The Dominion, Part One: Gods

From the top of Central Tower Cassandra White could look out over the whole of the Dominion. Her Dominion.

A grin spread slowly across her lips, stopping well short of her eyes, as a fire flared somewhere far below. It’s yellowish orange glow shining small as lights on a festival tree among the glittering sea of white pinpricks beneath her feet. One more slum up in smoke.

The grin broadened into a genuine smile at the thought.

Burning slums meant burning tenements, and those meant profits. The executives who lived on floors seventy-five to ninety-one of Central Tower would rebuild, charging three times what they had before.

Nothing better than the same, flammable, shit hole. Different only thanks to the lack of grime that coated everything and everyone down there. Among the rats and the trash, with the disgusting odour of the Lower Dominion caking to the inside of peasant lungs. Pathetic people waiting their turn to add to the stench.

Executives.

She stifled a girlish giggle at the thought, unable to take her eyes off the flickering light, dimming as crews worked to put it out. Crews that got there a touch too late, exactly as they were meant to. The giggle threatened to rise again, and she cut it off with a sip of the drink in her hand.

Imbecilic people in suits, that was what the C-suites were. Men and women and Nonem who thought they had climbed up as far as mortals could. Who would raise their children not to look up but to jeer down - just the same as the people they fooled themselves into thinking they ruled over.

But they were nothing, really. Nothing compared to the Gods, and despite their elevated place there were rules for them. Some few of the executives had, over the long decades, thought that their position gave them the ability to abuse the Lowers. The Order of Stewards had set that right quick enough. A nice little purge to put them back in line.

And what could they do about it? It was impossible to climb the tower and deliver their objections in person. Four whole stories, four of the mighty, cavernous Tower floors dedicated as a barrier to separate the Executives from the real power. No one fully understood the defences in those floors, but rumours flew about the forces marshalled to protect the true power over the Dominion. The power that never descended to the streets, never concerned itself with who won the meaningless elections, never looked down except for entertainment.

Different words were used to describe it: Asgard, Mount Olympus, Tír na nÓg, the Jade Palace. But none of them came close to the true beauty of the home of the Gods. Nothing that could be taught to the peasants, the ruled, could ever describe the majesty of that place.

It defied description.

Seated atop the Dominion, above the noxious fumes from which even the C-Suites were not truly removed, there was paradise. A land without the ravages of age, without the falsehoods and temptations of the mortal world, without the pain of looking up. Green fields glittered under reflected sunlight; streams of fresh water flowed; people lived in comfort and with smiles on their faces. Life was sweet, gentle, and long.

Now it was night, and Cassandra looked down, as was only proper. She stood at one of the massive windows, looking down on the south quadrant of the Dominion. The fire still glowed, big enough to be seen from where she stood, and she thought again about the rebuilding.

The work itself would keep the labourers happy. Money and goods would flow in so long as the construction lasted. Then the Executives could reap their heartless reward. Money would flow so long as people needed a place to live. And not one of them would ever dream of looking up.

Lifetimes upon lifetimes of societal memory, of uprisings and reprisals, had taught them their places well. Not that the Executives, or anyone under them in their little revolutions had ever come close to making the changes they promised. And the winners were always bribed easily enough, except when they had to be replaced. Sometimes people really were incorruptible.

Cassandra pouted a little when she remembered the last one, they had been forced to remove. It had interrupted her at one of her wife’s parties - and in a theme she adored, too. But it was her job to authorize these things, among others, and send the enforcers to do their work. To top it off, she had then discovered that the beastly Lower was handsome, and she had only been allowed one night with him.

Rules must be ironclad, even in paradise. The Founders laid down the laws and they, quite literally, were written in stone. No one dared question the words of their forebears, the mythic figures who had conquered the skeleton of a dead world and build their Dominion on its ashes. Besides, who could question them They worked perfectly, even if they meant that she had to give up her newest toy just as she was getting to know him.

Nothing had happened since the Founding. Nothing could happen. The system was perfect.

