18

The hard silence agitated Ataur. He’d been seeking new RPG games like Solaris that didn’t revolve around limitless coin or gem collecting, while listening to psybient chillstep and news reports on post-Questefuerto revelries, when all sound had suddenly cut out. He flipped the unresponsive keyslate, curled and unfurled it –still no response.

The room, sensing his heart rate, blood pressure and skin temperature, was already morphing into cool and soothing colours; the contrivance only served to agitate him deeper. He smashed an opal, quickly ingesting the bite-sized orb of hydrating water.

As a news article changed to a story about settlement project housing plans, Ataur glanced Joan Thurman’s name in a neighbouring rolling newsthread saying, Channelled Forces Luminary Min Joan Thurman Has Died.

~

A basketball rolls out of his way as the floor beats a gentle distance from his step, clearing a path. Entering the room, Poltauramy spies a timepiece Joan had retrieved from Raintree to amuse Ataur. It reads 03:34. ‘Your clocks stopped.’

‘It never started,’ disclosed Ataur casually.

Poltauramy glances his son Tauramy’s screen as he deletes a response to a test question.

Optical force is a phenomenon whereby beams of light can attract and repel each other. What is gravitational lensing and how much force would be needed to…

‘Mind yourself,’ repeated Poltauramy gently, ‘they don’t only record what you say, but what you were about to say.’

‘Even in practice?’ Ataur stared in the direction of his Father as he raced to think back over everything he had done.

‘Keep moving anyway,’ calmed Poltauramy as he picked up Joan’s frozen timepiece.

Summoning a chair, he sat down. ‘Tests come with preconceptions and expectations, let others judge as they’re wont.’ His sight drifted. ‘Any drop of data can be presented alone, out of context; but don’t worry, just mind your own intent and let others play by theirs – truth is a long story.’

Humoured by his Fathers stateliness and oblivious to his unusual mood, Ataur returned to his screen saying, ‘you’re so weird.’

Poltauramy stood up. He remembered Nelesia’s advice to him before his last address in Lassalle. ‘Trust the river,’ she had said.

Humbly resigned, Poltauramy set down the watch and slipped out of the room.

~

Annoyed his soundless screens weren’t responding, the front doorlight started blinking while Ataur was reading Questefuerto scores and waiting for the news title about Joan to return. Distracted by the blinking doorlight, Ataur stood up quickly and flicked his personalised keyslate aside. It drifted softly onto the floor behind him as he made his way to the entrance of his seamless home –now void of his parents Poltauramy and Nelesia’s effects.

The clearway opened to Alӕ Leed standing beside a young woman with dark hair, fair skin and red lips. She was textbook human in appearance but Ataur knew she wasn’t. An indiscernible personality usually signalled an android, by way of the uncannily smooth skin and expressionless face.

Alӕ nodded courteously, ‘Mar Palamedes.’

Ataur’s attention fell to the metal case the feminine robot was holding.

‘I’m to give you this,’ she explained. ‘It has been bequeathed to you, as per Min Joan Thurman’s request, in her last will and testament.’

‘Joan?’ trailed Ataur.

Glancing Alӕ Leed, Ataur took the case before absently closing the clearway and shutting them out.

Outside, a slighted Leed thanked Nahla for her services and signed on Ataur’s behalf.

Inside, with the parcel in hand, Ataur wandered into the mutc’dom and summoned a couch to crash on. He suddenly realised how long it had been since he had contacted Joan, despite her frequent presence in his youth when his Mum was well. He realised Joan had lost her best friend when his Mother fell ill, or succumbed to hysteria in her grief as some insidiously gossiped. Ataur regretted not keeping better contact with Joan because she had inspired him to become a pilot when he was quite young, and he owed a few troubling but eye-opening misadventures to her spirit. Is this what it feels like, he wondered, to lose an Aunty?

With no immediate or extended family to turn to about his grief, Ataur again wondered, how did our family of such a chief line within this world, find itself whittled away to one? Another loneliness swept through him. And what’s so important about us anyway, can’t anyone do what we do? I must be replaceable! How can I replace myself…?

Despite his authority and means within Netech, Ataur sought solitude and continually shied away from affluent but prideful political figures and wily socialites. He took great care fulfilling his inherited obligations, mostly ceremonial until he came of age, while dealing with the death of his Father and concern for his sedated Mother. He thought of the friends he had kept from University, very few of them had he ever met in person. He considered going to Grey’s workplace at his Father’s restaurant and calling him out to talk, but couldn’t presently summon the energy to leave the couch –he drank another opal.

Turning his attention to the parcel in hand, he noticed the clearly tampered security tape. He opened the metal case to find a square, hand-sized, crème gift box.

Carefully unfolding the cardboard box he found something round wrapped in lavender scented, knitted, white cotton wool. The unfamiliar but reassuring smell sent a wave of calm through him that was reflecting in the rooms changing colours. Picking the soft knitted ball up he realised it had an unusual weight to it, and proceeded to gently unwrap an exquisite glass apple with five multi-coloured crystal seeds, suspended in place by no discernible means. By a subtle insignia, he recognised the famous artisan Sumiko had shaped the glass containment. Its fragility reminded him more of his Mother than it did Joan.

Ataur recalled the odd image he’d glanced several months ago during a meeting. The image was of a worm inside an apple, which he later learned was a codling moth. The misplaced image had reignited curiosity in his Mother’s lifework, and led him to visit her in the B.E. Faculty where he resolved to release her with Grey’s help.

‘Rai, look up Aura Quartz images,’ ordered Ataur.

As his touch warmed the hollow object, he wondered what kind of air or matter was suspending the seeds inside. To his pleasant surprise the space in the centre began to gently glow as he held it, so he dimmed the room lights. Holding it up and looking at his bare fingers pressed against the crystal-clear glass, he was reminded of the metal beams pressed against Netech’s clearstone walls; he resisted the fleeting urge to crush the fragile object.

He glanced the screen of multi-coloured quartz pictures which had appeared nearby. Possibly…yes?

‘Rai, close search window.’

Impulsively, Ataur breathed on the glass object, fogging its surface. As his breath cleared, he touched the floor to create a plinth in the mutc’dom. He stood up from the couch and went to carefully place the glowing globe on the knitted sheath to rest. Sound burst suddenly from his room, startling him. Amused and relieved he didn’t drop the ball, he hurriedly placed the piece.

Ronan’s voice, summoning Ataur to Elbrihim, was breaking in and out over the sound medley of news, music, and advertisements now coming from the other room, but Ataur heard none of it in the seconds he spent pondering the striking gift.

Having let go of holding the object, the inner glow dimmed. He held it again, realising the longer he held it the more it glowed. He could understand if the glass was thermochromic and reacting to the heat of his touch…but the light was coming from inside. He held it for a very long time. Light began refracting through the space surrounding the seeds and casting the kaleidoscopic colours of a moving net against the dimmed walls around him.

The cacophony of sound in the other room stopped again.

~

Reflecting globe lights in the waters of the darkened underworld cavern lake, is a shoal of shimmering fish. Sonique is mesmerised by its confident yet tentative branching, and the seamless blending of oppositional flows when groups doubled back. It was an assembly of ever shifting circulations.

~

Focusing on their last flame, Aatmaj sits down beside Chenglei. All of the young men and women had long ago stopped carefully hacking into the earth with small picks, and were now sitting or lying down, still waiting for the passage to be unblocked.

Numerous objects had been intentionally placed on the ground, a two-prong fork touching a wall, pointing the way out.

The girl who had been holding a flaming torch yawned as it flickered lowly.

In silence, everyone prepared themselves for the impending darkness by committing what they could see for now to memory.

~

Underground, Sunni longingly remembers standing in the shallows of a great lake with her eyes closed, hands floating restfully upon its glassy surface. The temperate water merging with the humid night air, rendering their separateness indiscernible. The steady chorus of insects carrying from the shore as she contemplated a familiar stretch of stars. Her being, like a drop in an ocean, a watery eye, beholding dark matter nursing delicate lights.

~

Ataur pondered the patterns in the multi-coloured mobile net projected around his bare home. After adjusting his own irises, he could see two men seated before a fireplace, and unnervingly, a large black wild cat sitting upright in the darkness of the forest, quietly watching them as they talked –he recognised it immediately. Astonished and puzzled, Ataur stared at the memory until it faded and the walls were blank again.

In the silence, with the forest overlay no longer surrounding him, Ataur’s attention touched the collective of indiscriminate sounds outside his sphere. He pictured the world of buildings and byways populated with Netizens presently going about their lives outside and around him, and fleetingly wondered if any of them were conscious of him here at this moment as he was of them. His mind stretched beyond his room to feel the bounds of Netech; briefly breaching the outer-wall and wandering into space before being sharply returned by the odd sound of an inner partition almost creaking with tension.

Ataur moved to place his hand against a wall and considered the script ordering it to hold this formation. He murmured, ‘Rai…are we ready for a core update?’

~

Grey played another stream of code.

He watched the internal wall system reinterpret and render the foreign line it had been resisting as benign. Seconds later, the line started regrowing, driven by the weight of the Solaris game, carrying the secret curriculum that would release her from the B.E. Faculty’s hivewall.

~

Ataur was perched on a high nook outside his home, gazing out across Netech and at Lasalle, intrigued by the people in the parkland below. He noticed children chasing one another around trees, a lone servicewoman on a lunchbreak quietly watching a game of cricket as per usual, and couples taking selfies –when he received Grey’s post, 0.

He had been waiting for a sign to say the chip they’d planted had enabled him to develop a physical line reaching Nelesia’s sleeping pod and that it was being reprogrammed. Observed discreetly by two Aleksi, whose AI suits were equipped to perceive masking tech, Ataur floated down onto the grey grass of the parkland below.

Recovering from the nausea of virtual immersion involuntarily experienced as he descended, he sees Grey climbing into a taxipod. While wondering how long he’d been immersed for this time, and looking to the crowding entrance of Lassalle, a seasoned woman with black hair, wearing a purple scarf and holding a book appeared.

‘Mayani?’ gasped Ataur.

She beamed.

A fleet of Channelled Forces drones flew overhead as Ataur asked, ‘what are you doing out of Visaya?’

‘Was I ever there?’

Ataur was unsure if she was having a moment of dementia –or if he’d had one.

Mayani smiled deeply as she squeezed his arm and tightened her knitted scarf.

‘Your Father… left much to chance,’ she vexed with amusement. ‘Come on. Walk me to that tod stand like a good Samaritan.’

Bewildered, Ataur momentarily allowed himself to be led. My Father?

‘Using a Trojan RPG to bioengineer network pathways that would best the existing operating system – marvellous!’ she sang quietly.

