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Автор Ada Palmer

Too Like the Lightning

by Ada Palmer

This book is dedicated to the first human who thought to hollow out a log to make a boat, and his or her successors.

TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING

A NARRATIVE OF EVENTS of the year 2454

Written by MYCROFT CANNER, at the REQUEST OF CERTAIN PARTIES.

Published with the permissions of:

The Romanova Seven-Hive Council Stability Committee

The Five-Hive Committee on Dangerous Literature

Ordo Quiritum Imperatorisque Masonicorum

The Cousins’ Commission for the Humane Treatment of Servicers

The Mitsubishi Executive Directorate

His Majesty Isabel Carlos II of Spain

And with the consent of all FREE AND UNFREE LIVING PERSONS HEREIN PORTRAYED.

Qui veritatem desideret, ipse hoc legat. Nihil obstat.

Recommended. —Anonymous.

CERTIFIED NONPROSELYTORY BY THE FOUR-HIVE COMMISSION ON RELIGION IN LITERATURE.

RATÉ D PAR LA COMMISSION EUROPÉENNE DES MEDIAS DANGEREUX.

Gordian Exposure Commission Content Ratings:

S3—Explicit but not protracted sexual scenes; references to rape; sex with violence; sexual acts of real and living persons.

V5—Explicit and protracted scenes of intentional violence; explicit but not protracted scenes of extreme violence; violence praised; historical incidents of global trauma; crimes of violence committed by real and living persons.

R4—Explicit and protracted treatment of religious themes without intent to convert; religious beliefs of real and living persons.

O3—Opinions likely to cause offense to selected groups and to the sensibilities of many; subject matter likely to cause distress or offense to the same.

Ah, my poor Jacques! You are a philosopher. But don’t worry: I’ll protect you.

—Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and His Master

CHAPTER THE FIRST

A Prayer to the Reader

You will criticize me, reader, for writing in a style six hundred years removed from the events I describe, but you came to me for explanation of those days of transformation which left your world the world it is, and since it was the philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, heavy with optimism and ambition, whose abrupt revival birthed the recent revolution, so it is only in the language of the Enlightenment, rich with opinion and sentiment, that those days can be described. You must forgive me my ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s and ‘he’s and ‘she’s, my lack of modern words and modern objectivity. It will be hard at first, but whether you are my contemporary still awed by the new order, or an historian gazing back at my Twenty-Fifth Century as remotely as I gaze back on the Eighteenth, you will find yourself more fluent in the language of the past than you imagined; we all are.

I wondered once why authors of ancient days so often prostrate themselves before their audience, apologize, beg favors, pray to the reader as to an Emperor as they explain their faults and failings; yet, with my work barely begun, I find myself already in need of such obsequies. If I am properly to follow the style I have chosen, I must, at the book’s outset, describe myself, my background and qualifications, and tell you by what chance or Providence it is that the answers you seek are in my hands. I beg you, gentle reader, master, tyrant, grant me the privilege of silence on this count. Those of you who know the name of Mycroft Canner may now set this book aside. Those who do not, I beg you, let me make you trust me for a few dozen pages, since the tale will give you time enough to hate me in its own right.