Let This Radicalize You Rather Than Lead You to Despair

July 792 U.C., Heinessen

Reinhard and Annerose went home over winter break together, making their way through the blustery Wrightsville streets side by side. They were both in good spirits, having finished their respective semesters easily. Reinhard’s hair was coming back in a bit, now, but he had to wear his uniform beanie in order to prevent his scalp from freezing in the wet winter air.

It was odd, this feeling of returning home. He hadn’t thought himself particularly attached to the crumbling bricks and crooked streets of Wrightsville, but he found an unexpected joy in recognition as they walked home, turning corners and seeing familiar buildings and signages.

Annerose sighed a little as they came close to their apartment. “Weird to think that this is the last time I’ll be living here,” she said.

“You aren’t going to miss it, though,” Reinhard said. “I don’t think you’ve missed it while at school. It won’t be any different when you graduate.”

“You think I didn’t miss you and mom while I was at school?” she asked, looking over at him as she unlocked the outer building door.

“I suppose I was making an assumption. You always seemed like you were doing fine without me. You still do.”

She nudged his shoulder with her own. “You’re very silly.”

They trooped up the stairs. “Give me the over/under on her being awake.”

“Don’t be mean,” Annerose said. “She has a delicate constitution.”

“Alright, alright.” Reinhard unlocked the door to their apartment and went in, finding it completely dark. “Mom?” he called as he flipped on the light.

The kitchen was much as he remembered it, but the living room had an interesting new feature: the shrine that had formerly occupied the top of their mother’s dresser now took up the entire coffee table, which had been pushed against the wall, while the couch had been moved into the center of the room. On the wall was a large banner, which read ‘EARTH IS MY MOTHER. TERRA IN MY HAND.’

“Mama?” Annerose asked, heading towards their mother’s bedroom. She pushed the door open and found it empty.

“She knew we were coming home, right?”

“Yes, of course she did,” Annerose said. “I spoke to her on the phone last night.”

“Hmph.” Reinhard sat down on the out of place couch, not liking the new vantage point on the room that it provided. “I guess it was preemptive of me to think that nothing would have changed.”

“You can’t blame her for wanting to use more of the apartment, now that we’re gone,” Annerose said. “There’s no reason she needs to stay in her bedroom all the time.”

“You think she was just giving us space before?” Reinhard asked.

“It’s the generous interpretation,” Annerose said. “And I think a fair one. She does love you, you know.”

“I know.” Reinhard contemplated the banner. “That is weird, though.”

“Why?” Annerose asked.

“I don’t understand what she sees in it.”

“You don’t?” Annerose asked. “I’d think it’s fairly obvious.”

Reinhard tilted his head. “Enlighten me?”

“Think about it from her perspective.” Annerose stared at the banner, sitting down on the couch next to him. “You’re an ill woman who’s fled your home, you know no one, have no real ties to anything except your children, and you’re probably a bit depressed. You find out about this thing that tells you that you have a community, and a homeland, and a place to make your life better-- why wouldn’t you join it?”

“Because it’s nonsense?”

Annerose nudged him. “People love things that give them a sense of meaning. You know that. The meaning doesn’t even have to be a good one. It just has to be something they feel like they can… be a part of, I suppose.”

Reinhard frowned. “Still.”

“You should just consider yourself lucky that you feel like you have a purpose already.”

“And how would you know anything about that?”

Annerose rolled her eyes. “You really should know better than to think I’m stupid, by now,” she said. “You live your life consumed by it. I’d have to be blind not to see it.”

“It’s not the same as that.” He nodded at the banner. He wished that they could turn the couch around, so that they didn’t have to face it, but there was no point in upsetting their mother while they were just home for a little while.

“No, you’re right,” she said. “But some people are more susceptible to different kinds of purposes than others.”

“And what are you susceptible to?”

Annerose smiled at him and stood up. “I have no idea.” He suspected that this was a lie. “I’m going to go unpack, instead of contemplating religion. Don’t give yourself a headache over this.”

“I won’t,” Reinhard said, though he continued to stare at the banner, considering it. He didn’t think his mother was a stupid woman, so there must be something to this that he just didn’t understand. What Annerose had said about purpose, he knew was true. It was what had pushed Kaiser Rudolph to power: the sense of purpose that he gave to the nation. But he couldn’t imagine being the type who would fall into following something, especially not something incorporeal. Kaiser Rudolph, and everyone who had ever been like him, had at least had something real to give people.

He bit his finger, feeling discomfited by his own lack of understanding.

Their mother came home a bit later and greeted them warmly. There had been enough food in the cupboards for Annerose to get a dinner going, and she had also run down to the liquor store to buy a bottle of wine. They sat around the kitchen table and Annerose doled out the casserole she had made.

“What are you celebrating?” Caribelle asked, glancing at the unopened wine bottle on the counter. “Just being home?”

“Reinhard is sure that when final grades are posted at midnight, he’ll have claimed the number one spot in the freshman class,” Annerose said with a knowing smile.

“Oh, good for you,” Caribelle said. “Don’t let it become a habit, though.”

“I’m sure we won’t, mama,” Annerose said.

“And don’t be too loud when you stay up late, alright? I have a headache.”

“We won’t, I promise.”

“Where were you when we got back?” Reinhard asked. “I figured you would be home.”

“I was out with my church group,” she said. “Were you waiting for me long?”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Reinhard said. “I was just wondering.”

“Do you like spending time with them?” Annerose asked.

“Of course I do.” She smiled, rather wistfully. “You might meet them while you’re here. I’ve been running a prayer group a few times a week.”

“Really?” Reinhard asked. “Is that why the living room is like that?”

“Do you not like the change?”

“It’s your house,” Reinhard said. “Annerose and I hardly even live here anymore.”

Caribelle sighed and looked at her children, a kind of rueful expression on her face. “I know. I have such an empty nest.”

“Why do you run a prayer group, mama?” Annerose asked, bringing the conversation back.

Caribelle looked at her, a tiny smile on her face. “You’re not the only one who discovered that she has a taste for leadership, you know. The bishop was looking for volunteers, and I wanted to get more involved.” She smoothed down her skirt. “I enjoy it, besides.”

