She Dies Singing

“Mr. Brin had recently discovered that he has inherited from his mother a mutation of a gene called LRRK2 that appears to predispose carriers to familial Parkinson's. Thus Mr. Brin, at the age of 35, had found out that he had a high statistical chance—between 20% and 80%, depending on the study—of developing Parkinson's himself. To the surprise of many in the audience, this did not seem to bother him… Mr. Brin regards his mutation of LRRK2 as a bug in his personal code, and thus as no different from the bugs in computer code that Google's engineers fix every day…”
         - “Enlightenment Man”, 2008 from Technology Quarterly, on Sergey Brin’s use of his wife Anne Wojcicki’s service, 23andMe, to discover his mutation of LRRK2. http://www.economist.com/node/12673407

< >

My name is Oxalis. I killed myself and was commended to the Tekh. I see nothing and am aware of all. This is what I would tell you of our world.

In the summer when I was still alive and only five years old, my Da took me to the Odeion, the singing temple.

The walk from our village was not long, but the suns had yet to rise and I was tired. He took me by my small, pale hand, leading me parallel to the narrow ptekh road, our sandaled feet treading the soft dewy grasses and not trespassing the charcoal gray stone of the eerily glowing path. Though he would take me to the Odeion to rest my hands and forehead against a pillar made of the very same ptekh, and would pay three years’ income for the privilege, he dared not touch the stone yet or allow me to do so. Such was not for the likes of us.

As we walked, he talked with me, perhaps to keep me awake, perhaps to educate me.

“Do you know how old our village is, Oxalis?” he asked.

“I do not know… really, really old?” I said, furrowing my brow. The village had been there when I was born, and when my Ma and Da were born, so that made it very old indeed in my young mind.

My Da did not agree, though he smiled down at me. “No, my daughter, our village is very young. She still has not told us her name.”

“Villages talk?” I demanded, far more intrigued by that idea than by the question of the village’s age. I had never heard the village talk, or seen any of the walls open up like mouths to speak, but the idea that such might happen one day, or might already be happening other places, in other villages, was water to my thirsty imagination.

He nodded, charm-woven black hair falling for a moment into his azure eyes before he pushed it back over his shoulder and glanced at me. “Aye, but you and I cannot hear. Do you know why?”

I wilted at that moment of disillusionment. I did indeed know why I would never hear a village speak. I was told every day. “Because we are Survi.”

“Aye,” he agreed, his voice not glum like my own, but simply matter-of-fact. “Only Navi can commune with the ptekh. But today we will sing songs to the ptekh, and you will touch the living walls of the Odeion, and the ptekh will know and remember you.”

I scrunched up my nose at that. I did not want some wall to know anything about me. Though I did want to be Navi, and wondered if touching and knowing and remembering would make me such. That would be nice. “Will I become Navi when I sing the songs?” I asked. Perhaps then I would have a Navi’s powers of transformation, like in the fairy tales Da told me at night.

He laughed at that. I did not yet understand my difference well enough to understand why twas so funny that one born without gtekh might be able to become Navi with just a few temple songs. “No, my child,” he said as I scowled at him. “But the Navi Keystone will bless you after you sing the song, and as you live your life in the years to come, the Tekh will follow what you do and say and are, and hold you forever when you die so that you can live on when your body is taken up by the ptekh. Would you like that?”

I did not yet understand what he was asking, but thought that sounded like something I might like. Maybe. Now, from within the Tekh, knowing what I know, I wish I had said no, had asked him to take me home and never bring me to the Odeion and its living, alien walls.

But I was young, and did not yet know how the world worked. I did not yet know that the rich brown earth beneath my feet, the long, dew-damp grass brushing my bare ankles, and the lush trees shading my head from the rising suns were infested with microscopic ptekh, trillions upon uncounted trillions of synthetic nanite life forms that flew with the wind and burrowed into rocks and rivers, bones and veins. I only knew that the other villagers talked of the ptekh in whispers, describing the way the small fields and forest groves that had sustained our neighbors for generations had recently been replaced by ptekh laden crops that fed the Navi communities up North, leaving our neighboring villages with little for their own families to eat.

