Twisting Topeka

by Lissa Staley

  Grigory turned on his small desk lamp and fed his electric typewriter a piece of cheap paper. The contrast between these two tools of his trade was jarring and inescapable. The typewriter, a newer model produced by the Industrial Combine, had memory functions and an auto-spell. It was black and sleek and looked like it came from the future. It represented all of the power and industrial might of the Party. The paper, which was thin enough to trace through, had barely even been bleached white. It had been designed specifically for use in a typewriter—a sharpened pencil would tear right through it—and then sent to a photocopier for reproduction. It had been over-engineered to the point of serving a single, replaceable function, and was too fragile to do anything else. Which also, in a way, represented the Party.

  But am I the paper or the typewriter?

  He shouldn’t have asked.

  *****

  Morning found him still hunched over his small desk in his small office. The plaza was beginning to fill with workers dressed in long coats and thick hats on their way to work before the sun rose above the housing blocs on the east side of the city center. Grigory watched them, half asleep, a dull ache having settled in the middle of his back.

  A knock on his door startled him. “Come.”

  The door opened with a creak. “Comrade O’Sullivan, come to breakfast.” His friend Pyotr stood in the doorway, his cheeks red from the walk to work. “There are duck eggs.” Pyotr knew Grigory loved duck eggs.

  “Yes, alright, Comrade. I could use some coffee, too.”

  “Burning the midnight oil again?”

  “It’s just the farm bill.” Grigory tried to stretch out his back as he stood.

  “They need something to debate today, then.” Pyotr gave him a conspiratorial wink.

  Grigory sighed as he raised his arm to show Pyotr out of his office. There was always something for the Party members to debate; there just wasn’t always a bill to ground their debate in reality. As a legislative draftsman, it was Grigory’s job to make sure that didn’t happen very often.

  “Yes, Comrade. Today and every day.” Grigory closed his office door behind him. He didn’t bother to lock it.

  *****

  Breakfast was pleasant enough. Many of the Konza Oblast Party Committee members were in attendance, making a show of greeting each other and the Committee staffers. Grigory tried not to be disdainful of their fine suits and clear eyes.

  Pyotr regaled him with the latest rumors on each one as he walked by. This one had a new mistress; that one’s youngest son received permission to go to university abroad; this other one was mounting a campaign to run for the Central Committee; that other one had secretly celebrated Christmas (Can’t you see his new pocketwatch? Pyotr asked, pointing at the man’s waistcoat.)

  But for all the pomp, the Party-sponsored breakfast was a little meager. There had been duck eggs, as Pyotr had promised, and bacon, and griddle-cakes, and some strawberries that must have come from Mexico or somewhere. But the thin and gray-skinned kitchen staff ensured no one—not even the Oblast Secretary who came downstairs for a few minutes towards the end—received more than a modestly-sized portion.

  Pyotr ate quickly and excused himself; as a Liaison Officer for the Security Committee, he had several things to finish up before the Party Committee began its first meeting. “Just a few reports.” But they both knew reports were never just reports.

  Grigory walked back to his office alone. The People’s House was over a hundred years old, but the former occupants had obscured its mural-covered hallways and built offices out into the open spaces. The Party had been restoring the building almost since taking up residence; but there was still a lot of work to be done, and not a lot of room in the Oblast budget to complete the work. A carpenter avoided Grigory’s glance as he walked by.

  The sun had risen high enough to cast Grigory’s office in a bath of orange light. He was about to step into that pool of sunbeams, though it promised no warmth, when he realized the draft bill was missing from his desk.

  He quickly closed his door and took stock of his office. Everything was where it was supposed to be; everything except the bill.

  Not that bill. Not that one. Not today.

  It was a joke. He hadn’t meant anything by it. He still had plenty of time to fix it. It was just that in the early hours of the morning, when the bill was close enough to completion that his sleepless-ly fuzzy brain couldn’t choose between orneriness and celebration, he’d changed some of the words. A lot of the words.

