The Daisy Genocide
My Admiration and Disgust of the Color White
I found myself in his arms. I did not leap or run or fly into them, I walked towards him and he caught me. I didn't smile nor did I cry or act surprised. It was like I had temporarily shut down until my brain could rap around the reality of the situation, I had stopped swimming until a direction could be found.
His arms were real, his breath was real, his beating chest, his relieved laugh. He was there. "I can't believe it." He laughed. I looked up at his face which both cried profusely and smiled intensely at the same time. "You've grown so tall," was all he managed to say before being caught in another fit of tear-stained laughter.
I moved with zombie-like oblivion, brushing tears away from his watery blue eyes. "Who are you?" I mumbled numbly, barely recognizing that I was even speaking.
"I'm the same person I was seven years ago, only…I'm seven years older now."
"Marxi?" My mouth mimicked his name for my tense vocal chords that couldn't remember how to make sound. "You're alive?"
Tears welled up in his glassy blue eyes again and another throaty laugh was dredged up his crying throat. "It's me, Lovino."
My numbness fell away as I grappled onto the boy and cried tears that I had held back for years because it was him. The reader, the rebel, the radiant, he was back. At the moment, I didn't bother to question how or why that was possible, I just forgot reality for a moment at let myself believe that he really did come back from the dead. He held me back and sobbed with laughter while all I could get out were sharp, staggering breaths. Finally he pried me away from him. "Come on, inside." He ushered me into the barn and my subconscious forced me to look back and check that the forgotten boy was still with us. He was much more serious but he flashed me a smile and followed us in, closing the door behind himself.
Marxi and I sat on barrels of hay across from each other, a few kerosene lamps between us. Antonio sat hip-to-hip with me as an awkwardness filled the space. We looked around, inspected, shuffled, rubbed our noses and scratched our cheeks. "Are you comfortable?" The dead boy finally asked. "I know it's a bit cold but it can't be helped. Are you hungy? I have salmon cakes in my bag, you could have some-"
"I'm fine."
"Okay. Well, I mean, I you need anything, there's a blanket right behind you."
"It's okay."
"So… you're taller now." He nodded and laughed at his own observation.
A crooked smile managed its way onto my face as I nodded. "Seven years will do that." I didn't feel like we should be talking about what we were talking about. The words were dry and used as they exited our mouths, meaning close to nothing.
Our of obligation, I picked up the blanket and laid across mine and Antonio's laps. He didn't notice, he was too busy wearily inspected the flame. "Marxi?" He asked, "Is it okay to have those in here?"
He nodded. "This hay doesn't catch fire, they had that genetically altered away before I was even born."
Antonio took my hand and I gratefully held it back. I wasn't sure if I were alive or not, if I were breathing or not, if I were awake or deep asleep. I clung to Antonio. "You should explain." The Spaniard offered.
"I wish I could but…hell… where do I even start?"
"Start at the part where you died." I suggested without an ounce of sarcasm.
He smiled apologetically. "You were young…I'm so sorry…"
"I held you. I saw your blood, they dragged you away to a van! Your name is banned!"
"I was helped. They took me to a place, I don't know where." The boy found ways to appease the awkwardness by brushing at the unintentional stubble on his face or raking a hand through his discombobulated hair. "I was supposed to die but a man there was a supporter of the revolution. He stole my body during the night and brought me here. I don't know how I survived but I did."
"Why didn't I know about this! If you were supposedly alive this whole time, why didn't anyone tell me!"
"We didn't tell anyone, not even Mill."
"Is Mill-"
"He's gone." Marxi nervously wetted his lips and clasped his hands. "Mill is gone."
"But…but…I don't understand…"
"The things you don't know and the things I'll tell you are almost identical. It's a dangerous thing that's happening here, I'm not involving you any more than I have to."
"Wait! If there really is a revolution happening here than I will not sit by!"
"No, you'll leave with Antonio on Sunday." The hand holding mine gripped stronger.
