WIP: Letter from a roof

Letter From a Roof.

A young adult novella about overcoming prejudice based not on race or gender but on who you choose to be. A technically legal adult searches for a future where her choices in life are accepted and valued. Can she deal with a world that increasingly views people with skills a threat, find a community that accepts her, and possibly love?

June 13, 2058

Dear Editor

I sit here on the roof of what was until a few hours ago my home. I should tell my story as I believe I was one of the first. You see I am one of the people that you have labeled in your reporting and editorials as menaces.

I am a person just like you with feelings, loves, and hates. I am going to relate the events that have led to an almost eighteen year old girl is sitting on a roof with no home to return to.

It started at a small town farmers' market, back in 2051. I was only eleven years old. My mother was looking at tacky jewelry. Across the street a man, dressed like a gypsy, was setting up a small stall, the kind that unfolds and rises on four legs. Under this he unrolled a thick afghan rug and hung a sign. As he hung up the "Learn to fly in five minutes for $30" sign, I felt intensely interested. When he sat cross legged in the middle of the carpet, closed his eyes and floated a meter up off the ground, my eyes nearly popped out.

Pulling mom's arm I asked, "Can I learn to fly, mom?" She barely paused before saying, "You are too young to learn to fly a plane. Do you think this would look good on me?". "No, I want to fly like him!" I insisted.

I headed towards the stall as mom just stared. Elbowing my way to the front of the forming crowed I watched the kneeling woman before him. Mom caught up while yelling, "Get back here, young lady!"

I watched in awe as the lady haltingly began to float upwards, stopping when she bumped into the roof. With a yelp she fell to the floor. She collected herself, closed her eyes and once again floated upwards this time stopping at a meter and a half up, bobbing there for a minute or so, then settled back down.

Looking at my mom's stunned face, "I want to learn to fly!" My mother slowly looked down at me and said, "It is just a trick dear, people can't fly!" I looked at her in disbelief and pointed to the lady now slowly floating over our heads.

She looked up and crossed herself, proclaiming, "The devil has gotten into them, no child of mine will be a minion of the devil." A man next to us said, "That is the most amazing thing I have ever seen!" This started a quickly escalating argument with my mother.

It was at this point that I heard a voice in my head, "Would you like to learn to fly". Turning to the man I saw his blue eyes staring at me, and I nodded my head, YES!

"Close your eyes and picture the inside of your head. Do you see the blue glow of your mind?" I nodded again.

"I am going to push down with the glow, it might feel weird, to show you how to fly." The glow expanded downwards and a small pink ball became visible.

"See the pink ball? Push it with your thoughts in the direction you want to fly. Try pushing it down, you should feel heavier."

I did and almost fell to my knees as I suddenly felt much heavier. Releasing the pink ball caused it to quickly return to the shape and position it had been in. My weight returned to normal.

"Go slowly until you can practice more! Moving the ball gives you direction. The more you squeeze, the faster in that direction you will go. If you hit a solid object it will hurt. Turning too fast can cause you to pass out. In general the faster you go the slower you should turn, and don't go too high. It is cold and the air is thin up there."

With that the voice and the blue glow were gone from my mind, but the pink ball still glowed. A gentle nudge and I was suddenly light on my feet I wasn't off the ground, but I was flying. My heart exploded in joy.

A few minutes later my mother grabbed my arm, breaking my concentration, and dragged me off. We left the market shortly thereafter with my mother muttering about the “devil’s minions are everywhere” and “what was this world coming to”. I didn't know what she was angry about, but I didn’t want her angry at me, so I just followed along quickly and quietly, while my heart basked in the thought of flying. It was like liquid joy to me.

That night, tucked safely into bed, I started to play. I experimented with flying and discovered that turning the ball would turn my body in place.

“Flying Man” was a local news headline for a few days. He didn’t show up at the next fair and the news concluded that it had been a hoax. I knew he was still out there, teaching more and more people how to fly for $30 each. The story faded into the stuff of urban legends, but I knew it was real.

