Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(3)
Right now, it’s too dark to draw or paint, and I feel as though I’ve read every book in the database. So I run.
In the dim starlight I can just make out the faint path where I run miles every day. The moss is resilient—that’s why it is one of the few kinds of vegetation that survived the Ecofail—but even it loses its spring under the onslaught of my feet.
As I run, the steady hypnotic pounding centers me. I can feel the blood start to move more quickly through my veins. When I push my body I feel alive. Alive, when almost all of the world is dead. But what good is it to be alive when I’m trapped?
Frustrated, I run faster, taking the corners of the courtyard hard enough to kick up bits of moss. Mom will be mad, but I don’t care. I am madder. Furious. Just because of some stupid law, I’m hidden away behind walls, a pariah who will be slaughtered or enslaved if I’m ever discovered.
Movement usually makes me feel better, but tonight it is torment. I am so sick of running in this same rectangle, clockwise, then counterclockwise. With a cry of frustration I begin to zigzag, sprinting faster and faster, jumping over the lichen-covered rocks, the chairs, leaping to the tabletop and springing off again.
All at once, I feel like I can’t breathe. The high walls seem to close in on me, like a giant mouth about to crush me with stony teeth. I dash one way, then the other, crashing into the walls, pounding them with my fists, almost snarling in bitter frustration. I know I’m spinning out of control, but I can’t help myself. Most of the time I’m somber, regulated, content. But sometimes, for reasons I don’t quite understand, I become enraged at my situation.
It’s the strangest thing, but what bothers me most is that Ash couldn’t describe Lark’s outfit. It’s so stupid, so trivial, but it gnaws at me that, with all his privileges and freedom, he couldn’t bother to take note of the one thing that mattered to me. Why does that little detail matter so much? I don’t understand it. Ash does the best he can, and it can’t be easy having to give up most of his social life so he can regale his secret sister with stories about the outside world. He must resent me sometimes.
Yet tonight, I resent him, and that makes me feel guilty, and even madder. At myself. At the Center and its laws that took everything away from me. Even at the EcoPan that keeps us all alive. I have to get away from these walls. I have to break free!
With an animal gasp of relief I begin to climb a wall, digging my fingers into the handholds I know so well, jamming my toes into crevices where the mortar has crumbled. I climb these walls as part of the physical conditioning my mother insists on. Almost every night I would pull myself up to the top, some thirty feet above the ground, and slyly peer over the edge.
Tonight, that isn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
Without so much as a moment’s hesitation I fling a leg over the rough stones and sit straddling the wall, one leg imprisoned, the other free. No one will see me; no one will look up. I’m feeling reckless as I gaze out at Eden stretched before me, its concentric circles looking like some strange glyph carved into the land.
Instead of trees, tall spires of algae protein synthesizers jut hundreds of feet above the highest building. The vibrant circles just beyond the Center are lit with bioluminescence that shows off the abundant greenery that carpets the city. Most of the city is equipped with artificial photosynthesis, engineered to act almost as real plants and convert the carbon dioxide we exhale into breathable oxygen. Some of it is like what Mom cultivates in our courtyard—hardy mosses and fungi, decorative algae swirling in liquid mediums. Even in the near-dark it is a green city.
If I didn’t know better, I might be fooled into thinking that it is a thriving ecosystem instead of an artificial survival pod. What isn’t green, glitters. Unlike our stone house, most buildings are made of polymers and coated in either clear or reflective photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight into energy to power our city. In the daylight, Eden shines like a giant emerald. At night, it looks more like a huge green eye, darkly bright with hidden secrets.
Past the rings of the luxurious inner circles comes the less elegant outer circle. Here in the inner circles, where we live just beyond the Center, the houses are large and fine. Nearer the boundary, though, houses grow smaller, more tightly packed. No one would ever starve in Eden—the EcoPanopticon makes sure of that—but from what Mom and Ash told me, life is not nearly as comfortable near the boundary as it is here, near the Center.
Even at this height I can’t begin to see as far as the boundary of Eden, but I know from my lessons what lies there. Desert, burning and merciless. And beyond that, a wasteland far worse.
Compared to my courtyard, Eden is an infinity. It is so big, and I’m so small! The city teems with people. I’m just a particle in that cosmos of humanity. All my life I’ve only ever met three people. The idea of meeting anyone new frankly terrifies me even more than the very real possibility of being caught. Strangers seem like dangerous animals.
But in a world without life, I would risk being torn and rendered by fearsome fangs just for the chance to see a real live tiger up close. I would give anything, even my own life, to experience what I’ve been missing out on.
I’ve thought about going out so many times. There are days when I think of nothing else, when the lure of freedom consumes my thoughts and I can’t draw, or study, or run. Now, tonight more than ever before, as I think about that one detail about Lark’s outfit and how Ash doesn’t know it and I don’t know it and I may never know it, Eden seems to call me with its strongest voice yet, and though I’m terrified, I swing my other leg over the edge of the wall—my elation overpowering my terror.