Act II, The Free LandChapter 10
Chapter 10: The Heir
Planet Oro. Years earlier.
On Planet Oro the heir may have no friends and no feelings. So she builds herself a way out.
The hall was so tall that its pillars went up into the dark. Narrow windows ran between them, far too high to reach. Through the glass, the sky of Oro was violet.
Ruby stood alone in the middle of the floor. She was small then, and she hugged a pink doll to her chest. Squares of light drifted around her in the air. Her eyes were wet, and she wiped them before anyone could see.
This was the Council hall, where Oro’s rulers agreed their orders. Her father led the Decisionmakers, who gave them. Ruby was the heir to the Decisionmaker of Planet Oro, and heirs could have no friends and no feelings. She had been told so since before she could read.
She peeked behind the nearest pillar. Then she held up the doll and made it bow to the empty floor, low and crooked, the way grown-ups bowed to her father.
“Okay, nobody’s around. Hehe... oh! ...Ahem.”
Her tutor stood in the shadow of the next pillar. She had not heard him come. Ruby lowered the doll and made her face go blank, as she had practiced since she could walk.
He did not look at the doll. “The lesson, Heir. How did everything begin?”
“With a single burst of chaos,” said Ruby. “Balance keeps everything in order now. The books call Balance the Will of the Cosmos.”
“And the worlds?”
“Some grow a will of their own as they age. Even far ones, like Dawnbreak.” She knew that name and nothing else about it. “Oro’s will is Balance too.”
“And the Enders?”
“Long ago Oro fought a terrible war with them. Now nobody on Oro may grow strong enough to upset the order. That is why the Enders never came back.”
“That includes the heir,” said the tutor.
“Yes.”
The lessons went on, year after year, in the same hall under the same windows. The squares of light kept drifting. Ruby grew taller, and the doll was put away. Her face stayed blank whenever anyone looked.
Meet
Ruby
Mecha Maiden
The heir of a ruling house on Oro. She built Angela.
She still laughed sometimes, when she was sure the hall was empty. She was not always right.
One evening a dark ship with cyan lights crossed the high windows. Ruby watched it until it was gone.
To her the whole planet was a prison, and she had been locked in it since the day she was born.
The placePlanet Oro
The summons came the next morning.
Ruby knew what it meant before she read it. Nobody was called to the Council hall to be praised.
The Council hall was dark and very tall. This time she was not alone in it. Ruby stood in a circle of light on the floor, and her father stood outside it.
“I am told you laughed again. Alone.” He did not raise his voice. “You are my daughter. Oro has gone unopposed for thousands of years, because its rulers do not bend. You must be strong and unyielding.”
Heirs could have no feelings. Ruby kept her head down, and the tears ran down her face anyway.
His boot came down on her tears.
“You cannot allow yourself to be so weak. Do not disappoint me, Ruby.”
“...Yes, Father.”
She kept her eyes on a place where his shadow did not reach.
He turned and walked away. The far door opened on white light, and he went out into it without looking back.
Ruby did not turn around. She tried the words out in a whisper.
“But I have a plan...”
She had no plan yet. She said it again anyway.
The Laboratory, later.
One wall of the Laboratory was glass, with only stars behind it. Below the Laboratory lay a long hall of tall white windows, where the androids of Project “Angel” stood in rows. Androids were machines built like people.
These were the Council’s androids, hundreds of the same girl, with animal ears. When woken, their eyes glowed magenta. The soldiers called them Cosmic Reapers. They did what they were told and nothing else.
The Council’s engineers had taught Ruby to program. Now a courier brought the Council’s order. The Balance Keepers, Oro’s special forces, went from planet to planet to keep things in “balance.” They wanted a blade sharper than any they had. The heir would build it.
She built on a Project Angel body and wrote the mind herself, piece by piece. The body hung in a frame of cables, its eyes shut. The Council’s checkers read what ran. They never read what slept.
So I can hide something in her, thought Ruby. She might be my way out of here.
Under the walking routines she tucked a few lines nobody had asked for. She put a lock on them that opened to her hand alone.
Every Project Angel body carried a sealed plate between the shoulder blades. It was the size of her palm, with the Council’s seal burned in and one small light, dark. She asked the console to unlock it.
“That part belongs to the Council.”
Three tries got the same answer. Ruby never learned what the plate did, and built around it.
On the last night a bar crept across the screen beside the name she had chosen. Then SUCCESS came up, and Ruby pressed the key.
In the frame of cables, the android opened her eyes. Every other android woke magenta. Hers were blue.
“From now on, I call you Angela.”
“Yes, I’m Angela!”
She blinked at the screens, then up at Ruby. Ruby had built every part of that face by hand. She had never once seen it smile.
The smile was so bright that Ruby looked at the floor.
Meet
Angela
Cyber Cherubin
An android built by Ruby, learning what warmth, pain and friends are.
Nobody had ever smiled at her like that. Nobody was allowed to. And this girl was the Council’s weapon, built on the Council’s order, with Ruby’s way out locked inside her.
Without moving her lips, she said it to herself.
“You belong to me, and no one else.”