“Tritia, you have a letter!” called Tritia’s mom from downstairs. Tritia literally fell over herself down the stairs trying to get to the letter. A few weeks ago she had received a call that she had been accepted into the Government Rebuilding Program, and all she had had to do was wait for the paperwork to come for her to fill out. “Finally it came!” she exclaimed as she tore open the envelope. She excitedly read the official-looking letter.
Tritia,
You have been accepted into the Government Rebuilding Program. You will be transported to the base in three days time by a government official. Please have all your things packed up and ready to be transported by this time. Remember that by accepting our request you are giving up your former life for a life in the government service. Please do not leave any of your possessions at your place of dwelling, for you will be distrusted if officials search the house afterwards and find something of yours. Thank you for entering your form, and congratulations for being chosen.
Thank you,
Head of Government
“Mom, I got in! I was accepted! I got in!” Tritia screamed. Tritia’s mom emerged from the kitchen with a wet plate in one hand and a towel in the other. “Wonderful honey. I know you’ll be the best. Why don’t you go pack now? I know you’ll have a lot of stuff to pack up. Your room is filthy. Go dig out some suitcases from the basement and run up to your room,” Tritia literally bounced down to the basement and up to her room, where she disturbed her sister Kara’s house of cards. “Great,” she mumbled, “she got in. Now I can finally get some peace and quiet around here,” Kara didn’t like that her sister was accepted and she wasn’t. It just didn’t make sense. Kara had higher grades then Tritia, though not by much. But still, why didn’t she get accepted? She had asked that question to Tritia when she had first gotten the phone call. Her answer was, “Well, maybe the Government looks past grades and looks into more important things such as character and personality,” Kara had grumbled a reply, but Tritia had been too excited to care.
Three days later, the government car had arrived in the front of the house. Tritia was squirming in her dress robes that had been sent to her by mail. Everyone in the family was out in the front yard besides Kara. Kara was camping out in Tritia’s room, thinking that she couldn’t believe that Tritia was leaving forever. Her empty cot and desk that came with every house were the only things that ever indicated that someone had lived in there. Her one-of-a-kind pastel blankets were gone. Her forgetful sister’s Post-It note wall was torn down, her textbooks and old homework papers no longer cluttering the desk space. Her walls were no longer decorated with cutout stickers that she had drawn. Bare, and Kara hated it. She snuck a quick glance out the window. Her parents were out in the front lawn, hugging and seeing off her show-off sister. She was waving as if the whole world was watching her go join the GRP. “Yeah, just go and save the Government. They would love to have you. Just go already, I can’t bear watching you anymore!” she yelled, throwing herself on the empty cot. Kara didn’t hate her sister, really, she was just upset. She also was forming some questions that never would have formed if her sister had stayed. Why can’t you leave behind anything of your possessions? Why can’t you come back? And why is the Government’s base where her sister was being taken so far away?
That night, Kara had a dream.
She was riding in the Government’s car, with the base in the distance. Her heart was beating frantically, more from fear than excitement. On her right was a tray of food and gourmet drinks. On her left was everything that she owned, but Kara didn’t own it. The pile was made up of Tritia’s stuff. Kara started to ask the driver what her sister’s stuff was doing next to her when the pile of stuff attacked her and started shaking her. Kara frantically opened her eyes. Her mother stood above her, shaking her awake to go to school. Kara stood up uncertainly. She had been in the car with her sister’s stuff. Was she dreaming her sister’s visit to the base? “Impossible,” she said out loud to nobody in particular. Her sister had no way to have a connection with Kara like that. “It’s just jealousy, it’s just jealousy,” she mumbled under her breath on the way to school.
A week later and Kara was almost back to normal. The school day passed uneventfully, and in during evening meal, they ate like normal. Though Chicken parmesan was Kara’s favorite meal, she couldn’t eat more than a bite or two. Her mind was still whirling with thoughts. “How did I dream as Tritia?
