Howard, who’d become accustomed to a quiet and slow-moving existence in the upper floors of the estate was thrown headfirst into the proverbial deep end of his father’s expectations, then the literal deep end of a competition swimming pool to build his strength. His old routine hardly consisted of more than window gazing. Wake up a little before noon, have a nice sit at the big window with his lunch, then amuse himself for the rest of the day with books or drawing, perhaps humming to himself while he kicked his dangly little legs back and forth. His new schedule by comparison, was frenetic.
Morning started before dawn. He was sent on a daybreak jog around the estate property with their family’s personal trainer. When he returned it was time for breakfast, where would inhale a questionable amount of food, consistently eating more than should be humanly possible for a young man his size. It was chalked up as being a side effect of whatever had miraculously healed him. After breakfast, he caught up on years of knowledge regarding economics and business management. Though he’d been largely free to do whatever he pleased before, his parents had at least had a private tutor work on his math and other fundamentals, so they didn’t need to review much in that area. Unfortunately, the previous pace at which he would do his work was anything but fast, and it took him a few months to adjust to the new speed at which he was expected to learn.
Economics was especially hard for him, who wanted nothing more than to leap out a window at the mere mention of supply and demand, but he sat diligently in his seat, not wanting to disappoint his father. Many of the lessons were instilled with a strange mix of practical, almost scientific methodologies for learning the economy, mixed in with a strange anecdote of ‘Never let them take what is yours,’ that Howard didn’t really understand.
The strange part was that he was getting more attention from his father than he ever had. Kirk was bringing Howard into meetings, taking him out on walks, he even started training him in the ancient art of business, golf. Though Howard had difficulty understanding the true purpose of the game.
“So you want the lowest score?” he’d ask his father while out on the green.
“Yes, but the true aim of the game isn’t winning, it’s to talk openly with associates, seal deals, and make new connections,” his father would explain while putting the golf ball into the hole.
“So it’s not a game?”
“Of course it’s a game.”
“Then why doesn't it matter if I win?”
“Of course winning matters!”
Business, as it turned out, was complicated, confusing, and contradictory. Howard was also quite the miserable golfer as well, often hitting the ball backwards when it should go forwards, to the great annoyance of his father.
Perhaps the most troubling concept he was attempting to wrap his head around was something called the Grand Exchange, a network of businesses, banks, and firms that all worked under a giant umbrella to serve the people of the Confederacy. His father told him it was the most important institution ever made, having become so important that it effectively was the Confederacy's true government. Those under the protection of the Exchange were free to conduct trade and business as they pleased without much worry of oversight, and benefited from generous deals that couldn’t be offered anywhere else in the galaxy.
Howard asked numerous times how such an entity came to be, and his father would always launch into the same passionate speech. That as humanity expanded out into the stars, boldly motivated by the industries that had made their space travel possible in the first place, eventually they came across an enemy that rivaled humanity, the Skep, the war-hungry species of bug humanoids who’d also taken to the stars eons before humans had. They were tough, and stubborn, repelling humanity and their advances into the stars. A collection of companies were no match for that of the hivemind coordination of the bugs, so humanity formed a Confederacy to fight them, industries unifying their strength, swinging back fiercely against the bugs. Then with the help of a surprise ally, the aquatic Fluorescent, they subdued the Skep into a forceful peace with the birth of the Interstate, a technology that allowed them to move their armies across space and time at the speed of light, with none of the downsides.
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A second Confederacy was formed, with it now the Skep, and a new institution to regulate trade between the galaxy spanning species, the Grand Exchange. Howard’s father argued that it was the entire reason peace had even been held as long as it had, with humanity introducing the concept of trade to the other races, which they took to greedily. But nobody was better at it than humanity.
This competitive advantage stemmed from the fact that of the many other races out in the galaxy, many were rather homogeneous, finding unity more easily than the human race ever had. Whether the homogeneity came from a unique, literal hive mind connection, or a more instinctual monarchal tendency, didn’t matter. The human race splintered hundreds if not thousands of times as it expanded out into the galaxy, finding new identities the farther they got from their home world, but their bonds in trade kept them from splitting entirely, making them masters of the craft.
Howard found he actually did enjoy the concept quite a bit, thinking it to be very romantic. How wonderful it was that humanity could change so much but stay connected over the thousands of years, through a common shared ancestral value. It made him proud to be human! He even wrote a poem about it and showed it to his mother, who found it adorable.
O Humanity, so far from home.
Into space we have gone, so brash and so bold.
Though we no longer live as one, through trade our hands we still hold.
In the far reaches of the galaxy, no matter how cold.
On reading Howard’s poem, his father quickly suggested that he continue to focus on his studies.
The worst of his new schedule was the strange lunches his father was constantly arranging for him. There were a handful of other wealthy families that had been invited to live on Kirk’s Colony, each of them with their own young professionals and he was expected to eat with them and make conversation, which he was terrible at. The first time he ate with them he rambled for a full five minutes about a book he once read before he realized the other boys were looking at him weird. After that, he mostly just listened and chimed in when it felt appropriate. They preferred to talk about other things, such as their family business, their business plans, and developments in the world of business. Business was their business, it seemed.
Occasionally they’d speak of their partners, their girlfriends and boyfriends, which Howard had little to contribute with. One time he was asked directly if he’d ever dated anyone, to which Howard turned beet red and went entirely silent, much to the amusement of the boys. Howard requested afterwards if he could stop attending the lunches but his father shot down his request quickly, becoming irritated that he was having so much trouble socializing with his peers and simply getting along with others in his circle. His father had put a finger in the air when he stated what was perhaps the most important pillar of business, knowing one’s friends and knowing one’s enemies even better.
But Howard didn’t want to have enemies, and it seemed to be a core part of business. Howard’s instinct was to cooperate, as his ancestors had. To build great and mighty achievements with the help of others. But his father continued to insist that no, it was a competition, a race where even falling into second place might as well have been worse than death.
Though he was conflicted about what he was learning, eventually his new routine became just routine, and he got used to the changes. His domain of the upper floors remained his, but his parents had mandated that they clean the place up, removing the stacks of books and placing them into storage. The library was untouched, but he spent depressingly little time inside its familiar walls.
He was always doing something, studying for an exam, preparing for a lesson. He carved out what little time he had for himself for reading for fun, staying up a little later than he should have to squeeze in some quality time with the pages of whatever book he could get his hands on.
By the time he was nineteen he’d transformed. He was still quite thin, and a tad underweight, but he’d been able to bear the weight of expectations and was turning into quite the young professional himself. He’d been making great marks in all his studies. His peers from the other fortunate families seemed to have accepted him into their circle, and most importantly, he was starting to understand the business of business. Howard could now squint at a balance sheet and determine with some accuracy if the credits were outweighing the debts. He could look at a suit and tell if it was the right fit, match his belt with his shoes, and knew to shake his head at the mere idea of regulation. There was still the issue of his inhuman appetite, but his father had him so busy that it’d largely been chalked up to the hunger pains of a growing young man, and since he hadn’t manifested any odd symptoms, it was quickly accepted as normal.
In this time his sister had become even more distant than she was before to him. She stared daggers at him at every family dinner in the dining hall, which were mostly sad, quiet affairs anyway. Any mention of anything other than the family business was met with retaliation from his father, so Howard simply remained silent, picking at his gourmet-prepared food mostly out of reticence and not any lack of hunger. It was after one of these silent dinners that Howard returned to the big window upstairs, and stared out at the mountains as he’d done in the past. It was there he began to realize that he was once again miserable and his heart still yearned for something more real, more alive.