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Inner Sanctum Tunnels | 10:39 AM | Second Day
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Death''s inverse, after all, is not life,'' I remembered learning in a long-ago theology class in primary school, ''for life''s opposite is barren void, where nothing has ever lived at all. Death is merely the moment in which life comes to an end.''
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hadn''t changed with the collapse of the old world. So it was symbolically fitting that they appeared as they always had: An androgynous form, crowned and masked in porcelain, wrapped from head to toe in bandages of dark cloth, so long they fell over their body, almost resembling robes. Clutching in each of their hands one of the two possible fates of mankind after death.
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LET US BE THE LAST
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accessories to oathbreaking - though the penalty for that is much less severe for begin with." She looked at her scepter for a moment, still in her hand, then reattached it to her waist. "It''s all redundant now, but many of the old hands still take it very seriously."
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Not much interest in the uncommitted, then, I thought.
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Mundane. People could do worse than getting a little militant about it."
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absurdly difficult. And the goal may not even be thermodynamically possible."
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great," Neferuaten said cheerfully.
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total despots." She gave a wistful snort. "Though, if Anna had anything to say about it..."
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12 years, huh.
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refused to confess to oath breaking, right up until the very end."
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could break their oaths and get away with it, so long as it was politically expedient.)
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technically break the Covenant, thus making some of the crimes people were charged under unjust."
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Oh, I get it.
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swear on anything."
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knew we were criminals by almost any sense of the word. That we were breaking our vows by becoming part of this. The Order has always emphasized that to new recruits, and I, incidentally, was no exception. I heard the speech when I joined as a neophyte, nigh-on 300 years ago." She looked upward wistfully. "I still remember what it felt like, the day when I realized I was choosing to live the rest of my life partly in the shadows... Or so I thought at the time. It''s a harrowing feeling."
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That''s right, I thought. When we saw the version of the Covenant yesterday, she said it was done in hopes that its presence would make the authorities look favorably on them. Not that any of them really believed in it.
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bind people to the Order over the Covenant, or justify some legal or ethical escape. By being here at all, it''s implicitly expected that an applicant will have decided that they view our goal as more important than their prior loyalties." She glanced down at it. "Instead, it''s just a sentiment that the founder wanted scholars to genuinely believe, if they were to join our cause. To hold themselves to our better nature."
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this is what you want from me, right?
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Ah, so that''s it, then...
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If you ask me, all politics, all this maneuvering of power we''ve been doing since the dawn of time, is treating the symptom. Trying to merely offset the human condition in lieu of solving it.''
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longing.
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call it selfish, though," Kamrusepa objected. Her tone was more uneasy than usual, but still had that underlying quality of stubborn defiance I''d come to associate with her. "It''s only because people dying that way that it''s even conceptualized that way. In the old days, we called stealing bread selfish, but now we rightly recognize that a scenario where the only way people can eat is by breaking the law is-- Well, insane."
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does bother me," she eventually said. "To be frank, I''ve always liked the absence of those sentiments in the culture of the Great Work. People shouldn''t be seen as... As evil, if they''re not willing to set aside their own dreams for the benefit of their replacements." She said the word with a harsh, deliberate intonation, as if it were vulgar.
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no, I don''t," she replied firmly, her tone becoming a little defensive. "But that doesn''t mean I''m empathetic. I care about people in the here and now!" She pushed her lips together. "But I can''t care about anything in a future where I don''t exist."
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"...I-I don''t think that''s anything to be ashamed of," Kamrusepa added, setting her teeth.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
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plenty of members who violate the sentiment far more than I''m sure you ever would in practice, and are much less honest about it to boot." She smiled more widely, but there was a bittersweetness in it. "But in all honestly, now that the Biological Continuity Oath has been reinterpreted, they''ll probably be leagues of organizations like ours soon enough. Why not find people who you know share your beliefs unambiguously? It does make life a little easier."
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massive increase to lifelong health span if administered to people who were still young... Well, obviously the more humanitarian thing would be to pick the second. So I could see it redirecting people away from bad impulses, if only passively."
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That''s not really why you like it, though. No, that''s because of your creepy martyr complex.
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one baby?" She tapped a finger against her arm. "I''ll have to call a meeting after all this is over. We must step up our game." She turned to regard the only person who hadn''t spoken.
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Symbolically surrendering," Neferuaten corrected herself. "And not a physical object, but something that consumes their passions. Like a hobby, an interest, a favorite thing... Or sometimes something more abstract. Like a fixation on a place or memory. Sometimes, people even give up relationships..."
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exactly what I was going to say." She furrowed her brow. "Has someone explained all of this to you before?"
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had that come from? It''d felt completely natural in the moment, but when I tried to retrace my steps mentally, it led to dead ends.
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much better at managing it healthily with it than I am." She moved to the next shelf. "Grief is addictive! Worse than most drugs I''ve tried, and believe you me, I''ve tried quite a lot. Like an abusive partner, it beats you savagely night after night, only for you to start missing it and come crawling back. Doing the old dances, over and over again. It is at once the death of the soul, and its solitary salvation."
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memento mori." She smiled, coming to a stop at the other side of the statue. "I don''t expect you to understand it quite yet, but the main reason I brought you down here was so that you might acquire a better sense of what the Order is, as an organization, before everything that is to happen later today. What we value, what we choose to give up. And how many of us hold those ideals in good faith."
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Oh, I thought. That sort of good time.
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That she''ll shut it down, I thought to myself. Or that we''ll find out it was too late. That all of this will have been for nothing.
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