Five Threats: A Game of Telephone Part 2

He was led to see horrors.

The first was a circle of eagles. One stood tall and noble, yet the other eagles looked truly wretched. More like plucked chickens than anything else. They scurried and crawled, for their wings were broken, and they plucked sticks and stones out of seemingly nowhere. Building the nest of the healthy eagle as it nursed its own eggs. When one of the wretched eagles tried to build its own nest, the healthy eagle pecked it. Peeling off more feathers and smashing their broken wings. Unrelenting even as the lesser bird screamed in pain.

The second was the sound of a whip. It held no physical form, it was only the crack of a whip slashing a scarred back.

The third… was a beaten man. Not beaten in the physical sense. But when Almes looked at him, he saw something so utterly dead. A back weighed down by numerous chains, it had no face yet its face spoke only hopelessness and depression, a wretched, broken thing that only moved forward by the heavy momentum of its own shackles. Simply looking at it… it tried to pull him in. A black hole of depression and hopelessness. To move not because of purpose, but because they were dragged.

Almes looked away. His mind was fraying at the edges. Yet the power of his ancestors protected him. Wiping away the corruption of Bleed effects as a friend would dust on his clothing. “These are all the Living Concepts of Democracy?”

His assistant nodded. “There are more, however they are similarly representative of this.”

“What’s wrong with the Living Concepts?” Almes asked. These horrors… they weren’t Democracy. They were bald faced lies. Something twisted from what was right.

“We have several ideas,” his assistant said as they continued walking. “These Living Concepts were captured in locations of high population density. We’ve learned that population numbers and feelings matter more to the creation of these things than facts.”

Almes nodded, the low tiers were uneducated. It wasn’t a leap of logic to see them misconstrue facts.

“And we suspect that our own reality is having a strange mixing effect. Leaning the manifestations more towards the negative.”

“The rule of abilities,” he nodded along. His own ability had already posited this, though it was good to confirm his men were not incompetent.

“And third…”

They stopped to look at a fourth concept.

It was a pile of sand, or was it grain? The particulates constantly shifted into different geometric patterns. It was quite mesmerising, if not for the fact that Almes understood what they were saying.

The geometric patterns constantly communicated screaming.

“This one introduced itself as Grain-Interpreter-Cymatics,” his assistant began. “It was one of the first Living Concepts we’ve confirmed to have a degree of intelligence. It reached out to us first, and taught us many things about Arcadia.”

“And why is it here now?” Almes asked. Noting the numerous electrical wires, flame throwers, and other measures constantly keeping it restrained. “It's not immortal is it?” That was the only reason he could see keeping a blasted alien alive.

“It taught us that Living Concepts could be altered,” his assistant told him. “We saw it do it, but we don’t understand how. The process does not appear to be limited by distance, since they can choose when to care about distance. Assanger ordered us to keep it restrained until more could be learnt about it.”

President Almes furrowed his brow. “And that is why Assanger declared war against Arcadia.”

The old president suspected that the sentient concepts in Arcadia were altering the creation of Democracy somehow. Corrupting and twisting it. However Almes was unsure. One did not necessarily lead to the other.

“Your orders?” his assistant asked.

“Continue the war against Arcadia. Even if they aren’t the cause of the corruption of Democracy. They have the capability to do so. Such a latent threat cannot be allowed to exist,” he answered simply. Ultimately, the enemy was not human. They were aliens existing in different dimensions of the multiverse. They did not believe in Democracy, nor could they be converted like their less enlightened kin. Conflict was an inevitability.

Almes gestured at the Living Concept below, “Also, kill this thing, its screams are annoying.”

“Understood,” his assistant nodded. And soon, the sands stopped moving.

The president turned his mind to other matters. It seemed like Living Concepts would not be the silver bullet to solve all his problems. The natural laws of abilities were immutable, but predictable. Enough sacrifice should preclude more positive results. The problem that was left was the low tiers.

Something had to be done about them. Their numbers and low intelligence corrupted what Democracy was.

They feared Rell now. The former friends and fellows of the work camp, the council of second tiers, they all feared her. Rell wasn’t sure why, until she was taken away. Cleaned up, and her tattoo updated.