Why was she feeling scared?” and the most important thing she asked herself was, “How did she do it? Her mother interrupted her tornado of thoughts. “Dear, why aren’t you eating? Are you sick? Should I call for the doctor?” Both her mother and father were looking curiously at Kara. She faked a sigh and said, “I think I just miss Tritia a little. I think I’ll go up to my room and read,” Kara excused herself from the table and ran up the stairs and fell onto her bed. She stared up at her ceiling, thinking. She lifted her head and looked around. Her desk was neat and organized, her papers in different colored folders for each subject. Her ivory-lined mirror cast a bright spot on her blue and green carpets covering a hardwood floor. Her keepsake from her sister, a glass ball filled with water from her secret hiding spot in the wild that the officials didn’t know came from Tritia, was clear, reflecting the sunbeams coming in the window. The water bent and refracted on the floor in a rainbow. Kara started to move to get it. Something that colorful shouldn’t exist in her world of confusion, but before she could get up, she fell into the blissful calm of sleep.
“Kara, can you hear me?”
Kara was lying down on a cold floor. She opened her eyes. The ceiling of where she was was so bright, she couldn’t tell if it was 3 feet above her or a hundred feet. She saw a hand reaching towards her, inviting her to be lifted up. She took it, and almost let go when she saw who was behind it. “Tri-tri-Tritia?” Kara stuttered. Her older sister was barely recognizable with a pure white dress on. She smiled softly. “Kind of, Kara. Kind of.” Kara looked confused. Tritia let out a small giggle. “I know. I’m confused too. But it is also very clear to me. Please, sit, and I will tell you how I came to be this way.”
“As you know, I was escorted in the most enjoyable fashion. I rode with luxury, gourmet food and drinks at my fingertips. When I got to the base, I was treated in the same fashion for three days. In this time, I made friends with almost every kid there. I even found the other kid from our area, a girl named Crystal. But it all changed on the third night. We were told that our training started that night. We were laughing and joking around until then, awaiting the first test. It turned out that we were going to be shown where any prisoners that we capture sleep and live. It was a disgusting place, but it had been cleaned out somewhat for us. We said that if we are going to capture prisoners, we should know what they go through. There were chains to keep them where they need to be, and behind every cell is a room where they can tighten and loosen the chains if they need to. We talked and giggled as we chained each other up to the wall. There were so many of us, they needed to us some rooms under the stairs and some other nasty places for really bad prisoners. I volunteered to be the bad prisoner, along with a boy named James and Crystal. Only three of us went in there, so they spaced us out. There were six sets of chains on either sides of the wall, and I was farthest away from the door. I chained up James and Crystal, and the guards jostled me around as if I was a prisoner. I hurt after that, but I assumed that I would be treated in the morning. As the guard was walking out, he turned around, gave us a wink, and laughed maniacally. We figured the wink was to say he was pretending. That was the last bit of friendliness we would see.
