Utopia Minus One
25 minutes
Light Sensuality
Please enjoy this teaser selection from my upcoming collection of short stories, Hearts Uncanny
The Corridor
Though suddenly conscious, I did not have that sense of shaking off sleep. In a white corridor, I simply was. The floors and walls were polished to a high sheen, and were framed occasionally by a pleasing blue molding set like pillars in the walls, and there were many small lights that blinked or twinkled, as if the whole place were working out a problem. I was already standing, but didn’t remember ever having stood. I don’t remember anything before that moment.
Soon I began moving in a circle, not walking exactly, but rotating to get my bearings. The space behind resembled what was before. Later, when I knew better what to look for, I would have reason to wish that I’d taken more time to notice the small characteristics that distinguished that specific corridor. Not that it was my true beginning, but everyone must have an origin story, and this entails some point in space.
It was very quiet, but for a low hum that I felt more than heard. Presently, there were voices up ahead. I had the impulse to hide. Two women in brown coveralls came down the corridor. They were chatting at a low volume, but quieted their conversation when they got closer to me. They passed me by, and, after having gone some distance, resumed speaking. That, and an almost imperceptible glance from one of the women, were the only proof I’d been seen.
I stayed rooted for some time after that, until a tall man in a navy blue uniform stepped through a break in the wall, looked away without either acknowledgment or concern, and turned right down the corridor at a leisurely pace. I noticed that the corridor where I stood was broken at intervals by rectangular gaps that were rounded at the edges, through which anyone could step to go from one corridor to another. There were no doors, with their implication of privacy; only gaps in lengths of space. While I stood looking at the gaps, several more travelers passed by through parallel corridors. I noticed more men in navy, a few women in the functional brown, and one very striking woman in cobalt a uniform, very tightly-fitting, with white buttons that ran from the V of her neck down to her belly.
I looked down at what I was wearing. I had on a simple white shirt with L-clasps down the middle, and white slacks that reached my heels. The material was light, almost weightless, and my feet were covered in warm slippers. I still remember that initial sense of profound physical comfort, and how it contrasted with something unpleasant that I couldn’t recall. It wasn’t a memory; just a vague impression of disquiet from the time before. My body was tranquil. But at the back of my mind was something like pain, or guilt, over what I cannot say. Dressed in white, and feeling weightlessness, I briefly wondered if I was a ghost.
But people saw me, even if they didn’t speak to me. I felt the floor through my feet, smelled the clean, almost antiseptic rosiness in the air, heard the low hum, and the silence. There was a simple absence where memory ought to reside, yet it was somehow purposeful. Expected. In those early days, what came before was still the greatest mystery. I was mostly conscious of the questions bubbling up in my mind: Who am I? How did I get here? What is here? I started walking.
Though I seemed to be going in a straight line, there was always more corridor ahead of me, and I came to understood that the path curved. The very graduality of it suggested bigness. True, I was in an enclosure, but the slow grade of the bend and the openings on either side, the shining white walls and floor, held off for a time any sense of being contained.
Presently I noticed that some of the rectangles were not openings, but small enclaves. Some were lined with terminals, while others held couches or tables, and things for which I had no words, only a vague familiarity. As I kept walking, and kept seeing these side lounges, I became curious about the centerpieces erected in the middle of each circular table. Not seeing anyone around, I hurried over to one of the tables. That made me dizzy, and I had to pull out the chair, and lean on it for support. The chair scraped the floor and made an awful sound. Someone groaned to my right, and I froze.
In the enclave, a man I hadn’t seen stirred on a couch. He was entirely nude, though his skin glistened under a translucent covering. I stared, out of sheer surprise, and the man looked back at me, his eyes still foggy. Coming fully awake, and recognizing, apparently, that I was a person of small interest, he turned his attention to the corridor, and stumbled off like one awakened just in time for an appointment. Alone again, I sat down at the table, and looked at the centerpiece.
