– 2231 Alysande Cornelia Mundy-Blackwell, heir to Chatsworth estate and titles after her mother, born to the Hon. Hasmita Joan Mundy-Chakravarthi and Alexander Blackwell.
During those years Hasmita and Alexander settled in the house in Founders’ Falls, continued their careers, and Hasmita produced the next Mundy heir, who happened to be a delightful baby girl with chubby hands and a bright smile. Our parents found themselves becoming helplessly adoring grandparents. Grandma Joan died after a short illness. Great-Aunt Adelaide, instead of settling into a quiet retirement, decided that Paragon could not be left to the mercy of groups like the Knives of Artemis and the ever-threatening Nemesis, and therefore she joined a cadre of volunteers who coordinated vigilante activities with the informal approval of City Hall.
– 2231 Adele Mundy completes her PhD in Information Tech, with Archival Studies; goes to work in Steel Canyon Library
I spent my post-grad days between the University and the Library in Steel Canyon, and by the time I completed my doctorate, I was familiar with the Library and its systems. I had used them, in fact, to track down The Little Horror through his little deception, and to keep an eye on the progress of Cadet Chakravarthi, and then Ensign Chakravarthi, and then Lt.Jr. Chakravarthi. I didn’t think he would advance so fast, given his past avowal that he would never salute anyone, and his past behaviour, but he seemed to take to the Navy life, and even without any recommendation from Admiral Mundy he was making a career for himself.
Other, less pleasant things, were also advancing on and in Paragon. It happened gradually, and we who lived there, having become used to seeing gangs in the streets, were only slightly disturbed when the gang members started using drugs that caused or speeded up mutations, and made them look increasingly alien. Then there were sightings of aliens, and we thought it only slightly unusual. The number of vigilantes increased too, and we grew accustomed to the sight of flying figures above our streets, and fights in the city squares, and snipers on the roofs.
Between 2232 and 2233 I went off-planet several times, on research assignments for the Library. The first time I experienced micro-gravity was a fascinating cross between delight and disconnection; but almost everything uses artificial gravity, and space travel, which had seemed so exotic to someone who had never left Paragon, started to become routine.