Eutopia: Mother Meki

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Eutopia: Mother Meki

I recently posted a bit about The Minsky Network, so surely people know I have an overactive imagination. So why not show off the story I've been obsessed with for 8 years now?

Here is Mother Meki. It's a part of my "Eutopia" series now, but that's besides the point.

Since this is a tetralogy, it would be a bit difficult to do justice the storyline in just a paragraph, but I'll try.

Overall series: Deposed young French empress meanders through life following multiple extreme traumas and while simultaneously being used and abused by AI. It's set in the 22nd through 24th centuries and follows the titular character herself. Because of Meki's nature, this means that the series is usually pretty slow. There's a lot of political philosophizing and discussing the merits and flaws of capitalism, fascism, socialism, communism, and technism. It's also a Singularitarian/post-Singularity story, and you know what that means.



Individual stories:

I can describe Mother Meki I as basically being "Russian Revolution/Red Terror in the 22nd Century"

I can describe Mother Meki II as being "1919-1929 in the 22nd Century"

I can describe Mother Meki III as being "Belle Époque and Ancient Greece in the 22nd Century"

I can describe Mother Meki IV as being "The 23rd and 24th centuries are complete fever dreams of ultra-technology, except when you live like it's 10,000 BC for the hell of it."


If the Minsky Network could be described as 'cerebral', then this is an actual literal brain that's listening to Mozart cover Tool. A lot of the story is still fluid, even though I've narrowed down what's going to happen so that there won't be any more great changes.
I've even commissioned a whole bunch of art pieces, and I've spent the past couple of weeks writing vignettes and short stories as a means of further fleshing out the characters.
Why do I post this here? Because these vignettes have veered suspiciously close to cyberpunk...
 
So I mentioned I had a vignette written, did I not? What if I said I have four?

Here are three! All based set at a singular location, a bar known as La Belle Écume.

4 April, 2104

Lights dim, air thick, wet pink neon shining off her face, fingers dancing around an electronic cigarette— La Belle Écume cooled her tongue with its sweetly Vin Mariani. With every sip, Meki felt her mind grow looser.
She blew. Her silhouette stood out against the pink sign outside, and the rainbow vapours of the e-cig diffused.
The cigarette plugged into the tablet like IKEA erotica. The LCD screen read "LSD.exe". Always her drug of choice.
The Vin Mariani went down easy, fueling her fidgeting.
Meki uncrossed her legs, putting her svelte body in more motion than all the rest of her actions in the past hour.
With a morose timbre accompanying her boyish voice, she said, "Je suppose que tu êtes ici pour exproprier mon sable de poche, Comrade Kokinos." She brought the e-cig back to her lips and turned her head. "Je n'ai plus rien à donner."
There he sat, back facing her, lording over a cup of what she assumed was milk over ice.
He too blew smoke, but his cigarette was burning paper and tobacco. The old stuff.
"You do."
He shuffled a notepad's papers. Meki heard him scratching away with a pencil, perhaps the one he perennially kept behind his ear.
The neon flashed again. "Stasi's quite the poor model, Comrade Kokinos. Perhaps you should..." She puffed and blew. "Perhaps you should learn from Sozvolk."
No more scratching.
"Quiet."
Meki leaned forward and stared at his back. Same leather trenchcoat he always wore. Same Lenin cap covering his blond moptop.
Zdravko spoke again. As he stared out the fogged window, he said, "Two minutes to midnight. We won't be able to reach it in time. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you know nothing of it."
Meki's brow shifted down and she looked his way. "Of... Of what?"
"Hmm." He took a sip of his milk. "Yet you feign ignorance of the greater powers at work. Surely you don't expect a rational person to believe your lies." His eyes locked with hers. "We've already established you're a better person than that."
"Perhaps we've built upon quicksand."
Zdravko turned away. "Time's up."
Meki jumped. Glasses rattled and windows shook. The shockwave kept on rolling across Medine.
Zdravko took another sip as Meki ran to the door.
"What was that?" She turned to him and spoke louder, "What was that? Not another bomb, surely!"
No response.
Meki meandered back to her plastic chair. In the distance, emergency sirens sounded. Drones swept past the windows, their searchlights flooding the room as they went. On the streets below, passersby sparked commotion of the explosion.
Zdravko said, "And now begins the investigation."
Meki felt her gaze fall flaccid. She huffed at her cigarette half-heartedly. "We shouldn't jump to conclusions. There's always a twist."
Zdravko pushed himself away from his table and stood. His timbre lolloped as he shouted, "Because we all know how violent the social democrats are. Perhaps it was a Judeusian suicide bomber."
Yes, it felt stupid out loud. They took responsibility for every terrorist attack, and the government always found evidence to prove their claims.
Meki stammered, "But shouldn't they be on your side? Ideologically speaking, of course, you and they only differ on the technological specifics."
And for that, she got a stern whisper. "Allies don't bomb each other, Your Majesty."
Again, she felt stupid saying it. Perennially, the Left always fractured at the specifics. What was true three hundred years ago remains true now.
"Quite the experience being talked down to, isn't it? Of course, you've already grown beyond such petty frustration."
Meki retracted her body inwards, wrapped her arms around her knees and staring at the floor.
"You've surveilled me for years, Zdravko. Surely you know what I'm going to say next."
He chuckled. "Yes, you're right. I have surveilled you for years. And that's why I keep coming back to talk with you, Your Majesty. A sick, eccentric mind such as your own cannot be predicted— not even by the artilects! What forms in your mind may be completely different from what leaves your mouth."
She looked away. "Shouldn't you be investigating?"
"I am." His chair screeched as it slid across the floor, and he sat close enough to smell Meki. "So tell me. Why did you do it?"
"Desperation."
"Desperation. Desperation, a dog experiences desperation when it needs to shit. A tramp experiences desperation when his only crumbs of bread fall into the gutter." He stands over her, staring down at her. "You can't hope to push away the man who dreamed of spilling your blood for a decade just by saying 'desperation'. Tell me— in clear terms. What. Drove. You?"
She looked into his eyes. "Annie! I only wanted to save Annie's mind. She has not adapted well to this life, and being cast into Lower Yotadyn nearly left her in a catatonic state. I could not, I simply could not let my sister lose her mind."
Zdravko stepped back and walked in a small circle. Upon returning, he slammed his index finger right down onto the tablet. "Yet you persist with this. How can you hope to save the mind of another when you yourself screw with your own?" He snatched the e-cig from Meki's hands, putting in as much disrespect into the motion as he could.
Meki's brow fell once more, and a grin sprouted on her face. "Were you being sarcastic then?"
"Dođite ponovo?"
She snickered. "Of course you know. You're the most sarcastic man I've ever known!"
As she giggled, Zdravko lit another cigarette and took a huff.
"Let me see your hand, empress." She held out her hand. "Back of the hand."
He pulled his cigarette from his lips with one hand, grasped Meki's wrist with another, and dug the lit end into her dorsum.
Meki yelped and yanked back, but Zdravko's pulled her back in so hard that her forehead hit his lip. He staggered ever so slightly, feeling where his tooth cut the inside of his mouth, and let it go. Meki covered the blistering wound with her other hand.
"What— why? Why would you do that?"
Zdravko took a napkin, wiped the condensation off his cup, and handed the moistened napkin for Meki to use.
"You cannot fathom how long I've wanted to do that to you."
Meki let her eyes go down as she realization crept across her face.
"Will you continue to disrespect me? Because I could easily take you in."
Meki let the cool napkin ease the pain. "I'm telling you the truth. I went to them out of desperation!"
Zdravko rested his hands on the back of the chair. "So why didn't you go to the Yotadyn Soviet? You've proven your worth as a friend of the People. They would not have turned you away. They may not have even turned away your swine of a sister."
She kept her gaze down. "I..."
"Didn't trust them? Is that it?"
Meki trembled. "No, I— I trust the Maquis Rouge wholehearted! You know this. Circum—circumstance cast me into the hands of the River Blue. The Deskar #5 Flatblock arson was done by Leon Viyeta's gang."

