THE TORTH EMPIRE WILL PREVAIL!

The Pink Screwdriver sneaked behind Lieutenant Yolpeen’s townhouse and cowered against the ivy-covered backyard wall. She dared not shelter in her cubby hole, or anyplace where she might be easily found.

 The Conqueror will never return.

  The Giant is gone.

   The remaining enemies are outmatched by those of Us who can leap across interstellar distances.

    Kill those uppity runaways!

     How dare they enslave (superior beings) Torth!

Traitorous penitents marauded through the streets. They tore down signs and stole weapons, having been liberated. They vandalized shops at the behest of their whispering orbiters. Some of them even did it without qualms.

 You no longer have to obey slaves.

  You are free.

   JOIN US!

    (or die)

The summons thundered inside her brain. The Torth Majority was inside her head.

Well, it wasn’t quite the whole Majority. A measly rotation of one to three orbiters peered through her eyes. These were bored low ranks who wanted to vicariously experience the invaded enemy city through hapless penitents. They did not care who she was or who she used to be. They were just using her as a pair of eyes and ears.

But her temporary orbiters had their own orbiters, who had their own, and so forth. They were a thread of the vast cobweb that comprised the Torth Majority. The Pink Screwdriver could hear the Majority, attenuated and distant, yet thunderously powerful all the same.

 Blast that nussian!

  Yes!

   Throw a grenade into that doorway!

The Pink Screwdriver dropped out of the Megacosm with her jaw clenched.

How could so many of her fellow penitents be selfish idiots? Did they really want to wreck all the painstaking care that Kessa had put into their rehabilitation? Was it worthwhile, to trash the homes and shops of decent people?

How forgiving would Kessa be, once she learned that a bunch of penitents had shot and killed innocent bystanders?

How would the Conqueror react, if he ever returned?

The Pink Screwdriver knew that she ought to ascend into the Megacosm and re-invite her audience. That was survival. If the Conqueror was truly gone forever, then pleasing the Torth Majority was likely her only chance to survive.

Instead, she bitterly hoped that every Torth in this invasion would fail to notice her absence.

She did not actually enjoy having orbiters anymore. It felt dangerous. It was also weirdly embarrassing. Ever since she had stopped repressing her emotions, events in her life felt more visceral; more significant. She didn’t want every mind reader in the galaxy judging the way she experienced things.

A handful of incurious peepers was all right. The Pink Screwdriver had needed to hear the news, and that was the price of hearing it.

But enough was enough. Her personal secrets had surpassed a critical mass, and she would not invite thousands of voyeurs to comb through her recent transgressions.

She had experimented with pleasuring her own body, like she was an animal.

She fantasized about cuddling with the Conqueror.

And also with a fellow penitent who called himself Jake. And not just with those young men, but also with certain Alashani war heroes. And maidens. And even with humans. She had all sorts of beastly thoughts.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

And even weirder? She observed sisters holding hands, and friends laughing over frozen treats, and mothers with their children, and seeing those bonds tugged a different sort of primal desire inside her.

She kept wondering what it would be like to reject her Torth identity forever. Could she truly become a person? A singular person, disconnected from any audience, without any greater purpose? Was that possible for someone like her?

Those thoughts bounced around the vast absence left by the Megacosm.

Perhaps her mental transgressions were meager, but they were many, and they were persistent. Her savagery would earn her execution.

So she hid from the executioners and the vandals and everyone else. She was reduced to being an animal in survival mode. If she were a Yeresunsa, she probably would have set the whole yard on fire by accident out of sheer terror. All she could do was hope that none of the invaders would pop out of thin air within sight of her.

Someone ducked through the tropical plants in a neighboring backyard.

The Pink Screwdriver nearly fled. But the figure went still, and she recognized (the Fluid Obloquy) Jake.

Everything about Jake was sharp and angular. He had a sharp nose, pronounced collarbones, and hair that fell in a precise way. Not that his outward appearance mattered. The Pink Screwdriver was still Torth enough to value someone’s mind over their body. Jake, formerly known as the Fluid Obloquy, had a gentle and caring soul, combined with formidable mental acuity. She marveled that so few people were attracted to him. He was quite unique.

