Chương 118: Day One Hundred And Seventeen

Dear Diary, Gotta love that feeling when somebody's an asshole, you know they're an asshole, but they're the precise kind of asshole you need to do a job that needs to be done, so you have to tolerate them rather than fucking off to Bora Bora. Y'know, I'm totally okay with cuddles. In case the whole habit of sleeping in a pile of purring bodies wasn't a big fuckin' clue. But I've never really gotten the whole 'sex is just a big hug' thing.

I'm not gonna claim it's some kind of mystical bonding thing, and the fuck sticks who think that a woman's vajayjay magically conforms to her first temporary phallic resident? They deserve the sad, pathetic excuse for sex they have. But I guess I've always been way too much of an active participant to conflate 'sex' and 'cuddling'. Which is why this morning was really weird for me. After we got the menace dressed and off on her day, Saffron and I took one look at each other and just kinda collapsed back into bed.

"Lord Lenny Lancaster's gonna crawl directly up our asses if we're late to the training field." Saffron shifted, for some inexplicable reason using my ass for a pillow. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully behind the ass equals pillow thing, but mine is absolutely 'buns of steel' more than 'junk in the trunk'. Fuck it, not complaining.

"Yeah. You hungry?" I shrugged, then rolled over and twisted around so I could follow her example. Her ass, unlike mine, had enough padding to make a good pillow. Cue muffled annoyed Saffron noises for a moment.

"Nah. Really hoping for maybe just a little more sleep." Once she recovered from the jostling and got her head propped back up, she said, "yeah. That sounds nice." We lay there for a while, not sleeping, but not moving all that much, just kinda enjoying the whole snuggly bed vibe. Eventually I felt feather light traceries as she ran her fingers along my thigh.

"Neither of us are getting to sleep, are we?" I thought about it a second.

"Nah. Probably not. Wish I had the energy for something more, uh, energetic." She giggled, almost sliding into that snickering our daughter had become so enamored of lately.

"Not everything needs to be energetic, Goof." We spend maybe an hour proving her point. Like I said, weird. Not bad. But not my normal thing. Adult fun times without sweat! Who knew? Afterward, we just kinda lay there vibing until I thought about something that'd occurred to me while we dressed the menace munchkin up for her day of cart riding.

"Y'know, with her being so advanced and all, we really ought to start looking for schools soon, shouldn't we?" She responded without moving, because like I said, neither of us really wanted to move until we absolutely had to.

"Goof. She's nine months old."

"Yeah, but she's got a lot more than nine months going on between the ears." I toyed with Saffron's toes, because they happened to be within reach and I'm constitutionally incapable of actually sitting still for any meaningful length of time. She giggled a little at my tickling.

"Fair point, but even assuming she's learning at triple the rate of a normal child, that would put her at just a little past most two-year-olds."

"Yeah, but like you said before, we're supposed to be all rich and powerful and shit, which means our kid needs to be going to the best pre-school, to get into the right kindergarten, to get into the top grade school, and so on and so forth, right?" She made these cute squealing noises as I waggled her toes.

"Sorry, you want me to stop?"

"If I want you to stop I'll say stop, Goof. What are you talking about, though? Prep schools? I mean, such things exist, sort of. I think there's one that's managed to remain open for around a decade." Something about that just sounded off, but I really wasn't up to getting pissed off right now, so I shifted to massaging her foot and said, "You talk like there aren't, like, schools for kids."

"Oh, Goddess, please don't stop that. There are prep schools for wealthy children, as I noted. Oh, some will make a big deal about accepting anyone who 'meets their standards', trying to be like PCHA, but even there, the youngest anyone ever passed all of their tests was at thirteen." That was all the encouragement I needed, I shifted to get both hands on her foot and really dug in to work all the tension out.

"So, if you figure the Miracle Menace isn't likely to slow down in any way she can avoid, that gives us what, until she's four?" After a long interlude of indulgent Saffron noises, she replied, "you really think she'll beat my record by that much, Goof?" The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Hey, she's our kid. I sure as fuck ain't going to hold her back. Harder, better, faster, stronger all the way, baby." Her words finally penetrated my dome.

"Wait, you got into the fancy school at thirteen? I thought you said you'd had to pay for tutors?" She sighed, "I passed all the tests. Then was turned down for 'unsuitable origins'. Then got very frustrated and, as a consequence of relieving that frustration, wound up creating the very problem we're talking about." I poked her in the thigh, because I couldn't quite get the angle to reach her ass.

"Hey! Our kid is not a problem." A moment later, some kind of impulse to honesty made me add, "I mean, she causes problems, yeah, but she, herself, isn't a problem." Saffron snorted at that, then reached out to take one of my feet in her hands. I lost all ability to think coherently as she found knots from spending two straight days on my feet and massaged them loose.

