He hated everything they stood for. He hated the white heart they wore on their chests. He hated the orders that commanded their focus and the men who gave their orders and he hated what they had done to his family, what they had done to his sister. But she was free now and she was with their father and they would be together soon and they would go to New Utopia and they could be happy again, away from the remnants of a squandered humanity.

  He longed so much to see his sister smile again and to be held in his father’s loving embrace; the three, united and complete; a family.

  0011001000111000

  There was an air of difference fermenting throughout the complex. As much as she would have liked, she couldn’t remove the morning’s confusion from her mind. She kept visualising the complete abandon of the city centre, something she had never witnessed or even thought probable. For even in the absence of movement, all things seemed to gravitate towards the centre. It is where they were, it is where everything that clung to the last threads of civilised humanity; or at least some primal learned understanding of what it meant, gathered and waited for normality to return; for ‘they’ to fix everything and make it all better.

  For The Woman, to see this City structure so hollow, vacant and erased was haunting for her. All the necessary parts were there for a living breathing City. It looked alive and functional but there was no blood pumping through its veins, there was no pulse and there was no energy; regardless of how tenuous it might have appeared in the better sight of contrast like an aged body that had never been lived or had never had a soul; that had never been occupied but of whom looked just as tired as everyone else, or like a suit that had never been worn; affected by time but curtailed beyond its yearning.

  As she sat in her class midmorning; watching The Children draw images of fear and disillusion she thought of many things. She thought of the empty streets. She thought of being woken to the sight of war at the foot of her bed. She thought of their ushering through The City amidst a circle of black; seeing only shards of The City’s vacuity through the gaps where the men’s bulky frames curved to and away from each other letting light and peculiarity sneak into their sight. She thought about the difference in her lover’s eyes; how the milky white seemed to invite her into drowning; their gravity, heavier than a thousand suns. And she thought of her own reflection; how in the mornings and in the eves just been, how she, for what seemed like the first time in her life, had found recognition in the face looking back. She had seen the repugnant scars on her belly and her face; the ones that centred on her alienation from her lover and from which drew the stellar part of his grievance, darken to the colour of her skin and her cheeks flush and pinken like a spring flower until her beauty and symmetry had returned. And she thought of how the sickness that curdled in her stomach, made her feel homelier than the learned, practiced, fabricated and fictitious plastic smiles that drew wide upon her every passing of Mother, Child and Father inside this philosophical circus of the bizarre.

  The Children all had their eyes tied to their pencils, leaning their faces onto their resting outstretched arms; drawing in one hand and losing feeling in the other. They all stayed in the same artless posture scratching away in absent intention at the paper while The Woman sat emotional; looking at, but also through, each and every one; caring not for what they did, but unto them, what might be done.

  She thought about the violence they endured. First the passive violence of being born into this pathetic forgotten city and then being ‘saved’ by these self-proclaimed philosophical thinkers who treated these Children’s minds like scraps of paper, etching away at the depths of their subconscious influence and thinking that when they made a mistake; regardless of how deep the impression, that they could just erase it all with some ‘Telling’ or ‘Loving’ or some inane rhyme that if they repeated over and over would; like a fracture on an arm, make them stronger and more resistant to the stresses of their sick mind experiments.

  Then secondly of the direct administered violence by the hands of those loving them, thrusting them head first into a well of dizzying trepidation that should they fail to surface, would; without a moment of indecision or supposed care, count them off as an objectionable number, a transposable statistic for a fraudulent mathematical agenda attempting to trick mother nature into giving back something that they in the first place had willingly given away.

  A sense of compassion washed over her. It flooded first from her belly to her toes and as she squeezed, the warmth rushed through her veins and filled her face bringing tears to her eyes. She started to really love The Children and in that loving she thought about setting them free; free from the reach of these maniacal scientists; free from the grace of her lover’s heart.

  But what did it mean to be free?

  She thought of drowning The Children. She remembered how the screaming in her mind would vanish when she submersed herself in water, holding her breath until she burst upwards choking for air like a new born baby.

  When she remembered being under the water, a sensation of calm washed over her, just like it had in that moment; one of tranquillity as if returning to a natural universal state; immersed in essence.

  She returned her thought to drowning The Children and a smile swam upon her face. There could be nothing closer to freedom than returning them from whence they came; back into the waters of nature’s womb where every particle and atom wrapped itself around their trembling bodies and carried them away from this unjust existence.

  When The Woman pulled herself from her magnification, she clapped her hands and signalled The Children to put down their pencils and be At Peace out in the courtyard. The Children all left in single file, passing by her table and stacking their pictures on top of each other on her desk.

  When they were gone, she sorted through the papers taking each one and looking at the extent of their fear. They drew so marvellously but it was so wrong that they should have such a grip and connection to absolute fear. Neither Child attached this much clarity and definition to love.

  All of the pictures were the same except for one; where a Child had drawn their fear and the image although scratchy and weak was very clear. In the picture sat The Child’s mother, staring listlessly into a void with a tear running down her face while behind her stood The Collector, with his slicing weapon drawn, held high above The Mother’s head with only an air of chance standing between her bare white neck and the glistening blade.

