Archetype

So you’ve decided on your Archetype, my girl? Congratulations – it must have been only yesterday that we were playing ice cream shop in an old cardboard box. What did you say? Ten years ago? No, impossible! Anyway, who did you select to devote yourself to?

Nzinga Mbandi? Ahh, a queen – a revolutionary queen at that. A woman who opposed the colonists who had taken over her country. To take on her thoughts and memories would be a great source of strength.

Heh. Funny how things repeat themselves. Be careful though, my love. The life of a revolutionary seldom ends happily. I had chosen a revolutionary Archetype, too.

Yes, that’s right. My current Archetype wasn’t my first. Don’t look at me like that, girl. I was young once. I know that you want to get going, to start organizing your grand adventure out into the world. Long before you were born, a group known as the Amish existed in what is now the Amerigo Economic Bloc. They lived their entire lives on small farms, but it was customary for young men and women to go on Rumspringa, to leave home when they were about your age and experience the world at its best – and at its worst. The journey to devote yourself to an Archetype, to absorb the mind of a historic champion into yours, has become your generation’s own coming of age ceremony.

But before you go, daughter, sit and listen to your old man for a while. When it was my time for the Archetype journey, I also set out to be a revolutionary. It ended terribly.

Because I failed? No, dear heart. Because I succeeded.

Where to begin? The world when I was young was reeling from the effects of the Second Global Depression. Various countries squabbled amongst themselves to shore up the collapsing global economy. You know who took charge? The bankers. Democracies and dictators still existed, but they were irrelevant in a world where the few corporations able to survive the crash extended their reach to control cities, countries, then whole continents. This was a time of pax denarios, world peace through rule of the CEOs. Cultures that had slain each other on sight for millennia suddenly found themselves desperate to serve together under the new corporate order, and we thought the end of history had finally been reached; a bland global economic and cultural milieu where no one lived in absolute poverty – but no one had enough.

There were backlashes to this arrangement, obviously. Nationalism, that dying beast that once devoured whole countries, still snapped and snarled as it crawled towards the grave. Many nursed resentments, dreaming of pasts and futures that might have been, or had never been. I should know – I was one of them. Raised in a meaningless factory town at the edge of what was once called England, my town’s only stamp of individuality were the faded tapestries and vacant armour collecting dust in the local museum, accompanied by small white signs that said – forlornly – that great men and women once strode the land like gods.

You know, in hindsight the arrival of the Archetype technology couldn’t have come at a worse time. It had been discovered decades beforehand, purely by accident, like many great discoveries have been. A researcher at an applied chemistry lab had working on the quantum entanglement of complex molecules, working her way up from single electromagnetic particles to complete organic acids. Do you know happened? She suddenly went mad. Well that’s what they believed at first. She was babbling, remembering things from the life of her lab assistant. Her colleagues managed to trace her behavior to a stray eyelash from the assistant that had been contaminated with the experimental material fallen onto the young woman’s skin. The contact had rewired her mind to give her a simulacrum of the lab assistant’s memories. After all, what are memories but chemical connections in the brain?

No, my love, I haven’t heard of the theories of neuroscience and consciousness by Asha Mutangi. Let’s not get distracted.

When Archetype technology was released into an unsuspecting world, most assumed it would be a tool of law enforcement. “Imagine,” they said. “The ability to see all of a criminal’s secrets just by taking a DNA swab!”

It wasn’t that easy – material that had been treated in such a way could only give you a glimpse of the suspect’s mind; a sense impression of sounds, thoughts and feelings over an entire lifetime. The police’s attempts to use the new technology was immediately trapped in a legal quagmire. The courts were a black hole that pulled everything into a void from which no light or reason could escape. So not much has changed, eh?

No, the Archetype technology found its niche in museums and galleries. The chemical treatment was horrendously expensive, at first, but dusty old museums that had not seen crowds for generations suddenly heaved with visitors begging for the smallest brush with men and women of greatness. Curators became the new Sibyls, mediating between the pilgrims seeking answers and the spirits of the dead. Shakespeare, Austen, Wilde – legends great and small were pulled from their tombs to whisper silent truths to those that revered them.

