As It Seems

As It Seems

Noah Essig

CONTENT WARNING: THIS STORY INCLUDES MENTION OF THE DEATHS OF INFANTS AS PART OF SCIENTIFIC TRIALS AND PUBLIC EXECUTIONS OF MINORS.

Tom ran from the Administrator's Building, feet compacting and then flinging snow up into the air behind him. He glanced back at the grand glass doors that were just now beginning to close. Nobody had given chase yet, but he still felt terror driving him forward. Turning back, he narrowly avoided a car, a police car, as he crossed the street. The officers within gave him derisive stares, but he kept moving. Would they think him a petty thief? No, he had nothing on him save for the clothing on his back and the knowledge he had just gained. His sweat cooled rapidly as it poured from his skin; his breath making puffs of vapor that trailed behind him. His legs began to ache as he made a turn around a corner. He needed to find someplace safe. But where was safe when nothing you trusted was trustworthy? Maybe they’ll know something. Tom clenched his teeth and kept running, a destination finally in mind. Running from terror and running to safety looked identical, but Tom felt a difference. He didn’t stop until he covered the two miles to the edge of the city.

TWO HOURS PRIOR

Tom pulled on the small steel handle to the enormous glass door of the Administrator’s Building. It swung open easily and Tom stepped back as the door effortlessly pushed the morning’s snowfall from its path. Stepping inside reminded him of the first time he had visited University. The large red banners with their black and white logo, the golden and silver busts of important historical figures, and the impossibly clean floors all worked together to create an air of timeless power. The lobby of the Administrator’s Building was bigger than twenty of Tom’s apartment rooms combined. The ceiling stretched on and on, disappearing behind the bright white lights that nestled there. The walls were adorned with enormous oil paintings of important conflicts. Tom prided himself on being able to pick out four of the nearly two dozen. 

The first and oldest he recognized, Struggle for Sensibility, hung from behind the imposing slate desk that was the only furniture in the entire room. Standing behind it was a sharp-looking woman wearing her Administrator’s gray and red uniform. He tried to keep his eyes on the painting as he approached, looking over the details of their Great Leader’s first victory in the fight for peace. The man stood atop a cage filled with all sorts of deplorables and undesirables. The types of people that simply could not exist within a truly cultured society. Behind him were two smaller depictions of conflicts from the time. To the left, there was the War of the Unseen, a technological war that was fought with information. The depiction was simply a bald man with an outdated computer screen that had a line of code that supposedly wiped out all of the misinformation that used to exist in the digital space. To the right, the Cleansing of Purity. Soldiers in gray and red, sweeping through armed militants wearing all manner of clothing and using unborn fetuses as shields against the soldiers. 

Tom took a calming breath as he reached the desk and said, “Hello, my name is Tom Knocks. I have a meeting with the Medical Advancements Supervisory Board. They reached out yesterday and asked me to be here bright and early to debrief them on my findings.” Without looking up at him, she clicked a button hidden somewhere on her desk. Tom turned as he heard a hissing noise and was shocked to see that there was an entryway opening on the floor behind him. He turned back to the woman who was fussing with something at her desk, “I thought I would be taking an elevator to one of the upper floors.”

“Go now or you will be late, Mr. Knocks,” was the woman’s only reply. Tom turned and hurried down the stairs that had been revealed by the trapdoor. Being late was one of the easiest ways to earn yourself a reputation. ‘Once tardy, always tardy’ was the saying that his mother would always use. One of his classmates, Irina, had been late due to an issue with her father’s vehicle while they were in grade school. She had been punished by public shaming. Tom never saw her again after that, but his class was told that her family had moved to a more rural location in order to be within walking distance of a new school. 

The stairwell was double-wide with low ceilings and small red lights illuminating his path downwards. He counted twenty steps before each landing and had walked down more than fifteen landings when another seamless door opened up to his left. A light mechanical whirring filled the air as the door eased itself open to reveal a hallway with blue lights stretching farther than he could see. He hesitated in the doorway, not knowing if he had accidentally triggered its opening. A deep masculine voice boomed into existence from a hidden speaker, “Once tardy, always tardy. Continue down the hallway.”

Tom nodded to the voice, subconsciously reacting to its authoritative tone, and started making his way down the hall. The shift from red to blue was mildly irritating, and Tom caught himself grinding his teeth as he walked. It seems silly that even with all of my data being scraped by the Administrator's Science Division that they would need my input. Aren’t they the ones who should be capable of reproducing my results and deliberating on the discovery’s impact on society? Tom chided himself for questioning his superiors. Another adage from his mother, ‘Authority is not to be understood, earned, or exercised by the Populace. Authority is to be given to those without it by those with it.’

