3. THE WEEKEND LESSON

In the far future they seem ton have forgotten about love...

It was the first day of the triangle ending of a long week, and teacher Zoz breathed a sighlet of relief. It meant three days away from the precocious nippers, all in their late and witty teens, who, probably unintentionally, reminded him that as a perfectoid he had no instinct or desire for lust, that most human emotion. That was for the nippers and they had no reason not to play their games. Games he knew nothing about

He searched his memory banks and came up with Eros. Erotic. Eroticism. He even came upon an ancient image of the winged and naked portrait of what was called a deity. The games the nippers played now, though, didn’t owe much to the ancients. He wasn’t quite sure what they did when they were alone with each other (a contradiction he understood because he knew what he meant). But he was sure, quite sure, that it refreshed them and after the triangle they would return to school, faces flushed and ready to absorb more of what he had to teach them.

But it might be interesting if he did a bit of planning, now that he’d stumbled on Eros. As a concept it had probably been erased ages ago, but erasing his knowledge only erased its chapter heading: the bulk of the information remained intact but unreferenced and even possibly irretrievable.

I know what I’ll do. I’ll go fishing, he thought, and grinned to himself. There weren’t any fish in the waters that ran in a confusing myriad of streams across much of Terraful, but that didn't mean there wasn’t fun to be had. There were other things, the foshes, all plant-based and rooted to Untouchables. And those Untouchables were a delight in themselves, being the only sentient life native to the planet. They weren’t fish or anything like fish, but they did live in the waters, were perfectly adapted to that medium for life, and had long formed a perfect symbiotic relationship with the foshes. And they tolerated the way perfectoids and even some men sat hunched on river banks with magnetic fishing rods and seemed to enjoy detecting their heartbeats. That’s all they did: detect heartbeats, and if their antics harmed a single Untouchable all hell would be let loose. That was the law.

So Zoz went fishing.

What I’ll do next lesson, he thought, is teach them some of what I can dredge up about Eros. They’ll like that. I can see it in their eyes when this or that bit of play gets reflected in their learning. So I must dig as deep into my erased memories as I can and search out the heart of Eros.

Fishing was good and despite his best efforts, the chore of trying to un-erase materials that had probably been wiped from his memory banks even before he had been created in the workshops of Clingle became swamped by the magnetic impulses from the Untouchables and he released his mental hold on Eros.

Then a voice came to him. He usually controlled his senses and obliterated hearing when he was alone, because in his mind being alone didn’t need audio-reception, but fishing was different. He loved the ripples of the steams as they rollicked along, swirling with Untouchables and their foshes. The voice irritated him because he recognised it. There was no doubt. His pupil Fil, the lass that had been scarred in a freak accident and whose parents were unable to afford the surgery necessary to remove scar blemishes, was addressing him.

“Teacher Zoz,” she said, nervously.

“Pardon?” he murmured, not wanting to seem interested in the students during break periods, like Triangle weekends.

“I knew you would be here,” she said, her voice really quite tiny. “I need your advice.”

Advice for free during a Triangle? What does the silly girl think I am? I need to become refreshed just like the students need to be refreshed, and there’s no refreshment in offering free words when I should be resting…

“What is it?” he asked, slipping a soupçon of irritability into his voice in order to let her know that he’d had enough of the five of them during the week and now it was his free time.

“I want to become a prostitute,” she said, quite blatantly. Not expressing desire to become a mathematician or an engineer, not even a teacher of a poodle trainer, but a prostitute.

“Really?” he murmured, with no soupçon of irritability because he couldn’t be anything but interested in the statement made by young Fil. Prostitution was a noble profession and highly paid and despite their high earning prostitutes paid no taxes, their employment being a necessary relief to those in need of an outlet for their emotions that didn’t depend on Michaelmas. But Fil was badly scarred and prostitutes needed to be virtually blemish-free if they were going to attain the highest ranks within their calling, and it was his task to ensure that students always wanted the highest of everything.

“I was thinking of Eros,” he added, not really knowing where the thought came from.

“Eros? Who or what is Eros?” asked Fil, frowning.

“The ancients buried deep in my memory vaults had a deity called Eros,” he said slowly, struggling to extract whatever he could that might help the young woman in front if him as he fished.

“What Ancients?” she asked.

“They were, let me see, what were they? Greeks: that’s right. They were Greeks and they had a male deity called Eros, and he was a god of love, with wings and always naked,” said Zoz, grateful for his skill at extracting erased and almost lost knowledge from somewhere deep inside himself.

“Greeks? I haven’t heard of those?” murmured Fil, “and what is love?”

Zoz sighed. How could he explain the inexplicable. “There was a time,” he began, “when two people might form such a powerful attraction for each other that they wanted to stay together for the remainder of their lives. That attraction was called love, but it has been replaced in these more meaningful times by lust, which, being a transient thing, means you men and fems can have a great deal more pleasure when you play your games.”

“That’s sad,” whispered Fil.

“What is?” he asked.

“That people, we people, don’t know, what did you call it, love, any more. I’d like to meet this Eros of yours. I’d like to talk to him about love.”

“But you can’t,” Zoz shook his head slowly. “He is a story and I guess love must be part of that story, too. An embryonic kind of lust, from the olden times. Now tell me about your chosen career. You might need to have … treatment for your scars if you’re to be a well paid and highly renowned prostitute.”

She smiled at him, her smile attractively crooked. “I don’t care about being well paid or renowned,” she whispered, “I just want to meet Eros. I want to be loved.”

© Peter Rogerson 12.04.19