The Matriarch Manifesto Read online

  THE

  MATRIARCH

  MANIFESTO

  By Devin Hanson

  The Matriarch Manifesto is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Devin Hanson

  All Rights Reserved.

  Thanks go to my wife, without whom this book would never have been possible.

  Books by Devin Hanson

  The Dragon Speaker Series

  Rune Scale

  Rune Song

  Rune Master

  The Speaker’s Son

  The Cleric Scribe

  The Last Incantor

  The Immortal Archives

  The December Protocol

  The Matriarch Manifesto

  Table of Contents

  PREFACE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  NOTE

  A BRIEF

  PREFACE

  The Matriarch Manifesto is not a sequel to The December Protocol in the traditional sense as it follows the story of characters not in the first book, but it does take place in the same universe. The technologies of immortality are introduced in great detail in The December Protocol, along with the history of development between the Womack Process and the Helix Rebuild.

  Where The December Protocol focuses on the Womack Process, this book takes a closer look at the Helix Rebuild and the society put into place by Dr. Annette Everard. To grasp the significance of the differences between the societies on Mars and Venus, the author strongly recommends reading The December Protocol first.

  Still, reading the first book isn’t wholly necessary, so the author would be remiss if he failed to provide a brief summary of the history:

  On April 22nd, 2108, Dr. Annette Everard proved the success of her Helix Rebuild, a serum refined from a viable egg cell from a human woman which triggered a full-body regeneration. As aging is nothing more than the failure of the body to replace cells, this meant someone undergoing Rebuild treatment was effectively immortal until their body ran out of egg cells.

  The Helix Rebuild was a miraculous leap forward in genetic engineering technology, but it was limited to exact DNA matches. The only viable recipients for a Rebuild treatment was the woman herself and her immediate children.

  Dr. Womack created his treatment in an effort to open the promise of immortality to everyone. The Womack Process made a viable egg cell suitable for use on anybody, but the duration of the effect was severely truncated, down to a single month instead of over a year.

  The Womack Process triggered a planet-wide crisis. The most valuable material on Earth became a woman’s egg cells, and millions of young women were kidnapped and harvested in a bid to either make money or provide a source for the treatments.

  In desperation, the December Protocol was introduced by the U.N., which outlawed all human genetic research and banned both treatments from Earth. Dr. Annette Everard took her newly created Council of Matriarchs to Venus, where she set up a society strictly following the guidelines of the Matriarch Manifesto. All practices and recipients of the Womack Process were banned from Venus on pain of death.

  Dr. Womack was killed on Earth, and those who had already received the Process fled to Mars where they set up their own society.

  The year is now 2430, three hundred and twenty-two years after Dr. Everard’s first successful application of the Helix Rebuild, and some fifteen years after the events of The December Protocol.

  Welcome to Venus.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  The Matriarch Manifesto

  Tenet One

  A matriarch must be inviolate. The rule of law does not apply to them, but that does not mean a matriarch is above the law. A matriarch should strive to be perfect in her adherence to the law, not in fear of repercussion, but through a strict code of ethics and the realization that only through perfect harmony with society will tolerance remain.

  This tenet, more than any other, defines how a matriarch exists within a society. Perfect ethics is a must. The moment that society sees matriarchs to be a burden rather than a blessing will be the beginning of the end. In our tests to determine who qualifies to be a matriarch, the degree of ethics a candidate holds within herself must be a primary factor for consideration.

  Matriarch Cynthia Everard woke as the blinds covering the windows began to retract with a soft whirring noise. Sunlight streamed into her room, softened by the partially reflective glass. She stretched and yawned, and rose from her bed.

  Outside the window, clouds drifted in a perfectly blue sky. Towering cumulonimbus passed by on either side, brilliant white against the deep blue Venusian sky. One of the windows blanked to a slate grey, then provided a scrolling display of the current state of the floating habitat city.

  Cynthia watched the scroll of data as she started brushing her hair. Her hair was a point of pride for Cynthia. Not necessarily the beauty of it, though it was beautiful, but for the effort that it took to maintain it. Her hair was thick and black, glossy and healthy from the roots all the way to the ends that brushed her waist. It took nearly an hour every day to comb it out and return it to its plait in the morning and at night.

  It was a routine that she had once thought she would grow bored with. Then, as the years passed, she came to view it as something more than a dreary task. It was a reminder that she was still human. It was a reminder that despite the apparent urgency of the day’s events, it was attention to small details that made life worth living.

  The condition of the habitat flowed by. Battery levels, aquaponic harvest schedules, oxygen percentages, atmospheric pressure, and weather forecasts. There were maintenance reports, upcoming scheduled tasks and points of concern tabbed for her consideration. The ablative shielding on the starboard side was showing signs of early wear. The aft solar array was running slightly below expected efficiency. The water extractors in the ballast had filled their reservoirs again.

