From “Anagrams” [xxii]

Injured, sleep-deprived, sorely tested, Adah, Cain, and Father K are falsely imprisoned in a shallow cave
with other unfortunates seeking refuge from their war-torn homeland. It is hard to blame the writers’ room
if “Unlike All Other Empires” felt as cynical and world-weary as its protagonists. Cain, in need of medical attention he will never receive for his infected gunshot wound, entertains the children with parables of

the less than
K and Adah fragments of cheese and dried a side pocket rucksack in rendition of the five thousand. lost and the only view comes from talkative guard, sunstroke, who plight as the
of humanity.

human. Father portion out tiny dehydrated goat bread found in of K’s deflated some worn out feeding of the
All hope seems external point of an unusually half mad with regards their normal situation And yet there

is a will to live, an ember which has not quite been scotched. Those lines in the dust could be as nihilistic as any ephemeral gesture, or they could be the most hopeful, the most human impulse we possess. “Posterity is bullshit. This is where we always planned to end it,” says Halberg, well aware that there were still a full nine episodes to go in the projected 31-episode run, and that many shows could complete an entire plot cycle without much more screen time than that which he’d set aside for the denouement. “It was discussed at the outset, so don’t listen to Lin or James or any of the other whiners I should have let go at the halfway point.” A toast to the not rescued. The Edward Said quotation in full: “Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.”