It was a white disk about the circumference of a closed hand, and it was mounted inside chrome-colored tongs, the latter fixed directly into the table’s center. Each of the tables around had one just like it, though they differed slightly in size and color. I wanted to pluck one from the tongs to further examine it, but it made me nervous. I tried to think what the disk reminded me of, but came up against the absence that was my memory. This was maybe the first time—not, by far, the last—that I experienced this particular species of mental distress. It was the agony of knowing something, and not being able to get at the knowledge.
I became very upset. My eyes filled with frustrated tears, which I blinked back out of shame. My attire and everything around me suggested a plan that I was not privy to. Steeling myself, I stared hard at the object, and mined my brain for associations. The white disk wasn’t whole, but was riven with many pores and tunnels, and its borders were implied rather than defined. For some reason, it made me think of water, vast stretches of blue water, but when I tried to give a name to that water, I found more blanks. Indeed, my mind seemed riven with holes, just like this disk. I kept at it, thinking that if I strained enough, the name would come to me. Twice I almost remembered the vast blue thing, or perhaps whatever the white disk reminded me of, but it escaped me. I guess this intense focus was what kept me from noticing his approach.
A man with silvering hair and a gray suit pulled out the chair opposite mine and sat. He rested his arms on the table, and smiled warmly. He was thickly-built, though not fat. He had large, blue, confident eyes, and a square jaw. I waited for him to say something, but it was a long time before he did. Conscious of my lingering tears, I looked away quickly and tried to remove the evidence, pretending to cough while drawing my sleeve across my face. When I looked back, I saw that he’d not been taken in. He smiled again, a small, empathetic pull of the lips.
“It’s perfectly normal to feel that way at the start.”
The start? Curiosity was overtaking my anxiety.
“But,” he continued, “you’ll find in time that you know what you need to know, and that the things you don’t remember were never very important.”
His voice was deep but smooth. I nodded, doubting what he said, but happy at least that someone was talking to me. I fumbled around with my fingers, trilling them against the tabletop for something to do.
“How do you feel?” he said.
“Well,” I said. “Comfortable.”
It seemed prudent to focus on my physical comfort; to conceal my distress.
“That’s good!” he said. “In that case, you’ll have nothing to worry about here.”
I considered the obvious questions. I burned to ask, “Where am I? Who am I? Where is here?” but intuition warned me to keep quiet. The man seemed friendly enough, but he must have known the answers I sought, and I gathered he was party to my present ignorance.
“What should I do?” I said. It was the only question that seemed safe.
He smiled, and clasped one large hand inside the other on the table.
“That’s to be determined. For now, feel free to wander about the place. Nothing is barred to you. No one should give you any trouble, but if they do, let me know.”
I nodded, as if I understood any of that. He sat back in his chair, then looked at the white circle on the tongs.
“Are you hungry?”
I shook my head. He nodded, pushed his chair back, and walked over to a small counter. He took a clear glass from the counter top, filled it with water from an aperture in the wall, and then returned to his seat. I reflected on the paradox that I knew what water was, and wasn’t surprised by any of the basic items around me, though I didn’t have words for all of them. Were I as new as I felt, these things ought to have been complete novelties. He gave me an appraising look.
“You have good sense,” he said. “Yes, I think it’ll go well for you.”
He reached across the table. When he extended his hand, the sleeve of his gray jacket pulled back, and I noticed the border of a thin translucent covering over the skin of his wrist. At first I thought he was going to touch me, but he plucked the white circle from the tongs, broke it, and dropped the pieces into his glass. It roiled and fizzled, disassembling itself in the water, which process he helped along by gently swishing the glass. When the thing was entirely dissolved, he drank it down in uninterrupted gulps. The glass bottom clapped on the table, and he leaned back with a satisfied smile.
Now my curiosity got the better of me. “What is that stuff?”
He nodded, fully expecting the question. “We just call it the coral. There’s plenty of it around. Good for decoration, or a bite between meals. Those are served in the mess, which is…”
He went on, listing the areas for eating, sleeping, working, or relaxing. I nodded, only half-attending. I was fixated on that word coral. It was what I’d been trying to remember, and now it fit like a key in a lock. Memory is like that. And yet it came without associated images or stories of coral. It was just as if a surgeon had reached into my brain with scalpel and gloved fingers, and had plucked the single word from an opaque void, excising it without its sinewy context. I continue to have that experience over and over again. I’ve come to accept it.
