Michael Soll - Scorched

What I know is only what I’m told and what I’m told is only what they know. Trusting that my knowledge is the knowledge because others said it so, is trusting that they know what is right and what is wrong. It’s trusting that they know what is good and what is bad. But which knowledge is accurate? Newbury’s ancestors? My ancestors? Or neither?

I woke up in the middle of the night and expected to hear Joey’s troubled nocturnal breathing. It took me a few moments before I realized he was gone and would be gone forever.

I was thirsty so I went downstairs to get some water when I found the Mayor sitting with a glass in his hands, staring through the wall in front of him.

“If you can’t feel the world around you, it doesn’t exist. Did you know that, Spec?” I shook my head and stood silently. “We have five senses, you know? Sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch. Take away one’s eyes, one can no longer see the world. Take away one’s nose, no more smelling. No tongue, no taste. No ears, no hearing. No heart, no feeling, no touch. We only comprehend our world through our senses. So if you close your eyes, curl up into a ball and shut out the world, it doesn’t exist. You don’t exist. Because, you’re a part of this world now, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

He took a sip of his drink. “You’re insignificant, Spec. Did you know that? I don’t say that to be cruel. I’m insignificant too. We’re all… insignificant. I’m going to teach you something I should’ve taught Joseph. The world is not black and white. It’s shades of gray and purple and blue and red. But if you treat it as such, buildings crumble. People want there to be only two colors. They want only black and white. They don’t want to decide what type of gray they are looking at because if they had to decide, they might choose differently than their neighbors and their friends and family. You know what happens then? That person is different. That person is an outcast. Two choices. Black and white. Make things clear. People don’t get hurt. They need right and wrong. You can’t have a decent society without right and wrong. And when people start to question if black is black or white is white… civilizations topple.”

Another sip.

“Before the end of the surface, people said, ‘We don’t have to prepare for an apocalyptic disaster. It’s fiction.’ They didn’t believe in a truth. They didn’t believe black was black and white was white. And those people burned.”

Another sip.

“There are two types of truth, Spec. The reality in our mind and society’s reality. Take you and me for example. I believe in what I believe. Since I believe it, it’s true. You believe what you believe and hence, it’s true. Then there’s the reality society says is true. That’s the loudest voice. That’s the voice that once said the world was flat and so it was flat. That was fact. Sure, some said it was round, but that was their truth. Would their truth matter if society did not agree? If everybody who declared the world was round was suddenly purged from a society, would that truth still exist?”

“Yes,” I said defiantly.

He laughed and took a big gulp of his truth. “Yes!? And how is that?”

“Because there are an infinite amount of truths. But there can be only one truth within me,” I replied.

“And what truth is that?”

“What I see is true because I see it. What you see is true because you see it. Those aren’t two separate truths. What is real can only exist inside of me. You can say something that might change what I believe to be real and change my truth, but in terms of what is real and what isn’t, all that matters is what I think. Newbury views me as inferior. They see my friends as subhuman. But I don’t see that. What they believe isn’t true. What I believe is fact even if everything points to my being wrong, in my mind, that’s all that matters.”

The Mayor gulped down the rest of his drink. “You should get some sleep.”

I nodded and walked back upstairs. I didn’t know if what I said was a mistake. I had never spoken that way to anyone in my life, but I had never been spoken to like that either. I had never had somebody challenge me in such a way that prompted me to discuss what I believed, to divulge my thoughts. Those had always been private to me. They had always been my own but now, they were the Mayor’s and he could do with them what he pleased. Every time he looked at me now, he would know what I was thinking, what I believed. Did I just give up my last bit of privacy?

I got back in bed and looked at the ceiling. At that very moment, I knew the one truth I believed, the one truth that would set me free.

I would reach the surface.

The change was inevitable.

School was suspended and we were all forced to attend self-defense classes, even Kaolin, who had only appeared in public once since the auction. I had woken up early and decided to explore the city on my own for the first time before the class.

I weaved through the residential sector and found a path on the outskirts that led upward. I went as high as I could and found a spot where I could see the entire city below.

I felt higher than I had ever been and I had this unusual sensation, this fear that I might fall. I imagined the pain from the impact. I guess the higher you go, the harder you fall.

I stood against the dirt wall and saw everything. The city was magnificent. More buildings than I could possibly count. Most of them were rectangular with windows made of glass (a protective substance that you could see through). At the East Sector, the buildings winded up an uneven path. Most of the structures were scrunched together with tiny alleys in between. In the South Sector, the buildings were bigger and more spread apart. The West Sector consisted of the industrial businesses, including the farms and pens.

And then there was the North Sector. It differed the most from the other districts. It was cold and abandoned, a vestige from the past, a path from the old to the new. At the northern most tip of the city, a path led up to a mechanical structure called an elevator. Before the flare hit, several individuals predicted the disaster and created the town. They brought the smartest and most capable people down to the city and created Newbury. But once the flare hit and the surface was scorched, the founders of the city blocked off the path.

They hadn’t done the best job at obstructing the path and it wouldn’t be the first time somebody from the olden days tried to block the past. If Cotta and I could breech the Old Hive, we could make way to the elevator, but would the contraption even work? If it did, could we figure out how to work it? If it’s only purpose is to go up and down, would it be that difficult to decipher?

The bootcamp was starting so I hurried down the winding path and made my way to the class. I quickly spotted Cotta standing by the front, waiting for me.

“Hey, Spec. How’re you doing?”

“I’m fine. You?”

“Yeah, I’m alright. I’m eager to learn self-defense, but I don’t know what it is.”

And then, all eyes turned as a pair of shiny legs appeared. They belonged to the most beautiful girl in the city. Kaolin.

She looked over at us, then spoke in our native tongue. “I hate this place.”

“It’s not that bad,” Cotta said playing with his zipper. “They’ve got jackets and they easily open and close. So if I’m feeling slightly warm, I can zip it down but if I’m feeling a little bit cold, I can zip it up.”

Kaolin stared at him dumfounded. “It sounds to me like you just like playing with the zipper.”

“They’re fun! What if you could put a giant zipper on a house and zip or unzip it to make a completely different house?”