The subject of the last shift

                         was living a fantasy of escaping from her intos cell, but she probably, like many others in late biotech, did actually want to get out, and at last some of them did. Get out into what? is an obvious question. What was the world like outside the dragon’s coils?

   We have some idea what the world of the dragon was like from the outside, although we never saw it until the creature was dying, since there was no living being on the outside we could shift to. The intos was actually more like a tree than a dragon: a tree global in extent, and having branches which ran along the ground, anchored at intervals by great molar-like roots to prevent the winds ripping it out of the ground. Since it functioned like a giant plant, carrying out photosynthesis, transpiration and so on, the dragon would have served to replace the forests destroyed during necrotech and bionecrotech in that it would have had the same function in respect of the climate, rainfall and hydrological processes. Because of that, it is possible that the ‘flatteners’, the storm force winds, died down, and benign climates re-established themselves, at least in some regions of the world.

   If it had not been for bionecrotech, it is possible that diverse natural wilderness would have returned in between the intos coils. However, the monstrous genetically engineered plants released during bionecrotech were so strong and successful that for the entire era of biotech, they excluded any wild plants which might have re-established themselves. So of course when the tree/dragon died, the extreme weather patterns of bionecrotech came back: the world was again the stormy green desert which Fred Drakely was driven through in the motorway train.

   An artificial variety of the wild plant chickweed, or stellaria, was particularly abundant, fortunately, as you will see. This plant had been developed as fodder input to the industries of bionecrotech which produced cultured meat and other animal products. Considered in necrotech science’s terms, the plant was high in proteins and fats, with a balance of amino acids and essential oils. It fixed nitrogen, and unlike other hybrid plants it produced true seed, as well as spreading vegetatively. Its originally natural habit of rooting lightly in the soil had been encouraged in the hybrid so that it could be harvested by mechanically pulling it out and rolling it up into great bales. The genetically engineered chickweed proved to be a valuable foodstuff during the early years of the pattern age.

   When the emergence actually took place the dragon was dying. It seems that the ‘creature’ was profoundly disturbed by the changed mood of many of its charges, who were seeing through and rejecting the illusions, perhaps because of the awakening of their eversight. The dragon did not have an individual self-awareness to get upset: it never had any centre for its intelligence, let alone its emotions, even if it could have been thought of as having emotions. What happened to the dragon was connected with the way the intos dealt with people who had finished with life. It did not wait for people to die and then dispose of the bodies. Anyone who was inactive and bored got their vital supplies cut off, and then the body was decomposed and the material recycled. Quality of life, which it continuously assessed from the person’s level of interest in what was going on, was the only criterion it used. It made no judgement about normality as opposed to handicap or unfitness.

   By some quirk of its own logic, the dragon interpreted the desire for escape of some of its inmates as a rejection, and a sign that its own life was over, and it began to let itself die. As a result, people discovered the system failing: the stories and illusions did not appear in response to their wishes. The basic processes of life sustenance continued longer than the illusions, but boredom set in, and so the intos disconnected the cells of inmates who had nothing to keep them amused. No one could repair the system: it had evolved far beyond the skills even of its long dead innovators to understand it, and no one had any practical knowledge or manual skill, even if they imagined they did.

   Eventually parts of the exterior walls began to lose their toughness and it became possible to break out. The few who had survived, perhaps through having eversight as a substitute for the intos illusions, escaped into the outside world.

   My next shift for you then is not an intos story. The people you will meet lived on the earth under the heavens. As you will see, they had none of the material comforts developed during necrotech, and no system dedicated to sustaining them. But the air they breathed was clean, and they could see through the fresh air to more stars than you could even imagine.

   The subject is a young boy whose name is Yshi.

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