Dark State--A Novel of the Merchant Princes Multiverse
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Faced with a widespread uprising by the Radical Party—the consistently named and much more militant successor to previous decades’ League of Labor—combined with a fiscal crisis and mutinies in the military, King John Frederick demonstrated far less resilience than his ancestors. He fled the capital, but was captured by mutineers at an army garrison in the vicinity of Lake Michigan. (Extensive conurbations exist in New Britain in the vicinity of major US cities including Chicago and Detroit, but due to the vagaries of naming and urban growth none of their names will be familiar.) Well-organized cadres from the Leveler underground movements seized control over the ministries and parliament buildings in New London. These forces were mysteriously well-funded under the circumstances. It is speculated that Clan world-walkers were even then liquidating their assets in the United States and using them to bankroll the quartermasters of the New England cells of Burroughs’s faction. When the pound (currency) floated and began to hyperinflate, their stockpile of gold bullion became extremely valuable. This in turn served to cement the world-walkers’ insidious leverage within the Radical party.
* * *
All revolutions take place against the backdrop of a power vacuum. The revolution in the New British Empire shocked everyone—this is a time line in which there was no French revolution, no American War of Independence, no Russian Revolution. The Year Zero for constitutional democratic government in time line three was 2002, and it remains a deeply shocking, ideologically radical proposition to the other natives of that time line. It is easy to forget just how revolutionary the United States of America seemed when seen through the eyes of outsiders in the nineteenth century; to the Bourbon Imperium and the other powers of time line three, the New American Commonwealth (as the post-imperial government renamed itself) is as utopian and as existentially terrifying as the Bolshevik Soviet Union must have seemed in the 1920s.
Internal factional fighting in the first six months of the new republic threatened to develop into a full-scale internal civil war, with death squads and blood baths on all sides. Somehow (world-walker intervention is suspected but cannot be proven) the Moderate Faction within the Leveler Party executed an end game that resulted in the death of the Security Commissioner, Stephen Reynolds, leader of the Peace and Justice faction, on the eve of a purge he was planning (which may be compared in scope to the Third Reich’s Night of the Long Knives). This was rapidly followed by the consolidation of power under a Radical Party government led by Adam Burroughs himself, with Erasmus Burgeson as Minister of Propaganda (communications).
The Party government sued for peace immediately, settling with the French Crown on terms that initially seemed invidious—handing over a considerable number of warships, accepting liability for reparations, and losing Cuba.
And then the influence of the Clan world-walkers becomes clear.
A secret document circulating among the Party leadership in 2003 bears description. Titled “Revolutions and Their Deaths,” and written in contemporary American English (hastily, by a variety of hands), it consists of a study guide to the revolutions in our own time line alluded to earlier in this briefing. It also describes a number of less well-understood revolutions and coups (Haiti 1791, Gran Columbia 1819, Germany 1933, China 1949, Egypt 1952, Iran 1953, Greece 1974, Iran 1979) in terms of the objectives of their leaders, and the administrative and ideological shortcomings that led to their failures to meet their goals (and on occasion, contributed to their successes). The framing rhetorical devices in this document are suspiciously familiar (“fail early, fail smarter, learn from your failures,” “creative disruption,” “the innovator’s dilemma”) and the perspective is somewhat Whiggish in tone: nevertheless, as a document that sets out to explain to a newly empaneled revolutionary government how not to shoot itself in the foot with the same caliber of ammunition used by its predecessors, it succeeds reasonably well.
A particularly frightening aspect of “Revolutions and Their Deaths” is the appendix containing a cynical, if not outright Machiavellian, analysis of two successful revolutions—the Iranian revolution of 1979, and the development of Communist China after the death of Mao Zedong. The Islamic Republic of Iran today is a (to Western eyes, bizarre) fusion of republican democratic values with religious fundamentalism. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China is nominally a communist state (ruled by the dictatorship of the proletariat), but in practice is governed by an authoritarian capitalist oligarchy. The appendix proposes that as the revolution in the British Empire is the first of its kind, and the people are not accustomed to democratic forms, it will be necessary for the Party to operate and maintain a Deep State for at least a generation—a disciplined ideological cadre (like the Communist Party, or the Iranian Shiite religious academy) to stabilize and hold in place the structures of democracy within tightly delineated boundaries until such time as the embryonic forms of representative government take root and can survive autonomously.
