The System

Chapter 8

Until the early evening, Sharon did her best job to fill me in on what was really going on in Eriton. It turns out that nobody really understood that they were brainwashed and, I guessed, that was why the system worked so well.

From what Sharon told me, the law was injected into people from the very start of their lives. The Authority's way of justifying this was why shouldn't it be? After all, it is a small price to pay for the way that those in Eriton lived: everybody was seen to be equal; there was no such thing as poverty or famine; and you were allowed to live life as you pleased.

But that wasn't technically true. Sharon took pride in pointing out that after only three years in Eriton, she began to notice all of the conditionals at the ends of sentences. Everybody was seen to be equal, besides those in charge. There was no such thing as poverty or famine, but only inside our community. And you were allowed to live life as you pleased, as long as you did not infringe on any of the laws.

To be fair, the laws were pretty simple, nothing that you would really want to do anyway. Yet even the best of the citizens of Eriton couldn't obey them. Sharon told me that Harry claimed that even those on highest still rebelled.

I was sceptical of this. "What kind of reason do they have for rebelling? Their lives are perfect"

"Not always," Sharon argued. "Take Alan Carter, for example. Even I know him as a rebel - which, by the way, makes him a bad rebel. He'll get caught. I guarantee it."

I nodded, but secretly disagreed. There was no way someone like Alan would go against everything he had in order to rebel. His position was just as highly ranked as Olivers, and when you looked at the street they lived on, you were looking at true luxury.

But it was the higher laws, Sharon explained, which the rebels seemed to have a problem with. Why was no one allowed to practice religious beliefs or ceremonies; assuming that they knew what they were? And why wasn't anyone allowed outside of the walls, even if they were armed? Harry had told the rebels that he had been out there for weeks once and he never encountered the wild beasts that the Authorities claimed would massacre us. However, he never explained the circumstances which led him to be outside the wall, and a few didn't really believe him. I counted herself among that few.

"The main aim of the rebellion is to defeat the system. But in order to do that, we're going to need a lot more power. And seeing as we can't trust the majority of people in Eriton, we're looking further afield," Sharon had told her. "But you don't need to worry about that for a while. Just now, you go home and act like the obedient wife that you're supposed to. Become a model citizen; that'll be when you're of most use to us."

So when I arrived home that night, I started to cook up a storm. By the time that the information I was trying to process began to die down, I didn't have much left in me to be worried about Ben's message. I shrugged off Ben's threat and figured that the time would come when it either happened or it didn't. Either way I wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

"Benjamin?" I called nicely, when I head the front door close. I was just finishing dinner, drying my hands on a dishtowel. It must have been raining as he was shaking out an umbrella. Inside. It was a small thing in comparison to all I had found out that day, but it irked me.

"Yes, darling?" He replied, hanging up his coat and replacing his black work shoes with a pair of suede loafers. Clearly Ben was happy just to act as though nothing had ever happened. Or perhaps he was simply in a very good mood.

I had many questions to ask him. Thousands swirled in my head: What did your note mean? Are you still angry about last night? Why don't you shake your umbrella outside and then bring it in? But I lost her nerve. I knew where my sentence would start but I was worried about where it would end. So I picked up with a different question. "How was work?" I asked with a sweet grin.