hand, with his other hand holding four blue playing cards, he stepped aside and cocked his head to say come through. 

~

Fender uselessly wiped his oily stubby fingered hands on his overalls, before extending his hand to her.
Jaimie squeezed his hand, relaxed tensely, and they smiled at one another guardedly.
‘Now explain what happened to my baby.’
‘Well, they reckon it’s fragments of purifying particles accidentally left behind from the recycling process.’
‘And what do you reckon?’
‘You were sabotaged. The fuel you were all designated to take from that station, and provide a certified digital receipt to prove you had bought fuel from them that same morning, was polluted with nanites. They replicated their own units, taking material from whatever they touched -weakening and even tearing tiny holes in your fuel lines. That’s what messed with your engine pressure, causing the hyper fluctuations.’ He scratched his head, waiting for her reaction.
Quietly, referring to the nanites, she said, ‘because you can’t make something from nothing.’
She sighed. ‘A leaky gut -has this happened to anyone else?’
‘Yeah, we’re flat out dealing with it.’
‘Is it not obvious by now who all the good biodiesel is going to?’
‘Yeah nah this is the first time I’ve seen anything like this.’
‘Hmm.’ She looked around Fender’s workshop, calmly contemplating ways to counteract their sabotage. Beyond a car being wrecked, roughly stacked boxes of parts and broken metal pieces, Jaimee glanced a spot of organised mess by the wayside where she assumed Fender must be tinkering on his own designs. She noticed an unusual conglomeration of parts that reminded her of a metal xylophone. She wondered briefly where that could possibly fit in a car.
‘Maybe, you should steel me up,’ she ordered, ‘like, harden us up with some legit resistance, install metal pipes.’
‘So, you wanna build a rocket now?’ amused Fender.
‘Maybe I do,’ beamed Jaimee.
‘Can you afford it?’
‘Well…I’ve been trying to bust through the protection racket for the rich by energising some idle credit on developing essential technologies…’
‘Investing? Why bother…’
‘Because we aren’t paid what we’re worth, we’re paid what we have the power to negotiate.’
Fender sniffed.
‘I don’t care if it looks like some steampunk contraption, let’s be ready to enter the next qualifier.’
‘Next week?’
‘Yes!’ she exclaimed, ‘while they still think they’ve got the better of us and can cleanly make off with the profits of our disadvantage -can you do it?’
‘Well, I finish this Friday actually…’ admitted Fender. ‘New CFP post. But, we can steel make it happen.’
Jaime held her breath to avoid laughing at, rather than with, him. Oh god, who chipped you? She thought.

~

A sealed path within Netech, ran over streams, past ponds, and under palms, away from their apartment amongst columnar towers like egg covered grass stalks. Sonya is hurriedly crossing The Parklands, heading towards the expanse community gardens. She hoped to find her husband with their children there, still enjoying feeding the chickens or returning home.
A swarm of Channelled Forces Drones and Autonomous Drone Insects flew overhead.
Sonya started running.

Grains of sand are falling through a tube.
‘Keep pouring the coloured sand through this tube.’ To the young boy’s Father, the seller added, ‘only the red sand will stick, the rest will pass by. Pour again and the blue sand will stick to the yellow. Pour a third time and the yellow will stick to the red. We call it affinity chromatography.’
As his oldest child Arin awed at the magic of the process, his distracted youngest daughter Dahlia was looking around the garden market. She announced, ‘Dad, that woman is so wrinkly, I think she’s going to die soon.’
Jonathon, eyes on the formations building at the end of two tubes now, squeezed his daughters hand saying, ‘shhh Dahl.’
‘It’s inspired by magnetic sand from The Black Sea,’ the seller said theatrically.
‘Dad, that man’s haircut fell off!’ was next said of a bald headed, bearded man, in heavy boots -who either didn’t hear or chose not to acknowledge the comment as he passed.
‘Dahlia, don’t yell. Look here, look at this.’
‘The grains are shaped like hexagonal prisms,’ explained the seller, ‘which are really truncated octahedrons.’
Dahlia looked for all of three seconds.
‘Each side attracts only one of another, it’s opposite. Increasing the number of passes, increases the chances of connection. It amuses the kids to watch all these little blocks put themselves together, building up in a chain reaction to form shapes and objects.’
Jonathon could see his son was interested and said, ‘we’ll take one.’
The seller smiled. ‘Would you like a set in large, medium, small or nano?’
A baby in a pram was chuckling as another family approached the display.
‘Dad! When you make a baby-’ Sonya’s husband laughed emphatically as he promptly lifted his daughter up into a hug, knowing he couldn’t silence her, ‘-can I help stick all the pieces together?’
The seller and other browsers who overheard were amused until the sudden appearance of several Aleksi gave the distinct feeling something was wrong. People stopped flowing around the market space -they became frozen; distracted, looking at screens or into space as they listened to disembodied voices in their heads breaking News and Special Services Messages. Everyone without an official exemption, was ordered to return home immediately.
Jonathon was still holding his daughter as an Aleksi scanned him.