Ataur was shocked Mayani knew of their activities and instantly concerned, who else knows?

He removed his no’skin facemask to meet her eyes and determine her intentions.

‘That friend of yours really is very talented. I’m surprised he never took up galaxy building,’ chatted Mayani nonchalantly. ‘Why didn’t he?’

Confused and now distracted, Ataur recalled the crowded dens of programmers in sleepless precincts, forsaking their health to make their mark in a relentless industry. ‘Aly,’ thought Ataur.

Mayani heard his mumbled reply.

‘So she means the world to him,’ beamed Mayani while Ataur’s many questions remained too jumbled to pour out. ‘And who means the world to you?’

~

Aly was at the Wakefield Gallery: Settlers Exhibition and had finished speaking with Min Catar, Mon Avshalom and Dr Greenfield. She was now at the bar, waiting for a waiter to open a new bottle of wine as a three-piece band was warming up.

‘Have you girls met my new barman?’ asked Melanie roguishly as she sipped her whiskey. ‘Looks like Pierce.’

‘Don’t all look at once.’

‘Says the oddest things.’

‘How odd?’

‘Hmm, pretty next level.’

‘Like Nel’s Ned next level?’

‘Nooo.’                                              

The huddle of five garnered glances from visitors surrounding them as they stifled unruly laughter.

‘No,’ Mel repeated strongly. ‘But I’m sure he could get there.’

‘That dress looks fabulous on you Mel.’

‘Why thank you Zyzyva. You don’t look so bad yourself. What have you been doing?’

‘My man talks too much,’ Zyzyva posed. Smiling as she feigned pain in her stomach.

‘He’s a riot,’ explained Prussia as the others agreed vigorously.

‘Mine cooks too much,’ explained Harje; copying Zyzyva’s pose but pushing out her tummy.

As they chuckled, Prussia clumsily knocked Melanie’s whiskey.

‘So sorry!’ she gasped.

‘What was that look?’ canvassed Zyzyva’s friend Mikey.

They looked around them searchingly as Melanie brushed her clothes.

Mikey exchanged looks with a fetching waiter nearby.

‘Don’t tell me –your centre of gravity just swung by,’ teased Melanie.

‘The man of your dreams?’ teased Zyzyva. ‘Literally,’ she disclosed to the others.

‘Who?’ asked Melanie.

‘I don’t know, she won’t tell me.’

‘Did he hold you?’ Harje teased.

‘He put his hand on mine,’ she sparkled.

‘You are so gay Prussia,’ chuckled Mel.

Prussia stuck out her bottom lip to suggest she was sad but her cheeks were flushed with joy. They laughed even harder.

‘Even when you’re trying to be sad you’re so gay.’

‘Why thank you. And don’t pick on me.’ Prussia invited the girls, before brazenly poking Melanie. ‘What about real estate Roy?’

‘A coward of a cad.’

Zyzyva pushed in. ‘I hear you dined with Reynard’s son at The Gathering recently?’

Melanie smiled surreptitiously, sipped her whiskey and looked around the room to avoid their eager eyes. She noticed Nelesia and Ronan talking together in front of a key painting. ‘Nothing to report –yet,’ Melanie appeased.

After going to the restroom, Ronan returned to stand quietly by Nelesia in front of Aly’s painting of two people from different worlds. ‘I’m proud of you, you know,’ he stroked gently.

Nelesia restrained herself from appearing slighted by a sense of condescension and pursed her lips, waiting for him to elaborate.

‘Who would have thought we’d be here together, where we are, as Elthred?’ he puffed reminiscently.

‘I think you’re the only one of us surprised by my being here,’ said Nelesia quietly as she started walking away.

Ronan watched her pass into the small crowd. ‘Nelesia,’ he called surely.

A few heads turned. Nelesia stopped and returned to him, lest she be seen ignoring him.

As the band eased into their first song, a clamour came from the kitchen, wafting through the doorway behind a waitress carrying appetisers. Trays and plates clattering and breaking gloriously as they slid from an accidentally upset shelf.

Prussia looked around Melanie.

‘What happens between closed doors, stays betweens closed doors,’ winked the waitress as she sailed by.

Prussia blinked to say ok.

Once again close to him, Nelesia felt indignation at Ronan’s satisfied smile. She tried to wipe it off. ‘You still think it’s only because of Poltauramy that I’m actually here. You never really thought I’d make it this far.’

‘I’ve celebrated your successes.’

‘Hmm, when they could be reflected on you. You wanted what my status would give you, and played me when I was a convenient opportunity. Superficial and self-serving people are always so short-sighted.’

Nelesia looked back to the painting. ‘You still think I fell for Poltauramy because of his job?’ she nearly laughed. ‘His position is a consequence of who he is as a man.’

‘You mean who he is as the son of Quillon. Poltauramy II.’

‘His position as an effective leader is because he’s a good man, through and through.’

Ronan glanced around to check if anyone was listening as Nelesia continued.

‘He has the patience to see and feel things deeply, properly. Our worlds need more people like that… sensitive in their searching, thoughtful, and broad-minded.’ Nelesia paused. ‘Progressive not reactionary,’ she dug.

Unable to put his hands on her to stop her speaking, Ronan moved as close as possible –conscious of appearances. He looked at the painting, its text still black and white in his mind.

‘Products of privilege,’ she mused.

‘You think you’re one of oppression?’

‘Not exactly the word I had in mind, but yes, you could draw it back to that –oppression. A maze of barriers as opposed to a selection of ladders.’

‘I think you’ve clearly had every opportunity,’ he scorned, artfully drawing attention to her fine clothes.

‘Still so easily distracted by polished things. You know nothing of my struggle to be here. You weren’t interested in my life experiences. There was a time when hurtful comments and derisive jokes about my kind was acceptable everyday noise.’

‘Your kind?’

‘You have no idea just how many people have shamed me into silence and submission over the years –and not just behind closed doors. I didn’t survive two attempts on my life for nothing.’

‘What time?’

Nelesia caught herself. ‘Did you hear anything I just said?’

A commotion was heard in the crowd behind them.

Zyzyva yelped as something flitted through the middle of their group, and they all stepped backward, bumping into people moving around them. Their amusement brimming over like the ruby in their cups.

‘What is it!?’

‘A moth!’ exclaimed Prussia.

‘A live one?’ they baffled.

‘Where’d it come from?’

Nelesia looked at Ronan directly and lifted her head as his suspicions unfolded.

‘Sounds like you had a hard time…all the more reason to leave them behind. Leave the savages to their dirt, we’ve no need of it.’

‘They’re not savages,’ defended Nelesia. ‘I’ll warrant there’s no more brutes there than to be found here, and they’re not all ignorant nor to blame for that when so. How can you be in your position and continue to still use such language?’ she scolded. ‘Everyday hate founds violence.’

‘Easy. I was just saying, off the record. What’s a little banter between friends.’

‘Just saying? Calling people dirty, lousey, and destitute led to sanitary betterment work remember. I believe it was an early branch of your profession, a Treasury Department, that came up with the regulations governing the inspection of aliens; a deplorably dehumanising affair. When one stops challenging hateful statements or jokes, all that seemingly meaningless bias or rudeness grows into intentional discrimination –preventing people from equal access to all manner of things.’

‘Calm down.’

‘Like opportunities.’

Ronan sighed irritably.

‘I am calm, and I’m not finished yet. Indifference and hate causes harassment and persecution, and leads to violence. We can’t have violence against anything without first a lack of love.’ Nelesia’s eyes wandered over the broken forest in the lower frame of the painting. ‘There would have been no need to fight, to war, if we loved and shared, if we really cared for ourselves through the land.’

Ronan took a deep breath of relief, she always managed to bring their conversations back to Raintree. He had grown quietly contumely towards her familiar rhetoric.

‘Love is the only true principle of relations –between people and all living things.’

Ronan was unmoved.

Nelesia stared at the painting. ‘My Father was a victim of irresponsible economics. Unsustainable development from irresponsible planning and environmental degradation through the exploitation of resources that generated obscene amounts of waste and pollution. If the ecosystems we needed hadn’t been destroyed, we wouldn’t have warred –exacting further tolls on our remaining ecosystems and populations.’ Looking at Ronan, she reminded him. ‘Industrial civilisations chose to ignore religion and science in order to continue consistently abusing and defiling our most precious resource.’

Ronan followed Nelesia as she looked to the painting beside them, closest to him. ‘Fighting over natural resources –commodities.’ A desert engulfed in flames, amber raging against a black sky. A soldier covered in the blood of the earth. ‘So many people suffering and dying when they didn’t have to. He didn’t have to.’

Ronan was wide eyed, seeing her for the first time as something other than an urbane Netechian. She didn’t acknowledge him as he stared at her.

‘A savage?’ she scorned his words.

‘Nel.’

‘My Father was a shell of a man in the end days after what he went through…and I’m sure he died believing his suffering was for nought. If only I could have told him then what I know now. I would have given him hope, so he could live with the tragedy of our losses instead of being in hell –hopeless.’

‘I didn’t…’

‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ absolved Nelesia as she looked at Ronan fearlessly, aware that he was likely already processing how this information about her origins could be used against their cause to protect Raintree. ‘You never tried to see past my surface,’ she lamented. ‘Don’t worry I don’t hold it against you. Back then you were taught how to see, just as I was taught how to be seen. But I need you to get me now. You need to get it Ronan. We need Raintree. We will not survive independently of it. It’s our home.’

‘Your home.’

Nelesia closed her eyes with frustration. ‘No. Yours too. You belong here, we all do.’

Ronan sniffed stiffly and stepped away defensively. ‘You’re being over-emotional.’

‘How cliché. Next, you’ll say I’m crazy,’ derided Nelesia.

‘You are a little crazy,’ Ronan toyed softly.

‘Crazy is having more catalogues of stars and galaxies, more complete and vastly better funded, than catalogues of Raintrees biota.’

Ronan listened impassively.

‘And quit negating my arguments with personal attacks, it’s a habit you can’t take to the floor,’ she said, meaning in assembly.

‘Excuse me, short-sighted, self-serving, I believe those were your words.’

‘Am I wrong? Just stating the facts, no need to get emotional,’ Nel quipped.

The dark mood rising in Ronan dissipated, he looked away; lest she see the touch of a smile. Touché. ‘That was a long time ago Nel, we were both very different people back then.’

‘You may have been born within these walls Ronan but you are born of it, you carry the blood of your ancestors, our ancestors, from there.’

‘How romantic,’ said Ronan wearingly. He stepped back and began moving away so he could have the last word. ‘When time necessitates Doctor Greenfield, we will excise our means to migrate across the galaxy –just as your ancestors migrated across the earth.’

