Prologue
Fire. Another synapse provided a burst of electrical impulses, which formulated into a question in the adolescent’s brain. The seventeen-year-old’s voice contained a slight tremble that went unperceived by the doctor. The boy did not intend to be profound; he just wanted a simple answer to a simple question.
“How did we get here?”
Dr. William Osler, who considered himself an above-grade amateur philosopher, would have been very bored with such a mundane question if it had been asked by one of the other boys. However, he was fascinated by this particular student’s rapidly developing cognitive abilities. He was also slightly stoned. A question about the shaping of society could be exactly what he needed. After the previous night’s conversations, Dr. Osler surmised that the boy wanted to understand how man evolved its social system to become what it was today. A simple, but excellent, question. Dr. Osler had grown to appreciate that the boy always allowed him the leeway to provide detailed background in his answers, leaving only the question of where to start. Keep it simple, he thought, but also flood the boy with a good dose of truth.
“Throughout history, there have been four basic societal structures in play. Four doctrines that have been struggling to be the one real truth that will rescue mankind.”
This was Dr. Osler’s attempt at simplicity.
“We started with the doctrine of religious rule, where the guiding light was provided from above. Then came the ruling despot, which was sometimes in harmony with, and sometimes in conflict with religious rule. Like it or not, for most of our history, these two dogmas are what we have lived under. Democracy was a latecomer to the game, and it really only gathered steam when democratic countries became rich. Then a few political theorists created a fourth doctrine: nothing gets inherited, and people get rewarded based on their value to society. That sounds like a really good idea, until you add man into the mix.”
Dr. Osler didn’t pause to gauge whether his audience was keeping pace with him (and the boys were used to that). He was self-indulging, formulating much of his thinking as the words spewed out. The doctor had fed the youth a paucity of information for years, but now the boy’s desire to learn puts more demands on the conversation. Under the influence of the hallucinogenic, ideas came tumbling from the doctor’s mouth like a falling set of dominos. The two other boys that were there, paid little attention to the soliloquy. Over the past few months, the doctor had provided facts and opinions on everything from modern art, to science, to philosophy. Tonight’s diatribe on politics was the easiest for him to extend into one of his rants, and even easier for the other boys to ignore.
“As a young man, I believed that everything had played out to its natural resolution in the 20th century,” Dr. Osler continued. “Kings had lost their kingdoms, and the odd self-proclaimed despot had effectively succumbed to their own greed. Even religious reign was on the decline. That left a battle between the theorists that believed communism was the answer, and those that believed in the power of democracies.”
A pause. Not to compose his thoughts or evaluate his audience’s attention level, but for a quick inhale. The two other boys had already lost interest and they got up to head to a checkerboard. Losing some of his listeners did not bother the doctor, but he did sense confusion in the remaining youth’s expression. Nevertheless, he persisted. He was attempting to fill in knowledge gaps, without stopping to ascertain what the gaps actually were.
“Then, out of virtually nowhere, communism suddenly ended in Russia. It really felt like the great experiment was just a theory that failed, and democracy had won the day.”
In the dimly lit room, Dr. Osler sat in a maroon leather wingback chair and squinted through the slits of his half-closed eyes. His occasional glance at the boy wasn’t to ensure he was being comprehended … it was to make sure the boy was still there. Across the room on a matching sofa, the young adolescent sat below a half-filled bookshelf, staring intently back at the lecturer.
‘Where is this going?’ the boy thought. ‘What does Russia mean? Is he ever going to answer my question, or is he just going to prattle on?’
Dr. Osler took another quick inhalation of his ‘antidepressant’ and continued in his slow cadence.
“Even the Bolsheviks had to admit that democracy had won the doctrinal beauty contest. But wait! There were still wars, and where there is a war, there is usually either a religious or materialistic objective. And, despite the sham elections, Russia had left communism not for democracy, but to fall back under the rule of a despot. Then the democracies started self-destructing with their own would-be despots pulling their countries back to authoritarianism. Some even imploded under the desire to remain outside of a global economic union. Reliance on your neighbour is not something that comes easy to us.
