Chapter 10 (May 2920 - September 2920)
plotvitalnpc
Once more walking the path of the catgirl.
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Scene 1
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There were as many types of town as there were towns. You had to experience each one on its own merits and come to conclusions then and there. Every context was beautiful and unique and special and magical. There was always some spark of goodness in a place.
That was the bullshit people who didn't travel much spat.
In practical terms, when you went someplace new - anyplace new - you needed to get your finger on its pulse far too quickly for that sort of wishy washy sentimentalism. It was a situation you were dealing with then and there, and it could kill you before you knew it if you weren't at least as cautious as it demanded. Life demanded a real, systematic approach to risk and opportunity assessment to stay afloat. It demanded that each new place be swiftly categorized and for vigilance to be balanced against avoiding burnout accordingly.
That was what made the entire past year so damn embarrassing for Johann. Getting so sure you were safe that you tried to go right for the goods without looking around was how a lot of folks, smart folks at one point or another in their lives, died. If anything, getting a job out of it instead of a grave was even more humiliating.
Not that he was going to complain too loudly about that, though. For the time being he was safe, the kid was safe, and there were decent opportunities to move up in the world. There were successful jobs that didn't pay so well. With the lives of a few petty crooks as payment, he'd gotten most of what he wanted all this time. Maybe. As long as the bosses kept to the understanding they'd come to. As long as nobody on the outside sniffed out there being something of real value here. As long as…
Screw 'as long as'. That sort of moping wasn't any use when you didn't have a way out.
In the grand scheme of things, Kallipolis wasn't too bad. Nice and compact, not zoned by an asshole, light on fumes and traffic alike. It wasn't covered in horse shit. Maybe a few years ago, it was a lot worse - he couldn't rightly say. It would've been under the current management that the grid migrated off of coal, so maybe he'd have lost a lung just walking before.
It was a damn load more comfortable than the average town built out of brick and cobblestones - and ideally, it would stay that way. Ideally, there'd be more towns like that down the line.
But that was the tricky business with backwaters that found their motherlode, their claim to fame and their route to buy a better life than they could give themselves. Everything became dependent on the outside, and the outside had its own tendency to start getting interested in your affairs.
If things dried up, you slid back down. If things seemed to be getting too good, too fast, your 'beloved partners' would look to carve things up for themselves, damn the middleman, and get down to real business. If things got even more profitable than that, you had a choice of either spending everything on mercenaries or becoming a dartboard for every band of pirates operating out of buttfuck nowhere that ever did live - eager to climb back into the world of relevance themselves.
If whatever windfall the bosses had collected back in the day, whatever tooling they had, and whatever plans they'd made paid off, then Alphard might really escape the asscrack of destiny and find its own way. Best case scenario, things got self-sustaining, the planet got unified, and then they went silent like the place had suddenly gone down in flames, cutting off ties to the outside. Place was pretty well defended for the time being, but being known as a new supplier on the block, an up-and-comer, was dangerous no matter what. Suspicious, tempting, and utterly worth it to knock over.
Which would be a fucking shame, because the next guy probably wouldn't pay as well.
Johann turned to shield his lunch as a brown and red tram ground down the rails in the middle of the road, running over the accumulated mud of the pedestrian street. His coat could be saved, much as Starlet would bitch at him for getting mud soaked into wool, but there was no saving a soiled sausage.
A butchershop, a grocery store, a laundry shop, the people living on the top stories of these buildings were within a block or two of everything they needed to get through their days. Just like the insulae and tabernae of ancient Rome, except with electricity, running water, gas lines… the idea was the same, at least. A lot of people would kill to live on a street like this - on worlds like Detroit, the laws at large were out to kill these sorts of places as 'slums'. It was fucking ironic, because splitting up land uses just because you could made it easier for crooks to mess the place up - an empty street was an easy mark. Probably the only thing that was keeping the locals from calling the cops on a suspicious roamer like him was the noteputer in one hand as he walked, following the guidance of the hasty net-map the imported broadcast towers around the city made available.
For the time being, the only people who had them were pretty important, which meant...ah, who was he kidding? They probably thought he stole it, but were just too scared to make trouble over it.
If they did, he at least had the documents on him to prove otherwise.
Now, one bit of common wisdom about going town to town, world to world that people tossed about actually was true. The food was always gonna surprise you somehow. As Johann bit into his not-a-hotdog, the bun giving way with an almost crunchy crackle and letting out a hint of sweetness like honey, the natural casing of the sausage breaking with a snap, the juices of the meat - which was gamey to a whole other level - carrying with them a violent peppery flavor from the seasoning, and some sort of sharp funky cheese oozing out of a hollow in the middle of the meat tube, that was confirmed again.
On any given world, there were enough local varieties of bread, sausage, cheese, and beer that you could have a different combination every day for every meal of your natural life and not make your way through the first hundredth of the list. Shame he'd ruined the beer side of things for himself all those years ago. If his younger self had known how much he'd need a little bit of liquid comfort as a crusty old bum, would he have been so selfishly cavalier about using up their liver in his twenties?
Eh, probably.
Even without a cold one, though, a good sausage inna bun could be called one of life's special pleasures. As things went, Johann wasn't entirely sure he'd be springing for this one again. It wasn't bad, but it was a pretty long ride out this far, and he wasn't really in love with anything about it either.
If he lived on this street, though, he'd probably stop by the cart and get one every day.
Maybe if he bitched loud enough, the powers that be would issue some food cart licenses around the gaudy fucking palace so he wouldn't need to go urban exploring just to find an eatery that didn't want you to come dressed for a fucking wedding or funeral.
They spat in your soup if you disappointed them.
Bite by bite, the bunwich receded until it barely cleared the end of the wax paper it was sold in, the warm fuzzy feeling it put in Johann's gut matched only by his foreknowledge that eating something this greasy for lunch was going to give him a one-two punch of the shits and a migraine later.
When the last bite had disappeared and he began to make his way over to a trash can to dump the wrapper, though, Johann's ears picked up on something unsavory.
Sounded like some broad down the alleyway yelling 'no!'.
The noteputer went away as he stopped to think about that. It was damn ironic to be stared down like a crook while the actual crooks were doing their crookery out of sight, but that wasn't worth dwelling on. Rather, it was more important to judge what he was supposed to fucking do in this situation. Every city had its ups and downs and moments of nastiness, but if you let those slide too much that meant letting the city turn into a little more of a hole. It was important, if you were sticking around, to put chicanery like back alley grabass to rest when it happened, so people wouldn't shit in your food bowl. So you could rest easy in the town. At least, if the people doing the nastiness weren't the bosses around there - if they were, you kept your silly little head down and overlooked it.
