The door opened, and before he could scuttle away, I began to read at him.

"The greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time, the central tenet of Utilitarianism, espouses that it is in the maximization of utility -- or happiness -- that the nature of good can be discerned. So does this argue that good is defined by that which promotes good, Father? Because that seems hardly a definition at all, to me."

"Have you read the rest of the chapter?" he sighed.

"Twice, yes, and I am still very unsatisfied."

He began to walk away and I had to jog to keep up. Though I was fifteen and well in the throes of puberty, God had seen fit to grace me only with topheaviness, while still forcing me to scamper around at half of the height of a real person, which I detested, as I believed it made my tutors unable to take me seriously.

"Utility is defined as that which promotes happiness or prevents unhappiness, and yet it seems to me that very few laws are passed which are aimed to make people happy," I continued.

"Happiness comes in all forms," he said, winding his way through the broad, richly-stained wood-timbered halls of our home. "A law which clears up a contentious point removes the possibility of future headaches and stops petty squabbles." He looked at me significantly. "And pointless questions. All of which promote the greater good."

I shook my head. "But the marginal utility of passing such a law is nonexistent to the opportunity cost of passing laws which could affect real change. If, instead of listening to lobbyists and passing bills which affected your own proceedings, you made a law which touched the public...if it improved their lives by only point-one percent, and if your law improved your life by one-hundred percent, there are still billions of them more than you."

"Are you saying my position is unimportant, my dear?" he scoffed.

"I am saying that there are sixty senators and four-hundred and eleven million non-senators. Laws affecting you are…" I paused to think, not exactly sure if I could get the numbers right without a tablet in front of me.

He crossed his arms and waited. I had set myself up for a math test, unfortunately.

"That makes...six senators for forty-one million...or nearly one to seven million. One seventh is...point one four, so...so you are...point zero, zero, zero, zero--"

"To the negative seventh, yes."

"--one four percent of the public. And as I am expressing it in a percentage, that would be to the negative fifth."

"Next time, do the calculation within your head, and attempt to keep up small talk to disguise that you do not have your number. Stopping to figure simply makes you seem weak and unprepared. Distract and divert always."

"Yes, Father. But, Father, my point remains--"

He sighed and opened his office door, moving inside and I let myself in before I could be told not to.

"There is a lot more to happiness than the good of all," he said. "Some people's good is more important than others', that's a simple, unfortunate truth of the world."

"Well, that does not seem very fair," I said, sitting down in an upholstered dark-wood chair opposite him. "We hold these truths to be self-evident--"

"That all men are created equal. I am familiar with that particular document. But consider this -- let us say a corporate entity promises to donate towards...let's say, education. A budget everybody wants to have, and nobody wants to fund. They promise four percent of their profit as a charitable institution. In exchange, they want a small tax break, to make them competitive with competing companies which make no such promises. Is it good to give it to them?"

"Certainly. You are promoting the general good by the redistribution of wealth and investing in the next generation."

"Simple enough, yes? But now let's say instead of simply making that company a competitive tax cut, we can give them a disproportionately large cut, give them a legitimate advantage over their competition. What then?"

I bounced the variables around in my mind for a moment. "Well...probably not? At this point, the fair economy of this company and its rivals is being upset, and those rivals, who have done nothing wrong are being punished, harming the well-being of those who work under them."

"But we want the rivals hurt," Father said, stroking his moustache. "The more the first company grows, the greater their profit, and the more they will donate to charity."

"That doesn't sound fair...but I admit...not actually bad," I said, leaning back and thinking. "It does seem consistent with providing the greatest good, but...it also means the government is hand-picking which companies succeed or fail."

"Which we already do on the daily," he mused. "The US Government is the largest buyer on Earth, through grants issued, military contracts, bonds bought and sold, and a million other things. Whom we choose to fill an order can make or break a company easily."

"Then...then for the government to do good...they must always be hiring the good companies. The ones that donate or the like, in this scenario."

