Arcfire
Chapter 3
by E. E. Bowers
As is usual with such encounters, there was little else to do but to offer aid to the strange female. Strange and beautiful. Or, just beautiful—perhaps just emphasise how comely the girl would be. With pretty people, a lot of flaws are clearly overlooked. Just take a glimpse at the number of times celebrities have been arrested…and promptly freed to do more of the same.
Beautiful and all the more visibly so. Add to this how there was almost nothing in the way of clothing, and there are all the telling factors for more of the inevitable. All of which is exactly how the fellows have decided to make the opening play in their game. Aia knew… Aia just knew…that the fellows had played her like a game-piece. Depriving her of most anything in clothing. Putting her at the edge of a settlement populated by two men. Of course, there should be the chance at revenge regarding her underdressed circumstances, but first there is the matter of dealing with the here and now. Revenge, indeed. And when that happens…
Or until that happens, Aia would have to play this role. The alternative, go turn about and wander the wastelands or plains or whatever they call it locally. Her impromptu gift of the local language did not include knowledge of culture or geography. And let it be known, culture is vastly more important than lessons on geography, for your miserable political map changes every single last year. Human fools and morons with money and power to match their levels of idiocy go madly about, starting revolutions, overthrowing tyrannies…only to establish their own tyrannies. Suffice to say, this landscape had a steady sort of government—as hard-handed as it may be. As Aia and you will find out.
And until that happens, there is her mincing behind this rambling dwarf and the rather tongue-tied young man. Yes, there was certainly a shuddering in his step, as if just being close to her was enough to set off shakes.
Indeed, Aia was a very pretty girl before being whisked away to partake of this adventure. Other than the Americans pouring contempt upon an immigrant girl, there were still those who stared longingly at her. And as with many very pretty Euro-born girls, they just accept it. (American girls seem endlessly set to rage out against being stared at by males. Americans, ever holding onto the worst remnants of Puritanism.)
But Aia was quite doubtful that such an American strain of hateful religion had ever reached this planet. Nary a single bit of religious paraphernalia in sight, in fact. Or maybe there was, and Aia just did not recognise it. Perhaps that elongated pipe… No, that’s a chimney.
“So would anyone believe old Master Fromm upon hearing of a skyfall child? Certainly not! Do people believe in skyfall children? No to that as well!” complained the before-mentioned hyper-intelligent dwarf. Now, just quite hyper. “I could have a pile of prophet-crystal shavings and the appropriate contrivance to show images of you, and they would choose to still not believe. A great many youngsters still fail to believe that your kind existed! Or exists, in your case! Not extinct now-w-w!
“But it seems that every generation of youths take to the belief that disbelief is forever the way to go. They do not believe the history. They do not believe in machinery or the ways thereof. And are you quite well, Jakk?”
“Wait, what?” went the before-mentioned apprentice. Or just the apprentice, for there were no others yet.
“You quiver as if afflicted with something not cured yet,” said Master Fromm. “Fairly obvious, your malady! Would you like a moment alone to alleviate your tension?”
“Wait, what?” went the apprentice again. Oh dear, his mind is still reeling about. Too much of having especially inappropriate thoughts given this most recent sight.
Indeed, with such talk, Puritanism has never touched the likes of this world. The followers of such would have likely condemned the entire population as being witches or ever-blaspheming servants of Baphomet or some-such folderol. Then they would quickly find that the population is a great deal more capable of resisting religious prosecution than red-skinned polytheists.
“Oh dear,” went Master Fromm. “The young one’s brain has sprung a proverbial spring, gashed a gears, etcetera, etcetera. Vasi cures on brain-ails are a touch more difficult and would require professional healers.” Now, mockingly. “Wait, what! Wait, what!” Less mockingly, “While none so lovingly crafted as a skyfall girl, very pretty women nevertheless throughout! Learn to coexist with, and without shaking like an ill-calibrated gimbal!”
Whilst Master Fromm is declared a master of machinery, Aia was not quite sure that master extended to skills with people. With machinery, it’s easy to get to the point. Machines work or they do not. People function whenever they feel like it. But people cannot be fixed as easily as gimbals or governors. (The regulatory device governor, not the idiot politician type of governor.) Aia knew the type with regards to this man… This dwarf… This person.
As a person, terse and metal-hard in getting to the point on most everything. A near-absence of subtlety and tact. Not even warming up to subjects. But then again true, machine-expert humans on Earth have the same state of mind.
How bad is Master Fromm? You weren’t there for the initial conversation, but it went something like… Oh yes, now we remember. He said something along the lines of… My name and title is Master Fromm, not necessarily in that order.
Meanwhile, my instinct-stunned companion and apprentice is named Jakk the Apprentice. Now follow me indoors promptly.
