My Friend the Emperor

by William Lee Gordon

  “But I really didn’t know!” I protested.

  “So? Ignorance is no excuse… Look newb, you follow the rules at The Academy or you go home. They may or may not make an allowance since this is your first day, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

  “Oh, and cadet, don’t try to sit down with me. I’m not inviting you to lunch,” she said over her shoulder as she walked off.

  I looked back at the screen and was dumbfounded for a second time. I quickly did the math in my head and realized that the ‘extra’ she’d casually given me was enough to buy a hover bike back on my home world. A used hover bike, perhaps, but a nice hover bike nevertheless.

  “Hey, move it,” a voice said from behind me. “We’re hungry here.”

  I found an empty table and sat down. The food wasn’t bad but I barely noticed it. I was starting to think that The Academy might not be what I’d thought it was going to be. Perhaps I just needed to make some friends, I confidently told myself.

  No one joined me at my table.

  ΔΔΔ

  My advisor turned out to be an old man in a rumpled uniform who didn’t hear very well. At least I think he couldn’t hear; either that or he didn’t really care what I was saying.

  “I’m not really sure what to do,” I said. “According to this map you’ve got me crisscrossing the campus after almost every class. The legend says that it takes at least 17 minutes of travel time and you’re only giving me 10 minutes to get there. There’s no way I can be in my classes on time.”

  Either not hearing me or not caring, he continued. “This is a list of the subjects and the grades you’ll be required to maintain in each class. Failure to perform will be cause for automatic dismissal from The Academy.”

  “When do the classes start?” I asked.

  “They’ve already started,” he responded dismissively. “They never end. You need to jump in and complete your cycle with high grades.”

  That didn’t make any sense to me. Was I expected to start at midcourse and score as well as everybody that been there from the beginning? I knew I had to be missing something, but I wasn’t going to get it out of this guy.

  “… Sir. Don’t I have to get a chip or something to identify myself?”

  “Mmm… You haven’t done that yet? No, I suppose you haven’t. Go to this office first and tell them to tag you. You’d better allow some time for it because they have to verify your identity and that includes genetic samples.”

  “How long does it usually take?” I asked.

  “Anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks,” He responded.

  “Isn’t there any way I can shorten that?” I asked somewhat exasperatedly.

  “Of course. If you’re smart you’ll give the civil servant a handful of denars so you can start classes the same day.”

  “Go to class? Are you telling me I can’t even attend classes until I get my chip?”

  “Of course not! Do you think the Empire is stupid? We certainly wouldn’t take a chance on bad elements infiltrating our classes.”

  “But… I don’t have much money. What am I going to do?”

  “What? How did you get into The Academy? Well, never mind. You’ll either figure something out or you’ll fail and go home.”

  I was already becoming accustomed to my new life at The Academy so I was no longer stunned. I clamped my mouth shut and picked up the data chip he had given me.

  “Will there be anything else, Sir?” I said tightly.

  “Eh… No. Now get out of here. I’ve got work to do.”

  As I left his office I looked at the data chip which held my classes, a map of the campus, and everything else I needed to know. The thing is, I didn’t have a reader. He had started to offer me one, but when he’d checked my credit balance he had pulled it back. I couldn’t even afford to know my class schedule. I barely remembered him mumbling something about public readers being scattered about the campus grounds before he’d quickly moved the conversation on.

  I finally found one and oriented myself to the massive campus. I set off walking in the direction of my first stop.

  When I finally found the building I was dismayed at the size of the lines. Since I had nothing better to do, I got in one.

  A few hours later, I finally reached the woman behind the window. This time she was young and, like all of us, had brown eyes. Unlike all of the rest of us newly reporting cadets, the only body hair she sported was her eyelashes, which highlighted those same brown eyes – and they were striking. But she also had a hard, bored look on her face. We went through the ritual of questions and answers and I had to place my finger in a small box. I felt a small prick and knew that a biometric sample had been collected. She looked up at me expectantly.

  There was a sign right beside her window that said 50 denars to expedite biometric testing. I knew I didn’t have the 50, so I tried to casually approach the subject…

  “Um, is there a way I can expedite the test results?” I asked.

  She tilted her head and said, “500 denars to expedite your order.”

  “500? The sign says 50…”

  Her gaze hardened and she said nothing.

  Now I was sweating. I had spent the entire walk over here trying to formulate a strategy or plan. Maybe I could sweet-talk the civil servant? Maybe I could plead poverty? Maybe I could take a loan?

  “Loans are available,” she finally said. “Place your thumb print here and I’ll take care of you.”

  “What am I signing for?” I asked.