All of this spawned from an era of manipulative intelligence, with truly little intelligence injected into the equation, so then we …”
Dr. Osler glanced briefly through his eyelids and saw that the boy’s expression had succumbed to bewilderment.
“Are you following me? Or do I need to go over some more of the history again or delve into the part that technology investments played?”
“You’re not answering my question. I mean, how did we get here, me and my father.”
“Oh,” Dr. Osler softly muttered, his words frozen in his head as he slipped into a soma-induced introspection. The boy wasn’t being philosophical at all. He had asked the right question, but the doctor had been supplying the wrong answer.
“You and your father … that’s a bit harder to explain.”
He couldn’t explain it. There was no way to explain the boy’s broken future, or why his father would want him dead. What are the acceptable motives for killing one’s son? In a way, it was related exactly to what he had been trying to explain to the boy. Society had evolved to make this proposition acceptable, but how to make this make sense? Then the doctor smiled. He took amusement in knowing the punchline to one of the greatest historical jokes: what had pulled down the great states of the twentieth century? It wasn’t war. It wasn’t global warming. It wasn’t a global pandemic. He believed it was the success of healthcare. Healthcare caused the bankruptcy of publicly funded systems, private systems and the goddam insurance companies.
When Dr. Osler first arrived at the Academy, he was given the usual warning about having any personal discussions with the boys. However, he no longer interacted well with the other doctors at the school, so telling students a few anecdotes about his own life experiences was a justifiable mental release. Now however, he had to explain why a failed healthcare regime led to a society where this boy’s father would kill him, the same way his father had killed the boy’s older brother.
“You know your father is a doctor, right?” Dr. Osler asked, unsure of where to take the conversation.
Osler paused in exasperation, while Jan waited intently for the doctor to gather his thoughts.
“There’s just so much you don’t know yet …” Dr. Osler said as he let his thoughts tail off.
“I know that if I do nothing, I die. What if I kill my father, would I be allowed to live?”
It was mid-August, and the doctor knew that the plan for the 17-year-old boy would see him dead in less than two weeks.
The Academy
The students lived on the school grounds and collectively lived an extremely isolated existence. Life at the Academy meant only seeing the school staff and the other boys. Four times a year the students were visited by their fathers, but beyond that, there were very few outside connections for any of them. The net effect was that most of the boys had absolutely no concept of the state of affairs in the world outside of their school. In their daily routine, there was no scheduled discussion of current affairs, just a timetable filled with sports, gym, meals, rest and of course a regular meeting with one of the doctors.
At The Corpo Academy for Development, very little mental development was encouraged. Physical development was not only the core curriculum of CAD … it was the only item on the syllabus. Any cognitive advancement that did occur, would be serendipitously developed through an informal osmosis. Most of the elite doctors didn’t talk to students outside of the conventional environment, but Dr. Osler liked to sit and talk with the boys. He didn’t talk ‘to’ them as much as he talked ‘at’ them, ignoring the responses that were relatively immature. However, earlier that year, he discovered that one student was eager to learn and actually asked meaningful questions.
Jan was 17 years-old and he suffered from hemochromatosis, a condition signified by too much iron in his system. The extra iron meant that he required less sleep and was more active than the other boys. The inherited disorder, known informally as ‘the Viking disease’, could eventually damage his liver but was very manageable if treated. The treatment was simply a regularly scheduled phlebotomy, a blood letting to temporarily reduce the amount of iron in the patient’s circulatory system. The remedy hadn’t changed much since a doctor prescribed leeches in the 1800s.