And just like that, Aia was indeed following these two curious-looking individuals. There is the dwarf. Dwarves no longer exist on Earth. Or at the least, not on Aia’s Earth. Saying again for yet more emphasis, all the (asinine) ruling families of all of your planet’s (asinine) governments have still banned genetic fixes for (yet even more asinine) reasons. Dwarves only exist in computer virtual games. But here is an actual dwarf. As proud and as strong as can be, broad of shoulders and yet stubby of legs. That seemed to do nothing for his intelligence, for he seems to be the brains of this setup. But be that as it may, his temper seemed to make up for his lack of vertical stature. He seems to be on a constant rip about most everything, and Aia had just met him.
And he was still talking. “Now, it may not suit the legendary high-likes of your space-faring kin, but this is still a viable habitat! Albeit for machinery!” He pressed his hand to a glassy glossy bit of the door. There was a sturdy mechanical sound that was more clock-k than click. And then he kept walking as the door swung open the rest of the way.
Aia thought it must be more of that crystal technology this Master Fromm seems to always be on about. For all the extravagant levels of computers, artificial intelligence, space colonies, unlimited clean energy and the like… For all of that, Aia’s version of Earth still had doors that had to be unlocked with simple chunks of shaped metal. (Otherwise known as keys.) Oh, and pushed open the same way that doors have been opened for hundreds of thousands of years.
Don’t think pre-Ice Age civilisation had doors? Goes to show what you know! That you are not aware of any pre-Ice Age civilisations you’re your planet demonstrates yet further ignorance still! Ignoramuses, the whole lot of you. Why are humans still allowed to reproduce?
But in any event, the automatic door of crystalline control could be just a means of impressing clientele. Or perhaps a pet project for Jakk to have completed. An extravagance, that.
Yet the door did what it’s for. It bars the way from troublemakers like you in accessing a space. And being unlocked and also open, it now reveals and permits the way into the indoor space. Which is—most immediately—a short hallway. Glassine cubby spaces held what looked to be various kinds of outer-wear and different sorts of boots. This is a world in which people take things more slowly. No madly rushing about to and from endless amounts of asinine industrial wage-slavery. Which is to say, people have the time to use foyers. Because that what this space is, a foyer. A small space between outdoors and indoors. Before Jakk would lose consciousness from being in such close, close quarters with the barely-clad and pointy-eared girl, the door into the actual indoor space was now open.
…
Ah, a living room and a quaint one at that. Three deep armchairs rested about the vicinity of a solid-hewn yet slightly glossy wooden table. While the armchairs seemed to have cushioning deep and soft, the cloth thereabouts also had a slight sheen to it. Polished wood, yes. But polished cushions? Then Aia recalled all this talk of crystal-smithing and machine-smithing and what-not among Master Fromm’s ceaseless ranting about this or that. The glossiness could very well be some outgrowth of crystalline works. Or perhaps everything was made from some kind of crystal-smithing. Wooden tables and bookshelves? How can one have wood if there are no trees?
Aia and her so-called friends had once seen a movie about a horrid little town that had an extensive meat market. And yet, there was no livestock evident. The ever-ready answer is always, The meat is of human flesh! Ah, just so very predictable as a plot-twist.. This, just as the amnesiac detective-boyfriend-etcetera spends most all the movie finding the mysterious killer of his lover, only to discover that…he was the killer all along! Amnesia, murder case, that should have been a dead giveaway, so to speak. That, or the protagonists thrust head-long into a psychedelic set of circumstances after a horrible accident…were dead all along. Predictable, so very predictable.
Well this time, rest assured. Aia is quite alive. This is not a psychedelic death-dream. That, the furniture is not made from human flesh. Not in this instance, at the least.
“Jakk! Water the brew-pot and set it for crafting tea,” said Master Fromm. “Meanwhile, our legend-made-flesh guest must be properly clad if this association is to carry forth! Speaking of flesh, stop ogling it!”
While all three humanoids in this room are quite alive, Jakk has taken on the mien of the undead. The wide-open mouth. The wide-eyed glossy stare. The shuffling step. In going off to do as his teacher bid, Jakk was also quite off his regular state of mind. What, did you think that shambling reanimated corpses could serve as apprentices? Given the undead, shambling behaviour shown by human teenagers in high school, we can see how you would come to accept such circumstances. But again, not this time.
Turning to face Aia. “Yes, now. Where were we? Ah, but how could I possibly forget! Hereabouts with a scantily clad and impossibly comely fem-creature straight out of the deepest, most barely believable myths of all Morkudum! Long of legs and long of ears, too! And neck. For whatever impossible reason, the legends leave out the length of what connects body to head with you people.”
Aia was going to open her mouth to explain the how and why of her neck’s length. It was more a matter of personal preference. And then the fellows had…
And Master Fromm was still talking. “But, so much for reaction and conjecture! Best to deal with the here and now prior to approaching the later on approach from elsewhere! Among which, Lord Morkudum’s atrocious korth-smelling lackeys getting wind of the likes of you! Would have you whisked about and locked away like so many of his questionably-acquired treasures.” He made a fluttery-twirley sort of gesture with his right hand. “Now turn yourself about, and there is a de-dusting room with a set of garments for both apprentices and masters. Not that Lord Morkudum is keen to it, but masters and apprentices past have also included beings of the child-bearing sort!