I looked at him with sudden skepticism that he didn't deserve. "What's your role in this?"
"Antonio has involved himself purely on your account." Marxi interjected. "People have been talking about a certain pomaig boy, it was Antonio who found me and demanded that you not become a subject of rebellion trading."
"Trading?" I spat.
"You're father… he's important. People here don't like him and they heard about a boy who was too close for comfort, you knew too much, you were an enemy."
"But I know nothing!"
"You know more than you think you do. With your father's role, your history with me, and your regular trips to the reservation… people were becoming suspicious."
"You knew about that?" I was sure no one was watching all those times I had hid away with a book among the trees.
He nodded. "They wanted to capture you and use you as hostage to gain ground with your father."
"Like he would care."
"Regardless, this revolution… it was a long time coming and you were a threat, however small. There were people who just didn't want to risk it. Antonio became your advocate, swearing up-and-down that you were pro-revolution. He worked to keep you happy in your home, he helped you like I never could. So we managed to settle everyone and implemented spies."
"Spies?"
" , The Beilschmidts-"
"What have the Beilschmidts got to do with this!?"
"Lovino, please understand that everything you're hearing is confidential. These people are good people and it would be terrible if you tipped anyone off to anything."
Antonio spoke up. "He doesn't tattle, I swear!"
"I know." Marxi smiled to reassure me. "But there are lives on the line."
"I understand."
"Artillery." He finally admitted. "They supply, that's their gig. As soon as we heard that your parents were going to marry you off, we had somebody get in the system and make sure you would be sent to them, just to ensure that our secrets stay with people we trust."
"What about Rosalind?"
"She was just there to confirm Antonio's claims about your plans to run away, her testimony did you a huge favor."
I looked to Antonio, telling him in silence about my fear. The people I knew, the things I thought were coincidence, they were all planted in my life to keep me silent. What parts of me were real? How often was I watched? How often were people evaluation my innocence? I felt used and confused and crooked. "Are you real?" I mumbled to the boy with clear emerald eyes who looked back at me with a twinge of sadness.
"Of course, my love, of course." He mumbled, his words aching.
"Do you really love me?" I don't know why my lips could suddenly move on their own, revealing my most subconscious pains.
A deeper sadness inflicted him. "How could you even ask me that?" The weary boy pulled my face to his and kissed passionately, wrapping one arm tightly around me and making me aware of how cruel my questions had been.
"I'm sorry." I whispered when he pulled his lips away, my voice full of guilt. I hated apologies half because I never knew the words that wanted to be heard and half because I could never say it in a way that made it seem like I meant it. But how selfish had I been? How could I think otherwise? After all he had done, all the promises we'd made, all the times we had shared our secrets and kissed under my bed sheets. How could I ever accuse that boy of not loving me? It was a terrible insult. "Would you forgive me?"
A pure, unadulterated smile slipped up his cheeks. I had never seen Antonio Fernandez Carriedo's face shadowed by a frown for longer than eight seconds. "You didn't have to ask. You know that I could never be angry at my Lovino." I thought that must be a lie. To never be angry with someone? Impossible? Then again, Antonio's mind is a place of unexplainable wonders. I played along.
"Even when he says stupid things?"
"Especially when he says stupid things." He smirked and kissed me again.
"And so the lonely boy has found a companion, I see. I thought to suspect it after seeing the way Antonio spoke of you."
"If by companion, you mean pain in the ass, then definitely."
"This particular pain in the ass is especially trust worthy. I think you can sleep easy knowing that when it's time to leave, you will be well protected."
"I'm not leaving." I corrected.
"Yes, you are." The two older boys insisted.
"If this rebellion exists and you are not an apparition, then I will not run like a coward away from the battle that will challenge the very foundations that I've fought my whole life."
"It is not running nor is it cowardly." Marxi interjected. "Antonio and myself have already settled things. He's going to take you away the night before."
