Chapter Text
Canberra is a city well known for…
Well, that’s the thing. To call it a city well-known for anything is to disguise the actual nature of the place. Canberra is not well-known, or notable, or distinctive or unusual or in any real way [BIZARRE]. It is a perfectly average city with no real presence in the global collective consciousness.
And that is noteworthy, if only because it is a strange quality for the capital of the largest island nation on earth to possess.
Australia is at the very least well known. Mention the country to any person on the street, and they could tell you about kangaroos and didgeridoos and spiders and snakes and dropbears. Most have heard of Sydney, a fair few have heard of Melbourne, and nearly all are surprised to discover that neither is actually the capital city. They are the two largest and most significant, after all. Why not pick one of them?
Well, that was the problem. The Australian people couldn’t, not when both of the cities that had existed since well before federation were so prideful and sure of their right to house the newly formed government. So when the time came, a site equidistant between the cities was picked, a cold and mountainous region in the middle of New South Wales, a biblical compromise between the two best options.
The construction of the capital was equally haphazard. An international contest to pick the architect of the city as a whole was held, with a Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney Griffin of Chicago being chosen to create the blueprint that the city still builds itself upon today. The naming committee eventually settled on Canberra for the capital, a word belonging to the native people of the area roughly meaning “meeting place.” However, this was only after an open invitation was sent out to the public for naming suggestions.
All you need to know about the Australian people of then, and indeed now, can be divined from the fact that front-runner suggestions were “Kangeremu”, “Cookaburra”, “Swindleville”, and “Meladneyperbane.”
Depending on who you ask, the last notable thing to happen in Canberra was in 1913 when Lady Denman, wife to the Governor General, finally ended the chaos with a firm announcement before gathered crowds:
I name the capital of Australia, Canberra - the accent is on the Can.
Some would disagree with this assessment. Canberrans, for one, who having lived there are aware of the comings and goings and upturns and downswings and miscellaneous events that form the heartbeat of a city. But barring the tedious procession of government and politics that is so antithetical to exciting stories, nothing occurred in Canberra for over a century, or at least nothing so exciting that the rest of the world finally took notice of the city between the hills.
By the end of this story, that will no longer be the case.
We’ll get to that change itself in due course. For now, we’re going to focus in on the centre of the city, on the grand Federal Highway that leads over Lake Burley Griffin to arrive at Capital Hill, on an off-shoot of the road lined with trees and red-brick buildings. This particular building contains an example of the one place where there is always activity in any city, even more so when none can be found elsewhere.
And within this bar, surrounded by teenagers and tradies and all manner of people who are looking to lose memories instead of make them, is a corner booth with two old men sitting across from each other.
They are not noticed by the surrounding crowd: this is by design, as the bar they sit in is not the type of place one goes to get noticed. They sit identically, and are dressed identically, in finely tailored pink suits with crisp green undershirts and sleek black shoes. The similarities don’t end there: tendrils of blonde hair fall limply over two sets of shoulders, bony fingers idly rap on both sides of the greasy tabletop, and each have eyes that seem to shine blue even in the darkness of the room around them.
One speaks.
“I’m surprised this place is still open.”
The words were spoken in a whisper, so quiet that even in the ambient noise of the street outside it would be difficult to hear them, thereby ensuring that nobody inside the bass-filled space would be able to even catch a hint of it. However, both occupants of the table had a certain advantage when it came to hearing.
Their ears themselves weren’t very good. But the ears of the spirits that hovered over their shoulders, spirits that stared at each other with small eyes inset into rotting green faces that ended with jutting ivory tusks?
Well, stands were known to possess abilities beyond the norm, senses among them. That meant that unless there were any other stand users in the bar, something that had already been disproven by a careful and vicious examination, their conversation would remain between them and them alone.
The second smiled.
“That’s why I like drinking here. The only time it’s not open is when it's under investigation for violating health codes.”
“And how often does that happen?”
“Since I got a guy into the inspection agency? Not as much as you’d think.”
The first man grunted.
“Hm. Not exactly what I meant. I was referring to the… recent tragedy.”
The second escalated from a smile into full blown laughter.
“Do you know where you are? This is Australia, mate. They paid the convicts with rum when the foundations were first being laid. Nothing is going to stop these people from drinking.”