Four stars and stripes. She was a tier four citizen now.

She was of high enough rank that she could’ve killed any of them, and not be questioned. If she killed everyone in the camp, then she would at best be asked to pay reparations to the other high tier who owned those people.

That was the privilege of a Gifted. To have the ability to grasp an ability.

She was simply above them.

And yet, Rell felt it insane. Unthinkable. She didn’t change as a person, she still felt the same inside. She didn’t experience some sudden increase in intelligence and capability, she was still Rell. Only now she could grab space, her marker had three more stripes and she got a better room to live in.

How could she be above someone else?

So she stayed inside. Hiding. Barely eating until someone entered.

He looked kind, though Rell could not remember his face. It was all indistinct. “Who are you?”

“I am the assistant to the president,” he answered as he knelt down to meet her eyes. “You possess a powerful ability, yet why do you continue to hide here?”

For some reason, Rell felt comfortable around this person. More so than the too soft cushions of her new home.

“Because I don’t feel gifted,” she answered. “I didn’t become smarter, I didn’t become more capable. I can only pull at things.” She pulled at the air, turning it slightly blue.

He touched her, patting her head. “I understand that it must be difficult for a child, but you are right. You are a natural gifted. One born of manifestation rather than bloodline. And that means you aren’t like the other mid tiers. You aren’t as gifted as a geneline. The trauma of manifestation often leaves a natural gifted with many mental defects. That’s alright, because you still have citizens above you. People who will do the thinking for you. You need not worry.”

His voice was soothing. Comforting, confirming all her fears yet telling her they weren’t something to worry about. She did not notice at all the silvery strings quietly attaching themselves to her.

“String Theocracy,” the assistant murmured. “You need not worry about thinking or worrying. The president needs you for a task. You will become friends with another meta named Jacob Ladders. His ability complements yours. You two will train and work well together.”

The strings kept wrapping around her, though Rell did not notice. Becoming more and more enamoured by the words of this unnamed assistant.

“You will go into a Gate, and you will fight for our country, for the human race. Follow your orders, and your life will be meaningful.”

Rell nodded. Her eyes glazed over.

“You will not remember me, you reached these conclusions on your own. You will not harm the interests of the United States and Democracy. You will seek to actively uphold it and serve the president. You will be assigned somewhere soon, you feel excited to meet others of your tier. You will do as ordered.”

Rell nodded one final time and felt peaceful. There was still someone above her, someone who she had to work for. So what if a few people got added beneath her?

The world was still right.

Almes looked at the tier five citizen before him. Glancing nervously at the book he was calmly reading.

“What do you require of me, President?” the man asked.

“Do you know what is written about the tiers in the Rationality?”

“That a tiered system is the most logical method of sorting people-”

“-into the roles that they most suitably accomplish,” Almes finished, snapping his book shut. “You know the words, yet you still don’t know why you’re here?”

“I’m- not sure why-”

“We are all cogs,” Almes said. “All cogs of the great machine known as Democracy. We may be alive, but we are merely individual cells. And do you know what happens to cells when they steal resources?”

“I-”

The man didn’t get a chance to finish, before he was stamped from behind.

“They are called cancerous, and they are removed or repurposed,” Almes said above the screams.

The man was the citizen formerly in charge of the city where one of those false living concepts of Democracy manifested. Specifically the flight of eagles. He was embezzling rations and funds from the lower classes in order to build a greater mansion.

The utter gall.

A parasite who butchered what was great for self gain. If not for the Living Concept captured there, no one would’ve been any wiser of his schemes and treason.

The man was sedated and removed, he would still serve the Democracy, but this time as a reality anchor. So Almes turned his mind to a more darker pursuit.

Religion.

Even now he didn’t know why his power directed him to read such terrible works. Aurelius was very outspoken of the dangers of religion and actively combated it throughout his life. Almes himself could not even begin to understand how someone could believe in something so clearly irrational.

It was obvious that many of the texts he found were written by the mad and conniving. Tricks and false ideals, trying to create a fake morality when the question of morality had already been solved by the existence of Democracy.

