Broken Reflection

Clouds painted the sky in different shades gray and white, shadows defining their abstract shapes, giving us the illusion that the sky wasn’t blue. These days it rarely ever was, even in this area where cars don’t pass and buildings don’t grow as tall as mountains and blocked us from the nostalgic sky. I still remembered how, in my primary school, one kid had painted the sky gray and when the teacher asked him why he hadn’t painted it blue like the rest, he looked at the window and asked “When is it blue?” Even then we were deprived from the sun’s presence and the beautiful, clear blue sky, making it always seem later than it actually was. Even the grass wasn’t the same in the field where we stood. It used to be painted in marvelous green hues that always were inviting me to lay in them and just stare at the sky. When the sky was clear, it was a nice thing to look at. And if it was clear, it wasn’t the same as it was when I was younger. It never would be. Now, I wish I had done it more often, because I was slowly forgetting how the sky used to be. As I stared at the tall, dry grass, after years and years of not being treated by men, because they were too concerned with all their greedy desires for power and natural tendencies to destroy and express violence and hatred, I couldn’t see a hint of the life it once gave the playground where we were.

I looked up and let the cool wind, which seemed to smell like smoke, brush away some chestnut strands away from my face. I wondered how people in neutral countries would see the same sky that I looked at. I wondered if their sky was clearer… All I could see when I looked at the blurred hues above me was a reflection of all our mistakes and flaws.

The sound of an object being hit replayed near me. I turned my attention back at my surroundings. I could see a small playground: the once neon colored giant toys in which I used to play as a kid were now rusty and had lost every inch of color; the grass covered some of it; words were scrawled in felt-tip pens on the walls varying from simple anonymous love messages (or initials of people in love) to the ones filled with hatred, like the endless list of swear words that would forever take away the innocence and naivety off kids who once played in that symbol of being a kid, and even the local rumors that have, since then, become mere whispers in the wind: gone as fast as they appeared. Every single word present on those walls was at least ten years old, for the park no longer had visitors, except us and once in a while a visit from a bird or two. We had gone there as kids, and even in those years, many kids still preferred to stay indoors with their beloved technology. Everyone did.

Technology was always innovating. One day, a brand of mobile phones would come out equipped with all the latest technology. Everyone would buy, because it was “in” and nobody wanted to be left out from the trend wave. The next week a new brand would appear, and what was once a trend, would be in the trash, substituted by the latest gadgets with even more features. You would eventually have to pick between being stuck in the past and not conform along with the rest, or follow the constant evolution of technology.

The wind was cold chilly, but it felt great to contrast with the heat of the rest of the day. The weather was weird: we were in October and sometimes it felt like summer in the afternoon and like winter at night. The sun was preparing to give us a temporary farewell, or wait until we turned around and counted until ten for it to hide behind the mountains like a simple game of hide and seek. It was already partially hidden, the clouds being its hiding place. I used to play that game a lot with the few kids who used to go to the playground before it closed down. It used to be fun.

The red paint of the slide had faded into a dark, rusty color and even had some holes in it; the strings of the swings now suspended from the horizontal pole above them without the seats which had long since disappeared; the once vivid yellow stairs were now broken, frail and brown… - the entire thing just reminded me of how much I missed my childhood: not being able to comprehend problems and live a careless life. What I’d give to have that again…

The sound of an object being hit still could be heard in the background. I looked to my side and saw the kid who had painted the sky gray in school, my best friend, Josh, scrunching up some papers and using a wooden plank he found scattered in the playground to hit the paper balls into the distance, into nowhere at all. When I saw the papers with some more attention, I noticed that they were posters of patriotism and newspapers: anything with the face of the person he hated the most – the president.

Josh or Joshua Haynes as it was in his identification although he hated his name was one of the few people that I adored and considered a great friend. He was like someone from another decade. He abhorred new technology and preferred to use the older forms of technology. He would probably be voted in our year as “most likely to be put into a political prison”, if that category existed. You see, Josh didn’t care if he was arrested or not; he just couldn’t seem to accept that freedom of speech was something solely for the history books and nothing more. He was a rebel in every meaning of the word. His longing for a revolution exceeded even the one for his basic necessities. I sometimes feared the day I’d see him on the news, hand cuffs on both wrists and two policemen on either side. I feared so much and he didn’t realize it.

At that moment, he was ripping more bits of paper and making more balls out of them before hitting them far away. We went there almost every afternoon and he would do that a lot. Sometimes, when he was angry, he would call it therapy. His exact words were “releasing my inner rage”. I think his real intention for that little game of his, was to pretend that he could just throw all the bullshit in the world far away just like a scrunched up piece of paper, but he was too realistic for that, so he would content himself with his mental metaphors. He would scream swear words as he hit them and cheer himself when they went very far. Most people didn’t like Josh. Most people were patriotic zombies who supported the war and the troops and conformed easily, fearing breaking rules. Josh despised the war with all his heart.

