“Look at that water wheel. As long as there is water, the wheel keeps turning. The wheel of the Dharma is the same. As long as the self-sacrificing mind of a bodhisattva is present, the Dharma is realized. You must exert yourself to the utmost to ensure that the water of the bodhisattva mind never runs out.” - Master Yamamoto Gempo, Rinzai Zen
“I mean, who the hell wants to exercise if there’s no prize?” - Yukari, Azumanga Daioh
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Squanto Bank Branch Office, Fore River district of Narragansett, a week before Thanksgiving.
Aitken rubbed his eyes and yawned. Work always felt tougher after it got dark out, and tonight was no exception. This late in the year meant that darkness descended even earlier upon the city; Aitken stayed long past closing hours, long past sunset.
Aitken was an ambitious man, a son of a wealthy family who graduated with high marks from Cambridge University a few years ago. Not as one of those Rddhi users, but as a business major. Despite warning signs coming out of the Shanghai stock market, business continued on as usual, especially for New England's upper crust of society. And Aitken certainly worked for those elites by accepting that job offer at Squanto Bank, the largest financial institution in the country. And according to the weekly required readings for Squanto employees, the firm's recent success had made it the second-largest corporate conglomerate in all of New England, finally overtaking the Arnold family.
Squanto Bank had humble beginnings nearly a hundred years ago as one of the many Atlantic merchant houses, competing with the likes of the Arnolds and the Reeds until New York mercenary invasions of New England townships forced them into a temporary alliance. Squanto’s backing – and financing – of the Restorationists in the Presidential Restoration proved instrumental to their victory in the conflict. Squanto money fueled the building of railroads and factories during the subsequent industrialization. Though the bank failed in their ultimate plan to occupy the presidency itself, they became closely intertwined with the Presidential Administration, the Army, and the Cambridge school system - the original oligarchy than ran New England.
The chaos of the First American War and the Quinetucket Years temporarily disrupted the oligarchy and allowed new players to step in. Pulaski brought back the Presidential Administration, while the State Police and the Institute muscled their way to the inner circle. The old guard - the Reeds, the Arnolds, Cambridge - distrusted the new players. And that's why the Arnolds were now behind Squanto Bank, which always seized opportunities when it found them.
Those opportunities were why Aitken was working so late. As the branch manager for the Fore River office, Aitken was in charge of finalizing the sale of several blocks of property to the State Police and the Institute. Building new joint laboratories was the explanation they provided, and Aitken knew – and didn’t care – to ask beyond that. And the transaction was to be done urgently, since this was for Chief Amien himself – the presumed heir to the presidency. Squanto Bank wanted to be on the right side of history, after all. Only the best for Amien.
Aitken scratched his head in frustration. His ambition had led him to take up this branch manager position in one of the worst districts of the city, the poorest side of the southern part of Narragansett.
Neponset in the north was dangerous, sure, but Squanto Bank had already made several inroads into it by now. The Squanto pioneers had tamed the financial wilderness of a shantytown and made something decent out of it (if you checked a June 2220 edition of the Narragansett Observer, you could see Aitken's smiling (and exhausted) face alongside his fellow associates standing in front of the Squanto Bank Entertainment Plaza they did the financial grunt work for). Aitken’s job was to do that to Fore River, an entire district of tenement houses, filled with dirty, disease-ridden, and most-likely alcoholic workers who traveled every morning to either the nearby factories or to the ocean’s edge, performing their daily duties as longshoremen or janitors at the Fore River Naval Yard.
Aitken missed the comforts of Kendall Bridge. There, the inhabitants had televisions, the newest cars out of Brazil, and the newest products out of Asia. Here in Fore River, all they had was horse-drawn carriages and old radios and probably square-dancing or something like that. To think both Kendall Bridge and Fore River were in the same city!
Not helping matters was the distrust the inhabitants of Fore River held for Squanto Bank. The people of the district often referred to Squanto Bank as Merchants of Death, a reference to the bank’s role in funding the New England war machine in the First American War’s three years of deadly conflict. The postwar Quinetucket administration used Merchants of Death as a reference to corporations such as Squanto; when Pulaski took power, he applied that moniker right back at Quinetucket supporters, many of whom had their assets seized by the state (the Pulaski government was more effective – and much more deadly – than its Quinetucket predecessor).
Money and power. Aitken wanted to rise to the top.
But he let out a sigh.
So many long hours, so many nights alone...
Well, not entirely alone. By this time of night, Aitken let the other employees go home first while he finished up. The only one who stayed was his secretary, since she and Aitken had some particularly non-secretarial plans for when they got back to his apartment in Russet, the neighboring district to Fore River to the north.
They both sat in his office, he at his desk, her in a spare office chair. She waited patiently; Aitken couldn’t help but notice the way she shifted her legs while she waited.