Tom remembered the first time he had seen someone be given authority in his age group. Their high school class president, Kiara, had been selected out of their class of 15 to lead her peers through their final year of schooling. She had tested best in the three subjects, Science, History*, and Mathematics. She was also the only daughter of Businessman Lalo, the sole owner of the Food Industry. Tom recalled how proud she had been, how quickly authority became second nature to her. One of her first acts as class president was to execute a rival suitor of the boy she was interested in. Tom never knew what to make of the fact that entertaining both Kiara’s and Maggie’s advances would lead the latter to be publicly hung at a school function. Maggie’s family had moved away after that too. He didn’t know what to make of the fact that Kiara asked him to marry her on the same day. He did know that he should not have accepted the proposal.

In his reverie, Tom had lost track of how far he had walked down the hall. He hadn’t taken any turns, but looking back revealed nothing but a seemingly infinite continuation of the same dull gray walls bathed in blue light. He felt a chill coming from up ahead and continued onwards, rubbing his hands together as he did so. The static crackling of an intercom gave him pause as the voice returned, “Stand on the square of pavement in front of you. Do not move once the elevator begins its descent.”

Tom did as he was told, stepping up to the square. A hiss of air was the only noise that accompanied the descent of the elevator. He rode it for a few dozen seconds before a white light illuminated the shaft, overtaking the dull blue from above. As he was lowered, Tom noticed a large rectangular table made of spotless glass surrounded by large white leather rolling chairs. Of the nearly twenty seats, all were filled except for one. His heart started to thump in his chest as the square of pavement seamlessly joined the floor of the room. The white tiled ceiling was recovered before he could look up into the elevator shaft. He stopped himself from wiping the perspiration from his forehead and moved to take a seat.

“You may remain standing, Mr. Knocks,” the man at the far end of the table said, shuffling a stack of papers. He pulled out a page and smiled, staring Tom in the eyes. “Your research is quite fascinating. What drove you to look so thoroughly into this topic, Mr. Knocks?”

“It was something that I found fascinating. The relationship between Undesirables and ourselves is a topic that has quite a lot of scholarship already, but something I found lacking in the available materials was where our two species diverged from one another,” Tom said, glancing around the table. All eyes were on him and none were showing anything more than rapt attention.

“Could you summarize your findings for everyone present, Mr. Knocks? We have all read your work quite thoroughly, but I have always considered it best to hear it straight from the author,” the man said. Tom tore his eyes from their wandering gaze and looked at the man again. Did he recognize him? Or any of them for that matter? I thought that the Speaker of Scientific Truths would be present for this.

“Um, certainly, sir,” Tom began, clearing his throat. “After investigating the individual cells of both Undesirables and human beings, I discovered that there was absolutely no difference in cellular structures between the two. Furthermore, I was able to increase the magnification of my microscopes to seek out some crucial variation that separated the two, but this only led me to the same conclusion. I discovered a ‘twisted ladder’ like structure that acts like fibers in a sheet of cloth, winding together to create the ‘fabric’ of our bodies. Granted, there are several variations in how this fabric presents, but it remains consistent in individual subjects. I studied nearly 15,000 samples from both groups and was still unable to find conclusive evidence of a difference significant enough to appropriately categorize the two groups as separate species. I proceeded to gather samples from the local exotic animal pens from various monkeys, hoping to find the differences in Undesirables and humans more obvious by looking at a related, but definitely separate species.”

“The cross-examination of all three sets of samples provided only further proof that Undesirables were not different from humans. Given the import of the discovery I determined it would be best to do a further test. I had the labs in charge of Undesirables Research send me sperm samples from fifty different Undesirable males and egg samples from the same number of females. I fertilized fifty human female eggs with the U-male sperm and fifty U-female eggs with human male sperm and then incubated all one-hundred following Administrator Guidelines. To my utter shock, all one-hundred fertilized eggs proceeded into the fetus stage and beyond. The infants that were produced from all samples were healthy at ‘birth’, showing no signs of malformation, disease, or issues with neurological activity.”

“Per Administrator guidelines, I terminated all one-hundred samples after each reached the age of one-year,” Tom cleared his throat, desperately wanting to undo his tie and put his hands on his knees. All of the men in the room had taken on dark expressions–some anger, some disgust–and worst of all the man at the far end was smiling ear to ear like a hound watching a slab of meat sliding off a table. Instead of collapsing into his rising panic, he continued, “I repeated my earlier study of the cells on the one-hundred new samples. The results were the same. The lack of evidence of any significant differences between Undesirables and ourselves at a biological level, coupled with the ability to procreate–the offspring themselves healthy and not at all different from human offspring–led me to the conclusion that we are not, in fact, different species.” The man at the end of the table stopped grinning. 

