Prologue
The Book of Sam
“I always knew something was wrong.”
February 12, 2137 A.D.
Last winter was terrible. There were several power outages and the temperature descended to record lows again. Many people had to use whatever wool they had. Ronan and his girlfriend Abby were caught sleeping together in the same blanket and sent to the Correctional for the Prevention of Vice.
The next day I thought I was living the worst part of my life. Things couldn’t get worse for how I felt, both physically and psychologically.
Then I had a response.
The sound of gunshots and explosions came almost instantly. I was pinned to the ground, with the smell of smoke and dirt polluting my soul. The other acolytes were disoriented as well. I think I heard a priest calling the Peace Force from distance. I was outside when the first bomb went off.
The school, or the Academy of Moral Studies as it’s officially known, was next to the 60-feet wall separating St. Elmer’s Place from the outside world.
More blasts followed along the wall’s perimeter. At that time, the only thing I knew for sure was that my life was going to change forever.
Not one minute had passed when I saw them.
My vision continued to be blurry, but I distinguished several figures dressed in black running through the gardens or taking cover beside a building. One of them gunned down Deacon Moyes when he tried to fire back. Never in my life I had seen that kind of heresy until that day.
My senses gradually restarted themselves. I didn’t move. I think I couldn’t had even if I wanted to. I didn’t even feel my legs at that moment. Now that I remember it I can say with all honesty one part of me wanted to die there. One part of me wanted to tell the other how miserable my life had been. How coward and blatantly blind I had become that I didn’t deserve to live anymore.
But I lived.
My mother’s voice was the first sign I had that this was something else. She kneeled right in front of me and checked my wounds. I remember I saw her firing a gun several times before returning to me. A serf possessing an unauthorized weapon could result in a death sentence.
The black figures came closer to me. The priests and all the other members of the clergy called them demons. But they weren’t like the pictures and billboards that warned St. Elmer’s about their presence. They didn’t have horns, fangs or black skin.
They were people. Like mother and me.
And the black color was protective gear, not their skin.
“You were supposed to wait five minutes until he was safe” I remember my mother telling this to one of the persons in black armor. That moment I realized I didn’t even know my own mother. I didn’t know anything.
“Sorry, orders from above.” One of them responded.
A demon apologizing to my mother?
He had orders from above? From Heaven?
My head hurt, so I ceased focusing on every word I heard and embraced my destiny.
Mother and a black man carried me over to the other side of the wall. All my life I’ve been living inside those walls whose large parts lied destroyed. Venturing outside without permission would result in severe physical punishment.
Now that I write this memory all I can say is that feeling the refreshing air in my face was so harmonious.
It was like being born again.
Me getting drawn out of the womb to the light.
Now that my eyes are open, eighteen years of my life I felt blindfolded and tied to a wall. And I didn’t know it.
Until now.
It’s been two years since I was rescued by The Unmasked, one of many rebellious groups fighting against the Sammites, an authoritarian system ruled by religious charlatans. Tomorrow they will launch their biggest offensive yet. A coordinated assault against Rapture, the capital and largest city of this government. I never stood out as a good fighter, but I am a great orator and penman. Just before the final assault, a video of me will be broadcasted inside Rapture, lambasting the elite and giving hope to the people still under oppression, with the goal of starting an uprising inside the capital.
Before anything happens, I want to make clear I won’t surrender myself. I have a handgun and a cyanide pill at my side all the time. For that reason I want my memories to be immortalized in this digital device as I write them.
