The Paris Commune (2)
The cradle of global communism. The birthplace of every red revolution. And the seat of the Council of Materialists, personally established by the Eternal General Secretary of the Party and the Union. There, in the very place the world called the Kremlin, the Iron Leader sat in solemn majesty, gazing out over the entire globe.
"We have lost contact at last."
Standing before the Leader, the secretary did not know what to do with himself. The General Secretary, who had lived for over a century, was in a visibly foul mood. Standing perfectly still to avoid any blunder, the secretary prayed for this seemingly eternal moment to pass, his mind racing with a single thought.
What would happen if the people ever found out?
The fact that the Iron General Secretary, Iosif Stalin, was still alive and breathing, personally overseeing the affairs of the Union despite the official announcement of his death decades ago.
Come to think of it, it isn't just Comrade General Secretary...
Those members of the Party leadership who had survived without being "purged" and had far outlived the lifespan of ordinary men were granted the privilege of joining this glorious Council, subject to the General Secretary's approval. Though they had relinquished their official public titles, their actual power had only grown more absolute.
Furthermore, the members of the Council were bestowed with an incomparable blessing. Not only were they guaranteed a lifespan of well over a century, but they also awakened to Arcanum—a mysterious realm of magic that humanity had yet to fully comprehend. In truth, their longevity itself was a byproduct of this magic.
Before the General Secretary established the Council, the Party leadership had been thrown into no small amount of confusion upon witnessing the reality of this magic.
Could the materialist worldview we believed in so blindly be wrong?
Is the world truly governed by irrational, metaphysical truths?
When everyone was drowning in doubt, the General Secretary had personally stepped forward with a definitive answer: "No." He declared that while this thing called magic might appear to contradict communism and materialism on the surface, the reality was quite the opposite. Like any other field of study, magic was merely a prisoner bound by rules, rationality, and reason.
It was against this backdrop that the General Secretary had founded the Council of Materialists. The Union had to maintain its superiority over the enemies surrounding it on all sides.
From the already crumbling evil empire in Berlin. From the inferior yellow monkeys who might stab them in the back at any moment. And from the island pirates and New World Yankees, with whom they currently shared a boat but were destined to clash.
Fortunately, the Motherland possessed the vastest territory in the world. And a larger territory inevitably meant a greater abundance of ancient relics.
From the black soil of Ukraine to the taiga near Finland, the steppes of Central Asia, the vast permafrost of Siberia, the Arctic Ocean, and the settlements of the Far East. Prehistoric and historical artifacts, each harboring its own magic, began to be unearthed all at once. The seemingly inexplicable phenomenon of magic was finally integrated into the materialist worldview.
It was the General Secretary who had weaponized these excavated magical artifacts during the Great Patriotic War. It was also the General Secretary who had swiftly occupied Manchuria, Sakhalin, and Hokkaido before the Yankees could drop their two atomic bombs on the Japanese archipelago.
Ah! How could anyone not praise Comrade General Secretary's bold decisions and foresight? The only regret was that the capitalist lackeys had realized the utility of magic faster than expected, preventing the Union from crushing them completely. Because of that, they were now locked in a state of mutual physical and magical assured destruction.
Yet, even this was far better than the worst-case scenario. Who knew? If Comrade General Secretary had been even slightly slower to weaponize magic, the Union might never have grown as powerful as it was today.
It might be an irreverent speculation, but Moscow itself might have been blanketed in radioactive fallout, or the Union torn to shreds. If only they didn't have to hide the existence of magic from the common people, Comrade General Secretary wouldn't have needed to step down from his public post. The cost of adding several tedious steps to the decision-making process was no small burden.
But precisely because Comrade General Secretary was so great, the secretary made a desperate effort not to upset his visibly foul mood. It was a feat made possible only by years of honing his ability to read the room.
"That is enough. You may leave."
Whether his prayers had been answered—though praying was hardly a materialist way of thinking—Comrade Iosif Stalin merely waved his hand dismissively.
Phew...
Bowing politely, the secretary slipped out of the office, having narrowly escaped a tempest of worst-case scenarios.
Even after dismissing the secretary who had brought the documents, the Iron General Secretary was far from tranquil.
So the Paris Commune has failed.
Piecing together the reports coming out of France, there was only one conclusion to draw. The influence of Yerina Bronska—one of the individuals the Council had been watching most closely of late—would only grow stronger.
Although the Paris Commune had its headquarters in Marseille despite its name, Stalin had assumed they would seize Paris soon enough anyway, so it hadn't seemed like a major issue. If they could absorb all the remnants of the shattered organization of Willo Bronsky, that traitor to the revolution, they would have become a shadow syndicate spanning not just Paris, but the entirety of France.
The vast smuggling network established in Western Europe with Kaliningrad as its base—the Northern Covenant Syndicate—had been left alone previously because tolerating its existence was more profitable. But when its founder, Bronsky, despite being a veteran of the Great Patriotic War who had even received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, dared to sell national artifacts to the West, any need for mercy vanished.
And we were supposed to secure his daughter in the process.
The mother was already dead, so nothing could be done about her, but the daughter was a subject they absolutely had to capture. If they could only unravel the unknown principles behind the magic dwelling within Yerina Bronska's body, the Union's power would undoubtedly reach unprecedented heights.
