Strigoiverse Collections (Original stories from various genres); latest chapter: After Work: The Common Labourer’s Lot In The Age Of Automatons (Fantasy Dystopic Satire)
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***
In the depths of the void, a small yellow sun spins within a secondary arm of a middling starwheel. About it spin many worlds, three of which might have sustained life, once.
Only one did. It does so no longer.
Unlike its siblings, it was neither too close to nor too far from the parent-star for living beings to flourish. Neither too hot nor too cold, neither mantled in clouds or poison nor surrounded by too-thin air, this “world of the golden middle” once hosted, as far as its inhabitants knew, the greatest variety of organisms within the cosmos. Indeed, the only one.
“You would think,” one might say, “that, thinking this bounty unique, they would have gone to great lengths to cherish and defend it, from itself, from the uncaring universe, but most of all from each other.”
Yes. One might.
Were a traveller of the stars to happen upon the blasted husk of the golden middle’s world nowadays, they could easily be forgiven for thinking it was always a wasteland of a globe. Its oceans, once the better part of its surface, have been drained and boiled away. Its tectonic plates no longer move, its air is gone and its core, the source of its molten lifeblood, is, on the scale of a world’s lifespan, rapidly cooling.
Now let us contrive that such a traveller does indeed arrive. Is there anything to see? Anything besides thousands of leagues of bleakness, that is.
There is! Halfway between the husk-world and its lone, unusually large moon floats a void-keep that was not built by the planet’s former inhabitants. They never got to that stage of advancement, though they had the knowledge and the means, before the end.
Within the heart of that keep waits a lone sentinel. It is not in any way related to the dead world’s former people, unless one is inclined towards the tale of comet-borne life-kernels, which would make all life in the cosmos cousins of a sort.
The sentinel is the scion of a scholarly, compassionate people. Their kind rose towards the stars on a vaster, colder world than the one watched over by the keep. The core of their beings is ammonia, like carbon was that of the dead people. Thus, they are slow and deliberate, and it was through deliberation that they managed to begin sailing the void without ripping themselves apart beyond mending.
The sentinel’s visage could not be properly glimpsed by a human eye, nor remembered by a human mind, nor could its speech be perceived by a human, or reproduced by one, except with the rarest of instruments, now gone too. Regardless, it keeps itself armoured, and its living plate is suffused with a myriad of apparatuses, that any visitor it receives might be able to notice and converse with it.
One strides in, now. The core of its being is closer to sand than water or tree bark, thus its exterior is gleaming and its mind quick and sharp. It is flanked by two others, kindred or students, perhaps, for their postures indicate they are more than ready to strike back against whoever might attack the slighter, shorter central figure.
Not a leader of its kind, that one. Its bearing is too timid, at least for its people. A sage, maybe, a revered elder, here to sift through the past and learn how the future might be shaped and catastrophe avoided.
The sentinel stirs to life. Its armour is bulky enough to fall through lead like an anvil through air, yet the floor of its home is made of sterner stuff, and its panoply is cunningly devised. At its whim, the corpuscles of gravitation might be repelled, letting it soar.
‘I bid you welcome, strangers,’ the sentinel greets. ‘Did you simply stumble upon this place, or did you seek it out? My people did not think to mark it when I was posted here, for in our journeys within the starless dark, we are yet to encounter any being greater than the moss that grows on stone or the ephemeral things that spawn within raindrops.’
The sage replies, ‘We thank you for your welcome, kindly host. Indeed, we did not know about your keep until we passed by the edge of this sun’s light, when our instruments noticed its artifice.’
‘Yet we must ask,’ one of the youths chimes in. It is greater in stature and bulk than its fellow, its form brutal, yet neither voice nor manner are brutal now that it is clear the host does not wish them ill. ‘Your kind are clearly a people of great knowledge, equal to us, mayhap. Why would you let your world fall into ruin, only to place a monument within its ring of gravitation afterwards? Would it not have been better to have prevented this?’
‘Ah,’ replies the sentinel, ‘we could have, and we would have, had this orb been our cradle. Yet we only learned of it in a manner not unlike that in which you did. We are still deliberating whether to reverse the damage, perhaps plant life on it again - I hear the debates daily, through the pit of the void-worm that is both my herald and my door.’
The sage hums. ‘Know you, then, what manner of disaster befell this world? For, though it is an act of grand compassion to mourn a former cradle of life, surely your people have other purposes besides stationing their champions above every dead planet.’
Were it human, the sentinel might’ve placed a hand above its heart. ‘We have indeed, for, by learning to use the worm’s pit as a spyglass lens, we can read the past as our ancient astronomers read the night skies.’
The other youth, leaner yet fiercer than its counterpart, remarks, ‘It must have been an awful catastrophe to move your kind to such a waste of resources and time, for surely nothing noteworthy shall happen here ever again.’
The sentinel does not rise to the bait, for it is transparent that the more belligerent youth wants a confrontation. It knows the type: gone stir-crazy in the voidship, aggressive to begin with, it would rather cool its temper through violence than discussion.
Were it of a more hotheaded kind, the sentinel might take insult. Yet it is impossible for its people to lash out. Anything they feel, they choose to. So, instead of responding in kind, it instead says, “This is a meagre use of our means. Do not fret over us. Rather, follow me within the archives, where you might peruse the film-tomes we have compiled. They will teach you how the wastelands below came to be.’
It led. The others rushed to match its pace.
***
Picture an ape descending from the trees, developing an upright posture so as to better tread the savannahs. Freed from their part in locomotion, the forelegs become true upper limbs, the better to grasp and throw. The scions of this creature slaughter all competition, growing longer-lived and smarter, if not wiser.
For the better part of their species’ history, the majority of the population works on farms, to produce the food needed to sustain the artisans, the soldiers, the thinkers, the leaders.
Is it any wonder these people of the fields ended up calling their world something that could be replaced with “dirt”?
At a certain point, after well over ten thousand generations since they evolved, these ape scions, the humans, the reigning species of “Dirt” (so they counted themselves), thought it would be a grand idea to use automatons to augment their thinking, as, a couple centuries prior, they began using steam-driven machines to craft beyond the limits of living labourers.
It should be remembered that every technical revolution in human history had a great deal of growing pains to go with anything one might have called benefits.
The development of agriculture freed primitive humans from the need to hunt for food, enabling permanent settlements, the division and specialisation of labour, and a greater population, providing a pool of potential fighters and thinkers, so that the lot of everyone might be improved.
