The lobby of the Grand Empress had been designed by someone who believed wealth should whisper. No marble statues, crystal chandeliers the size of automobiles or - g-d forbid - gold statues of some old decrepit owner. Just polished black stone beneath the feet, warm walnut paneling climbing the walls, and pools of soft amber light that made everyone inside look a little more important than they really were.
Outside, the city of Charlotte shimmered against the glass curtain walls, thousands of office windows burning in the late evening darkness. Thanksgiving approached, but the city was still hard at work.
A tall woman of a certain age and striking proportions stepped through the revolving door without breaking stride. She wore a charcoal overcoat over a black turtleneck dress that reached almost to the knee, severe enough to pass for executive attire but cut with the sort of impossible precision that only expensive tailoring ever achieved. Completing the “fit”, as her daughters might say, were black stockings, tall heels, a silver watch at one wrist and an unusual green stone as a pendant necklace sitting on a bosom that looked heavy but high and firm for her years.
Nothing flashy. Nothing wasted. She appeared perhaps forty-five. A remarkably attractive forty-five, certainly, but not unnaturally so - not a single procedure (surgical, that is). The truth was, though, that she had stopped counting birthdays sometime during the Eisenhower administration.
A young assistant loaned to her by one of the local development firms hurried after her, balancing a leather portfolio against her much thinner chest. “The site visit tomorrow has been moved to nine-thirty,” she said, calling out to the statuesque redhead, “The city inspectors want to attend, and-”
“They can have ten,” without breaking stride.
The assistant blinked. “But they specifically requested—”
“Ten.”
The assistant made a note immediately. “Of course.”
The concierge looked up, and recognition flickered. Certain people simply carried authority with them, and this redhead was obviously among their ranks. Also, the Grand Empress was a hotel friendly to the Movement, and to her kind in particular. It had been that way for generations.
“Ms. Henders, welcome back!” the concierge greeted, “We have your usual suite ready. Your bags are alr-“
Olivia never slowed down.
The assistant was still talking.
“-and the zoning board chairman wondered whether the proposed campus could support a future expansion footprint-”
“It can.”
“But the environmental report-”
“Has already been approved.” We have women on the council.
The younger woman looked down at her notes. It had. She simply hadn’t reached that page yet.
Olivia took the portfolio from her, removed a single folder without looking, handed the rest back. “Go get some sleep.”
The assistant hesitated. “We still have the breakfast meeting we need to prepare f-.”
“It will still be there in the morning.”
The assistant smiled nervously - “Yes, ma’am” - and departed.
Only then did Olivia look toward the lobby.
And stop.
The girl sitting near the fireplace pretended not to notice.
She wore an enormous navy-blue WESTHALL UNIVERSITY sweatshirt that covered her almost to mid-thigh over black leggings, one sneaker dangling from the end of an outstretched foot while the other remained on. A battered backpack sat beside her chair, overflowing with textbooks and loose papers. Long, thick red curls spilled in every direction, barely contained by a pencil stuck haphazardly through the mass. Tortoiseshell glasses sat low on her nose. A textbook was open across her lap. She had been staring at the same page for nearly half an hour.
But Ashleigh finally looked up.
Green eyes. So much like her sister’s. Except where Melissa’s eyes always seemed to be discovering the world for the first time, Ashleigh’s looked as though they were quietly taking it apart.
“Hi, Mom.”
Olivia regarded her for a long moment. “You should be at school.”
“I know.”
A pause.
“I have a statistics exam next Monday.”
Another pause.
Olivia’s eyes drifted to the overstuffed backpack. Then to the object leaning casually against the side of the chair. A broom. Ash had wrapped the cracked handle in faded black athletic tape years ago. One side bore a tiny silver WESTHALL parking sticker from a joke she’d found much funnier than Olivia had.
“You flew here?”
Ashleigh pushed her glasses back up her nose. “Yeah?”
“You crossed three states.”
“Tailwind.”
Silence. For the briefest fraction of a second, the corner of Olivia’s mouth moved. Not quite a smile, but the closest thing to it that Ashleigh could remember seeing in a while.
