The Red Book

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter One
Luciana

All of the best memories were of Luciana. Most of them had been ushered away in the sands of time but those that remained caught in the narrow hour glass were the precious few that were littered through the rest. They were the specks of gold between jagged stone and soil. They were the ones he wished would return. They were the ones he could only see with his eyes closed now.

Beneath the willow resting atop the prickly green blades of grass lay the checkered board. Elegant pieces of carved wood, real wood, stood tall and regal with their multitudes of grainy perfection and imperfection. Later on he looked back at those aged remnants of a planet full of plenty; the fragile miniatures that in their slights and scratches and dents were still far more valuable than what most could dream of. Real wood.

"It's your turn." Her tone was playful and floated in the warm summer breeze as it caressed his ears and swept the fresh petals along the carved stone, the alabaster roads between their oceans of grass, another sight that few would believe. He had never beaten Luciana. He read countless books by now and while his studies demanded most of his time it was this that he stayed up late at night to solve. Luciana was always a step ahead. She never boasted or bragged and even as he felt with one completed lesson after another that he might catch her, it was always one step forward and two steps back.

" This time I'm going to win." He said through a smile as he lifted a pawn and placed it two spaces out. Aggressive. He had always believed that aggression was the key to success. Trading while ahead, learning the values of the many pieces and calculating the success as he went. In the beginning it had only taken her four moves to beat him. That was a painful lesson. As time went on and their sessions grew longer he began to take more from them. More from her. It was his 12th cycle and soon he would be unable to enjoy these days. Trivial at best compared to eventually taking over the family business. He knew it deep down how true it was. What it meant to be a member of the court- the many families who served beneath them and who they in turn protected. That was why this was anything but trivial to him. He had beaten father and he had beaten mother and all the others. But not Luciana. That was why he began to change his approach. If not relentless aggression then maybe scheming. Deception. Feints and fakes.

This was their longest game to date and by his calculations the outcome seemed immutable: he was going to lose. He was putting up a far better fight than ever before but still even now it wasn't going to be enough. He stared at those little wooden figurines and their shadows they cast over the checkered marble board. The shadows of the willow brushing and stroking and floating effortlessly in the new gust. One by one the birds ceased to sing their songs. The warm embrace of the sun chilled over his skin. His hairs stood on end. Blade by blade the grass didn't seem to prick his palms any longer. The chimes hanging from the ivory stone balcony were hushed. There was only the lines on the board. He could see them clearly now. Why hadn't he ever seen them before? There they were and it was so clear. He slowly picked up a rook and set it down.

"Check." He looked up and didn't have time to savor the small act of defiance. The intelligent, no, genius stroke of a move that would pierce through her rhythm like a spear to a carp. Skewering it while it flapped helplessly clouding the once clear water with plumes of red which eventually bled to brown. For the first time in his life and the last time he saw something that would never leave him. It bored a hole in his chest and it tore from him a beating heart never to be the same again. Tears welled in her eyes as her lips moved. He couldn't hear them at first but years later he would come to understand their meaning quite well. All that could be heard over the chimes in the wind, the birds and their songs, the breeze and all the petals it carried along and the many blades of grass was the sound of her hand striking his cheek and lighting every nerve in it ablaze. That was the last time he would ever see Luciana.

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Two
Bashir

"Who wrote that again?" Bashir had began resetting the checkered board, either unable to mask his distaste in the question or unwilling to.

"Dirk Jetlan, it's a classic." Nero sat opposite him under the corrugated rivets. The mesh of weathered alloy and stone was one quake away from coming down right on top of them but it was one of the few sectors remaining without constant watch.

"No, it sucked." Bashir abruptly snapped back setting the last of the pawns before giving a hurried brush of the hand for the game to commence.

Nero balked at his rebuttal mulling over the abrasive retort and whether or not to follow through with his gut instinct. The Queen's Pawn pushed forward and he found his words beneath the various chatter going on in the street. Even beneath the terraces of malnourished infrastructure that spanned like a spider's web the heat beat their brows. Bashir never removed his face cloth when they were outside of the acreage and his caution was an implicit law that Nero must do the same. He was a year older and he was that friend. The best friend; everyone had that best friend that was smarter than them and would challenge them whenever they deemed it fit. That is without question what makes them a best friend. The grumpy narrowing of his sharp brown-yellow eyes only added to the intensity in his furrowed brows. Small beads of sweat slicked down his copper-gold skin and he leaned forward gesturing.

"You disagree? Let me tell you why you're wrong per usual. It's crap. Beetle dung. I would scrape it off the bottom of my sandal without second thought. It is too pretty; there are far too many literary devices when a simple "I love you" would have done the trick. The main protagonist gets all of the time and the female love interest lacks any agency. It's chauvinistic and it is dated. Also your opener lacked any spine." He answered with a direct Nimzo Indian Defense and stared across at Nero tapping his fingers on the sandstone table.

His hand hovered over the Queen. Unusual hesitation bubbled to the surface and instead of embarking on a chaotic spiral of relentless trading that they usually attributed their afternoon angst and adventurism to he instead set his hand back down in his lap staring at the Queen.

"Not enough to persuade you? Okay let me continue. "You were taught it was a classic and from there on out you have it embedded in your mind that it must be one. So you use it as a guide stick for everything you read and write. This is problematic in two forks because you will imitate it's flaws and you will digress from any works that deviate from it." He leaned back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest tapping his sandal feverishly while rolling his eyes. Beneath his face wrap his lips opened once more but he was swiftly cut off.

"Do you think Processors have emotions?" His words sounded hoarse and dry. There was a faint shimmer around his eyes dancing subtly while his knuckles grew pale around the sudden dunes formed in his pantlegs.

"What?" Bashir froze.

"Do you think Processors... you know... are like us? Can they feel?" He looked up at his best friend each croaked syllable a shadow of the begging in his eyes.

A painful throb came through Nero's arm as he looked to Bashir's hand seizing his wrist.

"We. Do. Not. Talk. About. That. Here." Each word could have been its own minor spell thrusting needles inside his vacuum sealed chest. Every syllable brought further pain before Bashir released him and rest on either side of the board.

"I know I just..." Nero stared at the pieces on the board toppled over. Unmitigated chaos. No order at all.

The more seasoned face cloth flapped with a flare of nostrils. They were as close to an island as they could get and even now when the unnamed bodies wove too close to them on the street they went silent. Dialects and vernacular blended and fought for supremacy in the eavesdropping Bashir could make out. All harmless conversations that he could hear none of which accompanied by wandering eyes that could have locked with his own. He exhaled and looked back to Nero.

"Why not? They say they don't but they also say that's because they're not programmed to. They're also not programmed to hit us." The second statement had a finessed release to it. Nothing Bashir said or did was an accident and Nero slowly nodded thankful for the consideration.

"Is it possible it is just a learned behavior? They see it and they mimic it?" Nero was balancing his index finger on the King's crown. He leaned it in every direction watching it nearly topple but not yet letting it go, teetering on the edge.

"Aren't our behaviors all learned? Were you born knowing how to read? How to speak? Did you know love and pain the moment you entered the world?" Bashir pulled open the soft bag and began scooping the pieces into it.

The King was balanced forward close enough that it might just go on its own with no assistance at all from him. He nodded slowly considering Bashir's thoughts.

"We're certain of a lot of things Nero. That we know what is right or wrong. What is or isn't a classic." His eyes narrowed with a few degrees less of irritation than before and his wide smile was definitely beneath that face cloth. He pulled on his strings to tighten the back and stood up sliding in his chair softly.

Nero began to do the same leaving the King for last before he pushed it over delicately and soon tossed it in with the rest before folding up the board.

"Stop repeating what others believe they know. Instead trust what you do know." He looked to the various silent moving parts in the street as they crossed in all directions. Traffic was picking up which meant they were running out of time. Nero pressed in his chair as well and they slipped into the current of bodies before escaping down the narrow alley back to the derelict aqueducts.

As Bashir began to pick the lock without looking he turned to Nero and peeled back his face cloth wearing his prideful smile. "This round goes to me."

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Three
Aqueducts

Termites crawling along the endless sun dried log slipping through its weathered cracks; that's at least how he imagined they looked from above. On their trek out he had missed all of the finer details that his wavering confidence forced him to see now. The structure wove itself through the city from the outskirts as far as he could look inward towards the gardens. Its snaking form had proven far easier to manage earlier in the day but now as the sun began to set to their east he found himself double and triple checking his footing. The surface had once boasted some kind of elaborate poly-methyl blend sworn to fend off the relentless rays. No more than three steps at a time could he take the luxury of seeing where Bashir led and how he wove effortlessly through the trapeze design that the elements had carved through the once-great artery.

"Should I slow down? I thought it was so easy."

Bashir's mocking drew a finer ire from him than he realized. It was true. He was struggling to keep up with the pace. The clock was ticking against them and the lower the sun went the harder it would be to get home. He wanted to yell back something scornful and harsh but the moment he looked up he felt the weathered skeleton give way to his foot. Something scraped and the sand slicked beneath him leaving his heel pressing up into his rear. If not for the arduous hours spent with Basam he would have barreled down into the massive belly. Balancing took all of his attention as he felt the hot red breath entering his body.

Close your eyes. Focus.

The blue exhale that he envisioned passed through his mask as spraying particles. One more time he practiced his breathing before slowly lowering his foot in front of the other. Bashir was waiting with his arms crossed and tapping his foot in annoyance.

"Should I hold your hand? Would that be more appropriate?"

He nearly spilled over into the abyss waiting below. He looked down again and over the right side of the alabaster material he could see the first kindling of lights in the sea of homes. Soon they would be passing over the commons and then it would just be a matter of choosing their moments. Almost home.

"I'm trying to keep up. When there's no rush it's a lot ea-" before he could finish he was met with a hand extended out and a stomp of the foot.

"Sorry what's that?! I can't hear you over the spoon dangling from your mouth. Not all of us are afforded the luxury of coming and going when we please. If I don't make it back in time there will be hell to pay for me and my daddy isn't going to just chalk it up to some leisurely adventure!"

The truth stung. He picked up his pace imitating Bashir better now that he'd allowed him to get closer. More lights began to sprinkle through the streets and the closer they got to the gardens the less sand obstructed the real nature of the structure. A fine black surface was now solid ground, its full diameter easily thirty meters, and as they drew closer to the junction their pace slowed considerably.

"Why do you think they work so hard Nero?" Bashir paused looking back at the way they had come. Towards the outskirts the lights bled from the warm fusion of ochre and amber to the harsh blues of the callous fingertips of the city. He never saw the gradient before from this perspective. Always he could see towards the horizon yes but the sunset always out of reach drew his attention. Looking down beyond the beauty that nature had it was surreal. A sea of lights ranging from the warmth of an augmented hearth to the chilled flicker of older diodes not tuned for anyone's circadian rhythm. Without a thought of the time of day or when someone might want to sleep. Only with the thought of the superior lifespan and how they would outlast the ones they lit in the dark.

"Survival. Just like we all do." He turned and Bashir was gesturing to the service ladder they had used to scale the tube. Their entire escape act was playing in reverse now as he began to step down one rung after another. An alley way led to a service tunnel, the tunnel had led to a junction, the junction brought them to the hatch, the hatch got them on top of the duct and from the duct they could get anywhere in the city they wanted to. It was a freedom incarnate as long as they didn't get caught. He figured that was most of life wasn't it? That thought would too be a painful reminder of the spoon dangling from his mouth.

"Sure. Let's go with that." The sound of his overwhelming snark was only snuffed out by the vacuum sealing of the hatch. It was old school and was mostly symbolic of the workers who had been contracted to build it back when contracting was a common method. One wheel welded to the dome of the hatch inwards used to lock and unlock it. He figured it was old so maybe a hard magnetic seal but definitely not so old as to be hydraulics.

Once down the ladder Bashir pulled out his hand-light and twisted the adjuster at the bottom bringing to life the warm glow of the stick. It flickered once or twice before he struck it with a crack and it found its resonance frequency.

"They work their entire lives in the hope, the dream, that by the time they are unable to continue they might be able to live out the rest of their lives in moderate comfort. What kind of life is that?" He held the light up to the old scrawl on the tunnel wall and followed the lines on the floor. The attention he gave to what could have been hieroglyphs spoke volumes of the boy who could glide along the sandy backbone with ease. To take the wrong turn at the junction could mean one of many potentially awful endings for someone. So they took their time and Bashir turned right, so Nero followed.

"We all work Bashir. We couldn't all survive otherwise. They work so that we can work. We work so that we can all live. Your father does important work just like mine. No more or less important than the Processors or anyone else." He was following before the abrupt touch of a palm against his shoulder stilled him. Bashir pressed back and they both stood against the edge of the tunnel. A drone hummed in the distance with its ebb of light pulsing. They made it. Almost. Close enough. After what felt like an eternity the hum was no longer echoing in the cavernous structure and they continued on.

"Yes, very observant of you. I bet you read that in a book somewhere. Who writes the books you read, Nero? Who decides what lessons you learn? Is it you?" Bashir's quick wit followed with his increased pace. He scaled the steps before them with the gentle pitter patter of his woven shoes before reaching the top and waving on Nero.

"It's true though. We're all a part of the same system." He hurried after and wiped at his brow. How long had they walked today? He knew that Bashir often went out exploring the outskirts and the commons but he had no idea how tired even one round trip would be.

"It is true. We all work hard. Yet only some of us live in the gardens. Only some of us are afforded the things we often take for granted. For example." He opened the composite door and they stepped out into the alleyway. Once Nero caught the crisp clean air he unfastened his face mask and bellowed a deep, whole breath.

"Like clean air." Bashir watched Nero and shut the door behind him before pointing up at a sign above the doorway. The fine print was backlit with a soft blue hue against a charcoal-grey plate: SERVICE TUNNEL. NO ENTRY UNLESS PERMITTED. SQUID-A037-D1.

Nero couldn't remember seeing it in the daytime. The alley had the gunmetal polymer coating that the tunnel had so it was possible it had blended right in in the shade of the sun. They strode from the hard cool pavement to the quantized perfect imitation of cobble. So perfect that it almost made him wince from the design. Piece by piece they removed the crusted suits they had brought and stuffed them inside their packs. Coated in sand it was going to be difficult to come up with a good explanation for it but he knew deep down there was no point in really hiding it. Bashir's father knew what he was up to and their fathers were friends. Well, Bashir's father worked for his, so they were as close as friends could be given their work. Not before long they were making their way down the broad path and to the fork. Looking over the fence just at the edge of the plush green grass there was the horizon. As high up as they were it was evident now to Nero how he had never noticed the gradient. Only the stars glittered in the black sea of the sky.

"Do you know why they call them the aqueducts?" Bashir broke their long silence with the question as he too stared out at the night sky. The cool brush of wind tickled the back of his neck as it had so many times before. Gone was the fear of falling from a rotted skeleton structure. Gone was the harsh arid stab of sand between his cloth and gone was the paranoia of being seen by the wrong eyes, being caught in the wrong place in the wrong point in time. Now there was only the sweet scent of the grass and the stars wishing them a goodnight.

"No." The truth was often simple.

