The Governess

There is no way to know what will be needed to survive the desolation that has occurred at my hands because of what I could not keep to myself, what I could not un-feel.

This little black book might once have contained my daily notes and tasks, but now it only reflects my feelings. There is no one left to read it. There is no one left to heed my orders. It is an act of vanity, not a record for posterity. I speak only to myself, in isolation, alone.

I am writing now from the safety of my bunker, a seemingly endless cavern twisting beneath the ground into rooted rooms of stone and metal, perhaps my final resting place if my plan does not go to accord. I do not yet know if anyone else is here besides me. It is possible they are looking for me. I have not left my chambered suite since I arrived, and do not intend to for some time still. The only thing that could draw me out into the labyrinth is further failure.

I have gone from governing a feudal nation-state to attempting clandestine rebellion against the evergarchs to losing all of those dearest to me in the process. What was once my country above is now a devastation, the glass and ashes of my compact with those who betrayed me. I exist in total self-imposed exile, for my own safety, and out of shame at my failure. But I will not remain here forever.

There were dreams we shared together, my lovers and I. We dreamed of returning power to the people, of giving back what we had taken from them and fleeing the evergarchs who held us in place from generation to generation. It is possible we could have done little to disabuse the serfs of the notion that we were cruel to them. If only they could have seen that we were also controlled. They were not allowed to see behind the veil that shrouded the true work of the governors and governesses. We limited this vision even amongst our most trusted Knights.

It is true we lived richly, not needing for anything. Our chosen Knights were loyal and powerful. Despite our best intentions, we were not allowed to extend this comfort or we would be replaced. We knew this because some of us were sent here as replacements. Through the ancient waypoints dispersed by our ancestors throughout the Indolirian Archipelago, we were sent as emissaries of the evergarchs to collect for them, and were guaranteed local power in return.

Our communications across the waypoints were disrupted by their encasement some time ago. Our magnificent star network of hundreds of worlds, with people and technologies as diverse as the plants and animals spread between the tropics and the arctics of my own world, was shattered. Only the evergarchs’ closest servants passed through to deliver mandates and intimidate the governors. Apparently some had thought to deviate from their assignments. I do not know who started the deviation, only that I soon followed.

Where before we might have touched and passed through the ancient stones to step into the light of a distant star on the soil of a different planet, now we would find ourselves passing into total darkness, reaching out an arm’s length from the stone in any direction to find a barrier, unbreakable. The anger I felt, knowing that we were totally cut off from the Archipelago without reason, was immense.

However, we had long suspected that there might be other unknown waypoints to pass through, and I sent my agents to find them.

Betrayal took its time, but it did arrive. I was able to warn two of my lovers to hide before the attack. I have heard from neither of them, and now cannot. The web of my compassion, so intricately spun over decades, was torn asunder in an instant, by those who care nothing for the individual beyond themselves. All of my lovers are gone now, dead or running for their lives. I know that I will never see or speak to any of them again, feel their touch, the gentle caress of their hands, their lips upon mine. I can dwell on this no longer, or I may begin to regret the path I walk.

I saw the first beam flash down from an unknown satellite, something that may have been in orbit that we were unable to observe, or tricked to ignore, begin to vaporize the harbor’s water at the mouth of the valley. I felt only mild shock, knowing deep down that it had been coming, quickly quelling my fear for my loved ones, my staff and advisors and brave lovers who had all followed my orders. They were on their own. The lords above could no longer intimidate me. I had known that our gentle clouds would be parted by some heavenly terror. This was only a warning shot, this killing of thousands of innocents, the evergarchs lancing my valley to punish me for my thoughts of rebellion. This outcome had always been on the table, though I had lied to myself that I could not bring it upon us.

_______

I now know myself to be an aberration in my line, an anomaly that cannot be accounted for by the evergarchs’ eugenicists or by the cultural sterilists, those who would contain us to perform the mandates given by our lords, the evergarchs, those who live forever and take forever, giving us in return a semblance of peace and prosperity. Most of us only ever want to be told what to do, how to be, how to act. We all desire a mandate, so as to calm our own existential horror at the fact that everything we do may be meaningless. If only we could be validated by those in power! If only we could be told that we are doing well, and be rewarded.

