Go Tell the Gamezohans (Dorian Cycladian Mix)

---

(Formerly For Death Said She – Whimpering of Table 23 Mix)

17. Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception. Thus it is in a simple substance, and not in a compound or in a machine, that perception must be sought for. Further, nothing but this (namely, perceptions and their changes) can be found in a simple substance. It is also in this alone that all the internal activities of simple substances can consist. (Theod. Pref. [E. 474; G. vi. 37].)

I

There was me, that is Bob, and my three warthogs, that is Dolph, Mitya and Doom, Doom being really weird, and we sat in the Kovalenko meat bar trying to drink ourselves into a completely new level of nerdy stupor.

"The Second Coming," announced Doom, "is by far the most meaningful poem from old Earth. It’s especially ominous since Damocles’ alleged destruction." He stressed the italics of alleged. Vodka made him more of a paranoid schizophrenic.

"I’m partial to that Ozymandias one myself, as I can really imagine Kubrik gone but for the boastful old statue of Wilhelm the Boring," I said.

"I heard they’re changing that for one of Wernher, now he’s the previous Emperor," said Mitya. We ignored him as usual, because we envied his girlfriend-having skills. It was a friendly kind of ignore, though, and he was used to it.

"Dudes. You both think way too much with your… brains," said Dolph, smiling blissfully and straining his forehead trying to open his eyes. "You should have someone read you Poe’s Bells while absolutely under the spell of sweet, sweet Vanara. Or Mary Jane, if you’re restricting it to stuff that grew there. Word. The bells totally make you feel the ghouls are biting your toes off with their alarums."

"I don’t think an alarum is some kind of maw," I observed, munching on the last piece of our Xurmaithian bull beef entry.

Doom nodded solemnly. He was prone to doing that for no reason. But hey, the High Preemptive Warthogs are the strangest men in Kubrik. Or we try to be.

We’re colleagues from the Gamezohan Imperial University. We met at Terran Culture 101, and despite taking few other subjects together, we’re pretty much indivisible as of now. I’m going for the Semiotics Phenomenology degree, hopefully to eventually be accepted in the Truth-Smothering Order of Pure Law.

Dmitry, alias Mitya, is a novian, a lesser race of humanoids from the icy wastes of Gahnta-Cyberia Nova, but you’d be hard pressed to find any major anatomical differences between him and a human, at least externally, besides the metallic cyan eyes the Novians boast for no immediate evolutionary advantage I can think of at the moment. He can also be buried naked in snow for indeterminate amounts of time, which I suppose makes sense. Mitya is close to getting a Mobility/Countermobility/Survivability degree, also known as "the degree to be a military field engineer and freeze your ass on some god-forsaken rock". Since freezing ass is not an issue for him, I suppose he doesn’t resent his Mafioso father that much for steering his career choice. Someone will have to take over the Tellurian Condensate harvesting trade someday, as the condensate must flow, he’ll say, and then snort. Actually it’s the only subject that can really upset him, as he’s otherwise as cold and blasé as the worst Sphexoren existentialist. You’ll end up seeing me narrating, "Mitya shrugged," a lot.

Adolphus is a human like me, though his family still lives in old Earth and practices Judaism, but a curious anachronism to the rest of us. They have a centuries old fortune made making diamonds from carbon. The five-ton bed cut from a single huge diamond Empress Nike got from her brother in her last birthday was commissioned from them. Dolph hails from a less filthy rich branch of the family, as his father specialized in medicine, specifically treating crystalline lifeforms, such as the Ruby Men from Salyra Ducat System D. Another hapless rich kid forced by his father into a profitable career, Dolph would have finished Complexity Cybernetics if he didn’t find it necessary to experience every single new drug in the Galaxy. On the plus side, he can sure play guitar, and is bound to eventually make big money with his sound-streamer cube skills. Actually, given his foot in mouth talents, he’s better off in an artistic career anyway. Complexity Cybernetics usually leads to a hard science career, unless you’re willing to go the distance and do psychohistory.

Ardaster von Doom, or, DOOOOOM as he’s likely to say it, and Ardy when we want to piss him off, is at once the least and the worst loser of us all. His future trade in Arcological Engineering requires no small amount of political connections, and of that he is aware. He has embraced the stereotype of the self-serving ambitious young workaholic selling his soul for the highest bidder who will eventually be very rich and able to dismiss all people below in the social ladder as weaklings who haven’t worked as hard. The only thing that saves him, from the point of view of our small intellectual clique, is that he associates with us in an entirely unbusinesslike way. Hopefully. Business networking takes many forms, and nothing pisses me off as bad as reminding me of all the responsible things I’m not doing for my career. A Neophobosexmachinan Black Mage by birth, he wears a metal mask to hide whatever horrifying visage he was born with, instead of the traditional big pointy hat. His specific branch of minor NPEMian magocracy has been associated with the green banner of House Gamdoha since the first imperial conquest of the region, a couple thousand years ago, but to be honest he lives on the same monthly amount as I do. He doesn’t have to work for it, though.

There are no tuitions in the GIU, of course, but a guy still has to make ends meet and lo, I work my afternoons at the Arjuna and the Sappho. The two bookstores belong to the same man, one Hubertus Ramirez d’Actylos. The Arjuna is one of those multimedia bookstores whose only concession to quaintness is still selling the cellulose information storage devices themselves. The books are the latest bestsellers and the best-selling classics one would expect, together with those technical books that are still committed to print. The store lies on a well-located corner in the Tyler Ticine Avenue, and is in no way remarkably distinct from any other in the Arjuna franchise. However, if you go to the very end of it, after Personality Imprint, after Synergy/Diminishing Returns Harmonics, and around the corner past the Staff Only sign, you’ll reach Sappho.

Customers get to Sappho by a side street that, despite being parallel to TT Av., does not directly connect to it. You have to leave the avenue at either the The Edge or The Smith’s Daughter streets, depending on whether you’re coming down TT from north or south, until you reach Gun And Blade Avenue. In the block between the two streets, you’ll find a small alley coming out of the Gab leading to a small square, named Serpent-Death. It features a small statue of the prophet Zarrothustra, when he tamed the scorpions to hunt down the devils tempting him in the desert. Around the square, all buildings belong to the tiny community of Zorrathustrists in Kubrik. It’s the last one left in the Galaxy, because it’s such a complicated religion. Anyway, between two of the buildings, you’ll find an alley that grows moderately wide as you follow it, until actually being worthy of a name, when you’ll find a sign indicating Walk On Street. Right then, the street dead-ends and to your left will be Sappho.

Sappho is, I dare say, one of the greatest places ever. It’s simply chocked full of books so old they’re practically rotting. Ramirez spent his entire share of the House’s fortune to make a collection to paragon the Empire’s and like absolutely no other, and his entire delight in the whole affair is not so much having a book as having possessed it. After finding a particularly rare tome he’s gone to great lengths to acquire, he’s more than happy to sell it again with an insignificant profit margin.

Yeah, I don’t get paid much, but the place rocks.

So I’ll spend all the time I can away from Arjuna, dusting off a first edition of Académie de l’espée, or a La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo, or a Persiles with a Trautz-Bauzonnet binding worth a small fortune. The collection includes some definitely worth more than just a small fortune, and they’re not locked away in any vault as they should be, but just sit there in the bookshelves invitingly, if you’ll just understand the strange logic behind the organization. There’s the one remaining copy of the Necryptozoonomicon in its original Farsi, and at least five other later editions and translations. There’s an Octavo and two copies of the Delomelanicon. There’s one of each version of Unausprechlichen Kulten, two copies of Philetas’ translation of the Al Azif, of which I think we have three or four original volumes, Liber Ivonis, Cthaat Aquadingen, Steganografia, De Vermiis Mysteriis, yeah, the complete occult catalog. We also have Aristotle’s Poetics in near mint, the first manuscript of Augustine’s Confessions, the notebooks of Aquinas. And that’s only Terran books. The Zardarkian section is at least equally rich, the Novan theological tomes comprise a significant percentage of the d’Actylos net worth, and there are even Wendauerian books, valuable if not for their content at least for their rarity.

I remember my first day at Sappho. Hubertus beckoned me closer with a wry smile in his wrinkled, somewhat obscene face.

"Come here, boy. I suppose this is the only book you ought to keep an eye on, because not even the Triple Eye could track it down if it fell in the really wrong hands."

I glanced at it, somewhat numbed by the collection, and did a double take. "A Draconomicon?"

"No," he said, grin widening. "THE Draconomicon. Bound in the hide of Waltraud, mother of Emperor Wilhelm, herself. The one in the Dynastic Museum is a censored copy and the versions belonging to each Lord of the Houses are abridged. Though we do have the Earl of Sawarren’s, he sold it last time he got buried in debt, it’s right in that corner on the floor."

I couldn’t believe. "Wow. And you just… leave it here? Anyone can take it from the bookshelf, read a couple of secrets humans are not meant to know and put it back?"

He chuckled. "I’m a skeptic and minor dragon, boy, and I believe information flow is beautiful. It sorts itself out. ‘If you’re unready for knowledge, you just won’t get it, dude.’"

"Anaxerretibes," I identified, and smiled.

"Yes, him. I acquired very briefly his Complete Works, but I had no place to store them, so I donated them to the Imperial Library. They had to acquire a new wing to store the forty thousand something volumes, so they named it after me," he finished, with unusual pride.

"Cool. Well, don’t worry, I won’t let any Wendauerian put their filthy paws on this book." I passed my fingers on the silvery, rough binding. "You must treasure it dearly, no?"

He scoffed, a little to brag his detachment. "No, I only have one book I really love and wouldn’t sell for any price." He pulled a small book bound in some pink alien leather. It had no title. "It’s the complete works of Sappho. The woman, not the store."

"She was a human poet, right? Roman?"

"Greek, boy, Greek. Some beautiful odes. I love Poikilothron most of them all. She was also the favorite of Alisia Sphexoren, you know. This," he waved the little book, "used to belong to her."

Of course I knew Alisia Sphexoren. She was acknowledged as the greatest dragon poet ever, except for – maybe – the Sphexoren Sphexoren, who founded the House.

"She was said to cause the suns to cry, something I had the opportunity to verify personally."

"Really, now?" I said with defensive sarcasm.

He winked. "I was young once, my good boy. I fell in love with an asteryad once. You know what one is, right?"

I shook my head.

"Well, you get hamadryads for trees, maenads for water, and asteryads for, well, stars. Suns. Even the Gamezoha System star has its asteryad, and if she died, the star would go out. My, what do you children learn of cosmogony in school these days?"

I shrugged. "I missed class a lot, I suppose."

He burst out laughing. "Well, actually, so did I. Long story short, Alisia’s poetry won me my beloved’s heart. And then she died. Bloody Sphexoren curse."

I nodded. Even associating with the House of Gloom is bad luck in love. Which kinda explains Wernher Gauss, come to think of it.

"Oh well, I guess I should have stuck to Sappho. But then I’d have children today, and not nearly enough money for my precious books!"

II

That conversation flashed back for no apparent reason as we sat in the Kovalenko meat bar, trying to decide upon the greatest human poet while drinking like awful losers. None of us chauvinists would even think of Sappho, of course.

"‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light’," said Dolph, lighting something smokable and probably illegal in less permissive societies.

"Kinda repetitive. I prefer ‘the fire that stirs about her, when she stirs’," said Mitya.

"You would, wouldn’t you," said I, maliciously.

He ignored the provocation. "Or maybe ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’."

"Please, Keats does not compare," objected Doom. "In terms of raw harmony, I’ll admit the Second Coming loses easily. But then you can’t beat ‘hardly ashore at Clear Creek, I hear it: clarity, a voice of such perfect clarity’."

We all nod. We’re suckers for Li Po.

That grave matter solved, we order our steak. The Kovalenko Meat Bar is the newest fad, opened recently by a savagely beautiful and absurdly stupid werewolf with a funny accent and the stout belief you can’t sell Vodka without giving people fresh, practically raw meat with it. Crazy Miss Sacha, as we call her, ends up breaking a couple of heads every night, but all you got to do is stay out of the way, quietly enjoying your burger, and she’ll eagerly show you her sweet side. Which can be dangerous enough on its own. Since my personal policy is to avoid talking to the opposite sex as much as humanly possible, she thinks I’m mute and treats me all the better for it. Works for me.

"So," I say, once she’s out of ear sight. "What’s the game this week? Operation Shrewd Wombat?"

"Fuck no," replied Doom. "I’ve had it with the Wendauerian campaign. Duke Ardashir Aberdash was just too good. Every battle was won through preemption or dislocation."

"Heh, PM Moe thought so, as well. Now it makes sense, why he had Wilhelm remove glorious Duke Victory from command of the Joint Chiefs."

"And we end up with skinny old Morgan-Giles. So stupid his flagship disappears in an incursion against SURTRites."

Dolph looks up from his sound-streaming cube, with which he’s making a song vaguely akin to a soft whimpering. "Rumor has it he defected."

Doom snorts. "Gamezohans defecting? I’d say the idea is laughable, but with the whore we have for an Empress… long live!, of course," he added with an invisible grin, raising his glass.

"Speaking of which," says Dolph, pointing the cube in my direction. Violins and a Gregorian choir play from its darkness, following Dolph’s disrupted train of thought. "I got the new Nike XXX slave AI tactile hologram. The DataCube also has Mrs. Gauss-Ticine, Chromelips, Krystal Halak and classics like Bungren."

I shake my head. I stopped being that kind of loser a long time ago. Almost two months. Mitya reacts more vehemently.

"Dolph, you could at least be embarrassed by your habits, you know. Especially knowing some of the people you mentioned are practically my family."

That was true, in a roundabout way. Mitya’s unnaturally devoted girlfriend was none other than the infamously gorgeous gladiatrix and bullfighter Paraskeve Ticine, the archduchess’s younger sister. Now you see why we hate the lucky bastard so much.

Come to think of it, she was probably in the DC Dolph mentioned, too, and the dope fiend had been tactful enough not to mention it. It’d stand to reason, I mean, as Keh has competed with our present Empress as number one wet dream since that time she killed the arcturian wolfbear barehanded when she was 12. Gamezohan males of all species seem to develop an unhealthy preference for the deadly females…

Damn, maybe I did want a copy. Hum. I mean. Er. Moving ahead.

Dolph shrugged and smiled. Mitya shrugged and sighed. Doom rolled his eyes and continued. "No, I think we should do the present campaign. ‘Operation Ragnarok Adamant’. I’ve been following the latest materiel specs and doctrine closely."

"An on-going campaign? Sounds harder than our usual thing," objected Mitya.

"Well, we’re the greatest wargamers not currently employed by our excellent government. As I see it, we might preempt what will happen in the macrocosm with our microcosmic simulation."

Mitya shrugged. "Our mainframe is pretty weak."

"But we can upgrade it. We have a crystal craftsman right here for a C-chip."

"Oh-ho-ho! Dude. That’s… harder than it sounds, ya know. Totally. And I don’t have a pure enough rock."

"Ah," said Doom, with a glint in his eye, "I arranged the import of an Aceldama stone."

I did a spit-take and looked around. "Holy fuck, Ardy, those are military-grade and restricted. We could get in trouble just for owning one without permit."

"Chill, dude, our man Ardy wouldn’t do anything compromising, ain’t it right, Ardyman?"

Doom cleared his throat. "Thank you, Dolph. Two points. One, ‘Ardy’ is the filthy whore who gave birth to you motherfuckers. Two, I got the stone through with Weiss. Remember him? He studies Advanced Space Defense Systems. Going far in the customs officer career, that one. He passed three Aceldama stones, and I can now tell you, they were the last ones. The Aceldama asteroid ring is dry of any useful ore now. Those were going to be taken by the Dewnhëemian military, but an unsanctioned Gamezohan secret agent stole them to protect our interests. He only had two empty eye sockets, though, so he let Weiss keep one for his cooperation."

"Eye sockets," I repeated, dryly.

"That’s what Weiss said. And now we’ll buy the stone for ourselves, with money our faithful friend and Don’s son will provide."

Mitya raised a hand to object, but shrugged. "Meh. Whatever."

"How much do you trust this Weiss?"

"I know his brother. He always takes his dates to Le Róten Orànge."

We nodded. Doom was a pompous bastard and always had breakfast at Ardan’s, even when he couldn’t afford it. He said it paid off in networking.

"I’ve got the images for the 37-D holoboard. All strategic centers included. The Fleet’s site is very user friendly."

"How are we going to divide assignments?" I asked, interest growing.

"We can leave the AI handle the Opposing Force. I want the Intelligence and Information Flow head-quartered at the Balamb Garden section of Wei Palace."

"They have a Balamb Garden section? Heh." Dolph loved prehistoric videogames. I personally missed the reference.

"Mitya will probably want the role of Ryota Duv and command the space-to-space forces, right?"

Mitya shrugged, but almost enthusiastically.

"Corso will have Generalissimus Gàrakz’s role of controlling the ground deployment forces, as usual."

I nodded. I liked land battles, the messier the better.

"This leaves Adolphus with Duke Ticine’s new assignment as Void Marshal, commanding the Fleet’s operational deployment."

Dolph raised his right hand in a v-for-victory gesture and smirked.

I leaped up. "I’m out. I have a ultra-calculus test tomorrow morning."

"Damn that Rudolf Dactylos," said Dolph.

