The Humanity of Monsters

by Nathan Ballingrud

  “I’m glad you’re taking an interest,” she says, taking my hand.

  I smile. “I try.”

  I want to say I’ve also been thinking about her bird. I want her to know I didn’t care enough to kill it. Because all these years later, I finally understand my brother’s game. He didn’t hate the bird. He wanted to hurt her. Wanted her out of the game. This time he might be more direct and I’ve no idea what to do about it.

  There was a murder a few years before I was born. The world didn’t know what to do. Most crimes meant community service, but those were minor thefts and disturbances. They couldn’t let a murderer walk freely, so they built a box for her.

  When I failed my scan, they wanted to put me in the box with her. I cried and promised to be good. The act wasn’t entirely false. I had no interest in being locked away. I wanted a life, like anyone else. Someday, maybe I’d have children, though my parents weren’t happy about the prospect. Mentioning it’d be fine because I’d done animal husbandry at school was a mistake. I thought it made me sound responsible.

  But still, I was curious. I visited her once, to see if she was like me. All I found was guilty silence.

  I don’t wait for my sister to take my advice. The terraforming station isn’t far away, and the air seems a little thicker today. I reach it in good health.

  The main building isn’t much to look at. It’s small, grey, and rectangular. The roof is covered with spheres and poles. Something to do with measurements or transmissions. I wasn’t that interested in science at school.

  The rest of the compound is far more interesting. Three large greenhouses contain plants and animals ready for release. Other round pods surround the area, with whatever supplies the terraformers need. At this stage, biodiversity is supposed to be the main aim. Not worrying about the atmosphere or why released things keep dying.

  Much as I’d like to see inside the greenhouses, I head to the grey building and knock on the door.

  A woman opens it. We’d been in the same year at school. That’s probably why she immediately tries to close it. I jam my foot in the door. “I’m here for a brief inspection, for my sister.”

  She opens the door again, without leaving too many bruises on my foot. “Sorry, I thought . . . well, come in.”

  As though murderers turn up unarmed and knock on the door politely. If I did want to kill someone, they wouldn’t see me coming.

  The woman goes back to her work and I’m left to roam. It’s a single room, with multiple work stations. Some are computers. Some are lab benches with samples. I offer random pleasantries, and the workers relax a little. I recognise some of what’s going on. One rack of test tubes has sludge samples, tightly sealed and marked with hazard labels. Another has various grasses in pots. A worker is measuring each clump and recording its growth. They look far healthier than the grass outside, so I wonder if the atmosphere is different inside. It didn’t feel different to me.

  The person from the party has been looking my way, but I don’t want to appear as though I’m here for them. I reach them when I do, after examining each workstation. “Hello again.”

  “An unexpected visit,” they say.

  “Just getting a feel for my sister’s work. Though I confess, I don’t know much about science.”

  “If there’s anything you want to know, just ask.”

  They have to say it, as every citizen has a right to see what’s being done on their behalf. Though if I did ask about the science side, I’m not sure I’d get an honest answer. That’s not a problem. I’m here for another reason. I cast my gaze slowly around the room, as though deciding what to ask about. I settle on the plaque a short distance away. It commemorates the world’s first murder victim.

  I indicate the plaque. “I didn’t know there was a plaque. He was a scientist, right?”

  “Oh. Yes. I didn’t know him.”

  “I expect he did a lot of,” I pause, for comic effect, and wave a hand vaguely, “science.”

  The person grins. “Yes, lots of science.”

  “Hey, I’m trying.” I return the grin. “I know some things. The green things are plants.”

  “That’s something.”

  I go back to a sombre face and look towards the sludge samples. The good side of the gossips is everyone knows I’ve been a bird in the sludge. People want me to be traumatised, so sometimes I give them that. Lighten the mood then switch on the trauma. It makes people drop their guard and say things they shouldn’t.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sure. It just reminds me.”

  The person pauses and I find their expression hard to read. “How do you feel?”

  It’s an odd question. I’ve been asked it many times by therapists, but everyone else tiptoes around it. I go with, “Frustrated.” I’d hope for something more enlightening than a question about my emotions, so it was true.

  They held a hearing shortly after I reached adulthood. The director of medicine was an expert in manipulation. He knew how to dehumanise me. “The psychopath has no conscience. No remorse. No concept of right and wrong.”

  Getting two out of three right wasn’t bad, but did he really think I couldn’t memorise a list of rules? Or I had no incentive to keep them? It wasn’t in my best interest to end up in a box or to upset my family to the point they wanted nothing more to do with me. Perhaps he didn’t realise that. Directors often weren’t the most intelligent of any department. They were simply the ones who were good at speeches and routine administration tasks.

  “It has a poor sense of self. It views others as objects for entertainment, to be discarded on a whim.”

  And others liked to suggest I wasn’t truly human. That made us even. But that wasn’t the main point. Everyone is an object, including me. The idea of self is a delusion to keep fear at bay. I don’t feel fear, so I don’t need the delusion.