"It's because they can't read. The system was called Project Squid. It would suck the oil from the outskirts and funnel it here to the gardens. It powered the factories in the old days. It powered our lights and our homes and our heating in the cold and our air in the heat. We sucked the life out of their lands. But we told them it was an old waterway. That they depended on us to live."

He looked at Bashir and under the moons he saw their light against his skin. He seemed to glow. And he looked back at the stars and then to the horizon. He strained to look lower. There were twinkling blue lights barely visible. They were down there even if he couldn't see them. Kept so far down that it didn't matter what time of day it was- you just couldn't see them.

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Four
Commodus

Nero was running late. The last of sandy garments were resisting his shoves into his satchel before that muscle beneath the thumb got caught on the zipper and he hissed. Turning the cobblestone before their street he could see his father waiting, arms crossed, paying more attention to his watch than the motorcade.

"So you finally show." His grizzled graying beard did little to hide the scowl.

"By five minutes", he never made it up the first step before they were being ushered into the second most rear vehicle. All black, all tinted, he couldn't differentiate it from a funeral had he tried. Or at least the ones he'd heard about.

"A minute or an eternity; if a Zhir says he will be somewhere then he will be held accountable. Keep this up and you'll make us the laughing stock of system." Fingers tightly pinched the bridge of his nose before he pulled down the mirror on the back of the headrest on the drivers seat and began pinching precise drops into his eyes. They made Nero think of a cracked counter top or toilet bowl except in between the shards someone had squeezed some red fluid between. Or lightning streaking across heaven.

"We're not going to an assembly though. You can literally show up and leave whenever you-" He was cut off by the snap of the headrest and an angry gaze.

"You're missing the point. If you say you are going to do something then do it. If you're not certain then simply don't say it. A Zhir's word can be his life."

For some time they rode in silence as they passed through the residential district of lush life into the outer perimeter of the industrial zone. Orange and purple were cast against the metal and mirrors that forged the hard angles on the concrete paths. They passed the black iron gates to The Factory and as they left it in the rear view Nero's shoulders dropped as he turned his head.

"Where are we going then?"

"Somewhere far more interesting. Did you have fun with Bashir today? Find something worth sharing?" His smile crooked when he turned to the clutched bag.

"We don't go looking for things to bring home we just go looking around and seeing what we can find." He declined to hand the satchel over for any inspection.

"Yet you always find something worth bringing home." He smiled and looked out at the encroaching fortress at the end of the boulevard.

As the vehicles began to round the fountain at the foot of the boulevard, the one that always made Nero scratch his head why this man was sitting with a boulder on his back, they exited and approached the steps that threatened to go on for eternity. Standing at the first was a tall man, of the same complexion as Bashir only his grays had come in even thicker than his own fathers. Not a hair was to be seen past his jawline and in his fusion of suit and kurta he removed his arms from behind his back and greeted them.

"Commodus! I was beginning to think you were going to run late!" His hearty, deep voice echoed out.

"Aside my son's finest efforts, we are still early." As they approached Nero watched for the first time in his life as his father bowed his head and embraced the man with heavy pats to the back.

"Surely you don't mean this sprouting young man?" He looked from Commodus to Nero and extended his hand out. Utterly eclipsed, Nero felt the coarse yet tender shake as he nodded up at the man.

"This is Marcus, my finest adviser and above all else, my best friend." He gestured with a squeeze on his shoulder.

"Bashir has told me much of your adventures, Nero. I'm excited to show you what we've been working here." His smile was warm and genuine and as they began to scale the endless flight of steps, Nero noticed their escort was flanking them in all directions. Eventually they would hit the story-tall mirror doors with polished brushed steel cylinders for handles. No locks, the doormen gestured for them to enter and so they did.

"Welcome to Genesis. This is where we create the Processors." Marcus gestured to several glass cases lining the main hall. Within back lit marble cutouts were displays showing what looked to Nero to be unfinished busts. Full body in scope they were lifelike copies of men and women only lacking any defining features. Like they had been taken and dipped into a thick layer of some type of cement and left to dry; butterflies set out for all to see.

They continued walking through the facility going deeper and at certain intervals were required to scan their badges to gain entry further. There were less people the further they went and even less windows. The air was practically suffocating with its purity- even a lifetime in the residential district hadn't prepared him for the particulate-free intensity of freshly scrubbed oxygen. They came to a single red door with a keypad. Commodus stepped up and blinked a few presses before a loud snap and the door opened just enough before coming back. He quickly grasped the handle and ushered them inside. It was a dim lit room with a wall of monitors each displaying a different room or angle of the room beside it. Commodus stood at the desk as Marcus took a seat in the chair and gestured for Nero to join him close. A wire frame was soon blown up consuming the center of the monitors.

"Do you know why the Processors are designed to look like us?"

It was the first time Nero had even begun to consider the question. Never before had he really blinked at the thought of synthetic people walking and talking and fake breathing among them. To think that they had been engineered to do all of that seamlessly was dawning on him now.

"No."

The wire frame was rotating as a lifelike model spliced its space in half matching its rotation perfectly.

"A long time ago they say that our ancestors would often take extra measures to create an immersive force for spectators. This went so far as to put decals and unnecessary trinkets on machines to make them appear as a commercial vehicle. Even though they did nothing to add to the functionality to the thrill-seeking races they would become more identifiable with the spectator. You see Nero, the human mind is good at recognizing things. Things it knows and things it doesn't. Things that it thinks belong and those that it doesn't. Could you be at ease walking down the street if a machine with no eyes looked at you?"

The rhetorical question sent a chill down his spine. He simply shook his head left and right.

"Exactly. That is why we set out to make the perfect machine. So perfect that it could fool us. Man and machine coinciding in work side by side, breaking down the barriers between the two so that we can find a harmony-" Before he could finish, his father cleared his throat and set a hand on Nero's shoulder and Marcus's own.

"Marcus is the smartest man I've ever met. He has exceeded all expectations and broken every barrier in his way." This didn't sound like a good reason to interrupt him though. Nero waited for what he imagined might be the point of this.

A few clicks and Marcus's smile had flattened out as he paused the wire frame and pulled up footage of a recent incident. A processor was on the screen with the frames paused. Engulfed, Nero could make out through the scanlines and pixels that it sat seated, ablaze.

"We still have a ways to go. Man creating man has come a little too close to the source code. Marcus assures me that he can fix this defect and for all of us I hope he's right."

Marcus didn't budge. He looked from the screen to the keyboard and sat silent.

"We're at a crossroads Nero. We don't have the capabilities some of the other houses do. We don't have the sheer numbers or the right pull with the minor factions. We have our production and we have the edge with technology. We arm. We clothe. We provide for the other houses and shield them from The Rot. Eventually they will catch up and what will we do then? The Processors are necessary to increase production and to stay ahead of the curve. Without our resources we are nothing to them. For years we managed to stave off the copies and even now their finest works are but shoddy imitations. Still. This damn bug keeps creeping back from-" He was abruptly cut off.

"That's to say that emotions are a defect. Emotions are an important piece of the human puzzle. Why wouldn't they be the same for a Processor?" The glare Commodus wore was rivaled only by the vein that threatened to erupt in his forehead. It slowly receded as he pushed off the desk and took a deep breath.

"The needs of the many Marcus. Can you disable them?"

"You already have your dead-switch. Wasn't that the point? This is not as simple as uncoupling a breaker or wiring a circuit board. We're talking about complexities within complexities. These are fabricated quantum machines here. Could I make a workaround? Sure, they're called lobotomies and they were outlawed back when we torched our original home." He slid the chair to the side and looked to Commodus with disbelief splayed over his face.

The silence lasted for an eternity until the door opened and a janitor stuck their head in.

"Forgive me, the facility will be commencing the nightly scrub. Please see yourselves out in five minutes." The head disappeared and the two men began laughing, leaving Nero clueless as to the punchline. As they rose and made their way for the door they both looked to the younger.

"We used to sneak around too when we were younger. Every time it's the damn janitors that caught us." Marcus's grin was painfully reminiscent of Bashir's.

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Five
Rot

"They were very informal. It was weird." Nero was trying to see over his shoulder as a sharp squeeze suffocated him from behind.

Bashir was fixing the straps on his aging suit. Each tug brought a sharp stab in some new place of his body he didn't know he could feel pain.

"You really are terrible at this you know?" Bashir barked.

Overhead the opaque flood of light was carved in a messy spill into the duct they were currently in. Looking over the amount of dust and sand that had built up inside it Nero could only guess at how old this one had to be. Lifetimes stood between them and its last use or maintenance. A cough sent some sand dancing in the light as Bashir's latest adjustment set a rib floating. Or close enough.

"Well if we could get our hands on some new suits I wouldn't have to try and jerry rig it to fit me. The first time we went out was years ago by this point." Nero was fighting the urge to rip it off and just run in his birthday suit.

"That's true but it doesn't excuse you from being incompetent. What will you do when I'm not there to tie your shoes for you hmm?" He punctuated the lesson with one final check of the gear before nigh lifting Nero off his feet with a final stretch of the 'x' bands on his back. A shallow wheeze was the prize and he knew it was a job well done. Hearty pats sent some more dust askew before the creak of worn gloves covered his hands and his goggles came down over his face. Nero followed suit before Bashir paused, hands at the nine and two positions on the vault wheel.

"This isn't like the districts we've been to before. You say nothing. You look at no one. Keep your eyes on my back. Your family means something different out this far. Even in the close districts they know better. Out here..." He looked Nero dead in the eyes.

"Yeah, I get it. They hate us. It's nothing I haven't-" He was cut off with a raised index finger swinging left and right.

"No. There exists a thing beyond hatred. There is no word for what they harbor in their breasts. You hate people who wrong you. You hate people who humiliate you. You hate people who hurt you. What do you call someone who made you to be less than human? What do you call someone who has destroyed everything you ever built in life? What do you feel for someone who spends every waking moment thinking how they will next profit off of your endless suffering?" His hand returned to the wheel and the painful cry it let out soon came with a flood of sand and blinding light. Even through the dark visor goggles Nero had to lift a hand to blot some of it out.

"I don't know." Nero responded.

◙

Everything was broken. Right out of the vault they had been washed over with the sand and it burned hot even against their suits. Old roads were simply indents in the sun baked sand beds. Buildings were halfway decayed and most had been decapitated over the course of the years. In reality they had been made of bedrock back then so it didn't come as a surprise that they would have given to the elements over time. The very sand they drudged through was probably the missing roofs, walls, doors and walkways. He thought he knew hot before but wading through ankle high molten sand was proving difficult for his legs and his lungs.

Bashir led the way and Nero stayed within arms length of him. Little shade was afforded with the sun directly overhead but that didn't stop them from piling on one another in the small crevasses between walls. Too narrow to be considered alleys they were more like single file lines going nowhere. He didn't look but he felt their eyes.

"They know we're not from here." Bashir's voice was muffled inside his visor as they continued on. He paused and Nero almost toppled over from the immense relief in his aching legs. Bashir's right hand gestured in a lightning fast flick of index and middle fingers towards the rooftops. A few lumps of tattered clothes had been moving and froze as Nero even thought of looking. They drew in closer to the faux alleys and in the brief sliver of shade it felt like they had stepped into air conditioning. Bashir's cue to rest came with a plop of his burning but in the cooler sand. The sound of plastic straining against eager sucks could be heard through the visor.

"The only thing keeping them from killing us and taking our shields is they think we're here to check on them. Ironically." The lack of any humor in Bashir's voice left a hollow ebb in Nero's chest. He was never serious. At least not at any point since he had known him.

"So they hate us for who we are but because they don't know exactly who we are, we're safe?" It was nonsensical to say out loud.

"Not hate. Think of the love a mother has for her child. Or the love that a healthy sun gives to life. That warmth. What would you call the opposite?" He flicked his fingers again and across the bleeding decrepit skyline of forgotten buildings he could see them. They were shambling out from the recesses. Torn gear, well older than either of them combined, was black around the holes where something scaled that once resembled skin now rest. Black and purple boils grew to the size of small tumors between golf and tennis balls. Some were dragging themselves and others were using discarded limbs tied to their own for stability. Everyone who had been in the lines was now missing and Bashir was moving down the small crevasse towards the end. More were filing out across the street as well.

"We don't know exactly when it was discovered but people were the first to get it. The earliest case of Rot was recorded when the old factory was about six months old. People were working it then. At first they thought it was the byproducts being spewed out but all tests indicated that those were only responsible for the internal issues. Ruptured lungs, black spots and atrophied arteries- you know the things that they were told to just work through. It wasn't until they started dying in the street that they took it seriously. High radiation."

Bashir began to lead them back around the opposite way they came as the shamblers were growing all around them. Every building seemed to bleeding them out. They weren't fast, they didn't look at them as the lines had, they didn't seem to look at anything at all. It was like they didn't exist. Invisible to them the two were walking at a far less brisk pace and were on their way back towards the vault hatch.

"What caused it? People were here for a thousand years before the first factory weren't they?" Nero sucked down the next salty bitter swallow.

"Easily three times that if the early records are to be believed. They believe that it was always there." He paused and held a hand out behind him. A few shamblers crawled and ambled by looking right through them before crossing out of sight behind the next broken building.

"How is that possible? They weren't nearly as advanced back then and were still relying on crude oils." They started back and the massive worm structure was craning its way into existence. Far off in the distance he could see the lush green gardens. How could that oasis exist in a hell like this? That's how they see us.

"Precisely the point. Once they began to harness their harmful fuels it gave way to the first factory. As if killing people slowly wasn't enough of a warning to stop. As it turns out the shields weren't even designed until the Rot. As the factory continued the cases only got worse until it turns out that it killed the planet's natural defense. Once that happened production on the Processors took first priority." They began to climb the razor thin ladder back up towards the hatch only pausing near the lip to turn and get another view. Discarded and forgotten the ruins were a sea of orange sand. The shamblers weren't fast and why should they have been?

"They didn't even see us." Nero lamented.

"Those were Processors. The earlier versions anyway. The Rot doesn't fully kill them since it is a cancer without a proper system. Instead it grows as much as it can and then sits. Once a Processor has been compromised they drop them out here since it isn't safe to properly dispose of them and reuse their parts. They aren't immune but it isn't a death sentence either. So they wander here aimlessly. Until they eventually shut down."

"Modern Processors can last for several generations can't they?" The grinding of the vault hatch reduced the ache in Nero's chest as he lifted his visor and blinked furiously at the bright light flooding through the hole in the tunnel.

"Yes. Those earlier generations are often still put into circulation since a lot of them were shelved and as I'm sure you saw not fit for general purpose anymore. Still, people get their hands on them and eventually the all end up here." Nero looked down at his shoe prints in the sand. Larger even as a teenager.

"The child models." He'd seen them too.

"They were outlawed when the second factory was made. The design of the first was made in the style of the old days where space was of primary concern and they believed it contributed to high retention. Pile in as much machinery as possible in tight space to reduce the footprint and marginalize the capitol costs. Since normal workers couldn't fit and they were unable to reinstitute child labor the young model Processors were introduced. This had a litany of issues spanning from adult minds in childlike bodies, and I needn't clarify all of those implications, as well as the inverse effects of the workers having to navigate child bodies through the eventual toxic environments. We wanted machines that looked like us to ease our minds but then we made them into children as if that wasn't some hypocrisy." His suit was being tucked inside his pack and Nero was barely getting his fingers free from his gloves.