Sonya burst into the garden to find gardeners cleaning the coops, shovelling copious amounts of chicken poo into barrels.
There was no sign of her family.
‘Shit!’ stressed Sonya.
‘Fertiliser,’ corrected one of the workers automatically.

~

Tender tendrils, green cables of ivy that looked like Monstera in most sectors, trailed along pathways and corridors; climbing walls into windows and spilling back out of such windows, lining alleyways and streets. The art installation, grown so quickly in a once hyper atmosphere, gave the illusion of life to public spaces now eerily still and void of company -as if the whole world had slipped into delta wave sleep.

~

Barefoot, she padded gently through the Hall of Sleepers in search of the sun -the orchestra had moved her. There were people sitting and lying down, deep in meditation. The quiet accentuated the lack of bird song and the energy rippling across the room, converging into a babbling brook, seemed agitated. Sonique followed its flow out of the chamber, continuing to explore claustrophobic corridors. With the notes of symphonic instruments resounding inside, she recalled fast flowing rivers, the shimmering foliage of forests, and the gritty warm grain of sand -a desert, a shore, a sea ray half the size of the Long Hut, rising out of the sea and flying overhead.

Discreet and systematic in her searching, Sonique also found a cave system filled with timber crates of weapons she recognised from the hands of Tekah Ahn, Ashen, and Raken. She had not seen such instruments since wandering the Plains.

In the southern amphitheatre, Sonique had watched Greibarians escorting people carrying baskets down to the edge of the lake. As the Pleiians lit a fire in a large bowl, Sonique was reminded of the Ashen ceremony below a great wheel. With dread and growing anxiety, she had looked to Celia, Rai and Tephio -they had appeared at ease, and so too had she become.

In her searching, Sonique could find no way unto the island by way of any corridor.
As she watched people stepping into the lake laden with baskets a third time, radiating ripples that travelled easily across the surface of the water, she began to suspect that the only way to reach the island was to cross the lake.

~

Pieter moved across the room to answer the front door alarm.
Cohen watched a newsfeed of Aleksi systematically clearing Rechk Point. He was still angry at his accounts being frozen, and adamant he had not lost social credits or exceeded his carbon footprint -imposed by the Netech Economic Forum, tracked and monitored through his digital ID. ‘You know, now would be the perfect time to get a clear snapshot of people’s essential routine and pinpoint their closest circles,’ he thought. ‘I mean, with all this fear about the future we’re naturally inclined to rely on or at least reach out to our very closest family and friends.’
Having entered the mutcdom, complaining about the appearance of a new comms signal in their home, Ebony said, ‘as if they don’t already know all that already -there’s no privacy in this place. Our private rooms been jammed, someone’s cottoned on to multiple users reading and deleting drafts at shared email addresses to communicate.’ She saw the look on Pieter’s face by their front door as he turned around to face everyone. ‘Who is it Pieter? Aleksi?’
His heart raced loudly. ‘No, they look like bureau cats.’
Pieter’s words sound tracked Cohen’s horror in realising the staggering number of women’s husbands that had recently disappeared and been replaced by socially accredited strangers, sent by regional governing bodies to live in their homes.
A cold washed through Aly’s chest.
‘Why are they here?’ asked Ebony as she rushed to Pieter’s side, to look for herself.
Like the responsive but typically out of check algorithm for a personal playlist, their mutcdom turned into the picturesque scene of evergreens by a running river with joyful families arriving for a day party. Irritated, Ebony finger-punched the control panel on the wall by the door and turned it off.
Their home returned to white.
‘Wait!’ yelled Aly, ‘let me answer it. Everyone, go shut yourself in your pods.’
‘What? Why?’ argued Ebony, ‘we haven’t done anything. I’m standing right here. Open the door Pieter!’