Reinhard and Annerose glanced at each other. “Forgive me if this is a rude question,” Reinhard said.

“I’m sure it’s not,” Caribelle said.

“What are you gaining here?”

She laughed a little. “Not everything can be measured like that. You could come to worship and see for yourself.”

“No, thanks,” Reinhard said.

“I understand. You’ve always been much more worldly than I ever was.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Is a mother not allowed to make observations about her children?”

“Alright, alright,” Reinhard said.

After a moment of silence, Caribelle said, “I suppose, if I tried to explain how it makes me feel, it’s like-- I’ve spent my whole life dreaming and waiting for I don’t know what, and suddenly I’ve found something that’s woken me up.”

“Why this, though?”

“You will think me stupid if I say that I genuinely believe that the way to heal the human race is to return to our physical and spiritual homeland,” Caribelle said.

“But you do believe that?” Annerose asked.

“Yes,” Caribelle said. “I do.”

They talked about other things after that, though Reinhard couldn’t quite get his mother’s words out of his head. It was odd for him to consider that she, too, had a desire to change the course of human history. If he looked at it that way, he could almost understand it. But then he looked at it, and the beliefs and their goals made no sense to him. His mother went to bed shortly after they finished eating, which left Annerose and Reinhard to retreat to their own bedroom with the bottle of wine, neither of them having any desire to sit in the living room beneath their mother’s banner.

Reinhard sat on the floor, on his bedspread that he had laid out, and Annerose sat on the bed. They were both moderately tipsy by time midnight approached, whispering to each other in a way they hadn’t since they were both much younger. Reinhard was feeling odd and nostalgic, and he suspected that Annerose was feeling the same. They weren’t going to have many opportunities to do this in the future, and now that Reinhard was in the academy, they felt more on equal footing than they had in years. He knew that Annerose had never considered herself superior, but Reinhard couldn’t help but feel jealous that she had been having experiences that were barred to him. Now that they were in the same place, it felt like the world had returned to its natural order.

“Are you looking forward to your practical course?” he asked.

Annerose tipped her wine around in her cup. “It’s not as though I didn’t spend all of last summer, and the one before it, up in space. I’m familiar with it already.”

“That just means you’ll be better at it than everyone else,” Reinhard said. “But that didn’t answer the question.”

“I suppose I am,” she said. “But it’s a long month to be away.”

“Did Schenkopp do the practical course? I don’t remember you mentioning it.”

“Non-traditional students are exempt,” Annerose said. “Since they already have experience.”

“I see.”

“It will be interesting,” Annerose said. “I’ve heard good things about it.”

“I wish I could come with you.”

She looked at him with a kind of wistful smile. “You know what, maybe someday we’ll be on the same ship together. You can be the captain.”

“And what will you be? I don’t want to think that I could get above you. You’re better than that, and you have me at an advantage.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Annerose said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But you’ve decided that you want to go to space when you graduate?”

“I don’t get a say,” Annerose said. “I think Cazerne is going to grab me.” She took a sip of her wine. “He’s invited us to his house over break, for dinner.”

“Oh, I look forward to it.”

“I don’t want to think that I’m somehow taking advantage, by being social with him.”

“I don’t think so at all,” Reinhard said. “On the contrary, if the summer program is to form connections, then that’s an unmitigated success.”

“Still.” Annerose poured herself another half-glass of wine. “Oh, it’s midnight. Grades should be posted by now, if you really want to see.”

“I do,” Reinhard said.

“You won’t throw a fit if you’re not first, right?”

“I have nothing if not exquisite self control,” Reinhard said. “Besides, I will be first.”

Annerose smiled a little. “Alright.”

Reinhard opened his computer and navigated to the ancient website where grades were posted. He opened his first semester transcript, scrolled past all his grades, and sought out the little class rank indicator. The number there burned him to his core, and he scowled and slapped his computer shut, tossing it heavily onto his pillow.

“Exquisite self control indeed,” Annerose said.

“Shut up.” Reinhard took a gulp of his wine and regretted it. He did manage to resist the temptation to throw his cup on the floor. He wasn’t a toddler having a temper tantrum.

“You’re number two?” Annerose asked.

“I don’t understand,” Reinhard said with a scowl. “I have a perfect score in all my classes, and all freshmen take the same number and type of classes. Even if there was somehow a tie, there shouldn’t physically be a way for anyone to get ahead of me.”

“Mmm,” Annerose said. Reinhard glared at her. “What?” she asked.

“You know something about this?”

“Maybe.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Who’s number one, then?”

“How would I know?” Annerose was definitely hiding something. She could pretend all she wanted, but Reinhard could see right through her.

“You suspect you know who it is.” He ran through the list of freshmen that Annerose was likely to know, and came up with a very small selection. “It’s one of your women’s society people? How?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

“Find out,” Reinhard demanded. “I need to know.”

“Alright, alright,” Annerose said, pulling out her phone. “I’ll text who I think it might be.”

“Call her.”

“At midnight? Besides, mom’s asleep and I don’t want to wake her up with the noise.”

Reinhard glared at her as she tapped out a message and sent it. Her phone buzzed back a few seconds later. Annerose smiled slightly at the message, but then hid her smile when she saw Reinhard’s stormy expression once again. “Were your suspicions correct?”

“Yes, they were.” Annerose said.

“And who is it?” Reinhard asked.

“Ms. Greenhill, who you were so rude to.”

“I wasn’t rude to her.”

“You weren’t?”

Reinhard just scowled. “And how did she beat me?”

“She takes calculus with Professor Stanislaw,” Annerose said. “And she asked me if it was worth staying for his extra ‘math club’ that he holds after class. I told her yes, because I personally find Stanislaw a very interesting man. Anyway, he apparently offered everyone who attended his club regularly a credit of Topics in Mathematics. So she earned one extra credit. That’s all.” Annerose took a sip of her wine. “I’m sorry that you’re disappointed.”

“I’ll beat her next semester.” He was furious at Annerose, but he tried to keep that out of his voice, rather unsuccessfully.

“You know, I think this proves that she’s worth being friends with,” Annerose said.

