Ship of War (This Town Will Never Let Us Go)
An incomplete, pilot-less "Ship of War", or more fully a "Ship of War and Culture and Ritual", existed beneath a late-20th century British town which had been repeatedly touched by the War. The occultist Inangela Marrero came to identify it with the "Great Urban Horror" she had been trying to summon, an embodiment of all the parts of the town which polite society tried to keep at arm's length.
On the night before the Ghost Point, human pop idol Tiffany Korta bonded with the Ship, which attempted to rise. However, Valentine Bregman, in a misguided effort to oppose the War, used a Red Uranium bomb to destroy the Ship from within. This prevented a localised apotheosis of human culture, and either caused, or at least prevented the Ship from preventing, the Ghost Point itself, (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...["This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"]) the inflection point of human history at which cultural progress began to stagnate, preventing humanity from becoming the threat to the Great Houses' supremacy as which it seemed poised to emerge. (PROSE: The Book of the War [+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"])
Nature[[edit] | [edit source]]
Valentine Bregman believed that the Ship was one of those used by the major War-time powers, which had crashed and buried itself under the town. Inangela, Horror and Tiffany Korta, on the other hand, would gravitate towards the view that the Ship was a kind of embodiment of the culture of the town, a "vast, ungainly and gloriously willful metaphor for the things that move[d] beneath the human psyche". They speculated that every town on Earth, and on countless other planets, might have a similar unfinished Ship slowly percolating beneath it, waiting to be awakened and bonded to a pilot — only for most to be stolen by the War-time powers for field use in the War, or otherwise rendered unusable to the people who had unwittingly created it. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...["This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"])
Do they really come from anywhere else, the people who run this War? Are they truly, literally inhuman? Do they seed worlds like ours with technology that lets Ships and towns to come into existence, or do we create them ourselves—inevitably—and then sit by as the War-time powers harvest them for their own uses?
History[[edit] | [edit source]]
"Not five years" prior to 2001, Inangela Marrero, an occultist native to the town, began to speculate about the symbolic Great Urban Horror kept supernaturally buried by the patterns and symbols of order that crisscrossed the town, from electrical cables to Neighbourhood Watch signs. After Inangela and her delinquent friends vandalised six of the latter, she speculated that the Horror would be able to begin to wrest itself free. It was a few years thereafter that rocket attacks from the War began to hit the town, with Inangela speculating that they may be trying to further unpin the Horror. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"0.34","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"})
Three weeks before the Ghost Point, (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.17","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) the field which would, on the day itself, become the venue of a concert by pop star Tiffany Korta, became the site of a rocket attack. The place was selected by the Executive, Tiffany's collective of managers, (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"3.42","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) whose members were believed by Tiffany to belong to the real Faction Paradox. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"1.41","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) Some speculated that the seemingly random pattern of the rocket attacks was explained by the time-active nature of the War-time powers, who would bomb site of future relevance in an attempt to alter or enact particular outcomes at those coordinates. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"1.18","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"})
On the night of the concert, Inangela and her life partner Horror were about to complete Inangela's ritual to rouse the Great Urban Horror. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"0.54","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) The venue for the concert would go on to become the crucible for the arising of the Ship, its circular, crater-like arena eventually superimposing itself with the perception of a hexagonal control room. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"4.52","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) The concert went well, but, just at the end of the performance, at exactly 11.38 p.m., concurrently with the launch of rocket-like red fireworks above the stage, a real rocket attack occurred on the other part of town. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"0.02","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"})
The attack spurred Valentine Bregman, one of the paramedics who responded to the attack, to action. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"0.12","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) Obsessed with making a difference in the War, and influenced by heroic Hollywood fantasies where everything hinged on a single hero blowing up a doomsday device, (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"2.38","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) he had become an agent of a group whom he believed to be Faction Paradox, (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"1.50","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}, This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"2.51","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) having met them a year prior at a political demonstration, (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"1.50","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) but who, to later Earthbound investigations, turned out to actually be a rather dingy operation consisting of around ten teenage and twenty-something would-be-terrorists, led by a self-proclaimed Grandfather.(PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.17","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}, This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.48","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) Despite their unconvincing nature, they were aware of the Ghost Point by name, (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.17","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) a real factor in the War in Heaven, (PROSE: The Book of the War [+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"]) having had a vision of the "great whiteness" and its significance "after the ingestion of wild mushrooms and cheap beer". Their actions were motivated by an eagerness to "prove themselves to be among those who underst[ood]". (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.17","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"})
