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My Garden's Path, by Sansha Kuvakei
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Maguelone Sarpati
Doomheim
#1 - 2016-03-24 07:27:46 UTC
A people who trade water call ice Enemy. Ice leaches poison, obscuring it with beauty.

A people who trade water call beauty Lie.

My people traded water. I called ice Enemy and beauty Lie. My family grew prosperous under those serrated ramparts of the Teko-Kiota Escarpment. We quenched the thirst of caravans and knew that titans fashioned our home. We recorded observations of the countryside meticulously, then, despite our inability - in times of such antiquity - to truly comprehend. Progress pulled veils from mysteries; and draped new shrouds over the coffins of further understanding.

I was a precocious child, playful according to the standards of our tribe.

By my seventh birthday, I explored all those hidden wonders within a boy’s reach. I spied upon Cold Wind in the west with my lenses. I listened to the sky above with my microphones. I spoke to diplomats, scientists, and tradesmen visiting our estates. I anticipated conflict, but kept counsel with only wind and sky. The Gallente were beautiful. A witch told me her God would redeem Man through Beauty.

But the greatest purity lies unseen.

“You speak of false redemption,” I told the crone. “Man needs no God of Lies. I shall redeem the Universe with Truth.”

“Truth burns all who come near,” she replied, serpentine.

I laughed. If so, then Truth was paradise to us - the enemies of Ice!

When Man first reached the star now called Luminaire, he did not settle on my home.

He chose instead a planet of azure seas and beaches of brilliantly colored sand. Philosophers and princes descended from the heavens to splash and play. They commissioned villas of palladium and porphyry surrounded by columns arranged to create pleasing patterns in the waves. Their cities were crystal towers; in those, they listened to Symphonies and gazed on Art.

But it was not princes and philosophers who built villas by the sea.

The men and women who did required a different home. There wavered a world between barren rock and endless ice. Nothing lived. That was fortunate, for engineers who built villas by warm seas bombed that world with comets plucked from the void. They pulverized stone into soil seeded with microbial monsters. Then they seeded microbes to eat the monsters that ate the broken stone. They bored cavernous tunnels and glazed their walls, pumping life-sustaining liquid beneath the surface. And heat.

My family’s estates in the cliffs of the Teko-Kiota Escarpment overlooked one such marvel. On the surface, it was a lake three kilometers across. Beneath the surface, it swelled to fifteen before narrowing down to abyssal depths. Called a Deep Bore Cistern, this wonder fed tunnels which fed pipes through which titanic pumps forced water into capillaries that cracked bedrock and watered the surface from beneath.

Thousands of years after cataclysm claimed beautiful softness, my people traded water and grew strong.
Maguelone Sarpati
Doomheim
#2 - 2016-03-25 07:27:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Maguelone Sarpati
“A man who walks in circles sees too much of too little,” my mother told me.

“I will walk straight to my goals!”

“Then you will see too little of too much.”

“What path reveals enough of enough?”

My mother’s feet drew a spiral in the dirt.

Her garden fed thousands. Feulliere called it the ugliest garden in the world. The mathematician’s bold joke endeared him to our family. In beauty lies poison. My mother did not arrange orchards neatly. Feulliere insisted that neat rows improved the efficiency of automated harvesting equipment. The Gallente loved automatons; with them, they could return to a state of being princes and philosophers playing on sand.

But my tutor calculated efficiency far differently than my mother. While I believed automation warranted investigation, I dared not raise that point. Instead, I stacked branches around the trunks of trees with gloved hands - grumbling, but dutiful. I did not cut what I stacked. A Civire brute named Hyykiala Futtari cut the branches beneath the cliffs which marked the orchards to which I was assigned.

Futtari knew exactly which branch to cut, and when.

It was late afternoon. A weak sun broke through clouds long enough to roll on the world’s edge. In its painted light, I saw freezing fog build on Teko-Kiota’s ramparts. It hung menacingly for long minutes, and then began to flow. Survival dictated we retreat to the superstructure. Hyykiala Futtari knew not only which branch to cut, however, but when. Now was the time to cut this branch.

“Cut it quickly,” I urged, trying not to sound like a frightened child.

Hyykiala Futtari ignored me.

