The girl from the mire: part 2
Were we ever alive? Were we ever here? Were we ever?
Judith exists in a graveyard. Her tombstone is so old that it looks like a smooth glacial stone. Protrudes into her dusty, dormant grass world. Inhabitants are terri...
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The mire swelters away the winter world. Spring forces foliage and dirt of the bleak no mans land into a melt of muddy puddle reclamation. Touch of death and the forever sleep of frozen fingerprints drain like snow melting in a terrarium hour glass.
It's been five years since the minty blue Leonards held a desolate power in the First Reality. They were defeated by the avenging rolling hills Factory in a week long battle that witnessed the destruction of the centre of the city. Where all roads used to meet.
After the street by street bombing and gun to gun and ammunition lacking hand to hand, the Leonard army and their lieutenants fled. Were hunted down. Captured. Forced to take responsibility for their torturous science. Responsibility for their brutalities. Some were imprisoned in Hellish simulations of brimstone and the branding chains of bare skin scorch sunrises. Some were thrown into the blizzards of barefoot snow midnights. Others, such as David Leonard and his disposable mask entourage escaped to another simulation where he named himself Lord. Conquered his new kingdom. Named it "the first reality" and discarded any notion of the place that he could no longer set a villainous foot in. Felt the insides of a martyr in his own imagination. His final communication to the Factory was of a barbarian capitalism. How dare they reject him after all he did for the first reality. After all the resources he plundered for them. How dare they. How dare the Poor district and the Factory and the city of Veridiction hunt him and excommunicate him. The chemical weapons he had weren't meant for the first reality. They were meant for every other simulation. They were meant to kill everyone outside the first reality so the resources could be obtained without lifetimes of war.
The war record shows that this is David's reason for committing atrocities. His teleological excuse was a misunderstanding and bastardization of utilitarianism and deontology.
The Leonards defeat was assured ten years ago when Terra Coal destroyed their major weapons infrastructure and in the process, saved every simulation in existence. She was tortured and murdered and turned into a monster for her actions.
The war was brutal and is still happening in other simulations. Other simulations that the First Reality has blocked. The First Reality has become the hardest world to enter since the old and new government made up of the remnants of the Poor district and the Factory leaders destroyed the majority of the portals.
The existing portals are heavily guarded. Most of them.
From the mire, the city is a distant structure, like a circuit board laying in the mud. It's silver twinkle power ports and brick box inputs and steel bridge regulators and mown forest park antenna and skyscraper slick cylinder batteries which have a charge that's been missing for a decade. The city's rebuilding. Resurrecting with a fresh glass downtown aesthetic and fresh park bench welds.
The dust of the war has settled and has been swept away. Most of it into the mire.
Donovan remembers the past and what it took to find the future. He took part in the war and helped destroy one of the Leonard outposts where the dark forest sprang up. That outpost is a parking lot now. The dark forest was chopped down and bulldozed into mulch. The Poor district is still a ruin but some people are rebuilding homes. Donovan doesn't envy them or care to ever build a home in that haunted place. He's a Factory man and lives in the underground city and facilities of the greatest place in Veridiction. The greatest place, at least in his opinion. But he's also a scientist. Not like those blue clad butchers. No. He's a proper lab nerd. He's curious but not really ambitious. Which is why he gets to do the jobs that no one else will touch as a reminder that he could be more ambitious about certain things.
