cHAPTER 1 – WAKING DREAM

We’ve all seen it, that looming spire overlooking a territory, crowned with crags looking like malformed fingers stripped to the bone and petrified by the aeons. Upon each tip a shrouded member of a secret society who control all, the unseen hand that tinkers with civilization to suit needs that, once you boil the fat off of the end result, always reveals a calloused, unfeeling, all-consuming brand of self-interest. It’s a tried and true trope among those trying to envision what bad guys do with their time, but hey, gotta play by the rules until you can change the game, am I right? Spoiler alert: I’m right.

So here’s us, the glorified regional managers of our little slice of the new world, waiting in this fucking thunderstorm one of the others or something else conjured. I get it, we’re trying to hide our activity from drones and the like, but a thick fog would have done just fine; personally, I could do without the dramatic effect. Any moment now a pale light will pierce the evening sky already drowned by the thick, churning system overhead, where it will crash into the palm of the twisted limb we waited upon and from the crater, not orders, but plans. Plans of attack that we can ignore if we want to, but if we’d like to keep what we’ve gained, shouldn’t.

What brought me here? Standing here with these jack-offs LARPing like supervillains some of these creeps are so trying to emulate. I’ll go back, not too far, but just far enough to know most of the why’s.

Two years ago, we were living in decadent excess. Good times. Everyone most This Earth over could afford to be both fat AND sedentary. It wasn’t a way of life, it was THE way of life. A bit before that there was a pandemic scare that really made everyone globally shit their collective pants. Social distancing became the norm. Without food shortages, there were food lines that dictated everyone stand two meters apart just waiting to get in to grab groceries. Misinformation spread online, of course, and the digital rumour mill was working three shifts, and with every shift in overdrive.

But something else happened. Over just a few months of suppressed wanton activity, decades worth of pollutants were digested by the planet’s accommodating systems. Where doom and gloom reigned online amongst the shut-ins, those who left their makeshift bunkers now breathed cleaner air. The roads were at a third of the congestion they knew so well. Over time still, less maintenance needed to be done and society began to prioritize that which was not dictated by the powers that be, the ones ever-chasing over inflated quarterly projections to entertain the fossils so locked in old ways. No one gave a shit anymore about brand loyalty, what influencers were being paid to tell them to buy.

The lockdown lasted almost a year, but the face of society had changed in ways many had been crying for since they perceived humanity to have lost its way. Boredom got people out, and the prolongation of this way of life got people used to knowing that the world was much bigger than the drama and diversions found on their personal device of choice. A wave of learning took hold among those too functioning to stare into tripe garbage, content creators who doubled down on their annoyances, knowing their analytics were being brutalized by society’s awakening, their recognition of the balance that should be walked between analog and digital.

There was more. There was not a single living entity on This Earth that did not feel the weight of venomous particulates be lifted off them. Not all of it, but for most, more than they had ever seen in their lives. People were getting stronger. Smarter. Functional. Without their natural systems struggling to filter and process all the manmade garbage floating unseen with the virus that started this all, many, many people were realizing their true potential. And others realized their limits were far greater than they had perceived, but no greater than they could dream. I’m one of those people.

I can only speak personally, but the experience is pretty much the same across the board. Since I was young I’ve always been plagued by intensely lucid dreams. Maybe plagued isn’t quite the word, since more often than not this trait was more a blessing than a curse. Very few people know exactly what it feels like to fly, to be something else or someone else with all the sensations that come with that shard of reality. But I could, and have. Anything from fantastic adventures with a balanced party saving the world from an ancient evil to timelines where I stayed with that train wreck who got her hooks so deep in me I had to lose a lot to save the rest. I still can’t tell which was more terrifying. Either way, many of us were given fair warning that further change was coming.

The vision was experienced in a resolution of heightened senses that made many of the messages become lost in translation. Vents were opening in remote parts of This Earth while clouds elsewhere took on the shapes of cities. Children thrived in these realms, but every time you’d blink, time would be lost, and the inhabitants advanced greatly. From infants to children, to teens and young adults, until finally, as aged ones they stood in dominion over all that lived and breathed. Old things that used to be called Gods promised us a place among them in exchange for patience and compliance, but only to the plan.

