Once Again

Chapter 1

Merle's parents were never the most thrilled with having a Deww as a daughter. But that didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, as everyone was a Deww at one point. And so you would think that if everyone were once a Deww, some strange human empathy would rise, there wouldn't be nearly as much prejudice against Dewws, and voila! Problem solved, and the world would finally accomplish its long-held goal of a utopia. But sadly, when given a choice between relieving or inducing suffering, humans often chose the latter, which is probably why the world was a shoddy place by that point.

Merle Albeon went, as all Dewws did, to the Regional School of Learning and Simplicity, a school (and the only school in the whole of the western hemisphere) for Dewws. It was a regular school, high and gleaming white, stainless steel. The large synthetic doors were dark brown, mimicking the wood that people used to use. Old-fashioned light bulbs stood near clear roses, golden branches, and white blooms, lining the concrete walkway leading up to the doors. A rose maze of a sheer variety like the ones common in the 3000s snaked around the school, spotted with bonsai trees and light bulbs. The facility inside was sleek and understated, each classroom having thirty identical desks with a built-in tablet. A simple cafeteria to the right, a bookstore, and library to the left of the doors. Simplistic enough.

One must understand that though now people had gotten (somewhat) past racial prejudices, gender, and others, they had merely moved on to the other difference. A difference between ages.

A fact commonly (always) taught in schools was that rebirth spawned from a time when paltry humans only had one chance. That once, humanity could die at any time and never have another opportunity at the constantly mutating thing called life. A concept horrifying to a general populace used to eternal (or as close as to eternal as you could get) lives.

It was this lesson that Merle, for the perhaps ninth time, was going through. The professor, like most professors in this time and age, was a Deww with no other job opportunities than to make younger Dewws' lives living hell.

"As you may have heard before," said the Professor Ferguson, amidst sarcastic twittering from the far corners of the classroom, "our great potential for increasing lives stems from our first concept of this country. We had second chances for everyone, but still, we were blocked by an impassable barrier called death..., " and it was by this point most people tuned out. The built in tablets into each student's desk glowed blue, jerking in a flurry of chess tournaments and stealthy texting, the desks lighting up in a strange collision of indirect light. The professor didn't notice, of course. He never did.

Merle sat in the back of the corner, examining a bookshelf filled with ancient books. It was tall and mahogany, the varnish scratched where students had tested it to see if it possessed the self-repairing properties most objects held. But an object from eons ago wouldn't have anything of that sort. The bookshelf was still a strange anomaly; the idea that once upon a time, books weren't held in weightless databases, but in those big, bulky storage cases.

Merle's screen flashed a harsh green, interrupting visuals streaming along that were to help engage students in the lesson (and failed miserably), signaling an incoming message. Merle tapped it a couple of times, noting that it was her brother who was in Afghanistan at the time, studying a bomb site that remained untouched. Glade Albeon was on his third life and therefore higher up than she was in the hierarchy no one acknowledged.

"Hey Merle," wrote the virtual assistant in the desk, "Just thought you might want to see this." It flashed to a picture of a strange stone, rusty and silvery. "It's iron! You know, what they used back in the day." Merle grinned. Glade didn't contact her as often as he used to, not that her parents encouraged his doing so. The message continued, eventually looking more like a textbook than a personal message, but it didn't matter. She continued to read it anyway; it was either this or the teacher's lecture.