It's all good in Hell
This story could have happened to anyone, anywhere.
Since it needed a context to make it more tangible, I chosed to set it in the place I come from.
Any resemblance to real life is, of course, purely coincidental.
Bear in mind that it’s intended for a mature audience.
I wish you an enjoyable read — and some courage.
Toulon was suffocating.
It had rained during the night, a sudden, heavy downpour, almost tropical.
It had lashed the cracked ground with fury and left behind an oppressive dampness.
It was almost midday. The sun was scorching the Pit, that sea of waste at the edge of the city where the dregs of society toiled.
Flora (known as Flo) was one of them.
She walked slowly between the heaps of rubbish, her boots seeping, her fingers numb from the effort.
Like her companions in misfortune, she earned her living by sorting refuse twelve hours a day.
Among the supervisors of this cesspool, it was customary to say that the waste sorted itself.
Indeed, she belonged to that people of outcasts, the Non-Aligned, whom the Council had graciously agreed to integrate into the community by offering them jobs suited to their condition.
The manual management of waste, formerly entrusted to automata, was among the activities they were permitted to perform.
Officially, it was to provide them with a dignified occupation, a social purpose. But Flo was certain that, at heart, it was nothing more than a message to the rest of the population.
She felt the same thought cross the minds of the Aligned every time their gaze brushed against her: Obey, or you will end up like her.
A lorry had tipped its load of filth.
She sorted it into piles, bent over in the mud.
A thick stench rose from the putrid mounds, reeking of old grease, decay and rust.
Insects buzzed around her in swarms, but she no longer chased them away. She let them cling to her skin, as one accepts rain or wind, with the dull detachment of beasts of burden.
The world, according to what she had been taught, was living in a state of restored peace.
While the Great War raged and peoples tore each other apart over religions, territorial control or resources, the Great Pandemic struck.
These two scourges had very nearly brought Humanity to its knees. It was estimated that eighty per cent of human beings had perished in the space of some ten years.
Fortunately, the Tripartite Council had been formed and had taken the reins of this faltering world.
It was composed of three chambers: the Assembled States (composed of the previously existing states), the Universal Federation of Production and Trade Corporations (more commonly referred to as the Corporation, which brought together almost all the world’s companies), and the Churches United for the Salvation of All (which amalgamated all faiths around a shared conclusion: the Scourges were divine punishments inflicted to chastise Mankind for its sins).
This benevolent union had restored order.
Wars had ceased. A vaccine had been found.
Resources, once plundered without restraint, were now managed efficiently. Everything was order and stability.
But here, at the threshold of the city, amid dust and refuse, the world of the Non-Aligned bore little resemblance to the one promised by the Council.
This accursed people gathered those who belonged to no faction, either because they had failed to abide by its rules and had been cast out, or because they had committed the mistake of being born wrong.
They were required to live in the zones set aside for them — they could not have lived elsewhere anyway; it was too expensive.
They could engage in economic activity only under the supervision of the Corporation, and solely in specific, poorly paid occupations.
They had no rights and could access neither education nor property. They were, in effect, confined to ignorance and poverty.
A cloud passed in front of the sun, fleeting, and the light dimmed. In the distance, the hangars of the recycling units belched out black smoke.
And then, suddenly, the bell rang.
A shrill, metallic sound that split the air like a prison alarm. Noon. Fifteen minutes break. Not one more.
Flo vaguely wiped her hands on her filthy trousers and headed towards a shelter of warped sheet metal, where other nameless shadows would also come to catch their breath before resuming their toil.
The day was drawing to a close. The sorting was over.
The Non-Aligned, hollow-faced and knot-limbed, bustled about like a disillusioned anthill in their district at the entrance to the city — a tangle of huts made from salvaged planks, patched tarpaulins and twisted metal, which they rented from the Corporation.
Flo trudged along the dusty paths, her hands still sticky from the day’s work. Her empty stomach reminded her that it was time to eat.
She headed towards the Corporation’s catering centre. On what amounted to a sort of square in the middle of the shelters stood three containers.
One sold water and provided a place to wash one’s hands.
Another dispensed a kind of gruel that served as food; it consisted of leftovers and unsold goods from the Aligned. These were crushed, sterilised, containerised and delivered daily to the Non-Aligned. Unappetising, but one could be almost certain not to fall ill.
The third container allowed diners to return the crockery hired for the meal. If a spoon was missing, the deposit was forfeited. One also had to eat quickly, as every minute beyond the allotted time included in the price of the meal was charged at a premium.
After thirty minutes of waiting among dejected faces with vacant stares, Flo reached the first container.
She stepped up in turn to face the camera positioned above the dispenser hatch. A validation beep sounded, a small green light came on, and the hatch opened.
Flo placed her hands inside; soapy water flowed for ten seconds. She scrubbed as quickly as possible, then, a moment later, a brief jet of water allowed her to rinse away the grime, now foamy, left there by a day of toil. As she withdrew her hands from the machine, a blast of air dried them roughly.
She took from the adjacent hatch the steel cup of water that had been provided during her wash, then moved on to the second container.
Once again she positioned herself in front of the camera above the dispenser hatch. A steel bowl filled with a mixture one preferred not to know the contents of, along with a spoon, was presented to her.
She now had fifteen minutes to savour this delicious meal.
Facial recognition was the only means of payment available since physical currencies had been banned.
Every individual had an account with the Bank of the Corporation — Aligned and Non-Aligned alike.
Whenever one wished to purchase something, one had to present oneself at a terminal that identified the account holder — and made it possible to know what they had consumed, when, where and with whom.
It was impossible to obtain anything without the Corporation’s consent.
In order to encourage consumption, it had also been decided that a “universal growth levy” would be applied to every account at midnight and would feed the accounts of the Assembled States.
The rate of deduction depended on each individual’s social credit; the higher one’s social credit, the lower the rate.
It could even be negative for eminent members of society; they were then given money each day as a reward for their exemplary conduct.
By contrast, the Non-Aligned, who by default had a social credit score of zero, saw their accounts reduced by five per cent each night.
It was therefore mathematically impossible for them to build up any financial capital — not that they had any way of verifying this, since it had curiously been forgotten to supply payment terminals with screens allowing one to view one’s account balance after each transaction.
She sat down a little way off to eat her meal.
Voices rose nearby — psalms. A small group of cultists were handing out free portions of the same mixture she had just paid a high price for.
These members of the United Churches were there every week, dressed in immaculate white robes, preaching redemption through obedience and gratitude towards the Council, according to divine will.
A few children hovered around them, drawn by the sweet bread offered as an extra.
Flo looked away, jaw clenched.
The stench of the foul stew was more bearable to her than that of the cheap incense hanging about the Cult’s recruiters.
She hated these soul merchants and never went near them. The memories were too vivid: the orphanage, the punishments, the honeyed voices that filled with acid the moment one refused to bend.
The sky suddenly ignited with shades of orange and purple. The sun was dying on the horizon.
The beauty of this spectacle amid the surrounding desolation was tinged with irony.
The beauty of nature, indifferent to the misery of those who gazed upon it, made them forget their condition for a moment, before giving way to night.
She thought of Cam — Camille by his real name (he did not like to be called that). For several days now, his face had often come back to her.
This young man, nearly thirty like her, had arrived at the sorting facility about a year earlier.
Jovial, he was ill-suited to this landscape of iron and rot.
He spoke readily to everyone, joked when most of their kind preferred to remain silent, resigned to muteness after a lifetime of misery.
His attitude unsettled her and, truth be told, attracted her somewhat.
She sensed in him a flame, a strange humanity she had not felt for a long time.
A breeze passed, stirring up the dust. Flo stood up to return her empty bowl, her cup and her spoon, just in time to avoid being charged.
Tomorrow, she would have to return to the sorting.
But before going back to the filthy “room” she rented, she wanted to watch the day fade away.
She wanted to enjoy the silence of the night.
Two weeks had passed.
As every morning, Flo had gone at dawn to the Labour Exchange.
It was there, at the edge of the outcasts’ district, on a beaten-earth esplanade surrounded by a few buildings overlooking the Pit, that every morning the Corporation’s recruitment staff displayed the assignments it had the kindness to offer to the system’s excluded.
Unlike them, the Aligned mostly had lifelong contracts with the Council.
Officials of the Assembled States took civil service exams and progressed internally; the Cultists swore allegiance to their congregation; and those who remained joined the Corporation after a process of recruitment, training and assignment.
Their loyalty as well as their personal qualities were tested, for the system was meritocratic, even if not all extractions reached the same positions.
Being born well was an enviable talent.
Those whose devotion had been questioned did as Flo did: they chained together arduous, low-skilled and poorly paid jobs, with no guarantee of finding another the following day.
Large steel noticeboards were spaced several metres apart.
They indicated the type of jobs on offer and the number of available positions. The working hours and salary were at the recruiters’ discretion.
However, it was widely known that some positions were less gruelling and paid relatively better than others. So when Flo saw that delivery positions were available, she decided to try her luck.
She made her way to a table where Corporation employees were stationed.
Arriving in the queue, she looked around.
No sign of Cam.
She hadn’t seen him for several days, neither at the Exchange, nor at the Pit, nor even at the catering centre. Not that it worried her.
He was probably occupied elsewhere, and they simply hadn’t crossed paths.
But she couldn’t help thinking of the preventive arrests sometimes carried out by the Assembled States’ police…
She pushed the thought aside. It was not her problem.
The queue moved forward. New thoughts filled her mind.
There were rumours. There always were, but when they became too frequent and lasted too long, it became reasonable to worry.
A new variant had appeared. At least, that’s what they said. Soon there would be new health measures, and above all, a new vaccine. Flo gritted her teeth at the thought.
Approximately every two years since the Great Pandemic, a new variant appeared somewhere on the planet.
After numerous deaths and strict health measures, the Corporation managed to produce a new vaccine, and everyone got vaccinated.
Periodic booster treatments were then required to ensure the vaccine’s effectiveness.
This, moreover, was not optional.
It was impossible to work, move about, or access the communal catering centre without a valid health passport one month after a new vaccine was launched.
Above all, no one had ever survived more than three months without getting the shot, so deadly were the variants of the Great Pandemic.
And it all cost a lot. Quite a lot.
Of course, these treatments were far more accessible for the Aligned, the Assembled States, or the Cult, who covered part of the cost.
But for the others…
Unfortunately, Flo’s finances were not in great shape.
Recently, she had only found assignments at the Pit or in the fields, which paid relatively little. She had even spent several days without work since her last injection and was aware of her precarious situation.
She would skip a few meals and get by.
Arriving at the recruiter’s desk, she put her worries aside, braced herself to appear cheerful, and addressed the man sitting on the other side of the table:
“Good morning, sir. I saw that there were delivery positions available. I would like to know if they are still open so I can apply. I have already had the opportunity to work in this field and…”
“Face the camera.”
The man, who had not lifted his eyes from the charts on his tablet, pointed to the facial recognition device on the table.
“Oh, right, thank you, sir.”
Flo leaned forward to face the machine, trying to keep a smile.
After a few seconds, a green light appeared next to the camera.
“All set. Position two in ten minutes.”
“Thank you, sir. Have a good day.”
These sweet words offered to an impolite automaton felt bitter, but at least she would spend a day away from the Pit.
She headed towards the spot indicated on the edge of the esplanade.
Flo walked in the shade of the plane trees along the city’s main avenue.
She had spent the morning making trips back and forth between the Corporation’s logistics centres, collecting products she could never afford and delivering them to people who didn’t really need them.
Some people, seeing her, would step aside slightly, lean towards their neighbours, cast her sidelong glances, and whisper inaudible words.
Others walked straight at her, giving her dark looks, occasionally muttering an insult as they passed.
