Hope/Substitute
...Please buckle your seatbelts and stay put until we have reached our altitude...
Anthony Rester held back a sigh of frustration as he watched the pale child-prodigy in the seat next to his fidget and fumble with the buckle, his normally nimble hands seemingly overburdened with the task. He reached over and adjusted the straps, a resounding click giving proof that Near was securely strapped in. Near. A mind like a computer network, thoughts firing faster than normal people could even comprehend. The ability to build complex structures out of simple matchsticks. Able to analyze every aspect of a situation in seconds, unable to go grocery shopping on his own. Dextrous enough to make a perfectly balanced tower out of rubber ducks, but not able to tie his shoelaces. At eighteen years of age.
Rester looked again at the child sitting next to him, a frightening intellect and bare ruthlessness side-by-side with the wide-eyed wondering of an infant, for whom the world is a great miracle.
This was it. This was the greatest hope of mankind against a tyrant who believed he was God. This was their secret weapon, their stronghold, and he was an immature boy who languished in pyjamas all day and clutched his plastic robots like a lifeline.
Somehow, Rester sometimes felt like a parent. He was assigned to protect this miracle mind in a porcelain body. Porcelain. Many people sought to break it. Some might have succeeded, if it weren't for him. He'd never had a wife, or children. His work didn't allow it. He wondered what it would be like to actually be the father of this puerile mastermind. Other than the relation of blood, his duties were not too far off. But he couldn't hope for affection from this ice prince.
Protecting mankind's hope was simply Rester's job.
„The flight is going to take many hours." Near's voice cut his musings off aprubtly.
„Please hand me one of the robots I have in my duffel bag."
And Rester obliged and Near took the toy from his hands almost impatiently and looked at him for a moment. If he'd wanted to play pretend for a bit, Rester could have imagined a hint of thankfulness in those bottomless eyes.
He was doing his job good, after all.