War: it was a common thing to appear on TV or the news. The war atmosphere enveloped most of the world in a tragic embrace. Everyday, another bomb would explode in another city; another thousand deaths; another pool of tears and blood… And can you believe that people talk about all of this nonchalantly as if they were discussing a rugby game? Lives of people from other nations, lives from people of our nation – both were ending and the numbers were rising like the piles of leaves in this month of transition. And in all honesty, they were dying for a lost cause, for a bullshit reason!

I watched Josh who just continued hitting the ball with a huge smile on his face and managed to hit one twice the distance of all the other ones. “Did you see that one?” He placed the plank behind his neck, placing both hands on either end, as if he were resting them on the wooden piece as he tried to mentally calculate the distance. He was so mature, yet at times he was still so much like a child and I knew that at heart he would forever be a kid. He still marveled over his little victories and threw a tantrum once in a while. Although we were born in the same year and I was older by some months, he observed what went on in the world a lot more than me, being more politically involved and very strongly opinionated about some matters.

Looking at the stillness that surrounded the park, I found myself reminiscing about the day I met Josh. I had met him in that park many years ago, back when we were eight. It was around the time the riots were starting and the world seemed to be going to shit, due to Man’s ignorance, greed, materialism and need for the feeling of superiority. But I didn’t realize that at the time. He had jumped off the highest point of the playground and I was near him when he fell on the ground and scratched both knees. I had walked up to him and asked him if he was okay. He had an enigmatic look on his face, a mix between disappointment and sadness, and didn’t answer. Only when I asked him why he had jumped, he replied “I wanted to fly with them to somewhere better…” He was pointing at the flock of migratory birds above us. He didn’t sprain or break anything, luckily, but even when he was young, he had aspirations of leaving his country. He had always wanted to fly far away from it, forever. He had no pride in the stars and stripes.

Once in a while, Josh would have his “genius” moments, when he’d speak some amazing thoughts he had. Thoughts about utopias and perfect governments and economical crisis’ solutions… Thoughts he didn’t vocalize in the presence of adults, knowing that their response would be something along the lines of “You’re too young and naïve to know…”

But Josh was very smart indeed. He read a lot of books about history. Some of the pages of those books looked so worn out that I wondered how he had the courage to touch them without fearing that they would crumble at his touch. He’d skip multiple times from classes to go to the library and read. He’d show me pictures of lakes and forests that no longer existed. He despised what most of today’s youth adored: when it came to movies and music, he only heard and watched things that were at least five decades old, although he had a hard time finding these, because many movies and songs from those years were censored or banned entirely in the country.

To be quite frank, I don’t know how we became friends. He didn’t like spending time with most people, opting for being alone, reading and making up theories. Although he had a lot of knowledge, he wasn’t a very bright student in school, even in History, because teachers only taught what was established in the reform imposed by the government. History was censored, To him, school was just another institution that alienated the youth of America, inducing in them a sense of patriotism by learning merely about the victories, instead of developing a critical spirit in students, by demonstrating some of the failures in history. He just didn’t fail, because he didn’t want to be sent off to the war.

Maybe that’s why we got along: in the end, we both wanted the same things. But he wasn’t a coward to express his opinions unlike me. He was still hitting the paper balls as he screamed profanities like “Fuck the war!” and “Fuck the government!” without a single worry about the consequences. He didn’t care if the police suddenly heard him and appeared there just to arrest him. I just stood a few feet apart from him, observing his moves and thinking about things. Too many things were on my mind.

When he had no more scraps of paper left, he faced me, with a relieved expression, and asked “So why so gloom?” Did I mention that he was also incredibly empathetic? Nobody would’ve expected that from him, but he actually genuinely cares about friends. He walked towards me and I looked down to meet his glance, because he was shorter than me, although that wasn’t something hard to be. I was kind of tall for my age.

I analyzed his features: he had short and messy light brown hair and olive skin; his eyes were big and a caramel brown, when the sun hit them, like at that moment, though they were normally chestnut brown. He was considered good looking by the female persuasion, but his biggest turn off for them was his careless audacity. I actually envied his looks. The only thing about me that I loved was my eye color, which reflected my love for water and for the ocean: an extremely pale blue-green. I had a very rosy skin and didn’t tan easily. Actually, instead I got burnt in extensive periods of sun exposure. Adding to that, my hair was pretty uncooperative and somewhat thick, unlike Josh’ hair that seemed to be extremely flexible and flowed as well as a river. Yet, he never acknowledged the way he looked; he didn’t care the littlest bit about how he presented himself.

At that moment, I also didn’t care much about my own appearance. I had too much on my mind. More than twenty four hours had passed since I heard the news. “Too much shit is happening,” I answered as I sad on the only cold, metal bench in the park. He dropped the piece of wood onto the ground beneath him and sat beside me.

He nodded in agreement and asked “What happened this time?” He had been looking at the park, but the instant he asked me that question, he faced me, waiting for the news I wanted to confide in someone.

“Ian was called for the army inspection.” Whenever you were called, you knew your time to make the choice you feared had arrived. You either ran away or went to war. Time was your enemy, giving you either no time to run or to even decide. I couldn’t even picture my brother handling a weapon, let alone shooting someone in the head with one. Knowing him, he’d probably kill himself rather than kill anyone else. He just couldn’t. Yet war changed people, so I would never know.