  What’s important is objects can be unique. They need care and they can be hard to replace. When I care about an object, I’ll look after it. When I don’t, I’m indifferent to it. People murder because they care too much, not because they don’t.

  “It’s true, good upbringing can counter some of the worst excesses, but the psychopath can never be trusted.”

  My family’s reaction to that was mixed. My parents were trying not to cry. My sister was tense, ready to fight if this didn’t go the right way. My brother shifted guiltily. The rest of the family were loving, so it was his fault if I did anything bad. He was lucky I valued my freedom more than that.

  “There’s no future in our community for the psychopath.”

  No mention of the letter from my boss, who praised my aptitude as an apprentice funeral director.

  “This is about the essence of humanity.”

  The founding principle of the world, keeping humans human. Hidden away from those nasty sub-humans who mixed with aliens. Who integrated into other worlds. Everyone a pure human, blah blah blah. I didn’t care about ideology. Only about survival.

  My turn came to speak. I kept my face calm and my eyes down. False displays would be noted, and too much eye contact was threatening. After a suitable pause, as though wrestling with what I’d heard, I locked my gaze on the medical director. “I’m not an it. I’m a they.”

  I visit the box, because there’s one thing no one knows: her motive. The two of them had been working late one night, during a time when everything was going well with the terraforming. Then she killed him. The ecosystem collapsed after that. It’s the world’s biggest mystery. And also a little coincidental that my sister wants to poke around outside, and suddenly my brother is trying to persuade me it’d be easier if she wasn’t around.

  She’s sitting on her bed when I enter the visitor’s area. A mesh separates us, so that nothing can be passed into her cell.

  I sit on the visitor’s chair. “We have some things in common.”

&n
bsp; “I’m nothing like you,” she says.

  “That’s true. You’re a murderer. I’m a valued citizen with a future as a funeral director.”

  She flinches away, bringing her legs up in a ball. She feels guilty. I can use that guilt.

  “Do you get many visitors?” I ask.

  “Only the guards,” she says.

  “If it were my choice, I wouldn’t put you in a box. People who damage things have to repair them. People who drop waste have to clean things. There must be things you could do to fix things.”

  “They won’t let me out.”

  “I could fix things for you. If people knew why, maybe they’d visit you.” She had children, though they never liked to mention the relationship. Family love is unconditional, except when it isn’t. Another inconsistency.

  “Why would you want to? You don’t care.”

  “I want to prove I can.” It’s the ultimate way to show I’m better than them. Not murdering anyone is too easy. Finding out why other people murder each other is a challenge.

  “I can’t help you,” she says.

  “Suit yourself, but he was only the first.”

  I get up to leave. Not too quickly, in case she has a change of heart. I reach the door and open it before she calls after me, “You fell in the sludge, didn’t you? How do you feel?”

  I continue through the door without a word.

  There were two groups of people who liked to ask how I felt. Therapists and my parents. “I’m not feeling anything,” was never the right answer. Of course, when I did feel things, that was wrong too. I once made the mistake of telling a therapist I enjoyed eating mango.

  “Empathy is like a mango,” she said.

  “Rounded and sweet?”

  “Not that. Think about what it’d be like if someone took your mango. That’s how it feels when you hurt people.”

  I didn’t like it when someone took things from me, but I got over it quickly. It wasn’t the same as when I told my sister it’d been a stupid bird anyway, and I didn’t see why she was still crying over it. I just wanted her to stop so she would come out with me, but it made her cry more. Empathy wasn’t as simple as a mango. That’s why I needed my rules. I should have hugged her, not tried to reason with her. But the therapists wouldn’t accept that I was never going to understand. It wasn’t enough to follow the rules. They wouldn’t be happy until I could feel the rules.

  Another time, I told a therapist I wanted to set fire to my brother. That’s when they threatened to put me in the box.

  I stand on the cliff, looking down into the dead-algae water. I’m not going to jump again, though the temptation is there. I have a question to answer. Why have two people in a day wanted to know how I felt? Usually, people don’t want to know.

  I close my eyes and try to focus on my innermost feelings, as a therapist long ago failed to teach me.

  The thought of jumping still has a thrill attached. I remember the first time, wheezing up the path. I rested on the rocks until I caught my breath. Since then, I’d spent enough time outside that I don’t wheeze when I walk. But there is nothing else. How am I supposed to feel about it?

  I open my eyes again. Now it’s water below, so the landing wouldn’t be as deadly. In that moment, I know how I feel.

  My life turned around on the day my sister snuck into my room. I wasn’t supposed to be alone in the room with anyone else, but she did what she wanted. She’d started a job at the food warehouse, and saved up credits for sweets. Little jelly hearts with gooey centres. She knew I liked them, so she came to share. By then, I’d learnt enough about empathy to know it when I saw it. I knew I should do something in return, so I told jokes, and made shadow animals on the wall. It was like we were children again, before scans and therapy.

  At the same time, someone set fire to my brother’s bed.

  I was blamed. It was the final sign of my inherent violence. Except it wasn’t, because I was with my sister and everyone trusted her. That’s when my parents realised it was my brother. They put it down to sibling rivalry, but I knew he wanted me gone.

