Changes in the heavens wrought changes on the earth.

You never saw them; you never met them; you were never touched by their suffering except on the evening news or at the occasional fundraiser. They were what they were because they were uncivilized, unteachable, underprivileged and unsalvageable. They were the underclasses, and you found a use for them, because without their cheap labor and their primitive wars, your own world of mirrored towers and imported luxuries and megabuck negotiations could never exist.

He runs something called the Celestial People’s Republic, just north of here. What he tells his subjects is that we can turn Hell into Heaven by collectivizing it.

He was a wizard of sorts, a magus and a grammaticus; and continually communing with his machines as he did, he seemed to find talking to actual people a confusion to him.

He runs something called the Celestial People's Republic, just north of here. What he tells his subjects is that we can turn Hell into Heaven by collectivizing it.

Gods and politics are the tools with which the godless and unprincipled manipulate the gullible.