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Pandora Anthropodrome
February 23, 2037
09:17 PM
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Lute was trying to do his homework in the most isolated spot of the most isolated pavilion at one of the most ridiculous family parties he’d ever been to when the guest of honor found him.
He was in a cream colored morning suit with a matching top hat. For some unfathomable reason, all male family members had also been ordered to carry decorative walking sticks. His stick was lying on the ground in front of the white folding chair he was sitting in. He tried to ignore the patter of clay on the pavilion roof. It was a strange kind of rain, created by men and women running faster than horses could have dreamed around the massive earthen track.
The clay rain was supposed to be part of the experience somehow, but it was just worrying him because what if the transparent barriers between them and the track edge gave out? What if some Brute speedster lost control of their powers and smashed through the tent, killing themselves and some of the people here?
On top of that, his homework sucked. He was memorizing the human morality clauses. Because they were in middle school, and it was time for them to prepare for the day when they would all be Avowed.
A lot of his classes were now Avowed-focused in a way that they hadn’t been before.
Imagine you are a speedster running to catch the train. Your top safe speed with your skills fully activated and your spell impressions aiding you is 198 km/hr. You are nineteen standard F-city blocks away. If the train is approaching the station at 50 km/hr and is only one block away…
Now Lute was slouching in his seat beside the crumbs of a sticky toffee pudding that had been decorated with an unappetizing amount of gold leaf, and here came the birthday girl.
It was garbage on top of garbage on top of a perfectly rotten day.
Quiet. If I’m just quiet and polite, it’ll be fine.
Biting his tongue had been working at school so far. Just the other day, someone had...sniffed him. In the hallway. One of the new kids who’d started attending this year so that they could have the pre-selection Avowed prep experience at a fancier middle school.
There were so many students like that, and he was much funnier to them than he was to the people he’d spent the past few years growing up with. And the fact that they found him so funny seemed to be making it more all right for some of the ones he had grown up with to…
Anyway, Lute knew what the sniffing joke was, but he’d pretended not to. So only a couple of people had laughed, and then it had died out. It was fine.
“There you are!” said Hazel. She was being trailed by a couple of her friendish people and a few of the weak cousins who were too far from Aulia’s graces to be bitter about her position in the way the more talented family members were.
The boys were in their top hats and morning suits. The girls were all in dresses and big hats. There was a lot of lace and ribbons going on.
Why on Earth would they come over here to bother me? Lute wondered. There is a live band. There are Avowed running around in circles to watch. She’s got a fireworks launch every fifteen minutes. I can’t even be in the top twenty most interesting things here.
“Hello, Hazel,” he said. “Happy birthday.”
“You too!” she said brightly. Turning to the others, she added, “Lute’s birthday was last month. He turned twelve. He didn’t have a party.”
“I didn’t want a party,” Lute muttered.
Then he berated himself because that wasn’t being quiet. That was arguing. He wouldn’t do it again.
If I’m just quiet, she’ll get bored.
Her friends were already bored. Hazel had led them here, but for three or four minutes, it seemed like she was just chatting with Lute. Or at Lute. And he couldn’t imagine what she was getting out of it.
For a moment, he actually had to entertain the fact that she might be trying to be nice to him. She was declaring to the world that she would be coming of age this year, which was just absurd. But maybe she was trying to be adult by coming to visit him in his lonely corner and make amends?
Then Hazel suddenly said, “Even though Lute didn’t have a party, he wanted Libra all to himself for his birthday. Aunt Jessica begged Grandmother to give it to him, so my family had to leave even though we were vacationing on it last month. I’ve been so busy on the Triplanets with our family’s friends that I needed a rest. But I didn’t mind giving up the yacht at all of course. Not to you Lute.”
Lute stared at her. “You got thrown off the yacht?”
For me?
Nobody had told him that. His mother had said they’d have his little get-together of favored adults at the apartment if Libra wasn’t available. He’d just assumed it had been available.
Lute’s birthday was January 22nd. Hazel said Libra was supposed to be her family’s for the month…had Jessica really gotten them kicked off a whole week early? Hugh, Cady, Corin, Orpheus, Hazel…all of them?
Well, maybe not Orpheus. He drifted around. There was no guarantee he was with the rest of them.
“We left,” Hazel said tightly. “For you. Because we understand you don’t have friends other than the crew and you have difficulties.”
They got kicked off. For me.
He smiled. Just a little.
“Grandma Aulia is modeling our family after some concepts she likes from Artonan history and culture,” Hazel said, taking off her wide-brimmed white hat and setting it on the table behind Lute. “So it all makes sense to me now. Hold on, let me perform a wordchain.”
Lute didn’t roll his eyes, but it took a lot of effort. “‘Hold on, let me perform a wordchain,’ was practically Hazel’s catchphrase. She whipped them out periodically to show off how many she knew.
She spoke in Artonan. Her hands flicked around. Lute assumed she was doing it correctly because she usually was.
When she was done, she sighed. “There. Much better. That one enhanced my ability to perceive certain things visually. It’s the fourteenth wordchain I’ve cast on my fourteenth birthday. For luck!”
“Wow! Fourteen!” said a guy who had to be three years older than the rest of them.
Hazel smiled at him.
Gross. Is he her boyfriend?
