Forbidden Thoughts

by Milo Yiannopoulos

  The beta seemed to want to argue its point further, but decided against the idea, bowing its head once, then clapping one of the two young trogs on the butt. The young trog began to hurry off, with Shervet and the dorm mother in the lead, and the beta following watchfully behind.

  Suddenly, Dinah found herself alone with the trog who seemed very much like the one from the day before. He kept his eyes on the ground, his posture stiff. Afraid.

  “I’m sorry the beta hurt you yesterday,” Dinah said.

  The trog in front of her, kept silent. He didn’t so much as alter his breathing.

  “It is you, isn’t it?” Dinah asked, aware of the fact that this was very much against protocol—to directly interrogate a trog, without first going through a beta—but she was intensely curious, and there might not ever be another opportunity to talk to a trog without any adult supervision present.

  “Please,” Dinah said. “Just let me know that it’s you, or not. If you can’t look me in the eye, at least show me somehow. I know, let’s try this—if you remember me from the school, and were unfortunately punished for looking at me, stamp your right foot on the ground two times.”

  At first, there was nothing. Then, hesitantly, the trog lifted his right foot, and gently tapped the sole of his boot on the cement floor twice in succession.

  “It is you!” Dinah exclaimed, suddenly delighted.

  Then she remembered herself.

  “Please,” she said. “It’s important to me that you understand what I am saying, and that you believe me when I tell you that I did not want you to get into trouble. Certainly I didn’t want that beast of a beta taking out its anger on you. I know lytes aren’t supposed to care. We’re not even supposed to spend much time in contact with trogs. But I’m not like that. I think there’s a case to be made for courtesy, as well as kindness. Especially when—”

  The young trog raised his face, and Dinah stopped short. Yes, this was the one. His eyes—the same intelligence, the same warmth—could not be mistaken for another’s. Her heart skipped a beat, when he said just a single word.

  “Gebbel.”

  Dinah was shocked at the deepness of the trog’s voice. In truth, it was the first time she’d ever heard a trog form a word at all.

  “What?” Dinah blurted, surprised.

  “Do not forget. My name, is Gebbel.”

  Then the trog’s face aimed back down to the floor, and footsteps in the distance told Dinah that the dorm mother was coming. Very quickly, the beta, Shervet, and the trog carrying Shervet’s second chest, returned. Gebbel stooped and hefted Dinah’s chest, then he and the other trog—who now carried Shervet’s two chests, one atop the other; with obvious strain and discomfort—began to walk behind Dinah and Shervet, as the dorm mother led them through two more connecting hallways, and finally out into a large plaza.

  Dinah wasn’t familiar with this place. It was one of the areas reserved strictly for the mothers. Paving bricks formed pathways in between or around variously-shaped fountains. Trees grew tall, providing shade from the sun as it approached midday. On the other side of the plaza, a large, multi-storied building awaited. The dorm mother pointed to it and said, “Go there. Mother Uroz is waiting for you. You do not know her, but she will know the both of you. She will show you to your new place of residence, and give you further direction.”

  “Will we be able to see any of our friends, or old teachers?” Shervet asked nervously.

  “In time, yes. But Mother Uroz will be able to tell you more. I bid you goodbye, and wish you well.”

  The outer door—somewhere on the flank of the dorm—snapped shut, and Dinah walked woodenly next to Shervet, as they crossed the plaza to their new home.

  Things weren’t much different from before. The hours and schedule were almost exactly the same. Dinah and Shervet even shared a room, built for two. But this room was much larger, and actually had a lavatory of its own. Incredibly small, compared to the communal dorm lavatories Dinah was used to. But the exclusivity of the tiny two-person lavatory seemed almost obscenely luxurious. Neither Dinah nor Shervet could get over it. For a full week, they took turns simply relishing the quiet privacy of the thing.

  Class was more exclusive too. Dinah and Shervet took lessons with only four other lytes, all of varying age. Mother Uroz seemed to have the same timeless quality that Mother Qez possessed, and a dignified manner of speech and movement that suggested great age. Their school subjects were the same, the opening hymns the same, but the material concerning motherhood was greatly enhanced and expanded. Including details on the companion, about which almost nothing had been said by any of the mothers before.

