This is a song;
the song of those
who drink the sun in earthen bowls!
This is a tress:
a tress of flame!

It is twisting:
it is burning like a bloody crimson torch
on the dark brows of
the heroes with bare copper feet!
I too saw those heroes,
I too braided that tress,
I too crossed with them

the bridge
going to the sun!
I too drank the sun in earthen bowls.
I too sang that song!

Nâzım Hikmet

1. The Coordinator

The two large force vortexes, each at least five meters in diameter, didn't look at all intimidating next to the giant aircraft carrier - or at least until they advanced rapidly towards the carrier, tearing the metal at its seams, turning the vessel inside out, sweeping through the deck like two swift whirlwinds and leaving hell in their wake. Of course, the 2-D black-and-white recording of horrible quality didn't provide quite the same level of immersion as a 3-D stereoscopic disaster film would, but it still looked impressive.

Coordinator of the First Interstellar Expedition Ali Gonzalez stood in the centre of the main hall in the Tokaido Palace of Debate, all alone. The position of a coordinator on a research starship is a whole different thing from a position of those ship's captains in ancient times, that I-am-the-state kind of people. All vital questions concerning the expedition were decided upon collegially, and every crew member possessed utmost competence in their own field, so under normal conditions a coordinator's task was purely technical. However, under extreme circumstances, when a decision was to be made at very short notice and there could be no unequivocal agreement between the crew members, it was the Coordinator on whom all the power and the responsibility fell. And so today, as the results of the First Interstellar Expedition were being discussed and as that discussion was quickly turning into his trial, Gonzalez alone was taking the blame. Whether the crew's actions will be judged rational or criminal, only his future will be affected.

Meanwhile, on the big screen behind his back the epic tragedy of the mangled carrier, proudly titled Freedom-Bringer, continued to unfold. The vessel was wreathed in flames, but still wouldn't go down. This footage had been recorded from a helicopter and was the best evidence available of the first contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. Still, there was no one to tell the tale of the main Continental Order Alliance Command headquarters, buried alive amidst a rock massif in the very heart of the North Continent. Or of the united fleet of the Union of the One God, completely annihilated in the southern seas. Or of our missile shafts, forever sealed, our submarines, abandoned at the bottom of the ocean, and of many other things that had to be done to prevent the war and to make first contact.

The agony of the carrier kept going in the complete silence. To those present in the hall, as well as to the twelve million participants in the debate who were currently on the line, it seemed endless. Without moving, Gonzalez, still standing before the Council, went online, put the main thread of the discussion tree up on his eye screen, ran through the opinions with a keyword search and glanced through the results of the poll between the communes, without delving into the particulars. The main thing was to wait until he was finally given a word. He didn't think much on his own fate, but he had to persuade the Commune that prolonging the contact was imminent and inevitable. Even if he would go down in history as a criminal, the main thing was that those who would come to rectify his "crime" move in the right direction.

Finally the footage ended, but the council was still silent. They were silent for about two minutes, until finally Council moderator Khadijah Bondar spoke:

"So, all in all, how many people did you kill?"

"Only one hundred and fifty years ago we used to call this "annihilating the enemy's soldiers," Gonzalez answered. "And we haven't yet moved far enough from the age of the last class wars to shy away from such expressions. If we're speaking of soldiers, to prevent the invasion of the Island and disrupt the forces of two military blocs completely we had to annihilate about one hundred thousand of those."

"Monstrous!" a man next to Bondar blurted. Gonzalez didn't know him.

"Without our interference, the war would have lead to much greater losses. I admit we may not have acted in the most effective and humane way. Unfortunately, we had no appropriate weaponry for surgical strikes, and using non-military technology for such ends is akin to using a sledge-hammer to crack a nut, if you're familiar with the saying."

But the man wouldn't recede:

"So, your research expedition has committed unauthorized excesses, interfered into a military conflict on the very first planet it discovered, made first contact in violation of all the instructions you have received from the Commune - and all of this just to satisfy your romantic hopes of being a part of a real revolution? You, who were entrusted with coordination of a project of utmost importance, have demonstrated absolute irresponsibility, childishness and individualism!"

"The Commune gave us permission to make first contact when absolutely necessary," Gonzalez cut in. "No one could expect that the very first expedition would stumble upon a planet with intelligent life. Much less with intelligent humanoids. Much less with an advanced civilization in its industrial stage, at its pivotal moment in history, when the first ever state of laborers was being threatened by two blocs of imperialists at the dawn of a world war and in its moment of weakness, before that state could recover from ruin in the aftermath of a civil war. Maybe next time the Commune will have to look for people who can bear to watch twenty eight millions of workers and peasants being enslaved just after having freed themselves from lords and masters. Let those people explore space. I guess the research work needs zealots, who believe in the "unique cultural identity", that is to say, the unique and invaluable experience of destructive war, genocide and the deadlock of failing social structures. Those who at least once doubted whether the degradation and the downfall of the first attempt at building a communist society in the twentieth century were necessary and unavoidable should not be allowed further than the Solar System."

"So you felt like playing god? Like correcting the faults in the evolution of an entire planet by pressing one button?" Someone - Gonzalez didn't even notice who - spoke from the back of the hall.

"In no way did we feel like playing god, and that is why, after everything was done, we appeared to the planet in human form and explained that what had happened was no miracle or anomaly of nature, that the planet's inhabitants weren't alone in the universe, that we had come from a far-away star and were people like them, people who can't stand oppression and injustice."

"I believe you do not understand the full consequences of your little escapade," the soft tone Bondar spoke in did nothing to reassure any Council member who knew her well. "I believe you do not yet understand what murky waters you have unearthed, what tsunami of xenophobia and religious fanaticism your attack has caused, what new great support the most bigoted reactionaries have suddenly gained in the face of a danger from space and how far backwards dozens of countries have been thrown in their development. The price for your limited success - if it can even be called a success - will be an unprecedented resurgence of fascism..."

"And this is why," Gonzalez' voice became stronger, as he saw that the discussion was finally heading the right way, "the Contact must not, under any circumstances, be broken. This is why we must continue what we have started."

2. The Militiawoman

Last minutes of packing were business-like and unhurried. They were checked if everything necessary has been taken and whether it has been packed properly and strapped all necessary ammunition to their belts. While Anthy was fastening Nino's helmet onto the left side of her chest, Nino was for the thousandth time checking the length of her tommy-gun length. Again she was dissatisfied with it and tightened it a little.

"Now hop up and down a couple times", Anthy commanded. Nino did, and both were satisfied with the hopping. The final touch was the balaclava which Nino put on the back of her head slightly cocked, like a little boy might wear. Anthy straightened it and pulled it down on Nino's ears in a mother-like fashion. Nino didn't protest, growing hopeful to leave their apartment without unnecessary delays. However, it wasn't going to be that simple...

