NewU Pt. 07

As with many orders like this one, the Conclave became indescribably powerful, able to influence monarchs and merchants to do their bidding almost at will. People these days talk about conspiracies such as the New World Order, a shadowy group of powerful individuals who pull the strings of governments, international corporations and military institutions, and although such an organization would normally seem laughable to an educated person, this is exactly what came to exist in the late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance era. The Conclave was, in a very real sense, the power that drove the world. It was a power that they wielded with complete disregard for the humans that power would affect.

There was, however, a fatal flaw in the system. The Middle Ages were a time of almost universal religious belief. Everyone believed in God and everyone followed the teachings of the Church, and the members of the Conclave were no exception. It would seem that the existence of the Evo mutation was seen by the members of the Conclave as proof of the hand of God at work. He had personally ordained them to guide humanity. Whatever the rationale, humanity's reverence of the Catholic Church seems to have been as present in the Conclave as it was everywhere else, and being the institution that was founded by one of Jesus' disciples, the respect that the Conclave held for the Church forbade any Evo from finding their place of power within it.

This would turn out to be the Conclave's Achilles' heel.

As the Conclave wielded power with impunity, its effects started to become more and more apparent to other institutions able to see it. It is important to remember that there were no methods of long-distance communication in the 14 and 1500s. News of an event would take months to travel from one side of the old world to the other and often would never make it there at all. So, a Conclave-play for power in London, for example, would rarely, if ever, be known by the people living in Constantinople. There were only a few institutions other than the Conclave capable of seeing the bigger picture and the most capable -- and by far the most powerful - of these was the Vatican.

Through strict adherence to religious teachings and blind reverence to the supremacy of the Church, the Conclave had constructed their own blind spot. No Conclave member was allowed to build their power base in opposition to the Vatican because the Church held primacy no matter what. But when push came to shove and the leaders of grand armies and local officials were forced to choose between their commitments to the Conclave and their allegiance to the Church, there was no competition. When the Church eventually demanded it, the institutions that the Conclave had spent decades infiltrating turned on them with a single word from the Pope.

The more extreme instances of the Conclave's thirst for power finally and inevitably drew the wrath of the Church. Able to disseminate orders beyond the sight of the Conclave, the Church acted to stem the perceived threat of the Evos with merciless and ferocious effectiveness. The Spanish Inquisitions, the European witch trials and the countless accusations of heresy were, in most cases, thinly veiled attacks on the Evo society. Nations such as the Netherlands and England, for example, thought by the Vatican -- correctly -- to be powerbases of the Evo, were invaded by righteous armies with Papal mandate. Hundreds of thousands were killed, perhaps millions over the course of numerous Holy wars. But despite the vast majority of those casualties being ordinary humans, thousands of Evos were killed in the process. Somehow, though, through all this, the main structure and security of the Conclave remained a secret and mostly intact. Individual Evos were hunted down without mercy and they, along with anyone thought to have aided them, were executed with nothing more than a show trial. The branch of the Church tasked with the systematic hunt for the Evos became known as the Inquisitors, it would be a century or more before Evo society realized the biological difference between the rest of the church and those who made up the ranks of the people hunting them.

But an unexpected benefit of the Conclave social structure stopped a massacre from becoming all out annihilation. Individual Evos knew nothing of the whereabouts of other members, even within their own rank and certainly nothing of the ranks above them. The strict and rigid class structure of the Conclave that had forbade fraternisation between the ranks had turned it into something resembling a modern day terrorist cell network and had allowed it to survive.

As the Renaissance dawned some 300 years after the founding of the Conclave, and the Age of Enlightenment spread through humanity, new ways of thinking started to pervade. The idea that a man's worth could not be judged by the manner of his birth and that a rigid and immobile class structure were bad for a society started to gain popularity within the Conclave, despite fierce opposition from the higher ranks. Arguments became heated, sometimes turning violent, civil war became a real and very possible fear and this was all on top of the relentless threat posed by the inquisitors. Using the cracks in the system caused by the Church attacks, a group of Conclave members decided to act. Under the backdrop of the American War of Independence, a few hundred of the more disillusioned members -- some of whom were old enough to have witnessed the Conclave's foundation -- broke away from the rest of Evo society, retreating into hiding and weathering the inevitable storm from their former friends and being left to fend for themselves against the Church.

Despite all odds, and after suffering enormous proportional casualties, the new sect -- choosing not to give themselves some auspicious name -- survived. Barely a quarter of the numbers that had fled the Conclave remained alive, scattered all over the globe but, through sheer force of will and a granite-hard resolve to protect each other, they thrived.

They had learned the lessons of their forebears. The search for power was outlawed, and the use of an Evo's power on the human population was to be limited to only as much as was necessary for their survival. Over the course of a century, the members of this new Sect moved to Britain where the power of the Church was weakest. They set themselves up as doctors, teachers, employers, politicians, important and revered members of society just like the old Conclave mandate, but benevolent ones. Any member of the new Sect attacked by the Church would find whole communities of humans ready to defend them. But, strangely, these attacks never came.

