You say that like I bought into it in the first place. I'm used to saying what people in power want to hear. It's how we all had to survive.
They have things that are useful to me. Visits home, if they can make it work. I haven't seen my family, my mate [he briefly closes his eyes tightly and then opens them again, clearly pained] since I was taken.
[He looks down at the stone bracelet, fiddling with it.]
She and I had just moved into our own hut separate from our family the month before. We don't have marriage where I come from but if we did, we would have been...what do you call them here? Honeymoons? We were honeymoons.
[So yes, he'll say what he needs to for visits to see her.]
And they have the special money cards. It's not easy to get by in a world like this when you can't read and nothing is familiar.
[He knows he'd struggle even harder than most. He doesn't have a lifetime of familiarity with the culture, laws, and technology. He can easily be taken advantage of when he doesn't know what's fair to ask for work and can't learn things as easily since he can't just read them.]
But I don't think the way a lot of future people do and I don't think that's any different here. They overcomplicate things. And they're either too hard to be decent to others or too soft to do hard things that need to be done.
[He taps his chest.] You need a soft heart. [He taps his temple.] Hard mind.
[He holds out both hands, briefly causing them to waver and then steady, like scales balancing out. (He has never seen scales but at least knows how levers work.)]
Or there's no balance.
That's why I wanted to know how hard it is to keep it a secret so I don't lose the perks. If they really do believe in doing good, we have that in common, but there are right ways and wrong ways.
I don't trust systems so if they're relying on that [he lets out an expressive, extremely derisive snort that is pretty much caveperson for "Fat chance."]
no subject
They have things that are useful to me. Visits home, if they can make it work. I haven't seen my family, my mate [he briefly closes his eyes tightly and then opens them again, clearly pained] since I was taken.
[He looks down at the stone bracelet, fiddling with it.]
She and I had just moved into our own hut separate from our family the month before. We don't have marriage where I come from but if we did, we would have been...what do you call them here? Honeymoons? We were honeymoons.
[So yes, he'll say what he needs to for visits to see her.]
And they have the special money cards. It's not easy to get by in a world like this when you can't read and nothing is familiar.
[He knows he'd struggle even harder than most. He doesn't have a lifetime of familiarity with the culture, laws, and technology. He can easily be taken advantage of when he doesn't know what's fair to ask for work and can't learn things as easily since he can't just read them.]
But I don't think the way a lot of future people do and I don't think that's any different here. They overcomplicate things. And they're either too hard to be decent to others or too soft to do hard things that need to be done.
[He taps his chest.] You need a soft heart. [He taps his temple.] Hard mind.
[He holds out both hands, briefly causing them to waver and then steady, like scales balancing out. (He has never seen scales but at least knows how levers work.)]
Or there's no balance.
That's why I wanted to know how hard it is to keep it a secret so I don't lose the perks. If they really do believe in doing good, we have that in common, but there are right ways and wrong ways.
I don't trust systems so if they're relying on that [he lets out an expressive, extremely derisive snort that is pretty much caveperson for "Fat chance."]