[This is an entry for lsusr's write-like-lsusr competition.]

It is a curious fact that many citizens of the city abstain from eating the flesh of living creatures, and yet all put beef and chicken on the plates of their children. My belief was always that this was the natural and just state of affairs, and yet events of late have made me wonder if those who would trade one second of their child's health for the lives of a thousand heifers, are exactly those who have walked away.

The wave of powerful magic washed low and fast through city streets, causing icicles on gutters to throw out refracted rainbows. Following more slowly, the bulk of the power moved and grew out overhead. Every leaf on distant trees snapped into sharp relief, and peals of laughter echoed, and from the echos one could tell if the sound bounced off the brick fireplace, or the soft wall hangings. This flare was largely familiar- it was of course the same magic that sustained the city, and that had always waxed and waned, and that for centuries had shone brightest every year during the summer festival. It was different now- still healthy, somehow more joyful, but pulsatile instead of smoothly cresting. The children in the park were thrilled to have the light without having to wait 5 more months. 

Most adults, having studied the foundations of the city during years of schooling, could easily guess what had happened. Young couples, walking all bundled up to their dinner reservations, marveled at the sudden clarity of their clouds of breath, and then caught in their step, and then held each other and one by one began to sob in uncautious relief. An old woman counted each stich on her needle, admiring the fibers of soft wool, and smiled. It was the parents, even the parents who sustained themselves on legumes and potatoes and all the rest of the vegetable harvest, who looked at the flickering beauty and saw only horror. 

With the spell broken, by a single, thoughtless utterance of “I’m sorry,” there is no sense in a attempting to repair it. The child is given a new name, Nathaniel, as his old name had been long forgotten. I start asking around- speech pathologists, physical therapists, dieticians. Lots to do, lots to do.

Attention. It is not an easy thing to evaluate a utopian city, a city of 30,000 living, loving, sentient men and women, on a computational substrate of the attention paid to them by 9th grade language arts students. The trick to it is to spread it thin, but not too thin- a less clever narrative state machine might dump exaflops and exaflops into the moment Lucy steps up to the lamp post, far past the qualia threshold, and waste it redundantly rehashing the same 80 seconds of childlike wonder. There are of course issues of acquiring attention before allocating it, and our distasteful engine was heavily constrained by this as well.

It’s not romantic. Hour to hour, the task before was mostly about managing waste, the task now is managing waste. The transition to a dignified way to use the bathroom is not going to be dignified. God, we are monsters.

And of course it sounded like a brilliant way to cut the gordian knot- what a teenage idea. That joy can be as interesting as suffering, that Nathanial’s recovery could keep our city thriving at a less terrible price. And of course it falls on me, groaning with middle age, to make the path we are on work while growing ever more doubtful that I will meet my grandchildren. The morning vibrancy was not the vindication that our apologiser thought it was, as the core issue here is not attention ( though all signs point to this also being lethal on a longer timescale ) but distribution- our temporal symmetry is utterly broken. By my calculations, over three quarters of the flops that remain in our city’s future have been spent in the last two days- we had millennia!

I change bandages. Nathaniel is growing strong faster than he is growing social. We bring him home, to our house, with 24 hour aide support. My daughter says she is finally proud of the job I do. She looks worse than she ever has, stressed.

Fuck. I’m a protagonist. Do you know how much math went in to preventing us from growing a protagonist?

Rachel Tatham is interesting because she is the daughter of the man who led the effort to reintegrate Nathanial Ross into society. She also freed him with a word, on a field trip, and when I was young I refused to let this advantage her.

He did integrate. I didn’t expect him to. He doesn’t resent me. I wish he would.

Albert Tatham and Ellie Norse are interesting because they are the grandchildren of the man who nursed Nathaniel Ross.

Nathaniel Norse, Charles and Alex Tatham are the great grandchildren of the man who nursed Nathaniel Ross.