Of Empires Vapid and Grand

A Project ‘Bellicose’ Creation

Published by Smashwords for Veiled Void Publishing

Copyright Dean Marden 2012

First edition published as Final Education: A Novel of Empires Both Vapid and Grand in August 2012 by Adophicution Multimedia (Canberra, Australia). This version published in July 2015 by Veiled Void Publishing (Canberra, Australia).

The moral right of Dean Marden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted. This publication is not to be reproduced or distributed in any other physical, electronic or audible form without the express permission of the copyright owner. This publication is not to be adapted, transferred or converted into another format without the express permission of the copyright owner. If a copy of this publication has been gained via unpaid channels, holders are encouraged to donate to the author via PayPal (project.bellicose@gmail.com) if any enjoyment or inspiration is derived from its reading.

Cover and map designs by Dean Marden.

ISBN 978-0-9873129-0-7

For Kell, Jerram,

Gunn and Roki –

my earnest enablers

Contents

Prologue

The Eager Enabled

Part One, the Ancient Era

Foremost Endeavours

Chapter One

The Stolid Stirred

Chapter Two

The Truculent Taught

Chapter Three

The Righteous Riled

Chapter Four

The Intrepid Illumed

Part Two, the Middle Ages Era

Fraught Encounters

Chapter Five

The Untried Untied

Chapter Six

The Calm Coruscant

Chapter Seven

The Gallant Grounded

Chapter Eight

The Forsaken Firm

Part Three, the Imperial Era

Future Evolutions

Chapter Nine

The Perfidious Placated

Chapter Ten

The Baleful Borne

Chapter Eleven

The Anarchic Assuaged

Chapter Twelve

The Dauntless Despoiled

Part Four, the Modern Era

Fated Enterprises

Chapter Thirteen

The Mellifluous Maligned

Chapter Fourteen

The Hubristic Harassed

Chapter Fifteen

The Querulous Quelled

Chapter Sixteen

The Laconic Levered

Epilogue

The Veracious Vindicated

Miscellany

Map – Eras 1 and 2

Map – Eras 3 and 4

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright

Title Page

Contents

Prologue

The Eager Enabled

The shutter shifts || To offer sight || Of grandeur stretched unbound

EVEN after everything, most of the people close to me still wouldn't know my name. For the sake of completeness, I’m Lex. More properly, Alexander Ryerson, one of the Cawdor High School students selected to partake in the government’s ‘Program’. My high school year group had been randomly selected from classes graduating across the country to help predict the ‘social, scientific and economic evolution’ of our nation. Exactly how that would happen had been kept a mystery, with the hundred of us thinking ourselves in for twelve weeks of aptitude, personality and intelligence tests. If a scholarship or cash payment hadn't been promised, few of us would have made the trip to our country's capital of Canberra.

Contrary to the most resigned expectations, the Program had been grand – grand beyond any brief description. My faction had fared enviably well during its early episodes, and it must have seemed from afar – inaccurately, to be expected – that much of our success had been owed to the resolutely unfeeling form of that always quiet (and often spotty) long-haired dirty-blond guy who’d always seemed so pretentiously unaffected and unaffecting that there'd never seemed any practical value in learning his name.

That was for the few who'd noticed my existence. To most, I'd kept myself invisible over the years by very conscious choice. My best friend and I had spent almost every school lunchbreak on the library's mezzanine, creating a shared world for ourselves through the writing and sharing of stories. In the Program, we took that guiltless yet guarded habit to a very public and never-matchable extreme.

For those who’d noticed me without knowing me, my superficially 'unaffected' and 'unneeding' manner could be off-puttingly alien – something best avoided. The people who ‘liked’ me best were those who’d witnessed my defensive reactions of sarcastic condescension when confronted with the raw realities of the wild world, exposing me as more affected and accessible than my apparent calm could imply. For those who'd lacked the will, patience or interest to restrain themselves enough to observe my consciously guarded and decidedly uncertain self for five seconds, I continued to exist as an insouciant irritation to their preferred perspective of the world.

Standing aside my indifferent presence, they felt less leave to revel in their contextless convictions, their infantile grandeur, their blustering timidity, their (relatable) lack of worldly focus, and their general loves and fears of everything within their uncomfortably evolving social universes.

If they thought their own experiences uncomfortable, a minute in the straightjacket of my own social limitations would have gifted them objectivity enough to suffocate them.

The Program hadn’t helped in deflating my collectively-affirmed image. To the sideline voyeurs, if my group had done well, it had been through leveraging my socially unchallenged unaffectedness to brutally batter our most ardent adversaries with all the varied weapons of human history with unmatched ethical indolence. To the opportunistically uninformed, it likely looked as if I’d been demonstrating the superiority of my unaffected worldview, with their communal response having been to show just how unaffected they too could be: for them, my name became a conscious irrelevance.

On the evening following the final end of the Program, my affected self sat beneath the grand skylight of Parliament House’s Great Hall, half-heartedly processing the dronings of the saggy-eyed Minister for Defence. A thousand parents, teachers, media representatives and elected officials stared blankly at the elderly man, the minister delivering the first public debriefing of the Program since its conclusion the previous morning. The Program’s much younger social, political and military leaders filled the hall’s front few rows, backs straight and confident in the midst of their real-world counterparts. These leaders had earned their honours and titles on the fields of a world infinitely more taxing than the waking world’s political pantomime: one that had been moulded by the capricious apathy of a teenaged collective consciousness.