The class structure was also completely dissolved. It would be years before the realization that it was this structure that had allowed the Conclave to survive but the Sect valued absolute equality of its members above the need for self-preservation. It was run by a council of seven members. Each member was nominated and voted for by the rest of the Sect and would hold that position permanently. If a council member was determined to be unfit for office, they could be removed, either by the other council members or by a vote from the rest of the Sect, at any time. Every decision was completely transparent and, being geographically located -- for the most part -- to a single small nation, the Sect gathered for meetings on a frequency that was unheard of in the Conclave. As far as I could tell, Charlotte felt that they constituted an almost second family for their members. She knew almost every other member of the Sect personally and, if necessary, would drop whatever she was doing to come to the aid of any one of them. For someone lacking even the most basic of familial connections, I would be lying if I said that those kinds of bonds didn't hold an appeal. But it would take decades after the schism -- as it came to be known -- for the modern Sect to grow into something resembling its current form.

The first puzzles that had plagued those early years was to explain why -- for the most part -- they had been left alone by the Church. It had been proven in the years since then that the Inquisitors were very aware of the internal struggles within the Conclave and had followed the schism with great interest. But although their zealous attacks on the Conclave persisted, they had almost ignored the new Sect entirely. It was a question that, to this day, still hadn't been answered to anyone's satisfaction. The most popular theory was that it was the Conclave itself with its relentless thirst for power that was the Church's main target, and by separating themselves from it, the new Sect was no longer a means to bring down their old institution. But even that was a best guess, and not a great one at that.

It was the Conclave itself that posed by far the greatest threat to the new Sect. With Evos able to detect each other over vast distances, individual Sect members were hunted down by their former brethren with relentless zeal. Whether it was through a sense of betrayal or the thought that they could compromise the Conclave as a whole was anyone's guess, but after their numbers dropped to dangerously low levels, the Sect was forced to implement a universal teaching program to its members to ensure their proficiency at duelling. Taking an Evo life was still the highest of all crimes, as it had once been in the Conclave, but allowances were now made for self-defense. Sect losses slowly dropped off as Conclave members were beaten back, eventually leading to the two institutions living in relatively peaceful, albeit suspicious, co-existence.

The second puzzle, one brought up by the Conclave attacks, was that of recruitment. Any un-awakened Evo was a potential enemy of the new Sect and eradicating the children of their own species was simply not an option. So, they started a recruitment drive of their own, taken straight from the play book of their former masters. They would sense a child ready to be awoken and get there to welcome them before the Conclave did. With training geared towards staying off the radar and being able to defend themselves if that failed, these new initiates became expert infiltrators and many of them faked another awakening to work their way into the Conclave, feeding the Sect information and warning members of an impending attack. It would seem from her intimate knowledge of the modern Conclave that Charlotte had once been one such member. It didn't take me long to realize that Marco was a loyal member of the Conclave whereas Charlotte was obviously in the Sect camp and the disdain that she held for Marco was no secret.

It was an odd feeling, to be taught like this. As the lesson went on it became clearer that Marco, assuming he had been assigned as my mentor for the Conclave, had seriously mishandled my initiation, and the memory of Charlotte's reaction to that missing information when we first met became easier to understand.

Like I said, Fucking useless!

If I was understanding it correctly, Marco should have awoken me and immediately told me about the Conclave, assigned me a rank and initiated me into the order, a process that was extremely difficult to undo. Even if he had been pressed for time, the concept of leaving me that night without the slightest notion of how to unlock my city, duel, block, or perceive a threat from other Evos, not to mention the Inquisitors, was an enormous lapse of responsibility on his part. The error seemed to be more apparent when Charlotte told me that it was incredibly rare for a newly indoctrinated member of the Conclave to even hear out a member of the Sect, let alone allow himself to be associated with one. The fact that she was teaching me the things that Marco had failed to, and I was still expected to attend Marco's party, was a massive boon to the Sect. Apparently, they were watching my progress with great interest.

The modern relationship between the Conclave and the Sect was a hard one to quantify. Judging the Sect's attitude towards the Conclave was difficult; even Charlotte had to concede that her opinions -- and my education -- were filtered through the lens of the memories that she was sharing with me, memories from people who had a very real and very justifiable fear of the Conclave. Yet Charlotte herself felt very little fear of them. It would be some time before I fully understood her relationship with the Conclave, but much like the rest of the Sect, she viewed them in the same way modern Americans view the slave trade: distasteful, misguided, downright abhorrent, but something to be learned from and never repeated. To her, the Conclave of history and the Conclave of today were entirely different beasts, and the modern Conclave was to be watched, never trusted, but not openly feared. But the lessons to maintain a safe distance from the Conclave were never far away from anything she said.

