First to Dance

by Sonya Writes

Etana looked at the sheet of paper she was handed. Zozeis. She would be living on a planet called Zozeis. She felt angry, but she didn’t speak up. She rarely spoke up. She was a timid person, and she saved all her passion and emotion for only her closest of friends. She didn’t share that part of herself with anyone else, and certainly not with a crowd of strangers.

  Other people did speak up in anger, but, she soon found out, they were all being sent to a different planet than she was. They were not given time to group together and rise up against the decisions being made against their will. Everyone was quickly ushered into the spaceships they were assigned to, and as the spaceships filled up, the doors were closed. A few people tried to resist, but they were restrained by Dr. Azias’s employees and pushed inside.

  The people Etana was traveling with were all like herself: quiet, reserved, and controlled on the outside; strong-willed, stubborn, and brilliant on the inside. In the face of authority they dutifully obeyed, but once they were alone together on the spaceship, their opinions started pouring out.

  Everyone was sharing their personality profiles and realizing they were all the same. They chatted endlessly, which wasn’t usual for any of them, but then, this was not a usual situation either. The spaceship was driven automatically by a computer on Azias and so there was no pilot aboard, only passengers. The spaceship landed in the middle of an empty town. There were houses everywhere and no one in them. Once all of the people left the spaceship, it took off without them.

  Before exploring this new land, the people decided to create a plan. Etana had many thoughts of her own, but for now, she listened. Ideas were being tossed around by the others, but Etana, especially, liked to keep her thoughts to herself until she was sure of how they would be received. Her nature remained unchanged despite the change of circumstance.

  “This is an experiment, you realize.”

  “An experiment? What do you mean?”

  “He’s a scientist. He’s testing a hypothesis of some sort. Dr. Azias deliberately divided us up by our personality types to send us to different planets. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “But what are we going to do about it?”

  “Wreck the experiment.”

  “How?”

  “By not being ourselves. At least outwardly.”

  “But maybe that’s what he expects us to do. He knows our type; he has our psych evals. He expects us to outsmart him, or to at least try to.”

  “So are you saying we should act dumb?”

  “Don’t you get it? No matter what we do, we lose. If we try to beat him at his game, we lose. We’re stuck on this planet, and he knows that. There’s nowhere for us to go, and nothing for us to do, except to act as his guinea pigs. The best thing we can do is make the best of this situation. We need to just all get along and build the best society we can.”

  “You’re right. We can only win if we forget that any of this ever happened, forget about him completely, and live our lives as if we didn’t know.”

  “Yeah. Forget Earth, forget him. We can make the best of this.”

  “And since we all have the same personality, it should be easy to get along with each other!” one man joked, and a few people started laughing along with him, some sincerely and others nervously.

  “I think he wanted us all to be as similar as possible. We’re probably far more alike than we realize.”

  “We all have different occupations, though.”

  “I’m sure he made that exception so we could survive more than a few years. If we were all doctors, we might keep each other healthy, but we would know nothing about keeping the electricity running, much less the plumbing.”

  “If the houses even have electricity or plumbing.”

  “We should check out the houses and see what they’re like.”

  They discussed their occupations and skills and got to know each other a little bit, and then they went out to look at the houses and buildings here. There were many more houses than there were people, so each individual chose their own home to live in. Etana chose a two story, two bedroom house with a basement, located along the edge of the forest which surrounded them. The cabinets and refrigerator were already filled with nonperishable food items, as were the kitchens in all the other homes.

  After choosing their homes, they all met up together at the large building in the center of the town. The building was clearly designed to be a school, but many of the rooms were filled with wood, other building materials and all sorts of tools. One room had desks stacked to the ceiling and another was a library. The library was already full of books on varying topics and also had an entire wall of guidebooks on everything they could possibly need to run a city together: from plumbing to first aid and from government to mechanics. It seemed there was a how-to book on every topic imaginable. In addition to books, the library contained floor plans and maps of the town.

  As they toured the school they all had the same topic on their minds. A school is for children, and children come from parents. All the people here were single adults. There were no married couples and no children. There were a total of thirty women and thirty men, sixty people in all, and all of them between the ages of 20 and 35. They all started to study each other inconspicuously. These people would be their new family members and closest friends, whether they liked it or not.

  The roof of the school building was covered with solar panels which, they discovered, powered every building in town. If something happened to the school building, everyone would be without power. Those with scientific and mechanical backgrounds gathered together to study the maintenance needs of the solar panels and also the wiring which led the electricity to every other home and building. Another group of people got together to form an agricultural plan, and a third group of people gathered to study the well and water systems.

  Several days after they arrived, they woke to find that a large stack of boxes had been deposited in front of the school building. The boxes were all labeled by name, and each individual was excited to see that these boxes contained the personal belongings they’d brought with them to Azias from Earth.

