1.1.01.01.037: sacrifices for the good of the collective.

[needshumility]

You know, ever since that port, I've been thinking about Violet.



She's my fiancee. She's pregnant. I hate her. I don't even feel slightly guilty for consistently cheating on her whilst here with Jane. Because I love Jane. Not because of her nose - that's for people like Tommo. But because she gave me something nobody else could at home - the truth. Which is a very, very valuable thing. In a world where everyone is stupid as a matter of course, which I realised myself in a Chromogencia meeting, and even more so since being here. We're educated, by Rule, 'until we're sixteen, or know everything there is to know, whichever comes first'. Our most clear answer to any question is just 'I don't know'.

So I'm cheating on her. I just don't care. It won't last when I get home. I am forbidden to even associate with Jane when I get home. This, right here, is all I get, before I give my life to a woman I hate.


Violet. She's Purple. Her father is Head Prefect. But her family is quickly heading towards Blue. They needed a high perceiving Red to bring them back. As soon as she knew I was over 75%, she forced me against a wall and kissed me. Soon enough, her father and mine had come to an arrangement. A very expensive arrangement, but that's how the marriage market goes, right?

Her being pregnant was part of the deal, because, well, I was going on a dangerous mission the next morning and might turn up dead. It happens. Especially at High Saffron. They paint the walls with Greed there. That's the colour which causes the Mildew. It's nothing but dust and bones in places. The first thing I knew about the pregnancy half of the deal was when she turned up naked in my bedroom. They'd paid my dad extra for that.

Security, I suppose.

Never the less, I proposed to Jane. In High Saffron. My dad would have let it happen. He promised me, if I loved someone, I could marry them.

The Rules won't. She was 'discovered' to be a Green in her Ishihara - that's a colour perception test - and we were complimentary colours. I couldn't talk to her. Let alone marry her. I am in no doubt Violet's father bribed the Colourman. (Incidentally, I can run circles around the Colourman sometimes - and there's very few people here who remind me of him. Una's inmate, mostly.)

I almost don't want to go home. So I can keep doing youknow with Jane, so I don't have to marry someone I was sold to.

But that would be selfish. I have a greater service to the collective.

That is the sacrifice I will make for it. Having the woman I love.

Don't take it for granted. Never, ever take it for granted. Because not all of us have the freedom to love as we want.

All those things you can have, without thinking twice - books, love, science, the ability to see colour, the freedoms you have, the ability to trust without doubting it - some of us think are amazing. Some of us would be in absolute awe of. Are in absolute awe of.

And then it's so very disappointing when you don't entirely realise how precious that is.

Comments

[needshumility.livejournal.com]

Mister Russett, thank you. I've had an Ishihara. I'm not a boy.

I'm also not sure if I got myself into this predicament, or everyone else got me there. It certainly feels like the latter.

[19centconstable.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid you have. If you've gotten this girl in the family way there's nothing to be done about it: you've got to marry her.

[needshumility.livejournal.com]

She's only 'in the family way' because I was engaged to her. And part of the payment involved me getting her pregnant. No matter what I thought about it.

So I still don't want to.

[19centconstable.livejournal.com]

But you still got her pregnant. It doesn't matter what you want now: all that matters is the child.

[needshumility.livejournal.com]

Except I don't want her damn child. The only person who didn't get a tauping choice in the matter was me.

I have to go back for a lot of reasons, but that - that is the one which makes me angry. I'm not selfish, but it would have been nice to be able to have the one choice in life I was actually promised.

And I used to think my dad was a good man - in the main, I still do, but I can't help but resent him for this.

[19centconstable.livejournal.com]

It's your child, Eddie, not only hers. And he or she didn't have any choice either. Don't hold it against them.

[needshumility.livejournal.com]

It might as well be hers and hers alone.

She's only pregnant because they thought I'd die. Nobody cares who the father is, just that it can see Red.

I'm not taking it out on it - I won't. But it will always be a de Mauve. That's all she'll ever want it to be. That's the only tauping purpose I have in her damn life.

[19centconstable.livejournal.com]

She's pregnant because you laid with her.

The child will care who its father is, believe me.

[needshumility.livejournal.com]

Yes. And that was something she, and her father, and my father, wanted more than I ever did. I hardly had a choice in the matter.

My father, George, isn't my father. Him and my mother married for love - and used the Rainbow Room to make sure their child had a high perception of Red. But he's the only father I have.

[19centconstable.livejournal.com]

You did have a choice, though. It isn't as though she held you down. You could have at least pulled out.

I'll never know who my father was.

[needshumility.livejournal.com]

... I generally felt like she would have done if I didn't agree. You do not say no to Violet de Mauve. There was an obligation there. I didn't even want to know what would have broken loose if I had turned her down.

Me neither.

[19centconstable.livejournal.com]

Then you must understand why you can't simply abandon them.

[needshumility.livejournal.com]

Not really. I was never abandoned.

[19centconstable.livejournal.com]

I was.

[needshumility.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry.

[19centconstable.livejournal.com]

It's a terrible thing.

[needshumility.livejournal.com]

I imagine so.