"Don't we give Processors shields even when they work outside?" Nero was beginning to fold the suit into his pack and was staring at the particulates swirling in the milky light.

"Only the contractors that can afford them. The rest end up here." He was already on the move through the tunnel as Nero hurried to keep up.

"I don't understand isn't there enough by now to go around? Why don't we just give the old models to them?"

Bashir stopped and turned to face Nero. Nero winced expecting some sharp mockery or some barbed retort. Instead Bashir zipped open his pack and pulled out a book. Roughly the size of an old personal tech manual and with frayed red covering he handed it over. There was no title, no labels and when Nero opened it it was handwritten.

"What is this?" Nero flipped through seeing texts, diagrams as well as some blank pages at the end before looking up.

"The Red Book. Read it. Then we will talk more and see more." Bashir turned and continued on. "Hurry now silver spoon Nero. My father is a lot less lenient than yours."

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Six
The Red Book

Bzzzzzz!

The lights flashed red all around the practice court and the dim overhead ambience sharply struck to their bright fluorescent blues. He could hear his father droning on about how this time he hadn't scored a single clean hit or had failed to properly pierce the shield with the right technique but all he could really see were the grooves in the hilt of the daggers he held.

"Are you listening Nero?" He was unstrapping his wrists and plucking each finger loose of the gloves.

All he got was a shrug back.

"You're better than that. Your last session you beat Praetus and Lucas without a single round going in their favor. They say you might be the best they've ever taught. What's going on?"

A lot. Not that it ever would matter. Still he couldn't help himself. It couldn't hurt to ask.

"Why doesn't everyone have a shield for the rot? We could afford that couldn't we?"

Commodus paused and approached resting his hand on Nero's shoulder before giving it a squeeze and then a shake.

"Leave it to my son to get stabbed while thinking about all of the problems he cannot fix. Yes that is a part of it. We could afford to arm the entire country and planet with shields and then what comes after that? Our allies have their own people and then they would see it as a slight if we didn't offer the same amenities. But let's say for instance that we did do that and then to all of their allies until everyone we liked had shields and no one was getting Rot. What happens when the old ones begin to fail?"

Nero gave it some thought. "Don't they hold a charge for over a life span?"

"Sure they do. And nothing is perfect. They malfunction or they will be rendered obsolete or they will take our tools and will go to war with them. Then everyone we didn't give them to will consider us an enemy. Not to mention we will have to perform maintenance on all of these and in the long run what started as a little gesture of kindness has exhausted us, and the entire system, for what?" He gave Nero's shoulder a squeeze.

"Well can't we donate the old ones to people?"

"We could but then you also have to consider that if we did that there would be those who would purposefully use it against us. Not to mention hand-me-downs aren't exactly good optics for House Zhir. Sowed and Woven, Nero. Those are more than just words. Remember that. Now go on and next time you better split at least half of the rounds."

"You'll ask Marcus about fitting the old ones to give away?" He lingered as he began to inch towards the doorway.

"For you Nero, I will do just that." He pulled out his hand terminal and tapped away. "Go on, dinner is soon."

◙

Dinner was as it had been before and would be after. Silver on marble, served platters and the elegant decor of century old heirlooms and paintings on the walls. He hated dinner. Nothing made him feel less part of the ecosystem than sitting in that large dining hall surrounded by servants he never asked for and dining under the strangled silence knowing they all had to watch and attend to every need while the moist meat glistened and eventually grew cold. That too would get thrown away. He once bothered his father about that also: why wouldn't they let the kitchen staff eat the left overs? Surely they were hungry or had families or that the meals couldn't be reheated later. They are all well paid for their services you needn't worry about every single problem and every single solution. But it just made sense didn't it?

Truthfully he hated dinner. Father was always absent with work and mother was always speaking to a friend or another noble woman scheming and plotting their next event. They had fun he imagined or always pretended like they did. To him it looked like the most choreographed affair he had ever seen; laughing, small talk and always a bit of wine. Or a lot of wine. All they did was work or talk to people about work or plan work events. What did they ever do for fun he wondered. Eventually he excused himself and wandered the large marble and ivory halls until he came to the garden. The tabletops had been sun bleached over the summer and the checkers would have to be redone if they were going to be used again anytime soon. They wouldn't get to it if he didn't ask and since Luciana had gone it wasn't really worth it anymore. The game was no longer fun. He found the seat where that had all happened and took it now years later. Warm from the day's sweltering heat it was hot at the first touch but from his tote he pulled out the red journal. Old, the binding gave a noise of resistance when he opened it to the first page.

To those who seek to know. May we never forget those who struggled before us and those who will struggle after us. We are all a part of it. Never stop fighting. Not until we've all found liberation.

The orange and purple of the sun on the horizon bled across the invisible shield and soaked him and the trees and the immaculate cut grass. No birds were chirping, no servants hustled around and even though the machine kept turning around him he had a feeling when he next looked up the gradient would be looking back at him. He turned the page again.

Value vs Use Value

The simplest way to analyze the functionality of the system is to break down how unnatural it is and how it perverts and distorts everything to meet its desired end. There is no desired end: the goal is simply to accrue more. Always. Forever. To understand these ideas you will have to be willing to forget everything you have been told. There are truths, there are lies and there are those things that will remain in between. This space between the black and the white is where they operate at their best. The muddied waters are where they thrive. It is through the mystification and obfuscation of truth that they dig their trenches and they lurk and slunk.

Commodification is the rupturing of use value and value. A commodity is a good or a service that is produced in order to be exchanged for other commodities for gain. Any product that one makes or any service that one offers for exchange is a commodity: a shoe, a table, the installation of a new utility, a babysitter or any and all things in between. Since exchange is the goal of the system they have created a meta commodity, currency, which exchanges with all other commodities. This avoids the otherwise necessary headache of establishing how many shoes one would have to trade for one table. This brings us to the crux of the first perversion: value vs use value. People have always been nomadic. They travel together and always kept moving and to do so they needed clothes to protect them from the elements. Shoes were created to protect feet from harsher surfaces. Therefore the use value of a shoe is that by creating it and wearing it, your feet are protected. In the system presently, the value of the shoe becomes what amount of currency you can obtain by exchanging it, or selling it. This is the rupturing of a natural occurring process to the bastardized commodification. Now if there is not enough currency to exchange for your shoes they will remain on a rack unused. Eventually they will be removed and discarded. This is true for food and all other commodities. The purpose of the system is to exchange commodities for more commodities, currency in the case of the seller, to earn more than they started with. This perpetual cycle is the only thing that matters. Use Value has no concern anymore- only the value that can be acquired through selling the commodity. Therefore when food fails to exchange for any reason(lack of sales) it is thrown into the trash as opposed to given away for free. The seller is not concerned with the starving or the hungry, they are only concerned with obtaining the value for their commodity.

In history we see excruciating lengths taken to secure the established value of said commodities. If no one exchanges for food and it is all given away it loses its intrinsic value. Therefore throughout history we have seen that when food is discarded it is further degraded by means of making it lose its intrinsic value. Discarding into the trash means any who are willing may take it still and ascertain its use value. This is why we see people lighting food on fire in the street, dousing it in gasoline and fuel, and even hiring armed security to ensure that the starving do not get its use value. It is here that we begin our dissection of this system because it is here that it is so poignantly illustrated that what matters most is the pursuit and perpetuity of the exchange. Not the needs of the people. It pains me to witness these events occurring now on Calantha as they have so many times before. Are we damned to never escape this cycle?

◙

He stared at the ceiling overhead as the hours drifted by. What did it all mean? He would have to read it again. And again. And again after that until it clicked in his mind. Surely there was something missing here from the picture. Their family had worked hard and built themselves up from tradesmen to one of the finest noble houses of the system. They took care of their people. Not like House Slava or some of the others. They weren't like them. It wasn't like that.

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Seven
Legacy

Every time he fastened the lapel it always went crooked. A spindle of yarn pierced diagonally by a narrow gold needle. Regal crimson fit as though it was a second skin; the Thawb held a snug embrace on him and floating on it was the crest of House Zhir. The time piece on his wrist, an antique from his grandfather's belongings, still chugged along with an inaudible iterator. He was out of time. The knock at the door ushered his hands down his form smoothing the elaborate fabric into place.

"Prince, it's time for the council." The words had him drawing in a sharp breath accompanied by a sharp stab in his ribs.

"I'm ready."

◙

Through the main hall sprawling heavens circled in the domes. Spiraling tales of old enumerated only by the invisible signatures of the famous artists who had been honored to serve House Zhir through the decades. H'shjir the Deft, Lazar, The Artist Previously Considered Io, that one had always amused him, but it was only now that his eyes returned to his escort's back did it really set in. Those domes were at least four stories high. The scaffolding needed to get that high alone would require more power than every shield in the hall. To span the entire ceiling of the hall, a building scaling 55,000 square feet, would have taken countless days and nights. The servants that hurried through the halls all took irreplaceable moments out of their lives to bow and curtsy. To pay their respects to him, but not to him, to that crooked lapel on his chest. To the colors that he wore, to the history they had written and made, to the dome overhead and the shields in the sky.

Mahogany doors, real wood, lined with gold furnishings opened allowing his escort into the Council Chamber first and then he followed. At the head of the table his father sat consulting Locust Leif, the ambassador from... where was he from again? He scanned the room as he circled the table and took his seat. So many faces, so many names, it was impossible to keep them all straight in his head. The glances he caught were swift and mostly innocuous.

Commodus cleared his throat and looked around the table. Two seats remained empty and as he stood and adjusted his Thawb the doors opened once more with the thud of armor. Black, finished with a glossy coat, trimmed with a blinding polished chrome entered. Two Knights each wielding spears with decorative red feathers stood at arms and lifted them before slamming them onto the marble tile beneath.

"We present Prince Gaozreich, Heir to House Slava." Their synchronous boom of candor filled the hall before the Prince entered. From sole to shoulders he wore the matching armor albeit several heads shorter than the guards. Lush blonde locks met just at the deltoid plates and piercing blue eyes set perfectly square in his face. He rounded the table and stood by one of the empty seats.

"Honorable Commodus", before he could finish Praetus stepped forward with a hand on his hilt.

"You will greet him as the Heir of House Zhir, in his own home!" The guards shifted and before anything else could go sideways a laugh came out from Commodus and he pat Praetus' shoulder.

"Stand down old friend. The seeds don't scatter far from the tree after all. He carries his father's pride that much is for certain. Continue." He ushered back to his seat and took it with a hefty thud.

"As I was saying", his gaze hovered on Praetus as he spoke, "My father regrets to inform you that he is unable to attend this Council due to unforeseen circumstances regarding our latest Processors."

"Maybe if you're degenerate clan would let go of your grotesque perversions you wouldn't have so many problems." Praetus spat.

"Possibly the case", the words seemed to tickle Gaozreich into glee, "or if your house were less stingy with the only qualified technicians we could remedy these problems on our own time. But benevolence isn't exactly House Zhir's claim to throne, is it?"

He might as well have lit a tinder attached to eight fuselages full of explosives. The way Praetus and a few others began to cross the room and how the Slavaan guards immediately formed a two-manned phalanx around the Prince was nothing less than incredible, in both respects. He was incapable of turning away from the Prince. Such boldness; he had never seen someone speak to his father in such a way, let alone someone so young. He must have been only a year or two older than himself at this point. But the poise was unmistakable. His hand had not once left the hilt of his weapon but as for all of House Slava's braggart nature- that too was performative. All of their traditions they wore on their sleeves. Old fashioned armor that was woven with the newest tech, the way that they continued their barbaric lineage of slavery... He found himself looking down at the thick red garment he wore and recalled stories of how in the blistering heat and oppressive sun of old, it was necessary to wear them. They could block the rays but allow the shallow wind to comfort you even on the longest treks. Now? It was just them clinging to a time that well predated them. A mockery. Looking back to Gaozreich, they didn't seem to be as much at odds as the guards thought. They were doing the same thing.

Not long after the promise of an impending scuffle was offered all parties had been seated and the meeting officially began. Locust Leif had begun the meeting by pledging two hundred more vessels, it was now he remembered that Locust Leif was the Duke of Cypso C908, the most advanced shipyard in the system. They had terraformed their planet's surface to grow the plating required for vacuum travel. He forgot the specifics of how it worked but it was something regarding the hull plates and how their malleability allowed them to polymorph depending on the path they took. That always struck him as odd since there was no resistance in space but he guessed it had something to do with how they could manipulate the storage capacity without adding or removing tiers. The infrastructure layout would always remain the same however the length and other specifications were never identical even on the same vessel. Re-entry, leaving the gravity well, it was incredible to consider and it probably spun Theseus in his grave.

Next up had been Treymond claiming that the last batch of labor Processors they had received from House Zhir were malfunctioning and he would need to see a full reimbursement of his claim. This was a regular gambit by him to the point now that as soon as he had begun to read from his scroll, Commodus had already summoned his Calculator to his side and sent them to the corner. Per usual Treymond would accept a minimal apology and roughly 15% off his next batch. It might accumulate one day but with the cost of shipping technicians out for the remedial tasks, they would always make it back.

Eventually the floor was taken by Gaozreich. He stood and cleared his throat and an uneasy quiet filled the chamber.

"My father has entrusted me to this meeting to see that the new contract may not succumb to any reprisals barring our slight disagreements regarding our Houses." His smile was effortless. His tact was graceful and yet the ease of which he spoke of such vile things sent a shiver down Nero's spine.

"By disagreements you mean the enslavement of the Processors you possess?" Commodus spoke the words not without vitriol but far more controlled than Praetus by his side could have managed.

"The manner in which we treat our Processors, that we have legally purchased from you, is not of your concern once they have been exchanged into our hands, is that not accurate? Regardless of your alleged claims." There was the smile again only this time he looked straight at Nero.

Commodus sat in his seat and it was the first time Nero had ever seen him at a lack of an instant rebuttal. No clever, barbed riposte or parry to the raised point. Instead he gestured with his hand.

"So what is it exactly then that you're here to confirm from me? Since you seem to understand the logistics beneath our family's dealings."

"We would like to up our next shipment by..." The young Prince tilted his head as he reviewed the scroll in his hands. "Thirty percent." It swiftly evaded the pull of gravity and snapped into itself within one gauntlet he wore before he turned his smile from Nero to Commodus. "This of course will be upheld to the brevity of our trade agreements. That means that we expect bi-cycle visits from your best technician and no more invasive, unexpected tours of our facilities. Your alleged claims have not been confirmed in countless attempts and we grow weary of them. It is nothing short of a sign of disrespect."

Commodus let out a bark of a laugh and tapped his fingers on the top of the polished slate table. He looked to Praetus and to an empty spot beside him. It was at that moment Nero had realized Marcus's absence from the Council.

