The Rise of Her

0509138 is the number that was assigned to him, but people didn't really call each other by their whole number. The name was usually the first two numbers of the sequence, so this boy is referred to as "05," often pronounced as "Oh five".

After school, 05 and his friends would hang out at the scrap yard. This was pretty much their regular hangout, and they did things average thirteen-year-old boys did. They sat around, talked, threw rocks at far away targets, and sometimes ran and jumped around.

05 grew up with these boys, as they were assigned to housing units in close proximity to each other. Rarely did someone move units. But despite his history, he never really felt like he could connect with them. They loved to talk about trivial things, like how their day went or sports.

05 did participate in these discussions occasionally, but he was tired of them. He often wondered if there was more to the world, to life, than just these shallow conversations.

"Hey," he said, interrupting the silence. The only sounds were an occasional creak of metal beneath their feet as they clambered over large masses. These objects were like colorful curved boxes on wheels, something his Head of Household called "cars". "Don't you think there's more to life that we don't see?"

A redhead with freckles rolled his eyes and lazily looked at 05,"This again, 05?"

"Cool it, eighty-eight," said his other friend, shooting him a warning glance.

Eighty-eight just shrugged and said nothing more.

And so 05 would try to explain what he was thinking, but his companions' responses were usually "Uh, sure." They never really had much thought to contribute to his ideas.

05 lived in a standard unit, but then again so did everyone else. It was basically a storage unit, fitted with some air vents and electricity, although that did not do much to filter the polluted air. The air once was clean enough to see to the end of the road, or so it was rumored.

There was a lot of rumors and tidbits that 05 collected and thought about often. 05 was curious in nature, but curiosity and thinking beyond the confines of school or work was frowned  upon. But this never really stopped 05 from wondering about the past and finding artifacts.

    For example, on a walk he was on one afternoon he discovered a rectangular object comprised of many papers, tightly bound together. The cover, though torn and faded, was colorful and had a title, "Lord of the Flies" and a strange name. Words covered each page, separated in sections called "chapters". He took it back to his unit and, when everyone else was asleep, he'd stay up and read the words.

This, he realized, was a story. He wasn't sure if it was a story of fact or fiction. Either way, it was a whole different world from what he knew. 05 read it over and over, to the point in which he practically memorized the story.

The story was about some boys stranded on an island. There were concepts that he didn't know, such as "grass" or "trees." He'd sometimes ask the Head of the Household what those were, but never got an answer. The response would always be scolding him for asking such questions. He eventually didn't ask anymore, and just had to rely on the context to figure it out.

It was now late morning on the weekend. He was alone at the beach, or whatever was left of it. Nobody really visited the beach anymore, the appeal of it was lost as the amount of pollutants increased over the years.

Waves crashed on the shore, the murky water accessorized by foam. Although the salty air didn't mask the smell of pollution and gas completely, it did give a sense of getting away from it all. He could pretend for a second that he wasn't living in a crime-ridden, junk-filled wasteland.