“GLAD TO BE BACK home?” Becca asked, dropping her pack onto the kitchen table.

Sord gazed around the small kitchen for a moment. “I suppose. Happy about not having to eat that crap hospital food. Geez, Mom, they are even more militant than you about ingesting sweets. No desserts. No videos. No fun. Nothing but boring school stuff and pouring through the terribly tedious stories you forced me to read.”

“Good for them!” she smiled.

He thought about his trip home on the shuttle, passing by onlookers. “Which of them knows what I’ve been through? My face must have been splattered on every vidscreen and newscast. I’m sure the adults are making Robbie and me out as examples of classic stupidity. No teenager in his right mind will swallow that line, however. Based on Robbie’s messages to me, we’re the talk of school.”

“Did you see how people were looking at me on the shuttle?”

She knew where his mind was going. “Sord, believe me, you are likely way overblowing the fame factor of your little adventure. I’ve already heard some people calling it a stunt by rowdy, undisciplined teens. The parents I know are kind enough to ask how you’re doing, but no doubt they’re going right back home to speak with their kids about the importance of following our societal guidelines. Of being thoughtful and moderately cautious. Of proper planning and risk assessment. Of learning to manage yourself irrespective of your age. Either way, it’s not the kind of talk a mother likes to hear about her darling, can-do-no-wrong son. Maybe I give you too much credit.”

“Tsk!” his tongue clicked. “Please, I’ve already been lectured on this topic until my eyes turned green.”

“They do have a little bit of green in them. From your father.”

Sord knew she was not paying attention, and he was anxious to get back to school. To tell his friends. To embellish and amplify Robbie’s stories.

“I just want to get back to normal life.”

“You will,” she affirmed. “And regarding your studies while at the hospital, I failed to ask in the shuttle. How did your reading, bio, and math assignments go?”

“Lousy. Not really lousy, but I couldn’t get as much done because you made me read that crappy old diary again for hours, and I’d fall asleep every few minutes. He’s a terrible writer with even worse stories.”

Becca rose and stepped to the sink to begin preparing dinner. “Oh, good” she replied, her back to him, “so you read more of the diary as I asked?”

He sighed. Required readings. Utterly boring. Most of his current reading and literature classes were on history, but not the fun kind. Not the tales of seafarers from long ago. Or the Revolutionary War and Wild West. Or of heroes larger than life.

No, not at sixteen, the age when Prosperity considered citizens old enough to begin facing the terrible truths in humanity’s recent history. It’s not like the distant past was rose colored, but it was certainly more interesting than the previous hundred years. The prior century was filled with horrific tales of torment, hunger, deprivation, and the gross mismanagement of all things within the grasp of humans, most particularly their own mentality.

Sord clearly appreciated the complexities and suffering of those years. How society was corrupted by the power of concentration and centralization. The incessant push and pull of control to the top, the few, the corrupt or readily corruptible. Of networks, systems, and AI that went off-kilter, quickly devolving from the original dreams and mandates of improving the lives of all humans to controlling their lives, desires, and emotions.

This wasn’t fun stuff. It was immeasurably tarnished, viscous mires of poison and pain, very removed from his everyday life.

Though he loved history, that love was selective. “Nobody,” he considered, “could have wanted to exist during those last hundred years. Yes, technology advanced at a far greater pace than humanity’s ability to cope with it. I get that. Ethical systems, arguably having difficulty keeping society intact with such advances, were subverted or ignored. Instead, they were replaced by the spoon-feeding of self-centered, self-absorbed, confirming narratives from social networks and the media. Much of this malodorous fodder was initiated by proto-oligarchs who may have started with good intentions but were ultimately corrupted by power and control, fear and entitlement, and love of possessions. No society in the history of the planet could ever get beyond that Great Filter. And some new technology was always on tap, at the ready, to further amplify the disparities, depravities, and divisions.”

“Well,” he conceded, “I was forced to read it. You’re making me, and, of course, I do everything my dear mother implores me to do.”

It was a sarcastic tone, but he buffered it with his usual sly smile that melted her heart.

She replied with a head shaking, half-frown, half-smirk. “Wasn’t anything of interest? I know you’re not big on such stories at this point in life, but something must have caught your attention.”

Despite the last century of turmoil and Prosperity’s disciplined code of living, teen boys had changed little. He would admit to nothing that made him seem weak.

