Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  “…a hard worker, bless her heart. She’s a good girl. Makes her father proud, she does. I promise you, your honor, you’ve never seen talent like hers.”

  Amanda tilted her head back up towards the governor and found him peering at her with polite disinterest. The poor man no doubt had grand affairs to attend to. He had no time to sit astride his horse in the middle of a poor miller’s land on a hot summer day in those beautifully rich clothes surrounded by servants to hear her father go on about how talented she was. Amanda had her share of skill when it came to artificial intelligence and mechanics, that was true enough. More than probably any other girl for five-score miles. But it was rudimentary skill. She could work the mill generator and make tweaks here and there to its AI here and there; nothing that would be of any interest to someone like Governor Byron Weaver.

  But her father never would see it that way. He didn’t know that the kind of work she did was nothing like the kind of work that someone with dreams as big and as wide as this man’s would need. He only wanted a life for her away from mills and endless summer days grinding wheat until they finally could rest before beginning another day.

  Bless his heart.

  She sighed, and interjected. “Your honor, allow me to apologize for the interruption of your ride. Do make the most of the rest of your day.”

  The governor tipped his silk cap to her then addressed himself to her father. “I thank you for the opportunity to meet your daughter, sir. I wish I could help you, but I’m afraid that New England is tightening restrictions on workers from out of state. It would be impossible to employ her in any capacity.” He drained the dregs from the chipped cup and handed it back to her father. “I thank you for the refreshment. Can I pay you for your trouble?”

  She cut in before her father could reply in the affirmative. “No need. It’s our honor to serve you, sir.”

  Governor Weaver tipped his cap to her with a smile. “I am grateful. Now if you will excuse me, we must return before nightfall…”

  “One more thing,” her father cut in, her poor, stupid, well-meaning father. “Did I mention just how talented she is?”

  “As you say, I am sure she is overflowing with talent, sir. Now I bid you…”

  “She can take the most worthless bits of junk and create high-functioning AI machines worthy of any technician’s jealousy.”

  The governor stopped his courteous dismissal and a spark of interest lit in his eyes.

  That was the moment that Amanda should have spoken up and denied this absurd affirmation. She could barely fashion the most basic programming for the mill. She knew nothing of more complex creations or how to make anything that would meet even the barest qualifications of “high-functioning.” Programs she created could follow a single or perhaps double protocol, but they could not learn, and they certainly couldn’t understand how to perform more than twenty different tasks. This was a field that, from what she could discern from the papers, was barely being touched by the most advanced inventors.

  So it was absurd to think that a poor, uneducated miller’s daughter could succeed where the best minds had failed.

  This most likely was the reason she didn’t speak up. Regardless, she kept silent.

  “I say,” the governor remarked. “That is intriguing. Do you have anything you could show me?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but her father cut in. “I wish so, your honor, but the small things she has had time to make have been sold.”

  That statement, isolated, was not untrue. She had made some small machines, mainly programs to help run generators, like the one they used for the mill. But they were not even close to high-functioning.

  Her father probably just didn’t know what high-functioning meant.

  The governor sighed before she could figure out the most gracious way to deny the claim. “If this is true… if it were up to me I would employ her on the spot. But as I said, New England has laws against employing anyone outside the state. I can’t afford to run afoul of the labor unions right now. Not while everyone knows I want more automation in the workplace.” He pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and drew it across his forehead. Then his eyes met hers. They were brown eyes, she could see even from the distance of her spot on the ground to his place on the horse. “I am truly sorry. Perhaps I can find some other way to advance your career.”

  Her heart sank most illogically. “Understandable, your honor. Thank you for your time.”

  The man tipped his hat to them each in turn. “Good day. And best wishes.”

  Then the forest of horse legs began to move, and the party shuffled away into the forest of trees.

  Amanda watched after them until they had vanished, then she turned to her father, opting in the moment not to address his lies or misconceptions, whichever they were. He had good intentions. No harm had come of his bragging.

  “Come on, papa. Let’s finish up.”

  He turned and followed her into the mill, which was grinding air in their absence.

  “Fifty. Two. Percent. Power. Generated,” greeted the voice as she walked in.

  She breathed, and took her place at the crank again.

  Amanda could barely remember the war. Perhaps she could not remember it at all. Sometimes, when she slept, she had a dream of being very small and hiding under the table while soldiers stormed the house demanding provisions. These were the New England soldiers, and her parents always gave them what they needed. Usually her father would go, shaking, to the pantry to retrieve anything they could spare, and her mother would crawl under the table to hold her close.

  Or perhaps it was only a dream, built from faint memories of her mother and stories she’d heard of raids on neighboring farms.

  Three nights after the governor’s visit, she had the dream and woke up suddenly, heart pounding. Fingers shaking, she touched the pearls underneath her cotton nightgown and ran her fingers along the bumpy, cold surface.

