10th Ymiden 718
In the Empire of the Burning Snow Plow Cow Bow, grades were the be all and the end all. They represented everything that was worth anything about you. From the moment you came out of your mother’s womb, they gauged your potential. They estimated your future height, predicted the full reach of your arms, measured the circumference of your head to find some indication of your potential brain power. They brought in telepaths to ‘flash’ into the murky spaces where possibility and probability met, digging away in hopes that they could find even the silver of the greatest things you could ever hope to contribute to the Empire of the Burning Snow Plow Cow Bow.
In effect, they fed you your future from day fuckin one. They gave you an expectation and demanded that you met it. They charted the path of your self-actualization and, were it a boon to society, they gave you everything you would need to fulfill it.
And then they gave your parents a little report on how they were supposed to raise you to reach that full potential. They, too, were graded based on how well they parented. If they failed, well, they failed.
And nobody wanted to fail in the Empire of the Burning Snow Snow Plow Cow Bow Zow Pow.
Nobody.
While what you accomplished was the only textbook means of success, there were other non-textbook factors to consider.
Because a grade was nothing without a grader.
Because it also mattered who did your grade and from a very young age, Fiona yearned to be graded by the fabled grader Doran Cooney.
In the hierarchical caste system of the Burning Snow Plow Bow Now Row Mow, graders were the 2nd highest class of providers, superseded only by the administrators and tied with gadgeteers and coffee makers - and neither of those latter two roles held life and death over every other caste like the graders did. A failed grade could mean the difference between a good life and sub-par one, a second the difference between that and poverty, and a third could very well chart the divide between life and actual death - and the graders were notoriously, well, mood-dependent on whether they intended to pass or fail you.
A less discrete person might say corrupt.
Gold seemed to improve the mood of the average grader, but some of the above-average ones demanded tokens of a more… sinister nature. Some asked for favors that no one should ever be expected to give. Some asked for so much that you had to wonder the grade matched the price.
But Doran Cooney was not like the other graders. Doran Cooney asked for only excellence.
And many felt that bribery was easier than excelling.
But those many people were not Fiona.
From the moment of her birth, the telepaths and seers and teaching folk were all unanimous in two things:
Firstly, her bust size would never move past an A.
Secondly, that she was the most terribly gifted haiku poet the Empire of the Burning Pow Mow Row Mao would ever see.
And excellence, even in mediocrity, was appreciated by all within the empire
Her first words to her parents were thus:
“Love blossomed in spring,” she intoned in a squeaky, new person voice that carried her folks to a sunlit beach where the crabs played fiddles and the gulls died and nobody cared because nobody liked gulls. “At the green crossroads of want.”
But she never finished it. Her parents put her back in her cot and began a slow clap so infectious it spread through the hospital. The nurses joined in first, for they were sheep unable to reach the caste of doctor’s, but even the latter joined in too. What meaningless words! Even the scalpels and doctor’s tools chattered on their metal trays, unable to contain their excitment at a prodigy of such badness.
All except Doran Cooney, who was at the Empire’s state hospital that day for his fifth surgery after a gaggle of school children had ripped off his face.
From the first day of her birth, Fiona had already been rejected by famed grader Doran Cooney.
She swore, to the very unclogged healthy veins in her infant heart of hearts, unholy vengeance.
Some people had their parents gunned down by crossbow bolts in dark alleyways. Others had their planets blown up and sent to live on a foreign world where everything could be broken. Yet others dressed like whores and lived on an island with only women and hey, that’s not really all that bad - but those tragedies paled next to hers. To know, as she knew, that her gift in bad haiku readings was rejected by the number one authority on anything that had to do with grades-
Her life might as well be over.
But as time went on, as she grew and the prophecy of her bust size proved true, her thoughts on her first-day rejection softened. Doran Cooney wasn’t a seer, after all, nor was he a telepath. He was no potential estimator - he was a grader. She read every book on grading to make sense of what he was, trailed through his autobiography (He got his face ripped off by tiny children too many times for it to be a coincidence), and finally understood the man as she couldn’t as a tiny but weirdly sapient infant.
Because she knew now that he was a grader.
He saw what was not what could have been.
She had given him a diamond in the rough, unpolished and unrefined, when he was gauging her at the level of a professional bad haiku poet.
She doubted he would remember her, but now was her chance to change her mind. Her parents had pushed their life savings into 5 bits with Doran Cooney, and she was going to rock every trill she had with him.
