Page 7 of The Champion
To read that I play a special part in your life is moving.
Let me reciprocate by telling you that I too enjoy our conversation as much as you do. Hearing your arguments is sort of like blowing your nose during a cold. Ordinary and yet fascinating to see how much discharge a tiny nose can hold.
Freya
August 6th, 2462
Hi Freya,
What happened to Dear Victor and warm wishes?
Did my message set you off in one of the famous Northlander tantrums?
Victor
My alarm clock went off, alerting me that once again I had fallen into the time warp of reading old correspondence between Victor and me. That last letter was almost five years old and so much had happened since then.
In a resolute movement, I removed the blanket and got up from the cozy chair I’d been sitting in. Touching my friend’s arm, I spoke to her in a gentle tone.
“Linea, sweetie. It’s time to wake up. We’re going to the summit in France. I need your help to pick out my outfit.”
CHAPTER 2
Speed Chess
France – July 2467
Victor
As a scientist, I considered curiosity one of my strongest suits. One thing that fascinated me to no end was the concept of time. How was it possible that time always seemed to slow down in the weeks and days before our yearly summit? Every year, my days felt endless as I waited for the summit to begin. Then, when the summit started, time sped up and a week went by at what felt like accelerated speed.
Today was a painfully slow day. Every five to ten minutes, I checked the time, feeling like it had been an hour since I last looked.
The delegations from the Motherlands and the Northlands were on their way to France right now and all preparations had been made for us to host the fourteenth summit.
Drumming my fingertips on the table, I ran over a few things. Double-checking that every detail was ready for tonight’s arrival dinner was silly. We had worked on the preparations for months and I had a keen eye for details, which made it unlikely that I would find any loose ends.
What I couldn’t control was the outcome of the summit. The participants from the Motherlands were kind people but their tempting offers to help my country out of poverty always came with the price of our losing our sovereignty.
The delegation from the Northlands were volatile by nature and never played by the rules of civilized negotiations. Over the years, they had threatened me with bodily harm when they didn’t like what I had to say. It was pitiful to see grown people throw tantrums and resort to threats of violence whenever they didn’t get their way.
Despite the many threats from Mason, Indiana, Thor, and Aubri, I still had my teeth and limbs intact. I was well aware that the peaceful Motlanders had helped calm the waters when things got too heated. So had Freya, who seemed a misfit in the Northlander delegation.
She was fiercely intelligent, poised, and dignified in the way she carried herself and communicated at the summits. We French delegation members had often spoken about how sorry we felt for her.
If Freya had been born in a different country, her life would have been much better. Women were oppressed in the Northlands and never given the same opportunities as men. In Freya’s case she was almost five years older than her brother, Thor, and yet he was the heir to their father’s role as the dictator of their country.
I wished Freya had been French. Then she would have had freedom to live out her full potential. She would also have had a natural relationship with sex instead of her archaic Northlander attitude that she wanted to marry and devote herself to one partner for life.
My fingers drummed harder on the table as I thought about the number of times that we French had argued with the Northlanders about their ridiculous notion that two people could fulfill every sexual need with each other.
The Motlanders and Northlanders were naïve compared to us French. I appreciated that some of it was a matter of cultural conditioning. But what I couldn’t understand was how they could stay that naïve after we French took time to explain to them the logic that defied their silly arguments.
My greatest frustration was with Freya.
The first summer, she had a lucky win against me in chess. I had underestimated her intelligence and wasn’t concentrating on the game as much as I should have.
The defeat hit my pride hard because as the leader of the French delegation, I carried the burden of showing the world that our tiny nation was powerful in knowledge and intelligence.
