Work Text:
“This is a Public Service Announcement.
“Forty percent of produce is thrown away, wasted. We're working to solve world hunger, to redistribute resources more efficiently. We are reaching forth today toward a better and brighter tomorrow! ”
Cut scene: an average shopping plaza with barter going on.
Cut scene: Hathor's sky-palace, soaring pillars surround a golden pyramid that tears through the cloud deck. A beautiful blue river courses leisurely by in front of the grounds.
The PSA goes on to describe the magical words' equivalent of a scientifically based unparalleled nano-healing system (heuristic with predictive trending based upon Hathor's most recent aesthetics and artistic “improvements ”).
Cut scene: Stone City. Marvelous architecture, finely detailed statuary of people, plants, animals, food, stalls, furniture, life in general caught in a moment – core and fringes perfectly normal, near-center turning inward as if to look at something happening, near-fringe caught as if running away from center in panic.
It's a tourist not-exactly-attraction, semi-religious semi-social pilgrimages. Those statues are meant to be people in the act of living life at around 10 AM: shopping, working, sleeping, pissing, nooner-threesomes, frolicking, brunching (and some presence of other meals and snacks), etc.. Given Hathor's sex-drugs-arts focus, the citizens of I-m-n-t – the only city in the entire world-pond – will sometimes pay their “respects” to those more... amenable statues; newly arrived kidnaps from other world-ponds sometimes do the same from kink or curiosity.
Stone City is a false flag: Hathor wouldn't care about killing over 5,000 people, but she would have been quite put out at having to replace all of her toys afterward; the whole thing is CAD and geopolymer stage with carefully placed “ancient” legends of a wicked city whose mayor had closed the gates to her and whose citizens then celebrated for three days before she cast her judgment, along with a sprinkling of false memory implants.
“Stone City is now an open air museum as a somber reminder to all. Nobody steals or destroys anything there.”
Cut scene: relatively well-off citizens of I-m-n-t and the outlying villages move about within market places.
“Twelve point nine percent of rural citizens and eleven point eight percent of urban citizens experience food insecurity,
Cut scene: pan to mountains using actors in filth and squalor.
“...in contrast to fifteen percent of those poor mountain dwellers who know no better and shun Her glory and magnificence.
Cut scene: wanton acts in one of Hathor's numerous temples, silver trays and goblets of various substances all about.
“In Her service, you will know no wants. Come to Hathor; come to love and lose yourself in one another's embrace.”
Still the same old ground effects carpets; where are the flying carpets of tomorrow? the old lady thought as she sipped her ouzo quietly.
O ~~~ O