#8224

Start

#8224

By Anthony Arnhold

8224 had never seen a room so ghastly white. The walls were white, the floor was white, the chairs, the table. It was nigh on blinding to have her eyes open, so she kept them shut and pressed her head against the table’s cold metal. It wasn’t much comfort, but it was some - and comfort was in short supply as of late. To be concise, comfort was akin to heresy, blasphemy. “The comfortable person is a stagnant person,” she muttered, wondering if the microphones would pick it up.

There was no time in this room, and she couldn’t remember if she’d been waiting in this chair for half an hour or three days. They never brought food, and 8224 wasn’t sure that she’d be able to eat it anyway. She wasn’t hungry; she was tired. Tired and cold and finished with the whole ordeal.

“Attention,” screeched a speaker, and 8224 shot up in her chair. Although it isn’t your chair, you don’t own it, no one owns anything. To presume that it is, in fact, your chair, is representative of your own intrinsic selfishness. There was a loud clanging noise, the sound of a gigantic lock sliding open, and a piece of the pure white wall parted away.

The man who stepped in was a bureaucratic shade of pale, his eyes the color of dead beetles in a windowsill. He had no hair, no brows, no beard, just a pasty stretch of skin that nearly matched the walls around them. He sat in the chair across from her as though he were designed to do so.

She stared at him.

He stared back as the wall hissed shut behind them.

“8224, assigned and accepted female at birth, twenty-four rotations old, 126 pounds gross weight, work detail… janitorial. Is this all correct?”

“I suppose,” she said.

“Do you suppose,” he said, “or do you know?”

“I don’t know anything,” she said.

He blinked. He stared.

“Are you prepared to cooperate with this inquisition,” he asked, “or do you require physical coercion? It can be provided if you feel it’s necessary to this investigation.”

“Torture?”

He stared, thinking.

“What is that word,” he asked, honestly curious.

“Torture,” she said again, “hurting somebody to get what you want out of them.”

“Physical coercion is often helpful in obtaining information from those who have forgotten that they possess it. If you find that your existing memory of the events leading up to your arrest is insubstantial, I can aid you in your retrieval of those memories via physical coercion. Are you prepared to cooperate with this inquisition?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Why were you arrested, 8224?”

“Possession of contraband,” she sighed.

“What was this contraband?”

“A necklace,” she said.

“Jewelery,” he asked, and the absurd way he pronounced it sounded like a fly buzzing in her ears.

“Yes,” she said. “Jewelery. A chain with a heart on it.”

The inquisitor reached into the side pocket of his jacket and then held his hand over the table. There was a small clink as he laid the necklace out before her.

“This chain with a heart on it?”

She looked at it. Examined it. A tear welled in her eye and when she went to wipe it away she remembered that she was cuffed to the chair. She wanted to hold it again. To feel it tangibly in her hand. The tear rolled down her cheek. It was so beautiful.

Beauty is an abstract concept, a simple notion, an unnecessary ideal.

She nodded.

“Speak, please.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Why were you in possession of this contraband?”

“I found it while I was cleaning the alley. It was behind a dumpster.”

“And why, 8224, did you not simply throw it into said dumpster as a dedicated citizen would? Were you not aware that jewelery in all its forms is considered contraband?”

“I don’t know why I kept it,” she said. “I just… I just put it in my pocket and went on cleaning.”

“And then…?”

“What do you mean,” she asked. “I kept cleaning.”

“What did you do with the locket?”

“I took it home.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you wear it? Did you put it on in the mirror and fancy that perhaps you were a higher caliber of human being than those who do not possess such finery?”

“I mean… I wore it, yes, but… but not like that. I just… I thought it was beautiful.”

“Beauty is an abstract concept, 8224. A simplistic notion. An unnecessary ideal. Beauty convinces one citizen that they are more important than another. Beauty is one of the roots of fascism. First a person thinks something is beautiful, then they think it is theirs alone to possess, then they deem it fit to protect their perceived beauty from others… do you see where this is heading?”

“A person is not fit to protect, a person is invalid, only the society matters.”

“And how were you contributing to our society by possessing such beauty, 8224?”

“I suppose I wasn’t…”

“Do you suppose,” he asked, growing stern, like an angry father readying to loosen his belt. “Or do you know?”