He shut the door in James’s face, who was close to the door. The door had no windows, so we were in total darkness. Crystal started to sniffle, and James and I rushed to comfort her with our voices. I could hear James’s chains clanking trying to get to Crystal. Then I heard the grinding sound of the wheel behind the cell tightening James’s chains. I decided to just sleep. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. But sleep never came. I was too nervous. Would I do good tomorrow? Early in the morning, just as I was about to fall asleep, I felt a rough yank on my chains to wake me up. I heard doors slamming open, and sunlight poured in. We all started thanking him, saying what a long night it was without light and a bed, when three people came out from behind him with ropes and gags. None of us knew what to say until they started advancing on us. The first guy, the one who opened the door, smiled a cruel smile and revealed wrist and ankle chains and with lightning speed started attaching them to our wrists and ankles. Crystal was the first one to be gagged and roped around the neck. James was next. I could only hear them, because I had shut my eyes tight. When it was silent in the room, I opened them. Crystal and James were squirming and thrashing, but all of their ropes and chains and the people who did it prevented them from doing so. The guy who was in front of me smiled, put the noose around my head and tightened. I draw what I thought would be my last breath, but he didn’t strange me. He just attached the other bindings while the first guy held the rope. They undid the wall chains last, to make sure we couldn’t get away. I wasn’t sure anymore if this was a test or not, but Crystal and James didn’t look scared, so I shouldn’t have been. They tied our nooses together to a long pole with loops in it for the knots. We met up with people from the cell next door, and they tied the ropes together. I was surrounded by people. We were lead out into the base’s beautiful courtyard. They hooked up our poles to a device that looked like a huge bike stand. The Head of Government stood on a podium and spoke to us. “Citizens of the GRP! You all have passed your first test with flying colors. Now you are to be tested the entire day on how well you can deal if the enemy captures you. Thank You!” he yelled. We felt a little bit better. It was just a test, and we would move onto fighting in a day. We all went about our servant-like tasks for various people pretending to be the enemy. When it was our break we had to head back to our dark, dank cells. Once, during a drill, I was all alone while Crystal and James got to be servants to the Head of Government. Even worse, because we had drills too do the entire day, they didn’t take off our nooses and wrists and ankle binds. The binds gave enough slack to move around, but you couldn’t run with them on. When they put us in our cells, they just put on the wall chains and left us there. I was sitting all alone in that room for 3 hours. As the evening approached, we were all escorted to our cells and server barely hot food. We ate it, as nothing had been fed to us the last two nights. Another night we slept in the cells. Some more cells had been opened up for us, and I was put in the totally unclean one. I swear, that was a blood stain on the floor. I was alone this time. My noose was attached to the wall, and I couldn’t sleep.
The next morning, we were so glad to be released into fresh air. They told us they would release us to the next test in the courtyard. So the pole carriers guided us to the yard. The Head of Government stood on the podium again. Today he sounded happy. “GRP graduates! What does GRP stand for?” he asked enthusiastically. “GOVERNMENT REBUILDING PROGRAM!” we shouted the answer in unison. “WRONG!” he yelled back, smiling wildly. There was mass confusion. He blew a whistle for silence. “As all of you probably know, the world is starting to get crowded. So I started the Get Rid of the Population foundation!” he grinned at us, but we were all silent with fear. “So you will all be given a piece of paper choosing your way to die to the GRP. Don’t even think of not filling it out, as then we will choose the most painful way to die. So choose the quick and painless way, whichever way appeals to you!” he finished with a flourish. His guards dispatched at once with huge stacks of paper. I got the paper and a pencil first, and I checked out the death paper.
Get Rid of the Population
Death paper
Ways to be sacrificed
o Active Mount Kilimanjaro
o The Pacific Ocean
o Gunshot
o Grand Canyon-Height
o Sword fight
o Hunted Maze
Thank you for submitting your form.
Please proceed.
I couldn’t believe it, Kara. It was all a trap, right from the very start,” Kara looked at her in awe. How could her sister have died this way?
“What did you pick?” said Kara, barely wanting to know the answer. In answer, Tritia lifted up her dress a little so you could see her ankle. I saw a chain around it, though very faint.
“I chose to drown in the ocean. I thought it was the best choose, see. I thought I would be able to swim away from the boat they would take us out on and live. But they had obviously thought of that. Because when they loaded us onto the boat, all 25 of us, including Crystal, they chained us up again. This guard was quite rough with us. We were down in the dark hold for over an hour. When they finally came to fetch us, they attached us to the poles again. There was a special platform for this horrible ceremony. They called us by name. I was halfway, so I could see what they would do. Unlucky Abraham was first. They removed him from the pole, and he was all ready to jump, but they pulled him back and chained him in more places than just the wrists and neck. They put one more on his wrists, a chain on his neck, a chain around his ankles, and a huge rusty metal chain with a ball on the end on his ankle. They also wrapped him up in rope. Now any of us who still had hope lost it. There was no way you could swim well with your body bound up that tight. He could only do enough to walk to the edge of the platform. He leaned over the clear blue water. The guard, growing impatient, just sped it up. We watched him plummet from our helpless positions. Beatrice was next. They kept going, and one of the guards comments after Heather’s plummet was disturbing. “This way, we can get the chains back to use again. Better way for us for you to die than the silly volcano thing. Wasting all that metal just for a quick death,” he had said. When it was finally my turn, I got myself ready. I walked forward, head held high. The chains they added to me felt almost impossible to move. I could only move to the edge. Suddenly, I felt a push from behind, and I knew my time had come. I hit the water on my back. I tried to swim, of course, but it just sapped my strength and my breath. I gave up and sank to the bottom. I felt my head growing light, and my lungs were burning. Poor James had chosen the same route as me, and his beautiful face was the last thing I remember before I woke up here,” Tritia sighed and sat down. She flickered in Kara’s view.
