Undecided

First-person narrative of a utopian society through the eyes of a 24-year-old woman. The beginning prologue/chapters

I grew up thinking everyone woke to the sounds of water. 

Not oceans �" but rivers, braided through stone and garden paths, and waterfalls, stitched into the bones of buildings. Sound before sight. Cool air. Light that filtered through ruffled leaves and glass. Curved, soft, blue, and white structures that never felt like walls. 

I’m twenty-four now, which in my family means I’m still like a child in some ways. We live together �" all of us �" in a family unit terraced into a hillside. My grandparents live above. My parents, my brother, and I are below them, and my cousins, aunts, and uncles are fanned out like branches. You can hear everyone if you listen: laughter echoing through the water channels, someone humming while they cook, feet padding along the shared walkways. Privacy exists here. Isolation, is all but extinct. 

I work teaching children. That’s what the assessors called it anyway �" “developmental support and social grounding.”  I just call it listening. Some days, I help with reading and pattern building. Some days, I listen while kids untangle feelings they don't yet have names for. Some days, I just sit on the river stones and let them talk until the words run out and play takes over again. 

I wasn’t assigned this job. That's not really how it works. 

Here, when you turn sixteen, they begin the long assessments �" personality mapping, stress responses, empathy bandwidth, curiosity thresholds. They ask questions that feel like games and initiate games that feel like questions. They watch how you move through groups. The assessors are people, just like me, who have accepted a job they’re good at �" reading people. 

“You orient towards people,” the assessor told me gently with a smile. “Especially ones that are still learning who they are.” 

That felt right. 

My mother works in governance, not power in the way the stories make it sound, but coordination. She helps mediate the districts, manages long-term planning, listens to complaints that arrive on her desk, and leaves them sorted. She says her job is mostly translating fear. 

My father is a medical officer. Preventive care, mostly. Monitoring environmental health, public wellness, and the slow rhythms of bodies over decades. He always smells like herbs and clean water. When I was little, I thought all fathers came home with leaf-stained sleeves and stories about helping people get better. 

We eat together most nights. Not because we have to �" because it would feel strange not to. Food travels easily between units; recipes migrate the way birds do. My grandmother tells the same stories every week, and we pretend not to know the endings because that’s part of the ritual. My youngest cousin sleeps wherever she drops, and someone always carries her home. 

Family here isn’t a phase or a cycle. It’s more like a structure. 

Death isn’t hidden from us either. When someone reaches their end, we gather. We sing. We eat. We tell stories that person carried and others that they made possible, even the ones we’ve heard a thousand times before. And then they return to the earth �" not sealed away, not separated �" buried, at the roots of trees that will grow taller because of them. 

The earth is the ultimate recycler. That’s what we are taught. Nothing is wasted�" everything becomes something else. 

I love my life. I love the way the city moves slowly, even when it's busy. I love that children grow up barefoot and elders are treated like libraries. I love that no one rushes grief and no one hoards joy. 

My hair is dark and thick, usually pulled back in a careless knot that never survives the day. I forget it’s there until a child pulls it or the wind off the river lifts it loose. There’s a scar on my left knee from climbing the fig trees near the western terraces when I was ten�" my brother swears he pushed me, but I remember slipping because I wanted to reach the highest figs. 

My eyes are my mother’s. Steady. Observant. The kind that make people explain themselves without even realizing they've started. 

Our family unit curves along the hillside as if it grew there. Three levels, open walkways, shared kitchens that bleed into one another. Water runs through the center�" not just for show, but because moving water keeps spaces cool and minds calm. At night, the sound folds into sleep. 

My grandmother wakes before the sun and sings while she makes tea. My grandfather pretends not to nap in the middle of the day, usually in a chair that catches the afternoon light. He smells like cedar and old paper, and the citrus salve my father makes. 

My mother keeps the space deceptively simple�" soft fabrics, low tables, nothing sharp unless it’s necessary. She dresses in layers that move easily, colors pulled from stone and leaves. When shes thinking hard, she braids her hair without noticing. When she worries, she reorganizes things that don't need reorganizing. 

My father's presence is quieter but constant. He speaks softly even when the room is loud. His hands are steady in a way that makes people trust him immediately. He brings his work home sometimes�" not emergencies, just thoughtfulness; new preventative methods, long-term health projections. He asks me what the children I work with are struggling with lately, and I ask him how bodies tend to hide things when something's wrong. We trade notes over dinner like it’s the most normal thing in the world. 