The right time was not the quick time. Creatures ran to shelter. Many small rodents darted into the branch skirts I and others had built up around tree trunks. Futtari moved his hook saw deliberately. I wondered if he was trying to frighten me. Anger eclipsed fear, but only for a moment. The freezing fog gained speed. I felt a change in pressure. Temperatures plunged. We were the only creatures foolish enough to remain exposed. I voiced my concern again as calmly as I could. The Civire pretended not to hear. At last, he finished his cut.

“Let’s go!”

But it was not time to go. Futtari climbed the tree and lacquered its wound with resin.

Arms of fog streaked passed us. Heavy with moisture, whatever they touched exploded in rime. Somewhere above our position, ice would have spread so thickly between trees, the forest would already appear to have been overrun by gargantuan ice spiders. In ancient times, men told of such fanciful creatures - and their victims. Futtari collected the fallen branch. I watched, unbelieving, as he placed it carefully on the pile from which I would eventually gather it.

But even the granite-headed Civire acknowledged that then was not the right time for gathering.

Fingers of fog found us; our bodies sprouted ice. Still, Hyykiala Futtari refused to run. Movement crushed ice from our bodies. But I knew that when the real wave hit, more ice would encase us than even Futtari’s powerful limbs could crush. We would die, wrapped as surely as if ice spiders existed. The Civire who had killed us both stopped walking before what appeared nothing more than a large pile of wood. Now was not the time to stop! Without a word, Futtari pulled up a tangle of branches and logs. That action revealed an opening. The mound was empty inside. Futtari nodded me in.

“This won’t protect us!” I insisted.

He shoved me, followed close, and replaced the branches. It was not a large space. I could see out through a hundred gaps. That meant the fog could get in through a hundred gaps. My anger flared. We should have returned to the superstructure sooner. His insistence about proper times to cut was superstitious nonsense. Being in a mound of rotting wood would only make it more difficult for others to find our bodies. Hyykiala Futtari listened in silence. I felt bitter. But then calm. Peeking through wood, I watched the fog approach. Ice grew from trees like crystal leaves and branches in accelerated time. It was beautiful. That thought made me chuckle.

Abruptly, Hyykiala Futtari yanked me back from my view.

I turned to complain, but the fog hit. It exploded through the gaps… and sealed them in an instant. The temperature inside fell no further. Hyykiala Futtari sat calmly in the middle of the mound and waited. Wordlessly, I waited with him. After some time, the Civire stood. He placed first one hand on frozen wood, then introduced it to his shoulder. After several blows, wood and ice shattered outward.

We stepped into a magical scene.

“Superstructures won’t always be close enough,” Hyykiala Futtari told me calmly.

I nodded.

He said nothing further, but I knew that was not the only lesson to absorb. Every rodent knew to hide in branch skirts. Now understanding at least one aspect of their utility, intensely, I resolved to make the best branch skirts the world ever knew. I further resolved to one day know more about survival than a tree mouse. Truthfully, tree mice know a great deal.
Soldarius
Dreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
#3 - 2016-03-25 13:54:34 UTC
First. Civire are people, too.

http://youtu.be/YVkUvmDQ3HY
Maguelone Sarpati
Doomheim
#4 - 2016-03-28 06:23:25 UTC
Collaboration is an ambiguous word.

Artists collaborate.

I stood with my tutor atop a cermet tower one kilometer tall and watched the sun. Because cermet towers and deep bore cisterns refused to move, the generation of my grandparents refused to move. I rested a hand on artificial jadeite and thanked it for sheltering my family when bombs fell.

When bombs stopped falling, water gained in importance.

Few knew how to coax the ancient infrastructure woven through the surface of our home into providing for life. Of those who did, many obeyed the order to evacuate. The wealth of those who refused to flee therefore expanded in the aftermath of that national calamity. Collaboration? The measure of our nation is profit. Without my family’s profit, the buried infrastructure which provided for life would in many places have failed.

“Neat rows perish quickly in cold wind.”

A glass steel globe capped the tower above Feulliere and me. It collected sunlight and focused it down shafts, warming oil seeping through capillaries throughout the enormous structure. Oil transferred heat to water. Water flowed through vesicles in ceramic polymers within walls. Where water froze anyway, ice distorted the vesicles. Distortion generated current. Current warmed oil. The nature of the tower’s construction allowed pieces of it to shift in strong winds. Shifting distorted vesicles, generating current.

Constantly moving while appearing still, constantly warming while appearing frozen, the titanic bones provided for us all - constantly.

I was an angry young man when I looked up at the sky.

“I hate.”

“Those who fled?” asked Feulliere.