“What I am saying in so many words is, there is a not-so-questionable reason as to why my home has female clothing! This, though I doubt that your physical interactions with us mere mortals would produce fertile offspring. Now, off with you then!”
Under such a madcap flurry of lunatic commentary, Aia turned listlessly about and did indeed see a door set between two book-cases. Was it there before? Why, of course it was! Else, how could it not have been there otherwise? It’s not as if this Master Fromm person magicked up a slab of typically shiny strange wood and perhaps a de-dusting room behind it. There seems not to be magick in this world. (So, so very sorry to disappoint those in love with story-telling from a certain master story-smith! No bespectacled dashing young heroes—orphaned or otherwise—with sorcery-slinging wands.) This world seems to have all the trapping of those who accomplish everything with technology.
Such as the sort that turned the knob automatically and opened the door to the de-dusting room. (Magnetics, it must be.) As to there being something called a de-dusting room, it must be something like a decontamination room—something all too sadly familiar to those from a planet that experienced a nuclear war.
Speaking of such, this room seemed a bit more squarely austere and more…technologically concerned than the rest of this quaint home. The size of a large bathing room, there are three wash-stalls at one end of the room—tightly placed together.
A wash-stall. What better time to use it? In all the fantasy-realm ages Aia had read of, bathing habits were variable and questionable otherwise. (Do calm yourselves. Aia would later find out that the people of Morkudum actually bathe twice a day—once before greeting the people of the day’s business, and once to wash off the day’s dealings with them. Regular bathing happens more often than it would for you, that said.)
Now we skip over what some of you would droolingly expect. As in, skipping past the naughty view of an unclad elf-girl bathing with water and drying by heated air. Now Aia was to be dressed. If you want to see beautifully arranged flesh, then fancy yourself a visit to the butcher’s.
As to how Aia dresses, now immediately before her was a bench set in front of nine glassine closets. More of that glossy crystalline substance. What, did it simply grow out of the ground, or was it mined in sufficient quantities to be used for most all building materials?
In any event, Aia’s huge eyes set upon a draping sort of garment set in one of the little glassed-in closets. It was all the more visible given how some kind of crystal had the little containing closet-space aglow. Either Master Fromm had pressed a button or waved a hand or something in front of some crystalline device, or there was something in the way of a smart-crystalline device able to read her body type and select something for her. There was Master Fromm’s mention of self-thinking crystal-devices they called prophets.
Rather apt, the name. The crystals were able to foresee Aia reaching for the garment and had slid open the glassine closet. A slight whiff of electrified-smelling air, and the clothing was available for use.
What a garment, it was. A white-silk affair, the lower portion had deep slits at the sides to allow free movement of legs. (Likely necessary for the mounting of ride-beasts.) Which meant that her legs were very much bare from ankles to hip, but practicality wins out over American sensibilities of modesty. A belted portion sized around her narrow waist, also cupping the material of the bodice just so that her…dual upper anatomy was less subject to…ahem, free movement. Long sleeves for her arms. Also, a circular scarf-like portion of material around the place for slipping one’s neck through. Oh, and there are boots.
Of course, boots! How could you possibly even consider fathoming an other-worldly adventure of oddish ride-beasts and crystalline think-machines without boots? For that matter, anything with the word adventure in its description quite automatically entails sturdy footwear with reliable ankle support and significant calf coverage!
And when Aia was reasonably sure that the garment was properly in place, boots fitted to legs, the girl nevertheless made sure that everything fit as it should. That was necessary because it felts as if the girl was not wearing much of anything at all.
The material was so very light and very comfortable. And it controlled its release or retention of heat seemingly flawlessly. It was very much unlike anything Aia had ever worn before. So much for far-away fantasy worlds having inferior technology! Hah!
With her body properly attired, Aia was going to… Oh, and the sleeves can extend and fold about to form self-sealing gloves? The circular bit of cloth has a hood? What a wonderful bit of kit this is! Other than the double-slit skirting portion leaving much of her legs bare, this was more than what Aia could have expected. And the cloth was made with a technology that very much likely did not exist back on…
Not to think of that now. There was likely no going home—not for quite a very, very long time. Not until this…game put forth by the fellows was resolved. That said, Aia now truly did walk for the door—and back to the master of the house.