It was enough.
Ashleigh, though, tried very hard to keep her expression neutral. Inside, however, her heart was beating far too quickly. She had replayed this moment the entire trip. Maybe Mom would be annoyed. Maybe impressed. Maybe she’d simply tell her to go home.
She had almost turned around over Kentucky.
But then she told herself again: Jay, Missy’s “boyfriend”. The baby bottle, the formula crafted by Evolution to mimic her sister’s potential lactation profile. Pink Panther. She thought of the possible future and the possible numbers and realized she couldn’t wait any longer. Not for a phone call, not for a meeting next week. She needed Mom to hear it now, face to face.
Olivia was still looking at her. “You came here for a reason.”
Ashleigh swallowed, and felt her stomach tighten immediately. She had rehearsed this conversation the entire way here, but the lobby suddenly felt much larger. Much brighter. “I…” she began, then stopped. Ashleigh Henders was seldom at a loss for words, seldom nervous. She prided herself on her own heroic sense of insouciance. Everything was different, though, around her mom, and sometimes she still felt like a little girl.
Olivia waited. The lobby was quiet around them, interrupted only by muted conversations, rolling luggage and the soft clink of glassware from the bar.
“I think I solved one of y-…one of our problems.”
Silence. For the first time since entering the hotel, Olivia’s full attention settled completely on one person: her daughter Ashleigh. She studied her. The oversized sweatshirt. The wild, windblown hair. The textbook. The broom. The nervousness hidden behind the jokes, the way she just swallowed. Then Ashleigh said quietly:
"I think I have an idea…."
Pause.
"...that could be our final solution."
As if suddenly cautious, Olivia looked up from her daughter for a moment. A businessman seated at the hotel bar across the lobby had glanced over from his laptop and was watching them. He looked to be in his mid-forties maybe, with the expected kit: conference badge hanging crookedly from his jacket pocket, second bourbon, wedding ring.
Ash saw him too. He smiled politely, lifted his glass in a tiny salute to both women, and returned to whatever spreadsheet occupied his screen.
Olivia watched him exactly long enough to remember his face. Then she looked back at her daughter, reached down, picked up Ashleigh’s backpack before she could protest, and slung it over one shoulder.
“Mom you don’t need t-”
“It’s fine. You had a long ride. I’ll carry it. You grab the broom.”
Ashleigh looked at her mother, blinked, and realized this was probably the closest thing she’d had in the way of maternal affection in years. She’d take it. And the broom.
“Walk with me,” said Olivia, and began walking towards the elevators. Behind her, her daughter quickly stood, took hold of her broomstick, and followed.
The elevator arrived almost immediately, as if The Grand Empress had a way of arranging itself around people like Olivia Henders. A pair of businesswomen stepped out first, still talking quietly about quarterly forecasts and acquisition targets. One of them glanced toward Olivia, hesitated for just a fraction of a second, then instinctively moved aside to make room. She gave the smallest nod of acknowledgment - these were women doing good work - and stepped inside. Ashleigh followed, broom tucked awkwardly under one arm.
The doors slid shut to silence, Ash and Olivia alone, until the soft mechanical hum of the elevator filled the space and they began to move, upwards.
Ashleigh glanced at her mother carrying her backpack. The thing was, admittedly, absurdly heavy with her textbook, laptop, three notebooks, a neuroanatomy lab manual, and several pounds of things she had thrown in at the last second because she hadn't known how long she’d be staying. Olivia was, to put it mildly, a strong woman. Normally she carried such things as though they were empty. Today, though, Ash noticed a bit of effort. Mom looks a little tired.
Ash folded her arms. "You know, I can actually carry my own stuff."
"I know." Olivia looked at the floor indicator as it climbed.
Ash waited. Nothing else came. She sighed. "Thank you."
That finally earned her a glance.
"You are welcome." The words were perfectly sincere, which somehow made them stranger.
The elevator continued upward. Ash adjusted her grip on the broom.
