The Messenger

"What?" I answered less than eloquently. That's why she seemed so familiar. She looked and sounded like my mother. I looked at her more closely, noting the hardness in her face and her eyes. Despite all I knew about my mother, in that moment I realized that she was far more beautiful than her sister.

"Disappointed, my dear? Disappointed in your parents because they never told you? Disappointed in me because I never made your life easier?" She cruelly laughed, all pretense of friendliness gone. She still wanted to kill me, she just wanted to play with me a bit first.

"That was the point, my dear. You are my toy and you've always been. Your parents are my toys. There is just one purpose for your existence, which is to entertain me.

"I see you're wearing Abigor's gear."

Ah, so there was something identifying about his costume. Idly, I wondered what it was.

"He finally tried to have you, right? The old fool. He was getting too weak anyway, about to be replaced. In a way, I'm glad you defeated him. It would have been an embarrassment for the family otherwise."

"What...?"

"Yes, you are right. I really owe you an explanation before I kill you."

She favored me with another mirthless smile. I did my best not to let my expression change. I would not give her the satisfaction of knowing she'd gotten to me.

"Yes, I will. And it finally might be the time to kill your parents as well. I really should have done it back then, this whole game was a silly idea, don't you think? Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about? Let me explain.

"You know, my sister always was the weaker one. Empathic, caring, loving, in short, an embarrassment. When our father, the old king, got sick, I didn't wait for The Mind to decide between me and her. I just grabbed the opportunity when it came along and The Mind seemed okay with it. I took the royal suit and the royal gun when your grandfather was comatose and left him to die in his room.

"Back then, I didn't dare to kill my sister, not sure how The Mind would react."

"What is The Mind?"

"What? Where have been all your life? Ah, yes, I remember. In some insignificant hellhole at the end of the world. The Mind basically is everything that shimmers blue. It is one connected, pre-war artificial intelligence. Hi-tek, as you might call it. Its sole purpose is to advise and help me.

"Anyway, your sister seemed a bit disappointed about the way I grabbed the throne, and she left the palace for a few years. She never fought back, which proved she was way too soft to do what needed to be done to rule a kingdom. A few years later, she came for a visit, wanting our family of two to be reunited, the damn fool. I could have done without that, but it turned out she had married while she was away.

"Girl, was I young and blind back then. I immediately knew I had to have that man. I knew he felt the same way, but couldn't overcome his moral boundaries. It was laughable. I used some of my royal persuasion techniques and a few well-placed threats to break the silly moral boundaries he couldn't cross by himself.

"Did that ever work. From then on, his true passion shone through and we had the hottest affair ever. Of course, I made sure your mother knew about it right from the start. It was fun to watch her, she was so helpless and heart-broken. Once I had unleashed his true feelings, she didn't stand a chance.

"After a few blissful months, I demanded that he make it official. He was to divorce her and become my king. I knew it was what he wanted anyway; it was what every man wanted.

"The damned idiot let my worthless sister convince him to stay with her, though. I threatened, I fought, I tried to convince him to follow his true feelings, to no avail. I think without her pregnancy we could have been happy. In the end, it got really ugly. He even claimed that he never loved me at all. That I had just forced him to do it. That they had agreed to play along for a while and then flee. It was pathetic and it was insulting.

"My love for him had evaporated completely and I decided death was too quick and easy for him and my sister. I remembered an old, abandoned messenger station in the middle of nowhere. I remembered Abigor, a freshly made messenger who was horny as a goat and repulsive as hell. It all came together so beautifully. They were to live there in their own isolated hell. She would have to endure having sex with Abigor whenever he came there. He would know and would be powerless to do anything about it. It would slowly and surely kill their love. When their child, namely you, would come along, they would be unable to hide what a wimp and a whore they were. They would be unable to stop losing your respect.

"It was beautiful and Abigor told me it worked like a charm."

I stood there, thinking about my poor parents. About how they had tried to protect me. About how I had misjudged them, following the Queen's plans like puppets. Fuck. All of this suffering just for a Queen's rejected love and dented ego. I had never before been proud to be my parents' daughter, but at that moment I was. I'm sure it showed on my face, and added yet more snark to the Queen's sinister smirk.

"And you know what's best, my dear? There is nothing you or anyone can do about it. Should I just send you back to the station and let my men have their way with you as well? Should I let your parents watch? How would you like that?"

"So that's how you treat your niece?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

She laughed sharply and sounded honestly amused. "Dear, you wouldn't ask that if you knew kind of things I have done in the past. I really don't give a shit."

"How about this? You don't give a shit about this either?" I said, while pulling my dagger out of my belt and pointing it in her direction. I knew how futile this was against her protection suit and hundreds of messengers, but I felt like something needed to be done.