With far too much iron in his system, Jan found it challenging to cope with any lax schedules. Wednesdays were the worst. The mandatory sleep-in time for Wednesday was 11 a.m. It was difficult for Jan to sleep past seven o’clock. He would lie in his dormitory bed, trying not to squirm, trying not to wake his roommate and of course, trying his best not to allow the slightest thought to enter his head. His only chance to fall back to sleep was to suppress thinking. With great regularity, his mind wouldn’t let him slumber and instead it wandered to thoughts of what it was like where his father lived, or who invented the game of soccer, or how does someone become a doctor. He usually awoke at least two hours ahead of his school roommate.
Jan often fantasized about a life outside of the Academy. He had an analytical mind but had very little to apply it to. Corpo was not a place that would develop a student’s ability to apply logic or reason. Instead of mathematics and sciences, the student’s daily programme adhered to a strict regime consisting of various physical activities. The only deskbound education was based solely on the requirement to understand the rules of a sport or game. The Academy believed that sports and exercise were all that the students needed to prepare them for their life. Sleeping in, lots to eat, plenty of spare time, plenty of workout time, no academic studies … the Academy should have been every boy’s dream. For Jan, it was just life as he knew it.
By the time he reached the age of 17, Jan maintained the statuesque physique of a young man. An athletic young man. As a product of the Corpo Academy, he knew little about the realm of politics, governments, or finances, let alone about art, music, or romance. The only members of the opposite sex that Jan had ever seen were the two female nurses that tended the students, and a glimpse of Nurse Rossignol would do very little to excite an adolescent mind. Jan had been raised by a squad of trainers, coaches, nurses and, of course, doctors. He lived a life of game playing and sports as far back as his memory would take him. And Jan was good at it. The blossoming youth excelled above his classmates in most sports, particularly water sports and gymnastics.
Although they didn’t use the expression, Jan and Dixon Gémeaux had been best friends since they first met. Dix had been Jan’s roommate for the past three years. Standing beside each other, Jan and Dix made an impressive duo. They were both well built and had handsome features. Dix was taller, broader and heavier than Jan, and yet somehow it would be very apparent that he was less of an athlete. Where Dix was slightly overweight and slightly pear-shaped, Jan’s physique was more chiselled and better proportioned. Jan was a blond, blue-eyed boy of Scandinavian descent. Dix had unusual brown eyes with an undertone that was almost orange, together with chestnut hair, slightly olive skin and DNA from any of a number of Southern European countries. Very often at the Academy, roommates were not only the same age in years, but were also born in the same month. Jan was born on August 24th and Dix was born on the 28th.
This year their birthday celebration was anticipated to be the best one of their lives. Not only would they celebrate their renaissance, but they would celebrate it together, or at least in the same week. The renaissance was the final celebration at The Corpo Academy for Development, which marked the end of their time at the school and the beginning of a new life … a life together with their fathers. To Dix the renaissance represented the conclusion of an old life, one he would miss, but to Jan it was the beginning of a new life, one that brought new opportunities.
Despite all the anticipation, neither boy knew exactly what form the renaissance celebration took. Jan pointed out to Dix that it wouldn’t be like a Solstice party as there wouldn’t be other boys invited. Besides, you could never hear any party noises coming out of the hall during any of the older boys’ renaissances. The older boys had headed to Renaissance Hall in the evening of their 18th birthday and the next day their belongings would be packed into one box and shipped off. Occasionally, some of the older boys had been spotted a day or two after their party. They were laughing and smiling as they boarded the shuttle that would take them away from the Academy. Dix told Jan that he didn’t need to understand what form the party would take, just that there would be a grand party and that it would be in his honour.
On that particular Wednesday morning, in early June, three months before his 18th birthday, Jan lay in bed awake. He contemplated the transformations that would come along with his renaissance celebration. In the glow of a deep indigo light, Dix continued his tenth hour of sleep. Jan lay quietly with his eyes closed. He knew that he would not be able to go back to sleep unless he could stop thinking about the potential held in his new life. Jan wondered if his father would attend the party and take him directly to New London immediately after the festivities. He looked around his dorm room and thought about whether his new room, in his father’s residence, would be as sparse as his current accommodations. He didn’t begrudge his current environment as there was everything he needed, he just wondered if there would be a little more of him reflected in his new bedroom. Everything Jan knew about his future life was based on his own fantasies.
