You-Draft 3-now titled Irrevocable
Guh, I can't believe this. This was my latest rewrite of that story. It's more linear and solid, but too short and not nearly as entertaining. Soo, how do I combine the good qualities of both? huh?
From space the continental city of Areopagus could be seen clearly, a gray-brown swath over what had once been North America. At the hub of the great city there was an oblong wall encircling a patch of green more than a hundred miles wide. The wall itself stretched up thirty miles, into the stratosphere, and was estimated at around two miles, or three point two kilometers, in width.
No one in Areopagus knew why the Wall was there or what exactly was behind it. Only two working satellites now circled the globe, and both of them belonged to the Russians. The wall had gone up seventy years ago, erected completely in just over a week. How it happened no one knew. There were rumors that the People of the Wall had illegal technology, or that they were aliens.
As for Areopagus, it was a mass of paved streets and high-rises. Its heart spread out from near the northernmost part of the Wall like wild web. Sky scrapers littered the heart of the city, trying ineffectively to block out the site of the Wall. Huge towers took carbon monoxide and hydrogen from the atmosphere, turned it into breathable air, and spat it out onto the streets and into the buildings. There were theaters and shops of all kinds sporting anything and everything synthetic. Synthetic, after all, was popular. A huge polygonal temple stretched for miles, as big as any mall. There you could enter one of it’s eighty different doors and worship any deity in any manner of your choice, so long as you didn’t stop anyone else from doing the same. And, beside that stood City Hall, the tallest of the high-rises and home to Thaddeus, the Mayor.
Thaddeus and his wife Mina dictated everything in Areopagus. The latest fashions and all the laws bent to their whims. There were three laws that didn’t change, though, and those were inscribed on the glorious glass doors of City Hall.
“1. No citizen will go within a mile of the Wall. This will be considered a willful
act of treason and will be treated accordingly.
2. No citizen will pursue information regarding the Wall. This will be considered a volatile disruption of the peace and will be treated accordingly.
3. No citizen will aid anyone attempting to break the first two laws. This will be considered aiding and abetting criminal activity and will be treated accordingly.”
Treated accordingly could be translated ‘and you will die’ but that didn’t sound very friendly, so they didn’t say it quite like that.
Up in his office Thaddeus didn’t concern himself with fashion and popularity. That was Mina’s area of expertise. No, he glared out his window at the Wall. How dare they. How dare they mock him like that. He could see in his mind’s eye the lush vegetation and the trees stretching miles into the air and the animals roaming around. He didn’t need it, he didn’t need them, no one did. He turned away from his window and back to his desk. Maybe he’d be lucky and one day that wall would fall in on those traitorous bastards.
In an old sewer tunnel a mile below the city a little boy name Liam walked in the dark. He’d had the path memorized for months now, and he munched on a piece of fruit his father had given him while he fingered the delicate box in his pocket. The occasional light, kept alive by generators long forgotten, poured soft orange light onto his brown hair. His eyes too were a rich brown and in Areopagus he didn’t stand out at all, just another one of the many, and that was the way it had to be.
As soon as he passed under the last bit of the Wall he felt his stomach lurch in protest. It was though his entire being rebelled against this place he had entered where not even the air was real.
“Synthetic.” He spat the word, and then he sighed.
Not everything here was fake. The people weren’t fake. Tommie wasn’t fake. He liked Tommie. Liam smiled as he wrapped his hand around the box in his pocket again and took off running toward Tommie’s house.
Up above Tommie sat in the back seat of her mother’s hybrid Toyota next to Tristan, who would not look at her. In the driver’s seat sat Alice and beside her was Rose. They were taking Tommie home. Of course she’d fallen and broken her leg when she climbed to the top of their apartment to get a better look at the Wall. Rose had told her not to. It was an offense that at its best was punishable by having your eyes gouged, but she’d gone up and looked anyway. It was magnificent, stretching as far as she could see strait up. Then she’d fallen, and it was lucky that she landed on the fire escape or she would have died as a stain on the street. They hadn’t gouged out her eyes, but a threat still hung in the air, the authorities knew what she’d been thinking.