As of 2005, the Radical Party appeared to be following this prescription. Adam Burroughs was enshrined in office as “the First Man,” a President for Life with constitutional powers approximating those of a cut-down monarchy. The Radical Party itself occupied key ministries in his cabinet by way of the People’s Commissioners. Parliament is open and a universal franchise (including women and anyone aged sixteen or over) elects representatives from any political party that does not espouse a return to monarchism or the abolition of democratic norms—but the Party also maintains control over the Treasury, and has its own armed formation in the shape of the Commonwealth Guard, which occupies a role approximately equivalent to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard or (within the Soviet Union) the KGB’s troops. The Radical Party is built around an ideology of revolutionary republican democracy and resistance to aristocracy and the principle of monarchism. As the first flowering of modernist post-royal politics in time line three, the Party is a deadly existential threat to every other government on the planet: they are unflinching and fanatical proponents of a form of politics that we are taught to take for granted, and this often causes confusion on the part of Americans when they are first introduced to Commonwealth politics.
We come from a time line where democracy unquestionably won. This is by no means the case in time line three. They speak our political idiom—but in their own world’s context they are extremists and zealots. They will use the tools of fanatics, if necessary, to achieve their goals, because they are deeply unreasonable about democracy. Their ideology is not congruent with our time line’s views on economic liberalism, capitalism, free trade, or socialism. It is vitally important that the reader not project their own preconceptions of the meaning of democracy onto the statements of the Radical Party’s ideologues, lest in doing so they blind themselves to subtle warning signs of difference.
After all, if there is one person a fanatic is predisposed to hate, it’s a moderate who is almost but not completely aligned with their program.
And the Commonwealth has nuclear weapons.
(TO BE CONTINUED in Invisible Sun, coming January 2019)
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Accretion disk
A “whirlpool-like” disk of extremely hot gas that gathers around a black hole. As matter is sucked into a black hole it heats up until the radiation pressure from the inside of the accretion disk balances out the attractive force of the hole. It thus limits the rate at which a black hole can absorb matter. As most black holes rotate, the accretion disk is dragged round at very high speed: temperatures range from several millions of degrees up.
ARMBAND
Device used by US military and DHS to transport aircraft between parallel universes. Mechanism is secret; believed to include neural tissue harvested from world-walker “donors.”
BLACK RAIN
Code name assigned to time line three (home of the New American Commonwealth) by the US government.
Bogies
The chassis or framework carrying wheels, upon which a railway carriage rests.
&nb
sp; Alternatively: hostile airborne/spaceborne missile or object.
Clan
An umbrella organization consisting of five (previously six) families of world-walkers, formerly resident in the Gruinmarkt in time line one. Coordinated the world-walkers’ inter-temporal trade and smuggling activities, provided security, and a framework for the arranged marriages required to keep the world-walking bloodlines alive. The Clan was effectively disbanded in 2003, and the survivors sought asylum in time line three (with the New American Commonwealth).
Corvée for the Clan postal service
An obligation on world-walkers from time line one (who were members of the Clan). They had to make themselves available to transport goods between time lines a certain number of times every month. The organization is now defunct.
CVS
A big, well-known American pharmacy chain.
DHS
US Department of Homeland Security: in time line two, the agency responsible for transportation security, counter-terrorism, and para-time security (interception of world-walkers). Also responsible for organizing security of government and corporate sites in other time lines, and countering threats from all other time lines.
DPR
Department of Para-historical Research: a para-time industrial espionage agency established within MITI in the New American Commonwealth.
Engram
Among world-walkers, a knotwork design that can trigger the world-walking ability to transport them to another parallel universe.
Family Trade Organization
Precursor to the Office of Special Projects. It was a cross-agency organization established within the US government in 2002 in response to the discovery of world-walkers and the Clan.
FISA Court
United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court: a US federal court established to oversee requests for surveillance warrants and other espionage-related secret legislation.
Gruinmarkt
A small kingdom on the eastern seaboard of North America in time line one, founded by Viking colonists in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Home of the Clan. It had reached a late medieval level of political and economic development before it was destroyed in a nuclear holocaust instigated by the United States.
