Gloried ages. “Looks less a factory from outside.” Shay said quietly, having the sense she was patrolling a temple.
“A factory?” Gargarensyr gasped, appalled. "No longer."
A near stall was stacked with books for sale regarding the grounds they now walked through. Another stall simmered off a stuffy and homely starchy smell. Bowl after bowl of noodles were being handed out. Tourists and monks alike were resting on fallen trees or stones from the ruins of elden as they ate, in agreement that the vegetables still had ‘some bite left’. Birds watched with judgemental indifference, stealing cutlery for their nests. Children were sniffing gathered flower buds.
∞
“It was once a factory, as you may tell from those steam pipes.” Gargarensyr explained. “We still pump out a harmless vapour to give that same old industrial effect. There are proposals to turn it back into a factory, the machinery all being in place already, and our Lady Fate needing more fabric than before. History is uniquely exponential. There is some rumoured commotion or another of a foe that could rival our Lady Fate, as well…” The cyclops-monk scoffed. “What hope could fanciful hearsay have against Fate herself? I daresay.”
Hearing the name ‘Lady Fate’ forced Shay to think of the oval-shaped sun, staring strangely over Imirka. Shaped like surveillance:
“Fate?” she asked, slurring: “Is that why the sun-one is shaped like an eye?”
Gargarensyr nodded into a smile: “How little the young know! The stars are all connected to The Observatories of Argus not far from here, from which The Watcher has sat since Humanity was young, observing fractals fold and unfold.”
Shay could imagine then the impervious helm of Argus somehow connected to such observatories. The holes perhaps, not only for his many eyes but for scopes to attach as well, magnifying his sight into the stars before whatever had forced him into Greed’s arenas, and made of The Watcher a thing to be watched.
∞
Along their walk through the past she watched as performers stroked branches through steam, rising from pipes scattered throughout the flourishing grounds, clawing non-descript patterns at first.
“Wait for it…” Gargarensyr urged excitedly, slowing his pace.
As the smoking steam cut by branches rose upwards, the wisps of vapour formed arachnid shapes, making connected worlds and words of their webs. The shapes were protective over their young or their eggs, Shay thought, and heard a passer refer to them as ‘belike Louise.’ She joined her smile with the sudden and communal clapping as Gargarensyr stared enamoured.
∞
“You as most visitors, appear too young to know.” He eyed up her foot, noticing she limped less seriously than before, and he kept slow his pace onwards through the graceful site. “It was not a well-age for my kin when Falsehood reigned.” He shook his head almost comically, as though putting on a show for larger groups, near and taking notice. "Nor Werewolves nor Dwarves nor the other all-sorts of Life Proliferate. We were not considered among Humanity’s number then as we are now.”
Drills and saws came or went, passing by renovating works or altogether new wings of a museum.
∞
“As for my kin, our one eye associated rightfully so…” he pointed at his brow. “…with being of a single mind, a narrow vision, an obsessive inner nature. A Lyvirian idea freed us - to stop pretending one is not human and embrace one’s nature, to allow in The Truth. To have reigned indulgences that are indulgences still, to be both Nature and Human Nature. An idea by no means unique to Lyviria, though the one that settled for my devoted sort. It is a well-age when we can remember by looking back how far now we are. Seek always the best, but remain yet grateful! Lest the meridian-frontiers of Falsehood return.”
Shay felt for a moment unguarded. Exposed. Vulnerable. Watching distant children gather flower buds she thought Serib was with them. What Gargarensyr had said was about himself yet related to her in some sense. Many had been her recent efforts to feel less. To turn away from her love and humanity, injecting it all away. Yet after listening to Gargarensyr she hoped the scenes out of The Dam’e’s window too would flicker to a nicer dream as this, for Woid and Serib to watch or join. Was Fate their enemy at all?
∞
The multiple numbing doses she had emptied into her arm seemed to have worn off quickly - here she fussed and worried already over her friends - yet who could say how long had passed? In Timeless seams as these. In some returning instinct, Shay suspected Gargarensyr could be aware of the Timelessness and luring her somewhere. Conversely, she worried how long this was taking, while trying to not let it show.
∞
“Your narrow-minded nature root-suits the monastic role you have, I imagine.” She saved the short silence.
“I daresay!”
“I recall the change from one age to the next. My parents were assassins by nature - persecuted before, employed after. Fate’s name is new to me, however.”
Stolen novel; please report.
Gargarensyr paused respectfully in nod, having heard ‘were’ regarding Shay’s parents:
“Have you siblings or a similar sort, whom you might share your grief with?”
Shay doubted for a moment, before shaking her head. She saw Serib on a sofa back at the shop, deeply asleep. Gargarensyr carried on:
“Your parents then, criminals in an older age, made soldiers of good use in the next! Why squander such talents, Falsehood? The Truth answers, for Falsehood now long is dead-shed skin, Hypocrisy in atrophy. Best it is to embrace what we cannot change, for Falsehood's grave is a shallow one.”
