“The strife of the opposites gives birth to all that comes to be.” Heraclitus – c. 500 BCE
Prologue
Appendix 4G6FF. ‘The Precepts of Rohr.’ Archaeology & Early ExpaContractics, subsection 22b.
Editor’s note: This is the oldest known inscription of ExpaContractic tenets. It is etched into a three-ton block of granite and is currently housed in the Chronicles of Oscillations Museum in Rohr, Switzerland. Commonly attributed to Lincoln de Guise, it predates him by twenty years. Carbon analysis confirms its origins in Kurdistan, year 2191 CE. An identical inscription was found on Mars fifty years later. Author unknown.
“Know then Expansion is the force of repulsion. It explodes, shatters, and pushes.
Know then Contraction is the force of attraction. It accretes, implodes, and binds.
Know then the universe expands and the universe contracts. What is true of the universe is true of everything.
I say unto you: there is Expansion and Contraction in all things!”
Chapter 1
Lombo Niall was awaiting his sentence on the charge of attempted manslaughter. The five-judge panel would convene in one hour’s time. According to his advocate the length of his Rehabilitation was foregone. The sentence called for was five years’ corrective therapy. This was the most intensive of all such therapies and the maximum issued by the Judiciary.
It was rare for such an extreme sentence to be meted out, but his belligerence during the trial and absence of remorse meant little chance of leniency. His advocate didn’t offer any apology upon revealing this fact and went on to tell him it was perhaps in his long-term interest to undergo so lengthy a re-integration process.
He’d committed the assault in Zurich. It was there the trial was taking place. Witnesses had caught him in the act. An Orb had raced in to arrest him. He’d resisted and been punished for it. He recalled this vividly and with far more raw emotion than the crime itself. The paralysis had lasted for hours.
His court-appointed advocate hadn’t defended a criminal case for many years. It was the first thing he’d said to him the one and only time they met before trial.
“It’s hard to find people with that kind of experience,” the man had told him.
From the start, nothing went well for the defence. The prosecution presented numerous video testimonies of shaken and distraught witnesses describing in horrific detail the crime. With tremors in their voices they told of Lombo Niall’s savagery.
It was clear from them there’d never been an altercation. Lombo Niall had jumped the man, pinned him, and pummelled him. The victim hadn’t had the slightest chance to defend himself. After a long period of relentless drubbing, the accused had leapt to his feet and resorted to kicking.
Those witnesses went on to recount how they’d implored him to let off. Some had even taken tentative steps to intercede. It was visible to the courtroom the shame many of them felt.
“Had we been more courageous and worked in unison we could’ve toppled him,” one said.
The court likewise heard that despite the victim’s being completely motionless and blood trickling from an obvious head wound, the accused had continued to attack him. The kicking wouldn’t have stopped, they all asserted, had the Orb not arrived. It was more than just the violence. Lombo Niall’s curses and verbal berating was of such virulence that one woman actually referred to him as ‘possessed.’
“I’m going to pulverize you!” was used by the accused repeatedly. As was: “I’m going to smash your head in!” Yet, when each witness recounted his saying “You’re going to die, you’re going to die you worthless maggot!” the reaction was so pronounced the proceedings came to a momentary standstill.
It elicited discernible gasps from the judges. They each seemed jolted, visibly rattled by words incongruous to modern ways. One of the female judges brought her hand instinctively up to her heart. They gazed with alarm at one another and shared concerned looks with Lombo’s advocate who was himself clearly affected by it.
It was then Lombo slammed his hand on the table, stood and pointed aggressively at the judges. “You have no right!” he yelled. “Do you understand who I am?”
An Orb entered the courtroom and Lombo was compelled by its presence curtail his outburst. He sat back down and pounded once more the table with his large fist. The proceedings resumed upon his silence, but with signs of disquiet as if a wild beast had been forced into their midst.
The victim’s live video testimony was presented next. His image was displayed with him laid out on his hospital bed, reparative nodes placed on various parts of his body. Standing to the left of him surveilled his physician whose grave look conveyed the severity of trauma endured by his patient. The prosecution asked the victim to describe in his own words what had transpired.
