Dwindle

“It was the dawning of a new age after the nuke hit our home. And I started to call it Dwindle. I wasn’t necessarily a scientist, but I liked to name things anyway. My brothers took it on and after the first week told someone else. They told someone else. They told someone else. Before long, the whole country of our desolation knew Washington D.C. as Dwindle, the land that breathed and thrived off of death because of the High Council’s trigger-happy fingers.

  My mom had said we were different, her children, not like her. We were going to change the world, us and our ancestors. I was a gift from God. I was impossible, and I would bring about a species so important to future events, my mom said, that I would be remembered for centuries to come.

  I told no one. It was a secret. I only told my husband after we were joined. He just laughed at my apprehension, told me I was still a beautiful woman that he loved. It didn’t matter to him. If only this was the case of so many others.

  People grew older. It took a few years to find out there were only a few hundred of us left in our walled-in world. Humans and people like us. They began calling us ‘Bad People.’ It hurt, but nobody ever came forward. We hid our marks. Mine was on my palm, so such a thing was easily done. Others weren’t so lucky. I knew of one Aio who had a mark on his wrist. They lynched him as soon as he blew in, hung him by his head until dead like savages. Another was burned on a pole until she was nothing but ashes.

  Brutality at its finest.

  Eventually, Aios just became bad stories, filthy rumors. Of course, I was a little different. We’d devised a test to see who was allowed outside, and I was immune to the virus. The Horde had grown large in those days, and we needed soldiers to thin their numbers. When I volunteered and passed the immunity test, I was looked down upon and called names, like the other Outsiders.

  Outcast.

  Alien.

  Abomination.

  All at once, it did not matter that I was a Bad Person or not. It just mattered that I survived like one, and that was bad enough.

  As the years passed, many of these people died. But not me. I changed the colony, one death at a time. My tale went from being outright truth to lies to suspicion to just vague rumors. My children carried the rumors with them, and they never faded, but it was enough.

  Nothing was the same after that, but it was okay. We had to prove them wrong – all of them. That Aios and people could live together. That Deviants who hid and survived, and I knew of only one other, a slightly dense little man who wasn’t too bright but knew how to keep quiet, could live and breathe and not kill human beings.

  It was possible, albeit unpopular. But it was possible. We weren’t programmed, not like the computers were saying. We were just…trapped. Trapped by bigotry and prejudice.

  And so, I made it my life to undo this, to make children, who I hope will make children, who I hope will make children. We will reproduce with humans until there is almost nothing left of us, and then you, whoever you are, will emerge victorious. Whoever you are, you will make the world a better place.

  And so, my ancestor, who I’m sure will be born after me, I leave this book to you. I hope you change the world someday.”

  “Wait, there’s a pause here…” I said to Myth. “Someone else wrote in it.”

  “What?” Myth asked, raising her eyebrows. “Who? I did not know of others who know how to make marks on the page.”

  “Let’s find out,” I said hurriedly, and I read on:

  “I feel the need to explain myself in writing because I cannot bear the thought of leaving you to worry about these things yourself, Myth. I am, of course, referring to your name. To our history. To all the things I should have tried harder to explain.

  My mother had lied to me about my name and my origin and about everything we stood for, and so I lied to you, my daughter. And, as your mother, I have failed you most horribly.”

  “My mother knew about this!” she cried loudly.

  I opened my mouth, but something fast was happening in her eyes. An understanding, finally, of everything that happened. The death. The dying. The mysterious name-calling.

  I had a feeling her mom would explain it all.