COMMUTATION 1.4

"Forgive me, if my speech is unclear and absurd, but I really have no idea how to ask, even though the nature of my petition demands complete selfless humility. Just imagine I beg you on my knees! In any case, believe me, I feel that way."

- A snippet of dialogue from a poor translation of Troll Pathologic.

A troll girl of roughly ten sweeps dressed in a revealingly-cut leotard and an elaborate ruffle collar is standing in the middle of a moonlit podium. The pews in front of her are empty, save for one other troll dressed in ceremonial military lolita. Light shines on her through a beautiful stained glass window, depicting the Empress' rise to power and the attentions of several of her castes of loyal subjects. This prominently includes the jades, the purples and the violets, kneeling in supplication, all three bearing their own symbols. A matriorb for the jades, a golden club for the clowns, and a whalebone baton for the violets.

Of course, this being a church, the clowns take up the center of the triptych adorning the bottom half of the window. Amongst them is one that's dressed eerily similar to the girl on stage, down to the collar of pearls in all the colours of the haemospectrum. She paces across her podium, clearly working up to something, practicing her diction while she moves. Occasionally, she turns her back on the other troll and spreads her arms out over her head, staring in faked exultation at the window crafted to grant the impression of a halo, which settles upon her slender antenna-like horns. They bend up and sideways at a 45 degree angle before cascading down like ribbons fixed in place.

The visitor taps his foot impatiently, but nevertheless humours this private show being put on for him. His outfit isn't represented in this particular church's window.

The church itself is evidently over a hundred sweeps old from its exterior construction, but the interior's decoration is incredibly shiny, with none of the wear or tear expected from the length of time it has existed. The most ostentatious thing in the room is probably the stained glass window itself. The rest is relatively sober, although it does possess an organ, and the acoustics are excellent.

======-> Be the clown.

Excuse me?

======-> Be the clown*girl*, thank you very much.

You are now the CLOWNGIRL. You're standing in a BEATIFIC CHURCH in the CENTRE OF THE CITY. Relatively tucked away in a dead-end corner, you managed to LIBERATE IT from a more traditional clown-sect by virtue of YOUR ANCESTOR'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS. You now use this building to accomplish a VARIETY OF PERSONAL GOALS by performing POLITICAL SERMONS. You're also FOMENTING A SCHISM by letting in THE LOWBLOODS. The more traditionally-minded don't particularly like this.

Your name is CERATO HONING, and currently, you're giving a SPEECH.

CERATO: There is a wonderful school of thought that has been spreading amongst the lower and subsequently upper echelons of blueblood social scienstiffs lately.

CERATO: Or, rather, their debate has been going on for a while.

CERATO: I'm not sure you would be quite acquainted with it?

CERATO: It has been in vogue, as they say, although they probably in turn stole that expression, for them to pay attention to their lower status on the haemocaste. Lower, of course, compared to us.

CERATO: This school of thought is very concerned with social constructions. They argue the reason they're not appreciated more - their words - is because of the idea they are not appreciated more. That it is this very idea that is keeping them, and specifically them, down.

CERATO: This, too, is an idea they stole from somewhere else. Poorly, might I add.

CERATO: But, let us indulge their ideas a little. The social scienstiffs are trying to legitimise this idea in science, but not too broadly. Only applying to themselves.

CERATO: Constructionihilists, as they label themselves, argue that the methods imposed on them for science, their very own ideological doctrine, is nothing more than a blindfold to the actual truth: clowns - and it's always clowns, not fish! they can do something right after all - planted these ideas initially.

CERATO: That they're blinded by now dogmatic rules of science to the truth of the world. That all of it is made up by those atop the pile to keep them busy in their little laboratories. That their work has no meaning.

CERATO: It's funny how this does end up being a wonderful sniping against the more materially minded of their ilk. The ones actually working on important things, like, say, biochemistry and drone rearing. Or designing new biotechnology for the imperial war machine.

CERATO: From their self-inflated point of view, their science, the real game in town, is actually rhetoric.

You perform a little twirl and flourish to accompany the word, before you launch into your next sentence, voice projecting.

CERATO: A mere attempt at swaying a crowd of presumably lowbloods or even my and your own assorted peers - the only relevant actors, really - into the appropriate frenzy that all devolves into enough violence you become right. Or that science is when you civilly persuade them of your own superior point of view. Hah! Who am I kidding.

CERATO: We do all love a little bit of divinely ordained violence, do we not? Whatever form that violence might take.

CERATO: Rhetoric, rhetoric, rhetoric. I can dance a wonderful dance around most others of my caste rhetorically, but obviously this is not solely where the problem lies. I would be spinning my wheels.