She looked back at Lute. “As I was saying, it all makes sense now. Why Grandma keeps you and Aunt Jessica with her all the time and why she does favors for you that she wouldn’t do for most of the family members… it’s because you’re the assistants.”
“My mom’s her assistant,” Lute said. “I’m just her grandson.”
Hazel was staring at his face with her somehow-enhanced eyes. “No, I mean, you’re like a wizard’s assistants. Both of you. The wizard class is supposed to protect the non-wizard class, and they take especially good care of their assistants. They give them a home to live in. And clothes to wear. And they give them gifts all the time.”
I have to argue after all.
“Hazel, that’s what families do, too. Grandma gives you clothes to wear and a yacht to live on, and she gives you gifts all the time. I don’t know everything about Artonan culture, but I’ve lived on Earth for a while. Sharing things with your relatives is normal.”
He was glad her attempt to get back at him for the yacht ousting was so pitiful.
“Yes, of course it is,” Hazel said. “But you’re different. Want to see?”
Suddenly, Lute sensed danger. Hazel did stupid things sometimes because she had no sense of… something important most people had. A sense of consequence maybe?
But she wasn’t stupid.
And she’d brought over witnesses. She was confident that she was right about this insane Artonan assistant thing. She thought Lute had gotten something that was supposed to be hers because of an alien version of…what was that phrase he’d heard his grandmother say a couple of times?
Beatnik? No, that wasn’t it. That was just a random memory of Aulia resurfacing.
Noblesse oblige, he thought. That one.
“Hazel, I’m doing my homework.”
He tried not to let his nerves show. They must have anyway.
“Never mind.” The corners of Hazel’s lips turned up. “I can tell you don’t want to hear this. The last time I told you the truth about what people said about you, you cried. That was wrong of me. Assistants are supposed to be protected from painful information.”
Lute stood.
“You’re cracked,” he spat. “Why can’t you leave me alone!? Roman barely notices I exist! Miyo asked me if I still played piano at Christmas! None of the important cousins care about me at all. You know who bothers me at school? It’s mostly not the future S-ranks, Hazel! You act like an F.”
This was an insult based entirely on Lute’s lived experience. Hazel probably didn’t even understand it, but it was true. Lexi Roberts had actually implied it over a year ago, when he doubted Kon’s assertion that Lute would be able to get along with the low ranks.
Lute was at the very bottom, and the people who were most aware of that were not the members of his class who were aiming for Apex. They’d already left him so far behind that he’d have had to scream in their faces to remind them he was still alive.
It was painful. But with the exception of those high rank children who had a specific grievance with his family, the kids who saw him and snickered about him and sniffed the whiff, were the ones who felt like they were being left behind, too.
Just like the cousins. Exactly like them.
The cousins who were always the most eager to start speaking languages he didn’t know and talking about things he’d never be able to do were the people who were hoping they’d end up as C’s and B’s.
Hazel was the Chosen One. She had no business being so obsessed with Lute’s business.
“You’re pathetic!” he said. “You’re so used to getting first you can’t stand to come in second for a single moment! The only reason you care about me at all is because I live with Grandma and you’re afraid that means she might take three seconds out of her month to look at me instead of you!”
“I’m pathetic!” Hazel scoffed. She looked around at her friends for support. “Me? I spend hours every day with Grandma Aulia. I spend days on the Triplanets every month. I don’t need to worry about you. I just pity you.”
“Your birthday party is the stupidest thing ever! The theme is weird. Morning suits are for daytime! You’ve got Brutes instead of horses. And you’re fourteen! Coming of Age parties are at fifteen. Were you soooo busy doing mysterious things on the Triplanets you forgot how to count or did you just want us all to lick your feet a few extra times?”
At this, a couple of her hangers-on did look uncomfortable.
“I might be chosen at fourteen,” Hazel said, running her hands over the sides of her white lace dress. “If I am, this will be my only chance to have a Coming of Age party.”
Lute gave her a blank look.
“He’s a little bit right,” Cousin Uma said unexpectedly. She was wearing a peach dress with a big tulle flower on the hip. “My parents were saying the same thing on the way over here…”
Hazel rounded on her.
“They weren’t saying it mean! Like he just did. With the feet licking…they were just saying that nobody in the family has ever been a pre-fifteen selectee. Orpheus was the earliest, wasn’t he? Fifteen years, fifty-one days.”
“You don’t think I can beat Orpheus? He started dosing himself with potions the second he made it to the Triplanets! He’s going to get fired. Did you even know an Avowed could be fired?”
“You’re not getting picked at fourteen,” said Lute.
“It’s not unlikely I will be,” said Hazel, turning back to him. “Even Grandma says so.”
Her fake smile had dropped. Her confidence at being surrounded by her friends seemed to have faded, too. She looked peeved.
“The System hates making outliers,” Lute said. “That’s why they’re outliers. Only a few people get chosen before fifteen each year and some of them are usually U-types. You can’t count them. Everything about them is strange.”
“Hazel is unique,” the person who might have been a boyfriend said, glaring at Lute. “There’s nobody else like her on all of Anesidora. So there’s no reason to think she won’t be chosen at fourteen. The Gloom was selected at fourteen years, two hundred eighty-seven days. Rime was chosen at fourteen years, three hundred days. Neha—”
Oh he’s one of those, Lute thought as he droned on. He didn’t just have the selection dates of hyperboles memorized; if he was bringing up Neha, he’d gone and memorized all the significant S’s on the island, too.
