Fortunately there is always somewhere more enjoyable to be.  At least in my mind I can mix with intelligent civilized people, people whose minds function properly.
Of course, ominiscience being part of the JD, any form of consciousness that might exist meriting the description 'God' knows its fermions from its leptons. 
'The British were evil! The British tortured, murdered, imprisoned without trial.'  The trouble is there's this gaping hole, guys.  You don't give a fuck about people being tortured, murdered and imprisoned without trial. It's all a charade.  Or you do but haven't got the balls to do anything about it.  Sort things out at home first, then get back to us.
​
Extract from The Anile Heir ©2006.   I, Ysabel Jehan Howard, hereby assert and give notice of my right under s.77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this book.
That’s one thing.  The real question is of course Sarat.
Munzi raised his hand in  imitation.
“Cool it, guys!”
“It’s not that the authority isn’t there, it’s that it is.”
“There you have the nub, I think.  Undoubtedly there is metal under the paddy-paws.  What is its chemical composition?”
What, we wonder, warms it up around here?
 
 “It’s not the same,” said Inyulat.
“Oh but it is,” said Ritawa.  “You’re missing the point.”
“You can’t fake it,” said Munzi.  “The animal does not get antsy.”
“You want to see if you can make Sarat antsy?  Are you completely insane?”
“Bit more to it than that,” said Ritawa.
“Morons,” said Munzi, “piss-artists, time-wasters.”
“We want to know what he damn’ does,” said Ritawa.
Inyulat spluttered.
“Other than summary execution, you mean.”
“That would be very uncool,” said Ritawa.
“Spetzi wouldn’t want you to go this way!”
Challin came in.
“We were planning a little intolerable insolence,” said Ritawa
“Entirely insufferable and insane behaviour,” suggested Munzi, “time-wasting and tedious.”
“An experiment,” murmured Challin
“We do not entirely understand.”
“Clarification,” murmured Challin. “I imagine execution will be swift.”
“I know how I should respond,” said Ritawa.
Challin pondered that a moment.
“Would it not be less painful to ask Mitch?”
“You really think there’s a point to be made?” asked Inyulat. 
“Yes,” said Challin.
 
