Frostpunk Divine Throne-Chapter 19: Clinical Analysis (One)

Cyren looked at Aldridge's expression, his heart stirring.
Since the train accident, when he first met this rune master, aside from knowing he was very rational and methodical in his work, he understood nothing else about him.
He spoke very little. Except for necessary matters, he was sparing with words.
His face always wore an expressionless look. Even during the most exhausting moments on the road, he would at most furrow his brow.
He never voluntarily mentioned himself. Cyren didn't even know where he was from.
To ordinary people, this was just a reserved person. Many people didn't like to talk. It was nothing unusual.
But to Cyren, this meant deeper hidden circumstances. A person's silence represented many layers of meaning, but he didn't have enough information yet.
But facing that armor, he showed complex emotions for the first time, appreciation, sorrow, and perhaps some pain.
"You're very familiar with it." Cyren said.
Aldridge didn't speak. After a long while, he said softly, "Many people are familiar with it. When it soars through the sky, everyone wailing in the fire becomes very familiar with it."
Cyren thought rapidly. He had directed the topic toward Aldridge, but Aldridge refused to make himself "present" in the conversation, yet expressed a kind of anger and accusation. It seemed to be accusing the Steel Angels, but was actually accusing the big Other behind them, that is, the Church.
But Aldridge was clearly the Church's rune master. This time coming north, he had also accepted a transfer order...
Cyren understood at once.
For a psychoanalyst, silence was not merely silence itself. Many possible causes lurked behind it. Combined with Aldridge's behavior, it perhaps meant resistance to the symbolic order.
The symbolic order, one of the three registers proposed by Jacques Lacan, was the domain of language, law, rules, social structures, cultural symbols and order. For Aldridge, that should be the Church's laws, ethics, commands and power.
Through "silence," he maintained an imaginary distance from the symbolic social order, refusing to have too much contact with it. Even in conversation, he strived to keep "himself" absent. He refused to incorporate his own subjectivity into the order of the symbolic.
Or to put it simply, "I don't want to play by your rules, but I can't refuse, so I remain silent and distant."
"So... he didn't come to Spessay voluntarily. He was transferred here but didn't want to come, perhaps stemming from some violent act by the Church... Combined with the Steel Angels... war? That's it. He's very likely antiwar. He refuses to create war machines..." Cyren thought rapidly, numerous thoughts surging like instinct.
Aldridge perhaps didn't know that just a simple action and one answer had almost completely exposed him.
But Cyren wouldn't express this. A psychoanalyst's analysis of a client's words wasn't the superiority of "I've seen through you," nor the sympathy of "I understand you."
"Soaring through the sky... and wailing in fire?" Cyren repeated the two most vivid phrases in that passage, "When was such a scene witnessed?"
He deliberately omitted the "you" from "when did you witness..." The omission and absence of the subject would align with Aldridge's desire for his own subjectivity to be absent, not touching his sensitive heart.
The words gave him a field, rather than an aggressive Other trying to enter his mind.
"When..." Aldridge's rough fingers caressed the steel armor, "Many times, every time... That war, the Fourth Crusade, and the Fifth Crusade, even until now still..."
Cyren rapidly reviewed his memories. The Fourth Crusade occurred fifty years ago, using ten years to destroy the dwarves' Mountain Kingdom. The Church obtained runic technology.
The Fifth Crusade occurred twenty-nine years ago. The Steel Angel Knights made their first appearance. Massive war machines swept the world. The target was the Sindora Empire further east, but that place had already been a colony of the Albion Empire a hundred years prior.
The Knights pierced through fourteen nations, clashing with Albion's musketeers in Sindora's primitive tropical jungles.
That was a famous war in world history, and also the last Crusade. The most powerful empire, Albion, suffered heavy defeats on land but sank ninety percent of the Church's ships in the Starlight Ocean naval battle, forcing both sides to sign a peace agreement.
That was the last Crusade. The Church demonstrated the strength of an old hegemonic power, while the Albion Empire also proved its authority as the first empire in the naval battle.
The weapons deployed during that time, steam steel ships, Steel Angels, steam tanks, breech-loading cartridge rifles, and more, demonstrated the technology of top hegemonies, becoming research targets that endured for twenty years in major military academies.
During both wars, countless innocents surely died, but there were two problems in Aldridge's words, one was that during the Fourth Crusade, Steel Angels hadn't yet appeared. The other was "until now."
The Fifth Crusade lasted three years. Those scenes of Steel Angels soaring through the sky and people perishing in seas of fire were only during those few years. Even if there were some small wars in between, it couldn't be "until now."
A slip of the tongue!
Like catching a mouse by its tail, Cyren inwardly smiled. He had completely entered the role of psychoanalyst.
A slip of the tongue wasn't simply a slip of the tongue, but exposed the client's inner unconscious. As a rune master, he was very likely one of the designers of the Steel Angels, or had witnessed the cruel slaughter of the Fifth Crusade. That scene had lingered in his subconscious and dreams, haunting him.
That pain and entanglement traced back to the Fourth Crusade, that is, the moment the Steel Angels were born, and continued until now.
"Until now?" Cyren interrupted Aldridge's words.
He suddenly realized, "No... it was just during those three years, but I... I..."
His face showed twisted pain and struggle. Cyren had never encountered a patient in such pain. That expression deeply pierced him, but he absolutely couldn't express any attitude, because expressions were also a form of speech, even a kind of performance.
At this moment, Aldridge regarded him as the big Other, the personification of the symbolic order in his eyes. He described and performed his pain through body language, trying to get the big Other to answer.
Cyren heard his deafening roar, that questioning and pain, but he had to play the role of a backdrop.
Joseph and the guards nearby heard the commotion and came to check, but Cyren used gestures and eye contact to make them leave and remain quiet.
Cyren looked at Aldridge collapsed on the ground. He realized he might have encountered the most difficult patient he'd faced so far.