by Michael Soll
And then there is right and wrong which somehow correlates with truth and lies. The right was true and the wrong was a lie. There was no in between, at least from what I’ve gathered, but I don’t understand why some things are considered good and others are bad. I don’t understand how Joey can blindly say one thing is right and dismiss the alternative as being wrong. Then again, if I were born in Newbury, would I believe what he believes? Would I be me, or would I be some version of him? How much of me is truly mine? Am I just a product of my father and the hive or am I something more?
As I sat in the room alone, relishing the opportunity not to be seen, a noise I had never heard chimed throughout the city, over and over and over. I looked out the window and I saw people rushing out toward the City Center. My time of solitude had ended.
I hurried down the stairs where the Mayor promptly appeared. He grabbed his sword and rushed out as if the house were collapsing. I followed behind the Mayor, through the panicked crowd. Riley stood on the stage with James and Bryan who were covered in tears.
The mayor hurried over to Riley who took a sympathetic step toward his boss and whispered something into his ear. Riley took a step back, giving the Mayor some space. He held the sword firmly and shut his eyes as the entire city watched him closely. And after a few moments, Joey’s father opened his eyes and looked out at the city:
“The NaNas have returned and they have taken my son’s life.” Everything went eerily silent. “We will secure the borders at all times. Schools will be suspended indefinitely and all citizens 8 and up will be enrolled in daily military training.”
The mayor paused for a moment and examined all of the panicked faces in the crowd. “We don’t die. We don’t die! We fight. Fight like we did so many years ago. Fight for our children. For our parents. For our brothers and sisters. For our people. And we will win like we have every time before! Newbury is a beacon of light and they are the darkness. We are the shining city that survived the apocalypse and nobody is going to take that from us.” He lifted his sword into the air, then slammed it into the ground beneath, turned and walked away.
The crowd slowly dispersed, but I lingered behind and stared at the weapon lodged in the ground. I thought about Joey and his last moments and how he must have felt. I wondered if he somehow knew about his imminent doom and had intentionally left me behind. I wonder if I had gone, would Joey be wiping up tears with James and Bryan while I became extinguished?
I walked back to Joey’s house, back to Joey’s room and stood idle amidst his memories. He had left so much behind but so little at the same time. I wonder about his friends and his family and how much they knew the real Joey. I wonder how much I knew the real Joey. Did I know him better than everyone else? Was he truly dead if I survived and carried on his story?
And then, before I knew it, it was supper time. I walked downstairs not knowing what to expect but found an ordinary setting without one key component. The Mayor was at the head of the table, Kat at her spot, but across from her was Joey’s empty chair.
The Mayor looked over at me. “I suppose we’ll begin with a prayer.” I didn’t know what that was, but I watched Kat close her eyes and bow her head so I did the same. “Bless us, oh God, for the food we are about to eat. Thank you for this house and this life and protecting Joey in that thereafter. Amen.” After a moment of silence, I opened my eyes and realized the other two had started eating.
I didn’t know much about God, but Joey had taught me a little about him sometime ago:
“There’s only one God and he created everything,” Joey said nonchalantly while we were playing basketball (a game played by bouncing a ball and shooting into a hoop).
“Did he create this ball?” I asked.
“Well, he created Man who created the ball, so yeah.”
“He created me and you?”
“Of course.”
“Who created him?”
“Nobody. He’s always been around. Or he created himself. In the olden days, there were a lot of different names for him and different religions. But in Newbury, we just all refer to him as God.”
“What about those who don’t believe in him?”
“Nobody doesn’t believe in him.”
“I don’t,” I said abruptly.
“Well, you just don’t know any better. Like when you first saw a carrot you thought it wouldn’t taste good, but you ate it and you liked it. And now you have it every day.”
“That’s true.”
“Yeah, and before you came here, you never heard music. You didn’t know it existed, but you love it now.”
“I do…”
“So, I mean, now you know about God. He looks out for us all. Why wouldn’t you want to believe that?”
“What about when the solar flare hit?”
“Sometimes he does things for reasons we don’t understand. But if he stopped the flare, we wouldn’t have ever met, right? So he brought us together --”
I snapped back to reality and looked over at the empty seat beside me. If God really existed, did Joey need to die in order for me to continue my journey? Or was he just something people believed in that may not exist, like giant insects or my dream of walking on the surface?
I finished my meal, but waited for the others to be done before I left the table. I looked over at the Mayor who was imbibing copious amounts of alcohol.
“You two are excused.”
Kat got up and ran to her room. I looked over at the Mayor and wondered if I should talk to him. I wondered if I had any words he had not already heard. I knew I didn’t, so I went back to Joey’s room.
I thought a lot about Joey and what he had done for me. I left the hive because I couldn’t grow old in a place I couldn’t grow. Not only were the walls narrow, but so too were the expectations of a substantial future. In Newbury, the ceiling was so high I could barely see it. Yet, I knew it was there. I knew the ceiling was keeping me down just as it did in the hive. The only difference is in Newbury, there was the illusion that there was no ceiling. That anybody could become mayor.
