Babs arrived at the church a few days later.

In the interim, the days moved in a blur. She spent her hours locked away at Yellow Triad headquarters, taking deep breaths, in and out, in and out. Long ago, power sprang from the barrel of a gun; nowadays, it came via the dantian. Relying on just her quick wits and physical prowess would be like an archer fighting against a machine gunner; in a different time, the archer was king, but Babs needed to make use of the weapons of today. And a gun was only as good as the one wielding it, same with the bow, same with cultivation; she needed to be in top condition, mentally and physically, to enact the change she wanted to see.

Caesar was wrong. He was not fit to run Kallipolis. Nobody had ever dared say that out loud before Haneda did. The time had come for Babs to pick up his flag and fulfill his mission. No doubt, many other Restorationists felt the same way, but had been too scared to speak it, but somebody needed to lead that undercurrent of rebellion.

If Caesar could read her thoughts - so what? If Caesar could remote view her actions or astral project before her very eyes one night - what of it? Inaction and death were two sides of the same coin. In fact, inaction was worse, because it meant Babs failed to act on the injustice that grew more and more each passing day.

The local coroner deemed Haneda’s death a suicide with no foul play. Somebody killing themselves by leaping off the Zhanghai tower was covered up entirely, as it if never happened. Haneda had a small funeral, just family (Babs) and friends (Old Bob). The frail, elderly owner of the dance hall walked in with a cane; Babs helped him back home, but not before she took one last look at Haneda's grave, just one of many in a potter’s field, not too far from where her own parents were buried.

Let Caesar come for her. The next day, she arrived at the Neponset church. The priest was busy in his office; the church was utterly empty outside of the giant fresco of the Skyfather looming over the hall. He reached down from his kingdom above the clouds, a single finger pointing towards his children; lightning flashed behind him, while the Moon quietly looked upon it all amid a field of stars. Restorationist doctrine said the Skyfather wasn’t real - they had a deity of their own they worshiped. If the Skyfather was indeed real, then surely he was laughing at the way his children ran the creation he had gifted them.

But the Skyfather favored direct action - according to the myths, he sent down the bolt of the Unleashing to punish man for their sins, after all. That sort of religious, holy fervor - Babs felt in her bones. She would accomplish what she set out to do or die in the attempt. There was no in-between.

She found the fifteen pew and when she knelt down, she grabbed the third leg from the right. It came off with a metallic clink; the inside was hollow and filled with a scrolled-up paper. Babs looked around to make sure nobody was watching, but she felt the eyes of the Skyfather on her, so she disappeared inside a confessional booth.

Already firmly committed to this path, there was nothing Babs could do besides read it.

Dear Babs,

If you’re reading this, I must have passed on. This is a dangerous line of work. But it’s worth it to achieve utopia. But we must have the right people ruling Kallipolis, otherwise we’ll have replaced one tyranny for another. I grew up believing in Caesar, but he is infallible, just like any other man. Try as he might, he’s not divine - he’s just a man who believes in his own delusions. He has lost that humility somewhere along the way. We must take care not to do the same. There is no point in winning the war if you lose the peace afterwards. We’re not gods; we’re just men and women trying to make a difference for the next generation.

For me, you’re the next generation. I didn’t want to bequeath a world ruled by tyranny to you. You might think I’m a traitor, but it needed to be done, for the sake of all who come after us. Wise men plant trees even when they know they won’t live long enough to sit under their shade.

Caesar is powerful. But I believe he can be overthrown. It must be done now before he establishes Kallipolis. I would like to carry this plan out myself, but if you’re reading this, he must’ve caught on. My only regret is that I could not live to see you in the peaceful future you’re bound to create.

When you see injustice, you must act on it.

I would say to make me proud, but you already have, each and every day.

Babs wiped her eyes. She could still feel the warmth of his hands on her shoulder, on the small of her back, when he tried to take her ballroom dancing amid all the jazz and lights.

The rest of the letter detailed his plan. He had connections with the Navy - that’s how he was able to get them to investigate the smuggling. In turn, he learned of a powerful device hidden below the Elizabeth Pond naval base - a biomechanical creation known as the Heart that was powered by human souls. Meanwhile, Caesar worked with Chairman Dai Hong of Zhanghai to create a cultivation-powered energy source below Four Eagles. The usage of atomic material meant that neither the leaders of Zhanghai or Arcadia could know about it, resulting in Dai Hong’s turn to the Restorationists for slave labor and cultivation needs.

If that device could be transformed into a weapon, the Heart could provide it with an endless source of ammunition. A superweapon that powerful, more precise than an atomic bomb, stronger than any living cultivator, would be enough to seize Narragansett and control the country without Caesar. Afterwards, he could be dealt with, dying just as the superweapon ushered in the new Kallipolis.

All it would take was the will of a single person to accomplish it. And when it came to willpower, Babs had plenty of it.

Turns out, much of Arcadia’s youth was equally disaffected with the status quo and willing to make a violent change. Yellow Knife territory was right next to Four Eagles - their common criminal connections brought Babs to its local boss, a sharp-eyed, sharp-haired woman named Zou Mei. She was an easy convert and got two of her local geniuses, the Dederick twins, inside the Zhanghai project. They converted the energy source into a weapon.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Then came ambitious bedfellows, temporary alliances just of convenience. An underground meeting of an ultranationalist society brought Babs to the arrogant Naval officer Henry Spinelli, son of Naval Police Vice Commandant Spinelli. He flicked his blue cap as she talked, no doubt undressing her with his eyes, but he had ambitions of his own and the two shook on it. He’d be her inside man at the Navy, covering up what needed to be covered up, putting pressure where it needed to be applied. He found an officer that could be pinched into doing business for her - a man named Connor with a dying daughter and too much debt on his hands.

