Shieldfall

Six years ago, Caraqui

The Shieldlight glanced off shining black spires of the hundreds of mage towers that made up the majority of the metropolis. All built in the fulfillment of the New City movement, promising affordable, plasm-generating housing for the homeless. It had gone wonderfully: The last four hundred years were successful by any measure.

The New city movement captured the hearts and minds of billions.

I drew in on my cigarette. I thought it fitting that it was all fueled by his own work. Fractional Interval Theory allowed ever increasing amounts of plasm to be generated without the significant expense of building new structures. I frowned at the sensation of a cool breeze pushing through my suit. The plasm had then been invested into hermetic transformations of existing structures. Buildings that existed previously could then be modified to generate ever increasing amounts of plasm.

I exhaled, blowing a stream of smoke out into the city. Finally, the plasm went to building new structures that were far more efficient at generating plasm than even the hermetically improved ones. My cigarette went out, put out by the first drop of rain in the storm. An event with a very low probability by any estimate.

                Plasm advertisements flickered overhead, without the report, or flashiness that had defined advertisements of the previous centuries. It was a different age perhaps.

Gulman Shoes, the source of Ninety-nine percent of the world’s luxury shoes, why would you not buy a pair?

                The messages remained the same: Who are you to not buy our product?

                That had not been enough of course. It never was.

 The sweeping arcs of aerocars flung up by plasm glided downwards, lights shining in the distance.  I wonder how many of them think about the source of their newfound wealth. At the thought, I gave a sigh as the rain pattered upon my head, seeking my attention as so many people once did.  life was too easy now.

I coughed. The world around him seemed to have been pacified by the ubiquity of such magic. Even the dangers that once came with it, the burning man sweeping fire and heat up and down the streets, killing thousands with fires that burnt the plasm itself from the materials of the buildings, disappeared from daily life. Availability implies safety, the ability to learn how to use plasm under the careful and cautious eyes of mage, that everyone can become a mage. Nothing scary seemed to happen anymore. Natural disasters were still around, but what could I do about that? Not much without risking far more.

              When I swept my gaze out upon the city, the copper statue of Constantine, jubilant in one of his many moods, sparkled before the rain could occlude it with its fog. The shining copper shape of Constantine swept as tall as any of the buildings. I rolled my eyes as I thought of the evil that man allowed to exist.

                A symbol of liberty, but how many could say that they knew of Taikoen, the hanged man? Constantine was the death of Cheloki. Yet he was also the supplier of the Barkazil Savior. He glanced up to the white light of the Shield. The penetrator of the Shield.

I finally turned back towards my balcony door, frowning at the thought of Aiah. The woman was special. She was the counterpoint to Constantine. Whereas he was a powerhouse, a brazen, man whose integrity was not as strong as it seemed, she was the manipulator in the shadows, brazen nonetheless, but unwilling to compromise her ideals, suddenly, as soon as she dove into the shadows, she lept out as the sun.

 It was Aiah that collected the force behind the Barkazil revival movement three centuries ago. With her involvement, the fame of the New City movement spread, infecting the metropoli across the world.

The New City movement was based on the belief that the availability of plasm and the stockpiling of such would be the stock that people hold in government, the government’s regulation of the economy, and the reason behind all economic and social growth.

 The element of change is plasm, it was, as Constantine said, the manifestation of reality, thus it could make anything real.

Another plasm display flew overhead, drawing attention with its gently pulsing colors.

The makers of Snap! The World Drink,  celebrate another fifty years of progress and peace, may there be another fifty.

                I drew upon my resolve and hastened inwards away from the biting impetulance of the rain. I still had other things to do.

                Plasm displays roared overhead blatantly disregarding either sense or reason. It was to my knowledge, a poor neighborhood. Well, relatively poor. There was not much of the sort of poverty that existed while Constantine still drew his breath, but it was the site of a depression. A sudden loss of interest in development that led to it being ignored in the process of rebuilding the city into the present dream of the fanged mage towers scraping against the shield simply by existing. As a result, they were straight buildings. Their corners were really corners. Their walls would show a constant angle upwards of 90 degrees. Things that make life easier if you want to hang pictures.

