The Factory of Light
Roger walked quickly through the cobbled streets. He felt safer at night despite the curfew. He knew where it was safe and when. At night he could be himself and without anyone on the street watching him he let his body move the way it wanted to. It was dusty and the air spicy. He always felt tense on these nights, but tonight, his first night as a Non-Op, he had nothing left to lose. He’d either be free with Ben, or they’d catch him and he’d die. It wasn’t often he was able to let his guard down and after a few weeks he may never have to build it back up again.
He came to the innocuous slatted door that held behind it his real self and knocked, almost timidly, but in a specific rhythm, as if he half-hoped that there would be no reply. As he waited he turned his head nervously from side to side, squinting his eyes, hearing nothing but the wind and his heart-beat. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nostrils, jaw set, thinking of Ben as the distinct smells of paprika, coriander, and urine (for some reason) tickled his olfactory system. How long had it been since he’d last seen him?
It was not safe for them to be seen together, so they only met under the most careful circumstances. At night, in the country, using faithful friends to squire them unnoticed from the city. There was an abandoned Cabin. Few knew of it then, but to those who did, it became sanctuary. As he opened his eyes, a hand beckoned from the darkness behind the cracked door. He followed the hand soundlessly to its kitchen. There, some boards had been removed exposing a deep hole in the earth that Roger knew connected to a network of tunnels. He shook the hand and kissed it, a painfully happy look on his face as he disappeared beneath the surface and the boards were replaced.
. . .
During the day Roger was a clerk for a mediocre judge. So although he knew the law, he had no influence over it. After the war and the devastation, government and law were rebuilt by the survivors, the stoic, the faithful. The old law, having given rise to the war, was considered too loose and lenient, allowing certain indecencies in the name of acceptance. Well, they saw where lenience had led. So with the great rebuild came the Stricture and with Stricture came The Factory.
The obvious ones were first: no killing, no stealing, no fucking your neighbor's wife, etc...but more came: beginning with no drinking it progressed as far as no dancing and then no music. Roger was forced to incinerate every single copy of his musical theater VHS collection. Then, no sex before marriage and then no sodomy. Sex and marriage were to be for procreational purposes only. Anything that wasn’t “useful” was considered “sinful” and sins were punishable, not by God as you might think, but by the state. God and the state had become one. Soon even staying out after dark was considered sinful, so you can probably assume how they felt about Roger and Ben.
The official government policy stated that in their glorious nation, homosexuality did not exist. They claimed that every single citizen within their great, rebuilt state complied strictly with the state’s ideals. This country, consisting of some eighty million disenfranchised constituents, claimed to be unanimous and homogeneous. Like a colony of ants devoted to a single Queen.
Roger watched helplessly as this policy was ratified by the very judge he served. In such a populous nation, disparate opinion existed but was not tolerated so he, despite the guilt he felt daily, kept close to his judge. He watched as the non-compliant, the unlucky, and the stupid were gathered and executed. This occurred for a year, roughly, until international pressure necessitated a new solution. Thus, The Factory was created.
A scholar, nationally recognized and publicly endorsed, pondered their country’s dilemma for over three months, pouring over the sacred texts. He found that these essentially indecipherable texts only prohibited sexual acts between members of the same sex; they did not however, prohibit the sexual urge which prompted such acts. Therefore he concluded that, if a man were to feel the impulse to commit sin with another man, he must actually be a woman. The desire is simply mismatched with the body, and until it can be made right, a man with these urges must feel trapped within his body. He, out of sympathy and pious love, implemented a system that would correct these people, so that their bodies more appropriately represented their thoughts and desires. Out of love and understanding for these poor, lost souls, he created a place, a sterile church, in which they could be rectified by modern science. They would be given pills to correct their hormonal goofs and surgery to fix their genital mix-ups. If a person resisted these corrective measures, their families were encouraged to release them into state custody in order to preserve their honor; this act was construed through the lens of pity, as if it would be better for a homosexual to die than to live on confused.
You could see droves of men in collars and stark white tunics marching vacantly into the glass, beacon-like factory. It had been erected in the country’s exact center, representing the moral seriousness with which they approached this national problem. Siblings and parents, with tears in their eyes and love in their hearts, abducted offending family members and relinquished them to the government. Gangs of men roamed the streets searching for signs of Effeminance; the government defined Effeminance broadly as being synonymous with weakness (in the physical sense). If one refused to fight an aggressor, spoke in high or soft tones, wore clothes for the way they looked, drank anything but the strongest and most bitter coffee, preferred vegetables to meat, or in anyway threatened the patriarchy’s fragile ego, one would find oneself in a collar and a white tunic.
Posters of smiling men in this outfit could be seen on every street corner and advertisements endorsing this new, elegant solution blared from government controlled loud-speakers. Mandatory sermons took on an even more fearful aspect for Roger. Wherever he went he feared; in attempting to act normal, he felt that he forgot what normal was, and began to shiver and sweat before outings as routine as family dinner. He became two people, splitting his life between day and night, hate and love, surviving on the periphery of both.