This wasn't that kind of town, though. The thing to worry about was whether there was more to what was going on - some muggers went out hero hunting by getting a dame on their side to make it sound like something different was happening, after all. If that was a possibility, then it'd be better for him to leave this to the fuzz - call a cop, tell 'em what he heard, and let them take the heat if it went bad. Just from a personal perspective.
There was no real reason to risk his skin personally for his street. Well, there might have been. The bosses might take it as him 'showing initiative', being a good dog, a reformed man, or something like that. Not really that worth risking his skin, though. Any reasonable person would leave someone else to take the risk of intervening in this situation, so far from their own neighborhood.
So, that in mind, Johann pulled his semi-auto from one of the pockets of his coat, the other hand uniting it with a magazine of the weird local caliber it was chambered for - fucking periphery wildcat cartridges - and marched step by step into the alleyway. The kid could take care of herself, but that didn't mean she had to. If he could shoot the balls off every rapist in the city, given enough time, that was what he was going to do.
Releasing the slide forward to chamber the round, he pointed the muzzle towards the ground a few meters ahead of his feet, finger off the trigger, and continued deeper in.
"Stop! Please stop! Someone help!"
The renewed cry for help gave him a better idea of where to look, so he picked up his pace. He'd wasted enough time asking himself pointless questions already.
As he reached the corner where the sounds of the struggle were strongest, he peeked slowly around it, taking in the scene. If it was a trick, it was more sophisticated than the usual mugging setup. Usually, nobody's shirt actually came off for those.
Under the circumstances, it'd be easy enough to put a cap in the musclebound dockworker whodunnit's skull without catching the poor damn redhead up in the danger. He'd drilled the shots enough with this gun to know how it fired, how it swerved. For a moment, he even lined the shot up, just out of the line of sight of the victim, and well and truly out of view for the scumbag.
But then, they were playing at the idea of the rule of law being a real thing, here. He might get in actual trouble if he just shot for the head from somewhere in the dark. So the barrel drifted down, to the side, pointing at the cobblestones just so, and…
Well, the warning shot went blam just right. As the man flinched away from his victim, and as she began to reclaim what sense of modesty and safety she could, Johann stepped around the corner and placed the sights back on the man's head from around five paces away. "Party's over, shitbag. I'm taking you in."
Internally, though, he was silently reciting the mantra of 'don't be drunk, don't be drunk', aiming to avoid the crook doing anything too stupid on top of everything so far. If he did, that'd just make things messier.
- -
It was over an hour later, even having gotten a good look at his documents, that the cops let Johann walk, taking down the number of the palace guest room in case they needed to contact him again.
Well, it made sense that they'd be a little on edge when they saw a dockworker bleeding from both knees, a lady stripped of her dignity, and an obvious dirtbag with a gun in an alleyway together.
If they would've believed the gal when she told them he was the good guy, though, things would have been over a damn sight faster.
At least Johann had the restraint not to castrate the waste of skin before they got there!
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Scene 2
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The steps at the front of the palace of the former Emperor of the Supreme Promethean Dominion made a decent enough seat for people watching. They were wide enough to fit a whole ass, let alone a pair of feet, without any uncomfortable corners digging in anywhere. The stone was polished smooth, such that shifting around didn't cause any unwanted friction or wear down clothing. The monumental overhanging facade of the building kept the weather off quite ably, making it suitable - with appropriate thermal insulation - for all weathers. From a physical perspective, it was just about all one could ask a spot to be.
Then there were the more indirect characteristics of the site. The streetcar station routinely disgorged and took crowds onto the vehicles that plyed its tracks, contributing to a healthy flow of foot traffic. That was a pretty important feature of people watching. But the watchable people themselves were also of quite a high quality - the area was still thick with the deprecated ruling class of the former state, kept under the watchful eye of the Blue Bramblings infantry battalion, to say nothing of the growing contingent of local soldiers and police loyal to the new regime, to keep them from getting funny ideas about restoring the familiar order. That meant that their affronted pride turned them red every time they saw some 'low-bred offworlder' sitting on the stoop of their 'sacred' national monument in a leather jacket. It was hilarious.
But the most important part, from the perspective of a habitual people watcher, was that Alexandria had them all to herself. Unlike a public park, there wasn't any risk of attracting the attention of girl-watchers while people watching, let alone getting propositioned. Nobody was insane enough to climb the first twenty steps towards the heads of state to try and get into her pants.
Which meant nobody was ever in any danger.
Flipping her wrist up towards her face, she glanced down at her locally made watch. 15:24. Still six minutes to the next scheduled arrival. Who could really say if he'd decide to be on time, though.
It was a shame she'd had to shout down the old man's calls for food carts in the area. He couldn't be trusted with that sort of easy access to junk food, sure. He'd destroy what little there was left to his body in a month if he didn't need to go on absurd expeditions and long walks to sneak snacks. Unfortunately, that meant there was really nowhere accessible to get lunch herself that didn't involve making it herself. Unless, that was, she pestered the domestic staff of the Clayton-Camerons into bringing her something, but that just seemed obnoxious and uncalled for. Hell, even joining the royal couple themselves was technically an option, but… amiable as they could be, it was hard to be friends with a boss who's admitted to you that you're a potential intelligence leak that they might have liquidated.
"Auuughwnnn."
Her eyes slammed shut, her jaw stretching to its outer limits, as the powerful yawn punched its way out of her throat. That was weird - she didn't think she'd slept poorly last night, and it wasn't as though she was having a bad time right now. The crowds were flowing, carrying out their ludicrous courtly greetings whenever they came face to face with one another, and…
Oh, who the fuck was she even kidding in her own thoughts? She was bored as fuck. This place was always more or less the same - the only way she was going to milk more out of people watching in this city was going to be to find other, less sanitized spots. But then, that would be missing the entire point of sticking so close…
She supposed she could always pester some of the Red Roosters into a simulator match, later. Shame that real range time was a relative scarcity around here - particularly with the comparative lack of spare parts and munitions for Shadow Hawks.
There was the matter of, just maybe, following through on the old man's suggestion and trying dating but… nope, no, nuh-uh. That was a horrible plan from start to end.
Wait - 15:24, or… 15:29 now. That meant...
Her stomach rolled as the streetcar pulled up, ever so slightly early, and disgorged its load. O'Reilly was not among its thirty passengers, but all the same one group of five approached the steps. What a fun aftermath to thinking about one's fundamentally tenuous position among the living - meeting with three of the top candidates for ending it.
Plus the kids.
As the bundle of escorts and escorted drew close, Marcus stepped forward with a welcoming smile - one she forced herself to return despite her misgivings about him. "Afternoon, Starlet. O'Reilly out on the town or something?"
"Yep. He was supposed to be back by now, but I guess it's not surprising if he got distracted or somesuch. It's a big town, and he's kind of a dumbass at times." she replied, placing her cheeks in her hands as she turned her attention to James and Marie. "How was school today, brats? They teaching you how to build WarShips yet?"
