2054

Year: 2054

Until 4 years ago, I was an average yellow light man. I spent most of my days working from 9 am to 9 pm. I never did anything that I was told not to do. But some things just make us forget everything we were taught since we learned how to learn.

Year: 2050

I had a wife, Pavni. Her eyes looked like honey in the sunshine and the sound of her laughter could make the most powerful men weak. She had a mole on the right side of her lip. Our daughter would sometimes joke about how her mother’s mole resembled sesame seeds on naan.

Our daughter, Saila.

Saila was the purest angel you could ever meet. It felt as if she was too pure for the heavens so they sent her to us to make this dark world a little brighter. She had red hair, just like her grandmother. When she tied her braids, they looked like bundles of fire.

I remember this gloomy winter morning. She was reading out the news to me from her tablet, while I cooked omelets for her and Pavni.

"Journalist taken into brown light last night after writing an unpublished explosive article on Rono. It was revealed that he found the information through an illegal source. Papa, don’t you think it’s funny how everyone just forgot about the contents of the unpublished article? The entire focus everywhere is on how his source is a dangerous threat to us. But what did he

write that had to be obtained through that source?”

"Hey! It’s MR. RONO! He is a respectable man. He knows what is best for us. On whose instructions did that journalist break the law? Any honorable person would know how to work within the legal system. Besides, why would you even want to read such a disgusting article? Go wear your shoes, you are late for school.”

I grew up learning that the light system was the most efficient system that there is and that Mr. Rono was a genius who crafted a system that placed people exactly where they belonged. In her times, Queen Elizabeth I had forbidden anyone except the close members of the royal family from wearing purple. Purple has been the royal color since the dawn of time; therefore, it was only fitting that most elites of the society were a part of the purple light. The purple lights drank expensive teas flown in from the most exotic places around the world. You were taken into the group if you were honorable and honored by the other purple lights.

The yellow lights were a vast majority of the society. We would work for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Anyone who was average was a yellow light. Some yellow lights were occasionally given special status if they helped a purple light out. A troop of yellow lights was hired to monitor everything the rest of us did, to make sure we didn’t do anything that would mean that we were pushed into brown light.

The brown lights were the outcasts. Their water reeked of sweat and their home walls were one push away from collapsing. They were stuffed in rooms like sheep. Some were even tied up. They would screech and howl till the noise scrapped their vocal cords enough to not allow them to do so anymore. I had heard that a few people had gone missing the day had been turned into brown lights.

So why would anyone consider a system so blatantly divisional efficient?

Well, the thing is, no one was born a brown or purple light. Every individual, when born, is assigned the life of yellow light. A society can't function without a structure that designates status. Think about it, cavemen had a few people who directed the hunts and a few who stayed in the caves and worked to cook the food because the others wouldn’t have benefited from them. Think of an ideal world. Sunshine and rainbows. Everyone is happy. Now, think of how you achieve it. Who would be given the job of capturing scorching sunshine and delicately painting every single color of the rainbow? So, if someone has to do the job, why

not it be based on the kind of life you have lived?

Year: 2051

I was extremely worried for Saila. She would carry little mics and sneak into brown lights’ houses and record them speaking about their experiences. She would contact people we had been explicitly instructed not to contact. She knew that she couldn’t use her phone so she would write letters to nowhere and leave them out until someone collected them from outside our house. What did she know? If Mr. Rono can check who we are calling, can’t his men notice suspicious letters being picked up regularly from the same address?

Pavni said that she was having a young blood phase. That everyone wants to be rebellious, become a revolutionary, and fight the power when they are 17. I didn’t. I didn’t want to do those things when I was 17. I just wanted to get a degree and work.

And then it happened.

I was mechanically uploading everything that my boss told me to upload amid the caterwauling of type-keys echoing in my yellow office. The walls were blinding bright and the marble floor made sure every movement made noise.

I got a call.

A part of me knew what the call was, you know, the part that thinks of the worst possible scenario every morning when you wake up.

“They took her! They are taking me too!”

“No, please, please, please. Take me, leave her!” Pavni wailed out as if her throat tore open in her screams.

The sounds of type-keys intensified as my daughter was dragged out of my home as my wife begged them to stop. I couldn’t hear the last thing that she said to me. Maybe it was that she loved me. Maybe it was that she wanted me to come to save them. Maybe it was that I should obey Rono enough to be in a place where I can protect them. Or maybe, she didn’t say anything. Maybe it was just her screams and wails morphing into the type-keys.

I sat there. In silence. I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t find the words. It hurt too much. It felt like someone had scraped my heart till it bled open, till nothing was left of it. When I reached my house at 9, the entire house was silent; silent as if it was a mirror held to me. The yellowing plant leaves were drenched in red. Our family photo in the yellow frame had burst into a shattered broken glass on the wooden floor with blood splattered all over it.

Year: 2052

It was at a purple light party. After I turned in the boy, they gave me access to more and more purple light parties. Slowly, I connected with the right people in power. In mid-November last year, as winter canopied over the Earth, I got upgraded into a purple light.

The fairy lights engulfing the gate to the mansion welcomed me to the party that was going to change my life. The security escorted me to a room at the very top. It was glowing with lavender light and had a fine white marble floor. In the very center of the room, a black round table was placed with two chairs opposite each other. Two glasses of whiskey were sitting across the table. The blinding radiance from Rono made it difficult for people to look at him. He would talk in a soft tone in his low-pitched voice. He would make it seem like others had a choice, but we didn’t.

“What changes would you make if I gave you power?”

Year: 2053

Rono was a charismatic man. People worshipped him not because they feared him; he presented his ideas in a way that made people believe in him. People genuinely thought that those who disobeyed deserved to be shoved into brown light. I knew this because I used to be one of those people. I observed him every day- the wrinkles around his hazel eyes that lowered them enough to cover the top of his iris, his greying hair with rope-like strands falling on his face, his composed stature, and his piercing gaze. The more I would observe

him, the more I would get answers to my questions.

It was a rainy evening. The thunder in the sky echoed on the surface of the Earth every few minutes. The moon was hiding behind the clouds for she was terrified of what was to come. Rono called me to his room and sat me down next to him. The glasses of whiskey were placed adjacent to each other this time.

“I have trusted you. I knew the moment I heard of your work at the office that you are a man of great capability. That is why I called you that night at the party- your daughter and wife were betrayers of my community, but you chose to stand your ground and continue working.

I am dying. I have a terrible illness and it is consuming my body every passing day. I have a month at most. I want you to take my power. I believe in you. I believe in your belief in our system.”

Year: 2054

Saila stood in front of me. Her under-eye circles were a shade of deep red. Her lips were dried and cracking. The deep contours of her face lined the very little fat she had left.

“What have you done?”

Until 4 years ago, I was an average yellow light man. I spent most of my days working from 9 am to 9 pm. I never did anything that I was told not to do. But some things just make us forget everything we were taught since we learned how to learn.

“I have established a system that is not nearly as flawed as the one before. A world without division simply can’t exist. Hence, I decided that the division be based on birth. Because anytime a person with power has been given the authority to determine who goes where people have suffered agony. Why not it be determined by birth?”

“Father, you are a person with power who was given the authority to determine who goes where. And you created a system that benefits you. Just like Rono. You refuse to see its flaws because you believe that your privilege has been earned when it was simply a repercussion of abiding by a power that destroyed your family. You did it to protect me, but you forgot why I ended up there. Tie me in shackles and burn me alive. The rain will wash my burning corpse and you will use it as gravel for your new world.”