He wondered how long it would be before his classmates started doing this kind of thing.
“Sonde was picked at thirteen years, three hundred eleven days,” Hazel announced, apparently miffed that the boyfriend hadn’t included her genetic father.
He’s a U, though, thought Lute. And a massive outlier. That was kind of my point.
“He’s a U, though,” said Uma, as if she’s read Lute’s mind. “You can't be a U, Hazel.”
Hazel’s expression turned even more irritated.
“I just came over here to say hello,” she ground out. “Since Lute didn’t even come greet me on my birthday. I’m done now. Let’s go.”
Amazing, thought Lute as she stalked away with her posse trailing after her. She even forgot to prove her point, whatever it was.
It looked like she was heading for the towering confection of silver and gold boxes that was the gift table. Everyone had been told to stick to certain wrapping guidelines for their presents so that they wouldn’t clash with the decor. Then she suddenly turned around, and leaving her friends behind, she stalked back toward Lute.
He watched her cautiously.
“My hat,” she muttered, reaching over him to grab it. She perched it back on top of her head. “You’re such a spoiled brat. You can’t even let me enjoy my Coming of Age. And you’re so stupid you don’t know anything. I don’t know why I talk to you.”
Lute opened his mouth.
“Aunt Jessica will pick up whatever any other member of the family drops,” Hazel whispered in his ear. “My dad and mom said so, and I watched, and it’s true.”
He could tell she thought she was saying something awful to him, but…
“What does that mean?” he asked in spite of his own better judgment.
“Even when she’s not working. Even if there are servants around. If anyone else in the family makes a mess, she cleans it. Because she knows she’s the assistant. It’s not just her job. It’s what she is.”
Lute was cold all over. Maybe the under-table heaters had stopped working. “You think my mom’s not a family member because she tidies up. That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Watch. You’ll see.” She straightened again. The expression on her face smoothed. “And another thing—I wasn’t going to mention this one because it’s just awful, but…family members? We get slots with a rejuvenator. They’ve all been booked and contracted for the next several years. I asked Grandma Aulia to give my mom one, and she did. Six years from now. Your mom? She hasn’t ever had one. And she’s still not booked for one. Do you know why?”
Wait, thought Lute. Stop talking. Stop.
His head was spinning. He felt like he was going to faint.
“I bet you do. I bet you have noticed. Family members—if they’re even a tiny bit important to Grandma—get to stay young. That’s half the reason other people hate us. Because we take up tons of slots with the Healers who have the rejuve talents.” Hazel exhaled sharply through her nose. “You and Jessica get lots of things for being the family’s assistants. But you don’t get that. Because there’s not enough of it to go around. And…well…it doesn’t really hurt the Velra line, does it? If your mom gets too old to make more kids like you.”
Lute was too overwhelmed to speak. There was no retort.
He watched Hazel leave in a daze. The band was playing a mambo song suddenly. Most of the family, friends, and random Aulia-invited guests were cheering on their favorite Brutes as they lapped the track again.
Clay spattered onto the pavilion roof.
Hazel walked straight over to Cousin Katsuro, one of Aimi’s brothers. He was talking to Jessica and drinking a glass of the imitation champagne that tasted so terrible Lute couldn’t imagine the real stuff was anything like it.
Hazel bumped into his arm. The glass tumbled from his hand into the grass. Maybe he would have bent down to pick it up himself, but before he could, Lute’s mother dove for it. They said something to each other. She patted Katsuro on the arm. She nodded to Hazel. Then she hurried over to the mocktail bar to fetch him another drink.
Hazel turned around, looked back at Lute, and smiled.
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“I ran away from the Royal Ascot party,” Lute said casually. “For some reason, I left my homework behind and took two puddings with me instead.”
Once again, Alden had no idea what to say. The remains of the trail mix was spread on the table between them. They’d eaten out all the dark chocolate and nuts, and now there were a bunch of raisins left.
“The sticky toffee ones covered in all that gold leaf,” Lute added. “They were individual serving sizes. I don’t even remember going to pick them up. One minute, I was in my chair watching Hazel smile at me and the next I was on a train, holding two puddings on these little gold plates.”
“I wonder if I wanted to hit her with them?” he mused. “Maybe I grabbed the puddings, planning to smash them into her face in front of two hundred people and a band playing Latin music, but then I just left instead. I ended up at Cyril’s place. I told him I’d brought the pudding for him.
“Of course, she got a second Coming of Age party the next year.”
What was the theme for that one? Alden wondered.
“I can’t believe people memorize exactly how old other Avowed were when they got selected,” he said. “Down to the day.”
“Really? To me it feels like a natural extension of everything else. The soon-to-be-super lunacy that takes people over as their big birthdays approach is something to behold when you think it doesn’t apply to you at all.” Lute crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back. “By seventh grade, I was starting to hate everything about it so much. On this side of it, I can see that I was unreasonable in some ways. A lot of what upset me was just…unavoidable for everyone. But after an entire year of people ignoring me, teasing me, or talking endlessly about all the cool things in their lives and their futures that I thought I couldn’t take part in, I was done with the whole country. I wanted it to vanish like Atlantis.
