badninja | (no subject)

Speaking of Peter, he and I are in conversation; perhaps you knew. We're not messaging, we're using ansible bandwidth for conversation. It's bittersweet to see him at nearly sixty years of age. Hair turning steely grey, face lined, carrying a little weight (but still fit), and the lines of responsibility etched on his face. He's not the boy I knew and hated. But the existence of this man does not erase that boy from my memory. They are simply two separate people in my mind, who happen to have the same name.

I find myself admiring the man; even loving him. He has faced choices every bit as terrible as mine ever were—and he dealt with them with his eyes open. He knew before he made his decisions that people would die from them. And yet he has more compassion than he—or I, or Valentine for that matter—ever expected of him.

He tells me that in his childhood, after I was in Battle School, he decided that the only way to succeed in his work was to deceive people into thinking he was as lovable as me. (I thought he was joking, but he was not; I don't believe my reputation in Battle School was "lovable" but Peter was dealing with the way I was remembered at home.) So from then on, he looked at all his choices and said, What would a good person do, and then did it. But he has now learned something very important about human nature. If you spend your whole life pretending to be good, then you are indistinguishable from a good person. Relentless hypocrisy eventually becomes the truth. Peter has made himself into a good man, even if he set out on that road for reasons that were far from pure.

This gives me great hope for myself. All I have to do now is find some work to do that will lay to rest the burden that I carry. Governing a colony has been interesting and valuable work, but it does not do for me what I hoped it would. I still wake up with dead formics and dead soldiers and dead children in my head. I still wake up with memories that tell me that I am what Peter used to be. When those go away, I can be myself again.

OSC is trying to kill me through Ender

:|

(I am so excited about this part of the new stories, okay. The most important part of Game to me that took no more than a page. Soo much expansion)!