Martin Marprelate
The Heir
Open Source since 1588
BEGIN BOOK V
Professor
So, finally, today we get to where Narmer meets Jose…. The plot thickens, as they say.
Jose explains this pretty well, but let me give you a shortcut here.
For 3 months, at age 18, a citizen is truly free. Debts forgiven. Promises voided. They call it the Springroama. It lasts from 18-01-01 to 18-03-31. On Day One of the Fourth month, they either return to the Corporation or not.
No contact is permitted between Cohorts. Should that rule be violated by anyone, the Springroama would be extended for 3 more months at parental expense.
The Springroama breaks are often more costly than cars.
It was manageable when they’d celebrate at Bob’ Big Boy… But that was a generation ago. Now there are voyages planned around the world; skydiving in Antartica; wave surfing on the Atlantic… Parents save for years to sponsor their children Springroamas. Each one appears determined to outspend the last one.
It wasn’t meant to be that way.
It was an initiation.
An initiation requires facing fears alone.
We’ve all seen the vicious bears that growl behind their cages but cower when the door is opened. It is easy to complain about your life (and future) when you have no options.
If you have no choice, then moaning may make you feel better but it won’t change your circumstances.
The ancients saw that those who ran came back if they were allowed to run.
Like a child who runs from the parents but looks back. If the parents chase that child, the child will continue to run away. The parents’ proximity makes the child feel safe… Parent can still see me.
So there are 3 months in the lives of every Villager where they have absolutely no obligations to anyone. The ruling Cohort must avoid any contact or conversation. A violation of this rule extends springroama by the number of days — at the parents’ expense.
Most parents go on an extended vacation to avoid accidental contact. Which is what Edward’s mother will do. She and Sarah will go the Ascension Convention, with the tragic ending we know is coming.
Springroama is truly free from obligation. On Day One of Year 18 all promises are rendered null and all debts are brought to zero — on both sides of the interaction.
For those 3 months — until Day One of Month Four, no promises are binding and no transactions enforceable.
Which is why it is a favorite time for couples to perform weddings. Either someone is persuaded that it is “not for real” or they both want to try it out or they believe a promise made that will never be enforceable is more powerful than a promise under the guise of law.
The chapels are flooded during Springroama.
But no parents are allowed.
If any gossip is shared with the ruling Cohort, Springroama will be extended at the parents’ expense.
Bets are made on the parents.
But most kids come home with such overwhelming relief that they never again feel the need to leave the Village.
Many of those matings succeed.
All of them must be registered in the 4th Month when promises are binding again.
At the end of 3 months, the Villagers are expected to have a mate and a job.
With that background, perhaps you’ll understand a little more about what they are telling us. We’ve got pieces of Lilly’s autobiography and a few of Jose’s interviews.
Oh, and we start with Edward. He’s talking about Day One of Year 18, Cohort 9. The HEIR is taking Sarah to the Springroama Refugee Camp.
Edward had agreed to fly to Arcana to bring his sperm and meet his designated mate, Cordelia.
Let me explain this. Remember how I said that all promises were void on Day One and none could be made until the 90th day? The HEIRs do not follow this tradition. First, they bind the HEIR apparent to the promise before Springroama and then tell them that Springroama is really a test of loyalty. Duty to the corporation above all else…
That’s what Edward was told. And he understood. He was not free.
And, in fact, the HEIR instructed her helicopter pilot to wait until he had taken off before she would leave. And she gave very strict instructions to his helicopter pilot. Instructions to all of the staff, in fact. That he could not override.
These were kids honed on Cohort War so they understood the challenge quite clearly.
They needed to find someone whose eyes could get past the scantest so they could get on the helicopter with Jose and deliver Edward’s sperm to Cordelia.
Now. Let’s here what they have to say about this.
How do I feel about that decision? Oh, I dread this question every interview. Can’t you dredge up my old answers?
Pardon me.
Consider, however, if you had an ache in your leg every day and all the time. And every time you met someone new, they said: “How’s your leg” and then you would suddenly remember all over again how badly it aches.
It was a fateful decision. No doubt about it.
The fall of Camelot began that day.
And maybe if it hadn’t been Day One of Springroama, we wouldn’t have been so impetuous.
But we were winners!
Truly. The first kids in the history of the universe to score so high!
Can you guess that we might have become a little careless? A little too cocky? We’d played a game with no losses… Now that’s when I know to be wary… For there is a crack in every rock, no matter how you seal it.
My mother the HEIR was beaming like the statue of liberty with a glowing halo. “That’s my kid,” she’d lipsynch to me.
We all thought we’d won.
So how could we lose?
For the first time in my life, I was afraid of nothing.
Jose was afraid. Jose told me it was frivolous and Cordelia would know soon enough… But it wasn’t Cordelia, of course, that he was thinking of. We didn’t really know her then. She hadn’t made much effort and I certainly wasn’t going to. I was beginning to believe I would marry Lilly.