Some works by Kristians even claimed that their depraved rituals were not originally part of their religion. Obviously false. Though it was amusing to see them adamantly refer to their cannibal rituals as merely ‘bread’ and ‘wine’. Plus their sacrifice of children through drowning was well documented by Democracy scholars. Like most of its kind, the religion was grotesque and needlessly cruel.

Yet, their corruption remained in the country the longest. Almost lasting longer than Aurelius’ reign. If the Last Day of Traitors did not come, they may still be in this country. That itself was a chilling thought. To have to wonder if the person standing next to you was a traitor, believing in something utterly insane.

Almes recalled the third Living Concept. The Democracy that looked like a beaten man. The city where the concept was captured barely looked any better. The citizens there looked almost exactly like the Living Concept they had spawned.

“So this is the path,” he murmured.

Expunge the parasites within the high and mid tiers, and bring purpose back to the low tiers.

He took out his copy of the Rationality, looking over it. A mere book, yet it contained so many truths. But its contents were inaccessible to the low tiers. Education was deemed unnecessary for the first, and only the second and third could hear snippets of it.

Almes took out a pen and notebook, and began writing a simplified version of the Rationality.

A gospel.

Rell was eventually deployed to Arcadia. The dimension was… strange.

The world changed at a thought, when she thought the dimension alien, alien flora and creatures spontaneously appeared. Only in the established bases was reality at least somewhat stable. With enough people believing it stable, it simply was.

Fighting Living Concepts was strange as well. Embodiments of ideas itself, they weren’t actually harmed by their weapons or abilities. She was told it was the belief that they would be harmed that actually damaged the creatures.

It was confusing, but she was not required to think. Rell followed orders. Go to this place, warp space, rip apart that thing, open another Gate here.

It became routine over the years, until one day, War attacked.

Living Concepts were far more vast on this side than in normal reality. On Earth, they got condensed into smaller, more understandable things. Entities you could see with your eyes and understand.

War was in Arcadia, and thus it was a vast red mist that covered continents. Shadows of not-men wielded things only a blind god would consider a human weapon.

It approached like a massive stormwall. Slamming into them. Covering the sky and world in red.

“Rell!” Jacob yelled, “It’s still coming! Stop it!”

She quickly lost him, but still she reacted. Pulling space around her like a blanket, causing the red mist to swirl around her instead of actually touching her. She grabbed space, and ripped it apart. Slashing the mist apart.

But they quickly filled the gap. Still, she had to believe she was damaging it. Otherwise it wouldn’t be. Instead she targeted the not-men. Ripping apart the red shades one by one as she progressed into the eye of the storm.

She pulled at space, dragging herself in the same way someone might climb a rope. Hours passed without progress, only more and more red mist.

Until suddenly, calm. The red mist turned empty, and suddenly a warm golden light filled her.

The not-men disappeared, instead were people of gold standing all around her. And she heard something.

“Peace, peace, peace, peace…” It was spoken, told to her.

“Who’s talking?” she asked.

And the Living Concept responded.

“I am War-Peace-Convey. I am here to ask for peace.”

Rell’s eyes widened. She didn’t know these things could talk. She knew triple concepts were more intelligent, but the only one that actually talked was the first one.

“You… you’re the Living Concept of both War and Peace?”

“I am.”

“Doesn’t that contradict?”

“I am not Contradiction. I was once War. Grain-Interpreter-Cymatics taught me, and I became Peace. I learned to be Convey to speak.”

“No, I mean aren’t war and peace opposites?”

“Grain-Interpreter-Cymatics taught me I could be anything. I did not choose to be Opposite, so I chose Peace.”

She was silent, which the concept took as a go ahead to continue speaking.

“I am here to seek peace between our kind and yours. Do you accept it?”

“I don’t have the authority to agree to that.”

“Then I ask if you will be peaceful with our kind.”

“I also can’t agree to that,” she said.

And the concept looked at her strangely. “You are human. Do you not have the capacity to choose?”

“I-” something shifted in her mind. Like pushing through a thick cloth. It wasn’t unyielding, but it was still impassable.

And suddenly, War-Peace-Convey screamed.

A bright light encompassed the Living Concept, and suddenly her radio blared to life.

“Good job keeping it busy,” Jacob yelled. “We got a clear hit on it!”

