A weekend of family activities had passed without incident, and Monday began the same way Friday had, with an alarm he'd forgotten to turn off. This time, the phrase "Loose lips sink ships" accompanied a reminder on TigerTalk that it wasn't too late to enroll in summer activities, either at Heller or at the local community colleges. The best and brightest even had the opportunity to attend workshops at UC Berkeley, Stanford, and the other four-year institutions in the area. Marco was profoundly bored of all this, not helped by the early hour, and thought that either club members didn't get bored or that the term didn't exist in their lexicon.

No option remained but to take another morning walk; perhaps this time he'd discover something new. He got dressed and walked outside, and saw the same dewy roses. The weather was overcast, and his phone's forecast said that their recent heat wave had passed. Jessica's plants would have a chance to grow, assuming she'd planted them to begin with—she had once quipped in a true protagonist's fashion that as soon as she woke up she'd think of impossible things: her actually planting anything that Friday afternoon wasn't impossible, just unlikely. Isaac would estimate the odds if asked, but Isaac had been quiet those past few days.

Assuming she hadn't planted anything, and that it was out of prudence and not absentmindedness, she was certainly correct in doing so: scorched earth would never let anything grow. The idea reminded Marco of a club speech way back when, and he pulled up TigerTalk and opened the "Literature" section, where thanks to an impressive digitization effort all the club's public-facing speeches were listed, and as if he were thumbing through a Bible he could scan for mentions of a garden or growth: not the Garden of Eden, not that community garden out behind the science wing, not anything about ecology... there it was: an anecdote from President Frank's middle school.

Long ago, in the time before the club (if such a time truly existed), President Frank had a gardening project in middle school, where all the students had to pick a plant to grow. Most went for conventional choices, flowers that were all show but no substance, but Frank had gone against the grain and picked lavender. A hardy plant, he had said, that still provided value to society. And it had grown, it had persisted, until the present, outlasting all the others. More so than proving that among his many rumored talents, Frank had a green thumb, or that if any were to visit Pemberley Middle School they would mistake it for the fields of Provence, this was supposed to prove that being a visionary was a good thing. Or maybe it wasn't that—the theme felt muddled, and none of the exegeses made sense to Marco. But lavender did smell good, and maybe he'd suggest his mom plant some come spring.

Today Marco decided he would take Harry's recommendation and walk to where the ducks were, over the bridge to that side of paradise. The gray sky complemented the neighborhood's natural grayness. Certainly there were still colors to be seen everywhere, in house paint and mailboxes, but they did not change the fundamental nature of the neighborhood. All was still gray, and though the real estate brochures sold the neighborhood as a place where everyone would wave and say "Howdy, neighbor!" from their buzz-cut lawns, Marco didn't believe a word.

There was a wide bike path that traced the inlet's edge, demarcating the boundary between the herons' territory and a housing complex Harry was presumably referring to when he said Daisy lived here. He had said it with such elated diction that Marco would have assumed, crossing the bridge to this side of the water, that a rainbow would appear in the sky and the residents would burst into song. But this place was nothing out of the ordinary. He'd walked here as a kid at some point, but it was just some expensive real estate (the homes weren't large, but they certainly cost more for the "waterfront view") and nothing more.

He kept walking to the duck ponds, and took a seat under another willow tree. Some years ago, a population of mandarin ducks had been introduced to the area, and they'd liked the temperate weather and gun control so much they stayed. The city had taken measures to cull the mallard population, deeming the mandarin ducks prettier and a tourist attraction—as if anyone would visit San Sebastian for ducks alone. San Francisco had its parrots, who even had their own documentary; the opportunity was ripe for a Heller student to plagiarize and film The Wild Ducks of San Sebastian. They didn't sound as cool as parrots.

Marco had had enough silent harrumphing for a morning, and chose to continue on, treading carefully around the spots where the ducks had soiled the pavement. A bit farther and he'd reach a park where there wasn't a chance any of the local residents would call the cops on him for trespassing. There was no way anyone would: it was a public space surrounded by public spaces without any fences, but he felt ill at ease anyhow. Out of the trees' shelter, he was right by the road, and followed it past streets fancifully named after seabirds to the park (it certainly was big enough to have a name, but Marco had forgotten it). Some time ago, some rich architect had seen the mandarin ducks and the lagoon and thought what the place needed was a replica Chinese pavilion. That was one story Marco had heard; another was that a rich businessman had been walking along the lagoon at night admiring the moon and had been suddenly seized with a pang of homesickness, and had commissioned the pavilion. The local tea club sometimes held tastings there.

