12/22/2025

12/23/2025 2:16 AM

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Marauder

“Who can tell me the three core laws of noematurgy?” The professor turned as he spoke. He had to: it was the only way to address every student in the panopticon classroom. He himself was in the centre of an immense amphitheatre, his motorised chalkboard spinning lazily so that every student could see what he was scribbling. A conveyor belt of knowledge. Nobody raised their hands. “No need to get excited”, The Professor said to himself. “Don’t all call out at once.” “The first law is the rule of reveritic relativity”, a student said. The professor waddled to the chalkboard. Here he wrote down a long equation, his fingers flashing as if he had committed it to motor memory. “And what”, the professor said. “Is reveretic relativity?” “The fact that the number of thoughts generated increases the likelihood of a phenomenon forming in the material universe”, the student said. “Correct”, the professor smiled and pulled out a sheet of sugar paper. “If we imagine that thoughts build ‘mass’ within the World Of The Forms, and this mass allows them to pass through into our world…” Here he held out the paper and spun around so that every student could see it had a label on one side ‘material universe’ and another on the other: ‘the world of the forms’. He dripped a tiny drop of water from a pipette onto the paper. It floated atop it. “As can be seen”, the professor continued. “When less thoughts are present in a given area, they do not come through to our world”. But then his fist clenched the pipette. The water dissolved the barrier between the two sides of the sheet of sugar paper. “But when lots of thoughts are condensed in an area, the barrier between both planes is disturbed. The thoughts become reality.” He turned dramatically to the other side of the classroom. “Now! We all wish our lives to be better, do we not? Some of you may even wish to leave this lecture, but still we are stuck here. Our thoughts, though they may be the same, are not changing the world. So, what is the second law of Neurmotological physics?” Another student suggested: “The law of synaptic synchronicity. Even though people may have similiar thoughts, if they are not exactly the same they will not gain mass in the World Of The Forms. We might, for example, all be thinking of leaving the class: but because how we all picture this is different, it does not occur.” The professor scribbled down the students words, chalk flicking from his fingers as it flew across the whiteboard. “Correct”, the professor replied. “Though this hamperment can be superseded by Gestalt triplets or the use of neurostimulants, the average person’s thoughts will not have enough convergence to create phenomena. Now tell me: if we all could think of leaving the classroom in the exact same way, what would be the law that governs the likelihood of this phenomenon occurring be?” There was a longer wait. This had not been covered yet. The professor walked in a circle around his whiteboard, then answered his own question: “That… now that would be the law of concentrated conception”, the professor said. “Ideas more that are agreed upon are harder to distort: facts cannot be altered by thought as easily as less concrete ideas. So if something is already highly likely to happen…” Here he trailed off, as if waiting for something. His eyes looked to the bell on the wall which chimed. “Then its occurrence through mass thoughts makes it almost certain”. The students began to pack up their bags. They all wore the same clothes, the brown jumpsuits of Watch citizenship, they all had their head’s buzzed. The barcodes identifying their citizenship winked by as they walked out. “And remember, your exam on this is the day after the next Unwatched Night. Spend your time studying!” The words fell futile from his lips. He knew they would all be out at the qualia bars or the pleasure domes or in each others houses. He knew Noemuturgy wasn’t why any of them were on the course: the ideas he was explaining would never come in handy to them. It was highly unlikely B.E.N.T.H.A.M would allocate them any sort of role that required them to use their brains in any capacity at all. That wasn’t what The Watch was about. On the way home the city flew through a cloud. The professor had forgotten it was water farming day despite the tannoy announcements: as the fog settled in the streets, slowly being sucked up by The Watch’s immense hydrofarms, he huddled his coat about himself. He scowled miserably as the artillery on the side of the city fired warning shots at a nearby flock of birds; he hated water farming day. It was loud, it was cold closer to the void, and the rapid drop in altitude the city took gave him hives. He pulled the coat about himself a little tighter. “Steven is that you?” A voice said from his left. He turned. There was a man standing in the fog beside him, barely an inch away. “Fritz?” He said. “I haven’t seen you since… well since…” “Since I was shipped off to war?” Fritz said. “That’ll cut ties like nobodies business.” “But that was nearly ten years ago”, Professor Steven said. “What are you doing here?” The word that came next was not something he was expecting. “Investigating”, Fritz said. And then: “Something big.” Steven looked at his friend stare up at one of B.E.N.T.H.A.M’s eyes. An Abaki was using a long brush to clean the camera’s lense. “What are you investigating?” The question was obvious, the answer less so. “I can’t say here.” Fritz turned and walked away into the fog and Professor Steven, somewhat shocked by the encounter, began to follow him. “What do you mean? What are you…” Steven said and then stopped. Something and just caught the corner of his eye, twisting in the fog. “Fritz did you see that?”, Steven said. “See what?” The two men stopped. Fritz turned and looked into the fog. They were both looking now. “I thought… I could’ve sworn I saw something”, Steven said. Fritz peered into the fog. “You’re going nuts”, Fritz said: “There is nothing there.” “No no, look”, Steven said, jumping back. “I’m certain of it: right there!” They were both thinking they had seen something now, the thought multiplied in their minds: a cognitional cancer. “You’re right… there’s something in the fog”, Fritz agreed, slowly creeping forward. The ex-soldier’s brow was furrowed now. He slowly disappeared out of sight. There was a nasty, wet, crunch. It was followed by the sound of chattering teeth and liquid falling flatly onto the metal streets of the city. “Fritz?” Steven said. “Are you alright?” He had a strange feeling he should be running very quickly away from here. The fog crept round him “Fritz?” There was definitely something in the fog that was not his friend. He was sure of that now. It was a fact. “Who’s there?” It was bigger than a person would be, disturbing the fog about it. He heard the sound of teeth grinding to his right. Steven stepped backwards, his voice shaking, and started to run. He was screaming into the cold air now, his coat flying behind him as he dashed away. He could hardly hear himself over the sound of the sucking, warbling, sound of the hydrofarms. But he could hear the thing in the fog. It was laughing. Coming at him with leaps and bounds. Shaking the very metal of the street as it moved. He fell down and turned in terror, his arms flailing in fear, his mouth opened in an ‘o’ of suprise, he anticipated the thing turning him inside out, tearing through him, breaking his bones in its jaw. He waited. Nothing came. He opened his eyes and saw the fog had cleared. He was surrounded by people, all looking at him strangely. He stated back at them, and then at where the thing had gone. But now, there was nothing there.