The Matriarch Manifesto

by Devin Hanson

  “The habitat is secure, Mother.”

  “And the damage to the solar panels?”

  “Micrometeorite fragments were recovered from the ablative polymer,” Evan admitted. “The makeup shows unrefined nickel-iron content, with positive identification of chondrules.”

  “A meteorite?”

  Ethan winced. “We believe so. It seems an orbital refinery had an accident and some debris was knocked out of orbit.”

  Cynthia held her icy stare until Evan dropped his gaze. “Well, at least it wasn’t a real threat,” she finally allowed. “But,” she said firmly as he looked up in relief, “I want a solution presented to me before midnight on how you propose to prevent this from happening again.”

  Evan bowed his head. “It will be done.”

  Cynthia stepped up and laid a hand on his shoulder. She had to reach up to do it, and she smiled as he twitched in surprise at the touch. “Thank you, Evan.”

  He nodded jerkily.

  “You’ve checked with my sisters?”

  Evan nodded again, and fell into step with her as she starting walking toward the lifts. “Their ainlif have been alerted. None have reported any untoward contacts.”

  “Untoward. An interesting choice of words. I’m guessing that is related to the threat you withheld from me?”

  He met her gaze evenly, without guilt. “It was a calculated response, Mother. There is unrest among some of the commons.”

  “What is it this time?”

  “They are in a near-riot about housing. There, ah, was a video leaked to the internet of a walkthrough on Charing Hab.”

  “Charing? That’s one of the oldest of the habs, one of the originals. What sparked the unrest?”

  “The empty rooms, Mother. It was footage from one of the maintenance crews decommissioning the third level.”

  “They understand the level was being decommissioned because of the weight of the new computer installations?”

  Evan shrugged as they stepped into the lift and looked a question at Cynthia, then punched the button for the second level at her nod. “It’s still bad optics. Some of the poorest are time-sharing bunkbeds on New London and Nueva Angela. They’re not overly receptive to logical arguments. All they see are the empty rooms. Doubtless each of them envisioned themselves with a private suite.” He rolled his eyes.

  “Optics.” Cynthia repeated sourly.

  It was difficult for her to feel much empathy for the people crushed into tiny living quarters on New London and Nueva Angela. They were the two mega-habs, seven habitats linked together to form a single structure. The teardrop centers of those habs each had twice the displacement of New Galway, and every kilogram of that carrying capacity was dedicated to food production, life support, and living quarters.

  The people knew the restrictions on expanding the available real estate on Venus. If they kept having children, then the obvious consequence of that would be less living space. It was no different for the matriarchs. Yes, each matriarch might have eleven sons, but that was it. They would never expand their population unintentionally. Every new matriarch born was allowed only when the resources existed to support the new matriarch and her eventual sons.

  “Maybe we need to pool our resources and build another mega-hab,” she sighed.

  “That wouldn’t solve the underlying problem,” Evan pointed out. “The population would simply expand to fill that space as well. It’s a problem of underlying demodynamics. People want to have children. The poorer they are, the more desperate their situation, the more children they want to have. It’s a genetic survival response.”

  “You’ve been studying.”

  Evan shrugged as the lift came to a stop and the door pinged open. “It’s not a new concern, Mother. Best that someone understands what’s happening.”

  “You may be right, Evan. But it is our duty to foresee the demands of the future. If it takes generations to educate into a more frugal culture, then it falls to us to support our society in the meantime. I will speak with my sisters and see what can be done.”

  “Mother! There you are!”

  Cynthia smiled as Leila came running around the curve of the passage ahead. She was tall for her age, and slender, her eyes brilliant blue and her raven hair streamed behind her, unbound as was her preference. Leila was beautiful, not because of her genetics, though there was nothing at fault there, but through the unbridled enthusiasm that sparked from her eyes.

  “Chase had me under lockdown for half the morning. I need to prepare for the Challenge! We’re going to be late if we don’t leave soon.”

  Cynthia shared a look with Evan. “Maybe it is best that you wait another year, Leila. There is no rush.”

  Leila scowled. “I’ve been having my period for a year and a half already. That’s nearly a thousand years of my life gone!”

  “You’ll only live to see a hundred if you fail the Challenge, Leila. Thirty-nine thousand years is a long, long time to live. A few hundred years less will make little difference.” Cynthia tempered her words with a smile. It had been close to three hundred years since she had passed her own Challenge, but she still remembered the unbearable wait beforehand and the excruciating suspense as she had awaited her Verdict.

  “I know that, Mother. We’re nearly six hundred kilometers from Nova Aeria. If we leave within the next half hour, we will still arrive in time for the Challenge. I checked the map and the winds favor us.”

  “There are security concerns–”

  “We’re going to be late!” Leila groaned. “They won’t let us in if we’re late!”

  Privately, Cynthia rather doubted they would refuse her entry, but trying to tell that to Leila was a lost cause. “It is a matriarch’s duty to have concern for the wellbeing of herself and her family,” she said firmly. “We have just spent the morning in lockdown, Leila. There are credible threats against us. It would be irresponsible to act without verifying the safety of our own habitat and that of our family.”

