Before joining hands across the remaining Great Wall, three point four million Twos, Threes and Fours drank from vials. Some were true, some were false. All provided hope.
Hands joined, their unbroken chain stretched from Shanhaiguan, running west and southwest through the mountains of Hebei, Badaling, Mutianyu, Jinshanling, into what was once and shall always remain the Shanxi province, toward the Yellow River, navigating the rubble that time, once more important to humanity than it is now, ravaged the wall where armies had failed, some seven hundred kilometers of hope, but also four hundred and thirty five miles of finality.
They sang, in unison:
Wǒmen shì yītǐ, wǒmen shì zhòngshēng, wǒmen shì miǎoxiǎo què kěyǐ wěidà de rén.Wǒmen shì xìnyǎng zhě, wǒmen shì xīwàng zhě, wǒmen shì kěwàng gèng duō de rén,huò bèi wúxíng zhī shǒu cáijué — huò jìnshēng, huò xiāowáng —ér xiāowáng zhě de xīshēng, zīyǎng le liúcún zhě, shǐ tāmen chéngzhǎng, shǐ tāmen shēnghuá.
We are one, we are all beings, we are the small who can become great.We are the faithful, we are the hopeful, we are those who hunger for more,or are judged by an invisible hand — either elevated, or erased —and the sacrifice of those who are erased nourishes those who remain, causing them to grow, causing them to ascend.
There were other languages, of course, but sung by those who knew what came next and no longer feared their use.
When the song finished, still holding hands, each kissed the person first toward their right, then the person toward their left. Their hands fell to the side.
Then they ran toward the edge, toward ladders and ropes and breaks in the stone and cliff edges and where no falls existed from which they could throw themselves, they aimed their heads at boulders or stabbed themselves in the heart with daggers and each of them, each and every one of the three point four million workers suicided their old selves,
Cries of anguish echoed through old China, and across Asia, and through the Communion drug and Central’s connection, the rest of the world.
The culling was complete.
Of the three point four million, Eighty-seven thousand stood and healed, broken bones mending, gushing hearts sealing. And each was more than they were before, and worthy to continue.
Another year past, another year the future assured.
Central was in control.
THE DIRECTIVES: CLASSIFIED ARCHIVE
In the world of The Optimised Future, the State demands perfection. The population is neatly divided into ten Categories. At the top, the elite are rewarded with the suffocating, biological permanence of the Sacrament. At the bottom, the working classes are quietly recycled, their memories wiped to keep the machinery of Central running.
You are entering the shadows of that machinery.
These Directives are weekly dispatches from the unseen corners of the State. They are not the grand political struggles of the Bureau. They are intercepted transmissions from the periphery; micro-tragedies, analog rebellions, and the quiet, devastating cost of surviving in a world that has weaponized human biology.
New dispatches are unsealed every Saturday. Read them carefully. Central is always watching.
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