Subjection (6 page)

I read fluently by age seven, started accelerated track courses at age ten, and spent most of the day dozing or pissing off teachers by the time I got to high school. I was a bit of a jerk back then, but what teenage boy isn’t a bit of a jerk? The truth was, my life had always been easy. I didn’t study, I didn’t try, I didn’t even care most days, preferring to ditch class. Still, I managed to get mostly A grades, with a B here and there because some teacher felt like going on a power trip and marking me down for my “attitude.”

Could I help it if my tenth grade English teacher didn’t appreciate my term paper on the subject of “Assholes in Academia?” I had a full bibliography and everything.

Abriel struggled his way through middle and high school. He started dating his girlfriend during our freshman year, and between her and I, we forced him to keep up his good grades. I didn’t mind that he had someone and I didn’t, just like I never minded when he fit in better with the other kids than I did, but it made me feel left out. I had always assumed that we’d find a set of twin girls, or, preferably, a brother and sister, because I liked boys a lot more than girls, and we’d each date one of them, and it would always be the four of us, just like it had always been the two of us. Instead, Abriel spent free periods and lunch with Maggie, enjoying the success he had in his relationship as much as I enjoyed my success in education. I was placed in advanced track classes, and my guidance counselor threatened me with extra gym classes if I didn’t comply.

Abriel struggled to keep his grades up while I tried my hand at computer hacking and college-level math just to keep myself from causing even more trouble. Our report cards came out as mirror images of each other—mine always talking about my intellect and academic ability, along with my “oppositionality” and “defiance” and “difficulty cooperating with peers.” Abriel’s always mentioned his wonderful social skills and friendliness and politeness, but actively avoided talking about his academic struggles. Unless a rare good grade occurred, that wasn’t the sort of thing that got mentioned.

I always wanted to protect my brother, but as we grew older and our differences grew stronger, I knew I had to do something to help him. My decision should have been difficult, but it wasn’t. I focused on the strategy, I made my plan, and I executed it flawlessly. The day that we took our Assessments passed quickly, but I never doubted my plan or my intentions.

We sat there, silent, as the results were calculated. You could almost hear the nervousness in the room as the answer sheets were scanned through a machine, which scored the sheets right on the spot instead of sending it wirelessly to another system. All my research had indicated that they used this system for security, just like they had used paper forms for the tests themselves. So much technology, yet the best and brightest can always outsmart it. The creators of the Assessment thought they had the system beat by reverting back to the anachronistic paper forms, but I had exploited that.

Finally, the machine made an innocuous beeping sound, and I felt my pulse race as I realized that the results were in. A sheet of paper printed off, and I scanned the proctor’s face for any sign of a problem. She looked calm, unsurprised. My deception went undetected.

The proctor read the names off of a sheet. Abriel and I were on different lists, sealing my fate as Demoted, and his as passing. Those on the first list were instructed to go to the gym, those on the second were instructed to go to the cafeteria. The makeup of the groups seemed to be puzzling most of the kids. Mostly because I was in the one headed to go to the room where you get Demoted, and even the many kids whom I had alienated over the years knew I should have passed the Assessment with flying colors. I couldn’t bring myself to look at anyone, too afraid that I would give away my secret and ruin the whole thing.

We were instructed not to speak or exchange anything on the way out, but I tackled Abriel and gave him a hug and told him I loved him before joining my group. I was certain that I would never see him again. The proctor glared at me, but she gave the same confused look that Abriel did. I ignored it like I ignored the stares of my former classmates.

I was herded with my not-peers into the gym, where the lower echelons of our fine academy had been gathered. Nice enough kids, most of them, from what I knew, but I hadn’t had classes with most of them since we were in elementary school. They knew me, and a few of them glanced around hopefully upon seeing me, perhaps thinking that they had been placed in the non-Demoted group. I felt guilty to disappoint them. We were lined up according to our SID numbers—Statewide Identification. I had always hated that acronym, but it was unsettling to be rid of it. Once a person is Demoted, their SID is stripped and they are assigned a property number instead. Nobody has ever thought to make a corny acronym for that.

