Lovers of Babel

by Valerie Walker

  “’Parents of Sage, this is your formal invitation to enter your daughter in elementary power school. Here, Sage will learn to develop her powers so that she may become one of the best 3 generation creators that this earth has to offer. She will also study the fundamentals as well, however; in power school the focus will be on hexing. We are proud to offer the daughter of Mr. Riley a place in this prestigious academy. If you choose to seek higher education for your daughter she must depart within 24 hours. We must keep the location secret from the naturals and other outsiders in order to protect our students. So, to find the school you must follow me in your hover car. We will depart in a day.’”

  Then the blob collapsed into a tiny droplet of mercury. We didn’t need a day to decide whether I was going or not. My father was ecstatic about it. He had dreamt of the day that his first born would be able to take his place as leader, and the fact that I had the opportunity to advance my powers further than his own, made him all the more eager to send me off. My mother on the other hand, was not so keen on sending her five-year-old to some unknown place by herself for a year of schooling. She preferred that I go to a normal school in town and have a normal childhood. Sure I would have powers, but they wouldn’t be the center of my life. Despite my mother’s old fashioned plan for me, my father’s authority trumped her simple aspirations for my future. My suitcase was practically already packed.

  I’m not sure if I would’ve hated the life that my mother wanted for me. I wouldn’t have had so much responsibility and pressure to improve my powers. Still, if I had grown up a simple girl I wouldn’t have a reason to investigate some of the secrets of our beginnings and I also wouldn’t have met my friends.

  The next day my parents and I got dressed and ready for the journey to Power School. The blob was already inflated and hovering by the door when we reached the living room. We loaded into our black hover car and followed the blob as it sped through New Washington like a pinball. Once we got to the outskirts of the city, the blob ascended higher up into the sky. We were now amongst the colorful clouds, much higher than a domestic car usually flew. We traveled for hours and hours until finally the school appeared in the distance. From the outside, the school seemed to have no windows. It was huge, round and silver and it sat on top of a body of water. It appeared to float there. The blob zoomed away from us and disappeared into the liquid structure of the school building. Thousands of blobs from all different directions were flying into the school in the same way. They looked like drops of mercury coming together to join one giant blob. The school was sitting in the middle of the ocean where there was not another building in sight, except for the other two smaller replicas sitting on either side of the main structure. We landed our car in the water right in front of the sphere building. We waited a while to see what we should do next. We saw other cars that were on the water drive into the building and disappear. My father decided to do the same. We began to drive toward what looked like a shiny silver wall. I braced myself and my mom shrieked as we collided into the structure and came out on the other side as if nothing happened. I looked behind us and saw the ocean.

  In front of us was a city filled with all sorts of people walking along the sidewalks chatting about the day’s events. The city looked like autumn in New York. The few times I visited I remembered the different colored trees that lined the streets to decorate the environment with subtle beauty. This place looked like something out of the old world in its simplicity, but I could tell there was something magical about it.

  We exited the car with my luggage and began walking toward the crowded city. When we arrived at the middle of the square I saw a wealth of book stores lining the street. There were so many types of bookstores, from children’s books to geology textbooks. No two stores were alike. The people in scarves and sweaters were going in and out of stores some carrying books and others reading them along the way. We walked further down the street and there in front of us stood a red brick building with the words: The Power Society in big letters above the front doors. As we entered the elaborate building I noticed moving murals on the grand ceiling and marble floors. My parents were too busy looking for someone to direct us to the school to notice. Finally, a fair-skinned woman with round eyes appeared before us.

  “Mr. Riley and family, it is a delight to have you here. I trust it wasn’t too hard finding us. We like for first-timers to get a personal perspective of the city,” she said with an Icelandic accent.

  “This is a city?” My mother asked.

  “Oh, have you never been here before? Aren’t you wife of the headmaster of all power schools?”

  “Yes, but my husband has never taken me on a tour,” my mom gave my father a look.

  “Well I’m sure there’s a good reason for that,” the woman replied nervously.

  “I wish I could’ve visited a long time ago,” my mom said while looking above her at the floating clouds. “Since there are clouds inside, does it ever rain inside the society?” The question sounded absurd.

  “Only if there’s a reason. The last time it rained, one of our most precious artifacts from the old age, a 20 century book, was stolen from the power society library. It was the oldest thing to ever enter the new world,” she said.

  “ It happened about five years ago,” my father added. “We’re still looking for it.”

  My mother looked at him as if wanting to ask more questions about the stolen book, but our tour guide interrupted.

  “Now who is this little bundle of joy all nice and snug in her coat?” The woman bent down to talk to me.

  “I’m Sage,” I said shyly.

  “Well Sage we’ve got lots of fun and adventure planned for you so don’t be afraid of leaving mommy and daddy for a while. We’re going to take good care of you,” the fair woman said.