  She was an adult. The war was over. Her mother was dead. What had once been the United States had become New England, the Confederation, the States of Virginia, and the New Union. They even all cooperated fairly decently, despite widely differing views on technology, industrialization, and human alterations.

  She sat up in bed and swung her legs over the side, then wrapped her mother’s old dressing gown around her. It always felt like a threadbare hug, and she still imagined it held her mother’s lingering scent, though of course that had long since ceased to be true.

  She snuck downstairs to the mill. It too seemed dead; dark and motionless in the scant moonlight that filtered through the stone-framed windows.

  The generator lights blinked green, showing a minimal percentage of power still conserved.

  There had to be some way to improve the ratio of cranking to power generation. There had to be some way to train the AI to use power more efficiently than it did.

  Even if there wasn’t, it would take her mind off the war, and her mother, and all the missed opportunities.

  She turned the AI on, set it to silent so as not to awaken her father in the next room, rolled up her sleeves, and delved into the program.

  Maybe if she had been born in New England, it would have been different. There, any talent she had would have had the ability to be truly cultivated. But the States frowned on automation, especially when it came to removing jobs from needy workers. And when an issue had been big enough to tear a country apart in war, people tended to be a little sensitive about it.

  So Amanda had to be satisfied with what little work she could apply to the mill itself.

  Not that New England was free of prejudice. Sure, altered humans might not be entirely embraced in the States, but in New England they could barely even live. Not allowed to get an education, get a job, patronize public places, marry, or even adopt children.

  How backwards.

  Amanda wrinkled her nose. She’d much rather be a part of a state that tolerated people who had to accept mechanical alterations t
han one that allowed further technological advances.

  Or so she told herself.

  The work kept at least a large chunk of her mind anchored, keeping her from following a thousand lines of thought at once. This calmed her to the point that when her father shook her awake in the early morning light, she didn’t even remember drifting off to sleep with her back against the generator.

  She blinked up at him.

  “Rise and shine, Mandy,” her father said.

  She shuffled to her feet and said something that was meant to be “I’ll go get dressed” but came out garbled.

  Half an hour later, she was washed and dressed and ready to begin the grind again. Grind. She chuckled to herself but didn’t bother to say it aloud.

  Thus began another day.

  The sun shone high in the sky before Amanda felt, rather than saw, a shadow cast over the mill’s floor. She looked up, expecting to have to explain to a customer why his flour was not quite ready.

  Instead, her eyes met Governor Weaver’s handsome brown ones.

  She jerked her hands from the crank as though it burned her.

  He mouthed, “Can we talk?”

  II.

  Be Our Guest

  Life took unexpected turns sometimes. Not often. At least, not for Amanda. Most of her life had been fairly predictable. There were two exceptions. Her mother’s death of consumption when she was six, and being taken by the governor of New England to be his wife.

  Conditionally, of course.

  She blinked in the sunset light that streamed through the stone windows.

  That morning, she had awakened in her own bed in her little room above the mill. By evening, she had been whisked away to the capitol of the neighboring state and locked away in a barren room with piles and piles of junk.

  All because her father either was anxious to be rid of her, or he truly was as stupid as he sometimes looked.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. That wasn’t fair. Her father wasn’t stupid exactly. He was merely ignorant. It couldn’t be helped. He always had been.

  After that initial surprise, she and her father had seated Governor Weaver at their table in the dining room behind the mill and listened while he talked.

  “I think I may have found a way,” he’d told them. “I can’t hire someone from another state, I really can’t in the current political climate. But…” here he looked a little bit uncomfortable, “if I were to marry this person… they would be a citizen of New England, and that would be much more acceptable.”

  Amanda had only stared.

  Her father, bless his heart, instead of telling the governor he was raving mad, asked for more information.

  “I know emigration seems simpler,” the governor said, answering her question before she asked it, “but the current process takes months or years, and I think it would be viewed with suspicion. But a marriage…” He shrugged. “No one dares inquire into matters… of the heart.”

  He really was mad. Handsome, but mad.

  “When would you be ready to take her?” her father asked, but Amanda pressed a hand on his arm. She probably pressed a little too hard.

  “Papa, may I speak with you alone for a moment?”

  “Excuse us,” her father said, and they exited to the mill. Amanda closed the door behind them.

  “Papa,” she said, close to his ear to be heard over the grinding of the mill, “I don’t know how to make high-functioning AI. Besides, I’m not going to marry a stranger.”

  He whispered back, his whiskers tickling her ear. “But Mandy dear, I know you can do it. You’re the smartest girl this side of the Potomac.”

  Flattering. And quite possibly true. But, “I really can’t.”

  “Have you ever tried?”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “Then you don’t know that!” He nodded sagely at her.

  She sighed. “Papa… even if that were true, I’m not going to marry someone just to be able to work on technology.” What was he thinking? She would just go live in this handsome man’s lavish house and do whatever she pleased whenever she pleased and contribute to the advance of technology in ways she’d only dreamed of?

