The Declaration

the country, we’ll have flowers everywhere. Flowers for my butterfly.’
    Anna took the flower and gazed in wonderment at it – it was so bright, so fragrant. Then she took a deep breath.
    ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I was thinking that I wouldn’t go. To the country.’
    Peter frowned. ‘Don’t be stupid. You have to.’
    ‘No, I don’t,’ Anna said seriously, standing up and looking at her mother and Peter pleadingly. ‘You have to leave me here. Then you can all escape and they won’t come after you, and you’ll be safe. They’ll never stop looking for me because I’m nearly a Valuable Asset, and if they find me, they’ll find you, and Ben —’
    ‘I’m not going anywhere without you,’ Peter said hotly. ‘Stop being stupid. If anyone should stay behind, it’s me. This is your family, not mine.’
    ‘I’m not being stupid,’ Anna retorted. ‘And it’s my fault the Catchers are coming, not yours. I’m being sensible. I’m being —’
    ‘Anna, sit down a moment, will you?’ Her mother, who had been looking at them both sadly, came over to the sofa and sat down with Peter and Anna either side of her, taking their hands in hers.
    ‘Let me tell you both a story,’ she said, her voice soft and kind. ‘This story is about a man and a woman who loved each other very much, and who wanted to have children, because, contrary to what you were taught at Grange Hall, Anna, Nature is not about preserving old things, but about creating new ones. New life. New ideas. Like your daffodil. It will die, eventually, but in its place will come new daffodils. That’s the way things should be.
    ‘Now, this man and woman went to the Authorities, and said that they would like to Opt Out of Longevity, so that they could have a child. But the Authorities said that they couldn’t, because you had to Opt Out when you were sixteen, and if you didn’t, you were deemed to have agreed to the Declaration. The man and woman said that they hadn’t known they’d want to Opt Out when they were sixteen, that they’d been too young. But the Authorities told them that it was still impossible to Opt Out now, and that they couldn’t have a child.
    ‘So they were very sad, but then they started to meet other people who weren’t allowed to have children. And they found out that not everyone thinks that Longevity drugs are a good thing after all, but that the drugs companies were so powerful that no one was allowed to question Longevity, and if they did, they ended up in prison. And so they joined something called the Underground Movement, and they decided to have a baby, even though they weren’t allowed to, because they believed that if they didn’t have children, the Authorities would have won, because if there weren’t any children, people would forget about them, and everyone would have signed the Declaration, so there would never be any children again.
    ‘So they had a child, and she was the most beautiful little girl, and she made them so happy they thought they would burst, even though they had to keep her a secret. They loved that little girl more than anything in the world, but they made a mistake. They met a woman, who said she wanted to join the Underground Movement, who said she and her husband wanted to have a baby. They trusted her, and they told her about their little girl, and a week later, the Catchers arrived and took their baby away, and put the man and the woman in prison, and they screamed and screamed for their little girl, but it was no use.
    ‘A few years later, they were let out of prison, and they changed their names and joined the Underground Movement again, and the Movement gave them a new house to live in, here in Bloomsbury. And then one day, they were lucky enough to meet a boy called Peter, whom they loved very much and who agreed to live with them. And then they became even happier when they had another baby, this time a little boy. But all that time, they were still very sad, because they didn’t have their little girl. They hadn’t protected her. And now she was paying the price, locked away in Grange Hall.
    ‘Now, Peter, here, was a very brave and wonderful boy, and he decided that he was going to save their little girl. The man and woman were worried for him, but he refused to take no for an answer, and they told him what their little girl looked like, that her name was Anna, and that she had a butterfly on her stomach, a little mark from Mother Nature to show the world