“And those who made them flee. Hatred consumes me.”

We watched the sun set.

“Water is valuable here,” the mathematician observed. “But space is big and not everywhere is here.”

My tutor’s representations of electrons fascinated me. Were they real or tricks of wild imagination. Bubbles in the Void, they came and went as they pleased. But not quite. We lived in an era of death at increasing distances. Near, bubbles danced in the void with some consideration for the gyrations of others far away. Dancing bubbles could therefore direct death at increasing distances.

“Strike true, strike far!”

But I could not strike from home.

With Feulliere’s guidance, I submitted three mathematical proofs and as many obscure translations to the College Petit Rouvenor. I was the first Caldari to submit an application to that rarefied institution, steeped in geometric fantasy spun about an oblique philosophy. Concerns were expressed by multiple parties. My parents relented first. That was fortunate, for it required many encounters and interviews before the security archons relaxed their objections. Feulliere was more than a mathematician, of course. He was placed with my family to signal a liquidation event should one prove necessary.

“I am old,” said the spy one day coming in from the cold. “My ambitions have faded. I will follow yours.”

Leaving the air car and walking cobblestones toward that institution which would forever ground me in academic rigor, the warmth of a paradise fit for princes and philosophers almost crushed me. At most a thousand curious faces greeted this arriving curiosity through the course of my first day. It was a tiny institution, far removed from the world on which it rested. Many of its denizens were shocked to hear that a war had begun, let alone continued. Their shock at my revelations wore off quickly, and they returned to what mattered: event bracketing on a surface of thirteen dimensions without accounting for time.

In little to no time, I myself almost forgot about war.

But only almost: event bracketing in thirteen dimensions while accounting for time might direct death at increasing distances.
Maguelone Sarpati
Doomheim
#5 - 2016-03-31 19:13:42 UTC
Petit Rouvenor wrapped tinted glass, brushed steel, and charming brick around a sculpted hill by the sea - serpentine. Blades of grass waved in warm ocean breezes only where permitted by the architect’s grand design. In beauty lies poison. Classmates and lecturers hunted beneath ferns like snakes.

I belonged.

More than speak or write, I learned to communicate.

At first, I found the systems of social and political control prevalent on that warm paradise awkward. Too many participants spoke just to make their presence known. But I was patient. I built constituencies. Rather than try to lead, I endeavored to make myself invaluable to leaders. It was not yet my time. Leaders age. Like Feulliere, they would grow ambivalent about personal ambitious and invest in mine. So I believed.

Myrmecologist Rikaine Delmarre was the Provost of Petit Rouvenor.

Acquiring talent by delivering a quality of life even other institutions on the most luxurious planet in known space failed to match, the researcher pushed his tiny institution to the forefront of applied artificial intelligence - and beyond. He was a small man with brilliant white hair always kept impeccably short. They said he spoke as softly as he did for fear of disturbing his ants.

I believed them.

Many years ago, Dr. Delmarre converted the tea courtyard behind his offices into a garden. My mother would have approved. Trees were never trimmed. Fallen leaves were never raked. Rickety planks of untreated wood a meter off the ground provided the only means of navigating the unkempt space.

The Provost’s study was an irregular polygon with unusually high ceiling vaults. He kept the space poorly lit. Seated in comfortable chairs, Dr. Delmarre and guests discussed the purchase of a small island off the coast of Petit Rouvenor’s hill. While they talked, I studied the garden through floor to ceiling windows. The Provost specifically requested my presence, but it was not clear what I brought to the encounter.

Gallente real property law was not a subject on which I maintained any expertise.

Only much later did I realize Dr. Delmarre was instructing me in the value of holding title. At the time, nothing was asked of me. Discussions concluded favorably. Provost and attorneys shook hands and thanked one another. When we were alone, Dr. Delmarre walked to the door leading to his garden and opened it with a smile. I was momentarily at a loss. Perhaps a dozen people had ever been invited to walk in the Provost’s garden.

The rickety wooden plants felt strange under my feet - like I was not touching them.

We walked slowly. It was another flawlessly comfortable day on the most luxurious planet in known space. Dr. Delmarre said nothing. I felt uncertain. The Provost never engaged in chit chat. A trademark economy of expression reinforced his stature. Because no topic that mattered came to me, I said nothing and focused on the garden.