"Exactly my point. So we work with companies and develop relationships, they prove themselves trustworthy, fiscally stable, functionally competent, and then before long, they are another arm of the government, partners in doing what needs to be done."

"Which brings us back to some people's good being more important than others," I said. "You don't want to choose a potentially better customer over a proven, reliable one, even if it's not the greatest good."

"The greatest good is, in my experience, hokum," he said with a snort. "There's nobody out there with a checklist making sure you did everything optimally. If there were, it should be me holding it, as I'm the man with the most experience in getting it done. The world doesn't function in 'best', just in 'good enough' for the most part."

"But that's dumb and wrong," I argued.

"The world is that as well," he grinned. "But you argued earlier the opportunity cost in indulging ourselves...consider how much time and opportunity we would waste if we had to look into every possible company every single time. Some ramshackle company could throw bids at everything, and we would waste thousands of hours investigating and then denying their bid, over and over and over."

"Aren't...isn't there a law saying the bids have to be investigated?" I asked. I was pretty sure I'd read that somewhere, but not anywhere in class.

He smiled. "And yet, over ninety-nine percent of renewing contracts are awarded to the winner of the original RFP. Things do get investigated fully. Once, typically."

I shook my head. "This just...just all sounds like justification to keep giving lucrative contracts to the same people over and over, just because they already have lucrative contracts."

"Well, you could put it that way, and you wouldn't be exactly wrong, but as I've just argued, and could continue to argue, there are plenty of reasons why doing so is efficient and good. Could argue, but won't," he said with some finality.

I sighed heavily. I felt like conversations with Father always headed this direction lately. Any time I wanted to discuss the nature of good, or what made things moral, or what defined righteousness, it always came back to politics, and the harsh realities of How Things Are. If I was lucky, I could get him to dip into scripture from time to time and verse me on lessons from that bible instead, but it was rapidly becoming clear to me that the man had his opinions, had made his living from them, and could not be convinced to question them.

Even if, in many ways, they seemed wrong to my naive eyes.

"What of personal happiness?" I asked him. "What merit do you ascribe to that?"

"Is this the beginning of another debate? I do believe you have class forthcoming…"

"No," I lied. "I am merely curious."

He looked at me sternly for a moment. "Sit up straight, Daughter. You'll have enough back problems in life as it is. My opinion on personal happiness is the same, and I believe you'll find the law consistent. Some individual's happiness is more valued than others for much the same reason I described."

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"So...many do not deserve to be happy?"

"Do not twist my words, Daughter. Perhaps everybody deserves to be happy, just as everybody deserves to be safe, have an education, and food and air. But no, everybody does not deserve to be equally happy. Take me, for an example. Why do you suppose I am afforded the wealth and prestige to live in this fine house with these servants and my child well cared-for?"

"Because you are a very important politician?" I sighed.

"No," he said with a sly smirk. "Because if I were unhappy in my post, I would be susceptible to corruption. Why would I tarnish my hands with dirty money if I already have sponsors whose graces I might risk by accepting it?"

"But you still have sponsors."

"Every politician has sponsors."

"That doesn't make it just. You have an unfair advantage over--"

"Karen, I believe I asked if this was a debate or an opinion, and you informed me it was just an opinion. Are you making a liar of my daughter?"

"No, sir."

"Go prepare for your next class, and leave me in peace," he said, turning to his holo.

Knowing I'd get nothing else out of him, I rose, bowed, and left the room, closing the doors behind me, my mind still ablaze with conflicting opinions on philosophy, economics, and politics.

Father had me trained in these subjects, and others, from a very early age, citing their importance in being an Irenside, and always stating that the only opposition who could defeat you was one who had prepared more. That was his goal for me, to make sure I was the most prepared I could be, so that when it came to college exams, no other would outmatch me. When it came to earning a degree, no subject would hold me back. When it came for my time in service, I would shine as any jewel forged in the heart of America. And when it came to take up politics, no rival could stand against me, no matter what.

