Chapter 3– Part 1
(Leah)
As soon as I was sure no one was watching I read the note.
“Love and pain,
Succumb to one another.
With time I have come to discover,
What it means to lose love.”
It was a poem; one I had studied in “Old society literacy”. I remember it from my second year when I started studying poetry.
The paper was different though, rougher than the print, though the characters where ordinary, standardized script. I folded it again and hid it in one of my textbooks; it was only as I was putting it away that I realized the writing on the back. These letters were different; it was messy and almost illegible. I couldn’t immediately make out what was written, however after a few hypotheses I came to this conclusion:
“To lose one’s love is to lose one’s self. Remember, we are out there.”
I analyzed the paper once more and realized that it couldn’t be of the old days, like I had thought. It wouldn’t have survived that long in the cemetery and ignoring the dirt stains, the paper itself was undamaged. That meant that someone, other than I and Sarah, had been in the cemetery more recently. No more than a few weeks.
Though intuitively I could guess the note wasn’t meant for me I couldn’t help taking the message personally. There is someone to look for, something besides society and its rules.
My mind wandered to what that could mean. I had studied the old days before The Society: the alternative was chaos and mayhem. Pain and loss wracked citizen’s bodies as their “loved one’s” deceased in the Great War. Mortality rates went up, suicide became a daily occurrence; that’s when The Society stepped in. They slowly killed relationships and supported the Single Person Identity Program. Every action became calculated, and safer. Technology developed and medicine progressed. Life became better… So why would somebody want to fight it?
I fell asleep with these thoughts wandering through my mind.
A\N This was a brief writing exercise which unless askes me to continue, I will no longer be posting.
How NOT to be functional 