First Draft: Chapter 13

It was barely even light out.  The sun was just a pink glow at the horizon, and darkness was reluctantly giving up its hold on the sky.  The air, not yet warmed by the sun, was still cold even though summer had only recently left us.
Five O clock.  We all gathered on time on the field by the FJC building.  “Alright Gentleman,” Zeus screamed at us, “I can’t tell you what great pleasure it gives me to see you all assembled here on time like this.  I was a little worried that some of you might not quite be able to make it.”
Was everyone here?  How did he know?  I looked around me at all the other cadets gathered.
I felt a hand roughly grab my shirt and pull it forward.  I snapped my head back to its original position.  “You want to lose your eyes boy?” Zeus yelled into my face.
“No sir.”
“Then you look at me when I’m talking.  Is that too much to ask?”
“Sorry sir.”
He let me go with a push and I almost fell into the Cadet behind me.
“Gentleman, I hope you came ready to work today, because if you don’t leave here feeling like you want to die then I haven’t done my job.”

I entered cautiously.  The meeting looked like it was in progress already, and so I quickly retreated and thought about leaving.  Hermes saw me.  “Jon!  Jon!” he called out, breaking up the rest of the conversation.  “Come on in Jon.”  I walked in cautiously and red faced.  “Here, have a seat Jon,” Hermes said, gesturing to an open chair.
There were about twenty other people present.  I gave a sheepish wave to everyone as I walked to my seat.  I noticed that everyone else there was well equipped with thick pencils and paintbrushes and other drawing supplies.  I had come empty handed.
“Well Hermes, would you like to introduce your friend?” someone asked.
Hermes almost seemed to study me, as if evaluating whether I was acceptable or not.  “No, no I think I’ll let him introduce himself.
I looked out on the faces.  “Hello.  My name is Jonathon.  I’m a first year student here, but I’m actually a native of Urbae.  I haven’t decided what I want to study yet.”  I paused, looking for something else to say.  “I’m not really sure why I’m here.  I’ve never really been interested in art, but I thought I wouldn’t hurt to check it out.”
Someone nodded to me.  “Welcome to our second meeting Jon.  I hop you find it interesting.”

“Take a good look at it gentleman, because you’ll be having nightmares about it for a long time.  This is quite possibly the worst obstacle course designed by human ingenuity, and you will do it every day as a warm up.  Anyone who fails to complete the obstacles in the allotted time will have to do it again, and again, until he gets it right.  Any questions?”  None of us dared say anything.  “Good.  Well, what are you waiting for?  Get to it Gentleman.  Let’s go.  Your time is running.”

“The format here is pretty simple Jon.  We let people share different works they have done on their own to begin with.  Then we move on to all doing some kind of group activity.  For instance last week we all drew portraits of the person sitting next to each of us.”

Zeus had us begin the obstacle course in pairs.  In each pair the men raced against each other, and the rest of us cheered them on.
I was paired with another young cadet named Ajax.  We were lined up at the start, and Zeus yelled for the race to begin.
Ajax and I scrambled through the mud.  The cheering sounds from the rest of the cadets swirled into my ears.  We both leapt over the first obstacle.  He was slightly ahead of me.  The roaring of the crowd was beginning to seep into me.  My old competition instincts began to creep back.  It suddenly became very important for me to beat Ajax.
With renewed drive I pushed my body forward.  We both leaped over the second obstacle.  He was still ahead of me.  By the time we got to the wall I was beginning to catch him.  I clambered up the wall.  When I got to the top I flung my legs over, and leapt down into the muddy pit below.  Some where on that obstacle I had passed Ajax.

“This next piece is very special to me.  I was trying to represent a lot of the various themes that I think make us all human.  The different colors in the picture represent different emotions.  In most cases I’ve stuck with traditional interpretations.  Red represents anger, blue sadness, and so on.  Another thing I thought was important was the fact that all of us have different personalities at different times.  That’s what the many different faces represent.”
Hermes nudged me.  “See?  Isn’t this great?”
I shrugged, and we both returned our attention to the artist.  “I also wanted to create a sense of being trapped or imprisoned by our humanity.  That’s why I’ve set the whole painting behind these bars, as if the whole scene takes place in a jail.  Now I have one final piece I would like to share with all of you…”

My hands clawed the dirt as I ascended the hill.  Once to the top, I swung on a rope to a platform, leaped off into the soft mud, and raced to the finish line.  I had finished almost a full minute before Ajax.
I collapsed into the mud in exhaustion at having completed the course.  Zeus walked over to me.  “Well done Cadet.  You won.  Now get to your feet and act like a man.”
Almost mechanically I obeyed.  My hands placed themselves in the mud and pushed.  My mud cake face was lifted off of the ground.  Then, unexpectedly, my arms gave way in protest at having been so abused.  My face plopped back into the mud.
“You will get up Cadet or you will run this course again.  Do you understand me?  You will stand up of I will make it my personal duty to make your life miserable.  Do I make myself clear?”  With strength I didn’t know I had I stood up.  “Good.  Never think you’re done Cadet.  You’re not done until I say you are.  Is that clear?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good.  You may fall back in the mud now.”