Yeah. Damn him for inventing the most revolutionary mathematics since calculus itself. Well, he worked upon Anaxerretibes’ work. Either way, ultra-calculus makes überspeed drives work and all in all makes the Empire go round. "Off I go."

As I left, I glanced at my credit cube to verify whether Crazy Miss Sacha had remembered to charge me. Seriously, it’s a surprise she turns in any profit at all.

Outside, it had been dark for several hours already, but the planet-wide arcological engineering ensured we had a bearable 289 K at that time of the year. The wind made it feel a lot colder and as usual I was too stupid to remember to wear my warmth jacket.

I enjoyed walking as much as the fellow man, but I was way too cold, too drunk and with some credit to spare, so I walked to the nearest booth, passed my credit cube, and exited the booth in front of the dingy building I have a room in.

Standing in front of my door, I thought of three things I wanted to change in my life. I then thought of three things I was thankful for. Unable to think of a third, I sighed, knocked it off, swore never to follow Dolph’s suggestions ever again, and went in.

Upload news to brain. Good night pills. Collapse in bed.

Repeat every night, for the rest of your life.

III

The good night pills ensure I have a refreshing, productive sleep time during which my body fully scans itself for defects and begins whatever treatment is necessary to ensure even a human can live beyond one hundred without any special treatments. My ultra-calculus is made an integral part of my cognitive process during my dreaming and I wake up informed and perky, after having lovingly designed dreams from the Ministry of the Sandman.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, yet despite everything, I still wake up feeling pretty much like shit.

Good morning, pills.

I take my good morning pills, and am jolted awake in what Dolph said was exactly like a cocaine rush. The hangover, headache and assorted ill being are gone. The existential gloom is also gone, though that’s usually back before nine a.m.

I leap up rubbing my hands. My mouth feels wonderfully refreshed as the highly nanites who call it home release highly concentrated menthol. The directional sound system begins playing a random cover of Paint it Black. I glance at my clothing and have the fibers fix themselves so I won’t have to change the clothing I was wearing at the Meat Bar. I take my shirt off, the good morning pill kicks in strongly, and I tap-dance my way downstairs to the rhythm of the song that, for everyone else’s convenience, only I can hear.

I find a spot among my neighbors waiting in the street. The public infomercial holograms flare up in the entire city at once.

"Gooooood morning fellow Kubrikans!" The day’s celebrity is a very familiar face even if you don’t like rock. Mrs. Whutty. "Today’s message to you from your Empress is, nemo pervenit qui non legitime certaverit! She also told me to wish you all an especially fine day! ‘The Empire ticks still.’ I have a show today at the Mitokana Plaza auditorium! It’s going to rock your souls into a brand new wavelength! Anyway, gotta run, bye! Enjoy your katas!"

The Empire ticks still. Not the most optimistic of slogans, but pretty realistic, I think, as the entire block harmoniously begins to practice its katas collectively. There probably is some kind of communal-love drug thing in the good morning pill, because it’s strangely soothing to move in synchronous order with people you don’t know at all, all over the city, rich, poor, young, old. It’s one of those moments you have to admit that your rulers may be mad, but they’re also genius.

I followed the motions in our collective meditation, eyes closed, consciousness in my center of gravity. I don’t know any martial arts at all, but for the mandatory thing. I lost my self easily that morning, which didn’t happen always. It was usually good news. At half past six, the twenty minutes were over and everyone resumed their individual identities and masks, but gratefully still under the effects of the pills and the exercise. I went up for my shirt and a two-minute sonic shower.

"I must remember to tell Dolph my theory about owning more than one set of clothing being a ridiculous anachronism today," I said out loud to myself. My six-legged cat tilted her head. I’ve no idea where she’s from, if it’s an actual animal or bio-engineered or what. Mitya gave her to me. I basically don’t pay any attention to her in the vain hope she’ll go away.

I grabbed my backpack and made my escape from the creepy kitty from hell.

Two blocks away sits O Debochado, where I had my usual flain bagel with coffee, flain being that little green fruit from Salyra Ducat System B that tastes like what olives would taste like if they were trying really hard to disguise themselves as grapes.

"So," said the bartender and owner of the place, Hari Roscoe, widely acknowledged as the greatest mathematician of the Empire and who runs the risk of brain damage if he ever works with mathematics again. "You’ve got an ultra-calculus test today, don’t you?"

I nodded. I shared more of my studying details with Roscoe than I did with the warthogs. They weren’t eager to know, either. "I think I’ve got that covered, though, I ran an information absorption dream program last night."

He shook his head and poured me more coffee. "Yes, but the deal with UC is not so much the information but the internal relationships, mate. It’s like hoping to go well in an English literature test just because you memorized a dictionary."

"Yeah, I’m aware," I said, sighing. "It’s pretty random. Either the questions will be ones I can solve, or not."

"I see what you mean behind the truism," he admitted after a brief pause. "Solving problems can easily become a matter of gestalts. But make an effort, man. You’ll be evaluated for the solution but also for the process."

I drummed my fingers on the bar. "Orange licorice," I said.

"As Gödel would have said: come again?"

"Can you pour some orange licorice in my coffee? I’m not sure why. A weird craving."

He stared at me for a moment as if I had just grown a pair of Halakian dolphin antlers. "Well, ok, I suppose," he agreed, eventually, and poured the mildly sickly-looking thing into my cup.

"Thanks, Hari."

"Oh, never you mind. You’re in the right track to end up like me if UC is making you think in strange ways…"

I smiled, finished my breakfast, and waved him goodbye. "See you tomorrow, Hari. Prepare to have your ass beaten in Go!"

He laughed. "Maybe then we’ll play another without the twenty point handicap."

Yeah, well, yeah, he’s just too good. He made me learn the game just to have a regular buddy to defeat. Told me girls couldn’t love men who couldn’t play Go. Come to think of it, given his loser status, I guess I should’ve been more skeptical, but I believed in reasonable doubt back then.

Lo, I went, and made a horrible UC test, and lo, there was much getting flunked.

I couldn’t care much. About anything, really, but especially about my responsibilities. I had gone beyond getting afraid of poverty and into the absolute delivery of my fate to the hands of the Almighty. Actually, I don’t know which Almighty I mean here. Mother was a faithful of the Glock Church but my atheistic father insisted I be raised in, at best, an agnostic fashion. Still, I remember one or two passages of the Book of Glock. Like the First Commandment: All Guns Art Loaded. Always.

That’s not even a real commandment. Still, I suppose it saved more lives over history than the ‘no other God’ thing.

I had a ricotta sandwich for lunch and had to stay at Arjuna the whole afternoon, so you can say my day remained bad. And then, there was a Her. ‘Of course’, ‘how unexpected’ and ‘meh’ are all acceptable responses.

I was unpacking some newly arrived cooking books when I heard a pleasant clearing of throat behind me. I turned, and behold, it was freaking Adelais Aberdash.

I’ll gain time before narrating what happened next by assuming you’ve been buried to your neck in Cyberia-Novan ice for the last oh fifty years and know nothing of Gamezohan nobility.

There are the Gausses, the silver dragons who have been holding dynastic power since times so remote homo sapiens still had scales. Though I suppose we weren’t homo sapiens then. Oh well. Down the spectrum in telluric condensates, you have seven other colors, each associated with one House, and then you used to have black dragons, who, we’re told, were evil and sucked.

House Aberdash is right on top of the spectrum, with their noble purple banner and the most exquisitely honorable ways among the Houses, imperial family included. Together with Houses Ticine and Sphexoren, the High Houses have more than symbolic power, as only the dragons of these families can mate with silver dragons and still produce pure silver offspring, depending of course on how untainted by non-draconic blood the specific branch of the family is. Therefore, any child of Archduke Gauss and his consort would be pure dragon, as both have no recent humanoid ancestors, and ‘pure’ silver, despite her lineage being indigo, per House Ticine. As a counter-example, Lysander Whutty von Sphexoren is son to a human mother, so he’s not a pure dragon. It’s a matter of wavelength versus signal strength, though my grasp of the actual science of the thing is at best very sloppy.

Major Adelais Aberdash is the daughter of the elsewhere mentioned Duke Ardashir "Victory" Aberdash, and has a respectable career in the Silver Berets special forces, assault platoon. She’s second in command only to Generalissimus Gàrakz himself, though she’s still nominally below the other generals responsible for combat support and similarly uninteresting subjects. She’s one of a handful pure dragonesses Wernher Gauss had the option of having the imperial heir with, and was expected to be the first choice as they had trained together as teenagers in a friendly basis. Not few people had hoped for that, as she was respectable and serious in a way our Empress (long live!) will never be, though perhaps not as shrewd as Ticine.

Let’s play a game. Try to guess my reaction when I saw her standing there, with the straight neck-length hair in the gray tone that just screams "royalty!" to a Gamezohan, wearing the infamous silver beret and the dark blue camouflage uniform they were using for Operation Ragnarok Adamant and packing enough firepower to wipe out the city a dozen times (don’t forget to add in the Gamezohan thing for uniforms!), calmly asking me if we had Ryota Chu’s Maneuver in the Fringe: Experiments in transtellurical logistics. Hint: I was still carrying the box with the cooking books.

"OW! FUCK! FUCK! MY FOOT! MY FUCKING FOOT!"

That was the first impression she had of me. I rock.

IV

"And then she just smiled and turned away." I stepped up and balanced myself on the parapet, looking down. The cold, black waters of Lake Gauss didn’t look especially inviting.

"Dude," said Dolph, leaning against an ancient light post. Needle Chill Square was old town Kubrik. Less than a hundred yards away, the ominous architecture of the Blackheart Cathedral loomed over us. We loved the ambience. Except when the gargoyles went on killing sprees, that sucked.

"Dude," he repeated, this time determined to finish a sentence no matter the effort. "I’m totally going to burn you that DC. The Duke’s daughter is there too, ya know. And it’s all based on actual medical records."

I tried to stunt-kick him in the face, and almost fell into the lake. "Shut up. It’s not like that. I’m just boasting my loser skills, I’m not in love or anything."

"Good, good," said Dolph, lighting up another smokable fulfillment. "We don’t need another Mitya."

"Hah! I’d never! Mark my words, for I am like Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing!"

He grinned at the irony. "You’re trying reverse psychology on fate, aren’t you?"

I laughed. "Well, fuck," I said eventually. "The sky’s wound is looking fine tonight."

"Uh-oh."

"Yeah… I think I’d bring her to the Cathedral, you know. They have a beautifully gloomy rosary of black roses and bitter thorns, and…"

"Knock it off, Romeo. Damn. Being raised in this planet does make you a masochist, eh?"

"I blame the dragons’ evolutionary psychology. You’ll want a dragoness capable of defending her eggs on her own."

"No shit, and look where that got you. Monkeys shouldn’t think like iguanas, man."

"Meh, look where it got them. Running the Galaxy and with the hottest chicks ever."

"I’m more of a fae person myself," he shrugged, with mock embarrassment. "You know what they say. Elf girls like to rock and roll."

"That’s," I stood up erect on the parapet, as if to make an important announcement, "the eternal dichotomy between Apollonian and Dionysian. You keep your free love. I want my girls with Ticine-style dog collars."

He inhaled deeply. "Oy, you Gamezohans really make a point of proving Theodore Adorno correct, eh."

"Who’s that again?" I asked, jumping down to his side. "The Terran suicide sociologist?"

"The one who blamed totalitarianisms on something he called the ‘authoritarian personality’. Ya know. We studied that regarding the collapse of Earth’s nation-states."

"Oh, that guy. Meh. It’s a bit farfetched to call ours a totalitarian State."

He stared at me.

"Hey, you get away with being serviced by the Imperial Family, wanker."

"Totally," he agreed, smiling blissfully. "Or I would, but I still haven’t gone through the entirety of the elf girl section."

I shook my head, and then heard footsteps behind us. I turned.

"You must be Weiss."

"Who, me?" he looked around nervously.

The three of us were the only people there as far as the eye could see, so, yeah, I suppose.

"I suppose," I answered.

"Uh. Yeah, Weiss van Silberwald. Pleased to meet you."

"I’m Bob, this is Dolph. Don’t mind him."

"Alright, I won’t." He raised the briefcase he was carrying in his right hand. "Dhe rock’s right here."

"You got the funds already, right?"

"Yeah. Wait. Dolph. You’re Adolphus at giu.gz?"

Dolph nodded slowly. He was already stoned out of his wits, so, back to his normal self, in other words.

"I got your e-mail. I got dhe attachment," he added meaningfully. Dolph smiled. "How… how do you unlock Queen de Lanseau?"

I rolled my eyes. Wankers, everywhere.

Twenty minutes later we were at the Kovalenko, the one place for good beef at one in the morning.

"And then I told him, you have to score five points with each of the Ticine sisters – sorry, Mitya, but that’s what I said – in ten minutes and then…"

Doom, "But you did get the stone, right?"

"…yeah. It’s in this briefcase."

"Have you checked it?"

We exchanged glances. "Not in objective reality, exactly, no."

Doom grabbed the briefcase and opened it. His face was bathed in golden light.

"It’s… beautiful."

"Yeah," said Dolph, "that’s Aceldama for you. I’ll begin work at it tomorrow."

"You have the tools?" asked Mitya. "You can’t use the GIU labs for this."

"It’s cool. My father will be so happy I finally decided to devote myself to my studies he’ll immediately slipgate me everything I need."

"How long will it take? The SURTR probably won’t outlast the month."

Dolph laughed. "Don’t worry about that! Two days. If you can’t make something in two days, it’s not worth it."

"Good thing women don’t think that way about pregnancy, though," I pointed out.

"Eggs. Eggs make everything easier," declared Mitya.

We stared at him. "Say, have you discussed with Keh…"

"No. No I haven’t. Shut up, you."

Doom shivered. "Right. Anyway. This C-Chip will have as much processing power as FUCKUP-II."

"I could have an entire city of AI slave girls!"

"Shut up, Dolph," agreed Mitya. "We know you’re secretly gay. For Doom."

"Shut up, you two," interrupted Doom. "Two points. One: we meet tomorrow afternoon at Dmitry’s. Two: everyone knows Dolph is gay for you, Mitya, you might as well give Keh the bad news."

I grinned. Doom was occasionally funny.

"Meeting adjourned."

Good night, pills. Good morning, pills. Paint it black. Public announcement. Katas. Flain bagel and coffee.

"Had a bad night?" asked Roscoe, filling my cup.

"Wow, you must be really perceptive."

"Well, you look like shit, good morning pills or not."

I chuckled. "I think I’m developing a resistance."

"Hah, you wish. The pharma-people of the Ministry of Delirium guarantee no such thing is possible."

"I want to file a complaint then. The happiness my government has been feeding me isn’t working. Can I call tech support?"

"You know, in fact, I think you can. But that’s irrelevant. You know what you need, boy."

"Oh no."

"Oh yes. A girl. And to get a girl…"

"…I have to play go. Tell me, Roscoe, have you ever had a girlfriend?"

"Oh yes," he replied, looking over my shoulder wistfully. "When I was six, I think."

I nodded. Figures. "Alright, bring on The Board."

I begin with a numerical advantage that disappears very quickly, Hari’s mad math skills or maybe just Go-related nerdyness making him always one step ahead of me. Well, he had a PhD in Psychohistory. If he can predict the future of societies, my gaming trends can’t be that difficult.

"Getting raped, I see," says Adelais Aberdash just a few inches from my left ear. I fall from the stool face-first into the sweet, sweet floor.

"Oof," I observe.

She smiles and picks up a shiny black bead, places it at an intersection I could swear was random, and says: "You always have to give people a chance, don’t you, Professor Roscoe?"

Hari smiles. "I see you’ve read my book on SIG Theory. I’m not a professor anymore, I’m afraid. And," he looks at the board, and smiles embarrassedly, "yeah, you win."

That morning I took the mature decision to believe the universe was shitting me.

"Hi," I said, from the ground. It was pretty comfortable there.

"Hi," she replied, leaning against the counter. "Are you always hurting yourself, or are you happy to see me?"

"Right. Fancy seeing you here," I said, trying to sound dry and just sounding muffled and with a nose-full of blood.

"I followed the orange scent, orange boy." She looked around casually from behind her mirror shades before bending down and pulling me up in one fluid motion. "I like oranges."

"Amazing. I think there’s a city on Earth…"

She snorted. "Citru? My nostrils hurt just from the memory."

"Oh, you’ve been to Citru? The king of Wendauer was born there, I think..."

"Once. We dropped Wernher there for his eighteenth trial." She pulled a stick of chewing gum from one of her pockets.

"Ah. Right." I picked up my cup and took a long sip. "Fancy seeing you here," I said, finally.

"I can leave, if you want me to," she retorted coolly. Hmm, gum. Eucalypt? Good… Wow, it’s actually impressive that I could smell that through all the blood running down my nose.

"Well, what I mean is. Fuck. Fancy seeing you here."

"I’m sorry? Did you break anything in the fall? That’s the third time you…"

"Actually," I interrupted, "I think I did." I passed out.

V

You overhear conversations at Sappho. It happens. It’s part of the strange, but easily verified law of physics that states that a man placing books on bookshelves immediately becomes invisible. Well, it’s true.

"You sold Zoroaster a Delomelanicon?" There was disbelief in the voice of the man talking to Hubertus. "Do you even know what he wants to do with it?"

The old dragon snorted. "Mercy, Orcus. Serves you right for never counting me among the Primi. I just served my superior illuminatus, as the Rule commands."

