Until recently, it was safe for modern historians to differentiate between the pre-Auran and Auran ages. The revelations in Buenos Aires have thrown the field a curveball, and a new classification is required. Post-Auran has been suggested.
Those of advanced age can be said to have lived most of their lives inside an epoch which has now drawn to a close after seventy-seven years. What constitutes the ruling class throughout the world is typically in their fifties, and the masses will see a bifurcation in their leadership: those who draw the formative epoch out, unconvinced of Death’s Crown as a genuine artefact; and those who wish to move on to the next era.
In addition to the conventional prefixes, more terms will be needed for our chronicles. Reactionaries and Futurists will be found in the ranks of both The Auran and The Still. Since new forms of collaboration or competition have yet to emerge, we will leave these for another time.
Our Society’s rank and file are typically in their twenties. While they presently protect us living fossils, their sworn lifetime of service will be expedited, and the new world will be their oyster. Since their birth, things have settled into a routine rhythm which is about to be interrupted by what I hope will be a calm uproar.
It is the respite of peacetime, and not the daily struggle of war, which permits the propagation of false pasts. Future historians and other activist academics will eventually concoct a narrative that serves some latent ideological or professional end, but cultural memory is harder to erase. So, I write before the peace is truly won, wishing to leave my men with some idea of what it was all about.
***
It is remarkable that the Auran age began and ended in Argentina. Haslam’s perfection of Spectral Imaging at twenty-three years old cemented his name. He will remain one of the most important world-historical figures. The Imager’s ability to detect human Auras was at first dismissed as a pseudo-scientific curiosity, but a monocular version was easy enough to mass produce. Findings could be replicated in the labs of scientists and the homes of dilettantes.
The questions remain, even to this day: What does the Aura signify? Why is it only present among half of the world’s population? Why do some Auras shine brighter than others?
The population has been divided into two demographics: The Auran and The Still. The etymology of Aura leads to a word for a breeze. In the absence of a breeze, there is stillness. These are not my most favoured terms, but they have stuck.
***
Early researchers conducted themselves in their spare time, fearing academic reprisal and career suicide. In their circles, the theory that gained the most traction was that the Aura was a representation of mental processes. Dualism was reinforced and succeeded by a new idea: that the Brain and the Mind are separate, but while everyone has a brain, not everybody has a mind.
This posed an ethical quandary: does half the population lack true consciousness, or have they been denied access to a higher level of consciousness? What is to be done with these people, some of which are researching a characteristic that they lack?
***
The Aura was also considered in supernatural contexts. Was it a representation of the soul or a malevolent spirit? Established religious institutions — both monotheistic and polytheistic — at first dismissed Spectral Imaging as a tool of optical illusion and then as outright witchcraft. Haslam, himself a Christian, was temporarily excommunicated from every major denomination. He lived out the rest of his days oscillating between pride and regret for his culturally intrusive examination of God’s creation. Rescinded bans did not bring about later church attendance. In defiance of the values camps which predominate, our Society fashions itself after Haslam’s example. Our ranks are filled with both Auran and Still, whose loyalty is above an invisible mist.
The new religious movements which have since divided the globe posed a threat to the old faiths in those early days, precisely for their adoption of Spectral Imaging. Schisms abounded over the nature of the Aura, and whether having one qualified or disqualified one from membership.
It is important to note the Auras dissipated with their owner’s bodily death, but we will touch on that later. Concerning the phenomenon’s disparities in brightness, experiments in cognition, philanthropy, and crime followed.
***
It came as no surprise that Alzheimer’s patients at a clinic in Norfolk, England grew dimmer as their condition advanced.
It was vainly hoped that the first World Chess Championship of the Auran age would prove a distraction from the tumult. A chess prodigy from British Columbia made gains in brightness with each stunning victory, shattering that dream with a meteoric rise.
At the same time, an Irish boxing legend who had retired to Jamaica with brain damage glowed brighter throughout his steady decline. More puzzling was that in Mexico, a school for gifted children — many of whom were Auran — saw no alteration in brightness with each merited accomplishment.
***
A Nanny in Triers, who previously held the record for dimmest Aura, gained brightness with each round of blood plasma donation until she peaked at the average readout. In New York City, an Auran drug driver killed a Still teenager and grew dimmer than the Triers Donor.
Capitan Blanco, of Brazil’s Special Police Operations Battalion, gained a permanent increase in brightness after his extrajudicial killings of suspected cartel members. A faction of the country’s Pentecostal Church successfully lobbied for his pardon, though he spent the rest of his life dodging assassination attempts. Copycats who imitate Blanco’s vigilantism persist to this day, but none have been given the same “reward”.
