Once again, it was only in the morning when he woke up, and the cobwebs of sleep finally parted from his weary mind, that he realized that Web-Web hadn’t made contact with him the night before. Now granted, his and the AI’s conversation time was, quite literally, finite, but it still made him feel a little uneasy to end the day without the unemotional voice sounding in his mind. There was always the chance that something went wrong and the AI was cut off from contacting him, or even worse: dead, or whatever version of death applied to them.

There is a joke to be made here about how talking with me is, actually, a fate worse than death, Sam noted to himself as he stepped into the bathroom, but was kept from fully formulating it by his desire to keep his anxiety fueled. Of course, the most likely scenario is that they simply don’t have anything to tell me, and since any conversation between us has so far spiraled out of their initial intentions, they chose to try and avoid any unnecessary chatter. And since any necessary chatter between us, at his point of the adventure, could only be about me shitting the bed, that’s a good thing. Or… could be that I’ve shat the bad already, but not quite enough for Web-Web to seek me out, having chosen to wait for a little more shit to gather in the name of maximizing our limited conversation time.

He shook his head with a wry smile at that point, deciding that this line of thought had completely run out of its non-unhealthy uses. Drying his face on the designated towel, he let out a sigh before stepping back into the room to mediate. Once that was over, he opted not to push himself too much straight away into the morning, and got back to his only personal pursuit as of yet, remaking his playlist. This time on the computer! A short while later, and with the computer’s superiority—when it came to organizing music—over the smartphone proved once again, he met up with Sarah downstairs.

“Last day of the week.” Sarah smiled at him. “Got any plans for the weekend?”

“Yes, actually. I’m going to start a foundation that calls for giving the death sentence to any person who dares call a single day off ‘the weekend.’ My hope is that, like Facebook, we’ll establish ourselves across the different campuses before eventually manifesting ourselves into a global phenomenon.”

“I’m sorry, but as cadets, we’re not allowed to be a part of any political organization.”

“Oh? Is that the separation between military and government that I heard so much about? Mainly on how it doesn’t actually happen anymore?”

“It is indeed. Also, you’re gonna like this, we’re not allowed to marry while cadets. We are allowed to divorce, though. Because they had to take into consideration the few people who decided to marry in the short time between becoming adults and entering the academy.”

“Really? That’s so stupid, I love it! What about getting pregnant?”

“It’s frowned upon. But you can’t make a woman choosing what to do with her own body illegal.”

“Really? They got rid of that too? You can’t do anything fun anymore.”

“Maybe now that you’re here, you can start fixing things.”

“You’re right. First thing I’m going to do when I’m in charge of the Terran Republic, is criminalize getting pregnant. No mores stupid whiny babies! God I hate babies!”

“What’s this about hating babies?” Felix asked as he and Yvessa joined them.

“That’s pretty much it, really. I don’t have any rational arguments to defend my position. It’s not like I’m still living in the days before we all knew that Malthus was completely full of crap.”

“How about irrational ones?” Yvessa asked.

“Oh. Well, then there’s plenty: They’re annoying, loud and obtrusive. They grow into toddlers, and, even worse, young children, which are the worst version of a human being that there is. What else? Oh, they make older siblings feel sad because they take parental attention away from them.”

“Aren’t you a youngest child?” Felix asked.

“Yeah? What’s your point? I watched TV. I went to a psychologist. I know the common tropes of familial alienation. Besides, I’m not some egoist. I can make complaints based on other people being hurt.”

“People who? I love my younger siblings.”

“So did I,” Sarah said.

“Uh… Normal people, maybe? Back me up here, Yvessa.”

“Yeah, he does have a point.”

“See? Wait, seriously? You’re with me on this? Aren’t you an only child?”

“So now I’m an egoist that can’t understand other people’s pain?”

“I didn’t say that, I just insinuated to it. For comedic effect.”

“Regardless. I was privy to many noble families during my childhood. And I saw firsthand the great friction that sometimes arose between older and younger siblings. It’s not a universal rule, but it does happen.”