We were told of our deep connection to the energies that once thrived across the surface of This Earth, which in time had been weakened, stifled by the progress of man. The haze of particulates teeming in the air had faltered the unseen system that worked for millions of years in ways far different than this. It was returning, and so were they. The aura that sustained them was so vulnerable to pollution that the world’s native magic had been smothered into dormancy, but the unexpected grind to a halt due to the pandemic showed us the path to a way back to how things were, how they could be, and for some, how they should be.

I couldn’t get the dream out of my head the next day and it didn’t take long to figure out why. Let me get one thing straight before I tell this next part. I don’t hate dogs. Not even the little abominations designed by selective breeding to fit into some debutante’s purse. And I don’t hate dog owners, even though they can be a little, let’s say, ‘afflicted’, but overall, harmless. I fucking hate shitty dog owners with shitty dogs. I had a long shift on the road that day, and sure enough, mop-dog next door won’t shut the fuck up and hasn’t since the half our since I got out of bed because of its non-stop yapping. Let the god-damned dog in or scold it, or something, idiot! So, when my errant, casual wish for the little rat’s brain and heart to simultaneously explode was granted, I took note.

Being alone in the car making deliveries for the next ten hours let me digest the dream and get my laughs out over the negligent neighbour screaming over the pulpy mess she found on her lawn. A squirrel bolted out across a rural back road at some point, and it wasn’t like I was going to scrap thirty-thousand dollars in assets, so I gave it a shot. Into it’s feeble mind I put the realization of its fate if it didn’t move, in terms it would understand. It worked like a charm. I stopped for lunch at a greasy spoon in the middle of nowhere, where I realized the intensity of the heat wave they wouldn’t shut up about on the radio. The insects were going crazy, filling the relative silence with an exo-skeletal din that just rubbed me the wrong way. An angry pulse outward in all directions kept them quiet until well after I finished lunch and gave them permission to continue.

It got better. Back in the car, I realized there was very little I actually had to do. I could steer without touching the wheel, change the radio station as well as override the safety for the back camera while I was driving. Before long I was able to lay back in the seat with my eyes closed and still see, no, FEEL the traffic, the upcoming bends, read the signs. I’m not going to lie, I was starting to get pretty excited at this point and decided to milk this obvious dream for what it was worth… literally. I pulled into a small town to feign getting a coffee with more sinister intent in mind. The customer in line in front of me was particularly careful about hiding her PIN number from everyone, but I got it just by feeling the pressure of her fingers against the debit machine’s button scheme. I implanted her with a sudden realization of how small the coffee chain branch was and that she needed to leave as quickly as possible. Thanks to her sudden onset of claustrophobia, she left her bank card, ripe for the picking.

A quick ride across town had me idling in the bank parking lot, wondering how to proceed. When I considered the cameras, I could see them, their wiring, all the way to the server in the basement where everything was backed up. The inner workings of the ATM were laid out if I squinted just so and leaned in over my steering wheel. My sheer want disabled them all, no different than the bugs at the chip stand earlier, no different than much of the other vile things to come. Whim came next, adding a few zeros to the lady’s account balance, which would only be there as long as it took me to withdraw in the largest bills the machine had.

So there I was, sitting with three years worth of salary stuffed in the glove compartment, a full day of getting everything I wanted and having still not yet woken up from this amazing dream. If it wasn’t a Friday and had there been anyone at the shop when I got there, I probably would have quit on the spot and gone on a spending spree. Now I’d have an entire weekend with myself and this newfound glory. The night would go as it’d been planned for a few weeks now, but with some twists, and despite all that happened that day, the one thing I wanted to do most was for it to be over, so I could sleep, and there, ask questions.

CHAPTER 2 – ADMINISTRATIVE COMMUN

The lockdown’s effects led me into the night with a new perspective along with new eyes to view it from. I sat on my porch, looking out from my tiny hole in my small town, appreciating the silence I’d been not-so-secretly wanting since I could remember. Now I have it. No desperate attention-seekers squealing their tires so anyone would have a reason to look at them. No drunks staggering down the street arm and arm singing some stupid song they and no one else knew. It was as though my ears were breathing as clean as my lungs; none of this was lost on me. I spent the evening exploring my gifts even further, but in the confines of my apartment, where I decided to take stock of the discrepancies between now and before now.

