Mel watched the shock on the others' faces. The same as hers yesterday, probably. People didn't slap you. People didn't order you, people were nice.
Mel stepped towards Eryn. She slapped the doctor so hard that Eryn's glasses fell from her nose.
"Ah," Eryn said calmly after she'd wiped her cheek and lips with a laced white handkerchief and picked up her glasses, while Mel stood aside, her hands suddenly shaking.
"Adelaide and Ivan, you two have had enough darkness for now. This is the first part of your education. The rest of it starts half an hour from now. Meliora, your education, it seems, must be a bit different."
***
Eryn had them exit the train right there, between the stone walls, then touched her hand to a door. The place they entered looked like a mall. It had no windows, but the lights inside were bright. The corridors were big, and the rooms were glass-walled.
But not all of them.
Eryn brought Mel to a room that looked normal-walled from the outside. She pushed Mel in, and Mel wasn't surprised to hear the door click locked behind her.
The light was even weaker than that of the unlit wagons. There was no water, no food, no windows, and the door had no interface. At least not on the inside of the room.
There wasn't even a bed or soft carpet. There was no interweb, either.
Every night, the medstat at home gave Meliora a little pill for good sleep. The machines gave it to everyone. It was called the pill for good sleep, just like fifty years ago something was called the pill against nightmares.
It must be the reason she'd never seen this room, this darkness, this silence.
She'd thought the world silent when Nicolas had stopped the interweb in the mall. It hadn't been. There had been people there with her, living, breathing people.
Mel tried to find computers she could open, but to no end.
She tried to message Mom through the disconnected, lonely computer in her hands—no use again.
She stomped her feet, she shouted, she hit the walls with fists, she cried huddled in the corner—nothing.
Hours passed before the door opened. Mel stepped out, and her computer beeped.
Doctor Eryn stood in the corridor, watching her. Mel had 182 messages from her mom.
Mel... Mel... Mel... was the last one. Many of the others were in the same style. While Meliora was reading them, another message came in.
Mel, it said. Oh, Mel! Don't tell me that you, like him, have left forever!
Mel's knees bent by themselves. She was crying. The tears rolled down no matter how much she hated them or wanted to stop them, while she hummed her message to Mom.
It is all right, Mom. That doctoring work turned out to be involved with other cities. Remember the sleeper trains, Mom? I can't send messages while I sleep.
Then, a new message: I love you, Mom. I love you more than anything! I will never, ever leave you!
Mel got up from the floor. She raised a hand, the tears still falling.
"I wouldn't advise you to," Doctor Eryn said. "You don't want her to stop receiving messages for longer, do you—certainly longer than a ride in a sleeper train. Or two rides. Or four."
Mel let her hand drop.
Eryn shrugged. "You're free to leave, if you so wish. If you do, you get a normal job, if you care to get one at all. You message your mother, you find a mate, all that stuff. But if you want to be a doctor, of anything, you do as I say, or face the consequences."
"May I ask a question, Doctor Eryn?" Her own voice sounded meek, broken. But she wasn't. She wasn't!
Eryn stepped closer and Mel hardly resisted the urge to cringe before the new slap. No slap came.
Eryn smiled her crooked smile. "You may."
Mel met the doctor's eyes. "What are the consequences, Doctor Eryn? Prison, each one worse than before? Making my mom worry until she is so unnatural that she starts screaming all the time, or says nothing at all to anyone until even doctors can't help her? She does not deserve to be closed off into her own mind because of me, doctor."
"And how is it, girl, that, still ignorant of mostly everything, you determine who deserves what and for what reason?"
"Because this is what the ignorant do always, Doctor," someone else replied behind Meliora's back.
Mel turned to see another old man, not as old as Great-Granddad Nicolas but still old.
