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by Bell 2/4/2014, 5:22 amHi! I made this story for the writing contest, and as some of you might have known, I was late.
And so, looking at my story, I said, "Down we go to the Stories section, lad."
Was that weird? Yeah? Let's just...wrap things up. Please enjoy the story.
Lugubrious.
That was one word that always popped in Harvey Abbott’s mind every time he woke up, every day, for nearly sixteen years.
Every day was another boring day for him; another day with grey clothes and pebbles. The Law, of course, had been keeping the world controlled and peaceful, but for Harvey, all these strict regulations weren’t necessary. He’d be punished if he said that out loud, so every morning, Harvey would always whisper, “Strict regulations are necessary, but over-strict rules are not exactly better” in the lowest voice he could do and he would walk out from his room as if nothing really happened. Living in this kind of world had made him fear...and loathe The Law at the same time.
His teachers had taught him about the history of The Government ever since he was eleven. He remembered it very clearly. After a massive, world-wide rebellion on 2094 A.D., the leaders of the world formed a new type of government. It was famously known as The Government. Under the Central Council, countries around the world began to govern their regions according to the new way: The Law.
Citizens were not to make their own crucial paths. They were not allowed to have more than one child. The children they bore were to be registered as soon as possible. Their data would show up on the computers of the workers in the Birth divisions located in the main headquarter of the Central Council, along with hundreds and thousands of other data around the world. There, the babies’ ‘destinies’ were to be determined, starting from their future careers until their future spouses. The Central Council determined them all, and nobody was able to go against them.
They also introduced a new type of money and a whole new way of earning it.
Payments are done every day, in the form of pebbles. The number of pebbles each person got was different according to their performances of the day. Pebbles were to be put in banks if they were not used, because otherwise they would vanish at 12 AM each day. The pebbles that were in banks were to be entirely spent at the end of the month, for they would eventually vanish as well.
Parties weren’t allowed. Flashy clothes were prohibited. Any forms of celebrations were forbidden. All clothes designers could do were to make shabby, boring gray clothes…for Central Council wanted the world to wear clothes in gray. There were no Yellow Mondays or Colorful Sundays for them. All the world got was Gray for Life.
That way, citizens of the world were forced to work their best every day in order to be able to eat and thus making them extremely productive….and tortured.
Every once in a while, rebellions would happen. The rebels would escape from their homes and build a base camp somewhere safe, where they would plan for their attacks. Most people did it the hard way: they attacked their own countries. But the Central Council were smart. They were always good at killing those rebellions. The participants, in the end, were either missing or dead.
The world Harvey was living was a box. A very, very teeny box. And he thought that he was going to live this routine for his entire pathetic life; getting an unwanted job, marrying a girl he barely knew, and spending his lifetime satisfied with grey clothes.
He was wrong.
On the thirty-first of December, 2415, some of his friends were acting way weirder than the usual. Martin was much more quieter that day, and even though Roman was as quiet as a rock—as usual—his facial expression was certainly not calm. It was the first time he saw him looking at his surroundings with that some sort of a guilty face. Emma was obviously the worst. She was nervous—they were having series of tests that day and tests scared her very much—but it seemed that the nervousness of her had reached a new height. That day, Emma couldn’t stop looking at the window every two hours and let out a deep sigh when she saw nothing special.
His other classmates didn’t seem to catch the strangeness that was happening, but Harvey was determined to know.
His curiosity was answered when four of them went to Roman’s house to do a group project. Harvey had tried to melt the intense atmosphere, but none of his jokes would work. His best friends were deadly serious that day. When he asked them for a reason why they were acting like this, however, several things happened at once. Right after Harvey’s last words, Emma burst into tears. Much in Harvey’s surprise, Roman immediately jumped from his bed and closed the door as fast as he could. His hands then flew to the curtains and in a panicked manner, he closed the curtains down. Martin, on the other hand, gave her a wad of tissues and desperately tried to calm her down, whispering words Harvey couldn’t hear.