"Starlet…" Marcus whined, even as the brats stepped forward around him, each followed by one of the other Bramblings.
"It was fine, but...uh… no?" Marie replied, a puffing out of her cheeks responding to the 'brat' label in place of any words. "Honestly, it's a normal class, and we learn more at home than we do there, but that would be ridiculous!"
James wore a mischievous grin, and was about to speak up when Marcus' hand shot forward around him and covered his mouth. "No, you're not starting an argument out here. Funny as you might find it, that's not an appropriate way to bother your sister. Just...the doors right ahead, you two. Why not go inside? I'm sure your parents would appreciate having you there to help out, what with your mother carrying little Alan and all."
As the kids, happily in the case of Marie and reluctantly for James, marched the rest of the way home, flanked by their respective guards, Marcus loosed a heavy sigh with his hands on his hips. "Honestly, those two are a massive handful. It's not like James even has room to talk." A few moments later, though, he glanced back to Alexandria with a snort. "But...uh… you're seriously just out here waiting for O'Reilly to get back? Lucky bastard, getting welcomed home by his own adoptive daughter, when Jack and Amy wait inside for the kids because of how busy things are. Maybe a sign that we need to give you folks more work, when a mess of a man like Johann O'Reilly has the more responsive family life. Gonna greenlight any of Alan's personnel transfers anytime soon, by the way? Be a shame to leave the rest of your lance idle any longer."
"Oh for fuck's sake-!" Alexandria spat, before shaking her head, rising to her feet, and establishing firm eye contact with the infantry commander. "I'll greenlight the transfers when one of them isn't named Marinkovich. Until then, I'm sticking to the plan of training some locals. But more importantly! I'm not the old man's fucking daughter. You people saying that shit is why he can't get that stupid fucking idea out of his dome. I don't even really remember the first time we met - it wasn't for very long, and he wasn't particularly welcome at the time - far as I'm concerned, the first time I saw the guy was when I was eighteen. He's barely even old enough to have a kid my age, and I'm the one who does all the parenting here, if anyone - I make sure he stays healthy, I slap his hand when he's being dumb, and I set his allowance. Besides! They might not get welcomed home at the door by their parents, but those kids get picked up from school by their goddamn uncle!"
Having shrunken back under the force of the rant, Marcus made an attempt to spring back at the end of that. "Oh, come on, I'm not their un-"
Alexandria, however, blasted through that claim before it could even be finished."Their unborn brother is named for your goddamned older brother, you hack! They literally call the man 'Uncle Alan'. You don't get to accuse me of being the old man's daughter like that and then turn around and pretend you're not vastly more of an uncle than I've ever been a daughter."
"Yeah, yeah, fine, I'll cop to it." the Major admitted, scratching the back of my head. "I guess it's a little better not to think of him as your dad, in that sense. Means he didn't drag his own daughter on a ten year long Periphery journey in such...uh...miserable company. He looks a little bit better in that light, but...eh...damn, the two of you tell completely different stories about the way things are between you, you know? He made it sound way more...uh...paternal, of him."
"Of course he would." Starlet huffed. "He's delusional about some things, which is even more annoying than the obsession with ancient Rome. Besides which, he didn't bring me along at first. I stowed away on his ride out."
His interest piqued and his eyes wide, the infantry officer just gestured for her to continue.
Pacing side to side, the mechwarrior nodded to herself as she recounted the old memories. "He looked like a walking corpse after he deep-sixed my dad, so I decided to go along and keep him from getting himself killed. I had at least that much gratitude to him - he took away a damn hard choice back then. Dad was a rat bastard, but he was probably also right about what it took to save everyone else, so… if not for Johann, he probably would've gone unpunished forever - so I didn't want him to burn himself out like he was so desperate to do. That's just been going on for the past decade, because if I settled down on my own like he wants me to, I still can't shake the feeling he'd get himself killed the next week."
"You, uh…" Marcus muttered, pausing one real word deep to glance up at the sky for a second, tapping the heels of his shoes on the landing of the stairs, and otherwise doing anything other than continue the thought for a few seconds. "Well, I guess you must have found something to like about the piece of shit, to run with him for that long. I don't really think gratitude alone can inspire the sort of loyalty you've...uh...shown. But, like, even a kid can care for their parents when they're like that, so I don't really understand why you've got such a big problem with being called his daughter."
"Well, it's fine if you don't understand!" Alexandria huffed, flushing red with anger at the prolonged prodding. "It's not like I want people to read my mind or something! Honestly, though, who the hell would even want the guy as a father figure?! The only parts of the job he's got down pat are the shitty jokes. Guy's a mess - I can't even fathom the sort of person I could trust to keep him in one piece if I handed him off to someone else, if I could even find someone to take him. Hence, uh… I guess just call me his lifelong minder or something? Probably the most accurate way to put the mess of a life he lives."
"Uh...huh?" Marcus mumbled in discomprehension, before shaking his head and starting to walk towards the palace. "You know what, I think I've heard more than I actually wanted to today. I'm just going to...leave you to that, and go do my actual job instead. Have fun with the people watching, Alexandria."
For her part, Starlet was fine with the man not understanding. Even with him choosing not to understand. Even if he understood, it wasn't as though it would change the fact that he was - potentially - the ax-man at her and the old man's funerals if things went south between them and their bosses.
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Scene 3
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The library and the Library were very different places.
The emperor of this little patch of dust had maintained his own royal library, a collection of the finest works of art and scholarship his people had produced, and the meager collection of works that survived from the era of the Star League. It was a master copy of the reserve of knowledge that had made the Promethean Dominion, the great power which reigned over, among much else, the ruins of the legendary Alphard Trading Company, everything it had been.
This archive, his line had named 'Prometheus', drawing on the mythology of the titan Prometheus, creator of humanity, advocate for their prosperity, he who stole fire back from the gods and suffered personally in penance so his children could prosper eternally. It was close to an icon of faith for the people of the land, the very thing which had, in the before-times, propelled them so close to complete global dominance on the back of the germanium trade. This was the library, a place of purely historical significance.
The Library, ironically, was also named Prometheus. Its extensive records left it completely unexplained why, exactly, a domineering hegemonic power like the Star League saw fit to name its master archive for such a mythological figure, but that was what they called it. Created first as an aspirational central backup of all human knowledge, and then enhanced for direct usability as a teaching resource for use in the Invisible Palace, for six hours a day it was made wirelessly accessible to properly credentialed computers located within one room of the palace, one of the ultra-high density, ultra-high durability, utterly irreplaceable data cores brought up from the depths of Terra spinning up to serve it through a narrow-range wireless network. A reduced version of the information was made available for educational purposes day-round on the public access network that'd been installed throughout the city, limited though the access nodes were, running off of more primitive drives which represented the state of the art in the wider Sphere, but for security reasons, data preservation reasons, and frankly, bandwidth reasons it was neither desirable nor possible to serve the full resource to the general public at this time.
