“Well, almost the entire country,” his wife said.
“But how will we mobilize them?” Arsyen asked.
“You just need to tell them you have returned,” the chief strategist said.
“Well,” said his wife, with a nervous laugh, “you might have to do a bit more than that. Your family did kill quite a few people.”
The chief strategist shot his wife a dirty look. “What she means is that most everyone is waiting for your return.”
“But where are they?”
“They are everywhere, Prince Arsyen. Everywhere.”
Arsyen threw up his hands. But then he had an idea.
“I know a revolutionary,” he said.
“Revolutionaries? You don’t want to fall in with them,” the chief strategist said.
“Communists, likely,” his wife said.
“Natia is the good type of revolutionary,” Arsyen said. “I mean, she’s a woman. Women get a bit bored and need something to talk about, and that’s how they fall into these things. My father always said that female revolutionaries are only revolutionaries until they’re pregnant. Anyway, I think I know where she is — at Sklartar’s home.”
“Impossible,” said the treasurer. “Sklartar’s home burned down during the coup. A police station is there now.”
“We don’t need revolutionaries,” the chief strategist said. “We just need to rally your supporters. Our army at the convalescent home will help us spread the word. Just give us a moment to discuss the plan.”
The chief strategist waved the committee members closer, forming a tight ball of gray, weathered faces.
“We could have our army go house to house,” Arsyen heard the chief strategist say. “The wheelchairs can cover a lot of ground in a day.”
“What about a subversive theater performance?” said another.
Arsyen shook his head. He had forgotten how useless old people were. Silicon Valley was right to ban them — youth and entrepreneurial daring were so much more important than experience.
He shifted in his uncomfortable throne and felt his mobile phone dig into his thigh. He thought of his GaltPage. How many followers had joined Justice for Poodlekek since he last checked? Probably millions.
His supporters were waiting for him. They were his people. Young people. Innovators and disruptors.
Arsyen slid off the chair and slipped up the stairs. He had to find Natia.
O utside the Throne Reclamation Committee headquarters, Arsyen hailed a bison-drawn carriage and gave the driver Natia’s home address. He wasn’t sure she would be there, but Sklartar’s old home was now a police station, and the police would surely arrest him on sight if he went there.
Natia’s apartment was in a crumbling, 1970’s-era building. Arsyen climbed three flights of stairs and could hear several voices coming from behind her door. He peered through a half-inch gap in the curtains of her front window. It was hard to make anything out, but it seemed there were several people, none of them in police uniform.
Arsyen knocked twice and within seconds Natia was there, staring back at him, as surprised by him as he was by the realness of her. He processed each bit of her separately — the flushed cheeks, the long nose, the green eyes, the mole on the chin, the sturdy neck. Natia cut off his inspection with a hug.
“I knew the email wasn’t true! I knew you would come!”
Inside the cramped apartment were several other men. These were the strong, young Pyrrhian men he needed to retake his country.
“We’re taking the city back!” Natia said to Arsyen, pushing him toward the center of the room, where everyone was gathered around a man with a map. Arsyen wondered if this was Niels_1973.
The man registered the arrival of the new visitor, his eyes flicking between Natia and Arsyen. The chance that Natia had perhaps been unfaithful crossed Arsyen’s mind, but he pushed it away. What mattered was that he was there now, finally united with his beloved and ready to lead his people.
Natia gripped his arm and unloaded all of the government’s latest atrocities — the cover-ups, the corruption, the “shackles of oppression.” As Natia spoke, Arsyen surveyed the room. The men seemed to be poor students and artists. They were well into their twenties, but there was no gold in their mouths. Their sweaters had holes in them. By California standards — barring Berkeley, where a similar look was widely adopted by the citizenry — the men appeared homeless.
“You!” said the man with the map, suddenly rising to his feet and shaking his finger at Arsyen. “You are Prince Arsyen! As a boy I had to stare at your photo each morning in school. For years I had to hear about your croquet exploits.”
