by Charles Ray
As the workers cleared the ash, the nasal tone of The Chairman would issue from the loudspeakers that were placed at intervals throughout the prole community, “Dear people, residents of New Liberty, yet again those who have put their own selfish needs above those of the community have paid the price for that selfishness. They are finally contributing to the community in a meaningful way. May peace be with you.”
As the last of the ashes were cleared, proles made their way back to their hovels, most, happy that this year they had not been selected for culling. Those looking at their nineteenth year coming, wondering if their names would be on the list at the next event. Heads bowed, not speaking, not making eye contact with the person standing next to them, for fear that they might be looking at someone scheduled to become one with the earth.
The monitors, other than those assigned security and patrol duty in the community, formed ranks and marched back across the river.
1.
2072 AD/18 A.A. – New Liberty
Columbus Heights Crèche
“Mr. Jefferson, you are not paying attention,” the stentorian tones of Octavia Olympus, head of the Columbus Heights Crèche, yanked Hiroshi Jefferson from his reverie.
With her orange hair piled high atop her narrow head, her grayish-orange complexion, and the dull-green one-piece dress draped over her skinny frame, she looked like some of the vegetables Hiroshi had to harvest from the fields to the west of the crèche, where he spent the time when he wasn’t working, in the company of two hundred other children ranging in age from newborn infant to Hiroshi’s eighteen years. He’d been a resident of Columbus Heights since just before he turned seven, unlike the others who had been placed there immediately after birth, and had never quite adapted to the norms of behavior expected of crèche residents. While Olympus found his behavior disruptive, she also found herself often drawn to him – an attraction she could not explain.
“Sorry, Miss Olympus,” he said without a trace of sincerity. “I’m still tired I guess. They had us working late yesterday harvesting potatoes.” That, at least, was true. His work crew hadn’t been allowed to return to the crèche until well after sunset.
“You are to address me as headmaster, Mr. Jefferson,” she said. Hiroshi could feel the chill in her voice. She looked around the room at the other students who sat alert, their bright eyes on her. “Your sector mates had to work late as well, but I don’t see them daydreaming.”
“Yes, headmaster,” he said, looking away from her piercing gaze. As his head turned, he caught the eye of his best friend, Washington Benedict, also eighteen, who sat across the crowded classroom from him.
Washington, his dark brown face impassive, returned his gaze. Then, his full lips twitched up slightly and he slowly closed his left eye. This was as much as he dared do to support his friend’s rebelliousness, but for Hiroshi it was enough.
The two boys had been friends from the day that Hiroshi had been taken from his parents and transported to Columbus Heights. Washington, who had been in the crèche since birth, had never known his own parents, and as a consequence was curious about Hiroshi, who had spent so much time with a mother and father rather than the impersonal crèche attendants. For Hiroshi, it had been a way to retain the memory of his own parents as he and Washington sneaked from their cots at night when the attendants were less attentive, and talked for hours in a darkened storage closet at the back of the sleeping room where fifty children were housed.
As time went on, what had begun out of curiosity had developed into a close bond. The two boys became as close as blood brothers ever could. They were inseparable, and at the age of ten had sworn oaths of loyalty. Washington was fascinated by Hiroshi’s stories of a life that he’d never known, and Hiroshi kept alive the memory of his mother, Junko, a tiny woman with delicate features and a musical laugh, and his father Ulysses, a mountain of a man, with skin the color of mahogany, who, despite his immense strength, was as gentle as a spring breeze.
Hiroshi had inherited his mother’s delicate features and size, and his father’s physical strength and indomitable will, which in the regimented environment of the crèche, where conformity and immediate obedience were the first two rules, meant that he was constantly in trouble, even from the beginning.
“Tell me, Mr. Jefferson,” Olympus said, looming over Hiroshi, her orange hair blocking the light from the grim-spattered window. “What is the first rule of the community?”
Hiroshi took a deep breath. He regarded the headmaster levelly, his dark brown almond-shaped eyes not betraying the emotions that raged beneath the surface. The only sign of his anger, and only his friend Washington noticed this, was the two faint circles of red that blossomed on his light brown cheeks.
“The first rule of the community,” he said quietly. “Is that the needs of the community come before the needs of the individual.”
His gaze locked with Olympus. A muscle in her cheek twitched. This was the one student; she thought of them as students rather than inmates, which was how they thought of themselves; that she could not fathom. He was intelligent, far more so than any of the others, but he had a stubborn streak that she could not understand. Finally, when she could take it no longer, she wrenched her gaze away.
“Very good . . . Mr. Jackson,” she said, struggling to maintain control of her voice. She glanced at the chrono on her wrist; nearly lunch hour. She breathed a sigh of relief; an hour away from that boy and those piercing eyes. “That will be all, children. You may go to lunch now.”
She almost fled from the room.
“I don’t think the headmaster likes you,” Washington said as they walked shoulder to shoulder toward the canteen.