  Not that it sounded entirely miserable.

  “You wouldn’t really be marrying him,” her father said. “Didn’t he make plain it was just a formality? So you can work for him.”

  “But Papa, then I won’t be able to marry anyone else.”

  “I know, but… what better is there for you?”

  The words dropped her heart straight to the floor. What better was there for her, anyhow?

  Would getting away from the mill be so bad?

  She frowned and shook the thoughts away. She was as mad as the two of them. “No, Papa. I told you, I don’t know how to do it.”

  She hated the disappointment in his eyes. “It’s up to you, Mandy. You know you’re always welcome here.”

  Those words didn’t bring her heart back to her chest, where it belonged.

  She went back into the room where the governor sat drinking the tea she’d made.

  He turned as she entered and flashed a charming smile. “Well?”

  This was when she should politely decline.

  Curse those eyes. She had gotten lost in the flutter of her heart for just long enough. After all, her father was right. She’d seen images of Governor Weaver’s home in the papers. She knew the nearly royal lifestyle he lived. But she never expected him to look at her with such a depth of interest in those eyes. She had never expected him to look at her at all.

  What better would there be, anyway?

  “I’ll do it,” she said, throwing the words at him before she could stuff them down again.

  Thus she sat on the edge of a plain bed in a spacious stone room, staring at a hundred thousand scraps of metal. They had given her tools before they locked her there. A welder. Pliers. Things she would have known how to use if she were just repairing some of the mill’s mechanism, but nothing that gave her even the slightest bit of direction when it came to building even the most basic AI machine.

  She hadn’t allowed herself to think when he’d literally swept her off her feet and onto his horse. And she had continued not thinking when she’d waved goodbye until her father faded, and then the mill itself became a speck in the fields.

  She was mad. Stark, raving mad.

  She had to breathe. Later, if indeed she could do nothing close to what he needed, she could say that she had been mistaken. That she hadn’t understood what was meant by high-functioning AI. That she was only a stupid miller girl who didn’t know any better.

  This was just a ride. A ride to the palace. At any moment, she could make it end.

  There was no binding contract, whether auditory or written. When her father had suggested they record the agreement, the governor had shaken his head.

  “No,” he said. “If this is to work, the true nature of the union must remain between us. But I am a man of my word. I will give your daughter the opportunity to show me her skills, and if it’s anywhere near what you have said, I will legally marry her.”

  All in all, she was grateful for the secrecy. It freed her from the possibility of prosecution when she failed. Or admitted the truth.

  But with every passing moment, it grew harder to speak up. Small talk with Governor Weaver was easy. The ride was delightful. And when they approached the palace—she wanted to see the inside so badly. Surely she could wait just a little longer before correcting the mistake.

  Her heart fluttered all over again when he helped her off her horse. He talked pleasantly with her as he led her in on his arm—and her breath had been whisked away the instant she stepped inside. The mansion was so huge and beautiful and clean. It was so bright. The art on the walls was like nothing she’d ever seen outside a newspaper. The servants’ clothes were so much cleaner and more beautiful than anything she owned.

  While she was still busy being dazzled, he had called a maid to him and asked that she be taken
to one of the rooms and bathed and put into clean clothes. She should have told him then. She should have explained. But—she had heard that they had machines that could produce hot water at the touch of a button. She wanted to wear something truly nice, just this once. Then she would explain.

  A hot bath and a beautiful green silk gown later, she was escorted back to him. He gave her his arm and walked her downstairs to a simple wooden door.

  “Thank you for agreeing to help me,” he smiled at her. “I… I am not a rich man, despite appearances. No doubt you have seen the speculations in the paper. None of my investments in AI invention have yielded a return, and there’s one corporation in particular that seems determined to run me into bankruptcy. But I would love to one day see every business in the state incorporate automation into their workflow.”

  His eyes took on a dreamy quality when he spoke of it.

  “Imagine that,” he went on. “Think what we could do, and what we would no longer have to do. Think what more humanity could focus on, if we fashioned metal men to do what they can, so we only had to do what they cannot.”

  This was it. The place to correct herself, to feign misunderstanding.

  Instead, she put the final nail in her coffin. “I shall do my best, your honor.”

  He signed the undocumented contract with his smile. “Call me Byron.”

  Her statement hadn’t been a lie. Her best might be barely anything, but that was exactly what she would do.

  “Take all the time you need,” he’d told her. “I’ll come check on you in the morning.”

  Thus, she sat on a simple bed in a barren room surrounded by nearly useless things.

  She might be able to create another generator, similar to the mill’s.

  Might.

  But she could as soon form straw into gold as create AI out of anything at all—much less bits of junk just barely saved from the furnace.

  She put her head in her hands and started to cry.

  Best case scenario was that the governor would come in the morning, see how useless she was, and send her away. It would be difficult to go back to the grind of everyday life after seeing such finery and hoping for such opportunity, but that was the outcome she prayed for.