“Comrade Vgad is right!” said another man, jumping to his feet. “He is an Aimo!”
“Arsyen…Aimo?” said Natia, turning to him wide-eyed. “You really don’t look like…”
“Yes, well, I live in California now,” said Arsyen, smiling, trying to pull Natia away from the group of dirty men. “I’ve gotten a bit tanner and in shape. You see, we have these great gyms at Anahata and — ”
“You have no place here,” shouted the man from across the room, taking a step toward Arsyen. “You are the very chains our people are trying to break.”
“Chains?” said Arsyen, looking around the room. He turned. “Natia, I’m sorry. I should have told you. It’s just that I didn’t want it to change how you thought of me.”
“You didn’t want her to know because she would have hated you. Your country hates you,” the man spat. “We all hate you, Bloodthirsty Aimo!”
Arsyen stiffened and turned toward the angry man. “I don’t really agree with that assessment.” He reminded himself to ask for the man’s name — he wouldn’t be long for the world once Arsyen was back in power.
“You have no business being here,” said the man, grabbing a poker from the fireplace.
“Comrade Vgad — stop!” Natia said. “Arsyen built the Justice for Poodlekek page. He is on our side.”
Arsyen’s eyes scanned the hostile faces before him. Such disrespect made him look rather foolish in front of Natia. He would just have to win these dirty hippies to his side.
“She speaks the truth,” said Arsyen, throwing out his chest and putting his hands on his hips, as his father used to do. “I am on your side. I have come back to lead you to victory.”
Arsyen took a step forward and invoked all the silly poetry Natia had written him in her emails.
“We must join together to throw off the shackles of oppression,” he said. “Throw the rich on their backs! Take back the means of production! Join me and my thousands of supporters and we will take back the city!”
“Thousands?” Vgad said. “Show me even a handful. King Aimo starved his supporters and beat his enemies. There is no one left who supports you.”
“My father treated his enemies in a manner befitting of their treachery,” answered Arsyen, puffing his chest out farther.
“Comrade,” hissed a man to Vgad’s left. “A prince’s blood is still blood. We can put him in the front and he can shield the others. If he dies first, then he’s saved one of us.”
“Yeah, and the Aimos weren’t so bad,” another man said, “compared to, say, Stalin or Hitler.”
“And still better than Korpeko,” said another.
“That’s the spirit!” Arsyen grinned. “You see, we can be revolutionaries together.”
Arsyen felt the adrenaline moving through his veins. His father would have been proud. Arsyen had just converted the very people who wanted to destroy his family — and there were still thousands of his real supporters he could call on. He watched with satisfaction as Vgad put down his poker and turned to the other men.
“Come, we must finish our planning. We don’t have time for these distractions.” He beckoned the men to his map.
Arsyen turned to Natia and tried to speak, but his military bluster did not translate to suave courtship. If only he could have a few minutes alone with her bef
ore they started their revolution. She was speaking to him, but it sounded like his Justice for Poodlekek page. Injustice. Injustice. Blah. Blah. It mattered, of course, but he really wished she’d pay a bit more attention to his needs. Injustice would be there tomorrow and the next day; they could solve it then. Arsyen would eventually have to teach her that you can’t really be a queen without allowing — even encouraging — a bit of injustice in your kingdom.
But Natia continued to speak, urging him, touching his shoulder. She blushed whenever their gaze crossed and would occasionally let her hand drift to touch his.
Vgad periodically looked over at the two of them, using each opportunity to glare at Arsyen, who likewise sized up his competition. Vgad seemed as poor as the rest of them, and his clothes were standard-issue Red Cross, but he had clear eyes and a thick beard — the trademark signs of Pyrrhian virility. Arsyen touched his own chin and felt the short stubble of two days without shaving. Vgad stood and addressed the group.
“We are ready to whistle.”
“Whistle?” said Arsyen.
“It’s how we protest,” Natia whispered. “We walk through the streets whistling in peaceful protest.”