  “It’s a loan, stupid. You’ll have 90 days to pay back the loan plus interest.”

  “And how much will the interest be?” I asked.

  She looked at her pad and said, “It will be 980 denars for a total repayment of 1480 denars due in 90 days.”

  “That’s… usury,” I said. “Is that even legal?”

  Her eyes got narrow and she pulled the pad back. “I don’t think you’re a good risk newb. Why don’t we just forget about the loan and you can wait for your test results like all the other urchins that somehow worm their way into The Academy.”

  “No, wait!” I said hurriedly. “I’ll pay it.”

  What choice did I have? I had no idea how I would repay that much money, but my mom had always said to tackle one problem at a time – and I didn’t see any other way around this one.

  As I left the office a few hours later, rubbing my arm where my identification chip had been inserted, I finally dared to ask myself; what would be the consequences of defaulting on a black market loan?

  ΔΔΔ

  It took me two weeks to get ‘unlost’ in my classes. Apparently, they were continuous. The curriculum cycled through the subject matter and then simply restarted at the beginning. There were so many students coming into The Academy from so many different places, at so many different times, that this was the most efficient way to do it.

  Because of this, none of the scores you created in the first four weeks of classes counted on your permanent record. Of course, nobody had bothered to tell me so I had busted my butt and lain awake each night, sweating in my bunk, wondering when the ax was going to fall and I would have to admit defeat.

  Have you ever heard the expression, Be careful what you wish for? Well, I was about to learn that one the hard way too.

  I was lonelier than I’d ever been in my life. I kept hoping to meet a friendly face, but was constantly disappointed. Until one day…

  I was eating lunch in the cafeteria (for cadets with chips I’d discovered it was no charge) when a female upperclassman set her tray down directly across from me. I knew she must have already finished her first year because she had already gone through the depilatory process of removing all body hair. She still had eyelashes but no eyebrows. This was the look all Citizens wore but you had to pass your first year at Academy to earn the right. Anyway, I think she was two or three years older than I was; she certainly had more confidence. I didn’t say anything and she didn’t say anything. We sat there, looking each
other over and eating our lunch.

  Finally, she broke the silence. “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “Lightspar. And you?”

  “Leadstone,” she responded. “It’s in the Perian sector.”

  I had never heard of either so I said nothing.

  “You don’t have any skin rashes or contagious conditions, do you?”

  “No, of course not,” I responded.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “I’m Jacoby. Jacoby Nikolay. Who are you?”

  “Don’t use your last name, you idiot. Until you graduate The Academy it‘s first names only, got it?”

  “Yeah, okay. My name is Jacoby. What’s yours?”

  “My name is Valys. Not Val, not Valerie, it’s Valys.”

  After a moment she spoke again. “So Jac, do you have a go to?”

  “I don’t think so,” I responded.

  “You don’t even know what it is, do you?” she said, finally showing a small smile.

  After so long without any noticeable friendliness being shown my direction I couldn’t help but smile back. “No,” I laughed. “I guess I really don’t.”

  “A go to is the person you go to when you need to scratch an itch… You know what I mean?”

  “An itch… What kind of itch?”

  “An itch. You know, when you’ve got to have it. When you need someone to hook up with,” she said in a slightly less friendly manner.

  “Oh, no… I guess I don’t. I mean, I didn’t understand what you were asking… But I don’t have anyone, like that.”

  She kept staring at me and I guess she finally made a decision.

  “Look, I need someone I can bump bellies with; someone I can relieve the pressure with. You’re kind of attractive to me, so are you interested?”

  I was totally shocked and out of my element. It’s not that I was a prude, and I knew that sexual relations would be a part of my adult life, but I never visualized starting a relationship like this. On the other hand, I was desperate to have a friend and so far this had been my only chance.

  “Yeah, I’d like that… but uh, how will we find any privacy?” I whispered.

  If it weren’t for everything being so strange I probably would’ve been more uncomfortable with all the media globes floating around. They were everywhere and monitored everything. It wasn’t just in the public places that we were being watched, there was always one close to my bunk, in the cafeteria, in the shower, the gym; I couldn’t even take a crap without being observed by… someone.

  “You’re kidding, right? There won’t be any privacy,” she said deadpan.

  Well, I thought to myself. This will be something new.

  ΔΔΔ

  She wasn’t tender, but she wasn’t cruel either.

  After the first time Valys and I were together I think she knew I’d been a virgin, but she didn’t mention it. She simply walked me through what I was going to need to do to be a better lover. Actually, I’m not sure if lover was the right word to use, but at the time the alternatives were still a little too crude for my comfort.

