Post by spanishspy on Nov 9, 2020 8:21:58 GMT
London.
The capital of the known universe.
Airships bobbed in the air like leaves and twigs in a country stream, powered by steam and by aetherium, or some arcane combination of the two.
Aetherium.
The ichor of the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
The twinkling substance that powered the Empire, whose dark satanic mills with their colossal smokestacks jutting into the Middlesex skies vomited smoke infused with stardust.
Egbert.
The heir apparent.
The young man with greatness tragically thrust upon him long before he had any reason to expect to.
Victoria IX and Crown Prince Mark had been on the star yacht Gloriana touring the Galilean dominions, in transit between Bromley on Io and Sutcliffe on Callisto. Some of the natives had been restless and had fired a missile from Sinope at the Gloriana, killing them both.
Poor Egbert was being given a crash course in how to rule an empire upon which the sun never set.
He had done his protocol lessons and his courses in how to manage the multitude of governments over which he reigned. He had learned more about the cultures of his subjects than he would ever remember.
But here he was, in a small Royal airship, ascending into the skies over Chelsea to go through the final ritual of a new monarch.
He had to visit what was called the Other Country, the floating platform that looked down on London like a panopticon, and whose interior was known only to the monarch and the small staff that maintained it. Its name came from how small it was and how easy it was to ignore from the ground, and its interior was endlessly obscure.
Egbert was flanked by an automata, who even in idleness emitted the sound of cogs grinding against another. This one was shaped to be feminine, a clanking handmaiden, named Maurilia.
Apart from Egbert and Maurilia and the operator of the airship, there was nobody else onboard. The king-to-be and his handmaiden gazed down upon the city, the skies black and spangled with the tiny blips of light that aetherium manufacturing had as its inevitable result. It was beautiful, in a sense, if one could see beauty in the sprawl human beings could make. It was industry and artifice from Dover to Inverness, the entire island a sprawling metropolis.
Soon they felt the airship land on the docking bay of the Other Country. It was sparse, made mostly of marble and stone and glass, held up with aetheric antigravity. Egbert could hear the gears and pumps that kept it afloat.
Above the doors to the interior of the Other Country was inscribed a poem:
And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.
On the platform stood a woman in a black and white dress, peering matronly at the heir apparent. She wore glasses and had curled black hair that was just beginning to go white.
Her name was Fedora Hambly and she was the headmistress of the Other Country.
She was always at the big functions in any number of palaces. She was an adept conversationalist who was clearly widely read. Egbert had enjoyed her company several times.
But never once did she even hint at what was inside the Other Country.
“Welcome, Prince Egbert. I hope you find your stay here to be illuminating,” she said as she ushered the Prince out of the airship. “We have been expecting you.”
“An honor to be here,” he said as he bowed and kissed her hand. Unlike the princesses and starlets and heiresses he often cavorted, she had no reaction to what was often perceived as conspicuous gallantry.
Maurilia stayed with the airship as the Prince and the headmistress entered the doors. The cogs that opened them spun as they bolted together, leaving the corridor dark but for the gas lamps that lined the carpeted floor.
“Tell me, your highness, why does Britain rule the waves and the skies?” she asked him, her voice matronly. It reminded Egbert of some of the tutors he had had when he was a boy in the palaces.
“Because of the Charter of the Land.”
“And what does the Charter of the Land say?”
“That in ancient times, the Lamb of God walked upon England’s mountains green, and ordered the nation, embodied in its monarchy, to build a new Jerusalem and to evangelize civilization, built upon His will, to the nations of the universe.”
“Do you sincerely believe that you and your line were chosen by God to do what you’ve done? That your Empire, with three crosses on its flags, was divinely ordained to conquer the Earth and the stars?”
“Yes, ma’am. I am aware of the responsibility of the divine task I have been chosen for.”
Fedora paused for a bit as they came to another massive door. She tinkered with a clockwork device that had the door slide open to either side.
“Why do you think you are here?” Fedora asked, they entered a metal chamber with the slight fragrance of smoke.
“To learn something about how to fulfill my divine duty?”
“No,” she states plainly. The room began to fill with a yellow fog that was the trademark of certain forms of aetherium.
“You are here to be disillusioned of the notion that God had anything to do with this.”
He shuddered, but said nothing.
In the yellow haze, the fog began to spread so that he couldn’t even see the walls. Some of it shimmered into a form that he recognized as the pride of the British Army for so long: the Hartley Steamer, the bipedal walker whose basic form was how Britain extended her will for a century or so. It was the walker that won them America.
“I see. This is a symbol of Britain’s power?”
