THE THREE LIVES OF CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING (#34)

As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words
A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World

He left me shackled all night with no food or water, which my indestructible mortal body did not need but still sorely wanted. The next morning he was back with two male attendants. “A complete waste of EverReds, but we’ve still got to do it,” he complained as the men dragged me down a hallway and through a door with an observation window in it into a small room. In the middle sat an enormous chair with a hundred wires running to it from an ancient machine in the corner. I felt a rush of panic. Here was the horror I’d heard about my whole life: the machine that administered the Kachfeldern-Rheingold-Smytherite Measure of Bioneurogenetic Integrity.
The attendants tore off my clothing and strapped me into the chair naked with my feet and hands still cuffed. After bestowing a brief leer, the stocky man began efficiently attaching the wires all over my body with black tape. “One of these fine days there’ll be no more EverReds and that will be the end of Kachfeldern-Rheingold-Smytherite. I keep telling the Duke he should save the test for the doubtful ones, but oh no, every suspect has to be tested, that’s the law! What kind of law will we have when there’s no test anymore, I’d like to know?”

(to be continued tomorrow)