~

They had marched into a gorgeous garden on the edge of Asher.
She considered the peaceful beauty of their surroundings in the late summer weather, resonating Spring. Little succulents by their side, the scent of jasmine swirling around them; the glow of the late sun upon freshly mulched garden beds, a freshly stained veranda, swinging birdfeeder, broken window, blanketed couch, and coloured chalkboard of notes and messages about food and fixings. A message scroll lay just out of sight behind herbs on the kitchen bench.
Barefoot in a thin dress, she stood within the threshold of her sanctuary, faced by two severe looking Armin dressed in black. Another hovered at a distance by the gate. Burdened with weapons, they wore combat armour and chest plates with a black eye on their heart centre. Towering over her at the doorstep, threatening to alert her master and withhold several months of her earnings for communing with any one. How could she explain, if it were true, that she only needed the comfort of a friend because she was experiencing depression or grief, having lost a loved one or been harmed again? Right now, conjugal visits were legal but visits by others were illegal and would be reported by bored and brainwashed neighbours. Regardless of whether one might need care or assistance, especially with extra children and elderly parents to care for since Asher’s main hospital and many lesser clinics were now inaccessible - destroyed by recent earth tremors.
The Armin looked through the house, beyond a veranda to a rockpool in a landscaped garden behind her. ‘Are you okay?’ pried the Armin for a fifth time.
As property of the Ashen state, she was subject to a considerable set of rules. This included not interacting with the general public -to incur less injury or disease…and limit our ability to consort over our conditions she thought.
She swayed. Clearly alone and now irritated, ‘yes,’ she said for the fifth time while looking at the eye on his chest. Thinking why do you keep asking!? Why don’t you leave now it’s obvious I am alone?
She began to feel ill. There was nowhere to begin. She was physically fine despite being exhausted by their culture of refusing to acknowledge her kinds complaints, yet always appearing to offer retributive justice after the violence. She was livid: about being controlled with threats and false accusations; bored sick of being lied to, led on and let down; disordered from sporadic attacks; wearied from being hyper vigilant -the history of every strike fortifying her mind and muscle; discouraged by the sorrow that followed times of sunshine as deepening troughs in increasingly demented waves; and vexed by sheeple oblivious to the patterns, still acting like crabs in a bucket dragging down anyone close to climbing out.
To stay high, she wanted to retreat and never be found, but the wilderness belonged to them now -they would stop her reaching there. It was up to them when and where she should be, and how, by day and night. So, she chose to stay. Besides, things were better since the war -she didn’t have to choose whether to flee or fight out of fear of kidnap, rape, or murder; with babies, children and elderly parents in tow. These four walls, this stall, was safe -the wilderness must wait.
Outside, a man and woman could be heard fighting in a house nearby, a young boy ran past on the street with tears streaming down his face, and within sight an old woman was placing flowers under a street lantern with a red scarf tied around it. Food wrappings and other rubbish had built up along the front step of a nearby deserted and unkempt house where last month a son had hung himself on the clothes line after finding his mother had killed herself in the kitchen. Corrupted by pain, people were increasingly choosing permanent solutions to temporary problems.
Today, against these toady’s and neighbourhood spies she had not the means to object. The Armin noticed her eyes, suddenly as heavy as her heart and her body -dancing alone only minutes ago- now stood slumped and still inside the door frame. Her aura shrank and the vampire dementors, like dogs that had lost a scent, prepared to leave. She was allowing her desire to lash out wash deep down into the compressed core where all rage was typically annulled for the day. Feeling lighter, she admitted their silence was better than being subjected to corporate activist gobbledygook.
‘I’m fine,’ bowed the housebound maidservant, her quiet face aglow in the setting suns light. Still looking at the ground, she hoped, ‘are we done here?’ Don’t you have somewhere better to be?
The Thebe’s, three black suit corporate controlled militia working for the god of endless war, sent not to deliver justice but to deliver law, departed leisurely.