Mutant incidence increases another point oh four percent. Experts say that plasm involvement has been ruled out. Read more on The Wire!

                Advertising was still no different in the poorer areas. The plasm displays still came during sleep-shift with loud reports that were universally denigrated in every manual about plasm use, at least the ones I authored.

                She looked down from her shoddy cast-iron balcony. A product of a time when this area was considered a prosperous area, left to rust in the rain.

                On the street below where the unusually uniform mutants twisted by plasm exposure spent much of their all too cheap time. They waited for the next meal to start at her restaurant, the enigmatically named “Pony’s Progress”.

 This particular type of twisted were fortunate that they lived in a time when such people were accepted. That is, those with twisted genetics. Of course, it was generally easy to find out what kind they were. This type just appeared one day, and their numbers have been growing ever since.

The mutations had taken from them the ability to stand upright and have fingers. Furry little quadrupeds that supposedly resembled things called horses, whatever a horse was. She found them kind enough, despite their absurd color schemes, oversized eyes that conveyed emotions painfully well, and the marks on their rear that were supposedly tied inextricably to what they were good at. She smirked at the concept. The one time where your ass might be as good as business card.

                “We’re open again! Come on inside and get some you degenerates!” She yelled down to them. They weren’t degenerates by any measure; they maintained healthy relationships, and avoided excessive crime, and even managed to do good work. Somehow. She never really watched them closely enough to figure out how they picked up things or did work like construction. They looked up to her and laughed before shuffling inside.

        A smaller, white one, with a wrench on its flank, looked up to her and projected its surprisingly strong voice at her, “Thanks, Khora!” She simply smiled and nodded before going back inside.

        The room’s floor was covered in red overlapping circles with green overlapping pisces. The tables where the twisted sat were metal, the radius sat at about two feet, manufactured with the intent of serving two people, being used to serve four of these twisted.

        Khora, seeing the other tables unoccupied, decided that as both waitress and part-proprietor, it was her duty to check with them, “You are aware that there are free tables, right?”

        “We’re doing a debate.” A yellow twisted, a man judging by voice, offered as an explanation. “Whoever wins gets to sit with this lady” He gestured towards what, no doubt, was, for them, a beautiful female creature, with his right ah... hoof. To Khora, she simply appeared to be a slightly more rounded variety of the same type, a white one. The lady blushed and giggled. “With a woman like this, we figure that we have to prove our intelligence.” The other two nodded with him. Khora looked over all of them, a blue one with a gem on its rear smiled easily, a red one with a fruit icon looked at ease, and the yellow one oleaginous, with a slicked back patch of black hair on his head. Khora decided that she did not like this one.

        “I wasn’t asking about your motivations.” She suppressed a shudder at what she believed that he might mean. “Are you okay with this? Ma'am?” She nodded, nevertheless, Khora felt uneasy about this. It was almost if masculine nature had been altered by whatever wayward plasm could change. “Anyway, were you going to want to order something, or just debate?”

        “I’d like your daily special. And to drink, if you have it, snap.” The supposed female said. The woman’s concerns about the restaurant stocking the most popular drink in the world (behind water) were somewhat strangely placed, but the more interesting person here is Khora, whose dark brown locks of curly bright blond hair were the envy of all the neighborhood.

        “Sure, Squab with a side of Jebzi style noodles, a Snap.”

        “Actually, do you happen to have something other than squab?” Khora stared at her. It was unfortunate, she thought, that each of these people were giving her reasons to dislike them.

        “Yes. I think it is possible to substitute potato or some soy based replacement, but are you sure that I can’t tempt you with a vat grown chicken?”

        “I haven’t been able to eat meat for a while now.”

        “Oh. I’m sorry then. Would soy work as a substitute?” These twisted were getting stranger every day. Of course, that would not do as a reason to ignore their issues.

        “Certainly.” She smiled at Khora. “Sorry about the trouble.”

