Our Beloved Children

[theotherguy]

Alright guys, after I quit writing my fanfiction Hl2: The Resistance, I decided to go off on a tangent and start writing original fiction. I initially started writing a novel about an amazing futuristic game allowing gamers to grow their own civilization starting from a single-celled organism (the twist was that the game was real, and that the creatures they were creating actually existed...its complicated how it worked)

But then, that novel instantly became fan-fiction when Spore was announced, much to my surprise, about a week later. It was really amazing, I felt like I had predicted the future or something. But it also meant that I had to quit writing that novel, or else people would say I stole the idea from will wright. So, I abandoned that novel and wrote nothing for quite some time.

A few weeks ago, I had a little bit of inspiration and decided to start writing a new novel.

So here are the first two chapters of my new book: Our Beloved Children

It's really quite boring for now, as its all exposition, but the story will be picking up very soon.

--Introduction--
What makes someone a human being? Is it our consciousness, our intelligence, our emotions, or our soul? Is it our DNA, our physical features or a culmination of all of those things?

These questions have plauged humanity since its birth. But we, as a species are on the brink of an era in which these questions are not merely philosophical, but practical. We will have to answer them eventually...we will have to make laws to seperate man from his machines.

Not so long ago, humanity saw other races as less than human. They saw their slaves as mere tools and their neighbors as unclean savages, their political enemies as inuman machines and their religious opposites as demons. Most of these things have been resolved, and we have taken a more egalitarian approach.

But what of the machines? What of our computers, our robots, our airplanes, our toaster ovens? How smart do they have to be to be considered human?

In a world where the line between humanity and brutality is blurred, we might find that our tools are more human than we are.


////Our Beloved Children/////
A novel by Theotherguy

-Chapter 1, The Instructor-

The grass sifted through his fingers like silk, its stalks slipping through his hand in the wind. He had always wondered what it would be like to be very small, and to climb those pieces of grass and ride them like sails, the sunlight filtering through them and creating a green hue like that of stained glass as the entire structure swayed in the breeze. But as it was, he lay there and stared at the swaying grass against the backdrop of the clear blue sky.

Calm and serene, the young Alex wished that he could spend an eternity lying there in the grass. He wouldn’t have to worry about the elders or the instructional periods or the Society. He could just be there like an insect and blend into nature as if he had never been there to begin with. But then he was sharply brought back to reality.

“Alex, the period of regeneration has ended. I must tutor you further if you plan on completing the examinations this season,” the harsh, metallic voice of the instructor echoed. Startled, Alex shot up into a sitting position, his fantasy of living in the grass ending as he looked upon the worn old face of the instructor, pockmarked with corrosion and rust. The instructor stood there, waiting patiently for Alex to come along with him and continue the lesson.

“Alright Mr. Michaels, I’m getting up” Alex replied, slowly bringing himself to a standing position on the lush green grass. He brushed himself off and looked about the landscape.

They stood in a large, open grass field not far from the hut of the instructor, small and insignificant compared to the majesty of the rolling hills, the swaying grass and wheat fields in the distance. The instructor himself was a blemish to the landscape, hunched over, his joints squeaking as he moved. In spite of his gnarled appearance Alex couldn’t help but feel respect for the knowledge that the old, wise man had. Alex had been learning all day and indeed almost his entire lifetime from this old man, his personal tutor. He knew nothing but his old wise sayings and his rusty but firm logic. It was true that he was a relic, but his ideas were all fresh to Alex—still, he was an extremely boring person.

“My pupil, if you spend too long lying down in the grass, it may grow up around you and you will become forgotten in it, and the world may never know what new ideas you might hold for the future,” The instructor pointed out, shaking at the knees and leading Alex back into his lesson.

Alex shot back in recitation, “But teacher, if one does not rest a little to think he will never have enough time to see the truth.” The instructor thought about what the pupil had said, and seemed to agree with him.

“So it is,” he returned, “but all this talking is keeping us from your lessons. The examinations are next week, and we’ve barely even covered the properties of Scathing Compounds…” He began to walk towards his hut, nearby which some foul-smelling orange fruits grew on low-growing trees.

Boredom setting in, Alex followed the instructor, his feet crushing the grass beneath him. “And what exactly are ‘Scathing Compounds’, Mr. Michaels?” He asked, accentuating the alien term to make it sound official and pompous.

The instructor ignored him, and pulled one of the noxious orange fruits from one of the trees and observed its shiny, bright exterior, holding it towards Alex in the palm of his hand. “Crush this between your fingers and then smell the juices that come out of it. Tell me what they smell like to you.” The instructor insisted, holding out the glistening fruit.

Alex shrugged and took the spherical fruit from the instructor’s palm and felt its smooth yet pitted exterior as he observed the thing in his hand. Taking the instructor’s advice, he contracted his fingers and squeezed the fruit in his hand with all the force he could muster. The orange skin of the sphere gave way in his hand in a disgusting manner, and a foul, burning fluid came out of the holes he had created. The smell of the fluid was horrifying to sense. A scent like that of extremely rotten bread filled Alex’s olfactory preceptors, and he immediately dropped the orange fruit in a coughing frenzy.

“What is this awful thing you’ve given me?” Alex demanded, wiping the rancid burning liquid from his hands onto the grass and backing away from the crushed orange sphere beneath him. He wondered how something so awful, so rotten and terrible could look so innocent and harmless.

“That,” explained the instructor “is an orange. It contains harmless Scathing Compounds that emit a burning sensation upon touch and smell terrible, but otherwise do nothing to harm you. I wanted to illustrate to you some of the most common and harmless Scathing Compounds so that you would recognize their smell and qualities for the examination.” With his hands behind his back, the instructor continued on, towards his hut and away from the trees containing the terrible fruits.

Alex was now calm after his experience with the oranges, yet he was curious, “Why do you keep these things by your home? Doesn’t the smell bother you?” Alex followed the instructor towards his hut, and waited for a response to his question. When he turned away from the place where he had thrown the fruit, some small hairy creature grabbed the remains of the orange and ran off into a hole in the ground with its new prized catch. Apparently the creature was not bothered by its terrible smell and taste.

“Am I revolted by the smell?” The instructor replied, laughing, “I’m nearing one hundred and twenty-two years old. My sense of smell is not quite what it used to be. I keep the trees because they look quite nice and allow me to demonstrate Scathing Compounds to my pupils --The juices in those orange trees are nothing compared to the substances which I am about to demonstrate to you.”

Alex scoffed at the idea of even worse smelling fruits, but was nevertheless curious. He began to wonder why the small hairy creature had not been affected by the burning chemicals in the orange—perhaps it too was as old as the instructor, and could not sense its poorer qualities.

Finally, the instructor reached the thatched door of his tiny hut, and placed his rust-covered hand on the thatched door, and pushed it inward, revealing the poorly lit interior. Alex followed the instructor into his home and shut the door for him, making sure to remain silent unless the instructor said anything of value.

The space inside the hut was tiny—circular and perhaps only two or three meters in diameter. The floor was dirt (as was common in provincial huts such as this), and the walls and ceiling were of thatched straw. In his room rested a small recharging station and a single, dim lamp in the center of it. In the back of the room stood a table with various chemical instruments on it. Alex never understood why the instructor settled for such meager building materials, yet had a relatively expensive electric lighting system and a full laboratory in the back of his home. The communal home in which Alex himself lived had all the modern amenities: a full recharging station, a computer terminal and glass walls looking out onto the streets. Thus, Alex wished that the instructor would move to the city so that his daily commute would be shorter.

“Ah, now let me get out those old bottles of Scathing Compounds…” The instructor trailed off, rummaging through an ancient cabinet filled with glass bottles of all shapes and sizes. Alex knew he was about to get one of the instructor’s long, windy lectures and his mind began wondering back to his communal home and the friends he had made there.

It is worthwhile to note that all children that were born in the town at that time were raised in communal homes away from their biological parents and amongst a peer group of fifty to sixty young children, usually chaperoned by a young adult. These homes were always fiercely competitive among one another, and friendships in them ran close. All of this was for good reason, of course. The Society believed that the communal homes fostered competition, teamwork and resource-sharing—all of which were entirely necessary for survival in the harsh world in which they lived.

“Ah, here it is,” the instructor exclaimed, knocking Alex out of his daydreaming, “I’ve found the last bottle of the Scathing that I have here. It probably has a few drops left—Alex, come over here so I can demonstrate it to you!” The instructor beckoned with his finger, prompting Alex to come nearer to the laboratory table.

In the instructor’s left hand was an ancient glass vial that was at least a hundred years old, encrusted with dirt and etched very crudely with the label, ‘The Scathing.’ The instructor twirled it for a moment in his hand, and then polished the dirt off of the glass with a rag he had lying nearby. Once polished, the glass vial gleamed in the light, and through the dusty air and the transparent surface of the vial Alex could see a small amount of clear liquid resting inside: a pure sample of The Scathing.

“Alex-- have you heard anything of The Scathing as a child?” The instructor asked nervously, breathing between each word as he carefully unplugged the top of the vial.

Alex thought about it for a moment and replied, “They—the elders used to say something about it during the religious services I think. It was a prayer“

The instructor cut him off, “yes, yes the Prayer of Deliverance: ‘Our forefathers, deliver us from the rain, deliver us so that The Scathing shall not fall upon us like fire…’ --An excellent prayer with scientific basis. Do you remember anything of the story behind that prayer, perhaps?”

Images of the services filled his mind momentarily. He saw the elders as clearly as if it had occurred that day, standing under the decaying rubble of the Divine Ruin. He hadn’t taken the religious services very seriously as a child. He felt detached from the chants and the stories and the dogma…it simply didn’t seem to have any relevance.

Nevertheless, he did seem to remember a story that included The Scathing. “Was that the one with the Reckoning and the Rain?” Alex asked, scrubbing his memory for answers. The instructor took an eyedropper from one of the cabinets and took a small sample of the scathing out of the vial and replied, “ah yes, Alex it seems you have remembered a little of our history after all…”

He slid a small piece of white material from the other side of the table and placed it in front of him. Like some kind of gemstone, it had a white, pleasingly curved surface which was reflective in the light. Aside from being dirty and old, it was made of precisely the same material as Alex’s skin, which was also white and reflective. Alex conjectured that the instructor must have gotten it from a recycling repository.

Then, taking the dropper in his hand, the instructor dripped a few drops of The Scathing onto the piece of skin in front of him. At first, the clear liquid did nothing to mar the surface of the beautiful gem, but then a cloud of translucent white gas began rising from the surface of the skin, and a hissing sound filled the air as the Scathing ate through it. Instantly an awful smell like nothing Alex had ever experienced filled his nostrils, and he was nearly overcome by the foul odor.

When finally the hissing had stopped and smoke no longer rose from the piece of skin, the instructor took the small, shiny object between his forefinger and his thumb and showed it to his pupil in the light. Alex was horrified to see that the skin had been eaten completely through the center by the Scathing, and he could see the uninviting old eye of the instructor through the fissure which had been made.

“wow,” Alex exclaimed, “what happened? It looks like the thing was bored through by a drill or something!” He couldn’t believe that a substance that looked so harmless could be so devastating. The stuff might as well have been water, yet it appeared more adept at destroying skin than a bullet.

“That,” the instructor answered matter-of-factly, “is why The Scathing is so dangerous. Have you ever wondered why you pray for deliverance, why the compound smells so badly? The Scathing can eat through skin and internal components quickly and easily through a violent reaction which turns everything it comes into contact with into gas.” The instructor put the stopper back into its vial and placed the container back into the cupboard.

“Now, you had asked about The Reckoning and The Rain?” The instructor asked rhetorically, returning his attention back to Alex, “If you recall, the legend spoke of terrible black clouds that rained The Scathing upon our poor ancestors’ heads and killed them like flies. Our ancestors hid themselves in the Divine Ruin, where they were protected from the more vile qualities of The Scathing. This is why the Divine Ruin is so important to us, Alex. It saved our people from utter destruction during the Reckoning.”

Now that the instructor spoke of the legend, its details became more apparent to Alex. He had remembered hearing of it as a child. However, he had thought of it, like he thought of most of the Reckoning legends, as a myth intended to inspire moral behavior.

“This stuff couldn’t have really rained from the sky….could it?” Alex asked hesitantly, looking at the charred and malformed hole created on the piece of skin.

.

