So, this is just a random short-ish story I wrote just for the sake of it. If anyone happens to be reading feel free to give feedback.
She was the girl 76 couldn’t help but notice. She was always
there, going through the motions day by day, like they all did. But she was
different. For a start, she didn’t
respond to her number. Everyone else did. But not 14. She remained silent and
solitary – she spoke not a word – and even the way she walked set her apart
from the crowd. It was as if every step she took had a purpose that lay far
beyond the walls of the Centre, a purpose that no one else could fathom. If the
other digits were grey, she was blood red, and 76 was intrigued. He wanted to
know what gears spun and whirred inside her mind that stopped her from laughing
with the others through the humdrum of the daily routine.
Most of all, 76 was curious to know what force compelled 14
to remain lying, albeit shuddering violently, on the stiff white cover sheets
of the experimental cots every day.
She would trudge obediently into the whitewashed labs
alongside the other digits and lie down, usually in the adjacent cot to 76. She
wouldn’t object when the Doctors fitted the ugly white headgear around her
skull as if it were some ghastly torture instrument. In a way, 76 supposed, it
was. He would watch her through the dark visor of his own clunky apparatus as
she lay there, stock still, with every muscle in her body tensed. She didn’t
talk up until activation, like the other digits; not once did her voice
contribute to the mindless, droning babble that filled the labs.
And then, activation. The Doctors would push that little
black button, and there would be sudden, inexplicable silence. Each and every
digit would rise slowly until the lab was a mass of rigid bodies and white
headpieces, standing in sporadic formation on the white linoleum floor. Then
came the commands. They were different each day – 76 supposed the Doctor’s
wanted to discover the extents to which the digits were mindlessly obedient.
And if he thought about it hard enough – which he didn’t do often – he supposed
it was rather cruel. But it never seemed cruel at the time. The commands of the
Doctors simply washed through his mind, sweeter than the honey they were
allowed on their porridge on Sunday, and never did he once consider disobeying
the authoritative voice that swirled out of his earpiece. He felt nothing but
calm, no matter the instruction.
He assumed all the other normal
digits felt the same calm as him, the calm that soothed him into
senselessly obeying every word, for every day the digits swarmed through the
labs:
“Walk”.
“Run”.
“Scream”.
“Fight”.
They would all submit.
Except 14.
76 didn’t really think of her specifically during
activation; his mind was inexplicably drawn into what seemed like one mass of
thoughts – an entirety of motion and purpose that was possessive of all the
digits collectively. However, he occasionally saw her out of the corner of his
eye, still lying in her cot. She would tremble violently and clench her fists
so tight that her fingernails drew blood from the paper-soft skin of her palms.
She seemed to be resisting. 76 couldn’t understand why she would want to resist
the soothing power of the honey-sweet voices, especially when it seemed to
cause her so much pain. But resist she did, day after day, and slowly her face
became sunken and her eyes lost their light and 76 came to think of her as the
girl with the broken smile.
Once activation was over, the Doctors would always pay
specific attention to 14. Every day they would poke her and prod her
roughly, as though one day something would change, and they would
suddenly understand what made her different from the other digits – different
as white from black; sky from sea; blood from tears. They would interrogate her
– talk softly to her, and when that didn’t work, scream at her.
“What are you doing?”
“Why don’t you move?”
“Say something, curse you!”
She remained silent.
76 did not know what he had expected to happen to 14. He
didn’t think about it very much – he just expected the days to crawl by with
their usual monotony, and he imagined 14 would simply… continue, like everyone
and everything else in the Centre. But one day, it changed.
It was a hot, dry day and the sun beat down
mercilessly on the grey concrete Centre and its inhabitants. As per usual, the
digits strode into the labs; oblivious, mindless rows; and lay obediently down
on the starched white sheets. Activation came, predictable as the rising of the
cruel sun, and each digit succumbed to its grasp once more. 14 just lay there,
trembling. And then came the command.
“Kill 21”.
Without a backwards glance or a step astray, the digits
converged on 21. A small thread of doubt briefly wound through 76’s mind, but it
evaporated in an instant, and his mind floated back to the seething mass that
was the group. He obeyed the honey-voice without another thought.
21 did not resist – how could he? He began tearing at his
own pale flesh with ragged fingernails as the other digits swarmed upon him
like bees.
“Stop!”
The command rang out across the labs, the neon word
ricocheting off the whitewashed walls, echoing with surprising timbre. It was
not the voice of the Doctors, still every digit obeyed instantly. That one word
was the single most beautiful sound 76 had ever heard. It brought images to his
mind of glistening waterfalls and rainbow birds and majestic, expansive oceans
– all of which he had never seen in his monotonous life. He spun around to see
the source of the voice.
14.
She was standing, shaking violently like a leaf in the wind
– a wind so foreign to the other digits that it was nigh on unimaginable – with
an expression of disgust and utter loathing such as 76 had never laid eyes upon
before.
“What are you doing?” she screamed. “How could you be so
vile?”
Something stirred deep inside 76, something that he could
not place.
“How can you just let them control you like that? It’s
repulsive!” 76 could not banish the bizarre pictures that inundated his mind as
14 shouted. They were vivid pictures of another world, one that perhaps he had
once known…
All of a sudden, more
Doctors than 76 knew existed flooded into the labs. One of them roughly hit 14
with a short, thin tube that abruptly burst with a sickly yellow light. She
jerked violently and dropped to the floor.
The digits fiddled uncomfortably.
The shouts from the Doctors turned to incomprehensible
clamour as the bewildered digits silently watched on, unsure of their task.
Another flash of yellow light. 14 thrashed on the floor.
“14! You have one chance. Listen to me, one chance. You will
live, if you kill 21,” boomed the head Doctor.
A black silence rushed through the room. The digits were becoming
restless now.
Slowly, very, very slowly, 14 struggled to her feet.
“My name,” she declared, “is Emma”.
More stunned silence.
Buried far below 76’s deadened emotions was a memory, and it
was fighting to resurface.
The Doctors leaped to action, as if they were of one mind.
Perhaps, mused 76, they were. They ripped off 14’s – Emma’s – headpiece, as
well as her shirt. They tore the grey garments into strips and bound and gagged
her with them, leaving her standing – shaking and vulnerable – in her undergarments.
She could barely put up a fight.
The Doctors turned to the other digits. “Forget everything
you just witnessed”.
Something in 76 put up a one-second long struggle, before he
succumbed once more to the honey-voices. His memories blurred and smudged into
one long smear of murky brown, and suddenly he could not understand why 14
was bound, half-naked, in the centre of the room.
And so, the next instruction made no sense to him, but he
obeyed anyway – mindless and oblivious.
“Kill 14”.
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