Such was my given role as the Governess of Alokatt. I was raised with a mandate, though I did not care for it in particular. I was to continue the project of the evergarchs, and to deny the serfs their freedoms if they did not deliver the required product. I was to punish them if they were to question their end of the deal. I gave them their freedoms and destroyed their lives when they interpreted that freedom as something that it was not. For decades I felt nothing until a young farmer owed twenty thousand dollars worth of product that he could not account for, and I discovered that I had been mistaking my mandate for something akin to divine power.

I was shocked into awakening.

I saw the error of my ways as I gave the order to have the man’s left hand taken from him, severed on the floor of the court in front of me by my highest Knight with the man’s own wife and small child watching. I saw what I could not see, countless times before, as the young man cradled his bloody stump, and another of my officers was brought before him to cauterize the wound, the wife stock-still and as white as the silk bedsheets I slept upon every night. I saw that for all of our technology, for all of our ability to communicate across the stars, and to participate in the give and take of the Archipelago’s economy of riches, we were still medieval, enforcing power through the old ways, the spilling of blood and the gristly tearing of flesh from others. Those of us we tore flesh from were no different from ourselves. This young man in front of me, and his wife, and his child, they were the same as me.

I felt then as if I had had my own hand chopped off in front of me. I felt a break in my mind, like a horrible wound that had scarred over had been freshly opened, and the thoughts spilled forth into a delusion. I could change all of this. I could free the people of this fiefdom. The encasement of the waypoints was by no means a way of entrapping us here... it was a challenge to escape.

I tasked my brightest officers with finding a new waypoint so that we could begin to run, as perhaps our ancestors had run from their own homeworld to scatter across the stars. Seeding the Archipelago with waypoints, I imagined, could have been precipitated by the desire to escape, just as my own desire now called for me to transform this country, to begin to make amends for the injustice I had carried out, like a coward, like a servant, in the name of the lords who ruled my life. The memory of the young farmer and his family haunted me. To no one’s surprise except the young man whose arm I had taken, we were able to recover the stolen product, from one of the man’s brothers, and I ordered him released to his family for their judgment. I was finished judging others as I once had.

For months, for years, nothing was found. We launched satellites and scoured the planet, and did not let slip to our allies our mission. There was to be no talk, for fear that it would make its way back to the evergarchs who would kill us or worse—for yes, though death is the ultimate punishment for one of the evergarchs, they deal in far harsher punishments to those who dare to disobey them.

Eventually there was a sign of something in the water, a signature not unlike some of the earlier waypoints that we knew of, which gave off signals that were fading but traceable. I sent a team to begin its recovery. It was brought to several more locations, each by a different team, until finally one man would drive it alone to its final destination where the only person I trusted could test its functionality.

That man was not allowed the honor to drive the waypoint. I drove it myself. I chose him to be the final bringer of the waypoint because of my knowledge of him as the traitor who betrayed our plan to an ally across the Greater Sea. A formerly trusted high advisor, it was necessary to entrust him with the honor of this final task, alone, so that he not suspect my coming revenge, and so the trail would run cold before I took the waypoint myself to my current location. Unlike for the young man whose arm I ordered to be taken from him, I do not feel remorse. Just because I had a change of heart, nay, an empathic break, does not mean that there are no necessary evils left to perform.

The waypoint rests with me now. Its only record is here, in this black book, and in my mind. No one has yet touched it to cross over. I will stay here with it until I am sure that no one travels the halls of my bunker, and then I will pass through. I will leave this world behind, coward that I am, and no one will follow. I hope that it is not encased; I hope it does not lead me to somewhere worse than here. I hope that I do not wake from sleep to find someone who has passed through it to my chamber.

My lovers are dead; my country is destroyed. I did not fail to win the hearts and minds of those who could change all of this with me. I simply underestimated the will of the evergarchs to correct any deviations, swiftly and totally.

I will not underestimate their will again. I will run, as far and for as long as I can, until I am one of them.