Chapter 35: Social issues

[May/June 2374 AD – POV Timotheus Mellark]

The last visit to Dr. Aurelius and what he had shown us had been confusing and worrying; not even he, with his expertise in children's psychology, understood why Rue felt so much better when she was around me and why that was important for her well-being. Sure, we liked each other a lot, but that was obviously by far not enough to explain what we had learned. I was glad that I could find distraction by my work, and besides that, I had also started to look into options to have the large underground area on the Jones farm explored, the one which had been operated illegally. Robert Hawthorne was a mining expert, and he was going to spend a few weeks later this year trying to find out what could be done there and what kind of minerals or valuables we might be able to extract. His services weren't cheap, but I was determined to cover that, if the fess exceeded what the Jones were able and willing to pay; eventually, the income from the mines would most likely more than compensate for that.

With the hot season approaching, I also started to discuss summer vacation plans with my twin cousin. We had a tradition to spend a couple of weeks together in summer, and as we had been in Panem together summer last year, he suggested an area in Europe for this year when we talked on the phone:

"I have heard that they have a number of nice caves on the 'Schwäbische Alb', south of Stuttgart. What about spending a couple of weeks there, for hiking, going into some caves, and more? What do you think?"

"Hm, we could do that. On the other hand, what about seeing real mountains again? I have done some research, and there is this small town called 'Heiligenblut', not far from the 'Großglockner', the highest mountain in Austria. I have read about the glacier remnants there and that they are nowadays growing again, and I would like to see that. Besides, some of the roads leading there are supposed to be quite nice, with wonderful views and lots of nature around."

"Okay, that sounds even better; first half of August?"

We agreed on the time and some more details, and that was that. My twin cousin and I had always been spending two or three weeks in summer together since we'd been adults, and while the regular Christmas events always provided opportunities to see family and more, in the summer it was usually just the two of us, only sometimes, like we had done last summer, a few others had been with us. Timotheus Sinterguth had another question:

"Say, how is it going with Rue?"

"She is still wonderful. I can barely recall how my life was before I met her. It is difficult for me to believe that I kind of found another baby sister, and yet, I immensely enjoy every time with her. Also, she is so smart and intelligent. Her grandparents shared a few school reports with me, and when they ran an IQ test in her class, she came out on top with a value of more than 150. The explanation told that such a value indicated an intelligence level which less than one in ten thousand people have."

"Wow!"

"Yes, indeed. This seems to be quite extraordinary, and the principal said that they don't recall seeing such a result for many years. She is quite special, and I wonder what her options will be for further education. With her shyness and also because she is a minor, leaving home and the farm will be an issue for her."

"I understand, yes. Well, my own date is not quite that intelligent, and I am now tutoring her on accounting stuff."

"You do? I thought that you tried and stopped when she told you about her feelings?"

"Yes, but you know, as everything is in the open and her parents know, we also do a little bit of tutoring. I am not sure if she is learning the right stuff; her heart does not seem to be in it, but that's up to her. No, she is not super-intelligent or so, but she is amazing. The way she looks at me when I pick her up on Tuesdays, after her long work days, almost makes my heart melt. And, believe it or not, I can actually have normal conversations with her."

"Yep, that works for me and Rue as well."

"Talking about Rue, are you going to organize a big birthday party for her and Ruth again?"

"Good point; I had not thought about that, but I am sure that the girls will like that. Yes, I guess I should talk to them about it soon."

And indeed, when I mentioned that to Ruth, she insisted that we stage something again, and Mr. Jones was quite willing to follow last year's example and offered his barn once more. Rue also liked the idea, as it enabled her to meet many friends and still keep her distance, on that small platform, and so I got busy organizing that again, for June 11th 2374, which was a Tuesday this year. We had to make the party shorter this year as this was a long school day in Rue's and Prim՚s class, so that there was going to be only a dinner buffet. As most parents wanted to have their kids home by 21:00, they'd only be able to spend a few hours together, but that was all right.

Before that event was coming up, though, and Mrs. Jones had exciting news:

"Mr. Mellark, have we ever told you about our son?"

"You mentioned him a couple of times, I think. Isn't he somewhere in South America?"

"Yes, he is, but he is going to come home later this year. He's been spending a few years there and has not been here for some time, so that you never got a chance to meet him; his last visit was just a couple of moths before Rue came here. Now he writes that this current contract is almost over and that he plans to stay here with us for some time. Isn't that wonderful?"

