This story is a follow-up to my original Utopian Dream. It is set in the same world, where miniature worlds filled with ignorant people float or rise high above the true ground that is the “Earth.” These people generally know little of the outside world, and are prevented from escaping by high rising cliffs. And yet, somehow, people are perfectly happy living in ignorance inside their “bowl worlds.”

Read on for the story.

“Utopian Dream 2″

Alongside one bowl is another, less great, yet still grand in size. It hovers above the true ground, leaving no direct connection to the land below. Its traditions, culture, and world are of its own.

Inside this bowl exists a people always prepared for war. They spread their wings with pride and, with unimaginable speed, test their skills over the lake that encompasses the majority of their land. Their wings are real, yet they are not on their back. The wings seemingly sprout out of nowhere, from their arms, and yet their arms do not turn to wings. In this manner, the people live, train, fly, and die all in this bowl. They are buried under the gigantic lake. They live on the cliffs surrounding the lake. They have little connection to the outside world.

Despite this, and despite the fact that the island was floating, a boy managed to find his way onto the island. Nobody knew how he had done it, but the inhabitants of the floating world, seeing the boy as something special, took him in. However, instead of simply “raising” him as one of their own, he seemed to be fully raised already by the people of the Earth. It seemed that he had not willingly come to this island. However, once in, there was no way out – even flight would not take these people out of their island. Nobody had ever breached the boundary before, and yet every citizen knew what was beyond it. This was quite different than the other worlds off the Earth, which were quite convinced that their island, or plateau, or wherever it was they lived was the only world in the world, and outside of it was an unruly hellfire of torment and despair.

There was no place in society for this boy. He had to be assimilated – there was no other option. That meant taking him and making him into one of their own, both in mind and body. Yet instead of a ludicrous ritual or process of hypnosis, or the conjuring of spirits or the conducting of magic, they simply kept the boy within viable reach of their arms and made sure he never went anywhere they were not. “They” were the inhabitants of such an island. Night and day would they fly over the great lake in the center of the island, above cliff that rose on its eastern edge, yet never over it. Rocks jutted out of this obscenely high mass of land, becoming more than just a platform to stand on, but sometimes a floor for entire homes. They were primitive homes, possibly indicating the tribal nature of these people, or likewise indicating that shelter was not the most important aspect of life to these beings. The populous, to this lost boy, seemed to spend almost no time in their homes.

One day, his foster father approached him. He was tall, yet not much taller than the boy himself. His skin was tanned, his eyes were shot, and he was ready to leave the house. However, there was apparently something of grave importance to announce. Out it came, but sugar-coated as to avoid the prospect of assimilation. The boy would begin some odd sort of “training.” He knew not what it was or what it was for or what it intended to do to him – for all he knew it might just force him to sprout wings in a horribly painful exercise, and yet he found that highly unlikely. There did not seem to be too much to conceal in this society. Nevertheless, he prepared himself for whatever they would do to him.

It came later in the day. He was sent up into the sky, along with his foster father. He looked up at the man’s face – though not too far up, because his foster father was still only slightly taller than he – and noticed that his bloodshot eyes were bloodshot no more. He looked up even further and saw two pegs floating in mid-air. The sky grew dark. It must have been later than he thought it was; or a storm was forming. Either way, it probably meant bad news for his performance, which, based on his few days in the society, he knew would be closely and accurately judged.

He had been taken in far too quickly for here to be any real introduction. The elders in society, who, based on its tribal nature, were the most important members, took quick action as soon as the boy as discovered. Word was never released. And now, after a mere few days, his assimilation had begun. It was ruthless efficiency, and now he alone had to face whatever test they put before him.

The pegs felt rickety, their metal surfaces making loud clanking noises in the wind of the coming storm. He wanted to reach for one, to grab a hold of it and pull himself up – he could see even higher ground not too far above the pegs. Below, he could see everybody he knew, that small group of people, watching him. His foster father stood next to him, though it seemed that the man would follow him all the way up hi climb – that was what he had determined was his task, to use the pegs and climb as high into the darkened sky as he could. The storm was closer approaching. He grasped the pegs and pulled himself upward, the wind against his back, its gale howling in his ear. The sky had become completely dark. His father was, indeed, following him up.

The puzzle of the pegs became far more confusing in the next step – rails began to appear, forming floating train tracks in the sky. What did this mean? Was he to walk the tracks? Why were there pegs around the tracks? What most astounded him was that the entire setup seemed like a roller coaster, the tracks turning on their side and upside down, all built to test the agility of the citizens. But he, who was not able to fly, had to rely on the pegs to make his way across. Every peg was rickety like the first two. He figured that they must have been speedily set up, just for him.

Lightning struck. His father hovered next to him, watching.

