Veridis Quo

Chapter 44 - The Last Straw

Once upon a time, there was a school of notebooks in a bag. The bag belonged to a someone but he wasn't important to this part of the story. Inside the bag were numerous notebooks of differing subjects: Mathematics, Seaspeak, Physics, Chemistry, cultural studies and a few other obscure topics that wouldn't help the owner post-graduation.

Why oh why were they taught, then? God knows. What mattered was their teachings and the dire need to pass them at minimum.

There was a period where the owner and one of the subjects were locked in a vile conflict, luckily, that was resolved with the power of friendship or something gayer along those lines.

Gay as in happy; everyone is hated unequally in this tale.

Among the loyal subjects was another not mentioned till now; History. The study of the past and the lessons that may be derived from it.

In theory, of course. No one truly learned the mistakes of their forefathers, dooming the cycle to eternity.

History, under the careful judgement of the owner, was chosen. It was special to him, it carried a flag that belonged to no other legion. It was... spectacular.

While in reality it was just one of the first lessons when the first year had started.

Sitting in the back rows of the class without eyes drilling into the back of my skull was a morbid relief. I suspected that sort of spotlight would never require a replacement lightbulb as long as I breathed the air of this green earth.

Acting as a self-appointed overseer, I approved of the current state of the classroom – attentive. The ideal space was of quiet students soaking the knowledge a competent educator gave them, such as now. It was majestic, nearly bringing a tear to my eye.

If only I could care.

Since the second half of the lesson was simulating a mock test for the upcoming tests, I excused myself and flipped to the end of the notebook.

Over the last year and almost a half, I had attached many rogue pages to the spine of the notebook with scotch tape. If its integrity failed, I'd staple the rude pages. And if that failed, gorilla glue would hammer down the pesky nail.

Pause.

Was gorilla glue made out of actual gorillas?

I didn't trust the industrial giants but in today's age, that violated a few laws... I think.

Just a few, though.

Nevertheless, I started from the end.

Nostalgia hit like a brick albeit softly, the brick was a huge fan of consent.

Though not much time has passed since I was enlisted in the academy, I re-remembered every addition to the story.

The Eight planet... made of eights. As in, everything was made out of the number eight; the trees, the rivers, the clouds, the micro-organisms, etcetera. The inhabitants of the planet had to use the number as a basis for a counting system, right?

Wrong!

Simplicity was too good to be true, like the Imperial system!

In fantasy, they used a base of two. Why, you ask or not? Because the number 8 had two zeroes in it, go figure~

The eight planet became a type 1 civilization after figuring out the scale of powers in arithmetic and launched a rocket ship using nothing but the raw power of a firework and two eight folks spinning like a fired slingshot.

Flipping over a page, the eight-people discovered an alien on their moon which was conveniently shaped like two smaller eights interlocked in a headache-inducing loop. Since the alien was different, it could mean it was dangerous to them. But they had never met an enemy, so what was the meaning of danger anyway? The eight pair were the ones in a precarious situation.