tion id="u6a5eb801-1515-536a-9bfb-9f1ec5ab5d44">
FOR
MY FAMILY,
who knows
the importance
of dreaming
beyond the edge
of our world
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
—Jalāl ad-Din ar-Rūmī
The first humans were especially ungrateful. After the birth of the sun and the moon, they asked for stars. After the crops rose from the ground, they asked for beasts to fill the fields. After some time, the god of the ground, weary of their demands, thought it best to destroy them and begin again with humbler beings. So it goes that the god of the sky thought the first humans too clever to waste, and he agreed to keep them in the sky with the promise that they would never again interfere with the ground.
—The History of Internment, Chapter 1
Table of Contents
You have all heard the warnings about the edge. We have been told its winds are a song that will hypnotize us, and by the time we awaken from that trance, it will be too late.
—“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten
WE LIVE ENCAPSULATED BY THE TRAINS. They go around in a perfect oval at all hours, stopping for thirty-five seconds in each section so the commuters are able to board and depart. Beyond the tracks, after the fence, there’s sky. Engineers crafted a scope so that we can see the ground below us. We can see tall buildings and other sorts of trains—some of which disappear underground or rise onto bridges. We can see patches of cities and towns that appear stitched like one of Lex’s blankets.
We’ve never been able to craft a scope advanced enough to see the people—it isn’t allowed. We’ve been banished to the sky. I’m told they can see Internment, though. I wonder, what must we look like to them? A giant oval of the earth with rocks and roots clinging to the bottom, I suppose. I’ve seen sketches of what Internment looks like as a whole, and it’s as though a giant hand came down and took a piece right out of the ground, and here we are floating in the sky.
When I was a child, I used to think about the day Internment was ripped from the ground and placed in the sky. I used to wonder if the people were frightened, or if they felt fortunate to be saved. I used to imagine that I was a part of Interment’s first generation. I’d close my eyes and feel the ground under my feet going up and up and up.
“Ms. Stockhour,” Instructor Newlan says, “you’re dreaming with your eyes open again. Page forty-six.”
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