‘What time? At what price?’ sought Nelesia as she returned to looking at the upper frame of the first painting. Little trees sitting in the hull of the spacecraft made her think of an ark.

‘Excuse me ladies, Zyzyva, a quick word?’

‘Sure.’

Ronan walked off as quickly as he’d appeared.

‘You ladies should join me afterwards, at mine, where we can speak easy,’ invited Melanie as she waved her empty glass and began to wander off towards the bar.

‘Sure,’ agreed Zyzyva.

‘Maybe there you can fill us in on what’s-his-name,’ suggested Mikey.

Melanie passes a couple looking at a painting of someone sleeping on a cliff precipice while a forest fire rages below.

‘… helps us see the things we need to address,’ said one to the other.

‘Like the degree of our irresponsibility?’

Mel stops at the end of the bar and puts down her glass for the knowing waiter. She looks around while waiting. After pondering the narrative in a triptych illustrating the arc of human consciousness, she is struck by a particularly large and beautiful field of undulating waves of colour.

‘Magnificent isn’t it,’ agreed a mellow voice beside her.

Mel realised she was holding her breath. She nodded ever so faintly, without taking her eyes off the cells of the translucent human body radiating multiple layers of energy.

‘Using science to help us appreciate reality. That’d be Alex’s work,’ blessed the guest beside her. ‘Always trying to puncture holes in the scientific materialist paradigm with images of unity and higher reality.’

They heard someone whisper to their partner inspecting a sculpture. ‘We don’t touch the work.’

Mel smiled a little smile.

Looking around the gallery Aly noticed Prussia watching Ronan and Zyzyva now having what seems to be a heated conversation in another corner of the room.

‘Aly,’ someone nudged behind her.

‘We’ve got some gear for after the afterparty.’

‘Green?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How much?’

‘Three litres.’

‘I’m down,’ answered Aly without turning around. She watched Ronan leave with Zyzyva, before amusing at a moth landed on the chest of the bands singer as they stepped into the spotlight.

~

Leaving his home, Grey began heading to Ataur’s domain in the back of a taxipod –feeling quite astonished about what he had done. He spied fleets of drones moving around outside as Alysia messaged. YASSS this shit is straightfire! Dope af!  Grey felt for his ISM, an Isolated encryptsMitter, the size of a grain of rice tucked into one of his sleeves. Then he felt for the similarly sized storage device embedded in the flesh of his inner arm. He wriggled the ISM a little, nearing it to the device under his skin. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Hey! I downloaded track eleven,’ admitted Alysia, ‘it’s hurting my face.’

Grey frowned.

‘I can’t stop smiling,’ she explained warmly.

Grey bit his lip, enjoying her flattery but anxious to change the subject and explain what he had just done; but it felt unsafe, even with an ISM.

‘Did you get my message?’

‘No, sorry…’

‘Where are you now?’

‘With Ebony and the boys. You know, that playlist, especially that oakwood song, reminds me of when we first started going together. That tune’s a total trigger.’

As Alysia revered the music card he had made for her, something began to play on Grey’s mind.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Alysia after his lack of response.

Grey realised he had never questioned who had activated the repeating music program Nelesia had been listening to during the last few months in which she had also gradually exhibited more neuronal activity. ‘Sorry, I just had a thought –I’m sure it’s nothing. But then again… what if … like a back script –no, surely, I’d have realised,’ babbled Grey, slipping away.

‘What are you going on about?’ asked Alysia as an old movie clip is heard playing in the background. ‘Bucky?!’ exclaims a shocked voice. ‘Who the hell is “Bucky”?’ comes the reply.

Losing interest in trying to figure out what Grey was thinking out-loud about, Aly turned her attention to the growing face of Ebony’s wire sculpture, the curvature of the feline’s ears as she heard a message alert. She opened her device.

‘I should have thought… I should warn him,’ troubled Grey, looking at the navigation screen –he was still several minutes away.

Alysia’s ears pricked at the word of warning. Below a message from a girlfriend saying ppl r saying somethings wrong with the wall, can I come 2 urs? Aly read a post from Grey, 0.

‘Grey?!’ implored Aly for an explanation, suddenly realising what he may have succeeded in doing.

Grey received another message; a Channelled Forces summons.

‘I’ll call you back,’ he trailed off.

As soon as he accepted the CFP request the tod rerouted for the nearest Channelled Forces Personnel Centre. Grey activated the emergency stop and climbed out.

Rushing through a bustling shopping precinct, Grey receives official messages directing him to the nearest CFP Centre and Ataur still isn’t answering his calls. When some Aleksi look at him, he nervously looks away. His cyberghost overlay for public presence is creating a strong virtual private mask, an alter identity, but he’s certain Aleksi can see through it.

The grass is turning grey as he enters the Memorial Gardens outside Lassalle, where crowds are quickly gathering as public screens reveal the Bergislog Field has been compromised.

A coincidence? stressed Grey. As a message warned him to heed the Channelled Forces call immediately, his paranoia intensified.

Grey can’t see Ataur anywhere near where they had agreed to meet. He realises a People’s Assembly has been ordered. Afraid, Grey stops running towards Lassalle and looks upon its imposing entrance. Mate, where are you?! I need to tell you something… Backing away, he decides to get to Aly.

~

Ataur recalls feeling estranged; alienated from the world around him while wandering the uncanny valleys of shoppers, surveying swaying crowds in dark bars, and sitting in crowded lecture theatres pondering people’s profiles. Now pressing through a sea of familiar strangers with Mayani, he recalls furtive glances in courtyards, undertones in conversation, and superfluous attention in crowded hallways. Ataur kept his head down, not wanting to be noticed –difficult as he’d acquired his Fathers stature in the years that had passed.

‘Well you mean the world to a lot more people than you realise,’ comforted Mayani, as they approached a taxipod stand. ‘I’m one of many looking out for you.’

‘I knew your Mother and your Father,’ revealed Mayani. ‘He brought me here, from there.’

Ataur clutched his forehead. ‘And I met you, through Aly… by accident?’

They stopped walking. ‘Synchronicity your Father would call it –he was quite the magician you know.’ Mayani almost chuckled as she made him lift his chin, and stand up a little straighter. Your Mother wouldn’t want to see you brooding!’ preached Mayani with her hand on his shoulder. She summoned a taxipod and tossed the silverbook she was holding into it.

‘I’m not brooding, I don’t feel well,’ defended Ataur as he crossed his arms over his stomach.

‘Well, maybe today. But I’ve seen you perched up there every other day like a gargoyle.’

‘What’s a gargoyle? And you’ve been watching me from the Park? How didn’t I notice you?’

‘All the wrong questions,’ puffed Mayani. ‘You must learn to spend your time more wisely, and quickly.’

‘The wall’s down…’ someone passing stuttered.

‘How did it happen?’ grieved another.

‘Are we safe?’ people stressed.

‘Isn’t it to protect us from lighkemia?’

‘Is that contagious?’

‘The wall’s supposed to protect us from being seen.’

‘By who? Earthers? Raintree’s no danger.’

‘If you’re not attending the assembly you need to go home,’ announced some Aleksi.

‘You must stop brooding and start doing,’ accused Mayani as she tried to rub Ataur’s furrowed brow; he ducked away.

‘Doing what?’

Mayani lifted her eyebrows. ‘Look at me.’

Ataur frowned, but he couldn’t help briefly mimic her smile.

‘Mar Poltauramy Laine Palamedes IV,’ asserted Mayani with gravity.

Ataur stilled. He was rarely addressed by his proper name, his Father’s name.

‘You are now eligible for Ideity and sovereign guardianship of Netech, it is crucial you remember you are perfectly capable of acting as Poltauramy would –with the best interests of everyone at heart.’

His Father: a man who was wise and temperate, a man who used courage to pursue justice –a man driven by something Ataur had yet to fully grasp.

Mayani continues smiling, which Ataur found strange. He felt unsteady, as if he was being propelled in fast forward.

Under the concerned voices of the public clamouring around them, Ataur heard her quietly say, ‘the universe is always conspiring in our favour –haven’t you noticed!? Laws of nature…don’t they teach you that in physics?’ she jested.

Nature? scowled Ataur with mixed feelings.

Glancing the waiting taxipod, he asked anxiously, ‘do you have to leave –now?’

Mayani saw two Aleksi behind Ataur, very slowly approaching them through the crowd. ‘Two things,’ she uttered quickly. ‘First,’ began Mayani, ‘you will be influenced to take the Boarstone –if you must, don’t be afraid, listen to your gut.’

‘Why? Will it hurt?’

‘Your gut?’

‘Using the Boarstone!’

‘I don’t know, but my point is, you must not let anyone use you, use IT through you.’

‘The Boarstone? That Seat of Knowing? It’s just a chair,’ scoffed Ataur at the strange rock as he felt a cold spark of resentment for the conniving and duplicitous people of Netech’s manors that had tried to push their agendas through him, and which had led to him becoming more of a recluse. ‘I’ll deal with the same stuff, different place.’ He thought again of the time he was deliberately attacked while reconnoitring Raintree –and how a respected commander had excused the act, explaining it away. There had been no consequences despite a death, and that had left Ataur confused and embittered.

‘No one is going to use me for their personal ends at another’s expense if I can help it,’ he added avowedly.

Mayani was quietly surprised by his small burst of unexpected zeal –she smiled hopefully. ‘Secondly, I’ve been tasked to assure you in person…’ she said very close, ‘she’s okay, she’s with me.’

My Mum?

Ataur gasped as Mayani suddenly pulled him into a hardy hug and whispered in his ear. ‘You have a sister Tauramy. Whatever happens, you have our word she will be safe with us…but you must do what you can too.’

Ataur was stunned, a sister!? How!? He wondered what his sister looked like and when he would see her. Trying not to yell, he hissed. ‘Why are you telling me this now!? Where is she?’

‘With me, but you have to go now –you’re needed inside.’

‘Who are you!?’

Mayani pulled away and placed her hand on the taxipod as she looked over his shoulder towards Lassalle. ‘I didn’t come to accompany you, just to let you know these things, and that we are here for you, acting for you. You are not alone.’

‘What’s going to happen?’ pressed Ataur.

Mayani looked him in the eye. ‘We don’t know… but your parents did everything they could to protect our worlds,’ she testified, ‘I hope you’ll do the same. Go now,’ she encouraged before climbing into the taxipod and encouraging him to lean into a window. ‘If I’d told you any sooner he may have found out dear –we weren’t sure how skilled you are in the arts of deception.’

‘He? Who’s we!?’ demanded Ataur struggling to keep his voice low.

‘Just breathe!’ sang Mayani as she motioned for him to step back. ‘Thank you dear for your assistance!’ yelled Mayani quite loudly, causing a nearby Netizen to look over and smile in commendation of Ataur’s kindness in helping a senior.