“You’re still using that old thing?” Olivia posited.
"It has sentimental value,” Ashleigh answered, “It was Grandmother’s. And it seemed to bring her luck.”
Olivia raised one eyebrow, and for perhaps the second time that evening, the corner of Olivia's mouth threatened to become an actual smile. She chuckled. “Maybe true.”
The elevator doors opened, and the two tall, redheaded women stepped out.
The executive floor was almost unnaturally quiet. Thick carpet swallowed their footsteps and muted artwork lined the walls. Everything smelled faintly of cedar and expensive soap.
Olivia walked through its halls without hesitation while Ash followed half a step behind, watching her mother with the same fascination she always had but with a touch of concern. Olivia never hurried, was never uncertain. As a little girl, Ash had honestly believed her mother simply knew everything. She had eventually learned that wasn't true.
It was almost worse.
Olivia didn't know everything. She simply prepared for more possibilities than anyone else. The woman was competent to the extreme and wore many hats, not all of them tall, black and pointy: brilliant scientist, entrepeneur, political advisor, corporate consultant. Her strength and energy for greater and greater accomplishments never ceased to amaze her daughter. Today, though, she looked a touch…drained. More severe. Perhaps older.
They rounded a corner.
“Mom - how long has it been since you’ve eaten?”
”I had something in Japan.”
Ashleigh nodded. “That was only two weeks ago.” A feeding should have lasted her longer than that. “Are you okay?”
"I’m fine. How…is Westhall?" Olivia asked. She asked more with the curiosity of an old alum - which she was - than that of a concerned mom.
Ash blinked. The question was so ordinary that it caught her off guard. I guess we’re doing small talk. Or rather, Mom’s version of small talk. "It's...Westhall."
"An unhelpful answer,” Olivia followed, "How are your classes?"
"They continue to insist on grading me."
Again, her mother almost smiled, and Ashleigh noticed. Another tiny victory.
Olivia reached her suite and produced a keycard from her coat pocket. It had been given to her earlier today. The lock clicked. Olivia opened the door. She stepped inside.
The suite looked less like a hotel room than a temporary command center. The dining/meeting table had disappeared beneath carefully arranged maps, architectural renderings, demographic reports, and thick folders bearing the new Far Horizons Global Evolution logo. It had all been prepared for Olivia beforehand. One entire wall was covered by the lights of Charlotte stretching into the distance.
Olivia set Ashleigh's backpack carefully beside the table. She removed her coat and draped it over a chair. Then she turned back toward her daughter. Standing straight, putting effort into her posture, her hourglass figure cut a dramatic silhouette. Her big breasts were perhaps not as large as either of her daughters’ but they, a powerful set of hips and a narrow waist made her an impressive sight nonetheless.
Ashleigh was still standing in the doorway, broom in one hand, wild hair from the flight, looking all at once like both an exhausted college student and one of the most dangerous young women in the world.
"How is your sister?" Olivia asked.
More small talk. Or maybe not. "Complicated," Ashleigh answered, setting the broom down against the wall, by the entrance. “I’m keeping an eye on her.”
"Are you sleeping?"
"I get some cat naps in." Another attempt to make her mom smile; not as successful.
Olivia instead regarded her for a long moment. Then, very simply, she said: "Show me what you have."
Ashleigh did not move immediately. She stood in the middle of the suite, one hand now resting on the edge of the thick table, looking around the room.
Charlotte spread out beyond the windows. The city was beautiful from up here. Ordered and predictable with lights tracing roads and towers marking centers of commerce. Tiny moving lines of headlights carried thousands of people toward homes, apartments, hotels.
Systems.
Her eyes drifted from the city to the papers spread across the conference table. Someone here likes their maps. County parcels, transportation corridors, population density projections - it was all here. Several sites circled in red. Ash recognized their purpose immediately. "You're looking for spots for clinics," she offered, “but not just one?”
Olivia had already resumed sorting through a stack of reports. "No,” she answered, “we’re looking five years out. More than clinics.”
Ash stepped closer. "This is infrastructure."
