The coronation robes were heavy, the anointing oil smelled like it had gone bad a century ago, the crown dug into her forehead and chafed, she was sweating, the coronational liturgy was nearly an hour long, and to top it all off, Cardenia’s period had begun last night and right now her cramps were like someone with an iron glove had taken it, wrapped it around her uterus, and squeezed.
Yes, Coronation Day was going along just great for Emperox Grayland II, thanks for asking.
The cathedral in Xi’an—her cathedral, in point of fact, because in addition to being emperox she was the head of the Interdependent Church, technically the Cardinal of Xi’an and Hub, and thus had to have her own cathedral—was a vast space, made of stone and glass in the Early Interdependence style. Cardenia mused on the incongruity of a massive edifice of stone constructed inside of a space station, but not for too long, lest the incongruity of Xi’an entire, with its hills, streams, and forests, with administrative buildings, housing corridors, and commerce artfully tucked away to avoid the impression of clutter, send her into delirious giggles.
Xi’an Cathedral had room for thousands in its pews and today of all days those pews were filled. Representatives from all of the interdependent states, guild families, celebrities, and princes of the Interdependent Church looked on, presumably reverently, as Archbishop Gunda Korbijn droned through the liturgy. At one point Cardenia noted that Korbijn had a speaker set into her left ear canal, revealing that even the archbishop couldn’t be relied upon to know the entire ceremony by heart. This relieved Cardenia somewhat and made everything slightly more human-scaled.
Cardenia did not herself have a speaker in her ear, but then her role in the event was oddly limited: walk and sit. She had processed down the nave of Xi’an Cathedral in a relatively simple imperial green suit, stopped at the transept, and waited for Korbijn to offer her opening prayer and homily, and her invitation for Cardenia—for Grayland II, rather—to join her on the chancel. A stool for kneeling had been set in its center, above a mosaic of the imperial seal. Cardenia kneeled, bowed her head, and waited for things to be put on her by Korbijn and her assistants.
First, the aforementioned anointing oil, which almost made her gag with its smell. Then a ceremonial scarlet robe and a golden braid with a medallion, the braid being the symbol of the Interdependent Church and medallion featuring a phoenix, the personal symbol of the prophet. With that she was declared the cardinal of Xi’an and Hub, and thus, the head of the Interdependent Church.
Next came a key on a smaller golden chain, symbolizing access to the rooms of parliament, which resided at the other end of Xi’an from the imperial palace, symbolizing (in theory if not always in practice) the independence of the parliament from the emperox. This independence was in part belied by the fact that the emperox was always the minister of parliament for Xi’an, a seat that was generally considered honorary and ceremonial but which in fact had the same voting privileges as any other. It was tradition for the emperox to abstain from voting on any legislation, including legislation they were known to favor (legislation they disliked they would simply veto). But every once in a while an emperox would record a vote, to the scandal of the rank-and-file parliamentarians.
After the key came a signet ring, the size of a small rock, which symbolized Cardenia’s ascendance to the role of matriarch of the House of Wu. This was a role formally separate from Cardenia’s role as emperox; while the House of Wu was the imperial dynasty, it was also a guild family, with monopolies on starship construction and military weaponry and services. One could very easily say that the House of Wu was the imperial house because of these particular monopolies. As emperox, Cardenia would not be actively involved in the day-to-day running of the house monopolies; those would be administered by a board of cousins who would resent her interference. But she was the one with the Wu signet nonetheless, worn on the left hand to leave room for the imperial signet on the right.
Which came next, a ring even larger than the one for the House of Wu, along with a ceremonial scepter tipped with an emerald the size of a fist, and a crown of rubies, diamonds, and emeralds, signifying the church, the parliament, and the imperial house, which was heavy as hell and which started chafing Cardenia almost immediately. The scepter, crown, and signet also marked her as Queen of Hub and the Associated Nations, a lesser title. Cardenia also held dukedoms and earldoms and a few baronies which were salted away among the various interdependent states, which she would have almost nothing ever to do with directly.
For each step Korbijn said something ceremonial, said more as she was laying the object on Cardenia, and even more afterward, followed by a prayer or small homily, or both. After a certain early point Cardenia, sweating and cramping, started wishing that she could have just filed a form.
Korbijn turned and looked directly at Cardenia, and now, finally, she was required to do something besides kneel there.
“Arise, Grayland II, Emperox of the Holy Empire of the Interdependent States and Mercantile Guilds, Queen of Hub and Associated Nations, Head of the Interdependent Church, Successor to Earth and Mother of All, Eighty-eighth Emperox of the House of Wu, and proclaim your reign,” Korbijn said, and then stood aside.
