Waking up is awkward. The position I slept in has left a kink in my neck. The pressure from the pillows against my ears has left them sore, and my eyes ache from being forced closed all night. Worst of all, disturbing dreams kept me from rest. I dreamt I was locked in a poison-filled classroom. Its doors blocked by my dead and dying classmates. I tried to climb past them to get out, but they clawed at me, dragging me down—their nails tore into my face around my mask’s seal.

I wish I could go back to that moment before Mother jumped from the couch and live there in that stillness. But it’s too late for that. Any moment now Mother will come through the door with a new filter and pretend like nothing happened last night.

I swipe the pillows and covers from my head with a single push. They fall to the floor with a thud. Light streaming through the blinds forces me to squint. Sitting up on the edge of the bed, I glance at the clock on the nightstand: Seven forty-five. Like clockwork, Mother creeps into the room holding a filter. She’s wearing her mask—her eyes are obscured behind its two reflective glass circles. Her breathing is rasping and rhythmic. Her arm extends clutching the filter. She usually offers some form of greeting or asks me what I’d like for breakfast, but today all I get is the sound of her unnatural breaths. I grab my mask from behind the clock on the nightstand and then take the new filter from her outstretched hand. With the speed and enthusiasm I give to all my tedious and repetitive tasks, I open the filter and twist it into place at the front of my mask. Seemingly satisfied, Mother turns languidly then exits. She leaves the door wide open. There is no evidence for it other than the interaction we just had, but I can sense a shift taking place within her. Looking again at the clock, I realize I only have fifteen minutes before I have to leave for school. I’ll have to worry about Mother later.

Showered, changed, and still eating the haphazardly created piece of toast Mother laid out for me, I rush out the door. I finish the toast while walking the length of the long hallway to the elevator. With my school bag on my back and mask in my hand, I press the small silver button to call the elevator. Ding. I step through the doors as they open, tap the lobby button, and then lean against the back wall. It smells of lemon cleaner and coal. The descent is smooth and silent except for the faint whirring of pulleys and gears.

The doors open and the noise of hundreds of shuffling feet floods in. Throngs of people waddle through the long lines stretched out behind the building’s six airlocks. I step out of the elevator onto the dark polished floors and take my place among them in line. No one looks around. Heads forward, eyes fixed on the floor, we all shuffle forward a single step at a time. Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle.

My mask hangs heavy in my hands. I twist it around and examine the two glass circles in the middle of the black rubber. It’s plain with only a red strip around the edge of the gray filter to break up the solid black of the rubber. A serial number is stamped into it just above the forehead PPS 174517. I guess that serves to personalize it. It’s hard to imagine why Mother would willingly lock herself in one of these when she’s safe at home.

I’ve been shuffling automatically, and without realizing it, I run into the man in front of me. He was fumbling with his mask, and my minor bump knocks it from his gaunt gloved hands.

“Watch where you’re going girl, you could hurt someone.”

Taken aback, and forced to re-enter the world outside my head, I can’t seem to find words.

“Are you going to say something?”

I continue to stare, forcing down my desire to snap back at him.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Damn right, you’re sorry.”

The man pulls on his mask. Even veiled in rubber, his displeasure is unmistakable.

“Bitch.” His mask mutes and garbles his insult but does nothing to dull the sting.

Fuming, I watch him step into the airlock and disappear behind its hissing doors. Rooted in place, I envision a thousand unpleasant ends for that jerk. Some combination of road accident and choking to death would suit him just fine. There’s a jab in my ribs.

“It’s your turn,” says the woman behind be already shrouded in her mask—her overcoat’s large cowl pulled up to protect her coifed hair from soot.

“Right, sorry.” I give her a curt smile, but the only thing she’s interested in is getting through the airlock.