My phone inadvertently became the first target of scrutiny after I passively checked the time and noticed the charge had gone up since I last looked at it. Of course; as I pondered the turn of events, I was pacing with it clenched in my hand until I decided what to do next. A gentle squeeze charged the battery even more, and the harder I clenched, the faster the charge was replenished. Even better, when I closed my eyes, I could see the home screen as if projected onto the inside of my eyelids and with some strain, I could access my apps. It would take some getting used to, but the potential abuse this aspect carried was astronomical and a definite priority in terms of talents I should focus on first.

If it stopped at this, I’d be happier than I was five minutes earlier, but I’d been saying this all day and I still found myself being pleasantly surprised for quite some time since. I’ve been a gamer since I was very young, and a power gamer at that. I don’t watch TV. I don’t go see movies. All the stories and action and drama that can satisfy me have been the ones where I’ve had a stake in the outcome. Online gaming came into the rotation the moment it became available, and I’d had the night set aside for the boys all week. The whole gang was going to represent hard in the latest glory-kill simulator-of-the-month and it was going to kick ass.

I couldn’t fucking believe it. I was interfacing hands-free with the game and even though I was seeing it on my screen, I was feeling it everywhere else. While others were restricted to some fingers and their thumbs, my synapses were telling my avatar what to do and when. In the end, my team had to carry me as I sucked harder than I had in years, but that didn’t matter. As with the phone, this too was something I know I’d be spending enough hours on to be able to look back on this first, dismal attempt and laugh harder than I was already. The boys were a solid group and the lockdown didn’t mean a damn thing to us; as a matter of fact it gave us more time to go adventuring since there was so much less time to spend adulting.

I cut out much earlier than usual, blaming the junk food I stuffed in my face for my lousy kill/death ratio. These guys, including me, could do this until sunrise and I wanted to go to sleep as much as I didn’t want to. Part of me, most of me was sure this was an elaborate dream I’d only remember fragments of instead of every amazing second of every surreal minute. I had to yield. Whatever it was I was doing now had added a new form of fatigue, one of the mind, and with normal exhaustion stacked on top of that, it was time. I fell hard against the bed, face first into the pillow where I swear I kept falling, into a place I’d come to know better than most on This Earth.

Imagine that, falling away from your self yet deeper into yourself but going somewhere completely off the spiritual grid, all at the same time. It was a lucid experience those in the deep meditation circles took decades to even glimpse and bored suburbanites paid thousands for cheap imitations of. This realm made of cluttered subconscious snippets gave way to a bigger picture that made me realize I was far, far, far from alone. I stood at an ancient amphitheatre, the kind heads were cut off in during ancient times as a desperate bid for rain in the upcoming farming season. I’d come to learn that those bids were not so desperate, and far from far fetched.

Hundreds of others stood with me, a house packed to capacity, their faces veiled by some sort of illusion that made it impossible to remember any details of who they could be. My fresh instincts insisted that they were not part of the mind’s eye; that we were patched in to a common feed by an uncommon thing. It was not worth the time to lean in, to peer and guess who they might have been. It was not for us to know. The old stone structure we filled looked as it must have thousands of years ago, when it was new. Perhaps others here, those more travelled recognized the place, but their voices were heard only by themselves; to the rest of us, incoherent murmurs. I could tell those who knew more than I did were unsettled.

A font of light hushed us in a wave that radiated out from the centre of the amphitheatre. It was not white, or even colored at all. It was neutral and dragged all hue from the surroundings, locking the predominant, warm breeze in place, freezing time as is not uncommon on this side of the waking world. The intensity increased as the font became a twisting column, sending wisps of crackling energy lashing out overhead until something passed through from wherever the hell was making it boil from underneath us. Lo and behold, my narcissism had become incarnate for before us stood a perfect version of myself. Fashionable. In perfect shape. Bright, white, unnaturally straight teeth. Hair styled in a way I’d rip off easily if I was allowed to go back to the real world. As a matter of fact, I was going to mimic the entire look now that I’d seen what I could be with a little bit more effort.