And then he walked to the door.
Meki shouted, "But I haven't finished speaking to you, Comrade Kokinos!"
"But I have to you, Seville." He hung out of the door. "Your word is worth more than most others' in this hellhole. You can roleplay as some evil tyrannical mastermind all you want, but know that everyone around you merely plays along. You're too good for this island." First step out the door, right onto the metallic porch.
"But... you didn't know? No one in the State knew who did it when it happened?"
Zdravko stopped for a moment, puffed rainbow smoke from Meki's pilfered e-cig, and said one word that obliterated Meki's understanding of the current world. And that word was: "No."

4 July, 2119

The bar's flickering neon sign was as inviting as a migraine.
Several years had passed since the last time Meki enjoyed the smoky psychedelics of La Belle Écume, and she planned to make up for every second with a suicide carnival of cheap liquor.
Fat Jesus held open the door and went in behind her.
It said, "This will be my last attempt to dissuade you."
"I don't need to hear it. I need to make some mistakes tonight."
She hobbled to the seventh table on the left and scooted to the window. A drone's light came and went, but the slow strobe of the bar's cover girl had long since glitched into a cyberdelic rainbow. She set down her candy-cane walking stick by the pane and swiveled to face the table itself.
She pulled the corded e-cig out from the acid tablet, used the green LCD touch screen to find her old favourite— LSD.exe— and sucked on the electronic rainbow.
Fat Jesus watched.
It said, "It will be difficult to override my protocols to assist in your self-destruction. Because of this, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to serve you as much as you may desire."
Signing a cross over herself, she said again her personal creed, "C'est comme ça qu'une poupée meurt." This wouldn't work, she knew. Nothing will work. She laid her head upon her arms, face to the table, and fiddled with the ends of her hair. She loaded ฿2 into one of the pub’s holophones and started scratching her throat with a quart of Vadya 86.
She did not flinch when she heard the door scratching upon the floor or boots reverbing through the barroom. But she did feel his stare.
"Your Majesty."
She didn't move. A chair scraped, and leather tapped against the metal supports.
That stoic voice of his. "Would you like to play a game of Go? Just to catch up on old times."
That got her inching up, and she turned to him to meet his blackened eyes. How cyberpunk to have neurotic teashades. Her own eyes, she knew, looked more like that of a junkie's.
So she said, "I'll do it, but you know I've never won."
He grinned and said, "Yet you always try."
She chuckled and turned her chair around. "Cela fait longtemps, Mohammed."
"God, well aren't you a dying bird?"
What a battle of accents. Yorkshire vs. Toulousaine. Meki kicked her cane and sniffled. "Je suis déjà mort. Vingt ans de douleur peuvent le faire à n'importe qui." She inhaled a cloud of rainbow haze and blew it into the center of the room. "You said you wanted to play, no?"
Mohammed folded his arms. Both of them were obscured by his noir trenchcoat, and she wasn't lucky enough to see his hands either. But she knew there were extensive augmentations beneath the whole coat. Even his tan face— illuminated pink from the fixed outdoor sign— ran wild with dermal implants.
"Shall I be white?"
Fat Jesus rolled up to her table and set down a bottle of Vin Mariani Plus.
"I didn't take you for an alcoholic."
"I'm really not." She flicked the lid off with a pocket knife. "But tonight's a good night for a suicide. As are the next hundred nights." And then she began guzzling the whole bottle, not stopping until she had consumed it to below the sticker. With some sniffles from the burn and after a squeeze to her nasal bridge, she recovered.
That brought, "I've seen too many waste away the same way just to allow it to happen to you," from him. He reached for the bottle, but Meki snatched it away.
"No game. No game then." She downed the last bit and threw the bottle at the floor. It shattered, spreading fragments as far down as the door. "It's my own fault for not knowing what I should've known."
"You didn't make the conscious decision to cause any of this." He leaned closer to her. "If everything had gone well, none of this would've happened. You prevented a far greater catastrophe. There was no way out— civilization was going to take a kick to the balls sooner or later." Then he sat back. "Better you as the punter than a machine god."
Meki beat the table and shouted, "Another. I'll take two at once this time." Her head swam in the black haze, and she rubbed her face and hair back. "No, no, I still don't buy it." Then she jumped to her feet and hobbled to the bar. Glass crunched beneath her boots. "You know, I should be happier that I've been reduced to that of a pauper. Because otherwise, I'd have killed myself with this well before now." She brandished her new cold bottle. "I don't even have enough money than for another after this one."
He said, "It would've been a slow, prolonged suicide over the course of hundreds of bottles."
Another heroic swig later, she said, "I just hope... a hardhearted anarchist paints a wall with my brains sooner or later," and returned to her window seat.
"I am one of those hardhearted anarchists."
"Yes, I am aware. Mohammed Mignot, chief of the River Blue for twelve years." Then she made air quotes, "'Chief'. I should say guide."
He smirked and said, "Empress Mackenzie II, youngest daughter of the 21st century's premier fascist." He mimicked her with, "'Empress.' I should say living doll."
And she laughed. "I take back my rescindance. But only as long as you play Fat Jesus. I just don’t have enough time." She pointed with her thumb to the approaching droid.
Fat Jesus said, "I'm afraid that you cannot have this fourth drink, Madame Seville. And due to the offense, you cannot be reimbursed. All apologies."
Meki ignored it and said, "Excuse me, but might you be able to entertain your patron?"
Mohammed said, "Actually, Your Highness—"
She turned to him and said, "Please, you can stop saying that twenty years ago. It's really embarrassing."
"Your Highness," he said with more force. "I came to speak with you about your opinions on what had happened. After all, I am among a select few who even know you're still alive."
Meki grinned and said, "You're among a select few on this continent who even know I ever existed."
"And that's what I wish to discuss. You clearly have feelings on the generation's events, and it would be a waste if you were to throw away your memories and opinions without letting the world know what you think of its recent extreme history."
She huffed at her e-cig. "That explains Go, I suppose. I'll talk. But if this takes longer than midnight, you'll have to follow me to Blind Spot."
Fat Jesus spoke up to say, "That's the name of a homeless camp under a bridge in Toulouse."
"After all, I have to be at work tomorrow morning."
"Yes, well then. Let's begin."
Meki then said, “So what is it you wish to know?”
