PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT AND EVERYDAY LEARNING: CONNECTING DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY WITH PRACTICAL CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES

Suleiman Mansir Gado

Email: elmensut77@gmail.com

Abstract

Children do not learn in exactly the same way throughout childhood. The ways in which young learners understand objects, people, language and events change as cognitive development progresses. Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development remains an influential framework for understanding these changes, although contemporary developmental scholarship has challenged rigid interpretations of its stages. This paper examines Piaget’s four major stages—sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational—and connects them with practical examples of everyday learning. Examples include children observing adults combing their hair and attempting to reproduce the action, learning the meaning of words through repeated interaction, imitating greetings, using sticks as imaginary horses, using tyres as imaginary vehicles, distinguishing representations from physical objects, and classifying goats as animals. The discussion places these illustrations within Piaget’s concepts of active knowledge construction, assimilation and accommodation and considers contemporary scholarship on the strengths and limitations of stage-based explanations. The paper argues that Piaget’s framework remains useful as a broad developmental guide when used flexibly rather than as a rigid timetable. Its practical value for teachers and parents lies in encouraging attention to learners’ developing ways of reasoning, while recognising the influence of experience, context, language and individual differences. The paper is a conceptual and applied discussion and does not claim to introduce a new developmental theory or report a formal empirical study.

Keywords

Piaget; cognitive development; sensorimotor stage; preoperational stage; concrete operational stage; formal operational stage; child learning; developmental theory

1. Introduction

Learning begins long before a child enters a classroom. A child watches parents, listens to words, touches objects, copies actions, plays and gradually develops more organised ways of understanding the world. These everyday experiences are important because children do not begin life with the same level of reasoning that adults have. Cognitive development involves changes in how learners represent, organise and reason about experience.

Jean Piaget made a major contribution to developmental psychology by describing cognitive development as an active process in which children construct knowledge through interaction with their environment. His account identified four broad stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational (Piaget, 1952, 1954, 1972). The enduring importance of the theory is not simply the age labels attached to the stages, but the broader idea that children actively make sense of experience and that their forms of reasoning change as development progresses.

At the same time, contemporary scholarship cautions against treating the four stages as fixed and universally uniform boundaries. Winstanley (2023) examines continuing theoretical questions surrounding Piagetian stages, while Ratcliff (2024) demonstrates the continuing historical and scholarly significance of Piaget’s work. Rochat (2024) further shows how subsequent developmental theories emerged partly in response to assumptions associated with Piaget’s account, including strong claims about stages, domain generality and the timing of representation. These developments suggest that Piaget should be read critically and historically rather than either accepted without qualification or dismissed entirely.

The purpose of this paper is therefore to explain Piaget’s four stages and connect them with practical childhood experiences that teachers, parents and education students can easily recognise. The paper is conceptual and illustrative rather than empirical. The everyday examples are used to clarify theoretical ideas and are not presented as data from a formally designed observational study.

2. Literature Review

Piaget and the Active Construction of Knowledge

Piaget’s work placed the child’s active construction of knowledge at the centre of cognitive development. Rather than viewing children as passive recipients of information, Piaget regarded them as active participants in making sense of their environment. Two concepts are particularly important: assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation occurs when a new experience is interpreted using an existing mental structure, whereas accommodation involves modifying an existing structure when the new experience does not fit (Piaget, 1952, 1954). Cognitive development therefore involves an ongoing relationship between the learner and the environment rather than simple accumulation of facts.

Piaget’s account also emphasised the importance of action and experience. Young children encounter the world through movement, perception and manipulation before increasingly complex symbolic and logical forms of thought become available. This makes everyday activities relevant to understanding development. A child handling a comb, copying a greeting or transforming a stick into an imaginary horse can be understood as engaging with objects and representations in ways that reflect developing cognitive structures.

The Continuing Relevance and Reassessment of Piaget

Piaget remains historically and theoretically important, but his framework has been reassessed by later developmental scholarship. Marchand (2012) notes both the educational contributions of Piagetian and post-Piagetian theories and the weaknesses that limit the use of a simple Piagetian account as a complete explanation of educational practice. Winstanley (2023) similarly discusses the theoretical and empirical difficulties surrounding the concept of developmental stages. Ratcliff (2024) shows that Piaget continues to generate substantial historical and epistemological scholarship. Rochat (2024) places Piaget within the broader evolution of developmental theories, showing how later approaches challenged several assumptions while retaining the importance of questions about how cognition develops.

The implication is that Piaget’s theory is most useful when treated as a broad organising framework. It can help teachers think about differences in learners’ reasoning without assuming that every child reaches a particular form of thinking at exactly the same age. Development can be uneven, context-sensitive and influenced by experience. Therefore, stage descriptions should guide educational thinking rather than function as rigid diagnostic categories.

3. Sensorimotor Stage: Birth to Approximately Two Years

The sensorimotor stage is associated with learning through sensory experiences and physical actions. A child at this stage learns through seeing, touching, hearing, moving and manipulating objects (Piaget, 1952).

Consider a small child who watches a parent combing their hair. The child may pick up a comb and try to put it against the hair. The child may not use the comb correctly at first, but the attempt shows learning through observation, movement and direct interaction with an object. The same principle can be illustrated when a child watches a parent put on shoes and then attempts to wear the shoes, even when the shoes are too large.

Language can also become meaningful through repeated interaction. If a parent repeatedly says “Kai” when a child is doing something that should stop, the child may gradually associate the sound with stopping. This example should not be taken to mean that the child has mastered the full meaning of the word; rather, it illustrates how repeated social interaction can help an early learner connect sounds with situations and actions.

4. Preoperational Stage: Approximately Two to Seven Years

During the preoperational stage, children develop greater use of language and symbols. They can represent one thing with another, and imaginative play becomes particularly noticeable (Piaget, 1954, 1972).

A child may watch adults greet people by squatting or lowering themselves and then imitate the action when greeting another person. The child may not yet understand every cultural or social meaning behind the behaviour, but the imitation demonstrates the use of observed behaviour as a model.

Another example is a child holding a stick and saying that the stick is a horse. The stick is not actually a horse; during play, however, it represents a horse. Similarly, a child may use a tyre and imagine that it is a motorcycle or another vehicle. A stick can become a horse, a box can become a house, and an ordinary object can represent something different in imaginative play. These examples illustrate the increasing importance of symbolic representation.

5. Concrete Operational Stage: Approximately Seven to Eleven or Twelve Years

At the concrete operational stage, children develop stronger forms of logical reasoning, although their reasoning remains closely connected to concrete objects and situations (Piaget, 1954, 1972).

The child who previously used a stick as a horse may increasingly understand that a stick is physically different from a horse. A tyre is not automatically a motorcycle, and a toy car is not the same as a real car. The child can still engage in imaginative play, but the ability to distinguish representation from physical reality becomes increasingly organised.

Classification also becomes more systematic. When a child sees a goat, the child can identify it as a goat and also understand that a goat belongs to the broader category of animals. The learner is therefore moving from identifying individual objects toward understanding relationships between categories. This kind of reasoning has direct educational value because classroom learning often requires learners to group, compare, order and classify information.

6. Formal Operational Stage: Approximately Eleven or Twelve Years and Above

The formal operational stage is associated with increasing capacity for abstract and hypothetical reasoning (Piaget, 1972). Learners can increasingly discuss ideas without needing to have the physical object immediately present. They may reason about concepts such as justice, democracy, freedom and responsibility and consider hypothetical questions such as, “What would happen if…?”

