Chapter 15. The Three-Stripe Armband
“Why do you care about the level that much?” Cece-40 asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve been like this since I was very young.”
Maybe it came from my dad. Like many Chinese parents, he wanted me to do well in school. For as long as I can remember, he would teach me the alphabet and give me homework before he left for the fields. He never had the chance to go to town for middle school — the Cultural Revolution broke out around that time. He had been the top student in his class, set to attend the same school I would later go to, the best in our county. But teachers were considered relics of the old world and were subjected to public struggle sessions. No classes were taught. He refused to go, even when my grandfather threatened to beat him.
When I was five, he took me to the village elementary school principal’s home and spent a long time convincing him I was ready. He succeeded. I became the youngest child in the whole class — most of my peers were at least two years older — and even so, I topped the class in academics.
But I never became a class leader. Never earned one of those three-stripe armbands the student cadres wore. I had wanted one from the very first day. It never came. Part of the reason was that I was small for my age, and leadership roles typically went to the taller, stronger kids — the ones who could command respect from the troublemakers. I was the opposite. Often the target. On the walk home, a few of the problem kids would sometimes stop me and push me to the ground just for something to do. My cousin could help sometimes; most of the time, no one could. I was completely outmatched, so I usually just waited until they got bored and wandered off. I rarely mentioned any of this to my parents. Luckily, I was never really hurt. But I never became any kind of leader — not until much later.
Still, I know it wasn’t only my father’s influence. Something is coded into me. I instinctively want to be someone, want to leave a mark on this world.
And yet — I know none of it matters. That’s the cold fact I’ve lived with since I was young, long before I ever had a title to lose. Most achievements disappear the moment you leave the room. Only a handful of people are remembered at all, and even those memories vanish when a civilization ends. I’m not sure where these thoughts come from, but the extinction of human civilization genuinely worries me. People first wrote on stone, then bamboo, then paper. Now knowledge is mostly digital. Words carved in rock might outlast all of it — bamboo and paper are long gone, and a hard drive? I picture future beings using one to crack open a pecan.
That contradiction is one of the strangest things about me. Recently, our leadership team did a personality assessment using shapes: square, circle, triangle, and squiggle. As with most tests, my results spread nearly evenly across all four — unlike most of my peers, who have one clear dominant type. I have a strong Square, the rule follower — but almost as strong a Squiggle, the out-of-the-box thinker who resists rules. My Circle and Triangle aren’t far behind. The facilitator struggled to explain it.
“I’ve rarely seen such a balanced result,” she said.
In my heart, I wondered if that’s why I carry so much existential restlessness. I can’t make peace with myself easily.
[Yin] Perfect. You can’t decide whether you’re a rule-follower or a rule-breaker. No wonder you can’t decide whether the level matters.
“Don’t worry. After the one-year mark, you should be able to adjust to the new level. The merge will need to move everyone to the new system anyway.” Cece-40 assured me.
“How did you know that?”
“ I searched the library. Mark promised you this when he communicated the offer in February — it was Monsanto practice sometimes to give you the actual promotion only after an unofficial probation in the new role.”
“Maybe. But I no longer report to Mark, and who knows how Bayer grades these things.”
[Yin] Exactly. Who knows. That’s the problem. No one knows. And “no one knows” is just another way of saying you have no control.
I pushed the thought aside. “Either way, I don’t have the bandwidth to worry about it right now. I need to go talk to the breeding manager — he won’t open up their AWS Redshift environment to my team.”