Fragments of despair

*Occuring during The Man Who Feared To Die*

## Flanders Fields

An old man sat down, his back against the field, his mind torn apart by the horrors he had seen. He had thought it fitting to die there. More than a hundred years ago he had been here as well after all, overseeing the mindless carnage of the Great War. Looking back on it, though he only formally turned against the tradition during the second world war it was in that horror that the seeds of his turning had been sown. The brutal and senseless waste of human life, and all that because their leaders were divided into petty squabbles.

He had known it then, that Unity had to be won, lest the world be devoured in precisely such a manner.

They had all been idiots, after the sacrifice of Wrinkles Triumvirate. Mostly drunk on their own victories, despite everyone's massive losses in the wake of the so-called Homecoming Betrayal they had proceeded to believe themselves invincible, trying to wipe out the Traditions at their lowest ebb.

Off course, there was a faction that was not weakened and had obviously chosen just that moment, after two relatively short but catastrophic wars to strike. And they succeeded. Over the course of a month the Things From Beyond had proceeded to wipe out human life, consigning the world to oblivion.

The old man, dressed in white, was finally out of tricks, bar perhaps one. The trick would probably annihilate himself, but even Wrinkle probably was too busy otherwise now, so he might as well try. He drew breath, and prepared a ritual to travel back in time. At times like these, having been an Cultist of Ecstasy finally became an advantage.

Before he could though, three familiar but long dead faces appeared before him. Another chance represented itself, and as they explained their plight, Levi decided to cast a light into the past. Afterwards, as he felt his own body dissolve he couldn't help but feel glad: 'They made it.'

## Past Perfect, Future Tense

‘Girls, I have to go and have a talk with the director. Now, promise to be good, and you can watch the puppet show in the meantime,’ the young mother points at the seating area in front of the puppet theatre.

‘What do you have to talk about, mama?’ the youngest girl asks while the greying director joins them.

‘About grown up things, like what jobs mom and dad are going to do next season.’

‘What do you want to be when you grow up, Cici?’ the director asks the little girl.

‘A magician! Or maybe a princess. I like princesses. They wear their best dresses all the time,’ she answers.

‘I want to be a mother!’ the elder girl pipes up excitedly. ‘And a magician!’

‘No, not a princess, a queen!’ little Cici interrupts. ‘Because princesses have to listen to their mother, and queens don’t.’

The memory floated to the top of her mind. She could turn those random memories off, of course, but she had calculated that there was a high probability that they were useful. After all, mankind’s subconscious mind has evolved over millions of years to best assist the conscious mind.

Her conscious mind tries not to snigger about the irony of the memory. In a way both little girls managed to fulfill their dreams. Teresa is a mother of five. But having her first one at 19, without any money or a house was probably not what she imagined at seven. Luckily she was a talented magician and everything turned out very well. Even with Hanzi. And the odds are looking good voor Mireli as well, even though she has spotted some signs.

However, her sister was not the reason her subconsciousness decided to show her this memory.
Little Cici wanted to wear pretty dresses. That worked, even though the colour palette is a little limited. But well, giving up one petty dream of wearing floral embroidered rainbow dresses isn’t that much in the grand scheme. And once in a while she does get away with blood red or colorful jewelry.

Little Cici wanted to be a magician. Well, she did manage to become a mage. After all, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Just don't mention that to Nicole.

Nicole. The best friend she has. And still, so bloody annoying sometimes that you want to sharpen your knives and make her suffer. Hmm, blunt knives would work even better, especially with the musculocutaneous nerv.. Patricia stops her train of thought and curses at herself.

But she didn't use knives, did she? There was no blood, no delicious screaming, not even pain. And if anything, Patricia knows what she likes most: The precision work with blood dripping everywhere and with terrified screaming in the background is so utterly relaxing.

But subject Taylor was wearing VR-glasses. A technocrat was tortured by a mage with technology. And Nicole, ever so observant, completely missed that. Guess she was a little preoccupied.

There is a very important message there. Even as a mage, she still needs the stability and the dynamics of technology. Dynamics are easy. Franklin can just find new ways to blow things up if it doesn’t get enough space. But stability doesn’t balance that easily.

If queen Jane was a real future self, Patricia would have been really proud of herself for scaring Nicole that much. That mind trick was awesome. Now Nicole fears losing a fight with Patricia. And she will take every safety measures needed to protect herself. Which is exactly what should happen. Patricia does not want to win a war against Nicole. There is no need to purify the world of stability. There should be an equilibrium. So she’s going to make sure she won’t win.

## A Brave New World

Nicole was looking down on Central Square, pondering while the little drones were busy cleaning up the rubble from Franklin’s recently destroyed statue. The visit wasn’t a surprise, of course – she was there the first time, all those years ago – but her companion’s reactions were less pleasant than she remembered.

Some of it was obvious even back then. The structured life of today was perhaps a bit of a culture shock. All for good reasons, though – the stability and security of this new society came hand in hand with that. But that wasn’t that big a deal; systems have always had their fluctuations, and Patricia and Salisbury would always be two of those. There were measures in place to ensure happiness even for the outliers, of course, and society could cope as long as they were kept within their proper tolerances. No, it was the mistrust that stung the most.