Mr Jack Lyons, our year advisor of six years, understood that consciousness better than most, having helped shape and guide it for so long a time. Mrs Rhonda McGeachy had made her own contributions, taking the mantle of assistant year advisor and quasi-motherly figure. Both sat behind their former charges, Mr Lyons desperately trying to suppress a broad smile of pride and respect. Mrs McGeachy made no such efforts, grinning widely as our sour-faced careers advisor, Ms Colvin, droned on indifferently beside her.

Having detailed the major events of the Program’s twelve-week span, the minister pushed aside his speech, pausing behind the old wooden lectern to stare at a knot in the jarrah. He nodded, looking up with uncommon focus as the right words fell into place.

"Many members of the public, media and political establishment have openly criticised the belligerence in which the Program participants conducted themselves these few months past. To them, I can say only this: if history has taught us anything, it’s that pragmatism doesn’t come instinctively to the masses.

"Instead, the passions of like-minded individuals rise to validate collective instincts for action, with such passions imposed on the majority through persuasion or violence. When passion can no longer stand on its own, it morphs into ideology, with frameworks rising around touted passions to give them justification and mechanisms for memetic survival. It’s only when ideology can be properly subjected to objective consideration by the clash of different groups – different ideologies – that pragmatism can finally reign as an objective, progressive middle ground.

"It was this process that the Program sought to capture. This process was what we needed to understand to accurately extrapolate the future sociological evolution of this country. Our nation’s development won’t depend on its internal drivers – on the passions and ideologies of our own people – but rather on the ever-evolving face of the world around it. In this light, our national capacity for pragmatic embrace required quantification; we needed to know what views we could accommodate if faced with the practical need to do so, and, in concert, what immutable ideological mindsets sat at the core of our national identity.

If faced with a pragmatic need to change, we had to know how far we could go.

My body sat rigid, eyes vacantly taking in the details of the wooden floor. Though the Program had only ended the previous morning, its events had already taken on a kind of mythic quality, impossibly confined to distant memory. The thought that those events – enacted by people I’d grown up surrounded by – could influence the future direction of our country seemed ridiculously unthinkable. We’d just been showing off for the most part, not really caring about how our actions could have been perceived. We’d done things because we could.

I closed my eyes, the colours of the real world still too alien for me to process for too long a time. I reflected back on that single day of objectivity we’d had before entering the Program, on the day we’d arrived at that old, slit-windowed Defence building in the capital just three days after Christmas. It had been there that – after months of conjecture – the details of the Program had finally been explained.

AN authoritative looking woman stood at the front of the dimly-lit theatrette, her arms secure behind the rigid back of her sour-green Army dress uniform. She looked a little over forty, with dark reddish hair held loosely behind her finely-featured head. Her skin was tanned and her lips were pursed as her large hazel eyes darted across the room with focused, unknown intent. An expensive-looking electronic lectern stood resolutely beside her, matching well with the general impression of its environment.

Having found a suitable spot, my friend Mark Gertic sat wordlessly, leaving me a thickly-padded aisle seat.

This is crap, he said.

I gave a barely noticeable shake of the head, a habitual response to Mark’s frequent targetless complaints. His speckled greenish eyes surveyed the room with an almost anxious cynicism, his pale and freckled brow as deeply furrowed as the day I’d met him in primary school.

It hasn’t started yet – this is just a briefing, I reminded him.

My head swivelled curiously as people took their seats amidst the thickly-carpeted burgundy walls, my classmates looking markedly more grown-up without the drab, unoriginal blue uniforms of their school years.

Alright, Year 12! called Mr Lyons, looking very strange without his trademark dirt-streaked overalls. Despite being a sun-bleached forty year old, he didn’t really look his age, with either regular labour or a general lack of stress helping to keep his appearance markedly youthful. Find yourself a seat, get in it and shut up!

Voices began dying out, the older man quickly gaining our uncommonly willing attention.

Alright, this is Colonel Windradyne. She’ll be explaining the testing program you’ll be starting tomorrow morning, so listen carefully.

Forsaking the lectern, Colonel Windradyne moved to stand on the very edge of the stage, letting a sideways smile finally break through her effortlessly imperious façade. Good morning, she said with authoritative ease. "My name’s Nerida Windradyne, and I’m the principal designer of the exercise you’ll very soon be entering. To prevent you from having prepared yourselves, you should’ve only been told that you’re here to partake in a testing program to help our strategic analysts better plan for the future evolution of this country. I’m sure you’re all very curious as to what that could mean in practice, but even today, I’ll only be giving you a very brief explanation of what you can expect from the Program."

The Colonel moved to take her place behind the lectern, keying the start of a presentation. A few excited yelps escaped the less restrained of us as the lights dimmed, a projector flashing to life above us. A sweeping aerial view of an unfamiliar landmass was starkly projected, its expanses adorned with forests, deserts, highland plateaus, undulating plains, blue seas and grey lakes. The view zoomed out to show a rhombus spotted with the greens, yellows and blues of the lands we’d just witnessed.

This is the world you’ll be entering tomorrow morning, the Colonel relayed, all eyes squarely fixed on the projected image. "It’s a completely interactive virtual environment, designed by a collaborative team from the Departments of Education and Defence. Using total immersion and virtual reality software, you’ll be entering this artificial world to partake in the testing program. You don’t have an aim in this environment, but you will have some help in determining your courses of action."