All those things happened so quickly that Harvey almost couldn’t catch up with the current events.
“What—“he said. He stood up and looked at his best friends, bewildered. “Roman, what are you doing? Why did you close the curtains? It’s not even noon! And Emma! Why are you crying? What is flippin’ happening here?”
“Harvey, look—“ Roman said.
But Harvey didn’t want this kind of smooth approach. He wanted the answer, and he wanted it fast.
“What is wrong here?” he asked once more. “I need to know. I can’t let you guys act strangely without any reasons! You’re my best friends as long as I can remember. Don’t you trust me?”
The three of them looked stunned. Even Emma stopped crying. They looked at each other for a couple of seconds before Martin, with a hand gesture, politely asked him to sit back.
“We’re sorry,” he started. “We were planning to include you in this plan, but we were unsure, Harvey. Your parents were too obedient to the Law. If this information is to be heard by them, this is the end.”
“The end...” Harvey mused as he sat on the chair. “The end of what?”
“The end of our lives, Harvey, and the hope of Revolution.”
Harvey wouldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “Dude,” he said. “There had been hundreds of rebellions out there. None of them survived. Why do you want to waste your lives on this particular movement?”
“But it’s not a normal movement, Harvey,” Emma wiped the last of her tears and looked straight to his eyes. “This rebellion is going to be successful, Harvey. Believe me.”
“Hear, hear,” Roman said. He was sitting on his mahogany desk and was looking at the door. “This particular organization has been here for about twenty years, which is longer than any other opposing organizations in a hundred years. It started in Italy and it now has gathered millions of people around the Earth. Their bases are located in safe, secured islands and many great minds are already joining.”
Roman stopped and turned to face Harvey. His face was grave. “Don’t you want a life, Harvey? A real life? Some things are worth fighting for.”
The fact that Roman could actually speak in paragraphs startled Harvey, but his words hit him much harder, for they were true. Every time a rebellion happened, Harvey couldn’t help it but to wish that it was successful. So far, those revolutionary movements had failed, and they had disappointed him. But for some reason, his friends believed in this movement very much. Was it really going to work?
Seeing that Harvey was silent, Martin walked over and handed him a map. “We’re leaving tonight, at eleven PM, sharp. If you want to join us, meet us at the restaurant marked on the map. You can always choose not to join us and go on with life. It is your choice. Think about it carefully, Harvey.”
******
Clothes? Check.
Important stuff? Check.
Snacks? Check.
A letter for the parents? Check.
Harvey sat on his bed, looking at his huge bag and wondering whether it was right or not to leave his life behind. He looked at the letter he’d written for his parents and sighed. They were not in the house now, so if he wanted to go, this was the perfect time to do it. A feeling of guilt came into his heart. As his parents were obedient citizens, they’d never partied. They celebrated anything only by sitting on the dining table and enjoying the dinner. But tonight, they went outside to buy some food. It was odd, considering the fact that his mom always cooked their own food, but Harvey could almost imagine them coming home with a bunch of meals. And a cake.
That thought depressed him, but Harvey shook his head. He’d made his choice when he first took out his bad and started filling it with clothes. This time, he was going to go. Harvey took a last look of his room and pulled out his phone from his pocket. He put it right beside the letter…that way, nobody could contact him. He would be cutting his connections to his other innocent peers, and both of the sides—his and theirs—would be just fine.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered at the letter. Then, taking his bag and the map Martin gave him, Harvey walked to the front door.
* * * * * * *
Harvey was sitting on a tree-less area on a small cliff near the tents just a meter away from the nearest magnetic field borderline, watching the starry night, when his mind took him to the past, right when he and his companions reached the evacuation camp.
The camp area—they could see it—was heavily protected. The camp itself was set on a strategic place—it is located at the middle of the forest, greatly guarded by tall trees. At night, it would be quite hard to reach the tents without any help. The protection was doubled by the existence of guards in various places around the camp, and the strong magnetic field that surrounded the camp with a radius of half a kilometer. Nobody could locate the camp, and nobody was able to penetrate the wall unless they were given special objects that were necessary in order to cross the line. In any possible way, as soon as they got into the area, they were safe.