"Have I no say in these settled things? Is my fate not my business!?"
"By fate, do you mean death?" Marxi's voice was suddenly harsh. "Death is what lies beyond, there is no heroism that you can put behind it. It is bloody soldiers and guns and pain and death."
"So you'll willingly allow hundreds of these people to be slaughtered?"
"They volunteered, Lovino. Every person who stands with me that fateful day knows what they face. They know that it is likely that they will not live to see another day, that they will die but they also know that there lies the honor is a well-served life."
"Then why not let me stand there too! I can load a gun, I can walk forward."
"You're too smart, Lovino. You're just too damn smart. You're not going to die at the hands of some emotionless politia officer, your young life has possibilities beyond those that these people could ever understand. You're going to go somewhere else and tell them of the collapsing city. Warn them of the past, make them see the danger hidden within what they call perfection."
"Is that some bullshit way of saying I'm too young?"
"No." His eyes looked me dead on. "There are children preparing for this war who are no higher than my knee. It's not your age, it's your wise eyes that keep me from letting you on that battle field. You're our diplomat to the future. You're our warning to the world who likely doesn't even know of our existence."
"Why are you doing this? What have we to lose if the world cares nothing for us?"
"You know better than anyone the answer to that. You know exactly what there is to lose but in case you've forgotten, let me remind you. Discrimination down to a science, children forced into slave-like repetition of lives that were never theirs, mindlessness, knowledgeless, brain-washed, experiments run on innocents, others cast into seclusion and still more locked up like cattle. That's why we're doing this."
"What if I'm not all you expect me to be? What if I'm not as smart or courageous or strong as you need me to be? What if I am all those things but I'm snatched up by a wild beast or the polio virus before I have the chance to see another human being?"
"There is nobody I trust more with this task." He reassured me. "I can never be sure of what the future brings but I am sure that you are a strong spirit. So little can stop such a fierce will."
"And what, after all of this, if nothing has changed? What if the rebellion is relinquished and everyone forgets? What then accounts for these deaths?"
He shrugged. "A man who lends his hand to a rightful cause is justified in failure. Win or not, I've given my life in attempt. If there were more I could give, I would."
"Fight with knowledge! Do to them what you did to me, make them realize the truth with speech and passion!"
"We cannot flip a table just by willing it to do so, we must use force. If this were a war that could be fought with words then it would have already been won."
"So you and Rosalind and those tikes playing in wash basins, you'll all be dead? The Beilschmidts? Little Harzetta, Mother, Father, Ludwig, the sickly one? This is their last week of life?"
"It's a risk they take. Some may live and others will perish, it is the course their lives will run."
"Run? Like me? I'll be running, leaving all those hundreds to give their lives. I'll be eating canned peaches while bones are snapped. I'll be sleeping under oaks while blood is spilled and flesh is burned."
"Don't do that to yourself." Antonio chimed in.
"Don't pretend that you will feel nothing! How do you expect to jump over that fence on Sunday night knowing the fate we'll be leaving for our loved ones?"
"I'll be looking at the boy at my side and think, Damn, he deserves better. That's what will get me through. I cannot feel useless when I'm protecting you. I cannot feel guilt by choosing your life over hundreds of others. Selfish as it is, it's true. This war, it's victims, it's survivors, they do not mean to me what you do." Our eyes became interlocked. How did he do it? How did he ease even the worse of my worries just with a glance?
I looked back to the rebel. "So you ask me to survive a war. Is that all? Is that my burden?"
"No, not completely."
"Then what? I have nothing to give but my life which you've already refused."
"We need information."
"Ask away."
"Not from you, from your father. His office is in the home, right?"
The sweat on my neck went cold. "That's right."
"We need you to find us some codes that will allow us to enter his work facility."
"So, you're going to kill him?"
The boy said nothing but diverted his eyes and bit at his lip.
"You are."
"It's not personal, Lovino, I swear."
