The Partisan
eMark@:88.29.52.77X85.71[encrypt.matrx.SIGMA-9]
ATTN/HX:
Village SubNet Subcell 197019G
Transmo
Freq: EHZ.K12.2021.0901A
Telematrix
Domain Prefix Delta
Oh,
comrades!
Thik’n’ning
as I was rolling high, and abouts the finer things in the worlds, I reflected
as like in a mirrored parabola on the people in my life.
And
I tried to find Order in Chaos.
Before
I was wetwebbed, I had a name: Mordecai of Iko Band, Wanderer Clan, Wind Dagger
Tribe, Born Free to the Steppe. I was well enough read for a Barbarian. It’s
why the Wetweb numbered made me First-Among-Equals. I believe in theories and I
believe in facts and things I can see or smell or make explode. And I like my
thik’n’nings on things such as Order and Chaos. I take at it analytically as like
I was some science observer from some parallel plane, looking askew and
ignorantly at all the worlds that humanity calls home, and when I do this I
find myself questioning of myself, why is it that I say “Their Great Vigilance”
sometimes, not with reverence or respect, but out of fear? And am I thik’n’ning
alone on this? And all the other oddball thik’n’nings I thik. And chief among
the thik’n’nings this mornering as I heat breakfast stew over a fire outside my
thermal-insulated tent and huddle myself with shivers against the bite of wind,
is that the people in my life are special.
I
love every one of the combat workers in my squad like they were family.
Because, though I am first to wake, alone, when each partisan wakens and wetwebs,
I absorb them into my heart and soul.
Second-Among-Equals
came here from the Peoples’ Legion to show us how to fight. She is a Canalite,
from the coastal region. She brought the Newsong.
Fourth-Among-Equals
came with her from the Canalite land of Pontiel. He is a cherubic warrior,
skilled with the bow, the scimitrix, and the long-gun.
Fifth-Among-Equals
is young, maybe too young, but fearless, and strong. She is the Carrier-of-Water
and Songkeeper.
Sixth-Among-Equals
prefers to fight using the weapons of our oppressors, the Technocrati, the
Forces of Jacoby Prosser. He’s amassed a collection.
Seventh,
they sing.
Eighth,
they ache for their lost love.
Ninth,
he is always first to volunteer.
I
love even Third-Among-Equals, who came to us from the Disenfranchised Classes.
I see how he hard he tries to fit in. But it never clouds his mind. He can
stand on his own feet. The Family is a dying cell. We are the Newkind, the
Wetwebbed, the Many, the Proud, the Partisans!
And
we are all the children of Grand Marshall now.
Rush
concludes. High roll come down. Drop low. Then, boom! Big white flash.
The
Gammamen coming. I senses it. It’s killing time.
One
detaches slowly from its cluster, a lonely bubble now, this strange envoy.
Floating up in the sky, unattached and cold, its sight inspires the fight in us
to overwhelm the allness in ourselves.
Our
Enemy is cold and detached. It does not know the simple pleasurings of
hearthfire and Song. It has never felled a gamebird with bola or toxdart, it
has never run on the steppe and flapped its arms like wings and shouted at the
Greater Light and called the Lesser names.
But
it has invaded my home. It wants my lands for more “rational” use.
And
that is why we fight. We fight for our freedom. We fight for Grand Marshall!
Grand
Marshall was like us once, thik’n’ning just like this, on his circumstances as
like they’d look to an Outsider. And Grand Marshall, in all his thik’n’nings,
concluded that the Steppe of Marr, and the Forests of Gend, and the Coastal Cities
of Pontiel, ought not to be anymore a part of the Global Domains under the
Technocrati. Our planet had seen its share of conquerors- Rigelians,
Diamonders, Ophidians, Taskmasters. We drove them all off. The Technocrati
defeated four empires with Higher Tech, and that was truegood, but when they
turned that tech on us, to take away our lands, that’s when Grand Marshall knew
he could no longer tolerate what the Global Domains had become, and he declared
the Trifecta an independent, sovereign, and macrocollectivist Folk Republic.
And within that Folk Republic’s borders, he dissolved the Classes and
encouraged mixing of the Trifecta Nations. In his thik’n’ning, if the Steppeans
and the Foresters and Canalites- all the Folk Tribes of the Trifecta- got wetwebbed
up together, we could protect our lifeways from the Technocrati. So we wetwebbed,
on a subnet of the Telematrix, encrypted and walled off from any Enemy hacker.
And squads like mine, operated as a subcell in the Wetweb. We were localed to
each other, and segmented from the All. It quieted the voices in our minds. We
operated in tandem with the prowline scouting-cats, the dual webchips in our
brainstems and forebrains aligned with theirs in a repeating sequence that tied
us and our thik’n’nings together as one so that we knew each other and the
world through each other. We creep together through the Trifecta sowing chaos
and devastation upon every reach of the Technocrati.
We
are all like Sixth-Among-Equals now, using the weapons of the Technocrati
against them. EmRails and plasmery, EMPs and nuclear fusion missiles,
long-range attack craft and gunships and cruisers, lasers and caterpillar
mines, and sleepermist grenades, and the naked rawness of mere bullets.
The
lonely bubble swoops low, and free-electron lasers slash outward from its
mirrored skin. Scorches burn on the ground where the hot beams strike. They
prefer not to kill. They prefer to quell with awe.
But
in all our webbed thik’n’ings of late, we are not so suchly prone to awe.
May
Their Great Vigilance forgive my abouts-to-dos.
Roll
high, roll on, sibs!
Victory
to Grand Marshall, victory to the Trifecta Folk Republic! Victory to the Confederation
of the Non-Aligned! Victory and Long Life to the All.
I
give my life.
Do
not forget me, oh!