Breaching the Invisible Wall

Never go past the walls of the city district.

There was never a reason. Never a very good one in my opinion anyways. But there it was, the rule to never go past the clear forcefield wall that provided so-called safety to its residents. One could not even see the wall itself; as the wall that surrounded the city district functioned much like a screen – looking like a desolate wasteland beyond.

I walked the long way home from the market to pick up herbs and various spices from the underground co-op. No one could grow anything in our own gardens with the artificial sky and atmosphere caused by the domed invisible walls around the city. I took the winding path that led to the perimeter of the city’s transparent LED screen walls. Heavily armored guards with ominous weapons manned the sides of the road that led to the gates that allowed supplies and government official in and out. I held back the urge within my soul to run at the gates…. To dare the fates and let the armored guards attempt to stop me.

But where would I go even if I were to make it to the other side? What really existed behind the screen? Was it truly the radioactive poisoned world that they claimed at that it was?

It had been 2 years since they had erected the invisible wall.

I remember it like it was 2 hours ago.

A world war had broken out. Or at least that was what was told to us via the television screen. Nuclear weapons were released – the earth’s atmosphere had been poisoned.

Or so they told us.

An emergency meeting had been called. A new technology: a clear invisible dome to be raised around all the new district cities of the new world. Now the major cities of the world could have their air and light be filtered through the dome wall that would be put up for everyone’s safety within.

Anyone or anything outside of the dome would be dead.

That or horrifically mutated.

There had been stories of those who dared to travel between the domed invisible walled cities without permission or a military chaperone. When the dome went up, the internet and communication became localized only to the city itself. Communication to other district cities could only be done at specific call centers in the city and they were heavily monitored to prevent those who would threaten the peace agreement created when the world war ended.

Did the war ever end?

Those who opposed the wall’s implementation were quickly publicly executed in the city square to make an example. One of those was my mother. My mother was our community’s healer. She was who you would come to for fertility advice, for tinctures for ailments and to bring blessings to the home. She did not believe the story that the world outside the walls of the city was unlivable.

My mother was executed for breaching the city’s invisible wall on her regular Sunday morning gathering of herbs and plants from the small wild forest a mile south of the city gates. The security was not what it was then as it is now.

The wall was still new. The security measure fresh and a little lax.

My mother got to see the outside world. Her eyes told me everything when they executed her in front of me and my sister in the middle of the city. That there was so much more to what they were telling us from beyond the city’s invisible walls.

I pushed the urge to run at the gates as I walked backed the entry point. Continued my walk home to my humble home that I shared with my two younger sisters. I was making a healing potion for the youngest to assist with a cough that she had developed in the last week.

What would really help with that potion is a very specific flower that could only be found in the wild forest outside the city’s forcefield…

But perhaps that forest no longer lived.

Or did it? As I approach the walkway to the brick apartment block, I wave at the elderly man on the front porch who is smoking a large cigar.

“No one’s caught you smoking that yet, Carl?” I tease him as I walk up the steps to the apartment’s front door. Smoking anywhere in the city is strictly prohibited.

Something about the air quality of all being impacted by each of our vices. Aka “Sins”.

So much for the separation of church and state.

Carl shot me back me a wink, “No one’s caught you making your magic healing potions neither eh?”

“Shhhh...,” I hiss back, half joking, half aware that the city’s spy enforcement could be anywhere. Monitoring and watching for anyone or anything that could prove to be detrimental to the so-called wellbeing of the district city.

The front door of our apartment complex is always left open, and so I nudge the door with my left shoulder open – keeping my bag of herbs and spices cradled in my right hand. I walk up the creaky stairs, as the elevator is always out or stalled.

I live on the 3^rd floor, and I can hear my dog Sparky going off as soon as my feet touch the ground on that floor. Once he goes off, then a symphony of other dogs starts barking and going crazy in response – so I hurry to my door which I unlock quickly and head in.

“I’m home!!!” I yell out and drop my keys on the side table in the foyer.

Sparky, my golden lab, barrels up to me nearly knocking me on my back. Music is playing from the kitchen, but there is a note on the wall from one of my sisters saying:

WENT OUT. FOOD IN FRIDGE.

“Must be from Melissa,” I say to myself. This is because I could hear my youngest sister Sierra slightly snoring from her bedroom. Sparky had gone back into her room to sleep on the bed with her after his initial rambunctious greeting to me.

Once in the kitchen, I unpack the herbs and spices I had gotten from the underground greenhouse market. You could only get such items from government sanctioned centers these days, but it would do for the healing potion. I hoped.

As I begin my potion-creation work, a voice starts to crackle over the illegal hand radio nestled in the corner of the kitchen. We have one to talk to our family members from other District Cities. As mentioned before, doing so is strictly prohibited. However, there are those in each of our cities that oppose the incredibly totalitarian regime imposed on us... based on a nuclear war that no one can necessarily verify beyond the view on a screen.

The voice sounds like static noise at first, but then comes through much clearer:

“There is life beyond the walls of the city districts.”

I stop my puttering around in the kitchen.

Move towards the radio, tentatively.

Picking up the receiver of the radio, I speak into it, “How do you know there is life beyond the wall? Over.”

A pause.

Crackling on the radio. Sparky has now entered the kitchen, wondering hearing the frequency and the potential news that wildlife and life itself may exist beyond the walls of the city.

“There is life beyond the walls of the city districts.”

The message repeating again.

I feel my heart drop at this. Was this some sort of pre-recording? Some remnants of the past left in an analog form to offer a type of hope to us trapped within the city.

But it continued…

“There is life beyond the walls of the city districts. I know because I am beyond the wall. If you are hearing this, it means that you are meant to.”

[Click.]

Sparky whines, cocking his head to one side looking at me.

I look at the herbs and spices and the awareness that there is a special flower that exists beyond the walls of the district city that is required to complete the healing potion surrounds me like a pounding call.

Never go past the walls of the city’s district.

The urge in my soul returned, pushing against my heart and my inner self.

It was time to breach the invisible wall. Tonight.