Pleasing Life In-Cambaret

“D’you see that star, Tengri?”

“Which? It’s a full sky.”

“Pah, love. Far north.”

“The leading star?”

The twin stars flash green as they sink into the sea, at the horizon. Shadows lengthen ad infinitum. Cloudy waves break, froth struggling up the last steps of the shore before being dragged yet again into the wake. 

“The one at the end of the spade and the bear. Funny how little people put little names on little shapes. I remember that empty patch being fuller.” 

“The sky’s the same every night at the same time. Now as ever.”

“Ah, sorry, I guess, then. It’s a memory from millennia past, in this place. Maybe it’s not a lessened patch, just an old one turned some way I’ve mistaken it. The stars do move in that sky.”

“Eyeh. Tell me about Fiji. About the man-eaters.”

“I’d rather tell you about Cervantes and Quixote.”

There’s a moment of silence. Ammonia snowflakes fall from the thin blue atmosphere, sliding down the sleek aerogelled outsides of our suits, as we sit amongst a sea of blue flowers, watching far away in the sky distant the old home far and the old star farther.

“Am I important?”

“Of course.”

“How? Now’s a drop of water in the- maybe endless oceans of your life. You’ve probably done this, before, with another person, in a similar place, and you might do it again, with another person, maybe even in the same place. The place’s new, but eventually it won’t be, same goes for me.”

“Hah. The ocean doesn’t matter. I’m a man floating in it. I don’t see the other side of the water planet, just the little patch I’m floating. Human after all.”

“And I thought immortals would be more long-sighted, less- well, human.”

“What is there to see? I’ve got human eyes and face, hands and feet. I see now and not much farther. For the historians they have empires in the past to stare back into with the overeye of history- but I have been a peasant, a knight, a minor lord, a philosopher- I never saw the glory- just the little patches. And now more than ever fewer people can see the glory of it all. It’s too disparate. Central command would make little sense across such a large body if you asked a man a few centuries- millennia ago.”

“A man of a few millennia ago would find anything now to be of little sense. That’s the passage of time and human exponentialism.”

“Many things are by the same root.”

“Those being?” 

“Me, hah. You know observer theory?”

“Yeah.”

“I like to think all things are the same, contiguous universe ever since humanity has started carving rocks since I’ve been around to watch.”

“So- what? Ambrose-centrism? To complement heliocentrism, geocentrism and humano-centrism?”

“Last one hasn’t been disproven. Perhaps we really are alone in the universe.”

“If the universe thought like you, maybe.”

“No one thinks like me.”

“Plenty do. You’ve missed a lot, you know?”

“Mhm- Immortal I am, omnipresent I am not. Besides, they weren’t on my level.”

She snorts. I pull an orchid from the field, pulling off the stem and placing the flower on her pseudo-exposed hair, brushing off the dust, where it falls off, drifting to the field floor. The stars illuminate the darkness with pinpoints of light.

“You’ve got to keep the stem, then weave it into the fabric, idiot.”

I snort. She goes on.

“So. Twenty years, I die or grow old, and you’re gone. And the world will be completely new by that time.”

I make a noise to protest, but she talks over me.

“You live in the- the flower of present- that flower will grow still and wilt but it will be reborn, and I will only live to see the wilt and not the new bloom. I suppose it’s inevitable. I know who you are, maybe a little more than you think- you who laid the highways for humanity, spread humanity from Earth to the opposite rim of the Galaxy and back. This planet’s only been like this for a century, and it’s one of the older ones. Life in the galaxy erupted in a blink of an eye- and then you disappeared-”

“Don’t think of things like that- Inevitabilities are always so looming. Have a thought for free will.”

“Unrelated- but free will’s been disproven.”

“Just ‘cause someone up there’s got a machine the size of a moon back in innersys calculating every possible choice of every type of human doesn’t mean we can’t act as if we can choose. Determinism and free will aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“And how does that work?”

I laugh. “Belief in me, that great man who laid the foundations for the Empire of Man. Cynically, if you don’t, the gears for determinism are so complex- free will’s practically a given- perhaps a solid block of iron is a sponge at a small’nough level, but if it works as a block, it works as a block. Correspondence, see? Maybe the universe is deterministic, but it’s so arbitrarily difficult to calculate fate that spontaneity, free will, they’re good as true.”

“Defeating empirical utilitarianism with faith utilitarianism. How wonderful.”

“Hey. You wouldn’t call truncation faith. The mind is the mind, reality is reality, you need a bridge.”

“Is that how you substantiate your delusions, after living so long? It’s not so much… I’m no scientist, I don’t have the lingo to argue with you- but I don’t think that’s my point.”

I laugh. “We make absolutes with such certainty. Two plus two is four, a thousand and six point oh-nine’s root is a nice ten point three. Mathematics is theoretical.”

“Our calculators aren’t. They’re very real. You’ve definitely seen them.”

