the happiness of society is the end of government

[numberhuang]

Working for the government is a pain in the butt. (Or ass. I guess I don't have to censor myself for my sons these days.)

I generally do not expect much from my government, or my elected representatives. Call me cynical. Maybe some people would also say that I'm a hypocrite for now working for the government, but I actually think it's quite logical — I am always of the mentality that the only person that you can trust to get it done is yourself. So if I'm to have any faith in the system at all, why wouldn't I make myself part of it?

Anyway.

The whole government is a mess. And I don't mean in terms of balancing budget or numbers, or writing policies that are legally sound. I mean the whole lack of transparency. If I thought that working for the government was going to put me in a better position to understand what happens and why, I'm unfortunately pretty disappointed. Even my first public event as congressperson-elect had the Mayor telling everyone to pick up these mysterious plastic eggs of unknown origin. Who does that?

I've been trying to track down who was responsible. I've gotten a couple of people fired through paper trails. But I still can't say that I have found the actual person responsible, and it's driving me crazy.

Dangerous things happen in the city. Why is it so hard to figure out where they're coming from, when they touch the actual government itself? Ugh. What a headache.

On top of this all, I have been holding lots of open office hours so that people can actually see and talk face to face with their representative, and that keeps me busier than I expected. Even now, there's a knock on the door, and I look up quickly, trying to put a smile on my face.

"Come in," I say loudly enough for the visitor to hear.

Comments

[thatsallthereis]

Something was coming. Gansey could feel it in the way his heart skipped with his step, in the way that his breath lived in his chest. It felt like falling in love, which he definitely had. Love was a strange thing to Gansey, since the person he loved was not the person he knew to be his true love. It didn't feel all that different. Except Henry yelled at him less.

That thing in his chest could have been called Henry as quickly as it could be called adventure. Sometimes, they were one and the same. These two things dominated his waking hours -- all of them, since Gansey still slept very little. Something was waiting to be found, and Gansey wasn't sure if that something was inside him or inside Darrow.

"Good morning, Mrs. Huang," Gansey said pleasantly, spinning to close the door behind him. In one hand and in the crook of his elbow, he held two coffees. He extended one of them to Jessica. "I wasn't sure how you feel about coffee. I have creamer and sugar as well, should that be something that you prefer." Gansey took a sip from his coffee -- black, his needs were simple when it came to libations.

"May I sit? How is councilwoman life?" Gansey only asked questions he wanted to know the answers to. He tried to only speak when he had something to say, when there was something he might be able to learn in the response.

[numberhuang]

I have to admit, sometimes I am still not sure how I feel about Richard Gansey.

I am fine with the fact that he and Henry are dating. Really, I am. I am no longer afraid that Gansey is the type of person who would knowingly treat Henry any less well than Henry deserves, and naturally I know that Henry only wants the best for Gansey as well. But there is a difference between being generally okay with who your son is dating (yes, Henry's not actually my son, but the point stands) and actually liking them wholly as a person.

It's like when Eddie brought back Chinese Allison. For some reason, I just didn't really like her. She didn't have a personality that I found interesting.

This is how I sometimes feel about Richard Gansey. But see, where Eddie's Allison (who I later out found out was only a fake Allison, not the one Eddie was actually dating, but the kind of girl he thought I wanted for him) was just bland and boring, Gansey is... well, too many layers. Too polished. I want him to make some mistakes, be a little more human around me.

But maybe this is how he is with the older generation.

"Thank you," I say when he offers me coffee, extending my hand to receive. "No cream or sugar, thank you. Both are bad for your health and I am not afraid of a little bitterness." I remove the lid and carefully blow to cool the drink off faster.

"Yes, please, sit," I add, nodding at the chair. "Councilwoman life is very busy, but not in the most engaging way. Lots of paperwork. Busywork. Not enough time actually solving problems. Feels like American politics."

[thatsallthereis]

The answer seemed to please Gansey. He passed the coffee off with a faint smile, with eyes a little brighter. Many could take their coffee black. Not many could make it look kind of badass. He had yet to cease amazement at Mrs. Huang's many layers. Gansey could not quite track her, and he liked that.

In a way, she reminded him of Maura, were she less mystical and more upwardly mobile. It didn't matter if that suited him just fine.

