What I Can Become
Time seemed to lose meaning in places like this. Time and space. The annoyance of the young man's handicaps made the cell seem like it was everything he had ever known. The harness squeezed tight around Harrison's chest, holding up all of the two thousand pounds that were holding him down. He could have taken more. He could feel the strength being forced into his muscles by his anger. It would take more than straps to hold down Harrison Bergeron. He could escape whenever he was ready, which would be soon. Not like his weakling father. George Bergeron would never be ready.
"Happy birthday to you," Harrison's parents warbled, "Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Ha-" Half of the song abruptly cut out as George cried out in pain, all thoughts of his son's birthday blasted from his head by the sound of three hundred beer bottles simultaneously falling off a wall. He folded in half, physically weakened by the noise, and his handicap bags then dragged the rest of the way down to the floor. The three-year-old's attention was already turned away from the cake by the time his perfectly normal mother noticed the commotion.
"George, honey!" Hazel offered her hand to help him up, her perfectly average intelligence causing her to forget that she did not have the strength to pull up her husband or his forty-seven pounds of birdshot. "What was it this time?"
"Glass bottles falling off a wall," he informed her. George had completely forgotten his son's birthday, which was sitting right in front of him in the form of one standard issue cake. Shaped like equality, flavoured like equality, sized like equality. It seemed that the amendments to the constitution also covered birthday cakes.
"Daddy," Harrison chimed in, "Why do you wear the handicaps if they hurt you?"
"Because if I didn't wear them, I wouldn't be equal. And if I wasn't equal, then soon the whole society would be competing again and then we'd be back in the dark ages."
"What were the dark ages, Daddy?"
George opened his mouth to answer, but the knowledge was blasted from his brain.
"Foghorn," George informed his family.
Dark ages! Harrison scoffed inside his head. These were the dark ages! It was not a bright world if a genius like him was forced to think through the constant white noise of foghorns and ball-peen hammers on milk bottles, if they were forced to look out on this dark world through the ugliest mask imaginable and through glasses that distorted the horror into chunks and swirls and blinding migraines. As far as Harrison Bergeron was concerned, these were the dark ages.
"Okay, Harrison," the computer purred, "just sit still while NannyNurseTM puts the little radio in your ear and…" The computer paused for the allocated two and a half seconds as a buzzer sounded through the earpiece of every overly intelligent citizen in the first world. "And then you'll be equal with everyone else." Harrison looked at his father, who was still gathering his wits after the last bout of equality. NannyNurseTM rolledsmoothly over to the five-year-old and clamped his pretty face in one hand. Another appendage fitted the ear radio while a third re-shaved his eyebrows and then proceeded to re-apply the fake marks and scars that he had been wearing since his fourth birthday.
While the robot went about its work, the scanner checked the lead weights in Harrison's shoes, ankle cuffs and bracelets were in order, comparing the weights against the information on the main database. Harrison did not understand the necessity of this process and fidgeted. The weights were a hindrance, and stopped him from being able to do things better than the other children. He didn't know why he had to wear uglier marks on his face than they did, either, and he was the only one in his class who had their eyebrows shaved weekly.
Harrison's understanding never became concrete. Perhaps that was why he was always watched in case he was plotting against the government. But there was never a plot. A plot was a plan to overthrow, usually involving a vast network of allies, colleagues and equals. Everyone he had ever come into contact with had been brainwashed by the regime, or just as pathetic as the regime itself. The regime was as bad as the dictatorships, as bad as the communists that the world had eradicated a century ago. The regime's logic was just as flawed as theirs, and could even more easily be turned against it.
The policeman stared at Harrison, both the muscular young boy that sat in front of him, and the replica on the wall screen. The classroom on the screen was average. Exactly the same amount of desks, chairs, students, teachers and equipment as every other classroom in the first world. The eleven-year-old sat staring at the screen as intensely as possible through the thick, wavy-lens handicap glasses that the child was forced to wear. He bore huge headphones, which seemed to be constantly emitting noise from what the policeman could hear after recovering his wits after each burst of noise from his own handicap. The officer could see the boy's father, George, in the same state as he, while the boy's mother looked to be in the same dazed state without a handicap. She was normal. The boy in the video was quite obviously not.
On the screen, Harrison Bergeron raised his hand, interrupting the AI Teacher's lecture on the dark ages.
"But Miss," he said, "Although everybody's abilities were not equal a century ago, all of their handicaps were equal."
"A century is equal to one hundred years, Harrison," the teacher interrupted, "The 1990's were only ninety one to eighty two years ago."
"Technicalities," the boy dismissed, "What I am trying to say is that the equality back then made more sense than it does now. People of great strength or beauty or intelligence had power over and influenced those who didn't. I do not think that the levels of influence were correct but…" He paused while half the class winced, blinked a couple times and then ploughed onwards, "But people back then were allowed to use whatever God gave them. They did not have handicaps to bring them all down to the lowest level. The most ludicrous thing about the handicaps is that they are not the same! Oh, sure, they might make us on the same level, but the amount of inhibitance on our abilities is vastly different! The 'average' people are allowed to perform to the best of their abilities, but the people above average can only perform to less than their normal ability! The handicaps are not equal."
The last statement echoed throughout the room, during which time, the policeman, Harrison and George all flinched. The policeman rewound the last part again.
"…less than their normal ability! The handicaps are not equal!" Harrison continued staring at the screen while both George and Hazel continued to look confused.
"That, Mr and Mrs Bergeron," the policeman said, "is why we are here to discuss your son."
The adolescent shifted slightly on his cell bench, aware of the cameras analysing his body language. He kept his eyes fixed on the television, where some clumsy ballerinas floundered about on the stage, two collapsing at the same intervals as the increase in the intensity of his handicap noise. His parents would be watching this too. They probably weren't thinking about him, they were too weak to overcome their meagre handicaps in even such a small way as thinking about their 'criminal' son. Why was he a criminal? Because he had missed his appointment for handicap increasing, and when the handicapper agent had come to his house to see why, they found him with his mask and glasses off, staring for the first time at his own face in a forbidden, handmade mirror. The agent had held the fourteen-year-old at gunpoint while he put his handicaps back on and kept him there until backup arrived. That was Harrison Bergeron's great evil plot against the government. Simple curiosity. The penalty for his curiosity was ten years spent in this standard, average, equal-in-every-way prison cell. Even the prisons in this society were equal. Same things in each cell, same materials gone into making it, same amount of inmates and food.
Ten years was far too long for a genius like him to be wasted. He might as well be dead. So he was going to escape. He was going to go to the studio and appear on the little screen in his empty cell as the emperor, and rule over the first world with his strength and beauty and genius. He would teach everyone the real meaning of 'freedom' and he would teach the ballerinas how to dance. Because the handicaps were not equal. And he was better than them. The government. Better than anybody ever could be. And now he was going to become what he could become.