Utopia

A searing arrow of pain shoots up my body as I lift what seems to be my millionth piece of stone. Every muscle screaming in protest, I lift the dead weights of my arms, passing the brick down the line. The air is charged with silence, broken only by the steady hum of supervising robots and the clanking of shackles that clamp us together like a morbid human charm bracelet. My eyes drift upwards to the smooth, endless curve of glass that encloses us in a giant inverted fishbowl, protecting this paradise of lush forests, unending plains, and deep lakes from the barren desert surrounding it. It is a veritable Utopia, the last patch of Earth left unscarred by a combination of global warming and bloody wars. It is perhaps ironic that this supposed heaven is the place where I must serve out my prison sentence.

We are the latest batch of Sacrifices, children plucked out of the Wastelands, given up for a year of hard labor as payment to the City. We deserve this punishment, They tell us, for we are rejects, pests polluting the earth, disease-ridden, feral animals cast out of a society of ideal human-beings, allowed to live only to provide the blood and sweat upon which this paradise was built. Years ago, when climate change and territorial wars became so severe the survival of the human race came under threat, the most genetically perfect people were selected to create and become citizens of a new world, a world free from disease, starvation and war. The rest of us, deemed an inferior blend of defective genes and human flaws, were exiled to eke out a life in the desolate remains of decades of bombings and conflict, called up once in a lifetime to serve a year of ‘work’.

A fanfare blasts through the air, startling me out of my thoughts. It signals the end of a workday, and the beginning of a daily City ritual. Every day, this walking graveyard is marched past the glass walls of the inner Living Dome, as a form of entertainment to the genetic Barbies®. It has been a half-century since zoos were outlawed for being inhumane, yet They have created a twisted menagerie of Their own, a Vegas show of ‘freakish barbarians’, paraded past to remind them of their inherent superiority.

To my left, I see a small boy (who resembles my baby brother back home in the Tunnels) raise a hand cheerily at me. Instinctively, I smile and wave back. Too late, I realize my mistake. I see expressions of shock ripple across their faces, feel the wave of horror sweep through the links of emaciated children around me. An apology bursts immediately from my chest in a frantic yell, hoarse from disuse. I freeze, mind working furiously, panic filling my body as I realize I have broken the two fatal rules.

Filling the air, robots swoop down, like angels of death, their gun arms pointing point-blank at my chest…

Grade: 12 | Pickering College

Aaron Gliklich