dydx - Chapter V: Equal to Zero

The open society is closing its doors

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dydx - Chapter IV: Reply to All

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Inside the Capitol dome, the scars ran deep. If one were to listen closely, each would whisper facts and sing fiction of the peaks and troughs of democracy before the fall. The dome — still magnificent — though altered, bore those self-conscious signs of wear. It stood, not in its birthplace, but atop the Diet of Auricene, a testament to the persistence of a nation. Just not the one it used to be. Shifted in location but not in purpose, it was first paraded with the spoils of war; now it rests, reminding all that decay and rebirth don’t always follow a cycle.

As Senator Beerswick inhaled deeply — composing herself and observing her peers — her eyes followed the edges of the cracks trying to find each other, much like the Membrane States trying to piece together a fragmented self. Guelphine Beerswick was the emerging hope of the burgeoning agricultural elite of the RUSA. Unyielding in her libertarian pulse and near-anarchic spirit, her commanding presence hardly drew the assembly’s attention.

“Freedom. Property. Wealth. None of those were handed to the Stavrovenii,” she pierced Duneron Homvenius in the audience with her eyes, “they built from the ground up. Holding dear the values this Dome once celebrated. Like the Dome, stolen to be preserved, your are now here proposing theft to conserve those values.” Lips curled in bitter mockery, she lifted an empty glass, “I raise a toast,” she declared, “and invite you all to drink from the empty cup of democracy.”

Chancellor Anatalon-Fersus Nymovenius, presiding the session, looked squarely at her. “Thank you for your contribution,” he began, the kind simplicity of his thanks barely concealing the underlying scorn. “Your passion is as evident as the symbolism you ascribe to the Dome. But that’s a relic, not a trophy,” his eyes meeting the cracked ceiling, he continued, “It tells us that a feather in the cap doesn’t mean a bird is in the hand. In your mythology, democracy was the sacred bird that stretched its wings too wide, so much that they snapped. A gift you once generously offered, now mourn its appropriation. Once gifted, now seized. Your sentiment doesn’t sway; yet, the proposal has been dismissed. The majority have already spoken. As instructed.”