“I’ll finish tomorrow,” Aitken decided, closing his ledgers.
“Won’t they get mad?” his secretary asked with a sly smile.
“Let them. It’s almost midnight, anyway. If anyone asks, tell them I wanted to get the last train.” He packed his things away in his briefcase. “I’ll tell them I didn’t want to take a taxi this late at night. This is a dangerous district.” Despite his bravado, reality struck him, and he sighed. “I’ll come in early tomorrow to make up for it.”
The secretary rose from her seat. “We got a long night ahead of us. Think you’ll be up in time?”
Aitken smiled right back. “You’re my secretary. It’s your job to make sure of it.”
Aitken helped her put her coat on, he grabbed his briefcase, and the two were done for the day, turning the lights to the office off as they left. As they stepped into the building’s main hallway, he locked the door to the office; Squanto Bank was only one of several companies in the building (though, of course, the Bank owned the building as a whole).
The two headed down the hallway and pushed through double doors, arriving outside into the cold air of a November night, the lights of gaslamps illuminating a small courtyard in front of the building greeting them. The secretary shivered, and Aitken didn’t feel particularly enthusiastic about the fall weather either.
“Once I get my bonus, I want a vacation home,” Aitken muttered. “Somewhere warm. Too bad everywhere in this damn country’s cold.”
Being close to the midnight, they seemed to have the entire world to themselves as they descended down the stone steps of the building. Aitken frowned; the world was actually only almost to themselves. He saw a man bundled in a heavy coat sitting on a bench in the courtyard; along the main path of the courtyard, another man leaned against a lamppost, reading a newspaper.
Some weird people in this district.
Seeing the workers here just made Aitken more excited about his eventual transfer back to the main office in Kendall Bridge.
Just a few more years, and you’re set for life.
To take his mind off of the reality in front of him, images clouded Aitken’s mind, swirling together, a mixture of summer cottages, downtown highrises, the warmth of his secretary’s skin...
As they passed by the lamppost man, he bundled the newspaper and approached Aitken and his secretary from behind.
Homeless, Aitken supposed, looking at the slightly erratic way the man walked. He linked arms with his secretary and picked up his pace. Just keep your head down.
As they passed by him, the man sitting on the bench reached down and touched the ground. His hands flickered with red energy.
No way, Aitken realized, his pace increasing. That’s the spark of the Rddhi-
The ground ahead of them rumbled, splitting apart, until a wall made of solid earth blocked their path.
Trembling, Aitken turned around, and he saw lamppost man grinning, his hand shaking as he pointed the newspaper at them.
“It was not a woman I struck, but an Empress,” the man proclaimed. “It was a crown that I had in view.”
The gun hidden behind the newspaper fired.
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Season 1, Episode 5 - The Boxtops
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The following day at school. Last class of the day, Rddhi Theory, Class 2-B.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Marie of the Revere Gang sat at her desk, adjusted her glasses, and pulled out the day’s newspaper from her Rddhi-filled sleeve. The first article on the front page immediately drew her in; apparently, a sailor used the free time of his shore leave to shoot and kill a Squanto Bank branch manager and his secretary late last night. When officers from the Fore River Military Police battalion arrived on the scene, they found the sailor dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The newspaper itself, the Narragansett Observer, was known for its pro-government slant (though all newspapers had to be pro-government anyway). The sailor, simply due to killing a banker, was linked to the centripetalist-communist conspiracy that constantly worked to overthrow the beloved government of President Pulaski, which justified the continued deployment of Military Police battalions to monitor most of the city’s districts and other important towns.
Marie wasn’t much for Squanto Bank or other wealthy oligarchs. Come to think of it, she hadn’t been much for anything until Sir came along this past summer.
She then supposed that there seemed to be a lot of killing nowadays. The State Police raid last month kept not only the Pond, but all of the capital on edge. In the past, the Presidential Administration favored keeping things stable through handouts, festivals, and presenting themselves as a benevolent dictatorship that kept New England in a quiet peace.
But ever since the Asian stock markets crashed two years ago, that approach seemed to grow increasingly ineffectual. A trade war with New York and other Unified Pact members didn’t exactly help things, either. Prices rose, there were less handouts, and at times, the people could get rather uppity. A midnight knock on the door usually solved that issue and kept the situation simmering rather than an open fire, but the State Police raid changed that.
The government attacked a Rddhi district. Things like that just don’t happen, yet it did. And when the impossible happens, people tend to lash out. The raid was certainly meant as a show of force, to cow all of New England into fearing the State Police, but that seemed to make its opponents desperate enough to act actually commit to their plans.
In the past month, multiple Squanto Bank employees had been shot, a judge was stabbed, and several financial offices had been bombed. The culprits ranged from disgruntled factory workers to the unemployed to radicalized soldiers. The government and the media linked all of them, of course, to the centripetalist conspiracy, but Marie wondered about that. She also wondered if living in a district like Elizabeth Pond, though less safe than it once seemed to be, gave her the mental space necessary in order to wonder about things like that.
