AN: This chapter has come after prayer, and I'm immensely pleased with the result. I hope you all enjoy this chapter, and I will see you next time.

Pagliacci-11.

Chapter 92

Night had fallen, and Aelita was sitting in the now solitary silence of her room. She looked over at the bunk next to her, currently vacant. It seemed to her, very odd and still. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but something felt as if it was keeping her awake. She tossed and turned as much as her nerves demanded, still to no avail.

Aelita sat up, and she thought about all that had happened in the afternoon. The revelation that another world, another dimension, genuinely existed. One that was just beyond them, ever so close and yet so far out of reach. Aelita contemplated the being she'd seen. One just like herself, one that was colder, more bitter, she didn't care for people it seemed but—Sylvia. Sylvia, Aelita felt in her bones, couldn't be trusted. She's spoken so well about so much, and yet she wished to destroy the earth. All Sylvia's speeches about fairness and a grander vision, needing Aelita to aide her, all of that seemed a distant memory now.

Aelita felt pulled between two forces, one she knew well enough, angry, arrogant, sociopathic, spiteful, no matter how honeyed her words or how she professed noble her intentions were. The other, this Natasha, was different. Aelita could feel it. She could feel this muck, this indescribable vestigial element-like and invisible stringy soot that dripped from her. It was if she could hear the screams of those she'd put in the earth, and yet, not one drop of blood was on Natasha.

From Odd's explanation, from what he'd learned of the mirror world, Natasha was a brutal tyrant who'd used theology as her grounding for actions. By her own admission, Natasha had killed hundreds of thousands, as if miscalculating was a form of insult to her legacy. That bloodshed she wore as her grizzled medallion, her badge of honor. But what did she know of the woman Natasha? Nothing but what history from the other side was said to have of her and Odd's account. They were a mirror universe, a mirrored people.

Aelita's eyes went wide; she reflected on that moment with Yolanda as they packed for Mercier. "Yolanda." She thought, "but—that's impossible." She laughed out loud, but her laughter stopped, "Come to think—she went far for that joke. Too far."

Aelita got up, got modestly dressed for the evening, and went to the infirmary. She was about to knock when she hesitated, "She's the day nurse, not night. Still—" She knocked, and to her surprise, Yolanda answered.

"Aelita, how may I help you?"

Aelita came in and said, "Yolanda, I need to ask you a question."

Yolanda left the door open a crack and sat back in her chair. Taking her clipboard, she said, "Firstly, are you ill?"

"No, ma'am," Aelita replied.

Yolanda put her clipboard up, "Then what's the issue?"

Aelita sat on one of the cots and asked, "That joke, the one you told me about the mirror universe—are you from there?"

Yolanda chuckled, "Aelita, it was just a joke. Call it majorly playing into your adolescent sensibilities at the time."

Aelita nodded, "But you were so precise about it. Methinks thou doth protest too much. The level you put into it—"

Yolanda sat back in her chair, bemused. She was smiling, and unknown to her, Aelita had seen that look before. In Heidi Klinger, when she been caught but was too vain to admit it.

Aelita leaned in, "That's the thing, Heidi. I know it is you. I have you at a disadvantage, mirror lady. I know that face."

Yolanda laughed out loud, "Come now, seriously? Continue on this path Ms. Stones, and you'll be certifiable for sure."

"I'm already leagues ahead of your math teachers. So, a certified genius, I already am."

Yolanda smirked and replied in a posh English accent, "Genusees! Which I is one of them!"

Aelita groaned, "There is so much structurally wrong with that sentence that I—I can't even."

"And praise, dear girl, is not what I mean when I say you're certifiable." Yolanda smiled, "Look, you're smart, no question. But you read too deeply into things. Why was I able to give such a formulaic and convincing response? Because something you don't realize about your dear nurse is that she was an improvisational comedian in America for eight years. It's how I paid for a semester of college, both going to college and paying the gargantuan bills afterward. For that line of work, you must think on the spot and react reasonably given the situation. Now, do you understand?"