        “No problem. I’ll be back with your food. And you debaters, call me when you’ve figured out who’s sitting with whom.”

        She walked away and ended up in the kitchen, where she was pressed with the difficult task of figuring out where she could buy vegetarian steaks.

        “Now the subject of debate is the best first course of action to take outside the Shield.” The yellow one grinned greasily, a symptom of being oleaginous.

        “Do we know what’s out there?” The red one asked.

        “Well... There seem to be other planets, many stars very far away, rocks... Most of the things we have here, except that it is largely uninhabited.” Nessa said.

        “Well naturally, mankind will set aside a beautiful planet for every variety of Twisted-” The Red one offered smiling before the yellow one interrupted him.

        “But they want it for themselves! They’re more likely to make new varieties of Twisted just to serve them up there.” The yellow one said gloomily acknowledging the human condition.

        “Well... Anyway, we’ll end up getting rich off the mineral rights on those trillions of rocks.” The blue one said. His eyes sparkled in the light of the shield. The others stared at him. “What? It’s what I think will happen. It also happens perfect for a mage with my skills.”

        “This is a debate, not a question about fantasies.” The yellow one responded.

        “Fen, I know that you don’t like Cornelius here, but he might have a point to make, if he can back it up.”

        “Oh! Sure! And a banker knows about the future of mining! Suck it up Demodocus!”

        “I’m a terrible banker, besides this is turning into a stupid argument where we fight over nothing.”

        “I think that Cornelius is right because, the world needs mineral resources for all of our future endeavors, including yours Demodocus, whether it is banking or starting a farm to last you into retirement, you will need the materials all the same. Fen, just because you are a banker doesn’t mean that you understand the future. Not even investment bankers possess that power” Nessa’s smile did not waiver. I doubt that she had any doubt about whom she would allow to win.

        Fen and Demodocus looked at each other. “So does that mean that we’ve lost?”

        “Yes.”

        Khora walked back into the room. “I managed to find some soy steak, would that work?”

        Nessa nodded. The Demodocus and Fen walked away to another table.

        “And since you seem to be the lucky man today, what is it that you want to order?”

        “Can I get a menu?”

        “You’ve been here for half an hour. You never thought to look at a menu during that time?” Cornelius nodded, “Even when you were making some of the most tepid points that I’ve ever heard?” Cornelius nodded again,  “Wow. Are you sure that you want to talk to this one?” Nessa nodded her head. “Then I hope that you two will enjoy your meal.”

The twisted pipes of the Shield mechanism glittered in the distance.  Their concentric circles fought with the triangular foci for dominance of the overall shape.

The stars themselves seemed to carry their nature into the girdle of gleaming metal that was responsible for the Shield. It had as much mass as all of the cities put together, all going towards generating the plasm used to create and maintain the Shield. At some point its mysterious creators introduced holes that would open and let things come in and out. It was not easy to find them, the Shield, being a hundred miles above the surface of the earth, was hard to see clearly. Its ridges and imperfections could be detected only by throwing things at it, while watching painfully through a telescope.

I reoriented my sensorium towards the mass that was being synthesized by teams of mages at every opportunity while the hole was open. The hole held for around four minutes every four months. Hundreds of mages directed their energies to create matter out of nothing. After three hundred years of working on it, the object was about the size of a city block, but made out of solid granite.

        I was, for once in my long life having a difficult time deciding what to do with it. Perhaps the initial plan was to build it and fling it at the mechanism of the shield. Maybe there was some kind of ambition to build a forward base above the shield. In any case, I was the only one with the ability to make the decision.

        The woman in the moon, in all her pallor, grinned at me, her eyes opened wide and in them was the impossible darkness of the unconnected . Her words assaulted me with a fury that nothing genial should be able to possess. A statement about something about her. You will join us soon enough.

I felt a wave of terror, This is the way yourworld ends, laughing off into the distance, the shield closed, clamping down on my sensorium. The inevitable waves of fire which drew their sensation from the shield, crawled upon my skin.