“Oh, man…” He sighed knowing it was tough on me. He put his hand on my shoulder in a comforting manner. “When is it? Is he going?” The wind hit our backs and I suddenly regretted not having brought my jacket.

“In three weeks.” I lowered my head, knowing that either way I wouldn’t see him for some time, whichever was the choice he made. “I don’t know actually if he’s going. He told me and my parents yesterday. He didn’t seem worried.” I was describing the scene I had watched during lunch time the previous day. That’s all I did: watch. I didn’t react. I couldn’t bring myself to react. Just sat there like a statue watching their reactions and the news didn’t seem to compute in my brain.

My dad was proud: his son was going to defend his country, just like he and his own father had. No wonder he was so patriotic. My mom was proud as well, but she held some worry in her eyes and not merely pride. Pride was probably just her mask to make her look strong on the outside and not show her worries and reservations about the war, because deep down, I knew the news had devastated her. But my brother didn’t seem to have a distinct expression. He wasn’t happy, or sad, or worried, or afraid. His expression was blank. His reaction was just like mine. Blank. Since he had unveiled the news, I still hadn’t talked with him about it, because he left the house to hang out with friends and arrived very late.

“Don’t worry, Tristan. Anyway, it’s Ian! He can get out of anything!” I had to laugh at his remark. That was actually true. My brother had always been the main topic of discussion at the dinner table due to his careless nature, but unlike Josh, he wasn’t political, he just loved having fun. He loved going to parties and was extremely social. Ian was actually a very happy and optimistic person, always there to cheer you up. And although he had some problems with the law already, he never got into much trouble, maybe because he usually did well at school, although his final exams’ results could’ve been better. He may cause some trouble with law, but nothing to serious to be taken by the Secret Police, unlike Josh. At least not yet.

“I sure hope you’re right…” I had never seen Ian blank. He would always joke even with the most serious situations. Maybe the news hadn’t fully sunk in yet. It was getting somewhat late and my curfew was close. My parents had established that until I was eighteen and fully responsible for my actions, I could only stay out until eight o’clock at most. My brother also had to follow that rule, until he turned eighteen, but he was rebellious and sneaked out. He was never caught though. The park was on the way so our parents never got worried about our whereabouts.

Josh’ parents were as patriotic as mine, possibly even more. He would often be grounded and fought with his parents a lot for his inability to keep his mouth shut. He had an older sister who was the same age as Ian. I still remembered how Ian used to have a crush on her, but she never returned the same type of feelings. Stella was very different from her brother, being their only similarity their natural good looks: she had beautiful facial features, practically a female version of her brother, and was extremely fit, because she worked out and ate healthily. She was very uptight and organized. Ian had only liked her in Junior High mainly because of her looks, but once he found out her true annoying personality, his little crush ended. She was an excellent student and perhaps the most patriotic member of the Haynes family, therefore being the pride and jewel of Josh’ parents.

We sat there watching the ghosts of the memories we had once experienced in that park. So distant yet so close. I could almost hear the bursts of laughter from when the kids would play as if it were their last day at the playground. I could almost hear the sounds of happiness fading as the park got emptier. Now, I could only hear the sound of the wind hitting against rusty pieces of metal and against the tall grass.

The playground was now ruins of where once innocence and naivety reigned.

Josh noticed the sudden melancholic atmosphere and decided to talk. “The war is bullshit! You and I know that. And Ian knows that. Ian won’t waste his time fighting for a bullshit case, will he?” I shook my head. “He won’t be a coward either. He just won’t fight this war. I’m sure of it.” He grabbed a pocketknife from his backpack, one he had probably taken from his dad, turned around to face the tree behind the bench and started carving something on it. I watched him as he furrowed his eyebrows and focused on getting the words correct.

I wondered what he was writing, as his hand covered the word from me. He said “I hope I live to the day I can come here and this word is once again part of the dictionary…” He took his hand off, wiping away the wood that he had carved out. I saw the word: freedom, a word that the newest generation had never heard of and it was probably one of the least uttered words.

“The war shall end. It has to end.” I tried to convince myself of that, but it didn’t come out as convincing as I thought it would. He gave me a skeptic look. We both knew too well that the war ending in the next couple of years was a long shot.

“Man is selfish and greedy and egocentric. Unless this assertion changes, the war has tendencies to get worse.” I cringed at the thought. The news about the war on TV had given me nightmares the first few weeks: the images of burnt corpses and mutilated bodies had forever traumatized me. “Tristan, this isn’t even close to the end. It’s actually just the beginning.”

“What happens if you don’t want to go to war?” I asked thinking about my brother and us. If the war didn’t end, we would have to fight too. This war wasn’t like anything in history. The new weapons were more devastating. I had seen seniors comeback mere days after they were sent to the battlefield with burned body parts and without their arms or legs. People who were just beginning their lives, ending them so early: all their dreams gone. Dreams… I always dreamed of swimming in the Olympics. Competing. Winning. My childhood dream was so selfish and self-centered, compared to Josh’s. He wanted a revolution. He wanted change.

