Plateau (rough draft)

rough draft of a story about society vs nature. Two individuals are given the jobs of communicating with nature for their entire people.

Plateau

Part I:

Chapter I: Where we come from

Where we come from, people live like ants under thumb. Overruled by our strict obligations of task and the rigors of our class system. Where we come from, the people are happy for these things.

In our society, you live according to necessity. Every decision and choice is for the need of the people. Once you have become of age an evaluation of your skills, knowledge and other attributes is done. The rest of your life is planned according to what this evaluation determines that you need to be. In our society, we are chosen to do, what we need to.

Most people, in our common age, are chosen for work of industry. The majority of the population works in the black towers and factories. They say that the future of our kind depends on this. Most people, in our common age, are not selected to do what we do on the other hand.

While our brothers and sisters clamor about the city, we are alone in the trees. Compared to the rest of our kind, compared to their continuous interaction, our lives are spent in silence. It is our charge to keep us close to nature. Away from our peers we try to understand our basic selves by giving ourselves to the forest. While our brothers and sisters pluck the fruit, we communicate with it.

It is unusual for there to be two of us, a live, at the same time, but the evaluations are not flawed. Traditionally only one man or woman is determined to be worthy of the loneliest task, but the last few generations have not been traditional. Rarities and oddities have become increasingly witnessed. The most noted of these curiosities, are us, we, the two living Oculus.  

 

Chapter II: The two living Oculus

I remember, five years before my own election, the first time I heard his name; Mentis-13-7. It was on the annual day of graduation, where young boys and girls become of age, and are elected to their tasks. Everyone heard his name that day; it was at the front and end of every sentence and story that day. I remember my teacher telling me, “Never, in all of our history, never, have there been two living Oculus at the same time. Imagine what they will say to one another, imagine what they will learn from one another, and imagine what they could teach us. What does this mean for our kind and our ways?”

The story was well known during my developmental years, among the people of the city. Our Oculus, Pyre-37-44, like the many before him, lived the entirety of his life after his election, alone with nature. After nearly seventy years, he had accumulated knowledge and wisdom incomprehensible to the rest of us. He was a figure to be respected. But on his seventieth year, a boy named Mentis-13-7, from necessity was chosen to become an Oculus, and his time alone ended. This was the first time in known history this had happened, but after only three years it was reported that Pyer-37-44 had died, and that Mentis-13-7, was now as the other before him, alone.

It was considered a fantastic time for our kind, the three years the two Oculus lived together. Innovations and invention sparked our culture. Philosophy, technology, industry, law, it all changed because of Mentis-13-7.

During the rest of my development the city was changing, while the Oculus explored the depths of our psyche, and the meaning of nature as in tradition, one person apart. Until, the annual day of graduation, for my generation. Like the day Mentis-13-7 shook what many believed possible, I, Union-3-130 was charged with the life of Oculus. I was fifteen years of age; Mentis-13-7 was twenty. It wasn’t long before the departure to my new home, but in that brief time the people had started to refer to Mentis-13- 7 and I together as The Two Living Oculus. A lot was expected of me, of us.

Chapter III: The one who figured it all out