 

[theotherguy]

The instructor blinked with his one remaining eyelid and replied, “Why, on the contrary Alex. The legend embellishes a bit, but it is in fact true! You see, after the Reckoning, a great deal of unnatural compounds was kicked up into the air, including the Scathing. These compounds sometimes formed into clouds, up there in the air, and then rained down upon our heads. In fact, Scathing rained from the sky for no less than twenty-eight days after The Reckoning, as our records show. It would have been impossible to grow anything in those days, and it must have been terrible, being down there in the Divine ruin, running on solar power.”

So the legend had been true after all. Alex was troubled by this and other legends about the Reckoning, and he wondered if such a thing would happen again. The elders spoke constantly of the Reckoning and the terrible events that happened after it: the Scathing, the Pink Snow, the Invisible Death, and most of all the Stars of Destruction. The phenomena were always capitalized and emphasized and they always spoke of death, destruction and evil. So many infamous things came from the Reckoning that it was almost unbelievable. The Reckoning had been so consuming, so transforming in nature that imagining anything that happened before it was impossible

The elders had said that before the Reckoning, the world had been a magical place inhabited by the ancestors. It had been a land of towering cities, beautiful creatures, and godlike heroes: unmarred by the Reckoning and the ‘impure’ people who live here today. Nobody knew why or from where the Reckoning had come…the elders say it simply happened, like a sunrise from the night, and the ancestors were blinded by its suddenness. Countless lives were lost, but the few who survived the Reckoning carried on the legacy of the ancestors, and passed on the old stories.

Returning from his moment of remembrance, Alex asked the instructor hesitantly, “Does the Scathing still rain from the skies? I mean—does it still happen every now and then?”

The instructor smiled at Alex’s naiveté and replied with an air of reassurance, “I think you have your mind a bit too engulfed in legends, my pupil. The Reckoning was over a thousand years ago, and the Scathing clouds dissipated shortly after the great event itself. What few samples we have of the Scathing today come from ancient pores in rocks or from the reserves of Scathing the ancestors wisely collected themselves. This miniscule vile of mine originally came from my first expedition beyond the city walls. There were tiny pools of scathing that had been slowly collecting in one the ruins, and I was lucky enough to gather this tiny sample.”

Alex marveled at the instructor’s stories of his expeditions beyond the city walls. It was forbidden for anyone who had not taken the examinations to venture beyond the safety of the city, and Alex was eager to hear what lay beyond, in the Wastes. It was a different world beyond the city walls. Marred by the Reckoning, the Wastes was a land filled with the dead and inanimate ruins of the ancestors. The elders had said that anyone who ventured into the Wastes would not last for more than three or four days. Some said that terrible creatures and bands of nomadic Wanderers roamed the Wastes. In any case, the place seemed fascinating to Alex—not the boring and mundane atmosphere of the city, but an exciting adventure.

As the instructor tidied up his lab, he remarked, “Well Alex, this season’s examinations are next week, as I’m sure you know. All of my instruction that I have given to you your entire life has led up to this moment, and I do believe that you will do well. My lesson about the Scathing compounds is the last in my curriculum. Quite frankly all that is left for you is a week of studying, and then the examination. A couple of weeks from now you’ll be assigned a job, and my purpose will be complete; at least until I find another pupil.”

Alex was relieved when the instructor made his last remarks. For his entire life, Alex had been confined to a single old instructor, and had been living in a youth communal home. In two weeks, he would be considered an adult, and could own a home of his own, and he would finally be able to work. Even though the elders were likely to pick out a mundane job for him, anything would be better if it had a purpose.

“Well, I just have to thank you, Mr. Michaels,” he replied to the instructor, “for teaching me about the world. Now just maybe I’ll do well on the exams and the elders will give me a decent job.”

The instructor beamed visibly with pride, and asked, “What job do you aspire to be assigned, my pupil? Work as a scientist, I hope….perhaps a civil engineer?”

Alex balked at the idea of being a scientist or civil engineer. It would just be more mundane work in the city. He shook his head and replied apologetically, “No, sorry Mr. Michaels, but I want to be a Reclaimer.” The instructor’s eyes widened, and with good reason, for the work of a Reclaimer was the most dangerous of any available in the Society.

“Alex?” The instructor exclaimed unbelievingly, “Surely you must be joking! You do know that Reclaimers are the citizens that go out into the Wastes to face the unknown!? Reclaimers are considered dead the moment in which they sign up for the job! You can’t even get assigned a position on the Reclaiming squad unless you explicitly volunteer!” The instructor was practically steaming with hysteria, waving his arms in the air in violent gestures as he rattled off a lecture about the dangers of Reclaiming.

The fact of the matter was, Reclaimers had the most important jobs out of everyone. They would go out beyond the city walls and gather up toxic chemicals, set up air purifiers, and plant special types of foliage to detoxify the soil and make it suitable for growing crops. Of course, with this job also came all of the hazards of the wastes: strange anomalies, frightening creatures and of course the Wanderers. But thus the title of Reclaimer also came with great adventure, and great responsibility.

“Calm down, Mr. Michaels. I’ve thought this through for a long time. I know it’s dangerous, and I know death is around the corner for every Reclaimer, but I’m not afraid. I can handle whatever’s out there. You did expeditions into the Wastes, didn’t you? – And you came back fine! “ Alex’s voice was tinged with angst as he told the instructor of his reasoning.

Still, the instructor was not at all pleased and rebuffed, “Yes, but I was out there for only a few days accompanied by a caravan of many experienced men. As a Reclaimer you would be out there every hour of the day, exposing yourself to the elements as an inexperienced novice. I beg you to reconsider your decision, Alex! Wouldn’t you enjoy some civil engineering work? Perhaps you could build bridges, or construct vehicles--maybe you would do well as…as anything other than a Reclaimer!” The instructor placed his hand on Alex’s shoulders, trying to shake some sense into the boy, but Alex pulled away.

“Okay, I’ll take your advice into consideration, but my decision is final. If I don’t like Reclaiming I’ll apply for a change of occupation and see what the elders give me. But I at least want to try it. I’d do anything to get out of this city. Maybe since you’re so afraid of Reclaiming I could join the next trading caravan heading to Vihara and see what life is like over there.” Alex threw out the last suggestion as a joke, but the instructor took him seriously.

“My goodness Alex, you really are crazy! You don’t want to go on a trading convoy to Vihara, that’s even more dangerous than being a Reclaimer. After all, Vihara is over five-hundred sects away! Well if you truly want to do that, reclaiming might be a much better idea…at least you’ll be closer to the city—and I don’t think there have been any Wanderer attacks near the walls, but you’d certainly be more exposed on the trade route to Vihara.” The instructor shook his head and lowered his eyes, “Even though I don’t support your position, perhaps I just have to accept it. I was like you once, Alex. I remember wanting to go out and see the world, wanting to be an explorer, of all things…” He looked off into the distance and then snapped back, “but my experiences on the scientific exhibitions changed all of that. There are things out there—there are things that a young person simply shouldn’t see.”

Before Alex could discuss the matter further, the instructor sat down at his desk and began writing furiously on a slip of paper. “Feel free to depart,” the instructor suggested solemnly, “Do some studying and I’ll see you after the examination. Now leave me be so I can prepare my lesson plans for next year.”

Alex felt the weight of the instructor’s dismissal and disappointment upon him and without saying a word turned around and left the instructor to his writing in the dark hovel in which he lived. Shutting the wooden door behind him, Alex stepped out into the daylight to enjoy his last week of childhood.

 

[theotherguy]

-Chapter 2, Commune-

Alex trudged through the tall grass away from the instructor’s hut towards the old dirt road, which snaked around the foul-smelling orange tree orchard and off in the distance towards the more urbanized regions of the city. He thought about the old instructor, and all of the conversations and lessons they had, both tedious and somewhat interesting. He thought mainly about their argument just moments before, and whether the instructor would ever accept his decision to become a Reclaimer.

But it really didn’t matter what the instructor had to say. What importance did his opinion have? Alex would soon be an adult, and he didn’t need some old pile of rust telling him what to do. The old man simply feared the unknown, and rested too much in the quiet traditions of the cities. He must have been more rebellious, more adventurous when he was young…but that was a long time ago. Now the instructor was nothing but a relic of the distant past.

Even so, he was going to miss the old curmudgeon. More so, he would miss his old life as a youth; namely the friends he had made over the years in the commune, and the easy life he had led thus far—but perhaps he was getting ahead of himself. After all, he still had a week left.

Alex finally reached the old dirt road, and his feet crunched heavily against the rough gravel. Usually the youths didn’t wear shoes, even out in the country in those days, but Alex’s feet had grown accustomed to the rough terrain over the years, and he no longer sensed pain when walking over the sharp gravel of the dirt road. Besides, the stuff couldn’t hurt him anyway…

He moved slowly down the dirt trail with rolling hills of wheat on either side of him, the occasional piece of automated farm equipment poking its mechanical head into view above the endless forest of the golden-brown crop. It was getting close to sundown, and the equipment would soon shut down for the night to conserve their solar energy, ready to work the fields in the morning.

Alex traveled to the countryside often, but at heart he was a city youth. Most people couldn’t stand to live out in the country anyway, and in fact less than one percent of the city’s population lived out here, most of them ancient farmers who did little more than to make sure their equipment didn’t go haywire. Of course, the instructor was an exception to the rule—old, but by no means a farmer. Rumors sometimes flooded the communes that an old hermit lived out in wilderness, but Alex was quick to tell them that it was his instructor…although he wasn’t quite sure if the instructor was a hermit or not.

Sooner or later, as the farmland began to clear out and gradually give way to a pine forest, Alex could see the city up ahead. It wasn’t that large, and didn’t have much of a skyline, but it was the most highly concentrated center of people for miles around. The bigger buildings: the factories, public buildings and of course the Divine Ruin stood upon a hill in the center of the city, gleaming in the setting sun. They were surrounded by several squat apartment buildings—the communes, and a host of small businesses. The rest of the buildings were too small to be seen from where Alex was standing, but they consisted of the homes of the more wealthy and respected citizens, a few pleasure gardens and public parks, and a few smaller, less-divine ruins.

Alex could be a bit cynical and bored with the city at times, but it was all he had ever known. He had been and raised from birth in the same little squat Youth Commune just a few miles from the clinic where he had been born, and had only traveled outside the city to see the instructor, who only lived a mile or so away. The city was in itself a microcosm, self-sustaining and alone; a tiny bubble of prosperity in the sea that was the Wastes. Just 1,580 people lived within the city walls; surrounded by a scant hundred acres of farmland… not that Alex would have liked to live in a larger society, or had even seen one.

It only took him a few minutes to travel to the outer reaches of the city. At this point the road became paved, and Alex was happy to have found a less painful surface to walk on. It was one of the few streets in the city. Mainly the streets were used to carry grain from the outer reaches of the city to the factories, where it would be processed and turned into bread. Otherwise, the city was entirely devoid of roads, and the glass buildings protruded naturally out of the grass. Every building was different, molded into the earth beneath it like an outcropping of rock, albeit made of glass and steel..
As Alex walked hurriedly down the street he caught glimpses of the older, more important citizens, who hardly gave Alex--the youth-- a passing glance on their way home from work. Alex respectfully gave way to them, and continued down the road. Soon, he would be one of them, with his own home in the suburbs—not that he would use his home very often as a Reclaimer. Come to think of it, Alex had never even met a Reclaimer, and had only heard about them from rumors in the Commune.

Alex passed out of the suburbs, and had made it to the downtown area, where buildings rose to heights of a few stories, and were rectangular in appearance. Through their glass walls Alex could see the shadows of people moving about, readying their apartments for the night. Here the streets were dirtier, and vehicles were parked along the road, their shiny glass exteriors sparkling in the light of the setting sun.

It didn’t take him long to reach his Commune, which was yet another rectangular glass building, albeit a more recognizable one. It was in the Commune District, a ring of squat apartment buildings circling the hilltop on top of which the Divine Ruin sat. There were five Communes in all, each containing a set of Youths. Their traditions dated back for hundreds of years: rivalries, sports, games.... but over the past year Alex had grown tired of all the competition. He was growing up now, and Commune sports and rivalries no longer meant anything to him. The only things that mattered to him about the communes now were the warm recharging stations and his friends.
He finally came to the doorstep of his Commune, and as he stepped a foot or so away from the smooth glass double doors, they opened for him automatically, and he stepped inside.

The old familiar smell, like a mixture of rotten cabbage and mildew filled his olfactory preceptors as he entered the Commune. His feet were grateful to finally step onto the microfiber carpeting, and he felt the cool rush of air from the Commune fans blow onto his face.