 
So here is long trellis table.  It is not an exciting table, slatted and of a dirty brown.  There are many of its kind around.  Sarat and Maya are sitting at it, along with several other people of various species.  Behind them there is a hot-water dispenser, a basket of tea-bags, powdered milk, sugar and a box of polystyrene cups.  Other guys mill around. 
Ritawa and Munzi sprawled themselves nearly opposite, waiting for a good opening.
Maya turned, cup in hand and half-rose to make herself another cup of tea.  Some nice person took the cup from her, and she sat down again.  Gripping this, isn’t it.
“Ah,” said Ritawa.  “The Dabidan whore.”
Heads jerked up, people half-moved, started to speak, fulminate, as people do in situations in which an electric current has passed through them.
Sarat raised his hand signalling my call.  Ritawa’s eyes met his, quizzical, mocking.
One duels, sir?
And of course journos routinely trailing Sarat around broke into sweats.
            “Not the Azt Star again!” said Sarat.  “Do they never give up!”
“Be saying I am The Star next,” said Maya.  Jaizal’s favourite tart, you will recall.
“Haven’t they done that yet?”
One chance to say just quoting the papers?  Fuck, they’re good!
            “Did someone speak?”
“Hearing loss?” asked Maya.
            “Guess he should be invalided out,” said Sarat.
            “It seems we have a Fidubi homosexual and a slut from Zur Master and Mistress of Kadun.”
            Maya bit her lip.
            “I think he doesn’t like us!”
            “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
            “There was this guy Narulis.”
             “How slut?” asked Maya
            “Clearly you were sold to gain power in Kadun.”
            “Clearly,” said Maya, in a voice that -  clearly – said loon!
            “You can scarcely claim to hide it!  All too plainly the only coup here is one by AMI.”
            “Aw,” said Sarat, “haven’t I done anything?”
“Are you from Glitz?” asked Maya. “All a bit chaotic, thought you might be a press-fiend who’s stolen a uniform. Trying to goad us into revealing the secrets of the imperial bed!”
            “After all,” said Sarat, looking extremely innocent, “we have promised transparency.”
            “Not that transparent,” said Maya briskly. “I can sincerely assure you Sarat isn’t gay.”
            What do you do with it!  Raw unforgivable insolence, I think
            “You are of course too scared to command, take refuge in puerile repartee, a pansy who defends neither his lady’s honour nor his own.”
            Sarat burst out laughing.
            “What commands d’you think I should give?”
            “Oh for -  get on my feet! Apologize, retract, crawl at my lady Maya’s feet.”
            “But you want to be a fuckwit,” said Sarat. “Why should I get in the way?”
            I do?
            “You are the bloody Anile emperor!  Supposedly.”
            “Prove I’m the boss?  I know I’m the boss,” said Sarat.
            “Hardly if no-one obey.”
            “Define ‘obey’,” said Sarat.
            “You did go to school?”
            “It is a transitive verb meaning do what one is told.”
            “Try again.”
            “Fidub speaks a different language?”
            “If I command you behave like a fuckwit, undoubtedly you obey.”
            “Implicit is doing something you don’t want to do.”
            “You’re all here because you’ve been made to do something you don’t want to do?”
            “Of course not!”
            “You want to be made to do something you don’t want to do?”
            “Of course not!”
            “Why should I want guys to do something they don’t want to do, something which has no purpose other than to prove I can make them do it, prove I’m more powerful and important than they are.  Prove I can jerk people around like puppets.  That’s what the other guys do.”
            “Surely authority has to be established in the face of gross insubordination.”
            “But it’s phoney,” said Maya. “Either everyone here wants broadly the same thing and so wants to work together to achieve it or they don’t and we pack.”
            “Alternatively of course,” said Sarat, “you pack.”
            “You would say we are – surplus to requirements.”
            “Suppose I enter into your dumbfuck game, order you to get on your feet. You refuse.  If I accept that, I’m weak, scaredy-cat, in your view.  I play your game. What then? PANTHER drag you to your feet?  Oh the drama! What has been achieved that is of the remotest use, help or interest to you, me, Kadun?”
            Of course we want it! There is the small detail that we do not understand what ‘it’ is.  Let us continue.
            “Our job is to listen,” said Maya.  “Doesn’t mean we have to like what we hear.  Doesn’t mean we have to coo over it.  Doesn’t mean we accept having our time wasted if it’s garbage.”
            “We need to listen,” said Sarat.  “See if there’s any non-garbage.  You decide how you behave.  If it’s gross, you’re pulled up and you go on with it, then you’re a waste of oxygen.  That has nothing to do with military discipline.  That’s true in the Sa’aanda Senta, in the student caff.”
“Student caff, guys just walk away,” said Maya.
            “Bo-o-o-ring,” said Sarat.  “Hey, it’s an offensive little shit.  Leave it drivelling to itself. But if I walk away you say I’m scared, yes?”
            “Yes.”
            “Why?”
            “You have noticed you are Anile emperor?”
            “It has crossed my mind.  So?”
            “Leader of the pack, was it not.  People in senior positions do not tolerate – drivel from people in junior positions.  Nor get displaced!  I should have thought that was pretty universal, even in Fidub!”
            “And here we are at a board meeting of Sohenoil.”
            “What would happen?”
            “The fuckwit would be asked to wait until it was over, when he or she could scream at Cho all he/she liked.  I prefer here and now.”
            “Why!”
            “If someone’s at the screaming stage, s/he has a problem or thinks s/he does.  It needs hearing.  Maybe it’s garbage, maybe not.”
“The tolerating,” said Maya.  “What does it indicate?”
            “If we get away with it, then everyone will think they can get away with it.”
            “That,” said Sarat, “presupposes that ‘everyone’ wants to, that it’s only being crushed from above that maintains order.”
            “That is rather what we’re against,” said Maya.
            “And a loss of face, I am -  we are supposed to be lessened by your crap? Is that what you think?”
            “No.  It is a – an element in some people’s thinking.”
            “So ‘scared’ is – scared to do that which maintains an order which is essentially corrupt – why should I want to do that!  Suppose I tore your balls off verbally while you stood rigid, forbidden to speak.”
            “I’d have asked for it.”
“It’s still a grotesque  abuse of power,” said Sarat, “to insult, anger, distress a man who cannot answer back.  Like hitting a man who’s tied up. Do you have a partner?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose for instance I amused myself abusing her, with the pathetic excuse that it was just tit for tat.  Wouldn’t that be pretty filthy?”
