[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/5xgAJ5K.png[/img][/center] [b]The Sociology Corridor, Evergreen Grammar School Friday Morning[/b] Motion all around. A boy approaches from the right – [color=0072bc][i]Isn’t that that person who[/i][/color] – and says something about him [color=7ea7d8]“spacing out,”[/color] tone gentle. Then another, portside, darting through in a flurry of words – [color=silver]“himbeinglikethathavea –”[/color] that he can hardly catch. Alistair’s head swivels back and forth, mind snatching up everything it can as it strains to analyse and assimilate everything while still reverberating from the events of moments before. For a moment, he halts, putting a hand to his temple and rubbing it in firm, circular motions. Alistair breathes, compartmentalising. He gives a nod and a half-smile to the blue-haired boy alongside him. Then he turns forward once more – and flees. [b]Wimbledon Park Tube Station, Arthur Road, Wimbledon Friday Afternoon[/b] Alistair emerges into an irregularly breeze from behind the station’s threshold, the clouds parted to let the golden glow of the Sun pass, shining from its home low in the sky. He lets the corners of his mouth rise, a fine mist glazing his vision as he turns down the relatively quiet street. He holds onto some level of awareness, just enough to let him perceive the lack of traffic and step quickly across the road, but lets it go thereafter. He needs peace and contemplation, after this morning’s events. No sense in concentrating a part of his mind away from that. His gaze wanders down the track whence he came, his feet carrying him over the bridge above it, before a line of not-quite-regular houses in reds and whites occupies it as he turns onto the helpfully marked Home Park Road. He smiles idly at that. [color=0072bc][i]Appropriate… Joins of the few places of this city where I can feel like it.[/i][/color] A few people pass him by as he ambles down the lane – someone walking their dog, a small, wiry, bouncy creature that wags more intensely as he passes by; a group of kids that rush through on scooters, far too focussed on their own games to pay him attention – and in doing so are noted by Alistair, somewhere in his subconscious. They stir his mind, its currents now melding, now separating. The same, too, can be said of the iron-spiked gates to his right as they glint in the sunshine; the wave of the trees to his left, all increasingly bare aside from the resilient pines; the slight irregularities of the pavement beneath his feet. From his subconscious, like the motions of the Earth’s ferrous core, they energise the layer above. And as he enters Wimbledon Park, with its playground filled with eager children running this way and that, its rustling oaks, ashes and willows and the paths weaving between them, its glassy lake populated with geese, its golfers and (of course) its tennis players, there is more than enough to provide all the mental stimulation for a good couple of hours of thought. [b]Wimbledon Suburbs, Wimbledon About half an hour later[/b] [color=0072bc][i]…right – you’re going to have to make rules to keep those people’s preferences in check.[/i] “That means a group of people making rules…”[/color] Alistair frowns, letting out a sustained puff of air through his nostrils. [color=0072bc][i]And those people are obviously going to be those charismatic ones. There isn’t a stable system here.[/i][/color] He sighs, that train of thought coming to an end alongside the crunch of shoes on gravel, replaced now by the low slap of those shoes against tarmac. The roads here are much like the ones on the other side of the park, a little shabby but well-built and serviceable, though the homes and driveways are larger and the pavements smaller and less frequent – like the people, in that last regard at least. [color=0072bc][i]That’s the core problem with Utilitarianism… No account for human imperfections. If you try to apply it to a society you inevitably fail because the system can’t deal with the complexity. If you try to apply it to yourself, then [i]you[/i] can’t deal with that complexity. Just too much unpredictability.[/i][/color] He purses his lips. [color=0072bc][i]Though I suppose it’s more me trying to force it into doing something that the people working on it weren’t… Huh… Case in point.[/i][/color] From the other side of the pavement corner comes striding a boy – [i]the[/i] boy, the one with silver-white hair whose speech he’d barely caught in the earlier tumult at school, having apparently sighted him a few seconds before. Caught more than a little off guard, Alistair slows, then halts mid-step, seemingly frozen. There he waits. Thus, it is the other boy who speaks first. [color=silver]“…Umm, hello there. You’re a student from Evergreen, yes? …My name is Tyler Blackmore, an upper sixth at Evergreen as well. I…umm, I’m sorry for coming up to you out of the blue like this, but that boy who ran into you a while ago was a friend of mine. I wanted to apologize about that incident in his stead. …I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive him. He… he wasn't always like that.”[/color] Alistair blinks once, twice, mind unprepared and therefore sluggish to adjust to the new topic. [color=0072bc]“I… I hadn’t thought much about it yet,”[/color] he answers honestly. Finally, old channels open, long-forgotten social protocol clicking into place. [color=0072bc]“I’m Alistair, Parton – Lower Sixth. Thanks…”[/color] He considers, new knowledge melding with old knowledge and ideas, then nods. [color=0072bc]“You don’t need to apologise, though. If I judged someone for things happening to them that they didn’t see coming or doing something with results they didn’t intend…”[/color] He smiles weakly. [color=0072bc]“Well, if you work out how to predict them, I’d love to know. Otherwise, you don’t need to worry – I can carry on.”[/color]