A Helping Hand

Little Mary ran through the front door of her house, eager to be home after a long day at school. Her mother, Sally, welcomed her back and she took off her coat and hung it up. The coat was new; previously it had been far too expensive to buy so much new clothing but with the new factories it was easier to buy clothing. Her father was now a worker in one of the textile factories in Hermes.

A few years before life was quite different from how it was now. Back then there was no school for her to go to but now she went to school every day. They taught her how to read and write, how to do arithmetic, and many other things. It was a new experience at first and she was quite excited about it. However, by now the novelty had worn off and school was no longer as fun as it had been in the beginning. Education was now required among children, and although many of her classmates did not like school very much, she still enjoyed learning and found it quite interesting. She was glad that she was among the earlier ones to begin school. In the beginning there weren't enough schools for everyone so many children were not able to begin school until recently.

Mary played around the house for a while before she wandered into the kitchen. She saw that her mother was cutting vegetables to cook for dinner.

"Mom, did you wash your hands before cutting the vegetables?", she asked.

Her mother Sally gave her a confused look and said, "Why should I be washing my hands? Is there any reason for it? Even though water is much easier to get nowadays since the public water system was installed and we could get water from the sinks, we still shouldn't be wasting the water."

"In school, they taught us that we should wash our hands", Mary relied. "Apparently diseases are caused by very small things called germs. If germs get into our body then we get sick so we should wash our hands to get rid of the germs."

"What are these germs?", Sally asked. "I don't see them."

"The teacher said they are too small to see", Mary said.

"Then how do we know they exist?", said Sally.

"I don't know", replied Mary. "I still haven't gotten far enough in my learning to find out yet. But all of the knowledge that the teachers gave comes from the very top, so it has to be true."

Sally nodded. "I suppose that if the Pope has been giving this knowledge to the people, then it must be true. They probably have their own ways of finding out all of this."

Sally went to wash her hands and then returned to work. Then she realized something and asked Mary, "Doesn't the water have germs too? Trying to wash my hands with it is just going to put new germs on my hands. It would be trying to wash the water off of something by using water."

"Don't worry about that", said Mary. "The public water is all safe. They said that they make sure to kill all of the germs in the water before putting it into the system."

"How do they do that?", asked Sally. "Surely they can't just swing swords at the water to kill the germs if they can't even see them."

"They use something called UV light to kill the germs", Mary answered.

"Light?" Sally seemed confused. "Light can kill these germs?"

Mary nodded. "It's a special kind of light. UV light is invisible and it is what causes sunburns. I don't know much else about it. They weren't really teaching me about light, apparently that is for a lot later. I only learned about it because I asked the same questions you did."

"Wow, school seems to be quite useful. You have learned all of this important information. It looks like sending you there wasn't a mistake after all. I never had this when I grew up. I don't know any of this stuff. Invisible light? What a strange notion", Sally murmured. "How do they make this UV light anyways. I don't suppose a torch makes the right kind of light."

Mary had an answer for this as well. "Apparently they have a witch that can make light. She uses her abilities to make a bunch of UV light and shine it on the water before the batch of water is added to the water tower. But I hear that they are working on making a machine to generate UV light."

Sally had an odd look on her face. "A witch? I wouldn't have expected that."

"What is strange about that?", asked Mary.

"Before, the church told us that witches were evil", Sally answered. "Back then, using witches for things like this would never have happened."

"Really?" Mary was surprised. "But that one witch I met was very nice. She didn't seem evil at all."

"I suppose not", Sally replied. "Now they are saying that there is nothing wrong with witches and it seems to be true. I don't really get why they said what they said before but now it doesn't matter."

"Witches seem really good", said Mary. "They do a bunch of great things like making the water good for everyone. I don't know why people would hate them. I don't have any problem with them and I don't think any of the other kids do either."

"That is good", replied Sally. "We should conform to the new official policy."

After Mary was done sharing what she had learned, she quickly ran off again to go play. The lives of the people of Hermes was changing slowly but surely. Overall, the lives of the people improved and that was all that they needed to be happy. The politics involved were an abstract thing far removed from their lives and ultimately their needs were more basic and mundane.