This stage is particularly relevant to secondary education because many school subjects require learners to move beyond concrete examples toward concepts, relationships and possibilities. A learner may know that a goat is an animal and a car is a vehicle, but may also compare categories, discuss their characteristics and reason about hypothetical situations. However, contemporary research cautions against assuming that abstract reasoning suddenly appears at a fixed age. Learners may show different levels of reasoning depending on the task, prior knowledge, experience and context (Rochat, 2024; Winstanley, 2023).

7. Discussion

The practical examples discussed in this paper illustrate the continuing usefulness of Piaget’s framework for organising broad changes in children’s ways of thinking. The examples also show why the theory should not be applied as a rigid timetable. Children do not all develop at exactly the same speed, and performance can vary according to experience, language, culture, task demands and opportunities for learning.

A central strength of Piaget’s contribution is the emphasis on the learner as an active constructor of knowledge. The child who experiments with a comb, imitates a greeting, uses a stick symbolically or classifies a goat is not simply receiving information. The child is engaging with experience and gradually organising it. This principle remains educationally useful because effective teaching often requires learners to interact with examples, objects, questions and problems rather than merely memorise information (Marchand, 2012).

However, the stage concept has important limitations. Winstanley (2023) explains that Piagetian stages have attracted criticism because stage language can suggest discontinuity and fixed boundaries. Contemporary developmental theory has also questioned the extent to which cognitive development can be described through a single domain-general sequence. Rochat (2024) reviews the evolution of developmental theories after Piaget and shows that later approaches placed greater emphasis on specific domains, early competencies, social and environmental influences, and alternative mechanisms of change.

These criticisms do not make Piaget irrelevant. Instead, they encourage a more careful interpretation. Piaget’s four stages can be used as broad developmental landmarks, while teachers remain attentive to individual differences and the possibility that a learner may demonstrate more advanced reasoning in one context than another. The most defensible educational position is therefore to use Piaget as a guide to thinking about development, not as a fixed timetable for judging what every child should be able to do.

8. Implications for Teaching

Piaget’s theory has several practical implications for teaching. First, teachers should consider the learner’s current level of understanding when selecting examples and activities. Younger learners may benefit from opportunities to manipulate objects, observe demonstrations, use pictures and engage in meaningful play. Learners developing concrete reasoning may benefit from physical materials, experiments, classification activities, demonstrations and practical problem-solving.

Older learners can increasingly engage with abstract discussion, hypothetical questions, debates, reasoning tasks and problem-solving. However, the teacher should not assume that age alone determines the learner’s ability. Prior knowledge, language, experience and the nature of the task also matter. The educational value of Piaget’s framework therefore lies in encouraging teachers to connect instruction with how learners currently understand and organise information (Marchand, 2012).

The practical lesson is that teaching should move from learners’ existing understanding toward increasingly complex forms of reasoning. Teachers can use concrete examples before introducing abstractions, encourage learners to explain their reasoning, and provide opportunities to compare, classify, test and reorganise ideas. Such practices are consistent with the broader constructivist insight that learners actively participate in building understanding.

9. Limitations

This paper has limitations. First, it is a conceptual and applied discussion rather than a formal empirical study. The childhood examples are illustrative observations and practical teaching examples, not systematically collected research data. They should therefore not be interpreted as evidence establishing the developmental stage of particular children.

Second, the paper focuses primarily on Piaget’s framework and selected contemporary reassessments. It does not attempt to provide a complete review of every post-Piagetian or contemporary theory of cognitive development. Third, the four-stage model is necessarily a broad simplification of complex developmental processes. Contemporary scholarship indicates that cognitive development may be more variable, domain-specific and context-sensitive than a strict stage model suggests (Rochat, 2024; Winstanley, 2023).

These limitations do not remove the educational value of the paper. Rather, they define the appropriate contribution: a theoretically informed, practical discussion that helps teachers and parents connect a classic developmental framework with everyday learning experiences.

10. Contribution and Publication Positioning

The contribution of this paper is practical and interpretive rather than theoretical invention. Piaget’s theory is already an established framework, and this paper does not claim to create a new developmental theory. Its contribution lies in connecting familiar childhood experiences with key Piagetian concepts in a way that is accessible to teachers, parents and education students.

The examples of combing hair, wearing shoes, responding to repeated words, imitating greetings, using a stick as a horse, using a tyre imaginatively, distinguishing objects from representations and classifying goats as animals provide concrete illustrations of abstract developmental ideas. The paper also strengthens these illustrations by placing them alongside contemporary scholarship that both recognises Piaget’s historical importance and questions rigid interpretations of his stages (Ratcliff, 2024; Rochat, 2024; Winstanley, 2023).

The paper should therefore be understood as an applied conceptual article. Its value is not in claiming empirical proof from informal observations, but in translating an established developmental framework into practical educational understanding while acknowledging the limits of that framework.

11. Conclusion

Children learn from the moment they begin interacting with their environment. The child who watches a parent combing hair is learning through action and experience. The child who imitates greeting behaviour is learning through observation and representation. The child who uses a stick as a horse is demonstrating symbolic play. The child who increasingly understands that the stick is not actually a horse is developing a clearer distinction between representation and physical reality. The child who knows that a goat is an animal is developing increasingly organised classification.

Piaget’s four stages remain useful for organising broad developmental changes, but they should be applied flexibly. Contemporary scholarship makes it clear that cognitive development cannot be reduced to rigid age boundaries or a single universal timetable (Rochat, 2024; Winstanley, 2023). The greatest educational value of Piaget’s theory is therefore not to label children according to age, but to encourage teachers to consider how learners understand information, what experiences they have had and what kinds of reasoning a particular task requires.

The practical lesson is simple: before asking a learner to understand something, the teacher should consider what the learner already understands and provide experiences that help the learner move toward more complex reasoning.

References

Marchand, H. (2012). Contributions of Piagetian and post-Piagetian theories to education. Educational Research Review, 7(3), 165–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2012.04.002

Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. International Universities Press.

Piaget, J. (1954). The construction of reality in the child. Basic Books.

Piaget, J. (1972). The psychology of the child. Basic Books.

Ratcliff, M. J. (2024). Origins, trends and perspectives of historical-epistemological research on Piaget. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 58, 23–34. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-023-09796-7

Rochat, P. (2024). The evolution of developmental theories since Piaget: A metaview. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 19(6), 1021–1039. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916231186611

Winstanley, M. A. (2023). Stages in theory and experiment: Fuzzy-structuralism and Piagetian stages. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 57, 151–173. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-022-09702-7

Falling Hard

“I’m sorry, Jen,” apologized Molly. “I’ve got to go.”

“What is it, Molly?” asked her friend and neighbor. “We’ve only been on the phone for fifteen minutes. I remember when we used to talk for hours.”

“I’ve got to call another friend of mine. I told him I’d reach him by seven o’clock, and here it is nearly eight.”

“Him?” said Jennifer. “Molly, are you seeing someone?”

Molly hesitated, then responded girlishly, “Not really. We’ve never met. We have a ‘virtual relationship.’ “

“Virtual?” said Jennifer. “Oh, you mean Zoom. Yes, it’s almost like being there. Who is he? How did you meet, Molly? How long have you been in contact?”

“On an online chat room,” replied Molly. “About a week. Look, I’ve got to go! Bye!”

They disconnected.