CERATO: I could further twist the argument that science, and with it, power, is even less attached to any concrete truth and observable reality! That all knowledge is simply those power plays, the systemic bias against you and me a product of social relations, that what other clowns tell themselves as they shut the door on me and what your delightful associates in your little parliament whisper among themselves about your ideas is only *rhetoric*. Or, even beyond that, simply a story. All form, no content.

The deadpan you deliver this in should be enough to signal your disapproval. A wry lilt enters your voice.

CERATO: Then so much for those of us who would still like to talk about *reality* with more confidence than we allow the evengealists when they discuss their double death and being raptured out of the final destruction of the world.

CERATO: Obviously it can't just be rhetoric.

CERATO: These ways of knowing are embedded in quite material issues. The institutions themselves, in ways, live and breathe these ways of knowing. His Honorable Tyranny being a prime example.

CERATO: No, the problem lies in me not being afforded the opportunity to spin my opponents into metaphorical dizziness. The problem is systemic.

CERATO: Institutions that have decided certain people do not get to speak does not happen all on their own and it is not made entirely out of decisions in the here and now.

CERATO: Inherited status and wealth is a rather pernicious concern amongst my peers. Amongst yours, too, I am told.

CERATO: Aren't you glad we're on the lucky side of that dice roll?

CERATO: Of course, we're both on the unfortunate end of another. You and I are practically sisters in our circumstances, really. It's quite amusing how we're funhouse mirrors of each other.

You smile at him, before continuing

CERATO: To explain reality we have to come up with something different. Relying on the idea of an objective truth however gets us back into the thorn-dense thicket of those privileged positions claiming they belong nearer to objectivity than us.

CERATO: That certain qualities about us make us unfit for objectivity.

CERATO: So we can't simply claim the traditional ways of knowing what's objective and what isn't, lest we shoot ourselves prematurely in the frond by positioning ourselves in the category that is unable to be rational.

CERATO: Additionally, objectivity promises a sort of "god-trick", as heretical as that sounds.

CERATO: By creating knowledge and declaring that knowledge as objectively true, you position yourself outside the process. As if you have no bearing on what's being made.

CERATO: In that sense it's also not particularly in touch with reality, is it not?

CERATO: The knowledge that a seadweller would create - one in which the ability to breathe underwater is taken for granted - does in fact differ from my own experiences.

CERATO: Objectivity is therefore a scam. A losing proposition. But we can't abandon it either, because material issues afflict us like plagues.

CERATO: What's left, then? If we can't claim divine, arbitrary objectivity but we must still ground ourselves in material concerns? Dialectics? Oh, twin gods no. I'm not touching those.

You pantomime shuddering slightly, playing up your aversion.

CERATO: The debate. The debate about objectivity does of course matter. You can't simply give up the fight about defining things. They're actually on to something, for once. It's not like bluebloods are somehow ontologically incapable of grasping at any truth, as naive, shuttered and blinkered as their perspectives may be at times.

CERATO: The consequences of not being trained for big-picture thinking, I'm afraid.

CERATO: No, they do have a point. The debate about objectivity matters, who gets to create knowledge, who only gets to consume it. It's not actually solely academic.

CERATO: Immortality and omnipotence are not our goals. I'm not a heretic. Gods forbid.

CERATO: All I suggest is that we could use some enforceable, reliable accounts of things not reducible to power moves and agonistic, clownish games of rhetoric, or to traditional scienstiff blueblood positivistic arrogance.

CERATO: That is part of what I wish to introduce with the new doctrine I am writing.

CERATO: A certain subjectivity to it all, limited by place and time. Context-bound, to say that what is virtue in one church may become sin in another.

CERATO: My detractors might call it a get-out-of-heresy-free card.

CERATO: Rigid lot. They're the ones that have slipped so much they're losing their grip on the pulse of society. The rot has set in, there.

CERATO: Indulgences abound while they laze away, not noticing the social movement brewing right beneath their noses.

This is perhaps the most open you've been about your disdain for the established order of the Church. It's thrilling, to commit an offence they'd cull you over. You've slipped the noose already before, though, securing this place. They can't touch you yet.

CERATO: All I'm doing is re-interpreting things to grant myself a little more leniency.

CERATO: Slipping the bounds of the noose they've woven for themselves.

CERATO: So, this is why I'm inventing my own, new epistemology.

CERATO: Adapted to the context of each congregation.

CERATO: What's traditionally heresy may be permissible in context. That leniency has always been afforded to our religion off-planet.

CERATO: And these are exceptional times.