Over the next few years I snuck off to play in the woods, and flew like the wind through the trees. I hit a few, got more than a few scrapes and broke my arm once, I hit a branch. I told my mom that I fell out of a tree. Unfortunately that was the end of playing by myself in the woods, or at least, letting mom know that I was there.

I got better and better at flying fast and nimbly. I danced on clouds, spun with tornadoes, skimmed the waves at crazy speed, soared with hawks, and almost froze my nose in the stratosphere.

It is amazing how much your world opens up when you can shoot up a few thousand meters and hit almost supersonic speeds. I created an alias on SocialNet, SteamGirl, joined some Fliers’ communities, met others like me, and found friends. I didn't know why at the time, but I thought it best if my mom still didn't find out.

A few years later, I think I was about 15 then, a man almost everyone knows now made Fliers mainstream. Rocket Rob started working as a courier in New York City. He would pick up packages, and fly at a couple hundred kilometers per hour across Manhattan to deliver them.

Some loved him, others hated him. Most just thought that anything was possible in New York City. The news on the other hand had a field day with the man that could fly. You probably know most of his story. About how he was sued for preventing a suicide, raced a dragster at a speed way, posed for photo ops outside of windows, accused of being a peeping tom, shattered most of the windows on 5th Ave when he broke the sound barrier on a dare, and how he died. A lot of people thought that he was pretentious; he never stopped flying even when on the ground.

One weekend when my mom was out of town and I was on my own, I was almost sixteen, I took off. I grabbed an old leather duster that my dad had left when he moved out, a red wig, and a flight hat and goggles from a Steam Punk festival, and headed for New York. I don't think I broke the sound barrier, but I was moving faster than I had ever before. I loved every second of freedom and the view was to die for.

I flew around Manhattan until I spotted Rob and waved. He smiled and waved back, then for the next twenty minutes we played a game of tag amongst the towering canyons of Manhattan. Afterwards we sat on the edge of a building, 35 stories up, and talked. I was one of the few fliers that he had met in person.

We both had similar stories of learning to fly. Although his involved a wheelchair and a network of friends that scoured the country to find the flying man. When they located him, Dave traveled to the Flying Man and learned to fly. Dave had been paralyzed from the waist down since a childhood accident. Flying let him be free of the chair.

Near suppertime I headed home and had everything hidden away before mom got home.

A few weeks later Dave died when a bunch of kids threw handfuls of pennies into the air in front of him as a prank. They never said if it was the impact with the pennies or the crash at 200+ kilometers per hour that killed him. They called it an accident.

A loving and caring man was dead, and my friend was gone. All the Talking Heads could do was talk about how these "Fliers were a menace to normal people!" and "It was good there was one less in the world!" I was stunned by the news, and had to hide how sad I was from my mom. By this time I had no doubts about what mom thought about fliers. I pretended it was problems with girls at school, but at night I cried myself to sleep.

It was about this time that the Flying Man stopped showing up at fairs.

In school we were studying how discrimination and bigotry had begun to be eliminated with Martin Luther King Jr. followed by Caroline and Lizzy Woolworth ending it 30 years ago.

The protests over same sex marriage and rights had been gaining steam for years. Caroline and her wife Lizzy had led many rallies, protests, and sit-ins. The one in Atlanta was the one where Lizzy died; the shooter claimed that it was his “God-given right to kill Lezzbos”. The world was stunned as CNN aired the shooting live and hearts broke worldwide as Caroline held her bleeding wife on stage for the world to see, while she died. She was gone before the paramedic could make it through the panic. The video of her scream of anguish when she realized her wife was gone played for days. The YouTube video of it broke 3.5 billion views. It was a sound that cut through rhetoric, culture, language, and spoke to the heart in words it understood. This is the sound of true love lost!