  “Your companion is the key,” said Mother Uroz. “It will be with you from the first day, after your one and only birth. Once implanted, the companion monitors all of your body’s life functions. It also runs the army of microbe-sized machines which will be introduced into your bodies—to ward you against diseases, cancers, sclerotic arteries, and other problems. Without the companion, each of you would die in a matter of decades. With your companion intact and fully functioning, life can be extended dramatically.”

  “How dramatically?” Dinah asked, after turning on her question light.

  “Nobody really knows,” Mother Uroz admitted. “We’ve had the companions for as long as I’ve been alive. To my knowledge, no woman ever given the companion implant has ever died of old age. They have died of other things—usually accidents and injuries—but old age? No. Not yet. Perhaps, not ever.”

  “What’s it like,” Shervet said, leaning forward into the illuminating halo of her own question light.

  “What’s what like?” Mother Uroz asked.

  “To live so long,” Shervet said. “Years upon decades upon... centuries. Do you ever get bored?”

  Mother Uroz’s brow creased, and she seemed about to dismiss the question, then she closed her mouth and considered further. Before responding, she drew up a stool in front of the lectern from which she ordinarily orated, and sat down; her hands folded.

  “In the regular schools, we’d not be obliged to answer such an audacious question. But as you’re all aware, this is not a regular school. Each of you has been, in different ways, deemed precocious. This is a blessing, and a curse. Your minds may be ready to accept knowledge at an uneven or accelerated pace, but your hearts may not be. When a lyte is brought to me, it’s because her imagination is adventuring into territory well beyond her ken. My job is to try to guide you all down the correct paths, without stunting or discouraging your intellect. Our nation needs powerful minds. It’s how we managed to re-forge a better world for ourselves. Here, inside the wall. When all else surrounding us was ash.”

  “Are you old enough to remember the war?” one of the other lytes asked.

  “No,” Mother Uroz responded. “That was long before my time. But I was like you, once. And when my questions threatened to explode out of my skull, I was brought here. The senior mothers helped me to understand. Eventually, I attained motherhood, experienced my one birth, gained a companion, and when I’d lived many, many decades beyond the years of a lyte, I returned here. To help ones such as I had been find their places in our society.”

  Shervet still leaned forward at her desk, the question light not yet darkened.

  “Which,” Mother Uroz said, chuckling at herself, “does not address the original point, Lyte Shervet. Let me put it this way. I have lived three hundred and forty six years. During that time I have seen our nation inside the wall create many wonderful things. We have grown. But not without balance. There are many more of us now, and we’re capable of doing many things. But our progress is restrained. Sensible. To include long journeys beyond the wall—into the wilderness.”

  Now, all the question lights on all the desks illuminated.

  Mother Uroz chuckled again.

  “Yes, I know. You’ve not been told—until now—of the expeditions. Doubtless when some of you are ascended to motherhood, you will have an opp
ortunity to venture out on some future quest for knowledge. Depending on your professions. Going outside for days, weeks, even months, is not for the delicate. There are things you will see out there—places you will visit and experience—which will change you forever. And it’s the change which keeps life interesting. I am not now, who I was one hundred years in the past. And I was not then, who I was one hundred years prior. And so on, and so forth. If there was no opportunity for change, then long life would seem like a prison.”

  “Like with the trogs,” Dinah said under her breath.

  Mother Uroz’s back straightened.

  “What about them?” she said, and suddenly Dinah’s face was turning bright red—Mother Uroz had keen ears.

  “Short life would seem to be as much of a potential prison, as long life,” Dinah said quickly. Then shrank into her seat, hoping she could stop being the sudden center of attention.

