Refuge of Lies

Assignments

"We write?!" Iliana burst out laughing, "How is writing going to solve anything?"

"Have you ever heard of the saying, 'The pen is mightier then the sword'?" Julie inquired.

Shaking her head no, Iliana cocked her head quizzically.

"I thought not," Julie muttered, almost to herself. "In a nutshell, it basically means that what we write has much more influence over people then the weapons with which we would kill the same people. It's usually true, but sometimes people are too dense to listen to words, and then we turn to violence as a last resort. Sad, but true. Even sadder but also true, most people work that the other way around. Violence, then words. However, in order to win a war that seems impossible because of government control, we must win the hearts of the people with our words before we can do anything else. We must-"

"Win the hearts of the people? What is that supposed to mean?" Iliana exclaimed. "Why do we need their hearts?"

"People will do almost anything in the interest of self-preservation. Whether it's backstabbing their closest friend or committing crimes they'd never dreamed of, if something threatens people, they will do almost anything to get rid of it – if they know how dangerous it is to them. What we need to do is to convince the citizenry that this government, in its current modus operandi is threatening their very existence! We must make them realize that the government – not ignorance – is their biggest enemy!" Pounding the table emphatically at the last word, Julia's impassioned words began to kindle the fires of something in Iliana's heart. Julia jumped up and clicked a button on the wall, then several more until a large electric replica of the world map in the Library proper popped up – only it was different. "This is the world as we know it today! This is the world our people need to see can be theirs! This-" She clicked another button and a map of the City replaced the world map. "-This does not have to limit them! Humans were meant to explore possibilities, to go places they dream of, to invent machines that can harness the earth's power, to reach even to the moon and the stars beyond, but they-we cannot if they are fenced into these walls!"

Facing Julia's eager eyes, Iliana felt ashamed of her doubt, but voiced it anyways. "How-how can we do that? It's impossible!"

"No, it's not! They will convince themselves. We must reach them and get them to agree with us on something we all agree on and that challenges the government on something most will see as a reasonable argument. We use the government's own weapon against it: the Terminations. Everybody hates them, and everybody is affected by them. Who doesn't have a dear friend or family member that was Terminated because they didn't fit the mold? Very few indeed. If we can convince the majority to agree with us that the Terminations are wrong, that they must be stopped, that there is another way – we have won the battle. We must stop the Terminations! And it may not seem much, but that's how a race is won: step by step, not in one giant leap."

The next day, Iliana's thoughts raced around her head in mobs every moment of every hour. She barely had enough presence of mind to pass (really, ace) the Algebra quiz, and no matter which friend she was talking to, she never seemed to be quite all there. Looking around at her classmates, she realized more and more that unless she did something, one in every three of them would die come Test Day. It was a sobering, yet oddly invigorating, thought.

Finally, in World History, Dmitri, Iliana, and Chiara sat side by side like they always did, waiting for the teacher's assignment. Chiara was doodling in her notebook, what, Iliana couldn't see clearly, but she saw something that looked suspiciously like Dmitri+Chiara enclosed in a flowery stylized heart.