The Remedy Files: Illusion

by Lauren Eckhardt

  The Remedy Files:

  Illusion

  LAUREN ECKHARDT

  Copyright © 2014 Lauren Klump

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1505389593

  ISBN-13: 978-1505389593

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to my wonderful family, particularly my mom who has encouraged my writing ever since I was a little girl and to my husband who supports me every single day.

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  Sometimes I will just lie on the ground. There’s no reason. It’s simply the only thing I want to do.

  For the past couple of years, my dreams or nightmares or both- as sometimes they're hard to classify- have gotten worse. More frequent, more intense. But when I don't have them, I don't sleep. I'm not sure which one is worse.

  So mornings like today when I don't sleep throughout the night, I will simply sit on my bedroom floor and wait for the click of the door as it unlocks at 6:00 AM, notifying us that the Sleeping Hours are over. When this occurs on the weekend, it gives us some freedom as to how the day is spent as long as we don’t have to go to work. On weekdays, there's only a small amount of time I can steal for myself before the official schedule begins. Impetus prefers to keep us busy, making sure we’re continually learning and providing for the future. They also prefer that we always be around each other versus alone for systematic accountability. But I like time to myself. I especially like it in the early morning hours when I’ve spent hours wide awake staring at my ceiling. It makes me want to run to the outside the second I’m able.

  Today, that’s exactly what I did. As soon as my door unlocks, I’m sprinting through cave-like halls of the Levels 14-17 Home to get to the main door. I run on my tiptoes in an effort to prevent the echoes of my heavy footsteps from reverberating down the hallways. I pass door after door, confident that I’m the only person that’s up right now. Most alarms will go off around 7:00 AM, marking everyone’s start to a new day of an Impetus-driven agenda.

  I burst through the double doors into the morning air, the squeak of the hinges announcing my limited moment of freedom to Impetus. The sun is slowly rising, producing an incandescent mixture of the sun’s rays and the light from the Lightstones that welcome me into the freshness of a new day. This is my favorite time of the day, when the community seems completely untouched with no one around. There’s a glow of innocence that settles on it making it look somewhat beautiful, as though this would be a place people would choose to live if there was ever such a choice.

  But there’s not. No choice, no other communities, or at least that’s what we’re told to believe. This is just what we get: Impetus. And it’s okay, I suppose- especially during times like this when the enchantment of the morning air reflects the serenity of the land in its purest form. In these moments, there are no thoughts about the future or how things will be, or could be for that matter.

  The trouble is, I know that other communities exist. Gavin comes from another community and he’s told me about how some of our food comes from a community even further away. He was the start to my life changing. Ever since I met him, that’s when the dreams all began.

  My black boots kick up the dirt on Road C and something about the brown speckles drifting back down in a unanimous cluster makes me decide to head to the nearby digging grounds. It seems that ground specifically is calling to me today.

  The Lightstones shine through the Remedy Advertisement that sits erect in the middle of the road, almost blinding me with their solar rays. I don’t have to see it, though. I know by memory what is says from reading it time after time: “Remember: Three meals, three drinks and three Remedy doses a day keeps your life healthy and in play.” There is one advertisement down every road and each one displays something slightly different but the message is consistent and clear: To survive each day, we need to eat, drink water, and take our required Remedy doses three times a day. Not fulfilling each of those duties shows us as unruly and indifferent to our own life and the community of Impetus. Our wrist monitors assist in reminding us of the importance so forgetting is inexcusable.

  The sounds of my clunky steps are buffered by the grass as I cross to the other side of the road. I run my hand along the maintenance and storage buildings, tapping a random song on them as I move. Gavin hums a lot when I’m around him and sometimes those tunes will stick in my head long after my visits with him end. It’s nice being able to make my own song as it fills the silence of the morning air, although I wonder how much of it has been influenced by Gavin’s creations.

  Gavin once revealed to me that he’s sure he would have been a musician if he was born in The Before. “I hear music in my head all the time and I can make up the lyrics as though the songs already exist.” It was a rare moment of Gavin sharing more of who he is to me. “Maybe a guitarist.”

  “But you wouldn’t be able to feel the instrument.” I reminded him and immediately regret it. I didn’t need to state the obvious.

  “Yeah.” He resigned, which quickly ended the conversation. He never brought the topic up again.

  The luscious green grass comes to an end as the Digging Ground appears. There are small holes spread throughout the dirt from previous Level Digs that have taken place and the elevation is a little steeper from the progress made throughout the years. I wonder if they’ll eventually turn this into a pond once it gets deep enough. It seems pointless to fill it back up with dirt after all of the items have been found. A small body of water- even if manmade- would be nice to have to decorate Impetus a little bit. The pond is one of my favorite parts of the area that Gavin and I have our secret meetings at. It always seems to pick up on the beauty of the forest that surrounds it and then will reflect the image back, making it seem as though there’s twice as much of the beauty all around.