There would be some manner of gradual rollout of more of its contents in the coming years, to facilitate the further development of the knowledgebase and economy of Alphard, but for now things were as they were. At the moment, it was enough to know that for the people of Alphard's newest, not officially named nation, the availability of knowledge and technology was rising at a meteoric pace, while all throughout the rest of charted space it remained in an unmitigated state of continuous collapse, each day stripping away more of the wonders of a lost age.
And in this, the highest sanctum of knowledge known to exist anywhere in the universe, one computer was active, and another was soon to come on.
Crossing over blocky conduits of wires that had been messily retrofitted into the room, Marie traversed the former 'secondary ballroom' with great haste, her eyes set like a swooping bird of prey's on the nearest open desktop computer. Which, to her great misfortune, was directly next to the one James was using.
"Marco need to do something else today? You usually get here a lot later." the boy observed, casting a smug glance her way for a moment as she pulled out a chair before his eyes flitted back to the glow of the screen to soak in more of humanity's accumulated lore about chemistry.
"Right back at you, stench mountain, gonna be heading out later to talk to Lisa?" she shot back with a glare as she woke the machine up, waiting patiently for it to request her credentials until one of James' vast elbows found her similarly - for their age - overly vast side as he shifted his mouse left handed. "Hey!"
Shaking his head, the boy continued to click through the lesson without making any accommodation for his twin. "Hay is for horses. You're the one who picked the next seat over, genius. Scoot a little if you want more room."
Grunting in annoyance, Marie twisted her head to flick her dark brown ponytail in his face before retreating hastily with a scoot of her chair to pick up some distance. Despite the gesture, though, her eyes drifted with relative haste to James' screen. "Wugh, you're working, what, two, three years ahead on that right now? Don't you think you could give it a rest and worry about something else sometime soon?"
James' eyes bore no real amusement as he glanced back over, his mouth fixed in a pout. "Ask me that when you stop working ahead on physics, Marie. It's interesting stuff. I like it."
"No, no, no! One of us has to learn how to run this place one day, and it's not going to be me!" Marie hissed, reaching out to grab James by the shoulder. "Come on, at least try to get a year ahead on civics?"
No longer able to focus on his lesson at all, James turned his chair fully to face Marie, speaking out with such sudden force that visible drops of saliva flew through the air."Don't pawn that off on me! You're the firstborn, that means you should be the one to bite the bullet and take the throne one day. It's not my problem if you don't want to do it."
Wiping her face desperately, Marie let out a cry of indignation as she turned away. "Oh, eugh, you spit on my face, dumbass!"
"Oooooh, language!"
"Nobody cares, James. This isn't Lisa's house." Marie shot back as she turned around, a fiery glare on her face. "Besides, it's not as simple as 'firstborn, firstborn'. If I suck at it, it's obvious that I shouldn't be forced to be the one who does it! That wouldn't be for the best at all."
"And if I suck at it, it shouldn't get pawned off on me!" James asserted, rising from his chair. "You may as well decide Alan's going to do it, for all it's worth."
Rising to match, his twin took a step forward and got up in his face. "Alan hasn't even been born yet! What the hell are you even saying?"
Tensions were high, but before they could start throwing hands or anything, the doors of the room opened wide.
- -
"Alexandria said something like that back then, huh?" John mused, chewing on his lower lip as he turned around in his chair. "And that got the two of you thinking about what you wanted to do in the future? Well, I'm glad that you're having those sorts of thoughts on your own, at least. Not so happy that you're getting into fights because of it, though."
"But dad!" the pair cried in unison, before, with a shared glare, silently agreeing to go in birth order.
As Marie spoke up, she clasped her hands together under her chin. "Isn't it a bad thing if we both decide we want to do something else? I mean, someone's gotta run the place when you and mom decide to pass it on, right? If we both go into the sciences instead, who's even going to keep things going?"
"And if someone's gotta do it," James continued on from her point, giving his best - read, terrible - puppy dog eyes in the process. "That means someone has to get forced to do it if nobody wants to, right?"
Throwing his head back, John rumbled off the...fakest laugh. "A-ha-ha, no. Honestly, we've got all the time in the world to figure this sort of things out. The whole government as it's running right now is very much a provisional thing - the job Amy and I are doing right now is probably totally different to what we'll pass on later. Besides which, it's perfectly fine if neither of you actually ends up 'running the place'. We didn't come out here to force anyone to become a king or queen or whatever. Maybe Alan will want to do it years down the line. Maybe someone born even later will. Maybe one of you will just marry someone who's a good fit for the job and delegate to them. If it comes down to it, learning to delegate might be all you really need - one of you could take 'the job' and then pass it off to someone with the skills and will to do it right and go on to do whatever sort of science you want. You belong to yourselves, in the end. Whatever you decide you want to do, as long as it's not horribly illegal, and as long as you don't actually build any warships, Amy and I will support that decision as best as we can."
Blinking a few times, Marie glanced to James, then back to their father, then back again, trying to puzzle out that completely wide open response. "Seems kinda...wishy washy, doesn't it? Is it really okay to wing it like that when you're trying to carry out a plan this...uh...elaborate?"
"Marie," John began, a slightly gleeful sigh coming out of his mouth. "Anybody who thinks they can plan everything out at day one and have it work just by insisting on their plan is a fucking hack. When you two were born, we figured one of you would probably be okay with taking over some day, but there's absolutely no sense in forcing one of you to do a job you don't like and aren't good at. That's probably the fastest way to sink the whole project. I'd appreciate it a lot if the both of you at least tried to get decent at the things you'll need to know, but you don't need to force yourselves to fit into that mold. What's most important for a leader is that the person who takes over the helm is happily invested in the ideals of the mission they're accepting, and interested in serving the people that way."
"When you put it that way…" James muttered. "It sounds...uh… reasonable, I guess. I can live with that, at least."
"Now." John asserted, his expression firming up. "Now that we've gotten through the feelgood stuff, I want to see the two of you apologize to each-other for riling one another up so much. There's a level of frustration with one another that's to be expected, but nearly coming to blows goes over that line. Please, try to limit the insults and such going forward. You don't have to be best friends, but you're family."
As the apologies commenced, John's mind drifted away from the situation directly at hand and onto what it meant for the future. What would it mean for the nation to adjust to a royal family more concerned with the sciences than with rulership? What sort of system of governance could bear that kind of thing?
He'd have to bring this up to Amy later.