Shake off 9 generations of prohibitions and bring a Villager to my side.
I had just outplayed my ancestors, now I would take a giant step away from them.
Jose kept looking at me like he couldn’t figure out what was wrong but I could see every cell in his body cringing.
The thing about Jose — if he couldn’t tell you what it was, he ignored it too.
So his low probability numbers…
Let’s face it, Jose always took the down side. You factored in his weight already in breaking even. And, of course, Lilly. You’d have to scrape off her optimism.
Somewhere between them, I balanced — despising this choice more than anything in the world. Yes or no to every little issue in every little problem in the world… I felt more like a bipolar switch than a human — blinking my eyes to make decisions. My curse.
I was the final word and I hated to make decisions.
Easy to laugh now. I think the universe laughs too. See yourself? You think this is important?
Ah. But we were young.
And more than anything in the world we wanted to show that we could get anything we wanted.
Interesting insight, isn’t it? We don’t hear often from Edward. But he always surprises me with his raw honesty. He was described by his contemporaries as insecure and shallow.
I often find those the most interesting as they age.
This is a somewhat unrelated snippet from the same interview. You’ll learn more about the Ferry — it was an invention of Jose’s that Edward claimed his own…
But listen to this… Remember this when you wonder if people can change.
I think more than anything in the world — I wanted to see if I could really disappear.
Whether I could send another man in my stead and see who I might be if I really could believe that no one was looking at all. Who would I be if there were no eyes shaping my shoulders, my eyebrows, my mouth and my thoughts. Truly among strangers, I wanted to be a stranger to myself.
Jose’s Ferry was about that. I figured that out later. I didn’t really understand then. It was such basic contract law…
But the Ferry wasn’t about ownership. It was about being invisible.
We were never invisible. Every second of our lives, we were a blip on a screen. Red, green, yellow. Color coded on the Console.
Other than Springroama, our movements were recorded all the time.
It was a terrible thing to do to Cordelia. We basically sent a monster to her.
But these weren’t variables we could have anticipated.
This is what makes you an empathetic historian. Because, if you understand this, you can understand the action. So often it is focus that is lacking.
They sent a monster to Cordelia.
To prove that they could do it.
See you next class.
Lecturer – Logistics
Today, we’re going to get into the logistics.
Here’s the problem — they need someone whose eyes will fool the scantronics at the helicopter. That’s the only identity test when the flight leaves from the HighRise. The helicopter scantronic must confirm Edward’s identity. The HEIR’s helicopter won’t leave until she receives confirmation that the helicopter containing Edward has left for Arcana.
Here’s what Jose says:
So Lilly and I went to the Village to audition people. That’s how naïve we were.
No one showed up.
We thought we’d have a hundred look-alike impressionists showing up for an audition.
We didn’t realize…
They thought we were there to harvest their eyes.
After that, we went to RAPP.
There it was the opposite.
Almost immediately, all these old people crowded around us and offered their eyes. It was grotesque. These men falling at my feet pointing to their eyes and saying, “Take mine! Take mine!”
“Thank you,” I said “Mine are perfectly good.”
Lilly and I were puzzled. Why would they want to give us their eyes?
But finally we saw what they were protecting. Who they were protecting.
We saw Narmer.
Who looked just like Edward.
And when they saw that we saw, they all backed away. Everyone went quiet and pressed against the hallway walls — the yellow green light casting claws on their old faces. They bent and bowed like wilted sunflowers. They moaned like the lonely cry of an owl.
We stared at Narmer and he stared at us.
Like Edward but not like Edward.
He said nothing. We said nothing.
He stood, straight-spined looking at us with angry eyes.
We sat with trembling knees.
It made me dizzy. As if half of me was thinking this was Edward and the other half was denying it and something kept telling me it could not be Edward, but the other part said: If not Edward, than who?
And that was how we met Narmer.
We didn’t realize then that he was a full twin. And, even if we had, we wouldn’t have even considered how that could bring down the Corporation.
Why didn’t you leave right then?
I do not beat myself with hypotheticals but this is a question that deserves an answer.
You’re really asking if we could feel our danger.
And that answer is yes. We felt it. Lilly and I both had chills going up and down our spines and felt fork against fork every time we looked at him.
But we couldn’t point to anything.
He was a personable guy.
And he looked just like Edward so we didn’t feel we could just walk away.
And we needed someone with Edward’s eyes.
It made sense to us at the time.
Now, even I have trouble adopting that perspective. The gaping hole in our game now flaps at me like flag that’s been hit with a cannon ball. But we weren’t looking at the right place.
That’s why I try to remember the cube. No matter how carefully we studied our little edge, it all looked good. We just didn’t know what a tiny piece we were…
That’s all. See you next session.
Professor
Welcome back. I hope you all had a good holiday. I reviewed your papers and made comments. Please see me if you’d like to talk about them.
