“Hello, Ruth and James. My name is Mack. I’m sorry. Io’s a bit tired right now. We’ve been testing her chip all morning and I’m afraid it requires quite a bit of effort on her part for one so young. But I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear that everything is in working order.”
“Is it? I’m glad to hear it. I don’t mean to be forward, but how long until I can try it out?”
I know that it’s ignorance that produces the question, that there is not even a hint of blatant malevolence in the expression on Ruth’s face, but unexpected anger still flares up inside my mind at the enthusiasm in her voice. How dare she so eagerly anticipate that which causes me such unendurable agony. How dare she even think to uphold this charade of courtesy when she is little more than a monster, a barbarian just like the rest of the Governors. She may be a Plenty, but she’s a government Plenty, a Super-Plenty, and that is not enough to redeem her in my eyes. The fury that spreads through my veins feels good, like some part of my old self is fighting desperately to resurface in the midst of an ocean of people more powerful than me. Emotions give me an element of control when I otherwise would have none.
“Not long now. We’ll give her another fifteen, maybe twenty minutes to recover, and then we’ll see how she’s feeling.”
Though it flourishes right beside him, it’s almost comical how entirely unaware Mack is of my fury. That is, unaware until he attempts to place an endearing hand upon my shoulder. The ferocity of my recoil and the sharp exhale that accompanies it clue him in just a bit to the hidden sentiment behind the eyes that now meet his. He reads me quickly and silently with a scowl on his face, effortlessly concealing from Ruth and James the interaction proceeding just meters in front of them.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be right back. There’s a small issue I need to take care of. Come with me, Io. We need to have a quick conversation.” Before I can protest or resist, Mack pulls me up off the cot on which I’m seated and drags me, silent with shock, through a door into the next room. The lights are switched off, but through the trickle of light that slips underneath the door I can just barely make out his face.
“Is something wrong, Io? You’re being very quiet in there. Are you upset?”
I stare at him blankly. How can he not realize?
“I won’t know if you don’t tell me, Io.”
“I need to tell you?” The disbelief in my voice renews my faith yet again that maybe I haven’t quite lost my old, irreverent ways. But there’s nothing illegitimate about my surprise or confusion. Is he really so naïve, even in his old age, that he believes a revolution of demeanor and personal values could occur in just a few days?
“No. I suppose you don’t. Ah, but I had such high hopes for you!” He throws his hands to the ceiling in exasperation, crossing the room as though to escape from the reality of my failure to transform into a model citizen.
“Why, Io? Why would you do this? What drives you to betray me like this? Have I ever, ever hurt you?” As he speaks, Mack returns from his distant position, grabbing hold of my wrists and putting his nose just centimeters from mine.
“I’ve known you for twenty minutes.” A tinge of amusement at his dramatic reaction stretches my emotional muscles even more than the anger did before. I feel just a little bit stronger.
“Twenty minutes? Twenty minutes! Don’t you understand, Io? It’s so much more, so much longer! No use trying to explain it though...”
“I haven’t betrayed you, either. How could I betray you if I’ve never been on your side?” Within the spinning confines of my head, the thought seemed so much more innocent – cheeky, maybe, but innocent enough. But the awful stoicism that crosses Mack’s face, the deep inhale that flares his nostrils outward, registers alarm somewhere deep in my mind. I have extensive experience in infuriating superiors, but I’m positive that nowhere in my memory have I ever faced this degree of wrath.
His hand pulls back as though to strike me and I flinch backwards immediately, my imagination two seconds ahead of reality in viciously lifelike anticipation of the impact to come. For just a moment, I wonder if I’m going to die, right here, right now at the hands of an old, and yet not at all frail man. And then I see it coming.