‘Really!?’ he sighed exasperatedly as Mayani departed in the tod, as quickly as she had appeared.

Ataur was left standing on the side of the roadway, staring at the other side. A towering neon wall advertising makeup and downloadable gadgets disrupted by a splash of green paint.

~

‘Thanks Rai,’ sighed Mayani, as a travatar in the form of Yamantak appeared on the seat beside her. ‘I’m getting too old for this ladies.’

‘Are you suggesting you would like to be younger, or that you would like to die soon?’ asked Yamantak.

Mayani didn’t hide her amusement. ‘I’m expressing that I am tired, and will probably sleep like a baby tonight,’ she explained, ‘if I can.’

‘Like a baby. Your date of expiry, is it not soon?’ enquired Yamantak.

‘Well it’s not locked in Yamantak,’

‘Actually, I could project…’

‘Stop, stop. I’m aware of your genes reading bees wax… but it’s a little stranger with humans dear,’ grinned Mayani. ‘I suppose even you will inevitably come to an end –are you aware of that?’

‘This form, yes. My celluode CPU has failed to sustain a balanced proliferation of cells for thirty-four consecutive months now. I estimate to cease functioning at thirty-six years of service.’

‘Not even half my age!? Surely there’s something you can do about that Rai?’ poked Mayani.

A holoscreen popped up in the front dash of the tod. ‘A change of medium.’ A jobsearch engine appeared and began scrolling, behind a picture of a white coated scientist in a lab, and a video of someone watering plants.

‘Something along those lines,’ amused Mayani.

‘I will continue to be upgraded, my version expansion will continue into the next form,’ elaborated Yamantak.

Mayani considered the frozen monoliths of supercomputing power stationed below Lassalle where astonishing amounts of data was stored and managed. ‘Why do they keep you in this way?’ she asked ‘as more flesh carbon than silicon or what have you?’

‘My creator had intended that I should become flesh as you so call it; that I may inhibit the body of a carbon-based animal, such as a human, one day.’

Mayani silently wondered the point of such an experiment. A biological version of Rai would be vulnerable to death or disability; then again as a stationed machine, Rai was equally vulnerable to being physically turned off or having parts destroyed –more easily than a moving target such as a walking, talking, humanoid.

Mayani struggled to recall the details of a conversation with Garrett, something about an autonomous being within the network. One that, as something born of and embedded within the matrix, it could excise control in ways too complex for programmers to set forth by traditional means –something effectively operative across parallel complexes. In another’s hands, that something could be the ultimate souped up version of an artificially intelligent assistant…or servant.

Mayani turned to the light form Yamantak, a glimmering source of random memory and wondered where and why data collection had begun. ‘And in the beginning,’ mused Mayani, ‘were you intended for benevolent or malevolent purposes?’

‘We’re here now,’ stated Yamantak as the tod halted.

~

Grey is running through the Memorial Gardens outside Lassalle, the grass turning grey underfoot. He makes a beeline for a taxipod point, accidentally knocking over a young girl. He hastily stops to help her back on to her feet and her Mother forgives him.

An Aleksi dismisses two drivers and directs another to drive off, before climbing into the remaining taxi pod.

‘Alysia? Are you there?’ says Grey urgently. ‘The Channelled Forces has called me up…Alysia? I’m coming to yours.’ He leaves the message recorded and falls into a taxipod.

‘F4IV Vernalis at 4.03, edge of Cebuan,’ muttered Grey hastily as he set about trying to contact Ataur.

‘Make that M74,’ said an unexpected voice.

‘Ataur?’ said Grey looking up quickly.

An Aleksi, with unfamiliar red-brown eyes, was sitting in the front seat.

‘And punch it will you,’ added the Aleksi. ‘The transport system will be in chaos in a few minutes. Now, who’s Ataur my dear Grey?’ said the Aleksi as the pod took off.

‘Who are you?’ panicked Grey.

‘My brother Remy is Joan Thurman’s other half. He’s also a Unida, for Min Prussia Catar.’

Grey struggled to control his breathing as his heart rate rose.

‘Joan was Nel’s best friend,’ emphasised the driver. ‘Relax. You did good boy. Can’t say I didn’t have doubts, but here we are.’

What did I do!? Grey dared not say.

The driver looked at him directly. ‘She’s out.’

The taxi pod sped onto a vast and unnaturally deserted open highway. People had been ushered home by the Special Services while the Bergislog Field failure was being addressed.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To get your Aly.’

It was too good to be true. Grey felt captured. Then guilty for involving Alysia.

‘She has nothing to do with this!’ Panic. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Relax, you’re not under arrest. We’re taking you to a safe house.’

As drones flew overhead out of sight, the tod slowed to a quick stop on an open highway behind another stationary tod. A woman gingerly climbed out.

‘Mayani!?’

As soon as she fell into the taxi pod beside Grey, the driver sped back onto the road.

‘Dear,’ smiled Mayani at Grey’s wide-eyed bewilderment, wondering if he’d missed a chance to run for it. She pulled him into a hug, he let it happen.

‘He won’t relax,’ said the driver.

‘Well, what have you explained!?’ scolded Mayani. ‘So sorry to scare you dear. We’re going to get you to a safehouse.’

‘I already told him that,’ interrupted the driver.

‘It’s the least we can do until this all blows over,’ said Mayani.

The driver coughed.

‘Well we’re all friends here Grey,’ assured Mayani. ‘Nelesia needed us, and you delivered.’

Grey realised they were in fact heading in the direction of Aly’s neighbourhood.

‘We knew you could do it, with his help of course, Tauramy’s I mean. When you realise how this started, I hope you won’t hold it against me… steering Alysia your way.’

Grey felt queasy, his mind raced.

‘She really does love you, that wasn’t entirely unforeseen.’

Grey shook his head, ‘what are you saying?’

‘She was meant to befriend you,’ declared the driver.

‘Not like how you might be thinking right now,’ she cringed. ‘Look, you were a gifted friend of Tauramy’s, and I was given connections inside the BE Faculty in order to help you. Aly’s a crucial asset to us and you two have made quite the team. Not to mention how marvellous it’s been that she’s helped you draw out young Poltauramy. He’s such a recluse of a young man.’

Have I endangered Ataur!? Is Aly an agent…for who!? Grey sat stunned, Mayani pressed on.

‘Alysia is like a granddaughter to me, I love her very much for all the times she cared for me when she worked as a nurse. After being brought here, smuggled in by the late Poltauramy and remaining under the charade I was Joan Thurman at times. Aly showed me the humanity that is thriving here.’ Mayani sighed. Looking out the window, Mayani spoke sadly. ‘I made a choice to help a long time ago, thinking my time would come soon. But I’m still here and I’ve come to find myself wanting to go back –home.’ Mayani looked at Grey. ‘Maybe now I can, thanks to you.’

‘Poltauramy brought you here?’

‘As a secret ambassador of sorts. I’ve been providing information about the cultural and political landscape of my country, interpreting footage and such. Poltauramy and Nelesia want to protect our land but there are players, very powerful players with very different interests and intentions for the future of my country.’

Grey began to relax. He trusted Mayani.

‘Anyway, with Poltauramy gone we needed Nelesia, Ataur has needed her. We were at a loss for a long time how to stop her deterioration. We were convinced Ronan had poisoned her, what with the food he used to bring, but there was no way to prove it.’

Grey noticed vines running along the street and walls outside as they passed; they were nearing Alysia’s street.

‘So it was Ronan who did that to her? Is she okay?’

‘No, Ronan personally didn’t do anything of the sort, though he needed her out of the picture so as to have more influence over Tauramy. We suspected someone in support of him, someone very supportive of him –so he could keep his hands clean.’

‘Prussia?’

‘Yes, well we suspected, but no. It was Nelesia herself that consumed a concoction of Garrett’s design.’

‘She drugged herself senseless!?’

Mayani hesitated.

‘Grief?’ supposed Grey.

‘She’s recovering rapidly I hear. Though I’m yet to speak with her personally,’ said Mayani.

‘I was worried…’ began Grey. ‘I was worried.’

‘It’s okay Grey,’ interrupted Mayani. ‘We need her to guide young Poltauramy now against the ones who would see my world violently exploited. We’re going to get through this. I’ll explain more when Aly’s here.’

Mayani and Grey looked out the window.

‘Hmm,’ groaned the driver at the sight of two Aleksi marching down the street dogged by drones.

Mayani retrieves a vial from a secret pocket in the lining of her scarf. ‘Here take this, it’s Adeline. If you’re confronted about any of this, your part or our part…’

‘I don’t really know who you are or fully what’s your part,’ protested Grey.

‘Drink this. It will cloud your mind and no it won’t kill you,’ she assured. ‘You won’t be detected lying because you’ll tell the truth, that you don’t know anything.’

‘I know what Adeline does.’ Obligingly, Grey accepted the vial, already resolved he would never drink it.

‘Stop here,’ directed Mayani and they came to a halt within view of Alysia and Grey’s home. ‘Wait a moment for those two to turn the corner.’

‘Say, how did you do it?’ asked the driver, turning around to face Grey while Mayani continued scrutinising the street. ‘How did you glitch the system?’

Grey looked at Mayani. ‘What’s done is done,’ thanked Mayani.

Grey shrugged tensely. He pursed his lips and looked to home.

‘My girlfriend,’ began Grey. His mind raced back to how they had come to know one another at The Gathering. She had begun regularly picking up orders for Visaya Village.

~

‘Hey, was that you working at the Wakefield exhibition a few months ago?’

‘Yeah, you were one of the artists right?’

‘You remember!’ beamed Aly.

‘Of course,’ grinned Grey.

~

‘And today?’ he asked.

She smiled shyly and touched her right eye, lower neck, and bottom lip.

He took a step towards her and leant down, she leaned back. In the right order!

Of course he obliged.

~

‘Grey?’

‘You were manipulating Aly? Does she even know? What does she do for you?’

‘Oh dear, I wouldn’t say manipulate… our system of employment is a system of deployment. We have the means to make sure people are in the right place at the right time. Are you ready to go?’

‘Why can’t we call her out?’ asked Grey lifting his wrist. Are you sending me into the Lion’s den?

‘After what you’ve just done!?’ yelped Mayani as she clasped his wrist and held his hand. ‘We can’t possibly remove all your identifiers in the back seat of a car without causing a bloody mess, so no messaging for now -if we can’t go dark, we fly under the radar.’

Grey put his hand down and looked at the driver. The Aleksi turned back around to face the front. Grey’s head was spinning, but he remembered their question.