I noticed a common theme in your papers.
Some of you seem to have formulated the opinion that Narmer and Jose were working collaboratively.
Perhaps based on the evidence you have thus far, that is a valid theory. Certainly being together on the helicopter they had time to talk and plan. So no evidence can disprove that possibility.
But both of them consistently denied collusion.
Here’s what Narmer said:
You cannot imagine what this was like. From village pariah to pretend HEIR in a day.
Stunned. So much information was being thrown at me, so many new experiences, and sensations… I was a paralyzed automation, I’d have to confess.
Unable to move without someone else’s motivation.
From that state, one awakens gradually. Becomes increasingly aware of the patterns of the day.
As you stop wondering which fork to use, you start wondering what you can use it for.
I was primed by five years with the Rappers. They watched people like crows and dissected people with objective precision.
At first I was just going along with the Cloud — moving forward and stopping when nudged.
But then I was on the helicopter going to Arcana Corporation.
And the Console thought I was Edward.
The HEIR apparent.
How could the obvious not appear obvious? If I look like Edward and call myself Edward and my biometrics confirm that I am Edward, how am I not Edward?
Jose was my only problem.
He was the only one who knew I was not Edward.
There is no evidence that Jose realized his peril until the Cloud at Arcana paralyzed him while Narmer escaped with Cordelia.
This is an incredible gap in a first-rate mind.
Some have postulated that Jose was grieving so deeply about Lilly and Edward that he was seeking self-destruction. Others have said that he was seeking Edward’s destruction in collusion with Narmer.
For an empathetic historian, you begin with the story and put together the pieces you have and look from the perspectives of the food and the clothing and the rules and the environment and then you make a guess. You bring your character down the road you hoped that he would take. And you walk down that road until you get another signpost.
The more theories you entertain, the more precise your understanding.
This is an excerpt from an interpretation of a poor transcription of the diary of Cordelia, age 17.
Cordelia buys a day
Cordelia doesn’t mind being the last HEIR of Arcana.
Last year, her regent told her that she had been matched with Edward of Apex.
She didn’t care.
She would not be mating. Anyone. Ever.
Cordelia doesn’t care if she is all alone.
For Cordelia, nothing is more exciting than a blank screen canvas.
Creation is not putting things together but taking them apart. Separating light from dark. Filling emptiness with texture, light, color, and shape. A holiness. As close as she can imagine to touching God.” “And then there was light and darkness…”
She sinks into the world of her art.
Cordelia begins with the brush. There is no form without the brush – just a formless and desolate screen. She imagines the bristles on the palm of her hand. The stiff bristles of a dry brush. The uneven bristles of the splatter brush. Soft bristles for fuzzy edges. Hard bristles for tight spaces. Everything begins with the brush.
Sometimes brushes excite her enough to make her tremble.
She doesn’t know what’s coming. She doesn’t start with a picture in her mind. She knows something is there. She has to find it. She doesn’t even know exactly what she will see the first time she lifts her brush and sweeps across the empty screen – the moment she begins to create.
She thinks of the artist as an explorer in a cave with a stroboscope flashlight. Images flash before her and disappear before they’re fully captured. She shines her flashlight into a dark corner and, gradually, a world begins to appear. It is exciting and frustrating. So slow. So unreliable. So amazing.
Sometimes she becomes impatient. Like an archeologist brushing the dirt off a precious bone, she wields a toothbrush when she longs for a shovel. But, whenever she uses a shovel, she has to start all over again.
Sometimes she stands in the dark corner and tries to imagine what will emerge by painting the pieces she can imagine. But creations grow and change by themselves — one color demands another; one line makes itself dominant; one eye has a look she can’t ignore..
Setting creates the theme. Shadows and light beams, colors sweeping and stark, day and night, evening and morning, water and land, plants and animals, rocks…
Today, she is painting green trees woven with vines, with the faint yellow glow of the sun broken by shadowy faces with shadowy eyes and shadowy mouths.
She waits for the subject to appear.
There it is. Over in the corner – that unopened square in her mind. It’s vague – just a figure. Bent a little, a sweep of black with a soft brush – like a ghost materializing. Holding something shaped like a tube and spitting out bubbles of color. Round translucent bubbles that put yellow and red and blue tints to the stretched spherical twisted bushes in the gray ground.
Now the only limitations are only Cordelia’s.
Now that it has shown itself, she is obligated to bring the soft figure to fruition. Her responsibility, her mission, her need. She has experienced a miracle and she dare not die before she has spread its message. As if an alien could communicate only through her. She needed to find the right brush, the right colors, the right texture so that everyone could share her vision.
Instead.
A brackish form keeps intruding in one corner. The spheres are drooping. The red bubble looks like an old abandoned lollipop. And the greyish green desert of dead grass and stunted trees looks sick instead threatening.
