by J. M. Clark
“You see, when a woman stops caring to hold her man to a standard, she repeats the same message to her son, then her daughter. Everything gets out of whack. After a while you end up with chaos and ruin. Prior to the sickness, everything was in disarray. There were wars all over the world, crime was a common thing, education was not a priority, and I’ve just finished telling you about how mothers no longer wanted to be mothers.
“I’m going to ask you a question, Mrs. Tanahill, and I want you to be honest with me, okay? You know that honesty is very important here.”
The woman’s panic was clear in the way her eyes shot all around the room. Perhaps she thought he would call security to take her away. That idea was funny to him. When she finally locked eyes with him once more, she nodded.
“How many abortions have you given yourself in the last five years?”
“I haven’t—”
Sirus raised a hand to stop her. “Lying would cause me to get upset. We have been having a good talk thus far; please don’t sully it with impure things like lies. If I meant to have you punished, that would be happening right now. I’m just trying to understand. We offer everything here that you could possibly want. Food, drink, clothing, sexual companionship within reason, safety, education, and a lot of other things. Why would you do it?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, sir. I would never do a thing like that. I’ve gotten older, and maybe things aren’t working like they did when I was younger. I’ve carried and delivered eight children to the child center. I don’t believe my body can handle it anymore.” All sexual desire had vacated the look in her eyes.
“I’ve given you a chance to level with me, Diane. It saddens me that I have to do so much in order to get the truth out of you. Maybe you do understand the women of the past a bit more than you lead on. Did your mother have a good amount of male friends? Did she leave you alone in your room while she entertained company in the other room? Or maybe she gave you a new step-father every few months.”
Sirus walked to his chair, pulled out the seat, and sat down. He grabbed the manila folder with her name on it and opened it up to rifle through a few of the papers. “I do not say that to be cruel. You must believe that’s not my way. I do think it is important that you understand yourself in order for you to take the next step that we have in store for you.”
He slid Diane’s folder across the desk. She opened it and looked through some of the pictures and papers. After a few seconds, she closed the folder and was silent, staring at the desk, not able to look Sirus in the face.
“I know you can’t find the words, dear, so don’t worry about it. I’ll do the talking. We have evidence of over seven self-administered abortions that you have managed by way of slamming your abdomen against objects in your pod. This was initially figured out by the people in the infirmary…and we do have other means of finding out things.”
“I’m so sorry, Sirus, I have just had so many children, and it’s taken a terrible toll on my bod—”
“Shhh.” He cut her off with a hand in the air. “I said I would do the talking now. You had your opportunity to give me the truth, and you opted to be dishonest. That’s something you will have to live with, Diane.
“As I was saying, you have given yourself seven abortions, you have been found to masturbate every free moment you have in your pod, and you have been having sex with many of the men on your floor. You had to know this was a bad idea. This is not the Old World, Mrs. Tanahill. You cannot behave that way here,” Sirus said while giving her his best concerned face.
“I do understand, Sirus. I’ve messed up a lot. I’ve tried so hard to be the way I’m expected to be. The urges, I can’t fight them sometimes. I’ve let you down, the Order, the teachers, and myself. I’ll accept whatever punishment may be waiting for me.” Diane slumped into her seat and went back to staring at the desk.
“On the contrary, Mrs. Tanahill. You are not here to be punished, I’ve told you that. You are here to be promoted. We are going to put you into the Greater Understanding Program. You have been with us for quite some time, and we appreciate all the long, hard years you have endured inside of this place.”
Diane’s eyes widened, threatening to pop out of her head. She sat up straight in the chair as she looked up at him, eyes welling with tears.
“But…but…why would you? I don’t deserve it,” she cried.
“It’s my job to decide who deserves and who does not. The Order has appointed me to that position, and I take all things into consideration when making these decisions. While the things you did were not becoming of you or the values we teach here, I do understand what you have gone through. I think you need a new setting and new responsibilities. You have accomplished all you can here in the Palace. It’s time you move on to the next level.”
Sirus allowed her time to dry her face, make amends with him, apologize, cry, dry her face again, and eventually go with Teacher Simon, who was waiting on the outside of the door to take her to the next destination.
Once she was out of the room, Sirus pulled a white handkerchief out of his back pocket and spit on it. He walked over to where she’d been sitting and proceeded to wipe the seat clean. He felt the sides of his mouth quirk upwards in an amused grin. He tossed the handkerchief into the waste basket next to the exit door, picked up his glasses from the desk, and made his way back to the window facing the courtyard.
Sirus opened the curtain as wide as he could and looked out into the world. He took it all in and was happy with what he saw. Order, happiness, and friendly faces. He would make sure that those things remained in place. That was his job, after all.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jacob
Jacob sat in a chair, holding onto a book. But instead of reading its pages, he was staring at a magnificent view of the main entrance. The book was not important. Today it was a prop for a bigger plan. On the first floor of the Palace was the center plaza area, which housed the main entrance into the Palace. The area was mostly used for socializing because of course, they couldn’t actually use this exit to leave. At least, no one ever had before.