Yet, its detractors argued, it spawned social stratification, ended what they call natural equality and extended war from battles between small bands to clashes between armies of countless thousands. The monotonous, grain-based diets of early civilisation also meant lesser variety and poorer teeth, not to mention densely-populated cities were havens of plague.
Their opponents sneered that it was inane to think human nature had aught to do with equality of peace, and that losing the right to get mauled by a bear or die of a cracked tooth at the ripe old age of thirty was more than made up for by the benefits of civilisation.
The development of true industry, the shift from artisanal crafting to mass production, was just as fundamental a shift, yet it happened within lifetimes, which made it seem far fiercer and more pernicious to those caught within the heart of it.
Industrialisation fuelled already rampant invasions, colonisation and warfare. It ended the little industries families tended in their cottages. It replaced farm workers with vast machines that neither tired nor complained, driving them towards the rapidly-growing cities, lest they end up destitute and starving. The cities, controlled by magnates more interested in greater and cheaper production of goods than the health and housing of their workers, were cesspits perfect for all manner of illnesses to grow in.
That the workers revolted for greater rights and representation, which improved life for everyone, was, for a long time, debated. Was it a benefit of industrialisation or a side effect of it? That factory labour paved the way for the production of wondrous devices was not in question, yet were the miserable conditions, the long working hours, the poor pay and tyrannical bosses and brutal strikebreakers’ beatings, worth it?
In any case, roughly a century after what some called the end of this revolution of industry, reckoning machines became advanced enough to allow worldwide, instantaneous communication. Writings, speech, images and more could all be transmitted around the globe in moments, conversations could be had between people on the opposite ends of different continents in real time.
Technological prophets had predicted this would end division and strife across the globe. With the sharing of ideas being so fast and easy, such distinctions as country, creed and whatnot would fade away, perhaps in a generation or two, In the end, the nations of the world would realise that they were all people, with practically the same needs if not wants, and they would rise amidst the stars to stand together against the uncaring vastness of the universe.
As farcical as such visions seemed before the end, one has to remember that they were spoken of in earnest.
Despite the friction resulting from the reckoning machines’ world-wide web of knowledge, it seemed things might get brighter, for a time. Yes, the heralds and the writers always kept tragedies at the fore of the news, but this was not because the world was worse than it had been in some imagined golden age. It was, in fact, getting better. Instantaneous information just meant that events which would have once faded into obscurity were now known to all.
Ever since the machine replaced the physical worker, visionaries thought to craft the means that would allow menial thinking - calculation, record-keeping and the like - to be outsourced to automatons, so that genuine geniuses might instead bend their mighty intellects to more glorious tasks.
The crafted wisdom movement was not one of continuous, accelerating progress for most of its history. It experienced several hiatuses, “winters” they were called, before it produced anything noteworthy.
When the models of grand speech appeared on the market, they sparked fierce debate. What was consciousness? What did awareness mean? What was intelligence?
“You cannot say that they are not self-aware!” their proponents insisted. “If a human were disembodied and bereft of senses, would you call them mindless, unthinking? So they make mistakes - doesn’t everyone? Take note, eventually, these things will spawn thinking beings who can surpass man at any task within a fraction of the time, with a fraction of the resources needed, without fatigue, without distraction or payment or sustenance needed. And then…”
“Wrong,” their rivals replied. “They make mistakes because they cannot do aught else: their architecture is such that hallucinations are inevitable. Just like how bankruptcy is inevitable for the guilds crafting them. When the investors accept that they are only ever going to produce a fraction of the coin that was given to their creators, the whole arrangement will pop, like a bubble.”
There was much fighting over this on the knowledge web. Yet, in the end, this was only a sideshow compared to the main issues the world faced at the time.
For one, the worth of a person had, for centuries, been equated with what they owned or could produce. People opposed to this capital-focused model of society argued that this was nothing but sheer materialism, shallow and petty; that it was insanity for people who broke their backs working to have to choose between paying their rent and buying food while landlords made money off rented properties they had inherited. Instead, they argued, man ought to put aside nonsensical, artificial divisions, share everything between everyone, and value people based on who they were as a person. Everything else, everything good, would follow.
“No,” the lovers of capital argued, “for by rooting out competition and scarcity, you would hollow out the soul of man. Aye, ever since we lived on the plains and in the forest and jungles, strife, and only strife, has driven us forward, towards better things for all. Fighting against the elements, or the beasts of the field and wood, or against our fellow man, drove us to craft weapons and tools. It was ambition that fuelled the flames of science, of civilization-building.”
“Yet,” the lovers of community replied, “you are, in the end, acting as if man can grow infinitely on this finite world. How can that be? Will we not strip it bare of resources, eventually, acting as you would? Would that not lead to death in a desert of our own making? We say, let everyone have whatever they might need, and then they shall give back as best they can.”
“Nay,” the lovers of capital retorted. “Are you so blind as to think man is some perfect, kindly angel? Who will never take more than needed, never seek advantage over his fellows? That is insanity. Do you know what else is insanity? Repeating something whilst expecting different results. Did not every nation where your philosophy was applied crumble from within.”
“Of course,” the lovers of community agreed, “because your ilk sabotaged them! Not one was allowed to seek its destiny without an embargo, or infiltration, or warfare. Left alone, they would have-”
“Let’s pretend it’s so,” the lovers of capital interrupted, “and agree that they were treated unfairly. Yet what is fairness? The dream of man. A wish, perhaps not even an honest one. For man ever seeks advantage, as we said. The world is not fair and it is even less kind: let that be known to all. A system that cannot face reality, by definition, does not deserve to exist. You say you were better, in terms of virtue? Perhaps had you been better in terms of power, you would not be here, pointing at tomes of history while whining that your true philosophy has never been tried.”
“Brazen oafs!” the lovers of community fumed. “You happened to be lucky and you think it’s a manifestation of your worth! But then, that’s always been the problem with you, no? It’s all about running starts, and too bad for those left in the dust.”