In the Empire of the Burning Snow Plow Cow Bow, grades were the be all and the end all. They represented everything that was worth anything about you. From the moment you came out of your mother’s womb, they gauged your potential. They estimated your future height, predicted the full reach of your arms, measured the circumference of your head to find some indication of your potential brain power. They brought in telepaths to ‘flash’ into the murky spaces where possibility and probability met, digging away in hopes that they could find even the silver of the greatest things you could ever hope to contribute to the Empire of the Burning Snow Plow Cow Bow.
In effect, they fed you your future from day fuckin one. They gave you an expectation and demanded that you met it. They charted the path of your self-actualization and, were it a boon to society, they gave you everything you would need to fulfill it.
And then they gave your parents a little report on how they were supposed to raise you to reach that full potential. They, too, were graded based on how well they parented. If they failed, well, they failed.
And nobody wanted to fail in the Empire of the Burning Snow Snow Plow Cow Bow Zow Pow.
Nobody.
While what you accomplished was the only textbook means of success, there were other non-textbook factors to consider.
Because a grade was nothing without a grader.
Because it also mattered who did your grade and from a very young age, Fiona yearned to be graded by the fabled grader Doran Cooney.
In the hierarchical caste system of the Burning Snow Plow Bow Now Row Mow, graders were the 2nd highest class of providers, superseded only by the administrators and tied with gadgeteers and coffee makers - and neither of those latter two roles held life and death over every other caste like the graders did. A failed grade could mean the difference between a good life and sub-par one, a second the difference between that and poverty, and a third could very well chart the divide between life and actual death - and the graders were notoriously, well, mood-dependent on whether they intended to pass or fail you.
A less discrete person might say corrupt.
Gold seemed to improve the mood of the average grader, but some of the above-average ones demanded tokens of a more… sinister nature. Some asked for favors that no one should ever be expected to give. Some asked for so much that you had to wonder the grade matched the price.
But Doran Cooney was not like the other graders. Doran Cooney asked for only excellence.
And many felt that bribery was easier than excelling.
But those many people were not Fiona.
From the moment of her birth, the telepaths and seers and teaching folk were all unanimous in two things:
Firstly, her bust size would never move past an A.
Secondly, that she was the most terribly gifted haiku poet the Empire of the Burning Pow Mow Row Mao would ever see.
And excellence, even in mediocrity, was appreciated by all within the empire
Her first words to her parents were thus:
“Love blossomed in spring,” she intoned in a squeaky, new person voice that carried her folks to a sunlit beach where the crabs played fiddles and the gulls died and nobody cared because nobody liked gulls. “At the green crossroads of want.”
But she never finished it. Her parents put her back in her cot and began a slow clap so infectious it spread through the hospital. The nurses joined in first, for they were sheep unable to reach the caste of doctor’s, but even the latter joined in too. What meaningless words! Even the scalpels and doctor’s tools chattered on their metal trays, unable to contain their excitment at a prodigy of such badness.
All except Doran Cooney, who was at the Empire’s state hospital that day for his fifth surgery after a gaggle of school children had ripped off his face.
From the first day of her birth, Fiona had already been rejected by famed grader Doran Cooney.
She swore, to the very unclogged healthy veins in her infant heart of hearts, unholy vengeance.
Some people had their parents gunned down by crossbow bolts in dark alleyways. Others had their planets blown up and sent to live on a foreign world where everything could be broken. Yet others dressed like whores and lived on an island with only women and hey, that’s not really all that bad - but those tragedies paled next to hers. To know, as she knew, that her gift in bad haiku readings was rejected by the number one authority on anything that had to do with grades-
Her life might as well be over.
But as time went on, as she grew and the prophecy of her bust size proved true, her thoughts on her first-day rejection softened. Doran Cooney wasn’t a seer, after all, nor was he a telepath. He was no potential estimator - he was a grader. She read every book on grading to make sense of what he was, trailed through his autobiography (He got his face ripped off by tiny children too many times for it to be a coincidence), and finally understood the man as she couldn’t as a tiny but weirdly sapient infant.
Because she knew now that he was a grader.
He saw what was not what could have been.
She had given him a diamond in the rough, unpolished and unrefined, when he was gauging her at the level of a professional bad haiku poet.
She doubted he would remember her, but now was her chance to change her mind. Her parents had pushed their life savings into 5 bits with Doran Cooney, and she was going to rock every trill she had with him.