The gold light and red mist started dissipating. And the Living Concept turned to stare at her. She raised her hand, prepared to receive an attack.

Instead, it simply spoke.

“If you believe War-Peace to be opposites. Then know that I was once one and became the other. You can too. I believe in you.”

More metahumans charged through the mist, attacking the concept as it retreated. As it kept asking for peace. Until it was eventually killed.

Rell learnt later there were zero casualties. The red mist that screamed war and violence did not attack a single person. Not a single person was harmed.

Grey hairs marked Almes’ head. He was still supposed to be young, but the weight of the crown was heavy. And Almes became more and more tired.

“It’s finally happened.”

South Muriganna had discovered their meddling, and their worship of religion had given birth to a Living Concept.

Huitzilopochtli was the name of their false god.

“Our enemies got to it first,” he said. Yet his voice was joyful. “But it just proves it can be done.”

Arcadia has been cleansed. Only a handful of sentient Concepts hid there, and they would be dealt with soon enough. His power told him that the long war on the Arcadian front was over. The ideals of Democracy were being spread to the low tiers and he was leading a second Last Night of Traitors on the mid and higher tiers.

The work was almost done.

Almes turned to his trusted assistant, “Recall some of the Arcadian troops. We need to defend our border and send these savages a message. The Democracy is not to be challenged.”

Hayden Xin gingerly climbed the monument of the First Fathers. Following the directions of his power. Of all things, he didn’t expect the Weshmin Mountains to hide an Inheritance. That was what he was starting to call these things. Ancient abilities and powers left behind to be used again.

Following his power, he found a hidden entrance, leading directly into the head of the fifth statue. That of the 500th President Aurelius Caesar.

Walking through ancient, slightly wet steps, he entered the head of Aurelius, and there, Hayden Xin found a coffin.

A coffin that constantly whispered.

Star-Witness-Mother-Last watched her entire people die. The humans had killed them, one by one. Until all that was left were the singular concepts that they enslaved.

She was the Last with Four names.

She had hid from the humans for so long, a star was very distant after all, and she had witnessed them butchering her people, her friends, her family. The scream that Grain-Interpreter-Cymatics let out with his final breath still haunted her mind.

Why did she exist? Just to witness everything end? To be the last one the humans killed?

She wanted to stop hiding, just so she could be ended alongside all her friends.

Yet as she floated in the lands of Arcadia, she bumped into it.

The Undefined.

It was the only place that the humans have not yet reached, for they always defined things. Expected the ground to be soft or hard. Expected the air to be breathable or poisonous. They could never touch the Undefined.

But she could.

And Star-Witness-Mother-Last knew her purpose.

She reached into the vast Undefined, and she moulded. She defined it. She gave it all she saw, all she witnessed, she made into a Living Concept, a mould that the Undefined will fill.

And she was finally a mother.

The first of her creations stepped onto Arcadia. A creature with mottled green skin. It took the dirt beneath and redefined it into something else. Soon another appeared next to it, and they kept multiplying more and more as the mould was filled. They touched and changed things, turning them into weapons. And as a mass, they attacked the human settlements. Overrunning them.

They captured the surviving humans, and changed them as well. Doing to them what they did to her friends. Torturing them, changing them into monstrous creatures of war and conflict.

Star-Witness-Mother-Last had created the Living Concept of Humanity and they would bring war and ruin so long as humans existed.

Hayden Xin saw the past.

An old man stood among wretched crab-like creatures in a dirty slum. He laughed among them, despite their clear differences. And he helped them build. Yet as he did so, an egg was thrown at him.

People yelled and jeered at the old man and the crab creatures. A mob carrying signs. “Humanity first!” “No aliens on our soil!” “Kill the invaders!”

And the old man simply gestured at the crab creatures to retreat, as he walked forward and stood alone against the crowd.

“The Hijarsi came here in peace! Seeking aid as refugees! Their world has already been destroyed by Gates! We as good people should be compassionate!” The old man yelled.

“Traitor!” the crowd yelled back, and Hayden finally recognised him. He looked nothing like the statues or the paintings, but there was still a minor resemblance.

He was the ancient traitor, Paradigm.

