Chapter two
(Lucas)
I looked at my dirt stained hands and couldn’t help feeling resentful. Not that I had expected a better placement, given my parents’ status as feelers, but it definitely would have been nice. The words I had written in the mud, “A wish for freedom.”, were sketched into my mind. Nonetheless, as I left the work site I remembered to carefully rub all traces of the letters away. I had used a fallen branch to write them, like in the old times. Nowadays, no one knows how to write the old way anymore. Only typing is left and even that right is reserved to the few that make it as “scribers”.
.My thoughts drifted back to my parents, I wasn’t resentful. They were simply in the same wretched society I am, it’s not their fault this was my “destiny”. My mother’s lullabies used to magically ease me to sleep, even the nights of the bombings, and my father’s hands were strong, yet somehow gentle, as he guided mine and taught me to write. I missed them, but they had acted rashly. I had lost them, all because they couldn’t admit they didn’t love me.
Ever since their feelings for me and each other had become clear to the commanders, they had been taken away and though my aptitude test results were higher than most, I had been classed as “unfit for further education” and sent to manual training. That between age six and ten; since then I have been placed in a construction work camp and live in bunkers with the other kids like me. We all similar backstories but never talk about them, remembering is too painful. Deep down though, we understand why we are a risk to the system. We have been taught to feel.
“Hurry up Lucas, come inside.”
The camp patroller’s strict voice reached me and I quickly hurried to the dining desks. My food pills appeared in front of me and I gulped them down with a cup of water. These were meant to contain all the needed nutrients, but I and my work mates had our doubts. In centrals, of course, the pills were calibrated to the person’s necessities and were even made to taste nice but we had reason to think they were cutting back on funds and the bitter tablets probably contained half the nutrients we really needed, judging on how thin we all were. Of course, we are the disposable side of society. Not essential to anyone if not for strictly manual jobs that even robots can be programmed to do. The work camps themselves are just another one of society’s methods of keeping us distant from socializing, but we are expendable.
The commander had warned us yesterday, we were to be stationed in another camp. He had said we needed to pack all our belongings this evening, how funny. We don’t own enough belongings to actually require packing. The new camp is in one of the richer provinces, Assia, not that it will change anything for us. Every place is the same, and each day more tiring.
Before going to sleep and after having made sure nobody could see me, I started my evening ritual. I took out my only real belonging: a poetry book from the old days, allowing myself a quick glance. No one knows I have it, I keep it well hidden, but every night I read a few lines. I shouldn’t know how to read either, but my father thought well to teach me. A skill, amongst others, I’ve mastered behind the system’s back.
How NOT to be functional 