Imaginary Stories: Chapter Five (** Draft **)

(The following is the concluding chapter of a short story that began here, proceeded to zig and zag before turning a corner in this direction, and finally leading us to our current location.)

Chapter Five: Lost Girls

"Chen-Chi took Katie's hand in hers and lead her along the path of broken cobblestones that ran up toward the abandoned mansion. She said, "Don't be scared. I think Mister Moon was just teasing us when he said that the house was haunted. Or maybe he thought that we were big babies who still believed in ghosts."

"I'm not a baby!" Katie blurted out with the sort of urgency and sincerity that only an eight-year-old could put into such a self-evident statement. "But... I don't want to go in there. It's not a nice place."

The older girl stopped. She could see that her companion was on the verge of tears. "Well, maybe it's OK to be scared, then. I don't want to go inside, either, but if we don't, then how are we ever going to rescue Mei-Xie? We can't just abandon her. And no one would ever believe us about the dragon, so who else is there?"

Katie began to sob, and Chen-Chi despaired. But then the younger girl started moving slowly forward once again, in the direction of the dark, looming structure that no child with any other options would ever choose to enter."
- "Lost Girls", Coming Of Age Tale, Elizabeth Lee (Born: 1991), Published 2006

Linus continued to stare downward as James Hancock said, "Hey, that's great news, Linus! But how come we're only hearing about this now?"

Laurel answered before Linus could say anything. "James, you know that this is a voluntary group session every day. No one has to say anything about their COAT. We're all just here to support each other in whatever form is needed by each COAT author."

"I know that, Miss Allen," James replied, shifting in his seat, "but Linus had us convinced he was never going to write his COAT! He had us calling him Peter Pan, for Heaven's sake!"

"Look," Linus said, with irritation evident in his tone but still not taking his eyes off his shoes, "it's not that big of a deal. I've started my COAT. I've got what seems like a reasonable idea for it. It'll be done soon and then I get to call myself a grownup. Whoo hoo."

"Is there any chance you're going to share this new idea with the rest of us?" asked Peter, with just a touch of disbelief in his voice.

Laurel began to object to this slight violation of COAT session protocol but then checked herself. Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures, she thought to herself.

"Actually," Linus said, finally wrenching his gaze up from the floor, "that's what we've been talking about."

"Huh?" both Sanjay and James said, in unison.

Linus took a deep breath in, held it briefly, and then let it out. "Alright. Suppose the Literary Revolution had never happened. Yes, I know it did happen, country by country, over the course of a decade or so; but suppose it hadn't. What would the world look like today?" As his words hung in the air and no one spoke, Linus thought, Well, that certainly shut them up!

Sanjay Majmudar was the first to berak the silence. "Well, I guess people would still be achieving adult status at age 18, or 21, or whatever it used to be in their particular country."

"And not everyone would be able to read!" James offered, enthusiastically.

"Not exactly the most thrilling of ideas, Linus," Peter said, drawing a dirty look from his teacher in the process.

"Isn't it?" Linus asked. "Maybe that's because you're not really thinking it all the way through."

"What do you mean, Linus?" asked Elizabeth Lee, for once not a step or two ahead of her classmates. "What other differences do you think it would have made?"

"Now, that's a very interesting question," Linus said. "And this is all speculation on my part, of course, because we'll never actually know. But I've done considerable research on what life was like in the latter half of the nineteenth century, specifically looking for trends that didn't continue much beyond the introduction of the various COAT laws."

"What did you find?" Laurel asked, almost breathlessly.

"I found quite a lot. In fact, the more I dug, the more there was to find! I've got enough notes to give me material for two or three COATs, I imagine. It may be hard to cram it all into just fifty thousand words..."

"You know that that's a minimum, and not a maximum, don't you, Linus?" asked his teacher, softly.

"I was only joking, Miss Allen. I'm not really worried. This thing is practically writing itself."

"Throw us a bone or two, Linus!" James implored his friend, impatiently.

"OK, sure. Does anybody think it's strange that we haven't had much in the way of warfare over the past hundred years? I mean, think about it: Just in North America alone, there'd been the American War of Independence, the War of 1812, the American Civil War, and the Spanish American War, all within 130 years of the entirely bloodless Literary Revolution that started in 1905. And in the century since then... nothing!"

"Well, Linus, that's because we progressed and became more civilized," said Liz.

"Is it? I'm not so sure it's all that simple, Liz. After all, people in the 1890s were quite a bit more progressed and civilized compared to those in the 1790s, and yet they were still waging war on each other. What's different since then?"

"What do you think is different, Linus?" asked Laurel.

"Everybody reads."

