Rich sat in the Armitage Auditorium, enjoying the rare comfort. Unlike most of the campus classrooms at Waverly, this one had air conditioning. The cool air was a bit defrayed by the four or five dozen sweaty youths crammed into it, but it beat the usual funk of midday.

“This is an unexpected bonus,” Pat said as he slid into an adjacent seat. “Any idea why Morty wants to hold personalogy in here today?”

“No clue.” Rich shrugged. “You know how he is.”

The professor was erratic at the best of times. Last year he'd gotten into hot water for showing up drunk and complaining loudly about how they'd changed the class name from sociology, because some random pastor had thought it sounded too close to socialism.

Rich had done some quiet checking, and found that the Ministry had indeed purged the word sociology a few years ago. Which was probably why Professor Mortimer had only gotten off with a slap on the wrist, after that drunken denouncement. It hadn't been a recent event, and the majority of the public had forgotten it had even been a thing back in its day to begin with.

That and the fact that Waverly preferred to keep its business private. A lot went on inside these walls that was best kept away from the public.

This... this thing today, this air conditioned session, it had the feeling of something that fit that description. Rich had a feeling this wouldn't be the usual class.

But it started like a usual class, as Professor Mortimer strolled up on stage, and the HUD overlay flashed at the edge of Rich's vision, telling him that his ECHO implant was now amplifying the teacher's words.

“All right. The grades are finished for the last test. No curve on this one, boys, so some of you have a scramble to make up points before the end of the quarter. Now normally this is the point where I would go over assigned reading, and walk through the chapters ahead, but we have a slight change of plans today. An old friend of mine is in town, and I've... asked him to give a lecture.”

Rich squinted at the Professor. Old Morty sounded a little off today. Was he drunk?

His contact lenses zoomed in a bit, coordinating with his software to provide a closeup.

In the middle of the air conditioning, up on stage and far from the student body which had just crawled in out of the muggy heat, Professor Mortimer's face was dripping with sweat.

Rich glanced to the doors. He wasn't surprised to find them shut and barred, with proctors in front of each. Pity the poor bastard who has to go to the bathroom during this one, his mind threw out randomly.

Pat evidently hadn't noticed. “You okay, man? Greg told me about the green guy.”

Rich winced. Pat was a good friend. But Pat didn't understand operational security all that well. Granted, it wasn't much of a problem for his area of expertise. He was angling for a position in the Ministry of Hope, wearing the bright red that his peers all wore. Hope dealt with mainly non-covert activities, things you could talk about openly, like land reclamation, ecological reconstruction, and medical advances. Hope was meant to keep the Ministry's spirits up, give some optimism for the future.

But it also meant that Pat didn't have much experience with Rich's problems. “Yeah, I'm fine. We can discuss it later.” He looked down four rows, to where that aforementioned green guy was sitting. What was his name? Cole, that was it.

Rich blinked. It had been a long night, and for a second he wasn't sure of his memory. He was tired, plain and simple.

So tired he'd tuned out some of the professor's words. Rich shook his head, and caught the last of what he was saying.

“...And this won't impact finals, or be on any tests or quizzes. However, I urge you to listen to Mister Grant with an open mind, and keep his words in mind from this point on. Remember, we do not have the luxury of remaining ignorant. That is for the flock. The shepherds must be vigilant, or all is lost.”

It wasn't the first time Rich had heard such sentiments. But from the glances he could see his classmates shooting to each other, the weirdness of the situation was starting to sink in.

Then came an unexpected sound.

The tap of crutches on wood.

And Rich felt the world swim around him, as a familiar figure limped onto the stage.

An old man, hunched and bent, leaning on two hand-held canes, dragging himself forward with labored breath that whistled through the silent auditorium, wheezing and stuttering in a horrible, inevitable way.

“Mayhew,” Rich whispered. Here? Now? Why?

His mind flashed back to the recordings, to the experience he'd seen when he'd thought himself a dragon in a human body. To that day out in the burn zone.

