Team Free Will

        Will Papasian lived in a modest house with a green front door. He put in exactly forty hours every week at the paint factory, mixing the exact same shades of pine green and off-white paint. The same colors as his house, and indeed everyone’s house. The city of Nutopia was a sea of pine green and off-white as far as the eye could see. Will had never lent much thought to this fact; or much thought to any fact, really; thoughts weren’t necessary in Nutopia. Everything here moved smoothly, thanks to the Nutopian City Council. They oversaw everything, from their own elections to marriages to the colors of the buildings. 

         Today seemed no different than any other before it as Will headed off to work in his sensible khakis and green shirt. He arrived at the paint factory at exactly a quarter past nine, and began mixing paint and filling cans. It was the same routine as always, until the clock struck noon and signaled lunch. Will was eating the Fill ‘Em Up meal bar he had every day when he noticed a spot on the off-white tile floor. A small corner of the tile had chipped, and beneath it was a color that shouldn’t be there. 

        This gave Will pause, which was a rather unusual feeling as he’d never taken pause before. He stared intently at that little spot of color, in a shade he couldn’t even name. It wasn’t off-white, nor was it pine green. He almost knew what it was, but the word slipped away from his mind like water through a sieve. Will spent the rest of the day with a strange tightness in his chest, thinking of the color that didn’t belong and wondering if he should tell someone. This too was a remarkable experience. No one ever wondered what to do in Nutopia. Will returned to his modest house with the green front door and looked around at the simple white walls. 

        He went to bed that night feeling uneasy, dreaming of colors he couldn’t name. The crisp light of morning did nothing to ease the strange stirrings in Will’s mind. His head pounded all day long, and when it was time for lunch he looked for the spot of color. It was gone, as if it had never existed. Will tried to take comfort in this, in supposing that he’d imagined it. But how could he imagine a color he’d never seen and couldn’t even name? The dull throb in his skull persisted into the evening as he dragged himself home. And the next day, Will Papasian did the impossible. He didn’t go to work. 

       It was not a day sanctioned by the City Council to stay home, but stay home he did. Like a man possessed, Will began inspecting his modest house. He scraped at the neutral white paint on the walls and yanked at the thin white carpet on the floors. And underneath he found other colors, faded with time. Just like with the spot of color he’d seen at work, Will felt like he almost knew the names for these. Everything in Nutopia was supposed to be perfect; that was what they were assured by the City Council. They kept everything perfect by choosing what people wore and ate, where they worked, who they married and when. But if everything was truly perfect, why were there strange things hidden beneath the floors and in the walls?

        Reeling from his sudden epiphany, and from the ability to have epiphanies, Will stumbled to the kitchen for a glass of water. As he filled a glass he stared at the box of Fill ‘Em Up bars on the counter. They were packed with all the nutrients and protein one needed to get through the day. They were also supposed to taste like strawberries. Will couldn’t actually recall if he’d ever eaten a real strawberry, but surely they must taste better than the meal bars. 

        “I hate those things,” Will muttered to himself, sure of the truth in the statement but also amazed at himself for saying it. He was dumping the box into the trash when a knock at his door startled him. It shouldn’t have though; he had failed to show up for work. 

        “Will Papasian,” a deep voice rumbled. “I am here on behalf of the City Council. Open the door.” 

        Will winced as he felt a sharp stab of pain in his head, and his feet wanted to carry him to the door. He should do as the voice commanded. But then he ground his heels into the floor and shook his aching head. He didn’t want to open the door, City Council be damned. He instead turned the other way, heading down the hall toward the back door. 

        “Will Papasian, I am here on behalf of the City Council. Open the door.” The voice seemed impatient now, but Will had decided not to obey its orders, and that fact made him nearly giddy. Headache or no, he wasn’t opening the door. He sagged against the wall for a moment, catching his breath. There was a strange sound from the front door and then it swung open, revealing a tall man in a long green coat.

        “I am authorized to present you to the City Council by force,” he said.

        “You and what army?” Will scoffed, marveling at his own brazenness. The man in the green coat pulled something from his pocket and pointed it at Will. Will had never acted on blind instinct before, but he did it now. He dove away from the wall as something flew through the air and ripped a hole where his head had been. Will hit the floor with a pained grunt and cursed as he scrambled into his room, kicking the door closed with his foot.

It was a flimsy shield between him and Green Coat, but irony is a mischievous creature. Will was suddenly a man with the ability to choose options, but in that moment he had very few. Green Coat’s footsteps pounded up the hall and Will shoved his dresser in front of the door before rushing to the window and hauling himself through. He landed in the small, neatly mowed backyard and scrambled over the fence. 

        His leap was not exactly graceful, as Green Coat had made it past the dresser barricade and fired at him again from the window. Will let out a yelp and fell face first into the neighbor’s yard. Splinters of fence rained down around him. Gasping with both terror and exhilaration, Will kept low and ran to the next fence, hopping into the next yard. He kept going, over identical fences into identical yards. He could hear Green Coat still pursuing him, and Will knew he couldn’t keep up this run and jump routine forever. As he hopped the next fence he found himself landing on pavement instead of grass. He had made it to the main street, where identical white cars zipped back and forth. A few people did double takes as they spotted Will there, disheveled, out of breath, and wearing his pajamas. 

