Slumrat Rising

Truth knew that it was dangerous to make assumptions without enough information. Paranoid speculation, however, was different. He would explain why, but some bastard would take advantage. Right now, he had the horrible suspicion that the “good doctor” and his team at Happori Village were trying to minutely alter the rules of reality, creating a zone of complete control. Not straying too far from the established order. Just pushing. Slightly.

Two immediate possible interpretations leapt to mind- one, they wanted to alter local reality far enough that they could continue to benefit from stellar rays and keep their technology and apertures up and running after the collapse. If the world becomes too unreal, make a spot that is real enough to work. A new holy land for the Starbrite faithful, that they might work their miracles in the world to come. As backup plans went, it was top-notch. Really leveraging the current power and resources of the corp. Truth didn’t quite buy it, though.

Starbrite was king of the world. It wouldn’t benefit him more to become the God of it. He didn’t want worship. He never appeared in public, never gave philanthropy, never pretended to care about people or nations. The company cared. They had endless programs to show just what good corporate citizens they were.

Your manager cared about you. Cared so very much. You think just anyone gets pizza in the break room once a month (access to the break room must be scheduled in advance, unpaid but mandatory pizza party attendance for qualified associates, enthusiastic participation encouraged for those seeking promotion)?

But the man himself was practically mythical. What was the upside to staying on this planet after the collapse? Truth couldn’t see any. There would be no more natural treasures or resources worth collecting. His path to power would be severed. He would have stripped all useful assets from the planet. Time to offload the cleanup to some sucker.

What if this village was a test bed for cracking the magical technology of the Black Ships? That researcher he murdered, the theosophist, thought the ships worked by knowing their reality so perfectly they could manipulate it. What if that was just the first step? Perfectly know yourself and your environment, then make changes? Alter the local rules to let them cross the shattering void between the protective embrace of the stellar eminences.

Truth looked through the green woods. A lot of spikey-looking trees. He would guess… pine? Or some kind of evergreen? They didn’t grow in Harban, that much he knew. And above them, the sun. Was that grandee’s face clouded by more than atmosphere? He couldn’t tell. He got back in motion, slower now, no longer worried about speed and purely focused on concealment and minimizing his energy expenditure. It was going to be a long day.

The woods slowly revealed its hidden dangers. The outermost ring consisted of surveillance in the form of spell birds and beasts. Some talisman creations, others were witch-crafted or corpse puppets moving with an uncanny semblance of true life. Deeper in, he found arrays for detection. More arrays to deploy barriers or attack spells. Golems hidden in trees. Summoning rings. Banashments. Spell bowls tailored for a variety of needs. Leaves sprayed with subtle poisons that gave unsubtle results.

Truth came across a deer trail winding through a small stand of thorn bushes. The bushes had been achemically toughened. The trail had no less than three explosive mines hidden on it. People with time, who genuinely cared about their work and had the budget to make things happen, had put years of effort into making the forest a nightmare for infiltrators.

Truth was genuinely impressed. Pissed off, frustrated, but impressed. It took him the whole morning to get to the edge of the village. Six hours to go twenty kilometers, and it tired him out more than sprinting down the highway. He almost laughed with relief when he finally found a physical patrol. Then he stopped laughing when he realized the path the patrol was following had a “unique” feature. The parts of the trail just ahead and to the sides of the patrol would be subjected to a barrage of active detection magic and sweeps by mini-golems. The area directly behind them would see small explosive arrays arming for a few minutes before sinking back into inactivity.

The patrol wasn’t there to find people. They were there to invite an ambush, then counter ambush. Say what you like about the PMC, they weren’t soft. Truth gave the patrol plenty of room. He had thought about inserting into the back of the squad, letting Incisive and the Blessings of the Silent Forest help him blend in, but no. That was just silly. They would have taken steps to prevent that.

When he finally breached the external defenses and got within eyesight of the village, he took a moment to look it over. The point of coming from higher up the mountain was to give an elevated view, after all. The village was patently phony, in the way that planned developments always are. Too clean, too samey. All one-floor ranch-style homes with big sloping roofs to shed the snow. Mass-produced houses in one of four approved colors, built around backyards and “informal living spaces” in one of four approved styles.

No streets, he noticed. Wide sidewalks everywhere but no streets. It was quite densely built. You could walk everywhere, and if something heavy needed to come in? It would get flown in and then carried to your house on a floating platform.

Nobody living in this village was a nobody, after all. They had the credits to cover whatever they wanted. Especially since the System helped temper those wants to a more reasonable, productive level.

Lots of very pretty people having bland conversations over garden fences, keeping house, keeping fit. Waiting for their most important person to come home. However long that might take. They would run up, wagging their tails and making a happy noise, letting their people know just how happy they were to see them.