“I know I wasn’t,” she said, fresh tears now running freely from her glazed, reddened eyes. She ground her teeth together to keep from screaming out of sheer frustration. This didn’t make any sense. It was pretty, she wanted to wear it. What was so wrong? What was the crime? Aren’t they supposed to be protecting me, rather than persecuting me?

Persecution is necessary to root out those that would threaten our stability. Beyond the safety of our society lies chaos, an infernal bed of doubt, confusion, and war. But here, we have peace, and we must persecute those who threaten to bring chaos to our door.

She knew all the words. She knew all the reasons she was here. But now that she was here, they made less sense than ever before.

“Did you imagine, perhaps,” the inquisitor asked, “that before you found the jewelery, it belonged to another citizen?”

“Yes,” she said through her teeth.

“What were they like,” he asked.

“Y-young,” she couldn’t help but cry. The tears came freely now and she was exposed, naked, unable to stop. She’d spent a long time thinking about where the necklace might have come from, more time, in fact, than she’d spent fancying herself wearing it. “A-a young girl. One of the derelicts that hide in all of those abandoned buildings and still have their own children. I-i-i-i thought that maybe she got it as… as a gift or, I don’t know…”

She tried to breathe but her heart was racing and stuffed up into her throat like a sock.

She screamed.

At the inquisitor. At the white room. At the locket. At herself.

She screamed as loud as she could and when her vision came back into focus she sucked the snot back up into her nose and coughed a little.

“So you made up some fantasy about a young girl with a family?”

The inquisitor didn’t seem to notice that she’d lost her mind for a brief moment. He examined her like a butcher deciding where to cut next.

“Yes,” she said.

“And you are aware that it was a fantasy, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Had you ever conceived such fantasies before you found the jewelery?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Hmm,” the inquisitor eyed his wrist. He touched the back of his hand and the wall behind him opened back up. “I believe I’ve heard enough, then.”

“Wha… what?” 8224 stared wildly around the room. “What do you mean?”

“We have a thinker in room 12,” he said into his wrist. He looked down at the locket on the table and shook his head. He looked at 8224 and pointed down at the jewelery. “The person who created this… Do you ‘imagine…’”

He said the word with visible, hateful, disgust. His voice rose as he spoke, until he was nearly matching her own scream a few moments earlier.

“... that the person who assembled this device, thought for one moment about the danger it poses to the people around him? Did he consider that they would make up stories? That they would shift their focus from the prime directive of building a better world - here in reality - to some nonexistent plane? Do you know what happens when people begin fantasizing, 8224? Do you?”

“I-i… I don’t…”

“That’s right, I forgot, you don’t know anything. You suppose. You imagine. You fantasize. Reality isn’t good enough for you. You have to have something beautiful. You have to wear it…”

The inquisitor stood and drew his coat around him. He whirled away from her as if she were a mess on the carpet and stormed from the room.

She looked down at the locket sniffling and confused.

It was pretty - a small, silver thing. She noticed that there was a small bump on one side of it and leaned in closer, trying to blink away the wetness in her eyes. It was a latch. Did the locket open? What could be inside of it, she wondered, and in her head she imagined the locket around her neck. She was opening it. And inside was… what? A pill? A nibble of rare, illegal, dark chocolate? A picture? Of who? It was so small you’d barely be able to make it out, whoever it was.

“Yeah,” said a deep voice from the hallway. The wall was still open, and outside of this room, the walls were not white. They were blue. A dark, spiteful shade of blue. “We gotta get 12 cleared fast. He’s got three more today.”

A pair of men stepped into the room. Both were garbed in hazmat gear so their faces were obscured behind thick, black plastic. One of them leaned forward with a small silver pen.

“8224,” he inquired.

She shook her head up and down.

“Will you look into this light,” he asked, holding the pen out towards her eyes.

She looked.

There was a small click, similar to the sound the necklace made against the table. A thin stream of blood leaked from the white of her eye and over the lid and lashes. She slumped forward on the table and lay still.

The men uncuffed her and one lifted her over his shoulder. “I got her,” he said. “You go grab the next one.”

“Copy that,” said the other.

As he followed his partner out of the room, the second man looked down at the table. His head tilted and he reached out one of his large, gloved hands. He lifted the necklace from the table and stared at it for a moment.

“Hm,” he wondered, and he slid it into his pocket.