[b]November, 3V![/b]

Euna is deathly quiet. Statue still. Her eyes drill into 3V with every bite of that greasy slop she puts in her mouth. The corners of her lips keep twitching towards a frown, but she doesn't comment on it. Barely winces at the sound of the crunch, does not comment at all on the fact that she's just paid for some of the least food-y food she's ever laid eyes on.

She can't keep the disapproval out of her eyes, but she never lets it become more than a vague sense of an expression that would like to be playing more fully across her face. In the end she just watches her friend eat dinner, and doesn't do anything about it except to make sure that 3V finishes every single bite of it.

Sometimes, calories are calories. Optimizing for perfection can mean climbing toward ever greater heights, but sometimes it just paralyzes you instead. Sometimes forward is better than upward. Sometimes to move, simply at all, is to win.

"I..."

Something shifts in the way she's sitting. Her finger taps a beat against the back of her other hand, and the rhythmic clinking of the metal meeting fills the little room. It's the most nervous she has ever looked.

"I [i]want[/i] it to be a fight," she says at last, "I want that heat. Or, well, no I don't. People who aren't me are gonna get hurt and I can't fucking... I can't stand it. But what the fuck good is sitting still doing me? In the end I'm going to lose everything anyway. No. What's the point in not swinging?"

Euna rises to her feet, and walks over to the door to her office. She leans against it instead of opening it, and watches the three of you with a very strained expression on her face.

"Sara's going to beat my ass to death for this. 'Oh, you let the [i]robot[/i] talk you into it, but when your own wife says she's ready you just--' Man. Fuck. Look. Just. Ms... White? You are the most interesting student I have had in a very long time. And I expect to see you back here regularly. With as much of the rest of you as wants to come. If you do anything to jeopardize that, I will never forgive you. So just. Keep that in mind. Understood?"

--------

[b]Errant:[/b] By design, the kid can't think rationally about any of this.
[b]Errant:[/b] The allure and the horror of Omelas are both supposed to be that the suffering is random. No intent. The child doesn't know why they suffer, nor are they selected with any malice in mind.
[b]Errant:[/b] But even if they could volunteer. It doesn't matter. It doesn't make it noble.
[b]Errant:[/b] You can assume that a single person's suffering for the sake of the rest of society is the best we'll ever be capable of, if you want to.
[b]Errant:[/b] But even in that case there would be more we could do to reduce. You've got how many volunteers? Why should any one of them have to go it alone?
[b]Errant:[/b] Why doesn't it rotate? Why doesn't EVERYBODY take their turn? Go inside the machine and suffer so that when you come back out, paradise is waiting for you.
[b]Errant:[/b] You can optimize it further, but I don't care. It's a sick system. 
[b]Errant:[/b] And if martyrs could fix the world we wouldn't be living like this in the first place.
[b]Errant:[/b] My point in bringing it up in the first place is that you can't stop fighting.
[b]Errant:[/b] Ever.
[b]Errant:[/b] There is always work to be done.
[b]Errant:[/b] Pass the torch. Share the load. But never accept that what's around you is the best that we can do.
[b]Errant:[/b] The minute you become too afraid to lose what you have, you get eaten.
[b]Errant:[/b] And you'll never be of help to anyone ever again.
[b]Errant:[/b] Lovely chatting with you all, as always.
[b]Errant:[/b] You may now resume mocking me for writing twice a year about popular musicians instead of doing 'real' good in the world.
[b]Errant:[/b] <3