Product Portfolio: Alex Jefferson Marsh

Product #1: Option R – Seeing the Future

“The Giver” by Lois Lowry

Chapter 23

Lily awoke with a start. The dream had seemed so vivid, as so many of her dreams did not after “the awakening,” as it had come to be known. Even now, only a few years after her brother’s untimely and unfortunate death Lily could not remember what it was like to dream before everyone in the community had become able to “see beyond.” Tonight’s dream had been particularly vivid, though.
She had seen, in her dream, her brother Jonas and the baby Gabriel moving quickly down a mound.
“Hill” she told herself, correcting herself in her heard. Since the memories had come back everyone had been struggling with the new words that would burst into their heads unbidden.
Yet the new words were nothing compared to the feelings. If someone had reminded Lily of her anger at the playground when the boy from a different community skipped in line she would have laughed. That irritation was anger in the days before, but not now.
It had been five years since Jonas had drowned in the river. His body had never been found. She could remember how angry she and her parents had been that day. It was the day of the Ceremonies, and yet Jonas was nowhere to be found.
Lily could remember that anger: it was stronger than at the playground, but she knew now that even that was mere irritation compared to the emotions she now felt.
It was fortunate that The Receiver had been around to help all the members of the community after the loss of a second receiver-in-training. The Elders had faced a difficult year after Jonas’ death. The entire Community had. Suddenly everyone began being able to see beyond: Lily herself was suddenly able to taste things she had never tasted before, things she began to call “sweet” and “sour” although she really only called them to herrself.
One of the first rules from the Elders was that no one was to talk about their ability to see beyond. This was agreed to be a good idea: so many people were being so imprecise with their language as they saw colors, or heard music. The Receiver was there from the beginning of the troubles, looking more weary by the day as he tried to sooth people who had remembered war for the first time, or, most frightening of all: love.
The people who had remembered love were normally quarantined from the beginning. Lily, as a Nurturer-in-training, had seen many of the nurturers who had felt this new emotion. It made them insufferable in the workplace – they were so occupied with their new feelings they often did their jobs poorly or not at all. Lily often felt irritated as the Quarantiners escorted another Nurturer from the Birthing Place, yet it was nothing still like the anger.
She had felt anger when the Elders had decided to put her father on trial for taking the child Gabriel into their house for caretaking, and then losing the boy. Many in the Community felt that the actions of the Elders were actually an attempt by them to take out their feelings of anger at Jonas’s death on a scapegoat. But since there was so much strife within the Community as Jonas’s memories flooded over them these feelings were brushed aside.
“But mother, it is so unfair! Jonas must have taken the baby to the river with him.” She would cry to her mother as the trial of her father went onwards. His approval from the Elders to take the child from the Nurturing Center was an embarassment for them. People were beginning to suggest that the Elders had played favorites with their family. Allowing them a third child in the guise of taking care of a sickly youngling was just the beginning. The selection of Jonas as Receiver and his treatment of the others in the Community during his first year of training were the real focus.
Lily could barely stand up when her name was called during the Twelves and she received her assignment – she could feel the weight of the stares from the entire Community as they held their breath hoping that the next receiver would not be from the same family.
When she was assigned to the Nurturing Center there had been an audible sigh of relief from the Community. There was a great deal of anguish as they tried to select a new Receiver-in-Training, but there seemed to be a consensus that no one in Jonas’s family should be involved in the process again.
Eventually her father had been acquitted of most of the charges, although his carelessness with his charge was noted and put on the list at the Hall of Open Records. Her father had never really recovered from the dishonor of his accusations: he now led his days in almost complete seclusion, waiting for the time when he would move to the place of Childless Adults.
Lily began to think abbout her dream again. The dream-sharing she had known as a little girl was gone. The Elders had decided given the amount of Stirrings going on in the community that the topics of people’s dream should be offlimits until they had reached the expiration of Jonas’s memories. There would be noone with which to share her dream.
Lily was sad for a moment as she realized she would never see her brother again, but was overjoyed as she relived the memory, of his own thrill and desperation as he slid down the Hill in the snow. The dream was so intense it almost seemed like a memory, but Lily knew that was impossible.
It had never snowed in the community, and certainly Jonas would never have been on a Hill. He had only left the community one or two times to see neighboring Communities, and there were no hills around as far as the eye could see. Still it was something to treasure – a new memory of her brother – even if it was only a dream.
There had been whispers in the weeks after Jonas’s death that he was not dead at all, that he had left the Community to go Elsewhere, and had taken the baby Gabriel, scheduled for Release the next day, with him. Secretly Lily had entertained these dreams herself.
But Jonas had never returned, and the rumors died away as everyone became overwhelmed with their own new emotions and memories and faculties. Now she worked in the Nurturing Center and understood what happened when newones were released. So Lily also kept a wish in a corner of her heart somewhere that Jonas HAD taken Gabe with him and made it to Elsewhere. But the rational part of her knew that Gabriel had likely died along with Jonas when he decided to go swimming. This is what the Elders had determined, and they, along with Lily and her family unit and the rest of the Community, had spent a day chanting Jonas name softer and softer, wishing him a quiet and lasting goodbye.
The Decembers were closing in, and soon, as she reached her 14th year, Lily would be making her first tenative steps at living alone. Already she could feel the physical seperation from her father, who rarely lifted his head in public after the double disgrace of Jonas’s death and Gabriel’s disappearance. With her mother the cues were more subtle, but the duties of the household were increasingly falling upon Lily. She had been learning, along with her time at the Nurturing Center, to prepare food and keep the house. This had been how it always was as children approached the time of Seperation, yet most parents agreed that it was growing harder for them to let their children go.
There had been a petition for there to be a committee to examine whether teens should stay for an additional year, but the Elders were so overwhelmed with all the petitions that had come in as people remembered experiences from before and before that it had been quickly denied. In fact, there had been a moratorium on Committees for the last three years. Many people joked that it was the best thing about Jonas dying.
Still, the ever-onward progress of daily life had helped the Community to cope, perhaps even more than The Receiver’s help had. There was a promising Ten with light eyes that many hoped wold be the new Receiver, the old one simply did not seem to be able to make it much longer. Lily straightened her things, put on her coat, now identical to the ones the other adults wore, and walked out into the colorless kitchen in the home that was hers for just this one last day.