"He's a good man… he never tried to be a bad man, it was just bred into him. He's the best father he knows how to be…"
"We know, Lovino. We don't blame him. You're right, he didn't choose this for himself, fate did. It was fate who told him what world he would be developed in. I wish-"
"He's still a good man." I didn't notice how my vision had clouded over and my speech become shaky. "He used to take baths with me and brush my hair. He was the one who taught me how to read… and he used to put me to bed…and…a-and he used to kiss my mother. He never meant to do bad things…"
I was held by Antonio who let me silently sob into his chest. I hated the man when he was alive but now that he was dead, or almost dead, I remembered things I had ignored for the sake of hating him. He had loved me, he still did. He just wanted me to be successful, everything a young boy should be. He loved my mother and he loved my brother. He worked hard, he kissed our heads, he taught us what he knew of happiness.
My mother too, so innocent. She was but a lamb, unknowing of the world's ugliness. She'd only ever wanted to give care. She wanted to keep her house clean and warm for her family, she wanted to be a loving wife and nurturing mother. She didn't deserve what was going to happen. The lamb would be forced to watch as her happiness was uprooted. Her neat picket fence would be covered in blood, bodies would be laid at her doorstep to make her realize an evil she never meant to contribute to. The soundisome wouldn't be able to drown out the screams, the white walls would watch her crumble into the skeleton of a woman.
What people never understand about war is that there is never a villain. Every person who's lended their hand to evil did so thinking that it was the best choice. All the deaths were of good people. People who did their best to make peace. There is such excitement that comes with war, such a surge of strength. Sun chasers. They run at the horizon, an imaginary line that recedes as you near it. They chase death. No one wins, one side loses worse. In the end, there is only death and the echo of death.
Antonio pulled me into his lap, covered me with the blanket, held me tight and shushed me as I took in the intensity of war. My mother, my father, the grieving man, the pesky girl, the rebel, all of them. Tots pulled from their cradles, people with tired eyes and wrinkled skin. Everybody's mothers, everybody's fathers. The only world I had ever known would be slaughtered.
"When they go," I mumbled through repressed sobs, "In their bed. That's my condition. I'll get the info. When they go, they'll go together, silently, in their sleep. That's my condition."
"Okay." Marxi agreed.
They tried to let me finish mourning but it was no use. I couldn't stop. I eventually evened my breath enough to speak steadily again. Every time I thought I had forgotten, I remembered and the tears would come on their own. I wasn't strong like Marxi expected me to be. All I could do was stay curled up like an idiot in Antonio's lap with my swollen eyes and red nose. "Is that all you need? I want to go home."
"I think you should stay a bit longer. Until you've settled just a bit more."
I nodded.
"Lovino?"
I swallowed a shuttering sob and nodded again.
"Lovino, I'm sorry. This is hard, I know. More pain than any human should have to endure."
"You die in my hands then come back seven years later to tell me that the world is going to hell. It's a bit of a shocker."
"Are you okay?"
"I want to go home." I whimpered. How stupid, resorting to a childish need to be embraced by my mother and tucked into familiar sheets. I coughed up a few hard sobs. The arms around me took me in closer until there was no more room in my shell.
"I'll take you home, I promise." Antonio's soft voice soothed. "I'll take you away, I'll take you to your bed and your sheets and your pillows. It'll be okay, I promise."
"Now?"
"No, not now. Very soon. So soon, my love."
"Why?"
"I need you to stop crying for me, okay? Then we can go."
"When I wake up… When I wake up… will this be gone?"
My question was not answered. Kisses began to shower over my hair and hot face. The person who wants to hold you even when you're pitifully begging to go home and shaking and crying and ugly after being drowned out with tears is the person who loves you most in the world. They're the person who wants to whisper kindly to you and kiss you and hug away the fear. Antonio was that person for me.
