The boy who communicated with his father via letters

In a quaint little house nestled within the heart of a bustling city, there lived a boy named Thomas. His world was painted in letters - letters penned to and fro between him and his father, who resided on the unreachable second floor.

The stairway that led to his father’s domain was an insurmountable obstacle. Each step towered too high for young Thomas to conquer, leaving him confined to the ground floor. But the power of the written word transcended the physical barriers that separated them. Daily, he would carefully craft letters filled with his dreams, fears, and inquiries, slipping them under his father’s door, waiting with bated breath for the response that would arrive the next morning.

His mother, a tall and graceful figure, was the emissary between the two realms. Every evening, she ascended the formidable staircase to deliver dinner to her husband, carrying with her Thomas’s words and bringing back his father’s responses.

Years passed, and Thomas grew in both age and curiosity. His longing to meet the elusive figure upstairs intensified. He yearned to see his father's face, to have conversations beyond the confines of ink and paper. With determination ablaze in his heart, he sought a way to conquer the towering steps that had long kept him at bay.

Finally, on a day when determination outmatched fear, Thomas ascended the staircase. His heart raced with anticipation as he approached his father’s room, his hand trembling as it reached for the doorknob.

As the door creaked open, Thomas was met with a sight that shattered the illusion of his father's existence. Instead of the loving figure he had imagined, his father sat before a bank of computer screens, each displaying different scenes from the district. His father was an administrator - a wielder of power that Thomas couldn’t comprehend.

In shock and confusion, Thomas listened as his father explained his role. With a click on the screen, he could summon lightning to punish those he deemed criminal offenders. The weight of this revelation bore heavily upon Thomas's shoulders as he grappled with the magnitude of his father's authority.

A tumultuous whirlwind of thoughts raced through his mind. Should he intervene? Was it his duty to liberate the district from this seemingly arbitrary justice? His loyalty to his father warred with the desire to bring about change.

For a fleeting moment, the idea to push his father out of the window to free the district danced in his mind. But as quickly as the thought arose, Thomas quashed it. Loyalty, morality, and the bond with his father held him back. He couldn’t bring himself to commit such an act.

With a heavy heart and conflicted mind, Thomas descended the staircase. The letters, once his lifeline, now felt like a tether to a world he didn’t fully understand. The complexity of his father’s role weighed on him, leaving him grappling with the morality of his father’s actions and his own conflicting emotions.

And so, the boy who communicated solely through letters with his father continued to navigate the complexities of their relationship, now burdened with a truth that forever altered his perception of the man upstairs.

Claus D. Volko, with help from ChatGPT