Alex looked around the entry hallway…there was nothing out of the ordinary: only a few of the younger children, playing board games and playing with plush toys remained at this hour. He watched them for a moment, remembering the early days of the commune when he was ignorant and uncaring. They were Sonys, with tiny round blue-green eyes like buttons and highly stylized limbs. They called themselves the Sony Gang or something like that. All the little kids would get into gangs of friends when they were little, and the Sony children especially bonded together…which was not surprising, since Sonys were the smallest minority group in the Society, not to mention the smallest in stature.

Alex was just about to ascend the glass staircase to the dorm rooms of the Commune when a hand struck the side of his head from behind him, knocking him off balance and confusing him for a moment as he spun around, stunned by the sudden attack. When he regained orientation, the face of his attacker came into sight. The slanted blue bulbous eyes gave him away; it was his best friend, Shen.

“Hey you out-of-shape pile of rubble, didn’t notice me standing next to the door did you? If you want to be a Reclaimer you got to have good reflexes like me Alex!” Shen grinned deformedly as he bantered with Alex.
“I told you not to do that anymore!” Alex laughed, “You know I could take you down, I just reserve my strength until you really tick me off.” He shoved Shen slightly, twisting his torso but not really throwing him off balance.

“So how’d it go?” Shen asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, the last day of school. Mine was yesterday, and I knew your old windbag instructor had another day to drill you,” he explained, moving away from the door so another Youth could get in.

“Oh,” Alex replied, “you know: the usual. He showed me some Scathing, nothing special. He was pretty rattled about the Reclaimer stuff, but I gave him a piece of my mind.”

 

[theotherguy]

Shen laughed bitterly and remarked, “Well at least you don’t have to deal with him anymore. My instructor wasn’t too happy about me wanting to be a musician either. The way he goes on, you’d think he wants me to be a waste technician or something. But you know, after all it’ll be those cronies up in the Job Placement department who tell us what we’re going to do.” Shen started up the stairs towards the dorms, and Alex followed him.

He wasn’t surprised at Shen’s desire to become a professional musician. Most Toyotas like Shen were pretty creative, but Shen especially was an extremely talented musician. The stuff he wrote was amazing, the kind of music that could put you in a trance. But Alex had to admit that Shen wasn’t very ambitious, he was mostly content to sit in his room all day writing music or just slacking. Shen wasn’t pure Toyota anyway; it was obvious from the way he walked that he was a hybrid, but probably only a slight one.

The people of the Society were divided into three distinct racial groups, based on where their ancestors came from after the Reckoning. There were Hondas like Alex, who made up the bulk of people in the city, Toyotas like Shen, who were the largest minority group, and Sonys who made up a tiny but vocal minority. The elders said that the three races had fought each other briefly after the Reckoning, but had learned to overcome their differences with the realization that survival depended on cooperation. Thus, most people were actually hybrids of the three, but only a few people were truly indistinguishable from one race or another.

When they reached the second floor landing, Shen continued, “I tell you what, Alex; if neither of us get the jobs we want, I’ll volunteer to be a Reclaimer with you. I’d rather be out there with my best friend than in here in the city at some desk job.”

Startled, Alex stepped back slightly, “You really mean that, Shen? And here I was thinking I’d be alone out there—“Shen cut him off.

“Don’t get your hopes up, man. I’ll do so badly on the examinations they’ll be sure to make me a musician.” He laughed bitterly and moved into the Commons, where the rest of the Commune’s residents were relaxing at computer stations or simply talking to one another.

Alex was overwhelmed with what Shen had said. He knew Shen would never leave the city, not with Zoe here. Somehow something between them must have gone wrong…but Alex had missed it. Shen was always chasing Zoe, but she was never more than a good friend to him. In any case, Alex was pleased that Shen was considering Reclaiming. After all, it would be better to have a friend out there than to just have a bunch of hardened old Reclaimers for company.

Shen sat down on a glass bench, and put his hands behind his head, exhaling. Alex took in the Commons around him, looking at the old familiar faces and objects. The wall opposite of Shen, like all the exterior walls of the commune, was made of solid glass interlaced with steel beams crisscrossing it in triangular patterns. From here on the second floor, Alex could see out to the edges of the city, past the grain fields and solar collectors, straight to the massive city wall which shut them off from the outside world, and to the mountains of grey ash in the distance, over which the sun was setting against the backdrop of pink and orange clouds. Someday, hopefully, he would travel to the mountains as a Reclaimer and see the view from the opposite direction.

Returning to the conversation, Alex sat down on an uncomfortable glass chair across from Shen, and up his feet up on an equally uncomfortable footrest. Why the Society insisted on putting such uncomfortable furniture in the communes, Alex did not know. Not only was it uncomfortable, the furniture was also fragile, suffering from scratches and chips from all of the people who had sat on it over the years.

“So yeah… since we’re both off this week what are we going to do? I’m not planning on studying much, and if you are that’s cool…” Shen looked at him with that look in his eye. His mouth curled into a smirk and his bulbous blue eyes gleamed with a new cleverness. Alex knew this look well; it was the look Shen always got when he was planning something really crazy.

“Oh, I won’t be doing any studying Alex. Some guys from the one of the other commune and I are planning something pretty crazy. Basically, we’re going to get industrial gloss and—“

He was cut off by a distinctly female voice, “And you’ll sit down in your bunk and read a book about industrial engineering,” she said, sitting down next to Shen. It was Zoe, just getting back from her evening volunteer work and returning to the commune for the night.

“Zoe…” Shen gulped in surprise, his look of mischievousness quickly bleeding away from his face and being replaced by one of embarrassment. “We were just talking about that…yeah…studying,” he managed to squeak out, backing away from Zoe as she sat down on the glass bench.

Zoe was a moderately good-looking Honda, not stunningly beautiful, but not by any means mediocre. Why Alex was thinking this about Shen’s love interest he didn’t know…but nobody could deny that she was pretty. She had always been opposed to Shen’s wild spirit, especially the drugs, and this had always been one of the main reasons she wouldn’t respond to his call. She was considered by most to be a ‘community-girl’, always maintaining a high level of public service, aspiring to be an elder: it was a title which caused her to be despised by most of the Youths. Still, she remained friends with the both of them, perhaps to torture them into accepting the dogma of the Society.

Zoe responded to Shen’s squeaking embarrassment with a look of indifference, and then went off on her own tangent, “Today in community service we tore down the old farmhouse on Lilac Street, you know, the one that Elder Sam used to live in. It was really tough to take it down…we had to manually dig out some of the concrete struts. But it had to be done, the place was a wreck.”

Alex replied sarcastically, “Fascinating Zoe, have any more exciting tales to tell us, maybe the one about you helping the old lady across the street? That was a good one.”

She shot a look of vindictiveness at him, but it quickly changed into a smirk. “No, Alex. You just wish you were out there doing something useful instead of sitting around and complaining about the Society. For your information I got 100 community credits for dismantling that barn… exactly how many community credits do you have, Alex?”

Alex sighed at this. Every Youth was required to earn “community credits” which were some kind of rudimentary currency that would earn them a better living as adults. The more community credits you had, the better qualified you were for certain jobs, better housing and better goods.

“Zero, okay?” Alex replied apathetically to the smug and defiant Zoe. “And I don’t plan on getting any in the future. Reclaimers don’t need credits after all; they live in tents out in the wastes.” Alex made sure to mention his intentions of becoming a Reclaimer often when speaking to Zoe. It always made her a bit angry.

“There you go again with this Reclaimer business…” she trailed off, unwilling to discuss it for the thousandth time. She had already argued with him about it several times, and her position on the subject was already well known to Alex. Changing the subject, she looked over at Shen and asked, “So I heard you were working on a new song? Jake said it was really…electric or something”

Shen, with a blank look on his face, mumbled, “Yeah…but I don’t want anyone to hear it yet. Jake just dropped by when I was messing with some stuff. He didn’t hear the whole thing. You wouldn’t like it anyway; it’s the kind of thing that nobody listens to anymore…you know, stuff with a rhythm.”

Shen always downplayed his music, even though most of the time it was really brilliant and nice to listen to. Sometimes Shen would play something for Alex or Zoe, but it was only on rare occasions. Most of the time he sat in his room; quietly recording and composing music. Alex guessed that most of the music would never be heard by anyone but Shen himself, and it was pretty depressing. Shen could have been a popular musician by now, if only he promoted himself more.

“Well I’d love to hear it sometime Shen,” she said absentmindedly, already looking at the clock on the wall and thinking of her next appointment, “even if it has a rhythm.” She got up from the bench, and brushing dust from her slender arms, proceeded to explain where she was going.

 

[theotherguy]

“Sorry guys, it’s getting quite late, and I have to finish my thoughtgram on the Divine Ruin. I’ll see you later. Promise not to do anything too crazy tonight, okay? I don’t want them to put you in suspension a week before examinations.” She was already moving out of the door, hurrying off to write her pitiful thoughtgram.

“Yeah, whatever,” Alex grunted. They exchanged their goodbyes and then she was gone, leaving the two of them alone on the uncomfortable glass furniture.

Shen still seemed star struck by her brief appearance. His eyes sill seemed glossed over with wonder as he thought longingly of her. It disgusted Alex.

“Why do you like her anyway?” Alex asked, for the first time since he had known Shen. When asked, Shen seemed baffled, and the look of longing left his face.

“Well, you know…uh…she’s kind of hot.”

Alex sighed, “She’s also kind of a bitch, man. She’s got no substance. Why do we even talk to her?”

Shen gave him another blank look and responded, “Look, I don’t have time for this. Who I like is my business, not yours. Why should you start caring all of the sudden? Anyway, it’s getting late. If you want to get in your recharging station, go ahead. But I’m going to be planning our next trick. You do want to come along, don’t you?”

Alex decided to drop the subject. After all, it was indeed Shen’s business. “Yeah, sure; just tell me when and what you’ll be doing and I’ll be there. I’ve been there for all your other tricks haven’t I?”

“Yeah,” Shen replied with a vague air of excitement, “but this one is big. I want to be remembered for this one—I’ll tell you about it later. All I can say is it’s going to be huge. I’ve got a bunch of people from the other communes to come and participate tomorrow night. The elders won’t know what hit ‘em.”

So it had something to do with the elders…of course, they were the biggest target for vandalism and trickery in the Society. They were just so…easy to mess with, and their reactions were always the biggest. He could only imagine what Shen was planning to do with multiple people and “industrial gloss” as he had put it.

The light in the commune was beginning to fade as the sun slipped behind the great ash mountains in the distance, and the Youths began to filter out as they got tired. Alex and Shen remained for a little while, idly chatting about the coming weeks, then Alex decided that it was time to go to bed.

They exchanged their goodbyes, and Shen remained in the shadows of the Commons, sitting on the glass bench in solitude as thoughts of vandalism running through his mind, his bulbous blue eyes glowing eerily with electric light as they registered the darkness around him. Alex left him like this, to think his own thoughts, and headed up the glass staircase towards his dorm.

It didn’t take long to ascend to the next floor, his feet scraping metallically against the cold transparent glass of the staircase. He came to a small landing in the stairwell, and entered a metal doorframe with the glowing LED display above it reading, “200-221 ACCESS”. Many of the LED’s had become inactive over the years, so the sign was barely even legible; but everyone knew the Commune so well by now that nobody had thought to replace it.

He moved quickly down the mundane hallway to his dorm, room 215. The steel door to his room was worn and old, covered in grime and scratches from the hundreds of Youths who had inhabited it over the years. Alex had left his own marks on the door: a slight dent from when he was trying to move in a piece of furniture, a scratch from when he bumped into it in the dark one night—He wished he could say he would miss living in the dorm, but to tell the truth he was immensely happy to be leaving this mundane and decrepit place. In a couple of weeks, he wouldn’t have to worry about cramped hallways or metal doors anymore. The mountain passes would be his corridors, and the open air his doorway.

Alex placed the flat of his palm against a scanner next to the door, which had been programmed long ago to recognize the exact features of his fingertips and palm. It let out an annoying, shrill beeping noise twice, indicating that it didn’t get a good enough reading.

Alex cursed, and pressed his hand harder onto the scanner. This time it beeped three times, and the door to his dorm room unlocked with a mechanical click. Opening, and then shutting and locking the door behind him, Alex advanced at last into the musty confines of his room.

