AUCKLAND — When I received word of the ignition of the Tokamak and the arrival of the fae into our world, I was on assignment visiting the compound of an obscure millenarian sect deep in the jungles of Boca Grande. Naturally, the parishioners hailed the news as a confirmation of their prophecies and a harbinger of world peace. But far from uplifting humanity into an era of enlightenment, the supernatural forces that the fae brought with them have served only as a new playground for humanity's venal and myopic impulses.

Last Saturday in Auckland, Monsanto hosted a private reception at the botanical gardens to unveil their latest abomination against nature, a native New Zealand cedar tree that they have endowed with sentience by combining fae magic with genetic engineering. The message sent by this deed is one so simple that even the tree can express it: "We do what we want." As I lined up drink in hand to engage in monosyllabic conversation with the awakened tree, I felt like a mourner at a visitation filing past the corpse of the last restraints on innovation for innovation's sake, without regard for consequences. But I was alone in this sense. All around me, various corporate executives, major shareholders, and scientists ebulliently congratulated one another on this "breakthrough." What exactly was being broken through or to what end went unspoken, but seemed implicitly accepted by all parties.

This being an exclusive affair, and I being an interloping journalist, some form of conflict was inevitable. My presence was eventually discovered, and I was taken to a back room where security threatened to break my fingers if I didn't reveal my true identity. Having talked my way out of worse situations just on the aforementioned trip to Boca Grande, I escaped unmaimed to write this dispatch, but the resemblance of these methods to the brutal dictatorships that I have visited on assignment was striking. It appears that the millenarian prophesies of world peace are, like many others, a dream deferred.