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A futuristic dystopian novel that I've been working on for a decade. Trying Again. |
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I am not Eve. In fact, I am not anyone. "Eve" is what my mother and father named me the day that I was born, but it has never been written in the First Universal Government's books. You cannot travel to the government buildings and find my birth record. You will find no status record linked to my family's bloodline and surname: I have no family name, and I have no status. I am neither Keeper nor Keepling. There is no Eve -- not to the government; not to society. I am Eve only to the others like me -- those remaining free from Keeper rule. They call us Wilds, and our numbers are dwindling. 60 years ago, I might have been Eve to everyone, but that was before stupidity and selfishness knocked civilization as humanity knew it to its knees. I suppose we should have seen it coming; it wasn't as if we were unaware of the impact that global warfare could have. But, I guess that our ancestors never truly thought it was possible to wipe out two thirds of the world's population in a matter of one year. Or, more than likely, they thought that everyone else would surely stop before it reached that point. Clearly, everyone had been wrong. My grandmother used to say that the Universal War only stopped when there was nobody left who was willing to fight it. The war could no longer sustain itself. Trouble was, life as they knew it could no longer be sustained either. The government still stood -- at least, it had here. Those who had been in charge of this country had never had any intention of risking their own lives on the battlefields that they had controlled like chess boards in the year for which the war had lasted. And, those who remained, were happy to look to the government officials for leadership. After all, that was what they had always done in the years before the Universal War, and everyone was eager for things to return to some semblance of normalcy. But, of course, at one third the population from before, that was impossible. And so, the First Universal Government was created, and government officials had handed out the first statuses -- although they were not called such in the beginning. They simply asked those with remaining wealth and property to care for those who had nothing left. "We must be our brothers' and sisters' keepers," President Armar had declared. And, in return, those with nothing were to care for those who helped them by working for their food and shelter. It was a simple system, a fair system, a system taken from the oldest history books. Perhaps President Armar had meant for it to instill a sense of teamwork that would bolster humanity as we sought to repair society. What it really did was reinstate a system of slavery. But, there was one group of people that the First Universal Government had not considered when it created its system of "haves" and "have nots:" those who did not have wealth and property as society recognized, but instead had self-sustaining families and knowledge that allowed them to survive outside of so-called civilized society. These people did not need to be taken under Keepers' wings and given food and shelter; nor did they have any intention of registering with the government to take care of their own Keeplings. These groups kept to themselves, and society had always been happy to let them do so before now. But, that was before humans themselves became a commodity. Those who were not physically forced or otherwise coerced into registering with the government as Keeplings fled and developed hidden tribes. They became the Wilds; they ceased to exist. They are my ancestors. They are my family. |
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