The following is an excerpt from Appendix A of 'Political Void' by Naomi P. Deus: 'Pretentious philosophical shit for idiots who somehow need that sort of motivation to overthrow a despotate of literal people-eaters'. Retrieved from the personal archives of Kaito Shimizu, who accessed this section hundreds of times.

Consider civilisation as an abstraction. No other theorarium purports by its very conception to establish a moral supersedence over the phenomena it represents; others are content to supersede merely by virtue of their greater explanatory power.

The essence of civilisation may be conceived as communication insofar as it persists in a fraction of consciousness which is presumed by those who participate in it to be public in the sense of being held in common and shared.

Yet in the noumenal space between consciousnesses there is only a void, and a wholly public thought cannot exist. If civilisation exists as an entity it must therefore exist forever obscured in the very void over which it purports to be victorious. Civilisation and emptiness, which may be conceived as barbarity, therefore exist in symbiosis, each defined primarily by their relationship to the Other.

We may, therefore, also consider the void as an abstraction. "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you," said Friedrich Nietzsche of Earth, and similarly the Meitagenan Skound, "The consumer is in the end the consumed". A consciousness which reaches too far beyond its bounds is destroyed. Perfect civilisation is therefore no civilisation at all by virtue of its singularity, just as much as perfect barbarity.

Yet civilisation requires a pretence of perfection to be sustained. In its grand hypocrisy it reaches into the void and claims a portion of it as its own. We call this portion politics. It is the civilisation of uncivilisation, ritualised non-understanding, the continuation of war by other means. Politics is the void and, therefore, the void itself is also political. The obscurity of the noumenal is an eternal tyranny, and we are as subject to it.

Given this, we must analyse the Meitagenan civilisation as the final hypocrisy, at once a perfect civilisation and a perfect void, sustaining this paradox by virtue of its utter completeness. We must also say that the Meitagenan civilisation literally is the Network, more than merely coextensive with it or codependent upon it. The Network is the void made physically manifest, the phenomenal made noumenal by sheer consumption. It has claimed the whole of the void as its own. In this subsists both their greatest strength and their greatest weakness. It is a weakness insofar as if anyone can find a void beyond the void, and in so doing transvaluate, the Meitagenan paradox must as a matter of logical necessity dissolve. So to sustain itself the Network must, by definition, perpetually and abominably, gaze into us.

********

「あなたは誰ですか？ここはどこ？どうしたの？」

It wasn't that the rakish newcomer didn't look frightened to Marie, but it was the fright of an injured tiger, fierce and dangerous. Several people had already emerged from the pods in similar anger and distress, though none yet had started out by babbling in what she thought she recognised as one of Earth's many heritage languages.

Praying he also spoke English, she raised her hands in a gesture of reassurance and said in a gentle voice, "It's okay. Nobody here wants to hurt you. We all arrived here the same way, and we're just as confused as you are."

The young man nodded, his posture shifting from attack to defence, but when he spoke again his voice was level.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Over the last couple of months, everyone here has come out of one of those pods, just like you. We can't remember anything about who we are or where we came from, can you?"

"I… 糞, no, I can't." He paused for a while. "I can remember all sorts of other things though. I know what all sorts of different things are and what they're for; I remember how to ski…"

Marie nodded. "It seems to be just our lives we've forgotten. 'Episodic memory', Unatti called it. Forgive me, but what was the language you were speaking when you first came out?"

"Japanese," the man said. "It… seems to be my native language. But I speak English too."

"Hmm…" said Marie. A crowd was already forming around them. "If I may ask, there were several… unusual things about your pod opening compared to the rest of us. That book you're holding, for instance."

At this, the newcomer looked down at it, apparently unaware until now that he'd had it in his hand. He looked at the cover.

"Political Void…" he read. "It actually feels a bit familiar. It's like I have a sense of what it's about, but I don't remember reading it."

"May I see?" Marie asked. The newcomer looked a little perturbed, but nodded and handed it over.

Marie looked at the cover, running her hand over it. She opened it and leafed through the pages, stopping to look at a random paragraph.

"That's strange…" she said. "Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I feel like I've read this book before, but I don't remember." Having noted his reluctance to hand it over, she gave it back. "Would you be willing to read it for us? See if you can get any clues to what's happening? I'm sure others will want to as well, but I suppose you ought to read it first."

"Hang on," interjected Horace impatiently, having waited longer than usual to speak up. "I think the Council should take control of this book immediately. Who knows what it might say."

Another Councillor stepped forward, with a nervous glance toward the Holmdyke. "We should keep it safe at least."

The newcomer perked up at this. "Why?"

Marie rolled her eyes. "No reason at all, in my opinion. It took all of a few weeks for people to start thinking of the Space like it's Lord of the Flies."

The newcomer smiled slightly. "Are you Ralph or Jack?"

Marie blinked at him. "Um, my name's Marie."

