I M P U L S I O N  |  a futuristic asoiaf au
      » when industrialization leaves westeros uninhabitable, society looks to the sky

The length of their workday has always depended on quota fulfillment, which is why Gendry is still there, even though nearly everyone else has left. It’s getting late, and the city lights have come up, flaring, on the far end of the grid. Gendry sits and waits, back resting up against the buzzing warmth of what’s left of the day’s transportation load, and watches Arya carry bricks across the grid and back.

She has three left when he offers to take one, because it’s late and he wants to go home; he’s even willing to deal with her wounded pride.

‘Oi,’ Yoren growls as Gendry hefts the brick. ‘Tha’s his load.’

‘I’m not asking for overtime,’ Gendry sighs.

‘It’s his load.’

‘He’s smaller, Yoren,’ Gendry snaps. ‘Give him a fucking break.’ He starts across the grid, brick in hand, and Arya comes up behind him panting, red in the face, a brick lodged under each arm.

‘I’m not small,’ she grunts.

‘Oh, that’s likely,’ he mumbles, and then speeds away from her on longer legs.

They’re tracing the winding city streets home again, a half an hour later, and her pride is still too wounded for her to speak. Gendry slides his ID card when they reach their building, and Arya slips in after him. She doesn’t have a card; it’s because she doesn’t have an identity.

He stands in the kitchen unit for a long time, holding a glass of water and wondering if he wants to waste the electricity it would take to brew tea. He peeks out into the parlor room, to ask Arya if she wants some, but she’s fallen asleep, with her head tilted awkwardly against the arm of the sofa.

In the end, he makes the tea, and, even though he hasn’t got the heart to wake her, he leaves a cup on the table next to her just in case.

I M P U L S I O N  |  a futuristic asoiaf au
      » when industrialization leaves westeros uninhabitable, society looks to the sky

He’s halfway home from work when he thinks he sees his little sister. She’s walking with a boy about his age, who keeps giving her concerned glances out of the corner of his eye; she, in turn, sets her shoulders proudly and pretends she doesn’t see. Jon stops, staring, on the corner, and the two duck into a doorway, illuminated for just a second in the eerie blue lamp glow before they disappear inside.

And as soon as they’re gone, Jon knows that he was mistaken. It couldn’t have been Arya, because Arya was sent Below. He can’t even remember the charges, now, just that he cried when he heard them, over the audio transmitter in his low-grade, power-light apartment all alone.

The door to his building rejects his ID card twice before it lets him in, and Jon realizes that if he doesn’t start remembering to store the card in his locker, electricity exposure is going to make the thing go bust. And then he’ll have to apply for a new one, and there’s almost no chance that he’s going to get lucky the second time around.

This job was an accident, and agreement, a godsend; this job is his life now, and it’s the only thing keeping him out of jail. Sansa had always been the weaver, and as a child Jon would try and only burn himself instead. He never was an electrician then, either, but that’s just because he didn’t know.

When they offered him the job, and the most sparsely populated northern space to house him, what was he to say? Jon took it, and his identification, and retreated under the gracious blind eye of the government. He longed to fight; there was no denying that, but, truly, what was he to say?

He throws his card down on the table and hits the dial on the audio transmitter. Pip’s voice flickers through.

‘Hey Jonny-boy, I know you just went home, but when you get this, we’ve got borderlines down all along the Wall.’

Jon sighs and stuffs his card back into his pocket and turns toward the door. It’s going to be a long night.

I M P U L S I O N  |  a futuristic asoiaf au
      » when industrialization leaves westeros uninhabitable, society looks to the sky

‘We need our own farms,’ Barristan offers.

Dany shakes her head and takes a draught of wine. ‘What we have is fine.’

He looks as though he is resisting the urge to spit. ‘Our stability is caving in. The New Dothraki sea collapsed this morning. The entire thing is now a gaping hole, and if we can’t set up new borderlines, the rest of the continent is going to follow.’

‘What do you want me to do then, Ser?’ Dany sighs. ‘Even if half the airspace was stable enough to farm, we haven’t got the men to work it.’ She stares down into her cup of wine. ‘I hear, Ser, that they’ve begun synthesizing food stuffs across the Narrow Gap.’

She doesn’t need to elaborate for him to understand. Barristan’s eyes fall to his plate, to his untouched steak and empty glass of wine. When the Seven Kingdoms were devastated, it was by industrialization, and an influx of urbanization that the Dothraki had resisted with all of their might. Her evacuation was less necessary, more voluntary, for she fled a land that still reaped produce and was stock with game.

But what she wants is Westeros, and Westeros no longer exists in the regions down below. Neither will she, soon enough, if their electricity supply cannot be stabilized. Lacking the manpower to farm, she initiated the export of food and drink— produced in Pentos down below and delivered up —to the Seven Kingdoms. In return, the Lannisters have reserved a portion of electricity from all government farms for use across the Gap.

But it’s not enough— hasn’t been enough for a long while —and if the rumors are true, and food products can readily be synthesized from nothing, then Dany will have come here for nothing but an early death; an explosion like a dying little star.

‘Tell me what I should do, Ser,’ she says, not because she wants advice, but because she knows he will not answer. Dany smiles into his silence and takes another eager sip of wine.

