Sord in Prosperity - Hope Beyond the Apocalypse

EP. 142 - TEST

"THIS PLACE IS PERFECT, don't you think?"

The two looked up from the center of the depression. It was as if they were the actors on stage in a circular theater, with enormous chunks of distorted bioplas and red boulders serving as their audience.

"Perfect?" Sord mumbled, releasing his armful of water and snacks onto the makeshift table.

He felt slightly off-balance. What could she want to know? Would he stumble? Say something stupid? Ruin the moment, this lovely moment?

"Tell me something interesting about you," she began with a taunting tone.

"Well, Daisy, I'm a pretty typical teenage guy."

She stopped him. "Okay, I see you're needing to warm up to this. Can you conceive of anything else exciting about yourself, despite the third degree grilling I'm about to place you under? For instance, have you read anything recently that made you think differently than you had before?"

"Um," he sighed, wondering if he should bring up the diary. It was not the kind of stuff a guy talked about with a girl. "I missed a bit of school, but I'm pretty much caught up now."

"I imagine our classes are similar. What about outside of school, though? Anything catching your interest?"

He grinned. "Aside from you, nothing comes close. But I'm being tested, so I must answer truthfully. I wasn't going to mention this, however, because it's mother-mandated and therefore utterly boring."

"What's that?"

"She's forcing me to read some old crap from an ancestor on my dad's side of the family."

"Interesting. She's forcing you?" she half-smiled. "Like holding the pad while you read it, and threatening physical harm if you don't comply? Why is she making you do this?"

"I imagine various reasons. She probably wants me to understand my dad's family a bit deeper since he's no longer around."

Daisy, as enthralled about being with Sord as he was with her, had set aside in her mind what happened in this place. With his remark, she suddenly felt the weight of where they sat pressing down upon her, thinking, "This might be the spot, maybe this very place, where his father died. I wonder if this is occupying his mind?"

"I can understand why she'd force you, in that case. What is it? A book?"

"No, not a book per se. More like a diary, a very tedious and poorly written diatribe, about this guy and his life in the early part of twenty-first century. Actually, more like in the later part of the twentieth, when he was a youth. I haven't read it all yet, and I don't know how long he lived."

She grabbed a water bottle. "Thirsty?" she inquired, throwing one his way. "I personally have never been into diaries. I get the point of them, about putting yourself in someone's shoes and experiencing their lives. But so much crazy bad stuff happened to virtually every person who lived during the last hundred years. I can't easily go back in my mind and dwell on the multitude and magnitude of pain. It's too visceral. Gets me feeling sorry for them and what they went through, and that's not a good path unless I can learn from it."

"Do you like history?" he asked.

"I do. I do. Some of it. Yet from day one, we are taught these specific lessons to prevent humanity's horrific past from recurring. Wars, man-made plagues, deprivations, biases and bigotry, and all forms of entitlement and victim behavior that drove people to believe they had a right to claim value or dominion over others, and to use this as justification to extract righteous penance from them, typically by force. You know, I know, that nobody has a claim on any one of us. We only have a claim on ourselves, individually, to move forward, be kind to others, extend the species through time, and achieve that one primary goal. To do this, even across infinite time we hope, assuming we do our jobs well. So, yes and no, I like history for the lessons, but I can't dwell on the pains."