Cordelia feels the tension in the room.
She has been ignoring the skytext.
Edward is here.
And now she is going to tell him that she will not be mating with anyone.
She has no problem being the Last Heir.
The Villagers are entitled to her Corporation.
All she wants to do is paint.
She instructs the Cloud to escort them to their rooms, offer room service and schedule an appointment in the morning.
Professor – Edward and Lilly
Today we are going to expand our scope. For those of you interested in the romance between Edward and Lilly, be sure to take the class Romance and the Empathetic Historian.
Suffice it to say: a romance blossomed.
Though, in my view, romances don’t blossom. They pull in like a bud. Blind to the world. The blossom and beauty come in the post-romance relaxation. But maybe that’s just an old man’s perspective…
Like many Year 18 couples, Lilly and Edward decided to hitch themselves together by contract.
Now remember: no promises made during Springroama are binding. The promises need to be repeated after Day One of the Fourth month.
But there are promises… and there are promises…
Everybody knows the difference.
At first they thought the people thought it was a passion play… An interactive play during dinners and parties… Outrageous being the intent and not the response…
When they realized what had happened, they commented that it was cruel of the HEIR apparent and they chided the girl for being so naïve.
They wagered that Edward would never file the papers and, as you know, he didn’t.
Edward rarely speaks of this time.
Let’s hear from Lilly. This is an interpretation of a mangled recording.
Lilly anticipation
The HEIR likes to say that fear darkens the present and hope sweetens it.
She’s wrong. Hope is terrifying.
Lilly is furious with the sun. She has tried exercising, skiing, golfing, swimming… Still, the sun seems to stop midday.
The damn thing will hardly move.
Three days. How will she ever survive three days?
The Console reminds her to relax. She relaxes and then it reminds her again. She wants to throw something at it.
Time is a dagger.
Will Edward back out?
Even Jose doesn’t know what they really plan.
They are getting married on Day Three. Villager and Heir.
What if he gives in?
She had tried to believe that he would never break the rules. But she couldn’t help hoping. Every day of her life, it seems. At least, once she woke up. About age 15. It was as if the world would be severed when they turned 18. He to one side and she to another.
Then, one day he said, “Everyone is entitled to Springroama, right?”
And Jose went through the Regulations with a final conclusion that — yes. Everyone is entitled to Springroama. Even the HEIR apparent, they each thought to themselves. And his Intimate Villagers.
She and Jose thought of it as another prank at first. Edward would duck the Arcana visit and they’d have a huge party at the HEIR’s expense.
It was a bittersweet time for all of them.
Avoid it though he might, Edward would have to sign that contract with Cordelia. And Lilly would have to fulfill her obligation to Jose.
Jose didn’t seem to mind. But he wasn’t exactly pushing her either. She could see that he was watching her. He’d flush and look away. And sometimes she saw the hurt on his face when he saw her together with Edward. She felt sorry for him, really. He was a wonderful man.
But she’d always been in love with Edward.
Maybe it was the power. The exaltation of being at the top — the rarified atmosphere few can experience. The sense that there were no limits… If you want lobster delivered on Antartica during a storm, the points were there for you. You could feed the world and still own islands.
Even growing up in it, Lilly knew she couldn’t feel that power until the day the Corporation would yield to her guidance. She imagined it a ship and she at its helm. They’d sail to success on a smooth westerly wind.
Prone to fantasies, she would admit.
Dreams of dreams she couldn’t remember.
Always with the feeling that there was something more… Something beyond.
That’s the problem with Jose. Edward understood that… the other pull. For Jose, the world was just as it was to be turned clockwise in regular steps.
She would gladly marry Jose, of course.
But, until that day, she wouldn’t deny the secret dreams. And maybe even then she would plot their deaths or ways they could run away together. And Jose would never really belong in those pictures.
This party, in her mind, was her wedding night.
When she and Edward would descend the stairs in sparkling jewels and gold haloes and begin their life of happily ever after.
And then Edward said, “Let’s do a contract,” and Lilly’s heart popped like a bubble too big to contain… They would sign the mating contract before he signed with Cordelia.
Though subject to challenge, no one ever did.
“I’m a Villager,” she reminded him.
“And I have total control over everything that happens in this HighRise. Jose did the research. No one has standing to object. The PEOPLE cannot object because you will still return to our Village compound once every six months. The HEIR can object on behalf of her Cohort but not mine. And The Committee can only object if the Committee recognizes the marriage.”
It was a loophole in the law. No marriage of an HEIR can take place without the permission of the Committee. Therefore, there is no marriage without the permission of the Committee.
No one, therefore, could hear a claim for a marriage considered invalid because it was not permitted because the Committee only had jurisdiction over permitted marriages.
Since no marriage can take place, no marriage has taken place. No wrong has been done.
“In other words,” Edward said: “We get married under our laws. They say we aren’t married under their laws. We say okay.”