“You don’t look surprised,” He said, speaking directly to me, “Some would call that narcissism but others would say it’s a sign you’ve put a lot of thought into what I’d look like. Or maybe, none at all?” He gestured to the others, “They’re seeing their own thing, hearing it in their own way – it doesn’t matter, though, I’ll be telling you all the same thing.” He went on to explain a way of This Earth that had been forgotten by time and buried under the ages. It was a time when the ley-lines beneath the surface influenced everything from the planet’s core to the layers that kept the microwaves at bay. It was the era before the inexplicable mysteries of the past were easily explained by the palpable energy surging throughout the plane. When those most attuned to the whims of the system were rewarded with a power that knew nothing of the concepts of wealth.

“Magic.” I surmised, only to be partially correct. The world ran on a merit-based system which promoted those who served it best a role, best described to me, as an administrator of sorts. Abilities were given in exchange for devotion that outweighed the cost of abstract free will… to those without anything else to gain or lose. People like me were chosen because of our inherent need for more than the mundane, enticed by our dreams with glimpses of what could be. What I am, he told me, is what the world intended to be the true ruling class with both the vision and lifespan to ensure the proliferation of the mega-fauna known as This Earth.

“Us and you,” He explained, pointing to himself and gesturing to all of us, “We’re linked, even to those who aren’t here, every last one of you. And us. Before you, we were primordial and thoughtless. We ruled the eras as dumb titans who were watchful over the big picture but nothing else. Oh, how early life must have suffered under us, I can only imagine but never remember. But when you guys came along, holy shit, what a boon. We could think. We could act. We could plan ahead for the next phase fate called for implementation.”

They walked among us as we pieced it all together. They were there when we stood upright and sharpened our first sticks. Our tactics for the hunt became theirs and over much more time, our innovation became their capacity for schemes. It was only when we discovered fire did they realize their potential weakness: the desecration of the system. Ash and particulates represented an energy that did not depend on the ley-lines, and where a balance must always be upheld, the scales tipped in favor of the former over the latter, if only slightly.

“Are you telling me you’re a God?” I asked, or rather heard myself and all the others ask in mumbled unison. Even though it was the question on my mind, clearly he was in control of the hundreds of conversations he was having like this at once.

“That’s an outdated term.” He admitted, “I myself prefer ‘administrator’. It’s much more suitable.” He went on to let us know that even though our advancement was detracting from their all-encompassing might, his kind were fascinated by progress and made the collective decision to trade raw power for sheer complexity. Music, art, war, love, all of these things made the pantheon cherish their capacity for thought, which in turn led them to covet their station. Their newfound ability to curate their next incarnation made them blind to their intended purpose, if only for the moment it took for their reckoning to take hold.

Factories. Traffic. Industry. Smog. In the blink of their eye it took for the exponential development of man to reach the industrial revolution, his kind had already been dragged down to the mortal coil. Large scale wars choked This Earth with even more of what tainted its purity. Oil. Plastic. Silicone. At the turn of the last century, the administrators found themselves dissolved back to which they once were before life even crawled out of the ocean and bound to a tormenting dormancy they could only watch from. Until quite recently. The lockdown after the pandemic saw unprecedented renewal on the part of our world. Holes in the ozone healed. Life proliferated unabated. Now it was the machine’s turn to sleep and in exchange, his kind were given a second chance.

“Let me make this simple,” He said, “The cost of life is subservience. The plant dies without the sun. The predator dies without the hunt. And you need me to keep from going back to your shit life, even after what you’ve seen and learned. I grow, you grow.” He nodded assuredly, “Oh yes, there’s much more in store for you if you’re willing to play ball.”

“Not a sports fan.” I told him, “Just tell me what you want.”

“What WE want.” He insisted, “When you see a chance to disrupt the new system, take it. If you find a way to help our way gain, go for it. Subtle nudges can wobble the axis, and then, my friends… things will start getting real fun and real interesting in your favor.”