  That last point caught her attention and she made a pleased sound in her throat as she began plaiting her hair. There were aquaponic tanks on the third level that had been dry for too long. A surplus of water meant she could expand their crop rotations. As she dressed, she thought about what she wanted to grow. A purely financial crop wasn’t needed. No, she wanted something new that could add variety to her diet, and the diets of everyone who lived on Venus.

  The quality of the light changed and the view out the windows turned murky and dark. Sulfuric acid rattled against the window in gusts of rain. Cynthia settled her shawl over her shoulders and left her chambers behind. There were a lot of things she wanted to get done today, and only a short period of time to do it in.

  Today was the twenty-second of April, by Earth reckoning. It was the Day of Challenge. It was the day when Cynthia’s youngest daughter, Leila, would be tested to see if she qualified to become a matriarch.

  “Take us a little higher. I want to get a better look at the second shelf shielding.”

  Cynthia leaned against the curved glass dome of the s
kimmer and squinted against the glare of reflected sunlight. The city habitat of New Galway loomed beside them, an enormous, elongated teardrop with the bulbous end on top and the point trailing away below nearly a kilometer away.

  Around the crown of the teardrop, the city was built in diminishing rings. Every surface that wasn’t a window was covered in solar panels, even the surfaces on the underside of the city. The reflection of sunlight off the solid bank of clouds below might not be as brilliant as the direct sunlight above, but the panels were well worth the cost and weight.

  “I still think Pritchard was exaggerating,” Evan grunted, but he tilted the stick back and brought the skimmer up in a careful spiral.

  “It’s Pritchard’s job to be cautious,” Cynthia rebutted without heat. “We would be doing him, and ourselves, a disservice to not take him seriously.”

  “Of course, Mother.”

  The skimmer was little more than a glorified gyrocopter. The cab had room for a pilot and two passengers, if they didn’t mind being cramped. Cynthia certainly did mind, so Evan was the only other person in the cab.

  It drove her other sons mad, that she would put herself in harm’s way. Anyone could go out in a gyrocopter and inspect the shielding. They weren’t wrong, of course, but Cynthia wanted to inspect the shielding herself. It had been weeks since the last time she had been outside of the habitat, and she felt the need for space. The wear in the shielding just provided the excuse she needed. There was only so much coddling protection she could stand before the need to feel some adrenaline grew overpowering. Her sons should be happy she found release in such a tame activity.

  The skimmer lifted above the second level, to where Pritchard’s drones had spotted the wear in the shielding. Unlike a proper helicopter, the skimmer couldn’t hover. The freely spinning propeller on top of the vehicle generated lift only when they were in a constant forward motion.

  Evan swept the skimmer past the area Pritchard had indicated a few times, slowing down as much as he dared without threatening a stall.

  “There!” Cynthia called out and tapped on the glass. “That’s section, ah, 2E, I think. Near the lip.”

  “Roger, coming about for a second pass.”

  Cynthia scooted over to the opposite side of the skimmer and peered down, shielding her eyes against the glare of the sun. Something had impacted with the hexagonal solar panel arrays, and damage was visible to three of the panels.

  “Huh. I see it,” Evan said. “I’m taking us back. Tower, this is M-Active. Request immediate air support. We’re coming in hot.”

  “Is that really necessary?” Cynthia sighed.

  Evan ignored her. From the crown of the habitat, a hatch opened and an anti-aircraft cannon emerged, spider-like, to spread out and cover their approach. The skimmer picked up speed as Evan drove the throttle home.

  Cynthia was pressed back in her seat, and she scrabbled to wrap the crash webbing around her shoulders. Outside the window, she watched as one of the cannon marched along the rim of the habitat, keeping pace with them, its sensor panels open wide and searching.

  A billow of oxygen-rich air erupted from the landing bay as the gates were opened before the atmosphere within could be pumped out. In the nearly pure carbon dioxide, the Earth-standard air looked greasy and caught the harsh sunlight for a moment before it mixed and was gone.

  Ethan drove them into the landing bay in full crash override mode. The spinning blades above the skimmer were released and they flew off in opposite directions. Foam erupted from nozzles and the forward momentum of the skimmer was caught and slowed.

  The view out of the glass ports was obscured in an instant by seething foam and Cynthia jerked against her restraints as they slammed to a stop. Distantly, muffled through the foam, she heard the crash of the bay doors sealing, and the second thud of the armor plating falling into place.

  Already the foam was crumbling and falling away into dust. She heard the shriek of exhaust fans as the external atmosphere was emergency vented and replaced with good air again. Boots came running and her door popped open. Three of her sons were there, in full tac gear, rifles pressed to shoulders and scanning the landing bay. They stood waist-deep in a sea of foam dust.

  “Air space is clear, Mother, but we’ve prepped for a crash dive into the cloud cover if needed.”