. . .
Once in the tunnel, his exhilaration devolved into shivers and giggles. Taking a moment to lie on the ground in the dark and breathe the subterranean air around him, he lifted himself into a crouching position and lit his pen-light. He shuffled into the dark salvation extending before him, keenly aware of the irony. Why was there such stigma against the dark? What had darkness ever actually done to people? It seemed to him that people were attempting to destroy a necessary aspect of life. Life without darkness would only be a half-life, without contrast, density, or beauty. It is only by refracting pure light at different angles that colors exist, and only in respect to darkness that light can be noticed.
And the darkness can be secure, womb-like and protective. It is only once we are born into the harsh light that we begin to cry and feel fear. In this fearful light people forget the safety of the darkness. It’s just like the light to destroy what it does not understand, does not remember.
He wondered how many people were underground at that very moment. Tunneling their ways through history, tradition, law, and religion (less accepting than solid earth I assure you) toward peace and safety. What did the Stricture keep them safe from? He couldn’t understand how his country felt threatened by him, needed to surgically alter his body in order to feel more comfortable.
. . .
Roger knew some who’d been caught. In their group nobody knew each other’s names (except for him and Ben, obviously) but he knew their faces. In the paper, about three weeks ago, he had recognized two of his friends. They always published those they Rectified in the style of an obituary, signifying the death of their sinful selves. Ominously, there existed no publication signifying their rebirth. From this report he learned that their names were Chance Harper and Duane Jackson.
Roger obsessed over these names for two weeks. Visiting them would be extremely dangerous; he didn’t know what a Rectified was like. Were they still their old selves? Were they still in love? The Factory workers were anonymous, and the facility was all but impenetrable. Very little information about the procedure or those who’d undergone it was known. Even the number of those Rectified was unknown. From the papers, personal accounts, and snippets of conversation he’d eaves-dropped from his judge, Roger determined that roughly 1/4 of those who entered the Factory were returned to their families. The other 3/4’s were presumably killed or sent to work camps. Of that 1/4, approximately 2/3’s took their own lives or died due to surgical complications. Chance and Duane were among the lucky who’d been sent back to their families, and were apparently working and participating within the community. Their names were now Jane and Tracy, and the Stricture had so much confidence in their corrective methods, that they even allowed contact to continue between them.
Roger had stayed alive by being smart and staying well hidden. Maintaining old relationships faithfully and almost mechanically, sticking to a strict and well-established routine, and never attempting to build new relationships or break his habit under the scrutiny of daylight. At 20 he was a little old to be unmarried, which gave some a reason to pause, but he dodged accusation through diligent work and documented taciturnity. He walked to work and walked straight home, deviating from this path only in the foot-placements themselves. He dutifully attended to his family, went to church more than was required, and stayed out of the way. The only thing on Earth that made living like this tolerable, was Ben. Who recognized him, reached out, and pulled him into a world that only turned at night.
That’s why he didn’t quite understand his decision to follow Chance and Duane. He understood the danger and yet felt compelled to see them, to identify himself and to speak to them. So he called-in sick and went out the back door. Went to two internet cafes, separated economically, to search for their family’s addresses. And watched, hoping to catch one of them alone.
. . .
After an hour the tunnel became cavernous, the trail discernible only by the footprints leading downward at a slow grade. He heard water trickling over stone somewhere to his right and his footsteps echoing from the ceiling. Presently he stopped and turned off his pen-light, peering up into the darkness. He put his arms out straight at his sides and felt nothing. A feeling like electricity tickled its way up his arms and warmed his chest, cracking his face into a laughing smile.
Here he could be anything and so was himself. He thought about what his parents and his sister would say. The Stricture would surely be at their door by morning; with gleaming white coats and spotless white boots, they would vandalize his room during their routine search and they would find nothing but a poster. No indication that he was a transgressor and a sinner. They would interrogate his judge, for surely someone in such an intimate relationship with the law should have seen lawlessness in an employee. Roger warmed at this thought. Fuck his judge. He had denied himself for his entire life and now that he knew what it was like to act on his desires, to put himself first, he laughed at those who so piteously followed the state, who so fearfully hid behind the light.
How free he felt, trapped underground in the darkness, how paradoxical it is that freedom is walking a path. Lowering himself slowly, Roger sat unmoving in the dirt, allowing the still air to calm him and the unseen walls to shelter him. Steadying his heart beat he whispered Ben’s name one time before dusting himself off, switching on the pen light, and moving on to another reality.
. . .
To his great surprise, Chance and Duane still spent significant time with each other. Was the Stricture so brazen as to set their experiments (only 1/12 of whom survive let me remind you) loose after they were Opped? He couldn’t see anyone else surveilling them, they looked utterly free about their businesses.