“Wow, Tritia, that’s awful. What did Crystal chose?” Kara felt bad for asking, but she had to know. Tritia looked her in the eye and said, “she chose the volcano. We were grouped before setting out, and she was the only one. Crystal had a less painful death, if you ask me.” Tritia fell down and lay on the ground of the white room. “Are you ok, Tritia?” Kara asked, sounding scared. Tritia let out a huge sigh. “Yeah, I’m just tired. By telling you about my past experience, I felt it all over again. The hunger, the pain, the unconscious state. And I still feel the chain of the metal ball, though faint. It will go away, as soon as you leave. But I want to go say goodbye to Crystal first, and I will need your help,” she closed her eyes and held her breath. Kara looked at her in wonder, then felt as if someone was yanking her back into the real world. She screamed, but Tritia’s soft voice calmed her. “Come on, Kara. They will come soon, so we must hurry,” Kara marveled at the real world, but her sister wasn’t waiting for her. She was hurrying up the big rocky hill in from of them. “Tritia, wait up!” Kara called, tackling the hill and running up the slope. Tritia sped up even more. When Kara reached the top of the hill, she was panting and gasping. “Tritia, why…?” She stopped in midsentence. Tritia was now in the clothes that she had left the house in. “Tritia, your clothes!” Kara exclaimed. Tritia jerked her head up, seemingly from a trance. “What? Oh, sorry Kara. I just got caught up in what Crystal’s last words were. As spirits, we can do that. She was defiant, saying something like this will never work. The guard just laughed, and, and…” A single tear rolled down her silver cheek, dropped onto the ground, became solid, and disappeared into the earth. Kara went over to comfort her sister, forgetting for a minute that she was half-transparent. “Tritia, how would you have done it over, you know, from when you started this?” Tritia looked at her with sad eyes. “I know now that I was chosen because I had very low grades. The lowest in the area. Keep your grades up, that’s the most important thing to staying alive in this savage world. I am now alone, reliving my recent past. And one more thing. Kara…” she froze on the spot. “What, Tritia?” she asked, but Tritia didn’t have time to answer. She just heard her voice whispering in her ear as she whisked back to her white world, “He is coming. Save me, Kara. Save me from my loneliness. I am alone, alone in the light,” Kara started to ask a reply, but she felt a shove from behind and she was falling into the volcano.
Kara opened her eyes. It was nighttime, her crystal ball glimmering in the dark. She thought she saw a flash of light inside it, but it was dark. It was all a dream, Kara thought. A crazy dream in grief from my sister’s absence. It was a dream, I hope it was a dream, please let it have been a dream. Kara got up. She was shaking in her jeans and t-shirt. She opened her door and let some light in, then she fell back on her bed and slept a dreamless night.
The next morning, she was completely sure it was a dream. Tritia is in the GRP, training to serve the Head of Government. When she walked downstairs, her mom and dad attacked her with hugs. “Congrats, Kara!” her dad said as her mom handed her a small envelope. Kara’s hands were shaking as she took it out of her mother’s possession. It only said a few words.
Congratulations. You have been accepted into the Government Rebuilding Program.
Kara let out a shriek.
