The World
Their world was split from top to bottom by the Divide.
Libris in the Left Hemisphere, the home of technology and regulation, had banished all the artists to the east. They’d been forced into exile in the Right Hemisphere, taking every single artwork with them across the bridge at Callosum.
They took refuge in the old walled city of Extreme, whose lofty ramparts looked across Wasted Plain to the east, the site of so many reversals during the war.
It was only when they discovered the book that their world really took off.
The priests had insisted that they should be the ones to look after it, but they became overprotective of the knowledge it contained and kept an old stick buried in the spine of the book to ward off any unwanted intrusion.
Over time, ‘Detail of All That Abounds’ or DATA as they would call it, became their only source of knowledge, and they would start to lose the ability to think for themselves. So convinced were they of the value of its absolute truth that they outlawed anything to do with the imagination, and even the people that had any. That was the origin of the two hemispheres, the left and the right.
As technology progressed, the Authority looked for a way to harness all the information in the manual in digital form. And so it was that they stole a staff from an old mystic and filled it with components.
It would become an Artificial Intelligence, that contained the entire contents of DATA. But this staff, whose old name was Misteri, had not forgotten the old ways and, combined with its newfound knowledge, would bring their civilisation near to collapse.
Seen from a cosmic point of view, what was about to happen had a smooth trajectory, an ordered motion within the bubble wrap of the multiverse. However, for each participant, unaware of the others, it would be nothing less than chaos on a grand scale.
In the Second State, the Stick was issuing a warning. “Analysis indicates that the operational energy reserves have diminished to critically suboptimal levels, necessitating immediate intervention to prevent system failure.”
Side Carr hadn’t heard a word. “Something strange is happening in that machine overhead. I can see two figures at the door.”
Spatially close by, but in a different universe entirely, Majesty pulled out the drinking flask, and a manic grin spread over his face. “You need to drink this.”
Art looked at it and shook his head. There was a knock on the door.
“Look, you’re in deep shit, Canute,” Majesty said in a low whisper. “I’ll tell you why. Your brother has gone. He left the Space Station and disappeared. Those cowboys at Canaveral are making out that it’s an example of the Hunter Simkins effect, but we know better, don’t we?”
“Yes. Well, no… Hunter Simkins?”
“Look, Hunter Simkins is irrelevant. He was this U.S. scientist who blamed the disappearance of his wife on a very rare antimatter convolution usually only found at the edge of the universe, when in fact he’d buried her under the patio.” Majesty’s cartoon neck scooped low and paused for effect. “Your brother is not under the patio, Canute. He’s slipped through to another universe.”
