I've finally reached 3000 posts! In accordance with tradition here's the first bit of the prologue (yeah, yeah, I know) from my latest. Tear it to shreds, ye swarthy animals!
~
Run it again.
You can imagine it, can’t you?
Your brother is looking at you. He is inviting you to play. He is taller than you, only by degrees, but you are stronger; again, only by degrees. His freckle-dappled face bears the type of broad, gap-tothed smile only worn by carefree children outside on a perfect summer’s morning. The sun is out, the air is warm yet bristles with a gentle breeze promising better things coming from the west. It is a beautiful day on Sinjin, a perfect day to play.
–Let’s build towers, he says.
You do not want to build towers. The mere suggestion of it irritates you. Why does this invitation stir up this reaction? Is it the inanity of it? The fact that you simply want to be left alone? The fact that the last time you built towers together your own collapsed while his remained standing? Or something else?
What do you see when you see your brother looking at you?
Do you see the bucolic scene around you? Do you see the trappings of your good fortune? Do you notice the sprawling sweep of your home, built in the late Gaian style, set into fifty acres of land? Or perhaps you see the robots tending to the garden with a gentle buzz, ensuring that its delicate eco-system is kept just-so? You do not see the labourers, because the labourers are far from here - you know this because you have heard the Citizens speak of them from time to time. The Citizens speak of the labourers the way you speak about pencils. You do not yet know why they talk about the labourers in this way, but you will, boy. What you do know is the labourers are not anywhere good, and not doing anything pleasant, and that they probably deserve to be wherever they are. To be sure, a couple of labourers have fallen on their feet; one of them serves drinks at the estate here, bringing out cold beers and fizzing citrus drinks, smiling in a way you know isn’t quite right but you can’t quite say how.
–Come on, let’s build a tower. I got some new blocks from Savvo.
You shrug, and follow your brother. The labourer with the drinks looks up at you momentarily, but when he sees you looking at him he turns away and gives that yes sir of course sir didn’t mean anything by it sir look as though he’s one of those artifical pets that’s just felt the back of its master’s shoe. Those things are designed to take a punishment beating, too. Built right into the DNA.
–Oh look at mine. Here, you put them together like this.
Your brother gives you a demonstration. He creates a solid base, and then proceeds to create a tower in a way that your child’s mind can neither articulate nor comprehend, but it stirs a strong sense of something in you. No, a sense of many things, like you are in fact a frothing army of individuals with different aims and personalities and objectives who cannot organise themselves into a coherent formation. You like the tower, don’t you? It has a basic elegance to it, a childish sophistication. It stays up just when you think it will fall, and then it is fortified with blocks added in just the right place. There is a strange mathematical magic and logic to this - several Cartesian calculations fly through the mind of your brother as he assesses the structure, what it lacks and what it requires, what will make it strong and what will make it beautiful, and all these thoughts occur at the same time, all in an instant. It is admirable. Perhaps even awesome. Something worth emulating. Perhaps the invitation to play was worthwhile after all. Before long your brother’s tower is sufficiently high that he has to stand to complete it. His face is beaming with delight. In spite of the achievement - or perhaps because of it? - a not-insignificant part of you wants to knock it down, but another part of you wants to emulate it. That is the better part of you. It is only natural to emulate the towering figures you see. Do you remember when your father took you to the local Thes Buros server and you saw its gleaming spires?
–Thes Buros is the most beautiful thing on Sinjin, he said. Without it, we would simply wither and die.
You did not question this. You knew you ought not to, because how could you question something that is so beautiful? Its silver architecture, unknowable and impenetrable, vast and terrible, an eldritch vault more sophisticated than anything that present-day man could conceive. A digitised behemoth that knows the fate of every Animas, every blade of grass, every molecule and every atom of carbon, oxygen, silicon and hydrogen on Sinjin. The power - and the fortune - of a planet locked into something fathomable to the human eye, and yet unfathomable to the mind. You saw the people paying homage to the Thes Buros server, dancing and drinking and moaning and swaying and oh Buros we thank you for the daily bread which sustains us we thank you for the animas and the florias and we thank you for our lives and some of them even do that thing that grown-ups do when their bodies intertwine in strange ways like some sort of exotic dance.
–What are they doing? You had asked your father.
–Thes Buros is a Creator, he said. They’re copying it. Emulating it.