Flipping the mask back around, I shake that blood-boiling man my head, look out through the eye holes, then plunge my face into the rubber. It’s loose, so I tug on the four straps until it presses firmly against my face. I hold my hand over the filter’s vent and blow out hard. The air rushes out under the edges, forming a seal on my face. In the instant before I pull my hand away from the vent, I am empty. My lungs are drained, and I’m trapped in an airtight prison. I move my hand away from the vent and draw in a deep breath. Air, with the faint taste of charcoal and the pungent odor of rubber, fills my nostrils. The airlock doors open with a hiss of escaping air. I step inside, they close automatically behind me. The cramped cylinder hisses with changing pressures for a moment then becomes eerily still. The airlock surrounds me with an oppressive silence and makes me conscious of being trapped—caged within a cage.

The doors open, and the soot-filled air of the streets rushes in. Stepping onto the sidewalk, I scan back and forth for the silver transport that will take me to school. The swarms of people weaving here and there make the search difficult, but shining silver is hard to miss in a city of soot and ash, and its twinkling in the fragments of sunlight show me the way. Eyes fixed on my target, I head straight toward it cutting across the overlapping streams of equally self-engrossed pedestrians. The transport’s door opens as I approach. Up the short few steps into the cabin sits the driver, an emaciated woman—each breath reveals chasms where her ribs connect to her sternum. She’s new and can’t be but a few years older than me. I wonder what happened to Mrs. Guerra? Her golden hair is braided into pigtails that she has flopped over her shoulders to dangle on her chest. She turns to look at me. The ominous mask she is wearing seems out of place next to her pigtails. Avoiding her gaze, I take my seat halfway down the driver’s side. I slide along the seat until I’m right up against the window.

The ride to school is long in the ceaseless traffic of the city. The streets were built long before automobiles and mechanical contraptions were thought of, and it seems that in the time between no one decided to take a break from building and plan things out. The resulting city is one where everything new is precariously built on the crumbling bones of the old. Typical, though. Advertisements, television, the Caretakers, they always want you to have something new, something more. They’re always pressing more and more down the city’s exhausted throat with no thought of consequence. Last week’s filters are pushed off the shelves to make room for new ones. No restock would be complete without accompanying masks of every size, shape, and dimension—of course. Custom fit, premium: you name it, they’ll make it. But it’s always the same thing. It’s always the same masks, same filters, and same trench coats with just enough changes to make you want them. Mother always insists on having the newest mask, the newest filters, and I always indulge her. Twice a year or more she throws away all the filters in the spare bedroom to buy this month’s version of Mountain Air filters, youth-small. Somewhere there is a mountain of discarded things, still good, still working, but garbage nonetheless.

Traffic eases, and the bus lurches forward. Coming out of my head, I look around at the other people on the bus. Neptus Memorial is a primary through secondary school, so most of these kids are younger, but there are a few other twelfth years on the bus. Masks and trench coats make it difficult to tell who’s who though. The masks further exacerbate the issue because it’s nearly impossible to understand each other with the way they garble your words and dampen your hearing. Isolated in the mask’s custody, we sit alone, stare out the window alone, and converse to ourselves. I shift my gaze back out the window to watch the blurs of people, cars, and propaganda posters pass me by.

The transport slows, and I see the familiar landmarks that signal that school is only moments away. I pull the straps of my mask again to ensure they’re tight. Looking around, I watch the other kids perform their own last-minute checks. Some are even going so far as to reform their seals by momentarily depriving themselves of air.

The transport glides to a stop. We wait for a moment while the bus sits idle with the doors closed. I wring the straps of my backpack holding it tight to my chest. The driver gives the signal by raising her arm out toward the door—it opens at her command. Starting with the first row, right to left, we each wait patiently—sitting up straight eyes forward—for our turn to exit. Ordinary, uniform, disciplined. Eyes fixed on the girl sitting one row up and opposite me, the anxiety that I might screw up the pattern gnaws at me. When she goes, I count a single breath then follow. Shuffling down the narrow walkway, I keep my eyes fixed to my feet. I step off the bus and join the line for the school’s airlocks.

