Regret

by Jaleta Clegg

Regret

  Jaleta Clegg

  Copyright 2010 Jaleta Clegg

  “What is it?” The man in the patent office, Hurley Brown, poked a pencil at the contraption on his desk. “It looks like the offspring of a vacuum cleaner and a blender with a big dose of Dr. Frankenstein thrown in for looks.”

  “It’s…” The inventor, Lawrence Winkley, hesitated, fishing for words. “I call it the Emoticator.”

  “Which tells me exactly nothing.” Hurley Brown leaned back in his chair, bored by yet another gadget and its crackpot inventor. He flipped a pencil through his fingers.

  “It stores emotions.” Lawrence leaned forward across the desk, hovering over his invention. “Have you ever done something you regretted?”

  “Everyone has.” Hurley shifted uncomfortably. This was supposed to be about the invention, not the patent officer.

  “Deeply regretted?”

  “Explain this.” Hurley jabbed his pencil into a coil of tubing protruding from the machine.

  Lawrence ignored his demand. “How would you like to have the regret removed, permanently?”

  Hurley paused, staring into Lawrence’s overly intent gaze. There was that fight last month, the one that sent his wife away for good. He regretted his words to her, enough that he found it hard to flirt with his secretary. Without regret hanging over his head, weighing in his heart...

  “Has it been tested?” Hurley asked.

  Lawrence dropped his gaze and shuffled back a step, insecure inventor once again. “Only on me.”

  “Let’s try it out, right now,” Hurley suggested. What was the harm in losing a bit of regret?

  Lawrence sprang forward, eagerly uncoiling tubes and wires.

  Hurley backed away, just a bit. The thing did look capable of removing more than emotions. Images of bad Dr. Frankenstein movies hovered in his head. “It won’t hurt, will it?”

  “Just a touch, at first,” Lawrence assured him. “You won’t regret it.”

  They laughed at his joke. Hurley allowed Lawrence to attach the suction cup to his forehead.

  Fast forward a hundred years...

  Sirens wailed in the distance. Mayla stared through the bars of her window. She could glimpse the sky, sometimes, if she leaned right. She hadn’t stepped beyond the compound walls since she was small. Outside was for the police marines and the criminals they hunted. The real people lived and worked inside, with bars and safety doors and reinforced walls.

  Until they snapped. Until the Emoticator stole their regrets and left them soulless criminals.

  She shuddered, her black robes shimmering in the momentary sunlight. She had seen too much during her tenure as judge. Without regret, criminals murdered and tortured innocents with wanton abandon. Churches stood empty, their confessionals filled only with spiderwebs and dust. Who had need to confess when the Emoticator removed any guilt, free of charge? The Emoticator destroyed families, destroyed ordinary lives, left society a victim of ruthless criminals who harbored no remorse or even the slightest twinge of guilt for their actions.

  “Judge Mayla?” Her assistant slipped through her door, quiet and unobtrusive. “Dr. Lewold is here.”

  “Please, send him in.” Mayla smoothed her robes as she sat behind her desk. In the distance, the sirens wailed, a death song for civilization.

  Dr. Lewold scurried in, papers trailing from the huge stack he held close to his chest. “I think I’ve done it, I’ve figured out how to reverse the Emoticator.” He dropped the papers to her desk where they scattered like leaves in an autumn wind.

  He reminded her of a squirrel she’d seen once, long ago, in her father’s guarded estate garden. “We can replace the emotions?”

  He pushed thick glasses up his nose. “More. We can pull emotions from anyone, store them, then return them to someone else.”

  Mayla frowned, trying to grasp the importance of Dr. Lewold’s announcement.

  “Don’t you see? We can take regret, guilt, anger, anything from ordinary people and we can give it to someone else, say a criminal, a hundred times over. Who would steal or murder if they knew their punishment was to carry a thousand people’s regrets? Who would ever cheat at taxes? Or even break the speed limit?” He slid into a chair and planted his elbows on the papers covering her desk like very large snowflakes. “It would be the ultimate deterrent to crime. Not just that, it would be the ultimate cure. Criminals function on anger, hate, jealousy, all the bad emotions. We take those away with the Emoticator, and we replace them with guilt, regret, sorrow.”