The rest simply ignored her completely.
With noon approaching, she was now delivering meals.
Most came from central kitchens — small industrial sites spread across the cities that produced standardised dishes automatically.
They looked as good as those prepared by chefs, but some preferred meals cooked by human hands.
Thus, although mechanised kitchens churned out optimised flows sufficient to feed the Aligned within the pleasant confines of catering centres, independent establishments still existed.
These offered wealthy clients a more upscale experience, which mostly meant not mingling with those less fortunate than themselves.
Their creation, like all independent businesses, required prior authorisation from the Assembled States, granted in exchange for a right of establishment and a thirty-five per cent tax on profits.
They were also subject to regular inspections by the Corporation’s standards branch to ensure regulatory compliance, under threat of fines or administrative closure.
This service was, of course, not free — no more than the banking services offered by the Corporation, mandatory insurance provided by the Corporation, and a host of other expenses inevitably paid to the Corporation.
Once all that was paid, one could not forget to pay the obligatory voluntary contribution to the Churches United for the Salvation of All.
The financial and regulatory pressures, combined with the systemic power of the Corporation, made it extremely difficult to establish a genuinely independent and viable business.
Occasionally, an overly ambitious and naïve entrepreneur would squander a lifetime’s savings or ruin their family on a risky venture.
However, in the vast majority of cases, independent businesses were in fact created by senior Council officials or members of the underworld subordinate to it.
They received funding in exchange for the Corporation taking shares, acting as subcontractors, and often receiving aid from the Assembled States.
It was common knowledge that working conditions and remuneration were far less favourable at independents than at the Corporation, except for the executives who were handsomely paid.
In practice, working in such companies represented the final stage before being excluded from the system and joining the Non-Aligned, which made employees even more zealous than elsewhere.
For while the world created by the Council was ostensibly for the Common Salvation, everyone knew that salvation was not the same for all.
Everyone dreamed of moving up a social class and was haunted by the fear of social decline or worse still, by the possibility of becoming Non-Aligned.
More than the Cultists’ sermons, more than the indoctrination practised from childhood to death by the Assembled States or the Corporation, it was this fear of social fall that kept the world in place.
That’s why Flo was here, far from the slums. She was not merely delivering goods but reminding everyone that the fall was possible, and that it was painful.
Although rather beautiful, Flo’s appearance betrayed the harshness of her life; it shouted to the Aligned: “Go to Church and pray, serve the State, work for the Corporation. Obey, be the system, or you will end up like her.”
Yes, once again, as if to confirm her suspicions, Flo felt it. With every glance cast her way.
Interactions between the Aligned and the Non-Aligned existed solely to strengthen the desire to belong to the system and the fear of leaving it.
Flo arrived near the station.
In earlier times, it had welcomed trains whose rusting carriages now served as shelters and storage spaces in the Non-Aligned district.
They had long been replaced by autonomous pods guided by embedded software.
She did not like to admit it, but she had to concede that the technological feats of the Council were impressive.
After the Calamities, the Assembled States had commissioned the Corporation to build a transport network that largely replaced traditional roads.
This new system was efficient, quick to implement, and cheap to construct and maintain.
It began with reinforced concrete pillars poured into the ground — six metres apart in length and two and a half metres in the desired width. These rose to heights of ten to twenty metres, depending on the anticipated traffic.
At the top, a system of rails fixed along the edges of the pillars and mobile hoists allowed reinforced concrete modules to be moved and slotted along them. Workers then connected the modules, ran tests, and the road was ready.
Whenever a malfunction was detected, the same hoist-and-rail system extracted the faulty module and replaced it with a new one.
On the ground, a space of around four metres was left up to the first module. The Council had thus succeeded in creating a dense network of roads, offering pedestrians and cyclists outdoor recreational space.
These green spaces, adorned with flowers and fruit trees, were a true blessing for biodiversity; they countered ecological fragmentation and reduced animal mortality caused by transport, which had once been the norm.
Inside the modules, electrically powered rails allowed autonomous pods of various sizes to transport people and goods from one station to another.
All pods travelled at the same speed on predetermined tracks, reaching their designated destination without surprises or accidents.
For longer journeys, pods entered special tracks and linked together into trains capable of travelling at several hundred kilometres per hour between major terminals before resuming their route.
These roads did not only carry the Aligned (the Non-Aligned had no access to it) and other system-produced goods.
Some modules contained electrical networks, water pipelines, heat-transfer fluid conduits, optical fibre networks… thus interconnecting the Council’s territories.
Above the roads, photovoltaic panels produced part of the energy required to power the pods and captured solar heat, which was stored in thermal reservoirs and fed into the cities’ heating systems.
Solar energy was stored as potential energy in large water tanks, smoothing electricity production with minimal loss at a negligible cost.
Cars and other vehicles existing before the Council’s formation had not disappeared. Some trains remained as attractions for nostalgic enthusiasts of an era they had never known.
The Corporation continued to sell hybrid vehicles running on synthetic hydrocarbons, hydrogen, and batteries far smaller than those used before the Calamities.
Undoubtedly, the high-ranking officials of the Assembled States wished to preserve resilience in case their wondrous roads were rendered unusable by new conflicts or potential rebellions.
Flo had learned all this in History and Ethics lessons at the orphanage where she had lived.
These lessons usually served to relay the Council’s propaganda, demonstrating to the youth how benevolent the system was.
She usually hated this indoctrination, but for once, she had enjoyed the subject and even approved of the Council’s actions.
She had also been taught that, in an earlier era, humanity had attempted to develop electric cars with enormous batteries to “save the planet” consuming staggering amounts of rare earth minerals.
These rolling bombs were powered by fossil-fuelled power plants, making them even more polluting than conventional cars.
She had been astonished to learn that previous generations produced electricity by directly burning coal or gas and stored it in batteries rather than gravitational systems.
The Corporation had greatly improved electricity production.
It had designed modular nuclear fission generators, ensuring energy supply security. Easily movable, they could be deployed wherever the network failed.
It had created nuclear fusion plants, whose colossal energy powered vertical farming systems.
These systems allowed virtually unlimited food production by stacking containers hundreds of metres high, where plants grew under optimised conditions — temperature, irrigation, fertilisation, and light exposure tailored to each crop.
The height of these containers adjusted as plants grew, retracting or expanding to follow their development.
These automated systems, stretching from the heights of the skies to depts of the oceans, increased yields and farmed areas without pesticides, absorbed enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, and freed vast spaces returned to nature.
In addition to solar energy powering much of the Council’s world, the Corporation had installed massive turbines on the ocean floor, harnessing the colossal energy of thermohaline cascades to produce hydrogen via seawater electrolysis.
This hydrogen was used in synthetic hydrocarbon production or as a direct energy vector.
Energy efficiency had been pushed to the extreme by connecting industrial sites producing large amounts of heat (such as concrete or steel plants) to recovery systems that generated electricity and heated surrounding cities.
Gravitational energy storage was achieved through massive reservoirs hundreds of metres high, which discharged into lower basins, underground formations, or rivers and seas, activating turbines along the way to produce electricity.
Industry and construction had not escaped the Council’s incredible advances. Artifical intelligence directed armies of robotic modules to autonomously perform optimised processes, and the Corporation could supply manufactured goods in unimaginable quantities and build entire cities in a ridiculously short time.
Flo remembered being fascinated by these engineering feats, but their shine was dimmed when she realised they mirrored the world she lived in.
Everything moved in the same predetermined direction at a dictated pace.
Modules, all identical, were replaced as soon as they ceased to function as expected.
Everything was beautiful, efficient, comfortable, optimised. In a sense, she understood the system’s appeal.
All one had to do was believe, obey, and refrain from thinking to access comfort.
But she could not help drawing a parallel with ancient Rome.
People admired its wonders — but did the slave heating the baths or rowing in the galleys, the pawn sacrificed to satisfy the elites’ greed, admire them as much?
Flo had just delivered his meal to the soldier posted at the entrance to the station.
As he took the bag, he said “thank you”, without taking his eyes off the surveillance screens.
An Aligned thanking a Non-Aligned for her work? It was rare enough to be noticed — and appreciated.
Flo did not hate all Aligned people. Of course, she disliked the way most of them treated her, but her resentment was directed primarily at the Society that pushed them to act this way.
This one was not entirely unlikeable, and his politeness — which ought to have been unremarkable in an ideal world — betrayed the humanity he had been forced to suppress in order to conform to the expectations of the system.
He belonged to the branch of the Assembled States’ army managed by the Corporation.
Flo knew this because his navy-blue uniform differed from the one her father had worn when she was a child.
After the Calamities, the Council had reorganised the world’s armed forces.
Every Aligned individual, if they wished to retain their status, had to complete at least one year of military service between the ages of eighteen and twenty.
The three branches of the Council maintained armed forces to defend against traitors and potential enemies — Flo wondered if they weren’t also taking precautions against their fellow branches.
The Cultists maintained an army of fanatical henchmen, the “Soldiers of the Divine,” as they called themselves.
They believed their mission was to defend the Council’s authority against any rebellion, according to the will of God (or Gods, depending on their congregation), in order to avoid divine wrath and further Calamities.
In practice, they were mainly used to intimidate civilians, serving somewhat as a moral police force.
The Corporation maintained militias to protect its assets; they mostly enforced order and could carry out police functions.
The soldier to whom Flo had just delivered his meal belonged to that faction.
The Corporation also supplied and maintained the majority of military equipment used by the Assembled States’ forces.
These forces were intended to prevent insurrection, and the Council had spared no expense to ensure this objective was achieved.
Massive nuclear-powered ships, the Pandors, patrolled the world’s seas.
Equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles and hydrogen bombs, they had also been loaded with radioactive waste and cobalt, so that any attempt to rebel against the Council or to attack it would condemn humanity to relive the disaster of the Great War — on a far greater scale.
Anyone who rose up would be struck by the Pandors’ warheads, and even if someone managed to sink one deadly radioactive particles would be released into the atmosphere, spreading across the Earth and seas and killing everything in their path for centuries.
These deterrent tools, paragons of caution, were not the only weapons at the Council’s disposal.
Commercial ships and specialised military vessels carried containers filled with drones and their armaments.
These instruments of death could swarm in coordinated formations and were resupplied in midair by other drones with ammunition and fuel.
They could intercept missiles, saturate air-defences, carry out targeted eliminations using facial recognition and triangulation technology,
drop bombs on anyone attempting to challenge the system, and contaminate air and water with chemicals or pathogens.
Some even deployed biological vectors to transmit diseases, so that rebels who survived the bombs lived in terror of drinking, eating, or even breathing, suffering panic attacks at the sight of a single mosquito.
Neither the ocean depths nor the vastness of space escaped the Council’s military reach.
Ordinary submarines now patrolled the seas accompanied by millions of drones, their missiles supplementing those stationed in orbit around the Earth and on the Moon.
What made these omnipotent instruments of destruction even more terrifying was the System’s omniscience.
Myriads of sensor buoys drifted with the currents, monitoring all maritime activity; underground sensors recorded subterranean activity.
Swarms of satellites observed everything on land and in the air, day and night.
Individuals’ movements were tracked via satellite triangulation built into their devices, combined with ubiquitous video surveillance and facial recognition.
Objects were traced through magnetic detection systems and imperceptible physical markings.
Everything, from spoken conversations to written words, was tracked.
Digital writing was quietly copied through device keyboards.
Even physical writing was not anonymous; inks, pencils, and paper had specific batch compositions that revealed their origin and users, and printing devices contained imperceptible markings identifying their output.
All data was centralised, cross-referenced, and analysed by artificial intelligences, granting the Council absolute control over everything.