"Very well." The shock of the acceptance was palpable in Praetus's rage. There was mild clamoring around the table before he held up a hand. "I anticipated this and have already sent our finest to Slava Major ahead of your arrival. However tell your father next time he sends a child to do his bidding I will happily mistake the gesture of an offering of a Ward." The table erupted in laughter and he watched Gaozreich anticipating a retaliation of some kind. A budge of the brow, an awkward shift of the stance or any cue that he had gotten under his skin. There was none. The young Prince bowed his head and turned from the table.

"Very well, this concludes my business here. Our Calculators will be in touch." He bowed and his guards led him on out. Swift and without recourse the rest of the room spoke softly amongst their neighbors before he checked his grandfather's time piece. Half an hour. Half an hour had gone by. He groaned and slid back into his chair as they next looked at the next model of shielding and the various contractors from the System that wanted to buy the rights in a bidding war.

◙

It was not until the purple of the sky had gone black that the Council adjourned. He was confident that if someone had taken pliers to his nails and peeled them one by one he would have felt more joy than he did at this very moment. Commodus was finishing a comforting laugh with someone he had just ripped off for a year's backlogged supply of shields, marked up beyond a thousand percent, before they eventually left and it was just the two of them. He stood by the carved stone window, the invisible shield offering an occasional crackle and visible permutation before going invisible again. A bug maybe, a single grain of sand, who knew.

"So... what did you make of your first Council Meeting?" He asked without looking to Nero.

There had been so many mental notes that he had forgotten until he looked now. Rage initially had taken hold in him, then it devolved into anger and now it had been replaced by something else. Something defeated and empty.

"So we're just going to sell them more Processors knowing they enslave them?"

"He is right. We have attempted several times to find any evidence of wrong doing either in their factories or throughout various cities. There have been zero incidents reported and after random checks and intervals, our investigations have brought up nothing. They--" before he could finish a shock to him and Nero himself, he had punched the slate table.

"They know what they're doing! They're not fools! How can we turn a blind eye to that?!" He was breathing hard, the red he wore lifting and falling, his knuckles didn't hurt yet but they surely would in another hour or as soon as that adrenaline left his system.

"Say you're right, what do we do then, break off the trade agreement? We have seen only steady growth since opening trading routes with House Slava and they are now growing to equal roughly a quarter of our entire exports. That is a price they pay. They are a despicable House but the more we can twist their arm the better for everyone, no?"

The words caused his jaw to clench and his teeth to grind.

"How is that better for the Processors?! An existence of endless labor at the least!"

"Do not raise your voice to me child!" He stepped closer and extended an index pointing, or even stabbing, right into his heart. "You understand just the surface of what's going on here. This is a system at work. We cannot think of only ourselves or the Processors. They are machines. That is it. The cost of ensuring stability across the system is a few tools being used? That is a price I can live with. The needs of my people come first. Then the needs of our allies. Then even the needs of House Slava. Then the Processors. That is final."

An eternity hung between them in silence before Nero turned to leave. Before he could a forceful grip took his arm and held him. The other hand went to the lapel and straightened it out before he released him.

"Sowed and Woven. That is our legacy."

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Eight
Theory

Several cycles had passed since Bashir had given him the book. Too many a night had ended with the dawn of a new day peeling through the shields at his bedside over pages he recanted. Bashir had made him promise that he could not continue onto a new chapter until he had properly displayed a mastery over the previous. Whoever had penned the word labyrinth had taken painstakingly acute notes and details that his first attempts to swim through had only ended in him drowning. The first breakthrough had been the shadow mentoring at the Processor Plant. Following his father and Marcus through the operations over three months had put things into perspective.

Labor was the craft of taking the capital, in the case of the Plant it was the circuitry, the bio-gel that would encase it, the processor tech, the crysalis, all of the components that went into each Processor and transforming them all into one final product. Due to the nature of the work and the risks of the facility and process it was prohibited for any non-Processor to enter the Plant levels below the first three. Store beneath the bedrock the process was done by his estimation a mile beneath the surface. The duality of the system was that only Processors could create Processors; their existence was predicated on the insurmountable dangers that came with the evolving technology. From their efforts they would bring forth the next era and so it was each and every subsequent year. The truth was also found in the shield developments. Each year new more efficient models were created with new, expansive profits.

By his count presently the Processors outnumbered them roughly seven to one. It was the reliance on them that had led Calantha to its position in the system. Processors did not need food or drink, they did not need the sun light nor did they need currency. They were given a badge with their credentials coded and what they required in suitable provisions for maintenance was supplied at the Plant. Their maintenance was free since who was there to pay and what with and the cycle seemed to keep House Zhir higher than those below. But every year he began to see the cursory disposal of the previous eras. The Rot was growing predominantly in the outer sectors but even beneath the large dome shields there were sights of shortcomings and failures.

He had been tasked with researching inward solutions and as he began to make habit of patrolling the inner sectors it dawned on him all too clearly; there was no way to fend off the radiation in a wide area. Everyone would need a personal shield by the next fifteen years.

Through the halls his gait carried him towards the briefing room when he ran into Bashir.

"Oh to what do I owe the pleasure of the Prince of Pearls?" Long braids had been meticulously colored in varying shades of fire; orange, yellow, red and the likes of which bled in between that left Nero both jealous and in awe. They embraced with a smile before they stepped into the intimate chamber.

"Have you come to see the outcomes of my research? Not unexpected however they're going to accuse me of beating the same drums." He set down the folder and the thin tablet on the podium and began to swipe through his absurd stack of data. There was no fault in the calculations, in the dotted lines and vectors and trajectories. He had quadruple checked the math and with a sigh he shook his head. "More are going to die unless we do something about this."

"Then you better make a compelling case to your people that money bags are only worth having when there's something to spend them all on, que?" The sarcastic ribbing was responded with a scowl from Nero and a quick turn of the pages.

"They're not my people. If you came to prick my asshole with a sand dagger I feel as though you could have done it by drone." He nodded as a few Council members started to enter and take their seats. What had been a smaller youth now stood a fuller presence. His formal dress hugged round shoulders, squeezed against a broader frame and tapered off about the waist. He wasn't going to need any door frames redesigned any time soon but there were now few in the Praetoriate that could last a round with him. Bashir was always a coin flip on the day.

"Please, at this point I can do that mentally alone. That tingly sensation when you toss and turn at night; that's me possessing the sands lodged far up your rectum." He nodded to a disgruntled looking assistant who had happened to overhear the latter half of the sentence and chose not to return with any grace other than a mumbled obscenity. Bashir saluted with a formal tip of his hand before leaning closer in. "No, after your presentation we're taking a trip up to The Rig."

Before he could turn away Nero was staring at him and whatever thoughts had been preoccupying his mind were vacant.

"How?"

"My father was supposed to oversee the general meeting but is preoccupied so I get to go in his place. Meanwhile, I could use an escort to make sure they don't get the wrong idea while I'm up there. Your daddy is paying the bills but the utility is going to be for "the system"." His emphasized air quotes said all they needed to.

Nero sighed and as the last of the members filed in he took a pointer and clicked a few times to test the laser. He flicked at the title page which had a satellite image of Calantha focused over the bleached desert. "I'll make this one prompt since you're all very busy people who no doubt have better ideas of how to spend your day than get lectured by a twat half your age." He waited while they awkwardly laughed- even though he had no real power to punish them otherwise, it humored him to see men graying at the temples and beard squirm. "Unless we make shields more accessible and more affordable in the next decade: over half of our population will die."

◙

The Rig, lacking any meaningful title or dictate otherwise, was a sprawling beast of a station located on the other side of the Bend. Nestled in a formed space that had required the Major Houses to each sacrifice a plot of their territory, the Rig was officially a stateless endeavor. Each House was to send a rotating crew of engineers that would swap circulations every seven years. Arachnid shaped limbs blossomed out from the sphere of enforced steel and glass. Each limb was a feat of construction that took easily their entire lives to construct. Within the pod they could see the black velvet sea of space and only the stars between them and the Rig.

"Why are we actually out here?" Nero's eyes were glued past the thin veil of shielding that kept them from the infinite vacuum.

"I told you. Though no Zhir truly hears something until they have been told eight thousand times. We are here to meet with the chief engineer and look at the projections for the next production cycle." He sung in a chimey tune as the display alerted them they were within one kilometer of station docking.

"Construction on the final limbs is scheduled to be finished well within this cycle. What more construction do they need this should be ready and operational." Nero watched their little rectangle diagram slip along and consume one more full bead on the string they rode until they came to a silent halt and the shield crackled before disabling. The white interior that awaited them looked pristine and he figured it was cleaner than the hospitals back on Calantha.

They stepped out and were immediately greeted by a pair of technicians who wore their matching jumpsuits; navy and red with only a patch that had the silhouette of The Rig on each shoulder before they led them onto the lift and they proceeded to the heart of the beast. The coriolis had Nero clutching at the support beam as they began to circle the glass walkway, nothing other than partially refracted light indicating to their apeish brains that they weren't in danger of falling through directly into the cosmos below.

"You'll get used to that eventually." Bashir snickered before he clapped his hands and bowed his head. Nero nearly guffawed at the display since the man had never shown anyone an ounce of respect before he turned to the young woman wearing the white lab trench coat that made him think she was a chemistry teacher. Dark hair was pulled into a messy bun behind her and the scowl on her face almost recoiled him backwards.

"The hell is this?" Her venom was unmistakable aimed at Nero and Nero alone.

"It's so nice to see you again Chief Engineer Tsu!" Bashir stepped out and held both of his palms out as he approached her only to be met by an extended palm and the other finger pointing square at Nero.

"This is not what we agreed on Bashir. You told me you were-" Before she could finish Bashir gently pat the air with his hands and cut her off with the grace of a swan in a lake.

"I told you I would bring someone who could breathe the air of legitimacy into our future. And so I have. I give you Nero, Crown Prince of House Zhir." He turned smiling and nodded to Nero who at this point was trying to contain his brain from spinning and snapping his brain stem completely. His cheeks puffed and his hand vacated the support beam to keep his dry heave in check before Tsu rolled her eyes and threw her hands up.

"Un-fucking-believable. You had one job Bashir, one job!" She turned and shook her head before looking back at a loss for words. "There is too much riding on this. No, no I'm going to have to scrap it and we're going to be set back at least another decade." She turned and pulled out her hand terminal and Bashir hurried to her side and waved Nero off.

"Hold on let me explain. Let's take a walk like the old days." He followed her down a corridor and as they disappeared Nero could hear the swell of frustration and utter loathing in her voice. He winced and looked around. In all directions there was only the black of space. Consoles and walkways crawled over the circumference of the glass sphere. There were people walking upside down above him, perpendicular to his right and left and below him they were fairly oriented as he was. The idea was splitting his skull in two as he clutched the bannister and began to make his way to a flat platform against what he could only pretend to call straight ahead.

Standing at the glass was a young man who couldn't have been more than two cycles in either direction from himself or Bashir. He turned when Nero approached and held out a mug of steaming coffee. "You must be a new transplant from the a surface. Well, we did our best to match a regulated standard deviation for the gravity up here but you know, artificial never does scratch the itch does it?" His cheery smile turned Nero's stomach as he gave an attempt at the black steaming drink. Outside the glass one of the mechanical limbs came into view as it arched and consumed half of the display.

"So.... what exactly is this place for anyway?" He took a sip and rest his eyes hoping the coffee wouldn't bounce around like he felt his brain was.

"Ah that accent, Calantha?" The young man waited for any indication that his correct assumption would be confirmed, only Nero gave nothing so he continued on with his assured self. "You would recognize this plight better than most of the other Houses. We need water. Not just you folk but it's no coincidence why House Zhir has contributed a sizable portion of The Rig's grants. But it's all out there." He nodded to the sea of black. "It's all waiting. So we are going to be the system's largest repository. They haul it here and each limb is retrofit with the strongest electromagnetic coils known in the history of mankind. They will draw them in, obliterate their chemical bonds and will reduce the thermodynamic loss to the smallest fraction of a joule per kelvin per kilogram. The Polytropic heat capacity will plummet to the tiniest margin. None of this would have been possible without your family of course. The crysalis changed everything." He stared at the unfurling arm; a skeletal construction with gossamer ligaments protruding and spiraling throughout it. Finished yet not, immeasurable scale and yet when Nero lifted his index he could block it all out of view.

"How many limbs are completed now?"

"Seventeen. The last is under its final checks now and we estimate that within the year we will begin alpha testing on small comets. This would make breaking and storing megagrams of water a trivial step. Just like that." He snapped his fingers and the silence echoed out.

Nero looked out at the extended colossal arm and suddenly sipping his coffee, wondering when the gravity might give out on him and him alone and he'd go floating across, he forgot about the problems on Calantha.

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Nine
Speed Limit

Strapped into their seats he and Bashir were facing each other as the ship sailed through the vacuum sea. Just a dot on the display, The Rig had lost all fine detail and was nothing more than a Green circle with its serif font labeling it. Blue lights filled what was visible of the interior of the ship with a blanket of uv light. That would serve as their primary defense should the ship's shields fail. They had their personal units, beyond military grade, so he was never concerned but just in case it ever came to it the uv tracks would kill any seeds of the rot that might bleed through.

"I hate traveling like this." He broke the silence, interrupting whatever communication Bashir had been crafting.

The smile across from him was no doubt preceding a smart ass remark aimed to wedge itself between some new formed crack in the porcelain facade he wore all day. Instead it was far less caustic.

"The speed limit is important. No one or nothing is above it." He looked at the display and Nero followed shortly after. The construct was terrifying. Hard angles, rectangular attached to some polygonal trapezoid. The matte black finish on it made it nigh invisible and the thrusters fired at random intervals so that they could never be targeted with ease. By the time you might find yourself in range to use a manual targeting laser they would course correct and shoot a beam hot enough to split the atoms in your hull or worse, your shield.

The interaction had come after the H'shjir Accords; where there was a shield there was always a spear. In the early years when House Zhir had adopted the shield tech adjacent families were concerned that their eventual rise to prominence would threaten their collective well-being. Little did they know Commodus the First had no intentions of something so brutish. That was always more House Slava's wheelhouse. The plan laid in waiting was to end up exactly where the system was now: dependent on their tech through exploitive and suffocating contracts. But before that natural state there had been the concern and the answer was if you can't manufacture the shields as well as they can make a weapon that would eradicate anyone in a circle with a diameter of 49.6 clicks. The beam ruptured the bonds between atoms and when it came to the massive energy amplification of the crysalis the result was a chain reaction that ended up being roughly one megaton. The treaties came second to the skirmishes. Bluffs were called and that's how they lost Triladia Station. Over two hundred thousand dead over the rattling of words and that's when they all collectively decided that wars can be fought on the ground or in space without shields. It was funny to him since what was the point if you were going to agree to mutually assured destruction?

