Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: ion fyr 2026
It had been ages since Etelka had been outdoors in public. She could not remember the last time, and it had not been in this wonderous future.
Everything about the experience was different, alien. The sky was blue with whisps of fuzzy clouds and a solitary massive airship in the distance, black against the robin’s egg of the horizion.
Unlike her other forays into Nila’s hellish time period, there was no need for the damned breathers, at least not today.
Ctesiphon, or as they render it, Tesifon, had the blessing of being in a place with a constant breeze this time of year (whatever time of year it was), and the otherwise ubiquitous choking smog was currently at bay.
Alien too, were the buildings. Glass and steel and plastics rose into the heavens, to heights that the architects of the late 19th century would have certainly dreamed about, but could have never engineered, though the late Professor Rex would have claimed to have had designes for but, alas, for the funding.
Here on the somewhat crowded rooftop, she guessed 150 meters up from the ground, she sensed some swaying in the wind, nothing compared to the Hut, and neither she nor any of the other guests seemed bothered by it. However, the idea that a building would sway was a curious thing to her; buildings only a dozen stories tall didn’t sway in the wind. Airships did, but never buildings.
And the clothing. She had long ago become acustomed to Nila’s costume, with the tight leggings and muted colors (all black for Ms Tagore), and had herself worn some variations so as to fit in, but here and now, she wouldn’t recognizer her own reflection. The garments were too tight, too short, too black (for her tastes) and seemed altogether entirely synthetic. A glaringly shiny vest to match the equally shiny flared skirt. She wasn’t certain, but suspected that Luc had secretly instructed his servant, whom he had sent out shopping for her, to choose garments that he prefered on his lady friends.
She looked at him as he sat across from her, looking out over the horizon through his dark glasses. Luc, of course, was dressed as he always had been since they had become acquainted. Black leather pants and jacket, open to his bare chest like a vulgar pirate. Gold chains on his naked pectorals and wrists. Jet black beard and hair to his shoulders, oiled and perfumed, like some sultan…very much like a sultan, I should think.
She raised her glass by the stem, sending bubbles tumbling up and releasing a waft of a scent that she barely noticed as it was erased by the breeze. She sniffed the rim of the glass and took another sip. “What is this, Luc? Some sort of berry?”
“Cranberry wine. From Newland. They grow there in swamps, or marshes, maybe.”
“It’s light, like cider…I think I like it.” She did like it.
“About Nila’s arm…. Is it unusual for them to grow back so quickly?”
He wagged his finger, indicating discretion. She could see him looking around behind the lenses of his glasses.
There were people nearby. A couple at a nearby table, entranced with each other. At another, a pair of men laughed over some shared joke in the local language and jostled affectionately. An old woman and a young man, maybe her son or grandson (or gigalo) ate quietly. She didn’t notice any cause to be paranoid, but then, this was Luc’s haunt, his city, so she took it under advisement.
After a hearty swig from his beer glass, he answered her. “Yes, it is rather quick. Our friend’s facility is as top notch as it is underground…” He paused long enough for her to recognise the unofficial nature of the doctor’s clinic, “…but it still should have been weeks, not days. Something is going on with Nila. I’m no doctor, but the meds should have kept her under for longer than that. And the juice shouldn’t have been…fizzy…like that.” He flicked the side of his glass, sending a cascade of bubbles up the sides.
“Any idea what is causing it? I mean…I have my suspicions, but I am not familiar with future medical practices, or all of the science behind it.”
“I am not sure. Daytime didn’t have an explanation either and she is the expert in the field.” He looked at her over the upper rim of his glasses.
“The rings? That is the only explanation I have. We never found them. You and the Constable and I searched inside and outside the cargo room for them, sifting through Nila’s…gobbits for hours. Not even a fragment.” [Etelka found it uncharacteristic of her to use that word.]
After a long, contemplative pause, while they each looked out at the scrubland to the south past the dry riverbed, Luc added, “and then there’s the matter of Pool…Not our Pool, if he even is our Pool, but the one on the vid. Wasn’t he left on the island in 1880 something?”
“’89,” she clarified.
“Yeah, 1889. How did he get here? If that is the original. Is there an original? What if they’re both anthromorphs? The real Pool isn’t immortal, is he? That would explain some things, but be an offense to immortality in others.”
She sent him a glare in defense of Pool. “He’s not the cad that you seem to think he is, Mr Maron. I recognize that you and Mr Pool have your differences, but he is a good man as far as I know him, and I will not have you denigrate him, despite how much you despise him for his nature.”
“Come on,” he said in his own defense, “I don’t despise him at all. He grates. He bumbles and smells like a musty closet, but I don’t hate him. I just don’t like him.”
She continued to glare at him, but set it aside for now. “It is a conundrum. I admit that much. I don’t have an inkling of how there are two of them. It was Pool in the projection. That is certain. His mustache had vanished and even Nila recognized her raincoat, but how could he have come to the 23rd century? That I cannot comprehend. Unless someone else built a…” she looked furtively around the rooftop restaurant, “…a device, like we have in the Hut.”
