A Desperation For Difference

Only four hundred years passed since the end of modern civilization, yet The Directorate was awfully strict towards their huge population. They feared progress that could, for a second time, harm all of humanity. Their spite of the past drove their education plans to erase all history. The schoolchildren here believed the English language was created by their colony, and they had no knowledge of other populations. No knowledge of what England was, nor America, nor any other country. These citizens lived a bland life of Directorate-sanctioned productivity, where the jobs are planned upon one’s birth.

Retirement didn’t exist. Disease couldn’t get in the way of work. If a loved one died, one was to return to work as soon as the funeral was over. Since there wasn’t enough food to go around, the most unproductive citizens suffered more than others by having their rations lowered. Medicine only went to the most productive, but the Directorate had full discretion over the definition of most productive. It changed on a weekly basis, but the powerful men in their white lab coats didn’t care. It was for the greater good.

Any dissidence meant death, but their parameters of what dissidence actually meant were changing on a weekly basis. There was, however, one dissident that had something more powerful than a fear of death. It was love. And no, it wasn’t a love that was sanctioned by the Directorate. It was the love for someone of another race, which was beyond illegal.

This dissident was from the Caucasian-Population, known as Yuri Tarasova. He was standing in the food line when his heart swelled for the girl before him. She was of the Asian-Population, and she was named Lilly Zhao. This difference didn’t strike fear into Yuri, for his tingly waves of euphoric love were far too powerful. Standing this close was a high for him.

He let out a low cough as he admired her greasy, black hair. Her back stiffened in her overalls as she refused to turn around. She had a fear of the guards that patrolled the cantina, but she didn’t blame them for their intimidation. They were assigned their jobs at birth, after all.

Yuri let out another cough as the food line inched forward, and Lilly pretended to nonchalantly look for a place to sit. “Yes?” she asked, bearing a stiff face of indifference.

“It’s me again,” Yuri said, with his eyes focused on the fried bits that were handed to their distant comrade. He looked down to Lilly’s denim-covered ass and said, “Looks like we’re having Cicada-Tots again. Wouldn’t mind having you, though.”

Lilly clenched her jaw, dug a sharp elbow into Yuri’s stomach, and she whispered, “Are you fucking crazy? We have laws for a damn good reason, sir. I don’t want to get killed. Please leave me alone.”

Truthfully, she didn’t want him to leave her alone. Oh, no. Her heart also swelled for Yuri. She wanted to learn what was behind the man with the dark eyebrows, the butt-chin, and the cute dimples. She felt bad about hitting him, but it was for their own good. Her family depended on her productivity. If she was killed for flirting with a white man, her family would suffer.

“We could escape,” Yuri said, clenching his jaw so the distant guards couldn’t read his lips.

Feeling depressed, Lilly shook her head and quietly said, “No.”

“I could,” Yuri said, but a guard walked by and waved his shotgun around, causing Yuri to cough on his own spit. The guard, wearing Directorate-Red overalls, shifted his gaze to the dissidents. Yuri and Lilly stood as still as stone, with faces as blank as the cement walls around them. They stayed like this for a few minutes, only moving when the food line moved closer to the serving counter. Several other guards came, and they scanned the room with grim faces.

But one raised his M4 at a lunch table, and Yuri yanked Lilly down before the guard could fire. The three gunshots were like pots falling onto tiling, and it was deafening to the scared citizens of the cantina. Fifteen additional shots whizzed over a dozen people, and the guard finally lowered his weapon. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it as Yuri looked to where the shots landed. It was his friend, Reggie Goodword, of the Black-Population. On the other side of Reggie’s table was a white girl, who sat there with flecks of Reggie’s blood upon her face. She didn’t dare to scream, for that could bring punishment. Instead, she hyperventilated while being unable to look away or finish her blood-stained Cicada-Tots.

“What was he doing?” One guard asked.

The guard with the M4 took a long drag of his cigarette and said, “Reggie,” but he expelled a cloud of smoke from his pale lips, “was touching the hand of that girl, Amber, and he blew her a kiss. She bit her lip at him, so I had enough and shot him. Directorate policy, right boys?”

“Right.”

“Correct,” another guard said. “No race-mixing allowed. You hear that everyone?”

The crowd of comrades murmured up from their trays. Yuri slowly stood up with Lilly, but they didn’t dare to show mournful faces. They faked their hatred for the dead body. Hatred for dissidence was encouraged by The Directorate. And if Reggie got himself killed, he must have been doing something incredibly illegal. But the guards didn’t care to clean up the bleeding body. That was the job of the bipedal janitor-bot.

“See?” Lilly whispered, hatefully watching the dead body as the janitor-bot walked up to the site. “I don’t want to get killed.”

“But,” Yuri said, speaking through clenched teeth. “I could escape. Reggie… my dead friend there… said something about Hope.”

“Hope? I hope you shut up,” she said from the corner of her mouth.

