Thread by @Lancer_RPG

>//...

>//pulled an interesting one

>//...

>//not

>//sure how many people know this

>//...

>//remember John?

>//they do.

On Mariela, in the Constellation, Master Teacher reclined on a wide marble bench and watched the children run and play. Never a kinder sound in the whole of the galaxy than the laughter of children.

Crystal-in-fall.

Even those made in the image of a monster had sweet voices.

“Master Teacher,” one of the children, breathless. “Five more minutes of play? I’m ‘it’ and I don’t wish to be!”

Teacher furrowed his brow. “Now John, you already had five more minutes.”

John slumped.

Teacher made a show of relenting. “So then, what’s five more minutes?”

John whooped and ran to his brothers. They cavorted around the manicured lawn, blonde and lean.

The eldest played slow, to let the youngest catch them. The youngest played ‘till collapse.

Master Teacher watched them all. Them all so alike.

An uncanny thing to someone outside the Constellation. All of the boys were the same, only at different ages. An order fifteen years in waiting, as the eldest showed.

It was fine summer, and the grass was soft, and the poor children didn’t know of the world beyond the walls.

M. Teacher sighed and turned his face to the sky, closed his eyes to the pastel wash of Mariela’s watercolor sunset.

Just listen to the laughter of the children. Deny the Congress their quiet request. A shuttle and a favor is all you would need.

They are only boys.

And what of your life, M. Teacher? What would happen to you if you refuted the quiet request?

A death, of course. Unavoidable. Would that be enough?

Perhaps, perhaps.

The body holds all manner of contradiction, no matter how deep you tune it. No matter how elegant your bespoke enzymes, how accurate your edits, your total genomic map.

A person is more than that meat, and yet, that is all we are. We are not our progenitors, and yet, we are.

Observe: M. Teacher, whose body is frail and needs exoaugmentation to move, and rest even from that.

And yet this frame holds his mind -- a blade whose edge is ten thousand kilometers long. Whose voice can open any door. Whose favor, even as his life fades, begets favors.

Observe: fifteen children, the youngest not yet a year old, rambunctious when there is dire need to be serious.

But tell them to play hide-and-seek. To be quiet, lest they be found and caught by the bogie-man.

Make their predicament a lark, and see them calm.

Observe: the eldest, also John, fifteen and already he looks like his father, the reason for the quiet request.

Not a single thought as to what the child could be. What they all could be.

M. Teacher did weep as the shuttle cleared orbit.

They would live.

M. Teacher reclined on his marble bench, eyes closed to another Mariela sunset.

Footfalls across the lawn. Many of them, heavy.

“That didn’t take you long,” M. said.

“Guns down,” the Midnight said. “Where is the Harrison order?”

“The children? Lost to you.”

On Mariela, when the sun sets, you can see the rings of the world, its moons of emerald and aubergine.

It is a beautiful world, the finest in the known galaxy.

M. Teacher’s body was thrown in with the organic waste and burnt to cinder.

His secrets, too. All burned.