Update 39: Copper Haloes
Final Chapter
For Second Corporal Drexal, socialism was utopia. He stood on the deck of the NPS
No Masters, its clean blue interiors welcoming. He looked down at the woman in the gunnery chair, Chief Gunnery Technician Havill. "It's a beautiful sun out there, isn't it?" he asked, pointing at a white dwarf through a massive oval-shaped window in the ship.
"Yeah, and these seats are really soft," Havill said, a projector node attached to the floor by her feet. "So, what's in that system?" she asked.
"Lesser Captain Regulus says that there's twenty space stations there, two orbiting city-ships, and one megastation," he responded.
"Damn. Who owns it?" she asked. Borders were a thing of the past with warp drive, but that just meant national claims weren't typically contiguous.
"Just some FinCiv techno-barbarians. The Meat Tree's there too, it's that big thing over there."
"Wonder what the fuck it is," Havill said. "Why doesn't it orbit anything or move?"
"...I dunno. The Mazzaroth's armored flunky did a press tour. She said that the Meat Tree is fuckin' Wide Eyes. Maybe the stick up her ass keeps her there."
"Fuckin'? As in,
is Wide Eyes, or having sex with Wide Eyes?" Havill asked with a laugh.
"Gross. Hope it's the second one. So, uh...Anyway, let's send a sun expander in there and torch the system," Drexal said, putting an arm lazily on the back of Havill's chair.
"Can do," she said, looking down at the projector node. "Computer, throw a sun expander into it."
"Will do, ma'am," the computer said, and a dot that looked like a missile shot out in full view. It disappeared when it got far from the ship, then a second after the NPS ship warped away, the missile blinked into the nearest sun. A few seconds later, the white dwarf became a red giant, enveloping something like twenty million sophonts in a gaseous inferno.
THE HEADLINES:
"MEAT TREE" ENVELOPED IN RED SUN
MAZZAROTH CLAIMS MEAT TREE IS WIDE EYES
THE GOLEM OF PRAGUE: A FOLK TALE
OLIVIA RODRIGO STILL CRANKING OUT THE HITS, NOW JUMP-KRAZZ
IS GIULIA MARI A MASON?
FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OF WOMEN IN THE FREEMASONS
MASONRY AND THE PURIFICATION STATE
THE PURE: A KILLUMINATI?
GIULIA MARI ADMITS TO BEING A MASON
ALIEN GAZOR-RODHA MESSAGE
ALIEN GAZOR-RODHA MESSAGE DEBUNKED
PROPAGANDA DUE?
WHAT IS PROPAGANDA DUE?
DARK SECRETS OF THE MARI BLOODLINE
MARI: "YOU PREDS HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON YOUR HANDS"
HOW SECRET SOCIETIES SERVED THE PEOPLE DURING THE STAR FLAG YEARS
ILLUMINATI VS. MASONS IN STAR FLAG?
DISCONTENT IN THE SECOND NATIONALIST UNION
TRANSITION TO FULL COMMUNISM IN USR CONTINUES
LABOR STRIKES IN 2NU: "USR OVER THE SPACERS"
LEADERLESS REVOLUTION?
CRACKDOWNS IN 2NU NATIONS
OCTOBER 1ST COMMITTEE TAKES CONTROL OF 2NU
USR FUNDING TERRORISTS IN 2NU?
MODERN COUNTERINSURGENCY POLICY FINALIZED
"WHY ARE WE LIVING LIKE THIS?" - 2NU DISSIDENTS
"RED REBELLION" SHUT DOWN, RINGLEADERS PROSECUTED
USR CONDEMNS UNDEMOCRATIC ACTIONS OF 2NU STATES
2NU CENTRALIZING AS USR DECENTRALIZES
"OUR GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO FREEDOM WILL NOT BE INFRINGED": NEWFOUNDLAND PRIME MINISTER
"TERROR KINGS": NEW BIOPIC IN DEVELOPMENT ABOUT THE RED REBELLION OF 2535
USR DECLARES WAR ON PURIFICATION STATE AND MAZZAROTH'S "RED MARCHES"
MAZZAROTH: "LET THE HERETICS COME"
WHAT ABOUT LEFT UNITY?
2NU: "VEHEMENT NEUTRALITY"
MAZZAROTH: "HERESY DARKER THAN HEATHENRY, A DISTORTION OF TRUTH"
SURVIVING HZMAK: "IT'S A COLD, COLD GALAXY"
BOMB BLOWS UP BRITISH PARLIAMENT
INSTABILITY IN 2NU STATES
SECOND BRITISH EMPIRE OVERTHROWN IN SPONSORED COUP
BLOOD IN BRITAIN
JUSTICE IS DONE, FROM THE PURIFICATION STATE
MARI: "THEY'RE ALL LIKE THAT, THE LORDS AND LADIES JUST ADMITTED TO IT."
