An Heirloom

Have you ever played those farming games? You know the ones. Where a relative—normally a parent or grandparent—dies and leaves you an absolute disaster of a plot to clean, cultivate, and somehow transform into a thriving agricultural empire. Not only do you become inexplicably wealthy, but you also end up fixing every interpersonal grievance in town, curing generational trauma one turnip at a time.

Well. I wish I could tell you that was my story.

I wished I could tell you this ends with me married to the local blacksmith, rolling in parsnips and passive goodwill. I wish I could tell you that if you are reading this, it is because I lived a long and irritatingly contented life.

But my dear—if you are reading this at all—then something has gone very wrong.

Very wrong indeed.

***

“Could a one Miss Bramley Turner report to the High Manager’s Office. Immediately.”

It is only nine fifteen. On a Monday, no less. I have been at my desk in The Morgue for precisely five minutes. Five. Not an actual morgue, of course. That’s just what we Junior Scientists call it, for its perpetually cold regardless of season. And no one talks. No one acknowledges another’s existence. Nobody asks how your weekend was or tries to get to know you. And if nobody knows you, nobody cares to learn your history.

That is a quality I like very much in my co-workers. It is, in part, what drew me to working here.

I sigh. A visit to the High Manager’s Office. This is going to ruin my week. I can feel it in my bones. The only saving grace is that I am wearing my practical shoes today. This has nothing to do with the fact that I broke three of my toes—three—kicking the leg of the dining table this morning…

I turn back down the corridor I walked just minutes ago, my ever-practical shoes squeaking on the polished rubber floor.

Squeak.

Squeak.

Squeak.

Squeak.

It would not be my first choice in funeral ballad, but it does have an irritating quality to it that I think suits me rather well.

The High Manager’s door is perfectly black, perfectly painted, and adorned with a perfectly lettered sign that reads High Manager, as if anyone could forget. The receptionist is no where to be seen, but her ginger tabby is asleep in its bed on the desk. How she ever got Management to sign off of that, I will never know.

“Good morning, Heather,” I say, scratching the cat behind her ears. She purrs deeply, vibrating with approval.

“Well, that makes one of us who is having a good day... What do you think—complete evisceration or a promotion?”

Meow.

“A very astute point. Thank you, my dear. Best be going though…”

I knock and enter as requested.

***

The High Manager’s office is disappointingly normal. The same black rubber that adorns all of the floors of the “Ministry for Scientific Advancement”, and the same custard-yellow walls. A colour combination I have always found deeply offensive. The first thing I will change when I work my way up to High Manager myself. Assuming I am not fired today.

The High Manager sits behind a large white desk, entirely plastic, because everything here must be wipeable. They are broad-shouldered, blonde-haired, and trimmed to corporate perfection. Power, apparently, looks like it shops exclusively in neutral tones.

But it is the woman perched on the sofa who truly concerns me. She sits as though the furniture might attempt to eat her at any moment.

I bow to the High Manager, then turn to her:

“Have we met before? I’m afraid I fail to recall your face or name.”

“Partridge. Leonora Partridge,” she says. “And no, Miss Turner. We have not met. However, I am familiar with your father’s work. Master Bramley Turner. So odd to call a daughter after her father.”

Ah.

So that is how this day is going to go.

“My family is nothing if not stubborn and traditional, Madam Partridge. A pleasure to meet you.”

I extend my left hand.

She eyes it as though it might bite, turning her nose up in disgust. It will take more than that to deter me.

“My hand is clean,” I add pleasantly. “I am a Junior Scientist after all. Wouldn’t do me very well to be traipsing germs around, would it?”

The grin I give her could curdle milk. We stood like this for several seconds.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Leonora, take the woman’s hand. It’s not as though she has her father’s abilities,” shouted the High Manager,

Oh, how little they know.

Finally, Leonora relents, shaking my hand. Rather… wetly. I am disappointed. I expected much better of someone from the Corporation Guild. You can tell a lot about someone from their handshake, you know.

I turn back to the High Manager. “With respect, why am I here? And why is there a High Member of the Corporation Guild in your office?”

Leonora Partridge gasps, making a noise a piccolo would take pride in.

“How do you know who I am? You do have your father’s abilities!” Her accusatory finger comes dangerously close to poking my eye. I don’t step back.

“Madam, it doesn’t take a genius to know who you must work for, given the security clearance around my father. And I am a genius. You do know where you are, correct?”

“Leonora, may I call you Leonora?” I don’t wait for her reply. “Given the security clearance around my father, and given where we are, it does not take a genius to deduce your employer. Though it does help that I am one.”

