Tex Mechanica is a huge, old foundry. At its height, the Mechanica had multiple proving grounds, distribution centers, autofabricators, and other facilities across Sol. We even used to build ships! Though we were never good at it. That was centuries ago, when the tide was high, before the Vanguard determined that contraction and consolidation to the Last City was the prudent move. Squash the frontier, they said. Focus on one stronghold and its satellites.

Father, though he is fantastically wealthy and powerful, is a king at the end of a dynasty. He's the sucker left holding the bag as the house lights come on. What is Tex Mechanica in the age of the Last City? A sporting goods supplier. A widget factory for the Guardians of the Vanguard. A toolmaker for a junta, always building larger and deadlier weapons to face an enemy that is always approaching, never arriving. What do they face next? An arms dealer loves that question because it has no answer—only fear.

I leave my father to figure it out without me. To play weapons-master to undead tyrants. I have a new faith now. A new way forward. The pursuit of freedom and understanding hidden by the Vanguard—this is my task that I take up without guilt and with clear eyes. I am willing to pay any cost; I think of my dear friend Bracus Lume, who has returned from the Hive front terribly wounded by one of their most vicious paracausal weapons. He convalesces in orbit (Father denied him the use of our personal medical suite on campus here) but still insists on fighting to live for a tomorrow he so furiously believes in. I should do the same.

Together, Lume and I make a mighty intellectual and spiritual pair. He, the soldier, and me, the dreamer. Our correspondence sharpens our desire and renders in actual fact the targets of our heady dreams. Father, the Vanguard, and the Guardians are too removed from the people of The City that they might as well oppose their liberation! The current order restrains their growth, restricts them to huddling behind high walls, fearing nightmares beyond them. This ruling elite demands we cow to their dictates and proscribes any group or individual that speaks against them. Caiatl and her Cabal are much the same to Lume and his soldiers, he assures me. Her father twisted what it meant to be Cabal, and though she deposed him, she has not fixed what he broke.

Forces, ideologies, and thoughts opposed to these twin malignancies are deemed evil, dark, and wrong by the institutions they threaten. I ask—what is evil about opposing tyranny? Neither the Vanguard nor Caiatl will abdicate without a fight; liberating the City will take a mass movement, which I don't yet have. However, a small cell that is committed to the cause, acting at the right time and in the most critical places? A bullet is ignited by a firing pin; great movements need a catalyst. The people of The City cry out for one.

I could be the one who brings about the first wave of change. Should I not grasp any weapon, tool, or thought afforded to me to oppose a foe that separates mothers from their children? I have availed myself of the deep records Tex Mechanica keeps hidden in its off-book archives. Paper histories. Nothing that can be searched unless one is physically present. Our guns once barked as vicious dogs across the ruins of fallen Earth. Once, we made tools for seekers on the frontier who used our weapons to carve new paths into the future. According to my research, these weapons became more than their first form.

I, the shunned heir of Tex Mechanica, have scrubbed my name and history from our archives. I go out into the darkness away from home, as our weapons before have. I will find a new name. I will sound out across the frontier and then come home to address the world the Light has built.