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Could you believe that I almost forgot to upload this because today wasn't feeling that much like a Monday?
Scene 1
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There were as many types of town as there were towns. You had to experience each one on its own merits and come to conclusions then and there. Every context was beautiful and unique and special and magical. There was always some spark of goodness in a place.
That was the bullshit people who didn't travel much spat.
In practical terms, when you went someplace new - anyplace new - you needed to get your finger on its pulse far too quickly for that sort of wishy washy sentimentalism. It was a situation you were dealing with then and there, and it could kill you before you knew it if you weren't at least as cautious as it demanded. Life demanded a real, systematic approach to risk and opportunity assessment to stay afloat. It demanded that each new place be swiftly categorized and for vigilance to be balanced against avoiding burnout accordingly.
That was what made the entire past year so damn embarrassing for Johann. Getting so sure you were safe that you tried to go right for the goods without looking around was how a lot of folks, smart folks at one point or another in their lives, died. If anything, getting a job out of it instead of a grave was even more humiliating.
Not that he was going to complain too loudly about that, though. For the time being he was safe, the kid was safe, and there were decent opportunities to move up in the world. There were successful jobs that didn't pay so well. With the lives of a few petty crooks as payment, he'd gotten most of what he wanted all this time. Maybe. As long as the bosses kept to the understanding they'd come to. As long as nobody on the outside sniffed out there being something of real value here. As long as…
Screw 'as long as'. That sort of moping wasn't any use when you didn't have a way out.
In the grand scheme of things, Kallipolis wasn't too bad. Nice and compact, not zoned by an asshole, light on fumes and traffic alike. It wasn't covered in horse shit. Maybe a few years ago, it was a lot worse - he couldn't rightly say. It would've been under the current management that the grid migrated off of coal, so maybe he'd have lost a lung just walking before.
It was a damn load more comfortable than the average town built out of brick and cobblestones - and ideally, it would stay that way. Ideally, there'd be more towns like that down the line.
But that was the tricky business with backwaters that found their motherlode, their claim to fame and their route to buy a better life than they could give themselves. Everything became dependent on the outside, and the outside had its own tendency to start getting interested in your affairs.
If things dried up, you slid back down. If things seemed to be getting too good, too fast, your 'beloved partners' would look to carve things up for themselves, damn the middleman, and get down to real business. If things got even more profitable than that, you had a choice of either spending everything on mercenaries or becoming a dartboard for every band of pirates operating out of buttfuck nowhere that ever did live - eager to climb back into the world of relevance themselves.
If whatever windfall the bosses had collected back in the day, whatever tooling they had, and whatever plans they'd made paid off, then Alphard might really escape the asscrack of destiny and find its own way. Best case scenario, things got self-sustaining, the planet got unified, and then they went silent like the place had suddenly gone down in flames, cutting off ties to the outside. Place was pretty well defended for the time being, but being known as a new supplier on the block, an up-and-comer, was dangerous no matter what. Suspicious, tempting, and utterly worth it to knock over.
Which would be a fucking shame, because the next guy probably wouldn't pay as well.
Johann turned to shield his lunch as a brown and red tram ground down the rails in the middle of the road, running over the accumulated mud of the pedestrian street. His coat could be saved, much as Starlet would bitch at him for getting mud soaked into wool, but there was no saving a soiled sausage.
A butchershop, a grocery store, a laundry shop, the people living on the top stories of these buildings were within a block or two of everything they needed to get through their days. Just like the insulae and tabernae of ancient Rome, except with electricity, running water, gas lines… the idea was the same, at least. A lot of people would kill to live on a street like this - on worlds like Detroit, the laws at large were out to kill these sorts of places as 'slums'. It was fucking ironic, because splitting up land uses just because you could made it easier for crooks to mess the place up - an empty street was an easy mark. Probably the only thing that was keeping the locals from calling the cops on a suspicious roamer like him was the noteputer in one hand as he walked, following the guidance of the hasty net-map the imported broadcast towers around the city made available.
For the time being, the only people who had them were pretty important, which meant...ah, who was he kidding? They probably thought he stole it, but were just too scared to make trouble over it.
If they did, he at least had the documents on him to prove otherwise.
Now, one bit of common wisdom about going town to town, world to world that people tossed about actually was true. The food was always gonna surprise you somehow. As Johann bit into his not-a-hotdog, the bun giving way with an almost crunchy crackle and letting out a hint of sweetness like honey, the natural casing of the sausage breaking with a snap, the juices of the meat - which was gamey to a whole other level - carrying with them a violent peppery flavor from the seasoning, and some sort of sharp funky cheese oozing out of a hollow in the middle of the meat tube, that was confirmed again.
On any given world, there were enough local varieties of bread, sausage, cheese, and beer that you could have a different combination every day for every meal of your natural life and not make your way through the first hundredth of the list. Shame he'd ruined the beer side of things for himself all those years ago. If his younger self had known how much he'd need a little bit of liquid comfort as a crusty old bum, would he have been so selfishly cavalier about using up their liver in his twenties?
Eh, probably.
Even without a cold one, though, a good sausage inna bun could be called one of life's special pleasures. As things went, Johann wasn't entirely sure he'd be springing for this one again. It wasn't bad, but it was a pretty long ride out this far, and he wasn't really in love with anything about it either.
If he lived on this street, though, he'd probably stop by the cart and get one every day.
Maybe if he bitched loud enough, the powers that be would issue some food cart licenses around the gaudy fucking palace so he wouldn't need to go urban exploring just to find an eatery that didn't want you to come dressed for a fucking wedding or funeral.
They spat in your soup if you disappointed them.
Bite by bite, the bunwich receded until it barely cleared the end of the wax paper it was sold in, the warm fuzzy feeling it put in Johann's gut matched only by his foreknowledge that eating something this greasy for lunch was going to give him a one-two punch of the shits and a migraine later.
When the last bite had disappeared and he began to make his way over to a trash can to dump the wrapper, though, Johann's ears picked up on something unsavory.
Sounded like some broad down the alleyway yelling 'no!'.
The noteputer went away as he stopped to think about that. It was damn ironic to be stared down like a crook while the actual crooks were doing their crookery out of sight, but that wasn't worth dwelling on. Rather, it was more important to judge what he was supposed to fucking do in this situation. Every city had its ups and downs and moments of nastiness, but if you let those slide too much that meant letting the city turn into a little more of a hole. It was important, if you were sticking around, to put chicanery like back alley grabass to rest when it happened, so people wouldn't shit in your food bowl. So you could rest easy in the town. At least, if the people doing the nastiness weren't the bosses around there - if they were, you kept your silly little head down and overlooked it.