When the Second Great Crash finally happened, many assumed the fad for taking on the memories of long-lost heroes would pass. We were preoccupied with borders and governments dissolving before the new corporate global culture. I still remember the day when corporate security forces, or CorpSec, took over the abandoned police stations. Many lauded the return to law and order. Those of us who protested against the grey uniforms on street corners were given short, brutal lessons in compliance. Yet through all this, the lines in museums and memorials stayed, and the corporate powers were happy to respond to the demand. Business, after all, is business.

There were some who opposed this new communion with the dead. Some called it necromancy. Others were horrified to find their national heroes were just as anxious, greedy and dirty-minded as they were. You know, dear girl, there was a rumour that the Church had received one of the earliest prototypes, applying it to a minor Saint in interred in Baltimore. No-one knows the result, but the Church banned exposing any relics to the Archetype treatment. Some believed they were afraid of what it meant if their most sacred relics were proven to be fakes. I believe they were afraid of what it meant if the relics were proven to be real.

Heh. Sorry, that was unkind. Perhaps there’s still a bit of Roundhead left in me.

What I was your age, girl, my future was a factory floor where my life decisions had been mapped out by faceless men half a world away. Instead, I became a familiar face to CorpsSec forces stationed in my town. Some said that they were just men doing a job. But when the locals hate you, the job makes you brutal.

I still remember this one girl, a teen a just a few years younger than you, caught spray painting an anti-corporate slogan. CorpSec got her in the act, two of them dragged her out onto the street and just, just beat her, savagely, in front of everyone. She died before we could drag her to a medical node.

What kind of a monster do you have to be to hurt a girl like that? I thought to myself. She was just doing what she believed in.

That’s when I started getting angry, getting violent. Me and the lads had running brawls with the grey-uniformed officers. It never ended well. So I spent yet another night battered and lying against an alley wall, fingers scraping along the grimy bricks as I tried to force my body to move.

“You look like you’ve seen the wrong end of a security truncheon, mate,” chirped a voice beside me.

I struggled to my feet, spat some blood, and gave a warm and salty grin.

“Yeah, but what else is there to do on a Friday night?”

My vision cleared enough to focus on the short, skinny man in front of me. We shared matching bruises, medals of honour that connected us as brothers better than any placard or badge. I remember his eyes. Watching, glinting, darting from corner to corner. Expecting another attack. Relishing it.

“What if I told you there was, mate?” he replied with a crooked smile. “The name’s CJ. I’m part of a group, see? People like you. People who want things back the way they were.”

“How d’you mean to do that?” I asked carefully. I had heard similar spiels. When you got a reputation as a “person of interest” to CorpSec, you’d get shady types trying to recruit you. Drug-runners, usually. This one, though, he seemed different.

“We’ve got access to an Archetype, mate. A man who stood against tyranny. Changed all of England, he did.”

“Yeah, right. Who would that be, then?”

“Oliver Cromwell.”

“Never heard of him.”

CJ laughed, a short bark that echoed through the dirty alley as he took out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and offered me one.

“He was a rebel,” the wiry figure answered. “His Roundheads overthrew the bloody government, they did. Cromwell became the Lord Protector of England.”

I took the proffered cigarette and lit it, letting the smoke coil through my throat and lungs.

“Alright, I’m listening. What have you got to show me?”

Yes, my love, I have told you never to talk to strangers in alleys. This was different.

Because it is.

Look, we can discuss that later. Let me get on with the story, girl.

CJ was a recruiter, recently joined up to a reborn Roundheads. He had been watching corporate security stations in bottom-feeder towns looking for, well, angry young men like me, I guess. We travelled to the South-Central Distribution Node, and I was vaguely aware that this had once been called Cambridge. Once upon a time, this had been an ancient seat of learning. But even the sages had bills to pay, and the sprawling University was now partially demolished to make way for the neutral glass boxes that served as the local corporate administration and warehouses. Other areas of the University had been abandoned, the stones covered in gang symbols and the statues jointed by some careless butcher into anonymous torsos.

