Getting through immigration to Threshwater was always a pain for him specifically. Everyone from the world had two passports and citizenship papers, one to prove they were a citizen of the planet, and the other for the specific country they were from on Threshwater. It was a unique planet amongst the surviving Gaelic colonies, in that it never truly formed a unitary government in the wake of the Starbreak.
Part of a massive homesteading push by the Old Country centuries ago, the planet was the youngest of the settled colonies. Once the legislation was passed and the precedent set for private colonization the world in its infancy was soon awash in a flood of colonists, pioneers and daredevils – or rather opportunists of the desperate and idealistic variety – and no cost was spared in its rapid terraforming push.
Afterall, it was a highly prized planet being so Earth-like, and the then recent miraculous advances in terraforming technology and techniques, it required only a little effort in terms of bringing it into full habitability. Meaning that in time it could be yet another addition to the small batch of ideal worlds that made up the jewels in Inisfáil’s colonial crown. So, everyone wanted to stake their claim given the previous history of successful colonial ventures.
However, the sad thing is this all occurred right on the cusp of the Starbreak itself, which threw the entire operation into chaos and threatened to doom the entire colony world entirely. The planet was covered in hundreds of major domed habitats and countless homesteading operations, all forced to band together and compete with one another for resources and territory, all while keeping the terraforming process going. By the time the domes came down and the planet was stabilized it was too late to realistically unify, identities had been set, grudges borne generationally, flags unfurled and the planet of Stróicusice, or Threshwater in the vulgar tongue, had well earned its name. A world of troubled waters.
That didn’t stop them all from coming together as a confederation when it came to dealing with the other colonies of course, but whenever the other worlds weren’t causing them grief it was right back to clannish strife and struggle. In the end it really was closer to Earth than all the other colonies in that way.
And unfortunately for Padraig, that meant his own, very unique citizenship passport betrayed him for who he really was, it really couldn’t be otherwise. Despite the strong sense of familial bonds that helped unite the far-flung families people had in different colonies, there was no mistaking who Padraig was. There was only one family of Ui Neills that could come from that particular island on Threshwater.
He suffered the laughing and jeers in good nature, it was the fastest way of getting through the routine humiliation ritual that had defined his life, and made his way through customs, leaving the public shuttle annex of the starport of the Republic of Ghéis. The by now familiar route through public transit to the city of Donaldston and to the rented garage near the Pearse Memorial University, where he had studied many of his necessary courses and qualifications for his plan. He glanced over his shoulder as he waited for the door to his garage to open, gazing back out onto the campus grounds across the river.
It was funny thinking now, how much time he had spent there, and how little he got to know the actual people who frequented it. Or how he never did study anything that interested him intellectually. Every waking moment of his years since he legally could do so, was dedicated to making him free and independent and now that it was here in his grasp…
It didn’t bear thinking about. The freedom was what mattered. There was no sense having regrets now.
He strode into the rented garage that had been burning a small hole in his pocket for the past few years, unnoticeable given his actual current wealth but given the strict schedule he was no won, he couldn’t afford to keep his ride her much longer. Literally, soon enough all that money would be spent purchasing his future amongst the stars. He gazed out at the city behind him.
The buildings were of the typical colonial style that defined the Domed habitats of the early colonial period. Constructed in squat and broad configurations, giving the impression of a sequence of artificial hills and mountains that made up residential complexes and commercial zones.
As centuries came and went the initial, brutal aesthetic of the initial designs were chipped away, in a lot of cases quite literally, to reveal an ascetic beauty. The tops of these squat building, now exposed to the fresh air and loving sunlight where repaved and quite literally planted with sprawling parks, public and private orchards, animal preserves, ensuring there was always a need to clean up the streets below of freshly fallen leaves every autumn, and those in higher buildings always had green and pleasant things to gaze down upon even in the heart of the metropolis. Reliefs and tapestries carved out of stone, brick, concrete and regolithic composite material in the neo-Art Deco stylings popular back on Earth in the mid twenty third century but with a Gaelic flair and local colour. Depicting everything from the histories of settlement to wars with neighboring countries, to mythological references. Newer buildings, ambitious and bold, continued the tradition of detailing architectural mastery in a similar vein in taller, narrower buildings resplendent in silvery metals treated to preserve them against the elements and retain their sheen, depicting local political officials and rich benefactors keen to leave a permanent mark upon the city for the honour of their families, or even just themselves.
Even if one’s navigation unit was down and did not have access to a map, a local could easily find there way to where a location was by referring to a specific and striking décor that a building was known by, which was more relevant to the popular psyche than whatever corporate office, storefront, or residential complex was stored within.
He mounted the long, heavy air bike as the garage door finally receded and shed daylight on the darkened interior and activated the engine. He waited for the aged machine to boot up and roar to life, the engine building up to a loud whine before mellowing out into a dull roar as the turbine cylinders were flooded with air and the ground-effect machine rose from the dusty floor. It was a long, sleek, black machine, or it had been in its day, chromed piping peeked out between the stylish black panels and winking white and red signal lights shone from the underside.
He waited for the repulsion block to fully charge and activate, betrayed by the dull purple light radiating from below him before slowly dipping the nose of the bike forward out of the garage door and over to the waiting edge of the ten-story building. The flashing hololithic display that projected in front of the opening wall of the garage flashing red warning signs indicating the system had detected him and would notify him when it was safe to leave. He flexed his hands as he fixed his gloves and lowered the visor from his headband in preparation.
The display flashed green and he flicked the switch and activated the repulsion block with a meaty thump that pushed his bike half a meter further into the air. He nosed out over the edge, pulled back on the throttle and allowed the air bike to drop off the edge and correct itself in the air. The repulsion block acting to slow its descent to the ground by a considerable margin, allowing for a gentle drop to the waiting landing pad below with the directional turbines acting for balancing. He gently fell to earth and positioned the bike for appropriate landing take off along the civilian flyway on the ground.
He glanced up above him at the lines of true flight vehicles that now crossed the skies of every major city in the colonies. His own bike was decades old but like everything in the age after Starbreak, it was made to last. And the reliable technology and mechanics were cheap to come by, easy to repair and easier to replace. Excellent for his budget concerns.
