Chapter Fourteen Page 22
Yet another returning character from an early chapter! I introduced Shamila thinking she would come up in the background regularly…and then we didn’t come back to Patrick’s adult ESL classes for almost ten chapters.
Teacher: Okay, everybody pair up with the person next to you and ask three questions each in different past tenses.
Shamila: Patrick! This will be easy. How was your morning?
Patrick: Good! Did your nephews have a good time in school last year?
Shamila: The older one did. The younger one had some trouble. Have you ever had a girlfriend?
Patrick: N-no.
Shamila: A boyfriend?
Patrick: Not that either . . . Unless you just mean any person that you love, and would do anything for, and are happy to be around . . .
. . . and hopefully they love you too, and it can involve sex if that ‘s what they want, but it isn’t necessary. In which case, I’ve had a few hundred of those, I think.
Shamila: Ah! You sure do “get around.”
Patrick: Maybe? Only the one I have right now is important, though. I barely remember the others.
Shamila: Oh, my, don’t say that. To love one person does not mean you must erase the idea of others. Having a past is part of being human.
… Which he isn’t. :P
Has it been explained why Patrick is taking an ESL class? I’d’ve thought he was fluent. After all, he’s been living in an English-speaking country with an English-speaking master for many years at least, probably longer.
He speaks it (and a lot of other languages) fluently; he just reads it very badly, and his writing is even worse.
But Shamila always says wise things when she is around. It’s worth the wait.
Oh and Patrick, never mention to Miranda that you’ll probably forget her within two or three more Masters.
This makes me curious… is it a function of time, or do Beings start fuzzing out based on a number of Masters since the event? they live for quite a while, and it would be incredibly cruel to test…
If we go with the machine/computer analogy, it just probably clears out memory so there’s no issues.
They DO remember something. And they forgot things not really related to masters while not completely forgetting the masters. If it’s intentional clearing, it has bugs.
Also, it can be both. Like, with every new contract, the being forgot all masters you had more that 100 years before.
Oh…..oh Patrick :(
“Having a past is part of being human.” … exactly. And he isn’t.
In the last panel she only has one tooth.
So…
I guess it’s advice: 1 Dental: 0