Jean PR, a Still who made billions in the tech sector from a minor innovation, parted with his entire fortune. He hoped to gain an Aura from building infrastructure across Sub-Saharan Africa. The act had no effect whatsoever and drove him to suicide. It is rumoured that Blanco, on a secret speaking tour with the Pentecostals, went out of his way to silently attend Jean PR’s funeral. The Society considers his purported attendance to be apocryphal, as there is no evidence that Blanco travelled any further than the Falkland Islands.
***
Each of the above examples, of course, has an inverse. Gain and loss of light are not dependent on the morality or complexity of actions, though most changes occur Out-of-Season after some action of note.
On the topic of Season, it was noted by scientific and religious researchers alike that rapid fluctuations in brightness occur with each seventh year of age. The Aura is present while the child is in the womb, and fluctuations occur at seven, fourteen, twenty-one, etc. The final fluctuation occurs at age seventy-seven, which is fascinating considering the epoch lasted that many years.
To be Auran or Still was considered in other contexts. Is a man without an Aura truly fit to lead a nation? If I marry this Still woman, will our children have the same affliction — if it is indeed an affliction?
***
Moral panic was mobilised thirty-eight-and-a-half years into the epoch, exactly at its halfway point. We have dubbed this moment The Calcutta Emergency. Seventy-seven percent of its population consisted of Stills, the highest amount on record. Like attracted like – it became a site of pilgrimage for those without the mist. Foreigners elected to stay and boost the numbers. The Auran locals were expelled, drawing the ire of an international Auran brigade and making the city a target. Revenge rockets were fired – a starting gun for a mystical war.
In the beginning, there were no Eastern or Western fronts; no European, Pacific, or African theatres. There were no lines where armies were amassed to gain or lose ground. Soul riots gave way to Rwandan conditions the world over, but Western perpetrators were not just limited to machetes and Kalashnikovs. Militaries split in two, their telescopic gunsights replaced with Spectrometers. Air raids became viable as the two populations drifted apart into separate territorial imperatives.
The Still had the upper hand for a while. It wasn’t so easy for the Auran to hide. The only advantage Aurans had was knowing where each other was at all times. The tide changed with the development of Obscurant armour. I inherited a prototype – like an old diver’s helmet fused with an oversized medieval breastplate. I was among the first Porteños to don such equipment. It hid from the Imagers the mist that clung to our lungs and rose around our heads. At times, the Still heard us coming, but never saw us until it was too late.
The iron law of countermeasures saw the Still attempt to spoof readouts with false positives. The random noise could not fool an initiated eye accustomed to the wax and wane of the plasms, but it was enough to cost us our young as the wars dragged on.
Defying a ceasefire, I perched in a belltower like a hawk roosting, my marksman rifle spying on some Still youths. I watched them play their ball games with the spirit of joy on their faces, if not in their lungs. It had been years since I saw such sights. A shot went off, but not my own. A comrade missed from across the way. He could not see things from my angle, despite the traits we shared. I shot his gun arm before we could do more harm and fled the church.
***
In my enforced absence from the cause, I began to question the meaning of the mist. My search led me into our Society’s fold. As you boys know, I have been here for many years. I was among the first to set foot in the silos of this Atacama Desert; only venturing out of the bunker in my Obscurant to accept water and make trespassers of both kinds disappear.
I am old now, but I taught you everything I know. My final lesson is to confirm the truth of the rumours you have heard. That the corpse of Haslam the Still, now dead on his hundredth birthday, has grown an Aura. Haslam wears Death’s Crown.
The Founders and I have decided to parade his corpse throughout the world. By land, sea, and air, we will march him to the heart of the ruins of Calcutta and back. As a pallbearer, I will shoulder my share of the burden without the broadness of the Obscurant. My weathered hands will be too full to carry a rifle with that terrible scope.
Our message has gone out. Should they try to snipe the six of us, Sakarov Prime will finish our mission. Electromagnetic Pulse, delivered by missile and detonated at high altitude. Powerful enough to pierce the Faraday cages and render all Spectral Imagers useless.
There will be a collateral price. There always is. All but the most radiation-hardened circuits will fry in the radio flash. The streetlights will blow out, replaced with the bonfires of a thousand power stations. The night owls will look up to a sky painted with man-made Borealis, and it will rain planes. Come morning, the twin values camps will find that that which is potable is no longer portable, and at that hour they will rediscover what is truly important.
And I will envy the divine eyes looking down on the Earth entire, once more the sole knower of who wears the halo and who wears the horns.
I wonder which my corpse will sport.
Enoch writes 