  It hadn’t been a bill on the desk next to his typewriter when he left for breakfast. It had been a manifesto. An indictment. A rumination and a prescription. A scathing review and a heartfelt sermon. It was everything he knew he shouldn’t say, most of the things he knew he couldn’t say, and quite a few of the things he knew he wouldn’t have said if he hadn’t been called in so late on such a cold night.

  It wasn’t a bill. It was a confession.

  Changing his name had been easy; Pyotr had done it, too, and Katya had once been Catie. He could call his state the Konza Oblast and its capital city Lewellingrad with stumbling; he had learned the new street names and mostly got them right the first time. He enjoyed looking through the House of Prototypes catalogue that came each fall, if only because Katya always told him he had the perfect frame for the newer styles. In all the little outward ways that anyone who was paying attention would notice, he had remade himself to fit squarely and securely into the new order. But changing his beliefs had been harder.

  Even after ten years as a Party member, he wasn’t a communist. This deficiency hardly surprised him; he had never cared for the parties that had once vied for control of the state, and he hadn’t much cared in school when they learned about the parties that had come before—although this newest one had been smart to invoke the battle cries of Mary Elizabeth Lease and her contemporaries when they came in with their new “People’s Party.” They hadn’t even needed the tanks that were waiting on great ships just offshore and in the bellies of great planes circling overhead; they only needed to win Afghanistan and promise the people of the plains that their sons would no longer be sent abroad to fight on foreign soil, their grocery shelves would never again be empty, and their voice would always be heard. After fifteen years of war and two very hard winters, that had been enough for Grigory—and for most everyone else.

  The Revolution’s only casualty was an elderly man who collapsed walking to the church two streets over to cast his vote on the referendum. Grigory didn’t feel like a traitor when he cast his vote; he felt like a pragmatist. In truth, though he had often claimed allegiance to one political party or another, often vociferously, and just as often rather sincerely, Grigory had always simply voted for the person who made the most sense.

  It was easier now: though the Party committees had their debates and power struggles behind the scenes, there was only ever one candidate. He still went to the rallies, and the canvasses, though the Party always seemed to put up candidates who were indistinguishable from each other in their zeal and, eventually, in their inefficacy. He wore his Party-approved coat and waved his Party flag. He did all the right things, and he said all the right things. It had been easy to blend in, toe the line, do his job, and keep his family fed.

  But now they would know. They would know that he was not reformed. That a full belly was not enough to buy his loyalty. That he didn’t care for the Party Committee members or their platforms or their hypocritical fancy suits. That he thought the whole system was a sham.

  If only he had shrugged off Pyotr’s invitation and fixed the draft, like he had planned. But no. He had to have his duck eggs. Had it been worth it? Whoever had that sheaf of papers, whatever they intended to do with it, Grigory’s career was likely over. If he acted fast, he might be able to save something of his reputation, find a job with less responsibility in a suburb or a farm town somewhere. Katya could even have a garden.

  He turned for the door—but behind the glazed window
stood the shadow of a man, hand drawn back to rap on the glass in a rude knock.

  Grigory saved him the effort and opened the door.

  *****

  Grigory couldn’t remember if he’d ever been in the Secretary’s office before. He’d worked in the People’s House long enough he surely must have entered the room for something or other at some point. But its smallness surprised him. Maybe he hadn’t been in there before.

  The Secretary sat cross-legged behind his desk, leafing through the papers that had been left in an office that should have been locked. Now that he was only a few feet from the man, Grigory could see that his suit was well-made but not new; his glasses were chipped in a few places along the rim; his eyes were puffy with redness and lack of sleep. Grigory looked around the office again; the bookcases were plain, the carpet a little worn, the paintings on the wall were poster prints. He briefly entertained the thought that this man, the most powerful in the Konza Oblast, was a true believer. He wasn’t sure if that should worry him.