The pavilion was supported on a pier atop the water, flanked by two golden Chinese lions that had been burnished over the years; Marco rubbed the right one for good luck. The setting had given name to the Waterfront Pavilion dim sum restaurant in the strip mall across the street, which was regarded as having the most authentic dim sum in the area by the Heller Insight's food critics. It did brisk business, partially due to club members and their families who saw eating at Vice President Juliet's family's restaurant a path to success. Freshman year, Marco had been quite confused as to why there was a full-page ad for the restaurant specifically calling out Epsilons next to a crime blotter and an admittedly normal Men's Warehouse advertisement, but then he had heard the lore, and all made sense. She was the first Vice President with capital letters, and deserved special recognition.

It was early, and Marco hadn't bothered to eat breakfast under the naïve assumption he would only be gone for a short while. Instead of entering the pavilion, he crossed the street to the restaurant—there weren't many options open at 7:30 in those parts. He held up a finger and was taken to a table in the back. There weren't many windows, presumably to hide that the Waterfront Pavilion wasn't truly at the water's edge.

"What tea do you want?" a waitress brusquely asked.

"Oolong?" Marco said, questioningly. The waitress nodded and scribbled something on a paper slip she left on his table.

Marco discovered quickly that asking what something was in a dim sum cart got monosyllabic responses, but a bit of faith later, he had three steamers of food: one had some translucent dumplings, one had white buns that burst apart in mimicry of a runny egg, and one had curried tripe—certainly not his usual breakfast, but it reminded him of his grandmother's menudo. All delicious, and all washed down with enough oolong to make him feel awake.

He certainly couldn't tell, looking around at the lobster tanks and the white tablecloths, that he'd wandered into the enemy's lair. Nobody else looked his age; he certainly didn't see anyone that looked like him. A few more decades and gray hairs and he'd blend in better—but at the same time, he received the same service as anyone else. It wasn't like the people who did speak Cantonese were having amicable discussions with the waitstaff. Some had speculated, based on the backgrounds and interests of those who founded the club, that inspiration was taken from communist China; Marco had been assured in his little red book of club doctrine he still carried in his pocket out of habit that this was not the case. If the club was communist, perhaps it was like Animal Farm, which he had read freshman year: all students were equal, but some were more equal than others.

Marco brought his paper slip to the cashier at the front, who looked him over.

"Are you from Heller?" he asked interrogatively. Marco nodded.

"What's your rank?" he continued, pointing to a sign behind him that said Alphas got 25% off and Betas 10%.

"Gamma."

The cashier shrugged and wrote an A on the slip in red pen. "I like how a kid like you is awake so early during summer vacation. That's Alpha behavior." He typed some numbers into a calculator and showed Marco, who handed over a $10 bill and received a bit of loose change in return.

Marco exited and went to the stone fountain in front, which bubbled with vigor. He wasn't the superstitious sort, but he couldn't do much with spare change, so he tossed some coins in and wished that he hadn't missed any texts during his breakfast. But everyone knows that wishes don't come true: his mom had texted, asking where he'd left again so early.

"Just got dim sum," he texted back.

His mom responded immediately: "Is 99 Ranch open yet? Dad said he wants fish for dinner."

"Live or dead?" His mom reacted with a thumbs-down.

"Caught with your hands from the Bay. Don't be silly."

"I'll start walking over," Marco texted, and he checked Google Maps for the time estimate. If he maintained the proper walking pace, ten or fifteen minutes at most. There was no need to stop halfway.

The same sort of people who would go to Waterfront Pavilion daily for breakfast before going out to play Chinese chess in the park shopped at 99 Ranch when it opened at 8 sharp and the floors were squeaky clean, and Marco felt like an interloper again. The only fish Marco had personally bought before was fish sticks he'd tossed in his mother's shopping cart. He followed the signs to the back of the store, where different fish swam about in tanks. The catfish looked ugly—and some looked like their neighbors had tried to take bites out of them—so Marco pointed at the carp tank. A few whacks of the cleaver later, a cleaned fish was presented to him in a plastic bag.

Marco had always believed there was a first time for everything, and today was his first time toting a dead carp in a shopping basket that would have to be carried back home. What else he was to do with the carp, perhaps recite an eulogy or sing Schubert's Die Forelle, was unclear, and he searched the aisles for guidance and found President Haneul, who unfortunately recognized him. Even when off the clock, she dressed sharply, though a critic would observe it was not quite the business dress that would be demanded if she were on the clock—but who could criticize President Haneul?

"Marco, what a surprise to see you here! Do you come here often?" she asked, comparing the labels of two different brands of soy sauce.

"This is my first time, President Haneul. I was actually rather lost."

"If you look above you, you can see the aisles are labeled by their contents."

Marco stifled a snicker. "I mean that my mom asked me to buy a fish for dinner tonight, and I don't know how I'm supposed to cook it or what to buy."

