"She's the one," I announced, my words cutting through the nervous susurration. "She's what I've been waiting for."

My daughter. My rival. My legacy. For the first time in decades, I am thrilled and terrified. I looked down into the small face of the toddler who defied me, her steamed carrots miraculously untouched.

"Eat your vegetables," I insisted, again, a thousand eyes and ears now focused on this domestic drama.

The Voice compels. The Voice commands. The Voice is undeniable. For nearly fifty years the Voice has held the world in thrall. No mortal, no machine can resist an order spoken by the Voice. It is irrefutable and impossible to deny. And yet...

"Ucky," the child replied, and she pushed her plate onto the floor. She pointed at her mother's plate, and spoke with her own tiny Voice.

"Schikkin'," the little girl ordered. Her mother, helplessly obedient, immediately tore a piece of meat from the breast of fowl that was her own dinner. She turned to hand the morsel to the demanding child.

"Don't give it to her," I contradicted, fascinated.

My concubine's hand shook, trembled. Her fingers turned pale with the tension, conflicting compulsions tearing at mind and muscle and bone. The bite of poultry wobbled and danced in her shaking fingers, betraying the war that raged within the woman that held it.

"Schikkin', Mommy!" insisted Voice the Younger, screeching, little hands reaching. "SCHIKKIN'!"

The toddler kicked fruitlessly, tantrum building, and something in her mother's hand broke under the strain. Chicken dropped to the floor, eliciting a shriek from the thwarted child. Her mother's hand seized involuntarily, horrifically, and unfiltered agony washed over the woman's face as she writhed and fell. As her child continued to howl, my concubine cradled her ruined hand to her chest and screamed into the floor.

Chaos ensued, and the Great Hall filled with panic. The Bat Kol strode forward from their positions around the room, spears in hand, looking for some intruder to attack. My Metatron, sword and eyes ablaze, gears whirring with lethal purpose, rose like an angry fireball from its place near the great doors. Four hundred concubines shouted and cried in fear, startled and confused. Plates and cups, entire tables, were knocked to the floor as the harem panicked.

"Stop," I commanded.

Five hundred and eleven people froze in place, silent, afraid to even breathe. Only one person, one very little person, dared to complain. She did so loudly, but over her vehement and indecorous protests, I commanded all who heard. As always, those who heard, obeyed.

"Relax. Breathe. Right the tables; resume dinner as best you can. Share amongst yourselves equitably, to compensate those whose dinner was ruined. We will have extra at breakfast tomorrow, in case anyone goes hungry."

Hundreds of deep, shuddering breaths filled the Great Hall. Twenty women worked together to right the various tables that were overturned. A dozen more went around the room, collecting small amounts donated from every plate, scraps scrounged from the great serving trays, filled offerings for their sisters whose meals now lay scattered and ruined. There were nervous jitters, shaking hands, but none could defy the Voice.

Except one.

I rose. My attendants rose with me, always following. I made my way over to the concubine whose daughter had defied me, looking around to see the effect her fit might be having on the others. My daughter screamed her tantrum, unheeding of anything around her. It was simultaneously the most obnoxious and the most wonderful sound I'd heard, in at least the last thirty years. Since the day the old world had ended, probably.

"Stop crying," I tried, fruitlessly.

Her screeching hit a new and even more awful pitch, as she redoubled her efforts to bend the world to her little will. Ah well, it was worth a shot, I shrugged the thought away.

"Please," her mother whispered from the floor, terrified and in terrible pain. "Don't hurt her."

I knelt, gently stroked her hair, her cheek.

"Be not afraid," I commanded, softly. "Feel no pain. I won't ever, ever harm our child. Or you. I swear it."

She sagged as the tension of torment vanished. Releasing the deathgrip on her shattered hand, her delicate fingers dislocated and bent in awful, unnatural ways, she stared at it. She was still gasping raggedly from the horrific experience, and no wonder. Her hand looked torturously painful, twisted and mangled by her own tendons. I could hardly imagine what it must have felt like. But now, she had been commanded by the Voice and so felt nothing.

Still, she looked up at me on the verge of tears. I suspected that these tears were from uncertainty, and the anguish of embarrassment. After all, literally everyone she knew had just watched this entire scene unfold. If the Voice didn't intervene, she'd be hearing whispers and catching looks for months.

"Go to the doctors. I will speak to your sisters. Then I will come to you, and I will bring our daughter," I promised her. "You have done well, and I am proud of you, my love."

Slowly, unsteadily, my concubine--I couldn't even remember her name, I realized guiltily--rose. She made her way towards the door, unwilling to look around in case she caught the eye of some jealous or judgmental sister. Our daughter wailed on unceasingly, unmindful of her suffering mother, uncaring of all else but the object of her fixation.

Until her father--the de facto ruler of the survivors of humanity, and the bearer of the Voice which had ruled men and beast and machine alike since the bombs fell--turned to her.

"Daddy schikkin'! Schikkin Daddy NOW!" she strained out, face red with rage, hands beating against the baby chair for punctuation.

With an awed grin, I offer the little monster the rest of the chicken from her mother's abandoned plate. She screamed defiance once more, still furious in the grip of unbridled infantile emotions, and snatched at her prize. She tried putting it in her mouth, tried squeezing it, tried seething noisily at it, waiting impatiently for it to metamorphose into the strips of hand-shredded meat she expected it to become.

Enthralled by this tiny tyrant, I begin to tear strips of meat for her, keeping her sullen attention occupied. I didn't dare let her strike upon the strategy of commanding others around her. With a toss of my head, I gestured to an attendant.

"Prepare a garden. Only the deaf may work there. Her mother may move there if she chooses, but no one else may enter without approval. This girl must be taught, and raised, and protected, and... and above all, cherished."

My attendant rushed off, her robes flapping around her long legs as she ran to obey. Another took her place at my side. The rest of the Hall went back to their meal, though the whispers I heard carried venom. I suspected the whispers I didn't hear were worse. I would have to speak, to command, lest bitterness lead to tragedy. I tried to ponder on what might be the correct thing to say.

Meanwhile, the future queen of the world munched sulkily on seasoned meat, one ragged strip clutched greedily in each greasy fist. I found my own attention captured, my focus ensnared. My little girl. It was so hard to worry about the many, when I was so captivated by the one.

"My daughter must never be entirely reliant on the Voice, lest she be helpless without it," I mused aloud. "As was I, the moment my daughter told me 'No'."