  The Secretary finished reading, put the papers on his desk and worked a phlegmy cough as politely as possible. He took off his glasses with his left hand and rubbed his temples with his right. He put his glasses back on and stared at Grigory. His tired eyes were blue and sharp.

  “Tell me Tovarishch O’Sullivan,” he started, using the formal Russian term as if to remind Grigory that although he had lost most of his accent he had not lost his ties to the Motherland, “why does the Party Committee debate a farm bill every spring?”

  Grigory contemplated his response. Giving the Secretary the same answer he’d just read in the stolen papers was obviously not an option, but he was hard pressed to come up with a better one.

  “Do you think it is to make a show? To fill the radio waves with sound bites and catchphrases? To quell the people, to convince them the merits of growing crops that receive almost no subsidy from the Central Committee? To trick them into mere obedience?”

  Grigory chose not to answer.

  The Secretary grew tired of waiting.

  “It’s because we have quotas. Our Republic stands in unity with other soviet republics across the globe. There are radicals who would shatter the bonds that tie us together with so-called ‘decentralization’ efforts. The only way to stop them is to protect the system of mutual cooperation we have so carefully established.

  “And so we must choose. Maize, or wheat? Beans, or barley? Sorghum, or rye? Do we stay at five million cattle, or should we replace some with sheep or goats? And on top of it all, we must choose where these things will go. Do we plow more fields in the east, or do we let fields lay fallow for a season? Do we build more pumps in the west, or do we turn fields over to ranching?

  “These are the questions the Party Committee was supposed to debate today. And they are serious questions.” The Secretary rapped his knuckles on Grigory’s papers in emphasis. “We must have a proposal for the Central Committee to review, as must the other Oblasts. We must play our part here in the heartland, for the good of the Republic. Do you understand?”

  Of course he did. The system wasn’t perfect, but it prevented the bubbles and price collapses that had driven the economy to the verge of collapse countless times before. “I didn’t sleep last night,” he offered.

  “Neither did I.” The Secretary’s response was almost kind.

  “I only meant—”

  “I know exactly what you meant, Comrade. You were frustrated. You had every right to be. But your work is serious. You must be serious about it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well then.” The Secretary pushed the papers back across the desk. “I’ll need a finished draft before noon. You did good work on the bridges bill last fall. Let’s get a little more of that out of you, shall we?” He smiled in a way that told Grigory the discussion of his transgression had come to an end.

  Is that all? A stern warning and a pat on the back? Grigory stood, and offered a feeble smile in return. An aide showed him out.

  He had to admit, he had done good work on the bridges bill last fall. But was that all it took? To put him in his place, to turn him back into a good little soldier?

  Of course the bill debate was just a show. Of course it was designed as a source of sound bites to distract the dirt-poor farmers whose standard of living had actually decreased since the so-called “People’s Party” had swept them up in its fervor. The Central Committee had already decided who would grow what, and where.

  But maybe there was another truth buried in what the Secretary had told him. Maybe the system was fragile enough they needed him—yes, him—to write another piece of legislative poetry like the bridges bill, the kind with lofty language that would inspire the kind of debate that would get endless replay on the evening news.

  Maybe the Party would eventually crumble under the weight of its central planning and forced employment and social artifice and revolving patronage. Or maybe those were the only things to keep it from disintegrating. Grigory feared what would happen if there wasn’t at least a debate before the Central Committee issued its planting maps, the kind of debate that would remind the farmers how important they were to this grand new Republic while distracting them from the wealth that never seemed to flow farther than the outskirts of Lewellingrad. He felt sick to his stomach.

  But duty called. And he knew he would feel better when he fixed his draft.

  Test Year

  Jamie Crispin

  “You are our most successful patient yet. You have exceeded your predecessors by over two weeks. We are very proud of you.”

