The Death of the Wave (4 page)
Read The Death of the Wave Online
Authors: G. L. Adamson
He submitted placidly enough, but that thin mouth was closed and trembling
with an inexpressible sadness, like a beast that would not speak if it could.
Wait.
I search my memories.
Certainly that can’t be right.
They have sadness bred out of them from birth, along with the fullest extent of any emotion.
Aristos believed that emotions clogged the thinking.
But that downturned head, that flat dead gaze catching the light.
Sadness.
Say what you like, aristos are not like us.
Hatred, of course, existed for that poor skinny bastard, the hungry men who looked past
how wretchedly thin he was and saw instead
a test weighted towards the Palaces,
the ringing out of the edicts every hour from the clock-tower,
a television with only three channels.
He hadn’t long to live, we all knew that,
and we waited for the gunshot that would signal another ration.
We were beyond sadness for any man’s death, certainly beyond that of
a weird little aristo who never spoke.
When that last shot rang out, the prisoner with the fiery eyes was already dead and gone.
We never questioned his wildness.
People broke all the time in the Barracks.
It was, you could say, the purpose of the place.
But still, I clutch the madman’s letter to my heart,
meaning with the entirety of my being to later read it.
I unclip the piece of metal curved to keep it, and I save it.
The letter itself is written on the back of a booklet of Edicts,
a page torn out and given far away.
Edict 3462: The Choice of the Camps.
I read it as I eat my bread, the ink is dry and flaking.
The words straggle on as if they had to be chewed thoroughly
before being spat back out on the page.
This is the letter of a man who has to think carefully about every syllable.
It’s him.
Descartes.
Yes, I remember him now.
How different he was in the Palaces!
And all for the love of an Author.
I can see him in my mind, bent over the desk,
his glossy black hair obscuring those odd opal-eyes.
His hands move like magic and there is arithmetic in his fingers.
So there
was
still sanity in his head.
He pauses in his writing to hollow out another piece of the straw
that the Breakers leave us in the winter.
Another pause to his wrist and then he writes in his own ink, like me,
with all my little tricks.
So it was not about the fiery-eyed outcast?
Almost a disappointment.
DESCARTES
My dearest reader:
If you are reading this, poor fool, you are in here with me.
I don’t know why I have bothered to compose this letter, as your chances of survival are also rather slim, but as it remains you are my only hope.
How depressing.
But I have lived long enough.
Sometimes it feels as if I have lived forever.
My mind stalls and slows compared to the strange black-eyed children
that can measure up to the machines.
These aristos, as you call them…they are somehow new.
I am not, I am only a step above the norms.
A mistake, or a test.
I remember the first sight that I saw
being the cool eyes of my father and his skin as white as marble.
Useless, really, but time goes slowly here, it stretches and it strains to fill the hours of the day.
One must fill it up with something.
In my mind alone, here exists the memories of growing up in the Palaces.
Aristocracy.
Private tutoring for the CEE which we are assured we would pass.
Fencing lessons to keep both mind and body sharp, the subtle contests against the Breakers.
My mother used to hold me against her skeletal chest
and chant tunelessly a song of the periodic tables.
Boring, of course, to someone like you.
I wasn’t like the others.
I wanted to learn everything, and was frustrated by the knowledge that was kept from me.
My father would watch me through slitted eyes over the dinner table
as if that frustration was printed cleanly on my forehead.
I became more and less than the others:
The aristocrat who writes.
You may ask the purpose of this tirade.
I think that someone here in the Barracks is going to kill me.
They tolerated me at first, but their suspicions have overrun my novelty.
I intend, before the inevitable occurs, to tell someone of what I have seen and what I know.
I do not know if this will have an effect save to drive this letter into the hands of another,
or if you, dear reader, can even be trusted with this information.
But I am a dead man and so, most likely, are you.
Pity.
Wait until Cleaning day.
Hold the line.
I’ll have him leave you a message.
Poor little fool, I wonder if you even remember what the world looks like outside the Barracks.
What else is there to do, but murmur your grievances
over and over to yourself in the face of an artificial night?
I wonder, if they blind you—will that make you sing?
One’s sympathies are always on the side of life so-
Good luck, my poor fool, and fly for the both of us.
—Descartes
Dormant (Cont.)
COMET
56859 said it wasn’t always like this.
That there had been a time before the CEEs.
His mother who told him what it had been like before the Censor,
had heard it long passed down the family line.
He was not like the other kids, he had a family back in Poet’s Camp,
but the Keeper said they sold him to pay for food years ago.
He thought that they would come back for him.
Every night he read a small booklet that he said
he smuggled in past the Breakers when he was delivered.
His mother gave it to him and it contains in tiny print all of Eden’s edicts.
It was supposed to keep him out of trouble.
It was supposed to keep him safe.
56859 was smart.
He said that he had been practicing poetry for when he got out of the Hive,
but most of his work would never be written.
Ten minutes then, until they gave out the CEEs.
I was watching the Breaker in the corner of the classroom, but 56859 was looking at me.
I hid the booklet he gave me and I smiled to tell him his secret was safe.
He did not smile back.
Do I remember the genesis of my destiny?
That is easy.
It was after testing day, after the frantic ceremony, and the great division of lives.
It is rather funny in retrospect, all the emphasis we place on the CEE,
I hardly remember the test-taking process itself.
