— TESTIMONIALS —
I took my girlfriend to Hierarchia to propose to her, and wanted to pop the question on the barricades as the old regime fell. Sadly, she got a bit involved in the uprising. Now she’s their prophesied hero and just accepted a marriage proposal from the woman who forged her sword. Shit holiday.
— Ben Fist, 19, Car Dealer
Even as an offworlder, I’ve been a keen fan of the Hierarchian political cycle for years, and it was amazing to actually make it to an overthrow. And that last season – what an upset! Can’t believe there was a second band of rebels waiting to snatch the state from the first set when they were just a week into government! I mean, they’re a bunch of jokers and opportunists, and I guarantee they’ll be off the throne by winter, but still – what a play.
— Sasha Bees, 32, Civil Engineer
Outstanding break. We’d been working hard all year and had been promising ourselves a holiday for a while, and Hierarchia was just the ticket. Cocktails on a balcony a mile in the air, and great sports on the TV every night – bliss. There was a revolution halfway through our stay, but aside from a brief hostage situation (where the rebels were frankly charming), it barely disrupted things at all.
— Spencer Work, 44, Solicitor
I came here to admire the architecture of the megastructure itself, but I have to say I’ve ended up wondering about other structures altogether. This whole mechanic with new governments every three months and constant rebellions … isn’t that … a system in itself, which ensures nothing ever changes? I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but it does seem nobody here’s even curious about that, let alone keen to rebel against it. Odd.
—Evelyn Bread, 64, Architect
DON’T MISS: DUNUPRISING
‘Not everyone can be the hero’ reads the sign above the doors to this quiet community, just outside Hierarchia. It’s a bittersweet, quiet place – a retirement home for failed rebels. After all, even with the sheer number of opportunities offered by the timeshare system, not every aspiring champion can end up burning the world down. Some just never make it, despite years of trying, and this is where they end up. Burnt out in their early twenties, these poor souls realise they just can’t face another year of trying to be the unlikely central figure of a revolution, and retire to Dunuprising for the start of their rehabilitation. It’s worth a look before you leave.
DAY 4
You’ll have the chance to meet and greet the various hotheads vying to lead the next overthrow of the government, and you are almost certain to become romantically entangled with at least a handful of them, if you’re of a certain age. Life in an insurrectionist fighting force entirely comprising beautiful people in their late teens is a tornado of hormones waiting to happen, and it will be an unusual day indeed if it doesn’t end with you bogged down in at least three love triangles.
DAY 5
Your trip will be timed so that day five coincides with some kind of highly spiritual coming-of-age ceremony for the Nethers, in which the potential revolutionaries get to jostle with their rivals in a test of courage and skill. Whatever the set-up, these events almost always end up escalating into riots and then full-scale revolution, and it’s a joy to watch: one minute things are just a bit rowdy, then you clock someone giving a speech and kicking the head off a statue, and suddenly everyone’s chanting and bashing in windows. One of your love interests might have a bit of a die in the carnage, but don’t worry: you’ll get over it in the long run, and in the short term you’ll be too busy assaulting the Leader’s Palace to care much.
DAY 7
After a wild night overthrowing the tyrannical regime of the former leader, your trip will finish where it began: in the golden splendour of the Apex, as the new leader ponders how to set up the society that has fallen into their hands. Take a little time to enjoy the electric sense of optimism washing over the newly liberated Nethers, but don’t dally too long – it’ll be a day at most before the new leader faces their first dark dilemma and starts Hierarchia back on the slippery slope to dystopia.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Floyd’s footnote to Eliza following his trip to Mundania was the last copy he ever filed. Until we began to assemble this manuscript, nobody knew where he had gone, and it was presumed his final destination would remain a mystery for ever. That was until we found a recording of a voicemail addressed to Eliza in the archive we purchased, dated two weeks after Floyd’s last footnote was penned. Going by other records, we know that Eliza Salt left her office just an hour after she received this message and was never seen again. The next day, access to the Worlds appeared to be closed for good. While this message doesn’t do much to explain the disappearances or the vanishing of the Worlds, we have decided to include a full transcript below, for the sake of completeness.
Hi, Eliza, it’s Floyd. Listen, my battery’s nearly gone, and I’ve got to go back inside in a second anyway. What I’m saying is, I’ve got to be quick. So if I start rambling, which I probably