Reinhard fumed silently.

“You will survive not being on top of everything for one single semester,” she said.

“I can’t believe you would do that to me.”

“How was I supposed to know?” Annerose asked. “Besides, the whole point of the women’s society is for us to help each other. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t joined it, so it wouldn’t be fair for me to not be generous to the underclassmen.” She shrugged. “And there was nothing I could have done for you, anyway, since you don’t even have Stanislaw as your professor.”

“You could have warned me.”

“I think that’s an unreasonable thing for you to want.”

Reinhard scowled even more deeply, then finished his glass of wine. He gathered Annerose’s empty cup and took the dishes into the kitchen, dropping them a little too heavily into the sink. There was a part of him that knew he was behaving unreasonably, but the larger part of him didn’t care. He retreated into the bathroom to brush his teeth, staring at his own furious expression in the mirror, hating his shaved head. Instead of returning to the bedroom he shared with Annerose, he flopped down on the living room couch.

“Are you really so mad at me that you’re going to sleep out here?” Annerose asked when she walked past him in the dark room.

Reinhard didn’t gratify her with a response, instead tucking his arm underneath his head, pouting, and closing his eyes. He heard Annerose sigh deeply, do her nighttime ablutions, then return to their bedroom, shutting the door behind her. In the near-complete darkness, Reinhard was forced to stare at his mother’s banner until he fell asleep.

EARTH IS MY MOTHER. TERRA IN MY HAND.

August 792 U.C., Heinessen

Reinhard’s annoyances had mostly calmed down by the time that he returned to school for the spring semester. He could hold grudges for an absurdly long time, it was true, but not against Annerose. He suspected that she had him beat, in that respect.

Unfortunately for Reinhard, he was forcibly reminded of his status as second in the class on his first day back, when he sat down in his elective, Mathematical Methods in Economics. He was right in the front, and a couple minutes early, so when Greenhill came in, she spotted him immediately and took a seat next to him. Well, not directly next to him; she sat one empty seat away, but Reinhard was reasonably sure that no one else would take the seat in between.

He didn’t acknowledge her at first, but then she leaned over the armrest and smiled at him. “Hi Reinhard,” she said.

“Fredrica.”

“Did you have a good winter solstice?”

“It was fine.” He paused, then grudgingly asked, “You?”

“Good. My mom and I went to see my grandparents. It was nice.”

“Your dad is…”

“Not divorced,” she said. “Just in space right now.”

Reinhard nodded. “I suppose I should congratulate you.”

“On my parents being together?” Greenhill seemed legitimately confused. “I’m sorry about yours.”

Reinhard gave her a flat and annoyed look. “No, at being number one.”

She laughed, a cheerful and bright sound. “Oh, that! I’m sure it won’t last. Next year everyone will be able to take more classes, and I don’t intend to overload myself, so…” She shrugged, but looked at him with a kind of sneaking expression. “Your sister texted me about it.”

“I know. I told her to.”

“Why?”

“She said she thought you might be the number one, and I wanted to confirm that.”

“You could have texted me yourself.”

“I don’t have your number.”

This was clearly the opportunity that Fredrica was looking for, because she scribbled her phone number on a sheet of her notebook and ripped it out to hand to Reinhard. He took it with two fingers, then folded it crisply and tucked it into his pocket. They probably would have continued speaking, but the professor had come into the lecture hall and class was beginning.

After class, Reinhard gathered up his belongings and left, but found Greenhill tagging along after him. “Do you have class right now?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Want to get some lunch?”

“My sister isn’t here for you to make happy,” Reinhard pointed out. “She’s taking the practical course right now.”

“You are aware that some people can do things without their reason for them being to please Annerose,” Greenhill said. “It’s lunchtime. We’re probably going to both eat anyway, so why don’t we go together?”

“If you insist.”

They walked to the dining hall together without speaking, and Reinhard resisted the temptation to look at her. Though he was done being annoyed at Annerose, he couldn’t help but feel miffed about Greenhill, who may have been pretending that the number one spot was meaningless, but he could tell by the way that the corners of her eyes had twitched when he mentioned it that she actually was quite pleased.

The dining hall was fairly crowded at this time of day, so they ended up off in a far corner, at a table that was smaller than Reinhard would have preferred. He ate his sandwich in silence for a few minutes, while Greenhill ate her pizza.

“What did you sign up for Math Models for?” Greenhill asked him after a few minutes.

“I have an interest in economics as a subject,” Reinhard said. “And that’s a prerequisite for the Economic Game Theory course, which I actually want to take.”

“Why do you want to take that?”

“Because the Strategic Game Theory class is for seniors only,” Reinhard said. “And I’m sure that the mathematical basis for both classes is the same, even if the subject is different on the surface.”

“You think it will give you an advantage when you take the senior course?”

“I’m interested in learning things that will give me an advantage in life,” Reinhard said sharply. “School is just a stepping stone.”

“I see.”

“Why are you in the class?”

“My calculus professor from last semester recommended it to me,” she said with a shrug. “And it seemed like a fine elective choice.”

“Do you know anything about economics?” Reinhard asked. Although it was a genuine question, he realized belatedly that he came off a bit snide.

Greenhill didn’t seem to mind his tone. “A little. I took a class in high school, but that was high school. You?”

“I’ve studied it.” He paused, then decided if he was going to be having lunch with Greenhill, he might as well actually have a real conversation. She wasn’t stupid, after all. “I think it’s going to be a more important subject to know about than most people realize, in the next few decades.”

Greenhill looked at him curiously. “Why do you say that?”

“The war with the Empire isn’t going to last forever,” Reinhard said.

“You’re hoping for peace?”

“I think the Empire will be defeated. If you call that peace.”

She looked at him, her mouth pinched into a thin line. “And why do you think that?”

Reinhard decided that it wasn’t judicious at that moment to describe his intention to personally bring down the Empire, so instead he said, “The Goldenbaum dynasty is a husk of what it once was, and the Kaiser doesn’t have a clear successor. It’s likely that the whole thing is going to be thrown into chaos when he finally dies. If people can take advantage of that once in a generation opening, the Alliance will have a chance to end the war.”