  Through the muffling of his mask, Cynthia couldn’t recognize who was speaking.

  “It is not needed,” she said angrily. Evan’s over-protectiveness and the cost of lost atmosphere and skimmer would far outweigh the value of the water in the lower cisterns.

  “We’ll be the judge of that, Mother. We’ve prepped the bunker.”

  Cynthia folded her arms. “Is there some intelligence you’re not sharing with me? Are we under threat?”

  She saw the looks traded among her sons and gritted her teeth. “All right. I’m going, but I expect a full report.”

  It was undignified, but she let herself be hustled to the bunker, deep within the core of the habitat. Solid, meter-thick slabs of nickel-iron armor protected a small but efficient life support module and a living chamber large enough for a single person. The bunker was designed to seal off and protect whoever was inside against everything but a directed nuclear explosion. Even if the entire habitat was destroyed, the bunker would fall to the surface and could withstand the hellish environment for weeks if necessary, until a rescue mission could recover the occupant.

  Cynthia allowed herself to be hurried inside and watched as the oversized vault door was rolled into place. Bolts slammed home and the life support powered up. A bank of monitors against one wall flickered to life and a full readout of the habitat’s status appeared.

  The first research stations on Venus were timid affairs. The materials had to be shipped from Earth at enormous expense. Like most of the spacefaring projects in the late twenty-first century, the stations were government-funded, with all the over-engineering and maximization of function that went hand-in-hand with it.

  The December Protocol changed things dramatically. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough for a few hundred highly-trained specialists to live aboard the stations. There was an abrupt demand for room for thousands of people, mostly civilian and untrained.

  A new type of habitat had to be created. Doctor Annette Everard hired the best material engineers and chemists she could find and together they developed the now-ubiquitous habitats. The design specifications were already known; all it took was a new approach and the desperate willingness to try new things.

  Venus is a curious planet. Of all the planets in Sol’s orbit, only Venus has a retrograde rotation, and it spins about its axis very slowly, once every two hundred and forty-three Earth days. An out of control greenhouse effect spikes the surface temperatures well over four hundred degrees Celsius. The atmosphere is over ninety-six percent carbon dioxide, and clouds of sulfuric acid blanket the entire planet.

  And yet, despite the completely inhospitable surface, human colonization is perhaps even easier than it is on Mars. By some coincidence, at an altitude where atmospheric pressure is equal to one bar, the temperature is a comfortable twenty-five degrees centigrade. All that is needed to create a hospitable environment for humans is a slightly over-pressured habitat impervious to the acid rain, with no need for thermal insulation.

  Compared to the frigid vacuum of the Martian surface, colonizing Venus is simple.

  Early habitats used donut-shaped balloons with the habitat hanging below. These were prone to failure and not nearly large enough for the population boom. When Doctor Everard arrived to Venus orbit, she brought with her the equipment and materials to build a new type of habitat.

  While still in orbit, the first habitats were constructed. Around a central spine, a foaming aerogel was applied in an elongated teardrop shape. The aerogel formed a matrix of tiny sealed bubbles of vacuum, lighter than helium and strong enough to contain the vacuum at atmospheric pressures. Over the whole kilometer-long teardrop, a polymer coating was applied
that was impervious to sulfuric acid and dense enough to prevent punctures to the aerogel.

  The original teardrop shapes had a displacement of over thirty metric tons. At the tail of the teardrop, the heaviest machinery and liquid storage tanks were placed to act as ballast. At the top, below the widest part of the teardrop, the circular rings of the habitat were built.

  Doctor Everard and her matriarchs brought enough materials with them to build two dozen habitats. During the centuries since, asteroids were tamed and mined for bulk material, while the chemicals and solvents too difficult to manufacture locally were shipped from Earth. The fleet of floating habitats grew from the initial two dozen to several hundred. The population grew from pre-Protocol numbers in the low hundreds, to nearly five hundred thousand people.

  Of those five hundred thousand, a single percent of them were made up of the immortal matriarchs and their eleven ainlif, sons tied inextricably to their mothers by the necessity for their yearly treatments. There were a few endlaf, sons of the matriarchs not chosen to receive the immortality treatments, with the rest of the population the descendants of the original scientists.

  Living space was at a premium. New habitats were constantly being constructed and dropped into the atmosphere, but it took immense wealth to fund the aerogel shipments from Earth, and more wealth to mine asteroids for the raw metals necessary to form the habitats.

  From the bunker at the center of the habitat’s aerogel core, Cynthia watched the monitors as the ainlif secured the habitat from the lowest maintenance tunnels to the highest observation deck. Clipped reports came through, summarizing as every compartment and cubby was checked and scanned.

  It took a little under an hour.

  Finally, the all-clear was given and the locking bolts in the door released with a series of clunks. Evan was waiting outside, with the good grace to look sheepish.