The light in the room slowly shifted to a warm tangerine as the 11:00 a.m. wakeup horn sounded. Two long blasts and Dix immediately woke, sat upright in his bed as if programmed to wake up and he began to talk about that day’s activities. The sports for Wednesdays were field hockey and tennis.
“Right, here’s how we’re going to win this thing today,” Dix stated. “If I’m selected as captain for the hockey team, I’ll pick you first. If you’re captain, you pick me. If that fat-ass Jet is captain, let’s both hide at the back of the pack, so he doesn’t pick us. Deal?”
In individual competitions in the school, Jan often finished in the top three. In team sports however, much to his coaches’ dismay, he was less of a standout. He would all too often selflessly make a pass to allow a teammate the opportunity to score a point. This was especially the case when they played field hockey. The superior player, Jan would pass even if he had a better chance of scoring. Usually when Jan passed to a weaker player, after the game Dix would point this out as a mistake, as if his expert sports knowledge were required for the post-game analysis. However, when Jan passed to Dix, if Dix didn’t score, he would never suggest that Jan shouldn’t have passed to him. Dix would find some other reason why he failed to score.
Within minutes of wake-up, all the boys of the Academy hurriedly got changed out of their pale blue elastane sleepsuits, then went for a quick wash-up to start the day. Jan and Dix didn’t need to shave. They were both at the peach fuzz stage in facial hair. Once ready, the boys proceeded to the dining hall for breakfast. Breakfast was always big but was also always extremely healthy. No bacon and eggs. The boys had never seen bacon or eggs. Instead, they had yogurt, whole wheat toast, all bran cereal, and lots and lots of fresh fruit.
The school grounds consisted of a vast campus with 20 low-level buildings, 17 of which were currently functional. The buildings by and large had a retro design making them appear as if they were built in the 19th century, however many of them were less than a decade old. The only buildings with an exterior that did not have the feel of brown chiselled stone and mortar, were the Administration Building and Renaissance Hall, both of which sat in contrast with their sterile atmospheres created through a mesh of green glass and steel. Even the outside of the dormitory looked like it was centuries old. The buildings that the boys used most often, the velodrome, the swimming pool and the new gymnasium were all built within the last five years. They were specifically designed to provide a nostalgic feel such that the boys’ fathers would relate to their own high school days. However, the fallen structures of their fathers’ youth had been authentic and there was very little that was authentic in the construction at Corpo.
The extensive dining hall was functionally located next to the boys’ residence. The building’s pleasing external aesthetic sat in contrast to an interior that was markedly stark. The large dining area was contained by high walls that were undecorated by posters or paintings. The walls were straddled with thick wooden beams that conjured up a feeling of history. Dix felt the room looked old and he said the place was ‘creepy’, but Jan liked the feeling of days-gone-by that the room evoked in him. He particularly liked the way the dark wooden beams contrasted against the plain white ceiling and walls. The actual room construction was prefabricated fibreglass, textured to look like wood and coloured to appear aged. There was nothing old in the dining hall. The room was large enough to accommodate about 100 diners, even though currently there were only 42 boys in attendance at the school.
After breakfast, precisely at noon, the boys made their way through the tangerine light of the cafeteria to the perfect bright yellow light of the outside field. It was another great day for field hockey. They jogged across the quad, past the Rod Laver tennis courts, to the Dhyan Chand hockey field where they would begin with the team selection. Because this was Wednesday, all the boys had dressed that morning in the appropriate uniform for hockey, including protective equipment.
