Liberating Hazor

With long tweezers, Starlyne gently removes yellowed paper from a plastic canister. "Thank you twenty-first century for non-biodegradable plastic," she whispers.

A construction crew unearthed forty containers near what has long been believed to be the center of Hazor, a significant religious and political power after the second American Revolution. She hopes to find information about the lost women of America. The guardians destroyed all Hazorian records during the liberation of the reproduction factories.

She unfolds the paper and begins to read the ancient text.

My dearest granddaughter,

I am learning to write. The guardians brought a new girl to the factory. Sarah. They captured her from the world outside. She refuses to acknowledge the guardians' number for her. They beat her. I tell her to forget her name but she will not.

Sarah knows things we are not allowed, like writing, stories, songs even. She teaches us to write. Some do not trust her. Do not learn. I think she will not betray us.

I am fifteen and pregnant with my first baby. I will birth any day now. I hope I do not die. I am strong with wide hips. Good stock. But even good stock dies.

I am happy to think you will be born, granddaughter.

Sarah says there are men fighting to free us. Women fight too, though we do not believe her. We know women are weak.

I do not understand the freedom she describes. She says my baby will not live in a factory. That I will raise it. I do not understand this raise, but Sarah says it is the right way, the natural way. It will not serve the great nation of Hazor.

I like this idea of holding my baby, keeping my baby. My heart cries at giving it to the guardians. It is our way, but it does not feel right.

Sarah is a soldier. She taught me to punch. She says we will need to defend ourselves. That we must fight back when the bombs explode. I do not know these bombs. She says the building will shake. The guardians will try to kill us. We must fight.

She says we must write these letters to talk to the future. You are the only future I see, granddaughter.

I hope you hold your babies in Sarah's world.

Your grandmother,

348967048

Starlyne removes her glasses. Recently, false histories have circulated in the media claiming Hazor was a golden age, idealizing it as a simpler time, a better time. A time when differences did not exist. Some depict it as a moral, efficient, prosperous nation.

They forget the secrecy, the walls, the enslavement of the lower classes to war and breeding, the enslavement of the wealthy to possessions. How could anyone rebel when everyone was a slave? she wonders. Free will, freedom, is worth the destruction of a mythical Eden.

Starlyne picks up another container. She has come to Hazor to liberate the truth of the past to protect the future.