~

Barbuak was restless in the underground, and still awake a long while after Remi had left them. Their cavernous underground room was now dimly lit by a single globe. Though the muffled sounds of talking and laughter passing outside the closed wooden door was reassuring, a draught was coming from somewhere, and he was certain this room felt colder than everywhere they’d ventured in this underground complex so far.

After a particularly cold stream of air passed over them, he longed for the familiarity of the cool store they had kept in the cliffside cave with its climbing plants. He was sure he couldn’t stand this strangeness much longer.

Barbuak rolled over and tried not to picture the home they had lost.

A low wail of air drove him to sit bolt upright.

 

~

 

Finlee’s tame wolfdog began to whine.

Assuming it would bark, Lonigan shot a glare from where he was standing, carefully drawing lines on a map.

Jeremoth was pompously leaving The Hall, contemplating the ceremony he would conduct during the games at The Arena to elevate his sect. He was carrying the strange white stone from the Hiidean’s that Richard had regarded dismissively. Jeremoth would take it back to the Mara in the Temple of Quatar, so they could inspect it finally before it was stored away by Anastasia in the Alecsee Library.

Richard was distracted, occupied by the return of giant hominid Nibwaw Ariod and death drivelling Raken. He fretted about receiving another drink, confident Chaise and Freeman would find the Ariod’s whereabouts beyond the Northern Paper Plains, but unable to shape what they would learn.

In a psychosis induced by Richard’s cocktails, Finlee was regimentally organising the relocation of his fellow mineworkers to Norwood Base. It required forcing them from their local work and marching them far from home. At Norwood these men would be well positioned to confront any Ariod and first line fodder against any Raken, ahead of Ashers Armin, now commanded by Cornelius of the Norwest Woods. Cornelius was finishing securing the city, delivering martial law under the pretence it was in the wake of an earthquake whose damage had triggered looting, violence, and general chaos.

Richard’s servants had deserted The Hall in fear, so only soldiers remained.

Finlee’s wolfdog whined again.

‘Shut that dog up,’ ordered Lonigan.

Practiced in the art of pretence, Prue glanced at Lonigan blankly.

 

Prue knew full well of Lonigan’s participation with Richard in the campaign of deportation and mass killing conducted against Ashers subjects by their government during the Raken-Daugn war.

Across the Kariah Sea in Hadarach, Raken held a holy book granting them divine permission to enslave infidels. Though slavery existed mostly in the form of marriage, forced as it was. Ashers women noticed most eleven, twelve, up to fourteen-year-old Daughn girls disappeared customarily from Thebe schools and communities annually, never to be seen again. After Ashers failed attempt to conquer Hadarach for the wealth of its resources, refugees already fleeing tribal Warlords and now Ashen versus Raken conflict, flooded onto the shores of the continent largely controlled by the Ashen Empire.

In Asher, Thebe’s resentment of Gondor related economic and political successes had been growing, it was a reversal of Thebe’s social hierarchies that envisioned themselves as superior. A census, taken in which women were included for the first time -though still unable to vote and absent in chairs of official governance- preceded legislation passed to formally authorise the deportation and expulsion by executive agency of unlawful aliens -those without an Ashen citizen Ship paper. The seemingly arbitrary use of numbers to identify people made it easier to discriminate individuals by sex and race.

So, when the Raken-Daugn came for retribution in reaction to the expanding Ashen empire’s violent excursions, it triggered the start of an all-out war.

