Sentience, page 1
part #1 of Farm Land Series
Farm Land: Sentience
Book One of the Farm Land Trilogy
By G. Lawrence
Copyright © Gemma Lawrence 2018
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this manuscript may be reproduced without Gemma Lawrence's express consent
This book is dedicated to Kate Simpson
“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing, end them.”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Dream sweet dreams in the sleep of death, old friend.
“The clearest way to the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
John Muir
“There is sufficiency in the world for man’s need, but not for man’s greed.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“Man is the cruellest animal.”
Friedrich Nietzche
“The Romans said the Huns were not human, which was only partly true.
As in any other group of people, some of them were human and some were not.”
Will Cuppy
“The evil that men do lives after them;
the good is oft interred with their bones.”
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Table of Contents
A Note on the Text
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Epilogue
Thank You
About The Author
A Note on the Text
Four stories are told in this book which I did not write. The first is a relatively modern fable, possibly of American origin, (although it may have been born from an earlier fable of Aesop), the second comes from African mythology, the third from Norse, and the last is a retelling of Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale. The idea was to give the villagers an oral history, made up of many cultures, passed on through stories from generation to generation, but also to emphasise various themes in the book as a whole. I hope no one reading them will take offence at the way I have retold, or used them.
I would also like to say this is a work of fantasy, rather than science fiction, as may become clear upon reading. The book may be put in science fiction by Amazon, as often the themes of fantasy and science fiction overlap, but I see it primarily as a work of dystopian fantasy.
G. Lawrence
Cornwall, 2018
Prologue
Stories in the Darkness
In the beginning, there was darkness.
But darkness was not what we feared.
When the light came, when the crumbling walls bounced with bright, clear, painful flames, when we saw what it was that came for us… that was when we understood fear.
Darkness kept us safe, that was what we were told.
It was a lie, like many others we were offered.
I remember my mother’s face on the day we were taken from her. Her monstrous pupils shying from the blazing torch shining on her face. I remember the eyes of my siblings, wide and wild in the light of the torch. I remember the stink of fear.
I hated the light then. I wanted darkness to claim me, hold me safe, banish the light.
Later, I would come to understand not all light was to be feared. There was light which was not harsh and cruel; light that brought life and not death. There was light that granted hope.
I have found danger in daylight and safety in the darkest night. I have found peril under dim skies as under sun. I found friendship in the shadow of death, and enemies in my own kind. What I came to understand, as I did not when I lived in darkness, was it is neither the dark nor light we should fear, but what dwells within it.
There are no monsters, but the ones we make.
They have told me the beginning is where stories start, so that is where I will begin. They have told me stories are important, so the young will know where they came from, and how their world was made. That is why I agreed to tell this tale, for the young, for all who come after me, so the world we lived in will not be forgotten.
And they must understand the past. They must understand, so what was done to us, never happens to them.
This story begins in darkness. The darkness of the Factory.
Chapter One
The Factory
I don’t know when I was born. I don’t remember my first words, or faltering footsteps. I don’t know how old I am now. The first things I remember were not events, but smells and sounds, for I was raised in darkness.
My first memory is the scent of my mother’s body. She did not smell of herbs or flowers, things I have found women use outside of the dark to change their scent. She smelt dusky, musty and sweet. Her skin was soft and supple. I could feel the hairs on her arms and her legs; they were bare in the dark. We had no need of clothes. Her body was warm, comforting.
I and her other children found her to sleep against when we needed to. We would snuggle together, our bodies, our limbs entwined. She barely spoke, but I knew her shape.
She taught us to whisper. We did not speak. Any sound might bring the masters upon us. Silence was safe. Quiet words were a risk, but we took it. We did not understand, but we followed her orders and obeyed. My first words were whispers, murmurs, broken snippets of sound. I was taught not to make noise, for noise was dangerous.
There were other sounds. The drip, far in a corner of our small room, was the loudest, at least most of the time. From the drip we drank when we needed to. The water tasted of chalk and sand, but we knew no different. In that corner of our room, the walls were moist and soft. We ate the slime that grew there. It was sweet with salt and slipped on the tongue. That corner glowed with the softest light; gentle, green, shimmering luminosity, which played on the dark, crumbling walls and bars guarding the doorway. In that light, I could see my siblings and my mother. This light we did not fear. It was not the bad light, not the light that would take us away.
The rest of the walls were dry and brittle. My little hand stroked them in the darkness and played with the powdery sands that made up our world.
At one end of the room there were the bars. Iron that tasted like blood. Sometimes we licked them to feel a tang on our tongues. A hole in the floor was our toilet. When we squatted over it, we would hear a rushing noise of wind and water below.
There were soft murmurs from other rooms, other rooms like ours, where other mothers kept other children quiet. My mother told us we must be always silent, always still, so the light could not find us. They only took the ones they noticed, she whispered. If we were quiet the masters could not find us.
Food came on silent feet each day, slipped through the bars at the front of the sandy room. There was always plenty. Some was bread, our mother told us, made from grasses that grew far away. She told us of fields which stood outside the pit. She said a thing called the sun shone, and water slipped from the skies, this made the grass grow, and from that the masters made bread. She told us of trees and flowers, of rivers and lakes, of creatures which flew in the skies and scrambled along the ground. We stared at her in wonder when she told her tales. Such things seemed impossible. We asked her if she had seen the sun, the rain, the grass. She had not, but her mother had told her the stories, and her mother had told her.
Sometimes there were other, smaller foods that tasted sharp and sweet. But our mother could not remember their names. We sucked them, our tongues watering. It was always a treat when they came. They were good to eat.
When
Most of the time there was nothing in the dark. It was safe and warm, its air thick with the smell of bodies and skin. But there were times when the smell of sharp, fresh air came. It always came with the light. The bad light.