But in recent decades true flying vehicles became possible with advancements made in gravitational technology that made the rather primitive repulsion block of his own vehicle quaint in comparison. The new technology was flashy and unnecessary for civilian life, as convenient as they were, but he made sure to do his research all the same. He’d need something capable of flight when he was dirt-side from his stellar sojourns in the future.
His air bike landed gently onto the ground, the turbines whined and a cushion of air pushed the weight of the vehicle back up to an equilibrium, as he turned the repulsion block down to minimum power. The on-board navigation flickered onto his visor and plotted a route to pull out from the landing pad and towards the flyway around the other people and vehicles using the area.
He paused as he waited for an opening onto the slipway down to the flyways. The four channeled, two-tiered transportation network that ran between the various cities on the continent. It was a colossal structure, always dug into the ground and lower than the rest of the colonial cities, an adaptation from the planet’s history of domed habitat development and paranoia over warfare. It consisted of two channels on its lower segment, each several lanes wide that only heavy goods, freight and drones were allowed to travel on wheeled vehicles at blistering speeds, that ferried goods and services around the city, turning into service and distribution hubs connected to the fly-way underneath the city itself.
Goods got unloaded safely there, and the trucks pulled out from the subterranean pit stops out into the light and reconnected onto the flyway again as the goods were then ferried to their destinations above ground. The civilian lanes were tiered above this level on either side, again multiple lanes wide but with the difference of single directions either side, which meant getting turned around was a pain in the ass, but allowed hover vehicles to travel at breathtaking speeds without the worry or concern of heavier traffic.
The resultant structure was a U shape in cross section where the civilian traffic never intersected with the commercial traffic and all of it was crossed over by pedestrian bridges that connected the city’s two sides. It had its problems, and again, times were changing with the advent of true-flight vehicles requiring a new solution to the transportation question to incorporate the changing reality. To speak nothing of the pains of public transportation the plebian masses were sometimes relegated to, on incredibly antiquated, if functional, tram systems.
Padraig briefly eyed the snaking lines of aerial traffic above him as he took in a deep breath, the air was always crisp and sweet after a stint in the artificial atmosphere of a starship. Every planet’s air, much like every climate on a planet, had a distinct taste and Threshwater was no different. He tasted the sea breeze, even this far from the coast, and savored it. The familiar smell of burning concrete under the summer sun and the hum of the traffic below him, the noise of the city above him and the reassuring pull of real gravity affecting his body. All of it sufficed to put him at ease after so long in space.
He saw an opening flash up on his navigation readout and gunned the throttle, the air bike roared in triumph and pulled from its position, the nose pushing down and angling the vehicle forward as the air cushion pushed its weight from the earth and propelled it forward.
The speed was exhilarating, and no amount of technological progress could cushion the innate sense of danger one felt when you shot from the slip road onto the flyway like a missile to join the insane rush of life along the pulsating artery that cut through the urban landscape.
The sense of weightlessness one felt as the machine subtly bobbed on the cushion of air, the roaring whine of the turbines and reverberations of the active engine pulsing through the machine beneath him and the knowledge that the single wrong decision or move could result in a catastrophic crash and his death. All of this combined to an incredible sense of wonder and demanded an exacting concentration on what he was doing least he lose control entirely.
As if he were not riding a marvel of modern engineering and were instead astride some wild beast of mythic antiquity or some wondrous, speeding predator from Aigéuain. Even so, he was keenly aware he was still not pressing the air bike to its full limitations, he was still inside the city after all. He glanced to neighbouring lanes, noting most people were ensconced in enclosed vehicles, sparing the occupants from the pull of the wind in the slipstream that he enjoyed.
He could never sacrifice that and knew then that however long his life as a spacer would last, he would always visit planet side whenever he could. There was too much of life to be enjoyed that could not be done in the void. Still, he knew that either way he would have to say goodbye to this particular air-bike, he couldn’t take it with him to space.
The turn out of the city came up not too long after he joined the fly-way. He made his intentions clear to the navigation controls earlier and the route and timing was plotted exactly. Allowing him to seamlessly, elegantly pull out from the flowing stream of air cars and off the fly way.
Leaving the gleaming city proper and out into the outskirts, he saw the looming wall of Donaldston rising ahead of him as the silver, greys and blues of the sparkling metropolis gave way to the lush greens of the surrounding fields and hills that were still maintained as public parklands of the inner city. The wall was all that remained of the ancient dome complex that once sheltered what was now the capital city of the Republic of Ghéis.
The great gateway stood open before him as he rapidly approached, he braced his speed to compensate for the approach, the wind cutting away at his coat as he sped through the laneways, passing by the more infrequent traffic taking this exit towards the sea.
The cyclopean structure of the dome wall cast him in shadow as he threaded through the pillars of the gate. And no sooner had he passed by it then the green hill lands of the inner-city’s parks gave way to the low-lying urban extensions of the outer city, which in its turn surrendered to the open countryside once again.
The navigation computer clicked a notification and Padraig gunned the bike, going full speed as he was let loose from the city’s restrictive network. The air-bike cut across the landscape like a black dart loosed from an invisible bow. Raising slightly higher over the land as the repulsion block pushed it just that much higher off the ground to account for any possible debris that the computer couldn’t calculate for.
It was in no time at all, or so it seemed, that he had crossed the miles between the city and the sea, coming at once to cliff edge overlooking a stony beach. He slowed to a crawl before stopping at the cliff’s edge, looking down over the raging waters. He took off his helmet to take one final look at his destination before crossing the raging main.
The cold was biting, the warmth of the summer’s day he experienced in the city gave way to a chill in the air, and he could smell the rain on the horizon. The wind chopped at the sea below him as it crashed on the empty shoreline beneath him. In the distance, clouds gathered, promising a summer storm to water the fields and flowers of the world.
But for Padraig, that storm was perennial, for it always accompanied his memories of his island home as a child, in good time and bad. A storm he always knew and which he had always dreaded. And a storm he would face one final time as he met with the island’s unhappy prisoner who chose to make it his kingdom.
