by Judyth Baker
That’s the way it worked. Vaguely, he remembered some kind of hand placing a new implant in his skull. He didn’t like this one at all: it hurt. Anyway, he was awake again. His room, his mother, his Teddy Bear – all had vanished. Even his clothing was different. He was wearing a kind of military-style armor, and was seated in a chrome chair, at a huge round table that had its enormous center cut out. Suddenly, he could see the faces of everyone there – he knew they were Leaders, and he understood that he, too was a Leader. What fascinated him were the figures and scenes that he was viewing in the center of the huge table.
“You’re getting a full review,” the Beta Male to his left explained. The Beta Male had to lean over the Alpha Female, who sat to Roger’s left, in order to speak to him. “You’re going to see some of your erased memories. Everyone here has gone through this, so don’t think anything you’ll see is unusual. The only thing that made your case different is that your Mother was successful in rescuing you. Usually a woman hasn’t the strength to do that. It’s the Father who makes the attempt. In your case, there was also an older sibling… a sister. Sorry, most of us never had a sibling.”
“My mother told me,” Roger responded. “I thought every family had a boy and a girl. At least, that’s what they put in my head.”
“Every family can dare to have both a boy and a girl,” the Beta Male told him. “But few of them do. They spend twice as much time with their children, when they do, in Free-Think. In your case, they became very attached to the two of you and loved both of you. So, when it was the right time, your Father tried to rescue your sister. But they both…” Richard, the Beta Male, hesitated. “They… both succumbed.”
Roger felt a surge of grief and loss. “I want to see her, like I saw my father!” He demanded this, rising from his seat. An electric shock surged through his body as a command seared into his brain: You will not stand in the presence of any member of greater Seniority! He collapsed back into his chair.
“I would have appreciated it if you’d given me that information the usual way,” Roger complained, rubbing his numbed hands. “You know – just implanted how I was supposed to act, inside my head.”
“We can’t do that,” the Beta Male said. “In this chamber, it’s essential that your brain stays intact.”
Roger thought that over. “Intact?” he asked. “What do you mean by that?”
“I’m sorry to tell you that most of the things your mother – and most Scientists and Professionals – say and do are already pre-programmed. They don’t know that. They think that everything they say and do during Free-Think time is spontaneous and free from control.”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“Some of it is,” the Beta Male replied. “For example, your Mother does love you. And her act of rescuing you was spontaneous and generous. Courageous, even. We don’t see much of that. She certainly was thinking for herself through the entire rescue operation. She’s a Level Two – capable of it – whereas Level Three, and the others, they wouldn’t know how to begin.”
The Beta Male smiled. He had thick brown hair that reminded Roger of his Teddy Bear. He also had brown, beady eyes, like the glass eyes of his Teddy, but he decided to keep his mouth shut about it. Insulting a Leader might not be a good idea.
“As for your sister,” the Beta Male told him, “she couldn’t be kept long enough for you to say goodbye. We’re sorry. Now, please watch the panorama. Since we’re busy with other matters. But you need the orientation. You will be assisted and guided as you watch this saga. By the way, your guide is Angelica. She’s sitting between you and me. She’s our Alpha Female Leader. She has also agreed to be your Mate, so she will be certain to guide you carefully and gently.”
The Alpha Female reached over and took Roger’s hand. He steeled himself not to pull it away, afraid of getting another electric shock. She was a dark blonde: beautiful, sexy-looking, young. Guess I can live with this, he thought to himself.
“Hello, Roger,” she said, blinking her green eyes. As she did so, it seemed that she and he were sitting all alone in the chamber before the gleaming round table. The fifty-four other Leaders, male, female, and hermaphrodites, all garbed in shiny, metallic-looking armor, had faded from view.
“Look carefully at the screen, Roger,” Angelica said, squeezing his hand. “But don’t get upset. I’m right here, to explain it for you. Just as it was explained to me.”
The scene was outdoors, and primitive. It was winter, with snowstorms howling by day and wolves howling by night. He saw perhaps thirty small wooden cabins, clustered together, with high stacks of firewood in front of each cabin door.
“We supply them with firewood, axes, disinfectants, and enough calories to survive winter,” Angelica commented. “They were given a little basic information about edible plants and animals, how to hunt, and how to make their own clothing.”
“Is this some kind of colony?” he asked.
“You came from there,” Angelica replied. “You were taken there when you were twelve-and-a-half. It is very democratic. Everyone has the same information. The same resources. Then, they’re on their own.”
She continued to advise as he watched some figures appear among the distant trees. “There are only six hours of daylight during the winter,” she whispered. “But summer isn’t much better. There’s barely enough time to hunt necessary game animals, gather berries and roots, prepare and cure skins, and chop up the firewood, before winter sets in again.”
Roger shivered. Some part of his body remembered the cold.
“So… I really was there?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“What about you?” he asked her. “Did this happen to you, too?”
