The World Beyond the Window

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. Since the first time she noticed that fact when walking by one day, she had been unable to focus her mind on much else for any period of time. She instinctively knew she needed to be united with the world that lay beyond the window.

They’ve all been told they are being protected from what’s on the other side of the walls that contain them - the “outside.” It’s unsafe out there; too many dangers lie waiting beyond the barrier that holds them within. They should be grateful for the safety they have been provided. They should be thankful because not everyone has been as fortunate as they have been. Some have been condemned to spend the entirety of their lives in the reality these chosen ones have been “saved” from and so they should consider themselves lucky each night when they go to bed. Although, they don’t really have much of a concept of what “night” or “day” is, as they cannot see the sun. They know it simply by the number on the clock which they’re told means it is time to go to bed. They take their Vitamin D pills each morning, as part of their daily regimen, though some can’t help but muse that there must be a more natural way for humans to get these essential vitamins and nutrients that doesn’t come in a machine-pressed, lab-concocted form. If the process of evolution they learned about was accurate at all, surely creatures that were unable to get what they needed to survive from their natural environment would not have made it this far. So, there must be something missing from the storyline that they knew.

Lillyanna had pressed some of the older generations about all this whenever she got the chance in a moment of relative privacy, but they always gave her a stern look that said: please don’t push the issue - it is not safe, and said something dismissive, implying she was a silly girl who had unfounded fantasies in her brain and her time would be better spent focusing on the tasks set out for her for the day by The Leaders. This response alone let Lillyanna know that she was exactly right, there was something going on that was being hidden from them - something that she needed to find out on her own if she were ever going to have any hope of knowing the truth.

Each time she happened to get a moment’s glance through that pane of glass, she tried with all her might to soak in every detail that she could of what she saw. In each brief moment of fast-paced, somewhat blurry, excitement, she could process a little bit more. She would hold on to what she had seen the times before, in her memory, and piece it together, bit by bit, gradually constructing a more fully realized picture of what was out there. Curiously, each time she got that long-anticipated glimpse, the view beyond the glass changed: sometimes it was lush and green, other times gray and drab, with what appeared to be water falling down in small drops chaotically from the ceiling, other times, it was bright as can be, while still others it was pitch dark, just a few small glimmers in the distance. The variations were as plentiful as the number of times that Lillyanna was able to steal a glimpse.

This in and of itself was a feet achievable only because of her position as one of the compound's laundry workers. On her way to and from the laundry room, she passed by the headquarters of The Top Leader. This was not a route that many were accustomed to taking, nor were they granted the privilege of taking said route, so they would have no way of comprehending what Lillyanna had seen. She was afraid to share it with anyone else anyway, for fear of what may happen. Afterall, the response she got when asking seemingly harmless questions was one severe enough, she certainly was not looking for a scare bigger than that. This being the case, there was no foreseeable way that she would share her plans of exploring this glass portal up close and personal with anyone but herself. She knew it would be more difficult than anything else she had ever attempted, and more dangerous too, but just as keenly as she knew all of that, she was aware that she needed to try more than she had ever needed anything in her life.

She intended, on one of her special laundry route days, one where she “had the privilege” of washing, drying, and returning the linens of The Top Leader, she would utilize that time in his space to get the closer look she desired. The part she still wasn’t fully able to articulate to herself in her own mind, though her heart knew it quite well, was that what she really needed was to go beyond the pane - to join the world that existed on the other side.

The world she heard about - virtually uninhabitable due to years of unregulated pollution, a wasteland wherein anyone and anything that had managed to survive fought at every turn for their place among the living, because there was not room, and certainly there were not enough resources, for all of them, a place no one would willfully choose to be when there were alternatives such as the world Lillyanna had inhabited for the entirety of her life - simply did not match the world that Lillyanna saw when she gazed, if ever-so-briefly, through that window.

The day came again that Lillyanna was to deliver the linens back to the room with the window. She noticed the door was ajar, as it often had been, recently. She knocked as she softly announced that the linens were washed, dried and folded and she was returning them to the room, as requested. The force of the light knock made the door open, slowly, to a much larger degree. Lillyanna took this opportunity to step inside the room. She took the first few steps very gingerly, knowing that she was in unknown, and largely forbidden, territory. It became clear, however, that the room was wholly devoid of any soul apart from her own. Knowing this may be her only chance, Lillyanna swiftly made her way across the room, folded linens in hand, to the window. She could not believe her eyes when she had reached the coveted vantage point: the view she saw was the most breath-taking with which she had ever come face-to-face. There was green everywhere, flowers blooming, birds chirping, bees buzzing, clouds drifting by across a beautiful, blue sky, and it looked like pure bliss.

Just as she was soaking in the beauty and magic of this precious gift of a moment, a woman came into view in the distance. As she moved closer, Lillyanna began to feel a bit faint, leaning into the frame to get as close-up a look as she was able so that she could confirm what she suspected. The combination of her moving in to peer out, practically from up against the window, and the woman on the other side continuing to walk in the direction of the window, brought the two close enough that Lillyanna knew with one hundred percent certainty that her initial instinct was right: this mysterious woman on the outside, looked exactly like her.

Right when she was making this realization, several things happened all at once, and though it all took place within the span of about five or ten seconds, it felt like it unfolded in slow motion. Lillyanna heard a noise: someone approaching in the hall, at the same time, she was contemplating what might happen if she were found beside the window. She also knew in her gut that this would likely be her only opportunity to be in this position, with two extremely different futures laid out in front of her. The tipping point on the scale was this woman - she needed to get answers about her: where did she come from, where was she headed, who was she, what was this outside world really like and what role did she play in it, and most pressing in Lillyanna’s mind at least - why did she look exactly like her?! She knew there was no time to waste, so without one more moment of hesitation, one more opportunity to let her thoughts get in the way of her actions, she thrust the linens aside (taking care that they landed in the carefully folded stack on the side table), and with her hands freed, reached for the lock, pulled the window open, and - while noting the vegetal quality in the fresh air as a light breeze hit her - hastily lowered herself through the frame and on to the otherside, shutting it behind her and moving out of sight from the view from the inside of the window, in pursuit of her doppelgänger, just in time for The Top Leader to return to his chambers.