My dear, you told me your dream because it frightened you. But I want you to know that when you children first started appearing on the grassy knoll behind the hospital, we were the ones who were frightened. Even now we don’t have the full explanation of where you come from. You are human, of course, nothing different about your DNA. But you came from a place with much more advanced technology, but also a draconian system of morality.
The people of our world have been assailed by pollution, war, pandemics, our population in decline for so many years, many of us have not seen a child. So, all you children arriving beautiful, cherub-cheeked in the sunny glen in the southern part of the country simply seemed like a miracle.
We would have taken you into our homes; raised you as our own, but you were all so fervently possessed of a sense of having wronged someone beyond reason. You could not live in society; our world was too gray for you, and so we made the compound. I know you all call this place the Ruins. But we live here, we call it home. And we want you to be happy here. That’s why we have teachers and doctors here, to help you take it easy on yourselves. Think about this, can anyone wrong another being beyond the possibility of forgiveness at seven years old? Your utter conviction of guilt made people think that you were angels, fallen from a height – ridiculous, of course. The name stuck, though, and you became the Angelic Youth.
You wanted to know what they mean, your dreams. It means you’re doing well. I’m not lying. Let me prove it to you. I will tell you the dreams of the others.
The Endless Stair: a boy approaches a tower. He is asked a question, but failing to answer correctly, he cannot be transported to the top. Instead, he must ascend the stairs to reach the pinnacle of the tower, and he does not know when he starts climbing that the climb would be in complete darkness, and that even though he was supplied food and water, and every few days he glimpses a light, he will die of old age before he can reach the top. He had missed his only chance, and the rest of his long life lived in the darkness is the consequence.
The Black Goo: A girl pulls out her hearing aid and what comes after is a long, ropy, stringy tangle of black goo, which she understands to be the all the badness inside, and so she keeps pulling and pulling. It is sticky like tar, and even when she has extracted so that it puddles at her feet, she is still not done, because she is so much worse than anyone knew. She still believes she could be totally purified, but there would be a price.
(Many of the Angelic Youth enjoy cosmetics that promise to “get the gunk out.” They like cleanses. They tidy their rooms. They make many resolutions at the new year or their birthdays. You are not alone in that, either.)
The Meeting with God: A boy goes up the hospital stairs to the very top floor, to the upper room. In the room there is a bed and in the bed there is an old man with many tubes coming out of him connected to many machines. The man tells the boy that he is not an angel. Here is the real story: the boy was grown in a lab, with other children. The boy was told a story about himself, which is that he is bad, that he has done terrible things. Why this story? Maybe it will make him work harder, to never be satisfied, to achieve more. Maybe because it was the story everyone else got, too.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: A girl and her brother are in the glen. The boy raises his arm and calls for the doors to open to the place where they came from, and though the girl didn’t think it would happen, it did. But then, in the space where the two worlds connected, where she and her brother stood, the air ignited. The flame spread to consume both worlds, and she understood too late why the door must not be opened. They have seen her laugh in the Ruins, where there was only ever supposed to be lamentation; she cannot go back.
Right, that’s your dream. It is a good one – the world bursting into flames. A real firecracker of a dream.
Yours is my favorite dream of all of them, do you know why? Because you’re right. You can’t go back. How can you ask to live in the world and be blameless? There is no such existence. To live in the world is to know that you’ll be wrong, you’ll make a mistake, you’ll be ruined. The only hope is in knowing there is no cure. You’re stuck here in the Ruins. Might as well enjoy it. Might as well earn your guilt, like the rest of us.
Feeling better? That’s what I’m here for. I’ll recommend that you can integrate in another six months – nine, tops. Now back you go to art therapy. I’ll see you next week, same time. Yes, I think you will do well.
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Shiwei Zhou is a Chinese-American writer of speculative fiction; her work is forthcoming from Asimov’s, khōréō, and Diabolical Plots. She lives in the Midwest with her family and a golden retriever named Mango. You can find her on Bluesky at @shiweizhou.bsky.social.