Yes, you know better than to question something that is beautiful. When it causes people to act this way it has undeniable power. In that moment did you not see something worth emulating? And in seeing it you very quickly - if not consciously - recognised the qualities of something worth emulating.
You have that same sense now. Your brother’s tower. Elegance, strength, form.
You look at your blocks. You do not overthink it, and begin putting one upon the other.
–That’s really good! he says, but you barely hear him. And you suspect that it may not be a genuine appraisal. Still you progress, and in putting blocks of different shapes in unexpected orders you too are now existing on the thin border between chaos and order, where anything is possible but where the risks are almighty. An excitement is building within you, and you feel a twinge of pride. Perhaps one more block on the top just there…
The tower topples over with a crash and fragments into an abstract mess, leaving you slack-jawed for a moment. Your brother also has a look of oh no upon him for a fraction of a second, but as the blocks spread out upon the grass he cannot help but burst into laughter at the scene.
–Oh, that’s bad luck!
The armies within you stir. They are agitated. They are suddenly readied and stuck at the Hot Gates, overheating and liable to blow, whipping their own blood and bile into a little frenzy. And why not? Why ought his efforts to be rewarded with the glory of edificial structure, while yours are cast into the grass? What’s fair about that? Isn’t it simply a random matter, a quirk of happenstance that determines whose efforts are to be rewarded, while the efforts of others become so much dust? Or is it that dreadful word he just said, luck? Are we to determine the matters and the movements of people just by luck? I know these words mean little to you now. But do not fight them.
His laughing becomes a drone. Your fists become balls. Your face is a hot mask. Your breath rises to the quick. What will you do?
Some decisions are made so quickly that perhaps it is inaccurate to describe them as having been made at all. They are reactions, instincts, reflexes built from ancient biological architectures that have been honed by millions of years of culling the extraneous fat. What remains, by definition, must be perfection. Until that too is pared back even more. If that is so, what is perfection? Is it an empty space?
You are on him. The building blocks – yours and his – are now scattered. A squeal erupts and he hits you over the head but you have surprised him with the attack and such is the adrenaline coursing through your veins that you barely register the impact. You hit him on the head with a block, and it catches him in the eye. He squeals again. The noise is awful, so – again, it cannot be said to be a decision, can it? – you wrap your hands around his throat, and you squeeze.
~
Run it again.
You can imagine it, can’t you?
Your brother is looking at you. He is inviting you to play. He is taller than you, only by degrees, but you are stronger; again, only by degrees. His freckle-dappled face bears the type of broad, gap-tothed smile only worn by carefree children outside on a perfect summer’s morning. The sun is out, the air is warm yet bristles with a gentle breeze promising better things coming from the west. It is a beautiful day on Sinjin, a perfect day to play.
–Let’s build towers, he says.
You do not want to build towers. The mere suggestion of it irritates you. Why does this invitation stir up this reaction? Is it the inanity of it? The fact that you simply want to be left alone? The fact that the last time you built towers together your own collapsed while his remained standing? Or something else?
What do you see when you see your brother looking at you?
Do you see the bucolic scene around you? Do you see the trappings of your good fortune? Do you notice the sprawling sweep of your home, built in the late Gaian style, set into fifty acres of land? Or perhaps you see the robots tending to the garden with a gentle buzz, ensuring that its delicate eco-system is kept just-so? You do not see the labourers, because the labourers are far from here - you know this because you have heard the Citizens speak of them from time to time. The Citizens speak of the labourers the way you speak about pencils. You do not yet know why they talk about the labourers in this way, but you will, boy. What you do know is the labourers are not anywhere good, and not doing anything pleasant, and that they probably deserve to be wherever they are. To be sure, a couple of labourers have fallen on their feet; one of them serves drinks at the estate here, bringing out cold beers and fizzing citrus drinks, smiling in a way you know isn’t quite right but you can’t quite say how.
–Come on, let’s build a tower. I got some new blocks from Savvo.
You shrug, and follow your brother. The labourer with the drinks looks up at you momentarily, but when he sees you looking at him he turns away and gives that yes sir of course sir didn’t mean anything by it sir look as though he’s one of those artifical pets that’s just felt the back of its master’s shoe. Those things are designed to take a punishment beating, too. Built right into the DNA.
–Oh look at mine. Here, you put them together like this.
