Red Flux: A New Weird Quest for Justice, Freedom and the Self

"Hey, Leigna! I thought I'd missed you."

The monorail snakes over the deep chasm of Kybal City's Lower Eastron, residential towers rising up on all sides, gleaming white concrete and gleaming window glass rising to tall spires, accelerating towards the skies. Above, clouds of Orgone collect around the high towers of the Central district, condensers opening like gills to catch the life giving stuff. To live among the clouds is immortality. Looking below, you can see the colourful roofs of the ground level slums,

"Morning." You stifle a yawn and look over at Cadmey, probably your best friend in the city, even though she's a cop. If you didn't know, you probably wouldn't be able to tell. She's average height, with the darker skin that demonstrates nomad blood, tattoos, body armour and muscle all concealed under the long black coat she keeps forever buttoned up. People know what she is though, and step out of her way as she comes over. "Seems like the weather's gotten a little worse. My apartment has a draft."

"You poor thing, did you sleep okay?" She sits next to you. The man who was there hurriedly rising to let her through. You were surprised to score a seat this morning but it's easier for her.

"Not really. Another bad dream."

You remember red sky over the mountains, gory clouds. The sun? No, something worse, a rain of blood, pouring down onto the valleys and mountains of the world. A rain of blood, and monsters in its wake.

It was only a dream.

"Ahah, you know it's funny you mention that. At the precinct we've had a couple of people come to us in a panic all… terrified of their own dreams."

"No…"

"Yeah." She raises a hand, throwing away the craziness of the world. "Maybe it's something in the water, or people being anxious after the stock market dropped last week. Do… you have stocks, Leigna?"

"I live in Lower Eastron, and today I'm going to steal my lunch from the library catering cart. I'm afraid your stock tips are going to have to find another home."

"...you got me there." She smiles, then waves a finger. "Although be careful. If you get caught, I can't bail you out of library jail or however it works over there."

"And here I was making friends with the tools of state violence just for that."

"I'm new. You gotta wait until I'm section chief before that's an option. Also you, I'd need to owe you some favours."

"Babysitting Gido isn't enough?"

"You do that once in a blue moon! Maybe you could fuss over my father now and then, and make sure he's fine too." She grins. "He's starved for female attention since he took sick."

"Heeh. I'm not sure you'll want me to be your stepmum."

"Oh I don't know, living together wouldn't be all-bad. You seem to keep good house on a librarian's wages."

"I just told you I'm going to steal my lunch."

"Like I said, keep good house."

"You're horrid."

"Officer Horrid, but thanks."

The rail thumps around a turn in the track, the electric arc above throwing out a spray of blue sparks. Outside, advertisements promise shiny black sky cars and expensive jewelry, an escape to the sun and the bounty of investments in the Hagioplex Energy League's new industrial complexes. It's stiflingly hot inside the train in a cold morning like this. You didn't think you'd get a seat. The rattle of the rail and the motion of the train start to merge. You close your eyes. You'll just be a second.

"Hey Leigna."

"Awuh." You blink, then shut your mouth hastily. Oh no, where you drooling? "...hm?"

"You were asleep on my shoulder."

"...I realize that. Are we at Central yet?"

"Bonamaere."

"A stop early this time. Thank you for… oh." You look down at the mark on the dark shoulder of her coat. "...sorry, I didn't realize I drooled on our jacket."

"...you did!?" She looks down then mops at it hastily. "You are so lucky these coats are waterproof."

"I am." You blush. "Sorry."

"It's alright. Well, see you tonight. Oh, are we still on for dinner on Saturday?"

"Sure. I'll see you tonight too hopefully. Unless you're stuck doing overtime again. I thought your union was supposed to be on that." The train pulls up to Bonamaere station tower. You're glad you don't have to get out here, as you hate Bonamaere station. There's no guard rails on the platform side, just a long long drop into residential towers and streets of the South Pinnacle below. Just thinking about it is enough to give you a twinge of acrophobia.

"I'll complain once I'm comfortable." She makes an 'I'll call you' gesture with a hand. "See you."

The door shuts behind her coat, people getting out of her way. You sit back, head resting against the window. Ahead of you, the great airborne disk that is central station comes into view, the entire building suspended impossibly amid the monorail tracks, seeming to hang like an airborne spider amidst the web of rails. The monorail begins to decelerate and comes to a smooth stop on the platform, most of the carriage pouring out through the doors and moving up towards the security checkpoint.