"Doctor Eryn, you are needed in your office after you are done with this new recruit," he said. "And yes, girl, I am old." He turned to look at Mel. "You don't have to stare. And no, you don't have to make the same choice in order to be a doctor. Hasn't our Head Doctor here, whose assistant I am, told you already? You can look as young and beautiful as anyone else."
"And die as soon as they do," Mel whispered.
"That, too. I see you're a bit less ignorant than I thought. Now, don't frighten her more than she needs to be frightened, Doctor Eryn, all right? Why not tell her the answer to the question that, ignorant as she is, she is not asking?"
"You may go at any point, Meliora," Eryn said. "Jerome is right, we should tell you this. We are not going to keep you against your will. As to how we are to punish you if you do stay and deserve punishment—that, we won't answer. You decide if it is worth earning a new punishment in order to know. But you may go. During any time you're not being punished, you may leave."
"And never come back," Doctor Jerome said behind Mel's back. Mel turned to look at him again, all the time feeling vulnerable that, while she was watching one of the doctors, the other one was out of sight.
Vulnerable. Whoever had felt vulnerable in this world in the last fifty or so years?
Anyone training to be a doctor, perhaps. She remembered Adelaide's and Ivan's faces in the train.
"If you leave," Doctor Jerome said, "that's it. You have lost your chance."
"Doctor Eryn," Mel said, "may I ask something?"
"You don't like that meek voice, do you, girl? You may ask. You're allowed to ask questions here."
"If I leave, what will my punishment for this be?"
The woman looked into Mel's eyes and held them for a few moments. She was shorter than Mel and wrinkled. Her cheeks were starting to droop and no make-up could hide it. Her white hands were marred by big, protruding blue veins. Her eyes, though, looked as hard and strong as a bare stone wall.
It is just the body that breaks, Mel thought, there is something inside that endures. It must be an important thing. This is why they choose to live for so long.
"Your punishment for leaving? Oh, we have punished you already, and I am not talking about dark rooms. We have given you, and will give you, knowledge that others lack but don't respect. If you must live among those others, girl, such knowledge is the worst punishment you can get."
Computers
You were allowed to ask questions. That didn't mean you would receive answers.
Meliora asked Eryn about the City of Life on her second day. All she got was silence and a slight widening of Eryn's eyes, a twitch in her cheek. Then, the doctor continued as if she'd heard nothing. Ivan and Adi listened on.
"Doctor Eryn," Meliora said in a louder voice. "Does such a place exist? How can one get there?"
A slap, stronger than before.
"You were told you could ask questions! You weren't told that you could piss people off, you insufferable little monster—no one is deaf here! Once is enough!"
"Then answer, you insufferable old hag!"
Meekness didn't seem to be something that endured until the next day. Evil, on the other hand, seemed just the opposite. Eryn closed her off in the dark room, but this time Mel was ready. She'd sent a message to Mom even as she was shouting. Going away, Mom, it said. Won't be able to write, but I'll be back. Go to the wonderful experiences.
Time passed in darkness. Long—she didn't know how long, but long enough for an intercity train ride probably, or two, or four.
Mel had sent a message to Mom when she'd shouted at Eryn. Yet, she suddenly thought, what if Eryn realized it
and sent Mom another one? What if Eryn lied to Mom?
Everything was still and silent in the room. Especially the computers. Meliora would know if they were connected. She'd know if she could reach Mom. She thought she felt computers, sometimes, buzzing with people's emotions and thoughts. The computers were always there for her—except when someone messed them up.
"You don't have the right!" She pounded on the door again.
Useless.
She went through the whole room by touch, inch by inch. Bare walls, bare floor—how about the ceiling? There was nothing to climb on and check, no footholds in the smoothly painted wall. She started scraping the paint and the mortar with her nails.
By the time Eryn let her out, she'd climbed at least six feet up. She had no idea how far the ceiling was in that darkness. Her nails were bleeding, and she was so hungry and thirsty that even the light looked strange to her eyes.