The pain isn’t all that unbearable, but the force of the blow is still enough to send me to the floor with sparks in my eyes, a pounding headache and all the breath expunged forcibly from my lungs. It’s unpleasant enough that I lay there immobile to give Mack time to expel the rest of his anger before he decides to take it out on me. Unfortunately, my strategy is flawed; not all anger fades on its own. Another strike of his boot to my ribcage is enough to turn my motionlessness involuntary, but at least it seems he restrained the force. Had he not, I’m not sure I would have even been capable of standing again by my own power for a very long time.
When we reenter the room where the others still stand waiting, I can’t help but search their faces, curious at what reaction my newfound injuries will produce. Do they realize that their kind and gentle superior is capable of such ruthless violence, that his temper runs so short? The way they glance away, avoiding direct eye contact with me at all costs, tells me that I’m not the first to suffer at his brutal hands.
“Are you feeling better now, Io? Or do we need to go back in there and talk a bit longer?” Mack’s eyebrows stretch toward the ceiling in expectation, but I know my place well enough without his menacing threats.
“H-hello. I’m Io. It’s nice to meet you.”
Ruth presents an open hand before me again, and this time I take it. Despite the icy chill where her skin presses against mine, her grip carries a sort of underlying power that could bind my hand in place were it her will to do so. I wonder at it momentarily, at the person she must have been before the same chemicals that took her sight also eradicated every last hint, every last memory of the world as she knew it with all its light and all its colors still intact. But that’s one of the conditions, one of the supposed advantages of becoming a Plenty – you will have no memory of the sacrifice you made, and if you can’t remember you can’t regret. It isn’t long I have to speculate before a sharp, demanding tug at the corner of my shirt forces my attention downward to a different pair of little hands, as infantile as Ruth’s are ancient. This is my first interaction with James.
“What’s going on? I want to know!”
“James, behave yourself. We were just shaking hands. That’s all. You’re not missing anything.” Ruth’s admonishment comes lightly, and her words are traced with an outline of sympathy and pity. Some small fragment of my heart, a part not already numb and dry from the happenings of the day so far, breaks just a little for the child before me.
“I want to shake hands too!” His voice grows thick with an insinuation of tears, and I kneel down immediately. It’s not to placate him, nor is it out of guilt. Something about the strength of his reactions so far, the overwhelming fear of missing some detail proceeding around him that seems to blot out all other concerns, leaves an ache in my heart that has nothing to do with my own condition. It’s like he has some memory of sight beyond that which instinct reminds him is absent. It’s like he misses it.
I catch one of James’ flailing arms and guide his hand to mine, allowing him to initiate the motion with the knowledge that, were it me, I would appreciate someone granting me even this small element of control. He accepts it eagerly, propelling my hand from the ceiling to the floor with the sort of exaggerated gusto only a young child can truly muster. Unless I’m very much mistaken, I’ve just made myself a friend for life.
With a quick survey of the room to judge the distance of earshot, I lean forward and whisper in his ear, “Don’t worry, James. Now that I’m your Optic, I’ll make sure you never miss anything that’s happening ever again. I promise.”
His tiny muscles tense and tremble beside me, and I pull away to examine the source of this abrupt reaction. Beneath reddening eyes, made nearly monochromatic by the existing pink of his irises, little pools of li
quid are forming, a reservoir about to overflow its banks. I’m not sure if these tears are a reaction to what I said, or to some other hidden stressor, but as the first drops cascade towards the floor and catch on the pure white fabric of his soft, white shirt, the only thing that precludes my gasp of horror is the fear of causing him any more distress. Those aren’t just tears that he’s crying. Where the little drop slid down his face, it left a trail of diluted blood.
“You don’t need to cry, James. Is something wrong?” Heather steps forward with a dark black towel and gently dabs the residue off his cheeks. I redirect my revolted stare to Mack only to find that his eyes have already found mine. A single finger comes to his lips in a warning that, for once, I don’t need to hear. There is no threat here, and the risk isn’t my own. Unless I want to shatter the peace of mind of an innocent child and terrify him to the point of trauma, I can never tell James what I just saw.
