Prologue: Condrate

If you were in high orbit, flying over the endless oceans of this blue and green water-world, making your way over the south pole, you would see a glimmer, a sparkle on the surface, like a single diamond, shimmering in a vast black and green spiderlike setting. Making your descent, perhaps to a few hundred miles above the pole itself, you would discover that this single glimmer was in fact a collection of many hundreds of little sparkles, a forest full of fireflies, their movement frozen in time. Approaching the landing zone, this forest would have turned into a city, a sprawling collection of tents, buildings, settlements, across the many islands in this archipelago, home to a few thousand revellers for a few weeks. It is here that the happy few – or maybe we should say the happy many, as we speak of thousands of people – get together for the ‘Turn’, the start of a new Cycle, to celebrate life, love and leisure.

Contrary to appearances, the real reason this festival was still hosted at every Turn was politics. Think about it – what common citizen or even corporation would organize and fund such a mammoth happening out of the goodness of their heart? The ‘Opening of the Turn’, which was the official name of what most people commonly simply referred to as ’the Turn’, was, before anything else, an event for the rich and influential. It was their moment to come together, to discuss the state of things, to plan the future of the system and to make or break pacts.

Alyssa Grandman, eldest daughter of the influential Grandman family, was not feeling the cheer that everyone else seemed to feel. She was not herself. Not just because it was hot and humid, or because she was slightly agoraphobic and was only too aware she was in the middle of thousands of kilometres of ocean, and not just because she despised most of the people she would have to meet and play nice to, but because of what she knew she had to do this evening. It made her restless and irritable.

She coughed politely and addressed the handsome but annoying man to her right.

“Forgive me, I need to go and see my family”.

“I understand”, he said, with a look indicating that he really didn’t but that he knew how to take his loss. “It was a real pleasure speaking with you madam. Will you speak with me again some later moment at this Turn?”

“Perhaps”, she said, turning half away and giving him a warm smile as she did so. She left him wondering how sincere that smile had been. He decided to flatter himself that it was.

Making her way through the onlookers, she proceeded from the relatively quiet area near the lower terrace, overlooking the lily garden and the koi pond, towards the darker and busier part of the reception, seeking out her relatives. Being highly attuned to the conversations around her, a side-effect of her upbringing, she heard the distinctive sounds of insincerity. She recognized the high-pitched sounds of fake laughter, the bellowing of too much enthusiasm, the overdone screams of pretend-surprise above the din. Led by an internal urge to avoid these shallow partygoers, she veered away and made her way back to the illuminated and somewhat quieter side of the massive room.

The reception hall was enormous, set up centrally inside an even bigger building. By a trick of artificial gravity, the building’s roof floated some twenty meters above the top of the glass walls, bringing in light from all directions, which was reflected and refracted by cleverly placed separations hanging in mid-air. This created separate areas across the architectural monstrosity for various functions, connected by seemingly weightless crystalline bridges and staircases. Floating in mid-air, across the entire space, were balconies exposed to the setting sun to lounge on with cocktails, fields of grass to sit and play on, darker corners for trysts and love making, music halls with sound-tempering walls and swimming pools without anything holding the water in.

In the middle of it all was the grand ballroom, hundreds of feet across, with plush carpets, oak and mahogany and cherry veneer tables and chairs, all below the grandest, most opulent crystal chandeliers ever seen.

Different music could be heard depending on where one was. Currently, Alyssa was hearing a light pizzicato folk tune, vaguely reminding her of summers on the coast of her home planet. By the time she had worked her way through a few dozen little gatherings, all bowing, smiling, or vying for her attention, all politely declined with her well-practiced friendly smile, she had reached another open area, looking straight out at a large lawn with a view to the ocean. How she detested being here, on this night, how she detested all the people around her, how she hated this room, this building, this whole damn planet and their political system for leading her to this moment.

“Alyssa”, a voice called out to her. It took her a moment to find her bearings, to recognize the speaker. “It’s me, Avrem”, feigning hurt at her not immediately recognizing him.

“I know, Uncle”, she sighed, “I know. I’m sorry. How are you, sir?”

“No need for formalities, Alyssa,” Avrem said, stern but loving, as a benign parent.

Alyssa realized wryly that in her family, there was no such thing.

“I can see for myself that you’re not entirely at ease”. He took her hand and squeezed it. “Have a drink with me,” he proposed, and half-turned to summon a waiter-drone as he said it.

“No thanks”, said Alyssa. She felt both relief for having someone notice her anxiety, maybe even care, and annoyance at the intrusion on her privacy. She looked away quickly, hiding her reaction from her uncle as his attention returned to her.

“Still, you’re ready for your big moment, I hope? We’re all looking forward very much to what you have to say.”

