The Society

by A I Knowles

  I focus on the two girls. I know who they’re referring to. We’ve been studying World War 2, and one of the soldiers in the ancient video was...well, the charitable descriptor would be “plain.” With a heavy brow and a perpetual sneer, his face was enough to make some girls cringe in disgust, if those around the table were any indication. Linea was the only one who didn’t nod in agreement.

  “That’s not kind.”

  Shana frowns at me. “What? Surely they had...ways...even back then.”

  I’m starting to think I’m the only one who even pays attention to what we’re taught. “I mean, they were all starving, and they had to use alternate metals to make their currency because copper was needed for bullets, but sure. I’m sure they had the time and the resources to make facial alterations.”

  “Presenting a good face to the world is important.” Lakasha flips her hair over her shoulder.

  I gape at the four of them in shock. Crying gets us medicated, but this kind of talk is fine? “I’d think staying alive was more of a priority than looking nice. All faces look kind of the same when they’re crushed and covered in blood.”

  When the other girls gasp in horror, I almost regret the graphic nature of my comment. Almost. They deserved it, though. I turn my attention to my plate and spear some eggs on my fork.

  “Presentation is important, Alyss!” They continue in this vein for a while, but I ignore them. Linea catches my eyes and gives me the tiniest of smiles. At least one person gets me. At least we aren’t all budding sociopaths who think appearances are more important than food and shelter.

  When the bell rings, we all rise from the bench in unison and take our trays back to our respective niches. My throat feels tight from forcing down the tasteless oatmeal through the tension created by the conversation, but leaving food on my plate isn’t worth the forced trip to the infirmary. If only I could get the androids to understand that actual human beings have daily variations in things such as appetite and energy levels...but no. They’re all too far removed from the sensations of human life to remember what it feels like to be at the mercy of an imperfect body.

  My tray slides onto its little shelf, and I turn to follow the rest of the girls as they walk to the opposite end of the mess hall. We pass underneath the arch and step into the relatively dim light of another featureless corridor. This one curves to the left, and we are blessed with a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that allow bright sunlight to spill onto the floor and give us a passing view of the exercise yard. The little Vacbot is still busily collecting the orange-tinged leaves that flutter to the ground. They are the first, and the only hints of autumn we ever see inside the Compound. Soon we will wake up each morning to frost-rimmed glass and eventually a blanket of snow and ice.

  Upon reaching the classrooms, I return Linea’s wave and stand in front of the frosted-glass door with my name on it. When it hisses aside, I step into the tiny room with the chair and desk identical to those in my bedroom, and the featureless white wall. Sliding into the chair, I pick up the stylus on the desk and rock the chair back on two legs while I wait for the screen to light up. The room is empty but for the chair, desk, and screen.

  After a moment a musical hum emanates from the wall, and a rectangle of it brightens.

  “Good morning, Alyss.” The bright female voice sounds annoyingly similar to that of the Headmistress.

  I repeat the expected greeting. “Good morning, Teacher.” Unlike most of the robots and androids here, Teacher has no body. She is AI in its purest form, a disembodied voice coming from a screen. There’s a rumor among the girls that she used to be human, and had her consciousness uploaded to the teaching system rather than take on an android body. I don’t know what to believe. All I know is that such a fate sounds like my own personal version of hell.

  “Did you sleep well?”

  I tap the stylus against the desk’s top impatiently. “Well enough, thank you.”

  “Good.” The text of my math lesson sprawls across the screen. I stare at it for a moment until the algorithms resolve into something that makes sense to my tired brain. “Please begin. Speak up if you have any questions.”

  For the next hour, I scribble out the equations on the desktop, then type in the answers on the keyboard once I come to my conclusions. When the hour’s up, the screen hums and displays the pages of my English work. I ask Teacher when I have questions, but mostly I work in silence.

  After English comes history. I’m allowed a ten-minute break to go to the bathroom across the hall and get a drink. When the flickering footage of WWII lights up the screen, I find myself remembering the conversation at breakfast. The ugly man from yesterday doesn’t make a reappearance. I almost wish he would. I wish Shana, Lakesha and the twins could be faced with the dying screams of a man they decided to look down on simply because of his appearance. Maybe something would get through to them, make them realize how cold-hearted they were being.

  Or maybe they are just too sheltered by their life of comfort and privilege to care.

  At noon, the screens turn off and we are released for a half-hour to eat lunch.

  I silently pick at the lettuce on my fake-turkey sandwich. I’m just not hungry today. The remnants of my nightmare plague me, fragments of dream-sequences my mind can barely remember. The sensation puts me on edge and steals away my appetite. The four girls ignore me, which is fine with me. Their callous lack of concern for a real human life baffles me. It’s like they see him as nothing more than pixels on a screen, rather than the very real and visceral part of history that he is. Maybe that’s it. Maybe they don’t have my curse of imagination, and they’re content to exist in their own world without caring what goes on outside it.

  After lunch, we return to our classrooms for two more classes.