"I don't know much about him. Is he older or younger than Rue's mother?"

"He is twelve years younger; he is not even thirty years old yet."

"So, what has he been doing in South America all of that time?"

"Initially he went for an exchange program, right after school. He said that he liked the area and the people, and thus he went back and stayed for longer. We almost thought that he might decide to be there forever, but now we are happy that he will come back. He has not told us much about what he's been doing, but there have been some hints about meeting a nice young lady."

"Is he also a farmer?"

"He sure knows the basics, but we're not sure what his work was over there. The exchange program was mostly on farming, but do not really know much about what he did in the last few years."

"I would love to talk to him when he visits you. My twin cousin and I are fairly up to date on the situation here in Panem and in Central Europe, but our knowledge on South America is rather limited. Of course we leaned the ancient history, about European conquerors exploiting some areas and many locals centuries ago, but we don't know very much about the areas after the Great War. Since some parts of Central America became flooded and the turbulences there hindered sea traffic, contacts have been limited."

"Yes, I know. We had been hoping to get some more information from Matthew, but he has not said or written much in general."

I nodded, and I sure hoped to meet that Matthew guy when he was coming to the farm later in the year.

Now, work was claiming me again, and we started to look into a new project. Close to the still existing main old coal mine in the original District Twelve area, there had been a few others, long abandoned since, and initial investigations done recently had shown that most of them were still mostly dry. A team of scientists and engineers had suggested to experiment with alternate methods of energy storage there, and they had proposed two different systems. The first system had a large weight moving down deep shafts and generating electricity via a generator, while electrical motors could lift the weight up again later on. The second system used hydraulic power for the same concept rather than having the weights on thick ropes or cables. In some areas of Central Europe both concepts had, as I learned, been done on smaller scales, but they lacked the deep and dry shafts to build larger prototypes. In former Germany, mining had been done mostly in the Ruhr area, which was nowadays completed flooded by the ocean. Based on recent surveys, several old shafts in the Appalachian Mountains had been identified as usable candidates, and an advance team needed to verify that assumption, pick the most promising locations and prepare for the main construction.

For that work, our team was going to be based in the old district town; the former Victor Village in there had been remodeled into a vacation area, and there were a few hotels and boarding houses available. For most weekends, we'd be able to take the maglev home to Appacolia. The line between Appacolia and the old district town, the first new line which had been built after the Snow regime had ended, was still operational, mostly because the old district was the hub where several maglev lines met and branched off.

As normal for those tasks, we were a mixed group of engineers, rangers, miners and artisans, and on the first day we started to find our way from the town to the first location. We had picked the closest one first, and this implied a short walk only, as it had been within the former fence area.

Once we had reached the main house, which was still mostly intact, we first pointed a laser rangefinder down into the shaft, and it confirmed that there was more than 500 meters of open space downwards; that was going to be more than enough for a decent prototype, at least for the hydraulic version. For the version with weights on cables, that much height might not be best, as the increasing weight of the cables would impact the overall efficiency.

As with similar expeditions before, Rex and I were not directly involved with the exploration of the mine and the shaft itself, but were useful, for instance, to explore options to build a wider road to the mine; in this situation, as it was so close to the town, that would be easy. Thus, while most of the others still stayed here, I started with a much smaller team to explore access to the other potential locations.

On the first weekend, I continued working on Saturday and stayed in the area, and it was nice to talk to some of the people there. On the second weekend, however, I hurried back to Appacolia on Friday around noon time, taking my own car rather than the maglev, and I just managed to pick up Rue from school. Of course I knew her timetable, and as she had not expected me right now and here, it was real great to see her facial expression change when she saw me. Even with many other kids around us, probably including some of her own class, she did not hesitate to run towards me and jump into my arms, literally, while wrapping her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. My sister Primrose came up next, and when she saw me and Rue, she grinned and said:

"All right, Rue will be taken care of, I guess. So, big brother, will we see you at home, too, at some time?"

"Oh, well, maybe I could be home for Sunday dinner."

"I guess that this will be good enough; enjoy the weekend, you two!"

I was almost feeling a little bit bad. Rather than spending most of the weekend at home with my family, I was going to be on the Evergreen farm with Rue and her grandparents. I tried to convince myself that my main reason for spending the weekend with Rue was that she needed me, but I was not fully successful; I simply enjoyed spending time with that amazing girl, and as much as I loved my family, Rue and the farm attracted me more.

