The New Age

By Madison Brown

Gray. My entire world is gray. The foliage is dead, and the sky’s covered with a cloud of pollution. The factories, the prison buildings, our radiation-resistant uniforms. Even our skin is gray from malnutrition and lack of sun.

I adjust the mask pressed against my face and step off the bus from the women’s penitentiary, following the line of other prisoners toward the factory. My mask is old, near malfunctioning and exposing me to the radioactive world. Even now, I can feel the radiation slowly eating my body. It will kill me someday, but my death won’t matter. I’m just one prisoner among thousands.

I approach the factory door where an armed guard glances up from his clipboard. The speaker on his mask crackles as he asks, “Your number?”

“37417.” The number slips easily off my tongue after six years of checking into the factory every morning. Never in those six years has a guard asked for my name—only the number assigned to me. My number is all that matters to the Oligarchs.

And it’s starting to become all that matters to me, too. I’ve used my name so rarely since the bombing, I forget it sometimes. But I try to remember, because it’s the only fragment of identity I have left.

The guard waves me through, and I head into the factory with the other workers. We take off our masks, hang them in our lockers, and fall into position in the assembly line to begin another day of mindless labor. We might as well be robots, sweating rust, with steel rods instead of bones. Motors instead of hearts.

I begin assembling machinery piece by piece, hating each one because I know they’ll be shipped across the seas to the Oligarchs, the tyrants who bombed us, who made us prisoners, who built the factories that stole our lives. I guess that’s what our country gets for trying to resist their global confederation.

I work for hours, only pausing occasionally to flex my frigid fingers. I’m half-asleep when—clang!—the doors burst open, and people swarm the factory. They storm the guards—some with guns, others with makeshift clubs and blades. They wear ragged clothing over their uniforms, like they’d put on anything decent they could find in the rubble of the old world. I realize these strangers aren’t here to harm us, but to free us. There’s long been rumors of rebels against the Oligarchy, but I never expected them to show up here.

My awe dissipates as the world becomes chaos.

The guards and rebels clash, a cacophony of yells and gunfire. I cover my ears and drop beneath my workbench. Several feet away, a worker tumbles to the floor, hit by a stray bullet. I scream. Blood gushes. I want to help her, but I don’t know how. I close my eyes, trying to shut out the havoc. I can’t breathe.

Then… the noise dies. And I’m alive. The air smells burnt, and my ears ring. I barely open my eyes and look around the room. Guards lie on the floor, unconscious or dead; I don’t want to know which. I stand, though I’m not sure my body can support its own weight. Rebels surround us. One of them kneels by the injured worker beside me and begins tending to her wound, while several others care for the guards they overpowered. A woman with cropped black hair and a scar down her cheek hops up onto a workbench and removes her mask.

“Prisoners.” She spits out. “That’s all we are to them. Slaves. The Oligarchs destroyed our world, our lives. We cannot continue to let them strip us of our identities.”

Another rebel hands her a red flag, its splash of color invading our gray world. The fabric is tattered, likely pulled from the debris left over from the bombing, and a dead tree branch serves as a pole.

The woman holds the flag high. “We usher in a new age—a revolution. Each one of us holds the power to show the Oligarchs we will not remain oppressed; we only have to step up and do it. Which of you will fight with us?”

Silence. So quiet I hear someone across the factory drop a wrench.

The rebel leader frowns. The flag lowers. Was she really expecting us to join the revolution? We don’t stand a chance against the Oligarchs. We are nothing. I am nothing.

My gaze passes over the rebels. There is fire in their eyes. Hope. Passion. But when I look at my fellow prisoners, all I see is despair. We’ve let our lives be torn from us because we refuse to stand up for ourselves. We’re living defeated, as though we’re already dead.

I don’t want that anymore. I want the hope the rebels have. I want to be more than a number. I want to feel alive.

My hand shoots into the air.

“Me,” I yell. My voice shakes. My fingers shake. My legs shake. “I’ll fight with you.”

All heads turn in my direction. The factory workers gape at me, probably thinking I’m crazy for risking my life to join the revolution. I grit my teeth and stretch my hand higher in determination. I’d rather die today as a free spirit than live a thousand years as one of the Oligarch’s machines.

The black-haired woman hops off the table and approaches me, her chin high. “And who are you?”

Adrenaline floods my chest, its energy reaching all the way down to my bones. My heart hammers, each beat spelling out a message of hope and purpose. “I’m 37—” My tongue knots, as if refusing to utter the number. I swallow. “I… am Aubrey Miller. And I will fight.”

One of the rebels lets out a whoop, and a few others raise fists in triumph.

“Well, Aubrey Miller.” The scarred woman presses the flagpole into my hands. It’s warm in my palms. “Welcome to the new age.”

Can you guess which song inspired this story? (This month it could be any time period, any genre.) Share in the comments!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Madison Brown is an illustrator and graphic designer from southwest Missouri. She is a member of ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) and enjoys writing young adult speculative fiction featuring Christian values. When she’s not busy making art or wrangling plot bunnies, you can probably find her obsessing over board games, chips and salsa, and anything Disney-related.

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