Arch/Eternal - Chapter Six

Esther Quinn: A Team Player

This is Arch/Eternal, a sprawling novel-in-progress in the genre of philosophical sci-fi. Think Dune meets Harry Potter, and maybe channeling a little bit of Dan Simmons.

If you’d like to start from the beginning, here’s the Prologue.

And if you’d like to follow along with the world-building behind the story, take a look at the companion series shamelessly titled A Terran’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Also, if you haven’t yet, try this out:

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Esther Quinn - A Team Player

People keep saying, “What’s the problem? You’re a writer, aren’t you?” Yeah, I am, and I’ll tell you what there’s a big difference between writing about political philosophy and somehow figuring out how to tell my own life story. 

Anyway it seemed like it would be easier if I could get someone to ask me some questions. And since this is all supposed to be my perspective, coming from my brain, it turns out Sky is the only one I can trust to ask the right questions. Thankfully, she very generously agreed to help. 

So here we are and…okay. I’m ready. Let’s go. Hit me.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

Ha! Thank you very much for the softball. My name is Esther Olivia Quinn.

WRITE ABOUT YOUR ORIGINS.

My…origins?

And here I was thinking you would be helpful. But okay whatever. My origins. 

I guess that means where I’m from, my family, etc etc. Alright. That seems like tmi tbh, but I’ll do my best not to overthink it. 

I’ll start by saying that I understand my privilege. If you’re a person of faith, you’d call me blessed. If you’re superstitious, you’d say I’m lucky. I like fortunate. Fortune feels like a big enough word to inoffensively express the terms of my youth. 

What do I mean? (I guess I can just as well interview myself, can’t I? Feel free to stop me whenever you want, Sky.)

I mean that I was born to two parents who loved me very much, and who were wise and good, and had money. Not lots of money, but enough. Viktor Thomas Quinn and Florence Olivia Lundquist (Vik and Flo) were each from old New England families, just outside the reach of trust funds, but not so far that they would ever face the hazards of poverty.

They were both well-educated at ivy league schools, where they met, fell in love, and had a baby too soon. They named him Adam, after a distant uncle, and he was a genius. One of those people born with extravagant endowments of intelligence and talent who seem almost supernatural to other people.

When my parents settled into a cozy home in eastern Connecticut (right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, I swear to god), they both had comfortable writing careers and a growing awareness of Adam’s potential. He started speaking in full sentences by 18 months, and at three years old, he was reading, and criticizing, books with no pictures.

ENOUGH ABOUT ADAM, MORE ABOUT YOU.

I’m getting there. 

See, given Adam’s early and astonishing display of potential, my parents decided two things: they would do their best to help him realize all of it, and also they’d better have another kid.

That was me. By the time I was born, my brother was a five-year-old prodigy. I was never gonna catch up, but I also wasn’t bothered by that. As early as I can remember, I just looked up to him, insatiable for his time and attention. And he was a good brother. He took time to teach me things our parents were less familiar with  — things like math and the more technical sciences, like coding and chemistry. Dad had collected two doctorates in philosophy, and Mom had focused her studies on comparative literature and political science. But to their enormous credit, both of them understood the advantage Adam would have if he learned to code as early as possible. 

They also realized very early that traditional schooling would be worse than useless for someone like him, and established a hybrid system of home-schooling, tutoring, and judicious involvement in vetted private schools, primarily for the sake of socialization. 

Mom and Dad were gracious enough not to expect lightning to strike twice, and I really don’t think it did. But thanks to such a precocious older brother, I was reading books out loud by my third birthday, and even though my books had pictures in them, everyone thought I’d probably turn out OK.

Our parents did their best to find us a good set of peers, especially since Adam and I weren’t close in age, but it wasn’t easy. Social engagements were scientific field experiments. “Observe and report.” We made friend with kids our age, but we were cautioned against showing off, or otherwise calling undue attention to ourselves. Home became a basecamp for synthesis and distillation, discussion and dissection. It was a place we knew we were safe to be fully ourselves. 

Neither of our parents were even a little bit religious. Not that they were militant atheists, but if pressed, they would probably agree that capital F Faith was an artifact of human psychology that had outlived its utility. Despite that, they preached selflessness and altruism. Human beings, they explained, always thrive best when they belong and contribute to healthy communities. 

I have early memories of my parents being strict with Adam. It was hard for him not to feel superior — probably because he was superior. But feeling superior pretty much always turns you into an asshole. Since traditional punishment was taboo in our house, my parents used emotional distance as their primary tactic of discipline. When Adam behaved in a selfish or manipulative way, they would become cold. Acts of service, on the other hand, were rewarded with warmth and affection. They were rigorously consistent, determined that Adam use his powers for good. 

As is common, they were softer with their second kid. I didn’t get much of a taste of that coldness. But I could sense early that Adam was never fully emotionally available. When I was little, and maybe all the way up until I grew up, actually, I assumed this was just the distance of his superior intelligence.

Because by all evidence, he did seem smarter than me. Smart enough to take over my education entirely by the time he was ten, having surpassed my parents in nearly every category. I loved having him as my personal tutor. Those were really happy times for me.

When I was seven, mom’s birth control shit the bed, and she had twins. Kaden and Kyle. (Dad got a vasectomy.)

No one knew what to expect of them. Adam was an ambitious intellectual generalist, and I was at least on the same road, if less dour and more aesthetically inclined. But the twins turned out to be typhoons of physical energy. While they quickly formed their own kind of twinspeak, it wasn’t until well after their third birthday that they demonstrated they were capable of using words other people could understand. And by that point, the other differences were obvious and profound. 