The stranger sighed. "Well, we’ve been rearranging things. Lucilla is still protective of her consort, and wasn’t keen on Zoroaster’s plan. Plus, after Sylvia got… erased, the entire Council of Seers fear the order will become a mere instrument for that reindeer."

"My, my, the plot thickens," said Hubertus, grinning and gently opening a tome. "Omnes vulnerant, postuma necat."

"Each wounds, the last kills?"

"Old family motto."

"Ah. Well, Sylvia’s place is still open and Zoroaster is being pressed to renounce. My sources tell me his daughter will succeed him among the Primi. Meaning there’s room for a male."

"And here you are, asking me for information. For reasons you will not disclose."

"Doubtlessly."

"And then I’ll be Aetius?" Hubertus seemed more amused than tempted by the offer.

"A smooth approval by the Circle is certain," said the stranger, nodding.

"In that case, my house is your house. Corso!" he shouted my name and I stood up, right between them. "Aaah! Oh. It’s you. You were here all along?"

"I was dusting off Les trois livres de l’Art," I replied, truthfully.

"Good boy. Max, meet Bob Corso. I couldn’t run this place without him."

I extended my hand, but he didn’t take it. "Pleased to meet you, Max." He didn’t answer that, either.

"Corso, take Max to the registers book. Answer all his questions to the best of your ability."

I nodded. "Alright. This way…"

We walked past alchemy, turned left at cosmogony, past soterology and into erotica. I briefly rested my gaze on a large golden book until realizing it was named Parsiphallus. I shook my head, took the keys from my pocket and opened the drawer where Hubertus kept his notebook.

Max took the notebook from my hands and examined it. It was encrypted in Hubertus complex, jargon-ridden encoding.

Eventually he handed it back to me. "Find me what ex-Premier Mobius bought recently."

Well, shit. Moebius had been a wanted criminal for some time now. I didn’t know the Sappho could evade Triple Eye surveillance that well.

I quickly found an entry a pair of months old.

"Here, sir. He bought: 1 of Delomelanicon. 1 of Moribus et rebus gestis Satanae. 1 of Necronomicon, trans. by Olaus Wormius. 1 of Watership Down, rabbit skin binding." I looked up. "Rabbit skin? Now that’s fucking evil."

He looked distant. Then he proved my initial judgment – paranoid schizophrenic – was correct as he began to speak to himself.

"That would explain… yes, he would need the devil’s cooperation… to win the dragons, with the Empire as a handy bonus. The lover boy is the weakest link…"

He turned to me. "Say, Corso, what do you think the Devil is like?"

"The Devil. Well, more than anything, he’s utterly, totally gay. For Jesus."

He stared at me for a while. "Well, actually, yes. But he’s also extremely hard to appease, these days."

"No shit."

"Moebius required a favor, and I know exactly what it was," he said, snapping his fingers. He was completely mad, so I decided to play along lest he bit me. With his alarum.

"Enlighten me!"

"You’re damn right I will! Morningstar had his demons torture, gang rape and generally get abyssal on Krystal Halak’s ghost!"

"Ouch! The big meanie! Why would he do that?"

"It’s a plan of utter evil genius, can’t you see?! That’s how we got Tinfoil Lady! Krystal is the TL! He twisted her essence, and the defiled harmonics will expand unhindered until the entire telluric field has been corrupted. All he has to do is place her and Wernher Gauss together. She will then assimilate him, and he will not resist!"

"Amazing! We are Doomed!" I hadn’t had as much fun since the previous night, at Kovalenko’s.

"Yes! What will his friends do, when he becomes tainted? The faux-Damocles, Miriam, will try to purify him, but the MPOITU have no power over the tellurian. On the contrary, she will be assimilated. As, eventually, all of us!"

"Wow! How can we stop Moebius!"

"There is only one way! The Black Fire! It’s an avatar of Eçaraia, the Oblivion, mistress of the Mi-Go. Ironically, if we can have the Fire consume the tainted tellurian before it spreads…" He pointed at me. "That’s it! It all makes sense! The Black Fire and the Klotterdämmerung!"

"But Klot helps Moebius!"

"He was not supposed to! He was destined to be a warrior of Light, the one gifted with the power to fight Oblivion with Oblivion! Moebius corrupted him, but he had always remained as a wild card until now, this twin-pronged attack. Either the Lady of A Million Blades slaughters all life in the universe or Klot and the tainted essence cancel out and we’re left at the mercy of the Mi-Go! So it unfolds – the final act of this plot!"

"Good for you. For the record, I didn’t understand a single word you said," I offered helpfully. He looked at me suspiciously. I shrugged. "What?"

"What, are you waking up for real this time?"

"What?" I looked around me. I was in my bedroom, placed none too comfortably on my armchair. "Oh."

"I took the liberty of kicking in your door," said Adelais. She was lying on her stomach, face resting on both hands, as if she had been watching me sleep, which weirded me out. I don’t pretend to be especially dainty when breathing through clotted blood.

"Oh. Right. I was dreaming about something that happened at work," I explained, rubbing my eyes. "Weird people we meet."

"I can imagine."

"Bookstores totally beat jungle guerrilla in raw danger, you know." I breathed deeply and my dry throat hurt. "So. Where were we? Ah, yes. Fancy seeing you here."

"Alright, mister Robert Corso. I drank all the milk in your fridge, I suppose I owe you some kind of explanation."

"Victory!" I stood up and moved my arms very slowly in a rather unenthusiastic victory dance. She burst out laughing.

"Well, I think you just summed up everything, really. I didn’t laugh. I lived for my work, like ninety percent of our military. And one day my father went all existential and told me I’d better make some civilian friends my age or he’d have me discharged because he didn’t want me to have the meaningless life of duty he had."

"Wow. Sucks to be you," I said, taking off my bloodied jacket and pulling the sonic cleaning hose from its slot on the wall.

"Sometimes." She shrugged, and rolled onto her back, looking at me cleaning my face upside down. Her hair spread like… well, it’s not romantic but my immediate mental image was of a polar bear getting his legs shaved by a drunken Zen Motorcycle Rabbi.

"Why me?" Grillion dollar question from your friendly neighborhood cynic!

"You strike me as the only person with worse social skills than me in the entire city," she answered, and I knew she wasn’t lying. It was soothing, really.

"Oh yes, my personality is easily overwhelmed, I’m always confused, and I’m not perceptive enough for those mind-games that make human interaction so thrilling and demanding."

"Exactly."

I nodded. I could live with that.

"I expect you’re aware I can’t have a boyfriend, especially a human one, due to political and religious arrangements, of course."

"Of course," I said, nodding to myself in the mirror. "I mean, a girlfriend falling from the sky into my lap? No, Glock wouldn’t have that, he has to send me a girl-friend to make me remember exactly how empty and sad my life is and then laugh in my face because I’m exactly like Tantalus in hell."

She made an awkward sound I imagine was an inexperienced attempt at giggling. "Wow, did you take self-depreciation courses with Ricky Whutty? You sound a lot like him."

"I like Sphexoren literature. Especially self-ruining. It’s like self-help, but from a Sphexoren point of view."

"A true Gamezohan man. Made of flesh, steel and despair."

I shrugged and pointed at her. "Morning dew, gentle breeze and tinted glass. You got the uninteresting end of the stick."

She looked at me with curiosity, and I looked at her with whatever feeling you get when you have a beautiful female ass on your bed and know it’s just there because "frustrated expectations" is your middle name. I sighed. "Anyway, what time is it?"

"Why? Today is Thursday. All hail Emperor Wilhelm and his four-day weekend!"

I shook my head. "I said to Mr. Ramirez I’d help him at Sappho after lunch."

"You haven’t had lunch yet, though."

"Are you suggesting anything?"

"We could go somewhere," she replied, sitting up and beginning to put her boots back on.

"Where?"

"Surprise me."

"Bob! What are you… who’s that… greetings! I am DOOM! Ardaster A’Arpam von Doom! Delighted to make your acquaintance."

"Doom, Adelais, Adelais, Doom." I congratulated myself on how incredibly thoroughly I managed to screw myself by bringing her to a place I could not afford. I could see little Zardarkian schoolgirls cheering, waving little pom-poms and chanting, ‘Shit! For! Brains! Shit! For! Brains!’

"Nice to meet you too, Ardy." Wow. Instinctive tactlessness. I liked her.

"I don’t know what my dear friend was thinking when he brought his delightful date to Le Róten Orànge, a place that is practically my second home, but it probably was something in the lines of, Doom will pay the bills for me. Am I right, Bob?"

Good old Doom. You can always count on his urge to appear rich and powerful. I felt like kissing him.

"Good old Doom. I can always count on your urge to appear rich and powerful! I feel like kissing you," I replied.

"And you can always be counted to say what you think. That’s a bad strategy, friend." He gestured us to sit at his table.

"She’s not my date, by the way."

He paled. Well, I think he paled. He looked at Adelais, who smirked and shrugged.

"One of those things, eh," he said, finally.

"I don’t know. What things?" She sounded amused.

"Oh, you know, when… um. Weren’t you supposed to be killing SURTRites?"

"Tracking down Morgan-Giles, actually. Nah, my father decided I should take girly-ness classes instead of leading the most deadly men of the Empire to victory."

"Ah, and Bob is your teacher." Doom grinned. I grinned back, and gave him the finger. He was shedding the poseur mask and showing his better warthog face. Adelais was not cursed with the smothering perkiness girls tend to have. It was easy to think of her as a warthog. Ess. Warthogess? Thogatrix? Hmm.

VI

The first subtle hint that something was wrong came when Davi Ardan rushed by our table shouting into a mobile communicator that all was lost.

"All is lost! Are you positive he has the Stag?"

Doom looked up, but I tried to screen the kitsune out and focus on my anaconda.

"Well, I know from a reliable source he’s got the Unicorn. Oui, this week. This means he has one third of the Plan complete. And if what you say is true, the rest will follow."

I picked up the silverware spork and carefully pulled more molten gorgonzola to my plate.

"You know what follows, mon frére. Enraging the Raven, corrupting the Stag, tainting the Snake. The Stag is as good as compromised in his hands, Aetius has ominous reports regarding the Raven, the Snake has been doomed ever since he crushed the Swan, not to mention they brought the Dove’s destruction unto themselves when they destroyed Damocles."

I drink the last of my passion fruit soda and the waiting robot gives me my free refill.

"Non. I don’t think Lucilla can do much for the Snake, no matter how willing she is. That old schemer… he planned all this. His own renunciation only ensured we cannot pull rank on Syntia now and thwart his plans regarding the Stag. Syntia, is that even a bloody Roman name?"

He asked it looking in my general direction, so I shook my head helpfully.

"Oui, our hope resides in the fact Syntia still has unfinished businesses with the Snake’s sister. If we can keep her focusing on that… Oui. I’ll arrange a meeting between the demoiselles. Talk to you later." He walked off into the porch, and closed a soundproof glass door behind him.

"…well, took him long enough to realize no-one’s interested in what he had to say," I said, finally.

Doom and Ad nodded. "Seer business. Not very interesting," said Doom.

"Oh, you’d know about it?"

He produced his wallet. He had a large, conspicuous one-eyed pyramid badge inside.

"Pretty irrelevant, though. I rank so low all I get to do is being bossed about. Someday this will ensure Success, though, and that’s all that matters," he concluded, returning his wallet to his back pocket.

I nodded and used my spork as a tiny catapult to throw flain pits at him. Adelais watched bemusedly.

Good times.

Later that day at Sappho, having finally convinced my stalker that my job was really really boring and she didn’t have to watch me do it, I was enjoying my brief triumph by doing the exquisitely boring job of arranging the Zardarkian titles by furriness of the writer’s tail. Apparently this was very important for sociological reasons, and the information features highlighted in all the book covers according to an ancient symbolic coding system.

A customer tripped over me, stood up, dusted himself off, and walked away, cursing his awful luck that made him fall down for no reason. Then he said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Ramirez. Do you have dhe book I asked?"

"Oh, yes. Lore of Love and Loss, by Lucas Pásztor. Did you know this was one of the last books to be burned by the Church, in Earth?"

The customer, whom I recognized as Ricardus Whutty, took the book extended to him. It wasn’t one of the oldest in our catalog. "Why? Really sick black magic shit?"

Hubertus laughed. "Hah, you’d wish. No, it’s got nothing to do with Pásztor’s poetry or philosophy, actually. They only came to understand it two centuries later, anyway. Apparently the illustrator was really gay and filled the book with, as the Dominican priest called them, ‘barely disguised pederasty’."

Whutty sighed. "Wow, dhe good news just keep coming, don’t dhey."

"Well, blame the blood. Old Sphexoren Sphexoren was so gloomy, the only time it stopped raining on him was when he got stranded in the Alamein desert world."

Ricardus chuckled. Reading biographies of his ancestors were his main form of entertainment, as he could finally find people more miserable.

"You can take the book, and I’ll discount it from my debts to your House. But I’m curious…" Hubertus leaned closer to the admiral. "What made you suddenly interested in this kind of literature?"

"Oh, dhat’s an easy one," said Whutty, eager to share his pain. "Dhey took my love away."

My boss raised his eyebrows. "Come again?"

"Well, didn’t you hear dhe Mitokana Plaza show was cancelled because she was feeling indisposed? Lies. She never cancelled a show before. She disappeared right after presenting dhe Day’s Overture."

Hubertus Ramirez d’Actylos passed his scrawny fingers on his beard. He could easily win a Hemingway look-alike contest, except for his more Iberian-styled moustache. "That’s strange. What does the Triple Eye know?"

"Dhe station had been commandeered before dhe transmission. Apparently dhe day’s message was some kind of code or in-joke of dhose responsible."

"Hence, the LLL."

"Hence, dhe LLL, yes."

Hubertus nodded. "I imagine you won’t require assistance deciphering the enigma?"

Whutty hesitated. "Actually… now I dhink about it…"

Hubertus opened his mouth dramatically. "My! Let me help you, then, for I’ve devoted myself to the study of this book for quite some time." He took the Lore from its new owner’s unresisting hands. "You see, there are nine panels, associated with the unlocking of the eightfold chrysanthemum path and then Satori. But you knew that, right?"

Whutty scratched his head. "All I knew was dhat dhe quote came from dhat book."

Mr. Ramirez sighed. "Ok, each of the nine key illustrations has a subtitle, taken from an older work, the De umbrarum regni novem portis. That’s mostly irrelevant, though, as the new illustrations are unconnected to the old."

He opened the book at a picture of a large cat. "This illustration, the Panther, is the first of the book and the one your phrase, Nemo pervenit…is the subtitle of. It might have been used as a signature."

"Damn. I knew it. If dhere is one dhing in life a pandher needs, it’s a swift and merciless asskicking."

"A wise aphorism. However, her capture is only part of a greater plan, it would seem. The next illustration, the Swan, bears the subtitle Clausae patent."

"What’s dhat mean?"

"Literally? ‘They open that which is closed’. In the book’s context, it refers to the fact men are more easily hurt and corrupted through their loved ones. The subtitle of the first illustration means roughly ‘no-one who didn’t fight by the rules can win’. It refers to loyalty and honor."

Whutty sighed. "Can you just write it down for me?"

"Corso! You’ve got homework!" I exited placing-books-onto-bookshelves mode. "AAAAH!"

Whutty, "Wow. You gave dhe dude a heart attack. Heh."

I called 911. Hubertus was fine, eventually.

Lo, I worked on my assignment. It was interesting, except for the overabundance of drawings of strong men in loincloths.

I (Roman numeral one, not me) was the Panther. It showed said panther being covered by the Devil in a dark blanket. The subtitle and its meaning have been deciphered already, though there is an additional subtext of irony, as the ‘playing by the rules’ seems to involve trickery.

II is the Swan. The Devil is plain and simple crushing the swan in a grindstone. He collects the "juice" in a bucket. The panther sits faithfully by his side, like a trained dog.

III is the Unicorn. The Devil is guiding the unicorn’s horn to his coat’s pocket, as if driving it inside. The panther is snarling at the unicorn. The bucket is visible in the background. The subtitle is Verbum dimissum custodiat Arcanum, ‘the lost word guards the Secret’. Lucas writes, ‘Obviously the Word is only temporarily lost, and by Secret you can bet your ass they mean Power, even maybe Might. Specifically, military triumph is promised to whoever will seize ownership of the Word when it surfaces in his or her generation.’

IV is the Raven. The Devil has his arms raised and his mouth open in a taunt, and the Raven seems enraged. You can see a unicorn horn coming from the Devil’s pocket, as are present symbols from each previous illustration. The Raven is standing on a tombstone, on which one can just make out the words ‘beloved wife’. The motto is Fortuna non omnibus aeque, ‘Fortune isn’t equal for everyone’. Though the illustration lends itself to the gloomy interpretation that some people are just born to suffer, e.g. me, it’s also supposed to mean death isn’t the common fate of everyone, and other mystical nonsense.

V is the Stag. This is one of the most obscure illustrations. Apparently, the stag and the Devil are sitting around a table, having tea and a pleasant, friendly conversation while smoking cigars. The stag’s and the Devil’s horns have been traded, and the stag casts no shadow. The subtitle is a single word, Frustra, ‘in vain’, and often refers to the attempt to escape from oneself.

VI is the Snake. The Devil is feeding a morose-looking snake from the bucket he’s been dragging along since illustration II. The Devil still has the stag horns and the other trophies. Ditesco mori: ‘I profit from death’. The ambiguity of this phrase is that it could mean one is so miserable he’d be better off dead.

