Hope

I practice every day. Be small. Look weak. Never look anyone in the eyes. Nondescripts are safer here. I see what happens to anyone who is too loud, too strong, too tall, too MUCH!

Space is paramount. They still haven't managed to control height, but weight is another matter. No one here is fat. Eating's a chore. Everyone has the same slop twice a day. We were told it has everything in it that we need to live. I look around at the rest of the survivors. I can't believe they buy into this stuff?! I crave real food. I crave a real conversation. There is no place I know of that is not within the range of EARS. There is no contesting an EARS status report. The super sensitive monitoring program is reliant on the most advanced technology. Even whispers are easily detected, but, so far, they don't know and can't control what I think. Thank god no one has mastered that ability, though I'm not so sure god is in the mix any more.

My Mom believed right up to the devastating blast that pretty much did away with our old world. If the MASTERS had not planned well in advance, no one would have survived. The construction cost of the underground stations and tunnels was slipped into the budget of all the major cities around the world. The MASTERS had orchestrated Armageddon and the only means of salvation. They were the new 'gods'. Wasn't anyone watching? I often think we deserve this.

Why am I a survivor? It seems mere chance that I was visiting newly found relatives in Paris, France. It was a last minute decision to visit the Louvre Museum on that fateful day. It was most certainly random that I ended up in an elevator to go up two stories. I always took stairs when given an option. Why? Why? Why? It exhausts me to try and find answers. Was it just the luck of the draw? I and three other elevator passengers plunged into the depths of the earth at the second of the impact.

Why keep us alive? Most humans don't 'work' in this new world, that is unless you're an expert in AI and technology. I guess every MASTER needs subjects. How else can they revel in power and control? I wish I had been with my Mother when the blast swept over the globe. Instantaneous oblivion sounds pretty good sometimes. She died believing in the goodness of mankind.

The plan? Wipe all remnants of our past life and program us to be ideal citizens of a New World Order. Literally stripped, doused with numerous sanitizing and cleansing agents, and given clothes that identify us as Commoners, we are supposed to be blank slates. Gray walls, gray clothes, gray food, and even gray computer chips housed in our backs - I've forgotten the color of joy. Everyone's hair is cropped short and our clothing is the same, regardless of gender. The sameness is demoralizing. I doubt we will go above ground in my lifetime. I doubt I will ever bear a child. Procreation is strictly controlled and the MASTERS have turned it into a science, post a decade of genetic experimentation. They have even taken our given names from us, or so they think.

It was accidental that I have a piece of my past. My Mother had given me a locket the week before the blast. I thought it was childish at the time. Hell, I was almost twenty. Who gives a twenty-year-old a heart shaped locket with a tiny, almost indistinguishable picture of their mother stuffed into one side and a similar picture of the child I used to be in the other? I don't remember the photo being taken. My hair is pulled up in wild disarray, eyes bright, with a smile that comes from feeling safe and being loved. I touch my now-cropped, coarse, dense curls and smile. When I first discovered the contraband tangled in my hair, I froze. I knew the penalty for being in possession of anything from the past. I developed an intricate system to protect the locket from being found and, so far, it has worked. It makes me feel a bit special, set apart. It gives me strength. To have found a way to keep this from the MASTERS, the EARS, the ENFORCERS...well, you would have to live here to know just how unbelievable that is.

Beneath my lowered eyelids a fire still burns in me. I have my own unadulterated thoughts. I still have a desire to control my destiny and I have my locket, a link to my past. Day after day, I watch and wait. I will survive. I know who I am and my name is Hope.