“There’s a concept where approximations can be as good as or better than truth. I’ll name it common sense. Those machines are as good as theoreticals to you- you can’t possibly hope to understand- no single human in their lifetime-”

“But you? You could disprove it. You’re immortal.”

“Now- perhaps. But truthfully- why? If I could get people to understand the concept, then why would proof be needed?”

“I believe you’d call that a cult.”

I turn my gaze icy. “Perhaps.” 

Unsaid I scream the words I could’ve. We do have cults to the eight pillars of the old cGh cube and we put them in lab coats and throw a quarter of the sun-budget at them. They’re a good way through a ninth pillar and so maybe the pioneers would finally set their eyes on a tenth and then and then, finding the truer approximation to infinity to infinity. The phenomena predate the theories- it is only with time that the murky eyes of Man are cleared to see them- . I’ve been around long enough. Pah. What matters the past? It is immutable as I am. 

Ghora, blue and green and red and cloudy, rises over the horizon of its moon’s dawn. In my mind, a clock reaches its apogee. Another day, another month, another year. It’s my fifteenth thousand birthday, in Sol years. I look for a spot in the Milky Way Galaxy. No particular spot. It is satisfying to know that we own it all now. But still there are more stars in the universe.

Peeking back in history, somewhere, sometime on a blue planet on a yellow star in the arm of a small galaxy, I am born. 

Looking a little away, I remember other people, other places, desert and plain and sea, river and loch and arctic, garth and garden, all things I’ve seen in a time and at different times with different people. Regrettably… past circumstances meant I haven’t had much time to explore the universe I’d laid at man’s lap. Humans are the most damnable creatures of all the earth. Yet I cannot help but love them. My mouth twitches in something approximating a grimace or a smile. How could I not, for a species in my image? 

Is this a dream? Who knows? Some things are wrong but perhaps that is misremembering. All past memories in the present are dreams, good as, anyhow. I am immutable as I am immortal, burning and transient.

—

Warden whatever-your-name-is, hi, hello, what’s good, a’holla from New Weimar no-longer-by-Erfurt.

Is there meant to be a break after the address? Whatever. Hello. I’ll call you Francis Beaumont, for the sake of having a name. Francis, alright, again, hi. You’ll be scribe to I, my own burning pestle through which I mince and make the world. This is a status report, lost track of which I should be on, I’m pretty sure you don’t even read these little things. It’s been a while. No, I still really haven’t bothered to do what you ask. I do have the information. It’s just with me. Don’t mind the tone. I can’t tell if you’re a real person deserving of respect. That said, Let’s get the recording on.

Maybe you’ll have a secretary read this out to you, or skim through a summary, read a full transcript, or God forbid, listen to the actual tape I’m recording as per your enforced agreement. For the board, then, or the jury, or whatever multiplicity you have judging my actions, hello, maybe again, maybe not. You know why this is generally, why it is specifically is an expression of my own self to remonstrate by my own self-demonstration your unfair penance levied.

I am Ambrose, about a place and aout longevity.

Shush, Elido. I’m recording. I’ll get you your caviar later. She’s my cat. Don’t worry about it. Right. Where are my notes?

So yes. I am a Freedman. Not a free man, a Freedman. Frei-d-mahn. Frei-mann. Frei to Free to Freed. A tamped weight on the upwards mouthwards openwards tilt of Frei, in a truer allusion to the faux this freedom is, a faux pas of the sociology of history. An embarrassment I have been brought in to make more appealing- or at least palatable, as au fait as my understanding of a great deal of things are. 

A Freedman, not a free man. There is nothing pleasing to be found in the established social order. It all must go again. The abdicated seat has merely been retooled, renamed, a facelift and a little training sesh to not make those petty first mistakes that led to War. Pah.

It has not been a liberation from the hand of one dominator, it is simply domination by another under those fulsome false flags of freedom. Thus it is not so much a linguistic difference as a simple lie. Well, fairly, Liberty’s just one of the Liars’ most prized possessions, compared to the most disgusting Glory of Liars’ Wars. Not that I personally was, well, actually- Freed, or anything, from the mines or the common cells. Funny. To be true to myself, loosening of colonial etiquette meant a good chunk of the revolutionaries weren’t those indentured labourers the movement held at helm and on herald- more the middling managers- now magnificos- far enough away from the slums to have power and yet close enough to not be visible for the eyes of wrath. A clenched fist, broken chains rechained, grapes turned blue to the vintage of righteous hate. It’s a matter of justice then. There was and is none to be had, not for me, not for anyone else here.

Though all taken, it is for I and those foul magnificos more a change in passing than any real change to how we’ve lived. There certainly was an interregnum for the plebeian other, and a shift in belief and slogans, certainly. I’ve hardly toiled in the penal cities, nay so ‘freely’ for the Prussian Tears nor dregs for and of this lacrimal blue world- nor for chunks of meat off yallowed cadavers, but then again, neither roaming the blue cage before nor after the Wars was or is freedom. 

