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In Support of the Academy PART I CHAPTER II SECTION II
By The Host
Here's the rest of chapter two. Hope you enjoy!
Forty years and eight Rhodes scholars later, Waterton Academy had somehow lived up to its namesake. Despite dwindling funds and dwindling population, the Academy had maintained an unrivaled standard of academic excellence. It was for twelve years home of the Enhanced Program, for fifteen home of one of the top debate teams in the country, and for twenty home of Mr Bartleby Bloom. His title – Assistant Headmaster – betrayed the school’s independent origins. He carried other titles: economics teacher, E.P. coordinator, debate coach, and Seminar organizer. It was in this last capacity that I first knew him, and the other attendees’ admiration for the man was not entirely lost on me. He was quite clearly dedicated, and his speech on negotiation was intelligent if a little rehearsed. I found him an interesting speaker, although, as noted, I didn’t have the support of all of my peers. Not on that day, at least.
The next day would be more interesting. I had spent the night curled in a sleeping bag in the corner of one classroom. I had met many people so far, but no friends. That almost everybody already knew each other was an unfortunate reality I hadn’t expected. They weren’t as outgoing as I had hoped.
We met in the gymnasium to receive our roles. We were to engage in a Simulation – a two-day immersion into a different world, dominated by tense negotiation and flamboyant personalities. We would enter the United Nations of the year 2020, all with our own specific characters and secret designs. Chance would smile upon me, as mine would be the pivotal character. Charisma was called for, and pomposity, and absurdity, for I was to be the cloned reincarnation of Genghis Khan.
Each national delegation was assigned a single Seminar staff member to guide us in the essential early hours of role-playing. We were given rooms to occupy and an hour to prepare with our mentor before simulated negotiation would begin in earnest.
I marched to Room 104, the pink paper inscribed with my character description and nation’s goals in hand. The classroom wasn’t far from the gymnasium. Again, the unexpected scale of the room momentarily disoriented me, before I strode over to the teacher’s abandoned desk and sat vaingloriously behind it, waiting for my Mongolian hordes to arrive. Ten minutes passed before they began to trickle in. The room was largely devoid of desks, although the teacher’s desk still had ledgers and notebooks and pencils and papers upon it, neatly organized. It seemed as though the teacher had left it just for the day, not for the summer. Pull-down maps of the kind Laurier High couldn’t afford were strewn along the walls. They detailed the fracturing of Eastern Europe after World War I, and the advance of German armies in 1940; they might have been drawn that very year. Dozens of maps of all shapes and sizes covered all epochs of history. Nowhere was there a map of Canada, much less Waterton. The school’s crest was inscribed in the woodwork above the door. Within it was a picture of an open book and two torches and a scroll and flowers of some sort, maybe thistle (I’m no botanist), and the words Pro Salute Academiae Et Discipulorum. I made a mental note to ask somebody what that meant.
Twenty minutes had passed. Six others were in the room, most of them quietly chatting. No sign of staff. Finally I stood.
‘Anybody know who our staff guide is?’
‘I am.’ The voice was small and shaky; so was the girl. I laughed. She was clearly too young – all staff members were Academy graduates. She was obviously younger than I was.
‘They didn’t introduce you with the staff yesterday.’
‘That’s because I wasn’t here.’ She said matter-of-factly, with only a hint of annoyance. She rubbed the back of her neck nervously with her right hand and held her elbow with her left.
True enough, I hadn’t seen her until this morning. Certainly she was noticeable. The Seminar allowed only high school students and those entering high school to attend, but she looked maybe twelve. She was abnormally short and thin, and still had a hint of baby fat in her face. Her eyes were wide and sparkled with a manic energy.
‘She is staff,’ a dark-haired girl said, apparently seeing my incredulity. (I still couldn’t hide my feelings.)
‘I’m nineteen years old,’ said the young staff member. Nods and smiles confirmed her words. I gaped, but felt immediately embarrassed.
‘Sorry,’ I said lamely.
‘It’s all right. I get it a lot. I’m Casey Muck, and I’ve already heard every joke you could make about my name, so don’t bother.’ I didn’t. ‘Who’re you?’