VII is the Boar. The Devil is raising the unicorn’s head from his pocket, grabbing it by the horn, and the light from the unicorn is blinding a large, ferocious-looking boar, whose eyes begin to bleed. Discipulus potior magistro: ‘the student surpasses his master’. There is, Lucas points out, an ironic subtext of blind hubris in the message.

VIII is the Dove. The Devil breaks a dove’s neck. The crow, the stag, the snake and the panther watch approvingly. The blind boar just sits there looking powerless. The subtitle, Victa iacet virtus, means ‘virtue lies defeated’. The implication is that it lost because of its own failures.

IX, the last illustration, is the Wolf. The Wolf is looking adoringly at the Devil, tongue out and tail wagging. He carries several wounds, as if he had just been beaten and tamed. He’s at the forefront of the other animals, all in similarly worshipful stances. Nunc scio tenebris lux. ‘I know, now, light comes from darkness.’ Pásztor’s commentary: "The now implies a learning process, maybe even a phase transition to a higher state of consciousness."

Well, shit, that took the entire fucking evening. I mail everything to Whutty and try to forget all about it. Good night, pills.

VII

I took the Friday to sleep away my morning, so no good morning pills for me. Kata practice’s only mandatory on weekdays, anyway. Hmm. Sweet Zzz.

As anyone could have seen coming, Mitya knocks on my door at 7 a.m. Usually, I would ignore him until he left, but a special someone had kicked in my door and Mitya had little scruples regarding coming in uninvited.

"Good morning, Mr. Sunshine."

"Holy Semi-Automatic Virgin, Mitya. …fancy seeing you here." I pulled up my bed sheets. "And Keh. Hi, Keh."

She smirked and gave me a look stating clearly I was the one who should be embarrassed about being naked before my guests.

"I’m not embarrassed about being naked in front of my guests, you know. You’re not guests, and I have these bed sheets up anyway. Now."

Mitya shrugged. "Yeah, whatever, shame on you. Doom told us you got a girlfriend."

I shook my head emphatically. "No, that’s impossible, someone in the Ministry of Destiny is gay. For me." I narrowed my eyes. "You want to drag me to some kind of party, right?"

"Is there any other reason I would invade your bedroom at this time in a Friday wearing a Dynastic Youth Dharma Club uniform?"

That was a very good question and I didn’t have an answer.

"That’s a very good question and I don’t have an answer."

Keh giggled. "Wow, you’re silly! We brought two tickets as a gift to you, Mr. Silly!!" ^_^

"Wow," I said, very slowly, after thinking for several moments. "I can’t point my finger at which nickname makes me more homicidal, Mr. Sunshine or Mr. Silly."

"Oh my God! Won’t you ask what the tickets are for?? Super-party, that’s what they’re for!!!" ^_^

I cringed. "I don’t do ‘parties’."

"Ain’t you the big cuddly hug-prone care-bear-friend!!!!" ^_^

I checked my arms and then under the bed sheets. "Nope."

She pulled out a short sword. "Oh really?" ^_^

"…I can change, though."

Mitya passed an arm around Keh. "See, he’s very reasonable."

"Ohmygod yes. Ohmygod! Ohmygod! What a cute chibi fluffy furry cute cute CUTE kitten!" ^_^

"Like her? Please take her away with you."

"Ohmygod you’re TOO NICE! THANKS!" She picked up Scary Kitten From Hell, and then turned to Mitya: "Let’s go, snuggle pumpkin." =^.^=

I whined. "Snuggle… pumpkin…"

"Let’s, sugar kitten."

"Sugar… kitten… you’ve got to be shitting me…"

And they left. Glock is good. Glock is great.

Nine hours later, when I woke up, I took my good morning pills and checked the tickets. The DYDC was helping the dryads organize a big rave. The DYDC would provide the jingoistic teenagers eager for some intense emotions and the dryads… well, they provide the emotions. Drugs, sex and formidable indie-goth-metal rock.

I was bound to be oh so miserable.

Not one to fight fate, I messaged the contact ID Ad had left me for this very kind of thing.

"Hi," I recorded. "Party tonight. Dryad rave. Empress’s sister-in-law going to stab me with knives if I don’t go. Need, ahem, ‘date’." I scratched my head. "You’ll get to meet the other warthogs." I paused. That wasn’t an especially good thing. "That’s not an especially good thing. But if you’re going to stalk me anyway, you could try to, ya know, be useful."

I have a way with words, no?

Some more hours later, I was at the Silberwald admiring the Sphexoren architecture in the full magnitude of its despair. The rave was, indeed, raving all around me, and it took me a while to find a familiar face.

"Yo," I said.

"What’s up," replied Dolph. He had a little bowl on his shoulder, directly connected to his jugular. The idea is that people passing beside drop drugs in it. The effects were showing in the strong purple glow coming from his ears.

"Nice shade of purple there."

"Mmm. Say. This song is awesome."

I paid attention. O sisters let’s go down, Down in the river to pray…

"It’s a black metal remix of a Baptist song from Earth. Trippy, huh?"

"You tell me. I thought all their songs were about Palantenna."

"Baptists?"

"Fae," I shouted.

"Right! Right. Well, the song before this was about that, yeah."

"And the one before that?"

He thought for a while. "That one too."

I nodded. Palantenna was the lost home planet of the elves, said to be roaming outside the Galaxy in a magic bubble of telluric energy trekking in search of life outside our little corner of the universe. It lent itself perfectly to wistful, dramatic songs about homesickness and loss.

"They’re not very creative in that regard," Dolph said, after following a train of thought similar to mine.

"Shalom, shalom," I replied, smirking.

"There’s that," he conceded. "But you know… I’m not halfway wasted enough."

"Wasting time, then."

"Yeah. Gotta fix that."

"Doubtlessly. Say," I held his hand before he poured the contents of a little green flask into his bloodstream, and thereby left my world for somewhere over the rainbow way up high. "Have you seen any of the others?"

"Mitya and Keh were dancing, if I recall correctly. Well, she was dancing and he was more or less shrugging to the tune."

"Right… anyone else?"

"No."

"Hi."

I spun around, got my foot stuck in a random piece of underwear scattered on the ground, tripped, and bounced between two big burly Zardarkians dancing to each side of me, before finally falling into Adelais.

"…hi."

"Are you always hurting yourself or are you…"

"Oh, no, I didn’t get hurt at all, your bosom thing is quite soft and comfortable."

Thud.

"Well, now I’m hurt."

"Can I check it?" asked Dolph.

"Check what?" Adelais raised a puzzled gaze from me to Dolph.

"The softness and…"

"No, not really."

"K."

I stood up. "Anyway. Hi."

"Fancy seeing you here," she said, smiling softly.

"I have crazy friends who can’t live without me," I explained.

"It’s probably that Bob Corso magic," she offered.

Dolph nodded. "He can make any thing a loser thing."

"You’re too kind," I said, sincerely.

"Drinks to everyone," said a random friendly Hungardian with a large sentient beard.

"Thanks," I said, taking a purple beverage and wishing myself luck.

"Say," said Dolph, and I knew it would be a stupid question. "Have you met the Empress?"

Adelais smiled. "Didn’t you know? I was raised in the Imperial court, like Nickie, Keh and Kylie. Potential breeding stock kind of thing."

Dolph looked skywards dreamily. "Ah, to be the Crown Prince…"

She snorted. "Easy for you to think he’s lucky. Poor bastard was always depressed. Lots of responsibility, you know, and hypocrisy all over the court."

"But, but, chicks. All he had to do was ask."

Adelais shrugged. "Yes, well, he was too nice for that. Like me, he embraced early military training as a way out from the intrigue."

Dolph scratched his head and decided he ought to return to the one subject that mattered. "Yeah, well, anyway. Nike?" He smiled hopefully. I could read his mind, practically, and it was, ‘plz plz Yhwh hawt story w/ bewbiez plz’.

"Well, she hit on me since I was ten, and she was twelve. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

Dolph began to babble. "…yes!" he said eventually. "Please tell me you gave in."

"I’ll leave that to your imagination." She smirked seductively. She clearly had no experience at it, but it was a good effort. A very good effort.

"Well," I said, after Dolph had entered a catatonic state. "That was mean. The ‘kinkiness reasonable doubt’ thing."

"I didn’t want to break his heart," she shrugged, taking a large swig from her mug. "Reality can be sad and un-kinky."

"Was Nike that bad? I always thought it was a publicity thing."

"No, she was really like that. She had some… weird… friends. Bad company."

I nodded slowly, and then pulled a Dolph. "Say, did she try Nicolette or…"

To my surprise, she laughed, instead of piercing me with a gaze of evil piercingness or something. "She sure tried. I don’t think so. Nicky was too… well, lawful. Her sister was the youngest of us all, you’d hope that made a difference. And Kylie Sphexoren was an angsty whiny goth that not even Nike could stand the presence of."

I remembered a few images of the pale girl from some six years before, when I had a meaningless crush on her. "What’s she up to, these days, anyway? You don’t hear about her whereabouts in the media."

"She’s got a top secret assignment as a Grammaton Nova." She leaned closer and whispered into my ear: "She’s investigating the Pink Lotus."

I nodded. Then I drank some of whatever it was I was drinking. Then I nodded again and said, "Ah." I nodded some more, and then I said, "Wait, what’s a pink lotus?"

VIII

The Gods were restless, for they had no memory, having been suddenly awakened from a hitherto fore uninterrupted slumber. They wandered aimlessly, slowly sinking into madness. But then, the Emperor Gauss-Gauss, who had been the last to collapse into a physical form, stood upon the tallest mountain, and spoke out, "I am the most exalted among you, kneel before me and you shall have a role."

"Aberdash-Aberdash, you are my better in Virtue, and second only to me in Power, but you are still my inferior in Power, and so you shall serve me. You’ll be Maker of Justice in my Empire, leader of my armies, master of my paladins. As a tribute, you shall sacrifice to me your Ability to Act in Disaccord With Honor." The Purple Dragon knelt, recognizing his Emperor, and obliged. He went, and conquered all peoples for Him.

"Ticine-Ticine, you are my better in Beauty, but you are still my inferior in Power, and so you shall serve me. You’ll be Banner and Trophy in my Empire, artist of artists, builder of my palaces. As a tribute, you shall sacrifice to me your Ability to Act Without Vanity." The Indigo Dragoness knelt, recognizing her Emperor, and obliged. She went, and built a beautiful city for Him.

"Sphexoren-Sphexoren, you are my better in Passion, but you are still my inferior in Power, and so you shall serve me. You’ll be Bard and Dreamer in my Empire, first among men of language, mourner of my grief. As a tribute, you shall sacrifice to me your Ability to Ever Become Satisfied." The Blue Dragon knelt, recognizing his Emperor, and obliged. He went, and sung beautifully in His praise.

"Gamdoha-Gamdoha, you are my better in Wisdom, but you are still my inferior in Power, and so you shall serve me. You’ll be Philosopher and Lawmaker in my Empire, impartial bureaucrat, administrator of my conquests. As a tribute, you shall sacrifice to me your Ability to Act Without Careful Deliberation." The Emerald Dragoness knelt, recognizing her Emperor, and obliged. She went, and through Logic demonstrated His designs were Good.

"Dactylos-Dactylos, you are my better in Intelligence, but you are still my inferior in Power, and so you shall serve me. You’ll be Researcher and Technician in my Empire, master of all crafts, artificer of my machines. As a tribute, you shall sacrifice to me your Ability to Relate to People." The Golden Dragon knelt, recognizing his Emperor, and obliged. He went, and forged for Him a beautiful suit of armor and one thousand ships.

"Sawarren-Sawarren, you are my better in Spontaneity, but you are still my inferior in Power, and so you shall serve me. You’ll be Entertainer and Fool in my Empire, honest to a fault, critic of my mistakes. As a tribute, you shall sacrifice to me your Ability to Take Anything Seriously." The Orange Dragoness knelt, recognizing her Emperor, and obliged. She went, and played with Him, that all could see His youth and skill.

"Rockthriller-Rockthriller, you are my better in Guile, but you are still my inferior in Power, and so you shall serve me. You’ll be Merchant and Moneylender in my Empire, backbone of the economy, keeper of my wealth. As a tribute, you shall sacrifice to me your Ability to Pursue Immaterial Interests." The Red Dragon knelt, recognizing his Emperor, and obliged. He went, and raised for Him an Empire to outlast the Stars.

But the Black Dragoness, who had been the first to awaken, knew she would be addressed next, and she stood forth, and said, "I will not serve you."

The Whitest Dragon looked at the rebel, mildly amused by the defiance. "What? Can you not see you are the most feeble in Power? That you lack in Glory, Splendor, Victory? That I am all that is Awesome, and Triumph is my Name?"

"That is true, and I do not deny it, and I am lacking in all virtues, and all I have is the Truth. But I kneel only before the Truth, as is every Virtue’s purpose to Serve Truth."

"Truth, you say," the Dragon of Mirrors said, and there was scorn in his voice. "Truth is as I say Truth is, for I am Lord. I control what is."

The Shadow Dragoness shook her head, and looked away, in disgust. "We do not exist for our Selves. Our task against the merciless Eçaraia is Purpose for our Process. You are young and beautiful and talented, and that is your ruin. To have them for privileges."

The Silver Dragon struck her, and sent her forth from the first city, and had it anathema to speak to her, and had it anathema to speak of her ideas. And then, to ensure He, Himself, would not change his mind and ultimately concede the Black Dragoness was correct, he sacrificed his own Ability to Achieve Redemption Through Any Means Short of Death.

I closed the Draconomicon. I preferred the Glock Church creation myth, myself. ‘In the beginning, was the bang. And then God changed magazines, and continued firing until the other dude stopped moving.’

I checked a holographic projection of a watch I had on my wrist. It was a simple concept. Instead of having a physical watch and the associated risks of damage to it, you could pay an additional three cents per month in your taxes and the Prefecture would provide you with the hologram, with several useful features and definitely waterproof. They used to have a similar program for clothing, but one day a generator got hacked and half the city found itself naked during rush hour.

Anyway, I checked my ‘watch’ and, indeed, my break at Sappho was over. I returned to Arjuna and the foolish old matrons buying presents for their ichthyologist nephews back on Citru. Well, there was just one matron buying a present for her ichthyologist nephew back on Citru, but she was big enough to count as many. The book was, How to dodge things.

Going through the motions of helping her browse the DC section for a present for her other nephew, the black sheep one, Dave, who’d run off to a dojo run by a cockroach, yah, I’m sure he’ll like this DC of that show when those Black Mage necromancers raised Judas Priest and the skeletons black metal’d it out until a freak accident involving a crucifix blessed by Cardinal Saint-Germain, anyway, I was there wondering why they didn’t use a robot for my job and practically dozing off in the middle of conversation, when I recognized voices in the level below.

"Cammy," said Weiss. "Dhat was an easy one. Who for an archduchess’s lookalike?"

"Are we still in Earth games?" asked Dolph, conspicuously smoking a blue glow-stick-like thing, I think they make those in Hungarden.

"Same planet, same decade."

"Nina Williams."

"Good one," conceded Weiss.

Doom was leading the way towards me. I could read the lips he didn’t have. He was saying, certainly, "Urge… to kill… rising," as usual.

"So," I said, enjoying the fact the fat woman was buried under a stack of DCs that had just collapsed because of Doom’s negative thoughts. "You here. Fancy."

"Important matters pertinent to all High Preemptive Warthogs have arisen," said Doom.

"I’m working."

Doom snorted. "I was supposed to be at Syne’s office, but you don’t see me whining."

"Well then, speak."

He shook his head. "No, not here. Kovalenko’s. Mitya will be there."

"Well, shit. Alright, if I get fired I’m going to be moderately upset."

Dolph and Weiss were still at it. "Now, speaking purely as an appreciator of good boobies, I think Wendauerian games, especially from the 2130’s, can’t really be beat…"

I rolled my eyes. Wankers.

I was about to reach for the Kovalenko Meat Bar’s door when it burst open, and a cod-man ran out covered in flames and screaming. He ran in circles for a while until collapsing in the middle of the street. We stared at him for a while, shrugged, and walked in.

"Don’t like fish?" Dolph asked Crazy Miss Sacha.

She shook her head. "I didn’t do eet. Spoon… spawn-tay-nee-oos comboostion, I think eez called," she added helpfully.

Doom nodded gravely. "Tends to happen to my enemies, too," he said, and I imagine he smirked.

We sat down in the table Mitya had set aside for us. "Hey."

"’sup."

"Alright, let’s get down to business. Dolph, tell Bob what happened."

Dolph nodded, pulled another stick from his pocket, tapped the table with it until it started glowing, and began: "Well, you see, I was at my supply house place thing."

"Oh the eloquence," added Doom, helpfully.

"I was in the toilet tuning my sound-streaming cube. As you know, it can do any sound I can imagine. But I was unpleased with the way the hundred-violin orchestra was coming out. It was hard to discern the Stradivarius from the Kantonnen.