The walker faded away, and changed to that of a man in 18th century garb tinkering with tools. Any schoolchild in the Empire could recognize the face: Edgar Hartley, the inventor of the Hartley Steamer who, in his workshop in Sheffield, invented the pride of his homeland’s engineering.
Two numbers appeared in front of Hartley: 80 and 20. The twenty lit up with a bright white. The scene changed to another familiar image: the Hartley Steamers taking the field against the American rebels, ensuring Britain would rule this continent forever.
“I don’t understand. Everyone in the empire knows this story,” exclaimed the Crown Prince.
The vision shifted again, back to Hartley in the workshop with the numbers. The number 80 split into smaller numbers, 10s and 20s and 5s and 1s, and the view zoomed in on a 10.
Hartley became frustrated and threw his hammer to the ground, and walked away.
The scene changed rapidly after that. He saw men in workshops in what he recognized as Paris or Berlin or Beijing or Edo or Cairo or Timbuktu, and each given rise to a world-spanning colossus, powered by steam and aetherium, ruled by a fleur-de-lis or a Prussian eagle or a dragon or a sakura or a crescent or a palace made of earth.
In all of them, Britain was but a small province in somebody else’s empire.
He was shaken, but his training to be monarch said he must never show weakness. As the face of the Empire to all its subjects, he must be ever confident, ever cool.
The aetherium faded back into clarity and he could see the next door opening for him.
“Come.”
They continued through another hallway, still with a carpet lining the floor. In the middle of the hallway there was a statue, perhaps the height of Egbert himself, of a great many women in ancient Greek dress all holding scrolls. On the base of the statue was a single word:
CLIO SURVEYING THE MYRIAD FATES
Behind the statue was another door, which Fedora once more opened by tinkering with a clockwork contraption. Inside was another circular chamber.
Fedora began to tinker with a console whose gears emitted a disconcerting clack. The misty yellow of the aetherium projector once more began to seep into the room.
As the fog obscured the walls, a portion of the aetherium became a blob of pitch black. Not the black of night, but the black of closed eyelids. He was not seeing an absence of light, but an absence of perception.
There was a miniscule dot in the center of it all.
It exploded.
The primeval stuff of the universe shot out of that little dot. The ‘camera’ zoomed in, and there were small yellow particles.
Aetherium particles.
Two more numbers appeared: 0.001 and 99.999. The former lit up, and the universe was created as he knew it, and it was good. He saw humanity born from the primeval stew, and Britannia ruling the waves and the skies and the stars.
But then it rewound to the big bang.
The two numbers were there again, and 99.999 lit up.
The universe was born again, but without the yellow particle. A cosmos without aetherium.
There was Earth, and humanity, and Britannia.
There was General Cornwallis, in Egbert’s world a war hero, but here surrendering to the rebel Washington.
There was a brief empire, but then mechanization and war.
There were metal eagles bearing bent crosses pelting Britannia with incendiaries. Her cities burned.
There were savage wars of peace that did not end in peace, but in humiliated withdrawal.
The Empire died with not a bang but with a whimper, its glory one with Nineveh and Tyre.
That poor little island was now ruled by chancellors and chairmen and messy-haired demagogues.
And, according to this display, this was the more likely option in the grand scheme of things than just about anything else. Aetherium was apparently a fluke of probability and nothing more.
His empire was a rounding error.
His Charter was a sham.
His breathing increased and his eyes swung back and forth out of sheer panic. He had seen the cosmos and their crushing apathy.
He had seen the absence of God.
He fell to his legs and screamed.
“Many years ago, King Horace developed a way to actually travel to other worlds. He went, and he saw how few of them were like his own,” said Fedora without much pomp. “He created the Other Country to teach future rulers of the empire that they must never become complicit, for there is no God to ensure that they would succeed. This is to teach you to avoid the arrogance and the bloodlust that a sense of utter certainty inevitably gives you.”
Egbert could scream no more. He inhaled deeply. “I think I understand.”
“That poem you saw at the doors was from one of those worlds where Britain became irrelevant. It is already poignant, and more poignant with that knowledge.”
Fedora escorted Egbert out of the chamber back to the landing pad. Maurilia was waiting there. She approached them.
“He has learned his lesson. Take him back down. He will know the meaning of his coronation.”
“Yes, my lady,” responded the mechanical woman. Fedora was the only person other than royalty she accorded that honorific.
Egbert was still too stunned to say anything as the two walked to the airship. They went up the walkway and it closed. The airship descended.
“So what was it like?” asked Maurilia, as she turned towards the sulking princeling.
He glared at her with so much rage and so much despair.
He grabbed her arm and thrust her down to the floor with his knee. He twisted her forearm and ripped it out from its socket.
He used it as a bludgeon against the viewing window. The shards of glass sprinkled down onto the city.