He had told me this many times, and I remembered in my youth, hearing those words and feeling a fire within me, ready and willing to burn and consume all the knowledge in the world, to shape me into the greatest leader of the greatest country in the world. I held that ambition, and my father had been so proud of me for holding it.

Yet lately...I felt...more and more lost. I felt like the more I learned, the more I realized I did not know. The world was not as simple as growing strong and defeating a foe, no matter how much I wished it were so. I did not have doubts, exactly, but...moments where I saw that for thousands of years, wise men and women had been asking these same questions that my father answered so confidently, and though it seemed impossible, I could not believe that I just happened to be born to the world's greatest philosopher of all time.

And once I had that thought, all else began to fall apart. His arguments, once so compelling, I now saw as merely directing justification towards his own actions. His confidence, once so overwhelming, I now thought of as rooted in insecurities. His charm began to apply to me less and less, as I questioned him more and more openly, though I still saw it in full effect on those with whom he mingled daily.

And it was frustrating. Because at the end of the day, I did not feel my questions were too complicated to answer. I knew who I was, knew what I was being groomed to do and to be, knew every step of my life from here forward.

But I also knew that when I got there, I would be at a loss. Were I someday to become President or similar, and a bill to cross my desk, was it morally right to sign it into law? What defined right and wrong? Did my own feelings matter, or was I merely a vessel for upholding an objective truth?

Father told me not to worry, that he was not going anywhere, and when, not if, I had my position in power, he would be with me to guide my every step. Which was as reassuring as it was terrifying.

I found myself back in my room with no motivation to prepare for my next class. It was history, and a tragic waste of my time, I felt. Though I knew well that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, I hardly saw how the minutiae of dates and historical figures in the twentieth-century China would be relevant. It was not like China would be repeating much of anything.

And yet, without motivation, without drive or reason, I sat down at my desk and opened the history book anyway. I set an alarm on my tablet for class and then willed it out of existence as a distraction. My father had told me to study, and I was a good and dutiful daughter, if nothing else.

And yet, the insidious tendrils of distraction were in my mind and showed no mercy, as whatever great leaps forward Mao Zedong may have made slid past my eyes.

Because, unfortunately, the current situation reflected the question in my mind perfectly. Here I sat, unhappy. What worth was personal happiness? To what extent could it be pursued? Was a life of debauchery and hedonism inherently wrong?

I knew well the Bible's opinion on the matter, and yet many politicians that Father claimed were good and capable men and women, the backbone of America, were among the most indulgent people I had met.

Were I ever to reach that level...that...apogee, I thought, with only a glance at my tablet to confirm the spelling of the recently-learned word...would I live on as I believed myself now, a staunch advocate of good and justice and right? Or would I become tainted by power and influence and…

...and perhaps I was being unfair. Tainted had darker implications than I intended. Being self-centered was not opposite being just or good. In fact, in order to affect goodness, one had to first live and have the power to affect the world, both of which came out of self-focused development. As Father said, 'Altruism is a beautiful thing which has no place in politics.'

I stared at myself in the mirror on my desk, leaning toward my right to capture myself in the reflection rather than my dressing area. I felt short and round, my hair straight and boring and ugly. Father said I needed to keep it long so that when I grew, it would look good, but would only make vague promises when I demanded to know when exactly I could plan on growing.

But mostly, the face in the mirror looked unhappy. Uninspired by the world and her prospects in it. I had a map to follow in life, yes, and for that I was always grateful, to be blessed with vision and direction surpassing any other teen out there.

That is how I should have felt. I turned the mirror away, disgusted with the ingrateful creature it showed. There were people in need out there in the world, and I would lead them to justice and greatness. I knew this, because I had been aimed towards doing so since the day I was born.

My moment of disgust gave me an answer, I thought. If I felt guilt at my own ingratitude, that was God within me, pointing my heart towards what apparently came so easily to all other people. I could not indulge unhappiness, I had to work hard on my studies, attain that...apogee. And when I got there, hold fast to my beliefs, let God and his works move through me and become the salvation this country needed.