"I am sorry to hear that," Gansey said good-naturedly, taking a seat and sipping his coffee at the same time. He needed the coffee like many, but he drank it like it needed him. Like it was an accessory. "Is it the tedium that bothers you?" Or -- he implied -- was it something else? Maybe she had a thirst for knowledge like he did. It could have been. Gansey didn't get the impression power for power's sake was what she wanted.

Then again, he'd been wrong about things like this before.

[numberhuang]

I squint, thinking about how to best describe how politics are here in Darrow. I don't think it's tedium. If it was just tedium, I would do so well. You know, I've been studying the American tax code in and out, so well that I could definitely have my own tax accounting business. My biggest passion is knowing how a machine works and then making it run better.

"Not that... I guess I shouldn't say that it's the paperwork itself that bothers me," I admit with a wave of my hand. "It's the fact that so much of it doesn't lead anywhere. I thought being in this office would get me more answers. Sometimes it does. But never for the important stuff, you know?"

I lean back in my chair, letting it support my weight before I blow on the surface of my coffee and take a slight sip. Ah, scalding hot.

"I just want to have a research team that's constantly looking into how the city works, and I want them to brief me, and I want them to explain to me where stupid things like those crazy machine Easter eggs came from. But can I get that? No. And no one tells me why not, they just say that's not how things work here."

[thatsallthereis]

Gansey's ley line heart thrummed. Maybe he couldn't get a read on Jessica Huang because they were so similar. Gansey had spent his time finding reliability in people that didn't have as much in common. Adam had a hunger for knowledge, but they couldn't see eye-to-eye on the simple things. Ronan knew what it was like to want for nothing, but he wasn't rooted in reality -- literally. Blue hated parts of him, but she loved him. Henry was another side of the Gansey coin, somehow both more and less sure of himself.

Jessica was looking hard. She knew that there was something more. Gansey wanted to open his mouth and let every thought tumble out. He was scared, though. He remembered a gun in his face, that gun in his hands, how luck had been the only reason he hadn't died by Whelk's hand, all because he'd been too eager to share what he knew to be true.

She wasn't Whelk. Henry saw in her something fit to admire. The more he sought her out, the more he knew exactly how Henry felt.

"If I may," Gansey said, digging blindly in the leather bag Henry had gotten him for Christmas. He didn't value things - except his beloved Pig, except for Monmouth and now Hywel - but he loved that bag. He loved how his whole life in Darrow was concealed in it. Most would think it was schoolwork. Very little of it was.

He opened a similarly leather (but much more worn) journal to a center page and slid it toward her. The page was a series of sketches: a pasted map that folded open and had many scribbled notes, lines, and an arc-shape made by three interlocking curved lines. "We've been inspecting some of the ley line activity in Darrow." He paused and looked up at her. "Are you familiar with ley lines?" Oh, he hoped she wasn't. His heart was a kickdrum, now. He wanted to tell her everything about anything he'd ever seen.

[numberhuang]

There is one thing that I know that I have in common with Richard. Both of us value knowledge. Both of us will not stop in our quest to learn more. Maybe we don't always search for it in the same way — but that makes sense. Everyone should lean on their strengths, and the strengths of a middle-aged Taiwanese woman are likely to be very different than an upper-class young American man.

I lean forward in my chair, leaning over the desk and staring at the journal that Richard pulls out of his leather bag. There are many notes in this journal, almost like it's a study book. There are diagrams. Pictures. If there is any credit that I can give Richard right now, it's that he has certainly made an effort to learn about this mysterious city.

"I am not familiar with ley lines," I say, shaking my head. Before he continues, my finger hovers over the lines he's drawn, and I look at the rest of the details on the page. It's a map of Darrow. "Wait, so you are saying that these... lines are in the city? What's important about them? Do you think that they're causing all the people to suddenly show up and suddenly disappear?"

I always thought that it would be some of the most well-known scientists in the city that would eventually find a breakthrough. But wouldn't it be nice if it was just a nice, earnest young man?

[thatsallthereis]

"There's one ley line in Darrow," Gansey corrected, because that part was important. Oh, he wanted to jump up and clap his hands. Yes. Finally. There was someone in Darrow besides his professor friend and his family of misfits that he could talk to.