  0011001000111001

  “What are they?” asked Marcos in a mix of wonder and dismay.

  “They are a solution; maybe not the solution but one of many until we are fateful enough to stumble upon the one and only. What you see here is order and progression. Now, the result may still need some tweaking but the effort on our part, on the science itself, is undeniably splendorous if I might say so. This here is evolution; theoretically it is what nature intended all along. You see that splice of our DNA, it has so much potential and in theory it had perpetually gone to waste” said The Elderly Scientist.

  The two men looked out over a railing where below them a giant area was segmented into glass boxes where in each box of differentiating size, a human in white clothes was being exposed to a variety of regimented tests and experiments. The humans in white had tubes coming from their temples that were tied off to boxes at the far ends of the rooms. The boxes had dials and digits and men in white coats sat by the dials, augmenting them gradually as the humans in white underwent physical stresses.

  “This is what you’re experimenting on? This is your version of a cure; perfecting the disease?” Marcos said.

  “You’re looking at this through a glass eye. You saw yourself, in the previous rooms. We are working hard to re-establish the empathy gene focusing on the re-learning and loving of Mother to Infant. What you see here is the recycling of our knowledge and resources to focus on understanding better how to make the caipirinha a little bit stronger. If this is evolution, than it will not go in reverse so we need to adapt our thinking to nature’s intention. Man went back into the jungle yes, but not with a banana, with a shotgun and man went back to the sea, but not with gills, with submarines. We all want to get back to the same place; some of us are just designing more efficient ways of getting there. Nature took us from our womb, so we built The City. Nature took us from our Mother’s breast and so, we conceived an Industry. The Industry was nature” said The Elderly Scientist.

  Marcos stared vacantly out through the glass cubes.

  “No? Okey dokey, take this picture frame for example” he said, pulling an empty broken picture frame from a table near the two.

  “Now a long time ago this frame had a value, it was property, a symbol of identity and it was sold in a store and I assume along the way someone bought this frame and well, somewhere down the line it ended up here, in my hands. Now the life of the frame is not important but when this frame was sold it came with a picture inside; a charming family frolicking in a park, the happy young couple doting over their blonde haired child, picking flowers from a garden bed; or something like that. Now the picture in the frame wouldn’t serve the frame’s ultimate potential. The idea was that one would be enticed into the design, take the frame home and replace the photo with one of your own; your family, your pet, your lover, whatever the occasion may fancy. We’re doing the same thing. We see the empathy gene as not essential to the frame but merely an average representation of human idealism that could be easily mass produced for the sake of species replication; like having a system whose only intelligent command is to back up. Instead of the cute blonde haired boy, we envisage a picture of a young Adolf Hitler, Ivan the Terrible or a sardonic Jesus Christ. We are removing the back-up command and replacing with something more appropriate. For instance, in this room you will see one of our first experiments. This infant is only a day or two old. She was collected yesterday I believe. Now for the first weeks; now I say weeks only if it responds to our formulae, if not than these experiments run anywhere from three hours to one and a half days, until it is officially brain dead. Anyway, in the first weeks its sight is not very functional so we expose it to sounds. The Infant’s ears respond very well to hissing, creating a sense of calm. We try to assume the complete opposite. Our focus is to incite pure terror and have the infant nurture this sensation as the foundation of their emotional reserve. Now our goal is not to frighten, we don’t want to weaken or inhibit the child as it grows. Our aim is to galvanize the infant’s subconscious state into one of absolute abomination and have the infant grow around this state so that its being; its state of one, is in fact, pure unadulterated evil; as my charming meta-colleague would put it. You know, it wasn’t so much the image, but the usage of colour that made religion so interesting, but that’s a direction we can take at the end of the tour. Anyway, where were we? Oh yes the car. No wait, that was before. Oh dear. What were we talking about again?” he said, left of focus.

  “We talked about religion, I said that religion was colourful and that’s not bad and before that we, ah, yes, unadulterated evil. You know I could have just said evil but its adjectives that make communication special. Accessorise your speech, that’s what I always say. Well I don’t say it. I mean, not all the time, well never really but, you know…given the right context I could see that as being a great moniker. Do you ever think about this sort of thing? Anyway, umm… ahh yes, oh this is beautiful. Look, here at this Child” The Elderly Scientist said, pointing to a window beside Marcos where an infant lay on the floor in a sticky tar substance that covered its back and neck.

  The infant sank just up to its ears; enough so that with every movement, its skin pulled agonisingly as it tried to return its cry back to the ceiling.

  There was a man being choked next to the infant’s ear as it cried hysterically into the air and a couple engaged in sadomasochistic sex at the far end of the room. Marcos couldn’t look any more.

  It was perverted and horrific.

  “What do you hope to achieve? What is the result of this science?” he asked.