It was an impeccably efficient room—boring, square and exactly three and a half meters on each side. The walls, like all of the walls in the commune, were constructed of thick, tinted glass interlaced by a grid of steel, and the floor was steel and covered by an unsightly and old microfiber carpet. There were only two pieces of furniture in the room: the massive and frightening recharging station, and a small glass table, (which Alex had used to dent the door when he was trying to move it into the room.) His room was also an internal one, so there were no windows to be seen, and the only lighting came from a tiny fluorescent lamp that he had placed on the pitiful little glass table.

Some of the Youths had more elaborate rooms filled with electronic devices and luxurious furniture they had bought with community credits. Alex, however, preferred Spartan and utilitarian living space. What was the point , if the only reason he entered his room was to sleep?

He was too tired to think about much else, so Alex simply shuffled over to the recharging station, which appeared as a large and ugly glass pod with various wires running off of it. He opened the door of the recharging station and stepped inside, feeling the cool, stagnant air as it flowed out of the pod and engulfed him. The door of the pod closed instantly behind him as a laser trigger inside noticed his presence.

Alex turned around and placed his head against the side of the pod. He knew the drill about recharging quite well already, since he had done it almost every night since he was born. He didn’t even have to wait for the computerized instructions to tell him what had to be done—he was already in place before the jittery synthesized voice began.

“Please…place…your….head,” the jittery and disjointed voice began. Alex pushed a button next to his left hand to shut the thing up and move on with the process. He had heard the instructions so many times now that he despised listening to the machine drone on with a passion.

He felt a slight tingling sensation run up his spine as the machine arranged itself to fit his body, the many black wires snaking up his legs and arms like crawling vines. Then, he felt a mildly painful prick on the back of his neck as the main recharging wire jammed itself into his spine, but the pain was brief and quickly nullified. He felt an instant wave of relaxation as the machine took control of his brain and forced his body to shut down.

Then, with the wire of the recharging station digging into the back of his neck, Alex drifted off to sleep.

-Chapter 3, Vandals-

 

[15357]

God. You are awesome at writing. This reads like one of Herbert's books; really interesting.

btw, the phrase " moderately good-looking Honda" made me think of cars.

Also, the storyline reminded me vaguely of "The Giver".

 

[theotherguy]

Thank you.

I wanted it to sound like a utopian society in the beginning, very similar to The Giver; but the story will be much much different

Whereas the society in The Giver chose to live that way for religious/political reasons, "The Society" in my book lives the way it does out of necessity.

I'm sorry if any of the terms are confusing. I wanted the reader to know very little, and learn about the world along with the main charachter, so in the beggining there are alot of terms which don't mean much at first (Scathing, Reckoning, Divine Ruin, and the fact that they're named as Hondas, Toyotas and Sonys) But bit by bit I plan to link the world of the book with the world of today, and all of this will make much more sense.

 

[15357]

Ah I see. At first it seemed like a fantasy novel, but as it went on, I realized that it was in the future of this world, or at least in a world with the same or better level of technology.

 

[TheHamster22]

Wow, I've only read two of the posts so far, but what a compelling storyline its building up. I love it! I really hope your intending to finish this it's fantastic.

The only thing that got me though was maybe the Introduction, it didn't seem compelling really to read and a bit cliché maybe?

 

[theotherguy]

I edited in the introduction right after posting it, so I didn't think much about it.

 

[15357]

I didn't notice the introduction for some weird reason. :O

 

[theotherguy]

wow, I haven't written this in a while, but tonight I had a sudden rush of creativity and wrote two chapters.... here you go.

-Chapter 3, Waiting-
The next day was mind-numbingly boring.
Alex woke up, as usual, to the annoying sound of the recharging station?s voice droning on erratically about how he should step away from the station, lest he become overcharged. He pulled the wires out of his neck, as usual, with a quick tug. He couldn?t remember anything that had happened in the past nine hours, the standard time of nightly recharging. Confused and clumsy, Alex stumbled out of the recharger pod and into his dorm room. His brain was still recovering from being shut off for an extended period of time, and the back of his neck stung irritably from the tiny holes that the recharger had bored into his spine.

He had heard that newer rechargers had non-invasive wires which simply coupled with sensory preceptors on the surface of the neck, rather than drilling all the way to the spine. However, his commune was third tier, and thus didn?t get new equipment from The Society until long after it was invented--often in the order of decades afterwards.

Alex staggered to the glass table in the corner and propped himself up against it. Fumbling in the dark with his hands, he found the light switch on the small fluorescent lamp on the table and flipped it on. The lamp buzzed, and then let off a feeble blue glow that allowed him to see more clearly into the darkness of the room. At the same time, his neck healed itself as light-activated nanospores released a cool, quickly hardening gel into the bore holes created by the recharging wires?as usual.

He had gone through this routine every day for his entire life, so the slight discomfort barely registered to him?it only served to give him a nagging feeling of restlessness and boredom. How could people go around living like this? Every day was the same, every action equally mundane and pointless. Even the highest ranking members of The Society spent their days in a plush hole of an apartment or in the modest cave of a suburban home their entire lives, never doing anything other than their specified job (which was more often than not equally as mundane) and raising the next generation to do the same. It seemed as though The Society was doing nothing more than merely existing, doing what meager things it could to survive, but never truly advancing, never truly growing.

That is why Alex desired to become a Reclaimer. Every day was new to them?true, they performed the same tasks over and over, detoxifying the land a few meters at a time, but at least they saw new scenery, met new challenges and discovered something new on every step of their journey. Alex wondered what it would have been like to live before the Reckoning, when all the land was beautiful and all the people knowledgeable and godlike. Somehow, he thought it would be equally as boring.

When Alex had become sufficiently refreshed, he exited his dorm room and went down to the Commons. Finding it empty, with the rays of the morning sun just barely shining in through the glass walls, he decided to visit Shen. However, when he ascended to the third floor and came to Shen?s dorm, he discovered that Shen had left for the morning to go on a jog. Shen always jogged in the mornings, but Alex had never woken up early enough or had the drive to go with him. Sometimes he just didn?t understand Shen.

His best friend not available, Alex passed by Zoe?s room. She too, had gone somewhere for the morning, but unlike Shen had left a short thoughtgram by the door. There was nothing visible to show that the thoughtgram was there, but as with all thoughtgrams, Alex simply knew it was there?it was like a feeling, an emotion felt within the brain whenever one passed by.
He placed his hand against the door, and with the contact the thoughtgram message spoke out within his mind. It was the voice of Zoe, absentmindedly projecting her thoughts onto the door as she left.

?For anyone who is looking for me today, I?m at the Hall of Services delivering a thoughtgram on the Divine Ruin. If you want to get in touch with me come back at three. That?s when I?ll be done with my community service for the day.
-Zoe?

Alex pulled his hand away from the door, the voice of Zoe still echoing in his mind. Great?now he had nobody to talk to. Since he didn?t have school, there wasn?t much he could do today. He could study: going over old recordings of the instructor?s ramblings, or he could hang out with the other Youths?none of which he was particularly fond of.

Alex decided he would just walk around the town for a while. There wasn?t much else to do; and besides, he might find something interesting to do. So, his mind set, Alex descended the glass staircase to the first floor of the Commune and headed out the front door.

As he left the confines of the climate-controlled commune, Alex was greeted with the warm rush of morning air. The world was just waking up around him, with the light of the new sun just barely lighting up the concrete street ahead of him and reflecting off of the glass buildings, still just barely flickering with the white glow of the sun. Bulbous reflective vehicles parked along the road were covered in morning dew, which sparkled like stardust as he walked down the sidewalk towards the downtown area.

Alex knew that he would have to get to the Societal Bakery early if he wanted a bite to eat for breakfast, so he hurried down the street, not really noticing the scenery around him. After all, he had seen this same drab street his entire life and he could really care less who was out and about this morning. The only thing he worried about was the hunger he felt, and the short hours of the Societal Bakery.

Usually Alex didn?t eat off-campus. He generally had to leave too early to get to the instructor?s hut out in the country to eat anything substantial. The Commune provided only a soggy mush of who-knows-what for every meal. So, it was natural for him to go for some good food on his day off. After all, it was free.

Alex hurried past the various ugly, boxlike buildings of the outer commune ring, making his way towards the center of the city, where the Divine Ruin and various official buildings were positioned. No doubt there was already a long line for the bakery. He probably should have left earlier.

He wondered where Shen was off to on his morning run. Maybe Shen had already picked up something from the bakery and was now jogging through the wheat fields on the outskirts of town. He might have already made it to the solar collectors by now? that kid was a beast.

Whenever Shen would go running he would always bring back a random object he had found lying around the road on the outskirts of town?a knickknack here, an old artifact there?but it was usually something cool that he brought back, and he filled his dorm room with various little objects of questionable value. Most of it was rusty or moldy, and often the chaperones would get on him and request he remove the artifacts, or throw them away. ..well that and the drugs?the chaperones were never too happy about those.

Alex took a turn at the intersection of Commune-6 and Industrial_Ring-2 (perhaps the two most generic streets in the entire city), and headed west, towards the bakery. The streets were divided into longitudinal and lateral lines which ran in circles around the main hill of the city, and all intersected at the Divine Ruin. Industrial_Ring-2 (which Youths affectionately called ?The Circle?) was one of the most important roads of the city. It stood just in-between the Commune districts and the Industrial District, and had many sites related to food, fun and relaxation. It was basically the place where Youth?s went to hang out, and where adults came to sell the products of their labor for community credits.

Along this road, Alex could certainly see a lot more activity that had been on his old communal street. Round grain trucks were constantly moving along the road at a slow crawl, leaking their brown seed onto the ground?while attracting various birds?before pulling into one of the various bread factory driveways. There were also several people, (most of them adults heading to work), walking along the sidewalks in a melancholy manner.

After walking about a quarter of the ring, Alex came to the Societal Bakery. It was a modest building, jutting directly into the street and connected directly to the Societal Flour Repository, a massive cylindrical building that served as both a storage facility for processed flour and a factory for the mass production of bread. The Societal Bakery, like all of the businesses in the city, was a direct factory wholesale supplier. The Societal Flour Repository simply moved its finished product directly to the street to be sold. But ?sold? is a term that is to be used lightly. Bread was automatically paid for by the government, as were all of the other necessary goods of the people

The smell of freshly baked bread filled Alex?s nostrils as he quickly moved towards the modest square bakery which jutted out from the ugly cylindrical flour repository. Even though it was early, there was already a line for the bread. An old Sony woman stood hunched over in front of Alex as he got into the line for today?s public bread. She was short, perhaps only three feet tall, and Alex noticed that she lacked any semblance of teeth. Even so, she was just as eager as the rest of them to get her daily allotment of bread.

Alex began to wonder how long he would be standing there with the old woman hobbling along and mumbling to herself in front of him. The line had hardly moved an inch when six more people lined up behind him. They were all adults, carrying suitcases or purses, lining up to get their breakfast before they had to go to work. Directly behind him was a tall, slender Honda with very peculiar facial features which made him seem gaunt and garishly thin.

Alex felt almost naked in this crowd of adults. He was the only one there who didn?t seem to have an agenda or a place he had to be. In fact, what exactly was he doing there? He should have been out doing tricks on the Elders or vandalizing government offices. On the other hand, he didn?t have the drive for such an endeavor. When he was to become a Reclaimer, he wouldn?t have to worry about standing in line with factory workers.

Just when he felt he would be crushed in-between the rusty old woman ahead of him and the garishly thin factory worker behind him, a smooth and calm voice echoed out to him from behind.

?You look kind of nervous kid; this your first time buying bread??
It was the factory worker, an amused smile spreading across his thin face.

?No, sir,? Alex replied hesitantly, ?I just don?t come out here this early very often. You see, it?s my first day out of school.?

The factory worker nodded and his expression grew more cheerful, ?Ah, so you?re a graduate! I still remember my first day out of school, but that must have been twenty years ago. Since then it?s just been work every day all day with passive charging and no sleep. Tell me, what Commune do you belong to??

Alex looked away passively. He had already decided that this man would be a bore to speak with. Apathetically he grunted, ?uh, third Tier?commune 4?
At this the factory worker lit up, ?Ah, commune 4! That was my commune too. Hey, I?ll bet it?s got the same old equipment and junk. Don?t worry about it though kid, the real world is much better?the third Tier communes are always kind of dated. But hey?look where I am now, I?m living in a bread factory!?