Joey had saved me in more ways than one. He carried me from a life of ignorance into one of understanding. Before, I imagined a world beyond my world but now, I knew there were an infinite amount of worlds. If the hive and Newbury existed, anything could exist. Eight months ago, I was lost and hopeful but now, I was determined more than ever to see the above. In the hive, I only knew what I was told by my ancestors and they only knew what they were told by their ancestors. Now I know a different set of truths told by a different set of ancestors. Who’s to say the surface is forever scorched? Who’s to say there’s an irreparable scar imprinted above the dirt and beneath the dust?
What I know is only what I’m told and what I’m told is only what they know. Trusting that my knowledge is the knowledge because others said it so, is trusting that they know what is right and what is wrong. It’s trusting that they know what is good and what is bad. But which knowledge is accurate? Newbury’s ancestors? My ancestors? Or neither?
***
I woke up in the middle of the night and expected to hear Joey’s troubled nocturnal breathing. It took me a few moments before I realized he was gone and would be gone forever.
I was thirsty so I went downstairs to get some water when I found the Mayor sitting with a glass in his hands, staring through the wall in front of him.
“If you can’t feel the world around you, it doesn’t exist. Did you know that, Spec?” I shook my head and stood silently. “We have five senses, you know? Sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch. Take away one’s eyes, one can no longer see the world. Take away one’s nose, no more smelling. No tongue, no taste. No ears, no hearing. No heart, no feeling, no touch. We only comprehend our world through our senses. So if you close your eyes, curl up into a ball and shut out the world, it doesn’t exist. You don’t exist. Because, you’re a part of this world now, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
He took a sip of his drink. “Y
ou’re insignificant, Spec. Did you know that? I don’t say that to be cruel. I’m insignificant too. We’re all…insignificant. I’m going to teach you something I should’ve taught Joseph. The world is not black and white. It’s shades of gray and purple and blue and red. But if you treat it as such, buildings crumble. People want there to be only two colors. They want only black and white. They don’t want to decide what type of gray they are looking at because if they had to decide, they might choose differently than their neighbors and their friends and family. You know what happens then? That person is different. That person is an outcast. Two choices. Black and white. Make things clear. People don’t get hurt. They need right and wrong. You can’t have a decent society without right and wrong. And when people start to question if black is black or white is white…civilizations topple.”
Another sip.
“Before the end of the surface, people said, ‘We don’t have to prepare for an apocalyptic disaster. It’s fiction.’ They didn’t believe in a truth. They didn’t believe black was black and white was white. And those people burned.”
Another sip.
“There are two types of truth, Spec. The reality in our mind and society’s reality. Take you and me for example. I believe in what I believe. Since I believe it, it’s true. You believe what you believe and hence, it’s true. Then there’s the reality society says is true. That’s the loudest voice. That’s the voice that once said the world was flat and so it was flat. That was fact. Sure, some said it was round, but that was their truth. Would their truth matter if society did not agree? If everybody who declared the world was round was suddenly purged from a society, would that truth still exist?”
“Yes,” I said defiantly.
He laughed and took a big gulp of his truth. “Yes!? And how is that?”
“Because there are an infinite amount of truths. But there can be only one truth within me,” I replied.
“And what truth is that?”
“What I see is true because I see it. What you see is true because you see it. Those aren’t two separate truths. What is real can only exist inside of me. You can say something that might change what I believe to be real and change my truth, but in terms of what is real and what isn’t, all that matters is what I think. Newbury views me as inferior. They see my friends as subhuman. But I don’t see that. What they believe isn’t true. What I believe is fact even if everything points to my being wrong, in my mind, that’s all that matters.”
The Mayor gulped down the rest of his drink. “You should get some sleep.”
I nodded and walked back upstairs. I didn’t know if what I said was a mistake. I had never spoken that way to anyone in my life, but I had never been spoken to like that either. I had never had somebody challenge me in such a way that prompted me to discuss what I believed, to divulge my thoughts. Those had always been private to me. They had always been my own but now, they were the Mayor’s and he could do with them what he pleased. Every time he looked at me now, he would know what I was thinking, what I believed. Did I just give up my last bit of privacy?
I got back in bed and looked at the ceiling. At that very moment, I knew the one truth I believed, the one truth that would set me free.
I would reach the surface.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Change:
The change was inevitable.
School was suspended and we were all forced to attend self-defense classes, even Kaolin, who had only appeared in public once since the auction. I had woken up early and decided to explore the city on my own for the first time before the class.
I weaved through the residential sector and found a path on the outskirts that led upward. I went as high as I could and found a spot where I could see the entire city below.
I felt higher than I had ever been and I had this unusual sensation, this fear that I might fall. I imagined the pain from the impact. I guess the higher you go, the harder you fall.