Of course, this was only a fraction of the Tripartite Council’s power, and they ensured everyone knew this, to discourage potential dissenters and maintain the fervour of its supporters.
Flo froze.
A train had just entered the station — one of those relics that burned petroleum and belched scorching gases.
The piercing screech of its brakes made her blood run cold and snapped her out of her thoughts.
It was that sound.
The same sound she had heard that morning.
Flo could still hear it.
That awful screech.
Since her visit to the station the previous day, she couldn’t get it out of her head.
She had nothing else to do but think anyway; she had been standing for over two hours in the interminable queue at the Assembled States’ clinic.
A shuttle periodically came to the slums to take the Non-Aligned to the Council’s hospital centres for vaccinations and booster treatments.
Of course, Aligned and Non-Aligned did not mix; they were each on their own side of the vast hall, separated by large glass panels.
The pariahs were corralled in a stark space under harsh lighting, with nowhere to sit, endless lines leading to a handful of counters guarded by armed personnel.
On the other side, slightly elevated and arranged like tiers of seating, warm spaces with armchairs, tables, and green plants were laid out for the Aligned, visible to the Non-Aligned.
After being greeted by smiling reception agents who offered them a snack, the Aligned would sit comfortably, facing the misery of the others, and contemplate their privileges for a few minutes before a nurse came to fetch them.
Flo was usually quite irritated by the pointed fingers of astonished children, the indifference of adults, and their looks of disdain or pity.
But today she didn’t notice them at all.
Her thoughts were on her parents.
Eyes cast down, she heard that sound — the one that had pierced her eardrums that day.
She had few memories of her childhood, before the Cultist orphanage.
She remembered living in a small village about twenty kilometres from Toulon, in a house with ochre walls and blue shutters.
She remembered the vineyards, the olive trees, the pines. The song of the cicadas and the scent of flowers.
She remembered the warm sand under her feet when they went to the sea, the salty taste when she emerged from the water, and the sun on her back.
She remembered her father, she remembered her mother. She could see their faces again, hear their voices. She could still feel their embraces and the warmth of their love.
Her father was a sailor for the Assembled States; her mother worked in the pharmaceutical industry for the Corporation.
One morning, there was a knock at the door.
Her father had returned from a mission after three months at sea. She rushed to open it, so happy to see him again.
When the door opened, she saw three men dressed in black and two women covered in veils that revealed only their faces.
Cultists.
Surprised, she turned to the doorway and cast a questioning look at her mother.
“Mum?”
Suddenly, a horrible screech split her skull.
She clutched her ears and curled into herself, crying in pain.
Then a scream joined the screech — her mother’s voice.
She heard a body fall, and the scream ceased.
She opened her tear-filled eyes and saw her mother collapsed on the floor, her hand reaching out to her.
Her eyes locked onto Flo’s, and she seemed to call to her with all her love.
It was the last image she had of her.
Flo lost consciousness, and when she awoke, she was at the Cultist orphanage.
She never saw her parents again.
She was told that her father had a heart attack at sea. Her mother, unable to bear the news delivered by the Cultists, suffered a hypertensive crisis that caused a fatal stroke.
Having no uncles or aunts to care for her, Flo was entrusted to the Cultists, who promised to look after her.
And they kept their word.
They made sure she attended mass and ideology classes from morning until night to teach her to praise God and the Council.
They carefully vomited crude propaganda into her brain and inflicted the harshest punishments whenever she asked questions or failed to show enough zeal in parroting their speeches.
She lost count of the humiliations, beatings, days without food, winter nights spent outdoors in the cold, weeks in isolation.
Flo had certainly been “well cared for,” so much so that by the age of fifteen she decided to stop taking advantage of this benevolence and ran away from the orphanage.
When the police returned her a few days later, after a standard beating, they informed her that ungrateful little girls had no place with the Cultists and sent her back to the streets.
Flo finally reached the counter.
She faced the facial recognition device.
Her vaccination passport appeared on a screen.
She was two days late for her booster, but it was still valid.
Suddenly, an error message appeared under a red cross.
“Insufficient credits,” the clerk said in a robotic tone.
“Next.”
“But I don’t understand! My pay from yesterday hasn’t been deposited?!” Flo pressed against the counter, her face almost touching the glass separating her from the clerk.
She spoke in panic, tinged with irritation. The guards beside the counter stepped closer.
“Apparently, you stole a package from a Corporation customer, and the amount to cover the loss has been deducted from your account. Not surprising, coming from someone like you… Next.”
Flo was furious. She bit her lips to keep calm. She was innocent, but she knew that if she protested, the guards would arrest her.
She turned on her heel and walked away in silence, her blood boiling with rage.
She heard the man’s smile behind the glass as he offered her one final word.
“And have a good day, miss.”
Flo was exhausted.
The day was nearly over. At least in the pit.
Ever since the incident five days ago, she had been working day and night in the hope of being able to pay for her booster before she began to wither away.
She had applied to participate in clinical trials.
The Corporation paid handsomely for Non-Aligned individuals willing to act as guinea pigs and submit to all sorts of experiments. She had already taken part in two of them.
This had allowed her to afford doses of the vaccine, and she could have gotten by this way once more.
But she had not been accepted this time; “Too old.”
Tonight, she would clean offices for the Corporation.
In the meantime, she had to keep sorting.
Bent over her pile of waste, she heard someone approaching from behind.
“Well, you look in good shape, I must say.”
Flo turned her head.
It was Cam.
“Well, well, Camille. You’re back, huh? How were the Council’s prisons?”
She finished placing cans into the bag she was carrying.
“Brilliant. I would have liked to stay, but I missed the atmosphere down here.”
Flo turned and raised her eyebrows at Cam. He gave her a smug smile.
She was glad to see him again.
The Council’s prisons.
She had heard about them.
The Assembled States sent criminals and dissidents — by their very personal definitions of those words — to large central prisons distributed across each State.
These facilities were divided into divisions, each with its own purpose and mode of operation.
They did not communicate with one another and were separated from the rest of the world by high walls, deep ditches, and fields filled with thorny plants hiding anti-personnel mines.
Everything was topped with barbed wire, and access to the outside was secured by autonomous machine guns that automatically shot anyone attempting to escape.
These prisons aimed to re-educate deviant individuals, to turn them into good members of society.
And to make this process even more profitable, the Corporation used the available labour and paid the Assembled States for it.
The peculiarity of these facilities — and what made them especially lucrative — was that they were managed directly by the prisoners themselves.
Rather than paying staff to supervise the inmates, the Council had the ingenious idea of allowing some prisoners to oversee maintenance and discipline within the penitentiary in exchange for slightly improved conditions — and, above all, the coveted privilege of having power over their peers.
Under the supervision of a few state administrators, these wretches zealously applied to others the same harshness they had sought to escape.
Most sentences involved spending time in Section 1 before moving to Section 2 or 3, depending on the severity of the crime, and gradually returning to Section 1 as the end of the sentence approached.
Those who disobeyed the rules or committed particularly heinous offences could be sent to Section 4, or even 5.
Section 1 most closely resembled life outside.
Its inhabitants lived in small studios, worked only five days a week, had proper meals, free time after their moral and re-education classes, leisure activities, and the possibility to interact with fellow inmates or receive visitors.
Their earnings were three times less than what they would have earned outside — the Council kept two-thirds — but enough to cover incarceration costs.
Prison was not free: accommodation fees, food, administrative fees, admission and release fees, medical expenses…
If they or their families could not pay, the prisoners finished their sentence with a debt to repay, with interest.
Section 2 was where debt began to grow.
Fees increased, wages decreased; the work was harder and communication or visits were forbidden.
Free time and leisure disappeared, and moral and re-education classes multiplied.
Guards punished any breach of rules mercilessly.
Living conditions were harsher; prisoners slept in dormitories, ate poorly, and had limited access to hygiene.
It was mathematically impossible to cover expenses through work; inmates were therefore forced to sell blood, hair, or even organs to avoid debt.
It was also common for them to offer sexual services to free citizens seeking gratification in dedicated spaces or to participate in the production of suggestive content.
Thus, prisoners faced a double punishment: in addition to lost time and harsh treatment, they had to choose between selling their bodies or indebting themselves heavily, sacrificing all comfort once free.
Section 3 was the worst of the standard incarceration sections; Sections 4 and 5 were purely punitive.
In Section 3, one worked seven days a week.
The labour was grueling, and on top of previous penalties, guards did not hesitate to abuse or assault prisoners — in fact, they were obliged to.
Pay was lower still, conditions even more squalid; washing was rare, food scarce, and they slept on the bare floor, crowded in cages with other inmates.
Endless indoctrination broadcasts played day and night.
The purpose was clear: to make individuals understand they had to obey the system or be crushed — and to enrich the Council.
If disobedience persisted or submission was insufficient, one was sent to Section 4.
In total darkness, prisoners were continuously tortured by sadistic criminals who had found a place to entertain themselves — with the blessing of prison authorities.
They were confined for days in cramped pits, unable to move, eat, or drink.
Screams echoed constantly, reminding inmates of what they had endured or would soon endure.
Time lost all meaning, and they remained in these sections until an order allowed their return to standard incarceration areas.
Before that, the goal was to utterly destroy them emotionally and socially.
They were forced to commit and endure unspeakable acts, alternating between victim and perpetrator.
These horrific scenes were freely visible to the Aligned, with the names of those involved, reasons for their sentence, and their relatives.
Those who emerged were empty shells, bodies without thought, broken forever.
No one wanted to associate with them, not even their families, and they wished to interact with no one.
They inevitably became automatons serving the system — silent, solitary, and docile slaves forever.
Finally, there was Section 5.
As it was difficult to surpass the horror of previous sections, the Assembled States employed professionals.
The objective here was no longer reintegration; it was outright elimination.
Inmates were kept alive for the “necessary” time, and life was nothing but suffering.
Chemical and electrical methods inflicted such torment on body and mind that survival would have been impossible without the Council’s technological and medical expertise.
No one ever left Section 5 alive, making even the mere mention of it a command for obedience.
Suffering was not the Council’s only punishment; oblivion awaited.
No one wanted to be associated with a Section 5 inmate; speaking of them was forbidden.
There were no graves, no thoughts or tears for those who passed through.
Simply suffering, then nothing.
All traces of their existence on Earth were erased, and they vanished forever.
Flo and Cam continued their work, occasionally exchanging a few teasing words.
Flo liked him, and the feeling seemed mutual.
He wasn’t really a friend — that concept was distant in their world — but he was the closest she had.
Suddenly, the machines fell silent.
The conveyors stopped. A heavy stillness settled.
Everyone knew what was about to happen.
It had been a week since they had been thrown into a vast hangar with a glass roof and bare concrete floor.
The roundup had been swift and brutal. Drones had swooped down on the pit workers and fired incapacitating devices at them.
Flo, Cam, and the others had been knocked out and sent to the ground in an instant.
Then men from the Council had come to gather them, striking anyone who still moved with batons before piling them into trucks.
It was hard to tell how long they had been travelling.
In the stifling darkness and heat, they had waited pressed against one another, heading to an unknown destination.
“Preventive incarceration.”
When the doors finally opened, the prisoners could move from one oven to another.
The steel hangar, overheated by the summer sun, offered almost no shade. The walls and floor were scorching.
Occasionally, the guards would bring a few drums of water.
The fiercest would fight to drink first before the contents ran out.
The weakest, or the most despondent, settled for the leftovers.
Sultry nights followed sweltering days.
The few outbursts of anger at the start had given way to a general torpor.
The guards still periodically struck a few unfortunate souls for any reason at all, but even they seemed to lack the energy to act.
Everyone agonised in silence under the blazing sun, awaiting what would come next — or the end.
Flo and Cam often stayed close together, drying out side by side.