Poor leadership and harsh conditions contributed to the Thebe’s worst defeat on the mountainous Western Front, but the government shifted the blame, claiming treachery. All Daugn, Gondor, and suspected adherents of ancient Song practices long condemned by Gondor, were publicly vilified.

To recover their pride, all fought dutifully in the successful Battle of Longreach and the Raken advance was ended. What remained of Song culture after being widely belittled and demeaned by Thebes and Gondor adherents had made them easy to eradicate. Out of fear of extreme fundamentalist thought rising again, the Thebian military took a leaf from the book of Raken practice. Believing themselves retired after the victory, having fought for the Thebe’s, Gondor soldiers and Marahn Daugn were demobilized and transferred into labour battalions. The disarmed soldiers were suddenly and systematically murdered by Thebe troops. Meanwhile, as people were encouraged to kill their neighbours, irregular forces carried out mass killings in villages well beyond established Ashen borders. Unfortunately, civilians’ resistance provided authorities with a pretext for employing even harsher measures. The women and children who survived the ensuing killing fields, death marches, or desert concentration camps, were forced to give up their identities and convert to being Thebe’s. Though the government denied intentionally endeavouring to destroy everyone not descended from Uetzcayotl and Eloxotzin clans, they had indeed attempted genocide.

 

Dust eventually settled in great empty mountain hollows where ancient carvings of meditating giants had stood for centuries. Gondorian children hiding from Raken in the most famous surviving building from the pre-Ashen, Song era, The Hall of Slain Warriors, were either sent to their afterlife or spared to serve the new order. Ending the war, the Thebe’s defaced The Hall from within and inhabited the classical structure to assert their power and mark their victory.

Smoke from the pyre of saints, stripped from The Hall’s vaulted ceilings, had ushered in the Ashen era.

Now, a monolith stood where their ashes had lain cold in the morning light.

Then, while drunken revellers had danced themselves furiously to sleep, a few had discreetly taken some ashes to keep in memoriam, thinking lest we forget.

 

Hallways lined with mute and glassy eyed birds and extinct beasts cast shadows like an alien army.

A humble carpenter who had refused to fashion a table with the legs of an actual deer had become the first taxidermised human in the collection. Drawings of coveted but elusive Uwai and Ariod hung framed in their absence, surrounded by curious artefacts -tufts of hair like dried kelp vines, coarse fabric like salty reed mats, a giant ring, and tiny skulls the size of your thumbnail.

In the great Hall and centre of what had become a hollowed ark of death, Richard rested upon the backs of past leaders -some living and others cast. It was a morbid and grotesque throne to dissuade disagreement.

Outside, the wheel of Quatar turned without pause, fuelled by the givings of those who climbed its steps for the Mara, Ashers Uber elite.

Inside, Lonigan was still pouring over papers on Secret Military Armaments Residential Technologies when Finlee’s wolf whined again. ‘Shut it up,’ repeated Lonigan irritatedly as he counted public ballista placements on a city map.

Prue gently dropped a hand and Finlee’s black and white-faced wolf pup padded towards her. She gently stroked Hel’s silken noble face and rubbed her soft ears with feigned savagery.

 

~

 

Certain he saw something move, Barbuak stood up and stepped over Lenshu to get closer to the wall where the sound had come from. The tapestry gave way under his touch, so he took a corner and slowly lifted it to reveal a lightless warren. A beetle ambled out. Barbuak quickly dropped the fabric, lest another critter or creature follow; skittering or creeping upon them into the dim light where he stood while the others slept. He grasped another hanging, it too covered another pitch-black hole, a tunnel of sorts in the wall.

Barbuak’s gaze drifted upwards. The high walls were covered with pretty pictures of quaint countryside scenes. The hairs on the back of his neck stood. He wondered if they too were all thin veils for giant wormholes, tunnels extending to unknown reaches. Barbuak was spooked by vague imaginings of what could come from the other side.

