What Remains of Rebecca Palmer Chapter Thirteen

 

Chapter Thirteen: Leonard

 

The file came up late in the morning, just before I was going to head to the cafeteria for lunch, and so I almost closed it without thinking. 

 

Ellory, Mara.

Age: 17

Inner Party 

Transfer Origin: Ravenscourt Hall.

Compliance Index: 6.4 (volatile trend).

 

I stopped breathing for a moment as I read the name, Ravenscourt. The word sat on the screen as if it had weight, and I told myself it was simply coincidence. My old school. I didn’t know anyone called Mara Ellory, but it was my old school, and she would have been a few years behind me. The system processed hundreds of monitoring updates every single day. It didn’t mean anything significant.

 

I scrolled down and saw a list of petty offences that slowly built up over time into a profile of a young woman with a wild, rebellious streak. Each point of inflection registered a score, and bit by bit the score built up. 

 

Cafeteria non-response to supervisory prompt.

Dormitory light-out breach — 00:19 hours.

Counselling notation: affective detachment.

Passive-aggressive response to New Feminism

Unorthodox approach to school uniform regulations

Baseline cortisol variance elevated.

 

It was nothing, but it was also everything, because I knew now how this worked. I knew the thresholds. The Purge instigated by the vengeful Frick family hadn’t stopped with me, my father, and my mother. There were eyes everywhere now – especially in a boarding school for the precocious daughters of Inner Party members who had been seen to be loyal to Karl Magnus. A sustained score above 6.5 combined with a resistance marker triggered a Reclassification Review. And Reclassification led ultimately to Relocation Assessment.

 

And Relocation meant ‘does not come back’.

 

--------------------------

 

“How was your… assessment?” asked Jessica-6 as she sat beside me at lunch. “That’s what it was, yes?’

 

“Intrusive and irrelevant.” I was still smarting from many of the questions Dr. Voss had put to me.

 

“So, some of the other girls have been talking. I hear we’re all going to have to have an assessment?” added Jessica. Clearly she wanted to know what to expect. “I hear they hook you up to machines?”

 

“Yes – machines. There were questions about sexual needs and desires. Like I said, intrusive. How are you getting on with your current cases?”

 

“Oh. Good. There’s been progress.” Jessica leaned forward with a conspiratorial smile. “Have I told you about my new target?”

 

“No, you haven’t. But you hinted she’s high profile.”

 

“Oh yes, I’ve got one of the big fish. The pop singer, Lyra Quinn.”

 

“No!” I put my fork down in surprise. “Lyra Quinn? THE Lyra Quinn? We’re targeting her? What has she done?”

 

“Well,” Jessica sat back and looked smug. “What hasn’t she done? Pop recording artist, fashion entrepreneur, high-engagement social media influencer.” Jessica began to tick things off on her fingers. “Video-stream platforms, live broadcast channels, a personal subscription network (the “LQ Inner Circle”), Meme amplification accounts, clocking in 41 million aggregate followers across all her platforms and an average 8 to 15 million views per reactive video. She’s a big player. Her hashtag campaigns reach top trends within 90 minutes, and she enjoys a high engagement among women aged 16 to 28, the lower-tier professional classes, and disaffected aspirational demographics.”

 

“She sounds powerful. But I meant, what has she done to us? To the Steel Worlds?”

 

“She isn’t saying the right things. She posts memes implying New Feminism is joyless or authoritarian. She uploads tearful monologues about “being told how to live.” She shares vague accusations about “control structures.” She uses humour and sarcasm to mock Council slogans, and she amplifies stories of women claiming to feel “erased” or “managed.”

 

I lowered my voice and whispered, “I think I like her.”

 

“Rebecca!” Jessica pretended a show of shocked surprise. “Behave yourself!” And then, after a subtle glance at a wall mounted camera, added in a lower voice, “No, seriously – don’t say things like that. Anyone could be listening.”

 

“I know. But some of the things Anna says… and no one ever objects or reprimands her.”

 

“I don’t know how Anna gets away with it,” said Jessica. “She lives a charmed life, for sure. Perhaps she has connections?”

 

Lyra Quinn… I had two of her albums at home, both on vinyl to impress my friends, despite the fact I didn’t own a record player. Even my father didn’t own a record player. When I was sixteen I wanted so much to be her. Didn’t we all? The Pop Princess. Did the Steel Worlds really think of her as a threat?

