What's Fair: And Other Short Stories

by Ben Shapiro

  The Pulse grew louder. The Pod crept up on him, an animal in pursuit of its prey. He looked for an escape to the right or left, but each block was solid – no alleyways, to prevent clandestine meetings and secret liaisons, a policy he had always thought fair and good. But the unforgiving, unbroken walls continued to the end of the street. Behind him, the Pulse crescendoed. He could feel the hair on his arms stand on end. His knees begin to buckle. Soon, he knew, his legs would give out, his head fry from the Pulse.

  But it didn’t.

  As the Pulse grew closer, he felt a strange sensation flow through his limbs. A second burst of energy. He was not like that girl, he suddenly realized – a shocking realization, for he had always been like everyone. He was not like the slack-jawed Enforcer.

  The Enforcer’s eyes widened in shock as the Pod approached. He was well within the range of the Pulse now. Yet nothing was happening. Nothing. Another Enforcement Pod opened up with the Pulse, full bore.

  Nothing.

  A smile creased his worn face. He slowed to a jog, then a walk. Then, finally, he stopped dead and turned around, facing his pursuers. As he did, the Pods backed away, as though called away by some higher power.

  He turned again and ran toward the Mountain.

  He didn’t know how he knew about the Mountain. The Ministry of Environment never talked about it; nobody knew the words “mountain” or “valley.” He couldn’t even see the Mountain, thanks to the Bubble, the protective climate change artificial environment that made all land even and flat, fruitful and evenly graded. Nobody he knew had ever been outside the Bubble.

  When he reached the wall of the Bubble, he stopped, puzzled. The Plexiglass dome rose thousands of feet off the ground; it was dozens of feet thick, brightly polished, gleaming in the red sun. Perfectly smooth, unblemished. Unbreakable.

  He sat in the dust for hours, waiting. He didn’t know what he was waiting for; he only knew that he had no other choice. It wasn’t a protest against the Ministries, or against his brethren. He just knew that after seeing the wild star, he would never go back to the spigot. He would never go back to his living space. He would never go back to his blue-clad women or his card-playing acquaintances.

  He waited for the Enforcers to come get him. The red sun rose above him. He sweat through his gray jumpsuit, and stripped down. He felt the heat on his shoulders concentrated through the dome, like an ant under a magnifying glass. He had never seen an ant; he had only heard of a magnifying glass.

  And then the dome opened, and he was free.

  The doorway appeared almost as if by magic. It slid open silently. The darkness beckoned beyond it. He stepped through.

  In the distance, silent and frightening, sat the Mountain.

  It was barren, a wasteland, spotted with sulfur and salt. Something inside him warned him from the Mountain, a deep spot in his consciousness covered in a gauzy film of time. He walked toward the Mountain.

  It stood surprisingly close to the Bubble. It was a miracle, he thought, that you could not see the Mountain from inside; outside the Bubble, it was the only feature of the landscape. Barren desert extended in every direction from the Mountain.

  A light shone on the Mountain, winking in the distance.

  The Bubble shut behind him.

  He walked toward the Mountain.

  By the time he approached the light on the Mountain, he was dirtier than he had ever been in his life – at least so far as he remembered it. Grime and ash coated his face; his skin felt gritty, as though each pore were individually rubbing against the others. He could feel the dirt particles between his fingers, underneath his uniform, in his ears. Heat radiated from the Mountain like an enormous kiln.

  The Mountain was rocky, far less smooth than it appeared from a distance. The darkness of the Mountain concealed its craggy surfaces. Now, as he climbed down into a crevice, the light disappeared for a moment; when he climbed up again, it stood before him: a door in the ledge. Above the door, an inscription had been pounded into the flat black rock:

  “THE CREED OF IGNORANCE.”

  He gazed up at it, wondering.

  “Do you understand it?”

  The voice came from inside the door. It beckoned him closer.

  “No,” he answered.

  “Good,” said the voice. “Come in. Don’t be afraid.”

  He edged through the doorway. The light inside was extraordinarily bright, oddly harsh. It illuminated a sparse marble room lined with a wall of books. He had never seen so many books. Actually, he had never seen a book at all – they were obsolete, he had been told.

  A small wooden table marked the corner of the room. A bed lay along the opposite wall. And in that bed was a tiny man, wrinkled with age, weak with decay. His mouth grinned; his eyes did not.

  “Who are you?” the man demanded.

  He didn’t know what to answer. He had never been asked.

  “I see,” said the man. “And what are you doing here?”

  Silence.

  “But you are out here, are you not? Outside the Bubble.”

  He pointed out the door, to the velvety purple beyond, where the meteor continued to burn brightly across the night sky.

