Whatever is on the cardboard reflects all of society, in one way or another. The concrete world is really a world that is cardboard based. Corrugated and thick and lightweight and cheap. Where would all of the goods of the modern world be without cardboard? Everything gets moved in cardboard, or the tools needed for it are, sooner or later it forms the basis of each item of the modern world. Therefore there is a separate and cardboard-less modern world that is not the same.
A world next door to civilization where Orange Flakes have arrived on the menu. See, civilization isn't about the artifacts, the plastic goods, the things from cans that got shipped in cardboard. Nothing had ever gone into cardboard here, in this sweltering and wet place, not since the first rat got eaten.
And here civilization had existed for tens of thousands of years. Some of the stones in the jungle were carved by the same people that still lived here, so long ago.
Not until Orange Flakes. They made people live longer and healthier, the little flattened grains. A genetically modified organism. It was grown in space, apparently. The people who brought it had told them all of this.
Na'gh Na had gone to get the Orange Flakes. The people who came from above were not allowed past the sand of the beach. Once they had come too far and the chief had come to see that the boys had shot arrows and killed the intruder.
They were afraid no more Orange Flakes would come, or worse, warriors from the above places would come. But there was no reprisal.
The people from above had apologized and offered a greater tribute of Orange Flakes. Strange were their ways.
This day, Na'gh Na had aimed his bow at a surprise. The Above Person was wearing a tattered clothing of his people, was bleeding, sitting with his back to the tropical forest. He was eating the Orange Flakes, right out of the box!
Na'gh Na laughed he was so surprised. Then he saw the body of the other Above Person laying there, dead. This was not a funny surprise. He aimed his bow.
"Did you kill that Above Person?" Na'gh Na demanded of the one he aimed an arrow at. The Above Person looked at him with strange, sick eyes.
"I don't speak your language." the Above Person was saying something and a voice spoke as he did, from his neck. Na'gh Na was impressed by this tool and wanted one. He said so, forgetting the corpse for a moment. The stanger got up slowly and took the one from the dead and tossed it to Na'gh Na.
Na'gh Na saw the tiny hairlike hooks and put it on his neck anyway. It didn't hurt, but he could feel it feeding on him, like a misquito, but slower. He said this and the object said his words again in the language of the Above Person. Evidently it could change languages, the wondrous tool, and it lived off of his energy, he understood this, he'd got bitten by enough bugs.
"I am impressed you grasp it so easily. You are very smart." the Above Person seemed amused, somehow.
Na'gh Na raised his bow again. He now planned to shoot the man, probably. He had glanced over and seen the body again.
"You killed this person. Why, are you crazy?" Na'gh Na demanded to know. He was not going to ask again, a third time, for an explanation.
"It was to defend myself. I escaped to here, the coordinates were preset, to deliver this stuff, I guess. She followed me. She is a cop, a hunter of people like me. I'd get executed if she took me back. So I killed her."
"What is it you did that you should be executed? Maybe the law of the Above People will be met here, by my arrow. I see no way to leave you on this beach alive." Na'gh Na watched him carefully. He wasn't sure how the Above Person had killed. He didn't have a gun of any kind, nor did the one he had killed. But her body had a holster for a handgun, so he must have a gun, somewhere.
The Above Person started talking rapidly, obviously repeating a false story. He used too many words of the Above People for a good translation and the tale was hard to follow anyway. Suddenly the Above Person screamed in agony.
The arrow had sailed like a striking snake, through his hand as he had reached into the box of Orange Flakes. He raised the box, his hand inside, but the bow and arrow was ready before he was, after the impalement.
The second arrow went into his heart and stopped it from beating, quickly killing the Above Person. The gun went off blowing Orange Flakes out the bottom of the cardboard box. Na'gh Na fell, bleeding to the sand.
He awoke in a brightly lit room, evidently in the above place. They had given him drugs, much stronger than Sacred Yage. Probably to help with the pain of the gunshot wound. They had done surgery on him while he slept.
An ambassador of the Above People came into the room. He said something and the walls became as outdoor scenery. Na'gh Na felt for the translator and found it was gone. The man understood and had one brought into the room by an assistant, that then left them alone again.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"You brought me here because I was shot. I killed the one that escaped, it was self defense." Na'gh Na said, learning quickly of the ways of the Above People. Many of his generation were greatly obsessed with the ones who brought the Orange Flakes.
"It is okay. We saw everything. We have...magic eyes." the Above Person told him a lie. It was strange.
"Is it that you do use magic, after all, or are these marvelous things just very useful tools you make?" Na'gh Na listened as the words were said, in their language. How it shaped the syllables. He was using the translator better and better each time he spoke with it. A very useful tool.
"You are right, we do not use magic. Useful tools. We call it all Technology." the Above Person smiled. It was a strange smile. It had no affection or meaning. It was almost offensive. Na'gh Na smiled back, trying to emulate the superficial countenance of his captor.
