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Episode description
Exigency Register A-TM-V-742 - Total Record of Events, Entry 001
To whoever finds this message: My name is Keen Forester Gloaming. I am, at time of this recording, the Chief Intercessor of the Rapid Evening in the Quire System and Primary Observer of the Twilight Mirage. I speak these words on the eve of Crystal Palace’s arrival and the scheduled deployment of a limited scope stellar combustor to destroy the divine Volition and its’...
Well shit, I guess I have no idea if any of those words mean anything to you.
Alright, let me start from the very top:
My name is Keen, and I come from a place called the Principality of Kesh. It is a collection of hundreds of worlds, tied together by a lesion in our history: A long time ago, my people spent eons enslaved by a technological tyrant, extraction exalted. And then, by luck, we found ourselves freed and empowered. And using that strength, we faced our oppressor down.
And in the generations that followed, we learned that the galaxy was filled with other threats just as--if not more--terrifying. The stars were as a forest, and it was on fire. And so we had a choice: Look away, and let our faces feel the heat from the safety of our veranda at the treeline, or intercede.
And we would not turn our backs as trillions burned.
But our efforts to save others cost us dearly, and in time, our wills shook. No terror defeated seemed lesson enough for the galaxy at large. There was always some new case of unchecked ambition, the arrival of a monstrosity we could not comprehend let alone predict.
And so, somewhere along the way, we built a machine that could uncover what our eyes could not. It is a collection of axles and algorithms, pulleys and passive dynamics. It is a structure that reveals structure. We called it the apparatus that sees the world as it is. We called it Crystal Palace.
And it told us that, with this new information, we would save a great many more people. And we did. But Crystal Palace does not lie, which means that it also told us the hard truth: that we could not save everyone, that there was a distance beyond which its own predictions would falter.
And so like armadillo curling into shell, society itself bent into permanent shape, hiding inside armored plates of reliability, and, for those deep in the populous heart of the Principality: repetition, too.
Some folks think Crystal Palace started the cycle, but I don’t buy it. There is… something beautiful about a watch that winds itself.
Which is probably why those living beyond the cycle line didn’t even notice it for those first few, beautiful loops: 2000 years set to quartz-rhythm, gliding over and over again in pendulum precision. An arcing dance of lives: a deliveryman, a gardener, a crankish politician. People found themselves in roles, not lives--repeating the steps of someone millenia their predecessor.
And as is our paradoxical way, when those Off Cycle finally noticed this happening, they interceded. The loop was modified, just in the way Crystal Palace told us it would be. A system was put in place. When someone On Cycle comes of age, they step off the dance floor, climb to the balcony, and see the ballroom for what it really is. And they are given a choice:
Join the Rapid Evening off cycle, in a world that carries always the rare possibility of the terrible improbable. Or return to absolute certainty, to the heart of Kesh.
But this system, this mirage, has proven treacherous to reality itself. And so the Cycle is broken, and what comes next for Kesh is not beautiful clockwork. It’s a factory fire.
I have been a member of the Rapid Evening for a long time, for decades. I have done things I regret, and which the apparatus has told me I will always regret. And yet the first time in my life off cycle, that I truly, really, deeply wish that Crystal Palace would be wrong.
But I know better than most that wishes do not hold back tomorrows.
And I know that when it all happens, regardless of what I want, regardless of what I think is best for the galaxy, I will be standing in its halls of glass and steel, helpless. Just five or six steps away from where I will stand, a spark will catch the tinder of the galaxy, and I will be the only one close enough to stop the blaze.
And I will fail.[note 1]
This week on Twilight Mirage: Futura Free Pt. 4
Turn back, turn back
Turn back, turn
Back, turn back, turn
If you've never been in love
Contents
Plot
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The State of the System
“
Just two years ago, the Divine Fleet had just a single way of thinking about Divines. Now, between all of the different cultures, there’s four. Over the following centuries, for those on Altar and for some across the Divine Free States and Seneschal’s Brace, even the Qui Err Coalition, this already broad category of Divine becomes even more eclectic. In the wake of Arbit, Divines no longer need to be sapient. They may not even need to be tied to infrastructure, or war, or anything like that. Instead, they serve a different public function. For those who believe, they are like living poems: prayers you can visit.