“You won’t remember all that,” he said.
I looked up, confused, then realized he meant all the places and things he’d just listed.
“That’s perfectly fine, though,” he continued. “Just you wander around, and learn a little every day. You can sleep on any open couch or bed. They’re quite comfortable.”
I was far from tired, and the idea of laying down somewhere to sleep, strangers walking all around me, made me uneasy.
“So,” I said, shrugging, “I should just…”
He nodded. “Yes. Continue your walk. Get familiar with the place. Let me know if you encounter any friction.”
I chewed my lip, wondering what that could mean.
“How will I find you?” I asked instead.
He smiled. “Oh, you won’t need to. I’ll be watching.”
2. Discovery
The liberating thing about being no one is that you don’t know when you’re lost. Anyway, the corridors were a series of concentric circles, so that I could simply pass through the gaps to move outwards or inwards.
On that first day, like any animal in an enclosure, I first tried to find its limits. After some hours, I’d not reached the border. This was partly because of the size of the place, and partly because the further out I went, the more infrequently did gaps appear on the outer walls. This had the effect of discouraging me from pressing on, for not only was I getting away from where I knew the mess and main sleeping quarters were supposed to be, but the increased difficulty made me appreciate, for the first time, that I was contained.
I pressed on a little further, determined to find something to justify the effort so far invested. All that while, the lights had gradually dimmed, but so subtly that I hadn’t noticed while it was happening. I had still to retrace my way toward the interior. The corridors narrowed until they were little wider than my shoulders. I was on the point of turning back when I found another outward break. This one was small, little more than a slit in the wall. I had an eerie feeling looking at it. I stepped through, planning to have only a quick look around.
To my surprise, I found a large space teeming with people. Most were in white, though their dress differed from mine. They wore loosely fitting coats over slacks, and moved about a series of high counters on which sat a number of ugly devices. I had that same odd sense of recognition without words, of not being able to really name a single item in the place, while not finding the things entirely foreign. Thinking I ought to announce my presence, I walked further into the room and cleared my throat. Two of the workers immediately turned and stopped what they were doing. The man closest to me frowned at his colleague, who glanced my way, then shrugged as if to say, “What can we do?” I felt unwelcome, and considered backing out of the place. But recalling then what the Gray Man had told me, I resolved on the spot to put it to the test.
By now more of the white coats had stopped to look. It was more attention than any worker had given me, and more than I’d bargained for. A tall man whose long face and small eyes made him the picture of aloofness, put down what was in his hands and stepped toward me.
“If you’re hungry,” he said, “the mess can be found in the interior.”
It was not a command to leave; not exactly.
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
A partial lie. Though my body still felt tranquil, the long walk had stirred my appetite.
“Well,” offered another man, “if you just need a bite, there’s always the coral.” He gestured toward the interior. “That way.”
Though I was clearly unwanted, his mention of the coral had the opposite of its intended effect. From the beginning, something about the stuff made me uneasy. Anyway, their very desire to be rid of me emboldened my sense of discovery. I recognized that feeling as somehow innate. Perhaps in the shadowy unknown that was my previous existence, I’d been in the business of finding things out. I looked around the room, and saw a stool pushed up against a wall.
“I think I’ll just sit.”
I did it before they could object. There was a sort of collective shrug, and they slowly returned to work. I settled into my chair, trying to make myself a feature of the wall.
I watched their process, fascinated. The white coats all milled about the counters on which sat the machines. These were large, ungainly looking things, and emitted first a loud grinding sound, and then a softer humming. Those noises were occasionally punctuated by a suction sound in the background. The white coats watched display screens mounted beside the machines, and made careful notes on smaller screens they held in their hands. I knew that I knew some of these items, and even summoned words for a few, though on that first day I was still inventing my own and assigning these as labels to the things I encountered. Later on, when I had more words—or perhaps when some memories returned; who can say—I would retroactively attach these found words to my first memories. When you do that, you don’t really know if you’re tampering with the memory itself. Consequently, all of this still has a dream-like quality in recollection. But I digress.