  Judge Mayla despite the distant chorus of sirens. “It’s brilliant. How long, Dr. Lewold? How long before we can implement the change?”

  “I can have the change made within a few weeks. It just requires this piece to be installed.” His bald head ducked as he fished through his bag. He set a strange contraption that resembled nothing so much as an eggbeater on her desk.

  Mayla ran her finger over the device. “Can you make it permanent? Integrate it so deeply in the Emoticator that no one can remove it without destroying the machine?”

  “Of course. It would mean a complete redesign of the Emoticator, but I have my staff already working on that.”

  “Then do it, as quickly as you can.”

  Dr. Lewold scampered from her office, trailing papers.

  Mayla studied the odd thing he’d left on her desk. His plan wouldn’t work, not if someone built an Emoticator without the new part. Few understood the concepts of the machine. Fewer still could build one.

  Dr. Lewold and his staff would have to die. It would appear an accident, of course. Mayla couldn’t risk anyone building an Emoticator without the new attachment. There had to be consequences for actions, regret and remorse for behavior. No, Dr. Lewold and those who understood the Emoticator would have to die.

  She would regret it, but not for long.

  Fast forward a thousand years...

  “Hush now, she comes.”

  Whispered voices, like the soft murmur of a sleepy ocean, filtered through the Tower as Lilinnea assumed her post. Her robe floated around her willowy body like a gray cloud. The Tower held nothing sharp, nothing jarring. Every surface was designed to soothe and comfort.

  Lilinnea settled onto her couch, running her thin hands along the velvet cushions. She closed her eyes as the crown settled onto her dark hair, framing her delicate features and pale complexion with silver wires and spindles. Her face contorted as the emotional floodgates opened. She was a Sorter. Her job required her to feel the full range of human emotion, weeding out those too strong, too dangerous for ordinary humans to feel.

  Everyone reported to the Emoticator every night, from newborn infants to ancients. The Sorters scanned, sorted, cleaned, and softened their emotions, returning only those deemed acceptable.

  Those who resisted the Sorters were sent to sanatoriums where they were fed concentrated emotions. Most relinquished their misguided claim to emotion within a few weeks. The very few who were genetically incapable of responding to such a treatment were quietly euthanized. It was best, for all.

  Lilinnea tweaked her channel. Her mind flooded with grief. She sobbed, tears rolling from her eyes like rain from heaven. She knew not whose grief she suffered, or the reason for such overwhelming pain. It did not matter. She fed the grief into the crown where it was concentrated, packaged, and ultimately converted into energy that powered the city’s Emoticator network.

  Grief faded into rage. Lilinnea screamed and swore and beat her fists on the cushions. Her attendants withdrew, frightened and ashamed of her display of raw emotion. Lilinnea sank deeper into the flood of emotions, submitting her mind to the crown. She let emotions flood her soul, giving back the concentrated essence.

  Her shift ended. Lilinnea removed her crown, setting it into
the cradle reserved for it. She rose to her feet, her every move graceful though weary beyond measure.

  “Hush, she returns.”

  The whispers followed her from the Tower to her Room. Peace, calm, harmony, softness surrounded her constantly. Inside, her heart wept despite the Emoticator.

  Fast forward another thousand years...

  “We stand at the edge of our galaxy, reaching to explore ever farther. We salute these brave men and women standing here, ready to embark on a journey of exploration that dwarfs all previous journeys.”

  The speaker droned on. Kento shuffled his feet, just enough to keep his knees from locking. The helmet under his arm was symbolic, but still heavy. Explorers had stood thus, helmet under arm, dressed in suits designed to protect from vacuum and danger, for time beyond measure. It was tradition, though none of it functioned.

  Kento glanced at the rest of the crew. Twenty four humans, all that could be found who were willing to take the risks. They had spent the last weeks in the Emoticator, drinking every drop of courage, restlessness,