“Yes,” the lovers of capital said wryly “much better to be like you and flatten chances for all. Remove incentive, for no one will receive more for being better than others. What drives one to excel when the slacker receives the same as the diligent, simply for laying about. Indeed, did not one of your own champions end up saying that those who will not work will not eat? He saw mankind for what it was, even through his insanity. And here we arrive at your problem, again. The only thing you will ever achieve is equality in poverty for the bulk, while the leaders lounge in gilded mansions, as distant and untouchable to their “fellow workers” as aristocrats and industrial tycoons ever were to their subjects and employees. Because you cannot plan for everything, any more than you can fairly distribute everything towards everyone in time. Where will you find a planner that capable? The best you’ve ever managed to do was pile resources at the top, and there they stayed. With the revolutionary vanguards, with the heroes of the people. Strange, isn’t it, how similar they act to the so-called oligarchs and tyrants you decry.”
“They were never given the freedom to develop naturally,” the lovers of community answered. “But we have already spoken of that, and you know well what you did, besides. Perhaps we tried too early. Perhaps we tried in the wrong nations, though the more technologically-developed ones opposed our message, for their greedy elites held them in an iron hand. Yet this is a new age, and man has begun producing the tools that will make him more powerful than he has ever dreamed to be. With them in hand, we will have the perfect planners you mocked, aye, and prosperity for all, and fair and loving leaders will be chosen from among the people liberated by their very technologies.”
“Call us when you reach the end of the purity spiral,” the lovers of capital replied, “and run out of ideological deviants to shoot. We know how it goes: when everything is grand and all the enemies without are gone, the enemies within start looking awfully menacing. There’s always someone who’s not thinking quite right.”
”You are so…petty!” the lovers of community exclaimed. “It’s always about who has the most with you, isn’t it? Largest house, fastest auto-carriage. Most coin. As though coin is not just a totem for the value society perceives a person as having! As though it is valuable in itself! In a sane world, people would be judged in accordance with their character, not their wallet.”
“Tell you what,” the lovers of capital remarked, “make this work outside your imagination, then we’ll talk more.”
The problem went something like this: before industry flourished, one could only do so much within a given time. It was not really possible to train one’s body beyond natural limits, not in this cosmos. Man was as productive as possible, and if the commoner was less wealthy than they could have been, because their alleged betters took the first part of the fruits of their labour, at least they could only be so wealthy when everything was muscle-powered.
Machines changed this. The driver of an industrial machine could do the work of ten, a hundred, more farmhands, in a fraction of the time and without tiring at all. Did that mean the driver deserved a wage equal to those of the people they’d replaced? They’d get awfully wealthy that way, the people who ought to know worried. Better to revamp the whole thing. And if those unskilled dirt-grubbers were faced with penury and hunger, well, no one forced them to be born poor, right?
They’d find something else to do, something better. The world was changing, growing thanks to industry, yet shrinking, also, thanks to transportation and communication on an unprecedented scale. They’d pull themselves up, and if the people who’d risen before had, purely by mistake, pulled the ladder up or knocked it down a crevice, they’d pull themselves up by the straps of their boots.
(Here, the sentinel stopped to explain to its guests, one could see a cultural trope that had ended up part of daily speech. In children’s animations whose main draw was absurdity, characters incapable of flight would rise through the air, or at least briefly avoid falling, by pulling on the straps of their boots. Originally, this expression referred to an incapable person’s attempts to achieve something impossible. That it ended up being used to imply something necessary was, in the host’s opinion, even more ridiculous than its origins.)
As it happened, people did not always manage to pull themselves up by the straps of their boots. Shoddy shoemaking, doubtlessly. And if they wanted better cobblers, they’d stop being lazy and work more, instead of relying on the largesse of the successful and thus, deserving.
With the world growing more and more productive, yet the workers getting more stressed and busy and the poor getting poorer, something clearly was amiss. There was so much food people thought nothing of throwing almost half away, so how could there be world hunger also?
Or, some argued, industrialists had, pressured by their revolting workers, agreed to a five-day working week of eight hours of labour a day. But industry had grown much vaster since, and automation had grown to match. An outsider might have thought, should not the common labourer now be working, say, a handful of hours a week, or at least fewer hours a day? Shouldn’t they be much richer, also? Have better purchasing power, the means to always be fed and housed and healthy?
The booming industry was clearly producing plenty. The purpose of production was to get people to buy the products. So where was the prosperity? Where was the wealth?
In a vast, powerful country, these problems came to a head. Safe from all but the most desperate enemies thanks to natural defences and friendly or at least harmless neighbours, this Republic indulged monarchist nostalgia by calling its leader, chosen by the population, the monarch-elect.
The race for the monarchical throne was always tense, not that the following administrative epoch was any more peaceful. Also, it was an open secret that the captains of industry and other people of means might appeal to the monarch-elect or their ministers and advisors, so that policies and laws that would benefit them would be passed.
Thus, it was no surprise that, in an age of everyone trying to craft thinkers as capable as a person, an industrialist focused on this would come forward, looking to gain the monarch-elect’s ear.
That worthy was still to be chosen at the time, however. So, the wizard-artisan Ynh Vester gauged the people in the race and backed the man whose character opposed his the least.
Some said Ynh was no mighty mage, but rather a skulker in shadows who simply exploited everything he could beg, borrow and steal. In any case, thanks to Ynh’s funding, his chosen man’s campaign was the most extravagant, and with the people of the country so bitterly opposed that they would choose even those they might not consider in calmer times, he was elected by the greater part of the population.
A feckless man, this monarch-elect was much keener on indulging himself than administrating the country or overseeing battles; these tasks he left to his advisory council whilst he pursued various amusements, and the ministers among said circle handled the nation’s affairs as each saw fit.
The monarch was not overly knowledgeable about the crafted wisdom race, and even less interested. As soon as Vester’s coin kept flowing, he was more than happy to sign whatever his friend asked him for into the law.
Once, it had been thought that a monarch-elect could not simply act unilaterally, for the scroll at the heart of the nation’s legislature forbade such concentration of power. Decent leaders, the founders had figured, would rise to the fore, because it was natural for people to want the best to be in charge, thus they’d choose them. If one leader, once elected, found their integrity eroded by the burden of administration, or personal problems, their character would compel them to step away, so that they might be replaced by someone better.
And even if, somehow, a ruthless, cunning despot made it to the electoral palace, they would be constrained and eventually removed from power by the judges and grand advocates, or, if worst came to worst, the peacekeepers or the army.
What was a country to do when most of the government was split, each minister obsessing over their own domain and the things pertaining to it?
Meanwhile, Ynh coaxed, cajoled, bribed or threatened the wealthy until they gave him the funding he wanted, something, his opponents argued, that he had great experience doing.