  “We’re pretending that a trog has the capacity to grasp what it would mean—to live a short life, versus a long life,” Mother Uroz said confidently. “I’ve had more than my fair share of experience with their kind. In a sense, the trogs are one of nature’s truly unfortunate cases. Almost smart enough, to be civilized. Almost long-lived enough, to attain the kind of wisdom one needs to be a productive member of society. But not quite. Always... not quite. Like a stunted child just intelligent enough to be aware of how she doesn’t measure up to everyone else. We do the trogs a favor, by employing their strength for practical projects that require muscle.”

  “And what about the betas?” Shervet asked.

  “A beta is merely a trog we—the mothers—have chosen to elevate to a higher grade of awareness.”

  “How?”

  “The same medical science that gives us the companion, gives us the ability to make a trog into something more than what it is.”

  “Then why not all the way?” Dinah asked—her question light staying off. She’d forgotten all about pushing the button. And Mother Uroz didn’t seem to care.

  “All the way to what?” Mother Uroz responded.

  “If we can take a trog and make him into a beta, why not take a beta and make the beta into something more like us?”

  Mother Uroz smiled, and shook her head.

  “Do not mistake the limits of our medicine, for lack of compassion. We have tried. Oh yes, our country has tried. The first mothers worked endlessly to uplift the trogs. It’s in the records, which some of you will see eventually, if you yourselves decide to practice medicine. We tried so hard to improve the trogs’ existence—to make them like we are. But it never worked. The closest we could come, was the betas. So, we did what we could with both species. We gave them roles in our world. Roles for which they are most aptly suited. Which is a far, far better thing, than banishing them to the outside. There is no hope beyond the wall. I’ve been out there to see it for myself. No creature would ever want to be condemned to a life outside. Here, on the inside, the betas and the trogs at least have some form of civilization. Clothing. Food. Sanitation. None of you understand precisely how valuable things like clothing, food, and sanitation can be; until you’re forced to do without them.”

  “Can trogs make baby trogs, the way a mother makes a baby lyte?”

  Dinah’s last question—asked of Mother Quez, earlier—stopped Mother Uroz short.

  “What?” she blurted.

  “It makes sense,” Dinah pressed. “Lytes come from mothers, and eventually turn into mothers. The trogs must also come from other trogs. But we’ve never seen a trog be pregnant. What little we see of them at all. Can trogs even get pregnant?”

  “No,” Mother Uroz snapped, and then wiped a hand along the side of her face with exasperation. “I mean, it’s more complicated than you suspect, Lyte Dinah. I was briefed on your specific precociousness, before your arrival here. I know what you saw, that morning, during the field trip. Doubtless the dead trog was a horrible thing to discover, and when you’ve seen something horrible—believe me, I have, more than once—the image sticks in your brain. It fascinates you. So now the trog takes up space within your soul. You cannot get rid of him. You need to understand him. To know what happened, and why.”

  “Yes!” Dinah practically shouted, realizing Mother Uroz understood her predicament.

  “But,” Mother Uroz said—with the mothers, there was always a caveat, “the specifics of procreation—trogs, betas, lytes, mothers—is something not even I can discuss freely, until all of you have had more time with me. To properly prepare you. Some of you might be ready now. Others might not be ready ever. We’re striking a happy medium, and hoping that even with an accelerated learning curve, we’re not exposing you all to too much, too soon. If we did that, we’d be destroying exactly what we’re desiring to build in you. A proper education.”

  A little sigh of disappointment passed through all the lytes. Except for Dinah. Dinah felt a kernel of anger burning in her stomach. Once again, the mothers were being deliberately opaque. It wasn’t fair to Dinah, or Shervet, or any of their new classmates. More than that, Dinah was beginning to suspect that it wasn’t fair to the trogs either.

  Occasionally, Dinah caught sight of her trog—Gebbel—while she was walking the plaza. Funny, she thought, that she’d come to regard him as hers. Almost always, Gebbel was part of a work crew, engaged in some aspect of plaza maintenance. Trimming the verge, or re-laying the pavers into a new configuration. He never looked up at her, whether Dinah was near or far. But she sensed that he was aware of her presence, and deliberately trying to not let it be known. The betas would notice, and make their displeasure felt with their pain flails.