 

~

 

Matahari knew there was only one place left to look. She retrieved the silver pick and inserted it into the dark metal eye of the wooden door, squeezing the loop on the end with her thumb, and rotating it until the square teeth on the opposite end pushed the internal locks aside. After all this time, the sturdy skeleton key still worked.

Matahari was followed into the old quarters. With respectful intentions, she crossed the threshold first. There was no fear in it.

Expectantly, Matahari felt the echoes of candles as they moved through the short entrance. The thick carpeted floor let them move gently and silently. The distant sounds of melodious birdsongs grew as they passed dark timber banisters of elegant and sturdy twin staircases leading upwards on their right.

Moving to inspect the lower level first, Matahari entered a warm room of low ceiling. Glowing light revealed solid timber walls. There was a bench running the length of the wall facing them, covered by a table runner of clean white linen. On it, to her left, something beautiful captured Matahari’s attention -glowing specks of dust floating upward like embers from a magical fire. She thought a candle was burning inside a white collar sitting on the bench, meaning they hadn’t been long gone and her heart hoped, but it was a trick of light.

She saw a hammer, a white collar, and a leather wallet together. The hammer was old, with a worn wooden handle and simple dirty gold coloured metal head. The collar was a crisp white and clean circle. The soft brown leather wallet for holding smoking leaves or money was etched with sharp angular lettering -maybe a name too worn to read.

Matahari felt the building was empty, and suddenly knew they would find no one here. ‘He isn’t here, Finlee is missing,’ Matahari admitted. She heard shuffling behind her as someone turned to leave, saying, ‘I’ll let Raoul know.’

On the same bench running along the wall of the room, Matahari found a closed book resting by tree leaves. Briefly she had supposed a vase was holding fresh leaves, but now she realised it was the branches of a real living tree. It was growing through the wall and into a brightly sunlit spot. Its scent was beautiful.

As Matahari picked up the book from the table under its branches to inspect its fragile, almost translucent, white pages dotted with ink, the tree leaves quivered and swayed. A sound like water rushing rose -it was wind.

 

~

 

Barbuak shook Lenshu.

‘Len,’ he growled, ‘Lenshu, wake up!’

Lenshu stirred. ‘Bruak,’ he murmured. ‘What?’

‘Something’s not right…’

Lenshu yawned and nestled deeper into his bedding, ‘What’s bothering you?’

Barbuak whispered vociferously, ‘there’s a hole in the wall, there’s holes in the wall! Things can get in here!’

Lenshu sighed frustratedly as he obliged to turn and glance over his shoulder at Barbuak and around the room. He gauged the size of the pictures.

Lenshu chuckled sleepily. ‘I didn’t notice any leg bones on the way in, did you?’

‘Hey,’ frustrated Barbuak, ‘we could be eaten alive in our sleep.’

‘Bugs never bothered us before, so get some sleep,’ insisted Lenshu as he reburied himself.

A pitter patter sound began, very faintly at first, but slowly getting louder.

‘Lenshu!’ yelled Barbuak.

Now Lenshu and Jaklyn sat up, confused and anxious.

‘Is it raining? murmured Alesandra with her eyes closed.

 

~

 

Matahari looked up and beyond the bullseye of a looking glass. There was a ceiling of lapis lazuli upon which she could not focus. The distance to its glowing surface was ungraspable, it was untouchable, ethereal -it was sky.

The glacial wall was gone.

With difficulty, she could see a river lined with trees.

 

~

 

The sound of rushing water from an underground stream and a familiar smell wafting from a cleaner’s station invoked strong memories of rain rustling tree leaves I miss the scent of eucalypts and the sound of laughing birds thought Sonique. She felt the weight of the earthen ceiling around her doubly, took a deep breath and hastened on her way.

 

~

 

Interrupting Matahari’s memory, Eve’s voice wafted from the corridor.

‘He wants to know if you want something healthy for dinner or not.’

Matahari looked up to sense an unfamiliar young woman passing behind Lizi and Eve in the corridor.

Distant laughter echoed.

Lizitsky’s lip curled at the thought of serving dead food in her home. ‘We’re his guests,’ she held as they entered the room.