…
And into cozy luxury. Master Fromm was leaned back and in the most comfortable position he seems to have ever been in…ever since Aia had met the man… The dwarf… The apprentice-master! And be satisfied with that! Master Fromm was in what was without doubt his armchair. The cushioning seemed to have molded to his very short but very stocky form. Dwarf and armchair are one with each other and at peace with existence. Furthering the appearance was the cup of tea clasped with surprising delicacy with his thick, thick fingers. Such hands have spent days unto months unto decades pounding and plying with metal and crystal, and flesh must toughen and strengthen to do so. It is almost as if hands and arms take on aspects of strength and hardness from the hard materials themselves. Before departing for America, Aia’s family had encountered a great many rough-and-ready men who plied about with metal and machinery—getting things to work when there were few to no more parts coming from most factories of Central Europe.
Irradiated factories. Dead places. To get people away from the dead places, those rough-and-ready men did what they could with what they had. They repaired and repaired the very busses which took refugees like Aia to quickly prepared airports crafted by Americans and Canadians.
“Aye, I know the look, child.” Master Fromm speaking, of course. “A look of seeing death. I know not of how things are in the worlds of your birth, but many a young fool has been felled by sword or bolt. Swords… Silly business, that. What, you stand nearly toe-to-toe with someone who is soon to be a corpse or to make a corpse of you! Better to strike from afar with ballistae or a properly prepared crystalline cannon! But no, the hot-blooded youths wish to live at the edge.” A grim nod. “The sword’s edge. Cuts both hither and thither.”
Those who live the love of war, one would presume they would follow advise at least similar to Master Fromm’s. Taking the enemy from afar with weapons that go beyond the swing of the arm. It certainly is possible. But they are lack-wits, which means that they collectively lack the wit to operate the likes of crystal-cannon or the occasional prophet-powered chariot of war.
A sip of tea, then putting down the cup onto its saucer on a folded-out contraption to his left. “And do sit down! Young Jakk here is set to have his entire body explode from a full view of your anatomy—albeit draped in the garb of female apprentice!”
Oh, would you look at that. Jakk’s cheeks were afire with blood enough to replenish all that which was spilled in at least a few hundred battles. Stunned as usual by sight of this…impossible girl. A smattering of sayings of your world, perfect beauties described as being rare as unicorns or only existing under laboratory conditions. Well, sorry to brutally disappoint, but there are no unicorns in this world. Only the ugly, ugly likes of korth and other such beasts of burden—created for purpose, not for fashion.
Again, created. Before humans and humanoids came along, this planet was a matter of bring your own ride-beasts. Along with bringing everything else for that matter, for there was no native plant or animal life on this world at first, having to be crafted.
Which is to say, a fresh new world for starting afresh. And what’s the likes of humanity to do? Why… Start a bloody war, of course! How silly of you to ask! But why stop there? Like well-baked curled potlings (probably the best kind by many opinions), you cannot have just one! No! You cannot have just one war!
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But anyway, petite Aia has seated herself in the large armchair—tucking in her legs and arranging the front draping cloth of her garment. Trying for modesty and in the presence of those from another culture, but the posture took on the aspect of being a pose. After all, her thighs were still quite bare. Convenient it may be for riding korth with unrestricted limbs, it still bared quite a bit of leg-flesh down there.
“Quick with the tea for our guest, boy!” shouted Master Fromm. “It is far from the every day in which a skyfall child is first in our homes!”
The poor shaken apprentice stood completely up even if he only had but to lean forward. Now completely on his feet, he took to care-ful-ly putting heated sweetened fluid in the oddishly cut teacup and its odd material. More of that crystal-grown material, no doubt. (If plastics of your world are safe enough to eat from whilst not being eaten themselves, Aia supposed it was okay.)
It was not okay. Aia took but half a sip but could not swallow. (Oh, please check your base instincts at the door. That one. We must continue to narrate events. Thank you.) Her long throat would not pull the tea through her neck. There seemed to be a dead stop between mouth and neck through which nothing would pass.
“Yes! Yes! Truly a skyfall child, indeed!” declared Master Fromm, probably the happiest that Aia had ever expected of the apprentice-master. A complete grump up until this point. “Only the master-crafting of skyfall children would allow bodies that need neither food nor drink! Now we prise facts from legend and clear away the myths of your kind! Oh, so many, many questions to ask of you!”
And all the patience of this world to ask it! There are no smartphones hereabouts to distract young eyes, ears, and therefore minds away from the landscape all around. Talking to people means actually talking. Using words, not thumbs. (The lot of you believe yourself to be using words, but the absolute epidemic of mis-spelt items has rendered ineffective your efforts at effective communication.) By words, those are spoken words. Such things take a great deal longer to both put out and to heed rather than the jumble of atrociously assorted coded letters that you toss hither and thither amongst your so-called social networks.
“So, do tell!” began Master Fromm. “Is it true that all the entities of your home-realm go about with bodies of artifice? Are you born into them? Or, do some simply lounge about with their brains afloat in crystal-run machinations until deciding to go traipsing about in the material world?”
“I…” began Aia. But saying that one-letter word alone made it sound as if the girl was saying aye. Same pronunciation, different words.