Aelita nodded, "So, how did you arrive at Heidi Klinger?"

"Look around, do you see many blondes with my shade of hair, a natural towhead? The only way you could break the illusion is if you cared to observe Heidi is right-hand dominant."

Aelita was surprised and smiling; she asked, "Why not Brynja? You know Sissi's pen-pal?"

"Pfft, seriously? One, she's too buxom for me to carry off the joke convincingly. Besides, I can say with a fair of certainty; she'll get a reduction on her own—relatively soon. Two, I had to make the joke at least make sense in terms of your conventional purview as a student in what you'd see every day. Thirdly, Heidi is closest to me as a teen girl regarding her general facial bone structure. I can logically explain the transformation in that when puberty struck; I grew taller, the roundedness of my face was lost with the growth-spurt stretch as well as proper nutrition and exercise."

Aelita laughed, "You are such a nerd! I thought Jeremy was bad, but you're a medical nerd."

"I'm a hot nerd. In the world that makes a bit of a difference opening different doors, you know?"

Aelita nodded as her eyes scanned Yolanda's desk, "But if you were from the mirror-verse, you know what would give you away?"

Yolanda chuckled, "What, Aelita?"

"Your lack of photographs of you or any of your family. You have no mementos of your life, no pictures of your family. Even the teachers have that in their offices or even on their desks."

Yolanda was calm, anticipating such a response. She smiled and opened her right-hand desk drawer, and showed Aelita a small, framed picture.

Aelita looked at it, and she saw Yolanda looking prim and proper along with a variety of other what looked like doctors. As she looked at the photo, she saw the one she and the team knew as John Barrow. She read the holographic print in the lower right hand, "Valmont Industries: Biological Div. 2."

"You knew Mr. Barrow well then," Aelita observed.

"He was a close friend and my research partner at Valmont after Johns Hopkins. Together we perfected quite a few things that sadly to this day are under NDA."

Aelita looked at her, "NDA?"

"Non-Disclosure Agreement." Yolanda clarified, "We did a lot for the company and still make it tons of money. However, that place screwed us both over, and because we worked for the company at the time of our best think-tank work, well, despite how we pioneered quite a few things, the company owned the property, lock stock, and barrel. We didn't exactly reap the reward financially. Eventually, he went his way, and I went mine. I was surprised when he showed up here when he did."

Aelita handed back the picture, and Yolanda said, "So, no, Aelita. I'm not from the mirror-verse. It was just dedication to a joke that, as I said, was improved through years of prior experience." Yolanda looked at her watch, "I advise you to get to bed and rest for tomorrow. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

Aelita nodded, and she headed back upstairs while Yolanda resumed her work. As she headed upstairs, Aelita thought, "Okay. So, she might not be of the mirror-verse, but she knows Barrow very well. That doesn't necessarily mean she knows just what he's involved in. Although, given the scandal and show of his arrest, I'm sure she's had her questions about him. So, how does one enter the mirror-verse?"

Aelita went back to her room and opened her phone. She called Odd.

Odd was groggy when he greeted her, "Hello?"

"Hi, Odd. When you were talking about the mirror-verse, how did you get there?"

Odd groaned, and he replied, "It was explained that when you look long enough into your mirror, the reflection will look back, provided the doppelganger isn't already there. You can call each other to the mirror if you need to just by staring at it long enough. Apart from that, I don't know."

Aelita understood, and she asked, "Tired Odd?"

"It was a long day of reading here at Aulamerta. It feels like a junior university half the time. You gotta' read two chapters a week, roughly forty-six pages per chapter. Thankfully, that's all I have to do for the heavy lifting, but it's just a true drain at times. That's why I'm tired."

Aelita was astounded, "Forty-six-page chapters?!"