Jabbing her lectern’s control board, Colonel Windradyne brought up the rotating figure of a primitive-looking man, naked bar a ragged black loincloth and sporting long unkempt hair. Underneath the figure beamed two words: ‘Worker Drone’.

Tomorrow morning, you’ll find yourselves somewhere in the environment I’ve just shown you divided amongst fourteen groups. Each group will be accompanied by twenty of these worker drones and a simple building to serve as your base of operations. These drones are designed to obey your commands, provided they’re delivered in comprehensible English or else keyed-in via the facilities available within your base of operations.

Her audience simply sat there in cautious silence, the testing process seemingly of a grandeur beyond both expectation and belief.

What kind of stuff can they do? called Meg Coldrake from the back, a social director of the year’s more rebellious girls.

Their actions contribute to your overall operational capabilities: they can gather resources, construct buildings and research capability enhancements to the cumulative effect of allowing you to build your own virtual empires, the Colonel announced. These drones can gather food, metals and building materials with which you can construct dwellings, military barracks, storage areas, naval dockyards and a varied array of other buildings. Resources can also be used to train specialist military and economic drones, as well as equip them with anything from rocks to rocket launchers. In effect, each group will have the chance to create its own civilisation, able to wield it with or against any other group in the Program.

Their wildest assumptions confirmed, the assembled animated in a collective murmur.

What groups will we be in? someone called.

"We’ve tried to match your social groups as closely as possible, but group sizes will need to vary somewhat from your established divisions. Owing to the Program’s nature, some groups have been made fairly large, with ten or eleven people, while others are down to three or four. At the heart of the Program is the desire to see how you respond in certain situations, and we want to see how peer pressure can impact on this. To the same end, a capability will exist for you to keep personal journals within the Program: we encourage you to take advantage of it to provide us with broader context for your motivations and actions.

The drone I’ve just shown you is how your workers will appear in the very beginning. We’ve developed twelve time periods through which your groups will advance, starting with the Stone Age, the Colonel went on. "Through your efforts, you’ll have the opportunity to advance through these time periods to acquire more advanced weaponry and techniques."

What do you mean by ‘techniques’? asked Coldrake. I looked back, for the first time noticing her new bright pink hair, the style of it still short and spiked. Her shape was the only thing that identified her as a woman; she’d always presented herself as a man.

"Development through warfare is only one method of rising to prominence. You could also choose to use your resources to study various technological advancements, enabling effective defence against those who’d chosen to invest more resources into developing military capabilities. You’re all free to make what you will of the Program – that’s the bottom line.

"In any case, the Help service accessible from within the Program will provide you with any additional context you might need. The only things you need to be aware of right now are as follows. Because you aren’t physically in this environment, you won’t feel pain or fatigue, nor will you need food or drink. Additionally, you won’t need to sleep for as long as you would in the waking world, but you will have less control as to when you do fall asleep. Also, to prevent distraction from physical elements that child protection laws prevent us from coding into the Program, your sex drives will need to be repressed to a certain degree."

The Colonel didn’t give us time to dwell on the point, continuing without pause.

"From this room, you’ll be escorted into a conference area laid out with a wide variety of foods. To ensure maximum mental integration with the Program, you will need to eat a certain amount from each food group, diet or not. After some isometric exercises, you’ll be free to explore the city but must be back here by eighteen hundred hours and must not eat anything while you’re out and about. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be rising at zero seven hundred hours to drink a prepared solution designed to completely flush out your digestive system – I would not recommend straying too far from a toilet after drinking it."

The resultant outcry could never have been unexpected

You will then, at zero eight fifteen hours, be taken to the rooms where you’ll be housed for the next twelve weeks. That’s all I have to say right now. Good luck, Colonel Windradyne finished, stepping down without ceremony to tread down the aisle with long, confident strides.

All at once, students began squawking like seagulls, questions bombarding Mr Lyons from all angles. All he could do was direct us towards the emerging attendants.

This might be alright! gave Mark.

WITH Mark and I having been so mercilessly bullied during our early years of high school, Mrs McGeachy had always felt a little protective. Although probably against the rules, she’d mentioned to us that we’d be in the same Program group, forming part of the ‘Blue’ faction, with groups to be designated by colour.

After our post-briefing feast, our year group had been led in over an hour of surprisingly light exercises, explained as necessary to ensure maximum receptivity to the Program hardware. We’d been left to our own devices after that, with Mark and I joining a bus tour that had ended up at a lookout near the top of a small mountain overlooking the capital.

How do you think we should do this? I asked, my wiry and narrow-shouldered body leaning against the railings of the lookout bay. The wind was up slightly, tossing my shoulder-length hair into a loose tangle. It was blond at the time, always searing blond in the summer when most of my time was spent outdoors in the backyard pool. Despite the best efforts of the bleaching sun, however, my thick eyebrows remained as stubbornly dark as ever, the pair sitting atop a prominent brow that seemed at awkward odds with my markedly slight frame. I’d changed into a turquoise singlet top for the warm day’s tour, with sun and swimming having tanned and toned my demure form to a degree unlikely to be matched until late in the coming year.

Mark didn’t reply right away, the other boy far too busy chewing at the inside of his cheek. He sat still on the rock-carved steps, his black hair flat despite the wind. It had grown out slightly since the formal end of high school, with its newfound freedom having given it something of a curl. Its tones greatly contrasted with the white, uneven skin of Mark’s near-insubstantial body, its extremities spotted evenly with fading freckles. He was slightly taller than me, with his hands and face still pink from the slight physical exertion of stepping down to the lookout bay.