“That’s an optimistic reading of the situation.”

“What are you doing here if you don’t think that victory is possible?” Reinhard asked, quite derisively.

“I was on El Facil,” Greenhill said. “I have a vested interest in protecting us from invasion, so that nothing like that can happen again.”

“I see,” Reinhard said. He took a second look at her. “You don’t seem too scarred by the experience.”

Greenhill’s expression darkened. “My mother and I were lucky enough to get out.”

Reinhard nodded. “I’m glad.”

She stared slightly into space. “I don’t know if I am. It could have gone so differently.”

“Survivor’s guilt is normal.”

“Maybe. Though you wouldn’t know.” Some bitterness had crept into her voice.

Reinhard offered her an olive branch. “You’re not the only one who’s fled from the Empire,” he said, fiddling with his locket. “I often wonder what life would have been like, if I had stayed.”

Greenhill’s expression softened. “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t realize.”

“It’s fine.” He twisted the chain of his locket around his finger. “It’s something that shaped me and gave me a purpose, which is better than the alternative.”

“The alternative?”

“Death or despair,” Reinhard said. “Though from where I stand today, those seem almost equally bad.”

“I wish I could be so confidently the same,” Greenhill said. “Well, regardless…” She watched him tug on his locket some more for a silent second. “You didn’t tell me why you think that knowing economics will be more important than it is currently.”

Reinhard was glad to get the topic back to something practical and well understood. “The entire Alliance economy, since the day of its founding, has been built around being at war. When that war is over…” He shrugged. “Just like the transition between kaisers will be a dangerous time for the Empire, the shift from a wartime to a peacetime economy is a period that will be easy to take advantage in.”

“That’s a long way away.”

“I can guarantee that people who want to gain power are already looking at how to turn the situation to their advantage.”

“Like you?”

“Unfortunately,” Reinhard said with a kind of wry smile, “having some capital is rather a requirement when it comes to making economic plans. And I lack that completely.”

“If you had money, where would you be investing it?” Greenhill asked. “You’re making me curious.”

“That depends on a lot of things. But I’m not really interested in making money. I’m more interested in the new social order that’s going to come about.”

“New social order?”

“Rudolph von Goldenbaum emerged in peacetime, is I suppose all I’m saying.”

“Not a pleasant thought.”

“It’s idle speculation now, anyway,” Reinhard said. “Perhaps it’s best not to get invested in a certain image of the future.”

“I feel like you have a specific image in mind, though.”

“You are making assumptions,” Reinhard said.

“And what if I am?”

“It’s a dangerous thing to do, when you don’t know me at all.”

“That’s hardly my fault. We could get to know each other better.”

Reinhard huffed, suddenly annoyed again at her. “And what would the point of that be? For either of us?”

“I would like to be friends.”

“Why?”

“Do I need a reason? I’m not trying to get something out of you. I just think you’re interesting.”

“Everybody has a reason for doing things,” Reinhard said.

“If you say so.” Greenhill seemed slightly disappointed, and she gathered up her belongings. “Well, I’ll see you around, Reinhard.”

“Yeah. See you.”

As she left, Reinhard found himself still feeling annoyed, though when he interrogated the feeling, he discovered it was directed less at her than it was at himself. He fiddled with his locket as he drank the last few sips of his coffee.

Although Greenhill had continued to sit next to Reinhard in their economics class, she didn’t attempt to speak to him again until two weeks later, when they both arrived to class early. She turned to him and smiled. “Hey, Reinhard,” she said.

Reinhard’s surprise that she was speaking to him again was enough to distract him from the slight happiness he felt that she was speaking to him, and he accidentally smiled a little, which in turn made Greenhill’s eyes light up. “Fredrica,” he said.

“Remember our conversation from a few weeks ago?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Well, I was talking to my dad about it on the phone the other day and--” She stopped when she saw Reinhard’s somewhat rueful expression. “What?”

“I wasn’t precisely on my best behavior during that conversation. I would be ashamed to learn that someone who might be my superior officer someday was learning of that.”

Greenhill lifted her chin slightly. “But you feel perfectly fine being rude to me when I might someday be your superior officer.”

Reinhard was caught so off guard by that that he laughed, and Greenhill smiled. “You know, that was as close to an apology as you were going to get, so you should have just taken it.”

Greenhill laughed, then. “Alright, I’ll accept your apology. But to soothe your worries: I didn’t mention your name, or that you were rude to me.”

“So what was there to talk about?”

“I mentioned what you thought about the economy changing in peacetime, and he told me to look up this article he had read on that subject. Anyway, I thought I’d show it to you, in case you were interested. Since we were talking about it.”

“Okay,” Reinhard said.

Greenhill pulled out her phone and handed it to him so that he could see the article in question. Reinhard stifled a laugh as he looked down at it: Greenhill was showing him his own blog post. It was entitled “If the War Ended Today: Some Speculative Economic Fictions” and began with this paragraph:

Last week, I had a very entertaining lunch with a coworker of mine, where we discussed, among other things, the possible economic consequences of the end of the war with the Galactic Empire. We have, after all, been living, since the founding of our nation, in an economy of perpetual war. I cannot pretend that I have not benefited, in a small way, from this economic footing: that is what this blog is about. Although it seems highly unlikely that the war with the Empire will end any time soon, and when it does, I am sure that the universe will be in a very different state, it is still entertaining to imagine what would happen if a switch were flipped tomorrow, and the whole universe had to go from a wartime to a peacetime economy. If you feel like indulging in that speculation, follow along.

Reinhard passed her phone back as the professor entered the room. She kept glancing at him throughout class, and he wasn’t sure what that was about. The last third of class was taken up with the professor going over the first project that would be due that semester, which could be done in a group. Reinhard had been intending to work alone, but then realized that perhaps there had been a reason that Greenhill had been speaking to him and glancing at him. He frowned down at his notebook.

