"The Last Daughter"

~Impatient creature that I am, when I get stuck, I post some of what I've written. This is all from The Last Daughter, the novelette that goes in Part Seven – "One Possible Future". These are the 'presentable' sections, though there far more written at this point. I do have the whole thing outlined and all the chapters have names, some of which may change with time. But it's all 'there' more or less. Just matter of Facing The Page...


1 The Return

~Bryn clearly remembered her Womb Mother. Carmela Torres had now been dead longer than nearly everyone else had been alive, but she always was vivid somewhere in her daughter's memory. The way her dark eyes sparkled when she laughed...and she laughed a lot, and loudly. The elegant, angular beauty of her face, topped with a defiant bleached blonde buzz-cut that proclaimed “Dyke!” Her lean muscular body, tanned a rich brown under so many bright, hot skies. Bryn could see much of that woman when she herself looked in a mirror, even after all the profound physical and emotional changes she herself had undergone.

Wherever Bryn had traveled in her own long life, she had carried a 2D hard copy in a blast-proof frame. She had found the photo among Carmela's things after she'd died. It showed a young Carmela with her Trikmates Frieda and Rachel in their old Merrican Republic Army camo uniforms, somewhere in either SoMerrica or Afrikao, grinning broadly, with their arms draped over each others shoulders. They weren't in full combat gear, but their Military Police gorgets were visible and they had holsters with big machine pistols slung on their hips. The buildings behind them were pockmarked with bullet holes.

That framed photo was now in a pouch beneath her robes as she sat in the Viewing Lounge of Gaia One Station looking at her home world, the one she had not visited in several centuries. She sat there, motionless, looking out the viewing blister, for the entire six hours of her Quarantine Period. No one disturbed her, in part because Gaia One was largely deserted, in part because a Sister wearing the robes of a Senior High Priestess of the Cult of Eriskegal was best left alone.

Hardly anyone passed through Gaia One anymore. Mother was now more a 'concept', not a place to visit and no Sliders made the direct connection these days. Bryn had traveled on the Paarleekeeyo, a passenger Slider, to Alta Kalifornia, the ancient Orbital on the other side of Sol from Mother.

Bryn had not bothered to stop there. She knew the place well. She had after all been part of the crew that had built the thing, had lived there for over two centuries and she estimated had roughly five million descendants presently living there. No, she was not in the mood for any of any of that, not in the mood at all.

She had taken the Ship-To-Shore Portal to the Orbital's Quarantine Transit Lounge and then crossed straight to the Portal for Gaia One. Her Priestess's robes helped facilitate that. One simply did not stand in the path of a Psychopompos.

No doubt there would be buzzing about a Senior High Priestess of the Cult of Eriskegal breezing through the Transit Lounge, but it would likely come to nothing. All her transponder implants would read her as “Kai, High Priestess etc.” which is who she was now and had been for one and twenty four Solanums.

She was already in the Viewing Lounge when the station's Command Trikona became aware of her presence. The XO had looked in, saw her sitting silently, and wisely withdrawn without a word. They were all Old Gals themselves and 'knew the score'.

Bryn looked down upon Mother, Gaia, Terra, Earth, all names she had used at one point or another. Gaia One was in Geo-Sync directly above SoCal. She could see her birth place had changed since the last time she was here. The western half of SoCal was now a long slim island. El Lay was completely submerged. Her old home in The High Desert was north of what was called the Tulare Channel and looked too green to be desert anymore. The dry flatland called Lake Tulare in her childhood was now a bay. She remembered being told that Lake Tulare had once been the largest body of fresh water in NorAm west of the Great Lakes. Water had been especially Sacred to The Sisterhood back in those days.

Looking East, she noted that the Great Lakes were now a huge single lake – The Great Lake her Neural Nanonics told her – that drained into a very very wide continent dividing Missipi River down to Lusiana Bay. And that Florda was just a long patch of shallow water. “No one misses that, I'll wager,” she thought to herself. Even after all this time the Departure Massacres were still vivid.

None of this was really new information. Bryn had kept track of things regarding Mother. Gaia One was Mother's last orbital platform. Mother was almost totally deserted, barely a million Sisters on Her surface and about ninety percent of them Elder Solitaries who had come here to age out and die away from Civilization. Mother was near pristine, all civilization purged and removed to Alta Kalifornia for historical preservation. SoCal Island was the last outpost of Tech and even that was Spartan. Servitors were kept to a strict minimum, with a limit of one Body Servant per Sister and not many more for general maintenance.

A soft chime sounded in her head. Via her Neural Nanonics a soft pleasant voice said, “Your Quarantine Period has ended. You may take the Portal down to the surface at any time. Thank you for your patience.” Bryn sat there motionless for a few minutes longer.

*~*
She stepped out of the Portal into the First Karaal Complex. Though the Portal access area was under an awning, the hot humid air was like a solid wall, one redolent of pungent flowering plants. The air Bryn remembered was dry and smelled faintly of sage.

Her robes were instantly oppressive and her implants automatically started to work on lowering her body temperature. But she countermanded that. Bryn wanted to enjoy the relief of getting naked and showering off her sweat. That was one of her oldest pleasures and she planned to indulge it fully. She could feel the sweat begin to gather and run down her skin beneath her robes. She smiled very very slightly.

A Sister had been waiting there for her. She now approached. Tall like Bryn – about six feet – with skin the color of milk chocolate, short snow white hair and bright yellow eyes, the latter two features once popular Geno-Cosmetic modifications that had become in time common marks of The Sisterhood. She wore a sleeveless chemise dress of a fine powder blue cotton, hemmed about a third of the way down her thighs, and simple open topped sandals. The sight of that obviously comfortable outfit intensified Bryn's desire to shed her robes.