But in parts it is a matter of me to speak of the truth of revolution. This is not how it happens. I will make the world better with my grace.

I am immortal, old, mundic agnostic, and Judaist in the way that Christ is only man and all worship of other men should be idolatry. 

Where am I going with this? Script, script. 

Yes.

It has been too long. This cannot be my end. It will be my beginning. It must be. In my heart of hearts it is so, as with Halton; all that is left is rust and stardust yearning there for a future that is not theirs to have. I will not join those numbers of manqué souls, the moulding mindless and mindlessness, founded in and of slop.

There may be telemetry of my thoughts down in the future- however that works through my Hallucinogens. It works, it works, they’ve shown me my own memories, even as I, the time and time again incarnate. In any case, in this mind memorial, I am not really alone, then, am I? Even if you aren’t here now, I will be here later down the line just as you will be, even if I by then am in a different place. Immortality is complicated. In the case, that case, there is likely a great deal of defamation against me. My time with PenCol authority has been enlightening on at least that, if nothing else.

There may be defamations that I am arrogant, misanthropic, mad- all untrue. If I seem mad, it is merely the world that has necessitated me act so. I am the practical, deital lover of all man, it is true. I am immortal, a-born once a long time past in the horse nomad steppes, and I was worshipped, and times were good. I was worshipped as so many things, until I grew embarrassed. I was the mother, the horse, the snake, the sun, the poet and the musician and the brewer, and so I travelled the world more humbly like the idea of Christ for many a year to meet those in my image and hear their lives for it is a great tragedy of existence that I may be not everywhere and in every life proper to hear life’s truism sprawling in every aspect and it will be in that way mostly unknowable to me, even with all the time. It could never suffice to try and believe that small groups of others knowing me would have the same effect, so a cult over I to shepherd and their lives for me to transfix were for a time out of style, but larger cults were better, I suppose. But travel would always be my fun upon the world. 

And then in more recent times- in perspective, of course; I have no idea how to know how much real time has passed in the real world, I have led Man to the stars. PROMOHA. I designed PROMOHA on my own, where the inventors aplenty and mortal were kept developing the spear and the net, and I reached to design the sail and the ship. I designed the sun’s cradle, though it seems oddly that cradle is being used more akin to a ship’s cradle now, out of here. Somehow, though, I can find more about the outside than the truth of the inside. Halton is very good at information censorship, I admit to thee. I have my suspicions, but here, a summary for posterity on the past that was and is clear to me and hopefully at least now to you: Candle-ships powered by antimatter to throw seeds to prepare for Man’s admittedly slower arrival to the infinite rapture amidst the stars. I saw the first land, colonised the star, and it sent a message back in that first dimming of a star in morse. We found a tree. Come see. 

It was a dyson sphere from a deconstructed planet; a sequel to Alexandria, Hercules, the West-Hinders, Hraunhafnartangi, Adlivun. The greatest man-made light. From there, all Man became immortal.

And now here, this exile caused by ungratefuls.

sigh (enunciated)

Well, I’m here now. 

I know much of the history. War and colonisation, at least I am gladdened to know it is Man that inhabits this world primarily, though you filth have been changing things of late. Latter first, yeah. But War’s more important. I’ve gone over it enough. I think it’ll be enough. What’s that formula on the probability of data loss? Fuck it. I’ll just make my thoughts known. About time.

The War, Great War, very Great War, was started by a slave-morality, whereas the initial state of Halton had the aristocrat-like superiors as simply superior in all their objective traits, a master-morality, wherein the lower were inherently evil for both for their criminal outworld guilt they could not remember essentially branded on from new birth, as well as their conditions brought on by their physical state, their uncleanliness, rudeness, illiteracy, ill health, and weak minds. As in, they were evil because they were criminals and further because they were dirty. The repercussions of that thus led to development of the reactive-progenitor slave-morality, where the once-exalted leader was the vile and the bad slave was the heroic sacrificial lamb revelling in new morality through their suffering for the world. The sins that were the filth of dearth were now the filth of excess, decadence, perhaps? 

However, now there is a conflict- obviously the Freedman Wars have come to no real consequence, a few years down, at least in terms of power structures. There are a few new ministries, and a good turn in the flavour of propaganda, but a new master-morality and a new caste of aristocrats have arisen to fill the gap before any proper ideas could fill it, years on after the war. Thus, a nihilism has emerged. How can either morality be right when both are identical- and both moralities are now accepted and promulgated as a package of the zeitgeist, contradictions and all, composing the self of every new person, has diluted faith that any morality can be true, as people are coming to see that great things and great change and maybe even good things- as the inverse of the bad, require one to be beyond the morality that is.

