Book One – Chapter Fourteen

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Michael never put much stock into Nietzsche. On the whole, he was just rhetoric.

When he was much, much younger, Michael would read Nietzsche for fun. He also enjoyed Machiavelli, Shan Yu, and the Mongrel Artemis Kuran. This bizarre penchant for such literature worried his parents at the time, though Michael could never figure out why. Nevertheless, they would often try to hide the books from him, and every time he would find them. At the time, they had no idea of what their son was capable of or of the lengths he would go to find what he wanted. Michael often questioned whether they ever really did appreciate his skills they way they should have.

Typically, he would read a chapter or two from the book, then place it in an area of the house where his mother or father would see it, so they could hide it again and repeat the cycle. The simple intake of knowledge soon became his reward for solving the puzzles and challenges set before him.

Needless to say, when Michael arrived at the Academy for the first time, and was instructed to read volumes of texts—texts believed to be far beyond his intellectual grasp—Michael was a bit confused. On a few occasions Michael refused to do any such studying, believing that his new Teachers were mocking him.

Michael’s counselor, Dr. Theo Dorn, saw this sort of stubbornness as more evidence of a heightened level of mental fortitude. That was how Michael was accepted into the Oracle Program.

‘What does not destroy me, makes me stronger,’ says Friedrich Nietzsche.

Please , Michael thought. It was a clever idea, with interesting inspiration, but ultimately flawed. Michael worked hard to prove this theory of imperfection ever since he first read that passage. His theory, so far, had gone mostly unchallenged.

In the end, all philosophy is made rhetorical.

In reflecting on the state in which he left Hathwald Fuller, Michael could not see any truth in Ni