“Exactly. And if even noble families suffer from those ills, imagine how much common families, who are of a baser material, suffer from them. It’s a tragedy on the scale of the entire species. Just think how better the world would be if people only had one child.”

“Yes, just a few short generations to extinction,” Felix said.

“A worthy sacrifice. But enough about stripping people of their reproductive rights. We have a workout to get to. And if we don’t do it today, then I won’t have any reason to feel like shit when it’s this time tomorrow, and I just realized that I worked out every single day of the week.”

“But what if you skip today or tomorrow?”

“Than I’ll feel like shit for not having exercised every single day of the week.”

“Hah… a catch-22. My commiserations.”

“Not exactly, but thank you nonetheless.”

“What do you mean ‘not exactly?’ That’s exactly what the phrase means.”

“It’s similar enough in the layman’s eye, for sure, but while my case is one of being fucked either way, a catch-22 is more of—”

“Boys!” Sarah interrupted them. “Come back to this while you’re between sets and resting. Now you’re just wasting time.”

“Sorry mate,” Felix whispered to Sam, “I tired.” And what a valiant effort that was. Playing himself for the ignorant fool in order to delay the time in which Sam would have to start the exercise. A futile effort in the grand scheme of things, but even empty words can go a long way when they’re said with kindness. That having been said, Sam was not going to let Felix off without being sure that his usage of the phrase was true to its original, nearly two-hundred-years-old meaning. He made sure to educate Felix on the term’s origins in between sets, as previously mandated by Sarah.

When he was done with his workout and having just returned from the shower, once again before his friends were done with theirs, it was to the sound of Felix mocking him to Yvessa, who rolled her eyes at Sam once she saw him return. “I mean, who gives a crap some dude meant when he originally wrote a book a million years ago? I didn’t even know that it was a book! It was probably a stupid one, like all the books that stinky Sam read. Man, I hate that guy! He really gets on my nerves! Who does he think he is? Coming here and starting to lecture us on things that happened before we were born? He’s like a childless ninety-year-old spinster, popping out of nowhere to ambush you when you’re coming back to school and forcing you to listen to how things were better in her days.”

“That’s because they were, young man,” Sam said. “And don’t you forget it… Has he just been continuously speaking like that since I’ve been gone, or did he know I was coming somehow and just started?”

“He was peeking over his shoulders every couple of seconds, waiting for you to come back,” Yvessa said.

“No I wasn’t. I didn’t even know he was right behind me. Hey Sam, by the way. How was your shower? You didn’t happen to hear anything that I was saying, right?”

“I’m afraid not. My brain automatically overwrites any adjective when it’s used to describe me. Because if it’s positive, then there’s no way that it’s true, and if it’s negative, then I’m already aware of it and there’s no reason to waste memory space on lies or redundant information. That being said, I will require a written apology concerning your statement that all the books I read are dumb because, by now, you should be well aware of the fact that the list includes the Lord of the Rings, and I do not abide by criticism of that piece of narrative.”

“Even if they’re jokes?”

“Especially if they’re jokes. You wouldn’t joke about the Bible now, would you?”

“Yes I would. And you most definitely did.”

“Well, I shouldn’t have. Because if we were living a thousand years ago, that would have been liable to get us killed. Now imagine that I feel as strongly about my Good Book as the Catholic clergy did about theirs back when they were still able to kill people out in the open. That’s how badly I take negative statements about Lord of the Rings.”

“What about the movies and TV shows?”

“Nah, that’s alright. It’s like making fun of Mormonism for a Christian. It’s a lesser reimagining of the original. To use a biblical reference, it’s why making fun of man is allowed despite him being made in God’s own image.”

“So what does that mean about making fun of women?”

“Oh, that’s even more permissible. It’s like criticizing a LOTR fanfiction that’s based on the movies and not the books. It’s removed from the unity of nature by two whole steps. In fact, one could argue, that by making fun of a woman for the sole qualities that are unique to her, we actually bring ourselves closer to god. Because we are better able to differentiate what women lack in contrast to men and thus we are certain of what qualities are completely removed from the divine. That being said, I did borrow some wording from Spinoza at the beginning of my argument, which necessitates the latter part of what I said being impossible. Any questions?”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Yes.” Yvessa raised her hand. “What are either of you guys going to do one day when a woman overhears you and she doesn’t realize that you two are joking?”