            “Yes.  I really can’t say I should like you very much after that.”
“And  you would have no means of redress, no means of making it entirely apparent I was a total – consider the third letter changed! And of course you would have to continue obeying me.  Isn’t that a pretty filthy way to run a country?”
            “Of course.  The answer to -  unconstructive conduct not equally unconstructive conduct, then?  That is interesting.  It may even be correct!  Nonetheless - let us list our offences!  We have called your lady a slut and a whore, your lady who is by the way Anile Empress, Mistress of Kadun, to whom our loyalty is pledged.  We are therefore probably guilty of high treason. Additionally we have accused her and with her the Crown of Dabida of – actually I’m not sure what of, fraud, theft? General venality.  Called you a pervert, a liar and a coward.  Denied and mocked your authority.  How can we possibly be permitted to get away with it?”
            “Don’t forget wasting my time. Yea, mine honour is besmirched.  And of course Maya’s. Why should your drivel be of the slightest importance to either of us?”
            “Does it come out in the wash?” asked Maya.  “Smirch.” She began to examine her sleeve for stains. 
“I think it’ll wash out with new improved PANTHER,” said Sarat.
“You have just said people have to be heard.  Now you say – drivel has no importance.  Would it be at all possible to clarify?”
“Emotionally,” said Sarat, “to us personally.  Ravings no importance.  Do we strike you as having hissy fits?”
Whew!  Many things strike me.  Not that.
“Truly,” asked Maya, “you expect me to be stung?”
“You have said you want to know what people actually think.”
            “Yes.”
            “I am telling you what people actually think.”  This in the tone of one addressing someone of limited mental endowment.
            “You are telling me what some people think.  If it were the view of everyone I shouldn’t be here.”
 “Let us say it is a segment of public opinion.  May I not introduce to you something called reason?  On the one hand you say you wish to know what all people actually think.  On the other when presented with what some people actually think you mock it, dismiss it.  Is that entirely logical?  Further, you have said that you recognize that persons of socially conservative opinion are not necessarily, what was it, creatures from the pit of desecration – “
            “That was Mitch.”
            “But you concur.”
            “I concur.”
            “But you treat their opinions with complete contempt.”
            “I find them contemptible.”
“So you will ride roughshod - ?”
“Basic human rights are non-negotiable. Women and gays are about 60% of a population. How can a country be fairly governed by 40% of its population? Nobody knows exactly what All-Kadun thinks.  Until everyone is equal in rights, free to speak and in the polling booths no-one will know. You appear to be saying my conduct should be shaped by the Azt Star.”
            “You seem to be saying  lack of courtesy is frowned upon – “
            “My lord Cile, do you have to be totally moronic?”
            “Among other bons mots…”
            Morons, I think, are decidedly non grata.
            “How else would you describe what is probably the only course of action anyone anywhere on this continent right now can pursue which ensures that lots and lots of guys with partners and kids get dead?”
            “Let an insult be only true!”
            “Broadly based in fact! Or rational argument.  I’m also saying, fine, you’re concerned about Dabidan and Fidubi influence in Kadun.  You get a few facts and figures together. You present me with arguments. It’s all on the Grid, AMI, Sohenoil.” Pause.  “There are two – can’t think of the word, must be my limited education – “
“Realms,” suggested Maya innocently.
“There is the world of the mostly sane based on fact and reason and there is the world
of the out of it.  Insult falls into one or other category.”
            “Insult is then – merely a joke if grounded in nonsense and directed at the mostly sane.”
            “And a weapon against the out of it!”
            “The Cult owns approximately half Kadun.  It is just a little kooky to rave about me rather than  Madam Minister.”
            “Perhaps there are concerns about exchanging one set of masters for another.”
            “A valid point.”
            They looked at each other and started laughing.
            “We appear to be having a civilized conversation. But of course those in the world of the out of it think themselves in the world of fact and reason. It would  be fair to say you don’t like idiots?”
            “Don’t do idiots,” said Sarat.
            “It would seem to me,” said Maya, “that the basic – perception is that most people are idiots and require their idiocy controlling.”
            “Except,” said Sarat, “the people who want to control other people generally are the idiots.”
            “Freedom,” said Maya, “sort of idiot control mechanism basically.”
            “But it has to work both ways?”
            “But it has to work both ways.”
             Maya said: “Someone tells us we’re out of it, nuts, we can’t possibly take Azt.  No, we’re not going to explain how we can, we don’t know whom the person might sing to.  But we need to know that people are worried and need some reassurance and we need to hear why.  They might know something we don’t.”
            “There is nobody,” said Sarat, “who can’t be wrong, misinformed, flawed in his or her reasoning.”
            “And obedience is the opposite of that?”
            “Deference is the opposite of that.”
            Oh, right, lad, thought Varulin, so that’s why I want to fall at your bloody feet.
            “So here are Sarat and I in the lush green fields of Carlin,” said Maya, “a couple of screaming loons who think they’re going to take Azt and establish democracy in Kadun.  Who are these nutters?  Where are they coming from?”’
            “Obedience is switching off one’s brain?”
            “There isn’t an insult in the world that isn’t coming from a point of view.  Next question is whether that point of view has any basis in fact and reason.”
            “Could we possibly behave intelligently!”
            “Pretty-please,” said Sarat.
            “I think – among some – there is a – perception that the mere act of questioning shows a lack of respect.”
            “For what?  Omniscience? Psychosis?”
            “Who,” asked Maya, “is actually being treated with a total lack of respect in that scenario?  The only serious offence is to think people are your property, your tools, creatures of your will.”
            “We have of course observed the extreme deference of Zuri”  He stood.  “My lord, my lady, we have been moronic.  Our abject apologies.”
            In days of yore, thought Baz.  Will he do it?
“Accepted,” said Sarat. “Kilana siy tan.”
“Kilana siy tan.” said Maya.
            “Spring has the to-do list,” said Sarat, “if you want to hang around.”
           
