I forget, have I told you much about my childhood?
Uhhhh. You were orphaned and you have an older brother. And then you were in the War. I think that's it.
OK, I'll give you some stuff I went through before that. I say "went through" but I guess it wasn't that bad. Anyway, I was born in East Chicago. That doesn't exist yet, but it will once the lake starts to dry up and there's prime real estate. My parents bought in early. They were the kind of rich people who were just rich enough to pretend they weren't. My mother was the one who brought money into the marriage, actually. She came from a Russian family though her parents had emigrated stateside. She didn't like to talk about where the money came from, so I assume it either wasn't legal or was so uninteresting that it's better to make it seem mysterious.
Ironically, they didn't meet here. They met while my father was backpacking in Europe and my mother was attending university. They eloped and I hear it pissed off both sets of parents, and they were even less happy when she turned up pregnant. I know this doesn't directly go into my childhood but I think the context is important.
Sure.
Everybody breathed a sigh of relief when my parents settled down with my baby brother--that is, he was a baby, he is obviously older than me--and got "real jobs." My father did different odd jobs for a while and my mother got into administrative work, doing things they didn't have AIs to do just yet. My understanding is that her family in particular kept them afloat in the lean times. So, at some point my parents bought into some small-scale nuclear company and it went big and they cashed out. After that, they didn't worry about money anymore. They had a house built in one of the developing areas of East Chicago and moved in with my brother. Richard was eight when I was born. You know how parents won't tell you you're an accident but the way they avoid discussing how you came to exist tells you you obviously were? I don't know how people had "accidents" in an era with so much birth control readily available, but they obviously made the decision to bring me into this world, for better or worse.
I won't lie, I grew up pretty spoiled. Things were pretty good, as far as I remember, until I was nine or so. That's when a couple of bullies decided I needed to be their source of amusement. Peter Litchfield and Calum deWood. Little shits. Litchfield came from old Chicago money; his dad ran an autonomous transport business and did really well for himself. All Peter had to do was not fuck up and he would simply inherit the business. Calum had moved into town from elsewhere; his family was up-and-coming, doing fence installations. I don't mean picket fences or chain link stuff you'd put around your yard, I mean wealthy people who knew the store were getting some serious hardware put together to fortify their houses, and Calum's family was on the ground floor in the area. So, he was in the same boat as Peter: just had to hang on long enough to become the new boss.
Clearly, they saw kindred spirits in each other, and they saw me as meat. I was a scrawny kid, small for my age, kept to myself. Quiet, if you can believe that. I went to public school because my parents thought it would be good for me to grow up around "normal" kids, I guess. They'd tried the whole private school thing with Richard and he had a bad time. He ended up going public for high school and did better, even if his grades weren't so hot.
With Peter and Calum, it started with name-calling. "Hey, toothpick. Hey, tiny. I heard your parents are loony." Oh, I guess the stuff about my parents is worth getting into here. After they got money and the freedom that went with it, they found religion. In particular, they started following this new form of Christianity that held that Jesus Christ was actually an alien who'd come to Earth to tell humanity about extraterrestrial life, but also God. I'm a little fuzzy on whether God was still God or some kind of alien. But they got really, really into it and word definitely got around, especially since they took up proselytizing to anyone who'd listen. Eventually, they'd take their mission to space, which is how I wound up orphaned, but that's not the story I'm telling right now. You can see why other kids would say my parents were nuts. I defended them because they were my parents, but objectively speaking they were kinda batty with that stuff.
Sticking up for them got me shoved around, and eventually I had enough and started fighting back. That's always the funny thing about bullying. Nobody pays attention if some miscreants are kicking the shit out of you, but the second you give one of them a bloody nose you get in trouble for fighting. We served out a couple suspensions. My parents scolded me but they were pretty understanding of me defending myself. Peter's parents went ballistic on the school, I heard, threatening to sue and everything. Let me set the scene with the principal.