Soon there were protests across the world, all in favor of getting rid of stupid bigoted laws. After mass protests, and politicians trying to make capital on the issue, governments around the world made some of the most significant moves to eliminate discrimination. They claimed it was for the betterment of society, but they saw which side the votes were on.

It was six months later that the church officially said that they no longer had an official stance on this issue.

This was where history said that we ended bigotry and discrimination for all. History lies; it is not gone, it is just hiding. Now we see the worst of mankind rearing its ugly head again. The firebombing and persecution of fliers is worse than anything I ever studied about the Negros’ struggle for equality. It was like the world was just waiting for another minority that they could hate. I walked past hate groups that my Mom supported and they never knew I was one of those that they hated. You cannot tell a flier from a non-flier just by looking at them; we are the same as you!

Come on people, we have been struggling with equality for all, for over two hundred years now, you would think we would have figured it out by now!

Is it human nature to need someone to hate?

I wish the answer was no, but the actions of humanity speak for the fact that the answer is yes. We proclaim that tolerance is best, that we are an enlightened society. But in the end, the first group that is identified as different, we lash out at with hate and violence again.

Even people like my mom that I love and believe to be a good person are all for locking up the “evil freaks”. Some of the literature that she has, I swear people dug up from old papers and searched and replaced “negro” with “flier”.

Will we ever learn?

Lots of fliers hoped that the military would defend us as a flying solder would be a great asset. Sergeant McNeily was a member of Seal Team Six and a decorated hero. He found Flying Man and learned to fly so he could be a better defender of the USA. He proved to be a major asset in covert operations, but was drummed out of the military on what many thought were bogus charges.

He did become the first flier in space though, with the help of an old Russian space suit. He flew there on his own! I hear the crew of the International Space Station 2 almost had a heart attack when he knocked on a window from the outside.

The Talking Heads proclaimed that fliers are a security risk. They claimed that if anyone could learn to fly then enemies would use it to attack. There has never been a terrorist attack carried out by fliers. There had been reports of the flying man failing to teach some people how to fly and giving refunds. I have talked to more than a few other fliers, and they all say the same thing. We have never met a flier that wasn't basically a decent person. I think the Flying Man did a bit of a personality test. If you didn't pass he wouldn't teach you how to fly. None have ever been able to talk mind to mind like he can either, but who knows.

Immigration officials claimed fliers are crossing borders without going through checkpoints. To be honest we are! The FAA claimed that we were a hazard to aircraft because apparently a human is nearly invisible to aviation radar systems. Even at eleven years old I realized that flying around an airport would be a bad idea.

I agree some of these points are valid, but they are not an excuse to hunt down people and kill them.

Now you may have forgotten that I am sitting on the roof of what was my home till a few hours ago.

The reason for this is that a few hours ago I was shopping with my mom and there was a commotion up ahead. There was a man and a pregnant woman up on the edge of a building; the Police were trying to talk them down. We all heard the man yelling that he would rather spend the rest of his life in jail rather than let this, um bad word there, live and have his child.

Shortly thereafter he pushed her off. I didn't even think, I flew, catching the lady, lowering her to the ground safely. The lady was trembling in fear but her eyes were grateful.

Then the crowd started yelling insults. With my mother at the front yelling, "I have no daughter! I never want to see you again!"

Would I do it again if I had a choice?

I say, I didn't have a choice, it was the only thing to do.

So I am sitting on the roof with tears streaming down my face as I write this. I hear mom's car coming, so will finish this up. I have a photo of my family; I still love them even if they don’t love me. With my backpack of clothes and camping gear I will shortly fly off to drop this letter in a NAPS (Editor: North American Postal Service) box, and be on my way.

Where I will go?

I don't know.

Thought the world hates me, I will attempt to make a new life and hopefully leave the world a better place than I find it today. I am thankful everyday for the gift that was given by one incredible man of courage; who tried to share his gift with the rest of us.

- SteamGirl