After the warnings, and with the help of their allies, the Union managed to defeat both Threat Null, and the Nephandic invaders that tried to capitalize on the chaos. While Patricia and Salisbury perished in the assault on Autochtonia, their sacrifice kept the peace intact long enough to hold, and the Union set out to forge a true utopia.

Time-motion management had perfected the amount of work people had to perform to find fulfilment; automation took up the rest, ensuring plenty of free time for all, without too much for people to become restless. The NWO and the Syndicate had taken public order and the economy well in their hands, with societal progress going ahead at a proper, calm pace. The Progenitor’s additives kept all who needed a little boost in their morale at peace – only when they chose to do so, of course, but most did. And, after all the mishaps in the last decades, the Void Engineers were making up for time, colonizing deep space at breakneck speed. As the lines between Enlightened and citizen blurred, humanity was heading for a true global Ascension.

They even managed to fit the traditions and the other outsides in, in their own little enclave in Australia. It was a hard sell, but once in place, they too seemed at peace with the situation, forging their own little world where they could live as they wished. It’d been too long since she spoke the old man – work always got in the way – but the diplomatic channels and the intelligence reports had been positive for years on end. Their presence even stabilized the rest of the world, serving as a possible way out for those truly not fitting into society.

But from the start, Patricia and Salisbury were skeptical. This perfect union seemed too perfect to them, and they were constantly trying to find the “sacrifices” that had to be made. There were none – not really, anyway. The Tradition managed their own dissenters with minimal Union help, their leadership seeing the advantages of the arrangement, and with the full attention of the Technocracy, any dissent for the masses was easily blunted with the softest of measures. Yet still, the pair of visitors from the past seemed uneasy with the situation, as if the uncertainties and dangers of the past were a boon rather than a curse. She’d heard it all before – as if modern citizens didn’t have all the freedom to do as they wished – but to hear it from here best friends was more painful than she realized.

Walking to the kitchen after seeing the trio depart the city, Nicole tried to think back about the discussions she and the other two had about the visions they witnessed afterwards – only to draw a blank. Sure, they talked about the possible scenario’s in the future, but it’d been too long for Nicole to recall any specifics. In fact, now that she was thinking about it, a lot of details about how the current state of affairs came to pass seemed hazy.
Pouring a cup of tea to gather her thoughts, Nicole was too immersed in her thoughts to notice the world around her slowly fading away. Before long, her entire reality drifted into the surrounding fog, as the fleeting thoughts from a nightmare after waking.

## Lessons Learned

A tall and muscular man paused at the door to the shooting range of the Antwerp Technocratic Construct, knocked, and waited a few more seconds before entering.

Inside, a man wearing a lab coat riddled with scorch marks, with dark sunglasses on, looked at the first man, then put down the laser pointer he was holding and removed his sunglasses.

"Guinea! How's the new arm?"

"I had to make them redraft the requisition form four times before they agreed to give me a regular one without any bells and whistles, but the arm is doing fine."

Guinea flexed his left arm a few times to demonstrate.

"I'd like to apologize again," Franklin said. "Big blunder on my part."

*He feels embarrassed? That's a new thing for him. Maybe that school is softening him.*

"It's okay, boss. I got it replaced for free, and with my salary, I was able to get the mortgage I needed easily. So if you think about it, I got a discount of 1 leg."

"Huh?"

"Nevermind. So what are you doing?"

"Well, basically we got some creepy visions of the future while saving Xanax from some rogue mages, about how things would turn out depending on which of us would go on a suicide mission to Autochtonia. Tailor and Jane wanted to see what a future where I stay behind and survive looks like, and it turned out basically how I predicted it would: with me unable to broker a peace - since honesty alone doesn't make diplomacy - and stuck running around cleaning up one mess at a time. And even though it turns out the creepy mist was really some sort of super ghost trying to break us mentally, supposedly the 'visions' have a kernel of truth, so instead of doing the rational thing and not dying, Tailor and Jane want me to sign up for all these leadership seminars so I can carry the war without them. Yes?"

Guinea lowered his raised arm, and hesitantly said "Um, boss? This sounds above my clearance level."

"Right, sorry. Make sure to ask Lee-vie for a selective mind wipe later today."

"It's pronounced Lay-vee, boss."

"Only in Britain, Guinea."

Guinea sighed. *Not winning that battle today.*

"Still, boss, looks to me like you're not filling out application forms so much as..." - Guinea picked up a charred sheet of paper from the ground - "... destroying them?"

Franklin blinked, in the worst impression of surprise Guinea had ever seen. "Oh my goodness, were those the application forms? I needed some cheap targets, and I thought I had picked some empty sheets."

Guinea chuckled, and turned to leave, throwing the fragment of paper in the paper bin. "Stick to practicing your shooting skills, boss - unless you actually believe you've improved them to the point where you'll be able to survive that suicide mission, I don't think the others will."

Franklin put his sunglasses back on, and leveled his laser pointer at one of the paper targets. "Point taken, Guinea. Only dig the graves you can fill, and all that."

"I don't think that's a real saying, boss," Guinea said, before closing the door behind him and heading off down the corridor. *Guess I should get mind-wiped before I get lunch - don't want the office gossips to somehow find out the boss leaked to me again.* He was not fond of office politics, but the pay made up for a lot.