"Yeah, some really thick-ass chapters. It's a slog the first three days of a week which is why as much as I know we gotta' stop the nutjob, I value my sleep these days."

"I understand. I'm sorry, I'll let you sleep."

"Thanks. I'm amazed, frankly, that Mercier doesn't do the same to you. I mean, it is supposed to be the elite institution of the two of us."

"It's not so bad for those of us in the advanced classes. But it's a balancing act. Not so much in terms of length of study required, just a lot crammed into the lecture elements. You thought Meyer was tough, well, Mercier is tough, even for me."

"You're a math whiz, though. You'll be fine." He yawned, "Well, I'll see you tomorrow for training."

He hung up, and Aelita hung up her phone and thought about what Odd had said, "Look into the mirror."

Aelita got up and went to the shower room, and finding none there at present, she closed the door and looked at her reflection. She concentrated for ten minutes, nothing. She waited a few more minutes, still nothing. Suddenly, a crackling was heard overhead, and she looked up. Just the creaking of the building, she thought, and she looked back. To her shock, her reflection looked irritated, no, angry. The reflection jutted out with its hand, and as Aelita saw the hand that grabbed her, it was not a teenager's hand; it the hand of a grown woman.

She was pulled forth with a terrified scream as there was a bright light that blinded her at first, and she fell asleep.

Soon, Aelita awoke, and she found she was on a perfectly white, almost luminous white couch. Across sat an adult version of herself. She was tall, taller than Jim, slim and her face was handsome. She was dressed in a steel-grey uniform with burgundy fringes along the collar's lapels. Black jackboots with gold-tipped toes that were perfectly polished were on the woman's feet, her pantlegs elegantly tucked into the boots and with a well-defined crease. Her hair was long, combed back at first, and braided in an elegant ponytail that seemed to wrap around the body to the left, resting on the right-hand side in the lap.

Aelita sat up and asked, "Natasha?"

The woman nodded, "You summoned me. What do you want?" Her voice was stern, albeit soft, the t at the end of want spoken with its own pronunciational emphasis. Her accent sounded unique, certainly not anything she'd heard so far.

Aelita looked around herself; it was dark save for the light on her and Natasha. The air was different; it was almost nonexistent. There were no smells where they were. Aelita asked, "Where are we?"

"The intermediary ground between our world, a council chamber, as it were." Natasha replied, "I brought you here so you wouldn't be destroyed in my world. This is where we can coexist with each other without destroying each other. Now, what do you want?"

Aelita looked at her and said, "You're quite beautiful."

"Thank you. Now, what do you need? I'm a busy woman, out with it."

"Give me a moment, please. This is—so, you are real?"

"As real as you are. But unlike you, I wasn't trapped in a machine for years on end. I grew, I thrived through hardship, I carved out a nation, only to have it taken from me. Are you here to accept my proposal? Or did you merely wish to test out this the reality with which you became recently acquainted?"

Aelita was still astonished at the woman before her. She was beautiful but cold, akin to the ice sculptures she'd seen with Jeremy in winter. She composed herself and then asked, "I've heard many things about you. You're a tyrant not to be trusted; you murdered hundreds of thousands by your own admission. You oppressed your people, leading to your sister taking your power from you. Why should we trust you?"

The doppelganger chuckled, "You accuse me of being a monster, but you don't know what birthed such a perception. You are only analyzing the result, not asking why the result took place. If you cannot genuinely think critically, I might as well talk to Kiwi for the progress we'll make."

Aelita was stunned at the bluntness of her reflection, and she seemed to even laugh at this, mockingly, albeit restrained.

"Praised have you been for your apparent genius, yet you have yet to be derided for your emotional frailty." The doppelganger replied, "It is this same frailty which made me disgusted with you, how you cried for weeks in the wake of your mother's apprehension that I turned my back on you. I vowed never to be like you. I can't say right now I have that many regrets choosing to do so."