Not long after, one housewife found the splattered paste of a princeling on her roof.
The capital of the known universe.
Airships bobbed in the air like leaves and twigs in a country stream, powered by steam and by aetherium, or some arcane combination of the two.
Aetherium.
The ichor of the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
The twinkling substance that powered the Empire, whose dark satanic mills with their colossal smokestacks jutting into the Middlesex skies vomited smoke infused with stardust.
Egbert.
The heir apparent.
The young man with greatness tragically thrust upon him long before he had any reason to expect to.
Victoria IX and Crown Prince Mark had been on the star yacht Gloriana touring the Galilean dominions, in transit between Bromley on Io and Sutcliffe on Callisto. Some of the natives had been restless and had fired a missile from Sinope at the Gloriana, killing them both.
Poor Egbert was being given a crash course in how to rule an empire upon which the sun never set.
He had done his protocol lessons and his courses in how to manage the multitude of governments over which he reigned. He had learned more about the cultures of his subjects than he would ever remember.
But here he was, in a small Royal airship, ascending into the skies over Chelsea to go through the final ritual of a new monarch.
He had to visit what was called the Other Country, the floating platform that looked down on London like a panopticon, and whose interior was known only to the monarch and the small staff that maintained it. Its name came from how small it was and how easy it was to ignore from the ground, and its interior was endlessly obscure.
Egbert was flanked by an automata, who even in idleness emitted the sound of cogs grinding against another. This one was shaped to be feminine, a clanking handmaiden, named Maurilia.
Apart from Egbert and Maurilia and the operator of the airship, there was nobody else onboard. The king-to-be and his handmaiden gazed down upon the city, the skies black and spangled with the tiny blips of light that aetherium manufacturing had as its inevitable result. It was beautiful, in a sense, if one could see beauty in the sprawl human beings could make. It was industry and artifice from Dover to Inverness, the entire island a sprawling metropolis.
Soon they felt the airship land on the docking bay of the Other Country. It was sparse, made mostly of marble and stone and glass, held up with aetheric antigravity. Egbert could hear the gears and pumps that kept it afloat.
Above the doors to the interior of the Other Country was inscribed a poem:
And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.
On the platform stood a woman in a black and white dress, peering matronly at the heir apparent. She wore glasses and had curled black hair that was just beginning to go white.
Her name was Fedora Hambly and she was the headmistress of the Other Country.
She was always at the big functions in any number of palaces. She was an adept conversationalist who was clearly widely read. Egbert had enjoyed her company several times.
But never once did she even hint at what was inside the Other Country.
“Welcome, Prince Egbert. I hope you find your stay here to be illuminating,” she said as she ushered the Prince out of the airship. “We have been expecting you.”
“An honor to be here,” he said as he bowed and kissed her hand. Unlike the princesses and starlets and heiresses he often cavorted, she had no reaction to what was often perceived as conspicuous gallantry.
Maurilia stayed with the airship as the Prince and the headmistress entered the doors. The cogs that opened them spun as they bolted together, leaving the corridor dark but for the gas lamps that lined the carpeted floor.
“Tell me, your highness, why does Britain rule the waves and the skies?” she asked him, her voice matronly. It reminded Egbert of some of the tutors he had had when he was a boy in the palaces.
“Because of the Charter of the Land.”
“And what does the Charter of the Land say?”
“That in ancient times, the Lamb of God walked upon England’s mountains green, and ordered the nation, embodied in its monarchy, to build a new Jerusalem and to evangelize civilization, built upon His will, to the nations of the universe.”
“Do you sincerely believe that you and your line were chosen by God to do what you’ve done? That your Empire, with three crosses on its flags, was divinely ordained to conquer the Earth and the stars?”
“Yes, ma’am. I am aware of the responsibility of the divine task I have been chosen for.”
Fedora paused for a bit as they came to another massive door. She tinkered with a clockwork device that had the door slide open to either side.
“Why do you think you are here?” Fedora asked, they entered a metal chamber with the slight fragrance of smoke.
“To learn something about how to fulfill my divine duty?”
“No,” she states plainly. The room began to fill with a yellow fog that was the trademark of certain forms of aetherium.
“You are here to be disillusioned of the notion that God had anything to do with this.”
He shuddered, but said nothing.
In the yellow haze, the fog began to spread so that he couldn’t even see the walls. Some of it shimmered into a form that he recognized as the pride of the British Army for so long: the Hartley Steamer, the bipedal walker whose basic form was how Britain extended her will for a century or so. It was the walker that won them America.
“I see. This is a symbol of Britain’s power?”
The walker faded away, and changed to that of a man in 18th century garb tinkering with tools. Any schoolchild in the Empire could recognize the face: Edgar Hartley, the inventor of the Hartley Steamer who, in his workshop in Sheffield, invented the pride of his homeland’s engineering.
