Required Reading

It was nothing. Less than nothing. A glimpse out of the corner of the eye, a flash of color. Tell me, is that something to risk life and security on? For a stranger? And one you never liked?

I’m not a fighter. My parents tried to make me one, at least as far as their religion demanded. Weekends of camping rough and weeks of training in survival and weapons didn’t make me like it any better. I didn’t like fights, and I didn’t like camping, and I didn’t like being prepared for a revolution that never came.

And after father died, I didn’t like anything my parents had taught me. It’s all very well to believe that some supernatural force endowed humans with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But where was dad’s right when push came to shove? He died like other men, and they burned his remains, and he was as gone as the mythical Usa, that land of freedom that was the core of my parents’ misguided beliefs.

I was not a Usaian. I hadn’t left the religion because it was forbidden. The proclamation that anyone found belonging to the cult would be killed hadn’t made me leave. It was that I could no longer believe in it…

Read the rest at According to Hoyt.