Just as Father told me. Just as the Bible told me. Personal feelings were a temptation, a poison spread by Satan to ensnare the unfaithful.

I did not allow my attention to waver from my studies again, and committed to confessing this sin of heart to our chaplain. I would accept whatever punishment he thought appropriate, severe though he often was, and I would do so without allowing my personal feelings to surface. That was the whole point, to do what I must, not what I felt.

My conviction held through the remainder of my classes and dinner, where I was corrected only on my posture by Father and not my behavior, which I saw as a positive sign. It wasn't until my scheduled rest period for an hour before bed that an issue occurred.

I was reading philosophy, of course, having little desire in my heart to study anything else at the moment, and had just broached the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, whom I had heard of in passing but never given any comprehensive reading.

I found myself gripped, engrossed by his theories, arguing that there was no singular definition of good, and that things have value only as we afford them it. That there could exist an opinion so old and published which seemed to echo the sentiment in my heart, that the world was a nonsensical and contradictory place, that personal desires were a concrete and knowable thing, and 'good' was distant and ephemeral and both half-true and utterly false…

Well, I could tell with certainty that it was no philosophy I would be able to espouse. Yet that rejection did not keep me from reading under the covers long into the night by the light of my tablet, my pulse pounding and my ears straining at every sound, stiflingly hot but not willing to risk being found with such scandalous material in my bed.

At long last, well past midnight, I emerged from my sheets, exultant and sweaty and exhausted, and hid my tablet, my conduit to that dirty world, under my bed. I lay panting and reeling, my heart pounding with the thought of what I had just done, and what Father might think if he could see his daughter now.

Nihilism by holo-light. Was there anything more irreputable I could be caught doing in bed, I wondered?

It was not for me. It could not be. I was one destined for order and greatness, not personal indulgence and entropy. I knew this in my heart, but just the existence of such a contradicting opinion seemed to give me spirit. I felt...encouraged, that I was not the only one who had ever had doubts, that there were people who questioned as I did, and proposed answers even as radical as Nietzsche's.

I felt like the discourse I wanted to hold with Father, to have him acknowledge that I was a person and had feelings beyond the plans we had laid out, that conversation I just successfully had, but with a four-hundred year dead German. It made my heart feel a little bit lighter, as it were, and I knew that this, too, had been a mercy from God, showing me exactly what I needed in a moment of weakness.

I closed my eyes but was too excited to sleep for a time.

The vision ahead of me seemed so much clearer now. My job as...as President, charitably, with bills crossing my desk. I could look at them and know that, perhaps I could not always determine the one truth, perhaps I could not be a perfect vessel for justice and righteousness. There would be situations where I did not know what I was doing, and I could not always turn to Father or beat myself over the head with a bible or other organ until the truth became known to me.

Sometimes, there would be no truth to be found, and then I would simply have to decide anyway. And there was power in knowing that.

Of course, I would still be a righteous and good vessel, and as I had decided earlier, would uphold those values wherever I could, regardless of personal feelings. I found the knowledge that there wasn't one truth liberating, but there still, irrefutably existed truth. Nothing could deter me from that, I knew.

It would take something or someone which could invert my entire life, chew me up and spit me out, and force me to challenge and dismiss every moral I'd ever held before that could happen, and I knew that could never happen to me. I knew who and what I was, and who and what I was going to be. My life was planned for me, and for that I was grateful.

Comfortable, confident for the first time in weeks, and basking in the afterglow of my imaginings, I gripped the blankets firmly as I drifted into the embrace of sleep.

Perhaps tomorrow, I thought, I might favor Father with a nice discussion of sports or the like instead. Something which would not wander into the morass of political debate and feed the schism growing between us.

Or maybe religion. I had several qualms with some of the verses that I had been meaning to raise with him for some time.