Prisons of Ice and Fire

The Cult Revealed

My strange episode of being a puppet of the Cult was coming to a close, or at least I hoped.

Once we had delivered the crate back to the City Of The Eye I could think of no reason why I should be bothered by them again; I could go back to Dragu, embellish what was essentially a non-report, and be on my way with either a year to serve on The Destiny or three, that part was out of my hands.

Unfortunately that did not seem to be the case as on our approach to The City Of The Eye I was once again summoned to change my clothes.

This time the monk took me to a different part of the City.

It was a 'gathering' room for want of a better word, but certainly no Great Hall.

The room was just as big as it needed to be to accommodate enough chairs and tables so that twenty or thirty people could sit around in a square and all see each other.

The woman who I had previously met was sat at the table when I entered the room along with two other people, all dressed normally. The monk closed the door behind me and I made my way through a gap in the square of tables towards the chair that had obviously been set for me.

All the while the three people watched me intently.

I didn't wait to be asked to sit as my disappointment at having to go through all this again had turned to belligerence.

"I've done what you asked," I said simply, "now just let me go. I don't need to give anything to Dragu, I'll be fine if you just leave me alone."

The woman looked down for a moment as if to hide some emotional response to my words, then looked up at me again, smiling.

"I'm afraid I can't do that," she said, "but I only need one more thing from you."

I'm sure the look of anger on my face told her that she needed to tread carefully now, and she did.

"Firstly though, I'd like to keep the promise I made to you the last time we met. I want to tell you what this is all about."

I did at this point let my guard down a little, but to make sure she understood I replied before she had chance to start, "Please don't keep me here too long, I just want to get back to work."

She nodded, smiled again and said, "Of course. Can I ask you first if Dragu said anything about us?"

I told her what Dragu had told me and she listened politely.

"Thank you," she replied, "now let me tell you what really happened thirty years ago. To start with, The Heptet at the time and their 'great minds' were as worried by the lack of progress that was being made on improving our situation as anyone. They were, in fact, the ones that initiated the IQ survey. One of their 'great minds' suggested an experiment based on the assumption that the reason for the lack of progress was the inability of those involved in solving the 'big' problems to distance themselves enough from the problems: there was a kind of feedback loop effect.

Not wanting, of course, to remove themselves from their positions of power within the academic circles, they set about collecting some of the slightly less able, younger students and isolating them from both their control and what they were doing. Essentially, these students were not to be influenced in any way by the perceived consensus on the direction research should take.

Of course, very quickly this became untenable without physically isolating them. Naturally, some of the students rebelled at this, not seeing the point in even trying to solve problems if they were going to be outside of a domain that allowed their careers to progress if they did. They were quickly dismissed and put into the 'normal' workforce. What do you think happened next?"