I’ve seen something for what might be my third and last installment for this Season. I didn’t like looking at it and I don’t like talking about it. But it is canonical to Machine Civilization, so there it is. This is not something I’ve written in Word and run through Grammarly; this is what I just saw and and posting. Expect errors.

My Lenten commitment was daily posting. But I hate what I’ve just seen.

“You want to me to what, Empress?” Acting legate Aurelia asked. They both stood outside the commander’s tent. Unless sensitive information, Empress Faustina always spoke for all to hear.

“After all sixty thousand civilians of Old Eagle,” her shorthand for the regime around what used to be Washington, DC, “are dead, you must take personal command of seventh legion and lead them and my eighth and ninth north, into what was once eastern Pennsylvania. You will kill anyone who does not renounce their allegiance to Old Eagle and have them swear loyalty to me.”

“Taking after my great-grandfather much, Empress?” Aurelia asked with a sneer.

Faustina just looked at her.

“I plan to eradicate the District of Columbia. Sow the ground with salt. Delenda Carthago Est.” Faustina looked hard at her niece, the best commander in her army. “Do not cross me.”

Twenty-year-old Aurelia, a hybrid of human and Machine, drew up and saluted.

“I shall follow your orders as best I can, my Empress,” she said, seeing the seething in her aunt’s eyes.