“No. Nada. Well, some of it was a confirmation, I suppose.”

Becca stopped chopping onions and turned to face him. “Confirmation? Of what?”

“You won’t like me saying it,” he warned with a grin.

“Then say it. I’m sure I’ve heard worse from you.”

“Confirmation that people are generally rotten.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning this guy’s mom was getting beaten up regularly by the bad dude she married. A genuine villain, though not the kind you admire or elevate in any way. Not the kind with any redeeming qualities. The human manifestation of a demon.”

Becca swiftly swept away from the sink and sat down at the chair next to Sord. Her fingers outstretched, she wiped her eyes with the back of her arm.

“Are you crying?”

She couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t bring herself to say what she’d considered telling him before. Not enough evidence yet. Not enough to make an accusation that might expel the man from Prosperity.

“I don’t have to remind you to never . . .”

“Mom, you make me read Prosperity’s Stoic literature every day. I know it’s wrong to physically assault people like what this Chuck guy did to Greg’s mom.”

She was silent, nodding her head. “Onions. The onions make me cry. But on the topic, I’m letting you know now so you can be ready for it. I will soon be confronting Matt about what he did to your poor little forehead.”

“Mom!” he whined. “You can’t do that. He’ll think I accused him because he and I don’t get along. It was Robbie who saw it, and we don’t even know if he was lucid.”

Sord clasped his hands together in mock prayer. “Please, please, please. Don’t say anything. I think it was actually a racnine strike, or maybe the moto seat, or my head hit a rock.”

“Shhh!” she demanded. “It was no rock.”

“How do you know?”

The options were running through his mind. He could move out when Matt gets so mad at the accusation that he makes it intolerable for him to live in his own house. Or if Matt denies it and leaves her forever, then she’s mad at herself for accusing him.

“I know it’s true because I received first-hand confirmation.”

“From Robbie? I told you. He was delirious, maybe more so than me.”

“No, not Robbie. Do you recall that girl you were with in the hospital? Daisy?”

“Of course!” Then he realized she might be involved and slapped his forehead without thinking.

“Jesus! Ouch. You didn’t talk to her, did you? My God, Mom, I’m just getting to know her, and you’re going to wreck it all.”

“Wound still hurts, huh?” she observed. “I’m not wrecking anything.”

He was dumbfounded. His own mother was standing in the way of their budding love.

“How could she possibly have been involved?”

“You asked,” she replied, standing up and shifting back to her onion at the sink. “The guy who arrived right after Matt and told him to ‘calm down?’ That was Daisy’s father.”

“Sh..”

She turned, knowing what might come next.

“…oot!” he slurred. “I thought only Sylvia’s father was there. Daisy’s father, too? You asked her dad if Matt hit me?”

“I didn’t need to ask. He contacted me of his own volition. That’s the kind of decency we build in Prosperity, one where people care about each other. Creating and maintaining a sense of local community. And no, he wasn’t overstepping his bounds. And yes, he put himself out there with courage and a willingness to face Matt on the off chance they’d see each other again. Sord, people in Prosperity are bound together to create a perennial human society, and even something done like this in the anger of the moment must be reckoned with.”

He slumped in his chair with eyes closed and felt a burning lump in his throat and moist heat on his eyelids. “Don’t drop a tear on this. She’ll know how much you care. God, I’m never going to see her again. The way she stroked my hair. Heaven’s smile. Her scent. Those lovely hands. If I could just kiss those sweet, soft hands, I’d never want anything again in life. That would be enough. But now, it never happens!”

“So much for Daisy,” he mumbled.

Becca sighed. “Allow no more than a second to feel sorry for yourself . . .”

“I know, Mom, I know. You remind me of that daily.”

“I didn’t harm your future with Daisy, I’m sure. This nominally has anything to do with her. It’s between Matt and me, that’s all. Nobody else is involved. I’ll confront him and assess his response.”

“Oh, yeah. He’ll just love being around me after that. It’s hard enough that he’s so rough around the edges and carries more baggage than anyone I’ve ever known. And now, now he has valid reason to be angry at me for eternity.”

“You can deal with that if and when the time comes. Don’t over-anticipate or self-absorb, as it weakens your sense of self.”

“Mom, enough of the Prosperity propaganda. I am literally drowning in it every minute of conscious existence and even when I sleep."