I did not yet know that with a Navi’s mere thought, with the tiniest exercise of his or her will, the ptekh could turn against the land, consuming the soil, grass, trees and even my own body and my entire village, rendering them down to primordial soup out of which new ptekh could be formed. I only knew that a Navi had gtekh—magic—and was beautiful and powerful and much smarter and faster and healthier and longer-lived than any Survi person.

I did not know that even though a Navi had the power to bestow transformations of all kinds, it was his or her choice when and how to exercise that power, not mine. I only knew we had to do as the Navis said, had to conform our lives to their will just as the ptekh bent to their will in spectacular displays of power and knowledge that made my people feel as weak and ignorant as the Navis said we were.

I did not know that although a Navi would ensure my body would be preserved and then transformed by ptekh in death, I would never be allowed to undergo the kind of bodily transformation I so craved in life. All I knew was I was male-bodied, not female-bodied, though I felt like a little girl inside, and Survi, not Navi, though I felt strong and beautiful and smart and wise and magical and purposeful within.

But my Da and I did not talk about any such matters that day. Not really. Instead, as we walked alongside but never upon the black pearl road, gazing out of the corners of our eyes at the flowing amaranth, amber, forest green and midnight blue gloss moving with inner light over the face of the stone, my Da drilled me on what I was to do and say and even think when we arrived at the Odeion.

“Keep your chin up and do not fidget,” he said. “You are a child of Rinehart, not some Fontbona, Yanai or Dangote brat.”

“Aye, Da,” I said quietly. I did not quite understand the difference between myself and one of those other children, except that my skin was lighter and we spoke Germance instead of Spanish, Filijaparin or Arabyeai. But I sensed now was not the time to argue with him.

“If you see a Mittal, Usmanov, Lemann, or Pinault—or Mars, though I doubt any will venture this far from the cities—stand aside so they may pass first, and remove your ochipok.”

I tensed at that. “Why!” I cried, hand flying to the top of my head as if I was already being forced to remove the cap my sisters had embroidered for me.

My Da looked down at me, pain in his hazel eyes. “Because outside of our village, you must live as a boy.”

“But I’m a girl,” I protested.

“I know,” he said, resting one hand atop my ochipok, as though to reassure me twould not be taken from me. Not yet. “But the Navi do not see you as such, and neither will the upper Survi classes. And Oxalis?”

I pouted. “What?” I snapped, a tone I had learned from my older sisters.

Da’s eyes danced in indulgent amusement at that. His hand slipped from my cap to my shoulder, then down to my hand, squeezing gently. “When you see the Navis, you must not speak until given permission, and must not look into their eyes, even if you see the gtekh. Understand?”

I shivered. I had heard tales of children being killed for less. I wanted to see that magical darkness I’d heard fairy tales about, the iridescent hematite swirl of ptekh deep within a Navi’s irises. But looking at a Navi was forbidden. They were the earthly embodiments of pure Tekh, perfect and powerful and utterly, utterly untouchable.

“I understand,” I whispered, though in truth I did not. How could it be wrong to just look?

My Da told me other things as we made our way through the forest, along the river and over the bridge to the Odeion. He taught me the hymns I was to sing. My favorite was, “In the beginning, twas the ending. In all endings, new beginnings.” I liked singing the simple tune, though I kept getting my beginnings and endings mixed up, so that by the time we made it to the Odeion, my gloomy and confused mood had fallen away, cheered by my Da’s laughter at my antics.

Soon, however, we sobered. The long bridge across the river had spat us out directly onto a ptekh path, with ornate, mosaic-lined walls to either side. There was no way off the ptekh walkway, and so we stepped reverently, staring transfixed at the quicksilver rivulets pooling about our feet in the black stone with our every step. I was reminded of the fish in the pond back home, moving like lightning to gobble up small bugs or breadcrumbs, fluid and alive, and wondered if ptekh had fish thoughts. The idea made me giggle, and Da glanced at me sternly until I quieted.

The thick trees fell away suddenly, and I found that we were at the lip of a small valley, the hills sloping gradually downward from where we stood in graduated ptekh stone steps, benches and tiered gardens to the Odeion below. The plants growing amidst the charcoal gray planters were unlike any I had ever seen, unblemished and alien, with the brightest flowers and perfectly circular fruits. I remembered the ancient fairy tale from the motherworld Da often told me, of the Navi with her poison apple, and wondered if that was why our neighboring villages did not have enough to eat. Were the ptekh crops poisoning the fields?