Hochsprache
A Germanic family language spoken in the Gruinmarkt; now effectively extinct, remembered only by former members of the Clan.
HUMINT
Human Intelligence: intelligence gathered by means of human agents and informers (see also SIGINT, ELINT).
ICBM
Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile.
MITI
Ministry of Intertemporal Technological Intelligence: a government agency within the New American Commonwealth. This body is tasked with accelerating technological development by disseminating new developments discovered in other time lines.
New American Commonwealth
Successor nation to the New British Empire, which ruled North and South America and Australasia in time line three from 1761 to 2003. The New American Commonwealth is a revolutionary republic created by the former Radical Party to pursue the goal of spreading democracy throughout time line three.
Niejwein
Capital of the Gruinmarkt. Destroyed in 2003.
NRO
National Reconnaissance Office: US government secret agency in time line two responsible for launching spy satellites and developing photographic/radar intelligence from satellites.
NSA
National Security Agency: the US government agency in time line two tasked with SIGINT and ELINT, the interception and decryption of enemy communications. Noted for monitoring all phone, Internet, and data communications worldwide.
Outer family
Among the Clan world-walkers, the world-walking trait is recessive: only the children of two active world-walkers inherit the ability. However, the children of a world-walker and a non-world-walker may be carriers. The offspring of two such carriers may have the world-walking ability. Such carriers were monitored by the Clan and known as “outer family” members (the Clan had a strong interest in maximizing the pool of possible world-walkers available to them).
Para-time
Umbrella term for parallel universes diverging from a point in time. The cause of divergence may be some quantum event which may have multiple outcomes with macroscopic (observable) effects.
POTUS
President of the United States.
RFID
Radio Frequency ID: “smart” inventory control tags found on many items of packaging or clothing. RFID tags can be interrogated remotely and used to identify the item they are attached to, unlike bar codes (which need to be scanned at close range). Same underlying technology as contactless payment cards.
SCEP
Special Counter-Espionage Police: a government agency within the New American Commonwealth of time line three. The organization is tasked with tracking down subversives, spies, and agents of both the British Crown-in-Exile and the French Empire.
SIGINT
Signals intelligence: intelligence obtained by analyzing metadata derived from enemy radio, telegraph, Internet, and other signals.
TL:DR
“Too Long; Didn’t Read” (sarcastic dismissal of a long explanation or glossary).
USAF
United States Air Force.
World-walker
A person equipped with the ability to controllably teleport between parallel universes. It’s an inherited ability, the hereditable mechanism presumed to have been invented by a high-technology civilization elsewhere in para-time.
TOR BOOKS BY CHARLES STROSS
The Rapture of the Nerds (with Cory Doctorow)
The Delirium Brief
THE MERCHANT PRINCES SERIES
The Bloodline Feud
(Originally published as The Family Trade and The Hidden Family)
The Traders’ War
(Originally published as The Clan Corporate and The Merchants’ War)
The Revolution Trade
(Originally published as The Revolution Business and The Trade of Queens)
Empire Games
Dark State
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHARLES STROSS was born in Leeds, England, in 1964. He has worked as a pharmacist, software engineer, and freelance journalist, but now writes full-time. To date, Stross has won three Hugo Awards and been a finalist fifteen times. He has also won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, Best Novella, Best Fantasy Novel, and has been a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (twice) and for the Nebula Award. In addition, his fiction has been translated into around a dozen languages. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife, Feòrag, a couple of cats, several thousand books, and an ever-changing herd of obsolescent computers. You can sign up for email updates here.
Visit Charles Stross at:
www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/
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Twitter @cstross
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Time Lines
Main Character Profiles
Principal Cast List
Part One: Prisoner
Moscow Rules
Best Laid Plans
Arrivals
Bred in the Bones
Part Two: Emissary
Covert Agendas
Exchange Visit
Diplomats
Learning Exercises
Part Three: Defectors
Dining with the Devil
Action Thi
s Day
Exception Amber
Appendix
Glossary of Terms
Tor Books by Charles Stross
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DARK STATE
Copyright © 2017 by Charles Stross
All rights reserved.
Cover art direction and design by Neil Lang
Cover photograph by Elnur/Shutterstock.com
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First Edition: January 2018