I know I'm not great about updating quickly anyway, but I'm going on vacation for two weeks and I might not be able to for a while.
Disclaimer: This is the boring disclaimer, I do not own The Giver
That night, Noah tried to murder Brooke. Of course the plan was ill-thought out and the rest of the community protected their new Chief Elder. Brooke glared at him with the same steeliness from the previous night creeping back into her cold, gray eyes.
"You will be released," she said icily. "Follow me." The community let go of him, frightened and bewildered, while Noah finally realized what he had tried to do. I'd never seen such an expression of terror in my life as he followed Brooke into the forest. I never saw him again.
It's not exactly true what I said before, I have seen such fear before, in the faces of the innocent about to be vaporized by the falling alpha. Thinking about the innocent caused me to make a decision; Brooke was right. My fellow community members did not deserve to suffer like this, forever living life scarred by the memory of the stomach wrenching fear. I would take those memories of pain from them with a willing and heavy heart.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Brooke did not return to our campsite for some time leaving the rest of to speculate what release could possibly be. Everyone agreed on one point, Noah was going to wind up Elsewhere. What no one could agree on past that point was what Elsewhere was exactly.
"It's obvious that the unfortunate male in question will end up outside of our Hudson oasis here. He will be forever banished to live in the barren, radioactive world out there. Of course he won't be able to survive without food, and the Hudson is radioactive everywhere else, so he can't drink. He will die from starvation and radioactive poisoning within a fortnight," Roy reported, pushing up his glasses.
"No, I don't think so," said Kendra. "It may start out that way, but I think that with all of the radioactivity emanating from the earth in the past fifteen years, extraterrestrial life of some kind must have detected our existence. I think that they will come to search for life here. They will undoubtedly find Noah and pick him up. Who knows what will happen from there?"
I searched her face for signs of sarcasm, but found nothing. The rest of the community started arguing amongst themselves and many farfetched theories were shared. They know nothing, the naïve fools, I thought cynically. Could they be so childish so as not to know what release meant? Not to understand what Elsewhere really was?
Noah was never seen again because he was dead, and quite frankly, speaking with a corpse does not provide for any particularly stimulating conversation. Elsewhere was where everyone came from before birth and where everyone went when they died; heaven. You couldn't separate yourself from it, it would always be there to welcome you home. Of course, that is if you believe in that sort of thing, which I do.
Everyone was talking about how to separate themselves from Elsewhere so that the released and those of the community would not become confused. Rip all the trees out of the ground, they cried! Topple the hills, we want a level plain! Make everything the same! We don't want any more terror, tears, warfare, loneliness, loss, tasting of unsavory foods, crime, injustice, poverty, suffering, illness, and above all, pain. Let us live in the present. Let us live in ignorance. Let us live in peace.