New Columbus - May 2083
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Dawn
As I look back on my childhood, or the earlier part of it anyway, I can't help but feel grateful for the unique experiences that my friends and I have had growing up in such a surreal moment in history. The world was changing around us, with the dawn of Coronation and the symbiotic relationship between humans and nodes. But for us kids, it was simply a way of life - one that we embraced with our whole beings.
I remember spending countless afternoons playing with Asaph and Herod in the common behind our houses, coming up with wild schemes to prank our neighbors or teaching ourselves science (and so often the latter to aid the former). We were always together, always on the same wavelength, and always pushing each other to be the best we could be. It was as if we shared a single mind, each one of us practically an extension of the others.
Of course, it wasn't all fun and games. We were all gifted students, and we excelled in our studies from the first. Our teachers recognized our potential early on, and we were placed in a gifted class in first grade. By the time we finished our first year of public school, we had advanced to the third grade. It was a testament to our natural intelligence, but also to the unique bond that we shared; under Coronation many children were excelling in academics, yet we were far and away outliers nonetheless.
Looking back, I see now how much that bond was amplified by our connection to the nodes. We were already close, but being able to communicate telepathically made us even closer. We shared our thoughts and ideas freely, without the need for words. It was a connection that went beyond friendship, beyond family, beyond any other experience I think this world has to offer.
Our parents were close as well, but in a way defined by lives lived before Coronation. They all recognized early on the strength and power of us kids’ friendship, and we often found our homes interchangeable when we were young. Any one of our parents would be glad to have us around for dinner, we each had a toothbrush in three places, and nobody really bat an eye when they had zero or three children at the table for breakfast. There’s an old saying about taking a village to raise a child, and it was certainly true in a sense for us- with perhaps one slight exception.
Most of our parents were relatively doting, and glad to be very present in our lives, but as for Jude Sherman, I remember him as a distant figure in those days. He was always around, of course, but he seemed to be lost in his own world most of the time. I never quite understood why, but it seemed he had such a resentment towards the guardian angels that he and Asaph had. Then there were the times when us three kids would spend the night at Herod's house, and his dad and Asaph’s would disappear into Horace's study for hours on end. I always wondered what they were talking about, what secrets they were sharing until odd hours of the morning. But I never asked— it was just another mystery in a world full of them. And besides, I only ever caught wind of their conspiratorial evenings on account of our own youthful nights of scheming.
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Despite the challenges that we faced - both personal and global - I look back on those years with fondness and gratitude. We were a part of something special, something that would shape the course of human history. And we were lucky enough to experience it together, as the closest of friends.
This wave of nostalgia has of course been brought on by the swift approach of our mutual graduation from compulsory general education. At age thirteen each of us are getting ready to continue on to higher education. Turning my gaze from the past to the future, I certainly look forward to the next few years which we plan to spend together at the local Public College before we may well find ourselves at last on diverging paths. But in the here and now, we have our final day of final exams tomorrow, and our graduation ceremony will follow on the coming weekend.
‘We’re really there, aren’t we?’ I transferred a thought to Asaph and Herod.
‘I know I can hardly believe it myself,’ came Asaph’s reply.
‘What were our parents doing at this age? finishing grade 8, looking forward to basic node studies classes in High School’ chimed in Herod. A chuckle was transferred between all of us at this.
‘And here tomorrow we’ll be taking our exams on: the end of the nation our parents grew up under, the end of the lightform constructs that defined the lifetimes of their and their parents generation, and the government system that replaced the one they grew up with,’ I thought to them.
‘To be fair, our parents literally did all of that themselves,’ remarked Herod.
‘Well, except the end of the original nodes, that was the EOKAJ, my dad just ended the convergence of the nodes,’ interjected Asaph.
‘And every day we consider ourselves lucky that nobody tried to blame him for the Static,’ I joked. This was met with another resounding transfer of a chuckle.
‘Well y’all, I’m officially going to sleep,’ Asaph thought to us.
‘Yeah, ought to at least pretend like we’re putting effort and care into acing these exams, right?’ I replied.
‘Or something like that,’ returned Asaph.
‘Honk Shoo, everyone,’ thought Herod, and we all went to bed.
I had made my little jest about how easily we would coast through the end of this chapter of our lives, but I still couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. Whether those nerves were about tomorrow or the years to come, only time would tell.
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