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Banned
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: wouldn't you like to know? hehe...
Posts: 2,597
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Boy in a Bubble
It was, as usual, a beautiful day in the compound. The sun was shining, there was not a cloud to be seen in the sky, and the music of the birds could be heard even inside the buildings. I broke off from my gazing out the window as I heard footsteps in the hall outside my room. I turned just in time to see the door open and a tall, slender man step in. He nodded perfunctorily at me and then proceeded to ignore me, knelt down by my bed, and began to rifle through my possessions.
I watched in undisguised disgust for a few moments and then spoke up. “Exactly what do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
The man glanced up at me as if I were an insect. He thought for a moment and then said, “Are you Lionel?”
I nodded slowly, and then repeated myself. “Why are you here?”
“Standard room checks. Didn’t you hear that they were announced? Just yesterday, I believe.”
It wouldn’t be the first time I had missed an announcement, and I usually found out about them the hard way. But still, he could have told me something about them beforehand.
Then the man stood, and his gaze wandered down my body. I shivered uncomfortably. “How old are you?"
What an unusual question to ask. He surely had to know the answer. Us in this sector, we were all the same age. Everyone knew that. “Seventeen,” I said firmly, wishing that the man would just leave. Something about him disconcerted me, but I couldn’t place what exactly it was. That bothered me the most, I think. Instinctively, I reached down to my waist and pulled out the little bottle. I took out one pill and swallowed it.
Almost immediately, the flood of relief washed through my body, wiping away all the stress. I held out the bottle to the man. “Want one?” I asked in a friendly tone.
The man grimaced and said disgustedly, “That’s a filthy habit, you know. And shouldn’t you be in class?”
I shook my head slowly. “No. I…I passed those tests early…last year. It exempted me from school this year. I…graduated early, you see.” Then something else struck me. He called my stress pills a ‘filthy habit’. Yet I couldn’t remember anyone who didn’t have them. It was the only way to keep tempers cool, it was hailed as one of the most important breakthroughs since the outlawing of war, and what had greatly helped any war from breaking out.
As always, when I get on one train of thought, I tend to run away with it. The word ‘war’ stuck in my mind. What an archaic concept, I thought. The word even sounded savage and barbaric. I wondered where the word had originated (which was a perfectly normal thought for me to embark on, as I was studying to become a linguist). I almost forgot about the man and took a few steps toward my datadesk, which all my friends considered odd, as they were at least fifty years old. They all preferred the much more modern brain implants. But they scared me, and, honestly, I preferred the comfort of not having a piece of metal embedded in my brain.
“Excuse me?” said the man, pulling me out of my reverie.
I looked up and smiled apologetically. “Sorry. That happens to me sometimes. Did you say something?”
“No, but I’m going to now. I came here to tell you that the Chancellor is interested in you. He thinks that you stand a good chance of getting a job there as soon as your birthday comes around. And, by the way, that sidetracking you seem to keep having is a by-product of those pills you take.”
I had a right to know. “What do you have against the pills? They’re the greatest…”
“Greatest breakthrough since the outlawing of war,” finished the man. “Yes, I know. Doesn’t stop them from being evil, you know.”
Involuntarily, my face broke out into a smile. ‘Evil’ was another of those ancient, archaic words that had disappeared into the past. I had never actually heard it spoken out loud until know. That set me to wondering exactly why this man seemed so…so backwards. Before I knew it, I had completely forgotten the man again, until he once again said, “Excuse me?”
“Damn,” I said. “I really should stop that.”
“Start by getting off the pills,” suggested the man, a little too harshly. “And then you might be able to succeed. Besides, the Chancellor doesn’t approve of any addictions, including the pill.”
I frowned. What was ‘addiction’? I suspected that it was another of those archaic words, but I couldn’t remember ever having heard it. I caught myself just in time from letting my mind go, and looked up at the man.
He nodded appreciatively. “Good.”
“Good what?” I demanded.