Arsyen frowned. “But how does whistling — ”
“Comrade Natia,” Vgad called from across the room, “let’s not waste anymore time. We have a plan — with or without this pathetic prince. I for one have decided to whistle at the military barracks.”
A tear fell from Natia’s eye. “You are so brave, Comrade Vgad.” She stepped toward him.
“The barracks are a very dangerous spot,” said Vgad, his eyes meeting Arsyen’s as he extended his hand to Natia. “It takes a brave man to whistle at the barracks.”
Arsyen saw them then, Natia and Vgad, their lips pursed at the barracks, exchanging whistles, then caresses, and then final, gasping breaths as they dodged and were ultimately hit by Korpeko’s bullets. They would die in each other’s arms. He felt his insides begin to shake, as though Natia were being pulled from his very marrow.
“And I, Prince — I mean, Comrade Arsyen, will whistle at the imperial palace!” declared Arsyen, raising his fist.
The room went silent.
“Are you sure?” Natia rushed back to Arsyen’s side. “We hadn’t planned to whistle at the imperial palace just yet. There’s a protest there tonight, but it will certainly be heavily guarded.”
“The protest is the protest of my people. There must be justice for Poodlekek!” Arsyen cried.
Within minutes, Arsyen found himself equipped with a flag and a megaphone and was being pushed out the door by the group. He needed to find a moment to talk to Natia about his plans for them, but she kept pushing him forward as their group made its way down the stairs. She and twenty others would be accompanying him to the protest.
”My army,” said Arsyen, sweeping his hand across the group when they were all on the street.
“We are the people’s army,” Vgad growled.
The sky had begun to fade into evening, and the streets were deserted. But as his eyes adjusted to the unlit streets, Arsyen began to spot shadowy figures darting between houses, moving in parallel to their group’s own movements. They crept like thieves, jumping from one building to the next.
“Members of the resistance,” Natia whispered.
Soon Arsyen could spot the imperial palace in the distance. Even from several blocks away, the architect’s abuse of classical architecture was apparent, with row after row of Corinthian columns surrounding the palace like rotting teeth. Marble flowers and peacocks adorned the Greek capitals, but the passing of years had weathered their relief, and it now seemed the fruit was eating the birds, swallowing the plumage in their mighty petals. Arsyen would have to rebuild everything.
As they turned onto the imperial road, Arsyen gasped. Thousands of people were gathered in front of the palace. People carried signs bearing the words of Arsyen’s new comrades.
“Give us our land!”
“Speak the truth!”
“Justice for Poodlekek! Justice for Pyrrhia!”
Arsyen made his way through the crowd. New faces huddled around Natia and the other members of the group, pointing at Arsyen and pressing them with questions Arsyen couldn’t hear. It was just as the TRC had told him. His people were there for him, urging him forward.
Asyen and Natia pushed their way to the front. A group of women swarmed around them — mothers perhaps, their white handkerchiefs fluttering like anxious doves across their faces. “Help us!” they cried, grasping Arsyen’s hands.
Natia pulled out a plastic recorder and played a few notes. All of the chatter ceased as people joined hands and began to whistle — a rapid blast of tweets, coupled with the occasional errant showtune. Arsyen joined in by whistling the tune to his favorite video games.
The whistling spread across the crowd, and now everyone was doing it, whistling and swaying, and then Arsyen felt himself pushed forward, the crowd moving up the steps in a wave. They moved forward again, and then he fell and was lifted up and suddenly was perched on one of the comrade’s shoulders, carried higher and higher until he was on the top step, looking out onto the derelict landscape of his city, onto the faces of his people. They stared back at him, lips pursed like fish, and he heard Natia’s voice in his ear. “Whistle, Arsyen, whistle! Let them hear the voice of the revolution!”
Arsyen ferociously pumped air through his lips as his girlfriend helped him off her ox-like shoulders. His eyes raced across the crowd, then over them, toward the city gates, looking for the Throne Reclamation Committee or someone who would tell him what to do next.