Even with the coincidence of both of them sharing the same commune, Alex was still unimpressed. After all, with only five communes there was a 20 percent chance of any one person having been in the same one as you were. He actually found that fact quite depressing?it only underlined the boredom and smallness of his hometown. Alex came to the conclusion that this man must have been leading a terribly mundane life. He probably both lived and worked in the bread factory as a Presser or Kneader, constantly connected to a passive recharger and never given any respite but a short trip in the morning to obtain bread from the bakery on the outskirts of his own factory.
?Doesn?t it ever get boring though?? Alex asked, ?I mean, working in the bread factory at all??

The worker appeared puzzled, ?Not at all?,? he concluded, ?I?m happy with where I work. I have good friends in the factory, and I couldn?t imagine doing anything else. As the Elders say, ?He who works without complaint has eternal faith?; and the Elders are usually right, you know??

At that moment, Alex began to recognize the man?s condition?the constant work, the pits under his eyes, the gray skin, the gaunt thinness and his passive attitude?they all pointed to one thing: the man was drugged. He had learned from the instructor that the Society often passively pumped prescribed tranquilizing drugs into criminals and people of the most mundane of jobs to keep them content. Without the drugs, as the instructor informed him, the whole of society would break down in a constant cycle of terror and slavery. Those words had never meant much to Alex??terror? and ?slavery? were just textbook terms you put down as the answer to a pop quiz?but they were almost always used in a vague moralistic threat by the instructor.
?Sir, forgive me, but are you by any chance a criminal?? Alex asked the man, full of embarrassment for asking such an outlandish question.

The worker laughed, ?Why yes, yes I am actually. I?m not ashamed of telling it either. When I was about your age I did a few things that could be considered blasphemous?but work made everything better. I realized that in the end all that will matter is that I did my part--and I always do my part. What job are you hoping for, kid??

Alex?s suspicion was confirmed, the man was a criminal mellowed by passive drugs. His attitude of boredom towards he man turned into one of respect and kindliness. Criminals are like disabled people, and the Elders say that they must simply be treated as ordinary citizens with a few special circumstances. After all, a criminal was just a citizen with a little stroke of crazy in them?they only needed to be cured of their temporary insanity.

?Well,? Alex continued, in response to his question, ?I?m pretty sure that I want to become a Reclaimer. This city is just too small for me, and I want to do my part for the Society out there in the wastes, where they need us most.? It felt like a weight was lifted from his chest when he admitted this. Reclaimers usually got much respect in the Society, even if they were viewed as being on the brink of insanity.

The passive and eternally blissful worker simply smiled and replied, ?That?s nice. Reclaimers are the heroes of our Society. It?s good that a Youth should want to become one, it?s a sign of true moral character--at least that?s what the Elders said yesterday?I think.? The factory worker looked at the ground in a bizarre expression of contemplation and then his head snapped back up, smiling.

While the two of them had been talking the line moved forward quite a bit, and before they knew it, the old woman in front of Alex had received her loaf of bread and had hobbled off. Alex apologized to his eccentric companion, and turned around to face the counter? in truth he was glad to be removed from the factory worker?s tedious banter.

There stood a droopy-eyed Toyota in the window of the societal bakery, apathetically removing another loaf of dry, brown bread from a clear plastic bag. Crumbs fell from his grimy fingers to the counter below, but the clerk was either too tired or apathetic to care about sweeping them up.

 

[theotherguy]

“May I have a loaf of bread, sir?” Alex asked, placing his hands on the rusty metal counter in front of the open window of the bakery. The smell of fresh bread flowed around him smoothly as he expectantly waited for the clerk to hand him a loaf.

The clerk glanced at him and mumbled “Yeah, just hurry along,” and clumsily handed Alex a crusty loaf of fresh, warm bread.
Alex hurriedly thanked the clerk and went on his way holding his newly acquired breakfast. He had neither the desire nor the ability to address the drugged criminal factory worker any longer, so he left without so much as a passing good-bye; leaving the odd man to boil in his own eccentrics. He made a mental note never to become like that factory worker…it was something he duly dreaded. A pointless life filled with mood-altering drugs was not the life he desired.

With his fresh loaf of bread in hand, Alex strolled carelessly through the industrial ring, munching on the soft loaf, taking off tiny pieces at a time and swallowing them, feeling them as they slid down his throat and filled his empty belly. There was nothing like fresh bread…but it wasn’t like there was much else in the Society either. Needless to say, it was better than the gruel the commune gave him.
He decided that he would explore the city for a while before returning to the commune to wait for Shen’s return. He knew that Shen would be several hours away on his jog, running around the countryside and the suburbs. Alex would have plenty of time to amble around town before Shen returned.

Over the next few hours, Alex walked aimlessly around the industrial ring, watching the smoke rise from the factories and disappear as it was turned into useful chemicals by nanospores, and then siphoned off in glass tubes back to the factories where it was reprocessed. The cycle always seemed a little bit pointless to Alex, but it was nevertheless fascinating.
He finished his loaf of bread quickly, but it was not enough to satisfy his hunger. It was never enough.
He then headed towards the center of the city, reverently sneaking by the ruins district and the public offices, bowing to robed Elders as they passed. He hoped to get a glimpse of Zoe near the Hall of Services as she delivered her well-planned thoughtgram to the Elders. However, he was disappointed in finding out from one of the clerks that she had delivered her thoughtgram just minutes ago, and was already attending classes inside the Ruins complex.

So, Alex left the Ruins district, passed by the industrial ring again, and headed out to the suburbs. Here, he passed through rows of perfectly identical cylindrical glass houses, careful to avoid the automatic lawn-care machines and the proprietors’ rowdy, territorial pets. This place too, bored him, so he decided to go back to the Commune.

By now, four hours had passed, and he was feeling tired and above all bored. He thought that a trip to the industrial district and a loaf of fresh bread would be enough to entertain him for the day, but now that he had finished school, nothing seemed interesting anymore. It was as if he was in a state of limbo, not quite a Youth and not quite an adult, but a strange entity in-between with infinite amounts of time and nothing to do. Of course, he could study for the exams…but who would want to do that?

Alex re-entered the empty commune with a tedious sigh, and lounged on a piece of furniture in the lobby. He wondered if Shen had come back from his jog yet—but even if he was, it would be just as boring. Shen didn’t do anything crazy until nightfall, and it wasn’t even noon yet. He decided to sit down on one of the glass couches and relax.
Alex passively observed an abstract steel structure which hung from the wall, tracing its angular design with his eyes. It was an old sculpture, probably thirty years old, and it was covered with the grime of a thousand youths as they felt it with their grubby hands over the decades. It seemed a waste of space sitting there on the wall in the midst of such utilitarian and Spartan surroundings. Still, he couldn’t imagine it not being there. He wondered how long ago it had last been cleaned.

As he sat there observing the sculpture, Alex heard the soft clicking of feet as they descended the glass staircase down into the lobby. Alex passively turned his gaze towards the foot of the staircase and saw as the figure of a tall and rugged Toyota came into his line of sight. It was Gary Zelman, one of the Commune chaperones.

“Hey Alex,” Gary exclaimed as he noticed the jaded Youth on the glass couch. Alex took some time to respond. To be honest, he never really liked Gary; he was one of those over-enthusiastic adults who had read some self-help book about Commune counseling, and then thought he knew everything. Gary always had prosaic rhymes and sayings to try to get his underlings involved in the system…or something like that. Alex simply tended to avoid Gary as much as possible…but such a feat is completely unfeasible if one is trying to avoid someone who lives only a few doors down.

“Good morning, Gary” Alex groaned. Gary always wanted to be called by his first name for some reason, even though the man was in his early thirties, he never wanted to be called “Mr. Zelman…” it was just another one of the annoying quirks that made Gary so unlikeable.

“Kiddo, ya look kind of down…what’s giving ya trouble?” Gary whined in a fake tone of voice, standing in front of Alex in front of the sculpture on the wall.

‘Kiddo’… Alex disliked Gary with a passion. “Nothing, Gary, I’m just kind of bored. School’s over now and all of my friends are off doing stuff—“

Gary cut him off, not paying any attention to what he was saying, “Well kiddo, like I always say ‘turn your frown upside down with a little laughter each day’.”
It was another one of his sayings—Alex could have sworn he took it from an advertisement somewhere. Gary kept on blabbering, “You should come to the spirit meeting today, Alex. Take your mind off things, ya know kiddo? I remember when I first got out of school—it was like ten years ago or something. Man, I was so bored…worried about the exam and stuff, ya know? Or…I was until I realized I never wanted to leave this commune…so here I am, the chaperone! Anyway, you should come to this spirit meeting, you’ll love it---I swear… aye kiddo?”

Alex clenched his jaw. Gary was always telling him to come to the spirit meetings. He’d only been to one, years ago—the whole commune was gathered around a bonfire, singing and dancing all sorts of other revelry. It was commemorating the 70th anniversary of the commune or something like that....Alex would have gone to more spirit meetings—that is until the Elders banned fire in the Society. Now spirit meetings consisted of Gary telling some languid old story and pumping out lifeless motivational speeches. Only the first-year youths went to the spirit meetings anymore.
“Yeah, Gary…I’ll get to the spirit meeting…but really I have a lot of studying to do and---“
Gary cut him off again, this time with a tone of spurious sadness and regret, “Oh, really? I forgot you had to study for the exam. I’ll let you do that…but if you want to go to the spirit meeting I’d be more than happy to accommodate ya, okay Kiddo?”

Alex grunted, and Gary finally left, exiting the front door and leaving Alex to sit alone in the lobby. He was glad to be rid of that yuppie who called himself Gary Zelman. Shuddering for a moment in light of the recent embarrassing situation, Alex stared without thought at the floor.

After a few minutes of apathetic solitude, Alex decided that it would be best to go up to Shen’s room and see if his athletic friend had returned from his morning jog. Without much hesitation, Alex stretched his legs and proceeded to ascend the staircase and down the hallway to Shen’s room.

When he reached the dorm, he didn’t even bother to knock on the door, and simply entered. Alex and Shen were such friends that it had become second nature for either one of them to enter the other’s abode as if it had been his own. It should have been no surprise to Shen, then, that Alex should enter totally unannounced.
The interloper Alex found the exhausted Shen lying upon a rubber mattress on the floor, singing an utterly captivating and beautiful melody from his unmoving lips, his eyes pulsating with the rhythm. Alex knew that it was probably not best to bother Shen while he was in such a state. It was often that Shen would completely phase out while composing music and Alex knew that it would be impossible to get him out of this state of serenity without upsetting him—Shen always got upset whenever someone interrupted his song writing. In fact, this was probably the first time that Alex had listened to more than ten minutes of Shen’s music before the young musician became startled by his presence.

So, Alex quietly sat down in one of Shen’s glass chairs and listened to his beautiful music, as if he were at an orchestral concerto. Some said that Toyotas like Shen were born with a specially modified vocal organ that allowed them to synthesize chords, percussive instruments and deep, enthralling bass sounds and thrilling harmonies all at once, a one-man band. The truth was, his instructor told him, Toyotas were capable of alternating their vocal chords at such high rates that it seemed like they were singing multiple notes at once. Whatever the explanation, the result was ethereal, and Shen was just the type of person who could use his amazing vocal abilities to write brilliant compositions. Alex stared off into the distance for a few moments, enjoying the groove and falling into a slight trance, until Shen’s song had fallen into a soft and slow refrain, at which point Alex decided to interrupt his dazed friend.

“Hey, Shen… I’m sorry to interrupt you, but we—“, Alex crouched down and placed a hand on Shen’s shoulder. Suddenly, he awoke from his stupor and his beautiful song crashed into a brief cacophony of noise before Shen cried out in alarm.

“Ah!” He cried, rising to a sitting position and then turning his head in surprise towards Alex. “You freaked me out there, Alex” he said, calmer now. “What’s going on?” Shen sat up a bit and pressed a button on a tiny recording device strapped to his arm, which apparently had been taping the entire song as Shen had sat there composing.

“Well, you know….I just went down to the bread factory and had some breakfast, and I just sort of walked around and stuff—nothing special. I was getting kind of bored so I just came up here to see what you were up to.” Alex looked away awkwardly, embarrassed at breaking Shen’s calm and meditating song.
Shen clearly saw his shyness and a smile spread across his face. “Alex , don’t worry about what I was up to, and start worrying about what we’re going to be doing tonight! Man, you’d better see what stuff I’ve got planned. I didn’t want to talk about it around Zoe and all, but now that we’re up here I guess it would be best if I showed you what ‘s going down.”
Shen got up from the floor and moved over to a set of drawers he had standing in the corner. Intrigued by his sudden excitement, Alex followed close behind. The eccentric composer Shen rummaged around in one of his drawers and pulled out what looked like large, white plastic pill-shaped objects, which gleamed in a semi-transparent fashion in the artificial light of the room. Alex didn’t have any idea what these things were, but he was almost positive that Shen did not buy them himself. The hand-sized white pills were almost certainly stolen from an industrial site, as they had the clean and nondescript utilitarian nature of industrial tools.