They helped each other manage enough water to survive and had even talked a little.
Cam, lying in the shade of a roof beam, moved closer to Flo as the sun shifted.
He nodded towards a man lying a few metres away in the sun, unmoving for some time.
“You think he’s dead?” said Cam
“No, I guess he was cold.”
“Sarcastic as ever.”
“What can i do? More seriously at this rate, we won’t be far behind him.”
“You’d better stay in the shade.”
Flo smiled faintly, exhaling through her nose.
“It’s horrible when you think about it. We watch each other die for no reason. Preventive arrest. What a load of crap.”
“The Council’s ways are unfathomable,” said Cam, raising his eyebrows.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, let them all hang themselves.”
Cam looked around them.
“You shouldn’t talk like that.”
“What are they going to do? Leave me to rot in a warehouse?” replied Flo with a wry smile.
“There are things you don’t joke about, Flo.”
“Look around. There are nothing but corpses-in-waiting all around us. Everyone mocks the lives of the Non-Aligned, so their opinion…”
She swept her gaze across the hangar.
“Have you never thought we deserve better?”
“Better than what?”
“Better than this horrible life we’re condemned to.”
“How could it be better?” Cam replied sarcastically.
“Oh, come on, be serious for a moment.
This world is rotten. We are tortured from cradle to grave for no reason, just so the elites can perpetuate a social order that serves their own interests.
Even the Aligned are not free; they’re treated better than us, but they are merely cogs in a system that crushes them. The Council? What a joke.”
Cam remained silent. She continued.
“The Cultists are nothing but leeches who have revived the superstitions of pre-Plague sects. Their only aim is to continue brainwashing the masses and programming them to obey the established order blindly.
What an insult to the Divine, if it exists in any form at all, to speak in its name to impose one’s worldview and legitimise domination.
The Corporation? They are no better. The rich of the old world, who made fortunes exploiting their fellows, have banded together ‘for the common good’. Conveniently, they no longer even need to pretend.
They are so systemic that no competition exists; no wealth can be created outside their control. What are we if not slaves at their service?
The Assembled States, what a farce. They are the heirs of past opportunists who rallied crowds with promises to solve problems they had no interest in fixing.
If the evils they claimed to fight disappeared, they would lose legitimacy to govern. It was more profitable for each of them to shout and do nothing while railing against opponents, all the while defending the same interests — their own.
At least back then, they went through the motions to give the illusion of choice; nowadays, they lack even that decency. Government members are no longer elected by the people but appointed by their peers, to prevent past abuses that led to the Plagues.
We’ve been brainwashed so thoroughly that we accept this state of affairs without question, and those who challenge it end up like us.
If this is the best social organisation imaginable, humanity is worth very little indeed.”
Cam seemed slightly irritated and uneasy. He addressed Flo with a look of defiance she had never seen before.
It was true that she had let herself be carried away, and the stifling heat, hunger, thirst, and recent disappointments had reignited a spirit of rebellion she could barely contain.
“And you think you could do better?”
Flo grimaced.
“How could it be worse?
If it were up to me, I’d sweep away all this filth — the wolves imposing their views, and the sheep too stupid, too cowardly, or too lazy to resist them.
I’d crush anyone who stood in my way, and make them pay for the affront humanity has suffered since the dawn of time: oppressed by the mistakes of their Fathers, reduced to misery and confined to mediocrity by the will of others.
I’d write books to spread ideas, use people’s fears, sorrows, desires, and hopes to get what I want.
I’d show them the system’s flaws so they could glimpse the abyss in which they might plunge their tormentors — and themselves — if they opposed me.
I’d teach them that the forces they believe immutable and omnipotent are ultimately just humans.
And humans are humans.
The Market, the State, the Church, the Underworld, the Armies, the Media, Culture, Opinion, even the Experts who justify the powerful’s schemes — all just humans.
And what is common to all humans?
A heart.
A heart that loves, a heart that hates, a heart that dreams, desires, and fears.
A heart that can stop beating.
Laws and rules are merely the will of old fools who banded together at some point to impose their will and decide the lives of others.
Regardless of their merit, they only matter if a sufficient force compels obedience.
No law or rule can prevail without a social power sustaining it, and this power constantly faces circumstances that might make it ignored.
The world is just a power struggle based on individuals’ probabilistic perception of the gap between Good and Evil that could result from their choices.
In other words, humans weigh the carrot and stick the universe seems to present for each possible option and decide their actions considering their own will, and potential gains and losses.
To impose one’s will, one must either change what others want, inflict unacceptable harm, or offer irresistible rewards. Ideally, all three simultaneously.
Would the Council’s officials resist if those below them struck and they knew their status wouldn’t save them? Of course not. They would stab each other in the back, tearing one another apart.
Would the forces defending them remain if their members knew they were threatened even at home?
If they had to choose between blind obedience causing the loss of a loved one and the prospect of social ascent, do you think they would choose the Council?
A whisper must spread, saying to each: “The Council will fall, will you follow?” and make it seem plausible.
Imagine.
How would the population react if some used drones to set forests and fields on fire, others placed explosive materials like ammonium nitrate in building basements beneath pillars supporting automated tracks, or placed spikes on roads, puncturing vehicle tyres and blocking routes? If others electrolysed salt, wrapped the resulting sodium in water-soluble films, and threw it into sewage networks, reserving dichlorine for confined spaces… The material damage would be immense, and aid would be impeded.
Humans are far less untouchable than they think.
They go to work every day, return home, see loved ones; even those who watch us can be watched.
Imagine some observing who leaves the magnificent homes of Council leaders, following judges at court entrances, police leaving stations, consulting Corporation or Assembled States files to see who earns what and where they live…
Imagine this happening constantly, wearing down the patience and will of rulers and ruled.
The Council’s fragility would be exposed, and we could build a better world where we wouldn’t need to burn in hangars for false reasons.
We could recreate a real democracy; fragment the political spectrum to address the concerns of every social stratum.
That doesn’t mean abolishing all social order; a revolution often ends in swapping one corrupt elite for another.
An evolution would be preferable.
We would show current officials that they could genuinely govern without being the Council’s lackeys, create parties to defend workers’ rights, social protection, even the rights of the greedy to exploit others, promote consensual causes like the environment, or more contentious ones, like the right to seclude oneself and to hate or dissolve one’s people in all others and vanish.
We would force them to collaborate for the common good, exploiting their ambition to monitor each other; for instance, placing the most profit-driven in the Ministry of Economy and Labour alongside those defending workers’ rights.
To gain and retain votes, they’d have to deliver results aligned with public expectations, and certainly they’d be quick to find scandals among opponents; this would prevent overly extreme actions harming the wider population.
Better a constant, structured confrontation giving the people the sense of control than a harmonious system alienating them completely.
This redesigned system would eventually eliminate the distinction between Aligned and Non-Aligned and…”
“Flo, you’re insane.
Mad and naïve.
You really think the Council could fall like that? They are the system, the world order.
You cannot oppose an organisation that conditions all of humanity’s existence.
No matter how badly they treat us, no matter that some Aligned are worse off than others, no one will oppose the system because it gives them the illusion of upward mobility, living in the best possible world and taught to despise those who disobey.
Even if everything you say came true, rebels would be seen as madmen to be exterminated, not liberators.
And between us, do you hear yourself? How are you better than those you criticise? Would you condone making innocents suffer to serve your interests?”
“And us, don’t we suffer?! Must we accept everything in silence? Must we sacrifice our lives for the pleasure of those who oppress us, for fear of harming them? I’m not asking for a perfect world where everyone lives in love and complete justice; I demand, like every being on this planet, to be treated decently! We shouldn’t rot here on principle! We shouldn’t sort rubbish all day just to survive until tomorrow while technical progress could allow everyone on this planet to live properly!”
A metallic noise rang out, like a chain being undone.
Cam looked around, scanning the bodies that were stirring and beginning to rise.
The doors were about to open.
He turned to Flo, his face slightly worried, and whispered:
“Flo, please. Be quiet.”
Flo was growing weaker. Her cough was stronger and more frequent.
She was genuinely falling behind on her booster shot.
Having been drained from her incarceration, she had missed many days of work, and on top of that, she hadn’t seen Cam since their argument.
She felt a twinge of guilt for not keeping her mouth shut — not because she didn’t believe what she had said, but because she feared she had driven away the only person she was even vaguely close to.
She was currently working at an administrative office of the Assembled States, verifying data.
It was late — past ten o’clock. She had gotten the job because she could read and count, a rare skill for a Non-Aligned.
Normal people were there too.
She had thought “normal people” and not “Aligned.” The distinction displeased her.
Aligned people were there too.
The lower ranks, the common folk.
It had to be acknowledged that not all subordinates of the Council were treated equally, and one could roughly distinguish four groups.
Those at the bottom, making up about a third of the population, were there that evening with Flo.
They were assigned repetitive and alienating tasks, much like the Non-Aligned (though the latter were often given dangerous or excessively arduous work).
However, they did not take these posts out of necessity. The Council even provided its loyal but less productive members with enviably comfortable means of subsistence, so as long as one was content with little, one was not forced to work.
Those who worked little or not at all could occasionally grumble about earning less than others, but they were generally satisfied with their lot, or at least not willing to make a particular effort to improve their standard of living.
They also often displayed marked disdain for the Non-Aligned, the only people in comparison to whom they could feel superior.
No — the real driving force for this social category to labour was the hope of climbing the social ladder.
Generally from low-born families, they constantly tried to prove that they deserved advancement through their work, dedication, and uncounted hours.
Their greatest wish was to ensure that their children became executives, while they themselves laboured their entire lives to become “middle managers,” serving as a buffer between leaders and employees for almost the same salary.
Those whose parents had not worked hoped to break the family cycle; those whose parents had worked hard wanted to continue their efforts. They had been instilled with the value of labour and often blamed themselves for not achieving enough.
The poor seemed oblivious to a simple truth: they had very little chance of social advancement, regardless of their efforts.
It was not a question of willpower, but of mathematics and statistics.
Since the social structure was pyramidal, for them to rise, others had to fall — and those at the top were especially unwilling for that to happen.
Above the working class was the middle class, also about a third of the population.
It comprised intermediate managers, skilled workers, specialists in their fields… Like those below, they generally worked hard, hoping to climb the ranks and surpass their parents.
They too often approached professional exhaustion.
The friendly manager still present that evening, who had welcomed Flo with slightly condescending kindness and a stressed expression, perfectly represented this social category.
Besides diligent and docile people, this category also included particularly troublesome members of the upper middle class.
Family influence shielded them from the fate they deserved, and these privileged fools typically shone through incompetence and high self-regard; they did not understand why they did not have a higher status, believing everything was owed to them.
Near the top of the social ladder were department directors, officers, doctors, senior executives, and engineers, making up about a quarter of the Aligned — they formed the wealthy class.
A distinctive feature of this group was their lack of awareness regarding their place in society.
Some were entirely oblivious to their privileged position and considered themselves “normal.”
The other half believed themselves part of the rich ruling class, though the chasm separating them from real power was far wider than the modest gap separating them from their less fortunate peers.
Though they came from “good families” and lived enviable lives, they remained cogs in a system over which they had little real control.
They were what those below aspired to be, thinking that through work and complete dedication to the Council, they could one day join this class.
They were perhaps the most fearful of falling down the social hierarchy and were far more willing than others to crush anyone to maintain their privileges.
They served as a matrimonial reservoir for the refuse of the ruling class, marrying off their less competent offspring to ambitious, far smarter individuals.
This ensured loyal servants committed to their families’ and class interests, raising children who would perpetuate the System.
Each social circle attended different schools, pursued different activities and interests, and was exposed to different realities, so encounters with people from other classes were rare and usually produced no lasting connection.
