We Are the Enemy (short story)

 was the tenth story in The Book of the Enemy. In the story, Lawrence Burton explored the idea that — as a Faction Paradox writer — he himself was the Enemy.

Pre-Narrative Briefing
Briefing K

Story
Lawrence Burton cycles a trail every day, but today has had a tree fall in front of him, disrupting his thinking about the Faction.

The Man with Wheels is laid to rest in the Hall of Autophagic Weaponry.

Burton was thinking about We Are the Enemy and what he planned to write in it, but that tree just shocked him out of his thought process.

The Interrogator called down to a prisoner whose biodata had been hopelessly dissected, asking for his name, but the prisoner's nervous system and his memory was too warped to be able to give one.

Burton thinks about his path, how it's outside the jurisdiction of the city, so they won't bother cleaning it, but maybe it's a metaphor. Maybe the enemy caused the tree to collapse, so Burton wouldn't figure out who they were, making them real by conceiving of them. He thinks further on this.

The prisoner is placed in his cell and sees a three dimensional model of his face, recounting his testimony. Saying that they didn't know who could be writing us, that the tree didn't sound like much, but it was a massive breakthrough in terms of how much influence they could exert. The Interrogator laughed, saying that they still don't know.

Burton thinks about how the Great Houses are fighting against the enemy, how this defines them, and speculates that maybe they're the space robot people seen in two films with Peter Cushing.

Instead, it's considered, while we might think that "a new kind of history" means no Great Houses, it might instead mean they're reduced to a background detail, an empire written by someone more real than them in a children's show. Wouldn't that person be seen as an enemy?

Characters

 * Lawrence Burton
 * Interrogator
 * Ordance-Decurion Goralschaixianthellipse

Continuity

 * Burton walks past the place where Todd Calavero encountered frogs in Against Nature. (PROSE: Against Nature)
 * Goralschai originates from PROSE: Against Nature.
 * The Broken Remote colony of Fallahal is mentioned. (PROSE: The Book of the War)