Pushing your way over the hillocks of absurdity as that leering troll, adversity, flings a fault line at you. Climb the ladder, Nesser. Pull yourself up the bone staves until your foot meets the rotting rung. Climb. Occasionally assist the other few dire mountaineers who thought it would be distracting to share the pilgrimage trail - murder the others. Deal in absolutes; nuclear mines, cassettes of cannonball missiles, blade-dancing on stiletto shaped warhorses - have them shot out from under you. Find another, build another. Spy on Outcasts, stab terrorists, stop demagogues, stilt Lovecraftian horror. Keep overreaching till your sword arm snaps off, Nesrin. Keep playing at Icarus, down to the armature. You are the less-than-human.
Sometimes you’re not sure if you’re climbing down, or up. After all, up is just the illusion spawned by a gravity gradient. Where are you really going, Nesrin? How can you say you have a purpose when you bask in nihilism - when the idea of the golden child fails to stand the test of wisdom? You are uniquely suited to non-decay - if your body holds out, you could live forever, a reliquary of a human. You are as much a sarcophagus as those used to store the funerary skeleton of pre-hellenistic kings. You are are an old, outmoded, deviant - a pretender. You’ve been elevated against your will, thrown under the wheels of life, and now you dare pretend to save yourself as the truck mauls you.
Everyone believes their cause is just. The correct cause. The Lane Hackers sell murder data under the pretence of Robin Hoodery. The Maltese diligently refuse to employ mechanised labour for the love of a few, fresh, first-generation ovaries. The Corsairs hold life at its material value.
We are the generation of wayward pilgrims.
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)
![[Image: XTF1d6x.png]](https://i.imgur.com/XTF1d6x.png)