For those who have failed to heed the pronunciations of reading teachers for years, the term for that would be homonym. Homographs, homophones, of the same way of saying but not the same way of meaning.
“Aye, what?” went Master Fromm. “Do you speak to affirm of all three inquiries? Or simply the first of the series?”
Which was a combi-question which left her to think and unravel it a bit. Not that Aia was a complete idiot, as tending to be most all humans and especially human children. But nevertheless, the girl simply does not have the keenest of intellect. Else, the girl would not be in this folderol to begin with! No horrid trans-dimensional text. (Instead of calling up a demon from the vasty deep, a human is summoned elsewhere by other-worldly beings. How is that for inversion of cliché?)
Yet Aia is here, and now the questions must be answered. “Not…everyone is of an artificial body.” Talking of Earth or talking of that realm inhabited by the fellows? Including both in that wording, which is covering multiple interpretations.
“Of course not!” went Master Fromm. “Why, it just may be a matter of preference if some choose living flesh-bodies to those created! What a wonder it would be, being able to choose one’s physical form! I would have an extra two pairs of arms, me! And a great many fingers thereof! All the more means of crafting crystal and metal. And with more fingers and less need for tools, imagine the works to be accomplished!”
“Why not make machines to make things for you?” went Aia. And very much instantly regretting her question as soon as the looks of total horror conquered the faces of the two males before her. Even beauty-struck Jakk looked quite affright.
“Because it is forbidden!” shouted Master Fromm. If this was one of your moving-picture dramas, there would be a dash of thunder to punctuate the declaration.
Aia shrank back in her armchair. Not even two hours in this world, and already making formidable enemies. And from potential allies, no less! This is turning out to be quite the success from the outset! Keep at it, girl! You’ll have the cryslight-bearing villagers upon your trail lickety-split!
But Master Fromm is a patient teacher. Well, every teacher must be patient—especially in your world, and especially with so many hard heads filling every single last classroom every single last year for every…year…of…every…decade!
And a sip of tea helped. Not enough to completely put out the fire, but enough to set the flames down to foot-level and sparse enough that terrain may be crossed. “Your kind has tamed machines and machine-minds as so they can never be a threat. But in this world? With ignorance being as common as sand and just as erosive, the high-tall lack-wits have trouble enough crafting reins for korths…let alone trying to bridle the likes of prophets given electro-mechanical bodies! They would be unstoppable! Humans holding sharp objects are trouble enough. Lord Morkudum’s sort are living examples. Imagine the destruction rendered by machines! Crystal-cannon could thin their ranks, but such ranks would be more quickly replenished than those of humans. It takes twenty years and one to make a barely conscious human, and yet a hundred crystal-crafted mechanici can be made within the hour. This, no matter how severely that Lord Morkudum himself would wish to use you to repopulate the land.” A mischievous grin of glee. “Yet, your synthetic body is likely unable to produce children. Imagine the blow to that fool’s astounding sense of worth to think that the workings of his crotch-tower would be…ineffective! Hah!”
You would think such talk to be quite ribald. Quite lewd. And for those whose poor breadth of vocabulary still leaves you clueless, quite nasty. But we are not upon your silly Puritanical planet and all of its hypocrisies. This land of this world is called Morkudum, which makes sense given… Oh, why bother? Let Lord Fromm explain it—given how Aia is likely to ask the question.
“But wait a moment, if you world. This land is called Morkudum… And its ruler is called Morkudum. Am I understanding things quite correctly?”
“How else would it be, skyfall-lass?” asked Master Fromm rhetorically. “The land bears the name of the family which rules. How difficult for the twiff-brains would it be to live in a land named apart from its current tyrant?”
Which suddenly and severely led Aia to having the most sudden thrill course through her. This is normally not physically possible with a synthetic corpus of her sort. Feelings of adrenaline shooting throughout one’s internal flesh-bits are only possible if there is actual flesh there to begin with. No, nothing within the girl of that sort. Nothing but the sort of antimatter-powered artificial parts that your world’s researchers would probably kill their grandmothers to find out about. And if their grandmothers are dead, they would gladly dig them up and go through the motions regardless. Running completely contrary to all the lies told by your world’s adverts, Aia’s body is one-hundred percent not natural. So… Why the feeling?
Psychosomatic, of course. People with missing limbs in an age before robotic prosthetics would claim that they still feel it. Happens all the time, especially with politicians—the sort that claim they thought about something when their heads are so empty of effective minds otherwise. No actual feeling in a missing limb. No actual thinking in a politician’s hollow vacuum of an intellect. But that still leaves the question unanswered—and especially unanswered for those with the sort of mental prowess matching that of elected officials.
Because…this conversation is important to the game. Aia needs a purpose to be here and wants a way out of here. The only way that first bit leads to the second is if Aia resolves that purpose. And the most effective way to resolve it is to actually discover it. (Some hapless buffoonery can go about solving problems before knowing about them—i.e. doing so accidentally. That, much as the gerontocracy ruling over your local landmass solve problems without even trying at times. So goes because they cannot try. Their pre-frontal cortexes are not in condition enough to function well enough otherwise.