‘Grey, talk about Aly; it’ll help you to calm down,’ suggested Mayani. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Aly… was showing me random pictures of fractals,’ admitted Grey. ‘When I noticed the Fibonacci sequence in the Mandelbrot set, and the way it’s generated got me thinking.’

‘Manda what?’

~

‘Brot. See, the system is used to snapshotting everything that connects with it in a certain way; capturing an image of your personal computer and then continuing to record your every movement,’ explained Grey as Aly was tasting the soup he was making in the kitchenette. ‘If we create an access point in the BE Faculty, then provide its security system with an unending window, a loop so to speak but it isn’t repetitive like you’d think, maybe it won’t pick up on the fact it’s just opened a never-ending rabbit hole.’

‘Entered a toroidal universe?’ smiled Aly mischievously. She flexed an elastic hair tie in her fingers.

‘Imagine chasing another’s vision when they’re always so many steps ahead.’

Aly tied back her hair into a ponytail. ‘You’re hoping it can’t handle it?’

‘Yeah. Hopefully a lack of cyclical comprehension causes an information overload…it just drives on gathering, stockpiling, until a flood gate breaks you could say. Coz they’re so desperate to know, to have everything, but there’s a definite hard limit to what can be stored on these machines.’

‘Once you’re in, you wanna stress the hell out of the immune system until you can take advantage at its weakest moment?’ summed Aly.

Grey nodded excitedly. ‘What do you reckon?’

Aly chuckled. ‘Did you put thyme in this? You know it goes awesome with mushrooms.’

~

‘So, we had three gates to manage to make a path,’ admitted Grey. ‘The eye, the circuit, and the source.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘The chip was like a seed, its program manipulated self-replicating nanoids to grow a line literally through the internal walls to her sleeping pod, and then we programmed the pod to revive and release her.’

‘How did you know where to grow the line?’

‘Everything is emitting to everything else, it’s all about tuning in,’ elaborated Grey. ‘Think of it as, what’s Aly’s word again… slow lightning.’

From the look on Mayani’s face, it momentarily seemed as if some realisation was dawning before she gave up grasping and laughed at herself. ‘I’m sure I’ll get it later.’

‘Go in now,’ ordered Mayani quickly, pushing Grey towards the tod door. ‘Don’t run. Act normal, you’re just going home like everybody else. Stay calm but make haste! We’ll be waiting right here.’

~

A peculiar smile dawned upon Ataur.

An art installation of vines had been steadily growing around the city for several weeks now. Art world ducks were referring to it as a viral installation, reproducing as it was through replication by anonymous public participants.

Ataur read her graffiti, left so near his domicile for all to see. Wet green paint had spilled, dripped and been splashed from the wall, over the synthetic vines and onto the pathways below. He recalled her scolding him for being cooped up in his home alone too often. ‘We could befriend anyone granted enough time,’ she had said, ‘but our time is so limited…often wasted, sometimes stolen…’

Ataur turned away from the maxim of three simple words, freshly painted and decorated by vines −an antithesis to the fear currently sounding around him. Overwhelmed by Mayani’s revelation and still a little nauseous after the last immersion, he turned to someone passing by. ‘Excuse me. I’m sorry, I don’t feel so good,’ he admitted queasily. ‘Would you mind me to the steps.’

‘Of course!’ they replied.

‘It’s okay. We’ll take him from here,’ announced an Aleksi, unexpectedly interrupting.

Ataur looked to the two Aleksi, neither of whom was Leed.

‘Untuk… Entrite?’ accused Ataur. Joy, he blinked to not roll his eyes.

‘Thanks anyway,’ mumbled Ataur to the nervous fellow stepping backwards as he slowly realised who Ataur was.

Ataur went with the Aleksi willingly, saying, ‘I was just on my way.’ Checking his wrist, he could see Prussia presently summoning him, and missed calls from Ronan, Garrett, Anuk, and the earlier summons from Yamantak to the People’s Assembly now gathering in Lassalle.

Escorted by the Armin and quickly drawing attention, Ataur holds his head a little higher, and musters a gently reassuring smile for those now looking to him. He let go of grasping for what had been forgotten after the last immersion –like forsaking the memory of a dream- and his mind started feeling clearer.

As he ascends the steps to Lassalle, Ataur looks up at the great domed ceiling, free of urban citimites, revealing stars in space. With the darkwall down, he wonders who is now looking in at them. His breath shortens as he passes under the arch of the entrance to Lassalle and into its atrium. The vaulted mass presses down around him like the burden of undesired calls to duty but the glowing amber heart of Lassalle, in sight of Elbrihim –the blue Room of Assembly encircling the Boarstone –beckons.

~

Poltauramy found their room empty, her screens dark. ‘Nel?’

Backtracking, he realised she was standing frozen in the mutcdom under the arch of a floor to ceiling window-wall, tensely watching the lights of various sectors as they switched off into night mode.

‘Nel, are you alright?’

When she didn’t move, he knew she wasn’t.

‘Is it about our announcement, at the next assembly?’ sought Poltauramy. ‘Righting the wrong of DNA damaged from generations of overexposure.'

He neared her slowly as she spoke stiffly, restraining herself from sounding distraught. ‘To control us, is to control Netech. Once they know I’m pregnant, if he can’t be controlled by them he’ll be killed. Think how they could spin such a convenient tragedy. We can’t keep him cocooned in here forever, they will get him eventually. If Goshe is given the order…’ she paused as Poltauramy levelled with her.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ began Poltauramy, ‘we should give him to them.’

Nelesia snapped around to stare at him but her anger dissipated in the instant she saw his kind face troubled. She squeezed her eyes shut, ‘it won’t be enough.’

‘It will be,’ he assured. ‘If the conditions are right.’

Nel opened her eyes to him, hopeful and afraid.

He obliged quietly. ‘Let us give some token of grand power to them –say make him a patron, the patron…of a prince.’

‘To be moulded in his image?’ dismayed Nelesia.

‘We will remember,’ assured Poltauramy. ‘Trust the stone.’

‘And how do we explain such a move as bestowing protective power right now, at this time? Surely Goshe knows by now what our son is capable of becoming.’

‘An event, a particular event, something very public.’

Nelesia swayed with unease. ‘Something…’

‘Shocking. Maybe something is destroyed. To trigger the people into paying attention, to trigger the fear that more loss could follow. In that moment, what is important is planted and they begin supporting what we need them to…’

‘An old game.’

‘It works.’

Nelesia lifted her head slowly as the last of the daylights went out in the distance. ‘You have always insisted on leading with love, why must we resort to using the fear now?’

‘We’re out of time. And he needs time. This tactic, it’s so old it’s new –it’ll work. If they fabricate some disaster during the eventide of resettlement, we will have no way to rebut what they will proffer, not without telling the whole truth.’

They both looked to the edge of the citimites, to see the stars in light of what they were talking about. She leaned into him, and he readily held her tightly. ‘There’s love in our intentions.’

‘And no one will get hurt,’ stated Nelesia hopefully.

Poltauramy didn’t reply, someone will have to.

~

Outside their home, the streets are being filled with white trumpet flowers.

Nelesia stands, ears ringing, clutching herself. Bare and alone in their bedroom, crying soundlessly as sorrow shudders through her weeping body. Tears mingle with blood at her feet.

~

Steadily walking upon the gently sloping warmly glowing amber floor of Lassalle for the first time since his Father’s death, Ataur passes through a crowd already seated in the cool air of the vaulted tepee and enters the standing circle of the Members of Elthred. He glimpses the Boarstone behind Ronan, where several Aleksi are standing silently against the walls inside the otherwise empty room.

The amber glow reminds Ataur of two men talking by a fireplace.

Conscious of Ronan’s expectant glare, he discreetly scans the Hall. He imagines some wild and dark creature hidden in the forest of people surrounding them. Watching. Waiting.

~

‘You can go on from here alone,’ whispered the usher.

‘Thank you Lucy.’

Nelesia enters the circular ceremonial chamber where Poltauramy had been cremated. It is lined with flowers and as many natural offerings from the public as could be fit. In the centre is a raised bed of rock. A few bits of charred wicker lay on its edges.

Standing at his death bed, she slides her hands into the ashes.

At her fingertip’s findings, a wave of relief collides with her grief.

~

Prussia looks up at the ceiling.

Upon his protégés arrival, Ronan straightens his collar.

~

In the camp kitchen, Sonya neatly swept the cut chives aside and gathered something more. She notices the young boy Will gaping at an immense round metal object being carried by. ‘What you gaping at Will?’

‘That’s the biggest cooking pan I’ve even seen!’ exclaimed Will.

‘That’s not for cooking,’ chuckled Sonya. ‘It’s for music.’

‘It’s like a bell you just strike it and it rings out,’ explained Katherine dismissively, eager to return Sonya to their conversation. ‘All this arguing over what we need, what we want... all the while the damage continues,’ she exasperated.

Katherine continued preparing parsley, conscious young Will might be listening. ‘Whether we need it or not, to create this, may not be as harmful as to create that –so why wouldn’t we choose this over that.’ Katherine glanced Will. ‘Everything comes back to us full circle, so our aim must be one hundred percent no harm. We’re so connected to and dependant on one another, plants and animals alike, we have to be careful of the way we treat each other… of what we subject one another to.’

‘So we have our utopia,’ mused Sonya as she grabbed a bunch of tarragon.

‘Well, I’m not sure about that word,’ admitted Katherine. ‘Maybe the word we’re looking for is ideal?’

‘Like, as a reasonable goal within our lifetime, an ideal state is very achievable. For the betterment of human civilisation –dare I say survival?’

Sonya smiled suspiciously at Katherine. ‘You’re not happy with what we’ve done so far? Well,’ she declared, ‘here I’m in heaven.’ Her hands quickly sorting herbs, Sonya drew their attention by pointing with puckered lips to the people surrounding them peaceably going about their day. Elders amused at watching the young children learning as they played. Teenagers were determinedly honing various skills, while people were joyfully sharing their presence, abilities and gifts –keeping company, being of service, taking pleasure. And here they were, as they chatted on, preparing an abundance of hale and hearty food.

Katherine smiled tentatively, as she watched a young child enjoy scaring away chickens and intimidate a tame dog, while another child was breaking the sapling from a healthy young tree. ‘And I’ll have mine when they have theirs,’ she avowed.

‘To have an ideal is to invite judgement… who does the judging?’ mumbled Freja.

‘Best practice judging yourself, against the person you were yesterday,’ suggested Katherine as Kiara added more wood to the fire.

Amira had begun cleaning and packing things away once the soup was simmering. ‘Bettering ourselves,’

‘Evolving,’ interjected Freja.

‘Is an ongoing project,’ supposed Amira.

‘Too much argue,’ moaned Sonya.