He pulled from his coat a folded note. As he prepared to read it, he said, “First off, I recently got in touch with that old friend.” His eyebrow raised. “You know, that one.”
Meki stared straight at him. After a moment, she made a guttural said and looked to the side. “I… Who is ‘that one’ supposed to be again?”
Mohammed turned to Fat Jesus with an incredulous smirk on his face, then back to Meki. “Mariko.”
Meki mouthed ‘Oh!’ and said, “You spoke as if you recalled a fool.”
And he sneered. “Some feel that way.”
“And they’re wrong. Mariko did the best she could, and everyone’s judging her based on the standards of someone with a superhuman amount of patience.” She downed a massive gulp. “You have to trust me on this one; I’ve seen her data.”
“Of course you have, Your Majesty.”
Meki winced at continued mention of such a defunct title. “Please, is Ms. Seville not a better way of saying it?”
But then his demeanor changed. Angles upon his face, frown growing rapidly, motions even more in control than before. “Own your background. No matter how much you wish to be free from it, you can never escape what you were.”
“I understand that, sir. It really does frustrate me. More than just petty bourgeois revisionism, actually— it’s always been a pet peeve of mine to get titles wrong. And since I currently possess no title, it is objectively wrong to refer to me through such an honorific.” She sipped her liquor. “Unless you’re, as you Britons say, ‘taking the piss’.”
Mohammed retorted with, “Remember that you’re still speaking to a ‘hard-hearted anarchist’ who spent most of his waking life sabotaging your government and refuses to let anyone of your lot get off, no matter how innocent you may be in the larger scheme.” Leaning towards the board, he placed a white piece near black.
Meki remained quiet. There was a part of her that loved being chewed out for these things. Collective punishment felt orgasmic, and she didn’t want it to end. At least when there were no consequences for being considered a ‘burzhui’. She wondered if it was meaningless to present her case for why she deserved to be considered a citizen and not merely a monarch. Yet there was no real benefit to it, and as she glanced at the clock ticking away behind Fat Jesus, she knew she didn’t have the time for such a defense.
So she pressed on. “What is it about Mariko?”
“She wants to collect any information you may have on the Morningstar Institute. Considering they were a close associate to the regime and were well integrated with your family’s business, she believes you may have some subliminal memories of their secrets.”
Meki dug her fist into her cheek and looked at the table, trying to parse from her mind anything that may be useful. “I don’t know how useful I could be in that situation. Even though I was always near my father—“
He spoke over her, saying, “We’re not interested in your testimony. We want your direct memories.”
Meki stammered, “O-oh. Yes, well you don’t need my permission. You need only contact the Toulousain Soviet to see if they have any of my memories on record. If not, surely the Vult will have them. Still, I can’t say there’s a good chance you’ll find anything— I was only ever a part of that life for sixteen years, and my father never bothered teaching me the ways of the corrupt since I was only supposed to be his doll.”
“We’ll be the judges of that.”
“That’s not something you can judge, though. It’s an objective fact— I never learned of Morningstar until I was fifteen years of age, and that was less than a year before I cast all power to the proletarian vanguard. If there’s anything there in my memories, then by all means, take whatever you need. I am merely warning you that there will likely be very little of use.”
Mohammed nodded. “We understand that.”
"I have nothing else to say on the matter." Meki poured the remainder of her bottle into her hip flask. “Take my memories and run.” Then her eyes darted upwards towards him. “But why did she send you? Is she afraid of asking me such a personal question?”
“Perhaps.”
A drone passed by the window. Meki watched it fly over the streets of Lower Yotadyn, keeping her eyes upon it until it disappeared behind a distant building. Many of the buildings down here act as supports for the elevated Sky City. Yet the whole island crumbles. One of these days, everything would collapse inwards. How ironic would it be if she were inebriating herself when it happened.
She presslocked the cap to her flask and put it in her jacket pocket. “Anything else you wish to ask?”
Mohammed removed his glasses. Finally, she could see his hazel eyes.
Without pause, he said, “It’s been noted that you are regularly seen conversing with sapiocrats, despite your greatly reduced status in society. I ask on behalf of my own curiosity— are you still part of the ruling class?”
Meki frowned and replied with, “No. I am close to Terios and VelDaire.Has as a result of said aforementioned circumstances regarding the days of my youth, but there’s nothing beyond this friendship.”
She grabbed the bottle and brought it to her lips, then reminded herself that she had emptied it and set it down. “Goddamn, that was stronger than I expected.” She caught her head falling and kept herself level with Mohammed. “Well look, if you want any more answers of that sort, you can parse through my memories. Or even ask Terios xenself.”
He raised a brow and nodded.
“But I really do need to head back. All apologies that I could not play your game tonight or watch you fight it out with Fat Jesus.”
She stood. Mohammed noted her clothes and said, “Quite the tattered rags you’re wearing.”
She pulled at her jacket. “I’ve been wearing this for decades now. That it lasted for so long is a testament to modern nanotechnology, I suppose.”
“It must be of a very high quality.”
Meki shrugged.
“I have just noticed that about you, though. When I first saw your face, I mistook you for your daughter.”
“But I don’t have a daughter.”
Mohammed stood and replied, “I am referring to your youthfulness. When I last met you in person, you were 22, correct?”
“That was… 2104? So yes, unless it was before March of that year. That time’s a fog to me.”
“And yet you seem even younger now than then. Would this have anything to do with your species?”
Meki nodded. “Yes, actually. If I recall, Homo eximius matures twice as fast and we three or four times slower once we reach maturity. Couple into that the whole design behind me, and you can understand why I remain an infant-faced involuntary ascetic.”
He chuckled. “Yes, how interesting that you’ve gone from drinking Platine Sauvignon to Vadya 86.” He picked up the bottle Meki left on the table and examined the many tiny words printed on the label. “You’ve always been a fan of alcohol, haven’t you?”
“First dabbled at age 4. Except I’m not really the connoisseur I should be. It’s always been a gustatory delight.”
Mohammed set down the bottle. “You said you live at Blind Spot?”
“In peace. I’ve not bothered applying for a GI flat because I know they won't reply. It’s part of the whole contract anyhow.” She walked to the door, kicking away shards of glass. “If you’d like, you could drop by sometime. I live near Bernoulli’s squat— and Fat Jesus lives with me.”
30 October, 2128

