Object Lesson

Om was drenched in sweat, and even though the night was hot, they felt a chill run down their spine as the summer wind brushed their skin. The barracks were on the other side of the campus, so they had a long walk ahead of them, time enough to reflect on the events of the day. Off to the west, a plume of black smoke rose from the re-education facility. Eventually, the wind would carry the smoke over the campus, dumping ash onto the fields and buildings. Om shuddered at the thought of what the ash contained. Om’s father had been a traditionalist, bucking the laws of the land and affixing his son with the forbidden pronoun "he." Om’s father was not one of the secret dissidents that had to be ferreted out by Oversight. His counter-culture rhetoric had been front and center, so it was no surprise when Oversight arrested him.

Om had spent seven months in re-education, being trained to refer to themselves as the neutral "they" instead of the blasphemous "he." Oversight was gentle at first, hoping to reinforce their non-gendered pronouns with the carrot instead of the stick. If that didn’t work, it was the stick, then the carrot. Then, for the hard cases, which Om had been, it was purely the stick. Oversight had beaten "they" and "them" into Om, and Om had never slipped since, at least not with their words. Thoughts were another story. Om couldn’t bear to think of their father as “they” or “it” or any other Oversight approved term.

They stopped for a moment to look up at the full moon, casting soft-blue light across the landscape. They wondered at the enormity of the universe and considered how small a thing a word actually was. Out in the middle of one of the training fields, Om caught sight of something shining in the moonlight. On most evenings, they made the trek across campus with the other recruits in the training unit, but Om had fallen behind during PT and had been left to complete their laps alone.

There was no one around to censure them for deviating from their route back to the barracks. They crossed the field and stood over the object. It was a heart-shaped locket. Om had seen the heart symbol before when they were a child, but it was among the many symbols forbidden by Oversight, an attempt to dissuade people from notions of romantic love. Coupling was merely an act of reproduction and should not be associated with joy or fulfillment.

Om bent down, grabbing hold of the chain and lifting the heart-shaped locket. It spun on the end of the chain a few times, then swung back and forth hypnotically. They could see that the locket was held closed by a small clasp. They triggered the clasp, revealing a picture inside. It was a man and a woman, their faces pressed close together. They were smiling. Om could not remember the last time they had seen someone smile, as such an act was considered to be a micro-aggression, and micro-aggressions had to be cleansed through re-education.

Om quickly closed the locket and looked around, paranoid that this was some kind of test. Oversight was known for putting small temptations in the path of its recruits, just to measure how they would react. Om scanned the sky. There were no drones that they could see, and the center of the field was outside the range of the cameras that Oversight used to monitor their recruits in training. They shoved the locket into the pocket of their black coveralls. If they were caught with it, they would be scheduled for more than re-education. They would become part of the nightly ash cloud. Yet there was something deep inside Om that told them not to discard the object, that this small remnant of the past was worth keeping.

By the time Om finally reached the barracks, it was late, almost midnight. The rest of the recruits were sleeping, so Om walked quietly down the aisle between bunks. Each barracks housed two hundred recruits. As Om looked at the sleeping forms, they took note of their haircuts, and not for the first time. Each recruit had the same cut, two inches on top, tapered on the sides and in the back. The effect was meant to strip them of their gender and individual identity, but there were subtle characteristics that everyone possessed that rendered the effect incomplete.

Some had a specific way of behaving that immediately set them apart from the others and even revealed their gender. Mace, for instance, was obviously a woman. The way they walked and talked was clearly feminine, at least that was how Om saw it. Most of the recruits had been raised genderless, starting out from birth as an "X" or a "they." Ten years earlier, Oversight had decided that even "X" was too gender-specific, so even that term was wiped from the lexicon. It was amazing how quickly people forgot something that had been ingrained in them since birth when their very lives were on the line. Anyone who used "X" ran the risk of intense re-education or possibly death.

Om flopped down on their bunk, not even bothering to pull back the cover. Mace was sleeping above them, their breath coming out in gentle rasps. They were asthmatic, but they somehow always managed to keep up with the other recruits. Om touched the locket inside their coveralls, tracing the outline with their finger. Why had they brought it back with them? It was such a reckless act.

But then they remembered their father, talking about how things used to be before the world descended into chaos. How love was unlegislated and people were free to make choices with their hearts. That had been a long time ago, before the great war. From the ashes of that war, Oversight had emerged, convincing the people that the problems of the old world were caused by individual identity, particularly the division between genders and the destructiveness of emotion. People were desperate and wanted a solution that would give them some hope for the future, so they embraced the new order.