The Blue Republic, standing for the subjugation of all! Mark proclaimed. I can be President.

Right, have fun then. I thought you’d definitely go for general or something, I confessed.

Meh, you can be the general, he offered. You’re the quiet unpredictable one with the hair – more unsettling on the battlefield. I can be the puppet master, pulling the strings from behind.

Pfft, smeghead, I scowled quietly. How will any other group members fit in?

Mark’s pessimistic side had never let enthusiasm reign for long, and my casual comment had it speedily reasserting its usual dominating influence. He’d never found it easy to get along with people, despite having made decidedly perpetual efforts to be sociable. While things usually started fairly well with people, Mark’s problem was that he could never differentiate friendly humour from malicious sarcasm. If someone playfully jibed about his hair or clothes, he’d get angry and upset, lashing out without pause for objectivity. People were usually willing to forgive the odd outburst, but Mark had always found great difficulty in forgiving any perceived slight. The only friendships he’d been able to maintain were with people who just got on with things, not really caring if they had to skirt around certain issues.

I was definitely one such person: stolid and insouciant to the point of being ideologically trampled. I’d never been one for talking about myself, with the constant instinct in others to do exactly that – without any discernible conversational promptings – beyond perplexing to me. I spent most of the time just listening to Mark’s earnest commentary on existence, intrigued by his warped perspective of the world. He felt that everyone was out to get him, belittling him at every opportunity to make sure he’d never be able to make any noteworthy contributions to the universe. In contrast, I felt comfortably detached from the world, content to just sit back and watch it unfold without any inclination to involve myself – a welcome symptom of my uncomfortable place at the high functioning end of the autism spectrum. This view had marked me out as the perfect friend for Mark: someone who would listen without question – someone onto whom Mark could press his influence. I humoured him when practical, but had generally learnt to ignore the more polarising aspects of his personality.

He’d never been diagnosed, but I knew Mark’s mind to be firmly rooted along that same spectrum that served as both my most earnest enabler and cruellest disabler.

Who cares how anyone else’ll fit in, he muttered with a slight nasal drone. We’re only going to get stuck with flapdrabbles anyway.

Think about it, I implored quietly. Windradyne said some groups are down to three or four members: who else but us could form a group that small and still stay close to our usual social group? It’s been pretty much just the two of us since Tom and Beth left at the end of Year 10!

Mark said nothing. I gave a slight shake of the head, kicking a few twigs off the lookout ledge. It’s probably going to be just us two with one or two extras, I continued. However many, we’ll need to decide how we’ll fit in with everything. If we just sit around and see what happens, we’ll probably get smashed: people could attack us two without anyone else getting too upset. We’ll end up target practice if we just sit on our lumps.

A voice called out from behind. "Yeah, well we’ll definitely be gunning for yas! gave Jay Scullin, hitting the platform from a jump. You should be more worried about people getting stuck with you, Gertic!"

I’d never understood Jay. Despite his intelligence, he’d always acted like someone with something to prove – like there was something fundamentally superior about him that others just didn’t get. Maybe it was his looks that fuelled his pretension, as he did seem to attract a fair few comments from alright-looking women. Perhaps his issue was that things seemed to stop at comments: as far as anyone knew, he’d never been able to get any further. He obviously believed himself to be marked out for far more than the little female attention he received, and if there was ever anyone around to beat down to make himself more visible to them, he'd always be sure to make swift use of them. More often than not, that person was Mark.

He was around my height, Jay was, with dark skin and dark spiked hair. His large blue eyes shone out with a strange sapphire-like intensity that made my own blue-grey eyes seem unacceptably dull in comparison.

Er, shut up, Scullin! spat Mark. He usually ignored people like Jay, but members of Jay’s particular social group had always managed to provoke a response. They were one of the two intelligent male groups of our year, with Mark and I making up the other. They were the agreeable, sociable types, with Mark and I the more reclusive, hermit crab types. We’ll kick your butts in the Program!

I flushed with embarrassment, Jay’s incredulous scoff resounding down the slopes. Better settle him down, Lex: you don’t want him making enemies before we’ve even started. Jay moved to the edge of the lookout, emulating Mark in kicking random forest litter over its precipice. "Have fun trying to kick our slats, Gertic: it’ll be the closest you’ll ever get to doing what you’d really like to do to them."

My eyes fixed on Mark, arms ready to counter any foolish physical advance. His eyes flashed and his teeth ground together, but nothing else came from him.

Let’s go.

Part One

FOREMOST

ENDEAVOURS

The Ancient Era

The heart draws hard

Unsullied earth

To craft a head of stone

Chapter One

The Stolid Stirred

Difference ploughs || The deepest rut || To spawn a stronger root

CONTENT to let the stinging pain slither down my arm unattended, the freakishly skinny doctor moved hastily on to his next victim. A multitude of other attendants shuffled about the dimly-lit chamber, slinking between the large contoured slabs that each featured a former Cawdor High student. The vibrating slabs had been specially designed to fend off muscle atrophy, with extra attachments to be added later to remove bodily wastes.

Technicians rose in the doctor’s wake, three of them going about attaching sensors and other devices to my half-naked body. A stout older man with a shining bald head explained that these were to monitor my functions while inside the Program, and also reassured me that my asthma medication would be automatically administered at the usual dosage. A band of something that felt like vinyl was strapped tightly across my forehead, with another cold something placed atop my crown.

