Begin Recording
General
Recording by Scribe Ellison
The General is sitting with books and has been every evening after the day's work is done. Her desk is under the garage at her house so she can work while watching the life of the settlement.
This evening the entertainment is the children having a costume parade. It isn't Halloween but Mama Murphy finished sewing costumes for the two new children so they've decided to show off. Shaun is dressed as the Silver Shroud, in an only slightly oversized outfit. Shiloh is the Mistress of Mystery in a gray sequin dress cut down to fit her. Jimmy is Grognak but he's wearing the loincloth over his clothes, refusing to be cold for the sake of authenticity. Kaynah's made her own inspector outfit with a magnifying glass. She tried to get baby boomer into a bat-baby costume but Marci long wasn't having it. Adam and Jill are Manta-man and Manta-girl, and seem all right with it since their characters were bitten by a radioactive manta ray.
When I get back to Arlington library I have to see if the manta ray was a real animal. Seems unlikely, but elephants were real so one never knows.
Little Maya is dressed like a princess and riding her Giddyup Buttercup. Or she would be, except that the metal horse is on three legs while Shaun fixes its fourth. The parade is stalled while he cleans and oils the joint and reattaches the leg. He tightens a screw and says, 'Ok Maya, he's fixed."
Shiloh looks down her nose at the scene with the great maturity of a ten year old over a toddler. "I want a real horse. Or a synth horse. I told Mom to ask the Institute to make me a synth horse but they didn't."
Em yawns. "The Institute doesn't have any horse dna; they can't make a synth horse..."
I ask Shiloh, "Did you ride that Buttercup when you were little?"
"Huh. I was never that little. Mom found that toy and brought it back. She always brings Maya things."
"I bring you things too. I brought you that dress. Here, Mistress of Mystery, come read this and see if it makes sense."
Since my whole job is reading things I ask, "What are you working on?"
"You can read it too, I need to know if it's clear enough. I'm trying to make myself obsolete! The Minutemen are growing and it won't be long until I can't make all the decisions myself. So I'm writing a charter. How to choose the next general, how many settlements over how much area mean we should move to having two generals, just what the general's powersare and aren't, and all that. I think I'd rather face a savage deathclaw, it'd be less pressure."
I ask, "How did you become the General?"
"I was the only candidate!" she laughs. "When I met up with Preston he was the only one left but he was determined to rebuild the Minutemen. I'd gone out to help two settlements, the Abernathy's and Tenpines, so they knew me as the face of the Minutemen and Preston thought we should use that and make me the new General. I said I had no idea how to lead an army but if we could make 'General' mean 'Figurehead' I'd do it. I did not know what I was getting into!"
"I'm surprised Garvey didn't nominate himself."
"I thought he should, as the last survivor carrying on, but he said the Minutemen needed someone who hadn't seen everything fall apart. I think Preston just… didn't have it in him after Quincey. And there I was, naive and ready to help everybody and the only one of us who could be spared to run around the Commonwealth rescuing people and trying to recruit them. If I'd known that 'General' would turn out to mean 'errand girl for the whole damn Commonwealth'… and now here I am, in charge. After I finish this I'm going to start on a system of laws for the Commonwealth so maybe the settlers won't come ask me to mediate every dispute."
The parade is back on, and Shiloh and Kaynah are dancing and singing a song about an armchair. Mama Murphy claps from her armchair, so that must be why the song. Jimmy hollers, "Shut up or I'll club you!" and little Maya wails that she's the princess and this is her parade which gets the girls back on track. The parade passes: seven kids, one metal horse, and two dogs, and everyone applauds.