“Darling,” trilled Amelia, running her hand across her wife’s cheek as she swept up to her. “You’ve been over here for ages; the guests will think that you’re avoiding them. Or,” she giggled and turned her hand around so that she was gliding her nails down Cassandra’s cheek, “avoiding me.”

“You know I would never do that,” Cassandra kissed her wife lightly. “They know I could never stay away from you.”

“Please tell me that you’re not over here thinking about work,” there was a playful whine in Amelia’s voice. “That always makes you so dull.”

“I know, beautiful. Sometimes it just takes over, turns me into something boorish. But that’s not what I was thinking of, not entirely, anyway.”

“Were you thinking about us? About coming over and pulling this silly Egyptian number off me? Having your way with me? Just to get out of this party you don’t want to be here for.”

“Oh please, your parents are here. More likely I’d trick you into coming someplace private with me and do it there.”

Amelia’s eyes gleamed in the reflected light of the party, and she bit her lip before saying, “you know… I don’t think anyone would mind,” and plucking at the swooping neckline of Cassandra’s dress.

“Nope,” she said, pulling away and making Cassandra blink. “I’ve decided to bravely fight off your advances and return to the party. So, try not to think about work, eh?”

Sighing, Cassandra followed her out and rejoined the party, smiling as soon as someone called her name. Smiling with her lips, at any rate.

-0—0-

Lying in bed later that night, her hand idly caressing her wife’s body beside her, Cassandra could not get the thought of sending out the enforcers out of her head. It was her own fault, really, for being smart enough to get picked as a Steward. “From each based on their ability,” was sometimes seen as the de facto motto of Paradise. She could do the job, according to her tests in school, so do the job she must.

It bothered her sometimes, that she was made to work more than those with lesser abilities. The ones that the system designated to have the most luxurious of lives. The ones she was, it could be argued, better than.

But on that ‘night’, the use of the enforcers bothered her. They were crude machines, the kind that they should not need in Paradise. Crude, but effective. Usually, the Lower Orders were enough to keep each other in line. Usually. Unless there was someone who needed special attention.

And the one who directed them was her. She sat in the soundly uncomfortable chair and pushed the buttons or gave verbal orders. Looking through their eyes and reading the data they sent back.

Through those eyes, she had seen the face of the lowest ring in the Dominion. Her quarry had stayed in his old tenement, eschewing the luxuries his victory had earned him like a fool and played nice with the people. His people he had thought them, but they all belonged to the Gods.

Scared faces sprung out at her enforcers like monsters from one of the themed parties. Bodies loomed in doorways, breathing alcohol and vape fumes at any passers by. Others lay in the streets, passed out, or dead, or without the will to go on.

It disgusted her. These peasants should have taken better care of themselves, the Dominion couldn’t have them all dying before their time, not when they were the ones whose labour was so badly needed.

Her face twisted, remembering the squalor, imagining that she could smell them too. Through her electronic eyes, she could almost see the rising, reeking, stench of it all. How anyone could have lived there was beyond her, let alone why someone who had risen so high among his own kind had chosen to remain there. Had even turned away the usually successful inducements.

Guilt failed to register on her face as she remembered the man’s death. Another thing her job required her to witness. Only the disappointment that he wouldn’t be hers any longer. He had cried, before the doors came down on his gas chamber. She felt like that should mean something, or that it meaning nothing might mean something else.

With a shrug, she turned over and traced her way back down the thoughts of the evening that had brought to this line of uncomfortable contemplation. Looking down, that was what started it. Looking down and seeing the fire.

It was her right to look down on them. The Founders would never have wanted her to think about anything unpleasant just by exercising that right. Except… maybe they did. The rules they laid down, and the serious looks of their statues and holo-busts, did not make them seem like the easy-going types.

Distain and seriousness are what poured from those faces. Something bordering on a hatred of all they beheld, not the pure, gleaming joy that was on the statues of other Gods. The ones who had come after and somehow earned the recognition of a statue.