As the injected drug began taking effect, my perception of the goings-on around me dulled. I could hear Colonel Windradyne starting to explain something, but her words quickly degenerated into nothing of greater impact than white noise. I lifted my head to little practical benefit, my drugged eyes completely unable to make out anything beyond an unnaturally still greenish haze. After a few moments of straining, the haze began to coalesce into a vaguely recognizable shape. Instead of the Colonel, I found myself staring with uncommon intensity at a tree. It sat on a gently undulating plain, spotted with the occasional clump of casually swaying oaks. A hundred or so metres ahead, the plain began a steep ascent, the foliage changing to that of a pine forest as it reached up to the heights of a high, cliffed mountain.

Without understanding how, I suddenly realised I was standing upright. Instinctively turning, I saw Mark standing right behind me, his bare feet pressing lightly against the soft green grass below. He stood robed in a royal blue toga-like outfit, my own hands instinctively reaching up to find myself draped in similar attire. After a few mechanical motions, I quickly realised that the material couldn’t be shifted from my body – our clothes were apparently fixed in place.

Cool! cried Mark, his eyes lighting up.

Hey! came another voice. A tall, freckled girl stood resolutely to my left, her long, thick and unnaturally dark red hair swaying gently in the simulated breeze. Her cheeks were wide and red, her green eyes complimentarily big and bright. A single loop of metal pierced her right eyebrow, glimmering strongly in the morning sun. Guess you’re my groupies!

Sammy, I sighed with relief, looking about for other classmates. So it’s just you and us then.

Looks like it, Lex! Sammy Hunnerup responded in a half yell, as was her way.

Sammy had frequently socialised with Mark and I before the departure of our mutual friend Beth Grayne, with Sammy having drifted towards similarly irrepressible individuals in her absence. Sammy and Beth had always been full of life and humour, and I dreaded to think how Sammy would behave unhindered by fatigue or authority.

Sammy fell out of focus as my eyes met with four rows of five hairy-chested worker drones standing perfectly still behind her, their bodies graced with loincloths of the same royal blue colour as their new masters. Behind them sat a small domed building, its structure consisting of what appeared to be large animal bones wrapped in brownish animal skins. A smoke hole opened at the structure’s peak, with the skins surrounding it streaked a sooty blue.

Mark and I strolled through the rows of primitive-looking drones, inspecting them briefly before stepping into our only building, one that Colonel Windradyne had referred to as our ‘base of operations’. A narrow, chest height stone altar sat directly beneath the smoke hole, crafted from brownish rock. Upon inspection, Mark and I both gasped.

The altar featured a computer screen, built right into the top of the rock. A large rhombus bordered in black took up the top three-quarters of the display, with a smaller rhombus sitting in the middle of the area below. The large rhombus was coloured a dark grey, though a little spot of green featured within its right corner. Without hesitation, Mark touched the point of green light, the view zooming in to highlight an area in which sat a single blue-marked building. Touching my finger to the screen, a pop-up window jumped up to display the building’s insides: three toga-clad figures stood motionless.

That’s us! Sammy announced, her own toga draping down both shoulders. There’re our workers too.

Why is the rest of the map greyish? I asked futilely. A pop-up box appeared suddenly, explaining in an old-style script that unexplored areas would remain grey until ‘scouted’.

At that, Sammy bounded outside to our drones. Oi, workers: scout the place!

In an instant, our drones sprang eerily to life, each turning with heavy legs and hunched backs to head off in a different direction. Smiling instinctively, I turned to refocus on the command console. Zooming out from what the computer identified as our ‘Governance Hut’, I saw rivulets of green eating into the grey as our drones moved off into unexplored territory.

Sliding my finger over the screen, a selection box superimposed itself over the map. I lifted it after our five closest drones had been selected, an icon featuring a rather crude-looking hut appearing at the base of the screen. Pressing it brought up graphical representations of primitive buildings; selecting one out of curiosity, a rotating model of a Stone Age ‘Temple’ suddenly filled the screen, comprising an arched stone formation surrounded by man height pillars of crafted rock.

Beneath the model, I noted that the building cost one hundred and twenty units of ‘Materials’ to construct. Looking about the screen, I discovered a status box featuring five labelled indicators reading Food, Materials, Metal, Riches and Population. We had five hundred units of each resource and a population count of twenty, although the indicator displayed ‘20/20’. Pressing the indicator, it explained that the first number noted our current population, with the second displaying our total supportable population. Keying for more information, I learned that houses and barracks were needed to support higher numbers.

Sammy cried out in alarm, pointing towards eight marker pegs that had suddenly appeared to the east of the governance hut, marking the foundations of the first two dwellings of our fledgling society I’d just queued for construction. The five workers I’d assigned to the task turned on their heels as simple tools appeared in their hands, the group moving back towards the heart of our settlement. Mark stepped out of the governance hut in awe as the drones began their task, their jaws protruding in studied concentration as they set silently to work, fitting together the piles of bones and animal skins that had appeared beside our first construction site.

Sammy ran back inside the governance hut. What did you do? she asked.

Built some houses so we can get more workers to gather stuff, I explained quickly, eyes keenly skimming the Help service. Sammy stepped in as I called back eight workers still exploring, moving them towards a tree. I pressed an icon representing one of the selected workers, with a small information panel reading, ‘Worker: Health – 50/50, Attack – 2, Armour – 0’. Once all assembled, I pulled a selection box around a group of trees and watched as our workers began hacking away at the base of the nearest oak.