Monitors stand along the edges of the line in brown uniforms under oxford blue trench coats permanently stained black from ash. Their rebreathers are jet-black like the ones the Peace Officers wear, only less ominous. My eyes haven’t moved from my feet, and my legs have shuffled me forward out of reflex. The school frowns on disobedience and praises strict discipline above all other subjects a student is to learn while at school. I hate the school’s stifling rules, but the fear of repercussions and detention force me to bite my tongue and step in line.

Approaching the door, I dare a glance over at one of the monitors standing by the airlocks. The roughness of her soot-covered trench coat and harsh angles of the jet-black rebreather make her appear like a hyper-masculine soldier from the posters littering the industrial park. Her head turns, and though it is impossible to tell, I’m certain I feel her eyes piercing through me. Fear snakes through my spine like hot poison. I look away, back at my feet—it’s too close to look around now. I hate this feeling of helplessness and isolation but what can I do? They are always there and always watching.

Ahead of the person’s feet in front of me is the silver lip of the airlock. They step in and disappear as the door revolves around them. I’m next.

I take a gulp of carbonized air and hope the monitor won’t pull me aside to chew me out or give me a demerit for looking up at her. I shuffle forward—the airlock’s silver maw stands ready to swallow me up.

I step forward with one cautious foot. Just as my foot lands on the grated floor a hand falls on my shoulder. I jump out of my skin and turn to stone all at once. I force myself to look—it’s monitor I made eye contact with. Behind the veil of my mask, I grimace in anticipation of her scolding.

“Do not take off your mask once you’ve stepped through the airlock. I repeat, do not take off your mask once you’ve stepped through the airlock. Do you understand? Nod your head to comply.”

It is a moment before I realize her words are not a reprimand but a warning. As quickly as I piece it together, I oblige her by nodding enthusiastically.

“Step through,” she says removing her hand from my shoulder.

I obey and step into the airlock. The system depressurizes like normal and pumps in clean air. The airlocks aren’t broken, so they must be taking precautions after yesterday’s incident. Before I can think of anything else, the door opens, and I’m face to face with a towering male monitor. He leans down to my level, placing the glass eye slits of his mask in line with the circles of mine.

“Head down the hall to the auditorium. Do not remove your mask. Repeat, do not remove your mask. Nod to comply.”

I understand the redundancy is for our protection, but the constant reminder of my powerlessness sits in my stomach like a rock. I cannot stop a look of frustration from forming on my face. Yet behind my mask, this mini-rebellion is concealed. These masks are good for some things I suppose.

I nod out of deeply ingrained habit and walk past him down the hall. The kid who entered before me must only be in his third or fourth year. I walk fast, following his form down the hallway. I remember being his age at school. There was always an omnipresent feeling of fear and doubt.

Graduation is approaching in a few short months and even though I’ll be forced to go out into the world—a leap I’m ill prepared to make—I don’t envy him. Being that young and coming from an earlier life of cartoons and bliss into this kind of regimented asylum for ‘the chronically under-disciplined’ was a shock I’m still reeling from. It almost took the curiosity and life out of me. Almost.

I watch the boy press open the auditorium’s double doors and enter. They swing closed behind him, and for a moment I feel alone in the hallway. The thought of running away into the bathroom flashes in my mind. I could sit out the rest of the day in silence and avoid whatever awaits me in the auditorium.

I entertain the thought for a few rebellious moments before the burning press of the countless eyes of the students behind me drive it from my mind. I put my hand on the door handle and push while anxiety swells in my chest. I enter the auditorium, but my eyes are on my feet, and my mind is far from school.

I want to break free from the confines of school and its day-to-day monotony, from the masks we all wear, and the ceaseless fear that grips us all—desperately so. But I don’t know where I’d even start. My ignorance and doubt feed my timidity, and the rising tide of action fizzles away. I don’t know what’s holding me back more, the Great Society or myself?

