The Dadis

The Dadis looked bad. The Dadis looked mean.

The Dadis looked crazy.

The Dadis strode into the opass area. The opass area was very old. Many years ago – long before the fa'off - the opass was used by the people to get somewhere. I don't know where, and I don't know how. But the big pillars of the opass area were stone and steel and concrete and there were long roads of concrete that stretched between the opass pillars.

Most of the opass areas were where people lived. My family lived near the opass at Corringer Valley. Grid 17 area.

Just the moment before the Dadis strode into the opass area, lightening flashed.

The Dadis looked evil. He was tall and very dark. He was thin and his face was thin and sharp lookin'. His hair was short - almost no one's hair I've ever seen was that short.

And he wore a coat. Even in the heat – there was lighting, because it was so hot - the Dadis wore a coat. The Dadis was tall, and the dark coat flapped and whipped back and forth around him, looking like a cape, or something.

The lightening flashed again.

Those who lived near the edge of the opass saw the Dadis coming and shivered. He used to cause me to shiver, too, just ‘cause he looked that way.

Evil.

But he wasn't really evil.

He was spooky. He was different. But he wasn't evil.

He was a storyteller.

The Dadis would travel from cluster to cluster, grid to grid, and tell stories to people. I had heard that the polopol would love to get their hands on him.

I got to remember that.

Anyway, the Dadis would travel from cluster to cluster and tell stories. He moved freely, and the polopol didn't know where he was going to, or how he lived, for that matter. He didn't stop at the Centers for his t'lys - his tenelys - and the polopol didn't know how he lived.

We didn't know what the Dadis did when he was somewhere else. And he didn't have a regular assignment, like most of us.

The Dadis just seemed to be. He traveled from place to place with those stories.

As the Dadis now walked through the opass area, people began to flock to him. They watched his long coat flap on his long body, making little whipping noises, and they didn't get too close, but they followed.

By the time the Dadis had made his way to the center of the cluster, there were more than twenty people who were gathered around him.

The Dadis walked over to a crate that was lying against the wall of one of the opass pillars. He sat on it, looking tall even though he was sitting down.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small chain with a hangy-down decoration on it. It was a small heart-shaped thing. The Dadis looked it over and put it back in his pocket. I heard someone say it was a locket, but I don't know what that meant.

Then - he just started talking. Most of the adults couldn't make any sense of what he had to say.

His deep dark voice that seemed to match his coat, just boomed out with stories that didn't make any sense and never would to most people. They listened just because he was entertaining.

None of them actually believed him.

He talked about food, but it wasn't real. He didn't talk about t'lys. He didn't talk about going to the Centers four times a day, during the open hours, to receive t'lys. And it didn't matter what "V" number you were. Your amount to eat didn't depend on your "V" number.

He talked about a time when the Oclass didn't have responsibility for feeding the people. He talked about a time when you could eat seven times a day, if you wanted. You could eat only two times a day, if you wanted.

The Oclass didn't exist and no one cared when you ate.

The Dadis told wonderful stories that no one believed and lots of people didn't understand.

He told about a place called I-oh-way, a place where the Oclass was located, since the fa'off. He said that they control things from their headquarters in I-oh-way.

The Dadis sat on that crate and talked for a long time and spoke things that were scary and strange.

He talked about the Oclass being people just like us, and about them eating fruits and turkey glazed with honey and dreadles and fresh crannbrots and spicy casseroles. No one knew what those words meant, but when the Dadis talked about it, his dark eyes gleamed.

But one thing that he talked about was even stranger.

The storyteller talked about something called taste.

He said that what you eat could have a sensation when you eat it. Just the way that when you touch something it can be rough or smooth or hard or soft.

Well that dark man that told the stories said that when you eat t'lys you should get some sensation like that, IN YOUR MOUTH! He called it taste. The Dadis was talking about taste when the raid occurred.

He was telling us things we didn't understand in words that didn't make any sense.

But - even though most of the people there didn't understand him and didn't believe anything he said, I did. I did believe him. It was like I could see the truth in those dark, sincere eyes. Those eyes that looked evil, but were telling the truth.

Back then - ages ago - people could eat when they wanted.

There was things other than t'lys to eat.

The Oclass was people who controlled the t'lys and the polopol and from I-oh-way could eat that stuff that wasn't t'lys.

And things had a taste, then.

Your mouth felt different from meal to meal; different from bite to bite.

