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SF Trope: Dystopia
Is Hard
Current Event: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/28/us-korea-north-pyongyang-idUSBRE96R0BB20130728
Adéla Stoica hung
her head. She’d practiced abject submission just like all the other teenagers
in the Orientation Class did. Beside her, Enio Cassar did the same thing.
What the Master
before them didn’t see was Adéla open her eyes and shoot a sideways glance.
This time she beat
Enio to the punch and could barely hold in the giggle that bubbled up inside of
her when he opened his eyes an instant later. They were supposed to be
contemplating the worthlessness of their own lives in submission to the Great
Cause. She sighed – an acceptable sound – because the Masters of the Great
Cause thought they’d beaten everyone down.
Standing before
the class, Master Farkas scowled at her. He said to the class in Esperanto, the
Language of Submission, “Estas bone ke vi
kontempli vian propran senvaloreco ĉiutage, kaj konsideru la grandecon de la
Lando anstataŭe.”
This time Enio
sighed. It was the motto of the regime, “It is good that you contemplate your
own worthlessness every day, and consider the greatness of the Country
instead.” The education of the youth after fourteen years of the Society of the
Great Cause was predictable. Master Farkas continued, “It should make you feel
the weight of that responsibility so deeply that your spirit groans with the
burden of it. It is only through sacrifice to society that the individual might
live best. It is only through society that all wisdom, all knowledge and all
discovery might be directed by the National Science Foundation. Through that
wisdom, humanity might live again in the luxury to which it had become
accustomed.”
Enio muttered, “Ai mund të marrë zbetë e tij idiot horseshit gojën dhe të
fus atë deri gomar e tij, ku ai erdhi nga." Like everyone
else at the camp, their mother language was the one they cursed and made love
in; Esperanto was the language they learned to mock in; English was the
language everyone could communicate across ethnic walls in. Of course, there
were to BE no ethnic walls because the Great Cause united all of North America into
one Cause – the betterment of humanity.
It was too bad Master Farkas was also a linguist from the Old Order. His
gaze arrested Enio and he said in the same language, “Merrni ass tuaj i dobët këtu lart tani, ju mut pak.” Enio’s eyes
bulged as Master Farkas added, “Your girlfriend can come up here, too.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Enio blurted.
Adéla elbowed him
and they stood their ground. The line behind theirs shoved them forward and the
lines in front of them opened up. She looked at them and said, “Cowards.” But
none of them looked the slightest bit afraid. They looked bored. Like they
wanted something interesting to happen; kill the mold growing on their lives of
dull sameness. Like jackals. When Master Farkas looked up at them though, their
faces transformed to slack idiocy then morphed into hanging heads.
He gestured to
them and led them out of the classroom, his white lab coat flapping behind him.
Two other technicians wearing the shorter, lower-ranked blue lab coats went
into the classroom to take his place. Leading them down a half dozen short
flights of stairs, he stopped at a metal door and used his passkey to unlock
it. Pushing it open, Adéla and Enio could see that a huge screen covered one
wall and that a face filled the screen, looking at them. Master Farkas grabbed
Enio’s arm and shoved him into the room. Enio sighed and walked in. “I can’t
believe you’re doing this…” The door slammed ponderously.
He touched Adéla’s
shoulder and said, “You’re next.”
She knew exactly
what was coming and shook her head, remembering the really fascinating books
she’d read as a precocious two year old. First she grabbed her older brother’s
copy of THE HUNGER GAMES and read it, then the other six sequels. She fell in
love with Scott Westerfeld’s UGLIES books. Devoured Haddix’s THE HIDDEN. Every dystopian book she could
find from HG Well’s TIME MACHINE to the seven LAST SURVIVORS books; she read
and cherished in her heart.
Then the Great
Cause overtook the countries of North America – and her life had been tedious
boredom ever since...
Names: ♀ Czech, Romania ; ♂Albania, Malta
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