Public What You Built, We Burn | OPEN to all | Denon

[Csariden]

DENON.
Avenue-317. Sector Twelve.​

A ceremony of remembrance. A celebration of forgetting.

The plaza gleamed like new money. Chrome railings. Fresh duracrete. Projected names gliding across tall glass facades—names of firms and subsidiaries, logistics bodies, modular engineering firms, and orbital haulers. Names that meant very little to the civilians browsing vendor stalls or adjusting their holopads for a better photo angle.

All they saw was a stage.
All they heard was the speech echoing over the speakers:

“—without the tireless innovation of our sector’s supply chain, the war effort would have faltered. Your parts, your algorithms, your navigation modules made victory possible. We thank you for your service.”

A polite wave of applause followed. Apathetic. Professional. Obligatory.

Above, floating holo-screens rotated visuals of industry: orbital drydocks, assembly lines, factory workers smiling through face-shields. There was no mention of The Mercy—the colossal superweapon that had blown a planet to debris. No mention of Csilla. Of those vaporized in apocalyptic light 35 years ago. Of the Chiss children turned to ash in less than a second.

A “Peace Through Industry” banner hung above it all, flapping with automated airflow from cooling towers. A man in a grey suit gave a calm address about trade normalization. A catering droid handed out wine flutes.

All so civil.
All so polished.

But in the shadow between security patrol routes, a service drone paused.
Its lens shimmered.
A blank-faced child watched it, unmoving.

A few meters away, someone coughed static through a faulty commpiece.
Another drone stopped transmitting.

And above, for the first time all morning—
one of the holo-screens flickered.

The air was just a little too clean.
The sound just a little too distant.
Something beneath the surface was breathing in.

 

[Kasmion Duum]

A man in a grey suit gave a calm address about trade normalization.

One didn't reach or keep such heights unstained. Down in the crowd, politely applauding, Kasmion met the speaker's eyes and knew exactly what he'd find, the depths of willful blindness and routine complicity stretching back through the origins of branching sins down to a root of fundamental emptiness. "Shame, please," Kasmion whispered, and grasped the speaker's ability to focus on the here and now instead of all the memories the speaker suppressed every month or two when they cropped up.

Kasmion removed that barrier. The speech trailed off.

The speaker removed his suit jacket. Confused murmurs rose when he removed his shoes as well, tidily. Then the rest of his clothes, leaving him — a human in his early elder years, with the trim leanness of wealthy health — kneeling naked on the podium.

"Mercy," said the old man to nobody. "Mercy. Mercy. Mercy. Mercy—"