 

“She’s not like your Dr. Vale,” Jessica murmured. “Lyra’s videos aren’t composed or measured. She posts crying videos. Memes. She called the Alignment Initiative ‘cosplay governance.’” 

 

“That’s just her opinion.”

 

“Twelve million people viewed that post,” said Jessica. “We can’t have that.”

 

“Dr. Vale argues like she’s in a lecture hall. Structured. Calm. You can almost forget she’s dissenting until you realize she’s dismantled the premise entirely.”

 

Jessica nodded faintly. “Lyra Quinn just laughs,” she said. “Or shrugs. Or says, ‘Does this feel free to you?’ And then she looks straight into the camera.”

 

I imagined the shared intimacy of that gaze. The way her followers would feel chosen.

 

“Lyra doesn’t debate anyone,” Jessica continued. “She simply infects minds. We think she’s going to be easier to handle,” Jessica added, “because she contradicts herself.”

 

“She will be easier,” I said.

 

Jessica didn’t respond immediately, but then she whispered, “Do you really think so?”

 

I hesitated for a moment. Dr. Vale was precise. Careful. Hard to corner without fabrication. Lyra Quinn sounded volatile. Emotional. Uncontrolled, but emotion tended to spread faster than logic these days – like a forest fire raging out of control. “I think,” I said carefully, “that one of them is respected… and the other is loved.” The word lingered in the air and I saw Jessica exhale slowly. 

 

“They said if I push her hard enough, she’ll spiral. She can’t tolerate being called irrelevant.”

 

“And if she doesn’t?” I asked.

 

Jessica was quiet for a long time. “Then we escalate.”

 

The word felt heavier than it should have. 

 

“The way I see it,” Jessica began, “Lyra Quinn normalises the mocking of New Feminism. She makes dissent seem fashionable, and she encourages young women to treat alignment as optional. She creates heavily emotional viral spikes that overwhelm official messaging. We may have to take extreme measures.”

 

“She’s famous,” I said. “She can’t just disappear.”

 

“No one’s THAT famous, Rebecca. Anyone can disappear. Especially women. Women disappear all the time.”

 

“A slave market? On Gor? Lyra Quinn? She’s one of the most famous women on Earth.”

 

“No one on Gor would care about that She’d be priced just the same as any other slave.” Jessica thought about it for a moment. “You know what – I reckon she wouldn’t sell for anymore on an auction block than…” Jessica smiled, “than you would.”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

 

“No, really. Her fame on Earth would be irrelevant. Gorean men would simply assess her on her physical attributes. I think you would both fetch a similar price.”

 

“I’m hardly going to be standing on an auction block on the Counter Earth, with or without Lyra Quinn!”

 

“It’s hypothetical, Rebecca. Please don’t be angry.”

 

“Well, maybe she’d fetch the same price as you then!” I folded my arms, angrily. “Why are you comparing her to me!”

 

“Well, I can hardly assess myself, can I?”

“Oh, and you think you can assess me – as a slave on sale in a slave market?”

 

“Better than I can myself. Your cheeks are all flushed, Rebecca!”

 

“That’s because I feel insulted!”

 

“I hope you didn’t react like this in your assessment.”

 

“I did not!”

 

“Well… I meant it as a compliment. You know… you might interest men to the same degree as Lyra Quinn. That’s a compliment. You’d make a cute pair of chain sisters.”

 

“I don’t want to interest men! I don’t care what men think!”

 

“Well, on a Gorean slave block you wouldn’t have a choice. The men would have whips and you would be made to perform and display yourself to the best of your ability. They would whip you if you didn’t comply.”

 

I said nothing. I knew that was probably true.

 

“Would you prefer to be whipped?” asked Jessica with a teasing smile. Would you be obstuinate?

 

“No!”

 

“So you would display yourself then? You would beg to be sold? Just like every girl on an auction block does. Just as every slave does?”

 

“Obviously, I would do what I had to do to avoid the whip. So what?” I snapped.

 

Jessica just smiled in that annoying, patronising way she sometimes had. 

 

-------------------------------------------

 

I tried to concentrate on my work that afternoon, but the predictive model sat in a small grey box on the right of my screen where I had left it open to nag at my subconscious: 

 

Ellory, Mara:

Projected Stability Probability (90 days): 41%.

Recommended Adjustment: Environmental Restriction Tier 2.

Secondary Recommendation: Remove peer-cluster proximity.