This wasn't that kind of town, though. The thing to worry about was whether there was more to what was going on - some muggers went out hero hunting by getting a dame on their side to make it sound like something different was happening, after all. If that was a possibility, then it'd be better for him to leave this to the fuzz - call a cop, tell 'em what he heard, and let them take the heat if it went bad. Just from a personal perspective.
There was no real reason to risk his skin personally for his street. Well, there might have been. The bosses might take it as him 'showing initiative', being a good dog, a reformed man, or something like that. Not really that worth risking his skin, though. Any reasonable person would leave someone else to take the risk of intervening in this situation, so far from their own neighborhood.
So, that in mind, Johann pulled his semi-auto from one of the pockets of his coat, the other hand uniting it with a magazine of the weird local caliber it was chambered for - fucking periphery wildcat cartridges - and marched step by step into the alleyway. The kid could take care of herself, but that didn't mean she had to. If he could shoot the balls off every rapist in the city, given enough time, that was what he was going to do.
Releasing the slide forward to chamber the round, he pointed the muzzle towards the ground a few meters ahead of his feet, finger off the trigger, and continued deeper in.
"Stop! Please stop! Someone help!"
The renewed cry for help gave him a better idea of where to look, so he picked up his pace. He'd wasted enough time asking himself pointless questions already.
As he reached the corner where the sounds of the struggle were strongest, he peeked slowly around it, taking in the scene. If it was a trick, it was more sophisticated than the usual mugging setup. Usually, nobody's shirt actually came off for those.
Under the circumstances, it'd be easy enough to put a cap in the musclebound dockworker whodunnit's skull without catching the poor damn redhead up in the danger. He'd drilled the shots enough with this gun to know how it fired, how it swerved. For a moment, he even lined the shot up, just out of the line of sight of the victim, and well and truly out of view for the scumbag.
But then, they were playing at the idea of the rule of law being a real thing, here. He might get in actual trouble if he just shot for the head from somewhere in the dark. So the barrel drifted down, to the side, pointing at the cobblestones just so, and…
Well, the warning shot went blam just right. As the man flinched away from his victim, and as she began to reclaim what sense of modesty and safety she could, Johann stepped around the corner and placed the sights back on the man's head from around five paces away. "Party's over, shitbag. I'm taking you in."
Internally, though, he was silently reciting the mantra of 'don't be drunk, don't be drunk', aiming to avoid the crook doing anything too stupid on top of everything so far. If he did, that'd just make things messier.
- -
It was over an hour later, even having gotten a good look at his documents, that the cops let Johann walk, taking down the number of the palace guest room in case they needed to contact him again.
Well, it made sense that they'd be a little on edge when they saw a dockworker bleeding from both knees, a lady stripped of her dignity, and an obvious dirtbag with a gun in an alleyway together.
If they would've believed the gal when she told them he was the good guy, though, things would have been over a damn sight faster.
At least Johann had the restraint not to castrate the waste of skin before they got there!
---
Scene 2
---
The steps at the front of the palace of the former Emperor of the Supreme Promethean Dominion made a decent enough seat for people watching. They were wide enough to fit a whole ass, let alone a pair of feet, without any uncomfortable corners digging in anywhere. The stone was polished smooth, such that shifting around didn't cause any unwanted friction or wear down clothing. The monumental overhanging facade of the building kept the weather off quite ably, making it suitable - with appropriate thermal insulation - for all weathers. From a physical perspective, it was just about all one could ask a spot to be.
Then there were the more indirect characteristics of the site. The streetcar station routinely disgorged and took crowds onto the vehicles that plyed its tracks, contributing to a healthy flow of foot traffic. That was a pretty important feature of people watching. But the watchable people themselves were also of quite a high quality - the area was still thick with the deprecated ruling class of the former state, kept under the watchful eye of the Blue Bramblings infantry battalion, to say nothing of the growing contingent of local soldiers and police loyal to the new regime, to keep them from getting funny ideas about restoring the familiar order. That meant that their affronted pride turned them red every time they saw some 'low-bred offworlder' sitting on the stoop of their 'sacred' national monument in a leather jacket. It was hilarious.
But the most important part, from the perspective of a habitual people watcher, was that Alexandria had them all to herself. Unlike a public park, there wasn't any risk of attracting the attention of girl-watchers while people watching, let alone getting propositioned. Nobody was insane enough to climb the first twenty steps towards the heads of state to try and get into her pants.
Which meant nobody was ever in any danger.
Flipping her wrist up towards her face, she glanced down at her locally made watch. 15:24. Still six minutes to the next scheduled arrival. Who could really say if he'd decide to be on time, though.
It was a shame she'd had to shout down the old man's calls for food carts in the area. He couldn't be trusted with that sort of easy access to junk food, sure. He'd destroy what little there was left to his body in a month if he didn't need to go on absurd expeditions and long walks to sneak snacks. Unfortunately, that meant there was really nowhere accessible to get lunch herself that didn't involve making it herself. Unless, that was, she pestered the domestic staff of the Clayton-Camerons into bringing her something, but that just seemed obnoxious and uncalled for. Hell, even joining the royal couple themselves was technically an option, but… amiable as they could be, it was hard to be friends with a boss who's admitted to you that you're a potential intelligence leak that they might have liquidated.
"Auuughwnnn."
Her eyes slammed shut, her jaw stretching to its outer limits, as the powerful yawn punched its way out of her throat. That was weird - she didn't think she'd slept poorly last night, and it wasn't as though she was having a bad time right now. The crowds were flowing, carrying out their ludicrous courtly greetings whenever they came face to face with one another, and…
Oh, who the fuck was she even kidding in her own thoughts? She was bored as fuck. This place was always more or less the same - the only way she was going to milk more out of people watching in this city was going to be to find other, less sanitized spots. But then, that would be missing the entire point of sticking so close…
She supposed she could always pester some of the Red Roosters into a simulator match, later. Shame that real range time was a relative scarcity around here - particularly with the comparative lack of spare parts and munitions for Shadow Hawks.
There was the matter of, just maybe, following through on the old man's suggestion and trying dating but… nope, no, nuh-uh. That was a horrible plan from start to end.
Wait - 15:24, or… 15:29 now. That meant...
Her stomach rolled as the streetcar pulled up, ever so slightly early, and disgorged its load. O'Reilly was not among its thirty passengers, but all the same one group of five approached the steps. What a fun aftermath to thinking about one's fundamentally tenuous position among the living - meeting with three of the top candidates for ending it.
Plus the kids.
As the bundle of escorts and escorted drew close, Marcus stepped forward with a welcoming smile - one she forced herself to return despite her misgivings about him. "Afternoon, Starlet. O'Reilly out on the town or something?"
"Yep. He was supposed to be back by now, but I guess it's not surprising if he got distracted or somesuch. It's a big town, and he's kind of a dumbass at times." she replied, placing her cheeks in her hands as she turned her attention to James and Marie. "How was school today, brats? They teaching you how to build WarShips yet?"