The Triton Cannons were linked in synchronous orbits of all Major and Minor Houses. The system was in full agreement that each House would have unique access to the cannons within orbit and only they would know within regularly erratic intervals where they were located in case of an emergency. The arbitration papers had been ratified so that every House would receive a package to keep their Triton up to spec. The balance was maintained by the looming promise that should anything break the limit by any means, whether it was accidental gravity assist or drive malfunction, that was it. You and your clothes and your breaths were reduced to a state of plasma that was one with a radioactive starlet. Their effective range meant that they were for "defensive posturing" only but the thought always occurred to him: what would happen if you turned one on its House? The premise was exhilarating in a morbid sense. Your guardian angel might just be that until the seventh trumpet was blown and then what? The air you breathe and the soil you took for granted turns to ash in the microcosm of a second it takes for you to rupture into a trillion trillion atoms and revert back into the most basic elements and subatomic sequences.

◙

Calantha from space was a quilt of limestone and blue. The scarcity of green that mislead the eyes from orbit were the rusted beach barriers of old. Oxidation of the old barriers had taken centuries and once they had been over run they began the natural process from the incurable salt water that licked and lapped. They would never erode but the sore algae stains that were creeping from the water's edge towards the sand were a dull painful reminder that eventually the planet would have worse problems than the expansive sands. The Rot was a permanent fixture in life, the need for shields was nothing new even with the egregious conditions on the outskirts. But to add to that the oceans had been long past toxic. Even their newest refineries were cataloguing fifteen years out when it came to new samples. Their best minds were confident they could eventually get it to seven but there were limits even to the best systems. At some point the levels of toxicity expand past a point of filtration. Like that whole drinking your own piss thing. There are certain things you can't get out once it's in. The Rot for example, once your blood started to clump with those ionized strains and the fractals of iron formed in your plasma you were due for a slow, excruciating death. That is after the sores and blisters and the rest of the joy. There was the dome. There was home. A lush green dot surrounded on all sides by the litany of harsh LEDs. It was night time so the lights that should have been amber at one point were eery blue-white. More machine than natural but that could sum up their population so why did it bother him at all anymore?

Only when they course corrected into the brighter half of the planet did he realize that they weren't headed home, were they?

"Where are we going?" He looked back to Bashir who had been reading his tablet closely before swiping on the screen, all of which was concealed from him.

"When's the last time you visited the Marine Exhibit?"

"Never." He had no intention of doing so. Never before and not now.

"Should give it a look over. Have a pit stop to make on the way home so we'll be landing nearby in Shoa Moor." The re-entry was as terrible as he remembered. The ship began to rattle and shake and those uv lights flicked from blue to red. They were but red shadows in a pod small enough that another two bodies would feel awfully cramped. He clutched the seat with both of his hands until he felt like his knuckles might pop like corns fresh from the bone.

"You should--" Even Bashir had a difficult time laughing from the force of the descent back into the gravity well. "See your face." He finished with a sharp incising laugh.

"Fuck you." Was all he could murmur back before the lights swam back to the bright blue and there was radio static about the landing going smooth. Fuck them too.

Bright white flooded their vision as the ramp opened and descended and they snapped free of their harnesses and began exiting. Pale concrete walkways guided along the coastline where the pungent brine did nothing less than smack him with a haymaker. He tugged on the cloth mask and covered up to the bridge of his nose. Now it was only like he was drowning in seaweed as opposed to exhuming every imaginary mermaid that had ever been dreamt of. A man he didn't recognize greeted Bashir and drew him close to whisper beneath the cooling drive.

"It went well, as well as it could have anyway." Bashir turned after a few more words and looked to Nero. "That's what she said too!" He laughed and as terribly as it felt being on the outside looking in at a joke he didn't understand, Nero did his best to shoulder the brief attention. They began to head towards one of the buildings that oddly resembled a twisted phallus of metal and glass.

"How long is this going to take?" He asked with just a hint of spite that he was peering through from outside.

"Not long, enjoy the fresh air and we'll get you home safe." The accent branched from his own and even the outer territory. Across the planet the dialect had morphed considerably since they had planted seeds. Even here as he began to tread down the path towards the green foam water the sigil of House Zhir was omnipresent. But what did that really mean out this far? When was the last time one of them had set foot on the green marsh? He didn't know and he suspected his father wouldn't either.

◙

Hours had gone by and he'd traveled up and down visiting the various vendors and watching the daring younger children get close to the green before hurrying back as if the water might devour them whole. The meeting would probably wrap up soon and as the sun began to set on the horizon the flicker of the shields grew in spectacle. Slicing the harmful rays as they crossed the visible dividing line it was a prismatic set where each individual shade was spliced and laid out like a thousand tiny microscope slides. Something churned inside him at the thought. There would never be a natural sunset again. The only way people could witness this was through a lens within a lens within a lens within a lens ad infinitum. Forever separated from that which gave them life. There to the right there was the same patrol that had been marching up and down for hours. Even in his dress they hadn't acknowledged him once. They wore the spooled thread with that needle piercing but they hadn't once checked in over the free range comms. They instead harassed the youths, for their own good he guessed, but there was acid in the words. At several points he'd seen them reach for their bracelets which had only been a show and nothing more. He recognized the models well. Military surplus. That was strange wasn't it? Unless there was a plant nearby that was more than unnecessary.

The cart rolling down the orange concrete, painted with the sun's descent, was soon tilted up and the various fruits and vegetables and breads tumbled down the eroded concrete ramp that took them straight into the water. Splashing as they went the vendor turned and head back to his stall to close up for the night. All that food. He rose up and decided to take a closer look. From his vantage point he could make them out bobbing in the green water. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with them and as he pulled out his binoculars he paused when there was a pair of arms slicing through the waves. Young. One of the kids he'd seen earlier. Well this far out from the shield the water was a little salty, maybe had a few metals in it, but after enough treatment it would be edible enough. The calculations were rough estimates in his head but given the average exposure in the tides this time of year which reflected the disposal hauls from the factory he'd guess that anywhere between one and three thousand shields had been decommissioned which meant that by now-- he ate it. Nero's stomach twisted and he felt the urge to regurgitate all of his small and large intestines infinitely. He took a whole bite out of the lemon.

The binoculars collapsed in reverse from when he'd pulled them out and they smacked his hip painfully as he raced down the path towards the metallic beach.

"Stop! Don't take another bite!" He screamed and the youth saw him barreling forward.

Wide eyes soon turned narrow as he drew closer and reached for the lemon. The boy slashed out with long, sharp nails and tore into the fabric he was wearing before he recoiled back and fell to the metal.

"Wait! Please! You can't eat that!" He drew a step closer and the child yelled in such a harsh variation of vernacular he couldn't make it out. He tapped on his wrist and the translator kicked in.

"You not from here, ya?! So maybe you get these regular but not here! Here they a treat and tonight it's my turn to eat!" The words were chiseled and barbed behind jagged teeth and he took another bite.

The wind sucked in quietly behind him before a round was fired off towards the shield and was instantly dispersed into a scattering firework of what had been rubber sundered and splintered into its atomic structures. Nero turned to one of the guards gesturing for the boy to leave.

"You shouldn't be down here. Your friends are ready to depart." He pointed to the drive warming up.

"He can't eat that." Nero watched as the boy scurried down the metal beach with the small taps of his adolescent heels, bare against the salt and rust. "You need to sto--" before he could finish the guard was loading a second rubber round in as the other joined and laughed.

"Give him ten more paces. Bet dinner?" The words lodged in Nero's throat before he swung a fist and connected right on the man's round nose. The force drove him to the ground and he reached for his peacemaker and lifted it before the other guard quickly kicked it from his hand.

"He's royalty, dumbass!" He pulled him up and pushed him along before he followed after him and turned back to Nero. "Your friends are leaving. Best you do too." He hadn't even realized the translator was still running until he turned it off and the various exchanges after that might as well have been Slavaic.

Turning once more he could see that half bitten lemon washing up and back down the water, bobbing just feet from the small body laying against the metal.

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Ten
Mirage

The next tour group was making their way through the main hall. Pilgrims ventured from across the system to visit the heart of the crysalis. Colossal stone pillars lined the hall symmetrically from the entrance to the rear dome. From the dome limbs of corridors split into various offshoots that led down to the Factory. He was on his way when he paused at the retina scanner.

"Here is the largest indoor fountain." She gestured to the ring of elevated ridges, once rigid and jagged stone polished smooth over the centuries by the bubbling water. In the center was Commodus the First, the man who pioneered the crysalis and brought about the greatest revolution mankind had seen since the great pilgrimage. He passed it every day coming and he remembered what came next.

"Who's the youngest here today?" The tour guide looked around before a young girl stepped up with her hand raised. "It's custom to let the youngest take a drink. You needn't worry it's been thoroughly treated by our state of the art plant. Go ahead." The girl watched with broad eyes, suspicious of the guide's claims before she looked at her reflection in the pool. Cupping her tiny hands she scooped some and took a sip before hurrying back to her parents.

"House Zhir has built its legacy the same way it aims to build its future. One House for all people." She guided them down the next corridor where they would go over how great Commodus the First was and how he ushered in a new era of balance between the warring houses. How exactly did that make sense? Were they years of peace because no one had the means to fight them? Was arming either side of battle considered times of peace since they weren't aiming them at House Zhir? The blinking light accompanied the automatic lock clicking and he made his way towards the descender. The platform was metal grating held on a joint that began its diagonal descent. Overhead there were square slits in the bedrock that let the sun's light bleed through. Each one was a window into the bright sky above and in some way the further you got, the dimmer the light, the less human he felt. Eventually they had simply stopped cutting them out and the bright LEDs strung in the corners of the corridor overhead gave enough light that you were never completely in the dark. Eyeing his tablet he saw a small notification pop up. You had a question for me? Stop by my office I have an opening. - Marcus.

◙

The facility made him want to wash his hands the moment he stepped in. Pristine, not a single object out of place and even the chair that were crooked had the impression that they were exactly how they should have been. Marcus was looking over lines of scrolling text when the chime alerted him there was a guest and he turned with a smile setting down his glasses.

"Look at you! You've gotten bigger." The man himself had grown a few inches in diameter but Nero got the impression that wouldn't be news to him. The thick black beard he wore now presented patches of grey and around his eyes there were a few more crow's feet than he remembered. Everyone was getting older and there was no way to get around that, was there?

"It's good to see you Marcus. I think it'd be better to see you outside every now and then too." He held the tablet tucked between his arm and his ribs. Marcus gave both of his shoulders a firm slap and nodded with a smile.

"Next time I escape I'll visit you before my family, how's that?" He grinned and took his seat, his chair looked like it was going to fire each bolt as shrapnel and plant him flat on his ass. Nero's surprise when it didn't was evident in his pause before he set his tablet down on the work bench and began swiping towards a few schematics side by side.

"Bashir would probably have something to clever to say to me about that."

"You visit me down here more than he does now. Always busy with work yet has nothing to show for it. Please explain to me how that works? You're practically a brother to him so you'll have to keep tabs." He picked up his glasses and began looking at the wires and frames and digits and identification labels. "Ah.. new shields. These are.. somewhere between one cycle old or newer. Where did you see this?" He leaned back and scratched that scraggly forest of wired hair.

"We went out to the beach the other day and when he was doing whatever he was doing", the answer vague and with a more audible layer of irritation than he knew he had in him, "there were two guards with these models. They're military aren't they?"

Marcus exhaled and zoomed in with a pinch of his index and thumb expanding out slowly. "Yes, they are. That's odd. The models we normally assign have discriminators to tell the two apart. Military models have much higher yield. The Vatslav Particles are condensed in a much tighter matrix. From your studious practice with them, you know well how they blunt the impact, while the official model for street use is far less strict and can be modular. Ever since the Accords, the stipulations don't allow that kind of modification." He tapped on the table with a growing crease in his brow.

"So since they can't design the shields themselves to those specifications they're just using the Military issue? Why are they going through all that effort?" Nero seated himself looking at the comparator Marcus had pulled up cycling through the various delineations between the two.

"I have no idea." He leaned in further and Nero could see his eyes flicking back and forth rapidly, taking in so much more of it than Nero could keep up with. "There are no projectile weapon markets on Calantha. Every ship that's gone off-world is subject to the same LADAR scans down to the nuts and bolts. Anything not calibrated properly in the ship's logs flags for an onboard inspection." He pulled out his terminal and began making notes that Nero couldn't read from over the burly shoulder in his way. That didn't strike him as a coincidence.

"Around here the Royal outfit has their own issued supply so when I saw them it just didn't seem right." He watched as Marcus began sorting through the iterator program and began diving into the CSA. The Cache System Array was a directory of all inventory and all shields as well as Processor tech being researched, developed and when Marcus scrolled through he thought he saw a folder named Abrogation. That didn't make sense so he tried to stick with one train at a time. There was zero doubt in his mind now that wherever Marcus was poking around was far above what his eyes were cleared to be viewing so he looked down at the cycling images on his tablet instead.

"Every shield has an assigned model identification. These are for sale only and the shields that go to our armies are kept under a blackbox so there's no way to access these signatures. That means that these are standard issue to be dealt over trade. Their keys should lead us to which shipment they're meant to be a part of it." He tapped away and before long the monstrous display began pulling up lists of words that made zero sense to Nero. Some kind of recursive algorithm that had gone through and decided for all of them what these batches would be titled. Only as he guided the cursor to the blinking file when he opened it there was only columns of NULL. Every index was NULL. Marcus leaned in closer and pulled the glasses from his face.

"This can't be right." He went back to his terminal and dialed Praetus. After a few chimes it directed him to the automated voice pickup and he leaned back, repeating the rake of his beard anxiously with one hand as the other clutched the terminal. "Hey there old friend I'm looking into something and I could use a little help. Off the report. There's a batch of serials under the tag..." He squinted and Nero tried to follow the steps that he was going through, "Aegis, any idea what's going on with this? They were supposed to ship out off-world months ago but it looks like they never made it to their transport. They should be in the locker still so I'm hoping you can take a look for me when you next head down. Thanks." He tapped the terminal and it chimed again and he leaned back, the noise the chair made beneath him sounded like a certain threat that any more and it would fire out from under him with enough force to pierce through the wall.

"So... what are we looking at?" Nero broke the uncomfortable silence and looked at the blinking folder 109034-AEGIS.

"I have no idea." Marcus responded crossing his arms over his broad chest.

"Aren't you head of operations?" The question was the farthest thing form accusatory as Nero could pose it.

"Yes." Marcus stared unblinking at the screen. "Something's not right about this. Who else did you show this to?" He picked up the tablet.

"No one. Bashir was busy on the ride back and I've kept it off the grid. Only on that local sto--" before he could finish his answer Marcus smashed the tablet against the corner of the work desk. Spiderwebs formed and raced through the serene glass and Nero could see the struggling pixels flickering in their chromatic last gasps before it flushed black and he was looking into an insect's point of view of his own face.

"This stays between us and Praetus for now. Not a word to anyone. There is a strict itinerary for shipments this size and there are several different flags for late drops. They all need to pass through me." He tossed the tablet into a recycler and stared at the screen. "Don't tell anyone about this Nero." He pushed himself free from the desk and rose up.

"Are you going to tell my father?" Nero began to follow him on the way to the door.

"No one, Nero. I need to do more digging. Whatever this is there are too many failsafes for it to be an accident." He left the lights on and they both went separate ways out in the corridor.