  There were other trogs with whom Dinah began to acquaint herself, too. Some of them were regulars inside the school, performing some aspect of building maintenance, or carrying equipment at the behest of an instructor. Most of the trogs were obviously old. But a few of them were young, and it was one of the young ones—who seemed to always be helping Mother Evlun—who showed up mysteriously in the school hallways one night.

  Dinah only saw him, because she was out of her bed, trying to pace off her insomnia. She’d not slept well since departing the old school. Many nights, she lay in her bunk and stared up into the dark, unable to quiet her mind. Until literal exhaustion swept her off to oblivion. On this particular night, she’d decided to actively attack the problem, and slipped out of her bed with a mouse’s care, so as not to disturb Shervet, who softly snored.

  If trying to lay still wasn’t doing her any good, Dinah was going to burn off her anxious energy. A stroll ought to do the trick. But lytes were forbidden in the plaza after dark. So the interior of the school—that section portioned off for quarters—was all she had to work with.

  Dinah didn’t get a close look at the young trog. She spied yellow light coming from the end of one of the many corridors—usually, at this hour, lit simply by the moon’s pale energy; passing through windows in the walls—and peered around the corner just in time to see the trog being beckoned through an adult’s apartment door.

  Mother Evlun’s to be precise. No beta in sight.

  When the door closed, Dinah could not contain her curiosity. So she soft-footed her way toward the door, and waited at the archway for over a minute—looking as shadows moved around in the thin band of yellow light that projected beneath the edge of the door itself.

  Then, the light went out. And as Dinah stood there, motionless and listening, the most unusual sounds began to come from inside. Muffled, of course—the doors here were as thick as they’d been at the old school. But the intensity of the sounds escalated, until a rhythmic thumping against furniture could be heard, along with skin slapping skin.

  For a moment, Dinah almost screamed in alarm—because it sounded like Mother Evlun was being hurt.

  Dinah kept quiet, though, when Evlun’s voice distinctly cried out the words “More!” and “Yes!” in repetitive, breathless, interpolated succession.

  These were not the sounds of harm being do
ne. In fact, as Dinah listened intently—her head practically pressed to the door proper—she realized that what she was hearing was something similar to the touch. But much more energetic and feral than anything Dinah had ever done with Shervet. It seemed as if Mother Evlun and the young trog might shake the apartment apart. Then both Mother Evlun and the Trog engaged in a drawn out, mutual groan—that seemed to last for many seconds—and silence returned.

  Eventually, light returned beneath the door. Dinah’s heart leapt into her throat, and she scurried back down the corridor the way she’d come, until she was hidden again behind the corner. She watched from a safe distance as the door opened, and the young trog reappeared—adjusting and buttoning his dirty coveralls. Mother Evlun’s head appeared, as did her shoulders, which were bare. She and the trog both looked to the left, and then to the right, waiting and listening. Then came the most astonishing thing of all. Mother Evlun pushed her head forward and pressed her mouth to the trog’s mouth. He pushed back. And for several seconds, the two of them seemed to be rubbing faces. Then contact was broken quickly, Mother Evlun shut the door, and the young trog disappeared in the opposite direction—seemingly navigating in the dark with the swiftness of a cat.

  Dinah slipped back into her room, and laid down on her bed. Her heart was beating heavily in her chest. What had she just witnessed? Everything about it seemed obscene. No, worse than obscene. It was an abomination. And yet, the remembered sounds of Mother Evlun exclaiming “Yes!” and “More!” could not be wiped from Dinah’s mind. Those had been the sounds of joy, uttered with uncaring abandon. Is that what it would be like, to do the touch with Gebbel?

  Dinah spent the rest of the night wondering.

  Weeks passed into months. The shock of discovering the dead trog, had faded. But Dinah’s curiosity about live trogs, was greater than ever before. Twice more, Dinah observed the same young trog visiting Mother Evlun’s apartment in the middle of the night. Each time, Dinah told Shervet all about it—the following morning—but Shervet didn’t seem to care.