4
What transpired between Seth and Marjorie was a long time coming. And when it did, it was when she was weaker, from the impending financial disaster that beelined for her wealthy family, and her lost status in Science club. They were at her vacation home on the island resort, by the rolling ocean, when she proposed.
You have your own blade now…
Saim helped me forge it. A coven of witches blessed it.
Let me see it.
Seth drew it from his vest. It was a plain, half sheeny gray trapezoidal oblong that somehow weighed next to nothing despite all the layers of e-substance compressed into it.
Marjorie ran her fingers over the weapon but she wouldn’t pick it up. A woman never picks up a man’s blade. Seth stiffened and she smiled, undoing the top buttons of her blouse. That was as far as she would let him for now.
Saim Ye stood on the verandah of his dilapidated mansion home. It once belonged to a tech startup CEO whose company went bust in the AI-Inexact Science wars. Ironically, it now belonged to the best Trainer in the west and he wasn’t after fame, easy money or fast women. Saim’s dedication to the Concept was all but absolute. Maybe the western mindset led their people down a different mental pathway, one that was twisty and rough, while Asians banded together and paved it straight as they went along. But Science was always a strange yet regular bedfellow to philosophy.
Then loud bangs echoed from downstairs and he spun around to where they came from.
Marjorie and Seth lay together on the sand. It felt grainy under his back, bare as hers was. And the receding tide licked their peripheries like the adorations of a favorite pet.
How is it you’re no longer rich?
We haven’t lost anything. It’s just that nobody will take our money much anymore.
Seth was confused. But inexact Science had long drilled its roots into the financial system.
Marjorie explained, economics was the Science of human behavior towards survival. Anthropology told us why we are. Economics tells us why we should. When inexactness was applied to the economy, money became pervasively distributed among people. It existed like the US Dollar pretended not to be, merely as a security net between deals and was worth nothing. The Dollar was backed by security (military and intelligence). The inexact Dollar is backed by predicting where it will pool up next. And it used to be that it pooled up with us.
You’re a good teacher, Seth said, rubbing his head against his palm.
You have only the best.
Saim delt the cards. It was face-up poker, which meant everyone’s cards were face up, including those in the shuffled deck. He looked around at the other Asians caught during the day of raids. Sullen looking and dejected, they gathered their hands. It was everyone’s prerogative to cheat, quite unlike traditional card games. Where nothing could be 100% hidden, there was no point hiding it. Inexactness was actually profitable as people had gotten used to predicting / spying / betting efficaciously.
As he lay in detention, without his blade, away from his new protege, the master Trainer turned to contemplate the war. And he was one in the mind with Matthew.
I’m sorry for giving you up, said the counter tenor voice of the Leader.
Seth would have done differently.
His time is yet to come. Meanwhile, we have to obey the laws of the land.
I haven’t eaten all day.
Sorry to hear it.
For his services to the western block, Matthew Fastener was provided a firearm and a loyalty patch required to wield it. The sight was the familiar IS-designed 3 lens affair. But it didn’t fire bullets and had no power supply. It fired his intentions magnified by a static charge in its barrel. It could work based on memory if a target wasn’t in the line of sight. It could work around bends provided the target had once been spotted and the spark connection made. It could kill a well-known leader or high-profile celebrity with ease. And as Matthew ran his fingers over the sleek e-matter plastic which glowed dimly, he wondered about the war they were entering into. He hoped he wouldn’t be near even famous or successful as a soldier but that was next to heresy.
Saim, he said, I envy you.
Back at the resort, Marjorie and Seth plotted to turn revenue back from the east, and into the western betweens again. Being more numerous, Asians held sway over the inexact financial system. While the west with their superior computer infrastructure counted out funds, they were instantly drained into Asian people’s betweens, and stayed there as ‘there’ was more peaceful, thus prosperous. It was for that reason, Beijing had waded into the conflict confidently.
When anyone disturbs prosperity with force, they come before a disadvantage.
How so?
Unpopularity kills.
Then what should we have done?
Pray, I suppose.
Marjorie looked distant and small. Seth wanted to hold her again, like they did in the surf which was now beating on the tank obstacles newly scattered along the shoreline. Giant concrete jacks, laid to make the inevitable Chinese invasion of the Pacific as difficult as could be afforded.
That night, as they dreamed in each others’ arms, Seth came before the innermost of the supreme council.
What is leadership to you? What have you to offer that nobody else does?
I don’t half know.
Are you immovable? A bastion of logic? Are you brave? These things do not make a fighter in this enlightened age.
I’m not really a fighter, nor a thinker.
No? So come closer… closer…
And as he did, he felt the press of many minds. It was a feeling like death as parts of his body went dead to his mind and his thoughts unspooled into the mind of the innermost.
Who are you? He cried, who -YOU!
Abruptly, he woke, chest heaving for breath. Marjorie was awakened as well and she fondled his hair, kissing his face all over. He had almost lost his first fight and that made him self-resentful. Perhaps all he had was a burning desire to be correct in as much as others needed. Thus he was their inexact leader. He sensed the last kiss come with a smile and he stiffened his heart against her appreciation which he filtered with a fine comb of in-built values he had formed and lived-by himself.
You are our leader.
Seth looked resentfully at her.
Yes, you are.
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