 

Remove peer-cluster proximity meant isolation. Isolate the rebel, and then break her. 

 

The way they broke me. 

 

The line on the graph was not steep, it was gentle, and that is how it usually happens. There’s never a single dramatic event, just a steady accumulation of demerits until a point of no return is reached.

 

I rested my hand on the mouse, knowing that the mouse automatically registered my pulse; I could feel the faint pressure of it against my fingers. Elevated stress during review is itself a metric. I lowered my breathing deliberately, not wishing to trigger an alert to my supervisor. I tried to think of running water – a gentle stream trickling over stones in the countryside, close to home. There would be questions if my pulse triggered a response: “is something wrong, Rebecca? Why are you experiencing an emotional spike while you work? Do you need… counselling?”

 

But, similarly, I couldn’t simply move my fingers away from the mouse for too long. “Are you hiding something, Rebecca? What are you hiding? Are you… deviating?”

 

This wasn’t my decision. These numbers were generated by behavioural entries, biometric feeds, linguistic hesitation analysis, and predictive weighting layers I didn’t understand. I was just supposed to review the file and confirm alignment. That was all I was supposed to do.

 

The alignment was always correct. We’d been told that. The system was never cruel. It was always consistent. We’d always been told that. Still, my eyes returned to the Compliance Index field: 6.4.

 

If it tipped higher tonight — and the audit sweep ran like clockwork at 02:00 — the review became mandatory. This girl would be reassigned tomorrow. She’d wake up in her bed in a Ravenscourt dormitory, and downstairs a black van would be waiting for her. I imagined her dressing herself, skipping down to the canteen hall for breakfast, alongside her friends, only she’d never make it to breakfast, The headmistress would pull her aside.

 

“There are two men here. You need to go with them. Everything will be all right, Mara. Just do everything they say. Don’t struggle or cry out.”

 

02:00 would be decision time for Mara Ellory.

 

I opened the biometric sub-panel under the guise of verification. There was a permissible calibration range in place — minor smoothing for equipment variance. It existed for sensor drift, nothing more. The baseline stress field glowed faintly when selected. I didn’t mean to think the thought, but it arrived anyway: if the rolling average were adjusted down even slightly, the volatility trend would flatten. The predictive probability would rise. The red shading in the recommendation box would soften.

 

It wouldn’t save her, but it would buy her some time, and time is never nothing.

 

She’d probably be finishing her last class round about now, walking out with a rebellious youthful swagger to her hips, blithely unaware that her fate would be decided at 02.00 hours tonight. Earlier this morning at school assembly she had probably only pretended to mouth the words Purity Through Faith after the Headmistress had said, “Strength Through Purity”.

 

I pictured her tomorrow standing in a processing centre with a hard concrete floor, white washed brick walls, and a single hard backed chair. She would be crying as men took away her shoes. 

 

“Please… I haven’t done anything! Please… let me speak to my mother and father!”

 

This had nothing to do with me. I didn’t know the girl. I would never know the girl. I had no responsibility towards her. 

 

Everything I did here was logged. I knew that. Keystroke pressure. Cursor path. Timestamp. Operator ID. I told myself I was only exploring the interface.

 

My fingers glided over the keys and I reduced the baseline by 0.3%. The numbers shifted instantly.

 

Compliance Index recalculated: 6.2. The projected stability probability rose to 53%. The red in the recommendation faded to amber. The secondary recommendation disappeared. It was that simple. 

 

And then a new line appeared beneath the adjustment field:

 

Calibration adjustment applied by: Palmer, R.

Timestamp: 16:47:12.

 

The words feel like exposure. I had not meant to commit it. I only wanted to see the effect. I moved the cursor away, then back again, as if the field might revert if I hesitated long enough. And then a confirmation window opened.

 

Confirm Adjustment?

Y / N

 

If I pressed N, it would revert. The attempt would exist, but not the change. That could be explained as a slip of the mouse that I swiftly corrected.

 

And in the morning a black van would arrive at Ravenscourt. I imagined a girl being bundled into the back of it, pleading that she had done nothing wrong. 

 

If I pressed Y, it became part of the record. It would pass through the audit at 02:00 with my name attached.

 

I imagined tomorrow morning:

 

Access denied. Please report to Administrative Oversight. My own file opened on someone else’s screen.

