Origins

Chapter 1: Little Struggles

I was born into power. I never asked for it, not once, but it was handed to me by God Himself, and that was life; that was luck. I had wealth, fame, and of course, the right eye color. Eye color was key because it was everything if you wanted to be anyone at all. One drop of blood from a brown-eye relative anywhere along a family line was bound to show up, but my eyes were the clearest, cleanest blue. They could have been ice, or the sky. I preferred the former comparison. It reflected my heart a little more closely, and you know what they say about eyes and windows.

January 3rd, 2010. In the corner of the wing of a hospital, there lay a sleeping baby in his mother's arms. There was no star, no presents, no wise men — no, this was nothing like the first time. The first time was different, and considering the wholehearted effort to ignore the savior on the part of the entire world, Thamir figured he'd might as well give them a head start. So, Culver Morront was born only to an audience of nurses, a doctor, and his own parents. It was not recorded on any medium, much to his later relief.

Culver never really left that hospital. The house he went home to was just as sterile and sickly, the equipment being of a similar price. The chair he sat in: five thousand dollars. The table he wrote at, ten thousand dollars. The statue on the mantle, worth twenty five thousand at least, he was sure, now that the artist was dead. At his entire being was surrounded by things and so-called 'comforts' that his father was able to afford him. They wanted only the best for their son: materialistically, anyways.

So he sat at the ten thousand dollar table with a ten cent pencil and a two cent piece of paper. His mother demanded he be prepared for school with full knowledge of the alphabet and spelling and basic arithmetic, lest he bring shame on the family. Shame. He didn't quite understand that word. Shame. He knew how to spell it. But there was something in that four year-old mind of his that just couldn't grasp the concept quite yet. But he couldn't let that on to his parents. His father would beat him, and his mother would send him to his father for a beating. So, instead, he sat quietly and studied the dictionary and spelling.

Occasionally (as in every five minutes), his mind would wander off while his hand copied down letters automatically. He thought of the important work his mother said his father was doing. She said that through him, one day, America would be a great nation again, and that the power that has been stripped of them would return. She said that their lives would truly start when a new revolution swept the US — one they were sure to emerge victorious from. He asked her if everyone would be happy, then. He had heard of happiness before; he had read about it in the dictionary, but had scarcely seen it. She replied that his father certainly would be, and so by default, so would she and Culver. But Culver pressed, asking about their neighbors and the homeless people he saw that had it worse than they, certainly. His mother looked appalled and told him that the homeless people deserved to be there, because they had done wrong, and that almost all their eyes were brown, and told him that his father would hear about his questions. He did, and when Mr. Morront came home, he spanked Culver severely.

Culver didn't ask too many questions after that. He grew up quietly, and eventually resolved that if he couldn't have any power in his own home, at least he could have it at school. By the time he entered third grade, the first of the laws restricting those with certain eye colors were passed. The laws passed seemed harmless enough to begin with: one was required to register their official eye color, as well as skin color. Melanin had been proven by M Corp (America's largest and only corporation) to directly cause violence, and so only those with blue eyes and light skin were really considered safe. Green eyes were getting edgy (as it could spill over into hazel), brown eyes were considered a threat, and those with dark skin and dark eyes were considered extremely dangerous. Culver used this to his advantage, having been told by his father of his superiority. He pushed kids around on the playground — or rather, a gang of green eyed kids did it on his behalf. His father approved of his bullying, but not of actually touching the filth, and this issue was easily resolved with Buddy, Chester, and Saul.