LIVE FROM KADUN
 
Gee, Bal, he’s just bonding with his officers.
 
Karmen (Harn State Security) rang Faun: “Purr, purr, purr, such a cutesy little pair of cubs, I deem!  I may invite myself along?”
“Wondered what was keeping you,” said Faun.
“You have a fairly international gathering, I hear.”
“Nobody wants to miss this party.”
 
What was that about!
“It is an ancient formulation,” said Mitch, “as old as Narulis.  It is generally translated as ‘there is no harm’.
“And the modern formulation would be ‘everything’s cool’!”
“Forgotten, over.”
“That is mind-bending.”
“We are mind-bending.”
 
Challin arranged himself opposite Sarat’s desk.
“My lord of Kadun.  I believe you told me recommended for honours.”
“They had to be exceptional,” said Sarat.
“I take it you expected something of the kind.”
“If I were in their position,” said Sarat, “it would be irresistible.”
Challin laughed.
“Who are these nutters?”
 
Ritawa found himself surrounded by a hostile audience.
“Didn’t think you’d go that far.  Bloody gross.”
“That was the point.”
But someone said: “Did you go far enough?”
“Understood,” said Ritawa. 
“I’d just like to see.”
“Done my bit as human sacrifice,” said Ritawa.
Others looked puzzled.
“We understand.  We understand imperial law.  We understand the Constitution of Dabida – “
“I don’t,” muttered someone.
“We understand it’s all historical.  But we wonder.  How much of this, all of it, is a reaction to dear Jaizal, to the Cult.”
“It’s in all of us,” said Ritawa.
“Exactly so.  Salute him.  Call him sir.  So long as we stay upright.”
“What happens if someone kneels.”
“It’s probably going to happen.  Some cunt in Vaudos wanting to escape the rope.”
“I don’t think it needs a dry run,” said Ritawa.
“Me neither.”
 
“Well, didn’t I just get the turkey,” remarked Cioulis to no-one in particular.
       Karmen looked up.
       “How so?”
       “The young guy who was so very entertaining, department Dabidan whore, Challin thinks he’s interested and thinks he’d jump the hurdles.”
       Saban said: “He is senoki?”
       “Segani.  So’s his partner.  It seems it struck her in a moment of illumination – we’re all bloody tree-huggers, just being in a field of flowers.”
       Saban truly does have a sense of humour.
       So of course does my beloved.  He arranged to meet Ritawa in ‘Opshar’s Glade. In the interim he digested the world according to Spetzi.
      
       Cioulis settled himself comfortably into the leaf mould, his back against a handy bush.  Ritawa squatted on a small fallen log.
       “Now,” said Cioulis, “where are we?”
       “A little late in the season perhaps,” growled Ritawa.  “A field of flowers?”
       “Aren’t we!” said Cioulis enthusiastically.  “Are we being or doing?”
       Waa!
       “I suppose if we were motionless, without speech.”
       “Without heartbeat,” added Cioulis.
       “Life is movement?  I have to see that.”
       “And non-life? The physical world?”
       “Glaciers?” suggested Ritawa.  “Rivers.”
       “Thus the Great Divide.”
       “Everything is in motion, just a slower pace…
       “Even corpses,” said Cioulis.  “A dead rat, does it stay fixed, like an exhibit in a natural history museum?”
       “You are telling me something about the Cult?”  Ritawa had gone rather rapidly back to Mel’s Place.  “Everything is in some sense dead.”
       “It’s a question of control,” said Cioulis.  “There isn’t any, so they try to make some.”
       “The final control to murder.” 
       “Movement versus inertia.”
       “Then there is no – being, no stillness?”
       “Everything is itself,” said Cioulis, “that is its being. Sarat.”
       “Sarat is being Sarat.”
       “The unique lovable individual he is.  He will not be the Anile emperor.  The Anile emperor is whatever Sarat is. So?”
       “Being is doing?” sighed Ritawa.  “You are – recruiting officer?”
       “Take your time,” said Cioulis.  “Just at the moment we’re not training.”
       “What does it entail?”
       “First there are – you could call them aptitude tests.  In the first half we completely screw your surrounding reality and see how well you hang onto it.  Look around, drink it all in, imprint it.  See that lissome frond.  You are in a clearing in a small copse in Carlin. Strictly not your mind, that’s way down.  You are Ritawa.  You have a  really rather bright partner called Spetzi.  For reasons that possibly just at the moment escape you you are in a clearing in a small copse in Carlin talking to a loon from Sardun, whose preferred attire appears to be pirate. Thus the earrings, which appear to be in the form of a knot.  You are sitting on a small log.  The sun is sinking slowly into the west, which is thataway. A squirrel is watching us from that tree, wondering if we’re tree-huggers.  You are sitting on a log.  The path out of the clearing lies over there.  It veers sharply left at its start.  You are sitting on a log, aren’t you. And the ground is firm beneath your feet.”
       “Then what?”
       “Sure?”
       “Yes.”
       No! yelled Ritawa’s mind. The pirate-craft rocked gently under him.  The sea stretched to the horizon.  The sun was in the wrong place. I am not even bloody well standing up! He found it is quite hard to rise from a sitting position when one is already standing.  Squirrel – detail.  The squirrel was a small fat puffin perched on one of the masts.  What does reason tell me!  I put one foot in front of the other.  I walk out of the clearing.  Into the sea.  Sharks milled below him.  You bastard!  Not sharks  not sharks what sharks. Vegetation?   Not bloody fucking there, not real not sharks. What should I like to be there?
       Cioulis grinned to himself. A trio of sharks rose out of the water, performed graceful porpoise spins and sank slowly below the waves.  Land appeared, apparently a rocky outcrop on which was a lighthouse.
       What! Swim. Land.  Raft.  You’re not even bloody porpoises, you’re a raft!  The sharks manfully resisted and remained sharks. Not sharks, wrong shape sharks.  Not going to be able to do this but I can try.  He walked into the sea and tried to clamber aboard a raft.  It was still a shark, but what the hell.
       Normality.
       “Excellent start,” said Cioulis.  “Not of course maximum intensity. What happened there?”
       “You tell me!”
       “Think back to your conversation with Sarat.”
       “What!  I – I was in two places and my mind told me with – nearly equal fervency both were real.  What did you mean – yes, one might have been more – not sure what the word is.  Fragile.  Thinner than the other.  But I wasn’t sure. A bit, maybe, coming in and out of focus?”
       “Ever used a graphics program?”
       “Sometimes.”
       “Reducing the transparency of a superimposed image.”
       “Yes, that’s the word.  Real reality isn’t transparent!”
       “And you chose the real one.  That is good.  But?”
       “It didn’t bloody well work.  Was I right the sharks were less transparent!”
       “Ah, no.  That was the survival instinct kicking in.  Every neuron in your subconscious mind is telling you not to commit suicide.  Every neuron is focused on one small part of the whole.  The ship doesn’t matter, even the sea. So what did you do next?”
       “I tried to turn it.  I mean I couldn’t but.”
       “Focus on the essential, that is good.”
       “But wasn’t my focus split?  Isn’t that a bad thing?”
       “You could not have jumped if you were not fundamentally sure none of it was real.  If you had turned it, some things are sometimes best done incrementally, to climb back to – claw one’s way back to – reality.  The raft become an island, the island land known to you, etc.”
       “That is startling.  I thought you said every neuron of my subconscious mind!”
       “Beneath that.”
       “Hmm. My conversation with Sarat?”
       “You mean he didn’t enter the dumbfuck game and turn it?”
       “Aargh may be my response.  You said there were two halves.”                                            
       “Evil grin. Worse.  I increasingly bring to bear the full weight of my forceful personality on you, giving you orders you resist with every cell, every atom of your being.  Gold stars for retaining a reasonably relaxed posture and telling me to go fuck myself.”
       “I really know how to draw attention to myself,” said Ritawa. “I am thinking there must have been people around Sarat.”
       “Never in a million years,” said Cioulis.  “1) There is a large number of progressively more searing hurdles.  We have to be sure.  2) That is precisely why we hate them.”
       “And it’s all the same party?”
       “Is a party not a varied place?”
       “Obviously you didn’t – mess with my mind.  I felt – all my wits about me, in full possession of my faculties.  What did you mess with?”
       “Pixels,” said Cioulis.  “I think one may call them pixels.”
       “I don’t understand.”
       “One to think about,” said Cioulis.
       “May I tell Spetzi?”
       “She might like to join too.”
 