He saw her.

She leaned against the wall, grateful that it was him and not one of the marauding traitors. Jake smiled at her posture of repose. Like her, he was one of the penitents who freely used his face in order to express his thoughts.

Jake made his way towards her, stepping over flowers and shrubbery.

The Pink Screwdriver wasn’t sure if meeting now was a good idea. Should they risk caressing each other, or acting like fools, while the city was under an invasion?

They were beginning to take privacy for granted, and that was stupid. This strange penitent existence might turn out to be a mere blip in their total lifespans. They could not afford to be unguarded. The Conqueror (Thomas) had abandoned his people. Including them.

A whistling sound came from above.

The Pink Screwdriver looked up just in time to see a fiery explosion, and a rainfall of burning debris. A transport had just blown up.

A smashing sound came from the street. Metal screeched against metal.

Was that a hovercart crash?

The Pink Screwdriver climbed the ladder to the rooftop garden, taking a risk in order to gain a view. By the top, she was breathing hard. She prepared to duck behind an urn.

But the vista held her captivated.

Missiles angled towards every transport in the smoky sky. There was another fiery collision. And another.

The remaining transports jerked upwards, or else they dove, trying to escape death.

It was no use. Even if they did not encounter a missile, they got blasted by one of the cannons that protected the city’s airspace.

Jake had followed her. He reached for her hand.

“I thought the Torth took those weapons offline?” she said, gazing at fiery explosions in the air. Like many penitents, she had gotten into the habit of speech.

The Conqueror, Jake thought. He must have returned to protect Us.

Flower petals floated upwards, caught in heat updrafts.

The Pink Screwdriver accepted Jake’s hand. The touch helped to quell her desire to ascend into the Megacosm. She wanted to share this moment with someone.

I’m afraid to ascend, also, Jake silently let her know. I do not think I can be a Torth again.

At least she wasn’t alone.

Neither of them was alone. The Pink Screwdriver saw other penitents, hiding in backyards, or in windows, or in rooftop gardens. They gaped at the sudden destruction of the Torth fleet.

Even the traitorous penitents began to hide, darting into cubby holes or under bushes. Aerial drones were targeting individual Servants and Rosies with stunning precision. Those military ranks used their powers to hurl fireballs at the mechanized attackers, but they were unused to fighting robots… or mechanical drones controlled by a super-genius.

Some of them might have escaped. But many were too slow, or too drained, to be effective against the onslaught.

The Pink Screwdriver held Jake’s hand and admired the Conqueror’s handiwork.

She would thank him in person, if he ever deigned to see her again.

Yet at the same time, she understood that today had nearly been a loss. What if the Conqueror had not returned? Then she and Jake might well be forced back into the Torth Empire. The Majority would probably have them executed for their transgressions.

This day was a victory. But what about tomorrow?

What about a year from now? Or a decade?

The Torth Empire owned every planet in the galaxy. They owned the stars, the temporal streams, the fleets.

The Conqueror (Thomas) had wrenched another prize out of their grasp. He had pulled off another miracle. But there were cities on Nuss that had changed hands multiple times, conquered and re-conquered and then re-conquered again.

Jake squeezed her hand, acknowledging her worries. We are only flotsam, helplessly riding each wave, he thought. We do not control the fate of the galaxy.

He seemed untroubled by that truth. Power had never sat comfortably on his shoulders. Jake had been relieved to stop believing himself to be a god.

Perhaps the Pink Screwdriver ought to feel the same way.

She did not. Powerlessness made her feel like she was embedded in the Torth Majority, carried along by other people’s votes. Why did she have so little control over the collective decisions around her? Could she possibly change anything?

This war might last her entire life and beyond. Every win and every loss would bring fear. Could she exist like that, worrying over the implications of faraway news?

“Look,” Jake breathed, his voice emphasizing (!!!!!) shock. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

The Pink Screwdriver followed his gaze.

Then she knew that she had to ascend, no matter the risks. She could not believe what was happening. The Megacosm was the only way she might comprehend the strangeness taking place down below, in the streets of Freedomland.