Status: Active
The Perfect World
The Book
Nearly 500 years ago there came forth on this planet Earth a nation that would rock the world as we knew it. They came up with new ideas that changed the way people lived their lives. They came up with a new form of government that was something new, something that people had wished for since there were Kings ruling over them. They fought against injustice and they won, but what is left of what they died for?
The years is 2258. Much has changed since those 500 years ago when America was born. What was once a bright shining star of hope was now a dim piece of a broken mirror. What was once the land of the free and home of the brave, has become a place of oppression and fear. What was once a place of refuge for the weak and broken was now a prison to all who dared to enter in it. America was not like it once was, or so I imagined. I had heard faint whispers of an America like I described, but our history books had labeled it a terrible time of anarchy and great violence. All that was no more. There was no violence, no wars, no prejudice or racism. All that was blotted out by the NMR Act of 2015.
We were happy. We were free from the negative ramifications that freedom brought upon us, and if you didn’t believe that, well then you better not let the Government hear you say it. Not that it would matter if you did speak out, it would change nothing. One word against the Government and you were picked up and shipped to a concentration camp at some undisclosed location. You were labeled a traitor and forced to work in a labor yard for the rest of your life.
However, if your crime was big enough you would be publicly executed, either by the electric chair, the gallows, or the guillotine. Although there was talk about the Emperor bringing back crucifixions to strike even more fear into the hearts of the people, as if the other public executions weren’t terrifying enough. This was what awaited any who dared to disobey the rules our Government has set forth to keep us safe and happy, or so we were led to believe. No longer were we only called America, for we had two names. We were called the United Monarchy of Continents, spanning across the world. We still held the name America, but only because we needed a place to call the head of the Government.
Sometimes I wonder what the people of past America would think if they could have seen into the future all those years ago. Would the Revolutionary soldiers still have fought for America? Would the people of the 2020’s liked what they saw? Would they know it was for the best? Would they see how far we have come from where we were? There is no more religion, there is no more ‘freedom of speech’, there is no more of any of what was guaranteed the American people in the Constitution; we have replaced it with an improved version of it, and our ancestors signed it, pledging their undying loyalty to it, so it must be for our own good, right?
Religion was deemed a deadly poison to society. It was the cause of many wars; it was the cause of hatred and prejudice; it was the cause of the inability for technology and medical fields to advance forward because the ‘religious’ deemed some of the advancements as sins. Freedom of speech was outlawed, because as long as there are crazy lunatics who are allowed to speak out against what is good and right, there would be uprisings and war. There needed to be laws regulating what people could say and do. One word can be poison to the mind. It can change your whole way of thinking and looking at life. That kind of power can’t be handed or given to everyone; it was a dangerous and mighty power that had to be protected, so our words and media were carefully monitored and censored. I was raised in this day and age, and I never really questioned what I was told until I saw America for what it had become.
Isn’t it strange how one person can change the course of your life by one single act? I used to look at America today, then look back at what we once were, as was told by our History books, and think, ‘Wow, look at how far we've come. Our ancestors would have been proud!’ Now, I laugh at that thought. I learned through sources that America had tried to outlaw, that America was not the nation we thought it to be. I began seeing things for how they were, not how I had been told to see them as. What changed my views of the world so drastically? Let me start at the beginning: about a year ago:
I walked home along the sidewalk littered with puddles from the downpour earlier this morning alongside my best friend, Nancy. She held a closed umbrella in her arm by her side in case it decided to rain again. Her umbrella was a bright red, the only sign of color we’d seen in a long time with all the rain that had been coming this cold September month.
I’d known Nancy since we started preschool together, but recently I’d detected a change in her. She was more somber than ever before, and she always had a serious expression on her face; a scowl my mother would call it, as if she was always angry about something. Numerous times I’d tried to find out what was troubling her, but she would always look at me, open her mouth and then close it again. Then after a few seconds of silence she would shake her head and mutter, “Nothing.”
