The world turned cold and dark as the dragon,

The world turned cold and dark as the dragon, Grist, soared over the city. Zand felt a sudden rush of hopelessness and panic as he said, "I thought they were all dead!"

Zand had left, suddenly, at the end of the war, and had told himself repeatedly that he couldn't help them now. But as he soared over the city on his dragon, the city lay under

a warm blanket of fire because his Dragon had just destroyed Aberdeen.

His dragon green-screened the landscape with a big budget CGI layer of hell. Indiscriminate geopolitical hell.

He had Greeks in amphoras playing tiddly winks with Norwegian Lutefiskwive's tableware. Mandarins playing Chinese Checkers with Tibetan Dead Heads. Geopolitical hell. The cinemas

weren't allowed to show death in those days, what with the wars and such, so 4-F men would sneak onions past concessions to simulate crying at the suggestive parts. "This isn't an

unhappy film," Jenn the usherette whispered irritably at them, "It's just a short about washing your hands." But by then the 4-F guys had wiped their eyes with onion-y fingers, and

how a subterfuge of a maiming could be used to lead world leaders by the short hairs. They capitulated in the face of their own predictable failures. The Book of Face livestreaming

meant it would all be out in the open. No one would be safe, and everyone would be safe. This is what true freedom looked like, wasn't it?