“Let’s try out the chip, now, shall we?”
So clever of Mack, to slip this insidious little proposal in right at the moment of my distraction. Clever because Ruth, too, has been practicing with her own chip, and I don’t have time to prepare an adequate resistance to a second person joining me at the control panel of my own eyes. I pick a corner of the ceiling to stare at in the moment I still have ultimate power and I struggle to fight it, but my muscles betray me so easily you’d think they were never mine to command in the first place, and the floor jumps up into my range of vision as my eyes snap downward. They find the shoes, the hands, the face of James and then, each one at a time for a few seconds at a time, they focus on the tiny splotches of blood that have soiled the austerity of his shirt.
I jump when Ruth’s hand takes mine, but there’s a message in her touch. She guides me to view each stain one last time and then instantly relinquishes the control to me, all the while grasping my hand with that same iron grip. I understand more clearly than I have any concept in days.
Protect him from the government, and you can keep your eyes to yourself.
A Message in Etched in Gold
“He looks very young.”
The shadowed faces eclipse the light in a uniform rectangle. If the figure at the bottom of the angular pit six meters below could, he would look up and see that he has an audience, a group of men and women twice his age whose only passions lay in their own personal endeavors. They have no empathy for him. When they question his age, it is not in fear for his innocence or wellbeing, but for their own.
“Is he under eighteen?” The same voice continues, dry and scientific, with a touch of an unidentifiable accent.
“No, no.” In juxtaposition with the visitor’s deadpan tones, the guide’s voice reeks of selfish preoccupation: nervous, worried and defensive against judgment that has yet to be anything more than implied. “He’s not even a teenager.”
The interrogative personality has not yet finished. “That may be the case, but by the old standards, this would be unacceptable. How closely are the Neithers watching you?”
“They’re not. Not anymore.” The tremble in the guide’s words fades abruptly as the conversation reaches a question he is prepared to answer. “The moles were rooted out weeks ago, and we’ve put new practices in place to prevent the situation from occurring again. Our leader has promised us additional protection, for all of the research.”
“And what precautionary measures have you put in place to guarantee that he cannot leave?”
Nothing changes in the guide’s voice; not even his expression darkens from the nonchalant half-smile he has assumed. “We have blinded him and broken his wrists. In addition, the conditions down there keep him perpetually ill. Even if he manages to get away, he won’t survive more than a few days without additional medical assistance.”
“Good.”
Nodding in appreciative approval of the arrangements with which they have been presented, the group of heads follows suit as the guide turns away. Only one stays behind long enough to see the young man stir and begin to gently weep. He is fully conscious, conscious of the voices above that control his fate, of the putrid water in which he lies, of the sharp knife-like twinges in his wrists, of the blank charcoal-gray shades that have formed over his vision, broken only by a single patch of clarity in his right eye and the right periphery of his left that perfectly matches the shape of a human hand. It is through this shape that he continually views the world, through this shape that he follows the paths of three small metal disks, pounded like scrap metal, that fall from above, dropped carefully so as to not strike him where he lays. With a trembling hand, stiff with injury and burning with pain, he takes each disk in turn, reading the message etched into their faces.
On the first disk, four words on each side:
Though you are weak, these walls are strong.
On the second, with the flip side blank:
Use them, Daniel.
The last disk is the farthest away. He struggles to reach it, the shattered bones of his wrist hardly able to support his hand. No longer concerned with strength or stolidity, he allows his sobs to grow more powerful in response to the pain. There is no one listening anyway, the purveyor of the message having already departed. His fingertips brush along the disk’s surface, shifting it close enough for the light to reflect off of the engraved words. He doesn’t have the strength to lift it, but as even the brightest white of his vision fades to black, he fights just to glance at its illuminated face. Whether this person who was overhead who addressed him by name knows the significance of the day or not, Daniel isn’t sure, but even as he loses consciousness, there is one thing of which he is certain; this is not how he expected to spend his twentieth birthday.