I could pinpoint exactly when she started to change. It had been last summer, around the beginning of June. School had just let out, and the Noran’s, her family, had lost their house. The Government wanted to build a new highway, so they had been forced to vacate their house immediately. They had been set up with an old house that an elderly lady had recently died in, leaving the house to no one, seeing as she had no children or relatives. The house had been turned over to the Noran’s, as compensation for the Government taking their house, although everyone knew the Government could take any house they wanted and not be obligated to give you anything in return.
They moved in the new house, which turned out to be forty-five minutes away from my family’s own house, making it too far away for me to ride my bike or walk there. When school came around I was ecstatic to see Nancy again, but that was when I noticed she wasn’t the same bubbly, happy Nancy she had been before the move. Something had changed her, and it was for the worse; something about that house had set off something inside her, making her different. I saw a puddle in front of us and looked at Nancy with a smirk, but she only stared straight ahead, the same dead look in her eyes as always.
I ran up to the puddle and splashed in it, then looked back at Nancy to see if she would do the same. She walked through the puddle as if in a trance, not seeming to even notice me. I frowned before kicking some water at her with a smile. The cold, dirty water hit her jeans and her eyes widened in surprise and she looked at me with an anger I’d never seen in her before.
“What did you do that for?!” she yelled at me. I took a cautious step back and looked at her in shock. Never before had she reacted like this to me. We had our occasional fights like most friends do, but she’d never gotten so angry about something so petty before. Only a year ago we’d kicked water at each other and laughed about it when we ended up wrestling each other and falling into the puddles.
I raised an eyebrow. “You used to enjoy splashing around in the puddles!”
“Yeah, well I grew up. When are you going to?” she snapped.
"What are you being such a jerk for?" I snapped back.
"You know what? I'm getting real tired of your attitude!" she growled threateningly, taking a step towards me.
I narrowed my eyes at her and muttered a profanity under my breath as I turned and continued walking down the street. A moment later I heard hastened footsteps close behind mine before a hand landed on my shoulder, stopping me.
“I’m sorry, I’m just…I’ve been upset lately,” she tried to explain. I let out a sigh and turned to face her.
“I know, I’ve noticed. Why won’t you tell me why?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows in confusion. She’d been my best friend for years, and we’d always told each other everything, why should this be any different? She just shook her head.
“I can’t.”
“Why can’t you? You know you can tell me anything and I won’t tell anyone."
She let out a sigh before discreetly looking all around her. Everyone knew of the camera’s hidden in different locations by the Government. They weren’t even big enough to be seen, therefore you never knew where they were planted. This was how the Government monitored us; this was how they tracked our every move and made sure no one spoke out against them. She motioned with her finger for me to come closer and when I was right in front of her she leaned forward and whispered in my ear,
“I have something to show you, but you must promise not to tell anyone.”
The Government regulated what we said, but that was harder to do because of they couldn’t always hear what we were saying when we whispered, and they couldn’t always get a good shot of us to read our lips. They could intercept, read and regulate our letters, texts, holograms, and other updated versions of communication, but they couldn’t always catch a mumbled sentence, or something written on a slip of paper and passed on to another at an odd angle so a camera couldn’t catch it. I had heard talk of the Government coming up with a highly sensitive device that would allow them to hear even the faintest of whispers spoken, but we never knew when it would come out. The Government preferred to keep us in the dark about the new ways they devised to spy on us.
“I promise,” I whispered back before she smiled and grabbed my hand, leading me to the bus stop only a few blocks away. Usually it was here we parted, but Nancy assured me her parents could drive me home after we were done hanging out. While we were on the bus to her house my hologram phone started buzzing. I pulled it out of my pocket and saw my mom’s picture pop up. I clicked the Accept button and her face appeared before me.
“Charlotte, where are you?” she asked. I could see worry lines on her face and her eyes looked tired.
“I’m going to Nancy’s house. I’m sorry, I should have asked you,” I apologized.
She let out a sigh. “No, it’s fine. Just…just let me know next time, ok?” she asked, rubbing her head as she said this. I nodded before she hung up and her image disappeared. I snapped the phone shut and slipped it back into my pocket.