“I did get an early audition with the youth orchestra in sixth grade, though. I was so tired of waiting, I went and asked, and it turned out they weren’t that serious about the age limit. It was just like, ‘Yeah, sure. Come on. Whatever.’”
He pursed his lips. “Anesidora sucks that way. For someone like I was. Teenagers tend not to have really serious hobbies unrelated to their future dream class. And in a lot of cases, the way people practice for those dream classes is different from how a non-Avowed would practice for the nearest equivalent. So there really wasn’t anything for someone my age who wanted to get to the next level as a musician. I just had to stick with tutors.”
“People who want to be instrument Meisters don’t study music?” Alden asked.
“They study music,” Lute said. “But they’re encouraged to try different types of instrument instead of focusing too much on one. Youth orchestra is really just for them to see if they like playing in a group. The thing is, even if they know what subclass they want, there’s no guarantee that the System will offer something similar, or that their families will be able to get it for them. And musical instrument Meisters aren’t particularly common either. So the teachers and directors try to make sure they’re falling in love with music and the lifestyle of an Avowed musician, but they discourage them from getting too into any one thing. They want them to play around and get ideas for lots of different futures. It makes sense.”
He raised an eyebrow then added, “It also means most of them are kind of terrible before they get chosen. And afterward they don’t…have quite the right mindset in my opinion.”
“You’re saying that instrument Meisters don’t have the right mindset for being musicians.” Alden grinned at him.
“All right. I’m extremely snobby about this,” Lute said. “I admit it. And my snobbishness is actually why I decided I wouldn’t mind being friendly with Lexi around the same time. He was one of the only people in our entire school other than me who had an artistic hobby he was actually devoted to instead of just killing time with.”
“The ballet stuff?”
Lute nodded. “It’s just his personality, I think. He can’t stand to half-ass whatever he starts. If his parents had given him a hockey stick or a paintbrush when he was little, he’d have done those things instead. But they were dancers, so they put him in dance classes, and that’s what he turned all of his perfectionism toward while he was waiting for what came next.”
“Is he talented?”
“I’m a musician, not a dancer. But he was a lot better than the other kids were. I heard he was dancing with a community ballet of adults a little last year…Avowed adults. I’m sure they were way more casual and nothing like his parents’ company, but that still had to be next level.”
“And then he just quit,” said Alden.
“To spend more time with his whip,” Lute agreed. “I mean…of course he did. You can only be a perfectionist in so many different directions at once, and the hero program was always his goal. Is he good with it in gym?”
“I think he is.” It wasn’t easy for Alden to tell because he had no idea how difficult Writher might be to use. When Lexi practiced picking up small objects with it in the apartment, he had a tendency to cut them in half instead of lifting them. “He seems really good at changing its length, phasing it, and slicing. I think he might be having trouble with aiming the tip and controlling its general danger level? But that still seems impressive to me. He’s only had it a few months.”
“I knew he was going to pick Meister, but I still can’t believe he chose to have an Artonan chain whip linked to his brain. That was kind of ballsy. I pictured him with something much more traditional. Like a sword.”
“My class at selection was Meister.”
Lute looked startled. “How did you end up with Chainer, then?”
“I traded into it.”
“Ha!” said Lute. “That means Corin’s office screwed up! They should have been glued to the class trade system. Or it was luckier for you to hand deliver it to them for some reason? Or someone whose family hated mine had it, and they would never have sold it to us. But they didn’t want to force their kid to take it either. In that case, you’d think they would sell it to someone else who hated us, though.”
Alden had thought about Andrzej a bit since coming to Celena North. Lute’s comment just cemented his opinion. “I assume the person who gave it to me was offloading it before their family found out they had been chosen. I think they were afraid they would be forced to take it themselves if someone knew.”
“Ooo…a clan of extreme Velra dislikers then? Those are fun. They came out of the woodwork when I was in seventh grade and all their offspring turned extra monstrous for a while.”
“Why then?”
Lute’s eye shot skyward. “Aulia ran for re-election. You wouldn’t think it would be that bad since she was on the council for ages. You’d think they’d have gotten used to her, right? But no. They dug up old family news and pretended it was just as shocking as the day it happened. About halfway through the year I tried to quit, actually.”
“School?”
“I asked for private instruction, like I’d had when I was little. Like almost all the Velra kids get. It had gotten to the point where I thought I could withstand my relatives better than some of my classmates…total reversal, I know.” He stopped leaning and let the legs of his chair hit the floor with a clack. “Jessica said no. She wanted me to stay in school.”
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Nilama Paragon Academy
July 19, 2038
7:46 AM
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The wind was freezing, and the sky was still dark as Lute climbed the steps up to the front doors of the middle school building.
I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I’m doing this, he thought, as he clutched at his scarf with a gloved hand and stared down at his shoes. I can’t believe I announced I was leaving like some kind of drama lord on Friday. Why didn’t I just stay quiet?
It was in his second science class of the day. Biology. That one went off the rails a lot, and the teacher always let it go too far before he stepped in. He was a brownnose who always wanted to pick the right side, and he could never figure out which of his illustrious young Avowed to suck up to at any given moment.
