I do not see. I do not hear. I do not remember. I do not understand. I do not feel.
But I am still aware. I am aware of my existence. And I am aware of someone else.
That someone else is my enemy, and he seeks to defeat me. He very nearly has, and in a most terrible way, as well. He cut me off from everything I had, from natural and implanted senses, from my hamme and, to a large extent, from myself. And still he taunts me.
He has trapped me.
To trap someone is the cruelest thing. Enemies are to be killed, not trapped – not for so long, how ever long it may be. All Ysir know this. And…
My enemy is surely an Ysir. And yet, he has resorted to entrapment. This gives me something to think about, though. Something to understand.
No Ysir, no matter how perverse or insane, would resort to entrapment to defeat another. I am sure of this. But it was possible when it pursuit of some other, greater objective; a grander and more esoteric victory. Yes. Whoever has trapped me, and whoever was taunting me, had some different goal in mind.
I needed to figure it out. I needed to know what he was trying to get, and then… either help him get it, or destroy it.
Either way, he will then have to set me free.
And then I will destroy him.
No, this isn’t enough.
Give me more, Helgi. I know your memories must hold more. I will just prod you further, and eventually, I’m sure that I will hit the right vein.
And then all of your knowledge will come spilling out.
And then you, too, will understand. Perhaps you’ll understand even more than I do now.
---
Birth.
I do not remember being born. I never did remember that, which is, of course, entirely natural. I didn’t get my memory until after it was over.
But I know the general details; the process does not vary that much, after all. The genetic code of hamme Oswig – some parts of it brought by us from space, others taken from those who joined us later during the Second Schism – is taken and remixed – modified, adjusted, augmented in accordance to a set of guidelines that it was never my place to understand. It seems, however, that there is an element of randomness to it all, since random chance reveals the will of God, as when we must draw lots to see who has to do an unpleasant duty.
Be that as it may, I was thusly conceived, and then grown inside the clan’s great incubator, then hatched and brought out into the world, a mewling infant with no power over my circumstances, as I’ve later seen many others be. But I was not fully born yet.
The medicists and healers have examined me, as have the priests; they put me to the test, over the next few days, and judged me worthy. Only much later did I find out that there was real doubt about me and that I barely squeezed through; but by then I had managed to acquit myself in battle, and was not all that greatly daunted. Be it as it may, I have made up for any physical deficiencies with training and integrity, as I was taught.
It was not such a major issue in any case, since in the next stage I was fitted with my first implants. Thus I received my memory and greater sight, and have become part of the network – if only at a subsidiary level, only to be initiated fully into the hamme at the start of my second age. My other senses and capacities have likewise been upgraded, and would be continuously upgraded at other times in my life. But the first ones were the most difficult to accept, and I had struggled, ignorant and frightened as I was.
Still, in the end I was built from a mere Ysir into one of the Hammenammir; into one of hamme Oswig, for our implants characterise us as much as our genes or our traditions; and so, it was declared by the godar, with the priests’ blessing and the healers’ approval, that I, Helgi, was born.
Askinnath the Bright.
My favourite saga, when I was growing up, was that of Askinnath the Bright. Kendra and I, and some of the others, would often listen to it after training. It excited and teased our young minds, and made us want to live up to the great deeds mentioned there… It rather surprised me to find out that it was highly disapproved of by the priesthood, and most certainly by Orgmar, our hamme’s high priest.
It made sense, though, for the story was set on the Homeworld, and was largely secular in character. The priesthood never liked to encourage homesickness – or at least, hamme Oswig’s priesthood didn’t. They were of the opinion that it was a form of decadence, which was synonymous with despair.
Teacher Staphon, however, taught me that while there was such a thing as evil knowledge in old sagas – and elsewhere – that thing was just like poison, which meant that it was good and wholesome to read it as though one was prepared – if anything, such a one would only be made stronger by it. And furthermore, he said that strength and knowledge could be found anywhere; as for true piety, it will come with age.
Thus we listened to the saga of Askinnath the Bright and his retainers, who lived in a feudal tribe on the Homeworld. It was indeed quite strange to think of how similar and yet how different the lives of our ancestors were – not quite as different as they would have seemed on the Fleet, however. The tribes they lived in weren’t quite hammes, and the hillforts that they occupied weren’t exactly borgs; and they fought on foot or mounted on huge plated beasts, out in open air.
