The Blue Council

Chapter Two

The road to my house is dark as usual, with people minding their own businesses in remote corners.

Now and again the light of the Mooch, a huge screen installed above the buildings, comes through the small alleys.

I wasn't born yet when the Mooch had been installed, and neither was Ryan. My parents, however, had told me times and times again the story of the massive accomplishment that the Mooch had been. It had happened around 70 years ago, when the Blue Council had decided to shield the town from the black sky, following the advice of the scientific team. A gigantic dome had been erected above the citizens' heads, leaving them in the dark for around twenty years. Sunbaths had been opened, and the commerce of vitamins had reached the stars (no pun intended). Some of the population back then didn't make it, and they had to be moved to the Outside for their own well-being.

It was twenty-five years after the Safe Dome had been installed that the new Blue Council found a way to replace the Sun, with a screen capable of emulating its properties. Most of the people that had been sent to the Outside were welcomed back once more.

At night, instead, the intensity of the Mooch is kept down thanks to a complicate system of wires and photons. A system that I will never fully understand. Not that I want to, obviously.

The pavement is covered in beer cans and envelopes of crisps and snacks. I can also see flyers of different people running for a vacancy in the Blue Council. There is going to be an election in ten days and the city is in complete chaos, with television vans going back and forth. Election time is the only period when the first and the second Districts actually care about the rest of us.

When I get to my house, I don't even bother trying to find the keys for the main gate and I ring the buzzer, waking my brother up. I always do this, just so that I can bother him.

"Hello?" his voice was tired and sleepy.

"Ryan it's me." I reply. "I can't find my keys."

The silence on the other end of the buzzer is almost overwhelming, so I just try to get lost in it while I wait for my brother to open the gate.

Once Ryan buzzes me in, I walk the stairs up to the last floor, where my apartment is, strictly avoiding the elevator. There isn't a real reason why I don't use elevators, I just don't like them.

My brother must have gone back to bed, because, when I walk in, no one is there to welcome me home (not that I was expecting anything different, to be honest).

I quickly get undressed, for the second time that night, and I get into the shower before going to bed, trying not be kept awake by the noisy thoughts that at night come to crowd my mind.

A couple of hours later I wake up at the chaotic cluttering of plates and dishes. I turn around in my bed and I can see my brother leaning on the sink, scrubbing vigorously what seems to be a piece of portion 2. That was another rule of the new Blue Council: all the recipes and the ingredients were given to the people by the government on a weekly basis. Every Monday, therefore, we had to wake up at around four o'clock in the morning to get to the Basin in time.

The Basin is a small building where citizens can make their issues known to the state representatives. It's where Ryan and I had to go when my father finally died and I had to move to my brother's place. We were lucky it took us only twenty days to sort everything out.

"I could have done that." I say, lifting myself up on the mattress, with a sleepy and pasted voice.

"I think you've done enough for the day." His voice is cold and I can't help myself from grinning.