Utopia

Welcome to the allegorical version of Fiction Friday!

It was an average day in the city. It was not too hot or too cold. I had gotten another mediocre C on my math test. My family was not rich or poor, but we lived a happy life in the city of Middletown. We were happy because nothing ever rattled us or our city. All that terrible stuff that happened outside the city physically could not come through one of the five gates. The town elders had voted before I was even born to erect a 20 foot wall to keep us from the radical fringes of society. They loved the wall so much that they even named it. How many walls do you know that have names? (I read about one in an underground antique book store that helped defend China or someplace like that). They had a large ceremony, and the wall of Status Quo was established. Nobody went outside it, and everything outside stayed outside despite the efforts they made to enter.

This wall defined the limits of my world both physically and mentally. The world outside of it did not matter because it did not affect my daily routine. The world inside of it consisted of a bureaucracy that was legislated by people disconnected from the population in favor of legislating.

One day, my friend Tom and I were playing by the wall on Circle 74. He lobbed the ball up high; in fact, he lobbed it over Status Quo. Being a somewhat impulsive preteen, I immediately looked for a way to get outside to retrieve our ball regardless of the implications. It took me all day, but finally I found the crack in the wall across from Idea Avenue. I grabbed a hold of this crack and crawled through despite the earnest warnings of Tom. This fissure by Idea seemed to take me through black space. I had no idea where I was going. It seemed like once I entered this world, I wanted to know where I was and to have somewhere to anchor my existence. Finally, as I pondered and puzzled out where I was, I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I crawled toward the light not knowing what surprises awaited me beyond the wall of Status Quo.

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