“What was that?” Pat asked.

“Nothing. Wait. What did Morty say this guy's name was?” Rich fought to keep his voice low. He wasn't the only one muttering in the silence now, and that helped, but he did not want to draw that gimlet gaze his way.

Those eyes were dangerous. Mayhew was dangerous.

Mayhew was the director of the Ministry of Fortitude.

Mayhew was also, if Agent Cutter was to be believed, the man who had sent Rich back into Generica Online.

“Grant. Mister Grant,” Pat said. “Shit, now you're the one who's sweating. What's wrong?”

“Everything,” Rich whispered back, as the old man mounted the speaker's podium.

His burning gaze swept across the room, and where it went, whispers fell silent. It found Rich and lingered terrible seconds, before sweeping on.

The man's presence filled the room now, larger than his body, a weight heavier than that borne by his crutches. In Generica terms that's at least a two hundred, Rich thought, and fought the urge to laugh. It was hysteria, he knew.

“I'd tell you good morning, but it's not.” Mister Grant said, his voice as steady as his gnarled hands on his canes. “I'm going to tell you some things that are going to be death if you repeat them outside of this room. They're things that normally you would learn in your final year, though the more intelligent of you would have guessed them far before now.”

Rich saw some of his classmates relaxing a bit. This wasn't the first time that they had been through a sensitive briefing. It was just more intel that they had to swear to secrecy on. No big deal.

And then the crippled old man spoke, and horrified silence followed in the wake of four words.

“There is no god.”

He let the words linger.

Whispers, glares, youths turning to each other and asking if this was some kind of joke. And a couple rising, heading

toward the doors to storm off...

...and stopping when they saw the proctors for the first time.

One kid didn't stop. He reached out a hand toward the proctor.

The proctor leveled a pistol at the kid's head.

Silence again. “Oh my god,” someone broke it with a whisper, high and wavering.

“There is no god,” said Mister Grant, continuing without mercy or any discernible emotion. “The fact that we stand here, still alive after all we've done, is proof enough. And yet...”

Eyes turned back to him, stricken faces showing on some, calculating expressions on others.

Rich caught Cole looking at him, forced his face to show fear. It was easier than he thought, and a bead of sweat rolled down his cheek.

“...and yet we pretend there is. The Ministry is built on the inarguable fact that there IS a god. And we are his righteous servants. Now why is that?” Grant brought his cane down with a CHOK, and half the crowd winced. His voice had gone low, so their ECHOs had compensated, amplified his sounds.

Amateurs, Rich thought. Noise baffle apps were easy to find.

“Why is that? Tell me. You, boy, tell me why we pretend there is a god, when we know damn well there isn't one?”

He lifted a cane, pointed to a violet-jumpsuited kid on the right.

The youth stammered, swallowed hard. “In... in case we're wrong?”

“No.” Grant shook his head. “We're not wrong.”

“How do you know?” A yellow-suited youth burst out from the middle of the room. “How do you fucking know?”

Audible intakes of breath. The trainees nearest him edged away. He was only two rows in front of Rich, and Rich could feel the anger rolling off of him like a physical force.

“Because if there was a god, he would have stopped us by now. He would have prevented us from using the idea of a god as we do.” Grant caught the yellow-suited youth with his eyes, and Rich watched the kid shrink back. “God's had ample time to stop us, boy. But he hasn't. Because he doesn't exist.”

This was blasphemy. Plain and simple.

And it was a Minister saying this. Rich felt the breath thicken in his throat, felt like he was choking. The rest of the room didn't realize who Mister Grant was, what this meant.

Just as Rich thought it, almost as if the old man was reading his mind, Mister Grant put his thoughts into words.

“The truth is that our government is based on a lie. We claim divine mandate, right to rule by the grace of god. And again I ask you, why? Why do we pretend this is so?”