“Joking?” Sam and Felix asked simultaneously. Yvessa shook her head and opted to ignore them while she went back to finish her exercise. Although she was quickly brought right back once Felix locked on to the idea of making fun of some elven classics. Sam joined in on the critical merrymaking. Of course, he didn’t have any idea what he was talking about, but when has that ever prevented people from speaking of a subject? And since Sam was already finished with his workout, Sarah had no reason to criticize them for talking too much when she rejoined the three of them, although she kept herself out of the conversation. Before too long, Sam was back outside of the gym waiting for the three of them to finish showering, back on the never ending grind of playlist making.

Once regrouped outside, the walk to breakfast only consisted of Yvessa preaching about the qualities of elven culture and its written outputs. And although Sarah still kept herself out of the conversation, it was pretty evident on whose side she was on because she completely ignored Sam and Felix’s attempt to change the topic. And, of course, they couldn’t just cut Yvessa off and talk amongst themselves. That would be unsporting. Yvessa only relented once they were seated around the table, having most definitely carried the day in the end.

Finally released from the clutches of courtesy, Felix was free to turn his words to matters other than the Epics of Waters. “So what do you have planned for tomorrow, Sam? Besides getting to enjoy a whole private session with one of, if not the best, spear instructors in the academy?”

“That’s a good question Felix, thank you. I was planning to study. After that I was going to browse through the many collected works that found their way to my shelves yesterday. And to finish, I was going to begin my decent into the depths of academic ignorance that I have to make up for in only half a year. And then I was going to cry myself to sleep. Why do you ask?”

“No reason. I was just thinking that you were probably going to waste your day off on frivolities. And it seems I was right. When are you going to start applying yourself?”

“Felix!” Sarah chided him.

“Oh c’mon… You can’t cut me off there. I didn’t even get to my punchline.”

“What was the punchline?” Yvessa asked.

“Probably something about going out to cruise for chicks. But I guess that now we’ll never know.”

“And what a shame that is,” Sarah drawled.

“You know what? I’m beginning to understand what these two were talking about when they said that older siblings are resentful of their younger ones. Ever since Sam got here, he has had free rein to make bad jokes. Meanwhile, I barely get to tell mine. That’s just not fair!” He crossed his hands and soured his face.

“He’s right,” Sam said. “That’s the kind of thing that will get buried deep down in a person and will cause him to avoid saving my life in the heat of battle ten years down the line. I’m going to have to have you guys make an allowance for Felix’s shit jokes and awful takes from now on. It’s a matter of safety.”

“How about I start resenting you guys for somehow managing to quadruple my wasted time?” Yvessa asked.

“I like that. It’s like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts kind of deal. Maybe if we get another asshole into the group, we’ll manage to get an exponential growth to our time wastage. I don’t care what Socrates might say, now that’s a life worth living… Although he might actually agree with me,” he said the last part mostly to himself, briefly forgetting the others in order to pursue pondering this thread.

“Sam.” Sarah clapped in front of his eyes, drawing him out of his internal calculations.

“Yep. I’m with you.”

“Felix does raise a good point.”

“He does?”

“I do?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, “he does. In his own way, at least. I don’t think that it’s very healthy for you to spend this Saturday all on your own with your nose deep in books.”

“I know,” Sam said. “I’m with you. I’d much rather be reading on kindle.”

“Sam! I’m serious. We should do something fun instead. All four of us.”

“Excuse me,” Felix said. “But why do you get to decide for the four of us are going to spend our weekend?”

“Why?” Yvessa countered. “Do you have any other plans for the weekend?” Sam made a deep grumble, but only Sarah seemed to take notice based on the slight smile on her face.

“No, I don’t. Do you?”

“No. That’s why I didn’t object.”

“To be fair to Felix, Yvessa,” Sam said. “He is gay, so that makes spending time with me so much harder. Having to resist my attraction all the time and what not.”