“An Elba of our own, eh dad?” He muttered to himself bitterly. He knew he shouldn’t be as angry as he was. Some things couldn’t be helped, he knew that, it didn’t stop the feeling though. He looked down into the reflection of the visor he held in his hands. The same icy grey eyes stared back at him, his mother’s eyes he had always been told, and the noble, sharp features and strong jaw he had inherited from his father often caught the few friends of his progenitor who bothered to visit off guard. A dead ringer for his father they would say.
All except for the blonde hair, unlike his father, the blonde in his hair never faded to brown over the years of his youth, instead retaining its golden lustre and if anything growing more vibrant with age. He muttered a silent prayer before affixing his visor back over his face and preparing for the long journey across the water back to his home.
The air bike rose once more from its resting position, the repulsion block humming to life as it intensified in strength to account for travelling across open water rather than solid ground as he guided the vehicle down the uneven slope off the cliff and onto the shore. And with an eruption of water the air-bike shot across the sea like a bullet, casting walls of foam on either side. Racing headlong into the storm.
—[]—
The storm was not as bad as he had expected. There was no thunder, and no lightning, the wind was gentle and mournful, rather than forceful and violent. As if bemoaning a tragedy or casting a light benediction on a funeral with its soft tears.
His father was in his study, which was his usual haunt. He found him seated in his armchair, facing towards the towering window, his hand upon an astrolabeThe remains of a fire in the mantlepiece smouldered away the last dying gasps of its warmth as he idly spun the contraption and a work of the ancient medieval scholastics in his father’s other hand, lying off the side of the armrest. Several other books and papers were lying scattered here and there. Greek philosophers, Church council documents, historical records of every age, works of esoteric nature and arcane literature.
His father was now a far cry from the man of numbers and cold arithmetic people told him he used to be, the man who had amassed a stunning fortune in his youth through grit, cunning, luck and ruthlessness. Before he found Padraig’s mother who made him a man of myth rather than one of math.
And who made him a man of madness with her passing.
The rain pattered away on the window and filled the room with its quiet timekeeping. The astrolabe squeaked on its wheel as the tired and worn hand spun it idly, the ashes crackled, and the quiet, almost imperceptible tune of his father humming an old bard’s ditty lilted its way to Padraig’s ears.
He braced himself, summoning all his patience and propriety, he knocked on the doorframe to announce his presence.
“D-… Father.” he corrected himself. The figure in the armchair rose, a long, heavy cloak draped about his shoulders, half fallen off. The traditional mantle of a Gaelic free man, coloured a deep rich red with a dyed green, woolen fringe down its length, looked sombre in the dying firelight and the struggling rays of the sun through the rainstorm outside. The dignified, ankle length Léine tunic he wore, so like the kind worn by their ancient forebears but more modern and stylised, folded at waist length was held in place by a tight fitted leather belt embroidered according to custom, the black leatherwork accented by colourful woolen lengths tied in Celtic knots in the style associated with clan Ui Neill.
His attire was fairly typical for the national costume of men of the current era, mimicking the fashions of their ancient forebears, and advancing them forwards in many subsequent styles and adaptations to lifestyle and environment, but always with the same visible descent. Micheál Donavon Brendan Ui Neill was of the traditionalist school in that vein, however, insisting all his garments be made out of linen and wool rather than any other materials, regardless of wealth or circumstance.
“Padraig…” The old man smiled after a few seconds, his voice was low and rich, a warmth of recognition in the words as they embraced his son’s ears. The creased wrinkles around his brow and eyes seemed to disappear in the light of his smile. His dark, greying hair seemed to take on a silver sheen in the filtered light that pierced through the rain-stained glass. “You’re back.”
“I am, fa-”
“Bah!” His father said, waving a hand and holding onto his lacquered, Hawthorne walking cane, its sterling silver base muffled as it pressed against the soft carpet that covered the walnut wooden flooring as he hurried his way over to him, embracing the taller man in a full bodied hug betraying the surprising, bear like strength of the older gentleman. “You’re here now, forgot the formalities, just call me Da like you did when you were younger!”
Padraig was a bit taken aback, firstly by the strength of the man, which somehow always surprised him, second by the lucidity of his candour.
“… Dad.” He acquiesced, his father let him go, holding him by the shoulders and smiling up at him. “I’m back just to-”
“About time, I caught you before you left!” His father interjected excitedly, again catching his son off guard. “Come, come, we must make sure you’re ready, have you visited your mother yet?”
At this Padraig was at an utter loss. The meeting already not at all going how he had envisioned, he was led by the arm by his father across his study and out under a stone archway in the wall of the study that was perpetually left without a door to occupy itself. Padraig’s eyes briefly glanced upwards and read the Benedictine inscription carved onto the grey stone. Ora et Labora - prayer and labour in the language of priests and scholars.
They left the study and entered into the workshop proper, here was the bulk of the manor house, separated from the living quarters and housing of the family. Here was the wide open warehouse divided into three floors where his father’s many eccentric interests were placed. There a jewellery bench, wherein his father would labour on the arts of silver and gold smithing, there equipment for cutting gems and precious stones, there in the distance farthest away from the study and library was the forge with which he worked on harder metals. The carpentry and book binding equipment on the second floor, on the third a glassblowers workbench and kiln. On and on it went, leatherworking, clothmaking, stone cutting, even a chemical lab, the only part of the haphazard workshop that was properly sealed off from the rest and more ventilated then everything else.
Virtually every art one can imagine to learn was to be found somewhere in this cavernous tumour of a building, to work on all the eccentricities his father indulged in. A man who could buy anything he wanted should it fancied him, almost always insisted on making as much and as many treasures he could on his own. It should’ve been admirable to a man like Padraig, himself a man of the modern age, applying himself to as many arts and knowledges as he could to make of himself a man who required nothing but materials to make his way in most circumstances.
But as biased against his father because of his eccentricities as he was, he did not much care for the obvious comparisons between them this building always reminded him. The only part of the warehouse that was properly secluded from the rest was the family Chapel. Which could also be accessed from the main house itself, and to which his father now led him.