The entrance doors were made of glass and stood about fifteen feet tall. The first-floor walls of the lobby were also glass. Most everyone there thought that this enormous building was once a five-star hotel before it was remodeled to function as a Palace. The way the pods were set up made it hard for Jacob to believe this idea. Everything about this place seemed deliberate to him.
Coming down here was an activity Jacob had enjoyed since the very beginning. It was less about reading to him and more about keeping his eye on the prize. In the beginning, they were supposed to be released in a year or two. The Palace was never meant to be a long-term deal, at least that’s not how it was explained. Going back out into the world to lick their wounds, return home, and get back to living as they had lived before was on the agenda after a short period of time.
Soon that year or two turned into three to five years, then eventually everyone got accustomed to living here. The safety and certainty that the Palace provided made it comfortable. People stopped asking when they were leaving and seemed to accept their fate. It wasn’t a bad deal, and most of all, it allowed everyone who had lost so much to forget that reality and grasp onto a new one. But for Jacob, this was not a utopia. And he believed there were others who felt the same way. He would test that theory today.
He didn’t even know the title of the book he was pretending to flip the pages of. He had picked it up from the community area on his way here. For him, the time of asking was done, the answers irrelevant at this point. He wanted to leave, and his mind was set on doing just that.
But would Mary come with him? He had been thinking about this for a few weeks now. Over the last month, their bond had gotten much stronger, and he was not sure that he could leave without her.
Something was not right here, and he didn’t want to stick around to see what happened. Friends, or family as they liked to call the
m, came up missing out of thin air. Then the other Palace members were later told through pre-meal announcements that the individual had suddenly ascended to the Greater Understanding Program. Never seemed to be any of the Palace-born folks, only the people that came from the outside twenty years ago. Jacob wasn’t an old man just yet, and he most definitely wasn’t born yesterday.
Oddities had been occurring since the very beginning, but at that time, no one cared to consider things. Twenty years of being cooped up, a series of letdowns, and his own personal struggles had made Jacob have a change of heart. He knew Mary wanted to leave as well. Through the Greater Understanding Program though. He wondered if she cared how she got out of this place. If anyone cared.
There was always the chance that they would drop dead the second they stepped past the red flags in the grass. That’s what they had been told, and based on what happened to the world, that story wasn’t out of the question. He had seen the sickness at work, and it still haunted his dreams at night.
These years sleeping alone and being in solitude with his thoughts had given him much time to think about who he was, what he was willing to deal with, and what he was willing to do to get out of here. Jacob hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Trevor about his plan, but he would as soon as they saw each other again. He would need at least one friend on his side when he decided to leave. At the very least, he could rely on Trevor not ratting him out to the teachers, even if he didn’t want to leave.
Jacob turned a few pages all at once while watching the security guards at the door. He was trying to build up the confidence to get up and put his plan into motion. Eight to ten guards were stationed there every day, seven days a week. They switched shifts, so the doors were never left unattended. At any given time, there were multiple guards inside and outside of the main doors.
The soldiers wore black uniforms and carried handguns. Jacob could never figure out the reason for the guns. The assumption was that the weapons were for protection if a Palace member became violent. This very rarely happened, and when it did, no one was shot. He had never seen the security guards pull a gun out of the holster. Would I need a weapon? What if he was caught and they tried to hurt him or keep him here?
Jacob set the book on the table and finally got up. Shuffling toward the security guards, toward the doors, he felt sick. So much could go wrong, but he had thought about this for years. For years he had tossed and turned at night and asked himself, What if? Today was the day he would find out.
There were other Palace members in the plaza center. Some were reading or talking to each other, having drinks, eating fine foods and laughing about nothing. They were lost in their own self-importance, but this was a regular thing here and part of the reason he needed to go, or at least find out if that option was even available.
The sun was streaming through the glass of the first floor, filling the central plaza with the brightness of the afternoon. The day was truly beautiful; was there a better day to give himself some clarity? He thought not as he felt the corner of his mouth rise into a grin.
Two women sitting near the entrance stared at him as he walked past their table. “Hello,” they both said at the same time with a wave. He never made eye-contact or took the time to respond to them. He continued walking toward the entrance. Others were beginning to notice him as he crossed the red line that Palace members were not allowed to cross, which was about six feet from the double doors and the security guards.
A guard near the entrance didn’t notice Jacob coming in his direction. The man was busy speaking to one of the suppliers. The suppliers were the ones who brought boxes of goods to the Palace via helicopter, landing within the quarantine zone. They were never seen on the upper level floors of the Palace, just here at the main entrance dropping things off, or near the courtyard outside, speaking to security there. They wore black jackets with black billed caps and black shades. A few of them wore yellow raincoats, regardless of the weather, and they always wore a yellow hat. These yellow raincoat individuals never carried containers; they gave directions and did all the talking.