MAZZAROTH CULTS IN USR UNDER EXTREME SOCIAL SCRUTINY
GRAND DUCHESS DESDAEMONIA AND GF RECOMMEND BOOK OF JEWISH MYTH
MAZZAROTH CULTS GAINING ADHERENTS IN WAKE OF USR STATES' DRAFTS
DEFEATISTS: A NEW MUSICAL ABOUT THE MAZZAROTH CULTS
GRAND DUCHESS DESDAEMONIA HEZRIA ABDICATES: "I WANT TO SPEND TIME WITH MY GF"
MAZZAROTH APPOINTED PEOPLE'S LEGATE OF LETHE BY MAZZAROTH
MAZZAROTH: "PERFECT COMMUNISM AND THE HERETICS STILL CRAVE WAR. HOW FITTING."
Steph lay awake in bed, thinking of a sister that never was. She dreamed of Liv, gangly and smart. She saw a raven-haired high priestess. She thought of black and gold, of honeycomb and horror. She dreamed of her twisting many-armed goddess and her briefly-divine sister. Steph was tall and built like an oak tree, her bubblegum-dyed hair having been turned to a sober auburn months ago.
The bed was firm and dug into her back, making it half-numb. It felt like sleeping on a park bench made so the cold wind could pass through. Such was the need for constant endurance in the Mazzaroth's ritual guard. She tried to remember the mother and the utopian.
A single word stuck in her mind, explaining everything: faith.
Faith was hard, she thought, turning it around in her mind. It was hard to understand the point of it. She tried to get back to sleep. Maybe she'd see Liv again.
Maybe she'd see Mom. It was hard to miss someone like that, but she did.
"Abdication?" the Mazzaroth said, wings of meat bending and flapping behind her like the angel she was. She stood before those two Avians. "So much mercy, and yet you ask and you ask and you ask," she said, Ossia in silk pajamas and Des in a
Captain Northwest: Iron Thorax T-shirt. "Your reign was the simplest solution to prevent the momentary hassle of putting down a revolt." The tetragrammaton in gold burned on her neck.
Ossia, her blue feathers well-maintained, used her willpower to push through the haze of subjugation that the air had turned into. She looked to Des. She lay on the couch, barely awake, a throw blanket over her disturbed by Ossia leaving the soft cover.
"Well, you ought to stand down!" Des said, forcing herself to her feet.
The Mazzaroth tsked. "Oh? And why is that?"
"There is only
one thing you missed!" Des said, trying her hardest.
One of the Mazzaroth's back-arms pushed from the side of her wing, picked Des up and began to choke her.
"Ossia...The Golem in myth!" Des croaked out. "Died when...Name of God removed..."
Ossia ducked under the arms, then slashed through the tetragrammaton on the Mazzaroth's neck. The singular claw cut through the Hebrew lettering. There were four letters, in a script that was not her own:
Yodh.
He.
Waw.
He.
The source of her life marred as the Golem of Prague's was, the Mazzaroth sharply let Des go. Rapidly, she retreated into herself, her arms and meat wings folding and shifting.
A mass of goop and flesh, the compulsion to obey vanished in a moment, and emerging from the compressing genetic horror out of burps and squelches was a spectacled, bloody, pus-covered woman.
There were so many tumorous limbs on the floor, and they were melting.
Ossia Volo made a fist and decked Emily Mendez in the forehead, knocking her down.
Emily began to crawl on her back away from Ossia. The Avians kept kicking her.
"Where is the Mazzaroth?" Ossia yelled.
Emily spoke, her anachronistic skinny jeans looking uncomfortably soaked through. "She was Version Infinity of the human race, you rolled her back to me!"
Ossia charged. "You subjugated my homeland, you threatened Des and I's life, you killed stars-knows how many people, you suppressed any chance of worker autonomy or human liberty within socialism for what? Your ego? I knew it from the start,
" she said.
Emily's face drained of color as she tried to crawl back towards the door of the apartment. "There needs to be a Mazzaroth!" she said, her voice squeaky.
Ossia Volo sprinted, then kicked her in the crotch as hard as the bird could. Emily screamed, and Ossia put a foot on Emily's chest. The two birds kicked her on the floor a few times, Des mostly in the shins and Ossia on the arm.
