I was, originally, going to attempt to turn this into an anthology piece. As I tried to do so, the amount of setting and unpacking needed to make the story stand up falgged to me that I was, at beast, looking at a short novel. More probably a full length novel, if not a series of them. And my dream saw fit to only provide me with part 1. I always suspected I was a bit of a bastard. Parts in purple I added after being awake, to fill in some of the narrative blanks. Parts in black, including the footnotes, are as close as I can recall. One of the oddest things about this dream, actually many dreams I've had, is how deeply imbedded into the setting I get. It's like an entire world, with it's rules set up for me already, is just there for me to wander in. As you can see, there isn't much purple to the infodumps.

Warning: Bits of this are pretty distasteful.

It starts with me, hungover, escaping through the Citadel back to my quarters¹. This was not easilly accomplished. I lived in my mother's apartments in the heart of the military quarter, and the citadel itself was a giant flying aircraft. Giant, in fact, does not do it justice. Biblical might. A rather slowly moving one, but enough that my stomach felt every shudder and heave as I'd never felt it before. But my motehr was a pilot, the best, and I'd inherited her composure and strength. In the end, I was not nearly slick enough. My mother was sitting at the breakfast table, coffee in hand, calmly trading pleasantries with my literature professor². He was wondering, he said, if I was quite prepared to take my oral exam. Right then. He was free, I only had his class that day, and as I'd been procrastinating scheduling the exam with him, well, he was not so important he couldn't take time out of his day to see me. Especially since he'd needed to consult with my family's archives anyways. I begged off, wanting nothing in the world so much as a shower, and made an appointment with him that afternoon. As he'd reminded me, the course was nearly over, and it was far better to take the exam earlier than later.

I did not get in trouble. In fact my mother was faintly pleased. She'd worried about me, was glad I was getting into the young life. One of my duties as an adult was to father two children. The citadel did not get immigrants, but our population was nearly half a million. Inbreeding wasn't quite a worry, especially not with the support of world class genetic testig and cleaning, but maintaining population stability was important. Emigrants were considered traitors, their families under the same scrutiny and scron as the families of murderers, at least by the council who ruled the citadel. Emigrants that took their children were doubly damned, as they were seen to be stealing from the citadel's future. So were those who, for whatever reason, wasted the precious consuables that we lived on, or refused to do their part by siring two children. On top of all of that, mental instability was a serious problem, severe enough that most were driven mad by the time they hit fifty. It was strenous enough that citizenship depended on one's parenthood, though it was not necessary to raise the children yourself, or even have both children with the same person. This whole thing made me farily uneasy, because I knew my interests did not lie with, well, laying with women, but I figured I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.

The test he wanted me to take was quite important, to myself, to the professor, and to my mother. It wasn't so much that he was unimportant, merely that I was that important. The best prospective archivist in his class, indeed in some time. As good as my father, many said, though never my mother. Since my father and sister had both been reclaimed within the last couple years³, there was quite a bit of suspicion on my mother and I. My taking my place as an archivist, and then on to forming a family and household, would allievete much of the pressure on us both. We knew, for instance, that my mother's career in the air guard had been stalled some years despite her being the single best pilot the citadel had ever seen, and a very capable teacher and administrator besides. Her advancing from Colonel to general rank was almost a given, becoming air marshall was not out of the question, and quite soon, but only if this cloud could be dispelled from our house.

The exam did not test actual knowledge. That could be picked up at any time, and as archivist it would be my lifelong challenge to absorb and classify as much as possible. It tested that, the classification and absorbtion. And my ability to know what to look at beyond what I'd been assigned, and how much to admit knowing, even after a full hour of relentless drilling by a man who knew his work and . I passed, of course. I was my father's son.

We had a celebration. Madeline Glace and her son Pierre were not given to parties, either attending or giving, but we made an exception. Passing the exam meant my future as an archivist was assured. I was quite jubilant, and wondered why my mother was not. Oh, she played the part well enough⁴, but I knew her better than anyone. The deaths of Nicolette and Stephen, my sister and father, had drawn us together. And, well, the food was a clue. Tacos. I hated tacos. Despised the taste, the seasoning, the consistency. Which my mother full well knew. I dared not spurn the food, of course. Throwing back up food once eaten, throwing food away, that was what got Nicolette reclaimed, six months previous. Waste was treason, as far as the council was concerned. But, there was a trick to it. Eating wihtout eating. Serving a partial plate of broken pieces made the food seem eaten. The rest I gave to one of my friends, who'd already passed her exam the year before. Soon after, my mother came beside me, materilizing out of air, apparently. "Come with me, Pierre," she ordered in her Colonel voice. I followed her into the kitchen, noting more than one eye upon us.

"What I have to show you is the secret of the citadel. One every adult must learn, does learn the day they become an adult. Now it is your turn." She drew me into the cabinent, a coolroom that kept food inside perfectly preserved indefinetely. And then, once in there, she pushed aside a second door, one I never knew existed. She pushed it aside, then drew back.

Revealing the partially canabalized body of Nicolette.

Her hand over my mouth kept me from screaming. "I'm sorry," she whispered, over and over. "There was no good way to tell you this." I wasn't really listening, only the knowledge that I had not eaten any food that night kept my from puking my guts out. That and the strong stomach I'd inherited, of course. We eventually slid to the ground, me crying in my mother's arms, as she told me the rest.

Four generations before, the world had warred. And the world itself had lost. There was simply not enough life to suport the surviving human race, not really, though backbrekaing efforts started right away would evenutally change that. The citadel, nalled Citadelle de Papillon by it's European builders, was key to that effort. It was no less than a massive teraforming device, and the scientests within it worked tirelessly to take back the world from the death that gripped it. But, fast and hard as they worked, they were not fast enough.

