0
LOCKED OUT
PRINCESS RUBY, MOTHER OF THE DAUGHTERS OF DESPAIR Lying on the ground outside the tower, outside the Spire, lying on my back on the damp grass with Scarlet, we stared at the sky. We stared at the stars, pinpricks of light dotting the night’s blackness, holes in the fabric of space where the light beyond shone through. We lay there without speaking, without breathing, both thinking about what was going to happen next. The direction the Daughters of Despair would take under new leadership.
“You’re still in danger, you know,” Scarlet said after a period of time.
“How’s that?” I said, both of us speaking to the space where the Spire pierced the canopy, where you could see a brief sliver of sky, a ring of stars wrapping the tower in their light.
“The Daughters respected Frost,” Scarlet said.
“Except for Snow,” I said.
“Snow respected Frost most of all,” Scarlet said. Both of us parallel to the ground, not looking at one another. “That’s why she couldn’t challenge her face to face. Because she was ashamed.” I didn’t respond. “The Daughters feared Snow.”
“Except for me,” I said with a smile slowly forming.
“That’s not true,” Scarlet said. “Is it?”
“No,” I said, my smile dissipating in the night air. “I was scared shitless.” I could feel Scarlet nodding next to me. I didn’t need to see her to feel her nod of approval, glad that I didn’t feel the need to lie to her.
“But the Daughters have neither fear nor respect for you,” Scarlet said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“So they’ll challenge me,” I said. “I still need to worry about them.”
“They’ll be thinking about it,” Scarlet said. “Until you prove yourself. Think about it. The Daughters are daughters by birthright. They’re born into it, trained from a very young age. Their only identity is as Daughters. You’re the only one we’ve brought into the fold after the fact.”
“And they’ll hate me for it.”
“They’ll be wary of you,” she said. “Your intentions. They had only just accepted you as a Daughter and now you’re their Mother. You just need to be careful.”
“Understood,” I said. “Thank you.” We went back to staring at the sky. For minutes, hours, days, years. I didn’t know. Some amount of time. Time’s elasticity had finally lost its hold, and time didn’t exist any longer.
“I’ll help you through this,” Scarlet said finally. “You avenged Frost, and I couldn’t be more thankful for that. You’re not just my Mother. You’re my sister.”
I laughed.
“What a weird thing to say,” I said.
“We live a weird existence” was all she had to say.
I sat up, tried to brush the grass off my back. I looked at Scarlet, really looked at her. Her eyes closed, a faint smile plastered on her face, she looked peaceful.
“The fairy-tale gambit isn’t the only thing the Daughters have in play,” I said, “is it?”
“No,” Scarlet said, sighing. “No, it’s not. Not by a long shot.” She took a breath. “I guess it’s time then. Time for you to learn the scope of the Daughters’ reach.”
Later, some amount of time later, Scarlet brought me to the room on the ground floor that Snow had been living in. That I was now living in. A door in the back of the room, inconspicuous and blending in with the shelves and clutter, brought us to a dark cell. And in it sat a Librarian.
“You have a Librarian,” I said in shock. “You actually took one hostage.”
“It knows everything that Snow knew,” Scarlet said, looking at it. “You only need to ask.”
“Tell me,” I said, staring into the Librarian’s gray eyes. “Tell me everything.”
The Librarian stared back, taking no time to respond.
“What is ‘everything’?” the Librarian asked.
“All of it,” I said. “The Daughters’ plans, communication logs with Molotov, everything that Snow set into motion. Tell me everything.”
“What is your password, Princess Ruby?”
“What?” I said, not understanding.
“Oh shit,” Scarlet said.
“‘Everything’ is contained within the DOD3 database,” the Librarian said. “Which is password protected. What is your password, Princess Ruby?”
“I don’t…” I said. “I don’t know.” Snow never mentioned a password. Why would she have? I wasn’t her confidante; I didn’t need to know her plans. I looked over to Scarlet, who was shaking her head. I looked back at the Librarian.
“Access denied,” the Librarian said, unblinking.
“Shit,” Scarlet said. “This is bad.”
GODSPEED SUPERNOVA, GREAT-GRANDSON OF GODSPEED NANO AND CURRENT HEAD LIBRARIAN In constructing a comprehensive oral history of the circumstances surrounding the death of the Monolith and the one-hundredth anniversary of the Storm of the Screaming Skies, it is necessary to experiment with convention and structure in a way that is not normally reflective of official documents. I have also added certain texts to Nano’s document in an effort to provide context. The world was irreparably changed by the described events and is unrecognizable to our own; it is not an entirely linear narrative, and readers of this document would do well to keep that in mind.
1
SEARCHING
DISASTER FLUX, NEON FARMER Me and my girl, Whisper, we know the Coeur woods inside and out. It’s our livelihood, so we better. We’re nomads, see. We don’t have a homestead. We don’t call one town or another home. The forest’s our home. We live off of it. It takes care of us. Has since the Storm. My great-grandfa, Logic, came from Cervello during the neon rush, and the Fluxes have been here ever since.
Some people call it the Forest of the Whispering Woods, but that name is based on myth and I don’t like it much. There’s stories about the trees talking to people. It’s nonsense. Neon poisoning sometimes results in hallucinations. That’s all there is to it. There’s no truth to talking trees. I like things that you can prove, things that you can see. Not stories.
You could call us scavengers or grifters. People do. I’d rather you didn’t. We’re neon farmers. Neon doesn’t grow like crops, but I still like the term. You see, after the Storm, couple years after when everyone learned the value of neon, people rushed the forest. In those years after the Storm the ground in Coeur was more neon than dirt. Big chunks of it rained down from the sky and stuck to the earth. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people rushed to the forest to strip it bare. Towns sprung up that later died after the neon dried up. It didn’t dry up completely, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, but after years and years it ain’t as plentiful as it was back then. I sometimes yearn for those days, days that I didn’t live through but I’ve heard stories about. Days when the dead forest glowed blue at night, so bright it looked like day.
The Families paid handsomely for the neon. Cervello and Barriga more so than the others because of the transportation costs. The Families bought up all the neon over years. The A Capella started in Coeur too. Started worshipping the neon. Hoarding it. Eventually made their way to Cervello, headquarters is there now anyway, but they started here.