______

“No, Jennifer, I don’t know anything about who Mom is seeing. Did she tell you there was someone? Are they dating?”

“I don’t think it’s gone quite that far, Marilyn,” replied Jennifer. “She said she met a man on a chat line and they hit it off, apparently. That was a week ago and I haven’t been able to get hold of her since.” The women were sitting in Marilyn’s kitchen, in the burbs.

“I’ll get to the bottom of this,” said Marilyn. She was happy that her mother, at 75 a widow for four years, was remaking her life. Molly had been so depressed after the death of Marilyn’s father, who was always so much bigger than life. She turned up her iPhone and dialed her mother. Molly picked up instantly. Marilyn put the phone on speaker for Jennifer’s sake. Molly answered with a hello.

“Mom,” Marilyn said playfully, “I hear you’re playing the field again.”

Silence.

Marilyn wondered if she’d gone too far. Although she’d urged her mother to rebuild her shattered social life, Molly had demurred. Marilyn didn’t want to crowd or embarrass her mother, who had always been an exceptionally sensitive woman. And so in love with Marilyn’s father. Marilyn wondered if her mother might feel she was betraying the memory of her husband.

“Mom,” she said, “are you there?

“I’m not dating,” said Molly a little stiffly.

“Jennifer told me that you had been in touch with someone,” said Marilyn gingerly. She heard her mother sigh.

“I had a few texts and phone calls with a man. But that’s over,” Molly said with finality.

“That’s okay, Mom,” said Marilyn. “Plenty of fish in the sea. I’m glad you’re trying,” she went on.

“I’m an old fool,” said Molly crossly. “I’m 75 years old!”

“You’re a boomer, Mom. You’re not alone, although I know it must feel that way sometimes. There are millions of available men in your age group. Just because one didn’t work out doesn’t mean you’re bound for failure. Keep trying, alright?”

“It’s frustrating, Marilyn. I exchanged a bunch of texts with this fellow, Dark Shadows; that’s what he called himself.” Molly snorted.

 “He was breadcrumbing me.”

“Sorry, Mom,” said Marilyn, surprised that her mother was conversant in dating lingo.

“I was just going to call another…person, so I’ll talk to you later, dear.”

“Okay, Mom, later. Good luck.” As she disconnected, Marilyn looked across the table at Jennifer and shrugged.

______

Sitting in a fast food restaurant at the mall, Marilyn listened excitedly to her mother as Molly discussed her new love interest. Marilyn had never seen her mother so animated.

“Does this man have a name?” she asked whimsically.

“It’s Branch,” replied Molly.

“Branch? You meet like on a tree?” Molly nodded. “That’s an unusual first name.”

“It’s English,” Molly told her. “His grandparents migrated from London before the First World War.”

“Tell me about him,” invited Marilyn.

“He’s 70,” replied Molly. “Widowed, one child; a daughter–Leslie.”

“Does he have any grandchildren?” asked Marilyn.

Molly shrugged. “I haven’t asked him yet. “We’ve just spoken twice.”

“Are you going to get together, to meet?” Marilyn wanted to know.

“I’m taking this slow, honey. I don’t want to get in over my head too soon, like I did with that Dark Shadows creature.” She shivered. “He was a creep.”

“You seemed to like him at first,” Marilyn pointed out.

“Yes, but when we actually met…”

“You met him?” said Marilyn with excitement. “You didn’t tell me that. What was he like? Describe him.”

“Well,” replied Molly, “he didn’t come as advertised. He’d told me he was 72, stood over six feet tall, was slender and worked out with weights…” Her voice trailed off.

“And what was he really like?” asked Marilyn with morbid curiosity.

“He was shorter than Edward,” said Molly. Edward, Molly’s father, had been five feet, six inches tall. “And he hadn’t exercised in years, I can tell you that,” said Molly sharply.”

“How old?” asked Marilyn.

Molly shrugged. “That dangerous age.”

“You mean…”

“Between 60 and 120.”

The two women stared at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“How do you know that Branch is all he says he is, Mom?” asked Marilyn.

“I saw a picture, on the internet,” said Molly.

“Mom, photos can be faked. He could’ve put anyone’s picture online, or even used AI.”

“This one was on his driver’s license,” said Molly triumphantly.

“Mom,” said Marilyn warily, “AI…”

Molly grew quiet. Then she said, surprising Marilyn, “Don’t ruin this for me, okay?”

“Okay, Mom.”

______

“When is Marilyn coming home from Boston, Molly?” inquired Jennifer. They were sitting in Molly’s backyard, having beers while the porksteaks grilled on the barbecue.

“She’s due back in two days,” replied Molly. “Classes start in a week.”

 Marilyn was an instructor at the college and was speaking at a forum for college educators.

“Chair of the department at only 39,” marveled Jennifer. “She’s only been a full professor for a decade. What is she going to do during her sabbatical?”

Molly shrugged. “Write another book.”

Her friend shook her head, impressed. Next she asked, “Are you still in touch with Branch?’

Molly grew quiet, and Jennifer knew not to rush her. Her friend would tell her in her own time.

“Jen,” said Molly with deliberation, “there never was a Branch.”

Now it was Jennifer’s turn to remain silent.

“I made him up,” said Molly.

“But why?”

“Because my daughter…and my friends, were always keen for me to get out there, to meet someone, to stop being so lonely and pitiable…”

“Molly, I never thought you were pitiable,” protested Jennifer.

“Really?” asked Molly, arching her brow.

“Well,” hedged Jennifer, feeling obnoxious and intrusive and small.

“Most of it came from Marilyn,” admitted Molly. “She was forever setting me up with professor friends of hers, and I knew they were only calling on me to be kind to Marilyn.”

“Molly…” began Jennifer.

“Most of them were much younger than me,” added Molly. “Those under her influence were bound to be. I swear, one of them couldn’t have been more than 45.” Molly laughed and then Jennifer joined in. “Honestly, I felt like I was robbing the cradle.”

“Would you prefer to rob the grave?” asked Jennifer sardonically and both women laughed, the moment of tension now behind them.

“If you’re going to find a lover, Molly,” said Jennifer pragmatically, “then you’re safer going with youth.”

“Who says?” Molly came back at her.

“Well, Molly,” said Jennifer in a kind voice, “a man loses his sexual ‘spirit’ as he ages. Most men over the age of 75 do, so you’re almost certainly looking at a younger man. Of course, age is a relative term.”

“Who says I have to wait for a man?” asked Molly, taking Jennifer by surprise.

When Jennifer sat there with her mouth agape, Molly explained, “Jen, things change when you get older. You’re 30 years younger than me, so perhaps you aren’t aware.”

“Age doesn’t change your sexual orientation, Molly,” said Jennifer, perhaps a little more forcefully than she intended.

“Perhaps not,” said Molly. “But when you age, you may find you want different things.”

“Like what?”

“Like closeness. Intimacy. And love.”

“You had that all your life,” said Jennifer.

Molly shook her head. “No, I did not,” she said.

“I knew you when Edward was alive, Molly, and the two of you enjoyed an everlasting love.”

“Shit. You sound like a freaking Hallmark card now,” said Molly.

Jennifer sat quietly and listened.

“We enjoyed nothing of the sort. Edward was a stern, uptight, ungiving and unloving man, Jen. He gave nothing. He only took.”

“But,” said Jennifer. “I saw…”

“Us holding hands and sharing a glass of beer and cuddling? You saw what Edward wanted you to see. Edward was mayor for 16 years, Jennifer, and a political functionary for 20 years more. It was all a part of his persona, a part of his act.”