  “Mother!” Leila groaned.

  “Speak with Alec, he is the security chief. If you wish to be a matriarch, you must understand the value of patience. And respect, Leila. I won’t have you browbeating him.”

  Leila waved over her shoulder, already turning the far corner as she ran off in search of Alec. “Get ready to leave, Mother! Half an hour!”

  Evan coughed a wry laugh. “Were you ever like that?”

  “Believe it or not, I was even younger than Leila when I took the Challenge. If anything, I was worse.”

  “Still.” Evan’s humor dried up and worry creased his brow. “It makes me nervous, thinking of her taking the Challenge.”

  “Enthusiasm is not a crime, Evan. The Challenge questions search deep into your soul. My mother wrote them and coded the evaluation algorithm herself. It accounts for youthful tendencies. If Leila has the innate character to be worthy of becoming a matriarch, she will pass the test. If not…” Cynthia forced herself to shrug noncommittally despite the churning apprehension in her stomach.

  If Leila failed her Challenge, she would be chemically sterilized on the spot. Any hope for immortality would be lost and she would find no succor among the matriarchs. Leila would find herself alone, with only the traditional stipend and no home to return to.

  Most young women who failed the Challenge took their own lives. Perhaps it was that underlying tendency that made them unfit to be matriarchs in the first place. Perhaps it was the sudden loss of tens of thousands of years of life that pushed them to end it early.

  Those that didn’t give in to despair found a way to make a living among the common citizens. Most never came into contact with anyone from their old lives ever again. The reminder of what was lost was too painful for all involved.

  Cynthia loved Leila. She loved the impetuousness, the brazen cheer, the tinkling laughter that rang in the halls as she played. She looked forward to spending the next thirty thousand years with her. Leila would have taken the Challenge last year, but she
had been ill and unable to attend.

  Her own words to Evan came back to her. If Leila had the character to become a matriarch, waiting another year would change nothing, except deprive Leila of another thousand years of life.

  Cynthia shook her head and turned to make her way to her quarters to change. Alec would approve of their trip, she already knew. Excitement quickened her pulse. Today, Leila would become a matriarch!

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  Excerpt from the collected works of Doctor Annette Everard, from a treatise titled “The Way Forward” written during the Exodus from Earth:

  I do not blame James Womack for developing his process. In a way, it was inevitable. I only regret the loss of life that went with it. I have confidence that the people of Earth will act in time to isolate those who have engaged in the Process. They are finally aware of the danger and will act to protect their lives. All that concerns me now is the matriarchs and the new society we will built on Venus.

  I have written the Manifesto to guide us. Its tenets are draconian by necessity. The laws we make for ourselves must be far stricter than those for the general populace. For we are immortal, to all intents and purposes, and the mistakes we make are on a scale that expands beyond all possible human understanding. Even I, in my hours spent trying to delve into the future, cannot imagine what our society will be like ten thousand years from now.

  And so, I must prepare the way as best I can, and structure our laws and morals to withstand the test of eons to come.

  Jackson Harding woke with a start as something jabbed him through his hammock. The dark room was close with stale air despite the blowers going full blast, and the scent of body odor mingled with the sharp, acrid stench of vomit. Someone below him muttered an apology, and Jackson saw the shadowed bulk of the man stand up and make his way toward the adjacent lavatory.

  Someone cursed sleepily in the man’s wake and Jackson rolled over, fighting his growing irritation. Men shouldn’t have to live like this. Sleeping in shifts in rooms packed to capacity.

  Jackson squeezed his eyes closed and tried to reclaim the drowsiness of sleep. Down the aisle, someone with a racking cough started wheezing. The phlegmy gasps for air stuck in his ears like hot needles. He rolled to the other side and steadied his swinging hammock with an outstretched arm. In a nook against the wall, he fumbled until his fingers closed about the cool, oblong shape of his tablet. He thumbed the screen on and checked the time. There was still another hour left before the next shift came to use the hammocks, but he knew he wouldn’t get any more rest.

  He rolled onto his back and stared at the dimly seen ceiling overhead. Was this his lot, then? Could he hope for no better for the rest of his life? An eight-hour shift working maintenance around the hab, then eight hours of leisure that drained away what little money he made, then eight hours in a stifling communal dormitory, only to start the whole cycle over again the next day.

  There were things he could do to improve his life. He could download a textbook on his tablet and learn more about electronics or programming instead of going to one of the gaming rooms. He could abstain and save up his money. But the lure of easy release from the grinding monotony of the day was a siren song he couldn’t pull himself away from.

  Most times, he didn’t even try. Even just the thought of sitting down after a grueling day’s work and trying to study circuitry diagrams was exhausting. He was barely fifteen years old. A normal boy his age would still be in school.

  A year ago, he had come home from school to find his mother had already packed his things into a bag. She had gotten pregnant again, and the maternity wards only allowed two children per mother. He had accepted the bag, unable to understand and staring up at his mother, trying to meet her eyes. She refused to meet his gaze, only pressed a half-empty credit chip into his hand and shooed him back out the door.