The ground itself seemed to be nonexistent now. There he was, in the sky, far above everyone else, clinging to nothing but these odd metal pegs. Finally, after some distance, he reached a platform, which was slanted on a diagonal. Stairs ran upward from here, zigzagging like some sort of fire escape. The pegs were all around him, as though he could have used them instead of running up the stairwells. This was what he should have done, for it was what the elders – and his father – wanted to see. Fear should have driven him to forget his old ways of climbing stairs, and the new existence of using the sky as one’s only measure to rise higher.

But what were they? Pegs were not the sky! They were not as useless as stairs, serving neither as any test of flight, nor as a test of strength, for the boy could feel the wind pushing him further upward from below throughout the entire test. He continued to follow the oddly designed tracks, higher and higher, his father always beside him, floating in the sky with his wings a distance away as a ghostly figurehead, watching from afar. The structures he passed through became more and more intricate – once, he passed though somebody’s home, which seemed suspended by the same power that gave each person their wings. Instead of metal, structures became made of stone. Metal must have been scarce this high up, thought the boy. But his thoughts were interrupted by what he now saw.

He turned to his father, shocked. “What is this place?” he shouted, and his father moved closer, eventually landing next to him. The crowd below could no longer see the boy’s progress. Before him now was a floating city, nowhere near the top of the cliffs that marked the rim of the bowl-world, and yet so high up – that the boy was scared of going back down. The bricks of this city were ruined and yellow, decayed with age, yet not covered in any sort of plant. The wind must have eroded them, thought the boy.

“This,” said he father, who was standing now next to his foster son, “was once a battlefield.” Although the city was barely visible in the intense darkness of the storm, lightning shone light upon it, and his father pointed to one building. “That is what the soldiers fought for, the protection of that building.”

The boy was confused. Society was entirely closed in – there was only one people living on his island. Who was there to fight but themselves? Curious, he asked, “But sir, who did you fight? I mean, who did these people fight?”

“That is not important. However, I must introduce you to our history – that is the true lesson here. Perhaps you do not now have the body, mind, or heart of our people, but learning our history is the first step. Without history, we are not a people – we are no culture. It is history that makes us, and history that will make you us.”

But what his father had said did not console him. The boy began to imagine why this battlefield was here, and what had happened so long ago. He imaged, for an instant, why the battlefield was suspended in the sky, why the temple-like building was put at risk to wind erosion. And he knew what his father was trying to hide. They – the ones trying to protect the temple – had lost the war, not won it.

“Our people,” his foster father said, “have always been natives to the sky. We have dwelled here for centuries in our world, always peaceful, but always prepared. You, however, are an anomaly. Not a single one of us knows where it is you come from, but I, unlike the others, hailed you as a gift from God. You are destined to be as one of us!” His father pointed to the temple. “Walk inside and earn your place in society.”

The temple was a good distance ahead. To reach it, he had to jump across several floating stones. His fear of falling diminished when he slipped off of the second stone; the wind immediately pushed him back onto the stone. Panting, scared, he pulled himself up. It was as though the wind had formed a life of its own, and he merely its tool. Seven more stones and he would be mere feet from the ruins of his “history.” His father followed closely behind, never missing a step, calculating each carefully, manipulating the wind in his favor.

The temple doors were mostly destroyed. To the left and right, no building stood fully. The city was a wasteland – completely rubble. This had not been a war. This had been a massacre.

“Move the stone. Enter, child.” The boy turned around and saw his father, standing tall, seeming taller than he truly was, motioning him to shove the rubble aside and enter the temple.

He began to move the rock with his bare hands. Scrapes began to form and his hands eventually bled. A pile of blood and earth grew next to the temple as he moved away each stone. This time there was no wind to protect him from the stone, from missing a stone – and if he pulled the wrong stone, its brothers would come to seek revenge.

He was told, later, that he had entered the temple and emerged a wiser, more valuable citizen. That he had passed the tests with flying colors and learned the knowledge to navigate the sky. But he did not remember. All that the boy remembered were the stones, his blood, and his father’s laugh of joy. But the boy was no longer a boy – he was a citizen. He had earned his wings, and subsequently the right to fly.

He knew why the city was in the sky as well. They, the people of the sky, could manipulate the wind. The city was moved into the sky in order to protect the temple. By now, the rain up above had long since washed the blood from the rocks that the boy moved. While the boy was unconscious, the boy’s foster father had travelled back up to the temple and placed the rocks back in front of the temple door, as though nothing had ever happened. He intended to keep it that way, and ensure that the temple remain as such, until their next visitor from God appeared, if ever.

When the father returned, he saw what he had hoped to see – his young boy happily soaring above the lake on the Elders’ orders, up the cliffs, upside down and back again to the lake. Through the boy’s eyes he could see the magnificent glisten of their lake, the fabulous earthen reflections in its pools. Through the boy’s eyes he could remember his first flight, with all of the others soaring around him. He would circle around the lake, wiping the tears that the wind caused in his eyes, and after he had climbed as his up the cliffs as he could, never reaching the top, he would go back to lake and repeat the process, just as his son was now doing. Yes, back to the lake, with everybody else – with all of the children, flying, forever.