They were kissing each other, as always, greedily and with complete abandon. Anthy, being so small, was standing on her toes and grasping wildly at Nino's harness, while the other woman was pushing her arms against the door, trying not to collapse under the weight of her combined equipment and the body of her lover, enraptured with tenderness. Finally, they managed to break their unbearably long last kiss. Anthy looked up at Nino, now longer resembling a kindly mother - now she looked more like a hurt child. Those transformations of hers still confused Ninom but they also fascinated her. Two years after they met, there still was some riddle, some mystery in her girlfriend, and this only invited further exploration of each other - and there still was something to learn, like how she got that terrible laceration just above her left collarbone, or another, less deep, but still noticeable, above her right wrist. Even the longest and most thorough questioning, it seemed, couldn't get Anthy to reveal the scars' mystery. She would always take a defence-in-depth approach to the conversation and joke about getting into a fight in the accounts department.

"Fifty days..." Anthy breathed a deep sigh, putting on a long face while smiling happily with her golden eyes, deep as the ocean.

"At least, we'll get some sleep apart from each other," Nino smiled, but she wasn't joking. The Demon's Mountain Training Camp may not be the best place for a vacation, but it would be a great opportunity to get away from her everyday hustle and bustle for one full cycle, which sometimes is absolutely necessary.

"That's right, go ahead, make fun of me, spoilsport." Anthy caught Nino's right hand with her left, and they entwined their fingers. Anthy's skin of a light blue colour marked her as a descendant from the purest breed of colonizers from the North Continent. Thirty or so years ago they would be frothing at their mouths, proving they didn't have a drop of native blood in their veins. Her thin fingers, her delicate features - everything spoke of a noble lineage. Of course, times when people like her were side-eyed in "purple" working-class neighborhoods were long past. How could there even be any intolerance in such a cosmopolitan city which was home to the largest population of immigrants in the entire country - and not even immigrants from another country, but from another planet?

Nino was Anthy's opposite in everything. Her skin of deep violet betrayed in her a native of the Island's central highlands and her face would seem a little heavy for an average lady-killer. For Anthy, though, it was the most beautiful face in the world. She even had a slight highlander accent. Many young recruits such as Nino had been flocking to the factories along the coast lately, after the revolution. The government of the land had announced that socialism has entered its second phase and that significant human resources were required. However, even the most intensive economical growth didn't absolve the working class from another one of their responsibilities - protection of their own country. That, and not work, was what Nino was getting ready for today.

"Alright, I'm running late." With her left hand she found a door handle behind her back. "That's it, I'm off."

The hallway was already crowded with people. As usual, people from the entire apartment building gathered to say their goodbyes to the men and women that were leaving with the second battalion of the factory's defence. Even the children, who had a school break and could sleep in all they wanted, woke up. The big kids, who knew Anthy from school, and the small ones were all greeting her politely - everyone in the building already knew and liked the young teacher. Ever Jamal, the Eartherner, appeared in the doorway. He had his hitaro with him - that instrument had been very popular with the young people of late. Anthy was particularly happy to see Jamal. Next to that fair-skinned giant she became completely inconspicuous, not just in a "purple" neighborhood, but in about any part of the planet, although even the Eartherners became usual in the city in the last twenty-five years.

"How about singing our fighters off, friends?" The Eartherner strummed his hitaro invitingly as the fighters were descending down the stairs in rank and file.

"That's right!" Grandpa Maji lived alone and had no one to sing off, but he considered it his duty to wave off every squad that was leaving for the camp until they got into their vans. "Play our song, chap, the workers' song!"

The crowd responded with enthusiasm, and everyone, including the very little kids, joined in the song to the beat of the hitaro: To the factory owners - the pitchforks, to the pavement - the fabricants' blood...

Jamal often joked that out of all the Eartherners currently working in the county he was the most useless. What kind of job is collecting folklore, anyway? And not even some ancient tales from the bygone era, but urban legends, anecdotes, songs, even bathroom graffiti? Yet when the collection of songs from the revolutionary era was issued - heavily censored, with all the violence and all the language that the prudes considered "strong" carefully cat out - it was Jamal who first spoke out against it. The party put the self-appointed censors in their rightful place, and the whole story led to a long discussion in media about the portrayal of the revolution in modern art. After that, Jamal greatly gained in respect in the working-class neighborhoods. Even Grandpa Maji, whom Jamal always pestered about the exact words which the street boys would have shouted after the police patrols sixty years before, stopped spewing obscenities whenever Jamal's name would be mentioned. Instead he would just press his lips together and answer his interlocutor with annoyance: "How am I to know where your latrinologist done gone off to?"

The procession of militiapeople and those saying goodbye to them grew longer with every floor of the building it passed, so that when they left the building, they were a sizeable crowd. Their van was waiting at the ready. Everyone began saying goodbye again, for the very definitely final time. Anthy transformed again. She patted Nino on the shoulder and said to her in a deliberately deep voice: "Now, child o'mine, ah' bid thee farewell an' await thee back wreathed in glory an' all that." Nino laughed, kissed her girlfriend on the cheek, tossed her gun into the van and shook the hands that were stretched to her, while the fighters were unfurling a violet flag and fastening it to the side of the van. On the flag there were the symbols of the Island's working class - the anchor, the axe and the pickaxe. The van took off as the people cheered.

"In moments like this I feel like a third wheel." One by one, the people were leaving. Only a few people were still outside in this hour, at daybreak, Anthy and Jamal among them. The sun had already risen enough to be reflected in the windows of the top floors. Soon this entire residential complex, the largest in the country, that has grown out of thin air in a walking distance of the heavy machinery plant in just five years with all modern infrastructure necessary, this workers' neighborhood that tied its residents with a thousand of invisible threads into a single community, in which it was completely different from modern cities abroad that were rapidly becoming more and more atomized - soon it would come alive before their very eyes. Anthy loved her home, and the love was mutual, so Jamal's sadness was strange to her.

"I mean, sometimes I am under the illusion that I do belong in this world," Jamal went on. "But whenever a militia squad is sent to their retraining I am instantly reminded where I am from. Every citizen that is healthy, adult and working is under obligation to defend their country. Speaking of which, what is your specialty? The school's evacuation squad, was it?

"No, I'm a military interpreter to and from Eggroian, Saroian and Teikianese. Once a year I get assigned to the Eastern Defence Staff to undergo retraining. State your name, rank, division and mission. Otherwise you shall be shot in forty-eight hours. We guarantee the survival of yourself and your fighters. What is the population of your village? Surrender, resistance is futile," the barking sounds and short words of Eggroian were in sharp contrast to Anthy's sweet and melodic voice. "Unfortunately, this isn't as interesting as burning enemy tanks after withstanding a nuclear attack."

"And this scar that you have..." Jamal didn't point out the scar in question - it was clear enough which one he meant.

"All the result of misusing office supplies, imagine!" Anthy laughed. "You don't believe this? Neither does Nino."

Jamal was looking at her with great attention and worry.

"May I ask," he finally began, "don't you ever feel a little... alien?"

"Why would I?" Anthy was genuinely surprised.

