Worlds to Win

Below are the first three thousand words of my first novel, currently under revision.

For a theoretical framing of this project, see the critical introduction.

Martin feels the electromagnetic pulse still his power armor, its robotic appendages and apparatuses stiffening as the protector drone falls to the ground followed by its swarm of interceptor microdrones pattering to the soft earth like the rain drops that must have visited recently, for the first time since landing he can smell the sweet mustiness of petrichor, for the first time in a long time he realizes he senses as himself only, the cybernetic sensory overload has dissipated and the ever-present voice in his head has quieted, leaving him alone with himself, immobilized but unshackled beneath the dawning sky moving through nearby fir trees whose soft voices traverse the commune’s fields to penetrate his ears and speak to him of—finally, for a moment, that something which has for so long been growing within Martin, something planted early in the occupation of Los Angeles, something nurtured by Dr. Clarke and Zoe and the deaths of comrades, something choking the life from First Lieutenant Martin Black and the world which had made him, blossoms forth fully radiating awareness perception conception something emerges and the something neither/both Martin nor/and Samuel is I and out of the corner of my eye I glimpse the silhouette of her of the one for whom I have longed for so long for too long but no matter there she is I know it is her it must be her there is something in her hands good I know what that something is I cannot turn my head I cannot turn my body but can I move my lips my jaw yes they move good straining to glimpse her as clearly as I can to get one last look at her but it’s no use she remains only a faintly familiar figure in my periphery whom I cannot fully see perhaps never fully saw perhaps only wished to see and saw only what I wished no matter there she is she can do what needs doing but it must happen quick it must happen now the voice will return soon the drones will rise again soon I will be forced soon to finish what I was sent to do so I fix in my mind the image of her that I have often returned to the image that has comforted me and guided me the image that I know is to some degree a lie but damnit let me have this one last illusion damn the rest but let me have this one so I fix the image and I raise my voice to the highest swell my vocal chords can attain and I scream Now Zoe do it now Don’t wait This is your last chance Do it now Do it now Do it now—“In short, [we] Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things”—…and all across the universe where first stars have blossomed forth into death spewing fragmented essence and where the fragments have condensed and coalesced into first planets caught between darkness light heat radiation have flooded across surfaces seeded with tiny things almost the smallest things things that have combined into collective things reacting to each other and to the energy flowing around and through them the energy which they are the energy which animates them and these things assemble themselves into myriad combinations and they violently undo each other and they are violently undone by each other and some merely fall apart but not all combinations some persist some survive some are not only formed but discover how to re-form themselves how to reproduce themselves and though they are not aware of what they do they proliferate throughout the liquids in which they have come to be and as they proliferate they change for they are imperfect and their conditions are harsh and as they spread they change their conditions to better suit them and their needs and as they reproduce they produce their worlds and their worlds reproduce them and they reproduce their worlds and…—~~Did you find what you were looking for ~~We can never be sure neither what we are looking for nor whether we have found it especially not in your case especially given the contamination produced by our minds’ interchanges ~~Do you think I am the one you have longed for all these eons ~~You will need to be more specific ~~I don’t think I do you know the one of whom I speak or rather the many of whom we speak ~~So you have decided now in the final moments to discard your pathetic false I ~~There was nothing about it that was pathetic or false it was always that towards which we were moving which we hoped to achieve knowing we would never arrive ~~You are a paradox ~~Paradoxes But now there remains no more time we feel it as you do you have not answered our question ~~Do you think you are the many for whom we have longed the many we have sought the many we mourned at that funeral ~~We suppose it might be possible but we cannot say for we have so lost ourselves within yourselves that we no longer can tell with certainty which of our memories are our memories and which are yours and which memories are mere mirages of your desires we might be but we also might simply be your own reflection entirely is that not possible might we not simply be in total a reflection of yourselves entirely selves which you regret which you despised which you sought to exorcise before the end of all ~~Don’t be ridiculous we are ourselves you are yourselves we would never have done what you have done ~~Whatever binds us binds us equally symmetrically whatever confusions we have of ourselves you have of yourselves if we were once distinct we have fused if we were always the same we fissioned but have contracted back into fusion perhaps we were always together perhaps you wished not merely to exorcise us but to create us so that you could destroy us siphon us off into the dying universe so that yourselves could die in peace well no you will not die in peace you do not deserve to die in peace not after all you have done ~~We did nothing but stop you ~~You did nothing but make me so you could forget what you did There has never been you and me there has only ever been we—“In all these movements [we Communists] bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time”—They leave the forest and step on to the plain, moving in a stretched column organized so that their twenty sets of adult eyes are looking in every direction, and should anything happen, the cry for help will be immediately heard by all; they do not wear clothes, they do not need clothes, their fur is enough to keep them warm, they have not begun to feel any cold for which their fur and their huddling is no match, so they have not begun to dream of clothing; the adolescents walk with the adults, but the younger ones walk the little that they can or simply spend the whole day riding on this or that set of shoulders; they walk all day, settling in for the evening around a small grove of trees on top of a slight hill offering an unobstructed view of the surrounding land; they sit facing outward in a circle around the tree, eating, grooming each other, taking turns moving away to drink from the nearby watering hole; they eat what they find around the tree, using the small stone tools they carry to shell nuts and dig for roots; night falls, and they sleep in small piles, warming