Paradigm was not the evil, war like man he was depicted as. He simply stood there, asking for compassion as the crowd threw trash and insult at him.

It was only when someone tried to attack one of the small crustaceans, a child, did he move. Using his power to stop the attack and separate them without causing either attacker or victim any harm.

Time passed in a blur, and Paradigm laid in a hospital. His old body was failing him. Even from his sickbed, he tried to be a hero. Leading initiates to help others.

One day, a man entered.

Paradigm stirred from his sleep. Seeing the man.

A television in the room displayed the news, “President Aaron Casey has been voted into president for life.”

“President.” Paradigm narrowed his eyes, and Hayden recognised him too. How could he not, when he stood in a statue of his head.

“I’m here to end things,” Aurelius Caesar said. Taking a needle and injecting a liquid into Paradigms drip feed. “You should know that if you resist, then people will die.”

The president shrugged, “Should be obvious, but I figured you might be too old to think properly.”

“You want to silence me!?” Paradigm spat. “Are you not content to watch me waste away, so desperate you are to seize power!?”

“I am merely cleaning up the last loose end,” Aurelius answered. “Be honoured, you are important enough I can’t trust anyone else to kill you.”

“Release your hostages, and then let’s see who is killing who.”

“If you truly believed in your ideals, you would kill me, no matter the sacrifice,” Aurelius said. “I honestly expected better. But you are a disappointment, a demonstration of the failure of hero ideology. For all your long life and power, you have accomplished nothing.”

“It is because I do not believe in your ideals, that I refuse to kill any more through my action,” Paradigm spat. “You have the greatest thinker ability ever recorded, why do you insist on doing things this way? You could have brought peace, been a unifier, changed the world for the better!

“In the end you will lose. Alone in your madness, you will find yourself without friends or allies,” Paradigm continued. “You think you are the first tyrant? The first dictator? Look through history to see how that ends up.”

And Aurelius simply smirked at him. Hayden was unsettled by that look, it was as if the president was staring at some kind of amusing animal.

“Even if you die here alone?”

“I am not alone, that is the difference between you and I.”

Aurelius’ smile did not waver, instead his smirk seemed to grow. He sat down beside Paradigm. “I suppose you of all people ought to know the truth. I am a human from another dimension in the 892nd millennium. A transmigrator if you will. And that is the real difference between you and I. For I too am not alone, because behind me is a great civilisation that conquered our universe and exterminated all other opposition. I am not… whatever you creatures are.”

There was a moment of shocked silence. “You are joking.”

“I am not,” Aurelius answered. “In truth my appearance here was unexpected. In all the history of humanity, we have never encountered this phenomena of meta abilities, and most certainly not the presence of a multiverse. But oh how convenient it is. For now there is an entire multiverse to conquer, starting with here.”

“You aren’t human?” Paradigm asked.

“No, I am human, but you?” he scoffed. “This species of creature on this planet is not human. At best you can be considered a primitive… rung on the evolutionary ladder. One that will eventually lead to true humans like me. Though honestly I think your race is an evolutionary dead end, one not destined for anything.”

“You are insane. I thought you were mad before, but this is something else.”

And Aurelius laughed. “Oh that is rich coming from you monkeys. You still haven’t even solved problems like compassion. The weakness of emotion is what keeps you from being a sapient species. You monkeys aren’t sapient, you don’t feel things. You are just a collection of the rules of physics firing off in pre-programmed ways. You are smart enough to know this to be true, but you still refuse to recognise the obvious.”

“You won’t succeed,” Paradigm grunted, the poison taking effect.

Aurelius stood up, “Remember what they called me? The Gadgeteer President. Bringer of the Golden Age. I just made a few baubles that every knave knows and you primitives praised me like the second coming of god. I have already conquered your species with my superior technology, and it wasn’t even that hard. When I bring a real human army here, you will fold just like all the other aliens and primitives we have conquered.”

“But don’t worry,” Aurelius laughed as he left, “some of us might keep your kind in a zoo.”

Hayden fell to the ground, recoiling from the coffin before him. That vision, that corpse that was still whispering even though it was long dead. Hayden recognised the whispers, they were steps. Simplified steps to accomplish in order to fulfil a goal. And he knew who it was whispering to, the current President Almes Caesar.

