The Foundry | Part Four | Chapter Thirty-Eight
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Four | Unmasked; Unbound; Unleashed
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Everything Leopold gleaned from Auluré’s data was coming into focus. Although that complete picture of the threat they posed remained illusive, and its challenge for their sovereignty incomplete, there’d been much discovered by Rory and Echo’s mission.
Without the support from that web of reinforcements they’d hoped to jump The Foundry in middle of, the institution’s enemy would be outclassed by the warships at their disposal. Yet, only if they could get enough pilot’s ready in time.
Defections amongst the rank of pilot were surprising. Their thirty-seven had been cut to twenty-five, an even dozen making themselves known as traitors by their desertion and attempts at the same. They’d only gotten nine in total, Echo’s rail driver took the other three.
Cleaning crews of The Foundry had come to know the name of Echo Béleaph. She’d noticed them avoiding her gaze despite this newfound evolution, which had her feeling most proud of her baby’s good work. She’d kept the rail driver for herself, mounting it above her bed, and Echo even slept beside it one lonely night.
As Leopold presented his findings within The Council Chamber, he’d found himself most apt to the task. His extractions from that information were far beyond those of Investigator Harrison, who’d delivered their disappointing lack of discovery earlier. They were entirely red in the face as his session proved — over and over, before their eyes — how far beyond them that position had truly been.
There would be small reckonings for many in this time of change, as their positions earned by circumstance and privilege were made one all could share the responsibility of, if they’d choose. Gatekeeping — was what they’d been calling it. Echo had led the charge on this, finding much support with her peers in that regard; especially Rory, who shared a deep passion for a true and uncorrupted vision of communism.
“Just bear with me,” Echo chided the crowd as she was only getting started.
On her home world, communism had become a dirty word. Their own leaders of patriarchal hierarchy would teach of the innate corruption to such political ideologies, neglecting to mention the only reason it wouldn’t work had been people like themselves. The one and only failing of attempts at establishing communist principles into action had always been the same on that planet; men couldn’t handle the opportunity it provided to seize power as oligarchs, and those structures would end up benefiting a chosen few in ways that were easy to see.
That was the real problem. Not how it enabled an elite class to exist beyond the rest, which had always been happening, only that the artifice of running a civilization fairly, in a world owned by the corrupted ideas of men-gone-wrong, would be witnessed most plainly under the guise.
In a fair system, where people of honor were chosen to lead based on merit — it would prove the only way to do things. Echo lamented how her home world could’ve ever come to believe the concept of basing government on ideals of community and equal opportunity was something innately corrupted.
‘How could you not see?’ Was what she’d constantly wonder. ‘How do these people not realize what this says about them?’
A teacher of Echo’s middle-education had planted the seeds which would bring this into focus through negative example, in-fact saying it mostly outright herself, only missing the nuance of what her words truly meant. Echo hadn’t been satisfied with her answer to the question, “How is communism a bad thing?”
Her class, trained by the culture passed down from their forefathers, had gasped at the question alone. Even within a place of education, and at the very beginning of their process to introduce the concepts of governmental philosophy, every student had seemed to believe it completely taboo.
Echo’s teacher frowned, made her feel foolish, projecting their own defeated blindness to what their civilization had become. She’d said it plainly though, the truth of it, “Bad men will always take advantage.”
There’d been a discussion which followed that had been frowned upon as argumentative, where Echo asked the questions which felt pertinent to her, like, “Are we sure there’s not a way around that?”
Admonishment had come from her teacher, manipulations which aimed to make Echo accept their defeated view by painting her to be the one who was naive. She’d even seen some of her classmates nodding along with her. One girl had taken her side with a line of questioning most equally dismissed. These few were the students still hoping they might receive an honest education in that most dreadful public schooling system which was rearing them into consumer cattle for its gluttonous machine of disparity. That classroom had been the very place Echo began losing hope in her elders.
There was only one problem with communism, and Echo always knew it; the people who’d grasped control of her planet themselves.
Structures of their distorted ideals would teach everyone to deny the reality of those very same forces in the universe which powered Echo’s intuition. The profound insights shared between friends, and pouring from people’s hearts in moments of great importance, which could steer the whole forward in ways that would feel most divine. There was a spark of truth in everyone, and even that teacher — she’d known all of it on some repressed level . It was the elders of Earth’s humanity who trained their children for centuries to deny this out of hand.
Blindness borne in this state of denial for what they’d become — half-humans, unbelieving what they knew from the inside out — would be the very reason she’d agreed to flee and make this true home for herself amongst the stars. It was only the luckiest sort who’d find a way off that planet still so far from elevation into true acceptance within their galactic community. In fact, her people still weren’t aware of the very forces which had freed her from Earth.