It was then, typed Ritawa, I felt angry. At myself of course.  Having had my reality smashed fazed not your cold hard man of steel.  Much!  Why do I keep doing it!  Obviously I can rationalize.  Ingrained, not as a man but as a soldier.  Need to know. 
Spetzi took pity.  Poor darling, kiss better.  Etc.
 
After a while, Ritawa wrote.  We don’t just see with our eyes.  Locate ourselves, I mean. We only see with our eyes.  I was of course too thrown to think all that through.  Does the air smell of salt? Does my face sting?  Can I feel the log?  Should I have registered that subconsciously?
I think that might depend on the density of the pixels!  Suppose – not that I understand or anything.  An illusory reality put in front of your eyes.  You can’t not react.  As far as your field of vision stretches, you are on that bloody ship! Or suppose you were simply cocooned in an illusion, so everywhere you interface with the external world was cut off from it?
Hmm-hmm! What really puzzles me – did I just write that – Cioulis himself was nowhere to be seen.
Invisible man!
Not that too!
Time I went back to school.  The biology of vision.  I really want to know exactly how we see.
That would be brilliant.  Cornea, rods.  Remember bits but if you asked me to describe exactly how I am seeing the screen in front of me, I get about as far as light hits the eyes and signals are sent to the brain.
We don’t actually see with our eyes at all, do we.  They’re just the interface.  Obviously they’re critical, of all the awful things that can happen to people I’ve always thought being blind was worst.  But – technically, eyes are just a piece of machinery.  But – when all this is over, shall I write science fiction!  If a piece of machinery could be devised that registered, imaged, the external world and communicated it to the brain, then a blind person could see. Sight actually is all that matters, in the context of this.  So long as you could see the clearing it wouldn’t matter that you couldn’t feel it or smell it.
I’m wondering – this is weird.  So if I had simply shut my eyes, proceeded like some poor blind person by feel.  Maybe!  That depends on your cocoon. Isn’t it called a camera?  The machine!  Small matter of connecting it to the brain.
Doctors must have thought of this.  Have you ever heard of artificial eyes?
No.  That is hair-raising.  The surgery required to connect to the brain. 
I’m actually thinking  about what we’ve been saying, without turning a hair.  A illusory reality has been created.  What of?  Literally out of thin air?
There are about 90 naturally occurring elements, remember that bit!
That does somewhat simplify the whole thing!  So if you have all of them you can make anything that exists?  And presumably – what’s a rare metal?  Inessential to – most things I guess?
Actually not.  Vital to phones!
Why has Sarat not banned them entirely! But the natural world.  Presumably there are no rare metals in a fallen log.  The natural world is chemically fairly simple? What’s air made up of? Mostly oxygen?
Mostly nitrogen. 
What chemically is an image.  That seems to be the question.
Physically? I’m not saying there was a deck under my feet, only a good imitation?  A sensation, if we casually affirm we have dealt with vision.  What actually is a pixel?  Let me look….Oh great.  It is a ‘logical  - rather than a physical unit’.  That is clarifying! The ‘smallest addressable unit’.
O great pixel, impart to me your secrets. But that of course is in the context of a screen.  You can’t have a pixel in the open, all on its own. What I was starting by going to say is that in terms of sheer hair-raisingness – a surgeon is only human, his or her hand can slip, remember anyone can be wrong! Even if it were possible I’m really not sure a scalpel being wielded in my brain isn’t more hairy than this.  Except of course.
Except of course there would be a clear logical progression. 
There has to be, doesn’t there.
I’m wondering two things.  The first is – what you said about a different level of reality when looking at people.  Why just people?  Why not a blade of grass?  No idea what that means of course. Even if it’s true.  The second is – the Whole.  If everything is whole, it must follow that any part of it can be reached from any part of it.  No idea what that means, of course, even if true.  The third is saner and possibly madly more interesting.  We don’t just see what’s there like a camera.  Suppose you despise poor people or are terrified of dogs.  If you see a poor person or a dog, your brain adds a generous dollop of ‘your stuff’ to the image.  Doesn’t it.  I don’t just mean you have an emotional response.  Your brain edits the image.  So you only really see ragged clothes or dirt or teeth.
You don’t see a person and you don’t see the dog is really rather small! Were they big sharks?
ROTFL.
Tush, I was being serious…Imagine a shark the size of a goldfish.
Think that might be called a piranha. Well, smaller.  Not entirely sure that’s better.
All of this, all of it is about seeing. 
All of this is about what Sarat saw when he looked right back at me!  My life seems to have got quite exciting since then.  I couldn’t read what he was thinking.  I think now it might have been something like, OK, you want to play? I play.
 