CJ eyed the dilapidation and took an angry drag on his cigarette, sneering at the ruins as if it had been a personally-crafted insult.

“Look at this, would ya?” he snarled, waving his hand angrily and leaving a trail of cigarette smoke in his wake. “This used to be important. Cultural. Cromwell would be spinning his grave, if ‘e still had one.”

I cracked a smile as he led me through the run-down university blocks. CJ had spent the entire trip south telling me about the man Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, who fought the royalists to a standstill in the English Civil War and then deposed King Charles the First. Tough. Faithful. Not bowing the extravagant wealth of those who controlled the country. I already felt this man long dead was someone I would have followed into battle.

His body, I had learned, had been dug up and mutilated after his death, with his head put on a pike as a warning to future rebels.

The head had been preserved by Cromwell’s old University. Far from being a warning, it had become a rallying point. I don’t know how the ragged young men and women who watched us from the shadows had been able steal a fragment of Cromwell’s skull, let alone afford the expensive Archetype treatment for their prize. Perhaps they had used one of the black-market treatments I had heard whispers of in pubs and workhouses. Perhaps it had been like an old Charles Dickens story and a mysterious rich benefactor had bestowed a patronage on the new Roundheads.

Whatever the case, as I ducked through broken doors, half-buried tunnels, and finally emerged into an old lecture theatre, I felt an instant connection the mob around me. Something in their eyes, the set of the jaw, they way they moved.

They were angry. And they were about to let the world know it.

“Who have you brought us this time, CJ?” came a voice from the crowd packed into the rows of broken seats.

“Lad I found up north, trust me, he’s gravy. A real fighter.”

“We need more than just fighters,” came another voice. Cultured, thoughtful. Perhaps some son of a family that had been lords before the corporations took over. Almost all of what had once been called the nobility had lost it in the Crash, their children forced out into an unforgiving world. Most sunk without a trace. Some remembered that the Dukes and Earls of old had originally been warriors.

“Let him speak for himself,” called a young woman seated near the front, taking out a scrap of cloth from her factory uniform and idly polishing a switchblade. “Why are you here?”

CJ nodded.

“Don’t worry mate, you’ll be ok,” he whispered, placing a fist on my shoulder before stepping back.

I paused. Suddenly I was back in that corporate-sponsored primary school, standing in line with other disinterested students to recite multiplication tables until I was old enough to be shunted off to the factory.

“Well, it’s, uh, there was this museum. One that I used to go to sometimes. And there was this girl, teenage girl, right? And they – it’s because, uh…”

“He doesn’t know why he’s here,” called out someone from the crowd. “Throw ‘im back.”

“Yep. Ain’t got what it takes,” called another, as more voices joined in.

“He’s not a believer.”

“Just another corporate unit.”

“Shut the hell up!” I shouted. I was angry, then; red, raw and thick, the words pushed themselves up and tumbled out of my mouth.

“I’ve spent years bowing my head to the corporates because they had the money and the power,” I spat. “But that wasn’t enough, was it? No, they want everything. Not just my life, but my mind and soul. This used to be our country! We had men and women who, y’know, did things. Ruled the entire world. And now what, huh? Now we have some corporate policy drone overseas decides that our past, our culture, is just getting in the way, and whoosh, it’s all gone!”

Someone in the back rows clapped and a few started muttering and nodding their heads. I was too angry to care. Things I’d wanted to say for years spewed from somewhere deep inside me; malformed, badly-worded arguments that were simply trying to frame an emotion I couldn’t begin to describe.

“Why am I here? Our government is, is just this useless advisory committee. Our towns are nothing more than workstations! We aren’t – no, we’re taught that we aren’t important, that we were never important. Why am I here? I’m here because we once had leaders that made the world stand up and listen. And then, somehow, it all just vanished.”

My disjointed ramble came to an end, and I stood, panting, glaring out at the rows of dirty faces.

And then they erupted into cheers.

I’d never been cheered for anything in my life, and it was a bigger high than any drug I’d furtively bought out the back of the pub. 