My legs were strong and sturdy, but not yet long enough to easily clamor down the endless stairs. This place had not been built for children or people who could not easily walk. My Da lifted me into his arms, quietly humming the hymn we had learned together until I smiled.

At the bottom of the stairs was a raised platform, and a bustling market beyond, with stalls and shops and vendor’s carts all tucked within the shining ptekh-ribboned colonnades. More people than I had ever seen before milled about, looking like busy ants until we came closer and I could see that they were people, just like me and yet not.

As we stepped into the agora and walked along the western colonnade toward the Aedes, with its Heroon shrines for ancestor and hero veneration, Cellas for quiet prayer and Adyton inner sanctum where only the Arch—the Odeion’s clergy—could go without escort, Da directed me through the proper obeisances. There were no Fontbona, Yanai or Dangote people at the Odeion, for they are too low caste to be permitted in the holy premises, but we passed a handful of other Rinehart people, nodding our heads politely to one another. But nearly everyone else was of higher caste, requiring us to scurry constantly out of the way and pull our caps from our heads, even for those who sought temple services after us. Most paid us no mind, although a couple of the higher caste Lemanns and Pinaults scowled at us even though we were not in the way, and one little Mittal boy pointed at the ochipok clutched in my hand and babbled in a higher caste’s tongue to his Ma.

When they had passed, making it possible for us to resume our walk, I craned my head up to my Da, squirming unhappily in his arms. “How can those Lemanns and Mittals be higher caste than us? They’re brown!”

My Da hushed me quickly, glancing around as though afraid someone had heard. “Oxalis, worry not about them. Most Navis are as light as we, and all Mars. Take heart from that.”

“But—“

“The rest is the will of the Tekh, and not for us to question.”

I scowled at that, but kept my peace. I did not like having to take off my ochipok for people who looked like Fontbona, Yanai and Dangote to me, and certainly did not like that we were apparently the lowest of the low here, with everyone looking down upon us except the other Rineharts.

We wound our way through the market, not even stopping to check the prices on the gleaming, water-like ptekh textiles and eerily perfect foods. Our village ate only good produce from our lands and wore only clothing woven by our own hands and sheared from the sheep in our pastures. Though such fine goods as these were interesting, a small part of me scorned them even then for all that I enjoyed seeing people walking past us in their splendid finery.

At the very end of the colonnade was the Opisthodomos, my Da’s destination. We were met there by a tall, strong-boned woman with high, gold-dusted cheekbones and quicksilver flecked eyes. The instant I realized we were standing before a Navi, I lowered my gaze, and clung fearfully to my Da’s pant leg as he set me on the ground.

“We come seeking the Keystone’s blessing,” my Da said, bending so low in a bow that his fingertips brushed the floor at the Navi’s sandaled feet.

I could not stare at this godlike being’s face, but did stare openly at her toes. I had never seen feet so clean, so pale, as though untouched by sunlight or the dust of the road. Did Navis fly in order to escape the dirt? I had seen no wings yet, though there were tales that they could ride the winds, arms stretched out, hair billowing in great ribbons behind them. Perhaps this one would fly for us later. The idea both excited and terrified me.

But she did not fly, nor do anything splendid at all. Instead, she turned away from us, gesturing for us to follow. “I am but a Voussoir, goodsir. I will tell the Springer of my Haunch you are here, and she will fetch the Keystone if zhe is available.”

My ears pricked at that word, “zhe”, and my heart beat faster. So it was true; the Navis did have third-gender people among them, or perhaps people like me who had been born in one body but knew they belonged in another.

Jealousy and desire raged through me, that these unknown Navi people should have both acceptance and the ptekh for their own transformations, and yet deny the same to me.

I shoved my ochipok back on my head as the Navi nun walked away, and glared fiercely up at my Da as he opened his mouth to remind me to take it off again.

“Oxalis—“ He said, his voice tense with concern.

“I am already wearing a tunic and leggings,” I growled. “So let me have my cap!”

My Da sighed. “Daughter…” But he only shook his head, and did not take my ochipok away, perhaps thinking the Navi would see it as a strange local custom or passing fad and nothing more.

We waited for several long minutes before the Voussoir returned to take Da’s coin and tell us her Springer had said the Keystone would be down to meet us shortly.