Every morning they met at Fix Coffee House at 7:30am. Then they usually attended to personal errands for several hours before rendezvousing once again for lunch at Aunty Elma’s, after which they returned to their respective homes and tended to their families. They each wore loose dresses, wigs, and conservative makeup. Their legs and arms were shaved and their bodies were becoming more slender except were they had been augmented. Sitting across the room at Elma’s with a newspaper covering his face, Roger should have been able to hear their conversation, but routinely they sat in silence. How could they stand to be together but not to speak, not to share their experiences and analyze them? Surely they were traumatized, surely they had stories to tell?
After watching for two days, Roger had expended his patience. He waited at Elma’s, face buried in government approved literature (religious text) until Chance (Jane) excused herself to the ladies room. With two short breaths Roger dropped his book, walked over to Duane’s (Tracy’s) table and sat down, looking directly into her eyes. They were the same color, but something was missing from them.
“Duane, do you remember me?”
Slowly Duane’s features contorted from recognition to disgust and then to fear. Roger watched in slow motion as Duane’s reaction was forced out by Tracy’s.
“I, I remember you,” she stammered, “You’re number 28!”
Roger had no idea what that meant, but he could see Duane nervously reaching for a specific spot in the high neckline of her white dress. She seemed to be fiddling with some device. Quickly, Roger realized what was happening and snatched Duane’s hands from her dress.
“What’re you doing? Is this some kind of trap?”
Duane kicked her head back and released a terrifying and anguished scream. Her makeup streaming, she kicked and thrashed away from Roger, who recoiled instantly in horror. Roger looked behind him to see Chance (Tracy) clicking furiously at her neckline and pointing, wide eyed and agape, directly at him. Roger recalled a movie he’d seen as a child before the war, in which aliens took over the bodies of sleeping victims and assumed their places in society. Their ultimate goal was to replace every living person innocuously, so that those who remained human felt they had nothing to fear until their final moments.
With boots sounding behind him, Roger ran. He turned left out of Elma’s and sprinted left again down an alley. From there he turned right onto a narrow street that was sparsely populated. He heard men shouting and women screaming but never stopped to investigate their origins. Thank goodness he had had the foresight to create an escape route; he arrived at the fire-escape he had tied down on “Clear Street” and clambered onto the church’s roof where he had hidden a change of clothes. He donned the conservative religious garb he’d stashed and descended into the building’s attic. It was 12:30pm, time for midday mass, so he should be able to slip unnoticed into the crowd.
After sermon and prayers he exited the church quietly and returned home before his parents so that he could change and clean up. It would not be long before Stricture discovered his identity, he was sure that his image had been captured on camera during his escape. Frankly, he was amazed that we wasn’t in custody already.
Once in his room, he found the hidden slit in his mattress, reached his hand inside and produced his second cell phone, the one that Ben had given him. Shakily he dialed one of the two numbers stored on the phone and awaited Ben’s reply. After two rings he heard his lover’s voice crackle on the other side.
“What’s wrong, why are you calling during the day. I told you only to call at night.”
“I know, I know but I’m trouble, Ben. I can’t get into it now, but I think they know who I am. Fuck! I’m so sorry, I couldn’t help it!”
“Help what?”
“I went to see Chance and Duane, ya know, that nice couple that always wore matching shirts? We watched Ratatouille with them! Well, they were Opped... and... I had to see them and when I did, it was like a trap or something. They were waiting for me. They called me, ‘Number 28’”.
Ben was silent for some time while Roger breathed heavily on the line.
“Okay. Here’s the plan. Meet me at the Cabin tonight. Don’t bring anything. Use the Hansen St. entrance, and speak to no one. I love you.”
. . .
As Roger came closer to the Cabin he found himself beginning to jog. He was anxious to see Ben, anxious to be rid of anxiety. Approaching the hidden trapdoor leading up into the Cabin, Roger slowed and listened, as Ben had taught him. “Can’t be cautious enough ‘round these vicious fucks,” he remembered him saying. Sidling up to the door, he lay quietly and listened. Nothing.
The Cabin always had at least one occupant, it was never completely empty. All the actual doors and windows had been barred shut, but there were at least eight tunnels connected to eight distinct entrances; one couldn’t leave unless another relieved him. The trap doors could only be opened from the tunnels, but they had to be unlocked from inside the Cabin. From the tunnels, the visitor would knock in a prescribed fashion. If this knock was accepted, the Cabin resident would answer with three steady knocks and then unlock the trapdoor, allowing the visitor to enter at their leisure. However, the Cabin resident could not open the door for the visitor, the visitor must enter on his own volition, thus ensuring trust between both parties.
Roger grabbed the second wrung of the ladder standing directly under the trapdoor. With his penlight in his mouth, he knocked the tune to Dancing Queen and waited with baited breath. Almost instantly he heard a reply: two solid knocks and the screech of metal sliding against metal, a lock clicking open.
Two knocks.
Roger slumped onto the ground. Head bowed and legs splayed he stared wide-eyed from the top of his sockets at the small circle of earth that was illuminated by the penlight drooping from his slack lips.
The knocks sounded again. Steadily and horribly... even.
