Fuhrer Candidate #11

From the time of my birth, the State was my mother and my father. The White Coated Men raised me, not as their own children, but as a means to an end. As such, I knew no other name than Fuhrer Candidate. But the title meant nothing to me. I held no ambition to be Fuhrer... was actually frightened by the thought. The top was lonely, I instinctively knew. All along. there were people all around me, watching me. . . and although they didn't care for me the way a parent would, it was still a kind of shelter.

The Men in White Coats cared for us the way a farmer cared for his crops. Soil composition, sunlight, and nourishment were reduced to formulae designed to produce the largest harvest. None of us, of course knew when that harvest would take place.

I remember once, watching a family walk by our facility, and thinking how odd it was for that child to have two people all to himself.

Ishbalans used to believe that part of the soul was captured in a photo. I can't help wondering if the same thing happened when you look at something too hard. That time with the boy was burned so deeply in my mind that I couldn't concentrate for the rest of the day . . . or maybe the rest of my life.

I realised over time that all I had was my thoughts. The State owned what I wrote on paper, what I said out loud, what I did, where I went, who I talked to and what I ate. But in my mind, I was somewhere else. Somewhere not made of concrete and clip boards, of katas and regulations. Even though this was all I had known, I instinctively knew there was supposed to be more. Was it a kind of hope? I honestly don't know, but it was what I used in my mind to define myself from all of the others. Otherwise, it seemed we would flow into one another like a great big amorphous animal, one no different from the next. I didn't want to be part of that, I knew.

"Congratulations, Fuhrer Candidate. You are ready!" One of the White Coated Doctors announced one day to me over breakfast. Was I ready? I guess not. I guess they were wrong. I wasn't ready even though I still don't know what they thought I was ready for. It didn't matter then and it still doesn't matter.

I left my breakfast where it was and followed the Doctor. They owned everything about me but what made me, and if they wanted to interrupt breakfast, it was their business. I was lead to one of the medical rooms and was asked to lie down on a stretcher.

"This is a very special day for you, you know." The moustachioed doctor informed me, "Today, you will have a chance to become Fuhrer, isn't that wonderful?"

"That is wonderful news, doctor." They strapped me in, not really understanding what a medical procedure had to do with becoming Fuhrer.

"Do you know what this is?" The moustached man asked, a strange sort of sparkle alight in his eyes, "This is the philosopher's stone!" He answered without waiting for me to reply. He held a needle full of a red liquid that seemed to sparkle as much as the doctors eyes.

I should mention that this particular doctor had always seemed 'off' to me somehow, but at no time had he seemed more off than he had then. The red liquid in the syringe caught the light, and his face was tinged with it's reflected glow, which seemed to add to the surreal nature of this mid-breakfast encounter.

Another doctor this one with gold hair began to tighten the belts around me on the cot. I wondered what they were for, but immediately surmised that whatever was happening, it would probably be painful. Perhaps it was some form of stress test? 'Philosopher's Stone' meant nothing to me, despite the excited expression it lit on the mustached doctor's face.

"Just try and relax," The gold haired doctor reassured me and patted me on the shoulder before leaving me strapped in.

There was one man who was clearly not a doctor. He seemed out of place and about five centuries removed from everything and everyone else in the room. Other than his strange dress sense, there was no real reason for the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up, but they were.

"And will you be the one to accept my wrath?" He looked down at me, eclipsing the light that shone from the lamp above the bed.

I had no idea what that meant. He didn't seem angry to me. But perhaps the anger was there, because the hairs were still standing up on my neck.

I didn't have time to think about this, because the doctor had jabbed the needle into my arm and I could almost feel the blood curdle in my veins, and for one blinding moment, all I knew was pain.

And the room, the bed and everything else around me was gone.

"Well now! What's this?" A voice cut through me, as sharp as blades, "A pawn, eh?" A . . . something. . . I don't know what it was, stepped out from the strange swirling universe I found myself, "You belong to me now, young man. Give me that body."

"N-no. . ." I heard myself rebel for the first and perhaps the last time in my life.

"No?" There was a nasty chuckle in the thing's rough voice, "And why not? You're certainly not using it. Are you? You are State Property. And I am the State. Therefore, you belong to me."

"The State doesn't own me. . . A human is not property!" It was something I had thought vaguely for years and hadn't ever voiced. Being disembodied crystalized certain feelings I'd had for years.

"If you don't give me your cooperation, I will tear your body to shreds." It felt as though it had already begun, sharp blades seemed to puncuture my sides and flay my skin even as it seemed to reconstruct itself around the cutting blows. I felt as though I was being dismembered alive and then put back together again in rapid succession.

"Nnnnngh. . . no. . . you can't have me! You are not the State. I'm a human bieng! I'm not anyone's property!" I swore to a God I didn't even believe in that if I lived through this, things would be different.

"Hahaha. . . Going to struggle hmmm?" It laughed at me, " Do you know what happened to the other ten people who fought with me? They're dead now. Yes, that's right," It must have sensed my surprise, "There were ten other's before you,"

I didn't answer, I couldn't answer. My body wasn't regenerating as rapidly now, and the energy blades continued to tear me to pieces with the same force and fury they had at the begining of this horrible cycle.

"You can feel it, can't you? Your body succumbing to the stone's power. . . I'd say this is about your last chance," It said coolly to me, but I wasn't hearing right anymore, things had begun to become distant.

And then, something twisted inside my body and my hands and feet began to grow numb and heavy.

"Ahh well," the thing tutted, "the next one, perhaps. . .

"There's always gonna be someone idiot willing to give in." A new voice said somewhere close by, "But it's not gonna be this guy here."

I stand in front of a door. I don't know where it will lead, but something tells me it's the door to home.