Keeping busy from job to job, Shay had little wondered over these things before. For is it not a well age, hmm, when one needn’t concern themselves? As Gargarensyr has sort-of said.
∞
“Not enough know this hopeful thing: that Falsehood all the sooner could have raised up to Courtdom… alas those wasted dark and rotten ages, stretching longer than their name. How many more travellers I could have shown around the worlds! How sooner could we all have heard and seen The Truth adhered. I’ll inform my brethren of my prolonged absence and we can go to such halls in a show further along from here, once we are done here.”
He pointed out a giant structure far off to Imirka’s horizon, vaguely visible through the misty sunlight. Nearby travellers fanned themselves and crowded in cool shade.
∞
“A chimera of artifacts from the first world, salvaged together by archaeologists and arranged by artists. They do fine spicy dumplings there, to offset the dark - and rotten ages.”
He spoke this last part a little louder, as other souls, sitting on soft benches by hard fountains, turned their heads to hear him. He shuddered and it sent a laugh through everyone. “Dark an’ rotten ages!” they echoed. The largest group, laughing the maddest - were crowded around an exhibit concerning an antique grandclock.
“Brighter scholars than I correctly correct me of course, that without such darkness, much of all this would not be possible. Two halves always, hmm, of mind and heart? Of love and reason. What brightness would the stars if not for the dark around them?”
“Duality as it be.” Shay sighed something her mother might have said when she was dying, when she was not.
“I daresay!”
∞
The last phrases from Gargarensyr felt quoted from elsewhere or rehearsed, though his enthusiasm had a rhythm to it and Shay found herself pulled in. Some distance along she thought they may have been walking through the middle-or-so of an exhibit, rather than the start. Sweaty travellers cut rudely-and-not across their path, and she had a fleeting fantasy about drinking icy water. Without much context, Vilifrado Dorn was the central topic here; operatic lungs made soft the severe songs over the displays. Directional banners read as follows -
LEFT: The Emancipation and Eradication of The Languages.
/Tallen Fall
/Efficiency Principlia Upheld as it relates to The Truth
RIGHT: The St(ringed) States.
/The Two Ideologies, and The Eight Stages of Courtdom
/Distribution of The Territories
/The Ten Systems
/New Exhibit! Two of The Eight Lords missing from their thrones - Greed elected as Regent
TO TURN BACK: The Greatest Good.
/How’t Relates to The Truth
/All Humanity, Fore an’ Yore
/Tragedy or Evil? The Free Choice!
/War Ordered to (Shay did not recognise the following word)
ONWARDS, PILGRIM: The Assimilation of The Crime Lords.
/Illegality Reimagined
/Something blurry
/And Something else
Despite their plodding pace, she missed the remainder of the banner, having little understood most of it anyway.
∞
“The more basic needs were solved, thanks be to Truth.” Gargarensyr summarised the section. “Duality as it is, the throne that Need once filled was a Violent void, calling out we suppose, to Greed, whom arose smirking to power-again, out of the first world ashes. Who daresay what these gardens shall say in the aeons that follow ours? I daresay it will all be lovely. What inexorable progress… what squalor Once has been!”
He sighed into a smile. Shay could smell stronger now the chemical steam-smoke from the old factory, being reminded of crawling, bleeding and climbing through it. The stench did not match what Gargarensyr had claimed, that the vapour was harmless.
“It was no instant thing, and nigh primordial are the first inklings we have evidence of: on cave walls, pottery and bones, that we always knew The Truth of Duality and being! The Truth can be bleak, however, and humanity drifted off into Lands Preferred by Hypocrisy led. I suppose we all have had such fantasies. Though to turn away does not change The Truth! It swells swollen when avoided! And alas! The Truth was given a strange, most personal name, and too long our writhing was…”
Writhing, as halved snakes.
∞
Gigantic steps grew out of the closer horizon and little was said. Their shade soon covered Shay and Gargarensyr cooler, as they stopped before the ancient stone steps leading up to the temple or shrine that was once a factory. Too great for the mere world its imperial size a union of all under one. Many tourists were sitting with exhaustion barely mid-way up or less; the furthest were tiny struggling specs to Shay’s eyes. The steps were all-draped with fabrics of glory, and Gargarensyr stared up undaunted:
“I begin my tours often with this: a moment grateful at the foot of these: The Gathered Steps, for those too young to remember what horrors of division festered with thrive under Falsehood’s reign. All these together! Are but one step of the nonillion we have together taken. Taken through horrors spawned from misunderstanding Duality, and Truth thus. Horrors that would never even occur to us now, horrors to which we were conditioned, and all are too young to remember their names. And Truth-willing, shall never again occur.”
Most travellers seemed content to see The Steps, marvel silently or aloud at them, and continue on with their itinerary, preferring other exhibits ahead or their next meal, promised by an assortment of wafting stalls. It all looked sticky from here to Shay; food on sticks covered with crunchy seeds.
She thought of young Serib still growing, and other souls long gone that too might have enjoyed. The climb began.