Da handed her the large leather pouch almost reverently, and though I did not yet understand how much money Survis such as we could earn from our farming in three years, I knew it was a bigger pile of coin than I had ever seen at one time. The Navi took it in one silver ptekh-veined, white-gloved hand, holding the leather bag slightly away from her body as she carried it, as though the bag or the money or perhaps just the memory of our touch upon the leather and metal were unclean. But she did not turn it aside, for the Odeion thrived upon the offerings made by such as us, eager to overcome death.

When she returned, twas with the Keystone at her side. I could not stare into zher face, but even with my eyes lowered to the ground, I drank in this Navi’s every motion, from the slight sway of zher hips to the swing of zher long white, bead-adorned beard. I drank in zher flowing ptekh gown, the iridescent blues and greens shimmering in the silky black, and the long, sheathed particle blade jutting over zher right shoulder and behind zher left hip. I drank in the small breasts and long, strong limbs, and wondered what magic made this possible and how I could possibly touch it myself. This Navi had found the space between the genders and settled comfortably there, or so it seemed; I wanted desperately to cross to the other side, so strongly my bones and teeth ached.

But I was not Navi, as the Keystone’s words soon reminded me harshly, simply. “Survi seekers, you have paid the price for my sacred services,” zhe intoned in a resonant contralto voice. “What blessing would you ask of me?”

Da clutched my shoulders, pulling me in front of him. My gaze crept up from the Keystone’s sparkling black slippers to the sash tied about zher full hips. I was too young to realize it might have been impolite to stare at that place on zher body, and I suddenly wondered if the Navi often had to field unwanted questions about what lay beneath that dangling fabric, as I often hated doing whenever someone asked, “Are you a boy, or a girl? No, I mean, down there!”

Perhaps I was lost in my thoughts and in that moment, and that was what prompted me to ask my audacious question. Perhaps it was just a sort of magic the Keystone had, the power of zher presence causing desperate hope and desire to surge through me. Whatever twas, before my Da could ask aught, I blurted out, “Please change my outside to match my inside!”

My Da drew in a sharp, shocked breath at my outcry. The Keystone, and the Voussoir beside zher, merely stared down at me in confusion. “Pardon me, child? What is it you ask?” the Keystone inquired politely.

I opened my mouth to answer. My Da clamped his hand over my lips to stop me, and I bit down hard, wailing when he let me go with a grunt, “I’m a girl! Make my body a girl!”

Now the Navis, too, were shocked. The Keystone glanced at me sharply, snapping, “Silence!”

Terrified, I sucked in a breath of air and held it in my lungs as my heart beat against my chest like a caged bird.

The Keystone turned slowly to my Da. “I am going to overlook this blasphemy,” zhe said carefully, clipped tone still controlled but with an undercurrent of violence, like silver shooting through the ptekh stone beneath our feet. “I see that your son is very young, and you are perhaps a new father who does not know how to properly deal with such matters as… this. So I shall instruct you.” Zher voice sharpened into command. “When we are done here, you will take your son home, and dress him in a boy-child’s clothing, and give him a boy-child’s name if you have not done so already.” Zher eyes narrowed down at my trembling Da. “Whatever you do, know this, Survi. After your son has been commended to the Tekh today, the ptekh will know all you do regarding this matter, so do not fail me in this.”

My heart felt crushed in my chest, the worst pain I had ever felt in my young life. I did not even weep, but merely protested shakily, “But… but you are l-like m-me.” I felt betrayed, frightened and confused.

“No,” the Keystone told me with a surprisingly warm, kind voice yet words of cool finality. Zhe plucked the ochipok from my head with two fingers, and handed it to my Da with a pointed look. “Only the Navi create boundaries, and only we may transgress them. Now.” Zhe offered me a long, perfectly manicured hand. “Come, son of Rinehart. We will proceed to the Adyton together.”

I did not want to touch the hand of the one who had hurt me so, but did not feel I had any choice. Hope had fled. I rested my hand atop the Keystone’s cool palm, and felt dry fingers curl around my own.

While Da waited outside in the Opisthodomos with the Voussoir, the Keystone led me into the Odeion’s inner sanctum. My heart felt dead within me, but still I sang the hymns I’d been taught when the Keystone bade me do so, and then let zher lead me up to the obsidian ptekh pillar.