"Please, don't hurt me, I'm just trying to fix everything! You saw it, right? It works! All you need to do is get the fluid and—"
Des kept kicking her in the shins again in a rolling flurry, and Ossia bent down and took a claw to hold Emily by the neck. She steadied herself. It was important to be in control of one's emotions. "You are a deeply pathetic, spoiled little girl, and you are lucky that I am no murderess."
Des blushed deeply at the sight. Her pride in her partner was written on her face. She kicked Emily in the shins some more, as long as it took to hold her until the authorities could come.
"Do we have to keep her?" Des asked.
"...Yes, Des," Ossia said.
Des locked the door while Ossia held her down.
2536
The Black Rider approached Millicent in their shared mindscape. It was, today, a beach near a 2010s-era Hollywood mansion, the Black Rider's choice. Millicent sat on the beach in long-sleeved clothes, finding herself uncomfortably hot.
"I went and disabled the weapons on the Object of Consequence orbital body," the Black Rider said. "Ain't like you should've been given them."
The sun was high.
Millicent sighed. "Now what?" she asked. "What about...What about making sure that Oregon-Nephi functioned the right way?"
"Well, now the USR'll get on that," the Black Rider said.
"What about the Second Nationalist Union?" Millicent asked, cursing her own modesty in this imaginary space. Then, she remembered it was a simulation, and willed it to be cooler for her.
"They declared neutrality in the Purification State-USR war, and Oregon-Nephi's being intervened in that."
"And you're letting the commies walk right over us?" Millicent asked, dumbfounded.
"Yeah, I told them they should take your brain out of this thing and give you a long term in house arrest. Also therapy. I said you ain't a threat without your satellite."
Millicent sighed. "...So it's over?" she asked.
"It's been so long since the Christian Republic fell," the Black Rider said with a shrug. "Why not move on and make it up to everyone?"
Millicent let out an impotent scream.
THE HEADLINES:
2536-2541
PURIFICATION STATE OFFENSIVE TOWARDS EARTH
DEATH PSI-WAVE OF MAZZAROTH ELECTRIFIES GALAXY, FIGURATIVELY
DEATH PSI-WAVE BREAKS IRN
EMILY MENDEZ ALIVE AGAIN
EMILY MENDEZ TAKEN TO USR
INTERSTELLAR RED NAVY COLLAPSES INTO INFIGHTING
PURIFICATION STATE RUNS RAMPANT ACROSS FORMER FINCIV AND IRN
ASCENDENCY CRUSHED BY PURE
SECOND NATIONALIST UNION FOUND TRADING ARMS TO PURIFICATION STATE
EMILY MENDEZ DECLARED "SUPERREAL UNKNOWN", "KILL CALLIOPE" PRECEDENT INVOKED
USR STATES CONGREGATE LEGAL RULINGS FOR MENDEZ
EMILY MENDEZ TO BE EXECUTED UNDER "KILL CALLIOPE" PRECEDENT
PURIFICATION CULTS RISE UP IN USR, 2NU
ASCENDENCY RUMP STATE FOUND AIDING USR IN CRASH SUPERREAL PROGRAM
PURIFICATION SYMPATHIZERS TAKE OVER MAJOR 2NU STATES: CHINA, NIGERIA, SOUTH AFRICA, NEWFOUNDLAND
USR DEVELOPS SUPERREAL CAPABILITIES
SECOND NATIONALIST UNION THREATENS TO USE RELATIVISTIC KILL VEHICLES, USR INVASION
USR DESTROYS RKVs WITH SUPERREAL WEAPONS
USR: "COME TO THE FREE WORLD"
BILLION SOPHONTS LEAVE 2NU
PURIFICATION STATE SHIPS APPROACH EARTH
PURIFICATION STATE: "PUKE OFFENSIVE"
BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL WEAPONS DEPLOYED IN RECORD NUMBERS
PURIFICATION STATE: "WE BELIEVE WE CAN MAKE A PUPPET GOD"
A GOD CONTROLLED BY A SUPERIOR NATION?
2NU SUPPORT OF PURIFICATION STATE INCREASINGLY UNPOPULAR
PREDS BEWARE: "YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH TROUBLE YOU'RE IN"
USR UNLEASHES THOUSANDS OF GUIDED RKVs ON PURE WORLDS
PURE FLEET STRANDED IN SOL SYSTEM
CHINA SPLITS FROM 2NU
KENDRA OSWALD EVACUATES PURIFICATION STATE WITH WIFE, HIDES IN USR, OFFICIALLY DEFECTS
KENDRA EAGERLY PROVIDES INFORMATION ON PURIFICATION STATE
KENDRA AND WIFE: "WE HATE THOSE PEOPLE"
CHINA JOINS USR AS PROVISIONAL MEMBER
USR SENDS SUPERREAL-TRANSPORTED SUN EXPANDERS TO PURIFICATION STATE
MORE MEMBERS LEAVE 2SU
USR COUNTER-OFFENSIVE AGAINST PURE FLEET
"LEAVE NO SURVIVORS" - USR
2NU DISBANDS UNDER PURE AND USR PRESSURE
IRN REUNIFIED BY ADMIRAL HANSON
A SECOND RED REBELLION?
