The back yard was active today, so I had to leave Cypher in the house where it was safe. I ventured out with a jug of tea and some earthenware cups for whoever (or whatever) might be waiting. It’s always a good idea to bring some sort of offering when the chimes are tinkling on the back porch, showing that the yard has visitors. I know they’re visitors because there’s a rule in place about who lives here (Cypher and me) and who doesn’t (everybody else), but of course visitations are different.
My morning screen had showed that the world was still going to hell as usual, with the scum somehow usurping from the standups, as they always try to do but usually (but not recently) fail. Not that there are that many standups left—or maybe there are, but they’re just as sick and tired of the scum as I am; as everybody is. It’s just propaganda-induced exhaustion, that’s what it is. After enough of their crap you just can’t take it any more and say sure, what the fuck, I’ve got my own life and as long as you stay out if it, I’m not going to unleash anything on you that I might be capable of unleashing. There might be some pretty significant unleashings there, of course, but everything has a cost and most of us seem to have just decided that the scum are not worth it. Let them grab all the things they think are important; we’ll go on tending to the real world.
The scum, when they’re in power, could I suppose affect the real world too, but I don’t think that’s particularly likely. They don’t even believe in the real world. And the things they find important are meaningless and weak. Still, it never hurts to keep an eye on them scum; even beings so stupid and petty will occasionally stumble into places they shouldn’t, and usually can’t even see, but they might tip over something important anyway.
When I took the tea and cups into the back yard there was a delegation waiting for me. They accepted the tea graciously, and I think they were glad to have it, even though in the state they’re in they can’t actually drink it. Not in the usual sense of the word, at least. They wanted to talk about the auspicious date fast approaching. On Wednesday, as it happens. They informed me that Wednesday is the 80th anniversary of the Great Crime, when the scum of that era had somehow managed to propagandize enough of us who see the real world to get us to do some Real World Shit and, surprise surprise, do their scum business on a huge scale. The propaganda has always said there were 70,000 victims. The real world folks, shocked at how they were tricked, withdrew almost instantly of course, and we know the real list of victims is many multiples of the propaganda figure. But in all the intervening years we’ve never reengaged with the scum to try to correct their record. They wouldn’t believe it anyway.
The delegation wondered what kind of ceremony there would be. I checked the screen in my pouch and told them about the observances. They were pleased with the extent and scope, but wondered what I personally would be doing. I was surprised for a moment, but remembered that in the real world there is no hierarchy and every member of the community is both independent and interdependent. I admitted that I had neglected my history and hadn’t realized the anniversary was so near, but promised to apply myself. They were once like I am now, and understood. There is no dearth of kindness and understanding in the real world. d’Liesl was not part of the delegation, but I recognized their acceptance in the group.
Here is what I thought of later, after I had put away the tea jug and earthenware cups. The Great Crime was performed in the name of my people, and my nation. Ever since there has been an undercurrent, even among the scum, of a degree of atonement. Or at least a degree of defensiveness. The scum, in particular, like to refer to imaginary worlds to which they ascribe great probability (the scum do not understand true probability). In these worlds our nation would have (supposedly) suffered greatly in the absence of the Great Crime, and so, they attest, the Great Crime was thus justified (they do not understand justification either). I thought of their specious justification, and thought that I might usefully delve into it as if it were a thing that existed in the real world.
And so I did that, and here is my attestation, as I pledged it to the delegation, of the names of those of my nation who would have been sacrificed had not the Great Crime claimed many multiples of 70,000 victims eighty years ago. The names:
There are, of course, none.
The Great Crime remains a crime, and the justification is ashes in the mouths of the scum. The scum do not taste ashes, or perhaps enjoy the taste of they do; I do not know. But the ashes in the mouths of those of us who know the real world are real, and Wednesday is a day of profound sorrow and regret, and a summoning of the will to never again allow the scum to take us in with their relentless propaganda.