Most barriers to social mixing were financial, but they went far beyond money. The rich’s activities were simply too expensive for others, but even without this, the lower classes would not have participated.
Indeed, the poor had to clean their homes, care for their children, shop, cook, find work, commute (often spending more time in transit than the upper classes)…
They were preoccupied with countless daily concerns that consumed their time and attention.
When not burdened by chores, they faced cockroaches, city noise that prevented sleep, and cramped living conditions…
Even if they had known of the rich’s activities — they were often unaware of their very existence — and had had the means to participate, they would not have had the time or energy to do so.
The rich, by contrast, had free and serene minds; all trivialities were handled for them, allowing them to focus fully on their pursuits.
The Council praised the equality of opportunity in the world it had built, and all positions were supposedly open to everyone regardless of birth.
However, while basic education was indeed offered free to all Aligned, private schools, affordable only to the wealthy, provided far superior training.
Family networks then allowed them to acquire valuable professional experience, skills, and credentials for high-ranking positions.
Everyone blocked those below them and placed their relatives in advantageous positions, so people generally remained in the social class they were born into.
The rare class migrants allowed to rise to the upper caste served as proof that social mobility was possible, that the Council’s system was meritocratic.
They were also used to guilt those who had not improved their station — just work harder and be better.
Whispers added to the clatter of keyboards pulled Flo from her thoughts on social order.
The news had come.
It was inevitable.
A new variant.
Soon the Cultists would hold grand ceremonies, praying for the Salvation of those who follow the Divine will and obey the Council.
The Assembled States would once again place the world under quarantine.
Within a month at most, the Corporation would have found a vaccine, and the Council would make it mandatory.
Flo rested her head on the edge of her desk.
She felt trapped.
She could have kept up with her booster by continuing to juggle jobs, but a vaccine?
She closed her eyes, holding back the tears of despair that threatened to spill.
Flo leaned over the sink.
She put her hands under the stream of cold water flowing from the tap and rubbed her face.
As she stood up, she looked at her reflection in the mirror facing her.
Her neckline was far too low, her skirt far too short, and there were traces of excessive make-up that she hadn’t managed to remove completely.
She was disgusted.
She had had no choice.
Without the vaccine, no health pass.
Without a health pass, no work, and no way to buy anything.
She had worked like a slave, sometimes up to twenty hours a day, skipping meals…
When she came to the conclusion that despite her efforts she would not be able to save enough money to pay for a booster shot and a vaccine before her health pass expired — effectively condemning her to death — she had to resign herself to it.
She had wanted to sell her blood to supply the Corporation’s assisted reproduction centres, establishments that allowed the Aligned to conceive their offspring ex-utero in cases of fertility problems (and to continue working during the gestation period).
This service was offered at a lower cost using artificial blood manufactured in laboratories, but some preferred to pay extra for blood from real human beings.
Artificial blood had been invented by the Assembled States with the aim of producing human beings industrially in order to maintain the population at an adequate level in the event of low birth rates.
Children were raised in specialised centres where they were indoctrinated from an early age; this was known as demographic rearmament.
It would have been unfortunate to see the number of customers, taxpayers and cult supporters decline.
In any case, Flo’s blood had been rejected.
‘Too old’.
It was as if, once they entered their third decade of existence, humans were nothing more than bags of rotten meat.
Flo turned to the only option left to her, because luckily the scavengers weren’t so picky.
She went to the Underworld.
She refused to surrender her mind to the Council, so she sold her body.
The Aligned tolerated her presence better when it came to afflicting her with sweaty, repulsive caresses.
From the labourer at the bottom of the social ladder to the executives of the Assembled States, no one had spared her the ridiculous groans of the users of such services.
Not even the members of the most holy United Churches. If the ways of the Lord were impenetrable, hers were clearly not.
In the dingy bathroom of the brothel where she had been abused, sometimes drugged, humiliated to satisfy the most unspeakable fantasies of men and women from high society, Flo was disgusted.
She was not alone in her ordeal.
Men and women of all ages and backgrounds shared her pain.
Debts, problems with the wrong people, or vital necessity, this cesspool reeked of despair.
Some were certainly there by choice, after all, who was she to judge, but for almost all of the residents, this brothel was a torment that had been imposed on them.
The Underworld, that faction of outcasts from the System who had pledged allegiance to it, sold their unfortunate peers like pieces of meat.
They were there to carry out the tasks that the Council did not want to deal with officially.
Prostitution, smuggling, drug trafficking, theft, blackmail, intimidation, kidnapping, murder…
The list of services these organisations offered to the powerful was extensive.
Of course, the elites helped themselves generously to the proceeds of these dubious activities, leaving their minions enough to live comfortably to ensure their loyalty.
And if that loyalty was ever questioned, or if a few people became a nuisance to those high up in the system, the vermin were crushed and new ones recruited.
Flo didn’t know how long she had been under the thumb of these sell-outs.
She had lost count of the number of pigs who had defiled her body.
But it was either that or sell her soul to the United Churches; at least she had remained dignified.
One day, a young cultist came to see her between clients.
“Sister, you are suffering. The Lord is our shepherd, our Saviour, and he loves you. Your pain is his, and in his infinite greatness he will always offer you salvation. We are his flock and we must follow his will if we wish to attain redemption. Please, sister, do not be distressed. Accept the hand that God is extending to you to lead you out of this temple of vice and misfortune…”
She continued this scene for about ten minutes before the pimps invited her to leave.
Morality is not good for business.
Flo had been touched by this woman, who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, judging by her slightly naive freshness.
She gave the impression of believing that the world could be changed simply through good will, and there was no doubt that her intentions were good and her faith sincere.
There are good people everywhere, Flo had no doubt about that.
But the goodness of one member is often exploited and held up as an example to excuse the questionable behaviour of the rest of the group.
Flo could only agree with this credulous soul, full of laudable intentions; it would have been infinitely easier to give in.
She was going through a life of suffering that she could have spared herself by bowing down.
But it would have been infinitely worse for her to give in to the hypocritical sermons of the Cultists.
Not after what they had done…
They may have preached love and compassion, but this wasn’t the first time Flo had faced the darkness of men because of bearded proselytisers who thought they were messengers of the divine.
When she had run away from the orphanage where she had been placed after her parents’ death, when she had been arrested by the police and beaten up before being thrown out onto the streets…
They had not been satisfied with this umpteenth abuse as a farewell.
She had to understand.
She had to pay.
A miscreant, a sinful soul who had rejected the Faith could not remain pure.
One evening, when she had just arrived in the slums reserved for the Non-Aligned, after discovering the labour of the Pit, she felt she was being followed as she returned to her shack.
Every time she turned around, she saw the same shadows heading towards her in the crowded, poorly lit alleys.
She took a different route from the one she usually took, hoping to lose her pursuers.
She quickened her pace and turned into an alleyway.
Halfway down, the men appeared in front of her.
Seized with fear, she tried to turn back.
Too late. The shadows had caught up with her.
She was trapped.
She still remembered the blows, the insults, her clothes being torn off, the icy ground.
She remembered those fanatical pigs congratulating themselves on making the whore who had dared to think suffer.
She could still taste the mud and tears in her mouth, she couldn’t forget the smell of sweat and blood.
Unfortunately, her vision had not clouded over, and she sometimes saw images she would have preferred to forget.
Nor could she erase from her memory the chilling silence that had responded to her cries of pain and anger, to the screams she had let out when she tried to fight back.
No one had done anything.
Not a single person present that evening had come to her aid.
Neither while she was being assaulted, nor once her torturers had left her lying on the floor, almost naked, covered in filth.
She had been beaten and raped by cultists, and no one had done anything.
She could have been their daughter, their sister, but that didn’t make any difference.
That day, something had broken. It was the culmination of a series of sufferings that had followed one after another since the morning she lost her mother.
It was the prelude to the life that awaited her and that had led her to this bathroom, facing this bitter young woman who was staring at her in the mirror.
She took the pills she had been given and looked at the red mark left on her shoulder by the injection she had been given.
All that for this.
The sun was setting in the distance over the waves.
The air bore the orange hue peculiar to late summer evenings.
Flo was sitting beneath a pine tree, her feet in the pebbles. From where she was, one could hardly smell the sewage flowing into the sea.
It was the only beach granted to the Non-Aligned, and most of them never went there (the prospect of walking for hours to bathe in the midst of filth held little appeal for those who already lived and worked in it) nor did one encounter any of the Aligned: the region abounded in magnificent and far cleaner beaches, so they never set foot there, and thus Flo was rarely disturbed.
She loved being there. She cherished those moments, alone, facing the azure. The melody of the waves, the song of the cicadas, the gentle breeze and the sun upon her face almost made her forget her life of misery.
It reminded her of the happy days of innocence when, surrounded by her parents, she was convinced that everything would be all right, that the world was a wonderful place and that life was beautiful.
She closed her eyes. The Council no longer existed. She was no longer a pariah. She was no longer alone against an inhuman system. There, facing the sea, she was free.
Through thought she transformed the world.
Men were equal. Certainly, birth was still a factor of social predestination, but public authority implemented effective policies to enable everyone to discover new horizons, and access to positions depended upon personal qualities rather than social circles.
States were no longer organisations serving elites, providers of wealth for greedy bourgeois. They were the embodiment of peoples united by the will to live together and to shape a fair and protective social structure, capable of guaranteeing their sovereignty and the integrity of their identities.
States gathered into regional organisations and formed great, balanced centres of power.
Not all peoples loved one another or necessarily appreciated their neighbours’ ways of life, but the stability of global equilibrium compelled them to work together in the interest of all, or at the very least to ignore one another cordially.
States were organised in broadly similar ways, with a few local variations. One almost always found a parliament and a council coordinating and directing government action.
Parliament was composed of representatives of the various components of society. They were elected for a four-year term and renewed by halves every two years. Moreover, they could serve no more than two terms, and half of the seats were reserved for individuals with no genuine connection to anyone who had previously held office. Half of the seats were reserved for men and half for women, and within those categories seats were distributed by age: those under thirty on one side, those aged thirty to fifty-five on the other, and finally those over fifty-five.
In this way, the organs of power were truly representative of the population and gave each person fair weight in the life of the Nation.
This arrangement also prevented the establishment of dynasties of lifelong elected officials completely disconnected from those they were meant to represent, far more concerned with their own interests than with those of society.
Parliament consisted of an Assembly divided into three chambers whose members were elected directly by citizens: one representing political parties and serving to express the will of the people; one representing the various social classes so that the interests of every member of society were taken into account; and one representing territories so that some were not sacrificed for the benefit of others.
For the chamber of political representatives, known as the Chamber of Parties, individuals voted for the party of their choice, which obtained a number of seats proportional to its share of the vote. Parties were required to be transparent regarding their political orientation and to set out concrete objectives towards which they sought to move. These being clearly displayed, people voted for them in full knowledge of the facts.
Representatives were then elected by party members through internal elections, taking first the candidate with the most votes, then the next, and so on until all the seats allocated to the party were filled.
These elected members could not vote outside their party’s overall political line, in order to respect the representativeness of the choices expressed by voters; matters beyond its scope led to consultations of party members.
For the chamber of representatives of social classes, known as the Chamber of Unions, citizens voted for trade union branches corresponding to their social function: workers elected workers, executives elected executives, students elected students, and so forth. Seats were distributed according to the demographic weight of each category, and representatives were chosen proportionally within the unions by internal vote following provisions similar to those for party representatives.
The final chamber, in which citizens directly elected parliamentarians, was the Chamber of Territories. Countries were divided into territories more or less equal in area, each with a minimum number of seats and additional seats allocated according to population. Citizens voted for lists of representatives, which first had to obtain a certain number of endorsements to stand for election. The first candidates from each list with sufficient votes were taken, then the second, and so on until all posts were filled. The more votes a list received, the greater the number of its members who could be elected.