Another thing she worried about. If the Founders would have been pleased with her. The weakness she had showed for that handsome Lower. The secret desires in heart that she was less capable so that she could spend every day like the others, care-free and joyful. If they would be pleased with who she was and what she did.

They were not deified. She did not pray to them as the Lowers did to their Gods of chrome and circuits. Nor did she give offerings to them like Middles for their Gods of prosperity. Nor yet the combination of rituals and ceremonies that the Uppers employed. She only thought about what they would think if they knew her, if they would be proud.

Certainly, she never - or at least never that anyone would ever get out of her - spoke to them. She never asked them questions with the secret, fevered hope that they might answer. Never hoped for them to grant her wishes.

She slipped out of bed, taking care when disentangling herself from Amelia so as not to wake her, and pulled on a robe. Perhaps her work made her beastly, perhaps it took away from time that she would rather have spent on other things, but it was only through her actions that her home could be maintained. There would be Hell to pay if too many people ever dared to look up and to dream.

Once, while directing an Enforcer raid, she had taken a moment to look up at Central Tower, to bask in its distant glory. It was a sight that few among the Gods ever saw, only those whose roving electronic eyes went into the Lower Dominion.

Up through the constant haze, the unbearable stench that she could only imagine, glimmered the Tower. Wide as an ancient city, Central Tower glowed like the eye of God, glaring down at their unruly children. Above the ninety-one layers of rising prestige and wealth, the place where the ‘leaders’ and ‘elites’ spent their days in laborious luxury, glowed the home of the Gods.

But thinking about that vision, the sight of her home - as far away as the stars themselves, or so it had seemed from so far below – brought back to the front of her mind the reason she could not sleep. Why she had been so unsociable at her wife’s party. The gnawing… something that was eating away at the back of her mind.

“You won’t get us all,” that had been the rebel’s last words, said through his tears before the airtight door slammed shut. He had said it before, in the one night that the Code allowed her to enjoy him. The one night of luxury that would bookend his insignificant life.

“There aren’t enough of you up here to stop us.”

Whoever ‘us’ was, Cassandra was certain that the Gods could handle them. The whole of the Dominion was under their control, and the System was perfect. Nevertheless, her position demanded that she pay attention to the mad ramblings of that Lower. Demanded that she dedicate part of her limited time on Earth to evaluating the threats he represented.

Even, no, especially if those threats were ultimately meaningless. If they were nothing more than dreams cooked up by people who did not know their place. Those dreams could be dangerous, they could disassemble the foundations of the Dominion if left unchecked. So, she emerged from her villa and strode purposely across the perfectly maintained lawns, under the beautiful trees, and over the bridges that spanned the gentle streams until the Acropolis came into sight.

All buildings in Heaven were the same, or at least of the same size and splendour. No one person was above any other there – except the founders, but with them being dead that did not matter much. They were all the same, blessed by birth to rule over all below them, with no greater status to achieve. Even the ones like her, the unlucky few whose skills and talents tore them from luxury and made into Stewards, were no better than the rest.

In her rebellious moments, she sometimes thought that the Stewards were lesser. Forced to labour instead of enjoying themselves as was the right of all Gods. But that was absurd, to genuinely think so was to degrade the efforts of the Founders. Sacrilege, if such a concept had existed to her.

Passing through the vaulted entry of the Acropolis, her identity confirmed by hidden sensors, Cassandra moved soundlessly across the marble floor in her silk slippers. It was as close to a sacred place as the Gods possessed; adorned with statues of people purported to be Founders, though no one memorized their names, it stood grand and tall and wide and open. Any could go there that chose, but only the chosen could go further.

She approached the inner chamber of the Acropolis, the sealed building within the enormous Graeco-Roman edifice and grasped a marble hand that extended beside the door. As she held it, palm to forearms in the ancient way, the marble somehow understood who she was and granted her access to the Reliquary. The marble door, imagined by some to be purely aesthetic, slid soundlessly into the ground, leaving barely a hint of where it now was.