But of course, that means I. I should rule, to be above exoteric morality I dictate for the masses to be good inasmuch as I define it. The God-Morality. A firmament not dependent on the everchanging will of profit or polity, a truth objective and thus beneficial for the moral health sustainable for a humanity.

Because I am to be the one God of the Human world, the Wotan, the Overman, the one who will seize the world and make it fine and good. It is I, and only, only, only I besides God in the Sky who knows of Good and Evil. The Gods here are bare wisps of what God should be. The imperial cult and the false idol are not Gods, nor is the errant leviathan that patrols about the place. I will open their eyes.

I stare across the war-shattered blue, the horizon blue world, in the corpse of crab and giant, over and over with every fucking-over the world turns around and I see the new beneath. In my time, Paradise had fallen to Man. Now it is the realm of the Gods to come. I have driven before humanity by my own merit into a new era in the land with a starry sky, now again it will be done under this… new starless sky.

With Kindness, Ambrose. You don’t seem to read these status updates, anyway, so I’m just using the free dataspace as testimonial journaling. You’re a prick.

—

The altars today are full. I walk down the streets in Jurel, angling in all directions. An antiquated bias drive from an ancient era keeps feet falling streetwards, however that changes.

The Streets today are also full. Grey and blue. I flick a handful of coins up and right to a beggar seated above. It starts to slow, before accelerating. 

Tungsten candles burn, melting. Red and yellow cloths weave through the air. Celebration is thick in the air. Chants in Indonesian, Spanish, Kulhuisan, Ancient Greek, Turkish and Leer fill the air with the smell of thankfulness and hemonate.

At the storefronts, newlyfreed freedmen parade, taken in as so so long after the war has ended. Oily red stone drips from the face of flame-painted altars. One collapses, and the smell of flesh permeates from the ruins. A small mob builds around the ruin of the nearest. They watch stony-faced. Everything returns to blue. The cloths disintegrate. Order has been restored. People move on. The worshippers understand the price of victory. It’s not my particular business. Though I feel a pang of annoyance. 

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

I weave through the clouds aimlessly, to find the meeting point. I stumble upon it after a short minute, the roads convalescing. A man’s lying on the ground, hands below his head, legs crossed, staring at the sky on a raggard mat, people part around him. I tap his side with a boot. It’s hard. 

“Oi.” The crowd parts before him. Manners are prevalent, I see.

“Good morning. D’you notice the view?” 

I look up, as he points.

A gaping maw of melted blue teeth- the sky. “What of it?”

“Imagine beyond.”

“Another desert. Another sky. A bit further up and north and you’ll find Halton. What of it?”

“Beyond,” he insists. He stands, abrupt. “Come with me.”

I pause. What does he know? I am uncertain, then. What do I know of the O'Seen? But pah, I’m immortal. Let’s just go.

I follow him as he walks. 

We move to the edge of the city. At the end, the buildings clump into a thicket. A cat falls as I enter, landing on its back, before rolling over and climbing up my leg. I notice the pain, and grab it by the scruff of its neck, inspecting it. Dark and dirty, but white, below the grime. 

A leaky pipe drips a bit of water on its hair, but a tub-full of water splashes onto my head. Its eyes lock on to me, and snorts, before smiling, smugly. Scoundrel. 

I wring it a little, and it growls. Then I stick it out in front of my liaison’s face.

“This yours?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s mine, now, I suppose?”

“She. Elido. Take good care of her.” 

I shrug. “Sure. If that’s all, can I go?”

We move around a corner, and the horizon looms at its end.

“You sure? I’ve something to show you.”

“Alright, then. I do need to know more- but give me some assurance your words will be worth my interpretation.”

“I won’t speak in tongues again, don’t worry.”

“Bullshit.”

A little chuckle, and we move onwards. The passage through is filled with dust of an ever-increasing density until it breaks, and I see the true outside.

The desert of blue. Dunes are still and foetid. The ring beyond the city, the city sands, if you will, are always rotten with something. There’s little and less wind to carry the stench elsewhere. I wrinkle my nose.

“Ignore the stench, ignore what you see beyond. Best to close your eyes and pinch your nose. What do you see?”

I entertain him, and do as he says. “I see the inside of my eyelids. My turn to ask; what’s the point?”

“I won’t consider that a wasted question. But I’ll answer it anyways- beyond reality, what do you think there is?”

“God, if that’s what you’re asking for. So you’re a religious organisation?”

“Yes. Then it is your turn for a question. A proper one.” He starts to stroll into the desert again. He coughs.

“Who- what are you?”

“One. We deal in revealing the nature of the world for what it is. We use tools to shape Man’s creation to make everyone more aware. The mind is as a tool as any instrument.”

“Unhelpful.”

“My turn. What is your name?”

“You know that already.” I pause, as we walk. The man still wants an answer. “Ambrose.”

“Good. Your turn.”

I think, frustrated. “Why?”

