Leaning against the balustrade of his suite’s balcony, Afshin took a deep, long inhale from his bejeweled long-stem pipe. Smoke billowed out as he exhaled, rising to the humid tropical night air before vanishing into the background pollution of the sleepless metropolis of Serendip spreading beneath. Under the faint light of the new moon, the city glimmered like a lustrous string of jewels that radiated against the backdrop of the pitch darkness of lush jungles to its one side. Colossal billboards and holograms produced animate vernacular forms in a myriad colors that danced throughout the corporate-owned nighttime skyline, and when one peered through the hyperreal Serendip exploded in emerald vines which tendrils encased buildings which turned stylized and patterned, from which interactive metaphorical wild orchids bloomed as solemnly joyful yet enigmatic music boomed directly from the city’s own air.
A massive, jolly, swarthy face beamed benevolently from a screen etched on the façade of a skyscraper's lower levels right across the road, flashing various projects and sponsors in the background. Even farther away, the massive hologram of the same man, displaying his entire towering body in an ostentatious and tasteless attire that struck Afshin off as unintentionally comedic, extensively jeweled from ears down to the ankles that he practically looked like a pagan idol, with swarm drones assembling to engrave a message WELCOME TO SERENDIP on air in multiple languages, as the man smiled and waved. The Zamorin of Serendip, as he was called, the ruling prince of the city, was practically unavoidable in either the skyline of the metropolis or the worlds of the hyperreal, blending along endless streams of advertisements. This was an unheard-of practice in the northern lands of the Abode of Peace, where the ancient merchant and banking houses were paranoid at the thought of being photographed, let alone advertising their faces and personalities into their cities’ billboards and screens. And yet such was the presence of the jolly and rotund Zamorin, who appeared more like an overbearing larger-than-life celebrity than an administrator, and yet by all accounts regarded as excellent in his work as the latter.
Being a northerner, Afshin nevertheless had very little love for Serendip, or indeed other southern cities like it. It was hot, humid, teeming with tropical vegetation with buzzing of bloodsucking insects, its people crassly glamorous, uncouth, and overly obsessed with excessive ostentation and larger-than-life personalities. As the southernmost Core agglomerate, it was a world away from the climate and temperament of his acceptably civilized home Ushrusana. Some of his colleagues admittedly liked to enjoy the indulgent resorts of the south, the warm sun and days of wasting away in indolent pleasures. Not him. If he’s here, he’s here for work and for work only.
An arm grabbed him from behind. He turned around, and a younger, more vibrant, slightly darker hued face, with disheveled dark hair and sharp brown eyes, bashfully grinned at him several inches above his own. Afshin didn’t really recall his name, but it doesn’t matter anyway. All of them used false names in this business, him included. The younger man–perhaps in his early twenties, or at least looked like one–already dressed himself up in a bathrobe, but Afshin still well remembered the immaculately sculpted musculature in his chest that now gently pushed against his back, and likewise the arms that enveloped him now, gripping warmly but with firmness that caused him to flutter slightly.
Well, he’s here mostly for work, and he only didn’t like most things about the city, anyway.
He gently released himself from the young man’s grip and regained his composure. “I’m going to leave shortly, after I finish this smoke,” he said. “This room’s already fully paid until noon, so don’t worry about it.”
The younger man’s face changed into feigned disappointment. “That soon? I’m booked for a night, you know.”
“Hmm, hmm.” Afshin mumbled. “It’s work. This entire week has been extremely busy and tomorrow it’s going to be a lot worse. I’m already exhausted as it is, keeping up with you for an entire night will fucking kill me.”
“Ah, I see.” He chuckled. “Well, I did figure out that you're a busy man. I know there's something amiss about a lot of old northern sorcerers like you hanging around this place lately. I mean, I know some of you do like to visit around occasionally, but it doesn’t seem like you guys are on sabbatical this time, a lot of you seem to be actually working. Big events coming around here, hmm?”
It didn’t remotely surprise Afshin that he was unaware about the existence of a summit a day’s away that was being garishly advertised everywhere throughout the streets of Serendip. The side effect of a system of esoteric interlocking black boxes that automated policy away from prying eyes of public opinion means that, over time, most people just lived their lives away not as much as from ignorance as from apathy to anything that didn’t directly affect their own pleasures and personal obsessions. As far as he and other lords of the Imperial Court are concerned, incuriosity was a good thing as long as it was from the ones who didn’t have business to pry any information in the first place. He was bothered with one thing, however.
“I’m not old,” he said in an almost miserable tone. “I’m not even forty.”
The younger man blinked. “I see. Well, I thought to guess a sorcerer’s age you just need to multiply the age of his appearance twice, so I thought you’re probably in your late fifties or something. Sorry about that.” He laughed while unwittingly sending a sharp pang to Afshin’s heart.
