Forbidden Thoughts

Lawrence, Kansas

October, 2150

The deadened leaves snapped beneath the feet of Kendra Bourne as she walked amongst the faded headstones of the Lawrence City Cemetery. Their waning inscriptions served as relics of a bygone age, of times past and forgotten. Wisps of fog hung in the air like specters of the graves, their souls trapped in this realm dying to whisper unspeakable, lost truths.

Kendra was in between classes at the University of Kansas, where she had just sat through an unbearable seminar about microeconomics. She had chosen to major in business, a choice she was practically driven to by birth. Her father, a corporate financial analyst, and her mother, a consultant that taught businessmen and women the art of extroversion, were chosen to mate with each other because their career statuses indicated they would give birth to a child that would excel in the corporate world.

Despite her high birth marks, Kendra always had the feeling that she did not belong, as if she was an alien in some foreign land. She dreamt of colors, and longed to hear stories of heroic beings on epic quests. But to her knowledge, nothing like that existed. Nothing like that could exist.

Kendra’s mind turned to what awaited her at home. Her husband, Mark, would be waiting to recount his day’s adventures as a marketing wizard, carefully crafting images to inform people what to buy and how to act. Sometimes Kendra felt as though Mark, who she had been chosen to mate with in hopes that Mark’s excellence would cancel out her lack of skill and give birth to children that were somewhere in the middle, could see into her mind and read her forbidden thoughts. He seemed to genuinely love her, as he showed her through his attention to her body and his comments on her ideal form. But secretly, Kendra could not say she felt the same. Sometimes when she would pass the department stores downtown, and saw the women standing in the windows displaying the latest styles, her body would be flooded with a storm of confusing emotions. Unwanted thoughts would overcome her… Thoughts of…

Suddenly, Kendra felt a sharp pain in her toe. She looked down at the brown autumn grass to behold the culprit. Embedded in the ground, she saw a red bulb peeking out, as if inviting its discoverer to literally unearth knowledge long subdued. Looking around, she determined that she was alone, and she began to dig. Soon, she had uncovered the injurious mechanism. She held in her hand a heart shaped locket, held together by a golden band that was like a xenolithic relic ready to conjure a ghost from long ago. Opening it up, she was shocked by what she saw.

Inside was a picture of two beautiful women, one with scarlet hair and piercing blue eyes, and the other with ruby lipstick and an unforgettable smile. They both wore elegant, white gowns, and were on the holding one another. “Our wedding 2017!” the photo read.

“My God,” Kendra thought. “These two women are together. In the forgotten age! How could that be?” she wondered. Her thoughts turned to that curious word: wedding. What could that be? And how could two women be together? How would the State allow that? They could not conceive a child. It looked almost as if these women chose to be together.

Later that night Kendra sat at the dinner table with Mark. He had regaled her with the stories of his day, all the while that inutterrable question hung on her tongue. Would she dare ask? Suddenly, the question jumped out as if compelled by some unforeseen force.

“Do you know what a wedding is?” she asked.

“A what?”

“A wedding.”

“I’ve never heard that word before. What would make you ask that?”

“It’s nothing. I thought I heard it on the TV. I must have heard it wrong.”

“Sometimes I worry about you Kendra. It seems as though you often have forbidden thoughts. Do you ever think what might happen to me if you give into your impulses?”

“I’m sorry Mark. Please forget about it.”

After an uncomfortable remainder of dinner, Kendra waited for Mark to retreat to his private area. He was right: she does have forbidden thoughts. But that word, and that image. They were like nothing she’d ever seen. She could never forget.

Opening up her computer, Kendra’s finger’s hovered over the keyboard. “No,” she thought. “I can’t.” But then she realized: she must.

W-E-D-D-I-N-G she typed, into the State-run internet.

NO RESULTS, the screen displayed.

Inside of the police station, Officer Smith received a rare ping on her computer. FORBIDDEN SEARCH, the screen read. 1111 Orchard Drive, Lawrence, Kansas. Kendra Bourne. TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION.

Thrilled by the potential of catching a criminal, and enticed at the possibility of being the arbiter of punishment, Officer Smith jumped in her car and made the short drive to the Bourne residence.

Sequestered in her room upstairs, Kendra heard a knock at the door. Looking out the window, she saw a police car at the end of her short driveway, and a female police officer standing at her door.

“Yes, she’s here. Is there anything wrong?” she could hear Mark say in a muffled tone.

Kendra realized she needed to act immediately. She ran down the stairs, opened the door to the garage, and jumped into her Toyota Camry, “The loyal consumer’s car,” as their marketing campaign, that Mark had a small role in, proclaimed.

At a glacial pace, the garage door opened. The moment her car could sneak under its last retreated bit, she sped out, passing Officer Smith and Mark. “Ma’am, stop!” Officer Smith yelled, her hand on her gun holster. Mark could do nothing but watch and shake his head.

But Kendra had no intention of stopping, although she neither knew where she was going or where her next stop would be. In her rearview mirror, she could see Officer Smith’s car gradually closing in on her.

She drove past the KU campus, where in the fabled past students could study art and literature, when the telos of society was not to be a soulless consumer, when questioning the powers that be was admired, not admonished. But Kendra, like everyone else, was unaware of that occulted reality.

Kendra roared down 9th Street, her forbidden thoughts blazing inside her, on the brink of turning from a campfire into flames of reckoning. But she could run no longer: Officer Smith’s car was catching up. In the middle of the crossroads of 9th Street and Massachusetts Street, the Officer pulled out her gun, and shot the left tire of Kendra’s loyal consumer vehicle. “Get out!” Officer Smith yelled.

Kendra knew not what to do. As she looked outside, she saw hundreds of people lining the streets, hoping to witness a spectacle. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the heart locket, and exited the car.

With her gun drawn, Officer Smith eyed the fugitive closely, afraid that she might be armed. “What is that?!” she yelled.

But Kendra did not reply. Instead, she addressed the audience.

“Please everyone, listen to me! Today, I found something that changed my life,” she said, opening the heart locket. “This picture has two WOMEN, embracing, in love with one another. It is dated from 2017, in the lost times, the outlawed years that we are not allowed to speak or know of. But it was embedded in the earth, a time capsule waiting to be discovered.”

“You better shut up!” Officer Smith yelled.

“Everyone, think for one moment. How absurd is our world? Why can we not love who we want? Why is it a sin to desire to hear beautiful sounds and speak wonderful stories?”

“I’m warning you!” Officer Smith screamed, her fingers teetering on the trigger.

But behind her crept a woman that Kendra had once seen at the department store, who she had once exchanged a secret glance with. This woman held in her hands a baseball bat, and was walking at a pace imperceptible to Officer Smith.

“It is time for us to move against the State!” Kendra proclaimed. “That’s it!” Officer Smith shouted, as her index finger began to squeeze the hammer of the gun.

But at that moment, the secret woman bashed Officer Smith over the head, and she crumpled to the ground like a piece of ash falling to the floor of a burning forest.

The revolution had begun.