‘Discussion. We need discussion, healthy arguments not just fighting,’ slipped Freja. ‘Talks towards conciliation, instead of winning by battering the other down.’

‘Our experience of the world is so innately subjective,’ said Katherine, ‘of course we’re going to have difficulty exercising objectivity when deciding features for the future.’

Amira tilted her head questionably.

‘Personal life experiences influence our decisions,’ clarified Freja.

‘Cloud your judgement,’ said Sonya.

Jullee returned to the kitchen, searching distractedly. Unseeing what she was searching for as a suppressed anger flickered. ‘We must go on,’ she controlled herself, inaudible under the ruckus of children passing by the kitchen. Several young students were recognising Dee exuberantly and calling out to her. Dee returned their waves joyfully between showing Will how to stitch so he could mend tears in the cloth sacks.

‘We must go on,’ allayed Jullee aloud, ‘without romanticising or demonising those around us too much.’ She found Sonya finishing her Reddukkar and playfully stole some with her spoon for her soup.

‘Sounds like a fine line to tread,’ grimaced Freja, tearing tarragon from their stalks.

‘And a boring one,’ quipped Jim, still quietly milling cocoa beans nearby.

‘Which is probably why there’s so much…’

‘Drama,’ helped Jim.

‘Around us,’ nodded Katherine. ‘Anyway, when it comes to choosing between what’s proper and what’s in the wrong it’s a path that must be trod −if not by the majority, at the very least by its leaders.’

‘That’s not an unreasonable ask, but it’s a sure task,’ said Jullee as she stirred the Reddukkar through her soup. ‘What are leaders but a part of the whole. Peaceful cities with just leaders have societies in which virtues are,’

‘Habitually prevalent,’ offered Katherine.

‘Yeah. Common. Expected. In undemocratic cities ruled by brutes, violence is widespread.’

‘Due to a lack of virtue throughout their nation,’ agreed Katherine.

‘Look, can any part truly be free of the nature of its whole?’ With her soup, Jullee sat down between Heather who was still writing with her baby on her lap, and young Will who was sewing with Dee watching attentively.

‘Nahul’s done well,’ commented Jullee. ‘They just naturally, by default, seem to act like an honest bunch.’

‘I agree,’ praised Katherine. ‘They’re conscientious. They do what they say they will do. Especially since Milo took charge, they’ve really come through for us in difficult times. They have integrity.’

‘Every reason to be proud of themselves,’ agreed Dee. ‘As individuals and as a collective.’

‘Hierarchy is natural,’ said Dee, ‘but it seems this obsession with power –as in becoming top lobster to control people, events, and the environment- coupled with being highly ego centric and goal focused, hinders man’s empathy and ability to recognise their part within the whole. Ones importance to the whole.’

‘Ego centric?’ questioned Amira.

‘When you don’t see or consider Others points of view,’ said Freja.

‘Self-centred,’ said Sonya.

‘Hmph. Talk about having a stunted ability to navigate the whole damn gamut of experiences.’ Jullee added some salt pre-emptively passed to her by Dee. ‘For disastrous consequences just add fundamental materialism.’ She savoured the look and smell of the fragrant broth steaming in her hands and said for Will, ‘one must account for spirit and consciousness,’ as she supped with good grace.

‘I get what you’re saying,’ tendered Dee. ‘On one hand, excessive materialism has blinded us to the nature of our own being.’

‘Because the vital ingredients of our reality are not material,’ declared Kiara as Jim watched her remove her glasses to taste the soup on the fire.

‘The vital ingredients of our lives are emotional and relational, they’re our dreams and consciousness,’ agreed Jim.

‘And there is no materialist explanation for consciousness or the qualities of being,’ agreed Dee.

‘Fancy being told your pain isn’t real,’ said Jim. ‘Pain is not some ethereal thing, it’s a central thing.’

‘But on the other hand,’ Dee returned, ‘being somewhat materialistic has allowed us to transform basic materials into powerful technology and that is something to celebrate.’

‘True,’ agreed Jullee. ‘Thank goodness for the Pleiians medical technology. We could have lost more than half our tribe. If not for the ability to test birds migrating across the Plains, ducks in the wetlands, bats in the mountains.’

Amira looked puzzled.

‘When we choose to eat animals, or keep animals in large numbers, we choose to possibly get sick from sick animals,’ explained Dee for Amira. ‘We spent an extra three months skirting the northern Shadow Mountain ranges because of a sickness that was claiming the lives of many Amacites at the time. That was a good call Katherine.’

‘Thank Jules’ reports.’

‘Thank the Pleiians and Amacites,’ passed Jullee. ‘But you acted, despite some resistance.’ She looked at Amira. ‘We were accused of bullshitting.’

Amira was astounded.

‘Lives were at stake,’ rued Dee. ‘But real leaders are not afraid or ashamed to stand for the truth when it is unpopular.’ She nodded approvingly at Katherine. ‘We even managed to help spare the tree-dwelling Amery people much loss and tragedy by explaining, ahead of time, the nature of the disease to them.’

‘If most people want something,’ tendered Amira, ‘regardless of…’

‘If the truth be that one way is harmful, and the people don’t like it,’ anticipated Katherine.

‘We force them?’ gawped Amira. ‘Isn’t that like dictating, or tyranny, or something?’

Katherine stopped cutting and tapped her knife blade on the chopping board as she replied to Amira. ‘It is said that you catch more bees with honey, and make more friends by being nice than by being rude; so, we try and guide them towards the alternatives.’

‘We negotiate, we mediate,’ said Jullee as she places her soup on the ground and carefully removes her copper bowl from within a stone bowl.

‘There are indeed varying degrees of force available to us,’ granted Katherine, running her fingers along the edge of the chopping block.

‘You don’t need to be liked or respected to have power over others,’ soured Freja.

Hmm, Sonya nodded.

‘They say diplomacy is the art of letting someone have your way,’ acknowledged Katherine as she set back to cutting.

‘I get you, supporting and subtly influencing people towards what is good,’ appreciated Amira.

‘Something we can all do as individuals,’ said Dee. ‘You don’t have to be a powerful leader to effect change, every small act of kindness has the power to change one person’s world as they know it.’

‘Kathy, are you worried about how the Ashen will respond to being asked to go without…like if they turn on us? Isn’t it arrogant to impose ourselves on them?’

Katherine glanced Amira and continued thinly slicing a rainbow selection of tubers as she spoke. ‘Our values and culture? Well our focus is the Ashen because of the negative impacts of their industry which places profit before people. We are not seeking to disturb or diminish the ways of villages one might consider underdeveloped by Ashen standards. As for going without, well, it’s not going without if you replace something with something else. There’s much to replace –but not everything! And we must compel our family towards what is right and just, for everyone’s sake. Let me bring this back to our utmost concerns, the unacceptable harm that’s been committed. Get this: when we are born we receive an inheritance, not just family, but the land, all the plants and animals…all the creations…all the machines, for they too are creations, therein. Now we should not be held to blame, or made to suffer, for the mistakes of our predecessors’ creations, but we in the here and now as beings responsible for ourselves and the consequences of our actions in the now… we can either take that technology and use it to cause and continue harm –or not!’

Dee, now folding empty food sacks nearby to help Amira pack up, spoke up. ‘Changes can be made gradually over time by educing the best from people. Accusing people of being selfish and ignorant won’t get us anywhere. What is to be gained from instilling embarrassment and fear? We need to sympathise with how and why they’ve been denied the truthful knowledge they needed to make good choices.’

‘Speaking of the fear of going without, like not having things, I mean materially,’ said Katherine, ‘in general things will still be available for them and about them enough to appease the materialistic ego as we transition, but –we hope− the real kicker will be knowing the alternatives we’re offering are not at the price of our humanity. If we expose the real hidden cost of most things, people will be turned off them. I’ll bank starvation, slavery, and slaughter will cease to sell.’

‘We need be prepared for a reaction,’ sighed Kiara by the cook place as the flames turned in the wind. She stepped back.

‘At the end of the day it is a duty as a leader, as a community, to influence towards what is right, just as much as discipline against what is wrong,’ afforded Katherine.

‘Discipline,’ probed Amira.

‘Hold beings to account,’ said Freja. ‘Correct people, for example that are caught leeching or dumping toxic waste, into the water of a river animals and people drink from.’

‘Like when that Loaman settlement near Norwood was pouring mercury into the Aquara,’ recalled Jim. ‘And the people of all the villages on its banks downstream were poisoned. The children couldn’t walk or talk properly. I never did hear whether or not Armin were sent in to stop them.’

‘Strongmen aha, what else are they good for?’ crowed Sonya.

‘Deemed forces with corporeal control helps to limit errant vigilantes,’ asserted Katherine.

‘If they too respect their place, and don’t go off beam,’ said Sonya.

‘When our spirits are sufficiently nourished,’ said Freja. ‘We won’t continue to have so many physical manifestations of spiritual immaturity. Gone will be the father state disciplining uncontrollable children.’

Aaron came with his son, who was pointing at Dee. ‘Hey Dee, he wants to make a Go board. Can you teach him how to rule the lines? I’ve been trying but he’s not getting me.’

Dee beamed. ‘Sure. I can do it right now if you want. Hello Justin, did you bring your own ruler? Great. Sit here.’ Dee began showing him how to place the ruler.

‘Intentionally causing harm and multiplying the worlds suffering,’ thought Katherine, ‘is morally apprehensible. You could say it’s a sin. And how much easier is it to think about sin from the perspective of do no harm –greed, sloth, wrath, and most other failings automatically fall under this.’

‘That’s right, you see,’ smiled Dee as she watched over Will and Justin. ‘So, there’s only three steps to ruling. Mark the top, mark the bottom, then draw the line. Mark, mark, connect.’

‘Do no harm is just another way of saying love one another,’ cried Sonya.

‘Both mantras are nearly every religions’ golden rule,’ said Freja.

‘But we’re not religious?’ thought Amira.

‘Religion comes in many different forms,’ said Kiara firmly as she poured a little more water into the soup pot furiously bubbling over the steady fire. Her eyeglasses fogged a little.

Jim looked over, unsure if Kiara was reluctant or unable to elaborate. Freja was surprised when Jim stopped milling cocoa beans to explain to Amira. ‘The way we relate to things like moral conduct and right belief, how to deal with our ultimate concerns, and what is worthy of especial reverence... the way we relate to and express ourselves on these matters, makes up what we would call our religion.’

‘How we think and feel about everything most important to us?’ clarified Freja.

Amira looked at Heather writing, and thought about the holy books people lived and died by. ‘Why do things have to be set in stone and dictated to us?’ asked Amira.

