Jun 10, 2016
15,000 years or so
before the September Incident, it went something like
this:
Somehow, they'd
survived. They'd peeled across the galaxy itself, launched by the
combined force of a half dozen stellar combusters. Shielded by
Rigor's endless mass, they'd subsisted on machine-assembled
proteins and nutrients, suffering in the lonely dark at high
speeds.
They weren't quite
candidates, but they were the closest thing Rigor had. So it stung,
in so far as Rigor can be stung, when they slipped from its grip in
the light of the Golden Branch. As the bulk of its body bore deep
into the ice of Ionias (and deeper still into slumber), they
wrenched free from it and found land elsewhere, taking bits of the
machine god with them.
There was a debate
among the survivors, though. What to do with the remnants?
With living technology that protected and provided for them in the
dark just as it had once exploited and used
them?
Some survivors
joined under the banner of a young, charismatic leader--Chess
Kesh--whose optimistic belief that the human spirit (and a lot of
careful oversight) could control the power of Rigor's technology
without being subsumed into a mechanical rhythm of
dehumanization.
Others, the
Apostles, preached that if people learned to shape a world such
that Rigor felt itself unnecessary--a world where every individual
strived to be their own best self without the gaze of a brutal
supervisor--it would remain in slumber indefinitely. And so they
built themselves a new leader, using what they knew from Rigor but
never using its flesh--algorithmic and driven, they knew, towards
singular end.
And
though there was conflict, there wasn't war--after all, they'd all
survived Rigor's whip and the brightest violence that the Diaspora
could light. So they disengaged from each other, and found new,
internal troubles to focus on. Until one day, new ships with old
marks appeared on the horizon.
This week on COUNTER/Weight: A
Splintered Branch, A Ringing Bell Pt. 3
The sky was blue beyond
compare...
Hosted by Austin Walker
(@austin_walker)
Produced by
Ali Acampora
Music by Jack
de Quidt
A transcription is available for this
episode here.
A full list of completed transcriptions is
available
here.
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