Two numbers appeared in front of Hartley: 80 and 20. The twenty lit up with a bright white. The scene changed to another familiar image: the Hartley Steamers taking the field against the American rebels, ensuring Britain would rule this continent forever.
“I don’t understand. Everyone in the empire knows this story,” exclaimed the Crown Prince.
The vision shifted again, back to Hartley in the workshop with the numbers. The number 80 split into smaller numbers, 10s and 20s and 5s and 1s, and the view zoomed in on a 10.
Hartley became frustrated and threw his hammer to the ground, and walked away.
The scene changed rapidly after that. He saw men in workshops in what he recognized as Paris or Berlin or Beijing or Edo or Cairo or Timbuktu, and each given rise to a world-spanning colossus, powered by steam and aetherium, ruled by a fleur-de-lis or a Prussian eagle or a dragon or a sakura or a crescent or a palace made of earth.
In all of them, Britain was but a small province in somebody else’s empire.
He was shaken, but his training to be monarch said he must never show weakness. As the face of the Empire to all its subjects, he must be ever confident, ever cool.
The aetherium faded back into clarity and he could see the next door opening for him.
“Come.”
They continued through another hallway, still with a carpet lining the floor. In the middle of the hallway there was a statue, perhaps the height of Egbert himself, of a great many women in ancient Greek dress all holding scrolls. On the base of the statue was a single word:
CLIO SURVEYING THE MYRIAD FATES
Behind the statue was another door, which Fedora once more opened by tinkering with a clockwork contraption. Inside was another circular chamber.
Fedora began to tinker with a console whose gears emitted a disconcerting clack. The misty yellow of the aetherium projector once more began to seep into the room.
As the fog obscured the walls, a portion of the aetherium became a blob of pitch black. Not the black of night, but the black of closed eyelids. He was not seeing an absence of light, but an absence of perception.
There was a miniscule dot in the center of it all.
It exploded.
The primeval stuff of the universe shot out of that little dot. The ‘camera’ zoomed in, and there were small yellow particles.
Aetherium particles.
Two more numbers appeared: 0.001 and 99.999. The former lit up, and the universe was created as he knew it, and it was good. He saw humanity born from the primeval stew, and Britannia ruling the waves and the skies and the stars.
But then it rewound to the big bang.
The two numbers were there again, and 99.999 lit up.
The universe was born again, but without the yellow particle. A cosmos without aetherium.
There was Earth, and humanity, and Britannia.
There was General Cornwallis, in Egbert’s world a war hero, but here surrendering to the rebel Washington.
There was a brief empire, but then mechanization and war.
There were metal eagles bearing bent crosses pelting Britannia with incendiaries. Her cities burned.
There were savage wars of peace that did not end in peace, but in humiliated withdrawal.
The Empire died with not a bang but with a whimper, its glory one with Nineveh and Tyre.
That poor little island was now ruled by chancellors and chairmen and messy-haired demagogues.
And, according to this display, this was the more likely option in the grand scheme of things than just about anything else. Aetherium was apparently a fluke of probability and nothing more.
His empire was a rounding error.
His Charter was a sham.
His breathing increased and his eyes swung back and forth out of sheer panic. He had seen the cosmos and their crushing apathy.
He had seen the absence of God.
He fell to his legs and screamed.
“Many years ago, King Horace developed a way to actually travel to other worlds. He went, and he saw how few of them were like his own,” said Fedora without much pomp. “He created the Other Country to teach future rulers of the empire that they must never become complicit, for there is no God to ensure that they would succeed. This is to teach you to avoid the arrogance and the bloodlust that a sense of utter certainty inevitably gives you.”
Egbert could scream no more. He inhaled deeply. “I think I understand.”
“That poem you saw at the doors was from one of those worlds where Britain became irrelevant. It is already poignant, and more poignant with that knowledge.”
Fedora escorted Egbert out of the chamber back to the landing pad. Maurilia was waiting there. She approached them.
“He has learned his lesson. Take him back down. He will know the meaning of his coronation.”
“Yes, my lady,” responded the mechanical woman. Fedora was the only person other than royalty she accorded that honorific.
Egbert was still too stunned to say anything as the two walked to the airship. They went up the walkway and it closed. The airship descended.
“So what was it like?” asked Maurilia, as she turned towards the sulking princeling.
He glared at her with so much rage and so much despair.
He grabbed her arm and thrust her down to the floor with his knee. He twisted her forearm and ripped it out from its socket.
He used it as a bludgeon against the viewing window. The shards of glass sprinkled down onto the city.
Not long after, one housewife found the splattered paste of a princeling on her roof.
