274 (Complex Series, #4)

Chapter One

My fingers fly over the keys on my hologram during I.L.I Teaching, my mind far from what I’m typing. I don’t need to focus on the thoughtless exercise that we are forced to do every day anyway. I need to think.

The Teaching Bell buzzes, signaling the end of class. I sigh inwardly in relief. I tap off the hologram, take out my ear chips, and file out of the room with the rest of the crowd. Completely silent as always. Completely orderly as always. Completely emotionless as always.

Completely perfect.

I swallow my disgust, keeping my face emotionless. I don’t understand why, after everything that has happened over the years, everyone continues to obey the Officials, the Heads.

The Officials have the rules so perfectly arranged, the consequences so flawlessly terrifying, that no one would even think of doing anything different. Being taken away into nothingness, never to be seen again, only to fade away in people’s faint memory. That’s what The Unknown.  

We stay safely away from the line of danger. We stay silent when we’re supposed to. Talk about what we’re told to. Eat what we’re given. Learn what we’re taught. Inhumanely perfect.

On the outside.

I’ve only tried to convince someone to actually think for a second once. It was one of my two roommates, Lillie, when I was only a ten year. The day before a girl I didn’t know had broken out screaming and crying, accusing the Officials of the truth. They tried to subdue her, but she kept fighting. One of the Officials ended up punching the girl, causing blood to pour from her nose. She was taken quickly away, disappearing into the Unknown.

That night while we were lying in our bunks, the Officials had administered to each of us a bright red shot. I didn’t feel any different afterwards, but nobody mentioned anything about them again.

I had quietly asked Lillie later if she thought the girl who had been punched was okay.

Lillie had no memory of the girl’s fight. She entirely denied its existence, while I can still see each detail clearly in my mind five years later. I still don’t understand why.

My attention is ripped back to reality as we enter the Eating Hall. I press my fingertip to the scanner and seconds later the Official brings back my Mid-day Meal food. Walking carefully back to my seat, I grip the tray in my pale hands. The stale bread with slightly cold sauce, small glass of water, and Vita sliding precariously over the smooth, gray plastic.

I sit down on my stool and begin eating, careful to be as ladylike as Etiquette Teaching informs us to be. No elbows on the table, chew with your mouth closed, legs or ankles crossed, back straight, shoulders back. My behavior is identical to everyone else here.

Mid-day Meal passes by uneventful, just like every other Mid-day Meal.

We file out of the room, in the standard uniform faultlessness to Music Teaching.  We spend the next half hour singing plain songs all to glorify the Heads in charge of the entire Complex, Ellen and Derek Windsor. We then have to spend the next half-hour playing simple melodies on our holographic pianos. The melodies are for more songs celebrating the ‘wonderfulness’ and ‘generosity’ of the Heads.