all my little tricks.
So it was not about the fiery-eyed outcast?
Almost a disappointment.
FIRST LETTER
DESCARTES
----
My dearest reader:
If you are reading this, poor fool, you are in here with me.
I don’t know why I have bothered to compose this letter, as your chances of survival are also rather slim, but as it remains you are my only hope.
How depressing.
But I have lived long enough.
Sometimes it feels as if I have lived forever.
My mind stalls and slows compared to the strange black-eyed children
that can measure up to the machines.
These aristos, as you call them…they are somehow new.
I am not, I am only a step above the norms.
A mistake, or a test.
I remember the first sight that I saw
being the cool eyes of my father and his skin as white as marble.
Useless, really, but time goes slowly here, it stretches and it strains to fill the hours of the day.
One must fill it up with something.
In my mind alone, here exists the memories of growing up in the Palaces.
Aristocracy.
Private tutoring for the CEE which we are assured we would pass.
Fencing lessons to keep both mind and body sharp, the subtle contests against the Breakers.
My mother used to hold me against her skeletal chest
and chant tunelessly a song of the periodic tables.
Boring, of course, to someone like you.
I wasn’t like the others.
I wanted to learn everything, and was frustrated by the knowledge that was kept from me.
My father would watch me through slitted eyes over the dinner table
as if that frustration was printed cleanly on my forehead.
I became more and less than the others:
The aristocrat who writes.
You may ask the purpose of this tirade.
I think that someone here in the Barracks is going to kill me.
They tolerated me at first, but their suspicions have overrun my novelty.
I intend, before the inevitable occurs, to tell someone of what I have seen and what I know.
I do not know if this will have an effect save to drive this letter into the hands of another,
or if you, dear reader, can even be trusted with this information.
But I am a dead man and so, most likely, are you.
Pity.
Wait until Cleaning day.
Hold the line.
I’ll have him leave you a message.
Poor little fool, I wonder if you even remember what the world looks like outside the Barracks.
What else is there to do, but murmur your grievances
over and over to yourself in the face of an artificial night?
I wonder, if they blind you—will that make you sing?
One’s sympathies are always on the side of life so-
Good luck, my poor fool, and fly for the both of us.
—Descartes
PART ONE:
Dormant (Cont.)
COMET
----
56859 said it wasn’t always like this.
That there had been a time before the CEEs.
His mother who told him what it had been like before the Censor,
had heard it long passed down the family line.
He was not like the other kids, he had a family back in Poet’s Camp,
but the Keeper said they sold him to pay for food years ago.
He thought that they would come back for him.
Every night he read a small booklet that he said
he smuggled in past the Breakers when he was delivered.
His mother gave it to him and it contains in tiny print all of Eden’s edicts.
It was supposed to keep him out of trouble.
It was supposed to keep him safe.
56859 was smart.
He said that he had been practicing poetry for when he got out of the Hive,
but most of his work would never be written.
Ten minutes then, until they gave out the CEEs.
I was watching the Breaker in the corner of the classroom, but 56859 was looking at me.
I hid the booklet he gave me and I smiled to tell him his secret was safe.
He did not smile back.
BREAKER 256
----
Do I remember the genesis of my destiny?
That is easy.
It was after testing day, after the frantic ceremony, and the great division of lives.
It is rather funny in retrospect, all the emphasis we place on the CEE,
I hardly remember the test-taking process
So it was not about the fiery-eyed outcast?
Almost a disappointment.
FIRST LETTER
DESCARTES
----
My dearest reader:
If you are reading this, poor fool, you are in here with me.
I don’t know why I have bothered to compose this letter, as your chances of survival are also rather slim, but as it remains you are my only hope.
How depressing.
But I have lived long enough.
Sometimes it feels as if I have lived forever.
My mind stalls and slows compared to the strange black-eyed children
that can measure up to the machines.
These aristos, as you call them…they are somehow new.
I am not, I am only a step above the norms.
A mistake, or a test.
I remember the first sight that I saw
being the cool eyes of my father and his skin as white as marble.
Useless, really, but time goes slowly here, it stretches and it strains to fill the hours of the day.
One must fill it up with something.
In my mind alone, here exists the memories of growing up in the Palaces.
Aristocracy.
Private tutoring for the CEE which we are assured we would pass.
Fencing lessons to keep both mind and body sharp, the subtle contests against the Breakers.
My mother used to hold me against her skeletal chest
and chant tunelessly a song of the periodic tables.
Boring, of course, to someone like you.
I wasn’t like the others.
I wanted to learn everything, and was frustrated by the knowledge that was kept from me.
My father would watch me through slitted eyes over the dinner table
as if that frustration was printed cleanly on my forehead.
I became more and less than the others:
The aristocrat who writes.
You may ask the purpose of this tirade.
I think that someone here in the Barracks is going to kill me.
They tolerated me at first, but their suspicions have overrun my novelty.
I intend, before the inevitable occurs, to tell someone of what I have seen and what I know.
I do not know if this will have an effect save to drive this letter into the hands of another,
or if you, dear reader, can even be trusted with this information.
But I am a dead man and so, most likely, are you.
Pity.
Wait until Cleaning day.
Hold the line.
I’ll have him leave you a message.
Poor little fool, I wonder if you even remember what the world looks like outside the Barracks.
What else is there to do, but murmur your grievances
over and over to yourself in the face of an artificial night?
I wonder, if they blind you—will that make you sing?
One’s sympathies are always on the side of life so-
Good luck, my poor fool, and fly for the both of us.
—Descartes
PART ONE:
Dormant (Cont.)
COMET
----
56859 said it wasn’t always like this.
That there had been a time before the CEEs.
His mother who told him what it had been like before the Censor,
had heard it long passed down the family line.
He was not like the other kids, he had a family back in Poet’s Camp,
but the Keeper said they sold him to pay for food years ago.
He thought that they would come back for him.
Every night he read a small booklet that he said
he smuggled in past the Breakers when he was delivered.
His mother gave it to him and it contains in tiny print all of Eden’s edicts.
It was supposed to keep him out of trouble.
It was supposed to keep him safe.
56859 was smart.
He said that he had been practicing poetry for when he got out of the Hive,
but most of his work would never be written.
Ten minutes then, until they gave out the CEEs.
I was watching the Breaker in the corner of the classroom, but 56859 was looking at me.
I hid the booklet he gave me and I smiled to tell him his secret was safe.
He did not smile back.
BREAKER 256
----
Do I remember the genesis of my destiny?
That is easy.
It was after testing day, after the frantic ceremony, and the great division of lives.
It is rather funny in retrospect, all the emphasis we place on the CEE,
I hardly remember the test-taking process
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