Your brother gives you a demonstration. He creates a solid base, and then proceeds to create a tower in a way that your child’s mind can neither articulate nor comprehend, but it stirs a strong sense of something in you. No, a sense of many things, like you are in fact a frothing army of individuals with different aims and personalities and objectives who cannot organise themselves into a coherent formation. You like the tower, don’t you? It has a basic elegance to it, a childish sophistication. It stays up just when you think it will fall, and then it is fortified with blocks added in just the right place. There is a strange mathematical magic and logic to this - several Cartesian calculations fly through the mind of your brother as he assesses the structure, what it lacks and what it requires, what will make it strong and what will make it beautiful, and all these thoughts occur at the same time, all in an instant. It is admirable. Perhaps even awesome. Something worth emulating. Perhaps the invitation to play was worthwhile after all. Before long your brother’s tower is sufficiently high that he has to stand to complete it. His face is beaming with delight. In spite of the achievement - or perhaps because of it? - a not-insignificant part of you wants to knock it down, but another part of you wants to emulate it. That is the better part of you. It is only natural to emulate the towering figures you see. Do you remember when your father took you to the local Thes Buros server and you saw its gleaming spires?
–Thes Buros is the most beautiful thing on Sinjin, he said. Without it, we would simply wither and die.
You did not question this. You knew you ought not to, because how could you question something that is so beautiful? Its silver architecture, unknowable and impenetrable, vast and terrible, an eldritch vault more sophisticated than anything that present-day man could conceive. A digitised behemoth that knows the fate of every Animas, every blade of grass, every molecule and every atom of carbon, oxygen, silicon and hydrogen on Sinjin. The power - and the fortune - of a planet locked into something fathomable to the human eye, and yet unfathomable to the mind. You saw the people paying homage to the Thes Buros server, dancing and drinking and moaning and swaying and oh Buros we thank you for the daily bread which sustains us we thank you for the animas and the florias and we thank you for our lives and some of them even do that thing that grown-ups do when their bodies intertwine in strange ways like some sort of exotic dance.
–What are they doing? You had asked your father.
–Thes Buros is a Creator, he said. They’re copying it. Emulating it.
Yes, you know better than to question something that is beautiful. When it causes people to act this way it has undeniable power. In that moment did you not see something worth emulating? And in seeing it you very quickly - if not consciously - recognised the qualities of something worth emulating.
You have that same sense now. Your brother’s tower. Elegance, strength, form.
You look at your blocks. You do not overthink it, and begin putting one upon the other.
–That’s really good! he says, but you barely hear him. And you suspect that it may not be a genuine appraisal. Still you progress, and in putting blocks of different shapes in unexpected orders you too are now existing on the thin border between chaos and order, where anything is possible but where the risks are almighty. An excitement is building within you, and you feel a twinge of pride. Perhaps one more block on the top just there…
The tower topples over with a crash and fragments into an abstract mess, leaving you slack-jawed for a moment. Your brother also has a look of oh no upon him for a fraction of a second, but as the blocks spread out upon the grass he cannot help but burst into laughter at the scene.
–Oh, that’s bad luck!
The armies within you stir. They are agitated. They are suddenly readied and stuck at the Hot Gates, overheating and liable to blow, whipping their own blood and bile into a little frenzy. And why not? Why ought his efforts to be rewarded with the glory of edificial structure, while yours are cast into the grass? What’s fair about that? Isn’t it simply a random matter, a quirk of happenstance that determines whose efforts are to be rewarded, while the efforts of others become so much dust? Or is it that dreadful word he just said, luck? Are we to determine the matters and the movements of people just by luck? I know these words mean little to you now. But do not fight them.
His laughing becomes a drone. Your fists become balls. Your face is a hot mask. Your breath rises to the quick. What will you do?
Some decisions are made so quickly that perhaps it is inaccurate to describe them as having been made at all. They are reactions, instincts, reflexes built from ancient biological architectures that have been honed by millions of years of culling the extraneous fat. What remains, by definition, must be perfection. Until that too is pared back even more. If that is so, what is perfection? Is it an empty space?
You are on him. The building blocks – yours and his – are now scattered. A squeal erupts and he hits you over the head but you have surprised him with the attack and such is the adrenaline coursing through your veins that you barely register the impact. You hit him on the head with a block, and it catches him in the eye. He squeals again. The noise is awful, so – again, it cannot be said to be a decision, can it? – you wrap your hands around his throat, and you squeeze.