He had given explicit orders to that effect—yet... The General Secretary shifted his gaze to the world map mounted on the wall.
...Not only did she escape, but she is now using Britain as her playground to expand her influence.
He did not know how that wretched girl had defied the solemn commands of the Party and the Union. He had deployed an elite Spetsnaz unit with orders to kill the father and capture the daughter alive, yet they had been utterly wiped out. This was why combined arms cooperation between mages and conventional forces was so critical. On that occasion, while the commanding mage was temporarily directing another operation, the Spetsnaz had met their demise. The more he dwelled on it, the more bitter it tasted.
Had Yerina Bronska fled to the eastern side of the Iron Curtain, where the Union's influence reached even indirectly, there would have been ways to rectify the situation. But of all places, she had fled to Britain—a nuclear power, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and a magical powerhouse.
He had even tolerated the complete destruction of their espionage network within Britain. He had deemed it a cheap price to pay if it meant keeping Yerina Bronska bottled up inside the British Isles and preventing her from expanding any further.
Yet this witch had torn through the blockade as if to mock him, swallowing the Paris Commune whole. And she had done it a mere three weeks after arriving in Paris.
Just as Napoleon's Continental Blockade had ultimately collapsed, the Paris Commune, resurrected in the shadows after more than a century, had once again vanished into the annals of history.
The most logical explanation was that Yerina Bronska had finally transitioned from a half-baked mage into a fully realized one, making full use of the still-veiled abilities she had inherited from her mother.
After a moment's deliberation, the General Secretary pressed the button on his intercom.
"Make preparations. I will go myself."
Deep beneath the State Kremlin Palace, in a place that would remain forever hidden from the public, lay the vault where the Union secretly stored its collected magical artifacts.
"Is OGAS ready?"
"Just as you ordered. Please keep in mind, the time a human can remain connected is limited."
"I, of all people, do not need to be reminded of that. Lead the way."
At the absolute deepest level of the underground, far below the vaults, sat the masterpiece into which the General Secretary had poured his heart and soul. A labyrinth of tangled wires pulsed with data that even the most advanced modern computers could not hope to process. This was the premier national artifact, governing every affair of the Union—from administration and diplomacy to military and magic. It was the Nationwide Automated System for Information Processing and Control—OGAS.
That OGAS could function as a centralized apparatus encompassing the Union's entire electronic network was solely due to the mages loyal to the Party and the Union, who were worked to the brink of death to assist with its calculations. This machinery, reminiscent of human neural pathways, gathered and categorized all manner of information in real-time from every corner of the vast socialist territory, distributing it precisely where it was needed. The Union's scientists, engineers, and mages had been mobilized in their entirety to bring OGAS to its current state.
If one knows the present perfectly, one can predict the future. If one knows a close approximation of the present, one can anticipate the future. Therefore, what the connection of millions of vertices stretching across the Union and its satellite states created was—
future sight.
—The infinite possibilities forged by a constantly branching reality. From these possibilities, which shifted with every passing second, they would select only those advantageous to the Party and the Union, reflecting them in administrative, diplomatic, military, and magical policies.
Yet OGAS was different from the Oracle of Delphi of old. It did not offer unscientific, irrational divine revelations or prophecies, but rather materialist predictions grounded in human reason. A Union of only humans, with neither gods nor demons. A feat that only the Soviet Union could accomplish.
This was the task that the Iron Leader, Iosif Stalin, could not let go of, even after stepping down from the office of General Secretary. Pruning the countless branching realities for the sake of One Leader, One Party, and One Union (Один Вождь, Одна Партия, и Один Союз). In a sense, he was a gardener. The only difference was that instead of mere garden plants, he cultivated the possibilities of the entire world.
Through OGAS, the Union had achieved dazzling growth. Heeding the prediction not to put all their eggs in the basket of heavy industry, they had elevated light industry as a new engine of economic growth. Accepting the prediction that the future of power projection lay in grasping the cosmos, they had never abandoned their dream of the stars—even though the Americans had been the first to set foot on the Moon. And following the prediction not to squander national power on hopeless foreign ventures, they were planning to withdraw soon from manpower-draining conflict zones like Afghanistan.
Yet there was one existence that rendered every prediction spat out by OGAS utterly useless. The moment Yerina Bronska interfered with the future sight, all predictions became tangled in a web of uncertainty.
Since the failure in Kaliningrad, Yerina Bronska was the sole irregular that OGAS could not predict. The reason remained unknown, but one thing was certain: if they allowed the witch to grow her power any further, the swamp of uncertainty would only expand. For a temptress who gathered strength outside the Union, sired by a father who had dared to betray the Party and the Motherland, there was no other word but "witch."
Yerina Bronska had to be eliminated for the very future of the Motherland. It was for this reason that he had dispatched a trusted mage of the Council to France—the witch's presumed next target—with orders to reorganize the Paris Commune. Yet even that plan had been brilliantly thwarted, leaving the General Secretary with no choice but to devise a new countermeasure.
Conceding to the opinion that their past failures had stemmed from being overly aggressive, he intended to shift his approach slightly this time. OGAS would not fail twice.