“Let him devote himself,” called out a voice from the approving crowd, sending another cheer around the broken room.

I stood, a little confused, until a group came forward with a metal lockbox. Inside was a small fragment of bone. Smooth and curved. A piece of skull. CJ picked up the fragment with a shiver and a smile.

“Have you ever experienced an Archetype treatment before?” he asked softly. The room before us dropped into a reverential hush. The miracle was about to occur.

“I saved up enough for a brief touch of an old knight once,” I replied uncertainly.

“This is different,” he whispered, dropping the yellow bone into my outstretched palm. “You need to hold on. See it through for as long as you can.”

The moment the fragment touched my skin the world exploded.

For a second, it was like diving into a pool at a loud party; lots of flashes and sounds, then suddenly everything felt both heavy and weightless. Slowly, I surfaced into a childhood home, neat, substantial but plain, set into old gardens and gravel paths. A father’s hands scooping me up – rough, warm, strong. Lessons with wise elders. Flashes of pride at performing my duties to the family. Pages from a bible. A kiss on my head for speaking well when Father was away. I tried to gasp it but instead I was surrounded by friends, their eyes shining with pride as they clapped me on the back for defending their quiet, simple faith in parliament.

I shook my head and the warmth turned to bitterness. They came, like a procession of twisted monsters out of the desert. The greedy, lazy politicians who neither knew nor cared about their own people. A state Bishop with a glittering miter, endlessly reciting prayers from a book that brooked no control by the people.

I knew, then, why I had been put on this earth. I was there to save my people. My family wanted it. The country wanted it. God wanted it.

The scene span around me and I charged through a battlefield. The muscles of my horse bunched beneath me as enemies fell before my sword. The king was the root of all the useless deaths. Men who otherwise might have lived honestly, loved their wives and raised fine children threw themselves again and again at my defensive line. But the Roundheads could not be beaten – would not be beaten. We were free men, and the world trembled before us.

So did it’s ruler. I felt a regret as I signed the death warrant for the king who had dragged his country into war. He wasn’t an inherently evil or depraved man, but his selfish rule had to be stopped.

The parliament, I knew, would be the answer the country needed. My disappointment tasted like dirt and ashes. The fools. They could have built anything, but they spent years arguing over how to carve up a war-torn country. Instead of uniting a great nation under God, they split up the armies who had saved them, worried that they would be next in the crosshairs.

They were right to fear us.

I remembered the excitement as I led my Roundheads into Parliament. I remembered the determination of my men. I remembered feeling that this was right. The corrupt politicians looked down from their chairs, their piggy little eyes widening as they realised what was happening. Staring out at rows of jeweled finery, the words swelled up within me.

Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance… I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place. Go, get you out!

Deeper and deeper I went, becoming one with memories that were not my own, until with a wrench and a gasp something pulled me back up to the present.

I coughed and looked up at a circle of dirty faces. CJ grinned like a madman and offered me his hand.

“How long?” I rasped, struggling to focus on the men and women around me.

“Almost three days,” CJ replied. “Longer than any of us has ever spent. See, everyone? I told you ‘e was something special!”

I stood on shaking legs, accepting a glass of water and watching the Roundheads whisper. They were keeping their distance. Shuffling and nodding in groups. Looking at me hopefully but casting their eyes down as I returned their gaze.

This wasn’t fear. It was something I’d never encountered.

Respect.

At any other time this would have amazed me, but I found I simply didn’t care. My mind was already weighing up plans, considering future battles, and identifying targets. For the first time in my life, I was completely focused – and I knew exactly what I had to do.

“Roundheads!” I barked. “Listen up! These are you orders…”

Yes, my love. You remember now from your history streams? Those Roundheads.

No, I’m not lying. For a time, I was their leader.

Yes, I do know that the original Cromwell was responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Irish civilians. But that wasn’t why we fought. Let me explain.