It was crazy stuff. No wonder the polopol was upset with him. No wonder they were hunting him. The Oclass provided for any need, and the Dadis needed sanity.

But the problem was this - I believed the Dadis.

And, of course, no one believed me. Who would believe a 14-year-old who thinks that your mouth should get sensations like touch?

The Dadis was probably crazy, and I probably was too, for believing him.

He was telling about taste when the raid happened - so fast that no one could warn him - 'cause we didn't really want to see him taken by the polopol. Just like that they were there. It seemed like dozens of them, in their dark uniforms, and they surrounded him and rushed him.

He would have been captured, too.

But...

"This way," I hissed.

The Dadis looked over to the side where I'd been standing, listening.

We slipped around the pillar that he was against and there was a crack in the wall.

He could barely get his tall body through it. Most of the adults in the cluster didn't even know it existed, but the kids did, and we used it for playing and if you were old enough and brave enough you could even use the lower level below the level of the cluster for traveling to the next cluster.

I knew as we walked that I wouldn't be in any trouble. I could show the Dadis the way to the next cluster, and my parents hadn't been at his storytelling session, so they wouldn't know it was me that helped the Dadis. The polopol wouldn't do much to try to find him - just breaking up the session was enough for them.

We walked and talked and I became convinced that the Dadis was sincere. I also became convinced that the Dadis was more dangerous than the polopol knew.

The Dadis said that we were meant for more. We were meant to be and to do more than just exist.

He really sounded crazy.

He said that we should be special, and that if we took responsibility for our lives that things would be very different.

He said that orange was more than just a color.

Orange had been a food, back in the days before the fa'off.

You could actually eat an orange. I asked him if you could eat a blue.

He laughed. A deep, big, hearty laugh that made me feel good, considering that I was with a crazy man the polopol wanted to take away.

The Dadis told me lots of things that afternoon. We sat and talked for a very long time. Our grandparents had colored t'lys. But some of their grandparents, not too long after the fa'off had eaten other things - foods, he called them. With taste and feeling different in your mouth.

The Dadis stressed that we must remember, and I asked why we needed to remember.

He told me that there was a more important memory - more important than taste. A memory of the great thing.

He shared with me more than he had shared with any other person for many, many years.

He made me crazy, too. He made me crazy…

What he shared was more than someone my age could or should know.

He had been part of the Oclass. The Oclass were just people.

People like me, but who lived very differently. There were just a few of them and they kept it that way, so that they wouldn't have to care for all of the people and for lots of Oclass people, too.

The Oclass controlled the polopol and the sector boundaries.

The Oclass knew about taste and ate food that wasn't t'lys.

They denied the great thing. They wanted him captured and killed because they denied the memory of the great thing.

The Dadis knew about the great thing. He took the chain out of his pocket and put it in my hand… the hanging down decorations – the heart and the cross – gleamed in my hand.

The Dadis simply said, “Love… and faith…”

The Dadis died that very day.

But not before he had told me about the great thing.

He had taken his name from the great thing.

The earliest recollections that he had of the great thing was his mother whispering to him that phrase that would become his name.

Dadis memor ami...

Ami? Didn't he say that that meant friend in some ancient language?

His mother would croon it to him as an infant, and many years later, he would adopt part of it as his name and would make it his special mission to share the knowledge of the great thing with anyone who would listen.

Dadis memor ami...

He had come to realize as an adult how important memory and remembrance was. Particularly after the meaning of his mother's lullaby became clear to him, one day.

Dadis memor ami.

Dadis memor o' me.

Do 'dis memor o' me.

Do 'dis 'n memory o' me.

Do this in memory of me...

His mother's mother's mother sang the words of remembrance, and the Dadis spoke of a shiny little heart on a chain.

Waves of grain... the fruited plain...

What could they mean?

The Dadis escaped at the next cluster, but was cornered that evening and was killed when they tried to capture him.

Later in my life, I would learn that the Dadis was a martyr. I'm not even sure what he was a martyr to.

Anyway, he is gone, but he shared with me a glimpse of what we were supposed to remember. A tiny remembrance of the great thing, and the wonderful gift behind it.

I wonder if I sound as crazy as he did?

Do this in memory of me.

Like the orange, it is a memory that I didn't know that I had.

A memory of something wonderful.

But who is me?

Who would the Dadis die for - die just so that he could share the stories?

I will find out.

I will find out.

For it is the great thing.