His cane swung around again, the old man shifting to balance on the sole remaining support. And the cane came to rest pointing at Cole.

“Because it's convenient for us?” Cole said.

“That's part of the answer,” Mister Grant nodded. “Part, but not all of it.” The man settled himself back on both canes, grimacing as something in his back gave an audible 'pop.' “The truth of the matter is that long ago, we had one bad year.”

Silence, for a moment, waiting perhaps to see if anyone would interrupt. Or merely gathering his thoughts, it was hard to tell. Rich could see the man's eyes shifting, losing some of their ferocity, looking back to a different time.

“We used to be one nation, once. A whole lot of different peoples, different lives, stuck working together because the alternative was worse. And we honored gods, once. Or one god in many different ways. It was big, it was disorganized, and it was chaotic... and it mostly worked.” He laughed a phlegmy laugh. “It wasn't a golden age, but it wasn't the heathen hellhole your textbooks made it out to be. It was just life.

“And then we had one bad year. We had a weak, corrupt government at the time, and they weren't up to the task of handling everything that happened. I could tell you stories of what all went wrong, but it doesn't matter. I'll simply say that it was bad, and the worst of it is still remembered in our history books. Along with a few patron saints that really, really didn't deserve beatification.

“At the end of that year, after an obviously corrupt re-election, entire regions started breaking away. Declaring independence. An irate government tried to mobilize troops, to go to war to keep themselves together. But they had been careless, so careless, and they hadn't maintained control over all their nuclear weapons. Some of the deserting states threatened to launch at the first sign of an invasion. And the military wasn't too thrilled about fighting itself, either. Enough units had split away to join the seceding nations, that it would have been a bloody mess, that would have left us in ruins.

“No. At the end of it, what had been one nation died not with a bang, but a whimper.”

The silence stretched on.

The old man's face drooped. There was a sadness there, a sorrow that lent weight to his already heavy words.

It was the truth, Rich knew. This wasn't the story they had been taught in the history textbooks. This wasn't the glowing founding of a new nation, under god. This was the ugly truth.

“And the problem was, that we were left holding the bag. We'd long derided the coastal politics and lifestyles. But the problem was, that they had all the money. All the trade. Our nation had long ago succumbed to economies of scale, and shipped the industry elsewhere. Industry we no longer had access to, thanks to the tariffs the new coastal states used to profit at our expense.

“The south was no better. They had no use for us. Dixie had been waiting centuries to go back to their old way, whatever their old way might truly be and we weren't a part of that old way. And the Lone Star republic grabbed Oklahoma, then hunkered down and told everyone else to fuck off.”

A ripple of motion then, some disgusted faces. Rich almost burst out laughing. The man was sitting there spitting blasphemy and treason, and some of his peers were offended because he'd said 'fuck'? It was hilarious, in a sad sort of way.

“They used to call us the heartland. But it was an old heart, a failing heart. A heart clogged with too many people and not enough resources. Pollution had tainted our lands, the infrastructure was crumbling, and the ecology had gone insane. Our full fields suffered under droughts, floods, fires and frost. Half our people were fearful and mourning the death of the nation we'd once been proud to pledge allegiance to. The other half were cheering the fall of the government, and getting guns ready to grab their own power. Oh, they said they just wanted to protect their independence, but we knew better. We knew they were a million little would-be kings, all wanting to carve out their own kingdoms. Sooner or later their independence would come at the cost of their neighbors. That was a saying they had, those types. That so long as you had a gun and enough neighbors with food, you would always have food, too.

“We needed something to stay unified. The more people, the more wealth, the more land you have, the more power you have. That's always been the way. Divided we would have been easy prey, picked off and sorted up to be vassals of the new powers, or used as border buffer states to wage the new wars in. Left to decay or die in fire. And when we took a good hard look at ourselves, we found only one commonality: faith.”

A murmur of satisfaction from three purple-suited students off to the left. A murmur that faded and died when the old man glared at them.