  “Sex and death are everything. Zero and one, love and fear, the void and infinity, production, destruction, creation, extinction, I could keep going. The infant, is exposed to both elements in its most, humanely bizarre, to put it laymanly. The sex and death are perpetuated throughout the experiment. Each party stays in a state of unremitting climax. This man never goes and that man never comes” he said laughing.

  “Sorry, bad taste, but yes we extend their suffering. Neither experience is pleasurable. I am really eager to see the outcome of this experiment. The idea here is to replicate or manipulate some gene that could assimilate as for instance, the Stalin gene. It’s still is in its infancy, I want you to see some work that has been running for some time now” said The Elderly Scientist, leading Marcos down a set of stairs where they came to a set of wrought iron doors, one on either side, both evasive about what they kept inside.

  The Elderly Scientist pulled open a sliding grate on one door showing a girl; an adolescent, sitting on a chair with her head looking to the floor. Her long hair hanged down over her face and her arms rested on her legs, coming together just in front of her knees and her fingers; laxed and open, catching the cool breeze coming from the ventilators behind her on the walls at the back of the room.

  The girl was dressed completely in white; white pants, a white shirt and bare feet; her pale and fair white skin dressed against the filthy concrete floor and on the girl’s chest; barely visible under the swish of her long straight black hair, a large black heart.

  Marcos stared through the window at the girl as if he were staring at the devil incarnate. The hairs on his neck tingled, his stomach felt heavy and his head light. His heart pumped waves of adrenaline through his body, fastening the go at his feet.

  “Who is she? What is she?” he asked shakily.

  “She is the first Black Heart” said The Elderly Scientist proudly.

  “What have you done? You’ve ruined everything. This was not what I imagined. There is no humanity in that Child” he said angrily.

  “Yes, she is amazing isn’t she? Her name is Eve. We are all very proud. She really is quite remarkable. It took a lot of research and a lot of science to create this girl. She is evolution; the next human, our replacement” said The Elderly Scientist.

  “But what does it matter? It’s all ending, we all know. Without the empathy gene no infant can survive, there can’t be more than fifty years left; until we’re no more present than a blue sky on a cold grey August morning. You wasted your time, you’ve wasted all of our time; for this, monstrosity” said Marcos; an accepted defeat serenading in his voice.

  “It is true, the current dilemma addressing mankind does assess some limitations but this is the beauty of our creation” The Elderly Scientist said, clicking his fingers towards another man in a white coat standing back at the top of the corridor.

  The Man in White entered the room with the screaming Infant and interrupted the man being choked advising the administrator to halt for a few moments. The choking man fell to the floor gagging for air, his neck raw from the cord that tore through his skin, enough just to perpetuate his suffering, but not enough to kill him, at least until the influence was at its completion.

  The man in white took the crying infant and dressed it in a white cloth enveloping the tar that for the moment would be too difficult and time consuming to remove. He took The Infant down the corridor to the door where Marcos and The Elderly Scientist stood then opened the door and left the crying Infant on the floor which by now was red all over from constant screaming in underived frustration and desperation for sustenance; be it from a Mother’s breast or the gentle kiss of a Mother’s heart.

  The Man in White left the room, locking the door behind him and The Elderly Scientist invited Marcos to attention, the two men watching through the window; a double sided mirror, as the girl dressed in white with a black heart on her chest stood up from the chair and took the crying Infant into her hands and held it high in the air so its screams passed through the ventilation and out into the hallways where The Elderly Scientist and Marcos stood.

  The Black Heart lowered the infant to her sight, her mouth dry with not a flicker of emotion on her face at all. She took the screaming infant and sat down on the chair. The Black Heart lifted her stare to the two men looking through the window and hissed vilely, her saliva spitting from her mouth onto the window and diluting their sight. Marcos flinched overcome by surprise, not at the girl’s hissing but at how she nursed the infant out of its frustration and into sleep.

  “She isn’t pretending. This is real” said The Elderly Scientist smiling to himself.

  Eve lifted her head to look at the two men she knew that were peering through the slit in the door. With one hand she pulled the hair from her face and her emerald green eyes pulled both men into distraction.

  “Milena? That’s her. That’s the girl” said Marcos pushing his face against the glass.

  “Who?” said The Elderly Scientist.

  “She came to me. She told me about Safrine’s taking” he said.

  “Oh, the twin. Her trials are fascinating. No, Eve doesn’t leave these laboratories” The Elderly Scientist said.

  “Are you sure? It’s impossible. Her eyes. She was in my office” he said before punching at the door, beating with the hammer of his fist.

  “Milena” he screamed.

  “Please refrain from creating a ruckus. She cannot hear you. Any outside stimuli could interfere with the cerebral experiments so her room is completely sound and light proofed. Please just refrain from hitting the door, I don’t like loud banging. I have an irritable bowel and well, loud banging causes this glitch in my brain like a domino that runs through my whole system and you know, for all the gizmos we have down here, you’d think they could put in one accessible toilet. I have to go all the way to the main office and you saw yourself, that’s just ridiculous. In the new place, I want a toilet on every floor” he said complainingly.