CERATO: I think they call for exceptional measures.

A short silence fills the air as you stand on the stage, facing the stained glass, perfectly posed in the light cascading in rays that coat you in a soft, circular glow.

OTOKON: Yo->u're perverting Harawy's theo->ry.

CERATO: Dearest Otokon, perversion is *what I do*.
CERATO: You should know that by now!

OTOKON: I kno->w what so->rt o->f bargain I made.
OTOKON: No->netheless, I kno->w o->bvio->us theft when I see it.
OTOKON: Yo->u're adapting it wro->ng. Yo->ur jump fro->m to->pic to-> to->pic is also-> slo->ppy.
OTOKON: Yo->ur ho->nest tho->ughts also-> started slipping o->ut near the end.
OTOKON: It's almo->st eno->ugh to-> make me believe yo->u didn't rehearse this.
OTOKON: Yo->u do->n't have to-> pretend to-> be wo->rse at what yo->u do-> to-> gain an advantage o->ver me.
OTOKON: I am also-> no->t pro->ne to-> fits o->f idealism that'll delude me into-> thinking yo->u're o->ur so->le so->lutio->n.
OTOKON: I refuse to-> under o->r o->verestimate yo->u as an asset.

During his little diatribe you've snuck up behind him and draped your arms around his neck. You have to tilt your head so your horns don't jut into his face, but you make the angle work. Them lightly brushing against his is the icing on the cake. A shiver runs up his spine, involuntarily.

CERATO: You're so cold, Otokon.
CERATO: I guess that is the natural consequence of being higher up the strata than I am, so truly, what did I expect?
CERATO: But it wouldn't hurt you to loosen up a little, you know?

OTOKON: I have a jo->b to-> do->.
OTOKON: That is all.

He shrugs you off as if trying to dissuade a bug from landing. You tut, walking a short distance away, and spin on your tall heels to face him again. Your eyes betray a certain mirth at making him uncomfortable. He turns up his nose and faces to the side as he continues.

OTOKON: O->n to-> what I'm here fo->r.
OTOKON: Have any jadeblo->o->ds sho->wn themselves in church?
OTOKON: Ho->w are things go->ing o-> the teal fro->nt?
OTOKON: I believe we are lo->sing the teals to-> the rest o->f the Church.

He pauses. You take the moment to admire his arrow-shaped horns, although one of them seems to be curling in on itself? Oh well. None of your concern. Your eyes drift down to the way his outfit accentuates the lines of his body. You wonder what would happen if you bit the frills along his ears..

CERATO: We're losing the teals, unfortunately. Overall, that is.
CERATO: There's a few individuals that show up to my sermons, but not many.
CERATO: A handful seem to recognise what we're doing, and they're the ones to watch out for.
CERATO: We can't have anyone get too wise to their entire way of life being fought over by fish and clowns.
CERATO: Probably this means a rise in terrorism.
CERATO: Or someone who is going to try provide a counterweight to me.

CERATO: As for the jades, none of them bit.
CERATO: That's what Harawy's theory is meant to help with.
CERATO: Not that you'd recognise that.

OTOKON: I reco->gnised Harawy.
OTOKON: I kno->w jade theo->ry.

CERATO: Sure you do.

He scoffs, and continues.

OTOKON: I have co->ntacted so->me o->ther peo->ple to->o->.
OTOKON: Maybe they will pro->ve more successful in jade o->utreach.

Despite your best attempts, you do feel something inside you lurch a little at the hint of his disapproval. You're probably within his margins or expectations, but the idea of someone else succeeding on your own turf won't do. You'll have to redouble your efforts. Before you manage to stop yourself your posture straightens, as if rearing up in threat display. He either doesn't notice, or pretends not to notice.

OTOKON: Additio->nally, we really need a name fo->r the traditional Church. No->w that yo->u're officially breaking with them.
OTOKON: So->mething to-> set yo->u two-> apart.
OTOKON: O->bviously yo->ur co->o->peratio->n with Lilith might pro->ve to-> yo->ur advantage there?
OTOKON: Yo->u co->uld theme yo->urself after her.

CERATO: I already had something planned, don't you worry.
CERATO: I've been snooping around your books, see. Learning your funny little formal fish language.
CERATO: As part of my activities while I spend time with my lovely moirail.

You can't resist sneaking in that barb as retaliation, and watching his brow furrow ever so slightly as he represses his response. You don't miss the slight change though, the sudden stillness.

CERATO: I think the word I've settled on for my little movement is Conscientiae.
CERATO: The conscience holding the old Church to account.

CERATO: Wouldn't it be nice to take them to task?