Rddhi users weren’t allowed outside of the district without authorization, but Sir knew a number of tunnels that had motorcycles waiting for them at the end. With the wind in her face as they drove across the city, Marie sitting behind Sir as she confidently steered the bike down long avenues and across overpasses, Marie could catch glimpses of it all – patriotic rallies in support of the State Police and New England itself, mass arrests, firebombings and letterbombings. New England was certainly approaching a tipping point, but Marie wasn’t sure which way it would go.
And she couldn’t have seen any of that if she didn’t sneak out of their district. Part of her wondered if that was the true purpose behind the walls around Elizabeth Pond.
An annoying laugh took her out of her thoughts. She glanced over and saw fellow gang member Samuel performing his daily ritual of trying to impress one half of the Mozhzhevelnik twins, more commonly referred to as the Fire and Ice sisters, so named for their powers and (opposite) personalities.
“And there’s this guy, Marty,” Samuel began. The Fire sister yawned, while the Ice sister listened with rapt attention. “Good ol’ Marty. He’s something like a younger brother to me. I felt bad for the poor kid, so I took him under my wing.”
Marty was two years older than Samuel. They met in their early teens at the arcade, which, back then, was more of a pool table kind of place, with a limited amount of electronics. At the end of their first meeting, one too many sodas had been drunk, and Marty ended up taking Samuel’s shoes, tying them together, and tossing them over a power line. Friends ever since.
Come to think of it, the only reason Marie knew that was because Sir had everybody learn about each other this past summer.
“And Marty, I love the guy,” Samuel continued. “But he constantly steals the lines I use, then takes credit for them. I swear, I have to think for two people sometimes. But I do it anyway, because it’s the right thing to do.”
Marty did not do that. In fact, Samuel had it the other way around.
The Fire Sister closed her eyes and rested her head on her palm, yawning.
“What kind of lines?” the Ice sister asked, her hands gathered into excited little fists.
Samuel paused. “Ah, well, you know...this...and that. And that and this.”
“Wow, that’s so cool!” The Ice sister twiddled her thumbs nervously. “You should take me to the Arcade sometime. I think I’d be cool to meet Marty and all that.” She raised her hands. “I mean, we don’t have to meet Marty, we can just, you know, play skeeball or something like that...just the two of us.”
Samuel thought about it, then looked at the Fire sister. “Would you like to meet Marty?”
The Fire Sister opened her eyes. “Oh, you’re here, Wheaton,” she said, referring to the student sliding into his desk next to her. “You see the game last night?”
Wheaton and the Fire sister started talking, drowning out Samuel's increasingly desperate flirtation. He sighed, not even aware of the Ice sister’s long look of longing, and returned to his seat next to Marie.
“So, what did you think, Marie?” Samuel asked. “Do you think I impressed her?”
“You seduced even me, pal,” Marie answered, focused on her newspaper.
Sam looked at her earnestly. “Did I actually?”
“No.”
Sam sighed dejectedly and slumped into his seat. “What does Coleridge have that I don’t?”
“Had.”
“Had what?”
“Not have, had.”
“I don’t get it.”
“We broke up.”
Sam coughed in surprise. “Really? When did that happen?”
“Early September.” Marie flipped a page. “The weekend before school started. Sir hosted everyone at the Arcade, and we all ended up staying there the whole day because of a rainstorm. We had pizza. And pepperoni. And pepperoni pizza. That’s when I really became friends with Sir. When Sir became Sir.”
Samuel gestured at himself. “Well, you can always cry on my shoulder.”
“No thanks, pal.”
Sam slumped in his seat so hard that his head barely appeared at desk level. Marie took one of her hands off the newspaper and reached into her sleeve, producing a lollipop for Sam that she left on his desk.
“Grape?” Sam questioned, eyeing the lollipop. “I’d rather have the mystery flavor than grape.”
Marie went back to her daily news. Sam sighed and licked the lollipop glumly.
Their fellow gang member Mallory, sitting behind Samuel, flicked him on the back of the head. “You’re an asshole, Samuel.”
Samuel rubbed his head. “What, do you like grape that much better? Some people say they’d rather have grape than mystery. That’s nonsense. With grape, you know what you’re getting. Where’s the surprise? Where’s the fun? With the mystery flavor...it’s a mystery!”
“I agree!” the Ice sister called out from her seat.
Samuel recoiled at the sound.
Mallory shook her head and sighed. Marie shrugged and went back to her newspaper.
The door to the classroom opened and in came one of their history teachers, Mr. Johnson. At the sight of an authority figure, the class quieted down. Usually, the class rep would run some student-led time at the start of every Rddhi Theory class as some sort of leadership development program, but things for 2-B had been rather...in flux, since the semester started.