"That's nothing, I'm sorry. Just a foolish idea I had."

"It's alright. Okay, I'm going to get some sleep." Anthy felt that it was time for her to leave, even though it might seem impolite.

State your name, rank, division and mission.

It were Eartherners who informed the Island's government of the planned assault on the Black Bay, having registered suspicious movement next to the territorial waters at the country border. The forces of the immigrants and Teikianese mercenaries were obviously not enough for a proper invasion; therefore, the militia was mobilized according to the plan A - without closing the factories or evacuating the population. A couple of battalions placed where the assault was supposed to happen was all that the Command considered necessary. However, almost the entire working-age population was prepared to defend themselves against the invasion. Two or three small arms per family had become a norm since long ago even in the deepest province, let alone on the coast that was accustomed to war.

The Coastal Defence Staff of the Southern Shore sector was also on alert, and Anthy the Interpreter joined it fully armed, even though she couldn't hope to use her weaponry or ammunition. That night the counter-revolutionaries received a big surprise, being welcomed by heavy fire right after their disembarkation. The battle was short - by noon the militants were surrounded and had to surrender. The prisoners were sorted and questioned right on the spot, in hopes of separating those few who could know something about the true purpose of this operation from the majority of those thugs of little interest and small intelligence (who else would agree to an invariably suicidal mission with very small hopes of receiving support. It was Anthy who detected an Eggroian training officer among the Teikianese and the immigrants.

Together with Brigade Commissar Noah she had been trying to extract at least some information from the Eggroian, but in vain. The training officer's attempt at passing as a Teikianese person failed from the start, his accent betraying him at once. As Anthy was again and again translating the same "State your name, rank, division and mission" mantra with no hope of getting an answer, her eyes were fixed on the Eggroian's wrist. She detected the traces of a removed tattoo on his muscular arm almost immediately and started to sort through the emblems of Eggroian "beast" divisions she knew. A three-horned staghorn in defensive posture stood for the Fifth Division, a grey dragon in flight - for the Ninth Steel Division... After half an hour of fruitless attempts, when exhausted Commissar Noah sat back in his chair, the Eggroian with a single, barely visible movement grasped the fountain pen that was lying on the table and stabbed it into Noah's eye. Then he shoved the table at the commissar with the force of his entire body and turned to run out of the tent. He was probably going to make a run for it through the entire camp, dodging the armed militiapeople at every step, like in some B-grade action movie, but Anthy was already hanging on to his arms, with a stranglehold on his wrists.

Knowledge of other cultures is a handy thing. In a situation like this the Eggroians would expect an interpreting woman to hide in a corner and scream profusely, at best, so Anthy's death glare and especially her total silence threw the Eggroian off-balance completely. He knew what this entire operation was about, knew that most Teikianese and immigrants in the Island were to become cannon fodder, knew that even he was risking his life. He just never thought that the end would be so quick and laughable. All his frustration with his ill luck and those bastards in Intelligence who must have snitched on him to the bloody commies, all his impotent anger was vented into that damned wench. He could knock her out cold with one blow, but instead he for some reason began to stab at her with the fountain pen he was still holding in his hand. He tried to slit the little hooker's throat with the pen, as if it were a knife, not paying attention to furious screams of now one-eyed Brigade Commissar Noah.

Anthy didn't remember the fight itself too well. All that remained were the scary thuds of the buttstocks, as the fighters were beating the Eggroian with their firearms, Noah shouting Not the head! We need him speaking!, despite having blood all over his face and someone tearing the fabric of her uniform and pressing her artery with their fingers - just like she herself was taught in Workers' Defense lessons in middle school.

The time that followed - the days she spent at the hospital and the few months after - now seemed to Anthy like a half-dream with brief wakeful periods. That abomination that she was facing one-on-one for a few brief moments didn't only leave scars on her body. She was persuading herself to think rationally, to look at that Eggroian as a poor slave of the capital. Maybe he had been particularly twisted by it, yes, but he was just a slave. However, this didn't help much, probably because there was also something about the history of the country they both shared. Anthy remembered the stories the older generations told her about the looming threat of war and their unexpected deliverance, but what she remembered most from those stories was the feeling of general powerlessness in the face of the enemy that was greatly superior in all respects. Nothing could silence that feeling - neither their determination to fight until the end nor their clear awareness of what they were fighting for and against whom. That war that had never begun was like a phantom pain. That pain, Anthy knew, could only be killed by destroying the world of the bloodsucking rich and the fascists with the animal tattoos on their wrists. The people who have virtually abolished their own armed forces to become a tremendous army of revolutionaries themselves were quite capable of doing that.

Anthy entered her apartment and turned the handle of a locking mechanism. Back at home locks were mostly a symbol, like a "Do Not Disturb" sign. During the day they almost never locked their doors, but now Anthy felt the need to get some sleep. After all, Nino was right: normally people sleep at night and use their showers and kitchen tables to wash themselves and make food respectively, unlike the two girlfriends. Without undressing, Anthy fell on her bed and smiled.

Fifty days of normal life wasn't too much, really.

3. The Chairperson

"Excuse me, but this is lunacy!" The secretary of the trade union felt the situation getting out of his control. Only now did he understand that his approach was wrong from the start. Working with people in the province was easier, that's for sure, they still retained the naturally due respect for their superiors, although it had weakened considerably. Here, on the other hand, even the most pathetic janitor had the attitude of a dozen noble heirs from ancient times, thinking himself the salt of the earth and the hope of the revolution. The newcomers couldn't get any respect, either - a real boss, apparently, ought to have spent about twenty years at the machine, with the others. Only then could they hope for some trust on part of the others, you see. That wasn't what he was being promised when he took up this job. The workers were all politeness, they said. They respected the Party, trusted the government and there weren't even two dozens of dissenters in the entire factory. And how did that work out? The trouble now wasn't even coming from the dissenters, but from the seasoned and respected activists.
"This ain't no lunacy!" Grandpa Maji shouted. After forty years of working as a locksmith, he was now a watchman at the northern gate of the factory. However, he still saw it as his duty to show up at every union meeting, where he would always have a place in the second row and an inalienable right to cut in any speaker's monologue with a sharp, but clever joke from there. "Listen, son, you were still in ya diapers when the Worker's Defense Chief, comrade Tet, came here himself and explained himself to us, in this very room. Put up a map on this here wall, he did, and explained how and why the generals grabbed our mountains back and how we crack their spines now. He answered stricter questions and listened to stronger words from us here, so don't ya think we're afraid of bosses..."

"Bosses are afraid of us, more like!" someone shouted from the back of the hall. Of course, most of those workers were born already after the civil war ended, but the old factory traditions of those workers who would pierce the tires and gas tanks of the police armored cars with their makeshift pikes were still alive.

"So what are you waiting for? Call your chairperson!" someone said from the corner where the factory's few maximal socialists were grouped. The mood among them was clearly elevated. "Or what? Is this not a workers' democracy anymore? Has this leader of your union become more like an esquire or something?

