Abandoned world: the Awareness - стр. 9

Daisy smiled and solemnly slit her throat.

Elder

Peyton thought he'd be better in a month. He really hoped it would be sooner, at least a

week. In fact, he was better the very next day. His eyes burned with a new passion, and all he could think about was Delaney. About what he would do to her when he got the chance… And most of all, he couldn't understand how he hadn't gotten to that point before. How he'd just fucked her without violence before. How he'd done it and never even considered that it might look completely different. Not at all the way the old him wanted it to. And not the way he wanted the renewed one....

He couldn't call himself young. No. It's not for him. Young people make more mistakes than they do right. He's not like that. He's wise and precise. Every move he makes is a properly calibrated final combination. One that deserves respect. And on this day, he has something new to explain to

people. Something new that they couldn't even think of before, because it's a new step. A new next right step. One of the twenty-four right steps in achieving the goals of Apollo 24.

***

The stream auditorium was full to capacity. Everyone knew that now one of the elders, Peyton Cross, would be announcing a new achievement of their station, a new successful step the station had come to.

This auditorium hadn't fit the entire population, or even half of it, in a long time. Only two and a half thousand out of seven. And now Peyton, looking at this meeting from the podium, remembered how he had cleverly thought of announcing that it was necessary to gather here, because from a certain moment only the chosen ones should listen to the speeches and be the first to know about new events. And how then, the obvious disadvantage of the lack of a suitable room had become a significant advantage to divide citizens, even nominally, into those who deserved to know everything firsthand and those who did not.

Then it was a lesson even for Peyton himself, who saw by his own example how one can successfully turn a given thing inside out, portraying disadvantages as advantages. After all, the most important thing is not what happens. The most important thing is how to tell about it. Because the one who tells about it will also keep silent about the most important thing in all this – will keep silent about himself, because without him all the above mentioned will not make sense at all… All this will not make sense without Peyton. The Peyton who's gonna get what's coming to him, not because he's the best. Not even because he deserves it. It's because he decided to.