# HRVST, Prologue - Burning Karma

By [edwardrooster](https://paragraph.com/@edwardrooster) · 2022-12-15

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**LUNA, Aitken Basin, Southern Region**

**We made it into the anteroom, the hatch sealed, the chamber pressurized. Our suits blinked green. Air. Then a voice:**

**I'm almost flattered you all came, up the well to see me.**

I can see it all over you, You're "Langley". And you, you're "Quantico". "You're Special Forces." In the end, you're all "The Cooperative", vassals and pawns, in its service.

**For thousands of years, we bathed in moonlight at night, reached for what was untouchable. Our karma was bondage to one world.**

One day, we harnessed new powers. Chariots made for the dark were flown to our object of desire. Our desire made a bonfire of our karma. What did it profit us? The first landing, the first footsteps, the first outpost. The Cooperative began on Luna.

**The first and richest province of the Space Cooperative. They deny it but that's what this place is, in the eyes of an entity that saw the future like a State. Burning karma for an empire.**

I've been under exile, house arrest. They don't call it that. I don't have the beach view like the former head of Wellington HQ, for his clever defiance, or avoid being put to pasture like the head of Houston HQ, who, despite his gamesmanship, is a lost boy.

It was always here, answers to all your questions, long before Earth and Mars were lit up by the worst solar storm in eons, before a hurricane washed away Heavyville, Texas, and a sentient ledger disappeared and robbed the world of its financial memory."

"Why are you doing this?" **"I'm just a moral man seeking relief."** **A portal opened, dim light grew brighter. We walked through it.**

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*Originally published on [edwardrooster](https://paragraph.com/@edwardrooster/hrvst-prologue-burning-karma)*