Feeling defeated, Yuri focused his mind back on what Reggie told him a few days ago. “It’s like this… cicada population has been low, so the guards escorted me around the oasis to find some more. I eventually saw some strange, bright words with my binoculars that said Hope. Capital H. Guards didn’t notice me cause they were busy smokin’ their cigarettes in the shade of the pop-up tent. I wonder if there are more cicadas over there to feed our people with? But Yuri? Don’t go askin’ or talkin’ about this. Please. I don’t wanna die. I know life is tough here, but we’re all that humanity has left.”

But Yuri knew that Hope must have something valuable for his fellow citizens. He believed that Hope had a way to rescue his comrades from The Directorate’s authoritarian vice-grip of a government. The janitor-bot’s aluminum chassis caught his attention, so he watched the machine say to Amber, “Have you finished your tray?”

“Yes,” she mumbled, now appearing dissociative.

“I am sworn to serve!” it shrieked. With a nod, the bot carried the tray and disposed of it at the conveyer belt. It crudely walked back to the crumpled body of Reggie, whirred as it bent down, and laid a wired hand on the blood-soaked bullet holes. It delivered an electrical current, but the dead man seized like a broken animatronic. So, the janitor-bot scooped Reggie off of the floor, and it nonchalantly carried the body to the conveyer belt. With a hefty plop, Reggie’s lifeless body leaked blood onto the moving belt and idlers. Yuri watched in faked hatred as his friend fell into a dark chute in the wal, but his boiling hatred was now aimed at The Directorate.

“Next!” said the chef at the serving counter.

Yuri and Lilly grabbed their aluminum trays from a cart and approached the chef. “Hello. Fine day, isn’t it?” Lilly asked, with a voice that intoxicated Yuri.

“Every day under The Directorate is a fine day,” the chef said, handing her a plate of steaming Cicada-Tots.

“Damn right, brother!” Yuri piped.

Lilly’s back stiffened as she took a water cup from the chef, and she hurriedly walked to where Reggie was killed. The janitor-bot has already wiped the blood from the tile, the table, and the seat.

“Hello?” asked the chef. “You got a line of people behind you!”

“Oh,” Yuri said. He shamefully avoided eye contact with the chef as he was handed his Cicada-Tots and his water cup. In his peripheral vision, the bot finished cleaning up the bloodstain and walked to the corner of the cantina, where it awaited additional messes.

“Great day to you, too! Next!” barks the chef.

Yuri nodded and carried his tray over to Lilly, who sat in Reggie’s old seat. Amber was still at the table, and her eyes were glazed from her disassociation. They didn’t move, didn’t cry, didn’t blink. Lilly looked up to Yuri and said, “What? Are you going to just stand? Aint many seats, you know. And the people who came after us will need to sit to eat. Hurry the hell up and sit the hell down.”

Lilly didn’t like being a rough character, but the Cantina is too public of a place for them to get to know each other. She hoped that he would understand.

Yuri sighed, sat down, and he stared into his plate of Cicada-Tots. They’re a deep-fried staple of their colony, and they’re enough to keep the workers on their feet! Thankfully, the Cicadas have plagued them for years, making them an excellent food source. But the food was running low, and the citizens in the cantina have all gotten reduced portions. A grumble escaped Yuri’s mouth as he counted the twelve unseasoned Cicada-Tots.

He lifted his head and studied the chewing-face of Lilly. It was pretty, but it was dirt-stained from her job as a farmer. She worked the fields for The Directorate, stiving to grow crops out of soured soil. For every two crops she harvested, twelve others have died from various causes. So, naturally, The Directorate’s upper class chose where the crops go. They always chose to take it for themselves, but never for the workers. The one thing that helped produce more crops was dead bodies. So, dead citizens are ground up and used as fertilizer. That way, their deaths help their comrades.

Lilly’s cheeks blushed as she asked, “What?”

“Uh…” Yuri mumbled, hiding his mouth with his hand and scanning the whole cantina for the gaze of a guard. None of them were paying attention. “I can escape. Hope sounds like a place that has… well… hope. Maybe people are there?”

Lilly’s eyes widened, but she glared at Amber. Pretending to talk to her instead of Yuri, Lilly said, “Don’t be silly. We’re all that’s left of humanity.”

“I don’t know,” Yuri said. “Reggie was certain that something is there.”

“What if it was a hallucination?” Lilly asked.

“It wasn’t,” Amber said, with a tremor to her voice.

Feeling excited, Yuri said, “You hear this, Lilly?”

Lilly scowled at the idea of going somewhere outside of The Directorate's control. Punishments for abandoning the colony are death or death to family members. And her family depended on her, especially since she already lost her mom because of her dissidence.

“But how are you going to do it?” Lilly asked, turning and looking Yuri dead in the eyes. Her pupils had a deadly pull to them as if they’re miniature black holes. They intimidated Yuri, and they made him feel an icy wave of goosebumps. “How?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Yuri said, feeling unable to look away from the pull of her eyes. “I don’t have any family left.” He pulled at his t-shirt to reveal a silver, heart-shaped locket that hung from his neck. “I’ve just got memories.”