“You can fight your impulses. That’s a good thing…and such a rare quality among you people now. Each successive generation is more and more inclined to give way to impulse. It’s dreadful, really, but I suppose it’s for the best. And I suppose we asked for it.”
This had gone far enough. I was a citizen; I was entitled to ask whatever questions I desired to. “Who are you?” I would be polite, for a while, at least.
He smiled mystically (another ancient word, I realized). “I am someone you should know quite well.”
I frowned. This man was quite an annoying one. I began to feel the stress welling up in me. That was unusual. Usually, these pills lasted several hours, long enough to get out of any stressful situation. Maybe the pill was just a dud.
I reached down to my waist and pulled the pills out again. Then the man reached out and grabbed me by the wrist. The bottle clattered to the floor, more out of surprise than anything else. Never had anyone actually touched me any more purposefully than brushing past me in a crowded corridor. I felt my muscles begin to tense. With an almost laughable amusement, I realized that this must be ‘anger’. The pills had stopped all that happening, and it was the first time I had ever felt like this. It was a good feeling, really, however ancient and primitive it might be. I let the anger take control and felt it spread through me, much like the pills did.
The man must have realized what was going through my head, for he quickly released my wrist. “I apologize,” he said. “I forgot that touching is such a faux pas these days.” He smiled at my confused expression. “Faux pas is French. It was a language spoken in Europe…dammit, Europe doesn’t exist anymore, does it? Well, French was a language spoken many hundreds of years ago. It meant ‘mistake’.”
“Why do you talk like that? Using all those old words?”
The man smiled bemusedly. “My name is Hunter Strahan.”
That didn’t help any. “Why do you have two names?” The only name I had ever known was Lionel. Did I have another one? If I did, I wanted to know it.
The man looked…angry, I realized. This was certainly turning out to be an interesting day. “Sorry. I forgot that you only have one.”
“Why?”
The man shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t have the words to explain it to you. Too many of them aren’t in use anymore.”
I smiled. “Try me. I’m a linguist.”
“Okay. Hundreds of years ago, when there were separate nations, people lived in families. They usually were made up of a mother, a father and children. There were many billions of people, and they all were together, not separated into age groups. So as not to create confusion, all the people had a second name, a family name, usually the father’s family name. Do you understand?”
Most of it I could follow, even if I had to think a little. Mother and father, though, they were so old that I had never truly understand the meaning until now. Or at least I thought I knew. But ‘nations’. What the hell were they? And ‘billion’ was such a large number; it was hard to imagine that there could have ever been that many people ever. And how odd it must have been, not to be separated like we are now. There must have been so much confusion, I was hardly surprised that they needed a second name. I was surprised they didn’t need six. That only brought more questions to my mind, though. “So, why do you have two names. There aren’t any more of these family things, are there?”
“No, not any more, Lionel. I personally think that we are all a little worse off for that.”
“You mean you were alive during families?” The question sounded funny.
“Yes.”
There was only one person alive that was that old. My jaw actually dropped; I felt it. I almost dropped to my knees, but caught myself in time. I had more dignity than that. “Sir,” I said. “I’m sorry for talking to you like that.”
The Chancellor smiled broadly, and said, “That’s quite alright. I always enjoy talking to the young men. It’s better when they don’t recognize me.” He smiled even more broadly and said, “Though it only tends to be the scatter-brained geniuses that fit into that category, the ones that don’t have enough time to watch the news.”
I smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry, sir. I guess I should do that more often. But…sometimes I just get so busy that I forget about everything.”
“Yes, I do remember men like that. Especially during the Last War.”
“You fought in the Last War?” I said, astonished.
“And you obviously never paid much attention during the history programs, either…”
“No, they never told us,” I blurted out, and then realized that I had just interrupted the Chancellor. And I had contradicted him! I felt my cheeks redden in embarrassment.
The Chancellor merely looked surprised. “Really? Show me.”
