Separate

Chapter 1 - The Firsts

I was born 165 years after the doors were sealed to the outside world. Four generations of people had lived in the station up until my birth, and I marked the fifth.

When I was younger I believed that the entire station was under my control. In a way, it was. My father was the highest council member in the station known as the President. He owned everything and all the people inside of it. He controlled all the systems, schedules, and districts so they would run perfectly and exactly to what his specifications were. Allegedly, his great great grandfather was something they called the "POTUS" when they first entered the bunker, so the title stuck with his family as it was passed down from generation to generation. He was smart and cunning, but also a stern man who knew how to get things done.

My mother was quite the opposite of him. She was so friendly to others, talking in a soft and gentle voice. It didn't matter who they were, she would stop them in the halls and ask them how their day was and their plans for the weekend. She was always looking out for me, keeping me safe, and showing me how to make friends with everyone I met.

Just before my sixth birthday she had suddenly vanished without leaving a note or any reason for her disappearance. Before she disappeared she had been speaking to the high council for the entire day. They didn't seem pleased with her based on the tone of their voices. She barely spoke to my father the night she went missing. After she had gone, he told me not to worry about her or where she went. He told me that she was safe, but I thought about her almost every day.

After she left, it was just me and my father for nearly two years until I went off to school. I never had a sibling like my friends did. The doctors had told my mother that she couldn't have any more children after me. They said she was "infertile" because of her old age. Law requirements made all couples wait until they were fifty years old to have children so they could focus most of their lives on working, but later on in my life I learned this was also for population control.

At eight years old, all citizens of Cedar Station were required to attend schooling five times a week. The day was split into six sessions with the second and the sixth designated as open periods for us to do whatever we wanted, so they said. Most of the kids went down to the local auditorium and played games or talked in small circles on the floor, which were appropriately called "Sitting Circles".

I wanted to join the kids who played games in the middle, but my father kept telling me that I'd hurt myself if I did. I didn't understand what he meant by hurting myself. I saw other kids fall all the time and they would get right back up and keep playing. What he told me didn't make sense, but I didn't want to disobey him. Instead I would keep to my Sitting Circle with my best friends: Grace, Julia, and McKenzie. We typically talked about the dances held every third Friday of the cycle where we would meet our future bonds. Grace and McKenzie didn't speak up much during conversations; mostly because Julia would always interrupt them. Julia would go on and on about a boy named Thompson who she thought was the cutest. She would talk about his hair, his eyes, his muscles, his everything. I thought it was a bunch of baloney. I wanted to stop her in her tracks and tell her that the bonding selections were picked by the council, not her, so it didn't matter anyway, but I also didn't want to hurt her feelings and lose her as a friend, so I stayed quiet when it came up.

During lunch, the staff would set up long tables in the auditorium for the kids to sit at and eat. We would line up at a small hatch that opened at 12:00 pm every day and a nice lady named Miss Susana would greet every kid who walked up to the window. She brightened up the most when she saw me, continuously asking how my father was doing. I would say that he'd been very busy, and she would reply with the same comment, everyday:

"Tell him I said hi! I hope he's still doing well," she exclaimed. The interaction got annoying after a while, but I became used to it. A few years later I learned that she had gotten into a conflict with the high council about taking home food scraps to her family. She looked to my father for support, since they had gone to school together as kids, but my father refused to pardon her. She was removed from the staff a few weeks later and I haven't seen her since.

After getting my food, I would sit next to my friends and we would continue our conversations. I usually tuned them out once Julia started blabbering on about Thompson again. Instead, I would turn my attention to what the other kids were assigned to eat that day, because it wasn't always the same.

On one particular day I had grilled corn, steak, and mashed potatoes. A few boys a couple rows down from us had a piece of bread and what looked like tomato soup. Another group had a chunk of grilled corn, but instead of mashed potatoes and steak they only had two chicken tenders. One time I saw a group of kids, three boys and two girls, who had only a piece of bread on their trays. I felt bad for those kids and I wanted to give them my food because sometimes I wasn't that hungry, but I knew it would be against the rules.

There were lots of rules in school, some of them I never understood. Besides the no sharing food policy, I had to pay close attention to the symbols imprinted on the back of everyone's right hand. There was this system my great grandfather put in place in the station that organized different groups of people among the various districts. The number of dots the person had on their hand determined what group they were in. For example, I had one dot on my hand, putting me in the group called the "Firsts". Father told me that the Firsts were the most important people like him who made all the decisions and guided everyone in the station. It was made up of members from the high council and their families who helped support them. We all lived in the Prime District.

The Seconds were our law enforcement and district representatives. They made up the lower council, but no one ever mentioned them since most of the decisions in the station were passed by the high council anyways. Their job was to bring information from the other districts and the high council could choose to act on it. They lived in Tritus District.

The Thirds were our teachers, firefighters, doctors, counselors, and scientists. Miss. Susana was part of this group. They helped us learn, spread knowledge, and continue the pursuit to further our survival. They all lived in Euphoria District.

The Fourths were our workers and engineers. They helped keep everything in order and made sure all the electrical systems were up to par. They worked in the factories deep inside Gridlock District and no one really ever saw them.

The Fifths were, well, father liked to call them "the extras". He told me they were the people who fill in gaps when a job was open. They lived in a place called Juniper District, which I was never allowed to go to. Lots of my friends say it's the biggest district in the entire station because of how many Fifths there are. According to the rules of the school and my father's own lectures, I wasn't allowed to go near these kids. I didn't understand what he meant, since the kids in my grade who had the five dots seemed nice. They were the ones playing lots of games in the auditorium during 2nd and 6th session. He told me that they were dangerous and that they would try to hurt me if I got too close or tried to be too friendly.

* * *

I didn't attend sixth session much when I was younger. My father would pull me out of school early and take me on little adventures throughout the station. He would bring me to places like the hydro farm and show me how the food and water was made, and to the laboratory where I could see the stars, even through the veil that covered the sky. The districts were huge, and I was amazed at how high the ceilings were in some places. Whenever we entered a room, all the workers in there would just step aside and my father wouldn't even look at them. I was confused, because he used to be so friendly with people when my mother was around. They would chat with the workers when they met them in the hallways, but now he just walks past them.

My father said I couldn't tell anyone about my adventures, because I would get in trouble. I had to resist every urge in my body when I was with my friends to not say a word about where I was during sixth session. I wanted so badly to change the subject from Julia's constant blabber about the boys she liked to something interesting, but I knew I couldn't. I couldn't let my father down because mother told me to look up to him.