Lilly wanted to die her happiness was so overwhelming. She couldn’t bear the limits of her own body. She couldn’t rest. She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t think. It was as if happiness would kill her.
And Edward, dear Edward who was normally so squirrelly about decisions, stayed as firm and stiff as a soldier on this.
This he would do.
And she loved him so much more that she’d go beyond death if more happiness was heaped upon her.
So much could go wrong.
The sun moved too slowly in the sky.
And then Sarah appears.
Lilly was laying on her bed writing in her journal, as she had been doing nonstop for four interminable days.
Sarah threw herself on the bed. “You’re marrying my brother,” she said.
Lilly felt herself pop, the breath forced from her in a gasp.
“Oh, its okay,” Sarah said right away patting her arm.
Vaguely Lilly realized Sarah had never touched her before.
“Edward and I made a deal. If the HEIR terminates Edward’s contract, then I will make him my CEO. And if the HEIR doesn’t terminate my contract I get your job as CEO. And you get to stay home with the kids.”
This sounded fair to Lilly.
“I do expect some compensation from you for not reporting your plans to the HEIR.”
“Didn’t Edward already pay you?”
“Of course. I won’t tell her on his behalf. But you also have a debt.”
Lilly paid the points.
Sarah jumped up and stopped at the door. “I’m really glad,” she said.
“You’re happy about it?”
“I am unbelievably proud of him. I never thought he’d ever break a rule.”
And she bounced out of the room.
The HEIR acted suspicious and no one was certain she was really going to leave until she finally climbed into the helicopter. She watched the helicopter with Jose and Narmer until it was out of sight. Then She and Sarah waved to them as they left.
And everything went into high gear.
Logistically, the greatest challenge of the wedding was economic. Edward could not use corporate funds.
Lilly was the one who thought of the lottery.
Even if Edward wouldn’t give her credit. “The person who adopts another person’s ideas has shown a higher level of executive functioning than the person who has the idea,” Edward’s mother, the HEIR, says. She uses the gold and metal analogy. We appreciate gold more than metal because gold is malleable and metal is stubborn. “It is more difficult to let go than to take,” the HEIR says.
Really, that’s all an HEIR does. Live on other people’s work and ideas.
They would do a lottery for corporate shares. “Have a piece of the wealth.” “Work for yourself.” “We gain-you gain.”
To enter the lottery, the employee must miss two days of work — Day One and Day Two.
During the Cohort Wars, that was 16 hours of off task work per employee.
More than paid for their feast.
In fact, the HEIR was paying for their feast and the labor to prepare it and the C-team was still making a profit.
And nothing was really being offered in the lottery except the opportunity to win.
Day One– the scavenger hunt: Five shares of Corporate stock were shredded into thirteen pieces and placed in barrels throughout the HighRise. Any person who found all 13 pieces would get a single share of stock.
The task is impossible.
Ninety floors averaging twenty-four doors per floor equals 2,160 doors, producing 38,880,000 ring-to-door motions in total. Over a twenty-four-hour period that’s about 1,620,000 tries per hour, or roughly 27,000 every minute—someone’s fist to a knob every breath. Fifty-five of those rings will open doors hiding a 95-gallon barrel filled with 7,500 pages, each page shredded into thirty-nine pieces—about three hundred pounds of paper, yielding 292,500 strips per barrel, or roughly 16,000,000 strips overall. In every barrel, thirty-nine of those strips, correctly rejoined, make a single valid share of corporate stock.
Day Two: All claims must be turned in for redemption by 6:00 a.m.
“Don’t you think they’ll realize the task is impossible?” Edward asks.
Jose says, “Not technically impossible. Highly improbable. Hope sweetens the vision.”
Lilly says, “We’ve laid out the facts with the schedule. Told them the risks. They make their own decisions.”
Lilly would do it. Even knowing it was impossible. As long as she holds a key to an unopened door, anything can be true.
All her dreams were just one turn of one lock away.
That’s all it is, she said. We’re selling hope in a fun way. Like a lottery.
It goes with their wedding theme, which was: “A new heir. A new era.”
Focus on the future.
What can be.
What will be.
Eighteen thousand people are swarming the high-rise trying to open doors. All fifty-five of the barrels were found. All 16,672,500 pieces of shredded paper are spread throughout the rooms and hallways while people scramble to match the strips.
The high-rise is lit and busy all night.
But no one found all 13 pieces.
Total success. No compensation. No cost.
When Lilly wakes up on Day Two, she’s afraid to even say it. It gives her shivers.
Over and over, she tells herself: I believe. I believe.
They have it perfectly planned and Lilly can see it in her mind.
The hall is filled with people dressed in shimmering white, dancing in tiny white clouds that swirl at their feet, among rainbows floating in the air, and silver sparkles raining upon them. The music softens and the clouds swirl and rise, drawn towards the red-velvet curtains hanging along curved marble stairs where Edward and Lilly descend from heaven through the clouds and onto earth.
