Upon a narrow strip of land, barely larger than a bus stop, stood a tiny gray concrete building, its skewed roof twisted into a painful geometric shape. No windows, signs or graffiti. One steel door, locked at all hours.
Inside was a church blacksite dedicated to counter-intelligence against God.
I like the idea of a church that has, through analysis of its own holy texts, identified God as a super threat capable of engineering extinction-level events, and has dedicated itself to a cold war against said threat.
(BTW, the Bible doesn't explicitly call God omnipotent, and the verses that are cited in the doctrine as evidence of such, e.g. "The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples", can also be interpreted as cautionary warnings about state actors being inherently compromised).
I liked it when they used my favorite title of address, 'Your Emergency'. While I would hesitate to call myself majestic, graceful, excellent or honorable, I was definitely emergent.
"My nature is chaos, and my love is a pyre."
The line went silent. Whoever was on the other side evidently needed a moment to ponder my revelation.
Upon a narrow strip of land, barely larger than a bus stop, stood a tiny gray concrete building, its skewed roof twisted into a painful geometric shape. No windows, signs or graffiti. One steel door, locked at all hours.
Inside was a church blacksite dedicated to counter-intelligence against God.
sitting in my monastic cell
diligently copying texts letter by letter
unburdened by worldly concerns
becoming a mere tool for divine will
lost in the haze of holy obedience
man papalymo's fucking crazy. 5 years ago louisoix fucking died and this THIRTY SEVEN YEAR OLD MAN was like, oh, leading the circle of knowing? no, i'm much too busy helping this 20-year-old war orphan poorly pretend to be her decade older sister in the world's most fucked up grieving process that none of you are allowed to comment on. i think we should all follow the young woman whose dad thancred killed and make her feel like the weight of the whole realm rests on her shoulders. i'm thirty-seven years old and i think this is a good idea.
okay well that went poorly and now far down the line we've all reunited. tragically the young woman we made our leader has disappeared due to complicated magic. now we don't know who will lead us. luckily this 16-year-old suggested we become a horizontal organization and i happily accepted. anyways now that this meeting's over i have to kill myself in front of you all and scar my student forever, just like louisoix did to us. peace!
what they don't tell you about shb is that we're actually seeing run 100 of a timeloop where thancred has fucked things up in some way every prior time and thats why his behavior is Shutting Up And Trying To Stand Still. he completely blunders into the True Path which might not even be the Best path
one half of his heart gets its wish and ryne euthanizes herself and becomes Minfilia, and thagamemnon realizes it wasn't worth it, it was never worth it
he is Too protective of ryne & it leads to her getting killed by smth she didn't have the skills to deal with
he never rescues ryne from eulmore and the wol dies on mt gulg and ends the world
he parks himself and ryne in il mheg and ran'jit's soldiers burn down the shelves and urianger dies
he parks himself and ryne at the crystarium and eulmore invades and sacks the city
he parks himself and ryne with the night's blessed and when fort gohn gets burned down y'shtola dies
he never lets them get anywhere near other people and ryne gets so lonely she runs away and dies
the classic "maybe if i die it'll end the loop and ill be free" no it doesnt
he does everything right, he's kind and generous and loving, and still she dies in some horrible accidental way
the run right after that where he's a mean bastard because he's exhausted and heartsore and maybe it'll work. it does not
ryne kills him
ryne mercy kills him after an injury
he gets sin eater'd
he gets leafman'd
he stomps off in a huff in amh araeng and falls into the cinder surprise sand canyon
he radiates such exhaustion and misery that a pixie "takes pity" on him and puts him in a dream forever
he snaps and tries to beat the shit out of emet-selch after one too many snide comments and is reduced to a pile of blood and ash
he manages to convince urianger to leave the shelves and go on the road with him and ryne. life is really really good for a few months until urianger gets light-poisoned and begs thancred for a mercy killing
he gets captured by eulmore while ensuring ryne's escape and ran'jiit tortures him before putting him on the meol diet
he gets heavily wounded in a duel with ran'jit. ryne, who he makes an effort to connect to in this loop, refuses to leave him and gets re-captured and then executed by vauthry
he's a mach-10 controlling asshole (as opposed to his canon mach-5) and ryne runs away
he pretends to be unable to speak for a loop (because he is so tired of his words changing nothing) and him and ryne get separated and the loop crashes to a close with her unable to recognize his voice calling for her in a fatal situation
he gets turned into a dog by pixies. tbh he wishes that loop had gone on longer, that was alright by him
This is a piece of writing inspired by my friend's talent in writing.
