She almost had it. The baby was in the high chair, still figuring out the sippy cup, staring down at the clean charcoal-grey and silver-flake epoxy floor of the kitchen. Baby (Alex) Ellison held the plastic spoon loaded with pureed carrots like it meant something. Then he flung it into the narrow space between the high chair and the stove. Almost wasn’t enough. Of all the days, this day, mid-month, when her body threw a tantrum because the moon had made its circuit without another pregnancy. Serious limp riz
Ulyth’s many manifestos had been full of riz. Splattered carrot puree never appeared in any of them. This was not revolutionary. Elyra saw the spoon coming and reached for it, but the baby was faster. It landed with a wet splat that dampened any urges to tear up Telegraph Avenue.
After the eviction and his death, whatever energy had held the Citadel together simply left. Ulyth’s sovereign-citizen habits meant none of the ordinary paperwork—LLC or corporate registration, tax ID, business licenses, insurance—had ever been filed. Even in a collapsed United States there was no legal structure left to inherit. The Citadel had always been closer to a long-running LARP than an actual institution. The four of them—Elyra, Liza, Bret, and Mark—had walked down the hill and built quieter, more ordinary lives once it was gone.
Seeking Hot Embers
Her phone lit up. A message from Liza: you doing anything?
Elyra looked at the orange mess on the floor, then typed back, no.
Cool. Because the others are talking about doing something this summer.
Another message arrived: Could you meet up on Saturday? It’s spring and we haven’t done anything in years. I miss Papa Bill. We should remember him somehow.
Elyra thought. Oh good. Tear up Telegraph Avenue and risk getting arrested. With a toddler. Perfect.
Her Mesh link offered a quiet query: Want me to say anything?
No, she thought back. Everything about this is stupid. Starting with the baby who needs me. The most heretical thing I did was become a trad-Mom/Wife and I love it.
A small, unearned warmth bloomed under her breastbone—the Mesh’s version of a smile, delivered by the nanites that lived in her blood. It felt almost like the real thing.
Primaris Solenne Vexton Ulyth had been dead a few years. The Oakland Museum built a permanent exhibit of his tribute to Mid-Twentieth Century Mainframe tech and included his argon filled sarcophagus in the exhibit. Ulyth had his fans so nightly the janitorial staff collects the flowers, gifts, and notes left by visitors. The museum maintains uniformed, armed security at the exhibit because not everyone obeys signs.
Elyra and Mark were not a couple while Ulyth was alive, but the chemistry was there. It became a marriage, and then it became Baby Ellison. Baby’s birth certificate said Alex Ellison. Mark was still at work; he’d be home later. Bret was on contract in the UK, protecting Mesh data centers from environmental agitators who claimed the cooling towers were driving climate change that threatened Blue Luna Butterflies. Liza was clearly organizing something, though Elyra didn’t know the details yet.
Rhyme Time?
It was a summer ritual for years. The KAOS five gathered at Willard Park, ate some food, then marched with banners, megaphones, and signs up Telegraph Avenue toward Sproul Plaza. Most summers it stayed mostly peaceful; after a few hours on Sproul Plaza people drifted home. But if Liza was planning another march, Elyra already knew the risk. The agitators who broke windows, set cars on fire, and pepper-sprayed police had a way of showing up whether anyone invited them or not.
Did the KAOS five have it in them to stop traffic on Telegraph Avenue one more time? Liza wanted the old riz, the old feeling of purpose and impact that came with disrupting the city for a few hours. Liza felt the limp riz more than she’d like. Mark was down, sort of. But Dad mode was preoccupying and fulfilling. He told Elyra it was good to have a routine and minimal fears of bombed supply lines, arrest or injury. Her morning buns were a reason to stick around. And he liked saying that Alex was the hardest and best thing he ever did.
Another message from Liza: Sara isn’t answering me. Can you try her?
Elyra: Sure.
She messaged Sara. After a pause: “hey, what’s up? kinda buried right now.“
Through her Mesh link, “Liza’s putting together a memorial for Papa Bill in July. Same route as always—Willard Park up to Sproul.”
“Sara: oh. yeah. that’s… a lot. I’m not sure I can make it work this year. Things are pretty full on my end.”