We were kept standing, and when people complained, they were immediately shouted at by a man with a taser. I thought of how petty it seemed to threaten to tase high school kids for talking. I suddenly realized that we weren’t kids anymore, not protected as youth or innocent in the eye of the law. Neither was the other group, but they had achieved free adult status. It struck me as comical that my little brother was an adult.

I went along with the orders, and a few minutes later, about one tenth of the graduating class was standing in the gym, lined up in nice little rows. The doors closed, and I started to get a little alarmed when I heard them lock.

A man in the front of the room, dressed in standard government enforcement teal, picked up a microphone and started speaking into it.

“I’m sorry to inform you, but you’ve been Demoted. From this day on, you will take your place in society as a Demoted human. You will be considered an adult minor under the law, under the protection of your trainers or masters. You will be considered property for tax purposes. We understand that you are of the lower range of mental functioning, and this shall be taken into account.”

It sounded easy, if dreadfully boring.

“You will spend the next two years in one of the state-approved re-education facilities. You will be taken there immediately after the sterilization procedure is completed and all shots are made up-to-date. From this point on, you will cease speaking, making unnecessary noise, or causing disruption. The guards will escort you to the transportation modules of their choice.”

A small girl who I remembered from the art class I took in tenth grade piped up, in tears. “What about my family? When do I get to say goodbye!”

The man who just finished addressing us turned his nose up as though he smelled a skunk. “You are property. You have no families.” He turned to exit the stage.

The girl darted toward him, yelling something that I couldn’t quite make out from where I stood. Before she could reach him, her words were cut off by screams as she was tased simultaneously by two of the guards who flanked the man who had spoken to us. She fell to the ground, twitching and sobbing.

It hit me just how real it was.

Nobody else tried anything sudden or impulsive, which was good, because the smell of singed flesh made me a little nauseous. Any other day, it would have been lunchtime. I wondered if they planned on feeding us.

We were herded into hover-vans, which were decidedly unappealing. Vans of all sorts had gone out of style decades earlier, since most people drove alone or with one passenger, two at most. People didn’t tend to have more than one or two kids due to the population growth and the escalating cost of education. Hover-buses caught on briefly, before the e-rail system caught on in most areas. Vans fell into use only for prisons and the like. Being Demoted wasn’t much different.

We weren’t fed until we arrived at the re-education facility. A big, brick building stood four stories tall, and electrified gates surrounded the perimeter. It seemed like a bit much to me, but for all I knew, maybe people tried to flee from a government-imposed life of servitude on a regular basis. It didn’t seem like the brightest idea in my book, but then, the place supposedly housed people who weren’t so bright. I discarded any hope of running anyway on the sheer logical realization that it wouldn’t work, no matter what I tried. Even if I was to get past the guards and the gates and the distance, there would be no place to go. I realized I’d rather live as a Demoted person than die of starvation or an animal attack or something. I had spent my whole life in a small city; my idea of wildlife was squirrels and pigeons. The trees and vast expanses of space were unnerving. Not only that, but Demoted don’t do well outside their usual status as pets—without a wristband or identification, there is no way to buy anything, nowhere to go, and no way to hide. The thing about Demoted trying to escape is that there is nowhere to escape to. To survive, a Demoted person must have a master.

After our uninspired but filling dinner of some sort of oatmeal-mash-thing and water, we were taken to dormitory-style rooms, mostly separated from our schoolmates. I ended up in a room with approximately twenty other boys, none of whom were familiar to me. The guards who escorted us one by one pointed to a bed for each of us, and there were sheets and clothes waiting. I stood beside my bed, awkward and bored, much like the rest of the boys. It was obvious what we were supposed to do, but we all waited for orders anyway. It seemed safer.

“You have five minutes to make your beds, change into regulation clothing, and get to sleep. There will be no talking, no leaving beds, and no contact between any of you.”

I hesitated for a moment, watching the other boys scurry to follow the orders. As if they had been doing it all their lives, they stripped naked in front of a room of dudes. I wasn’t a prude by any means, but I didn’t even know their names! I fiddled with the hem of my shirt for a few moments before trying to stall.

