The Academy

Switching Places

"The time has come for you to uphold the honorable name of Jameson. I have enrolled you in The Royal Academy for the last two years of your education and from there, you should get a commission in the Space Corps with ease. I fully expect you'll be commanding your own ship by the time you're twenty."

The words filled my heart to bursting, excitement bubbling up inside me like the fizz in a carbo drink from Earth-that-was. There was only one problem—they were meant for my twin brother, Kristopher, not for me.

Kristopher and I were the closest of siblings. Years of chronic lung disease as a child had kept my brother home and I had stayed with him instead of being sent to a charm school for privileged young ladies and married off, like others of my social class and sex. I had taken classes alongside Kristopher from the first, although I was a woman and, to my father's way of thinking, not worth educating. But my brother worked better with me beside him, a fact not lost on his many tutors. Now, though, he was going where I could not follow. Taking classes in the comfort of one's home was vastly different from enrolling in the Academy.

"Father, no." My brother's mild brown eyes grew large with horror. "I cannot go to the Academy now—not when Maestro says my technique is almost perfected. I need to practice for hours each day. I can work my lessons into my practice time here, with my tutors, but I am quite sure that wouldn't be possible at the Academy."

Our father frowned, his face filling the viewscreen which hung over the fireplace like a thundercloud. "I only allowed you to start that music nonsense in the first place because you were too sickly for school. But my physician tells me you're sound now—completely fit. As there is no longer any need for such idle distractions, I expect you to drop it immediately."

"Drop it?" Kristopher's face went pale. "Drop it? But Father, soon I'll be eligible to audition for a chair in the First System Orchestra and Maestro thinks I have a really good chance of—"

"I said you will drop it and drop it you will!" My father's eyes, the same dark brown as my brother's and my own, blazed with anger. "What good is having a son to carry on my name if he does not honor it in the correct fashion? There are four Star Commanders in our family and two Fleet Admirals, including myself. You will continue that proud tradition as you should."

"But Father—" Kristopher began.

"I know you are capable," our father continued, ignoring my brother's protests. "Your Astro Navigation tutor has told me what excellent work you do and your Inter-dimensional Calculus teacher says he has never seen such a prodigy. I expect you to be at the top of your classes."

Kristopher and I exchanged a glance. I was the one who had excellent marks in Astro Navigation and Inter-dimensional Calculus . I did almost all the work his tutors assigned to him in order to give him more time with his precious violin. The one thing I could not do for him was his physical education classes. But even there his tutor had been lenient, teaching me to fence and fight alongside Kristopher because he requested it, saying that having his twin sister nearby made him feel stronger. And now we were about to be separated forever.

Father probably wouldn't have let me stay with Kristopher in the first place if our mother had not died soon after our birth. Being raised by a succession of tutors and nannies had made my brother and I cling together and form a bond much closer than that of most siblings. Often I had shored up my brother's failing health, getting him through one medical crisis after another through sheer force of will. But now that his lungs were strong and healthy, my father thought no more of separating us and casting me aside than he did of sending my brother to a school he was unfitted for—one he would surely hate. The honor of our family name was all he cared about—all he had ever cared about.