Slumrat Rising

Vol. 4 Chap. 55 The Celestial Clockwork Slips A Gear

Truth laughed and walked forward, arm slung over the Prophet’s shoulder. He didn’t respond to the question. Someone walked straight through Etenesh without noticing her. Had anyone asked, she definitely would have denied yelping. She started looking around furiously.

It was almost like a nightmare- everything was familiar, but wrong. This market should be teeming with spirits and demons, but she didn’t see a single one. There were wagons, sure, but ones pulled by animals. No carriages. No sleek high speed chariots. Not a hint of a flying carpet, seven colored cloud or wide-winged firebird. Nothing normal. Just humans, arguing, laughing, eating, shopping. Living.

As nightmares went, it really wasn’t too bad. Maybe a sort of optimistic notion of what the world might look like after the magic collapsed? It was a nice thought.

“It ought to be a dream, but I swear I can smell these people. Just what the Hell is going on?” She muttered. She thought back to the debate she had just watched. A very old fashioned sort of argument. Modern theology was playing well past that point. The world is perfect and so are we- perfectly imperfect, just the way God wanted us. Our journey towards perfection was kind of the point of existence. At least, according to Orthodox Siphios. Otherwise, why create a universe at all? As for demons- aren’t they improving themselves too?

She was forced to follow behind Truth, or Pseudo-Truth, watching him chatter with people in a way she had never seen him do in real life. She had a nasty jolt, watching him drink bowl after bowl of wine. This was Truth, but not her Truth.

He looked happy here. He was so serious in Siphios. Or, not serious exactly, but you got the sense that the emotions he showed were superficial. The real emotions ran deep and silent. When she could pull a real smile out of him, see the vulnerability in his eyes… it about killed her. Knowing that the most hurt, scared person she knew was letting her in, treating her as safe. But here was a Truth, embracing a stranger. Here was a Truth that was happy in a way she couldn’t remember being in a long while. Jamming out to some music and flying arguments with laughing friends. She used to love listening to music in clubs. She had a very active social circle too.

On the one hand, now was really not the time. Everything was falling apart, and she was barely started on figuring out how the whole Apotheosis thing was supposed to work. On the other hand, Truth wouldn’t want her miserable. He wouldn’t just understand, he would approve. Etenesh smiled as the dream faded away. She was staying with some family at the moment. She could drag some cousins out for an evening. The music scene out in the countryside was pretty limited, but there were weekly sessions at the local bar. It might be nice. Even God needed a rest now and then, right?

She could feel the idea clicking into place, healing a broken place inside of her. The dream faded away as she woke up smiling. On the other side of the world, Truth kept right on sleeping. But come dawn, he woke smiling too.

“Today is going to be a great day.” He said, as the delayed monsoon hammered at the windows. Did you catch that memory?

No major changes, but he could see the little spark of Etenesh glowing more brightly. He could feel the joy shining off of it.

Good. She deserves to be happy.

He briefly wondered what that could be about, then shrugged. As long as she was happy, wasn’t it all good? Instead, he walked into the hostel lobby and found out about travel options out of the city. There were buses that ran regularly, as well as a local train. The local train, however, was no longer considered reliable.

“Breaks down all the time, always track repairs, always some problem with the demon, always something. Nobody ever does anything about it. No wonder the whole country is going down the toilet.” The woman behind the counter was older, and had the general air of someone’s mother filling in on their shift.

“Sounds like the bus is the safer bet.” Truth smiled.

“Safer, but not safe. You won’t believe how often it breaks down in the mountains. And now the monsoon is here! Ayah! You should pack a lunch and a snack AND two bottles- one with water, one empty.” They shared a look.

“I think I will do that, then. Work here often?”

“These days I mostly just keep the books. My husband and I own it. My son is in the Army now, so… here I am.”

Truth nodded understandingly. He hadn’t paid for the room, or told anyone he was going to be staying there, so it would be hard to say “Thank you for the lovely stay.” Still. It had been nice. Hmm.

He thanked the landlady for the tip, then quickly ran around the house, touching up any talismans in need of work. It wasn’t much, but when he considered what maintenance techs usually billed out at… well it still wasn’t enough to cover a night’s stay. But it was something.

Truth looked up into the torrent of rain. It would settle down in a bit, but you could reliably expect rain off and on for the next couple of months. Especially on the coast. All those clouds ran head-first into the mountains and dumped their rain on the habitable strips of land along the coast. Not that inland didn’t catch plenty of rain too. Jeon’s mountains, especially in the south, weren’t very big. The peninsula wasn’t that big either.

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Rain gear. He grabbed all kinds of supplies but neglected rain gear. Strictly speaking, he didn’t need it. Equally strictly speaking, it wasn’t comfortable running around in sopping wet clothes and he wanted it. He was firmly done with the nudist long haul runs.

Was there anywhere selling rain gear around here? No. At least, no one selling quality, long wearing stuff. There were, however, Happy Happy Marts that he would Happy Happy shoplift a cheap plastic poncho and a barely functional umbrella from.