  Fourteen years old and abandoned by his mother, Jackson had wandered the hab aimlessly, tears streaking the dirt on his face, until security had picked him up and directed him to the work center. His situation wasn’t an isolated case and the security guards had processed him with a blunt lack of empathy.

  He understood, in a way, why his mother had kicked him out. So long as she had children under her care, she could live in the maternity wards where she didn’t need to work, had a private suite, and all the food she could eat. Jackson and his sister were growing older, and without a new child to raise, she would have been kicked out of the ward once her youngest reached sixteen years of age.

  Her new pregnancy was a guarantee of another sixteen years of comfortable living. She could have aborted it and Jackson would have continued having a home. After nearly two years of living as an adult, Jackson understood the harsh realities of the situation. He didn’t blame her, but he also couldn’t love her.

  He had never returned to the maternity wards. He hadn’t even kept his name. Jackson Harding was a name he had made up. He had no papers to prove otherwise and nobody had challenged it.

  These days, he barely remembered what his mother looked like. If he passed her in the corridor, he doubted he would recognize her. In all likelihood, she wouldn’t recognize him either.

  Dull anger drove Jackson from the hammock and he dropped down to the deck softly. His head was muddled with sleep, and he made his way out of the dormitory, careful not to bump into anyone else.

  He took a turn into the locker room and keyed open his personal storage. Twenty centimeters by a meter. The only personal space he had, and it cost him thirty credits a month. He tucked his tablet inside and stripped out of his sleeping shorts. Naked, he padded into the showers and let the hot water pummel the last of his drowsiness away. At least they weren’t on a water allowance this month and he could take as long of a shower as he wanted. Vaguely, he knew the wasn’t truly wasted; it was filtered and pumped to the hydroponic levels to be recycled, but all that was beyond his education and interest.

  Later, pink-skinned and clean, he returned to his locker and dressed for work. He still had another hour before he was expected at the duty board, but he didn’t have anything better to do. Maybe he’d put in a few extra hours today, try and put some credits away.

  The coveralls felt a little tight about the shoulders; it was nearly time to turn his old clothes in to the recycler and buy a new set. He had never met his father, so had no idea how tall he would get eventually. At the rate he was going through his clothes, his father had to have been at least a hundred and eighty centimeters, though.

  As Jackson made his way out of locker room, he passed by the first of the shambling early-risers, come to take advantage of the showers before the general press arrived. Feeling a little smug, Jackson made a brief stop by the cafeteria, then headed straight to the duty board.

  He might have been dealt a bum hand in life, but every new day offered an opportunity to improve himself. This early, he could have his pick of the jobs available. Maybe he could find something that would involve some training. Anything he could do to expand his skill set would be another step toward a better life.

  The bland protein bar he had picked for breakfast didn’t stick in his throat like it normally did, and his steps were light as he made his way up a level. The lifts were full of people coming off their second shifts, so he took to the cramped stairs, unwilling to ruin his good mood by being stuck in a lift with a dozen smelly men.

  Jackson made it to the job center and his steps slowed as he took in the empty kiosks. He was the first to arrive, something he had never thought to do before. He checked his tablet just to make sure the last shift had ended, and then stepped into the first empty kiosk. After typing in his serial number, the screen blanked, and then scrolled down a list of available jobs.

  There was a never-ending list of tasks that needed doing to keep the floating habitats functional. Much of it was grunt work, menial tasks that required no skill and only a functional degree of personal mobility. But there were always jobs that needed doing that involved
more complex actions, like electronics that needed replacement, mechanical engineering tasks, and overhaul teams.

  And there was always the possibility of catching the eye of a supervisor and being slotted into a vocational track. He could learn to be an electrician or a systems engineer after a few years of experience. Maybe even a crew chief himself someday.

  The central database compared the list of tasks and compared them against Jackson’s skill set and the ratings he had received on past jobs. The initial board of several thousand potential jobs shortened down to a few dozen as the computer eliminated those that were beyond his education level, or that he had performed poorly on in the past.

  Next to each job, a credit amount was displayed. The central computer calculated the job’s value based on how it estimated Jackson’s performance would be, on each particular task. If it was a task he had proven himself to be efficient in, he would be paid more for it, as he could complete the job in a shorter period of time, and the quality of the product would be high. Those jobs were listed in green. If it was something that the computer guessed he would be able to do, but had no record of his performance, the computer offered them as grey, and the credit bounty for the job was low.

  Picking up grey jobs and performing well on them was one way to improve his situation in life. After the job supervisor reviewed his work and rated his product and performance, the computer would offer more of that type of job to him, at a higher credit rate.

  If Jackson kept picking the same type of job, he would eventually develop enough skill in that field to be put onto a permanent crew. Most people eventually found a vocation they could focus on and turn it into a career, though some people preferred the freedom of picking and choosing what they did each day. It paid less than a vocational track, but it never had the danger of becoming boring and routine.