  The rules changed that day. It was no longer wrong to go out on my own, to be alone with people, and to decide what I wanted. I wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from me again.

  I set fire to a poster for my sister’s election. It’s pasted on the side of a metal storage unit, so there’s little to burn out here other than the poster. I don’t want the crime to be too big. It needs to be personal, with just the right level of apparent impulsiveness. Everyone knows I act on impulse.

  The emergency systems note the fire. Alarms sound and people arrive. I look at the fire and I get the tears started. I don’t fight as they take me to see the head of law enforcement.

  “What are we going to do with you?” they ask.

  “I didn’t mean it.” I make sure a tear runs down my cheek. “It’s just . . . there’s so much going on. Please don’t put me in the box.”

  Their eyes soften, even though they know they shouldn’t believe me. “I don’t think we’re there yet. But we’re going to have to monitor you for a bit.”

  “I know. But my family . . .” I say tearfully.

  “You’re an adult. It’s up to you if you tell them.”

  I nod. I have what I want, so the rest is going through the motions. I promise to behave. I fill out forms. They attach the monitor. It doesn’t take them long to process me, as the only other criminals are two people who got into a fight over nothing important.

  The monitor isn’t obtrusive. It’s a wrist band, easily hidden under the baggy-sleeved top I happened to wear for the fire. It’ll record my every move and alert them if it thinks I’m committing a crime. It’ll sound an alarm if I take it off. I have a lot in common with the monitor. It also doesn’t need empathy to know right from wrong.

  I don’t knock at the bird cleaning centre, because only my brother works there. The other volunteers are long gone, now most of the sludge is cleared away.

  I haven’t seen the inside before, but it’s much as I expected. The birds are in several rooms with glass screens separating them from the corridor. Their behaviour is listless.

  My brother comes through a door. “What are you doing?”

  “I came to see the birds,” I say.

  “Well, you’ve seen them.”

  “That’s it? You’re not going to show me around?”

  My brother glares, but there’s always the guilt. It eats away at him, and eventually he breaks eye contact. “I guess it might be your sort of thing.” He leaves the corridor through a door with a lock. I haven’t seen many locks, outside of the box and secure supply areas. I follow.

  The room beyond is not my sort of thing. It’s filled with birds, though not in a way my sister would like either. Some of them are strapped down on benches, with their blood flowing out through tubes, through a machine, and back into the birds. One is in the process of being dissected. A few wait in a cage, healthy but huddled, as they can see the scene in front of them. I walk around, so the monitor can scan the area.

  “What are you doing to them?” I ask.

  “Cleaning their blood. The sludge gets inside.”

  It justifies keeping the centre open, long past the sludge disappearing. But there’s a problem with this. The sick birds in the rooms outside are how the birds act when they’re released. I walk to the cage. “Are these the treated ones?”

  “No, they need to be processed.”

  “But they’re so healthy,” I say.

  “Better to be sick and clean, than healthy and dirty.”

  My brother doesn’t trust me, but he’s given me a truth he wouldn’t want spread. It occurs to me this is more dangerous than recording a conversation. I consider my words, because I don’t want to die right now. “You’re making them sick. Why did you tell me that?”

 
“I want you to understand. What happened to the birds, to you, it isn’t natural. It shouldn’t have happened. It has to stay secret.”

  “So you told a psychopath?”

  “At worst, no one will believe you.”

  “At best?”

  “You’ll kill our sister, before she finds out. For the sake of the world.”

  The world isn’t my problem, as long as it continues existing. The damaged birds say my brother’s actions aren’t helping that. “What have you done for me?”

  “What have I done?” His brow furrows and his voice raises. “Do you know what I’ve put up with? The lies. The things you’ve destroyed. You made our parents think I did those things. You were the innocent one. The perfect baby. But you’ve never cared. It’s all a game to you.”

  “That was years ago, before the scans,” I say.

  The blow hits me before I can react. I hit the wall by the cage, causing the birds to screech.

  “Get out,” he says.

  I don’t argue. My face hurts and I have bruises down one side where I struck the wall. It’s not as exciting as jumping off a cliff. I choose to jump, but never to be hit.

  I return to the terraforming station and ask the person to show me the greenhouses. I expect to have to persuade, but the response is enthusiastic. Some things surprise me. It’s almost as though they like talking to me. But I have other things to focus on when we reach the first greenhouse. It’s filled with leafy plants and insects.

  “How many of these live outside?” I ask.

  “None. They used to, but we had to bring them back inside.”

  Some of the insects have large colourful wings. They perch on a tray with slices of fruit, drinking the juices. “What are these?”

  “Butterflies.” The person picks up a piece of fruit with a butterfly, bringing it closer so I can see. The butterfly moves its wings slowly, but is more concerned with the fruit than the people.

  “I never learnt about them at school.”

  “They think it’s easier that way. If you see even a sample of what we have waiting in storage, it’s obvious how bad it is outside.” They put the butterfly back with the others.