“Stop it, please,” she said, exasperated. ” You know every word I’m going to say. What you’re looking forward to is what happens when I say it.”

“Not in the least! But what happens if you don’t scares me a lot more, I’m not afraid to say,” Avrem admitted. “A lot is riding on the balance with the other families, and we won’t know how things will look before we all go home. This Turn is an important one, at least as important as the one where you father took over. You need to do this.”

“Thanks for adding to the pressure. But I’m ready. You’ll get your blood bath.” Looking at him with angry eyes, she quoted ‘Fear not, deities, your rivers shall be of blood and your payment shall be in tears’ and walked away.

—

As soon as Condrate’s sun had begun to set, subtle changes started to occur in the building. Almost like a living thing, it started to make small movements, subtle alterations. The walls around the grand ballroom lifted a few meters in the air, the roof lowered slightly, changing how the light channelled through the building. The terraces all lowered to ground level and the music converged, melting together to one single theme, while the volume decreased on the edges and increased towards the ballroom.

The effect was slow but unmistakable, almost as if the building wanted everyone to gather towards and then into the ballroom. People being what they are, as soon as some started moving, everyone followed, most of them unconsciously. Trickles, then streams, then rivers of people made their way from their individuals entertainments towards one single destination, becoming and acting as one coordinated organism.

Alyssa sat in the front row among hundreds of people from their system’s first families. She half-listened to a grey-haired elderly man from Druentia droning on about agricultural targets and annual planning, obviously vying for applause and recognition from his peers. There was no need to have grey hair these days and it annoyed her that this self-important bore had chosen to look old, just for effect. What the hell did he hope to accomplish, she thought, scowling.

When he finished, he left the stage rather bewildered and sad, receiving none of the applause he was looking for. Alyssa didn’t notice any of this as she was getting out of her seat and walked towards the other side of the stage. She climbed the steps up onto the wooden floor of the stage using a small, conveniently placed staircase and made her way towards the stage’s centre, each step more difficult, her feet heavy, her breath shallow and quick, her vision blurry around the edges. She focused on the spot just before her and with sheer willpower made it to the spot where she was supposed to stand for optimal acoustics. She slowed her breathing, looked up, and faced the audience.

They quietly sat there, waiting for her to start her speech. They looked expectant, curious, excited even, like someone whose birthday party it was and who knew that the fun was about to start. Those aware of political shifts and currents – and who in this room wasn’t? – knew that this would be an important speech. Each family had traditions, and the Grandman family was one of the more traditional ones. Power always went to the eldest son. It had for many centuries. Benjamin Grandman was the heir apparent. He was young, beautiful, single and the system’s most eligible bachelor. This Turn, he had been fêted by almost everyone who is anyone and lots more, and in the array of family presentations it was Benjamin that people had been expecting on stage. Not Alyssa.

“Great events have come to pass, and more await us, as we turn, together, in one more cycle”, she stated, using the traditional opening. She stood with her feet apart, shoulders broad and set slightly back, her black hair brushed back. Her voice boomed, amplified across the hall by an invisible sound system. She felt strong.

When Alyssa spoke, the room was silent. Thousands listened intently, eager to hear a family drama unfolding, hungry for something juicy and entertaining after the hours of economic boredom.

“My family has been here, in this moment, standing on this very spot and addressing you, innumerable times”, she continued, placing emphasis on the right words, staying in rhythm, applying all the oratory skills she could muster. “You know us as steadfast members of the system, and we have always supported and lived by the ways of our elders, accepting our place in history, and following the example of those before us. I stand here today before you in that long and noble tradition.”

Knowing that she would need to address the elephant in the room head-on, she asked the question that she knew everyone was asking, and which would start an irreversible chain reaction once she addressed it.

“Why me, you ask? Why not the eldest son as per our tradition? I will tell you!”

From the right-hand side of the assembled audience, she could hear the first rumblings of dissent. Her older brother Benjamin, the obvious heir, sat there, his cabal assembled around him. He must have known this would happen, of course. He had been causing too many scandals in the family with shady transactions and unethical deals, and if he had any sense, he would have anticipated that the family would not accept it much longer. Still, she needed to be careful how she continued. Looking at the faces around him, she saw Benjamin had attracted some cowardly minor families who would jump at the chance to buy themselves some social standing by supporting him and together they formed a group whose size could not be ignored. Good, she thought, let’s deal with two problems at once.

“Let me tell you”, she repeated, addressing the wider audience, and purposefully not looking to her right, letting them digest her words while seeing her ignoring them. “I am not without precedent. Families before us have sometimes been forced to deviate from tradition, to ignore custom, in order to serve a greater good.”

More noise from her right. Across the rest of the audience, she could see some faces turning to their neighbour, undoubtedly to share their suspicion of what might happen or what her reasons were for this breach of etiquette. Simpletons, she thought, as if etiquette is what mattered in the universe.