What are you doing now?! Mark called from outside.

Getting some wood! Sammy yelled back. I guess we need it to build stuff!

Yep, timber and stone increase our Materials supply, I explained, Mark returning to the confines of our only completed building.

Blue! he cried, staring at the screen.

Yep, that’s us, I nodded.

Nah, I mean there! he said, pointing to an area within the smaller map. I scrolled the main map upwards to find that one of our workers had stumbled across an area of coast about two hundred metres to the north. Water! Why can’t we see it from hear?

Ducking out of the hut, I could see that the ground to the north rose up slightly, blocking our view of the ocean, lake, or whatever it was ahead of us. I hadn’t really paid much attention to the environment’s specific details during Colonel Windradyne’s briefing, but suddenly thought remembering a large water mass taking up the northern portion of the Program.

A clattering had my gaze shooting back around, the three of us looking up as one of our worker drones dropped a pile of wood into the governance hut. As the inartfully dismembered logs settled in the dirt, they promptly disappeared.

Our Materials went up by ten! Mark beamed. We should build a shipyard or something in the water.

I saw a ‘wharfage’ in the menu, which looks like a dock-thingy – it has a bunch of jetties shooting out from it, I noted. We should build a ‘storehouse’ somewhere near a big clump of trees too so our guys don’t have to walk all the way back here to drop off wood. That foresty area to the west should be good.

We need to get more workers first so we can get stuff faster, Mark told us. This says they cost twenty Food units each. We should spend all our Food on making more.

"All of it?"

Yeah! he said. The more worker-type villagers we have, the quicker we can get stuff: the quicker we get stuff, the quicker we can spend it on other crap.

Half of it, I countered. We should save some for later.

"Or you could just spend it all now and have a hell of a lot more later! Two out of three vote all of it, Lex, said Sammy. We may as well jump straight into the deep end – never been one for caution myself, especially when you think about how most of the flapdrabbles in our year will just be sitting around doing nothing right now!"

I waved my hand in resignation, Mark setting about ordering the training of twenty-five worker drones. With another ten minutes before the completion of the first, Sammy stepped outside to sit against the hut, watching on as our drones continued their construction project.

What do you think the other groups are doing? I asked as Mark and I joined her.

Sitting around, Mark replied. Talking about crap. Wasting time.

In that order? I asked, raising an eyebrow.

All at once! he exclaimed, smiling back.

I know, but let it be on their heads, Sammy echoed. So are you guys fine with me being here?

I am, I confirmed.

Me too, gave Mark, confident he could be his own weird self around Sammy.

So, just to get me looking at things from the right perspective, who do you guys think of as the enemy? Sammy asked.

Jay Scullin, Mark stated straight off. Nathan Gorton, Gary Cutrone. Anyone from that group will do.

Hell, I’ll definitely help you against Jay and Gary, but the others in that group seem alright. Don’t know how they got stuck with those two to be honest, Sammy mused. So what have you got against them, Marky?

Mark grumbled to himself, trying to formulate a publicly acceptable rationale. He’d never been keen on justifying his prejudices: as far as he was concerned, he was free to hate whomever he wanted for whatever reasons were convenient. They’re just … idiots! he managed.

I shook my head, jumping in to give Sammy some context. Since us two were the only other guys apart from Jay and all them in the top classes, we became their targets when they needed to prop themselves up in front of the ladies and the other feckless flapdrabbles of the school.

Mark grumbled to himself, quickly changing the subject. We’ll just be enemies with whoever tries to screw us over.

Meh, that’s pretty good as far as foreign policies go, I approved.

Sounds good to me too, Sammy said. If we go ‘ow’, they go dead.

That’s the plan, I confirmed. So, now what do we do?

You leave that to the President, Mark announced, quickly addressing Sammy’s look. We decided before coming in that I’ll be like the civilian administrator-type president guy of the Blue Republic, and Lex will be the military man. What do you want to be?

Huh, well, to be blunt, no one’s going to take you two seriously if you came to negotiate war and peace and crap, she gave, as honest as Beth had ever been. Military stuff would be fun, but I should stick with my proven talents: Lady Ambassador Hunnerup.

She’s right, Lex, Mark said quickly. "What do you want your title to be as the military man?"

Grand Vanguard, I mused. Although maybe something weirder would be cool – like something Latin.

We could all be ‘imperators’: that used to mean victorious general, but then changed to mean emperor later on, Mark relayed. But maybe only after we start getting all imperial on other people’s lumps.

Yeah, you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself, Mr President, Sammy noted.

Mr President! Damn straight! Mark beamed. Right, so today we should focus on setting up our worker guys. We’ve got to get as many resources coming in as we can!

So what can we build, Grand Vanguard Lex? You’re one of those bloody annoying people who can remember irrelevant crap with pretty much no effort at all, aren’t you? Sammy asked, standing up to move towards our first rising house.

Houses, barracks, wharfages, temples, storehouses, quarries and towers, I told my companions. Most need Materials to build. I read that we can also study ‘Simple Tools’ at the hut, which lets us gather and build stuff faster.

Okay, but we need Food first, right? Now that we’ve gone and spent it all, anyway, Sammy mused, determined to carry out her suggestion that very second. Mark and I were left alone to take in the scenery as Sammy ran into the governance hut. The area hummed subtlety with the cries of birdlife, with one or two visible as they shot up the sides of the cliffed mountain rising to the southeast.