“Wouldn’t that also hold true for all three of us, then?”

“No. Because I’m only attracted to women. Thus, I am ambivalent towards the prospect of men finding me attractive but positive about the notion of women feeling the same way. And as you all know, if something is good for me, then it must also be objectively false. Thus, I could be irresistible to gay guys while at the same time repulsive to straight women. That’s just math.”

“Sam please…” Sarah said. “You’re just doing this on purpose at this point.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. That’s just maths.” And although she laughed, that wasn’t enough to save him from her flick of his forehead.

“I’m serious. Let’s do something tomorrow, just the four of us. A picnic! I wanted to have one for the longest time.”

“I won’t say no to a picnic,” Felix said. “But I do resent you trying to lead us on as though you haven’t already decided we’re having one beforehand.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. Then we’re having a picnic tomorrow, you guys. Clear your schedule.”

“No I just got it!” Sam cried. “And Dan worked so hard. He’s going to be devastated.”

“When?” Yvessa asked Sarah.

“I’m thinking that we’ll leave at around four. Sam’s got his session in the morning, and I’m sure he’s going to feel bad if he completely neglects studying tomorrow—”

“Right on target,” Sam confirmed. “This is why it pays off to be such a giant whiny baby all the time. People can completely understand you after only having known you for a couple of days.”

“So… I figure that a couple of hours studying before and after lunch will be enough to mollify him, and I’m sure the rest of us could also make use of the studying time.”

“Just you, but OK,” Felix said.

“So four seems pretty good. By the time that we’ll be finished setting up ready to eat, it’ll already be close to sunset. And that’s the best time to have a picnic.”

“This based on your extensive empirical research into the quality of picnics?”

“Felix, please!” Sam shut him off. “This constant display of pointless negativity and contrarianism doesn’t become you. Leave it to me, a person who has no positive qualities to be diminished by this sort of annoying behavior.”

“You’re right. I apologize.

“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to Sarah.”

“I’m sorry Sarah.”

She crossed her hands while keeping eye contact with him. She wasn’t amused. “I’m starting to think that just because you’ve seen me going easy on Sam when physically correcting him that you’ve forgotten the extent of how painful my threat of physical violence towards you can be.”

“I did forget that actually, you’re right… I’m going to shut my mouth now.”

“Coward,” Sam accused him before flinching once Sarah raised her finger and thumb threateningly at him.

“So we’re agreed then,” Sarah confirmed her iron-tight grip on the group. “Tomorrow at four, we’ll meet outside Sam’s dorm and go to a picnic from there. I’ll make all the preparations necessary.”

“How about I’ll make all the preparations necessary for the actual picnic, and you just choose a destination?” Yvessa suggested. “Since you’ve made sure to point how some of us could really use the extra study time.”

“Are you sure you could handle it?” Yvessa’s straight back and blank face made what she thought of Sarah’s question pretty clear. Even Sam and Felix were taken aback by the bluntness and immediate connotation behind Sarah’s question. She seemed to realize it a moment later herself because she blushed and covered her mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant to ask if you’ve ever prepared a picnic before, that’s all. There’s a lot that goes into it.”

“What like grabbing food, drinks, a blanket and something to put those in? Real complex procedure, that one. I’ll more than manage, I assure you. I might not have prepared for a picnic before, but I’m sure that any knowledge required that helping prepare an ambassadorial reception didn’t supply me with could be found on the internet. Worse comes to worst, I’ll draft Felix’s help into the preparation.”

Sarah, knowing she was beaten, quickly conceded to Yvessa the duty of material preparation for tomorrow’s event. Although Sam was pretty sure that she was going to keep tabs on Yvessa throughout the following day. But for now, the Taken retreated, opting to spend the rest of breakfast on much surer grounds: grilling Sam on what he did the day before and what he was going to do for the rest of the day.