Music throbbed through the car and buzzed down her back and legs. Tommie hunched down, her hands covering her ears. It amazed her that Alice still managed to talk over the music. It was Alice’s way of not paying attention to the difficult things, like the fact that she didn’t know her daughter anymore. It had been months since her daughter had been the girl she had once known. Outside the windows the city passed by and along the base of every building were vast murals of forests and flowers and every so often there was a playground covered in turf.
“Do you like the trees?” Alice called over the music. “They put them in while you were asleep.”
Tommie shook her head, angry, tired. She’d never seen a living plant in her life. None of them had. She didn’t even know what bark felt like.
She watched Oxygen buildings pumping fresh air into the streets, making little tornados of paper and trash at their bases.
Tommie missed Liam. She hadn’t seen him once while she was in the hospital. Though he was just a kid, he always made her feel that it was ok to not be ok. She remembered the first time she met him.
She’d been sitting in the park working on homework and watching the kiddies run around. It was always refreshing to watch kids. Liam had climbed to the top of a slide, a row of children on the ladder behind him, all waiting their turn. When he’d gotten to the top he spread his arms wide and fell back into all those kids, knocking them to the ground. There had been weeping and gnashing of teeth but Liam had just stood and stared at the other kids, unmoved by their plight. When Tommie walked over to him and said it was mean to knock other kids to the dirt his reply had been simple, and shocking. She’d thought he was crazy at first.
He kicked at the mushy turf that covered the park floor and looked up at her. “Don’t worry,” he’d said, “they’re not hurt. It wasn’t real dirt anyway.”
They passed businesses: a plethora of beauty salons and tanning parlors. Through one window she saw a tearful little red head having his hair dyed. After all, red hair was not fashionable. Tommie took a moment to focus on her reflection in the glass. For all intents and purposes she looked like a pixie. Pale skin and a delicate pointy chin. Her eyes were blue, just like Alice’s, but her short hair was a shocking natural red with only the pale tips hinting at its former shade. She liked the way she looked. She looked very different, and that, of course, seemed to be what was getting her in trouble. Being that different was unfashionable.
It wasn’t that she wanted to be different. She liked going shopping and listening to music and gossiping with her friends. It was just that she was changing. Things didn’t excite her like they used to. She asked questions and got no answers. She wasn’t like her mother; she needed answers. Tommie couldn’t just push down her questions by blasting her music while she drove. They passed dozens of banks and music shops, clubs with bright lights, and clothing stores, anything a person could want, every imaginable distraction. All she wanted was to understand and they made her nuts trying to keep it from her. It was why she’d cut her hair. She wanted them to see how nuts she felt. Tommie remembered with a grin the way Rose had screeched when she’d seen.
“My god, Tommie, what did you do?”
It had been all Tommie could do not to fall on the bathroom floor laughing. Now everyone was mad at her. She looked back out the window.
Finally the Toyota parked in front of the condominium where her parents lived. Tommie got out of the car but her leg still ached from several weeks lack of use and she didn’t move very quickly. Her mother and Rose walked with her to the elevator.
Tommie looked over at the woman who had once been her best friend. Rose had more than a little Japanese in her but still she dyed her hair blond and it fell in long silky sheets over her shoulders. Rose was one of the police.
Rose sighed and looked away. She missed the days when they went to the park or the temple together, but Tommie had changed, and unlike Tommie’s mother, that was something Rose did understand very well. Now Tommie asked questions that didn’t matter. What is our purpose? What’s over the Wall? How’d they make it so high? Why do you think that shirt is popular right now? Stupid questions.
At one time they’d been inseparable, but soon Tommie was going to pit herself against her, teary them apart completely, she could see it. Tommie would abandon everything just to find answers to her questions and then it would be up to Rose to bring her in. She caught at Tommie’s arm as she tried to enter the elevator and waved to Alice.
“We’ll be up in a minute.”
When the doors had closed she looked at Tommie.