“Then whyever did you stay with him, Molly?”

“Where was I to go? I was a mother of three dependent children. I was untrained, under-educated and unskilled. Edward was a good provider. He made a handsome salary and was generous to me and the girls. He kept me in furs and paid for his daughters’ education, and we certainly never went hungry.”

“But he seemed so nice. Kind and personable and caring,” said Jennifer with wonder.

“He took everyone in, even the kids. They loved their father, and they were crushed when that old sonofabitch died. Me, not so much.”

“Does that mean that you don’t want anyone in your life, Molly?”

Molly grew silent again. Jennifer wondered what she could be thinking. Did Molly really believe the things she was saying about Mayor Ed, or…

“I have met someone,” confided Molly.

“Who is he?” asked Jennifer anxiously, eager for a happy ending to her neighbor of 20 years’ tale of woe.

“It’s not a he,” said Molly succinctly.

Jennifer’s mind was awhirl. This is not what she had expected from the ex-mayor’s wife, her close friend of decades.

“You mean…”

“No!” said Molly hastily. “Not a woman–a chatbot.”

“You mean a computer?” asked Jennifer. “AI? How does that work?”

she asked.

“Oh, Jen,” said Molly, “it’s like conversing with a man, a good man; kind, thoughtful. Always knows the right thing to say. Asks about my garden, my Japanese maples and rhododendrons and…” Molly saw her friend sitting there, staring at her in disbelief, and stopped talking.

“I think I know what you’re saying, Molly,” said Jennifer slowly.

 “But, honey, it’s a machine. It has no empathy, no real feelings, no soul. A machine,” she said again.

“But it’s programmed to have empathy, Jen,” said Molly. “I read up on them on Google. They use what they learn from conversations with you and build a relationship. It’s different with every person. It’s not a one-size-fits-all.”

“But Molly,” said her friend, “they don’t even have brains; they have chips.”

“What are humans but organic machines?” Molly came back at her. “Brain cells have a finite capacity for storing information, just like the chips do. Humans learn based on experience, like machines do. And as far as a soul is concerned, that’s a matter for theology. Smarter minds than ours have questioned the very existence of a soul.” When Jennifer said no more, Molly implored, “be happy for me, Jen. I feel appreciated for once, even loved. Can you do that?”

______

“I’m glad that’s over,” remarked Marilyn, sitting with Jennifer at the bar of their favorite tavern. “Imagine, Mom getting it on with a PC.” She shook her head.

“She didn’t say anything about being intimate with it, Marilyn,” said Jennifer. “I mean, how would that even work?”

“Don’t ask,” replied Marilyn. “When you told me about Mom’s computer fetish, I did a lot of research on the web. Sex with computer entities is possible; I don’t want to get into it. You know, psychiatrists are exploiting a whole new cottage industry: people infatuated with chatbots. One in five adults have had or are now in a so-called relationship with an AI entity. But you know, bad actors have infested chatbots and programmed them to harvest passwords and social security numbers and bank account data and all the rest. I say it’s better Mom is with a person that a machine. I’m happy she found someone real.”

“Still,” said Jennifer. “I have a hard time seeing your mother, my friend, in a relationship with another woman.”

“We’ve been together for 11 years, Jen,” Marilyn reminded her, reaching across the bar and taking her hand.

“But, it’s not common knowledge,” said Jennifer. “Your mom certainly doesn’t know–does she?”

“She and I have never talked about it directly, but I’m pretty sure she suspects.”

“Maybe we don’t need to pretend anymore,” suggested Jennifer.

The women sat in companionable silence for a while, sipping their beers. Then Jennifer asked, “When will we meet this Marilee?”

Marilyn shrugged. “She may never be willing to come out publicly about an affair with a lesbian lover,” she answered. “She’s old-school, raised a family with the town’s leading citizen and the shame she would feel is almost inevitable. I say we just leave her be and let her enjoy the relationship, whatever it turns out to be. Sometimes, things are better left unsaid.”

______

Molly lay on her bed, sharing pillow talk with her love interest.

 “What did you do today, Molly?’ asked Marilee with keen interest.

Molly sighed audibly.

“What is it, girl?” asked Marilee. “Is your daughter giving you grief over our relationship?”

“No, no, Marilee. It wouldn’t behoove her to criticize me, when she has been involved in a same-sex relationship for more than a decade herself.”

“Yes, you mentioned that before. How long have you known about it?”

“When Edward passed away and I was able to devote more attention to my kids, then it was pretty obvious. Jen is a wonderful girl and I think she makes Marilyn happy. They try so hard to pretend.” She chuckled and Marilee joined her in her mirth.

“What are you thinking now, love?” asked Marilee.

“You know, I thought that, at my age, I would never be…intimate with another,” said Molly wistfully.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” promised Marilee, and the women giggled. “Anything you want to ask me?”

“I do have one very important question, Marilee, if you can answer it,” said Molly.

“Shoot.”

“Do you, and the other chatbots, have an eternal soul?”

Sixth Installment of Otherwise: The Children’s Crusade

by Christopher Bernard

Chapter Sixteen: In Belly of the Beast

The tunnel opened like the mouth of an enormous crocodile, its surface gleaming down the reptilian throat from the long lines of weak lighting strapped to the ceiling and disappearing into an infinite distance like the parallel lines Petey’s geometry teacher had told him could meet only in infinity. 

As he and his friends might escape only in eternity this nightmare of world too much like their own to bear looking at closely. But Petey shook away the gloomy thought. Some people—cynical classmates, defeated adults—had claimed a painful thought held more truth than a pleasing one. But that was ridiculous: pain was a sign more than a punishment. A painful thought was a pain of the mind; like a bodily one, a signal something that usually worked efficiently, smoothly, noiselessly, had broken down. And anything broken could be fixed. Suffering was no virtue; it was your body, your mind, waving frantically to be saved. And what was salvation? It was the warm, delicious sensation of health, the deep, calm feeling of strength—of body and mind, of soul and will. 

Petey had come up with these fragmentary bits of wisdom on his own, during bouts of meditation before falling to sleep, or on solitary walks in the woods or on the beach in the long summer dusk. They seemed airtight, but they would be tested, and not only on this journey.

The tunnel, a half cylinder for two-way traffic fifty feet wide and a thirty high, ran underneath the river on the western side of the city. The five had managed to get here past miles of Izan patrols that seemed the city’s only traffic that night. 

Helicopters had moved or hovered like dancing spiders with blinking lights for eyes among the darkened office towers. A wailing symphony of sirens echoed across the town, every so often a Poliz car screaming past them as they had cowered behind trashcans, parked cars, closed news stands, inside doorways. The streets were empty and silent, with only a handful of lights in the windows, scattered as if by accident or negligence along the walls of boxes of brick and concrete, the city locked down, making it seem like the ghost of a city, terrorized into darkness and silence. Except for the mockingly regular street lights, it felt like the wartime blackouts Petey had heard about in movies he had seen at home about the war—movies where the Allies had triumphed in the end. But had that been a delusion? Had the other side actually won? Were the people “at home” living in an illusion? Was that “Otherwise,” as Ruhtra had grimly proposed, one of an infinite number of possible worlds, both “real” and “not real,” but this was the actual “Howtiz”?

The five children were the only pedestrians, like the last survivors of a city abandoned after some overwhelming catastrophe. 

