Unprog

Chapter 1

I've escaped.

I've escaped and I'm alive. They aren't chasing me, they aren't looking for me. I'm just another citizen, except I've achieved the impossible. Other folks go around about their daily lives, bustling about, hurrying off to school. They walk by me without looking twice. There's nothing so unusual about me, at least, as far as other people can see. But they are just oblivious to what I had achieved. I'm not supposed to exist. I shouldn't be able to think the way I do, or say the things I say. That's why I must hide it.

The Watchers are of course watching. But they haven't noticed. My whole life, they've looked past me like I was just another normal person. But I'm not and that's the problem. Or maybe it's a good thing, I'm not sure. It affects me badly in almost every way, my life is at risk 24/7. But yet somehow I feel like there is a good side to this. Maybe I'm just crazy.

Nothing about what I've done has done anything good for me. It's only caused me trouble. At least, it's bound to happen one day. One day I'll be confident, feeling good, and then the Watchers will come in their sleek black uniforms and silver and gold badges clipped on their official coats. They'll scoop me up and send me away if I'm lucky enough not to be killed on the spot. That's why I'm always aware of what I'm doing, every step I take, every breath I breathe, I'm listening, and making sure I don't cross the line of normal.

Even now, I'm being watched. Everyone is being watched. There is not one moment somebody isn't being monitored by officials from their fancy computers in facilities. I can imagine them in their black outfit, staring at me through the screen, their face eerily lit by only the dim light from the computer.

I erased the thought from my mind. But that only makes me think of it more. Maybe if I hadn't escaped, and had just gone through with the programming I could get to sleep on time. I sat in bed with my eyes shut tight, pretending to be asleep so the officials monitoring me don't get suspicious of my sleep habits. I usually fall asleep after an hour at the most, but it's been much longer. I've taken the nighttime pill, it always works. So why is it different this time? Was there something happening tomorrow I had forgotten about that has been stressing me out? No, impossible. Everything's the same every day. Nothing hardly changes. Even the weather has quite a steady pace. Weather... a boring topic. The most boring I can think of.

The weather here can't get much more normal. In the summer, there is little rain and mostly sunny skies with the occasional cloud or two. During fall, there is some rain and cool temperatures. Winter; snow every so often with very light rain and freezing weather. Spring is the rainy season, and also the flower season. My personal favorite. Favorite. Something about that word didn't sound right in my head.

Right, I'm not supposed to have favorites. Favorites aren't supposed to exist. Nobody has any opinion of anything, of each other, of colors, of seasons. I'm not normal. I'm not supposed to be thinking the way I'm thinking. I know things citizens shouldn't know, that nobody should know.

I know their secret.

I wake up and quickly check the time as I always do. I'm hardly tired even though I had a long night of pondering, longer than usual. I've woken up just a couple minutes before required for programmed, or as I like to say, normal people. It's almost seven, I wait patiently lying down under my covers until the clock turns to the correct time. It's a struggle waking up for me. Normal people are wired to wake up every morning at seven, they don't even have to think twice. They just wake up. I, on the other hand, had to train myself to wake up at this general time. I usually wake up minutes earlier than supposed to. I supposed the officials don't mind, they have never called me in. Maybe they think it was a slight malfunction when it came to programming me. Except they didn't. They never programmed me. I escaped that day. It was the scariest day of my life. All the machines and equipment the programmers had attached to me, they buzzed and beeped and gave me small shocks. I was only six, and they thought I was dumb. They wanted to program me to be smarter. I heard them speaking about it. I've obviously proved them wrong just by being alive. I've survived this long as an Unprog, why stop?