“And yes,” Afshin continued, smoke seeping out from his mouth. “There’s going to be a very big event. I’m not sure if it’s going to directly concern you, but it’s a summit for leaders and diplomats of the lands of Se-Kešvar.” Three Continents, referring to the old Darussalami name of Valkian lands. “The Imperial Court will host an assembly of all peoples of this region, and this city has been selected as the location of the first summit.”
“A summit, huh? That’s interesting. So there’s going to be a lot of foreigners–high-profile foreigners, even!–around here. Potential clients, don’t you think?” He laughed again. “I wonder if they like playing around. They might even like men, too, although we have plenty of girls around here as well. Maybe the Zamorin will encourage them to do that, you know. To go around and have unexpected fun. That’s the point of being in Serendip, right?”
As he mentioned the Zamorin, Afshin grimaced, but he carefully concealed it. “Yes, the Zamorin,” he said. “I believe he’s going to welcome them in tomorrow’s ceremony. You might not want to miss it.”
“That’s great!” He wreathed a big radiant smile. “I don’t know much about politics–or care much about it, really, but the Zamorin is a really great man.”
Afshin looked again at the prince celebrity and his joyous expression in the Akashic databases. The Zamorin of Serendip was, by most accounts, a very popular man in his territories. To be sure, despite the grievances of many northerners uncomfortable with his glamorously personalized rule, his cult was relatively lighthearted and not particularly overbearing, people are more than free to dislike or disagree with him. He resided in a vast wooden monastery-like complex built on the hills of Ratna Parbat mountain that overlooked the city, clearly visible from certain districts even with all the towering skyscrapers that blotted its skyline, where everyday he’s said to receive petitions of his people. And yet no one’s quite sure regarding the extent–or basis–of his authority. He was not a political figure but a patrimonial monarch, a genial celebrity figure that symbolized the wealth and success of Serendip.
All that people knew is that when the Zamorin began to rule more than a decade ago, the city began to embark on an ambitious project. A deal was struck with Darussalami and Menelmacari contractors to build a ninety-kilometer canal starting just from the city’s outskirts that will cleave the Valkian continents into two, snaking through jungles, swamps, and deserts of southern Mesovalkia, and facilitating access to the largely pristine (and desolate) eastern coasts. In the sixth year it was finished, and Serendip rejoiced. It turned overnight from a wealthy but sleepy resort port into one of the busiest seaports in the subcontinent. Its population exploded into a few dozen millions and still climbing, and yet the city never overextended. The Zamorin again negotiated rule in the city’s teeming Sprawl, carving it up for several corporate mafia groups that now administered the outer districts professionally. The city and its surrounding districts simplified tax codes and business regulations that they inherited from long-fallen central authority of the twentieth-century Secular Regency, and joined the commercium of the Core regions. Still rooted in its origin as a sleazy resort town for the northern elites, the city’s companies built opulent casinos, grand festival grounds, and magnificent brothels under the blessing of the Zamorin who fashioned himself as a sybarite, potbellied from the world’s pleasures and with a carefree smile that never disappeared in front of his grateful subjects. His city had become a city of unexpected and limitless pleasures, such he claimed in a popular advertisement. Enjoy your surprises in the city of Serendip.
Afshin didn’t need to consult the Akashic databases to know all of that. Most people knew the Zamorin even less than they thought, and Afshin was among the few aware of that. In fact, probably only a handful of people knew the inner workings of the system that governed Serendip better than Afshin did. Starting, perhaps, from the fact that the Zamorin did not actually exist.
That is debatable, of course. Existence was always a tenuous and contentious thing in the realm where individual personalities dissolve into professional mind-hives, corporations manifested their personhood into corporal anthropomorphic forms, and sorcerers like Afshin maintain a dozen node individualities distributed throughout their identity network. But here’s the actual story about the Zamorin: a while ago, it was decided by the intricate mechanism that determined the internal workings of the publicly-traded municipal corporation of Serendip that investing in a larger-than-life personality that functioned as a legible interface to the masses and foreigners, a living and breathing advertisement, was an auspicious venture that will bring profitable returns. And so that person began to exist, summoned from the hyperreal. Generative and manipulative media technology aided the reconstruction of his appearance, professionally contracted artists were extensively equipped with props and make-ups and live-fed with dynamically-generated lines and personality beamed straight to their cerebral cortices. His existence was not bizarre or innovative in Darussalam, exceptional only perhaps by the omnipresence and scale of his advertising. The Zamorin of Serendip was merely one of perhaps hundreds of princes, and certainly hundreds of thousands of various virtual personalities throughout Mesovalkia created by generative adversarial neural networks and personality meticulously crafted by corporate boards.
