Hepathica

It took the government three generations, 93 years, to eradicate feeling from language in Hepathica. Sometime in the 2030s, a power-hungry, no, a power-starved group in what remained of the 1% decided an emotionally-castrated society would be more productive. Laws were passed, heart-shaped lockets smashed, books were burned, curriculums reconstructed, and rebellions annihilated without a trace. It wasn’t pretty and it most definitely was not easy.

To say that everything became pragmatic and utilitarian would be an understatement. Hepathica consisted of workplaces and sleep bunkers. People worked for food—bland, boring sustenance, chock full of synthetic nutrients to keep disease at bay. Most places of work mimicked your typical manufacturing plant; the only difference is no one knew what they were assembling, results always hidden from workers. Speaking was kept to a minimum, only when necessary and often top-down. Procreation was assigned to pairs by the government after genetic testing, and performed with a note-taking audience in a cold, sterile lab. To be a baby in Hepathica meant getting bottled breast milk and being changed at regular intervals by a slew of strangers. Solitary living was standard until old enough to work.

One such baby grew up to be Person 828, a random number assigned at birth by a relatively clunky, grey machine. She operated a conveyor belt at Factory 333 that seemed to move an l-shaped metal from one manufacturing junction to another. Her job consisted of ensuring everything was consistent and nothing more.

One day, on her way to sleep in Bunker 4545, Person 828 fell. She fell through a concealed grate in the street. No one did anything, of course, because no one ever does anything in Hepathica. She woke wet, caked in grime. She felt around in the darkness to get her bearings but couldn’t get too far without use of her sight. She lay back down in the damp and fell asleep to the orderly footsteps above her. When the sun shone on her eyelids, it brought light to the old, decommissioned tunnel she found herself in. She was looking around the tunnel for ways to get back up to street level when she heard the PKF government patrol surround the grate. Without exchanging any words, the PKF lowered a mechanized rope to pull 828 out of the tunnel. As she was being raised out of the dank, dingy underground passage, her eyes caught the cover of a book unlike anything she’d ever seen. The words may have been Weather in Heights and other nonsensical terms on it as far as she could tell.

828 had to undergo interviews to ensure her compliance. She was never allowed to return to the tunnel, speak of the tunnel, think of the tunnel. But she dreamt of the tunnel, and she dreamt of the book. She dreamt of the two persons wearing garbs unlike anything she’d ever seen, and the words, the words she either didn’t know or couldn’t see. The dreams—she’d never had dreams before. They woke her up from her sleep in the bunker filled with people and all their machine-assigned numbers. She’d never felt anything like this before, she’d never really felt before. The people of Hepathica had no compulsions, urges, desires... but she wanted this book without knowing what “want” was. And one night, after being awoken by another incessant dream, she slipped out of the bunker with a rope and a flashlight she found in a shed, covered herself in mud to blend in with the drab buildings, and snuck away to the grate.

She had the book in her hands. Her heart was racing; she thought she might be dying. She’d seen death, almost daily, but she’d never felt fear or exhilaration the way she felt them in this very moment.

She started reading. Five hours later she’d read it for the first time. She was shaking, confused, and overwhelmed. She could not miss work or the PKF would be after her. All day at the conveyer belt, words swirled in her mind, often making her nauseous and dizzy. She went back every night for the next five nights. On the 6th night she took charcoal and extra flashlights. She lit up a wall in the cloak of darkness in the tunnel and started to write. She wrote words, words she’d never heard, she’d never read... she’d never thought: love, hate, sobbing, joy, pleasure, miseries, affection, cruel, torment, frightful, passion, care, heart, a broken heart.

828 couldn’t fathom how you could break a heart, and what a Heathcliff was; is that a person, a person like all the other numbers in Hepathica? So, she wrote every word, words she’d never heard, she’d never read, she’d never thought. She circled the words and connected them— connected words to people and moments—trying to make sense of what each one meant. She wrote, circled, and drew line after line after line. She had to know why the words made her heart beat differently, her palms sweat, her lips chap.

Every night she came back and lit a different section of the tunnel. She wrote so much there was barely any concrete left visible beyond the black scratches of her charcoal. She wrote and read, and reread. At work she thought of Heathcliff. In bed she thought of Heathcliff. She replayed the sounds of the words in her mind all day.

And on Friday morning when the sky’s blue hue was interrupted by whimsical cloud wisps, Catherine, with the 828 tattooed vaguely on her wrist, walked behind a tall, dark, and handsome man. She slipped her beloved book into his coat pocket, grabbed his shoulder with her hand to lift her lips up to his ear, whispered “I love you,” and ran.