Josh had just underlined the word he had carved. And just as the blade hit the tree the last time, he said “You exile.” I already knew that, but two options for me just weren’t enough. Exiling wasn’t easy. Those who were caught would be arrested and would serve a long penalty in prison, which wasn’t exactly a bed of roses, because many rapes and murders happened within that small, chaotic space that held some of the worst people of the country, or sent directly to war. Going to war was sort of a death sentence in some ways, since you wouldn’t even get the preparation you would’ve gotten as a new recruit. You wouldn’t know how to handle a weapon, how to kill, and would eventually die in a matter of days. And even if you serve some time in prison, you would be sent to war, because in the end, prison is just a purgatory before the real punishment.

“If not me, I hope at least that the future generation gets to have it,” he looked at his little work of art and smiled. Josh didn’t want to be pessimistic, but he had gotten a reality check when his cousin had gone to war as soon as he finished high school, not believing in it as well, but not having time to exile. He died within days, even with the preparation. Josh wasn’t intentionally pessimistic, he was just realistic. And that’s what scared me.

“Do you want to come over for dinner? You could stay over…” He also had a curfew so unless he stayed over for the night, he couldn’t eat dinner at other people’s homes. Parents were worried, because the police would wander around at those times, catching anyone who was committing crimes. It was one of the control reforms they had established to lower the extremely high crime rates. “My uncle is coming over.” I saw his eyes widen with interest. Josh adored my uncle. They had similar views about the world, and most importantly, the war. But then something popped into his mind and he had a disappointed expression on his face.

“As much as I like you uncle’s visits, I don’t really think I can. I’ve eaten dinner at your house already three times this month.” I knew damn well that he would still ask his parents even if he had slept everyday at my house, but he knew as well as me that whenever my uncle visited, the dinner table would be a place filled with insults and shouts. My uncle Vince was from my mother’s side of the family, so as long as my mom enjoyed his visits, my dad, who hated him, didn’t want to make my mom sad and allowed him to join us for dinner once in a while. My mom and my uncle were very close, though they were very different. My uncle was younger than my mom and more reckless.

“Oh, okay.” We started walking away from the playground and go on our way home. Josh asked me about how my swimming was going and if there was any chance about me participating in a national competition or maybe even the Olympic Games. That was a lighter topic, so I felt better talking about it, until I arrived home, when I had to face reality again.

My house was four stories tall: the first floor had an austere living room, decorated in a minimalist way with a huge wall TV on one of the biggest walls, the one located just in front of the white sofas, made of special fibers that could be manipulated to fit your comfort. Most of the furniture was black and white. The same floor also had the fully equipped and very simple kitchen. It had all the automating cooking machines most kitchens nowadays had. Nothing was one hundred percent homemade now. You could basically save some recipes into the machine’s data and if you put the correct ingredients, it could cook you a whole feast for even a hundred people, faster than you would cook a normal meal for your family. The dining room was adjacent to the kitchen. The chairs were where made of steel, but the padding on it, was made with the same material as the sofa. Comfort was a priority in furniture. The table was clear and hanging from the ceiling with four thin chords made of metallic fibers. I never understood how those thin strings could carry the weight of the table and the food that was placed on it, but then again, I never was good at science. Close to the floor, on the walls, we could find these small spaces and once a button was pressed, you would activate the vacuum cleaner, that basically cleared the dirt and dust that after would go into the containers outside of the house, which would be cleaned weekly by the garbage company. It only took ten seconds to make the floor spotless.

These new innovations in technology allowed my mom time to relax after spending the whole day at the office. Me and my brother rarely had any chores actually, even growing up. Josh didn’t like any of it though. He avoided using it at all costs. Even in school where it was mandatory, it would take him a few warnings to finally oblige. Most of the reforms in education were mainly involved with the use of technology in almost everything: there weren’t any books or notebooks; we learnt everything through touch screen computers that also worked with voice activation. And all the technology used only renewable energies. It was a way of avoiding deforestation, though there wasn’t much they could do about it anymore – world’s nature was already very sick. The few forests we had were now rare reservations and many animal species were now extinct.

Josh may support that reform, because it is an environmental friendly measure, but he didn’t support the fact that if you, as a guy, failed at school in either your junior or your senior year, you were forced to serve your country in the army. It was the only reason he actually studied, because things at school weren’t repeated and followed a chronological and difficulty sequence, so we needed to know the things we learnt back in our first years at school to take the final evaluation tests to see if we could pass the year. My brother had passed, but with a very low positive grade, because the exams were a lot more demanding than your average test. Most guys passed with low grades, because although they supported the war, they were afraid of fighting in it.