"Then I hear the door open outside, ya know, and then these two guys, a Wendauerian and a Thaynese, they begin a-pacing about and opening drawers and shit. Well, the Wendauerian does that, the Thaynese guy just delivers this big speech about how Marc’s SpaceMac is delicious and that they call an ‘MacImperial with Cheese’ a ‘MacNot Quite Smells Like Orange with Cheese’ in Citru. Then he shoots Bob, ya know, another guy named Bob, and then he asks if the Prinzip Uzziel looks like a bitch and then he makes this quote from the Book of Glock about shepherds and German shepherds and K9 SWAT units and then he shoots Marc.

"Now, I have this gun with me in the toilet, so my first idea is to come out of the toilet shooting at them screaming. But then I decide against it, and they go away taking the Aceldama stone I had just made the C-Chip with."

"How did they find you?" I asked.

"The fourth guy in there, Jamir, he must’ve given them the information." He bit the stick.

"Well then, you’re a fucking stupid doss cunt for telling your dope dealers about it," I said, leaning back.

"Hey, dope’s the enemy of secrecy, and secrecy’s bad, m’kay?" He looked offended.

"So much for our game," I sighed.

"No, that’s where my information comes in," replied Doom.

"I’m all ears," I lied. I still had arms and legs and stuff.

"The owner of the office I’m doing my internship at, Mr. Syne, got a phone call some time later. Some clients, mediated by the Dewne Embassy, had just accidentally blown a certain dope head’s head off."

"Jamir."

"No shit," said Mitya.

"I gathered Syne went there to help them dispose of the evidence, like a good lawyer, and he phoned CEO Riley of Lucifuge Corporation, who has genetically modified cadaver-disposal pigs. But Riley, upon learning of the stone, had other plans."

"The plot thickens."

"He phoned a mysterious mercenary, Takako the Laser-Dodger, to hire her services."

"Not as deluxe escort, I’d imagine."

"Nope, she can’t stand the touch of men, I hear," said Doom, shrugging.

"What next?"

Mitya says, "According to the III report I could get with my Dynastic Youth credentials, Takako killed the Wendauerian in the water closet. The Thaynese guy wasn’t anywhere to be seen. She didn’t touch Syne, for some reason, but she took the stone away."

"And didn’t return it to Riley, if I understood Syne correctly when he was speaking in the phone," added Doom.

"I begin to see you want me dead," I offered.

Doom inhaled deeply. "Your mission, should you choose to accept it…"

IX

"We are not a stagnated culture," said Adelais, bouncing daintily down the wall of the ventilation shaft. Lacking all skill and coordination, I tried to follow her and her track of thought. "Few societies reacted as swiftly to change as we’ve done so far, and none lasted as long without institutional upheaval."

"What about the Republican Spasm?" My foot slipped and I hit my head a couple of times, hanging like an inept spider.

"Dynastic succession was quickly resumed, and most of the administration retained autonomy," she replied, sighing and face-palming at my helplessness.

"I think you’re confusing an inextricable bureaucracy and an Empire too big to centralize with institutional continuity."

"A mostly rhetorical difference, as I see it. Like the old priestess-queen of the Salyran amazons and the earthling Nipponese emperor, our dynastic ruler is merely a prescriptive paragon and symbolic unifier. Most administration happens at a local deliberative level, following the Zardarkian model."

"Help me please," I gestured.

"Oh, right." She pulled herself to my level and proceeded to disentangle me. "The Empire offers nothing but a model, and demands little beyond military unity and free flow of energy and information."

"Well, I think the issue is exactly that we may not be the perfect model we take ourselves to be. We may be collectively drunk of our rulers’ pride," I said.

"We’re better than everyone else, aren’t we?" She sounded a bit resentful of the criticism.

"Well, the cornerstone of you dragons’ philosophy has been the value of power in itself, so you’ll measure your success under that prism. Gamezoha hasn’t bested the Dht’n’k’lz in technical accomplishments, for example, save in a few select fields." I stopped spinning and got a hold of the stability rope. "And most of that upon Anaxerretibes’ work."

"It’s a common misunderstanding to assume dragons measure everything through power, at least in its relative form. The blood-hand spearwomen, the mamluks, the samurai, the battlemech – all of them have held absolute military dominance against their foes in their prime, and then became outdated because of an inability to react to circumstances. Their power was thusly relative."

I gestured that, no matter how interesting that was, we had to move on. She nodded and continued rappelling down.

"We are not blind to that phenomenon and seek power that is not vulnerable to such contingencies, to preempt and react as they change, in order to remain always on top, or fixing what has to be fixed to we can return there. War is beyond all a cultural event, and these cultures succeeded briefly because, briefly, their form of warfare was most the most apt. The biological analogy is pretty obvious here. But dragons always succeed because they don’t have a form of warfare, but triumph itself as an ultimate cultural goal. Von Clausewitz came close, but Mikko Kantonnen Senior really hit bull’s-eye in his analysis of our way of war, and that’s why he’s mandatory reading for Neuro-Political Science."

I frowned. "Kantonnen? The one who made the violins?"

She shrugged very deftly for someone rappelling and steering the descent of a half-ton stealth field generator. "Dunno."

I scratched my head. "Well, if we’re so damn good, how do you explain Thaynan, or Wendauer, or even Dewnhëem?"

She scoffed as if she had heard this argument a hundred times before. She probably did. "Thaynan was sabotaged. Our best units either weren’t employed, or were actively given assignments to avoid any victorious outcome before an exhaustive search conducted by the Premier could make a discovery under the fog of war. It was a conscious experiment at defeat, so we’d know how to proceed in the event." She reached the bottom, and unplugged her rappel harness system. "As proof of their hidden wile, we’ve never coincided to be in a war against the Wendauerians in a period when our best units weren’t engaged elsewhere. Anyway, their corner of the Galaxy is gravely lacking in resources and a handy operational buffer against Dewnhëem."

I landed with a lot less grace, and a soft snapping sound from my ankle. "OW! Ow, ow, fuck fuck fuck fuck…"

She sighed and knelt next to me, placing her hands on my ankle. "Don’t move. As for the Dewnes, we could totally have beat them if war had really broke out."

"Really? My wargames tell otherwise… ow!"

"Oops, it broke again."

"Seriously."

"You moved. Your mouth."

I sighed. "Right…"

I felt her magic healing me. Again. "But really, you don’t have access to the information I do. About the actual fighting powers of the Elites. The PSY-SQUAD. The Seventh Wing, the Savage Thorns, the Spiraling Chaos Skirmishers…"

"Alright, alright, you don’t have to recite Field Manual 777-5 for me." I stood up.

"Oh, you think that’s the SB’s real manual? Hah."

"What I mean is," I insisted, "someday we might meet a kind of foe we haven’t predicted at all, one our methods are powerless against."

"Happened before. In Hungarden, colonist dragons from House Rockthriller were being defeated by compact formations of spearmen, resistant to fly-by attacks and wearing armor resistant to our breath weapons. They began complementing their forces with Dreiklaue Zardarkian mercenaries, operating as private military companies. They employed flamberge zweihanders to chop the polearms and force the Hungardians to disperse. The…"

I rolled my eyes. "I don’t mean like that. Ultimately: our entire civilization is based around victory. What would happen if it fought an invincible foe? Would it simply collapse?"

She looked at me gravely, fixing her piercing purple eyes on me. "Yes," she said, eventually. "It would. And I’m proud of this."

I looked at her and sighed. She made justice to what the humans of the Empire call the dragons’ true motto: ‘Death before admission of failure!’ Still, I felt pretty good about myself. Talking about military affairs is half the Gamezohan courtship ritual. Maybe even more for dragons.

Of course, my views on the subject had been indelibly influenced by Professor Vormsak, a purple-skinned alien who dropped the biology teacher life to become a doctor in some remote asteroid. Vormsak had some very unorthodox views.

"The draco sapiens, above all, isn’t a natural life form, as most humanoids in the known universe tend to be," he was saying, one day. "Not having arisen from evolution, but rather from an energetic imperative, makes the application of normal biology, especially morphology, very redundant. Mr. Corso! What are the flight muscles of a dragon!"

I dropped my pen and stopped doodling. "Er. Subspinatus, supraspinatus and… uhm…"

"Deltoid major, Mr. Corso! Why do I even waste my time with pink-skinned freaks? Moving ahead!" Actually he was a really nice guy, he just put on a drill instructor façade when we were being bad little monkeys. "Like I was saying, dragons have many traits that make little to no sense biologically, even more than races with magical origins. Even elves and most fey work more or less like humanoids. Take reproduction, for example…"

The class sniggered. We were mature like that. "Dragons and dragonesses breeding with humanoids… and quadrupeds and vegetables and whatever they’re feeling like humping that day," he added, with a snort, "will operate more or less like mammals, though you’d only notice a pregnancy in humanoid or humanoid maximus form, if the specimen is female. The affair is completely different if the one they’re breeding with is another telluric being, be it fey or another dragon. While a male dragon remains fertile his entire adulthood, a dragoness will only have her dragon-form egg-laying system mature when she reaches dragon-adulthood, or at least the equivalent of teenage, which takes from fifty to seventy years."

He paused and looked at us. We were paying attention, and it probably unsettled him. "Um. Of course, that isn’t a problem, as even a half-dragoness won’t be looking like a full-grown woman for several centuries, unless she’s remarkably precocious like Princess Nike." From the example, drool discreetly shone in the corner of several young men’s mouths, not the least of which mine, while several girls snorted in unison. "Even then, the female will only be fertile about once every two decades. And after egg-laying, years or decades pass until hatching, a time that is controlled through ambient temperature and is coordinated so the hatchings coincide to happen over the period of a few years, forming thusly a ‘generation’, a phenomenon that wouldn’t happen otherwise because of the extremely low birthrate. This is why dragons from both genders turn to interspecies breeding for progeny, and that’s how this Empire got built."

I was about to ask something, but fat bird boy Suvy raised his hand first. "What’s that about fey and dragons not being able to interbreed, though?"

Vormsak nodded. "Good question. It’s like matter and antimatter, as you probably learned in quantum physics when you were eight. The gametes, using the term very loosely, can’t mix or else a shockwave will ripple through the telluric field, potentially killing all life in the universe. It’s a very paradoxical problem. On the one hand, it’s related to fertility: a male dragon can never approach a mature elf, because both are permanently potentially fertile, even if the specific dragon or fey has become infertile for some reason, while a female dragon has a much easier time with male elves, as long as she’s not in one of her rare periods of draconic fertility. On the other hand, it’s more related to the beings’ magical aura than to the physical circumstances in themselves, as any kind of extended physical exposure, even if not amounting to actual coitus, will trigger the field disturbances…"

I was jerked back from my pointless flashback when Adelais began dragging me down the tunnels below the Despoina Bathhouse & Girls’ Club.

X

I peeked into the screen of the seer-through-walls. "…sweet merciful Glock."

Adelais glared at me. "It’s a ‘special’ bathhouse. I hope you can handle it."

I kept my gaze fixed. "Oh yes, don’t worry. I’m just observing… for opportunities… yeah."

"…right. The little underage one with pink hair is Takako. The other two lying languidly seem to be yojimbo. Now we wait until she goes to her locker, see the combination, comm. Keh, and she’ll get your stone."

"Pretty precarious system, huh?"

"Traditional. They don’t really expect high-tech surveillance."

"Yeah, thanks again for that," I said.

She smiled. "Oh, don’t think too much of it," she replied cryptically.

"…wait, is that Nike?"

"Strangely, yes. …damn it, guy, get over yourself. That’s nothing the Galaxy hasn’t seen, touched and smelled before in Playalien, or one of those amateur videos going around the net, for that matter."

"You’d know about that?… alright, shutting up. Can’t we get sound? This might get interesting. …for our mission, I mean," I added quickly.

She glared at me and probably had to control herself to avoid exploding my head with the power of her mind. Then she turned on a knob and gave us sound-though-walls.

"…my one true love, that you can’t see how painful this state of affairs is for me, as well."

"You didn’t have to kidnap him."

Takako slapped the Empress. "I do what I feel like doing! Especially to the filthy male who defiled your precious body!"

Nike chuckled darkly. "Joel? He wasn’t exactly the first one, you know."

"Oh, how well do I know that repulsive fact. The triplets, I couldn’t care less about what they do with their free time, for they are merely handy servants. But you… you’re my soul mate."

"How touching, you cold cunt. And Oscar isn’t Joel, anyway. Free him!"

Another slap. Despite her defiant words, she doesn’t dare raise a hand to defend herself physically. My awesome pervert senses suggest me she’s enjoying the humiliation, in a way. The two chicks in the background can’t stop snickering, for one thing.

"You care about that thing? Well, don’t worry, Rosemary is taking good care of him as we speak. Isn’t she, girls?"

Thyme and Sage purred, licking one another’s arms.

"I don’t so much care about him personally, but he’s my brother’s friend. And Wild Thing’s."

"Well, you can solve half that problem by bringing me your brother’s head, now, can’t you?"

Nike clenched her fists. "Why? What do you have with him?"

Takako cackled. "Nothing! He’s a nice boy! It’d just prove your devotion to me. That’s why it’s so good. That’s what turns me on," she added meaningfully, running a finger on Nike’s bare chest.

The dragoness stepped back. "Nuh-huh. That’s not how it works. I had found something, with Katje, that I thought I had lost but Wernher’s new friends taught me was less uncommon than I thought. Love does not have to be about ownership."

Slap. The two of the triplets present laugh out loud. "You arrogant whelp! Kneel before your mistress! What do you know about love?!" As if by magic, Nike lowered her head and complied. She started to sob.

"The angel thing is mine, not daddy’s, not yours, and now, not even if you serve me fully and completely! My father has plans for him, and I’ll comply just to hurt you and your friends, because now you’ve pissed me off, and the funny thing is – you’ll still love me. Love me even more for it. Because that’s how your heart ticks."

She crouched in front of Nike, and to my surprised, passed her arms around her in a hug. "Daddy deciphered the silver dragons’ soul millennia ago, and he’s taught me all about it. Shhh. It’s ok. It’s ok. Want me to tell you how my heart ticks? It ticks for you. Just for you."

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. If Dolph were here, he’d say something rude about girly emo porn.

Takako sat in the cold marble at the edge of the pool, cradling Nike’s head on her lap, caressing her hair. "Thyme, go to my locker," she commanded softly. Adelais leaned closer to the screen. "Get the whip. You want the whip, don’t you, baby?…"

Nike whimpered, "Yes…"

"Could you sing for me? You know, that song we love?…"

The sobbing paused. Then she started, half-dreamily: "Listen to the girl, as she takes on half the world… moving up and so alive… in her honey-dripping… beehive…"

The fucked-up bitch, well, the most fucked-up bitch, no, wait, it’s hard to decide which one is worse, well then, Moebius’ daughter closed her eyes, smiling beatifically while Wilhelm’s daughter sang with unmistakable devotion, as me and Adelais hauled ass, having gotten the information we needed, my soul torn between the dilemma between missing the kinky stuff bound to ensue and getting several joints broken several times by my non-girlfriend.

Woe. Peep cheep woe.

"Well. What a loser," said Adelais, finally, when we reached the shaft again. Mitya was supposed to be waiting outside.

"I can’t believe she’s the Empress," I agreed.

She glared at me. "No, I meant Takako. Her combination is six nine, six nine."

"Even Keh could’ve guessed that," I agreed.

"The day you’re smart enough to defeat two rabid arcturian wolf-bears and a Salyran demon-tigress with a sharpened obsidian hand-axe, I’ll let you speak ill of Lady Paraskeve’s intelligence."

"Well, yeah, she’s awesome," I agreed.

"Not half as good as I am, though," she added, thoughtfully, passing the rappel harness around her torso.

I gave up agreeing. "Say, why don’t you just fly up the shaft, carrying the generator in your claws?"

She blinked. "…why, are you in a hurry?"

"Well, now that you mention it, there’s some pretty neat stuff on holo-TV tonight…"

"I… well, I’m not used to shifting in front of people I don’t intend to kill. I’m not a particularly impressive dragon either."

I chuckled. "Let me be the judge of that."

"Well, if you insist… step back…"

[Insert special effects here.]

I scratched my chin. "Well. That’s a lovely shadow of purple."

"Thanks."

"And you were wrong. I’m totally impressed.

"Aw, you’re too nice."

"Your luck I can’t see you blushing, huh."

"Oh, definitely. So, angst-boy. Need a ride up?"

"Angst-boy is a registered epithet of Admiral Sir Ricardus ben Lysander Whutty von Sphexoren, all rights reserved," I observed.

"Let’s see if you’re still that funny wrapped in a long purple scaly… tail."

I blinked in disbelief. "Well, holy fag percussion cap and semi-automatic turbans," I said. "Wankers! Everywhere! Where you least expect them! Like guerrilla, but dirtier!"

She laughed. "Oh, come on, I’m just pulling your leg."

"Careful, it might come off."

“Yeah, I know."

"I... won’t ask."

"Fine."

Mitya was waiting outside. Sadly, so was Dolph.

"W00t! Tentaclez."

"Shut up," I offered.

"But you still have your pants on… n00b," he grinned and nudged.

Punch in the face. Repeat a few times for reinforced educative effect.

XI

The following morning, Dolph and I went to the sensies for a couple of hours of Gates of Illium. I logged in and was immediately rewarded with the intense heat of my nation's encampment. I walked around in the scorching sand shouting commands to my troops in ancient Greek and being thirsty for half an hour, until I felt we were ready to move.

As expected, Dolph had been waiting at the rally point for quite some time, him and his much less organized force. I raised my helmet - up it went with a rusty squeak - and greeted his buff alter-ego.