I did my best to hush my crying and even flashed him my tiredest smile that he accepted and stood me up slowly. Marxi could do nothing. I could tell that he wanted to, he wanted to say something or do something but there was nothing. I looked for comfort in Antonio, the one who loved me most in the world. Marxi opened the barn door for us and even whispered a small apology as we left but there was nothing else he could give us but a solemn hug.
"Are you okay?" The Spaniard asked.
"I've been better."
"Do you want to stay in my bed tonight?"
So badly. I wished more than anything that I could slip into the worn-smelling sheets beside the boy's warm body and just fall asleep in his arms. I wished it were that easy.
"I can't."
"You think they'll notice?"
"I know they will."
"Maybe I could stay with you tonight?"
Normally, I'd refuse. I wouldn't dare risk it. I let myself have my exception for the day I learned my world was ending, it couldn't get a whole lot worse. "Would you?"
"Of course, my love, of course."
"Toni…?"
"Yes?"
"I'm afraid."
"Not today, tomorrow we'll talk more about all of the madness but not now. Right now, think about something else."
"Is this why you've been so depressed recently."
"Yes, this is the reason. I love people too, it's not something anyone could look at with dry eyes."
"So you suffered all on your own? You didn't have a lover there to hold you like I did."
"I thought we were going to talk about something else."
"But-"
"You were there, Lovino. Don't you remember? I came to you in the evenings and you kissed me until I forgot. You held my hand and spoke kindly and you were my greatest comfort. It's you who gives me hope."
"I don't see how. People are seeing things in me that I don't have. They call me brave and wise and smart. I'm just a person, Antonio. I'm a coward just like everyone else. I'm not especially victorious in any way."
"Would you believe me if I told you that you are? You're just as strong and wise and smart as everyone calls you. I wish they knew of your kindness and passion too but I know and I can say that you are the kindest and most passionate person I've ever met. You're the best, most exciting, most fantastic trouble I have ever gotten myself into."
"Oh, please."
"It's true! From the moment first saw you, way back in my borrowed memories, I always admired your rebelliousness. Your burning desire for something more. Then I met you and learned to love those things. I love your anger, I relish in its passion! I love your curses, they're poetry to this subservient, frost-bitten world! I love your love, how you keep the friendship of books so dearly and how you kiss so purely. Everything they say is true."
"Do they say that I am not afraid?"
"Nobody would say that. We all know fear and we know that god has never sent an immunity upon anyone. Every human that has ever lived is afraid."
"What about my father?"
"He is afraid."
"I know but what has he done to earn such hate?"
"That's something that I was told not to speak with you about… but who deserves to know more than you? I guess to put it simplest, he's what the rebels call A Carnage Maker. He works with human test subjects. Babies go into the lab, carnage comes out."
"So he kills people?"
"Some have survived."
"Are you one?"
He was silent for a little while. "It's possible. I don't know where I come from. I don't know why I would be chosen to live. Lovino, we really ought to talk about something else now." The mass of trees was ending and the wide city-scape had come into view. "We will never talk about anything like this off of the reservation, okay?"
"Alright."
The city was dark, drowned with sleep. Inside the dormant houses were little families with little jobs and little talks. They didn't know. Eerier still, I had the feeling that the walls knew. The silent walls. They had watched with their pail eyes and said nothing. They watched us walk to my house in silence and climb in through the window, still they said nothing.
I changed into a night shirt, or as Antonio liked to call it, a dress. I cursed at him and told him that it was practical and that everybody wore one but he refused my protests. "What's practical is not having clothes especially for your unconsciousness. I don't find a need to put on a suit and tie so that I can toss around in my bed."
"Nakedness is something to be preserved, that's how it is."
"Come on, Lovi~ Take it off. It's so much more comfortable." He had already taken off his shirt and was hidden under my blanket.
"I'm leaving myself clothed, end of discussion." I lifted the covers and hopped in beside him.
"Am I allowed to be naked?"
"Boxers must be worn at all times." I warned. "Or I'll rip every curly hair out of your head.