When we got to Nancy’s house she barely let me wave at her mom before dragging me up to her room. As soon as we got up there she silently locked the door before turning back to me. Everyone knew that the only rooms that didn't have cameras were bathrooms and bedrooms, (to maintain a sense of privacy, even if it was only a false one) but to keep a tight reign on the people each room in a house had recorders so they could still hear the people.
"I need to go to the bathroom first," I said as I set my backpack down on the floor. Nancy let out an impatient sigh, but nodded.
A few minutes later I walked back in her room and locked the door behind me as I had seen her do.
"Ok, now what it is?"
Nancy walked over to her bed and pulled out a pad of paper before taking out a pen and writing something down with it. This must be really important if she felt like she couldn’t speak of it. When she was done writing she handed it to me and I read her neat handwriting.
“When we first moved here I was in my room, pacing back and forth when I stepped on a floorboard and it came loose. I looked inside and found an old, brown bag that was commonly used to hold potatoes, and inside there were books. Lots of them, books from the Dark Age, nearly 200 years ago. I found what used to be called ‘CD’s’ from 200 years ago, banned books-history books from that time period, and the most dangerous book of them all, the Bible.”
I looked up in fear after reading this and grabbed the pen, hurriedly jotting down my response before handing it back to her. It read:
“Don’t worry, we can burn the books and the Government will never find out. Besides, even if they did they won’t send you to a concentration camp just because you found some books under your floorboards. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of this.”
When she read my response a scowl came across her face before she took the pen and jotted down her response in an irritated manner.
“That’s not what I meant. I read the Bible, and it makes sense. I believe what it says, and I also read what the History books said. The Government doesn’t want us to find out the truth. They say we have freedom and security because we’re being ruled over and taken care of, but we’re being oppressed. I realized the truth, and the truth carries a burden, that’s why I haven’t been myself lately. I realized the truth by reading the Bible, and I want to give it to you so that you can find the same freedom I did after I read it.”
I looked up at her with horror. The Government was right, religion did brainwash you. It was like a slow poison to your mind. It had already taken my friend and made her a somber, emotionless shell of her former self. I handed her the paper back before shaking my head. I had to save my friend from this book of lies before it was too late. I had to tell the Government; only they would be able to undo the damage it had already done to her mind.
The years is 2258. Much has changed since those 500 years ago when America was born. What was once a bright shining star of hope was now a dim piece of a broken mirror. What was once the land of the free and home of the brave, has become a place of oppression and fear. What was once a place of refuge for the weak and broken was now a prison to all who dared to enter in it. America was not like it once was, or so I imagined. I had heard faint whispers of an America like I described, but our history books had labeled it a terrible time of anarchy and great violence. All that was no more. There was no violence, no wars, no prejudice or racism. All that was blotted out by the NMR Act of 2015.
We were happy. We were free from the negative ramifications that freedom brought upon us, and if you didn’t believe that, well then you better not let the Government hear you say it. Not that it would matter if you did speak out, it would change nothing. One word against the Government and you were picked up and shipped to a concentration camp at some undisclosed location. You were labeled a traitor and forced to work in a labor yard for the rest of your life.
However, if your crime was big enough you would be publicly executed, either by the electric chair, the gallows, or the guillotine. Although there was talk about the Emperor bringing back crucifixions to strike even more fear into the hearts of the people, as if the other public executions weren’t terrifying enough. This was what awaited any who dared to disobey the rules our Government has set forth to keep us safe and happy, or so we were led to believe. No longer were we only called America, for we had two names. We were called the United Monarchy of Continents, spanning across the world. We still held the name America, but only because we needed a place to call the head of the Government.
Sometimes I wonder what the people of past America would think if they could have seen into the future all those years ago. Would the Revolutionary soldiers still have fought for America? Would the people of the 2020’s liked what they saw? Would they know it was for the best? Would they see how far we have come from where we were? There is no more religion, there is no more ‘freedom of speech’, there is no more of any of what was guaranteed the American people in the Constitution; we have replaced it with an improved version of it, and our ancestors signed it, pledging their undying loyalty to it, so it must be for our own good, right?
