Day Seventeen

There was the desk, a light honey-coloured plastic with a comshape chair perversely set to keep the occupant's posture rigid, their attention fully forward on the short, silver man, his glass eyes dusty, his shirt achingly white. His words were a clatter of consonants, heavy things tumbling from a thin face with too many articulated points. The professor emeritus occasionally waved his hands at the catalog that flitted around him, projecting citations and references for the full oval lecture hall. There were no scrapings of pens, no rustle of paper, each of these students were hand-chosen impressionists of the college and absorbed his words with a linear nicety, would later compare and contrast tone recognition, share overtones of inflection to make sure each had obtained the most accurate memory of the event.
Betaine was oddly bored, did not slouch even while bored. His polished shoes made no sound as he slammed his heel against the floor and he realized he was lost in a dream, stared at his fellow students who wore, to a one, the withdrawn intensity of memory absorption. He looked down at his hands, the long, pale fingers, the shiny knuckles, the lack of freckles, moles, scars oddly worrying. They were the hands of blank moderation and so different from her hands.
"Saul, you're not listening."
Whose hands?
"I am listening, Professor Kmep," he replied, laying his hands flat against the desk, wishing he had something to fiddle with. He didn't have to focus to remember this; perfect recollection was easy for him, a natural gift. It was sorting the data afterwards that was difficult.
"You are not, or you would know this is not the recollection you believe it to be."
"It's a dream. Yes, I'm aware."
Had the professor possessed any hint of egotism or desire to chastise, Betaine wouldn't have resented him so much. Kmep was brilliance amplified through perfect awareness of his faults, obtained over several lifetimes of self-reflection and careful control, and knew, as Betaine knew, that they would have been close friends once the young man got over his obsession, his phase, with purpose. Betaine's desire to prove him, and not just him, all his sort, wrong about this "phase, this flight of fancy" was simply made stronger and more shameful by the knowledge that his teachers were right. As it was, invisible arguments cluttered the silence between them. It was as difficult for Kmep to speak to him as it was for Betaine to listen to the professor.
"You are not aware nor are you listening yet otherwise you wouldn't perpetually be stuck at the mercy of others."
"The girl?"
"What? Oh, no. She has you honestly. You should ask her to show you the suit she's wearing. She might say no, but ahhh, if she's going to get what she wants anyway, may as well get something you want in return."
The other students in the hall had vanished and Betaine couldn't pinpoint when they had disappeared. Kmep remained at his own wide, polished stone lab table, occasionally laying a silvered finger against it pointedly. There was too much going on! How did they expect him to focus?
"I'm not asking you to focus. I'm telling you to listen. That was always your problem: too talented in too many things. Your skills would crowd up clamoring for your attention any time the smallest thing needed doing. You've been drowning in brains again.
No, I'm talking about the whole Planet ordeal. I believe you have no idea what's at stake here."
Betaine opened his mouth, felt a bitter drip of panic at the back of his throat, bit his teeth together before speaking.
"No, I don't. What does it really matter if a ten thousand year old person goes missing for a few months, a year, maybe more? Perhaps when you've been living as long as her and Bala, you cling to the familiar, but no, they've spent decades not speaking to each other. I honestly believe she doesn't need finding and that I'm getting paid an obscene amount of money to soothe a stupid goddess' fears!"
He found himself standing, hands trembling in a shocking loss of control. Kmep's expression hadn't changed at all through their discussion, but now carried a trace of anger. The desks had vanished, leaving a plain, oval room.
"Perhaps it would have been better if you had merely recalled the lecture I was giving before you began imposing your inadequacies on an otherwise pristine memory. Can you remember what it was about, Saul?"
A heavy lock of hair poked his eyelid as Betaine shook his head sharply. Irritating, out of place, but his hand wouldn't move to push it away. His outburst had shocked himself.
"Motivation. You were, ehhh, discussing the individual's need for action."
"Wrong! I was talking about the individual's need to cause. There is an evolution of needs in a sentient being which is the heart of Feynermann's Theory of Purpose. Foresight only extends as far forward as experience does back, which is why the needs of youth revolve around immediate effect, immediate consequence. You suffer from this; everyone does. It's good and necessary. Immediate results from experimentation give undeniable feedback in order to rule out that which is unimportant to a sentient being's fulfillment."
"Purpose doesn't require noticeable results, you said."
Kmep nodded, his chin a guillotine edge.
"You insist upon thinking about purpose as a thing, a set of actions which produce immediate cellular fulfillment, such as when you initiate a mnemonic trance or even get up in the morning, that create self-sustained immortality. Nothing could be further from the truth. Purpose is that which needs no fulfillment, action that needs no consequence. Don't mistake it for 'what is natural' either. Billions still die across the great, glorious face of the Universe simply because their purpose may be an action alien to them."
"You just said it wasn't a set of actions and immediately contradicted yourself," said Betaine, not bothering to conceal the smugness from his voice. Even an imaginary victory meant something.
"I'm attempting to explain it to you in a way that won't take you another twenty years to process. To be honest, words will always fail when you attempt to discover what purpose is because we still don't know! Oh, we have hints, bits and pieces, but I would guess that even were Feynermann still alive today, he could not give you a solid answer himself. All we know is that it is."
Betaine shook his head again, this time tugging swiftly and savagely on the errant strand of hair, smoothing it back into place.
"You talk about something with no definition as if you want to confuse me further. What does purpose have to do with being controlled by others?"
"What it has to do with control is that you insist upon judging others by what they want to do and not what they need to do and you never, ever plan for an action that may have no foreseeable consequence."
Understanding came in a rush of blood, colouring Betaine's cheeks the shade of roses, his hand frozen still on the back of his head.
"What Planet would need..."
Kmep began walking sedately away from Betaine, his fingers clasped behind his back, nestled in the creases of his shirt, resembling pebbles in snow. His steps were small, but each one took him a dozen yards.
"No!" shouted Betaine, "if I'm so wise, what do I do about the girl?"
His ears didn't register the words even though his lips knew he had said them and Betaine felt foolish for yelling at a dream.