The ample grounds of the Academy were laid out with several outdoor sporting facilities weaving in and out the more functional buildings. The tennis courts, basketball court, field hockey grounds and soccer pitch all appeared well maintained and manicured sufficiently to support professional level play. The grass was in fact synthetic, just like all of the other plants on the campus. There was a baseball diamond, but it was unused and sat dilapidated and uncared for. The soccer pitch, which Dr. O’Flanagan called ‘Paradise’, was right beside the student dormitory, and it was the only field that was lit at night (even though the boys never played after dark).
When the boys arrived at the hockey field, Coach Treinador was already there waiting for them. Treinador was a broad-shouldered man whose salt-and-pepper beard contrasted with his youthful physique. The coach selected the team captains for the game by throwing bibs at two of the boys. That day, he threw a red bib to Jan and a blue bib to Otto Penzler. Otto was a boy of Aryan heritage, with blond hair, blue eyes, and broad shoulders. His father was well-known to the doctors of the Academy as he was one of the wealthiest of the school’s benefactors. Otto was one of the few boys that was physically on the same level as Jan. He was a fierce competitor and Jan knew right away that they would have a hard-fought game that day.
Otto was first to pick a player for his team. He had respect for Jan but didn’t feel the same way about Dix. He knew that Dix would want to be on Jan’s team. and he thought momentarily about selecting Dix just to split up the roommates. However, because Dix wasn’t that good at field hockey, Otto picked his best friend Tam, as his first choice. Tam was a burley 16-year-old that looked like he followed a regular routine of ‘sterobics’, but his mass was pure natural muscle development. Tam loved to spend his spare time in the gym doing weight-training and he was a specimen that the coaches and doctors were proud of … next year’s model of a Jan or an Otto.
Jan knew that a team starting with Otto and Tam would be tough to beat. There were four or five other players that were better than Dix at field hockey, but Jan picked Dix first, as per Dix’s plan that morning. That meant that Otto picked next and was able to get three of the best field hockey players on his team before Jan was able to get his first real pick. Dix didn’t realize the challenge that Jan had perceived, and he was especially happy when “fat-assed Jet” was chosen as the very last pick. Unfortunately for us however, thought Dix, he’s on our team.
Despite the selection process, the two teams turned out almost evenly matched in their play. Jan’s picks were based on creating a team rather than a group of the best players, so his side was balanced with no weak areas in its offence or defence. However, as typically was the case, the game was a lot of running around with very little physical contact. Coach Treinador made sure of that. Thus, the play relied more on offensive finesse rather than defensive skills and Jan’s team selection reflected this.
“Nu nunner Nonno,” Dix called over to Jan.
Jan’s face let his roommate know that he didn’t understand the instructions. Dix spat out his mouthguard.
“You cover Otto.”
Jan and Dix were down by one goal with five minutes left to play when Dix scored the tying point. Dix was sure that his goal was due to his superior abilities. Everyone else on the team however saw that he had received an ideal cross field pass from Jan, which set up Dix perfectly for the shot. Dix was having a good day scoring. Jan was having a good day with assists.
Even despite Dix’s best scoring effort, that afternoon Otto and Tam were too athletic to be slowed down by 60 minutes of running end-to-end down the field. They followed up Dix’s goal with a passing play of their own to give them the lead. Then disaster struck.
Sometimes, the boys were split into different age categories for various sports. For field hockey however, all boys, ranging in age from 15 to 17, played in the same game. There was a significant difference in the stature of a 17-year-old boy compared to that of a 15-year-old boy. One of the slightest of the 15-year-olds on Otto’s team was a ginger-haired boy called Elf. He was a pimply faced skinny pixie-like boy who had just started at the school earlier that year. Otto passed the ball to Elf expecting him to pass it back, however Elf saw an opportunity to shoot the ball through Dix’s legs and run around him to receive his own pass. The move, known as a nutmeg, was executed perfectly. The speed of the manoeuvre led to Dix’s confusion, and he lost his balance as he tried to spin around to stop Elf. On the way down, he realized that he had been made to look foolish by one of the Corpo kids, so Dix swung his stick, not at the ball, but at Elf’s legs. The boys wore shinpads to protect the front of their legs, but a falling Dix had struck from the side and managed to break Elf’s fibula.
