Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(2)
Me, when I’m upset my jaw gets tight and still. I just clench my teeth until the muscles in my cheeks ache.
Been clenching my jaw a lot lately.
There are two other obvious differences between us, other than our gender, of course. Ash’s eyes are a flat reflective blue-gray, like our mother’s. Mine are a strange, shifting color that seems to alternate from green to blue to gold, depending on the light. When I look closely in a mirror, I can see a starburst of amber in the middle of the blue, flecks and streaks like meteors shooting across an azure sky.
My eyes would give me away in a heartbeat, if anyone ever saw them. Soon after birth, children have their eyes corrected with lens implants. This is because human eyes have evolved to withstand exposure to certain wavelengths of light. Now that the atmosphere is damaged, we’re exposed to increased low-band ultraviolet radiation, which can harm untreated eyes. The surgery implants a filter that protects everyone’s eyes from the rays. It takes a long time to cause damage, but if someone doesn’t get the surgery they will eventually go blind. I haven’t noticed any damage yet, but I’m told around thirty my vision will start to dim. The filter is coded to identify every resident of Eden with a quick scan.
Of course, I couldn’t have the surgery, so my eyes are still their natural color. Sometimes when Ash looks at me too long I see him blink and shake his head, and I know that they unnerve him. My father, whose own eyes are dead brown like a wall, can hardly look at me.
The other difference between Ash and me wouldn’t be apparent to anyone. He’s older than me. Only by about ten minutes, but that’s enough. It means that he is the official, legal child: the firstborn. I am the shameful second child who never should have come into this world at all.
Ash goes inside to finish his homework. My lessons, assigned by Mom and closely paralleling Ash’s, were done hours before he even came home. Now, as the night deepens, I begin to pace restlessly around the courtyard. We live in one of the inner circles, just beyond the Center, because my parents are both in the government. It’s a huge house, much bigger than we need. But whenever Dad talks about selling it, or dividing it into parcels to lease, Mom shuts him down. It’s her house, inherited from her parents. Unlike most buildings in Eden, ours is made of stone. When I put my hands on it, I can almost feel the Earth breathing against me. It’s alive, somehow. More alive, anyway, than the metal and concrete and solar cells that comprise the other buildings in Eden. These stones have been in dirt, I think. Real dirt, with worms, and roots, and life. None of us in Eden has experienced such natural circumstances.
The moss that carpets the walled courtyard is alive, but it isn’t a real plant. It doesn’t need dirt. It doesn’t have roots, only threadlike anchors that help it cling to rock. It doesn’t take its nutrients from the ground, but from the air. Like everything in Eden, it is separate from the Earth. Still, it is growing, living, and as my feet pace along its carpeted softness a sharp, fresh smell rises to meet my nose. If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine I’m in one of the forests that died almost two hundred years ago.
As chief archivist in the Central Records Division, Mom has access to the oldest records, the ones from before the Ecofail. My datablock lessons only have graphic illustrations of the way things used to be, but Mom told me that in the secret chambers of the archives there are images—ancient and crumbling—of tigers and lambs and palm trees and meadows full of wildflowers. They are so old and precious that they are kept in a static-free room and handled only with gloves.
She gave me one. She could have gotten locked up for doing so, but the photo would probably never be missed, and she thought I deserved something special, for my years in captivity. One day when she was going through the records she found an undocumented image of a night sky over a great chasm. Tucked behind another document, it was labeled with a date immediately before the Ecofail.
The stars don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen. There are thousands of them, swimming in a milky sea, and beneath them I can make out the contours of trees clinging to the rocky ridge. It is a vastness I can scarcely comprehend. Eden is big, but I can bisect the city in an autoloop in half a day.
The ancient, folded image my mother smuggled out for me shows a world. The World, in fact. It is my most precious possession.
Because my mother has seen such things, she cherishes living organisms even more than most. The majority of households, Ash tells me, make do with cheerful, neon-green turf and plasticized trees. But Mom prefers to get as close as possible to the real thing, even if it isn’t as pretty. Besides the moss, we have chunks of rock covered in white and pink lichens. A creeping black slime mold coils its way up an abstract sculpture. And at the center of the courtyard is a shallow pool where red and green sheets of algae swirl continuously in an artificial current.
Mine is a luxurious house, large and comfortable. But a large, comfortable prison is still a prison.
I know that I shouldn’t think of it that way. Home should be thought of as a sanctuary, and the alternative to having a home is too horrible to even consider. But all the same, I can’t shake my sense of entrapment.
With so many lonely hours to fill, I’ve learned to schedule my days tightly. Empty time leads to daydreaming, and daydreams are dangerous for a person in my position. Schoolwork, art, and exercise are all arranged in regular sequence so I don’t have too much time to yearn for what I can’t have.