Normally such demarches from the dissenters would only annoy the rest of the workers, but not now. The secretary could only take a deep sigh. Usually his job consisted of technical functions only - the actives of the party and the union knew the situation well and were relatively autonomous. But today it was he whom the entire workers' body considered responsible for all the mistakes the union's leaders have committed on an international level, however crazy all of it may have sounded. Sure. Why not pin the aggressive designs of the Eggroians and the atrocities of the Teikianese secret police on him, as well? Unfortunately, it's always the little people who have to take the blame for their bosses' mistakes. You know what? To hell with everything, he thought. If bringing the chairperson of the national Sector Coordinating Council to the factory, just so that the workers can tell them of their righteous indignation, is normal here, why not?

"Alright. But are you sure the people will take time to wait for their arrival? It's late, everyone wants to go home already."

"Don't worry, there's gonna be even more people flocking in for a cause like this!" Nino - the crane operator, the factory's Women Council activist and the sharpest pain in the ass of the union's entire committee - was making her way from the door to the secretary's desk. When the secretary didn't see her at the meeting, he was happy. Little did he know that Nino had already called half of the factory's staff. If only she knew the results this unexpected demand would lead to... The meeting was spontaneously turning into a rally, engulfing the entire factory, and other issues beside the Saroian lockout were likely to come to light, as well. Other dwellers of this commune were likely to join in the rally, too - the locals' ability of self-organization was truly overwhelming.

The secretary suppressed his desire to knock over the table, roar at the others like a spiny-tailed dragon, bash his head into the wall or do something else totally inappropriate for a model government official of the first workers' state on the planet. Instead he rose silently and went to call the city's department of the Coordinating Council.


Chairwoman Dalia was hoping to devote that evening to her scholarly work - not because the international union conference didn't concern her and not even because she had to finish her article on the Saroian lockout. It was just that the more she studied comparative interplanetary history and the different class societies of the Earth, the clearer she understood how flawed their approach of looking for solutions to their problems in the history of the Earth was. So she didn't intend to only touch upon the Saroian lockout - a painful and urgent enough issue - in her article, but also upon different theoretical questions that seemed unrelated at first sight. As a result, the article was threatening to swell up too much, though it was hardly appropriate for a newspaper, anyway. Did she really have to take up the whole thing in the middle of the Saroian crisis?

Dalia was sitting in front of her desktop computer, surrounded with rare volumes delivered straight from the Comparative History Institute: an abridged history of the workers' movement on the Earth in three volumes, a collection of articles on the trade union movement in Western Europe (one of the key regions in history), some issues of the institute journal and a couple other things. Most of it was available in digital format since long ago, but Dalia was hopelessly old-fashioned in that respect. Sipping "Militia's Best Friend" (this energy drink, the cheapest and safest available, was developed especially for the defenders of the Island and had been her favorite way of boosting energy for many years), the chairwoman was trying to concentrate on the thesis, but it just wouldn't obey her and grow the flesh of words around its bare bones. She always imagined the process of writing like a skeleton growing flesh, even back when she, still very young, was typing another leaflet with appeals for solidarity or exposes of the factory owners' machinations after working for twelve hours in the mercury cell room, among the poisonous fumes that were slowly killing her. She couldn't remember where that image came from - maybe, from constant starvation and hazardous working conditions. Or maybe it came from a long-forgotten childhood memory of her father flaying the freshly killed mountain-runner. That was one of the earliest and brightest impressions of her childhood and at the same time her first anatomy lesson. Under the skin there's always meat (not very delicious, of course, just poor people's meat), under the meat there are always bones. For a long time Dalia though that people come from a reverse process: the skeleton grows flesh, the flesh grows skin, and there you have it - a new person. She had to admit she was very disappointed after finding out the truth.

Dalia was running her eyes along the lines on her monitor, but she didn't see anything. Her thoughts were delving deeper and deeper into the past, and when she heard the phone ringing, she could barely suppress her annoyance. It felt like she discovered being peeped on in the shower, and not just naked, but also humming to herself some stupid little song from some stupid pre-revolutionary musical comedy. The chairwoman really was going to work hard and productively tonight, but apparently it was not to be.

Two cycles ago the Saroian cell of the International Union Association entered a coalition with the group of old trade unions, to nobody's pleasure. However, the impending crisis and the new conservative government were even less pleasant for everybody. The leadership of the International Union Association gave their approval to this alliance. The far-left were displeased with it, but no one paid them any attention. After all, Saroia was one of the only five countries on the planet where the Communist Party and its unions were legal, so might as well use this fact to its fullest. Soon a full-on strike broke out. The protesting workers, of whom there were several million, were demanding that the conservatives resign, the constitution be amended and the plan for the "optimization of economy" canceled. The strike put the Saroian government on the brink of a catastrophe. However, a sudden blow put an end to the heated days of many thousands marching in the streets and business being seized: the bosses of the "yellow" unions made a contract with the government behind the backs of their allies and their own cells, effectively betraying the striking workers for the sake of some phantom concessions. And now it wasn't about overthrowing the Saroian regime anymore, but rather about an urgent and immediate aid to those comrades of the International who became victims of the emboldened police, of the lockouts and selective layoffs, of the riots from fascist gangs who now had been given free run. Of course, there was an ongoing campaign for solidarity in the Island, as well; in fact, it was the only place the Saroian workers could get any substantial help from. However, during the debate on the current situation a lot of unpleasant questions - to the International as well as to the authorities of a local Party cell - arose, questions, which the scarce far-left opposition in the Island (mostly made up of maximal socialists and anarchists) didn't hesitate to take advantage of. Yet even most of the Party activists understood that the routine anathemas towards the opportunists wouldn't help right now. All in all, the wave of criticism was a certainty, and now, from the whole unrest at the one of the leading enterprises in the country, the local Heavy Machinery Plant, formerly known as Milon & Voice Industrial Engines, it seemed that the jig was up. The local union committee, in their great wisdom, proposed that the people work a double shift at one of the Saroian machine-building plants on behalf of the lockout victims, but even on paper, it sounded too much like righting the wrong of the others by working overtime. Naturally, the people demanded explanations and, after failing to get any from the secretary, decided to call on the highest ranking person they could reach at that moment - that is to say, on Dalia herself.


The official electric car was speeding down the half-empty streets of the city in the evening. It was late autumn already, and it was getting dark early, so even in the well-lit streets and boulevards there was no children playing or lovebirds walking in pairs to see. We've defeated the darkness, but not the bad weather yet, the chairwoman thought, looking out of the window thoughtfully. On Earth the people have long before acquired full control over the climate in their settlements. They didn't even need any primitive contraptions, like domes over the cities, for that. It seemed that the Island had still a long way to go until that. As the first coordinator of the mission from Earth Ali Gonzalez said, what they needed was a planet-wide network of weather machines - and for that, they would need a world united in cooperation, without Teikianese religious fanatics or Eggroian fascists. But, of course, they didn't need to be told that - that, of all things, they had learned long before making first contact.