Jan froze when he heard the sound. It felt like the cracking of the bone had reverberated across the field and throughout the campus. Coach Treinador was quick to blow three long blasts of his whistle and an assistant coach immediately ran toward the infirmary. All the boys gathered around Elf. There was no blood, but the sound of that crack hung in the air. Dix thought he had broken his hockey stick and was surprised when he stood up and found it intact. The assistant coach arrived with a stretcher and two nurses from the infirmary. One of the nurses told the boys to go get showered. The game was over.
There was very little talking on the way back to the showers. Jan started thinking about something his father had said to him when another boy broke a bone. Jan’s father was Trevor Ericson, a well-respected doctor that came to visit Jan once a quarter. A tall striking blond-haired Scandinavian, his father seemed immensely popular with the other fathers. The staff at the Academy referred to Jan’s father as ‘Doctor Ericson’, while the doctors called him ‘Tre’.
Tre had originally enrolled Jan in the Gehirn Academy. As his father told it, fortunately when Jan turned 15, another youngster at Corpo broke his arm playing lacrosse and this allowed Jan to transfer from Gehirn to Corpo. Jan never understood why someone would want to leave Corpo, even if they had a broken arm, but his father often joked that this was Jan’s ‘lucky break’. While the misfortune led to Jan’s opportunity to enter his new school, his father begrudged that it also eliminated lacrosse from the curriculum. Trevor Ericson paid a heavy premium to move Jan from Gehirn to Corpo, and he made sure to remind Jan to be grateful. Jan was sincerely grateful for his life at the school.
When they arrived at the showers, the boys finally started to talk and eventually joke. Dix gave a recap of the game, accepting that he was on the losing side even if the game ended abruptly, but he blamed the loss on the poor defensive play of Jet. Jet was a dark-haired, tawny-skinned boy of Southeast Asian descent. He was only about 15 pounds over his target weight, but Dix often said that he was too rotund to be very good at any sport except perhaps weightlifting. Dix told Jan that it was because Jet ate too much, but Jan felt that maybe Jet was just ‘built that way’. Neither of them knew that the calorie intake of all the boys was being regulated daily.
All the boys showered again. The showering routine was mandatory even if they didn’t break a sweat during the match. ‘A clean body was a healthy body’, Dr. Primero would remind the boys at their weekly ‘sermon’. In the showers, Dix approached Jet with a wet towel.
Snap.
He whipped the towel at Jet catching his exposed rear end with the tip of the soaked weapon.
This was no fun towel snap … it was meant to hurt.
“Ow … what ’cha do that for?” Jet protested.
“That’s for making us lose the game … fat-ass,” Dix answered.
Jan was about to point out that Jet wasn’t even on the field at the time the losing goal was scored, but Otto spoke first.
“He’s not the reason you lost.”
“What are you talking about Otto Penzler?” Dix responded purposefully using Otto’s full name for emphasis, “No one asked you!”
“You lost because we scored more goals than you,” Otto stated. “You were a forward, if you had scored more, you could have won.”
Jan listened. Otto never struck Jan as particularly clever, but he heard something in Otto’s voice. Jet wasn’t even on Otto’s team, yet Otto was defending him. Jan wondered if Otto was protecting Jet or attacking Dix.
“Who cares,” Jan said trying to be conciliatory. “It’s just a game.”
Both Dix and Otto shot Jan a look.
“A game we should have won but didn’t because of fat-ass here,” Dix said pointing at Jet.
Jan had been coming to Dix’s defence, but it was obvious that Dix didn’t need or want him to do so. Dix’s last comment hung in the air as Jet was rubbing the red patch on his posterior.
