Goodness Recognized as Goodness
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When he was fourteen, he became an orphan and saved over three hundred children from starvation.
Now he's eighteen, and life is treating him well. College recruiters are scrabbling to get their hands on the famous Albert Hillsborough, the silent mover and shaker of Perdido Beach, the teenage paramour of capitalism and business. Business Week and Time still run articles on the micro-economies of the FAYZ, always with flattering descriptions of his determination and forethought. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have already promised him internships down the road.
More importantly, the regular dry cleaners who take in a week's worth of his trademark slacks and collared shirts have stopped trying to shake his hand or look him over. Albert lifts his hanger, all his clothing fresh and draped in plastic, and returns to his spotless car, all the while mentally filing the college applications he'll need to finish by his end-of-the-week, self-set deadline.
Two years later, there's still a wasteland of wreckage where the FAYZ used to be. Reconstruction efforts have been slow. Some of the surviving kids left for the East Coast, some for other countries, anything to put distance between themselves and the memories of starvation and loneliness. Last Albert heard, Quinn was somewhere in Australia, surfing and fishing. Howard and Orc are in Italy, scouting villas after Orc's memoires of the FAYZ (written by Howard, of course) netted them a small fortune. Astrid went to New York to look for colleges and never came back.
Albert stayed behind, along with Edilio, to try and steward order into the fallen town. As two years went by and reconstruction projects got delayed further and further, Albert finds himself digging deep into the well of patience to sit through meeting after meeting of bureaucratic debates. Albert respects the regulations like they're sacred, but sometimes he wants to remind everyone else that the rules were written before anyone considered a telepathic child and an alien meteor could block off a beach full of children for two years.
On his drive home, Albert stops for exactly three seconds at the stop sign, looks both ways, and satisfied no one's coming, heaves a sigh and drives on to his state-provided apartment.
Astrid wrote a book, released a little after Howard and Orc's, detailing the less titillating goings-on of the FAYZ. Albert keeps a copy on his coffee table, and sometimes he reads through it after he's done with his senior-year homework and FAYZ reconstruction paperwork. One paragraph never fails to make him pause.
"Albert Hillsborough was determined and well-intentioned, but his Adam Smith-like system of payments created vast social inequity between the children who worked and those who, for whatever reason, couldn't or didn't. Caine Soren and Drake Merwin were the villains of Perdido Beach, but it's possible that Albert Hillsborough did more long-run damage, as his plans were presented as thoughtful, scholarly solutions to problems, rather than the uncontrolled violence of a sociopath. The 'Bertos system created vast social stratification, the aftereffects we still see in Perdido Beach survivors a year later."
Albert has never once doubted his actions in the FAYZ, and Astrid couldn't bring him to such self-flagellation, but even still, his legacy saddens him. He saved lives, he fed people, he gave people entertainment, and yet all that's visible of him is the paper-trail and the prestige. The children never saw the food in their hands, just that neat and orderly Albert didn't throw himself at the big villains or the fires. They remember Albert collecting, Albert keeping track of how many cabbages and fish they brought in, Albert rationing food into too-small portions that fed everyone but didn't satisfy anyone. Albert was aware of the rumors of his secret food stash or massive cache of 'Bertos, and try and he might he never could quite shake that falsified reputation.
He doesn't bother to wonder if Astrid's analysis holds any truth on its own, just considers that this will be his image in everyone else's memory. Albert knows one thing: he'll never go into marketing. His failures at self-aggrandizement speak for themselves.
On his deck, he's cultivated a small garden in a pot. He tends to it when he needs to think things over a bit more, before putting them down on paper. Sometimes, while pulling the dead leaves off his less-hardy plants, he'll look down and see the girl in the apartment below him, and think of Mary, preserved forever at almost fifteen years old. The girl doesn't look like Mary, and Albert doesn't even know her name, but her hair is the same color, her movements capture some of the same warm grace.
It wasn't that Albert loved Mary, simply that he admired her, more than just for her self-sacrificing nature. Somehow, she became entirely beloved by Perdido Beach for her efforts. She became a mother to the prees, whereas Albert just became a lightning rod for controversy, torn between being the benefactor and some greedy Boss Tweed-type in the kids' minds.
Mary became holy. There's something very memorable in the unattainability of that.
And yet, Mary crashed and burned as the crazed nutjob of Perdido Beach, and Albert continued taking perfectly measured strides through the rest of his life, and as such, he doesn't know whether, if he had the chance, he would have switched positions with the saint of the FAYZ.