  I glide my right foot back and forth across the dirt, smoothing out an area that will soon turn into an acting bed for me until I have to get up and begin the rest of the day. Once the dirt is completely level, I lie down, stretching my legs as far as they can go.

  This angle of the sky is why when I can’t sleep, this is the only thing I want to do. There are a few white clouds that’ll swirl about as though chasing each other in an endless game that extends across time. They change in shape as they dance with one another, allowing me the privilege of watching their intimate interpretative art. Then one by one, they’ll disappear behind the outline of the thickets that stretch high above me.

  The sky is infinite. That’s how Gavin once described it. It sees things that we couldn’t even imagine. I asked him if the world is bigger than the few communities he mentioned to me that still exist. At first, he refused to answer the question. When I wouldn’t drop the topic, he just shrugged and said, “There’s no telling exactly what’s left after all the wars. Many say it’s too risky to find out. You know, due to the unknown and leftover destruction and stuff.” His reluctance to answer the question in the first place, though, tells me either he’s not too sure himself or there’s things he’s withholding. I’ve learned that much over the years with him.

  When I can’t sleep, I find my mind drifts to thinking about the way The Before used to be. It’s strange because I would think my dreams or nightmares would be the agent that propels me into this thinking. But it seems to be lack of sleep that does it more.

  I touch the dirt, thinking about the explosions that probably cackled across the sky like lightning as bombs were dropped on one naive community after another. I think about how there were people who had no clue their lives were about to end but then how there were others who knew it was coming yet chose to not make anyone else aware. I would choose to tell others if I was in that situation. Or
at least I hope that I would have been that type of person. If my life was already doomed I don’t see what preserving that secret could have helped. Although I suppose telling them would be pointless as well if pretty much the majority of the population was going to be destroyed. Maybe being naïve wouldn’t have been a bad thing in those final moments.

  Moving my hand along the dirt, I make lines as though I’m creating a complex map for someone else to follow. Supposedly, there are miles and miles under where my body currently is laying of objects from The Before. We treat those items as a special find- and they are- although I treasure certain ones that are found more than others. But ultimately they’re all dead. Everything from The Before is a dead artifact representing a dead world that no longer exists.

  Sometimes it’s hard to believe that we are relatives of all of these atrocious people in the stories of The Before that we learn about. These people who were more concerned with the items under the dirt than they were about each other. In the end, the items survived and they didn’t. It just never makes sense why they would choose the things they did. No matter how many times I hear the stories, I can’t get my mind to wrap around them. Life was completely different, and the sky and dirt have seen it all.

  It’s in these moments that I understand Impetus the most. Although Gavin has proven new facts to me that Impetus tries to hide, I get it. They are trying to protect us. They want to keep us safe. The founders of Impetus recognized their mission is to provide a better future for mankind and to prevent the mistakes of the past from repeating. The survivors of The Before created our new life here. They know better than anyone else because they saw it all… They were a witness to the destruction when there was nothing left in the world except a few remaining lives that agreed on a pact to survive and not kill each other, creating a brand new civilization.

  We have to continue to depend on Impetus for the decisions they’re making. They have created a nice community that operates smoothly. Our population is growing and there are good people around us who want the best for Impetus and our future. Even Caroline is better than anyone from The Before that we hear about. Life is safe.

  Sitting up, I survey the environment around me. The gardens have dew on them from the morning air and all the plants are glistening and swaying, proving in response to my thought that their life is indeed virtuous. They’re decorative reminders of The Before but they are far from the existence that used to be in their place.

  There’s a lone rock, small in size, sitting just a few inches from me as though it’s keeping me company. It looks particularly minuscule in such a large dirt mound and I wonder if that’s how I look from the sky as I sit in the grounds of Impetus. I’m just a petite dot, a tiny part of today’s existence. I blend in daily but yet I stand out enough to be considered an important part of the future of Impetus. In a few days, my future will be declared and I will be given a new purpose for how the rest of my life is to be spent.

  I hold the little rock and close my eyes, trying to imagine what it feels like if I could feel it at all. Gavin describes them as cold, hard, sometimes with sharp edges that could hurt if you pull your finger across them at the wrong angle. Every morning that I can’t sleep, I come out here and try to imagine what something new feels like- whether that’s a building or plant in the garden or the ground itself. Gavin would like to hear that, but I don’t tell him. I hate that feelings game he plays with me. It’s stupid and pointless. But there’s something about not sleeping that makes a person do things they typically wouldn’t do.

  Reluctantly, I stand back up and dust the dirt off my pants. “I’ll see you again soon,” I mutter to the dirt, the gardens, the thickets, and anything else that was accustomed to my random morning visits. I like to pretend they’re listening even when they can’t talk back. My definition of alive is a little different than most.

  I take my time walking back to the Levels 14-17 Home. It’s time to get ready and start the day but I’m not quite ready to release these few minutes where I did something that’s not on Impetus’ schedule for me. I let out a sigh as puffs of white air follow the sound out of my mouth. I trust the schedule and all their plans for me. I do. I would just rather do alternative things more. Like go visit Gavin. I’d rather be doing that the majority of every single day. Instead, I have to wait until I go through the motions of school and the rest of the day until I can get to him.

