In this chapter, we learn that the project to develop a new generation of high-tech weapons has gone terribly wrong, and that the king and the librarians involved in the project have ended up killing each other because of it. The narrator also tells us that the daughter of the couple, Pollymerry Christmas, has been working on the project for a long time, but she's just not good at it. She's not good enough to be the queen of Alexandria, and she doesn't want to go through the same things that her parents went through. She wants to make sure that the new technology will make it possible for normal people to be able to have the same power as a king.