"Starlet…" Marcus whined, even as the brats stepped forward around him, each followed by one of the other Bramblings.
"It was fine, but...uh… no?" Marie replied, a puffing out of her cheeks responding to the 'brat' label in place of any words. "Honestly, it's a normal class, and we learn more at home than we do there, but that would be ridiculous!"
James wore a mischievous grin, and was about to speak up when Marcus' hand shot forward around him and covered his mouth. "No, you're not starting an argument out here. Funny as you might find it, that's not an appropriate way to bother your sister. Just...the doors right ahead, you two. Why not go inside? I'm sure your parents would appreciate having you there to help out, what with your mother carrying little Alan and all."
As the kids, happily in the case of Marie and reluctantly for James, marched the rest of the way home, flanked by their respective guards, Marcus loosed a heavy sigh with his hands on his hips. "Honestly, those two are a massive handful. It's not like James even has room to talk." A few moments later, though, he glanced back to Alexandria with a snort. "But...uh… you're seriously just out here waiting for O'Reilly to get back? Lucky bastard, getting welcomed home by his own adoptive daughter, when Jack and Amy wait inside for the kids because of how busy things are. Maybe a sign that we need to give you folks more work, when a mess of a man like Johann O'Reilly has the more responsive family life. Gonna greenlight any of Alan's personnel transfers anytime soon, by the way? Be a shame to leave the rest of your lance idle any longer."
"Oh for fuck's sake-!" Alexandria spat, before shaking her head, rising to her feet, and establishing firm eye contact with the infantry commander. "I'll greenlight the transfers when one of them isn't named Marinkovich. Until then, I'm sticking to the plan of training some locals. But more importantly! I'm not the old man's fucking daughter. You people saying that shit is why he can't get that stupid fucking idea out of his dome. I don't even really remember the first time we met - it wasn't for very long, and he wasn't particularly welcome at the time - far as I'm concerned, the first time I saw the guy was when I was eighteen. He's barely even old enough to have a kid my age, and I'm the one who does all the parenting here, if anyone - I make sure he stays healthy, I slap his hand when he's being dumb, and I set his allowance. Besides! They might not get welcomed home at the door by their parents, but those kids get picked up from school by their goddamn uncle!"
Having shrunken back under the force of the rant, Marcus made an attempt to spring back at the end of that. "Oh, come on, I'm not their un-"
Alexandria, however, blasted through that claim before it could even be finished."Their unborn brother is named for your goddamned older brother, you hack! They literally call the man 'Uncle Alan'. You don't get to accuse me of being the old man's daughter like that and then turn around and pretend you're not vastly more of an uncle than I've ever been a daughter."
"Yeah, yeah, fine, I'll cop to it." the Major admitted, scratching the back of my head. "I guess it's a little better not to think of him as your dad, in that sense. Means he didn't drag his own daughter on a ten year long Periphery journey in such...uh...miserable company. He looks a little bit better in that light, but...eh...damn, the two of you tell completely different stories about the way things are between you, you know? He made it sound way more...uh...paternal, of him."
"Of course he would." Starlet huffed. "He's delusional about some things, which is even more annoying than the obsession with ancient Rome. Besides which, he didn't bring me along at first. I stowed away on his ride out."
His interest piqued and his eyes wide, the infantry officer just gestured for her to continue.
Pacing side to side, the mechwarrior nodded to herself as she recounted the old memories. "He looked like a walking corpse after he deep-sixed my dad, so I decided to go along and keep him from getting himself killed. I had at least that much gratitude to him - he took away a damn hard choice back then. Dad was a rat bastard, but he was probably also right about what it took to save everyone else, so… if not for Johann, he probably would've gone unpunished forever - so I didn't want him to burn himself out like he was so desperate to do. That's just been going on for the past decade, because if I settled down on my own like he wants me to, I still can't shake the feeling he'd get himself killed the next week."
"You, uh…" Marcus muttered, pausing one real word deep to glance up at the sky for a second, tapping the heels of his shoes on the landing of the stairs, and otherwise doing anything other than continue the thought for a few seconds. "Well, I guess you must have found something to like about the piece of shit, to run with him for that long. I don't really think gratitude alone can inspire the sort of loyalty you've...uh...shown. But, like, even a kid can care for their parents when they're like that, so I don't really understand why you've got such a big problem with being called his daughter."
"Well, it's fine if you don't understand!" Alexandria huffed, flushing red with anger at the prolonged prodding. "It's not like I want people to read my mind or something! Honestly, though, who the hell would even want the guy as a father figure?! The only parts of the job he's got down pat are the shitty jokes. Guy's a mess - I can't even fathom the sort of person I could trust to keep him in one piece if I handed him off to someone else, if I could even find someone to take him. Hence, uh… I guess just call me his lifelong minder or something? Probably the most accurate way to put the mess of a life he lives."
"Uh...huh?" Marcus mumbled in discomprehension, before shaking his head and starting to walk towards the palace. "You know what, I think I've heard more than I actually wanted to today. I'm just going to...leave you to that, and go do my actual job instead. Have fun with the people watching, Alexandria."
For her part, Starlet was fine with the man not understanding. Even with him choosing not to understand. Even if he understood, it wasn't as though it would change the fact that he was - potentially - the ax-man at her and the old man's funerals if things went south between them and their bosses.
---
Scene 3
---
The library and the Library were very different places.
The emperor of this little patch of dust had maintained his own royal library, a collection of the finest works of art and scholarship his people had produced, and the meager collection of works that survived from the era of the Star League. It was a master copy of the reserve of knowledge that had made the Promethean Dominion, the great power which reigned over, among much else, the ruins of the legendary Alphard Trading Company, everything it had been.
This archive, his line had named 'Prometheus', drawing on the mythology of the titan Prometheus, creator of humanity, advocate for their prosperity, he who stole fire back from the gods and suffered personally in penance so his children could prosper eternally. It was close to an icon of faith for the people of the land, the very thing which had, in the before-times, propelled them so close to complete global dominance on the back of the germanium trade. This was the library, a place of purely historical significance.
The Library, ironically, was also named Prometheus. Its extensive records left it completely unexplained why, exactly, a domineering hegemonic power like the Star League saw fit to name its master archive for such a mythological figure, but that was what they called it. Created first as an aspirational central backup of all human knowledge, and then enhanced for direct usability as a teaching resource for use in the Invisible Palace, for six hours a day it was made wirelessly accessible to properly credentialed computers located within one room of the palace, one of the ultra-high density, ultra-high durability, utterly irreplaceable data cores brought up from the depths of Terra spinning up to serve it through a narrow-range wireless network. A reduced version of the information was made available for educational purposes day-round on the public access network that'd been installed throughout the city, limited though the access nodes were, running off of more primitive drives which represented the state of the art in the wider Sphere, but for security reasons, data preservation reasons, and frankly, bandwidth reasons it was neither desirable nor possible to serve the full resource to the general public at this time.