Aia’s pre-frontal cortex is surprisingly well-developed for a young idiot her age, and the girl therefore knew why there was the thrill. Why, what else goes on in those insipid playtime activities of yours involving tyrants deserving of trepanning—and preferably with a rapid-flying sharpened object? (Oh, very well. Go on and search your infernal, ever-present smartphones for the word trepanning. But do avoid drooling overly long on the resulting images.)
When one is in the beginnings of a quest, and one heeds words of a vicious ruler, the quest is obvious. Why, anyone could understand that. In a land of dreams darkened unto nightmares by the likes of cruel and callous kings… When all the people cower in skulking about the cities or weeping in their beds due to the doings of the autarch… When people are too stupid to understand what an autarch is, yet they feel the lead weight of oppression upon their necks… When all is night and woe, and there is one powerful fool to blame for it all, the solution is to have a spot of tea, of course!
Of course not, that is! Tyrants are usually unelected by normal means or cheat their way into power. But more commonly, they only acquire positions of power because someone among their ancestry put cold steel through a suddenly-bleeding body and therefore claimed the territory for his own. (Referring to Feudal-Era Europe, it is always a he doing the conquering and especially because female folk do not see themselves as having time enough for questing or conquest.)
Tyrants! They come to power through illegitimate means. And from the looks of how things can go, they can lose their thrones to the same. Be it the physical thrones of the kingdom or the de-facto desk-throne of a corporate officer, violence is most always the answer. And even in cases if not, it at least seems so. When times are desperate, the people shall take to desperation most foul to remove the human
Aia demonstrated her own mental capabilities by…stating the obvious. “It would seem that some would wish him dead.”
“Take caution, skyfall-child!” insisted Master Fromm. “Hereabouts, to even speak ill of the inbred, mentally-insipid, korth-scat ruler of Morkudum…is a crime! Thinking it, too. Difficult to ascertain that, but they try. Yet I take it, the sky-fall people of your far-away other-world are enlightened enough to allow ill talk of your own tyrants. Within the walls of home and hearth, we may curse the name of the waste product upon the throne. But in the open land public and proper, Lord Morkudum’s korth-riders could take your tongue, if not the rest of your head with it!”
In other words, this is actual fascism. By its actual definition. That is, not the idiotic and haphazard ten-foot definitions that the twiff-brains of your world create. Fascism—strong government combined with capitalism. Simple. As one news-man put it, fascism is capitalism plus death.
Master Fromm settled back farther into his armchair, for he had been leaning eagerly forward for some time. Not so energetically keen now, but still needing give warning. “Many a brave lad has tried to end Lord Morkudum, and that many are dead. One could hope that antics around his times of drink will resolve the matter.” Taking a sip of tea as if to seal the deal.
Speaking of deals, now Master Fromm had a yet more obvious question to ask. No doubt, you are thinking of, ahem, something else. (With Aia’s garment-slits baring plenty of legs and the bodice portion caressing her torso so… Poor Jakk over there cannot help but think of things.) But, away from your intellectual sewers! There is the matter of more-important purpose. And more immediate purpose at that.
Considerations of purpose. And at present, considerations of work. Do you think the people of this land can simply exist without acts of labor? Whilst also leaving aside the open running sewage which passes for your trains of thought (or lack thereof), also leave off considerations of all the atrocious fantasies you have for cinema. A pre-industrial society is not an easy and simple one to live in. Worse yet, feudal ones are worse off—given the exploitation of humans instead of machines. Machine labour which is faster, more efficient, vastly more free of flaws, able to leave citizens free time enough to become better soldiers…
There is no damned disadvantage to be had with automating labour! And before the absolute dunderheads amongst you claim that machines consume energy, you must know that human labour costs energy! More so! Biological systems such as yourselves are vastly less efficient than mechanised ones. You are not ethereal beings powered by spirit but instead powered by food. That food, which must be grown with energy and harvested with energy and processed with energy and taken to market and cooked and more, more, more! Moreover, the more that human labour is used versus machine-labour, the more energy you shall indirectly and directly consume as more energy goes into growing more food for you!
Do you understand now? Do you understand why having human labour is just so very, very wrong in so many damned ways? For goodness sakes! Could you humans please at least pretend to be even slightly less stupid than you actually are? Even for a moment? That moment being long enough to understand your lack of ability to understand? That is, unless you would actually prefer an actual invasion by extraterrestrial beings to improve your lot? And trust us when we say it when such an invasion and alteration will not be to your liking from the outset! Good? Good! Now, let’s resume hearing Master Fromm’s proposal to Aia.