Viewing trees up close, I saw ants swarming over them. As background, I knew that the doctor used his garden as a living laboratory. I was therefore not surprised to see the ants. But viewed in action, at least on that day, I was surprised at how fascinating they seemed. Prejudicially, I associated insects with decay. Decay was a natural process. Perhaps the doctor left his garden in an untended state to follow cycles of natural growth, death, and reanimation through new life. He paused near a green sprig rising from decay. I smiled at my cleverness.

However, trees with more ants appeared healthier than the trees with fewer.

I looked more closely at the insects. They were not biting into wood - prying for vulnerable spots, boring for shelter. Suspicious, I placed one finger on a branch. Almost immediately, I was bitten. The bites were moderately painful but not venomous. I pulled my finger back. Several insects continued clinging to my skin. Not wanting to offend the doctor, I worked them free as gently as I could and returned them to their branch. Delmarre chuckled and continued walking. I felt that I had passed a test.

When we returned to the Provost’s study, another guest was present.

He was not Gallente or Caldari. By that time, I had met students from Amarr and the Minmatar Republic, but this man appeared altogether alien. Tall and thin, he would have been very pale as well but for time spent in tropical splendor.

“I am Venabili Raych,” the gentleman said plainly, “from the Society of Conscious Thought. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Kuvakei. Your solutions to brackets in thirteen dimensions while accounting for time intrigue me. What do you think about bracketing civilization?”

It sounded absurd, but I knew better than to answer immediately.

This strange man occupied a position of rare importance to have been allowed into Dr. Delmarre’s study while the Provost was not present. On reflection, I wondered why I thought it was absurd to bracket civilization. In fact, it was because I considered myself too precious to reduce to a cell in matrix notation. Childish vanity should play no role in assessing mathematical tools.

“Self reference…”

Venabili Raych waved off my objection excitedly.

“Correct! What to do… what to do!?”

I looked at Dr. Delmarre. The Provost smiled enigmatically.

“In fact,” I replied, “Dr. Delmarre has spent two decades recruiting…”

“Correct again!”

I realized then that Venabili Raych from the Society of Conscious Thought possessed a trademark economy of his own.
Maguelone Sarpati
Doomheim
#6 - 2016-04-03 02:46:57 UTC
The family which sold their coastal island to Rikaine Delmarre traded a planetary fishing lodge two thousand years old for a dozen floors in a new station somewhere on the interstellar frontier. I sat on rattan and canvas in the Coral Trianon they left behind. It was an open air arena, circular with a sandy floor covered by shallow seawater. Colorful fish swirled around the rattan legs of my lounge.

Transparent aluminum fifteen meters high walled the circle. Clear metal sloped out to sea gently, eventually plunging beneath the waves. Inside the aquarium so constructed, coral arches and vaults painted impressions of ancient, submerged ruins. Venabili Raych stood near the transparent wall, dwarfed by an enormous snake of papillon fish that raced and swirled passed him.

Seated next to me, Dr. Delmarre thanked an undergraduate who handed him a pewter goblet filled with ice cream made in an antique cart floating a short distance away. At that time I was a graduate student studying topographical mathematics. I, too, thanked the underclassman when handed a goblet.

It was how princes and philosophers lived eight or nine thousand years earlier.

But that day, the alien Raych was too excited to eat ice cream.

“Individuality!” he cried. “A farce. How many people do you know? No! No facile demurrals! Individual people are of no consequence. To the extent they possess any will to act at all, for our purposes they are bundles of motivation. How many motivations are there? No! No facile demurrals! We don’t have to name them. The trajectory of hitherto existing civilization undulates on the contours of a space defined by a finite set of unnamed motivations.”

“You reject the capacity of a great figure to redefine the contours of historical space at his own whim?’” I asked, intending to provoke Raych into greater excitement. He revealed more when he was excited.

“Great figures!” he scoffed on cue. “Out of alignment, any bundle of motivation which might otherwise define a so-called great figure leads only to prison and quick death. No. There are no great figures.”

Unexpectedly, the narrow man thrust his hand toward the aquarium.

Magnifying film over transparent aluminum enlarged the field of view. Papillon fish grew to enormous size; Raych’s thin fingers began to wiggle.

“One fish in a million. He swims with the rest. But something is wrong in his crappy little life. Anxiety has bubbled to the top of his petty thoughts. Like a spastic child, he acts out. Nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a thousand, all of the other fish continue in their own crappy little lives, irritated by any interruption of the routine. But one time…”

Venabili waited.

We waited with him.

There was nothing, and still nothing.