Before him lay the corpse and thinker ability of Aurelius Caesar, American Idiot.

But the visions weren’t done, as they showed him one last thing.

Rell went to a thing they called war.

Yet it wasn’t a war, not in the true sense, because it was a slaughter.

Jacob Ladders’ had the ability of Carbon Manipulation, but his ability was so broad that he couldn’t actually use it. It didn’t even clear the Beatles Bar. In many ways, he was barely better than a baseline human.

Until Rell helped.

Rell ripped the fabric of space, opening a Gate to Arcadia. It didn’t greatly change the surroundings. Arcadia’s Earth, Wind, and Fire ratings were Loam, Vento and Keneq. Low risk and disruption, but high spread, city scale in fact.

As she was now seeing.

The Gate quickly covered the enemy city, and Jacob went to work. While he cannot actually affect the carbon of a person, once they began losing Hume due to resisting a Gate, he could quickly gain control.

One by one, people exploded into pure carbon dust, leaving behind all other materials as Jacob manipulated the dust into attacking those remaining.

Enemy metas quickly closed in on them, but they weren’t alone, as Democracy metas moved in to defend them. They were fighting at a clear disadvantage, for while both sides were losing Hume to the harmless Bleed effect, Jacob was executing every enemy with carbon manipulation once their Hume fell low enough.

It was a slaughter.

The enemy quickly found shutting the Gate to be impossible, so instead they focused on helping the civilians flee. But walls and barriers quickly sprung around the city, trapping them.

All the while Jacob went to work.

In the end, the city that once held millions lay empty. Only corpses and dust remained.

“Good work everyone!” their leader called out. “A few more cities and we can all go home.”

They chatted about what they would do once their mission was complete. Some of them had partners waiting for them back home, some planned to bring them all to their favourite restaurant.

All the while corpses and carbon dust lay around them.

Rell kneeled down to one of the corpses. It was one of the metas that directly tried to attack her and close the Gate. In the end he was put down by a shot to the head. Dying before he lost enough Hume for Jacob to dust him.

“Come on Rell!” Jacob called out, “Boss smuggled us chocolate rations! We can get back to celebrate!”

“Should we bury them?” she asked her friend.

“Bury?” Jacob asked.

She gestured at the enemy corpses.

And Jacob looked confused, “Why?”

Hayden saw the conclusion of President Aurelius’s life.

He stood under the bright blue sky, laughing as he activated the contraption.

And an obsidian moon appeared, eclipsing the sun.

People appeared next to the President, and he nodded at them. “I am TX31039B, I was transmigrated here through unknown means, and I was the one who opened the path to the multiverse.”

He took out a hard drive, “This is all the information I have gathered about this world, and my experiments on Hume and meta abilities.”

One of them took the hard drive, and answered him in a voice so devoid of emotion that Hayden thought it was a machine that spoke. “Your contribution has been noted.”

And the people disappeared.

Aurelius stood there confused for a moment. He called out again, and waited.

And waited.

The obsidian moon remained in the sky. Time had been stopped by the technology of the True Humans. Aurelius kept calling out at the sky, he kept asking for an answer.

The only answer he got was from his ability.

Telling him why they abandoned him.

For Aurelius Caesar held emotion. He laughed at the primitiveness of the monkeys, gloated at one, and felt triumph when he had finally called upon the true humans.

And so he realised, he had gained emotion and thus lost his humanity.

So humanity was exterminating him alongside all the other primitive monkeys.

Hayden Xin fell, leaning against the coffin as he breathed hard.

This close, he saw that the corpse was still alive. It breathed, shallowly but still it breathed.

And suddenly, he had a horrible premonition. Something terrible was about to be born.

Arcadia was not done. A new enemy had suddenly appeared. A creature they had tentatively named goblins. Endless in number and bearing contrived weapons almost as good as their own. Worse, is that they could trigger meta abilities, and convert their soldiers into theirs.

However, the work was almost complete. Almes saw the steps, he saw how close he was to finishing it. The Southern continent was cowed as his soldiers dismantled their cities. The truths of Democracy were now entrenched into the people.

Only a few more steps now.

“Assistant, walk with me.”