“I thought maybe a fun activity for us would be if we all drew a picture of the room we are sitting in.  Then, we could compare all of the pictures and see how much things were affected by our different perspectives.  We could also see how different people pick up on different things, and talk about that.”
People talked excitedly about the idea.  They rearranged their chairs around the room.  “Hermes, I didn’t bring anything,” I whispered.
“No problem,” Hermes replied.  “We’ll get you some stuff out of the drawer.”

“Congratulations men, you have completed your warm up.  Now this next exercise will tell me what you’re really made of.”  We all sat in a circle surrounding Zeus, who held a long slender stick.  “These are padded,” he declared, “but be careful.  They can still cause a lot of damage if you hit hard enough with them.  Your object is to get your opponent on the ground anyway you can, using your these sticks or not using them.  Remember, no hits above the shoulders or directly below the waste.

Hermes supplied me with a drawing pencil and a thick pad of white paper.  I positioned myself in a corner.  I could see the whole room and I could see it perfectly.  Clearly.
It was a warm appealing room.  Soft couches stretched invitingly for anyone who wished to sit down.  Plant life flourished in various clumps.  It was a very green room.  It was a very bright room.  Red carpet gave way to orange walls, and the ceiling was a color that many people have described as bright purple.  It was a well-lit room.  Light flooded all these images into my mind.
And there I sat.  I could not convey all the colors with only a white piece of paper and a black pencil.  I could not convey any of the colors.  But the shapes loomed before me with perfect precision.  All I had to do was transfer them onto my paper.  In my mind, the paper was already filled.  I could see exactly what I wanted it to look like to the exact detail.
My hand began to follow the pattern in my mind.  But my hand would not obey my mind.  The shape I had made representing the couch did not look at all like the couch I had in my mind.  “Hermes, I need an eraser.”

Ajax, my former competitor, staggered from the force of the last blow dealt to him.  We all leapt to our feet cheering.  His feet were wavering.  It looked as if he would fall any minute.  His opponent struck at him with enthusiasm equal to his last blow.  Ajax was on his knees now.  My view of him became obscured by the surging crowd.  I heard Zeus’ commanding voice above the noise.  “He’s still legal.  Give him some room boys; this match isn’t over yet.”
When the crowd parted so that I could see Ajax again, he had somehow returned to his feet.  His opponent was a man named Hector, a big strong man, and this Ajax was clearly the lesser, but he fought to hang on.
A feeble swing by Ajax was blocked easily by Hector.  Hector took another swing, which Ajax was only able to block at the cost of losing his footing.  A third swing was aimed directly at Ajax’s legs, and they were swept out from under him.  Ajax hit the ground with an audible thud that made me whence.  Hector threw his stick down in triumph.  A couple friends rushed to help the dazed Ajax off the field.  The fall seemed to have knocked the wind out of him.
Zeus pointed at me.  “You’re next, Cadet.”  I stood up obediently.  Zeus threw me a stick.  “Anyone want to challenge this young man, or do I have to pick?”
Orion arose.  “I’ll take him.”

Newly equipped with my erasure, I cleaned my paper and started again.  I had a steady hand.  It did what I told it to.  Perhaps the problem was not my hand at all.  Perhaps the picture in my mind was wrong.  But the picture in my mind was perfect.  What could be wrong?
The couch did not look on the paper how I envisioned it, no matter how many times I tried.  I kept erasing and redrawing to no avail.  Eventually, I had to let it go.  I had a whole room to draw.

I held the stick nervously, oblivious to the obnoxious crowd.  Orion held his stick fiercely before me.  I tried to discern his expression.  Why did he want to fight me?  What did he have against me?  We circled around each other, but it was like we were standing still and everyone else was moving.
“What are you boys waiting for?” Zeus yelled.  “Get to it.”
“Are you ready Jonny?” Orion asked me.  Before I could answer his stick swung out at me.  I blocked it instinctively.  He swung at me again; I blocked it again.  A third swing; a third block.
“Come on!  I want to see both cadets on the offensive here,” Zeus declared.
I eyed Orion cautiously.  He swung; I dodged and swung back.  In doing so I left myself exposed.  Orion struck my left shoulder.  He had swung the stick forcefully, and I had expected a hard blow, but the soft cushioning of the stick protected me.  Orion struck at me again, hitting me in the side.  Although my body involuntarily tensed up, once again the padding made it a rather painless blow.  I swung at Orion, but he jumped back to avoid my swing.