Sensing the presence of the seats to my left, I pull out of my head and back into the auditorium.

The bleachers are rapidly filling with students. Feeling the throng pushing at my back, I survey the seats and quickly find an empty one and press toward it. The steps up the bleachers strain under the weight of so many students and sway underfoot. Ten rows up, I begin my shuffle to the sixth place down and the empty seat waiting for me. My small feet avoid the other students with ease. No one looks up at me, their eyes are all fixed to their feet. I take my seat quickly without disturbing the students sitting around me. I do my best to sit still and wait here obediently like they want. But if I have to keep looking at my feet I’m going to burst into flames. Surely looking around is less disruptive than spontaneous combustion?

Keeping my head low I lift my eyes and scan the auditorium. The bleachers take up the entire length of one wall. The two walls running perpendicular are plain concrete except for the identical sets of double doors in their centers. At the base of the far wall is a stage made of polished, chestnut brown wood—an odd relic in this city of steel and glass. The wall behind it is decorated with sports banners and trophies, but larger and set off by its own gilded frame in the center is an enormous flag of the Great Society. The field of the flag is a dark blue, almost black. In the center is the depiction of a man and a woman holding their hands together under the radiating light of a star that has at its center a piece of coal. The auditorium’s charcoal walls make all the flags and banners, but especially the flag of the Great Society, pop.

The rest of the students have settled in, and the monitors have moved from their places in the hall and are taking positions around the room. Arms crossed, they stand along the walls forming a cage of muscle. Two of the largest monitors stand in front of the two sets of double doors. The auditorium is eerily quiet; the sounds of shifting seats and scuffling feet swell the room with unbearable anticipation.

The Authoritarian marches onto the stage. His polished boots echo like thunder in the stillness of the room releasing the tension like rain. Taking his place at the obsidian podium on the stage, I get the best look at him I’ve had in years. He is an old, stately looking man. Even through the glass disks of his mask, his eyes are piercing and as dark as the wood he’s standing on. Some of his gray hair is poking out under the straps of his mask. He wears the brown uniform of the instructors, but it’s made of higher quality fabric and stitched and tailored perfectly. His chest is covered in blue and black ribbons, and a gold aiguillette hangs over his right shoulder. Even with the distance between us, and the obscuring slits of his rebreather, the contempt glistening in his cruel eyes is unmistakable.

“Rise for the Anthem,” he commands—his voice projected and amplified from a microphone in his mask.

A great noise—a thousand students rising in unison to the Authoritarian’s voice—shatters the silence. I find myself standing among them, without having given it conscious thought.

The hidden speakers in the vaulted room crackle to life and begin to play. The recording of the Einsam Children’s Choir guides us along as we struggle to sing with muffled voices. My lips form the words, but no sound passes through them. Whether the other students are enthusiastic or not is hard to tell between the children’s choir’s patriotic tone and their muffled murmurs.

“The flag on high, our society closely knit. Our Great Society marches, step, step, step! Together marching strong we drive subversives from our midst. Loyalty to each other, and from the Caretakers we’re granted gifts. Through hard work and discipline, we build a lasting peace. United in our purpose we toil, with heart, and grit.”

The speakers crackle again then fall silent. We remain standing. A few students have lifted their heads as if inspired by the song. I feel no inspiration, only bewilderment at the absurdity of a recorded anthem played atop a muffled mess.

“Sit!” The Authoritarian’s voice booms. Startled, I sit obediently. The other students respond similarly and once again the silence of the auditorium is disturbed by the settling of a thousand seats.