It was the end of brightlights period, Eryn told her with a smirk. The second brightlights after Mel had shouted. Mel sent a message to Mom. Her hands were trembling so much that she had to hum.
Mel drank the bottle of water a servingstat shoved into her hands, then dragged herself to her room. She had a private home here. When naturals started their first job, they lived together with their colleagues and other new and old friends. Yet, young unnaturals must live alone, at least while they were learning.
But learning what? That they were weak? That there were those above and those below in the world, and that someone like Eryn could do everything she wished? That, out there, people had no idea of this.
Out there, all people supposedly did as they wished.
Inside her room, Mel got a message from Adelaide.
We are used to being told everything that we need to know, every moment of our lives. the message said. But this is only fine for naturals. We...we have always been different, Mel, but we haven't learned how to be different. This is why they are doing this to us. They are teaching us. Or, so I think.
Oh, so she thought herself an expert now, this future Doctor of People? Adi's eyes usually darted just like those of a natural. She didn't speak much and messaged only a bit more often, and she hadn't been in the dark room. She didn't even have ACD. She read her feeds for only seconds at a time because she could not bear to read for longer, but according to Eryn she understood them. She didn't just browse like a grass-eating clumsy animal that could only think of its next meal. She built intuition, a subconscious system about people.
Not that Eryn had deigned to explain what a grass-eating animal was.
I can't sleep, Adi wrote to Mel.
Mel was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling.
Neither can I. Who else could she write to and tell about Eryn and this place? Mom? She'd worry. Her thousands of friends? They wouldn't care. She wrote them "normal" things.
I am lonely, Mel. I miss Mom and Dad. I write to them, of course, but somehow it is not the same any more. Somehow, Mel, right now it helps more to write to you.
***
On the next day Meliora, Adelaide, and Ivan had a lesson with Doctor Theodore.
"Hello, children." Theodore smiled at them.
"Children, doctor? We thought we were adults." Mel smiled back, and Theodore laughed.
"Ah, I forget. People think they are adults out there."
Mel also laughed. Adi nodded, while Ivan shrugged and turned to watch the doctor's computer. "Now, we'll concentrate on..." Theodore started, and this time all three laughed.
Theodore joined them a moment later.
"Yes," he said, "I forget. You have been here for a very short time. The last five recruits before you came many months ago, and two have already left and one graduated. They soon learned what you three, too, will learn—it is all right to concentrate. Indeed, it is useful and needed, especially for the computer work."
"But, doctor," Adelaide asked, "How is concentration needed for computer work? We've been with computers all our lives, just like everyone. And everyone does not concentrate, doctor."
"I can answer that myself," Mel said. "People don't need to do real computer work, the kind that needs concentration. Perhaps people should not do real computer work. Is that so, doctor?"
He was uncomfortable with the question. If he were Eryn, he'd have done something unpleasant by now.
"Doctor, what is this for?" Ivan pointed at the screen. Mel wasn't sure he'd heard much of the others' conversation.
"This is a called a computer program." The doctor smiled again. "Step-by-step instructions for the computer about how to perform a task, or tasks, for humans." He stepped towards the screen and typed on the interface again. "I see all of you three are watching the interface. Typing works best for communicating with a computer. You're all humming when you communicate with other people, and this is good because you emit emotions and they perceive emotions. Emotions have proven themselves to be people's most comfortable means of interacting with the outside world, but as for computers... Yes, Meliora?"
"The words," Mel said. "With a hummie, the words that come on a receiver's screen are different from the words that the sender has in their mind."
"Yes, when it is your mind, Mel." Theodore tapped his forehead with a finger. "Or mine, or Ivan's. Because we have words there. Other people—not necessarily. Even Adi here has a mind that works differently. Why do you think the hummie interfaces became so popular? They could have been popular because of nothing but fashion, true. But fashion trends rarely endure. People, Mel and Ivan, strange as it may seem to you, don't necessarily want to know what's on their minds. With the hummies, the computer does the knowing for them. It is our job to help the computer know. The hummies have endured for years now because they are intuitive."
