by S. K Munt
Being inside the brothel made my stomach turn and Kelia very rudely hold her nose within, which was silly I suppose because the dwelling had been beautiful, clean-smelling and as meticulously well-presented as its proprietor, Madeline had been, but it had depressed me all the same. Not so much because Kelia looked truly horrified, but because Lette, Elfin and Emmerly had been exceedingly curious and at a few points- excited.
There was one silver lining to that trip though; Madeline had been an Artisan by birth and like Elfin’s mother, had grown up sewing and creating. Her personal wardrobe was impressive to say the least, but what surprised us was that she had a little shop front attached to the other side of her business, which she sold her own creations through with some other local designers. The entrance to her harem was on a street that housed a tavern, an inn and a few lowbrow eateries but the side that her boutique opened up on was in the town square and across from a noble neighbourhood. She had a lavish apartment in the middle and told us that she didn’t really need to work to provide for herself now, but she did it for the companionship. Madeline only saw clients of her own choosing if they were attractive and charming enough, and often serviced joined couples who treated her as friends within the nobility. For free, she spent time with a man who visited her from Rachiel every month (a truck driver) who she claimed to love and for her, that was as close to romance and acceptance as she was ever going to get. She seemed happy enough about that so I hope it motivated Kelia to dream a little bigger- I know it left an impression on Elfin, whose eyes were as big as saucers after.
*
The kingdom’s museum had one particular collection that fascinated me that I’d first noticed in the Collection room in Eden, but now delighted to see that it had grown to twice its original size. That collection consisted of over thirteen different telephones, dated from the early twenty-first century just before the return of God, which had been unearthed from the ruins of office buildings in Stanford, Connecticut by Jasper Bronx when he had come into power by excavating the entire crumbled city. Most of the phones were very damaged but one was still in a little white box sealed in plastic, which was astonishing. No wonder we outlawed reproducing plastic for packaging now!
Kohén had once told me that back in the day, humans had as many office workers as labourers, meaning that they had an unofficial class of people called ‘White Collars’ which was a caste that Kohén’s older brother Karol hoped to recreate when he was king, and once technology was back in full swing. For the time being we had the basics in technology- computers for the scientists, solar electricity for the people’s homes and the business districts, and photographers who were currently studying film-making, and although we knew how to do more, putting certain things into motions were made difficult by the fact that parts of the Callielian continent were still so wild. Yes we had people to call in Janiel, Academics who could quickly design the devices necessary and the funds to produce factories to build them- but not enough people to put in phone lines, not in a way that could be justified anyway when telegrams were sufficing and the mail service so quick thanks to the railroad and highways.
Our tutor said that when Calliel as a whole had become stable enough to warrant an increase in technology, some of the ‘desk’ jobs that we already had, in addition to new positions, would shift from being the responsibility of the lesser Academics and the upper Blue Collars, and would become ‘White Collar,’ careers instead. The people in this caste would be taught how to use computers and hopefully soon after, a digital telephone service would be implemented for them to run as well. We were all excited by the prospect of telephoning someone, but out tutor made it clear that the White Collar caste was still at least a decade away from being implemented. For the time being, we needed people building, farming and raising their families in Arcadia and little else, for Arcadia’s primary export was still food and not information.
Every region made the most of its natural resources; Arcadian Gold came from the area of Nitika in the south, which was not far from the highway junction on the southwest coast in St Miguel. There was nothing left of the original City Of Angels now which had stood there before it had become a crater, but a harbour had been formed there as a result of God’s wrath and man’s bombing, and now it was one of Arcadia’s most important terminals.
To honour the state that had been there before the fall, the entire southwest coast was referred to as ‘The Cali Coast’ still. The nuclear bomb that had been dropped there by one of America’s old rivals had devastated the heart of the area that had once been Miguel’s ‘Barachiel’ then ‘Los Angeles,’ (which our tutor swore had come from the translation of ‘Lost angels’ before the Native Americans had been wiped from the area) but part of that devastation included most of the land having been razed flat and so, that was where King Lloyd, Elijah’s father, had started building the highway as soon as he’d been sure that the radiation truly was gone. Now we had a highway in a crooked cross which ran east to west across the continent (connecting St Miguel, Nitika and Janiel), north to south on our side (Arcadia through Nitika junction then Tariel), and south to Yael in the middle from a small junction town.
That radiation had taken hundreds of years to dissipate though, because the ten-megaton bomb that had been dropped on the area of Los Angeles had not only devastated the area for hundreds of miles, but had punched a hole into the ground that was now called St Miguel’s Canyon, and formed the rear wall of the harbour. On the other hand, the bombs that had been dropped on Seattle soon after the start of World War Four had exploded in the air and caused a lot of carnage, but it hadn’t left a hole in the earth- just a flattened space that we now farmed.
Needless to say, nothing much had been salvaged from either area, directly after the bombings or centuries later when we’d managed to dig deeper, which was why it was now against the law for any country to manufacture bombs or even use the word ‘war’ when discussing a subject of contention.
