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  One

  Justin Cawthorne

  Copyright 2013 Justin Cawthorne

  Cover art: C. Aric Hanley

  One

  by Justin Cawthorne

  Like almost everyone else in this shitty place I never knew my parents.

  I grew up alone, with my Friends and Carers, learning to be the Best Member of Society that I could be. It wasn’t the worst life that anyone ever had, but I know it wasn’t the best. I was never hungry, never cold, no one hit me - not after I started hitting back, anyway - and I had what passes for freedom.

  But I was always alone.

  It was a long time before I understood the emptiness. Every day of my life I had people with me: when I slept I was surrounded by all my Friends; when I was awake I had Carers to listen to me, Teachers to talk at me. I was never lonely but it was only ever just me. None of the other people - and that’s exactly what they were: other people - none of them belonged to me, none of them were a part of me. None of them made me.

  That’s what was taken from me, from all of us, and that’s what I didn’t understand until my 12th birthday.

  That was when we were taught about the Rule of One.

  Once upon a time there were too many people. Because of them the world was turning to shit: whole countries were starving; people started killing other people just so they could eat; there was nowhere for the survivors to go. It was all totally fucked.

  That’s what they told us, anyway.

  Some countries tried population control, but the world still needs babies: “they’re our future” is what we’re told; it’s the adults that are the problem (it’s always the adults that are the problem, but I don’t reckon they see that the same way I do). In the end they said it was okay for people to carry on having babies: one baby, twins, triplets; as many babies as your insides can hold. Those babies can be born, fed, raised … loved ... by their parents. Everything and anything they need. All until their first birthday.

  Then their parents are taken.

  We all knew about it, of course; kids know things long before they get told by an adult, but sometimes there’s nothing worse than finally being told something by an adult. Before that happens you can pretend that it’s not really true; tell yourself that it’s just a scary story your Friend made up; imagine that your parents are just waiting to come and get your when your Education is completed.

  But adults have a way of taking all those scary things and making them much, much worse: making them cold and boring, turning them into something you can’t change just by pretending. I never met a single Friend who really remembered their parents but some of us felt their absence. It was like a thing you knew was missing but you just couldn’t remember what it was in the first place; it was an empty hole made even emptier because you didn’t really know what was supposed to fill it.

  From our first birthday we’re taken to School and Educated. We’re surrounded by Teachers, Carers and Friends. We’re taught to be the Best Member of Society we can be. We’re taught to work for the Greater Good. We’re taught that babies are our future, but that no one is excused from the Rule Of One.

  And on our 16th birthday they let us go.

  My friend Malia once told me they recorded everything.

  “What’s everything?” I asked.

  “Who you are. Who your parents are. Where they took them. Everything,” she said.

  I asked her who I had to talk to to see all this stuff.

  “Oh no one’ll tell you, stupid, and if you ask them they’ll put you on Watch for ages. But Jake said they keep all that stuff right here; it’s always right where you are so they can look up stuff about you whenever they want.”

  It took me a year.

  My first attempt was a total washout. Like an idiot I thought if I got myself in trouble I’d be able to get a look at my record; I imagined they’d want to keep it close by so they could see if there was a history of troublemaking in my genes.

  It was easy enough to get into trouble: all I had to do was break a window (I even ran away just to make it clear it wasn’t an accident). For that I was put on Watch for a month. I couldn’t eat, sleep or even pee without someone watching me. I didn’t so much as see my record, let alone get a chance to look inside it. All the time I was desperate to talk to Jake or Malia, to find out what else they knew, what other tricks I could try and pull off, but if the Carers realised I even knew about my record they’d probably put me on Watch until my sixteenth birthday.

  So I stayed good, and I kept quiet, and after a month I was allowed to be alone once again.

  “How do I do it Jake?” I asked.

  “How am I supposed to know? Why do you think I know anything?”

  “You knew about the record in the first place - how did you find out about it?”

  Jake looked around nervously.

  “I’m not leaving you alone until you tell me. You know that, right?”

  Jake slumped his shoulders: “It was an accident. I got hurt and they put me in the infirmary. I didn’t know if I was allergic to painkillers, so they came out with this file. I remember it was brown and it had my name on the front. The doctors and nurses looked through it and after that they knew exactly what to give me. Later on they took it to the nurses’ station - I guess they keep it handy until you’re all fixed up - but I never saw them look at it again.

  “But, there was this moment - just after they went to get my drugs that first time the nurse just left it sitting there and I was able to take a look at it, just for a moment.”

  “What was in it?”

  Jake looked at me, but as he spoke he was seeing right past me.

  “Everything,” he said. “My name, my genetic history, where I was born, the names of my parents …

  “... everything.”

  After that I started signing up for work details. If anyone had asked why I was suddenly the good citizen I was going to tell them I was making up for breaking the window. But no one asked.

