Bonus: The Monsters at the Door

And now for a message from our sponsor

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: The Triverse was created by the accidental opening of portals, connecting 19th century Earth to a future version of itself and a world of dragons and magic. It’s now 1973 and tensions run high in the Kingdom of Great Britain as it heads towards an election year…

Transcript:

September, 1973
Opinion: The Monsters at the door
By Stanley Pullman

It is a truth long acknowledged that the British are a kind and tolerant people. But to every kindness there is a limit.

When the hand of friendship is so frequently batted away by immigrants from Palinor - so often here without genuine permits - what choice do we really have but to take a stand?

Our offer of healthcare, of employment, of a place in our society, is generous but misplaced. Free handouts only encourage the hordes coming through the portal every year.

Enough is enough

Let's face it. They won't learn our language. They don't pay their taxes. They undercut our wages and send money back through the portal, diminishing our economy.

Did you know that over 65% of all arrests are of koth? They are a danger to our society - and, yes, we know that's a shocking sentence to read. We wish we didn't have to write it. It's not the politically correct thing to say. We say it not to be controversial or rude, but to speak the truth.

Because nobody else will.

What, then, is the answer?

Change is the answer

The blame here does not belong to the koth, or the aen'fa, or the Palinese humans. They have their own beliefs and reasons, and what they do in their dimension is none of our business. All we ask is that they respect our world and don't interfere with our way of life.

They're a symptom. The real problem is right here, at home, in the Houses of Parliament. In the so-called elected officials that claim to represent you.

Tories. Liberals. Labour. They're all the same. Out-dated terms for out-dated parties. It doesn't matter who you vote for, because you'll be getting the same weary old politician every time. The colour of their rosette makes no difference to their inherently weak policies.

A total change is needed. You already know the question. 'Why is my life not getting better?'

We are the answer. It's just common sense.

You may not have heard of us before. Don't worry, you will.

It's time to take back our city, take back our country, take back our empire and take back our world.

Join us. Think Earth First.

[Advertorial]

Handshake photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash

Illustrations from MidJourney

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Thanks for reading! Went for something a bit different this week. I’d always intended to do semi-regular ‘bonus’ chapters, which would break away from the main narrative to show off other corners of the Triverse, but it’s non-trivial to put them together. This seemed like an opportune moment, so here we are.

Right, let’s jump into some…

Author notes

This is, of course, riffing on all sorts of unpleasant political propaganda, especially the kind of rhetoric you all-too-often see from the extreme right. In particular it’s referencing the UKIP-inspired horrid material from Leave.EU during the 2016 Brexit vote, when their ‘Breaking Point’ poster showed a long line of black and brown people alongside the subheading ‘The EU Has Failed Us All’. They’re not subtle.

Incidentally, while researching this chapter I stumbled upon this amusing alternate version:

Very good, especially given the political events of this week here in the UK.

Back to this week’s chapter, then: the idea was to capture the tone of that sort of right wing rhetoric that always sounds terrified of anyone slightly different and channel it into a Triverse context. The rise of Earth First in the story, which has been bubbling away in the background for a while, is going to come to the fore in the next story arc.

The aim was for the language in the article to sound reasonable while being entirely unreasonable in its meaning. That’s the trick of a lot of political writing, where lies are wrapped in half-truths and wild claims are presented as carefully researched science. Reading it should be uncomfortable.

It did occur to me that someone encountering this as their first chapter of Triverse - which is entirely possible given the way I release it week-by-week - could come away with entirely the wrong impression of the book. Without the surrounding material of the previous chapters, is the satire here evident? I’ve no idea.

Practically, this was put together using a mixture of Canva and Midjourney. It’s really quite remarkable how many powerful tools are now available to non-designers and non-artists. I’ve been trying to customise my Midjourney output recently, to make it more human-made rather than machine-made, but in this case I left the images as-is (other than making them black and white), with the semi-photoreal style working well in context.

Cranking out increasingly dubious images that in the context of Triverse have an implicitly xenophobic element was an odd exercise. There’s long been debate about AI models having built-in biases due to their source data. AI generated images are absolutely, positively going to be used in political propaganda in the coming years and it’s going to become increasingly difficult to figure out what is real or not, so it seemed somewhat appropriate. I was particularly disturbed by the image on the second page of the lizard-people lining up outside what appears to be a shop, right behind a cowed human. That image came from a very basic prompt (‘a long queue of lizard men outside a supermarket, political style’) but is highly suggestive.

The intention is to use this fantastical, fictional context to shine a light on the real world, in that grand tradition of good sci-fi and fantasy. Today’s chapter is certainly not subtle, but then neither is the source material it’s satirising.

Next week we’ll return to a ‘normal’ chapter.

Thanks for your support.