The first grimaced, partially at the way his drinking fellow’s mongrel of an accent stumbled over the word “mate”, and partially over the way his drink tasted.
“You’d think with that much practice, they’d have gotten better at it.”
“There’s your issue. You’re drinking for the taste.”
The first sighed.
“Enough of this. You called me here for a reason, didn’t you?”
“Do I need one? We haven’t met in… why, it must be decades at this point. Perhaps I just missed an old friend.”
“Friend is a strong word.”
“Acquaintance, then.”
“I thought we broke contact because of that crate of [PARALYZER] you gifted to me. It couldn’t have been easy to get that many corpse parts into the air travel system.”
“It was difficult. Which was why I hoped the gift would be appreciated by you. Where were you the last thirty years that you couldn’t even thank me?”
The first took another drink, grimaced again, then looked at his glass.
Shrugging, he proceeded to down the rest of it, before wiping the edge of his mouth with a suit sleeve.
“I’m coming around to this stuff.”
“Good to hear! Should I get another round?”
“You should explain why you’re delaying. We both know why you called me here.”
The second raised an eyebrow.
“Do we, now? Explain, then, if you apparently know more about my motives than me.”
“Over one hundred and fifty years of this, and one thing that remains constant about all of us is that we need a hobby. Spain has the astronomer, New York had the historian. Last I heard, the twins had set up shop in Sydney. And then we have you.”
“What am I, then?”
“An inventor. You enjoy making things, but you enjoy showing them off more. I was there the last time you thought you had something worth showcasing, and you weren’t half this excited. So what’s got you so eager that you need another one of us to come see it in person?”
He gestured broadly at the room around him.
“And more to the point… why the fuck are you doing it here?"
The first laughed.
“Well, to answer the latter question, it’s precisely because of that reaction. None of the major factions have a presence here, beyond that required to keep an eye on the government, and even then it’s a low priority. The population is low, but the infrastructure is well developed. It’s the perfect place for someone looking to rule unopposed. And also for my own purposes.”
He raised a hand, cutting off any questions from his drinking partner.
“I’m getting there, I’m getting there. It’s just difficult to easily explain. You ever think about how much the internet has changed things?”
The first tilted his head, confused by the sudden change of topic.
“You mean how it’s made everyone want a computer for some godforsaken reason?”
The second laughed.
“No, no! That’s like… like thinking that all cars did was get people interested in tires. I’m talking about societal impacts. It’s brought people together, torn them apart, won wars, lost elections, and those aren’t even the big ones. Good thing I brought up cars earlier, because it also did the same thing on a lesser scale. See, both of those things redefined the concept of distance.”
“You’re saying they made travel more efficient?”
“Yes, but that was just the precursor of the real change. Remember when we were young, and it felt like the next town over was a whole world away? With cars, suddenly you’re functionally next door to the whole bloody country. And the internet was just the next step: now, anyone can talk with anyone else anywhere on earth. You don’t even need to live in the same country as your career anymore. That’s insane, right?”
“So they changed the distance between places. I see. Have you invented some new-”
“You’re still not getting it. They didn’t change the physical distance between places: they changed the idea of distance. One hundred years ago if you said to someone that you worked in a different country as a day job, you’d get laughed off the stage. Now, it’s practically a requirement for some positions. Nothing physically changed, but people on a global scale began to think differently. There’s this book I read a while back, something from that English socialist, where he says that control over people’s perception of reality is no different to control over reality itself. But I don’t think he went far enough. Control over perception is control over reality, sure, but it’s also control over people. If you can change an entire concept to that degree, then suddenly what people would have called impossible yesterday becomes possible. And more importantly, the things they would have avoided on pain of death become the new normal to be blindly accepted. Isn’t that crazy?”
“What are you trying to say? That you’ve changed a concept like that?”
“Not yet. I haven’t released it publicly, so nobody knows about it.”
“But what is-”
The first was shushed by the second, a thin finger pressed into his lips as his conversational partner smiled widely.
“Stop putting words into my mouth. I would’ve preferred to save most of that for later in the evening. Because what I actually wanted to say is this…”
He finished his drink, and gasped with satisfaction as he slammed the tin can down onto the table, breathing deeply with eyes wide open.
“Do you want to see something amazing?”