What Lies Beyond Sight – Part 3
There’s a lot of talk that the art world will experience a boon during the Trump era. That his policies, his disregard of ethics, and his complete and utter surrender to the will of the ‘alt-right’ will produce some of the most exquisite art ever seen. As a man who is trying to be an author full time, let me tell you straight: The opposite is true.
To be a writer is to care. You care about news, about people, about those who are different than yourselves. Differences are repugnant: they are invigorating. Think of all the new stories we can tell when we stretch out for something foreign from ourselves! I would never deny myself that resource, nor would the significant majority of writers that I have ever met or talked to. It’s just not in our DNA.
To watch Trump sit in the Oval Office and proceed down a checklist of alienation and bigotry is depressing. Watching Congress ramrod removal of Health Care for some 17 million people, and gag government agencies for fear of damaging press coverage is abhorrent. That doesn’t stimulate artists. I know this, because Wednesday was such a day for me.
I intend to fight with all that I have. This is not the America I grew up knowing. This is not the America that I want my son to grow up with. So I will fight. I will call congresspeople, I will write to congresspeople. I will write non-standard, non-gender binary characters, showing strong female protagonists of African-American or other minority decent. I do those things because their stories aren’t told enough. They aren’t enough of a hero in the mainstream mindset. So I’m going to do my small part to try and fix it.
Yesterday however, I found out that the US Congress had voted to remove the United States from the United Nations. There are zero words to encapsulate my rage at reading that. I’m not an unintelligent man. I originally went to college to be a history teacher. Watching our government, which is supposed to represent and protect it’s citizens, try and back out of one of the most singular driving forces OF PEACE that the modern world has ever known and will probably ever know is just revolting. How? How could we get here as a nation, where that is even conceivable!? That entire concept is just.. blech. I’m going to have another fit if I keep trying to explain the roiling emotions the vote creates within me.
Suffice to say, I did not write Wednesday. At all. I didn’t edit Temple, which I continue to slowly work on. I didn’t do a new post for What Lies Beyond Sight. I didn’t do what I needed to do to advance my career. I barely hung on to do my day job correctly, and even that was a constant struggle. I want this to be my life’s pursuit. Let me be the first to tell you however: Trump is not helping.
Without further bloviating…
What Lies Beyond Sight – Part 3
Channeling aether is nothing short of a rush. Channeling aether with a Ring strapped to your neck is… profanely enjoyable. An orgasmic experience, leaving you panting for more. Everything wonderful about life becomes sharper, clearer. The world off such a high is drab by comparison. Dr. Lacey realized that early on with his testing process. It wouldn’t be necessary for the first wave of volunteers in the homeland, but as the Empire grew, it would need more soldiers.
So it was that many women, including me, found themselves bound, gagged, and blindfolded in a dark room. I can tell you, it takes every ounce of self control to try and hold off channeling in that circumstance. We can’t even do anything with the aether we gather, but it’s presence, and the act itself, are an immeasurable comfort in that sort of situation. For two excruciating days, I held out. But by the time they got to my beloved Denmark, by the time Asia was conquered, the Empire had all the experience they would ever need. They didn’t even bother bringing me water. They had the patience of demonic intent, and they waited for me to crack. We all cracked, in the end. When I finally broke, when I could go no longer without some semblance of normalcy and comfort, I became their plaything. They were expert puppeteers, too.
The third leg of the triad is by far the simplest. The aetheric resonance board. Think of the board as a conduit connecting the mysteries of the aetheric energy to the mundane applications in the real world. Want to create a hovertank? Link all the power systems to an aetheric cockpit and run the thing in analog. Modern weaponry requires some risk. You have to account for circuitry, for creating a system to allow for the flow of electricity to various components. The Empire moved everything backwards. The hovertanks, the most iconic unit of the Empire’s vast army, is an ugly, squat steel brick with eight mobile railgun mounts, two pointing each direction off the brutish contraption. No need for windows, no need for anything but a steel hatch and space for six people. Each gunner had a viewboard powered by aether which would project a full 180 degree view of their side of the tank. The view wasn’t as good as a high tech television, but it posed zero risk to the gunner.
They were far from impregnable, but they could move at upwards of 100 miles an hour, over any terrain, and could fire non-stop until the team of two Conduits were beyond even their addition-aided limits. Conduits would get into horrendous, often deadly, fist fights to get assignments to the front. At first, they issued us combat knives to wear when we received our assignments. When the assignments were posted for the flagship group of Rings, over half of them were killed by their comrades in an attempt to get the most dangerous assignments. I still wake up shaking and vomiting as I remember the gleeful smile plastered on my face as my bunk-mates blood flowed over my hands. No one in the entire army was as dedicated or as feared as a Conduit steeped in her Ring. There are legends, none of them kind, about the fearsome glean in the eyes of a Conduit who will go to any lengths to maintain her high.
To be continued…
Gleefully,
Justin