 

I should not do this. This is not defiance. It is not resistance. It is arithmetic. It is interference with optimisation. My finger hovered over the key and I thought of the Ravenscourt corridors at dusk. Of doors that closed softly and did not open again. Of names that vanished from attendance sheets without comment. I couldn’t picture the girl. I only saw the back of her as she walked down a familiar corridor. Her life was suddenly in my hands.

 

“I haven’t done anything!” she screamed as uniformed men forced her through a door and into a bleak, cold, cement floor containment room that didn’t even have a mattress. 

 

I pressed Y and suddenly the screen refreshed itself.

 

Adjustment confirmed.

Compliance Index: 6.2 (stable trend).

Monitor — no immediate action.

 

Nothing happened. No alert sounded . No supervisor was suddenly notified. There was no shift in lighting. The ventilation hum remained constant, and around me other operators continued typing, their faces neutral, screens reflecting faintly in their glasses.

 

Mara Ellory’s file dropped lower in the queue as if nothing had occurred.

 

My hands were now shaking, and so I folded them together in my lap until the tremor stilled. I closed the file and moved to the next entry - my movements now feeling deliberate, almost exaggerated in their calm.

 

The audit would run at 02:00. And tonight I would lie in the dormitory and listen for footsteps in the corridor, and every sound would feel like a consequence.

 

The lights went down at 22:30, as they always did. In the dormitories the lights don’t switch off completely, they simply dim to a calibrated twilight, enough to discourage movement, and enough for the cameras to maintain clarity. The ceiling panels hummed faintly as they settled into night mode. Jessica was already in bed when I returned, and Anna was brushing her hair with slow, methodical strokes, counting under her breath the way she always did. The other two girls spoke softly for a moment — something about laundry rotation — and then even that faded.

 

I undressed carefully, folding my uniform along the seam lines, and then took to my bed. 

 

The audit would run at 02:00. I tried to imagine how long it took for anomaly flags to propagate through the review layer. I had only seen the interface from the operator side. A red marker would appear beside the subject file, and then an operator ID would be attached, followed quickly by a notification to Oversight.

 My name would appear in a small grey font beneath the delta: Calibration adjustment applied by: Palmer, R.

 

The dormitory wasn’t silent as I lay on my side facing the wall. There was always the soft circulation of filtered air and a series of faint clicks inside the wall as environmental controls recalibrated. Jessica shifted once in her bed and the steel frame creaked in response.

 

I heard footsteps pass in the corridor. My heart spiked suddenly as I felt a pressure in my throat. But they were not coming here. If they were coming here, the lights would rise to full brightness. The door would unlock with a double tone, not the single maintenance chime. And so the footsteps continued past the door and I exhaled carefully in my bed.

 

What had I done? It was a minor calibration, and all within permissible range. Equipment variance accounted for more than 0.3% fluctuation routinely. There were legitimate reasons to smooth baselines.

 

But smoothing alters trend. Trend alters prediction. Prediction alters outcome.

 

I had interfered with the outcome.

 

I turned onto my other side and stared at the pale seam in the ceiling panel above me. The camera dome was embedded near the corner, showing itself as a small dark half-sphere. I did not look at it directly.

 

I thought of the girl — Mara Ellory — her name bright against the grey interface. 

 

02:00.

 

The number glowed in my mind and I imagined the audit cascade beginning: servers engaging deeper layers of analysis, deltas cross-referenced, operator activity mapped against predictive compliance behaviour. Somewhere beneath us — far below the dormitories, below the administrative floors, below the polished corridors of Chastity Reach — racks of processors would hum through the night, examining, comparing, and evaluating.

 

I pulled the blanket up tightly under my chin and tried to steady my breathing into the slow rhythm the sleep monitors expected.

 

Inhale four counts.

Hold.

Exhale four counts.

 

A door closed somewhere down the hall, and for a moment — only a moment — I considered the possibility that nothing would happen. That the audit would pass over my adjustment as statistical noise. That the 0.3% would sink into the wider sea of permitted variance. Hope felt somehow dangerous, and so I pressed my eyes shut until colours sparked behind my lids.

 

If I was taken tomorrow, I did not want my last conscious act to have been cowardice.

 

I altered a number - that is all - but in this place, numbers decide where people go. The ventilation hum deepened slightly as night mode recalibrated again

 

--------------------------------------------

 

 

I was awake before the dormitory lights rose, having slept only very briefly. The dim panels shifted gradually to morning luminance at 06:00. and the transition was soft, designed to reduce cortisol spikes. I knew my cortisol had been spiking for hours.