The rest of the day, as it happened, passed uneventfully and pretty much exactly like Sam’s prediction for it. He bid his friends farewell and made his way to Dan’s office, where they repeated the same routine as the previous day. First half of the lesson was kept to tracing training, a break for lunch, which again Sam had (or got, if you were being positive by being negative about Sam’s personality) to go at alone. Back from lunch, Dan refilled his core, and it was gathering exercises once again. The only major difference was that the second lesson went on for a little longer than the day before, but not having to go back to Sam’s room after canceled that out in the end and he found himself late for dinner the same amount that he was yesterday.

Dinner consisted of a short interrogation session by Sarah about how his day went. And when she was finally satisfied, she declared that she finished her own preparation for tomorrow and asked Yvessa if she required her help. Yvessa promptly shut her down.

The rest of the meal passed in a placid and jovial manner, although Sam couldn’t help but feel as though a cloud of melancholy had slowly begun circling his thoughts. He bid goodnight to his friends before any of them, particularly sharp-eyed and fast to worry Sarah, could discern his new mood. And it’s not like the excuse he gave them was untrue. He had a lot of ground to cover, studies-wise. And as fun as it was hanging with a group of people who he had just met, but for some reason instantly took a liking to (and hopefully vice versa) he couldn’t let himself get too complacent. Friends come and go (hopefully not these, though), but learning about the command structure of the Terran military was forever.

That was his first subject of independent study after elven history (which he had already made quite a headway in, apparently). He had made sure to look through Dan’s schedule for him and read the syllabus of all the subjects which were left up to him to study during his free time. The Terran military was only the first in the line of army compositions to be examined during his first year. Apparently, learning about the Imperials and ningani could wait until the third trimester of the second year, but learning that the average Imperial squad was twice as large as its ningani counterpart could not.

Other subjects in which he was left to his own devices were the already familiar math and statistics, courses in which Dan assured him that he wouldn’t be tested but still advised him to shore up his knowledge on. Sam was reluctant to do so at first, due to his previous experience with the subjects. But after having considered that his usage of integrals might end up saving his life one day (as opposed to only his grades) he was hoping that he could fool himself into having an easier time with the two. Of course, Felix dismissing the importance of the subjects didn’t help, and, unfortunately, Yvessa’s argument that he should give his all to everything he was going to study didn’t provide enough of a counterbalance.

There were, of course, the courses less important to Sam as a fighter, or even an officer, but critically important to him as a person. Your social-sciences, which tried to convince you that even though you might become the strongest person in the world in the future, you still shouldn’t usurp the executive power of the democratically elected civilian government. There were the humanities, which were rather inaptly named considering the new circumstances, but apparently they translated clear enough to the other races. Those were the courses designed to make you into a better human being (still translates apparently, but only with the context) but the jury was still out on that one in Sam’s eyes. He already had a broader base of knowledge than what was provided by the academy’s mandatory courses on the subject, and he was still a piece of shit. Also, those courses were why Felix understood basic logic, which was the real reason that Sam was dissatisfied with them. Just like with math and statistics, Sam’s statement that he already possessed a significant background in the subjects was enough to get him out of having to be tested on them like the rest of his peers. But just as with the previous two, Dan thought that it was prudent for Sam to familiarize himself with the official curriculum of New Point in case there was a significant divergence between what Sam studied before and what was being taught now.

But those subjects, yes, even math and statistics, weren’t what worried Sam. He had come up against them before; he had triumphed, or at the very least, left the encounter with a passing grade. So he was sure of his capabilities to master any and all the new yet familiar subjects that represented what he would consider “properly academic.” It was the subjects that didn’t fall under those categories that scared the crap out of him. During his first year, those were mostly going to be supplementary material to his main objects of study with Dan. Stuff like pattern computation and formulation, theoretical questions about gathering, Epirak analysis and so on. In essence, it was magical math. Not because it was necessarily anything like math, but because it scared him like math and it seemed complicated and important enough to warrant his fear.

But thankfully, Sam wasn’t supposed to start struggling with those topics yet. He still had a couple of weeks before Dan deemed him proficient enough with the basic practice to start working on the basic theory crafting. No, for the next couple of weeks at least, Sam could rest easy knowing that only two-thirds of his day was going to be filled with studying about stuff that was completely foreign to him.

It was those little things in life that made it worth living.