May 20, Tukayyid Day, 3056, Nha Tranh, Kowloon...
Morning Ritual: Elizabeth wakes up after four hours of sleep, check. she rinses her mouth out with a harsh cleansing compound, shower, hair dry and comb. Check. Logs onto the Kowloon network, begins catching up on reports in her underwear and a terrycloth robe, while the coffee pot starts the cycle of grinding beans, forcing them into the boiling water vessel, and from the boiler into the carafe at exactly 105 degrees Celsius. Check. a timer begins as heat is vented to bring the brew to safe temperature. check.
She checks the sports page, noting professional trades and trends in the Rugby, Futbol, and Gridiron (Sheliak style Football) leagues. spends five minutes on sports news, turns to the business pages. Feeds from DBS, CBC and SLN. five minutes on the tech development pages. this is usually accompanied by handwritten notes on the notepad for reference.
Alarm goes off, the coffee is now ready. She lingers for exactly three minutes before getting up. the first cup she always forgets next to the refrigerator.
Take pills, use autoinjector. Prescriptions done for at least six hours.
begins making breakfast. This varies considerably, but always includes 'prescribed' foods. Her days of running a full day on half of a cold bagel are gone. The collection of injuries from seizures and one memorable fight have put the nails in that hand. while eating breakfast, she scrolls through messages and updates. she makes notes here, too-but these are electronic notes forwarded immediately to government departments or company employees whose job is to read those notes, and either make a decision, perform an action, or add them to a project's data-base.
This goes on until noon, with a lunch break-at which point, she remembers the coffee cup left standing on the counter next to the refrigerator.
She always makes the same face, tasting the cold coffee, pours it out, and pours a fresh cup from the carafe.
shower again. this time, she shaves her legs, and prepares her 'Duchess suit', her closet is loaded with seven identical versions in black, with white blouses of silk. The wool is uncomfortable by design. Every Noble does something to stand out from their subjects. Most choose a Uniform, or ornate formal wear. Elizabeth stands out from both other Nobles, and her subjects by dressing uncomfortably, in thick, black wool in late summer, over a crisp white shirt or blouse. Unadorned except for a single splash of color, usually a neckerchief, scarf, or pocket handkerchief.
Her choice of either pants, or skirt, is likewise calculated. This time, depending on how many times she cut herself shaving her legs with the razor. too many times, and it is black slacks of thick, heavy wool, if the cuts aren't too obvious, she will wear a skirt to get some relief from the heat.
The heels in the closet are for truly formal occasions. Like the flats, they are black, common leather waxed and polished to a mirror finish. she maintains this by paying someone else to do the shoe-shines at the office.
sixty percent of the time, it is an older human who lost his legs in the war of '39. Twenty percent of the time, it is a teenaged boy from up the street, the same boy who washes her car. (this will end, once he is of age to enter the military. In six years, there have been four people cycled through in such a manner. Two of them girls.) The remaining twenty percent of the time, she will find someone else, often a retail employee at one of the hundreds of small shops in Nha Tranh.
Dressed, crisp, and clean, she finally speaks out loud. "Jack! Nick! time for work guys!!"
and we disengage from the charging and maintenance bench, to relieve the silent watch team that has managed external security while our Duchess has had her private time.
For the rest of the day, deep into the night, we are all three on duty. She is on duty as Duchess and as Corporate Chairman. we take care of her.
we are her carers. for the time she must be in public, dealing with meetings and people, and policy, we secure her body, watch over her, and support her interests.
when she has a seizure, we turn her into the safe position if she hasn't gotten there on her own, we clean up her vomit, listen to her agonized screams, interpret her visions-and this last task, we share with the Twos and the Sixes. we are her Carers, her acolytes, and her high priests, though she is neither a god, nor goddess, nor even prophet.
we know there is nothing supernatural about her, she knows it too.
but dammit, she's ours. She should have been born a Cylon.
Today is Tukayyid day. May 20th. Our duchess will visit the Comstar compound, she will make a fat donation marked 'For the Comguards'. she will shake the hand of the lunatic tech-priests who run that place, and she will smile and tell them we are not devices, but people, and deserve to be treated as such.
She will give thanks for Focht, she will send a message to somewhere random, a greeting to a stranger, with a smaller donation in C-bills. she uses a random number generator for this, and the cost of the transmission she will cover from her personal funds. a shout to strangers to appreciate the world and live.
It always makes me sad, she urges others to make the most of their lives, to look beyond...and she hides the loneliness. we see it, we see everything, her brittle relationships with even her closest associates. we see her with her defenses down. We hear her nightmares, her fears, and her guilt. all of the things she hides from everyone. Today, is the one day she lets any of that out-to strangers, because she has to maintain image, the aura of untouchability, especially among her people, her employees, and her close associates.
We see it all, how she shies from human contact.
if she were a Cylon, she would not suffer so much for doing that. She is mortal, and she is dying, and she desperately wants to pretend she can make it so that she will not be mourned when she passes.
She will be.
not just by us. But we will mourn her the way she needs-by learning and understanding her example.
