We huddled for a time in our bedroom closet after barricading the front door. Anna showed me the pistol she always carried concealed. She pressed the stock into my fingers and explained the basic steps on how to use and fire the weapon. She assured me it would be quite easy and would feel almost natural. I couldn't fathom how it would feel natural pointing a gun at another person and killing them with a shot.
The breathless moments we waited as sounds by the front door, the slight turn and rattling of the locked door knob. We waited, and waited for the sound of it giving way. Would it be a crash or a bang. Nothing, a few minutes later another rattling, but not as pronounced and then nothing.
The apartment next to ours, we heard the crash and a door give. Screaming and shouting, a few shots and silence. This repeated, with each more muffled. We estimated at least eight apartments on the floor. Some loud talking in a hurried and excited tone with footsteps and down the stairwell and gone.
Then the moment we waited, the door heaved and a kick. Four figures massed into the living room and fanned out into each room. Anna raised the pistol through a crack in the closet door and waited. She took sight and then paused, lowering her aim she gently opened the door and embraced one of her sisters. Four of them soon embraced her as well, they had been in the streets and came with the rioters. They waited for them to leave and now returned.
Anna refused to leave alone. I refused to leave my home. After a time, I convinced her to leave with them. I refused her pistol and sat in the living room alone for a time then gathered some things and went looking for Sophie.
The rioting was restrained within the city limits and Gustafson estate was untouched. I reached there near the end of the day by foot and Sophie was there with the children. They were uneasy with what they had heard and relieved that I had arrived unscathed. We shared what information we each had and they said the Army was entering the city to quell the rioters and restore order. It was unclear how or why it began, but the start was when they overran the Secret Police precincts and it exploded soon afterwards.
Out of the rioters emerged a leader. Edgar. He was no one of importance and other than work as a bookend and waiter, he was just an average citizen. But somehow he became the face of the new movement and he negotiated the uneasy truce between the Army, the Police and the City. The Politiburo used every means to destroy him, but he somehow eluded and bested every tactic. Impressed, they agreed to hear him speak and his demands were modest.
They created a new role. Secretary of the People. He filled it with pride and restored law and order. His lover as it turns out was one Anna's sisters. She had sought him out and groomed him for this day. He performed admirably. The long arm of Knut persists.
I went to hear Edgar speak and his words were clear, concise. I could understand him and this made me both elated and frightened. I finally understood the Artesians and now it was Edgar. He challenged them and the statues of Karl began to crumble. Barely a generation and his image and visage was now anathema and forbidden. They were all burned and dismembered.
No new icons as Edgar would call them. Only the voice of the people would be our monuments. The Army soon took up arms and from deep within the bowels of the network of man made caverns made from a bygone era the unholy weapons of our ancestors where dragged out once more. When pleas by many had gave way to even older promises broken, we pointed them skyward and to the West, to East and to all points of the continent.
Like a great gray beetle it unfurled its protective shell and raised a thousand pointed spears. The shell was of no metal or element known and weighed nothing, yet could withstand a hurricane without a scratch. And when it disgorged itself of each flying spear, it would sit hollow and empty. Then deep within its clockwork it would produce new weapons and slowly fill its belly until it became engorged and ready anew. These eternal and immortal machines then slithered back into their subterranean layers.
New promises were made to never look for them, never to awaken and point them against our enemies. And as before they will always be broken and the devil beetles will emerge again to clear their stomachs and take their fill.
Anna perished in the boiling oceans and bones ground to dust. They made sure all of the Artesian cities were laid ruin. I could only assume they held each other, Anna and Anna Two.
I could not fathom this was the work of Edgar. I could not make sense of why this was the outcome yet again. As our forefathers warned, the beetles could not be destroyed only unleash destruction. They lamented in their greatest achievement a weapon of such absolute power would outlive everything.
Edgar, like many before in past centuries tried to throw them into the bottom of the sea. He had them dragged out of the pits and pushed beyond the bluffs on the southside of the city proper. And always like before they would fly up, shake off the waters and return to their home. They remained, a constant reminder.
Now my only solace, every physical shred of Knut's existence was gone. His pen, his writings, all of it finally sundered to ash.
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