“Each time I sit down to write I don’t know if I can do it. The flow of writing is always a surprise and a challenge.”
- Donald Murray, The Stranger in the Photo is Me
“This simply because I had a notion it somehow would be of help to Kurtz whom at the time I did not see – you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?”
- Charles Marlow, Heart of Darkness
----------------------------------------
Previously on...The Eightfold Fist: 200 years ago, an apocalyptic event known as the Unleashing splintered the United States and let loose the energy field known as the Rddhi. In the present, more and more members of the current generation as they come-of-age possess the ability to manipulate the Rddhi, leading to the establishment of military academies to study these new superpowers. After unlocking his powers at the start of the semester, Isaac of West Narragansett Technical Academy has taken his first steps into the wider world of the Rddhi, coming across friends and foes who have continually challenged the beliefs instilled in him by his brother and country.
Isaac stands at a crossroads of destiny - even though he's now a Class 2 out of 5 in the Rddhi power ranking scale, he's come to realize that simply punching harder doesn't necessarily solve societal problems. What he needs most is time to think and reflect - but time waits for no one, and Isaac isn't the only one facing personal struggles. The parents of his friend Audrey and her sister Esther disappeared in their childhood; his friend Reed, apparently connected to the most powerful family in the country, is struggling with her own personal demons; his classmates Lynn, Mackenzie, Dan, Coleridge, and Demetrius have their own personal journeys that will take them across the city and country; other schoolmates include Oksana who sees visions of Old Bolsheviks and Piper who's...doing pretty good and just living her life, all things considered.
Complicating all of that is a delicate national situation: drug-peddling revolutionary groups - the platonist Second Restorationists led by their Alchemist and the mysterious Dorrites - threaten to seize control of the capital city of Narragansett's underworld. The other two Rddhi academies - Cambridge and the Institute - are starting to stir. The State Police under Chief Amien try to juggle the domestic crises while jockeying for total power themselves. And to top it all off - a global economic downturn, atomic programs in Lake Victoria, dictatorships and rumblings of war across the world.
But, as November ends, as nights near their longest and the wind reaches its shrillest - Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's are approaching. Can our colorful cast of characters look forward to some relaxation in the coming weeks? Unfortunately, the holiday season is never that easy...
Now, for tonight's episode:
----------------------------------------
Thousands of soldiers in tan uniforms marched in lockstep to the beat of a war drum down the streets of Auldreekie- and marched in front of hundreds of news cameras that would replay the parade on televisions and movie theaters across the globe.
“The resurgent army of the Triple Kingdoms of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland marches proudly down the long avenues of their capital city,” the voice on the Berlin newsreel announced in the typical trans-Atlantic tone of today’s broadcasters, inspired by the first radio broadcasters from hundreds of years ago. “Today is the three-year anniversary of King Edwin merging his throne with the office of Prime Minister; his armies now march proudly before him."
The identical soldiers, in identical uniforms, walked in identical poses with identical rifles held firmly in their hands, parading in perfect unison, each step accentuated by the beat of a war drum. The army headed down a wide central street in the capital, thousands of cheering citizens on each side, waving their hands and Triple Kingdom flags towards the soldiers. The stone-faced men marching in long columns remained solemn as they headed toward their destination at the end of their route.
The parade took them past large apartment buildings, government offices, and an imposing podium filled with the most powerful men in the Triple Kingdoms. They waved at the passing soldiers, dressed in polished suits and military uniforms of their own.
“Among several others, here we have King Edwin himself, the visiting Iberian strongman Cardoso, and New England Secretary of State Gabriel Easton. The three nations were originally brought together by their disputes with the global powers that be - Iberia with Nigeria over Cape Verde, New England with the German Mandate of Nova Scotia and the English Mandate of Brunswick, and the Triple Kingdoms with their former fellow kingdom to the south. Recently, Iberia and New England have shown their support for King Edwin's efforts to receive concessions from Iceland over its failure to pay back several outstanding loans, something vehemently opposed by the Kingdom of England, which is attempting to negotiate a military alliance with that country itself..."
“Would you turn that off, honey?” Kanazawa asked. “You’ll wake the baby.”
Suga knew that was an old joke, of course. The baby in question was now thirty years old and working as a German intelligence officer. It would be an odd sight, of course – a Japanese man representing Germany. But their family was an odd family.
Sitting on the couch in their living room, Suga searched for the television remote. After spending several weeks on the road, promoting the European release of his relative box office success Of Limes and Lemons, Suga finally had arrived back home, back to his little well-off house in the suburbs of Berlin.
Home being a strong word, of course. Suga and Kanazawa had lived in Berlin for more than two decades now; Suga, in his youth, as he rose to fame as the leading star of Tokyo’s resurgent film industry, made some wrong comments at the wrong time. The young couple faced fleeing the country or being forcibly disappeared by the Pan-Asian League; as much as it hurt, they chose the former and ended up in Germany.