"Intuitive, doctor? Doctor Eryn said that intuition is a subconscious system that a person builds. Did people build intuition especially for the hummies, then?"
"Well, I..." Again, Theodore was uncomfortable with a question Mel had asked.
"Doctor, may I try typing?" Ivan said. He didn't seem to be listening to the discussion about hummies and minds.
"Yes, certainly." Theodore smiled, and his face acquired the pleasant expression of a person who had just taken relaxation pills. Happiness, the Lucastans called it.
"But first you must learn the language of computers. Or, the programming language, as it is also known. The computer always understands it and never misinterprets it—assuming that you don't arrange the words in a wrong way, of course. But if you do so, it is your mistake and not the computer's."
Mel watched the doctor's computer as if she were seeing a computer for the first time in her life.
A computer that needed specific words from a person and wouldn't just take any words or hummed sounds. A person being told that they could make a mistake with their words to a computer. It went against everything that Lucasta stood for.
"I know where to type, doctor," Ivan said, "I watched you the day before yesterday, when you talked to Adi and me."
"Haven't you seen the typing interfaces before?" Mel asked.
"No, where would I? I was a baby when people stopped using them and moved on to the speech ones."
"Great, Ivan, I am proud of your observation skills!" The doctor's eyes were shining. "But you can't be typing yet, not at this computer at least, though I will give you all regular typing interfaces to train on. You must know the programming language in order to type here."
"Why, doctor? What will happen if we make a mistake?" That was Adi, who had been humming into her computer again, eyes jumping everywhere. Mel wondered if Adi would be able to type in the programming language at all—and, separately, she wondered if this computer language of words was even needed. You could touch the computer directly inside, behind the lids. That must be a computer language itself, more precise than words. Why bother with words?
"What will happen, you ask."
The doctor sighed again. People rarely sighed. They didn't need to. They had medstats to
take care of them before they got to the sighing point. This time, however, his face didn't look relaxed.
"I don't know what exactly will happen. Same as what happened two years ago, perhaps. A shopping mall with no interweb—and, as a direct result of that, a train taking the wrong course and crashing into another so hard that no medstats or repairstats could do anything to fix the damage."
"The medstats could not...but what does that mean?"
"Oh, damn it!" the doctor exclaimed with an uncharacteristic zeal. "I should not be the one to tell you this! Eryn, Jerome, and the rest have not even talked to you about life yet! How did we get to this at all? It means people leaving us long, long before their time has come, Adelaide! It means shards of metal and glass on the tracks and the next two trains derailing, too—even though, for those, the medstats could at least do something, even if it wasn't enough. It means we should never, ever make mistakes."
"Or touch computers without understanding them first," Mel whispered. Damn you, Nicolas.
Adelaide was crying, a natural thing for a Lucastan. Ivan wasn't crying. He was staring at the doctor's screen. The medstat in the room wheeled closer and dispensed relaxation pills for Adi, which she promptly took. Years ago the medstats had rarely done this for crying.
Crying was natural. People cried or laughed very easily. Slowly, however, the medstats had started treating them. Mel didn't even know when she'd noticed this.
Medstats treated you for anything, whether you wanted or not—computers took your words from you even though you didn't know your words yourself—every new year, a little more of this.
To what end?
***
She walked back to Doctor Theodore's computer room later in brightlights period after all her lessons were done. He looked away from his screen and smiled at her as if glad to see her, but she could not bring herself to smile back.
"Tell me, doctor, did trains crash when I started the computers in my old doctor's office? Tell me, did my father leave Lucasta before his time because of someone's mistake, or because of someone's maliciousness, and did a boy named Nicolas 0x12A14762 with interweb address Nicolas351 leave Annabella before his time, too? Tell me why I never knew about those trains, and those dead people two years ago."
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