I haven’t thought of people around me as being real people for a long while now. That seems unhealthy.

Truth watched the sun wink through the leaves of the brilliantly colored tree above him.

It encourages a certain way of thinking. Of approaching problems. And I have to figure, since everything I have done I did because it seemed like a good idea or the best option, I must be picking cards from a stacked deck.

<>

Just a few small problems with the idea.

<>

Changing how the whole world thinks. Limiting the imagination of a whole world. All of it. Siphios and every other country he ever fought with, all the other companies, all the other Level Eights and were there really never any locally grown Level Nine’s? Because even with this planet being, apparently, a complete backwater, we did still have natural treasures and divinely blessed places and things. Really nobody else made it to the peak of Level Nine?

<>

Let’s go back to that library. When did Starbrite reach this planet?

There was a long pause.

<>

Because I never learned it?

<>

Six months- Oil of Lilly Verdsang (2% concentration or higher, up to 4%,) and check paths for wear and tear. Annual- strip down and clean with pure ethanol, retrace major paths with Number Four diamond tip rasp, fine brush minor paths, re-oil-

<>

But this must be public information, right? It’s the most powerful corporation in the world. It’s headed by the most powerful mages too, probably.

<>

But it had to start somewhere. He arrived here at some point. Which means that there was a time pre-Starbrite. And records of that time exist. Hell, we know the student attendance records of a mage six hundred years ago. How can we not find out when Starbrite arrived?

<>

Hell if I know. Back to the library?

<>

Truth nodded and got up. I’m going to take a walk. Maybe swing by some places on Merkovah’s list. Lists. He had a lot of things he wanted done around Harban, and you know what? Stressing the System Astrologica to the breaking point was already the plan. This is just another excellent reason to do it.

Truth walked down the street, vaguely headed back to the hotel. At some point, the hotel staff would ask someone for their identity sigil and a linked bank account, right? And the Shalia was one of those “our parent company is 45% owned by a Starbrite subsidiary” business. He had some vague recollection of someone’s niece or mistress being installed as the titular “Proprietor” years ago. There was a minor scandal about it. A million wen job, which consisted of smiling prettily at appropriate public events, and nothing else.

But what could you do about it? It’s just how things are. That’s life in the real world.

He observed the street. It was pretty ordinary. Basic Citizen zoned area, which made it far, far nicer than a slum, but lacked the color and aspiration of a high citizen district. The Aristocrat districts were, from what little Truth had seen, actually pretty bland looking from the street. A lot of privacy walls. Behind those walls, however, were some of the most beautiful homes in the entire world.

Thirty thousand people lived in a single Harban Slum apartment building. More or less. The number fluctuated rapidly based on birth and death rates within the tower. In an Aristocrat district home, there might be a dozen people living on the same amount of land. Eight of which would be full time live-in staff, or included the extended family of the owner.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

One would be filled with Level One drones, with no ambition but to be a slightly better off Level One drone, or to win the lottery. Truth shook his head at that, idly looking at a movie poster. That wasn’t fair. They had dreams, those rats. They had ambitions. It’s just the real world taught them that even dreams should have their limits.

The poster was for a gangster movie. All unshaven men in well tailored suits. Didn’t look like any gangsters Truth had ever seen. That was his Plan B, right there. If he couldn’t get into Starbrite, he was going to kill his parents and go gangster. Because as shitty and short as that life was, you could earn a hell of a lot more that way than by scavenging.

A very realistic way of thinking. Very grounded. The poster was in the window of a tiny convenience store, selling bags of snacks and soft drinks from a refrigerator. Smokes and porn behind the counter, along with beef jerky and other meat based snacks. They had walled off the whole back of the shop in spelled glass. Not even a cut out for a cash register.

Truth smiled grimly. Very forward thinking convenience store owner, right there. Once everyone switched over to credits, as long as there was a scanning talisman in the store, customers could just walk in, grab what they liked, and walk out again. Try to shoplift, and your identity would be sent to the cops before you reached the end of the block. Now, whether or not the cops did anything with the information was another issue.

You had to think realistically. Was a cop really going to get off their ass for a stolen armful of potato chips? In this day and age? They wouldn’t even send a golem. Best you could hope for was a police report number you could give to your insurance. If you had insurance.

He pressed on down the road, ignoring the bus stops, trying to pay attention to the people. Doing his best not to think of them as actors, or dolls, or ghosts. Each of them was real, and living in the real world.