“What the heck are those?” Alex asked a culmination of his thoughts.

Shen laughed lightly and held the small white pills out like rare and prized jewels. “These,” he explained in the most haughty fashion, “are industrial glossers,” He paused for a moment, juggling them between his hands before continuing with his esoteric explanation, “They use them down at the factory to produce farm equipment---they’re totally harmless, I swear—they just stick them into paint guns and they automatically emit gloss when pressed. At first it’s this really sticky pink stuff that’s really hard to get off of your skin, but it dries into clear polymer gloss.”
Alex began to sense his devious intentions, “You’re not planning to use these—“Alex’s query was immediately interrupted.
“Oh, but I am!” Shen exclaimed, tossing one in Alex’s direction suddenly, forcing him to catch it awkwardly in one hand, it’s incredibly smooth surface almost causing it to slip out of his hand and crash to the floor. “I can’t wait to see the look on the Elder’s faces when we trash the Public House tonight. I have at least twelve of these to spare—I was just going to get a bunch of guys from some of the other communes to help me, and we were going to toss them all at once from all directions and then run away as quickly as possible, so they don’t know who to prosecute. Man, it’ll take them weeks just to get the stuff off of the walls, and it’ll be even better if we hit one of them!”

Alex frowned slightly, “You sure we can pull this off man?” he asked skeptically.
Shen replied smugly, “do you know who you’re talking to? I’m the great Shen! I’m the one nobody catches, the ghost!” He started stalking around the room like some kind of hideous and stealthy specter, and then broke out into muffled laughter.

Again, Alex frowned, but he knew that he could trust his friend, Shen in pulling off any kind of stunt, as he always seemed to do, and managed a smile, “Yeah…uh…I guess we’d better get started then, it’s almost three hours past noon by now.” To be honest, Alex had not known the time, but had guessed on the amount of light in the sky…he doubted that it could have already been that late. Had he really listened to Shen’s entrancing song for so long?

“Nah, man” Shen grunted, taking the egg-like industrial glosses out of Alex’s unwitting hands. “We’ve got our planning cut out for us today. It’s the Harvest Sermon today at the Ruin. They’ll want to see every Youth there to be lectured to before the exams. It’ll be the perfect alibi, you see. We’ll just sit there and listen to the sermon, all the while placing these gloss things in the right locations—or something, you know? We’ll be scoping out our prey.” Shen tossed an egg up in the air and caught it. He was certainly the expert when it came to situations like these.
Alex was beginning to like Shen’s plan. Sermons were always the most mundane of affairs in the Society, and the Elders were not renowned for their eloquence. In fact, Elders had quite the ignominious reputation of droning on in esoteric fashions, never saying anything of real use. Perhaps the Harvest Sermon would be better passed in the manner which Shen described: in devious preparation.

“Alright then, so when does the Harvest Sermon start?” Alex asked, half-hypothetically, tapping his fingers on Shen’s desk. Shen was putting the industrial eggs into a large metal lunchbox, and observed Alex with an apathetic eye.

“In like half an hour or something…I don’t know let’s just head out. I’m bored,” the aspiring musician mumbled, moving towards the door. Alex simply shrugged and followed. Little did they know, and as they probably would have wished to have known at this point, it would be their last night of peace and boredom in the Commune; a peace they would wish for the entirety of their lives. For this one decision, this one inkling of devious and lighthearted nature, would be the turning point of each of their lives.

 

[theotherguy]

-Chapter 4, Vandals-
As was mentioned before, the eloquence of the Elders in the Society was not praised widely. The Elders were admired for their piety, and nothing more.

They were the religious and intellectual figureheads of the Society, passing down harsh rules and doctrines and getting respect and admiration in return. They were a hard people, a stern people, a people ruined by years of fiery, passionate study and left in their latter days to smolder as conservative bits of burnt coal at the bottom of an intellectual fire. Nevertheless, they were admired for their piety.

It was this atmosphere which permeated the Divine Ruin as Alex and Shen descended upon its blasted and dirty visage. The streets were filled with a multitude of people all on the way to the Ruin to hear the annual Harvest Sermon, in which the head Elder, Ramon, was expected to deliver a long-winded lecture on the importance of hard work, and commemorate the year’s bounty, as well as bless next batch of Youths in the taking of their upcoming exams.

There were people from all over the Society: office workers and industrialists fresh from dinner, farmers from the fields and Youths from their supposed hours of study all stopped their work for the remainder of the day to hear Elder Ramon preach his sermon. It seemed a great commotion had come over the city, and that for one instant that speck of civilization amidst an infinite field of wilderness might become a gleaming city upon a hill--if only that gleam were provided by the utterances of a single, hardened old man.

Shen pressed through the crowd, his lunchbox jangling against his side, rudely pushing people aside. Alex followed meekly. He pointed his gaze towards the divine ruin, which stood like a tumor against the backdrop of so many gleaming modern structures. It was square, blackened and low, yet it had a large concrete pillar extended towards the heavens as if to make up for its ineptitude. Nevertheless, it was an ancient structure, and passed on to the observer a sense of majesty that such ancient structures often provide. The front doorway, which had been so crudely blasted away in the wars and disasters of eons passed, was gilded in modern gold and marble, a slight renovation on a structure which gained so much of its charm through the chaos of the past.

Alex and Shen pushed their way through the crowd and entered the luxuriously adorned doorway, avoiding the greeters and screeners whose official job was to take out of the incoming crowd those ruffians they found unfit for the hearing of the Sermon. These included, but were not limited to, criminals, Reclaimers and underage Youths. Apparently, not everyone was fit to receive the divine word of the Ancestors, which had been supposedly passed down from generations past.

Entering through the doorway, Alex and Shen proceeded down a red carpet through the eerily lit and ghostly hallways of the Divine Ruin. The ceiling was low and constructed of concrete, and faded writing in some archaic and ancient language covered the walls, yet it was so old as to be completely illegible. Soon, this long hallway began to descend down into the earth, and it was clear that Alex and Shen were going some distance underground before reaching the Divine Sanctuary.

Eventually, the slope of the hallway evened out, and the two Youths exited the hallway and were greeted by the ancient majesty and beauty that was the Divine Sanctuary. It was a massive circular room, perhaps two hundred feet in diameter, and at least forty-five feet in height. A massive hole was blown out of the concrete ceiling and up about a hundred feet to the surface, through which the twilight of the outdoors streamed. The walls were of solid concrete and steel, and they stretched up to the ceiling and ended in a massive dome, under which hung a glorious glass chandelier, its blue electric light streaming over the massive cavern of the Sanctuary. Hundreds of glass benches were arranged in concentric circles around a central podium, on which stood the beloved Elder Ramon, his frame bent over the podium and using it to support his weak legs.

Already, at least half a thousand people had come to sit around the old Elder, and eagerly awaited his pious sermon which would must undoubtedly put them all to sleep. “Alright, we’ve made it, now let’s just find a good place to sit and we’ll figure out who exactly to gloss and where to set up our stuff…” Shen suggested, snaking his way through the benches and sitting down abruptly on an inconspicuous bench about seven rows from the podium. “this’ll do, I guess, “ he mumbled, shoving his lunchbox beneath the transparent pew.

Alex sat down next to his devious friend, and stretched his legs out a bit. He hadn’t said much on the way to the Divine Ruin, and he supposed that there really wasn’t that much to say, since all of them had been to the Ruin so many times, and it was nearly taboo to speak openly of mundane manners in such a sacred place. Nevertheless, Shen mouthed off.

“You think Zoe’s thoughtgram made a big splash here today? I know she was working on it for an awful long time, and I guess it must’ve been pretty great—you know, for an essay.” Shen spoke with a certain distance in his voice, his eyes glazed over with longing as he scanned the crowd for his beloved Zoe.

It made Alex sick. How could he speak so openly of her civic duty, when they were about to perform a trick on one of the Elders themselves? He knew that Shen’s judgment was clouded by his attraction to her, the perfect flower of the Society. “Well I don’t know,” he replied in a whisper, “Since you like her so much why don’t you just go and find her and leave me here to do your dirty work?”

Shen punched him lightly on the arm, “Shut up! She’s coming this way, nitwit.” Shen hissed, stifling Alex’s banter and gazing at the form of Zoe as she strode down the aisle to find a place to sit. She smiled modestly at an old woman and made a phony giggle at an infant as it reached out to touch her. Alex could not recall a time when Zoe disgusted him more than at this moment.

Suddenly, Shen waved at Zoe, and, seeing his beckoning hand, she came towards the two Youths without great hurry, her dimpled smile glistening with the kind of shine that makes an automobile attractive, but which did no great wonder for her own appearance.

“Shen?” She asked, with a certain air of plastic permeating her voice, “I didn’t think you would come to the Sermon…I mean you usually don’t, and you even brought Alex with you!” She sat down abruptly next to Shen, without even asking. Alex slid further away from the pair, feeling himself a third wheel.

“Well…I…uh…” Shen started with some awkwardness, “I just figured that since we’re graduating this year that I’d better hear this sermon, just so I could get a grips on where the old Elders are coming from, you know? I don’t want to leave the commune unprepared….”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right,” she snapped, and then came close, with a kind of hissing whispering, “I know you’re planning something, Shen. Don’t try to fool me with your flattery. I don’t know what you’ve got in your box down there, but I know it’s bound to be pretty nasty.”

Shen raised his hands in protest, but Zoe reached down beneath his legs and grabbed the lunchbox by the handle. “No!” Alex exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, vainly holding out his hand to try to stop the meddling little Zoe, but it was too late.

“Is this industrial gloss!?” She exclaimed excitedly, as Shen groped for the box and tried to pull it back into his grip. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this could be, Shen? How much trouble you would be in if you used it?” She groped to have the box back, but Shen ripped it from her hands and shoved it back under the pew.

“Get off my tail, Zoe. I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t want you blabbing to the Elders about me, got it?” However, in spite of his angry warnings, the damage had already been done…Zoe had seen the evidence and she most certainly would tattle on the both of them if they chose to use it.

But then, something odd happened, “Oh, I won’t tell anyone Shen…” she said, a devious smile spreading across her face, “I won’t tell anyone…as long as you let me in on it. I want to be a part of this...”
Shen choked in disbelief, “You don’t mean—“

“She’s lying, Shen!” Alex cut him off.

“I’m not lying! Look, you see me every day doing the right stuff, the community service, kissing up to the Elders and writing essays and all that stuff right? Well I’m tired of it! Do you really think that I’m good to the core, that I’m some kind of machine, that I can live my life doing stuff only for the good of the Elders and never for myself? Well I’m not, and I want a release!” Her whisper became hoarser, and a certain fire seemed to erupt from her eyes, replacing the fake sincerity that had been there before.

“She’s lying, Shen…” Alex persisted, his teeth clenched and his hand reaching to protect the box of industrial gloss. Their plan didn’t matter anymore; all that mattered was keeping Zoe from getting her grubby hands on it and reporting it to the Elders.

At that moment, Ramon began his sermon, and all, save the three Youths stood up and applauded their pious Elder Ramon as he took the podium and raised his hands in dedication of the coming ceremony. “My Beloved Children,” he began, “We are and shall always be the Beloved Children of the ancients. It is what separates us from the harshness of nature and the bestial urges of the animals! In this very chamber our ancestors hid and trembled for a decade following the Reckoning, and it is here in this chamber that the Great Library was built and destroyed in the Civil War, and when we, the Lost Generation, the Beloved Children were born!”

It might have been his most eloquent and meaningful of sermons, but Alex, Shen and Zoe wouldn’t have known it, because they continued to fight over the gloss. “Well I guess you could be a part of it,” Shen whispered, still spellbound by Zoe’s presence.

“No, damn it!” Alex persisted, pulling the box closer.

Zoe reached for the box, pleading, “Oh please, Alex…all I want is a little fun, that’s all! Just let me see the gloss…that’s all I want…I just want to see how it works, feel it in my hands!” She groped for the box, in spite of Alex’s recoiling and attempted to pull it towards herself.

