Ian Burton-Oakes

There are two sorts of people: those who are ignorant of the Law and those who have been broken by it.

There is a cold, inhuman order to the world. It orders man and machine, life and matter, according to its sublime and alien rationality. It has no name but the Law. There are those who have been cursed by a glimpse into that cold order and they have been broken by it?their knowledge expels them from the Law’s order. They are freed from the limits of their body, their personality, the very physical laws that order the world.

There are two sorts of people: those who are ignorant of the Law and those who have been broken by it.

There is a cold, inhuman order to the world. It orders man and machine, life and matter, according to its sublime and alien rationality. It has no name but the Law. Those who know nothing of it live in blissful submission to its machinations, playing their part and fading away. For while The Law is not kind, nor is it deliberately cruel. But there are those who have been cursed by a glimpse into that cold order and they have been broken by it-their knowledge expels them from the Law’s order. They are freed from the limits of their body, their personality, the very physical laws that order the world.

That freedom is terrible and empty. The broken have only choice to guide them. They can choose the path of Law, slowly stripping away their dependence on mere matter to manipulate the raw causal force that flows through the world. They can choose the path of steel, interacting with the world through the forged tools of man. Or they can choose the middle way, the path of humanity, seeking to employ the forces of steel and law in a delicate mimicry of their old life.

Breaks are mysterious occurrences. They always occur in a setting where rules have been invoked or broken and they always involve more than one person. As soon as the individual is broken, they become aware of the action of the Law around them, aware of the sensitive points through which it may be manipulated. In that near instantaneous moment, they must choose their path or have it chosen for them.

All those who are broken together are trapped on a single fault line and are carried along as it expands. The fault line extends in fit and starts, forcing the broken to leap ahead in time and sideways in space. Most broken call these sudden shifts ‘jags’ and live under the threat that they may be torn from their surroundings at any moment.