"Everybody reads?" echoed Peter, looking skeptical.

"Everybody reads. Illiteracy, which was the norm for the majority before the early 1900s, seemed to allow all kinds of things to happen that we can barely comprehend today. The poor in every nation could be made to believe any old line of crap that their leaders fed them, since they had no way of ever reading history books, newspapers or even the laws that were being passed. Presidents and kings could send their people to war on almost any pretext, no matter how ridiculous, if the masses had no way of educating themselves enough to question it."

Laurel felt the need to interrupt her student, though she hated to do it. "But Linus, that was the whole point of the COAT laws: to ensure that everyone was given the chance to lift themselves up to a reasonable level of education. And it's long been hailed as a great success in that regard. But how do you tie it to something like an end to all wars?"

"Besides the fact that we haven't had any, you mean? It's not just about ending war, either. For decades now, crime rates worldwide have been at a negligible level that would've astounded anyone from the nineteenth century. No one goes hungry, and that's just taken for granted now. Racism was rampant, and growing, in the early twentieth century, and now? Here we sit in a classroom with two Americans, a Chinese, an Indian, a Canadian and an Irish lad, and yet not one of us even thinks of each other in those divisive ways. Our level of integration, which exists everywhere today just as a matter of course, would've been unheard of before COAT. The Irish were considered outcasts in the Eastern United States in the 1800s! Human slavery was still being allowed until only a few decades before COATs, and a good chunk of the Southern U.S. still supported the idea even after it was made illegal! Religious persecution on the one hand, and religious extremism extending to violence, of all things, on the other hand, were both commonplace before COATs. Women had few rights, if any. Drug dependencies were on the rise.

"And those are just a few examples. What about technology? How much did we accelerate our various industries by having a worldwide work force that could do more complicated work than plow a field or plant rice? Would we have had computers in the 1940s without COATs? Would the average citizen of the world been educated enough to realize that we needed a closed system approach to preserving our natural resources, or would they have run out by now? What would it have meant to have our weaponry improve each generation if it advanced faster than our consciences?"

Linus paused to collect his thoughts. No one else in the group said anything but they all looked very thoughtful. He continued, "I don't think most people have any idea just how dark a world we were moving toward at that point in time. Some historians claim that the crimes of Jack the Ripper, in the 1880s, marked the low point in our development as a species. Everything I've read recently makes me believe that we suddenly took a sharp right turn in the early twentieth century. But without that turn, Jack the Ripper might easily have been nothing more than a perpetuation of a trend that would've taken us... who knows where?... had literacy not become law. That 'who knows where?' question is what my COAT's all about."

"That, and about twelve thousand words so far!" said James, even though he knew that it was an old joke.

"You've certainly become very passionate about this, Linus!" Laurel said, smiling. "I think you're just going to have to be patient with the rest of us, though, while we try to catch up. It's a lot to take in all at once."

"It sure is," Sanjay said.

"I'm really intrigued," Liz commented, with total sincerity.

"My head's spinning," quipped James. "But that's not all that unusual!"

"I've got to say," Peter said, beaming, "I'm pretty impressed, old chum."

"Whoo hoo," said Linus. But he couldn't completely hide a smile.

Epilogue: American Gothic

"Danny poked his head out of the opium den and looked around. The markings on the far wall seemed to indicate that the street was safe at the moment, but he knew that conditions could change quickly. If he were caught without the right Party Card, after all, he'd be lucky to get away with just a sound beating. Hard to have the right Party Card, he thought, when the party keeps changing. At least there were drugs to make it all almost bearable.

Three timezones away, Danny's girlfriend, Suzanne, was finishing her day's shift with the National Guard. Perpetual Martial Law meant lots of employment opportunities, but she wasn't sure just how much more of it she could endure. It was impossible to keep track of who "the enemy" was most days: was it the foreigners, or the Negroes, or the drugsters who she was supposed to harass and possibly detain? She knew the correct answer was "all of the above" but she also knew that the man who held her heart in his hands was similarly, and tragically, "all of the above."

At least now she had a job, though, which was more than most of her friends could say. The idea of opening the Guard up to women had its detractors, but Suzanne appreciated the opportunity it provided, at least in theory. As a woman, what other employment could she ever hope for, after all? Now she could afford to buy food tonight, and as a Guardsman she didn't have to stand in line to get an oil ration. Even thoroughly reprehensible work has its advantages, she thought. But it wasn't a terribly comforting thought."
- "American Gothic", Coming Of Age Tale, Linus Morgan (Born: 1990), Published 2006 and credited with launching the American Gothic genre in which writers envision modern day life had the COAT laws never been passed