CHAPTER 1 : ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL POLITICAL MOVEMENTS IS ENTIRELY UNCOINCIDENTAL

*** Planet Zhe – year 503 ***

One of Riona's earliest memories was of her grandpa on his deathbed and the kind but strangely haunted face he wore as he passed.

She didn't know then that he was the famous author of the seminal science fiction novel "484". Pretty much everyone knew a 484 quote regardless of whether they had actually read the thing or not. Riona had first done so as a young adult in the late 470s, but quickly became enamoured by the antics of the protagonists, and perhaps even some of the bad guys. The story followed a ragtag band of rebels who fought "GreatFather" – a dreadful authoritarian regime which kept an entire continent under its iron heel.

While the characters and places in the book were fictional, her grandpa had intended for the story to serve as a warning for future generations not to repeat the atrocities of World War 6 in 430 to 434. If similar works had been written about the previous World Wars, Riona could not know – too much had been purged, including the world calendar at one point. Whether the count of world wars was correct or an underestimation was also debatable.

In the real world the year 484 came and went. Some of the book's technological predictions were a bit off the mark, such as the nigh omniscient vision tablet – a sort of miniaturised computer, far too small and capable to ever be realistic.

The handheld device was not only used as a wallet, ID-card, tracking device, and radio communicator, it was also possible to dock it with a "funnies booth" and get weekly visi-stories on microtape which could then be viewed at leisure anywhere. Few people in the story – and perhaps not all among the readers – seemed to notice that the material was often just thinly disguised regime propaganda produced and disseminated by a handful of fanatically loyal and hyperactive think tank groups.

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In the early 490s the book was turned into a successful movie trilogy and toy franchise. Figures of GreatFather's Lightning Troops, and characters like Officer Vrontz, Rebel Joona, and Renegade Android Zoran could be seen lining many a boy's bedroom shelves.

The political climate changed for the worse in the late 490s and it was then that Riona first noticed just how ineffective the book had been – some simply saw it as a manual. A reader with a certain outlook could find GreatFather's methods perfectly pragmatic and agreeable rather than self-evidently evil. The Bending Stations, Water Dungeon and Annihilation Chambers would appear quite warranted to a person who easily accepted GreatFather's narrative and justifications; his bad qualities as good qualities. 

Somehow simultaneously it was like with that band who made "Pile up high against the bulwark" only to have their song used by the very institutions the lyrics directly critiqued. Which bulwark should we tear down? It's the evil bulwark of the Thryssian tree conservationists standing in the way of economical growth, of course. They're acting just like GreatFather, aren't they?  

Anyways, as for the rest of the general population... there really was no sturdy brick wall keeping humans from repeating past atrocities – just a rickety fence left to rot.

World War 7 started in 501. Propped up by sympathisers across the continent of Luraan the Neo-Dregh empire quickly swept up the Greater Mosslands and 70% of the city spires within two years. 2.4 million people "perished in the conflict" – that was almost a tenth of the entire population of the continent, now totalling some 20 million people.

Riona had noticed the use of passive voice and projected blame in the news reports. In truth, a good chunk of those who "perished" had been straight up murdered in one way or another; by execution squads, angry mobs, starvation tactics, or worse.

Riona herself had fared only a little better than those poor souls. She was "on the list" and had been chased by hunter squads across the Yama mountains and into the wasteland of the ancients. After using the last of her reserves to enter the bowl of a sinkhole she now lay there dying looking up at the sky, cracked lips parting for a melodious whisper. She'd never let them have the song.

 –– "Pile up against the bulwark, pile up, pile up, pile up and fight..."