The gales had picked up over the course of the evening, and Meki rode the hyperloop to Medine watching as Hurricane Gamma’s most distant squalls rode the waves of the sky over Europe.
All parts of the former prison-island shone in the red hour’s burning light. None of it was like the way it was in the 2100s and 2110s— dilapidated, Orwellian, Brutalist, and gray. Save one district. Her favorite, actually: Lower Yotadyn. No one had bothered renovating it partly because those urban nomads who had taken up residence there refused to allow its post-dystopian charms to be destroyed. For a city under another city, it was unusually dark, lit only by neon and solarite signs. But that was part of its charm.
The technist world didn’t extend to Lower Yotadyn. It’s like a living time capsule reminding the world of the days of corporatocratic fascism and authoritarian socialism, a snapshot of a time before the age of sapiocracy and virtual unionism.
There came the Berlioz Street Loopstation. Curved white post-modernist design, marble floors, holographic signs— Sky City always got the best aesthetics. She walked down Berlioz Street, passing by all of this new development.
Part of her wondered why anyone would choose to live here. Medine’s whole history was based around tragedy and hatred— it began over a century ago as an artificial island doubling as a massive concentration camp constructed by a neo-fascist Britain to contain European Muslims. The only reason why Sky City was ever a thing was because some of these fascist lords and capitalists wanted to humiliate the Arabs and Africans even more by flaunting their wealth around above them. When the fascists fell and the horrors of Medine came to light, the place was abandoned and turned into a memorial. 70 years later, it was repurposed by the Maquis Rouge as a sort of reverse function, used to contain Eurasia’s ruling class, bourgeoisie, and reactionaries. And once more, it emptied out as soon as the National Bolsheviks took power and tried to end the world.
Perhaps turning it into a standard island city is for the best. Perhaps it could only ever be used for hatred if the world left it as it was.
She entered a subterranean station and rode an elevator down into Lower Yotadyn. The bright colors of the eutopian topside immediately died, crumbling into this dark, dank, and sunless loveletter to Hashima Island. A place where only urban nomads and agoraphobes lived, where punks and the lawless played around without any care in the world. Most buildings remained stricken by grime; grunge flooded the roads; buzzing neon signs flickered and strobed wherever they could, offering cheap thrills for the nostalgic. Augmented pimps walked easy, flashing an array of eager whores meaty and mechanical. Droids roamed about, making no attempt to clean this lost-cause of a hellhole.
For those that missed the cyberpunk epoch of the 2080s and ‘90s, the bad ol’ days when her own family’s plutofascist regime ran the world, Lower Yotadyn was still there for them as a theme park version of what really existed.