  She was a fourth year senior with good marks so that gave her the privilege of living in a semiprivate, gender exclusive dorm – and like most cadets, her family could afford the upgrade. Whereas she only had three other roommates I was living like all freshmen did, in a barracks style dorm with 20 bunk beds to a room. My bunkroom, showers, sinks, and toilets were all coed.

  The Empire preached equality in all aspects of life and gender equality was an important part of that equation. We were all equal cogs in the machinery of empire and our instructors taught us that this was a great thing, while at the same time warning us that anyone could be replaced if we didn’t perform our duties.

  Apparently, in the days long before our enlightened empire, people used to fight over everything - social and economic status, even the color of their skin. Our instructor had to explain to us that mankind had not always favored the pleasant light brown skin color that all humans now shared. She said that earlier in human history we were of different races: yellow skin, red skin, black skin, and (of course) brown skin. There was even a white skin that wasn’t the result of a defective albino gene!

  When we asked her what had happened to the other races our instructor informed us that they’d killed each other off. She also briefly mentioned that over millennia it was possible the interbreeding had been so thorough as to leave us with a common genetic skin color, but it was obvious she preferred the self-destructive discrimination theory. It better fit her narrative of why the Celcium Empire was necessary, to eliminate strife by bringing equality to all peoples.

  With newfound insight I now suspected that this was the origin of many of the superficial differences between Citizens and Residents.

  As a child I had always admired the ‘special’ look that was reserved for Citizens: the same uniform, the same aloofness, and the same lack of body hair. Of course, I didn’t personally know any Citizens and only occasionally saw them from afar, but from watching the network vids it was obvious that they all looked and behaved the same – they were special and I admired them.

  As I mentioned, I’d grown up enthralled with the idea of serving The Empire and I’d enthusiastically followed all of its edicts. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’d understood all the reasons behind those sometimes seemingly random or inconvenient restrictions.

  In my youth back on Lightspar, for example, I’d never been able to understand why my mother was always so frantic to make sure I wasn’t cheating on my daily dietary allowance. I’d always followed her rules even though the temptations were high. There wasn’t a teenage party where someone wasn’t selling forbidden sugar-laden soda drinks or illegal high-fat high-sugar confections.

  It wasn’t until later that I’d understood that our apartment bathroom automatically sampled our stool and urine to monitor our health. If bad habits were detected, then additional healthcare assessments were deducted from my mom’s weekly pay.

  It wasn’t until I reached The Academy that I learned the macroeconomic reasons for controlling healthcare costs – the planetary population benefited from better health and The Empire benefited from having to dedicate fewer resources to the planet.

  In some ways it was a relief for our instructors to explain the necessity for all the laws and restrictions its Citizens and residents needed to abide by. It was comforting knowing that my faith in the Empire was justified.

  At any rate, when Valys and I got together we always used her place and that insured that there were at most only three other people and their partners to play voyeur – usually, though, they didn’t bother.

  We’d been hooking up a couple of times a week now for about a month when I finally got up the courage to mention something that had been bothering me…

  We were walking together towards her dorm. As usual, a softball sized media globe floated along beside us. I had only a week earlier tried to hold her hand on just such a walk. I had never seen her so angry and I didn’t want to piss her off again so I was being careful.

  “Valys, can I ask you a naïve question?”

  “Another one?” she laughed.

  The fact that she hadn’t already shot me down was a good sign.

  “Yeah, it’s just that I can’t help but noticing something but I don’t want to make you mad by asking…”

  She sighed.

  “Spit it out Jac,” she said. She was, by the way, the first person to ever shorten my first name to Jac.

  “Ok,” I replied. “When we have sex you’re very… loud. Your roommates are the same way with their partners. It’s just that in my dorm people are usually the opposite.”

  Valys’ face turned red and I could tell she almost turned her head to see how close the media globe was.

  “Everyone has their own style, Jac. Now just forget about it.” She’d said that last part with some steel in her voice so I let it go.

  What I’d said, though, was tru
e. There were 40 young, healthy, athletic men and women living, showering, and sleeping in my dorm room and of course there were going to be hookups. It was expected and, the rumor went, was the reason that our bunk beds were built so sturdily.

  Another pattern I’d noticed is that sex was contagious. If a couple started going at it on one side of the room (usually under the sheets but not always), then other couples would start pairing up almost by instinct. There were times when at least two-thirds of the room was showing the soles of their feet.

  My mom had always told me that I had a gift for noticing details in a fast-forward world. She had hoped it would serve me well but also warned it could get me into trouble. I still hadn’t figured out what she meant by the last part.