“Well, the feeling is mutual,” Hiroshi said. “I especially hate the way she treats us like animals in a zoo.”
“What’s a zoo?”
“You forget already, Wash? I told you; a zoo was a place where they kept all the animals in cages, and people would go and look at them.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember now,” Washington said. “Wow, Hirosh, where’d you learn stuff like that?”
Although his parents’ faces were dimly remembered after nearly eleven years, the one memory that was clear in Hiroshi’s mind was that of the times his father had taken him to the secret place near their residence, the place of the books. He remembered his father reading to him from the thick, dusty volumes, reading of strange places and fascinating people and events. Most clear, though, was his father’s warning: “You must never ever tell anyone of this place, Hiroshi. The Committee doesn’t know it wasn’t destroyed in the great purge. If they discover it, all of this knowledge will die, and anyone associated with it will be killed.”
A young Hiroshi didn’t understand his father’s warning at first. But, when the black-uniformed Monitors, their faces masked by dark visors, came to take his mother and father away, and transport him to the crèche, he understood. The Monitors worked for The Committee; the shadowy body on the other side of the turgid, brown waters of the forbidden river that ruled their lives; a body that had the power of life and death over those living in New Liberty. He had never spoken of the place of books to anyone, not even his friend Washington.
“My father used to tell me stories,” he said. “They still had zoos, and libraries and stuff like that when he was a boy.”
As they entered the line of boys and girls waiting to enter the dining facility, they lowered their voices. Not that anyone was paying them any attention, but they’d learned to be cautious with their conversations over the years.
“I remember libraries,” Washington said. “You said that was a place where they kept books, and people could go and read them, right?”
“That’s right.” Hiroshi nodded and patted his friend’s shoulder. “You could even borrow books to take home.”
“You’re making that up.” Washington’s eyes went round. In his world, there were only a few books, the Book of Apocalypse, which was required reading for every prole in New Liberty
who’d past the age of ten, and the instruction manuals for the machines proles used in their work; most of the latter were primarily pictures, with text only when an operation couldn’t be adequately portrayed in the cartoon-like pictures. None of these, however, could be removed from the crèche reading room, and could only be read under the watchful eye of the headmaster or one of the attendants. The idea that an individual could actually possess a book, and read it unsupervised, was alien to him.
“I am not,” Hiroshi insisted. “That’s what my father told me, and my father never lied.”
Washington could only shake his head. His friend had indeed had an incredible childhood, or he was the best storyteller Washington had ever seen.
Near the entrance the line slowed as attendants checked the name of each child entering. Beyond the double-wide door frame, they could hear the disembodied female voice that sounded so much like Headmaster Olympus coming over the loudspeakers set at intervals around the walls inside the dining facility, “The good of the community is superior to the good of the individual. The highest achievement of the individual is to contribute to the community.” These, and similar, slogans were heard everywhere within the crèche except the classrooms, where attendants did little else but spout them. The announcements began at first light and continued until lights out. Hiroshi had learned to tune them out.
“What mischief are you two up to?” a cheerful voice said from behind them.
Clementine Adams squeezed between the two boys and linked her arms with theirs. While Washington towered over her five-two form, Hiroshi’s height had come from his mother; he was only three inches taller. Where the two boys were dark, her skin was as pale as fine porcelain. She had an oval face, a small, turned up nose above lips that were naturally red and always smiling. Her light blue eyes also seemed to smile.
She had, like Washington, been taken from her parents at birth and raised in the crèche. But, unlike Washington’s parents, who had been mere laborers, Clementine’s father ran the largest dry good store in the prole community, which enabled the Adams family to get visitation rights. They could meet with their only child for one hour each month, under the supervision of one of the crèche attendants. At no time during the visits were they allowed to identify themselves as her parents, a strange situation at first, but by the time Clementine was ten she’d figured out who they were anyway – she continued, however, to play the game, pretending that these two nice people were just members of the prole community who liked spending time with children. She was one of a very few children in the crèche who were entitled to visits, so it hadn’t been hard to figure it out.
Like Washington, she’d been fascinated by Hiroshi. He’d actually spent his first seven years with a mother and father, in a family. In addition, she found his small, muscular frame and dark good looks fascinating; more so as they reached puberty. Hiroshi hadn’t noticed her at first as anything other than in interesting friend, but he too, as the hormonal rush of puberty hit him, noticed that she was interesting in other ways as well. He knew that Washington had also noticed the way her hips had started flaring from her narrow waist, and how the top half of the singlet she wore protruded in different ways than his own did.
Having been raised in the sterile environment of the crèche, though, none of them truly understood the conflicting emotions they felt. The only thing they knew for certain was that they were friends and that as friends they had to stick together. As was their usual practice, they found a table in the far corner of the meal room, somewhat away from the others, and after getting trays containing the gray, unrecognizable mass that passed for food, retired to ‘their’ corner.
“Okay, you two,” Clementine said as she frowned down at the lumpy food on the plastic plate. “You didn’t answer my question; what were you two talking about?”
