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Description
Daneel

In a random of collision of events three months ago, the lives of three strangers were thrown together in a journey that would change the course of their fates, and the destiny of the world around them.
That is what they will write in the history books when the time comes. They will speak of these living legends, these fearless leaders in the crumbling world to lead, through difference and controversy, a society on the brink of collapse into a new dawn of social justice and equality.
But the figures they speak of will not be us.
The history books will not remember Jedekiah Khoury and the silence in his own head that eventually drowned the life there. They will not remember Atarah Dayal and the thousand lives she gave to keep herself and those she loved alive. They will remember Ezekiel as a martyr, as a figure, and they will remember North York and Daneel Thulani Baheleh as the faceless, single-faceted unflawed heroes of an age so much less complex than the depths it has.
This doesn't feel real. It's not like a dream though - it's not even like a Prelim. I touch cold things, hot things; I follow the shadows from the sun to the floor; I take deep breaths so rich my lungs ache of the tarmac and the people and the coffee - but that's not what's wrong. Because those things are there and real - my fingers snatch away from the hot plate Mma passes me; my eyes know the shadows fall right; the world is rich and strong around me - but I... Don't feel like I am real.
They pass through me but they don't touch my consciousness on the way past.
I wonder if this is how Jedekiah felt, in those times when his eyes faded and his movements passed blindly without tune. I look at the world I am not a part of and I wonder if he felt so disconnected that it didn't matter if he was here at all. If it's this numbness in his chest that makes Ben make his skin sing the song of pain to give him something to focus on. I look at North and I wonder if this is how he feels as well - and our eyes meet and I think he does. At least now. Our lives have purpose and they have a story but it is not in our control. I want to say that this isn't our story any more. It never was. We are in another Prelim - not a digital one, not a pixelated universe of eternal battle wrought to the control of an encoded master key: this Prelim is the real world and it is the confines of the city and the fates that have been written out so carefully for us every step of the way.
Carnival Justice says it was never so certain, that we continued to surprise and tumble around with his plans constantly - but how did we, when we're here now and his maybe has paid off in the best way possible?
And then I have to wonder. I have to wonder just how much of a 'surprise' the way things has turned out was.
Like Kiah.
Was Kiah a spanner in the works? Too unpredictable to stay on our side, too untameable to play nice like me and North will? Is it his fate that messes up these plans of tri-racial cooperation, or was it his determination to charter his own course?
But Atarah. Atarah. She would have been so much better - her way with words, her clever eyes, her quick mind, her will, even her look, the perfect mix of fierce and beautiful to make her the most compelling poster-child the Regime could have hoped for...
She hasn't gotten any worse but it's still too early to know anything. There's a small chance she'll regain all of her function in the next year - but even then, what is it for her? Atarah could have escaped any time, and she knew it. All those months she would leave, Kiah assumed she spent time with other crews, in other parts of the steppes - and maybe for some of it, she did. But I think she was doing a lot of other things as well. Planning. Learning. Making links and looking through every option.
We were going to get away.
She waited for him. She waited and she kept coming back until he was ready.
And we don't have Atarah or Kiah and it makes my heart clench and my head spin with regret.
Kiah led the Flixton crew. He was cruel and he killed and I - I don't believe that he was all that much different from any other 'leader' of a Short pack. It seems so wrong, after everything we are here for, to say that I honestly believe they were so different from the rest of their entire race, just because I knew them better.
"Oh no, you're not a Short to me - you're educated!"
"I don't really see him as a Long - you know he's studying medicine at university?"
But they were still leaders and I know that Micah and Ben and Matt, and maybe Amos and all of the ones who sided with Asher just because they were stood nearer him when Flixton started to eat itself alive, need someone to follow.
Kiah didn't know what he was worth.
After being told for so long that he was worthless, I think he believed it.
But this is it. This is why we're still stood here.
Because the history books will not remember the unpleasant parts of the story but they will be written in a different future.
We are stood on one side of a door, in jail clothes, with dishevelled hair and that convenient, un-faded bruise on North's cheek. And on the other side of the door are three thousand people - people with cameras, with notebooks, with tablets, with signs, with war-paint written in three letters across their foreheads, with desperation and with anger and with hope and with a voice - waiting for us.
