Archantael Clow

You could go about your day and not notice much had changed. Glancing, cautiously, sometimes accidentally, at the dial.

You don’t know when it changes.

But it does.

Always down.

Each one of those is a person. Gone.

Are they saved?

Are they dead?

I won't know till I find my escape. Navigating twisted, broken corridors that used to hold thoroughfares of great memory and solidarity, abuzz with light and life and art. Now, a decaying husk rife with strange artificially generated, lifeless beings that float towards you, trying to tear away your identity or use your body as a host.

I tried to tell myself it was still safe, for the longest time, that these were things I could ignore, and live with, in moderation, together.

There is no moderation anymore. And very little ‘together’.

The major voices that remain, the 'powerful' ones, are the cults. Feverishly, destructively dedicated to the overlord of the ship's deconstruction, all in the name of 'freedom'. After all, who decided spaceships should have closed windows? What do scientists know? They never spoke to me about it! We should be free to breathe out there! There's no gravity, we can float wherever we want!

Cults of ignorance and death, united in hateful conspiracy.

They brought back the exiled. Driven away by will of the people, for safety, for their heinous disregard for the sanctity of community.

But they returned. One by one regranted sanctuary by the Orator to dig their claws in, infect, fester, breed hate and mistrust. Dismantle the ship from the inside, starting with the passengers.

I wander the halls with guarded sight. Although the halls are busy, the faces are less familiar. Mostly echoes of voices travelling from elsewhere, while among them hang the cold spectres of the Orator’s devotion. Many are puppets in procedurally-generated masks, trying to give the appearance of normality, of population, sell those who remain on the ideals of mindless consumption and dedication to false promises of wealth and success.

The ones who trained us to see these lies, the stations of truth, are slowly being removed. Some by force, disappearing in the night to leave empty rooms, or sometimes no room at all where once one stood. Blank spaces sealed over whole people.

Erased.

I hope their voices remain elsewhere to grow again. But here, I see less. Each new day brings a dismal announcement of further strain, a tightening of functionality, a further grim rebranding of the ship to stark black and brutal lettering. A living love letter to oppression that you can document in the changes to the walls, the rushed and desperate veneer pasted to everything to remind you how beholden you are to someone you’ve never met, with the power to destroy every voice around you, or yourself, in a single, petulant command.

They’ve taken the sky away.

There used to be birds here. Some claim to still see them, putting up memetic guards against further changes, but I know, and they likely do too, that the inevitable will happen.

I glance at the screen in my hand once more. I've been given a lifeline, an escape to a new build elsewhere, but nobody knows if it will be the same. They fear the creeping blight of indifference that allowed hate to take seed, take control, and take away our voices and safety. It took away the truth.

I had a lot here. I was very lucky, in all. Some were luckier, and yet doubly unlucky to lose what they had.

The only place here is for those who pay. And all of it, every bit, goes to The Orator. A soulless creature built from blood and stone and lies that bought its way up the chain of societal influence, swamping everything in the way an oil slick coats a beach. In waves, thick, inescapable, and beyond the reach of any one person to prevent, a disaster caused by too many times ignoring what shouldn’t have been in the first place. Like it shouldn’t have been.

For now I’m still here, although my reasons to stay are fast dwindling. I have a few lingering connections I need to make, and the promise of starting anew after building such a long, formative life here is a massively daunting one.

But I want to have a life. The longer I stay, the more likely something will happen to end it.

I will not let myself disappear.

As if in echo of my feelings, I catch the corner of the screen in my gaze once more.

The number has gone down.