Resolution 234. The government-sanctioned eradication of Primis. Their first step in creating a race of invulnerable superhumans designed to win an unwinnable war.
“My great-grandfather hated everything about it. I was old enough to know him before he died; they say that Primis are inferior, built to break early, but he lived to one-hundred-and-two. In the months before he died, he would argue with my father constantly about Resolution 234. ‘Humanity can only be borne of love,’ he’d say. ‘Robots will only create robots.’ He never agreed with my father’s decision to raise a Civi, but the thought of anyone voting for a sterilisation program incensed him.
“After the resolution passed, he would sit with me at his kitchen table, like we do now, and tell me about the old ways. The old world. He would point to scars, long spidery lines on his wrinkly skin, and tell me how he got them. And he would say to me, ‘these scars aren’t flaws, Henry. They aren’t something ugly to be wished away or erased. They are stories, evidence of our choices, signs of our humanity. They are beautiful.”
Ella stared at him, mesmerised by the story and the love and melancholy that ran through it. Papa never spoke about the past and she had never pressed him on it.
“On the night before my sterilisation, he met me after school. He and my father no longer spoke—‘politics divides families’—so he would find me in the park or playground just to see me, to ask about my life. ‘Tomorrow is a big day for you, Henry. Are you nervous?’ I was worried he was going to start another argument, pick up with me where he and father had left off. But he just handed me some boiled lollies. ‘For tomorrow morning, before you leave the apartment,’ he said. ‘They’ll help with the nausea.’
“He didn’t have to tell me not to tell Father, I’d always kept our visits secret. And he was a pharmacist as a young man, had always given me home-made remedies, even though my Civi body didn’t need them. But that was the thing about him, he was always so good to me—supportive, gentle, earnest—taking his remedies was a kindness to him.”
“He stopped the sterilisation?”
Papa eased the car to the side of the road and switched off the ignition. Without the hum of the engine or rattling of chains, there was only the sound of their breathing. It was a while before Papa looked at her, and when he did, he did not meet her eyes.
“No,” he murmured. “That is the ending I wanted for this story. What I wanted to be able to tell you. I’ve told it to myself for years, have almost come to believe it, even though I’ve never spoken it aloud until today.” He looked up at her. “The sterilisation worked as it should. The only thing my great-grandfather changed was my understanding, my perspective. He made me compassionate, he made me appreciate our humanity, he made me understand that true beauty comes from our flaws, that we are perfect in our imperfections.”
Ella pressed a hand to her stomach, trying in vain to hold back the sudden nausea and claustrophobia. “Papa?” she whispered.
He smiled sadly. “I am your Papa. I’ll always be your Papa, just like my father will always be my father. Our connection is a bond that will never be severed. But it is not a genetic bond, Ella. And I am sorry—” His voice broke and he scrubbed at his eyes. “Oh, Ella, I am so sorry I never told you. You have been the best thing to have ever happened to me. I have loved you from the moment your tiny hand gripped my finger. I had planned on telling you when you were old enough to understand, but…”
But there is never a good time to tell someone you are not their father.
“And Mama? Did…” Did you lie about her too?
“I knew her only for a short time. She was not much older than you when I found her hiding in the basement of our old apartment building. She had run away from a secret commune the objectionists had set up somewhere in the mountains. You were only a few weeks old and both of you were weak and sick…”
He lapsed into a silence she didn’t break. There were no more questions; she knew the rest of the story. A few months later the Government had picked her mother up, her growing chest infection too noticeable to be hidden. There were two types of Primis they hunted--those born before the Resolution and those with a fatal error, an RNA malfunction that remained hidden until something triggered its manifestation. Not knowing about the commune, they had assumed she was RNA defective. And they had killed her.
Just like they would kill Ella.
“I couldn’t save her,” Papa said, his voice grown tired and soft. “But I will save you Ella. I promise. I will save you.”
***
They met Jonas in an abandoned shed a half-mile down a dirt road off the highway hidden by trees. Papa had left their car two miles away in a hospital carpark, and he and Ella had trudged through snow the rest of the way. By morning, the fresh snow would cover their tracks.
“You shouldn’t have come here.” Jonas’ eyes twitched nervously and his hands pulled and smoothed the frayed ends of his woollen jumper. The three of them sat on wooden pallets stacked in the middle of the room and covered with scratchy hessian sacks, Jonas on one, Papa and Ella sharing the other.
“We have no time left,” Papa said. “We need to see the surgeon.”
“I told you I would contact you. Things need to be in place before it can go ahead.” He looked from Papa to Ella, scratched at his arms, shifted on his pallet. “We don’t know if she is compatible.”
Papa reached down and grabbed Ella’s hand. He squeezed it gently and didn’t let go. “She will die in any case. The surgery is our only hope.”
“The surgeon will not like it. She is not one to be told where to be and when to be there. These are dangerous times. We need to be more careful.”
“But it can be done?” Ella asked.
“It is too reckless. The surgery is never in the same place. There are government raids every other month. We haven’t tested you for the anaesthesia. You should wait.”
“We don’t need to involve you, Jonas,” Papa said gently. “I understand that you have already risked enough. Just tell us where the surgery was the last time and we will go alone.”