He knew what waited for him above ground and found himself paralyzed. Only moments ago a different reality existed in which he and Ben were free together in some exotic foreign country. A sound (a simple sound!) had shattered that reality and replaced it with one that didn’t have a future, that appeared only as blinding light. He would never see Ben again.
At this thought, rage welled up inside him geographically, like a natural force. He screamed inaudibly and beat at the trapdoor until his hands hurt and his voice broke. Several gunshots emanated from above, but the bullets were unable to breach the door’s heavy steel frame.
Minutes passed in silence until Roger heard someone, Stricture most likely, shuffle into position directly above the trapdoor. A voice, friendly but somehow cold, sliding like a tongue into Roger’s ears, found its way through the steel door.
“Roger, mate, we know it’s you.”
He didn’t respond.
“You know you’re cornered right? We haven’t found this tunnel’s origin yet, but rest assured we will. How long can you stay underground with no food, no water, no light? What if, on the way back, your light run’s out and you’re stuck down there forever? What happens then?”
Roger remained silent.
“Look, mate,” the Tongue continued, “this way is better for you, Roger. It’s better for everyone. Don’t you feel confused, out of place in our great country? Wouldn’t you rather live your life unhindered by Stricture? Unhindered by your genital mixup? We are here to help you, Roger. Here to fix you and make you Godly again.”
“What have you done with Ben?” Roger managed.
“He’s safe, Roger. He’s being held in The Factory for Light Realignment and Rectification. I’ve spoken to Ben personally. He wanted me to tell you to give in to the light. To take my offer so that the two of you can move on. You saw Jane and Tracy, how they resumed their friendship on equal terms. They’re best friends now and always will be. Roger, don’t you want to see Ben again?”
Shaking, Roger spit and scowled. “I’ll take my chances in the darkness,” he said, and walked back into the cave while the frustrated yells of his pursuers echoed impotently after him.
. . .
After five minutes Roger collapsed. The Tongue was right, he had nowhere to go. He would either die down here of dehydration, or he would be caught and Rectified. Actually at this point they might just dispose of him, quietly of course, but they had no reason to keep a dissident around. Helpless and numb he lay in the darkness that so recently had been womb-like. He found despair translated into a physical agony: his stomach cramped in emotional distress and he felt sharp pains in his toes and fingers. An old foot wound felt open and raw again.
“Why did you go to see them?” he sobbed, “why did you risk everything?” He curled into a silent shake and wept. He remembered seeing Ben for the first time, how they both double-took at the same moment and laughed. He remembered their first kiss on moonless night. He remembered-- he remembered the second phone number!
Suddenly alert, Roger reached over to his right pocket and felt for the cell-phone’s outline against the fabric. Sigh. When Ben had given him the phone, he had programmed two numbers into its memory. The first went directly to Ben. The second number went to who knows where. When Roger had asked Ben whose it was, he winked and replied that it was an insurance policy. With nothing left he pressed call. The line opened but whoever answered remained silent.
“Hello?” Roger ventured.
“What has happened?”
“This is Roger Hart--” “We know who it is, what has happened?”
“I’m underneath the Cabin. It's full of Stricture. They have Ben and I don’t know what to do. Ben told me not to call but he’s gone now and I don’t kn--”. “--Await instructions.”
The line clicked off and left Roger alone in the dark. Time passed without reference and not a sound uttered within the cave. He clicked the penlight on and off, projecting shapes onto the walls with his fingers. Was he any more than just a shadow on the wall? He thought he was more, he thought that there was more, but where? He was a shadow. He had ascended, assuming a form for a few brief hours before being cruelly denied and shot back down into reality.
The phone vibrated on his lap and Roger put it his ear expectantly. Hearing nothing, he investigated, discovering to his embarrassment that the mysterious number had texted him instructions:
--Stand 30 ft. from trapdoor. We’re coming.--
Roger jumped and ran into position, breath shallow and halting. Sweat dripped from his short hair and bloomed under his armpits. He had a feeling that he couldn’t explain, like a third reality had been created, one that dwarfed the previous two in scale and seemed unbreakable. As if it were there the whole time, but was obscured by potential-reality-A with Ben and potential-reality-B with Stricture. It was determined that he would end up here, in this new reality (which is the only one) he just couldn’t see it until now.
A high whistle sounded above the Cabin and seconds later the ground shook. Deafening noise filled the hollow space under the Cabin while a fireball burst through the trapdoor and traveled twenty-five feet into the tunnel. The blast knocked Roger back an additional seventeen feet, the base of his skull finding a smooth, blunt stone in the ground, rendering him unconscious.
. . .
Roger faintly remembered small, strong hands grabbing him by the shirt and dragging him through the tunnel. The smell of burning wood and accelerant. A high-pitched voice yelling against a helicopter’s chopping.
Waking to a starkly adorned grey cell, he took in his surroundings slowly. Decent bed on metal frame. Uneaten breakfast on bedside table. Clothes folded on bureau at bed’s foot. Clean to a Spartan degree, it reminded him of military accommodations. The lack of windows suggested that he was still underground. What was with these people and the subterranean?