Having this chance to speak on her deepest political beliefs, around a community like that of The Foundry — who listened to each other, and trusted what they knew as true in their hearts — had Echo finding herself most empowered to realize her place, and beyond that of pilot.
Something in her had always know it, reflecting on the notion often, even when it was laughed at by those people she left behind. Echo was influenced by a fear of herself being made wrong, like those men in power of her world, and on behalf of those calloused laughs which made her feel foolish for expressing her known truth which others were so blind to see. To find herself now honored by her fellows for it, would be another in a long line of great healings she’d receive at The Foundry.
Echo had finally been seen as what she was — a leader.
Rory had been nodding along as Echo rallied about her beliefs to The Council. When she’d return to their side, they’d leaned over to say, “Go the fuck off, dude.”
No longer would people be able to latch themselves onto positions of power at The Foundry. That only created dishonesty, enabled incompetence, and empowered unjustified competition. It had the very people who needed to be working hardest at those jobs they chose, which would often prove too much for them, instead fight solely for retaining their power, and holding down those others who’d do it better. It was a product of insecurity, and the results would leave their job most undone in the end.
There was no title which Echo would aim to achieve with the respect she’d earn by taking this rightful place amongst the leadership of The Foundry, because that would be antithetical to her entire point. She’d hope always to find others she might defer to; the woman more lifted in spirit by the act of empowering another’s voice than any other single action she might take.
The way she would reject the pedestal others might thrust her onto, along with how she’d prop-up others of unheard and most needed voice — the ways she’d endeavor to activate people who’d far eclipse herself at this all, with no worry of insecurity — was the very reason Echo Béleaph was meant to lead.
I feel peeps in my writing. Especially frustrations within my obfuscation type-situations. That bit at the beginning of the RUNNING — SOUNDS chapter, where Echo was lamenting my writing style of throwing myself into a situation where I have no idea what’s going on and figuring it out — but that was for the readers.
Totally add lines like the “Just bear with me,” in this one because I feel a guffaw.
I never know what’s going to happen in these chapters at all — basically. I work off music. Just feel it ahead, then figure out why that feeling is so cool. Songs come through and I know they are the soundtrack, or the one at the end, then I’ll just work towards it. Intuition gives me splashes of what’s to come, but it seems to come for ONLY the things I need to plant seeds. My subconscious is a fucking a beast. I just let it go wild and then tighten it up. That’s why I write so fast — I’m dying to know what happens. By not letting myself decide, it allows me to reconfigure each chapter’s tone and plot according to what’s needed. Those two have been in quite different places throughout — what’s happening; how its emotionally resonating — it’s a function of the crazy bi-polar shit Echo does. Also, when part two started, I didn’t want to ride the back and forth of Echo doing perpetual heel/face turns to put Rory over more than anyone ever in fiction. So, that’s when the nuance of those chapter got deeper, and Rory started to give some of it back. There was a discordance for where she was actually at emotionally — healing with Alan, beside the insane back and forth of that rivalry — and it became necessary to serve both simultaneously while also having the narration be a catty bitch to illuminate other hidden truths I wouldn’t be doubling back to cover in another chapter, like I did in part one.
My process of trusting intuition is so raw that I chose the first three-part titles at the moment I sat down to write the story, without knowing how they’d make sense at all. Those R words had been bouncing around in my head, and I had them written down just like that. Also, Thrice Bled Heart. I thought they both might be short stories or something else when I sketched them down between Grip and this — there was a big tank of juice I tapped with that short story.
Anyway, I just sat down to write this, and I was like, ‘Oh, shit, this is called The Foundry, and that’s part one, that’s part two, and the third one is called Dominion.
I didn’t get the fourth title until I was working on part three though. Its wild how much they make sense to me. Justiceers did the same thing.
I’m geeking out on it, but I love so much how I didn’t know what was coming when I sat down to start writing this. I literally just knew I was doing a space-academy kind of Fourth Wing-killer with transforming spaceships. I also knew the people I would be writing in, and that it would be building to war. I genuinely thought that might happen right after it started and be a backdrop for the whole second education of Echo, but it was just something I needed to know I was leading towards.
One of my fav things is pulling off “This is war!” better than anybody ever. That just came through and was hard to leave because it feels so typical, but it hits so good.
Anyways, even though it all just unfolds from my subconscious, I’m real smart, and when I start seeing what’s coming out, I know what I’m doing.
This is really about showing all the fucked up, and ‘fun’ things that get glorified in the NEW ADULT type books — still kind of having fun with it but also being real about the costs and the like… reality of human emotion — especially the interpersonal stuff. Also, and most importantly, disentangling it all from fucking patriarchal hierarchy — especially in education. It’s so stupid we keep choosing to play and have fun in that headspace. Shit needs to change, and this is a tricky way to get people to read something that’s going to make a difference hopefully.
It should be apparent by now I’m enjoying fucking with y’all. Supply closet was my fav.