The Authoritarian waits until the room falls again into stillness. “As I am sure most of you are aware, yesterday there was a tragedy at one of the city’s other schools. Their air filters failed, and it resulted in the death of twelve students. As a precaution, I have ordered that until our school’s air filters are checked, and the redundant systems installed, all students and faculty will wear their masks at all times. I understand the difficulty the instructors and yourselves will have in communicating with your masks on, so I have arranged to spend the next week or so watching some of the great films our Caretakers have created for us. Do not, under any circumstances, remove your masks. Any student found removing their own, or attempting to remove the mask of another student, will be severely punished and handed over to the authority of Peace Officers under suspicion of sedition. If you do what you are told this will be an easy few weeks for all of you. Do you comply?”

In a thunderous roar, hundreds of muffled voices shout in chorus.

“Yes, sir!”

My lips stay pressed together.

“Starting from the right exit row by row in an orderly fashion toward your respective classrooms. You are dismissed.”

The students sitting at the far-right end of the first row begin the process while the rest of us—the majority—remain perfectly still. No hand, head, nor foot dares to move out of sequence. Sitting dutifully, we wait minute after agonizing minute in the silence of our minds.

After waiting for what felt like an eternity, it’s finally my turn. I rise and fall lockstep into the line of students swapping one room for the confines of another. Our rhythmic, filtered breaths and footfalls keep the time like a paradiddle. At the fork that divides the primary and secondary levels I linger looking left down the hallway I used to walk. The day I moved up to secondary classes was exciting. I came to the fork, and for the first time instead of going left to the imprint rooms, I veered right toward the classrooms. I had been excited for the change. Imprint cradles are cold, uncomfortable, and smell like chlorine and I had hoped that in the classroom we would finally have an opportunity to participate in our education. Like they would ever let that happen. What was I thinking? Sure, they don’t literally jam thoughts into our heads anymore, but what’s the real difference between rote memorization of prepared lectures and preprogrammed data stored in a crystal robin’s egg?

A monitor cranes their head in my direction. I drop my eyes to my feet to avoid their gaze and follow the other twelfth-year students down the hallway to the right.

Step, step, step. I shuffle along envisioning myself a member of a chain gang like the ones the Nightly News is always showing in the pits.

Reaching the classroom, I take my seat and relish in the end of our march. I scratch at the itch created by the imaginary manacles on my wrists. A few minutes of silence pass as we wait for the rest of the class to arrive from the auditorium. After blissful moments of peace and quiet spent scratching my imaginary itch, the last student enters the room and takes his seat. Instructor Speer enters on his heels. Already, I long for those precious seconds of stillness. He closes the door behind him with a crash. Taking his place at the front—behind his desk—he stands observing us through his rebreather’s glass eye-slits. The sound of his rebreather’s whirring recycler fills the room. Why must the silence always be broken by shallow and meaningless noises? I’m positive I could learn more from my own silent and still mind than the gruff and trivial words of Speer.

Normally his young face is visible, and his expertly styled brown hair bounces gently while he pontificates and gesticulates. There’s no debating he’s handsome—most of the girls and even some of the boys have crushes on him. Unlike the rest of them, I’m not fooled by his siren’s call. His true nature is, despite his youth, cruel and vindictive. The rebreather seems at home on his body and makes him look the way I imagine he should.

“I understand how sad and scared you must feel. But feeling scared—or shedding tears after such a tragedy as befell your contemporaries—is a sign of immaturity and weakness. A wise and strong person, such as myself, feels overjoyed. And I am overjoyed. Overjoyed that I have escaped a gagging, screaming death. But I also feel elated because now measures will be taken to prevent further tragedies. Your fellow students sacrificed themselves so that you could live in a world that is safer and more vigilant than the one they departed. Be thankful and rejoice that you have such good Caretakers who were able to respond appropriately to this tragedy. That being said, how is the class doing today?”

In a chaotic roar, each student responds boisterously with their own expression of “joy.”

Letting my lips crack open, I mutter the truth, “Suffocated.”

