well, Sailor, very well, but what will you do to-day? Will you make all haste to my rescue? Will you take me away from this place?
For we now learned she was serving an indenture, which is to say shewas no better than a slave (though according to Law she was no slave), and if Dr. Dan wanted to free her from this Contract he had to buy her, which is what he now resolv’d to do.
It is she, he said later, his fist in the air. I have been mistaken before, but this time I know it to a certainty, and will devote my life toward securing her freedom.
2500
----
In the early stages of the remodernization campaign, before everything dried up and blew away in bundles of tinder and chaff, there was an idyll of repose. It was the winding of a watch. My own routine continued unimpeded, with few palpable changes. I got up early, when the heat started to rise, and breakfasted on the roof in the cool morning air. I had cold cornmeal porridge as well as mango, a little yoga cream, and a cup of hot caffeine. Then I persecuted my education. First, while my brain was still soft, I read my Modern English history books, and later I had tutors in mathematical logic and other topics. This was all my own anachro-feminist initiative. However, my education served chiefly to enlarge my feelings of grievance, for our library was riven with gaps and lacunae. It was actually only nine hundred books, and even though we housed them on the top floor with titanic barrels of dehumidifier salts, they were continuously succumbing to disintegration. Therefore I shouted in frustration, “But what is a Hittite!?” and “What is a kipper!?” and “They used to have illuminated books!” I could never achieve a comprehensive knowledge.
By noon I was fatigued. Sometimes I tried to refresh myself with fizzy camel milk and fruit, and sometimes I went unconscious for an hour, but it mattered little because after that I had nothing to do. I was trapped like a scorpion in a jar. This was the time of day when I usually succumbed to a staring madness. I would tell myself I should take a walk, but then I couldn’t decide what shoes and clothes to wear. I would tell myself to continue reading, but I could not make the words resolve into ideas. My thoughts scattered like marbles. Sometimes I just sat naked on the floor with one boot on. Sometimes I drank poppy juice to console myself. I had no true public existence. I had no trajectoryexcept as a wife and mother, although I secretly kept my womb untenanted by eating a monthly abortion medicine that Edward Halloween bought from a slave magician. This medicine was exceptionally illegal, but I didn’t care. It was another small exercise of my anachro-feminist prerogative.
At night we would have date wine in the garden, which was nice, but then we had state dinners with hereditary senators or visiting dignitaries from the MDC. These dinners were an agony of repeated courtesies, although they were much better than my nights with Anthony Fucking Corvette. He was a coarse frolicker who didn’t give a good damn about anything. He ate sorghum paste and peanut soup, he drank muddy water, he drowned his faculties in wine, and then he heaved himself on top of me. Our wedding was scheduled for December, which was a traditional time. Daniel Defoe had come to us in late summer.
Originally, the only thing that remodernization changed was that Edward Halloween found himself less occupied. In former days he had been ceaselessly busy with his job of singing, dancing, telling jokes, and playing the flute at orgies, but now my father decided that consorting with clowns was an indulgence unbefitting a serious monarch and president. He spent all his time with Daniel Defoe, though you could have argued that he had only exchanged one clown for another. In any case, Edward Halloween and I were left alone more often, which was nice for me but surprising for him, for he was dismayed to see how I passed my days.
“How do you stand it?” he
For we now learned she was serving an indenture, which is to say shewas no better than a slave (though according to Law she was no slave), and if Dr. Dan wanted to free her from this Contract he had to buy her, which is what he now resolv’d to do.
It is she, he said later, his fist in the air. I have been mistaken before, but this time I know it to a certainty, and will devote my life toward securing her freedom.
2500
----
In the early stages of the remodernization campaign, before everything dried up and blew away in bundles of tinder and chaff, there was an idyll of repose. It was the winding of a watch. My own routine continued unimpeded, with few palpable changes. I got up early, when the heat started to rise, and breakfasted on the roof in the cool morning air. I had cold cornmeal porridge as well as mango, a little yoga cream, and a cup of hot caffeine. Then I persecuted my education. First, while my brain was still soft, I read my Modern English history books, and later I had tutors in mathematical logic and other topics. This was all my own anachro-feminist initiative. However, my education served chiefly to enlarge my feelings of grievance, for our library was riven with gaps and lacunae. It was actually only nine hundred books, and even though we housed them on the top floor with titanic barrels of dehumidifier salts, they were continuously succumbing to disintegration. Therefore I shouted in frustration, “But what is a Hittite!?” and “What is a kipper!?” and “They used to have illuminated books!” I could never achieve a comprehensive knowledge.
By noon I was fatigued. Sometimes I tried to refresh myself with fizzy camel milk and fruit, and sometimes I went unconscious for an hour, but it mattered little because after that I had nothing to do. I was trapped like a scorpion in a jar. This was the time of day when I usually succumbed to a staring madness. I would tell myself I should take a walk, but then I couldn’t decide what shoes and clothes to wear. I would tell myself to continue reading, but I could not make the words resolve into ideas. My thoughts scattered like marbles. Sometimes I just sat naked on the floor with one boot on. Sometimes I drank poppy juice to console myself. I had no true public existence. I had no trajectoryexcept as a wife and mother, although I secretly kept my womb untenanted by eating a monthly abortion medicine that Edward Halloween bought from a slave magician. This medicine was exceptionally illegal, but I didn’t care. It was another small exercise of my anachro-feminist prerogative.
At night we would have date wine in the garden, which was nice, but then we had state dinners with hereditary senators or visiting dignitaries from the MDC. These dinners were an agony of repeated courtesies, although they were much better than my nights with Anthony Fucking Corvette. He was a coarse frolicker who didn’t give a good damn about anything. He ate sorghum paste and peanut soup, he drank muddy water, he drowned his faculties in wine, and then he heaved himself on top of me. Our wedding was scheduled for December, which was a traditional time. Daniel Defoe had come to us in late summer.
Originally, the only thing that remodernization changed was that Edward Halloween found himself less occupied. In former days he had been ceaselessly busy with his job of singing, dancing, telling jokes, and playing the flute at orgies, but now my father decided that consorting with clowns was an indulgence unbefitting a serious monarch and president. He spent all his time with Daniel Defoe, though you could have argued that he had only exchanged one clown for another. In any case, Edward Halloween and I were left alone more often, which was nice for me but surprising for him, for he was dismayed to see how I passed my days.
“How do you stand it?” he
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