"A ley line is indicative of a type of energy. Typically they're marked by monuments, through years of research on lore. Where I come from -- Henrietta, Virginia -- there is one strong ley line, but they're everywhere. Cosmically, they are places of significance, for any number of reasons." He gently, patiently extracted the journal from her hands and flipped to some of the frontmost pages. His notes: all of them. All of them for this book, anyway, which was only responsible for his last year in Henrietta. He laid the book flat in front of her. "This is known as the corpse road. Local lore -- and my own experience -- says that this is the line that the dead walk on St. Mark's, all of the souls that will die within that year. See, some ley lines can cause different sorts of strange activity like shifts in gravity, perceived superpowers. The Henrietta ley line -- the corpse road -- it is incredibly powerful. The kind of power one might seek to harness." Hopefully that said enough about that. There was a chance she was going to have to suspend disbelief on a lot of this, but Gansey had to forge on hoping she'd do that part on her own. If not, they could stop and go back.

"When I was 10, I died. The Henrietta ley line revived me. A soul was taken on that spot the moment I died and I was given another chance to live when Noah could not." Oh no, he was getting ahead of himself, but he was nearly trembling with excitement, like if he didn't get all of this out, he might explode. "I spent my time trying to find out why it happened. It kept coming back to the ley line. I thought it was destiny bestowed upon me for -- for greatness." He dipped his head over this falter. As much as Gansey valued the truth, it was sometimes too close to name. It took bravery. Even now.

"The ley line is magic because it means something," Gansey summed up. He flipped the page back to the Darrow map. "I know where it is, but I don't know what it means. There isn't enough public Darrow history in the libraries to piece together any find of cogent narrative." And that, he supposed, was where she came in.

[numberhuang]

I listen very closely to what Richard has to say. Maybe I haven't heard of this ley line before, but there are parts of what he tells me that send a shiver up my spine. The way that people who will die within the year will walk the corpse road. It sounds plausible. You know, so many people say that they are surprised that someone as logical as me is also as superstitious as I am, but I think it's very understandable.

Who understands everything in the universe? Isn't it the things that you don't understand, the things that you can't explain, that you should be the most scared of? It's always better to be careful with things that you know you cannot control.

Then he starts to explain how he died.

More and more, the stories that these boys keep telling me just make me dizzy. I don't understand how this small group of playful young men could have so much happen to them. I close my eyes, I push my hands against my temples, I'm putting together the pieces.

"Wait, you... died? Wait. Wait, that doesn't. Noah told me that he was murdered," I say, looking up at Richard again. "He told me that he was murdered by someone, not by this corpse road or ley line or... anyway, has the ley line always been here in Darrow? Was it here before all you boys got here, or do you think it followed you here?"

I want to go see it for myself, this line. I want to feel what it's like to stand there.

[thatsallthereis]

Gansey made an ah noise in his excitement. Mrs. Huang was putting things together beautifully. He didn't realize how much she knew.

"Simply Sherlockian," Gansey said, vaguely aware and completely unashamed of his excitement. He flipped a few pages back to the Henrietta ley line. "No, Noah was murdered on the ley line. We died at the same time." He tapped his finger on a sentence. It said, someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not and so you will live when you should not. All other notes were scrawled quickly, some loopy, some sharp and seemingly serrated. Those words, though, were perfectly articulated on the page. And 6 others, bolded by many passes of a pen. YOU WILL LIVE BECAUSE OF GLENDOWER.

"I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that question. Darrow history is poorly documented." Well, that wasn't true. He added, "Publicly, at least." So, he just let that hang there.

[numberhuang]

It all sounds... scary. Months ago, I would have said crazy. I would have said that this is just the stuff of Stephen King novels, that this never really happens in real life, that there might be some strange forces and reasons for superstitions out there but nothing would be so obvious. So blatant.

But Darrow has shown me otherwise. It doesn't care about subtlety. It throws freaking haunted plastic toys at everyone. And who's to say that other worlds aren't like this too? (Though it pains me when I think about it too much, the endless worlds out there, uncontrollable and each running under a different set of rules.)

"You died at the same time... and the ley line only let one of you live. But usually all the people who wander on the ley line die in a year?" I pause, frowning. "So shouldn't we block this line off? Won't it take other people, won't it cause them to die? You know, all that funny business with the singer who was once so popular here, and then her boyfriend, they died very strange deaths. Maybe the ley line was involved in all of that? We should section it off immediately. I mean — you and Noah died because of that thing."

My eyes wide, I thread my fingers through my hair, resting temples against palms as I stare at my desk, at the notebook.

This is a lot to process. Doesn't mean that I can't, but it's still a lot to learn.