Olivia looked up. A tiny pause. Then: "Yes."
Ash felt a little thrill run through her. Most people would have seen real estate, but she saw what her mother saw: a network, a skeleton waiting for flesh. She reached into her backpack and carefully pulled out her laptop. Then three notebooks. Then a thick folder stuffed with loose papers.
Olivia watched the process without interrupting.
Ash finally looked up. "I know you have a scaling problem."
Olivia sat down. Not dramatically. Simply...sat, her heavy rear settling into a chair.
Ash noticed it immediately. Her mother was listening.
"Go on."
Ash opened her laptop, swiped to a window. A collection of charts appeared. Numbers, flow diagrams. Handwritten annotations crowding the margins.
"I've been thinking about Program, and Product.”
Olivia nodded once.
"They don’t scale."
Olivia let out a breath. "No."
Ash took in a breath. "We can make extraordinary women….”
Another click, a different chart.
“…but we can't make enough of them."
Olivia nodded. It was true.
“And men. There’s lots of them out there. Billions, actually,” the young redhead continued, pulling the pencil from her hair to point out a bar graph, “We can put them into - I know you don’t like the term, but it’s what everybody’s calling them - hives. We can get some men under the influence of women on Product.” Ash paused. “We also have Nexifem’s shrink ray, and of course the newer Program-for-Men.”
Olivia remained silent. Something dark passed over her expression. Also, it was true: she didn’t love some of her daughter’s flippant terminology for either the cells of influence Product was creating around the world, or the groundbreaking biotech from Nexifem and the KOLECTV source labs, but she decided not to correct her.
Ash continued. "But Nexifem’s tech is expensive. And Program is complicated. Controlled but risky. Every iteration requires oversight." Another page. Another diagram. "It's brilliant, the Russians know their shit…"
She looked up at her mother. She knew she didn’t like cursing. Unless, of course…y’know. Eye of newt and all that. Anyway…
"But it doesn't spread. Not enough. Either does Product, honestly, the way we’d need it to. To get to them all, women and men. Make the world look the way we want, the way it should.”
For several seconds the only sound in the room was the faint hum of the climate control. Through both women’s minds, images of a very different planet formed briefly: one in which vibrantly beautiful wives lead their shrunken husbands around by the hand, or even better carried them in their purses.
Then Olivia asked: "And what does?"
Ash had rehearsed this answer a hundred times. She had practiced saying it in the dorm. On the broom, halfway over Kentucky. Still, she felt her pulse jump.
"Stories,” Ashleigh offered, “Myths. Legends."
Silence. Ash adjusted her glasses.
"They, like, spread themselves."
Her mother did not react, which actually encouraged her. She stood up from the chair she'd barely realized she'd taken and started pacing slowly around the table. "The Movement keeps treating people like they need to be convinced,” she began, as she gestured toward the city outside, "They really don't."
Olivia folded her hands. "What do they need, Ashleigh?"
There was something a bit maddeningly supercilious in her mother’s tone, but also a hint of intrigue and - if she wasn’t mistaken - motherly pride, which made Ash stop at the window. The lights below reflected faintly in the glass. "They need something to belong to," she answered, “Maybe someone to answer to.”
She could hear it; her own voice sounded strangely calm now. The nerves were disappearing. She continued. "They need symbols,” she said, as she turned back to her mother, "They need rituals." Another step. "They need to feel like they're participating in something bigger than themselves."
Olivia asked only one question, because she knew what her daughter was beginning to imply. "And where does Melissa fit into this?" she asked.
Ash hesitated. Not because she didn't know - she did, and her mother certainly did too. Both of them had knowledge of the crowds that had started to gather at Far Horizons on weekend mornings, or the worshipful communities that had begun to coalesce online. But this was the part that mattered. The part that had sent her all the way from New Corinth to Charlotte.
"Missy isn't the whole system, she can’t be." Her voice softened almost imperceptibly. "We know her. And we also know who she’s surrounding herself with, these friends. They can’t build what would need to be built - it’d be enormous. But, with the right guidance, Missy could be the reason the system works."