  She stood up to address my parents.

  “If you will follow me I will show you to the dormitory where she’ll be sleeping.” She walked briskly through the elegant lobby and down a long hallway with various pictures hanging on the walls of old people looking serious. We struggled to keep up. When we finally reached the end of the hallway there were two large staircases on both sides of the room that lead to the top floor where the living quarters were.

  “There are about six dozen of these dormitories with four chamber mates in each chamber.” She explained as we walked up the left staircase.

  As we made our way up the last set of stairs we could see a large room with antique tables and couches in the middle where the staircases met.

  “Here we have a reading room for the children. There are a dozen of these here in the elementary chambers,” she said.

  She then continued leading us into another long hallway to the left of the reading room. This time the walls had the ocean painted on each side. The faster we walked the more the water would sway.

  “This is one of our top professor’s masterpieces,” she said pointing at the wall. “He was the first creator to ever successfully create something that was suspended in animation without needing to keep a watchful eye on it.”

  My parents looked thoroughly impressed. I was lost, but I loved this place. This was a kid’s dream house. The hallway led us to a large room with four child size doors, two on each side. In the middle of the room there was a fireplace, two couches, and an Indian rug. There was a large wooden chest in the corner of the room that I suspected was for toys and games.

  “Here is her living quarters. She will be sharing this space with three other girls.” She brought out a key from her pocket and unlocked the door on the right in the left corner.

  “This will be her own personal living space.”

  I looked up at my father before entering. “Go on it’s yours,” he said lightly nudging me.

  The room was larger than I expected given that the door was so small. A crystal chandelier lit the room from the top. There was a pink bed by the round window that looked out toward a grassy field. There was a tall blue cabinet on the other side
of the room for my clothes. There were two small white chairs and a round white table by my bed that could be used for pretend tea time. There was also a bathroom, small floral vanity, small bookshelf, desk, and mini wireless refrigerator. I looked around in awe at my new home. Then I noticed something peculiar sitting on the bed. It looked like some kind of rope with a tag hanging from it.

  “What’s this?” I asked the guide.

  “This is an animal collar that you will need soon.”

  “But I don’t have a pet,” I said doubtfully.

  “I know child. Soon you will.”

  “But where will I get one? At a pet store?”

  “There is no need for pet stores when you have this,” she pointed at my forehead. “You will see soon. For now, I just want you to explore your new home, ok?”

  I nodded still skeptical about the pet thing.

  “Well Mr. and Mrs. Riley what do you think? Are these suitable living conditions for your daughter?” She asked.

  “Absolutely! When I was her age I lived Underground where the only view from my window was a giant dome made from inside the earth!” he said laughing.

  My mother agreed with a smile.

  “Splendid!” The fair lady exclaimed. “Now, to the cafeteria and classrooms. Ah, before I forget. The students are assigned their chamber mates by a slightly random process. For the elementary students we like to group creators, transformers and teleporters together in an attempt to enhance their knowledge of powers. We find it helpful that the children grow up understanding how different powers work. Once they get into high school we focus more on the student’s specific power grade.”

  We proceeded down the stairs and explored the rest of the school. Under the second story was the cafeteria. There were about fifteen large round tables with plates and utensils all prepped for the next meal. The headmasters’ table was at the center of the room adorned with chairs lined with gold. Above our heads was another sky scene. This time the sky was blue and there was the sun with rays that filled the room. It was the first time I had seen a blue sky and a sun. The sky that sheltered our world was usually dark purple during the day and the clouds were never white and fluffy. I remember being told by a teacher when I was 10 years old that the sky ceased to be blue and white because the ash and fire from the apocalypse scarred it for life. The cafeteria was the only place in the new world where an Equinoxian could see the sky as it should really be.

  The fair woman looked up serenely.

  “I’ll never get used to seeing it like this. Our sky is beautiful, yes, but there’s nothing like a pure blue sky lighted by the sun,” she sighed and looked at my parents who were looking up with mouths agape.

  “This is the cafeteria of course. All of our meals are organically processed using the most authentic chemicals money can buy. We make anything from buffalo burgers to salmon using pure taste extract manufactured by the best faux food chefs in the new world.”

  My parents nodded in approval.

  A cook approached us with a silver tray topped with what looked like shrimp wrapped in bacon. The lady stuck one with a toothpick.

  “Here, try one,” she handed one to me then to my parents.

  “Yummy! I can’t even taste the chemicals! This actually tastes like bacon,” my mother enthusiastically said.

  My mom always loved to cook, but she used to cook using real meats and vegetables. That was before the food shortage. There weren’t that many animals left after the apocalypse and those that were left were hunted for food before they could be used to reproduce. Some had been exposed to incredible amounts of radiation.

