Outside

The Lost Girl: Ch. 1

I sigh, my chin resting in my hands. I try to pay attention to Mr. Chamber as he explains our next boring math concept that I’m probably going to ace. This is the last period of the day and I can’t wait to get out of school.

It feels like I’ve been a freshman in high school for far too long, although it’s only been six months. I have gradually stopped caring about school, not just because it’s boring, but because I learn faster than anyone in my grade.

I look at the screen on my desk, checking the time on the clock in the corner of the home page. I swipe the screen and it takes me to a blank page meant for taking notes, but no one ever takes notes in class. I take my stylus and start sketching.

I’ve liked sketching for as long as I can remember, but it only recently became an important part of my life. I like to sketch random things. From time to time I’ll be constantly drawing something, but then I’ll move on to the next obsession. I decide to sketch the potted plant in the corner.

Not that there’s much to sketch, everything in the room is fake. Even the room is fake, and I constantly have to remind myself that. Everything looks so real, like everyone here is actually in the same room as me. But they’re not, they’re sitting in their chairs in their bedrooms in their apartments on their COMpads logged onto the school website.

Each COMpad is built into the desks that are put in every bedroom of every apartment, just the same as everyone else’s apartment. The only difference is that the COMpads are programmed with different passwords to unlock them.

Every COMpad can take you to certified government websites that are connected to the screens in our desks and the projectors in our headsets. None of this is real, it’s all a hologram projected from my visor and into my eyes.

I’ve just finished the curve on the edge of the pot’s rim when the alarm on my screen goes off to tell me that class is almost over and our homework is going to show up on our screens.

I swipe my page clean and wait for our boring assignment to show up. It turns out to be three pages of polar functions worksheets. I frown and swipe through the three pages thinking about all the work that I don’t want to do but have to.

I swear that the new curriculum they’ve been trying on students in high school is even more boring than it was before. They say it’s to get us excited about school again and is supposed to be “giving students a memorable experience that will not only teach them new things but help students associate school and learning with fun.” Screw that, they hire all the teachers that should be in an insane asylum because they smile and speak in high pitched voices that make me want to puke.

“Remember, everyone!” Mr. Chamber says with a psychotically happy smile, “If you need any extra support in any of the subjects that we cover, don’t forget that you can log on to our website after school whenever I’m available! I’d be glad to help!”

“Pff!” I scoff quietly, smirking to myself. Everyone knows that the teachers they put in these jobs are specifically hired because they are forever alone and without a family so they can teach and do school related things 24/7. Sometimes I feel bad for them, but then I remember that these people agreed to do this. I always wonder what kind of drug the government had to give these people to want to be a teacher.

Then everything goes black, and my screen simply says “Logged Off”.

I reach around and pull the headset off of my head, then press the red button on the side to turn it off. When I set it down and look at it. The headset always reminds me of the biker helmets that you see in pictures from Before.

I try to stay far away from technology whenever I can. I just get so tired of living in a screen and then not knowing what to do when I’m not hooked up to my headset.

That’s why the government made the headsets and COMpads, so we would forget about Before and how bad our lives are. They created virtual lives for the people so we didn’t have to live in our real lives, and I hate it. It’s all so fake.

I didn’t always think like this, I used to be happy with the system. Ever since Before, the government had to please the people somehow, and they found the answer in technology. There were games and places where you could meet other people without actually seeing them, and there was music and art and so much more. I was so happy, I didn’t care that no one ever left the apartment.

The government gave us everything, even online stores. Clothes, food, toys, whatever, it was on a website somewhere. All you have to do is order it and it shows up an hour or two later. For meals, you put your plates and cups in and seconds later they come out with food.

One of the most advanced technological advances that the government has come up with is teleportation, and when they started testing it out it was a little faulty. They’re still trying to work out all the kinks in the machines for regular use by the people, but for now, only government approved citizens can use a teleporter.  

Pretty impressive, right? Everyone basically worshipped this system, because people were too lazy to do things themselves. But they don’t realize that they’ve made their own hells. No one ever leaves their apartments, not ever. The only time anyone uses the front door is when they leave their childhood homes to go to their assigned homes with their assigned spouses. Then they’ll start a family and the cycle starts over for each of the children, until the original couple dies and the apartment is cleaned of their belongings so the next couple can live there.

I don’t ever want to move from this apartment. I love my mom and my dad and my little brother Joey. I don’t know if it’s that I can’t move or won’t, but either way I know I don’t like the cycle that the government puts us in. A constant, vicious cycle.

I can’t believe I was ever happy with the system, but I know I was once. Because I know exactly what changed my thoughts, the window.

The government knew that if we had windows in our apartments, we would want to leave our cozy little rooms for the great wide world outside. But they didn’t want the public to worry that the government was trying to lock them up, so they found a clever solution. They put screens in the walls where windows would be, so the people who lived there could have any outside they wanted.

There could be a desert, a tropical beach, snowcapped mountains, or a forest outside. All with the swipe of a hand.

Our apartment was different, though. Mom and dad got one of the older rooms, the ones that used to have windows. One day, I noticed my screen was a little bit crooked so I was trying to straighten it out. Every time I tried to move one side up so it was the same height as the other side, it would fall crooked again. I was eight though, so I just kept trying and trying and trying. Finally, I got so mad that I just tore the whole screen down from the wall.

Behind the screen had been a dusty old window covered in gray paint that was already starting to chip away. I stared at it for a while, because at first I didn’t know exactly what it was with the paint on it.

        Right in the middle of the window was a small piece of clear glass where the paint was coming off, and I could see just a small view of the world outside. I could see light spilling out of it like water jetting from a leaky pipe. There were buildings, bits of brick and cement mainly, but it was all that was needed to change my life forever.