"You're right, of course. I'm glad she wasn't here to hear me say that. She is a handful, though."

"Shit, you've got that right. Two handfuls, even. Four. Hell, between you, me, and Marie, we've got six hands, two of them super-sized, and she still manages to pull off wacky antics. Isnomi Aetos, Miracle Menace, Filler of Many Hands." I got my hands on Saffron's other foot and started in; turnabout's fair play and all that. Of course, my Saffron is way better at geometry than me, so I did get a finger poke straight to my rock hard ass.

"Isnomi Aetos-Diaz, Goof. Don't you forget it." I totally didn't tear up at that. Saffron's foot odor got in my eyes. Really. Fuck off. I shook my head a little, getting my hands back to work on Saffron's foot.

"I still don't get it. How do kids learn to read and write and do math and shit?" If her hands paused for a moment before she switched to my other foot, I wasn't about to say anything.

"Most don't, love."

"You mean people don't..." I stopped talking, thinking about how universal education wasn't really a thing in some parts of the world I'd come from.

"Oh." Saffron's way better than me at the whole massage thing. I mean, like, actual working knots out and shit. She moved on to my calf while I was still fucking around with the sole of her foot.

"I recognize that what you're thinking about will, as improbable as it seems, only serve to cause my burning hatred of the Powers to burn hotter and brighter. That said, out with it, Goof." I moved on to her calf, and she made appreciative Saffron noises.

"Okay. Universal Education. Not as universal as it sounds, really, and the schools in Camden ranged between recently constructed half-decent grade schools to ancient fucking heaps of stone with antiquated everything for High Schools, and all of them got shit for funding, and most of that got embezzled, but, I mean, anybody who couldn't read and write and do math by the end of the line there either had some serious learning disabilities or wasn't fucking paying attention."

"Were there that many wealthy families in your Camden then, love?" I snorted.

"Wealthy? Camden? Who the fuck are you talking about?" I paused, thinking about it.

"I mean, I guess there were a few who had more than the rest of us, and some of those got it and kept it the hard way, by working their collective asses off for it. Most of us, though? Poor as shit. Hell, some of us didn't realize how poor we were until we got the fuck out of Camden and got to see folks living what they thought of as 'poor' in the rest of the state.

Like, okay, I get it, food money's tight and you're living from paycheck to paycheck, but you're not paying rent to the senior squatters in your abandoned building, y'know?"

"I don't... You..." She paused, taking a deep breath before continuing.

"Are you telling me that each and every child in your Camden got to go to school?" I shrugged, "Not just Camden. Everywhere in the States. Everywhere in every developed country, and pretty much everywhere that wanted to get their asses developed before we burned the planet to the ground. All of those got their local equivalent of K through twelve."

"Kay?"

"Oh. Duh. Yeah. Kindergarten. Uh... German thing? Originally? Like, for kids too little for first grade, but old enough to start getting into the whole 'go to school every day, make friends, learn stuff' routine."

"So. Just to be clear. Every child in your world attends thirteen years of school?"

"I mean, I've heard some kids don't go to Kindergarten. Some kids fall through the cracks. Some parents decide to keep their kids out of school, because they're idiots. And there're delinquents like me make an absolute mockery of 'attending'. But on paper? Officially? I guess for most people? Yeah, that's about the size of it. I've heard kids in Europe get free college, too, but that always sounded a little sus to me."

She went quiet for a long time after that, working her way up my legs, getting me to let go of tension I didn't even realize I had. I reciprocated, because I'm a slacker, not a total bitch. Eventually we'd twisted around until by mutual silent decision I pushed myself up to sit on the side of the bed, and she sat in my lap, facing me, legs wrapped around my waist. She lay her head on my shoulder and whispered.

"Goof?" I buried my face in her hair, enveloping myself in the scent of her.

"Yeah, Kitten?"

"I have changed my mind." The steel buried in her voice made her mild words kinda freaky scary.

"Go on."

"Prior to this revelation, it was my intent to slay those responsible for the state of the world as soon as practicable." Fuck it, her hair smelled too good for me to get worked up over a little thing like planned deicide. Besides the whole fact that I agreed with her as a general rule.

"And now?"

"Swift, painless death is too good for them."

"Really?"

"Absolutely. Death by torture. I fully expect you to keep them alive as long as you possibly can. I'll handle making sure they hate you for doing so." Yeah. I'm not The Villain. No clue at all whether her businesslike pronouncement made me self-lubricate, piss myself a little bit, or both. Probably both. Definitely both, and I kinda wanted her to keep talking, even if we didn't have time to do anything but get dressed and get to our assigned units for the day. God dammit.

If this were a Disney flick, I'd totally be lime fucking green. Fuck. Not the greatest revelation at oh dark in the morning. Still, there are worse ways to start sixteen hours of marching in circles and teaching other people to march in circles. Lime. Fucking. Green. Fuck.