“Good, you’re up.”
Roger hadn’t noticed the slight, hard woman sitting statue-still in the corner to his right next to the heavy door. She was wearing distressed fatigues, had a rifle on her lap, and stared at Roger with an intensity he’d never experienced before.
“Shit,” he said, “Sorry, I didn’t see you”
“I only move when I have to,” she said as if it were an explanation, “Look, so here’s the deal. We saved you from Stricture, but there were more than we expected. Six of my own were killed and Stricture lost over thirty-five. Do you understand what this means?”
He could guess. Roger hesitated, but then nodded.
“You are one of us now, do you understand? You will do what you are told without question and you will fight and you will die.”
Roger felt that feeling again, felt that third reality taking shape. “Who is “us”?”
The stony woman smiled, revealing a missing tooth. “Just think of us as tunnel buddies.”
Roger arched an eyebrow. He didn’t quite know what to think about that. “Well...what would you have me do?”
Still smiling, the stony woman spat and then sang, “You’re not gonna like it...”
. . .
The plan, like most plans of this magnitude, was maddeningly simple. Roger was to infiltrate the Factory, place a strategically located incendiary device, and then detonate that device once he was a safe distance away. Easy. The problem was, that he would immediately be detected. Since thirty-seven Stricture (to date) had been killed in the attempt to detain him, Roger had become a wanted man. He was held up as an example of the dangerous and divergent homosexual, who was conspiring against the establishment in order to push his sinful agenda. He saw his family publicly condemn him on television. He would almost certainly be made into an example.
The Factory had the best security in the country. Within the temple and on its grounds roamed over eighty security guards armed with automatic weapons. Also, there were literally only three entrances into the building. Two doors, adjacent to one another, at the temple’s front (the right door admitting personnel, employees, and dignitaries; the left ushering the soon-to-be-rectified) and one exit at its rear, symbolizing the assimilation into Light that occurs within the temple.
Every soon-to-be-rectified was methodically searched upon entrance, and so were all but the highest profile individuals and returning Opped, for medicine and checkups.
When Roger heard this last bit of information, he breathed in sharply, already aware, at some level, of what they wanted from him. He no longer heard what the stony woman was saying to him and his eyes glazed slightly. What should he do? Thoughts of home and family had abandoned him, he had no one to rely on anymore. Even if he rolled the dice and left the country, there was nowhere for him to hide, he was labelled a terrorist in the media and he would be welcomed nowhere. He no longer had any council but his own, so despite what Ben might think, he agreed before the stony woman could finish asking.
He would be Rectified, he would be outfitted with micro-chip identification validating his Rectification, he would be dressed, wigged, and made-up, he would strap a small but powerful explosive to the inside of his left thigh, he would place this explosive in the central operations chamber, he would pick his way through the maze-like structure and up to the security control room, he would dispatch the guard, lock himself in, and use the broadcast system to make his presence within The Factory known, he would wait until the building evacuated, and then he would detonate the device.
Roger argued that if the bomb were to explode without warning, too many innocents, too may Rectified would be collaterally damaged and the attack would lose its symbolic value. Anyone could destroy a building, but for it to transcend history and become legendary or symbolic, it must be tragic. Only tragedy produces progress. The oppressed detonator most love, to his final moment, even those who oppress him, driving anger from his heart and surrendering to the finality of his action.
Roger spent the two days before his Rectification alone in his room. He no longer ate nor slept but was content to write his thoughts in a small leather journal, to pour over the pictures of Ben that the stony woman had left in his room, and to solidify in his mind the plan that had become his reality. That had always been his reality. Roger closed his eyes as the I.V. entered his cephalic vein and when he opened them, he no longer recognized himself, and smiled.
. . .
The Factory was a perfect cube. Fifty stories high and exactly as wide and as it was deep. Composed mostly of shimmering white glass, the structure blazed so that to walk toward it was perilous to the corneas. Security guards standing in front and looking away, casted long warped shadows, so that from an aerial view the palace looked as if it were guarded by massive, top-heavy, black beings. As Roger walked toward it, uncomfortable in shoes that befit a woman, he felt the plasticky bomb begin to rub raw against his sweaty thigh. Moving slowly and modestly, he made his approach to the right-hand entrance which had the word, “Righteous” inscribed into the marble above. To his left, a stream of several hundred men clad in collars and white tunics shuffled into the building, prodded and harassed by authorities constituting roughly 1/100 of their population. Not wanting to draw attention, Roger resisted the urge to stare openly at these men; for reasons he couldn’t fully understand he reviled them, was disgusted by them. He was so closely one of them himself (and for all intents and purposes he was Rectified) but found himself hating them even while he saved their lives. Flinching, he remembered a dream--well, not the dream itself but an image from the dream, a snapshot of his psyche. He saw, flashed before him, a line of men all bearing his face, marching forlornly and willingly into the knife. Forgetful of Ben and forgetful of darkness he watched himself trudge endlessly into the machine.
