MIA

Had Enough?

In a younger age, when demeanour may have boasted a more timid persuasion, the environment that I lived in may have driven me to something close to insanity. The type of insanity fostered from constant observation. The knowledge that my life was not truly my own.

It was an age unlike any before. The State was the singular government of the world. Her laws were what we all lived by and her core principles were drilled into our minds: Individuality hinders liberation. Separation is the key to progression. Your eyes lie, believe what you've been told. They were the three governing laws. To me, they all seemed to mean the same thing: Do what you're told and your life may become something encroaching on desirable.

However, not everyone was compliant, those who remembered the times of old, times of rights, individuality and freedom. The rebels fought for an equal society whereby one's living standards were no longer dependent on their social classes. They unabashedly diverged from the woven expectations of society. They were not mindless killers or heretics, as the State's propaganda might connote, they were just like us. Holding such beliefs would be punishable by death under the law, 'Thought with the Intent to Harm'. Everyone was told what to think and punished when their minds did not adhere to the laws they had been moulded by. Yet despite the omnipresent threat, equality seemed a nice idea in premise, parity for all who breathed. The State asseverated that equality was never successful in the past and it was merely an illusory value that people clung to like a clutch. The world had to be divided and binary, they taught us - those who were, those who would be and those who could never be must not coexist due to the categories in which they fell. 

The wealth was centralised in The Metropolitan, there the streets were lined with gold. The men were rich and the women prettier still, toiling behind white picket fences and keeping their manicured garden. They had real fruit and vegetables there, clean water and electricity at any time of the day. Their children attended school and learned to recite. It was the figurehead of society, evidence of the work that the State had done. It was inaccessible for most, that part of society, it was just luck of the draw. 

Most people I knew lived in the Suburbs, not the Metropolitan but scarcely more than a stones throw away. It wasn't always luxurious but we never worried for food on the table or clothes that fit, it was a life of simplicity and complacency. The further one moved from the Metropolitan, the more the wealth depleted. The Agrarian Lands seemed to be where suffering congregated, desperation and poverty infused in the air they breathed. It  was the land of the poor, isolated and disenfranchised. Their pleads ignored and were deduced to be a direct outcome to their own ignorance. They had slow drawls and ochre skin,  stooped shoulders and raggedy beards. They knew nothing more than the barrels of grain and water and they would never dare to bite the hand that fed them.  Free movement was prohibited, checkpoints erected around the borders, little children shot on sight if they were seen scaling the fences. The immigration process was nothing but a formality. To marry up seemed the only source of elevation, but who would ever marry an Agrarian? It was the perfect cycle. They had their place, a critical cog in our system, perfectly regulated. 

Standardisation was the core principle of the State, their aim to create a world of perfection. It was from this belief Evolution was born, a government initiative unlike any before it. Only the best would be selected, used to create a future generation of maximum efficiency, to procure a human race devoid of imperfection, crafted and moderated for maximum efficiency. Breeding like rats for the benefit of all. 

From the day I could walk, I was sworn in before my whole parish, my hand laid atop the Constitution. I was given a number and just like everyone else I was accounted for. My identity was compressed into numerical digits that could be cross referenced, located and assessed with the click of a button somewhere in the Metropolitan.