"What fun is there in rallying so late at night?" her driver said. His name was Almo, he was a young man with a family, and he was clearly displeased with this emergency call.

"Oh, there is much fun, believe me," Dalia responded. "Now, if workers in this country did nothing but confess their love for the government and applauded their leaders whenever they sneezed, that would be the death of the revolution. But it is still alive, and will outlive many of us. Now, dear comrade," she suddenly understood at last, "would you please drop me off at the factory? And then you could go home. Why waste your time staying here? I haven't taken the overground in centuries, and it would be nice to warm myself up a little."

The chairwoman never allowed herself any display of familiarity with her subordinates nor with those younger than herself. It was one of the basic rules of the revolutionary etiquette, back from the time when those who had been in the underground the day before were reclaiming the power: use the imperative only with your equals, but always say "would" to your subordinates.

"Me? Never!" To gesture his denial, the driver even took his hand off the wheel for a second. "Last decade you made such a pretty speech about the working class pride, well, now my pride doesn't let me leave you! What if there's a fight? And anyway, it will be interesting!"

"Interesting to look at a fight?" Dalia smiled. "Well, you are going to be disappointed there. But of course, you can stay, if you like."


The hall was full to the brim with people. There was a quiet buzz of conversation. It didn't look like there was a fight, although it certainly wasn't out of question, either - Dalia still remembered the times when questions of ideology would be solved by fistfights. However, when the people were appealed to for silence, they fell quiet at once. That was a good sign. Dalia inhaled and repeated in her head the introductory phrase on which the success of her entire speech was relying before saying it aloud:

"Somehow, everything that has happened in Saroia is considered by our opposition press to result from the arbitrary actions of their leadership. First, the communist bosses make pacts with the yellow bosses behind everyone's backs. Then, a strike happens - also due to the bosses' arbitrariness, no doubt. Then one bosses betray other bosses, being in cahoots with the government - is that right? In a situation like this, the working class indeed has nothing to do with anything, or so it seems, and therefore, the offers of help and solidarity look absolutely absurd. Is that correct?"

"You're just raking things up!" someone in the audience shouted.

"No, just quoting from the maximal socialist media. Today's issue, to be precise. But all jokes aside, I don't believe one could get very far with logic like this. No one has any illusions about the sellouts in charge of the yellows, however, there are more to the trade unions than villains and swindlers. Most of the politically immature working masses, for whom those old establishments are a tradition, are still among their members. Pacts with the union bureaucrats put no obligation on anyone - something our Saroian comrades learned from experience. But contacts with the grassroots groups where no one still knows the difference between the yellows and the violets and doesn't understand why we all don't just unite at ones - those are a whole different matter. And a lot more important one. And what do those honest workers - honest, though they may not be as self-conscious as the far-left would like - see? They see they have been betrayed, betrayed by those they have considered their leaders. After all, it's not their bosses who have to face their allies in every factory's committee and answer awkward questions. Once the ordinary members of the trade unions join the revolution, they won't be so easy to stop. The division is happening right now - many grassroots organizations are outraged by the current situation and ready to break with their leadership. Where will they turn to? Who will they support? A strong revolutionary international who leaves no one behind and is ready to face the hardest of times? If so, everything is up to us."

"Ever since our Island was saved from the atrocities of the war, we owe a certain debt. Not to the Eartherners, of course - they have long forgotten the notion of duty in its moral sense as well as in political - but to our own children. Our children, who, should our current state of siege transport to our future, will not find it to be their happy present. Our children, who deserve to live in a world that is big, and free. Our children, who will feel at home anywhere, even on the other end of the galaxy."

"Our world is, in fact, very small. The only difference between a fire in your neighbor's house and reprisals on the neighboring continent is the distance. A little solidarity here, on the island, can move mountains in another hemisphere. You know this, and now the decision is yours."

"Comrade Chairwoman, we don't need to be taught this," Nino said, actually looking a little upset that Dalia would think she lacks information. Nino was sitting on the floor in front of the secretary's desk. "We understand this alright."

"And did you think I would give you some startling revelation, some sacred truth?" Dalia smiled. "If even the messengers from the Earth couldn't give it, it would be funny to expect that a common bureaucrat such as me could. But there are questions I am perfectly capable of answering," Dalia took the opportunity to turn the conversation into a whole different direction. "Dear comrade... in the third row, a woman in a blue headscarf. Yes, you. I see you are eager to ask something, aren't you? I am all ears.

4. The Internationalists

The dead bodies of two local militiamen were lying almost in the middle of the temple's main hall. They must have decided that the Eggroians were done for which turned out to be their fatal mistake. Grey Dragons never retreat without leaving a couple of surprises for the victors who invariably let their guard down after the fight. They also never surrender, or rather, no one takes them prisoner. According to the Saroian edict, issued by the revolutionary government half a year ago after a series of terror attacks on the government offices in the capital, members of all the Eggroian beast divisions that took part in the Saroian intervention, regardless of their rank, had no right to live, as well as members of the seven fascist and right-wing conservative parties. With that said, anti-revolutionaries had far worse fates in store for their internationalist prisoners than a simple execution by shooting.

The three fighters from Nino's squad were sitting together with their commander behind the massive arc, inside the porch of the temple, and were arguing about how to smoke the Eggroians out of the shrine.

"I don't like the architecture here," Vargo, once a plasma torch operator, was now in charge of a machine gun. He was listening to the sounds of movement in the other end of the building. "Who needs walls that are three ells thick? Once the war is over, we'll raze all these opium dens to the ground, sure as day..."

"Why raze them to the ground?" Jamal was examining the inside of the temple, making sure not to peek from behind the arc. "Could be made into museums, cinemas, barns, at least."

"Who needs barns. with walls as thick as these?" Vargo waved his words off in annoyance. "Raze it till not a trace remains, and be done with it!"

"That's great, but what are we going to do, commander?" Tio, the youngest of fighters, looked at Nino. Her eyes were questioning and trusting, trusting and... but there's time for thoughts like these, and this is not that time.

The entrance to the shrine was only two thirds the height of an average person, so that no one who enters the abode of the One God could do it with their back straight and their head held high. The wall between the shrine and the main hall of prayer was as thick as the outer temple walls that Vargo disliked so much. Because of this, the entrance to the shrine was a niche of sorts, in which the Eggroians had barricaded themselves and installed a machine gun. If they could get under the cover of the saints' statues in the right wing of the temple, they would be out of the gun's reach. But before that, they had to run twenty or so paces from the entrance, which was in the crosshairs. Nino imagined the gunner looking intensely to the other end of the hall, intent on not going down without a fight. Suddenly, she got an idea.

"Jamal, you do still have that last Little Sun, right?"

The Earthling nodded.

"A flash grenade again?" Vargo had never seen a Little Sun in action and didn't know that they resembled flash grenades about as much as cluster bombs resembled regular grenades.