We started small, focusing on the northern regions of the Anglo-Franc Economic Bloc. Small factory towns, agricultural matrixes, solar- and geo-farms became our battlegrounds. Where the Roundheads had previously engaged in petty vandalism, they now caused major disruptions. Shipments went missing. Sensitive corporate documents found their way online, particularly those that proposed shutting down old towns and moving the original inhabitants to corporate work centers. Our greatest success was hitting the corporate road and rail network. Technology may have moved on from Cromwell’s day, but even the rich and powerful still needed supplies moved from place to place. The magnetic rail and autonomous lorries that pulsed through the country’s transport network with each beat of the corporate heart stuttered and lay still. Running a freight train at more than 250 kilometers per hour is meaningless when sections of the track can be blown up faster than work crews could make repairs.

The corporate security teams came for us, of course. But where they had once chased down lone protestors like rabbits, they now found themselves the prey. The English Civil War had taught me – well, had taught Cromwell – the importance of drawing your enemy into an organized charge. My Roundheads would stage a rally, and when the grey uniforms of corporate security began to fire on them they turned and ran. CorpSec would always follow, breaking ranks and running like a mob after the protestors, only to have their targets turn, form an unbreakable line and push them back. By the time the armed men realised what was happening, I had led a second line of troops from the alleyways behind CorpSec to cut them off. From their corpses we took shock-sticks, and riot shields. We also took their guns.

“It’s really happening, Commander!” beamed CJ, looking out at the disciplined groups of Roundheads stripping the bodies of the local CorpSec.

“Still too slowly, though,” I replied calmly. “At this rate it will take decades before we have enough strength to expel the corporations from English soil.”

“We’ll get there, just you wait and see,” the wiry man replied, going to punch me on the shoulder but hesitating at the last minute, turning the motion into an awkward salute.

“It’s alright, mate,” I smiled, punching his shoulder instead. “I’m still me. Mostly.”

CJ grinned and ran off to shout orders at the troops, gesturing wildly with his ever-present cigarette at the new recruits. From the crowd a young girl emerged, beaming, and handed me a bent flower.

“Mum says you’re going to get rid of the bad men!” she announced, as if letting me in on a secret.

“Every last one of them, honey. Just you wait and see.”

Beneath the bravado, I wasn’t so sure. There was still so much to do. Feeling my age, I rubbed my face tiredly and idly wondered why I couldn’t feel the warts on my eyebrow and chin.

No, that’s not right, I realised. I’m not even thirty yet. And the only wart I have is on my back.

“Hey Commander,” crackled the radio strapped to my chest. “Lizzy’s mob have made contact again. They want to meet up at the Northern Administrative Node. What d’you think?”

Shoving the uncomfortable thoughts aside, I twisted the chunky radio up to my lips.

“Call it by its proper name, soldier. Scone, in Scotland. Tell the Queen’s men we will meet but remind them that I will not forgive any royal tricks.”

At this point other groups in England had taken note of the Roundheads success, and many followed suit. Knights, lords and lost kings that had slept until their country needed them most had finally heard the summoning bell. Boudicca’s warriors painted themselves blue and screamed Brittonic war chants as they threw themselves at the local CorpSec. Robert the Bruce prowled the highlands once again. The rabble living in the London sewers remembered Winston Churchill and vowed never to surrender.

Most of these groups were short-lived, the remains of ancient heroes summarily destroyed by CorpSec. Shades cast back into the darkness where they could not challenge the corporate order. Other groups clashed with each other, feuds and vendettas spilling out of the history books and into the streets. But there were some Archetypes who reached out from the past to calm their devotees, disciplining them for the fight ahead.

Elizabeth the First was one such leader. While I remembered the necessity of ending Charles’s unfettered grasp for power, I was forced to give credit to the Golden Queen’s ability to organise her followers into a substantial fighting force. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised – England hadn’t had a royal family for generations, but the uniting force of royalty was still something the corporations feared. Once the Archetypes had begun to stand against them, CorpSec had raided the Cathedrals and Abbeys, carrying off the remains of kings and queens who might prove a threat. As several royals had been imprisoned by their political enemies in life, they might have enjoyed the irony. Somehow a single fragment of Elizabeth Rex had been saved, at great cost, and a small finger bone had become the center of the southern rebellion.