“Um, excuse me, what do I do with
my
clothes?”

The guard slapped me in the face before I even registered him walking toward me, and I cried out as I stumbled aside. Nobody had ever hit me like that before, and it hurt!

“Your job is to do as you’re told,” the guard growled, seeming pleased when I cowered a little. “Don’t waste time asking stupid questions about things you’re too ignorant to understand.”

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled, deciding that perhaps my unquestioning peers were right about it. I eyed up the pajama shirt and decided it was long enough to offer me some modesty, so I changed into that first, then the pants.

I was halfway through putting the sheets on my bed when a guard announces that it was lights out. The beast towered over me, smiled sadistically, and ripped the bedding from my hands.

“You sleep on the floor,” he ordered. “Maybe next time you’ll move faster.”

I sighed, figuring he was enjoying his little power play. I was about to retort something sarcastic, but my cheek still hurt where he slapped me earlier, so I held my tongue. I lay down on the floor and looked hopefully at the bedding that he took from me.

He dropped it back on the bed.

“Touch it tonight and I’ll beat you within an inch of your life,” he warned. I didn’t doubt him, although the urge to touch it was strong. I resisted.

The floor was cold. Not intolerably cold, but maybe five degrees above intolerably cold. The pajamas were thin and scratchy, and I longed for blankets to curl up with more than I longed for the mattress. Even the regulation-grade pillow sounded pretty damn good. But I was afraid to fuck up so soon. Not before my first full day. I couldn’t handle that much. I could barely handle the situation as it was.

If the sounds were any indication, the other boys weren’t handling it much better. There were muffled cries and sobs, and the sounds of lots of people tossing and turning in what must have been uncomfortable beds. I was surprised the guards didn’t come and yell at them for making noise, but maybe they did have some sort of compassion. That, or they just didn’t care. As far as anyone else was concerned, we were no longer people, no longer worthy of compassion. Like animals, we had been sterilized earlier, our “inadequate” genes removed from the gene pool. My dick hurt, well, my balls, more accurately, but it seemed to spread to the whole thing. As I lay there in the dark, I reached down and gingerly ran a finger along the small line of stitches from the vasectomy. It was such a little thing, but it changed me forever, just like the Assessment, just like the choice that I had made.

I thought about my brother, who got to go home, who got to go to the graduation ceremony and see mom and dad. I knew it would be hard for him to go on alone, and I knew it would be hard for our parents as well, but I knew I made the right decision. Mom and dad would have eventually grown bored of my “selfishness,” as they called it so often, my tendency to look out for nobody but myself.

I did always look out for Abriel. I had always considered him an extension of myself, and I wouldn’t have done it for just anyone. My sacrifice was for my brother, my twin, my genetic pair. I had always thought we did best when we were together, when we could both use our own strengths to compensate for the other’s weaknesses, but I knew I did the right thing by saving him. He could go on to do so much.

I tried to be happy about that fact, but I couldn’t help but realize that I had a whole life in front of me as well. A life of loneliness and humiliation. It washed over me all at once, and I tried to stay strong. I squeezed my eyes shut against the tears and tried to pretend I was just going to sleep, blocking out the dim light from the hallway. I got exactly what I wanted, I had just never considered the consequences.

Chapter 6
Training

I’ve only had the training materials for a few days when my master breaks his usual pattern of ignoring me and stops by my room.

“Show me what you’ve learned,” he orders, standing there expectantly.

I stare at him, silent and confused.

“That was an order, as if it wasn’t entirely clear,” he says, curt and cold. I tremble.

Slowly, I stand, unable to take my eyes off of him. I know it won’t stop him from hurting me if he wants to, but at least I’ll be able to see it coming. He doesn’t move, though, and after a moment, I try to focus on what I’ve read in the training manuals. It’s easy to forget, when I’m alone, when there aren’t many demands placed on me. But when my master speaks to me, when he makes demands, I realize how lost I am. Every interaction is a terrifying challenge, as is figuring out when to walk and when to sit and where. I used to take all this for granted, but now it just leaves me terrified.