Chapter 12: Link Start

I practically lived in the library for the next six days, exiting for lunch at the eatery right opposite, draining a further six gilt in the process, and to head home in time for dinner and sleep. I read anything and everything, from ancient myths to old maps to civil jurisprudence, anything that caught the eye and had the potential to make a difference in my future. As I did, I was forced to grudgingly raise my evaluation of the Frontier regime: for a feudal monarchy on the fringes of human territory, they ran a surprisingly sophisticated programme of information control.

See, on the practical side of things, the available books were remarkably factual in their content. If I wanted to learn the optimal methods of rotating crops to prevent soil degradation, there was a manual for that. Books on swordplay, archery and horsemanship were plentiful, as well the requisite fantasy novels and myths, lionising the heroes of the past and present, all the better to inspire young readers to join their ranks in the future. Even magic was well represented, albeit solely in the theoretical, and with copious cautionary tales advising against self-study. This, I could only deem prudent, as having seen how humans behaved across two lifetimes, I knew that giving someone the power to throw fireballs unsupervised would only end in disaster.

But where such practical subjects were well represented, the more academic disciplines were notable in their absence of rigour. I couldn’t find a single tome covering finance or economics, the politics and history sections were a laughable display of propaganda, so blatant that they would make the worst regimes back on Earth blush, and the newest religious tract available was over a hundred years old, and more dust than paper. As for governance, medicine, philosophy, or law? All absent, though the latter at least was taught in a simplified form as part of compulsory education, amounting pretty much to ‘obey the authorities’, couched in a hundred metaphors.

To be fair, there were many reasons why this unequal selection could be the case. Perhaps the missing areas were simply not well developed enough to be understood by the layman, and held only in the libraries of specialised trade guilds. Alternatively, we were so far from the cradle of civilisation that it wasn’t worth the price or effort to send them here, and any truly promising students travelled to learn at schools and universities in cities far away. Both examples had been commonplace in England, going back before the days of Gutenberg and his printing press. But the more I thought it over, the more certain I was that this situation had been deliberately engineered.

A map of the town had shown no less than three orphanages operating in close vicinity. I couldn’t be sure, but I highly doubted this was the norm, or a standard distribution across all human territories. Moreover, nearly half of the residents in my orphanage had a distinctly foreign accent. Never to the point where comprehension was difficult, but enough to tell that they were from far away. They rarely talked about it, which was understandable; orphans rarely had happy backstories to share, but it was still pretty blatant, which made me think. So, say you put all the orphans together, or in clumps across the border territories. They grew up listening to the tales of local heroes; there were enough of them that at least one came from every notable town.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Coupled with this, the tales of loss and destruction, because out here, everyone had lost people to monster attacks and raids, or knew someone who had. Their education was geared towards physical endurance, and even those who showed more initiative and paid their way into the library would only find narratives reinforcing their preexisting niche. Doesn’t this sound like a specialised academy of sorts? Nothing overt, but enough to create a dependable pipeline of loyal subjects, willing to give their labour and lives for the sake of humanity, whilst discouraging any pursuits that might infringe on the privileges of those living further from the border. It all made sense, seen in that light.

So, how does this affect me, you might be wondering. After all, I already learned all I needed in a more advanced society, so I could skip the education and head for the nearby capitol to make my fortune, right? Wrong. At the end of the day, the availability of information served as a barometer of society as a whole, and the picture being painted was worrying. If the institutions supporting the status quo had both the power and patience to arrange such an elaborate scheme, then they were unlikely to welcome anyone who bucked the trend. At best, heading inland to make an honest living would be met with derision and ostracisation, and that was if discrimination didn’t take more overt forms.

Sure, there would likely be places available for people willing to swallow such indignities for a chance at a better life, but I had no interest in wasting my second life, slaving away in the gig economy. Even a salaried position didn’t appeal to me, knowing the years-long grind it would take to reach anything approximating my old position in life. So no, I wasn’t going to play along, and I’d find a way to make it big, by hook or by crook. In a way, this realisation was small; a decision made, without any of the required actions to follow through. And yet. And yet...

Nobody knew for certain how Class assignment worked. All they had was empirical evidence, from those who had gone before. Could intent itself also matter, for this most important of days? Was this the time of Potter and the Sorting Hat? Probably not, but again, nobody would be willing to bet their life on the answer being ‘no’. I stood, then, stretching muscles sore from a combination of inactivity and poor posture. I should have corrected that, but honestly, as I rubbed my tired eyes, I couldn’t find it in myself to care. It could cause problems again, when I grow old once more, but well. Magic is a far better cure than a chiropractor.

I’d run out of steam to read, and the candle had run out, plunging the reading room into darkness. I’d brought everything I owned with me: a single set of clothes, nine gilt, and my knife in its sheath. Everything else had been returned to the orphanage, for the use of the next unfortunate to come through its doors. My Class day was today, but I didn’t know exactly when that was; maternity sheets in Frontier weren’t accurate down to the minute, so all I could do was wait, burn the midnight oil, and wait some more.

Until finally.

[System Update commencing, please standby.]