The first time I remember the light clearly, I was drinking at the drip, my hands pressed against the slimy wall and my mouth open as water fell into it. It was my turn to drink. We had to drink for a long time each day to get enough water to not thirst. Then I saw it, in front of me, a shimmering dark green. I gasped, for I had never seen a colour so clearly before. It was beautiful.
I heard my mother’s sharp intake of breath as she saw the light coming. It swung from side to side, heading down the narrow corridor outside. She held out her arms and I flew to her in silence.
The light was coming. I saw glimpses of the sandy white walls of our chamber and the black-red bars, the dark green of the drip and scattered remains of old bread on the floor. I saw flashes of my brothers and sisters, eight of us, all clinging to our mother.
The light stopped, and my mother pulled us to her with hard, desperate arms. The light was harsh, bright, horrific. It burned my eyes so I couldn’t see. I whimpered and she clamped a dirty hand over my mouth. I saw her turn her body to the light. Her belly was swollen, distended. She said nothing, but the light was raised, shining on her stomach.
The light paused and then moved on.
In the cell next to us, I heard bars clink back and there was a shout and a scuffle. Then the sound of a crash and a bash. We shuddered in the gloom and tears ran down my cheeks.
Someone was taken from that chamber and dragged along the corridor. In other cells more were heaved out, struggling vainly against the grip of the masters. The light retreated and left. The noises stopped. There was silence.
“What was that?” I whispered.
“The masters,” my mother answered.
The masters came many times after that. Perhaps they had come before, but my memory seems to start that day. Their burning torches of dried reeds came down the corridor, sending smoke into the air to mingle with the sharp, crisp air they brought. Every time they came, they took people away. Some returned, some did not. Sometimes they took us, me and my brothers and sisters. They tore us from our mother and dragged us to a place where light filled the chamber. They ordered us to stand in the light, to run around. We obeyed, too afraid to do otherwise. We hardly saw their faces, only shadowed, looming shapes, silhouetted against the blazing lights they carried. But we feared them.
As time went on, I saw masters shining their light in my direction more and more. I didn’t like it. I felt seen, watched, noticed.
Sometimes, eerie noises would come from other cells, interrupting our silent existence. Laughter, cracked and fractured, bounced from the walls, making us cringe. Sometimes there were screams. When such noises erupted, the masters would come. People were taken away. Silence returned.
When our hair grew long, we would be taken to a place where they poured water on us, washing away the dusty sand, making us clean. They cut our hair short, brushing our skulls with sharp knives made of metal. “This’ll fetch a good price,” a woman said as she held my hair in her hands. “A good, rich brown.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. I just kept still, hoping silence would keep me safe.
When we were taken back, our mother would weep with relief. Sometimes they took her. Not long after the day of the first light, they took her for hours. When she came back, she slumped in the corner and slept. She smelt of blood and sweat. After that day, her belly grew smaller. Some time later she was taken again, and her belly grew large once more. She told us she was growing children, like us. Some they would allow her to keep, and others they would take.
“Why?” I whispered.
“Because they are the masters,” she murmured. “They own us.”
Chapter Two
The Light
One day, fatty foods came on quiet feet; meat, balls of porridge and thick, plump bread. My mother sighed sadly when she felt them and moved away, taking only the younger ones with her. She sat at the other side of the room from then on. Days passed, and she said nothing. She told no more stories, tried to hold us no more.
Time passed. We ate fatty food each day, and felt our bellies swell. I wondered why our mother would not hold us…. why she spoke no more, but when I tried to ask, she turned her face away.
The masters came whilst we slept. Feet pumped along the corridor and hands dragged out the children. There were cries as others in cells realized the masters were taking a large haul that day.
Our cell opened, and rough hands grabbed us. I groaned softly in fear. In the light, I saw my mother and her other children huddled together, their naked bodies covered in sandy soil, her pupils wide and scared. She made no move to stop the masters, only held her other children closer, tighter.
They were stronger than us, and took four of us from the cell. Crying and struggling, we were pulled along the corridor, into another room. It was not the room where they made us play, but another. Bright, painful, burning light struck me, and I fell to my knees trying to cover my eyes. I had never felt such pain.
They pulled me to my feet. Through water swimming in my eyes, I saw a leering face, wide and white and flat, with fleshy, fat lips. The woman ran rough hands over my body. She put one to my breasts, cupping their little swells. She pursed her lips, and reached between my legs, pushing a finger into the hole there. I gasped in pain as sharp fingernails pierced my flesh, scratching inside me. Strong hands held me as she completed her work.
“B,” she said, then turned to my siblings, struggling vainly, silently, in the arms of their captors.
“M,” she said of them.
“This one?” asked a man holding my sister.
“M,” she repeated, shaking her head. “That one is too small, too weedy. This one has bigger hips, she’ll make more.”
He nodded, but his eyes roamed over my sister’s dark hair and high-boned face with regret. “Shame, it’s a pretty one,” he said.
The woman rolled her eyes. “They don’t need to be pretty.” She waved my sister away. “They just need to produce.”
They hauled my siblings to their feet and took them away. That was the last time I saw them.
They dragged me into a side room. There was a fire in one corner from which one of the men pulled an iron brand; smoking, red-hot in the gloom. I had never seen fire and recoiled in terror.
“Hold her,” he said as he lifted the iron. He came at me so fast I barely had time to struggle. They pulled me about, exposing my arm. Pain seared into my flesh, so keen and strong that I screamed. Vomit rose into my mouth. Choking, gagging, I groaned as the iron burned its brand deep into my arm and I felt my skin shrink, desiccated from the heat.
They let me go. I dropped to my knees. Vomiting, I clutched my bloodied and burned arm, feeling flesh melting under my skinny fingers.