Religion was deemed a deadly poison to society. It was the cause of many wars; it was the cause of hatred and prejudice; it was the cause of the inability for technology and medical fields to advance forward because the ‘religious’ deemed some of the advancements as sins. Freedom of speech was outlawed, because as long as there are crazy lunatics who are allowed to speak out against what is good and right, there would be uprisings and war. There needed to be laws regulating what people could say and do. One word can be poison to the mind. It can change your whole way of thinking and looking at life. That kind of power can’t be handed or given to everyone; it was a dangerous and mighty power that had to be protected, so our words and media were carefully monitored and censored. I was raised in this day and age, and I never really questioned what I was told until I saw America for what it had become.
Isn’t it strange how one person can change the course of your life by one single act? I used to look at America today, then look back at what we once were, as was told by our History books, and think, ‘Wow, look at how far we've come. Our ancestors would have been proud!’ Now, I laugh at that thought. I learned through sources that America had tried to outlaw, that America was not the nation we thought it to be. I began seeing things for how they were, not how I had been told to see them as. What changed my views of the world so drastically? Let me start at the beginning: about a year ago:
I walked home along the sidewalk littered with puddles from the downpour earlier this morning alongside my best friend, Nancy. She held a closed umbrella in her arm by her side in case it decided to rain again. Her umbrella was a bright red, the only sign of color we’d seen in a long time with all the rain that had been coming this cold September month.
I’d known Nancy since we started preschool together, but recently I’d detected a change in her. She was more somber than ever before, and she always had a serious expression on her face; a scowl my mother would call it, as if she was always angry about something. Numerous times I’d tried to find out what was troubling her, but she would always look at me, open her mouth and then close it again. Then after a few seconds of silence she would shake her head and mutter, “Nothing.”
I could pinpoint exactly when she started to change. It had been last summer, around the beginning of June. School had just let out, and the Noran’s, her family, had lost their house. The Government wanted to build a new highway, so they had been forced to vacate their house immediately. They had been set up with an old house that an elderly lady had recently died in, leaving the house to no one, seeing as she had no children or relatives. The house had been turned over to the Noran’s, as compensation for the Government taking their house, although everyone knew the Government could take any house they wanted and not be obligated to give you anything in return.
They moved in the new house, which turned out to be forty-five minutes away from my family’s own house, making it too far away for me to ride my bike or walk there. When school came around I was ecstatic to see Nancy again, but that was when I noticed she wasn’t the same bubbly, happy Nancy she had been before the move. Something had changed her, and it was for the worse; something about that house had set off something inside her, making her different. I saw a puddle in front of us and looked at Nancy with a smirk, but she only stared straight ahead, the same dead look in her eyes as always.
I ran up to the puddle and splashed in it, then looked back at Nancy to see if she would do the same. She walked through the puddle as if in a trance, not seeming to even notice me. I frowned before kicking some water at her with a smile. The cold, dirty water hit her jeans and her eyes widened in surprise and she looked at me with an anger I’d never seen in her before.
“What did you do that for?!” she yelled at me. I took a cautious step back and looked at her in shock. Never before had she reacted like this to me. We had our occasional fights like most friends do, but she’d never gotten so angry about something so petty before. Only a year ago we’d kicked water at each other and laughed about it when we ended up wrestling each other and falling into the puddles.
I raised an eyebrow. “You used to enjoy splashing around in the puddles!”
“Yeah, well I grew up. When are you going to?” she snapped.
"What are you being such a jerk for?" I snapped back.
"You know what? I'm getting real tired of your attitude!" she growled threateningly, taking a step towards me.
I narrowed my eyes at her and muttered a profanity under my breath as I turned and continued walking down the street. A moment later I heard hastened footsteps close behind mine before a hand landed on my shoulder, stopping me.
“I’m sorry, I’m just…I’ve been upset lately,” she tried to explain. I let out a sigh and turned to face her.
“I know, I’ve noticed. Why won’t you tell me why?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows in confusion. She’d been my best friend for years, and we’d always told each other everything, why should this be any different? She just shook her head.
“I can’t.”
“Why can’t you? You know you can tell me anything and I won’t tell anyone."
