Padre | Meet the Mercyblades
Hi. I’m Daniel Bayn. All the top interviewers want to talk to me about my new novel, Mercyblades, but they’re too shy to ask. So, until they muster up the courage, I’ll be interviewing myself…
Meet Padre. They’re the oldest and wisest member of a vigilante trio called the Mercyblades. Centuries from now, humanity has colonized the solar system, disassembling Mercury to build a swarm of bottle worlds around the Sun. When these paradises become prisons, the Mercyblades come to the rescue.
With enlightened kung-fu.
Padre gave up their meat body centuries ago, transplanting their cybernetic brain into a variety of chassis: men and women, large and small, human and animal. They once spent a year swimming the oceans in a dolphin body. These days, they strike a mysterious figure, wearing silver robes and a featureless, mirror faceplate.
What’s a weeping monk?
They’re a bleakly realist, monastic order that meditates with their eyes open, because they never look away from the truth. They’ve been around for centuries, but these days they’re just one esoteric order among millions. They believe that life is meaningless, but also sacred, so they developed a signature martial art that focuses on evasion, disarms, and binding enemies with short lengths of rope. It’s dope.
What’s Padre’s story?
They was born on Earth, during a post-apocalyptic period called the Fallen Age. They know exactly how precarious progress can be. After being rescued by a weeping monk, they joined the order and the cause: to reclaim humanity’s technological birthright.
It was a long and difficult road, back into space, and beset on all sides by fanatics. They fought fire with water, fanaticism with perseverance, and they did the impossible. Then, they spread out across the solar system, colonizing Jupiter and Saturn’s many moons, resettling the ruins of Mars, and building an orbital ring around the Earth.
(See also, Megstructures of Mercyblades.)
Ashe recruited Padre into the Mercyblades on account of all this guerilla experience, their high-minded idealism, and their martial arts expertise. Weeping kung-fu inspired the group’s eponymous weapons: swords with rope blades that break into segments, binding enemies’ hands or feet.
What’s it like being a robot?
Pretty great. Padre swims in a sea of data, always connected to the network. Augmented reality is their reality. They roll around on spherical wheels, instead of feet, and change their face to fit the occasion. They don’t sleep, but they do dream… immersive virtual realities that help kill time during long flights through space in their sarcophagus. (That’s a stripped-down shuttle, little more than a box strapped to a fusion drive.) They can overclock their thoughts, making time appear to slow.
I think a lot of the challenges of living and traveling in space will be solved by altering humans, not creating Earth-like conditions in space. When you don’t need air, food, heat, or air pressure — and you’re hardened against radiation — space travel’s a breeze.
What’s Padre’s character arc?
They begin the novel a bit overconfident. They’ve been fighting this fight for a long time and, while dealing with luddites in the Sol Swarm, their android brain and body give them a lot of advantages. When their reach finally exceeds their grasp… they lose a client and their self-confidence.
It’s a hard time all around, as the other Mercyblades face their own struggles. Padre tries to be the peacemaker, the healer, but failure only erodes their confidence further. They stop believing they can save anyone, and start thinking it’s time to retire.
Ultimately, their self-confidence is renewed, but only after they start an ill-fated worker’s revolt and very nearly get everyone killed. It’s a real rollercoaster ride.
What’s your favorite thing about Padre?
I like that I can always pair up Padre with one of the other characters on the team, so the power dynamics can shift in interesting ways. Padre and Ashe find common cause against Roka over his rookie behavior. They’ve also worked together the longest. However, Padre and Roka work together the most, since Ashe’s body is a spaceship. (You read that right.) Ashe and Roka only team up when Padre advocates caution or restraint, which is all the time.
What inspired Padre?
I love kung-fu movies and wanted a martial artist on the team. I also wanted multiple levels of transhumanism. Padre is my robot-bodied person, so making them the most spiritual member of the team provided an interesting contrast. Or maybe I just love the idea of a robot in monk’s robes.
Mercyblades is now available on Amazon Kindle.