  Etana unpacked her three large boxes and tried to make this house feel like home. She was glad to have her clothes, her photographs and her books again, but she still couldn’t shake the disappointment that her situation wasn’t what had been promised. Dr. Azias led all of them to believe that they would live on the planet Azias with him. It was supposed to be a society of close to 1000 people who’d been carefully screened to weed out the criminally minded and make sure all were responsible, hardworking citizens. Instead, she was stuck on this planet which felt deserted with its dozens of empty houses, and only 60 scattered people who could have been mirrors of herself. Etana hung up a picture of her family on her bedroom wall. They were all 30 years older now, if they were still alive, and she wondered what their lives were like. She wished she could talk to them again, see them again. She wanted to go home, but that wasn’t an option anymore. For all she knew, Earth had been destroyed, but she wondered sometimes if that was yet another lie started by Dr. Azias. Looking back, she wasn’t sure the world conflicts were as major as he made them seem. Still, even if she did have a way to go home, the people she knew before would either be elderly or dead by the time she returned. She sighed. Dr. Azias broke his promise, and she deeply regretted ever trusting him in the first place.

  As time went on, the idea of putting all memory of Earth behind them came up over and over in their discussions. They debated back and forth about destroying all the books that mentioned Earth and vowing to never speak of it again. Most of the people wanted every trace of Earth to be gone. Only a few disagreed with this notion, and Etana was one of them. She started dragging boards and wood planks from the school building to her home in the middle of the night as everyone was sleeping. She hid books in her clothes when she left the library and took them to her basement. Discreetly, she used the carpentry skills she’d learned from her father to build a room in
the basement with a barely noticeable door. She re-painted the basement walls so it all matched. To someone who hadn’t seen her basement before, which none of them had, it would only look like a small room. Over time she built shelves and tried to make the secret room comfortable. She filled it with all of her books and the several books she’d taken from the library. Eventually, the day came when she knew that all her work in putting the room together was rightly done.

  A group meeting was called for all to attend. They met in the hallway of the school building, as had become their custom. Nine months had passed since they first landed here. In that time, forty-seven people arrived to a strong conclusion that memories of Earth simply had to be done away with. Six people were on the fence, which left only seven who were strongly against the idea. For a while, it was enough for them to agree not to teach anyone else’s children about Earth, but now the others didn’t want any children at all to know—they might “contaminate” the others with that knowledge.

  As with their meetings before, Etana took a back seat and listened. She wanted to hear everyone else’s thoughts and then process it privately to come to her own conclusions.

  “We can’t agree to that. We won’t agree to that. You can’t dictate what we will and will not teach our children. Earth is our history, our heritage. The children need to know where they came from. What you’re asking for would be a great loss to our children.”

  “I agree. It would be a loss,” one of the men said. “It would be a loss if you teach them about Earth because then that child would have to lose their parents.”

  “Is that a threat? Are you threatening my life if I have children and teach them the truth?”

  The man laughed. “No, no, we wouldn’t kill you,” he said. “We would simply take your child from you, and if you resisted too heavily we might have to lock you away somewhere until you agree to comply.”

  The other forty-six seemed to all be nodding in agreement, some more confidently than others, and three of those who were on the fence started to look more concerned.

  “So, what then? You are going to take our children, lock all of us up, and go on with your lives, building this city as if all is well? What happens when a division comes between the forty-six of you? Will you then lock up another ten people? Eventually, there would be no one left. We will all die out and be nothing.”

  “If it comes to that, whoever is in the majority will take all the children and teach them exactly what we want them to believe.” He smiled widely, believing of course that he would always be in the majority opinion.

  “So that’s what this is, then? Majority rules? And the rest of us just have to suck it up and roll with the punches.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “So you’re really going to push this. You’re really going to take away our rights as future parents to teach our children the truth.”

  “What rights? Since when is that your right?” The man smiled and then he laughed once more. “Oh, I see. You’re thinking about Earth again. You better put an end to that habit now, before you have kids to think about.”

  The six who were on the fence with the issue were leaning more toward joining the seven after this conversation, which made it forty-seven to thirteen at current. But Etana closely watched the three who clearly hadn’t quite made up their minds, and she knew that if they thought the battle would be lost, they would switch sides and then it would be fifty to ten. There seemed to be no obvious way to win this fight.

  To solidify the point of the conversation and their seriousness about the issue, ten people stood in the way of the thirteen, while the others went into the library and pulled out all the books on the history of Earth and all the fictional books—everything except for the books that taught skills. “Those,” they explained, “we’ll make copies of—copies which omit any mention of Earth—and then we will burn them too.”

  The books were tossed into a pile outside and set on fire for all to see. This was a display of their power, and it was meant to silence their opposition. But it only silenced them publicly.