Her laughter filled the room as I heard a lot of rustling behind me. I turned around and saw all messengers had pulled their guns and pointed them at me again. Strangely, none of them were glowing even faintly, they were all completely dark. Confused, some of them looked at the weapons their lives depended on. My dagger, on the other hand, was glowing brightly.

"You don't stand a chance against this suit, my dear. Nor do you stand a chance against my gun pointed at your belly. This has been fun, but I think I've had enough. Goodbye, honey. The last thing you'll hear is this: I have decided to have your parents killed. This has been going on too long."

I heard a faint click and expected my guts to spread all over the place, but nothing happened. Confused, I stepped back a few paces and looked at my unharmed belly. The Queen looked confused at her suddenly very dark gun.

"Mine seems a little brighter than yours, now doesn't it," I said while raising my own, brightly glowing weapon.

"Kill her!" she barked.

I heard faint clicking noises from behind me, but again, the dark inert weapons refused to work.

Finally, the queen lifted her own gun again, but it still refused to obey.

I looked at the woman who had just tried to kill me. Who had tortured my parents, had my mother raped countless times, who had just declared she would have my parents killed. She was nothing. She was insecure and cruel. Humanity would be far better off without her. Someone needed to do something. Someone with determination and clear thinking.

Slowly, I aimed at her head. The faint glow that had extended from her suit and had protected her head like a veil had vanished. The smirk was gone from her face, and she realized her doom was at hand. She looked at me one last time. To my surprise, her eyes were sad and almost wistful.

"As you are, I once was..." she said just before I blew off her head.

"As I am, you shall be," I completed the adage in my mind.

What did she mean? Had she ever been an innocent, as I had been? It was difficult to imagine, but possible, I guess. And in what way would I be like her? Queen? Evil? Dead? Some combination of the three? Would the choice even be mine?

Lifting my chin, I determined one thing. I would be dead before I would be evil. I would not be like the pathetic remains lying on the throne room floor in front of me.

"That's where you're wrong, my dear aunt," I said as I turned around to face the messengers. To a man, they were all on their knees, bowing their heads. Turncoats, I thought, but possibly useful turncoats. I realized my choices were to rule or to die. Like the weapons, I would need these men if I chose the former.

Taking my time, I looked around. I now owned all of this and all of this owned me. I had walked in here, expecting to find death. Instead, I found a prison. The Mind obviously had chosen me as a more suitable tool than my aunt for whatever it wanted.

My aunt had been evil. I didn't know if she always had been or if the rulership or the Mind had corrupted her, but in the end, she was pure evil. The Mind had used me to replace her, meaning she wasn't the tool it wanted. It gave me hope The Mind wasn't evil and my weapons hummed slightly as if to confirm that.

Still, I had already killed two messengers, eight villagers and my own aunt. I was on my way to fulfilling her last prophecy. I would have to be really careful. My power was based solely on the weapons and The Mind. As soon as someone better came along, I would be as dead as my aunt, who was still lying on the floor right next to me.

The kingdom wasn't ruled by a human, but by a machine, with me as its tool. I wasn't comfortable with that thought, but keeping the general state of the kingdom in mind, I really might the better solution. In any case, I had some power on my own and I swore to use it wisely. I vowed to be a better queen than my aunt had been. I vowed to be true to myself: who I knew myself to be, the person my parents raised me to be. I would never despise them or be ashamed of them again. And in that vow, I felt a power that had nothing to do with weapons or the Mind.

"Use your powers for good." It had always been part of the tales my mother told me, back in my innocent childhood. What powers did I have, and how could I do good with them? I thought again of that awful town, its people ragged and degraded and starving. There was certainly room for a lot of good to be done. Maybe I would bring just law to the town, make people treat each other as human beings? Sort of like those Wild West sheriff types? They would somehow have to be fed first, though, and I didn't think the Mind would help with that. It didn't seem to take such things into consideration.

So how much power did I really have? I had exactly as much power as the Mind would give me. I would have that power as long as It found me useful. I had no idea whether my compassion, my good heart, and my will to do what was right were parts of me that It found useful, or even acceptable. I was already starting to lose them, under Its influence. I resolved to do whatever I could to keep the best of myself alive, despite whatever It could do. For I realized that if I didn't do that, if I let myself become corrupted and selfish and evil, I would be dead anyway.

I looked around the vast hall, the patiently waiting messengers, the lackeys behind me. I was suddenly responsible for them all. For the starving people in the small villages, for the sick families, for the violent knife-wielder town, for my parents, for a whole decaying kingdom full of radiation and dust. Now comes the really hard part, I thought. Shiiit.

Many thanks to George Anderson and Randi for their kind help.