Page 14 of His Bride

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen, sir,” she says. I like that she added thesir; it is the first bit of respect she has shown since she arrived.

Nineteen is a ridiculous age. The Artifice has given me someone to babysit, not a wife.

I lead her through the halls to the bedroom. I did have a room prepared to receive my new wife. My actual private bedroom has none of the accouterments that this room has. There is a large bed covered in black silk sheets and coverlets, and an even larger wardrobe that stands empty and open, waiting to receive what I had assumed would be an extensive collection of clothing.

This is a bedroom for a sophisticate. It swallows my bride whole. Her trepidation becomes even more obvious as she pales and stares around herself. “There are no windows,” she says.

“I like to keep things dark,” I reply. “For my eyes.”

“Yes, you hurt your eyes. Can you even see me?”

Again she asks one of those overly blunt simple country questions.

“Yes, I can see you,” I reply. “My eye injury has resulted in a sensitivity. It has not diminished my ability to see, merely my ability to tolerate light.”

“What kind of injury does that?”

I am caught between the desire to chastise her for her bluntness, and the amusement at being questioned so boldly.

“A chemical one,” I say. “There is a bathroom through that door. Stay here and settle in. Are you hungry?”

“No,” she says. “I ate on the plane. They fed us a lot of food in little compartments. It was nice. I thought I would be afraid of being in the sky, but it turns out I’m not afraid… of that.”

She trails off at the end, not quite able to make the blanket statement that she’s not afraid. She is afraid of me, and of this place. In the confines of this room, I can smell her. She still has the scent of earth and meadow clinging to her. I wonder what I will do to her. I wonder what my world will do to her.

“I will be back,” I tell her. “Stay here.”

I need a drink.

I go to my private lounge to collect my thoughts. I find it occupied, after a fashion. Lance is there, having wheeled himself from my office to my lounge.

“You owe the Artifice thanks,” he snorts as I enter the room, striding to the drinks station to pour myself one, and take an electronic cigar from its port on the wall. “What are you doing here? You should be enjoying that sweet young thing.”

“She’s a mistake,” I say. “She’s too young.”

“The Artifice does not make mistakes,” Lance smirks as he says the old adage. In any other circumstance, he would be paying necessary lip service. In this case, he’s fucking with me. This room is shielded, yes, even from the Artifice. We need places to speak plainly, and this is one of them. I draw on my cigar, and exhale with a great deal of disdain.

The world regards the Artifice as the ultimate benign dictator, an artificial dictator capable of making decisions for the greater good. It replaced the governments and monarchies that humans had been attempting to make work for our entire history.

The Artifice was supposed to bring peace, and maybe it would—if everyone was to accept the Artifice. They haven’t, of course. There are entire countries that reject its rule, not to mention pockets of resistance dotted through The State, Angeland, and Utopia.

I am on the side of the Artifice, and that means I regard it as infallible, even when it fails—you could say, especially when it fails.

“Then the Artifice is a fucking pervert. She’s less than half my age. We have absolutely nothing in common.”

Lance waves a dismissive hand. “She is a pretty, well-bred girl with a presumably fertile womb. You’ve done well. Stop complaining.”

I’m not complaining. I’m concerned. Our world depends on the Artifice and the decisions it makes. Lately there are more reports about odd commands being issued. If faith is lost in the Artifice, then faith is lost in the very concept of order itself. Society can and will break down.

Fortunately, there is plenty of mental wriggle room around the interpretations of the Artifice’s actions. There are two tenets that encourage people not to question it:

The Artifice is a mystery that cannot be known.

The Artifice does not make mistakes.

If anybody insists on doubting the decisions made by the machine, there’s a law to handle the situation:

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