Call Out
If you ask the elders about how all this here came to be, y’know, this life that we have going on around here, most ain’t gonna be able to tell you shit. Truth is, there ain’t no one around here who’s old enough to remember scat about how we got here. Hundreds of years ago? Thousands? Frankly, it doesn’t matter. It ain’t like finding the truth is gonna make shit any better. We ain’t going anywhere. Maybe we came from the skies, maybe we came from the bowels of this hellhole we’re forced to call home. Maybe god got bored with us and threw us here like garbage. Maybe it was the sins of our fathers and maybe we all deserve to rot here.
There ain’t no benefit to philosophizing and drowning yourself in answerless questions, I reckon. I ain’t so proud, so high n’ mighty to think there’s divine providence guiding our lives. Ain’t no god give a shit about us. So, I reckoned I’d do all the shit-giving around here.
I’m a woman of action myself, you see. That’s how I survived around here. That’s also how I attracted all these like-minded individuals such as yourself to this here town that we call Pride’s End. You’ve seen other towns, haven’t ya? Clueless fools, looking outside for deliverance. Their damned priests underpay suckers who don’t know any better to go into ruins to scavenge old artifacts. Once brought back, the artifacts are peddled as divine gifts and put upon pedestals and worshipped. What the fuck is the point of that? Ain’t nobody gonna benefit from that shit if we don’t learn to harness the true potential of those things. That’s why you’re here, ain’t ya? The “tech” is made by folks like you and I. Ain’t not a single doubt in my mind about that, I tell ya what. Those technocrats might not want us near those ruins, but you and I both know that ain’t gonna keep us away.
Now the truth is… There is something else. Something new. The sky scintillates up north and smells awful sweet and spicy. A couple lifetimes before mine, a Vigilant forebear of mine made a vox-cord about a similar occurrence. In his time, the “Rush” as he calls it, led to a shift in ways of life. The air caused some folks to awaken, something. No clue what that means, but those who went to the source came back more powerful than before: tenfold, hundredfold. People who breathe fire, spark electricity with their fingers. Bring back the dead.
The technocrats would tell ya that I’m lying. But tell me, haven’t you seen the signs? Smelled the air? The uncharted territories are crawling with… Well I don’t know what the call those things. I ain’t afraid though. Those ain’t much more different than what this world throws at us, I reckon.
No, what I care about is the Rush. If it ain’t us starting the Rush, then it sure as hell will be someone else. What do you reckon would happen if the technocrats get whatever causes the Rush in their damned hands?
Nah. I ain’t gonna let that happen. The Rush is gonna be ours.