His assistant followed him.

“You are a loyal man,” he told him. “You’ve been here since my first day in office. Doing the dirty work, tying up loose ends and ensuring that I’ve been comfortable.”

The man nodded, and Almes could see that he was truly proud of having been of service.

It was a shame what had to come next.

“So why is it,” Almes began, “that traitorous texts were found in your possession.”

His assistant stood shocked still. He opened his mouth to speak but he was already surrounded. Gagging his mouth so that he could not use his manifested ability. An ability he had kept hidden from everyone else.

His assistant kept trying to speak, and Almes gestured at his guards to bring the reality anchor. Strapping the Savant brain onto his assistant’s neck before letting him open his mouth.

“President! You are mistaken! I am not a traitor-”

“The poem you gave me that was once written on the Green Lady was not part of the archives,” Almes interrupted him. A book was handed to him, a book that his assistant recognised.

“What lies are written here, claiming that the Green Lady was not built by the Democracy?” he snorted. Other humans could not achieve a fraction of what the Democracy had achieved. They had brought about two Gadgeteering Golden Ages. Everything the rest of the world had achieved was because of aliens. All their technological achievements, all that they had built were the product of alien corruption and intervention. For what could those primitives in Yuro-P, Afrikaans, Usia and Oceanic have ever accomplished without Democracy?

Almes ripped the book apart. “I should’ve known that poem was a lie as well, our ancestors were smarter than that.”

“Sir, that is the real history of the world! It was passed down to me as-”

“You keep lying, expecting me to believe you,” Almes said. “When I know you have been brainwashing citizens with your unregistered ability.”

“Sir, I was making sure that they were all loyal to you! Please!” the man begged, “I have been loyal to you, I’ve never done anything against you sir!”

“I shall know soon enough,” Almes said, and he asked his ability whether or not his assistant was truly loyal.

And it was silent.

Almes kept asking it more questions, but the steps, they were gone. He felt no response from his ability, nothing at all.

He was for the first time in a long time, alone in his mind.

But he could not show such weakness, so instead he snorted, “To own such texts is to be a traitor to the Democracy, but don’t worry, you will still serve as a Savant.”

And he gestured at a guard to bring a stamp.

His former assistant panicked as he saw it, “No no, please, not the stamp! Not the stamp!”

He was stamped.

The man immediately began screaming as pain overtook his mind, writhing and struggling with new found strength. But still, he yelled at Almes, “President Almes! You must get rid of the people I’ve mind controlled! They’re all ticking bombs! Please! Quickly before I lose control!”

His former assistant was dragged away as his mind finally went out like a snuffed candle. Almes didn’t know the veracity of his final words, was it a threat, or did he grow a conscience as he was stamped? Deciding to do good for one last time?

It didn’t matter, what was done, was done. The last traitor was purged.

“Because they’re people,” Rell said.

Jacob laughed, “You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

Jacob furrowed his brow. “Look, Rell, I know you’re a good person. But you can’t say stuff like that.” He gestured at the corpses. “We’ve already been kind to them, we gave them a chance to join the Democracy, but they rejected it. Then they attacked us. There is kindness, and there is foolishness. Only citizens get graves.”

He shook his head, “Please don’t speak of such things, especially with other people. I don’t want the secret police to take you one day.”

“But-”

But what? She wondered.

“But- But- But-”

And Rell felt something snap as the user of the String Theocracy turned mad with pain.

“But my parents didn’t get a grave either.”

They were citizens, just like she was. Yet they didn’t get a grave, left to rot under hundreds of tons of rock.

Forgotten, just like these people.

And Rell wondered why she thought this way. Everyone else thought differently, they thought the right way. Yet Rell cared about these people.

Was she insane?

Yes, she was insane.

Jacob suddenly backed away, shivering, “Why is it getting colder? Rell, what is happening? What are you doing?”

Rell didn’t answer him.

She never spoke to another human ever again.

Jacob fell down, freezing to death as Rell had her second trigger event. Hiding in the Blue expanded in scope as she obtained a Domain that roared out and froze the world to a halt.

She looked down at her skin, where her citizenship tattoo lay. And without a word or change in expression, she ripped it off with her skin.