I walked into the kitchen and saw my mom. Her back was turned to me. Everything about my mom seemed just about perfect on the outside: her hair auburn, straight, shiny and reached her chin, not one single strand out of place; her skin was flawless, save the few wrinkles she had, but she was bound to have some, otherwise she just couldn’t be human; you could never find her slumping down on a chair, she always kept her posture – in other words, she seemed to perfect and sometimes people found her intimidating for that. At that moment, she was wearing a pale violet jacket that fit her slim figure well; some expensive high heels that made her seem a few inches taller than me, although I was, actually, taller than her; a pale icy blue blouse that matched her ivory white pants, that were, once again, slim and form fitting. Everything was sleek and very professional. She had probably heard me entering, because she turned around and asked “Hey, how was school?”

She always asked me that. Not even my daily routine is that important. Just school. My parents always wanted to know how my school life was. Education was an important value for everyone in the nation. Nobody was illiterate. Actually, the government made sure every single person knew how to read and count, even if that means creating schools of a lower standard for those who can’t afford going to normal schools. The education offered by these schools is free. Education is not just a right, but an obligation. If you were illiterate by the time you should’ve graduated, you were screwed and a rifle and a helmet would be placed on your lap.

“Okay… As always…” I was an average student. The other reform in education was to make everything stricter and more demanding. I had found old school text books at the local library and the things people learnt back when our grandparents and maybe parents were young were a lot easier than the things we learnt at school.

Obviously since those days, many things had been discovered, many things had happened, therefore science, physics, chemistry, geography and history had all changed in many ways. And we had no choice whatsoever over what we wanted to study, unlike before. We had those subjects and had to suck it up and accept them. Only in college we could decide the subjects we really wanted to pursue. Yet, every college required absurdly high averages and exam grades, so only students, who were smart enough to have those required grades, would get into college and be immune from the army. Well, only guys had the army problem, girls could join if they wanted to. But the moment you don’t get just even the smallest detail about a subject, you can forget about going to college.

My brother tried to apply for a college, but even the worst college he applied to, didn’t accept him, because although he had a decent average, he had a low evaluation result. My grades were identical to his, though mine were probably lower.

“Any new test results?” She asked suspiciously. For some reason, she seemed to have a sixth sense which could tell when I had received another test. As always, it was dead on. She looked at me, raising her left eyebrow slightly, waiting for me not to answer affirmatively, because her intuition was always correct and she knew that, but to go straight to the point or, in this case, the grade and the subject in which I had it. I had been hoping her extra sense would fail on her, but it just never did, no matter how much I hoped. Luckily, she wasn’t as easily disappointed as my dad, or at least she didn’t show it as much.

I hadn’t failed. Our grading system ranged in a scale of 1 to 70: 1 being the lowest, 70 being the highest, and 55 the passing grade. Having half of the test correct just didn’t cut it anymore like in the past. Average grades ranged from 55 to 65 and anything above 65 was miraculous and only omniscient geniuses had over 67. I usually had low 60s, but in the grade I had just gotten, I received a 56. It was Physics, a subject I didn’t appreciate much, therefore, it wasn’t one of my strongest subjects.

“56 in Physics,” I answered. She stopped everything she had been doing until that moment. I knew that even if she didn’t express her disappointment as much as my dad, she still gave pretty long sermons. She pushed a strand of her perfect hair behind her ear and sighed – the first sign of the beginning of a sermon. Then she looked at me with a disappointed stare – the second sign. I knew exactly how it would all go. It was always the same, only worse when I failed. But I rarely failed, because I studied a lot. I studied most afternoons and nights. Actually, the only times I didn’t study were when I was at the swimming facilities or when I was at the abandoned playground with Josh or when I was at school. My parents never took my right to swim away as a punishment, but they forbade meeting with friends for s short period of time, whenever I failed.

“Tristan,” whenever she said my name in that apologetic tone of voice, I knew she wasn’t happy about my actions. She would normally call me Tristan like everyone else. “You have to study more! You don’t want to fail, do you?” I just nodded and responded with answers like “I know” and “yes, I’ll do better next time” as she prolonged her apprehensive sermon. At the end she straightened out her shirt and jacket and continued putting ingredients into the machine as she was before I interrupted her by announcing my grade. “You’re lucky uncle Vince is coming over… You caught me in a good mood.”

The only people who still insisted in calling my uncle by his name were my parents. To everyone else he was Kant. He loved philosophy, so he wanted his nickname to be an old philosopher’s surname, one of his favorite ones. Emmanuel Kant, he had told me when I was a kid and he showed me a picture in his computer, was a man who would never do anything that went against morals in general and his own personal values. He told me that he didn’t agree with that philosophy when it came to doing things that were immoral, because, technically, some of his actions were considered immoral by society. But he did agree about not setting aside personal values. My parents refused to call him by his little nickname, not understanding the reasons behind him picking it and thinking instead that it was his idea of a terrible joke, because it may lead to some inappropriate thoughts from those whose minds are corrupted with dirty thoughts. At first, whenever I’d call him by his nickname, my parents would send me a reprimanding stare and I couldn’t help but snicker afterwards. But after the years, they had gotten used to it and pretended to ignore it.

