COUNTER/Weight 37: Visions from Windows, Or: The Last Time the Bomb Dropped

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Visions from Windows is a series of short vignettes (written by Austin Walker instead of using a particular game system) about various people's insights on the second stellar combustor detonation to cut off Rigour from the Automated Diaspora.

Episode description[edit | edit source]

20,000 years before The Chime met on Counterweight, long before the Golden War against Apostolos, the Automated Diaspora devised a plan to stop Rigor once and for all, and at great cost...

This week on COUNTER/Weight: Visions from Windows, Or: The Last Time the Bomb Dropped

Alright, alright. Now back to work!

Contents[edit | edit source]

Opening[edit | edit source]

The first stellar combustors were activated just decades after the death of Chital, final candidate of Liberty and Discovery. They were lit by a desperate fleet, dropped behind them as they fled at super high speeds through a carefully calculated escape route. The explosions propelled the fleet further, and though some were lost, the bulk of the Automated Diaspora survived, never stopping to look back at the destruction they had left in their wake. But over 60,000 years later, the second time the bomb dropped, it was impossible not to watch...

Plot[edit | edit source]

Vision Number One: Defective Appendages[edit | edit source]

Aleph Set, a mining maintenance worker, contemplates a question: what does it mean to work for Rigour? He reminisces about how the mechs he makes are referred to only as "Rigour's, mining", and factory workers similarly can be considered to belong to Rigour, some even becoming automaton-like appendages.

As Aleph considers how, no matter what, someone will always work for Rigour, he is obliterated by the explosion.

Vision Number Two: The Last and Final Voyage of the Wayfarer True[edit | edit source]

Captain Commander Centra Center of the Wayfarer True, a smuggler captain, leads the suicide mission to deliver the bomb to hit Rigour in the middle of the Perseus-Sagittarius star bridge. She and the rest of her alliteratively-named Earth-born crew are unworried about their fate, with the exception of the weapons officer, Cowboy, who believes that the destruction of many populated worlds will be a sin that prevents them from ever returning home to Earth. Centra Center takes out seven interceptors while Cowboy flinches and prepares an objection, at which point Catalino Christopher shoots them on her prior orders. Centra takes the device out in her small personal rigger and contemplates the future, before pressing the button to detonate it.

Vision Number Three: Reams of Distant Cloth[edit | edit source]

Kadaknath, Candidate of Independence and reluctant diplomat, is given a box of vibrant fabric samples by their secretary Tertiary Perfect. These represent a gift to the sector from a recently liberated world (whose name has not yet been voted upon).

They reminisce about the war against Rigour: forty years in, only now is the tide beginning to turn. Colors such as these swatches have not been available due to rationing. By implementing a newly designed bellicose voting software as a weapon of war, Kadaknath has won several major battles and others of their ilk have been dubbed by reporter California Rose as "those great heroes, in whom we find the living ideals of our democracy. Truth, Equality, Independence. They fly alive and bright and virtuous. Our divine candidates."

However, planet whatever-it-is is about to be destroyed by the stellar combustor, for which the order had already been sent out years ago. Kadaknath's secretary Tertiary Perfect asks what they will do with the fabric, and Independence suggests that they build beautiful cities that bend in the wind and move with the individual needs of the people. Tertiary observes the light from the window as the combustor explodes.

Cast[edit | edit source]

External Links[edit | edit source]

  • Comic by Annie Johnston-Glick illustrating the entire episode