Something Radical Onboard
Something truly radical had been going on during the years since the Ruby and the Ladies in Raising had liberated themselves from Pirate Anderson’s Marauders. Members of the crew had come and gone, many returning to their homes. Ruby and those remaining aboard have been recruiting women of ambition and intellect. Within the wooden walls of the Jeweled Princess, the greatest treasure being sought and stored is human knowledge. While famed for their acts of charity and their fights against the cruel pirates and monopolistic West India Company, these women have been educating each other. Ruby began teaching the other women as soon as they were free. Her Admiral father was a member of the Royal Society when it was led by Sir Isaac Newton. Ruby has her father’s books and continues to cultivate some of his connections to intellectual life in Britain and Europe. The booksellers of London don’t know the heavy orders of scientific and philosophical literature being sent overseas to a number of fictional names end up in the library of a pirate ship. Over time, other exceptional women have joined the crew bringing what they know, learning and teaching others.
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| Sir Isaac Newton |
The Jeweled Princess is the most advanced institution of higher learning in the Caribbean and equal to most colleges and universities in the Western Hemisphere. In a world where women are barred from formal higher education, these lady pirates are probably the largest collective of educated women in the New World. Their outfits and theatrics they delight in mask their true nature. Their mastery of Newton's calculus contributes to the exceptional precision of their artillery fire. Ruby also met and has read the writings of John Locke, who wrote, "The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only have the law of nature for his rule."
Locke felt that women had the ability to reason, which entitled them to an equal voice. He wrote, "It may not be [wrong] to offer new... [ideas] when the old [traditions] are apt to lead men into mistakes, as this [idea] of [fatherly] power's probably has done, which seems so [eager] to place the power of parents over their children wholly in the father, as if the mother had no share in it; whereas if we consult reason or [the Bible], we shall find she has an equal title."
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| John Locke |
At this early stage of the Enlightenment, science and reason are on the rise. Many people look to the new world as a place where these ideas can be developed. Locke drafts parts of the fundamental constitutions which set up government in the colony of Carolina. Locke invests in the new world and is one of the stockholders in the “Company of Adventurers to the Bahama Islands.” Locke also invests in slave trading, which Ruby and the women abhor. Ruby had been attempting to discover how the key to the sea worked, but that is far beyond the science of her time and ours. A rigid separation between science, religion and magic hadn’t yet evolved, but Ruby is certain she can solve the riddle of its power. She has no idea why or how the power of a major hurricane has thrown the ship and crew 300 years into the future, carrying a boatload of the Kings Guard and Dread Pirate Anderson’s band with them. She doesn’t know how the key landed her back on the surface of the Earth when the planet and the sun had moved billions of miles through space in 300 years.
Uneven Progress in the World of the Biscuit Which Mesmerizes
Everywhere that Queen Ruby and her ladies go in the modern world, she discovers how uneven human progress has been. Medicine is a wonder, though Ruby isn’t sure how they’ll access a modern hospital if one of them becomes injured or ill. There are computers, aircraft and electricity. Poverty, disease, and oppression are still everywhere, even in an advanced society like the United States. Though chattel slavery is gone, race and sexism are still huge issues. Having struggled to obtain books and scientific equipment in her time, Ruby is shocked to see how little universal instant access to all sorts of knowledge has contributed to human happiness. She resents “the Biscuit that enthralls,” her invented term for the smartphone. Everything necessary for human happiness can be found in this world, often in abundance. Much of it is wasted. In Charleston she finds huge libraries of books, videos, and access to electronic information, often nearly empty. In California she sees brilliant minds wasted and as companies seek quick profits and discard human talent.
There is a rising tide of violence which could be avoided. Politics is as corrupt as ever. Ruby knows she can’t rob the massive corporations of this century and hand out necessities to the homeless around her and long survive. The ship’s store of treasure is large, but it won’t hold out forever. Wary of the risks of becoming entangled in the modern system of documents and identification with the bogus identities offered to her by her high-tech friends in California, Ruby and the Ladies in Raiding are locked out of large parts of the economy. They’re able to sell their antique doubloons for huge amounts of money, but since they’re limited to cash and some experiments with gift cards they can’t book a hotel room or rent an automobile.