  Today, Dr. Malcolm’s words sting my heart more than usual. I know I should be happy. Most patients would be thrilled receiving high praise from their doctors. But, to me, exceeding Dr. Malcolm’s goals is actually terrifying. If I weren’t so angry, like massive temper tantrum anger, then I would be crying inconsolably. I would be crying like when my best friend, Inara, moved to Omaha. I can still see the moving van disappear down the street. The farther it got from me, the more I cried. Until recently, I considered Inara leaving the worst day of my life. Now, I wake up and believe every day is the worst day ever. So, the closer Dr. Malcolm gets to me, the angrier I get.

  The anger has been building. In the beginning, there was a flash of hatred that surged through my stomach when I saw a white lab coat. A few weeks ago, my hands trembled when I heard the keys unlock my door. Now, the anger has taken over my head. It pounds on my temples at night and screams inside my brain during the day.

  Dr. Malcolm likes to say to me, “You are extremely valuable to the plan.”

  This little mantra is so insulting and “the plan” is insane. What I hear instead is “you are extremely helpless.” I know I will never see the outside of this room. I am hooked up to wires, machines and monitors continuously. Each day, some scientist or doctor or both visit me in my room. They ask me questions about my health, my family and Topeka. At first, I didn’t talk. I just pretended that the person wasn’t in the room with me. But, they had ways to change that behavior. Now, I talk. I talk, and I journal. These days, the writing is the only thing that keeps me sane.

  The only feeling that cuts this deep anger is the pain I feel thinking of my family back home. I miss hearing my dad yell at the TV during a Kansas City Royals game. I ache to see my mom reading in her special chair. I even miss my brother, Nathan. What I wouldn’t trade for one day with him, even if it meant he was throwing his socks at me.  

  I have been here for 76 days. The researchers have told me that no one has made it past 61 days. I assume that is the reason for my quality visits from Dr. Malcolm. Lucky me! I know it might seem silly; but I feel that if I write this down, then, I existed. I am not sure if anyone will read this. But, I can’t bear to think that I will be so quickly forgotten. So, I guess I will just start at the beginning.

  My name is Turia Shepherd Nation and on September 9, 2046, I attended my first day at school. Yes, I did say AT school. I have been
attending online school for many years, but this year was the start of my Test Year. Back home, students go to school online with the exception of the 10th grade. The country decided in 2025 to change the education system due to safety issues, money, and teacher shortages. Blah, blah, blah. I wasn’t born yet, but we have studied it every year in online school. The most important part is that students have to attend school in-person for 10th grade.  

  I was always taught the purpose of the Test Year was to determine one’s career goals. My government believes the Test Year provides information about our skills and talents. This is done with the use of constant video surveillance and classroom observers or in-person monitoring. At the end of the year, students are ranked nationally. No pressure, right? The lucky students considered in the top 20% are invited to attend an elite university program. For those who didn’t make the cut–well the Test Year decides that, too. The lower the ranking, the fewer choices a person has about their future or job outlook. Someone has to collect garbage or clean bathrooms! In all, the Test Year is the most dreaded and most anticipated year of anyone’s life. There is only one chance to become someone important, and it is during the Test Year.  

  Thinking back, I am embarrassed at how much time I spent choosing my outfit for the first day. I wanted to stand out but not too much. I wanted to be seen as an individual, but one accepted by the masses. Needless to say, I had no idea what my Test Year was going to bring. If I had realized, then, I might have run away to Omaha to be with Inara. At least we could have faced this ordeal together.

  I was assigned to Randolph School, which was perfect since I lived just a few blocks from it. I always thought the building looked like a school in the traditional sense: a brick building with white columns and a brick path flanked with trees on either side. It was just like the schools pictured in the old movies. That was it; I was walking into a movie scene.

  On the first day, our instructors reminded us the cameras were present to record our best attributes. Of course, I never saw it that way. It felt eerie to know I was always being recorded. Probably because I knew the recordings were analyzed and graded. There were cameras in all corners of the building except for the bathroom and library. While the lack of cameras in the bathroom was for obvious reasons, the library was so seldom used that surveillance wasn’t necessary. Information was readily accessible and updated online. Books were quaint or decorative but not used for research any more.