Several days have passed since I shared with Paris the most intimate moments that two friends if I can consider myself, can share: a conversation so deep that it touched our souls. I hope she didn't take the ending we gave her the wrong way; it wasn't my intention at all. I'm not sure why she reacted that way, either. I haven't seen her for several days, as I said. I guess she has had to go back to work and is discovering a thousand things because she hardly ever shows up at home. When she does, we just exchange a few words about how the day went. I amuse myself as best I can. Sometimes, I go down to the garden and kick the ball around. I try to run a bit, go out to the promenade, and exercise there, always with Paris and her father's approval, with the gadget that controls my bracelet safely tucked away. That's how I stay in shape. Other times, I put soccer on the Screen, watching how Leonard Montana has become, in a few months, the top scorer of the League of the Provinces without even batting an eyelid. When I see how he celebrates his goals, I think they are dedicated to Sophie.

Well, lately, everything on the Screen has been paralyzed by the so-called Presidential Elections. I don't understand them. The citizens of the Provinces, where slaves are excluded, cast their vote in a ballot box every eight years, choosing between a person or their close relative. For as long as I can remember, the same elite people, President Leeparker and her twin, always run. They are so much alike that I think they cheat and swap and help each other. Because that is one of the conditions of the Elections, that the candidates are family. So, how are the Provinces going to change anything? They represent the same thing, that's why I don't understand the fights, discussions, and heated debates they broadcast on the Screen between the political supporters of one and the other. It is simply ridiculous.

Before going to sleep, I usually read the Bible for a while. I am enraptured by the symbol of the Priestess and by the Priestess herself. It's a strange sensation I feel because I feel a connection with myself, which means I think of my mother. What would she want to tell me with this book?

“Women and men are just that, women and men. They have reason and free will, qualities that no other creature in nature possesses. But, if they are not used as they should be used, are they any better than the animals they call beasts? No man is inferior or superior to another. No woman is inferior or superior to another woman, much less is she inferior or superior to any man. Women and men, in their differences, are equal by nature. This equality also corresponds before the Goddess, whose magnificence will bring an end to those who, in their infinite wickedness, do not consider themselves equal to the rest, putting in their hands the blood of the one who wants but cannot decide for himself. No one belongs to anyone. Neither a man to another man, nor a woman to another, nor a woman to a man. The Goddess, who appears between my fingers as I write, sees it so and makes it known. Blessed be all her mercy. May the weight of her wrath fall upon those who do not consider their equals equal and keep others and others in the tyranny of the yoke of labor with which one does not prosper, with which one is a slave.”

I finish reading, not without difficulty, and my mind flies through the lines and characters. I have to reread it several times, pausing on some words, trying to figure out their possible meaning. Then, I fit all those letters and what they mean and rewrite the story in my head. I am left not knowing how to act and what to say in the face of what was written almost two hundred years ago. I would call Paris and would have talked to her about this for hours, except that, surely, she would be sound asleep, resting up for another exhausting day.

This fragment of the Bible is a plea against slavery itself in favor of equality. I at least understand it that way. For this reason, the religion of the Priestess is forbidden in the Provinces because it goes totally against what sustains the system: the slaves. They are the majority of the population who produce practically everything that is consumed in the State at a very low cost. For this religion to spread throughout the Provinces would mean the destruction of slavery and the loss of privileges of the social elite and thousands of merchants and slave buyers. That is why the ideas of equality of the Priestess have endured in some slave communities, and that is also why the State has been increasing its repression to destroy it altogether. If all slaves believed in the Priestess... no one could stop them. After all, the United Provinces, with all its power, with all its President, and with all the money of its Companies, is weak. It can crack and break from one of its fundamental pillars: us, because I am a slave too. But why have I not known anything about the Goddess, the Priestess, and their ideas until now? Why did Mrs. Hall, believing in them, never made me partaker of all her knowledge? If my mother also believed in them?

I don't think Lunetta, my mother, and I are so different, after all. She believed in the Goddess, which made her able to aspire to freedom. I did not, until a few days ago, conceive of either the Goddess or the Priestess, but I have always longed for freedom, though I have never known how to attain it. If only my mother were here...It is such a strong feeling that I feel for my mother that I cannot understand why I do not feel the same way about my father, the slave Simon Moon. I suppose because no one has ever spoken to me about him and because I have no memory of him. Of my mother, I keep her smell, her very blurred and erased face, her voice even, her handkerchief. But of him, I have nothing. I know he is alive from Paris' inquiries, but I am afraid to face him. I don't want him, if he sees me, to want to act like the father he hasn't been. Besides, he will still be a slave. Maybe it's because of death. My mother is dead, and that feeling is much more influential on me because I know I will never see her again. Maybe it's because of what she has left me. Her ideas. Being a slave herself, she believed in freedom. Just like me. Maybe that's why they killed her, and it wasn't tuberculosis, as Mrs. Hall has told me since I was a child.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Thoughts of freedom lead me to Paris and to what binds me to her, which is only a lease. If she wants to find out what it was about the Collapse, I will help her, not just because I am her slave. As dangerous as the journey is, I guess that's what she wanted me for. If I think about it, she's standing up to the State far more than any slave on any plantation or factory would, docile to her master, as I have been. As I still am. I burn with an inner flame of hatred for slaveholders, especially Greg Gordon, however lenient he was to me. I will be free, and I will prove it to him. To him and to that pest Luke, to whom I owe a beating. In the end, Paris will have to come with me somewhere where neither the Provincial Police nor the army of the Provinces can reach. I hope there is such a place. I think he knows, as well as I do, that his investigation will never see the light of day. She will have to hide for the rest of her life to avoid being imprisoned, tortured, or worse, enslaved. I admire her determination and tenacity. Her courage. She is going to do it despite the consequences that may arise from it. Maybe someday, many years from now, someone will discover that book of Paris and will put it in value, that it will be the engine of the end of the Provinces and their slave system. Maybe I will be helping her not only to fulfill a dream but to build a better future. On the last of those trips that Paris has planned, I will have to escape. And she, soon after, will have to follow me.

