Wednesday November 28th, 2012

The exercise:

Write about: the system.

Much better sleep last night. Still feeling tired. Can't figure out how three weeks have gone by already.

Took some things to the dump this afternoon. Actually, most of the load was our old front porch. Pretty satisfying chucking that into the wood pile.

Early indications suggest we're in for another long night.

Mine:

The posters went up overnight all over the kingdom, seemingly plastered across every surface the king's men could reach. My tiny, insignificant village was no exception: the front door of the barber shop, the windows of the grocer and pharmacy, and three on my bakery alone.

I stood studying those monstrosities as the sun crawled over the horizon. The message was clear, the king's motives less so. A census was being conducted, a grand tallying of all the king's loyal and adoring subjects. In order to construct a more detailed map of the kingdom's population in regards to age, sex, and location.

To better serve us, the posters boldly claimed.

Please.

We were being collected and entered into a system of the king's design, transformed from living, breathing humans to soulless, bloodless numbers. For conscription, most likely. Or perhaps some other, even less savory purpose.

Without bothering to look around to see who might be watching I reached out and ripped the posters down, one by one by one. I crumpled them up and tossed them in the dirt before locking my shop and heading home.

There was planning to be done.