I had been listening patiently to the sermon, and once she was done and had her back to me, I didn’t know what to say, so I shrugged my shoulders. Our conversation ended there, so I left the kitchen when I felt the tension rising in the room. I climbed the stairs to go to the third floor of our small house. The second floor was where my parents’ bedroom and bathroom, while the third floor, was my bedroom and my brother’s bedroom and our bathroom. The fourth floor was the storage room, or attic.

My room was the only place of the house that I actually felt at ease in, although it still didn’t feel personal, it didn’t feel like my room. It was just a room where I slept and spent a lot of time in. The walls were a pale gray-blue color that actually reminded me of the swimming facility; the bed sheets were navy and black and the bed, made with the same fibers that almost every single piece of furniture of the house had, was located in the center of the room, against one wall; the glass that offered me a panoramic view of the neighborhood was now covered by the artificial retractable wall (smaller window included); my clothing room wasn’t activated and the doors were closed; my desk was still inside the wall, so my whole room seemed pretty empty save the bed, the remote controlled chair (also made with the same fibers that adapted to fit your comfort) and the shelves with holographic pictures of me and other people like relatives and friends throughout the years. I saw the remote control of my room on the bed and grabbed it, before pressing a button that would lift my bed enough to place my school bag in the small compartment under the bed next to the swimming duffel bag. Minimalism was the new trend in interior decoration: the room had to have a simple appearance. Everything was hidden, exposing only the things that actually allow you to assume what room you are in, which in this case, it’s the bed and since my parents didn’t want to pay extra money to make a compartment in the wall for the chair, it had to be left out too. I liked the minimalism. It was simple, and I hated complications.

I pressed the same button twice, which made the bed lower to its original state. Then I aimed the remote at the spot on the wall where I knew my desk was and pressed a white button bellow the one of the bed, and as I waited for my desk to lower from its hidden compartment, I sat on the chair, and brought it close to where the desk would be, using once again, the moving options on the remote control. Everything was robotic. All of these simple processes would take at most fifteen seconds. My computer turned on automatically, once the desk was in place. It ran at a very high speed, so all the activity would process really fast.

As soon as it turned on, I saw an image Josh had sent me of a beach that didn’t exist anymore, because the sea level had raised and instead of a beach that place was probably a cliff now, due to the tall rock formation around it. It was an old picture, so the definition was very bad compared to the high definition everything was in nowadays, but I liked it, so I set it as my main image. Around it there were icons for different things. I clicked on the envelope shaped icon and then widened the window that was opened to be able to read the messages without scrolling.

There were some messages from my class head student. Every year, we elected a new one. He was responsible for sending to every student the assignments given by the teachers and also the deadlines. Everything was done by computers now, so once we were done we would send the homework to our teachers.

I had two assignments: basically just to research and then elaborate some conclusions made from the information analyzed. I had three hours until the deadline, since I had spent some time out of the house and wasted two of the five given hours. I went straight to work.
First, I had to read some articles and texts about Ancient Greece and compare their lifestyles to the ones of the present days. I folded the message using my fingers to click on the corners of the window, indicating it to fold like an origami paper, then dragged it to the bottom right corner of the screen, and then clicked on the icon with the school symbol on it: a huge apple tree with a computer in the middle and the initials of our school bellow it. It was a program provided by the school with a long list of topics they knew we would talk about throughout our school life, so we didn’t have to use a search engine and find inappropriate material instead of the essential. I scrolled through the topics until I found Ancient Greece.

A long list of articles appeared once I clicked on the topic I wanted. I read two of them: one was about the education system back then and the other one was about public speaking and democracy. I wasn’t too keen on Ancient civilizations. I preferred more recent events when it came to History. It was Josh who loved everything about History. But he didn’t read the censored articles provided by the school to get real knowledge; he’d resource to forbidden books in the old abandoned libraries the government didn’t have knowledge about, or thought were harmless. I was still incredibly surprised yet thankful at how he hadn’t been caught thus far.

I wrote my essay formulating good arguments to explain my conclusions about the similarities and differences about our lifestyles. In Ancient Rome, democracy was done with votes and citizens were the minority, being only men born in the city above the age of twenty one. There was slavery and good public speaking could be taught. They had to memorize poems by Homer at school and also learned music. The women didn’t participate in the political life at all. I concluded that there were certainly many differences and, obviously, elaborated on those differences. I did the same for the essay I had to write about the Pythagorean theory and its applications to our daily routines.

I finished both within an hour. The sky was already dark and dinner was soon when I was done. I dragged both essays I had typed, using my touch screen keyboard, to the message area, automatically attaching the files, then clicked on the space where I could put the person I wanted to send it to, and it opened a list of contacts I could chose from. I dragged each contact to the correct file and then I folded the window and dragged it to the icon on the screen with an arrow pointing to the right: the sending icon.

Once I was finished, I heard someone climbing the stairs. I opened the door a bit, using my remote control and saw my brother. He was probably under the influence of substance, probably alcohol. I knew this because whenever he was very drunk or sometimes even just a bit, he had a dopey smile on him and the smell of cigarettes on his clothes. This was also a clear sign that he had been to a party. He walked into his room and I thought about confronting him. I wanted to talk to him, but didn’t know what to say. I got up and took a deep breath, thinking of what I’d ask him, as I made my way to his room.

