2 ONE BIOSTAT STATION VAULT LEVEL MARS DATE: DAY 25, MONTH 12/24, YEAR 2225 An end. A beginning. Niri floats, suspended in the bright glow of sound, the song of the formless, the sightless, the deaf… These are the shimmering beings of the Arupyadhatu, of infinite consciousness. Separate, but one, a voice that slips from all directions, on her skin, and under it, inside her. Here are sensations, tones too ancient to be human. She drags air into her lungs, feeling a foreign warmth coiling through her, searching. One. You are one. And the life slowly pulls out of her, a million ghosts set free, the murmur of a dozen languages. It’s the song of Earth, its sky muted by a yellow haze, its ghettos flooded with mothers and children. They are the helpless ones, the weak, the afraid. It is a world overrun by scavengers, partitioned by warlords, laid waste by monsters of ego, and by the old religions of blood and darkness, servitude and murder. The worst of us. The War of Last Nations, glittering cities gone dark, integrated economies, law and order, everything buckled under the strain of cyberattacks and physical destruction.