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Eleven
Surplus

Standing over the smooth sandstone perimeter he watched as the bubbling horror that mimicked his every move stared back. The fountain rest in the center of the courtyard and it was the easiest sample to acquire first. He stuck in a dropper and squeezed the little rubber bulb watching the clear liquid fill up past every notch and held it up to the filtered sunlight above. The recent iterations of the shields had begun to apply heavy particles in the filtration leaving the light in a constant chromatic aberration if you looked directly at it. The scientists swore the days of direct harm being done was over but he still held his hand out of habit. It was getting harder to really know what was true and what was assumed anymore in Calantha. He shook the dropper and watched for any sediment or soluble leftovers that were playing hard to get and sat observing the radiance that bloomed between crystal water and the glass that contained it. Once his brows began to ache from staring too hard he lowered it and set the extractor down before ejecting the sample tray and began to drip the fountain water onto a slide and inserted it back int. The measurements took less than two seconds before data began to spool and ripple across the screen. Varying charts, tables, colors and other metrics that he couldn't really decipher began to populate the screen before the verdict came up at the bottom: 0.0084 Bq/L.

The screen refused to budge from the conclusion as he set sealed the dropper in a thin bag and tossed it in the recycler before pulling out his hand terminal and allowing it to interface. He slid his fingers on the glass projecting the vibrating bar graph into sight as it began to scan the air. After the longest three seconds of his life the projection flooded all green and displayed: 0.001 Gy. He ran the data once more and when the projection flickered once and remained the same he packed it up and began for the Aqueducts.

As he began down the cobblestone walkway he could see the spliced rainbow painting itself over the trunks of the trees that greeted him in their annoying quantized spacing. Once when he passed them he would revel in their thick sturdy roots and their flush green leaves that never seemed to suffer. Now all he could see were the invisible maze of genetic alteration that had allowed them to survive on filtered water. He could see the synthetic veins that each leaf had and how they deviated from the golden ratio. Instead they resembled the crysalis. It all did. That was how they designed their roads with their optimized minimal spanning trees, it was how they transformed transformers into quasiformers, it was how they moved past fossils and it was how they were all able to live and breath and fucking praise be to Commodus the First or so help you god you'll be swinging from one of these fake trees like another ornament. They were there to remind everyone just how they got here and where they would go if they ever forgot. Holed up in their perfect dome with their lab grown trees, their ultra filtered water recycling endlessly in a fountain. When he closed his eyes he could see that child laying on the rust and the vibrant lemon in the water. How many had that boy eaten? He drew close to the hatch and began turning the wheel before he slid his fingers over his lapel and his shield rippled over him in luminescent scales before fading from view.

◙

Purple and orange bled across the volleyed stucco huts that surrounded the Gardens. The gravity of the view was as permanent as the looming heat shimmer on the horizon in the sand beyond the greater dome shield. You were always below the Zhirs. You were always looking up to them and you were depending on their shields over your house to keep you from waking up in the middle of the night to fill your toilet with your decaying intestines. You were depending on their arrays and particles to keep your cells from collapsing in your epidermis and your bones from melting and your vertebrae from fusing to your mattress in your sleep. He found a well in the middle of the sand-strewn rock road and set down the extractor while he began to turn the wheel. Across from him in the shade of a doorway an elderly woman watched. In the dark her eyes danced and swirled the purple-orange. They were pretty the way a rising creek was. There was no promise left in them but they belonged on the dome in the main hall. When the bucket rose and sloshed he was careful to set it down and pull out the next dropper. As he filled it and lifted it to the sun the swirl of particulates was impossible to miss. These wells had been excavated generations ago so there was bound to be due maintenance. He gave it a shake and watched to see if they would properly dissolve in the measured Vatslav Particles. Instead he watched as they strung out like an ink suspended in time. Stretching their limbs in the aqueous solution they twisted and spiraled and resisted as he shook it vigorously. Holding it to the light proved fruitless. No vibrant rainbow greeted him, only a murky shadow that he now thought resembled a little extra residue on a faucet. He ejected the tray on the extractor and dropped a few drops onto the next slide. He shut it and looked back up to the woman in the doorway. She hadn't moved. She might as well have been asking him from where she stood: Will I wake up tomorrow? When the chime interrupted the five second staring contest between them he looked down at the screen. A mixture of complex calculations and graphs seemed to be contesting one another in a tug-o-war of real estate and pixels on the screen. They pointed to one another accusingly and eventually narrowed down to a single line of output: 0.2149 Bq/L. That can't be right. There were three other stops to make before he wrapped up his day. He withdrew another dropper and inserted it into the bucket before repeating the process and looking over the older woman. He lifted one hand to her as if to indicate something. Was he telling her it was okay to go back into her home? To wash her food with that water? To drink from the well? To bathe in it? Or would she simply be better off bathing in the sand. He didn't know. He didn't have the answers. Maybe it was just enough that she was seen- that he had come down from that high pedestal that they were forced to worship day in and day out and that he had seen her. That she was real to the people above.

What comfort would that afford?

The chime rang out again and the same processes and calculations and charts and graphs and wrangled data churned out the same outcome: 0.2149 Bq/L. He inserted it into a shielded bag and tucked it away in the extractor before pulling out his terminal. It was possible that there was runoff in the subterranean sectors. There was an entire planet that they simply couldn't shield. The likelihood that the ocean led to rivulets and ancient basins was heartily non-zero. There were so many tunnels and caverns that predated their arrival it was impossible to rule them out. That was a start. There was also the residual rainfall that rode the shields down. Over such a large area it was inevitable that rain still got through. Most of it would be stripped of radium but there was always the run off to consider. It would seep into the sand like a sponge and it would eventually drip its way to the reserves and reservoirs. That's natural and that was something that he could explain. Rationally that would require them to take new filters into the wells and even if it meant a lattice work within the well itself for practicality's sake that was a solution. That's why he was out here after all. Every problem has a workable solution. He just had to find it. He looked at the projected charts and the gradient between green and yellow slid like the sunset in the projection. Sitting at the end of the convoluted disagreement between data types was: 0.010 Gy. He stared at it long enough to not realize when it wasn't just the old woman watching him now. He looked up and around to countless eyes fixated on him.

"What are you doing?" One man asked as he balanced a roll of mesh beneath his arm.

"I'm just doing a routine inspection." Nero held his terminal up and swiped with his hand to swap the green-yellow, the shade of dying or dead grass, to the lush green that he'd recorded before. "Things are looking good. I'll be out of your way as soon as I pack-" He didn't finish it when the man dropped the mesh at his feet.

"We may not look like much but we still have our pride." The sand and dirt that caked itself beneath his nails and his clothes and in the sunburn skin on his face accentuated the piercing gaze in his eyes that tore right through Nero.

He stood with the terminal at his side as he felt the drowning shame sink his heart in his stomach.

"We're not livestock. We're people. That used to mean something." He didn't move, he looked ready to topple over quite honestly. His arms were lithe but looked well worked- the mesh was scrap that he guessed came from the outskirts.

"I have several more checkpoints to hit today before I have any definitive results. You're safe here." The words chipped away at his ribs and as he picked up the extractor he began down the cracked road towards the next hatch. As he made his way he could feel the eyes on him. They weren't Processors here. They weren't going to get the Rot and simply stew away endlessly until scrappers killed them and took what parts still worked. They were going to know and unless he got the solutions right they weren't going to make it another year. But that meant there was still time. Time was still on his side.

◙

In the Aqueduct he strapped on the last of his suit before he fastened the fabric mask over his mouth and nose. The sliver of skin between his brow and the middle of his nose was all that remained visible. With the extractor in hand he gave a push to the heavy hatch and lifted it up gaining access to the top of the line. He remembered the first time Bashir took him out and how he could see the snaking obsidian filament warp and bend until the sand had eroded and covered its broken body like some protrusion, some bone sticking out of a broken arm, only now the entire tunnel was bone. Sand was encroaching closer, far beyond their recent models. Think. Think. The lights in the tunnel were still operational up until the hatch. He held out his terminal and began to hold it up in the air. As he waited a gust blew up the sand at his feet and it collided with his shield from head to toe. Scrambling ensued as the sand was obliterated. That was a regular measurement of how badly the infrastructure was decaying. Simple Sand was usually finely ground and was filtered and split within fractions of seconds. Then you had the aggregate Red Sand, when the oxidation shavings would find their way in and give it that reddish hue. Those took a little longer since the metal shrapnel could lodge themselves into the Vatslav matrix but they too were pushed out like splinters in skin. Then you had Black Sand, the web of sand, rust and silicate that really could do some damage if you were out on your own. That took five to ten seconds to filter out of the shield and usually when you were back you were going to need to fine tune it. He sat waiting for the crackling to finish and he watched the outskirts as he did. Five. Six. Seven.

There were less shambling around out there. He looked through his binoculars and saw the shimmering of shields. Black outfits. Was it possible this was some of their missing batch? He looked down to his terminal and began sending a message to Marcus.

Think I have something out here regarding that thing.

Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

The crackling got too thick for him to properly make out the degrees of magnification in the binoculars so he set them to his hip.

Fourteen. Fifteen.

He checked his terminal and the graphs weren't the lush synthetic leaves in the Gardens. They weren't the dead ochre of grass. Blood red. As high as they could go. There were no arguing charts or cycling data streams. There was no tug-o-war or conflicting opinions or rehashed calculations to go over. All that was staring back at him was a simple output: 7 Gy.

Seventeen. Eighteen.

He turned and began heaving the hatch. The extractor lay at his feet as he felt the burn in his muscles as he squeezed for dear life and felt a pop in his wrist as he did.

Nineteen.

The vault lurched open with a groan and he flung himself inside before pulling on it as hard as he could. The sand that scattered in was instantly drowned in the UV light. The hiss of hydraulics assisted him before the seals on the interior of the metallic dome flashed from red to green. He slammed the red button beside him and a hose began to spray him over. The crackling faded from the shield and green lasers began to race over him and trace him like an alien it had never seen before. There was a second blast from all directions as water rushed against his shield and slid down. The light overhead went from orange to green and he collapsed against the arced wall of the service tunnel. Looking down at his terminal there was only a red error blinking.

Message failure. Please try again.

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Twelve
Lapel

The first level of the new facility was ninety percent glass and five percent steel. The other five he imagined was some polycarbonate set between the two out of sight and mind. He sat in an uncomfortable mold of plastic with thin metal curving limbs and held he red book in one hand.

"The price of one commodity is reflected in the summation of the labor that goes into it, the labor that went into its composite parts and the cost of all materials along the way. Therefore you can effectively surmise the labor cost to a finite point of any commodity. All commodities have a set relation between price and labor hours. It stands to reason then that if you were to charge a consumer the exact amount that an object cost in its total labor hours as is dictated by all of its subsets of labor involved, the seller would not gross a profit.

This brings us to the juxtaposition of one who is creating for use-value as opposed to value. To generate surplus capital from an invested commodity and additional labor the price must reflect these and then some. A laborer must be paid for their own commodity, their labor, and in order to turn a profit the capitalist(owner of capital), the boss as it were, needs to generate more capital from the commodities they have purchased. This is where surplus labor factors in. By paying the laborer the least amount possible for their commodity the boss then retains the rest of the capital generated as "profit". The cycle remains capital purchases commodities and the commodities that are purchased then return surplus capital. Only then is the condition of capital accrual met and it is by locking the laborer into a shift that is surplus labor that the capitalist obtains this. By compensating the laborer with the bare minimum, which the capitalist holds the power since they own the means of production, the laborer must comply with this. In an average shift of eight hours, by the bare minimum pay, the laborer can produce enough commodities in under half of a shift to survive off. This means that every hour past this point is surplus labor; all of the profits are additional to what the laborer needs to survive, it is all extra capital that is kept by the capitalist.

This is most important in the modern Calantha because the primary source of labor has become the Processor. A being that has been reduced to nothing more than tools in a shed. They do not "require" food nor drink nor breaks. Their entire existence has been eroded into that of surplus capital. They do not own the means of production, they do not own their labor and they do not even claim ownership to themselves. This is one of the essential grave injustices that our society is based upon."

He turned the page and gently shut the book. Resting his eyes he tried to compartmentalize the onslaught of words. What they meant. What it meant to exist solely to generate profits. What it meant to exist and to have been born in wondrous existence where people had once been free to dream and to live free. What it meant now to be less than a drill. To receive less than the sum of your parts. He felt a cold shiver down his spine as the urge to dry vomit crept up his intestines and the dry ache in his throat clutched him well. Fortunately there was a chime and the gentle voice at the receptionist desk echoed out, "Nero Zhir, the foreman will see you now."

◙

The office was as tasteless as the waiting room. A full wall of glass held in place by razor thin slabs of steel. There was the view out of the endless sea of beige and orange as the setting sun bled across the curvy dunes. Their shadows arced and stretched out endlessly like dark fingers encroaching but never quite able to grasp what they sought. He looked to Foreman Diya and shook his hand. He was short, what thin black hair he had combed over in a sloppy attempt to hide that inset balding failed and his round face was too eager to be making his acquaintance. The urge lingered to wipe his hand after the shake but he kept it contained as the pudgy man gestured with his hand and they began the tour of the facility.

"When I heard you were coming out I was very excited Crown Prince! We boast the highest scores of all the facilities in this sector and have always greeted your inspection agencies with the finest courtesies!" It was true. Nero had looked into it enough to see that BHT hadn't needed to bribe to get their hefty contracts. They began the tour descending in an elevator that reminded Nero of a gross house of mirrors, staring at the distorted reflections of them, one tall and skinnier version of himself and one elongated oblong of Diya, stretched about the equator to near hilarity.

"Bulwark Heavy Technologies has been proud to be Calanthan since the days of old. It is with great pride that we have served House Zhir and that tradition continues to this day." There was a chime and the doors opened out onto a floor of waxed sandstone silicate. The beige had specks of darker hues washed around in it but retained the glossy sheen on top. No doubt a Processor's work when he failed to see any imperfection in the layer and their muddied refractions. Lining the walkway were large glass cubes that held primordial attempts at shield tech from well before either of their times.

"It is here that we fabricate the cutting edge of shields." They made their way down the next corridor with glass containment units that housed tinted windows. Even through the solar-resistant panels the blinding blue torches felt like they could melt his retinas clean from his skull. Inside, each operator was equipped with a blast shield helmet and the occasional offshoot of blue struck their own personal shields sending rippling rainbows about their person. "To be honest your visit has piqued my curiosity. What can I do for you aside from show you the uninteresting day to day activities?" He didn't stop leading Nero through the rat maze until they came to an empty conference room and the door shut behind them. There was a long black silicon desk in the center and on the glass board suspended at the end there were five columns in marker. At the top scribbled across were the words "ROT POOL". Three names he didn't recognize followed "DIYA" . The tallies to the side were beyond thirty and before Nero could find an answer he felt the eyes follow him.

"Surely not that!" A hearty laugh came out as Diya interlaced his sausage fingers and leaned forward with a mischievous grin. "That's our Rot Pool. We take bets at the beginning of every month how many Processors will contract rot. Single cash buy-in and it's a winner take-all by the end of the month. You want in?" His brow rose with unrestrained glee.