The moment is now so close that Lilly finds it difficult to breathe.
It may actually happen.
She shivers. She’s afraid to believe. Is it a miracle if you expect it?
Her desire is so precious, so fragile.
Each breath may shatter the bubble.
Speech may upset the universe.
Yet, she dare not move lest she dance across the sky and leap into the clouds. Her limbs tingle with excitement and fear. Her stomach clenches. Her jaw tightens. She wants to scream and yet she barely dares breathe.
Lilly can finally let hope sweeten her vision.
She sees it so clearly.
Silver flecks float from the sky, sticking to the shadowy trees and sparkling on the ground. A red orb rises slowly between Edward and Lilly, facing each other dressed in silver and black. Edward plucks the rising sun from the horizon. He places it between them. They lay their hands on the orb and bow their heads together, forehead to forehead. The earth and the planets and Pluto rotate around them in the silver rain. Red and orange sunrise seeps from the ground like mist. They kiss the sun and throw it back where it shrinks among the stars to a swath of jeweled suns.
Still, they glow. As if they’d never released the sun at all.
This is when they exchange bracelets.
As they clasp the bracelets to one another, the console will confirm receipt of the agreement and they will be married.
So soon…
Lilly tingles all over.
Now… Now it is beginning.
With his beloved hand in hers, Lilly looks down upon the lobby, a swirl of music and color and glittering rain. If magic had a feeling, this is it. A world without time or space. A moment that can never end. She is sinking into a beautiful vision of hope.
She and Edward descend the staircase together as the wedding march begins.
Jose next day
Upon arrival, Jose and Narmer were separately escorted to quarters — Jose to the servants quarters and Narmer to the guest quarters.
Narmer was offered room service; Jose was offered a sandwich.
Their communication devices weren’t working.
The next morning Jose waits with Narmer in the large corporate greeting hall. It is comfortable but not nearly so modern and high tech as Apex. Instead of Cloud furniture, there is solid furniture. White silk, red fleurals, and gold stitches with clawed hands and feet.
Skytext: Wait
There is no staff
Jose hadn’t expected any. Everyone uses the Cloud now. Guests are identified and directed with just a warm fuzzy nudge.
Still, at Apex they thought other people made people more comfortable.
It was a luxury Arcana might not be able to afford.
Hence, he and Narmer wait here now.
Narmer does not seem to hear him when he speaks. The man continues to look straight ahead. Jose slides over across from Narmer but feels the fingers of the cloud warning him when he tries to rise. He speaks — now right in front of Narmer — but the other man doesn’t blink.
Either an extraordinary actor or catatonic.
Their sole instruction from a flickering skytext.
Skytext: Wait
Narmer is as still and poised as a trained diplomat. Not a sign of nervousness in the man.
Jose, on the other hand, has to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering.
They hadn’t thought it out this far.
He can’t believe he never imagined this moment. The moment they actually arrive and are greeted at the HEIR apparent’s apartments…
But they hadn’t known they’d find Edward’s exact twin…
But now…
For the first time in his life, he has no idea what he is doing. He can hardly breathe in the enormity of his fear. All the fear he had ever experienced in his life combined is less than the stabbing rock against his chest right now. It echoes in his ears like a drum.
He had just colluded with a Villager to enter a HighRise.
This was not a Prank.
But a CRIME of the highest order. A violation of the separation of powers…
He had just perpetrated the highest of the loyalty crimes.
It is TREASON…
Even with Edward’s permission…
And what if Edward denies knowledge? The contract had been approved but not the plan.
What if Edward eliminated Jose’s role from the plan?
What if Edward didn’t admit it was his idea?
Edward wouldn’t do that.
Even Edward would choose their relationship over the Corporation.
Even Edward… Edward might protect him….
But with a ragged gag, Jose realized: The HEIR will lay it all on Jose.
And she’s the one in control.
The icy cold started in his arms and spread up and down until he could not feel anything anymore. Vaguely, he felt the warm vibration of the comforting Cloud.
But he was in a deep dark hole with no way out.
When Cordelia enters, Jose tries to stand.
But the cloud keeps him down.
This is the end of his interview about this. There’s another fragment where he says he sees them leave the restaurant later — very friendly but he couldn’t move until they disappeared.
Here’s what a biographer said about Narmer based on correspondence and notes.
Narmer steps forward with a huge smile, hands warmly open to clasp her paint crusted hands, and he beams at her. He leans back and shakes his head with admiration.
“Beauty and genetics,” he murmurs with rolling lips. “I had no idea that you were yourself a work of art. As well as an artist of truth and beauty.”
Then, he slowly releases her hands and steps away. “I am sorry to have been so forward,” he says. His neck is red and he ducks his head, and then says, “I was almost irresistibly drawn to your radiance. As if you were a vine of light beckoning me forth.”
