One Apple A Day #118
For Ariel, this is not a morning like any other in the last 16 years. And there is a chance that there will never be any other morning like those.
But it’s the moment he sets his foot in the kitchen that he understands. For what it seems to him a very long time, everything and everyone freeze. His mother stares at him with the dish for breakfast in her hands. Her eyes are wide open like a deer in front of the lights of an oncoming car. His father raises his eyes over the edge of the newspaper he read every morning. He never let anyone distract him from his morning reading, but Today there is something more important than anything else in the world.
The calendar on the wall says that Today is the 12th of July. Ariel’s sixteen birthday. Ariel’s revelation day.
Like all the other boys on the island, on the day of their sixteen birthday, they have to do the test. A simple blood test but it may change their life forever.
The M gene they call it. No one knows how it formed or when it started to appear, why it becomes visible only when the person turns sixteen. The only known thing is that if you have the M gene, you are different. Very few have the M gene. Most of them turn into Monsters before they are 18. Rarely the M gene may turn a boy into an invincible Warrior. But it is very rare and, most of all. There are no ways to know it except waiting to see if the boy turns into a Monster or not. The last Warrior is now in his sixties. The past 12 boys with the M gene all turned into Monsters. And they have been killed at the first signs of the transformation. What else can the sages do to protect their island? Not that being a Warrior is a beautiful life. They are practically slaves of the island, fighting and suffering to protect the island and its inhabitants from every possible external attack or danger.
Today is Ariel revelation day. He won’t go to school. His father will take him to the building near the temple on top of the hill. They will take a sample of his blood. It may take three or four days for the gene to reveal itself. After that, if he is normal he can go home like most of the other guys and live the normal life of an islander. If he’s not, his life will never be the same.
All his class mates are scared, but Ariel hates the boring life of the island. The routine, the rituals. Every day is exactly like the day before. He often dreamed of being a Monster or a Warrior. In his heart, dying young as a Monster is better than dying slowly as a human.