“When Tribula was attacked, and when it was clear that Harvid the eldest son was behind it, did the Moridues not select his brother Michael to head their house? When the war broke out between Fish and Immanuel’s world, didn’t the courts force the leading families to assign their daughters to lead their houses?”

She chose the next one carefully.

“When Robert Foster married against his family’s wishes, did they not disavow him?”

“And they killed him for it!” Someone shouted from halfway in front of her. Finally, she thought, someone who knows their history. She couldn’t see who it had been. A pity, as she would have like to have rewarded him for helping her make her point.

“Yes, they did”, she replied, facing the origin of the comment, “but that was only after they had taken away his privileges and assigned their estate to his sister Essa.”

The noise from her right became a roar, people shouting, obviously correctly interpreting what she was insinuating was going to happen to Benjamin. He himself stood up now, casting aside all decorum, and faced his sister. He pointed at her and shouted “you wouldn’t dare! You don’t have the support!”

On the edges of the room, she could see people craning their necks to better see what was going on, but also people quietly making their way out of the room, perhaps justly fearing the coming of violence.

Around Benjamin, who still stood shouting insults and threats at his sister, some of his supporters had begun to push forward, towards the stage. People that tried to stop them were being pushed aside, the noise increasing with each passing minute. With a faint buzz, mini security-drones were now descending from the top of the room, setting out to protect the majority of participants by precision-targeting a few. Chaos was ensuing and Alyssa decided it was time to get off the stage before things got even more out of hand.

Then, with no warning, gravity disappeared. Suddenly, everything in the world lost its weight. It took everyone a second to realize this. The noise and angry shouting faded for a few seconds, as people tried to make sense of this new development. Then, one by one, everyone started screaming in fear and confusion.

Hundreds of participants started to slowly drift into the air, as their frantic movements created an upward motion which was no longer counteracted by gravity. A stirring mass of bodies could be seen starting to rise slowly, as an enormous colony of bees that was moving to a new site. Each individual body with flailing arms and legs, eyes wide with panic. People hanging on to chairs and tables caused these to take air as well, adding furniture, glassware, hot and cold food and liquids and silver cutlery to the floating cloud of scared audience members now floating above the floor.

Outside, without anyone seeing it, the ocean was behaving strangely too. With no gravity to keep them down, massive ocean waves were turning into high ridges, then mountains ranges, then huge blobs of seawater, larger than the largest spaceships, majestically detaching themselves from the planet’s surface. Eerily, as a strange contrast, the high-flying gull-like seabirds seemed not to care, circling around, high above the water, looking for fish as if nothing had changed.

Inside, Alyssa was clinging on to the banister of the small staircase that led down from the stage. She felt safe for an instant, having something to hold on to, then realized that her staircase hadn’t been bolted to the floor and that she too was now slowly rising, banister and all. She looked around and spotted a greyish column not far from her that supported the lighting rig above the stage, and which seemed to be anchored to the ground. It was going to be close, she thought, it’s not too far to jump. Then she realized that she wasn’t thinking straight – without gravity it wouldn’t be a jump, it would be – she almost laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation – a flight. She jumped off, pushing away the steps which careened on the floor, causing it to bounce back up to slowly drift to the ceiling. She flew towards the girder and after two intensely long and surreal seconds she grasped a loose cable, her momentum pushing her forwards, felt the cable pulling taught, felt herself circling around the girder and ended up being smashed onto it, face first, as she completed her arc and the cable pulled her in. Her left arm instinctively grabbed whatever she could wrap her fingers around and felt relief as she closed her fist around a metal pin on the outside of the steel girder.

She sighed, inspecting her face, feeling shaky but uninjured. She turned her head to face the room again and saw the mayhem. The world had truly turned upside-down, she thought. Now that she had a moment to consider her circumstances, she noticed her heart beating very fast, almost like that of a bird, and she was breathing fast. She purposefully slowed both down by taking a few deep breaths, eyes closed, in through her nose, out through her mouth. She forced herself to be calm. She needed to think. She was in a better position than most – having solid purchase – but she needed a plan. She looked around to see if others were in a similar position.

Then, as suddenly as it had disappeared, gravity came back. Immediately, the mass of people and furniture and food smashed down into the ground with a sickening crunch. Alyssa saw it happen before she lost purchase on the girder and fell, at least ten feet down, and landed on her back. She lived, but knew she was injured. A few seconds later, with a high-pitched whine and occasional crashing sounds that drowned out the faint moans she could hear here and there from the remains of the audience around her, from hundreds of meters above, the glass ceilings crashed down, taking the walls and terraces and everything else in its way with it. Minutes later, the tsunami caused by the ocean waves coming down with a thunderous crash spilled over the entire island. Then, silence.