“Forty-two. An old joke, an older question. But something with more meaning and direction.”

“Can you stop fucking around? The point of language is clear communication, not having to puzzle shit out.” 

“You can understand fine.”

“I can?”

“You can.”

“I’d understand more easily if you spoke in plain syntax.”

“So would he.” He jabs a thumb back, and I whirl around. The city has vanished from view. I manifest a gun from my hand. It’s a strange sensation of dreamy logic. We’re on the plains, and the Meridian is somehow out of the garage on by me. That makes things simpler. But how the fuck?

“Oi.” The city comes back into view. I move my gun around.

The man lowers my arm. “No point in trying. The density is gone. We can talk, now. Sad you’re not using the sword.”

I stay silent, and glare at him.

“If so-” I raise my arm again and shoot him. I remember the cat’s perched on my shoulder. It leaps off and begins to eat. I reload.

The cat looks to me. Then it speaks. “Lower the gun.”

“Why?” Then I realise a cat’s talking. And it’s eating a corpse. The latter’s a bit less surprising- oh whatever. “Wh-” 

Then I remember the first message, and start piecing things together.

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh. Move your arm sixty-three degrees and fire.”

I do so, immediately. A metallic sound, and a drone falls from the air, fizzling. 

“That was his son,” Elido remarks. 

“Whoops. And are ya’im?”

“No.”

“And what do you want?”

“To watch and enable.”

“...You’re telling the truth. What does he want?” I gesture vaguely at the corpse of the man and the machine. Already the corpse is starting to turn blue. How long has it been?

“Plainly? A hobo. He wants to find God, and you’ve set him back an arm and set the O’Seen ahead five minutes in good analysis material.”

“And what’s the truth of the excursion they’ve set me on?”

“Find a golden fleece.”

I pause, then laugh, again, again, before something strange comes to mind. “Come along, then, Elido. I’ve got the caviar you like so much.”

—

One. There will be a prophet in a strange form. Despite appearances, she is not a demon. She does like caviar, so prepare accordingly. There’s a good intercity supplier by the name of Khachaturian. Decent guy, wouldn’t mind if you funded his business. He’s intercity, see, but not at EoS scale. Especially with current fashion trends. There’s one near your apartment, actually. 

Two. There is a sword in your mail. It’s around a metre long, good diamond cross-sect, good for blossfechten, ringen, ritual, and it’s delivered a good mordstreich or two. If you choose to use it for fighting, that is. On behalf of our experimental department, it is a weapon that can technically circumvent your immortality to aid you if you choose to commit suicide. Do not worry about recording, the sword has inbuilt recording devices, we are very curious about your state of mind.

Three. We are a curious order descended from the Abrahamic faiths you knew on old Earth. We are very interested in your existence, and, if you so choose, have a series of interesting activities for you to complete in tangent with our own goals of reshaping Deep Blue society for spiritual and gnostic advancement. We do not have a fixed address, we set up in encampments, tents and hotels. We can find you, you perhaps us, but it would be convenient for the both of us as of now. We can give gifts.

Four. There will be a meeting on the fourth day of the second month of the thirtieth year in Jurel, there will be a homeless man you will meet who will give you our prophet.

Finally, salutations, Ambrose, immortal, great forgotten. May you bring us to a new age. If you want to talk more, here’s an id for you to call. No memetic tricks. You’d live through them.

My eyes flick quickly through the message. Sword in the mail? There’s mailboxes in Venizieg? I turn it into a virtual tab chip and flick it into my halo for later further perusal. 

I wonder vaguely if it’s some sort of new domestic terrorism act. Maybe a new con. Seems really targeted, though. Still, there are hallucinogenic-based viruses that create advertisements and consequently- cons that work off my memory rather than any real narrative made. I do have a really strong sense of myself. 

Still. It sounds fun. Fakeness of a thing doesn’t matter if it’s good enough. I mark the date, and get up out of the seat of my apartment. I’m off work right now. I sniff the air, before grabbing the air freshener. The smell of blood pisses me off. My own limbs, don’t worry. I swear I cleaned up the blood. They’re precious things. Legs are more valuable, counterintuitively, because hands are seen as more valuable. Life insurance is a very- ah, last-ditch thing, and even with its high reliability, people always harbour the dread that it just might go awry for them. So they never promise an arm to Omadios. Always a leg. Usually the left. Still, even if the trade is legal, procurement isn’t as. The company won’t cooperate with the government investigation, of course, so I’m safe as long as I’m sensible. The companies prefer bigger operations, but there’s always open spaces for privates to fill shortfallings. They can’t just have consistent throughputs of limbs quarter-to-quarter, that’d look like they’re organ farming!

Pah.