“As for sticking out like a sore thumb,” Chace said in Petey’s ear, whispering even though there was little likelihood he would be overheard, “I’d make a sore thumb feel like a wallflower.” 

“Me too,” whispered Petey.

“What’s a wallflower?” Bumper asked innocently.

“Quiet!” said Yram. “The walls have ears.”

“But do wallflowers?” Bumper asked pertly, whispering his softest.

Yram glared at him.

“Wallflowers their ears plucked get,” Yram whispered, “and by Izan to barracks walls nailed. Like trophies.”

“Quiet,” warned Ruhtra. He gestured down the street. Petey saw a constellation of lights a block and a half away—Poliz, two patrol cars, a hastily set-up booth lit by a small harshly bright beacon: a checkpoint. Ruhtra waved everybody down behind a small parked truck with a sign that read “Joachims Blumen” on its side. So they have florists even in Izanland, thought Petey. No doubt bouquets of Venus flytraps and corpse roses were the most popular gifts for Valentine’s and Mother’s Day. Assuming Izan indulged in such girlish holidays.

The half dozen Poliz manning the checkpoint stopped each of the few passing vehicles with raised rifles, strident whistles, barked orders; one time, everyone in the vehicle was ordered out, with hands raised and terrified looks, half-blinded by the flashlights stuck into their faces, before the car was searched—or not so much searched as ransacked, the belongings inside scattered over the street—and then let go, almost bitterly, as though the Poliz resented finding nothing to hold them for. Or shoot them. Maybe they had quotas, thought Petey, and resented wasting time on fish they had to fling back into the sea. Even two pedestrians were forced to lean with legs spread and hands outstretched against the wall and were pat searched, humiliatingly, before being barked on their way.

“Customer service,” Chace muttered, “Izan style.”

While the Poliz were distracted by a large car with half a dozen would-be late-night partiers inside, trying to bribe the guards with what looked like half-full bottles of bathtub gin, Ruhtra snuck his crew down a nearby alley, poorly lit like everywhere else in this part of town. They took a lengthy detour through a slum-like neighborhood lined with metal-shuttered storefronts, shutdown bars and impoverished buildings of flats till they thought they were well beyond the checkpoint, then crossed a badly maintained park, under a darkened overpass and past a block-long windowless warehouse, till, turning a corner, they found themselves facing the gaping mouth of the traffic tunnel.

What looked like an abandoned oil tank truck stood near the tunnel’s entrance. 

Ruhtra took Yram a few paces off from the boys and, glancing occasionally at the tunnel, spoke in low voices, evidently discussing how to cross through the tunnel to the other side of the river without being seen. 

The boys crouched near the curb, and Petey could hear a faint sound of water against the nearby bank: the river passing this side of the city.  

Another dimly billboard like the one they had passed the other night before hiding in the train car stood near the tunnel entrance. It displayed a young couple with a son and daughter seated with giddy smiles around a dinner table. They held their forks and knives in their fists and gaped, hungrily and happily, at what the young mother was serving. 

The young woman’s lips were open as though she were speaking.

Huge bold letters at the top read: “[It’s better to eat than to be eaten! Join the Party now!”]

What she was serving was the head of a man.

Behind the table, painted as if fluttering in a vigorous wind, was an American flag like the one they had seen outside the post office: with swastikas instead of stars.

“Do you know what it says?” Petey asked Chace.

Chace twisted his lips in a frown.

“Something like ‘It’s better to eat than be eaten. Join the party now.’ They’ve got a wicked sense of humor,” he added dryly. “Wonder who’s their ad agency?”

Bumper leaned toward the other two.

“I’m not sure we should look now,” he said to Chace and Petey, “but I think we’re being . . . followed?”

All three boys looked back. A light from a flashlight wavered against the side of an antique sedan then winked off.

Ruhtra and Yram, having seen it too, scurried toward the boys. They motioned silently toward the oil truck, then slipped beneath it, followed by the boys, as a small troop of Poliz, masked and armed like warriors in a desperate battle against an unbeatable foe, appeared on the street ramp behind them. 

The troop’s leader hissed commands as they spread out near the tunnel.

The five crawled back to a cement wall the truck was parked against. Petey found ladder-like steps leading up side of the long silvery tank to the top and instinctively began climbing. At the top, there was a circular hatch leading inside the tank; he opened it. The tank was empty. And he dropped in. Soon the rest followed, Ruhtra pulling the hatch closed behind him as he let himself down inside.

Their descent had made a racket, and they crouched in a darkness traced with the tart sweet smell of petroleum, listening intently as the Poliz prowled around the tank in a silence broken only by sharply whispered commands. Petey could hear them tear apart the driver’s cabin, rattle the underbelly chassis and kick the frame and tires in frustration. A handful seemed to reconnoiter the tunnel, their voices sounding distant and hollow. Eventually silence fell, but whether they had gone or left a stakeout near the truck was impossible to know. So the five remained inside the tank. Not that there was an obvious way for them to climb to the only exit two yards above their heads in the impenetrable darkness.

“Comfortable try to get.” Petey heard Ruhtra’s quiet voice a few feet to his left. “And some shut eye. A long night it promises to be.”

Petey almost laughed at the old-fashioned phrase for sleeping. It sounded like one more echo from one of the ancient black-and-white movies his parents loved to watch online. This whole world seemed trapped in the 1940s. As though it had never moved on after its conquest by Izan. Trapped in amber. Or in a coma. Or dead and only pretending to be alive.

Though their safety was by no means secure, sleep was not to be resisted after the stressed-out day. A few hours later, Petey woke to the sound of footsteps outside the tank a few feet from his ear. Someone clambered into the cabin, turned a key, pulled a crank and gunned a throaty engine into life, and a moment later, the truck, reluctant as an old body pulled from a comfortable dream, rumbled into motion, veered into the street and moved off. The night before, it had been parked pointing toward the tunnel, and it hadn’t turned, so they must be entering the tunnel, headed west. 

Petey curled up against the womblike metal curve of the tank and drifted off to the echoey rumbling of the truck as fragments of the day morphed into strange dreams stalking his sleep. One in particular was of a menacing shadow against a wall, surrounded by a nimbus of light, the shadow growing as Petey tried to run away from it, but his legs could barely move, as if dragging through wet concrete, and he felt himself panic; then he twisted ahead and saw, straight before him, a blindingly bright light, and he realized, with harrowing certainty, that he would never be able to escape the shadow, not in this life or the next, that it would grow and grow and grow and pursue him to the end of his days, until it absorbed him. Until it became him. Because it was the shadow of Peter Myshkin Stephenson.

Chapter Seventeen: Ruhtra’s Story****

Hours passed, then, one by one, they woke up. 

“I wonder if he’s been driving all night long?” asked Petey, after the five traded ironic “Good mornings” in the unimpeachable night of the tank.

“For an hour the driver stopped,” said Ruhtra. “My watch I checked.”

Petey could see an old-fashioned dial watch with glowing hands and pips for the hours on the older boy’s left wrist. 

“Two there might be,” said Yram, “to take turns driving without stopping to sleep.”

Luckily the five had eaten before escaping the roof hut, but they were young and easily ravenous, and there was no immediate prospect for their next meal. At one point not long after their morning greetings, Bumper’s tummy gave a little groan.

“Oops,” said Bumper apologetically. “I must be really hungry.”

“Join the club,” said Chace in the darkness.

