by Rick K. Reut
“Can’t you hear what I’m saying?! They are not here and not among us!” the Controller tried to cry over the clamor, pushing the loudspeaker’s volume up to the limit.
When Its words finally reached the crowd, the clamor started to subside and eventually ceased altogether, giving way to another tense spell of silence that threatened to be torn into one more emotional eruption any moment.
“What I mean to say,” continued Gianna Globe, using this chance to take the agitated minds of the audience under control again, “is that they live on the same planet, but not in the same places, not in the same cities, countries or even on the same continents we do. What they actually inhabit are impassably fortified, constantly safeguarded strongholds called Isolated Islands, from where they cannot possibly escape. The only way to get off these Islands is through securing a special written permission sanctioned by at least seven of the ten current Chief Caretaking Continent Controllers. What concerns access to these areas from the outside, it is also highly restricted. No one in the whole New World State can go there without similar written permission from the entire Controllers’ Council. Such a permission is granted only when the individual or group asking for it is able to provide the Council with convincing proof that the actions to be undertaken can somehow solidify and perpetuate the common good and welfare of our social order. The main means of such solidification and perpetuation are no other than education and science. And the last person to have made such a request recently and to have been granted such permission was I, your humble servant, Chief Caretaking Continent Controller for Europe, Gianna Globe.”
The Controller drew a “T” sign on Its bosom and briefly bowed before the class.
“One of the main objectives of my request is to make sure that young social members like you are acquainted with our biological roots in the flesh. In other words, my aim is partly scientific, partly educational and partly medical. For we must know who we once were to make sure that we’ll never become them again, as well as make sure that those who still are who we were in the past will finally be cured and come to be just like us in the continuously presented future.”
On saying this, Controller Globe spread Its arms as wide as if it was going to embrace the entire classroom. Or else soar up to the ceiling like a giant raven or even a fallen angel rising from the ashes of past ages.
“And for that very reason I stand before you today not alone but along with a piece of our own not too distant and yet all too disgustingly disgraceful past, a piece of what we all once were and what we all might become again unless we are cautious on our way of civilization and do not dread to take the steps necessary to keep us from straying from the straight road of reason’s divine light back to the dark woods of savagery and barbarism.”
The Controller slowly lowered Its wings and It carried on.
“And for that we must know and always have before our eyes an expressive example of what this barbarism can look like. We must look and see the living embodiment of this barbarism that our pre-transsexual ancestors called “Man”. That living embodiment of bodily and spiritual shame and disgrace, my dear young trannies, is exactly what I bring you tonight in the face of this truly tragic figure.”
And with these words the Controller pointed directly at Adam. As soon as the students’ attention switched to him, It turned off the microphone and asked Adam below the crowd’s rising clamor to cross over to the center of the classroom.
Adam, who had been listening to the last part of Gianna Globe’s speech with a growing sense of shame for what he was, stood up and coyly complied with the Controller’s command under an avalanche of disparaging comments cascading from amphitheater.
And yet, it wasn’t so much these comments, painful as they were in themselves, as some of those strong words the Controller had used in reference to him personally that hurt his hope-hungry heart the most. It was clear that he could not become close with someone who scorned him so much.
“Why did she have to say all those things?” Adam kept asking himself inconsolably as he rose from his seat with a look of blind sorrow written across his paper-white face. He started towards the appointed spot, but could hardly walk straight. His feet felt like letters of lead engraved in the tombstone floor of his dead dreams as he walked across the stage on the stiff, stumbling legs of a living corpse.
“No wonder that these poor pre-transsexuals are either extinct or evolved into us. They aren’t even able to walk straight,” said one of the students seeing Adam plod past them in as much stage fright as the walking shadow from Macbeth’s monologue.
Meanwhile, Controller Globe noticed his sadness and tried to cheer him up a bit.
“I didn’t really mean most of what I said, Mister Marx.”
The Controller’s words came out quickly and quietly, so that nobody else could hear them. And then they were heard no more, drowned out by the din of the audience signifying nothing but the sound and fury of the students’ senseless hostility he all of a sudden no longer cared about. These last few words were more than enough to transform Adam into a totally different being, bringing him back to life.
As he walked on, it occurred to him that, by saying all those terrible things, the Controller could simply be playing with the public opinion. If so, It also had to have some sort of game plan. But what was this plan? Adam didn’t know and, frankly, didn’t care. All he knew was that it wasn’t as bad at it looked at first, and that was more than enough for him at the moment. He felt content, even elated at being so pleasantly reassured. The elation soon grew so strong that it seemed to have gained a few letters in length and now bordered on elevation. It was elevation of his spirit from the dark bottomless pit of despair to the highest mountain peak of hope. Like Jesus, he seemed to be walking not even on water, but on pure air, any moment running the risk of losing his balance and falling completely and utterly in love. However, he felt no fear. On the contrary, his slackened step suddenly turned strong and springy.