The basic process was as follows: the white coats placed chunks of matter into the machines, which ground them down, analyzed them, and then generated the results on the screens. The matter-chunks came from somewhere further out—the true outside, I suspected—and that was the cause of the suction noise. Someone was collecting these bits and bringing them in. I guessed this was happening a room or two away, because the suction noise was somewhat muted. From where I sat I couldn’t see what came up on the screens, though I was able read, as I’d confirm later that day. I longed to walk over and watch more closely, but already felt I was pushing my luck. This glimpse would have to suffice, though I promised myself I’d return and investigate.
After a while I really did feel hungry. I had a long walk ahead of me, so I stood to leave. In my white attire against the white wall, I must have been practically invisible, and I think they forgot I was there, because one of the workers near me startled, and dropped his chunk of rock on the floor. A piece broke off and went sliding over the shiny tile. I made a quick exit.
A trip is always faster the second time, and I made swift good progress until the breaks toward the interior became more frequent. Now famished, I moved with single mind, no longer even stopping to notice the others I encountered. Perhaps that was why I didn’t see the woman following me until she reached out and took my arm.
I froze; not from fear. It was just that the physical contact was so unexpected. But anything that makes you feel less a ghost is welcome. I turned toward her.
“Hey,” she said, in a sort of whisper.
“Hey.”
“What are we doing here? Did they tell you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t remember,” I said. “You?”
She shook her head, very sadly, but I could see her relief at finding me in the same predicament.
“A man told me there was food this way,” I said.
She nodded. “He told me the same.”
We were both whispering. It’s strange to consider that we’d independently detected an unspoken rule against asking too many questions. Maybe it was the way the others, the ones with jobs and functions, passed us by without speaking. Maybe it was something in the atmosphere of the place. We both sensed, even at that early stage, that we were being tested and observed.
“I’m going this way,” I said, nodding toward the interior.
I started moving again, fast enough I think to communicate that I didn’t want us to move as an obvious pair. I heard her scrambling to keep up, but I didn’t look back. I wasn’t exactly trying to lose her, but I also didn’t want to be saddled with her. We were both strangers inside a game we didn’t understand, and I wanted no allies till I knew what alliances entailed.
The last corridor gave way to a huge space. The ceiling was suddenly hundreds of feet above, and appeared to form part of a vast dome, though the area it overlooked was broken up, partitioned by a semi-open wall that reached from the floor almost to the domed ceiling. This made it impossible to see very far into the interior, especially in the low light, but the partition wall’s gray bricks were laid out gapped so that thousands of tiny windows peered into the space beyond. On the floor were many green plants in stands, and couches, and beds. Many of these were already occupied. The mess was supposed to be nearby, so I began making a circuit around the partition wall, creeping so as not to wake anyone. Another woman in cobalt blue came around the curve, and noticed me. She saw my perplexity, or the hunger on my face, and pointed in the direction from she’d come from.
“Food is there,” she whispered. “Go through any of the openings on the right.”
I nodded my thanks, and hurried on. Soon after I found a break in the wall, and passed through. The next section was almost entirely occupied with tables and booths, but there were also a number of large black kiosks. The kiosks had screens, which displayed various meal options. I walked up to one, and found to my chagrin that most of the options grayed out as soon as I approached. Evidently there were different meals for different people. Of the two available to me, one was something liquid and chunky in a bowl, the other being noodles on a plate. I selected the noodles. In a few seconds a black container that looked nothing like the nice plate from the picture slid out to an open drawer at my waist. I picked it up, and, unable to locate cutlery, walked to a table.
I took the lid off, and drank in the steam for a moment before I started shoveling the hot stuff into my mouth. It was savory and good, and I quickly got over my annoyance at having only the two options. When I was about halfway through, the girl from the hallway entered the mess. I didn’t look her way, but I heard her walk over to the kiosk, and go through the same halting process. A few moments later she approached, and pulled out the chair across from mine. She’d selected the chunky stuff, but had also managed to find the cutlery that went with it. We ate in silence for a while, she with a spoon, me trying to slurp without sound. I didn’t make eye contact.