“Enough,” the High Manager snaps. “You are not in trouble, Bramley. We know the work your father conducted was his alone, isn’t that right, Leonora?”

She merely shares her death stare equally around the room. The High Manager continues, undeterred.

“In fact, we have noticed just how well you are thriving here. Truly, we are considering offering you Junior Scientist of the Month.”

I blink. That is unexpected.

“That is why,” they continue, “we believe you are uniquely quality to help—contain, no, improve—a certain situation...”

“Whatever I can do to help the Corporation Guild. You know I am but its humble servant.”

The words escape my mouth before I could think. I really must stop practising that in the mirror.

“Good. Good.” Is that a smirk on the High Manager’s face? “Well then please accept this mission. This gift, if you will. You will find the instructions at your desk upon your return. You are dismissed.”

I bow deeply and leave. I feel a smirk of my own curl and quiver on my lips as I go down the corridor for the third time today.

***

As sure as government oversight, a manilla folder waits for me when I return.

Dear Bramley,

Please find attached directions. You must follow these to the letter. If you deviate, the Corporation Guild will know. There is a farm just beyond our borders. The land has been unfarmable for the last two decades. However, with the increased population in Miserium, it is imperative that you discover the cause of this blight and fix it. If you wish to further your career within the Ministry for Scientific Advancement, then you will also plant the seeds in this envelope and use them to create a billowing empire of fruits and vegetables. Succeed in your task and you will be rewarded. Your traitor of a father will be removed from your family tree, freeing the restrictions upon your family.

Warms regards,

Leonora Partridge

Remember. The Corporation Guild is always watching.

Wonderful. I mean I am an ecologist with a special interest in agriculture—an agroecologist, if you will—so this mission shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. This is exactly the sort of task they hand out like lottery tickets to Junior Scientists desperate to advance. The dream of escape, packaged neatly with oversight and surveillance, promotion dangled like bait.

Still. A farm means distance. Space. This will be a good opportunity to test and refine my plan.

The plan to break my father out of Hell.

***

I arrive at the gates of the SweetVille farm a little after midnight, having walked for two days on roads that seem deliberately designed to discourage rogue ambition. My practical shoes no longer feel all that practical. You would think an empire as advanced as Miserium would have a transport system for its promising young scientists, but apparently walking builds characters.

Or obedience.

Possibly both.

The gates themselves are ornamental rather than functional—rusted iron curled into the shapes of fruit long since forgotten. The sign hangs crooked, the letters flaking like old scabs. The land beyond is a mess. Not the romantic, reclaimable sort of mess either. This is rot with intent. Weeds tall enough to block out the stars. Soil reeks of death.

I sleep in the shack on the land because there is nowhere else to sleep.

It is a narrow thing, listing slightly to the left, as though trying to escape the land it sits upon. The wind finds every crack with enthusiasm. Something scuttles under the floorboards and in the walls. I decide not to name it. Naming things gives them power, and I have already handed over quite enough of that lately.

Morning brings the locals.

They appear gradually, as if summoned by the smell of new obligation. There is a woman with a clipboard who introduces herself as the Mayor, despite the fact that SweetVille has no discernible centre, let along a town hall. And besides, the town belongs to the Corporation Guild.

There is a man who wants his fence fixing. Another who wants me to “take a look” at a patch of land that is very clearly beyond redemption. A woman who presses a basket of bruised apples into my arms and asks when my crops will be ready.

I smile. I nod. I take notes. I make an awful good show of it all.

I even shake every local hand. With my left, of course.

The hand with the gold ring, invisible against my skin, warm in a way metal should not be. My father used to say that inventions always know what they are for, long before we do. I try not to think about that too hard. This ring was a present from my father before his capture by the Corporation Guild. His crime… passing on technology to the common folk. He had noble intentions of course, you know, a whole uprising and overthrowing the oppressive government thing. But the all-powerful government, is just that. All powerful. And a few tech-ed up farmers were no match for their raw strength and numbers.

Thus, he went to Hell. The prison for highly intelligent individuals. Highly Educated Life Lockup, if you will.

I have no dreams of grandeur like my father. I have learnt from his mistakes. But what I do know is that he cannot stay there. I am not embarrassed about his line in our family tree. In fact, I am proud.

He just went about it all wrong.

That doesn't mean the new liberation army won’t need the secrets contained within his mind. So that was my mission, infiltration the Ministry of Scientific Advancements, learn as much as I can, specialise in agroecology and be sent out on a farm restoration mission where I would plan the next stage of my plan.