Without warning, the enormous snaking dragon of papillon fish - which had spun around us for the better part of an hour - suddenly disintegrated into a spray of color like an undersea firework display. They reformed in a minute as if nothing changed. But something had changed. Before, Raych stood in the indescribable middle of a leviathan over a hundred meters long. Now, he stood at the head.

“A great figure!” he cried, gesturing to what we presumed was the one fish in front. “His crappy little life has undergone a transformative event. Nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a hundred, he will fall back into the middle. Of course, I understate the probabilities by several orders of magnitude out of laziness. There are no great figures. There are inflection points on the topography of accumulated motivation. That is why I value your talent, Sansha Kuvakei.”

“I knew that it wasn’t my charm,” I answered, charmingly. We were surrounded by a scene of great beauty, and I had become a venomous serpent hidden within it. “However, is there a practical application…”

“We are living in that practical application,” replied Dr. Delmarre.

Venabili Raych turned away from the papillon fish and toward us, enigmatically.

“Two,” he said with emphasis, “practical applications. Looking first at that closest to us in time. Imagine you are an advanced society, few in number and dying. Fate has surrounded you with violent savages, primitive in comparison to your great achievements; but gaining in sophistication. Let’s call them the Four Savage Kingdoms. What do you do, Mr. Kuvakei?”

“Play them against one another.”

“Yes.”

“By manipulating the topography of collected motivation?”

“Yes.”

To this day, I do not know if Venabili Raych predicted the moment papillon fish would reconfigure their leviathan; or, if he precipitated it.
Pieter Tuulinen
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#7 - 2016-04-03 17:26:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Pieter Tuulinen
This is intriguing. It's like looking into a lab bottle and finding something looking back. It's like parsing stellar noise and finding a message.

I don't have a clue if there's a message here, but it's making almost every other post feel like the noise baby animals use to attract the attention of their parents for food.

For the first time since I started the conversation, he looks me dead in the eye. In his gaze are steel jackhammers, quiet vengeance, a hundred thousand orbital bombs frozen in still life.
Maguelone Sarpati
Doomheim
#8 - 2016-04-07 00:24:08 UTC
Federal Intelligence Operations Specialist Gaal Pirenne accompanied me into the lift. It was a quiet trip. An ensign met us at the bottom. We marched through the bunker. The path was complex. After navigating checkpoints, we entered an uncharacteristically spacious cavern. Projected imagery danced in every shadow. Silent custodians of information studied light. Eventually, one custodian approached us.

Our ensign saluted so hard, I thought that he risked a concussion.

“Pirenne,” the custodian acknowledged. “Kuvakei.”

Eugene Amaryl was a colleague of my tutor Fuelliere and a graduate of Petit Rouvenor. His work with probabilities remained legendary at the institution. He led us to a ready room. I was pleasantly surprised by wood panels and comfortable seating.

“I have informed Command that I consider it likely you will share your targeting system with our enemies, Mr. Kuvakei.”

“I am unable to respond.”

“The value of your work is considered worth that risk.”

“Fortunate for me. However….”

“You will not be killed,” Amaryl sighed. “Your benefactors are more terrifying than the State.”

“I am not certain if your are trying to discourage… or encourage.”

“It would not do for you to think I failed to consider the topography of your motivations. Let’s get to work.”

We passed through a door that had not been obvious on entering. The corridor beyond constricted us tightly. Dense metallic clay tiles I could not identify lined its walls, floor, and ceiling. After another complex path, we entered a sparsely equipped oval chamber. Amaryl sat at a console that emerged on his approach.

Information materialized in the air around us.

“As requested,” said the colonel, “telemetry from every battle Federation Navy was able to record.”

Pirenne and I took our seats. Numbers flew.

Even with no declaration, it would quickly have become apparent to me that Colonel Amaryl never failed. If his work possessed flaw, it was that the Universe rarely lived up to the tidiness of his equations. The man hated chaos. I considered that an odd trait in a legendary theoretical mathematician.

Footage of Yakiya Tovil-Toba’s plunge into the atmosphere of Luminaire VI flickered into our collective vision.

Pirenne flinched as we replayed the event from every conceivable angle. Amaryl may as well have been watching a documentary on bird migrations. One orbital surveillance platform captured the carrier’s traversal of the planet’s azure seas with particular clarity.

“Probability is a collection of islands,” Amaryl observed out of nowhere. “We cannot see beneath the surface. But without water’s horizon, there are no islands - only mountains.”