  Sometimes I wonder how my life would be if I never met Gavin. For instance, I’m not sure if I would be out here right now in the morning, completely alone. I highly doubt there would be nights that I am not able to sleep. What I know without question is that when I do fall sleep, I wouldn’t have those dreams.

  CHAPTER 2

  When I get back to my room, I sit on the bed, waiting for the light to click off above the bathroom, meaning that it is now free for use. I already dressed for the day earlier so I don’t need to use it but when the light goes off, it’s only a few more minutes before Jacqueline comes bouncing into my room.

  Jacqueline and I have always been lucky with Suitemate selections each year. We have consistently been each other’s since Level 5 which was the first time we were put in separate rooms with joint bathrooms. All of the years prior to that we were in large Levels 0-4 sleeping rooms with caregivers.

  It gives me hope that maybe the Community Board’s decisions for the Futures Ceremony will be as accurate. They’ve obviously done a good job watching us, knowing that our friendship is important. I’m sure they’ve been taking notes on what’s good for our futures as well.

  Usually, Jacqueline’s colossal smile and laugh are contagious in the mornings as she comes into my room to partner up for the rest of the day. Today, it’s just not the same. Luckily, she can read me pretty easily.

  When she bursts through my door with her classic, big white smile, she immediately stops in her tracks. “You didn’t sleep again.”

  “Shhh!” I pull her inside my room and shut the door. “You can’t be saying those things out in the open.”

  “Relax, I checked down the hall. No one is around. We’re good, we’re good.” Jacqueline gives me her signature quick hug and then leans against my dresser, crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes narrow in on me, and even with her furrowed eyebrows and wrinkles at the crown of her nose, she still looks perfect. “Maybe you should have the Doctor check you out again. It could be more normal than you think.”

  If Impetus found out I wasn’t sleeping, I would become the Clinic’s newest science experiment. I already went through multiple tests once before when they thought I was ill due to the atypical color of my eyes. I can’t have that again. Besides, another hit on my health record so close to the Futures Ceremony is bound to hinder my chances even more for getting paired. I have a lot working against me as it is.

  “How many times have you seen ‘Insomnia’ come across the Clinic paperwork? I think we’d be one of the first to know if it’s normal.” For the past few years, Jacqueline and I have worked more hours at the Clinic office than anyone else. Even if we aren’t there during daytime hours when certain patients come in, we have to finish up the notes as part of our work-study lessons to learn all facets of the office.

  “Yeah, okay, you win. But you’re normal, I’m sure. Wouldn’t I out of all people know that?”

  I titter, “I don’t think you’ve been hitting the books enough to know.” Jacqueline was supposedly once in line to be the next Doctor since the current one is nearing the age of Respite. Despite being the most intelligent person in our class, she hasn’t dedicated herself to her work studies and made it pretty clear that if she had a choice, she wouldn’t choose that future.

  Flipping her long, curly ponytail to the side with overly dramatic flair, she says, “I have been busy with other things.” then joins me in laughter. We both know Ethan is the sum of those “other things”.

  “You know if they pull me in for more tests, no matter what the outcome, they’re not going to want me to take pa
rt in the reproduction of the future of Impetus. I will be deemed as ultimately and hopelessly diseased.”

  Jacqueline snorts in response as she shifts her weight from one foot to another. “We’re all a little diseased in some way or another, right?”

  That’s one of Gavin’s favorite lines. So for a moment, her comment makes me think she knows everything I do- that our knowledge about the truths of reality is finally equal. She knows Gavin, and all the things we talk about and the same lies of Impetus have been revealed to her too. I have wanted to talk to her about all of this badly for so long that I almost respond with, “I wonder if the other communities operate like this” but she cuts me off before I can open my mouth.

  “You probably just need an adjustment to your Remedy dosage. It may not be a bad thing.” She shrugs casually and that’s when I realize that regrettably, she doesn’t know any different. She only knows what Impetus has told her which means no other communities exist. That’s the problem with me having a separate life. Sometimes it’s hard to keep them both straight. I have a best friend in two different lives that I can’t blend.

  Jacqueline is probably right about the dosage increase, though. I take two pills three times a day as it is. Jacqueline and I compared pills side by side once before and mine are slightly bigger than the ones she’s required to take which was the result of the last round of tests that were performed on me. They will no doubt make an adjustment to my doses or pill sizes again since that seems to be their quick solution to everything.

  What’s worst than me not sleeping in the eyes of Impetus, is that when I do sleep, I dream. We’re not supposed to dream. Remedy prevents it. Ever since I met Gavin the dreams started and most are as though I live in The Before with feelings again. I can’t tell anyone that, though. I don’t know how to begin to describe it or understand what it means. I haven’t even told Gavin.