"Wait till you see," Nino said. "Now everyone, close your eyes. We're going to play hoodman-blind. Jamal, go!"

Jamal pressed a button on a small shell the size of a tennis ball, threw it into the hall, closed his eyes and started counting the seconds to the rhythm of an ancient poem from the Earth: To shine - / and to hell with everything else! / That is my motto / - and the sun's! He saw the bright flash of light, even though his eyelids were firmly shut. As to those who didn't close their eyes in time, they couldn't be blamed to think they were at the center of a nuclear blast. The light filled every gap, broke out of the building, blinded everyone who was so careless as to look towards the temple. The contrast between the wild flow of photons and the absolute lack of sound was shocking and bewildering.

The flare disappeared as soon as a lightning, but specks of light were still jumping in everyone's eyes. At once, Nino sprinted forward, towards the statues, while Vargo and Tio opened fire at their blinded enemy. She hid behind the pedestal of Emu the Just, looked back and saw Jamal. He was slowly moving left, aiming thoroughly and firing at the gunman's position in short bursts, all the while retaining absolute tranquility.

"Get out of there!" Nino shouted into the microphone of her communication device. The gunman may have lost his eyesight for quite some time, but he still could fire blindly at the entrance and hit someone. But apparently even she had underestimated the Little Suns' effects.

"Done! I removed him," Jamal's voice said in her ear self-assuredly. "Stop with the fire already, my head is ringing!"

They approached the entrance to the shrine with every caution, creeping behind the statues and keeping the gunman's position in their sights. However, even the most rudimentary examination left them no doubt that the Eggroian was, indeed, very much dead. Even the Eggroian military elite could hardly carry on with their combat assignments while missing half of their skull. Now only to find out whether anyone was still inside the shrine itself.

Nino and Jamal each threw a grenade inside, then, after the double explosion, threw a couple of rounds in a random direction. After that the division's commander, now satisfied, said loudly and clearly:

"All clear now. Let's go!"

When Nino was already in the porch, the platoon's commander called her:

"Are you all in one piece down there? What was up with the flashing?"

"Everything's okay, we still need a little time is all."

"Need any help?"

"No way!"

"Alright, but when you're done, run down to the administration building at once. We've taken the mayor captive, and locals are going to tear him apart. They're gathering outside, shouting and demanding."

"I'm sending Vargo and Tio to you right now. The Earthling and I will do just fine on our own."

Right after Nino and Jamal remained by themselves, the shooting somewhere on the outskirts of the little town stopped, and a complete silence fell. Nino even held her breath, as if afraid that, if anyone was still alive inside the shrine after two grenades exploded there, they would hear her sighing. Jamal put up a stopwatch on his eye screen and turned it on. Fifteen minutes, no more. If no one appears after fifteen minutes, then no one is left alive. The prudence and cunning of the Eggroians were not to be underestimated, but neither were they to be overestimated. The first clashes with them led to significant losses among the internationalists, but Grey Dragons were just as discouraged by the ability of those yesterday's civilians not only to meet the elite units with considerable resistance, but also to cause them significant damage. One couldn't even ascribe that to the help from the aliens, or the obvious technological superiority. Those were the fruits of universal military education since secondary school. Since childhood the Island's citizens were preparing for war with a numerically superior enemy, for survival after a series of nuclear strikes on their territory and for guerilla war after their defeat - all of this in itself was rather different from usual military exercises which were done, as a rule, just for show and invariably implied a victory over some abstract enemy. Therefore, they weren't at all easy to demoralize. After the internationalist units started being sent off to help the revolutionary government of Saroia, the Island's military commissariats were suddenly flooded by the volunteers. Apparently, everyone wanted to help in making world revolution. Some little boys in a seaside town stole a dinghy from a sports club to sail over the strait and fight the evil imperialists. Thankfully, the coast guard were doing their job well. The chairman of the Coordination Council had some ancient war veterans flood his mailbox with letters, in which they thoroughly listed their military accomplishment and explained just as thoroughly why the head of the local military committee was not only bloody clueless about warfare, but an actual saboteur in turning down the distinguished senior citizens, a little annoying though they may be. Simply put, the military mania which engulfed the Island was still going on up to this day, to which any internationalist could attest by simply calling their family.

Jamal's stopwatch was showing the fourteenth minute when two came out of the shrine, looking around furtively. One seemed to have been shot in the leg, because he had a sloppy bondage just above his knee. He was walking with a limp and had to lean for support on the shoulder of the second one, who had blood all over the left side of his face. Stunned and wounded, the two of them at that moment didn't look a thing like thugs and cutthroats whose idea of fun was taking pictures in front of the people they had burned alive. Even so, Nino didn't flinch, and as for Jamal, he was apparently unable to miss when shooting - his eye screens wouldn't allow him that. Both Eggroians fell down next to the corpses of the Saroian militiamen.

"I think that's all." But even now Nino still wasn't sure there was nobody left inside the temple.

Just as they were leaving the park in front of the temple, an armored truck of the Saroian militia, adorned with the party's slogans and emblems all over, came around the corner. Nino stopped it to tell them about the bodies of their friends that were left inside and to warn them to be careful when inspecting the shrine. At first the militiapeople didn't hear her that well, because they were blatantly staring at Jamal. Even the Islanders stood out in the Saroian province, let alone the Earthlings, who the locals could only have seen in stupid disaster movies about the alien invasion. Finally the militiapeople came to it and remembered to ask how many corpses were inside. They prepared a couple of plastic bags for the ones of their own. The Eggroians would probably just be dumped all together into a pit and sprinkled over with some quicklime.


The operation to capture the little town was a rousing success: the fascist troops were completely demoralized by the abruptness of the raid from an internationalist battalion backed by the workers' militia from the coast. As for the Eggroians, there was just half a company of them here, and it was easy to eliminate them even despite their desperate resistance. No one was expecting a counterattack soon, either, as the fascist frontline was falling apart under the onslaught of the united revolutionary forces. However, they still had to properly settle in the little town and stay there until the main forces arrived. The communicators were only handed out to the fighters late in the evening. While Nino's platoon had settled inside the park in front of the temple, the office of the battalion was inside the administration building, and the platoon commander had to drive over there already after dark. When the truck came back, the communicators were being handed out right where it stood, as everyone couldn't wait to call the ones they left at home.

"Shut up, now!" the platoon commander, normally the welders' foreman in the assembly workshop, Uncle Bruccho for anyone at home or at work, took out the log book for registering who was given a communication device and when. "Get in line, we'll be doing this in order. Harpo!"

"Yo, boss!"

"Put an X here where your signature should be and get your ass out of my sight until morning! Moron. Tio!"

"Here!"

"Say hi to mommy and daddy, as always. Mago!"

An uncomfortable silence followed. Uncle Bruccho gritted his teeth and crossed out the last name of the fighter who had fallen today so forcefully that he almost tore the paper.

"Shit, can anyone here make me a normal list of your names? Put them in order, like in the alphabet, or group them after the units? They're all out of order in this fucking book!"