Washington shoved a spoonful of the gunk into his mouth, wrinkled his nose, chewed a few times and then swallowed, making a gulping noise.
“Eeyew, this stuff tastes worse every meal,” he said. He took a drink of tepid water from his plastic cup. “Hirosh was telling me this tall tale about places called libraries, where people could go and get books to read.”
“It wasn’t a tall tale,” Hiroshi insisted. “Honest, Clem, my father told me there were places like that, and my father would never lie to me.”
Clementine looked at Hiroshi, her eyes wide.
“Your father was born in the time before, right?”
“Of course,” Hiroshi said. “I was born in Year One.” He turned to Washington. “You were too, Wash. You and me, we’re among the few people born in the first year of Apocalypse.”
Clementine nodded.
“My paren-, er, the people who come visit me, were born in the time before, too. They don’t talk about it, but I get a feeling they remember things like that. I believe you Hiroshi. It was different in the time before.”
“See, Clem believes me,” Hiroshi said. “It’s true, too.”
Washington shook his head.
“Wow! That must have been something. I mean, being able to read anything you wanted to read.”
“Learning is useful only if it serves the community,” the disembodied voice said, as if it had heard Washington’s remark.
The three of them giggled, covering their mouths to try and avoid attracting too much attention.
Then, as they looked around, their eyes went wide. An attendant, dressed in a singlesuit, the same dull green color as the dress Olympus wore, only with pants that clung to her, as both Hiroshi and Washington noticed, shapely legs, was heading their way. The effect of her shapely form was ruined by the boys by the dull look in her blue eyes. All of the attendants had blue eyes, and they all had the uninterested expressions of sleepwalkers.
It was clear that she was coming to their table. Hiroshi wondered if maybe they’d been talking too loud and been overheard. If so, they’d be in trouble for engaging in conversation about one of the forbidden subjects – books. In his early days, before he’d learned the taboos, he’d been punished often for talking about things that were banned; books, families, individual activities. He’d learned, though, to keep such things to himself, or to discuss them quietly with the only two people he could trust, Clementine and Washington.
His heart was pounding so when the attendant stopped at their table, he was sure she could hear it. He held his breath.
“Mr. Jackson, Mr. Benedict,” she said in that boring, droning voice that all the attendants had. “I have your work assignments for the afternoon.
Hiroshi let out his breath.
“You will report to the animal area where you will clean out the pig and chicken enclosures immediately at the end of the meal period.”
Her duty done, the attendant spun on her heels and silently glided across the dining facility toward the exit.
Washington and Clementine were making sour faces.
“I think maybe I’ll eat supper alone,” Clementine said, pinching her nostrils together. “And, maybe even breakfast tomorrow.”
“Aw, come on; it’s not really that bad,” Washington said. But, there was no conviction in his voice. “Besides, that new cedar scent disinfectant they have in the bath unit is pretty good.”
“Yeah,” Hiroshi chimed in. “It makes you smell like pig manure in a cedar forest. If I could avoid being around me after shoveling pig shit for four hours, I would.”
Washington shrugged and laughed.
“And, the chicken pens aren’t much better.”
“To work diligently for the benefit of the community benefits all.”
2.
The Committee
Across the turgid brown waters of the forbidden river, formerly known as the Potomac, nestled amid a tangled profusion of lush green trees and vines, sits a massive five-sided structure. The mottled grey concrete walls are covered in gnarled vines of English ivy that cling like great green snakes, covering the fly-specked windows. The wide expanse around the building, once parkin
g lots for thousands of vehicles, was now broken slabs of concrete covered with trees and vines, with narrow paths cut through leading to the high-rise buildings to the north and south.
The building, which once housed over 30,000 workers, was now home to the members of The Committee of New Liberty, their immediate families, aides, security guards, and retainers who served their every need. The only exception was Gravius-One, commander of the monitors, who had his residence in a one-story brick building, a few hundred yards away, from where he oversaw the activities of several hundred black-clad monitors.
From the second floor to the top of the headquarters were the residences, dining facilities, hospital, stores, and schools that served the elite of New Liberty’s citizens; those permitted to live west of the forbidden river. Residents of the building were the ruling elite, while the managers, caretakers, security forces, and attendants who oversaw the proles living to the east of the river, behind barriers and a razor-sharp fence, whose labor provided the clothing, food, and tools used by citizens, lived in high-rise buildings to the north and south. The building, like New Liberty itself, was encircled by a twelve-foot-high fence topped with razor wire, and guarded by black-suited Monitors; specially selected members of the security force. The ground floor contained administrative offices to which citizens with special passes could go to submit petitions, answer summons, or receive instructions. Below this were two subterranean floors, to which only the high ranking members of The Committee and specially-assigned Monitors were granted admittance.
In a special room in the lowest basement, a circular room with large monitor screens on the walls, seated around a large circular table, the members of The Committee met on a weekly basis, or when called by the Chairman.