They’re riding transit and camping out with the homeless. Ruby notes that a trip around Charleston is slower on transit stuck in traffic than it would be on horseback. Nearly everyone has a car that can go 80 knots, but they’re sitting still in them.
With the Key to the Sea thrown in the ocean for safekeeping, Ruby has to find a way forward for her and her ladies. They can’t hide out forever. Sooner or later, someone is going to make a mistake and law enforcement, or some government agency is going to discover there are women from 300 years in the past walking around the Holy City. Questions will be asked that can’t be answered. If that happens, Ruby’s ladies will need friends, people who share her hatred of oppression and long for progress.
Ruby visited the VWF Post on the Coast on the Isle of Palms on Memorial Day using the Bus to the Beach (no way to use Uber) hoping those old warriors might be able to help her. She meets many women who have fought in the modern armed forces. As one of them tells her, the cannons and wooden ship thing sounds cool, but she wouldn’t stand that up against her RAH-66 Comanche Helicopter Gunship. The veteran lady shows Ruby a video on her “Mesmerizing Biscuit.” Ruby smiles when she thinks of what Comanche helicopter gunship could do to Anderson.
Ruby has already made some friends who pay her fee to march in Charleston’s Pride Parade. She’s no stranger to issues of gender and sexuality. In the watery frontier of her time, she’s seen a lot and she and her ladies have accepted the variety of human choices. Ruby knows that given the staggering risks of modern existence racism and sexism have long outlived their time. Having fought these things her entire life, she and her ladies resolve to take the Ruby Flag down the streets of Charleston with hundreds of other marchers.
They’re still undercover. Most people regard the Ladies in Raiding as a fun, but rather strange sorority with quaint mannerisms and an acute interest in severely dated social philosophies and scientific ideas. Sapphire is up to date on Isaac Newton, but she’s still working on Einstein and Quantum Mechanics. Locke is great, but the crew is still chewing through the Feminine Mystique and the Shock Doctrine. Nobody has heard of their favorite woman playwright, Ana Caro, whose romantic comedies they sometimes presented to each other on deck. To relax, the crew are big fans of science fiction. They prefer Picard to Kirk and Janeway to both of them. They hate pirate movies.
They still wear their pirate outfits some of the time. Most guys never see beyond the fishnet stockings and corsets. That’s very useful. They’ve gone thrifting and bought modern clothes as well. They’re making friends, but it’s time to move.
Opening the Rolls for Enlistment of Modern, Remarkable Ladies
Queen Ruby and the ladies vote to open the rolls of the Ladies in Raiding to people who identify as modern women. They’ll sign them up to march with them in the Pride Parade. Another friend gets them a listing on Eventbrite, though Ruby would prefer a quill and parchment. She prefers clear, committed relationships to vague electronic entanglements. Someone has modern copies of their tattered ruby pirate flag made. Crystal’s new friends from Summerville are already on board. It’s cool to be a pirate. Dress shops are having run on black dresses and leather. They’re setting a style. In a time of uncertainty and oppression, it’s fun to pretend to be a pirate.
On Saturday, June 3 the crew will march with their new friends who don’t know they are joining a hip new club with some very senior members. Some of the intellectual stuff sounds interesting. The crew’s already doing Yoga. Many of the modern women find the martial arts training a bit dated but functional. Emerald reluctantly agrees that cutting an overly handy man down in a Charleston bar with a cutlass really isn’t a practical option. They use less lethal defensive moves. Nobody touches a lady in raiding unless they want them to.
Later in June, the crew will muster their new recruits on the Isle of Palms as Ruby figures out how to manage their new fight with their old ones. Anderson is still about and knows all about the Ladies in Raiding’s modern activities now. The King’s Guard is still stumbling about, disoriented, and getting no help from the British Government, who dismisses them as crazy people. The British Army won’t remit their pay. The men they claim to be disappeared in a storm in 1723.
Summer’s heating up in Charleston.