America probably would have fallen to pieces following those attacks, but the bombs that had been aimed at New York City had hit the ocean instead, and had drowned the city rather than pulverised it, giving millions of people the chance to escape before God had thrown his hat into the ring. Millions of others had perished from the tidal waves that had smashed and changed the coastline for years though, and those survivors had flocked to the area of Janiel, the way the south American’s had inundated North Arcadia, and now, we had over one hundred thousand people alive and well on the continent of Calliel where there had been only an estimated eleven thousand left in year 1, AA. But if that nuclear bomb had hit New York...well, we probably wouldn’t have settled the eastern seaboard at all by this point.
There were farms popping up across North Arcadia and mines in the south, but there were still only four actual towns on the land claimed by our kingdom; Eden, St Miguel Harbour (which was little more than a village that offered accommodation and food), Nitika, which was a very large city in the desert where those in the gold mining industry lived, and Rachiel. Four cities was not much compared to the previous ‘modern’ standards, but they were beautiful, peaceful cities and we had more in Arcadia than any of the other kingdoms did. In fact, the other Kingdoms thus far only had one city each, even the kingdom of Tariel that was the second most populous in Calliel, and definitely the wealthiest thanks to the fact that they mined gold as easily as humans had once mined trees for paper. In the north of our country, we farmed and in the south, we mined gold and quartz, but in Tariel, gold was everywhere.
The Kingdom of Tariel fell under the jurisdiction of King Emmanuel Gutierrez who had built his city where the Mexican border had once been after King Aidan (Elijah’s great-grandfather) had granted him the funds to do so. Technically, Emmanuel was in charge of the land from just beneath the Cali coast down and across to the mid-point of what had once been called Texas, but most of the southern tip of the continent was now overgrown by jungle and useless to him, which was okay because the people of Tariel
were content to buy what they could not provide for themselves. Their city was beautiful and had several skyscrapers already, their people dark-skinned and prosperous and their desire to explore or extend their boundaries slim. The population laws were the strictest there- one child per person- but they already had an excess of sixty thousand people so that made sense. In Arcadia, the Barachiel kings had capped our population at that for all four cities combined!
Oil was mined in the central region of Yael, and dozens of cattle ranches had started cropping up on the plains there in the past twenty years. Their current king hoped to expand the land they owned all the way to the coast, but piracy from those who remained Godless made almost the entire east coast of the country dangerous- the oceans especially which meant that Yael still had to trade across the country.
Our current King of Yael, Elbert was the grandson of a powerful Nephilim, James Yael, who had been granted ownership of the region for the simple fact that he had given the drought-stricken area what it needed most- rain. He’d only been in power for twenty years before he’d had to pass his crown down to his son Elbert, because he’d quickly exhausted himself, but he’d improved the soil quality by forty percent before doing so using powers similar to those of Kohl Barachiel. The current King had no powers of his own, but he was incredibly intelligent and well liked by his people, and had reigned with what was rumoured to be a jolly disposition and a sharp mind for twenty-five years since. I couldn’t wait to meet him one day, and when our tutor told us that the soil quality had now improved by sixty percent and soon would be farmed as well, I silently poked my tongue out at Kohén across the sea- I’d been right, and his own tutor agreed! I just had to hope that King Elbert was interested in giving up precious, arable land for cotton production and not just food.
Most of the factories that had sprung up in the eastern kingdom of Janiel had been funded by the fishing industry and populated by survivors of New York City, which had been brought back to life by King Jasper Bronx and was now ruled by his grandson, Elliot Bronx. Elliot was one of the monarchs who wanted to see our land restored to its former glory, and because his people had come from the east originally, Elliot worked hard to try and restore or salvage and antiquated treasures that he found buried under the rubble of cities such as Boston, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. The northeast coast was safer than the southeast, because the pirates shied away from the cold knowing that the top half of the continent was an icy wasteland anyway, so fishing wasn’t a death sentence as it would have been down off Yael’s shores, but it was still more dangerous to live there than in any other kingdom and radiation had affected a lot of the survivors in the beginning, which was why they still found conception problematic and opened their doors to our unwanted third-borns.
Elliot wanted to create a naval guard to counteract the pirate threat, but the other kings refused to arm multitudes of men in the name of keeping land that wasn’t actually being used by us- or water we didn’t own with people we couldn’t afford to lose. The Corps could defend their own people if attacked and every city had at least three bands of these, but they were not allowed to venture out into the ocean and pick a fight because someone they didn’t trust was sailing too close. Elliot didn’t like it and complained often, but he’d never been attacked either so he had no grounds for his demands, aside from paranoia.