Things had to explode before he said some tepid thing like, “Now quiet down, everyone. We’re all friends here.”
Why didn’t I just stay quiet? Wasn’t the plan to stay quiet?
The door handle felt icy even through his glove. He pulled it open and headed down the hall, trying to hide behind his scarf.
They’d called his mother a mule.
Declan was a terrible comedian who couldn’t even make his jokes work without a minute-long explanation in follow up, but still…still…
You know how horses and donkeys make mules? And mules are barren? Well maybe if a human and an Artonan make a mule, the mule can’t ever do magic!
The Lutes-mom-is-half-Artonan bullshit had been all over the school since before the election. The votes had been cast now. Aulia had won. Why wasn’t it going away?
We used to be friends. He came to my sleepovers. Mom was nice to him.
Lute didn’t understand what was so enthralling about the half-Artonan rumors anyway. There were other people who had similar features. There were people who begged the System or their surgeons for similar features.
Everyone knew alien-human hybrids weren’t a thing.
We were in a biology classroom surrounded by books and computers that said they weren’t a thing.
Lute had snapped. He’d stood up and told the whole classroom full of his peers not to expect him back on Monday.
So long, you psychos. I hate you all, and I’m looking forward to never seeing a single one of you again.
He’d been one hundred percent confident that his mom would let him quit school if he told her he was being bullied. It wasn’t like they couldn’t afford tutors for him. It wasn’t like he’d get a worse education at home. He’d get a better one.
The classes at Paragon were excellent. For most of the people here. But now that they were older, so much of the day was focused on the Triplanets, the Contract, System theory, superhuman history. At home, with his own program, he could skip all of that pre-Avowed crap and focus on things people learned in the real world. A literature class would be cool. Paragon didn’t even have those.
He’d been so certain, he’d cleaned out his locker. Now he was trudging toward it with a loaded backpack. To fill it back up again.
If Anesidora wasn’t an island, he would already have run away.
He tried not to meet anyone’s eyes as he hastily shoved everything back into the locker.
“Uh…good morning, Lute.”
Konstantin. Two lockers over.
He’d never said a single cruel thing to Lute. He never would. It just wasn’t his personality. He’d even tell people to knock it off, sometimes, if they said something completely awful by his standards. A lot like Vandy. A lot like Tuyet. A lot like a lot of nice people who didn’t want to see something too bad happen right in front of them…
But it ended there.
Kon had friends over all the time. He put together groups to go hang out at Rosa Grove. Sometimes Declan Gao was in those groups.
Lute never was.
“Good morning,” said Lute.
In classes, he was quiet. At lunch, he sat alone.
He made it through another week.
And another.
One more.
They had an ongoing pen pal assignment with students in Canada. Lute’s Canadian was depressed that she was Lute’s Canadian. All the other people in her class got to have video calls and send emails to future Avowed.
The instructor announced that they would start rotating pen pals.
Everyone knew why.
“Honestly,” said Carlotta. “You knew what she wanted to hear. Why didn’t you just lie and say you were one of us? The rest of us were having fun getting to know people and now we have to swap!”
“She doesn't mean it like that,” said Haoyu. “It might be fun to swap.”
“I did mean it like that,” she said. She stalked away.
“Well,” Haoyu said, sounding uncomfortable. “Her older sister just got D. She’s stressed out.”
“Yes, it must be so stressful for her,” said Lute, loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear him. “Just imagine how horrible it must be to get D when you’re expecting C. I think I’d cry my eyes out every day if I wound up as a lowly D, don’t you?”
It wasn’t quite fair. He knew he was being a little bit of an asshole, too.
But he felt less like a ghost after he’d said what was on his mind.
Without meaning to, he kept doing it. A retort here. A waspish remark there. It didn’t feel like he was doing it very often at all.
Every minute of every day, someone was stabbing him. On purpose. Accidentally. And the ones who weren’t stabbing him were ignoring the ones who were ninety percent of the time.
Will the world really come to an end, he wondered, if I just stop trying so hard to stay out of everyone’s way?
He took Angela Aubergine to the school talent show. They each got three minutes. He played his song. The biology teacher was the one who was giving everyone the signal to get off stage. Lute looked at him, and he suddenly realized…that guy will wait ages before he walks out here and actually makes me move.
He kept playing.
There was no grand plan. He had no delusions that anyone would think he was cool for this. They didn’t even like the harp. They thought classical music was dull.
He could’ve played something popular to try to win a few of them over, but he didn’t. Arranging Handel’s Suite in D Minor for himself was his current project. He cared about it. He had to listen to what they cared about every second of every day.
They could listen to him for a change.
I am good at this, he thought as he plucked the strings with more vigor than Handel might have wanted. I have made myself good at this. You’re all so proud of what a magic spell is going to turn you into.
One day, I’m going to be the best harpist in the world. Maybe that’s not as spectacular as what you’ll all be. But at least I’m going to earn it for myself.
The stage lights were getting hot.
Lute Velra was getting angry.
When the biology teacher finally stomped onto the stage and tried to touch Angela, Lute quit. The auditorium was full of people giggling or staring at him with wide eyes.
“This is inappropriate behavior, Lute. You need to apologize to all of us.”
