It was not as though Blaine was completely without a friend. He had Sam Evans. Sweet Sam who always assumed the best of people and didn't let rumours dissuade him from a potential friend. Who didn't mention it when Blaine sat maybe a little too close. Who sat across from Blaine now at a little table tucked into a back alcove of the seldom used William Mckinley High School library.

It was the safest place to talk in the school. No one ever had a purpose to go there. With it's dry papery books and its outdated computers who's old-fashioned black screens slept until someone needed them. The library really only served as a place for the IT guys to hang around and wait to be beckoned, and occasionally an unusually dedicated student would duck in for a quiet place to study.

"Wait, um, I don't get it." Sam was leaning forward on his elbow, his chin cradled in his palm, his blond eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

"Look, Sam, don't you think it's just a little strange how everybody keeps their distance so much? Doesn't it all seem so sterile? You have younger siblings, haven't you ever been sad and wanted your mom to hold you the way she held them?" Blaine pleaded, his amber eyes shining, like looking at Sam pathetically enough would convince him to break the law and come with him to the resistence meeting.

"She didn't hold them because they were sad, she held them because they didn't know how to walk yet."

"That's not the point, are you telling me you've never wanted to... you know.. be close with another human being?"

"Well, yeah I mean, doesn't everybody from time to time? But c'mon man, that's illegal, it's wrong," he dropped his voice to a whisper, " We could go to solitary for talking like this."

"Yeah well what if I told you that it's completely normal and natural to want... physical contact with other people and that it's wrong that we should have to be so removed from each other?"

Sam leaned in further, his eyes wide and shifting around the space, searching for anyone that might overhear them. "Shhh, Blaine, solitary remember?"

"Sam I feel like I've been living in solitary. I don't care! Please come with me! We can resist!"

"But what if I don't wanna resist? Like, the laws are good right? People used to hurt each other... before... we have laws for a reason dude."

"Yeah, fine okay, so they found a way to remove the violence and stuff but people used to make each other feel good too! What about that, you have to take the good with the bad isn't that right? Isn't that what life is suposed to be about? I feel like I'm suffocating, Sam, please come with me, please."

Sam stood, kicking his chair back clumsily. "Blaine, this is wrong, and just like you said I have my little brother and sister to think about. I won't report you bro, but I don't want to be a part of this, okay? I- I gotta go, I'm sorry."

Blaine's eyes followed his friend as he walked away, he called after him, yelling out the time and address of the meeting in Sam's direction, so he would know just in case he changed his mind. Sam continued without acknowledging Blaine's amendment.
...........................................................................................................................

Kurt had previously enjoyed the free, high speed, wireless internet that was available to every citizen, no matter where they were, as long as they were still within the boundaries of these 51 United States of America. It had been a useful tool that had helped Kurt through school in every way and had aided him in obtaining a beautiful, high fashion wardrobe that had not left his father destitute, and not even a reclusive father-son trip to a dumpy little cabin near a lake would prevent Kurt from bidding on a particularly desireable vintage accessory.

But now Kurt found the internet to be oddly limiting, because, for all the total availability, the internet came with a price, privacy. Everyone's internet activity was monitored constantly by a team of human and computerized watchdogs. They found people saying and doing things considered anti-government and they corrected them. And they censored the entire content of the once world wide web.
Which made it impossible for Kurt to turn to his old friend for more information on everything he had learned from his books. The information simply wasn't there, he knew.

So he turned to the library. The large room he'd been in only once. When his most ancient of teachers had herded the class there to use the old computer lab freshman year. Claiming she didn't trust the state-of-the-art translucent government-issued tablets each student had been provided. She had ranted many times about the devices, telling them to never trust something if you can't see where it keeps it's brain.

The old shelves were coated in a light sheen of dust from years of neglect. Kurt thought it had looked funny, he expected to see the dust covering the old book in his attic, but not on public property in a well-lit place of such crisp, sterile design.
He thought maybe the dust meant that somehow something had been left behind when the government had performed it's mass censorship, and if there was anything left to be learned in that library, it was Kurt's mission to find it.

He started in the reference section, which somehow looked even dustier than the rest of the library. The shelves were lined with thick volumes of medical dictionaries, legal textbooks, outdated atlases and, the thing of Kurt's intention, a line of very old but not very worn Encyclopedia Brittanicas.

