Eidos

Chapter 2: An Ordinary Day

Chapter 2: An Ordinary Day

"What are you doing in my garden?!?!"

Harmonia could not believe her luck. She had picked her furthest garden, and had gotten up earlier than ever before, rising before even the sun. It had been the biggest vegetable plantation she had grown that year. But as she looked around at the half eaten carrots, savagely torn cabbages, and one lonely tomato picked off to the side, the sad realization dawned upon her: the trip had been for nothing.

All of her hard work had been ruined, but it did not take her long to find the culprits who had stolen her due reward. Two boys stood as the responsible party. The first, fatter than even Willie, remained simply laying on his back annoyingly groaning. While the second, a skinny boy, was still busy tearing through a patch of Harmonia's tomatoes. Before she exploded with anger she noticed that both were wearing matching uniforms, but not just any uniforms, these were the dim military brownish-reds of the Corporations.

These two boys were Privateers, a group of children that volunteered for the Corporations before they turned sixteen. For their services, they were each promised a better place amongst the military ranks when it was their time to enlist. Their main job was to keep track of who turned sixteen and when. Even if they were wrong, which they often were, they would report their findings back to their superiors within the Corporations. But some had been corrupted by power, despite their youth, and took whatever they pleased. If anyone stood in their way, they would simply report them, or falsify their age, so the Corporations would come and simply take them away.

"Excuse me!" yelled Harmonia.

Neither moved from their spot.

She tried again, "Hey you! Excuse me!"

This time the fat boy had heard her as he struggled to lift his head to see above his large belly. A trail of drool, and stains of green coloured Silly Juice - or vomit for all Harmonia could tell - covered his cheeks. The boy could hardly keep his eyes open as he stared at her without so much as saying a word. Then, as if the weight of his head had been too much to bare, the fat boy simply fell back in his place and returned to staring at the sky.

Harmonia was in no mood for two meddling Privateers. So she tried yelling again as she marched towards them, "Excuse me! Why are you in my garden?"

This time the skinny boy had heard her as he frantically leaped up with wide eyes filled with surprise, "Who goes there? What do you want? This is our garden. You hear me! Get away!"

"No...actually...this is my garden and you've eaten all of my vegetables! What do you have to say for yourselves?"

The boy was already confused, a nearby open bottle of Silly Juice stood as the most likely culprit, "No way. How can this be your garden if we were here first?"

Harmonia could feel the anger rising up, just as magma waiting to burst out and shower a destructive cloud of furry over whoever was unfortunate enough to stand in its path. There was little she could do but bite her tongue to hold back the rising anger. With little left to do, she knew the last thing she had wanted was a debate with a foolish boy, yet the words came out all the same.

"It's my garden because I planted it. Do you see how that works? I traded scrap for seeds, I planted the seeds in the mountains, I watered the seeds, I nourished the seeds, then the seeds turned into vegetables. Now tell me, if I owned the seeds that became the vegetables, doesn't that mean I own the vegetables too?"

The skinny boy looked at his fat friend, who had clearly not heard a single word, before answering, "Sure...I guess? If you put it that way, it sure sounds like you'd own the vegetables if you owned the seeds."