“What are you looking at, keep moving,” the stony woman’s voice whispered into his ear, “You’re beginning to draw attention.”
Shaking slightly, which he supposed was normal for a Rectified since nobody noticed or said anything, he clicked his wrist against the righteous door. The chip wedged between his radius and ulna illuminating slightly, he entered as the marble slid smoothly away. The entire building’s center was hollow, floors wrapped around the inside of the cube, ascending slowly like a Guggenheim and increasing in size until it created a dome with a single glass center, spreading harsh light throughout the entire facility. He found that everyone within the Factory of Light smiled at him as he passed them, offered assistance, and was generally kind to him. These same kind people, these understanding, genteel, pious people, smiling at him and shaking his hand. Offering assistance, “do you know where you’re going,” “would you like some help,” “well aren’t YOU a pretty girl?”. They were so confident; they knew they were right and thought they understood perfectly what occurred between the ears of a “confused” citizen. Certainty diseases the brain, corrodes rational thought and blends emotion with reason, belief with truth. Thank God it also blinds.
Feeling nauseous and darkly playful, Roger walked forcefully in the direction of a high ranking cleric who had just disembarked from a clear glass elevator. His creamy white garb and tall pointed hat identified him clearly as a religious scholar of great piety and wisdom. His sage council reaching millions, his words heavy, dripping with influence.
“Most revered Chaplain of the Stricture,” Roger mock-supplicated as the stony-woman’s voice rang angrily and inarticulately in his left ear, “I wonder if one of God’s children might ask for your assistance?”
The cream-colored cleric raised his shaky head so that his eyes might meet his devotee’s. However frail his body may have been, however hidden in wrinkles and aches his consciousness might have seemed, his eyes peered from deep within their sockets with such intensity and focus that for several moments all Roger could manage was to stare. He felt these eyes all over his body, trying to get inside of him like unwanted hands. He felt these hands grip and stamp him, classify and file him away in a place where he could never be recovered. Regardless of how he spoke to this man he would remain in that place forever, for those powerfully clear eyes saw only what they already knew. It was as if the cleric’s eyes had, through some unfortunate accident, become stuck in place, doomed to see the world through a single perspective, incapable of acknowledging that there might be better vantage points from which to view a thing. An angle that would, should they discover it, illuminate an important aspect of whatever was being considered. Roger found himself pitying the old man. He was so weak; even his strength was a weakness, his certainty crippling. Roger marveled at himself. He pitied the pontiff and reviled the Rectified. What a world he found himself in, what a time to be alive: surrounded yet all alone; a man in a woman’s body; an infidel in the temple; a loving terrorist playfully antagonizing his enemy while a woman he hardly knows screams orders into his ear from an undisclosed location. He started to laugh, putting one hand on his mouth and the other on his stomach, as if both trying to stifle and encourage the giggle.
Without amusement the cleric turned back to his followers, ribbing,
“This one’s still feeling the effects of the gas, I’m afraid.” The students behind him nodded seriously as he turned back to Roger in a sickeningly pedantic fashion, folding his hands into prayer. His patience clearly wearing as thin as his understanding. “What can this old man help you with, my dear?”
Emboldened by anger and feeling invisible behind the cleric’s limited perspective, Roger began,
“Holy father, according to your sacred doctrine and your wise interpretation of the blessed texts, you maintain that a man has sexual thoughts only for women, and that a woman desires only for men. By this logic, you claim, a man who desires another man must be a woman, and that women who lust for other women simply need to be disciplined by their husbands, reminded what its like to be a woman. Is that correct?” The priest nodded slowly as Roger continued, “However, men of God like yourself are prohibited from having sexual desire, is that also correct?”
“No, my dear, we are not prohibited. Men of God simply experience desires for God only, and reject sinful earthly pleasures for what they are.”
Roger nodded. “Ohhhh...I see.” He cocked his head to one side. “So, and I apologize deeply for my ignorance, your grace, but how then do men of God identify, in terms of gender? If there are two genders, distinct only in their sexual desire, how does a man of God, penitently above such desires, remain a man? What are those who desire nothing but power?” This last sentence slipped from Roger’s mouth of its own accord, surprising both men equally. The voice in his ear fell silent and the priest’s disciples exchanged scandalized looks.
Roger had already gone too far, so with a wink and a laugh he tore the earpiece out, pushed the priest back into the elevator, and threw himself in beside “it”. He found the button for the top floor, and spammed the “door close” key while onlookers peered in static shock. Turning to the cleric he sighed, “Man that was fun. Wasn’t it, man?”
. . .
When they were between the 26th and 27th floors, Roger pulled the emergency lever and halted the elevator. The priest was leaning against the door breathing raggedly as Roger stood for a moment, looking down upon the amassing crowd. He was the leader of their congregation now, it was his voice that they would hear. And doubt was his subject.
