The Sympathetic Universe Part 20

Eliza spent an hour a day helping Gabriel learn English from his little guide. So, generously, Eloy spent two hours a day with him. Generously, he gave up his day to pick what food to eat, offering a bonus day on rotation to each of his campmates. Certainly, Eloy’s generosity could not be questioned.

Eliza and Angel had been sweeping the floors on a weekly basis with a couple brooms they’d found in the closet. In the spirit of service, Eloy took over. The day before their cleaning day, he swept all the floors, including the men’s bathroom, which had over time become rather ugly. Eloy found that he could do just as good a job as the two of them in half the time. They were always moving furniture around and he just swept directly underneath them. He smirked and shook his head at people who made things more complicated than they needed to me.

Humble Eloy thought of how much he cared about other people and how unimportant his own needs were. Eloy humbly looked back at the guide. “Humility: Appreciate what one has, appreciate the gifts of others.”

“How fortunate I am,” mumbled Eloy, “It sure is impressive how tall Angel is. Eliza is really good at knowing what time it is. That Destiny sure is adorable, and, um, mature for her age? Gabriel is really good at French.” Eloy thought a moment, then nodded and mentally crossed off “humility.”

Temperance – it was difficult for Eloy to do better than anyone else at abstaining from alcohol and tobacco, considering there wasn’t any around to indulge in. He ate his food slowly and paid attention to when he was full. He offered the rest to everyone else in case it would get him more generosity points, but there were always leftovers anyway, so it was a moot point. Sometimes he overdid his temperance and was hungry in the night, which was when he learned that the refrigerator included nighttime snacks as a meal of the day. Over a bowl of  French Toast Crunch, the little toast-shaped morsels oddly cold from being in the refrigerator, Eloy mused about how many points this blitz must be getting him.

Eloy felt he had always behaved with integrity, he felt. In fact, it was everyone else who had concealed their visits with their gods for so long. Oh wait. He would have to be honest with them about the guide. Or maybe not. He didn’t know exactly how the points worked, but he was pretty confident the advantage of exclusive access to the guide outweighed the penalty to his integrity score.

Eloy thought that industry was not cleanly separable from service, but eventually he figured that he could work hard at something that would mainly benefit himself if he wanted to focus specifically on this category. He had not kept up with Eliza’s calisthenics after the first couple days after his arrival, so he picked them up again. He started doing them twice a day, even though he soon began to feel sore on a regular basis. Eliza suggested that he should rest more while he built up endurance, but he figured at this point the best thing to do was to focus on building up his score as quickly as possible. His Mom, for all her strengths, had neglected to tell him if this game was about reaching a given score the fastest or having the highest score at the end, so he thought he’d try rushing it for a while and see if he won before he had to start pacing himself.

Grace was described as giving a gift to someone who does not deserve it. This was challenging, as it was hard to know who the system would determine did and did not deserve any given gift. Eloy could look out for opportunities to be nice to people who looked like they were being immoral, but mostly he would have to just hope that by being generous he’d happen across some grace here and there.

It was frustrating having so little to give. If he had a million dollars he could give it to a charity and get lots of generosity points. Maybe he could even give the money to some society to help death row inmates or something and win big on grace. So much at the camp was simply parceled out evenly to everyone, generosity didn’t seem to even be a thing. They even had each received a heavy coat and a pair of gloves (appearing on their beds) for what evidently was an upcoming winter. This event led Eliza to add an estimated “Eliza Date” to her Eliza Time. She guessed September 9th. No one dared to suggest they assign a year.

What was more frustrating was when Gabriel started refusing to accept more help with English. He insisted he was too tired, and had been happy with one hour of intensive practice a day, which, he strongly implied, he preferred to receive from Eliza. Then Eliza and Angel went ahead and swept the cabin on the day they usually did like he hadn’t done anything. Angel and Eliza were way ahead, he realized. They just happened to have landed on some of the virtues by accident, those lucky jerks.

Eloy would have to get creative. He took his next day to pick the food. It was a crisp morning, but he didn’t feel he needed gloves yet. He hefted in his hand the axe they had found in the supply closet and brought it down on the log in front of him. Instead of splitting, the log hung onto his ax, but he just lifted the whole thing and slammed it back down for a satisfying “SNAP.” Industrious, Eloy thought, watching his breath rise in the air. He chopped those halves into quarters and placed them on a stack he was making against the side of the cabin.

For supper, he would have steak and his mother’s homemade macaroni and cheese. He’d include a salad for a vegetable option. He wasn’t imagining it in much detail, but the fridge would just sub in a salad someone else had been thinking about. What he was really looking forward to, though, was the dessert. It was a crème brûlée, and he wanted it extra fresh. In fact, he was hoping the very last step would be something the refrigerator would give him the means to do himself.