Force and Energy

"Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan," said the old Biomade teacher, "Do you know why your design merits only a passing grade?"

Tomoe grit her teeth. She was the very image of classical Allskin beauty, and if all she needed to do was look pretty, that might have counted for something. If the histories were to be believed, her clan had once ruled nearly a quarter of a spiral galaxy - or at least those worlds within that quarter that were inhabitable - and commanded the allegiance of vast, powerful fleets of star-faring ships. Her noble heritage counted for little here, nor had the Ruby Hawk clan been considered to be particularly notable since the arrival of the refugee fleet on this world two hundred years previous. Now, she was only another student at the Matamos University of Art and Science.

The classroom was a warm, well-lit place. Willow-Sensei liked it that way. Well, she called him Willow-Sensei, anways, as did Ikari Makoto of the Jade Falcon clan, but the other three students in their Architecture and Design class - two mechified and a Biomade - had taken to calling him Old Man Willow. Tomoe supposed that Deborah and Samuel probably didn't know any better. Mechified were simple creatures, after all. But Midnight was a Biomade. For all their faults, the Biomade were at least civilized beings. She should know better.

"Do you have even a guess?" Old Man Wil... Willow-Sensei asked.

Tomoe let out an irritated puff of air which blew her bangs out of her eyes as she considered the holographic representation of her design. It seemed impressive enough to her. Easily a match for even the finest architecture of Geneva Prime. The carved arches over the entryway were immaculate, designed such that they seemed wrought from the living wood of the old growth trees they resembled rather than from the metal of which they would actually be fashioned. And the building itself, her grand amphitheatre? Breathtaking. Her design was highly stylized, flowing, curvilinear, all the things a Cheldrun building should be. There was nothing wrong with it. "... No."

Willow-Sensei smiled kindly. "I see," he said. He turned to the rest of the class. "Does anyone else care to take a guess at what is wrong with the work of Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan?"

There was silence in the classroom, broken only by the hum of the holo-generators affixed to each desk.

Midnight raised her hand, and Tomoe immediately felt a stab of anger. Midnight, to whom everything came so easily. Midnight, who had been engineered for brilliance. Midnight, with perfect hair as dark as her namesake, with that damnable fake Biomade beauty, with her perfectly symmetrical face and eyes precisely calculated such that an interested suitor could drown in them. 'Interested suitor,' that was the right term, Tomoe decided. The stories of Biomade promiscuity were legendary. At least, that's what her mother had always told her, and her grandmother agreed. Once, Tomoe had thought it a terrible thing that the Biomade had engineered themselves to be unable to reproduce, but considering their notorious... appetites, well, maybe it was for the best. If the stories were to believed, Biomade would even copulate with Karians. Karians! It was shocking. Appalling. But modesty, it seemed, was another thing the Biomade had engineered out of themselves, if the time she herself had caught Midnight and Deborah in a... compromising position was anything to judge by. Deborah at least had blushed at the interruption, but not Midnight. ... But Biomade promiscuity was not an appropriate topic of contemplation for a noble scion of House Ruby Hawk. Mother had said that once, though it had never stopped her from gossiping about it for hours on end.

Abruptly, Tomoe realized that Midnight had given her answer, and she quickly searched her memory to find it.

Oh.

Damnable, perfect Biomade. It wasn't fair, her having to work so hard to get as far as she had with miss Midnight learning the same things absolutely effortlessly.

"Is it because she hasn't attended to the aesthetics of the building's force and energy flow?" Midnight had asked.

"Very good, Midnight!" Willow-Sensei replied. "Force and energy. They are the fundamentals of all architecture, and indeed of all art. A well-designed physical structure without aesthetically pleasing methods of channeling force and energy is as worthless as an umbrella in a hurricane. Consider the work of Nakata Soujiro of the Ruby Hawk clan. As you know, Nakata Soujiro was one of the few artists whose work survived the great exodus, and many of his holo-sculptures are still on display in the Museum of Antiquities here in Matamos." Willow-Sensei pressed a button on his display, and each student's design faded and was replaced by a three dimensional representation of an alien planet, its surface alive with vibrant currents of force and energy.

Tomoe stared. Nakata Soujiro was the reason she wanted to be an artist: his work had always stirred her imagination in ways that she could not readily identify. Looking at this, called 'A Distant Star,' perhaps his most well-known work, stole her breath away. The planet shimmered, its energistic patterns pulsing like veins, sometimes seeming to dance across its surface. There, in the corner of the image, beyond the planet's orbit, was the titular star, shining with such grace and such subtlety, the force and the energy of its nuclear fires rendered in such beauty, that a tear trickled down her cheek at the sight of it.

Willow-Sensei continued his lecture, but Tomoe did not hear it. She stared, and for a moment, her fierce envy of Midnight faded away. For a moment, Deborah and Samuel and even Makoto were far from her imagination. For a moment, all of her mother's stories and her own prejudices faded into nothing. For a moment, even if it was only within her own imagination, Ishikawa Tomoe walked among the stars.