 

~

 

In a crowded avenue, Sonique was caught by someone sitting on the ground. She nearly fell over.

‘I know you!’ declared the man now holding Sonique’s ankle.

Sonique looked down at a jittery, underweight man, skin so pale it seemed grey, red glazed eyes, yellowed teeth darkened by black edges. His other arm was awkwardly holding and weighting the shoulders of a beautiful but burnt out looking young woman beside him, her arms were covered with sores.

‘I know you,’ he repeated, wide eyed.

‘You do not,’ insisted Sonique as she wrenched herself free of his fierce hand.

‘Sunni,’ he said.

‘Maine?’

 

~

 

Lizitsky uses a dropper to give a petite drop of liquid to the crying and trembling baby. Its little legs jerking around as its body cramps, muscles rippling under contorting flesh. She checks the sores on its elbows and heels and repositions the cushioning blankets.

‘Are you okay Lizi?’ asked Eve as she was gathering the old bedding for washing.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ assuaged Lizitsky, motioning for Guana Matahari to monitor the baby. She began to search the large glass bottles of liquids on the shelves carved into one stonewall. ‘This huge man just lunged at me before, trying to belt me for not giving him chocolate milk,’ she laughed faintly. ‘Another patient, an off-duty captain, overheard the commotion as I ran away behind a bed, telling him he needed to calm down, but the captain was too sick himself to help. He’d caught something resuscitating another overdose the other day. I got out, anyway -how are you going?’

‘Ahh, okay. Our section was in lockdown over gastro,’ revealed Eve, aware of the logarithmic exponential nature of how cases take off, ‘but we’re open again. Yesterday, a gentleman I was feeding in hospice asked me, ever so seriously, if he absconded would he be hunted down by dogs?’

‘Oh dear,’ they chuckled together, picturing an old man fretfully tottering away from a bunch of intensely focused but friendly beagles.

The baby’s crying suddenly eased.

Lizitsky started pulling bottles off the shelves and placing them on a bench.

Eve paused, holding the soiled bedding in the middle of the room. Eyes on the settling baby, she shook her head.

Lizitsky noticed, as she carefully inspected each bottle and began mixing potions on a bench.

Eve stared. ‘How could anyone?’

‘Under the influence?’ said Lizi. ‘Of substance or circumstance?’

Eve raised an eyebrow. ‘Circumstance?’

Lizitsky shook a bottle vigorously. ‘We all have choices, but some of us have less than others, which must be difficult. To realise your best self when no one honours you -that’s a tall order.’

Eve looked unconvinced, angry even. ‘And becoming hopelessly self-centred is going to help?’ she mocked, throwing the old bedding into a trolley. ‘Lying, stealing, abusing friends, family, children even.’

‘Hey,’ calmed Lizi, ‘I agree, the essence of all addiction is selfishness, but remember, it renders you incapable of giving and receiving real love - literally rendering you resistant to antidote.’

Eve started washing her hands.

‘I also agree, action should be taken against each of those offences accordingly.’ In stillness, Lizitsky saw the combined contents of one bottle slow and split, a dark liquid settling on the bottom. ‘But what if the only one in harm’s way, is oneself?’

Eve glanced layers appearing in Lizi’s concoction as she retrieved fresh linen.

Lizi held the bottle up to a warm light, its contents began to change colour. Seeming satisfied, she started carefully refilling the little potions vials in the leather bottle holster on her thigh. ‘Not everyone is educated or wealthy enough to recover from being prescribed pharmaceutical opioids or psychotropic drugs -as adults, let alone as children. And the rest, well, how do you stop trauma, abuse, molestation, and neglect; how do we close those gateways to drugs?’

Eve threw clean white sheets over a bed and started carefully folding and tucking them tightly into place. ‘In a culture that literally kills to boost the wealth and power of its men, praising and rewarding their rise to the heights of foolishness and tyranny?’

Lizi counted her vials. ‘You’re right, no culture that denies the autonomy, if not existence, of more than half its population could ever solve the problems such an arrangement creates. Where would we be without our differences?’