Whatever the case, it was plain that the world could not keep going as it was, not for another lifetime, nay, not for another decade, some said. If people kept getting poorer even as they were overworked, if houses and food grew more expensive even as it was easier to build and produce more, where was mankind going to end up? Perhaps not everyone could always have the richest fare, or the most luxurious home - it wasn’t like someone was going to build more room for beachfront property, for example; all the available space was already full -, yet surely producing the bare minimum of livelihood and delivering it to everyone was possible?
Productivity, some argued, had long since ceased having aught to do with value or wealth. Moral considerations aside, it was not practical to let this pressure-cooker of a civilization kept on boiling. The lid would fly off, eventually, and someone would be hurt.
Something, everyone agreed, needed to be done. For a good while, they kept agreeing - it was cheap to have an opinion, which could make anything popular, in those days.
Yet another issue arose, and twined itself with the aforementioned: it seemed that human intelligence could no longer produce as much, as fast, as certain people wanted. Had the borders of natural knowledge been bumped against? Was there naught more to find, to exploit, to build?
There was, some argued confidently. They would build a thing that would be to the human mind as the machines driven by steam engines had been to the menial worker.
‘You see,’ Ynh said one night, appearing on a country-wide scrying orb broadcast, ‘I’m going to leave the majority of the population out of work. You will lose all relevance and power, while my wealthy friends and I grow even wealthier. After draining this planet of everything useful, we will fly off to the next, and repeat. Then the next, and the one after that, forever. Oh yes, we are going to make ourselves immortal, too. As for everyone else, I suggest you make peace with dying early. At the age your parents began greying, you will be wrinkled and stooped, toothless and half-blind. And you will thank your lucky stars that you don’t have it worse.’
He then laughed, eyes glowing darkly. On the seat opposite his, the monarch-elect, who had spent the broadcast so far stuffing his maw with dubious sweetmeats and chortling when prompted by Ynh, laughed, somehow managing not to choke on the current mouthful. For part of the population, this was something of a national tragedy.
That part, however, was, mostly, aghast at Vester’s brazenness. Had society deteriorated so far that a man could go on the scrying orb and announce evil intentions, and no one would oppose him?
‘He can’t keep getting away with this!’ the writer Zhuyram snapped, gesturing with his pencil at the scrying orb in the inn’s main room. ‘That was - even if that threat was a joke in bad taste, you can’t just spout that shit on national television. We used to put people in the dungeon for shouting about fake fires in crowded theatres. Yet, I fear this warlock has even viler plans than he dares announce.’
‘Gods,’ a man replied from across the room, ‘you think you’re so smart and special, don’t you? You work with your head, you write. But that’s not your job, is it? It’s something you manage to get to in between shifts, just before you fall asleep from breaking your back at whatever miserable enterprise you actually make a living off.’
Zhuyram raised his head, that he might better see the other, and said, ‘Sir, do you have a problem with intellectuals? That I have not been as successful as I have hoped so far is demoralising, yes. I clearly need to think more about my future stories, yes. Yet I will persevere until then. My work might have little to do with what I apprenticed for, but a man has to eat. I do not see it as demeaning to work with my hands-’
‘Ooh, you don’t see it as demeaning?’ the other man sneered. ‘How nice that folk like me can get your approval, eh? You might not be able to tell, you skinny wretch, for you have never seen true labour in your life, yet I am a quarry worker-’
‘Sir, I assure you being a lumberjack is not roses and sunshine-’
‘-but me, I’ve worked with my hands all my life, because I’ve never had an alternative! What can one do? The schools are set up to churn out worthless thinkers like you, who lay about all day and complain about needing to lift a finger. Useful, diligent people are glossed over, in favour of the library rats.’
‘I would ask your name,’ Zhuyram said, rather more heatedly now, and the people around him noticed the axe at his hip, and that, when he stood straight, his shirt did little to hide his muscle. They began edging away. ‘I would ask your name, sir, so that I might know the man addressing me. And I would ask, also, for you to remember that I actually work all day, as you yourself said, and that I see nothing shameful in this.’
‘Aw, are you offended?’ the quarry worker said, with remarkably little care. ‘Maybe if you spent those years you wasted on free, country-sponsored education, learning to weave baskets underwater, you would not whine so when a man with common sense stops by to take a piss on your so-called intellect. And the name’s Jrajnov, by the way.’
Zhuyram harrumphed, wishing they’d been at the same table, so that he might better read the other’s expressions. He wasn’t sure if the fellow was mocking him or if his face was just set that way, for the lighting was dim and he didn’t have his glasses. ‘You might be interested to learn that I paid for my education by working around the college, and that the only thing I received for free was the contempt of those students who disliked being peers with someone from a poor family. Understand that-’
‘You must be one of those sleepwalkers!’ Jrajnov jeered. ‘Aren’t you? That’s why you can’t have a debate. You start crying as soon as you bump into someone with common sense.’
(“Sleepwalker”, the sentinel explained, was slang referring to those people one perceived as undeservedly self-confident, overly sensitive or both. Because some impulse drove them to act in unusual ways, rather like a sleepwalker, and because they were perceived as short-tempered and quick to lash out, also like a sleepwalker when disturbed, the name was coined and it stuck.)
Zhuyram, realising that he was still holding his pencil (had he gestured with it? He really ought to start writing at home, not in dubious dives), put it on his notebook and began turning towards his drink. ‘You know what? I have naught to gain from this row. You think whatever you want.’
How had it even started…? Oh yes, that jackass had taken issue with him calling the warlock out. Well, if he admired him, he could keep doing so. It was, he thought, tasteless but harmless, as long as it did not drive him to imitate the object of his respect. He began nursing his ale, for what was probably the better part of an hour.
‘Yeah, you’s scared of what ‘e’ll bring, ain’t you? Ain’t you? You sleepwalking shit!’
Zhuyram blinked as he looked up, to see Jrajnov trying to loom over him, despite his squatness and the tall stool the writer was on. The quarry worker poked him in the chest, seemed to think whether to grab his square-patterned shirt, then decided against it.
‘What is it now?’ he hissed, unsure why he wanted to keep quiet. The inn was almost empty, and the innkeeper was studiously ignoring them. Which she’d probably keep doing unless they began braining each other with the mugs. Not that they’d break, but blood would be annoying to clean off.