Aelita looked at her reflection, "What did they do to you? What happened to you? Tell me your story as you see it, and then I will give you my answer."

Natasha nodded, "Let us begin, for we have much to cover. What did they do? They took my life; they took my people. They took all that mattered to me, and because they believed themselves so righteous and so right, they repackaged my words with a prettier bow, the bow of freedom. But the words they regurgitated were not their own. They were mine.

The heartless one they called me, those ungrateful, scheming little shits. Why was I heartless? Because I wouldn't compromise my State, my temples, for their filthy visions and pleas for equality. It wasn't enough that, like Rome and Persia, I gave them their sectors, allowed their practices and communities. No, give an inch, and they take a foot, demanding more forever.

Inevitably, I drew my lines in the sand. They screamed at me; how unfair I was. For all they demanded, I appease them; I am fair, they took my kindness for their allowances for weakness. They could not get their way, the thankless, insatiable masses, so they refused to work. I made exoskeletons to help them at first; later, full-on automated working robots did the most grueling work, which they chose not to do.

There were those of them who were intelligent and more competent than the rabble. They came to my camp offering their services. Realizing this willingness existed amongst the masses, albeit for self-preservation, I had decided to turn the people in on themselves.

Those who came to me feared my building wrath due to the examples I'd made to those who were too hard-headed to listen. These people merely didn't wish for the same fate. However, because of their willingness and the conversation I had with them, I fell upon the resolution to reform prior policies. So, I formed in my government a policy of Supreme Egalitarianism. I improved the Ministry from its Draconian methods of old under my father and the government's prior heads before darkness. I made Egalitarianism the order of the day. Meritocracy was our engine that would catapult our society forward and the only way to reach the height of political and social power and continue to hold office.

I cared not for their words, these fickle people. Did they wish to advance, be better, live comfortably? All well and good. Under Egalitarianism, I destroyed the old gatekeepers' barriers, and all had a chance to be great. All had an opportunity to hone their craft and prove their metal through merit.

Sylvia speaks of unity through love of craft. That is not enough for humanity, not nearly enough. They wish to embrace pride, wish for elevation above others, and be boastful and grand in their display of achievements, especially personal or familial variety. This is what Sylvia could never understand. She knows humanity is driven by greed, but she does not embrace the system efficiently, nor realistically. She makes meritocracy in terms of treats.

Humans do not want treats; they are not dogs or beasts, so simply sated. They hunger and wish for more and more. Jealousy and pride run humanity like a perfectly oiled engine. One wishes to be higher than the other, and we cannot escape this facet of ourselves; Not you, nor I—no one.

So, what do you do? You make it so that a marketplace fueled by pride and shrewdness exists. This to keep your people sated and have them yearning for more constantly. I have learned, have humanity in a capacity to gloat through raw skills that are attained from their merit, and society will seek eternally to outperform each other for a more extraordinary ability to laud their progress over their rivals; tis' simple science.

The only things that keep them from greatness are themselves and the barriers that constrain them. Eliminate all obstacles and make all equal, and you will see who has the thirst, the hunger, to make something of themselves by their talents. Equally, some fought me with my vision. They fought the destruction of their boundaries because they, as the disenfranchised elite, never wanted equality.

You can see this the world over. They call the undesired the untouchables. They are in India, Japan, Iran, Iraq, America; they are everywhere in the world should you choose to look deep enough. They are the oppressed. They are oppressed by those who think themselves more extraordinary simply due to ancient dogma or bloodline. They divide the untouchables from the rest of them. Sometimes it is by such a literal divide, too, like by open sewers. Often, what's worse, money divides the people. Currency, until I destroyed the notion, for the longest time dictated power and prestige.

In time, I routed such dissenters. I killed them. I took their wealth, their precious jewels and metals made from the sweat of the backs of their slaves, and I put it back into the State. There were those when I came to power who exploited weakness and technicalities in the system. They kept having more kids to squeeze off the Dole.