The next day, Paris doesn't go to work. I presume she must be close to the day of the trip because she goes into her father's workshop. They will be finalizing the details. I try not to think too much about the things that are constantly on my mind now: my mother, the Priestess, and the Collapse. Everything together makes such a concoction in my head that sometimes I think I'm going to lose it. That I'm going to go crazy, days like this, when loneliness squeezes, I remember Greg Gordon's plantation with a certain nostalgia. After all, I am a slave. I was born to work and honor my owner. That, I suppose, is why I give myself to Paris. The Screen is saturated with Presidential Elections as if I care which of the two Leeparker twins rules.

By mid-morning, Paris is looking all over the house for me. She's shouting my name. She assumes I'm in my room, but I'm not. I let her find me. I'm in the garden, exercising with the ball and shooting at a small goal drawn on the wall.

—Ah, you're here! —She looks tired from walking up and down the stairs. —Come, we have something to show you.

She enters the living room, and I score one last goal. I follow in his wake and find Mr. Stonecraft tidying up the table where we usually dine with his scientist's instruments. I am asked to approach, and I do so. I'm not frightened, but I'm a little disgruntled. What's the matter?

—I have a present for you. —Paris holds out a hand to me.

—Is everything all right? —I ask, uncomfortable.

—Come on, come.

I hold out my hand to Paris, feel her brush my fingers, and then squeeze me, her gesture making me raise my left hand. Mr. Stonecraft, gazing blankly, admires the bracelet that almost fried me once.

—It has a simple mechanism. —He comes closer and closer, circling my hand.

Paris holds out her hand to me on the table, asking me, with her eyes, to relax. Her father is reaching for one of his electrical instruments. He pulls out what appears to be an elongated knife, the edge of which is shaped like a V with a saw on its sides. I hope he doesn't intend to cut the bracelet with that. Then he pulls out a small metal cross, the center of which fits perfectly into the joint where my bracelet attaches. The cross makes a noise, like cracking, and he pulls out a very thin screw. Mr. Stonecraft carefully lays it on the table and, with the V shaped saw, pokes into the hole left by the screw. The bracelet gives way and opens sideways. I can't believe it. He takes it off very carefully.

I bring my other hand to my now free wrist, which is red and bruised.

—Wow, I, thank you... —I manage to say. The confidence Paris said she had in me is genuine. Taking off that bracelet is one step closer to freedom. I believe now, more than ever, in Paris and his damned work on the Collapse.

—It's nothing, Eric. —She tells me. —It's the first step so we can go on that journey, you know.

—Let me examine it so I can reprogram it and remove some of its damaging effects. —Matt Stonecraft interjects as he puts away his material. —Then, Eric, I'm sorry, but you'll have to put it back on. For the Provinces... It not only monitors your position but also your vital rhythm, sending data every four, eight, or twelve hours, I don't know, I have to find out.

—Anyway, thank you. It's a real relief to stop thinking I might die by electrocution. —It's not just that, I don't feel very comfortable wearing it. It's a mark like the tattoo with my name and ID number.

—The surprises aren't over today. Start your training!

I don't know what Paris is referring to, but he pulls me tightly and takes me to one of the rooms on the second floor, where I have never been before. Upon entering, to my surprise, I find nothing. Smooth white walls. In one corner, a small desk with several pistols on top. He picks up one of them and hands it to me. It's long and light, and I guess from its magazine that it's an electric one.

—Take that face off. It's just a toy. —I'm surprised. I look at the gun again, this time in a different way.

The light goes out, and the walls light up, drawing a landscape. Everything is ice. It is snowing heavily. I find myself in a small frozen valley. In the background, there is a house. I move forward, and the landscape of the walls moves forward with me. Suddenly, gunshots ring out, and I see two men in the trees. I look at Paris, who is sitting at the desk with her feet in the air and her arms crossed.

—Come on, point your gun and shoot. You have to get home. It's mission one.

Then I find out what it's all about. It's one of those video games that appear in the ads on the Screen. Sophie showed me one many years ago, but I can only remember it in outlines as if my memory is failing. I point my gun, hide, and finish off the two men.

—Good job! To your left.

Paris calls this training as if it will improve my aim. Real guns are not a toy. They're not a dummy. They're not just a video game.