‘Holden Getty.’
‘You can call him God,’ added Jai, a boy from out-of-province that I’d met the day before. He was one of the few strangers to the Seminar, and we had therefore a grain of commonality between the two of us on which to build pleasantries and brief conversation. He seemed friendly enough.
‘Well, then, here’s to you, Holden Getty.’
I smiled as she turned to the others – her back to me – and explained the concept of the simulation and the goals of Mongolia. She also told us that negotiations, scheduled to begin in thirty minutes, would actually start late.
‘Everything will be late here. We’ve designed it that way. It’s traditional for the Seminar, or anything like this, really.’ Jai and I chuckled a bit; everybody else just nodded. It was, to them, not just an old joke but holy writ.
* * *
Russian president Vladimir Pisov was a drunkard, though his bottle was empty. Actually, he wasn’t really the Russian president; nor was his name Vladimir Pisov. Yet, despite his sobriety, Clarke Gouda – known to his friends as ‘The Cheese’ – made a brilliant and blustery lush. I, of course, was the charismatic Genghis Khan III. Entering negotiations, I had just conquered portions of eastern Russia, but was willing to sue for peace. My agenda, as per instructions, extended far beyond my northern neighbor.
‘You have invaded and offended Mother Russia,’ exclaimed Gouda/Pisov, in the fauxest faux accent he could muster.
‘For this offence I apologize,’ I said, trying to sound as charismatic and Mongolian as I could.
‘It must be undone, or Mother Rrussia will have her revenge!’
‘You must understand. Those lands were ours of old, those people of our bloodline. To you the land means nothing – you have millions of miles more in your mighty empire – but to us it is honor. To us it is life.’ I played (charismatically, of course) with the toy rifle I’d been given as a prop. Following my lead, Clarke took a spirited swig from his empty Vodka bottle. One of my countrymen fidgeted beside me.
‘They weren’t nothing to us. Those were our lands, won from you Mongolian scum centuries ago. Mother Rrrrussia will have her revenge!’
Every time Clarke said ‘Mother Russia,’ the words became longer, the ‘r’ trilled more gratuitously, until the phrase was recognizable only by its ubiquity.
‘Come, come, Pisov,’ I said (with great charisma), ‘we need not be enemies. We have got what we came for. Surely we have greater concerns than each other.’
Clarke considered this. He hiccupped, once, loudly, and took another drinkless sip.
‘You speak true. Moother Rrrrrrrussia has indeed greater enemies. But how do we not know you will not attack again?’
So it went. It was an absolutely glorious time. There were five or six others marginally involved in those negotiations in room 104, but they rarely spoke. They sat, and watched, and listened: the masters were at work. Negotiations, tactics, and everything I’d learned in Bloom’s lecture the day before were thrown out the window. They were subordinate to the characters: the tippling president and raving warlord. The first words I’d said to Clarke were the words of Genghis Khan, and Vladimir Pisov responded. There was no need to clarify ourselves, to assert ourselves, to show ourselves. Instead we immersed ourselves in character, and connected personally only on one single, profound level – we were both having enormous fun. We stretched ourselves toward absurdity, sanity teetering, and reveled in it. We could not look in each other’s eyes for fear of laughing and breaking the spell. Oh, we spoke shrewdly, within the ability of our respective characters to be shrewd. We hatched plans and concocted schemes. We would conquer the world together. I had an ally. Maybe a friend?
For one hour my life to that point ceased to exist. Everything was forgotten, all wiped clean. Laura, Harold, Port Crandall, Laurier High . . . All of it was fiction; none of it mattered.
Then the whistle blew. Casey told us it was time to leave, time for lunch. We exchanged good-byes, I shouldered my rifle and donned a smile, and strolled out of the room. As I left for the cafeteria, this is what I thought: I’m glad Laura didn’t come along.
So? What do you think? Please comment! I'll post part of the next chapter tomorrow or the next day.
-The Host
4/1/2003 4:11:41 PM
(Updated: 4/1/2003 4:17:07 PM)
(Updated: 4/1/2003 4:17:47 PM)
(Updated: 4/1/2003 4:18:27 PM)
Comment on this fan fiction!
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