The boy slipped out of his jeans. "You don't have to be afraid of your body."
"Why would I be afraid of it?"
"Some people are."
"I don't see why."
"Then take it off." He whined playfully and tugged at my sleeve.
"This is molestation! Leave me alone."
"Don't ask me to leave, I've just become comfortable."
I flicked on the soundisome and fell into his waiting arms. "Toni?"
"Yes?" He hummed against my neck, causing me to shiver.
"When I wake up… will this have all been a dream?"
"All? As in you wake up in another universe with other family and friends?"
"No, just today. Will I wake up and suddenly feel great relief, knowing that you had fed me a rotten tomato or I had smacked my head?"
"Well… we could give it the benefit of the doubt."
"You think so?"
"Sure."
"You know what I was thinking? Nobody ever cried for the Nazis and it's really god damn sad, you know that? They were people with hopes and dreams just like everyone else, they bled red blood just like everyone else yet nobody cries for them. To mourn them is considered a sin."
"That's the way history is. Someone's got to take the fall. There's got to be a good show and at the end, the good guy has to kill the bad guy, that's what people remember."
"I wish it weren't that way."
"That's the good thing about wishing, you can wish for anything you want, even the impractical things. For now though, just sleep. I want to see that Mona Lisa smile of yours when I awake."
"I'm not all that tired."
"What time is it?"
I glanced at the glowing digits on the low humming soundisome. "One on a Monday."
"Then it's time to sleep."
"Alright, fine."
The arms pulled me in closer and a face nuzzled against my back. We fell asleep like that. Four hours later, I was awake again. The soundisome was emitting this haunting scream. Antonio shuffled and raised his head, his curly hair sticking to his warm face. I heard the one down stairs scream too. The one in the office, the one in my parents' room, they called out in loud beeps. It was a warning, it had happened once before when there was an explosion at one of the labs and they told us to report to the clinic to determine if we were radioactive or not.
I quickly threw Antonio off the bed and forced the tired boy under it, despite his protests. "Quiet!" I hissed. I moved Feliciano's records under the bed to block the boy from view just in time for there to be a knock on my door. "Come in!" I fixed myself on my bed to look as innocent as possible.
"Honey?" My mother and father entered.
"Yeah?"
"Come downstairs, listen to the soundisome with us."
"Okay." I got up and left with them, making sure my door was closed tight. Father turned on the light and we sat together. After a minute more of blaring beeps, a stoic woman's voice began to speak.
"Attention. Attention, all citizens. Attention please. Due to the recent increase of crimes committed by the natural population, all natural-born citizens that have been registered as city-people in the last five years will be asked to return to planned housing in the reservation. All who refuse forced removal will be collected by the curvus denomination in one week. All pomaig-born and natural-born citizens with more than five years of registration are required to attend a seminar in the collective hall at seven o'clock a.m. this morning. Natural-born citizen with less than five years of registration are not permitted to attend. We apologize for the disruption, that is all."
It beeped for a minute longer, then the voice returned and repeated the same message. We listen for a couple of the loops, thinking and analyzing before father shut it off and began to walk upstairs. "Dress yourselves, we should arrive early." We all dispersed into our respective rooms. I sat on my bed.
"Toni?" I murmured after a bit of thoughtful silence.
"Yes?" A little voice answered.
"Come out."
He crawled out from under the bed and sat beside me, taking my hand in his. "I heard."
"You need to leave. Right now." He nodded and climbed up on my window sill but not before placing a kiss on either of my cold cheeks. "Toni."
"Yes?"
"Tell Marxi that I welcome the revolution and… and come back with the detailed list of whatever I can do to help."
"Alright… Are you okay, Lovino?"
"I've been better. Go. People will be leaving their houses soon, go." And he left off into the pail sunrise.