And Spetzi wrote.
I kept thinking about those 94 it is actually elements.  Like a fully-stocked kitchen.  Only you can’t put them together any way you like because they won’t go -  but there must still be a mind-numbing number of combinations, with or without human aid.    So then I found a site for kids on chemical bonding and reminded myself – honestly, this girl was taught science! So then I wondered can something that doesn’t exist come into existence or is everything that can exist in existence.  Has life diverged as much as it can and if it can’t diverge more what stops it.  At which point I more or less decided that I needed a chat with Cioulis because the alternative was ten years at the Schools! But I remembered, when we were staying at Tamal-va, there was a mutant in a litter, a poor little two-headed puppy.  It was put down of course but it wasn’t viable, that’s the point.  Back to ten years at the Schools, no idea why, maybe because two brains. So then I started to think a couple of strange things, if an insect can manage on six legs, why shouldn’t a puppy if unfortunate enough. Why would it be unfortunate?  An insect is lighter. Wouldn’t a dog benefit from six legs to carry it?  Why shouldn’t a dog have two tails!  We have of course been asking ourselves for many years now why are things as they are and can they be different!  Not, however, on the cosmic scale.  Crazy questions, why isn’t a shark the size of a goldfish? How dare a panther be bigger than a house-cat!  They’re the same design, can’t be a basic design-flaw that stopped goldfish from growing!  Can a shark grow more? How fixed is reality, Ritawa?  There are giant things like planets and minute things like bacteria and it all seems immutable, but if it’s all made of the same stuff is it? Two things.
People have always imagined things that don’t exist, though whether they can’t is something else, from the five-headed monster to unicorns.  There is nothing beyond the capacity of the human mind to imagine, which is a commonplace enough idea except that in the current context it is just a little nerve-wracking. 
Fundamental particles.  I was actually quite good at physics but it wasn’t that kind of physics.  Back to the Grid.  Everything indeed is the same stuff. Jolly little tidbit with which to wow your friends: only 5% of the universe is actually visible.  Isn’t that completely mind-bending?  What it seems to mean is so far as we can calculate only 5% of what is calculated to be the mass of the entire universe is made up of normal matter that we can quantify.   Most of what I seem to be currently reading I feel as though I understand about one word in ten – yes, I can cope with ‘the’ and ‘a’ – but I do seem to be able to grasp the essential: the universe is out of this world!  It’s defined as literally everything, did you know that, not just everything that is, everything that ever was and everything that ever will be.
 And Ritawa wrote:
I knew I had to do it and I knew he’d understand and somehow that made me feel worse, as though I was messing up the party again!  I asked if I could see Sarat briefly, at a time of his convenience of course.  I was asked to pop back at 3, so I popped.  I was shown in.  He was sitting on the desk on the phone, just ending a call.  Hi, he said.  Grab a coffee, do.  There’s a hot-plate and a mini-fridge.  I made polite noises about not wishing to take up his time but I grabbed a coffee anyway.  He motioned to me to sit and I sat, one of those frantically uncomfortable canvas folding-stools. He said: I hope Cioulis is treating you properly, I guess to show he was up to speed.   I grinned. I just wanted to ask a quick something, if I may. It – may sound a bit odd. What did you see when you looked at me? Ah. A person.  A person who actually isn’t a shit.  As to how to – progress. Pretty much the same, age, class.  Brought up differently. How differently? See how the budgie bites!
Does that answer - ?  I managed to say, I thank you.  Some of us, I admitted, are compiling phrase-books.  I don’t think I’ve met that one before.  He said: we’re all on a learning-curve.  My other question -  you are the Tradition.  Cioulis is earthpower. Cioulis said the  party is a varied place.  Does that mean I’d get different answers depending on whom I was talking to?  Woo-hoo.  Yes and no.  There’s only one reality.  They tell me it’s entirely mind-bending. For certain I’m not in its more esoteric reaches.  Upper branches, as you prefer.  I think Cioulis is capable of telling you reality is a tree.  I was made to learn a bit about it. Apparently it’s in the job description, essential qualification for the post.  I could not help laughing. What I wanted to learn about was how electricity is supplied to entire communities.  What unites the party is attachment to reality, seeing the real, what is there, not what you think is there, but – people are people.  They have their favourite bits of it.  They see it at different levels.  So – yes and no, essentially the same answers but they might seem different.  Does that help?  Very much, I said.  I thank you. And it’s based in physics.  Yes.
Of course I completely longed to say please may my partner be the first female member of the Imperial Army but of course that would be preposterous unless everyone’s female people not to mention children pitched up!  We are after all in this crazy nothing happening war.  A propos of which there was a very large map on the wall.  Can’t possibly tell you what I thought it was indicating but it was very, very interesting.
 