‘You’s scared!’ Jrajnov reiterated, perhaps to make sure he, himself, hadn’t forgot the allegation. ‘You’s scared that ‘is made thinkers are gonna come for those like you, for the publishing houses, yeah? And the advocates’ offices and the accountants’ officers, an’, an’-’ He hiccuped, perhaps to mask a sob, and blinked rapidly. He did not seem the sort of man who’d like to be seen crying in public, yet what did he have to cry over?
Besides how the mugs made everything taste like lead.
Jrajnov stopped, took a deep breath that sounded strange due to his stuffed nose. ‘When they came for us tradespeople with the golems and the machines and leave us in the street, did anyone wring ‘ands over us? No! Learn to carve runes! Yeah, that’s what they said. Learn to carve runes, for the scrying orbs! Everything’s gonna be done through scrying from now on, you ken?’ He wiped his eyes. ‘But, ooh, once the “thinkers” are the ones in danger? Once the clerks and the bean-counters and all you other city mice are gonna get kicked out into the ditch! That’s the problem! You can’t leave the clerks without a job, what kinda country is that!”
He plopped down in an empty stool, facing away from Zhuyram. ‘People ‘ave always had more respect for those who work with their heads than those who work with their hands! Even though we grow all the food and the herbs for medicine, an’ we build the houses and the roads an’ bridges, and we make every tool and machine…’ He hiccuped, again. ‘Or we used to!’
There was no hiding the sobbing now. It was not loud, indeed, it could not be heard at all. But Zhuyram knew what those shaking shoulders meant. He’d been like this, all too often, when manuscripts he’d all but broken his wrists writing had been rejected, or treated with derision by editors and critics and readers.
Awkwardly, he reached out, patted the other man’s back. ‘It can’t be that bad, right? You said you work.’ In a mine? No. ‘At the quarry, right?’
Jrajnov snorted. ‘A handful of hours a week! All I’m good for, now. Rest o’ the time, they need someone watching the golems, yeah? They’re man-shaped now, they can get everywhere machines with wheels and tracks couldn’t. So they need an old hand to see if they get things right! An’ they do! They always get it right, and you’ll never see one of them metal men sit down ‘cause he’s tired, or needs a meal. He’s not gonna scry that he’s sick, or has a funeral to attend, or this or that happened to his family and he gotta go, right? The bosses don’t wanna hear none of that! They want men like ants, an’ that devil, Ynh, he’s put them on the market.’ He glared at the other over his shoulder. ‘But who cares about that, eh? It’s just some more knuckle-draggers losing all prospects. We better clutch pearls over whether it’s gonna be a man shuffling papers from now on, or a golem.’
For most of the following minute, he was silent. Then, ‘It’s ingrained, from as soon as we go to the schoolhouse. So much more time spent on book-learnin’ than training the body, right? Even though some children are just better at that or love that more. You’ve gotta learn to remember and parrot, and parrot! Everyone makes up some nonsense about why they can’t take part in sports, and they waste those hours, while those who excel at it? They’re called stupid! They can’t or don’t wanna do what really matters, what’s gonna help them in life.’
He scoffed, gestured at the orb, which was now showing one of Vester’s golems perform various office tasks as quickly as the fastest human with perfect memory could have, and without tiring or taking breaks. ‘And? What’s gonna help ‘em in life, now? Is everyone gonna give up the paper-shuffling and take up trades? That’s insanity! The country doesn’t need that many plumbers and runesmiths and food-deliverers.The wages will go down for everyone, the old hands are gonna hate the newcomers…if they fight, the government steps in to keep the peace and replaces all them recalcitrant workers with metal men. Abyss! People are not gonna have houses or the money for anything needin’ people like that if the economy keeps going like this, anyway! What’s a plumber to someone livin’ in a tree and shittin’ in the woods! They might as well start sharing that clump of leaves!’
And he began laughing, bitterly. After stopping, he stood up and, remarkably steady for a man who’d drunk so much, began making his way to the exit. ‘But you know what? I’m glad! I’m glad you lot are losing everything, too! If we’re gonna crash and burn together, at least it’ll be together, huh? How’s that for some equality?!’
Shortly after he left, Zhuyram, who had to admit he’d lost his appetite for drink, pushed his mug away and stood up as well. ‘Keep the change,’ he told the innkeeper after paying.
In those days, small kindnesses were, sometimes, all a man could do.
* * *
The town was too small to have the various art guilds, or even a general “artists’ guild.” Rather, Zhuyram and his fellow artists met wherever they could, usually at one of their homes. Said homes were usually one-room affairs shared by multiple people, but no one said you got into art for money.
Though he’d expected to meet Jrajnov again, Zhuyram had not seen hide or hair of the quarry worker on his way to the meeting house. The man must’ve been the quickest drunk alive. He decided to relate the confrontation to his fellows, anyway.
‘Typical disgruntled worker,’ Okhorgo, who painted what he called inspirational art, said. ‘He has been beaten down by the elites so badly that he cannot develop a consciousness to share with his class, much less the will to take the fight to them. A tragedy of our times.’
(That “Odd Okho” regularly ate enough for a small family, using the money he got from rich perverts embarrassed enough to bribe the apparently skilled lover into shutting up, did not, in any way, factor into his philosophy of life. It was pragmatism, he said, and thus unrelated.)
‘That part with the schools might not be a bad idea,’ Zaravna, who was a teacher by occupation and a musician by calling, chimed in. ‘A balance could be struck…healthy mind in a healthy body, I think the ancients used to say.’
‘What about the rest?’ Okho demanded.
Zara shrugged, saying nothing. Their wide eyes and androgynous features made them look like a constantly surprised child. ‘I wouldn’t venture-’
‘Yeah,’ Okho showed his teeth, ‘you wouldn’t, you indoctrinating parasite on the working class. Go back to telling the youth more about how they ought to be cogs in the machine and happy about it.’
‘Don’t you have to make ends meet?’ Zhuyram asked, annoyed. Everyone knew what that stood for, like they knew Okho stood for anyone with money. Or sat. And more besides.
Not that he was overly interested in his ideology, whatever it was called (communitarianism or something, he thought), but Zhuyram thought that people who were probably felt embarrassed by association with Okho. He didn’t act like a real communi…whatever. He just talked like one.
The two ignored him, clearly gearing up for one of their shouting matches. Sighing, he stepped away.