So it had come to this. One species exiling its brothers, moving them back to the primitive forest to starve. It was the first step in killing off the naturals, and one of many steps involved in our grand happiness façade. Suddenly, the rebellion sat more comfortably in my stomach. It was a war that longed for violence and by god, it would have its violence. It wanted death and we would give it what it wanted. We would feed it bodies until it grew so stuffed and sick that it would die and all the sinners would go with it. It had to be done before our crimes could get any bigger. It had to be done. It had to be done. It had to be done. It had to be done. It had to be done.
We got there early. My mother wore her nice red dress, my father combed our hair back until we looked like clones of each other. There were politia everywhere which encouraged everyone to keep their lips tight. Hundreds of bodies jostled around in perfect, eerie silence. We waited with everyone else in the line to enter the hall. At the door, an officer waved a brick-lick scanner over my shoulder. It beeped, he read the screen, then ushered me in. Chip reading. The chip was my free pass to the good life, the only thing that separated me from every natural on the reservation. One piece of metal in my arm was the difference between wealth and poverty, love and hate, power and pity.
Inside, they took my family and I too a little room were the flash a light in our eyes and made us state our names, dates of birth, place of residence, and chip id number. My chip number was 16040, they told me it when I was five and once you've been told something once, you're expected to remember it for the rest of your life. They passed us on with front row assigned seating. Also in the first row I saw Rosalind, her dimidium, and their families along with the Beilschmidts and countless other familiar faces without names. I guess they wanted to make the message clear to all suspected rebel affiliates.
People chattered, fanned themselves nervously, inspected the large screens which were dead until finally given the task of showing a stranger's face as he entered the stage and stood at the microphone. "Welcome." He said in a strong, confident voice. Nobody knew him but that was no surprise, nobody knew anybody.
He was a well-groomed man of probably fifty or sixty years old. His full head of hair was greying fashionably, his deep eyes a dark color which I could not make out, his chiseled face calm yet serious, his suit nicely pleated. He was the ideal man. "No doubt, all of you are confused and rather stirred by the urgency in which this morning has begun. We apologize." We? Who's we? Who was addressing us? I was afraid. My mind wandered all of the possible tragedies that we could be gathered to witness. Maybe they would reveal the rebellion and bring up the young men responsible in hand cuffs. Antonio and Marxi would be there, their sad eyes watching me, awaiting a public execution. I tried to ignore all of these sick thoughts my subconscious was feeding me to no avail.
"I can assure you that you need not worry. We have called you all here today to discuss progressivism in our society. Brothers and sisters, the time has come to part ways with those who burden our ever growing society. The forest land is a place of our beginning, a place of discovery. The city lands are a place of innovation and renewal. We, city people, will move forward into an unknown, untraveled future. Now is the time to let our forest brothers discover themselves as we did when we were but a civilization of Neanderthals. Like us, they must learn the ways of technology. No longer can we nurse them. No longer can the man of science pity the man of nature. We, brothers and sisters, have become the next evolution of human kind and like our ancestors, we will thrive over our lessers.
A wall will be built come February, a wall that separates the two worlds. Here, we will focus our efforts on enterprise. We will learn to master the world, we will know the universe and be its comrade, we will teach our children a thirst for knowledge. In the forest world, they will scavenge and hunt and teach their youngers the brutality of the old world. Whether they flourish our parish can be no more of our concern. We concern ourselves only with becoming the strongest and smartest of our race. Our potential is dirtied by the forest-people. They will hold us back no longer!" Silence came from the attentive crowd. He continued his speech, convincing all the pomaigs that it was the right thing to do, they shouldn't feel guilty, and it was actually the naturals' fault for making us do this. He portrayed them as crime-committing savages who wanted to undermine our progression. It was an eat-or-be-eaten situation. If they were capable of being as smart as us then they would thrive and the wall could be taken down but if we were proven the better humans then they would die and evolution would run its course.
He finish by raising a hand, gesturing a wave goodbye, and calling, "Incomprehensibilis Potentia." The crowd repeated it drowsily. It was a sort-of motto meaning immeasurable potential. It had recently taken on a sick irony.