As Suga continued looking for the remote, the handsome face of the young (brown-haired in real life, black and white on the screen) King Edwin appeared on the television. Standing at a podium, he raised his fist and began speaking.
“And here we have King Edwin reminding the world of the alleged irregularities in the Cornwall Referendum that resulted in the independence of England from the United Kingdom at the end of the European Exchange, sixteen years ago, that transformed the former United Kingdom into the successor states of England and the Triple Kingdoms,” the newsreel announcer explained. “This isn’t the first time Edwin has told the world of his rightful claim to England. While Germany has called for peaceful negotiations, Edwin’s younger brother Henry, sitting on the ceremonial throne of England, has allegedly told his sibling to ‘do his worst’...”
“Found it,” Suga said, grabbing the remote. He changed the channel to something about cooking. Cooking shows were all the rage nowadays – Germany’s economy somewhat stabilized in the past few months following the collapse of the Asian stock markets in the prior years. And now that the citizens of Germany could afford to have some choices with their meals once again, cooking shows returned in full force.
“Hey, would you look at that,” Suga exclaimed, pointing at the television.
Kanazawa smiled. “Dutch-style makizushi...reminds me of Shinagawa.”
“You ever miss it?” Suga asked.
His wife sighed and sat down next to him. “Some days. But living here isn’t so bad. I wouldn’t have spent the last twenty-five years here otherwise.”
He put his arm around her. “Well, not the whole twenty years. I seem to remember you travelling around Europe quite a bit...you must’ve shaved ten years off my life when you were in Belarus while the atom bombs dropped...”
Kanazawa playfully pushed him. “It’ll take more than that to kill me!”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
She slid her hand through her brown hair that showed the first signs of graying. “Still, even if we can’t go back to Japan, even if we’re living on the other side of the world...at least we have memories of the old home, and can live in a new one. Not a whole lot of people can say that.”
She snapped her fingers. “That reminds me, I want to show you something I found the other day.”
Suga watched in amusement as his wife rummaged through a stack of bills, newsletters, and documents scattered on their kitchen table. She exhaled as she finally found it – a letter.
“Who’s it from?” Suga asked.
Kanazawa sat back down next to him. “Remember the young couple I traveled with in Belarus?”
Suga shrugged.
Kanazawa sighed. “They’re the ones I stayed with when said atom bombs dropped. All those action stunts have rotted your mind over the years.”
Brushing her teasing away, Suga flexed his arms. “Haven’t rotted these, though!”
Kanazawa ignored him – but smiled all the while – as she handed the letter over to him. “The Razams,” she explained, her pronunciation flawless. “They worked in a university research department in Minsk, but were visiting relatives in the countryside when the bomb fell. The Razams wanted to flee the country, but the relatives wouldn’t budge, so the Razams ended up traveling across Belarus alone.”
Kanazawa thought back to two decades ago. “I met them on the road. You know those older English books, that dystopian trilogy, Sunset-Dusk-Dawn?” She laughed. “All the wife had was Dusk. Why just the middle book, I asked her. She said it was her prized possession, given to her by her mother. It was the only thing left of home that she still had.”
“So, they left their home, just like us,” Suga surmised. “Though, at least our country wasn’t destroyed. Well, Japan was before we were born...but it’s still here, just in a new form.”
“Same as Belarus.” Kazanawa had a wistful look on her face. “Though, their definition of home was a bit different than ours. Japan was our home, and now Germany is...but to the Razams, they never had a home to start with. They told me that all their life, all they did was travel – as refugees, as students, as researchers. Every ‘home’ they had was temporary.”
She remembered the Razam husband looking into the night sky, the campfire fire illuminating his face, the carbine rifle across his back. “All throughout their lives, they always wanted to find something they could call a home. They were going to the former United States to find it.”
“Then they arrived there right before the American War, right?”
“I warned them things didn’t look so good over there, but they shrugged and said if they landed in the wrong country, they would go somewhere else.” She shook her head. “I hoped they would at least go to a democracy, or somewhere far from the fighting, but they ended up in New England, of all places.”
Upon hearing that, Suga looked a little ominously at the letter. “They didn’t die there, did they?”
Kanzawa sighed. “This is their last letter, but it came a few months after the war. Take a look at it. Based on the letter, it seems like they might have found their peace.”
Suga took the letter from her as delicately as his kung fu action hands could. The paper displayed sixteen years-worth of wear and tear, but the handwriting was still legible.
To Kanazawa,
By the time this letter reaches you, you surely will have heard the news – New England and New York have agreed to an armistice! And with the fighting over in Europe as well, we can finally live in a world of peace. Hopefully for good!