“We, on this great Harvest Day, are the greatest people on the Earth. We alone were chosen to survive the Reckoning and carry on the legacy of our ancestors as the whole world goes mad and crumbles around us!” Ramon continued his sermon; his hands rose into the air and spit flew from his tongue…had he any tongue left in his decayed Honda face after so many years of torment.

Zoe and Alex grappled for the case, with Shen pleading in-between. “Let me see it! Let me see it!” Zoe whispered continuously. Alex began to realize the gravity of the situation as he felt the lid of the lunchbox slip in his hands and felt the lid separate from the bottom of the container. Shen let out a cry and grabbed for the lid, but it was already too late.

For one shocking and life-defining instant, Alex watched the gleaming eggs of industrial gloss fall from the lunchbox and fly through the air like drops of rain, though white like milk and in the shape of pills. Then, they were dashed against the floor, and all became a sea of pink.










-Chapter 5, Banished-

 

[15357]

Thank god.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

Awesome. I hope you're planning on continuing this.

 

[theotherguy]

recentley I just stopped and said, "man, I have no idea where this story is going :cheese: ", so I did alot of planning and now I'm writing again.

 

[Mesz]

seems good, my pc's really crap though so I cant see some of the symbols in the first two posts or w/e.....yeah, good stuff though

 

[Edcrab]

Great as always!

Mesz: the symbol problem effects a lot of posts here now (since the update, it seems anything that was copy-pasted from any source other than a forum window can't match the characters to each other properly).

Certainly makes things harder to read, but don't let that put anyone off

 

[theotherguy]

-Chapter 5, Banished-

All that Alex could recall from the chaos that followed was that it felt like standing in a warm waterfall, except it was pouring upwards rather than downwards. The ooze hissed all around him and enveloped him in its pink embrace. Twelve seconds of turmoil, twelve seconds of complete panic and helplessness and finally, silence.

Alex, barely able to recover his wits, wiped the burning pink gloss from his eyes and managed to look about him. He was covered in the stuff, a dripping and sticky foam that clogged up his joints and flowed down his skin with gravity. There was a huge pink splotch like a single drop of spilt milk radiating outwards from the miserable Youths a good ten feet or so, absolutely drenching the pews, the carpet and of course those three unfortunate Youths.

For a moment all eyes were upon the pink interlopers, and a general look of shock abounded on every gaping face. Even Ramon had stopped rasping on, and stood staring, his hands in mid-gesture and the deviant vandals who had interrupted his beautiful sermon with their mass explosion of pinkish goo. His lips trembled, and then, with a horrifying shriek he exclaimed, “Hellfire and brimstone! Who dares disrupt this sacred place with their filthy games!? Who dares defy the speaker with foolishness!? I cannot believe what I am seeing!” His frame grew more and more animated as he shouted obscenities.

At that moment, as the collective gasp of the crowd began to devolve into uncontrollable giggling, large hands grabbed Alex by the shoulders and dragged him through the pink slop along the ground out into the aisle. He had no time to react, and his friends were grabbed too by security officers, and were half-dragged, half-led down the aisle among peals and peals of laughter from all around. Ramon continued to shriek obscenities.

Seeing hardly anything through the quickly solidifying gloss that dripped into his eyes, Alex was painfully dragged up the aisle, into a metal doorway and up a concrete ramp and was thrown into a darkened room. Jostled and confused, Alex rolled about on the ground as Zoe and Shen thumped down beside him.

He regained his wits and sat up to see three large men dressed in green robes, security officers, standing around the hapless Youths in quite a menacing manner. “Get up,” one of them grunted, grabbing Alex by the shoulder and pulling him painfully to his feet. The others were brought to their feet also, and the officer began his questioning.

“Do you have any idea what you have just done, Youths?” The officer asked the question menacingly, and answered for them, “You have disrupted the great Harvest Sermon with a sophomoric prank! This was Ramon’s final sermon before his euthanasia, and you have disrupted it! Oh, we will deal with you the way it should be done, mark my words!”

The officer came towards Alex with an up-stretched fist, and Alex held up his hands in self-defense when suddenly a tall and imperious figure entered the room and uttered, “Please, officer, I believe I can handle this myself!”

The authoritarian was a slender, tall fellow wearing red robes and sporting a red cap. Alex did not recognize him at first, but as he moved closer to spare the youth from the abuses of the officer, Alex recognized him as the Elder of Internal Affairs, one of the highest ranking Elders in the Society.

The officer grunted at the Elder’s entry, and moved away from Alex in a sniveling manner, sticking up his nose at the abusive Youths, now nearly dry after being hauled out of the chamber, up a ramp and into this dismal old cell. The Elder shoved the officer aside, a look of imperious anger on his face.

He addressed the Youths together, his lip rising slightly as he snapped, “My, what have we here? Three vandals caught red—or should I say, pink handed in the act of a disruptive stunt on the day of the Harvest Sermon? What a day for this! What do you think you could have possibly been doing?” His voice was quick and high, and he flailed his arms up in the air at the last question, throwing the responsibility off of himself and onto the Youths.

Zoe, now out of shock from the explosion, crawled towards the Elder, leaving a trail of pink goo behind her and sobbing, “Oh please, Elder Flavius,” (for that was his name) “please forgive me! It was the others who brought the stuff here, and I was merely trying to stop them! It was an accident I—“

She was cut off rudely, “And you, Zoe, I should have expected more from you! How could you associate with such vandals and hooligans as these? I listened to your thoughtgram on the Divine Ruin this morning, and my I had hopes for you…but now, now just look at you, the star pupil of her generation, groveling on the floor like a worm!”

Elder Flavius backed away from her, as if disgusted, and with his red robes spinning about him, turned to face the two male Youths, Alex and Shen, who were now standing in preparation of their scolding. Alex didn’t know what to expect, as it had only been perhaps a single minute since the fateful explosion of goo, and he hadn’t quite thought through the consequences of what had just occurred. Indeed, he was only just beginning to notice the gravity of the situation at hand. They had been taken to an ancient holding cell, a tiny concrete room that had not seen light in perhaps a hundred years, and which still had ancient pipes and electric lights jutting out from the ceiling, their glass shattered centuries ago. Indeed, he would have thought they had committed high treason to be brought to such an ancient and possibly sacred place.

Beginning his rant once more, the Elder of Internal Affairs snapped, “Ah, and you two dashing boys…yes I can see by the looks on your faces that you are nothing more than common punks who care nothing for the order in our society and who seek nothing but pleasure. Yes, I was like you fools once, I had my share of pranks; but there was nothing like this! Can you even contemplate what has just happened? Do you know all of the laws you have just broken?”

Shen, still apparently unmoved by the Elder’s angry rants, began to snap back in a sarcastic manner, but Flavius cut him off, “I will tell you what laws you have broken! First, you caused a public disturbance in the Divine Ruin, for which the sentence is three years of public service; Second, you have profaned his holiness, Elder Ramon, during the harvest sermon, for which the sentence is a public apology and four years of public service; Third, you have stolen vital societal goods and destroyed them, for which the sentence is death!” A collective gasp arose from the Youths and one of the guards at the last sentence, for no-one in thirty years had been executed for any crime, petty or criminal.

“But you can’t kill us!” Alex began, not despondently but rather resolvedly, “It was only a petty crime, and an accident, nonetheless. Give us public service, but don’t kill us!” The gloss, not quite dried, was flying from his face as he said this, little specks landing on the Elder’s cheek. Zoe cried all the more, rolling about on the floor like an infant.

Just as Elder Flavius was to begin reciting the law and justifying his position that the Youths clearly deserved to die, another figure burst into the room, this time of smaller and feebler frame. Alex recognized him as much by his squeaky sound as by his face: it was the Instructor, come to vouch for him in his time of need.

“Now what is all this racket about?!” the Instructor grumbled, shoving through the disgruntled guards and placing himself right next to the Elder of Internal Affairs, “What has happened in the chamber?” He asked the Elder, bending up to look at his stern face and then turning to the pitiful look of the Youths in their collective wretchedness.

“Nothing of importance, old man, these Youths have committed an act of high crime and are to be executed at once!” The Elder practically shouted the response, pointing straight at Alex and grabbing the Instructor by his shoulder.

But then, he began to laugh. That old rusty fool began to laugh heartedly, shaking the Elder’s hand from his shoulder.

The Elder seemed disgusted, “What? Do you think I jest? Did you not see what happened in the chamber?”

The old man’s cackle died off, and he responded, “I’m sorry sir, but surely you must be joking. To come in here and see my very own pupil, covered in pink sludge and being berated by the highest Elder in the court; my, it’s just all too funny! And to top it off, you want to execute him? My, what a surrealist nightmare this is!”

Flavius stared at the instructor blankly, his face stoic and expressionless but his eyes glaring with cold disbelief. “Now what I think is truly comical, old man, is that you decide to come into my private chamber (which god knows how you found) and ridicule the law! You say you know this hideous and misguided Youth? You say he is your pupil? Then, I do implore you sir to give me evidence towards why I shouldn’t kill him.” The Elder’s spoke with a quick and snappy tone, high pitched, with a slight lisp.

The instructor bent towards Alex unexpectedly and took the poor Youth’s left hand in his own and, scraping the nearly dry industrial gloss from Alex’s palm, revealed a faint black spot, hardly larger than a pebble, imprinted on it. “You may recognize this little black thing, wouldn’t you Mr. ‘Elder of Internal Affairs’?” the instructor pointed to the spot, his finger trembling.

Alex quickly sank into embarrassment, his stomach turning over as he saw the look on Elder Flavius’ face going from cold contempt to intrigue, and finally to excitement.

“You don’t mean to say…” the Elder trailed off, gazing at the spot as if it were a golden coin.

The instructor rejoined, “Alex has The Mark. You don’t really intend to kill the only Mark for a generation, would you Elder Flavius?” The question trailed off into silence, as everyone in the room stared blankly at Alex’s hand thus afflicted with the burdensome Mark.

The Mark was an extremely rare genetic defect which caused a perfectly circular black spot to appear directly beneath the skin of the left palm. In the early days after the Reckoning, those with the Mark had extreme power and prestige. They were thought to be holy, the messengers of the ancestors, and almost always lead the Society as a king or emperor. There was rarely more than one Mark every two generations, and it grew rarer and rarer as time went on. Modern scientific analysis of the Mark revealed it to be nothing more than an odd clump of hardened tissue just beneath the skin, and as more was learned about the Mark, the lest prestigious it became. Even still, it evoked a state of mystique and wonder on anyone who saw it.

It was for this reason that Alex retracted his hand instantly, and pulled it to his chest in a fist. He hated it when people singled him out, the only person with a Mark for over two hundred years. It made him different, it made him special, but he hated it. It connected him more thoroughly with the lore of the Society. It gave him a status he did not want.

The Elder regained himself, and spoke once more, now quite in a whisper, “Well,” he began, “This is certainly a momentous occasion, to give the orders to kill a Mark--but under the circumstances I believe I can see your point. It would be a shame to have such an….opportunity go to waste. I’m sure you agree with me that he and his meddlesome friends must be punished for their actions. I would just as soon kill the others and throw the Mark in prison for the rest of his life.”

 

[theotherguy]

Zoe, who thought she had been saved by Alex’s defect, and had stood up and regained composure, again fell into hysterics, “Please, please Elder Flavius, have mercy on me! I had nothing to do with it, I swear!” She cried, reaching out to touch his robes.

Flavius ignored her, and continued on, “But I think I have a better idea which might suit the situation more keenly. I cannot let such a serious act go unpunished, so I recommend banishing the three of them into the Wastes to live with the Reclaimers. That way, he may live on and pass the Mark to future generations, and his friends may not die and bring him torment.”

The instructor nodded slowly, and replied, “Yes, I believe this might be the only way to reconcile the situation. As I would have it they would get merely a slap on the wrist and nothing more, but the law is both blind and harsh. A fair punishment under the law is fair for me. After all, it was only yesterday that Alex disgraced me and announced his decision to become a Reclaimer!”

His words stung Alex like needles, but he could not have expected more. Here he was, hours before his death at the hands of the law, and he had been saved merely by a black spot on his hand. He supposed he should have been grateful for being allowed to leave the community and become a Reclaimer, exactly as he had wanted in the first place. Still, he did not intend to leave in ignominy.

Zoe sobbed ever more, complaining ever more vehemently at her treatment, and Alex did not blame her. Shen, who had remained quiet up until that point, whispered a remark to Alex, “Jeez, looks like you’re getting what you always wanted Alex, I guess that little deformity of yours finally came to some use; and you didn’t even have to fail the damn test.” His voice was acidic, biting. Alex knew that Shen probably didn’t care either way, as long as they weren’t executed.