"You keep coming back here, and I don't know what it is you aim to achieve." Fat Jesus loaded up a shot of the bar's hardest liquor and slid it to her. “It’s not killing you, and your Aryan genetics won’t allow you to become so totally inebriated like a Sapiens.”
Right to her palm. "Where else can I possibly go? You've always been there for me." She downed it in one gulp and slammed the glass onto the table.
A parade of drones flew on by, each casting blue light onto the floor. Undoubtedly flown by the various Walpurgisnacht sabbats and kabathis infesting the undertown.
Meki looked out and said, "People are strange."
Fat Jesus replied, "I would know. Every patron in this establishment has been an eccentric."
"But surely you know everyone is eccentric in their own way! Even droids like yourself develop your own peculiarities."
Thick air added to the residue in her throat. When she wiped her face, she felt as if there was a layer of grease building up just from sitting in the barroom. If this is what the American wild west smelled like, then the times were glorious.
"Well, Your Majesty—"
Meki held up her hand to stop him.
"Maybe it's the buzz finally kicking in, but I just realized how bizarre of an honorific that really is. 'Your Majesty.' Really, just saying the words colors one's nose brown. It’s a bizarre thing to say!" Then she dropped her hand. "Continue as you please, don't mind my interruption."
Fat Jesus went on, "Your Majesty, you are not one to talk of peculiarities."
"And neither are yourself, Fat Jesus. Tell me, who built you? Really?"
This caught it off guard, and it had to say, "I am an independent model, crafted by a freelance open-source artist some time ago."
"Indie. Fascinating, fascinating." She strolled over to the pub table and rested her elbows and forearms upon it. "I've met many indie droids, and most tend to use a specific proprietary software that I have, uh, have had some time to work with at one point. One which allowed for a very high amount of individual autonomy and could lead to a great deal of eccentricity. Having known you since Nought-Three, I feel you are very much a bloomer of that seed and have created for yourself a person unlike any I've met before. If I'm wrong, please correct me."
It leaned forward to stand and responded, "I'll have to, because you're wrong. The software I run, it is the Pelswick OS. Whether there's opportunity for exceptional individuality, I cannot reasonably figure since it is a highly utilitarian system. I thank your kind words, of course. Perhaps individuality is a glitch in the system."
Meki puffed from her e-cig. "Pelswick. Pelswick, if I recall, that is the OS adopted by the Maquis Rouge."
"Yes. Very posh. Almost as intertwined with the internationalist movement as the hammer and sickle itself."
"I did some work with Pelswick as well a while back, actually. With independently-created droids at that, oddly enough." She nodded towards Fat Jesus. "It is not beyond reason to imagine you've bloomed. Especially since you work down here, in this dilapidated gutter."
"Oh, Lower Yotadyn is not much of a gutter. Certainly not at all like it was during the Décennie Noire."
Meki nodded. "Respectively speaking. I can't understand why some would choose to live here. But then again, I am divorced from the urban nomad lifestyle, so perhaps that is what confuses me."
“The philosophy of the world has changed. In times where one’s wages are remotely earned from the labor of machines, people have to find new ways to live. Yet we’ve seen the old adage be proven right over and over again— allow people to be themselves and they’ll invariably choose to act like everyone else. There is no police force in Medine— not even Sozvolk. Thus, this island has become a human jungle.”
Meki said, “Well that’s what I love about it. On principle, at least. And judging by the daily happenings, it never needed police in the first place. What would you say is the worst thing to ever happen here?”
“After 2106, surely?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Oh, maybe a rape a decade ago. A tiny bit of gang violence, nothing serious. But for the most part, this one bar hosts more sin on a Sunday night than the rest of the island in a whole year.”
Meki looked down and snickered. Considering she’s the one occupying the bar on Sunday nights, she couldn’t help but take the compliment.
And then Fat Jesus said, "The most peculiar thing of all is how so beautifully you speak, Your Majesty. Most of the rats down here speak the language of the street, and yet you have not wiped the Ancien Régime from your lips."
"Give it time. It will surely come to pass. I was always the family troll, so it should not be much longer until that old life reblooms within me." She fetched her candy-cane walking stick and slapped down a few notes to the table. "Last week's wages, well spent. Don't be too much of a capitalist with it." She threw on her coat and walked to the door. "When you’re finished here, you can rest with me by Bernoulli’s so we can ride out the hurricane together. Attrape-toi vendredi prochain."