And Spetzi wrote:
Some of us female people have formed a kind of militia, just in case something disastrous happens, but I think we all understand that we don’t have a place in strategy planning, so it’s back to war to the death with leptons!  So no, I’m not doing anything particularly dramatic to assist the war-effort – though I may wish bloody Azt would bloody do something, preferably come out with their hands up, though probably not quite as much as all of you -  but I am very definitely working for the peace. 
 
 
Ritawa.  There’s only one reality but it’s constantly changing?  That actually sounds strange and is rather obvious..  A tree isn’t the same in spring as it is autumn. The geography of the planet isn’t what it was millions of years ago. What I think today most certainly isn’t what I thought a month ago! But the change is contained.  A tree is limited in its movement.  It can’t change itself into a daisy.  What limits the change is what it is. What limits change to people is what they think they are? Mental change I mean! And of course what other people think they are.
Spetzi.  Cantilip can’t have got that wrong.  I don’t mean she’s incapable of error.  In the situation, in the context, she could not have put on line total nonsense. Of course it might just have sounded different!).  People just getting on with their lives, not looking for a war. What have we learned?  The apparent difference is – let’s not say superficial, why not say superficial!  It works in the context it is, on level it is.  If there was no difference, it’d be the same.  Gold star, Spetzi, top of the class! There are different ways of climbing a tree but it’s still the same tree.  That’s pretty obvious too.  I mean you can start at that low branch on the left…What did you see when you looked at Sarat?
Ritawa.  That’s the funny bit, isn’t it. Pretty much word for word the same.  Only of course what you said.  So you’re His Imperial Majesty.  Let us see how this budgie bites!
Spetzi.  So what’s the difference?
Ritawa. Hierarchy, obviously.  We’ve been there.
Spetzi.  So he didn’t see a bloody offensive little shit of a junior officer, who bloody dares.  What does it mean?
Ritawa.  What do you mean?
Spetzi.  I don’t know!  But it means something, something to do with controlling, containing.  Don’t tell me that’s hierarchy too, I know it’s hierarchy too!  People are not to be controlled.  Of course there have to be ground rules for when they can be controlled, people being people. Let me try kindergarten steps. You wanted to establish how and in which circumstances he’d control you.  He didn’t see anything that basically needed controlling. Something in motion.  What did I say, hierarchy controls the motion.  A person can only behave in the way ordained by his or her position in the hierarchy.  Though of course there is only one way to behave.  Fun, this, isn’t it.    But we, but earthpower. In some fundamental sense sees people as being, not moving.  Not fluid.  It doesn’t  - wish you were here to soothe my brow.  You can put it really hierarchically or totally unhierarchically.  This is some filthy little man far below me.  This is a friend who’s really upset.  IS, Ritawa, IS.  Am I making the remotest sense?
Ritawa.  Yes but I don’t understand it either. We don’t think people are fixed.  Hierarchically or un.  If your friend is very upset you want her to be happy again. . 
Spetzi.  Oh no! I thought - what if Sarat were earthpower.
Ritawa.  So?
Spetzi.  Do you remember when I yelled at you for joining Challin and you said he wasn’t like what I thought.
Ritawa.  I told you other stuff too, didn’t I.  How none of us had ever met anyone like him before.  It wasn’t that he didn’t keep us on our toes, it was how he did it. 
Spetzi.  Never met a senoki senior officer?
Ritawa.  Now you come to mention it.  That’s interesting, isn’t it.
Spetzi.  I do of course keep every jewelled word that falls from your fingers.  Hang on a minute… ‘He just looks at you and that look says, oh this is ridiculous, but true.  I don’t mean the look says that, though I suppose it actually does. When I stop babbling, I mean the look says what are you? Munz describes it as biologist examining a new life-form.  He might say something like, ridiculous man. Then he’d ask you how you were ridiculous.  In a detached sort of way.  As though it were an open question rather than in a domineering way.’
Ritawa.  Of course we were all with him because we hated it all.  The last thing we wanted to be was ridiculous.  Does this sound familiar?
Spetzi.  Don’t tell me you expected Sarat to behave like Challin!
Ritawa.  Of course I didn’t. The problem just might be how very much he did.
Spetzi.  I suppose if you are a civilized being faced with a moron there can’t be that many variations on a theme.
Ritawa.  Thank you for your tender words.  It’s still what you said though, about motion.  I wish I could nail it.  Supposing Fana’s really upset.  Your focus is – what’s there. It’s not that the upsetness - is there such a word - is fixed, she can’t be happy again.  What IS is that she’s really unhappy. But – but if being is doing,  That IS – it’s the IS that’s fluid.  As if - this sounds good, no idea what it means.  As if the IS isn’t really an IS – this is going to drive me nuts -  means there’s a struggle.  Like that image going in and out of focus.  There’s something else there,
Spetzi.  That’s silly but I know what you mean.  About Fana I mean.  Seeeing the whole of her as her upsetness.
Ritawa.  You want to be a fuckwit.  Not of course you my angel!  There’s something there about choosing.  Earthpower doesn’t focus on the choosing but the choice?
Spetzi.  Could that possibly make sense? If there’s an illusory self, it’s pretty obvious where the struggle is.
Ritawa.  Then earthpower doesn’t believe in this illusory self?
Spetzi.  Earthpower says all of you is upset.
 