There was a cautionary tale that Charlotte taught me, one which had been told to Sect children since the founding of the order. It was the tale of three brothers, a tale that had become almost folklore in the sect. In a twist of irony, the real story -- I would later learn -- was that of two brothers and a sister. For a society who prided themselves on equality of all men, gender equality was apparently a step too far, but I digress. A series of typhoid epidemics in the Spanish city of Malaga hit one particular family very hard during the late 16^th Century, the mother catching the illness while pregnant with twins. Miraculously, all three survived and two healthy baby boys started their journey to adulthood while their mother made a full recovery. A few years later, another outbreak hit the family again. The mother was pregnant, this time with a baby girl and again, somehow both mother and child survived.

When the older twins were about seven years old, another outbreak hit, and once again, both parents caught it, this time succumbing and dying of the disease, leaving the children to fend for themselves. As children in these situations often do, they banded together, looked out for each other and, through sheer grit and determination -- along with some strange but useful abilities -- made it to their teenage years when, one day, a man sensed them, awakened them all on the same night, and brought them to the Conclave.

They were welcomed to their new family, were washed, fed, given clothes and then, Judged.

The youngest of the twins was the most powerful and placed into one of the highest ranks. The older was only a single rank lower. The sister was the weakest of the three, being placed only one rank higher than the bottom rung of the class ladder. It was then that they learned that they would never be able to see or interact with each other again. Even the briefest of hello's or the most subtle of nods would be grounds for severe punishment during their training. These children, who had relied on each other and bonded over their very survival, were torn apart by a society that promised to save them. The oldest twin was Charlotte's grandfather, and one of the members who would later split from the Conclave. Age and life expectancy, I was quickly learning, was a very fluid concept among Evos.

It was a strange and oddly humbling experience to watch not only his life, but his initiation into the Conclave, his time there, his struggles and eventual escape through the lens of his own eyes. I suppose it was a lesson that was somewhat lost on me. I could see that its moral was to show the breakdown of any bonds you had if you were to join the Conclave, but I didn't have any bonds to break down. Although rebelling against the compulsory dedication of your life to a cause that was almost forced upon you was one that I could understand. I had no desire for power, and the Conclave's almost pathological quest for it was already something that I could see myself rejecting.

But as the intricacies of the relative recruitment techniques were explained to me, I somehow overlooked one simple detail, one that would become a huge part in my later life. I remember it being said, it just didn't seem relevant at the time, but it came in the form of a simple statistic. The process of a child being sensed, and summarily awakened, was a lot more complicated than I had thought. They had to be powerful enough to be sensed in the first place, and geographically close enough to another Evo powerful enough to sense them and then, in the Conclave's case, be close enough to an available Mentor to be initiated properly. This meant that of all the Evo children born in the world, less than 30% were ever found and awakened. With only a rough correlation between parental lineage and the possession of powers, there was virtually no way to track or predict an Evo child's birth, so being discovered was something of a fluke, a statistical anomaly combining the child's relative power with the geographical availability of someone capable of sensing and awaking them. There were hot spots, of course; Chernobyl and the children born in the aftermath of the nuclear fallout caused a massive spike in the number of Evo births, as did the Cholera outbreaks of the early industrial revolution and the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic. But for more than two-thirds of Evo children, being found and brought into either fold, Conclave or Sect, simply never happened. More importantly, nobody seemed to know what happened to them.

Regardless of all this talk of recruitment, I never got the impression that Charlotte was actually trying to enlist me into the Sect, nor, did it seem, was she actively trying to dissuade me from joining the Conclave either. It seemed to genuinely be something of a history lesson. History was something I had always enjoyed at school and was my second choice of university majors if computer game development hadn't been available. So, I found this completely tangent history of an entirely unknown human sub-species fascinating.

Watching the faces and these people flash through my mind was a little harder to explain. Learning about a certain time frame, for example, or a certain person, from books is all well and good but a student would never really know what that person looked like, or how they sounded -- if you went back before the age of photography, at least. So, when a face flashed before my eyes, it was surprising to find that I instinctively knew who they were. William Shakespeare looked nothing like his portraits, neither did Oliver Cromwell or King Louis XVI. George Washington wasn't quite as tall as everyone made out and the real reasons behind Benedict Arnold's betrayal of the American revolutionaries suddenly had a whole new dimension. Imagine a memory of a conversation you had with someone a year ago, but you are able to recall it with perfect clarity; the color of their eyes, the way their lips moved when they talked, the smell of their cologne or their breath, the way their hand felt when you shook it, the place it happened, even the weather at the time. These tiny, almost imperceptible details are impossible to convey on paper, and so inconsequential at the time that you would never think to record them, yet they all make up part of the picture that tells you about that person and your interaction with them. It sets the scene, so to speak, and there were hundreds of them.

I could recall, with uncanny clarity, a conversation that someone had had with Joan of Arc, someone fighting alongside Lord Charles Cornwallis, fighting against Lord Cornwallis, discussing scientific theory with Leonardo DaVinci, watching Lincoln make his second inaugural address, travelling to the far East with Marco Polo, Opening the tomb of Tutankhamun, finding the new world with Columbus, exploring the African sub-continent with David Livingston and hearing those famous words first hand.