Weeksbooth: “They subsidize me because I take the kids. We have a special package where we get to stop at the ISSC, too. Do you realize seventy percent of kids today haven’t been to the Moon by the time they head off to a Campus? Thirteen percent of people never go at all, even with the subsidies! You know if you still haven’t gone by the time you turn sixty they invite you go for free, and thirteen percent still never do!”
Guildbreaker: “It sounds like a great club.”
Weeksbooth: “It is. It’s popular, too, we have sixty-one members this year, that’s a record. Of course, usually only about thirty come to each meeting, but twenty is still a lot! And I get more at the lectures, and they record the lectures now too and distribute them free. The Museum Director told me they’re being used in more than a hundred classrooms.”
Guildbreaker: “I watched one as a sample before coming.”
Weeksbooth: “Which one?”
Guildbreaker: “The history of vaccination. You’re a very passionate lecturer. You made me tear up at one point.”
Weeksbooth: “It’s the material, not me. An achievement like that would move you to tears if it were written in bad verse on the back of a napkin. That is, if you’ve any scientific passion left in you. Some people don’t.”
Guildbreaker: “I don’t think it was just the material, you’re a very good speaker. You’ve also written some books?”
Weeksbooth: “No one took it seriously. They say I’m trying to teach science like it’s poetry, well, science is poetry, and anyone who doesn’t see that is dead inside!”
Guildbreaker: “You’re referring to your guidebook for science teachers, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow?”
Weeksbooth: “Yes. You were thinking of something else?”
Guildbreaker: “The Horizoners.”
Weeksbooth: “Oh, that. Everyone made a big deal about that because Thiz got Orland Vives to make it into a movie. It was just a fun little story I wrote for the kids to circulate among their friends. Did you read it?”
Guildbreaker: “No, but I…”
Weeksbooth: “You watched the movie?”
Guildbreaker: “Yes.”
Weeksbooth: “Everybody watched the movie.”
Guildbreaker: “Did you like the movie?”
Weeksbooth: “It was okay.”
Guildbreaker: “Only okay?”
Weeksbooth: “They changed too much.”
Guildbreaker: “I heard they cut one of the story lines, is that right? Originally there were four groups of kids trying to build ships to go around the world including a Nineteenth-Century group as well as the ancient ones, the ones in 1495, and the contemporary ones?”
Weeksbooth: “Cutting a group was okay, they only had two hours, they couldn’t fit all four. The problem was they made Taylor Harrow into a Utopian.”
Guildbreaker: “That’s the leader of the contemporary set?”
Weeksbooth: “They said it was unrealistic for a kid to think that way and not be a Utopian, but that was the whole point! Anybody can have a sense of scientific curiosity, not just Utopians. The movie version reinforces the stereotype instead of breaking it.”
Guildbreaker: “You wanted to break it?”
Weeksbooth: “Of course. They said it was innovative making a movie with a Utopian as a central character instead of having them be some kind of mystical teacher or a techie or a supervillain, they said it would humanize the Utopians, like that last Canner movie did, what was it called?”
Guildbreaker: “Apollo’s River.”
Weeksbooth: “Right, but that wasn’t what I meant at all.”
Guildbreaker: “You were going for an ‘If Taylor Harrow can do it why can’t I’ type of thing?”
Weeksbooth: “Exactly. In the movie the message is that the Utopians have dibs on science the way the Humanists do on sports, and the other Hives all say, ‘We don’t need to do any exploring, leave it to the Utopians.’ Everybody talks about the Mars project as if only Utopians are ever going to set foot there, while the majority is content to sit around with their plastic bags and comfy chairs. Is that the future you want?”
Guildbreaker: “So you’re trying to get kids who aren’t Utopians to be interested in science and exploration?”
Weeksbooth: “Exactly. That’s why my persona is mad scientist, it’s a pre-Hive character so anyone can imagine themself as a mad scientist without associating it with Utopians.”
Guildbreaker: “Is it working?”
Weeksbooth: “What?”
Guildbreaker: “Your students, do a lot of them pursue careers in science?”
Weeksbooth: “Lots. Forty-three so far have doctorates in the sciences, thirty are working in experimental science, five in space engineering.”
Guildbreaker: “And how many of them became Utopians? Dr. Weeksbooth?”
Weeksbooth: “I heard you.”
Guildbreaker: “How many?”
Weeksbooth: (recording too faint to be made out)
Guildbreaker: “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear that.”
Weeksbooth: “All of them, okay? They all are. What does this have to do with Black Sakura, anyway? You can’t think the Utopians are behind it. They wouldn’t do something like that! The Utopians aren’t dirty like the rest of us, they’re not involved, they don’t even use the cars!”
Guildbreaker: “Did you ever consider becoming a Utopian yourself?”
Weeksbooth: “What?”
Guildbreaker: “Did you ever consider becoming a Utopian?”
Weeksbooth: “I heard you the first time.”
Guildbreaker: “Did you?”
Weeksbooth: “No, I … no. The bash’ is Humanist. My bash’, I mean, my bash’, they’re, we’re Humanists. We’ve been Humanists forever, it’s a hereditary bash’, it’s not … it wouldn’t have been practical. I couldn’t … that’s what I do, you know?”
Guildbreaker: “Would they have thrown you out of the bash’ if you became a Utopian?”
Weeksbooth: “I … it’s a Humanist bash’. Besides, Utopians don’t do mixed bash’es. I mean, they can, but they don’t.”
Guildbreaker: “Actually they can’t.”
Weeksbooth: “What?”
Guildbreaker: “Utopians can’t mix bash’es. There’s a rule against it.”
Weeksbooth: “No there isn’t.”
Guildbreaker: “There isn’t? I thought there was.”
Weeksbooth: “There absolutely isn’t, I checked.”
Guildbreaker: “You checked?”
Weeksbooth: “Yes.”
Guildbreaker: “Why did you check?”
Weeksbooth: “I … I don’t know. No reason.”