Elyra switched to her phone, “I hear you. I’m pretty busy too. You doing okay?“
“Yeah. Just closed on some farmland up in Sonoma. Nothing huge. The place is a mess. It needs huge sweat equity.“
Glory Days
“History rhymes but this beat seems rather limp riz and dissonant“, Elyra’s Mesh link interjected. Elyra couldn’t suppress a silent chuckle.
That was then. Ulyth would put the word out on the message boards that the usual crowd was gathering in Willard Park to protest the environmental murder of Blue Luna butterflies by toxic energy vibes from heretical thoughts. Hundreds of people would show up, hang out, eat some food, then start up Telegraph Avenue toward Sproul Plaza. The summer rite, done on a Saturday, would pass without incident.
After sunset, after KAOS had gone home, had dinner, and started streaming skibidi that the damage started. URC arrived and the protest went from mostly peaceful to mostly not. Predictable result: minor scrapes and bruises, OC spray burns, and harsher charges, some felonious. The five heard of the festivities through their streams.
All five had arrest records from those days. Mostly small time disturbing the peace, unlawful assembly and failure to disperse charges. Ward, on one occasion, swung at a campus police officer and missed, earning an assault charge. First offense, so she got community service and probation. The KAOS five were annoying but tolerable since their worst was a couple hours of noise on a Saturday in July.
Burn, Burn, Burn
As Ulyth’s health declined, the energy for shouting slogans on Telegraph Avenue faded. The KAOS five turned inward, spending more time at the Citadel and caring for him. Protests gave way to monthly struggle sessions: soft-spoken petitions for Blue Luna’s iridescent wings, confessions of privileges that had “poisoned the vibe,” and offerings of organic scraps left on the stone ledge outside the sarcophagus chamber. Elyra started to notice Mark. Her Mesh link showed her that Ulyth’s band of trouble was not alone as the sun set on the revolution.
Even the struggle sessions grew performative. No one wanted to be tagged as bougie, so the gatherings became potlucks. Confessions turned into word limbo, each person competing to prove the depth of their oppression. Liza would complain about sourcing wild-gathered pine resin from the Carpathians. When the biggest challenge life hands you is choosing the best time to upgrade a phone, it’s a little hard. Conversation slipped into awkward talk about a favorite episode of skibidi.
The Struggle is Real
These sessions put a serious dent in the wine cellar and the marijuana stores. Smoked meats—pork, beef, lamb, and goat—were served. The atmosphere was thick with bloviating and Bacchus-would-be-proud vibes. More than once the rowdier drunks finished the weekend in the hoosegow. There were wounded. No deaths, though..
There were a few weekend-long seminars in which Ulyth taught radical actualization through the works of Moses Hess. He committed the same rhetorical sin some pastors of an earlier generation had: believing the brilliance of the written page would carry equally well when spoken.
In those long, smoke-hazed weekends he lingered over Hess’s vision of humanity reconciled with its own productive essence, painting the old radical as a luminous prophet who had glimpsed, beyond the ugliness of capital and the barrenness of mere politics, a future in which labor itself became an act of love, the soil and the workshop fused into one continuous act of creation, and every man and woman woke each morning already half-transfigured by the knowledge that their smallest daily effort participated in the slow, inevitable flowering of a world no longer divided against itself—an image so intoxicating that more than one listener, glass in hand and eyes shining, would later swear they had felt the future brush against their skin like a lover’s breath.
Ill Winded Serenity
So it went. The time between marches on Telegraph Avenue lengthened. The KAOS five drifted into relationships, careers, and the quiet sins of privilege that calmed their lives down. Elyra’s background as a liaison for Ulyth got her a consulting gig with SRI International. She and Mark found greener pastures across the bay in Menlo Park; Mark made an interesting lateral move into Chief of Operations for a fulfillment house.
The others settled into quieter lives as well. Dalton retired from kinetic work for a desk job with Vesper Group. Ward had the most trouble—Elyra’s last contact with her before Liza asked her to call was Ward reaching out from a rehab center through a Mesh chat. Liza found her place in health spas as a massage therapist. Yes, therapist, you pig.
Time gets all of us. Life begins mewling and puking and ends sans everything. The confidence and fire of youth settles out. We change from surety that those people need to come correct to wondering whether the dining hall is serving mashed potatoes for dinner. If you are somewhere in the middle, don’t waste it.
.