  The geneticists tried cloning the healthy ones, but the cloned animals proved too toxic to digest. Eventually, the authorities mandated that all food and vegetables must be produced using elements from the earth and vegetation that had not been destroyed. They also made it illegal for creators to create food using their powers.

  This rule was one that most people found it hard to understand. It seemed harmless to create food if need be. If anything, creators could’ve been responsible for fixing the food shortage forever. We would never go hungry. But I began to realize as I got older that all of the rules regarding the use of our powers were put in place to control us. As I grew older I suspected more and more that this rule was meant to keep us at the mercy of the Authorities. To beat starvation, you could imagine the concoctions the food processors came up with.

  The catch was that the poorer the family was the more risky their food choices became. The food that was the cheapest to buy was used with less earth manna and more chemicals that proved toxic to the human body over time. The fact that at five I was eating top notch cuisine was a big deal to my parents and even my mom had a sigh of relief.

  After touring the dining hall we trekked outside the glass doors onto a large lawn area.

  “This is our pavilion. The kids enjoy recess during the day here. The grass is kept in tip-top shape by our groundskeeper who happens to be a natural,” she said with one hand covering her mouth.

  Naturals were like a faux pas to the power society. Almost like eating dinner with your hands or talking aloud in public. But I guess they were good enough to use as the help. Even at five years old this gesture of superiority didn’t escape me. Eventually, I would see that belittling those smaller than you happened within the super human community as well.

  The lawn was expansive and was the center of the entire school grounds. Every building circled it forming a horseshoe. When we were finished walking across to the studies building it was getting to be night. We entered the glass building and it looked much more futuristic than the vintage woodgrain interior of the dormitories. In the studies building there were glass bridges stretching out above our heads connecting one side of the building to the other. It looked to be twenty stories high and as I looked up there were teachers walking every which way from one side to the other. The elevators were also glass and the inside of the building sounded hollow.

  “This is the lobby and the classes are all up there. The class room locations are separated between elementary, middle, and high school levels, but the library is a communal place for everyone to use if they so choose,” the woman explained.

  We walked further away from the glass lobby and over to a room filled with books. I immediately knew what this was. The bookshelves were as tall as the building and were so high that I nearly broke my neck trying to look. There were glass platforms on each corner of the shelves that you could step on that elevated and moved from left to right. There were about 150 shelves in all. I could tell that the library was an important part of the school with all the intricacy that was put into designing it. There were tables all throughout the library in the center and in between shelves. They had transparent glass tabletops that were made with a computer inside. Students and teachers could manipulate the screen with just a touch of their fingers. This was the highest technological feature the school had to offer.

  The Equinoxians looked at technology as an inferior means of communicating. Since the power shift happened, the technology of the new world was, quite literally, inside the people.

  My people rationalized their contempt for technology by saying: What was the purpose of using the intranet when you could simply teleport to a place and find the information there? It made no sense to use a hologram, because creators could make anything appear in an instant. The 4D opera was unnecessary, because the greatest actors of our world were all transformers. The naturals were the only people who could never benefit from all of this, but since they were mostly elderly anyway, the rest of us super humans couldn’t have cared less.

  At the end of our tour of the school my parents and I were convinced that this was the best thing for me. The school had everything a kid could dream of.

  Saying goodbye to my parents was bitter sweet. My mother kissed me on my cheek and told me to notify her if I needed anything at all. She gave our tour guide all of her contact information in case of an emergency. Th
e woman already knew our information, but acquiesced to writing it down for sympathy’s sake. My father gently pulled my mother away from me and told me to be good and stay out of trouble. I would see my parents on holidays and short vacations to New Washington, but despite my young age I was never homesick. I thrived in my new home.

  This was the beginning of my life as a creator.

  On the first day of classes the students entered their assigned classrooms and sat in old-fashioned wooden desks. My chamber mates and I went to class together and sat next to each other. We were immediate friends. In our group there was Mia the raven-haired transformer, Zoe a green-eyed teleporter, and me, with my dark, curly hair and freckles. I was fond of all these girls, but I was particularly fond of Mia who once crawled through soot and mud to find my heart necklace that my mother gave to me as a keepsake. I had lost it on a field trip one day. She spent hours searching for it.

  The first day of class was a pivotal moment in our lives. The elementary teachers wanted to test our abilities right away so as to determine our level of skill in our particular power grade. We each had a test to complete based on our individual powers. The transformers were each required to stand in front of the class and transform into their favorite animal. The class erupted in chatter among the students. This was the first time that most of the students had ever used their powers. We were still so young. One by one each transformer was called up to display their transformation to the class. There were kids changing into half-man half-dogs. Some kids could only grow wings. The room would break into laughter at each failed attempt. Then it was Mia’s turn. She stood up from her creaky desk and slowly walked over to the front of the room. She turned to face the class.