“Sky-fall child, you wear the garment of a female apprentice,” began Master Fromm. “Also, granted that you are yet new to this world and all the doings therein, it would be rather convenient and perhaps safer for you to take up the role befitting the uniform. If, perchance, only for appearances’ sakes.” That pause again. “Appearances, indeed. Every apprentice’s garment includes an all-skies hood for dealing with results of sun or clouds. You’d best be sure to have yours in place lest the crowd flock to your worship…and drawing the wrong sorts of attention from the likes of the wrong sorts. Lord Morkudum’s korth riders, the most prominent example. And the worst.
“That and more, you would not be aware of. So, at least for the sake of immediacy and role to play, you should consider posing as an apprentice under my tutelage. One of the machine-huts can easily be reconverted into a place of slumber and life, more so for those of synthetic physiques. So, what would be your answer, lass?”
We need not give you Jakk’s preferred answer—which would be a raging mass of confusion. After all, all the wrong parts of his mind are beating each other over the head (so to speak) in reaching the visual cortex and looking at Aia. All the lower and more base parts of the mind. Such leaves Jakk as being as confused as he currently is. His answer would come out sounding something like a cross between an intoxicated wombat and a malfunctioning histhomp. You may not have the latter in your world (yet), but you do have the former! There is therefore no excuse for you not understanding Jakk’s plight or the need to not have him (attempt an) answer.
Jakk is beyond confused. Master Fromm asked the question in the first place. All of which leaves Aia to speak.
“I… I accept,” said Aia. The girl would nod, but certain ways of bobbing the head in the culture of this world mean that a person is demanding a lover’s romp or combat to the death. Aia simply wished for a steady bed and therefore stationary basis of operations.
“You would? You do? You, yes?” went Jakk. See that? Or rather, hear that? Confusion reigns whilst seizing the reins of Jakk’s mind.
“I would, and I do,” said Aia. Adjusting her legs, also assuring that the cloth was arranged appropriately. Have to get used to this. “What else is there for employment?” And suddenly regretting the question as soon as it was asked.
“All the more purpose in you remaining hereabouts!” declared Master Fromm. “Before Lord Morkudum’s galloping collection of stupidity would seize you away, you would no doubt fetch quite the price for any of many …ah, services.”
Not so much of a fantasy land after all. This is a hard world in which there are those who would exploit others in that way. Not something unfamiliar to Aia.
For those who failed to guess by now, it was a hard life in Europe when the fallout began to fall. When people began to actually starve—because even astounding amounts of money could buy only so little when very little food-crops were successfully grown. The alternative, eat black-market foodstuffs that may or may not have been contaminated. People become desperate. Women became desperate. And more horribly so, so did children.
“You heed my warning, child. That, I see,” went Master Fromm. “But be not stunned, for inaction can be the worst of actions when danger befalls you.”
“I’ll protect you, my skyfall lady!” blurted the lad… Oh, what was his name again? He seems to have been such a non-entity for so very much of this encounter. Jakk! His name is Jakk!
“Behold! It speaks!” declared Master Fromm with not a little sarcasm. Looking to Aia. “But though dangers exist, the corpus of a skyfall child is at the least more durable than those of us mere dirt-born mortals. Now, in that you have at the least a semblance of being an apprentice, you must be informed of how we mortals maintain a semblance of life!”
…
From there, they departed Master Fromm’s residence! At the back of the place and therefore the center of this small settlement of two plus one, there was a great crystal-powered vessel which greatly resembled a sea-going galleon of old Earth—but one capable of sailing the skies among the multiple moons! Master Fromm donned a pair of prophet-shard glasses by which he could both navigate and see the power fluctuations to control of this great contraption!
And from there, it was a grand adventure involving stalwart lads and sour beasts all in thrall to the mighty Lord Morkudum who was then slain at the hands of Aia the Skyfall Sorceresse! Very predictable, her killing him in the end! Then everyone died when Lord Morkudum’s flying castle exploded! And every single last recently stated sentence of ours ending in an exclamation point is a lie!
Well, not a complete lie. That grand adventure they now had involved crossing the shorn-stone path over to the dragon’s lair! Oh look, we seem to have done it again.
In any event, given the physically inactive likes of you, merely stepping out of your climate-controlled dwellings for the sake of traversing paths and entering another climate-controlled environment, that would be an adventure. And an exhausting one as well. For all of your social media-professed worship of nature and stalwart combat against pollution, you certainly do love your coal-fueled heating, your gas-powered air conditioning, and your petroleum byproduct-encased smartphones…made with deceptively entitled and highly toxic rare-earth metals. And all this whilst calling to ban all the forms of nuclear-energy research and usage that would put a stop to the madness. So then, you can tell future generations how much of a world-saver you were from the comfortable proximity of your own electronic devices. If there is any real lying going on here, it would be the ones you humans just keep telling yourselves! And that exclamation point stands sentinel at a declaration of truth.
