from
Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory
by
Yaroslav Barsukov

Dates—and to a certain extent, names—are only interesting to historians but never to those who read history. The purpose of a written account is to allow future generations to learn from the mistakes of the past; in the case of Drakiri, dating human cruelty doesn’t make it any more digestible.

Indeed, we could argue a date and a name create a greater distance between the event and the reader. Somebody would say, no, that wasn’t us, that didn’t happen in our time, we’d never stoop so low. And then proceed to do just that.

Cillian Rand, “World History XI,”
publication date unknown

Inconceivable how something could carry the sugary-powder flavor of childhood and, at the same time, a much more bitter, corroding taste.

“I never wanted to return,” he said.

The thought of an armed mob storming the palace seemed incongruous with the city’s morphine stupor, but such stupor always follows one day of violence and precedes the next. “Queen Daelyn built a tower, took gold from every man, breast milk from every mother ...” Soaring taxes, cuts to poorhouse programs, all for the sake of a thousand-foot monstrosity nobody needed—no wonder the people were furious.

Shea couldn’t understand why these people fled. At eighty, how long do you have left? Wouldn’t it be better to endure what remained of life at one’s home, whatever that home might be?

Only now, having fled himself, did he realize that for a refugee, home didn’t exist as a concept.

“I can tell you what’s happened there—and it will help you, although I doubt in the way you’re looking for.”

He said, “Somehow I assumed you’d need more convincing.”

“I had a daughter, and I didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear. Then another girl came to me, a daughter, too, and I told her what I thought she needed to hear. Now they’re both gone. Perhaps, had I been open with them, things might’ve been different. We lead each other on a leash, lie in the name of nonexistent good—I’m with you on this one—and sometimes, being gentle is the most difficult thing.”

“We’ll reshape the world, Shea. Turn it into paradise. Do you hear me, all of you? Into paradise!”—the latter addressed to the survivors below.

To Shea’s left and right, faces—save for Cara’s—were flushed with admiration. True evil, that’s where it is. Realization weighed him down like a stone on the neck of a drowning man, and it was twice as heavy. Evil wasn’t in the giant, or the Mimic Tower: Drakiri had created them, unwittingly, as mirrors of the darker facets of their own psyche. Evil wasn’t even in the crown prince; it hid in the silent consent, in every nod of approval and every “yes.”