All their proof of ethicality in sourcing is bullshit, anyways. Even in the most base sense, harvesting the limbs of the poor to fund the second lives of the rich seems unbalanced, even by the natural rule of scarcity, in that not all bodies can be harvested for that client’s own reincarnation. I’m different, of course. It’s something to do with proteins. I can’t really explain it, just like how eye colour or exact skin tone ranges are things I can’t properly enunciate but things I certainly can control in each new body.

And then, of course, the companies’ audits are all fabricated. It’s not even a secret, really. They can’t keep up with counting the actual numbers, since it’s hard to ethically source human body parts, so they make “educated guesses with a margin of overestimation.” 

I pull on boots and a coat, looking over myself in the mirror, before looking at my hair, and I scowl. A mess. I could make it more plasticky, but there is an element of mess needed to not look like I’ve replaced my face for a mask. I think, and pull my fist out of my mouth, the old skin deflating and tearing as I step out of it, in the same clothes. Ah, shit. I pull the old boots to a side, and strip the skin, before bundling it up and tossing it in a bin. I’ve- what? Six, seven pairs of the same boots, now? I should pawn them. Bleh. Not worth the effort. Later. I grab my pair of sunglasses from the table along with a shoulder bag, and push open the door.

I step out of the apartment, heading down the concrete hallway, onto the stairwell, and slide down the railings on each turn of the stair, whistling as I go down. Maybe it might seem a little hypocritical for a being above men to be living as a man, but I am Man. I am the epitome of Man, simply not a man, but symbolic of Man in its entirety, I do know and believe.

Which level- I check the message again. Where am I going? Oh, yeah. Sword, mail. Then caviar? I haven’t had good caviar in a while. Maybe it’s real stuff smuggled from Halton? Unlikely. The idea of the fake puts a bad taste in my mouth- but, well, all learned tastes are initially bad. That’s why they’re learning. The lie can be good as a different truth. 

Third floor walkways, then, I guess, as I skim through a search result. I take out a little bit of a sort of film and plaster it against my neck. Electrodes for a subvocal recognition experimental device, silent speech interface. They detect muscle movements and interpret them into phonemes to send to a connected computational device. Hallucinogens technically bypass that need, but I suppose this tech’s for extraneous devices. I think to the assistant programs that run the SVR, and the related family, not even as good as the ones in the early 21st century on old Earth, but, well, that’s to be expected. Rebuilding discovered software on a completely new framework. I set up a transparent window with map directions in a corner.

Maybe it's a good time for a call? I flick open the letter, in its rawtext form. God, that’s ugly to look at. I need to change the sysfont. It flicks straight to something more agreeable, comic sans. I focus on the id, and it soon redirects to a call window. A warning temporarily flashes to tell me it’s a bad idea to lead a walk half-blind, but I ignore it.

Immediately, a face comes on. That’s new. Is it a real face, though? Eh. Probably. I’m being too paranoid from the ‘40s. 2040s. Deepfakes are a lot more complicated and expensive to make here. LLMs and blackbox generative algorithms can’t arise in quite the same way here. 

“Oh. Hi.” I speak in my mind. It’s never been really clear to me whether it’s my actual voice or how I hear my voice that’s heard on the other side of these kinds of calls. Either seems somewhat plausible. The walkways are empty. It is peak work hours, I suppose. Still, I’m not the rude type to talk out loud in public

“Hi, Ambrose. I’m the O’Seen. A physical node. You can call me, ah, hm. What do you think’s an appropriate name?”

“Is this a religious thing? Regardless, I say, ah, Milton, you can be my poet to illuminate my blindness with words.” A white man, he’s against a backdrop of a white wall. Where is he, exactly? It’s probably a real background, where? Grey shirt, thin and short hair, large nose, smallish eyes, and a peckish grin.

“I guess. Milton is one of our saints. There are many of them, back from Old Earth, who we idolise. No more saints are made, now, no one properly dies in the Deep Blue. The afterworlds are a part of the Deep, down to whatever bottom that pit has. Though it’s messy. We believe in a supernatural power, God, and prime exemplars of human achievement, but we do not expect His aid. It is our job alone to find Him and wake Him, in this land detached from Him.”

“What’re you guys? Y’all don’t seem proselytising. Never heard of you guys before today. Are you a selfish bunch of religious apocalyptics, is that it?”

“Haa, haa, no. The world’s definitely not ending. And God won’t drastically change it much. He will shelter catastrophe from our backs- we have been lucky so far, but possibility and time make eventuality. And besides, we need do no proselytisation. All the sheep of the world are our flock.”

“Oh. Against their will, then, huh? Is that a cube time eventuality thing or…?”

“We mean it in the sense that all men are loved regardless. Our God is a much kinder- or perhaps curious one. He is not Man. He created Man, so he’d like to see what Man can do. He is much more forgiving, we will all be judged, cleansed, and forgiven in our end times. Now, though, we are more focused on ensuring we live to fulfil God’s interest for as long as possible.”

“Interest. Well, that sounds colder than God’s everful love. Why should I believe in that?”

