#anyone else feel insane when the crystal palace motif hits?

[arohawke]

a new (old) plan is put in motion

JACK (as Connadine): As anyone with even a passing familiarity will tell you, we are a principality of spies. Of course-

AUSTIN: There’s a little chuckle [imitates a faint chuckle]

JACK(as Connadine):  We know the extent of that understatement.

[“Adagio” by Jack de Quidt begins playing]

Some five thousand years ago, on our home planet, our predecessors employed one of the most remarkable psychological operations ever undertaken by the Principality. Using the immense future-seeing power of an oracle engine, they generated hundreds of thousands of near-flawless predictions: who would sit in government; the weather on a winter’s day; the right career for the son of a surgeon; the number of toy boats in an ornamental pond, the color of their sails;

These predictions were made in something like a loop in which the Principality’s citizens, whether they recognized it or not, were cast as actors. When two thousand years pass between the overture and the final bows, the exact shape of the play becomes helpfully obscured to anybody but the director. The system of control and surveillance was so comprehensive, so effective, so far-reaching that it cloaked itself in its total obviousness. And I’ve been sent to Palisade to bring this planet on cycle.

Of course, given the loss of the machine that drove the original project, the circumstances are meaningfully different, but Kesh has changed too. We understand, as an old friend of mine once said, that the easiest way to ensure that any tomorrow is a Tuesday is to make sure people believe that today is a Monday. You will have noticed that the workshop’s being constructed, I’m sure. Carpenters and costumers have been brought on the Princept’s orders, prop-makers. We are assembling quite a little paint shop.

We’ve already begun distributing predictions. A star will fall over Carleon. Yes, it will. Our ships are in place to destroy the satellite. A text found in a library in Carmathen will describe a long-forgotten duke returning on a black horse with white fetlocks. We are working on the script.

And we have been given a gift in our alliance of sorts with the existing Fabreal Duchy. A feudal society, constructing themselves around holy days, elaborate quests, and displays. They pass themselves down to their successors in the form of liquid glass – we only need adjust its consistency. There is a unique vector of weakness here. We will come to these lords wearing their own clothes and before long they will raise their cups in a toast that we have constructed, believing in their hearts it is some ancient, beautiful bastion of their own culture.

Now, this process will not be easy, nor will it be quick. I’m under no illusions that what we can accomplish will ever move with the grace and precision of what our ancestors knew. But I hope that we are setting a metronome in motion. Today we might only hear the click as it sets the time. Maybe in a few weeks we will hear a violin join us. In a year, we will start to see the shape of a piece of music. And when we are long dead and our bones lie in spies’ nameless memorials, our successors will look up at the sunset sky of hope and down at the complete score in their hands.

And hear the great, tempestuous rush of a symphony.

[“Adagio” by Jack de Quidt ends]

#friends at the table #palisade #palisade spoilers #anyone else feel insane when the crystal palace motif hits? #the shape of empire continues to be a circle #fattposting #fatt