One more junior officer joined the ad hoc alliance. At Henry’s urging, Babs meant with the woman he claimed to be more than friends with. She wore the black longcoat of the State Police; her blonde hair was cut in a messy bob, likely by her own hand. In agreement for keeping tabs on State Police activity and serving as an option of last resort for getting the Heart out of Elizabeth Pond, she placed forth her own conditions - that she could make tiny changes to plan when necessary, like leaving people alive when she wanted to. And second, her involvement would be over after the Heart’s retrieval. It would be entirely up to Babs after that.

The final piece came into play. Babs enrolled in the Navy herself. With Henry Spinelli as her guardian, she could keep abreast of Naval actions regarding the lingering issue of the abruptly-ended smuggling operation. The new head of the Cultivator Marines, a man named Stockham, was neutral in all of this, and soon began sniffing the trail of smuggling just like his predecessor. She also needed to confirm the Heart’s location below the base; she did so with a strand of the State Police’s officer hair that she promptly destroyed afterwards. And lastly - it would be great to recruit more allies on the inside, ones far more trustworthy than Henry. People who wanted to see the country change, too. If she were to be the new Caesar of Kallipolis, then she’d need trusted lieutenants. People who saw things the same way she did.

A few days after arrival, she got introduced to her squadmates. The girl seemed alright, though she lacked the inner fire Babs wanted to see. As for the guy - he had that same sort of look in his eyes. About wanting change. If he could dance the same way she did, that would confirm it. It had been so long since she danced with someone. His name was Isaac.

My name is Isaac.

After what seemed like years and years of memories, it all gave way. Isaac - yes, that’s who he was - found himself in an endless black void similar to the one conjured by Harburg. Sympathy for Babs instantly flooded him - he could still feel the shock and sorrow of Haneda’s death, the loneliness and self-loathing resulting from poisoning an entire community for a greater good named Caesar that she no longer believed in. Change was the name of the game, upsetting the status quo was the mission. Babs operated with no fear of death - as long as she got the ball rolling, she would consider it a victory. Considering the giant’s rampage and nearly bringing the Cultivator Marines and Naval Police to blows, she was certainly doing a good job of it.

A woman stood across from Isaac in the black void. The black longcoat gave her away as the State Police officer. The blonde hair and blue eyes gave her away as the giantess, though she was now normal-sized. When she looked at him, the collar of her coat slightly shifted, revealing a symbol tattooed at the base of her neck. Isaac felt chills run through him - it was the octagon with the diagonal line running through it. This woman bore the symbol of Project Patmos, of the Sect Hidden in the Mountains - the Mark of Cain.

“You control the body for the Heart,” Isaac said. He had a basic knowledge of biology from his research. “Are you the Mind?”

The woman’s mute expression didn’t change. She merely nodded in confirmation.

Questions thundered out of Isaac. “Why does the Heart exist? Why do you exist? Is there a Soul, too? Why did Babs betray me? And did you save me?”

The woman didn’t answer. Instead, she produced a package of cigarettes from her coat. With slow, tired movements, she lit up a cigarette and watched smoke escape from it. “You know, I cannot even feel the nicotine. I can program myself to have biological reactions to nicotine, but it is not the same. I only do it because my creator did so.”

“Who’s your creator?” Isaac demanded to know. “Was is the Skyfather? Was it God?”

More smoke. “You would like to know, of course. The reason I am sparing you is because I think you will find out.”

Further questions bottled up inside Isaac. He could only ask in confusion, “What do you mean?”

“Just as the Heart was born without a mind, I was born without a soul. I am nothing more than a computer. An adding machine designed to answer complicated equations. I can code and launch programs to mimic emotions, but they are nothing more than cheap imitations. I envy you humans for possessing something grand like that. If we are all the universe experiencing itself, then I can only gather data, while you may feel happiness and sorrow from it. What a rush that must be. But I don’t hate your race. In fact, I perfected my programming to love each and every one of you, weirdness and all.”

Isaac didn’t know what to say, so she kept speaking.

“I have a plan to save humanity from itself. I found Barbara Morang to be a convenient ally for the time-being. She has been useful in advancing my own plans. The plots of her and her Caesar are known variables. I can react in a timely manner and have no issues with their little sideshows. They will fail. I will see to that. The reason why I still exist, after more than five hundred years, is because humans are so interesting. Endless supplies of data. I once tried to learn all I could about humans to mimic you, but then I realized that was impossible. But watching humans for its own sake - can a computer not have hobbies?”

She pointed the cigarette at him. Ash fell against the floor of the black void. “You interest me. You are an unknown variable in my calculations. There are specific observations I would like to make of you before I decide if you pose a threat to my plan or not. Then, based on that, I will decide whether or not I shall kill you. That is why, per my conditions with Barbara, I saved you from certain death today. I showed you her trauma so I may gauge your reaction to it.”

Isaac raised an eyebrow. “Why me?”

“Do not think too highly of it. You are not from a special bloodline or a hidden prodigy. You are just an average human caught up in machinations beyond your wildest dreams. I would like to see how far you go. How much of the truth you can uncover. What you, this unknown variable, turns out to be.”

The Mind stepped toward him with long strides. She let the cigarette fall from her fingers and reached a thin, sinewy finger toward his forehead. With one touch, the black void disappeared entirely.

Isaac awoke to the sound of sirens. A gray blanket covered the sky and his head felt like mush. He tried to sit up, but his strength gave and he landed in a pile of flesh, blood, and metal. Footsteps approached him; as he blinked in and out of consciousness, the outlines of figures appeared before him. Osip, Mackenzie, and Dan reached down to retrieve him.

As he blacked out, Isaac realized he had awoken in the corpse of the giant. As to where both Babs and the Mind escaped to - he had no idea.