“Om?” Mace said. “You were late getting back.”

“Thought you were asleep,” said Om.

“I was,” Mace said. “I waited for you, but passed out.”

“Why would you wait for me?” Om said.

Mace leaned over the side of their bunk. They were clearly trying not to smile.

“Control your face,” Om said.

Om looked up at the camera attached to the support column in the aisle between bunks. The camera also had a microphone that could pick up the slightest whisper.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow on the training field,” Mace said.

They disappeared from view. A few minutes passed and then the raspy breathing began again, telling Om that Mace had gone back to sleep. The two were kindred, something Om had known immediately upon meeting Mace. Friendship was accepted by Oversight, but as long as it stayed within platonic boundaries. Om felt something more than friendship for Mace, but they kept it suppressed. Such feelings could never manifest. The two could never kiss, never hold hands, never make love. Om knew that keeping their distance was practical for both of them. It still hurt like hell, though.

Rolling over in their bunk, Om pulled the locket from their coveralls and looked at the man and woman inside. It had been a long time since Om had seen that kind of affection. It was the affection that their father had shown their mother before Oversight had marched them both to their deaths.

On the training field the next day, Om and Mace lagged behind their squad. It was not unusual for Om to fall back a bit, but Mace usually kept pace. Mace scanned the sky, probably looking for drones. Occasionally the drones would hover over a particular squad, scanning for murmurings of dissent or looking for behavior that was out of the ordinary. Seeing there were none nearby, Mace looked at Om.

“I had a dream,” Mace said.

Om looked back over their shoulder. Every time Mace spoke to them openly, they got the feeling like someone was watching them. Even though Om had feelings for Mace, there was always a small sense of doubt, like maybe Mace had been planted by Oversight to expose dissenters.

“You know we aren’t supposed to share our dreams,” Om said.

“I know the rules,” Mace said. “But this was significant to us.”

“Hence the reason for the rules,” Om said. “There is no us.”

“Do you ever think about more than this?” Mace said. “Like, do you ever consider how it used to be?”

Om said nothing. The locket inside their coveralls suddenly felt like a burning ember. Why had they kept it? Why hadn’t they just kept on walking?

“I know your father was a dissident,” Mace said. “I know what they did to them. So, I imagine you must think about the world before. You don’t have to answer.”

Om had no intention of answering them. The hairs on the back of their neck stood up. Something was wrong. Something was definitely wrong here.

“I sometimes think about falling in love,” Mace said. “I guess that was what triggered the dream. You and I were together, living in the country somewhere, and we had a baby.”

“Stop,” Om said. “You really need to stop.”

Mace continued, “At night we would sit on the porch. You would be singing a song and I would be rocking the baby. It was nice. I felt fulfilled.”

Mace gave them a sideways look. Om had their fists clenched down at their sides. They suddenly stopped walking, and Mace stopped as well.

“What is it?” Mace said.

“I’m not a dissident,” Om said. “My father was an enemy of the state. It tried to poison my mind.”

“Your father wasn’t an it,” Mace said. “Your father was a person. A man. Don't let them take that away.”

Om tried to speak, but all that came out was a guttural sound, almost a growl. Mace had a concerned look on their face. Om took a few steps forward, relaxing their hands.

“My father was a traitor to humanity,” Om said.

Om grabbed Mace by the neck and threw them to the ground. They straddled Mace, wrapping their hands around Mace's neck, squeezing until their face began to turn purple. Mace stared up at Om with fear in their eyes as their life slowly slipped away. Om slackened their grip, remembering the smiling man and woman, the love between them, the closeness there.

“I’m sorry,” Om said. “I’m so sorry.”

Mace was still trying to regain their breath. Om bent down to help them, but Mace slapped their hands away.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Om said. “Please.”

Mace looked up at them. Their eyes were bloodshot from the pressure of Om's hands around their neck. They rose to their feet and walked away from Om. There were tears in their eyes and their body shuddered with anguish.

Om pulled the locket from their coveralls and wrapped the chain around their finger. Om loved Mace, or at least they thought they did, but when Om felt threatened, they had responded with violence. Om thought back on their mother and father, the love between them. Could it have ever turned to that? Given the right stimulus, anything was possible.

They finally understood why the world had fallen in such a way, why individual identity and division and love had been suppressed. Because they were irrational, and irrationality was a form of chaos. Love was chaos. They imagined that if the locket had been a test, they had passed, and if it had been an object lesson, they had learned it well. Om took one last look at the heart-shaped locket and threw it into the distance.