        Will ran headlong into traffic, dodging cars until he reached the other side of the street. Green Coat had followed him over the last fence but was now hesitating at the sight of all the bewildered people. Will’s breath was coming in painful gasps as he glanced around at the crowded street. His attacker didn’t want to make a scene in front of so many people. This realization made Will feel bold. He began to wave his arms and shout at anyone driving or walking by, telling them that Fill ‘Em Up bars were disgusting and ranting about the green front doors. His antics began to disrupt the organized flow of the city; he could see confusion overtaking peoples’ faces. Confusion was not supposed to exist in Nutopia. 

        Then Green Coat was striding toward him and the pain in Will’s head went from a throb to a shriek and his off-white world went black. 

        Will woke to find himself sprawled in a chair before the City Council. There were nine of them, and they stared down at him severely. As if he were a naughty child, or perhaps a skittering insect they wanted to squash. 

        “Will Papasian, do you know why you’re here?” a stern-faced man asked. 

        “Because you sent a man to drag me here?” Will replied. Their severe expressions grew even more pinched. 

        “You are here because you are a danger to the city of Nutopia.” It was a woman who snapped at him this time. “Citizens are not to skip work or run amok through the streets.”

        “I only ran amok through the streets because your assassin was trying to kill me,” Will grumbled. 

        “Why did you disobey his request to open the door?” 

        “I didn’t want to open the door.”

        “You were informed that he was there on our behalf,” the stern man said. Will shrugged. 

         “And what makes all of you so important?” 

         He was genuinely curious, but the question caused a loaded hush to descend over the room. 

         “We were created to keep order.” A woman clasped her hands on top of the long table where they all sat, looking at him with eyes that Will realized possessed a strange, dull sheen. It seemed to exacerbate the pain in his head, so Will glanced away from her. There was a window looking out over a green field, and it took Will a moment to realize that there was an odd flicker where the field seemed to meet the sky. 

        “Created,” he repeated. “What does that mean?”

        “Humans cannot be trusted to make their own decisions,” the women explained. “You are rash, volatile, and emotional creatures. When left to your own devices, you cause chaos and do harm. So the task of optimal decision making was given to us. We are a machine, using algorithms and artificial intelligence to make your choices. And we do not make mistakes.”

         “Well that’s just bullshit, isn’t it?” Will replied, still looking at the flicker out the window. “Because if you didn’t make any mistakes, why am I here?” 

        The woman pursed her lips. Or her equivalent of them; could machines technically have lips? “Clearly, something interfered with our hold on your mind. But you won’t be a problem much longer,” she said dismissively. “Nutopia will continue to thrive, and we will ensure that the Dome is fortified to prevent our signal weakening again.”

        Dome, Will thought. That’s what the flicker was. This decision-making machine had some kind of invisible force around the city, clouding everyone’s minds so they’d be docile and cooperative; content with someone else making their choices for them.

        Will wasn’t content with that anymore. 

        “We will, of course, need to dispose of you,” the machine was saying now. “You’ve caused quite the disruption and that could lead to others rejecting our control.” 

        “Good,” Will said. “Because your choices suck.” 

        Fully conscious for the first time of making a choice all on his own, Will launched himself from the chair they’d dropped him into, grabbing the gun that Green Coat had tried to kill him with as he scrabbled across the floor. 

        “You cannot kill us with that.” The woman was giving him a look of disdain.

         “No, but I can get close enough.” Will fired first at the window, shattered glass falling down like deadly rain. The machine was shouting at Green Coat to stop him, and Will had the air knocked out of him as a heavy figure crashed into him and sent him sprawling out the window. He barely noticed when the glass shards cut him, barely processed that he could barely breathe with the weight of Green Coat pinning him to the ground. Will’s focus was on one thing in that moment. He aimed toward where he’d seen the flicker of the dome, and he fired. The recoil made his shoulders ache but he fired again before they realized exactly what he was doing and Green Coat wrenched the gun away from him. The flicker was constant now, and larger. Already the breach was having an effect on Nutopia. 

        Green Coat twitched like a bug in its death throes and went still, slumping forward and becoming nothing but dead weight. Will coughed and squirmed free, gasping and poking at his tender ribs. 

        The City Council was gathered by the broken window, staring in horror at the damage he’d done. Their images flickered now too, not quite able to hold their human-like shape anymore. Chunks of the dome began to fall, revealing a world beyond. The Council turned their inhuman gazes on Will. 

        “You’ve ruined everything.” 

        “Maybe,” Will said, climbing ungracefully to his feet. The pain in his head was receding, and things long forgotten were drifting back to his mind like a tide to the shore. Blue was the color he’d seen beneath the tiles at work. And he had eaten a real strawberry, long ago. The meal bars definitely didn’t live up to the real thing. 

         “If you had really understood humans, you would’ve known this would never work,” Will said. “We’re stubborn bastards in the end.” 

         With the machine still blinking in and out of shape behind him and the sky crumbling above him, Will Papasian turned and limped away, freedom trailing in his wake.