Overall, SweetVille is not a bad place to be sent. It is not hostile, instead, it is politely indifferent. The people here have learned the shape of disappointment and arranged their lives around it. They want the land fixed, yes—but more than that, they want someone else to be responsible for hoping.

The reality is, I have no desire to complete any of the tasks of these miserable town’s folk, nor do I have any intention of saving this land. I spend days walking the fields, taking samples, pretending to care. The blight is unlike anything I have seen. Not disease. Not poison. It is absence. The soil simply refuses. Life attempts to take root and gives up.

At night, I file reports that say nothing of substance. The Guild does not want solutions yet. They want compliance. Progress can wait.

The shack, however, does come with a basement.

Typically, one would have to work hard, impress the so-called Mayor, and be rewarded with the keys. However, I’m old fashioned. Bolt-cutters work just as well.

It is unfinished, damp, and smells faintly of rust and old earth. Perfect.

I replace the cut lock with my own—sleek, silent, far beyond the technological literacy of SweetVille. Down here, the walls are thick enough to block most signals. Down here, I can work.

Practice, my father called it. As though identity were a musical instrument and not a fundamental truth. For you see, that ring I mentioned earlier. It allows me to clone someone’s DNA from just a simple touch. The Guild thinks it a super-power. They have spent all this time, trying to isolate the genes from my father, when in fact it was simply his greatest invention.

And Leonora Partridge makes an excellent first subject. It was rather fortunate the High Member has been a woman. I don’t think I would want to impersonate a man. I rather like being able to sit cross legged.

I have her walk. Her posture. Her voice catalogued from our meeting. I spin the ring.

The transformation is always worse than I expect. Bones lengthen. Muscle shift in unfamiliar, deeply irritating ways. I can most definitely say they were never used on my own body.

Hair spills down my back. Heavy. Intrusive. Irritating.

How does he get anything done? I think.

I catch my reflection in a shard or mirror and feel a thrill that ahs nothing to do with triumph. I look powerful. Important. Invincible.

Changing back is harder. It always is.

This time, the pain comes faster. Sharper. A pressure in my chest that steals my breath. I try taking a deep breath. I can’t. I try again. Fail.

Understanding replaces frustration.

Oh.

Oh, well played.

I recognise this pain. I have studied it. I have written acclaimed papers on it. Rapid, engineered cellular instability. Anyone biologically significant enough to matter must be too unstable to copy safely. Or I just have really, really bad luck and tried to copy the DNA of the only person in Miserium with cancer.

They knew.

Of course they knew.

The High Manager played me.

The Corporation Guild played me.

I laugh, which hurts terribly, and sink to the floor of the basement as my lungs forget their purpose. My brilliant plan collapses before it ever really got started. I realise a single, infuriating truth: I was never meant to succeed. I was meant to prove a point.

With what little time I have left, I write.

***

So, my dear Bramley—

If you are reading this, then I have failed. Not for lack of intelligence or planning, but because I believed—briefly—that the Corporation Guild might underestimate me.

A rookie mistake. Do not repeat it.

I did not free your grandfather from Hell. I did not even reach the door. What I did manage, however, was to learn exactly how the Guild closes every path that looks like hope.

The ring is not magic. This gift I leave you is not a blessing. It will change the very direction of your life as you know it. It is leverage.

You must be smarter that I was. Quieter. Patient to the point of cruelty.

Do not try to save me yet.

Live. Learn. Let them believe you are grateful.

And when you finally decide to act, do not do it for revenge. Do it because Hell should never have been built in the first place.

I am sorry to leave you this gift.

With all the love I did not have time to give you,

—Your moth…

Bramley Turner closed the blood stained letter that his mother never finished, holding the gold ring in the palm of his hand. He slid it onto the ring finger on his left hand. It vanished instantly, and power coiled through this veins.

Now, how am I going to get my family out of Hell?

***

Have you ever played those farming games? You know the ones. Where a relative—normally a parent or grandparent—dies and leaves you an absolute disaster of a plot to clean, cultivate, and somehow transform into a thriving agricultural empire. Not only do you become inexplicably wealthy, but you also end up fixing every interpersonal grievance in town, curing generational trauma one turnip at a time.

Well. I wish I could tell you that was my story.

I wished I could tell you this ends with me married to the local blacksmith, rolling in parsnips and passive goodwill. I wish I could tell you that if you are reading this, it is because I lived a long and irritatingly contented life.

But my dear—if you are reading this at all—then something has gone very wrong.

Very wrong indeed.

***

“Could a one Master Bramley Turner report to the High Manager’s Office. Immediately.”