Truth slowly pulled himself together. Improved understanding of self notwithstanding, he still needed to get into Harban. He also still had the minor question of what to do with Barton.

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You just said that was a terrible, vile, thing to do! You had a whole big rant about what a no good, very bad thing that was!

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Barton. You just said his name was Barton.

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By transforming him into my devoted slave.

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The shine had gone off the view. It was still sweeping, looking down over the wide river, the thin belt of suburbs and the terrible glory of Harban. It’s just that the romance had left. Now it was just a series of problems.

Fantastic. Just. Fantastic. I am truly the best lone-wolf terrorist. Can we at least make him happy?

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Yeah. Sure. Praeger’s rotted cock, what a mess.

<>

Truth stood and dusted himself off. He firmly decided that he wasn’t going to think about this a moment longer. He had a job to do, and hanging around on this hillside wasn’t going to get it done. Besides, sunset wasn’t that far off. He didn’t feel like sleeping rough tonight. Time to get into it.

Alfred von Wigglebottom.

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I was wrong, I was wrong! It’s just, I keep wanting to call him “Butterball” and he’s a skinny little guy. Twiggy?

<>

Truth got running. The suburbs were ignorable. Multi-story low rise apartment buildings, wide parking lots, some big box stores. Dull, dull, dull. Not bad, exactly, just a sweet spot of “cheaper than downtown” and “nicer than the slums” without actually being cheap or nice. Not a lot of suburban sprawl around Harban. Part of that was geography, but more of that was that the land was just too valuable to waste on inexpensive housing.

Closer to the river were the factories. This far from the city, they were the smaller operators. Light industrial fabricators, or parts suppliers to the bigger factories. Truth had never worked a factory job. Never even been in one. But he always admired how they worked on the outside.

Each factory was a component. They explained it to him back in high school. Each and every factory was a component in a larger system. By themselves, they couldn't function. They had to be connected to the rest of the system to work.

He watched a slow moving freight train rumble alongside a paved road next to a factory. A flatbed wagon pulled up alongside of it, keeping pace with a particular rail car. A fetish floated up off the back of the flatbed- all long spider arms and gleaming red eyes- and quickly moved over a container on the train. The legs reached down, detached the container, lifted it up, and deposited it securely on the wagon. The wagon pulled away, heading back to the factory. There was a queue of yet more flatbeds lined up to repeat the procedure.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

In Harban, the flow of commerce was never interrupted. There was no reason for it to be interrupted. It was much the same on the river. Long barges, heavily loaded, plied their way up and down the Fan. The river ran all the way to the sea. It could hardly be easier for imports and exports to flow.

Truth was looking at it with different eyes now. You could see the way innovation and improvements had washed over the factories. Each time removing the human component.

No need to stop the train if you had flying magical devices. No need for longshoremen or crane operators either. Really, you could do away with the truck drivers too- you can train the bound demon to make the loop to and from the track. No need to unload the wagons with meat hands either. Or turn the bolts. He was probably missing something there, or they would have done all that by now. Still. Not a whole lot of humans in sight.

It’s what the truck drivers were talking about in the rest stop. More and more jobs are done by demons and magic, less and less need for people. And somehow, those savings and efficiencies never reached the pockets of the newly unemployed. Hopefully Jorle the truck driver was setting himself up for the collapse. He seemed like an ok guy.

Oh, positive thought- the collapse would lead to full employment. What with all the sudden vacancies opening up, and the urgent need for manual labor. It was too late to encourage mass breeding of course, but…

Truth slammed to a dead halt, stopping so hard a plume of dust shot out five meters ahead of him. His head rotated, like naval artillery taking its bearing, aiming directly at the slums.

There was ever increasing automation in the factories, in transport, everywhere you might need cheap, low skill labor. Surplus labor was only useful to keep costs down, and that only got you so far. The rate of unemployment, or informal employment, in the slums was extraordinarily high. And yet. There was no cap on the amount of children the state was willing to provide welfare and free technical education for.

Now, did that sound like Jeon? If he was describing the country to a foreigner or something? No. The government dumping intellect suppressants and contraceptives into the water supply for the slums, yes. Creating inescapable indentures in exchange for education and a universal spell, that would be more on brand. Unless, of course, you knew the collapse was coming far in advance.

He could see it with shattering clarity. Some bureaucrat, or probably several, had a high level meeting. Just like the ones at Nag Hammadi. They didn’t agree on what was causing the problem, and probably didn’t agree that the problem was happening at all. More or less what happened at Nag Hammadi. BUT. They were able to “work with industry leaders” to develop opportunities for Denizens to better themselves.

Welfare to encourage parents to have kids. Welfare to make sure those kids reached breeding age. Education for manual labor, variously defined. Smart enough to be useful. But never a real education. Never spells that could be used as weapons, or for non-labor work. No good food, or clean water, or healthy apartments. The obedient, the best laborers, got treats. Everyone else got to live like rats, breeding and fighting in the walls built by their betters. Everyone taught “this is the real world, this is what life is like.”

The people who ran things were playing for the world after the collapse. They wanted the weak Level One’s and the Level Zero’s. They would be the only functional people when the magic disappeared. Lots and lots of Level Ones and Zeros, trained to obey. Trained by the Army during their National Service. Trained by their schools. Easy to adapt into a magic free labor pool and military force. And now? Thanks to the new System coming in? The Denizens would be trained to work for food or shelter, not pay.

All the middle managers would be gone. The CEO’s of small companies, military leaders, lower level bureaucrats and politicians. All the possible challengers to the elite would be wiped out by their collapsing apertures. Only the very top of the pyramid, and the very bottom, would survive.

Jeon knew damn well what Starbrite was up to. The bureaucrats and politicians saw no reason not to get in on the game. There would be an aristocracy of those with body cultivation that let them hold onto their magic. There would be magic fueled by sacrifice instead of cosmic rays. The Church of Praeger would be right there with them, supporting the efforts. Making sure they were the ones holding the knife. And they would have plenty of serfs and slaves.

No more money. You won’t need it. You will make what you are told to make. You eat what you are given, sleep where you are permitted. Those poor dumb “citizens” still clinging to the notion that they were better than the denizens. At best, they would become the overseer class. Still toiling out in the fields for the real masters. Whipping can be tiring work. Delegation is the soul of leadership. The leaders must have their rest, so that they can make the very best decisions for everyone.

Borges knew. He knew exactly what these pricks were up to, what they had been up to for decades! He wasn’t trying to invent an entirely new world, he was going to hijack their plans and substitute his own, better version. Something more humane and beautiful. Did Merkovah know? Maybe not about why Borges was doing what he was doing, but he must have known about what Jeon was planning. It wasn’t a secret. It was a conspiracy right out in the open. The only secret was the “why.”

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Which scum?

<< Just start heaping. I’ll tell you when to stop.>>

Truth threw himself into motion. He aimed for the barges on the river. There would be security on the docks, certainly, but nothing too bad. Just too much volume moving through there, and smuggling had always been the rule, rather than the exception. He had a dead drop to pick up , too, and it was on the riverfront.

Truth leaned up against the rail and watched the city crawl by. He could see it now, a little more clearly. A factory. A component in a larger system called Jeon. Getting ready for the exciting new product launch. Truth started smiling.

A well trained slave class was what the bureaucrats and aristos wanted. Truth was quite willing to bet they had never been to the slums. He had a feeling things weren’t going to work out quite the way they planned.