The Telling
Sutty, an observer from Terra, arrives on the planet Aka to find a singular, oppressive capitalist state has taken over the entire population in the years she spent traversing the stars to get there. The state—known as the Corporation—outlawed all knowledge of the past, pulped the books, banished old languages and writing, and installed a work ethic that would make a Protestant blush. Desperate to find some hint of how this all happened, Sutty leaves the capital city and ventures into the outer lands, looking for signs of the old ways. She finds a quiet and peaceful people dedicated to the Telling: the memory and recital of stories, knowledge, history, medicine, movement, fables, and more. The Telling is both mystical and rational, both rooted in practical life and in something that is more than Sutty can fully grasp. As she tries to come to terms with what she’s found, and with her place on Aka, one of the teachers of the Telling offers her counsel—a piece of the Telling, a fragment that is also a whole. She says: “belief is the wound that knowledge heals.”