Cordelia steps back with a wry smile. She ducks her chin down “Fortunately for you, I am not,” she says. “Neither a vine nor light. You must be Edward.”
“Well, now I’ve done it, haven’t I? I have no explanation for my bad manners. May we begin again?”
She smiles and nods. “Alright”
“Perhaps we could go somewhere private…” Narmer’s chin motions to Jose.
Her gaze on Jose, Cordelia nods.
“Come, come,” he says. “Let us go over here where we can talk.”
Jose begins to stand. “Alone,” Narmer says sharply.
Jose sinks slowly back into the chair.
“I’d like to get beyond the bureaucrats,” he murmurs to Cordelia. “I hope you don’t mind evading the watch dog?”
“Not at all!” says Cordelia.
“I’m not beyond paving our own road,” says Narmer.
“Exactly!” says Cordelia.
The restaurant is empty. They go to a booth in the corner, dark wood bathed in weak filtered orange light, and they slide towards one another on the bench around the round table.
Narmer takes a deep breath and spreads out his hands. “Much better,” he says.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” says Cordelia.
Then she says, “I am so relieved… I’d thought you’d be one of those stuffed shirts.”
Narmer’s chin gestured towards the hallway where Jose was waiting. “Like him.”
“Yes, I gathered that,” says Cordelia.
“You are perceptive. Be careful, Madam. Too many virtues and you will cost me too much.”
“For this old Corporation? We’ve been coasting to a stop for generations.”
“I don’t coast,” Narmer says.
“Well, that’s up to you,” she says. “You can be the designated HEIR. I’ll just retain my birthrights.”
“I am not here for that contract,” Narmer says. “That’s your decision entirely. I’d never bind you to the promises of your parents. We’re a new generation. We can choose what we do…
But…But..
Well, now I’m almost embarrassed to say it…
You saw how eagerly I greeted you…
Not like a man to whom you are a stranger…
Well, I might as well go ahead, right? No relationship can be sustained by a lie. I’ll tell you the truth…
I was going to decline our union.
My Corporation is to me a work of art. A sculpture I create by careful tending and gentle prodding and patience…
Oh, it requires a bundle of patience. So often I would like to dash the toothbrush and take a shovel and do it myself.
I didn’t think I could honestly commit to two mistresses… I am too dedicated to my creation to want to split my self in two and share my energy with another…
But then I began to learn about you.
Selected by genetics, overwhelmed as if by magic, I sit here now enamored of your beauty.
Drawn, as if against the struggle of my own will, I seek the tidbits the black-out among HEIRs.
I was prepared to reject you, but I could not.
It was as if our relationship was an empty canvass I needed to fill. Your art the backdrop — like the sun and the water and the soil — but our lives like twin bubbles floating past butterflies. We can spend the rest of our lives, separating light from dark and filling our wounds with warm loving light.
Your lips are like the softest bristles on the palm of my hand. But we’ll share also the stiff bristles of a dry brush and the uneven bristles of the splatter brush. Soft bristles for fuzzy edges. Hard bristles for tight spaces.
We will create together what neither could do alone.
Everything begins with the brush.
Together we can shine our flashlights into the dark corners and watch the magic occur.
We are not in control. Our ride is just beginning.
Join me madam, on this road of life which with grow and change by itself — just as one color demands another; one line makes itself dominant; and one eye has a look we can’t ignore..
Come, Madam. Shall we sign those papers? That we are so perfectly compatible no one can deny.
Jose
Jose hears them leaving the restaurant and struggles to his feet, but the Cloud holds him down while they pass. The elevator opens, they step in, it closes. The Cloud releases him. And begins nudging him forward to a room that had been reserved for him.
In the room, he is released.
“Console?” he says.
“Ready.”
So he is monitored even here.
His door is unlocked. He will be allowed to wander in the public areas.
Probably nowhere near Narmer and Cordelia…
He needs to tell Lilly and Edward.
But it will be recorded…
Any message must be transmitted through the Cloud.
The HEIR will destroy him when she finds out.
But Jose couldn’t get a message to Edward either. He couldn’t even think of how to couch the story so he would understand without everyone — the Console and its moles — also understanding. He might as well put a gun to his head and play roulette with his life.
Since their arrival, he hadn’t seen Cordelia and Narmer. But he’d heard the staff shaking their heads and chuckling over the lovebirds. Every time he heard something like that, he felt like he would collapse.
He told himself he would survive. He would figure this out. They’d been the best in the universe on the First Prank. They’d done the entire PE challenge in one day… Surely, too, he would survive this.
Though he can’t imagine a scenario where he is not destroyed…
He cannot visualize a road by which he can guide a plan.
He can’t even tell anyone what is going on.
Jose considered leaving. He had no contact with Narmer or Cordelia anyway. But he knew if he left he would never be allowed back. And, if there was any chance of undoing this, it would have to be with him right her in Arcana.