PURIFICATION STATE REMNANTS SURRENDER
TREATY OF 2541 SIGNED
STELLAR COUNCIL REPUBLIC FOUNDED
EARTH GOES RED
INDIA SECEDES FROM ASCENDENCY, DEFENDED BY USR
IRN WEAK, REJOINS USR
"EVERYONE KILLING EACH OTHER KIND OF WORKED OUT FOR US" - USR
NEAR-ENTIRE POPULATION OF REMAINING PURE FOUND GUILTY OF ENABLING WAR CRIMES
ASCENDENCY: A FRAGILE STATE
"WE WANT THOSE WHO WISH TO BE REDEEMED TO BE ABLE TO" - USR
DE-PURIFICATION PROGRAMS FOUNDED IN USR
2NU ORGANIZATION DISBANDS DUE TO OUTSIDE PRESSURE
MILITARY COUP IN ASCENDENCY
LETHE JOINS THE USR, TOO WEAK AFTER MAZZAROTH INVASION NOT TO
KAZ HARRINGTON: THE WILHELM II OF THE MODERN AGE
ASCENDENT SOCIALIST REPUBLIC NOW USR NATION
WAS KAZ HARRINGTON ASSASSINATED?
POWER RIGBY, AKA "HIGHER POWER", RENOUNCES GODHOOD TO LIVE AS ANDROID
WHERE IS KAZ HARRINGTON?
KAZ HARRINGTON LIVES!
REMEMBERING KAZ HARRINGTON: EAT MANURE, IDIOT
2542
Holding Cell 6B was a cold, white place. Elvis Kvasti, aka Gemini Two, looked at the two in their shitty metal chairs in front of him. He adjusted his glasses and ran a hand through prematurely greying hair. Then, he sat down in his own metal chair. "Fantastic," he said, his provided lime green clothes feeling too loose.
"Oh, don't be such a whiner, Elv," Katey said. "We're alive, aren't we?" She wore a cocky smile.
He saw right through it. "Yeah, we
are. Wish everyone was. How many tens of millions of people got
killed for your
stupid fantasy?"
Katey's smile broke. "...I got carried away." She struggled against her ankle bonds and solid metal wrist cuffs. She couldn't break out, they were two inches thick and closed tight. Elvis didn't seem to mind his bonds, and Steph was merely human with a minimum of enhancements, so she was free. "Lots of people did. By the time I stared into that thing's eyes, it was too late. Besides, it isn't like you two were blame-free with
your evil space god."
"Hey," Steph interjected, in a prisoner jumpsuit like the rest of them. "You didn't get it! The Mazzaroth knew what she was doing."
"Yeah, and she knew she was creating a tyranny," Katey said.
"Better a tyranny than murderous anarchy! She
was better than us! She was going to give us
stability, socialism, a brighter future!" Steph said.
"Steph's right!" Elv said.
A trooper carrying a rail rifle entered the holding cell. "Hey, the three of you." He tilted his head at the yelling. "Steph, you were found to be a supporter of the Mazzaroth and guilty of treason, which comes with a five-year house arrest and rehabilitation period. Elvis, you were found guilty of treason and sentenced to rehabilitation during house arrest for five years as well, and Katey here has been found guilty of treason and cosmic-scale mass murder and as such has been sentenced to the firing squad. Elvis and Steph, you are free to go. There's a snack bar on the way out, it has a frozen yogurt machine. Katey, come with me."
Katey tried to break out, to punch his head into a concave surface, but her struggles were impotent. Elvis spoke. "I'm sorry it had to end this way," he said, in a tone of voice that Katey thought meant that he blamed her for the mistake of trying to do the right thing. Still, he sounded sad.
She shuffled off as she followed the guard down the baby-blue hallways of the detention facility, until they made it to an exterior portion.
Then, she walked out of the indoors and stood on Earthling grass, taking deep breaths as she approached a pristine brick wall. There was a woman there, wearing glasses. Her hair was ink, and she wore a frown. "You know, the funny thing is that they're killing both of us," Emily Mendez said.
The sun was high and true.
"Go fuck yourself," Katey said.