Olivia said nothing, but cocked her head. “So you think Melissa could be…?”
Ash continued. She knew her mother was prompting her, wanted to hear her say it, describe it herself. "She's...she makes people feel things." A small smile touched her mouth - nostalgic, maybe. "She always has." Ashleigh remembered childhood. Teachers. Neighbors. Friends. Boys. People who met Melissa and wanted to be part of her life. Wanted to protect her and help her succeed in whatever it was she was doing. Wanted nothing more than to see that goddamn perfect smile beaming back at them.
"I don't think that's an accident,” Ashleigh said, and looked directly at Olivia, “And I think it could be the breakthrough."
The older woman remained perfectly still as Ash moved back to the table and opened another notebook. This one wasn't full of equations, or lab notes. It was sketches. Arrows. Networks. Little diagrams connecting ideas instead of chemicals.
"Program changes bodies. Product changes bodies, sometimes minds." Ash touched one page. "But populations are changed by culture…and religion.”
Olivia's eyes had lowered to the notebook and were already scanning it with preternatural intelligence. She reached forward and turned one of the pages herself. A rough drawing. Not technical, just circles, some connected by lines.
At the center, one larger circle. Around it, countless smaller ones. No labels. No explanations. No lines connecting them to the center.
Olivia studied it. "What am I looking at?" She regretted using the term before she even said it. “Hives?”
Ash swallowed, knowing what her mother was assuming, then answered with complete sincerity. "Not hives. A self-sustaining social structure." She almost laughed at herself. "It probably looked better in my head."
Olivia kept looking at the page.
Ash suddenly felt like a schoolgirl again, showing a book report to her mom. She had crossed three states for this. Flown east from the setting sun. Nearly turned back. And now that the words were finally coming out into the open, they sounded impossibly small.
"I know it isn't finished," she said quietly, "I know there are gaps." She looked down at the notebook. "But I think..."
Her voice faltered for just an instant. Then she found it again.
"I think Melissa may be the first thing we’ve made that people - men and women - won't have to be convinced, or forced, to follow."
The room grew very still. Beyond the windows, Charlotte glittered beneath the night sky. When Ashleigh said “we”, she didn’t mean just herself and her mom. Yes, her mom ‘made’ Missy, both in her womb and in her own uniquely arcane way; Ash had been in there with her. But Ashleigh was speaking instead of the Movement as a whole, women making strides and changes in business, in education, in politics.
Olivia looked from the sketches…to the city....and finally back to her daughter. Then she asked, in the same calm tone she might have used discussing budgets or election polls or laboratory results: "What made you start thinking about this?"
Ash did not answer immediately. Ash took off her glasses. Ash polished them absently on the sleeve of her oversized sweatshirt. Ash didn’t know how to say this delicately, without sounding completely insane…or, worse still, embarrassing. This was still her mother, after all. “Melissa. And her pheromones. And Jay. And the formula we’re feeding him.”
Ash put her glasses back on.
“Yes..?” prompted Olivia.
“And I’ve been experimenting with Pink Panther.”
Olivia looked up. That earned a reaction, but her daughter had misspoken. “The Fifth Sacrament,” she corrected her.
Ashleigh sighed. “Nobody my age calls it that. The girls in my coven call it Pink Panther.”
“That,” Olivia replied, “does not make them correct.” She regarded her daughter. She’d been a disappointment, of course, at birth. As had been her sister. There should never have been two of them. But Ashleigh had become brilliant, in her own right, and growing into a powerful witch. She should hear what her daughter had to say.
Olivia folded her hands. “Go on.” She reached over and quietly closed the notebook with the circles and lines. We’re done discussing theory. Now tell me what you actually did.
Ashleigh looked toward the city again. “I’ve been…watching them. Melissa and Jay...”
Meow.
“...and I tried something myself. With him. I had him alone. I had the formula. I had Pin-…I had the Fifth Sacrament.”
For the first time that evening, Olivia did not interrupt.
She simply listened.
==========