Thalia

Prologue

Prologue

Thalia

304 NA

My mother used to tell me stories about life a long time ago.

Ideas that were so farfetched that I almost didn't believe her, but she swore they were true, and she was my mother, so I believed her without hesitation.

She told me stories about people who would write things with their hands, before they had computers, back when technology was extremely inferior or even nonexistent.

I remember lying in bed one night, with her sitting next to me in bed gently caressing my hair with her hand as she told me stories of these people who wrote with their hands. A fairytale, I thought, surely.

"They were as quick with their hands as you can speak." She would say. "They would write stories, and each person had their own handwriting, like a font when typing an essay or writing a story, each unique, like the sound of their voice. They wrote whole books with their fingers, holding small objects with ink, like a printer at your school, and would write away."

"Why, mother?" I would ask.

"To store information, my child. To keep record of events, to write to one another, to send letters."

"Letters?" I would always ask, even though I knew the answer. The conversation had become like a script, ready to be played when necessary. The words lulled me to sleep as much as any song.

"Words written on paper that they would send to one another; they could be declarations of love, or information to give, anything."

She would go on to tell me about the pictures they would create with their hands, beautiful drawings and paintings, she would say, though the words were nearly foreign to me.

When I came of age, she confided in me something that I was supposed to keep secret, something that was forbidden, she said, but something I would have to know. I never really understood why it had to be kept a secret, but I felt joy at having this special time with my mother, so I never asked.

She taught me how to write with my hands.

At first my attempts were extremely crude, so much unlike the gentle flow of the way her hands moved on the back of flyers that my mother stole from work, or I brought home from school. It was not easy to find paper, but somehow she always found a way. She even had what she called a pen, which was ancient, but never broke, it was encased in a kind of metal that held ink, that she found ways to refill, infused with gold like something cherished and valuable.

Overtime I progressed at this skill I found wonderful, something that was completely my own. I wanted to tell my friends about my new skill, but mother was always harsh.

"You can never do that Thalia! Promise me this stays between us. You can never tell anyone. Please my sweet daughter, you must never tell."

I would always agree of course, if my mother decided that it was a secret, than it would be, and I was true to my word. Mostly.

She had me keep a journal, like the diaries we were allowed to keep on our tablets, but in my own handwriting, that was never as good as hers, but that she claimed was the most beautiful in the world. I wrote in the journal every day, but she never read it. She told me that my journal was completely private, and I must not let anyone read it, ever.

Not until the day I died.

For some reason, she was always adamant about that part, and I never quite understood why.

But my writing was not the only thing that was secret.

She also told me about places beyond, away from our country, about people who lived beyond the fence.

In history, we were always told that there had been a nuclear war, and the world raged against itself, in the archaic and prehistoric times when there was war, before the new age. They said that to escape the battle, our country, which had once been called The United States of America, built up walls around a part of a place called Texas, a huge dome that was completely impervious to the missiles, and when we emerged from our shell, the world was in oblivion, so now there was nothing beyond the walls besides where nature rebuilt itself after hundreds of years, no more human life. We were all that was left.

But my mother claimed differently. She would talk about the gaping holes in that argument, saying that why, after all this time, if there were trees and forests, why haven't we explored? Why have we never left this dome where we have lived in and died in for hundreds of years? Why do the trees seem to have aged beyond the approximate 300 years of our New Age? And why didn't anyone else notice?

Turns out that was another of her secrets.

She also told me, not about the history that was against what we learned in school, but what they didn't tell us about the way we lived at that time.

Our country was a circle, she would say. Then, just because she was my mother, she would always ask, "What is the circumference of a circle?"

"Pi." I would say.

"In numerical form?"

"3.14159265."

"What's the square root of that?" She would ask. I would always pretend to ponder that for a moment, even though I knew the answer by heart.

"1.772453."

"Good. In the center of that circle, is where we live, the central part of our country, the part that plays an integral part in our society. This is where our government buildings are, our hospital, our research facility, our college, and our lavish houses."

"What about the edges?"

"The rest of our country is divided into north, south, east and west. The farther towards the edge you get, the more penurious the living conditions become."

"Why?" I would ask.

"That's just the way things are." She would answer.

Then one day, I remember asking a question that she didn't answer.

"Mother, if we have such good technology, why is there still poor people?"

She gave me a curious look and avoided the question every time I would ask it. This led me to ask more and more often, growing increasingly curious the more she refused to answer. Then finally one day, exasperated, she replied, "I don't know."