CHAPTER 3 – FIRST CUT

The next weeks were an absolute power trip. The first of many. As soon as I woke up, I took the day to see what kind of damage I could do from my small town an hour’s drive from the nearest actual city. The sprawling farming communities had a trickle-down effect I could exploit later if the grand scheme involved the food supply. It was good to take note of that. There were more of me out there than I thought, and probably more than that. At some point, quite soon I bet, we were going to have some financial backing. If I could make some jackass walking down the street hand me his wallet, which I did, then the banks would be sure to follow, and we were going to have all of it.

Soon into my trip down main street did I realize the man’s wallet was pointless. A simple brush against the mind and any clerk was convinced I’d paid already. A handful of days earlier I was an aimless soul moving forward with the rest of them. Intertwined histories with most of them, one degree of separation from the rest. Names. Faces. Relations to each. Disposable interactions that barely summed up to a profit. None of that mattered any more. I was literally better than all of it. Some idiot who took a girl from me years ago made some shitty comment when I was putting my bags back in my car. Could I have made him lay down and put his head under the back tire of a passing tractor? Easily.

That’s not what this is about. That’s not control. Control is belittling with a sneer so baleful coupled with the active, rapid erosion of self esteem and the will to live that he literally felt like he was a foot tall and standing in my shadow. The effect rippled from him like a wave and passed through his stupid fucking friends waiting for him to finish being an asshole. That feeling of worthlessness was going to haunt him every time he looked at me from now on, because that’s how trauma works. I couldn’t believe that for all the times I wanted to punch someone in the face, I’d find a better way.

In the coming days, an infrastructure was being born. In the vision with the others and the administrator, I did not notice the strange symbol ever present in the background. It looked like a simple drawing of objects falling to This Earth; three lines with circles to represent the stars and their path, with one circle depicting our world. One morning while on the toilet there was an ad that caught my eye and reminded me of what I wasn’t supposed to remember until just then. It was a logo for a brand-new social media platform, like so many others that had popped up, would never be able to compete with the giants. But that was the point. No authentication. No pictures. No arguments. Only the plan.

The message boards called it the Hub, and there was a lot going on there. One only logged in with a numbered profile that changed every time you logged out; it was completely anonymous. There was no fame or likes to chase here – we were all after power. It was cool to see so many others as excited as I was about how things unfolded. We speculated and wondered if the novelty of the experience would ever lose it’s shine as we got more of what we wanted. I was in the camp that said hell no.

It was agreed that metropolitan units needed to strike first, as they were closest to the hearts of the financial beast. Funds were securely crowd-sourced and then invested. By the end of the first week we were ahead by millions. Clearly some of us were in positions that could sway the markets; suddenly I was so rich I had no idea what I would even want more than I already had. Everything beyond that would be invested back into the plan. I made appointments at the bank to begin buying up the choicest bits this town had to pour into the greater good. Legal advice was offered into the forums that would allow us to make acquisitions without anyone knowing who was actually in charge. We had lawyers making the rounds and although I walked among them every day, not one knew it was me helping to change all of our lives for the better.

It only took me about a month to take most of what the town had to give. Every business we acquired we paid to be fitted with the greenest technology available with the aim of maintaining status quo while neutralizing the carbon footprint. After all, it was the only way, as the administrator explained, that we could grow in both power and complexity without sacrifice. With the markets at their weakest they were ripe for the next phase. Our people on the inside convinced government officials it was time to relax the restrictions for the lockdown. With their own posh livings on the line during the crisis, the pigs were more than eager to comply. Psychic nuances be damned, they were just waiting for the first person to actually suggest it.

Online backlash was predictable. To those who questioned if we were putting a dollar value on the human life, the actual, truthful answer was yes. You became units of measurement to us. How much do you take from our bottom line versus how much do you give to it was a legimitate metric we weighed constatnly. A competent, intelligent worker earns his keep by being worth more than oxygen than he uses. Hundreds of thousands of out of shape couch-slobs, shitting into a sewer could go, and a virus was the perfect way to flatten their curves. A drip feed of liberations pacified the units, but there was never a way we were ever going to let them have all of it back. It didn’t matter if it was possible – mass fear was our back door to asserting control.