Several days later I descended into a cellar in the burnt-out ruins of what had once been called Edinburgh Castle. The keep’s destruction was not, I had been surprised to learn, an act of CorpSec, but simply the result of decades of neglect. However, the bulky broken stones lying on the floor was a calculated act of cultural vandalism by CorpSec, the crowning stone from which the kings had ruled shattered to pieces.

“Cromwell, is that you?” called a voice, as a dozen men and women stepped out of the shadows.

“Increasingly,” I replied, nodding to my Roundheads to take up positions around the room. A tall, thin woman strode out of the darkness, standing with a calm formality with the teen girl who acted as her attendant.

“Elizabeth Tudor, I presume?” I asked cordially, meeting the proud gaze.

“The Archetype is mostly intact, and to all intents and purposes we are as one. Let’s get down to business, Kingslayer. Neither of us can overthrow the corporate authorities. CorpSec can ship in security personnel from the continent, and they have London locked down like a fortress.”

“But with our two armies together, we can breach their defences?”

Elizabeth’s avatar nodded.

“You may not know this, but Charlemagne has returned to France. He has not fielded his full strength yet but will co-ordinate with our attack on London to ensure CorpSec’s reserves do not arrive.”

“And what profit is it for me to join you?” I asked pleasantly. “Are the people going to swap one set of tyrants for another?”

The Golden Queen’s followers muttered and growled. One stepped forward angrily until he was stopped by a flick of the tall woman’s finger.

“You will find me more flexible than my Archetype in matters of governance,” replied Elizabeth quietly. “We will cede you the north as your Protectorate. But we will retain the south as our ancestral home.”

I nodded and twisted around to whisper to my second, taking a little pleasure in the look of slighted pride from the royal figure as I turned by back to her.

“What do you think, CJ?”

“Can’t say I trust her, Commander. The moment we win she’ll turn on us. She was a right monster, back in the day.”

“She was. But she’s correct – neither of us can do this alone. Don’t worry, we’ll make our own arrangements.”

I turned back to the haughty figure and clapped my hands.

“The Roundheads accept your terms,” I announced. “Send us the battle details, and we’ll fight by your side.”

Both groups of soldiers cheered, but Elizabeth and I merely nodded at each other. We both knew what was going to happen next.

I won’t bore you with the details of the attack. You can look up the official histories, although I doubt they would do it justice. They couldn’t capture the tingling fear on the back of the neck when the defensive line forms up around you, the rush when the enemy came into view and you plunged forward  in a surge of hands and feet, through the thundering screams of the attackers and wounded. The guns were so loud. So loud.

Somehow, we held on, and when CorpSec realised they weren’t getting any reinforcements, we pushed forward, yard by yard, chipping away at the Central Administration complex. Many of my Roundheads fell – too many – but with every encounter we grew more confident. The grey CorpSec men fought for money, which meant they fought only up until a point. By the time we had broken through and taken control of the Central Administration’s lower floor, most had abandoned their posts.

Finally, we had them. I had them. History spun around me like a tornado, all the lives and traditions displaced by the corporate monoculture whispering and screaming as my Roundheads battered down the Conference Room doors. Once my troops had secured the room, I entered. Slowly, deliberately. I looked down the long table of wrinkled old bankers and CEOs, the smell of their fear a fine wine. The words were already springing to my lips.

“I represent the people of England, and we reject you. Instead of raising our country back up, you became the worst tyrants we have ever endured – and we will suffer you no longer. I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately from of this country. Go, get you out!”

The room descended into pandemonium, the assembled fiends screeching and crying that they could not be cast out. Those with an ounce of sense took their data slates and ran. Those that shook their fists and declared they would not be moved were lined up against the wall. With a flash of sparks and smell of Sulphur, they stopped moving forever.

I walked out of the bloody room. My pulse was still humming, my thoughts still tumbling forward before I could catch up. This was only the beginning, I knew. Soon other Archetypes would follow the Roundheads’ example, inspire a revolution and be free. There was only one more obstacle remaining.

“Are the corporate usurpers dead?” came a woman’s voice.