It’s unfortunate that New England lost, but the people here have a strength and pride to them that will enable them to keep moving forward. I fear that might lead to further sorrow down the road, but I have faith in the next generation.
The new government in Quinetucket has promised the easing of censorship, so I will be brave and talk about our work with you for the first time – as much as I can say, anyway. Because we worked at an institute in Minsk, we took jobs here as researchers for a General Sullivan Pulaski. He’s the army commander in the north who fought against the Canadians. Perhaps you might have heard of him, but he’s not one for publicity. We primarily work his through his chief intelligence officer, a man named Amien, so we only met Pulaski once – he was very quiet, but highly knowledgeable on any topic we discussed.
Fortunately, through our work, we have made friends! We were worried about being accepted, but a young researcher named Josiah Stockham has taken us under his wing, so to speak. I feel sorry for him - he lost both his wife and daughter in the destruction of Narragansett. Yet he maintains a jovial attitude and has even approached us about aiding him in establishing a new academy for the psychics here!
Psychics. The fact that we can talk about such a concept with a completely straight face is something to marvel at. We’ve worked with these psychics for four years already, but to see someone possess the ability to freely manipulate reality, our minds still sometimes cannot believe it. Truly, one has to see it to really understand this Rddhi.
Our research takes us around the country. Life on the road as usual! But we don’t mind it. We’ve seen so much, yet there’s still much more ahead of us. We’ve worked in the port city of Acushnet, toured logging camps near Androscoggin, and stayed in a mill town named Salem Slot. We even went to Narragansett, much of it still in ruins, to see a performance by a returning Rddhi great. They say this man, in his youth, was instrumental in creating the modern New England state, simply with his ability to produce lightning from his sword! And this man still fought for his country, fifty years later! Unfortunately, his performance was canceled, so we instead walked around the city for the day, and watched men hard at work rebuilding this magnificent Kendall Bridge that had been destroyed by enemy blimps during the war.
So much life! Sometimes I wonder if this desire to see more is why we are always traveling.
And speaking of life...
My wife is pregnant! What beautiful timing, right as peace has been established! Now that the war is over, my wife spends her days listening to the phonograph or listening to local marching bands formed by returning soldiers. She’s convinced the child will be a musician, and a loud one at that! I have no idea as to why – as you know, we are both very quiet people!
My father worked with his hands in the fields of the Belarusian countryside. I wish for our child to have a grander life than that, yet I don’t want it to forget its roots. Literally. I talk into my wife’s stomach, naming all sorts of plants and flowers for our child. Music and botany – I wonder which side will win? Perhaps both will!
We still haven’t decided on a name. We agreed that if it’s a boy, I will name him. I want him to have a strong name, after my own father – Boris.
If it’s a girl, my wife will have the honor of choosing a name. She wants a local name, a colorful name, that will suit her in this land we now find ourselves in – Audrey.
But that’s enough about us! How are things in Germany? We heard that, with the war over, cinema is making a comeback! We hope your husband will have a wonderful career, and we will be eagerly awaiting the day his movies reach our shores. And your photography! We know you are hard at work with your pictures, we will put in orders for it right away once it’s ready!
Both of you have careers in visual media. It’s amazing that there are so many ways to tell a story. We cannot wait to tell the stories of our travels with you to our child.
Yours truly,
The Razams
“That was the last letter,” Kanazawa said. “I sent one back, but never got a response.” She looked out their window into a Berlin avenue. “I truly hope, wherever they may be now, that they found their peace.”
Suga looked up from the letter.
“I hope the kid became a musician.”
----------------------------------------
Season 1, Episode 6 - The Tree Plot
----------------------------------------
Audrey Adzinoki stood in Curley Park, savoring the moment. The sun dipped below the horizon, taking its light with it. Night settled in, and despite the cold, Audrey wanted to play one last song.
She blew soft notes into her trumpet, each one filled with a gentle wanderlust. Her lonely moonlight serenade drifted across the empty park. She tapped her foot slowly, sounding out each note until there was no more.
Silence took over, punctuated with occasional noise of a passing car.
Audrey sighed, her trumpet by her side as she looked up at the moon. She saw the same gray and golden sphere all over New England, because she had spent most of her early life traveling. A few months in Salem Slot, then a month up north, then a month out west, then a few months back in the Slot, until her travels started once more.
She spent a year and a half in Elizabeth Pond by now. She thought she had gotten used to it. Maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the moonlight, but right here and right now, Audrey wanted to go somewhere.
Home. She could never quite put her finger on where to call it.
Salem Slot was her home, of course. Or was it? She wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe home had no real definition. Maybe it was just perpetually somewhere else.
Taking one last look at the twelve stars of Narragansett, Audrey decided to blow a soft, final note.