Genesis

by Bernard Beckett

Anax had a favourite place, a ridge up above the city. She would often walk there after classes. Usually she went by herself. She wasn’t a loner; it was just that her friends were reluctant walkers. ‘You’re missing a great sunset,’ she would message them, but the answer was always the same, ‘So download it.’ The favoured insult of that time. It was during those final school years that Anax first began to realise she wasn’t like the others. She didn’t understand the careful nonchalance which appeared one day without warning, spreading through her classmates like the plague. It was as if a whole stage of development had passed her by. She tried to explain it to her best friend, Thales. ‘I think there might be something wrong with me.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I, well, I don’t think I’m like you. I like what we’re learning still. I don’t understand the things you talk about. The gossip. I enjoy the old days. I miss the games.’ ‘You’re just taking a bit longer to grow up,’ Thales told her, sounding confident it would happen soon. Anax wasn’t so sure. So each evening after class that summer, instead of rushing back to her apartment to plug into the group flashing—which to her had all the appeal of a passing electrical storm—she would detour up into the hills. It wasn’t just for the sunsets, although they grew more spectacular as the days lengthened and the northern haze extended. It was the breeze coming in off the sea. The feeling of standing at the edge of the world. It was the v...