She let out a sigh before discreetly looking all around her. Everyone knew of the camera’s hidden in different locations by the Government. They weren’t even big enough to be seen, therefore you never knew where they were planted. This was how the Government monitored us; this was how they tracked our every move and made sure no one spoke out against them. She motioned with her finger for me to come closer and when I was right in front of her she leaned forward and whispered in my ear,
“I have something to show you, but you must promise not to tell anyone.”
The Government regulated what we said, but that was harder to do because of they couldn’t always hear what we were saying when we whispered, and they couldn’t always get a good shot of us to read our lips. They could intercept, read and regulate our letters, texts, holograms, and other updated versions of communication, but they couldn’t always catch a mumbled sentence, or something written on a slip of paper and passed on to another at an odd angle so a camera couldn’t catch it. I had heard talk of the Government coming up with a highly sensitive device that would allow them to hear even the faintest of whispers spoken, but we never knew when it would come out. The Government preferred to keep us in the dark about the new ways they devised to spy on us.
“I promise,” I whispered back before she smiled and grabbed my hand, leading me to the bus stop only a few blocks away. Usually it was here we parted, but Nancy assured me her parents could drive me home after we were done hanging out. While we were on the bus to her house my hologram phone started buzzing. I pulled it out of my pocket and saw my mom’s picture pop up. I clicked the Accept button and her face appeared before me.
“Charlotte, where are you?” she asked. I could see worry lines on her face and her eyes looked tired.
“I’m going to Nancy’s house. I’m sorry, I should have asked you,” I apologized.
She let out a sigh. “No, it’s fine. Just…just let me know next time, ok?” she asked, rubbing her head as she said this. I nodded before she hung up and her image disappeared. I snapped the phone shut and slipped it back into my pocket.
When we got to Nancy’s house she barely let me wave at her mom before dragging me up to her room. As soon as we got up there she silently locked the door before turning back to me. Everyone knew that the only rooms that didn't have cameras were bathrooms and bedrooms, (to maintain a sense of privacy, even if it was only a false one) but to keep a tight reign on the people each room in a house had recorders so they could still hear the people.
"I need to go to the bathroom first," I said as I set my backpack down on the floor. Nancy let out an impatient sigh, but nodded.
A few minutes later I walked back in her room and locked the door behind me as I had seen her do.
"Ok, now what it is?"
Nancy walked over to her bed and pulled out a pad of paper before taking out a pen and writing something down with it. This must be really important if she felt like she couldn’t speak of it. When she was done writing she handed it to me and I read her neat handwriting.
“When we first moved here I was in my room, pacing back and forth when I stepped on a floorboard and it came loose. I looked inside and found an old, brown bag that was commonly used to hold potatoes, and inside there were books. Lots of them, books from the Dark Age, nearly 200 years ago. I found what used to be called ‘CD’s’ from 200 years ago, banned books-history books from that time period, and the most dangerous book of them all, the Bible.”
I looked up in fear after reading this and grabbed the pen, hurriedly jotting down my response before handing it back to her. It read:
“Don’t worry, we can burn the books and the Government will never find out. Besides, even if they did they won’t send you to a concentration camp just because you found some books under your floorboards. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of this.”
When she read my response a scowl came across her face before she took the pen and jotted down her response in an irritated manner.
“That’s not what I meant. I read the Bible, and it makes sense. I believe what it says, and I also read what the History books said. The Government doesn’t want us to find out the truth. They say we have freedom and security because we’re being ruled over and taken care of, but we’re being oppressed. I realized the truth, and the truth carries a burden, that’s why I haven’t been myself lately. I realized the truth by reading the Bible, and I want to give it to you so that you can find the same freedom I did after I read it.”
I looked up at her with horror. The Government was right, religion did brainwash you. It was like a slow poison to your mind. It had already taken my friend and made her a somber, emotionless shell of her former self. I handed her the paper back before shaking my head. I had to save my friend from this book of lies before it was too late. I had to tell the Government; only they would be able to undo the damage it had already done to her mind.
♠ ♠ ♠
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