Free The Demi-Monde: Winter by Rod Rees Page B

World doppelgänger would think and act if placed in a similar environment.’
    ‘I’m having a problem with the word “think”. Are you saying that these Dupes of yours have some form of intelligence?’
    The Captain smiled in a condescending way that Ella found hugely irritating. ‘It’s only ersatz intelligence, but to neoFights operating in the Demi-Monde it does appear that the Dupes have the capacity to think and behave independently. And DemiMondians don’t just interact with neoFights, they interact with each other.’ He took a deep breath, then continued his dissertation. ‘The Demi-Monde was planned from the OutSet to be a world that was intrinsically unstable and discordant, as only in this way could we be sure to provoke the type of war conditions we needed for our training. To do this we designed in a number of “Areas of Tension”: the notable ones being race, religion and population density.’
    Ella found all this a little depressing. The USA had spent the last two hundred years trying to overcome the problems created by its citizens being drawn from different racial backgrounds and having different religious beliefs, and here was the US Military studying how to exacerbate these differences in order to provoke war.
    The Captain used a laser-pen to indicate five segments of the map that radiated out from the centre of the circular world like slices of cake. ‘There are five equally sized Sectors in the Demi-Monde: the Rookeries, the Coven, Rodina, the Quartier Chaud and NoirVille. Each of the Sectors is racially and religiously distinct. To the north we have the Rookeries. This Sector is populated by people of Anglo-Saxon descent – an equal mix of Americans, of English and of Germans – who speak English and have an ascetic religion …’
    ‘Ascetic?’ asked Ella.
    ‘It’s a religion built on the denial of pleasure called UnFunDaMentalism, a creed that your friend Heydrich has made his own. However Aleister Crowley, the black magician who was so famous in the first half of the twentieth century,is the religious leader we placed in the Rookeries so there’s little wonder that UnFunDaMentalism has become suffused with aspects of the occult.’ He gave Ella a glance to check that she was following everything he was saying. ‘To the west of the Rookeries is Rodina. This Sector is largely Slavic in ethnicity: it’s a mix of Russians, Poles and Ukrainians. They speak Russian in Rodina and they follow – followed – an avowedly atheistic creed called RaTionalism which looks, as the name suggests, for rational explanations of the creation, the purpose and the oddities of the Demi-Monde and rejects supernatural interpretations. Since Heydrich’s coup RaTionalism has become an underground religion: UnFunDaMentalism is now the only official religion in the ForthRight.’
    ‘The ForthRight?’
    ‘The name Heydrich gave post-coup to the state that unifies Rodina and the Rookeries, the state he now controls.’
    ‘That’s a pretty ballsy thing for Heydrich to have done.’
    A nod from the Captain. ‘But then Heydrich’s a pretty ballsy sort of guy and he was helped by a Russian β-Singularity called Lavrentii Beria.’
    ‘In real life he was head of Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD,’ added the Professor helpfully. ‘A really nasty piece of work.’
    ‘Thank you, Professor,’ said the Captain testily. ‘Heydrich and Beria staged a revolution, assassinated the leaders of the two Sectors – Rodina and the Rookeries …’
    ‘Henry Tudor and Ivan Grozny,’ murmured the Professor.
    ‘… purged their political rivals and took over. The whole revolution is called the Time of Trouble, or as it’s more simply referred to in the ForthRight: the Troubles.’
    The Captain moved his pointer around the rim of the DemiMonde. ‘Clockwise from the Rookeries we come to the Quartier Chaud where the inhabitants are of Mediterranean stock – mainlyFrench, Italian, Venetian and Spanish – and where