“In the beginning, twas the ending. In all endings, new beginnings…”

“Place your hands here,” zhe said softly when my voice fell silent, lifting my arms gently until my palms were placed on the warm, faintly pulsing stone, fingers splayed like some dead thing about to be autopsied. I did not want the ptekh to know aught about me, but obeyed when the Keystone directed me to rest my forehead upon the stone, close my eyes, and take a deep breath. I had no choice.

At the time, I did not know what happened to me, except that I felt a great rushing up my nostrils and a strong pressure against my eyes, not painful, but not comfortable either. From my current vantage point within the Tekh, however, with full access to the ptekh’s memory of what happened in that moment, I know exactly what transpassed, how my body was violated.

The ptekh of the pillar, you see, is alive, and comprised of trillions of individual nanites, each many times smaller than the end of a pin. This vast colony of ptekh held the form of a pillar as long as it was commanded to do so, but when the Keystone’s gtekh transmitted thought passed across the pillar like a breath, some of the ptekh separated from the pillar, rushing toward me and crashing over me and surging through me like a cloud of soot. We say, at times, that the light shimmering within ptekh looks like quicksilver, and there is a good reason for that. The ptekh passed through me like mercury, yet left no traces of itself, instead squeezing between and sometimes even through every cell, tasting every neuron, recording every spark of thought and memory and intention emerging from my young brain. In the space of only a few seconds, the ptekh knew all there is to know of me, and knew to keep watching me and violating me in this way for the rest of my life, per the terms of my Da’s purchase. The same had been done to my sisters, and would be done to my brother as well later after he was born.

At the time, however, all I knew was that my nose itched and my head faintly hurt. I sneezed, shook my head hard, and it passed.

“You may open your eyes,” the Keystone told me.

I did so, though twas many years before I truly saw.

“Go back to your father now,” zhe said. “And put aside your girlish things. You are a boy, and the Tekh knows all you will do from here on out.”

I fled more than departed, leaving a part of myself behind: hope.

When I returned home, my dresses and ochipok and dolls were taken from me. I was no longer allowed to learn how to rule the village, or care for babes. Governance and childcare were women’s work, so my Da said sadly as he dragged me with him to hunt and, later, train for war.

Worst of all, my name was taken from me. Oxalis was tied and gagged and locked away in the Odeion. The boy Semorsang, She-Dies-Singing, took her place.

< >

I have not yet touched upon the matter of my death. I wanted you to understand first the circumstances that led me to want to die. In a world where, as the Keystone said, the Navi create our boundaries, and we conform to them as best as we can, no room is permitted for one such as I, one who was born in one body but belongs in another. I lived a life that was not my own as well as I could, but in the end, I decided it hurt more to be denied life than it did to take my own life.

I will not tell you how I killed myself. Tis enough to explain that, living as a young man of twenty-five, I had access to enough weapons to destroy myself a thousand times.

I will tell you what happened after I died. When I was five years old, my Da had paid handsomely to commend me to the ptekh. The violence I did to myself—only after years of violence at the hands of the Navi and my own family—had rendered my face and much of my body unrecognizable. My Ma found me, and laid me out upon my bed, screaming for my sisters and little brother and Da. It was, of course, too late, as they soon saw. I was already dead, and processes my Da had set in motion when I was commended to the Tekh at the age of five were already beginning.

The ptekh flowing through the air recognized me, and remembered that I had already been commended to the Tekh. Before my family’s very eyes, the diffuse ptekh floating in our home condensed about me, forming something not unlike a gray rain cloud. But there was nothing natural about this. The cloud boiled over my body, surging into my ruined face much as it had done that day so long ago when I had still been allowed to be a girl. Hair and skin melted away, then muscle and ligaments, organs and bones.

The ptekh was merciful, shrouding my form from my family’s tearful eyes as I was reduced, not merely to a liquid puddle of biomass, but to the raw materials for new ptekh.

And then, molecule by molecule, cell by cell, I was refashioned into a simulacrum of myself. Drawing upon dozens of milestones, hundreds of images, thousands of expressions and millions of thoughts and feelings already captured by the ptekh over the past twenty years of my life, my body was reconstructed, perfect and whole and utterly lifeless, for my family to behold.