He imagined how easy it would be to run his fingers over his concealed bracelet. How the blade would materialize centimeters from his hand and how he could weave his arm through the air catching it and getting it roughly halfway through Diya's shield before it finished. The rest would be easy enough. He'd claim it was a threat against his life that prompted it and there would be no witnesses to corroborate otherwise. Even just scraping one of those struggling arteries would suffice. Or maybe finding the gut and letting him sit in his own pool for hours in an agonizing death with the privacy settings turned up to max. Instead he slid his tablet across the table.

"Please explain to me what I'm looking at here." The tablet displayed a continuous arc of shields produced from BHT and the corresponding profit margins. It was a steady incline with two different colored line graphs displaying either array of data points.

"Oh ho, getting ready to take over the family business ahead of schedule are we?" His hearty laugh came again and Nero could hear the clenching of his teeth grinding beneath it. The man zoomed in, swiped, leaned back and did all kinds of frivolous body tells to explain that whatever he was seeing was confusing him. His attempts to play off the fact that it was mostly over his head fell flat but Nero spared him the hurt pride and followed up to help him along. Fucking moron.

"The lossless circuit provided by the crysalis means that energy outputs for personal models should last a lifetime. That's how the Royal models are explained anyway. So how is it that shields that are founded on a groundbreaking energy cycle need to be replaced yearly like clockwork?" He crossed his arms, not sure when exactly, but he leaned back and observed the man as he tapped his fingertips on the tablet leaving little smudges on the shiny surface.

"An excellent question." He nodded, assuring himself that he was in fact capable of explaining away this paradox. "Every model improves on the previous. There are new breakthroughs even now in this technology believe it or not. It is imperative that we stay ahead of the curve and maintain our technological supremacy over less savory houses. I needn't go into much detail on that I'm sure." He leaned back and seemed utterly content with his vague non-answer.

"Ah...." It was bullshit. But still he played the role. He swiped next to the specifications that he'd shown Marcus and slid it back. The color drained from Diya's face as he froze in his seat.

"Where did you come across this? This is directly from our D&D department. Not even the government oversight has the means to-" He was cut off by a gentle raise of the hand.

"I witnessed it out in the field. They were legally purchased and distributed as far as I can tell." He watched as Diya melted into his chair and pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his spotty glistening forehead.

"Ah yes yes, of course. This model is a new retrofit. The condensed particles allow longer duration in hostile environments. Theoretically one could withstand a direct nuclear fallout for upwards of a year in it. Yet to be tested of course." He smiled and blinked twice using only his left eye. Implants. That checked out. He had the resources to get it done off radar.

"I follow what you're saying but you can give me a little more detail as to why these are failing after a year? We are happy of our contractual situation but it is alarming how frail this technology has become when rumors are that the oldest shields in existence are still humming today." He watched carefully. There were no more obvious tells left. There was something more polished about Diya now. He was defaulting in a prepared stance. The minute rituals his hands acted in, sliding along his sleeves, plucking at the cuffs, how he scooted in his seat and straightened up. This was a choreographed delivery.

"Those are exactly as such, rumors, nothing more and nothing less. To be honest we all love to save a little face right? The old shields were less reliable and stuttered randomly giving out. The only reason that we have more regrettable deaths to the Rot now is because it was still a rarity back then. They simply didn't have the means to know what was coming. So if a shield lasted a few months they would spin tales about how it would last a lifetime." He chuckled , a stark departure from his haughty laughs, something controlled and conscious. It was alarming how well he had practiced this spell. How many times had he given this same speech to his Father's advisors? To the random auditors? How long had it loomed over this industry?

"So do you have data to corroborate this?" He watched as the man pulled out his own hand terminal and swiped sending a conveniently located file to the tablet and gently pushed it back.

He took it in his hands and began to see countless comparators flickering side by side. Energy loss reduced by fractions of a fraction of an electron volt. The output capacity was circulating better quarter by quarter. The marginal growths were absurd to the naked eye but according to every chart and representation the smallest of developments lent themselves to steps on the scale of the system-wide distribution of shields. There was little to no context behind the data which aroused plenty of red flags, however it was most important now to be read as convinced.

"In truth we're also guilty of embellishing our craft. We use the words breakthrough and ingenuity and evolution but what we're really doing here is wringing what we can out of what we have. You can see there that there are no colossal advancements being made but in order to save as many lives as possible, we take the small microsteps. And over the entire system that means that maybe we have added minutes to lives. Maybe those minutes add up to hours and hours to days and... you get it." He nodded heavily and earnestly trying to sell this even more. It left that cavernous pit in his stomach more shallow and seemingly full of lead. The data was too perfect. The explanation made too much sense. It was quantized and the growth was without error or flaw. There were no setbacks. The lines only went up.

"Thank you very much Foreman Diya." He wore his smile and stood up extending a hand. The sweaty, clammy palm that met his own turned his stomach.

"Ah yes as always, it is our pride and joy to serve House Zhir! You can feel free to finish the tour if you'd like- I'm afraid something has come up and is whisking me away!" He gave that hearty laugh and anxiously shoved his hands in his pockets and scurried from the room reaching to his ear to bark at the receptionist for not giving him a heads up.

Nero gathered his things and looked back at the glass board. Staring back at him were the tallies and the scorecards and the game above them all: "ROT POOL". His terminal chimed with a message from Marcus but he hurried to the bathroom where he promptly vomited in the stall.

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Thirteen
Vested Interest

Outside the office Bashir thumbed through some of the busy reading material as Nero sat with his fingers interlaced leaning like he might pass out. The Environmental Affairs headquarters was a colossal monument of grandiose ignorance. A massive jutting slab of sandstone that erupted from the desert at the edge of the shield zone it was a wonder that it remained upright. The building was unusable above the third floor rendering most of it empty space. It wasn't possible to cleanly demolish the topmost layers and since the building was erected over one of few streams it wasn't safe to demolish it. Thus the building sat in limbo; fault crevasses lined the foundation and had begun to web their way up to the first floor where they sat. There were maybe two hundred years before it would come down on its own and for one reason or another the bureaucracy was content to let it rot until it went its way. Maybe that was their way of keeping the agency on its last legs as well.

"So what am I doing here exactly?" Bashir's tone was humorous but fleeting.

"You're here to make sure no one interrupts us." Nero stared at the old door. The grains were visible in the wood, whether it was fake or not didn't seem to matter as much as he thought. The plaque that rested just off-center read Chairman Antoine. "And why the fuck is every person I have to talk to incompetent? And why are all of them hindered by the Y chromosome?" He stared at the door waiting for it to budge. It refused him.

"Because being in power means you were either lucky or born there. Or in the worst case scenario, like you, both." A barking laugh came with a pat on the shoulder. The snarl he wore was his admission of guilt. Hard to argue with the facts. "That's what privilege is Nero. Not a handwaving of hard work or an excuse to get handouts. It's just that the starting line for some people is ahead of others. Most frequently men. And they're often less qualified than others. Only a matter of being at the right place at the right time." He orbited the room taking in the small details, or nothing at all, it was impossible to read Bashir.

"So they're lucky." Nero could sympathize with that. He was the most fortunate soul born in the past years on Calantha, second only to his father.

"Individually yes. But being in the right place at the right time can't happen to everyone who's ever promoted. At some point you need to adjust your scope from the micro picture to the macro picture. If every position is being filled by the same demographic then there's something systemically at fault. No longer can we point to one board of executives or a faulty manager who is misappropriating talent. Now it becomes an issue of the entire ecosystem evaluating the wrong criteria across all phases. Do you know how Tsu got her position as Chief Engineer on The Rig?"

Nero's silence and frustrated flippant hand gestures spoke all that he couldn't.

"Her boss died. Faulty seal on the cycler when he was about to go on a space walk. A thousand different ways to die up there. Magboot fails at one juncture, a pinhole crack forms in your helmet and your sensors are faulty. You're at the wrong bulkhead that some asshole never finished hundreds of years prior to your birth and one too many screws gets stripped of its thread. The universe is indifferent to us Nero but that doesn't mean we aren't at its mercy. Anyway, her boss died. The LEDs flashed green, he took off his helmet, and his eyes engorged on water and ruptured in the dock. He fell over dead when his blood vessels went next and it was a pretty big mess." His nonchalant tone kind of bothered Nero, but he didn't linger.

"Bet they kissed a lot of ass to cover that one up."

"Oh sure but it was a literal mess in the dock too. Your body is storing a lot of fecal matter at any point in the day. They didn't manage to get the hatch open until they patched the hole on the outer deck so that took hours and by the time they cleaned him up well. Apparently they couldn't even recycle the suit because it smelled so bad and just tossed it out the airlock. Somewhere in that vast expanse of void, the previous Chief Engineer's shit particles are floating in the beyond." He sighed whimsically while Nero tried not to think too hard on imagining it.

"Okay....." Nero didn't know what else to say to that.

"Point being, Tsu is the best engineer they've ever had the pleasure of employing. She always had been. Two degrees from the system and one in Micro-Thermodynamics. The type of work she does, you could say she's the only living person in the system who could get it done." He smiled and looked to Nero. "Makes her in an entirely different class than us. Yet she only got her shot because some idiot died an unfortunate death. Once or twice we have luck. All over the system in every industry? That's what we call a problem."

"How do we fix it?"

"Not by talking about it or dreaming about it." He turned to the door and Nero followed his gaze. The knob turned and Antoine was gesturing for them to enter.

◙

"Holy shit you look more dead than Nero." Bashir stared in amazement at the man behind the desk. Deep inset bags of purple and blue made him look a brisk gust from death. The corner of his mouth lifted in the laziest, least heartfelt smirk Nero had ever seen before and he leaned back in his chair and tossed his pen onto the table.

"Thanks.... I guess..."

The office was scarce compared to most Nero had been in the past few days hunting down the absolute biggest pains in the ass in the system it felt like. This was different. Dim lights overhead were carved into the stone ceiling. What had once been regarded as an engineering marvel was on the cusp of failure. Cracks in the ceiling began to send the once-white light into a skewed web of off-yellow, some kind of dirty vanilla. Old style cabinets were bursting like ancient supernovae of folders and papers. It reeked of mildew, body odor and stale coffee. For some reason it was almost cozy in this cool pocket of shade. Out of reach from the bright sun, lacking any windows, it was a damp relief from the outside caustic world. In here he was just surrounded by old systems and older problems.

"So what can I do for you?" Antoine hadn't introduced himself but instead the lazy plaque outside and the triangle nameplate on his desk did it for him. He rest his eyes and Nero wasn't sure he hadn't immediately dozed off but he began anyway.

"I'd like to launch a formal investigation into Bulwark Heavy Industries. As well as instantiate new legal precedent having all of the non-business related water relays inspected quarterly. They must be retrofit no less than once every half-cycle and properly maintained." He swiped on his terminal and heard the man's chime behind the desk when he received it.

One eye cracked open, red lines visible as he looked down at the bulky terminal that had to have been older than Nero and Bashir combined. He sat in silence looking it over, swiping occasionally and looking up several times before he reached into his pocket and lit a cigarette.

"You're serious about this?" He set down his terminal and crushed his palm into his forehead.

"I'll have the ratifications expedited. This can go into effect as early as this cycle and I will personally oversee-" He was cut off by the sharp drag of crackling carcinogens. Glowing bright in the dark room, he took the courtesy of leaning away from the two of them to exhale.

"I can't do it." He scattered a few papers to reveal the dusty graveyard of cigarettes, some were missing half of the filters. The sight made him cringe a little.

"What do you mean? I can assure you there won't be any ramifications. They won't dare-" He was cut off again by a raise of a hand that soon dismissively waved.

"I know who you are. And it's not the idea behind it." Antoine sighed and leaned back, his chair squeaking with pleas of mercy that it might give out at any second from the strain. "Listen, all of these tech giants are the same. If everything in this report is legitimate we can get them for every fine imaginable and we will. They'll litigate their way and settle out of it ever reaching a court room. They'll install their latest tech and they'll make promises and they'll go and hand deliver pales of fresh water to those people down there and it'll be a P.R. rescue op for them. They'll follow up for the first three cycles and we'll be back at square one. Only next time they'll remember who burnt their asses and they'll make it a tougher climb uphill. There's only so much we can do and frankly as much as I'd love to see these greedy bastards suffer; the reality of it is look around you kid. This place is well past disheveled. They have been gutting the funding behind this agency for decades. Know why that is?"

For the first time in a while he was utterly stumped. "You're responsible for keeping things habitable. Why would they be pulling your funding?"

The ignorance of the question was smothering him as he sat like a preschooler waiting to be told when he could leave for recess or how stupid his raised hand made him look. But there wasn't anything of the nature in Antoine's face. Bashir watched on in utter silence. Whether he knew or not it wasn't present on his face. He didn't wear his heart on his sleeve. Maybe Nero could learn to do that too one day.

"Because regulations eventually always lose. We make our best informed suggestions and at the end of the day we hope that most people follow them. The most successful don't. Because they get away with it. Because no matter what their m.o. is that their profit lines always have to go up. You don't make money by replacing every unit every cycle or every five. You don't make profits by spending more on less. So they don't. And we slap them on the wrist and we fine them and the cycle continues. Any time someone like you comes along and wants to do good... it doesn't end well. So let it go. If you want to really hurt them then keep your head down for the next however long it is until your coronation. Then you can be the biggest thorn in their ass as often as you want and there's nothing they can do to you. The crown isn't a monarchy but you'll have enough sway then. Even these untouchables can't just swat you aside." He picked the cigarette up and groaned with the burn that filled his lungs before pressing it against the corpses of those that came before it.

"That's it?" Nero sat staring at the data he'd gathered. He could see the face of the man at the well. We're people. That used to mean something. "There's got to be something else I can do." He stood up and clenched his fists.

Antoine shrugged and in his eyes the forlorn wisdom dripped. "I'm sorry kid. If you were born fifty years ago we could do something more. As it is now it's not just the desert that's drying up. If you don't make them money they shove you into a crumbling building out of sight and out of mind." He grabbed a folder and opened it before picking his pen back up. "You're not the first and probably not the last. But maybe if we're all lucky you can actually get something done."

◙

They strode along the cobblestone path until they reached the edge of the overlook. Beneath the sharp sting of bright lights filled up the bazaar at night. The perimeter had grown wider and the diameter was uneven as it stretched further into the desert. They were taking on more people who were building the rafts, makeshift huts of recycled materials from beyond the shield, and were getting it back in one piece. People really were incredible. Their resilience was second to none.

"There's more now. They keep coming." Nero looked out at the newest string of bright lights that lit up the fresh planted rafts.

"They hope that by living here the crown will extend the perimeter of the shield and keep them safe. They they can get some of the runoff from the sewer and even after its been used a few times, an old recycler might pop up and they can get some anti-rad meds to make it potable." He looked at the strewn maze of bobbing lights as the gust sent them dancing with the sand.

"They won't. Not without some good reason." The only reason their water was going to be clean for the next cycle was because he went knocking on the right doors.

"Guess someone should give them a good enough reason then." Bashir playfully chirped before his terminal flickered.

"How long can they actually last like this? Everything I've done it's just triage. Those shields will decay again. They'll get that rad water and more of them will die. And it's not just here. It's all over the planet." He shoved against the railing and felt the cool sting of its kiss as he circled in place.