Originally, all of the monarchs in those areas had been Arcadian nobility once, and had received permission to go and contribute to the reconstruction effort by amassing their own empires with previous Barachiel kings. Each kingdom had its own government, but the four monarchs together operated as a continent-wide governing body for Calliel, which meant that they came together often enough to make sure that the rules of God and Miguel Barachiel were being followed, and most importantly that society was being erected upon our land and pushing forward to reclaim it, without the assistance of any form of religious practice. You had to believe in God to belong to Calliel, but you had no right to tell anybody how he or she ought to believe, so long as the followed the rules passed down to us by Archangel Miguel in the code of human ethics. Every serious disagreement was to be solved by one of the academically trained ‘shepherds’ in every caste, with no laws being present as a precedent, except for God’s. (Miguel’s stipulation). Murder was the biggest no-no, but that held true even for the government, so people accused of things such as murder were not put to death (unless you killed a Nephilim or Royal- THAT was death by guillotine and publicly), but banished, and that punishment rule held true for every single one of us as soon as we turned thirteen and were considered a young-adult. We had glyphs to symbolise various crimes and anybody found guilty of them by a shepherd were tattooed with the appropriate marking and either given a second chance, or banished if the crime was extreme enough. Other kingdoms could take them in but that was up for the kingdom to decide- and anyone who was not received anywhere else was left to wander the undeveloped ruins of Calliel and fend for themselves. Sometimes, you might happen upon a man with a glyph on his forearm and you knew to avoid him until he earned your trust, but anyone given more than three was immediately cast out as a trouble-maker and not likely to be taken in anywhere else.
Only once in my life had I met eyes with a man bearing the glyph for murder- he’d been on the other side of the electric fence and I’d been asking him what his tattoo meant after wandering away from Finch to fetch his soccer ball. He’d been charming and golden and handsome and had told me that he was marked as a Nephilim and that I could touch my fingers through the fence to his and not be electrocuted. I’d been gullible I suppose and always curious, and had been just about to stretch out my four-year old fingers when Finch had spotted me and hollered out. The man hadn’t retreated- had merely taunted Finch by telling him that he could take good care of a pretty little thing like me so my brother should just hand me over, and Finch had picked me up and raced me home. We’d both gotten into a lot of trouble with my mother and had been forbidden from going within fifty feet of the boundary fence ever again after that, but the funny thing was, I hadn’t gotten a dangerous vibe from the man at all until he’d called me ‘pretty.’ No one ever called me pretty, and my nerves had jangled with alarm then. Thinking over it now made chills run down my spine.
I’d glimpsed the banished since of course, but only ever from a safe distance. Sometimes they clumped together in little packs and came close to the electric fence separating the Tidal Fall from the Wildwoods, appealing to people for food or demanding that the monarchs come out and see the evidence of imperfection within Utopia, but I’d never been allowed near them and didn’t want to venture too close because they looked terrifying. Usually dirty, scruffy and hungry and armed with handmade weapons. The prospect of being cast out of Arcadia’s walls wouldn’t have scared me half as much, if not for the fact that I’d be forced to co exist (probably not for long!) with such terrifying creatures.
The laws were more lax and simple than the ones that had been in place worldwide before the apocalypse, but the Barachiel kings had always insisted that giving people all they could want was a better solution than punishing them for taking it, so that was the wisdom that our entire society had been built upon and for the most part, it was working. There were still snags of course- most women were still waiting to see a female monarch in power, and probably would not believe that men considered us equal until that happened (I was one of them, as was my mother- though Jaiya had never cared one bit), and conflicts still arose between neighbours, friends, spouses and villages- but the Barachiel kings had successfully netted the faith not only of the Arcadians, but of every kingdom in the world and for now, we were all working towards the very simple common goal of being good people and prospering together through fair trade and kindness.
Most of the kingdoms copied Arcadia’s conduct, but others changed certain things and that was okay with King Elijah so long as it was within reason, and so long as every child born into this new world understood that regardless of how m
uch distance separated us and how the values of the kingdoms differed- there was only one race left- the human race- and we all had a place within it. Sometimes, that place was harder than the person beside you, but if we put our faith in the Barachiel family, they would guide us to a world that would come to resemble God’s Heaven on earth in time.
By the time we Given girls had finished our crash course on Callielian history, I realised that I agreed with, or saw the logic in almost every decision that the monarchy had made in the past six hundred years. But as much as I respected my king, I knew that I’d never be able to shake off the belief that society was still severely unbalanced, and my dormitory room was proof of that. We had been collected together because we were third-born, which was illogical because I was twice as smart as many of the first-born kids being educated in the class beside us, we had been kept together because we were women, which was prejudiced, and we hated each other because we all felt like we were entitled to more happiness than the other, which was greedy, and without grounds because none of us had a purpose to our lives or any goal other than being better than the other! As God had punished Satan too severely for what he could have forgiven, we were punished for a crime that we had not committed and that was not fair. And every time Elfin pushed into the bathroom ahead of me, I wondered what she was hoping to gain, and every time I pushed back and snatched up the toothpaste first, I couldn’t help feel that I’d lost something I’d never be able to get back, even if I had won the prize.
Then another day would pass and a letter wouldn’t come from Martya, and I’d go to the main bathroom which was rarely ever used and brush my teeth alone, trying to think of a letter to write to Kohén to express all I was feeling, that I wouldn’t mind being read by the royal official who checked our mail.