I stood against the dirt wall and saw everything. The city was magnificent. More buildings than I could possibly count. Most of them were rectangular with windows made of glass (a protective substance that you could see through). At the East Sector, the buildings winded up an uneven path. Most of the structures were scrunched together with tiny alleys in between. In the South Sector, the buildings were bigger and more spread apart. The West Sector consisted of the industrial businesses, including the farms and pens.
And then there was the North Sector. It differed the most from the other districts. It was cold and abandoned, a vestige from the past, a path from the old to the new. At the northern most tip of the city, a path led up to a mechanical structure called an elevator. Before the flare hit, several individuals predicted the disaster and created the town. They brought the smartest and most capable people down to the city and created Newbury. But once the flare hit and the surface was scorched, the founders of the city blocked off the path.
They hadn’t done the best job at obstructing the path and it wouldn’t be the first time somebody from the olden days tried to block the past. If Cotta and I could breech the Old Hive, we could make way to the elevator, but would the contraption even work? If it did, could we figure out how to work it? If it’s only purpose is to go up and down, would it be that difficult to decipher?
The bootcamp was starting so I hurried down the winding path and made my way to the class. I quickly spotted Cotta standing by the front, waiting for me.
“Hey, Spec. How’re you doing?”
“I’m fine. You?”
“Yeah, I’m alright. I’m eager to learn self-defense, but I don’t know what it is.”
And then, all eyes turned as a pair of shiny legs appeared. They belonged to the most beautiful girl in the city. Kaolin.
She looked over at us, then spoke in our native tongue. “I hate this place.”
“It’s not that bad,” Cotta said playing with his zipper. “They’ve got jackets and they easily open and close. So if I’m feeling slightly warm, I can zip it down but if I’m feeling a little bit cold, I can zip it up.”
Kaolin stared at him dumfounded. “It sounds to me like you just like playing with the zipper.”
“They’re fun! What if you could put a giant zipper on a house and zip or unzip it to make a completely different house?”
Kaolin turned to me. “Tell me we’re leaving this place.”
All I could do was stare at her. Her neck was so shiny and her collar bone was so pronounced. It was hypnotic.
“Spec! Did you hear me!?”
Her angry shouts melted into beautiful melodies, massaging my ears. I could see that she was angry, but that didn’t make her any less beautiful.
Her melodies quieted and she gave me an angry stare and then, walked to the back of the class and stood by herself.
Cotta leaned over and whispered, “I think her Aunt Flo is visiting.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
Cotta shrugged. “I don’t know. I hear my dad say it when my mom is annoyed with him.”
A young man (slightly older than Cotta and myself) appeared yielding a sword. “Hello everybody. My name is Alex and today, I’ll be teaching you some basic moves with the sword. You should be getting your own within the next couple of weeks, but until then, you’ll each be practicing with the old ones.” Alex pulled a cart forward filled with several dull swords.
“What if we brought our own?!” Bryan appeared from the back, slashing his sword back and forth. “It’s my dad’s. He killed about a thousand NaNas with it back in the Great War.”
Alex lifted his weapon and made contact with Bryan’s sword. It leapt out of Bryan’s hands and went flying through the air, landing several yards away. “If you don’t know how to use your sword, stop pretending like you do. You’ll just end up getting hurt.”
Bryan scampered toward his sword and then dragged it back to his spot. Alex looked out at the students. Held his sword firmly in his hands. “This is called a slice.” He tilted the sword and br
ought it down diagonally toward the ground. “Now I want you all to choose a buddy and you’ll take turns slicing with the sword.”
I looked over at Cotta who looked over at me. “Who goes first?” he asked. We paused for a moment, then quickly put out our hands. I held up a 4 while he held up a 3. “I really gotta choose a different number,” he lamented.
James walked to the head of the class and grabbed a sword from the basket. “Is it alright if we work in a group of three? Kaolin doesn’t have a partner.”
Alex looked back at Kaolin who stood next to Bryan. “That’s fine.”
James hurried back to the two. He handed the sword to Kaolin, then wrapped his hands around behind her and showed her how to slice.
I held the sword firmly in my hands and sliced through the air, but all I could focus on was his arms around her.
“That’s some good slicin,’” Cotta said while practicing my motions, holding nothing but air. “Let me try!”
I handed him the sword and watched James smiling at Kaolin. I wondered if he thought the way I thought about her. I wondered if he felt the way I felt. I wondered if we all felt and thought the same way or if we comprehended the world differently. If we experienced the world through our five senses, it would be understandable for us to all think differently. Our bodies are all different, which means our eyes are different and our ears and everything else. So if we witness life through different means, who is to say we perceive them the same way? Does James feel the same sort of pain when Kaolin is next to me as I do when she is next to him? I only ever started feeling this way since I awoke in Newbury. Is this a normal part of growing up, or is it the city itself that has brought these feelings out of me?
They call us savages because we were raised in a place that does not adhere to their customs, but in the hive, we did not practice inflicting pain on others. In the hive, we did not need the largest house to show we were better than everyone else. In the hive, there was no better, but in Newbury, there was which meant there needed to be a worse. For every mayor, there was a janitor…yet, we are the savages.