“Am I not supposed to talk to you?” she finally asked.
“Don’t know,” I said, with a shrug.
“Is that your personal feeling, or something the man in the suit told you?”
I shrugged again. “He didn’t sat anything about it. I just…”
She nodded. “Just feel there’s some rule about it,” she replied, completing my thought.
I shoveled more noodles into my mouth, now thoroughly annoyed to be eating the greasy stuff with my hands. Embarrassed too. She was watching me while I ate, as if she expected something.
“Something isn’t right here,” she whispered. “You must feel it.”
I didn’t even look up.
“I don’t remember what happened,” she said. “But there was something. Some terrible thing that came before. Don’t you feel it?”
Again I said nothing. I knew we were being watched. The man in the gray suit had intimated as much.
“So you’re just going along with it?”
What else can we do? I thought. Anyway, the only danger I felt at present was that of crossing invisible lines. .
“I’m not going to cooperate,” she announced, no longer bothering to whisper. “Until I get answers. I’ve already decided.”
I ate more quickly, determined to get away from her. We were in the same predicament, but her method was too obvious.
“You know, there are no old people here. Nobody sick, or wounded. And the children! where are the children? I think … maybe I had children.”
That stumped me. I’d forgotten entirely about children. With the word, the concept suddenly returned to me, but I didn’t let on that any of this concerned me.
“You don’t care,” she hissed. “We’re in this thing together, but you’ll just go along with it to get by. You’re a…”
She struggled over a missing word. In the times between then and now, I’ve often encountered this phenomenon. We’ve all forgotten, but we haven’t necessarily forgotten the same things in the same way. If we all talked to each other, we could piece the past together. Hence the unspoken rule. I sensed all this back then, even before I learned the reasons for it.
I looked up at her, finally. “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘coward.’”
Her eyes flared, and she nodded slowly. I shrugged. I remember feeling thoughtful; not terribly offended.
“The thing is,” I began, “I think maybe everyone here is a coward. I’m not sure how I know this, but I think that whatever the unpleasantness was, we were both in on it. After all, we’re still here.”
The effect of those words on her surprised me. Her face contorted in a sneer.
“I can’t change the past,” she hissed, “whatever it was. But I’m going to find out. I keep seeing these faces. Children’s faces! I’m going to keep pressing until they tell me, or let it slip.”
I finished the last noodles. Not having anything to wipe my hands with, I cleaned my fingers on the inside of my shirt. As I stood, she stared at me, and the anger in her face gave way to a sort of desperation. She’d wanted an ally, and was shocked that I did not.
I walked away from her then, and planned my next exploration. In the days that followed, I’d encounter any number of fellow travelers, new people all in white, but none were as feisty or as obvious as this woman. The next time I saw her, our personal circumstances would be very much changed.
3. Something More
A blue globule hopped wetly across the display, leaving behind small drops of itself, which, being abandoned by its motion, grew tiny feet, chased after their natal body, and finally leaped onto the globule’s amorphous back, sinking back into it with tiny sighs.
“Glub, glub!” said the globule, and shivered with delight, while a laugh track composed of many high voices broke out to celebrate the reunion.
A pink globule entered from the right. The music, which before had been singsong and cloying, turned slow and deep. The pink blob slithered closer to the blue, leaned in inquisitively, and then away. It began to sway and then to tremble, blobby skin shuddering over it in waves. The blue globule transformed, becoming cylindrical, and two large eyes popped open near its rounded head. It went rigid, then rotated toward the viewer.
“Yubba, yubba!” it said, and the laugh track broke out again.
The colored blobs danced about each other, slinking closer every time, until both masses seemed to lose their composure and leapt at each other with a pent-up violence. Each seemed bent on wrapping, absorbing, and swallowing the other, until they melded into a messy, wheezing, purple blob that shuddered to a stop.