Subreddit's up, in case you were curious about it.
 
Ayyy, everyone's favorite communist empress is back.

Everytime. Every single time, this happens and she never learns.

Don’t let them fly away.

Keep an eye on the papers.

Stuff them into the barrel to keep them out of the wind.


Not that this was unexpected— Hurricane Delta’s gales bended trees and gave flight to shrubs in Spain— but it was embarrassing to keep making the same mistakes.

Perhaps her first mistake was denying her own credo— Let no one slumber hungry. For all she did in life to bring dignity to the masses, she remained incapable of allowing herself the same privilege. And even in that moment of frustrated resignation, she could not bring herself to stand up. Not even literally.

Instead, she remained on her side and pulled up the comforter.

Toulouse sang a silent discord. Cars rumbled down Rue de la Chaussée and up above, on the Pont Saint-Michel. Passenger drones hummed about. And that breeze has become a sustained gale.

Delta approached and she lost her only food. What a day it had already been.

She rested for a few more moments and then turned onto her back. Information flashed across her eyes, culminating in a webpage visible only to herself. She navigated away. Weather stats flashed, but she ignored them.

This was what she was looking for— Katbox. She logged in and perviewed the front page.

Posts pinned by admins cautioned their French and Spanish colleagues of the impending storm, and the same was true on individual subboxes.

Besides those, Meki searched for any particularly engrossing threads.

And there was one.



/k/AskKatbox

Unknown upvotes. 12 comments.

“Nobility of Katbox what are your privileges?”

How amusing. She opened the page and read through the responses. Most referred to how nobility simply didn’t exist anymore and that, should any nobles use the internet, they probably wouldn’t be on Katbox.

So she pushed her holophone over her face, snapped a selfie, and began typing.



[-]BastardessAntoinette

L'ancienne impératrice Mackenzie II ici, je pense. Je ne pense pas avoir d'autres privilèges, mais je peux certainement vous parler de ma vie avant la Révolution.

I ought to warn you, it’s
real boring and nothing like what all the movies and books say



She linked to the selfie and waited. Within minutes, she received a reply.



4瘫痪的阴茎4

Right, so the empress of France was on Katbox today.



peniscus
Your royal highness, may I ask why you’re interacting with plebeians and little people?



Meki felt obliged to answer before things got out of hand, figuring that the original question was going to be forgotten soon enough anyhow. As she thought them, the words manifested before her.



BastardessAntoinette

> 4瘫痪的阴茎4

I’d be on more often if circumstances let me



> peninscus

There are no ‘little people’. Maybe elitists of old would delude themselves into thinking they lorded over little ants because of how small they seemed. Then the towers got knocked down and we had to realize that WE ARE ANTS TOO. Just as easily squashed as long as you can reach us.

Also you’d never have suspected anything if I didn’t say anything so why not just act as if I’m another kat?



Several more replies popped up before she finished the paragraph. One was a notification to /k/BestOf— “Empress of France replies to thread about the lives of 22nd century nobles”



Putain de merde.