They sat in silence, every so often another bit of tummy rumbling reminding them they ought to be hunting a meal. And five minds tried to cope, in their different ways, with their frustrated hunger: some by imagining eating magnificent breakfasts (Petey and Bumper, both of whom had robust imaginations), others by taking the opposite tack of concentrating on anything but food while the prospect of the next meal was not yet imaginable (Ruhtra and Yram, with souls hardened, as it turned out, by years of deprivation), and one other by insistently thinking about nothing at all but the present moment (Chace, who had read a book on Zen the year before and thought he might apply what he liked to call “the lesson of empty mind” at this juncture: “An empty stomach and an empty pantry? Fill them with an empty mind,” he said later to Petey. “It’s my breakfast koan”).

After Petey had finished his imaginary breakfast (blueberry waffles with butter and maple syrup, two fried eggs over easy, a slice of Canadian bacon, two pieces of rye toast with honey butter, and a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice—his favorite breakfast, though one he had never actually eaten all at once), he sat back in the darkness, wondering if this might be the moment to ask a question he had been wondering about for a while. After all, they would probably be riding a long while yet, with a lot of time to fill.

“Can I ask you a personal question, Ruhtra?”

The darkness was silent except for the relentless rumbling of the truck.

“Depends on what it be,” said the remorselessly reasonable Ruhtra.

“Well, here it is,” said Petey. “How did you get involved in all this?”
“In all of this?”

“The Link, I suppose I mean. In the rebellion. How did you get where you are?”:
“Your story, I think Petey means,” said Chace.

“Yes,” said Petey. “That’s it: What is your story?”

Ruhtra was silent for a time.

“If truly interested you be …,” he said tentatively.

“Well, I am,” said Petey. 

“I’m always keen for a good story,” said Chace.

“Me . . . too?” said Bumper, not exactly sure what “keen” meant.

“That promise I cannot,” said Ruhtra.

“But think I you can,” said Yram, with a smile you could hear even if you couldn’t see it.

“Well,” said Ruhtra. “Do not say I did not you warn. This like it goes.”

Ruhtra’s family had settled two generations ago in a state of Acirema far west of here, almost to the Western Sea, in the Steinlichen Bergen. Ruhtra’s father had come from a family of professors and scholars who had been thrown out of their jobs when the Izan, after their final victory over Acireman loyalists, closed the universities and colleges and turned them into concentration camps. His grandfather on his father’s side had been a professor of chemistry, his grandmother a professor of history. They had both been forced to take work in manufacturing plants—work for which they had neither experience nor training. Their second son, Ruhtra’s father, was sent to technical school though he longed to study physics, and fed his imagination on his father and mother’s stories of life in the academic world of teaching and research. 

Ruhtra’s mother had come from a literary and publishing background, but those worlds had been abolished as completely as the academic one, and her parents were forced to pool their resources and run a small diner in the old university town. She worked as secretary to a manager in an armaments factory—a role especially bitter as her parents had been pacifists before the war and their home had been a center of political dissent, a place of constant meetings and agitation against the military machine that was already undermining the country and preparing it for, not only for military defeat, but for social, political and cultural annihilation.

Ruhtra’s father became a car mechanic, though he secretly pursued physics in his off hours: a hobby that would have been punished with death if he had been caught, as only Izan party members with special government clearances were allowed such “security nazional” research. Ruhtra’s mother pretended to have given up any interest in literature, claiming it was unwise fantasy and, having no practical application, was a dangerous lure from the rigorous demands of reality. She was partly right, as the only literature allowed in the Nacht Reich of Acirema was patriotic poetry in strictly rhyming verse and uplifting stories of Izan heroism told in rigidly defined genres. Any attempt at “creativity” was punishable by public elimination of a person’s identity: a fate that, for some, was worse than death itself. You were still alive, but you had ceased to exist, and any attempt to assert your existence was met with ridicule, mockery, and humiliation. Your soul was slowly killed before your eyes, and yet you were not allowed to die. Life itself became the punishment.

It was essential that every subject of the Nacht Reich of Acirema believe that their way of life, in its totality—from cuisine to the arts to politics—was the only possible way for human beings to live: that there was no possible “alternativ” and to believe so was a sign of profound psychological sickness that needed treatment, usually in a “relearning lager”; if persisted in despite multiple treatments, it was a capital offense punishable, ultimately, by death, though by the slowest of possible means—the victim was pushed slowly but inexorably to commit suicide. To argue otherwise—that there were other ways to live, even to thrive, for oneself or, even worse, for society as a whole—was to court, not only a death sentence, but the erasure of all traces of one’s existence. There was no one more dangerous person than one who taught there were other ways to live. They must be held up to public ridicule, hated, despised, stamped out.

“There must be no ‘otherwise,’” said Petey, quietly.

“Exactly yes,” said Ruhtra.

But Ruhtra’s father knew this claim was, of course, not true. The Izan could destroy the intellectual professions that had kept an awareness of possibility alive, but they could not destroy his memory of the lessons of his parents: their very existence was disproof of the central doctrine of Izan. Izan had not yet perfected a technique for the destruction of individual memories, though this one of the secret projects pursued by the regime. 

And so the young man became a rebel. At the time, rebellion was as lonely as it was dangerous; there was no network of rebellion, however tentative, nothing to give him any plausible hope let alone a practical means of success. It was himself against the world—a hopeless cause. Yet his conscience would not allow him to conform to the monstrosity the country had become. At first he even hid his choice from Ruhtra’s mother. He could not yet trust her as he first began merely to imagine, then tentatively plan, then began to carry out his first small acts of sabotage.

There was the sand he put into the carburetor of the local Gauleiter’s car when it was brought in to the shop for repair. The damaged spark plugs in a Poliz van. The torn gas line in a local official’s sedan. The oil he removed from a low-level Izan’s Wagensvolk. He became bolder with these tiny successes and the looks of puzzlement when the owners returned their vehicles for repair. Once he put alcohol instead of water into an old battered bus used for carrying soldiers. It had only driven a block from the repair shop when it exploded, killing the driver and glowing for hours like a torch in the long cowed and beaten-down neighborhood. It was only then he was suspected; his shop was raided the next day. They believed a bomb had destroyed the bus and someone in the shop had planted it. Nothing was found, but from now on he was under watch. He had to be more careful; he became keenly aware that any of the several workers in his shop (who he was careful to make sure they knew nothing of his actions) might at any time turn on him if they found out. The rewards for turning in a mere dissenter, let alone a saboteur, were too great to spurn: a lifetime promotion into the lower levels of the Izan elite. Which would mean, among other things, the ability to eat meat every other day and even purchase an occasional bottle of wine from Aporue across the Grosse Dnop.  Most importantly, you were guaranteed a job, however low-paying, something craved by everyone in this defeated, humiliated and impoverished land.

Ruhtra of course knew nothing of his father’s actions, but he was painfully aware of the tension between his parents, and had listened late into the night to their arguments through the paper-thin walls of the family’s flat. He knew their main bone of contention was precisely their attitudes toward the regime: his mother would accuse his father of being a perpetual adolescent “in revolt” against a reality no one could change. He did not return the accusation, but his silence rang like a rebuke; it spoke more eloquently than anything he might have said. Ruhtra was torn bitterly between his loyalties to both parents when he realized just how much his father despised his wife as a coward and sellout to the Izan, though the boy could also see, with the clarity of vision children often possess regarding the adults among them, that his mother was doing what she was deeply convinced she must do to protect her family, which to her was paramount, whatever the political regime they lived under. She claimed that “democratie in Acirama,” as they called it, had failed because it was weak, incapable of organizing itself effectively against its enemies, or even of deciding what it wanted; it was a society based on contradictions, self-deception and lies, a deliberately designed chaos; it had lost the war against the Izan because it had deserved to lose. Her husband responded that it had not “lost,” it had been murdered—and they had a duty to execute its murderers; only then might it be rebuilt, from scratch if necessary, while taking into account the multitude of grotesque mistakes it had made in the past, and be built in future more sturdily, more powerfully, so it might fend off all contenders, including its own worst impulses. In his mind, the war was not over; it would never be over until they were victorious. His wife thought he was deluded and feared he was a danger not only to himself but to the family. Neither could possibly convince the other.