Public transportation in Jeon had, until recently, been pretty good. All the bus and train routes were privately operated, of course, but there were legal minimums they had to meet. It all worked out. Truth was able to get a city bus to the combination bus and train station, paused briefly to note that all trains had been canceled for unspecified reasons, and queued up for the intercity bus to Harban.

Starbrite wasn’t in Harban, but Niles was. He had a suspicion that was the thread to pull, not running down the ritual sites. Besides, it would keep Cho and his ilk guessing about his movements.

The intercity coach was a long, tall thing, with ample storage below and rather decent seats above. Some enchanter had done a good job with the bound spirits on the vehicle- they would keep the ride safe and steady, plus they looked cute in their little bus company uniforms. His ticket was checked, naturally, as was his travel permit. They were checked by a distinctly elderly Level One ‘supervised’ by a Level Zero conscript. There was no trouble boarding the bus. He got a seat by the window and watched the world go past.

What, exactly, was his end game? “People should be nicer to each other, and work to help each other. It is possible to create a world where everyone can live safely and with dignity, if we work together.” Not exactly the stuff of revolutions. Not exactly the kind of thing you can sell with a tee shirt. Especially when you push into the details. Every time you dug into the details, you jammed yourself up. But you couldn’t just blow past the details either, because the details were where things got done.

“People should have safe, clean places to live. Places that can’t just be taken from them.”

“Alright, sounds good! How are we defining “safe,” “clean,” “places” and “live?” We should probably tackle that before we get to the notion of someone having an absolute right to residency somewhere despite attacking the maintenance workers with an iron pipe, or beating an old man half to death in the elevator.”

There were some core childhood memories, right there. You haven’t truly known life in a big apartment block until you see some blackout drunk dickheads crouching at the top of a flight of stairs, competing to see who’s turds could roll the furthest. The burnt out whores were downright charming neighbors by comparison.

The thing is, though, the thing is, even if he didn’t want them living anywhere near him, he did want them to be able to live somewhere. What were the odds that they were going to be able to be educated and get their heads together if they were made homeless? Zero, right? But how do you strike that balance? He didn’t know.

Everything was like that. No matter what you said- “Everyone should be able to eat good food,” there would be bad actors. But even they should eat, right? Because if they had their head on straight, they wouldn’t be acting like that, right? Which means that they have brain problems or education problems, or something.

So. How do we get there? No frigging way if it’s just him. You need loads of people thinking about these questions. Picking at them. Testing out different solutions. Hundreds or thousands of people whose job it is to make sure all these questions get answered and the rules get implemented and enforced. Definitely thousands of people. The Food Safety department alone would be enormous.

Truth leaned his head against the back of the seat ahead of him and laughed painfully.

“Oh God. I just discovered the reason for bureaucracy. And I found it good. This ‘thinking’ thing was a bad idea. Mindless violence, that’s the safe bet.”

Truth briefly hallucinated a country where practically everyone is a bureaucrat, or at least works for the government. You have the military, of course, but you also have the department that decides how much housing is needed, then the department that decides how they are built, then the department that gets all the materials together, a labor department to secure the workers, planning and permitting departments to site the building, environmental departments, transit departments, food, medicine, the very air you breathe, all got departments.

Farming? You have joined the national defense against malnutrition! And to make sure your farm is operating optimally, it will be owned and operated by the state- you are just labor. Just like the guys working in the fisheries and ranches. Education, well, education was at the core of all this. Nothing worked without it. That would definitely have to be carefully overseen by the government.

It was all benevolent, really. Everyone was employed at the same job- looking out for everyone else. No one person could do it all by themselves. With a well developed system, no one would have to. A governmental philosophy dedicated to people working together for communal goals. A beautiful thing.

Now… what were the odds of literally no one looking at this set up and thinking “How do I make sure I have a bigger and nicer apartment than my neighbors? Also, completely unrelated, Stevie is hoarding kumquats in his house so let’s just fit him for a noose…”

Was there a middle ground? He didn’t know. But it all started with education. And the education started with a dream. Back to Harban he went.

The world of bureaucrats was too much. People can’t wrap their head around that. What can you understand? What your arms can wrap around. Family. Those neighbors you have been avoiding meeting. The handful of people you know through work. What if you pitched a different kind of world to them- one that took the profit of the group and put it first? The world was too big and too scary to face it all on your own. Nobody could make it on their own.

For example, what if you had a life changing opportunity. Something that would improve both physical health and financial wellness. You could hoard it to yourself. You could be selfish like that. But really, you would be short-changing yourself. So it was both out of the absolute kindness of your heart and good sense that you reached out to a few of your besties to let them in on the biggest secret of the decade. The key to limitless prosperity. Megashroom.

Truth visualized the structure of the MLM, seeing the network of connections, seeing how the lowest tier had the flexibility to show initiative and creativity. Seeing how those chains of responsibility rose upwards, guided by policy. Policy set at the very top. You don’t need everyone for a revolution. You just need loud, motivated people. Shameless people. People who refuse to stop knocking on your door even if you put a bear trap on your front step.

The revolution would be network marketed, whether it liked it or not.