"Cooking a fish is like governing a school: you spoil it with too much poking. Cook it delicately," she explained, "with some soy sauce, garlic, ginger, scallions, a spoonful of sugar, and you have a meal fit for Principal Kurtz himself."

"Thank you, that's very wise."

"Are you doing any summer programs? We are developing something cutting-edge, actually, that we would typically not be telling Gammas about, but you are clearly a responsible person and I will tell you. Have you read much of our historical literature?"

"Our literature, not as much, but I love history. Those who don't study it are doomed to repeat it," Marco answered coyly.

"So you will understand this problem we have been encountering. We have too much history. It's all noble, and important, but we cannot study it all, and there are only a few dedicated people like Jason who are true scholars of what's been said and not said throughout all our different locations. When we were just at Heller, it was doable, but now every university has a group of good people who engage in scholarly debate, give speeches, and produce history. One could read it all with enough effort, but to understand it all? That would take a lifetime." President Haneul gestured as she talked, and they walked briskly to pick up their groceries.

"One can never have too much of a good thing," Marco quipped. "I remember it was you who said that. Or maybe it was President Jamal?"

"It was President Frank, and even before him it was Rosalind in As You Like It. So you see our problem! There is too much history."

"So what are we to do? Burn it all?"

"Fahrenheit 451 had many good ideas, but all the burning is a waste of paper. We are developing an AI chatbot that can digest all the club teachings, and respond to any question at all about what it means to be a good person. We hope it can succinctly explain, especially for those who are not devoted enough to read the original texts, how to live our best lives."

"I thought Sparknotes was prohibited by How To Be A Good Person? I forget the rule, but I have my book on me."

"This is smarter than Sparknotes. Maybe an interpretation of our texts says that this is still a forbidden shortcut, that true knowledge comes from study and not summary, but how will we truly know without asking this tool?"

"Do you have a name for it yet?" Marco asked in a vain attempt to steer the conversation away from tautology.

"President Frank suggested we pick something literary, but we are still deciding. We aren't in unanimous consensus about this yet, it is simply another innovation we are testing. And some innovations succeed, some innovations fail. Do you want to help it succeed?"

"How could I say no?"

"As we train this chatbot, we need human reviewers to sort through all its questions and answers, to make sure its responses are articulate. We estimate only a few thousand per reviewer. You scored well in English, yes?"

Marco nodded.

"You will be a good fit. I will contact you again in a few weeks. Be diligent with this, and you know, you might become a Beta!"

"Thank you, President Haneul. I forget—what are you doing now that you've graduated? Where are you going?"

President Haneul put down the daikon she was handling and turned back to Marco. "I'm going to Princeton, for political science. Princeton already has a strong club presence, and they're welcoming me as their new outreach director. I will help host visitors from other schools, check back in with the fine people at Heller, and do all those important tasks. And if I'm lucky, perhaps I will be president someday again. Outreach Director Haneul is not a good title. I'll just be Haneul again. Ms. Kim if I'm lucky."

"That's still very impressive. I've always admired your leadership. I think you'll become president again."

"I hope so too. May I tell you another story, Marco?"

"I'm all ears."

"When I was admitted to Princeton, I had a call with the current president, who's one year above me and really did not hold many positions here at Heller besides being an Alpha. He is this tall guy with a head shaped like one of these daikon radishes. When he saw my last name was Kim, he would not stop making jokes for the rest of the meeting about Kim Jong-Un. Heller is nothing like North Korea! That is very offensive to me."

"It does sound offensive. Did you say something to him?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I did not want him and his colleagues thinking I was troublesome. And when they said I should be outreach director, they asked if I was a good cook. I'm an excellent cook, so I said yes. And they laughed and said that would be excellent: I can cook meals for visiting club members. Nobody at Heller ever treated me like this. President Frank, President Jamal, everyone else was always so nice to me. And now when I join their Princeton Zoom rooms they salute me."

"That's terrible," Marco said. "I do appreciate your transparency, but if I may ask: why are you telling me all of this? I'm a Gamma, and you're the President."

"Because I doubt you are going to Princeton," President Haneul laughed. "I am done with my shopping, are you done with yours?"

"Yeah, I am."

"Then let us check out. My treat, as thanks for your welcoming ear." They walked to the checkout aisle, bought their food, and left. President Haneul stared him down outside, as she tended to do, and Marco fidgeted with his hands.

"I'd better start walking home, President Haneul, but thank you again."

"You aren't walking home with that fish," she said. "I will call you an Uber. I'm still on the presidential budget until the summer is over." She typed something on her phone and sent Marco the details, then gave him a flippant wave that looked more like shooing a fly. Marco would have said something more, but she had walked away too quickly.