V. Human Remains

Before anyone becomes a demon, they are first a human.

Humans have many strange beliefs. One of them is that each individual is like a separate tree in an orchard. In reality, every family is a single tree, each member a branch; even when one branch withers and dies, the others continue to grow, continue to fork. Some become tinder, but before they were tinder, they were branches.

When Darius Briggs still walked the Earth as man, he'd had a son named Lucian. Lucian's mother, Viola Crowne, would have been Darius' wife, if marriages were a luxury that Darius and Viola could have afforded. But those were turbulent times; the stagnating world powers of the past were collapsing. First Asia, then Europe, then the Middle East, then the Moon colony; they fell like dominoes to Lawrence Rehnquist's forces. It seemed that World War IV was ready to break out, with Rehnquist on one side and all who opposed him on the other. But Rehnquist was brighter than that; a few carefully controlled genetically engineered viruses ravaged his potential enemies without a shot fired. The world fell, not with a roar, but with a whisper.

The insurgency had been strong then, right after the iron fist first crashed down on the world. Some people said it was the end of the world. Some people thought that Rehnquist was the Antichrist; now everyone knew that wasn't true--Antichrist was only supposed to get seven years in power, and Rehnquist had held onto his hold of all humanity for nearly twenty-one years. The insurgents had fought with everything they had. They'd fought in the streets, in the harbors, in the hills, the skies, and even on the artificial meadows of the Moon and Mars Colonies. Their courage was legendary.

But it wasn't enough. The reason Rehnquist had succeeded where so many would-be conquerors had failed was that Rehnquist had triumphed over the one human trait that not even Lucifer could best--free will. They called it a Loyalty Enforcement Facilitator. What it actually was was an electronic construct applied to base of the brainstem, with a larger unit filled with stimulants attached to the back. When the desired response was obtained, a wave of pleasant chemicals washed over the wearer. Whenever the wearer did something that was discouraged, misery overwhelmed the poor wretch's form.

Of course, it wasn't economical to equip every human in existence--somewhere near ten billion--with an LEF. Instead, just Rehnquist's police forces used them. The official rosters listed the human automatons with their frightening black armor and glowing green visors as "Loyalty Monitors." Most of the unaltered population referred to them as "chots." The higher ranking ones, called Enforcers, had cybernetic enhancements; the only time anyone escaped an Enforcer was if he was leading it somewhere.

All of this would merely have made Lawrence Rehnquist a powerful dictator. What made him legendary was his law code. There was only one offense--disloyalty. All former crimes were under the heading of disloyalty. Accordingly, there was one sentence--death. This was best illustrated when the Mars Colony declared independence from Rehnquists regime. Rehnquist understood that people would never choose his regime if there was an alternative--the Mars Colony would not be allowed to secede. Rather than attempt to retake the colony, Rehnquist launched a salvo of nuclear warheads at the colony. No attempt to negotiate was made; six generations of perra-terraforming was undone in the space of an afternoon as all life was purged from the surface of Mars. The estimated body count topped one billion, making it the largest act of genocide in history by a wide margin.

This was what Darius Briggs had sacrificed himself to try to prevent. So many other had died, seemingly in vain. The insurgency remained, underground; they had sworn to never surrender.

Once the whole of human territory was his, Rehnquist had had the entire Earth analyzed to deduce the prime site for his capital. The analysis had come back with a backwater former state capital in the former United States--Columbus, Ohio. Data showed that its topography was best suited to expansion while still having plenty of access routes. The small city was renamed New Liberty and expanded tenfold. The bloated metropolis rested beside an artificial lake created by a rogue cluster rocket from World War III, some sixty years before. The lake was officially named Lake Gustav, after one Rehnquist's lieutenants, martyred early in the takeover. Most of the populace referred to it as the Bay of Sorrows.

All this seemed like a dream to Lucian Briggs. His father had died in this mess, and he wanted nothing to do with any of it.

Except, of course, when he dreamed...