On Friday afternoon and evening we just relaxed; I mentioned some details about my work, and Rue told about school. Like before, school topics and homework seemed to be too easy for Rue, and it was probably good for her that she was soon going to start her last year of high school. As I knew, she read quite a few books on the side, and almost all of them were technical and scientific books, including such challenging ones as books explaining and discussing the special theory of relativity, first properly documented by the genius Albert Einstein. I had learned about some aspects, like the time dilation at high speeds, at school, too, but above and beyond a few simple examples and illustrations, that had been a little too complex for me. Rue, on the other hand, could explain some aspects like a professor.

"You know", she smiled, "just last week we started to talk about Einstein's work and the basic statements and real-life effects, like time dilation, length contraction, and mass increase at very high speeds."

"Real-life effects? As far as I recall, they are barely measurable, at least as long as we don't have any spacecraft being able to travel much faster than everything mankind has built before."

"But measurable indeed, at least with fine instruments. Anyway, my physics teacher, Mr. Jeffrey, knows about my interest in the subject, and he asked me if I wanted to introduce the principles to the other students."

"Did you do it?"

"Yes, I did, but it did not go well."

"No? Was that too much without warning?"

"Oh, no, not at all. The problem was, as he told me later, that my way of talking and explaining took too much other knowledge for granted, and I also juggled with mathematical equations too quickly. When Mr. Jeffrey stopped me, I had kind of lost almost everybody, maybe except Primrose and two or three others. He said that I definitely needed to look for higher education at one of the top universities in the world."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh. Now the terms others use for me vary between eager-beaver, nerd, and wunderkind, and I cannot even be angry about that. Not that I haven't been called something like that before, but now it's even worse; without Ruth around at school, it would be totally unbearable. I am different, and I just can't help being like I am. For me, it is so difficult to understand why almost everybody else thinks in a different way and cannot see solutions I can see quickly."

That likely included me as well, but I did not feel offended; Rue was quite special, indeed, and I did not mind her being so smart at all.

"Rue," her grandmother now stated, "you need to understand that, at school, there is always competition. Here, on the farm, none of us competes against anyone else, and we don't have to prove anything. We are all able and willing to like each other as we are, and we are willing to allow our skills complement the skills others have. At school, the easy looking way you collect top grades almost constantly does create envy at least, and some may see your way of talking as bragging, although we know that it isn't."

"Hey, I bet that even some teachers envy you and wish that they could understand some topics as easily as you can."

Rue shrugged and conceded:

"Yes, Mr. Jeffrey admitted that to me once, but he isn't angry about that at all; he said that he is very proud to have me in his class."

"Mr. Jeffrey is a well educated man and not a teenager. Many teenagers do not have their emotions and feelings under control that much, and thus a lot of grudge can happen."

"The school social worker says the same when I talk to him. But what do I do about it?"

"In your situation, Rue, there's probably not much you can do. Whatever you do and whatever you say, you will always be a nerd at least, and with you looking so much younger, some students will always be angry and jealous. With Ruth being your best friend, the situation will at least not get out of control, and you will have to endure your final year at school. For the time afterwards we will have to see."

"But some, like Primrose, are not jealous at all!"

"Oh, but she is" I corrected her. "She doesn't show it, but she is somewhat jealous when she sees how easily you get your grades. Primrose likes you, though, and that more than compensates for the envy she feels."

"Oh my God!"

I wished that there way a way to make this easier for her. On the bright side, I knew that she had usually a good time in the breaks by spending most of them with Ruth and some of her friends rather than her own classmates, and when I asked how this worked out she replied:

"Yes, this is great. Ruth encouraged me to join them, and due to my size I fit right in. And you know, it's real nice to feel like a little kid in the breaks and play little girl games with Ruth and her friends. They all seem to like me, and not just because of Ruth. Yes, they know that I am five years older than they are, but they don't mind. Ruth sometimes has work to do in the breaks, you know, as unofficial assistant to the social worker, but even without her, they all like to have me around."

I was clearly not an expert on social behavior, but I understood that girls in elementary school could easily accept Rue, who was about their size, accept as one of their own and play little girl games together. They had no knowledge of Rue's intelligence, and Rue did not compete with them; for them, she was just a nice and friendly little girl, albeit a very shy one.

[Author's Notes: I wonder if anybody is still reading this story? I'd really appreciate to get a review or two, if it isn't too much of a bother.]