The second part of Parliament was the Senate.
Its function was not to represent particular interests or the political will of the people, and citizens did not vote directly for its members.
The Senate’s role was to ensure a functioning State and to guarantee that proposed decisions and laws did not run counter to the proper operation of society.
It was divided into three chambers.
The Security Chamber brought together representatives of the Armed Forces and the Police. Its function was to analyse each proposal from the perspective of national security and to oppose anything that might significantly undermine it, proposing amendments where necessary.
The Chamber of Ministries brought together representatives of all ministries, who analysed proposals in light of the concerns of their respective institutions, ensuring that laws did not disproportionately harm any aspect of national life.
Finally, the Chamber of Councillors brought together elected members of the various territorial councils, tasked with representing their regions by ensuring that proposals submitted to them did not have a significant negative impact on those they represented, or that appropriate compensatory measures were provided.
Each chamber was presided over by a council of five members ensuring the proper conduct of parliamentary activity.
The Government was composed of two ministers per ministry, one man and one woman, chosen by the council of each ministry and validated by ministerial staff. Their function was to represent their institutions’ actions in implementing Parliament’s decisions and to relay concerns and problems they might encounter.
In addition to the ministers were two representatives elected by each parliamentary chamber: the Chancellors. In addition to participating with the ministers in shaping government policy in line with their chamber’s orientation, they also had a role in representing the State, both domestically and abroad.
Finally, at the summit of the State, accountable before all members of society, stood a President and a Presidentess, elected by direct universal suffrage. In addition to representing the State before foreign powers, they were responsible for ensuring the proper functioning of the apparatus of State.
They were the guarantors of the Nation’s interest and possessed discretionary powers. They could call referendums to adopt laws and veto legislation proposed by Parliament. They could also pardon convicted persons and submit ministerial reforms to popular approval. However, this power came at a price: when their terms ended, the people were required to vote and decide whether or not to sentence them to death, making it almost impossible for tyrants to seize and retain power.
This organisation of the legislative and executive bodies ensured consensual and stable public action. It also had the advantage of preventing the concentration of power in a single place and within a single social circle; thus, the chambers and ministerial seats were established in cities spread across the entire territory of the States.
Moreover, in order to limit the unfortunate tendency that most individuals in positions of power naturally have to initiate unnecessary actions and reforms merely to prove that they are working and to occupy public debate, the number of proposals an elected representative could make was limited: throughout their entire term, they could submit and lend their support to only one bill. Since the support of one parliamentarian from each chamber was required for a proposal to become a bill and be debated, it was mathematically established that the number of bills debated over four years could not exceed one sixth of the number of elected representatives. And since the approval of at least two chambers of the Senate and two chambers of the Assembly was required for a bill to be adopted, there was assurance that laws and reforms were carefully considered and served the long-term interests of the people rather than the media exposure sought by power-hungry officials.
The territorial organisation of the States was simple and functional.
There were two types of structures.
Local structures were responsible for enlivening public life at the local level, carrying out actions within their sphere of competence, and working with ministerial delegates.
There were two kinds: communes, representing a village or town, and cantons, bringing together several towns or villages.
The central tiers constituted the operational zones of ministerial activity.
These included prefectures, which covered areas of approximately nine hundred square kilometres and formed the operational level of ministerial activities. Above them were departments, whose role was to coordinate the actions of prefectures, oversee them, and provide pooled resources to support them. Finally, there were the administrative regions. These did not correspond to cultural regions, with which different communes might associate in order to sustain a local culture; they were purely administrative structures aimed at verifying the proper implementation of public policies by the lower levels and providing them with additional resources if necessary.
Each entity was endowed with a council composed of representatives of lower administrative levels, ministerial representatives, and three intendants.
The intendants were civil servants belonging to the corps of administrators. They were responsible for the proper management of public institutions and ensured the optimal use of resources; they were present in all decision-making bodies.
The other part of this corps was composed of commissioners, intendants whose role was to oversee the actions of their colleagues.
The power of these civil servants was immense, and they were the very embodiment of the civic spirit: upright, devoted, benevolent yet firm, they held the State as their god and the service of the common good as their ambition.
Their intelligence had led them to grasp the intrinsic emptiness of human existence and the insignificance of honours. They were aware that, having been born, they were condemned to die, yet the inevitability of this sentence did not frighten them; why fear the unavoidable? Instead, they had chosen to occupy the uncertain time granted to them until their death by loving the world in which they lived and making it beautiful and pleasant. Since public authority made it possible to coordinate the actions of the rest of society for better or for worse, they had resolved to serve it so that it might be as useful as possible.
Maximising the positive impact of the State upon the rest of society required a system of taxation that was simple, stable, fair and easy to administer.
It consisted primarily of a few levies.
A value-added tax ranging between five and twenty per cent taxed consumption.
Companies did not pay tax on their profits; instead, they were required to distribute ten per cent of their profits equally among all their employees and to contribute fifteen per cent of their profits to a fund redistributed equally among all workers.
Individuals likewise did not pay income tax; instead, they paid a contribution of thirty per cent on all their income and, in return, received a universal redistribution income. This universal income was calculated simply: all income received as remuneration for labour or capital was placed in a common pool. Each person received an identical sum, so that the greater the income inequalities, the greater the redistributive effect.
It guaranteed the poorest a decent income while showing members of the working classes that it was indeed the wealthiest who captured the wealth produced; in fact, only a very limited portion of the population saw their income effectively reduced by this contribution, and even among them most faced low effective rates.
The State guaranteed everyone minimum protection against the inevitable hazards of human existence by levying one third of individuals’ earned income. Thus they were assured a pension, had equal access to a quality healthcare system, and were insured against unemployment and illness.
To ensure its functioning and stimulate the economy, the State could rely upon one of the most powerful levers an economic system could imagine: monetary levy. As the Assembled States did, a portion of the sums deposited in bank accounts was deducted each day. But instead of rewarding the faithful of the system, these sums served to finance public action, guarantee a universal income, and fund an equivalent bonus rewarding those who worked or had worked and were now retired.
Flo had just destroyed the corruption and injustice of the States.
Through this new system she had profoundly shaken the foundations of the Corporation; it was time for her to complete its dismantling.
The Corporation no longer existed.
It had been fragmented in the interest of all.
Each State possessed, either alone or in association with others of its own centre of power, public enterprises guaranteeing a minimum degree of competition and ensuring the sovereignty of peoples.
Moreover, States held stakes in private companies operating on their soil, acquired by financing their investments through capital increases rather than subsidies, so that private interests served the public interest.
The returns from these shareholdings were distributed equally to every citizen.
A portion of the capital of each significant private company was reserved for shareholders from the countries in which they were established, while another portion was reserved for foreign shareholders; thus the temporary good fortune of some lifted up the less fortunate in their difficult moments. This interlocking of interests contributed to overall well-being, since everyone benefited from seeing others prosper.
The State was obliged to reserve part of its procurement for each type of structure in order to serve the general interest as effectively as possible. It sourced from public enterprises, small and large local private companies, and always reserved a share of its purchases for foreign firms in order to diversify its supplies and foster ties between countries.
The State also encouraged the development of small commercial and industrial entities through a fine network of commercial premises which it rented for several years at low cost to young companies or firms undergoing restructuring, allowing them time to stabilise their activity.
Thus the conditions of competition and the permanent redistribution of wealth enabled the emergence of enterprises and prevented the concentration of economic power in the hands of a single group of individuals.
Companies contributed to the proper functioning of society; they were required to participate in the training of workers, enable them to gain experience, hire the young, retain older workers in employment, and not exclude persons with disabilities from work.
To this end, taxes were implemented, and companies could deduct part of their employees’ training expenses and part of the wages of those under thirty or over sixty, those with disabilities, or apprentices, so that if they fulfilled their role in achieving the set objectives, they owed nothing to the State.
Moreover, the media, cultural industries and sports were supported directly by citizens in order to prevent the expression of thought and the entertainment of the people from being diverted by the powerful to serve their own interests.
Each citizen was guaranteed a sum within the State budget which they could use to attend performances or sporting events, purchase books, or finance works of art.
Culture and information were no longer instruments of power but expressions of human thought and will.
Workers were entitled to a partial retirement from the age of fifty-five, thus reducing their working time and making room for younger generations.
They were encouraged to work for as long as they wished; once they received their full pension after forty years of labour, they could continue working a few weeks each year to increase their income and continue feeling useful. They were, however, assigned the least arduous tasks and were often employed in assisting others or advising younger workers.
Flo watched the sun descend further towards the sea.
Only they remained.
Those who believed themselves the source of Virtue.
Those who sullied everything: Nature, Men and the Gods.
Those who appropriated the Divine, claiming to possess its essence and its will through messages revealed to a few fanatics ages ago.
Flo hated them with all her being.
Far more than the Corporation, which was merely the culmination of greed.
More even than the Assembled States, that intolerable corruption of the Civic Spirit — which was hardly surprising, given how rare are those capable of resisting the compromise that accompanies power, unless constrained by an appropriate system.
The Cultists were infinitely worse than that; they were the embodiment of hubris.
They were Man placing himself above the Universe.
They confined the divine within a dogma and claimed the right to govern their fellow beings in the name of a God whose monopoly they asserted.
They decided what was good or evil. They indoctrinated their flock in order to impose their will, recoiling before no infamy and no manipulation, heedless of the unforgivable injury they inflicted upon the Sacred.
They massacred and assaulted those who did not think as they did.
They indoctrinated their children from the earliest age, conceiving them for the sole purpose of extending their dominion; they mutilated them to mark their belonging to the group.
They sacrificed living beings to the glory of their interpretation of the Divine; they fashioned representations which they idolised, imposed rituals, and promised eternal hell to those who did not follow them.
They intruded even into the most intimate recesses of individuals’ lives, telling them what to eat, what to drink, when to fast, how and whom to love.
They were the incarnation of Evil, vile perversions of the Truth, substituting for it delirious realities in which they imprisoned mankind.
They commanded belief rather than thought, preferring submission to Reason.
Flo had never accepted that injunction.
She had reflected deeply upon the matter — as do those confronted with the harshness of life and endowed with a functioning mind and a measure of intellectual honesty.
She had reached the conclusion that it was impossible to establish with certainty the nature or even the existence of supernatural entities or forces.
Thus, since certainty was impossible, one could only speculate.
Perhaps the Cultists were right.
Perhaps an omnipotent being had created the universe and, in the infinity of the cosmos, had taken a passionate interest in a band of insignificant bipeds living upon a microscopic speck orbiting a very small ball of gas in a remote corner of the Milky Way.
Perhaps that all-powerful being had once assumed the form of the son of a single mother who remarried a carpenter during the Roman occupation of a tiny Mediterranean province.
Perhaps he had appeared to an eastern prince seeking to impose his domination, or had chosen slaves to whom he revealed his nature and his will.
Yes, assuredly it was possible that he demanded human beings slit the throats of sheep, mutilate the genitals of their offspring, or immerse them in water whilst eating dry bread and drinking wine.
How could an infinitely wise being fail to spend eternity ensuring that animals he had created did not copulate with individuals of the same sex or before placing a twisted piece of metal upon their finger? That they did not eat fish without scales or chickens that had not been bled whilst facing a precise point upon the globe? How imagine that he would be sufficiently conscious of his superiority and sufficiently humble not to demand that his name be uttered in every sentence or that one kneel several times a day to praise his greatness?
Yes, assuredly all that was possible.
But Flo greatly doubted it.
Her reasoning was simple. If gods existed, they must be good.
