CHAPTER IV
An entire year had gone by since I first fell in love with Kathryn. Our relationship had bloomed into a lover’s dream. The weekly “denouncement parties” were just part of a person’s life schedule; a part of something that must be done. Family life was completely destroyed in several months. The local authorities received an order from the superior NTF government in Polaris to construct public luncheons. People were soon ordered to eat the public food served at the public cafeteria rather than the food cooked at home. Many people would stay to eat and hear the propaganda spewed out by NTF inner party members. My father always refused to eat at he public cafeteria, so I would go alone and eat with Mr. Strauss and Kathryn. I would bring home some food for my father. He had never refused the food I brought home to him.
With the commencement of my seventh year of public education, the authorities reduced a seven-hour school day “to two hours of strict politics discussion”. We would study The Dreams and Ambitions of the Great Admiral, a book composed of political jargon of a mind that knew only political jargon: the famous (later notorious) mind of Admiral Aken Bosch. Kathryn wasn’t assigned into my class that year but our relationship remained as warm as before. Our class would recite a chapter a day and discuss it the next day. The schedule is destined to bore even the most fervent student.
Mr. Strauss one day approached me at the public cafeteria and asked me whether I would like to take the ACE standardized test for college entrance. He seemed extremely asserted when he asked me to take the exams and even said that he’d help me to prepare. He had already persuaded Kathryn to prepare, and she had been fervently preparing for the exams for the past four months. I eagerly agreed to his request and his assistance. We agreed on that day to meet every day after school with Kathryn to study for the exams Mr. Strauss’ house. Kathryn and I later scheduled our test day to be the 34th of next month.
We prepared for the ACE exams by simulating actual exams on our touchpads. The answers came easily to me and I would achieve a stable four point six score out of five after every practice. Kathryn and I would work through every question after the practice. We usually worked through lunch and sometimes even through dinner. After practice, Kathryn and I would do other academic-related tasks. On several occasions we wrote poems privately and read each other’s work afterwards. Mr. Strauss would bring us cooled Ahepth’es, a drink favored by the Vasudans for thousands of their standard years and later became a craving amongst the Terrans after the Great War. At times I would go home late into the night. But often to my surprise, my father wouldn’t be home drinking; he would be out. I would find him almost every morning dozed in his drink.
After several days of studying with Mr. Strauss and Kathryn, I clearly manifested his plan for me. He had planned for Kathryn and me to leave Meridian and ultimately Alpha Centauri 4 for a system under GTVA control. With his plan, my dreams would finally come true, but another part would be in danger of annihilation.
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