Etelka continued, “That, of course, is a possibility. My own discovery of the process was itself strange and seems a temporal loop.” She ended the sentence in a hushed tone, audible to no one save Luc, as they leaned toward each other over their drinks. “It could be that in the future, some one gains control of the Hut or copies the…device, or it could be that I or we go back and fetch him from the island or from somewhere else in 1889 or the 90s—he did not look older than he is in my memory of him now—and carries him to 22….”
Luc did a calculation in his head, “2222. The WCC calendar is year 252. Subtract…add 1970.”
“My prevailing theory right at this moment is that somehow…however it was that Pool traveled here and then to Singhopolis, there was a point at which the original was copied, we ended up with a copy on that island, and the original or a separate copy escaped from that mountain before it was destroyed.”
“I hope to the gods that it was the original who escaped and that our original Constable Pool did not himself die alone on that island,” she continued.
“And, Luc, if it were not for my having witnessed what is possible with my own eyes regarding the construction of mechanical men in your time, I would scarcely believe it was possible. While I can imagine the fine mechanical engineering end of things being possible, if not imposingly complex, I have difficulty believing that they think and reason as we do. Even the most advanced anthromorphs do not think as we do, do they?”
“It is possible. It is illegal…very, very illegal. Has been since the start of the World Congress. They even fought a war over it. I don’t know the details it being history and all, but part of the story of the foundation of the great WCC,” he said with sarcastic awe, “began when one group of isolationist or nationalist states went to war with another and both sides claimed the other was lead by some sort of early anthromorphs.”
Luc went on. “I don’t know the details, like I said, because the story is rather full of shit in a lot of respects, and constructed to glorify the heroic businessmen who saved the world from madness. It’s hard to separate the vid-screen fantasies from reality. For all I knew the people in the 19th century were knuckle-dragging troglodytes choking on soot and working to death in mills.”
“You still choke on soot and work in mills today, Luc. Nothing has changed except the veneer of modernity.”
“True.”
He took a long sip of his beer, while she sipped hers.
In silence, watching the people on the rooftop beergarten, Etelka considered what Luc had said regarding the early days of this apparently world-wide government. She had never heard mention of either a parliamentary system, or a monarchy, and knew just from context that business magnates held sway.
“Luc,” she asked, “it is permisible to ask about the rulers of this time?” Leaving it unclear whether it was permisible to ask him or just to ask in general. Some places were like that. Taboos and such around the way things were established and run and by whom.
“You mean the WCC?”
“Yes, if it okay to ask. I don’t want to arrouse suspicion, given our friend’s activities.”
“I think as long as we’re not drawing attention to ourselves by chanting anti-regime slogans in the street, or being loudly critical in public…” he made a subtle spread with his fingers meant to include the others on the rooftop around them, “…we should be fine.”
“This place, Tesifon, is not at all the most monitored civil society, if it could even be called that, but it isn’t Singhapol,” he said with a smirk.
“That’s another thing that has caught my interest,” she said. “Is it Singhapol or Singapolis?”
“Either. Singhapolis is the official name of the city, but everyone drops the final syllable.”
“What I’m really interested in, however, is what kind of education exists in this period. People do not seem at all mentally impoverished, but I’ve seen and heard nothing at all of schooling or educational institutions. I even searched the Net like you showed me, but could not find references to libraries…the word, yes, but not the buildings of physical books.”
“To your first question: there is schooling, but it is sponsored. Children are educated to a point by their parents’ corporate patrons. They learn to read and write, and then they are assessed for their potential. Most are funneled into appropriate vocations, receiving necessary education in the process.”
“The cities are governed by one or more corporate patrons, and minor subsidiaries, you know, to bring in food and handle transportation and policing. The WCC as a whole recieves representatives from around 500 of the biggest and decides on general policies, while the local corporations handle local administration within the larger constraints.”
“Libraries like you know them, might exist, but people stopped making paper books a long time ago, so most of the ones that are still around are in private collections or were reused a hundred years ago, when they became too old to function.”
“We do have books; they are just vid-books on our scrolls, or maybe written technical manuals.”
She listened and was saddened hearing that there were no longer libraries for the common people. “What about the origins of the World Congress?”
“I really only know about it from vid-books they make kids watch: around 250, well 252 years ago—that’s the current year, they say, anyway—after the Anthromorph wars, the old nations merged into the World Congress, which eliminated wars and poverty and mass starvation. People became equal and everyone had something to contribute.”
“It seems like an enlightened age…”
“That is what they teach 10 year olds. There has never been equality anywhere I’ve seen, only corruption and wealth on the one hand and people who exist to serve the economy on the other. Just ask Nila’s parents…” He was interrupted by a barely audible vibration in his pocket.
He took at his scroll, furled so that it was a simple 15 cm matte black tube, and held it to between his ear and his mouth. “Yeah,” he answered.
He said nothing else to the device, but to Etelka: “She’s awake.”
Ion Fyr 