“Those that didn’t have the sense to run, yes.”

I turned and faced Elizabeth, watching the slow, confident smile spread across the tall woman’s lips.

“An excellent victory. My compliments to your soldiers.”

“And mine to yours, Golden Queen.”

The silence drew out between us, outlined by the distant shouts and dull thuds of mortars.

“Time to discuss what happens next,” I stated.

Elizabeth chuckled, pulling out a gun from her gilded combat vest.

“Did you really think I would let you slink back to the north to plot against the crown?” she asked. “Your great Protectorate barely lasted a decade. My rule took a small island and made it the greatest nation the world had ever known. I shall be the one to rebuild England, not some rabble-rouser with ideas above his station.”

As she spoke, a rattle of gunfire echoed down the corridor behind her. Elizabeth’s haughty face creased in confusion.

“Did you really think I would trust one of the bloodiest monarchs in history to keep her word?” I shrugged, grinning a little as the tall woman tried unsuccessfully to contact her security team. “I mean, have you even read my bio?” 

Elizabeth snarled and brought up her gun but gasped as the weapon was shot from her hand. We both looked up to see CJ grinning in the doorway, his firearm still smoking, and the wiry man’s face covered in bruises.

“All taken care of, Commander, all we have left is-”

He never got a chance to finish. CJ, that cocky, angry, loyal man, flopped onto the floor in a pool of blood.

“You bastard!” I screamed, whipping out my gun and levelling it at the corridor. Out of the doorway stepped a teenage girl. It took me a moment to recognise her – Elizabeth’s attendant.

“Your Majesty, our command team has been taken out,” she stuttered, her pistol shaking a little as she aimed at me. “We must escape and regroup.”

“Then execute this traitorous fool,” snapped Elizabeth, glaring at me and nursing her injured hand. “Do it!”

I felt my finger on the trigger, and my entire body seemed heavy as I lined the teenager up in my sights. Then I remembered a girl the same age from a meaningless factory town, murdered by those in power because she stood up for what she believed in.

Looking at the girl’s terrified face, I hesitated.

Cromwell didn’t.

The first shot dropped the attendant like a rag doll, the second went through Elizabeth’s screeching face.

I don’t remember what happened next. I just remember the gasp – a little sigh, almost a cough, as the breath left the girl’s lungs and the body hit the floor. I screamed; I beat my shaking fists against the wall. I wept.

I ran.

I ran for years, leaving the Roundheads and Royalists rudderless. The revolution had succeeded, but England reawakened into a state of anarchy. As for Cromwell? It would be easy to say that I wrestled with him, exorcising the ghost that had possessed me. The truth is more difficult to explain. Cromwell was part of me. I had lived his memories for so long that we would never truly be apart. Some days I would act without thinking, my body moving or speaking in ways that I wasn’t sure were my own. I wandered for years. Easy enough in a world without nations and borders.

But that’s changed, hasn’t it? Charlemagne warred with Napoleon, until both were defeated by Harald Bluetooth. The God-Kings of Nile stretch forth their hands, only to be met by the Sultans of legend. The Son of Heaven rules the Forbidden City once again, standing in cold opposition to the Glorious Leader of the People’s Army. Who knows? Perhaps the Middle Kingdom will travel down a new path this time around. Stalin, Lenin and the Czars settle old scores across a bloody tundra but keep a watchful eye on the reawakened Khans. Lincoln works to unite his disparate states, while to the south the centuries-old cartels have been all but wiped out by the blood-soaked divinity of Montezuma. I ran through it all, pursued in every dark corner by the sound of a girl’s gasp and the slump of a body hitting the floor.

Let me finish with a final lesson, my daughter. The world has once again fallen in love with the strongmen, the titans, the supermen and women. But in order for them to be super, everyone else must become lesser in their eyes.

So go, choose your Archetype. Take their strength and wisdom, but when it comes to the hard choices, rely on no-one’s will but your own. Perhaps you might become a woman who young girls will look to in their own lives.  

And whatever else happens, my darling, remember that your old Dad loves you.