Nino thought that the very idea of an old physical book like this, where even the tables had been drawn by hand, with a pencil, was at odds with state-of-the-art communicators which allowed people to call their families and loved ones on another continent by a closed communication system. Yet those thing did exist in the same moment and in the same space. Indeed, there was a lot of discrepancies like this - partly thanks to the Earthlings, but also because the progress didn't move at the same pace everywhere. Likewise, here, in Saroia, the revolutionary forces, as they were advancing at the fascists, were controlled almost at the platoon level by stealth satellites, the likes of which even the most advanced capitalist countries didn't have. However, the Saroian militia fought with rifles that were older than the fighters themselves. The newest communication devices often coexisted with horse-powered transport, and chasing the Eggroians out of the Eastern Citadel had turned out to be easier than to teach people at the battalion office the basics of electronic workflow. Catching up with the breakneck speed of the computer revolution wasn't always easy.

The fighters who already got their communicators and weren't on duty were receding to call their families and loved ones in peace and quiet. They had a short break and they had to make the most of it. Nino found the idea somewhat doubtful. Hello, darling. Today three people in my platoon were killed. One of them is the woman who lived next door to us, so please say hi to her children and give them some treats. As for me, I'm fine. I mean, I almost got my head cut off by shrapnel, but since it only almost happened, it doesn't really count. Oh, and tomorrow we are going on a great offensive, so don't worry if I don't call at the usual time - maybe, I'm not dead, just injured. Say hello to people at the factory. Yours truly, your loving husband. On the other hand, this is still better than suffering from not knowing, awaiting a letter and fearing that a death notice comes instead, like people used to before.

"Nino!" Uncle Bruccho shouted her name again in annoyance. The fighter had been lost in thought, apparently. "What, have you sandblasted your ears today by mistake, instead of washing them?"

"The hell is it good for?" Nino sighed, but still put her signature where it was supposed to be.

"Watching news," her commander answered condescendingly. "Reading the party's newsletter. You never know when such a wonderful electronic device may come in handy. Right, who's next? Can anyone of you give me a light? It's dark already."


The only people who weren't calling back home that night were Nino and Jamal. The Earthling came to Saroia on a humanitarian mission and at first didn't plan to take up arms. He had his hands full as it were already. But half a year before a car that was driven by a local and carried Jamal as well as three doctors from the Island was ambushed by bandits. After an hour and a half Jamal was brought into a clinic in the capital. He was cut by the broken glass all over, had sixteen bullets in his body and was the only survivor. No local doctor would bet a penny on the Earthling's life, yet in ten days he recovered almost completely. The Saroians who had never been faced with such extraordinary abilities of an Earthen organism before were in complete awe. The doctors were seriously planning on breaching their own professional ethics and cut the patient up a little to observe this unbelievable phenomenon again. However, Jamal managed to escape the clinic and reach the composite battalion of the Heavy Machinery Plant workers, where he knew a lot of people. There, he signed up for the internationalist army. Command was a little confused with this display of interplanetary solidarity, but after negotiating with the Earthen mission in Saroia both the stubbornness of the volunteer from a faraway planet and the full impotence of the Earthen "superiors" in matters concerned with personal choice. And that was how Jamal became subordinate to Nino, who wasn't in the least happy at this replenishment of her squad. Who knew what kind of ethical qualms about putting holes in other sentient beings his people might have? After all, they hadn't have a war for almost two hundred years and have long forgotten even the notion of a government. However, in his very first fight Jamal proved himself to be more than just an excellent shooter...

As for Nino herself, it wasn't that she had no one to call today, but rather that she had nowhere to call. Even though the selection of fighters for the factory's composite battalion wasn't regulated by district military commissariats, it didn't mean that the criteria weren't strict. Only the model fighters were accepted. Anthy taught at a school in the factory's commune, so she tried to join the battalion, but was met with extreme discrimination in favor of the workers. Unlike Nino, who did get accepted. It was the first time in their life together when they had an earnest fight. At last Anthy even began to shout some nonsense about how she was the only militia woman with real experience in the entire district, so that even their sensitive neighbors began to listen in. In the end, they managed to enforce peace on each other through mutual effort, but even their usual lovemaking felt so strained and forced that Nino started to feel suspicious. However, right until Nino departed, Anthy tried to behave as usual, and since she had since long ago became immune to being given the third degree, Nino saw no opportunity to find out what her girlfriend was planning. The first calls from Saroia almost persuaded Nino that Anthy was alright, as much as a spouse of a fighter from a workers' battalion, one fourth of which fell during the very first fight, can be alright. However, during one of the periods of calm Nino was summoned to the brigade headquarters and was signed to an agreement of secrecy about something that was still never said out loud. But Nino understood: her beloved is also fighting now, but instead of the Saroian front, she's at the front that is so portentously called invisible. Probably, with the underground communist party in Eggro. In Eggro, where the communists are skinned alive, where everyone who just happens to appear in sight of the secret police is tortured in their cachets by electric shock and hot irons, where they're taught to finish off your wounded comrade instantly, when in danger, where the underground members carry at least two poison capsules on them - one on the collar and the other in a more secret place, as a backup, in case you were already captured and immobilized before swallowing the first one.

In a word, Nino, once a ward of a small town orphanage, had nowhere to call for the time being. Yes, only for the time being. For Nino believed it would be alright, the fire of revolution would engulf Eggro, too, it would engulf the entire world, and then Anthy and she would meet on the ruins of the Imperial Palace and would begin kissing eagerly again. Tired, beautiful and armed with guns, they would then write their names on the wall that is black with soot and cracked from fire. And then the world would be unbearably bright and beautiful, and their small happiness, heavily mounted inside the shared happiness of the humankind, would have no end or limit. Yes, that would happen. Otherwise she might as well just jump in front of the counter-revolutionaries' bullets.

Jamal and she were again sitting inside the temple's porch, at the very place where they were thinking how to kill the Eggroian gunman just that morning. In the middle of a summer's night the newly risen Middle Follower was shining brightly over the park. Below the entire platoon was concentrated at the communicators' screens, speaking with their families. At the moment it was the peak of a workday in the Island, but a call from the fighters in Saroia was a very valid reason for taking a break, and even if there weren't a special order issued about that, the strictest of the bosses wouldn't have the heart to prevent it.

"Listen," Nino finally spoke. "I still don't understand why you're with us. I mean... it's actually pretty irrational, isn't it? I mean, from your point of view. What can you change, a simple rank-and-file soldier?"

"We've been in contact with you for thirty years already," Jamal said, smiling. "An entire generation of the Islanders grew up with no knowledge of either capitalism or the question "are we alone in the Universe?" But you still imagine we're some kind of robots - rational to the point of sterility and refined to the point of nausea."

"And you're not? Well, what about that computer inside your brain? Or how you never miss a shot because of your eye screens? Or how you can connect to the Net with no devices, from any point of the planet? What about the whole regeneration thing?"