Even through the crowd, you can see it's double manned today, with four black uniformed police, two with submachine guns across their chest and a heavy silver and black Gardshells with a massive automatic rifle at port arms. There must be some kind of a security alert.

"Papers please." The cop who's doing the greeting says as you reach the glass and metal barrier of the checkpoint.

"..." You hand over your card, steeling yourself for it to go wrong.

"Librarian eh?" The cop leafs through the document. He's a big guy, muscular but also fat, chewing gum slowly as he speaks. "Surprised to see one of you types working in such a nice part of the city. Must be good pay."

"It's decent." You shrug "Air quality is folded into our benefits package, mind."

"Ah, yeah. Always like that with the upper city jobs." He grins, makes a show of checking your quota against a list.

"I have a medical… well my throat's metal as you can see."

"As I can see. I'm afraid you'll have to get screened today." He looks apologetic "You look harmless enough but I've got my quotas, same as everyone else in the transport constabulary."

[ ] Object to this and show him the security certification you took a year ago that allows you to handle restricted texts. You are above this.
[ ] Make a scene. You're clearly being singled out!
[ ] Why does this always happen to you?

"...fine."

"In here." He presses a button, opening a door to a corridor of long metallic arches, the electro scanner. "Apologies for the invasion of your privacy. It's just the constables that are privy to the results."

"...thanks."

"You'll need to take your coat off. Put it in the slot. Your bag too."

The scanner hums and thumps after you comply, flickering arcs running down the backs of each pillar. The cop rubs his face. " Okay, it looks like you're clear. For reference, it's best if you declare anomalous details such as the uhm... situation underneath your clothes in advance of passing through the electro-sweep." He coughs "We've had reports of the insurgents using disguises and concealing implants."

"It's not exactly something I carry in my medical documents." You look down, angry, angry at yourself for being angry when he's trying to be nice. "But thanks, officer."

"As long as you know. Have a nice day uhm…" He thinks as you put on your coat and grab your bag "...ma'am."

Outside you quicken your pace. You're not quite late, but you're not as early as you'd like. The skywalk out of Central Station leads into the White Plaza, the central square between most of the biggest government buildings, with the New Parliament on one side, the grand Cathedral on a second, and massive spire that holds the offices of Offices of Caltrai and Sons, the largest financial concern on a third. On the fourth is your place of work, the massive, elegant tower of the grand library, extending both up and down as far as the top of the mountain the city is built on, and high into the organe clouds above.

You use the staff entrance, down a side street between it and the ministry of defense, your ID papers opening the lock. Inside this entrance it's a lot less elegant, though the wood panel stairs still show just how expensive this building is. Really though, it's just another office, with bulletin boards and screens showing motivational government films and the news. Stocks are down, but the biggest story is streaking jet aircraft and advancing tanks out in the Ballo, our brave men and women against the sinister insurgents supported, some say, by the forces of the Crawling City.

You head into your office, dump your bag on the desk and almost get chance to sit down before the door opens.

"Sheridan. Great news."

Your Boss, one of the most important scholars in the city dresses like any academic would if they were married to Lord Nathiel Radesson, one of the wealthiest old money men in the city. The somber dark blue suit and gleaming glasses are both from the best Ryslain design houses. She's smiling, which is good.

"What is it boss?" You try to smile.

"It's late spring! That means the universities are flooding us with gormless youths trying to pad their resumes with internships. I've gotten you a helper clerk for the summer."

"Oh, really?"

"Quite the looker too, fit as a horse at the races. I imagine you're not disinterested in…" She gives you a sly look.

"Ahem." You decide not to respond to that. "I'll mind my manners. Is he interning to be a librarian or something else?"

"Advocacy at Kybal Metropolitan University." She puts a file on your desk. "One of those idealists with an eye for law and politics."

"Wow. What's he even doing here?"

"Oh I couldn't fathom. Read his entrance essay if you're so curious." Your Boss turns to leave. You begin to look through the file in front of you. The photo shows he is quite a looker, if you like wiry, muscular guys who look like they might spend their off hours from debating politics fighting with knives in roguish slum bars, which you do.

You're broken from these thoughts by a new arrival in your office door. "Oh, Lennie! You heard the news? Boss has set you up with an absolute hottie!" Obeah, your best friend at work looks in. She's carrying a large handful of leatherbound books, almost disappearing under them. Shorter than you, and with short hair, she looks almost stereotypically like a librarian.