With his stage fright completely gone, Adam reached the appointed spot and stopped there, challenging the crowd with a defiant stare. The sudden change in his stride, as well as his overall conduct couldn’t escape the most attentive members of the audience, who, in addition to the initial negative impression, also considered the curious creature to be suffering from some sort of strange mental syndrome.
All people really want is chow, sex and show. And so, anything that can satisfy any one of these three basic desires will do. Even an entirely crazy critter from a pre-transsexual human zoo. After all, anything is better than boredom to a blasé mind. Even that. As a result, being utterly unaccustomed to expressing adverse emotions for too long, for they hardly ever had any reason for any, the audience soon grew tired of booing and shouting and subsided, like a stormy sea, to the level of lite curiosity, calmly washing the class’s coastline with cool contempt.
The Controller, who knew all too well the easygoing nature of Its younger subordinates, waited for the foamiest waves of instinctive indignation, no current conditioning technique could cancel out completely, to go down, before switching the microphone back on.
“This is so much better, isn’t it?” It spoke, emphasizing the steady silence that ensued. “So much better than the barbarism you’ve just been the source of. Like some utterly uncivilized savage horde. You’ve disappointed me beyond all measures, my young friends. I honestly thought that I had more reason to expect civilized behavior from you after all the hard work we’ve put into your conditioning. While you, on the contrary, show yourself to have hardly moved one step forward from your recent ancestors in the actual presence of one of them. Think what he is going to think of you after all this negativistic nonsense. Not to mention me, for that matter. Remember that physical superiority is not everything. It only gives ground for mental superiority. But that mental superiority you have to build yourselves. And what do you do instead!? You undermine the very construction site you are supposed to be building it on, like a bunch of comp
letely conditioning-free vandals and culture vultures”.
“And maybe this is exactly who you are,” the Controller stared at the students sternly. “A bunch of vandals and culture vultures who have no right to set foot in this classroom!? Shame on all of you! If it wasn’t for the means that have already been invested in your upbringing, I would order the whole class, no, not even a class, but a crowd, a herd of coarse pigs to be butchered to meat for a new chain of fast food restaurants! Wouldn’t it be nice then?! Peaceful and quite, just like now.”
The Controller took an artful pause that lasted for a few seconds, and then began again, slightly softening Its speech at the start only to harden it once more in the middle and then kept it on that same level of sternness all the way to the very last word.
“Remember that the life of an individual has absolutely no value in case it threatens the life of the whole social state. And since we are currently able to gene-engineer as many individuals as we want to, individuals that might turn out to be a thousand times better than all of you taken together, why should we value you at all? And especially since you do behave like swine, like so much meat that is really good only for being called chow. Maybe we should even return to our distant cannibalistic past and introduce a new international dish, since we seem to have already found ourselves the first thousand candidates to cook it out of. I might raise this question at the next Continent Controllers’ Summit. Maybe this savage practice is just the thing you need to make you happy,” the Controller ranted in a rush of rhetoric.
There was, of course, no answer to that question, for their simply couldn’t be one. Too scared to say a word, shamed beyond recognition, the thousand students sat totally still in stupefied silence. Staring at the floor under their feet with deeply downcast eyes, they all looked as if they’d swallowed their tongues. They even forgot about that curious little creature from another world, still standing in the center of the stage in front of them. All they could think of were the possible consequences of their careless conduct suddenly made real by the feeling of fear the Controller’s fury had created.
Even though punishments in the New World State were so rare that they could be traded as pieces of fine art at annual antique auctions of yore, they were still sometimes put into practice. Such savage archaic measures as putting someone in prison or straight to death, which the Controller had been so effectively frightening them with, was hardly heard of, of course. But there were still plenty of much more merciful methods of mending individual as well as collective ways, and sexual deprivation was deemed to be the most efficient one of them. And justly so, for in a society where any sexual caprice was satisfied in almost no time at all, the prospect of being bereft of such an amenity was absolutely terrifying.
Fortunately for them, though, the Controller wasn’t in too much of a hurry to make Its power not only heard but actually felt, for one of the first and foremost rules of Controllership was to govern with reason, not with brute force, always leaving the latter as a weapon of the last resort. To cut the throat of a long story short, Controller Globe was willing to give the students another chance.
“But if I ever see another sign of barbarism in your behavior, don’t expect any more mercy from me,” the Controller added, after another spell of silence, Its anger slowly subsiding to casual classroom coolness. “And now, when the matter of discipline seems to be settled, I would like to introduce our guest from one of the planet’s Isolated Islands, namely the Isle of Man.”
Again, the attention of the audience was switched to the curious little creature in the center of the stage.
“His name is Adam Marx, and he has kindly agreed to take part in our today’s lesson as a living example of what most of the planet’s inhabitants looked like only eight decades ago. That was right before the final upgrade of the whole embryo development and decanting process, as a result of which the demarcation line dividing the two sexes was erased, drawing us a straight path to a gender-stereotype-free society – a society with only one universal sex.”