Mr. Johnson stood at his podium. He was tall, middle-aged, and balding. Marie supposed he really was a typical high school science teacher. Yet he played a mean set of drums at the Homecoming dance.
“Hello, everyone,” he began. “My name is Mr. Johnson. I understand that the sudden departure of Ms. Riley right before the semester started has resulted in a revolving door of substitutes teaching your class. I am proud to announce that I’ll be your permanent substitute, starting today.”
The Ice sister clapped in congratulations. When no one else joined her, she realized her folly and slunk into her seat.
“Thank you,” Mr. Johnson said. He hadn't started teaching yet, but Marie could tell his voice was the kind that meant well but would ultimately put a good portion of the class to sleep.
Mr. Johnson examined his notes on the class. “Alright, so, let’s see, looks like the class rep is...Marie Sutalun.”
At the back of the class, Marie stood, the newspaper still in her hands. “I’m the class rep.”
“Sutalun, eh?” Mr. Johnson said. “That Korean?”
“Irish, Mister.”
“...oh...”
Marie sat back down.
Johnson cleared his throat. “Alright, so...since this is my first day teaching this class, anyone have any questions before we begin? Ah, yes, you over there.”
Mallory lowered her hand. “What happened to Ms. Riley? We were only told she had to go home.”
Mr. Johnson coughed and his words came out slowly.
“She went back home to see relatives,” Mr. Johnson explained, his voice even, almost as if he was reciting a speech. “Keep this quiet, but she had a sick parent. She might be gone for a while.”
Samuel raised his hand. “Can we get her a card?”
Johnson nodded. “Of course, we’ll let you guys handle that, and I can mail it when you’re finished.”
Marie raised her hand.
“Yes, Marie?” Johnson said.
“I’m the class rep.”
“...okay...”
The door to the classroom opened. Mr. Johnson's jaw slackened in surprise.
Chairman Stockham jovially entered the classroom, dressed in his blue suit, casually waving at the students.
Mr. Johnson took a step back from his podium. “Mr. Stockham...how unexpected."
“Ah, I’m sorry to intrude,” Stockham apologized. He looked over the class. “Since this is your first day, I thought I’d stop in, make sure everybody’s behaving themselves." He let out a hearty chuckle. "It seems like you have your hands full with these kids. Say, why don’t you come take a load off with me next Friday? I’m trying to recruit a little drinking party before the football game.”
Mr. Johnson rubbed the back of his next. “Mr. Stockham, uh...is that okay to talk about in front of the kids?”
Mr. Stockham waved his concerns away. “These kids will be adults soon enough. And it’s not like I have any reason to hide this. I'm thinking of heading to War Horse Bar. Beer on tap, mimosas and my tai’s. What do you say?”
Mr. Johnson gulped. “I appreciate the offer, but, um...my wife wants us to visit the in-laws that night.” His face dropped. “It was an order.”
“Well, your wife is certainly a higher authority than me,” Stockham supposed. His shoulders slumped. “A lot of teachers are busy that night. Looks like my drinking party will just be poor ol’ Josiah. To think, I’ll have to walk through the cold November air all by my lonesome...”
Mr. Johnson started sweating. “Uh...it’s not you, it’s me...”
The Chairman nodded sadly. “I’ll ask Shokahu, but he’ll probably throw that scarf around his shoulders and shut me down just as quickly. I’ll be all by myself.” He headed for the door. “All by myself...”
He shut the door behind him.
“Wow, poor Mr. Stockham,” Samuel commented.
The Ice sister swirled a strand of hair between her fingers. “Yeah, I guess everyone...EVERYONE...just needs somebody."
Samuel slumped in his seat. “Why isn’t there anyone for me!”
Marie smacked him with the newspaper. “Quiet down, class has started.”
Mr. Johnson collected his thoughts. “Ah, thank you, Marie. But, uh, you don’t need to use physical violence for things like that.”
Marie rose from her desk and saluted. “It’s all in my duties as Class Rep, Mister.”
“...yes, I know-”
“Because I’m the Class Rep.”
Marie sat back down, her job completed.
Mr. Johnson let out a long sigh and mumbled under his breath.
"Does Mr. Shokahu have a bunch of Rddhi users in this like Class 2-C?"
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Class 2-C watched in anticipation. Mr. Shokahu sighed, but since Rddhi Theory was supposed to be a nominally independent class, if this was what his students wanted to explore a on a free study day, who was he to stop them?
"Go, go, go!" Coleridge started chanting, then Lynn joined in, followed by Piper and Isaac and Dan and Demetrius and Babs and Reed and Mackenzie.
"Go, go, go, go!"
Very carefully, Audrey let go of the piece of toast in her hand. The class gasped when it fell to the ground-
"Butter side down!" Audrey declared. "I knew it!"