So much was riot and confusion that it was a genuine relief when parts of the war started to look like textbooks promised.
MASON declared war, a grim dawn ceremony on the ziggurat at Alexandria. The office of pater patratus sent a copy of the declaration to Charlemagne, who says it’s five times scarier in Latin, but that the gist of it is a pledge to ‘subdue and correct’ all enemies which threaten the IMPERIUM and its continuity (here ‘continuity’ is code for the Prince, since it’s still illegal to discuss the Imperator Destinatus). Within an hour of the ceremony, Masonic forces unfolded from their cities, the way satellites, compressed into cubes for launch, unfold their wings and wires and robot limbs. Jeeps rolled out, walls and wire, towers, boats around the seaports, bulldozers and steamrollers to carve out roads for trucks and motorcycles, and, inevitable like ill-omened comets, tanks. In mixed cities the bulwarks rose around Masonic districts, while cities where the Empire has a strong majority now have moats of roads and concrete. Tripoli, Cairo, Ankara, Istanbul, Constanța, Kraków, Antoniople, Kazan, Baku, Samarkand, Labokla, Caedeculmin, Kolkata: connect the dots and it feels like the geographic era has returned. And MASON can connect the dots, since the Levantine Reservation and its allies in Inner Asia—always friendliest with Masons—have granted the Empire the exclusive privilege of passing through their lands.
The Mitsubishi have taken to the sea. The first morning, thousands of ships poured out from nowhere, secreted in warehouses or assembled rapid-fire. Now, at night, the ship lights swarm like stars all the way from the Japanese islands past Seoul and Shanghai, along the Vietnamese coastlands, clear to the Indonesian archipelago. Dubai and lonely Hawaii also have their little firefly swarms of Mitsubishi ships, and patches twinkle around the Indian subcontinent, especially off the coast of Chennai. They’re flying Mitsubishi trefoils and some nation-strat flags (Japan’s is absent so far, and, while most of China’s regional flags are common, the Dongbei identities are conspicuously absent, as are many expected sub-strats of India), but the boats also boast flags for the different Mitsubishi voting blocs, which seem to each control specific fleets. Greenpeace flags are common—on ships and rooftops—especially around Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, and in the fleet that neared New Zealand on the 12. And still more ships pour out. They haven’t attacked anything yet, just floated about like overpopulated geese, and tested guns close to the coasts by Brisbane, Manila, and Taiwan.
Europe is best at war’s basics, or rather the nation-strats are best at them, since the Mitsubishi seem to be benefitting much the same. Nation-strats already had uniforms and flags and ranks, dredged from their history books but real, with manuals, procedures, training leaflets, salaries updated from umpteen years ago, and recruitment posters with patriotic slogans that still tug heartstrings. Even I got an invitation from the Hellenic Navy. Every strat in the European Union has set up a station in each city to handle their people, house the stranded, recruit troops, and generally help Members find help they still trust. All the little armies have done so far is host parades and spread posters, a festive feeling, half reenactment and half war. It makes all this feel normal. But there’s a scary underbelly to it: some recruitment offices—like the Flemish and Filipino ones behind Carlyle’s Column—are only flying their own flags, or theirs and the EU’s, but some—like our Greek one out by the Circus Max—already fly the Remaker V of Vs. They’re not allowed to yet. On Saturday the revisions to Europe’s constitution will go into effect, and King Isabel Carlos II of Spain will be crowned Emperor Isabel Carlos I of Europe. When Spain then weds Joyce Faust D’Arouet that afternoon, a suddenly legitimated Jehovah Epicurus Mason will be confirmed as Europe’s heir apparent. But the Emperorship that the king and makeshift Parliament have crafted is a constitutional monarchy, checks and balances, far from the absolute surrender that the Prince demands. Europe’s spirit is willing, the nation-strats so shocked to find themselves complicit with bloody Perry that they are eager to hand the kind, life-loving Prince a blank page with the words ‘New Constitution’ on the top. But Spain will be no breaker of the law, so the many branches of the European Union are debating whether they have the authority to grant such blank-slate power, even if the people clamor for it. Until they have decided, Europe’s outposts may not fly the V of Vs. But some do anyway.
The Cousins are not at war. They’re making peace. Their cafeterias and refugee centers are buzzing, and you hardly see a Cousin on the street who isn’t wearing the old Red Crystal, often a nurse’s cap and apron to go with it. They’ve set up dorms where stranded people can live, and work on Red Crystal humanitarian efforts. The Cousins and the Red Crystal are so synonymous now that volunteers from other Hives have started wearing red versions of their Hive symbols next to the Red Crystal to remind us “But I’m not a Cousin!” Ironic, really, since (I looked it up) the Red Crystal symbol itself—a red diamond with a white diamond inside—was created to signal neutrality, born at the turn of the Twenty-First Century, as the early tremors of the Church War made the old Red Cross and Red Crescent points of friction.
Bryar made it from Delhi as far as Mumbai, where they’re happily surrounded by Cousins and Greenpeace Mitsubishi, all in favor of not destroying Earth. Bryar’s trying to get leaders into peace talks already, new efforts every day, and flooding public screens with reassuring logistical announcements: how to find help centers, what household goods and gadgets people can donate to the effort (who’d have thought an old vacuum slug had so many medical uses!), and especially pushing their Weapon Exchange Program. The Cousins have centers where you can turn in a lethal weapon—new or used, modern or archaic—and receive in return a shiny new ‘Tiring Gun,’ the Cousins’ own design, a long-range stun gun certified humane. It’s their big bid to keep the combat bloodless, armies that capture instead of killing, turning World Civil War into World Civil Freeze Tag. Good luck to them. They planned to give thousands of Tiring Guns to all the armies too, but with transportation down, thousands of crates of them are stuck uselessly at factories, or shipping out on boats.
From Casablanca I’m delighted to say we see much more of Heloïse than of Lorelei Cook. Heloïse is not actually the head of Red Crystal, but they’re the human face of it, constantly releasing videos of how to diagnose dehydration or tie a bandage. But there are other videos, unofficial ones from Nurturists, advising people how to ‘deal humanely’ with a set-set (how best to capture ‘it’ and keep ‘it’ happy in confinement, what dangers each ‘species’ poses, ugh), and among the familiar types, Cartesian set-set, Stratford set-set, etc., new categories have entered the lexicon: D’Arouet set-set and gender set-set seem to be synonymous, then Alba Longa set-set (meaning Mycroft, Tully, and the other Mardis), O.S. set-set, Andō Oniwaban set-set (for Toshi, Masami, etc.), and, chill as a knife, Utopian set-set.
Utopia, as their first move of the war, gave the whole world bicycles. We would have printed up bicycles anyway, to supplement the city tram systems which weren’t designed for car-less worlds, but they published (fee-free) a design that uses a fifth as much material as the lightest bike in the recipe book, so Earth has saved some five billion kilograms of printable matter for future use as bandages or clothing. Or more depressing things. I can’t tell whether the gift eased the ill will which made so many praise the Atlantis Strike, but at least there have been no missile attacks on Oz, Shuilian, Lilliput, or Paititi. Not yet. In mixed cities, Utopians are keeping to their districts, with their scariest U-beasts patrolling the gates, but sometimes a squad of them will march down some central thoroughfare, bright with Delian suns and flanked by monsters. There are reports of mobs approaching Utopian districts, but all have been scared off by the wyrms and dinosaurs and steely-hearted robots.