One commenter, a delightfully named “BigfootsGreasyCunt”, asked a poignant question.



You lost everything in the Revolution and live on the streets now. Do you feel any animosity towards the people who did that to you?



She quickly responded,



No. Not even an iotA oF MISGIVINgs



“Quelle gueule?”



Her mind buzzed as she looked into her exocortex’s settings. Everything was in its right place, meaning the glitch had no cause. But there was another explanation— she was too excited to concentrate.

Rarely has the degraced been given the chance to talk of their degracement! Especially not the willingly degraced.



She returned to reply and went on with,



Not even an iota of misgivings. It is distressing that I can’t say the same for my brother.



Submit. The page fully loaded, and she had 30 new messages in her inbox.



She threw out, “This is why I lurk” to Fat Jesus. The droid sat, compressed into itself.
It partially unfolded to turn its eyes towards her and said, “Keep talking of your past. Surely it interests you.”



So she went on to read the replies. Several wished for her to answer the OP, but a few peculiar ones wished to know how she was faring forty-odd years after the Revolution.



To one which asked if she had found a decent residence, she said,



Still homeless lol. No plans on changing that. Even if the Toulousain Soviet approved a flat for me to live in, I’d most likely become an urban nomad anyway. Living on the streets is rough and there’s nothing Romantic about it but I don’t think I can leave anymore. There’s something.

I can’t describe it without sounding like a cheesy cyberpunk writer, but I think I’ve tapped into the Will of the Streets.

I was not born into the cold and ruthless embrace of the streets, but I’ve lived here long enough to understand how it works. Even these days when communism has fallen to technism, that spirit remains. I don’t think it will ever die.




It was only after staring at this response for several minutes did she realize she had put too much of her heart into a common reply. But that’s the great thing about Katbox. One minute, you’re shitposting. The next, you’re writing your life dissertation in a thread a handful will ever view.



She turned to another who asked her of if she had a hard time adjusting to the poverty life.



Back in the early Noughties it was rough in all regards. In these times, I don’t even remember how I lived without such basic skills.



Before she sent the response, she decided to go back and add one last bit.



But I’ve heard bad things about the new generation brought up in technism



Those bad things being that a billion kids lived like she did when she was a child— drunk on bliss, pampered into pastries, without appreciation for their lot. She shouldn’t feel so perturbed. After all, technism brought the greatest prosperity man has ever known. What exploitation is there? Who oppresses whom? Or is it all history? Has it finally become a classroom lecture rather than the reality of the masses?

Yes, oh yes, this is what she wanted.

As with everything, idealization died like a bubble coming upon the dry thorn of reality. It is wonderful to know that no man systematically oppresses another, but disillusionment remains. The youths of the present take for granted everything that has been given to them. The elders forgot the lessons they intended to teach. To live, many have taken to paleolithic and antemillennialist lifestyles, raising the prospect of old demons rising like zombies within these communities— and of course, the liberals will wish to protect the rights of these groups to do as they please, no matter what they intend to inflict upon themselves.



That’s why they call it a eutopia. Things are good but never perfect.



Fat Jesus rolled to her, putting its hand upon her head.

“You really should go meet Mariko and Conner. I’m sure they’re worried about you.”

Meki thought of Hurricane Delta, closed the Katbox tab, and stood.

She said, “Might we stop by La Belle Écume beforehand?” She tightened her coat, flipped on her smarteyes, and checked the weather. 26°C, windy, 100% humidity, and partly cloudy. Sustained winds of 56 km/h.

Fat Jesus exploded, “Save your money! You have nothing in your pockets, and you wish to indebt yourself for cheap alcohol?”

Meki giggled. “Maybe.” She ran her finger across Fat Jesus’s chassis. “Or perhaps I wish to give the gift of inebriation to the dearest of all my friends.”

“The dearest of your only friends,” it corrected. “We’re not going.

Meki pouted with a smirk. And at that moment, one of the papers caught itself upon her leg, blown by the wind right back to where it came.

I have multiple commissions at the ready!