“But it may not be there.”
“It’s a risk we’ll take.”
Jonas sighed loudly, spittle flying from his lips. “Fine. But you will need someone to go with you. Someone the surgeon trusts. I’ll send Thadeus with you.”
***
The makeshift surgery was only a block away from the hospital. Thadeus walked ahead of Ella and Papa, his gait awkward and self-conscious. He was younger than she had expected, only a year or two older than herself, and just as twitchy as Jonas. He paused briefly at the entry of an old apartment building and then ducked inside so quickly it was as if the building had swallowed him. With its cancer-ridden façade and rusted rebar poking out at strange angles, it could not be long before it was condemned.
Ella recalled memory fragments of the first building she saw demolished. It had been summer and crowds of people lined the lake, the water uncontaminated and still blue under a cloudless sky. There had been a fair—clowns walked on stilts, carrying coloured balloons that floated in the breeze, and hawkers meandered through the crowds with their paper bags full of hot popcorn, the smell of salty butter and charred corn making her mouth water. The cloud of smoke had appeared without fanfare and she had been disappointed to think this great spectacle had been reduced to a small, grey puff of dust. And then the noise exploded around her, rippling across the lake in waves and sending birds squawking from the trees. Debris had rained down from the sky, launched like so many stones from the slingshot she kept under her pillow. Except they were not stones, but chunks of concrete and metal. Three people died that day, struck down by an obliterated past. Papa didn’t take her to demolitions after that.
“Are you feeling okay?” Papa murmured to her as they climbed the stairs of the dilapidated building.
“Yes,” she lied. “Just a little cold.”
He shrugged out of his jacket and handed it to her. “They won’t let me be with you in t
he surgery room. The risk of infection is already too high.”
She nodded and pulled the jacket tight around her, relishing its warmth and the scent of her Papa that lingered in the threads.
“Ella?”
“Yes, Papa?”
“I will miss your one-brown-one-blue eyes.”
She paused on the stairs and smiled at him, letting his arms wrap around her and hold her in a fierce embrace.
“It will still be me afterwards.”
“I know.” He relaxed his embrace, his arms lingering for a few extra moments before they fell limp at his side.
Ella reached up and pulled the coloured lens from her eye, blinking a few times to relish the feeling of freedom and comfort that came from removing her armour. He looked up and brushed a hand over her temple, staring into her mismatched eyes.
“I love you, Ella.”
She smiled at him, secured the lens back into position and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I love you too, Papa.”
***
It was eerily quiet as they walked the final two flights of stairs, their footsteps thudding too loud no matter how slowly they ascended. The corridor’s plaster walls were water damaged; dark patches and bulging sheets cast strange shadows under flickering lights. Ella glanced at Papa; he had aged a century since they’d left their little apartment in Anders Central.
Halfway down the corridor, Thadeus stood waiting for them beside a plain brown door with its handle on the left side instead of the right.
“Have you got the money?” he asked Papa.
Papa nodded to Ella and she pulled the envelope of notes from his jacket pocket and handed it to the boy. “There’s extra in there,” Papa said, “to pardon the inconvenience.”
Thadeus grunted and gripped the envelope tight, turning it into a grotesque paper bowtie in his meaty grasp. With his free hand he rapped on the door.
She didn’t hear the door behind them open, only saw her papa swivel around. Before she could turn to see what had caught his attention, something heavy collided with her, pushing her off-balance and slamming her into the wall.
“You Civi bastards can’t do this to me!” Papa yelled.
Gasping for breath on the linoleum floor, Ella could see him surrounded by four uniformed officials, each of them throwing punches to try and subdue him. Papa was transformed; his mild demeanour shed like a tree’s leaves in autumn, something rabid and feral unleashed. Sickening blows rained down on him, bending him over and splitting his skin. He swung back almost lazily, hiding his Civi superiority in an effort to appear Primi. She scrambled to get up and go to him.
He knelt on the floor, holding himself up with one arm while his other covered his face to avoid more blows. She looked around for Thadeus and caught the final glimpse of him running to the stairs. Her chest tightened at the betrayal. Had this meeting always been doomed?
She pushed away from the wall, her heart a heavy rock in her chest. As if knowing she was close, Papa turned and looked at her, his eyes wild and bright and his busted lip forming one simple syllable. Run.
Her mind rejected the silent order. She would not leave him, would not let these brutes damage him any further. And then logic caught up; only her presence would condemn him. Without her, they could not convict him of anything—he was no Primi. If she left, he would stop fighting and submit. He would live.
The same panic that had assaulted her in the factory’s infirmary clawed at her insides. She fixed her mismatched eyes on her father one last time—I love you, Papa—and she ran.
***
The car was still in the hospital carpark when she arrived. Her hand trembled as she pulled the key from Papa’s jacket and jammed it into the ignition. The car roared to life with a vitality that mocked her, and through eyes blurred with unshed tears, she pulled out onto the street. In the rear-view mirror she watched the ugly apartment building grow smaller and smaller until it had disappeared completely from view. Only then did she allow the sobs to escape from her chest; strangled, tortured wails that rained hot tears down her cheeks and set fire to her right eye. She pulled angrily at the offending lens, the polymer tearing under her rough handling and triggering a fresh avalanche of tears.