His foibles about this were beginning to feel very silly, even to him. If Greenhill had been Kircheis, he would have worked with her on the project with no hesitation, but Greenhill was not Kircheis. It felt odd and uncomfortable for him to consider placing Greenhill in the position that he felt should naturally belong to Kircheis. But Kircheis wasn’t here, and wasn’t going to be here, and maybe Annerose was right, and he should make an effort to make friends, and not just because they could do things for him. And even if it was just because they could do things for him-- well, if he had to have an ulterior motive, Greenhill was the number one in the class, and her father had a powerful position. He bit his finger and barely paid attention to class as he thought through all of this.

At the end of the lecture, as Reinhard was gathering his things, Greenhill said, “I’ll forward you that article if you want to read it.”

“Oh, sure,” Reinhard said, distracted enough by his own thoughts that he failed to realize that he should probably tell Greenhill that he was the one who wrote the article. “Fredrica,” he said, then paused. She turned to him.

“Yes?”

He clenched his fist in his pocket for a second, feeling very tense, then said in a bit of a rush, “Do you want to work on the project with me?”

She smiled. “I’d love to. Shall we discuss it over lunch?”

Reinhard felt immediately like he had trapped himself. “Sure.”

As they walked out, Greenhill said, “I did want to work on the project with you, but I figured that you might not want to, so I wasn’t going to ask.”

He frowned. Although she was completely correct-- if she had asked him, he probably would have rejected her outright on principle-- he didn’t like to admit that he was being stubborn and stupid for no reason. “I’m glad that you are interested,” he said instead, a concession that took quite a lot of effort to get out.

They ate lunch together and decided how to divide up the work for the project. It really was a simple thing, and either of them could have done the project alone without much effort. For once, Reinhard didn’t mind that the work was trivial; he was intending to repurpose most of his schoolwork for a “basics” tutorial section on his blog, anyway. The tutorial section was a side project he had started about a year and a half ago, originally intended just as personal documentation on how to use a specific type of modeling software for his own reference, but it had ended up driving more traffic to his website than anything else, which annoyed him enough to drop the project when he felt he had learned enough for himself to no longer need to write things down. Still, he had been getting a steady stream of requests for more entry level content since that time, and if he was going to be doing basic schoolwork, he might as well put it to dual use.

“I’ll have my part finished this weekend,” Reinhard said.

“That’s fast. You don’t have to rush.”

“I’m not rushing. There’s just no reason to wait.”

“If you say so,” Greenhill said, though she narrowed her eyes a little bit. Reinhard smiled. He had to wonder what she was going to do-- try to one up him and be faster? Say she was also done with her part at the same time as he was? Follow her own advice and not rush? Perhaps he shouldn’t be thinking of this as a trial for his association with her, but he couldn’t help it.

That weekend, Reinhard texted Greenhill.

>I finished my section if you want to look it over.

>Sure.

So, she had finished hers quickly. Had she been waiting for him to send his? The mind game he was playing was simultaneously amusing and stupid. Unfortunately, this would be the end of the mind game, since he doubted that Greenhill would have much to say about his paper, which was boring in the extreme. His blog post on the subject, which he had made several days before, was more entertaining and detailed, but he had stripped most of that out for the paper.

When they met up at lunch on Monday, Greenhill seemed unamused, already waiting for him at a table in the dining hall, frowning as she looked out the window. Reinhard slid into the seat across from her.

“Is something the matter?” he asked as he pulled her marked up half of the paper out of his bag and slid it across the table to her. He could see underneath her elbow that she had a printout of his paper, as well, though it lacked the conspicuous red pen marks that he had provided.

Greenhill looked up at him. “I did expect better of you than outright plagiarism,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?” Reinhard took a sip of his coffee.

“Did you think that I wouldn’t notice that you copied your entire section of the paper from a website that I suggested that you read?” She slid her copy of his paper towards him, then lifted up a paperclipped section and showed him a printout of his own blog post. “I did a web search to confirm your math, and I found this.”

Reinhard hid a tiny smile behind his coffee cup as Greenhill ranted, pointing to various sections of his paper, which she had labeled, and then the corresponding sections of his website post. “It’s not word for word, but it is really just rephrased. And the graphs are identical. All you did was change the colors.”

She glared at him. “Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?” Her glare deepened when she saw his amused expression.

“I’m glad to see that you have integrity,” Reinhard said. “However, there’s no need for concern.”

“There isn’t?”

“I wrote that, too,” Reinhard said. “That’s my personal website.”

“I have heard a lot of lies in my life, but none quite so bold as that one.”

“I’m not sure what benefit you think I’d get out of lying,” Reinhard said.

“You expect me to believe that you have been consistently updating a website on economic theory since you were thirteen?”

“The older posts are really bad,” Reinhard said. “I probably should go back and delete them.”

“Then who is Marian Evans?” She tapped the author’s name on the website.

“A famous novelist who very famously used a pen name,” Reinhard said. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me borrowing hers. Annerose suggested it.”

“The writing here doesn’t sound like you at all.”

“Of course it doesn’t.” Reinhard’s tone was derisive. “When I was thirteen, I came up with a writing persona that I thought would be taken seriously. I’ve stuck with it for consistency.”

“You’re going to have to prove this to me,” Fredrica said, though her tone had changed from completely accusatory to mostly curious.

“If you insist.” Reinhard pulled out his own phone and opened to his website, then showed her that he could log in to the back end and edit a post.

“Why didn’t you tell me before? Was it funny to you that I told you to read your own writing?”

“I was mostly distracted by other things. It’s not like it’s a secret or anything.”

“If I were a less generous person, I’d say that you were having a good laugh at my expense.”

“Thank you for being generous, then.” He paused for a second. “You said your father showed you my website?”

“Yeah.”

“How did he find it?”

“A friend of his, Captain Cazerne, recommended it.”

Reinhard laughed. “Oh, okay then.”

“Why is that funny?”

“I know Captain Cazerne. I’ve been to his house several times. Annerose worked under him in the Student Officer Training Program, in her first year.”

Greenhill laughed. “Small world.”

“I suppose it is.”

Greenhill still frowned a little though, as she looked down at Reinhard’s paper. “This is still a problem, though.”

“Why?”

“It still looks like plagiarism. And even if it doesn’t, I think your prose could use some improvement.”

“My prose is fine!” Reinhard protested. “I’m not trying to win a literary award.”