Wonder who’s up there, I considered. As the words left my mouth, a pine tree high up on the mountain toppled to the ground, no sound from the fall reaching us. Whoever they are, they’re not wasting time either. Can’t be anyone too … average.

Drumbeats sounded for a half second, Mark and I starting as a worker drone materialised before us.

Whoa! Mark stammered, springing to his feet.

Sammy’s head poked out from the hut, making out our newest drone and smiling. Perfect bloody timing! she chirped, ordering the worker to follow her as she stepped out of the building.

Mark and I were soon in tow behind the mismatched duo, watching on as Sammy’s boundless energy was dragged down by the casual swagger of her mindless minion. The colours of the trees, grasses and coastal waters looked impossibly bright and cheerful, contrasting greatly with the drab yet meticulously detailed woollen coats of the half-dozen goats feeding about a hundred metres to the south. The President and I slowed as we finally made out the animal herd, Sammy continuing on with relaxed confidence. The long hair and twisted horns of the beasts were insanely detailed, their jaws chewing with an uneven and completely believable rhythm.

The console said that the bigger goats are worth fifty Food units each, Sammy told us, petting the nearest animal. The creature continued its meal, seemingly oblivious to the girl’s touch. Since workers are all we can make at the mo, I’m pretty sure they’re supposed to collect the meat. I’m just not sure how.

Mark stepped up, his chest rising in preparation for his first direct order as civilian administrator of the Blue faction. Worker! he called with authority. Get … ah, collect the meat … the Food. Ah … now! Off the goats, I mean.

A large sharp-edged rock appeared in the right hand of our worker, the drone stepping forward with a primitive grunt. His swift arm came arcing down, breaking the neck of the largest brown-furred animal in a single motion. Sammy let loose a disgusted exclamation, Mark laughing to himself before the worker began slicing the stomach of the doomed creature.

Right, well, that’s that, I said quickly, my face twisting in revulsion. Hopefully gathering stone will be a bit less bloody.

You should start building some barracks, Mark suggested. That way we can start on some army men.

How’s the town going to be planned? Sammy asked.

Mark shrugged. Who cares. We’ll just let it evolve.

I nodded. That’s why we’re here, right?

In spite of ourselves, wide smiles of possibility crossed our faces, our future seeming indomitably bright. All at once, the three of us bolted back towards the governance hut, no thought given to conveying any sense of maturity to anyone watching from the outside.

Everything but the planning of the Blue Republic felt forgivably irrelevant.

BLINDING light seeped through the gaps in the animal skins covering my adopted hut, signalling the end of the uncontrollable slumber I’d found myself in. The Program’s sleeping arrangement was very odd: Sammy had ordered a worker to create a camp fire, and after about half an hour of us sitting around the burning mound, Mark had suddenly dropped unconscious. Sammy and I had instantly assumed a Program error to be at fault.

It was about fifteen minutes later that I felt suddenly and illogically drained, my legs buckling as I fought to keep my eyes open. The feeling of tiredness was unmistakable, with Sammy managing to get me into the closest Stone Age hut and throwing me onto a floor-bound pile of animal skins. Before I’d even registered hitting the soft mass, sleep had taken me.

By the end of our first day, our Materials supply had halved through our efforts to establish a tangible presence in the Program. Our number of worker drones had more than doubled, our governance hut sat complemented by four houses, and a set of barracks and a primitive wharfage now stood assembled to the north. Our barracks were in keeping with the style of the age, made from bones and skin, but this building was different in that it had a large open area in its centre. Upon its completion, training promptly began on a group of clubmen, our first military drones of the Program.

I stepped out of my hut to half-heartedly greet the morning, the air temperature no different from what it had been the previous day. Birds darted playfully between the trees dotting the plain, the sun shining brightly above a completely cloudless sky.

Looking around, I could see our small village bustling with activity. To the north, our workers gathered Food from slaughtered deer and goats, with our wharfage visible behind them in the distance. It sat between a rocky patch of coast to the east and a long, sandy beach to the west. I’d named the beach Bassett Beach after the caravan park my family holidayed at. The wharfage itself was just a mound of sand and rock with wooden boards jutting out from it at intervals; I supposed that nothing fancier could have been expected in the Stone Age.

The cliffed foothills of the nearby mountain had proven a convenient source of stone, the workers of our first quarry chipping away without conscious thought. In concert with our new forest-side storehouse to the west, our Materials supply was steadily returning to its original amount.

"Grey! came Sammy’s fulsome voice from the governance hut. There’s a grey building on the map!"

Mark emerged from out of nowhere, freezing to consider me for a moment before darting off into our command building. I followed him in, Sammy lurched over the console with eyes wide in exhilaration. I joined the President in inspecting the screen, our eyebrows arching in unison.

Sammy had evidently sent our newly completed clubmen exploring, with one having come across a storehouse built up the side of the nearby mountain. It was identical to ours but for one detail: the large patch of linen covering the storage pit was coloured grey.

Before we’d had time to properly appreciate the sight, Mark and Sammy gasped. A grey-clad worker drone walked across the screen, moving towards a fallen tree just metres from the storehouse. Without any hesitation, the alien villager began chopping away, seemingly oblivious to our clubman’s presence.

Until our drone started attacking it. "Crap!" we exclaimed together, our clubmen swinging his weapon. The sound of a horn rang out around us.

That’ll be the battle siren, I offered, the previous day’s study of the Help menu coming back to me. It sounds whenever we attack or get attacked.

