lover/fighter - Finnick Odair

Chapter 31 - The Fischer's Boy

For the next few days, Rhea devotes half of her time to work, a compromise Finnick can also settle for.

Having breakfast together at his house quickly becomes standard. Finnick at least has a rough overview of his kitchen by now, but that doesn't stop the other three from making fun of him anyway.

The rest of the time they continue to practice diligently and by now she manages to keep herself afloat quite well, even if she probably doesn't cut a very graceful figure yet. Only the salt water is still a bit of a problem for her, even if Finnick insists that it will subside with time.

So, she usually spends the morning until noon in the Victors' Village or with Finnick on the beach, while she hides away in her room with her laptop through the afternoon until evening.

Elaine supplies her with some desk work every now and then, but she actually gets it done pretty quickly. Nevertheless, she sometimes sits up late into the night in front of the screen while her fingers fly incessantly over the keyboard. Word by word, sentence by sentence, and page by page, her now not-so-small project grows.

Rhea has thought long and hard about how she can best use the resources at her disposal for her purposes. She realizes that the voice of an insignificant doctor without a name is not going to make very much difference, even if she were to persuade the Capitolites at every opportunity, as she had done at the anniversary celebration. Still, the whole thing wasn't in vain, because at least it gave her a good idea of what levers would be most effective in getting the Capitolites moving.

What she has in mind is the Professional Conference Week on Development and Economic Progress, which takes place every three years. It's an initiative started by none other than President Snow to promote the steady growth and advancement of the Capitol for the long haul. During this time, all sorts of professionals and experts come together to discuss the latest developments and make plans for the future based on them.

The system has certainly established itself over the years and it must be admitted that it has taken the Capitol a long way. For anyone with something to say on the subject, this event provides the perfect stage, and if you manage to stand out from the crowd, it can even offer some very promising prospects for the future.

Rhea is not interested in a career in business, but the attention such an event generates comes in handy. The idea to use this for herself came early last year, when the last conference week was just taking place. She was struck by how many people seemed to feel the urge to share their sometimes incredibly disillusioned thoughts for the future with the entire Capitol. That year, there were a few particularly memorable pieces of writing among the many publications that came out of the event. At the time, she thought that these individuals were probably lucky not to have put their names to the garbage they had created.

The idea came to her a few weeks later. A way to present her knowledge to the entire Capitol in one fell swoop, with enough time to prepare it so that everyone would directly understand what was going on, without having to draw attention to herself as a person. The opportunity would be perfect.

Since then, she has already been working on her project so that when the time comes, everything will be absolutely perfect. She has now pretty much 20 months left to prepare everything, more than enough time. Unlike most others who merely want to distinguish themselves on this occasion, she will become the anonymous whistleblower who will throw the Capitol into turmoil. The scandal about Ashway and his systematic rip-off guarantees straight attention and she just has to cleverly link the rest to it.

When you look at the actual production costs of pharmaceuticals, it would be downright ridiculously easy to provide adequate care to the entire population of Panem. Even in most districts, people could afford at least the most basic things if needed. The fact that this is not the case at the moment and instead people do in fact still die from easily treatable diseases is nothing short of absurd.