The chapel itself was humble in the sense it only possessed one Window, a five arched stained glass representation of the Ascension of the Lord that bathed the small, grey and white stonework of the chapel a splendourous array of colour when the sun set. Now duly illuminated by the pale light fighting against the rainvlouds outside. They stopped as they approached the central nave that led to the Altar, the rows of pews, that were always unnecessary for the services the small family had in this place and his father bowed to the Holy Tabernacle. Padraig, still bemused and surprised by his father’s seeming foreknowledge of his intentions stuttered but eventually did likewise and waited on his father to speak.
He didn’t at first, smiling broadly as he was facing forward, as if waiting for something. Eventually, losing patience, Padraig broke the silence, albeit with the customary whisper that was appropriate in holy places.
“Dad. I just… I mean to say that I’ve come to say goodbye.” He broached at last and waited for his father’s response. The man just nodded, still looking forward.
“Yes, yes, I know.” He said. Padraig frowned.
“You knew?”
“Oh yes.” He said turning to look up at Padraig again before facing the altar again, his eyes searching it. “I knew.”
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“How? I never told you.”
“You didn’t have to my lad. You didn’t have to.” He said. “I know you, son.”
That made Padraig feel a little ashamed. How long had he been waiting on him to return with the news? Padraig had been away for years already. At school, training his mind, at work amongst the stars training his body. And now he had returned to say his last farewell and his father looked… Happy? How could this be?
Eventually, Donavon turned to his son and looked at him soberly.
“I know it’s been hard on you, having a madman for a father.” He said, Padraig said nothing in reply. “Yes. Yes indeed I must be mad, I who made a wealth using all the tricks of merchant and miscreant, accumulating the Wealth of Crassus and Rothschild before I made twenty one years of age, buying an island of my own exile and claiming myself king of our entire race!” He laughed at that, Padraig did not.
“Surely I must be mad, raising a son and insisting he is prince over all and sundry he encounters, certainly over this sovereign piece of dirt of which he and his sire are masters, don’t you think?” He challenged. Padraig did not answer him, for that was indeed the source of all his umbrage against the man to whom he owed his blood.
“I…” Padraig begin, but truthfully he did not know how to respond, so disarmed was he by his father’s summation. So he did the manful thing and spoke the truth, even if softly. “Yes.”
His father smiled, but it was wry and weak, not the briming beam of confidence and joy it had been before. It was a smile of sorrow, of guilt and of shame. The lifestyle he imposed on him was an enviable one. Who wouldn’t envy to live the life of a rich man, to want for nothing, to afford the finest tutors, the warmest clothes, the best food?
Ah but therein lay the catch, by forcing upon Padraig his princely air, he had doomed him to lifetime of mockery, wherein everywhere he went he had to be ashamed of his name and background. In this world where the memory of the fatherland was consigned to dusty history books, Earth a memory, and the knowledge of the old kingships even further removed. Yet here was the son of an eccentric madman who claimed to be king? He grew up and came to manhood isolated and shunned by the world around him. Robbed of pride and dignity by the false pieties imposed upon him by his father.
And so, he had to grow strong and mature rapidly, or else be broken against the rocks of society or reduced to a bitter wretch unworthy of the name of man out of spite for his paradoxical misfortune. Perhaps therein he had failed, given even now when all that was behind him, he was still planning to leave forever to wander the darkness amidst the stars instead.
“Then here and now I ask of you the hardest thing any father can ask of the son whom he has failed.” He said, taking Padraig’s hands in his own. “Padraig, my son. Do you forgive me?”
“What?”
“Forgive me!” His father insisted. “Please. For all I have put you through, the shame, the mockery. For driving you away from me all these years and forever more from now. Please! Before you leave, I beg of you…”
At that, emotions warred and raged in Padraig’s heart. Every acrimony was enraged at this emotional blackmail! His father was the most intelligent man he ever encountered and here he was, expecting his son’s return and his eventual departure, acknowledging his abuse because of his mad depredations in a way to garner sympathy from his son and getting him to stay!
But at that, there was the better part of him at play too, the mercy and magnanimity imparted to him by that same father, who filled the mind of his youth with the poetry of Oissin and the Hymns of Homer. The part that looked into his father’s dark eyes, the clearest they have been in years, and saw there the spark of sincerity. The part that wanted to believe him.
There was only one way to reconcile the two.
Padraig grit his teeth, his hands clasping his father’s in turn as he allowed the war to come to its natural conclusion, the only possible path to peace.
“I’m still going to leave.” He insisted, for he had resolved, that would be his fate. His father nodded slowly, once.
“I know.” Donavon said. Padraig glanced at the Altar.
“Fine.” He said at last, taking a shuddering breath. “Fine, I’ll forgive you.”
At that his father seemed to lighten, as if a load had been lifted from his shoulder, pressing him against the earth. “You… Don’t know what good it has done my heart to hear you say that, son.”
“Then, that’s it then.” Padraig said hurriedly, his entire planned conversation thrown so thoroughly against the rocks he didn’t know what to do with himself. “I’ll… I’ll just be going on then.”
“No, no, not yet I still have something to give you.”
“Give me?”
“Yes, come, it’s a gift, something to take with you.” He insisted. Padraig hesitated. He almost instinctively said he didn’t want anything but given their reconciliation it seemed impossible to say. He didn’t want it, he knew already, because while the emotions he was feeling now were impossible to process in the short term without compromising himself somehow, he was determined to not allow this moment to be abused by his father’s madness. To appeal to his son’s sentimentality to get him to accept his part in his father’s delusional fantasies of masquerading as the great Brian Boru’s successor, a would be second Emperor to unite the lost clans in a new era far from home.
He would not indulge his father in his daydreaming.
He followed the older man out of the family chapel, but not through the workshop towards his study, no this time the man led deeper into the manor house. Small worker drones fritted by on occasion, going through the halls in their by now long uninterrupted pre-programmed routes to keep the place tidy and clean. The small, unobtrusive and ostentatiously decorated robots no larger than a man’s foot in width and height were a typical sight in any dwelling place these days, though the average man never had more than one or two about his household, even with a large family.