These meetings were supposed to be relaxing, yet lately, everyone brought their baggage with them, instead of leaving it at the door. He, himself, had at least got over that asinine “writer’s guilt” of his, as he called it, which compelled him to write whenever he could (ideally, at least once a day), lest he disrespect or fail his readers, all but a handful of which were silent, offering no feedback, much less anything more substantial, so their liking for his stories was impossible to gauge.
He’d been less stressed since. Not much less, he was a worrying man, but at least he’d made peace with the fact that, from now on, he’d write when he felt like it. Clearly, it was not going to make him money, at least in the short term, so where was the rush?
Potential readership was so enamoured of tacky hacks nowadays, to. There was a handful of common threads he’d noticed, the stories defined by each more similar to each other than they were different.
Someone, usually a young man nondescript enough to be “relatable” (or at least easy enough for the reader to insert into), ended up in another world, where, despite their alleged worthlessness and general lack of aptitude in their original one, they amassed vast riches and power, often harems as well. The members of said harems tended to be even more nondescript (except for when they were implausibly endowed) and lacking in personality than the main figure; they were effectively interchangeable. How the apparently incompetent (at least according to the prologue) everyman managed to navigate such labyrinthine relationships, Zhuyram could only wonder.
He understood the need for escapism, the fantasies of power, love and respect…but gods, it should’ve been a crime for shit that juvenile to be put to paper. Trees died for that?
Or, someone, also usually a nondescript, relatable (one’s opinion might vary) young man discovered that reality had been overlaid with rules like those of a board game, and exploited those to achieve the aforementioned rewards in a way that, he supposed, ought to flatter those who viewed themselves as proponents of meritocracy. Such stories tended to be created by people with the prose of tabletop game manual writers, but who’d mistaken themselves for actual authors, which made them somehow more tedious than the premise.
Or, the everyman was a nobody born in a world where one could progress ceaselessly, with greater power always around the corner. Sometimes, the world was vast and filled with wandering immortals, who went to wars to save face and treated everyone weaker as though they were ants.
Some misanthropic bastards had even decided to combine the tropes. Zhuyram had not known you could get that lowbrow without headbutting your own teeth, but there you go.
Anyway…at least those people handmade something of themselves using their own, for lack of a better term, skills. That they were untalented panderers who’d be starving in a ditch if the audience shared his tastes was immaterial. He was not so immature that he couldn’t acknowledge preferences varied by person.
Still, the success of people who’d only written for a fraction of the time he had been, yet had achieved greater recognition and remuneration, had dismayed him. It still did. He was not sure it would stop any time soon. After putting some projects in order and gazing at his navel enough, he was back to writing like he’d been at his best.
Amusingly enough, a vast yet rapidly growing category of people he’d noticed during his hiatus had not contributed to his lack of motivation.
These people, who, hilariously, called themselves golem artists without a shred of irony, made a living, or at least a name for themselves, prompting golems to produce various images, texts and the like.
Why in the bloody abyss someone would pay money for something they could do with ease (for everyone could prompt a golem using their scrying orb, nowadays, and it was a simple operation), he didn’t understand. Oh, he knew some were so utterly lacking in initiative and self-confidence that they even preferred others to order their food for them, but at least people needed food. Paying for images with no heart and soul was just…well. At least it was less stupid than paying for images back when the golems always scrambled details.
These golem prompters had a whole philosophy behind them. They said that manmade art was rudimentary and sloppy. Or, if it wasn’t, the constructs had to be funded and trained continuously, so they could surpass man (to what end?).
He ought to take a swing at something like this, one of these days. He would become a marathon runner, a business that would consist of paying an auto-carriage’s cabbie to drive him to the finish line, so that those who put effort in being fast would finally be unable to gatekeep running from the people suffering under the tyranny of the fit.
Or he could become a chef, and during work, he’d call a restaurant to deliver him food…ah, but golem art wasn't like that, was it? It was like inventing a recipe and arranging provided ingredients, preparing them in the oven and such. No, to truly become a chef and stop the skilled from keeping the unskilled out of the kitchen, he’d have no recourse but to buy frozen meals, heat the already prepared food and sell it as his recipe after scrambling what was in the box a bit.
It wasn’t like people cared about the method, as long as the result was passable. Soon, the golem prompters argued, no traditional artists would be left. Zhuyram supposed he ought to breathe a sigh of relief. He’d always been appalled by art pieces people had put effort into and cared about. All that personality, it was intimidating.
Sure, a bottling guild didn’t care how much heart their sweatshop workers put into making the identical logo of each bottle, but that sort of…industrial artisanship, in his view, had never been real art. For something to be artful, quality wasn’t enough, and quantity certainly wasn’t. Oh, perhaps to the observer, who just wanted to look at something neat, it didn’t matter. But effort was the point, for the artist. Something was worth doing because it was difficult, not despite it...
Art, real art, was the expression of the human soul. Even if it was all automated, what would be gained? He was not going to quibble over lack of individuality and how golem knowledge bases cannibalised each other. Would the world really be better if no one cared anymore about writing, singing, painting, sculpting? Would artists toil in different fields, then?
No! For what would be left? Neither the trades nor the office would remain if golems were crafted cunningly enough to imitate all man could do. To talk less of unskilled labour. Had not the machine been crafted to do man’s chores so he could play? What was the point of making a machine that’d play while man did chores?
Especially once he had nowhere left to earn a living. Would the machine then lovingly care for its parent of flesh, now ? Could it? Was the golem a thinking being? A kindly one?
The “play machine” might earn the amusements of its creators and owners, yet what would it provide for the commoner?
Zhuyram drifted towards some of the others. Iskhea flashed him a gap-toothed smile, teeth stained, doubtlessly, by those oils she insisted on choking down. She said they were fundamental, or something, and was convinced greed and other bad vibrations (her words) were all that kept man from living in loving harmony in the forest, where everyone would eat fruit delivered by volunteers on auto-steeds while taking photographs and making scrying orb paintings. .
Personally, Zhuyram was more curious about where people would get the parts and fuel for auto-steeds while living in a forest like back in the epoch of stone…how’d they handle the whole process without factories?
Or the parts and caged lightning stones for photography devices, or the storm fluid for scrying orb runes, connections, web-supporting pillars. Would they fall out of the sky? And how would everything be tracked and debts handled without coin? Ah, perhaps given its totemic nature, sacrificing it in a bonfire would move nature itself to provide plenty.
Well, if those runner and chef jobs didn’t pan out, at least he’d make a living building wicker men and…coordinating ritualistic orgies. Those went together, right?