A Reg talks to us but neither of us listen.
When did this journey start? With the moment three strangers jumped me two blocks from home with a sack over my head and a rope around my wrists? With the moment Kiah grabbed hold of the package North clutched to his chest? With the email Clay Nicholson got from an untraceable IP telling him where to deliver his latest investment?
The door opens and the dim lobby of the Enforcement building floods with afternoon light of a late summer Monday and the camera flashes, and the sounds of three thousand people washing over ears that can't hear it. I feel like I'm moving in slow motion as my fingers clutch tightly in North's for one last second before they let go, and I'm stepping up with the notes memorised and all of the names reeling on the hidden back of a podium as we step into the street filled with people waiting for our words.
I think it started with the moment I pulled the trigger and watched Jedekiah Khoury bite his tongue as the blood bubbled up between his teeth and he died.
Firstly, because I will always think of that as the way he went. Angrily and spitefully and with his butchered black hair tossed down over his burning eyes. A climax, a plot twist - the way he wanted to go.
Secondly, because a Prelim ends with a conscious decision to take the life of another person. So no matter how much you might talk about coincidences and forced circumstance - I know that pulling that trigger was my decision. Mine.
This is more than three thousand people. 2.3 million in the city. 41 million in the country. 6 billion in the world. We're not changing the world, here right now and today. We hardly know what state the rest of the world is in; I have never been taught to look beyond the confines of the ten blocks at war with each other, I don't know a single person that ain't associated with North who ever left the city, and even a country resident ain't told much beyond what's happening ten farms down. Enough people don't want to know that those who do haven't got anything much to go off.
North is stood next to me, the big round plastic glasses staring out over the endless crowd that fills the steps in every direction, his eyes filled with wonder but his face set in a quiet way.
It's been seconds since we stepped outside and each camera flash seems to glare for minutes longer than it does as the blood thunders in my ears and the words wait eagerly on the back of the podium in front of me.
Everything starts now.
I was waiting for an ending but everything that happened feels now like a prologue.
The microphone picks up my tiny intake of breath.

Description
Daneel

In a random of collision of events three months ago, the lives of three strangers were thrown together in a journey that would change the course of their fates, and the destiny of the world around them.
That is what they will write in the history books when the time comes. They will speak of these living legends, these fearless leaders in the crumbling world to lead, through difference and controversy, a society on the brink of collapse into a new dawn of social justice and equality.
But the figures they speak of will not be us.
The history books will not remember Jedekiah Khoury and the silence in his own head that eventually drowned the life there. They will not remember Atarah Dayal and the thousand lives she gave to keep herself and those she loved alive. They will remember Ezekiel as a martyr, as a figure, and they will remember North York and Daneel Thulani Baheleh as the faceless, single-faceted unflawed heroes of an age so much less complex than the depths it has.
This doesn't feel real. It's not like a dream though - it's not even like a Prelim. I touch cold things, hot things; I follow the shadows from the sun to the floor; I take deep breaths so rich my lungs ache of the tarmac and the people and the coffee - but that's not what's wrong. Because those things are there and real - my fingers snatch away from the hot plate Mma passes me; my eyes know the shadows fall right; the world is rich and strong around me - but I... Don't feel like I am real.
They pass through me but they don't touch my consciousness on the way past.
I wonder if this is how Jedekiah felt, in those times when his eyes faded and his movements passed blindly without tune. I look at the world I am not a part of and I wonder if he felt so disconnected that it didn't matter if he was here at all. If it's this numbness in his chest that makes Ben make his skin sing the song of pain to give him something to focus on. I look at North and I wonder if this is how he feels as well - and our eyes meet and I think he does. At least now. Our lives have purpose and they have a story but it is not in our control. I want to say that this isn't our story any more. It never was. We are in another Prelim - not a digital one, not a pixelated universe of eternal battle wrought to the control of an encoded master key: this Prelim is the real world and it is the confines of the city and the fates that have been written out so carefully for us every step of the way.
Carnival Justice says it was never so certain, that we continued to surprise and tumble around with his plans constantly - but how did we, when we're here now and his maybe has paid off in the best way possible?