Cardenia took a breath and rose, using the scepter briefly to stabilize herself, the first and possibly last time the scepter would offer any practical use. Upon the completion of the ceremony, all the accouterment of the coronation would be (thankfully) stripped off her and sent back into their storage vault, to await the next coronation of the next emperox, whomever they might be. But for now they lay heavy on her.
That’s not at all symbolic, she thought.
She turned, to face the assembly of nobles, notables, and representatives. The executive committee, save Korbijn, in the front row of pews. Behind them, representatives from the House of Wu, and among them, looking wildly out of place, her uncle Brendan Patrick and her cousins Moira and Justin, representing her mother. Hannah Patrick would not hear of her daughter’s ascendance for weeks, and would hear it simultaneously to the news of her enlargement to become Baroness of Tacuarembó, a courtesy title from one of the emperox’s own holdings. This title would probably simultaneously annoy and tickle her mother.
Several rows back sat Naffa Dolg, with her family of republicans. Cardenia was touched that despite their opposition to imperial rule in a general sense, they still came out to support her, and their daughter. Between Naffa’s row and the close pews with the Wus sat the matriarchs and patriarchs of various guild families, nobles all.
And, in the third row, Amit and Nadashe Nohamapetan, both of them staring fixedly at Cardenia as if she were a long-term project, or a side of meat.
Or both, Cardenia thought.
Behind her, Archbishop Korbijn cleared her throat quietly, as if to say, Get on with it.
“I, Cardenia Wu-Patrick, having accepted these instruments of church and state, as is my right, become Grayland II, emperox, queen, head of church, successor to Earth, and mother to all. May the tenets of Interdependency, laid forth by the Prophet, bring continued peace and prosperity to all.”
“Long live the emperox,” came the reply, from the first pew to the rafters, followed by immense cheering, which Cardenia, through the sweat and cramps, still managed to enjoy.
Music swelled; the “March of the Prophetess” by Higeliac, written in the third century FI, swelled, performed by a chamber orchestra cleverly hidden in one of the transept alcoves in order to allow more pews to be placed in the cathedral. The boxed-up orchestra had its efforts played through speakers; the coronation audience stood, still cheering, as Grayland II took her first steps, down from the chancel, down the nave, and quickly down a side corridor, where assistants were waiting to escort her to a small office to divest her of crown, scepter, and other nonsense, and the imperial bodyguards to post themselves by the door.
“I thought that went well, Your Majesty,” Naffa said to her.
Cardenia looked up, confused, as she was being stripped down. “I just saw you in the audience.”
“That’s because I was just in the audience.”
“How did you get here so quickly?”
“Because it’s my job,” Naffa said, and magically a clipboard appeared. “How are you doing?”
“Tell me I never have to do this again.”
“It’s exceedingly rare for an emperox to have two coronation ceremonies, so, yes. You will never have to do this again.”
“Now tell me I can go home.”
“As the emperox owns Xi’an itself, technically speaking you are home.”
“There’s a terrifying thought.”
“In more prosaic fashion, however, you may not go home yet. In the next ten minutes, you must change into the formal uniform Dochae here is now showing you—” Naffa nodded toward the assistant, who indeed had a very formal uniform at the ready. “—and then you must go to the presentation balcony to wave to the tens of thousands of people who are currently ruining the lawn of the cathedral in the hope of seeing you. You’ll be up there for five minutes and then we go back to the palace where you will have an hour’s worth of five-minute audiences with a minute between them, and another hour of ten-minute audiences with two minutes between them. Then you are to arrive at your coronation celebration, at which point you will give a short address—”
Cardenia groaned.
“—which I have already prepared for you and which no one will listen to anyway because it is not of consequence, and then for the rest of your celebration you’ll spend three hours in a receiving line, shaking hands and having pictures and video taken with everyone, which I suspect is exactly the hell you imagine it will be. Then and only then will you be able to relax and eat something, so I suggest that while Dochae here helps you into that new uniform, that you also eat the protein bars she has for you. And maybe drink some water.”
“Do I get to relieve myself?”
“There’s a lavatory here. Door to your left. Before you ask, it’s stocked with everything you need at the moment.”
“Thank you. I’m glad someone remembers I am still actually a human.”
“Of course. Take your time as long as your time is under a minute.”
Cardenia groaned again and headed toward the lavatory.