  It took me almost ten months - ten months’ of cleaning, digging, delousing, painting, scrubbing. Ten months’ of doing all the menial jobs that no one else wanted to touch; anything that was too humiliating for any of the Teachers or Carers to take on. Ten months of getting more and more desperate, thinking I might reach my sixteenth birthday without a single chance to look at my record.

  Ten months of getting desperate enough to do something stupid.

  It wasn’t a long way down. Five or six metres at the most.

  I had been given the gutters on the facilities building to clean, the first job in months that was remotely dangerous (I had tried slipping on freshly mopped floors a couple of times, but all I’d gotten from that was a cripplingly bruised backside and a free pass getting me off mopping ever again).

  With each new job I had started idly wondering how much potential damage I could inflict upon myself: whether it would merely hurt; whether it would be potentially fatal; or whether it would be just enough to score me some infirmary time. My last few jobs had scored cuts and grazes at worst - but this one was lining up to be a bona fide winner.

  I was scraping gross handfuls of mulchy leaves from the gutters when I realised my brain was busy studying the gravel below and telling me that there was a real chance of breaking a limb. It didn’t tell me how I might get out of bed with two broken legs, break into the nurses’ station and steal a look at my top secret file, but I guess it was working one step at a time. What it did tell me was that the layers of gravel on the ground below were probably (definitely) hard enough to cause injury, but would (might) give just enough to not be fatal. It told me that the precarious angle I was leaning at right now would make a fall pretty convincing. It told me that a broken limb would definitely require a full array of painkillers.


  It told me to jump.

  “Don’t worry, we’ve already checked your genetic history and we’re certain you’re not allergic to the painkillers,” the nurse told me.

  I could hardly speak. The only good news was that my plan to get myself checked into the infirmary had panned out in spades - and it had left me with nothing more than a broken arm. The bad news was that they’d dosed me up while I was out cold. I hadn’t even seen my record, let alone gotten a chance to try and read it.

  “I’ve heard about people dying from allergic reactions. They taught us about it in class. Please, I’m really scared,” I said.

  The nurse smiled warmly. “Don’t worry, we’ve got all your details handy so we can check anything we need to right away. I promise we won’t give you any medication without checking it’s safe for you first. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  So they did keep the record close by.

  Because I came in with concussion I was able to stay in the infirmary for a week. I spent most of that time watching how the nurses came and went, working out when the quiet times were, trying to figure out when my best chance would be.

  The day after I arrived they brought in another patient; a boy who had managed to poison himself. The nurses wheeled him in and, a few moments later, someone - who definitely wasn’t a nurse - turned up and handed a brown file over to the doctor. She flicked through it and passed it to one of the nurses; they conferred and then gave the boy some drugs. Then I watched as the doctor took the file into the nurses’ station and placed the file on one of the shelves above the desk.

  So that’s where I’d find my record: not even locked up, just placed on a shelf.

  Two nights before I was supposed to be released I decided to take my chance. I had no way of knowing if I was going to get a second shot, but I wanted to give myself room to try again just in case. It was always quietest at night: the other patients were asleep, the nurses were on low rotation with one staying by the station and another resting in the dorm next door, there was almost no chance of a doctor or any other Carer coming by.

  The nurse who had spoken to me when I was first admitted was on duty tonight. I’d already worked out her routine: she would sit in the station for thirty minutes, do her rounds, and then disappear to get a coffee. On the good nights she’d stop for a chat with someone, other nights she’d come straight back after a couple of minutes. I just hoped this would be one of the good nights.

  I kept my eyes shut as she walked past my bed, listening closely to the sound of her footsteps until she left the room. When I was sure she’d gone I pulled myself silently out of bed and made my way to the nurses’ station. The sweat poured off me: having my arm in a cast made sneaking around so much harder and, even though the nurses hadn’t picked it up, I was sure I’d done something to my leg in the fall as well - nothing permanent but enough to make tiptoeing around almost impossibly painful.

  Finally I reached the nurses’ station.

  The door was locked.

  I fought the urge to just sit down and cry. Instead I took a breath and turned the handle the other way.

  The door opened.

  I went in, leaving the door open (I didn’t want to risk making any more noise by closing it again). At this point I had a couple of minutes - at best - but I had prepared for this: over the last ten months I had trained myself to have something as close to a photographic memory as I could manage. I didn’t need to remember big chunks of text, just key details: names, addresses, anything I could use. I had practised by taking random books from the library, memorizing a few pages, then going back the next day to see how much I really remembered. In the last few weeks I’d been remembering everything. I only hoped the painkillers hadn’t fuzzed up my brain too much.

  There weren’t many files but I still had to resist the urge to shout out when I found the one with my name on it. I realised that, even after all this time, I hadn’t truly expected to see my own record. But there it was: in my hand, everything that I wasn’t supposed to know about myself.