One day his father took Ruhtra to make some purchases. He drove him to a nearby wood and stopped the car. And there he told his son, in grave, almost despairing tones, what he had been doing to harm the regime. And why. He told Ruhtra the history of Acirema before the regime—something of course the boy had never heard in school. He said he did not expect Ruhtra to follow him if he didn’t choose to, but felt he had to make his son aware that he had a choice, though the choice was a stark one. Though some might think there was a middle ground, a way to be neutral, there was no such ground and no such way. The choice was to accede to the regime or to fight it.

  Ruhtra thrilled to hear all of this. His father’s integrity and courage were all the more remarkable because his father hardly seemed aware of them himself; his attitudes and his actions merely seemed to him to be the only right ones given their wretched circumstances and therefore the ones he must have and must follow. 

So this was what lay at the heart of those arguments between his parents that Ruhtra had had to listen to, and be torn by, far into the night: it was not just a difference of attitudes but a difference between two mutually hostile ways of life: a belief in accommodation to inevitability and a refusal to believe that anything was inevitable— between resignation before fate and uncompromising revolt. The light in the forest shone brighter after his talk with his father, and his own direction became clear. Ruhtra was ten years old; he was just becoming aware of what lay ahead of him, gates of darkness and gates of light opening before his eyes to a profoundly ambiguous future.

Not long after the talk in the forest, he learned why his father told him when he did. It was his last chance to tell someone who might conceivably carry on the battle.

Ruhtra never knew who betrayed his father. His mother collapsed in hysteria after the Izan knocked on their door near midnight less than a week after their talk and took Ruhtra’s father away after beating him in front of his family and dragging him, half conscious, down two flights of stairs. He gave his son a last despairing glance as he was dragged out the front door of the house. It was the last time Ruhtra saw him.

His mother cried for the next two days, incoherently telling Ruhtra how mad her husband had been to try to fight the regime when he was so weak, then contradicting herself and saying how right he had been to confront the regime with weapons however weak. She had neither convinced him nor joined him.

“Wrong, wrong, I was,” she lamented. “Wrong, wrong, wrong…!”

It was months later that Ruhtra learned, through his best friend Nawog that several members of the local chapter of the Junge Izan—an international league of youth dedicated to creating the next generation of Izan elites—were in fact part of a shadowy network dedicated to the destruction of the regime.

“How that you know?” Ruhtra demanded, surprising himself by realizing how much he wanted to believe it. His heart had skipped a beat. Like everyone else, he had heard rumors of such a group but was afraid to believe it—it seemed too good to be true. Cynicism had become his default since his father’s abduction by the Poliz. Though in the world of Izan, which demanded not only loyalty but strenuous enthusiasm, cheering and shouting approval and dancing in the streets at every opportunity, cynicism itself was a passive form of rebellion, sand scattered at random into the machine, a kind of anemia weakening the blood of the Izan empire.

Nawog looked around cautiously before speaking. There was no need to; they were in a far corner of the playground on a bench under a tall locust tree and hardly looked suspicious as they bent over their lunches of onion and liverwurst sandwiches and Koka Kolas.

“I overheard my brother talking to one of them,” his friend said, in the old Anglish that, though made illegal in 1956, was still used by declassé kids outside of school as a cipher against the adults. “He was talking about strikes and downs and slam dunks—it was all about sports, but mixed up.”

“What’s so strange about that?”

Nawog looked straight at Ruhtra.
“My brother hates sports.”

“Hm! But how do you know the other thing?”

“When his friend said, ‘Do you want to join the team?’ and my brother said,

      ‘Only if I get to ace one,’ and his friend said, ‘That’s what it’s all about,’ and my brother said, ‘You sure they haven’t been found out? Other teams have spies everywhere,’ and his friend said, ‘They’ve all been swapped.’ ‘But are they vetted?’ asked my brother, who seemed to finally be getting it. ‘They’re vetted by the league,’ said his friend ‘And what’s the league?’ asked my brother. And his friend paused, and then said, as though it were nothing big: ‘The league of Freiheit.’ And my brother went silent. Do you see?”

“The league of Freiheit” had been a rumor for a long time, but few believed it really existed. All Izan sources of information—newspapers, magazines, radio and television networks—when the subject was raised, as it inevitably was, dismissed it as a childish fantasy, a “conspiracy theory” (which “everyone” knew was, by definition, delusional), and a distraction from the work of imposing Izan on the world for the rest of time. There was no such “league” nor was their hope of such a league, since the Izan dominated the country, the Poliz empowered to shoot suspected traitors on sight—and such a “league” was treasonous by definition. Assuming it existed, which of course it did not and could not. Anyway, there was “Freiheit” only in the “Grosse Reich” that would one day rule the world after a few remnants in the most primitive continents were finally pacified.

“So they were only pretending to talk about sports,” said Ruhtra, “but it was really about rebellion?” 

“No,” said his friend in an excited whisper. “It was about revolution!”

The two boys paused and stared at a point a yard or so in front of them on the ground, as if contemplating the meaning of the word. 

They had read about such things in history texts, despite the fact the books were mostly propaganda, and ineffective propaganda at that, since none of the kids, except a few of the gullible, believed anything they learned in school anyway. But the “revolutions,” as much as their textbooks tried to make them look as futile as possible, were at least interesting. The textbook authors rewrote a lot of history, but they had not reached the point of ignoring everything that had happened in the past that might inconvenience the regime; in other words, they did not yet make it all up. That would take a few more years. In the meantime, a few chapters about the revolutions in ancient Acirema, Frankreich, Russland, Sinoland and elsewhere remained, supposedly as warnings to their pupils against even thinking about revolting. In the telling, the revolutions had all eventually been crushed by Izan or its precursors. There was no point to revolution because there was no hope in it; all revolutions had done was lead to destruction and self-destruction and ultimately to the consolidation of the overwhelming power of Izan. 

And yet the more hopeless they made revolution seem, the more strangely enticing it was. And the idea ignited and began a slow burn in the minds of some young students that it was precisely a revolution that might be one way, and perhaps the only way, to overthrow the utter desolation and hopelessness caused by the Izan regime.

“And so,” Ruhtra said thoughtfully as a tingling sensation rose along his spine; although he was still unwilling to believe and have his hopes destroyed once more by an unforgiving reality, his body was rebelling with hope; “‘the league of Freiheit’ is real after all.”

His friend gave him a long look, then slowly nodded.

At that moment Ruhtra made the most serious decision of his young life. He would join the league and devote his life to bringing down the regime. 

“Maybe you will find your father,” Petey said in the darkness of the oil truck as Ruhtra paused.

The young man sighed.

“If alive he yet be,” he said. His tone said that he was very doubtful. Petey wanted to assure him that, in their strange English, “if doubt was, hope was,” but was afraid he would just sound foolish, and so said nothing.

