(Author’s note: this is a first draft for a work in progress. It has been updated with names for the characters.)

Amendment to author’s note: I’ve decided to drop this chapter. It was originally going to be used as Chapter One but after consulting friends and rereading it once it’s freshness had left my mind, it seems that I have too much exposition going on and not enough actually happening. Still, I do like this chapter as did others who read it so it won’t be scrapped entirely. I may keep it as a teaser or supplementary material or even an appendix, just not in the main story. If I’m feeling ambitious, and can somehow find the time, I may even illustrate it and release it as a supplementary one-shot comic book, but I’m getting ahead of myself. So this chapter: gone, but not forgotten.

“The Sovereign Queen. They say that she came into existence at the precise instance that all universes were formed. She knows everything. All of the answers to the mysteries of the universe reside within her DNA. Much of this information is dormant in her early years. All knowledge will slowly flow onto the shores of her consciousness over the seven generations of her lifespan and come into full fruition during her final years. It is during the seventh generation that she is at her most powerful with all knowledge of the all universes and dimensions as well as full understanding of all matters of physics and sciences. It is also during the seventh generation that she is vulnerable and somewhat mortal. There must be a balance, after all. For six generations, the Queen is all but invincible and safe from the cold hands of Death. Mind you, this does not mean that she becomes fragile in her twilight. As I said, it is during this time that she is at her strongest. It simply means that, should someone wish to end her reign prematurely, it would have to be done at some point during that time frame.”

“But she was once killed, wasn’t she Granddad?” The small boy looks up with amber colored eyes and pupils that seem like deep cracks in tea-stained, crackle-glazed porcelain. His glance is not of intrigue but one seeking affirmation. The boy is dressed in exceptionally fine attire and appears to be about twelve years of age. His posture is rigid and confident. His slender arms hang with a comfortable stiffness at his sides.

The elderly chaperone stops in front of a portrait of a similar looking being in regal dress. A king. Lord Elrath Kailyua of the Kailyua Empire stands with his arms folded across his torso, his hands tucked into his sleeves. He slowly turns his gaze from the portrait to meet his grandson, Prince Nerovosa, with an air of frigid pride. “Yes, young prince. She was indeed.” He lifts his head back up to look at the painting, signaling to the boy to do the same. “Our ancestor, His Majesty the Unequalled King Yzexius Kailyua, is the only one to have successfully killed the Queen Mother. You see, she had been born to one of our greatest enemies, those wretched beasts of the Vanischi Union.” The man pauses to sneer in disgust as the name slithers past his thin dark violet lips. “They used the power of the Queen’s name to influence the neighboring systems to bring our government to a crawl. They did this simply out of spite. Our people suffered considerably. They abused their privilege. We have many enemies, but nearly everyone rallied behind them simply because they were host to the Sovereign Queen Mother. They took advantage of the Queen for their own gain. That is why our great ancestor decided to stand up for his people and kill the Queen. He was a magnificent leader as the legends go. He personally led the attack on the Queen’s luxury liner during her benevolence tour of the fringe planets of the Vanischi System. She was heavily guarded but those beasts could not have possibly been prepared for the new secret force of the Kailyuan Military. Our technological advances have always been second to none and King Yzexius created the ultimate army. It was early during his reign that an exceptionally keen technopath named Kar-em successfully combined multiple elements of alchemy with technopathy to become the first technomancer. He was able to give life to machinery and he used this new found power to create an army of mecha-golems, as he called them, to infiltrate and capture the Queen. Legend says that more died at the hands of King Yzexius than any mecha under his charge. He left no survivors. King Yzexius was truly a great leader. He was strong, calculating, and fearless. Some men in His Majesty’s position would have probably considered using the capture of the queen as a means of controlling others, almost like a hostage. A hostage, that is, who will never be let go but promised that no harm would fall upon her if her captors’ demands are met. His Majesty was not like other men. No, sir. He transported the Queen to the black hole in the center of the galaxy. He personally kicked her off of the bow of his ship and watched as she slowly approached the event horizon. Had he acted too soon, she would have simply entered the black hole and remained there until she reached the age of vulnerability. Instead, he waited and plotted until she was in her seventh generation to make sure that his wrath would count. He broadcasted her execution to the entire universe. She was ripped apart atom by atom before everyone’s eyes as she was yanked into that collapsed star in a single violent instance. Oh, to have been alive to see that. That was a thousand years ago.”

“Do you hate the Queen, Granddad?” He searched his grandfather’s face with his dark yellow eyes as he waited for an answer.

“Not necessarily, child. I celebrate the actions taken by our ancestor against those who oppressed us and sought to cripple us and separate us from the rest of the galaxy.”Lord Elrath continued to gaze at the portrait of Yzexius in reverence. “He did what no one else would dare to do in order to make a difference. He did it even at the cost of his own life.”

“I hate her, Granddad.” The boy’s lips pursed with the same contempt that had been passed on through generations of hatred. “Why would the Queen Mother allow such a thing? Why would she allow her children to suffer at the hands of those wretched beasts?”

“Your hatred is misplaced, child. Some would say that she knows everything and therefore she knows what’s best for everyone and that we should accept her decisions. Others would tell you that she is simply cold and uncaring and that she only has the power that she holds because we foolishly give it over to her and fall at her feet and blindly worship her. No matter what the truth may be, we must look at things as they are and not what we think they are or what we want them to be. She does hold sway over people, but she never actually does anything, does she?”

The boy’s face relaxes as his anger has been replaced by uncertainty. “I don’t know, Granddad. I’ve never known the Queen.” The boy catches himself, cautiously glances around in all directions and lowers his voice, “That is to say that I’ve never known the true Queen.”

