The Law of Nines

“What little we know is mostly a result of trying to learn about the Rahls in your world as we tried to figure out what Radell Cain is after, here. During that search we saw things, learned a little about the technology you use. Our view, however, is profoundly limited. It’s like a deaf blind man trying to recount a visit to a new place.

“While our tools are limited, we did the best we could. It took decades just to isolate the Rahl line here. That’s why I know a little about your grandfather’s history and how technology is woven into your lives. We know a few random, isolated things. Making tea just wasn’t one of them.”

“So you’re saying that what Radell Cain wants to do in your world is the equivalent of stopping us from using technology?”

Jax nodded. “It’s not the same, exactly, but it’s a good enough comparison. And he doesn’t merely want to stop people from using it—he wants to entirely strip the world of it, take it entirely out of existence. He paints it as a utopian world.”

“Do you think it would be as bad as you fear?”

“Some of us understand exactly what it would mean for us, and we’re terrified.”

“Why?”

“Well, imagine life here without technology. Imagine life without the technology that heats your buildings, helps grow food in abundance, makes your lights glow. What would your lives be like without your phones, your trucks, your medicines and cures, without the means to supply the people in your cities with goods and services?

“Imagine all the people in cities deprived of every kind of technology, technology that they use every day to survive. Imagine everyone suddenly having to find a way to grow their own food, to preserve it, to store it safely.”

“People are pretty ingenious,” Alex said with a shrug. “I’m sure it would be hard but I think they would cope.”

“Cope? Think of the reality of your world, tomorrow, suddenly stripped of your technology—no phones, no computer devices, no way to find out anything. Think it through, Alex.

“Without your technology the fabric of civilization itself would come apart within days—if not hours. Everyone would be on their own. One city wouldn’t know what the next was doing, or if they were even alive. There’d be no planes or cars or anything else. You couldn’t travel to other places unless you walked. Do you have any idea how long it takes to walk just a few dozen miles? A distance that in your cars takes a brief time would be days of hard travel on foot.

“There would be no way for people to know what had happened to their far-flung loved ones. No one would know what had happened to their government. No word would come about anything. Everyone—everyone—would be in the dark, literally and figuratively. You would all be sitting there with no phones, no electrical devices, no heat, no way to get anything or summon help. Your world would fall silent.

“It wouldn’t be long until supplies of food started to rot and run out. How long would it be until roving gangs started to loot what they wanted? Who would stop them? How would the police know when and where crimes were being committed? How would they hear anyone cry for help? How would they get there? Law and order would quickly become a thing of the past.

“When it turns cold, then what? Millions of people will rush to cut wood to try to keep warm, that’s what. Makeshift fires used to keep warm will inevitably get out of hand. Your technology to fight the fires would be gone. Once fires catch hold, they will rampage unchecked, growing to firestorms that will gut cities and leave tens of thousands homeless.

“Disease will spread like a plague with no means to stop it. Life will be not merely cheap but short.

“When all the food is gone you will begin dying by the millions. Those still alive will not have the strength or the will to bury all the dead. In the end, in the grip of starvation, the living will eat the dead.

“The only law will be survival.

“Those who once held idyllic notions of how simple and clean life would be without the demon of technology—like those in my world who believe the same thing about life without magic—will die filthy, terrified, and confused. Their idealistic notions will crumble in the cold face of reality. Like those in my world, they will be unprepared for the consequences of their pompous beliefs.

“What before had been simple will become tremendously difficult or impossible. The ignorant, the frightened, the weak, the criminal, will defecate in runoff areas, in streams, and in rivers, wanting their waste to be washed away. They won’t care about anyone downstream. Finding water will be a monumental chore. Finding clean, disease-free water will be impossible.

“Sewage and garbage will lie in the open. Vermin will multiply into a nightmare of filth. The stench of human habitation will be unbearable, but you will live in it, sleep in it, have sex in it, bear children you cannot care for in it. Without technology, the product of your minds, mankind will be marked by the stench of sickness and death.