First, he had neither done nor said anything to warrant the assault. This he asserted quite strenuously. He couldn’t imagine what anyone could’ve done to have deserved it. The accused had pounded his head as if it were no more than a sack of grain.
“I begged him to stop, but he said nothing in the world was going to save me. He told me I was a dead man and I believed him.”
The victim’s skull had been cracked in several locations, the doctor told the court. The time of death was 11.35pm, ten minutes prior to the Orb’s arrival. Upon being rushed to hospital, the victim’s body had been put into stasis and later revived.
Neither the prosecution nor the defence felt compelled to call the defendant to the stand. Relief was evident all around. Lombo seemed indifferent to his right to recount his version of the events. From that point he abjured from the proceedings, referring to them as an insult to his power.
The summary arguments were then presented. The prosecution’s speech was concise, lasting no more than a few minutes. The defence’s was not much longer. Uttered with clear weariness, it lacked conviction. To Lombo Niall’s eye everyone had already decided his fate. Procedures were now being hurried so the nastiness of his crime and person could be swept from their presence.
The verdict was rendered. Unanimously he was found guilty. The court called a recess and in one hour’s time its sentence would be handed down.
“Prepare for the worst, Mr Niall,” his advocate said in haste while rising from his chair and packing his documents. “But I remain confident happiness and good health would prove the end result.” He departed and Lombo was left alone in the courtroom except for the hovering sentinel Orb at his back.
He understood it was an onerous sentence he was facing and cursed. He didn’t know much of what took place, but those who exited the program were changed men. Their precious kernel of titanic capacity was permanently removed. They were all of them lobotomized, if not physically then in every other sense.
And this was to happen to him. He was to be shredded of his power, his self removed from himself. Lombo Niall as he’d always been was to die. They hid behind their pretended beneficence, reassuring him and themselves how superior his future life would be. But in truth his neck was meant for the block. His thoughts and understandings were to be severed from him.
The fear of this spread through his body. His breathing became laboured, too swift and successive for steely thinking. He could hear the axe grind, the coarse mask slipping over the executioner’s face. No, his head was his to keep! They would regret the day they tried. His panic twisted inside him, asphyxiating him.
The judges re-entered the courtroom and he imagined himself flying across the room and rattling each one by the throat. He would squeeze and watch their colours drain.
He had the power to take their lives. His boundless, infinite rage would know nothing but its exercise. Cries of clemency he’d be deaf to, just as he’d been the night he’d beaten that man to a pulp. He’d been deaf his whole life to maggots and their way of speaking.
His fury both warped and warmed him. He would never be hammer into anvil, but hammer remained. They thought they had him? They’d laid hands on the thunder-hammer and would come to rue the day.
The court ordered him to stand and hear his sentence proclaimed. In their crimson robes the five judges rose from the bench and peered down with eyes full of ill-intent. There was redness to their faces; they looked bloodied and vein-filled as if he’d truly enacted his violent fantasies upon them.
“Lombo Niall you are hereby to spend the next five years of your life in intensive corrective therapy,” one of them said. “Your person will be tagged and monitored. You are to have no contact with any persons except your re-integration medics. Your residence will be Orb guarded and all your movements tracked. You are to be pinned in your home, your sociopathic nature removed from you. Once done, your improved self will think long and hard on how to make amends to a world you seem so desirous to blight.
“Never has this court convened in my tenure a crime so violent. Never has an accused been so absent of contrition. You are devoid of sanity, relic of the Bygone era and the worst of what we once were. Your Rehabilitation will not merely re-integrate you with humanity, it will advance you, rid you of your archaisms and make you shine with the rest in this, the age of New Civilization. Once brought back into the fold, this court will extend its hand... we will extend our hands to you Lombo Niall and you will know then brotherhood and commonality. We look forward with the greatest sincerity to that day. The sentence is to take effect immediately. So says one.”
“So say all,” chorused the other judges. Lombo was then removed from the courtroom and the trial came to a close.