The Diamond
Age

A young Nell stares out the window of her cramped apartment in the Leased Territories, dreaming of escape. The rain falls endlessly on New Chusan as she imagines what lies beyond the gates she can't pass through.

John Percival Hackworth, master artificer, accepts Lord Finkle-McGraw's commission to create a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. But in his workshop, he crafts a second copy—one for his own daughter Fiona. A father's love becomes a father's crime.

Hackworth walks through the dangerous Leased Territories at night, the stolen Primer in hand. Shadows cluster where streetlights fail, and he's not alone. A mugging leaves him empty-handed—the Primer vanishes into the dark.

Nell discovers the Primer in her brother Harv's pocket. When she touches it, it opens and speaks her name. An interactive, adaptive story begins—with a princess who looks just like her. This isn't reading. This is becoming.

In the Primer, Princess Nell has four companions: Dinosaur, Duck, Peter, and Purple. They mirror Nell's worn stuffed toys but are sharper, wiser, more alive. Digital friends teaching a lonely girl everything she needs to survive.

Miranda is a ractor—a voice actress who performs interactive roles through the Feed. For ten years, she's been the voice behind Nell's Primer, speaking as princesses and queens. What started as a gig became something more. She's never met Nell, but she loves her.

Two battered children appear at Constable Moore's gate—a boy with nunchucks and a girl who speaks like Victorian royalty. Harv can't stay; he's got trouble with the law. But Nell, with her strange education and perfect speech, might find a home in Dovetail.

Judge Fang investigates the stolen Primer. Confucian wisdom meets technological marvel as he weighs the law against what's right. The tech is illegal, but it's transforming a poor girl's life. Sometimes justice means bending the rules.

An otherworldly piece representing the Drummers—humans connected through nanotechnology into a vast unconscious network. Alien chants and thunderous rhythms evoke a collective mind dreaming beneath the surface of society.

The Feed controls everything from above, but underground, the Drummers and the dispossessed cultivate something the towers can't own. Hands in soil, bodies moving as one—a revolution grows from hidden roots.

Years have passed. Nell, now grown, visits her brother Harv in a charity hospital ward. Street life destroyed his lungs. The boy who stole a book to save her is dying. She holds his hand and tells him Princess Nell's story one last time.

Hundreds of thousands of girls, all raised on copies of the Primer, march as one. The Mouse Army—trained in silence, educated by the same interactive book—becomes an unstoppable force. They don't stop until the fight is won.