My brother lives somewhere between everywhere and nowhere. He’s nineteen and tall in that unfinished way, all limbs and no momentum. His hair never does what he wants it to, and his smile gives him away every time he tries to be serious.  We used to sleep in the same room when we were little, curled up on opposite sides of the same platform bed, whispering until someone told us to close our eyes. Now his space is just across the open walkway from mine. 

He teases me for staying in people-work. I tease him for forgetting to eat when he’s deep in a problem. When he laughs, it fills the whole unit and spills out onto the walkways. Children follow him like he’s a magnet. 

Dinner is the axis everything turns on. 

Some nights it’s just us�" my parents, brother, and me. Some nights, cousins drift in, or an aunt brings a new recipe she’s still arguing with. Food appears from multiple kitchens and somehow becomes one meal. We sit on cushions or steps or low benches, wherever there’s room. Stories move faster than the food. My grandmother talks about when the eastern gardens were first replanted. My mother mentions a policy meeting that turned into an unexpected breakthrough. My father asks my brother about a redesign he's working on, then asks me about a child who's been unusually quiet lately. No one rushes the conversation. 

Later, when the lights soften and the river noise deepens, I like to cross the walkways barefoot. I pause sometimes at the trees�" the old ones, the ones whose roots hold our dead. I press my palm to the bark like I’m greeting a relative and listen. 

This is home. Not a place exactly, but a we. Everything fits together. 

>

Mornings belong to the children. 

I leave early, slipping out while most of the unit is still half-asleep. The walkways are cool then, the stones still holding onto the night. Mist lifts off the river like slow ribbons. I like this hour because the city feels like it's stretching�" no performances yet, no conversation layered on top of one another. Just breath. 

The learning space isn’t a building so much as a clearing. Trees arc overhead, their branches trained gently to form shade. Low platforms curve along the water’s edge. There are shelves, but nothing's fragile. Everything here is meant to be touched. 

The kids arrive in waves, escorted by siblings or grandparents or whoever happened to be awake first. Shoes are optional. Most of them don’t bother. 

They’re between four and eight, which means they’re still close enough to honesty that you can hear it when they talk. Some of them come running. Some hover at the edges, watching. I greet each of them by name, not loudly, not ceremonially�" just to let them know I see them. 

Today, we start with pattern-building. 

I scatter smooth stones and colored tiles across a wide mat and ask them to arrange them however feels right. They make spirals and faces and towers. One kid lines everything up meticulously by size and color and refuses to explain why, which is fine. Explanation is optional here. 

When disagreements happen, we pause. I don’t correct them immediately; I ask questions instead. 

“What are you trying to make?”

“What does it need to feel finished to you?”

Most of the time, they figure it out themselves. 

Midmorning, we move closer to the water. I sit with a small group who’ve been quieter lately. One boy leans against my side without asking. I let him. He talks about a dream he had where the river ran backwards, and no one noticed. Another kid insists that dreams are stories that we play because sleeping is actually boring, and a third quietly declares the river would probably be annoyed if it had to change directions. 

I’ve always loved the way their minds stretch with no limit. 

We eat together when the sun reaches a certain angle. Food arrives from home units nearby: fruit, warm bread, something sweet someone’s grandmother insisted on sending. No one keeps track of who brought what. It all becomes ours when it’s on the table. 

After lunch, the youngest take naps. The older ones wander or climb or sit with me while I read aloud. The story today is about a girl who tries to build a translator for animals and accidentally invents a way to listen to everything instead. They like that part. 

By the time their families come to collect them, the clearing looks gently chaotic�" stones rearranged, crumbs everywhere, laughter still drifting in the warm breeze. Parents ask how their kids did. I tell them what matters: who tried something new, who made a new friend, who finally spoke up during our talks.  

I clean up, and on my way home, I stop by the communal gardens. My brother is there, perched on a railing, sketching energy flows in the dirt with a stick. He looks up when he hears me. 

“You’re late,” he says with a beaming smile. 

“And you’re probably hungry,” I reply, nudging him playfully with my shoulder. 

He grins, unrepentant. 

My brother looks like he grew up faster than his body could keep up. 

