This is a story I wrote as an author study for my AP Literature class. I only wrote 850 words for the assignment, but this is going to be a real story. I was trying to replicate small pieces of Scott Westerfeld's style as I wrote this, to include the quote at the beginning of the chapter. The story follows Dr. Cable as a new special, and her big assignment that made her who she is. I made up a first name for her. Please, tell me what you think!
Disclaimer: Uglies is property of Scott Westerfeld and I'm in no way affiliated with it.
Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it. -George Santanya
A tiny ping awoke Dela Cable from her nap. Again. She didn't remember why she had set her alarm early, and she just wanted to go to sleep. She hardly opened her this time, and was just losing consciousness when ping. This annoyance was enough. Dela was up for good. She sat up in her bed, and hardly glanced around the pathetic room.
Allowing herself to be sent back to Rusty times had been the worst mistake of her life. Everything in the Rusty world worked strangely and was complicated, and Dela was becoming more and more irritable with every passing day she spent there.
She hated her morning routines with a passion. Wake up, get in the shower, find something to wear, find some sort of breakfast, and the worst offender, getting into the Rusty deathtrap they called a car.
As if the itchy and scratchy clothing Rusties wore wasn't bad enough, Dela was forced to sit in the land vehicle every day while she was driven from a house to a school. This was just terrifying. The results of these creations hadn't escaped her mind. Every Rusty with a car would be blown up some day.
Dela was on her way to school now, and couldn't help but admire the scenery. As much as she hated the Rusty era, the intense colors, buildings, and sights were eye-catching. Although Dr. Fogg had done some de-specialization surge on Dela and the other Specials for this mission, the city was still just as vivid as New Pretty Town.
Dela's mission was simple. Fogg wanted Special Circumstances to understand the Rusty world's innovative and liberal existence- and crush it in the future. Dela wanted to succeed more than anyone. She wanted to be the director of Special Circumstances, and she would be if she could prove she would have a firm control over it.
The car rides always seemed to last forever, but Dela ended up at Topeka High School eventually. The concept of the high school was fascinating for Dela. Only uglies went to school, and only until they turned sixteen and got the bubblehead operation.
However, the school went against all she had understood for education. There was no dorms for the uglies after they moved out of their crumblies' houses. Instead, they stayed there, like littlies. The students didn't wear uniforms, except those who were on sports teams. Instead, they dressed like a bunch of randoms. And their clothing wasn't even recyclable.
The school was the only place Dela went to on a regular basis. Aside from the "foster home" she had been placed in by an official-looking old ugly, she didn't see the insides of many buildings. The papers, real books, technology, and people were enough to deter her from wanting to go elsewhere.
Dela avoided talking to people in the school. Just because she looked like a random didn't mean she had to be a random. Unfortunately, the Specials' skintennas wouldn't work in Rusty times, and she had no way of talking to her friends. She had been placed in classes with fifteen and sixteen year-olds, while the older specials were placed in classes with seventeen year-olds. She didn't believe it was fair, but she also couldn't just tell anyone she was a different age.
As Dela moved from class to class, she had to remind herself of the reason she was there at all. This is an important mission. I can't mess this up, she thought to herself. A group of randoms passed her on her way to lunch, and accidentally shoved her into a locker. Anger surged into her, fueled by her frustration with this world. For a second, she was tempted to bare her teeth and growl, but the menacing affect would be lost by her non-special features.
"Get out the way," one girl said. Dela wanted to be special more than ever, at that moment. Her reflexes and surge had been removed, and she was defenseless against the ordinary as she went through the Rusty era.
Lunch was uneventful. Dela rarely ate, because the food was surprisingly worse than what the specials normally ate. She believed the food regulations of this era were ridiculous. They hardly prevented people from eating whatever they wanted. Dela didn't know anyone she had lunch with, and she spent her lunch period alone.
The afternoon classes were spent in the usual blur. Dela showed up in her classes, did nothing, and left at the end of the day. When she went home, there wasn't much to do. Dela finished her homework, and lounged around.
After dinner, she just laid in bed. She imagined the feeling of hoverboarding. The wind whipping her hair around and battering her body as she swerved between trees, the hoverboard below her, keeping steady and following her direction, the laughs of the specials as they raced each other, and the intense joy she always got from the sport.
More than ever, she missed being special. Only eighty more days here, she thought as she fell asleep.