One of the men was talking to the security guard as Jacob walked past them both, or tried to. The security guard grabbed his arm, scowling at Jacob. The look on his face was confused and angry.
“What are you doing, sir? Why are you over the line?” he said, pushing Jacob a few feet back. The guard put his hand on the gun hanging by his side from a belt clip. “You need to back up, sir.”
Jacob began to move backwards as the man in the yellow jacket walked out into the warm weather, letting the breeze of the day come flowing into the Palace. He never looked at or regarded Jacob’s presence at all. Three other security guards nearby were watching, expecting Jacob to comply and get back behind the red line.
He stood there staring at the security guard, wondering how far the man was willing to go to keep him from leaving through the main entrance. The guard was fully prepared to begin shooting at him it seemed. “I’m sorry, I must have gotten mixed up. Am I not able to get to the courtyard from this exit?” Jacob said to the guard. A crowd had begun to form as other Palace members came walking up to watch. Not much excitement happened in the Palace, so even marginal tension was liable to catch everyone’s attention. And when the gossip started, it would later be exaggerated. Jacob was counting on that.
“You are a man of age in this Palace, you know that you are not to use this exit. I’ll ask you once more to return behind that red line.” The guard stepped into an offensive stance, keeping his hand on the weapon as he nodded to the line behind Jacob. Additional security entered the Palace through the main doors. They must have been stationed outside. The newly arriving guards stood at the entrance with their hands behind their backs and their feet in a wide stance.
Jacob smiled at the security guards and took three steps back. He was now back in place, and there was nothing more for people to see. “I’m sorry, sir, I got confused. No need for things to escalate. Please don’t hurt me…I’ll be going now.” Jacob turned to see a crowd of fifteen or twenty people watching. With any luck, every last one of them would tell others about what they saw today. Jacob wore a cunning smile as he walked back to his table, picked up the book, and headed toward the elevators.
The crowd stayed where they were, staring at the wound-up security guards. Jacob could hear lots of chattering, outrage, accusations, and gossip. The confrontation between the middle-aged man and one of the security guards at the entrance would be the talk of the Palace, and that’s exactly what Jacob wanted.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dwight
Dwight sat in the plaza area of the Palace on the first floor, doing some people watching. Deposits for the spank bank, he liked to call it. While sitting at a four-person table, he thought about the old guy who’d gotten hassled by the security near the entrance. It was the same guy who’d butted into his secret session when they were down in the survey area of the child center.
Dwight remembered how excited he was that day, almost to the point of exploding in his jeans before that guy started bothering him. “Jacob,” he muttered under his breath, snapping his fingers when he suddenly remembered the name. Dwight didn’t like him. He didn’t like much of anyone in this place, and he was tempted to take off and run out those double doors just to see what happened.
According to the Palace gossip, Jacob had only stepped over the line…well, he also got close to the door, but that was no reason for the security guards to behave the way that they did, getting everyone in the area all in a fuss.
Dwight only caught the tail end of the big drama, arriving to the plaza just as Jacob was leaving. Lots of people were whispering about it though. When Dwight had joined the back of the crowd, a woman eagerly told him that one of the security guards actually threatened to shoot Jacob where he stood. “Now why would the guards get so uptight just because an old dude gets close to the door?” Dwight pondered as he got up from his spot at the table. It didn’t make any sense a
t all to him. Unless…his theories were correct.
What if the government was only keeping them in the Palace to do testing on them in their sleep? When he was sleeping at night, he sometimes heard steps in his pod. He never got up to check though, because he was afraid they would kill him or make him sick with their testing. Dwight remembered the time he woke up with a weird bump on his right side shoulder blade. He just knew they’d put some kind of implant inside of his arm.
His father once showed him a conspiracy about microchips and how the government was planning to put microchips in the bodies of citizens in order to track them or even control them. Dwight had spent that entire morning trying to dig the microchip out of his arm. It must have gotten deep in his back though; he couldn’t find it after cutting and digging for a good two hours. They are good at what they do, he thought as he walked over to a kiosk to get a bag of chips. His favorite kind, barbecue.
Chomping on the chips, Dwight leaned against the wall, watching Palace members come and go from the gym, dressed in their small shorts, tight shirts, and running shoes. If he were able to get some concrete evidence to show what was really going on here, maybe he could convince some people to help him get ahold of those protective suits and take back the country.
He waved at a guy walking past in small biker shorts and a sleeveless blue shirt. “Saved in the spank bank. Thanks for your service, sir,” he said, low enough so that no one could hear.
Dwight wasn’t sure what Jacob was doing. The guy wasn’t crazy, and even if he was, he would try his best to pretend not to be, just so he wouldn’t have to deal with a million mental evaluations. The main doors were off-limits to them; everyone knew that. They were only allowed to use the east exit leading out to the courtyard. Pulling a gun or threatening with a gun seemed pretty over the top.