As the Controller continued Its introduction, the crowd’s concern with the curious creature grew enormously and eventually reached the dimensions of the entire lecture hall. The story of Adam and the splinters of the old shipwrecked world he came from filling their ears made their eyes widen with wonder. If such incredible information hadn’t been coming from the most credible source in this part of the New World State, they would never have believed it. But it was coming from exactly such a source, and it made all the difference in the world for them. The world they knew and believed in before the beginning of this class changed in course of one academic hour. And though their new perception would sooner or later become a habit and start to seem natural, all too natural to ever even think of doubting it, it would inevitably influence and determine the rest of their biological lives.
The impact the actual encounter with a living pre-transsexual he-male had on these students’ minds was truly tremendous. For weeks afterwards some of them would still have nightmares about seeing it, him – whatever it was, it was too terrible – naked. Yes, actually naked, for after about fifteen minutes of Its monologue the Controller asked Adam to disrobe in order to illustrate to the class what at least half of them would have looked like, if it hadn’t been for the advanced gene-engineering techniques, compulsory hormone treatment and occasional plastic correction surgeries that made them all look as delightful as they did that day.
Those terrifyingly thin hairy legs, bony buttocks and flat TV-screen-like chest combined with a carelessly carved, almost featureless face… And above, or rather below all that – the penis! The penis that was so small that it looked like an underdeveloped clitoris to most of the she-male students who were used to no less than ten-inch-long standard sizes. No, all of it was truly too terrible to be true. How horrible could truth be when it wasn’t properly managed! And in this case it wasn’t. It was truth incarnated and standing stark naked before them in all its bare un-tanned flesh. And this bare un-tanned flesh was simply too brutal to behold with eyes that had their rose-colored glasses lifted from them for reasons they couldn’t comprehend. Reasons hiding behind such pretentious words as education and science. Words that could bring beauty, but also deformity, discontent and destruction into this world.
It was like seeing a lamb’s throat being slit, even like having to slit it oneself and then bathe in its burning-hot blood and be deafened by its dreadful bleating, the bleating of the murdering truth itself, before being served steak. Only a heartless savage, a crude beast could think of actually touching that steak, while a civilized human being would feel sick for days and days after, fasting or eating nothing but bread and water. That was how sick most of the students felt, seeing Adam turn naked at the Controller’s request when Its Freudship tried to show them what it was like to be born into a world devoid of biotechnology. Especially the kind of biotechnology that could correct the mistake of this birth, but didn’t do it because it was not there. Not there where only sorrow and suffering were left to fill this ugly emptiness with silent tears of despair so that it would no longer seem so hopelessly void.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the stage, that void was precisely what Adam was starting to sense soon after stripping. Standing in the spotlight of one thousand scrutinizing stares, he felt void and cold. Like a carelessly cleaned cup of coffee being checked for sediments by some pedantic supervisor. Was it washed well enough, scrubbed and sterilized sufficiently to be approbated by this new world with sky-high standards of sanitization? Or was it still as dirty and alien as before it was licked clean with waves of new data concerning what it was? It was hard to say.
At first, he felt extremely embarrassed, standing stark naked before all these strange people studying him with hostile curiosity. Even the fact that he was doing all this to please Its Freudship the Controller – the gorgeous Gianna Globe who was like a Goddess and Perfection Itself to him – and could therefore, as he thought, hope for some sort of reimbursem
ent in return for his sacrifices, could not shield him from this embarrassment. But as the lecture went on, the embarrassment gradually gave way to a kind of hollow apathy, leaving him indifferent to what was happening around him. He was simply too tired to care, psychologically as well as physically depleted. The flood of emotions poured on him for the past half and hour turned out to be too much for him to handle. The drain pipe of his perception was consequently clogged and refused to let anything into his nervous system, rendering it utterly irresponsive.
As a result of this emotional overload, Adam spent the rest of the lecture as well as the subsequent seminar in a state of scatterbrained stupor. Bottled up inside his head, he responded only to the Controller’s commands to turn this or that part of his body to the attentive audience. As for the audience itself, it regarded him as either a living museum exhibit or a human zoo animal that had been brought before them from the past imperfect tense of human history for reasons that had something to do with their so-called education, which none of them could naturally care any less about. All all of it boiled down to for them – just like for any other crowd, no matter of what age, race or intellectual level – was entertainment. Or else boredom in case entertainment wasn’t vivid enough or exceeded their perception capacities. In Adam’s case, it was, at first, torture and then, when the torture exceeded his personal perception capacities, absolute apathy.
Consequently, the Controller was constantly checking the class’s conduct to make sure that their perception capacities were not exceeded, and the entertainment remained vivid. As for Adam, Controller Globe thought that it would be much better for him to stay apathetic, for it looked like the least stressful way to face the ruthless reality for the time being.
Chapter Sixteen
An hour and a half hence…
After both the lecture and the subsequent seminar were over and Adam taken away by Director Downing, who had returned from the rector’s office for that particular purpose, the Controller lingered in the lecture hall to teach the students one more little lesson. This time in manners.