And the opposite is true for those in the Waking Cadent’s new Divine Fleet. Once, because of her desire to keep these beings alive, the Cadent convinced the fleet that there were two types of beings: mortals and Divines. Now we know better. Now, because of ⸢Signet⸣'s presence, and because of the time Kamala spent with Polyphony, the selfhood and autonomy of Divines becomes that much more recognised, that much more sacred.
And strangely, the Waking Cadent's isn’t the only Divine Fleet now. In its own roundabout way, the Argosy, Spliced, Our Profit's fleet of networked ships, which travels across the galaxy, "offering" new people access to the network, has become home to its own collection of Divines. While ⸢Tenderness⸣ watches over the interiority of the Splice, ensuring its freedom, inside of the physical ships of the fleet itself, Open Metal and Sui Juris, once pawns of the Hegemony, serve as watchdogs for this supposedly newly-egalitarian society. As ⸢Tenderness⸣ would do in the Splice, Open Metal does in the flesh. Partners at distance, yet close as can be.
With the risks of corruption addressed, and with the time-bending properties of the Splice on her side, the Divine Anticipation finally answers the question that has long gnawed at her. And regardless of her satisfaction with what she discovered, the experience of searching here, in the Splice, led her to something novel: a new reason to live. She commits herself to this place, running through the virtual veins of every network and node, and she decides to help eradicate the very notion of the so-called virtual. Nothing here is artificial, nothing is simulation, there are no digital imitations. There is only pure being, an endless stream of actions, creative and destructive and everything in between, the limits of ideas built, broken, and reconstructed endlessly by the Splice’s inhabitants, many of whom were created inside of the digital. It is an irony that is not missed by Volition, who sees its goal met by the very people it spent so long despising. And so, over time, Anticipation becomes one of many beings like herself, deep in the Splice. Spirits, ghosts, living ephemera, whispers in the code. Here and there, a touch of blue.
Of course, these new visions of the Divine were destined to generate a reactionary response. And where better than in the place so lacking in the very thing it claims to protect? Which is why deep in the tangled administrative organs of the Free States, an orthodoxy begins to play in counterpoint. These so-called reformist movements were heretical, said High Clef Nideo. They made vulgar the sanctity of the holy relationship between Divines and Excerpt. And so the Free States became more and more obsessed with the creation of new Divines.
Unity. Valour. Strength.
And while Acre Seven made sure that Potency was allowed to rest, death, she decided, was a thing sometimes something earned in sacrifice. The Free States did find uses for the Divines of the past, too. Some, like Empyrean, were recreated entirely, which was why her wings spread wide on the DFS banner. Others, like Gumption, were hypocritically rebuilt into something altogether different. Nideo’s argument was hard to ignore. They had lost so many Divines already. And what made Gumption special was that he could rebuild himself, always. What if, Nideo asked his people, Gumption could be distributed throughout each of their all-too-few Divines? What if they simply couldn’t die? What if their service could be secured forever? And so a promise snapped, of life and death: the DFS bought into fruition Independence's old prophecy, a world where the Divines would be eternal servants.
Perhaps it was due to this focus on everlasting existence, or perhaps it was due to a familiar devotion to structure and good intentions that, in time, the Divine Free States found themselves drawing closer and closer to the humbled remnants of the Rapid Evening. Or, maybe, it was because a shrewd statesman like Aram Nideo recognises a power vacuum when he sees one. After all, the holdings of the Principality of Kesh were vast. And with the authority and efficacy of Crystal Palace shaken, there was a sudden need for external validation. And such a need is an opportunity for those who can recognise it. Which is why, over the century that followed, as both powers fled the Mirage, the two forces grew closer, and closer, until eventually they were as one. From truce to defensive pact, from trading partners to sister nation. From federation to single state, to, eventually, empire.
