Laural Week 2 Part 2

Alan followed Laurel down a flight of stairs into a cool basement. A pool occupied one side of the room. The other held equipment he recognized from the old band his sisters had pushed on him with exhausting enthusiasm.

“Did you ever see Die Hard?” Laurel asked.

“Um, yeah. Every Christmas, actually.”

“Okay, cowgirl.” Laurel gestured at her outfit. “I upgraded the lactation transformation. That gave me the skills of a singing cowboy.”

Alan blinked.

“I thought it was super dumb at first,” Laurel continued. “But Roy Rogers actually knew his shit, even if I only recognized the name because of Die Hard.”

That was a lot for Alan to follow, so he nodded.

“There are a lot of ways to do music. Nathan learned one that was all about expressing his own feelings. It worked to make us DTF.”

Laurel shrugged.

“That is not Roy’s skill. Roy mastered a type of music based on group harmony. His own voice was good, and so is mine, but it shines when we combine with other performers.” She smiled. “That is peace. Apes are stronger together than we are alone.”

Laurel walked to a box of kindling and lifted it onto a table.

“One old symbol of unity was a bundle of sticks.”

She removed one stick and snapped it.

“One stick. Easy to break.”

Then she grabbed a fistful, held them together, and tried to bend them. Nothing happened.

“That is where we get the word fascism. Their problem is that they only believe in strength and unity. They cannot believe anything else matters. Every question becomes treason. Doubt becomes rot.”

Laurel looked at the bundled sticks.

“It is why fascists are so monumentally bad at dealing with reality.”

“Are they really?” Alan asked.

"Nazi Germany fought one war, and it lost that war. The country was split down the middle. Half of them got raped and enslaved by the Russians. The other half was demilitarized and managed by outsiders for generations, and they thanked them for it. Fascist Spain won a civil war, then avoided major wars until the fascists died off and the king turned the place into a democracy. Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy did not exactly cover themselves in glory, and neither did Argentina when they flirted with the same ideas." Laurel paused and smiled with the confidence of a Redditor who had watched a lot of documentaries on YouTube. "So, why do we keep trying it?"

“Oh,” Alan said. “Um.”

“Here is what I learned on the set of Harem Hotel, when you were an egg waiting to drop. And maybe a sperm somewhere. I am unclear how long sperm live.”

Laurel began explaining evolutionary psychology and anthropology. It was noticeably less coherent without Ariadne there to organize it.

---

Alan watched a video of screaming apes throwing rocks at a deeply confused group of lions.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be about peace?” he asked.

“It is.” Laurel nodded.

She pressed a button on the remote.

The image changed to taller apes with less body hair. Their screaming had changed. It was a song now. Their dance against the lions involved sticks with knots of grass tied to them. Pale mud made a stark contrast against their dark skin.

Alan felt something tighten in his stomach.

These were people.

Maybe not quite modern people, but close.

Laurel pressed another button.

A high-school football game appeared beside the earlier footage. Cheerleaders waved pom-poms. The screen divided into three images: screaming apes, early humans, and modern humans.

“I do not understand,” Alan admitted.

“Put humans on the same side,” Laurel said. “Scream together. Feel together. Sing, cheerlead, applaud. It is all the same.”

She gestured toward the screens.

“That is peace, Alan. That is love. It is also why we riot, why we have lynch mobs, and why street protests can turn ugly or bring down tyrants. It is how we used to fight wars, until firearms made the tactic into idiocy.” Laurel looked satisfied. “The fascists remember how we killed lions. Everyone had to feel the same emotions and do the same things. That was enough to survive.”

She tapped the screen showing early humans.

“Our brains got huge afterward because we still needed them, but we did not need to be as tough or sneaky or good at fighting alone. That is the human instinct.”

Her voice turned more serious.

“If you see the system is fucked, and you do not trust people to think their way out of it, you fall back on instinct. It feels right. It lets you build a movement without making hard choices.”

She looked at Alan.

“It works until you run into someone still using their brain. Really, it works horribly from the start, because every problem becomes someone failing to feel and try hard enough. So you keep hunting for witches who caused all your problems.” Laurel shrugged. “But it can sustain itself for a very long time.”

“You are not much of a fan of peace, are you?” Alan asked.

“Oh, I love peace.” Laurel sighed. “When you know what you are doing, it is great.”

She pointed at the screen again.

“Instinct is an amazing tool. If you want people to feel like they belong, you replicate the lion-fighting ritual. Sometimes you bring in real lions, but usually that is too much, and it is hard on the lions.”

She grinned.

“Get everyone making noise and emotion together, and they feel like they share interests. Then, if you put in the work to make that true, you can do amazing things.”

Her grin faded.

“If you do not put in the work, you build a tribe of Nazis.”

“You learned this on Harem Hotel?” Alan asked.

“Yes, I did.” Laurel nodded. “Ariadne’s grandmother taught me when she visited.”

“The rat in a lab coat?”

“The same.”

Laurel looked wistful.

“She did not start as human. She had their magic, so she copied humans. Shared emotion, thinking style, community. She learned all of it.”

Laurel looked back at the screens. “She became a human who happened to be a rat. You have no idea how good the Audience can be. I am not excusing their shit, but I saw the best of them, too. Echidna came from a people they destroyed, and they welcomed her into their family. They have done things that can almost make you forget what they are.”

“So they are human?” Alan asked.

Laurel laughed. “The Audience’s word for themselves is their word for human. We translate it in a bunch of ways. Stargazers. Audience. Those who witness heaven.”

She looked at him.

“They are observers changed by what they observe. They are literally us, with a little more power.”

“That is depressing.” Alan watched the humans and apes continue on mute.

“It does not have to be.” Laurel looked at him.

Then she sighed.

“But yeah. Fuck them.”