The instructor continued, “So, please consider it as a humble recommendation from an even more humble citizen. I assume you must deliberate this with your council before coming to a decision?” His brow lifted, shaking slightly on the left side.

The Elder shook his head, “No. I have the jurisdiction to do with Youths what I wish, as long as it is within the law. All that is required is a little paperwork after the fact. I will have workers clean up this mess in the Ruin and wash away the filthy stuff from the poor Youth’s skin, and then they will have exactly four hours to gather their belongings and they will be escorted immediately to the wastes just outside of the gate. If they try to enter the city for any reason other than severe medical emergency, they are to be imprisoned at once.” He began pacing the room, thinking up the terms of his grandiose punishment. “Guards!” he snapped, beckoning the two officers who had been standing stoically in place at the doors. “Send immediately for the Cleansing Workers and get them to clean up all of this slop! Also, have a group of officers escort these feckless vandals back to their Commune. I want it all done with before the day is out—no, not you Officer Miller, you remain here and make sure they don’t leave this room. The old man can go as he pleases, but the Youths must remain!” With that, the Elder of Internal Affairs spun about and marched out of the room, confident that his orders would be carried out.

The Instructor and one of the guards remained. Silence pierced the room more than the voice of the Elder of Internal Affairs, and the suspicious gaze of the guard cut through the three Youth’s like a razor. Now that they were alone, and somewhat in private, the Instructor addressed them honestly, “I’m really very disappointed in all of you.” He said, shaking his head, “especially you, Alex. I knew your friend Shen would lead you into trouble some day, but I kept telling myself that you would surpass---but I should have known that you were a rebel. You always have been and always will be. It is a sign of the Mark upon your hand—and you had better thank the heavens that you had that Mark on you today, child.”

“But Instructor,” Alex replied, as Zoe sobbed in the background, “Why did you come here to save us? How did you know we would be brought here?” His question, in all seriousness, fell upon the ears of the Instructor, yet it caused him to smile as if it were a joke.

“Peace, Alex.” He responded calmingly, “Let’s just say that I have faced many a situation like the one you’re in over my many years; never was it anything as harsh as stealing and destroying property in the Divine Ruin, but I have had my share of run-ins with the law. I was of course visiting the Ruin for the Harvest Sermon when your little mishap occurred, and I followed you here. I knew that the punishment for such a crime would be highly severe, and I had enough empathy to defend you all—“

“Yeah, some defense.” Shen cut him off, “Looks like we’ll be drifting around in the dust dunes for the rest of our lives thanks to you. Who knows, maybe we’ll get killed by Wanderers. Boy, would that be exciting.” The instructor lowered his brow and his face contorted into disgust.

“Shut your mouth, thoughtless boy!” He snapped, “You don’t know the start of what I have done for you! There are wonders in the Wastes that are greater than you could imagine. There is a world elsewhere, a world filled with things that you could not imagine. Some day you will thank me.”

This time, Zoe cried out, “Thank you!? My life, my career and my reputation have all been crushed by you!” She sobbed, mumbling this almost unintelligibly.

The Instructor replied again caustically, “It is you who have put yourself in this situation; from the very moment you reached for the gloss, you were committing an irreversible act. Dry your tears and look towards the future. It is a shame that such a beauty like you could become so wasted, but sometimes one must change one’s course in life to recognize one’s true potential! And with that, I am off to let you contemplate your fates. I hope to see you again in the near future. Good day, Youths!”

He bowed, turned and left the room without another word. The three were left alone with the guard, sitting yet again in silence. Zoe, no longer seeing any opportunity to please a superior, stopped sobbing.

“I can’t believe this!” She exclaimed emphatically, turning towards her other two accomplices in spite, “I thought it would be fun…I really did. I thought that we would just have a little fun, mess something up and run away like nothing happened. But no, you had to fight me didn’t you? If you’d just let me see the things we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

It took a moment for Alex to realize that she was talking about the gloss, but Shen answered before he could come up with a rebuttal, “Oh please, Zoe. I could see you wanted to snitch on us just by the look on your face. The excitement was practically dripping off of you.”

The two bickered on, setting out points and counter points that got more and more ridiculous until they transformed into base insults. Alex could tell that Shen was simply goading Zoe on—his smile revealed that—and he decided to end it. “Will you guys just shut up?” he snapped, stepping between them, “Don’t you realize what’s happened? It doesn’t matter who did what or whose fault it is, we’re in deep right now. There’s no going back…there’s no more commune, no more Gary Zelman, no more Elders, nothing. We’re criminals now, and we had better stick together if we’re going to survive. Can’t you understand that?”

His argument was weak, he would admit, but it was true. Their lives were irreparably changed from that point, no matter what they did. Not even murders were exiled in the Society, they were simply killed. Thieves too, were executed. Petty crimes like vandalism resulted in community service and brain-altercation. Only the oddest of crimes resulted in exile.

Alex had heard of sexual predators and political revolutionaries being exiled before, but these were extremely rare, and he supposed a Mark and his friends stealing, destroying and vandalizing public property fell in the same category. Thus, they were to be set apart from the community entirely---nothing more than a story to tell to first-year Youths. It was almost sickening to think about.

Shen and Zoe both looked at him with contempt, and Shen replied, “Yeah man…I got it. You want us to shut up so you can enjoy your little vacation with the Reclaimers. That’s what you’ve always wanted right? Well I’m not like you, man. I’ve got friends here, I’ve got reason to stay, you know? So if I can argue my way out of this, I think I’m going to try it.”

Alex, seeing that their friendship was quickly coming apart rebutted with, “I’m sorry Shen, but I---“

He was cut off suddenly by an opening of the heavy metal door of the chamber as the Elder of Internal Affairs along with several workers carrying buckets and hoses entered the room. “Ah, here they are. Spray them down, disinfect them and escort them back to their commune! I want them out of this sacred Ruin on the hour!” The Elder of Internal Affairs shouted orders at the obedient workers, who immediately and without warning began spraying down the Youths immediately where they stood, a slurry of pink goo and water flowing over them and into a drain on the concrete floor.

Zoe attempted to protest for civility, but was blasted in the face by a jet of water. At the same time, Alex felt an icy blast of water rush over him while workers simultaneously scrubbed at his skin with sponges smelling of noxious chemicals. The sensation itself was something not quite unlike a hurricane to Alex, and when it was over he was left soaking wet and completely disoriented.

Before he could get his bearings, his hands were rudely thrust behind his back and handcuffs were placed tightly around them, impeding his movement. The guards did the same for the other two Youths, and they were kicked and shoved into a line, and then marched out of the room.

Alex and the others spent the next few minutes in a debilitating parade of ignominy as they marched down the corridor and to the main hall of the Divine Ruin, where there was still a large crowd of people. They watched in shocked silence as the three Youths were escorted past them. Alex could hear whispers from the white-faced and wide-eyed crowd, “Execution?” One was heard to say, “Exile?”

The whispers grew slowly into a murmur, and then a roar. Alex hung his head in shame as the housewives, the factory workers, the farmers, teachers and Elders all laid their eyes upon him and whispered his name. Whatever they had to say, he didn’t want to hear it. It was really too much to bear.

They were led through the ornate hall of the Divine ruin and up the long, carpeted ramp to the surface. The sunlight from the massive doors flooded into the corridor as they opened, blinding Alex momentarily with reddish light from the setting sun. The square before them was even more crowded than the Ruin itself, where hundreds of peasants had gathered for the Harvest Ceremonies. The guards practically had to beat off the onrush of inquisitive pedestrians with the butts of their automatic rifles.

“Make way!” The head guard shouted, “Make way for the prisoners of exile!” Yet his shouting did nothing to diminish the flow of onlookers.

There were so many faces. Hundreds of faces stared, jeered, pointed at the Youths. Their very city had become a circus, and they were the performing elephants. Again Alex hung his head, partially to avoid eye contact with any of his peers that might be in the crowd, and partially to keep the sun out of his eyes.

Eventually, this parade of disgrace made its way past the smokestacks of the industrial ring and to the run-down neighborhood of communes. Alex expected them to stop there so the three convicts could gather their personal belongings, but they never stopped.

Obviously a bit puzzled, Zoe asked the lead guard, “Sir, didn’t the Elder of Internal Affairs say we would be allowed to gather our belongings?” Her voice was plaintive, unnaturally high, and unnaturally polite.

The officer grunted and turned his helmeted head towards her, “No time. Look, they exiled you to have you die in the wilderness anyway. Your belongings would be put to better use in the community…for charity…or something.” He shrugged, and turned around.

Zoe gasped, “Why that’s just plain awful! You won’t even let me have my cosmetics, or my nanospores, or my music, or my thoughtgrams or my—“

The officer kicked her, and she stopped talking. The others ventured to do the same for the rest of the trip. Alex was not concerned about giving up his personal belongings, for he had very little. Although, it would have been nice to take along some food, his rucksack and other necessary items, but he supposed they would have to make do.

They marched along in silence, and the scene seemed to grow more and more depressing as Alex began to realize that this would be the final glance he would have at his home: the last time he would see the wide streets, the smokeless smokestacks of the factories, the rolling fields of wheat and putrid orange trees, even that annoying and disturbing Gary Zelman. In moments it would all be gone, to be replaced by mountains of grey ash and mile upon mile of the unknown, the unnatural. He looked back towards the city, towards the gleaming Divine Ruin atop the hill—the very Ruin he had desecrated. He received a swift blow by the elbow of the rear guard. “Hurry up!” He ordered.

Alex rubbed his side to ease the pain, and looked forward yet again. Forward…yes, that was all that was left now. There was no sense in looking to the past and having regrets, he would have to find solace in the goals of the present and immediate future, and make the most out of what the future would bring.

They were past the residential ring now, and had passed into the vast expanses of farmland that surrounded the city. The wheat glowed with an orange hue in the setting sun, swaying in the breeze as automated harvesting machinery lumbered along like mammoths, decapitated their stalks for the good of the Society. A solar farm was seen gleaming brighter than the sun in the distance, its millions of recursively-grown solar panels spreading towards the setting sun, a vast phototrophic tree of glass and silicon.

 

[theotherguy]

They advanced further and further…a mile; two miles; three, until finally the outer wall of the city was seen stretching out before them, a white line of concrete extending over the horizon. It was perhaps the most depressing scene Alex had ever witnessed in his life, the wall which would keep the Youths from everything they had ever known and loved, a permanent barrier of exile.

Succinctly, they arrived at the wall, which Alex could now see was thirty feet tall, and which curved in a perfect circle around the city. It was smooth, white, and featureless. A few guards stood on top of the structure, peering down from behind the glass battlements with rifles in hand. A huge steel gate stood between the convoy of prisoners and their ultimate exile. Two of the guards entered a small round nice at one side of the gate, and entered a code into a secure keypad. Nine distinct electronic beeps resonated from the niche and pierced the silence, and then the gate, on huge mechanical gears, retracted into slots on the concrete wall, leaving a large rectangular opening for which the party could pass through.

Alex felt an unexpected jerk on his wrists, and he turned around to see a guard had unfastened his handcuffs, leaving his wrists raw, blue and painful. The others were also released from handcuffs, and the head guard remarked, “You’re free, exiles. Leave this place and never return. If for any reason you choose to walk through these gates you will receive no mercy and will be shot on site. Go due west to find a camp of Reclaimers three miles out. They will not be hard to miss, just search for a great noise and a large rotating spotlight. I wish we could escort you to them, but none of my guards are willing to go into the Wastes at any price, I am afraid. Good luck and may the ancestors have mercy on your souls!” His last remark was said almost in jest as he practically kicked the three of them out of the gate.

Alex turned back almost in despair as the machinery kicked in and the gate slowly shut behind him. He watched in misery as his home suddenly became a foreign nation that he could never again enter, as his former life was brought suddenly to a halt by the grinding of steel bars coming resoundingly to a close.

The gate clanged shut violently, and the three Youths were left alone, homeless outside the walls. Alex gazed out into the Wastes which would be his new home. The sun glowed orange as it set beneath a mountain of black ash in the distance; a flat plain of brown grass extended out for a few miles from the wall, but between there and the mountains was nothing but a desolate wasteland of ash, rock and ruin. And, most ominously, to the north a front of black clouds were advancing. A storm was rising.

Chapter 6, Storm