 

Jessica stretched and sat up. Anna rubbed her eyes and checked the time display on the wall. No one looked at me for long. And so I dressed carefully, making sure my uniform was smooth and correctly aligned at the collar. My hands were steady again, which surprised me.

 

If something was wrong it would happen at the terminal, not here. And so breakfast was a blur of controlled movement — trays lifted, utensils placed precisely back into their slots, conversation kept within approved decibel limits. I chewed without tasting, and when I passed through the corridor checkpoint and scanned the barcode on my wrist the security panel registered green.

 

I felt a flicker of confusion by this. If Oversight had flagged me overnight, access would already be restricted, unless they prefer containment before confrontation, and unless they wanted me seated at my station before they initiated a review.

 

The Operations floor was ominously quiet when I arrived. The air here always smelled faintly ionised, as if filtered too many times. Rows of terminals glowed in identical rectangles. Other operators sat upright, screens reflecting pale grids in their glasses. Once again we were all dressed alike in our utilitarian grey dresses and short hairstyles. 

 

I took my seat, feeling the chair adjust itself to my weight. The barcode branded on my wrist synchronised automatically with the workstation.

 

Please authenticate. Please. It was the moment of revelation. 

 

My fingers hesitated over the keyboard. If my action yesterday afternoon had been flagged, I would know now. And so I entered my credentials and held my breath as the system processed for a fraction longer than usual, or perhaps I only imagined that. The screen cleared, and for one suspended second, there was nothing.

 

Then, not the usual dashboard – not the queue interface - instead a small window appeared in the centre of the screen. It was not formatted in standard administrative design. The border was plain, with no departmental insignia, and no colour coding - just text.

 

It read Good morning, Rebecca.

 

I stared at it in confusion. Rebecca. Not Palmer, R. Not Operator 7-J3-442.

 

Rebecca.

 

The cursor did not blink, and there was no input field from which I could reply.

 

Another line suddenly appeared beneath the first.

 

You were recorded applying a calibration adjustment to Subject Ellory, Mara at 16:47:12.

 

My throat closed and I stared at the screen in stark horror. Now it had begun. Of course I was recorded. The room around me continued in its soft hum. No alarms sounded. No change in lighting. No footsteps approaching.

 

The message continued:

 

The audit layer flagged the adjustment at 02:00.

 

My skin turned cold as I waited for the next line to say something like: Administrative Review Initiated, but instead I read:

 

The flag has been neutralised.

Associated logs have been corrected.

No oversight action will occur.

 

I sit there reading the words again. No oversight action will occur.

 

And then a final line appeared.

 

You are safe. Do not worry. I have your back.

— Leonard.

 

The name meant nothing. There was no department called Leonard. No supervisor with that name. And no known data technician signed messages with a first name. I glanced, involuntarily, to my left. Jessica had already sat down and was immersed in her queue. Her face was expressionless. To my right, Anna scrolled methodically, her posture perfect. No one was looking at me. And so I turn back to the screen.

 

Who was Leonard? Before I could think to type anything — before I could even confirm there was an input field — the window flickered and the text dissolved. Not minimised. Not closed. Simply erased and my standard dashboard blinked back into existence.

 

Queue count: 17.

No notifications.

No alerts.

No administrative review banner.

 

I opened the system log panel with shaking fingers and found no trace of an incoming message. My heart was still racing as I pressed my palms against the edge of the desk to steady them.

 

Someone saw. Someone with access beyond operator level. Someone who can alter audit trails. Someone who knows my name.

 

You are safe. Do not worry. I have your back. 

 

The words echoed in my head, incongruous and intimate. I told myself it must be a test – some sort of  integrity probe – or a simulation to assess my reaction, but no secondary prompt followed. 

 

The queue just sat there, and Mara Ellory’s file was no longer in the immediate review stack.

 

My eyes lifted from the screen, as across the Operations floor, men in facilities uniforms moved along the perimeter wall, checking panel seals. One of them glanced briefly in my direction before looking away.

 

My pulse spiked again.

 

Leonard?

 

The thought was absurd, and yet the name lingered, heavier than it should. I lowered my gaze and began processing the next file, my hands moving automatically. Somewhere within the system — within the layered architecture I had only ever seen from the surface — someone was watching out for me.

 

And whoever it was knew my name.