Seven minutes later Cardenia’s coronation outfit was packed, her post-coronation outfit was on and surprisingly comfortable, and her phalanx of bodyguards was surrounding her in the elevator taking her up to the cathedral’s observatory deck, where her presentation balcony awaited. Cardenia looked around her and realized that outside of the palace itself, she was likely never to be alone in an elevator ever again.
The elevator door opened and there was Naffa again, standing in front of the alcove that was the presentation balcony.
“You have to stop doing that,” Cardenia said. “It’s creepy.”
“Relax. I took up the elevator on the other side. It has its own set of bodyguards.”
“Welcome to my world.”
“I’ve been in it a while. I hope you noticed.”
Cardenia laughed, stepped to exit the elevator, and then was knocked back into the elevator as the presentation balcony exploded. She was unconscious before her body slammed into the elevator’s back wall.
* * *
“There’s a very real possibility that the Flow streams that connect the Interdependency will collapse during your reign,” Attavio VI, Cardenia’s father, or rather the computer projection of him, said to Cardenia in her dream.
Cardenia was aware she was dreaming; Cardenia was also aware that the dream was, for the moment at least, replaying her first conversation in the Memory Room. She was not aware of how or when it was that she fell asleep, and the part of her brain that was lucid enough to register that she was in a dream was strongly shying away from thinking about it that much. Go with this conversation. It’s safe, that part of her brain seemed to be saying, so Cardenia did, saying her part of the conversation again as if reading off a script.
“How will that happen?” Cardenia asked.
“I’m not a scientist,” Attavio VI said. “But the Count of Claremont is. He’s been collecting data for three decades now. He sends me updates from time to time. The data he’s collected suggests that the stability of the Flow is an illusion and that over a long enough timescale everything shifts, and that we’re about to enter a period of shifts. He says it’s already been happening slowly, and it’s about to start happening very quickly indeed. It’s happened before.”
“To Dalasýsla. When the first Grayland was emperox.”
Attavio VI nodded. “Yes. She was given information, just like I have been given information—information you’ll now have access to.”
“She had information, but why didn’t she act on it? If she knew they were about to lose the stream to Dalasýsla, why didn’t she do something about it?”
“I could tell you, but you can ask her yourself.”
Cardenia blinked at this. “She’s in here?”
“Of course.”
“She was lost in the Flow. I didn’t think she existed.”
“She updated before her final trip. Everything but those last few days is in here.”
This took Cardenia aback. On one hand it made sense. On another, the idea of a person being … incomplete was odd. “Jiyi, show me Emperox Grayland I.”
A shimmer and a tall, wide woman appeared and walked toward Cardenia.
“You’re Emperox Grayland I,” Cardenia asked.
“Yes,” the woman said.
“You … know what happened to you? How you died?”
“I’m aware of the information, yes.”
“How do you feel about it?” This was all an aside, but Cardenia had to know.
“I don’t feel anything about it. I’m a computer simulation of a person. That said, given what I know about it, I imagine the actual Emperox Grayland I was exceptionally pissed about it.”
This made Cardenia smile. Then she got back on track. “You knew the Flow stream for Dalasýsla was collapsing.”
“I was given models by scientists that suggested that the stream was in danger of collapsing, yes. Given the data and my understanding of it, I thought it was possible, and likely.”
“But you didn’t evacuate the Dalasýsla system.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Politics,” Grayland said. “Evacuating the twenty million people who lived in the Dalasýsla system would have required immense planning and capital on the part of the Interdependency. There was no will for it.”
“The parliament didn’t want to save the lives of twenty million people?”
“They didn’t see it as a matter of saving those lives. They considered it a matter of someone they saw as a weak emperox trying to manufacture a crisis, as a way of shifting the balance of power away from the parliament. They also saw it as a threat to trade and the economy, since a large number of ships would need to be committed to an evacuation, at a huge cost.”
“What about the data showing the possibility of a collapse?”
“They held a commission which featured other Flow physicists poking holes in the findings, introducing enough doubt to undermine any political drive to do anything. Even the representatives from Dalasýsla voted down my recommendation to begin an evacuation. What eventually passed was a recommendation for further study. But money wasn’t appropriated in the imperial budget for that further study, so nothing came of it.”
“So—” So you did nothing, Cardenia was going to say, but then stopped because it would be rude and would make Grayland almost instantly defensive. Then she remembered she was talking to a computer who didn’t have feelings. “So you did nothing.”