He’s taller than anyone else in our immediate unit and still slightly folded in on himself. Broad shoulders, long arms, hands that are always moving, even when he’s standing still. His face is open in a way that makes people assume he’s harmless, which he is, mostly, but also deeply stubborn once he's decided something matters. His hair is lighter than mine, sun-browned from spending hours outside, perpetually unruly. He cuts it himself when it gets in his way. His eyes are a soft hazel, and he frowns when he concentrates, lower lip caught slightly between his teeth, like the world might slip if he lets go of it. 

He works in systems integration�" though he hates that phrase. 

He says what he actually does is help the city flow. He monitors energy exchange between water systems, solar structures, and thermal stone cores. He watches how small changes ripple outward. If a neighborhood overheats, a water channel slows, or a building starts to feel “off,” he's one of the people who notices first. 

His aptitude assessment flagged him early for pattern recognition and spatial empathy. He understands environments the way some people understand people and emotions. He can walk into a space and tell you where the tension will collect before it happens. 

He’s good at it. Quietly proud. 

We argue sometimes, but only about trivial things�" who ate the last of something, whose turn it is to fetch supplies, whether a certain design is clever or just elegant. When it matters, he’s unwavering. If I need him, he’s there before I finish asking. 

I don’t worry about him. Not really. The city suits him.

We walk back together, talking about nothing in particular. A new water-routing idea he’s excited about. A kid who built a bridge out of stones and refused to let anything cross it until they named it properly. The light shifts around us, forgiving and warm. 

At home, dinner is already forming�" voices overlapping, the smell of herbs and citrus. My mother catches my eye from across the space and smiles like she’s been waiting for me to arrive. 

“There you are,” she says, relieved. 

“We took the long way,” I tell her, leaning in to kiss her cheek. 

“I assumed.” She nudges a cutting board toward me without breaking rhythm. “Can you finish the citrus? Before it all disappears.” She gestures towards my nieces and nephews running barefoot through the unit, and her warm laugh fills the kitchen. 

Around us, the rest of the family drifts in and out.  My aunt has my uncle taste a sauce. My grandfather is hovering near the bread as if it might escape from him at any moment. My brother slides past me to snag a fresh slice, only to get his wrist slapped for it. 

“Not done,” my mother says. 

“It’s structurally complete,” he shrugs, nudging past her. 

My grandmother arrives last, as she often does, walking stick tapping lightly against the stone. We sit in loose clusters together, plates passed from hand to hand. My little cousin mentions a bird nest he saw today, and I give him my attention while he tells me about how many birds he saw in it. Laughter ripples through the space like a wave that finds no edge. 

Midway through the meal, my grandmother clears her throat. Not loudly, she never needs to be. 

“There’s a root system on the eastern fig that needs tending,” she says mildly. “The soil blend arrived today.”

My brother freezes mid-bite, then slowly lowers his fork and shoots a glance over to me. “Oh wow..” he stutters. “That sounds… very much like your territory.” 

I raise my eyebrows at him. “Interesting, considering you’re the one who understands roots in three dimensions.” 

My grandmother watches us with open amusement but says nothing. 

“I’ve been working all day,” my brother says. “Infrastructure waits for no one,” he adds dramatically, thrusting his fork into the air. 

“Children also wait for no one, and I’ve been working with them all day,” I shoot back, folding my arms across my chest theatrically. 

He tilts his head, considering it. “Counterpoint: You like the fig trees.”

I open my mouth to argue and then close it again. 

Thats unfair. I do like them. 

“Tomorrow afternoon,” I say finally, pointing my fork at him with an exasperated sigh. “After work. Not morning.”

He grins, victorious. “Absolutely heroic.”

My grandmother nods once, satisfied. “That will be perfect.”

The matter dissolves back into dinner like it was never heavy to begin with. 

As plates empty and people start to return to their own home units, my mother pauses beside me and presses a warm cup of tea into my hands. 

“I'm glad you made it back before we finished,” she says softly. 

“Me too.”

She studies me for a moment�" not searching, not probing. Just seeing. Then she nods, satisfied, and turns back to help clear the table. 

My father dims the lamps, and my brother bumps my shoulder as we carry dishes together. 

“Tomorrow afternoon,” he reminds me. 

“I know,” I say, smiling. 

Author's Note

This is a first draft. Any and all criticism is welcome. I want to improve, not feel better.

Reviews

[Carrie]

Good description, good voice, but the plot is slow. You need more action.