On the third disk he reads, and he understands:
It will be okay.
This Is My Life
Theoretically, I should have no relationship with my Plenties outside of serving their every need. Theoretically, I should sleep always in the Optic dormitory, eat only under the low stone ceiling of the cafeteria, own nothing whatsoever – not even the clothes on my back – and have no friends or family to speak of in the entirety of the city.
Theoretically, I think I would rather die.
The thing is, I live in a world where the air is always temperate and the lights go dim at nine o’clock each night, where white-clothed people travel in white monorails, surrounded in all directions at all times by rounded white walls; a world where the only colors besides white, black and gray are the Governors’ shirts and dresses, the brightly colored irises belonging to the Optics and Governors, the pink ones of the Plenties, the red of blood when it is occasionally spilt – either in accident, anger, or on the part of the guards – and the abstract paintings that Super-Plenties are so fond of viewing vicariously through their Optic’s eyes. And, of course, the posters. Big, bright and shiny – designed, or so the Governors think, so that it is impossible to look away. The variety is so wide, Henrick and I have been losing at our own game for years trying to find an identical pair throughout the trainee’s dormitories, classrooms and cafeteria. There are, though, two things that these posters all have in common. They are in relentless support of the alleged goodness and justness of the government, and they are everywhere.
But what they neglect to mention in these ubiquitous advertisements is that this universal justice in our infallible hierarchy they speak of is little more than an illusion. Because it isn’t just a hierarchy we live in; it’s a caste system.
At the very top, by nature the smallest group, are the Governors. Affluent and exclusive, the Governors are born into their status. Though not all are rulers, elections rely on this limited pool alone from which to draw candidates, and each member is permanently entitled to the advanced benefits that come with inheriting such a prestigious rank. At the very top, there is a single leader, a man sometimes referred to as the president, but he keeps to himself for 95 percent of the year, only giving an address at the beginning of the presentation of the Last Chance to prove to us
that he is still in control. The government is the only group that does not have to choose between vision and an easy life and trust me; they know it.
Outside of the government all citizens are, theoretically, born equal – the word theoretically, of course, meaning absolutely nothing in the city. As most of us are orphans, we spend our early lives in the custody of government training to become Optics, all the while withstanding an incessant barrage of propagandistic reminders that we may, at any time, choose to sacrifice our ability to see in order to live a more prosperous life. Many give out after the first few years, unable to endure, as just children, the endless hours of constant, required mental and physical effort on a diet so sparse it stunts our growth. The rest of us, the ones who, whatever our reason, choose to preserve our sight until the end of training, are given an ultimate choice at age fourteen, a last chance: allow the government to blind us, or, if not, begin a life of servitude to those who have.
Whatever their original title, even the Governors have slipped into the colloquialism of calling those who choose to be blinded Plenties. In whatever areas we survive, they thrive, fueling their abundance by drawing from the opposite end of the skewed distribution of resources that creates our lack. In that convoluted sort of way, we complement each other. They do what they want, or nothing if they so choose, listening to music and narrations, constructing three-dimensional puzzle statues, having their Optic read to them the epic tales of how the city was constructed – that the ancestors of the government tunneled it out from the infinite, solid mass that is our world – and, of course, eating. If there is one thing Plenties love to do, it’s eat. Though the meals that come to them daily through a clear glass tube in the kitchen wall are bland in appearance, a collection of whites, tans and browns that are about as visually appealing as a mound of wrinkled toilet paper, the government somehow infuses them with luxuriously detailed tastes and tantalizing scents. Part of me is disgusted with the Plenties for giving up the fight, for choosing to turn helplessness into a way of life – I know, even if they can’t see, that they are more than capable of thriving by their own power – and yet I can’t entirely condemn them for their choice. The Governors give every incentive to choose what they did, and every incentive not to choose like me. We’re all victims, just in a different way.
Be Thou My Vision (The Population Series) Page 3