Ungracefully, Roger flopped back onto the floor, leaning against the door with his hands above his head gripping the support rail. The priest could see nothing from his fixed perspective, his eyes staring at Roger as if straining to see him. Roger liked the way the priest looked at him; it was as if he were finally taking shape, becoming a person for the first time. He could become anyone he wanted here in front of the priest. These, he decided, were his defining moments.
He closed his eyes to relish the occasion, feeling his femoral artery pound against the weapon strapped to his thigh. He knew that if his heart stopped, the weapon would sense it, and it would all be over; he smiled. He felt the way he did when he was with Ben. He felt safe and free and that paradoxes never existed. He felt that he would always end up here, that his potential was actualizing. In his ecstasy, he failed to notice the video camera focusing on his face.
A voice he remembered from somewhere, spectrally, emanated tinnily through an intercom in the ceiling. Cold, like wet metal and amused. A tongue on his neck.
“Roger, is that you mate? You look positively ravishing! It’s nice to finally put a face to the file.”
The spell broken, Roger narrowed his eyes at the intercom. “If only I had the same luxury. I don’t even know your name, let alone your face.”
“You’ve seen my face, Roger. Look at that wheezing cleric there, or those rubber-necker’s down below. My face is theirs... in the same way that their voice is mine. You can see my face in the very architecture of this building.”
Roger rolled his eyes in silence.
“Listen, because you’ve essentially kidnapped the high cleric and isolated yourself in an elevator, I assume you’ve got some kind of bomb on you somewhere. Before you do anything you might regret, look down from your lofty perch and see what you are about to destroy.”
With a weary curiosity, Roger pulled himself into an upright position and stared bleakly at the now vacant cavern below. A woman--no a Rectified, uncannily familiar, walked stiffly into the room followed by a steady stream of what Roger assumed were more Rectified, until several hundred of them filled some of the empty space. Their leader was passed a megaphone. The Tongue thought Roger would change his mind in the presence of Rectified? He hadn’t wanted to hurt them, but now he was committed, drawing upon the hatred he felt for them earlier. Their leader put the megaphone to his lips, but before Roger could process her words, he recognized her voice. It was Ben. The Tongue laughed over the intercom as Roger forwent his dignity to reach the one-button. It had a little star next to it.
The seconds it took to reach ground-level skipped arrhythmically in Roger’s mind like the heartbeats in his cochlea. As the doors opened, he rushed from the elevator breathless. Arms wide and eyes streaming. He heard the cleric’s laughter join the Tongue’s, but he still hadn’t heard a word of Ben’s. Reaching him in seconds, he slapped the microphone away and kissed Ben so hard that his teeth hurt. Ben’s lips seemed not to notice. After a few seconds he pulled away and searched the implacable face in front of him. Vacant as a windswept valley, Ben’s eyes stared coldly through him. Roger shook him, pleaded with him and begged, but no recognition showed in Ben’s eyes. There was something missing from them. As the Rectified surrounded and subdued Roger, all he could feel were thousands of cold tongues, licking him from head to toe.
Two Rectified stayed each of Roger’s appendages. Ben stood straddling him and looking down derisively into his face, sneering. He could hear the Tongue’s voice somewhere over his left shoulder.
“This is what becomes of resistance, Roger, don’t you see? We have created a perfect nation here, a pure nation. We understand the confusion you feel, the heartbreak at being made wrong. We only seek to help, to cleanse and purify you in the name of the almighty. It is through His light that we find our salvation, it is through His deeds that we know we are righteous.” Ben produced a knife. “Can you comprehend what I’m telling you?”
At this, a litter carrying the most corpulent creature Roger had ever seen lumbered into his field of vision. Its face obscured by breathing apparatuses, Roger heard the Tongue’s voice sound crisply from the blob,
“Was it really so simple? You would submit yourself to certain death for an embrace?”
Toad-like in his bloated repose, the Tongue’s throat was a one-way valve, his stomach a trash compactor that never quite emptied. His gut seemed perpetually to be filled with moving gas. He could never be still, despite the hedonistic luxury he lived in. THIS was the voice of Stricture? THIS man sits in judgement over other human beings and presumes to alter their bodies? For the second time today Roger laughed uncontrollably.
Screeching, he managed,
“Thank you, Tongue, for showing me your “face” before I die,” he knew what would happen when his heart stopped, “and validating me in this effort. My mother taught me never to judge a book by its cover, but since I knew your voice before your likeness, I can only say with conviction that your appearance perfectly represents your substance.”
“Laugh all ya like, mate, but look at where we are!” Ben pushed the knife menacingly into Roger’s throat, drawing a drop of blood at its point. Roger waited gleefully for death, he couldn’t imagine a more tragic ending. “I’ve got the love of your life right here under my control, he’s going to kill you, mate, ya got that?”
Roger only laughed.
Shaking his head the Tongue sighed, exasperated, “Do it, then. Finish this for God’s sake.”