Harvey’s team was one of the first groups to come. The leader of the resistance movement in his area had welcomed them with open arms. He had brought him to the main tent, gave them cups of hot tea, and told him things. Wonderful things. Harvey remembered it very clearly.
“This is just the beginning,” the leader had said in rapid fire English. “Our movement is growing strong. We are growing in number. We have managed to overtake dozens of small islands around the world, and Italy is now in our side. The government has cut its connection to the Great Council and it is now opening its gate to every member of our rebellion. Amongst us, young people are our first priority. Italy will give you all the education you will need. Your transportation will arrive tomorrow at three o’clock. Good luck, and remember that we will never be defeated.”
It had took him quite a moment to understand that the leader was sending them to Italy to actually study their own desired subjects, and he hadn’t stop smiling since then. Given the chance, he would finally be able to do what his heart desired—writing. He would write all things that had happened during his era and keep them save for the next generations so that they would not make the same mistake. Well, that seemed to be a grand idea.
Taking himself back from his trance, Harvey looked down and reached something from his pocket: his last pebble. He took it out and held it in his hand. It would disappear anytime now, as soon as the clock reached 12 am, but for some reason, losing it wasn’t a big deal for him anymore. And when the clock really reached midnight, he could feel the pebble fading away. But he didn’t care. It wasn’t a worthy object anymore. From now on, it was only a small, smooth stone.
He then looked at the sky, wondering when it would be filled with colorful flashes and explosions like the illustrations he’d seen in books—fireworks, the people from the past called them. But Harvey grinned. This time, he would be patient. He would wait for that time to come.
Turning around to see his friends—Roman, Martin, and Emma—coming with huge smiles, Harvey Abbott couldn’t help it but to smile as large as them. It was January the first, 2416 A.D.—the first day of their new lives, their new challenges, and their new adventures.
And it was his birthday.
And so, looking at my story, I said, "Down we go to the Stories section, lad."
Was that weird? Yeah? Let's just...wrap things up. Please enjoy the story.
Lugubrious.
That was one word that always popped in Harvey Abbott’s mind every time he woke up, every day, for nearly sixteen years.
Every day was another boring day for him; another day with grey clothes and pebbles. The Law, of course, had been keeping the world controlled and peaceful, but for Harvey, all these strict regulations weren’t necessary. He’d be punished if he said that out loud, so every morning, Harvey would always whisper, “Strict regulations are necessary, but over-strict rules are not exactly better” in the lowest voice he could do and he would walk out from his room as if nothing really happened. Living in this kind of world had made him fear...and loathe The Law at the same time.
His teachers had taught him about the history of The Government ever since he was eleven. He remembered it very clearly. After a massive, world-wide rebellion on 2094 A.D., the leaders of the world formed a new type of government. It was famously known as The Government. Under the Central Council, countries around the world began to govern their regions according to the new way: The Law.
Citizens were not to make their own crucial paths. They were not allowed to have more than one child. The children they bore were to be registered as soon as possible. Their data would show up on the computers of the workers in the Birth divisions located in the main headquarter of the Central Council, along with hundreds and thousands of other data around the world. There, the babies’ ‘destinies’ were to be determined, starting from their future careers until their future spouses. The Central Council determined them all, and nobody was able to go against them.
They also introduced a new type of money and a whole new way of earning it.
Payments are done every day, in the form of pebbles. The number of pebbles each person got was different according to their performances of the day. Pebbles were to be put in banks if they were not used, because otherwise they would vanish at 12 AM each day. The pebbles that were in banks were to be entirely spent at the end of the month, for they would eventually vanish as well.
Parties weren’t allowed. Flashy clothes were prohibited. Any forms of celebrations were forbidden. All clothes designers could do were to make shabby, boring gray clothes…for Central Council wanted the world to wear clothes in gray. There were no Yellow Mondays or Colorful Sundays for them. All the world got was Gray for Life.