Padraig eyed one as it passed by, the small construction was trapezoidal in shape but narrowed towards the front, its edges framed in silvered alloy, shiny enough to give a glint of light but not so obnoxious as to give you your reflection. The panels covering it where segmented in place hiding compartments for the small arms and tools the bot could deploy to do its many varied tasks, but as was common in utility items of the modern day, in both public works and private us, it was decorated in scenes and references to mythology or history. His family’s drones were panelled in wood, often in Oak, Ash or Hawthorne, the colour rich and dark from wood polish.
This one in particular was decorated with a representation of the Book of Kells, embraced by an Eagle done in the same representative style of the venerable Illuminators of the ancient monastic age in the Old Country. His father was always a fan of the Kellsian revival artistic movement named after the Illustrious manuscript, and though he wouldn’t admit it in front of him, so was Padraig.
They entered an uncharacteristically dusty and apparently more disused room, this one filled with boxes of older junk and the room itself much more spartan and unadorned, as if it came from a previous era.
Given it housed all the old items and accoutrements of the man his father used to be, a colder man, much more calculating and ruthless. A man of math, of bitterness and no regrets for he had no attachments to regret losing. It was no surprise then, to see that all the boxes and crates in this room were filled with nothing so much old computer parts and long degenerated drives and data processors. No old photo slates, paintings, books, journals, neither handwritten nor digital – at least none written on tablets, no old clothes, or even uniforms of a bygone day where the man before him was the same man through sheer grit, determination and ruthless efficiency had navigated the vast, complicated legal and financial system of Threshwater’s colonial nations to accumulate such vast wealth that the rest of the room showed. Padraig had seen more warmth in a gravity-less janitorial closet he caught shift mates skiving off duty in to have a smoke, there was nothing human about the things in this room.
“It took your mother to teach me what blasphemy I was really doing you know.” His father said. Padraig started at that, realising only when he had been addressed that he hadn’t actually set foot in the darker room yet, following his father. His father hadn’t turned back, instead lifting one box off another, and rummaging.
“What?” Padraig asked.
“My work.” His father said, smiling as he glanced back at his son over his shoulder, with a light in his eye. “Or I should say my blasphemy.”
“I wouldn’t call economics sacred in the first place.”
“Good, because it isn’t, money is all well and good but the worship of it is perhaps the most perverse thing one can do while remaining physically clean.” Donavon elaborated, he always did prefer to be referred to by the second half of his first name. “And I did something worse than that.”
“… What are you getting at, dad?”
“Forgive me, I know you don’t have the same head for figures as I do.” Donavon said, Padraig snorted. “I don’t mean it as an insult, lad, you know that I mean. I abused math.”
“Everyone knows that about you dad; you’re kind of infamous for it.”
“You know how people used to abuse things?” Donavon asked. Padraig nodded.
“Yes, the debt system of Old Earth. Before the Stargates.”
“It was called capitalism more commonly but, yes, debt was a big part of it too, eventually it became the only real part of it. A particularly predatory system of debt and compound interest to be specific.”
“It’s been over a decade from my old history classes. What does the old monetary system of the pre-Stargate era have to do with what you were doing?”
“Technically nothing. Spiritually? Everything.” His father explained, lifting another crate and letting it fall heavily onto a desk. “An old system where everything worked for the benefit of shareholders in the society at the expense of the same society that was put to work for it. The other option back then was just as bad and did the same thing, just with different beneficiaries.”
“I fail to see what stakeholders benefitting from a system has to do with your one man reign of terror in the markets.”
“Shareholders, not stakeholders, boy. Massive difference.” His father corrected, pausing his labours to raise a finger to him for emphasis. “A man working a factory hammering nails has a stake in it, he needs the money from the job to feed his family, he has a stake in whether the factory is still there ten years from now or not. A shareholder doesn’t, all he holds is a paper right to a share of the profits, which he can buy and sell whenever he so wishes at the push of a button, he fundamentally has no stake in whether the man in the factory floor lives or dies, let alone gets a wage worth working for. It doesn’t matter to him on any level.”
“Long and short son, the way things are done now are a bit better. Everyone gets something, but if you want more you have to work for it, and you can. Like you always have.” He chuckled as he continued his search. “And the state holds a nice, friendly gun to the head of those fat bastards at the top of things to put most of the absurd money they make back into the businesses themselves as well as the people that work for them.”
Padraig had a thought about that. It was true enough at least dirt side on the planets. And most corporations had to play along with how the Colonies ran things if they wanted anyone with the guns necessary to protect the trade lanes in space to actually do their job. The obscene wealth that gets fritted about among the stars in the modern day was a scarce pittance to the quite literally legendary wealth that was said to have flowed through the Sol system in the era before the Starbreak, but it was still mind boggling.
“The current economic system as it stands is a far cry from what the ancients would have once referred to as ‘state capitalism’ and it’s the farthest thing from a planned economy - as much as that is possible among the stars, but the long and short of it is if they want access to the stellar market, a corporation large enough to make waves is forced to sell out a sizeable share to the local state, usually the planet the corporation’s founders were from generally speaking.” His father elaborated, now set on effectively explaining the nuts and bolts of how the system worked, presumably to better help Padraig understand how he latter broke it.
“No sane government allows free movement of capital and industry from a planet they controlled to one they don’t.” Padraig intoned, a tired refrain from his old civic and history classes when he was still being schooled as a child.
“Exactly. It gives a state a vested interest in the operation of the major corporations and formalises the relationship between government and industrial concerns.” Donavon continued. “You won’t believe how long the people can go about their day not understanding this basic, unavoidable relationship unless its literally drilled into their heads when they’re young. This allows at least nominal transparency about who exactly within the state benefits from what corporations and makes it obvious which corporations were having an influence on the state in return. Its why marriage and genealogy records are so important.”
“Mmhm,” Padraig hmmed, “And here I thought it was just to abide by the clan name laws.”
“Well yes initially, but you still need to know who is married to who. Family matters, Padraig, it always has and always will, its how power is passed on in every place and every age. Did you know they tried to abolish it before the Stargates?”
“Vaguely. How were the old farts expecting that to work anyway?” Padraig asked. Donavon smiled.