Two men, artists he was not familiar with, were standing some paces away from the main group and speaking in low voices, so that he struggled to parse their conversation even once within arm’s reach of them. Once closer, he cleared his throat, hoping to initiate a discussion.
‘I do not believe you fellows and I are closely acquainted,’ Zhuyram hedged with a slight smile. Hopefully, these people (clearly out of town, by their dress) were not the easily offended sort who flew off the handle when someone failed to recognise them despite their fame. ‘What is it that you pour your passion into?’
They were both, it turned out, golem prompters, not that they called themselves that. To them, it was art, not prompting.
‘Would you call a photographer less of an artist than a painter just because they press a button instead of spending hours with an easel?’ one asked.
Zhuyram blinked. ‘Uh, I’m fairly sure the artful part of photography is finding a beautiful position and moment to immortalise. The taking of the photograph itself is just an afterthought. If you could get perfect images regardless of timing or angle, then...well, artfulness isn’t easy to measure. Someone would certainly still put their soul in it. But it wouldn’t be anywhere near as much effort as any sort of modern art, to be sure. I’d even hesitate to call someone who did that a photographer.’
The other sniffed. ‘Perhaps you think, also, that those who direct moving pictures are not artists either, because they don’t act on stage, do they? They just give orders to the people who do.’
Zhuyram’s brows rose. ‘You think it’s effortless to direct an acting troupe, even after thinking up the perfect ideas for a moving picture? You cannot possibly compare prompting golems with that. They don’t have bad days or human needs. They’re certainly not going to disagree with you, nor are they going to share the dynamics that make troupes lively.’
The other man’s eyes shone. ‘You seem to have no idea what art is. No definition, at least. Is it about the effort, or the passion? Is a welder an artist if they love welding?’
‘If welding is their soul’s means of expression, sure. I’ve seen art made in mud and dust with bare hands. But someone who glues cutout images on mass-produced objects is no artist, and that’s…much closer to what you say you do.’ Except even that could at least be useful.
Seeing the other preparing to retort, Zhuyram cut in. ‘Look, I genuinely do not care if you love what golems do. I just disagree with what you call it.’ The underlying issues were a much bigger problem. This was just a symptom.
The other stranger, who had mostly stayed silent this far, said, ‘What do you believe about the lies people spew about golem knowledge cores? You know. That they’re already draining the planet’s water supply at visible speed and only going to ramp up. In reality, they spend only a fraction of what this country’s population consumes in the same amount of time.’
‘You mean those in this country do, no? But everyone has them. And I notice you’re not denying that they’re going to consume more in the future.’
The other waved a dismissive hand. ‘Technological improvements will render this meaningless.’
‘Maybe, but in the meantime, how about we stop putting those whirring horrors in towns that already struggle not to die of thirst?’
‘Do you really want to be remembered like the followers of Lood were?’
Zhuyram almost raised his eyes to the ceiling. Some people equated the followers of Lood with a hatred of progress and new technologies. As if those people hadn’t actually fought for the rights of those who lost their jobs at the onset of the magindustrial revolution. As well as the rights of those who had no recourse but to work in the new factories, and the rights of the land those factories were built on. But that was what happened when you got labelled an enemy of progress…
‘That might be grand, actually. Yet I digress,’ the writer answered. ‘It’s not about the amount, is it? Yes, I know the old saw about how club-ball fields and lawns use far more. It’s true. And those fields with nothing but grass are stupid! They turn nature upside down, give no shade, are ugly while providing nothing meaningful…it’s the same sort of mindset that makes people pave everything over with bitumen, really. If it was up to me, I’d stop allocating water to all such projects.’
Might as well stick a foot in the door. ‘Alright, listen. You know what really gets my goat? Say it all works out. Every single working person is replaced with a golem. The only people with any coin are the producers and owners of the golems. Yipee! Then what? Is everyone going to waste away, since they’ll have nothing to buy food or maintain their houses with?’
The first man held up a finger, said, ‘You’re indulging in the fantasy of the wealthy elites hoarding all resources and factories while the majority has neither the means to access them nor the means to acquire or build any of their own. That is inane, a childish sort of gloom and doom. It would help you to grow up.’
‘And what’s fantastical?’ Ynh had openly talked about the underground castles he and his friends were building in faraway lands, the guard golems they were surrounding their properties with. Half the country had cheered, because it had angered the other half, rather than because it’d benefit them.
The second stranger shook his head. ‘Should mass joblessness or restlessness appear, the government will provide everyone with an income so they can live comfortably and have buying power. Obviously.’
Zhuyram boggled at him. That might’ve been the most inane shit he’d heard tonight, which was saying something, with Okho around. Something depressing about the species. ‘And what in all of bloody history makes you think the government would give people money for free? Listen to yourself. You think you’d get even as much coin as a subsistence farmer? Buying power…why would they need buyers when their golems can produce everything they want?’
‘Without customers, the economy would collapse.’
Zhuyram crossed his arms. ‘This kind of economy, maybe. But that’s because the average worker still matters. Abyss, on that note - if the people pushing golems and the government, and we all know they’re, if not the same, then thick as thieves…if those people don’t help us at all and in fact make a point of fleecing us right now, when our refusal to work would hurt their wallets, what makes you think they’ll give a damn once we’re economically irrelevant? The kindness of their hearts?!’
‘There’s never been anything in history like Ynh Vester’s Glib Golem,’ the first man piped up. ‘You cannot compare the past with the future that is now. Do you know why the producers of Glib Golem - not the ineffectual government; we all know privatisation’s the way - are not providing everyone the coin to live like a king? Because there are resources still beyond their reach. Those of the inefficient public sector, most of all. Those of people who can’t plan beyond their next meal, much less for the rest of eternity…but once they own everything, it will be both easy and pleasant to provide for everyone.’
The second man cleared his voice. ‘If that sounds too good for you, just tell yourself they’ll do it to pacify the revolting population.’
Bread and circuses? At least the ancients had provided those for workers who actually mattered. At best, these people might keep a handful of inferiors around to fawn over them and provide contrast for their powers and wealth. If they didn’t just build golems meant for that. But maybe it wasn’t as fun without real living people to lord it over?
* * *
Some time after, a grand, world-spanning war began. The reasons for it are obvious, the tactics and strategies meaningless to the telling. It was a war in which man shored up machines, thinking machines, even, whilst they did most of the work. Yet the slaughter spilled out into populated areas to such a degree that more people died than in any single past conflict.