Now, after that bit of romping and roaming that was completely lacking in fire-breathing bastards that do not exist, they came to another one of the one-story stone dwellings. And since this is a small, small settlement of buildings in service to the arts and crafts of crystal- and machine-smithing, it is also where machine- and crystal-smithing craftwork live.
It will also be one of those places where Aia will live. Five structures. Two populated by beings. So, why not? But first, not before that explanation of how things are run and certainly not run amok. There is a logic and order to be had afar and apart from your demands for anarchy.
And the before-mentioned involves another one of those things that you hate so very much. One syllable. A noun. Can also be a verb when used properly—as it is five days a week by many adults in your wretchedly greedy and self-destructive epoch. That word, work. Oh, the horror!
That said, then this next machine-dwelling was an absolute bastion of frights…for this is a structure more dedicated to labour and learning than the enjoyment of far too much free time and energy. Like Master Fromm’s place, there is a foyer and something of a salon. Unlike Master Fromm’s place, there are a great deal more devices for the manipulation, usage, and even the growing of crystals. And all this time, we seem to have completely denied you details and explanation as to what these crystals are made from.
And that would be a deliberate move on our part. Can’t have you blowing up your planet with unshielded bits of antimatter, can we? Oh, but not before your so-called civilisation continues to make a complete anus of itself—therefore proving to be even more entertaining! Humans, the village idiots of your galaxy. Fun-fodder for a great many other galaxies at that.
…
“And thereabouts rounds it all for a tour of your residence!” declared Master Fromm. (And no, just because there is an exclamation point thereabouts does not mean it to be a lie. Forget the rule for now.) “It is far and away from being accommodations worthy of a princesse, yet royalty lives elsewhere. Royalty is also quite solitary and also damnably evil at that!”
Aia was currently standing in the shortish corridor which separated the simple wood-stone bedroom from the rest of the machine-residence. There was more in the way of machinery than furniture here. An unusual glow seemed to come from certain among them connected to the cut-stone walls. And for Aia to consider something to have a strange glow is saying quite a bit—for Aia comes from a world in which a great many things glow.
We mean what we say when we say that. Telephones, road signals, adverts, virtual game toys, all of that, everything portable and interactive glows. Given all the folderol in that direction, it is a wonder that the likes of you’ve not gone ahead and had your teeth aglow—and for no good reason other than to follow the (stupid) trends of your time. But unlike humans, the creatures with luminescent anatomy have such featuring for a purpose. You? Glowing teeth would have no purpose, for you are not attracting prey upon which to feed in the vasty deep of your ocean! The only thing you attract would be the derision of your fellow humans and entities observant of which you are not aware.
Now, back to that bit about Master Fromm outright calling Lord Morkudum evil. That’s not supposed to happen. Of her history lessons, Aia never recalled a fascist tyrant being called evil. Genghis Khan (marauder madness), Henry VIII (or most anyone with a roman numeral after the name), Adolf Hitler (simply classic), Joseph Stalin (higher genocidal count than Hitler, but they don’t tell you that), Sir Leopold Beltran (the real cause of World War Triple), they were all called out for the atrocities committed. They were called tyrannical, genocidal, tyrannically genocidal, inbred, mentally deficient, even short of a gonad in certain cases. (Well okay, one case. Guess which if you don’t already know of it!) Of all the declarations made in regards to such, for all the…
Wait, what’s that? You don’t think ol’ Gangrene Khan to have been such a horrible person? Then perhaps you side with one of the before-mentioned and think that a million deaths to be mere statistic instead of tragedy. In the case of that before-mentioned horse-carried horrible person, try forty. As in, forty million. But simply killing would not cut the mustard with that madman. Try torture, boiling alive (until not alive, of course), and…another classic of his time period…rape. But to be at least a little progressive in that regard, he had all of those things performed upon men and women.
And children, too. Can’t leave them out. That would leave them lonely and make things unfair. And we can’t have that! So! Into the cookpot you go! Step lively now! Being boiled out of life only happens once in a lifetime, you know. So let’s have a show of it, and make it extraordinary…
Yes, now! Where were we? Oh, standing in this shortish residence which is to be Aia’s for a time. You missed the tour, of course. Seven rooms small and large, various purposes thereof. And the bedroom, which was just seen—bed, mirror, and all. And yes, there is a bathroom, you grotesque perverts. But to do away with your sickish fetishes, Aia’s corpus is synthetic and will therefore not have need of it for that bodily purpose. But above all else? There is nary a single video device all throughout.
No. None. None whatsoever. Neither television nor smartphone nor virtual-reality headpieces. For all of your love of impossible lands of far and away, your psychology would not last a day without your accursed light-box and all of its…!
Ah, well. There we go again. And if the descendants of Genghis Khan were responsible for inventing smartphones and all the genocide of all the intellects resulting thereof, then it would be all the more fitting.
“You may have a time to yourself to sleep until dawn,” said Master Fromm. “Or if you like, I could recite the history of our world.”