  In private, they got together and they talked. They were very careful about what they said when the three who were undecided were around, but when it was just the ten of them who were certain the idea was a horrid one, they spoke freely about it and planned what they could do. But Etana still did not tell any of them about her secret room in the basement.

  “Right now we don’t have much choice. There are too many of them and they could easily pick us off one by one until everyone agrees with their opinion.”

  “So, do we pick them off one by one instead? Until we’re in the majority?”

  “If you’re suggesting murder, I sincerely hope not.”

  “No, no, of course not. Ten of us can’t build a society. Thirteen of us can’t. Unless our grandkids all had incestuous relationships together, which I certainly wouldn’t suggest, and they’ll already have to strategically marry as it is to make sure that doesn’t happen. What I mean is, pick them off one by one on their opinions. Change their minds.”

  “No. I don’t think that would work. That would let them know something is up. All it would take is one person to say, ‘hey, so-and-so is talking about Earth again and trying to convince me we should teach it to our kids’ and then they would put on their power displays again. They’ve already burned the books and I don’t want to find out what their next step is.”

  “Well, then our only hope is our kids. Teach our kids the truth…but only when they’re old enough to know that they shouldn’t tell anyone else. If we teach them right, they could possibly turn this all around when they become adults.”

  “But you’re forgetting something. The people against us aren’t dumb, and I think they know we’re not going to truly drop this. They’ll be teaching their kids their way of thinking, and unless we form really big families, our kids will be just as outnumbered as we are.”

  “What if we start a new city? We can go somewhere else and build.”

  “And have two quarreling nations? That sounds like a solid plan. We would have no houses to live in, no electricity and no water system in place. It will take years to put all that together with only ten of us working on it. And nothing would stop them from coming to us, wherever we go, and taking our children anyway. We’re all stuck here together, so we should try to keep the peace as much as possible.”

  “There’s another way,” a young woman said. “Our children can marry their children and teach our grandchildren in secret. The grandchildren can make the difference.”

  “You’ll be dividing up families if you do that. The kids will be torn between their parents who won’t trust each other, and whoever is the stronger one will win. I don’t see that there’s any way out of this.”

  “There’s a way; we just have to find it. For now we have one simple plan: as each of us have children, we’ll start teaching them secretly as soon as they are old enough to keep a secret. We will not let the memory of Earth die without a fight, and we will instill the same passion in our children.”

  It wasn’t long after the meeting that a man named Matthew started courting Etana. He was one of the six who’d initially been on the fence about the Earth issue, though by this point he was strongly leaning toward the same conviction Etana had. Etana allowed him to court her and she enjoyed his attention, though she was not sure she would ever fully trust him because of his chronic indecisiveness on important matters. Still, no one else was showing a particular interest in her, and everyone was feeling pressured to start their families before much time passed. She didn’t have very many options, and she needed a husband if she was to have children. It was up to her and the others to keep Earth’s memory alive on Zozeis.

  Etana entered into marriage with Matthew after a few months of courting. There was no legal system in place to define their marriage, but the relationship was officially recognized in front of everyone else. Several others formed relationships as well, and there were four ma
rriages in all so far, with everyone else rushing toward that state.

  Matthew was good to her as a husband. He loved her and cared for her and became the best friend she had on Zozeis, but still she never fully trusted him in her heart. She never told him about the secret room in their basement, and she was careful not to appear too strongly in her opinions on any topic unless she was sure he agreed with her. Time went on and she became pregnant with the first baby to be born on Zozeis.

  As soon as everyone realized that Etana was with child, the other women entered into some sort of madness. It was as if they’d never previously considered that there was no medical staff here to help deliver babies. The only doctor was a man who worked as a brain surgeon on Earth, but that was a far cry from obstetrics. Still, Etana wasn’t particularly worried about it. She knew that her body was designed to carry and deliver a child, and she felt sure that everything would be fine.

  “Promise me,” she said to Matthew, “that when I go into labor, you won’t tell anyone else until after the child is born. The last thing I want is to be surrounded by everyone else’s fear and worry in a time of joy.”

  After much discussion, Matthew agreed to the promise, but he was reluctant to agree, and Etana wondered whether or not she would even tell Matthew when the time came. In the end, she couldn’t keep it to herself, and once Matthew knew, neither could he. Her labor and delivery ended up being very stressful with several other people surrounding her and talking in frenzied tones. Noise filled the room and she wanted to shout at them to go away, but she bit her tongue. Finally, after several hours of labor, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

  Once their son was born, Etana and Matthew named him Aaron, and unintentionally started the next major argument on Zozeis.

  “All the children should be named alphabetically. Any other children born this year can have an A name, next year a B name, and so on. Upon meeting other people our descendants will always know how old they are by their name, and also, it will help us keep track of the years for now until we’ve settled on a calendar.”