Meetings with the administrator happened on the nights of the new moon. I looked forward to the quarterly report – there seemed to be a hype online about it, not because it was viral… because we could feel it. I hadn’t slept in almost a week ahead of this month’s vision. I’d gone longer since all this began, and only really felt the fatigue when it was time for bed. We knew that on these nights that we made sure to be home, and alone. Attending the meetings was not a choice. When I blinked to in the dreamscape, I immediately recognized the difference from last time. Well over half of the attendees were missing. Were they dead?

Where we met had changed too. Gone was its vague demeanour; now we were on a rooftop somewhere, looking down on a city so vast it went beyond the curvature of the dreamscape. There were clouds scrolling by not halfway down, making the tower so high it could not have existed… in the current age, at least. The bright light of the Administrator’s arrival was no longer a surging font from the ground, but a flickering pulse that crashed against the skin.

“Congratulations,” He said, “You’ve made it this far.” I wondered what the others were seeing. To me, he was still an image of myself I could never catch up to, “Things are moving at ninety-eight percent efficiency, which I could never have imagined.”

“And the others?” I asked, and therefore so did the rest. He did this. Set up the conversation well in advance. It made me wonder what his mind could be like, and how low he had to crouch just to speak with us.

“Safe and sound.” He replied, “Well, most of them.” He gestured to the façade, “Do you understand what’s happening? We’ve passed a threshold. What makes us who we are has more weight on the scale.” The scale was the metaphor he used to explain our progress. Every new moon the tallies were counted and This Earth paid the sides of our invisible war their dividends. It was fucked. “The ones who aren’t with us tonight, well, they’re meant for others things. But you – YOU!” He pointed at me but I didn’t take it personally, “You made the cut. I will become harder to interpret as we move along. Only the most worthy will be able to see me. To hear me. Which is why the rest of you are now in charge of the ground teams. Pass the plan along using the Hub.”

“It was easier when everyone had a direct line to you. That’s what was making this work. There was only one Administrator.”

“That’s why you’ll be moderators. Same system, only now everyone will know you’re the real deal. Any time you sign in, a tag will be added to your username that no one will question. They may not be able to hear everything from me, but they’ll definitely understand that you know what you’re talking about.” He paused. Was he hesitating? “The others are getting a more… vague vision that can only give them a more vague direction. I need you to act as interpreters that’ll pass on the next stages of the plan to the letter.”

“We’re stronger than them.” I assumed correctly, “This is going to happen again.”

“And again, and again.” He nodded, “In the past when this happened, the plan wore thin passing from the increasingly rare oracles to the rest of the flock. Now, however, with the internet and our system, we have unprecedented circumstance at our disposal. No more phone game. Always a direct line. To me.”

When I woke up, it was all there. All the instructions for the next phase which I transferred to my phone with a squeeze. The sensation was blurring. All I had left after the upload was instructions for myself, and there was only one: wait. Honing skill became the name of the game as in coincidentally, new lockdown measures were announced to move into their next phase. Of course.

The measure was taken to let us flex our dominance over the moving pieces of the plan. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be cooped up by low-grade hysteria only to come back to a world that would never be the same. Masks were the norm. No more handshakes. Suddenly everyone was aware of the oils and secretions they were leaving across doorknobs and everyday objects passed from one hand to the other. It was just short of disgusting now to even borrow a pen. It turns out its much easier to reprogram the paradigm than the people.

But there were always the defiant. They made things interesting. Fun. Personally, even though they might become a problem, they were more entertaining than the rest by far. A quality over quantity type of thing. I had infiltrated some of their groups on the normie social medias and frequently went to their off-the-grid parties. It was the most uncut measure of humanity one could take to study their nature, since personally, said nature was beginning to feel like a memory. There was a party tonight in a dilapidated barn outside of town. Having just come from a visit from the administrator, I was more than enough rested to burn off some steam.

