I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how.
“Is that what happened to Millers? And Shangs? And Lecturas? Were
they all taken by the Angels?”
“Yes, honey. Please, stop.”
“But they were good people! What happened? Why were they taken?”
“Because of how they were born. Or rather, of how who they were born
as.”
“But we are different, aren’t we? That’s why they didn’t get us!”
“They found an irregularity.”
“What does that mean?”
“I DON’T KNOW! OKAY? I HAVE NO IDEA.”
She started weeping. She covered her face with her hair and
held Mr. Snuggles tight. I exhaled deeply.
“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to.”
She sat there silently. I might as well tell her what I know,
there isn’t much I can do anyways.
“This was when I was young. Long before your mother and I had
you. There was no emperor or empire. It was just a state. I wish I could
tell you that it was just one bad day, one bad election. In truth, the
world was just constantly in conflict. Just when it seemed that some of
the problems would resolve, the Angels made their last stand. Of
course, they weren’t called the Angels back then. They were called the
supremacists .
I could hear her breathing over the sound of the engine. She was
calm. But she was awake and attentive. She was listening.
“It’s hard to put a date on it now. At some point, the state
became an empire. The man chosen by the supremacists - an emperor.
And all of a sudden, there were these checks, controls, tests and
whatnot. Many failed just because of what they looked like.”
“Like, their hair, daddy?”
So naïve .
“Their skin, sweetie.”
She just couldn’t understand ethnic diversity. She couldn’t picture it.
“After some time, tests and checks became a little different. They
looked into your past, your hobbies, anything you were connected to. If
there were even a slight problem, you would get a note. “Irregularity.”
That’s what it would say.”
“What does that mean, dad?”
Montage, May 2017 9