“Yes?” Tommie asked.
“Stop. Please stop. You have to stop.”
Tommie seemed bewildered. “Stop what?”
“Stop asking questions. Just-just be. Can you do that?.” Why couldn’t she get her to understand? If she went to the Wall everything she had would have to be given up.
Tommie frowned. “Don’t tell me what to do. Besides, it’s not like I tried to get to it or anything.”
“No, but you were thinking it.”
At that Tommie wrenched her arm free of Rose’s grip. “How do you people know that? And what does it matter?” Tears fell. “You don’t understand.”
Rose sighed and shoved a hand through her long hair. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Upstairs in the apartment Rose went and sat down in front of the television. Tommie felt like her head was spinning. Did no one understand? Did they all think something was wrong with her?
She wandered into the kitchen where her mother was heating dinner in the microwave.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, walking over to give Alice a quick hug. Alice gave her a peck on the cheek.
“Are you feeling better, baby?”
Tommie nodded. “Yeah, just a little sore.”
“Good, now life can get back to normal.”
Tommie froze. Normal? “What if I don’t want normal?”
Alice looked up as she pulled the steaming food out. She tried to act casual but Tommie could see some unhappy emotion in her eyes. Did she want to know what that was? “Don’t be stupid. Your life is wonderful. There’s no reason to change that. And, anyway, you wouldn’t leave everyone you love behind?”
Tommie didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t thought of that. Stunned she walked back to her room. It was bright and old school CDs sat stacked against one of her walls. She had really enjoyed music before. She flopped back on her bed. The quilt was soft, though its color was a little blinding. She and her mother had picked it out on a shopping trip a while back, but the materiel felt odd now, crunchy and wrong.. What was she going to do? Tommie curled up on her bed and cried.
Tommie woke to the sound of Alice knocking on her bedroom door.
“Yes,” Tommie said groggily. “Come in.”
Alice opened the door and beside her stood Liam.
“Rose left and this guy came.” Alice said.
With a grin Tommie got up and walked over to him, wrapping him in a big bear hug. The boy made and oomph sound as all the air was squeezed out of him and Tommie laughed. It was hard to believe she hadn’t seen him for a month. How had she laughed when he was gone? Alice smiled the smallest of smiles and walked away.
In the room Tommie sat on the floor and Liam did the same. She ruffled his hair and smiled.
“So, weirdo, long time, no see.”
Liam shrugged. “I was away. Did you look at the Wall?”
Tommie removed her hand from Liam’s hair, where she was petting it, and frowned. “Yeah, and I got a broken leg for it.”
“What did you think?” Liam asked.
A smile tugged at one corner of Tommie’s mouth and she got a distant look in her eyes. “It’s amazing. I wish-I wish I could touch it, see what’s inside of it. I wish I could go there.” Then she frowned, and her bottom lip trembled just slightly. “But I can’t. I can’t just leave my family, and everything I know. It doesn’t matter how different everything’s become. I can’t just leave them for a question.”
Liam grinned bright enough to light ten rooms. “I have a gift for you.”
Tommie glanced back at him with a raised eyebrow. “Really?”
Liam nodded and took out a small white jewelry box from his pocket.
“You got me a necklace?”
Liam sighed and rolled his eyes. “Open it.”
Tommie opened the box carefully and looked in side. She stared for a long time and then looked back up at Liam.
“What is it?”
“It’s a tree, well, a tree sprout. It’s from an Acorn tree.”
Tommie’s eyes went wide. It wasn’t possible. “Where did you get it?”
Liam’s smile turned to a smirk. “From the other side of the Wall.”
Tommie gaped. It couldn’t be possible, could it? Trees, plants. She looked at Liam. So young, yet he held so much influence over her.
“Are there other people like me there? Are there other people like you?”
Liam nodded, his eyes regarding her carefully, as though he wasn’t sure how she was going to respond.
Slowly Tommie nodded. If there were more people like Liam her decision was made. “Right,” she said, “So how do I get to the Wall?”