Askinnath the Bright himself had an unusual history for those times, since he was born without a tribe – I thought it meant that his own must have been wiped out, but Kendra reminded me that it was possible he was simply born out in the wild and left to die, but somehow lived. In either case, he gathered other followers and outcasts, who saw that he was brighter than all others, and knew the secret ways in which one may attain small victories.
Thus he started as a bandit chief, but made alliances with great spirits and other such beings, and when the standing tribes in the area were attacked by a powerful empire (even more strange to us now – empires were not made of kin and indeed did their best to keep kin-groups from forming by constantly moving everyone around, which was why they were a dead-end), Askinnath and his followers promised to assist those who once treated them as vermin. The chiefs were suspicious, but as they lost battle after battle, they agreed to meet Askinnath and hear out his plan. They went to the assigned meeting-place with large armed retinues, expecting an ambush, and came away as Askinnath’s most blindly loyal followers. Following his lead, they struck at the weakest points of the enemy army, and killed all of the imperials, other than the general. The general was brought before Askinnath, and ended up being his right-hand man…
There were many other stories such as this one, which told the greater history of how Askinnath united the tribes and destroyed the empire, then founded his great kingdom, which had combined the best elements of the empire and the feudal tribes. But more than that, the saga spoke of his strange insight into weaknesses and correct tactics, his talent for persuasion and his amazing luck. It is funny, but Askinnath in the saga had accomplished many of the things that godar now have by default – perhaps because he was one of the models for them in the first days, as Kendra later said.
I did not think of those things and of how strange some of Askinnath’s other bright magical powers were back then, though; I simply enjoyed the stories of his great wars and successful strategems. And that was well, considering what station I was being prepared for…
Network.
There is not much to say about the network. Being connected to it is a lot like breathing air; to be in the network is to be of the hamme. It carries in it permissions, warnings, restrictions and advice, though only a few of the laws in it are truly ironclad – mostly the ones that have to do with the godar, since the network is how the godar governs and commands the hamme, and how the hamme holds the godar accountable.
Others found a great deal of other things in the network; it granted access to a varied range of technology of convenience and to a large amount of different information, and besides it was the means for them to talk to one another even at great distances, tell stories and play games – even when their minds may have been better off centered on their current duties. I never used it as much, though – not because I didn’t appreciate it but because I thought it was best reserved for other things, while I preferred to diligently carry out my duties and my training, and spend the rest of the time exploring the borg and its surroundings, or listening to old sagas.
In this wise, I was distanced from some of my peers. But I was nevertheless a part of the hamme. I was in the network.
Bruslaw, Father.
I know that once upon a time, we had individual parents, instead of being the children of the hamme. Ancient heroes had fathers – this was sometimes mentioned, though it was never expanded upon much. It was a strange idea, certainly, and yet… not one that was completely dead.
For we all knew who was our father, and whom we sometimes called so, even if the priesthood disapproved. The godar is the father of his hamme.
And yet, in later days, Bruslaw himself seemed even closer to me than that. So I decided that in a way, he really was my father .
I was marked to succeed him, after all.
Of course, that was the main reason in and of itself for why he had… adopted me, and favoured me with his attention so much: we talked and sparred and prayed and travelled together, and he showed me some important secrets of our hamme. It was a pragmatic decision to prepare me and to entrust me with his deepest plans, so that I may carry them out if he died before he could see to it himself.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that there really was something more to it. Being a godar was a burden; a proud one, but still. Bruslaw was old and, though I didn’t notice until much later, tired, very tired. I had become his true support, which was an honour for me, naturally. But I think that to him, I was also a permissible bond; an object of something like warm parental or mentorly affection.
There was so much I still didn’t know about him, though. He led us for a long time – ever since godar Ervin passed away. He was a jerl during the Second Schism, I think, and perhaps during the first one, too. I am not sure, though. Did he ever see space? Or did I just imagine it when I thought he was looking at the sky wistfully and with regret?
It wasn’t that much of a stretch either way, though, because his plan was to return us there. No, not to space yet – that, he said, would be my work.
He fell ill, one day, but still sent me away. It wasn’t a snub. I was on an important mission. Far more important even than my inheritance, which I may very well have forfeited if… if my father died while I was away.
To be continued.
It's a lot like a Greek polis in that regard - or any other traditional society unit, for that matter.