“Of course,” she said. “My father rescued me. Just as you were rescued by your mother. But for me, that was fifty-one years ago.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixty-nine,” she answered. “I’m in my prime for child-bearing, if I wanted to get it implanted in me.” Of course, her eggs, she told him, were housed in a Fertility Lab, where the best of them had been selected and preserved. “They’re analyzing your sperm right now,” she revealed. “The best sperm, the best eggs, we’re the hope of the future, people like you and me.”
“But I’m only twenty,” he said. He didn’t dare say she was too old for him: it was bad enough that she frowned when he told her his age.
“You have no idea the sacrifice I’m making!” she said, with a huff. “I could have rejected the Council’s choice. But everyone else is decades older than I am. And you have muscles. I like that. It’s a plus I hadn’t expected. Now… watch this!”
He saw them come marching through the snow, holding pieces of wood that were ablaze. Those are torches, something in his head told him. There were probably a hundred of them, marching in unison… then, he saw the big wolf.
“That’s Sheba!” he said. “I want her!”
He said it so loudly that the heads of some of the Leaders appeared before him, frowning through the brilliance of the screen.
“Shhhh!” Angelica warned him. “Don’t upset them!”
“That’s my wolf!” he said insistently. “I want my wolf!”
“You can’t get her, sorry. It was the very devil, getting just you out of there.”
“I don’t see any little kids,” he told her. “I don’t see any old people…”
“As I said, they’re all teenagers. The ones with the uncontrollable urges. The high hormone levels. The impulsivity. The ones we cannot easily manage. All through history, previous to the Solution, we had to deal with their violence, stubbornness, and crimes. We do not have wars anymore, so we couldn’t discipline them through the military, nor kill them off in that manner. It was a huge problem that caused great unhappiness in our very happy world.”
The Beta Male tapped Roger on his shoulder. “All she says is true. But they’re not there merely because they’re hard to control.” The Beta Male laughed. “Don’t you get it? Y
ou’re supposed to be smart enough to understand.”
“Leave him alone, Richard,” Angelica said. “When he was rescued, he was at first placed in the wrong level. Implanted as a Scientist, instead of as a Leader. “
“Apologies, Roger,” Richard said. “I forgot. No wonder we were prompted to talk to you using this strange, informal dialect. You’re asking questions, but that’s understandable, if you had a prior implant that had to be swiped out.”
“And remember,” Angelica put in, “he was an Ultimate Rescue, which means he had a Full Memory Swipe, as well.”
“No wonder you’re confused!” Richard said. “That’s awesome. So, your memory was swiped clean twice?”
“Well, mostly.”
“I should have been nicer,” Richard said, leaning closer. “Well, let me tell you how it goes….” Richard looked sharply at Angelica, who nodded her head. “You see, when all teenagers from all levels are removed from the breeding colony at age twelve and a half, they are implanted with birth control devices, then released into this wilderness area without any memories of their past.”
“But, they can’t survive out there, at that age, all alone!”
“Oh, yes they can,” Angelica said. “Anthropoids with half the brain matter were making fire and hand axes. Some of these will murder, some of these will steal. But the most intelligent tend to survive. It’s Natural Selection at work. Just as it was thousands of years before we formed civilizations…”
“Long ago,” Richard went on, passing a dark hand over his highly-decorated helmet, “so long ago I can’t remember when it started; we realized that we had made everything so comfortable and predictable that our species was becoming weaker, more stupid, and less able to cope with even ordinary life stresses. In each generation, there were more people who cared only about themselves, wanting to be more comfortable, wanting to work fewer and fewer hours, wanting others to wait on them hand and foot. ‘Couch potato’ is a term from long ago, but it suited well. Robots were doing everything. People were doing nothing.”
“My turn,” Angelica said. “They selected me to tell him this part, because I’m kinder than you are.”
“Just keep talking.”
Roger told them. “So, do I really like sports? Or is that just forced onto everybody now?”
“No,” Richard said. “That was a real preference. Sports were inserted because you happen to love sports and physical exercise. You would have been depressed if we didn’t keep your body active. Most of us get passive sport muscle stimulating exercises. We exercise while we’re sleeping.”
“It works,” Angelica said, flexing her arms. “But your muscles are bigger.”
“Please allow me to continue,” Richard protested. “I have a lot to say before Omega Leader Three talks to him.”
“Our three Omega Leaders are Number One on the planet,” Angelica interjected.
“To continue, every generation on implants became less interested in anything but self. If anything was bad in the system, nobody cared, so long as it didn’t affect them. Nobody was wiping their own asses anymore, unless they were programmed to do it. They wouldn’t do a thing unless told to do it.”
“That’s the way it still is,” Roger snapped. “Schedules – even when to go to the toilet!”
“You remember that?” Angelica said, clearly impressed. “It seems they didn’t clear everything out. You do realize we’re talking this funny way to you, don’t you, because this is the way your brain likes to talk, right now?”
“Don’t worry,” Richard put in, “You’re going to get the final language update soon. We couldn’t change everything at once, that quickly. You might have put up too much resistance, so we let you keep some of your teenage talk style. We usually speak with more formality and with much more dignity, but I’m rather enjoying this bantering talk style, so – on with my story.”
