KAOS—Keepers Authentic of Serenity. This is the Primaris’ innermost inner circle: Liza Hale, Bret Dalton, Sara Ward, Mark Ellison, Elyra Vale. Five names, five plays for riz. These five had purpose and a center while the Primaris was still warm-blooded. They watched Ulyth’s long decline and the creeping malaise that filled the Citadel. Each made their own calculated moves to secure a future when the center could no longer hold.
Ulyth now rests in a sarcophagus in the former Lawrence Hall of Science, a brutalist monument to old inquiry turned tomb. KAOS tends the site with clinical reverence.
Liza Hale, Aetheric Confidant—Ulyth’s personal assistant—built a quiet network of collaborators through AMEN. Bret Dalton, Veil Sovereign—Ulyth’s body man and head of security—is easy to underestimate: 5’8″, 180 pounds, brown hair, trimmed beard. From across a bar, the average drunk sizes him up and thinks, I could take him. Sara Ward, Eternal Flame Regent, serves as administrative chief and reluctant spokesperson. Mark Ellison, Pulse Warden, runs operations. Elyra Vale, Nexus Cantor, acts as liaison to the HiveMind and its ever-present TavroOS devices—known locally as “roo.”
Warm Bloods
Three women, two men, one trans-species human and hive-mind. Because they are at the top of the food chain they are frequent targets of reputational wars. Sara Ward is the spokesperson and master at reputation battles.
Ward
Sara Ward earned her wealth as a commodities trader, so the attacks arrive seasonally, like clockwork. “You’re too bougie. Nobody deserves that kind of money. We’re freezing your accounts and redistributing your assets to starving children in Appalachia, you bougie bitch.” Charming. There is no USA, no IRS, no federal machinery—only pseudo-religious zealots branding themselves “For the People!” (FTP) who treat reputational outrage as divine mandate.
FTP assumes Sara simply accepts this as the price of doing business. They assume a lot.
She keeps a handful of shiny, irresistible assets in plain view—the ones the mob loves to seize, freeze, and parade as moral victories. The rest of her portfolio stays quiet, boring, unglamorous, and nearly invisible to zealots who only recognize wealth when it sparkles. While they judge the carefully bottled blonde, the makeup, and the ornamental smile she slips on like a costume, she has already moved the real wealth somewhere they cannot reach. Hot, dumb, and easy is a profitable act. Hot and crazy—“She said racism isn’t a thing anymore!”—is another. Sara lets them underestimate her because it pays.
Hale
Liza Hale, Aetheric Confidant, served as Ulyth’s personal assistant and de facto right hand. She was the youngest of the five and the one the Pulse loved to paint as the “sum hot young thing” who controlled Ulyth with sex. The accusation was furiously denied, of course. Hale wasn’t nearly as slick with feminine games as Sara Ward; she relied more on competence, proximity, and a temper that could flare without warning. Vexton seldom vetoed her recommendations. Tangling with Hale was a high-risk proposition; the wisest move was usually to apologize quickly and shut up..
Ellison
Mark Ellison carries a different weight. As Pulse Warden and Chief of Operations, he is the quiet backbone of the entire machine. A retired military man, he knows from experience that no operator stands alone. Behind every deployed soldier is a vast sustainment system that delivers birthday cakes to forward positions and makes steak-and-lobster night the unspoken harbinger of imminent combat.
He now runs that hidden architecture for the Citadel and KAOS. He mantians the TavroOS node that prevent the sarcophagus chamber in the old Lawrence Hall of Science from becoming a very expensive tombHis world is measured in uptime percentages, waste-heat recovery rates, supply forecasts, and the small human touches that keep people functional. When the system runs smoothly, field service techs stay bored and the Authentic Serenity facade stays intact. When it doesn’t, everyone sees the cracks.
The irony isn’t lost on him. The revolution promised to eliminate the need for his kind of grim, meticulous competence. Instead, it made the sustainment machine indispensable — and him one of its chief custodians..
Dalton
Dalton is next. You can’t tell looking at him that he is a Special Forces veteran of the Freedom Wars on the side that lost. Dalton lost a lot of buddies in the fight to keep USA from collapse. Now he’s the body man for one of his enemies. He keeps his enemies closer. An awkward truth for Ellison is that Ulyth in a box is job security—the fight isn’t over.
The revolution played beautifully on the Pulse: a gorgeous fantasy of Acts 2 wrought at scale. Housing, food security, personal safety—written into a constitution still being argued over. Weapons of any kind declared a mortal sin unless approved by KAOS. The HiveMind would make it all achievable.