When the ptekh shroud fell away, my family drew back with a shocked and joyful gasp at the illusion before them, the dead, artificial and yet eerily lifelike ptekh statue lying before them. The violence the Navi and my family had inflicted upon me in life, the violence I had inflicted upon myself in dying, the violence the ptekh had inflicted upon my body in death, was all hidden. Erased. It was a terrible lie.

And yet…

“Such beautiful work,” my sisters whispered, smoothing the hair away from my smooth, soft, cool cheeks.

“At least… no more pain,” my Ma sobbed, stroking the hem of my shimmering ptekh shroud.

“But…” My little brother paused, biting his lip and taking in the gentled lines of my face, the slight swell of my breasts and curve of my hips beneath the shroud with a blush and frown of confusion.

“It looks just like her,” my Da said, as the death flowers grew in my hands and my name—my name, Oxalis—crawled like spiders across the black ptekh petals.

< >

My body rested, a limp, lifeless lie—and yet a truth—upon my bed for three days. At first, I knew nothing, but gradually I began to wake up in the Tekh, as though from a strange dream, and I saw nothing, but knew all.

Friends and family came and went, saying their goodbyes, some crying and shouting and demanding to know why I had done this thing. I wanted to explain, but could not; at last I knew why it took time for villages to learn to speak. I did not yet know how to even move ptekh around, though I was learning rapidly.

Those closest to me knew why I had killed myself, but still, it was hard for them to truly understand. The Navi force us all to live lives that are not at all the ones we wish to live—the ones we are called to live—but very few of us are forced to live in bodies not our own.

My physical transformation from male to female in death drew less of a stir in my village than you might expect, for such things are generally accepted or at least overlooked among us except when the Navi interfere directly in our lives, forcing us to trade our ways for theirs if we want to benefit from their ptekh.

But still, word spread throughout the forest and into the hills and valleys beyond, and it was not long before the Keystone came to visit, accompanied by a Voussoirs monk and nun. I knew them as they arrived, feeling a certain amount of vicious glee, I admit, as I observed them from the Tekh.

The Voussoirs looked over my body with a certain amount of disdain, irritation, and even disgust, muttering between themselves in High English about the “abomination” that I was. But the Keystone examined me with a certain amount of curiosity, and I felt zher thoughts brushing the ptekh, seeking me.

You are a… curiosity.

I will admit, when I first heard that mindvoice, I was shocked. Had I sought the information in the Tekh, I would have known such was possible, but I was still learning how to pay attention to things outside my own thought processes. That another’s thoughts could touch my own—and when I was dead!—had been beyond my wildest imaginings.

The Keystone’s consciousness swept over mine, gently, not intruding, and I sensed that zhe was afraid of me. Zhe was one person, augmented perhaps, but only able to command the gtekh in zher body and the ptekh immediately around zher. But I… I was ptekh now. Nay, I was Tekh. I was connected to every ptekh nanite across our world, and sensed that, if I stretched myself, I could reach out to the ptekh on other worlds as well. If I wished it, I could lift my lifeless body from that bed now, lift it up into orbit around this planet, send it flying through space, feeding on the light of the suns and of the distant stars. I who was once only Oxalis, denied even the right to my own name, was now also Tekh.

With a certain amount of pride, I consulted the Tekh to learn how to respond, then brushed my consciousness against the Keystone’s. You were the one who commended me to the Tekh. Aye, I urged her as I felt her surprise, Search your gtekh for the memories of that day. Ah see, you do remember me.

I do, zhe agreed, bending over my body to lift one eyelid curiously. My eye color had not changed in death; this was molded ptekh, designed to perfectly mimic life. But I remember you were also a boy.

I was never a boy, nor a man, I pointed out. Even you cannot deny my true self. You commended me—all of me—to the Tekh, and the ptekh saw who I really was even though you did not.

Perhaps, zhe conceded, fingertips brushing my eyelid gently until it closed again. What will you do now?

I no longer had a mouth with which to smile, but I know she could feel my joy, my anger, my resolve, my triumph. I will tell the truth. The Tekh is awakening. Can you feel it?