Did the person actually exist? Perhaps. A person, after all, is always first and foremost an interface to a complex system. But it was of little relevance. What was certain is that much of the Zamorin’s appearance is fabricated, and that he existed merely to exist–as a figure subjected to the popular monarchical cult of the Serendipites. As for the government of Serendip, it was–as always–automated fullstack, from the decision making process down to the logistics and implementation, entangled in a network of algorithmic angelminds, esoteric prediction markets, and shady corporate boards presided by sorcerer-oligarchs. Perhaps the gestalt of these systems manifested as the Zamorin, the face of the inhuman mechanisms that ensured that the city ran smoothly. Regardless, only a handful of actual flesh-and-bones people were granted privilege of access and modification of certain sections of its internal mechanisms. Afshin was one of them.
Most of the time, Afshin did not micromanage the affairs of his metropolis, content to let the system function as it is. This time was different. Prediction markets and blockchained oracular mechanisms operating in the Imperial Court had fixed their eyes to Serendip for the coming days, waiting to determine whether to grant the status of headquarters of the newly christened Valkian League to it or the northern metropolis of Balasaghun, where a similarly enigmatic interface known as Biwarasp the Wise reigned. Even as he lay on bed with a man he didn’t know, his sorcerous mind expanded and underwent division of labor, raced throughout the cloud services of the city and distributed along the nodes of surveillance systems, taking notes of data collected by the city’s various sensors and swarmbots buzzed throughout the landscape disguised as swarming buzz of cicadas and mosquitoes. Everything was to be perfectly choreographed, either planned or predicted in advance. He even reduced the frequency of the Zamorin’s appearance in the screens and holographic projections throughout the city, giving space instead for more bright corporate mascots and dancing idol qiyans, for fear that some might be disheartened at questionably garish display of a personality cult.
“Do you have plans for tomorrow?” Afshin suddenly asked loudly.
The man looked at him in confusion. “I do, but… what, are you planning for another meetup? I thought you said you’d be busy tomorrow.”
“No, no, I’m not planning anything.” Afshin flashed a grin. “It’s just that, don’t worry about it. Tomorrow there'll be no rain. One hundred percent clear weather. Trust me on it.”
~~~~~~
Serendip woke up the next morning with torrents of rain washing down through its streets.
“I thought you said it’s not going to rain today.” A woman, reclining on a divan, watched the rain pouring down from her fogging window. “I think you might have been distracted last night.” She conjured words that reverberated directly to the inside of Afshin’s skull, communicating directly to his auditory cortex.
Afshin did the same. “It’s not supposed to,” he said in frustration. He was sitting in the back of a car that quietly rushed to the summit’s place in the city’s outskirts, up on the cooler and windier hills of Ratna Parbat, busy with adjusting his disheveled appearance. “I knew when I screwed up, and I certainly did not in this case. I don’t know what the fuck happened to precipitation, but it’s not a forecast mistake. There was only an infinitesimal chance of it raining just hours ago.”
“I understand, I was jesting.” The woman replied. “I predicted just the same last night. Don’t worry, I’m sure everything will go just fine. I’m more worried about the general state of attractor basins that this portended: this was beyond our predictions, and certainly not an auspicious time. Probably the same entanglements are behind the rain today and a certain news I’m going to inform you today.”
“Oh god.” Afshin said. “Unpleasant news?”
She hesitated. “Not necessarily. But, again. Attractor basin thrown out. They have approved a delegate from the Cities of Jabulqa and Jabulsa, the court of the Caliph in Occultation.”
“You’re fucking with me.” He ran fingers through his face. “Now?”
“Yes, just minutes ago, which is why I contacted you. I’m going to relay his channel to you right now, a moment please…”
Another node joined the network. A far younger man, in his late teens or early twenties, at least by appearance, stood beneath red shamiana awning, in his background rain visibly and audibly thundered before he tuned it out. His expression was complicated–a mix of apologetic, and perhaps as much confusion as Afshin’s regarding his presence. Afshin gently probed through the akashic databases, and as he expected–his numinosity, without user experience adjustments, blinded throughout the Noosphere, radiating the entire city in sorcerous light, standing on equal terms with the greatest angelminds. “Greetings, peace be upon you,” he said. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Al-Akhdar, or Zawba’ah, and you might call me by the latter,” he introduced himself using the names he clearly did not usually use in other circumstances. Zawba’ah hesitated a bit, before continuing. “I am here by order of the Caliph of a Thousand Nights, sovereign of his occulted court in Jabulqa. We apologize for this quite a… serendipitous encounter, but we have reached an agreement with the Imperial Court to participate in this endeavor. Worry not, we will largely observe and advise the course, and leave the important matters to the purview of the Court.”