“At first, we thought we could breed the problems out. You know, choose the more aggressive little kids, and so on. That was a gross mistake. We had a season of teenage riots. All teenagers who participated were banished to the wilderness, with just the bare essentials. You see, we no longer had prisons. And it was agreed that they shouldn’t be punished as adults. Even though some of them had been murderers.”
“That’s how it began,” Angelica put in. “Only two teens survived the first exodus. “But they were smart. Strong. Adaptable.”
“We saw how strong they had become,” Richard added. We had found our answer. We could stop the decline of the human race!” He hurried on. “What our geneticists couldn’t do, what our psychiatrists couldn’t do, the wilderness did. Survival in the wilderness put the Darwinian selection process back into operation, and our species began to get stronger again. The problem was, some of them were murderous thugs. We could not allow any of that kind into our peaceful world. As a teen turned twenty, they could return to our world, though there never was more than a handful a year who survived that long. Only parents who still cared enough to rescue their children, after watching their life histories on-screen, could petition to get their child out. This also helped our species, because only good parents cared. Only good parents had made bonds with their children before they were exiled. If we could find a way to get such a child out, without causing a riot, we did it.”
“You see, “ Angelica explained, “getting them out wasn’t easy. After a few rescues, the ones left behind realized what was going on. They found out where the Rescue Port was located.”
“They would post sentries there, at the Rescue Port,” Richard said. “Then, they’d make prisoners of the ones turning twenty. When the Port was opened to deliver food and supplies, we could keep order, as they fought each other for the food, which we threw out at a distance from the Port, but if we were trying to rescue a prisoner, they could do battle with us, using the prisoner as a shield. It was a terrible problem.”
“It was a sort of religion that they had developed,” Angelica told him. “Centuries ago, a few of them made it inside, never to be seen again. They became Untouchables, but they didn’t live past twenty-one. All our babies are born with mitochondria with a short shelf life, to keep the teenage numbers down.”
“But what about me?” Roger asked. “I have those mitochondria, too, don’t I?”
“Originally, you did,” Angelica said soothingly, “But because your parents loved you, they had set aside the fees needed to replace them. Your mitochondria were replaced a few hours after your mother rescued you. They should last several thousand years. Then you can renew, if you want to keep on living.”
“So, did I become a prisoner, too?”
Richard took his turn to explain. “The smartest of the oldest ones wouldn’t tell their ages, but of course, eventually, they’d be tied up. Then the tortures would start.”
“You didn’t have to mention that part,” Angelica objected, shuddering.
“Yes, I did,” Richard retorted. “He needs to know. They wanted the Rescue Port to open, as it did whenever a parent dared to try to rescue a kid. If nobody came, these kids would be slowly murdered on an altar, right in front of the Rescue Port. The parents of these kids could see it, on their screens. The beatings. The cuttings. It drove them half mad.”
“We could see what they were doing,” Angelica said softly. “By various means, to stop the torture, we found ways to confuse them, to disperse them. Such as throwing candy or something else, rare and desired, as far from the Port as possible. That would give a parent the chance to try a rescue. Unfortunately, they’d usually take their prisoner with them. The parent, armored just as we are here – that gives them honor – had the right to defend themselves, had the right to try to rescue their child.”
“The battles are shown on our screens all over the world,” Richard said. “It has been great entertainment for Third Level citizens.”
“The teenagers would do their religious dances, because they thought we were Gods. They’d demand to be let through the Rescue Port, or th
ey’d kill their prisoner. The most courageous of the parents would make several attempts to rescue their child. Such as, when the guards fell asleep.”
Roger had been rendered speechless with pure horror. Nothing in his preserved memories could have prepared him for such words.
“They’re such savages!” Richard said. “Many a parent and child perished, because of them.”
“That’s why you have no original toes,” Angelica added. “They cut them off, one by one… over a period of days… we had to grow new ones for you.”
Roger instinctively looked down at his feet. “So,” he muttered, “my father died at the hands of these kids? Trying to save my sister?”
“Yes. He was a hero.”
“Was – was I involved in his death?”
“No. You were too young at the time.”
“And you call those kids savages?” Roger growled. “You made them that way! You’re just as bad as they are! So you have spectacles on screens! Damn you!”
“It pays for their upkeep in the wilderness,” Richard said defensively.
“And why didn’t you help my father? Why do parents have to go in there alone? And why did you risk losing my mother and me?” Roger could feel some kind of primitive, raw anger pulsing through his body. As his face reddened with emotion, Angelica drew away from him slightly, and Richard stiffened to his full height.
“You don’t understand…” Richard protested. “Nobody wanted to go with your father. They were too afraid. And your mother wasn’t allowed to join him. And nobody wanted to go with your mother. Nobody was brave enough. That’s the damned truth. Please, just look at the screen again! Please!”
Roger looked again at the darkening scene: there were perhaps two hundred teenagers there now, dressed in furs, massing together. He realized they were singing.
“We just wanna KILL YOU! We just wanna KILL you!”
They were shaking their fists at what had to be the “hidden” cameras. In their midst was their latest prisoner, standing there shivering, naked in the freezing cold.