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Tag Archives: For Moments At Seventeen



For Moments at Seventeen

(Because the Commonwealth is human-centric, and everything is measured in Earth years.  Silly, yes?)

If now is a time that is forever “after this last” and “before that next thing,” then the now, or series of nows, that comprised the six months after I had, by what means I don’t really know, delivered myself from indenture to a ring of flash and weapons traders, and before anyone had ever offered me a fee to take a life, were peaceful.  The verbal contract with the traders, a colorful but pernicious cast of characters who called themselves The Consortium, dictated that I remain in their employ for another full year.  If I had not been bored, restless, at odds with their methods, undercompensated, and underappreciated …well…I am still.  Suffice it, however, to say that if I had not been seventeen, which is to say had I been the mature and prophetic sage that I am today, I probably would have stayed.  A funny thing, the propriety of thieves who will cite you your obligation to the letter of your contract with the gravest decorum while robbing everyone blind and fatting themselves on the fruits of your labor.  Funny too are a young man’s impulses.  Perhaps afraid that, once finding me gone, they would be even angrier with me to realize as well that I had run with some sizable portion of their contraband and thus be compelled to a more fervent pursuit, I instead took flight with nothing.  I was to learn that, despite having left them with all that was “theirs” except for my humble self, my having broken my scoundrel’s oath and bolted at all gave them umbrage enough to pursue me to exhaustion, on sheer principle I suppose.  It was a decision on my part that I can’t even label as juvenile, for it was one that no other Nietzschean male over the age of nine, to my knowledge, would ever have made. Read More →

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