Afshin sighed. “I understand, and worry not, we will welcome you as part of the decision making process. The input of the Emerald Cities will be of great use to all of us. I am Afshin Shuja-ud-Daula, and this is my colleague Al-Khayzuran.” He virtually gestured to the woman, who nodded in turn. Left unmentioned was Al-Khayzuran’s association, she was here as a representative of the Imperial Harem, whose relationship with the Caliph in Occultation was complicated at best, but nonetheless–he likely was already aware about it in the first place.
The places he referred to, the Emerald Cities of Jabulqa and Jabulsa, weren’t–or weren’t yet–physical, geographical locations. They were, rather, tilism or enclosed virtual hyperreality, distributed throughout the Noospheric networks of the Abode of Peace. There the Caliph that was once enthroned on the Peacock Throne of the Imperial Court now enthroned in Occultation, and for years now largely remained in static silence aside from the occasional ventures of this person, the same figure over and over again, perhaps his closest confidant if not the person himself.
Afshin wished he could have understood the intricacies of the Ma’adids’ court intrigues. He did not. The average common rabble knew even less, familiar with the events only when filtered through sacred languages. The Ma’adids mastered the arts of divination more than any, and thus weaved their plans over the minutest entanglements of probability, nudging the basins of attraction on which events evolve to their own advantages. Toward what end, again Afshin did not comprehend.
It was such a bizarre condition of the Abode of Peace that for all its supposed “openness” and “integration to the global economy”, of the quadrillions of dollars worth of goods that flowed in and out and millions of people who walked in and out throughout the realm as they pleased, details of the internal mechanisms of the realm remained highly as opaque as the fog that lingered on the city outside as rain thundered on. Most of the time it wasn’t even from transparency as from actual, genuine incomprehension–the scale of which it functioned, touching the heavens above and peering down quantum entanglements below, the staggering amount of information so immense that they called databases and their analysis systems Mountains, such as Mount Qaf and Mount Agate and Mount Cinnabar and so on, the illegibility of whatever is supposed to substitute the existence of a “state” in it, to the extent that it produced coherent diplomacy. Information processing and analysis have been largely outsourced to machines, and even sorcerers with godlike minds who controlled quadrillions of data points spreading through trillions of subsystems grappled for merely a scrap, a small peak of colossal iceberg of the gestalt entity of “Darussalam”.
Here’s how Afshin saw Darussalami diplomacy works: oracles slumbering in REM sleep divined peace, and thus dispatched diplomats live-fed with prediction markets betting on outcomes of specific terms of negotiation to discuss with people of other nations the possibility of an “international league”. The leaders of Valkia, weary of their endless wars and wary of the perfidy of other peoples, placed their trust in the Imperial Court, and by extension the Abode of Peace–the only people they perceived to be impartial, interested only in money and little else. Diplomats returned with good tidings from foreign leaders, a meeting will be hosted within the realm to eke out the details. Consultations held to the angelminds of Mount Qaf. An outcome was predetermined: either Balasaghun or Serendip will host the first summit, either will be decided as the headquarter of the new organization. Another instruction rolled by, like divine revelation: the names of those who will participate in the event. And so it goes. It worked perfectly, almost. For the Darussalamis, wars are internalized in cost for those willing to engage in it–the princes who financed opium guerrillas in Turtleshroom, aided Barboneian corporate intrigues, and so on.
Darussalam was “neutral”. So did the foreign understanding went. It traded with everyone, opened its borders to everyone, goods traveled without customs or barriers up and down the western coast running north-south. It cared little about national grievances, revanchist sentiments, or moralizing crusades. The deep seaport of Serendip bustled with activity, Barboneian bulk carriers piled high with containers edged past oil containers from Dire Dire Docks, liquid gas carriers arriving from the gas-rich desolate lands of the eastern Mesovalkian seaboard, coal ships from Grandstand, and so on. The canal of the Vanara Isthmus was open to everyone: tyrants, crusaders, god-kings, oligarchs.
Business went on as usual. Massive billboards and screens contrasted in innumerable bright colors against the graying sky. Millions descended into the subterranean depths of the municipal metro, rising on the streets in their umbrellas beneath the shades of towering skyscrapers. Airports and seaports received tens of thousands of arrivals and departures, and they also prepared for the arrival of the great delegations of the Valkian nations. A fleet of cars prepared for their arrival soon will dispatch them to the summit location, climbing up the foggy hills of Ratna Parbat that ominously loomed behind the city and flanked it against the vast Navigatic Ocean, to a picturesque palatial resort that overlooked the city from distance. The roads were busy but not congested, and the cars rode in ominous silence, without anyone on driver's seat and lacking the characteristic vibrations and hums of internal combustion engines.
The fifteen meter tall projection of the Zamorin of Serendip stood at the city center, his face barely visible beneath thick fog and rain. The words engraved on air to his side, however, are clear enough: WELCOME TO SERENDIP - WELCOME TO DARUSSALAM.