  Then we’re released to the exercise yard where we spend two hours either walking in circles, or following a Nandroid as she teaches us a very awkward approximation of a discipline I’m told was once called “yoga.” Thin mats are spread on the ground, each one a different shade of blue. The mats and the tree are the most colorful things in our surroundings now that the sun has disappeared behind sullen clouds. I’ve got to admit...watching a gangly metal body demonstrate “downward dog” is funny enough that I’m glad it can’t see my inability to keep a straight face. It doesn’t look like any dog I’ve ever seen. When Linea catches my eye, she grins at me in a rare moment of shared mirth. I watch sadly as her smile soon disappears, and her face returns to that blank expression she usually wears.

  Once outside time is finished, we have a tasteless dinner, then a couple hours of free time. We’re allowed to spend in the mess hall, the yard, or our bedrooms. This evening, I choose to fetch my drawing supplies from my room and I retreat to the yard, which is now empty except for the tree and the spastic little Vacbot that is determined to never let a leaf meet the ground for more than a moment.

  Eschewing the concrete benches, I pick a spot along the wall and slide down to sit on the cold floor with my back against the wall. My throw blanket is wrapped around my shoulders and I prop my sketchpad on my drawn-up knees. Leaning my head back against the wall, I close my eyes and inhale the crisp air until my lungs ache. When I can’t possibly hold any more, I let it out in a rush, and open my eyes to stare at the tree.

  I could sketch this tree by heart after so many years. But I’ve found that every new angle brings to light some detail I’ve missed before. As the daylight fades, little glowing lights turn on around the tree’s base and along the top of the walls, until the scene looks almost magical. The leaves are outlined in the pink and orange glow of the sunset, and lit from below by the white glow. The clouds have dissipated into wisps, rendered in molten colors by the fading light.

  Putting pencil to paper, I sketch the way the tree’s branches stretch away from the top of the trunk. I draw the interlacing lines, the random knobs, the paths that thin into twigs no wider than the tip of my pencil.

  As I glance between my
sketchpad and the tree, I have this intense wish to see beyond the top of the compound walls. To sketch a tree different than this one, or a mountain range like the ones I see in school. My fingers ache to touch growing things, to feel the warmth and growth of life rather than this constant coldness of concrete and metal.

  I know none of these things exist out there, but my heart insists they must even as my brain knows all I would find is emptiness and dead earth. I’ve seen the pictures and the movies of desolate land, of the twisting bones of trees that reach toward the sky like desperate fingers. Sometimes they show us the vistas side-by-side: green and lush next to barren and dead. They say the world is colder now that there are fewer trees and plants to produce carbon dioxide. They tell us the weather is more volatile, with snowier winters and summers plagued by tornadoes and hurricanes. I wouldn’t know. This is the only world I’ve ever known.

  When the bedtime bell sounds, I gather up my things and make my way back to my room. On the way there, all I find is empty corridors and a mess hall that echoes back the scuffing of my slippers on the shining floor.

  I pass beneath the arch and into the hallway that leads to the sleeping quarters. A couple moments later, I stand at my door, which hisses aside to admit me. Setting the sketchpad on the desk, I strip out of my uniform and toss it in a heap in the corner before pulling on the soft shirt and sweatpants which are neatly folded at the end of my bed. The room has been cleaned to spotlessness since I left this morning. Everything I left messy is gone or put back in its place. There isn’t a wrinkle or smudge in sight.

  “Computer, play bedtime music.” The screen fills with dim light and the gentle strains of instrumental music flow through the air.

  Pulling the bedspread back, I climb between the sheets and spread the throw blanket over the top. I lay on my back and stare at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to provide the dividing line between days no different than the other hundreds which came before them. Despite my misgivings, I can’t help a sense of longing for the day when I’ll get to see something beyond these gray walls.

  The song I’ve heard a thousand times before tugs me toward oblivion with the strains of soothing cello and flutes.

  ***

  The alarm and the sun wake me. So begins yet another day in the Compound. I go to breakfast, then school. After school and dinner, the Nandroids ask us to do a half-hour jog around the exercise yard. I pick up the running shoes that have been set on a bench in the yard, setting my everyday ones beneath it. Mo and Jo laugh over something, and Lakasha complains about having to run in a skirt.

  On this subject, I can’t blame her. For a set of androids which have so much knowledge of how to raise children, there sure are some odd gaps in their awareness of humanity. But there’s no use complaining to a Nandroid. It’s more likely to lose me free time than it is to get us permission to change into clothes more suited for exercise.

  For a third of an hour, we settle into a rhythm of pounding shoes and panting breaths as we run in a group around the yard. Despite her whining about the skirt, or perhaps because of it, Lakasha seems to feel she has to be better than the rest of us, and sets off at a sprint. She actually gets away with it until she runs past Jo a little too fast, and the short, stocky girl puts a foot at just the wrong angle, sending them both tumbling to the ground.

  Linea rolls her eyes when she knows I’m looking at her, and the two of us keep running while Jo, Lakasha, and a Nandroid have a disagreement over who’s at fault. I run with my friend, our feet hitting the ground in unison, our strides matched despite the difference in our heights. Even when the twenty minutes is up and Linea waves at me, then goes inside to shower, I keep running. I run until my lungs ache and the first of the lights come on beneath the tree.

