A long time ago we were all brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, and neighbors. There were no boundaries, no rivalries, and no enemies. Our city of Coniunctus was simply a stream of people and cars, sporadically shifting from one side to the other and back again. There was no official barrier dividing North and South. In fact, none of us distinguished between the two; there was only Coniunctus, true to its name. But one day all of the customary commuting stopped. The barrier had appeared.

That morning, I woke up in confusion to a commotion outside my window. Scores of people had formed a spontaneous line and were intensely studying something. Dressing briskly, I rushed outside to investigate the matter firsthand. The object of attention was something so ordinary that to see so many eyes fixed intently upon it was remarkably disturbing. It was a chain-link fence. Elbowing my way between the spectators, I reached out to touch the gleaming web of steel and was startled when my hand bounced back like a beach ball. The fence was repellent. What insensitive creature could have placed this here, and why?

The fence ran east to west. As far as the eye could see, crowds of people extended along both sides, staring in wonder at the mesh of wire and through it at each other. Surveying the anxious faces, my heart leapt to my mouth as I recognized two that made all the rest insignificant. My parents were on the opposite side! Fighting his way closer, Father assured me that I would be all right. Mom blew me a kiss and begged me to stay safe and out of harm's way until they could come back. As days turned into weeks, it became evident to me that they might never do so.

At first, people gathered around the fence almost all the time. They extended arms to their friends and loved ones but were always met with a discouraging repulsion from the fence. Eventually those people stopped coming. It’s still a mystery to me whether they lost hope or just quit caring for one another. My parents stopped coming to visit me, too. I waited for hours one August day, but they never came. The strangest thing was that I felt no pain or frustration at all, not even a bit of melancholy. I had lost interest in the land over the fence and the people who lived there. They were all foreigners now.

Things were happening on my side of the fence. One day, the streets were blanketed with bright yellow handbills. My curiosity getting the better of me, I picked one up and read what it had to say:

NOON LECTURE AND RALLY: ELI OGLETHORPE. BE THERE.

A picture of a stern looking man with cropped blonde hair, a scraggly beard, and piercing blue eyes, undoubtedly Mr. Oglethorpe himself, filled the right side of the handbill. What did he have to say that was so important? Bewildered, I tossed the handbill aside. I supposed that I would find out soon enough.

It took me quite a while to find the lecture, since the designer of the handbills had foolishly forgotten to specify a location. I was sweaty and exhausted when I finally found the auditorium. Cheers echoed from inside. “They're barbarians, all of them from the North! They think they're better than us!”, boomed the man in the center of the room. “They would like nothing more than to see you all dead!”

The room fell into an uneasy silence. I recognized the speaker: it was Eli Oglethorpe. He wore a strawberry colored suit with a flashy orange bow tie. I thought that he looked more like a comedian than a leader.

“But if they touch even a measly hair on our heads we shall destroy them…destroy them all!”, Oglethorpe yelled. The crowd gave a boisterous cheer. Even I cupped my hands and yelled.

Oglethorpe screamed at the top of his lungs, “They're all animals! We will never be like them, never! They are pure evil!”

We cheered again and began shouting insults and curses at the land across the fence. This comically dressed man had stirred up a steamy hatred in an empty pot and we naively joined in. It wasn’t just Oglethorpe’s speech that started the hate. It was as though deep down inside a feeling had been trapped within us all of this time and had just now blasted its way out to take control of our bodies and minds. We wanted to hate the other side, and that’s exactly what we did.

After the rally, we all gathered out in front of the fence and began to bellow at the top of our lungs. We paused for a minute, eager to hear the pitiful responses from the supposed wretched animals on the other side. Surprisingly, an equally forceful and belligerent volley of yells came from the North. A mob had congregated there as well and was trying to beat us in a battle of words. Realizing this, we yelled louder, more aggressively, more corrosively. The North launched a counterattack, hurling similarly militant language towards us. It was a deadlock.

Eventually everyone became tired of screaming and left. Our hearts still burned though, and we were thirsty for a fresh fight the next day. Soon after I awoke, I approached the fence but was met by a barrage of rocks. A man shoved me away, warning me to stay back. He claimed that this was only the beginning of the violence and that it would get even nastier soon.

Terrified, I started to run. I hated the other side, but I valued my life. Instead of retreating, I raced along the fence until I saw the crowds no more. Eventually, my lungs failed and I felt my legs give way beneath me. Mud squirted into my mouth as my face slammed against the ground, wet with last night's rain. Shakily, I came to my feet. The morning sun was streaming onto the nearby fence, illuminating it in a glittering pattern of diamonds, and I suddenly realized that there was at least one thing that it could not repel. It could not stop the light.

As I was contemplating the calming sight, I gradually became aware of a rustling in a clump of bushes to my left. Suddenly, someone stepped from among the leaves. It was a girl about my age and about my height. We didn’t speak; we just stared at each other. For a time I did not even realize that she was on the other side of the fence. She looked nervous, unlike the people throwing rocks. For a long time, our gaze was one, and I noticed that she had eyes as green as mine. In those eyes I saw fear. She was afraid of me and my people. She felt the same emotions that I felt, feared the same things that I feared. Her eyes, her feelings, her fears…they were all just like mine. She was like me. Maybe all of them on the Northern side were just like me in their own ways.

Taking no time to say goodbye, I hurried back to the conflict. I could not believe how daft I had been. How had this hatred overcome my senses? An extreme situation had provoked irrationality. How could I have been so blind? It wasn’t the fence that was dividing us; it was our failure to see the light. Why hadn’t we controlled our emotions and found a reasonable solution instead of creating another, potentially more devastating problem? There was only one way that we could correct the mistakes that we had made, right the wrongs that we had done. We had to reunite.

When I reached the scene of combat I noticed that people were gathered behind overturned cars, shouting above the cacophony of explosions. At first I felt powerless, but my conscience gave me strength, and I cried out, “Coniunctus!” Nobody seemed to notice at first, but then a man on our side laid down his weapon. “Coniunctus!” he cried. People behind him followed the example and began laying down their arms and chanting. “Coniunctus!” they shouted. Now the people on the North side began to chant in unison. The city rang with joyful cries of “Coniunctus!” We were a united city again, and the fence was less than air.