I M P U L S I O N  |  a futuristic asoiaf au
      » when industrialization leaves westeros uninhabitable, society looks to the sky

all the bright lights do is bore me
they bore me 

‘impulsion’ ramblings [how number weaving works and what happened to westeros]

So. Number weaving. It’s really weird making up a skill that doesn’t exist in real life, because I just keep thinking oh my god this could never be possible what am I saying but oh well.

Weiterlesen

Once I finish the really long explanation of this AU I’m writing up for Lorr, should I post it?

It’s not fic, it’s just a really long description of how stuff works.

I M P U L S I O N  |  a futuristic asoiaf au
      » when industrialization leaves westeros uninhabitable, society looks to the sky

He sits in small council for an hour before anyone invites him to say a word. His records are spread out on the table, carefully recorded facts and figures, weeks of research. It’s all there, written out as plainly as he can put it. And he hopes, for the first time in his life, that they won’t call on him to speak at all.

But they do. ‘Petyr?’ Cersei prompts, and the whole table turns to look at him

He stands, and preaches, as he always does, to the ignorant. ‘I’ll cut to the point,’ he says firmly, because these fools don’t deserve a flashy show. ‘We’ve hit our carrying capacity.’

‘Carrying capacity?’ Cersei says blankly. She’s trying not to understand.

Petyr splays his hands out on the table. ‘Think of it like this. We have 764,520 square leagues of occupied airspace. Because we’re laid out on the grid system, electricity is being distributed equally across the entire area, plus extra power along borderlines and in those areas that are still using building. This is entirely aside from the voltage expensed just by keeping us in the air. We’re talking massive quantities, and at the rate we’re farming, it’s not going to last forever.’

Cersei swallows. ‘The Greyjoys—‘

Petyr shakes his head. ‘New farms are a step in the right direction, but we need more. Either borderlines need to go down… or the population does.’

He’s in the hallway, half and hour later, making his way to the lift down to the street when he runs into Sansa Stark.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, as he helps her keep her feet, and she gives his hand a queer look as he draws away.

‘Are you a number weaver?’

He smiles. ‘A long time ago. How did you guess?’

She holds up her own hand and shows him that her fingers and her thumb are singed and calloused, just like his; she smiles, sadly, and he finds that he doesn’t know what to say.

I M P U L S I O N  |  a futuristic asoiaf au
      » when industrialization leaves westeros uninhabitable, society looks to the sky

‘I am good for more than twisting thread,’ Sansa used to say, as her fingers trembled across the electric string.

‘And I am good for more than hefting bricks,’ Arya had replied, as the electricity roared and shifted beneath her palms. But she had always hefted anyway, and Sansa had always twisted, and together they had help put a fraction of New Winterfell together. It had seemed like more at the time.

Some things are not meant to be confined, and an electric current is one of them. But what Sansa has is a gift, and what Arya has is a curse. To number weave requires precision, and intimate knowledge of the power behind every voltage, and the proper combination that, when layered, will yield something solid. Number weaving involves finesse, and concentration, and a grasp on the idea that twisting a 300 volt strand with a 120 will leave you dead.

And what Arya knows is labor, and how not to drop a brick so that the currents won’t unravel and escape. What Arya knows is how to lift something heavy, and hot, and carry it from one end of the grid to the other, and then do it over and over again; and she knows, most of all, that this is the only reason that the Lannisters are keeping her around.

As she picks up another block, Arya tries to remember the day that Sansa tried to teach her how to weave. ‘Feel the thread,’ she’d said. ‘Between your fingers. And pick out the voltage.’ Arya couldn’t even get past this step, let alone decide which voltage to twist in next. Instead, she had watched Sansa spin for hours, twisting and pinch and stopping and thinking, and all these godforskan years later, Arya doesn’t think she’s ever broken a thread.

‘Arry,’ Yoren grunts. ‘Back to work.’

And Arya realizes that she’s just been standing there, half inside the grid and half out, holding onto an electric brick that feels nothing like her sister’s.

I M P U L S I O N  |  a futuristic asoiaf au
      » when industrialization leaves westeros uninhabitable, society looks to the sky

‘Jaime Lannister, Head of Detainment and Security.’

‘Yes,’ he snaps. ‘For the last goddamn time yes.’

The automated voice crackles again. ‘Please be patient, Ser. We have undergone heightened security procedures in response to an influx of high risk prisoners.’

‘I know,’ Jaime breathes. ‘I brought them in this morning. Now if you’d just—‘

The door slides open with a bang and a hiss, and Jaime storms through it as quickly as he can. Security protocol has gotten ridiculous in the past few days; Cersei’s compulsion to go over his head dictates his life now more often than not. The hallways in here are off the regulated heating grid, and Jaime finds himself shivering as he makes his way down to the lower levels.

‘You called?’ he says testily, and Loras raises his head from the pile of papers on the security desk and eyes him. ‘This had better be goddamn important. The main door gave me a hard time.’

Loras smirks, and then rolls his eyes, as though he’s decided that it isn’t worth it. ‘We need— Cersei needs you on debrief. I said that I could do it, but she wanted you.’

Jaime frowns. ‘I debriefed them this morning,’ he says.

‘That’s the thing, isn’t it?’ Loras says, grinning. ‘They brought in a third one this afternoon. Jeyne Westerling.’

‘And Cersei wants me on this why?’

Loras resumes his papers. ‘Oh, nothing serious. The girl tried to number weave her way out of here this morning, and very nearly managed.’