MISC: The Girl Who Saved The World, part 1

[George Phillies]

I had a thought, namely reordering things by interchanging Chapters 1 
and 2, and establishing what she is, in the first few paragraphs:

Chapter One - Flashforward
The Invisible Fortress
Evening
January 11, 2018

I awoke at half past dark.  To put it mildly, I hurt.  Some places hurt 
even more than others. Yes, I was doing mind control on myself, so I 
didn’t exactly feel the pain. That meant I could sleep.  I still knew I 
hurt. A lot. “Hurt” was better than the alternative, which did not 
involve being alive.  I’d landed the right way when I was thrown into 
the wall, missed getting a disabling concussion, and dodged getting 
gutted by the fellow with the knife.

One of the times when I woke up, the healing matrix  prompted me to ramp 
down my mind control down, so the matrix could tell exactly where I had 
been injured.  I overdid it. I cut the mind control off.  Incredible 
pain swallowed me. I burst into sobs and uncontrollable tears. 
Fortunately the healing matrix kept me from going into shock. After a 
few minutes I remembered I could simply ramp control back up.  By then I 
was soaked in sweat. The matrix was putting me back together, but it had 
its own order of doing things, and some of the reasons I really hurt 
were late on its list.

Then I remembered where I was.  Not safe at home, the home I grew up in. 
I was in my own house, the one I bought. I don’t know why Mum threw me 
out of the house, those six months ago, leaving me with the money in my 
pocket and everything I owned locked in a U-Store-It bay.  I’d come 
home, finding home gone, Mum vanished, and a pair of U-Store-It keys 
anchoring a really short note.  The note told me to get lost and take 
care of myself. Not in my worst nightmare had I ever expected that. 
Mum was right.  I can take care of myself.  I just wish I didn’t have 
to, not with no advance notice.

The healing matrix was fixing me, but…oh right, healing matrix. I 
summoned the glyph for Medico, its associated rules engine.  Nothing in 
violet, nothing that was killing me despite the matrix.  Of course, the 
matrix should have dragged me conscious if I were dying, and it hadn’t. 
  Nothing blue, long-term near-death threat.  Red warnings? Let’s see. 
Three broken ribs, stitched by telekinesis.  My right shoulder? Nothing 
had broken, but bits of force field were holding things where they 
belonged while the matrix forced repairs. Internal bleeding from 
high-impact collisions?  That had been fixed.  Gold - a black eye, a few 
bone bruises, but I’ve been here before, just not so many ways at the 
same time.  Green – slices, scrapes, abrasions … my skin is being 
returned to perfection as I lie in bed.  My face was cleaned up by the 
Namestone before I faced the Martyr, but the rest of me was my problem. 
  The matrix was healing everything, way faster than
I’d heal naturally. I’d still need a week to recover.

Major knock-down, drag-out fight?  Where?  With whom? Then I remembered. 
  Atlanticea. It was the most wonderful memory in the world.  Or would 
have been, if everything didn’t hurt so much. Not to mention I was 
totally exhausted. I’d solved the Maze, the Maze that defeated Julius 
Caesar and Cortez and Jackie Fisher and the French Imperial Guard.  I’d 
reached the Tomb and matched wits with the Martyr himself.  I’d 
recovered that palm-size sphere of crystalline sky, the Namestone, the 
Key To Paradise. No one else in the history of the world had ever come 
close, but I’d done it.  Now the Namestone is a wonderful present I gave 
myself, a couple months late for my twelfth birthday, almost as good a 
present as my ponies. The ponies were a better birthday present, if a 
few months early, and I gave them to myself, too.