I walked over to my datadesk and logged on quickly. My fingers went rapidly over the commands and I’d soon brought up the history programs. “You know,” said the Chancellor distractedly. “I never much liked these things. I prefer a much older thing. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s called a computer.”
I looked up in sheer astonishment. “I didn’t even know they existed anymore.”
“To the best of my knowledge, I’m the only one that owns one. They’re much slower compared to even these, and they can’t do much. Now, show me those programs where they completely fail to mention how I became Chancellor.”
As I searched through the programs, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was an odd feeling, but comforting, as well. I guessed it was common when the Chancellor was growing up, and some habits are hard to break. I knew that, we all knew that. One of the tests when we were kids was to break a habit. When we were seven, we were introduced to this stuff. The programs called it ‘marijuana’, but it was more commonly called among us kids ‘funweed’. Now, we were allowed to have as much of that stuff as we wanted, but then when we were twelve, they just stopped giving it to us. Breaking that habit was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. But I did it, and I survived, unlike a few kids. Some of them died, and others were always kind of out of it, and there were rumors that they still used funweed.
Then I realized that the Chancellor was talking to me again, and I felt my blush come back. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”
The Chancellor chuckled. “I never thought that that stuff would do that to your brains. But anyway, it seems that while your brain is off God-knows-where, the rest of your body is here on Earth. You found me what I wanted to see. Let me clear some things up. I hated politics. I was a General in the Last War. I was, perhaps, the most hated man of my time. Some even called me a terrorist. I was the one that organized all the assassinations of virtually every world leader. I was no hero, whatever they say. When all the governments in the world had collapsed, I was the one that told everyone they would be listening to me from now on.” He smiled softly. “I guess I’ve mellowed over the years.”
I frowned. That was hardly an explanation. Half those words were ancient ones, whose meanings I couldn’t begin to fathom. With enough research, I probably could, but I had too much else on my mind.
I could swear that man was psychic (a very old word) when he said, “Tell me which bits you didn’t understand, and I’ll see if I can help.”
“What is ‘general’?”
The Chancellor shook his head. “You know the…the Protectors, right? Well, there used to be a lot of them, and so they had to come up with levels of…authority. Kind of like me, and then the people that report to me, all the way down to you. Does that help?”
I nodded. “And how about ‘terrorist’?”
“Well, terrorism used to be a crime…damn, you don’t know that word, either, do you?” I shook my head and he sighed. “I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing, but crime was like…like the men who speak out against me. That’s all the crime we have, but people used to take things from everyone…”
“But everything belongs to everyone,” I said, confused. “So how would that be bad?”
“That wasn’t the way it worked, long ago. People had things that only they owned, and sometimes a person would take it. That was a crime. It was called theft or robbery. Another crime was murder. That was when someone…damn, the words for that don’t exist anymore. In war, people die, yes? Well, to die by violence is called killing. Murder was when a single person was killed, not in a war. And terrorism, that was almost like speaking out against the government, only using violence, like murder.”
I nodded. This man would be a hell of a source for a linguistics paper, if he weren’t the Chancellor. Still, I couldn’t help but ask, “Do you like life better then or now?”
“Well, I’ve lived through the past almost six hundred years. I’ve been the cause of all that led up to this. But I liked it better before the Last War. Then, a man could really make a name for himself. He could be a hero, he could be a villain…” the Chancellor trailed off. “I’m sorry. Those words don’t exist either. And there’s no modern equivalent, or even enough words to explain.”
I nodded. “So, why did you really come here?”
“Like I said, I’m looking for a boy to be my assistant next year. Are you interested?”
So he was serious. “Why, sir? Why would you want to hire me?”
“I’m always in need of young geniuses.” He turned and walked out of the room, leaving me to ponder exactly what a ‘geniuses’ was.
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Also, would the Chancellor really say 'stuff'? Is he pretty laid back for a chacellor? I think he character needs more description, even if it is just the kid thinking about it.