Oh, though Lute. I’ve actually made him mad. He didn’t look that mad when they were torturing me in class the other day.
“Why?” Lute asked.
“I think you know why! You took five times as long as students are allowed—”
“That’s because I’m five times as talented as the rest of them,” said Lute.
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The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You didn't,” said Alden. “On stage in front of the whole school?”
“It felt so good,” said Lute. “Even as I said it, I knew it was social suicide. But I was already socially dead, and I’d begun to snap, and I kind of wanted to be expelled. I was so calm about it while I sat in the principal’s office.”
“They expelled you for playing the harp for fifteen minutes and talking back to a teacher?”
“Of course not. They just called my parents. They regretted that because Aulia showed up instead of Jessica or Cyril. I was shocked. The principal was shocked. I think my bio teacher almost pissed himself.
“I’d never gotten in trouble like that, so I didn’t realize that my grandmother was even available for Lute screw-ups. I’m sure the academy didn’t either. But my parents didn’t involve themselves at school much. Even when I was in third grade. Cyril couldn’t getting along with the other parents, and I guess Jessica knew people might tease me. And…power, you know. Nobody treats Aulia like she’s less than them.”
“Was she mad at you?”
Lute sighed. “She was very amused. When they told her what I’d done, she said, ‘Well, were you five times better than the rest of them?’
“It didn’t endear me to the faculty. That’s for sure. And my refusing-to-be-a-doormat phase didn’t win me any friends. I was mad at all of them, you know. I was almost more angry at the people who weren’t heinous. People can tell when you’re mad at them, and it offends them, and they stop feeling even a little sorry for you, and then it just…seventh grade sucked so bad.”
----------------------------------------
Declan Gao was evil. So were a few of the others.
Unless the System installed one hell of an empathy patch in their twisted brains when it gave them their powers, they were going to grow up to be supervillains. Terrorists, animal abusers, politicians in favor of a zero-human Anesidora—something like that.
Deciding they were evil helped. Lute despised them, and he still braced himself as he walked through the doors of the building, trying to prepare for whatever terrible thing would be funny to them that week. But even though they could still hurt him, he was no longer hurt by the fact that they wanted to hurt him.
Evil was what they were. What else could you expect from them?
An evil person nicknaming you Quadruple Decimal because your chance of being granted powers was four decimal places to the right of zero wasn’t surprising.
It was like a leech sucking your blood. Or like Hazel screaming at you to stop playing while she was chaining because she was fifteen now and she had mere days left to practice before she became one of the most powerful creatures on Earth.
It was just what they did. You could hate it, but you couldn’t be surprised by them anymore.
What hurt his feelings the most lately was all the others—the ones who weren’t evil. The friendly ones…who still didn’t really want to be his friend.
Well, I guess, he thought one morning in November as he sat down at his desk, I am an inconvenient person to be friends with. My family is complicated. We’ll only be in school together for a couple more years before they all head off to the Avowed high schools. My own life goal is to leave them all behind.
What else did I expect?
Part of him knew that what he’d expected was for primary school friendships to last. He’d expected them to keep liking him and wanting to hang out with him until they were all grown up. Because he’d liked them so much. They hadn’t been like the cousins, so he’d thought they were similar to children on cartoons—friends forever no matter the differences or distances.
But that was just an embarrassing thing to want, so he pretended he hadn’t. That he didn’t. It was easier that way.
He reached into his bag for his fountain pen. Fountain pens were his latest collectible distraction. All the different ink colors and the nibs and the chore of cleaning them gave him something to do. When school was particularly bad, he bought himself another one.
Some people use them for art. Maybe I’ll learn to draw.
When he set the pen inside his desk, his fingers brushed against something unfamiliar. He grabbed the unexpected object and looked down. It took him a minute to realize what the thing in the pink foil wrapper was.
This…is a condom.
They’d had an uncomfortable so-you’re-all-growing-up-now sex education class a couple of weeks ago. He’d only just managed to wipe it from his brain. Was this left over from that somehow? How could he not have noticed until today?
I can’t let anyone see me with this!
He shoved it into the back of the desk, blushing furiously. If anyone found it, he’d have to swim to Antarctica and feed himself to a leopard seal. There would be no other option.
His nerves about one of the super children developing the ability to see through wooden surfaces or his teacher announcing that there would be a desk-check for the first time ever kept him so distracted that he almost forgot to hate class. And he’d been really devoted to hating class that week because they were playing a game.
A stupid game. It’s all they ever talk about anymore anyway, so I don’t see why we have to make it official.
It was supposed to be a career-planning assignment, and it was a reward for making it through the school year. They were about to take their December break. Seventh grade was pretty much over. They’d all go home for a few weeks and come back as eighth graders.
This week was full of fun activities that were pretending to be work.
For the assignment, they had bags full of multisided dice. Some were even big, hundred-sided ones that looked like golfballs. To start the game, they closed their eyes and grabbed a random black bag from the plastic crate full of them at the front of the room. When you opened it up, the slip of paper inside determined your rank, and the color of your dice determined your Avowed class.
Congratulations! You’ve been selected!
