The Ravaged World (Book 2 of the Exiles Series)

Ten: Talia

I wouldn't have even found out about Magnus had Mom not found the old telescreen.

She hefted it home from work one day, cloaked in a dirty cardboard box. Nicole and I could see her struggling with it down the street, first trying to balance it on her hip and eventually tossing it up and over her shoulder. When she reached the front stoop Mom gave up, and decided to push it up the stairs and roll it into the living room for us to see.

"What's that?" I asked. It was the middle of summer, so warm that Nic and I had felt like doing little more than nothing all day. We had taken cold showers in the communal restrooms that morning, but even that hadn't helped with the heat. So most of that day had been spent at the kitchen table, inventing games from an old deck of playing cards that Nicole had found beneath the couch.

Mom leaned against the wall, catching her breath and closing the front door behind her. She wiped her brow. "It's a telescreen," she said, like that was a pretty obvious fact. "A big one, like from a long time ago. A friend at my work found it at her second job at one of the recycling plants, and thought that we would like it. Apparently it still hooks up to the channels and stuff, and we can play games on it. There are fees to pay for channels every month, but for the basic programs it's next to nothing."

"But Mom," I inquired, after she was done with her explanation, "what is a telescreen?"

Mom smiled at me and beckoned over. "Come here, have a look," she invited, waving in the direction of the box with her hand. She knelt beside the brown box. "I forgot, with your memories. You don't remember this stuff, do you?"

Nicole and I set down our playing cards and hurried over to the box. Mom pulled open the flaps and gently tilted the box to the side. She reached in just as gingerly, as if handling a newborn, and pulled out a dusty black rectangle that had a grayish shell on one part and a soft black rectangle that looked like a jumble of dots on the other side. As Nicole and I looked on in amazement at the thing, Mom blew away the dust and tilted the telescreen up so the soft side was facing us. The telescreen was thin, but not too thin and had buttons lining the bottom half of the side that faced us.

"Wow, that's cool," Nicole breathed, gazing unblinkingly at the device.

Mom smiled proudly. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" she asked, "in a funky sort of way. Let's plug it in and see how it works. It's a bit old, but it should still be ok."

Mom lifted up the small rectangle and brought it over to the couch. Several cords protruded from the telescreen's back, and these Mom plugged into an outlet in the wall that I had never really noticed before. As soon as the plugs connected, the machine made a staticky sort of buzz and popped to life. Almost as if by magic, I saw the forms of people come on, followed by voices and a background.

I was awestruck, and I could tell so were Nicole and Mom. It was amazing--almost like the people on the screen were right there in front of us. Even though I knew this thing wasn't advanced in our time, to me it was the most advanced thing I had ever seen. I ran my hand over the soft side, where the people were, and was surprised to find that it shocked me in greeting.

"So cool," Nicole murmured. Even though the telescreen was on the floor (we didn't have a table to set it on yet), the three of us sat down on the floor and watched the news program that was on the local station for the next hour.

For the next few weeks I became obsessed with that machine. I didn't watch it constantly, but close. It was beautiful, despite the screen being a bit fuzzy and pixelated and the chip in the right corner of the screen. I could switch the channels and watch whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. It was mind boggling.

. . .

One evening after Mom returned from work we were watching the news on the telescreen, eating soup out of the can when I saw him. The way he was introduced was so casual. To the rest of the city, to the rest of Silver his name meant something, something very important, but not as it did to me.