Truth despised himself for seeing the appeal. The utter safety of it. Everything was comfortable. Everything was just the way you liked it, within the established, written down and published rules of good taste. And if you wanted something a little spicier, a shot of espresso after all the milk tea, you could have that too. Behind closed and soundproofed doors. And the human cost? The lives burned to make this artificial world possible? Don’t worry about it. Really. Don’t.

The staff had more important things to worry about, like work, or cocktails with the Cavendishes. Yivonne is always such a hoot. Someone did a great job turning her into the perfect hostess. You could upgrade your lover to be just as good, of course. Wouldn’t even have to press a button. A thought would be enough, and the System would “adjust” as needed. Credits permitting.

It was more than just the company issued lovers, of course. It was the houses and yards and picket fences and the airlifted food, booze, medicine, entertainment. It was the thousands of laborers grinding away invisibly to keep this village of a few hundred aloft. The gray clothed, gray souled factory laborers. Factory farmers. People who are not allowed to have things like clean air or clean food. People living in seventy story apartment blocks, in rooms more like an insect nest, trying to eke out an invisible existence between Heaven and Hell before they died. Living to make sure Hwang had a new novelty tie every time he hosted one of his famous patio parties.

Truth closed his eyes and willed his thoughts away from the village. The cruelty was the point. He had known that since he lived in the slums. Nothing new there, and he was unlikely to catch his target at home. He forced his attention over to the research institute, then closed his eyes again.

He had a better imagination now. The books, the travel, the people, they really had broadened his mind. He understood what he was seeing now. The true arrogance and cruelty wasn’t in the village. It was in the flower facing the sky.

It was something like a lotus or pond lily. Beautiful colored petals unfolding in long, raised spikes. The buildings were scattered across the petals. From this height and angle, he could just about see them. No bridges- you moved from place to place on little flying clouds, or swarms of butterflies, or other dreams and whimsies. If the village was a mortal dream, this was the playground of gods. An immortal garden, floating above the world.

The umbilical vine connecting the flower to the mountain was purely decorative. You could see it was fragile, ready to fall away at any moment. Not that the flower could fall- never that. It was just a constant reminder to those in the village. A human’s path to immortality is fragile. The heavens and the earth are eternally separate, and the existence of the path is a gift from those above, not the birthright of those below.

You could live in the village, already a hallucination of maddened urban desire, and live as well as a human could hope to. Or you could be one of the elect, joyful in their work in the land of the gods. No wonder most of the researchers and staff spent all their time on the campus. Truth wouldn’t want to descend to the village either. Living below, looking up at a tangible heaven, knowing you weren’t good enough to even visit. A life in the mud, existing to satisfy an artificial nostalgia for mortal existence. Not even something valuable for itself. Lives reduced to props, stand ins for things that never existed.

He assembled the heavy needler, activating the telescopic vision talisman carved along its back. Sighting down onto the flower platform. With Graeme’s Arrow, it was technically in range. He didn’t for a moment imagine it was unprotected from sniper fire. He watched a pair of researchers board a hummingbird the size of a chariot and flutter to a different petal. They looked like they were really into their discussion. He put his reticule right over the head of the one on the left. Boring looking guy. Skinny, black hair, animated face, and he made sharp gestures with his hands.

You wouldn’t look twice at him if you ran into him at the convenience store. Not really the stuff of immortal dreams. Unless you were the “lover” at home, waiting by the door.

Truth spent the afternoon shifting around on the mountainside, learning the rhythms of the place. Trying to nail down patrol routes. Checking the contents of the information he received against what he was actually seeing. It was holding up pretty well. He hadn’t been expecting much, so “Only a bit wrong so far,” was quite acceptable. No sign of the target or hidden powerhouses so far, but that was also expected. Wouldn’t be very hidden if they were out in the open.

The afternoon shifted to evening. A few people descended, returning home for… pot roast? Curry? A kiss, a promise, and a healthy green salad? The petals lit up with light. No longer reflecting the sun, they made their own brilliance. Lights switched on in the laboratories, and the hard work of discovery continued. The lower petals blocked the light for those living below, he noticed. How thoughtful.

It got cold in the mountains in the spring. Truth just sat, watching. Moving now and then to get a different view. Dew condensed on him, dripping down, soaking his cotton clothes. Birds went quiet, but the insects were noisy enough on their own. The PMC patrols didn’t let up either. There was an implausible number of owls and bats flying around. Subtly had a place here, but a limited one. If his target had ever come out in the open, he hadn’t spotted them.

Just before dawn, Truth exited the secured perimeter. It was much faster now, having plotted his routes and figured out how to evade the thousands of watchful eyes. He would spend a few hours sleeping, hidden under pine boughs. Then, refreshed, he would break in. One way or another, he would topple the heavens. Just a matter of finding where to stick the lever.

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