Nothing.  Nothing looked at all like I pictured it.  Nothing looked at all like I wanted it to.  Near the end I became frustrated and started sketching faster and with less care, seeking merely to finish the work and get it over with.  The plant didn’t look how I wanted it too.  Who cares?  Nothing looked like I wanted it too.  A few strokes and I finished it off.  Faster, faster, just get this stupid thing over with.  My hand was a blunt instrument, incapable of producing beauty.  A series of lumps appeared where I had intended precise shapes.

“Let’s get this over with boys.  Who’s ever going to win, do it quickly.
Orion, seeing his stick was not effective as a striking object, came forward and pressed it against me, trying to use his leverage to knock me over.  As you have probably imagined reader, the passage of time had only served to increase Orion’s stature.  He was taller, stronger now then he had been at sixteen.  However I had been growing too, and I was becoming a well built young man as well, although I was not yet caught up to him.  Mustering up my reserved strength I pushed against him and he stumbled backwards.  I breathed a quick sigh of relief, and then he was upon me again.

“How’s it coming Jon,” Hermes asked me.
“It is finished.”  And it was.  It looked terrible, but with every line I added it only got worse.  I wanted to hide it away and not show anyone, but, imagine doing all that work and having nobody see it.  There was definitely some resemblance to the room, but it was an inaccurate representation.  If it had been an inaccurate representation of the room alone, I could have handled that, but it was also an inaccurate representation of what I had wished to create.

I took the offensive against Orion, pressing my stick against his stick, my weight against his, trying to push him over.  He was leaning back, and, encouraged by this sign, I pushed even harder.
Abruptly, Orion slid out from under me.  With nothing to hold me back my inertia pushed me forward.  My feet scrambled to keep up with the rest of my body.  Orion’s stick dropped down to catch my feet and I fell forward.  All I could do was to put my hands out to break my fall.  Orion hit me with his stick as I fell, as if to encourage gravity.  As a final indignity, he placed his foot on top of my fallen body.
“Clear the field Cadets, clear the field. We’ve got a lot of pairs to get through today.  Okay, next couple!”

“Fascinating.  See, I wouldn’t have even thought to draw that.”
“I like your attention to detail.”
“Wow.  What an interesting interpretation.”
They chatted about each other’s pictures, and abstract terms, and all sorts of things I did not understand.  I sat silently ashamed next to my own drawing, infinitely flawed compared to what I saw around me.  They made reference to my work occasionally, but they complemented me only to be polite.
“I like your spatial arrangement Jon.”
Or, “I think it’s very interesting how you centered everything around the coach.”
But what did I expect.  What had possessed me with the notion that I would be an artist?  If I didn’t appreciate it, how could I have expected to be good at it?
I left quickly after the meeting, slipping away without staying to socialize.  Hermes, however, caught up with me.  “You seem down Jon.  What’s wrong?”
“I’m okay.  I just felt out of place there, you know.  Like maybe art’s not really my thing.”
Hermes nodded his head in recognition.  “Picture not turn out the way you wanted it to?”
“No.  Not at all.”
“Well, we’ve all been there Jon, at one point or another.  Don’t get discouraged.”
“I think it might be more than that.”
“Don’t give up after your first try.  Come again next week.”
Well, no harm in trying again, I thought.  “Alright.  I’ll give it another go.”

“Gentleman, your first day of training is officially over.  Be here at five tomorrow or I’ll quarter you.  Dismissed.”

Between classes, David ran into me in the hall.  In the course of the conversation, Davide asked, “Have you heard about Clodius?”
“No, what?”
Poor Clodius never learned his lesson.  All those years of school and the teachers failed to impress upon him the danger of expressing his opinions.  At the University, the professors were not near as kind.  The first week of class, an inappropriate comment had earned him a stern lecture in which he was told he was now a University student, and what was forgivable when he was younger was no longer acceptable.  (Flash only tightened the reigns on us as we got older).  Two weeks into classes, and Clodius had stunned his professors by openly advocating that Old Flash be done away with and true democracy restored.  There was absolutely no question in their minds he had to go.  Without further thought, Clodius was expelled from the University.
Reader, I can not help but wonder what the professors thought about their own decision.  Did they pat each other on the back as they congratulated themselves for dealing so well with the problem?  They probably did.  They probably though, “Well, there goes that problem.  We won’t have to deal with that kid anymore.”