“Because it only applied to the lower orders, to ensure no one could actually accrue wealth and power other than those who already had it. A kind of caste system were rootless technocrats ruled an amorphous blob of lesser humanity with neither name nor place to call their own. A people with no history has no future, and is easily ruled and replaced. I am getting off topic here, the reason it matters is the have to keep the families of those in power as distant as possible from those who rule the money.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Of course it is, but not maintaining that distance as much as possible is what brought the downfall of the dynastic empires in the twilight centuries before the Stargates.”
“This again…” Padraig complained.
“I’m not going over the old bloodlines and claims, I’m just stating a fact. The ancient aristocracies couldn’t maintain that distance in rapidly changing times, and quite literally sold access to their power to those with the money, and so in the end, lost both their money and their power to the unscrupulous.” Donavon clarified. “So that’s why we have what we euphemistically call ‘political families’ and the merchants.”
“So the system as we have it, has those with political power, gaining sinecures for themselves and their families at the expense of the monied families. The people tolerate this because this extortion keeps the latter in line from ruling over us and destroying us in technocratic apathy like they used to and ensures those without anything are at least maintained by the wealth the system generates. The tycoons, oligarchs and other assorted rootless bandits masquerading as the great and the good still keep a great deal of their wealth. Just not all of it at the expense of the state and the people.”
Padraig nodded, it was why there was such an emphasis on history and civic scholarship as part of every child’s education. Indoctrination? Certainly. But if the state didn’t do it, those with the money and the power to do so would do so themselves, and for their own selfish benefit. Every state amongst the stars did the exact same thing. The key difference was the manner of enforcement.
Most planets quibbled on exactly how much, but the long and short of it was quarterly earnings were mandated to be public knowledge and a sizeable portion of what constituted a corporation’s profits were, in lieu of direct taxation, forced to be reinvested in the company itself, meaning its assets and maintenance, as well as the direct benefit in terms of compensation to the individual workers. A magnate got his wealth taxed less dependent on how much of his profit margin was reinvested in making his business more profitable and productive with protections and incentives for its employees to get a larger slice of the pie than otherwise would be preferred by such tycoons.
It meant that even if the lowliest worker knew for damn sure he was almost certainly never going to get into the highest position in whatever industry he worked in, the incentives were there to turn out a profit for the company which would result in him directly benefitting. Given that the corporation was mandated, again by the proverbial gun to the head, to invest in that same corporation. Innovation and funding for protective procedures was mandated as at least a way to ensure profits that executives couldn’t get a hold of themselves was at least spent on something productive rather than just being wasted. That it happened to benefit the average worker was just a bonus, but virtuous cycles often work best when the side effects are unintentionally beneficial rather than the stated aim of legal enforcement.
It was a flawed system, and very often those at the top of industry and economy chaffed something fierce against the tight restrictions, no matter how astronomical their remaining profits margins were and longed for the mythical days of utterly unrestrained financial looting that so characterised Old Earth.
This had its own share of disastrous consequences of course and came to a head a few times in the past, but the governments of Gaelic space saw the occasional uprising by ambitious corporations trying to usurp power by means of a rootless space navy, sponsored coups, assassinations and the bloodbaths that ensued when they were inevitably crushed by trained militaries with the dethroned oligarchs being hung from gallows and their assets seized by the state, a small price to pay for effectively subsidizing social welfare by means of distributed capitalist incentives.
Padraig thought back to Zonetech and its reckless Wild Mining operations for maximizing profit and smiled grimly. The contracts where they waived their rights to normal protections and safety regulations in return for an insane increase in profit share of mined material was skirted very close to the greyest areas of agreed colonial laws in this regard.
That was one such corporation that was showing all the signs of being well on its way to being on several Governments blacklists for a potential troublemaker that needed to get its board of executives liquidated and its shareholders investigated for treasonous activity. He would need to get his ducks in a row with Threshwater regulatory authorities so that he’d be in the clear as a former employee in case it went that way in the near future. Something to keep in mind.
“Everyone gets richer: the people in charge stay top of the chain, those with nothing can get by, and those with ambition can put the work in and make a life for themselves with all the incentives to do so. It’s a simple idea, honestly, elegant even. Hard to believe it was the Italians of all people on Old Earth who came up with it.”
“Yes, I know how economics work, I have a certificate and everything.” Padraig said dryly.
“Don’t get snippy with me, boy.” Donavon chastised.
“I just don’t see where this is going.” Padraig replied impatiently.
“I’m getting there. ‘The system shouldn’t punish success,’ which has long since been the refrain in older centuries against any criticism of the old system on Earth. Everyone has to be slaves or else you’re just punishing those at the top for succeeding too well. It was never put into those words but that was the effect whether anyone liked it or not. Which fed the opposite ideology, a monstrosity of avarice, which relied on the resentment and suffering the system naturally inculcates in the dispossessed in order to maintain power through their misery. Which of course meant it perpetuated that misery everywhere it took power to perpetuate itself. Almost destroyed the world, you know, between the two of them.”
“I know.” Padraig agreed, rolling his eyes.
“Right, the point here isn’t history, it’s economics, or rather, the abuse of the sacred numerology which economics is the murderer of.” Donavon said. “We live now in a day and age where the rapid and unprecedented accumulation of wealth is, well, not punished, but expected to be put back into the world around you. Almost-”
“Like the Patricians of Antiquity.” Padraig finished; he had heard some variation of this old Noblesse Oblige so many times in his life. Donavon nodded.
“An idealised way of putting it. The debt system was a way of getting around this, in previous centuries, as well as enslaving those around you. You got people in debt to you for life, a debt which always compounded and realistically could never be paid off, and you just made a new income stream for your entire life. The more debt slaves, the richer you were. Can’t do that anymore. So, when I was younger, more ruthless, more ambitious, I came up with a way to navigate our systems rules. To abuse the economy, to get as much wealth as possible, getting rid of it almost as soon as I got it in charitable works, donations, payments before I met the state’s thresholds for an ultimatum.”