Lizitsky slapped her holster full of shots shut. ‘So, technically, munted bunions and fringe dwelling space cadets offer deviance from a system, their own existence proves, is deficient. Bless them.’

 

For a moment, the corridor wasn’t echoing with traffic. It was quiet. Lizi was returning bottles to their shelves as Eve finished making the beds, a soft snoring sound caught their attention.

Matahari was smiling down at the baby, sleeping soundly.

Eve and Lizi turned to adore her.

‘She should go to Nahul,’ hoped Eve. ‘To be raised by their men.’

‘It has already been decided,’ said Matahari gently.

Eve knew this meant the baby would be returned to Asher somehow, from where she came, just as soon as she was fit enough. She could not live out her time in the underground without Sunlight, she was not Pleiian.

In Asher, neither religion or science commanded sense now. Economics dominated thought, the same field of sociologists and anthropologists but with a very different aim -how to wield the instrument of a competitive market. The use of money had become systemic, deeply embedded into the legal and institutional frameworks of Asher. While forced to use money, each person driven by self-interest had a negligible effect on the prices of goods. They could only vary the quantities bought and sold at given prices. The sum of all their individual separate actions determined prices, so economists focused on how to convert private vices into public virtues of consumption and production -in other words, how to profit off human behaviour. Unfortunately, while studying human behaviour to find metrics to profit from, their calculations did not account for responsibility to anything outside their language, which was every living thing. While great religious ceremonies were staged to simulate sanctifying the new political order, Ashers population increasingly languished under its directives. Policies were constantly created motivated by economics rather than the clear needs of people. This babe was another casualty of a rotting social system where nothing was sacred, and everything could be monetised.

‘Don’t worry,’ assured Matahari, ‘with a start like this, perhaps she’ll turn out to be a real hell raiser.’

Eve and Lizitsky understood this to mean exposing that which is hidden. The Gondorians had long ago appropriated a Song term for where the dead dwell and are cared for. Amusingly, Pleiians lived in the underground, hidden from surface dwellers. In their underworld there were no living dead suffering eternal damnation in literal fire and sulphur. Though they were closest to all prisoners incarcerated and forgotten.

Matahari watched Eve gazing at the baby. ‘I understand why you would want her to grow up in a peaceful and beautiful city, surrounded by compassionate, altruistic, stoic men to become a confident, enterprising, sunny young woman…but her fate is not for us to decide, we are merely to give her more time.’

Eve pulled away from the crib and started gathering more fresh linen into sets for more beds. ‘I heard, women and even girls are allowed to participate in Nahul’s running races now, and there are enough daring women to make teams that play together and against one another. How happy they must be to run free. I hear even their men cheer them on -roaring! Can you imagine? Men bellowing their guts out at women or little girls in fierce support and loving every second of it. How amazing it must feel to be them.’

Eve’s joy at the thought, turned to despair. ‘Do they know? Do they wonder, will we get the chance to run so free within our lifetime?’

Matahari reassured her, ‘society is largely something organic, self-regulating, governed by the laws of nature and light, say, white law. Its opposite, black law, is as fallible as any religion because it’s made by man who is fallible. The religious and political elites constantly making words, casting spells, spelling away the rights of the common people they so call and set themselves above, are not impervious to criticism -to our words. They are not safe from ideas -if they can’t control free expression, compelling us what to say or do against our better judgement or will.’

‘But they do,’ reproached Eve, meaning in Asher.

‘Not absolutely,’ asserted Matahari. ‘So, still they are not impervious, not safe, from the laws of nature and its balancing forces. Have a little faith in the unorthodox thoughts of outsiders -those with cognitive differences. Besides, attainment of total control would likely furnish the desire for deviance and set the pendulum swinging hard in the opposite direction,’ smiled Matahari. ‘It would likely result in a structure so rigid that the right deviation at the right time would be like striking an ounce of iron to a hundred tonnes of granite. A fracture, travelling like lightning, could split the entire edifice.’

 

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