A Hole in Time

The Dome - Chapter 1 - First day of School

I wake up and thank the Designers that built our weather Dome. Every school kid knows that the shield was built to protect those of us lucky enough to live inside from nuclear fallout. The Dome was built to shield us from radiation, protect from radical drops in temperature, and to regulate the weather inside to make life easy for us. The Designers made sure that the Dome would project the heat and light from the sun that is collected via a satellite and heat would still be held inside so the nights' doesn't get too cold. 

I hear this every year at school, and I know I will  hear it again today. The term starts today, and first class is history. I still catch myself wondering though. We've been in the Dome for over 15 generations. Is the Dome still sturdy or will it start to disintegrate? Will we be safe in here? I shake off these thoughts. My parents would not be happy if they knew what I was thinking. Thoughts like these can be taken as treacherous and I could be arrested and sent Outside the Dome. Those sent Outside die within hours of exposure to the elements. It's supposed to be a very painful death.

I dress in my simple school uniform and then comes another treacherous thought. I hate gray clothes and I wish I could wear something different. All girls have to wear tight pants and I would prefer loose skirts. I am not the only one who does not like our uniform. My best friend, Liam, thinks that gray clothes make us all look like robots and they suck the energy out of us all. I giggle at the mental image of our uniforms as energy sucking leeches. 

I walk downstairs to find my parents standing at their usual places. I greet them as I have been taught, bowing first to my father and then to my mother. I take my place next to my mother and await my twin brother, John. I will be greeted last, as is the custom, and this is another thing that I find stupid. I find a lot of things stupid lately. Soon enough, my brother climbs down the stairs, completes the customary greeting, and we are now to go to breakfast. My father enters first, followed by my brother, my mother and finally me, bringing up the rear. We eat in silence, like normal, and the first word spoken is good-day as my brother and I leave for school.

I look around me as we walk down the path leading to school. I see gray clothes, black clothes, and brown clothes. The uniforms of our three classes here in the Dome, the Hierarchy, who are our ruling class, the Unionists, who are the working class and lastly, the Healers, who are our nurses and doctors. The Hierarchy all wear black, the Unionists wear brown, and the Healers, like us, wear gray. We are all related to our original class setters. There were equal amounts of each class in the beginning, when the Dome was built, but that is not the way anymore. The Hierarchy are the biggest class, the Unionists are reasonably big, and the Healers are the smallest. We of the Healers class have the most needed job, and the most dangerous. That is what Liam and I think, but we never say that to anyone. The Hierarchy do not like it when people doubt their rulings. 

By the time I have finished my musings, we have reached the school. I line up where I am supposed to and bow to the principal when it is my turn. I notice that the principal has not laced his shoe correctly and I frown. Why is there only one set way to do things? If the shoe stays on your foot, what does it matter if the laces are not the same as everyone else? I am my own person, so why cannot I lace my shoes up the way I want to?  

I slowly walk from class to class, following the line of gray-clad girls. Even at school, you can see how they keep us in our class. I am in a group of 16 year old Healers girls. Liam, I know, is in a group of 16 year old Healers boys, with John. No-one mixes with another class and we are never told why. 

After school, I wait on the playground for John and Liam. Scarlett, my best girl friend, sits with me. We always sit here, every afternoon, because the boys have an extra class. Soon enough, I see Liam and John heading in our direction. I know my brother will want to go straight home, like he does every day. John and Scarlett go home, saying that they have to do their homework. Liam and I watch them go, and shake our heads. Scarlett and John are supposed to be getting married in two years, after school finishes, just like I am supposed to marry Liam. The Hierarchy gives our parents a choice, at our birth,  to decide if we will marry or stay single. I am just glad that they chose marriage for both of us. I get lonely very easily and I do not know what I would do without Liam. Scarlett and Liam are twins, just like John and I, so our two sets of parents decided to pair us together. We were the first sets of twins ever to be born here in the Dome. In the past 16 years, my mother, who is a midwife, has not found another pregnancy that was more than one child. The Hierarchy will be constantly watching Liam, Scarlett, John and I for the rest of our lives, because we are different. We are abnormalities in an otherwise perfectly run system.