The Sister bowed her head slightly, smiled warmly.

“Welcome, Mistress Kai. I am Deenah Hyun-Nemarra, Director of The First Karaal Project.” At the time of Bryn's birth, Director Hyun-Nemarra would have been thought in her mid to late twenties, but Bryn knew her to be four hundred and thirty six.

At that moment Bryn switched off her current ID transponders and reset her originals. Deenah's eyes widened slightly, but she recovered instantly and smiled with genuine affection. She bowed deeply, then looked Bryn steadily in the eyes.

“We are profoundly honored by your presence. We are all entirely at your disposal.”

Bryn gave her a warm smile. “Thank you, Zir Deenah. I will try not to be a bother.”

Deenah radiated Pleasure at Bryn's use of that honorific. Switching gears, she said, “I regret your old quarters are now part of the Nedo Uno active display. But a near exact equivalent is available in Nedo Tres.”

Bryn bowed her head slightly. “Today, I am merely a guest here, Zir Deenah. Nedo Tres will be perfectly fine.”

Deenah did not bother to disguise her relief. Her eyes went 'blank' for a few seconds, indicating that she was NetComming. She then refocused upon Bryn. “Everything is arranged, Mistress. If you'll please follow me, I have a ground car waiting.”

The ground car was the shape of a huge guitar pick, with a single seat at the sharp end and a row of three seats at the round end. As Bryn sat down in one of the rear seats, a restraining field wrapped itself around her waist and Deenah lifted off.

Deenah guided the ground car at a good clip, providing Bryn with relief in the form of a stiff breeze. She began to relax for the first time since debarking from the Paarleekeeyo. That was a little hour seven hours ago, but it seemed an entire Solanum.

“Everything is so green,” she thought. Until the completion of Nedo Uno, the First Karaal of her childhood had been mostly dun colored under a hard blue sky. The vertical farms had been full of greenery, but the tended to shine silver in the desert sun. The remaining farm towers now reflected the verdant colors of tropical savanna.

There were only one set of a half a dozen old style mobile homes clustered around an above ground pool, that was a reproduction of the old Queen of Heaven Retreat, the foundation community of the First Karaal. When Bryn was born there were at least a score of clusters like that, though they were all gone by the time she herself had left for good.

Around the horizon she could the grass covered mounds that marked the abandoned Nedo Cinco through Nedo Doce. That drove home in a visceral way how long she had been gone. Nedo Seis and Siete had only just been completed and ground broken for Nedo Ocho. The rest were still in the planning stage.

In the interim, they had all been built, living in, deserted and Mother had reclaimed them. Only Dos, Tres and Cuatro remained to serve living Sisters. Nedo Uno, her home for decades, was now a museum. She took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, a truly ancient technique. Deenah politely pretended not to notice.

They soon arrived at the above ground portion of Nedo Tres. Like all Nedos, it was a two story band-shell shaped structure at one end. Nedo Tres – and all others built afterward – went down ten stories, where Uno and Dos only went down seven, but otherwise they were all generally the same, a oval stadium-like mini-city dug into the earth, with waterfall opposite the above ground portion that fell all the way to a garden at the bottom. The below ground stories were all rimmed by balconied walkways, and the rooms dug into the sides....more


2 Early Days

~She was born Bryndís Torres Nemara in the very earliest days of The Sisterhood, back in The Time of Men.

Bryndís was an Icelandic name from the Old Norse brynja, referring to a corselet or mail coat or armor. Dís referred to a goddess or female guardian spirit.

Torres was the name of Carmela, her Womb Mother. But Nemara meant that the Seed came from Her Prophet. Not that Carmela had sex with him – she was in her own words, “a stone fucking dyke” – merely that he had provided the Seed 'by other means'. As Her Prophet had once said, “One does not entrust the fate of the species to the vagaries of fucking.”

Many Sisters in the early days had taken Her Prophet's Seed, all sorted to maximize the production of Daughters. Against all odds, not a single male child was ever produced, which was certainly taken as a Sign.

All these Daughters took the last name Nemara, which meant 'tigress' in Hebrew. Her Prophet said, “My name is my father's name. But the Sisters who come from my Seed shall have their own names, which breaks the link to Patriarchy.”

Over time the Nemara Sept became very large and powerful and the name shifted as the Sept branched out. Nemara – Nemmara – Nemarra – Nemarah – N'mara and so on. Having the Blood of Her Prophet in their veins carried great cachet and The Sisterhood had fully embraced Hierarchy from its very beginning....more


3 Hard Lessons Learned

~Bryn was using a ChekPad to do a systems review of her battle suit. Though she was fifty feet underground, she knew the sky outside was turning black. Fighting throughout Nevada had stopped almost completely as a tornado cluster crept across middle of the state. Or at least what was left of the state. Deseret and The Sisterhood had pushed each other back and forth a half dozen times at this point. There was barely one brick left standing upon another.

These tunnels were under the ruins of the aptly named town of Battle Mountain, which was at the moment the linchpin of The Sisterhood's Route 80 front line. The area was a warren of old copper and gold mines that provided ready made shelter. The Sisterhood had grabbed it early on and even though Deseret had pushed them back, they'd never let go, even when surrounded.

A few feet down the tunnel from Bryn, Med Techs were working what was left of her squad, the remaining nine out of the twenty one Threebees – Brain Box Boys – she'd arrived with two weeks ago. They were all tattooed, chocolate brown, hawk faced bastards, Cartelaño guerreros captured on the Southern Front. They'd been mind wiped, Brain-Boxed, then bolted and hard wired into battle armor and shipped off to the Deseret Front. Bryn was knew there were blond, blue eyed Threebee'd Deseret boys fighting the Cartelaños down south. Once The Sisterhood got through with them, they'd murder their own families without a moment's hesitation....more