They had a trading time slot and fake money where everyone tried to talk their friends into giving them the general class they wanted. Then you used one of the dice to pick you subclass. And the others could be rolled to randomize whatever was applicable to your class. You looked up corresponding numbers for talents the System might offer you on a chart, and you slowly built your dream profile as well as you could within the limits of chance. Afterward, they all talked about how great it was to be that type of Avowed and what kinds of jobs they could have.
Lute wasn’t required to participate. But if he didn’t participate, he had to sit in his desk trying to read a book while everyone squealed with excitement or groaned in despair at their imaginary fates.
And he caught pitying looks sometimes. He hated those, and they didn’t bother to shoot as many his way if he played, too.
The only one who’s almost always happy with how it works out for them is Haoyu, he thought while he rolled a green die.
He seemed to be gradually settling on Stamina Brute as his class preference. Nobody else ever wanted it.
Kind of unexpected. His parents could get him just about anything, and what he wants is the simplest thing to get.
Lute was a C-rank Meister today, rolling for his tool.
“Lute? Hey, Lute! Can I have your bag?”
The plastic die bounced across his desk, and Lute slapped his hand on it to keep it from escaping. He looked at Carlotta. She’d crossed the room with a bag full of the red Brute dice in her hand. Declan was behind her.
Other peoples’ dice were clattering around. The door to the hall was open so that they could come and go to make trades and discuss things with seventh graders in the nearby classrooms. Their current teacher was chatting with one of the others by the lockers instead of monitoring them.
The last days of the school year were always so haphazard.
“I’m already rolling for my subtype,” said Lute. “And I haven’t been Meister before, so…”
He always kept whatever he drew so that he didn’t have to negotiate with his classmates. It had been Brute every time so far. There were more of them in the box than any of the other colors.
“Yeah, but I’ve been Brute already,” she said. “And you know I want Meister so much.”
“You should give it to her,” Declan said.
“Meister’s more fun than Brute,” said Lute. “Maybe you’ll get it tomorrow.”
“Come on!” said Carlotta, thrusting her dice bag toward him. “Don’t be selfish!”
“She needs it way more than you.”
These two were the worst of the worst. And Lute wasn’t being a doormat anymore; that was the only thing that was keeping him sane. He wasn’t giving them a damn thing.
He squeezed the bag of dice. “No. Leave me alone. I need to finish the assignment.”
And then…
“You really ought to give it to her.”
The voice cut across the classroom. Vandy Carisson had a tendency to announce things for all to hear when she made a judgment.
Everyone started to look up to see who she’d decided to correct. She’d been sitting on the floor by the board, casting her dice with some of the other girls. She’d stood to make her proclamation.
“She wants to make a Meister profile to prepare herself,” said Vandy, staring at Lute with her pale eyes. She’d gotten rather pretty this year.
What a stupid thing to think at a time like this.
“You never take this seriously, Lute,” she continued. “You just pick random foundation points and talents that don’t fit together and then write them on your form.”
“What else would he do?” someone muttered.
“I don’t have to give her my dice.” Lute wondered why he felt nervous, suddenly. Everyone was staring. “I drew them from the box the same as everyone else. Nobody has to trade. Those are the rules.”
Rules. Vandy loved rules. She’d probably printed out a copy of the student handbook to sleep with.
“You don’t have to,” she said slowly. “But why wouldn’t you? This is important to us. And it’s not to you.”
“She’s kind of right,” said Konstantin from a desk nearby. “I mean, you don’t care, and she cares a lot…”
No, thought Lute. No, this is wrong. It’s not fair.
They had these looks on their faces…like he was hurting them. Even the nice ones. The probable high ranks. The hero kids.
Why…? What do they expect from me? They know how she treats me but…
Was this game so important now that the way she treated Lute didn’t matter in comparison?
“I guess…” Vandy said, her eyes going round as if she’d suddenly had a shocking thought. “Oh. Did you really want Meister, too? I guess if you did want it…that would be different. If you wanted to take building a profile seriously today. In case.”
A few people had still been playing around with their dice. The last one clicked to a stop, and the classroom went so quiet that they could hear the teachers murmuring together in the hall.
Lute felt like every eye in the room was carving out a piece of his heart.
“You will never be chosen. You will never be an Avowed. You will never do any magic other than wordchains. Do you understand?”
“But, Mommy, everybody else…”
“Say you understand.”
“I’m going to be a harpist,” Lute said. “I’ve never wanted to be anything else. Why would I take any of this seriously?”
Something left the room. Some enormous tension between him and them—worse than any he’d ever felt before—faded.
Eyes rolled, chairs creaked.
“Of course he doesn’t want to be a Meister for real, Vandy. He's got his own thing. He played boring music for like an hour at the talent show.”
“Quadruple Decimal’s got his whoooole future planned out,” Declan said. He shoved his hand into Lute’s desk. It was clear he knew exactly what he was looking for. “And look! He’s being responsible.”
He slapped Lute on the back hard and held up the pink foil wrapper. “We must prevent more whiffs!”
People gasped. Or laughed.
“Declan, seriously, what’s wrong with you?” said Kon. “That’s not funny.”
“Is that a condom?” someone said in horror.
“Is it?” Vandy asked, looking around for an answer.
Lute suddenly didn’t care at all about the condom. It was just Hazel’s original revelation about how some Avowed talked about people like him in a new form. The terrible joke of the day.