“We knew full well it was a lie. But it was a good one. Religion has always been the perfect excuse for power. It lets you promise things that don't need repayment in this lifetime. It excuses any atrocity, so long as you can convince enough people that God wanted you to do said atrocity. It lets you eliminate taxes, and put in tithes. What's the difference? Nothing, if the government runs the churches. But it gets people who would fight to the death to avoid paying taxes to freely open their pockets.

“We had just enough people in the territory we had left who professed to believe in a similar God that we could do it. And we did. We went to the churches, and got them on board. And the ones that wouldn't come on board we blackmailed and murdered and tortured until they GOT on board.

“And we didn't do it because God told us to do it. We didn't burn and drive out and persecute the atheists and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and the other minority religions in our lands because it was holy, or because they were wicked.

“We did it all because we needed to stay in power. Because this let us rise up to seize power from the weak and unworthy. We did it because it worked.”

“We did it because it's the biggest lie ever told. And once you can get the people you rule to believe your biggest lie, they'll believe any small one you throw at them.”

Rich couldn't keep his eyes still, during this mess. Couldn't keep from looking at his classmates, easy to read compared to him. Anger, sorrow, shock... and from some of them, cold acceptance. The confirmation of something they'd known for a long time.

Those few were looking around, just like him. Taking the measure of the room, seeing who they'd have to keep an eye on in the future.

Some few were in tears. Rich didn't grudge them that. He felt the ache in his chest, felt it throb. He'd long suspected there wasn't a God, not in the way that the Ministers pretended there was. But...

...he'd wanted there to be something.

“Go back now. Your classes for the rest of the day are canceled. Go to your dormitories or the chapel, if you want to think this over,” the man who wasn't Mister Grant said. “Go and think this over. Any leave requests you put in have been canceled. Anyone who tries to leave the compound will go straight to the camps. Anyone who tries anything stupid will pay the price. That is your test. That is the price of this truth that I have told you.”

And then he smiled, yellow teeth and black gaps and gray gums, and Rich shuddered to see it. He wasn't the only one to react so.

“And you will never speak of this truth again. Or we will call you a liar and kill you for your heresy. You will pretend to believe, and in time perhaps you will, again. And that? That is power. That is the only kind that matters.”

The old man turned and left, canes clacking in the silence.

The proctors unlocked the doors and stood aside.

And Rich found himself back in his dorm room, staring at the wall.

It was monstrous, when you thought about it. When you lingered on, really dug under the surface. What they'd done, what Grant— what Mayhew and his ilk had done. They'd built their rule around a lie, and used the lie itself to weed out everyone who was a problem, or who would be a problem.

Put in that light, what the old man had said today... that wasn't coming clean. That wasn't asking for forgiveness, or anything positive. It was a threat. It was a demonstration of power.

It was evil baring its teeth, and telling everyone else to either come and die or fall in line.

Rich closed his eyes.

I have a village to destroy, he thought to himself. Maybe that'll take my mind off of... this.

He put himself to bed, and logged in...

...and after the usual view of Konol, he found himself atop a snowy peak, with winds whipping around his scales.

Rich gasped. He'd gone from swampy heat to chilled air, almost polar cold, in the space of a minute.

And there was blood in his mouth. He smacked his lips. Had his character started the slaughter without him? Was he tasting people right now?

No. No, there was a carcass of some sort of giant wolf at his feet, half eaten.

“Master?” Geebo said, from the side. “You do not make me uneasy now. Are you the human?”

“I am,” Rich rumbled, turning to stare at the raptor-looking form, hunched and carefully avoiding his gaze.

“Good. We thought this might happen! Listen carefully, please. The villagers should be coming soon, and we need to draw them into the cult.”

The breath hissed out of Rich's lungs, vapor hanging in the air. “What?” he managed.

“You planned it with Aunarox, great one! We need them to believe as we do, or we have to kill them all where they stand. There is no other way...”