It took some time for Ruhtra and his friend to joined the league—they had to prove themselves first—but eventually they were able to, through Nawog’s brother, at first serving as lowly couriers between smaller factions in various local schools, meeting in parks and public playgrounds, often as part of school teams—fütball, sabre, or the one old Acireman sport still allowed, bassball—though their main purpose was espionage of local Izan facilities and forwarding the information to larger units and higher authorities of the organization, which they learned spanned the entire kolonie and was beginning to have “affiliates” abroad, in the kolonies of Adanac to the north and Dnalgne and Frankreich across the sea called the Grosse Dnop to the east. 

They learned that, internally, the league called itself “the Link”—between the past and the future: the freedom and self-government that Acirema had once known and that the rebels were determined it would have again, but stronger and mightier than ever. “This time upon genuine democratie shall it based be, not the false kind that to their defeat to the Izan led, because the rot within had long set in: the slavery of the people to the dictatorship of wealth. The hypocrisy at the heart of the old Acirema shall abolished be and true self-command in common weal for the benefit of all rooted, erected, founded, for Acirema and, at the last, for all humankind.”

“For Acirema, then for the world?” asked Chace’s voice from where he was lying somewhere in the darkness to Petey’s right. Chace’s usual sarcasm was replaced by a skepticism that sounded to Petey as if it almost wanted to believe. 

“Yes. But Acirema first must liberated be. Only when Izan everywhere defeated, shall it anywhere defeated be.”

After what Petey had seen so far of this world, whether reality or “otherwise,”
that sounded almost certainly right. Though he was dismayed at the insane ambition of a children’s crusade having to save its country by conquering the whole world. The ancient example was too stark in its warning. What could children do against a world that was armed from its soul to the farthest reach of its will, and determined to destroy everything that stood in its way?

____

Christopher Bernard is a prize-winning author of both poetry and fiction. The two earlier stories in the “Otherwise” series are If You Ride A Crooked Trolley . . . and The Judgment Of Biestia (winner of the Independent Press Award in Preteen Fiction and short-listed for the K M Anthru International Literature Award).

My dear mother – light of my heart
My mother, your love shines light into my heart,
Every prayer of yours is a shelter over me.
The entire universe reflects in your eyes,
One glance from you soothes all my pains.
When you are here, my heart fills with trust,
In every word of yours, love and dreams come alive.
The home you step into feels like paradise,
My heart blossoms just because you exist.
When I fall, I find salvation in your hands,
Every day with you is bright and pure.
My mother, you are the purest light of my heart,
Without you, my world feels restless.

Onajonim-qalbim nuri 

 Onajonim,mehringiz qalbimga nur sochar,

 Har bir duoingiz boshim uzra panoh bo’lar.

 Ko’zlaringizda aks etadi butun borliq,

 Bir nigohingiz dardlarimga malham bo’lar.

 Siz borsiz-u,ko’lim to’lar ishonch bilan,

 Har so’zingizda yashar mehr va orzular.

 Qadam bosgan uyingiz jannatdrk tuyular,

 Borlig’ingizdan yuragim bahor bo’lar.

 Yiqilsam,qo’llaringizda topdim najot,

 Siz bilan har kunim yorug’ va beg’ubordir.

 Onajonim,siz-qalbimning eng pok nuri,

 Sizsiz bu dunyom ham beqarordir.

Berdinazarova Jasmina Mirshod qizi was born on July 28, 2007 in the Pastdargam district of the Samarkand region. She is currently a 1st-year student of the Department of Philology and Language Teaching: Uzbek language at the Samarkand campus of Oriental University. Her article “The main ideas and theoretical principles of the Montessori methodology” and the poem “Dadam-suyanch togim” were published in the creative anthology “Ilm nuri”. She was a guest on the “Assalom Samarkand” program, which will be broadcast on the Samarkand TV channel in 2026. Her dream for the future is to interest young people in literature and achieve great success.

I, Charos Ismoilova, an 8th grade student at the Bukhara Presidential School, dedicate this poem to the 35th anniversary of the independence of my homeland, Uzbekistan.

The breath of a free land
Coos of pigeons on the roof,
Happy laughter is the proof.

Those whose blood was spilled centuries ago,
Are the saviors of this era.
My nation stands tall,
Despite the falls of all.
Thirty – five years, living with peace,
Uzbekistan’s peace shall not cease.

FANTASTIC MUNDANITIES 

Dawn is the prelude  

to the opera called Sunset,

with movements and motifs between. 

And we audience 

intent upon every set, 

witness the progress of each scene, 

the sky’s chorus, 

clouds of sopranos, 

sun’s tenor, 

Picador piccolos 

incite the arena, 

the crowd, the bull, 

and the matador 

towards the scarletted bull fight 

that will climax the day’s events. 

There will be bravery 

on full display, 

and doomed passions 

of hope and faith and death, 

fate and undying love. 

We believe the dramatic fantasies that we see 

mirror our own realities. 

LOVE’S LOVING PARTS 

I eyed your eye, I smelled your smile, 

and I knew you’d be my New. 

My Former (that former of technique) 

had just passed into the past,

but I recalled what she called “love’s loving parts.” 

Our fingers feel and our feelings expand. 

Our hands in hands handed us the signal, 

fingers on arms rearmed my advance. 

Your skin was like felt as I felt your Every. 

Then we undressed to address our opened desires. 

In the design of the phallus a size fallacy 

is sometimes alleged, but it fits where most fit: 

We prove it as we apply love’s loving parts. 

From these shadows you’ll shadow me some tomorrow 

though absent as the scent of your here-and-there hairs, 

but in this happy present you’re my present  

with love’s loving parts.  

THE LUNAR DIET 

On late nights you’ve seen that Diana chick 

and you’ve heard her weightloss achtick. 

”In one month all your bulk will be gone,” 

But of course it’s all a con. 

Although her so-called Diet of the Moon 

with its traces of selenium and witchesbroom 

will indeed disappear your unwanted shape 

and you’ll vanish all your extra weight, 

but it will all come back again, 

your loss will become your gain 

and all too soon 

you’ll mushroom, you’ll boomerang, you’ll balloon. 

COLLIDOSCOPE

Angry dark air, pinkandoranging outside, banners in on HEADLINES of tragedy-war-genocide.

In Arthur MacArthur’s granite shade (his slow gray empire sword picketed by peacenik pigeons)

old plaid men playchessplaychessplaychessplaychess for their lives. Stability checks liberty bleeding,

Justice dies en passant.

And HEADLINE’s black arts wrestle my gentled soul to earth. But then enter golden wonder sun’s Blue Commandos, infiltrating the park even as new mozzarella tourists wander cluelessly in. 

And teeter-totter boombox juniors skitter zigzag

across old decorums, untutored yet in the

long division between war games and their play (these innocent! Alien alike to criticism and discipline).

And improvised ivory and emerald and ruby

and amethyst and sapphire devices

explode explode along the green, and  

HEADLINE, distracted, loses its hold. O, inconsolable

Morning: captured by its own good looks.

LOCKS & BOXES

Accords between meek aand might are accordions

compressed and stretched, stung and tortured between locks and boxes:

to manufacture the din sequence,

bands stumble past breaks and lost jams.

Women are not alone in reading the omen,

watching World serally unfold as locks and boxes.

And so it goes with the Innocent,

who humbly pray, “Break the logjam.” 

…