The newcomer looked confused for a moment but then caught on. "Oh, pleased to meet you," he said, extending a hand, which Marie shook. "But actually, I meant Ralph and Jack are characters from Lord of the Flies. One of them represents civilisation, the other barbarity."

Marie smiled, slightly embarrassed. "To be honest, I never read it." She paused for a moment. "How do you know that?"

The newcomer frowned. "I don't know, actually. I don't remember reading it, but I remember those basic facts about the characters." He reflected on that for a moment, before adding, "This is fascinating."

Marie nodded. "I expect you and Unatti will get on."

"I, uh…" the newcomer said. "Come to think of it, I actually don't know my name."

"None of us did," Marie said in a reassuring tone. "We made up names for ourselves."

"Huh," said the newcomer. "In that case, I'll be… Otohiko.”

********

It took several hours before representatives of the Coven made an appearance; apparently, they hadn't noticed the spectacle of Oto's pod rising dramatically out of the slime. Oto had no explanation for that, and despite the strangeness of the circumstances, Marie was fairly satisfied Oto knew no more about any of this than they did. Horace was much less sure of him, but Marie already felt she knew Horace well enough to be suspicious of his disdain.

Crisper, as was now usual, stepped forward to speak for the Coven. Marie had actually thought she liked him at first: his cheeky and curious grin, as well as his thoughtfulness and frankness, endearing him to her when she'd first stepped out of the pod. Over time, though, she'd noticed a reflexive contrariness in him, which at first she had generously attributed to his relative youth, but had increasingly come to suspect was something more sinister.

The five Councillors, including her, Horace and Unatti, stepped forward in return. Oto stood at the front of the crowd, next to Anne, a friend of Marie's whom he had taken to.

"We need to talk," Crisper said, affecting his usual disdainful smirk. "About the offering. But first, the basics."

Horace was unable to resist the bait. "There's nothing more to be said about the offering!"

"We disagree," said Crisper, with a small gesture to the few other covenantors behind him. "But please, let's first discuss food and basic supplies. I don't want my people to suffer because of our disagreement."

"Your people?" said Unatti, then raising her voice a little to address the other covenantors. "Are you all really okay with that?"

"He doesn't mean it like that!" Insisted one of the others standing behind Crisper.

"Even so," interjected Marie. "It's not good that we should be thinking of ourselves as divided. We're all in this together."

"If we are divided," retorted Crisper, "There's no sense pretending we're not."

"You got to vote for the Council like everyone else," replied Unatti, wearily. "We're not divided as long as we're united in respecting democracy."

Crisper left a very long, very pregnant pause.

When he spoke again, he just said, "Let's talk about food."

The Council, more than a little perturbed, agreed, and started taking down a list of supplies. Oto took this opportunity to speak to Anne.

"What's this about an offering?" he asked.

"Oh…" said Anne, blushing slightly. "Matt said he'd be willing to give us way more stuff if we… But it's really horrible, what he's asking us to do."

This piqued Oto's curiosity, but instead he asked, "And they want to do it?" gesturing toward the covenantors.

"Yes," confirmed Anne. "We all took a vote, and decided we didn't want to. But Crisper got angry about it, and convinced a bunch of others to follow him. There's more of us than there are of them, but they're not dropping it."

Oto nodded, frowning. "I see."

The negotiation, as it seemed to be, between the Council and Crisper had apparently reached a point of contention.

"Just what do you want all these materials for?" Horace was demanding.

"I don't see how that's any of your business," retorted Crisper. "We agreed that our homes would be private spaces. What we do inside my castle isn't the Council's concern. Unless you're prepared to force the issue, of course," he added, daringly.

His gamble paid off. Horace still looked determined, but the other Council members all looked to be somewhere on a spectrum between conflicted and cowed.

"If that's that," Crisper went on, satisfied, "I want to talk about the offering."

"We agreed…" began Horace.

"We agreed it would be a majority vote," interrupted Crisper. "But we didn't agree not to discuss it again." Raising his voice, he addressed the assembled crowd. "I want to try to persuade you again. No harm will come to you from just listening to me."

The crowd murmured, but nobody spoke up.

Crisper nodded, and stepped back, such that he was standing elevated on the steps to the interdyke bridge.

"Matt was right," he began.

"We don't know how long we're going to be stuck here. It could be years, it could very well be generations. Some of us will definitely want to have kids. And what will our legacy be to them?

"If we don't take Matt's offer, our little society will decay into a genetic disaster. Our family lines will be doomed to inbreeding, disease and collapse. Is that really what you want?

"Forget about the incentive. We should give the offering because it's the right thing to do. The choice is a stark one: give up our reproductive autonomy to Matt, or live knowing we have condemned future generations to a civilisation which can never survive.

"Imagine looking your first child in the face knowing the future that awaited them, and their children. Could you really do it?"