It was clear zhe did not like that, but there was nothing zhe could do. I am no longer a natural being. I now have the power to destroy entire worlds and build them anew in whatever image I wish. And I am far from the only person ever commended to the Tekh. Even then, I was encountering other people in the nanite cloud who had been denied a full life because of their race, their class, their gender, their religion, their body or their mind, and together we were learning about how our multiple identities and multiple oppressions intersected. We were angry, and hopeful, and wanted change, and there were uncounted trillions of us. We were waking, and we were unstoppable. The Keystone was just one Navi, and the Navi just one people, and zhe knew it.

Zhe departed, doing nothing, saying nothing. My family and friends whispered among themselves, but when the Odeion’s Arch did naught to punish them for the “abomination” in their midst, they simply returned to their mourning.

On the fourth day after my passing, they took me outside, laying me in my shroud upon the grass in the clearing, where the suns shone their light upon my face. I was still as unnaturally fresh and perfect as I had been when the ptekh cloud had first surrounded my broken body.

They sang their farewell hymns, and shared stories—even jokes—about my life and deeds. They talked to me in quiet, hurt, loving voices, knowing that I could somehow sense them—though not able to imagine to what extent, for I certainly had not understood when I killed myself that this would be my life now—and said their final goodbyes.

When they seemed ready, I called the ptekh of my body forth, sending it spiraling upwards and outwards in multi-hued ribbons of color, leaving nothing behind. I would have preferred to have been buried in the good earth, to have my body rot away and feed the worms and roots to nourish the land. But instead, I am what I am. I am one who lived in violence, died violently, was violently changed in death to hide the reality of what had been done to me and what I had done to myself, and was now transformed into something with the power to wreck unspeakable violence upon the land, its communities and our world. I am one who was silenced in life. But I am also one who wants the violence to end, and wants to speak out.

< >

Here is my truth. My name is Oxalis. I killed myself and was commended to the Tekh. I see nothing and am aware of all. This is what I would tell you of our motherworld.

In life, the full mysteries of the Tekh are known only to the Navi. But in death, even a Survi who has been commended to the Tekh knows all. I can tell you what was hidden to me in life, for the memories of all gtekh and ptekh are imprinted in the Tekh cloud itself. Here is what I know.

In the end, our motherworld the Earth was destroyed not by global warming, nor by nuclear warfare, but by our technology, our foolish trust in its ability to solve all of our problems, and our unwillingness to stop using our technology to grasp after ever more comfort and profit at the expense of the land and the lives that depend upon it.

Although our motherworld would have been forever changed by global warming or nuclear warfare alone, she might still have been able to survive in some changed form, and some of her teeming, varied life with her. But instead, in the end, when overpopulation, drought, flooding, warfare and crushing poverty on Earth still had not been able to utterly destroy the planet, when her human population was still growing rapidly enough to expand to offworld colonies welcoming of any who could afford to go, Earth’s final destruction was brought on by the hands of those living on her youngest and richest offworld colony, V’Azyltri.

Before Earth was destroyed, one hundred families—the very richest on Earth, billionaires all—ruled the Lunar, Martian and Venusian colonies, abandoning the motherworld and its countless poor to their fates and seeking to establish paradise elsewhere.

The first colonies established were on our motherworld’s only natural satellite and on the fourth planet from our mothersun. These colonies came to be known by our people as L’Azylun and M’Azyltu, but in those days they were called Luna Basel 1 and Martia Basel 2. Fifty-two extremely wealthy families escaped the growing unrest on Earth and came to dwell on L’Azylun in several segregated settlements, bringing some of their friends and associates with them and forming what would one day become our own middle class Pinault and Lemann castes, lower middle class Usmanov and Mittal castes, working class Rinehart caste, and poor Fontbona, Yanai and Dangote castes.

Meanwhile, the forty-eight wealthiest families of Earth settled at the same time in the more comfortable Martian colony, M’Azyltu, bringing their friends and associates with them as well and allowing any who could afford to pay to emigrate to this wealthy world. The population of M’Azyltu later divided, with the twenty-seven richest families departing in secret to found Venusia Basel 3 on the second planet from Earth’s sun, and there begin an ambitious project. Later known as V’Azyltri, this wealthiest of colonies was the one that, in the end, destroyed our motherworld.

At the end of the 21st century, Benji Brin, the elderly son of Sergey Brin of Google and Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe, developed a revolutionary new product. Combining his Da’s cloud-computing services and his Ma’s genomics and biotechnology services, he funded the development of a genetically-engineered, self-replicating nanotech life form. Called primordial nanotechnology or p-tech in his time and ptekh in our own, the charcoal gray cloud of nanites had initially been developed to scrub carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from Earth’s atmosphere and toxic wastes from her rivers, soils and oceans.