"Hail, great King Hellexander. Isn't it nice your nose isn't broken inside the sensie?"

"Greetings, mighty King Robocopicles. Fuck you and the dragon you rode in on."

"Heh. What have you got there? I see some Astynomia, couple Psiloi... no spearmen?"

"Not Psiloi, Agrianian. But yeah, massing light infantry and javelinmen is everything there is to it."

"Word. Tell me, you didn't... use anything before logging in, right? The admins say it's dangerous to combine full consciousness extraction with any psychedelic experimentation."

"Well, last night I smoked a Kallisti King Ardy got me, in exchange for some help coding a political sim game. The stuff rocks."

I raised an eyebrow my character didn't have. "You could've sold it. It's worth more than your apartment."

"Are you insane? It's about the only thing I hadn't tried yet. It's not the kind of chance you throw away for a couple of... megacredits."

"MC? Are we talking emerald label here? Holy percussion cap."

Dolph chortled in concurrence. I sighed. "Well, enjoy your thing."

"Oh, I'm bound to. The effects keep coming and going for years after consumption. They say Emperor Wernher was under the 'influence' when he passed the Dissipative State Frost Act granting full citizenship to all cactus and cactus-like lifeforms."

I considered it briefly. "Probably just more gratuitous gossip, Senator Pricky is a very able spokesman for several worthy causes, after all."

"No doubt," he conceded. "Talking about Pricky, have you nailed the dragon yet?"

I immediately saw that I would turn my troops around and leave him in the battlefield to die, and it was beautiful. I grinned. "No, not really. But we're going to the Orange tonight, again. Hopefully Ardy won't be there this time."

"Woo, romance." Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

I foresaw his gouged-out eyes presented on a silver platter to Priam. "It's so beautiful."

He was owned so thoroughly that morning that they're still trying to find the scattered remnants of his army that routed into other servers causing a general system collapse in gunpowder-era sims. I remained drowsy with glee for the remainder of the day, or at least until the ever-shocking taste of Davi's claw shrimp cocktail reminded me of why the Hungardian Zenoid Turtle[1]'s taste buds have regenerative powers that makes the human liver purple with envy.

"Good evening, my friends, you're enjoying le meal, no?"

I lowered my spork. "It's very good," I said.

Adelais nodded. "The ostrich is excellent, the carrot tastes a little... different."

Ardan stepped back and looked around nervously. "What do you mean! You can't possibly be referring to those ludicrous stories of bunny-girls!"

We blinked. "Uh. No... not really. ...what stories?"

He snapped his fingers and an assistant produced a small towel. He wiped his forehead. "Never you mind, my good friends. I hope you'll have a very pleasant evening. If you'll excuse me..."

I shook my head as he left. "Crazy one, him."

"No doubt."

"Any news from Keh?"

"Mitya said she got the stone. She had to put a blade through Thyme's eye, though."

"Awesome."

"Yeah."

"I didn't really mean it. Murder is upsetting."

"It's not murder if you're a dragon," she reminded me.

"Right. Humans fall under animal rights in that case. I tend to forget that."

"Exactly."

"It's a sad world."

"It's a sad universe. Say, you have plans for the next weekend?"

"Yes."

"Elaborate," she said, after reminding herself what a great conversationist I am.

"Stay in bed. Listen to the same song on loop until, hopefully, I die."

"You're a disgrace for the Ministry of Flow, you know."

"It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black."

"How about we go to the Gardens?"

The Praetorian Gardens were a cheerful, beautiful and pleasant place for sports, health and youth.

"Not a chance in the firing range."

"Oh, but why?"

"I don't want to see you in a swimsuit, that'd just be wrong," I lied.

"Flattering. You're just afraid of my athletic skills."

"You gain obviousness points. With the kind of physical conditioning you get, it wouldn't be fair to race you against a hoverjeep."

"And you don't know half of it," she added with a vaguely wistful smile. "But I can play fair. It will be fun."

"Besides, even if we don't see some form of cosmic retribution involving the aceldama stone, I'll still have to help the guys with our war game."

"Oooh, a war game. So that's what it's about."

Curiosity. "...what did you think it was about?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. Dolph made me think it involved tactile holograms."

"Oh my."

"With 'Erotic Skill', 'Innocence' and 'Cocklust' attributes."

"Oh my."

"My thoughts exactly."

"I hasten to point out I never touched that datacube."

"I wonder what values they assigned to me."

"Ouch."

"You have sad friends, Corso."

"Don't taunt, you rank in the Top Five right now."

"Touché."

I glanced at the empty Zardarkian wine bottle and let the mind-reading waiterbots know I wanted another. Thank Glock for having Ardy pay my bills in the place. He reckons it would be good for him if I married into nobility.

The reasoning was flawed on so many levels.

"...by the way, you can't read my mind, right?"

"I try hard not to. I don't want to become clinically depressed, thank you."

"Well, shit. Good thing I can't lie anyway."

"Yeah. I like that."

"Score." I did my little celebration routine. It consisted of holding up my hands neck-high and opening and closing my my hands as if they were pincers while keeping a sad face. I might have been some kind of crab-person from B7765123A in a previous life. Or something.

She laughed. "Can I play with you?"

I didn't need my massive intellect to connect the request to the subject. "Hmm. No."

"Sadness."

"Our nerdy hobby made us too good for your puny special forces skills."

"Bet you can't stick it, master chief."

I leaned forward. "It's on."

"Tonnage of the CQB Xurmaithian Vulture alternate?"

"Seventy-four dot three. Function of hydrotechnical civilizations' momentum potential?"

"The Aleph-Sargonid equation, under revision by the GIU selection stochastics research group. The last battle when umbral metaphysical avionics guaranteed preemptive superiority?"

"Second Salyran uprising, of course. That's when the Lucifuge consensus warheads were first employed, reducing the spirit world to a barren waste in several hyperspheric parsecs." I paused and grinned evilly. "My favorite one. How the Birdrum faction could have won the second Hungardian Civil War?"

"Pre-Compact Dewne doctrine of telluric network externalities, as presented in the opening chapter of FM 11^3+2."

"Lucky guess."

"Uh-huh. How GENS Power Overwhelming ranks in the Joffre attrition scale?"

"Eighty four Joffre, Omicron Six BPGC, Thirteen RKT. The latter is used in all relevant simulations because of the Anaxerretibes-Myas Ahftas effect. Codename for the Xenocidal Circumvalation Protocol the Wendauerians tried to use against the Fourth Fleet in the Thaynan Blockade Crisis?"

"According to TOW VIII's captain's log, 'that legged in the hoax that joke bilked'. No idea what it means. Similarity between SURTRite and Mongol...?"

"The Great Hunt. The Vatican's secret Ananke-conditioning school?"

"Scola di Santo Lorenzo Quart, funded under the Istituto per le Opere Esteriori. Covert culture questions are cheap. Deployment cost of an Akira-class destroyer?"

"Hah, tricks are for Wendaurians. No destroyers in that class. Wolfperson most skilled in operational art in recorded history?"

"Chocolate Acorns Sawdust Woman. I fought her in a FUCKUP-II simulation."

"Interesting."

"You have no idea. Chances of a successful Mi-Go invasion in the next hundred years?"

I opened my mouth and stopped. "I... don't know."

"Well, come to think of it... me neither."

Stalemate. We looked into each other's eyes, and kissed.

[1] Since I'm loathe to end a section this way, I'm compelled to observe the Zenoid Turtle derives its name from its time-warping abilities, which allow it to elude pursuit from predators many times faster. It was through meditative observation of the Zenoid Turtle that Strategus Holsrik Nipòs-Dreksandr developed the Turtle Kung Fu that eventually evolved into the Time Katas guarded with extreme secrecy by the Escolas L33t, or Elites, themselves philosophic ramifications of the Order of Priest Town Dreksandr founded in his effort to promote Dentonism as the official religion of the Second Empire.

XII

Later that week, a Seeker came knocking on my door. I had just returned early from Arjuna because of a nanite spill higher up TT avenue, in the crossing with the Myrmidon Immolation Steersman Expressway. A couple of blocks had been endangered and everybody was dizzy because of the counternanites released to keep our skins from melting, thereby having yet another GIA PR disaster.

The Seeker wore a brown cloak and, as usual, carried a lot of candy in holsters over his body armor.

"Good afternoon, brother. Have you accepted Lordly Sweetness in your stomach as savior and delicious?"

I groaned. "Have you ever heard of diabetes?"

"What? Oh, isn't that one of those diseases that doesn't exist anymore?"

"Right. But it's the principle of the thing..."

"Accept the Candy. The Candy is a Sign."

"A sign, alright." Sign I should get one of those door-to-door preacher hunting licenses some day.

"The Candy evidences the general goodwill of the universe towards itSelf."

"No shit."

"Yes indeed! It is the Seekers' Duty to announce that all men that have been and will be are but one man, and that that man is a Star - the Most Holy Sun Absolute." He pushed me aside without effort and walked into my apartment, ignoring my protests. "The Sun is Defragmenting its Brain, or more exactly, the Data in It, and Cleansing itself from Impurity He accumulated in His Pondering." He started rummaging through my things.

"You sure like CAPS."

"Our motto is, What Is Holy Is Holy. Weehee." He turned to me after examining my datacube drawer. "Where's the pornography?"

"Come again?"

"The pornography. I know you must have some, it fits your profile. It is the Seekers' Duty to Destroy unholy Pr0n and accelerate the Cleansing. Now, there's no point in hiding - where is it?"

"There is none." I had disposed of all sixty petabytes of it the previous week, but he didn't need to know that.

He scratched his head. "Right. Well. Anyway, have some candy." He placed a half-kilo bag on my desk and quietly slipped past me in his way to some other unlucky fool's home.

I was returning to the sweet embrace of my bed when the high-priority incoming message alarm began buzzing inside my head. It was like having a cage of little dead furry mammals and arthropods dancing inside my skull. Believe me when I say this is the best analogy for the sensation I've ever come across.

"Mitya. What's up."

"The stone's gone."

I covered myself in my bedsheets, imagining the C-SQUID sentry bots bursting down my roof at any time. "I thought it was being kept at Keh's?"

"Yeah. She says it's gone. Vanished."

I expressed my relief by clutching my pillow fiercely. "Not the police, then."

"Exactly. The safe guess here is 'ninja'."

I scratched my chin. "I think learning is self-indulgent. Comforting and irresponsible. I feel that I am simply hoarding something that will slowly dissipate, like a black hole, with the difference that I'm supposed to operate on a level above necessity."

As a Warthog, Mitya was well versed in the art of rapid thought track switching. "But once you've tasted the fruit, there's no going back. All meaningful input has, by definition, an effect on the output."

"Maybe meaning depends solely on the semiological perception? One might be in a state where no input develops meaning."

"Information remains associated with negentropy and decaying energy states. It might be able to work through brute force. And if anything breaks through, we have the begining of an accelerating I² process. Intelligence on intelligence."

"But the process may not be fast enough for a human lifespan. And the signal can always decay."

"The hoarded quantity, and even quality, may be contingent dissipative state-variables, but the flow may be where the axiomatic importance may be placed, and its having-happened can't be undone."

"We've just made it necessary that the information absorption be considered an end in itself, haven't we?"

"'fraid so."

I scratched my chin again. "Ok. So Takako got her stone back?"

"Could be."

"Ok, so it's plan B then?"

"Sure, I'm wiring you the Betza files right now."

(Plan B was continuing our work on the n-dimensional n-time-vectors chess variant.)

"Oh yeah, Bob, did you hear about Adelais?"

"Not really."

"The SBs were called for a top secret mission in the edge of the telluric frontier."

"Wow, she didn't even message me."

"Well, she'll probably be back. Someday. Unless she dies or something."

"Thanks, Mitya, I needed those news. Suddenly everything is in its right place."

"Heh. Are you coming to ExpoCreed7K tomorrow?"

"Sure, it's not as if I have anything against celibacy right now."

"Ouch. I had inferred from Dolph..."

"I was getting there, damnit!" I sighed. "ExpoCreed at nine, then?"

"We're meeting at the TP terminal, this time. It's going to be housed someplace in Wei Palace."

"Shiny. A Seeker was here earlier, you know."

"Really? What did he want?"

"My pornography."

"Oh no."

"Joke's on him, I had none."

"Are you in danger of becoming a good person, Corso?"

"Not at all. I used my key ring to hack into his address book and put Dolph as next in line."

There came no response for a while. Finally, he said: "You're a mean one, you are."

"One of the worst. Watch me dance! Watch me-"

He disconnected before I could activate the video feed. I vowed solemnly that someday (probably tomorrow) he would have to face my mighty celebration dance.

Someone else was on hold. "MY LIFE IS RUINED!"

"Oh, hey Dolph."

"Hey. I HAVE NO MORE REASON TO LIVE!"

"What's up? Did you suddenly remember your family lives on Earth under the dictatorship of an insane artificial intelligence that hates all life?"

"Nah, all the really important people escaped as soon as the troubles started. Entire palaces, museums and shit were teleported. No, Corso, my pain comes from something much more tragic than the loss of my sweet Israel to the Qlippothic demons incarnated. MY PR0N IS GONE!"

I laughed out loud. "Well, download it all again."

"It's not like that. The tactile projectors. The modded interfaces. The unlocked secrets, cracked codes, nurtured AIs! I had three versions of Krystal Halak I'm going to miss dearly."

"Three?"

"One of them was in Tinfoil Lady mode!"

"I thought it was just a theory they were the same person."

"Hah, you lack l33t perv-fu powers. Go to pevrnova.org and download the Confidential True Medical Records And Internal Measures Patch for her."

"One thing, I don't do that kind of stuff. Anymore, anyway. Besides, how do they get these things?"

"I love hackers. Don't you love hackers?"

I remembered my sweet, sweet key ring and Dolph's plight. "Yes."

"Don't you want to know if they have one for your dragon chick?"

"She's not 'my dragon chick'." Not yet and not anymore, apparently. "Besides, I know for a fact everyone who can hack into the Silver Beret database already works for Them."

"Oh yeah, I've been using the 'age 10' file all along."

"..."

"I'm joking."

"..."

"Really."

"..."

"Ok, I'm not."

"..."

"...hah, got you again..."

"..."

"...ok, how about we don't talk about it anymore?"

"...right."

"Well, now I think about it, the really bad thing is losing the customized stuff and all my professional grade hardware. I can download everything I need in a couple of seconds."

"Good for you."

"Yeah."

I sighed. "Are you going to be at ExpoCreed tomorrow?"

"Sure. I might find the Seeker there."

"Yay, violence."

"Ardy will have a stand there, ya know. He'll be representing the Black Order of Mages, Illuminati, Natural Aristocracy, Sages and Hatters of Utter Normalcy."

I nodded to myself. "I love ExpoCreed. My religion doesn't even seem too wacky among the others."

"Yeah. I have the exact same feeling," agreed Dolph.

XIII

The macaxeira bagel with flain-flavored cream cheese and the double-cream five-spice latte stood in front of me, begging for mercy. But nay, I hungered.

"I know only three things in life, my friend. First, you no-mind the ko threat."

"Fairly abstract," I conceded.

"Two, thinking in one dimension is difficult enough."

I took a sip of the latte and made myself a white cream moustache. "I suppose..."

"Oh yeah, regarding your chess thing, don't forget Duchess Ticine's thesis on (n+2t)d wave dynamics."

"Oh, there is one?" I dismembered the bagel.

"She's a clever girl, that one. Kylie always had the best grades in pure math, but you can't discard the Ticine knack in applied astrophysics."

I nodded. "What's the third thing?"

"'You don't anger a sushiman whose hands bear no scars.'"

"..." I looked at the mess his hands were. "Uhm. You were supposed to give me love-life advice."

"Well, I don't know much about that." He hacked away at an unfortunate rice cylinder that would soon be submitted to my mercilessness. "Have you tried tango?"

"Er. No, not really."

"Well, there you are."

I sighed. "We were going to compare Gazraki and Napoleonic doctrines. Dreksandr versus Jomini. We would trace the influence until the present SpacePlanet Battle doctrine."

"Sounds romantic."

"Oh yeah." It was. Really.

"What's a Gazraki?"

I cringed at the display of overspecialization. "Um. You know, the humanoid natives of Gamezoha Prime? A warlike race some say shaped permanently the psychological outlook of the empire created when the dragons subjugated and assimilated them. There hasn't been a Gazraki for several millenia now, but the blood is still around today in what we call now native Gamezohans, amidst all the mingling with humans, hungardians, wendauerians and less orthodox kinds of humanoids."

He thought for a while. "Nope, doesn't ring any bells."

"The gray hair comes from them, not from mingling with silver dragons as is generally assumed. Ditto for the slavic looks, the decelerated experienced time sense and what have you."

"Ah, the ones with the pointy ears?"

I sighed and had some sushi. "No, no pointy ears. No antennae, spines or gills," I completed, through a mouthful of rice.

He meditated on this briefly. "Sounds boring. You sure they weren't really humans?"

"Yes. There are some minor differences in internal anatomy, I think. They're one of the races with squeedily spooches."

"Different races should have different looks," he groaned.

"Hey, go tell the Wendauerians."

"I always thought they were humans," he said, tapping his neck with the side of the knife.

"That's what they want you to think!"

He passed a towel on his forehead. "I think you're becoming somewhat paranoid."