Without blinking Ben plunged the knife into Roger’s throat, stifling his persistent laughter. Nothing changed in Ben’s eyes but Roger didn’t care. To him, this was perfect. In a foreign body, in a hostile location, bleeding freely, somehow he felt content. The most himself that he had ever been. Felt his heartbeats weakening with anticipation, and was finally apotheosized, for real this time, in the final blast. He felt Ben, there at last, next to him as the light turned to darkness.
He couldn’t imagine a more tragic ending.
. . .
There was a poster in Roger’s room that he loved. It had an Elk (a creature that Roger had never seen himself, but supposed probably existed) staring into a deep canyon filled mostly by a glacier. Grass and other greenery poked through the ice and snow promising a rebirth, a respite from the cold season. Roger stared at this grass and felt a deep sorrow. What about the grass that came before it? Was this the same grass that had been covered when the first snows had fallen? Or was this a new grass, a grass that was made possible by the old grass’s sacrifice? Was nurtured by the original’s vitality?
He would stare at this poster when he was alone in his room, which was often. It was bare aside from this poster, which he had salvaged from a culture-burn several years ago. It was probably dangerous to have, but he allowed himself this small indiscretion. Alone in his room he would stare at the Elk, admiring its strong neck and clear eyes, peering at it longingly, symbolically.
Cleanliness was part of Roger’s disguise. He would avoid suspicion through fastidiousness and lead a life of incontrovertible inconsequence. He made sure to cover his tracks wherever he might roam. But he stared at this Elk. It would distract him from his sacred text. He would look up at it while he struggled to exercise. Glance at it on his way out the door.
He thought about it at work. Walking home he would bump into a passerby and apologize profusely, seeing only the Elk. Where was it going? Did it have a name? No of course it didn’t have a name, it was an Elk! But it looked like it had a name.
Its eyes haunted Roger. They had no pupils and no irises, they were purely black and deep. He began avoiding the Elk’s eyes as he walked in his room. Felt watched by them, judged by their pure darkness. By their inability to judge. What was he in comparison to such ancient beauty? Did he exist in the face of an unconscious Nature? Did the Elk dream of him? He knew that he was nothing and loved the Elk, feared for it. He did not belong in this new world, old as it was.
As he vacuumed his room one day, as he did everyday, Roger struck the wall with the Oreck and down fluttered the Elk. He couldn’t figure it out. Where had the nail gone? Roger searched all over the floor, checked his shirt collar, dumped out the Oreck, and found nothing. He went over every inch of his room: underneath his bed, through his sheets, flipping every page of his sacred text, brushing every strand of his black hair. It was gone, the one nail that held up his Elk had vanished.
Roger couldn’t sleep, but kept his lamp burning and explored. It simply had to be here somewhere.
He skipped work the next day, claiming to be ill in the stomach, common these days what with poor water conditions. He closed the blinds, brought in extra lamps, stripped naked and began to thoroughly examine his room. It was sparse, with a stiff twin bed and a short dresser. There was almost nowhere to hide.
Roger picked his way surgically and strategically through the room. Starting at its southeast corner and proceeding clockwise around until the totality had been surveyed. He produced a magnet and hovered it a few inches above the ground, swinging it back and forth so that it covered the room’s entire surface area. He found nothing.
After several days, longer than he’d care to admit, Roger gave up. He couldn’t bear to get rid of the Elk poster so he rolled it up and hid it in his dresser amongst his small-cloths. He pined for the Elk. At work one day, as he was writing what his judge dictated, he wrote “elkementary” instead of “elementary”, thus damaging, in posterity, his judge’s favorite Sherlock Holmes joke on a recorded government document.
As he returned home that evening, bearing the scars of his judge’s reproach, he took his shoes off to enter his room and stepped on something sharp. With a yelp he hopped onto his undamaged left foot and sprung for the bed. Once safe, he took his right foot in his hands, bringing its sole to his face and, to his great surprise, discovered a nail. The very same nail that had once supported his favorite Elk had pierced his foot and was now dripping from a red wound.
It was there, somehow, right outside his door waiting for him. Biding its time as if it knew what Roger would do before he did it. As if the wound existed before the nail had created it. He tore it angrily from its new home and hobbled over to his drawer, dripping blood onto the light carpet, creating little patterns in the otherwise drab and homogeneous decor. To call it decor at all is to elevate its status.
Roger opened the top-right drawer and produced the Elk poster. Without looking at it, he hopped to the wall directly across from his bed. Smoothing the poster out with both hands, spreading his blood over the Elk’s implacable face as he did, Roger looked longingly, almost regretfully into its eye, and drove the nail through it, pinning the Elk to the wall. As he lent back on his bed, breathing hard, Roger knew he’d killed it, imagined it running around, bumping into rocks, falling into the snow and bleeding out into the glacier, staining it pink. Soon spring would arrive and the Elk’s body would be put to good use. It comforted him, knowing that the Elk was dead, and he slept, sweaty and bloody with the dead Elk watching over him. And dreamt of spring.