That way, citizens of the world were forced to work their best every day in order to be able to eat and thus making them extremely productive….and tortured.
Every once in a while, rebellions would happen. The rebels would escape from their homes and build a base camp somewhere safe, where they would plan for their attacks. Most people did it the hard way: they attacked their own countries. But the Central Council were smart. They were always good at killing those rebellions. The participants, in the end, were either missing or dead.
The world Harvey was living was a box. A very, very teeny box. And he thought that he was going to live this routine for his entire pathetic life; getting an unwanted job, marrying a girl he barely knew, and spending his lifetime satisfied with grey clothes.
He was wrong.
On the thirty-first of December, 2415, some of his friends were acting way weirder than the usual. Martin was much more quieter that day, and even though Roman was as quiet as a rock—as usual—his facial expression was certainly not calm. It was the first time he saw him looking at his surroundings with that some sort of a guilty face. Emma was obviously the worst. She was nervous—they were having series of tests that day and tests scared her very much—but it seemed that the nervousness of her had reached a new height. That day, Emma couldn’t stop looking at the window every two hours and let out a deep sigh when she saw nothing special.
His other classmates didn’t seem to catch the strangeness that was happening, but Harvey was determined to know.
His curiosity was answered when four of them went to Roman’s house to do a group project. Harvey had tried to melt the intense atmosphere, but none of his jokes would work. His best friends were deadly serious that day. When he asked them for a reason why they were acting like this, however, several things happened at once. Right after Harvey’s last words, Emma burst into tears. Much in Harvey’s surprise, Roman immediately jumped from his bed and closed the door as fast as he could. His hands then flew to the curtains and in a panicked manner, he closed the curtains down. Martin, on the other hand, gave her a wad of tissues and desperately tried to calm her down, whispering words Harvey couldn’t hear.
All those things happened so quickly that Harvey almost couldn’t catch up with the current events.
“What—“he said. He stood up and looked at his best friends, bewildered. “Roman, what are you doing? Why did you close the curtains? It’s not even noon! And Emma! Why are you crying? What is flippin’ happening here?”
“Harvey, look—“ Roman said.
But Harvey didn’t want this kind of smooth approach. He wanted the answer, and he wanted it fast.
“What is wrong here?” he asked once more. “I need to know. I can’t let you guys act strangely without any reasons! You’re my best friends as long as I can remember. Don’t you trust me?”
The three of them looked stunned. Even Emma stopped crying. They looked at each other for a couple of seconds before Martin, with a hand gesture, politely asked him to sit back.
“We’re sorry,” he started. “We were planning to include you in this plan, but we were unsure, Harvey. Your parents were too obedient to the Law. If this information is to be heard by them, this is the end.”
“The end...” Harvey mused as he sat on the chair. “The end of what?”
“The end of our lives, Harvey, and the hope of Revolution.”
Harvey wouldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “Dude,” he said. “There had been hundreds of rebellions out there. None of them survived. Why do you want to waste your lives on this particular movement?”
“But it’s not a normal movement, Harvey,” Emma wiped the last of her tears and looked straight to his eyes. “This rebellion is going to be successful, Harvey. Believe me.”
“Hear, hear,” Roman said. He was sitting on his mahogany desk and was looking at the door. “This particular organization has been here for about twenty years, which is longer than any other opposing organizations in a hundred years. It started in Italy and it now has gathered millions of people around the Earth. Their bases are located in safe, secured islands and many great minds are already joining.”
Roman stopped and turned to face Harvey. His face was grave. “Don’t you want a life, Harvey? A real life? Some things are worth fighting for.”
The fact that Roman could actually speak in paragraphs startled Harvey, but his words hit him much harder, for they were true. Every time a rebellion happened, Harvey couldn’t help it but to wish that it was successful. So far, those revolutionary movements had failed, and they had disappointed him. But for some reason, his friends believed in this movement very much. Was it really going to work?