“Still, one should always take any opportunity for improvement that exists.

December 792 U.C., Heinessen

The weather was getting much warmer, signaling that the upcoming summer was going to be a scorcher. Reinhard and Fredrica were sitting together beneath a huge tree on the green outside the freshman dorms in the last gasps of afternoon light, with their finals study materials arrayed out around them on the grass, though neither of them were paying much attention to their books. Fredrica was looking up at the sky.

“Think it’s going to thunder?” she asked.

The clouds were heavy above them, and there was the smell of rain on the wind. “Probably,” Reinhard said. “Why do you ask?”

“I like lightning storms,” she said.

“Hunh.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t know what they do for me, either way,” Reinhard said.

“I thought you would like the spectacle of it all.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Maybe?”

“Talking too nicely about the spectacle of nature makes me feel like my mother,” Reinhard said, pulling up a handful of grass.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot she was into that.”

“I try to pay as little attention to it as possible,” Reinhard said. “Easier, now that I’m out of the house. It’s fine, I suppose. If it makes her happy, I shouldn’t care. I just find the whole thing incomprehensible.”

“Yeah.” Fredrica slapped a hand down onto the pages of her textbook as a strong gust of wind started to lose her place. “Feel ready for tomorrow’s final?”

“Of course.”

“You going to beat me?”

“Of course.”

“I suppose we’ll have to see if your confidence is warranted.”

“I’ve never had unwarranted confidence in my life.”

Their conversation lapsed, and they both returned to studying, as much as they could, anyway, while their notebooks attempted to blow away in the wind, and the light grew feebler and feebler, in the murky pre-thunderstorm air. Fredrica was paying more attention to it than Reinhard was, as he had taken his phone out and was typing a few notes for an upcoming post he was planning for his website. He failed to notice when the rain started, shielded as they both were by the thick greenery above them, until it was coming down in a veritable curtain outside the tree’s canopy. Fredrica sat with her elbows on her knees, staring out at it, paying no heed to drops of water that the wind tossed in at her, or the way that all her papers, held down with rocks, fluttered wildly and threatened escape. Reinhard only looked up from his typing when the first flash of lightning split the sky, followed a good fifteen seconds later by a boom of thunder that echoed between the campus buildings. He wrinkled his nose.

“You should have told me to start packing up, so we wouldn’t have to get wet.”

“Are you going to melt?” Fredrica asked. “We could stay here.”

“If you love lightning so much that you want to die by being struck by it, you’re welcome to remain under a tree during a thunderstorm,” Reinhard said, gathering his belongings and tucking them into his bag. “I have no such intention.”

“What would your sister say, if she found my crispy corpse?”

“I have no idea,” Reinhard said. “Come on.” He stood up, finding his leg dead asleep, and stumbled a little. Fredrica offered him her shoulder to lean on for a second while he shook his leg out, grimacing at the pins and needles. “Shall we make a run for it?”

“We’ll have to.”

Lightning flashed across the sky again, and the thunder was closer, this time. They glanced at each other as they stood at the edge of the tree’s leaves, then on an unspoken signal, began running headlong across the wide open field. They were completely soaked almost immediately, and it took them almost a minute of running full speed to reach the door to Reinhard’s dorm. He let them both into the building, and they trudged up the steps to his room.

“Are you following me for a reason?” Reinhard asked.

“I thought we were going to keep studying. Or just hanging out.”

“It will be hard if you’re soaking wet.”

She shrugged as he unlocked the door. His roommates were mercifully all gone. Reinhard didn’t like them, so having some peace and quiet without them was quite nice. His wet shoes squelched on the carpet, and he took them off before he stepped further in. Fredrica did the same when he glared at her. He had no desire to get his room muddy.

“Here,” he said, tossing her one of his towels. “It’s clean.”

“Much obliged,” she said, and towelled off her hair, which was hanging in wet strings down her face. His hair wasn’t in much better of a state, and when she had finished drying her hair, he did the same thing to his. Both of their outfits were dripping onto the carpet. He pulled one of his uniforms out of his closet, hanger and all, and handed it to her.

“Borrow that,” he said. “So you’re not getting water all over everything. You’re not that much shorter than me.”

“And you’re going to stand there soaking wet?”

“No,” Reinhard said. He turned his back towards her and started pulling off his uniform, dropping it into his laundry basket. He was in his underwear for a second, then retrieved his pyjama pants from his trunk and pulled them on. He hadn’t heard Fredrica moving around behind him, so he asked, “Can I turn around?”

“Oh, er, one second,” she said, stammering slightly, and then he did hear her pull off her wet clothes and put on his dry ones. Reinhard stood there with his arms crossed over his bare chest. “Okay, I’m decent,” she said.

Decent was a strong word, since she hadn’t buttoned the uniform all the way, and it hung loosely over her, revealing her bra. Reinhard didn’t really care, though, and just sat down on his desk chair. She pulled over one of his roommates’ chairs and sat down next to him as he opened his backpack and tried to sort out the damp from the dry in there. She did the same with hers, and after a minute they were vainly arraying out their sheets of notes across the desks, trying to position them with maximum surface area up to try.

“Sorry for making us get wet,” Fredrica said.

“It’s fine. Don’t you have a perfect memory anyway? I don’t see why you need to take notes, and it won’t matter if these are ruined.”

“It’s important,” she said. “I don’t want to get lazy.”

“Hah.” Reinhard glanced down at his phone, which was flashing with a notification. He looked at it. “Oh, look, the placements for the summer program came in.”

“Really?” Fredrica scrambled for her own phone. “I’m so nervous.”

“Why?” Reinhard asked. “You’re definitely going to get one.”

Fredrica handed him her phone. “You look at it and tell me if it’s good or not.”

Reinhard took the phone. “You have eyes.”

She huffed. “Can’t you just play along? It’s more fun to hear the news from someone else than it is to just read an email.”

“Oh, alright. Here.” He passed her his phone. “You tell me what I got, then.”

She grinned at him, took his phone, and opened the email. Reinhard did the same with hers. “Do you want me to tell you first?” she asked.

“Up to you.”