“I’ll tell you what,” Dix continued, “let’s play with the same teams next week, and we’ll play the full time, and the winner gets the loser’s cut on steak night.”
Jan expected to hear ‘provided you guys take Jet on your team’, but the condition never came.
“You’re on,” Otto said accepting the challenge, then playfully snapped a wet towel in the air in Dix’s direction.
Cleanup was followed by lunch, which was always equally as healthy as breakfast. Today, it consisted of a bowl filled with ahi tuna, shredded carrots, diced cucumber and edamame, over the top of a rice base. After the food came a foamy shake that was served by the nurses. The boys got to rest a bit before the tennis matches, which began at 4:30 in the afternoon.
While some of the sporting events were organized to be competitive, the tennis matches tended to be a bit looser. There were no adults supervising tennis and Jan liked this. It was typical that one event during the day would be controlled, and another event would be left to the boys to self-manage. It was self-managed; but monitored. Since the boys ranged in age from 15 to 17, some were fitter than others solely because of their age. In the tennis matches, they played a tournament that consisted of one set of doubles. Usually the 17-year-old boys would each team up with a 15-year-old to even out the teams. That afternoon, the round robin was won by a team consisting of two 16-year-olds, one of whom was Tam. All the boys were amused with that outcome as it had been the first time in recent memory that neither Jan, Dix nor Otto had made it to the tennis finals.
Dinner followed tennis, which on Wednesdays was particularly worth savouring as the boys dined on bone-in ribeye steaks. The red meat diet wasn’t good for Jan’s hemochromatosis, but no one seemed to care. Jan noticed that Elf wasn’t at the dining table. He liked Elf and had treated him like a little brother ever since he arrived. Elf was smart and funny and had even joined Jan for a couple of Dr. Osler’s rants. Jan had thought that maybe he could teach Elf how to read, the way Dr. Osler had taught him during their unscheduled time.
Evenings on Wednesdays were also light. The boys had free time, which they usually filled by playing tag, or fooling around in their rooms. A few boys, like Tam, headed over to the gym for some extra weight training. Jan often went down to the main floor lounge in his residence.
The sizable lounge was one of the few decorated rooms on the campus. The room resembled an 18th century Victorian sitting room, complete with deep-coloured mahogany bookshelves. Here, you’d find ornaments and the only books on campus that were accessible to the boys. The books were as ornamental as anything else in the room. The sofas and chairs that filled the room were a deep maroon leather with brass metal studs highlighting their shape. Jan just liked sitting in the lounge, especially if Dr. Osler was sitting in one of the comfy wingback reading chairs. The doctor was on evening duty on Wednesdays and Sundays, and Jan would listen to him discuss aspects of his life beyond the school. It was during this downtime with Dr. Osler that Jan had eventually learned how to read. Jan had always flipped through the pages of the lounge’s books looking at the pictures and eventually he asked Dr. Osler to explain how the words functioned. The doctor clearly liked Jan and he liked his willingness to learn, but what really impressed him was how much the boy had taught himself. Dr. Osler even thought that, given half the chance, Jan could make a decent doctor himself.
That particular evening, after field hockey and tennis, Otto, Dix and Jan were hanging out in the lounge reflecting on their day’s performance, as Dr. Osler reviewed a few notes on his digivice.
“Otto, what does your father do for a living?” Jan asked.
“I don’t know. Why? Who cares?”
“Well, when’s your renaissance?”
“The third of November … why?” Otto asked getting frustrated with having to answer questions. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to talk about this particular subject, as much as Otto wasn’t used to someone asking two or three questions in a row.
“It’s just that you’ll be leaving here a few months after we do, and I just thought you’d know what you’ll be doing,” Jan answered.
“It will be the end of happy days for the three of you,” Dr. Osler contributed as he looked up, glassy-eyed, from his digivice.