“Slowly but surely,” Donavon said. “I garnered shares, properties, options, commodities, just long enough to trade them to just the right places, at the right times, and then dispose of the income in the right manner, in the right amounts, in the right countries.” Donavon turned around, emphasising with his fingers, pinching his thumb and forefinger together. “All according to the calculation I had written.”
“Calculation?” Padraig asked. “That’s right, everyone thought it was an algorithm you wrote.” Donavon smiled, shaking his head once.
“No… No. I would never entrust this to a machine, something which could so easily be copied without me knowing.” He reached into the box and pulled out a small drive. It looked very beaten up and ancient, he lifted a small tool from the box, the handhold autoscrew burred as he held it perpendicular to the access points and opened the metal container with much protest coming from the old bolts.
He lifted off the panel and took out a small sachet made out of a lightweight, metallic material Padraig didn’t immediately recognize but knew the purpose of. It was a hermetic container, meant to keep what is held inside safe from decay.
“In here is a piece of parchment, I had worked it all out when I was just a few years younger than you are now.” He said. “Its as black as night, stained so thoroughly by the pen I used to make it.”
“Make what?” Padraig asked.
“My calculation. The calculation.” He said, his words were low now, the light in his eyes had dimmed, sorrow entered his voice. “In my brilliance, I reduced the future to a dead thing, I had discovered the way to see through the reeds and tally all the hairs on a head from a glance. In a week of tireless, blistering, single minded, furious work, I had made a mere piece of paper something like unto a work of dark sorcery you would read about in some tired old novel of knights and dragons. Through it I could see the immediate transactional relationship of any item I bought or sold and how it would relate to its future returns elsewhere. I could tell a man his future as soon as I took the coin from his hand. I thought I was God… Instead I was a ghost.”
Padraig was quiet from a moment, taken aback by the sudden horror in his father’s eyes.
“You… Can’t be serious right? You would need to factor in so many things you couldn’t possibly know to do something like what you’re claiming.” He gestured to all the computer components in the storage boxes around them. “Even these wouldn’t be enough to do what you did. You’d need to be connected to every possible computational database everywhere to even begin to guess that.”
“No, no they wouldn’t…” He agreed nodding sombrely. “However, when you resonate with the music of the spheres, you’re operating on an intuitive level that can’t be calculated by something that isn’t alive. It’s not that machine’s aren’t smart, Padraig, that’s a stupid presumption. They’re better at imitating humans then humans are themselves sometimes. But that’s just the thing, they can only imitate human calculation, a dead thing calculating dead things for dead purposes.”
“But didn’t you just say-”
“What I did was far worse!” His father suddenly shouted. “I was given a gift! A mind that could penetrate, that could reach and grasp and take and intuit and understand the written structure of the Universe itself! The math of God! And that’s just what I did, isn’t it awful? It was as if God Himself singled me out with the ability to pierce the Heavens… And all I did was grovel in the dirt.”
“… I’m, confused. Other than make a lot of already rich bastards yellow with envy you never hurt anyone with what you did.”
“No… No I didn’t, did a great deal of good in fact. As much money as I made, more than triple of it was made and dispersed elsewhere in returns. Couldn’t make that much otherwise. But that’s not my sin. My sin is this!” He held the sachet in front of Padraig. “This calculation, this is my Census of David. This is my reduction of life to a dead thing, to something I could control, that anyone can control. This is my affront to God and my abuse of my gift!”
Padraig honestly wasn’t sure how to react to what his father was saying. It sounded like madness, but not like any of the delusions his father has foisted upon him in his youth. This was something different, something more desperate, something with which his father held with such terrible conviction it almost frightened him. He wasn’t sure if he believed him, but he was beginning to realise, with awful certainty, that Donavon did. And he did with such concrete ferocity
“Today I call myself King. High King. Emperor even! But you know what I was back then?” Donavon asked, Padraig didn’t answer. “I was a shadow behind the throne. If I wanted, the Clover Corp that builds the ships of this world’s Navy would have collapsed under my calculations and no one would have been the wiser. I could have bypassed the Threshwater Commonwealth’s restrictions and reduced this entire planet to a system of debt peonage so savage it’d make the banker despots of centuries past blush with indignation.”
“Father, you’re mad!”
“Mad! Yes, now I am mad, but I wasn’t then! Then, I was terrifying! On the verge of selling my soul and that of all mankind for the sake of simple greed!” He shook the packet. “Just looking upon this calculation is enough to never forget it, even now, looking at you, I can see if I gave you so much as a single coin in exchange for anything, I’d own you. I’d see you and everything you’d do from then on as clearly as I’d see a balance sheet. Do you know how horrendous that is!? Do you know what Hell is? I do. I see it every day.”
He was silent then. Long minutes of intense, terrible silence in the wake of his proclamation between a father grieving over past sins and a shocked son unable to comprehend his progenitor’s intense feelings.
“Take it.” His father ordered at last. His voice brittle.
“What?”
“Take it, you want to be independent from me? This is what I want to give you, this test.”
“I don’t wan-”
“What? Are you afraid of a piece of paper?” He challenged. “Take the sachet, open it, read the sheet, read and be damned like I was! You want to be independent? This will make you independent, free of all constraints of humanity. You want to be rich? This will make you richer than any amount of raw gold you could pull from the teeth of dead stars. You want power? This can buy you any politician you want, since you don’t want my throne. You can’t forget it once you read it, that’s the curse of it. It embeds itself in you. Lives in you. Controls you…”
“Why are you giving it to me then?” Padraig said, inadvertently taking one step back. His father advanced one step. The power in his gaze was such that he couldn’t turn away even though he wanted to.
“One more test, son. One more, no talk of thrones, no talk of history, nor of destiny, nor God, nor men. Just this. Just this.” He repeated. “Just this. And you can do what you want. You can be whatever you want.”
Padraig looked at the silver sachet, beginning to reach out his hand to it, bewildered despite himself. What his father was saying was madness on a level he had never seen from him before, but the sheer force with which he spoke was spellbinding.
His hand paused just before he touched the object. His eyes not leaving from it.
“Can I be free?” He asked, his father didn’t immediately respond to that question.
“Can you?” He asked at last, with a strange intonation as he spoke.