A woman took the stage as he left. She was in her thirties probably, her hair still bright and blonde and tied up in a neat bun. She had the same voice as the soundisome announcer. "All new laws enacted next week, January 8th, are as follows:
Cloning is prohibited to natural-born citizens. All career paths of notable scholarly merit are prohibited to natural-born citizens. Interaction with any forest-persons is punishable by law. Any citizen may be questioned at any time by any police or politia officers. Natural-born women may not be impregnated without first having her genetics tested for quality which must be done by a city-certified geneticist. Chips may not be removed from any citizen. Damaging your or another's chip information is punishable by law. All citizens must provide chip information upon request. That is all. Thank you. And as always, Incomprehensibilis Potentia." She raised her arm like the man before her but this time, a few people raised their arms back.
Lastly, the audience was asked if they had any questions or comments. Nobody said anything. Nobody stood and screamed out objections, nobody cried, nobody wondered if this were humane or ethical. We sat by like good little clones and waited to be released back to our homes, back to our white walls and text books. The silence made me want to vomit but then again, you could imagine the reaction to having solid matter in my stomach.
When it was over, Father excused himself, saying he had colleagues to speak with. Some people stayed to discuss with their neighbors those dirty, rotten naturals while the others sprinted home. "Oh, Lucy!" A man called as my mother and I were leaving. It was a police officer, the same one who would come over on weekend nights to talk with my mother about absolutely nothing.
"Oh, hello." She greeted back, her smile a little more weary than usual.
"Nasty business, those naturals."
"I had always known they were trouble. They just don't understand things like we do."
"That's the truth. They're lazy and when they bother to get out of bed, it's to rob the innocent city people who've done nothing but patiently tolerate their weakness. I say good riddens."
"Yes, good riddens. I don't want an influence like that around my family."
"Well, not that I'm really supposed to be telling you this but there have been some… instances in the city where people were getting sketchy. We're thinking there are some sympathizers, some hippies and whatnot. Always on with their peace keeping mumbo jumbo."
"Well, hopefully the wall will put an end to that and get them back on track with productive lives."
He looked right at me. "Hopefully. Else we might have to take some precautions. We don't want a few bad apples to spoil the whole cart."
"You're right." I agreed with a smile. "They just don't know how to be thankful." I said while thinking about his house lit on fire. The sirens would start screaming for his fat ass to get out of bed, chemical sludge would pour from the ceiling while he hobbled along to safety. I smile just the tiniest bit wider.
"I'm glad you agree." He papped my shoulder. "Everyone slips up in their youth. They start getting ideas, they want to do things they shouldn't. We all come around."
"We certainly do." My mother interjected. "I'm sorry Officer but we really must be getting home. Lovino and I have an appointment to have our hair cut and we really can't be late."
"Don't go gett'n too pretty now, ." He said jokingly before tussling my hair and letting us leave.
"I'm getting a haircut?" I asked as we walked.
"Yes, I forget to tell you that I had scheduled an appointment. I thought it was getting a little long. Besides, a change would nice."
"Alright."
So I let them wash, dry, and cut my hair so that it was neat like a young man's hair ought to be. It wasn't wild and unruly or anywhere near as free as the curly locks of Antonio's. They handed me a mirror when they had finished so I could see my own face look back at me.
Who was the boy looking back at me? What were his goals in life? Did he have any? What was most important to him? What made him happy?
He was not his brother. He was not Feliciano Vargas, not anymore. Never again would he study nerve cells, never again would he live for a dead boy on borrowed time, that life was far away from him. Now it was his time. The bones in his body were his, the blood was his, the heart, the brain, the kidneys, the eyes, all his and he planned to do something pretty god damn amazing with them. He was done filling a role and squabbling in fear. He was done with the crying and mourning, he was done being anyone else.
This is how Lovino Vargas became somebody.
