101 Ways to Skin a Hoodie

Chapter 7

It's been a few more hours of walking, uneventful after the last ordeal. After a snack break at a tree Ben speaks up.

"You know, if you want I can teach you a couple of things about swordplay. It just seemed, uh, a little rough, you know, back there."

I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He's looking down at his feet. "Yeah, that would probably be good," I respond, "as it seems like we may have some use for these things after all." I tap the hilt of my sword.

"Okay, cool." I slide my eyes back over to Ben again. He's still looking down, but now he's smiling a little. "Oh, it's not that I know that much though. It was just included as part of my education at the royal academy."

"You're royal?" I exclaim.

"Well, my family are merely barons, but my father has connections with some more patrician families, so my brothers and I get to attend the royal academy. Enough about me though, what's your lineage like?"

"Um," I begin strongly, "Well the country I'm from, America, has a democratic government, so there aren't any sort of royal systems and proud family lineages anymore. I guess I'm in an honors program at school, but who knows how long it'll be before I get kicked out due to my negligence..."

I trail off. It's weird remembering all of my real-world problems while I'm still trapped in this chaotic situation, but my breathing elevates a little anyway. A pulse starts beating in my head. Do my parents even care that I've been missing for a couple of days now? I mean, they're young, they can always try again, right?

"What's this honors program like?" asks Ben, cutting off my self-deprecating thoughts.

"It's not really anything special. They just throw you in these classes with a bunch of other 'gifted' kids who's only real talent is being able to memorize a plethora of facts by looking at a page of notes once. From what I've observed it doesn't seem like anyone has any interesting, original thoughts anymore, but that's okay because it's what the 'gen ed' model wants anyway. I bunch of soulless little kids that can regurgitate information on every subject that they learn.

"The real contradiction here is that we spend all of our lives learning about as many subjects as possible, and then once we get to higher education we have to make a decision on one or two specific things to get really good at. Of course you have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for this education, and only those going into STEM fields have any chance of paying it back, as they can find jobs that can actually pay. I don't know why there is this pressure to innovate rather than create, however, as the people going into science related fields aren't doing shit to fix the planet that we're killing, and once we're all gone our art is the only thing that will be able to showcase of individuality as a species to whatever form of life is going to evolve next."

...

"Wow. Alright."

"Sorry," I mumble, "I have very hard opinions on some things."

"No it's okay, I just think that that's the most I've heard you speak. To be honest I thought that you've seemed very dispassionate up to this point."

"Oh, I'm dispassionate alright, but it doesn't mean I can't have strong feelings about things. In fact, I would venture that it's because I have strong feelings about things that I have no hope of changing that I've become dispassionate."

"Chicken or the egg, huh?" ponders Ben.

...

"In any case, weren't you going to teach me how to swing a sword around?" I want to change the subject.