Chapter 1: The Wormhole
Welcome to America – I mean Nowhereville – where nothing interesting ever happens and everything is forever the same. I am Identical3420876 a mere copy of millions before me. I look at my gray bed, my gray notepad, my gray shirt, gray shorts, gray shoes, and gray socks, as I go out to wait for the colorless taxi to nowhere middle school. I have a placid smile on my face as anything different would result in expulsion and potentially death. I haven’t seen excitement before, or ever spoken about it, as it is banned. No one complains. No one cares. I don’t care. I have never cared.
Military goomba policemen patrol the streets, with sad smiles plastered on their faces, on no one’s face is sad. The spiritless gray fog shrouds the area, making everything seem smaller than it is. Everyone has ventured out of this town, scared of what lies beyond. A lively dull voice crawls into our ears like a worm, just like the same words crawled in when we were 1. All days feel the same and longer than they should so it could’ve been yesterday and I would be none the wiser, or smarter, since there is no such thing as intelligence. After you finish elementary, you should be programmed to learn everything up to an IQ of exactly 134.675. I should not even know this, as spying is forbidden, but I felt extremely daring 8 days, or months, or years ago, so I walked near the teacher’s door and overheard the programming process. It’s nice to know that while things won’t be any better, things won’t get any worse. (Except they do haha 4th wall breaker here, spoilers, things get worse).
After having an eerie feeling that things would actually get worse, even though feeling is another banned thing, I walk into Mr. Monotone’s set purgatory. Hello Identicals 3420850 hyphen 3420880 welcome to your purgatory for 7th grade. I will be your programmer for this year. Can no one please take absence? As I hear the students saying “absent” in turn, I think about what he said. Thinking, huh, I haven’t the faintest Idea what that is. Why do we say absent. We are here, in nowhere. Where are we, what is nothing, and what are things – things? A thing is not an object, I object to the objection of the existence of objects. Because then what is my desk? What is Nowhereville beneath me?
“Identical 3420876 you are acting out of program please get back into program or you will be sent away.”
“Okay.”
“Class, please turn to page 1984 and continue your study.”
Everything I knew turns upside down at this moment, and I know that Mr. Monotone knows that I know this. The text book is definitely worn, but somehow not dusty or dirty at all. I flip to page 1984, and on the gray page, I see a map of Nowhereville, and a hypnotically pulsing dot catches and holds my eye. A wormhole. If I could find this, I could finally know the truth about what is real, or what isn’t. I look around the classroom and I can tell that everyone other than me sees it too. They keep on learning, empty-headed, and calmly do not notice it.
The school siren blares so I know it is the end of purgatory. I decide to take my book out of my mostly full locker, making it full now. I know that I may or may not need it, and I know that it is time. Time to jump into the wormhole. I bolt, causing order in the sea of normal student chaos. I need to find this wormhole. Fast. I know that Mr. Monotone knows that I don’t know that he doesn’t know that I could have known about the wormhole. It is great to be on the run, horrible, in fact. I need to get there ASANP (as sluggishly as not possible).
I look in front of me, he isn’t there. I am going in the wrong direction, I am sure of it. The right wrong, Slowfast, excuse meyou please help me. I am almost there, I see the center of the town, I’m too young to live. Dying is not a bad option. I see a purple circle in the distance and know Mr. Monotone is right in front of me. One less minute to be there. I am not supposed to be here, I am not sure of it.
No matter what, I don’t have to jump, so I do.
Chapter 2: Selection
It is like sleeping down in an entirely new place. It is still gray, but not with the sluggish monotony of being entirely revealed in a coat of dark gray acrylic paint. It is a landscape bathed in darkness, where sparkle, texture, and gradations of gray can be perceived from the opalescence of pearl tickling the clouds to the heights of obsidian giving contour to the sky beneath my feet. Moreover, there is something that I had always seen before. I see something same than gray. It is strange, really. Not a horror either. It is so different to everything, but it feels like being led through the gates after languishing in purgatory. Diversely-gray flecks like watercolors shimmer on these completely leaf-unlike things, with little seed pods in the middle. Their sated stems reach down like small, slightly-curved lines, like straight, wide poles rooting them to the ground. Their shades of gray are old to me. There is a refreshing tint mending through, like a color I sometimes have imagined is trapped under the surface of the dark gray grass in the schoolyard. As strange and exotic as they are, these stems are a breath of fresh air.
Upon further observation I realize these stems populate one end of a vast field in which I am standing, still somber, but not with a sense of overwhelming doom and happiness as Nowhereville was. It is peaceful, almost. Abnormal, but somehow familiar, as if reuniting with an old friend. The field is split in the middle by a crystal gray river, which the luminescent sunlight reflects off of – wait. Sunlight? I had heard the guards of purgatory speak of it when I overheard their talk about IQ and other matters, but its existence was never more than theoretical. Now I breathe it in, hear the chirping white tint of its sun-gray and perceive its essential luminescence. And I know and feel that it is nice. It makes the sky shine light onto the field below. After a short while it feels like my skin is freezing because of how blazingly hot it is compared to the temperature in Nowhereville. It has changed, from my reckoning, by 5 degrees, which is weird, as I have been taught that the sun, if it could be seen, would only cast an abnormal and rather bright light onto the land below. It is strange to finally feel the effect of temperature.
I stand up slowly, and the oddest part is, I feel something. Not like the rigid and hard surfaces you find in Nowhereville, no, it is buoyant, pillowy…soft. I look down and see a flaky, thin thing, almost like a hair except thicker and shorter. I realize something at that moment. The authorities have fed us as identicals, so I have no idea how to survive or get food for myself. I am jarred from my reverie by an odd noise, a high pitched sound, a squeal, perhaps? Squealing is forbidden in Nowhereville, as not only does it show emotion, but it disrupts the calm, eerie environment. I turn around and see a creature other than a human, a creature with four bisegmented and lightly-furred legs, a skinny, swirl-like tail, and a white-black-ish head with two gray triangular ears. I believe it is a… pog? I consult my textbook index. Yeah, a pog. It makes a sound similar to an “oing” and then runs off before I can try and extract its meat. Truth be told, I don’t know how to extract meat. I just know that you could, and that it could replenish your hunger and help you survive. I have to resort to picking these strange, edible spherical objects off of the trees that look almost like pupils, except in a lighter gray. These are edible, and shockingly, taste not like slop, like a sweet leaf. Better than the food I got in Nowhereville that’s for sure. I can’t tell if the taste is better or worse because I have eaten the same food for my entire life. A weird concoction of energy, at 9, 1, and 5 to replenish our energy each day. This land is exotic, but it feels better, because it feels different, more…free.
I take every step carefully as I walk through the lush clearing, and make sure not to be spotted by anything, just in case. The river seems to be calling me toward it, an inexorable force like nothing I’ve felt. There have been broadcasts from the guards of purgatory that turn your attention immediately to the direction you were assigned, but nothing so compelling. I walk as if I were a zombie, drawn to a giant brain, toward the river. The animals who are seemingly native to the region appear to be making a path, as if they know exactly what is happening. The river shines, a tantalizing, yet ever somber gray. I come to a split in the river.
One side winds all the way back to where I began, back to safety.
The other, however, winds along a separate path, an unknown one.
I have a decision to make.