"First of all, it's not actually in my brain. Secondly, those computers of ours aren't fundamentally different from those you use. Yes, they're integrated inside our bodies, but that's just for convenience, not because of some deep and sacred idea behind that. We are people, Nino. And you know it very well. You're just making things up, because you're bored."

"Yeah? Well, why are you avoiding the conversation, then?" Nino pretended to frown.

"Very well, I'll try to explain."

After falling silent for about three minutes, Jamal began:

"You know, I had a couple of genuine conversations with that Anthy of yours, and once, she said something truly remarkable. She said: A war that has never begun is like a phantom pain. The Island may have been saved from destruction, but this pain will haunt all of you, generation after generation, until everyone is liberated, one and all. Of course, it's all cloud castles, and also an attempt to extrapolate from a personal experience to social relations. Yet we, the Earthlings, have enough phantom pains of our own."

"Our history is very tragic, because of too many times the liberation movement has fallen, been reborn or become degenerate, because the first attempts at a communist society failed miserably, because our horrid failures brought on unbelievable despair combined with absolute apathy. Have you heard of "the end of history"? Sounds disgusting, doesn't it? Disgusting and scary, like "the end of the world". Yet our deceiving minions of the capital claimed with vigor and joy that it really happened, and they had reasons for that. Our history, indeed, could end with them - I mean, the history of humanity itself, not of some particular civilization."

"We did manage to break this deadlock, but fifty or so years of the great decline in our society left a lot of scars on our culture. Shadows of the past impelled our first communards - then their children, then their grandchildren - to look back. Whether we were studying history at school, or watching 3-D documentaries, or reading books, we became passive observers to the tragedy since childhood. The Paris Commune would be drowned in its own blood, the Hungarian Soviet Republic would fall victim to the intervention, Sandino, general of the free people, would be assassinated by a traitor, sick and wounded Che Guevara would be captured and executed. A minute victory of the revolution would end in a takeover by the counter-revolutionaries and the betrayal of those who had sworn their loyalty to the working class. So it had been far too many times, and we were powerless to change anything. Dialectics explained why everything was the way it was, but that gave no satisfaction."

"Such were our feelings as we were sending our first spaceships to the stars. Making direct contact wasn't at all anticipated during the First Interstellar Expedition - the Gonzalez' expedition, that is - even if the sentient life discovered would be advanced enough to make it. The aim of expedition was exploration and exploration only. But what we saw here resembled our own history so much that it was impossible to intercede. So we did. For at any given time, everywhere, in every age and in every corner of the galaxy, a great army fights against the entropy. Our frontline begins at the first slave who had broken their chains and broke those of their peer to fight side by side and ends among the super civilizations who have the ability to extinguish the stars and light the new ones. A member of the underground who smuggles leaflets with appeals to uprising into a factory while risking their own life and a heroic doctor who tests a vaccine that can save millions of people on themselves fight for the same cause - our cause. Our victory is in the triumphant smile of the first astronaut, it's in the last song of the fighters on the last barricades of Paris. All of us, dead or alive, continue to serve the same cause. That is the highest point of reason. If history knows no direct and easy ways, that only means that my place is here, with you."

Jamal was speaking calmly, even a little too quietly, but somehow he reminded Nino of the first utopian socialists with his exalted, almost religious fervor, his asceticism, his self-sacrifice and especially his rhetoric. How does the beginning of "The Truth for the Poor" go? When the world was but a word on the lips of the One, there were people, and beasts, and greenery, but neither slaves nor masters, neither the poor nor the rich, neither the weak nor the strong. Well, after all, the Earthlings do call their interstellar spaceships after the wise fighters and visionaries of their antiquity, those doomed by the history, but all the more awe-inspiring for that: "Thomas More", "Campanella", "Gerrard Winstanley"...

"Hey, what are you two hiding here from?" Even in peace, Vargo wasn't the most considerate of fellows, but the war brought out the best of his talent to inject himself into any conversation. "Have you been reading the party's newsletter?"

"Speaking of which, have you heard that in Teiki their communists united with their left-wing nationalists and against the fascists and religious zealots?" Tio appeared behind Vargo. Both of them were clearly in high spirits after calling home.

"Ain't nothing good will come out of it," Vargo said with an air of an expert. "Should of just grinded those bourgeoisie types down, thrashed the fear into them the way we do here."

"Some expert on the world revolution you are!" Tio turned to Jamal: "Hey, and what do your people write about it?"

The Earthlings had their own Net, and in theory, the Islanders could connect to it with their own technology, but the navigation was very unwieldy, not to mention the language barrier. On the other hand, news appeared there sooner than even in the unified Island-wide Web. And because the "communicator" that Jamal had inside his head could not be removed and put into a safe for preservation, it fell to the Earthling to always provide the locals with the most up-to-date news, especially concerning the Earth.

"Let me see," Jamal half-closed his eyes, made a couple of almost invisible movements with the fingers of his right hand, began reading and suddenly became so anxious that he almost broke off the connection.

"Listen... It's not in the news yet... Not even on the Earth... But the starship "Gracchus Babeuf" reports discovering a planet with intelligent humanoid life. For the first time ever since your planet."

"What? When?" Nino could not believe it.

"Imagine, there are our scientists on that ship, too!" Tio said happily.

"Right, whatever would the Earthlings do without our biologists?" Vargo answered sarcastically. "Who did they even discover before they started taking us Islanders along? And who, pray tell, have our guys discovered there? Some bourgeois or fascists again, right? What kind of sentient life would it be without them?"

"Stop it," Tio said. "But really, how advanced are they?"

"Well, no bourgeois or fascists in sight yet," Jamal gave a cryptic smile. "But there definitely will be some in the future..."

"Oh, so it's feudalism," Tio said, disappointed.

"...in about one hundred thousand years," Jamal finished.

The fighters fell silent at once. Somehow no one has ever thought that sentient life could also take forms like this - primitive, barely out of the cradle. After all, there was nothing surprising about the fact that evolution was going at such a different pace in their wide universe, and still the scope of it all was daunting to those simple factory workers, even though they have learned to think in terms of countries or even whole planets. Now they saw that the responsibility for this newborn race would lie upon their shoulders, as well as hose of the Earthlings. After all, they were one united army, spanning time and space.

Nino thought of her beloved who at that very moment was risking her life in another country, of her own little dream to embrace Anthy on the ruins of the old world. But even now that little dream didn't seem worthless or unimportant to her. Doubtless she and everyone else will have strength enough to help their primal alien brothers and sisters. To help this entire young (a few billion years is quite young) galaxy the Earthlings called the Milky Way.

"It's alright," Nino rose to stretch her legs after sitting for so long in one position. "I think we could wait one hundred thousand years for a good fight against bourgeois and fascists. After all, it's way more interesting to make revolution than to read about it. Isn't it, Earthling?

With her startled comrades-in-arms watching Nino went outside, facing the light of the Middle Follower.

Facing her future.

Facing her struggle.

Facing her happiness.