Tom tried to control his breathing, calm his nerves, but he felt like the messenger that got shot. He pretended to cough so that he had an excuse to look away. “You should see a doctor, Mr. Knocks,” the man at the end of the table said. He stood from his chair, walking around the table, looking at the enraged group still sitting, “Gentleman!” He shouted, “Mr. Knocks has rediscovered an important truth. That is why I brought him here today.” Tom gaped. Does he believe me? 

One of the men who began looking angry had grown blood red at his leader’s remarks

and practically shrieked, “Surely you cannot agree with this madness! What important truth is the filthy lie that Undesirables are the same species as us? What would the Great Leader make of this… this heresy?”

The standing man’s grin had returned in full force, “Madness it is, dear Reiner. In fact, it is the exact madness that nearly destroyed the beautiful purity of our people long ago. That is truth that Mr. Knocks brought to us today. While his incompetence as a scientist is noteworthy for the production of those one-hundred abominations and his illegal manufacturing of a long forbidden scientific tool, his true purpose was to show you all what it is that we strive to stamp out at every opportunity. Misguided attempts to alter the very basic facts that ground our society. In order to keep the righteous dream of lifting up a small portion of people to positions of near-godhood so that they might wield the populace as extensions of their will alive, we must not simply trim away such poor creatures as Mr. Knocks.”

“We must cultivate a society that is incapable of accepting them. A populace whose ability to differentiate their own desires from that of their masters is nonexistent. One that is not only ready to carry out the will of their superiors, but thirsts to do so. We must lift up those fanatical enough to go beyond what is asked, those who believe so fully that they would destroy anything they saw as a threat to their world without hesitation. Make the rest comfortable enough that they wouldn’t dare bite the hand that feeds for fear of reprisal. If they deserve the carrot, then let them have it along with the stick; and if they deserve the stick, watch the others take care of it for you.”

The red-faced man pointed at Tom, who had unconsciously started stepping back from the table, and asked, “Are you proposing we just let this man wander off to spout this awful nonsense to others without State reprisal?” 

“That is exactly what I am suggesting. We will watch, and you all will learn the lesson the first Great Leader showed us. An enemy is necessary. One which is insidious and terrifying without being a real threat. An enemy that acts as a convenient excuse for the atrocities the State must commit for the good of its chosen people. Our enemy is the Undesirables. The reports that they kill as many people as they do are false. The State removes threats it deems necessary, and blames the Undesirable. Or, in Mr. Knocks’ case, the State praises the patriotic actions of one of its citizens standing up to an Undesirable Sympathizer,” the man said, looking at Tom for the first time since he had given his report. 

“Mr. Knocks, please exit the way you came. Have a pleasant rest of your day. We will attend your funeral in commemoration of your contributions to this committee’s important work,” he said while thumbing a remote he’d been hiding in his hand. Tom nearly fainted as the floor beneath him began to rise and the elevator shaft was revealed once more in the ceiling. As Tom ascended back into the long blue corridor, he caught sight of the man pointing his remote at the far wall. A screen illuminated, showing Tom from various angles. How do they have so many cameras everywhere? Are they going to just watch me leave? The room disappeared as he climbed higher into the shaft.

THREE HOURS LATER

The men in the room watched with rapt attention as Tom finished explaining everything he had seen at the Administrator’s Building. The Undesirable serving them mutely carried trays stacked high with drugs, alcohol, and food. Each only had one arm, their only hand fixed to the tray they were carrying by an adhesive that was originally designed to mimic welding joints. The man at the end of the table took a ripe tomato from one of the trays along with a paper stick filled with amphetamines. He broke it and snorted it into his nose. With a guttural scream he stood up, knocking his rolling chair back into the wall of screens, “Watch, my fellows! The culmination of generations of State influence brought to bear on one of nature’s most sanctimonious relations! Mother and child,” the man gestured to the screen with his tomato as Tom’s mother embraced him. The other men looked on with intrigue.

Tom’s mother was trying to calm him down, but the poor creature continued to whimper, “We aren’t supposed to be like this. They never told us we were evil. They never told us that we were killing and enslaving our own kind… all of them are human. All of them are just like you and me, Mom–” he grunted as his mother drove the kitchen knife into his neck. Blood began to run down his neck and onto her dress as Tom slumped fully into her. The man at the end of the table bit into his tomato as his compatriots cheered.