“What I’ll be doing is working,” Otto snipped, seeming to not even notice Dr. Osler’s comment.
“And what I’ll be doing is working,” Dix added. “And what you’ll be doing is working. And what none of us will be doing is playing … anymore!”
“Yeah, but don’t you think it could be fun at work?” Jan asked.
“You’re crazy,” Otto responded. “There is nothing fun about work … that’s why they call it work.”
“I don’t know,” Jan continued. “My father seems to enjoy his work.”
“Yeah,” Dix added, “mine too … but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t rather be playing. Look at the doctors here … do you think they’d rather be checking our temperatures or playing golf? Honestly Jan, I don’t know how you are going to survive out there without me.’
“My father told me to enjoy playing while I could,” Otto stated, “because he said after my renaissance my life would be over. It sounds to me like work will not be what you’re thinking it is Jan.”
“Oh,” Jan spoke semi-introspectively, “my father said we’ll be together after the renaissance and that sounds perfect to me.”
“Otto’s father meant that you should do less thinking and more playing Jan, now let’s go get the checkerboard and play a game.”
“Can we play chess instead?” Jan asked.
“I don’t get that game,” Dix responded. “It’s too complicated.”
“I’ll play you,” Otto said to Dix.
The two boys took the checkerboard off the shelf and started setting up for a game.
“I’ll play you a game of chess,” Dr. Osler called out from his corner chair.
“Really!” Jan blurted enthusiastically. “I’ll go get the board.”
They played chess for an hour and although the doctor won, there were a few tense moments when he thought Jan had him cornered. Dr. Osler tried to coach Jan a few times, but soon realized he didn’t need coaching. Regardless, Dr. Osler liked to talk while he played. The doctor liked to talk in general, and usually dipped into the realm of philosophy.
“Don’t surround yourself with yourself,” Dr. Osler said. “Move on back two squares.”
Jan ignored the kludge advice and asked Dr. Osler if he remembered when the boys used to play lacrosse.
“Oh yea,” Dr. Osler replied. “We had to drop that sport after one game, when some kid broke his arm.”
“What happened?” Jan asked.
“Well, there was a plan to start playing lacrosse, even though most fathers were against introducing the sport. One father, I think he was Canadian, really wanted to see his son play. Eventually, it was added to the curriculum and all the boys had to wear helmets, facemasks, shoulder pads and shin guards when they played. In the very first game, there was a particularly hard wallop across one boy’s arm … and that was it for the Canadian.”
“But what happened to the boy?” Jan asked.
“Well, he was no longer Corpo material, I guess,” Dr. Osler joked. The doctor saw the seriousness in Jan’s face and added, “Shortly after recovering from his wound, he transferred to another school. As a side-effect of the injury, lacrosse was discontinued and replaced by a non-competitive, relatively safer game of tennis, where the coaches downplayed the competitive aspects and stressed the fun. There was the odd scraped knee after tennis matches, but there was never a broken bone.”
“I think Elf broke a bone today,” Dix called out from the checkerboard, taking no responsibility for the youngster’s injury.
“What do you think will happen to Elf?” Jan asked.
“Well, if he broke a bone, then he’s probably no longer Corpo material,” Dr. Osler replied.
“So, if I break a bone, I’d get kicked out the school?” Jan asked a little frantically.
“No, no … if YOU broke a bone, your father would have our collective necks.”
And so it was, every Wednesday consisted of sleeping-in, getting up, having breakfast, playing field hockey, showering, having lunch, playing tennis, having steak dinner and then having two hours of free-time to play games and amuse yourself before lights-out. Even though there was no place in the formal agenda for the three Rs (and absolutely zero religious’ studies), Jan had been educating himself by asking Dr. Osler questions.
Thursdays were more demanding, with an early rise and a full day of sports that included a swimming competition followed by an afternoon in the velodrome. Thursday was Jan’s favourite day.