"I was just told." You wave the file.

"The girls in records are sooo jealous. He's the youngest from the Sandist family. Huge financials. Have you met him yet? He's been here since dawn filing books away and the look of him is something!"

"I was actually looking through his file." Prevaricating. "I'll go find him in a minute."

"Well, better get too it, The Boss is going around with some special assignments. Something outside the building."

"Oh? Do we get extra?"

"Better, you're getting benefits." Your boss sticks her head in, Obeah ducking to get out of the way. She tosses you an envelope with an order paper and a silver debit card in it. "Treat the Sandist boy to lunches on the expenses account while you're mentoring him. Just keep it reasonable."

You nod, collect your bag again and head out through the office door into the main library. It's green carpeted wood and cream walls, mostly covered in shelving, the ceilings the only thing not covered with volumes.

The main library is so large that there are multiple sections, running up and down the building. You're fortunate enough to be in this one, high up enough to get the benefit of the organe flowing through the building, though being near the entrance means you're constantly working. You head down the steps, stepping carefully to avoid a pair of running children and head down and to the right, into the non-fiction section. Rayburn is at one end, next to a large book conveyor, directing the thing to stack books onto a set of high shelves.

When he sees you he smiles, and you decide he's even better in person, sharply dressed in simple but expensive looking clothes. He looks a little older than the photo, with a small scar above his lip.

"Ah, excuse me! Are you Miss Sheridan?"

He steps forward and shakes your hand.

"Please don't call me that." You shake, a bit at a loss, then push forward again "I'm Leigna."

"Miss Leigna."

"...Ms. is fine, but I'd rather my first name. Just Leigna. Rayburn Sandist?"

"Yes. And I'd just like to say I'm very glad to work with someone like you."

"Like me?" Your heart sinks a little. "I'm not sure if you've heard the rumors..."

"Academia is a closed garden and prejudice has kept it too long closed to the people of the sky. My instructors spoke very highly of you when I told you I was going to work here." He gives you an incredibly serious look, and you relax a little he realized what he meant. "I'm happy to be out of it and meet some real people. I'm a little surprised you're working in a city library though."

"The air is better." You adjust yourself, "for reference, we like to be called Elindove. I'm also a few generations out from skyship life."

"My apologies then." He rubs a hand across his hair, looking embarrassed.

"Don't be like that. I do have an uncle who's out there with a clan that adopted him." You smile, "I'm glad to meet someone who's… glad to meet someone like me, but remember I'm basically your boss until your internship is done."

"Yes ma'am!"


For the next few hours you run the load system, slotting one book after another back into the shelves, and direct various customers who are too lazy, or stupid, to read the index to where they need to go. After a particularly dense part of the latter you decide you've had enough. "Are you hungry?"

"...yes. I was kind of hoping you'd bring it up soon." Rayburn grins, pretty white teeth like all the upper city boys you've seen. "I've been working like a horse. Are we going to be eating in the cafeteria, or…?"

[ ] You have an expense card and an empty pantry. Take advantage of this and go do your groceries, and then make something simple for him in the break room.
[ ] Take him to the cheap local corner shop that makes fried food and pasties, beloved by locals. You promised yourself not to eat from there too often but he seems the type to appreciate it.
[ ] Spoil yourself and go somewhere nice, you deserve it. Ask him for a recommendation.
[ ] No, you're not going to the cafeteria.

Leigna Sheridan
Occupation: Librarian/Bartender (Part-Time)
Age: 28

Height: 179 cm
Weight: 46 kg

Your willpower is STRONG, but WEAKENING. You are worried about the future, your life, your sanity and the purpose of your existence in the universe after unpleasant revelations. Sleep is no longer safe. You are slightly happy about your changing appearance.

Your health is POOR, and IMPROVING FAST. Exposure to the red rain makes you ill. Your knees and limbs no longer ache, your breathing is easy and natural, and the wounds around your respirator plate are starting to close. Chronic fatigue seems to be a thing of the past.

Your fitness is LANGUID, but RADICALLY IMPROVING.
Your coordination is CLUMSY, and RADICALLY IMPROVING.
Your reflexes are AVERAGE, but RADICALLY IMPROVING.
Your memory is GOOD.
Your perception is GOOD, and IMPROVING.

