Anthem: Part II
by: DRooDigger
XIII
It has been three years since we- no…. since I have written. I must get used to referring to myself as an individual.
We- that is, Gaea and I- wondered what we should name our son upon his arrival. All Gaea and I knew is that we were going to break the chains of our former society and give our son a proper name from birth. Equality 7-2521 is not a proper name. Liberty 5-3000 is not a proper name. Prometheus is a proper name, as is Gaea. They offer individuality, and individuality is what we wanted for our son.
Just before our son was born, I found myself digging through the thousands of books from the Unmentionable Times that I discovered, and came across a book that looked older than most of the others. It said "Greek Mythology" on the front of it, and had a picture of a large muscular man with long gray hair standing on a cliff surrounded by lightning. It was a worn picture. This book had obviously been used heavily before it had been stored here. I looked through this book and came across an extensive list of Greek gods and goddesses. The god Prometheus and the goddess Gaea were listed there. But these gods I knew about from previous studies. I eventually came across a god that intrigued me. There was a small symbol next to the description that caught my eye; a rod with a serpent wrapped around it. This god was said to be the god of something called "medicine". "Medicine", according to the book, was apparently something from the Unmentionable Times that cured illness and disease. In the Accursed Place, we had Doctors, but they rarely did any good. They attached leeches to the skin to get rid of bad blood, but this only seemed to make people sicker. After all, they could never do anything to cure Union 5-3992, Fraternity 2-5503, and Solidarity 9-6347. We named our son after this god, with the hope that he would bring "medicine" to our new world like his namesake did to the old world. We named our son Asclepius.
Gaea gave birth to Asclepius almost three years ago. We have been preoccupied with him ever since. I have waited for him to be old enough to no longer be too much work for Gaea to handle alone before I go out to handle the daunting task of liberating my brethren. I vowed when I last wrote three years ago that I would set the rest of my companions who are still enslaved by that evil word, "we", free. I would never leave Gaea home alone with our infant son for an extended period. Now, however, Asclepius is old enough to know the difference between what is right and what is wrong. Gaea is perfectly capable of handling him alone while I liberate my old friends. So, tomorrow I will take leave in the dead of night. I shall leave a note for Gaea, explaining my absence, and I shall go to the Accursed Place that bound me since birth. And I shall break the bonds that hold my friends to that place, and set them free. I shall bring them back here, and start a new society; a proper society; a society where everyone is an individual. I shall do this myself, as an individual, not as part of a unit; as "I", not as part of "We".