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I'm coming up for 42 years old, and I'm once again convinced the cycle - the gyre - is widening. I don't have much time before everything is needed to be in place. All the months of meetings have been fruitful – they announced it officially this morning:
The Olympics is coming back to London Town. The Mandarins are as pleased as punch that we've managed to clamber back onto the international stage – it gives them a chance to show the world that ENGLAND REBORN isn't insane. That, in fact, it's the most stable and secure we've ever been, and while mistakes have been made we're actually better off.
And we are, mostly. The Act has turned a feral wilderness into a hot-house garden. It's a vibrant and pleasant place to be. Sure, we had to bleed for it, and some people even died – but I can count on one hand the number of times something has been built without blood.
I saw Adams at Charlie Webber's funeral last month. The old guard are looking increasingly thin on the ground, but we're all getting older. Time marches on, as it were, and the Museum seems to be treating him well. He's certainly looking less frazzled these days.
Me, I'm spending almost all my time in meetings at the Ministry: Warburg and her cohorts in Parliament want to put on a big celebration of the Act. You know, invite the great and the good to tour the Museum. There's a bit of an agenda there – I can see it in the smiles and the handshakes, but I'm probably the only one of the non-Museum staff to see it.
I never thought I'd say it, but I'm actually enjoying the desk-side of things. Leaves me plenty of time to examine that thread, tweak the design a little. Nothing major – too much interference will attract attention, and I don't want to jeopardize what's coming.
It has to be organic, you see.
…I wonder if Warburg ever bothers to check these?
Hello, Julia. Do you know what we've set in motion? Was that your plan all along, or were you just curious?
I know you know something. I can smell it on you, dark and slightly askew, like the spoor of some great beast. I wonder if you know that I know. Can you feel the endless spiralling recursion? The way it's all sliding together like some great automaton, some shambling golem that's spontaneously generated its own anima?
It's all about mirrors – as above so below. Mankind makes mirrors, imitates and externalises.
“Every thing is a quantum of everything.”
Do you even know who said that, Doctor Julia Warburg, Museum Director? I had to look it up, because it just appeared, just emerged.
We're all linked now, bound together by artifice. All sharing the same pool, the same psychic living space. The irony is, we already were – we just didn't know it.
So catch your breath in the Green and Pleasant Land, this synthetic Paradise. It's what we built it for, to keep you safe.
'They heard the voice of Adonai, God, walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, so the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Adonai, God, among the trees in the garden. Adonai, God, called to the man, “Where are you?”'
Where, indeed?
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