Drowning Utopia

Chapter 2: The Letter

Closing the sliding car door, Tessa latched the lock shut. "Boy, what a night!" she huffed as she collapsed into her cot. She and the Marlow Twins shared the ninth train car of Old Faithful, and the space doubled as their bedroom and her invention workshop.

The train's slow rhythmic motion was soothing as Tessa closed her eyes. She nearly fell asleep when the door opened.

"Tess, you in here?" Marcus peered into the car with a quizzical look.

Tessa sat up begrudgingly, "What now? I swear if something else is broken and I need to fix it—

"No, no. Nothing of the sort. I have a letter for you."

"A Letter? From whom?" Tessa asked, getting to her feet, swaying with the motion of the rattling train car.

"Why don't you read it?" Marcus suggested.

Tessa took the envelope with a frown. "You opened it?"

"A Jotnar dropped it off," he said guardedly. "From his looks and accent, I would say he's one of those mercenaries from the Furrows, all decked out in a black duster with a piece on his side."

Tessa was familiar with the native population of giants; with the purebloods ranging from eight to twelve feet tall, their traditional territory was a large swath of mainland New Albion, a fertile belt called "the Furrows."

Hated because of their perceived brutish nature, the Jotnar (specifically the purebloods) were easily identifiable by their giant muscular bodies, onyx, slate, or marble-colored skin, sharp teeth, and straight jet-black hair. They ultimately had a lingering reputation from the war as brutal and tenacious fighters with strange beliefs and rituals that unnerved many a colonist.

However, since the Liberation Wars, the pure-blood Jotnar had become a subdued race intermixed with the other enslaved people, such as the exiled Omale.

Curious and somewhat apprehensive, Tessa opened the documents. Inside was a stack of cash, a flyer, and a handwritten note. Sliding the papers out, she skimmed their content. Realizing what it was, and more specifically, who it was from, she promptly slid the papers back in, sealed the envelope, and tossed it into the wastebasket.

Marcus grabbed the folder and said, "Hey now, no need for that."

Tessa leaned over her desk, bracing herself with her hands as she answered, a tear rolling down her cheek. "He stole everything from me!" the bitter anger and resentment tearing at Tessa's insides startled her. She would have said that she was over what had happened five years ago and had moved on. Clearly, that was not the case.

Years earlier, Tessa tried to compete in the market. She attempted to find new work and met with other potential sponsors and companies who could use her engineering mind. But thanks to the recirculated rumors, people believed her to be like her grandfather, an unstable crackpot with wild and vain imaginings about such notions as alchemy, the supernatural, and magic.

The rumors that she had heard rose to the forefront of her thoughts;

Did you read the paper? It has some disparaging words about you.

Is it true that you steal things uncontrollably?

I heard about her grandfather, but I had no idea she took after him in his crazy fantasies.

The paper says that she didn't invent any of it but stole the ideas from Meriwether.

I heard that the only reason that Meriwether even took her on as an apprentice was that he felt sorry for her.