A Prison for Paradise by Gabrielle B-G (best way to read e books txt) 📕

in our  nature to crave revolution. It was also in our nature to crave freedom.
I remember how I would sit in my bedroom and stare out into the rolling waves. I felt a sort of dependency there. Perhaps it was even more-so a longing caused by ebb and flow of the tides. Every so often when I traveled, I could feel a secret rage rise within me. I had a good family: my sister Molly, my brother Bobby, and Mother who loved and took care of us.

Of course, Father had left for war long after I was born. This was more normal for most families; even the higher class couldn’t escape the drafting imposed by the Foundation. The story I am about to tell you is one of searching for meaning in the past and the future of our world.. This is the story of how I came to find out what my freedom really means to me. It is a story that only outcasts and dreamers and revolutionaries will ever understand.

 

The New World Order

Three years later and their economy rapidly transformed. Where ordinary citizens could at last rush to the top and stare down at their minions. The Great Foundation prospered and was branded into every essence of life.

The Great Order was President L. Herbert's dream of a peaceful utopian world. One where no war or violence existed. He wanted to rewrite history and shape the minds of every living body on earth. Yet the crazed religious suicides, anarchist violent anger, and overall dissent sparked by the informed, crazy, enlightened or just plane revolutionary  had not been enough for the wealthy. The Great Foundation was supposed to so many things.

Instead, a great awakening turned into endless tyranny and eventually silence. For soon those elect few decided that they were God-chosen to sweep this planet of her soul. Believing it was their time to quell the fever of freedom and rise of rebellion, they would deal an unforgotten blow to this dissent, and pave their golden paradise with the death of the millions of resisters. Those chosen few went unscathed, and yet all would soon turn and beg for their salvation as this mass epidemic of sickness swept the planet and nearly destroyed all life.

And so the earth was remade. When the survivors couldn't take it anymore, they begged on their knees to the Royal Elect to be saved. Then taken in to the remaining hospitals to be brainwashed, conditioned, and "cured". Some few would pay millions for a BlackMarket cure, and a very few would steal the formula, forever in hiding until their children left them into the world happily.
"The only price for truth is our happiness, and to get happiness we pay for perfection,” once said a great and powerful member of The League of Dreams. I could go on for decades about how we became so corrupt, but I must continue my story.

It was nearly four years after my brother was kidnapped from Meridia, that we learned of the threat. The kidnappers were coming to “save us” and we needed to flee as far as we could in hopes of getting away from what the citizens seemed to want: a perfect life. All the roads that make up the highways are intended for "upper class travel” only. Much too expensive for us outcasts to afford. They are for the factory owners and military police. The rest of us? Well, if you're bound through RFID INK, you are allowed to participate in some of society. Though, you cannot travel without a Lead who has that Official Clearance.

Even worse, if you are not legally bound through RFID INK. you cannot get a job, and are not allowed anywhere in society because you are an outlaw. This is how the new system works and if you are not wanted in the system or unable to enforce it, you are an outcast. It is out of their mercy that they won't kill us. Of course, we don't want to be citizens anyways. That’s why my mother moved to Meridia. Outcasts here had joined together and formed a free society away from The Great Foundation's. Instead of using money, we use the old method of trading one resource for another.

And so began our journey to the very place we feared and hated. My mother bought us tickets to board a large boat which would carry us across the water to The Coast of AMERA. It was so dark inside the ship, but at night I swore I saw a star. We were very scared that once we got to AMERA, they would send us back home. The air was cool at night, but our hope warmed us and our curiosity seemed to keep the tears away. We were leaving, alone. Two young girls, outcasts, with no idea of where we were going.

There was always a hope that “The ONE” was still striving within me. 

“It is brilliance, pure brilliance, if I do say so myself!” said The Great Foundation's Step Lord Roth Branes, “Now, I’m going to give you all a great Bible Lesson, though some of you have heard it many times before. In the beginning, God created two separate bodies to live together in the Garden of Eden. They were called Adam and Eve and they lived in ultimate perfection. And, it was through the great fruit of knowledge that we learned to think for ourselves. Some have said that God told us not to eat the fruit as a test. Well it was! It was a test of human strength! The strength to know the importance of sacrifice for happiness. The fruit was our creation, and the fruit was also our initiation.

