The Year 2290 - pt. 3

“Can I see Miss Perry after this?”

Brandon’s tiny voice is given no attention, as he’s led by the hand to the waiting room. Even though I’m not the one on their schedule, the sight fills me with a sense of fear, sorrow and – thinking back to Dan – remorse, and that last one I’m still adjusting to. But Brandon…

“Hi, why are you crying?”

… Is clueless to what’s going on. He sits in a chair, small legs kicking idly, and flapping his lips with his finger to make a buzzy “biblbiblbibl” sound. As he waits longer, he gets more restless, and wanders about the room in search of entertainment, even asking a worker if he can play something on a tablet – when that amounts to nothing, he resorts to pretending to be an airplane.

How could anyone see such an innocent soul as a threat?

“Brandon Saski,” a specialist says.

As Brandon steps inside the room, I try to look away, but Ezri nudges me forward. This facility’s chamber, like many things here, is just like the one at the Corvid – containing nothing of significance but a stretcher and mysterious tub. He plops onto the stretcher, eyes darting around the bright room curiously. Little does he know, all there will be soon is darkness – and there’s nobody to save him.

“Why do you insist I have to watch this?” I ask Ezri, gritting my teeth.

“If you don’t, you’ll never be certain. In the back of your mind, there’ll always be a piece of you that wants to believe in the IPU, to think you’ve ‘misunderstood’ it all and that everything’s fine,” she shakes her head with a look of disgust. “And quite frankly, I can’t afford that.”

I scoff and shoot her a glare. “Oh, yeah? Who’s to say that in twelve years, your plan will work anyway? You still make me sick.”

“In due time, blondie. In due time.”

The syringe’s needle reflects the light. Brandon, seeing the specialist about to prick him with it, pulls back his arm and says, “No, those hurt!”

A flash of anger briefly appears on the specialist’s face before his eyes revert to a void of nothingness. He harshly lowers his arm back down, the poor thing winces – and just when he's about to resist again, the needle has been poked below his wrist. The specialist presses the plunger, the green substance pushing out the barrel and injected into Brandon’s arm.

Brandon blinks.

He blinks again, slower.

Then beginning to sway, his eyes shut – before finally he goes limp, falling flat onto the stretcher.

Brandon lies still. Trapped in a deep sleep, unknown for how long.

I slowly walk up to his side, my fingers gently touching the side rail, and my existence invisible to the specialist who stands across from me, setting down the syringe on a tray. Brandon lies still. The specialist goes to the tub and opens it from the end in the same automatic motions of the worker who was once with me. There’s the smoke again, along with the chemical-like odor.

Brandon lies still.

Too still, actually.

I lean down, trying to detect some movement in his chest, or breath from his nostrils. But nothing happens. He’s just- there. A chill creeps up my spine. Paranoid, I give his shoulder a shake… Except, that’s right – he won’t be able to feel it, but I can still feel him. Placing two fingers on his wrist, I check for a pulse. I’m worrying for nothing, surely, but after everything I’ve witnessed, being positive over that fact is necessary for my sanity.

Five seconds pass, then ten.

My hands tremble.

Fifteen seconds.

There’s no pulse. Brandon doesn’t have a pulse.

On the board taken out from the tub, there’s a set of clothes with no one to wear them. The specialist takes the clothes and tosses them into a bin, before he approaches Brandon and lifts him off the stretcher.

Wait, wait— What is he doing? Why doesn’t Brandon have a pulse?

He drops Brandon onto the board. Literally, he drops him, like he’s disposing trash. With a kick of his foot, the board pulls back into the tub, the door closing by itself. Back at the tray, he refills the same syringe, not even bothering to switch it out. The next inmate comes in, and the process repeats.

Eyes wide open like a crazy person, I march over to Ezri until I’m right in front of her. “Tell me, what’s going on here?”

“They put him to sleep, of course.”

My already loose control of my emotions slips even further. Gripping her shoulders, it sounds like the words are being forced out my throat. “He had. No. Pulse! Stop being so cryptic!”

“In that case, then you already know what they did to him, Calla,” she separates my hands from her. “No point in yelling at me about it, is there?”

The tub dings, my head snaps back to its direction. Another limp body has taken Brandon’s place on the stretcher. The door opens, and on the board… A small jumpsuit. None of this can be real. Falling onto my knees, I peer into the machine – strange disks, tubes and wires all over the walls, but no body, no Brandon.

Ezri hauls me up, pulling me away from the machine, as Brandon’s jumpsuit joins the others in the bin. The next inmate is put on the board, set to have the same destiny.

“Don’t get too close,” Ezri says. “That thing targets human cells. Disintegrates them until nothing remains. A lot more convenient than burial or cremation, wouldn’t you say?”

I clutch my stomach, my other hand covering my mouth. Holding it back won’t work. Rushing over to a sink while coughing violently, I vomit into it, and dizziness comes as an aftereffect. Weak, everywhere feels weak. My grip on the sink’s edge waning, I slide onto the hard floor, all while Ezri is there watching me. Yet another inmate is shot with that poison, and the tub alerts the specialist of his victim’s status.

They lied. Again.

So many people… So many lives cut short. Yet they’re supposed to be dangerous, unstable, or willfully disobedient – going to sleep is meant to help them, to keep society safe. They always said that, and we went along with it.

But— but this is… So very, very wrong.

Ha, wow…

I actually just thought that. And meant it.

Wow, I must’ve really lost it. But I don’t care anymore – I’ll accept the truth.

This isn’t a long sleep. This isn’t a reset of the brain.

It's an execution.

And I—

“Hey, with your record, I’d do the same thing if I didn’t know you! You’d report someone just for breathing wrong.”

“I’m doing what everyone else should be. It’s what the IPU expects of all of us – complete adherence to the law. No exceptions.”

My hands tangle into my hair. Ezri is still barely effected, even as I scream.

All this time, I’ve been both the executioner, and court jester.

The white room of the sleeping chamber becomes a night sky. The passage of time between those points fail to come to mind. Just know that Ezri brought me back here, at the Rosenwald Orphanage. Except now it looks closer to its state in the present. Thick smoke creates clouds above the building. Anguished shrieks escape the cracked windows. M-droids, lurking in the shadows, hold cannisters of lighter fluid. Not a witness in sight.

Oh.

They lied a third time. But I think I’m too numb to be bothered as much.

“Why…” I blankly stare at the roaring flames. “Why didn’t they just ‘put them to sleep’ too?”

“They didn’t keep quiet,” Ezri says. “A fire can be framed as an unfortunate coincidence. Sleep can’t.”

“And everything they told about Brandon…?”

“Covered up. Replaced with a lie. Brandon Saski was a deranged man who tried to assassinate the vice-president.”

Oh… Okay.

“Is this what you wanted to show me all along?” I ask her, still staring forward.

“Amongst other things, yeah.”

A white rose on a compass rests on a poster attached to my bedroom wall. As I close my eyes to sleep after Mom pecks my forehead, it makes me feel at peace. Like it’s my guardian looking after me.

I still have that poster, too.

The portal awaits us, nothing else here to be seen. It’s back to the year 2300, when things will never be the same.