Padraig gingerly placed his fingers on the sachet, his father let go and he lifted the packet closer to his face, contemplating it for some time. If he opened it, he had no doubt he likely would see a piece of parchment, exactly as black as his father described, he also didn’t doubt it would be so because his father had written the calculation in numbers so small it would need to be almost impossible to read properly with the bare eye.
The method his father had used to ruthlessly manipulate the markets of Threshwater to become the sheer economic force he became was a subject of both legend and incredible international speculation. No one was able to accumulate such a vast fortune without being the head of a serious industrial endeavour historically in the post Starbreak era. But his father was never a member of the plutocratic class and spurned their membership after he had equalled and surpassed them in wealth. There was no paper trail to follow, there was no algorithmic system to crack, there was no illegal artificial intelligence he had programmed to the brute force predictive work for him, no digital daemons trawling cyberspace for the secretive information for the deals and trades he made. For all the world it seemed to be just him and his raw abilities, and as Padraig now learned, perhaps it really was.
It was absurd, and in truth he had never given it serious thought. He never really knew the kind of man his father was before he met his mother. Only what was said about him. It was as if people had spoken about another person entirely, he never sounded like the happy man he knew as a child, when his mother still lived… And nothing like the delusional old fool he became after she passed on.
This strange change he saw in his father as he stood in the shadow of the room of his old life was disconcerting, he felt that he now got a glimpse into the kind of hard man he had been, the infamous ‘Man of Math’ he had heard so many dark tales about.
He looked him in the eye, the dull, flint like look stared back at him. No glint of delusion, no light of mischief or life, no twinkle of wisdom. Just a hard look, demanding, exacting, judging. Padraig suddenly felt the same terrible resolve well up from within him, he knew now he wasn’t dealing with the same man he had in the Chapel, this was not a father asking forgiveness from his son. This was a man of expectation. As if he were equal parts penitent and judge, waiting to see what his executioner, the man who had forgiven him not five minutes previously, would do now that he held the blade in his hands.
Suddenly the silver packet between his fingers felt very heavy indeed.
“You say this is your sin.” Padraig asked. His father didn’t move.
“Yes.” He breathed, his voice husky, dry. Weary.
“And yet you have given it to me.”
“Sins of the fathers.” He intoned.
“What do you want me to do with it?”
“Not mine to decide.” Donavon said, looking him dead in the eye.
“You said I can be anything I want with this?”
“You can.”
“Could you?” Padraig asked.
“… I couldn’t be happy.” He admitted. Padraig looked down at the packet.
“So you put it away?”
“I couldn’t let it be seen by anyone.” Donavon confessed.
“Why not destroy it?”
“It wasn’t mine to destroy.”
“Why?”
“Penance I suppose.” He said, now looking at the sachet at last. And then Padraig understood, in the context of their confession in the Chapel, this conversation now made sense. His father had planned this, for a long time indeed. Before he was born perhaps, he had always held in his mind a moment like this. Did he predict it? Did he somehow know this would happen, for the same reason he always did because of this calculation?
Were they both now dead things playing out a dead game, to be sorted and counted all coming back to this accused calculation that had ensnared the soul of his father, even as much as it ensnared everyone he encountered? Was that what his mother was then? Something he could calculate?
Or rather, was the change she wrought in him, because she was something he couldn’t? Then what was the significance of them being here and now then, with this sachet in his hands now, as he stood with the sole decision to make over his fate, and potentially that of his father and absolutely everyone he could ever meet? If this was true, he could rule, truly rule his own destiny, and that of everyone he would meet.
But he’d be a ruler of dead things, and a dead man himself, the sole ghost in the graveyard, the sole man with a seeing eye in the kingdom of the blind wearing a crown of damnation.
He placed both hands on either side of it. His father inhaled a breath in expectation.
“Then I choose to be free.” Padraig placed his fingers together along the top of the sachet and pulled in opposite directions, tearing both the seal and the paper within it to shreds, letting the silver and black of the material and paper fall to the floor, unwatched and unmourned. The fragments fell to the floor, the pale light of the rain-washed window shown upon the ground as the tiny cleaning drone crawled over the expensive rug carpeting and quickly hoovered up the fragments into itself without so much as a sound.
The same drone with the Kellsian eagle, the symbol of the St. John the Evangelist covered the sins of Donavon’s past from the disbelieving eyes of Padraig’s father, as he saw the chains that bound him his entire life shattered by his own son.
Far from exhaling, Donavon breathed a sudden, sharp breath, and seemed to stand straighter than he did before.
“Heh…” He began, lifting a hand to rub his forehead and wipe his hair back, “Hehehe…”
The laughter caught his son by surprise and the determined look he bore gave way to confusion as he looked as his father’s chest heaved as he slowly, but surely gave way to a deep, resounding laughter. He threw his head back and hands out to the sides, laughing loudly and with abandon.
“I can’t believe it!” he shouted, “All these years! The only one, you’re the only one who would, the only one who could!” He continued laughing, not elaborating on what he meant by those words. When he came down from his laughing fit and looked his son in the face again, he once more was the man he had always known. A delusional man, a man who still thought he was rightful High King and Emperor, a man who still thought his son should follow him and succeed him on his make-believe throne, but he was no longer the awful man he glanced in that dark room, the man he had been in his younger years. He emerged from the shadowy side room and closed the door behind him. Perhaps forever.
“It’s nothing, never mind. Thank you, Padraig.” He said at last. Padraig stepped back to allow his father to come into the hallway as the older man slapped a hand on his shoulder. Causing him to flinch involuntarily. “I’m proud of you.”
“Why?”
“I never needed a reason to be, but you gave me one nonetheless.” He chuckled. “Here I am giving you a gift and you gave me one instead.”
“I don’t understand, I was rejecting you.” He said confused, looking at where the fragments had fallen.
“In a sense you were, but in actuality what you had done was given me what you most wanted from me.” He said as he turned his son away from the lonely corridor. “And which I now can give you without a shred of regret, no matter how much you don’t want my throne. Come, let’s have something to eat, tell me how it’s been for you in space. I want one last talk with you before you leave.”