Stronger in my mind is my memory of the surrounding circumstances, the trappings.
Number 2397, an unusually lanky boy chewing nervously on his pencil, comes to mind,
as does number 2576, who played with her long flaxen hair as she searched for the perfect word
for her essay on Sustainable Agriculture.
I admit that I glanced slightly at her work, something not worth my life.
We, the adults, now build the exam up to be almost monolithic, taking on a life of its own,
but it wasn’t that horrible, truly.
I had my mother and my brother there to comfort me
before we were herded to the nearest Testing Center located in the nearest Hive.
Testing day, we were fed better than usual in the Hive’s shabby cafeteria,
and those that still had mothers were scrubbed almost to shining.
Testing day was important.
We were important.
Looking at the Hive kids, there were many thrown into our mix with their drab gray uniforms, we felt ourselves to be luckier than anyone in the world.
Only the grim Breaker, lounging lazily outside the Testing room door
with an old-fashioned rifle in hand reminded us of the stakes.
I answered the questions the best I could, my mind seeming to buzz in recognition.
I could do this.
This was what I had been training for.
Unfair, came the whine, often, after the exam,
in that hour lull while the answers were processed.
But I exulted in the silence, half-ashamed.
Lines of fresh-faced youngsters, with myself somewhere fidgeting in the mix
with my too-big blouse and my insipid hair-ribbons.
The lone Breaker in gleaming black uniform stood in the center of this sea of youth,
a large assortment of bowls filled with white paper slips set out on the table beside him.
One by one, he read the number of each child, their test score, their grouping, Palace or Camps, their segment of each and their class within their society, and their eventual profession.
Out of each of the bowls, split by Palace or Camps and into their segments, he would read their new names. Every so often, he would call out a number but no score
and the boy or girl called would be grouped into the corner.
The boy in front of me was trembling with nervousness,
dark hair plastered to his head in a shiny black cap.
The Breaker easily shifted his weight and read from his scroll: Number 2786. Score: High in Reading and Critical Analysis. Low in Mathematics. Low in Scientific Induction. High in Vocabulary. Low in Practical Application. High in Writing. Grouping: Camps. Segment: Writer’s Camp. Class: Second Tier. Profession: Copy Writer, Health Corps.
The boy seemed to sag with relief.
Completely ignoring this, the Breaker took his time fishing about in the Writer’s Camp, Second Tier bowl. He pulled out a paper slip, and read off the name Hearst.
It was my turn.
Number 2346. Score: Fair in Reading Comprehension and Critical Analysis. High in Mathematics. High in Scientific Induction. High in Vocabulary. High in Practical Application. High in Writing.
Accusing eyes turned to me as the Breaker paused.
He asked me if I knew my choices, and I could only nod numbly.
High scores or close to it across the board gave you a few choices.
I could choose the Palaces and live a life of comfort, but I would never see my family again.
I could choose the Camps, but that would only give my mother a permanent mouth to feed.
Or…I could be a Breaker.
Taking on the black uniform would allow my mother and my brother until his Testing Day
to move into a Breaker village, which wasn’t luxurious, but guaranteed enough to eat.
My mouth opened before I could stop it and by the time I spoke it was too late.
The Breaker cleared his throat.
Number 2346. Score: Fair in Reading Comprehension and Critical Analysis. High in Mathematics. High in Scientific Induction. High in Vocabulary. High in Practical Application. Grouping: Breaker. Segment: First Tier. Class: New Watchman (subject to change)
Profession: Written Camps Patrol.
No name for me, but a casual nod in my direction and a number, Breaker (Watchman) 256.
Probationary.
That is it. That’s how it happened.
Nothing particularly dramatic, or noteworthy.
I plodded to my fate like a cow to the slaughter
with the endless song of unfair ringing in my ears.
A choice that wasn’t a choice. What else could I have done?
BLUE
My poor fool.
What perfectly crafted arrogance in the face of an artificial night!
It is always dark in the Barracks save for the electric lights that line the corridors,
but I had at reading that first sentence an urgent need of a candle
to burn those words into dust and ashes—
Images of an aristo.
Third channel on our television sets constantly tuned to the smiling-faced advertisements
or at times important announcements, the first memories of these superiors.
Galileo, Human Services Coordinator, resplendent in gleaming white robes,
his eyes wide and knowing.
We knew nothing of them save that we were as animals to them.
Smooth-skinned Artists in the advert industries, chosen for their pallor
would tell us that our purpose was to become more like them,
even though we knew that that would be impossible.
There were contacts on sale in the Pharmacies for those Artists who could
scrounge to afford them, damaging their eyes to get that deep mysterious look,
and lead-based foundation to lighten skin after a life of toil.
And it was in that moment as I read the mocking words that said that his true belief
was that all effort on his part would fail, I hated him.
I hate him far more than I had ever hated an aristo
and that hatred only continues to intensify the further I read.
All for the love of an Author.
Descartes?
I can sense his self-awareness and it drives my blood cold.
Aristos are not meant to feel pity.
They are not meant to sense their differences or their gradations of genius.
They are not meant to know that anything that they were doing was wrong.
That, in a sense, is their main redeeming quality,
the one thing that removes them from true human horror.
To save or to kill is meant to be equal to them.
That was the myth that had been spread since the beginning,
and that was supposed to be our sole source of hatred and of pity.
True, the aristos have the intelligence that our society demands
