Young Writers Society

This could've maybe gone in Sci-Fi, but the only thing that puts it there is being set in the future. Enjoy.

Chapter One.

“Growing reports of vandalism in the Southern quarter were today attributed to a group of rebels acting on behalf of the group known as Social Acceleration,” the news reporter on the giant screen was announcing to the masses that were gathered in Carlin Square. Everyone stood, listening in the twilight. “The group, who remain unidentified among the citizens of Licentia city, are being held responsible for, among other heinous crimes, the defacement of City Hall over the past weekend.” The newsman’s face gave way to images of City Hall, a monolith of marble and white stone, with the words “CITYWIDE INERTIA” formed in huge black letters above the entrance to the building. Below the spray-paint declaration was the motto of the Council. FOREVER MOVING FORWARD. “Authorities are working day and night to locate these vandals, and any information from the public will be greatly appreciated.” The crowd continued to stare at the trustworthy man on the screen, all of them feeling that his eyes were looking directly at them when he said, “I’m Tom Harding. Goodnight.”
All of a sudden the masses were all going about their business in the square as the hypnosis of the nightly news report was over. Most of them murmured things like “I hope they catch those dirty hooligans,” or “What is this city coming to?”
No one knew what the city was coming to.
Except the only person in the square that was still staring at the screen.
“Goodnight, Tom,” he said under his breath, with both a sincere voice and condescending smirk. “Sleep well.”
The trail of his long black trench coat undulated through the air behind him as he stole away into an alleyway.

Sleeping bags, tents and makeshift fireplaces coated the grass from one side of the reserve to the other. Inhabitants sat huddled together by their dying fires, talking in quiet, desperate tones. Some spoke of what the future might hold, some of the events that brought them all here, some of simpler things like birds they happened to see in the reserve that day.
Lucy sat with her father next to their fire, gazing at the orange gold whips that lashed violently at the air above them. In the burning light he looked a lot younger, but the words he spoke were those that only a senior citizen would ever speak.
“Kids these days don’t know how lucky they are.”
Lucy rolled her eyes.
“I spent two years in a reserve like this back in 2011 when the whole West side of the city caught fire. We’ve been here not even a month and I hear kids talking about how bad it is. Why, if they don’t like this, maybe I should tell them about the culling the government carried out afterwards. Horrible times.”
Lucy had heard all about the culling, and the two years on the reserves, and although she knew that it was significant for everyone involved - emotionally, politically, physically, economically, every –ly she could think of – all she felt when her father spoke of such things was indifference. Even now, in what could turn out the same way, there was only apathy.
“I’m gonna go see Alana,” Lucy said, letting her father’s ramblings slide off her back.
“Be back before curfew,” he ordered. “I don’t want to have to pick you up from one of the guards’ tents again.”
“Whatever.”
Walking through the city of tents, Lucy swore she saw the same scene more times than she could count. People rubbed their hands together, intermittently giving them up to the warmth, as if the fire were expecting their palms, while no one said a word that wasn’t a remark about the cold. The sun would be gone soon, and the cold was definitely starting to set in. It was the kind of cold that seemed to find a way around the warm clothing people wore, brushing up against their skin once it got inside like a pseudo-innocent feline. Lucy’s grey t-shirt, with another long-sleeved shirt underneath was no match for the cunning chill that set itself on everyone like an infectious disease.
For a moment, she looked up from the temporary civilization to see the last splinters of sunlight piercing through the trees on the horizon. Maybe the people over there are still warm, she thought. While she was looking into the distance, she was not concentrating on the ground under her feet. She tripped on a sleeping bag that was hanging over onto the designated path area that ran through the whole place like the veins of the place. She managed to quickly find her feet before she fell forwards, but she was embarrassed nonetheless.
“Sorry about that, young lassie,” an unkempt looking man excused himself. He looked like he had spent his whole life living like this.
“That’s ok,” Lucy said with an uncomfortable smile. She didn’t really want to stay around this man, so she turned to persist on her path towards Alana’s tent.
“It’s just that they issued me with two of these blasted things and I have no room for this one,” the man admitted in an annoyed tone. “It’s not like I’ll not fit in one body bag when they’re finished with us all.”
“But that’s not a body bag,” she reasoned, deciding to find out what he meant by ‘when they’re finished with us.’
“Ah sure it is. Why would they give everyone a ‘sleeping bag’ when we walked in here when there isn’t a person alive that doesn’t own one anyway?”
Lucy didn’t know.
“Only corpses get body bags. Everyone here got one ‘cause we’re all dead!” He started laughing like a crazy man. Scared, Lucy strode swiftly away from the crazy guy. He was laughing too hard to notice.