“If we saw beneath the surface,” I replied, “we would follow islands down until they rose from another sea.”

“Our views conflict.”

“Until someone looks, we are both correct.”

Amaryl approved of my generosity.

We were not trying to look beneath water’s horizon, however. We were testing whether or not my evolving multi-dimensional bracketing implemented on an artificial intelligence fabric predicted the movement of State and Federation assets adequately for automated weapon platforms to target them. After multiple iterations through increasingly complex soft simulations, we considered the design ready for physical prototyping.

Sometime later, Pirenne and I descended in another lift.

Several hundred kilometers tall, this one was more of a train. An orbiting complex receded from view. We approached the pocked surface of a small moon; then plunged beneath. It was not an ensign who greeted us this time, but Venabili Raych. The narrow alien’s smile increasingly disturbed me. Our progress on topographical calculations pleased the “guest lecturer.” But his pleasure was not bounded by mere targeting systems. Beneath our observation room, an autonomous weapon platform came to life like an octopus awakening. I monitored its progress.

“The fabric consumes resources less rapidly than forecast,” I observed after several scenarios.

“Correct!” said Raych.

“You’ve altered…?”

“Slightly. Slightly! You’re work is rigorous, Sansha Kuvakei. You arrive in the same place. Remarkable. Remarkable!”

“Same…”

“Precedent solutions.”

“If….”

“To restore the puzzle, we must re-fabricate missing pieces. Your solutions conform to known examples. Consequently, we have increasing confidence that your solutions also conform to unknown examples.”

Despite numerous attempts, I never provoked Venabili Raych into providing a rigorous definition of “we.”
Maguelone Sarpati
Doomheim
#9 - 2016-04-11 22:55:24 UTC
Patent licenses from a diverse suite of automated target acquisition fabrics brought me wealth and a taste for finer things. Federal Intelligence Operations Specialist Gaal Pirenne possessed a keen intellect and lethal combat skills, but no fitting suits. It was not his fault. Training and augmentation molded a form which not even the Federation’s clothing racks covered properly. My vanity refused to be seen in public with him. In opposition, my handlers refused to let him let me out of his sight. So I paid to have suits made. Pirenne objected strenuously. However we were traveling to Mannar on the liner Elyse Rouvenor.

“The Federal Navy….”

“Should not be troubled to ferry us around the Cluster.”

We waited in a parlor for esteemed guests of the Garoun Coach Lines.

I admired their hospitality. Furniture felt comfortable, not absorbing. Artwork reinforced a message of civilized travel - modern, streamlined, idealized yet recognizable. Staff floated politely. With an understanding of body language and tone impressed upon employees for years before they interacted with the public, attendants knew when to approach and when to hang back. I had spent too much time in academic and military industrial complexes. In those moments of cascading peace, I thought that I might like to live in a Garoun Coach Lines lobby indefinitely.

Only other guests intruded on our comfort.

Bred to unnatural attractiveness by generations of dutiful ancestors, Pirenne looked princely in his fine suit. People believed they recognized a famous star. Trained as an investigator, an interrogator, and a killer, Gaal flailed awkwardly with superficial social intercourse. He was not Luminaire’s debonair Spy of the Everyman. I enjoyed watching, but not out of spite. Raych’s equations floated in my mind. People were bundles of motivations. Society was just a much larger bundle.

One guest, however, was specifically interested in me. Caerid Autaic was a military industrialist. He projected a cold void which convinced Pirenne’s admirers to visit the antique bar. Gaal collapsed in his chair, relieved. I smiled at Autaic.

“I understand your report impressed the President, Mr. Kuvakei.”

“One of a hundred the executive office gets in a week, I’m sure - If not a thousand.”

“Several thousand is more like it,” Autaic agreed. “But yours stood out. It is not common for employees of weapon laboratories to argue their employer should surrender.”

“I am not an employee. Furthermore, I made no such argument.”

Autaic was not dissuaded.

“For many, the memories of Nouvelle Rouvenor and Heuromont remain vivid.”

“The mathematics of our political situation suggest that ‘many’ is no longer enough.”

“If it emerged a collaborator attempted to influence policy…”

My father had a way of leaning forward like a glacier slipping. The emulated motion nearly knocked Autaic backward.

“My report was not a policy recommendation. It was an analysis intended exclusively for consumption by the cabinet. I do not believe you are capable of understanding it. However, putting aside your cabinet non-membership, you may have persons on retainer capable of reducing that classified document to language you understand.”