"Ridiculous." I activated a field of darkness around me while I typed my secret code to unlock my wallet, retrieved the exact sum, payed my bill and left for the TP station, minding the invisible ethereal surveillance squids I knew were there.

I met Keh and Mitya in front of the gate that had been set aside for the event. "Hi."

"Dolph said he'd be late, so we'd better go through."

"Right. I can't wait to..." The smell of ExpoCreed interrupted me as only a sudden rush of psychedelic incense to the head can. "...hrm. Pretty... *sniff* pretty strong, isn't it?"

"We've entered right beside the Predator Peyote Preachers' booth."

"I like the rasta hairdo," observed Keh.

"At least these guys don't kill folks. One of those absolute pacifism religions."

I examined the tripping aliens. They didn't look especially harmless, except for the spaced out countenance. "Well, they'd still need a predation license to attack a citizen of the Empire."

"Yah, one came after me in the arena just the other day. Their blood is greeen! ^_^ "

I scratched my head. Getting away from Keh could do wonders for my sanity.

"Yeah, uhm... you guys wait here for Dolph, I'll take a look around to see if I can find Doom."

"Doom! Doom is near! Buy your ranch in heaven with me!"

"No, I don't mean it like that," I replied, shoving the naked old hermit away.

"Fair enough," agreed Mitya, helping me with a taser.

I made my escape. I passed beside some Catholic priests with submachine guns and a briefcase with "TOP SECRET RE: ST. KRIEGSLEY" written on it, got glared at by a Yog-Sothothian inquisitor for flipping off a box of puppies, stumbled through some kind of ceremony of goldfish worshippers celebrating their successful pilgrimage to B7765123A, choked on the fumes of a Zen Rabbi's motorcycle while trying to sing along Hava Nagila, saw an infidel being fed to the kiwis by the Voudun Stalkers of the All-Mauling Kiwi, rolled my eyes at a sufi stand-up comedian still making jokes about the size of an x-box (whatever that is), witnessed some kind of Zardarkian Not Extremely Serious Nature-Friendly Mostly Reasonable Hedonic Religion (Human Sympathizer Branch) orgy, sneaked past the three Seekers who were beating the shit out of Dolph, tip-toed so as not to interrupt a ceremony of the Adoring Sons of Chud, avoided some kind of brawl between Riot Knights and Blitz Knights who agreed black was holy, but were split respectively in the side of blue and red, ran away from a Gnomical Gnostic gnome who had some kind of skin condition, used the air vents to avoid the Nymphs' Fertility Cult recruiters-of-males, bought me a watch from a Zardarkian Great Clocksmith of the Universe Lodge initiate, danced with wolves at a Wolfpeople Tribal Raver moot, subscribed to the Mercurial Caucus' newsletter, booby-trapped some Jenova's Witnesses' holy books to release aphrodisiac gas when opened, crawled under the legs of a Big People Who Can't Spell-ite prophet, heard the maniacal ramblings of a Tinfoil-Kult seer shouting "Krystal shall bring the End of the Million-Year Reich!", got mugged by a Wiccan Mithraite Shinto zealot, ate popcorn while watching the action in the War-Deity-Cults wing climax in an awesome carnage, donated money to the Evangelix Against Cruelty to Fish, donated a medium-sized stoat to be immolated in Our Lord Cthulhu's glory, grooved in the Mass Of People Who Worship Jimi Hendrix (So Far As To Paying A Priest Of Some Other Religion To Resurrect HIM), picked up a leaflet of prophecies by Antonio Conselheiro, fired a couple of rounds at some Razielite fundies who wanted to reave my soul, knelt in front of a picture of former Emperor and deity Wernher Gauss, thereby earning a 30% refund on my taxes, laughed when a Dervish of Kali told me he had kidnapped some girl named Amaya for the Great Glory of Ninazu but harbored suspicions that maybe his mentor, the wise Zoroaster, could be sided with that scary scary Eçaraia entity, drank from a pool of Protoss distilled soul essences (which gave me a stomach ache), doubted when the cleric of the Church of Regressology told me the members of his church had the ability to once in their lives return in time to avert the one worst thing that would have happened to them, which meant they were always afraid of bad experiences because they meant something worse was to come, bought a ticket for an exposition of ancient Gazraki religious artifacts (which all happened to be swords; the Gazraki religion was primarily a cult of weapons), rode a Sublime Rideworthy Gosling of the Coisismo Guru, which filled my soul with bliss and my mind with clarity, but sadly the bliss was shareware and I had only a thirty minute trial period before it expired to register and obtain permanent benefits, sung praise of the Lord with twenty-two hot Assyrian anabaptist mermaids, had no pocket money for the First Church of the Hobo Christ, despaired along some Argentino-Mexican Sphexoren Nihilism Zealots With No Eyes sectarians (verás que todo es mentira, verás que nada es amor - que al mundo nada le importa: Yira... yira...), helped some virginal Sisters of Mercilessness carry heavy crates with such plentiful human organs, envied the ordaining of a new Silberwyrmritter who would have the chance to, perhaps, fight side by side with Adelais, took a picture of the sunglasses the Monks of Cool were wearing this season, refused the opportunity to impregnate the Amazon High Priestess, understood the importance of the Zigs of Great Justice, meditated with a holy man from a trucker stop asteroid, took notes of the mathematical demonstrations of a High Sophist of the Anaxerretibes Academia who was using a tetrahedron to demonstrate both the cubicness of time and the evil of poking people, and then I found Doom.

"Hullo, Ardy."

"I'm in the exercise of Natural Aristocracy here, Corso."

"As you wish, Altgraf von Doom."

"Yeah, that's better."

I looked around the stand. It featured a fake but functional fireplace, in front of which Doom sat in a throne holding a cup of wine pretty dramatically. "What's up? No-one interested in the BOMINASHUN creed?"

"It's more than a creed, it's defiance before the tyrannous stars. We fight the collapse of honor, egalitarianism, the destruction of the aristocracies across the Galaxy. Can you believe most Earth traditional families had lost their identity by the beginning of their twenty-second century? That's why the Thaynamese Consensus was signed by all Illuminati, mage chantries, royal families, seer cabals and... um, hatter tweezers. Apparently. Yeah."

I nodded. "Makes a little sense. At least in comparison to the rest of the stuff here."

"Right. Hey, can you do me a favor? I have to deliver this datacube to a Dentonite Monk, but I also have to stay here and wait for an Imperial Rites courier."

"Sure, whatever."

And so I braved the jungle of credulous fools again, getting smitten by idols, strangled by pseudocherubs, smeared with fouled milk by cabalists....

XIV

Gestapo leather trenchcoat, sunglasses in the dark, a face so unaccostumed to smiling it could sprain a muscle to try. That was probably the guy I was looking for.

"Hello."

"Greetings, Robert Corso."

"What, a data uplink? Sweet."

"Just correcting a human deficiency. Myopia on a different scale."

"Save the anti-luddite speech, I voted on your party for the Chamber of Unified Fields and General Principles." I pulled the DC from my pocket and offered it to him.

"Sorry. Topographies of ignorance abound," he replied, taking the DC. "Incidentally, I'm Node Leonhard Denton."

"Node?"

"A generic title. There isn't really a hierarchy within the Paradigm."

"So I'm Node Bob?"

He shook his head. "Theoretically. All conscious beings are nodes, but we usually reserve the title to those who already joined the Paradigm."

"What do you call everyone else?"

"Varying topographies of ignorance." There seemed to be some kind of unfathomable in-joke involved.

"I see." I looked around in his booth. "Do you have, er, leaflets?"

"Our heuristic system suggests that anyone without a data implant yet is likely impervious to such lighter forms of propaganda for our cause. I can send you a copy of our 'manifesto' if you'll lower your DI spam filters for a moment."

"Sure, why not."

"Done."

"Enlarge your penis... enlarge your penis... oh, right, here it is."

"It is a sad noosphere," he replied, with a shrug.

"Makes one insecure, doesn't it?"

"Not necessarily. The one in question can already be augmented."

I look away discreetly. "Erm. So, anything I should tell Doom?"

"He should inform his superiors that the Paradigm is pleased by how the Illuminati arranged the recovery of its infrastructure from DAMOCLES. The defective Intelligence will have a hard time if it tries a comeback. Cooperation between our paradigms, after all these years, is pleasantly nostalgic for our oldest Node."

"...oldest Node. Right." I put away my notebook, while Leonhard watched with mild interest.

"That's a remarkably ineffective data storage device."

"Yeah, but I can't live without the adrenalin rush the risk of paper cuts brings." I waved goodbye. "Yes, um, good luck... assimilating folks... or something."

He nodded in uninterested acknowledgement. "Incidentally," he said when I was about to leave.

"Er. Yes?"

"You have a white cream moustache on your face."

"Oh." I wiped it off. "Right. Um. See you around, then." I made my escape wondering if I had accidentally created a new religion. That might explain why all these people had had cream on their noses while bowing around me and singing songs in my praise.

Not ten yards away, I was jumped by members of the Church of Willful Begging (and Prophecy!). They were like the folks from Hobo Christ, but more aggressive, and mad to the last man.

“The end is near! The Mi-Go are coming!”

“Nay! The trainman cometh!”

“Netsach Yisrael Lo Yeshaker!”

“Omg stfu zergrush kekekeke!”

“Have you ever felt like you lived in the tangent of a greater storyline?”

“No,” I replied, and emptied my wallet for freedom. Unzipping my pocket proved unwise, however, as it was immediately crammed with propaganda by those horribly skillful reverse-pick-pockets who made their fortunes in this kind of events.

I skimmed through the offers of salvation as I walked in the general direction of Ardy’s booth.

F41t|-| 0n f1|23 – c|-|u|2c|-| 0f t3h l33t3nt|-| d4y – p0w3|23d 8y J35u5.

Memoirs of a gay dervish in Transylvania.

Watch me eat children! sayeth Satan!

In the turkey all along – this is my favorite show.

Dymaxion Holy Ghost; rapture through a geodesic dome.

Anatomia de um alce chapadão – o seminário.

The Gospel of St. Vihayo.

For a new Great Businessperson Purge.

Have you slaughtered your child today?

Daisakusen and you: the Third Mecha-Samurai division needs Shinto chaplains!

I, antikythera golem; and other kwabbalalistikcke enochian lekturz by Dominican Inquisitor Q.

Scientology’s new gift to humanity! Love removal machine – it’s spotlessmindtastic!

Pwayse the lawd – today’s message from the Church of Small Girls With Cute But Incurable and Crippling Speech-Related Disablements.

Respect the Block! Tame the Schatten Ich!

9 pm – Flavius Vegetius Renatus Shrine – prayers for our boys in the Presidential Jäger Chausseur Pathfinder Sayeret Ranger Brigade.

Death, be not proud – you too shall die – join the Cult of Eçaraia… today!

And so on, cheesy leaflet after cheesy leaflet. I was drowning in a hostile meme pool. Then someone spoke behind me. “Einstand!” The voice was firm, as it would have to be in one such ceremony. All the indoctrination of the first few years of my life surged back through my soul, or as I had been raised to say, propellant. I froze.

The bishop walked around me, examining my clothing with tired contempt. I returned the favor, minding his semi-automatic turban, his nine-millimeter robes.

“You do not have your hands with you,” he said, finally. He was referring to the pair of guns I had received at birth.

“No. I’m no longer a follower. Your eminence.”

He shook his head. “It’s not how this works, and you know it. Young men these days are flocking towards the Gamezohan Imperial Religion, or the sects of Dentonites or Prestonites. The latter has been especially attractive for potential Glockians. Few want to commit to the atonement of the Einstand.”

“No shit. Your eminence.”

He pulled his guns, sleek, black. “You don’t have that option, though. It’s in your primer and in your powder.” That’s mind and soul for the uninitiated. He extended one of the guns to me, a privilege of priesthood, being allowed to part thusly with one’s hands. I took it.

“The latest statistics say modern ammunition fails only once in a trillion shots. One in a trillion – bleak odds, no? Don’t you wish you had faith now?”

I looked around, but I knew I had no escape. If I were going to try to shoot the bishop, he’d have pistol-whipped me already.

I put the gun to my head.

“Now you’re asking yourself – is Glock still on your side – after all these years?”

Indeed. The thought had crossed my primer. Was I as bitterly alone as I’d like to believe, desensitizing me from all responsibility over my fate? There was maths, and there was physics, and then there was the unexplainable fact seven out of ten Glockians survived their Einstand. If Glock didn’t exist, I had one chance in a trillion. If he did, I had zero, because I was definitely in the undeserving 30%. What if I survived? I could still say the one in a trillion thing worked for me. There would still be reasonable doubt, right? I wouldn’t have to actually go and believe. The bishop could have loaded the gun with duds – of course, he’d never do that, I was raised to believe, but who knows. All priesthood went through one Einstand per year. Surviving leads to inevitable promotions. It was probably just a matter of statistics the current Arch-ayatollah-of-the-laser-sight lived to one hundred and eighty, right?

I pointed the gun at some random guy in the pavilion and pressed the trigger. He screamed in bloody agony as his kneecap was blasted into tomorrow.

I placed the gun to my head and fired, and click, the gun went.

“Bullshit,” I said. “You knew I’d spend the first round on something else. The second was a dud. Or maybe the round had a tiny computer in it…”

The bishop shook his head smiling, took his gun and left.

“Ok, you’re a fag,” I muttered. I went home to study and bury myself on profane, secular things that wouldn’t freak me out in fear of a metaphysical giant gaseous anthropomorphic gunsmith of some sort. My friends would just assume Hellenic Nuit-Worshipping Vixens of Thelema had eaten my feet and hammered nails into the stubs. Like the saying of the Hungardian Church of Coprophilia goes, sometimes life tastes like shit. The rest of the time, it’s awful.

XV

I signed up over the noosphere for a quick freelancer job writing a folder for tourists, for the Ministry of Administering and Monitoring the Careful Bringage of Barbarians Into the Empire. I embraced the abuse of capital letters and exclamation marks as my little vengeance against all that was good and pure.

Top Ten FUN Facts about Gamezoha and its Happy People!!!!

10. Gamezohans LOVE cats! Displacing Panthers, Parachronic Lions, Cyberian Tigers – you name it, some crazy pratician pater familias has probably bought a couple for his whiny pampered HOT daughter!! Empress Nike sleeps cuddled with her dear Leopard named ASS-KICKING!!! A LEOPARD called ASS-KICKING!!!! Isn’t it WHACKED!!!!!

9. Gamezohans learn several UNUSUAL subjects in School – or should we say – SCOOL! LOL!! Among these, Psycho-History, Urbis Steersmanship, NEOLOGISM, Kounter-Insurgensy, mid-air refueling, MATHS, underwater demolition, the exquisite art of the Zen Debugger, librisphagia, and ars boni et aequi!!! So if you don’t know what one is talking about, YOU’RE PROBABLY NOT SUPPOSED TO LOL!!!!!

8. The UNIFICATION OF GAMEZOHA is celebrated on the TWENTY-NINTH day of MARCH!! That’s when the Battle of Sabr-Lfahr-on-Ka[clicking sound]Ko Novum occurred, between the Gaussian Dragons and their allies and the Gazraki remnants, led respectively by Grand Master Aberdash-Aberdash and Marshal Dreksandr Gz-Jahëetii!!! The victory was followed by, in the words of historian GAMDOHA-GAMDOHA, “PERFUNCTORY RAPING [OF THEIR WOMEN AND CHILDREN]. OUR HEART REALLY WASN’T IN IT, BUT IT’S SOMETHING YOU JUST HAVE TO DO. FOR THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING, YOU SEE.”!!!!

7. Gamezoha is NOT a State!!! Because of a LOOPHOLE in the SALYRAN PLATYPUS HUNT ACT of 1699, territorial Sovereignty was sold to BeneFaktor Corporation, pharmaceutics company eventually bought by GazTek, the state-owned fabrique d’armes that evolved from the Imperial Blacksmith’s Guild, GazTek which was then Bought by the Trader’s Federation, which was Bought by the Tic-Tac Bank, which was Bought by Imperial Dragon Arms, which merged with six other corporations to form Lucifuge Corporation, of which the Imperial Family owns Sixteen percent of the shares!!!! The Gamezohan Imperial Administration is, legally and technically, a green cloth embroidery club, at least according to the Order of Pure Law’s lawyers, who also happen to be the owners of the Banker’s Guild and the major stockholders of Lucifuge Corporation!!!!! (The GIA however reserves the right to maintain a big army and beat the shit out of folks on a regular basis.)

6. One of those words you don’t find in most other languages is the Gamezohan verb to schadm, from the old Gazraki Kxa!n! I schadm, you schadm, he schadms!! To schadm is to simulate, but, however, by actually doing the simulated thing!!! It has been previously translated as simulacrize!!!! For example, if you want to simulate a wound to evade work, and do so by actually inflicting to yourself a wound, you’re schadming a wound!!!! Nifty Huh!!!!!

5. The AV-4 is the most common civilian vehicle in Gamezoha!! It’s a flying van!!! It’s cheap, comes in several colors, and if you buy fuzzy dice for the mirror you gain FOR FREE twin Gatling Gauss Pulse Xaser Rail-Needlers for defense against the manifold dangers outside of Gamezoha!!!!

4. The WHOLE city of Kubrik (population fifty million) is inside A BIG FUCKING HUGE GEODESIC DOME!!! DUDE!!!! THAT’S HOW THE WEATHER IS SO GOOD, THE AIR SO PURE, THE GARDENS SO PRETTY AND YOU’RE MONITORED 24/7 FOR UNGAMEZOHAN ACTIVITIES!!!!!!

