The Telematrix, Part 2
On the fourteenth day of the month of Badizzle, in 972 AG, King Reginald XXVII issued a proclamation calling for three hundred nannies to report at the pleasure of the crown. When only 45 women responded to the summons, the king instated Purple Decree #745 (better known later as the “Nanny Draft”). As the royal nursery was poorly equipped to handle the urgent needs now thrust upon it, Reginald pulled out of his southern palace to accommodate the Telematrix.
The king could not stomach the sight of children, particularly newborns, and therefore he informed the expanded domestic staff to see to his daughters’ needs; he would not again visit them until the girls turned 5, at which time he would eliminate the most underdeveloped specimens. The first culling would include 93 girls. At the age of 10, another 93 would be cut, followed by an additional 93 at 15. By age 20, another 93 would go, allowing a year to discern a successor from the three finalists. In order to abide by the Mysts’ very specific instructions, the discarded girls were remanded to a distant location to live out their days in isolation until their twenty-first birthday, at which time they were transported to Wisshylna for ultimate payment.
And so our attention turns again to young Telematrice. By no definition was she considered an early favourite. A rather sickly girl, she was all but given up on by the nursing staff on her third birthday, at which time she still could not properly sit up. Her fate would have been sealed had not one particular nurse, Tronya Soy, taken a singular interest in her development. Soy immediately saw special intelligence in the physically challenged Telematrice, and began putting her through a series of carefully designed exercises to speed her growth.
Soy’s hard work eventually paid off: in 977, Telematrice survived her father’s first round of eliminations.