CW: isolation, unreality, fatal coldness, death.
The near total darkness swallowed everything in its path.
A bitter and burning lightless cold that chased away the feeble artificial sun.
The wretched shadow churned through the air, inky tendrils of the coldest void devoured all.
She had had this nightmare before. This terror. It lived in her head, in her spine, in her eyes.
She stumbled over her own panic. She woke up as she died.
---
Coldness. It had etched itself into every last rivet of the monitoring station. Not cold enough to incapacitate or injure, but a distinct lack of warmth. It was just expensive enough to skimp on, so it was skimped on. There were only seven people left at the unnamed and unlabelled dig site, tucked away on a classified and intentionally misplaced moon. Seven people, and an uncountable number of interchangeable robotic assistants, with intentionally restricted intelligence.
The Artificial Intelligence version of a Radio Free Zone. An organics only zone. They couldn’t connect to the full shattered space link, they couldn’t automate away their days, and they couldn’t lean on technology to pass time.
The observation node was located on the dim moon above a dead planet, and both orbited an exhausted sun. Tidally locked, staring downward. There had been no movement, no life, no sign of anything for centuries. But it still had to be watched. The watchers weren’t sure what had terrified the Broadstar Collective into watching a dead rock, nor were they going to ask.
All they had to do was affirm that the dead rock was dead rock.
The daily report came in. Thousands of probes spread evenly over the entire planet, technological eyes scouring every inch of this dead horse as if it were alive and biting.
Infra scans: Void.
Thermal scans: Void.
Visible spectrum scans: Void.
Seismic monitor: Inactive.
Oceanic report: Inhospitable.
Soil report: Inhospitable.
Atmosphere report: Inhospitable.
Biotic lifesigns: None.
Abiotic lifesigns: None.
Non electronic telescopic check: No lifesigns.
No life detected.
No motions detected.
No possible life detected.
The dead rock was still dead, of course.
From the thoroughly cooled and solidified core of the planet all the way to the edge of escape velocity, the planet was cold and dead.
Six hours of data. Six hours of verified nothingness. Six hours of her life. Six hours nearly alone.
Gloria filed the report, then added two layers of cryptographic verification to it. The exact local space time coordinates, then her momentary impulse brain pattern. With a bored heart, she clocked out and let Kalya clock in.
The smartly dressed blonde smiled at Gloria. It had once been sincere, flirty and fun smiles. Then friendly and polite smiles. Now it was the smile of friends who knew each other too well.
Kayla winked as she completed the handover procedure. “Another glorious day, Gloria? See anything new and exciting about our good friend?”
Gloria scoffed at her, then affixed an overly sleazy grin. “Same as it ever was. One of these days, I’m going to have dreams about that ‘good friend’ instead of about you. We should go on another date before that happens.”
“Let me think about it…”
Two more minutes of affirming the deadness of the planet and the aliveness of the watchers passed in rote. After two decades, they could do this paperwork in their sleep.
As they parted, Kayla’s lips gently brushed her cheek, and she let out a giggle. “Have your people reach out to my people, wife.”
“Yes ma’am!”
It had been seven years since they decided they were married. Kayla and Gloria were a team of observers, and they knew there were two other teams of two, but had no direct contact with them. The last person on base was a multitalented doctor who handled on site medicine, Dr. Silversight.
Seven lonely souls staring at a dead rock. Living on a mostly dead rock.
—
Her nightmares didn’t get better or worse. The report from the central worlds said it was a form of psychological radiation from the local solar system, and she had to report if there were changes to them.
Every night, the turbid dark devoured her. Tendrils of soft air became solid lightless destruction, invading any dream she had. But she wasn’t allowed to not dream, nor was she allowed to forget her dreams.
She filed the weekly dream summary, noting the unchanging nature of her dreams.
—
Years had passed smoothly like this, different pairs of reporters verifying the world was dead, verifying the psychic contamination was stable, a quiet and dull vigil over a fossilized corpse. Day to day, hour to hour, no change was happening, nothing spiked or dropped or rolled or bucked.
Unknown to the seven vigilant scouts, the aggregated data showed an unfortunate truth.
The planet was alive. It was active. It was thinking and watching them. It felt the harsh and bored gazes from their many eyes, it nested in the darkness of dreams where they could not approach, it encoded itself into the cryptographic signals and the margins of the report.