Cioulis had said: mail me any thoughts you might have if you like.  Quality check.  If it’s passable, I shan’t bother to reply, only if you go screamingly off in the wrong direction. 
 
“These two,” said Cioulis, “are nothing if not interesting.”
Karmen tapped his fingers on the table-top.
“I of course am more of a free agent.”
“She’s really going to relish some loon from Harn turning up on her doorstep.”
“I suspect little niss Spetzi would prove more than equal to the occasion.”     
“Just talk to her about fermions.”
“That is precisely my thinking.”
“I think not,” said Cioulis.  “He’d want to go and join her, not of course that he would and not of course that he doesn’t anyway – you know what I mean.”
“An activated wanting!  I know what you mean and I take that point.”
Cioulis was grinning to himself.
“What do you know about Challin?”
“A decent man, as clearly evinced. A brave one – “
“Nothing about his personal history?”
“Divorced, two kids with their mom, who does not seem to be anything of particular note.”
“Challin comes from deep VS, as I do, the area around the House.  Plenty of senoki in the Army of course but yes just possibly only one or few at least from the heartlands, the rest of us having joined Sardun.”
“So indeed he is unique?”
“You have to be pretty unique for Marula to fall in love with you.”
“I am entirely startled.  An affair – it would seem to me that you cannot be either Sardun or my lord of Van-senok if you will not go the whole way.”
“Ex-actly.  Joined up instead.”
“So long as Cantilip is not his daughter!”
“Dates are wrong,” said Cioulis.
“I am relieved to hear it.”
“Daddy is the fuckwit who tried to put out the Flame.”
“That did reach even our distant ears.  It would seem to me – that particular lady.  What is the vogue expression, socially conservative opinion.  My lady Van-senok perhaps the cause of a more conservative opinion of the female of the species?”
“No,” said Cioulis.  “Of course it may be our tendency to see what IS, block capitals.”
“You have lost me.”
“It isn’t that he thinks less of women. It’s that he thinks less of men.”
“You sound as if you know him – the same community?”
“Worse than that.  He had a run-in with the geralis.  Mate of mine was part of the rescue-party.”
“Oh, oh, oh,  I would guess it was after that he declared himself non grata – or grata, as you prefer.”
“He left it three months and planned it exquisitely.  That impressed us.”
“Indeed persons post do not necessarily think at their clearest.”
“What was of consuming interest to us is whom he talked to in those three months when we weren’t watching because we didn’t know there was anything to watch.”
“Cho?  You cannot believe in view of what you have said that it was a feint.”
“No, no, no.”  Cioulis looked quite shocked.  “Protected by a steel ring of fur, to mix my metaphors.  That took arranging.  It also means that PANTHER understood something essential, there had to be a focus for decent kids like young Ritawa who were nonetheless not quite ready to boogie naked in the Sa’aanda Senta.”
“They do that in Zur?  I must visit more often.  That is interesting,” said Karmen, and thought: you cannot be more than a year or two older.  But you of course have seen it and he has not.  I guess that is also what we are fighting for.
 
From Spetzi’s archive:
Spetzi: you have joined – I too can use the language of Harn – that sexist pig!
Ritawa: He’s not like that, Spetz. You’re probably thinking of someone like Ban-vardan, intellectually inferior, weak minds, all the rest of it. Yes, he has profound reservations about suitability.  They come from being bloody civilized.  He is.