The AnarkHivists

Excerpt From Chapter 9:

The Kaleidoscope [Generation 07.02.003]

Captain Rosalyn Nizet-Rosario sighed, bringing her legs up to her chest and settling into the seat. I did not match her relaxation. “Do you know what the most common Terran stories were?” she asked. 

“They didn’t have stories. They were too busy running from the storms and the fires to make anything. Earth was way too friggen dangerous for anyone to survive. We abandoned that planet for a reason. It was holding us back. Don’t know why you even bothered to lie about being from there,” I said. Overkill, words designed to slap. I’d seen her get angry before. I knew the old lady had it in her to gnash. I needed the brawl.

“Right,” Niz replied, clearing her throat before we truly began. “A suggestion, Alta—it is unwise to speak with your full chest on matters of which you know little about. Your cynicism betrays reality. You do know the answer. You said it. Humans, above all else, delight in disaster tales. We love to tell of what happens next, how resilient we are. Plants grow beneath the frost, towns survive the quakes, libraries build back up after the fires. Flood stories were once the most common tales the whole planet over.”

“Cut the hippie crap,” I repeated, losing what little patience I had left. “Floods don’t matter any more, Hives solved that issue. Just say it plain, Niz.” 

“What do you think I’m doing, Alta? You asked for an explanation, I’m giving it. Now it’s your turn to listen. I know you’re smarter than this. Do you legitimately believe that humans truly never made anything on Earth, and then one day miraculously figured out how to build IntraSolar rocketships?”

I stumbled. She caught the crack in my facade. “B-but that’s not art,” I said, attempting to recover. “That’s science. We had tools for friggen ages, but only the Corpe makes art. It’s the frosting on the cake, it ain’t the meal.” 

“Is that so?” She laughed, too jovial for the tension. “Is there no precision in a delicious cake? No chemistry in ceramics, no art in arithmetic, no craft in craftsmanship? Did you not feel the life instinct with Magnolia this afternoon? Because I felt her takeoff, I know she breathed new breath today. You’ve inspired the machine. But do not pretend that you know my art better than I.”

“So what’s your art?” I asked. 

“I’m a thief. I delight in the art of a beautifully executed heist.” 

“Let me guess, some ‘from the rich to the poor’ crap?”

“Not exactly,” Niz said. “That’s Pysces’s oeuvre. I would consider myself a savant of a good forced repatriation. I’m a treasure hunter, Alta, but not in the way you would expect. Flood stories are universal, and yet, most don’t know of the flood that culled nearly all art from existence around three hundred years ago. Only one millionth of one percent of all the creation that has ever existed still exists. I keep that number from shrinking.” 

I didn’t say a damn word. She kept talking.

Humans have always been remarkably human. Technology shifts and rockets fly, but people have a delightful knack for being. Those on the Dead World could once see the stars, glorious cosmos that danced from forests to deserts to beaches. Until, one day, the sky began to fade. Each advancement—automobiles, radio, telephones, bombs, computers, rockets—stole stars from their heavens. Metropolis lights brightened. The storms got worse. Atoms split. We landed on Luna, then Mars, then Europa. We built infinity machines that spit out swill and left them running indefinitely, declaring them to be the pinnacle of intelligence as they devoured the landscape. 

The story always went that we Swarmed like the bee did. When a queen outlived her usefulness, she was disposed of and the drone workers flew off in search of a new home. I’d always been relayed the same order of events. The Earth died, so we too Swarmed. But Niz told me that depiction of cause and effect was not, in fact, true. We wrecked the planet in our Swarm. We swore we could thrive without her.

Several companies sponsored the effort, though through one merger after another, only HexaCorpe remained in the spread from rock to rock. Originally miners and war profiteers, they were well positioned to become their own everything engine. Their reach quickly extended into all areas of content. Stories are easier to sculpt when one sole business controls the production of every textbook, every film, every painting, every play, every song, every website, every game, every menu, every article, every poem, every line of credit. 

Once power coalesced, the flood hit. The Corpe took the Swarm’s opportunity to enact the largest creative culling ever seen. 

All art made before the Swarm was declared to be barbaric, degenerative, retrograde, and uncultured in the shining light of the New System. All images of home were automatically erased. All physical media from the Dead Wold was locked away from public view, if not actively destroyed. Tens of thousands of years of culture and research disappeared in a blink. The disaster wiped digital records at the discretion of apathetic algorithms. There were not enough words to describe how much humanity lost to that destructive everything engine. Our collective library fell long before the masses noticed the ripple.

With HexaCorpe controlling the only methods of media distribution, they enacted a long list of rules for which content could or could not be discussed, regardless of medium. Only the most palatable works from Mercury to MakeMake could be created, and only as long as they were assured to generate maximized profit.If a five year old couldn’t consume it, no one could. Art for everyone or no one, no exceptions. The Corpe content machine churned, generating the same six drab works again and again, charging consumers more for less each time around. 

Reprehensible art found by the Peaceforce was swiftly confiscated, the artists punished, and the offensive material purged. Every single book we’d picked up on Ceres had been banned for one reason or another. The Magnolia crew saved them, taking the tomes to be archived and repeated regardless of legality. 

Because humans have always been so very human, Niz said. And there is nothing more human than the art of making, regardless of context or circumstance. Even from the darkest shadows, stories continued to be told, through paint, through song, through dialogues and photographs and the hidden language of film. Art was not a byproduct of comfortability—it was what remained when backs were against walls. In the face of a flood, those on the fringes got a little, well, creative. 

Creation unified. The librarians, the archivists, the artists, and many plain bystanders saw the cull coming. They followed the second most human instinct—to grab what they dared to save and climb to higher ground. Intentional repetition dragged the intangible through time, allowing what little of the past they could foster to live on in the collective dream of the future. That seed proliferated. Technology and material worked hand in hand, appealing to the senses, conveying the heart’s pain without a single word spoken. Unbridled creation became the art of rebellion. 

“My team and I are members of the AnarkHive, a collection of thieves that seek what has been lost, conserve the banned, and even the score in a System hellbent on creative control. Art is entropic, which makes it dangerous. And still, it is inevitable,” Niz said. “The Corpe hates what it cannot shape. It abstracts treasure to assets in the hopes that the masses will not covet all that is hoarded. But inspiration propagates. Art moments—those complicated, devastating thrills where souls fire like synapses and momentarily share in the same vision—open the door for change. You know this. You wouldn’t be sitting here if not for Wallon Dalyce. That continuation of human tradition makes life worth living. I fight to protect it. That’s the truth. I’m an art thief in search of what scraps survived the flood. I know what I treasure. Do you?”