Forward

Prologue

If you can read this, then our plan worked. 

There once was a time when the simple act of reading could be seen as the highest form of honor for some and the highest form of treachery for others. Where you were born into one side of a divided world, were grown into their ideals and pride. You later declared the whole system corrupt, but only because the other side refused to join your own, and when you bore children of your own, you raised them the same way you were raised. This cycle of hate and distinction, of prejudice and discrimination, lasted for generations. 

The Lefts saw the political system that they had built as they saw most everything they had a hand in making: Unflawed, perfect, and most importantly, logical. After all, it was the Lefts with their passion for studying that had found the ways that those Before had failed, improved upon them, and had been leading the thriving city for generations. The Lefts were the ones able to set laws and enforce them. Educated from textbooks and masters, the Lefts were intelligent enough to solve the world’s problems in a rational way. They were sensible enough to set parameters to keep corruption out of the government. Without their improvements in medicine and technology, there might still be poverty, hunger, and a fear of sickness in the world. From the data and samples they collected, it was clear to the Lefts that without them, the city would collapse in on itself. 

Unable to read, the Rights were crafty and inventive, the visionaries of the world, finding new and improved ways to exist and succeed without the need for formal education. A Right’s bookshelf was full of sketch journals, artwork, pottery, plants. Any skill that could be taught through word of mouth thrived in the Right sector of the city. After years of political ignorance and denial, the Rights suddenly felt that they deserved the throne. It was them, they swore, that had built the city from the ground. That had brought the music and arts from the past into the modern world. That were able to create in a day what would take a Left a lifetime. These rebellious thoughts spread like wildfire among the community, touching every home with a spark of hope: They would soon be the ones to rule.

There was a war brewing, and neither side, not the Rights with their gigantic imaginations nor the Lefts with their precious statistics was able to sense it coming. 

And yet, we did. There was a handful of us that disagreed with the ideals that had fueled our families for centuries. That knew unity always triumphed over a blatant separation. It took us a while to find each other, and we have no doubt that there were more riddled in the past. But once we did, once we realized that not everyone was blinded by pride and arrogance, that a difference could be made… we set out to make that difference. 

If you can read this, then our plan worked. 

If you can’t, then we’re already dead.