I am free.

"I am free."

Those words stare back at the befuddled young man, sitting on the concrete lip of a once lively fountain. Faded blue paint peels and chips off the fountain's empty basin, battered by years of neglect and exposure to the elements. Dryer than the drained crevasse that was once the city's harbor, which now only exists in old photographs strewn across brick walls as posters and adverts. Nothing living today knows of the city's past glory, only that it was once considered great. To the people that built and thrived in this city back in their time, it was known to be an excellent example of humanity's achievements. Those people, what they thought and experienced, what they once were, are now nothing but an implied element to the sentence. "It was once considered great."

Smog hangs over the grey skies, pierced by broken steel giants that were once complete buildings. Giants that - unlike the city's reputation - still lingered in a few living people's memories as being something greater then they are now. Their destruction was more recent, still preserved in those living minds. Of course, once those living minds are gone, those buildings' former states could be anything written down in the history logs. Nobody would know otherwise, or dare to oppose it. It would be reality. Just like the words "It was once considered great."

The young man has glared at the written sentence for the past ten minutes, looking down at the wilted and decayed notepad he found in his grandfather's old attic. No such thing was commonly made anymore, reserved only for those who use their elevated and superior intellect to serve the state. Did people once freely have the power to express themselves in something as powerful as written words? Freely? Not on a machine easily moderated and censored to preserve the unquestionable truth of correct logic? Not on something the state can correct? Not on something that couldn't be instantly destroyed for the vile and morally reprehensible words it could possibly house? Such a thought shocked the young man, looking down at paper that did not have the state's words blessing the pale sheet. Reserving all that precious space only for the ones who have the moral qualifications to do so.

At first he had horrid thoughts of excitement. Of something that he thought only existed in the horrors of the past, before the state's blessed protection: freedom of expression. The freedom to express something that ISN'T the correct narrative! He was no authorized agent of the state! He did not go to the highly prestigious academies that demanded years of an intellectually and morally superior person to graduate from! He was a designated factory worker, chosen at birth to be educated in the highest capacity, ONLY in regard to his work environment. He is not qualified to express his own potentially deviant thoughts! He wanted to destroy it, along with everything else his deviant, non-cognitively-aligned, traterious grandfather ever had! To expunge and erase them entirely! Just like the thought-guidance courses told him!

But... he didn't.

Now he sits in the open with such morally-incorrect potential, watching the zeppelins cruise calmly through the grey cloudy sky. Their ever watchful eye protecting them all from deviant and dangerous thought. A physical manifestation of the much vaster, greater, more secure protection the state grants all of it’s citizens on the inter-connected network system of computers, that freely grants him and everyone else with free access to unquestionably true and correct logic. He sits in the open, hoping to punish himself for infecting himself with the past's bigoted, corrupt evils of non-state-approved thought potential.

The only thought he could conjure to grab the Correctional Logic Enforcement Service's eye was "I am free." Exposing himself as a potential deviant alone should have been enough to secure himself a place in the re-education facilities they have plenty of scattered across the nation, but he had to make extra sure that he could have this potential bad logic out of his head.

He looks down at this sentence as a zeppelin begins to descend upon him, shrieking ugly sirens blaring out, casting harsh spotlights on him. Logic enforcers shout at him from the zeppelin's cradle, ready to leap at him like ravenous dogs, batons in hand. He was loyal, and wanted this potential evil to never be realized. He looks forward to his life-long punishment, in the hopes of extinguishing this spark of pure evil within him forever. Through death, or citizen class degradation that comes along with re-education.

This spark within him seems to be in that sentence, forcing his attention to it when he should be obeying the logic enforcers' orders. This spark has been there all along, and he had no idea, begging for some way to slip through the cracks of the state's flawless morally superior truth. The words pierce into him like hooks. This hidden evil's first, last, and only vile putrid filth forces him to think. Just like the Logic Enforcement said it would. He looked at it, trying to understand it. Trying to understand if it was true. Was it true...?

"I am free."

He reads these words over again as a logic enforcer leaps over the zeppelin cradle’s railing, not even giving it's metal bars a chance to fold down before rushing to do their righteous duty. They bounded over to him, throwing all their weight into a baton swing to the side of his head.

All at once there is no more thought. Nothing at all.

He would have been happy, for the evil spark was gone. It was what the correct logic he was taught demanded.

He is free.