This is told from Canada's viewpoint as a human child in a made up world ruled by a single government. It was inspired by those streaks of light you see when it's dark out and you're looking at a street light. When I was younger, I thought they were fairies. It is also somewhat inspired by the Uglies series by Scott Westerfield.
At birth in my world, all children are equipped with glasses. We are told that it's to let us see better; but really, all of us need glasses? None of us can see fine without them? Really?
Then again, I never thought about those kinds of thoughts before. Children only know what they've been told, I read about that somewhere, and even though I'm thinking in this kind of way I am still only a child. I have also heard that those children grow into adults that know only what they have been told, but with greater understanding.
I don't really understand that, but I guess that's what they mean when adults say that "you'll understand it better when you're an adult." I guess it will take me a long time to understand this all fully then, seeing as my brother and I just turned eight, we're twins, and the legal age for someone to be an adult is twenty-one. I have a lot of waiting to do then; but, at least I have Mr. Kirkland around to tell me more stuff that I can learn about to understand later.
Mr. Kirkland says I get off topic a lot of the time, I guess this is one of those times. I don't really understand why he wanted me to start a journal about this. No-wait, I do. It's because off all those books he has in his store. He wants me to write this all down like he is so people in the future can read about it. That's actually pretty cool.
Anyway, I bet that means he wants me to write this all out like some big story then instead of like the journal entries my parents have me do in accordance with the school's system. Mr. Kirkland told me to be very careful with what I put in that from now on. He says that my parents "losing" the journal every time I finish it is really just them giving it to the school system to review and see what needs to be done with me.
So writing this out like a story, the first part is good, right? So then I just need to write out what else he told me.
Right so, no one had questioned the system. It's gone on for so long that no one remembers a time before it. What always happens is that we are all given the glasses when we are younger because our eyes aren't fully developed, and so we can't have the surgery to make it permanent. No one doubts that we wear the glasses for our own benefit like we've been told is the reason we wear them. Why would anyone do something that didn't benefit everyone? Doing something that didn't help people went against everything we had ever been told we should do, so no one believed any trickery to be involved. We were told they would help us, so that's what would happen. According to Mr. Kirkland that is so very wrong.
My own belief in the system stayed until the day I took off my glasses. I hadn't been thinking at the time; but, I'm glad that I didn't. I would never have taken my glasses off otherwise, and I would never have seen the people trapped in the lights that powered our world.
That one accidental glasses-less view of the world turned into something more, or rather it happened much more. That one view of the world changed how I thought of it, after that my view of the world became very different, not all at once though.
I would take off my glasses every time I could, whenever the adult's backs were turned. I had a feeling I would get in trouble if they ever saw me take my glasses off. I was very fortunate that the first person to see me take them off and stare into the lights was Mr. Arthur Kirkland.
I was also very lucky that my parents were fine with me leaving the house to see him when I told them that he was letting me read the books in his store. It may also have helped that I told them I wasn't leaving to go see him specifically but rather to read that they were alright with my visits to his shop happening.
It's always seemed that their greatest pride in me has been how much I read, they would probably deny this though by saying that they loved me just as much as my brother but pride and love aren't the same thing and I know that they have no great level of either in me. They probably just encourage my reading because that's one thing that they don't have to pay money for, not that finances would be a problem of course; but that they don't have to pay does make it all the better in their eyes.
Mr. Kirkland understands that, in this place where they try to organize you as soon as they can and where I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, he also was a "late knower". He was lucky the bookshop idea had turned out to be a job he liked.
During one of my first visits to his bookshop he told me about a friend of his from when he was younger, and he still had his glasses. His friend had hacked into the city's computers for him. His friend had wiped his profile off of the list for those people needing their permanent contacts put in. Mr. Kirkland told me that the glasses made it so that children can't see the magic in the world, more importantly so they can't see the light fairies that illuminate the cities.
Mr. Kirkland explained how if people knew about the other species, that were intelligent and conscious of themselves, being held captive and used in this way people would be against it.
He told me that most adults lose their ability to see mystical creatures as they got older and became less imaginative. The surgery that adults went through was in case of the not-even one percent of the population that kept both their ability and their imagination. The amount of people that didn't lose their imagination was much higher, most of the population he says, but they can't see the fairies. They only know that they are there in their subconscious. The glasses make sure that they can't even know about them in that part of their being, and the contacts take away the ability to see the fairies when they have the power to feel rebellious, take off their glasses, and do something about it.
After talking about this with Mr. Kirkland he told me that he was lucky enough to have kept his ability after he grew up. He could still see the fairies.
It became my goal to feel even less alone in the world, I wanted to find others like us. I wanted to specifically find others my age first though. So, I chose to start with my brother, Alfred.
I spent weeks brainstorming with Mr. Kirkland about how exactly I could take Alfred's glasses off, how I could do it away from our parents, and how I could make it look accidental enough that Alfred wouldn't run screaming to Mommy about it. Mr. Kirkland made sure that making it look accidental should be my top priority.
When I finally executed the plan, and his glasses came off, I was over-joyed. Alfred could see the light people too.
Do you like it? hate it? Are you confused? Please tell me if I should explain things better. I tried to organize this, but I'm terrible at explaining things. I would not be a good teacher.