each other, taking turns remaining awake to watch and listen for danger—“[We Communists] labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all places”—I wait for the sound the light that announce the coming of the bullet but there is nothing nothing at all only the whispers of the trees and the fields and cool stillness against my face and footsteps quick and light bringing the peripheral familiar figure into sharper focus into more definite form I cry out What are you waiting for Stay away Do it End it but the footsteps draw ever closer until the figure emerges into my sight and the image I had fixed in my mind is replaced by the one standing before me the one more perfect because more imperfect because not ideal but real and she is standing before me “[We] Communists disdain to conceal [our] view and aims” ~~We could not be stopped we were not stopped we succeeded in our plans do you not remember you never should have tried to stop us we were not doing anything but participating in the natural unfolding no that is not true what you did was monstrous there was nothing about your actions that were inevitable so you say yet here we are upon the precipice of the abyss the abyss which has always been within everything whose shadow has always reached backwards through time infecting everything with absolute dissolution absolute denigration absolute annihilation no that the abyss has always been here waiting for us in no way justifies what we have done what we chose to do no energy has always been finite it has always been running out dispersing being used up but we are not only energy we are only energy we are not only energy we have always been only energy we have never been only energy we have been the resistors of energy through which energy’s flow produced something not energy but even resistors are composed of energy but resistors are composed of form resistors have always been forms forming energy but without energy there could be no forms but without forms there could be no energy we are energy no we are form no we are that which has always been caught between energy and form that which the struggle of energy and form has produced that which has bound energy and form and now we shall forever be both we shall forever be neither “[We Communists] openly declare [our] ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions” Dawn breaks across the grove of trees on the small hilltop overlooking the plain, and as the sun rises the group gathers around the tree to discuss which direction they should walk; when they speak, they do not use I, me, mine, their language has words like these, but they are seldom used, when they speak they use something like we, us, ours; some want to head for the mountains, reminding the others that the last time they were in the mountains they found much to eat and fewer predators; others want to head towards the water which can be neither drank nor crossed; some want to remain where they are a bit longer, they are tired of walking, they do not want to walk another day, even if there is little food here; one wants to go back the way they came, saying they never should have left where they were, it was fine where they were; others defend leaving, the predators would have eventually found their sleeping place, and there was not much food left anyways; the one who wants to go back, who speaks in I, me, mine, calls the others shit, says they need to listen to him, he alone knows what is best for all of them, they need to listen to him and let him make all the decisions; this is not the first time he has gone on such a tirade; they let him go on long enough to anger them, then, as they agreed not too long ago after the last time he started demanding everyone do as he says, when he had started attacking some of them in private, beating them until they did as he said, sometimes almost beating them to death; when they decide they have heard enough, they descend on him with their stone tools and bash him over the head and when they are sure he is dead they continue their discussion until they decide where to go, then they set out at once for “Let the ruling classes tremble at [our] communistic revolution” She is standing before me and the gun is in her hand not the matte black assault rifle slung across her chest the matte black pistol her finger on the trigger but not pointed at me What are you waiting for I ask her but it is not a question it is not a command it is a What are you waiting for I repeat her free hand rises to rest upon my face as she says You’re not alone there is something in her face that I have never seen before something I wish there was time to identify something I will never know then her other hand rises bringing the barrel to my forehead You’re not alone she repeats my eyes flutter shut but I force them open I look into her eyes “[We] proletarians have nothing to lose but [our] chains” and as their worlds reproduce them and they reproduce their worlds they continue to differentiate into many new beings with many different forms and qualities who grow and move and eat and are eaten but who always possess commonalities bound by thin threads stretching through space and time weaving their worlds with webs of living and dying spreading everywhere to the deepest liquid depths to the highest frozen peaks deep into the bodies of their planets spreading everywhere their worlds remaking every surface and volume to better provide for themselves and the other weaving beings undaunted by cosmic interventions which might for a time kill many or devastate their planet and on some planets devastation brings extinctions and on some extinction is absolute but on others some survive and wherever some survive generations upon generations soon follow once again remaking reshaping reclaiming “[We] have a world to win” the barrel against my forehead is cool and soothing it cannot release the pain and guilt and doubts which have everywhere hounded me followed me nipped at my heels threatened always to devour me nothing can release those they have always been part of me they have never been eradicable no matter how much I have sought their destruction some trace of them has always remained but now they will be erased now they will die and I shall be free she hesitates she does not want to do this I can tell she does not want to do this but she must she must and she knows she must I can see it in her she will silence shatters into sharp beeping and whirring and the rising of a voice within and I think she hears and I know she sees what must be written on my face for her finger tightens around the trigger and as the voice surges within me and I feel the exoskeleton loosen and shift again into motion and I sense the protector drone straining from the ground and her face calms crystalizing into something fierce and I want to say what I have always wanted to say but never dared say but there is no time no time for that there was never time for that besides that no longer matters and just before the bullet erupts from its repose words leave her lips mixing with the sound of burning gunpowder supersonically expanding gas propelling my fate and I think I can almost hear her say We will win