If Adam was a cold altruist, and I was a warm-souled incarnation of the tension between selfishness and selflessness, the twins struggled to comprehend that anyone outside of their little diode could be human, or worth their respect or consideration. It took all of us to reign them in. And while our efforts certainly tightened the sutures of our filial bonds, it wasn’t until they were well into their fourth year of life that we realized Kaden and Kyle just needed to run. Then, it was magic. 

They were body geniuses — their intelligence most vividly manifested in the way they moved, their reflexes, and their natural, uncanny ability to learn and perfect complicated maneuvers. They were best suited for team sports, though, starting with soccer. By the time they turned six, they couldn’t help but be locally famous. Other parents complained that their own children couldn’t get a normal, healthy athletic experience with those two mutants on the field. Each on his own was formidable, but together, in their supernatural coordination, they were unstoppable. 

God I love those boys. But this story isn’t about them. It’s about me and Adam. 

I should mention that even though we weren’t athletic phenoms like the twins, we were no slouches. Adam dabbled in all kinds of sports, and stayed fit to a fault, gravitating eventually to rock climbing — “the thinking man’s sport” — as an avenue of excellence. 

I, on the other hand, couldn’t get enough of team sports. Not that any sport came naturally to me. I always joked that I was a beater truck in a world of hybrids and EVs — for every hour of practice everyone else took, I needed three. But I was relentless and competitive, which compensated somewhat for my lack of natural ability, and I always got high on the energy of other people. For a while, my favorite thing in the world was lacrosse.

Until I got myself perma-banned from the sport, and for damn good reason. 

Am I getting too far off topic, or—?

NO. TALK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED.

Alright. 

I was eleven. But I was aggressive enough that I played for a league full of girls mostly a year or two older than me. Also, I whined and cajoled the right people to let me follow Amy, one of my best friends at the time, onto an older team. 

Amy was an excellent forward who scored a lot, so she was popular, and some of that rubbed off on me. Plus, I had an infectiously high energy, and a knack for stoking a tribal mentality that turned every game into an epic battle. It wasn’t an act, either. If what I wanted was to win — and I wanted to win — then the other team was the enemy. 

The last day I ever played that game was unseasonably warm for September in Connecticut, cloudy and muggy as the underside of hell. We drenched our clothes in sweat ten minutes into the match, and everyone was in a bad mood. If I was competitive on a good day, I was ruthless on a bad one. This was not a good day.

Still, we restrained ourselves as well as preteens can, and kept the shin-smacking to a minimum. But we kicked their asses on the scoreboard (figuratively — there was no actual board), and made them feel like they were just there to help us practice. Amy, in particular, was a legend. She’d throw away the points she scored like they didn’t matter. Like she was bored. 

At one point, the humiliation got to be too much, and they started fouling us. But honestly, it was such a pathetic retaliation that we weren’t even bothered. Instead, we taunted them. Snide comments, little maneuvers that would be invisible to the refs, and our coaches. Go ahead, we were saying. You can’t even score if you cheat.

Then someone from their defense broke Amy’s nose with her stick. She went to the ground. Blood everywhere. Coaches and refs rushed over to help her up. As she hobbled off the field, holding her face, it started to rain, heavy, and we saw the other team miming her, and laughing.

While our coaches were still busy with Amy, I called my teammates into a loose huddle. Keeping my voice just loud enough to cut through the rain, I laid out a plan. The other girls nodded. Some of them might have been spooked by the recent sight of blood and my retributive proposal, but most were seeing the same shade of red as me, and there’s strength in numbers. By the time the refs called us back onto the field, every girl on my team had agreed to the plan. 

Right away, we got control of the ball. But then, instead of working for a goal, we kept it in the midzone, jerking the other team back and forth a bit, getting them off balance. 

After a couple of minutes, we gave the ball away. We made it look natural, like maybe we were playing worse after our best scorer got her face bashed in. Then it was all defense, as we wore them out and prepared for what came next. 

Every girl on my team had a target. I was never great with offense, but I was a dogged defensive player, so my target was their best forward. I didn’t need to give them the signal. The other girl did it for me as she wound up for a shot. 

As her stick arched back for the swing, I coiled back and put everything I had into my own, smashing the netted end of my stick right into her face. She went down harder than Amy.

Every other girl on my team followed suit. Most of them made contact. In less than three seconds, eight of the other team’s players were on the ground. There was a lot of crying and screaming and cursing. 

Everything I’d read about the thrill of battle suddenly made visceral sense. Scoring a goal was cheap compared to physically cutting down the enemy. Knuckles white on the stick, I felt like a goddamn warrior. 

But then I looked down and watched the girl I’d hit curl up with her hands over her face, sobbing. A wave of guilt broke the spell and turned my stomach. I chucked my stick to the ground and walked off the field. I would tell you what the other girls did, how they looked at me, if I’d noticed. But I didn’t. 

You can imagine the fallout. It was scorched earth. A lot of the girls on my team, including me, never played again, and the rest had a tough path back. 

That night, my dad sat me down in the front room and asked me, very gently, to tell him everything. He wanted the whole story, no holds. I cried a lot. I couldn’t shake the image of that girl on the ground, face bloodied by my own violence. My dad didn’t say or do much other than hug me and let me get it all out.

After I had calmed, he told me point blank something he’d only ever hinted at before: “You’ve got a gift, Esther. You’re the kind of person other people will follow.”

“I don’t want people to follow me,” I said bitterly. 

“I know. But they will. All you can do is decide where to lead them.”

I don’t know where my mom was that night. Probably taking care of the twins. And Adam was busier than god around that time, so who knows where he was. That night it was just us. Just me and my dad, planting those words into a heart tilled by shame. 

I thought I understood them, but wisdom has a way of changing shape as it grows.

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A few items of business

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