It was not many, of course. Certainly not most. Just a few, here and there, but they were everywhere, people that turned on each other rather than die themselves. And while not many, there were enough that they banded together, and another war was fought. The Eaters, as they were called, swiftly lost. But the Pure could not bring themselves to put an entire new race, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, to death. Even after it became clear that an odd disease gripped the Eaters, robbing anyone above middle age of their mental health. So instead, the citadel that was slowly becoming less needed became their prison.

Much of this was surpressed. My father, an archivist, had delved deep into records to piece it all together. Along with the secret that as far as the City, which the new capital of the Pures came to be called, the war had not been called off. We knew we constantly fought against the city, in small skirmishes, but not why. Between my parents, and their access, they'd figure it out. Unfortunately, my father had been caught, and reclaimed. We'd nearly been reclaimed as well, but my mother was extremely good at her job, and was considered too valuable to throw away. But we'd been watched like hawks, and they were eager to kill us given the slightest excuse like my sister had handed them. What was common knowledge, among the adults, was that the madness of the eaters still held their descendants in thrall, and only three things had been proven to hold the madness at bay. The first were the archivist exercises like I'd been tested on, everyone was taught them, though only the best could master them. Both my parents were such masters. The second was the eating. The third was, strangely, forcing the same madness on the next generation.

But not everyone accepted that fate. The people that tried to emmigrate were almost always parents trying to gain a better life for their children, one where they were not forced to learn how to carve and serve their own families to the elders of the city. Tried being the operative word; my mother was quite certain the City had killed any citadel child they'd gotten their hands on, testing for the madness and killing anyone associated with a person that had it just to be sure. She suspected, in fact, that the citadel was betraying their escapees to the City themselves. But my mother had a plan, and now I was ready for my part in it.

It was a simple plan. First, she made sure I did not, in fact, posses the madness, by presenting the human food in such a way that I was sure to refuse it. Only adults ate other humans, it was our rite of passage, the real one. There weren't enough people to go around, after all, and anyways only a bit every so often was enough to keep the madness at bay. The older you were, the more you needed, but new adults didn't need much of any at all. The citadel needed to be convinced I had it though; that was necessary part of citizenship. They'd not test, they were content after the party that I had eaten form my sister's corpse, and would soon have it. Or, if not then, soon enough, at another party, now that I was an adult and could be invited to the real ones. Where other family's slowly fed the bodies of their reclaimed to elders or anyone who needed a fix. My mother admitted that she had it, of course, but to have a chance I couldn't. Which brought us to the third aspect: I would escape. She would not.

Originally, she'd planned to get both my sister and I out. But Nicolette proved too delicate to wait. The full secrets of the citadel hit her too hard, and her revulsion towards food sprang form paranoia that anything she ate could be a human. My mother had almost abandoned the plan then, but it bcame clear that I needed to escape, even more than Nicolette had. Homosexuality was, to put it mildly, forbidden on the citadel. Too much cultural pressure to breed, to replinish the population. Just the whisper of it would get me reclaimed for sure. But in the City, the still partially incomplete efforts to teraform the land had forced an opposite cultural pressure. They saw themselves as severely overpopulated; homosexuality was not just approved, having such a relationship was considered a cultural service. Getting me out to that was a priority above mere survival or distaste. I asked, quietly, how she knew. I'd kept myself hidden, I'd thought. She shrugged, and told me my father was homosexual, so she sort of expected it of one of us.

It wasn't immedietely that she did this. Too soon would arouse suspicion. But, soon enough, after I was a full archivist and soon to be pressured into taking a household for myself, we took ourselves to her airship bay. She was still only a Colonel, but her next rank needed only to be confirned, so no one stopped us. They would have, had I not been an adult, which was why the delay was necessary, but any adult was allowed into the hangar, if accompanied. They didn't even mind when she loaded us up into her stingship, idling for this very visit.

Our flying out of the hangar did cause a bit of a stir, but nothing a few missles didn't take care of. Madeleine Glace was not considered the greatest pilot ever for nothing.

It was a long, grueling dogfight of a flight. I was her co-pilot, the simulators she'd long forced on my sister and I coming to my aid. We were missing our third and fourth pilot positions. but the stingship could be flown by one, if needed, though not as well. But again, she was very good. And I was my mother's son. We were shot down well within the City's cordon. Outlasting the pilot police my mother had trained herself, the City's own stingships, and the anti-aircraft defenses of the City itself, though it was the last that finally brought us down. My mother was knocked unconcious, and I was simply not good enough to control our crash well. But I did good enough, managing not to kill us, or even injure myself. But my mother was dying.

With her final moments, she told me to escape. I said it was useless; they'd know there had been more than one pilot, and they'd not stop looking for me. She smiled, and said that was why she'd loaded my father's still mostly preserved corpse into the cargo. As soon as I was away, she'd fire the stingship, making it impossible to tell who was what, only that there were two DNA traces in the ship. It'd be enough, she thought. So I escaped into the City, the exploding stingship lighting my way.

¹Actually, the dream did not start there, but this was the first bit I carried into my waking memory. And, internal cues tell me this was the beginning anyways.

²This is, damnably, what so convinces me there was more to this dream than what i recall. I don't know what exactly he taught, or what he tested me on, but I strongly suspect he'd already been introduced to this persona.

³ Killed. Even in the dream, I knew my sister had been killed. I'm less certain I knew my father had been killed, he did not get invented until sometime later.

⁴ As an aside, this is the first scene my mother actually appear in, though her approval and touch was apparent in my earlier thoughts.