“Okay, I’ll read yours first,” Fredrica said. “Dear Mr. von Müsel, we are pleased to announce…” She skimmed the letter. “You have been assigned a position this summer in the Heinessen Starzone Fleet Port Alpha, working with Lieutenant Commander Amarri Sanchez. Lieutenant Commander Sanchez is involved in ship retrofit and repair.” Fredrica hummed under her breath to indicate she was skimming the letter. “There’s travel information attached. Looks like a good posting. Sweet that you get to go to space.”

“Don’t get to leave the starzone, though, which is too bad.”

“Don’t get greedy,” she said. “It’s not like they’re going to send students to the front lines. Okay, now you read mine.”

“Dear Ms. Greenhill,” Reinhard read. “We are pleased to announce that your application to the Student Officer Training Program has been accepted, and that you have been assigned a position this summer working in the military affairs headquarters, reporting to Captain Francis Burke. Captain Burke performs duties related to strategic fleet deployment.” Reinhard put her phone down on the desk between them and leaned back in his seat. “That’s exciting,” he said. “Congratulations.”

Fredrica was smiling broadly. “Yes, it is.” She leaned forward towards him. “Shall we celebrate our postings?”

“Sure,” Reinhard said with his own smile. “How shall we celebrate?”

“Like this,” Fredrica said. Then she was leaning towards him faster than he could react, placing her hand on his bare chest and her mouth to his.

Reinhard shoved himself backwards in his chair, then stood up so violently that he knocked it over backwards, stumbling in his haste to get away.

Fredrica was covering her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck?!” Reinhard demanded, clutching his locket. “Why did you do that?”

“I thought--”

“I told you that I didn’t--”

“I know! I’m sorry! I just--”

“Gods above, Fredrica!” Reinhard swore. His heart was beating strangely and he turned away from her, fingers twisting into the chain of his locket. He leaned his head on the cold metal bedframe of his bunkbed, the chill of it grounding him for a second.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, and he could hear her stand up and start shoving damp papers back into her bag. “I’ll go.” She headed for the door. “I’ll give you your uniform back tomorrow.”

He heard the door open, and suddenly he was struck by the thought that he was about three seconds away from losing the only friend he had at the academy. His thoughts were tumbling all over in his head, but he was actually strangely comforted by two facts.

First: this reassured him that Fredrica was not going to replace Kircheis in his life, since that brief kiss had been wholly unpleasant and unwanted, and he had no desire to repeat it whatsoever.

Second: she definitely wasn’t going to try that again.

“Wait, Fredrica,” he said as she stepped out of the doorway. She paused and looked at him. “You forgot your physics textbook,” he said lamely. He picked it up off the desk where it had been tossed and held it out.

She looked at the book in his hand and was forced to step back into the room, letting the door swing shut behind her. “Thanks,” she muttered as she took it. “Sorry.”

Reinhard brushed his still-damp bangs out of his eyes. “Look, Fredrica, you’re not going to do that again, right?”

“No, really, I am sorry,” she said. “I promise.”

“Okay. Then we can just forget about it, alright?” Although he had clenched his fist around his locket in anticipation that it would be hard to get the words out, he discovered that it was less difficult than he had thought, and there wasn’t much bitterness in his voice. Just relief.

Fredrica stood there rather awkwardly as Reinhard bent down and picked up the chair that he had knocked over. “Do you want me to go?” she asked.

“Er.” Reinhard hadn’t actually thought that far into the conversation. He prolonged things by sitting down before asking, “Do you want to leave?”

Fredrica shrugged, looking extremely miserable.

Reinhard gestured to the other desk chair, indicating that she could sit if she wanted to, and she did after a further long second of hesitation. Reinhard crossed his legs and leaned his elbow on his desk and his chin on his hand, contemplating her. She withered under his gaze, even though he wasn’t trying to be aggressive with it. He was mostly just curious now.

“Why did you do that?” he asked after a moment.

She flushed, her entire face going quite red. “Why do you think?”

“I have no idea, which is why I’m asking.”

“Because I like you-- and I thought that you liked me.” She didn’t meet his eyes. “Clearly, I was wrong.”

“I told you that I was spoken for, though,” Reinhard said. “When we met.”

“I assumed you were trying to get rid of me then,” Fredrica muttered. “You never mentioned her again. I thought she didn’t actually exist.”

A flush crept up on Reinhard’s own cheeks, then, and he turned away. He would address that in a minute. “And what made you think that I was interested in you like that?”

“Because we spend so much time together, I don’t know. You smile when you look at me.” She stared down at the floor. “You let me into your room, and then took off all your clothes. That’s not nothing. It felt like an invitation.”

“I apologize for behaving in a way that could be seen as improprietous,” Reinhard said. He pushed his hair out of his eyes again. “Perhaps it’s absurd for me to say, but I had completely forgotten.”

“Forgotten what, exactly?” She was defensive, now, and as she crossed her arms, she suddenly realized that the borrowed shirt she was wearing was still half unbuttoned, and she fastened it up the rest of the way hastily.

“I respect you as a peer,” Reinhard said. “So I was behaving the way I feel like I would with any of my equals. The idea that you were a woman and I am a man had simply not crossed my mind.” When Fredrica looked rather insulted, he tacked on, “Enough to change my behavior, anyway.”

“I see.”

“Did you think that I was trying to take advantage of you?”

She frowned. “I don’t know what I thought.” She looked over the top of his head, out the slim window where rain was still coming down in sheets. “You must really love your girlfriend, if you’re at a school where there’s one woman for every twelve men, and one of those women is interested in you, and you don’t do anything about it.”

“I told you to ask Anneorse about it.”

“I assumed you were just trying to use me as a tool to get her to stop bothering you.”

“Maybe I was,” Reinhard said. “But she probably would have actually told you about me.” He fiddled with his locket.

“Will you tell me what she’s like, then?” Fredrica asked, a curious edge in her voice.

“He,” Reinhard said after a long second. “I suppose I trust you not to betray my confidences.”

“What?” She stiffened a little, clearly surprised. Reinhard gauged her reaction, then continued.

“His name is Siegfried Kircheis. He lives on Odin. I haven’t seen him in six years.”