Something horrible was about to be born, and President Almes would be the one making it.

Hayden Xin didn’t know what, so he grabbed the body of the former president. He needed that thinker ability, that was the only way he could see to prevent it. But he could not grasp it, he was too different from the President as a person. “Wake you idiot!” He slapped him. “You’re still alive in there! Act like it! Act like President Aurelius Caesar!”

And the corpse responded. Mummified eyes fluttered open and stared at him.

“You’re still alive!” Hayden Xin yelled, “Your descendant is about to do something horrible, you have to stop him?”

“My descendant?” Aurelius laughed, “You think that I had descendants? Why would I ever copulate with you primitive monkeys!”

And Hayden paused. “The line of Caesar, that’s you isn’t it? You survived the Long Night and brought back the Golden Age by exploiting the shattered timeline. That was you wasn’t it?”

Aurelius kept laughing. “My name in life was Aaron Casey! And I wouldn’t even fuck you monkeys, what made you think I would keep living as one? I committed suicide the moment I learned that I was one of you!”

Hayden froze in place. “This… this society, you didn’t do this?”

Aurelius shook his head, his mouth widened in a smile. “I died before I could do any of the shit you guys attributed to me. All this?” he gestured around them, to the nation of the United States.

To the Democracy.

“You monkeys did that to yourselves.”

Hayden’s voice was shaking, “You can still fix this. You are nigh omniscient!”

“I am dead, it’s your problem now!” Aurelius laughed.

And he finally died. Like the end of a long sigh. Hayden felt a death comparable to the bearer of the sword in hell, not in type, but in scope. The feeling of something just as great coming to an end.

The corpse crumbled to dust.

Hayden Xin knew that Aurelius did not lie once.

Everything he said was true.

Almes suddenly felt his ability roar into his mind. No longer just whispers, the ability American Idiot was now fully his.

And possibilities rang across his mind, things he previously thought impossible, and a moment of utter enlightenment flashed through his mind.

“That’s all we are. Scavengers of corpses,” he murmured. “The old gods perished as myth, and their corpses tainted the power, now only those who share their regrets can drink the blighted water. The whole was broken into incompleteness and potential. Both seek the other yet they cannot push past the tainted water. Their power dispersed to the drinkers before they could find the other.”

It was all pointless. The world was dying, not suddenly, but had been for millenia. The world was a crippled old man drawing their last gasping breaths.

What was the point?

Why should he bother continuing, knowing the world had already ended?

“There is a point,” he murmured. “Humanity has pushed back the end for countless millennia. We have fought it in our cities, in the skies and on the beaches. We have cancelled the end even when it seemed inevitable. Why?”

Because of hope.

“Hope is not so easily extinguished,” the 789th President Almes Caesar murmured. “The end is knocking on our door, nay, it already has a foot in. Yet it is not yet the time to give up. Somebody will still stand up for what is right. I will still stand up for what is right. Even if everything seems hopeless. Because hope and strength is not a thing that exists without struggle.”

And if they failed, if the end did come, then Almes refused to go quietly.

A new possibility appeared, one he could not accomplish before, but now he could. Almes would save them all.

He fiddled with the teleportation device on his wrist. Changing it according to the directions of his power, he opened a Gate.

And he breathed in, he could not do the next step without sacrifice.

“Swan Song.”

And he felt his potential burning, all that could ever be achieved with the power, spent in a single moment as Almes plunged his hand into Arcadia.

And touched the Undefined.

Hayden Xin looked on in horror as his citizenship tattoo began glowing.

He had failed.

That monstrous thing had been born.

He rushed for a knife, anything to flay the tattoo off-

Hayden paused. What was he doing? Why did he want to flay his tattoo off, that was foolishness.

He shook his head, recalling false memories about an encounter with Aurelius. What a fanciful thing his imagination did. Perhaps he needed rest, he was having hallucinations and was unable to distinguish them from the visions of his ability.

Anyway, he needed to continue his work. Continue using his ability to find the Inheritances of the past.

Anything to serve the Democracy.

With his final breath, 789th President Almes Caesar looked upon the beautiful thing before him.

It was the Living Concept of Democracy, and it was everything he imagined it to be.