Rise of a Valkyrie

Part 35

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"I cannot believe we have a day off," Kayla said as she sat on her bed, clipping her toenails. "It feels weird. Like I'm a bad person for doing nothing."

Rose wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Can you not do that in private?"

"Nope," Kayla said evenly, and snapped off another chunk of keratin. She wasn't thrilled about Chisom swapping cabins with Rose and had dealt with the problem by trying to avoid her new cabin-mate wherever possible. Sharing all their training together was enough of a trial, and Kayla had at least been able to count on evening curfew as a break. Unfortunately, now they had a few days of rest ahead of them, there was nothing to do but suffer each other's company.

Stress Phase was over, and Kayla and the remaining recruits were about to graduate boot camp and be accepted into Valkyrie. They had completed long, solo marches in the hills, demonstrating their aptitude without instructor input and against time conditions. They had beaten the timed assault course, with no failures or restarts, and Kayla and Rose had set the best record.

Only one challenge stood in their way. The dreaded fast walk was a six-hour endurance run across a rough stretch of hills. The girls had heard rumors, supposedly shared by rolled back recruits, about snapped tibias, ankle fractures, or destroyed knees. Kayla had butterflies in her stomach as the day drew closer.

"Anyway, we are not doing nothing," Rose said in a painfully condescending tone. "Christie and Thandi are going to enlighten us with a history lesson, isn't that right, girls?" She gave the others a smile that was just a little too forced.

Kayla winced. Despite Rose's demotion to ordinary human-being, she still didn't seem to understand how real people spoke to each other.

"Remind me, what is the subject of your research?" Rose asked.

Christie began to speak, but Kayla interrupted. "The historical trend of aliens trying to enslave the human race, by recruiting human philosophers to create authoritarian regimes."

Rose raised an eyebrow. "Aliens?"

"Jotnar."

"Very well."

She seemed amused by the idea, but when Christie summarized the story of the Pythagoreans Rose's eyes widened in surprise.

"And so, we come to Plato," Christie said, "the next step in the Jotnar plan."

"Successful wrestler, by the way," Thandi said. "Not that I'm defending the guy, but I respect the hustle."

Christie tipped her head in acknowledgment. "To resume where we left off last time, the Greek world rejected the Pythagoreans and drove them underground. It makes sense to conclude that they would need to switch tactics rather than risk elimination. They want a new way to control people, but they can't control knowledge, because intellectual inquiry is becoming very popular, and good teachers can be hired for a fee. A lot of the aristocrats in Athens are certainly covert Pythagoreans, but around 425 BC, a new figure wanders onto the scene. He's married to an aristocrat, though he isn't one himself, he's extremely well respected as an upstanding citizen, and he has a strong interest in philosophy. More to the point, he's making it popular and entertaining to the average citizen. This is Socrates."

Kayla nodded. "So, the Pythagoreans start hanging around with him, maybe using his popularity to gain credibility?"

"Quite possibly, and Socrates is able to host public sessions teaching the young men of Athens his ideas without getting into trouble. Plato was one of those young men and he latched on to the Pythagorean ideas that were spreading behind the scenes. Unfortunately, Socrates never wrote anything down, and all we know about him was provided by Plato, who had his own agenda. What Socrates knew or thought about Pythagoras, we will doubtless never know. So, Thandi, if you would like to lead us off on Plato?"