She drove for hours until the car gasped its last breath; both she and it were spent—it of fuel, her of tears. For the longest time she stood there, her legs growing numb in the cold, her eyelashes setting like concrete with the residue of tears turned to ice. Leaving the car behind was a final farewell she was not ready to utter.
The light had disappeared in the overcast evening and the mountains on the horizon loomed like monsters ready to devour her. In the growing darkness, the car appeared to her as any other, and finally she was able to turn from it.
There was no sensation of cold as she trudged through the snow. Cold had lost its power hours ago; like eyes that grew accustomed to the night, her body no longer felt the pins and needles of the biting chill. But, every few minutes, like a nervous tic, her hand flew up to her face and pressed against her right eye. From her earliest memories, the coloured lenses had been her armour, and for just as long, Papa had cultivated a healthy fear of forgetting them.
‘They itch, Papa.’
Papa looked over at her from the sink, his hands soapy and cradling a chipped plate. ‘All things that restrain us, itch. All people chafe against the rules of someone else.’
She clenched her hands under the table. ‘But, the lenses itch.’
‘Do you know what itches more?’
She shook her head; in that moment she couldn’t imagine anything itchier than the flimsy polymer lens that felt like a shard of glass embedded in her eye.
‘Handcuffs, Ella. A hangman’s noose. Scabs from where the skin has been whipped into a bloody pulp. Those things are itchy. Your lenses are a safety net.’
Her knees were wet. Belatedly, she realised she was kneeling in the snow. Her brain yelled at her to stand up, and she could see herself doing just that—pressing her palms into the drift, forcing her muscles to contract and spring, lifting herself from the frozen ground—but the sensation rolled away from her; like a dream about waking, real and yet not real at the same time.
Her mind was drifting. She caught it slipping away from her and tried to pull it back, but it ran like one of the fish Papa had hooked on his fishing line that time at the river.
‘Why is it swimming away, Papa?’ Her skin was warm under the sun and her pinafore smelled of the vanilla ice cream that had melted and dripped down her chubby, childhood fingers.
‘Because it doesn’t want to get eaten.’ He held the rod securely, but looked away from his battle to flash her a smile. His skin was golden and his eyes sparkled blue like the sun-bathed river. She wished, not for the first time, that her lens was for her left eye; that, in her pretense, she had two blue eyes just like her papa.
‘Then why does it come so close to your hook?’ she asked.
‘Because it wants to eat.’
The snow caressed her cheek, the drift like a pillow. Her body was shivering, but not the rapid shivers that came after a cold shower or stepping into a cold wind. It shivered like the fish had shivered that afternoon on the riverbank; in slow, laboured gasps, scales glinting as its gills flared open in search of water that lay just out of reach.
‘But there is food all along the river! Midges and minnows. Why does it risk your hook for the promise of a measly worm?’
‘Nothing can deny its true nature forever. It can ignore it for a while, avoid it, fight it. But chasing the hook is not so much succumbing to temptation as it is living a truth. Even if that truth is fatal.’
***
Warmth tingled in her bones. She tried to open her eyes, but they were still so heavy with exhaustion. Around her, she heard the shuffling of feet and murmured voices. The panic that gripped her chest wasn’t the sharp, bright blade she had felt in the corridor outside the makeshift surgery; it was dull and colourless. Weariness and defeat had robbed her of what little
fight she had left.
“Kill me.”
Something prodded her chest, blunt and insistent. She flinched in anticipation of the gunshot.
“Mama! Mama!” a shrill voice called. “She’s waking up!”
“Fallon, leave be.”
“But there hasn’t been a new one in forever. And she’s the prettiest of them all.”
A hand pressed against Ella’s forehead. “Easy there; you’re safe, now. Can you open your eyes for me?”
Curiosity pricked in the darker corners of her mind, but she couldn’t prise her eyelids open. A wet, rough cloth wiped away the sleep that glued her eyelashes together. There was nothing keeping her eyes shut now. Nothing, except her fear.
“It’s okay. Rest now. When you’re ready, we can talk.” Soft hands brushed away the hair on her forehead. “You don’t need to be scared, here; we’ve stayed hidden from Civis for years. They can’t get you here. You don’t need to hide who you are.”
***
Ella drifted in and out of consciousness; at times waking to strange noises and hushed conversations, at others to nothing but a deep and unending silence. There was no way to tell how much time had passed, or whether she lived half-conscious in a fever dream.
When she finally opened her eyes, the world was not the one she knew. Candlelight flickered in niches carved into cave walls, and pallets, like the ones at Jonas’ shed, lay tied together in makeshift beds. A small girl, no older than five, sat nearby, regarding Ella curiously. Her red hair fell messily about her dirt-stained face, and her hands fidgeted clumsily in her lap, the left hand missing two of its fingers. She was flawed, more flawed than Ella, and she was beautiful.
“Primi,” Ella whispered.
Once Upon A Dystopia: An Anthology of Twisted Fairy Tales and Fractured Folklore Page 11
