Per Square Mile

The Bird's Unknown Songs

There are these creatures called birds, and I love this creature, although I have only seen two in my life. One was grey, he had a short curious beak and a white strip on both of its glittering wings. The other was all black and nearly invisible against the night sky. My mom told me all about them, and it would be a lie if I said I wasn't highly fascinated. She would whisper about how they used to fly everywhere, singing songs of joy. Their voices never stopped calling my name, inspiring me to be more, "Dani, Dani".

"One birds chirp occupied all silence," Mom's blue eyes showed me all the truth. She used to tell me of how our ancestors watched them for hours. How they were inspiration for airplanes and music. " You can feel their presence from miles and miles away." I suppose my mom never saw too many more birds than me, but she sweared she could hear and see them, even though the sky was bare. I believe her too.

I wish I could have known my mother longer, but like every other mom she was only allowed to raise me until I was five. There is not a thing I don't remember about her, from her blonde hair in tight curls, to her advice about the seventh day. She was the very first climate change analyst, which seems strange considering the reasons they build these walls, but no one wants to think about what is out there. When we go in for judging every seventh day they ask us what we want to be and tell us the amount of people with that job. That's why I'm a climate change analyst too. I don't know where my mom is but I do know she is still in Chantist. Its not a very arduous job, all I do is record weather patterns for the next fifty years and decide wear to plant food, but its an important job. Mom used to say it was easy the first few weeks, because nothing ever happens. Its never been like that for me, I have never gone a year without noticing a big storm that could possibly cave in the whole world, but the wall never shakes. It never moves, It never changes.

No one has any desire to make friends, especially me. We all have reasons though, who wants to be best friends with someone whose greatest desire is to see you gone? Everyone is constantly trying to become more robotic than the next person, and they would love to see me climbing up the tall ladder to get to the otherside of the wall. Even if there wasnt the threat haunting over us, I would only have the oppourtonity to meet one hundred people, but I wouldn't get to know them anyways because I would only see them for a brief week.

Iva made it impossible to sleep last night with her snoring, and although the loudness of it annoys me I secretly hope it will distract the others. Half of the people are old, they are wise, but physical activity matters too. Anyone who has been injured was thrown out before. Its like a floor fire clearing out the weeds on the bottom to make room for the blossoming trees. The other half is full of little kids. Once they turned five they were on their own, but luckily they all have until age eight until they can be thrown out. It may as well be the most intense three years,because they can move up or down in numbers none the less. Its just unlike everyone over eight they cant get below one million, but once they have that birthday they start to drop like flies, but a few find something to hang onto as the rushing water of number one takes every boy and girl who isnt a child prodigy and force them to climb down a ladder to a unknown death.

Once every seven days we take a test. Its always different, but everyone always passes it with soaring colors. None the less it is terrifying, mostly because you know everyone is getting all the questions correct, so if one of your answers is wrong it stands out in your results. We all know the reason the questions are so obvious, the whole catechism was written by the numbers under one thousand. Its obvious that if they took the test they would meet it with disaster. There is no need for these people to study, they all have reassured spots, but no one would dare accuse them because they have the power, they are in charge, they determine who lives and dies.

Next we show that we are physically fit, most doubt it actually counts toward are placement, but its not worth chancing. I however have noticed if someone broke a leg or couldn't do the splits they were placed low, but its mostly just to make sure we stay healty. Number one through ten are all sitting at a table in the first square mile. Ten of us are invited in for less then a minute and each is assigned to watch us for thirty seconds moving frantically. We manage to do flips and leaps, which is the easist thing to do in the poor amount of time handed to us.

Than we walk in one by one, there is always a person sitting down unintrested in what we are doing. Last time the little boy sitting in front of me who must have been one of the higher numbers children asked me what I wanted to be. Than when I replied he told me there was two left and he wrote something down on a sheet of paper and put it away. I thought he would take out my sheet, but After I waited he told me to go with nothing to place my range in front of him.

Now I am here, in a crowded room full of a hundred humans, with a small pillow and a blanket. The scenery never changes, books are spread and everyone is studying as the stretch in unhuman ways. I always ponder if I should never go to bed at night, if I should keep studying. Tonight I choose to sleep, because the sixth day is tomorrow, which leaves me with enough time to study. I lay down bunched in a weird version of the splits to work on my flexibility, than I here the birds. Dashing up of the floor I poke my head out the already open window, allowing my black hair to blow in the wind, and look up. They are near, I know they are, closer than I have ever been. But when I look up all I see is the vast night sky with silver stars looking as bright as always.

Chaintist is very abnormal, because I have heard the birds before in my life, but the sky is always empty. It happens often, but maybe its that left over fragrence from a perfume sprayed many years ago, its just a song in my head that I can hear loudly, but really isn't playing. I know it wasn't real, because birds have to build land somewhere, and the only safe pace is Chaintist, which means this animal is extinct. Despite all the facts, their presence doesn't go away, and I don't want it to. Sometimes I daydream of seeing a bird, but I don't know if I'll ever make this come true. Because I am Dani and unlike most girls my age, my numbers are rising and rising and soon it might be one number too high.