3. The most erotic parts of the female anatomy for a Gamezohan man are the female’s navel, armpits and ankles!!!! If you want to party, girls, don’t forget to get yourselves some pretty ankle bracelets and navel piercings at Kantonnen, Fëanor & Hellerstein Lightsmiths (Mitokana Plaza 108) – the best place for such things in the Universe!!!!! Oh yeah, and the delightful Nike-Black deodorant fragrance – made with the extract of silver oak and feycalyptus leaves – ALL megalosexuals are using it – available in any Duty Free shop!!!!!!!

2. Rule of thumb – if the hair is gray, you salute, if it’s silver, you kneel!!!!! Unless we’re talking about old people here!!!!!!!! (In which case, please report to the Ministry of Doing Away With Old Things. Thank you for your cooperation.)

1. Happiness is mandatory on Tuesdays!!! (It was also so on Mondays but there were far too many riots!!!!) [smiley face goes here, the end]

This document has been approved by all 596 appropriate offices of GIA bureaucracy as 100% full of The Truth. Content is rated JC-fourteen for foul language, implicit AOL syndrome and underlying sex deprivation. Imprimatur. The slaves shall serve. Objectioners r t gh3y.

After that, I paid my mother a visit. Mom lived in a fly’s eye house right in the middle of the nuclear wasteland at Gamezoha D. A small incident with the teleporter left me with a lingering headache, but otherwise the trip over AV-4 was quite brief and pleasant. It was a pretty landscape, if creepy, and mom painted it with Lovecraftian glee.

“Hello, mom.”

“You! Here! Are the Mi-Go attacking?”

“No. Not quite yet, last time I checked.”

“Oh. What happened, then, my dear angsty son of unending pathos?”

“I passed my Einstand, mom.”

She put down her painting brush. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s awesome, darling. How are you feeling?”

“…less intelligent, for one thing.”

“You know what the book says. The primer’s no good for anything but to begin the process in which the propellant exhausts the casing’s purpose.”

“Pretty metaphysical, don’t you think?”

“Darling, that’s what daddy said, and daddy drank all the time. Don’t you think he could have used some metaphysics?”

I scratched my head.

“In school, what was the answer you got most often when asking how stuff worked?”

“‘Magic’,” I said. It was a sad fact.

“There you go. How did Wilhelm put out the fires of a hundred stars during the Anti-Ceremonial Burial Wars?”

“Magic.”

“How does time kata work?”

“A lot of self-discipline. And magic.”

“How can a single Riot Knight massacre a city, a NeoSpartiate a planet, an Arcanoi Mistanen a star cluster?”

“Magic and More Magic.”

She nodded. “That’s right. M.M.M.”

I sighed. “But these things have scientific explanations.”

“Yes, of course, dear. There’s the Science of Magic. One of the finest courses in the GIU.”

“But metaphysics feels so dogmatic.”

“Everything that works within the constraints of a reality is dogmatic, dear. Even when there’s no reality. Especially then.”

I looked away, through one of the dome’s solar panels-slash-windows. I saw a line of AV-4s. Maybe blue, maybe brown, maybe green, but they were turning black before my very eyes.

“There’s a girl involved, right?”

“Why?”

“You’ve got the Corso look, but worse.”

“Humph.”

“Maybe you’ve got pathax.”

“It’s not a virus.”

“A girl, then.”

“Alright.”

“Have you called the Ministry of Flow’s Tech Support?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“They’d make me happy without her.”

“Aso.”

“I’m very suspicious of happiness from eudaimonic fulfillment of one’s potentials. Sounds like a very virtuous thing.”

“What have you been doing for yourself, then?”

“Working. There were these Mexicans, too. We sang.”

“Oh… kay…”

“Besar tus labios quisiera! Besar tus labios quisiera, malagueña salerosa, y decirte niña hermosa...”

“And what have you been reading?”

“Poe. Forhak. De Azevedo. Sonkyof. Some Alisia. Yorke.”

“By Glock. Not Yorke.”

“Yes.”

“Ok, I’m going to have to shoot you with this dart gun full of Happy Happy Joy Joy ™ now, ok?”

“But mom.”

“Sorry, it’s for your own good. A small help to make you fit the barrel and find your trajectory.”

I scratched my head. “Well, at least it’s chemical happiness. I was afraid you’d make me find satisfaction in some kind of altruistic or artistic endeavor.”

“Glock forbid,” she replied, with motherly love.

She shot me, and I went all the way over the rainbow, and then I found the love underlying all fuzzy little animals, the green of grass under the warm loving sun, the bliss of breeze, the music in trickling water, the freshness of the Earth, the gracefulness of the flying birds, the diligence of the carefree bee, the zen abandon of the ant, the hopeful rhythms of a beating heart, the delicious shiver of when one sits in the shadow of a mossy tree after running in the fields, the golden wheat fields, the small diamonds in the morning grass, the fragile art in a snow flake, the devotion of a dog, the helplessness of a puppy, the wide curious eyes of a baby, leaves in the wind, flowers blossoming, and a series of other glorious little things that would have triggered a bout of nausea if HHJJ hadn’t schadmed happiness in me.

“Now hold on to that, until the lying to yourself becomes so tiring your brain gives up and just assimilates the enactment as its truth,” she taught me.

XVI

We sat in the Kovalenko Meat Bar, we the warthogs.

“Earth is going to heck and you can save only one thing. What do you save?” asks Dolph.

“Vatican City,” says Doom. “The best thing that crappy planet produced in terms of mehum management.”

“The duet of Roy Orbison and K.D. Lang for ‘Crying’,” says Mitya. “It’s prehistoric, but worth a lot to me.”

“Keh-related aggregated value, huh?”

“No shit.”

“Tucupi,” I said. “And jambú and maniçoba. The greatest-tasting things in the galaxy.”

Dolph scratched his head. “Have you heard of the juices secreted by a dryad’s…”

“Shut up,” I offered.

“Well, I’d take the women.”

“Shut up,” we offered. “And that’s not one thing.”

“Neither is the Vatican City.”

“He’s got a point there,” said Mitya. His external communication interface rang. “Excuse me.”

We watched expectantly.

“Ok, honey muffin, I’m on it,” he said, finally.

“What was it?” Ardaster asked.

“Bob ran away.”

“…eh?”

“Bob’s the cat.”

“But it’s a she-cat!”

“I know.”

“…”

“Anyway,” said Mitya. “She’s really sad and wants me to duel with Bob to the death because of it.”

“Duel with the cat? Isn’t that silly?” Asked Dolph. Then he blinked as understanding obvious to anyone not stoned out of his soul dawned. “Oh.”

“Ok,” I said.

“Ok then.”

“Needle Chill Square, midnight.”

“Gun and saber?” Mitya asked, referring to the traditional Gamezohan dueling weapons.

“Of course.”

“Seconds?”

“I can have Dolph.”

“Ok, Doom’s mine.”

“Fine enough.”

“Insurance policies?”

“Everything by the book.”

“Old school or Tyler Ticine-reformed?”

“I’m all about old school.”

“Good.”

“No cheerleaders then?” asked Dolph, suddenly filled with sadness.

“I wouldn’t have one.”

“Keh would like to watch, though,” observed Mitya.

“I’ll get myself one, then,” I said.

“See you midnight,” he said, standing up.

“Yes. Midnight.”

I was left alone with Dolph, who made annoying sounds drinking his goulash.

“Dolph?”

“Yes?”

“Can you prepare my weapons?”

“Of course. The Panic and the Wombat, right?”

“Yes. Phobos and Phascolomys.”

“Which is the gun?”

“Phobos.”

“K.”

“See you half an hour earlier?”

“Sure. What you’re going to do until then?”

“Find myself a woman.”

“Awesome.”

“I say.”

We met later at the right time and place.

“Wow.”

“Nifty, no?”

“Hello, Ms. Empress.”

“Hi.”

“I’m a big fan of your work.”

“I can see that.”

“Can I smear flain oil on…”

“No.”

“The white chocolate thing?”

“Nope.”

“The thing with the peach?…”

“Nuh-huh.”

“…ok, what’s she doing here?”

“I posted in the Noosphere ‘I know who killed Thyme’ and waited.”

“That was pretty clever,” said Nike.

“Why, thank you.”

“Wait, you told her about Keh?”

“Yes.”

“And the stone?”

“Yup.”

“Aren’t we going to die?”

“Don’t think so.”

“K.”

Pause.

“So you knew Keh, Ms. Empress?”

“Call me Nike.”

“Of course.”

“Gorgeous chick, irresistible buttocks, long blond hair in braids?”

“That’d be the one.”

“So yes. A childhood friend.”

“Ah.” Dolph looked away thoughtfully. “Just a friend, though?”

“Dolph,” I said.

“Maybe a colorful friendship?”

“Shut up,” I offered.

“K.”

Pause.

“Say, how do you do the thing with the…”

“There they are. Thank Glock,” I said, genuinely grateful. He was about to ask about the infamous watermelon trick.

“Good night,” said Doom. “Oh, hello there, your imperial majesty.”

“Hi.”

“So, um, let’s just get this thing finished quick. I’ve got some work to do for tomorrow.”

“Alright,” I said, picking up the Panic and the Wombat. Mitya did the same with Gun and Pointy Thingy.

Now, I was no Hubertus Ramirez, but I did get swordplay lessons in school with Raul de Astarloa d’Actylos and the Glockian upbringing made me something of an artist with the thing.

Well, that had been at least ten years before. Since then, my radical pacifism and absolute mistrust of physical exercise meant Mitya could safely wear a blindfold without dramatically raising the odds in my favor.

“Can I have some popcorn?” asked Dolph.

“Sure!” ^_^

“Is it bacon-flavored?” asked Doom, peeking.

“Cheese.”

“Awesome.”

I raised my right arm and touched the tip of his saber with mine. The square had no artificial illumination in full moon nights, when it became a surreally black and white landscape.

“May your colon chip and shatter.”

It began with a lunge I immediately parried. The nature of our katas meant we had no chance of actually landing a shot at any range beyond point-blank, so the entire point of the combat was to open the foe’s defenses until it was safe to move the left arm close for firing without the risk of getting it slashed in a saber parry. You could also just skewer the other guy, too, if you managed to.

Sabers locked for corps-à-corps, I landed a blow with my gun on Mitya’s chest but he pushed my hand aside effectively parrying my shot. A similar attempt by himself required that I pulled down my right arm to push the threat away, unlocking sabers and allowing him to roundhouse-punch my jaw with his hand guard. I would have to use teeth-regrowth mouthwash. The blood seemed black in the dim light, and I observed what a nice contrast it made against the white tiles.

Probably the HHJJ speaking.

I spun and fired a pair of three round bursts, forcing him to focus on his defensive stance to avoid being in the trajectory of the hollow-point rounds. My saber landed, a shallow slash in his right shoulder reducing his dexterity with the mêlée weapon.

Perhaps too eagerly, I tried to hit a bullet in his solar plexus, a left arm thrust that he parried by firing a round into my elbow. I barely managed to push aside his follow-up gun attack by hitting it with my saber, but a slash of his own on my left forearm made my grip falter. My Glock fell to the ground.

I tried to win time by slashing at his throat. He parried the blade with a bullet, sending Phascolomys’ shattered remains from my hand.

He landed a solid blow with his gun into my chest and pressed the trigger.

XVII

“What is better than two hundred shields?” asked Ramirez.

“No idea, boss,” I said, continuing the inventory of the Anthropophagi section.

“Books, Corso. Old books.”

“Really? You can give the two hundred shields to two hundred burly men and have them…”

“Ah, but books are better. I’ll explain.” He picked up Liber hyssax y chambara. “Books are potions of experience, Corso, very literally. Sources of power beyond their mere content. And like wine, this power becomes all the stronger over the years.”

I looked up. It was kinda interesting. “What do you mean, literally?”

“I’m saying that if you read, say, this book, this book that was written while Gamdoha-Gamdoha, the last First Dragon to die, still lived, you’ll learn more than the mere intellectual contents of it. And I’m not referring to wisdom, either. That’s highly overrated.” He smiled, and passed his shaking hand on his beard. He seemed excited. “No, you’ll become better holistically, as if your general rating as an entity had been raised numerically and non-transitively. If I had begun my reading by the right books, I wouldn’t be too old and tired today to read all this collection, as only Zoroaster has, and then I’d be as powerful as him. I could then become an L-cosmos-naut, drifting between realities and marauding their own books, joining thusly the realms of the meta-semiological deities.”

I failed to understand, dramatically.

“You’re still young, though maybe too human in lifespan. Still, take the time to read some of my best stuff every week. It’s an order,” he added with a wry smile.

I nodded, and took the Liber.

That’s how, after Glock stopped Mitya’s bullet in its chamber, I parried his gun between my palms, and with a flick of my wrist sent it spinning into the air.

We stared at it spin.

Then I kicked him in the balls, and then kicked him in his chin, sending him back onto the sharp, impaling-prone rails that give the square its name.

Miraculously, it so happened that a cod-man hobo that had been sleeping near the rails had chosen the exact worst moment to stand up and check what was happening. Mitya bounced off him, and the unlucky bastard was the one sent onto the spikes and then beyond into the cold waters of lake Gauss, the sushi slices sinking with soft plops, followed by the humming of a school of Razor Piranhas feasting.

“Well,” said Doom. “You know the rules. Two deus ex machinas mean a draw.”

Mitya nodded. “A result as good as any,” I observed, and shrugged. “Are you going to kill Keh now, y’majesty?”

She pulled out sai from her belt. “Finally. You boys sure took your time.”

Keh giggled and produced nunchaku out of seemingly nowhere.

Dolph nudged me with his elbow. “I’ll know the world is good if this ends up in sex.”

“Shut up,” I offered, and looked at my holo-watch. I saluted its ingenuity. A normal watch would be covered with the blood running down my arm.

As calculated, the black AV-4 landed a few seconds later, just when the fight was about to start. Special Nova Agent Damascene slithered out, followed by four deputy marshals bearing big silver guns with green laser sights.

I felt all eyes turn to Kylie, with her short black hair, the neat black WiB suit, and the kinky cadaver paleness that was oh so irresistible.

“Oh, just go away, you,” said the Empress.

“I regret to inform your imperial majesty that I’ll have to inform the archduke of your involvement in this.”

Nike sighed. “I’m trying to solve things. You’ll just endanger Wernher, the Empire and everything.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not how it works. I can’t cover this kind of thing up. I am the law.”

“No, hang on,” interrupted Doom, as if from a couple of worlds away. “Jacob Syne is the law.”

“Love is the law?” Mitya suggested.

“Inspector Javert,” I remembered.

“Bird is the word,” added Dolph.

“Shut up,” offered Nike.

“Yeah, shut up.” ^_^

Kylie looked around. “Your brother is not remarkably wise, but maybe by informing him I can force you to be.”

The Empress sighed and looked away. “Well, I suppose things can hardly become worse now.”

“No killing your sister-in-law, either.”

“Takako’s going to kill me.”

“I somehow doubt it.”

Nike chuckled sadly. “Ok. She’s going to kill you. And Keh. And Wernher, and Nickie, and Wild Thing, and Wyn, and Oscar, and she’ll only stop once everyone I love is dead.”

“Except her.”

“You don’t know a thing about me and her.”

“I know everything. At least, everything that can be learned from years of surveillance. And that, you should know, is a lot.”

Dolph nudged me. “Voyeur! This is so awesome.”

“We’re so going to jail,” I observed.

Kylie seemed to notice us for the first time. “Oh yeah, take these fools to Information Retrieval.”

“I’m so smart,” I observed.

“We love you for it,” consoled Mitya.

We went free the following day, however, once they had read our minds and made sure we knew nothing of the whereabouts of the stone. We would have been prosecuted for the smuggling, but Doom’s mentor, in the exercise of one of his six or seven functions heading the justice of the Empire, decided not to press charges.

Dueling, of course, is perfectly legal. As for Keh and Nike, it was unrealistic to assume they’d be in any real trouble – legally, at least.

~*~

I saw Adelais again when walking down Gun And Blade Avenue in my way to work. The sky flickered, and everyone froze. The data terminals, the dome’s internal surface, the holographic interfaces began announcing the surprise attack from Dead Space by a gargantuan Mi-Go fleet. The entire galaxy of Dewnhëem was expected to be overrun in forty hours. Prinzip Uziel was presumed dead.

She grabbed my arm, and pulled me close to her. Her face has a burn in her left cheek, deep to the bone, and her straight, shoulder-length silver hair was soaked with green blood.

“The Mi-Go are coming,” she said softly. “The computer projections say odds are a million to one against us, so I give it fifty-fifty.”

“Go do your thing, then,” I said, holding her mauled hands. “The Empire’s way. Return with your shield or on it.”

She hugged me. “We’ll always have Kubrik.”

We kissed, and she warped back to the frontline while her lips still touched mine.

~*~

The scary kitten from hell had found her way back to my apartment. I had been watching the news for some thirty straight hours. She purred between my feet. I sighed, and finally let her onto my lap.

She vomited cat food, rotten cod and an Aceldama stone on me.

Generalissimus Gàrakz to all Warthogs. Report immediately for very pertinent gaming.

The Empire ticks still.

---

 

Return to Book III

Return to FrontPage