I wasn’t even about hiding it anymore. A week in and I bought myself the most expensive electric car on the market and it was slated to be delivered by the end of the month. I bought an old manor that had been up for sale near the heart of the town and fitted it with every green option money could buy. Solar panels, turbines, with much more on the way. I told anyone who asked that an old relative had died and I was just squandering an inheritance. With laser precision I could cook their next questions before they were even sent as signals to the mouth. Quick brushes against the subconscious turned their curiosity away and allowed them to accept my bullshit as pure fact.

The party went so well I managed to leave with a friend I’d been trying to delicately dismantle the walls representing the friend zone with for quite some time. I took her to my new place which was gutted by renovations and let her breathe down my neck while she asked where this aura of confidence came from. I’d never tell her the full truth, but I did say the sudden changes to the world stacked my priorities in such a proper order that change was inevitable. It was coffee cup bullshit, an inspirational quote on your lame aunt’s timeline that makes your soul gag, but most importantly, it was true. Even in this era gripped by unease and uncertainty, I was flourishing in ways where there were no others possible.

CHAPTER 4 – ORANGE ANGELS

Life goes on whether you like it or not, and these days, I was liking it a lot. Behind the mask I was becoming quite the socialite, and with barely any leaning against the free will of those around me. I was also busy both making moves as well as learning them. The most common trick I exercised was the secondhand notion that I couldn’t be bothered, which turned away the people who were only going to waste my time. When there was time to waste however, it was spent brushing off the consequences of face to face interactions to take a fine hit off of the best and worst mankind had to offer.

I wasn’t a substance abuser per se, but I was a regular dabbler. Well, those days were done for since I became perpetually drunk off my own burgeoning power. The populace was exhausted, stressed, broke and at their wits end, or as we logged into the Hub liked to call it, ‘ripe for the picking’. They were on edge and at a collective tipping point primed for the next phase as our operatives lined up for the controlled demolition of our next target. Things were about to get interesting, and even I wondered where I’d stand in the fallout, or if I’d be standing at all.

Even though a firm handled all my assets and most of my mundane activities, I was compelled one day to check the mail. I hadn’t since this all began, nor did I have to since someone on the payroll was doing that for me. Even still, I turned my key in the box, and inside there was a single envelop, yellow and just thick enough to be not considered a package, saving me an interaction with the clerk. The return address was obscure and some of the lettering was foreign. I scanned it with the light of my phone screen, and as I had trained it to, the map application loaded, zooming in from a satellite view over its origin, far, far, far to the east. Outside, a former neighbour who used to make eyes at me from our respective driveways was waiting for me to show her my new place, but I had to divert her attentions with an alarming, albeit false realization she had left her stove on. I didn’t have time for that anymore.

Amidst the plastic sheets blowing around me in the breeze that blew through my gutted manor, I set the envelope down on a sheet of wood held up by a pair of sawhorses. I willed the crew to leave well before I pulled into the driveway with the notion to come in earlier tomorrow to make up the the lost time. I’d learned to reconstitute the tips of my fingers into something sharp and nigh unbreakable, so the the envelope was opened with the utmost care. Inside was a thin, wooden box with a foreign name burned into it in the same language seen on the address. It opened lengthwise, so that the top slid off, revealing what the remaining vestiges of my old self wanted nothing to do with.

‘Murder Hornets’ were all the rage in the early months of the lockdown and had become a meme about how the year was going to stack one horror on top of another until the grand finale took us all. A queen, my very own, crawled out onto my hand and danced in circles on my wrist. I understood her, and to a limited extent, her, me. She told me of her land of origin, the last place on This Earth that had maintained a connection to the old ways of the administrator and his kind. Magic, in limited form, still lived and breathed there, shallowly, and had a hidden hand in the evolution of her species. With the condition of the world as it is, she could survive and thrive nearly anywhere, and promised in exchange for protection, nourishment. I let her fly away and even though I lost sight of her almost immediately, the coordinates of her dance were engrained into my internal compass. I knew where her hive would be located, and for those first few days, did my best to help with the propagation in a new land.

Meanwhile, as time moved on and the ‘new reality’ was defined, the plan lurched forward unabated. It was almost unfair how easily we’d sewn division in the common ranks of humanity. The races were at odds when relations had never been better, the war of the sexes raged when equality had never been so close. Those who saw through the engineering fingered the elite as the source of the discord, which worked even still in our favour. Fuck the right and the left in terms of political persuasion; the centre was hollering into a vacuum. All that counted was above and below, with the latter not even aware the former existed, let alone were responsible. For everything.