There would be some manner of gradual rollout of more of its contents in the coming years, to facilitate the further development of the knowledgebase and economy of Alphard, but for now things were as they were. At the moment, it was enough to know that for the people of Alphard's newest, not officially named nation, the availability of knowledge and technology was rising at a meteoric pace, while all throughout the rest of charted space it remained in an unmitigated state of continuous collapse, each day stripping away more of the wonders of a lost age.
And in this, the highest sanctum of knowledge known to exist anywhere in the universe, one computer was active, and another was soon to come on.
Crossing over blocky conduits of wires that had been messily retrofitted into the room, Marie traversed the former 'secondary ballroom' with great haste, her eyes set like a swooping bird of prey's on the nearest open desktop computer. Which, to her great misfortune, was directly next to the one James was using.
"Marco need to do something else today? You usually get here a lot later." the boy observed, casting a smug glance her way for a moment as she pulled out a chair before his eyes flitted back to the glow of the screen to soak in more of humanity's accumulated lore about chemistry.
"Right back at you, stench mountain, gonna be heading out later to talk to Lisa?" she shot back with a glare as she woke the machine up, waiting patiently for it to request her credentials until one of James' vast elbows found her similarly - for their age - overly vast side as he shifted his mouse left handed. "Hey!"
Shaking his head, the boy continued to click through the lesson without making any accommodation for his twin. "Hay is for horses. You're the one who picked the next seat over, genius. Scoot a little if you want more room."
Grunting in annoyance, Marie twisted her head to flick her dark brown ponytail in his face before retreating hastily with a scoot of her chair to pick up some distance. Despite the gesture, though, her eyes drifted with relative haste to James' screen. "Wugh, you're working, what, two, three years ahead on that right now? Don't you think you could give it a rest and worry about something else sometime soon?"
James' eyes bore no real amusement as he glanced back over, his mouth fixed in a pout. "Ask me that when you stop working ahead on physics, Marie. It's interesting stuff. I like it."
"No, no, no! One of us has to learn how to run this place one day, and it's not going to be me!" Marie hissed, reaching out to grab James by the shoulder. "Come on, at least try to get a year ahead on civics?"
No longer able to focus on his lesson at all, James turned his chair fully to face Marie, speaking out with such sudden force that visible drops of saliva flew through the air."Don't pawn that off on me! You're the firstborn, that means you should be the one to bite the bullet and take the throne one day. It's not my problem if you don't want to do it."
Wiping her face desperately, Marie let out a cry of indignation as she turned away. "Oh, eugh, you spit on my face, dumbass!"
"Oooooh, language!"
"Nobody cares, James. This isn't Lisa's house." Marie shot back as she turned around, a fiery glare on her face. "Besides, it's not as simple as 'firstborn, firstborn'. If I suck at it, it's obvious that I shouldn't be forced to be the one who does it! That wouldn't be for the best at all."
"And if I suck at it, it shouldn't get pawned off on me!" James asserted, rising from his chair. "You may as well decide Alan's going to do it, for all it's worth."
Rising to match, his twin took a step forward and got up in his face. "Alan hasn't even been born yet! What the hell are you even saying?"
Tensions were high, but before they could start throwing hands or anything, the doors of the room opened wide.
- -
"Alexandria said something like that back then, huh?" John mused, chewing on his lower lip as he turned around in his chair. "And that got the two of you thinking about what you wanted to do in the future? Well, I'm glad that you're having those sorts of thoughts on your own, at least. Not so happy that you're getting into fights because of it, though."
"But dad!" the pair cried in unison, before, with a shared glare, silently agreeing to go in birth order.
As Marie spoke up, she clasped her hands together under her chin. "Isn't it a bad thing if we both decide we want to do something else? I mean, someone's gotta run the place when you and mom decide to pass it on, right? If we both go into the sciences instead, who's even going to keep things going?"
"And if someone's gotta do it," James continued on from her point, giving his best - read, terrible - puppy dog eyes in the process. "That means someone has to get forced to do it if nobody wants to, right?"
Throwing his head back, John rumbled off the...fakest laugh. "A-ha-ha, no. Honestly, we've got all the time in the world to figure this sort of things out. The whole government as it's running right now is very much a provisional thing - the job Amy and I are doing right now is probably totally different to what we'll pass on later. Besides which, it's perfectly fine if neither of you actually ends up 'running the place'. We didn't come out here to force anyone to become a king or queen or whatever. Maybe Alan will want to do it years down the line. Maybe someone born even later will. Maybe one of you will just marry someone who's a good fit for the job and delegate to them. If it comes down to it, learning to delegate might be all you really need - one of you could take 'the job' and then pass it off to someone with the skills and will to do it right and go on to do whatever sort of science you want. You belong to yourselves, in the end. Whatever you decide you want to do, as long as it's not horribly illegal, and as long as you don't actually build any warships, Amy and I will support that decision as best as we can."
Blinking a few times, Marie glanced to James, then back to their father, then back again, trying to puzzle out that completely wide open response. "Seems kinda...wishy washy, doesn't it? Is it really okay to wing it like that when you're trying to carry out a plan this...uh...elaborate?"
"Marie," John began, a slightly gleeful sigh coming out of his mouth. "Anybody who thinks they can plan everything out at day one and have it work just by insisting on their plan is a fucking hack. When you two were born, we figured one of you would probably be okay with taking over some day, but there's absolutely no sense in forcing one of you to do a job you don't like and aren't good at. That's probably the fastest way to sink the whole project. I'd appreciate it a lot if the both of you at least tried to get decent at the things you'll need to know, but you don't need to force yourselves to fit into that mold. What's most important for a leader is that the person who takes over the helm is happily invested in the ideals of the mission they're accepting, and interested in serving the people that way."
"When you put it that way…" James muttered. "It sounds...uh… reasonable, I guess. I can live with that, at least."
"Now." John asserted, his expression firming up. "Now that we've gotten through the feelgood stuff, I want to see the two of you apologize to each-other for riling one another up so much. There's a level of frustration with one another that's to be expected, but nearly coming to blows goes over that line. Please, try to limit the insults and such going forward. You don't have to be best friends, but you're family."
As the apologies commenced, John's mind drifted away from the situation directly at hand and onto what it meant for the future. What would it mean for the nation to adjust to a royal family more concerned with the sciences than with rulership? What sort of system of governance could bear that kind of thing?
He'd have to bring this up to Amy later.
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Could you believe that I almost forgot to upload this because today wasn't feeling that much like a Monday?