The prior principal, Mr. Bonn, resigned in disgrace after a scandal where some parents paid him to get teachers to bump up their kids' grades because admissions to elite middle schools were on the line. The new principal was Ms. Reiting, and she was green as hell. She'd never served as a principal before and was out of her depth. As a kid, you can't really tell these things, but you look back and think, "yup, that person didn't have a clue."
She knew enough about the situation that she didn't think it was worth talking to Peter. She must have thought Calum could be reached, though. One day, she sat the two of us down and I guess the idea was that we'd find something to bond over and he wouldn't feel compelled to fuck with me anymore. She asked him straight out, "Why don't you like Bobby?"
"He's an oddball!"
That's one of the funniest ways anyone's ever described me, admittedly. Ms. Reiting didn't defend me at all on that, as if she agreed. Then she proceeded to tell me a story about how Calum was a micro preemie born at 18 weeks and spent months in the hospital where it was uncertain he would even survive. I mean, that sounds shitty for his parents, but he was a fetus, and definitely doesn't remember it, and had no lasting effects as far as I know, so why I was supposed to feel sorry for him over that when he was bullying me, I have no idea. But that was clearly her intention and she was grasping at straws. Then she tried to tell me I was at fault because I fought back, that because they knew they could get a rise out of me, I was just as responsible. It's so much nicer to be an adult and know you can just shoot somebody if they won't stop giving you shit.
Jesus Christ, dude!
I'm kidding! I've only shot people for very serious reasons.
OK, back to the story. The whole thing with Calum went nowhere, mind you. She got exasperated with the whole thing and just told us to leave each other alone.
That didn't work, did it?
Of course not. Two different things put a stop to it. One, my parents got the police involved regarding Peter and his father was so annoyed at having to deal with this that I am pretty sure he beat the shit out of his son and told him never to lay a hand on me again. I can only assume that's what happened because he very suddenly quit bothering me. Calum kept at it, though, and one day I punched him so hard in the head that I broke my hand. There's something about a kid in a cast that makes people not want to mess with you. I don't think I hurt him that badly but it must have made an impression because he didn't trouble me much after that, either.
I won't say the rest of school was smooth sailing, but that was basically the end of my bullying problems.
How long did Ms. Reiting last?
Two years? Rumor went around that Peter and Calum tried to make her life hell. Specifically, I heard Calum flushed her car fob down a urinal and Peter shit in her trash can. Don't know if any of that is true. I don't feel too bad about it if it was, though. That woman did me no favors at all. She was gone about the same time I bumped up to middle school.
I ended up in a different school from those guys, so I didn't know what happened to them for many years. I put them out of my mind for a long, long time. Later on, I checked up on them just to see what they'd been up to. Did they inherit their fathers' businesses, did they quit being little cretins?
I'm quivering with anticipation.
Calum kept having run-ins with the law. He didn't graduate high school, either. There was a lecture a judge gave him once that he could spend his life being a notorious loser, or he could make something of himself. As far as I know, he shipped off to Procyon to help do construction at the colony there. Peter fared less well by comparison. Far from being groomed to take over the family business, he wasn't allowed to do more than be a mechanic for his dad's company. He had a daughter out of wedlock and a very rocky relationship with her mother. He went to prison a couple times for dealing drugs. He finally overdosed at age 29. You know I went to his funeral? Not because I gave a shit, but I wanted to see, who would actually show up for him? Very few people, as a matter of fact. His parents came, but not his daughter or ex. Calum didn't show. Maybe two or three other popped in to pay respects, if you can call it that. I didn't hang around too long. Didn't want his parents to recognize me, even if they weren't likely to.
So you never felt bad for him?
Hell no. He got what was coming to him as far as I'm concerned. He made his bed, he shit in it, he got to sleep in it.
Compassion isn't your strong suit.
You can say I'm a bad person because I don't feel sympathy for someone who was cruel to me. Hurt people hurt people, is that it? That may be true, but all I've decided not to do is bully anyone else.
Except the people you killed to change the future, right?
That's not bullying! That's strategic.
I'm never going to understand your code of ethics.
I'll never understanding shedding tears over shitty people, so I guess we're even.