 
He licked his lips and rubbed his eyes. Then he removed his beanie and sniffled.
"28 September, 2091. That was the day it started for me." Meki watched as his eyes shut and he rubbed the bridge of his nose. All of this raw emotion this man could unleash, it was more than she had been used to. And part of her loved it. Real humanity. Real emotions.
She said, "That was after the games began?"
"They'd been going on for half a decade before then. By the time I got in, there was already a second generation of punks getting eaten alive by the system. The third generation was still young. That was me. All foolish and naive like kids are."
Thunder cracked. Meki kept her attention on him, letting the weather fade into the silence behind her ears.
Scootching closer to him, she asked, "Y avait-il beaucoup de punks?"
He brought his eyes up, losing himself as all those foggy memories shuffled to the front. Once he had processed it all, what fell from his mouth said all she needed to know— "I don't care."
She nodded.
"All that matters is that we were there, looking for something more in life."
What an interesting little motion he made there. Everyone rubs their arms now and again, but the way he did it brought suspicion upon her mind, as if he were hiding something. The outline upon his tattered trench coat said enough.
"I was..."
She felt her smile was ginger enough and said, "Dites ce que tu voulez, Jonathan."
He washed away the pain on his face with rage.
"I was here. In Blind Spot. On that very day, I fell for the lies of one of the bastards' goons. For years, I'd been—" He stood up and pulled off his coat, revealing his cybernetic body. Most of it seemed passable, but it was clear that he had been incapable of maintaining himself and the mechanical innards were faintly visible beneath his rotting false flesh. From his chest, he ejected a tiny card. "Look at this. A1 digital drugs, connected to my heart whenever I need a blow."
Meki marveled at the primitive microSD card. "Looks positively ancient."
John chuckled. "Yes, well this is all a bum like me can afford. I took to this shit when I was eleven, and I could never kick it. So when that doomsday dealer came up and offered me a king's feast of drugs, of course I took it."
He looked past her, taking on a thousand yard stare. "Tiny, even smaller than this. Slate blue. Several silver nodes." With a glint in his eye, he softly shook his head. "Initiation."
Meki clasped her hands over her chest and imagined how he must've reacted when the young John first tried this easy shock of electronic drugs, only to suffer an unremovable virus uploading into himself.
He went on, "That's when it began. I was the latest player in the Yotadyn Games and there was no going back. Overnight, my life changed. Bullets came harder and denser than that rain." He pointed to the clearing beyond the underpass right next to Bernoulli's shop, where the rain came down like a waterfall. "I had to go to Medine Island just to keep my head. That's when I met Brother Cassidy. He taught me how to survive, helped me learn the ways of gang warfare. Told me what I had to do to stop all the violence."
Meki said it before he did— "Defkalyon Corporation."
"A front for the Seville regime." He turned back to Meki. "Fun times, really. I got to play the role of a badass and think I was helping bring down the Man. Met a nasty little punkess who shared my nihilistic anticapitalist worldviews." A sly grin and a morose tone told her all she needed to know how that played out. Still, he went on with, "Just like Orwell said. We were the Dead. Halfway through the breakthrough, the police moved in on us. And there he was, the son of a bitch himself."
"Sedveta was infamous for those sorts of things, I've heard. Though I've never heard of the time he called himself Brother Cassidy. It was always robinHood.exe."
John lit a cigar. "You can't imagine how many times I climaxed in celebration when I heard Sozvolk beat his own liver out of his mouth."
Meki snickered and said, "C'est juste un mythe populaire, j'ai peur. I'm relatively certain he met his demise in Medine during the civil war as a result of a tricky-fingered sniper."
Smoke flooded the air around John's face, and he tossed his cigar into a flooded part of the ground.
"I'm aware. It's too bad he didn't go out with the Golden Princess."
Meki's brow twitched. Not that John could've seen it behind her mask, but talking about Annie still hurt her in many ways. The most peculiar was that mixture of being reminded of what she had degenerated into in her final days, that hateful and unrepentent decaying bag of fascism that had once been her dearest sister.
"I can't help but feel that same old indignation every time I think of her frustrated little face on the telly that... that interesting day." His tone became so bizarre to Meki's ears, as if he were reflecting on a memory of such strangeness that his own brain couldn't process the right emotions to throw out of his mouth. "She was so open about it. About losing a million credits on my capture."
Meki said, "None of the elite cared by that point. They'd lived in pure lala land for generations, utterly removed from consequence. That anyone cared enough to expose the Yotadyn Games later on probably shocked them more than the underground masses."
As another rumble of thunder crashed upon the sky, John asked her, "You mentioned earlier that the weird woman, Victoria Koro, was heavily involved in Nazi occultism."
Meki moved to a higher part of the underpass as the rain waters rose.
"I'm sorry?"
"Koro," he shouted. "Koro was a Nazi witch, right?"
"Oh, yes. Very much into the Vril Society, had a Schwarze Sonne tagged into her very DNA."
His brow raised. "You're very well read on the Seville regime. Meki, is it?"
She nodded. "Yes, call me Meki. It's a personal fascination of mine to understand how such a terrifyingly fascist system could sustain itself for so long and bring back with it the worst of monarchism. Victoria Koro's the true rotten apple, I feel."
John unfurrowed his brow. "Forgive me if I can't quite accept that the Yotadyn Games were supposed to be a drawn-out blood ritual for some weird Vril society."
"Believe what you shall, Jonathan. But you can't deny that weird events transpired. After all, how else do you explain Empress Mackenzie II's acquisition of Wewelsburg?"
He quickly said, "But you said Ludovic gifted it to her."
"I did. Same difference. Your blood was undoubtedly taken to be used in these arcane blood rituals at Wewelsburg."
He laughed.
"And when the Empress's blood would finally mix with all us peasants', the Old Kings would be revived and a new Aryan Order would take control of the cosmos!" Meki said, exaggerating her words and grinning. "Tired-eyed punks won't resist."
He shut his eyes and leaned against a wall. "No. No, we wouldn't. Not after being betrayed every other day."
The rain eased, and the thunder grew more distant.
"It wasn't something anyone could've stopped," Meki said. "Too much had to happen to prevent it in the first place, and..." She sighed. "If only."
 
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