Second Floor Common Room, Friday Morning

[endsthegame]

It had been a thankfully calm and uneventful week for once. Ender knew better than to hope that would continue, though he wasn't so bound by superstition that he feared acknowledging it aloud. However, not exactly being the type to talk to himself, he didn't anyway-- instead he was doing so by moving into the common room without his laptop this time.

He was going to check out if the History Channel was showing something interesting instead.

Yes. Exciting.

He had a bowl full of cereal and a glass of milk, and he was going to spend this morning doing the closest thing to relaxing he ever did. Well. Second-closest. He'd already gone through his morning exercise schedule.

...

Nerd.

[[ open! ]]

Comments

[endsthegame]

"What is the situation like back home for you?" he asked, curiously. "You mentioned that the US is going by a different name these days..."

His Earth technically had the Hegemony, but that had been a union of countries, and was slowly being replaced by Peter's FPE - at least if Peter was succesful. But even Peter wasn't changing any countries.

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"Panem -- which used to be the United States -- is made up of twelve districts, formerly thirteen, and the Capitol. Seventy-five years ago, there was a rebellion against the Capitol. Didn't work out." There. That was pretty succinct. "We don't have a lot of contact with other countries, for the most part."

[endsthegame]

"Isolation," Ender observed. "Always a fertile breeding ground for repressive governments." Which he was gathering from what she'd let slip was the case. It reminded him a little of the colonies, before he'd managed to talk Graff into giving them more access to the ansible communications network-- though that had been government imposed on them from above.

He was trying to put an end to it.

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"We're isolated in our districts, too," Katniss shared, because he had an excellent point there. "I'm from Twelve and until this year I'd never known what life was like in the other districts at all. Are the states in your time still states?" From what she could tell, Panem was the strange one, as far as possible futures went.

[endsthegame]

"For the most part, yes," Ender agreed, "Though the country isn't anywhere near as powerful as it once was. We were unified under a loose world government for the duration of the alien threat, but since that got dealt with, the government mostly fell apart back into its previous component atoms."

Her world interested him, though, and while he let her mull over that, he sought for questions in his own mind.

And tried not to think too hard about Alai.

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"Did you have a centralized figurehead as well?" Katniss asked curiously, because the idea of banding together with the rest of the world sounded promising, unless they were ruled by someone like President Snow. "Or a committee made up of different countries' leaders?"

[endsthegame]

"Three people were in charge of the Hegemony," Ender said. "The political head was the Hegemon - we still have one of those," snort, Peter, "Though the office is now largely symbolic." but Peter had given it power through other means, as he always did. "Otherwise, you had the Polemarch, who was in charge of the space fleet, and the Strategos, who held the reigns of the military within our solar system."

He tilted his head. "Yours sounds like a dictatorship, but correct me if I'm wrong."

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"One President, with his Cabinet, in the Capitol," she agreed. "President Snow controls it all, though of course he has people working with him who follow his ideals or else follow out of fear. Yours sounds much more...militarized than my world -- we have Peacekeepers, and different classes of those, but not exactly any sort of standing military."

[endsthegame]

"That's the difference between a world trying to keep invaders out, and a world trying to keep rebels under," Ender observed, because the fear of any repressive government was that its own citizens would realise their own power. "Mine developed the way it did because we were constantly under threat. Fear kept us unified."

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"And meanwhile Panem's threat, since everything fell apart and it was formed, has been from within," Katniss noted. "Even if the rebellion was unsuccessful and we're still feeling the effects three-fourths of a century later. I'm sure if an outside threat had emerged, things would be different."

[endsthegame]

"They must have applied divide-and-conquer pretty well to maintain an empire for that long," Ender observed.

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"They have excellent means of repressing the districts," Katniss said, quirking a humorless little smile. "Subjugation through entertaining violence and leading by example, mostly. I think I might prefer how your world sounds. Much more organized. More transparent, though you can feel free to correct that assumption."

[endsthegame]

"Most of my friends would tell you my world is a bureaucratic, manipulative nightmare," Ender said, dryly. "Ever since the Hegemony fell apart, everyone's been fighting it out to see who gets to rule the planet."

That last part... was less dry, if simply by virtue of the fact that most of the people fighting for dominance were past friends of his.

"Though, with your world, bread and games-- that's an old classic."

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"The districts provide the resources and the Games, yes," she said, having never put that together before. Blame her lack of Latin. And the fact that I haven't done my Mockingjay canon catchup yet. "Do you think one person alone can rule your planet? I'm not sure anyone alone should have that kind of power, but maybe it works, if done right."

[endsthegame]

Ender wasn't going to bore her with Latin at the moment and as it turns out was more of a genius than his mun but it was interesting. "I think that after the war, we're stuck with too many people who'd like to try," he said, after a brief moment. "It might be our only bid at peace. Or it might be the start of a repressive regime."

Peter.

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"If there's that many candidates who want it that bad, that could lead into unrest itself. Whoever wins, there'll be dissenters," Katniss pointed out.

[endsthegame]

"Which is why whoever wins needs to be clever about the way they go about it, or it'll fall apart before they're even done," Ender said. Which made it even harder not to think about Alai, who was failing at it so badly.