Rather than harm the children, the genuine innocent bystanders, I educated the children in meritocracy values through baby steps regarding skills they could easily possess. Once the youth understood the notion through simple exercises, the children could be trusted more and more with elevation in genuine positions. These children grew through the years to become great thinkers and doers of ever-advancing engineering, scientific, and societal innovations.

The adults who had exploited the Dole were not destroyed. By choice, either learning meritocracy as their children had, or refusal. Should they accept, I simply grafted them back into society into roles derived from genuine talent. If they refused, well, I took away their free will and made them so controlled in the penal colonies that they had no choice but to work. There were those, regrettably, who would not work period, no matter what you did. As I did not use torture to enforce, I simply had them reprocessed in the grand scheme."

Aelita spoke up, "Reprocessed, you mean, you exterminated them."

"What else can you do when they won't see reason? I won't beat them to death. I won't starve them out. Equally, I had labor camps, but those were reserved for prisoners of war or actual, albeit temporary, nonconformists to the State, both with hopes to be still educated. Death is only used when all other options are exhausted.

My administrative and governmental overhaul, Aelita, was not fueled by hatred of a people's race as it was with the Nazis. It was not by the desire for control as it was with Stalin. It was a desire to see people, regardless of birth or anything akin, to have a good life of fulfillment. So long as they continued to refine, innovate, and produce, that is all that mattered.

Now, let us say you hit the ceiling of your talent. Let us say you couldn't' do more at present. Well, you would be converted from meritocracy's broad scope to the finer range of quota. You meet X amount during a week; you maintain all benefits you have at select thresholds of production. We would monitor and survey all work to see if we can continue to help you grow. This functions in that if we think you can contribute, based on your raw experience, be it work or observation, that you are put into a think-tank sanctioned by the State. Thusly you represent a portion of the people in your industry for your income bracket attained through merit."

Aelita nodded and raised her hand, "Question, Natasha. Why did Sylvia rebel against you?"

"Why does any student rebel against their teacher? For Sylvia, it was an objection to my hardline stances. She hated that I allowed the pockets of people based on the incorporated nations to exist when she felt they should have a larger voice in parliament's halls. She objected to the stance I had that didn't allow the various other religions to have an equal say or integration in the State's religion as she would have encouraged. She didn't like that—"

Aelita raised her hand, "The incorporated nations? What do you mean by that?"

The doppelganger nodded and continued, "As I rose to power in my father's regime before I had developed Egalitarianism as a stance of government to be, I looked around at the neighboring nations. The neighboring countries still suffered monetary income divisions and self-regard and thusly had people they did not want to muddy up or clutter their streets. The homeless, mentally infirm, the disenfranchised and discarded veterans of their nations, the list goes on.

I asked my father to allow me to take the undesired of these affected people and graft them into our society, and it was here that my engine of Egalitarianism was tempered by real-world field practice. I found countless people had been cast aside by the nations because they felt either they knew too much of the governmental graft and had to be done away with, in a sense, or they simply were displaced because they had seen the end of what their former States deemed, 'their usefulness.'

So, realizing the nations had what can only be called 'general reasons' at best for their discarding their various people, I was forced to look at the finer reasons of why their people were undesired. Over time, I realized countless vets were broken in the theaters of battle, but their states did not care. All that mattered to those in charge were you have young, dumb, and hopelessly idealistic meatheads for cannon fodder or reserves for war for resources that are not yours, to begin with.

When you look at the world's true history, Aelita, regarding conflict and war, you would be amazed how many of these wars are engaged only when there is a massive monetary profit to be turned. You see it with the decimation of all kinds of people. The natives of Central and South America, the Natives of North America, let us go earlier to the displacement of the Germanic peoples by the Romans, a bit later to the decimation and carving up of the Ottoman empire for their oil reserves. The list goes on Infinitum in both directions since the dawn of time and likely to the end of all humanity.