  “Ah,” the man sighed. “Halley’s Comet. I know you don’t know what it is; never mind about that. Suffice it to say that it shows up once every 75 years. Your father and mother must have seen it at some point.”

  At that, he spoke. “I never knew my father and mother.”

  “But you remember the comet.”

  “I don’t know what I remember. Mostly nothing. But something.”

  “I see.” The man gnawed at his lip. “And you came out here.”

  “I had to. I am not like the others.”

  The man gestured to the chair, and propped himself on one arm. He looked a little like a gnome, withered and malevolent.

  “Let me tell you a story,” he began. “Many years ago, humanity was diverse. There were men and women of various races, ethnicities, abilities. And they were all unhappy. For no matter what measures government tried, inequality remained. Redistribution of resources merely masked the problem. Laws directed toward helping particular groups often ended with them being strangely disadvantaged.

  “Different abilities bred different values, different belief systems. Those values and systems caused conflict.

  “We tried everything to solve it. We tried education. We tried genetic treatments designed to raise the average intelligence. But each IQ point meant a massive difference in outcome.”

  The man looked at him, peered at him. “Do you know,” said the man, “what it is that makes us happy?”

  He shook his head.

  “Nothing. Nothing makes us happy,” the man said. “But it is desire – aspiration – that makes us unhappy. Ambition. Jealousy. These make us unhappy. The man who reaches for the stars is sure to fall short. The man who reaches out to the divine is sure to remain lonely. The man who reaches for his toothbrush – provided that his toothbrush is in its proper place – is satisfied. No dreams means no unhappiness. Or at least equal unhappiness. And if no one has experienced true joy – the joy of achievement – then no one knows that they are missing.

  “Equality is the key. Equality cannot be achieved in excellence. It can only be achieved in mediocrity. And we have achieved it within the Bubble. All are equal. All want nothing, aspire to nothing. It is perfect. It is stasis. It took generations. Three generations to breed out the intelligent, to select out the unique. We have more disease now, but we have no unhappiness. More poverty now, but shared by all. The secrets of science that once made men look to the heavens have been lost to us.

  “There were some left over from the Purge. We operated on them. Most remained as they were; a few, an unlucky few, reverted, their brains taking over functional operation from their damaged areas. Those we eliminated. We have achieved what no one ever thought possible: an end to unhappiness.”

  The man peered at him again, seemed to look b
eyond him. “But one man can destroy the system. One man who believes he is different. One man who dreams, who aspires, who wants more – who even feels that want.”

  Two shadows leapt onto the wall behind him. He glanced quickly – flanking him were two Enforcers. The withered man pushed himself up from the bed.

  “Are you unhappy?” said the man.

  He nodded.

  “That is unfortunate,” the man said.

  He hesitated. His eyes closed. Burned behind his eyelids was that image: the star crossing the heavens, blazing its way through the solid, soft curtain. His heart pounded in his chest. When he opened his eyes, the Enforcers stood on either side of him.

  “No,” he said, “it is happiness to be so unhappy.”

  The man nodded. The Enforcer on his right grabbed him by the arm, pinioning it to his side – but he was too fast, his brain now moving faster than those of the Enforcers, speeding up the action. He shot his foot forward, tripping the Enforcer. Then he kicked him in the head. The Enforcer grunted, then lay still.

  He leapt to the bookcase. His hand gripped a volume – The Pentateuch, it said – and he pulled it from the bookcase. The withered man was screaming now – in anger or despair, he could not tell. He swung the heavy volume, metal edged, at the other Enforcer, who was moving toward him with a slow certitude. The book crunched into the Enforcer’s skull, and he toppled to the floor with a crash.

  He faced the withered man. “Is there anything out there?” he said.

  “No,” said the withered man. “There isn’t.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “I can’t. But man has been searching for so long, and he has never found it.”

  He moved toward the withered man and stood over him.

  “You took my chance to search from me. From us all. It was my right --” The word popped into his head unbidden. “Our right to search.”

  “I protected you!” the man protested.

  A swell of pain touched his chest. Pity. He had heard the word, but did not know its meaning. He pushed the man down onto the mattress, reached for the man’s pillow, placed it over the man’s face. The man gasped. He fought. At the last, as his old body shuddered, he grunted. Something that sounded like a plea. A last hope.

  “No,” he said as the man drew his last breath. “You protected us from our humanity. From our possibility. May God…” The word jumped again to his mouth. “May God forgive you.”

  When the man was dead, he dragged him outside, onto the Mountain. Haley’s Comet still glowed in the sky, its aftertrail burning the night into brightness. He buried the man on the Mountain.

  Then, using the Comet as his guide, he turned his back on the Bubble and began walking. He did not look back.