I knocked on his door, but it was open: as my hand touched it lightly, the door moved forward. His room was slightly bigger than mine and not so minimalist. He went against the rules my parents had made and decorated his dark green walls with framed black and white pictures he had taken on his summer trip to Europe with his friends. He wasn’t into photography and his pictures weren’t all that great, just simple pictures, mostly of places he had visited and one or two that were just strange and hard to interpret. He just took them to really go against the rules. He hated minimalism. He liked complex things, although for him, life couldn’t be taken too seriously, otherwise, we would never have fun. His bed sheets were black and green to match the walls. His floor was spotless, but his bed was unmade. And my brother was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Hey,” I said as I closed the door behind me and leaned my back against the door. He responded with the same greeting word but his voice came out croaked and his dopey smile somehow wasn’t on his face. Reality was probably hitting him. “Where have you been?” I already kind of knew and it wasn’t really something that induced curiosity in me, but I wanted to begin the conversation on a lighter topic. He sat on his elbows and looked at me, trying to force a smile.

“Gil had a party in the cabin by the river. I was so trashed I only could drive this afternoon back. Great party…” He was reminiscing about the party, I could tell from the dreamy look he had on his eyes. He had a girlfriend and probably had spent the night with her at the cabin and she probably had driven him to her house where he had spent the rest of the day. I could also assume he didn’t tell her about being called for the army, because it seemed like he had completely forgotten about it, until he entered his room and saw the letter on his bed where he left it. He paused and looked at me, then saw my gaze being directed at the letter he had discarded like a nothing beside him. “Tristan, why exactly did you want to come and talk to me? I know that questions about my whereabouts are just small talk…” He knew me too well.

“What are you going to do about it?” I didn’t want to say the topic directly. I looked at him, trying to understand what he was feeling. His forced smile had faded and he was looking at me intently. He sat up straight and looked to his side, where the slightly folded piece of paper that informed him of bad news lay, and sighed. He grabbed it and stared at it, shaking his head in disbelief. Then he buried his face in his hands, scrunching up the paper against his cheek.

“I don’t know…” His voice was so low and so close to breaking. It was filled with fear: fear of the unknown and fear of having to fight in the war. He wasn’t crying, but he was close to it. He kept on repeating the same phrase over and over, almost in a pleading tone as if expecting someone to tell him exactly what he should do, solve his dilemma. When he finally looked up, he didn’t look at me. He looked at the crumbled up piece of paper in his hand and then said “I didn’t think it would be so soon…”

I sat next to him and put my arm around him. He wasn’t crying yet. I had never seen him cry, maybe because he rarely was serious. Even when he criticized society, he used humor. He was a very laid back person. But in that moment, seeing him that way, tore me up inside. I knew when my time would come that I would be just like him: afraid and broken. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid for him. I was nervous for him. And I wasn’t as strong, so I kept the words I wished I could speak within me and let silence stop me from breaking.

He made a ball out of the paper and walked to the wall. He knocked on the wall twice on one spot, being lazy to find his remote control, and a small trash can came out of the hidden compartment on the wall. He put the paper inside then closed the compartment. “Uncle Kant is coming over. Maybe he can help me…” Those were the closing words to that topic. I knew he didn’t want to talk about it and that at the same time, talking to our uncle was his last chance at running away from the war. Our uncle being very highly opinionated about freedom and democracy would probably know some sort of escape. I nodded, although I knew he wasn’t looking at me. He then asked “So how is the swimming?”

I loosened up a bit and said “My times are getting better, but I still have some work to be able to compete…” He faced me and smiled. He loved hearing about the possibility of me competing. I was roughly the same height as him, but maybe a few inches taller. He didn’t do much physical exercise; he just had natural tall genes, like most people in my family. I was rather short before I started swimming, but then I grew fast in a small period of time. And I was still growing.

“The day you compete, I’ll be on the bleachers cheering you on. Even if I have to catch a plane to see it…” He delivered the last line with some sadness. I knew that independently of what happened, he would have to leave and go somewhere. Despite the nostalgia it induced me in me, I managed to smile, knowing that he would support me in pursuing my dream. My parents didn’t stop me because it made me happy, but they thought I was wasting time that I could use to study and get into college.

“Oh, just don’t do your cheer dance… I might lose having a laugh attack underwater instead of focusing on the arm and leg movements!” I said in an attempt to lift the mood in the room. My brother would do a silly little choreography he had put together when I was little and participated in a school swimming competition. He still remembered the dance and would do it sometimes before wishing me good luck on a test or something. It always made me laugh. He stuck his tongue out at my mocking remark.

“Oh, don’t worry… I’ll even use pompoms just to perfect it all!” He was just teasing though. And we both laughed. That was when we heard the door downstairs opening with a bang and someone shouting a greeting that echoed throughout the house. We both knew instantly who it was: Uncle Kant. He loved making an entrance.