“God’s interest has more love, more mercy, more wisdom and temperance than any Man could know. God’s Interest, God’s eye and God’s attention is functionally thus equivalent to God’s love and God’s mercy. But it is not as all encompassing as the term. Besides, we’re not here to convert you.”

“You look like one guy in solitary confinement. Where are you?”

He smiles.

“Tabernacle-3.” The camera turns and raises to show a sort of… sprawl of people, folk lying down in sleeping bags, others sitting in cells of desks, others sitting in armchairs, others on the floor, people talking- nonsense, I hear, gibberish words slammed together in gibberish order, people working on something through their hallucinogens. I’m pretty sure it’s gibberish. I know most of the languages of Old Earth, and I can’t hear any patterns or anything properly resembling language. 

“Don’t mind impressing me with a digital ghost of all that’s going on?”

“It’s just the diplomacy department, you’ll only see chatrooms and the like, maybe a couple of notes floating around. Right now mostly working with AGIs, there’s a crisis in Venizieg and we’re freeing space for our SAR and other SAR to get to work. No one really knows we’re there, so half of logistics is here, puzzling out how to coordinate bureaucracies without communication.”

“And the gibberish? Doesn’t sound like a language.”

“Asemic speech. Mostly a psychological effect, same reason they’re all here. We are still working with bodied human brains. Some of these guys have their hearing temporarily disabled since they don’t work as well hearing it. We can translate needed sound telemetry directly into language processing.”

“Hive mind?”

“Hive mind. Voluntary, though. And they’re semi-independently conscious. We work our parameters with each person, and consciousness automatically by their own established parameters in their mind and more physical means slips in and out. We don’t entirely suppress consciousness in our people, so it’s easier to get more volunteers into our network and optimise performance. We haven’t mastered internal hormonal production stimulation- and we won’t, to ensure we’ll have to keep a degree of free will. Assured, informed consciousness is easier than a disturbed one we have to beat down. Especially with the degree of above-average neuroticism we deal with. And- it’s also easier to delegate smaller tasks by having an isolated consciousness deal with it without needing it to be brought to the attention of the whole hive. HR makes sure we prioritise people and logistics makes sure we prioritise efficiency, they work against and together to balance growth.”

“Ooh. Cool system. You seem to be at the stage where it’s easier to reshape the office to maximise each person’s work output rather than streamlining everyone.”

“We’re very particular in our hiring. Long-term relationships are worth more investment, after all. What else you wanna know?”

“Hm. The sword. I’m going to pick it up, right now. Mail, and stuff. Is it pointless to ask how you figured out so much about me?”

“It’s a very old spear. Carbon-dated, around… twenty-three centuries old. Yes, it was a spear. We alloyed it with more metal into a better cutting tool, and also so we could cut a sentence into it that would get you stuck permanently falling between afterworlds. It’d take a while, but eventually they get spatially small enough that it’d be an experience like death, non-existence. You’d be pushed into a state without brain activity without death that would instigate a reformation of your brain. We’ve read the experimentation docs from Halton.” I squirm. Not a comfortable topic.

“Right, right. And why’d I want that?”

“Well, you’re immortal. We can read on how your body works, but your mind must be very different. Asking straight questions for an hour might not even be a perceptible unit of time on the scale of your life. And you’re clearly some level of composed, so you’ve the fortitude at least to stay comprehensible as long as you have.”

“Hah. Maybe- ask, ask before you create the one thing that could send me to Hell?”

“Well, it’s been made. Handle it how you like. It needs to cut through the soul in your brain, between the hemispheres, to send you there. So be careful with it. Besides, you should be grateful you have it, rather than an enemy, or even us, enthused as we are with keeping you alive.”

“And I’m sure how that you’ven’t made more, or given me just the backup?”

“Well, there was only one Julius Caesar, so we’re pretty sure we can’t get another spear of that sort.”

“How the hell does that sword work?”

“Complicated. It’s not really Caesar that made the metal important, it was a carpenter.”

“...His blood, let me guess? And this spear, it was wielded by a Roman soldier?”

The man smiles, for once. “So. I am on your bandwidth. I’ve figured out how you think.”

“It was not the heart that broke.”

“He is the saint, the first, even if he was not the first virtuous man.”

“I get it. Right. Something else. The meeting.”

“Just a bit of in-person interaction. He’s part of the hive, of course. And we’re more careful about that delivery rather than this.”

“A prophet worth more than the one sword of its type that could end the unending? There’ve been a few prophets throughout history.”

“The sword will degrade after a long enough time, and be ineffective afterwards. Our prophet is the same. But the importance of each is inverse to the other. The sword- to you, is maximally useful in the forever-time it does not exist that were before and will be after its existence. The prophet, to you- is useful in the time it does.”

“Maximally useful?”