Breathing deeply, face twisting as always at the stale, recycled air of the Reliquary, she took the first step across the threshold and slowly descended the spiraling staircase. Behind her, as silently as it had opened, the door closed, leaving behind no hint from the outside that it could ever open.

The stairs wound gently down, turning back on themselves in a seemingly endless spiral through the dark and the silence. Her gentle footfalls against the polished stone stairs made barely a whisper. Time did not exist in that stair; she was alone with only her own breathing – muted as though the darkness were suffocating the sound – and the paranoid buzzing of her thoughts for company.

Finally, a relieved gasp bursting out of her, an arch opened from the stair into the main hall of the Reliquary. Several large couches, armchairs, and chaise longue surrounded a round, central table which would provide whatever the individual requested. During the day, when the majority of the Stewards would be at their stations, Servitors flitted person to person in the Common Room, fulfilling demands but after hours, as it were, she was forced to serve herself.

Dark coffee filled an elaborately painted mug at her command. Just before she could take the first sip that would drive any lingering fatigue from her mind, a voice piped up from behind her. “There another rebellion to put down? Maybe just try and let the Uppers handle this one, eh? No reason to deny yourself beauty sleep on their account.”

With a sigh, she set the mug down, still untasted, threw a venous look over her shoulder. “Yuji, what brings you here so late?”

“Not a rebellion, then? Shame… but then again, it’s for the best. People down there ought to value their own lives more anyway.”

Frustration bubbled in her, begging to be released.

“No rebellion.” Forcing herself to be polite and leave off the ‘that we know of’ she wanted to add for sting, she added. “And you? Any dissidents?”

The Internal Security Steward chuckled, moving to stand beside her and swiping her mug. Taking a slow sip, he said, “the only person behaving unprecedentedly is you, leaving your wife’s bed after such a lovely party. I’m told the food was something truly special, put a lot of your guests straight to sleep. One might think that you’re up to something, sleeping potions or the like.”

“Honestly, Yuji, what would I do even if we did drug them? Don’t be childish.”

He pouted and she relented.

Yuji was a good man, irritating and fond of playing the rogue, but decent. Though she suspected he might not always trust her intentions considering how many of her advances the man had refused over the years. Besides, Steward of Internal Security was the lowest of the Stewards – if they could be said to have ranks. He had nothing to do by spy on the Gods as they went through their idyllic lives. How boring.

“Oh, very well, assuming I did drug everyone, and my wife too, to what end and what are you going to do about it.”

Eyes lighting up, he explained how the whole sordid affair would play out. Ending with an impressive confrontation that culminated in her falling from a shattered window, vanishing into the swirling smog that hung perpetually over the Dominion.

“Very impressive,” she said, tone dry enough to bring drought to Heaven. “Now, mind telling me what you’re doing here? I expected to be alone.”

With a shrug, he said, “Got a notification that there was something I’d want to see. Not sure what, though, the computer isn’t being very cooperative.” He waved over her shoulder at a door with a set of golden scales emblazoned across it. “And you”

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said, seeing no point in hiding the truth from Yuji. He was a fellow Steward and might understand some of her distress. “The last rebel I caught; you remember him.”

“Yeah, the handsome one with the broad shoulders. Why?”

“Been thinking about what he said, just before the end. ‘There aren’t enough of you up here to stop us.’ It’s been eating away at me for a while now, and I don’t know why.”

“Seems pretty normal. According to the logs, previous ones said similar things, right? Bullshit about how the revolution will never die, or Sic Semper Tyrannis? I wouldn’t bother listening to them. I mean, if it was possible, someone would have done it by now because they’re right. We’re too few to stand up to them, but the System is perfect.”

“The System is perfect,” she repeated by rote. “I know all of that, but none of it surprised him. Nothing that happened, he even seemed to expect being taken by the Enforcers. Doesn’t that stick out to you?”