“Oh my God. I didn’t realize.” Her hands dropped to her lap, as though strings in them had been cut.

“And why should you have?”

“I don’t know.” This revelation seemed to relax her, even though she was still clearly embarrassed about her mistake. “I guess I just thought-- I mean, you go to the women’s society events.”

“Because Annerose tells me to.” He tilted his head, a wry expression on his face. “Most of the other guys who come are far more blatant about their reasons for attending social events that your club puts on.”

“And you just hang out at the food table until someone comes to talk to you,” Fredrica said, and actually laughed a little. “I see.”

“If I’m being made to attend a party, the least I can do is enjoy the food.”

“I really am sorry about making a mess of this.”

“It’s fine. As long as we understand each other now.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you upset?”

“I don’t know,” Fredrica said. “Disappointed, maybe.”

“I really don't see why.”

“Now you’re fishing for compliments.”

“Compliment me, then,” he said.

“You’re extremely good looking, and smart, and you did really help me out, once.”

“I thought you said you could have taken care of that yourself.”

She frowned. “Yes, well, it still shows something about your character.”

He laughed, then stood. She looked at him curiously as he walked towards his closet, ducked inside of it, then reached above his head, feeling around for the object hidden up there, taped to the wall, almost completely out of sight. His fingers found the bottle, and he detached it from its hiding place. He held it up to show her. “Did you still want to celebrate our summer postings?”

“I can’t believe you’re hiding contraband in here,” she said.

“Hiding contraband, admitting to proclivities that would get me into trouble, having a woman change clothes in my dorm room-- there are many inappropriate things happening here. Is that a yes or a no?”

“This is you saying that you’re not upset with me?”

“I’m the calmest person in the world,” Reinhard said. “Besides, Annerose would be mad at me if I managed to chase away the only friend I have here.”

“You only keep me around for Annerose’s benefit?”

“And I, too, would be the lesser for losing a friend.” He pulled two mugs out of his desk drawer, ones he usually used for instant coffee when he was up late at night, and poured a generous splash of vodka in each cup. “I would hope you feel the same way.” He held out one of the mugs towards her, and she hesitantly took it. He returned the bottle to its hiding place, then sat back down.

“To our summer placements,” Reinhard said, holding up his mug. Fredrica knocked her mug against his.

“To making a fool of myself.”

“Cheers.” He drank, the alcohol burning his mouth. It wasn’t very good, but he didn’t have anything to mix it with. He didn’t let his distaste show on his face. Fredrica took a huge mouthful and gulped, making a slightly pained expression as it went down.

After a moment of silence, Fredrica said, “Tell me about Seigfried?”

Reinhard was immediately defensive, but Fredrica’s tone was melancholy and curious, which calmed him. “What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. Anything. What does he look like?”

Reinhard stared into space as he conjured up Kircheis’s image in his memory. “He’s taller than I am. The first thing anyone sees about him is his red hair-- it’s just like a fire, but it’s soft. And he has blue eyes. A pretty face.” It felt odd to be speaking to anyone about Kircheis like this, but not entirely bad. It wasn’t something he could talk to Annerose about-- she still didn’t understand and didn’t approve, even if she was willing to ignore it-- so he hadn’t spoken to anyone. How strange it was, to say anything. It was like giving his memory of Kircheis a new life, putting him out into a world that he was a stranger to. He fiddled with his locket.

“Go on,” Fredrica said.

“I can’t believe you want to hear about this.”

She took another, smaller, sip of her drink. “It’s a side of you I didn’t know about until just now. I can’t help but be curious. You don’t have to tell me anything.” She didn’t quite look at him, and instead tipped her mug around in her hands.

“I guess it won’t surprise you if I tell you I was really rude to him when we first met,” Reinhard said with a bit of a laugh.

“Why, how old were you?”

“Six.”

“And how did you insult him?”

“I told him his first name was too common sounding. I still think of him as Kircheis more than I do Siegfried. A silly habit, maybe.”

“I suppose I’m not surprised by that.” She laughed, too. “You do have a habit of making bad first impressions on your peers.”

“I can’t help it. But he decided to be my friend anyway.” Reinhard smiled a little. “He’s much kinder than I am.”

“How so?”

“He would stop me from doing things that he didn’t approve of. He was usually right.”

“Like what?” She leaned forward onto her elbows.

He was tempted to tell her about the time that he had almost shot the deer, but that felt a little too intimate, like it was a dream that he had shared with Kircheis and spoken about to no one. He talked instead about the various times that Kircheis had stopped him from pummeling his classmates, which felt petty and childish now, but he had been a child then. She listened with rapt attention. “When I make decisions now,” he said when he had finished, “I still think about what he would want me to do.”

“I wish I could meet him.”

“Maybe someday,” he said. “I’m going to find him again.”

“You think so?”

“I will,” Reinhard said, voice as decisive as it had ever been. “No matter what it takes. I will destroy the Empire myself if I need to.”

“That’s why you’re here?”

“There are many reasons.”

She nodded. Reinhard drank the last of his vodka, feeling the effects of it a little. “You’re lucky that I think about him when I do things,” he said after a second.

“Why?”

“Because otherwise I might have been much more upset.”

“I really am sorry.”

“I can’t blame you too much.” He put his mug down on his desk and leaned on his elbow. “I suppose I did the same thing to him, a long time ago. It just turned out well for me.”

“Oh.”

“Am I rubbing salt in the wound?”

“Only a little.” She finished her drink, too, and looked up sharply as the sound of a key turning in the door interrupted their conversation. The door opened to reveal one of Reinhard’s roommates, Gabriel.

“Having a guest over?” Gabriel asked, looking with a smirk at Reinhard (who was still shirtless) and Fredrica (who was wearing a uniform that was obviously not hers).

“Shut it, Gabriel,” Reinhard said dismissively.

“I was just leaving,” Fredrica said, standing up. “See you tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Reinhard said. “Don’t forget your textbook.” She had again left it on the desk. Fredrica gathered up her belongings and pushed out of the room past Gabriel.

“You got pretty far with her?” Gabriel asked once she had gone.

“It would suit you better to mind your own business,” Reinhard said.