Beyond The Fence

Chapter 4:

"My name is Clary and I'm about the same age as you, so no calling me "kid"." Clary told the boy.

A smile played on the young boy's lips. Clary was already sick of the guy. His presence felt like the buzz of a bee you can't swat away. His every word, every breath and every movement seemed to annoy her.

"I'm Austin, and you?" The boy said, pointing towards Clary's best friend.

"I'm Nelson. Now mind telling us where you're from?"

"You guys might want to take off your scary face masks first. You're sort of creeping me out."

Clary snorted, but took it off anyway. Nelson followed.

"Great." Austin said, clapping his hands together and taking in the two figures standing before him. The lights were closed in the library so he couldn't make out much of the Alabamians standing before him, but from the glow of the moon, he could tell enough that the girl was a Burnette and the guy had a curly mess of hair. Austin then pulled one chair from around the tables and sat on it.

"You guys might wanna get yourselves seats too. I've got loads to tell."

Clary glanced at Nelson for his consent, who nodded at her. The two then got themselves chairs to get seated on.

"Okay, so before I start, here's something you should know: whatever you've been taught all your life has been a lie. At least, most of it has."

He looked at the two friends for some sort of change in expression, but they were just looking at him blankly so he continued:

"See, World War III-"

"World War? Does it mean what I think it means?" Nelson interrupted.

"If you think it means that the whole world goes to war, then yes, it's something of that sort."

"Woah." Nelson replied, his eyes widening in amusement.

"Okay, so World War III broke out about ages ago on the scarcity of the basic necessities of life: food, water. Almost every other country-"

"So there's more than one country?" Nelson asked.

This kid is already getting on my nerves, Austin thought, rolling his eyes.

"Yes, back then there were 196 countries."

Clary eyebrows shot up in amazement, as she let the fact sink in.

"So, these countries came to war over the shortage of the basic necessities of life. But you see, war was perhaps not the wisest solution, because it led to further depletion of our already meagre resources. The war officially came to an end about two years after it started. It was decided that negotiations should be held so that a method to put an end to the rising poverty and starvation levels can be agreed to.
"Thus after extensive table talks, the countries finally reached a consensus. All those 196 countries were merged together to form "districts" instead. The whole of the world was treated as one "country" and each continent was treated as a district of the "country". Now if you're thinking that since the whole world is just one "country", so there has to be one ruler too, but no- nothing of that sort happened. Instead, each district was given a president, who would look over the entire area."

"Wait? What's a continent?" Clary asked this time.

"Oh boy, this is harder than I expected it to be. I'll need to show you a map of the world."

"Then show it."

"You'll have to come home with me."

"We're in a library for crying out loud! There has got be some map here."

"Nope. All of this happened ages ago and all the records of what happened in history have been burnt. I bet no one my age knows the things I know."

"If there are no records, how do you know about all of this?"

"I have my sources. Now are you people coming or not?"

"Give us a minute."

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Clary stood up from her seat, taking Nelson along with her by his arm, to a distant corner of the library.

"Do you think we can trust him?" she asked, once they were as far as possible from Austin.

"It's not like we have another choice. There's so much we don't know."

Clary worried at her lower lip, thinking about all that could go wrong. But then curiosity to know more got the better of her and she agreed to go over to Austin's house.

When they were standing just outside the library, ready to go to the young boy's house, Austin said:
"Oh you might want to put your balaclavas back on. We're going to have to sneak into my house."

"Why?" Clary asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Because my dad is the president of this district." He replied, grinning.