Someone emerged from the crowd with a megaphone and handed it to Natia. Natia held up her hand to silence the crowd. “This man speaks for our hearts,” she said, pointing to Arsyen. “He is the one who will bring justice to Poodlekek!”
She surprised Arsyen with a kiss on the lips, a short but mighty kiss in which Arsyen saw fireworks explode across the sky, alighting his heart and the dreams of thousands of Pyrrhians. The crowd cheered. Then Natia pushed him forward and pressed the megaphone into his hands. The crowd threw up their arms.
“Speak!” they shouted. “Speak!”
Arsyen looked into the sea of faces and saw himself, people who looked like less handsome versions of him.
Arsyen spoke. His lips were moving and a voice was speaking, but he was not there. It was not his voice, his mouth, or his brain that spoke. It was not his father’s voice, or the voice of the TRC, or any voice Arsyen had ever imagined in any daydream of the throne. It was a stranger’s voice, repeating what Arsyen had seen on his Justice for Poodlekek page — the same invectives, the same charges against the government. With each squeeze of Natia’s hand, Arsyen’s calls for revolt grew stronger, and the cheers likewise grew in intensity. His people loved him, and he would give them more of what they wanted to hear.
“It is time for a new social order,” he said. “Let us rid our country of fancy palaces, of wealthy, corrupt landowners, and empty curling lanes. Pyrrhians unite! Comrades, we have nothing to lose but our chains!”
The crowd roared and then surged, rushing toward the entrance of the imperial palace. What a wonderful thing to be one with one’s people, Arsyen thought. To be a comrade.
“Long live comrade-ism!” he cried.
They tried to climb the tall gates, rattling the cage that housed the acropolis, kicking at the guards as they thrust their bayonets through the rails. Arsyen felt a strong arm pull him away from Natia, their hands separating as she screamed. He felt a sharp pain in his side, and then something against his head, and then nothing at all for a long time.
When he awoke, Arsyen was in a dank cell lit by suspended torches. His supporters were nowhere in sight. He was completely alone.
Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea.
G regor studied Anahata’s head of security as he briefed the group, his gaze moving from one member of the management team
to the next, collecting their worried expressions with thinly masked delight. But Gregor refused to join in. He would save his concern and attention for when it mattered. None of this had any consequence unless Bobby joined the conversation. And for that, Bobby would need to wake up. Instead, every few minutes, a loud snore, like someone suffocating a pig, came from his end of the table.
Gregor’s mobile buzzed in his pocket with an update. It was yet another story about Anahata’s share price.
Anahata Shares Continue to Fall Over Moon Colony Rumors
News Wire News, 9:43 a.m. EST, May 21 — Anahata stock fell a further 5 percent today, marking a week in which the Palo Alto–based internet firm shaved more than $300 from its share price in the wake of widespread investor belief that the company is losing focus.
The problem began earlier this month after a former senior executive, Niels Smeardon, claimed on social broadcasting site Flitter that the software giant was building a moon colony.
In a blog post issued in response, Anahata said Smeardon had already left the company at the time of his fleet, suggesting that the comments on Flitter were the work of a disgruntled employee. This morning, Smeardon posted a retraction of his moon colony comment on Flitter, stating he was sorry for any confusion. He said there was not any moon colony on Anahata and that his account had been hacked. Calls to Smeardon were not returned.
“There is no Anahata colony today on the moon,” an Anahata spokeswoman said.
Analysts, however, were skeptical.
“Moon colonies just aren’t a part of Anahata’s core business,” said Mark Roberts, an analyst with Sterling Platinum Capital. “The market wants to see more focus on Anahata’s strongest products and advertising services — not money being thrown at ‘pie-in-the-sky’ projects. If Anahata can’t explain what is happening, investors will quickly lose faith.”
“Tech companies don’t last forever. They get replaced by young upstarts at a remarkably fast rate,” Vargrite Mestayer said. “Anahata’s had a good ten years — that’s a century in normal industry years. Maybe this is it for them.”
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