The Promise

At the beginning, before the Dark Age, no one would have thought that this would be the end. Life on the planet began with the Promise that those who could succeed in a fair competition would be rewarded with unimaginable wealth. The promise itself was made by the brilliant Capitala, in whom they all believed, and who believed above all else in the world she had imagined.

If anyone could create it, it was her. Rumour had it that her power and knowledge were otherworldly. Where she had come from no one knew, and it was hard to estimate the number of years on her ageless face - there was a strange timelessness about her. Her long, grey cloak, which preserved the dust of many journeys, was concealing her slender figure when she knocked at the gate of Nocoi Castle on a gnashing winter night. The guards slammed open the small window in annoyance, and by the light of their torches peered into the face of the strange woman who pleaded for shelter and food in a voice like the rushing wind. They saw no horse, and the next day they learned that no one had seen the stranger pass on the road to Nocoi, though the tavern was crowded with people, despite the ungodly frost, and the two huts were full of the brigands who had been captured the previous day.

Other times Lord Nocoi would have smacked the head of the man who took him out of his heavy slumbers to deal with a stranger seeking shelter, but now he followed the guards without a word, who in obedience to some miraculous power, dared to wake up their master in the middle of the night. He found Capitala already in the knight's hall, by the fire, muttering to herself, and every now and then a new tuft of colour flickered in her hair, and silver stars sparkled in her eyes.

He did not know at the time that the coloured tresses and the starry sparkles would glow when the elements of some invention were outlined in Capitala's mind, but he was sure that the newcomer had brought the new world with her.

He was right, even though he was the only one who believed it at first. Soon the Castle of Nocoi became the furnace of this new world: its spacious halls were being filled with Capitala's blueprints and special parts, the castle corridors were bustling with workers helping out, the courtyard was filled with treadmill hoists and never-before-seen intricate structures building new masterpieces that have been marveled at by wanderers from faraway lands. By Capitala gathered countless people, listening to her every word with unquestioning faith. They were the first ones to hear the news of the forthcoming Great Announcement, and they had spread the word about it wholeheartedly, so such a mass of followers were present, the mountain appeared to be dark to the bare eyes. They were Breathless and silent, waiting for the automatic device to lift Capitala into the air.

According to the legend, as she raised her hand to swear the oath, the wind whirled, picked up the voices and scattered them to every corner of the planet. It was heard by those in the farthest reaches of the world, even those who were dreaming their best dreams, and remembered for the rest of their lives. Capitala has made it a competition in which all can participate. Henceforth, they would be driven by the promise of wonderful riches, the soothing sweet promise on which generations had grown up.

History has no records on when things finally started to go wrong. Capitala's marvelous machines were not only famous around the world: the blueprints were carried to the farthest corners by the birds that flocked around her, and the sensational inventions were produced everywhere. Over the long decades, the planet was flooded with Capitala's masterpieces, but the inevitable interrupted this expansion: her death was sudden, accompanied by a single, tiny laugh. She opened the window of Nocoi's castle tower, raised her hands to the sky, and to her resounding laughter birds around the world fell dead, her body billowing out in a colourful puff of smoke from between the cracks in the stone walls. For decades after her death, enthusiastic believers continued to work towards the beautiful future she had envisioned. Her followers, the nocoiners, worked tirelessly to help businesses take off, offering advice on how to create new products and services that would serve the masses better. Capitala's inventions, whose blueprints and prototypes were carefully preserved in the city's Machine Hall, were, of course, superior to these new creations, but at least they added something nice and useful to the world.

They brought news of these life-enriching innovations to the people in the form of works of art, with true faith. It is no longer known who could have been the first to get his honour stuck somewhere between the cogs of the production line and disguise his poisonous product as a gift; that which nocoiner was the first to produce a pseudo-work of falsehood trumpeting false benefits, outvoicing the kindly broadcast of modest truth.

In the Dark Ages, no one remembered this, Capitala and her promise was forgotten. The world, in which the hopes of life and work had once begun, had been destroyed by the pettiness of man.

The race for wealth could have been noble, it could have been constructive. It was not: there were those who got to the top by cheating and scamming, and those who started cheating and scamming as soon as they got to the top. They raised their favourites to their side, and the tight, impenetrable circle of Leaders became filled with incompetence, inability and malice.