We left my brother’s room and ran down the stairs to greet our uncle. We hadn’t seen him in some time. The last time we had was at another family dinner in which my father forced us to leave early after quarreling with my uncle. When two completely opposite opinions are on the table, the results aren’t pretty. If my father didn’t have much control over himself and if my uncle weren’t against the use of violence to settle arguments, every single one of their meetings would turn into a fist fight.

He was shorter than me and my brother and possibly shorter than my mother. His hair was curly and light brown, surrounding his long, oval face. He had a round belly, due to his love for food. Although he was younger than my mom, he looked older, due to the wrinkles from years of laughing and worrying about the world, contrasting to my mom’s always serene facial expression. But at heart, my uncle would always be our age, would always be the new generation that revolted against conformity, the new generation that longed for peace and democracy, the new generation that craved for change!

“Hey!” His eyes went wide as he saw us and his arms were wide waiting for an embrace. I arrived first and hugged him, and then my brother did the same. My mother was beside him and had been talking with him until we arrived. “How are you guys?” He then went on to ask us a series of questions about how the swimming was going, how was Ian’s trip to Europe, if I had already gotten myself a girlfriend, if Ian was still with his girlfriend… Many questions. And he really seemed interested. My mom then interrupted him and started asking him about his job and finance related issues: our cue to back away from the conversation.

My brother turned on the TV and images from the war appeared on immediately. I switched channels when I saw my brother look away from the screen. I also didn’t want to see anything about the war. “Tristan, can you put back in the other channel?” I heard my mother speak from the entrance hallway where she was watching the television with my uncle as they still talked about matters that didn’t particularly interest us. My brother got up and walked to his room as I put back in the channel and my uncle seemed clueless about the rude manner in which my brother left. My mom explained to him the situation, also knowing. But she, unlike my brother, wanted to know what was happening in the war, what could happen to his son if he went…

I left the room, not wanting to watch the news either. But as I was climbing the stairs up to my room, my dad arrived from work. He entered and gave a hostile look at my uncle, forcing a smile and a greeting out of his mouth. And my uncle always made it worse by joking and being overly friendly with my dad. My mom used the speaker phone to contact my brother. The speaker phone would echo like a radio transmission coming out the walls in the room you selected. It was dinner time.

Empty trays and dishes were left with stains of the food that once lay in them, as we sat bloated on the chairs and talked about mundane topics. My brother would give my mom stares for her not to bring up the topic of war. She clearly got the message, and didn’t mention war one single time. But my dad wasn’t warned. “Ian was called for the army today,” he stated looking proudly at his son, when my uncle had been talking about news he had read on the newspaper. It seemed like the tension bomb had dropped. My brother just dropped his eyes to his lap and I started playing with the napkin, ripping it into small shreds and making little balls out of them, before putting them on the dish.

I knew what would happen: my uncle would start criticizing the war, and this lead to a heated debate about politics, which eventually ended up with my dad kicking my uncle out of the house and my mother burying her face in her hands in frustration. That was why debating such controversial issues at our house wasn’t exactly the best idea.

This time it was slightly different though. My uncle asked “Oh, so when is the inspection?” Nobody was expecting that question from him, but when my dad wasn’t looking, he gave my brother an understanding nod. I didn’t know what he meant, but apparently he would talk to my brother when they were alone.

“In three weeks,” my dad didn’t seem to notice how the topic made my brother uncomfortable. He kept going on and on about how the army would be an unforgettable experience and how he would grow as a person there and would become more patriotic… Things I knew his dad had told him when he had gone to the army as well. But he was lucky, there wasn’t a global war. Just some small ones and the weapons weren’t as scary as the ones in the current war. Ian left halfway through the conversation, excusing himself to go to the backyard. My uncle excused himself to go to the bathroom, but I knew that he would go talk to my brother.

My dad took that opportunity to ask me about my test result. He didn’t have the sixth sense like my mom, but my mom stated harshly “Tristan had a 56 in Physics.” My father was silent for a while and he looked at me for a while, before speaking.

“See what wasting time on swimming does to you?” I hated when he brought my passion up as the reason why I wasn’t succeeding in school as well as I could. “Your grades go down the drain! Don’t you want to go to college?” He was barking questions at me without giving me time to answer. He was angry and he made me feel worse about not having had a better grade. I had some stupid mistakes in my test, some extra points I could’ve gotten. But the pressure you had whenever you took the test, sometimes would make you commit pathetic mistakes in some questions. He finished his long list of questions by saying “Everyday from now on, you have to study two hours of physics.” I looked at him trying to bargain for a different punishment. I studied already half an hour of physics almost everyday, but it wasn’t the only subject I studied. I just didn’t study that day and the previous day. But he was set and determined that I studied those two hours he established.

After that, my uncle and my brother walked back in the room and my brother had a relieved expression on his face. I would ask him about his conversation with my uncle another time. And for the first time, my uncle wasn’t thrown out of the house. Thankfully, he managed to keep his opinions about the war and politics to himself.