Chapter 1

This story should begin with elephants, or with a large airship, or perhaps with some mention of what year it is, but this story doesn't begin the way it should, because first I have to explain something. I have to tell you about Bellicose Tate.

Which, now that I think of it, is perhaps how the story should start after all - no, no that's not right. Bellicose is a horrible way to start anything. She's sharp and snappy and generally unpleseant to be around. She always smells like garlic - or onions, I can never really tell - nor can I tell if she cares.

I think she does care, actually. I think Bellicose just wants attention, and she doesn't care what breed. Vile little creature.

Snarky, ill-mannered, dirty, oniony-

It is really a shame that she is the reason all this started.

I could make an argument to the contrary, Heaven knows other people have tried, but the truth is that-

Oh, yes! Yes! That is how the story should start, with freedom!

How fitting!

I have free will, or it seems to me that I have free will, and it probably seems to you that you have free will too, that no destiny compells you to a path you have not chosen ---

(Frederick goes on for a long time here - the text is in Appendix A - but I'll just cut to the chase: free will is hard to define, and there are a bunch of smart people who don't think it's real because most of the definitions don't make sense, but Frederick thinks he's got a definition that does make sense...)

---namely that thing is free which can change its own response to the universe beyond itself, and that conscious thing which can change itself in such a way, we may say possesses free will!

And, so in this way the many ignitions of those events which I set out here to compile are mere automata, doing their work, bit by bit, unthinking, blind and fate-bound, and all of their cyclopean earth-moving powers were unbound and translated by the freedom of a teenage girl. This is the story of freedom. This is the story of Bellicose Tate.