  When I collapse on a bench and remove the running shoes, a Vacbot zooms out from beneath it, chittering at me madly before rolling out to start picking up the leaves on the pavement.

  I laugh. “I’m sorry!” I call after it, even though I know it won’t reply. The irritated beeping is all the response I’m going to get. After I’ve put my normal shoes back on and set the white running ones on the bench, I stand and head back to my room just as the buzzer sounds to signal the end of free time. The door from the yard opens into the mess hall near the corridor which would lead me to the school rooms. I head right and walk through the empty room. The arch of the corridor passes over my head, plunging me into semi-darkness. The soles of my shoes hitting the floor are the only sound.

  The darkness and silence is eerie. I almost wish there was some other sound, even if it has to be the voices of the other girls chattering. They must have all gone to their rooms already. I expect Lakasha has earned herself a removal of free-time privileges, and possibly Jo as well. It all depends on whether the Nandroid’s algorithms were able to ascertain who was at fault. Usually they are just confused by arguments and end up issuing demerits or punishments to everyone involved.

  “Alyssss…”

  Drawing in a sharp breath, I spin around. “Hello?” A trickle of fear snakes down my spine, though I quickly squash it. We’re safe here. Don’t be ridiculous. Yet, despite looking all around me, both up and down the empty corridor, I can’t see anyone. All I can see is the soft white glow of the lights along the base of the walls. After a few moments, during which the sound does not repeat, I shake off my trepidation and continue walking toward my room. Fear drives me to break into a trot until I find myself impatiently waiting for my door to open.

  Once I’m inside, I order the lights to full strength and drop my uniform in the corner before indulging in the day’s second shower.

  You were hearing things, Alyss. It was nothing. Just an overactive imagination.

  As the hot water beats on my tense shoulders and the soap bubbles swirl down the drain, I almost manage to convince myself I’d just imagined that bodiless voice which hissed my name in the corridor.

  Almost.

  Chapter 2: The Voice

  I wake to darkness that is relieved only by the faintest of glows from the window and the bathroom nightlight. For a long moment, I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling, trying to discern what woke me. All I can remember is fleeting glimpses of a disturbing dream: one in which voices whispered my name in the dark, and ghostly fingers grasped at my sleeves.

  Unable to face sleep again, I sit up and pull the throw blanket from where a Cleanbot folded it at the foot of the mattress. Throwing it around my shoulders, I rise and walk over to sit on the window ledge. I lean my head against the glass and stare at the few stars which are visible between the tree branches and the wall. Soon the leaves will fall. Soon more stars will appear. Soon, the walls of this place will feel just a little less confining.

  Sometimes it’s hard to believe that in two months I’ll be leaving this place behind forever. It’s difficult to imagine stepping from my regimented, controlled life straight into an immortality of freedom and endless choice.

  It’s strange. The Society professes to know what’s best for us, and to train us in ways that will best prepare us for adulthood, but is this really best? A childhood of zero choice, then thrown directly into a life where we can define ourselves down to the length of our eyelashes and the width of our nose? There is no logic behind it, and nothing about it makes any sense.

  The screen over the desk chimes quietly, as it does every hour, and the time scrolls across it. Five. Three hours until I have to be at my door, waiting to be let out for breakfast. Three and a half until I’m locked in a cubicle. Seven until lunch. Twelve until dinner, thirteen until free time, and fifteen until I have to return to my room. I’ve spent nearly half my life inside this space with nothing to look at but my bed and the tree outside the window.

  Over and over and over, the pattern repeats. Every day the same. We might as well be computers ourselves. Sometimes I dream of a whole day spent doing whatever I want, with no schedules, no cameras, and no rules. I imagine being able to sit on a hillside or the beach and sketch or
paint until my fingers cramp and my eyes grow blurry. To be able to listen to the kinds of music my ancestors enjoyed, songs of which I’ve heard only half-minute snippets in school. I would be happy just to be able to choose my own clothing, to wear something in a color other than gray and white.

  A headache pricks behind my eyes. Though the pain is mild, it seems as good an excuse as any. I slide to the floor and pad to my door in my socks. When I stand in front of the frosted glass, it speaks. The male voice echoes through my room. “Alyss, it is not time for breakfast. Please return to your bed.”

  “I have a headache. I want to go to the infirmary.”

  “Very well. Feel better, Alyss.”

  Even though I know it’s just a computer, as the door hisses aside and I step through, I respond.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” The mild voice trails after me as I turn to the right down the part of the corridor which will take me to the infirmary.

  It’s not until I’ve already passed the room next to mine and I’m in the blank stretch of corridor leading to the infirmary that I remember what happened the last time I walked this hall. I shudder and pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders. I can’t remember the last time I was out of my room in my pajamas. I don’t even have shoes on. The scuff of my socks on the floor creates the barest of echoes as I walk. I can hear the sound of my own heartbeat and each breath as it enters and exits my lungs.