Whether omniscient and omnipotent or not.
Whether or not they were the origin of the world.
If they were good, they would have no need of being worshipped.
If they were evil, they did not deserve to be worshipped, whether they condemned us to eternal damnation or not.
And if no divine forces existed, there was no need for cults; it would be absurd to worship nothingness.
Thus every cult was useless, and every cultist lived either in error, if unaware of it, or in blasphemy, if engaging in it knowingly.
Cults were merely instruments of social control in the hands of the powerful and the ambitious, diverting individuals from Reason and from the divine, legitimising the worst abuses in the service of their interests.
The only proper way to honour a benevolent higher power was to be a good human being — not in the hope of reward, but as a matter of principle.
How could gods or the forces of the universe prefer individuals who venerated them out of fear or hope of recompense to individuals convinced that no punishment would come to chastise their misdeeds and who nevertheless chose the good? Did they not possess infinitely greater merit? Were the gods so swollen with pride that mere mortals could surpass them in moral worth? For Flo, that was inconceivable.
She could not deny the possibility of sadistic gods whose sole purpose was to cause suffering; did one not sometimes see children crush ants merely for amusement? But Flo refused to believe in such a hypothesis, and she would rather have thrown herself from a cliff than worship such divinities.
She had also contemplated the existence of entities, spirits who amused themselves with mortals as the latter amused themselves with fictional characters. Sometimes benevolent, sometimes cruel, they might intervene according to rules known only to themselves, or leave the world to unfold and observe it as one watches a play.
After all, humans delighted as much in tragedies and sordid tales as in love stories and crude humour, and they had only a fleeting and constrained existence to fill. This idea greatly amused Flo.
Whatever the case, and whatever the nature of the divine, a place now had to be found for the Cultists within this imagined world.
Flo thought of the kermes oak that grew in the surrounding forests.
This plant grew everywhere like couch grass, rooted itself deeply, and constantly sprouted anew when its aerial parts were cut.
It occupied all the space, stifled other plants, produced no useful fruit, and injured those who approached it to uproot it.
When fire ravaged the land, it was always the first to spread again, and when the laziness of men prevented them from cultivating their fields, this weed never failed to invade them.
Religions were like the kermes oak.
It was illusory to wish to make them disappear.
Belief is the natural response of Man, in that it requires no effort, unlike reason; one need only believe.
Suppress them all and let time pass; the intellectual indolence of individuals and the difficult situations inherent to the human condition would soon give rise to new ones.
Thus civilisation must treat religions as one treats oaks: allow them to exist where they cannot cause harm, and waste no energy attempting to eradicate them.
Instead, they must be contained, their branches pruned when they might wound those who had chosen Reason, and above all prevented from infesting the minds of those who formed the backbone of society.
In Flo’s world, the Cultists still existed, and they continued to practise their heresies.
However, in order to claim the status of citizen and enjoy all associated advantages, including the exercise of political power, individuals were required to swear a civil oath recognising the primacy of the laws and of the State over the teachings of their gurus.
They acknowledged that their religion fell within their freedom of conscience, but that under no circumstances could they impose its precepts upon the rest of society.
Proselytism was prohibited, as were religious demonstrations.
Children were required to receive education based on the sciences and not on supposedly sacred texts.
Practices aimed at fostering communal separation were proscribed, and members of the clergy were forbidden to preach against civic values.
Cults were strictly regulated; they were forbidden from doing anything other than maintaining their sacred places and celebrating their rites. They were prohibited from exercising any activity likely to enable them to influence society.
Moreover, they were forbidden to spread. Each region of the world had its authorised cults according to local customs, and these could not expand, so as to prevent interference and conflict.
Finally, to provide a banner for those who wished to believe in something but who, like Flo, refused to adhere to existing sects, a civil religion had been created.
It did not define the nature of the divine nor guarantee its existence; each person was free to form their own opinion.
However, all agreed that whatever was superior to mankind had no need of messengers or clergy, and that the Civic Spirit — the embodiment of benevolent Reason — ought to guide their lives.
Thus one could see people who believed in a single god, others convinced that there were several, some who believed in disembodied forces, while others venerated the spirits of the dead and of nature.
Each lived in harmony, happy not to have to impose their views upon others and that no one sought to impose theirs upon them, filled with gratitude towards humanity for having chosen Reason rather than fanaticism.
There were, of course, individuals who refused to comply with the rules of the civil oath; such persons were deprived of citizen status and required to live in designated zones.
There they could endure all the abuses prescribed by the leaders of their sects; society did not concern itself with them.
They did not benefit from the advantages of civilised behaviour and remained alone before the hazards of existence; if they had too many children and rejected science, they were left to confront famine and disease with the aid of their gods until they agreed to swear the oath.
At this thought, Flo could not help noticing that she was adopting the methods of the Council.
Her objectives were different and seemed to her nobler; she defended laudable ideals, yet that reflection troubled her.
She recalled the conversation she had had with Cam during her detention.
Perhaps he had been right after all.
Perhaps she was not so different from the members of the Council.
However much she reassured herself that similar circumstances necessarily called for comparable measures, without implying that the moral value of those actions was identical, she remained irritated by the idea.
Flo looked around her.
Night was beginning to fall and the sun was finishing its descent beneath the horizon.
The cicadas were still singing, but the air had grown cooler.
It was time to return.
She leaned against the tree under which she was standing.
Suddenly she was seized by vertigo. Her vision blurred.
She felt her blood pounding in her temple and a violent pain struck her.
She fell to her knees. A burning sensation spread throughout her body. Blood flowed from her nose.
She lifted her head. A man stood a few metres away, his hand outstretched towards her.
Then she heard it.
That abominable sound which had torn her eardrums shortly after the Cultists had knocked upon her door, so many years before.
This time it was no bad memory, it was real.
The pain crushed her; she fell completely to the ground.
It was the end.
She was going to die…
Suddenly the man collapsed.
Flo glimpsed a silhouette advancing towards her, then lost consciousness.
Daylight had vanished.
When Flo opened her eyes, only the glow of the moon illuminated the surroundings.
She rose to her feet and looked around.
Her head still throbbed, though the pain had subsided somewhat.
She was no longer where she had fainted.
Somebody moved her.
She now found herself atop a rocky ridge that rose above the sea and did not recognise the place.
No buildings nearby, only a steep path running along the coast and disappearing into a pine forest.
Flo was lost.
She could not comprehend what had happened.
Who was the man she had seen earlier? What had he done to her?
Why had she been made to relive that atrocious torment that had ended her childhood years ago?
And above all, why was she alive?
Flo heard footsteps behind her.
“Sleep well?” an irritated male voice called.
She turned around.
It was Cam.
…
…
…
Her mouth parted in astonishment.
She fell silent for a moment, gazing at him.
“Cam? What are you doing here?”
Her voice was uncharacteristically desperate.
This likely softened Cam, who indicated a large, flat stone nearby with a wave of his hand.
“You should probably sit down.”
They both settled onto their makeshift seats.
For long minutes, neither dared utter a word or meet the other’s gaze.
Flo was stunned.
She stared out at the sea before her.
One question churned relentlessly in her mind.
Cam spoke, perhaps guessing her thoughts.
“You must be wondering what’s happening.”
Flo paused for a moment before replying.
“Who are you?”
“An Unaligned operative working in the Pit, and I happened to be on this beach by chance.”
They looked at each other and exchanged a wry smile.
She did not understand the events that had transpired; it seemed evident that Cam — if that were his true name — had not told her everything about himself.
Yet she recognised in that touch of humour the proof that the man she considered her only friend had not lied about who he truly was.
This thought comforted her, and she regained some composure.
“And I suppose the man I saw earlier is one of your colleagues?”
“In a manner of speaking. I didn’t know him very well.”
Flo frowned.
“Didn’t?”
“He’s dead, Flo.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, and officially, it was you who killed him.”
Flo rose, outraged.
“Cam, what are you talking about?!”
“Sit back down, Flo.”
She stepped back a few paces, then turned back.
Cam had killed a man who had been there at the moment she thought she was dying, yet he had carried her away, and she was alive.
She sat down again.
“Did you hear the sound? When he approached you?”
Flo nodded, surprised.
“It’s rare to hear it and be able to testify. For it to happen twice is historic.”
Flo was about to step away again, but Cam held her by the wrist.
“Flo, if we stop every time I say a sentence, we’ll be here all night — and time is short. I mean you no harm, but I have difficult things to tell you, and I am trying to convey them as best I can. Could you make it easier by not getting up all the time?”
“How do you know about the sound? About that day?”
“I’ll get to that, but please let me finish. You asked me who that man was earlier.
Do you remember our passage through the hangar?
Do you remember that impassioned speech you gave me, explaining what you thought of the Council and what you would do to its members?
Do you recall that I told you some things were better left unsaid, and you asked what they might do? Well… this. This, Flo, is what they might do.”
He closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead between thumb and forefinger before continuing.
“You told me that no one heard us, that the Council cared nothing for what cast-offs of society like us thought.
Well, surprise: you were twice wrong. And the man you saw earlier was precisely there with us that day, listening to what the underclass thought of those above.
And when he heard a young woman speaking with fervour of overthrowing the system, he filed a report.
That report went to his superiors, who decided it was unwise to let intelligent people sow seeds of revolt within their jurisdiction. And here we are this evening.”
Flo remained calm, her hands clasped.
“And you know all this because…?”
“Guess.”
“You’re working for them.”
…
He tilted his head with a hint of embarrassment.
“I understand why you find me clever.”
“Oh, do go on.”
They smiled at one another.
“But then why did you save me?”
“I wish I could say I saved you. At best, I gave you a chance to survive.”
“Very well, but why take that risk? Why kill one of your own to spare my life?”
“I couldn’t help it. When I saw you collapse, writhing in pain… I had to act. So I struck him over the head with a stone, and you know the rest.”
Flo was moved.
Cam had risked his life; he had killed to protect her, even though he served the Council and she was a target to be eliminated.
“You don’t know everything about the world, Flo. Neither do I, in truth, but I know a little more than you.
You see, the Council does not rely solely on its official channels to maintain its domination.
It has created an organisation known only to the high-ranking members of its three constituent factions. This organisation’s purpose is to infiltrate every stratum of society — to monitor, to guide, and to do what is necessary to keep the elites in power. That organisation is the Order. And I am part of it.”
He paused.
“Every major family among the elites of the Assembled States, the Churches, and the Corporation must provide children to the Order.
Of course, they do not give their own; they have us deliberately created.
The Order selects individuals from the ruling classes, harvests their gametes, and assembles them to produce agents with the desired traits for specific missions.
We are then incubated by machines in conditioning centres. There, we spend the first years of our lives being taught to love the Council, to love the great families from which we come.
We are told repeatedly that we belong to a chosen people and that we were chosen to defend it; that our destiny is to serve the Council and the system it has established, without ever questioning it.
We are trained in combat, schooled in infiltrating society.
We are raised as perfect little spies, capable of destroying any opposition from the shadows.
We are taught the truth about the world.
Do you remember, with the Cultists, when you were told the Scourges had descended upon mankind?
That the Great War and the Great Plague had decimated most of humanity, and that the Council had reversed the course of events and saved us all?
Well, you see, I was taught that the Council existed long before the Scourges.
Its members were not the ones who stopped them… They were the ones who caused them.”
Cam looked at Flo.
She listened devoutly, seeming unshaken. He was a little surprised but continued.
“You see, long ago, the world’s elites had come to a simple conclusion: the population was growing, and with technical progress and information technologies, people were increasingly difficult to control and increasingly dangerous.
The old systems that had succeeded one another had worked well enough to exploit the masses, but they were becoming more precarious, and everyone feared for their position.
