Chương 1044: Day One Thousand And Forty-Two

Dear Diary, I think I'm beginning to understand some of why I had the kind of attitude I had back in the day, the one I brought over here and now without much change or dilution until I started trying to, y'know, do and be better. Do better things, make better choices, be a better person. Because despite what Mal says, I think people can be better. I mean, I agree with him that you can't make them better.

You can't force someone to make better choices, to use their Agency in a particular way, or it's not really Agency. Okay, you can do that, but as noted, not Agency, and worst of all the moment you stop forcing them, unless you've broken them completely they're gonna bounce back in entirely the opposite direction. Even worse, sometimes they'll learn to work around what somebody's trying to do and do the opposite anyhow. So you can't force people to be better. But you can educate them and apply consequences.

If not, I'm not sure there's any point in any of this shit, because as has been shown repeatedly, the shittiest, most self-serving, greediest choices always win out in the short run. Anybody who doesn't see that either isn't looking short enough, has never been in an exploiter's crosshairs, or is one of the exploiters. The guys who cut their shit with whatever white powder is cheapest are gonna kill off their own customer base, but they'll make twice as much profit per sale today.

The jackass who lies to all the baddies is gonna get laid tonight, but eventually word's gonna get around. The new CEO who sells off the company's infrastructure and lays off the employees is gonna show record profits because of reduced short term costs and increased revenue, and he's gonna get a new job before anybody with the power to stop him realizes that what was once a company is now a pile of debt and broken people. There are always gonna be people who don't look past their own momentary desires.

Fact of Human Adjacent nature. Thing is, and I remember some of the dudes back in the day getting this advice, understanding it, and applying it ruthlessly with their own crews, investment pays off, so long as you keep those short term motherfuckers out of the cookie jar. Building is harder. Working towards synergies is usually frustrating shit. But it works. Yeah, 'synergy'. One of my science teachers taught me that shit. That concept of 'whole is greater than the sum of its parts'.

The idea that two people working together in the right way can get more than sixteen hours of work done in a day. Another thing is that whole 'working smarter' bit, which does not mean 'getting someone else to do the work and mooching off them', it means 'using a bucket instead of your fuckin' hands' or other instances of being a tool using primate. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

So yeah, I think people can be better, but it's got to come from an inner want, whether that inner want is a genuine desire to be a better, nicer person, or if it's purely enlightened self interest. But all of those start out with being in a place where you're not constantly scrabbling for every little bit you can get just to survive. But that's kinda where I was when I started here.

I lived on the raggedy edge for so long, watching my friends slip over that edge because their moms hadn't literally worked themselves to death in a grim gamble to give their offspring a slightly better head start. I lived there so long that everything I had was pushed into disappearing into the woodwork, and convincing anyone who saw me that I wasn't worth the time it would take to figure me out.

I know that sounds weird, almost like a contradiction, but there's a certain 'weird goblin wallflower' vibe that most people will just, I dunno, shake their heads and ignore. I wasn't able to think about the future, because I was fixated on the present, and every time I had a second to spare I wallowed in my memories of the past. I was kind of a hot mess, really. My isekai reset is probably the only reason I scored a hottie like Saffron.

I mean, I get that she likes me for me, as inexplicable as that is, but I can't think my flawless isekai issue face and body had nothing to do with it. So yeah, wound up spending most of last night snuggled up against Siobhan, keeping up a steady flow of Mana into my Comfort Skill as I held her. Right on the edges of perception I realized that whatever it was Hailee did had kinda similar effects. Couldn't tell you how I knew that, either, but I think it had something to do with that whole 'synergy' thing.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the kind of synergy that let us be more effective for the same effort. Instead it just kinda let us each expend less effort to keep her from feeling awful. Unfortunately, it didn't entirely stop her Braxton Hicks. Okay, I'm not sure if they would have happened in the middle of the night if both of us hadn't nodded off just a little, but after one instance of that the two of us stayed up and stayed with her the entire rest of the day.

Even when I Co-Located out to teach my new Math class, guard the bodies of my head of state ladies, and help Marie and the Maenad Maids out at the Academy, I kept one of me with her, gently pouring Mana into Comfort. On the upside, it kept her from being in too much pain for most of the day.

On the downside, she wasn't feeling well enough for more than a cup of bisque at lunch, and if she didn't puke it back up, she retched a little some time midafternoon, and not long after that she wound up having another round of contractions. I remembered what she'd shown me, and brought a stein of water straight from the Academy when it looked like 'false labor'.

Once she got some water into her, they eased off, although I'm not sure if it was the water hydrating her, or they would have gone away on their own, or if Hailee and I with our powers combined managed to settle them down. They lasted from midafternoon until not long before sunrise, though. Really hoping that all this unpleasant shit ends when Siobean is released on her own recognizance.