On the day that the so-called Divine Principality came into being, Aram Nideo, the newly crowned Resolute Regent, officially recognised the divinity of Crystal Palace, granting it a new, noble Excerpt, who would use what remained of its power to look backwards, instead of forward. But of course, it was only the empire that was truly considered holy. In the millennia that followed, the once-protectors of the galaxy turned to tyranny. And across the breadth of their territory, the broad reach of stars they referred to simply as Divinity, countless suffered. But this is not a place for that story. This is the Twilight Mirage, a nebula of solidarity and hope, which the Principality, even at their height, knew would halt them if they dare ever return. A wise lesson, and one that those in the Advent Discovery and Salvage Society would learn the hard way.
In the years after Kitcha Kana and his ilk failed to pillage the system, Advent’s home office, far from Quire, ordered more “explorers” to the Mirage, but again and again, they were defeated as soon as they pierced the fog. And because their raiders never touched the soil in the sector again, no one ever came to save the spymaster Miss’s Castlerose who, from her cell, well fed and well rested, could have lived the remains of her life in quiet peace. Instead, she boiled herself in obsession with escape, looking constantly for daggers she’d placed in old backs, hoping to twist them into rungs leading her up and out of captivity. But now the world had turned on her, and her ledger of agents, victims, and the many who counted themselves as both, had been made obsolete by time and by change. And so each ploy, each attempt to extort or blackmail or threaten, only made her walls more concrete. Only made the light of the system’s new sun warmer, and further away.
For others, though, Volition's light brought prosperity. At the individual level, people found fulfilment in new, small things. Janey and Surge Erannia spent their lives developing new, reliable ways to move from world to world, for the average person. And the found family of Demani Dusk, Grey Gloaming, and Morning’s Observation built the Brink into a home for all of those more interested in the journey than the destination: folks like Waltz Tango (Cache) and Tannoy Kajj and Lily Lysander, who would continue to seek and to find adventure. In fact, one day, long after the Notion went their separate ways, the three find a familiar key with no message attached. The World Without End had come into new ownership.
But it was not and could never be individuals who gained the most from this new Mirage. It was the masses as one. Nowhere was that more obvious than in the Qui Err Coalition. Like the words on the old palace read, “No Apokine. No Demarch. Only us.” In the years that followed, through a combination of political manoeuvring, military victory, and most importantly, the group's commitment to self-determination, the Coalition only grew in strength and size. In those early years the group was led by a council: the Annex Iota Pretense, the Princess of the Qui Err, who once suffered under Independence; Solemn Scale, principal representative of Parhelia, the planet Quire's dream for a better world; Vanya De La Vega, whose Sailors of the Ark proved the viability of a decentralised community in the Mirage; Gig Kephart, whose insight, congeniality and connections proved invaluable as the group spread throughout the system; and Echo Reverie, who knew well both the value and the cost of violence, and who dreamt powerfully of peace.
But more than the quality of their collective leadership, the Coalition perhaps owes its stability and longevity to something else common to each of these councillors: their willingness to step aside. Iota Pretense was born into royalty, the last Princess of the Qui Err before Independence all but destroyed her culture thousands of years prior. Now she would ensure that she would once again be the last Princess of her people, but this time because she knew that the only way to move into the future was to do so arm in arm alongside them. And so she resigned, and soon the others followed suit. And it was in this moment that the Coalition, a collection of minor states, was replaced with a free association of communities and minds, tied together in cooperation, instead of rigorous competition.”
Cast
- Austin Walker (GM)
- Janine Hawkins (⸢Signet⸣)
- Sylvia Clare (Echo Reverie)
- Ali Acampora (Tender Sky)
- Art Martinez-Tebbel (Grand Magnificent)
- Jack de Quidt (Fourteen Fifteen)
- Keith J Carberry (Gig Kephart)
- Andrew Lee Swan (Even Gardner)
Notes
- ↑ The text in the description also serves as the episode opening.