Instead, he cared about the fact that when Carlotta reached for his dice, his fingers let go.
Even the nice ones had said he shouldn’t have them, so…
Everyone else was freaking out about that condom though. They made a ton of noise about it, the teachers heard, and Declan got dragged off to the principal’s office.
Lute sat in his desk, and he tried to roll his dice.
Red ones.
His vision was blurry for some reason. Not tears, surely. He was thirteen. He’d seriously rather be eaten by a leopard seal than cry in front of them.
But he couldn’t see the numbers.
Two days later, when everyone went to select their dice bags, they discovered some of the dice had been replaced.
The discovery came after the colors had been seen and the trades had happened. It came after almost everyone was holding the dice set for their dream class.
Sometimes, when you rolled one, instead of getting the number that should have been on that face, you got a percentage. And a message written in tiny logograms.
People had to look up the meanings on their phones.
“This…this is an A-rank Adjuster’s chance of returning home after an emergency summons,” Kon said in a high voice.
“Mine’s for A-rank Brute! And there’s another die with the chance of being killed in combat on Earth!”
“Here’s one for…for unhealable mind damage,” Tuyet whispered.
“Mine’s S-rank Meister. It’s for death on Matadero. But the number’s zero.”
Yes, thought Lute, sitting at his desk with the red dice again. I wanted to be evenhanded. Nobody ever actually dies on Matadero.
“Mine’s the annual chance of getting an emergency summons as an S-rank.”
“Is the death rate really this high for S-rank Life Shapers?” someone said in a panicked voice. “You guys! Is it? My mom gets summoned sometimes, and she’s an S-rank Life Shaper!”
----------------------------------------
Alden and Lute stared at each other for a long time without saying anything.
“Alright then…” Alden said finally. “That was all horrible.”
“I know. I ruined the end of the school year. And apparently Haoyu’s mother was on an emergency summons when I did it. He was probably really scared for her. I didn’t know. He should have punched me. I hope I wouldn’t have done it if I had known, but I’m not sure. I snapped. Really snapped. It took more than a day to look up all the statistics, design the dice, and have them 3d printed. And it still felt like a reasonable and measured response when I shoved them in the bags.”
“I didn’t really mean you,” said Alden. “Just all of it. Your school sounds like hell.”
“They did take me to see Victoria Falls,” said Lute. “It was breathtaking.
Then he grimaced. “Haoyu’s tried to get me to hang out with some of them a couple of times. During Diwali. This morning at the skate park. He says he thinks being selected made them more mature, and…I do believe him. Mostly. The mood was already starting to shift when I left Paragon to come to CNH. But you should see their faces when they look at me.”
Alden had seen their faces when Lute name was mentioned. He could imagine.
“People like Vandy didn’t hate me before I said I hoped they and their parents all got summoned to die agonizing deaths—”
“Was that really what you were trying to say?”
“No. But that's how they took it. My enraged thirteen-year-old self thought he was making an impressive point. About how if the dice were so serious that I was a bad person for not giving one of my bullies her favorite color, then maybe the dice should actually be serious. That nuance was lost on everyone else. It turns out that a die covered in ways you and your loved ones might die doesn’t lend itself to conveying anything beyond, ‘Die, all of you.””
He rested his elbows on the table and propped his chin on his hands.
It was getting later. The noises of people moving through the building and outside on the walkways had gone quiet.
“I don’t think any of them ever understood I was upset about them making me give up the dice. They thought it was all about the condom, and I was being insane by taking out my anger on them when they didn’t have anything to do with it.” He looked at Alden. “I told you the story because I wanted to explain…I don’t feel that way. I grew up here. I know seriously bad shit happens to Avowed sometimes. And I know it’s not something to mock.”
Alden cleared his throat. “What are the statistics for B-rank Rabbits getting stuck on moons without Systems?”
Lute’s face relaxed. “You’ll never believe this, but I didn’t include that one on my ‘terrible Avowed facts’ dice.”
“Major oversight. You’ll have to pay more attention to the safe ranks and classes next time.”
“Chainer’s a safe class,” said Lute. “The safest there is. Everyone knows we don’t die. I guess Keiko could doing hero work, but the rest of us…I can’t imagine that adds to my old classmates’ opinion about my charact—”
“Oh, screw that. Your character’s fine,” said Alden. “Except…you know…”
“What?” Lute asked worriedly.
“You’re a bathtub hog,” said Alden in a serious tone. “I know it’s usually Lexi who complains, but that’s only because he wants to hog the tub, too. Haoyu and I get nothing but showers. We’re starting to talk bad about you both.”
“You guys get the fancy drug sauna! You don’t need the tub!”
“We pay for the drug sauna,” Alden said. “The tub is a free household resource. We are entitled to a quarter of all tub nights each. I understand you’re used to having constant access to multiple swimming pools—”
“Only two…or three if I didn’t mind putting up with certain people!”
“And in the absence of your two or three swimming pools, you’re clearly suffering from a lack of hydration,” said Alden. “Like some kind of tropical Velra plant. But you need to learn to water yourself in the shower once in a while instead.”
Lute looked thoughtful. “Are you going to tell Lexi he’s a tub hog, too?”
“No way. He carries a whip with him to the bathroom. Haoyu can tell him.”
*