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Second Floor Common Room, Wednesday Afternoon

Ender had been gone for the weekend, and since then he'd spent no small amount of time either in his room or in Tony's secret laboratory. But, he decided, it was time to stroll back into the common room and see if there was anything interesting he could catch on TV.

He suspected not, honestly. But sometimes - sometimes - there was an interesting documentary or two. Like right now-- a well-researched, thoughtfully filmed piece on the social and cultural development of early man. Because of the year they were in, some of the information would be out of date, Ender knew.

But at least it was food for thought.

He sat back and snacked idly on an apple as he watched. Speaking of food for thought - that fruit basket hadn't exactly been easy to find around here. He was starting to suspect someone had exchanged all the fruit for snack food.

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Ender smiled briefly. "Were you planning to go to college after school?" he asked.

He had a feeling the answer would be 'no', but he wouldn't assume.

Kenzi snorted and gave him a 'plzno' look, then relented slightly to say, "Not interested, even if it were an option." Seriously. What would she study? Well, maybe art. To be able to steal it better. "But I guess I can get an exciting job in fast food now, with my high school diploma." Like she couldn't apply to MoobyLand right now or something.

"There's a lot of manual work even outside the restaurant business you could do," Ender said. "Society needs those workers to survive, too."

He sat back. "So what do you plan to do?"

"That would implied I planned," Kenzi responded, smirking a little. Manual worker, pfft. "And if it needs manual workers to survive, how come there aren't any in your future?" At least from what Peter implied with his 'we have machines to cook for us, noooooo.'

Ender blinked. "Of course there are," he said. "The machines that build their homes don't operate themselves -- too much room for error that human ingenuity would normally account for, while the machines themselves make up for some human error just being there." He pursed his lips. "And the colonists only have limited building equipment as it is - what stands on Shakespeare now was mostly built with human hands."

Peter was just being oblivious again, then. Entitled dork. "I guess that's cool, if you're into machines like that," she observed, considering. "And you can make your house exactly how you like it and all. Peter made it sound like you all had computers doing everything." The show-off.

"Moreso than here," Ender acquiesced. "But that doesn't mean we live in some Utopian view of the future where no one has to do hard labor - we're still human, after all."

"Enh. That would be boring too," Kenzi decided. "Perfect people in perfect houses with perfect lives and oh my god I'd be on the first ship outta there."

Even if she did aspire to a place like Mr. Caffrey's. But have of that was the *getting* it.

Ender's smile went up another, if vaguely ironic, notch. "I think you might have just cracked the case of why so many people from first world countries are signing on for the colonization program."

"I'm guessing the people from the suckier countries are bailing too?" Kenzi asked. "'Cause hey, fresh start."

"Exactly," Ender said, "It's a good opportunity for people who don't have anything. Just get on a ship and start over."

Kenzi could get behind that. Then shot Ender a look. Naah. He wouldn't be in that camp, probably. "So things come out okay for you guys? Since you're six years ahead? That's good." She hummed into her coffee cup. "Maybe Peter will take up golf."

Then she laughed. A lot.

Ender snorted. "Being a workaholic is something else that runs in the family," he said, "Whatever we choose to use it for."

"What's your sister a workaholic in?" Kenzi asked idly. Peter, politics. Ender, exploration, maybe military? Same-ish thing. "Work work work. Ugh." Never mind how much time and effort she put into amusing herself. That wasn't work.

"My sister likes history and thinking about the ways our future is going to look like," Ender said, with another quirk of his mouth, "She's been working on a few history books of her own."

Valentine, he could talk about. Endlessly.

"Geek, geek, and geek," Kenzi teased. "That's cool, though. I mean it. Somebody's got to write this stuff. Although you are all way young to be so freaking serious, you know that, right?"

"Are we?" Ender asked, and took another bite of his apple. "I hadn't realised."

"Smartass," Kenzi diagnosed. "Although if everybody in the future is this smart and geeky, you should tell me. So I can invest in colleges or computer courses and shit to make money for my hypothetical grandkids."

Edited 2011-09-08 03:43 (UTC)

"Like I said, everyone's still human," Ender replied. He set his apple down. "Smart and stupid alike. The government's just gotten a little better at tracking down the smart kids, that's all."

"And this is why we should all have more than one identity. Or three," Kenzi responded. "Who wants Big Brother to know that much about us? Make 'em work for it. Or not find us at all if we don't want."

Bet Kenzi would've been jealous of Ender for having Jane, who could make that happen in an eyeflash.

"When your society is under the equivalent of martial law for as many decades as ours was," Ender said, "That can get a little tricky. Not that people don't still manage to slip between the cracks." He tilted his head. "Not unlike you, I'd imagine."

Kenzi gave him a long slow blink, and reevaluated. Peter'd had to be told; although Kenzi had been lying a lot more to Peter when they initially met. Ender was either even sharper, or possibly more exposed to less straight-edge people than Peter had been by now. She grinned a very little bit, and said, "What, I can't be some poser suburban chick, who likes to talk down the system 'cause Mommy and Daddy won't buy me a Mustang?"

Peter, Ender would argue, was sharp enough - he just never bothered to focus that on anything outside of his immediate self-interest, at least at this stage in his life. "Not the way you talk," Ender said, almost apologetically. "A good friend of mine grew up on the streets."

"Ah." Kenzi relaxed a tiny increment, sifting through that, and realized that Ender didn't have Peter's sense of entitlement either. Either the military thing had taken it out of him, or he never had it the way Peter had. Well, he'd been in military school since he was six; he probably never got a chance to develop it. She smirked, but it was slightly warmer, and more self-mocking. "I do okay disappearing in front of most people. You're good, getting me to talk enough to catch it."

"I'm accused of that, every now and again," Ender said, wryly. "Where did you grow up?"

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