Civil unrest spread across the globe for arbitrary reasons. Whatever caught steam, we grasped onto and our operatives, coupled with the angst of being imprisoned by a lockdown that extended several times made for the perfect circumstance for outdated models to be burnt to the ground. Every structure demolished in the name of a change that would never come was seized by our conglomerate to lend to change which would be inevitable, and permanent. In their place would be proud buildings which stood tall and ran on green energy, guarded by wards that would move those with ill intent onto another target more suitable to our cause and not the indiscriminate, wanton whims of a mob.

In my corner of the market, it was much easier. I procured old shops closed by the floundering economy and ordered demolitions. Newer, better businesses would be erected in the place of half, while parks and green spaces would fill in the rest. Changes that were months or years down the line would be more ascetically pleasing and so efficient in their function that my sector would be autonomous. The fewer vehicles we had coming and going in the name of transporting goods, the better. The more I could cut these people off from the other regions, the better even still. It had already been established that we were each in charge of our respective zones, and geographic segregation was the perfect way to dissuade the tides from one washing onto the shores of another. By the time lockdown was lifted, the mass would be conditioned to be so tied to their land, and in turn, their steward, no other way, new or old, could be plausible.

I relished where the old ways still thrived. Off the grid bonfires where those who gave no concerns about the virus or just plain couldn’t care was where I got my fix. Drinking messed with my focus, and smoking anything choked me in a way far from a hilarious coughing fit that would kick a drug trip into overdrive. Thankfully, there were edibles and sprays swimming through the hundred-strong of defiants. Deep down, I hoped for interactions like this to continue, while on the surface I knew their days were numbered. The next morning, after I rolled away from my latest conquest and left her to sleep until I compelled her to leave, I smelled something so delicious none of my senses could ignore.

On a picnic table set up in my sprawling back yard was what looked like a cup with an open top, grey and organic. A hornet landed nearby as if to watch what I’d do next. They made it. For me. I picked it up and looked inside, swirling the nectar they refined; a few ounces to me must have been much intense labour for them. I get it. It was my cut of the harvest, so I took the shot-sized portion out of respect, but due to instinct. It went down burning hot into my core and the trees vibrated as the whole of the colony I’d kept safe for the last few weeks celebrated the convocation. My head spun as the nectar, no, the ambrosia spread throughout my body and pumped vigorously through the brain unlocking access to functions I’d never have been able to without them.

The woman I brought home was one I ran into often through work. I’d only just now realized she was awake, let alone even there, when I heard her gasp. I looked towards the house where I caught my reflection in one of the newly installed windows. There were wisps of energy venting like steam through my pores, so I could understand why she was in distress. The hornets moved to act and I gave them the command to spare her before they stung but not after she was swarmed. I hated using my mental abilities on someone I’d connected with personally, but no one person is above the plan. Not even one of our people. Not most even still. I filled her head with nonsense and a recollection of a vivid nightmare she’d tell me about later.

The hornets turned on me, or so any onlooker would think. They covered me, bathing in this aura to define our parasitic bond and then some. High off the harvest they began to dance, speaking to me of a place with a fourth coordinate… a moment in time. This hot mist that covered me drew close and grew thick, dulling my senses. I felt myself drop to my knees as if to succumb to a meeting with the administrator but instead of falling down, my consciousness was carried upward, away from a body I knew was safe under the watchful eyes of the swarm, my sharp, orange little angels. This wasn’t a dream, it was a form of astral projection that took me not to another plane this time but a place, here upon This Earth.

So here we are, all caught up. Standing as a detached spirit amongst the others, the few who had been deemed worthy of the ambrosia. This mountaintop was a real place, a landmark from where the hornets hailed, a wonder of the ancient world and where we would learn more about the administrator’s personal endgame. From the moves we made as a whole, surely there were world leaders among us, billionaires, influencers and more. I wanted to ask him, as surely did we all, what made me worthy of coming this far? We had to know. I had to know.