Gathered around another fire, just like every other one in the place, Alana, Lucy and Alana’s family ate lukewarm vegetable soup from metallic bowls. Lucy liked Alana’s family. Her dad, Robert Liegeman, was the nicest man she had ever met, and was always good for a conversation in times where it felt like nothing could be talked about. Like this one, for example. He worked for the Council, and was about the only honest man there, or so many people thought. He worked in the sanitation department, but he also ran the Keep Licentia Beautiful program. Basically, they combated graffiti and other things that were tarnishing the cities appearance. So obviously, he was involved with the City Hall graffiti incident.
“I still don’t understand what they hoped to achieve,” he told anyone that happened to be listening as he gazed into the fire. “They obviously meant it as an act of rebellion, and in relation to the city motto, but they didn’t do a very good job.”
“Why not?” Lucy asked.
Robert lifted his eyes from the fire to look at the teenage girl with the midnight-black hair. “Well, because all they did was reinforce the motto. If we suggest that the city is forever moving forward, and they say that this is citywide inertia, what is the difference between the two? They both admit a constant and unchanging state of movement.” He had thought this out, she could tell. Something in his voice seemed to say that he was trying to see it in another light, but simply couldn’t.
“But what if their message isn’t in what they wrote, but the way they did it?” Alana had joined the conversation. Living with a member of the Council, she picked up an opinionated nature at a very young age. Although they had so much in common, Lucy couldn’t share Alana’s question-the-answers attitude.
“What do you mean?” Her father spoke to her like a colleague rather than a daughter.
“What if the simple act of having their message spray-painted, very much against the wishes of the Council, is supposed to be their idea of sarcasm?”
There was a pause. Somewhere in the background a baby was crying.
“Still not sure what you mean,” he admitted, now talking like a bewildered student to a teacher.
“If you say something in a way that’s proud and patriotic, and then I say something along the same lines, but in a way that is disinterested or childish, then we don’t believe the same thing, do we?” She waited for an answer.
Another pause.
“The Council said something seriously, and then some vandals agreed with it, but in the opposite way to how it was meant. I think it is quite witty, actually.”
Her father shot her a glance to say ‘it’s not funny, it’s serious business’ and she let her amused smile fade away. The conversation was over.
After a minute of silence that was drowned in the disagreeable taste of the vegetable soup, Lucy decided to tell the group what happened to her on the way there. She explained about the crazy guy and what he said, mainly aiming it at Alana’s father, seeing as he was more likely to know if what he said was true. He did.
“You said it yourself, Lucy,” he began reassuringly, “he was crazy. Trust me, we’re only here until the danger has passed and then we’ll all go home safely to our homes.”
She believed him. He had thinning hair that was beginning to turn grey, glasses and that comforting smile that made her think of him as one of those old wise men types.
She put down her soup bowl and told everyone that she had to be getting back to her father. Curfew would take effect in about half an hour, and she didn’t want to be caught walking around the reserve after 22:00 again. Last time she was caught by the overseers and had to spend a freezing night in a guards’ tent without a sleeping bag. Tonight was certainly not a night she wanted to tough out without warmth.
She said her goodbyes to Alana’s family, and Alana insisted on walking her halfway back to her father.
Lucy was glad of the company on the walk through the depressingly crowded and refugee-like gathering of nearly half the population of the city. Since they were relocated to the reserve, Lucy and Alana had not spent much time together - at least not like they used to. Before the move, what felt like years ago, they were the closest of friends. It wasn’t one of those spiritual bonds that people claim is the strongest force in the universe; they just like each other. Lucy liked the way Alana could make the most complicated point easy for her to understand, and the time taken for her to do it assured Lucy that she cared. Alana liked how down-to-earth Lucy was. She didn’t care for politics, or philosophy, or anything that didn’t affect her directly, and when it rubbed onto Alana it made life much easier. On top of these things, they just understood eachother, and liked eachother’s company.
As they were walking, they seemed to be occupying the only bubble of silence that existed in the area. Lucy sighed, like a girl wanting to be asked why she was sighing.
“What’s up?” Alana inquired, with an almost lighthearted concern.
“Oh, nothing.” She sounded like there was something though. Then she elaborated. “It’s just... in all those years I spent with mum, not feeling like she was doing anything as a mother, it’s taken this short time to realize how much she really did. Its like... our relationship was nothing at all, but when that nothing was taken away, it left one big hole.”
They stopped walking.
“I think this is about halfway,” Alana smiled. “Don’t worry; she’ll be back one day. From wherever she is.” Suddenly she realized how bad that sounded. “Don’t worry.” An attempt at an encouraging smile.
Lucy knew she was right, but it didn’t make things any easier. They hugged – a long ‘everything will be fine’ hug.
Alana turned to walk back to her family, and Lucy watched her walk away into the sea of people.
She’s coming back. I know it.

Across town, where the city is made of buildings rather than tents, three men stood across the street from City Hall, staring at the proclamation written above the entrance. FOREVER MOVING FORWARD. Looking up at the message, which stood alone now that the recent addition had been cleaned off, the men could have passed as patriots looking at the words of a government they loved, taking inspiration from the words above.
“Citywide Inertia,” one of them said, not feeling that anything else needed to be said.
The two other men didn’t say a word, but they lowered their eyes to the pedestrians and automobiles that crawled through the streets. They walked in circles, out their doors, through other doors, back through their own and so on in wide routes that took them nowhere. The men, Social Acceleration as they liked to be called, looked at eachother finally and shared the same thought.
Throughout the whole city, everyone keeps doing what they are already doing.