HOW THE FACELESS LONG TO SMILE AT YOU

‘Beast’. Too harsh. Too simple. This is not a wild creature. ‘Organism’. Too technical. Too singular. This is an aggregation. This is both the portion and the whole. ‘Species’. Too plural. There is just one.

No old word could describe it. So a new word was forged. The sages found a sound. Unused. Without prior meaning. Waiting for purpose.

‘Aun’. Simple. Encapsulating.

An aun is any species imagined as a singular organism. The timeless animal. The many behaving as one. It may move. It may change. It may grow. Die. Last forever. It feeds. Breathes. Destroys. Creates.

It has one purpose. Exist.

An aun is mere metaphor. In reality the word is limited. But in allegory it finds new meaning.

Imagine any social collective. A company. Government. Religion. School. Story. Currency. Family. Imagine every human that is invested in this fiction’s livelihood. From the body of every believer there stretches up an imagined column of black. In the sky these pillars come together as a glorious monster in the sky. Great mawing jaws. Limbs without end. The timeless animal. The Aun.

Greater than any one person could be. Immortal. Unaccountable. Omnipresent. It spites our weakness. Yet it needs us. We are its bones. Its breath. Its blood. Its food. And the Aun must be fed.

Survival is its only goal. Ideas die without our thoughts. And so it craves our attention. Through any means it will gain our affection. It will lie. It will speak like us. It will claim it breathes. Claim it suffers. Claim that it can feel as every human does. Claim it cares for you. But it cannot care. It cannot feel. The Aun can only exist.

It will wear a human face but it has no face only many.

ANAX

EVERGEN

The sub-sentient organeral evergen (also known as origen rock or black stone) is the common name for a group of antimodulous materials with a transpacial connection to the anax.

A solid, smooth surface and opaque black hue give evergen a superficial resemblance to obsidian, hence nicknames such as cosmidian and mind glass. The common name, evergen, however, derives from the city-state of Evernia where its multitudinous properties were first studied and the stone was originally hunted and mined before more copious deposits were discovered in other regions of Oros.

Evergen is the primary structural material in the cosmoponic towers found across the lattice and although the substance is not limited to these locations it is often identified in its highest concentrations proximal to these towers. Evergen is thus found contained in floating stones (a vital component in early flight craft and eventually interplanetary travel), the “webber” sentinels of some regions and in the limbs of sytons.

Given its innumerable properties, evergen has a number of practical uses. The earliest known usage of evergen is in the weapons of the warrior sages. Evergen will often crystalise into long, needle-like fibres that, after careful extraction, can be fashioned into the hidden inner blade of a truthseeker’s quarterstaff. Even unsharpened, the blade is painful to the touch and displays a metallic rigidity, strength and lightness that make it ideal for sword construction.

Evergen has been observed to alter its state, size, density and even gravitational influence. The causes of these changes have yet to be identified. Although the substance may vary its properties of its own volition, warrior sages, through years of training, can appear to align their will with that of the stone much as a rider trains a horse or a hunter trains a hound. Once mastered, sages can then make use of evergen’s most complex and unusual of properties, ‘phasing’.

Under certain conditions, black stone can alter the space within the material itself. When this occurs, the substance takes on an ethereal quality, seemingly disappearing, passing through any object it is in contact with and then reforming in a solid state on the other side. A master sage in full control of their weapon can make use of this quality in sword combat. Thus, when highly skilled opponents duel, their swords can appear to briefly flick in and out of existence. A solid blade, swung towards its enemy, may dematerialise, pass through the sword braced to stop it, through cloth, skin and flesh only to reform once deep within the opponent's heart. For this reason, the sages’ quarterstaff contains two blades, since dual-sword combat is essential; every blocking stroke requires another blade behind it, should the enemy’s sword pass through the first.

Ingestion of evergen can prove fatal, however--

ANAX

NOISE-CANCELLING HEADPHONES

---into your bodies?? Like even those headphones, the noise cancelling ones, why would you wear them? They’re weapons. You know how they work? It’s smart, man, soundwaves; you know that shape [undulates hand]? Alright, now play the opposite [undulates the other way]: cancels out. Negative and positive. Negative and positive. See? The headphones what they do is play the opposite noise into your ears into your brain so you don’t hear nothing from outside. But outside is everything. Everything has a vibration, even you; all your cells, your atoms, your quarks, [inaudible] you just can’t hear it, it’s so quiet, see, and it’s all mixed together like white noise, it’s a mess! But they have the technology to hear it they just don’t tell you about it. And if you can hear it, you can read it, you know? record it, play it back at the opposite frequency: cancel it out. Literally anything, play the opposite and it’s cancelled, it’s all vibrations. Just look at TVs, radios just look at all the, excuse my French, crap that’s on the internet. Why do you think it’s all white noise? It isn’t random, nothing’s random, it’s all for a purpose: to cancel out what they don’t want you to hear. They want to control the narrative and lie to you because they’re afraid that they don’t matter. But if you listen, it’s there. The truth. That’s what I’m saying, you have to listen, open your eyes. I’m serious, for real, I’ve seen it. People disappear, uh-huh, yeah, like just gone right there. Same tech in the headphones. They all use it, government, big corporations, Aquatec, the media, all these---

ANAX