As the winds calm, the sands settle, and the desert silences, life peers out from the depths to explore the peace at the end of the feared Sand Season. Crabs in greater numbers push through the sands before the scorching sun is fully gone from the sky.
A person bursts from the now still sand, head popping out first, looking around. He emerges like a worm gauging the temperature before taking off his goggles and doing a little jig. A second person emerges head first before extracting herself, performing her own jig, expressing their shared oddity. They get about pulling and setting a lever they systematically use to pull sand from their emergent point, helping others out. More people come outside in an organized rush, scattering in organized chaos to begin collecting and sifting sand excitedly.
All across the Namib Desert, people dig themselves out of the holds of underground shelters as news spreads through ELF radios: the storm season has ended early. Most holds come out mostly intact, with some of the biggest housing hundreds of people, while others hold as few as twelve. Hundreds of holds spew thousands of people throughout the day across thousands of kilometers.
They work enthusiastically and systematically, sifting and collecting sand into bags, filtering the finest grains left over from the storm. There is organized chaos as the locals rip wealth from the hostile desert, where the semi-diamond hard sand that once threatened them now becomes a resource as it settles.
Other life returns to the surface as fennec snake-lizards emerge in their thousands to hunt spiders and crabs. Meanwhile, the desert people show remarkable enthusiasm for their sand mining, quickly and efficiently filling synthetic bags. They can't re-enter the now sand-covered holds until the next season, but none lament the loss of their shelters.
None of the desert people are attached to any one hold more than another. The underground caverns are frequently abandoned due to the shifting availability of water. Water moves strangely in the desert underground and frequently super-evaporates, 'raining' in another cavern not even connected by a path humans can follow.
Those who finish collecting sand gather themselves and trek across the desert, burdened with tons of synthetic bags filled with as much sand as they can carry. Some carry it on their bare backs, while the most fortunate use sleds they power with leg-cycles. Even the children carry a load. All across the desert, these people come together, forming human trails that track ever westward.
Those who were previously expelled or lost but survived the surface now sift and collect sand, joining and being welcomed along the trails of sand miners, meandering westward toward the interested parties.
Their tools and equipment, dug up from the holds and unsealed, last longer now that the sands are still. A grav-cycle's carrier lasts almost 50 kilometers before its last vital gear breaks down. The most complicated technology fails first, while the lever and wheelbarrow endure the longest. All tools eventually malfunction when exposed too long to the shimmering sands of the deep Namid Desert.
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At some point, our breathing circle becomes a breathing and eye-gazing session where the energy being cultivated is used to see into each other. We begin perceiving each other's perspectives as we commune—simultaneously as a group, yet privately in pairs. We commune, communicating with word and mind, a novel experience for all of us. Vera asks Moxie how she gets her hair so smooth, while Moxie compliments Vera's strength and athleticism despite being banished from a hold. It's obvious they are attracted to each other, but norms culture and others peeking into their perspectives distract them from each other.
Cipro makes a move on Doxy, while Clinda grows frustrated by revolving sexual attention from people she isn't interested in. We all notice how healthy everyone now looks since they started practicing the breathing technique some months back. Everyone now notices how attractive the people in our group are becoming, despite missing teeth, scar tissue, limps, and other disabilities that made them the weakest links in their own holds they now have flush supple skin, strength in their postures, symmetry in their alignment of body aesthetics.
The experience of communicating profound meaning and intent with but a glance starts out with a lot of mental finger-pointing. People hide shame that comes to the fore: maliciousness previously well-hidden is obvious to all, hate with no outlet souring life, sorrow that was hoping for an end now sudden naked before all. People are so full of emotions, yet so little of what is within them consciously comes out.
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Amika rejects Kapto's feelings as a distraction, looking to Enala and Val as people she's most interested in forming a friendship with because of their strong personalities and positivity. Tetra has taken strength in my body and mind for the first time in years, and she looks at Aetio like he's a god or God's gift to her. Tito is wary of Aetio's alien mind. Though I drinks from the discovered power eagerly with every breath, I don't trust anyone—especially not Aetio who has too much control over the group’s acceptance.
Most surface-level conversations sputter out within the first few hours as we all get deeper into each other's unspoken meanings. Led by Aetio's strange mind, unconcerned with social norms, embarrassing or disgusting thoughts, the group quickly gets past a hurdle of shame, lust, fear, hope, scorn, hope and anger. Within a few hours the 26 sand storm survivors stop judging each other harshly for thoughts they'd never normally share with the world.
I am not interested in you.
I hate myself.
I was hoping to die out here.
I'm sorry for what I've done in the past.
The strong prosper. The weak endure.
You are so beautiful it elevates my heart rate to look at you.
This breathing technique is torture.
I hope we stay together and form our own hold.
Mhm... I haven’t needed to dump a load or eat in three days. That's not normal, right?
Oh God, I hope no one here finds out I once had sex with another man.
Storm season is ending, we should collect as much diamond sand while we still can to sell to the city folk.
There are 25 perspectives floating on the surface of 26 minds. We all hear and see one another and almost immediately, we start dominating one another in a negotiation of perspectives. I am right, you are wrong, think this, not that. A debate of who has the most accurate view of a topic ensues. All perspectives, even about the same subject, vary to such a degree that another wouldn't understand if they weren't seeing from personal perspective.
Human thoughts go around and round in circles looping over the same things inanely, a thought from Aetio that eventually shut everyone down as they realise they truly have been thinking in circles and living reactionarily even in their own minds.
Lisin is a killer, he shouldn't be part of us.
Are we an us now or is it you and me?
We are all clearly an us at this point and we need to plot our next moves.
Finally someone speaking sense instead of lusting after tail like a teenager in heat.
I'M 19, nine-TEEN.
We need killers if we are to thrive in this world. I recommend we head west with the normal migration and establish ourselves in the cities, eventually take over the whole continent.
Going from being banished in the desert during sand season to the ruler of all of Namibia? A bit ambitious aren't you?
We can survive in a desert that kills all other humans, the desert is our sanctuary and we should travel deeper into it not away to the west.
Namibia is one of the poorest least populated landmass on the planet but its the only place to find diamond sand all top tier space corporations need for their ships. If we can manage to control the sand export we have leverage we can use to set ourselves as a new power in the world.
True power is what you can touch with your hands and enforce with your will, not influence over a resource we can't replenish or really control. I say we focus on cultivating until we have power in our bodies no one can deny.
Would you stop the nomads from sheltering in holds waiting the seasons end so they can mine the sands? Would you kill those people that privately sell their d.sand independantly? Do you not realise the amount of blood and suffering trying to control the diamond sand indutry would bring?
Why do the western cities buy diamond sand to begin with?
They mostly make glass with it for windows in spaceships.
Oh, why not regular sand.
Glass from this sand is resistant to radiation and practically impregnament when fully form.
How do you not know why the nomids you're part of where settled here as mining slaves by the space corporations?
I knew that... i just never figured why our sand is so vaueable.
Lets focus people, first lets confirm we're sticking together.
Goes without saying.
Of course we're sticking together!
This world is ours for the taking.
A circle of survivors plan and plot their next few steps and how their going to achieve them in this new world that has open up to the. Each person's perspective broadening everyone else's, each person learning from each other as the web on minds twists and turns until they are aligned in their processing. Aetio who is fascinated by humans but also learning and cultivating them keeps himself slightly above their meshed mind as an overseer without losing the mind connectedness.
A plan unfolds as to how they'll stay hidden and cultivating in the deeper desert while some of them join the desert tribes in selling sand to the western cities and space corporations until they're strong enough to take over the whole Nomibian landmass, maybe eventually the world.