It is the duty of children to die for their parents, and the duty of all subjects to give their life for the Everlasting Emperor—though he never asks for more than what is necessary, and reasonably borne.
Ai Thi has only confused, jumbled memories of her implantation—a white, sterilised room that smells of disinfectant; the smooth voice of doctors and nurses, telling her to lie down on the operating table, that everything will be fine. She woke up with her voice scraped raw, as if she’d screamed for hours; with memories of struggling against restraints—but when she looked at her wrists and ankles, there was no trace of anything, not a single abrasion. And, later, alone in her room, a single, horrifying recollection: asking about painkillers and the doctors shaking their heads, telling her she had to endure it all without help, because analgesics were poison to the appeaser’s metabolism.
Her roommate Lan says that they do give drugs—something to make the harmonisers forget the pain, the hours spent raving and twisting and screaming while the appeasers burrow into their guts.
It’s all absurd, of course. It must be false impressions brought on by the drugs and the procedure, for why would the Everlasting Emperor take such bad care of those that serve him?
Ai Thi remembers waking up at night after the implantation, shivering and shaking with a terrible hunger—she was alone in the darkness, small and insignificant, and she could call for help but she didn’t matter—the doctors had gone home and no one would come, no one remembered she was there. Around her, the shadows of the room seemed to twist and come alive—if she turned and looked away, they would swallow her whole, crush her until nothing was left. She reached for the rice cakes on the table—and they slid into her stomach, as thin and as tasteless as paper, doing nothing to assuage the hunger. Empty, she was empty, and nothing would ever fill that hole within her …
Not her hunger. Not her loneliness. The appeaser’s. Cut off from the communion of their own kind, they so desperately needed contact to live, so desperately craved warmth and love.
You’re not alone, Ai Thi whispered. You are a subject of the Everlasting Emperor, and he loves you as a father loves his children.
You’re not alone.
Night after night, telling them the words from her training, the ones endlessly welling up out of her, like blood out of a wound. The Everlasting Emperor was human once, but he transcended that condition. He knows all our weaknesses, and he watches over us all. He asks only for respect and obedience in return for endless love.
You—we are part of something so much greater than ourselves: an Empire that has always been, that will always be as timeless as the Heavens. Through us—through the work of hundreds, of thousands like us, it will endure into this generation, and into the next.
Night after night, until the words became part of the appeaser—burrowed into them as they had burrowed within Ai Thi’s guts—until they ceaselessly spoke in her sleep, giving her back her own words with unwavering strength.
Beware what you read. The Quynh Federation reaches everywhere, to disseminate their lies:you cannot trust news that hasn’t been vetted.
Ai Thi gets down at her usual station: White Crane Monastery, close to the barracks. She has one last quadrant to go through on her rounds, Eggshell Celadon, making sure that the families there understand the cost of war fought beyond the Empire’s boundaries, and the necessity of the war effort.
As she turns into a corridor decorated with a splash of stars, she hears the footsteps behind her. A menial, going to work—a kitchen hand, like Ai Thi used to be before she volunteered—or a sweeper, supervising bots as they clean the quadrant. But at the next corridor—one that holds the machinery of the station rather than cramped family compartments—the footsteps are still here.
She turns, briefly, catching a glimpse of hempen clothes, torn sleeves, and the glint of metal. From the appeaser, a vague guess that whoever it is is determined: the appeaser can’t read human thoughts, can’t interpret them, or the harmonisers’ and enforcers’ work would be that much simpler. What they know from human behaviour, they learned from Ai Thi.
Captain Giang’s advice to her trainees: always choose the ground for a confrontation, rather than having choice forced on you.
Ai Thi stops, at the middle of the corridor—no nooks or crannies, no alcoves where her pursuer can hide. Within her the appeaser is silent and still, trying to find the proper words of the Everlasting Emperor for the circumstances, gathering strength for a psychic onslaught.
She’s expected a group of dissidents—Sergeant Bac said they were getting bolder in the daily briefing—but it’s just one person.
A woman in shapeless bot-milled clothes, bottom of the range—face gaunt, eyes sunken deep, lips so thin they look like the slash of a knife. Her hands rests inside her sleeves, fingers bunched. She has a knife or a gun. “Harmoniser,” the woman whispers. “How can you—how can you—”
Ai Thi spreads her hands, to show that she is unarmed; though it isn’t true. The appeaser is her best and surest weapon, but only used at the proper time. “I serve the Everlasting Emperor.”
The woman doesn’t answer. She merely quickens her pace. Her hand swings out, and it’s a gun that she holds, the barrel glinting in the station’s light, running towards Ai Thi and struggling to aim.
No time.
Ai Thi picks one saying, one piece of wisdom, from all the ones swarming in her mind. The Everlasting Emperor loves all his subjects like children, and it is the duty of children to bow down to their parents.
Bow down.
And she lets the appeaser hurl it like a thrown stone, straight into the woman’s thoughts. No subtlety, not the usual quiet influence, the background to everyone’s daily lives—just a noise that overwhelms everything like a scream.
Bow down.
The woman falters, even as her gun