  I raced though it, hungrily trying to memorize details, trying not to get lost in the euphoria of seeing my parents names and photos (photos!). In the end it wasn’t much, but it was still a history that I had been denied, a glimpse at the faces of the parents that had been stolen from me, a link to my past that wasn’t supposed to exist. I allowed myself a few more seconds for it all to soak in, then put the file carefully back on the shelf. I left the nurses’ station, this time closing the door carefully behind me, and turned around to sneak back to my bed.

  The nurse was staring right at me.

  Apparently she had come back early tonight. She was standing by my bed, coffee in hand, looking straight at me as I stood by the door. I had no idea what punishment she could inflict on me for being in the nurses’ station but, to be honest, I didn’t really care: I had found what I was looking for and nothing else mattered at the moment.

  I stared right back at her, almost daring her to come and get me. Then the strangest thing happened: the tiniest flicker of a smile crossed her mouth. After that she looked away from me, turned her attention to the patient in the next bed, and completely ignored me as I climbed back into my own bed.

  I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

  Two days later I was discharged. No one ever came to talk to me about being in the nurses’ station, even the nurse who saw me acted as if nothing strange had ever happened. As I was leaving I felt like I wanted to hug her. I almost did but she gave me a look that said: “No one else must ever know.”

  I thanked her and just walked away.

  Once I’d found out everything I could about my parents I just wanted the last few years before my sixteenth birthday to go as quickly as possible so I could finish my Education and get the hell out of School. I’d learned patience but those last years were torture.

  Then you find out that it doesn’t get much better after that. People say finishing your Education is like being released from prison. They put you in a halfway house, give you a job, give you a Liaison. It was another six months of not being able to do anything. I worked hard during that time, as hard as I needed to so I could get my own apartment, get a better job and, most important of all, get some time to myself.

  They don’t expect you to ever know the names of your parents, so once you do it’s funny how easy it is to find out all the other stuff. Birth records are restricted, of course, but old addresses, employment records, tax history - almost anything else you want to know can be found easily enough once you know how.

  It hadn’t taken me too long to find their old address - their last one, the one they would have been living at when I was born, the one they would have been living at when they were taken. One day I decided to check out their old home town (in a way it was my old home town too: my only home town). It was a three hour drive from where I lived; once the Rule Of One takes effect they like to put some distance between you and your past, just in case of any old memories.

  I tried to be careful, but there can’t be too many reasons why a teenager would be asking questions about an older couple who would have ‘left’ about 17 years ago. I probably wasn’t as careful as I should have been but, once again, I got away with it.

  It turned out that the old man who lived next door to their old house was a friend. He told me a few stories, asked me some questions, then disappeared from the room. I almost panicked, thinking he was going to shop me in, but then he came back with an old thumb drive in his hand.

  “They left this for you,” he said.

  I couldn’t speak.

  “They left other ones, with some other people, just in case you tracked someone down one day. Fuck of a long shot, if you’ll excuse my language. Never really thought you’d show up. You’re something special all right.”

  “What’s … what’s on it?” I finally asked.

  “No clue. It’s got a genetic lock. If you are who you say you are you’ll be just about th
e only person alive who can unlock it. Here. It’s yours.”

  I took the thumb drive. I wanted to drive home there and then and find out what was on it, but I had one more question I needed to ask the old man.

  “Why..?”

  “Ain’t right to take a little baby away from it’s parents, no matter what the government says. Your parents, me, a bunch of others, we did what we could to change things. Wasn’t enough, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Nothing’s changed,” I said.

  “Nothing big. Not enough, anyhow. Not yet. But now there’s you, and whoever you bring with you. Now it’s your turn.”

  I thanked him and drove home as quickly as I could without killing myself.

  The thumb drive had nothing more than a handful of family snapshots on it.

  At least that’s what most people would see. Family snapshots on their own were pretty bad: you wouldn’t get arrested for them, at least not officially, but they’d damn well wonder why you had them in the first place. Especially if it was your own family.

  I spent weeks looking at them. Every night. For all I knew they could have been pictures of a totally different family, but my heart told me I was looking at my Mum and Dad, and that the smiling baby in the picture was me. Once I’d spent long enough staring at them, analysing every single detail, I started to notice the clues that they’d left. After that it was easy to break down the files and stitch them back together again.

  And that’s when I found the video.

  He was my Dad. He called me Samantha.

  “They’ll change your name,” he said. “They always change your name, but let me tell you that we called you Samantha. That’s your name.”

  Then he held up a picture I hadn’t seen before. I could have almost been looking in the mirror: it was a picture of me!

  “We knew we’d never ever see you when you were older so we had someone make this up for us. It’s our way of … sharing a little bit of your future. It’s supposed to be 90% accurate. How well do you think they got you?”

  Pretty good, I replied.

  Then he got down to business. There were groups, he told me, organisations, partnerships, people out there dedicated to changing things. It was going to take a long, long time, but things would change eventually.

  He told me how there was no longer