It incubated in their collective psyche, staring at the panopticon they built.
—
Another day staring at the bare dead rock.
The room felt slightly colder today.
Gloria barely noticed the difference, daydreaming of last night’s intimate and tender date with Kayla.
A single unobtrusive warning light flickered to life, a sign of potential movement on the opposite side of the planet.
Gloria dazedly cross checked the data. That one did show movement, but after cross checking the overlapping sensors, it was determined to be a transmission error. This happened about once a year, a probe would either briefly false positive or report offline temporarily.
But after crosschecking and manual visual inspection, it would be noted as an error within margins and added to the report. The meta analysis of failures showed no variation from standard failure rates.
—
Time passed without notice or fanfare.
—
After sweaty and exhausting fun, Gloria and Kayla fell asleep in each other's arms, snuggled together.
Gloria fell into a nightmare as usual.
Even when you know it’s a nightmare, you still feel scared. On a primal level, watching the spiral strings of death tumble through the air, chewing through the scenery, snuffing out lives left and right? You can’t simply get used to the signals your brain sends.
Gloria struggled awake, pushing herself out of the nightmare.
The room was colder now. Kayla had left her a note and a small origami flower before she left.
The chill in her heart and her room were within standard limits.
—
Gloria doesn’t remember falling asleep this time, and that’s okay. She has those dreams, when she dozes off for a moment of boredom. Where the churning dark punches through the observation station. Where the cold of-
The cold is devastatingly real this time.
Something unseen has punctured the life supporting shell of the station.
The cold she felt wasn’t the familiar unreal chill of her dreams, of what she thought death would be.
It was the sort of cold that went beyond numbness, a biting and bitter cold that burned away all the water in her skin.
She doesn’t remember how she got inside the emergency spacesuit, but she was inside it. Her left arm was mostly useless, rapidly frozen into a brittle crisp. Her left leg was slightly crippled, nerves severed by icy winds.
The piercing silence unnerved her, there should have been alarms, there should have been lights. They had run these drills so many times! They had been prepared to be safe!
Her mind ran as her body stumbled, towards Kayla’s room.
The short five minute walk took almost half an hour to stumble through. She saw part of a pool of blood at the bottom of a narrow ravine, where Dr. Silversight’s office used to be.
She told herself it would be okay, that she would wake up soon, that Kayla would be safe.
Her nervous smile started to crack, as she got closer to Kayla’s room, the damage was more frequent, more violent. There was only a single safe approach left, and it was the one she had decided on.
At her wife’s suite, there was a radius of purity, a circle of untouched land. No damage, no scars, no darkness.
In the center of it, waiting at the door, Kayla stood, arms spread.
Gloria broke into a stumbling sprint, and desperately hugged her spouse.
As they touched, Kayla shattered into cold, dry, crystalline dust.
—
She woke up with a pounding heart, terror in her eyes.
The memory of that day, twenty five years ago, the moment she lost everything.
The emergency response team found her sobbing alone, half crippled, clutching a pile of red slush to her face, in an undamaged observation station.
Their words about it being a ‘minor breach’ and ‘acceptable loss’ and that ‘she was lucky’ were simply thorns that burrowed into her heart.
The Broadstar Collective forces scoured the moon for survivors, and found none.
In under 24 hours, she was sent off on a medical ship, to a new planet, into a new restricted intelligence zone. A small star system where the survivors of the vigil were sent.
Her heart was lonely and cold, a dead rock inside her chest.
Shit man, this mech war is fucked. I just saw a doll shoulder its rifle and say "reality warp: black hole star" or some similar shit, and every mech around it cratered, radiated a ring of pure energy, and disappeared. The camera didn't even go onto it, that's how common shit like this is. My ass is firing anti-personnel rounds and buckshot. I think I just heard "nanomachines: skewer" two groups over. I gotta get the fuck outta here.
you're a hard sci-fi mech that weighs up to 100 tons. she's made of sugar, spice and trauma. just STEP ON HER.
for that matter, why are you using anti-personnel rounds and buckshot in a MECH war? where are your autocannons, your missile salvos, your heavy lasers - you know, anti-MECH weapons? that just also happen to be pretty sweet for killing reality warpers from offscreen?
or did you pack Buckshot Loadout to warcrime civilians? if so:
(a) you kinda deserved that nanoskewering
(b) incendiary rockets would've done the job better and would've also made any caster doll's day into literal Hell
pixelskylines
amandla