People consider you FAIRLY ATTRACTIVE, and you DO NOT. These are BOTH IMPROVING.

You have an ADVANCED knowledge of Orgonic theory and library science. You have a GOOD understanding of politics, economics, history, mixology and medicine. You have a BASIC understanding of driving, mechanical engineering and style. You are BAD at fighting and sport.

ORGONE
You do not know any theurgy.

You have orgonic script on your hands and scalp. Your right hand can levitate and move small objects, while your left hand senses marked books and can generate a volumetric display for pathfinding. Other tattoos bolstered your health and controlled your endocrine system to autoregulate your body's natural hormones.

You have a prosthetic throat piece. It previously allowed you to eat and speak after surgical treatment of throat and esophageal cancer. The corresponding tissue is beginning to regenerate.

????
You have transformed 0 times.

You have only spoken a little bit with The Watcher.

When you broke from the Watcher's control and took control of it, it granted numerous abilities.

COMPLETE FOCUS on the Ox-Blood hue has allowed you to rapidly reshape your body to your whims. With time and effort you could become anyone, anything.

FOCUS on the Amaranth hue provides nigh-unstoppable defense and regenerative power. The world around you feels less fragile.

You are ATTUNED to the Crimson hue, which allows you to perceive and manipulate water and orgone. You suspect you can heal creatures and draw orgone out of things that do not resist it.

You are WEAKLY ATTUNED to the Flame hue, which allows you to perceive and understand primordial fire and prima materia, as well as the world that originates from it.

You are DISCONNECTED from the Vermillion hue. You may only access liminality at sunrise and sunset, transporting yourself and others between spaces.

Placeholder for Glossary

Leigna Sheridan
Prof. Afaris
LBS 1004-05
13 Germinal, 553


Orgone is a substance of contrasts. It is the very stuff of life, the engine that drives our commerce and the fuel of every conflict in the last decade. Our advanced technology and theurgy would fail to function without it.

No substance has impacted the development and organization of our civilization more than the self-organizing bionic ether, also known as the orgone. It drives industry, enables theurgy, and the refinement of its various forms it for medicine and technology is what drives progress. The world's nations have adopted fiat currencies fixed to the value of this substance.

Our cities and agriculture are planned to capitalize on the beneficial health effects of high-altitude "pure" or "sky" orgone. Low-altitude work such as mining and scavenging have become conflated with monstrosity and sacrilege due to the presence of "impure" or "pelagic" orgone, which has teratogenic effects on sapient life and is responsible for a host of monstrous life that has arisen from afflicted animalia and plantids. Further compounding this is the historage usage of civic and political undesirables such as criminals and resettled Elindove sky nomads in low-altitude work camps.

In warfare orgone is utilized in the enhancement of the merely mortal to superhuman, in the creation of weapons both technological and biological. The industrialized exploitation of deep pelagic orgone and its refinement into safe forms has resulted in yet another revolution in industrial machinery, allowing cities to rise to unseen heights.

Society itself has developed a moral sense of right and wrong, good and bad from the perceived consequences of living at different altitudes. It equates affluence and ritual purity with the right to live in the upper strata of the atmosphere, where these seemingly beneficial forms of orgone bestow superior physical capabilities, beauty and longevity. Deformities and disabilities caused by exposure to Pelagic Orgone are taboo in modern society and subject to censure by elites by society, resulting in generational ghettoization in ground-level settlements. Taboos are only beginning to evaporate as the value of pegalic orgone rises with the new trends in technology.

Resource wars over Orgone appear to be becoming less common as exploitation methods improve. The Great Mistake waged by the Hagioplex League against the sky nomads of the southearn hemisphere, who call themselves the Elindove, driven by a ccombination of religious fervor against the "heethen" nomads and their monopolization of several unsettled deepsky orgone gyres- as the substance is wont to aggregate in tempestuous pockets.

Resource wars over Orgone appear to be becoming less common as exploitation methods improve. Improvements in skyship technology and ground-based logistics have made it easier to access deepsky gyres- where much of the world's pure sky orgone collects, evaporating prior monopolies on the substance. The Great Mistake the Pacification Wars waged by the Hagioplex League against the sky nomads of the southern hemisphere, who call themselves the Elindove, driven by a combination of religious fervor against the "heathen" nomads and resentment over their monopolization of several unsettled gyres as harbor zones.

It appears that as technology improves and production increases, these resource wars will become less likely.