sunday, february 25, 2035
I've been too cold and too miserable, and too sick to do much writing. We've all had flu. We're made to work anyway. Four people died last week during a long, cold rain. One was pregnant. She gave birth alone in the mud. No one was allowed to help her. She and her baby both died. Two were worked until they dropped. When they dropped, the teachers called them lazy parasites and lashed them. During the night, they died—two men. They were all strangers, highway paupers—'vagrants' who had been forced to come here. They were sick and half-starved when they arrived. Thanks to the cold, wet weather, the lack of heat in our barracks, and the bad diet, we all catch any contagious disease brought to us from the highway or from the towns. Even our 'teachers' are suffering with colds and flu. And when they suffer, they take their misery out on us.
All this, and one other thing has made us decide that the time has come to make our own break—or die trying.
We have information—some of us have learned things from our rapists, others just from keeping our eyes and ears open. Also, we have 23 knives—that is, Earthseed, the Sullivans and the Gamas have 23 knives. That's more than one for each guard. Some we've stolen from the trash heap where our 'teachers' teach us wastefulness and slovenliness. Other knives are just sharp bits of metal that we've found and wrapped with tape or cloth to protect our hands. They're crude, but they'll cut a human throat. As soon as we've shut our collars off, we'll use the knives. If we're quick and if we move together as we've planned, we should be able to surprise several of our guards before they even think to use their maggots against us.
We know some of us will die in this. Maybe we'll all die. But the way things are going, we'll die anyway. None of us know how long we're to be kept collared. No one who's come here has been released. Even the few people who try to suck up to the 'teachers' when they don't have to are still here, still collared. None of us have heard anything about what's happened to our children. And most of us are sick. None of Earthseed has died since Day's rebellion, but we're sick. And Allie... Allie might die. Or she might be permanently brain damaged. She's one of the reasons I've decided we've got to risk a breakout soon.
Allie and her lover Mary Sullivan were caught last Sunday.
No, I take that back. They weren't caught. They were betrayed. They were betrayed by Beth and Jessica Faircloth. That's the worst They were betrayed by people who were part of us, part of Earthseed. They were betrayed by people whom Allie and the rest of us had helped to rescue from starvation and slavery back when they had nothing. We took them in, and when their family decided to join Earth-seed, when they had done their probationary year, we Welcomed them.
I watched the betrayal. I couldn't stop it I couldn't do anything. I'm worthless these days, just worthless.
Last Sunday, we had the usual six hours of preaching, this time on the evils of sexual sinfulness. First we heard from Reverend Locke, who runs this place. Then we heard from Reverend Chandler Benton, a minister from Eureka who sometimes drives out to inflict himself on us. Benton preached a vicious and weirdly salacious sermon on the evil, depraved wickedness of bestiality, incest, pedophilia, homosexuality, lesbianism, pornography, masturbation, prostitution, and adultery. It went on and on—stories from current news, Bible stories, long quotations of Old Testament laws and punishments including death by stoning, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the life and death of Jezebel, disease, hellfire, on and on.
But there was nothing at all said about rape. The good Reverend Benton himself has, during earlier visits, made use of both Adela Ortiz and Cristina Cho. He goes to the cabin—once the Balter house—that is reserved now for visiting VIPs and has the woman of his choice brought to him.
We endure these sermons. They give us a chance to come in out of the rain. We are allowed to sit down and not work. We aren't cold because our 'teachers' don't want to be cold. They build a big fire in the school's fireplace once a week. And so for a few hours on Sundays, we are warm, dry, and almost comfortable in our rows on the floor. We're hungry, but we know we'll soon be fed. We're in a drowsy, passive state. Without the rest we get on Sundays, several more of us would be dead. I'm sure of that. Nevertheless, we're being preached at while we're in that drowsy, passive state. I doze sometimes, though we're lashed if we're caught sleeping. I sit up, lean against a wall, and I let myself doze.
I didn't realize it, but the two female Faircloths, it seems, had begun to listen. Worse, they had begun to believe, to be frightened, to be converted. Or perhaps not. Perhaps they had other motives.
We're always being called upon to testify, to give public thanks for all the kindness and generosity that God has shown us in spite of our unworthiness. And we must confess that unworthiness and make a public repentance and a public appeal for God's mercy. We have each been required to do this many times. The more you yield, the more you are required to yield. Our teachers know we don't mean it, know we act out of fear of pain. We simply do as we are told. They hate us for this. They look at us with unmistakble hatred, disgust, and contempt, and they insist that it's love that they feel. Their God requires them to love us, after all. And it's only love that makes them try so hard to help us see the light. They say we're blinded by our own sinful
