💾 Archived View for tanelorn.city › ~vidak › old-blog › 2009-11-10-galatians-54.gemini captured on 2020-11-07 at 01:59:46. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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---
generator: pandoc
title: '2009-11-10-galatians-54'
viewport: 'width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes'
---
The sun had beat
down on them for little over a month now, their headclothes had
dissolved, what remained on their bodies was bleached and threadbare -
the smell of the earth permeated through the core of their very minds,
Harkoff, Shredig and Foolio trudged blindly into the southern Nelen
suburbs of Lesser Jou.\
\
\*\
\
"Mister Minister?"\
\
The old man put down some yellowing typewritten papers before grasping
the secretary at his office door with a firm gaze. "Yes?"\
\
"I've been authorised to inform you that dispatch team -"\
\
"Contact Field-Marshall Sherpie and tell him to contact Ragzin."\
\
"*Field-Marshall* Sherpie? And... and... Ragzin?"\
\
The Minister squinted at the woman standing in the threshold of his
tiny, wall-papered room.\
\
"Sherpie has been promoted, Miss, and he must talk to Ragzin about this
matter."\
\
The woman lingered in the doorway and seemed to study the hunched man,
and his single black bowler, unmoving on a hatstand to his left. Does
this man really command the future of eighty million people?\
\
"Is there something wrong, Miss? Miss Kost, is it?"\
\
"Sorry sir, nothing's wrong," Kost turned away and moved to the nearest
speaker tube to fulfil her instructions.\
\
\*\*\
\
For about a century, before the Nelen discovered masses of marble in the
deep south of Lesser Jou, architects and engineers were fixated on
creating structures with concrete. Concrete was more than just the most
functional building component ever developed, it was a tradition, a
social expression of progress - for a very long time, it seemed to
encapsulate what it meant to be Nelen.\
\
Great square structures issued from the ground in Nela's east, while it
spread closer, and ever more jealously towards Jou. Concrete formed
simple prisms that housed people closer and more numerously that ever
before. It was both dually and simultaneously speedily dirty, and
saturated with new Nelen culture. A new movement carried this espousal
of functionalism forward, prioritising not a direct expression of
wealth, but the pursual and possession of as much of it as physically
possible.\
\
Installation four was a relic of this era. Concrete lift-shafts,
concrete access-shafts, concerete hallways. Totally underground, it was
another secret government facility that had been converted from
office-space to a site for scientific experiements.\
\
\[continued, was not going to post but it became enough\]