“You’re right, that is odd. Though seriously, Cass, you think they,” he waved vaguely at the floor, “know anything about this? I mean, yeah, they can see the tower just fine but, you have to admit, it’s a bit farfetched.”

He was right, of course. The idea that the Lowers would know anything about the goings on in Heaven was laughable. Yet she did not laugh. It bothered her more than she would admit to anyone that the Lower had known what to expect. Or he seemed to. Nothing about their interactions had seemed to take him off guard.

Yuji knew enough about what she did, but within the confines of the rules laid down by the Founders. He could not know everything; the Codes were very clear on that. But he understood her job at a high-level and she knew he sympathized with her struggles.

Problem was that her paranoia had been right before. She had spotted something once, a few years ago, that somehow evaded the standard detection protocol. Her wife had thrown her a lavish party over it.

“Trust me, Yuji, I'm right on this.”

“If you say so,” he shrugged. “Not that it's likely, but you know, give me a shout if there are any suspects up here. You know that I get bored stiff.” He meant spying on the Gods, how interesting could watching perfect lives run their course possibly be.

With another wave, he wandered back to his office, snagging a small pastry as he walked by the central table. There was always food on that table, always fresh, though not nearly as good as what the Gods could make. Even in Heaven, only so much could be done by machines; it took a human touch to create real art.

Cassandra waited until the golden scales sealed shut behind him, then ordered another cup of coffee and walked to her own door. The golden binoculars split down the middle as the portal slid silently open, letting out the slightest breeze of cold, recycled air. She sighed, loathing the smell and the cold, wondering why she had not thought to get properly dressed and entered.

Quick stepping through the Spartan room, absent comfort and colour, she seated herself on the hard, uncomfortable chair and laid her palm on the scanner next to her keyboard. One by one the screens around her clicked to life, showing feeds from a random assortment of cameras secreted throughout the Dominion.

Those would provide her little benefit, however. The Rebel was dead, his family was dead, and the upper crust of his conspiracy was dead. Realistically, there should be nothing to look for, no reason for her to be there at all.

Pushing her curly, dark hair behind her ears, Cassandra called up a log of her interactions with the Rebel. She skipped over the carnal details, immortalized in the infinite memory banks of the Dominion, and focused her attention on the transcript of his words.

Naturally, nothing new jumped out at her.

Everything was exactly as it ought to be. He had been a nothing, a nobody in the grand scheme. And yet... and yet he had caught her attention and needed divine intervention to properly put down.

Reaching down from Heaven and taking an active part in the running of the Dominion was nothing too special. Different Stewards did it all the time, quietly editing subversive media or, as she did, removing subversive elements. Among the Stewards, the only ones who regularly interacted with the Lowers were the ones dealing with the Executives.

For some reason, the higher people moved in the Tower, the more important they thought they were. Some of them saw it as their right to abuse the lowest citizens, as though those people were the property of the C-Suites. As though they served profits before the Gods. Such people needed to be removed, and they represented the highest share of interventions.

In her role, Cassandra rarely had to actually do anything. Acting was rare, and the only thing that made the task bearable. Working to preserve the perfect life of the other Gods without getting to fully participate. It was as though she were a slave, and yet not a slave. A god and yet not a god.

Sipping at the steaming coffee, she called up the cameras around the Rebel's usual hangouts. Several of the buildings had been burned in riots sparked by influence from the Executives. Pushing the people towards violence, directing their discontent in... fire... that was a thought. Maybe she needed to pay more attention to the goings on in the C-Suites.

Clicking away from the feeds, she called up security reports and footage of the fires she had seen earlier. Fires weren't exactly rare in the poorest sections of the Dominion. The odd accident served its function, and she suspected that a few of them were even intentional. But that fire... it had been big.

As the long, dense, text of the incident reports scrolled by, a notification caught her eye.

“This might be important. - Argus.”

So, she thought, opening the file and hitting play, Yuji and I aren't the only ones working late.