At first mention of the President, Pirenne forgot the awkward social interactions of a few minutes prior. Dressed like a celebrity, fawned over by groupies, he appeared harmless. Furthermore, Autaic wanted to believe I associated with dilettantes. It confirmed that I was simply a dilettante who got lucky and not a rival. But a raptor's instincts sparkled behind baby blue.

The industrialist recovered from my counterattack.

“Everything passing across the President’s desk is policy, Kuvakei.”

Autaic walked away. Pirenne watched him, then turned toward me.

“So you picked this departure because you wanted to spend a week sampling Mannari cuisine?”

“Of course! But remember to never ask what’s actually in a dish, no matter how good it tastes.”
Maguelone Sarpati
Doomheim
#10 - 2016-04-21 05:44:30 UTC
Pirenne held on to the furniture as he moved from one chamber to the next. There was too much empty space for a spaceship, he insisted. Truthfully, we occupied a villa traveling between stars. Two other villas shared the uppermost circle of a repurposed capital turret with ours. Floors of lesser suites descended the column. Taunting Autaic had been fun - and not unrelated to the real agenda behind an early departure. That agenda occupied both the other villas on our circle; her retinue, no modest number of floors below.

Grand Duchess Ferhunde Emine Tash-Murkon possessed more than staggering wealth.

The industrial capacity of planets mobilized (often involuntarily) on a moment’s notice to meet her production decrees. Her Excellency recently decreed that a continent’s worth of warship assembly lines retool for the manufacture of advanced cybernetics. Federal Intelligence considered that curious. Through my family, I knew that State analysts also felt baffled. Not long ago, all things considered, Amarr suffered a substantial naval loss against the Jove.

Why would one of that empire’s industrial titans stop the production of warships?

A number of passengers tried to place themselves in the suite Pirenne and I occupied. I had therefore twice jousted with Autaic. It behooved me to smooth things out with the man - eventually. He remained a dangerously powerful individual. But at dinner, I had eyes only for Old Maid.

The handsome Amarrian woman struck me as neither old nor a maid.

After dessert wine, she invited Pirenne and me back for an audience with her employer. Old Maid was one of Ferhunde Emine’s spy masters. The Duchess herself was a titanic woman. She had not dined with the rest of us. Instead, an army of attendants continued to feed the monster one exquisitely prepared morsel after another.

“Gallente are vain,” Her Excellency told us immediately upon our entry. “Even spies must always look just so lovely. Intelligence is a dirty job, Operations Specialist Gaal Pirenne. It requires dirty people.”

Not even a Federation industrialist with a dozen senators on his payroll knew Pirenne was an operative.

“Oh, there are dirty spies in the Federation, dear,” Old Maid corrected, boldly. Her Excellency laughed.

“The Blood Cults don’t lack for pretty people with dark souls,” burbled that massive head. “The two of you have been sent by one to interfere with my acquisition of some Mannarian artifacts. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t think we could interfere with Your Excellency if we wanted to,” I replied, cautiously.

“Well stated,” she agreed. “You couldn’t, no. Not if you wanted to. But if you didn’t want to, because you didn’t know, you might do better. That’s what the pretty person with a dark soul thought. So I’ve told you. I’m sure you are skeptical. It wouldn’t do for you to be anything but skeptical. Have either of you heard of the Takmahl?”

I had not. Pirenne volunteered that he understood they were a heretical sect stamped out several thousand years ago.

“Not entirely stamped out,” replied the Grand Duchess. “They took to the stars. The artifacts which I have purchased, legally, may connect in some way to them. I am not interested in stopping you from speaking to the witches you will rendezvous with. On the contrary, I would very much like to know what they tell you. You will have to decide, Mr. Operations Specialist, if telling me is opposed to your duty - or consistent with it.”

Pirenne moved to speak. Ferhunde cut him off with an enormous palm.

Old Maid indicated that it was time to go. We went. Sipping cognac in a comfortable chair with a view of the heavens some time later, I laughed out loud. Pirenne looked across what was, in fairness, too much space for a spaceship.

“I outmaneuvered no one,” I told him. “The Grand Duchess arranged for us to be neighbors.”
Jason Galente
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#11 - 2016-04-21 06:02:33 UTC
TL;DR

Only the liberty of the individual assures the prosperity of the whole. And this foundation must be defended.

At any cost