"You Zhirs always did have your temper." Bashir shook his head and pocketed his terminal. "Have to check on a few things. You've done a lot by rattling the cages. Saved all those lives down there. We can't fix everything by shouting Nero but this time you did some real good. Keep your eyes on the horizon. Real change happens over time. It's not going to happen overnight but we're planting seeds now. Eventually, well after us, they'll bloom." He smiled and made his way out into the square.

He was right. But even now it stung. The idea of being the dumbest person in the room had stopped bothering him a while ago. He was making his way down the road to the keep. Eventually he'd found his way back to his desk where the Red Book remained. The futility he felt at trying to uncover what it meant. What were they doing with those new shields? Why were they missing? What exactly had he seen out in the outskirts? None of it made sense. He couldn't draw any practical lines between them but he just had a feeling. They were somehow connected. He turned the page of The Red Book and when he read the title of the next chapter his heart skipped a beat. His mouth grew dry and he could taste each individual bud on his tongue. It scraped against the roof of his mouth and he felt an apple grow instantly in his throat. He couldn't breathe. His fingers dug into his desk and he could feel the grains of the real wood crying as his nails scraped against it. His temples were beating violently with the pulse of his increasing heart rate. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

His vision tunneled and he jerked up sending his chair to the cool stone floor. His nails had pierced into his palms at some point. The warm trickle of blood masking the sting of his self-inflicted stab wounds. His eyes raced over and over and over and over again hoping they'd change their mind. He felt the painful throb in his temples before he saw black and he felt the caress of the stone before passing out. Atop the page in a hurried scrawl the words read: The Extermination of Calantha.

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Fourteen
Murmur

Orange. As far as his eyes could see there was only orange. Every direction only held the endless haze. There was no sky. There was no horizon. If he could he'd look at the ground only he wasn't standing on the ground. He wasn't breathing whatever consisted in the air. He wasn't present. An observer. He was hovering over the ground and looking down from the perspective of an acute angle. Was this a dream?

There were brief moments where he could feel the cold floor against his face. An ache in his jaw. Some pooling warmth around his temple. Was that his blood? He'd been at his desk with the Red Book. But now he was there and not.

The orange. It expanded from roughly ten feet unto infinity. It was foreign but it was familiar. He had never set foot on this place nor had he ever seen or heard of it or smelled it. But he knew the density of the particulates in the air. He knew without breathing that it would peel the lining from his lungs. He knew that most modern shield outputs couldn't handle the lingering specter of rads. What life had once flourished in this place had long since died.

There was the sound of his door opening and a shout down the hall. He could feel his limp heavy body being propped up and rolled over. There was a bright light shining into one eye then another. More frantic screaming muffled beneath the boundless tides between him and them. No he was somewhere else. Not on his floor bleeding and not in the orange.

But the orange was back. Only this time he was soaring. Below there were dark rivulets of sediment or what had once been sediment streaking out in claws. Raking the surface they carved eldritch marks into the orange and left gouges. Another voice, softer, whispered in his ear. If he had a ear.

"I have felt you." The coarse timbre in her voice was smoothed over decades of suffering.

They were rushing him on a slab to the medical bay. The ringing was numbed but he could see the blotch of red in the guard's hands to his right. He reached and where had once been his arm was a prickling block of lead. So heavy. He couldn't get it from the slab before he was sucked away.

There wasn't orange now. A field. Spanning far and wide. Green. Wheat? From over her shoulder he could see the fine details. The fresh stem and how the drops slicked down the auricle. Not wheat after all. The design was beautiful and it was something else entirely. Leaning closer he could smell the dew and the cells if he strained he could see them too and the life that slid through the walls.

"It wasn't always desolate." She spoke out loud. The gray of her hair contrasting with her melanin rich skin. The callouses meant she probably could no longer feel the resistance those fibrous hairs applied with each snap of the stem. Long past feeling that pain she placed them in the basket at her side. "It isn't right now. It wasn't for times of time before they came." She smiled and chirped a labored laugh.

The slamming of heavy doors came with a jolt of lightning through his body. Sharp incising strikes lurched him with a croak of life. They transitioned him onto the cold metal table and there was another bright light shining overhead now. He could hear father.

"Nero! What happened?!" He stood overhead as the doctor peeled his cheek down one after the other and inspected. There was another hand on his shoulder and he turned and was offered the Red Book. Words. Muffled. Too deep to make sense of.

Standing beside her he could feel the warm trickle of air passing through her fingers. She kneeled at the entrance of the cavern and beside her. Who was that? She turned and the wrinkles of her skin were gone. Smooth and her bright hair dazzled in the sun setting behind them. Fiery reds, golden strands, chestnut and some gradient of them all in one furious spectacle. Beside her he carefully cupped the soil and when the sunset struck the cave wall it resonated and refracted through the entire cavern. Racing through the edges and angles it traced the circuitry and illuminated the cave. Countless crystalline forms sprawled and skittered about the structure. In his hands, a small one was appraising the soil with its mandibles before she spoke in a tongue he couldn't make out. But he could feel her excitement. He could feel the bond between them. The unwavering toiling that had led to this cave and these transparent arthropods.

"They changed everything." Her coarse voice was a hand on his shoulder. Her tired fingers clinging as if he were holding her up. "I wouldn't change a thing even now. Because you're here."

A jolt summoned him back to the medical bay. His body arched from the electrical impulse that jumpstarted his heart and his gasp spit against the mask. "Come on Nero!" The doctor shouted at him as he rubbed the defibrillators against one another. Only father wasn't shouting anymore. His eyes were wide but they were no longer on his son on the cold metal slab. They were furiously scanning inside the Red Book. They were racing. His hands were shaking and soon they tore page after page out of the book. There was spit dangling from his lip and beard as he shouted. Ferocity in his voice as he held out his hand and soon a guard gave him a medical torch. Right there it was engulfed in the blue flames before it caught all over and he threw it into the metal waste bin. That heavy heavy lead arm lifted for it.

"Get Marcus immediately!" He shouted before turning his back to slab and exiting the medical bay.

They were in a dim lit room. He was crouched on a stool looking at the magnifying array with the precise light focused on one of the crystals. Beneath the sterile LED it was a clear structure. Natural light had been split into a million rainbows. Each fractured color being fractured a thousand times into a prism of endless prisms. Now beneath the cold construct he looked over his shoulder and he turned to him. He gestured with his hand and he realized that it wasn't him at all. It was her. She stood over the array and could see in all of the brilliant details. Configurations that were as complex as they were limitless. Spanning circuitry that even at the highest magnification were sprawling with endless spirals. Endless possibilities all webbing from one another. Their symmetry was art as it was science. The marriage of Fibonacci and da Vinci and Beethoven and Pythagoras and Aquinas. They would shed tears just to have this opportunity. He could feel the sting of that warm salty liquid pooling around her eyes as he reached up and wiped them from her cheeks. He didn't know the specifics of what he saw but he also did.

The hurdle that humanity would have to reconcile with came in endless forms. Every innovation and discovery came with its inevitable shackles. The transistor revolutionized life but with it ushered in Moore's Law. You can only sharpen a dagger so many times. You can only perfect a method or a process once. Then you simply sat and waited. You had theories because the missing picture was too grand and the best explanations you had only worked under certain narrow conditions. When things broke down it was because you didn't have the entire view. You were too focused on one slide instead of the entire film reel. These crystalline beings had thrown out Moore's Law. The Crysalis. He'd known about it since he could speak and read. The story was that Commodus the First had created the crysalis and with it all modern technology. The shields. The conduits. The ships. Everything. The story was that he had possessed the genius to fabricate it all. Then what was this? What was this he was being shown?

His eyes opened in the bed and the lights were mostly out. The bright green display of the machine he was hooked up was blurry but there were no alarms going off and he was still physical; so he assumed that meant he wasn't dead. Or if he was this had to have been hell. To his side Bashir was seated looking through his terminal.

"Bash..." He could taste every grain of sand on Calantha on his tongue as he coughed and his eyes clenched tight. Was there sand in his eyes also? They burned a fierce stabbing in every atom.

"They took him Nero. Broke his terminal right on the spot. What happened?" He rest his face in his hands and even though he masked the panic in his voice the sound of his leg bouncing against the frame of the bed was ebbing in and out of his mind.

"I... got to the chapter.. and my head... ugh..." Before he could finish he was sucked back.

Green and blue. From orbit. A beautiful tapestry of life. Then the clouds formed. Ashen. Black and ochre. The storms unending. Until there was yellow. Then the orange. And the orange never left. It would always be orange from now until forever. She didn't speak to him now. She only wept. His embrace was tight. He never stopped loving her. Her weeping was not only for her planet, her people, but something else. From the moment she started until her last with him seated beside her, holding her hand. She never stopped weeping. Not even when the tension had stopped releasing that saline mixture and instead blood replaced them. Until her last breath she wept. He could feel the way her insides twisted and folded on themselves. How frail she had become. The inheritance. Maybe. What did it mean?

"There must be another way." She pleaded. "You can't do this. You must not."

The voice that came in response was more familiar. It was older, emptier. The clash of fury and wrath and whatever that was that Bashir tried to express to him what felt like forever ago. What's beyond hatred? What's beyond anger? Whatever that was he could hear it in the response. The depthless void that consumed the words. The thing beyond rage. Juxtaposed endless love, the thing that bound all humans and all of humanity that could transcend time and space and was the thread that went from heart to heart that led to music, arts, stories and the rest of the miracles that humanity had conjured- there was this. The counterweight. The thing that harbored deep within that had been born of agony and sorrow. The voice that answered her spoke.

"No."

Wretched and vicious. Disgraced. Tarnished. It was his own.

[Nero Zhir]

Chapter Fifteen
Self-Made

When he woke he was fastened to the bed. They insisted that it was a matter of safety but as he lay there day after day and now in the chill of the night he could only ask silently: whose? The machines hummed their quantum lullaby and their screens while dulled to the dimmest of diodes leaked an eerie aura. Pale. Moonlight shone through the colossal chunks of sandstone that were fixed by shields but in the old days he imagined back when it rained they would have regretted those.

All he had to measure time was the crackling of the shields. Presently there was no noise outside. No sand was scooped up in the air which meant it was past midnight. Things typically settled down around now; the heat had all but sprinted from the desert leaving the arid night stagnant. Several different times they had stuck him with drugs and asked him a myriad of questions. It was the longest days that he was grateful to have been born a Zhir. Even under present circumstances it was against the laws to shoot him up with too much. Normally the cocktail was guaranteed to pry even the darkest of secrets. Theories floated around that they'd unlocked whatever chemical jailbreak might make a man kill his own mother for a nickel- whether or not that was true wouldn't matter. Not yet. How long exactly he had between the patience of men and the law was something else entirely.

They had asked him everything imaginable from what his shoe size was, when the dunes would rearrange next, the pH levels in the basalt and his grandfather's lapel.

Wait.

When had they asked that? The thought skittered through with the rest and it rest somewhere in the peripheral with his ebbing and flowing need to visit the restroom. Dancing in the corners of his brain even now as he was coming down from the latest batch of uppers and downers and whatever else they shot into his bloodstream it was too hard to piece it all together. Lapel. Why did that come back?

Before he could fixate on it only to lose it again, like trying to squeeze sand that slipped through your palm regardless, there were taps against the cold stone floor. A silhouette. So they weren't going to wait after all. That was alright he'd remembered those lessons upon lessons growing up. At some point someone would come and the best thing you could do was face it with dignity. Or some bullshit like that. The truth of the matter was if he was going to die he'd prefer it to not be with him strapped to some shitty bed. The worst part was once it was done he was going to end up using the bathroom but wouldn't even get the relief. Weird. What the hell had they shoved in him? He didn't want to think about that anymore. Just as he rolled his neck and prepared some snark the hood descended and there was a familiar face. The most familiar face.

"You look like shit." Bashir said with a smile.

"Yeah...." He gestured the one arm that was strapped to the bed and looked to the left. Tubes. Needles. When had that happened? He was jacked up to a machine with some fancy looking diagrams and some machine in between. Probably a doser with a modulator to ensure he wouldn't go in his sleep. Considerate.

"They found the book. It was only a matter of time." He took a seat by the bed and rest his hands in his lap. Solemn eyes looked up into the moonlight and for a long while they sat in their relative silence.

"There was a chapter I found. Something about an extermination. I didn't get past the title before I blacked out. What was in that?" Even now if not for the remnants of stimulants he felt like he might puke. Not that he had anything in him that would come up, liquid or otherwise, but the retching inside him made itself known.

"Lies. Everything you know was built on them. Sure, sand was here and the stone and the foundations but beneath them all, lies. The things they don't teach you, or me, or anyone else are the three pillars of society on Calantha Nero. Sand, Lies and blood. That's all it has to offer now. This or the original." At the words he clutched his chest. Thump. Thump. A cold sweat washed over him and he tried to steady his breathing.

"What.... what happened?" He could taste the vomit on his breath and fought it back down.

"Before our time. Maybe one day we'll get the answers for ourselves but I only know what was in that book. And now the author has been missing since they found it." He folded his fingers together and rest his forehead against them. "None of those three pillars of sin are above the others. The sand was once plentiful land. The blood was once flowing inside veins instead of in the ground. The lies.... well maybe at some point they weren't there either. To find the origin of it all is difficult. Maybe we can go back just enough though to a time before all of this. To a time before our father's fathers and before their fathers fathers and before they stole the land and power from their own great grandmothers. There were days where people didn't spend every waking moment laboring to enrich others. They didn't trade goods or expect return for services. The idea of commodities was unborn and in its absence there was simply life. Think on it Nero. The bed you're in: did the Processors who assembled it in the factory create the machines? Did the men who designed the machines collect the copper by hand that they used to construct the machines to design them? Did the automations that assembled them together create the sand paper? That's if it's even real wood. Did they water the plants? Did they feed the animals that produced the manure for the food that the farmers ate? Did they start the sun? Did they grow the oxygen? Are they god?"

He sat in silence.

"To what end do we owe anyone? The greatest lie of them all is that we are owed or due anything. There is no such thing as a self-made man. There is no such thing as private property. The land belongs to all life. The air belongs to all creatures. The sky has no borders. Yet here we are again destroying another paradise. Here we are shoving our flags in made up places demanding we be paid stipends so that people don't die preventable deaths to the elements. For our made up currencies for our made up rules. That might be the worst of them all: life was around far before any of our lies. I wanted you to finish the book before we did the next step but we're running out of time. Your parents are probably planning the next in succession anyway." He stood up and held out a terminal before the band around his right wrist flickered and dislinked. He rounded the bed and began removing the needles. It wasn't until they were out that he felt the burn.

"What..... are you saying?" Vertigo struck him as he tried to sit up straight and Bashir caught him before holding him steady.

"Tonight we're taking you to the greatest modern secret. The Plant." His words sloshed in his mind as he felt the cold stone against his feet.

"We can't go in there... it's closed..." The nonsensical logic was the only thing he could come up with as Bashir helped him through the doorway into the dark hall.

"It never stops running." He responded as they blended into the night's shadow.