Their spines were emblazoned with their copyright year, 2010, a year so ancient sounding to Kurt's ears. Twenty years before the matters of the conflict had even been a sparkle in a politician's eye. The thick books on the shelf were just around 113 years old and Kurt found it a little bit ridiculous that they were wallowing in neglect in a high school library and not in a museum of some sort.

Of course, the old books were probably too mundane, they wouldn't hold much value and it would be difficult to manipulate them for the sake of propaganda, which Kurt knew was the real purpose of museums. "look children, this is how humans used to do things, isn't that awful, aren't you glad the state protects us from these barbaric horrors." His pessimistic teenage brain had picked up on that little subtext the last time they'd been taken there on a field trip.

Kurt hummed to himself as he carefully thumbed through the books. He selected volume 'G'. For 'gay' that's what the character in his favorite book had labeled himself, and after re-reading the novel several times and deducing that he didn't mean happy, Kurt had labeled himself too. He had been doing a lot of contemplating on the matter and he was certain, he liked boys.

He carried the book like it would disintegrate at any moment, and chose a table to sit at that was quite hidden and out of the sun, if no one else would respect the books, at least he could. He opened to a spot a few pages in, breathing in sharply and wincing at the stiff sound of the spine, like someone popping their joints after sitting still for days. And then he regarded the text, or lack thereof, because someone, however many years ago, had opened the book before him, and just as everything in Kurt's world was censored, so was the encyclopedia. Nearly half of the open page was blocked out with thick, ugly black marker. The articles not blacked out were mostly things like a certain species of bird or some sort of primitive flute. Things that could not possible be offensive to anyone, nor could they give anybody any dangerous ideas.

Kurt leaned back in his chair, threw his head back and began to groan in frustration. He wished he had lived in the information age, he'd learned about it in school and from his cache of forbidden books. The teacher had made it seem vile, he was sure that's what he was paid to do. But in his books it seemed lovely, all the information and freedom there for the taking, not like the world he knew, where the collective motto was " that's on a need-to-know basis and you don't need to know".

He stopped his groaning before it could really escape him though, because just on the other side of a tall bookshelf he heard a voice. Male and warm sounding, the voice whispered, but not in a way that would suggest it really cared weather or not it was overheard. And it had been. The words that had seized Kurt's attention seemed to have been meant just for him.

"Yeah well what if I told you that it's completely normal and natural to want... physical contact with other people and that it's wrong that we should have to be so removed from each other?"

Kurt couldn't believe it. How could there have been another person feeling just as he felt, there the whole time, the same school, roaming the same halls. He lept from his seat, cursing himself afterwards for his lack of grace and for forgetting to be quiet. He made his way to the bookshelf separating him and the voice, willing his boots into silence. He pulled a book from the shelf at eye-level, carefully sliding it from it's place so as to not draw attention to his presence. He was rewarded with a view of the owner of the voice.

The boy was adorable. He was tiny, that was apparent even while he sat at one of the library's little round tables, and he wore his hair with too much gel, a trend that had gone out of style a few years prior and Kurt was thankful it had. But his eyes were bright, and they shone with such a passion that Kurt had never seen before, not even in himself or even his father.

He was talking with another boy, and he leaned forward, his arm extended on the table, like he was reaching for his friend, nothing like the posture every other citizen carried themselves with, tight to themselves and closed off. The boy looked so open and even without his words of change, which his friend was discouraging, Kurt knew he would still feel that he needed to know him.

The voice told the blond boy about a resistance, and he pleaded for his friend to go with him, and while the friend seemed offended as he denied any interest in this resistence, Kurt found himself pressed flush against the bookshelf, if there was a formal resistance taking place, and if that lovely boy was going to be there, Kurt was eager to join.

Suddenly, the blond boy was on his feet, stumbling away from his rebellious friend. The voice slid down in his chair, dejection painted across his features. He called after his friend, weakly, as a last plea, a time and an address.

Kurt pulled his phone from his pocket, tapping the screen to enter the information in his notes. If it was where this resistance was meeting, and if the voice would be there, so would he. And if maybe, in time, he would be able to act out things from his books, would be able to satisfy his lifelong craving with that beautiful anomaly of a boy, well, Kurt certainly wouldn't complain.