And then I have to wonder. I have to wonder just how much of a 'surprise' the way things has turned out was.
Like Kiah.
Was Kiah a spanner in the works? Too unpredictable to stay on our side, too untameable to play nice like me and North will? Is it his fate that messes up these plans of tri-racial cooperation, or was it his determination to charter his own course?
But Atarah. Atarah. She would have been so much better - her way with words, her clever eyes, her quick mind, her will, even her look, the perfect mix of fierce and beautiful to make her the most compelling poster-child the Regime could have hoped for...
She hasn't gotten any worse but it's still too early to know anything. There's a small chance she'll regain all of her function in the next year - but even then, what is it for her? Atarah could have escaped any time, and she knew it. All those months she would leave, Kiah assumed she spent time with other crews, in other parts of the steppes - and maybe for some of it, she did. But I think she was doing a lot of other things as well. Planning. Learning. Making links and looking through every option.
We were going to get away.
She waited for him. She waited and she kept coming back until he was ready.
And we don't have Atarah or Kiah and it makes my heart clench and my head spin with regret.
Kiah led the Flixton crew. He was cruel and he killed and I - I don't believe that he was all that much different from any other 'leader' of a Short pack. It seems so wrong, after everything we are here for, to say that I honestly believe they were so different from the rest of their entire race, just because I knew them better.
"Oh no, you're not a Short to me - you're educated!"
"I don't really see him as a Long - you know he's studying medicine at university?"
But they were still leaders and I know that Micah and Ben and Matt, and maybe Amos and all of the ones who sided with Asher just because they were stood nearer him when Flixton started to eat itself alive, need someone to follow.
Kiah didn't know what he was worth.
After being told for so long that he was worthless, I think he believed it.
But this is it. This is why we're still stood here.
Because the history books will not remember the unpleasant parts of the story but they will be written in a different future.
We are stood on one side of a door, in jail clothes, with dishevelled hair and that convenient, un-faded bruise on North's cheek. And on the other side of the door are three thousand people - people with cameras, with notebooks, with tablets, with signs, with war-paint written in three letters across their foreheads, with desperation and with anger and with hope and with a voice - waiting for us.
A Reg talks to us but neither of us listen.
When did this journey start? With the moment three strangers jumped me two blocks from home with a sack over my head and a rope around my wrists? With the moment Kiah grabbed hold of the package North clutched to his chest? With the email Clay Nicholson got from an untraceable IP telling him where to deliver his latest investment?
The door opens and the dim lobby of the Enforcement building floods with afternoon light of a late summer Monday and the camera flashes, and the sounds of three thousand people washing over ears that can't hear it. I feel like I'm moving in slow motion as my fingers clutch tightly in North's for one last second before they let go, and I'm stepping up with the notes memorised and all of the names reeling on the hidden back of a podium as we step into the street filled with people waiting for our words.
I think it started with the moment I pulled the trigger and watched Jedekiah Khoury bite his tongue as the blood bubbled up between his teeth and he died.
Firstly, because I will always think of that as the way he went. Angrily and spitefully and with his butchered black hair tossed down over his burning eyes. A climax, a plot twist - the way he wanted to go.
Secondly, because a Prelim ends with a conscious decision to take the life of another person. So no matter how much you might talk about coincidences and forced circumstance - I know that pulling that trigger was my decision. Mine.
This is more than three thousand people. 2.3 million in the city. 41 million in the country. 6 billion in the world. We're not changing the world, here right now and today. We hardly know what state the rest of the world is in; I have never been taught to look beyond the confines of the ten blocks at war with each other, I don't know a single person that ain't associated with North who ever left the city, and even a country resident ain't told much beyond what's happening ten farms down. Enough people don't want to know that those who do haven't got anything much to go off.
North is stood next to me, the big round plastic glasses staring out over the endless crowd that fills the steps in every direction, his eyes filled with wonder but his face set in a quiet way.
It's been seconds since we stepped outside and each camera flash seems to glare for minutes longer than it does as the blood thunders in my ears and the words wait eagerly on the back of the podium in front of me.
Everything starts now.
I was waiting for an ending but everything that happened feels now like a prologue.
The microphone picks up my tiny intake of breath.