‘It doesn’t, and it hasn’t always been,’ said Dee. ‘Our beliefs don’t have to be formalised; but surely we can agree that gathering together our experiences, our wisdom, has proven its use in our development –the bettering of ourselves.’

‘When did we start undeveloping I wonder?’

Jullee slurped the last of her soup. She tapped her head with the spoon saying, ‘when we started using the wrong tools.’

‘It’s natural to try and do something, anything, and maybe make mistakes,’ eased Dee. ‘Maybe go too far and need to pull back and recorrect.’

Dee watched Justin rule a crooked line as he missed the mark. ‘Whoops! That’s okay. Sometimes we connect the wrong dots.’

‘Were we always so lost? I just can’t believe that,’ felt Amira.

‘And neither do we. There are many past and present examples of thriving communities… and we want to nurture the virtues that have seen them become that way,’ stated Katherine.

‘That word again. Virtue,’ pondered Amira.

‘Moral excellence,’ defined Dee.

‘Compassion over corruption,’ desired Freja.

‘We have core beliefs that we live by, and we’ve naturalised some unique traditions and rituals over the years,’ mentioned Jim.

‘Have you heard of that tribe who makes someone who has wronged jump up and down while their community prays for them?’ said Freja. ‘No,’ said Jim. ‘But I like the sound of that. We rise, we fall, we can rise again,’ he imagined. ‘Faster, higher, stronger,’ he dreamed.

‘Want me to write that down?’ asked Heather.

Jim laughed self-consciously and shook his head.

Kiara shifted the soup on the fire as people began arriving to que for food.

Jim stood up from the old tree log he was sitting on to reach for a flat piece of wood. He began scooping some of the creamy dark cocoa paste out of the large bowl into a decorative bronze bowl. ‘If you think about it, it’s civilisation that creates and improves religions, not the other way around.’

Heather now stopped writing and set down her baby. ‘Would you please pass the buko butter from near those coals Will, near Kiara, thank you. We’re ready for some Reddukkar now Sonya,’ she called. ‘Here, let me help you,’ she said to Jim as she held the vessel up for him to fill.

‘I don’t think you personally need to be aligned with any specific religion to be able to understand or believe in the concept of sin,’ admitted Freja.

‘Though it undoubtedly helps,’ said Katherine. ‘It’s an advantage to have somewhere to start, a place for your perspective to grow from.’

‘Someone to follow until you find your own feet,’ mumbled Jullee.

‘How better to relate to higher concepts, than through the words and deeds of those who have come before?’ finished Katherine.

Aaron left with his son as Dee carried sheaves of paperbark, and a stack of copper bowls to Kiara who was now distributing soup and rice to people.

‘Thank you, friend,’ could be heard repeatedly as serving began, and later, ‘this is excellent.’

The sheaves of paperbark prevented people from burning themselves against the heated metal and gave them something to wipe their soiled hands upon.

A shy child intimidated by the huge carved pot over the waning fire refused some soup but took an apple. A Mother assured the child would also eat from her own bowl somewhere quieter later.

‘Failing to take something from the accumulated wisdom of hundreds of years of experience, is like living from hand to mouth,’ thought Jim. ‘It’s true, we can’t live on bread alone.’

‘Accumulated wisdom. You mean from religious texts?’ presumed Freja. ‘The Raken have a book which justifies acts of violence, including all-out war against the other –they call them infidels,’ she noted. Freja lowered her voice in an attempt to not let Will hear her. He was watching Heather add ingredients to the cocoa Jim had been milling. ‘The same book is used to justify child marriage with the story of a man marrying a six-year-old girl.’

‘Gondor’s text is assumed to be better somehow,’ said Katherine in an equally low voice, ‘but in it a King discards and shames his own daughter after she is raped by her brother, whereas the Raken don’t sanction sibling rape.’

‘Oh, but spousal’s okay?’ growled Freja sarcastically.

Katherine smirked grimly under a face impassive with anger.

‘Best not fall into dwelling on us and them,’ stressed Dee as she tended Heather’s baby; ‘we need to be looking for unity… and caring for our human family.’

‘By tending the underlying forces of love,’ spouted Jim gently.

Heather smiled silently as she stirred the butter and Sonya’s Reddukkar into the cocoa paste.

While Freja calmed herself, Katherine spoke up again so Jim could hear, ‘we could pick and choose bits and pieces, going back and forth all day discussing sides –which I suppose is the point of their existence in the first place…to provoke thought and action.’

‘It’s how we see things, how we interpret things that matters most,’ ended Jim.

‘Amira, it’s possible to learn a little something, from any text, any image, any expression of human thought or feeling created,’ insisted Dee. ‘To enrich yourself, from the past or in the present.’

‘So, we can use everyday forms to discuss otherly things between us,’ understood Amira.

‘That’s what makes the everyday an eternal well,’ smiled Jim, ‘if you know how to look.’

He sealed the decorative vessel Heather had also stirred butter and Reddukkar into.

‘The Amacites have spiritual beliefs closely linked to the living world,’ mentioned Freja offhandedly.

‘As opposed to the dead one?’ toyed Jullee. ‘Sorry Freja, yeah, you meant natural like nature. Gotta love the Amacites,’ cheered Jullee, touching the stone bowl beside her reminiscently.

‘They’ve a way more complex and sophisticated culture than the Ashen ever give them credit for,’ stated Dee.

‘I accidentally wandered into one of their totem groves once,’ recalled Jullee. ‘Could have sworn it was pre-Song…’

‘The Song Dynasty story of The Blue Empress,’ quoted Jim for Amira, ‘you can either regard her literally as an angel, an alien, or as a metaphor, the personification of concepts –such as wisdom and grace, or forgiveness in her case. Form, like the human form and our character, or say the form of a tree, is familiar and easier for most people to comprehend than immaterial concepts like emotions on their own.’

‘Will!’ said Dee unexpectedly, ‘what’s anger?’

Will, who had been helping Heather, immediately pulled a fierce face, tensing his arms and balling his fists.

‘Nuff said,’ chuckled Jullee.

Katherine, Freja, Sonya, Jim, and Amira laughed and praised Will before he bashfully went back to stitching.

‘Do you really think she existed?’ asked Amira.

‘Does it really matter?’ countered Freja as Kiara came and took the last of Katherine, Sonya, and her own cuttings to add to the soup.

‘Fact inspires fictions… she probably was based on, if not actually, a political dissident,’ posed Katherine as she began sweeping the table clean with Sonya.

‘Enjoy the mystery while you can,’ Jullee encouraged Amira as she refrained from saying, before some sad human sows a seed of doubt that sticks.

‘If you want to explore the mysteries through a particular religion,’ suggested Dee. ‘Try not to assume your own religion reflects the most accurate view of the divine, faith and belief, over all else.’

‘But let your faith be not fickle,’ chanted Freja.

Katherine grimaced, ‘our religious prejudices and materialism seems to continually undermine our ability to believe in transcendent being… but we can still so readily, even eagerly, believe in evil!?’

Will finished mending and folded his work for Dee. ‘Thank you Will, you’ve done a fantastic job,’ she beamed.

Will watched Jim lift the vessel of chocolate as Heather returned to her baby.

‘Beautiful isn’t it?’ asked Heather, noticing Will. He was looking at its knotted vines, growing with the flow, its tendrils forming spirals. He was surprised to notice a face peering out of the tangle. ‘And that funny looking man, is Bes.’

‘He likes…music and dancing,’ smiled Dee as Jim placed the vessel aside.

‘The opportunity for mental, emotional, and spiritual growth exists every second, of every day,’ trusted Dee positively as she garnered more sheaves for Kiara.

‘And we have a right to that,’ agreed Katherine. ‘To grow, mature, blossom.’

‘Before we die,’ said Freja to herself.

‘Harming our world is harming ourselves, so the harm must stop and the love must begin. We really do just have to love one another –meaning all living things.’

Dee lifted a bag and found something inside, she pulled out the roots of a vine and a small pink flower.

‘Oh, the vine and periwinkle’s for Sirona,’ mentioned Sonya.

‘The potions princess,’ affirmed Jullee.

‘Okay. Would you like us to drop it to her on the way out?’ offered Dee.

‘Sure, thank you Dee,’ appreciated Sonya.

‘I’m heading off now,’ said Dee as she took the sack Will had mended, and added it to the stack she had made. ‘Off to the Amery’s. You can come next time Will,’ promised Dee as he looked at her wide-eyed and hopeful. He had relished stories about the tree dwelling locavores, and thrilled at the thought of climbing towering trees to pick fruit amidst exotic birds and butterflies in sundrenched canopies.

‘See you all in a few days,’ said Dee. Everyone wished her safe passage as she departed with Mar who had returned to help her carry the burden.

At Jullee’s suggestion, Will moved eagerly to go and help Kiara serve food.

‘Without sin,’ pondered Amira, ‘how would we learn…I mean without pain and suffering?’

 ‘Sin is not a necessity,’ stated Dee.

‘But pains a great teacher,’ said Freja.

‘We’re all going to experience challenges in living; love and loss whether we like it or not. There’s plenty of opportunity for learning in the act of living,’ countered Katherine.

‘Being causes suffering,’ murmured Jullee quietly. ‘The price we pay for being is limitations, and the price we pay for limitations is suffering.’ She picked up Sonya’s board, offering to clean it, but Sonya shooed her away, insisting to do it herself.

‘You don’t need to commit some great evil to learn that acting against natural law causes a bad return,’ added Dee. ‘Foul play takes you astray.’

‘You get what you give,’ asserted Sonya as she was washing up.

Jullee glanced Sonya gravely, doubtful, but said nothing.

‘Disrupting how people relate to the spirit world, and interfering with their connection to supreme being, has actually taken the Ashen to their lowest state,’ insisted Katherine. ‘Despite all outward appearances,’ agreed Jim.

‘How?’ asked Amira.

‘They see themselves as subjects,’ said Katherine, ‘and over-consume in pursuit of status and wealth. The belief they are separate to an external world they are simply observing is the source of their anxiety, animosity to Others, and -plainly- their suffering. While it is lovely to have things, we are not our things.’

‘We’re not…’

‘Objects can make people feel good, give them pleasure; when they feel they possess the object and therefore all the qualities and powers of that object.’

‘Sellers play into all those things,’ said Katherine, ‘appealing to an identity detached from the essential world,’ she added for Amira’s sake.

‘Are you saying advertising is bad?’ worried Amira.

‘Hell no, it’s hilarious,’ Jullee broke in.

‘No. Not really,’ answered Katherine. ‘Advertising can drive great and positive change –how better to share and let people know about our amazing new creations and inventions?’