Meanwhile, automation and artificial intelligence had made human labour largely obsolete, so a growing, uncontrollable population was living in a world of ever-scarcer resources, becoming increasingly dangerous to the elites even as it became less necessary for their material comfort.
The stance to adopt became self-evident to the majority of the powerful.
Councils were held, and it was decided that global power must be restructured.
Situations were orchestrated that led to the Great War, and those who opposed it were eliminated.
Then synthetic pathogens were released worldwide, drastically reducing the potential mass of rebels; the Great Plague arrived.
By chance, those who had caused the wars and unleashed the diseases had also developed a vaccine; the people were led to believe that the benevolent elites of all nations had joined forces to save humanity — and the Council was born.
All of this had been done for a single purpose: to protect the chosen people from all nations who today form the Council, from the inferior beings who swarm the Earth.
And it is our mission, as members of the Order, descendants of these superior beings, to continue defending this people.”
Flo still said nothing.
“I was assigned to the underworld to monitor potential acts of rebellion.
I had to speak to everyone to gauge each individual’s intentions…
I must admit, I enjoy conversation; perhaps that is why I was sent here.”
He smiled at Flo.
“Periodically, I had to report to my superiors.
That is why I sometimes disappeared for several days.
You were on the list of people to monitor.
That is why I know your life, your history, your parents’ story…”
“What do you know about my parents?” Flo interrupted.
Cam fell silent. He looked down.
…
“It was no accident.
Your father did not die of a heart attack.
Your mother did not suffer a stroke.”
He paused, turning to Flo.
“They were killed.”
…
Flo’s face contorted. Her anger was visible. She had always known.
“Why?”
“Your mother worked for the pharmaceutical branch of the Corporation. She discovered something she should not have discovered…”
“And you killed her! And my father, you killed them! You deprived me of those I loved and threw me into the clutches of the Cultists! You…”
Cam pressed a hand to Flo’s mouth.
She had risen, shouting in her fury.
“Yes, Flo. It was the Order. Not me, of course, but one of mine. And I am sincerely sorry. You were lucky to have known the love of a family, and we tore it from you.”
Flo was struck by the sadness in Cam’s voice. She calmed, and he lowered his hand.
She realised he had never had a family.
They faced each other, mere inches apart, eyes locked.
“What had she discovered?”
Cam allowed a few seconds to pass before answering.
“The reason the Corporation produces vaccines and enforces regular boosters.
The variants are not natural.
They are created by the Council to maintain constant pressure on society.
The vaccines and boosters do not stimulate the immune system; they destroy it.
The antigens in the Corporation’s medicines are, in fact, nanites that parasitise the host’s body and disable the immune system.
They then become the only protection against pathogens, so without these medicines — provided only by the Council — a human being can survive only a few months. You knew that; now you know why.
What you do not know, however, is what caused the sound you heard, and the abominable pain you felt.
The nanites do not only serve to subjugate the people by destroying their ability to defend against disease.
They are highly advanced bio-machines, which we, members of the Order, can control through waves.
We have neural implants that interact with others’ nanites through these waves.
We can determine a person’s location via satellite triangulation, access information on their physiological state, disrupt their senses, unsettle their thoughts, or inflict any imaginable suffering and manipulate their body at will.
It is entirely possible to trigger strokes or heart attacks remotely, to make anyone who opposes us writhe in pain. The sound heard in such cases is the effect of the nanites in the target’s ears and brain.
These nanites are designed by artificial intelligences so that no one outside the Council knows of their existence.
Occasionally someone discovers them; the protocol is then to eliminate everyone they could have told.
That is what happened to your parents.
You survived only because you were considered too young to be a threat, and your parents belonged to a social class suggesting you could become a useful and obedient servant for the Council.
When incidents concerning you began to multiply, you were placed under surveillance.
You were already under scrutiny when I arrived in the Pit.
I tried to cover for you by downplaying your actions, but a few weeks ago I learned I was to be reassigned.
A new agent was to replace me — the man you saw earlier.
He was with us in the hangar. I could no longer protect you, and we were ordered to execute you at the appropriate moment.
I delayed as long as possible, and that is how we came to be here.”
“But why? Why help me?”
“During my first important mission…
I had completed my training. I had endured the worst torments. I had then successfully carried out several assassinations, and a few social manipulation operations.
I was ready. Ready to serve my people.
Ready to serve the Council and destroy any vermin who might challenge its dominion.
I was sent to infiltrate an opposition group that was beginning to organise.
Nothing that could pose a real threat to the system, but better safe than sorry.
I had to uncover all its branches so they could be eliminated.
It was not easy to integrate this network. It took me years to gain their trust, to join them, and to gather enough information.
During that time, I sometimes went months without contact with the Order, so as not to arouse suspicion.
By living among them, cut off from the Order, I gradually understood their perspective on those I served.
By being treated as a friend, I came to care for them.
And my superiors did not like that.
I was tortured to remind me where my allegiance lay and what could happen if I questioned it.
I completed the mission.
I was forced to participate in the elimination of those who had welcomed me, those who had shown me what affection was.
I will never forget their eyes.
I did not want to endure that again.
I tried not to get attached to you, but I believe I am far too weak to belong to the Order.
When I look at you, I cannot see an inferior being to eliminate.
I only see you.
Flo, a girl who could have been my friend had we been born elsewhere, in other times.
Damn it, I hate this world at least as much as you do.”
Tears glimmered in both their eyes, and a few rolled down their cheeks as they sat side by side, facing the moon.
…
“And now? What do we do?” Flo asked.
“I will deactivate your nanites.
Your immune system will be very weak, but you will no longer be traceable.
I cannot guarantee that you will survive long, and I cannot help you further.
But if you reach an exclusion zone, no one will come looking for you.
I will do my utmost to ensure you are not pursued. In my report, I will say that you killed my colleague, who had broken the rules and approached you intending to torture you.
He lowered his guard, turned toward me while I was monitoring the surroundings, and you struck him dead with a stone. I immediately executed you, and you fell into the water.
I tried to rescue my colleague, but it was too late.
I then searched for your body, but in the darkness of night it was nowhere to be found, and then…”
Flo threw her arm around Cam and rested her head on his shoulder.
“So that’s why you risked yourself? To give me a fugitive life, without identity, in a wild, irradiated territory, where I will quickly die of some disease?”
Flo seemed almost amused.
“It would be a change from my life as a pariah, after all.”
“Flo…”
He exhaled softly and paused.
“I know it’s a lot to take in. I know what I offer you isn’t perfect, but it’s all I can do.
You must live, Flo. I want you to live…”
She looked at him tenderly.
“Cam…”
“I want you to be free, Flo.
I could never be; one cannot leave the Order. They would hunt me down.
Better to continue serving them while helping as best I can those I can help, for as long as possible.
But my burden would be lighter if I knew you were freed from this horrible machinery that crushes us all…”
She stood and placed her hand on her friend’s shoulder. He took it in his, then raised his head to meet her gaze.
“Thank you. Truly.
I never thought I could feel again the simple joy of having someone who cares for me and whom I care for.
No matter where you come from, no matter what you may have done before, you are good, and you are the only friend life has given me.”
She gently withdrew her hand and turned slowly before taking a few steps.
“When you think about it, there is something beautiful there.
They took my family from me, they took yours from you.
We endured trials we did not deserve, yet, in the midst of filth, though we could not have been more opposed in social hierarchy, we found a way to draw close.”
She paused, then continued walking.
“Despite everything that separates us, despite all that might make you despise me and all that should make me hate you, I do not hate you, and you do not disdain me.
You know what that means?
That hope is possible.
Despite all the methods and efforts employed by those who built the system, they could not erase indignation at injustice; they could not make us accept the unacceptable.
The system is therefore fallible.
And if it has failed once, it will fail again; whether in a hundred years or a thousand, it will fall.
But that is not what matters — the system will inevitably be replaced by another horror at some point.
What truly matters is that humankind, no matter how hard it tries, will never destroy love.
We will never extinguish our inclination to wish for our own happiness and that of others, no matter the suffering we endure or inflict.”
He rose.
“In the end, we are all victims; no one is truly free.
From the underworld to the heights, since the dawn of time, no one escapes circumstance, no one escapes life’s miseries.
We are the walls that imprison us, we are the irons that stifle our fellows, and the chains that bind us.
We are the system.
We flail, we shout; from birth to death, we live a thousand existences, filling them with vain suffering and futile pleasures.
And in this useless cacophony, we must do our best, and love.
These are the only two things that give meaning to our lives.
We must use the anticipation of our demise not to fear but to cherish, to be good, and to do good as far as we can.
Let us think until we disappear, employ our minds and act until we can no longer do so, to improve the lives of those who come after us.
Let us remember those who came before, sympathise with our contemporaries, and be gentle with ourselves.
We are all, at best, arrogant fools.”
Flo reached the cliff’s edge. She turned.
Cam had approached, standing a few paces below. Tears glistened in his eyes.
“You wanted me to be free; here I am, free, and it is thanks to you.
I know what happened to my parents, and I know the truth about the world.
I know who you are; proof that good exists, that it is everywhere, and that it is inalienable.
And more than anything, you’re the one who allowed me to feel the joy of affection again.
You have been a light in my life.
I no longer fear the system nor its representatives; I feel neither anger nor resentment toward them, only pity.
I can never thank you enough.
I have no desires left, save one.
As unfair as society has been, I have never ceased to appreciate the beauty of the world and to hope for its improvement.
I have loved it, and thanks to you, I have also loved those who inhabit it.
All that remains is to use my reason and act to lighten the suffering of those who come after me.
I know you understand.
That is why you are holding back your tears, isn’t it?”
Cam understood indeed.
“I cannot allow you to sacrifice your life for me.
They would eventually find me.
They would know you betrayed them, and then you could help no one.
The only thing I can do for all of us, the only right choice, is to ensure you live.”
Flo’s voice trembled.
Cam drew close, and they fell into each other’s arms, weeping bitterly.
Though resigned, neither wanted to release the embrace.
How sweet it would be if the final moments with those we love could last forever.
…
At last, their sobs grew less frequent, their grief subsided, and they let go.
“I will miss you, Flo. Terribly.”
“I hope I am mistaken about the hereafter, so that I may see you again one day, Cam.
I wish you a gentle and beautiful life, the one you deserve.”
Flo stood at the cliff’s edge, her back to the sea.
The moon bathed her in an otherworldly light.
She offered Cam one final smile.
“Farewell, my friend.”
She let herself fall backward.
As she was carried toward the sea that had seen her grow and would now end her life, she could not help but smile.
“In the end,
it’ all good in Hell.”
Dry your tears, we have reached the end of this story.
I hope my work as an author has been well done and that it pleased you as much as it outraged you.
Rest assured, however, this entire story is pure fiction.
The world is fair.
Humans are free and equal.
Critical thinking and free expression are never hindered, and Reason always prevails.
Politicians of all stripes are neither hypocritical, dishonest, nor corrupt.
The bourgeoisie are not greedy exploiters of wealth, nor jealous of their privileges.
Religious leaders are not megalomaniacs convinced they hold a divine will granting them the right to control the thoughts and actions of others.
Elites from all countries are benevolent, enlightened, and act in the best interest of the public.
The rest of the population is also honest, deserving, and would never resort to the worst extremes to improve their living conditions or social status.
All human beings are fundamentally good, especially you and me, of course.
Everyone has the place they deserve, according to their qualities and their work.
No part of humanity is condemned to work hard in miserable conditions so that another can live in joy and opulence.
Who could imagine living in a world where, everywhere and at all times, humans have been crushed by systems in which they were mere cogs?
Yes, certainly, there is no reason to be troubled.
After all, it’s all good in Hell.
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