"You'll get people complaining about what their tax dollars go to, or what it enables, moralistic arguments about freeloaders. I agree with you on that at least."

Shrug. "If helping abused children is enabling freeloaders then yeah I'm cool with it. And even in general, using my money to help people is not something I'm opposed to in principle."

"Wouldn't you know it, most governments involve other people. I suppose if we become immortal sorcerers and start a Mars colony we won't run into the traditional monarchy problem of the good king dying and the idiot son taking over."

"Yup! Benevolent dictatorship for everyone!"

"I, personally, will stick to benevolent magic engineer."

"You're too cute," she declares.

Blush.

"Say, did you get around to writing pseudo-code like we talked about?"

"Yeah! That was way more fun than homework."

"Cool, can I see it?"

"Uh, I didn't actually bring it with me."

"Oh well. I can invite you over to my house again tomorrow probably, if you bring it then I'll even have dibs on the computer."

"Sounds good!"

He nods cheerfully, then sighs. "Time to go do some calculus. If only it were interesting, useful calculus."

"What kind of calculus is it instead?"

"The kind where you practice integrating a bunch of arbitrary functions through convoluted processes. I suppose they could be useful in mechanical engineering, maybe."

"I kinda like that, to be frank. Well, I guess not repeating it a lot of times, but I like it when it's not obvious what I have to do."

"The repeating so many times is the part I have a problem with."

Shrug. "And you have to hand it in?"

"It'll be trouble if I don't, and keep not doing it. I've already bargained them down from after school college prep classes."

She shakes her head. "That sounds annoying."

"Not as annoying as, oh, Carlos scored 31 on the ACT, Carlos got into Yale, you should apply for the Stanford pre-admission program, time's running out!"

"...wow. Want a hug?"

Hug. "I feel like I've complained about this before. And I do think they love me. And it can't be as bad as some people have it, I'm sure."

"I mean, you've mentioned it, but... I guess I hadn't realized it ate at you as much maybe? And... Yeah. I mean, them loving you doesn't really excuse that kind of thing. Do you want to go to Standford?"

"I want it to be okay if I don't go to Stanford or Harvard or MIT or Yale or Georgia Tech. Haven't actually decided about any of it, still a junior. And thinking that it probably will be okay isn't the same as knowing it."