Mark hadn’t heard me, his efforts squarely focused on moving our drone away from the foreign worker. He seemed satisfied for a moment, letting out a short sigh before following it with another gasp. A collection of grey-garbed clubmen came suddenly into view, the formation of four heading straight for our drone. Mark ordered our unit quickly home, but out of the dull fog of war came another two Grey clubmen, their waists covered in loincloths and their arms cradling large wooden clubs, their weapons’ bulbous ends studded with sharpened rock fragments.

In about ten seconds, our drone was a red-stained heap, rapidly decomposing into the ground. With our first victim of war dead, the suddenly unoccupied section of map greyed itself out. Without an active drone or building in the area, all we could see was the landscape and storehouse.

Mark was out the door without a word, Sammy and I feeling it best to follow. He marched forcefully towards our barracks, the structure looking nothing but foreboding amidst our simpler economic structures. Along with clubmen, the barracks allowed us to train spearmen, javelineers and slingers (guys with rock-flinging animal skin pouches).

The President cast his gaze inside, quickly whipping around to Sammy.

"You sent our whole military out?!" he called almost squeakily.

Yeah, why? Sammy demanded, already fully aware of Mark’s intent. What, do you think that if I hadn’t, military-man Lex would’ve been stupid enough to send them to attack someone this early on? Someone who’d just suffered an unprovoked attack from us?

I wasted no time in exploiting the lapse in Mark’s momentum.

We need to talk to the Greys and explain what happened – no point starting anything if we don’t have to, I said. "We saw that tree fall yesterday from way higher up that mountain, so if the Greys have military drones that far away from their village, then I’d say that they’d have to be at least as advanced as us."

Mark’s expression hardened before washing away, the President not as eager to risk his newborn civilisation as impulsively implied. Then what do we do?

Leave it to the Lady Ambassador! Sammy called. Lex and I will go up: if there’s no threat, we’ll try and establish a friendship thingy, and if not, we’ll head back here to talk about the best way to kick some Grey lumps!

Sammy’s air of regal authority under pressure was something to be admired.

Without another word, the President moved back to the governance hut. A nearby worker drone abandoned his house-building efforts to move towards our command centre, Sammy and I following it to witness its hands suddenly sprout a piece of bark and length of charcoal. Without ceremony, our minion slumped against the wall, promptly jabbing away with his new writing implements. Inspecting the command console, I saw a progress bar appear in the corner: ‘Researching Basic Military Tactics – 0.14% Complete (1 Worker)’.

It might help, gave Mark, waving us off before refocusing on the console.

With that, we were gone, Sammy and I heading towards the mountain’s foothills at a fast pace. Without fatigue, it was easy going, and for once someone was actually walking faster than me. Mark had always hated me walking so fast, but I’d always hated sitting still for too long – I always needed to be moving.

The distance was greater than we'd imagined, and it was over an hour before we passed the Grey storehouse with its single worker.

Good morning, Alex, Samantha, came a voice from beside us.

I turned to see Mrs Rhonda McGeachy standing perfectly content beside a large boulder, her simple jumpsuit-like clothing coloured a bright gold. Mrs McGeachy was a short, stout woman with short brown hair, bright rosy cheeks and a large dimpled smile. She’d been my history teacher in Years 7, 8 and 10, and I’d always gotten on well with her.

Whoa, Miss! cried Sammy. What the hell are you doing here?

We’ll be popping in every now and then to discuss your progress, she reported, turning to gaze down the mountain. But I must say, you three are making far more progress than most.

I looked back down the path we’d just trod, spying the domed roof of our governance hut and the ocean beyond. Our growing collection of houses stood to the east of our command building, our barracks and slowly-rising temple further off. From what I’d read, temples were used for healing wounded troops, both from placing drones next to them and from training shamans within them.

What’s everyone else doing, Miss? Sammy enquired at once.

Ah, most are just sitting around talking to each other – nothing out of the ordinary, she said with a hint of disappointment. But that’s what Colonel Windradyne expected, or so she says. The organisers have told us they expect the groups to advance through one historical period each week on average, but it looks like you three are already almost to the Bronze Age!

How can we get to it? I asked.

The command console in the governance hut will let you know. Apparently you have to have a certain amount of buildings, drones and resources to qualify. Colonel Windradyne doesn’t tell us much: she must think we’ll give it away, Mrs McGeachy told us with a hen-like laugh, finishing it off with a big smile.

Do you know who’s up here on this mountain? I asked.

Of course, but I can’t tell you! A hen-like chuckle came again. Come on, we can walk and talk at the same time.

Sammy didn’t waste the opportunity, bounding up the nearest rise and calling back to our former teacher. How big’s the Program, Miss?

Each edge of the map you can see on your terminal is about a hundred kilometres. You can’t really see the edge until you’re right on top of it; the ground just suddenly drops away, and the sky stretches all the way around underneath. You’ll be bounced back if you try to step off, according to the Colonel.

Echoes of wood chopping could be heard as we made our way upwards, a pair of grey-streaked houses becoming visible through the branches of mountainside pines.

You and this lot were lucky to have built a couple of houses: most groups had to spend last night curled up in their governance huts, Mrs McGeachy noted. It would’ve been a bit cramped for this group. I suppose you’re lucky just having the three of you: it should keep you focused and active.

This group seems active too, so there must be at least two groups out there making a go of it, I noted.

"Oh, there’s more than just the two of you, but I’d better