The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Nell spends more time reading the Primer than listening as she becomes a more proficient reader. She also uses it as a journal to record the abuse she experiences from Tequila’s boyfriends. Nell learns more about self-defense by reading stories about tiny creatures defeating Dinosaur using their wits and physics. Nell changes her diet based on what Dojo teaches her about nutrition. Relying on the lessons Dojo teaches her about using an opponent’s strength and psychology, Nell beats up Kevin, a big bully in the apartment playroom.

Hackworth meets with Finkle-McGraw and Major Napier, an official in the neo-Victorian intelligence and armed forces. Finkle-McGraw knows what Hackworth did, based on surveillance. He forces Hackworth to become a double agent for New Atlantis.

Nell reads the Primer that night. In it, Baron Jack, the evil stepmother’s new suitor, breaks into the Dark Castle and beats Princess Nell and Prince Harv. Purple, the steadiest and most patient of Princess Nell’s companions, advises her to fight such evil to the death. In real time, Burt, Tequila’s current boyfriend and the analog of Baron Jack, turns out to be the father of Kevin. He gives the children life-threatening injuries and burns Nell with cigarettes. Nell inserts stories about the abuse in the Primer, horrifying Miranda.

Using Dinosaur’s dialogue, Miranda encourages the children to flee from the Dark Castle/apartment. In the Primer’s tale, Peter Rabbit gets Baron Jack drunk. After Nell’s questions about escape elicit the tale of how Odysseus escaped the monstrous Cyclops by stabbing out his eye, Nell makes a screwdriver and stabs Burt in the forehead. Burt chases the two children outside. Chang, set to watch the children by Dr. X, intervenes and kills Burt. In the Primer, the children take the 12 keys from Baron Jack, who is dead or injured, and run away to the Land Beyond, a Primer analog for life outside the apartment.

It has been two years since Hackworth lost the Primer. An automated snooper tells Hackworth it has located the Primer in Enchantment, the Leased Territories (outside Nell and Harv’s apartment block, unbeknownst to him). After saying goodbye to Gwen, who is oddly calm, and giving Fiona her own copy of the Primer, he goes to Atlantis/Vancouver as instructed by Dr. X.

Nell, having spent time in forests in the virtual world of the Primer, runs away to hide in the roots of a toppled tree in an Enchantment greenspace. Harv eventually catches up with her. They leave when (much as Harv warned) a security aerostat kicks them out of the greenspace, which it keeps free of unhoused people. Harv tells Nell that he stole the Primer—which he managed to grab during their escape from Burt—from a neo-Victorian and then lied when Dr. X asked for it. Both of these people are probably looking for him. The children camp out on a sea wall and sleep in turns as Harv advises. Nell approves because this is what Princess Nell always does in the Primer tales.

Miranda leaves the intense session and is shaken. Carl Hollywood comforts her. Miranda realizes she has spent so much time with Nell in the Primer that she is what the girl has for a mother.

In the Primer, the stepmother catches the princess and prince as they try to escape the Dark Castle. The sorceress is devastated by the death of Baron Jack, “because she was weak and helpless without a man” (184). The sorceress steals the 12 castle keys, but Raven shows the children a slit window they can use to escape. Prince Harv is too big. The princess is too afraid at first to go without him, but he tells her that, despite her stepmother’s poor example, Princess Nell is a “strong, smart, brave girl” who can carry on without him (185). Nell and the Night Friends sail for the Land Beyond, losing Dinosaur along the way because his weight swamps the boat. Peter Rabbit—clever and flexible—becomes her guide.

A new threat, King Magpie and his flock of little spies, lives in the Land Beyond. King Magpie is one of 12 Faerie kings and queens who rule the land. When they arrive, Raven gives them bad news: the Faerie rulers of the Land Beyond defeated the stepmother-sorceress, but each took one of the 12 keys. Nell will have to defeat them all, starting with King Magpie, who has many traps and tricks. They go to his castle.

Princess Nell is terrified. The company tries to sleep in the castle forest, but a hyena with infrared eyes finds them no matter how still they are. The princess eventually leaves with a stranger who promises food and shelter, even though Peter tells her this is a mistake. Nell discovers that each time she chooses to go with the stranger in the Primer narrative, the story ends with abuse and slavery. When a stranger approaches Nell in real time, she applies the lesson by pretending to go with him and then beating him with Harv’s nunchuks. The children go back to hide in the tree root in the greenspace. Nell, remembering how being still was no help against the hyena in the Primer, cleverly covers them with a mylar-like blanket to avoid detection by the security aerostats’ infrared sensors.

Hackworth uses a chit from Dr. X to compile a chevaline (an electronic, four-legged transport—a mechanical horse). He writes Finkle-McGraw to tell him that he has located the original Primer. The user is a thete girl who is probably no older than seven and lives in the Leased Territories. He removes advice encouraging Finkle-McGraw to let the girl keep the Primer. Hackworth mounts the chevaline, which he names “Kidnapper.” It takes off in a direction programmed in advance by Dr. X.

Nell and Harv go to Dovetail clave to see if Brad (Tequila’s one decent ex-boyfriend) can help them. A kindly Constable Moore invites them inside his gatehouse when Nell uses her posh voice to ask if they might get some work there. Moore recognizes the fancy Primer from one of his crime bulletins and forces Harv to give up his weapons. Nell can keep the Primer and stay in Dovetail under several conditions, he says. She must hide it, not share it or the information on it with anyone, and not use the matter compiler in Dovetail—presumably because doing so would reveal her location to New Atlantis phyle or Dr. X. If she does any of these things, the constable will destroy the Primer and eject Nell from Dovetail. She agrees to these conditions.

The constable hands the children over to Rita, Brad’s partner. She tells them that Dovetail is an artisan and craftsperson phyle: everything around them is handmade and unique. Carelessness with material objects, which is common in the Leased Territories, is not acceptable here. Her roundabout talk confuses the two, who are used to abuse from adults. Brad comes home. He says Nell can stay, but Harv can’t because he is a wanted criminal. Letting him stay will cause problems with New Atlantis, the main Dovetail market. Although Nell has learned to lie when asked direct questions—a strategy she learned from the tricky Peter Rabbit—she wants to tell Rita and Brad why Harv committed crimes. Harv, who suspected they would have to separate because of his record, runs away without a word.

Over the years, Judge Fang continues overseeing the mice. The culmination of this project occurs when the first Middle Kingdom Primer arrives. These jade-green Primers aren’t ractive, but the little girls eagerly examine them. Their education of these lowly girls is in keeping with Confucian ethics, so Fang is emotional as he watches them.

As Hackworth rides past Vancouver, he both marvels at and recoils from the extraordinary linguistic and ethnic diversity of Vancouver. In a forest near the coast, he encounters a tattooed young woman observing a totem pole. The woman’s tattoos, her hair, and the totem pole have a constantly changing show of images—scenes, animals, and humans, including Fiona and Gwen—intermingled, a “promiscuous denial of boundaries” (207). He follows her under the sea to the colony of the Drummers. The powerful drumming inside the colony and quick flashes of mediatronic displays on the colony walls disorient him. He is hallucinating by the time he gets to the clave center. In one hallucination, he sees Fiona, now a woman, walking on the beach. Nanosites implanted by Dr. X take over his body and mind. Well over a thousand people populated with the same nanosites are pounding on the floor.