"Technology is very useful. This translator, the place we are now, the Orange Flakes. All of this is Technology, then." Na'gh Na smiled as he said this.
"Well yes, and you are very smart." the man told him, impressed.
"I am the chief's son." Na'gh Na said and showed him a scar he had. He was lying, the scar was a brand for stealing and he was a rival of the chief's son for a beautiful girl in his village. All lies and he said more to make it interesting: "I am the chief's oldest son and this mark is because I am of the royal bloodline of my people."
"Amazing. That must be why you come to get the Orange Flakes. It is your right?"
"That is correct. Going to fetch this food is considered a great honor. Only men of courage and honor may go to get the Orange Flakes from the beach." Na'gh Na kept lying. It was fun, to tell such lies. He felt strange doing so, telling reckless lies for no reason. It seemed to be their way, deceptive and false faced.
"Tell me something, then: how is it you expect that we have no magic?" the ambassador asked the strange question. Na'gh Na had to think about this and realized that the man wanted to see just how smart he was. Na'gh Na was too scared to lie about magic, so he said:
"I have never seen sorcery committed. I am not one who uses magic." Na'gh Na replied, telling the truth.
"Well couldn't you do one little ritual for us? Something public? It would help me explain your attitude."
"Then you would take me home, if I made your words about me true?" Na'gh Na felt fear creep into his heart, for the first time in his life he felt a kind of deep and dark dread, not normal fear of the forest or of fighting, but of magic.
"Yes. I would make that happen. If you show us we are your friend, bless our people with your people's cultural rituals...definitely we could take you home, take a ton of Orange Flakes back with you."
"I would go home and get Orange Flakes if I commit sorcery for you?" Na'gh Na had heard of some corrupt bargains in his life, but this felt like selling his soul.
"You make it sound like I am asking you for something important. It is important, to help secure the future of our people. Many among us are afraid to continue interacting with you down there, that we are damaging your culture. Show them they are wrong. Make them see your ways."
"You are not asking for sorcery at all, are you? You just want me to wave and smile, right?" Na'gh Na tried this communication.
"No we need the sorcery. Put a spell on the non-believers. Or else they will stop the Orange Flakes. That is the consequences of what happened today."
"I see. I will need time to prepare. I will need Sacred Yage."
"I have some of that for you. We have a museum with all of that stuff. I can get it for you."
"You mean you have the implements of sorcery already? I don't understand. Why not use it all yourself? I am not familiar with magic."
"You know enough I am sure."
"This must not be a good idea." Na'gh Na promised.
He went with his captor and donned the sorcerer's relics and consumed the Sacred Yage. Then he sat there and stared at the cameras that were filming his drug-induced mutterings.
He was doing this for all of the right reasons, but it still felt very wrong. He could feel the anger of the sorcerer that had made this costume. A healer, a medicine woman from another village, the style different then his own village's enchanted midwife. It was a sacrilege and the Sacred Yage made him feel guilty and afraid.
Dark words passed his lips and the translator could not really keep up. Sometimes it said the names of mythical devils and other fearsome concepts, as if recognizing the non-language he was speaking.
Hours went by and the ritual continued. Na'gh Na knew the other things he must do to finish. He bled and he promised that his soul would serve a sentence for the magic he bartered for. Then as he rode the Sacred Yage back to his body where it was bleeding and chanting he felt the touch of the Three Gods on his forehead and he opened his thoughts and heard what he might be able to say that would happen. He said it.
Then he awoke in the darkness, there in the above place. He stood and began stripping off the vestments of magic. He felt contaminated and corrupt. He had said the magic words and made it all dark, up here.
The door was opening, but not by itself. The Above People were pushing it open. Red lighting and the sound of their alarm was in the corridor beyond. The Above People were fleeing their above place in a panic.
"We are rapidly detaching from orbit in this station. Do you know what that means?" the ambassador had a real face. He looked happy. His words sounded sincere.
"The magic has convinced your political enemies to allow Orange Flakes to continue to come to my people?" Na'gh Na responded respectfully.
"Yes. I can't believe the magic worked! What a rotten-jolly coincidence!"
"What do you mean?" Na'gh Na was confused. "You think the magic did not work? That the destruction of this place was by chance, somehow?"
"I don't know what to believe right now!" the ambassador seemed childish to Na'gh Na all-of-a-sudden. He then felt very ashamed to have participated in the scheme. All of the lies had led to an even deeper deception.
"This is not the above place is it? You are not the Above People, after all, are you?" Na'gh Na now believed he was in the world of the dead, that this was all a test. If so then he had failed. There was only one way to know for sure.
He took up the knife of the sorcery and used it to slash apart the ambassador and kill him. Okay so they were Above People and he was still alive.
He followed the flashing arrows of light on the floor to a small room, stocked with Orange Flakes and he went inside. It jettisoned itself, door closing of its own power, the craft he had entered, not a small room at all.
It took him home.