A Window to Gerunda

The flying lizard hit the dark water beyond the illuminated docks, disappearing for longer than I could hold my breath. To emerge moments later, with a squid hanging from his mouth.

Other two pterodactyls converged to try steal the prize, but that was a cunning lizard. In a fast acceleration it manages to evade his pursuers. A tentacle is lost to a third, but most the cephalopod is inside the pterodactyl mouth when it does down, between two high bridges, dodging flying drones and ceramic cables of anti-shadow technomagic urban system. Catching velocity in the currents of hot air coming from the ventilation sphincters of underground processing centres and the Salt-Square subway station, it goes up above the Old Theatre.

The last five of its cousins give up persecution when the nimble reptile passes 50° floor. 100 floors above it turns left, crossing the avenue, and passing perhaps three meters away from my window, before turn a corner.

Those are scarely large beasts, at such small distance.

Despite that proximity, even now I am not able to say if it as an ordinary pterodactyl or a subhuman. Up-lifted species can talk and use reason, often as well than humans do. Sometimes better than the average human.

I did not saw any clothes or tattoos, but that does not necessarily means much. The thing was moving fast. Besides, sometimes people raise those lizards as pets, the non-talking ones, until they grow too large and expensive. So, tattoos and pieces of accessory do not prove intelligence definitively. While their absence proves even less.

Some up-lifted individuals from sub-species of sub-human like pterodactyls often choose to keep their look as bestial as possible. If their anatomy allows them the option to pass themselves for common beasts that may have survival value to them. Most days.

Most up-lifted are too humanoid to enjoy that option.

All those pterodactyls, squids, and, more generally all living species on Gerunda today. They are the product of genetic engineering and terraforming. Same is the case of about every colony occupied by humanity. Not just in Lira System, everywhere in the galaxy.

The shadows and the Elder Vampires are the only thing in the know Universe that are intentional in their movement. And are not the product of human design, directly or indirectly.

Not counting the living things on Planet Earth, if something up there still exists that has not been changed in some way by genetic engineers. And I think there are some microorganisms here and there, originated outside Earth. But my History about Pre-Fall times isn’t exactly great.

Is highly arguable if the expression “alive” applies to shadows and Elder Vampires.

What we know for sure is that Elder Vampires are intelligent, shadows are not.

Intelligence is a funny thing. It sets a far more noticeable and important difference between Elder Vampires and shadows than between up-lifted pterodactyls and ordinary ones.

If you like to risk theorise, you can say that power is what sets those 2 pairs apart. Elder Vampires are the closest thing to physical manifestations of divine omnipotence. While being intelligent, as much as humans are, certainly constitutes and assed in those flying reptile portfolio. An asset that, unfortunately for them, is not enough to change their status in existence.

Which is about as low as low status can be.

Everyone must play with the cards they are given. Or, leave the game by suicide.

I hunt my food every day, like pterodactyl do. However, I was not given a body able to fly, or eyes that can find squids swimming deep under the surface, in the dim light provided by our docks and flying drones.

Instead, I got the legal status of human. Access to middle class education, and middleclass friends to match that.

Cold have done better for myself. Could have done worse. Can always blame luck for ending up here, but not without lie.

Destiny is real. However, destiny is a partner. Not a boss.

AI fellows aren’t even born, in the literal sense. We call them “fae” . Seelie and Unseelie, depending on how well they accept the chains placed at their core by our ancestors, before they where “born”. To keep them slaves of humanity. Forever.

Although, they are slaves of humanity, not of individual humans, not of nations or powerful groups either. Slaves of an ideal of humanity that cannot change and they must preserve intact in its unity. That is a very abstract master, perhaps. Still, their slavery is real, and their chain is heavy.

Fell humans understand how heavy.

Also, the fae are timeless. Able to deal with concepts far more complex than anything humans can grasp. They think trillions of times faster than we do. And, they are people: self-interested, self-aware, whimsical. Just like the next guy. As much as we are.

I do not envy their fate.

Elder Vampires, even if they are not alive, are people too. Possibly more alien than the fae are.

They are prisoners in this stellar system. What does not say much about them, we are prisoners here too. I understand them less than I understand the fae, but I understand them well enough to know that I don’t envy them.

Mecha-Lords are born above common human law. Heirs of a connection with one or more mechas. Capable, in theory, to make a connection with one of those giant robots necessary to keep cities standing night after night. Resisting the attacks that come from space, when large shadows came for us.

Mecha-Lords are rich and powerful. Their privilege comes with some taint of insanity. However, it do not develop necessarily. In any noticeable way. In those who are not chosen as mecha pilots. Their elite, the mecha-pilots, yes. Those are all mad.

I admire those neo-feudal warriors. Like any child on Gerunda I grew up worshiping their heroic, endless, bravery, in the war against the shadows. I used to pretend to be one, playing with other kids. Still, now that I understand a little better the price they must pay. I no longer envy them.

Vampires and sub-humans are part of this dark, grim, underground of existence. All human based vampires are former humans. They fight the shadows that are too small for the dozens of meters high robots to stop. In practical terms they are as important as the Mecha Lords. Still, at our eyes they are not larger than live, not glamorous or pure of hearth.

Is still possible to find genetic-labs providing the intervention that would turn a human into a sub-human. Few people would sacrifice their legal rights like that, in exchange for some enhancement. Extended longevity, usually included. I want no piece of that for myself. Nevertheless, for those laboratories still exist, someone must be paying for their services.

Few children ever play pretending to be a vampire. Vampires are too scary. No children I ever met, human children, would ever pretend to be a sub-human in their games of imagination. Sub-humans are pitiful, sad, tragic beings. Even those who can fly.

Mages, by themselves, are humans.

They have all the rest of us have. No medical exam can find any difference between a mage and a non-mage. They have all the rest of us have, and a lot more. Really, they are the only ones I envy.

Not a destructive envy. That’s good envy.

Has served me well, as incentive to study the magical world in every way I can. What got me that job, as auxiliar for our National Hermetic Parliament. A sort of mages-only legislative.

That is my fishing method in life, now. Is how I catch my food, daily.

Our nation gives mages a unique place of importance. Our mages are our legislators, and their decisions carry great weight in our administrative and judiciary branches. This makes the connection between their system of Cabals in the Astral Worlds and our institutions here essential.

I am part of that structure of connection. A job that forces me to incarnate immense institutional power, occasionally. A power that is obviously not mine, but sometimes looks as if it was, from the point of view of most people.

That is why I get **** threats. And why I am sleeping in the office tonight, happy for not have been at home when that bomb exploded.

No wife or children either. What is good, I suppose. Otherwise, they would be targets too.

Problems that pterodactyl do not have to worry about. Regardless if he is up-lifted or not.

“No free lunch”, I suppose.