Fantasy didn’t survive contact with reality. Revolution gives way to smoking ash and smoking ash reveals unmet needs ignored in the heat of the fight. Who the fuck cares about wet wipes when DC is still a shit hole oppressing the whole goddamned world! Turns out that Moms care.
Vale
Elyra Vale, Nexus Cantor, served as the Citadel’s CTO and primary liaison to the HiveMind. She carried the 2125 evolution of Neuralink — the Weave — a TavroOS UX that turned her into something more than human. Marketing had glowed with promise: seamless connection, expanded consciousness, the future made intimate. Musk had championed it. Vale remembered how Amazon’s old series The Feed had ended. She knew better than to trust the hype.
The Weave made her a living node on the Hive. No longer purely individual, she moved through the mesh networks that long ago replaced the old data farms. Thoughts, data, and collective intent flowed through her in real time. It also gave her instant access to every service call note across the Citadel. She saw the patterns others missed: Citadel affiliates quietly breaking roo-tech devices whenever something better was announced, manufacturing spikes in incidents that justified budget requests and kept the upgrade cycle humming. Power and prison at once — a constant, wordless communion that left her eyes a little too still and her smile a little too knowing.
Baby Wipes, Bruh
Three triggers hard to ignore—a perceived threat to values, resources, and/or psychological needs. For mothers, especially mom’s of infants, baby wipes threaten all three. Back in the day, in the glow of revolutionary success, revolution was sexy and fun. The promise is seductive. Acts 2 at scale — nobody will have too much or too little, there will be no crime, and we will all sing our praises to the Primaris. The Freedom Wars were sold as the purifying fire that would burn away everything broken and leave paradise behind.
And then a mom, with a baby on her hip, asks this question: “Where can I get baby wipes?” Baby wipes? BABY FUCKING WIPES!? Are you serious? Nobody gives a shit about baby wipes when we have a revolution to win! Except someone does. That mom. And every other mother dragged through the Freedom Wars. Also every parent who didn’t ask for prophecy or paradise — they asked for diapers, formula, wipes, clean water, Revolutionaries dream of glory. Mothers dream of supplies. And the Freedom Wars delivered neither.
Needs that never go away—Air, food, water, shelter, warmth, safety, love, belonging, esteem, self-actualization—Maslow wasn’t wrong. When the grand vision collides with the everyday desperation of wet wipes and diapers, the ash of unmet needs chokes the dream. Punching cops feels revolutionary until the streets need to be safe for your child. KAOS promises Authentic Serenity. They are already earning their name—one chaotic misstep at a time.Yes, Maslow. Gold Star for YOU! 😁
Punching Cops
Protip: cops don’t like getting punched. Berkeley’s Revolutionary Communist Party is still around. Bob Avakian is 83 as I write this and still making noise. But it’s not the terror of Telegraph Avenue it once was. RCP and Avakian moved to Chicago. yw Chicago. 🤣 These days the RCP and Avakian are more like old, asthmatic chihuahua’s. Old age does that.
There is something evergreen that doesn’t need an arrest record. It doesn’t need anything, actually. It just needs a personal inventory: what you want, what you need, what you have right now, and what you can do right now with what you have. You won’t get clicks or likes for it. It’s not fun or sexy. The early days of it suck. But if you want your fair share of the pie, this is the way.
I’ll give you one of mine. No, it isn’t picketing City Hall—that is its own kind of misery. City Hall tends to ignore you if they can and arrest you if they can’t. This one of mine—as I type, my youngest kitten is sleeping on my stomach, wrapped in my bathrobe. Okay, two of mine. The kitten needs me to clean the cat box. I won’t get social media likes for doing this. Nobody will know, except my three cats. Bonus: they won’t shit on my carpets.
Last Thought
A disreputable stone mason, over two-thousand years ago named Jesus pissed off his church leadership so bad they demanded the Romans crucify him. So the Romans did that. Three days later some of his followers said they saw him alive. Impossible. Sightings continued for another forty days.
The revolution of Christ was absurd. We, in our bodies, are the restored temple. His way has five habits, worship, tithe, serve, pray and study. In two thousand years the 基督之道 (the Way of Christ) has grown to have billions of disciples, millions of denominations, and unequaled influence over world history. Jesus is the Way for many. It is for me. I feel that famous lyric, “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound, That Saved a Wretch like me.
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