"Against the wall!" the firing squad yelled.
"Doesn't bother me." She and Katey pressed up against the wall. "I've shown them all the path. Now, they just need to follow."
For a second, Emily sounded like Wide Eyes.
Katey closed her eyes.
Goodbye, she thought.
The firing line set itself up, and it did not care about Katey's good intentions or Emily's grandiose ambitions when it splattered them both against the brick.
"Gemini One?" Weiss asked, lifting a cigar in his personal space yacht. It looked like a Vegas casino from the glittering days when that meant something besides a museum. He looked at the military woman in front of her, who gazed at the mess of candy wrappers and protein shake cups on the table. Weiss twisted a poker chip in his fingers. "It's great to see you. Always nice to deal with remnants of the IRN. What brings you here?" He gave a little chuckle.
Ndidi Ekwueme leveled the gun at his head. "Where are your scum-sucking murderer kids?" she asked.
Claudius gave a friendly chuckle and took a drag. "You'll never know," he said.
Ndidi punched him across the face.
"I'd never sell out my boys," Claudius Weiss said, rubbing his feathered cheek. "Shoot me if you want." He reached into his desk drawer, eyes on a little pistol. He reached for it slowly, as if not to be noticed.
"Fair enough," Ndidi said, blowing his head open with her own coil pistol. It covered her in brains and blood. She felt proud wearing the viscera.
She spoke into her comms implant. "This is Gemini One of USR Zodiac Platoon. Claudius Weiss is KIA. Search the ship, we need leads to track down his war criminal kids for trial."
Now in a chrome-and-glass android body, Power walked the streets of Salt Lake City in a flowing dress that glittered like starlight. It wore a feminine form, feeling the mood, and it danced across the pavement. It had been salvaged, recovered, brought to safety, and it had requested to be a sophont rather than an brain in complete isolation.
The buildings were high and lined with creeping, edible vines. The solar panels were built into the roads, the streets were little forests and the city was walkable and with a state-of-the-art tram system. What was the point of being a god, it thought, when being mortal was so much warmer?
2543
Kendra, Lottie, Ossia, and Des stood on a rooftop in Malibu, by the solar panels and the public pool. Kendra and Lottie wore cloned bodies, inhumanly perfect versions of their former selves. Kendra also wore a micro-kini that Des and Ossia both nonverbally agreed was scandalously tiny, along with sparkly flip-flops.
Meanwhile, Lottie wore a one-piece swimsuit. The sun shone high, true and fair. The summer was bright, and Kendra thought to herself that this area having been so long ago just nearby an atomic blast felt impossible. Des and Ossia held hands, and Lottie swam laps while Kendra suntanned.
Des found herself captivated by the sides, underside, and top of Kendra's perfectly over-enhanced bust.
"Come now, Des, it's rude to stare," Ossia chided, and Desdaemonia looked away shamefully. The two birds disappeared into the pool bathrooms, so that Ossia could redirect Des' interest.
Lottie pulled herself out of the pool, dripping wet, her body fit and her muscles defined. She brushed her blonde hair behind her ears. Then, she sat down on the side of Kendra's pool chair. "Thank God it's over, right?" she asked.
Kendra reached for a paper book to read. "What's over?"
"The stuff with Star Flag, the superreality stuff, the Mazzaroth, the trials, the war..." Lottie mumbled. "God, I'm just so tired."
"I think you're tired from all that swimming," Kendra said, flipping through the pages of her book to find where she was. "Oh, and this purple lipstick looks cute, right?" she asked. "Anyway, excited for my new holomover?"
"It's pretty 'you', yeah, and the holomover actually sounded pretty clever, to use a morning coffee as a metaphor for ambition," Lottie said. "Here's to the shining socialist future, right?"
Kendra laughed like a cup of hot cocoa. "Yeah," she said. "So, Desdaemonia and Ossia?"
"Yeah?" Lottie asked. "I still can't believe they saved themselves until marriage," she said. "Good friends, though."
"Yeah, they're kinda prudes, right?" Kendra joked, squeezing her wife's hand. It felt nice to be an idealized version of who she was so long ago, yet modern and her-as-she-was-now just the same.
"Prudes," Lottie said. It had been around five hundred years. People swam and played and had fun with each other. People made popsicles simply for the joy of having something to give out by the pool. How the proletariat faded away, leaving only hundreds of billions of beautiful individual sophonts. "You know, centuries ago, things could have gone completely differently. Maybe there's a universe out there with no superreality, no space travel."
"Well, that isn't our universe," Kendra said, hand in hand. "We're here in this one."
Their gods were themselves and each other.
