Wednesday 1st November 2028
Son, I want to tell you about how it was before. The PTB may never let you know, and you will be taken away from me in 2035 on your 6th birthday, hopefully after I have taught you to read and write. I don’t know whether I will be allowed to give this letter to you, but I will try to find a way.
I was one of the chosen few, one of the lucky ones, they said. But was I? It is a bit like Noah’s Ark here, but on a grand scale. You’ll know what I mean. I know they will have let you read the Bible. That is one of the books that we have been allowed to keep here. It was written before they deemed that the world had been desecrated by writing and other media.
We lived on Planet Earth, which was slowly being destroyed by the human race, they said. The PTB were going to start a new world on a new planet. Well, not really on a planet just yet. That will come later when we have completed this experiment of living in this dome on the moon.
They only took a handful of us humans: one hundred fertile young women between age eighteen and twenty five; one hundred virile young men of the same age; fifty of the top scientists of the world and of course, the powers that be (the PTB we call them). The rest of Planet Earth’s humans were left behind to struggle on until the time came for them to take the pills that had been issued for them to take, when they could stand to live no longer. Planet Earth as we knew it would never recover, and was rapidly frazzling up, after the ice caps had melted. We are given news every day of the various disasters happening on Planet Earth: earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, virus epidemics and wars. But we are never told who the victims were, or who the survivors might be. Only the PTB know that.
I have been here for six months and I am missing my family terribly. I wonder every day if they are still alive? My little brother was sick when I left, so I doubt if he would have survived much longer, and I can imagine that my parents would administer the pill to him rather than see him suffer. Would they then have a suicide pact and take their own pills together? I imagine that they would. Your grandparents were very devoted to each other, and to my brother and me. It broke their hearts when I was taken for this experiment.
I am suppressing the tears I feel like crying and, as I pat my tummy, I am thinking about your future, my darling unborn baby boy. I wonder who your father was. From whose tube of donor sperm have you originated? I am hoping that you are Daniel’s, as he is such a nice man, and would make a lovely Daddy for you, if they would let him. However, I doubt they will ever let any of us know. They had matched me with the most suitable donor, they said. Most suitable to whom though? Now they had a second chance to start the human race almost from scratch, they wanted to create a perfect society, they said. Perfect for whom, I wonder?
They have only brought with us animals essential for human survival: horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens and fish. You may be taught how to breed and look after these animals, and how to kill them and cook them for our food. But, you will never know the love and devotion we got from a dog by our side, the comfort of cuddling a cat, or the joy of hearing birdsong. You will never watch a beautiful butterfly drying its gossamer wings in the sunshine. You may be allowed to watch the historic films they have brought with us about the animals on Planet Earth, but you will never get to feel the emotion of being close to any of those wonderful creatures.
They have brought essential crops, and you will be taught how to farm them to provide food for our survival. But you will never know the satisfaction of owning a garden, and of growing pretty flowers to encourage butterflies and bees. Yes, they have beehives here surrounded by essential nectar producing flowers, but you won’t be allowed to grow all the different exotic species that they have brought along to keep in the experimental dome. Only the scientists will have access to them in ‘The Laboratory’. If plants cannot supply food for our new Utopian society, they will be deemed to be of no use to us.
On the plus side, you will never know what it is like to smoke or drink alcohol. Grapevines and hops have not been brought with us, neither have tobacco plants thankfully, unless they have them in ‘The Laboratory’. That is probably not such a bad thing. People used to get drunk a lot on Planet Earth, and smoke cigarettes that polluted the atmosphere, and people’s lungs. These are things that I am glad that the PTB has banned. There are other things that they have banned that I agree with, like junk food. If you only knew how bad that was for the human race, but thankfully you will not get any of that.
You will not be allowed access to technology. Back on Planet Earth we had televisions with hundreds of different channels to watch films produced to amuse us in our hours of rest. There will be no hours of rest or pleasure for you. You will be here strictly to farm, mine, build, develop and procreate. You will only work, pause to eat now and again, and then sleep when you can work no longer.
You will be watched by the PBT wherever you go here, and you will not be allowed to communicate with anyone else, unless at the daily gatherings where we discuss our day. On Planet Earth we used to be able to communicate with each other any time we liked, and were free to use our computers for anything we liked. We had friends we could chat to on Skype anywhere in the World. We had a thing called Facebook, where we could find new friends and communicate with each other. We had telephones we carried everywhere with us, and we could speak to any of our friends whenever we wanted. Our emails came from anyone anywhere, not just from the PTB. They have banned all that now.
We could travel anywhere we wanted, whenever we wanted, by bike, car, boat, train, plane, or even by balloon. You will never travel anywhere, unless you are picked to travel to the ‘Chosen Planet’ to form the new human society.
We were free. We were allowed to speak up if we objected to something that our rulers had decreed. We were allowed to vote for different ones if we didn’t like our rulers. You are stuck with the PTB. They will decide what is good for our new ‘perfect’ society, and you will have no say in the matter.
I want to tell you that I am sorry that I will have brought you into this new world of perfect imperfection. I would rather have stayed back on our imperfect Planet Earth and taken the consequences, but I had no choice.
There is so much more I want to tell you, but I will have to go now, my darling boy. I can hear them coming and I need to hide this letter……..
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