Instructor Speer’s reaction to the class’s outcry is impossible to gauge with his face hidden behind his mask, but by his smug, shoulders-back bravado he is relishing in their sycophantic praise. Now that his ego has been recharged, Speer turns to the wall behind him and presses his hand into the projector’s command module. His fingers dance in the rays of light awakening the aging projector which comes to life in a flicker of prismatic colors. The equally antiquated speakers crackle like the ones in the audit­­orium. As the projector warms up, the start screen for a Great Society film comes into focus.

“Because we will be watching films for the next week or so, I decided we have the time to start at the beginning. Today we’re going to watch one of my favorite films. Year One, the Origins of Our Great Society. This film tells the tale of how the Great Society formed itself from the ashes of oppression and foreign invasion. You should take the whole film in and appreciate it. But pay special attention to the story of our first High Caretaker Antonius Neptus. He is truly our greatest hero, having single-handedly formed the nation and created a great and lasting peace.”

I know my disinterest is shared among my fellow students, but after twelve years we’ve all become experts at repressing our opinions. No one makes a peep, not even me.

“Remain awake, remain attentive. When this week of movies and vacation is over, there will be a test, a detailed one.”

For a moment I contemplate living out one of my long-held fantasies. In it, every student springs from their desks, charges Speer, straps him to his chair then runs out of the school. We run and run until the thick smog clouds of the city disappear, and the towering outlines of skyscrapers fade into the horizon. We don’t stop until we reach that mythic Mountain Air. But deep down I know it will always be a fantasy. I have never even stood up out of turn, let alone assault the instructor and flee. Even if I worked up the courage and did it right this second, none of my classmates would join with me. They’d be the first to hold me back.

The projected image dances to life while the narrator’s velvety voice fills the room.  

“In the fourth century of the Great Society, many take for granted the wonders and bounty we have been born into. From time to time, however, we should all pause and remember the great patriots and martyrs upon whose blood and bone our civilization was built. Be thankful and appreciative of what they have given you…”

The film continues for almost two hours, but little to none of it sticks. Drifting off into my own world I watch the re-enacted scenes of the great evils of barbarity and hedonism in the old world and the heroic battles that were fought to eradicate them. I witness walls and blockades, made from the bodies of an untold number of patriotic martyrs, holding the rest of the uncivilized world at bay. The narrator names a dozen heroes and heroines, a hundred battles, and a thousand enemies, but their names all fail to imprint themselves in my mind. Only his final words work themselves out of the regular muck and propaganda that saturates everything that passes through his lips.

“The greatest sacrifices of our Great Society have yet to be made. Are you willing to give everything to ensure the survival of the greatest human achievement?”

After his words finally echo away, an image of a Peace Officer’s recruitment facility and Guardian’s barracks fill up the front wall of the classroom. The image lingers there, blaring, “Join Today,” even after Speer switches on the lights.

Confidently standing in the diminishing light of the projector, Speer addresses us, his voice filled with energetic patriotism no doubt put there by the film.

“I want all of you to take a moment and contemplate the heritage of sacrifice, and turmoil our Great Society has endured for you. No matter which path you choose when you graduate and join the ranks of ours, the greatest of societies, always remember that giving your life in service to the Great Society is the least you can do.”

The room falls silent. A few of the boys fidget with their sweaty palms under their desks. They’ve probably eaten the whole story up, taking each word as truth. I bet even now they’re planning their activities the day after our rapidly approaching graduation. They’ll wake up early, eat one last home-cooked meal from mother then race off into the muck-filled streets for the recruiting offices. Inevitably there will already be a line, and they will stand there for hours shuffling and soot-covered in their haste to become thralls of the state. It seems like every year those lines get longer. I’ve little doubt most of my classmates will be standing in them before the ink on their diplomas is dry.

Maybe once I would have joined them. Standing in line with them I would have dreamt of being a heroine of the state and having my own likeness cast in bronze to stand vigil over my grave. As desirable as that path may be for them, it’s not the one for me. After watching the film, I am only filled with new doubts.

Were the walls built to keep them out or us in?

Next Chapter: Chapter Three