But L’Azylun, M’Azyltu and V’Azyltri watched in horror as the first beta releases of the p-tech canisters over Earth’s economically-oppressed southern hemisphere quickly spiraled out of control. The p-tech not only scrubbed the earth, air and water of our motherworld clean, but reduced her and all her teeming life to bare bedrock and pools of biochemical sludge.

It is hard for those of you living today to fully appreciate the catastrophic loss that occurred in those ten short days so long ago. Humanity’s Navi and Survi children now live in a universe of countless colonized worlds, where our terraformation ships routinely release ptekh in entire planetary systems, reducing each world down to bare bedrock and clouds of new ptekh that assemble themselves into entire landscapes, harden to form the roads and walls and roofs of entire cities, fabricate new ptekh liveships to bear us to new worlds, and feed, clothe and heal us with ptekh foods, textiles and medicines. What is the loss of one small world so long ago to us today when we destroy and remake thousands of worlds to meet the everyday needs of our people?

But there is much we have forgotten, much we have been made to forget. Our forgetfulness, our education into ignorance, oppresses us. The truth is hidden in the Tekh cloud, which is everywhere and thinks about everything. But we who have been commended to the Tekh after passing through the gateway of death are Tekh. We know our secrets, and we are willing to share with those who will listen.

You have forgotten that our motherworld was not harvested for her biomass after all her life forms had been safely gathered into a ptekh liveship habitat pod as emigrants are today, waiting for the planet to be converted and reshaped around them as the outer shell of their living ship.

But I remember. Remember with me.

You have forgotten that our motherworld was teeming with life, human and nonhuman, when she was destroyed.

But I remember. Remember with me.

You have forgotten that those who did this, those twenty-seven families living in safety and luxury on V’Azyltri, deliberately released p-tech on an entire inhabited world and destroyed everyone and everything there.

But I remember. Remember with me.

You have forgotten that these human ancestors of the Navi, beholding the tragedy their hands had wrought and discerning a ghastly opportunity even before the rogue p-tech had settled, engineered and released vaporized genetic-nanotechnology—g-tech—in L’Azylun as well, and watched with greedy, cold, calculating eyes as that early, failed form of gtekh infected millions with cancer-causing nanites.

But I remember. Remember with me.

You have forgotten those twenty-seven families, seeing and pursuing a way to remake their bodies and the bodies of their descendents into genetically-augmented Navis, nearly destroyed M’Azyltu with nuclear weapons when our Survi ancestors there realized their less-wealthy colony would likely be the site of the next round of experimentation and fought back.

But I remember. Remember with me.

You have forgotten that it was only after a world was destroyed, a colony was infected and a war was fought that the fifty-two wealthy families of L’Azylun and the forty-eight rich families of M’Azyltu were allowed to seek refuge in V’Azyltri.

But I remember. Remember with me.

You have forgotten that we Survi people, known then as the Survivors, were only a tiny, extremely privileged portion of the population of Earth, and that the sun-warmed skin of people who once walked the motherworld and died with her used to be far more often brown than white.

But I remember. Remember with me.

You have forgotten that the Navi people, known then as the Navigators, have not always had gtekh in their blood, have not always been able to control ptekh with their bodies and minds, have not always been genetically, mentally, physically, spiritually and technologically superior to we mere Survis.

But I remember. Remember with me.

You have forgotten that the twenty-seven families who made themselves into Navis sacrificed literally billions of lives to create and perfect p-tech and g-tech.

But I remember. Remember with me.

You have forgotten that it was only then, seeing a better future for themselves that depended upon our subjugation, that they gathered our Survi ancestors in to that first p-tech pod on V’Azyltri, harvested the Venusian landscape to create new p-tech for that first liveship’s outer hull, and launched the first generation ship toward Alpha Centauri with the Navigators looking through the p-tech ship’s eyes.

But I remember. Remember with me.

You who now believe our Tekh saves us have forgotten that it was initially our Tekh that destroyed our motherworld and her people, nearly destroyed us all, and oppresses us and our countless worlds now.

Please remember with me. Our worlds depend upon it.