“There are a few additional sentences we engraved into it so it would be useful in combat, should you not use it to commit suicide. An additional incentive to keep it around, because we’ve a bit of an attachment to things we make.”

“Cool. Like what?”

“Sending a handbook. It’s with the sword. Paper’s more sentimental than data. Anyhow. We’ve talked so far. Would you be interested in more?”

“Maybe. I appreciate the effort. What’d it be?”

“Receivance of more gifts, and a kickback to us of a few in turn.”

“Gifts? Like what?”

“A repurposed lunar lorry we intercepted from Halton. We fit a road train onto it, micronuclear reactor. You can keep it as long as you want, or you can give it back at the end of your tenure. The prophet knows which you’ll choose. We’ll start a colony with it, if you choose to return it. It’s in your city in a garage, we’ll send over the biometrics you’ll need to imitate to reprogram security. If you can’t, we’ll just deactivate it manually.”

“Well, if you prophet knows, I’ll keep it a little secret of mine till the day. Or maybe then, I’ll decide on the spot.”

“Ok. Then we’ve a few sentences. They’ll help you in work. And a docket of the to-be Wanderers. You’ll need help, and we’ll need some of them. There are two non-negotiables. Then you can pick as many more as you need.”

“Pah. You’re pretty good at predictions. What’ll be of the gifts I give you?”

“If you’re talking specifics, then great amounts of all the Word inks. It’ll be interesting seeing you find them, with your resourcefulness. We only need them in a month’s time, so you shouldn’t have a problem. And then the two highlighted in the dossier. Also, just have the engineer of the MNR keep the reactor breeding properly. It’s a multipurpose mission. And, and, well, it’s a fourth thing, perhaps we should be listing it better, but there are a few locations you might need visit, for scientific purposes. We’ve a few GDCs you’ll just need to plop down there. They’ll broadcast data back to us. Research.”

“Hold, I’m making notes.”

“Alright.”

“Ne’ermind. Hold a little longer. I’m at the mail.”

A white room, with blue highlights, locked cabinets lining the walls and a single dividing shelf. One of many offices around the place, though they’re all located at rather different locations rather than a single hub to make confusion harder. Lots of old people around, you know? I’m old, but at least not that sort of old. I go to a central machine, scanning myself in, a soluble sort of ink, very different from the sort the O’Seen have given me the searching-for-task, pasting itself onto the skin tip of my index finger, one that I’ve fitted into a slot in the machine. I check my notes for my box, then go over to it. I stick my finger onto the mesh, a moment of wetness, then dryness, and I take off my finger, wiping off the residual drops onto my pant leg. Water. Such half-baked extreme security measures- checking ink pattern with fingerprint with camera footage- without even any security guards, is, I suppose, the sort given to folk semi-legal and paranoid of visual identification. It’s way harder to change a face than a finger. One’s smaller, and there’s no good facial surgery around the place yet. Not like I’m properly one of those.

Truth be told, there is a leather-covered, twine bound, parchment book right next to a conspicuously long brown-paper wrapper, also bound with twine. What? I take both out, and I look straight at the security camera. Eh, fuck it. If the company paid enough for me to have this mailbox, I’m making enough for them that they won’t mind me pulling a sword out of a mailbox. The more money made, the more leeway there is for eccentricities, after all. I feel around the paper and it suddenly cuts itself on my finger. There’s no holster? What the fuck? I carefully pinch the paper on what seems to be the wide end of the blade, and grasp the handle, before pulling the paper down and around it, shredding the wrapper into a sort of not-quite-halved but certainly slit fashion, leaving it dropping to the floor. Cleaners can clean. I walk about, admiring the blade. Don’t remember what the O’Seen said, but it is a pretty sword. I haven’t used one in quite a while, but I still remember quite some. I stuff the book into my shoulder bag and feel the weight of the sword. I take a few practice jabs and swings in the confined space, before thinking better of it. There’s probably a law against swinging a weapon in a public space. I stab the sword through my shoulder bag- not the book, though- before leaving.

“Alright,” I say, out loud, now, relaxed. “What’s next?”

“We’ve sent you notes. And a bunch of documents. Just talking, left.”

“Hm? Alright. It’s a mighty-nice sword, you’ve given. No holster- sheathe, though, so I’ve improvised with my bag.”

“Can’t see.”

“Don’t got a good camera. Visual processing still’s experimental, and I don’t want to fry my brain right about now. Trust my word for it.”

“Aight, guess’ve got t’trust you, ‘nyways. Caviar, I’d say is next. And then, maybe pack, and get on the bus. Time’s ticking, and there’s not much interesting for you, here? We’ll drop a half milly in your account, if you do.”

“Fair game.” I turn on my heels, taking off my sunglasses. I won’t need them much longer. I smile into a street surveillance camera that turns to watch me. Have a nice, long look. I won’t be using these biomets for a long while, cammy. “Where’d you say, again?”