“Yessssssshhiiiiiir!” said a bodiless voice, and the unseen laughers roared and clapped.
I hated this vid, but watched it over and over again. The pleasure booths offered many experiences, but most made me uncomfortable, and seemed to inflame that amorphous guilt that called back to the unknown time. This vid only made me feel stupid, and terribly bored when it was over. The odd thing was, once you started a vid, you could never make yourself stop. You were surrounded in a way, immersed in the experience, even though you knew you hated it, and that it gained you nothing. It kept your brain going. And you could always reach into the display, and swim through it with your hands, which effected the globule’s behavior in minor ways, though without ever altering the outcome. So I watched it every day. By this time, I’d seen it at least eighty times.
It finished, and a dozen suggested vids came up on the display, their icons already playing soundlessly in microcosm. I swam through them, hoping to find something genuinely new. I wanted a vid that was about something, but those with human actors were the sort that left me most empty. There was only one other vid I could stomach, and that was because the environment in which the actors moved showed snatches of real things I still remembered. The background was a swirl of form and motion, but if you reached in at the just the right moment, you could pause the scene, and sometimes spy a tree, or a rock, or even an ocean. I especially liked the ocean, because it was the first word I remembered on my own, and so became a symbol for me of triumph. Anyway, if you just kept looking at those real things, you didn’t have to watch what took place in the foreground.
I began searching for that vid, spinning through hundreds. But it was gone. I guess they’d removed it. Maybe they were on to me. I felt a tap on my shoulder, and practically fell out of the chair from surprise. I reached up quickly to remove the head shell.
When you come out of a pleasure session, you always feel dazed and little ill. The Gray Man stood beside me, and waited politely for me to recover my bearings. I looked up at him, and waited for the lingering vidpressions to sizzle away.
“Let’s chat?” he said, as if it were a request.
I nodded. He led away from the rotunda, back toward the corridors. I followed docilely, until we stopped at one of the corridor enclaves. By now I understood things much better. Those terminals, which I had seen on my waking day, were mostly pleasure booths, but more compact versions than were found in the interior. Other terminals were gel dispensers. There was the same basic arrangement of couches, chairs, and tables with the coral disks. These were often consumed by passing workers who didn’t have time to go all the way to the mess. I’d learned that the brown-garbed women were the oasis’ cleaners and maintainers, and that one of their duties was replacing the coral disks when they were eaten.
I sat. The man snatched a coral from one of the adjacent tables, and dunked it in a glass of water before joining me.
“You must be hungry,” he said.
I shook my head no.
“Sleepy then.”
“No, not particularly,” I said.
He frowned. I’d maybe given away that I had no interest in the sort of vids that left you sleepy—unless they had trees in the background.
“Do you know why I came to see you?” he said.
His squared his shoulders bowed toward me, as if to pin me in place. Though I was taller, it didn’t feel that way.
“You’ve been here fifty days. It’s time for your evaluation,” he said.
“Oh.”
I was always aware that there was some test. I didn’t fall over myself trying to pass it, whatever it was, but I at least knew how to stay on the right side of invisible lines.
“I’d say your results are … mixed,” he continued. “Non-traditional. It’s not clear what sort of work is the best fit for you here.”
I stayed mum. No one, of course, had ever told us newcomers about any of the work being done at the oasis. The whole place was a sort of self-perpetuating cocoon. All of the tasks seemed oriented toward its own maintenance, but what was the end of it all? In my short time, I’d seen dozens of other arrivals. Of these, there were four I was rather certain had moved on to real work, becoming navy blue workers known as Jimmies, or the joining the ranks of the brown-garbed Shias. Others had wandered around for a few days, had asked a lot of the questions, and had disappeared.
“Do you have a preference?” he said.
I found that dangerous. Telling him what I wanted was tantamount to telling him who I was, all of the me that I held back. I knew there were wrong answers.
“I think I want to work in the labs,” I said.
He scratched his chin thoughtfully.
“Why? What would you do there?”
I shrugged. “Learn something. Investigate.”
“Investigate what? You already have free run of the place. Why not look just look over the Labbies’ shoulders while they work?”