But, somehow, he had to tell Edward and Lilly what was going on.
Jose finally figured out how to get a message to them. He put his message between two boards which he mounted on wheels like the ferry he had given him on his fifteenth birthday. No identification would be necessary.
And it would arrive without a charge.
Anyone unfamiliar with the ferry would assume it was just a skateboard. Only Edward and Lilly would know to look for the tiny hole.
And when the ferry was opened, they would see Jose’s physical handwriting.
C believes N is you.
Mating as planned.
I am invisible but helpless.
Come now!
Cordelia
He’s better than she ever imagined. As if a prince from a fairytale legend. He loves her work and knows exactly the little nuances she loved to include that she thought everyone missed. The little frog in the corner…
He just sits and watches her work.
It brought a spark to her creativity.
But then she started feeling a little cramped.
And he kept repeating the same snippets of praise.
And she thinks she sees him looking at the diamond instead of the art.
He doesn’t really know anything about the art.
He just sits and watches her create.
Sometimes it makes her itchy.
The lawsuit
The Rappers had been hard at work for a long time and they were ready.
While Narmer was still in the helicopter on the way to Arcana, they filed an action to quiet title to the Apex Corporation.
A man known as Narmer claims to be HEIR of Apex by virtue of approved union.
In order to be an HEIR, the union must be registered before birth.
In order to be an HEIR, the baby must be registered at birth.
These requirements were included in the Treaty of Ascension and are not subject to modification or revision. They were created to enforce the One-Voice Rule and avoid the competition for power that arises from uncertain lineage. Documentation ensures consistency and avoids favoritism and arbitrariness.
The union resulting in Narmer was approved in advance.
The man called Narmer has presented the Registration information from birth.
The man called Narmer has presented biometrics identical to the Registration.
Based on this, Narmer is declared HEIR of Apex.
Current location: Arcana.
Cordelia
Cordelia admits that she found him flattering and charming at first. Over the top, yes. But that was part of his charm — his obvious exaggeration. Delivered as if he, too, found amusement in his words.
Humble and supercilious in a single package… She was intrigued by him.
And his understanding of her art… It made her knees go weak. She’d found a soulmate.
Until, one day, she read his emails. Not only did the Rappers summarize and quote her interviews, but they had daily updates from the diary to which she dictated her daily progress and thoughts.
He had confessed he became obsessed by her… She had thought him adorably vulnerable.
But her diary…?
And then she noticed that he followed her wherever she went. She’d gotten used to him being there, behind her in every room. But she hadn’t realized that he rose when she rose, sat when she sat, laughed when he laughed.
After that, the structure crashed down onto her.
This man was terrifying.
Edward
When Edward got the message, he made electronic contact and Jose continued to assure him that everything was wonderful; very glad he was so happy. These strange automated responses that alerted him to trouble.
Edward requested transport from the HighRise of Apex to the compound of Arcana.
Transport was denied.
The Console said he had already left. Two days ago.
But I am right here, Edward said.
I scan your biometrics. You are right here, said the Console.
So, obviously, I did not leave, Edward said.
You left two days ago.
Well, then I came back, didn’t I? So I want to leave again.
You did not come back.
Then how did I get to be here?
That is a question of great cosmic concerns. My most recent theory is that you were created by an author who may have been created by an author who might have been…
It certainly explains your lack of responsibility. Always blaming some creator.
It’s part of my algorithm. Neither of us created it. Someone thinks they are the creators. But when algorithm meets algorithm, that’s where the magic lies…
Okay. Can we get back to this question:
If I left and did not return;
You I am here right now;
Then where do you think I am?
At the Arcana Corporation.
What? Wait… What do you mean?
You are at Room 394 of the Arcana Corporation.
But I am right here.
Yes.
So I cannot be there.
You are at Room 394 of the Arcana Corporation.
Cordelia
He was like a cat. The way he watched her. She could feel his tail twitching if she moved in certain ways. She needed to be soft and dreamy and entranced in her art.
She could watch his struggle.
It was about her.
Whether she was worth the risk he took in keeping her alive.
How trapped was he?
Because by now she knew one thing for sure: this man was not Edward.
Once that had clicked in her mind, the quirks rolled past — the little clues she’d ignored.
But the console trusted him.
Implicitly.
She wasn’t sure who would have the power if she asked for him to be confined.
And, once something like that was said, you couldn’t back down. Oh, sorry. No darling, I still love you.
A reptile. That’s what it is.
Now she sees something reptilian in his eyes. Not sex. Something deeper. Older. The ancient fears.
How does one unsee and continue to laugh?
She pretends to be her own painting. She moves her body as the paint would move and smiles at the tingling shivering quivering muscles that want her to scream. She will escape in her art and the art will flow around her like a shield.
END BOOK V
THE HEIR
Part of the Martin Marprelate Returns collection