DUALITY: The World of Lies by Paul Barufaldi Page A

world.
    Red versus blue? Who had the time or
inclination for that? Besides, Mei's patronizingly sympathetic ear
at these times turned sour whenever it came to spewing epithets at
the Cearuleians, and her mouth became a fountain of vitriol in
return.
    She and her world were every bit as bipolar as
he and his. Tropica internal politics came first, along with a
barrage of clichéd criticisms of Mnemtechian rule, followed by the
Arathian nations as a whole and their century long conflict with
the ever decaying Anarchies, their lawlessness and vice at the
heart of the subcontinent. Then there were all the usual rants
about human versus machine world, but how at least on Occitania,
the humans still held the upper hand. As if that were
true! And then all of that was still only half her world.
Discussions of the Pangea were even more inherently schizophrenic
with the utopian East and the wicked Far West. Magic and
religion... so much religion: -isms of every shape and form that
the mind of man could conjure up. And then there was the red
satellite Oberion, the Occitanian moon.
    It was an oft remarked upon irony that
Calidonians spent all their days on a red world under red sun while
their nights were ruled by the huge blue disc of Aq Thalassa and
the bright Blue Star, Cearuli Azur -while Occitanians lived beneath
a blue sun with a red moon and a red star ruling their night. So
whether one was born red or blue, they spent their nights beneath
the mantle of the other.
    But he would save all that fun for
later.
    “Kinny, music. Modern Eclectic Court
Symphony,” he ordered, realizing he must already be quite
inebriated, since in no lesser state would he slip into Mei's habit
of personifying the ship's system.
    “Belay that order!” shouted Mei with mock
urgency. She then laid out her conditions to Aru. “You could just
well do this in your den, you know -anywhere else on the entire
ship for that matter. So if you insist on doing it near me, the
ship's acting command authority, while I am working, you'll have to
do it to a musical fare that doesn't grate on my brain like a
thousand whirring wire brushes.”
    “Dharmic mix, Kinny, traditional,” he
conceded. This was Mei's favorite inspirational genre -and
supposedly her religion. As Aru saw it and from what he knew of
that doctrine, she was an appallingly bad adherent in pretty much
every aspect of it. Although he would never admit it to her, the
music had rubbed off him more than a little over the years. Many a
nights’ rest were spent as those rich melodies and mantras played
in his chamber, and seeped into his dreams. Now, they filled the
hall of the main bridge.
    Aru brought the Kinetic up on holograph. He
loved to look at his ship. It was truly a technological
masterpiece. Five spokes formed from the hub and extended out to an
inner ring, in which he and Mei resided. It was not a tubular
centrifugal ring as one saw on more primitive craft, but one that
tapered out to to a flattened edge, increasing their gravitational
surface area. The inner ring turned perpetually at just the right
rate to maintain 1G, give or take. It also contained the permanent
circuit that maintained their force fields, and powered everything
besides the engines. The shield ring overlaid the main ring,
wrapping around it completely, but magnetically levitated so that
they never touched. The outer ring’s rotation could be synched with
the inner ring, or spun faster or slower. This feature was helpful
in confusing enemies, who were unable to determine which section of
the ship to target. The shield ring also contained thruster arrays
on each panel that worked in unison with each other to drive the
ship, making the Kinetic Dream the most maneuverable mid-size
warship of her class. Both plasma beam jets and more robust
anti-matter fuel engines drove the ship. There was no central
drive, each panel held its own thruster array, so no single strike
on the ship could wipe out their thrust capacity.
    The