I took a deep breath before answering. It felt like the start of a countdown.
“Yes, but … I’ve never seen where they bring it in from.”
He chuckled. “You want to go outside. What do you think you’d find out there?”
I weighed my response for a long time, then settled on the simple truth.
“Something different,” I said. “Something fascinating, that you can’t find in here.”
That answer seemed not to please him, so I quickly added, “I believe there’s some danger out there that you’re protecting us from. I want to help in those efforts.”
I want to see the real world, I thought. To know where the hell I came from!
He studied me, concealing his thoughts.
“Going through the airlocks is a special duty,” he said. “And that decision’s over my head, anyway.”
I nodded, and tried to hide my disappointment. But I held onto “airlock”, a mystery for later.
“It’s dangerous,” he continued, “like you suspected. But there are … other dangers. All around us. There are a ways that a person like you—curious yet discrete—could be very helpful. Maybe even make the case that you’re worthy of special duties. Going outside, for example.”
With his eyes, he seemed to weigh me to the ounce. I looked down at my white uniform, and fiddled with it. I noticed some slight browning around the hem of my sleeves, and decided to go to the Shias, and get it cleaned. I’d been avoiding that, since it meant I’d have to walk around in the gel for half a day. But plenty of people did it. Some never wore clothes. Maybe I needed to get over my squeamishness. Presently, the lingering silence made me aware that he was waiting on some kind of an answer.
“What kinds of duties?” I said.
“Investigative duties,” he replied. “Just right for a guy like you.”
“What would I be investigating?”
He sighed, and leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together.
“Like I said, there are dangers outside, but some are right here. Around you. Not everyone who comes here appreciates the life he’s been given. Despite our efforts, there’s always a few malcontents. Holdouts, from the time before. Some of them may even be in uniform.”
“The time before? But nobody remembers—”
“Not perfectly,” he said. “But snatches here and there. And when discontented people get together and talk, and whisper, well…you see they sometimes piece together a past that never was. Always an idealized past. It’s one of the foibles of human nature. A vestige of our imperfection. Some of my colleagues call it ‘Edening.’”
I shook my head, not catching the reference.
“So … what do you want me to do?”
He smiled. “Not much. Just be aware. Walk around, like you do. People are used to it. I’ve been watching you. Do you know you’ve explored more of this oasis than any three people combined? And you haven’t been here that long. So when you walk by, nobody thinks anything of it. They talk. They become careless.”
“You want me to spy on people,” I said.
“That’s a very negative way of putting it. I want you to help protect your fellow lodgers, and I’m telling you that it’s a path for your advancement. Toward what you really want.”
I swallowed. “And what’s that?”
He laughed openly then. “Come now. You’re not as opaque as you try to be. You may be discrete, but I’m an expert on human behaviors. Especially the vestigial kinds. The kinds that, improperly managed, led to the old unpleasantness.”
His choice of words made me uncomfortable, and I scoured my memory for foolish conversations from before I’d gotten my bearings. I felt I was under the knife, and yet the idea of spying made me queasy. I think, in my past, that I must have had a special loathing for people who did that.
“What will happen if I say no,”
He shrugged. “Nothing at all. You’ll go on doing what you always do.”
Forever and ever, I thought. With no change in circumstances. Still, I didn’t think I could bring myself to do this thing. I was on the point of refusing, when he made an offer that he must have known I couldn’t pass up.
“And, as a reward for this help, I’ll give you something you’ve wanted almost as badly as you’ve wanted to go outside. Your name.”
Discrete as I can be, I couldn’t pretend to be unaffected. I thought I had some principles, but they dissolved on the spot.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it. What’s my name?”
“You’re sure now? You’re committing to this?”
“I want to know my name.”
“If you make this commitment,” he said, “you’ll be held to it. A choice like this may have implications you cannot now envision.”
“Tell me my name!”
It’s a good thing that we were alone, because I think I was shouting at him.
© 2023 Joseph Breslin All Rights Reserved
Read the full story in my upcoming anthology, Hearts Uncanny.
COMING SUMMER OF 2024