“It’s quite alright, my boy. She can’t possibly hear you from here.” He smiles, amused by the boy’s sudden innocence. “Of course none of us have ever known the true Queen. She has not yet been reborn, but she will soon. Let’s have a quiz, young Nerovosa. For how long does the Queen live?”

“Seven generations, Granddad. You mentioned that many times in your story.” Lord Elrath smiled playfully.

“Did I? Well then, how is the Queen’s lifespan determined?”

Nerovosa’s back straightened up to become even more rigid than before as he is overcome by confidence. “It’s determined by the planet she is nearest to when she is born. If she is born on a planet close to the system’s central star, then her years will be shorter. She will live longer if she is born on a planet further from the star because the years are longer.”

“What happens to the Queen at the end of her seventh generation?” Elrath asks as he leans in with feigned seriousness.

“She will turn into space dust and return to the cosmos for seven times seven generations. AND…” Prince Nerovosa looks up at Lord Elrath and wags his little finger with a hint of arrogance in his eyes, “the way she feels when she dies will decide if the universe will prosper or suffer. Granddad, I’ve already learned all of this from my tutor.”

Elrath chuckles with amusement. “I know you have. I only wanted to make certain that your tutor is teaching you well. I should suggest to your father to have that tutor killed if he isn’t teaching you appropriately.”

“Would Dad throw him into a black hole?” Nerovosa’s purple lips pull back to reveal dozens of small, rounded, perfect teeth. His amber eyes, once fierce, are partially eclipsed by semi translucent membranes as he giggles.

“Perhaps.” The elder chuckles and the laughs intertwine and echo through the large corridor. “Alright. It is time for the big question. If you can answer this, I will play any game that you wish.”

“Will you help me practice hand-to-hand combat?”

“Practice? I would destroy you! You would be practicing survival techniques.”

“We’ll see about that. I’ve been practicing really hard! What’s the big question, Granddad?”

“Okay. When will the Queen be reborn?”

Nerovosa mumbled to himself as he tried to find the magic number that will get him some one-on-one playtime with his grandfather. “…last time she was born on the fourth planet of the Lienad System …330 days in a year…times twenty…6,600 days…”

“Would you like a calculator?”

“Granddad! You’re gonna mess me up! …times seven…times seven… divided by Kailyuan years...about twenty years! Hey, I’ll be about…thirty-two! That means that I’ll be king then!” Prince Nerovosa smiled gleefully as he wriggled in his clothes. “I win! That means that you have to spar with me!”

“Are you sure about that? Are you sure you didn’t forget to carry the one somewhere?”

“I’m positive!”

“Alright then. A deal is a deal. Let’s go then.”

The two begin to walk the length of the corridor when Nerovosa whispers “Granddad, what will happen to the fake Queen we have now?”

“The same thing that has happened to all of the false Queens we have secretly had over the past thousand years: she will be thrown back into the black hole and her particles will be collected by the royal data skimmers. Then they’ll sort through all of the data and they’ll reconstruct the Queen for the final time. We’ve been doing this in secret for a millennium in order to gather the correct information. We study how the Queen behaves, what she says, how she reacts to information, what types of commands she gives, and the like. We take all of this information and learn the correct ways to get the answers and actions from her that we want. We’ve got it down to a science. This current iteration of the Queen is already perfect enough for what we will need her for, but the time is not right. It would have aroused much suspicion if we announced that the Queen had been born to our system decades or hundreds of years too soon. Timing is crucial, boy. I tell you all of this now because it shall be you who will carry our empire into the new age where all systems everywhere will serve the Kailyuan Empire.”

“But how can data skimmers get the Queen out of a black hole? Nothing can escape. Won’t people and machines just be sucked in?” The boy slouches his shoulders in confusion.

“Has your tutor not taught you about how we data skim? Our people not only invented data skimming, we perfected it. Many people outside of our system often consider data skimming to be a loose term for gathering information. There are many who call themselves data skimmers but they are more like research pirates who collect information and sell it, scratch that, extort it for as much money as they can wring out of the client. True data skimmers, like ours, are able to gather data from black holes using the very art that Kar-em created. By using technomancy, we are able to create conscious machines which can link to other machines by means of a sort of telepathy which exists solely between the machine, the sentient machine, and the technomancer. A single sentient machine can control thousands of data skimmers and a technomancer is assigned to each sentient machine. This means that millions upon millions of data skimming machines have been collecting data since we began. The data skimmers themselves are able to pass between a black hole and safety by means of our advanced teleportation technology. The data skimmers are able to ascend beyond physical matter and gather information from a black hole with a moderate amount of safety. Our data puzzlers are then able to sort through the data using information that they have gathered in the past. That which once took many arduous years to complete is now done by thousands of dedicated machines in just under two years. Not only that, but they have mined a great deal of data out of the black hole over the past thousand years so. All of the particles that have been determined to not be part of the Queen are contained, labeled and teleported to a storage facility far, far away.”

The boy now pouts in annoyance. “This seems like so much work! Why don’t you just clone her?”

“Do you not think that we have tried?” Elrath laughs uproariously. “She cannot be cloned. She is special; truly one of a kind. This is why we must repeat this process again and again and again. But it will all end with you. As you said, the new true Queen will be born in about two decades or so. It will be you who will announce that the new Queen has been born and you will introduce her to the universe. With her, you will bring about a new era in which every knee will bow to us from then until eternity.”

“But what about the real Queen. Won’t people know that she’s a fake if they find the real Queen?”

“That, child, is why we have paid very handsomely for information, data, and all matters of anomalies and oddities for hundreds of years. Like I said, data skimmers outside of our facilities are pirates. They’d sell us their very souls if they could find a way to separate them from their physical bodies as well as the souls of their loved ones. Don’t worry. If and when the new Queen does show up, someone will find her and they will turn her in for money. Besides, why would anyone question anything when we already have the Queen?”