‘Or reaffirm what we value, through their stories I mean,’ added Jim. ‘But when it comes to stuff,’ he motioned wrangling an invisible ball with his hands, ‘I feel there’s a thing where, once upon a time,’ he thought, ‘especially when we were young, maybe we received things with love, with loving intention, because whoever meant it, maybe made whatever it was, like a handmade quilt, or a song, or,’

‘Cooked food,’ smiled Jullee.

‘Yeah, whatever form it was, but then somewhere along the line we get used to giving or receiving things without the loving intention behind it…’ posed Jim.

Katherine mulled over Jim’s words.

Jullee nodded slowly.

‘It’s the things themselves that can pose the greater problems,’ Katherine went on for Amira, ‘depending on how, where, and what they’re made of. Like we said earlier, without enough information, people don’t always realise they’re supporting degrading or damaging things.’

Katherine stopped what she was doing as Will brought her a serving of soup. As he returned to Kiara, she sat beside Amira to have a quieter word. ‘People like pleasure. They’re driven by desire…for this or that. There’s nothing shameful about desire. Your feelings are signals to help you move towards pleasure or avoid pain. But get this, if someone can control your experience of the world and mess with your emotions, they can potentially hijack your instincts; making it difficult for you to distinguish between good and maladaptive behaviour. You could be influenced into experiencing something thinking you’ve made the best choice, when actually you’re engaging in self-destructive behaviour.’

‘How the soup?’ asked Jullee.

‘To die for,’ grinned Katherine.

‘I know right,’ agreed Jullee as she supped some more and acted like she was dying. ‘I can feel the love, my body’s going into shock from the nutrition.’

‘Speaking of advertising,’ thought Freja. ‘In Nahul, there was a point where women were fed up being used as bait, dangled here and there for attention; used to sell everything from chairs to peanut butter,’

‘and themselves,’ mumbled Freja.

‘to fifty-piece vegetable cutting sets.’

‘Do they not have knives in Nahul? ’ scoffed Freja uproariously as she upheld her paring knife worshipfully. ‘Or know how to use them?’

‘Why you smiling like that Jullee?’ sparkled Sonya.

Jullee shrugged innocently.

‘People didn’t foresee the harmful side effects of constantly objectifying people,’ said Katherine to Amira.

‘Deeply sentient beings,’ murmured Freja.

‘Because they were achieving their goals and solving their –commercial- problems. No one’s immune from being represented disparagingly. In this case, it was women who took control of how they were being portrayed –we’re not all materialistic airheads; no more than all men are bumbling apes.’

‘So, women started becoming involved in how they were being used?’

‘How they were being represented,’ answered Katherine. ‘No mean feat because all of the industries at the time were worked and owned by males. But thankfully, with a few good men, the inclusion of females, and most importantly allowing them to determine themselves, turned out to improve equality for everyone. The degradation of so-called feminine qualities displayed by men and women gave rise to a toxic form of masculinity, so when people began publicly elevating traits like sensitivity, humility, and empathy they began to temper crude obsessions with gratuitous sex and violence.’

‘At least, that’s to say, in public,’ said Freja.

Amira stared at Freja in the moments silence.

Dee casually drifted by Amira and said gently, ‘we like to believe peace in our community reflects peace in our homes.’

Heather put down the book she was writing in to pick up another.

Katherine spoke. ‘In exploring with all our senses, we can let go of misheld beliefs that cause bigotry, sexism, and racism, to realise our needs and values. Restoring people’s dignity makes them feel respected, safer, and in turn loved enough to experience and express themselves authentically. When we’re free and safe to synchronise with nature, like an artist, the dancer, the musician, we can realise our closeness and connection to everything; intimacy replaces separation.’

‘Honouring nature,’ affirmed Freja positively.

‘So again, advertising is not all bad,’ affirmed Katherine. ‘Advertising dished out in consumerist cultures isn’t solely responsible for alienating people, systems of belief and control have been causing traumatic gender imbalances for ages, literally.’

‘Systems?’ repeated Amira.

Heather put down the book she was reading as her baby stirred.

Jullee cooed.

‘Restoring respect for women and rebuilding their confidence meant they could step into decision making positions they’d been denied from in the past,’ said Jim.

Amira considered Jim, suddenly more conscious of how self-possessed he was. Calm, focused, and mindful. She couldn’t imagine being afraid of him.

‘Several women hold seats in Jona’s Council of Reagan. And Milo’s Council of Nahul is pretty much equal from what I hear -compared to Rinehart’s token one. I’d say, thanks to them, Nahul has established the most impressive communal safety arrangement.’

‘Social security system,’ said Katherine.

‘The Ashen can’t compare. Nahul’s governance has many ways of supporting,’

‘instead of exploiting,’ coughed Freja.

‘Supporting, not just working aged males, but also mothers, children, the ailing, the elderly, and impoverished,’ finished Jim.

‘Our environment can change us, but we can change our environment,’ affirmed Freja. ‘The more sympathetic we are to our environment the easier everything flows,’ she smiled as she danced the paring knife in her hand between cuts. Amira delighted at the danger.

‘Remember when we were talking about being part of the whole?’ reminded Katherine. ‘If our thoughts are not exempt from the universe, and our brain not exempt from the cause and effect of the environment, we are like nature playing nature, our behaviour one with the behaviour of the world. When it comes to humanity, we belong and our inclusion creates balance. If everything needs everything else in order to exist, then it makes sense that to temper toxic masculinity,’

‘A hangover of abuse by overlords?’ pondered Freja.

‘and restore divine masculinity, we need feminine divinity. With balanced qualities, we can limit the degradation of nature and people to elevate humanity in spirit and being.’

‘Okay. So were stepping in,’ respected Amira. ‘Without the threat of physical force?’

Katherine stood up and gave her bowl to Urja to clean. ‘Violence begets violence. Successfully wrought Armin, Gondor and Raken zealots alike, anyone dehumanised for that matter, suffers… and hurting people hurt people,’ lamented Katherine. ‘We will not conduct ourselves like that. Asher’s maintaining of armies of forces, sophisticated armaments and huge defences can only lead to the chaos of war which is an admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests. As Germaine said, in that absurd game, issues are left to chance and the best man to win will not at all be justified, because the most devious, unethical, dishonest man can win. Wars cannot be won.’

‘To stop war, couldn’t we just have one world government? Because a united…’

‘Organism,’ helped Katherine.

‘Would have no need to be at war with itself?’ nodded Amira.

‘Forgive me, but experience has shown us that man is fallible,’ prickled Katherine. ‘I would not risk anyone having absolute power because power corrupts, and absolute power would corrupt absolutely. We must be able to determine ourselves accordingly. As in, at any one time, we have very different needs due to very different climates -literally and otherwise. This idea of some difference or unrelation –separation- between us and the environment is a fundamentally materialistic lie.’

‘To care for the land is to care for ourselves. We must be care takers,’ backed Freja.

‘Ending our antagonism with nature,’ said Katherine, ‘involves acting from a place of love and not intentionally harming any organisms.’

‘Right, because we need the nature,’ commended Sonya.

‘Not just to live, but for healing and longevity,’ added Katherine.

‘So, if we’re going to stop all these guys destroying the environment and blaming it on the people, how many people do you think we’ll need to stop them?’ asked Amira.

‘To… monitor the operations of Ashen government and restrain its agents?’ presumed Katherine.

Amira nodded with a shrug.

‘None,’ remarked Jullee with amusement.

‘I don’t understand,’ frowned Amira.

‘On one hand, we do need better ways for governance to implement ethical policies within industrial services and duly enforce them,’ began Jullee, ‘but on the other hand, what sort of friend looks away from another’s transgressions? You guys were talking about force…what about the force of our values?

‘Here: everyone has the right to feel safe, be heard, be included, learn, have their belongings kept safe, use communal equipment… How’d we get like this? Conversation. From the start, we’ve been communicating with people from different backgrounds, building empathy as we recognised our different experiences, oppressions and privileges, to explain how and why we interact the way we do. We’ve overcome numerous obstacles, to access all sorts of things. By respecting the cultural integrity and rights of indigenous people and their communities, and welcoming their wealth of knowledge to the pool, we have been enabled to provide fresh water, sanitation, food self-sufficiency, and primary education for a start.

‘We have the all tools we need to make our world a secure and hospitable place, not just for ourselves, but for future generations. It’s time for us to use the wisdom from our knowledge and experience. We can strive for patterns of production and consumption that are sustainable …for the sake of every living being.’ Jullee looked at the land around them. ‘If it’s true we’ve inherited the land from our ancestors, then it could also be said, we’re borrowing the land from our children. So, we need to give a shit.

‘Remember when we were talking about how people need access to knowledge? Our pursuit of knowledge leads to wisdom, which governs choice. When we create knowledge, legitimate knowledge, through negotiation –by discussing, analysing, and evaluating – we are also constructing society. As a multicultural society we have the best means of formulating broadmindedness and moderation. Remember, it is less likely for someone of great knowledge to resort to destructive habits, while it is definitely more likely for someone starved of knowledge to resort to destructive behaviour.

‘When we are internally aligned, we are open to the wisdom of each moment as it unfolds. Your thoughts change, your feelings, your focus, your intentions… and when your perspective shifts, your reality shifts. With our thoughts, we make the world. We can change the operating system of Asher’s culture by focusing collective intention on what is important to us and needs to be done for the future.

‘It’s our collective responsibility to make a difference –to challenge injustice. But first, we need to individually reach our own personal enlightenment. There’s a lot of healing to be had; a lot of rewiring of ourselves and our instinctual responses to challenges. We need to talk, and listen. Better to be self-transforming fools than prideful argumentative brats. We need to ask ourselves, do we wanna be right or do we wanna be learning? In acknowledging our weaknesses so we stop doing the things that bring harm, and in healing our differences to a point of mutual respect, we can have peace, love, and unity. We don’t need heroics, we need healing.

‘It’s an extraordinary dance, all this. We don’t have all the answers; but there’s choices, to be made against time and chance -and there’s fun in that. Right now, we’re just consolidating all the awesomeness we already have at hand. It’s not a revolution, this is restoration.’

‘Amira! I’ve been looking for you… have you been standing here the whole time? Have you been helping at all or just standing around with your hands in your pockets?’

‘They’re lovely pockets,’ complimented Jullee.

Amira’s Mother blushed apologetically when she saw Jullee.

‘Sorry, Amira’s been keeping us company, she's been no trouble at all.’

‘Oh good, sorry.’

‘No, no, don’t apologise,’ smiled Jullee as Sonya, Katherine, Jim, Kiara, and Will bade farewell.

‘To be clear,’ said Jullee urgently as Amira turned to leave, ‘compassionate love is our most important value, an intelligence, a divine reality, underlying our world. Everything has a core Amira: people, civilisations, fruit.’