The World of Tomorrow

Chapter One

"Jibe! Get up already! Some people moved in next door yesterday and mom wants us to bring cookies to them." A voice shouts, shattering the pleasant, giant birthday cake dream I was having. I crack open one eye, a trick my dad taught me when I was six, and peeked at the invader in my bedroom. It's my nine year old sister, Anza. Her hands are on her hips, and her dark brown hair veils her face as she peers down at me. I keep my eyes closed and my breathing steady, pretending to still be asleep. "If you're not out of bed in five minutes mami says I get to pour water on you to wake you up!"
I open my eyes at that, and slowly pull myself into a sitting position. "Okay, I'm up, I'm up. Now go away." I shoo Anza sleepily, buy stay upright as long as she's in my room.
The second she leaves, I flop back down again. I have absolutely no intention on bringing cookies to the neighbors. My family lives in a newly built neighborhood in the city of Future, also known as "the world of tomorrow" by its pamphlet, so new neighbors pop up all the time.
Future was designed to be heaven on earth, where it had the things people wanted, like great salaries, no crime, and no taxes, without the drawbacks. Future is the perfect city, with the perfect people.
Yeah, people. Future is so great because the people who live there don't cause trouble, spread disease, anything that could jeopardize Future's other inhabitants. Do you have a criminal history? Sorry, go live somewhere else. How about a genetic mess up? Bye bye. What if you're just a carrier for some disease? Our high-tech nano bots will take care of that. If whatever they don't like is able to be fixed, you can't move into Future until it is. If it's not? Too bad, so sad. Future has never housed anyone that strays too far outside ordinary. Everyone is perfectly normal. Even me.
I open my eyes in wait for Anza's inevitable return, and stare at my white ceiling, the scent of lilacs filling my nose. Dropping my eyes a bit, I catch a corner of my warm orange wall, and the smell of spiced apple cider joins the mix.
Okay, so I lied. Maybe I'm not normal.
When I was born, nothing was wrong with me. I was a perfect little baby, like all other infants in Future. No sickness, no malformations, I wasn't blind or deaf or mute. No defects. There's a lot of "No's" in Future. A lot of rules you have to get past to live here. I got past every one. I was normal, just like everyone else. Or so they thought.
When I was four years old, I was a cheerful, generally happy kid. I knew the alphabet, for the most part, and numbers one through ten. I was pretty smart, for a kindergartner. Then came colors. It was our newest "unit" in class, and I was completely ecstatic to learn something new. The teacher, Miss Casey or Miss Carrey, something with a 'C', pulled a large, square tile from the activities bag she always kept with her. I know now that it was red, but at the time all I knew was that I smelled applesauce, and the big square Miss Christine was holding was the source.
"You all should know this color!" She said, showing the class the square. "Anyone want to say it's name?"
I immediately jumped up, so sure of myself that everyone else the sweet scent that I did, and said, "Applesauce!".
Miss Carla furrowed her eyebrows, confused. She thought for a second, then smiled as if she had figured out what I was referring to. "Good job, Jibe, apples are red! But applesauce is not. Can anyone tell me what color applesauce is?"
Some other kid shouted out yellow at the top of their lungs, and Miss Cathy congratulated them before reminding the class to use 'inside voices', but I wasn't paying attention. I was ignoring the other kids and thinking quietly.
The teacher moved on to another color, but I raised my head and asked, as solemn as a four year old could be, "What's red?"
Miss Cate looked at me in shock, jaw hanging open, head slightly cocked to one side. Then she slowly took out the other color tiles from her bag. Laying them out on the floor, she pointed to each one, starting with red, and asked me what color it was. To each one, I responded with the smell each tile gave off, confusing Miss Cara more and more as we went on to more and more colors.
When we got to the final square, which was white, and she asked me what it was, I responded with, "Lilac." My mom kept white lilacs in our house at all times, she loved them. Whenever something is white, I smell lilacs.
To this, the teacher asked, "Why is this one called Lilac?" The question surprised me, she never asked that with the other colors.
"I...smell lilacs." I replied, not quite sure what her question meant.
"So when I showed the red tile, you smelled applesauce?" She asked, her mind slowly putting two and two together.
"MmHmm..." I trailed off, still not seeing the relevance of her questions.
The next day, instead of school, my mom drove me to the nearest hospital, showing the receptionist the small slip of paper my teacher had given her when she picked me up the day before.
The nurse quickly scanned the writing, gave the paper back to my mom, then looked at me sympathetically as she told her to give it to the receptionist on the fifth floor. The rest of the visit was a blur of smells and random questions that I thought meant nothing. I went home that day with something no one in Future was allowed to have. A genetic disease.
On September 8th, 3024, I was diagnosed with color-to-smell synesthesia.