in color | Glowfic Constellation

His hair is green.

His mother was green, and in lots of places he would follow her, but Anitam is not one of those places; castes are patrilineal. He is a blue with hair inconveniently reminiscent of his dead mother, that's all. He will grow up and be a politician or a diplomat or an ambassador, like his father, like his father's second wife. His mother did embroidery, stunningly beautiful tapestries and fabric concepts and artwork that hangs in the state buildings and museums. But he's not green, and he can't follow her.

He runs away from home, of course. He would probably have done that anyway; looking back on it it feels a bit overdetermined. The hair would have been enough. Entis, his father's second wife, would have been enough. His siblings - two of them, blue in hair and ambitions and manner and talents - would have been enough. His hair is green. He runs away from home and shows up at a university in Anitam's third-largest city and sits in on classes, front row, asking questions and taking notes and turning in effortlessly brilliant problem sets.

In the third week he tells a professor, biting his lip, that he's not technically enrolled - family couldn't come up with tuition this year, and said maybe next, but he didn't want to wait - and the professor ruffles his hair (green!) and says that it's a delight to grade his work, he can keep sitting in and if he does well he'll talk with the administration at semester's end.

He excels in all five classes he sat in on. They find a scholarship. He vaguely mentions his mother's family.

He graduates with honors and co-authorship of four papers and offers from eight higher degree programs. He accepts one and publishes machine learning papers at a pace that has his advisors gently asking if he's going to burn out and he's green green green and he lives off microwave dinners and praise and envy and he marries the co-author of one of his papers about fluid dynamics and eventually someone pieces together his parentage and asks -

"Are you," he says, "suggesting that someone wrote my papers for me?"

" - I - what - no - I was at your thesis defense, no one else could possibly have -"

"Right. So then are you suggesting that the person who achieved those things wasn't even green?"

"There's no need to be confrontational. I was just - it's matrilineal lots of other places."

"Yes, it is."

And he's green green green.

Total: 6302

Posts Per Page:

‹ Previous 1 2 … 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 … 252 253 Next ›

« First ‹ Previous 216 of 253 Next › Last »

Everybody who wanted to send their reds to Miolee and now has uncooperative reds has a complaint against Rivik, and can simultaneously demand recompense and an apology once it's established that that's in fact what everybody else is doing. The demands for recompense add up to much more than Rivik could agree to, but that's kind of the point. No one's reds are going to relax because their government demanded money from Rivik; they might relax if their government joins a coalition to depose the people responsible.

Anitam has no cause of action here, and he's fairly clear that he's just helping orchestrate this because he happens to be really annoyed.

The orchestration from an outside party is pretty useful and keeps the planning moving along until it is disinclined to fizzle. Rivik is strongly advised to retire all the blues instrumental in deciding to do that stupid thing.

Rivik's blues instrumental in doing the stupid thing do another stupid thing but they can be shot just as well as reds can and the less stupid suddenly form a voting majority.

There you go. Now with some newly earned credibility perhaps Miolee will settle for sums of ransom money instead of actual hostages, such that sending becomes much cheaper than shooting.

Ransom money is good. They have all kinds of ways to profit off holding money for a few months, even.

Makel Alasi

All of this does nothing for the dead but is a little soothing.

Peka Atan

touchme

And it might help the living.

Makel Alasi

One hopes.

Winter rolls around and it's time to allocate credits! The thing with half-greys is very clever they can reduce grey credits a skosh.

That will not be appreciated but makes sense. The subsidies for first children are going to be rolled out gradually but amount to about a 20% discount on a credit if the child is both parents' first one.

How does that work with the thing where credits are priced by auction?

If you bought a credit at auction and it's your first kid, you get a check for some of the money back.

Do you have to actually have all of the money you spend on it?

A couple banks have agreed to make loans in exchange for the refund check being written directly to them.

Neato.

(It's not popular among divorcés with a kid already or those who marry them childless, but it's popular with young people and poor childless people of all ages.)

It's the sort of thing that will always leave some people feeling cheated when it's first implemented, but which ought to be in place. And tinkering with the amount of the subsidy will be less controversial.

Much less.

Tanalo is married now and wants to know if he can get more than that twenty percent kicked back, blue credits are steep.