Remember that all our greatest wars were fought because we knew that our right to freedom outweighed everything else. We knew that if we could win against Satan, as we all know it is the enemy of progress, that we would have our Garden of Eden. Well, my friends, where does all my talk fit in? Well, today marks our first step towards getting back to the Garden of Eden.

It has been a very long time that men have forgotten to share the fruit of our knowledge with the female kind. We declare that from this day onward, all females will have all the rights of men! Every single law shall be amended for young females and boys. No longer will a man be forced to leave his loved ones for battle or leave his children forever. Together we will march, side by side, man and female; fathers and sons will be armed with love for the females will join in our great victory. When the evil enemy has died, our bonds will not be broken. United we are one. We are one! Now I invite our female sisters to come taste of the fruit and rejoice in salvation.”


FALSE FREEDOM

 It was still morning when we made it to the coast of AMERICA. The coolness felt more comforting than the night before, and yet waking up in a foreign place left us feeling so empty, lost, and gone. We were like abandoned sea shells. Where was that creature inside of us? Had it been swept off in the storm? We were so afraid of being caught. So we did as we had planned all along, and jumped out of the boat to swim unnoticed to the shore.

 We were lucky because it was too dark for anyone to see us. And although Meridians were allowed to travel to AMERICA, there was a price that we weren't willing to pay for this legal travel. It was six miles when we finally made it to the beginning of the highway. They would not expect their missing passengers here.

You had to be crazy traveling without a license, but where else would we go? We wanted to make it out as far as we could from where they would find us. We were going to find the last free settlement. There, we would  be safe. Or at least we hoped. Back then we didn’t know all of this, of course. We had a map and the words, flee or die, still fresh in our minds.

“How much further do we have to go to get to the nearest gas station?” Molly asked.

“We have seven miles to go.”

There were many more gas station cities then. Molly, being my younger sister, had never heard of such a thing. She was afraid, but determined to survive.

“When are we going to ever see mommy again?” Molly had asked between sobs.

“Soon,” I would say, “As soon as we can get out of this place.”

I knew inside, and she knew deep down, that there was barely a chance of ever seeing her again. No one caught us from the time we left till we made it to the gas station.

The trucks were lined up and men were unpacking. Molly and I were to try and get into one going south. But Molly insisted on going to the bathroom. I admit, my bladder was about to burst. Molly did well going in and out without being noticed, but my features were easily caught and a man behind the counter took me back for questioning.

This is it, I thought, there is no way I can make it out of this one. I told him I was lost.

“Why is a girl like you so far from home? Where is your mother?”

“I don’t have a mother,” I lied.

He said he would let me go, for a price.

“Work for me for a few days, and I’ll forget this ever happened…” Then I saw him crack a wicked smile.

I had to go along and I felt sick. I secretly hoped Molly would wait for me. But every time I kept trying to go out he wouldn’t let me leave. I had to work if I was to escape ever. Because if I didn’t, he would make one call and they would send me, mom, and the whole of Meridia to prison. I became a slave to him. I had to work all day and half a night. No one else had to work as much as I did, for I had “special privileges.”

I would cry at first, every night, thinking of my sister, Molly. She was my sister. She was the only person I had left. She was my family. She was gone.

I was scared and alone. I spent my days toiling away like some slave girl. I mixed and poured chemicals and substances into the water. I began operating their new highly technological machines. In this daily routine I supplied my lonely days with smells from the sea substituting the smell of chemicals, gasoline, and smoke.

When I stocked the shelves, I secretly held the seashore freshener close to my nose. It smelled artificial and made me nauseous, but I craved the smell so much. When the boss was out, I would pull out the air freshener from under the cash register and silently daydream of the sea.

I had gotten so used to the patterns of work and the shifts, but most of all I think the fumes really got to my head. I began to forget nearly everything about my home and my past life. Time simply slipped away. I just knew that I really like that smell. I longed for it and craved it.

Then one day I woke up and the smell was gone. I searched in vain for anything recognizable. I had lost my sense of taste and smell! My mind felt empty all the sudden. I had to get out. The fear of losing my senses had woke me up. I hadn’t known how long I had been there but I knew I had to get out.

I walked out the door of my bedroom, out of the office, and