His attention was not on her but the horror unfolding on the screens in front of them, the twenty-four-hour for-profit shit show, drumming up scandal and terror, both feeding on the fear of its audience and fattening it at the same time.

Kaveh Mazandarani was a tragedy.

The men who attacked Nikola Sassanian were vigilantes, outlaws.

Kaveh Mazandarani was a hero.

The men who defended our country were patriots, heroes.

Kaveh Mazandarani was a traitor.

We must defend our country. We must defend Western Civilization.

“We could leave this place.”

She looked at Ampersand. His body shook slightly as he lowered himself into a crouch, and then seated himself next to her, bright eyes still fixed on the wall of televisions.

“I could remove us from this planet. You do not need to see this. I could take us to another life-sustaining place. I would protect you. We aren’t obligated to stay here.”

She looked at the chaos unfolding, the world crumbling before her. Already these talking heads were going on and on and on, not about human civilization but about Western Civilization. The misappropriation of Kaveh’s face, a person she loved, now a hero, a tragedy, a traitor. The Third Option moving forward, gearing up for a machine designed to dehumanize and oppress. Thus perpetuating the cycle that was human civilization, over and over.

And she was powerless to stop it, powerless to change it, powerless to influence anything. She was a rat on a massive ship trying to push the rudder, deluding herself that she could budge it even a millimeter in either direction. This is hopeless. There is no changing the direction of this ship.

“I can extract Nikola’s ability to fold space,” Ampersand continued. “Anything we might be able to use, anything you may potentially want to rebuild, all we need is the data. We do not need to stay here.”

It wasn’t even despair that flooded her, it was something more akin to hatred. The way the Superorganism would see human civilization—bellicose, competitive, consumptive, dangerous, xenophobic—wasn’t irrational, it was an accurate assessment. It wasn’t just that humanity had built a civilization whose inertia toward its own self-destruction was too strong for it to change. This was a civilization that, in the face of adversity, turned on itself, devoured itself, ate its most vulnerable. Flesh-eaters, pugilists, militarists.

This was a civilization that did not deserve to be saved.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Yes?”

It was foolish to think they could ever really affect the direction the ship was headed. As people, they were tiny, nothing. The ship was too big, the inertia was too strong.

But Kaveh had been wrong about going down with the ship.

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go.”

A Fiction Agreed Upon

A FICTION AGREED UPON