Author's Note: For this piece, I challenged myself to impersonate the writer of a letter, someone who experienced a revolution against an all knowing totalitarian government. I plan to expand on this piece in the future through a series of installments, and will continue to improve this piece.
To my Dearest Readers, 29/04/26 NT
I write this recollection of a recent past to you so that you and all the others with you make take note of all that has happened. I know not if this will ever reach you, but I hope it will. In fact, I know not if the scribe writing this message is even writing what I am actually saying. But, in respect to those of you reading, here goes my story.
My village was the only place I’d known, for it was the only place that we knew of. As far as our incompetent, restricted minds could comprehend, the village was all that was left. All that was left of a lonely planet with a lack of hope.
I never questioned what we were told. Never dared questioning the way we lived. Not that we ever did live in those years; we were controlled, something that I’d rather not explain, an awfully long explanation that would be. But I never did realize that my life, our lives, were controlled, if it was even life for that matter, and even now I still know that I am unsure of what life is.
We were told that something catastrophic happened. That which happened caused the collapse of our planet, our lonely planet, and we were told that we were all that was left of it. We were also told to never embrace the cause of it: thought. Not that any of us actually knew what thought was. As we knew it (a very vague definition of a complicated concept) was something dangerous, something we ought not to do. We ought not to do it because they said they could see it all, and we believed them.
I should probably clear this up; they is what you probably know as the Old Government. I am not sure of who you are, so I say probably (for you might call them something else). The Old Government is still existent, so thus it is not something outdated or replaced, but rather, well, coexistent.
However, I shall make haste and return to my story. Time passed (but then again, what was time until we discovered that it existed?) and as I thought of our situation, a little walled village in a wasteland of oblivion, I realized something; the wall. The bare granite stone wall, several cubes* thick, harsh and cold and unforgiving as life itself. Why was there a wall if we were alone? Everyday, I had seen it, it had never crossed my empty mind that its existence was so queer. I kept this to myself, for I feared my life over the thought of questioning them, for we knew better than to do that, among the few things we actually knew.
It then became evident that there was more going on than I realized. The wall was the beginning; the beginning of the first time I thought. This chain of thought led me to realize the one thing wrong with the whole concept of them, the existence of something above us, watching us, whether it be guiding or leading us to destruction seemed preposterous. If the world had been torn by a catastrophe, how did this greater thing exist?
More and more, I grew to not trust those around me. I grew distant from other village members, and they began to avoid me as well. Life seemed to be hiding something from me I couldn’t find. There was something I felt was missing, but I saw it more in those around me than myself. As I began to find to freedom, I realized how much the people resembled robots, unable to make their own choices, unable to do their own will.
I felt withdrawal, but freedom at the same time; an odd sensation. I soon realized I didn’t belong where I was. Nothing felt right anymore. That was when they came.
They pulled me out from the crowd, and took me into something I didn’t recognize; and as I tried to fight, the others from the village stared, unsure of what to do. I screamed. Yelled. But nothing happened. All they did was stare. Staring hopelessly. And I felt hopeless. Hopeless on a lonely planet.
*a measurement for length or thickness