So, the incorporated nations, at the time, were nations who, in the wake of XANADU plunging them into darkness, allied with each other and were the last remnants of what our people termed the Decay. This term has been applied to the case-by-case occurrences in which monetary corruption reinforced through nepotism in some form or fashion constitutes legislatively biased decisions for the whole of the State and the State's allies.

These peoples, the Decay, are weighed in our balance. When found wanting, we decimated them, but, in my taste, in my fashion, I took their rejects, their unwanted, and made them the bulwark of my offense. I made the former unwanted the infiltrators, the spies, in time, the elite vanguard of the assault. For, what loyalty have they to those who would so easily dismiss them and throw them aside as simply and arbitrarily as the teenager who ejaculates into a wet towel? Equally, what loyalty have they for the ones who rebuilt them, gave them back their purpose, and showed them the love and respect they were denied?"

Aelita was stunned. So, this is who Natasha was. This is who her reflection was and the ideals she held. She was, admittedly, far removed from the butcher as many painted her to be. But just as Sylvia was, Natasha was pragmatic to the end. It was here Aelita was faced with an uncomfortable truth that Natasha likely saw no wrong in what she did.

Aelita then said, "So, your government—I—" she hesitated, trying to find the right words. She looked at the woman who sat across from her and could see in her eyes; she was waiting for her to finish the question, albeit patiently. Aelita then spoke, "How much of what Sylvia promised is your vision, and how much is hers?"

"That it!" her doppelganger said with almost glee, "At last! You ask the right questions." She laughed a bit and then, after a sigh, said, "Everything she has spouted to you was mine. But she twisted and negated my boundaries step by step. She killed me out of jealousy, Aelita. No more, no less. She hated that the people grew to love me. Because I had lifted through attentiveness and care as I would my orchids, countless people out of the mire and had given them hope to bear better fruit.

It didn't help that her mother, our mother, poisoned her against me in the grand scheme. She filled her head with all manner of superfluous bullshit affixing the crimes of Decay to be allowed to continue under our father. This simply was not the case. When you look at the true history, what little remains after Sylvia asserts power, you realize how much history is genuinely written by the victors. Only in looking at both sides of our mirror can you see the truth, provided it hasn't been blotted out by the ones who have taken your throne."

A chime sounded in the depths of the darkness and, after a moment, began to strike solid tones of a golden ring in A-flat. Once it had finished its tenth's strike, the doppelganger looked at Aelita after looking into the darkness from where the chime sounded and said, "It's nearly time for you to return."

Aelita looked at her reflection and asked, "Let me ask you, for all that you have done, the good to horrid; how are you any better than Sylvia?"

Natasha looked at Aelita and, after a moment of genuine contemplation, replied, "I'm not. Neither are you when you're pushed enough. No one is better than Sylvia. No one is better than anyone; that's the fucking point. But much as I told you in my history, those who laud and lord power, no matter the form, over others, those who have so damned much they never had to claw their way out or know a truly rough day; it's easy to condemn the perceived 'lessers' amongst you. It is so damned easy.

They keep you so busy with work; you do not have time to contemplate, just to work, to do for them, so you can't ask genuine questions. Your people continually are worn down in the promise of promotions that never come; you are not given any actual positive incentives to keep working, but you still are expected to work. Meanwhile, much as Sylvia, so blindly following her heart instead of her head, when the nations give countless elements to those who enter your lands for the sake of a new start, read between the lines. These new people, regardless of your nation, if treated with the epitome of philanthropy, are, in all reality a new labor force to shore-up votes in the democratic process; the natives themselves, you will find across the world, are left without their necessities. The veterans who secured your freedom are destroyed mentally, and without recourse, the homeless populations skyrocket. That's nothing compared to the fact that the affluent conglomerates have tens of thousands of unused industrial factories or depot buildings you could convert into living quarters and smaller agrarian workstations. This is provided, of course, if, God forbid, profit and philanthropy ever were to go hand in hand in your fucked-up hellhole.