There was some construction work being done. Wood siding, big flat panels of plywood painted blue, had been stretched along the sidewalk side of some scaffolding. Posters had been pasted to the side of it. None of them glamoured or enchanted. Just… colors printed on paper, stuck on with glue. How bad did things have to be, if you were just relying on “Look at this pretty picture!” For movies, no less. The name of the flick wasn’t even glittering or moving.

Romance, action movie, gangster movie, probably a comedy, on and on, so far, so generic. Not a single one appealed, but he had never been big on scry or movies. Here was one about a “family” of golems, apparently trying to recreate a normal life for a little girl. The comedy just had a slightly overweight guy wearing a backpack and an ugly sweater looking confused. “I was promised cookies?!” written across the bottom of the poster in blocky white letters.

Well. That sounded just super. He would one hundred percent for sure make the time to go watch it.

They all looked pretty samey and dull, but when you got right down to it, the romance novels, thrillers and spy stories he liked were pretty samey too. The same few stories, over and over, each author bringing a little variation, their own special sauce, to the book. Bringing their own prejudices and assumptions. Writing to meet changing market conditions. Nothing new under the sun.

But all human invention was like that, right? It was the almighty power of jank. You took two things that you knew worked and mashed ‘em together and made something that kind of worked, and then you took that and refined, and refined, and refined until you had an actual usable thing. Nobody ever invented a spell wagon without other people figuring out both wagons and demon binding first.

Some people, young, angry, some middle aged, came bolting out of an alley, waving signs.

“Free Jeon!”

“Affordable housing now!”

“Punish thieves!”

The chants lacked a degree of polish, Truth felt, and lacked punch. They were good enough for Internal Security, apparently, as random passers by suddenly turned and snapped out charms. The charms rapidly expanded into wide curtains, screening the protest from the street and muffling the sound. Some of the cops went behind the curtain. Others stood in front, glaring at anyone who dared look over.

Pretty standard, from what Truth remembered. Maybe a few more Internal Security on the street. That reaction seemed very fast. Like they were waiting. Wonder how many informers were in that little group of civic minded citizens.

Nobody liked being an informer, he imagined. Not a safe feeling. But you had to be realistic. You had to look out for yourself and your family.

Also “free Jeon, affordable housing, and punishing thieves” had to be some of the most inoffensive, generic slogans he could imagine. Why not just storm out with blank signs and let people imagine their own slogans? That would at least be funny. Was that really the best they could come up with?

Truth slowly came to a stop. Yes. It was the best they could come up with. He could imagine better slogans. A practiced propagandist would definitely come up with something better. But the basic things they were asking for was probably as far as they could imagine. They were about as far as he could imagine too. Wasn’t he pushing the same messages when he scattered propaganda?

Free Jeon. Sure. Who were you freeing it from? Be specific, because there was a serious lack of occupying soldiers on the street. Affordable housing? Does that mean building more apartments or what? How else do you keep prices down, and for that matter, how do you make sure they are affordable? Punish thieves… because that wasn’t already being done? It was, though. Of course it was. But it wasn’t burglary they wanted punished.

The rats were trying to find out where the food had gone, and why their nests were rotten, and they couldn’t see a damn thing. They hadn’t climbed. They hadn’t even looked up. They didn’t have the words to explain what they felt, or the concepts to explain why things were the way they were. They couldn’t even explain what was, let alone what should be.

They wanted to live like humans. They were scared they wouldn’t be able to live at all.

Truth started laughing, making a sad, broken noise. These little rats were like him. Stuck in the walls of the “real world” and not able to even imagine an alternative. He wasn’t the only one who felt that pressing unreality. The protestors were rebelling against their blocking, against the masks they had to wear and the scripts they had been handed. But they didn’t have anything else to work with. It was all they knew. That blue cloth and spotlight were the sky, and had to be the sky, because without it they would be lost in a nightmare of uncertainty.

Well. He could help there. He might not see the alternatives, but as a born gangster, a thug, a murderous criminal living by extortion, violence and abuse of social convention, as a complete scumbag slumrat, he did have one relevant piece of insight. The great dream, in fact, of denizens everywhere.

Truth dashed into the mob of secret policemen, the Tongue flicking out and silently taking lives. They were bare Level One’s, supervised by a Level Two. They never even saw what hit them. They were all dead before the first one hit the ground. Truth started throwing the bodies around the street, dropping them in front of cars, groups of people, the queue by the bus stop. Once he was sure everyone was good and agitated, he slammed energy into Incisive and yelled-

“EAT THE RICH. YOU HUNGRY? EAT THE RICH.”