After the black (chapter one)          

What did outside look like? They didn’t know. What was it like to stand barefoot in the grass, while the sun warmed your shoulders?         

These were questions most likely on the minds of each and every inhabitant of city #48. One of the 50 left, on the contaminated planet of earth.           

The black walls of the city reached straight up into the sky; there was no seeing over them, unless you owned one of the few flying vehicles, which could only be obtained through the Dominants. The Dominants controlled everything.          

There were few windows in the city, for reasons quite obvious to the people of city #48. No one wanted to look outside. No one had any desire to see the filthy black air, or the grounds blanketed with decay.         

Freedom was nearly as hard to come across as the windows them selves, which were located only at the very top of the tower.          

Everything in the 50 cities was strict, and controlled. Food was delivered weekly, if food is even the correct word, for a flavored block of essential nutrients and other things the body needed to survive. Three a day, that was the limit, breakfast, lunch and dinner.          

The little homes which people who were not in control, (the Commens) lived, were located in the mid levels of the tower, though they were much more like cages then homes. All that was provided was a bed for sleep, and a desk for studying, what little the Commen person was allowed to learn.          

Arithmetic was something the Dominants found suitable, up to division, but no more then that. The Commen person had no need for anything more complicated.           Reading was allowed, but only reading of the books provided to each family monthly, for entertainment.                  

These books told the thousand year old stories, of the Dominants Conquering evil, and saving the helpless, Commens from the cruel outside world, which was full of a hideous disease, which caused them to drop like flies.          

Also there was History, the history only told by the 50 cities. The history that claimed it had always been this way, at least back until the times before 2,561 when the Dominants saved the Commens, from the world which was quickly being over taken by a morbid pollution. Ever since then the sky had been black, and the Dominants had been around to ‘protect us’. To give us shelter, and food, and give us the means to survive, in a world which was uninhabitable.

          But there were those of us, who knew better.