Seeing that Harvey was silent, Martin walked over and handed him a map. “We’re leaving tonight, at eleven PM, sharp. If you want to join us, meet us at the restaurant marked on the map. You can always choose not to join us and go on with life. It is your choice. Think about it carefully, Harvey.”
******
Clothes? Check.
Important stuff? Check.
Snacks? Check.
A letter for the parents? Check.
Harvey sat on his bed, looking at his huge bag and wondering whether it was right or not to leave his life behind. He looked at the letter he’d written for his parents and sighed. They were not in the house now, so if he wanted to go, this was the perfect time to do it. A feeling of guilt came into his heart. As his parents were obedient citizens, they’d never partied. They celebrated anything only by sitting on the dining table and enjoying the dinner. But tonight, they went outside to buy some food. It was odd, considering the fact that his mom always cooked their own food, but Harvey could almost imagine them coming home with a bunch of meals. And a cake.
That thought depressed him, but Harvey shook his head. He’d made his choice when he first took out his bad and started filling it with clothes. This time, he was going to go. Harvey took a last look of his room and pulled out his phone from his pocket. He put it right beside the letter…that way, nobody could contact him. He would be cutting his connections to his other innocent peers, and both of the sides—his and theirs—would be just fine.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered at the letter. Then, taking his bag and the map Martin gave him, Harvey walked to the front door.
* * * * * * *
Harvey was sitting on a tree-less area on a small cliff near the tents just a meter away from the nearest magnetic field borderline, watching the starry night, when his mind took him to the past, right when he and his companions reached the evacuation camp.
The camp area—they could see it—was heavily protected. The camp itself was set on a strategic place—it is located at the middle of the forest, greatly guarded by tall trees. At night, it would be quite hard to reach the tents without any help. The protection was doubled by the existence of guards in various places around the camp, and the strong magnetic field that surrounded the camp with a radius of half a kilometer. Nobody could locate the camp, and nobody was able to penetrate the wall unless they were given special objects that were necessary in order to cross the line. In any possible way, as soon as they got into the area, they were safe.
Harvey’s team was one of the first groups to come. The leader of the resistance movement in his area had welcomed them with open arms. He had brought him to the main tent, gave them cups of hot tea, and told him things. Wonderful things. Harvey remembered it very clearly.
“This is just the beginning,” the leader had said in rapid fire English. “Our movement is growing strong. We are growing in number. We have managed to overtake dozens of small islands around the world, and Italy is now in our side. The government has cut its connection to the Great Council and it is now opening its gate to every member of our rebellion. Amongst us, young people are our first priority. Italy will give you all the education you will need. Your transportation will arrive tomorrow at three o’clock. Good luck, and remember that we will never be defeated.”
It had took him quite a moment to understand that the leader was sending them to Italy to actually study their own desired subjects, and he hadn’t stop smiling since then. Given the chance, he would finally be able to do what his heart desired—writing. He would write all things that had happened during his era and keep them save for the next generations so that they would not make the same mistake. Well, that seemed to be a grand idea.
Taking himself back from his trance, Harvey looked down and reached something from his pocket: his last pebble. He took it out and held it in his hand. It would disappear anytime now, as soon as the clock reached 12 am, but for some reason, losing it wasn’t a big deal for him anymore. And when the clock really reached midnight, he could feel the pebble fading away. But he didn’t care. It wasn’t a worthy object anymore. From now on, it was only a small, smooth stone.
He then looked at the sky, wondering when it would be filled with colorful flashes and explosions like the illustrations he’d seen in books—fireworks, the people from the past called them. But Harvey grinned. This time, he would be patient. He would wait for that time to come.
Turning around to see his friends—Roman, Martin, and Emma—coming with huge smiles, Harvey Abbott couldn’t help it but to smile as large as them. It was January the first, 2416 A.D.—the first day of their new lives, their new challenges, and their new adventures.
And it was his birthday.