“I sent the local duchess an advisory, and told the military and local imperial bureaucrats to assist, on an expedited basis, any Dalasýslans who wanted to leave.”
“And did they?”
“We don’t know. The Flow stream collapsed almost immediately after I sent the advisory.”
“So twenty million people died because of politics and bureaucracy.”
“Yes. Not immediately, of course. But the intentional nature of the Interdependency is that each system is reliant on the others for essentials. Remove one system, and its ruling house and monopoly, and the dozens of other systems will survive. But that one system will not. Over time it will begin to fail. The habitats in space and outposts on otherwise uninhabitable planets and moons will fall into disrepair and over time will become harder to fix. Farms and food production factories will also start to fail. Social networks will break down predictably, commensurate to failures of the physical plant and the realization that ultimately nothing can save the people in the cut-off system. Between the physical and social failures that will follow the collapse of the Flow stream, system-wide death is inevitable.”
“How long did it take?”
“When the Dalasýsla collapse happened, I ordered radio observatories in the Kaipara system to train in on Dalasýsla. Kaipara was the closest system by physical distance, seventeen light-years away. I was dead before they heard anything.”
“But they heard something.”
“Briefly. Most in-system communication in my era was through focused streams of data, so it would have been difficult to eavesdrop randomly. When I ordered the radio telescopes to listen I hoped someone at Dalasýsla would have the presence of mind to point a wide-spectrum transmitter at Kaipara. And as I understand it, someone did, for about a month, two years after the collapse.”
“What did it say?”
“Basically: civil war, murder, violence, sabotage of life-support systems and food production, the rise of cults of personality. There’s a classified report that was prepared by my son and successor, Bruno III.”
“Classified?” Cardenia turned to Attavio VI. “Is it still classified?”
“I didn’t unclassify it, no,” Attavio said.
“Why not? Especially if you believe the Flow is in danger of collapsing?”
“Because the problems that existed in Grayland’s era exist in ours, or mine, I should say. The parliament would still see raising the concern as a political move to marginalize them. No one wants to disrupt trade or the privileges of the guild houses. And in this case it won’t be just one system, like Dalasýsla. It will be all of them. There won’t be anywhere to run. What happened at Dalasýsla will happen everywhere. Unless I was absolutely sure, I wasn’t going to open that particular box of trouble.”
And here is where Cardenia, in her dream, departed from her script. “This is all stupid,” she said, to Attavio VI and Grayland I. “We’re doomed only if we keep doing what we’re doing. If we know a collapse is coming, we have to reform the Interdependency. End the house monopolies. Help every system prepare for the collapse.”
“It won’t happen,” Attavio VI said.
“You don’t know that.”
“Of course I know that. I’m the emperox. Or was.”
Cardenia turned to Grayland I. “You saw a collapse happen. In your time, they must have responded.”
“I was assassinated,” Grayland I said. “And after a brief vogue for entertainment about the lost system of Dalasýsla, everyone decided to forget about it. The other Flow streams looked stable, and thinking about Dalasýsla was inconvenient.”
“No one wants the Interdependency to end. Including the House of Wu. There’s too much money and power at stake,” Attavio VI said.
“And the survival of humanity doesn’t matter?” Cardenia asked, incredulously.
“Not if it means the end of the Interdependency.”
“The survival of humanity was the point of the Interdependency!” Cardenia shouted, at the computer simulation of her father.
And this is where, in her dream, both Attavio VI and Grayland I laughed in her face.
“My child, that’s never been the point of the Interdependency,” Attavio VI said.
“It’s just the excuse we gave for it,” Grayland I affirmed, nodding.
“Then what is the point?” Cardenia asked, still shouting. “What is the Interdependency?”
And here there was another shimmer, and another figure walked toward Cardenia, a figure that Cardenia knew was meant to be Rachela I, prophet-emperox, the legendary founder of the Interdependency. It was meant to be Rachela I but looked like Naffa, Naffa who had been caught in the explosion of the presentation balcony, Naffa, the last sight of whom that Cardenia would ever have was her being torn apart by the blast, Naffa, covered in blood, who stood in front of Cardenia now, as Rachela I, to tell her what the Interdependency was and is.
“It’s a scam,” she said.
And then Cardenia, who even dreaming could no longer pretend not to know what had happened, willed herself awake, to find herself in a bed in her own very small, very secure private hospital, surrounded by imperial bodyguards, a phalanx of doctors led by Qui Drinin, and a small contingent of imperial guards, including the one, right there, who would tell her what she already knew, that her friend Naffa Dolg was dead.