An increasingly paranoid Bregman went AWOL from his duties at the attack site, meeting with the Black Man to obtain a critical mass of the supernatural nuclear substance known as Red Uranium. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"1.57","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) The Black Man was a known agent of the Celestis. (PROSE: Alien Bodies [+]Loading...["Alien Bodies (novel)"]) Hounded by urban animals whom he believed to be placed in his path by War-time powers — though they might not be conscious of their role — (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"4.04","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}, This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"4.10","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}, etc.) he too eventually found himself at the concert arena at the same time as Inangela, Horror, and Tiffay. There, the searching light-beams of helicopters believed by Valentine to be more urban animals somehow allowed their targets to slip across layers of existence and into the buried interior of the Ship; Inangela's understanding was that "The light from the helicopters was just a trigger, that burning, brilliant glare letting her reach such a point of intensity that the Ship could connect with her and take her into its body below the ground. No un-primed human being, unprepared by the proper ceremony, could get here". (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"4.55","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}, This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"4.56","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}, This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.05","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) although to outside observer they didn't appear to have physically left the muddy field. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.19","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"})
Inangela initially experienced the Ship's interior as a non-Euclidean labyrinth of darkness, (This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"4.56","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}, This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.05","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) while Valentine, his perception aligned to the War's, perceived a more traditional, massive control room with distant walls covered in ultraviolet patterns, and a hexagonal, violet central column in which the ship's pilot was embedded. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.06","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) The Pilot was none other than Tiffany, who had completed the ascension for which her Executive had primed her — while underestimating how far she would take the process — by bonding with the Ship completely, (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.22","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) becoming the "system of navigation" whose job was to "find a pattern in its structure that a single human brain [could] comprehend and follow". (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.25","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) Inangela managed to talk Valentine down from triggering his bomb, but he thoughtlessly left the explosive onboard the ship (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.36","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) where it was detonated anyway by the magnetic pulse released by the Ship as it continued to awake. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.40","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}, This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.43","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) In the moments before the explosion, Tiffany, accepting that there was no way out of this one, may have sanguinely run a simulation of a conversation she could have had with Horror while she remained onboard the Ship, confirming Horror's unlikely true identity. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.58","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"})
"History buckle[d]" as the Ship was damaged from within, producing a loss of meaning in human culture, (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.50","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) which, as its most literal and mundane, came in the form of the hegemonic "good taste" preventing serious discussion of the War for years after the nuclear explosion. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"chaptnum":"5.25","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"}) However, the Ship was not completely destroyed, surviving underneath the town, and there was a possibility that it would rise again, albeit reduced. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...{"namednum":"5.59","1":"This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"})
It’s still down there, after all. It may have been crippled, but its bulk still exists, buried under the skin. It’ll always be there. As long as there’s human understanding that it might be there, it’ll be there. Waiting to repair itself. Waiting to be dragged to the surface. Moving in the depths of all human experience, intersecting with every human lifetime. This Ship will never leave without us. This town will never let us go.
The Universal Machine, an embodiment and amalgamation of all human-created tools, would later recall how it had "very nearly manifested once, on Earth, in the 21st century" only for the War to "put paid to that". (PROSE: Of the City of the Saved... [+]Loading...["Of the City of the Saved... (novel)"])
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
For most of This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...["This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"], the assumption is that the timeship around which the plot resolved was a ship of the Great Houses which crashed during a War-time attack and buried itself metaphysically under the town at a metaphysical level while awaiting rescue, with powers rival to the Houses — such as the Faction and Celestis — trying to prevent this through Valentine Bregman.
However, as the book's thematics increasingly come to the fore, the third-person narration towards the end of the novel strongly comes down on the side that the Ship was created as a byproduct of human activity, and that identical Ships exist under all human hubs, with the "crashed Ship of War" narrative being a delusion of Bregman's, perhaps deliberately induced by powers who wish to curtail humanity's potential. Indeed, the implication in Of the City of the Saved... that the Ship was an aspect of the Universal Machine would seem to confirm that it was man-made, as the Universal Machine is specifically an amalgamation of all human machines and tools.
In War terms, the plot thus seems to be that the Houses, acting indirectly through urban animals, the Grandfather Cult, and the culture at large, manipulate Bregman into either protecting, or outright triggering, the Ghost Point. The implication that Bregman and the Cult are causing the very Ghost Point they foresaw and tried to prevent is foreshadowed in Chapter 2.19 by the plot of the Twilight Zone episode Miss Ruth is watching:
Man gets precognitive television. Man sees himself kill wife. Man tries to avoid killing wife. Man and wife get into argument as a result. Man ends up killing wife exactly as predicted. Perfect self-fulfilling prophecy, bordering on the paradoxical. The Faction would be mildly entertained, possibly.
However, the Faction's lukewarm hypothetical response to this reading suggests that although the bombing of the Ship being the singular cause of the Ghost Point would be a perfectly sensible interpretation of This Town Will Never Let Us Go [+]Loading...["This Town Will Never Let Us Go (novel)"], it may be overly simplistic. Indeed, other causes for the overall Ghost Point are hinted at or implied in other Faction Paradox media from The Book of the War [+]Loading...["The Book of the War (novel)"] to Head of State [+]Loading...["Head of State (novel)"].
Also ambiguous are the motivations and true nature of the Executive relative to the rise of the Ship. Although their claim to being the Faction is more believable than most Faction imitators in the book, and they are clearly aware of higher War factors, their agenda remains unclear, and they are shown as a hostile force ultimately trying to prevent the rising of the Ship, trying to stop Tiffany a few steps away from her apotheosis: although they were the ones who shaped her into an entity who had enough cultural power to become the Pilot, this does not appear to have been their actual aim at all. Their record label's logo is a sigil described as infinity symbol-like ouroboros, which is also how The Book of the War describes the sigil of the Great Houses, i.e. the Seal of Rassilon, suggesting the Executive may be another front of the Houses, parading as the Faction in a false-flag gambit.