Oh, but Aelita, your teachers don't talk about that in your little world. They prefer to shelter you and your generation. But when the wealthy and even small power brokers rob and cheat you as an everyday worker, they steal from you any hope when you were so hopeful. When they have the money and subsequently the means of power to pervert justice for their own fucking twisted ends? When in all reality, you'll inevitably find that this world is amazingly insular; the realm of power and those with 'right' to power and prosperity because of it, even more so?" Natasha laughed grimly, "After you experience that, you come back to me and tell me if XANA was wrong for wanting to purge you all.

Your world, your people, adore self-elevation and real power over others. They wish for their lesser to want to grovel before them and acknowledge their brilliance. Well—" she chuckled, "your people will inevitably be destroyed by those who they looked down on. But suddenly," she gasped, "the poor are wrong for wanting their overdue portion. That's how the wealthy, that's how they'll always paint it. Never mind, these same wealthy elites scarcely ever benefit their home nations. But, because of money, they'll go to other nations worldwide, mind you, this isn't just one nation at all, for cheap-ass labor across the board! But seldom, you will realize does their nation, you know the place where they make the bulk of their enterprising personal profits, ever profit."

She sighed, "Long story short; we've all come a long-ass way. But you should know the unfulfilling hell you go into now than realize it later. Much as Sylvia says, even the broken clock is right twice daily, 'it's not what you know, it's who you know.' The sooner you embrace that, the sooner you'll realize the mantra of the world. It goes something like this: 'Long-life, right to freedom and happiness.' it's a glorified crock of shit. Really we want you to thanklessly serve us until you are used up, ground to dust, and insane."

Natasha stood, and she said, "I've going to give you a chance. Do you want to be restored to your true self? Your adult life, devoid of XANA? Devoid of Carthage? Do you wish to be with your father as you should have been? Or do you wish to be restored to before Sylvia came? Before she had a chance to set her feet down in your world?"

Aelita looked at her, and she stood, "I cannot accept. You would purge me of all meaning of the life that this twisted fate has doled out to me. If you are truly here to stop Sylvia, do so and let that be the end of it. We may be doomed and evil, as you would likely say, but so be it. You can't defeat people's pride; you've made a market out of it; you said so yourself because you couldn't defeat it. You couldn't stop your own sister. So, before we leave, what would you say to me, to us beyond here of genuine worth?"

Natasha was quiet a moment, and then she said, "Eyes have you, but you see not; ears have you, but you hear not. Very well. Here is what I have to tell you and your people. I tell you this. Do not let morality and ethic be the cudgel by which you let this hypocritical world control you. They do not abide by morality and ethic; despite their pretenses. There is no justice in this world; there is just us. You will grow; you will see this world as we have described. But even though you see and sound the alarm, crying for change, change. There is no change. It is a mathematical certainty.

The slave who becomes master will give birth to more slaves who end up being, because of insatiability, being masters over them. The wheel just keeps turning, never ceasing. You need to look to each other, empower each other, lift each other up and not crush them into the mire. And there, when or if you seek to do so, that is where your true prosperity can begin.

It is not an easy road, Aelita. It will kill you, grieve you immensely as you see humanity is insatiable. But the best you can do is simply that. That is all the world should ask of you. But if this world doesn't change in due time, I will return." She stepped forward until directly in front of Aelita, and she knelt down to her level, "And when I return; I will burn away what I see and start you all over. If you don't listen to me and attempt to improve this place as we watch, you all—will die—in blackened ash pits to sew gardens—and that will be on you."

Natasha stood, turned, and headed back to her chair, "My sister and her people will be ended. That is my promise to you. Remember what we have talked about; remember that we will be watching. The clock starts now." She slammed the chair down in a magnificent boom, and Aelita awoke with a jolting gasp upon the shower room floor. It was now early morning.