The survivors were put to use by industrious people.
A triumphant cackle boomed through the halls of Ynh Vester’s wizardly lair. ‘We’ve done it, master! We’ve built the Agony Engine from acclaimed speculative novel “Don’t Build The Agony Engine”!’
Ynh himself threw his head and laughed, to match his aide. ‘Good! With the Agony Engine at the heart of our efforts, our industry will not run out of power for lifetimes!’ He turned, gestured at his golems. ‘Bring forth the rabble! They shall be placed in the drainage pods, where their souls and suffering shall be harnessed by the Engine to power my mighty machinery!’
‘What’s the difference between this and the jobs they worked, anyway?’
Ynh bared his teeth in an evil grin. ‘Now, their pain matters! It fuels my efforts directly, and I can see it, and I shall take great joy in the fools’ torment.’
‘I guess they’re not surplus to requirements anymore, eh?’ the aide asked, then they shared a chortle.
Most of the people the golems dragged to the pods had been close to death, yet the machinery of Agony now made them immortal, to their dismay. Aye, they would be flensed and gutted, burned and crushed, and recreated and destroyed again and again and again and again, and they would never be allowed to go mad, for insanity was the refuge of the weak, and only the despair of the sane could satisfy the wizard’s mighty hatred.
The monarch-elect, who had been eating a turkey leg, leaned closer to Ynh, and asked, ‘Say, friend, being the sage you are, surely you can predict how loved and respected our country will be once it grows stronger, right? And me especially!’
Ynh waved him away irritably. ‘Yes, yes, sir, you’re already the most loved and respected leader in the most loved and respected country. The rest of the world is just lashing out in jealousy. We’ll sort them out in no time…’
The result of the war, that is, which nation or alliance of nations could be called the winner, is immaterial. Suffice to say, the world was devastated, yet Ynh Vester and his fellows called not, for in the ruins, they could easily send their golem hunting hounds to track down survivors that’d feed the Agony Engine.
It so happened that, one day, a man who had once argued for Ynh and his projects found himself being dragged towards the Engine. He could not understand. How had this happened? How had Ynh’s enemies poisoned his heart so that in noble, wounded rage he would even lash out against those who loved him?
The man looked to the sides, and saw the re the axe-toting writer he had once argued with, writhing in a pod, and on the opposite row, the man who had stood beside him as they’d argued.
Then he looked forward, and gasped, for besides Ynh stood a man who, although otherwise ordinary-looking, had his face frozen in a horrifying rictus. He was constantly rubbing his hands, too, as if anticipating some great entertainment.
Eyes wide, he shouted to Ynh, ‘Who in the abyss is that?!’
The wizard gave him a dismissive look, said, ‘My chief aide, Dhrek the Demented. In exchange for me indulging his “needs”, he handles things around here.’
‘Needs…?’
Ynh rubbed his eyes, looking vaguely embarrassed. ‘You see, Dhrek loves children-’
He gasped again, remembering what he’d once written off as conspiracies. ‘You…you monster! You really used Glib Golem to artificially strip children in provided photos and share them on the scrying web!’
The wizard rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t be a cretin. Those were petty criminals. It’s an open source thing. Everyone being able to use it is the point.’
Dhrek stepped forward, still rubbing his hands. ‘You didn’t let him explain. I’ve never touched a child. I’d never touch a child. Yet my brain is wired improperly, compared to a common man’s, thus I am driven, by perversity, to…’ he gulped. ‘You might want to know that it was much easier to provide written descriptions of generic bairn and have Glib generate images based on them than it’d have been to photograph real ones, put them in the layering engine, then…’
The horrifically grinning man ran a hand through his hair. ‘No one was harmed, right? Not a single real living person. It was all images, just images.’
Ynh stepped forward. ‘Besides, be serious. Do you really think the leader of this country would’ve lent me his ear if I was or employed, what…a child rapist? You might as well next say that he was one himself, and the people elected him despite or because of that! When you start dreaming up cartoon villainy, anything can be imagined.’ He adjusted his cuffs. ‘We are businessmen here. We do business. That Dhrek has this bizarre affliction was a speedblock, yet I managed to work a way around it.’ His expression turned deadpan. ‘Besides, I’m about to feed you into a pain machine. Do you really want to have these be your last normal memories?’
Then that man was, too, thrown into the Agony Engine. His screams began moments later, and they still echo in the afterworlds.
The world Ynh tried to build from the ashes did not last long, for all that he had all the resources and the power now. His fellows fell into petty infighting instead of properly admiring his majestic genius. Not that he genuinely cared about their opinion, but, when they were done draining this world and sped off to the next, he’d need some lackeys to fawn over him. It was more fun than programming machines to do so.
Eventually, he found himself sitting in the rubble at the centre of his ruined stronghold, alone, head in his hands. Around him, the mutilated things that had once been people, which he had mangled until they could do naught but sing his praises, capered and howled, yeti wasn’t fun anymore. His mechanical legions stood, awaiting orders, yet for all the power he held, his hands felt as empty as his heart.
‘I don’t get it,’ he whispered to the world his machines had drained. ‘I’m the richest. The smartest. The best. I am the best! Why aren’t I happy?! I won!’
He closed his eyes, deciding he ought to dwell on this, and did so. He sat alone for a long, long time.
He never opened them again.
* * *
The cold people, from beyond the farthest star in the night sky, eventually stumbled across the barren system and this lifeless world. With their worm’s pit spyglasses, they read the past, and were aghast at the story it told. Whilst they debated what might be done about this, one from among their number stepped forward to be this world’s custodian, and was named that by its fellows.
They are still debating. The sentinel yet awaits their decision. And, in the meantime, it stands ready to share this cautionary tale with whoever might need to hear it.
The people of almost-sand, after hearing it, left the world in their void vessel. The brasher one of their number, the older of the youths, said to their teacher, ‘What a worthless species. Yet I suppose we ought to be thankful, for they did not survive to spread their poison to the stars.’
Its counterpart trembled to hear this. ‘Have you no shame? Are you not sorry for what their folly brought down on them?’
Yet their sagely teacher said, ‘My students, there are many lessons to draw from here. We ought to return home and share them with our people, lest we fall into the same pits as these humans before us did. We will then see what they make of it.’
On that, at least, both could agree.
