“Brand new day sir”, came a chorus in unison.

  Marcos welcomed the men as he did the one armed man at the building´s entrance; nodding his head slightly and offering some faint kindness in his eyes. He positioned himself at the head of the room in front of a large dusted blackboard. His fixated eyes; a magnet for attention, scanned the room and each general and soldier standing before him.

  “Famine” he said.

  Collectively; eyes widened, pupils dilated, heart rates accelerated, adrenaline flowed and beads of sweat formed.

  00110011

  The woman entered the room like light creeping into a warm November morning; silent, smooth and of natural tranquillity. She moved towards the front of the class like smoke through an open window, her dress swishing as her bare feet skipped along the cool tiles. The children followed her every step; their eyes lightening as their smiles widened.

  The woman pulled a piece of chalk from her table and drew a large white heart on the board. Immediately the children rose from behind their desks, holding a small mirror to their eyes and in the weight of their own reflection, they sang in honesty; The Collective creed:

  I am to eye,

  As the heart is to lie,

  But to many, I am one part of all.

  Love always here,

  Make no business with fear,

  And never again shall we fall.

  The Children moved from their tables and gathered around the woman who was seated on a large cushion on the floor. They formed a circle around her, some lying on their backs staring up at a grand orange sun painted on the ceiling, some leaning against the wall with their arms either folded or on their laps and others sat cross legged and perched upright, leaning forward just slightly; fixated on the woman´s empyreal grace as she moistened her lips delicately and hollowed her breath in preparation to tell a story.

  She looked up from the book she was holding, breathed heavily and swallowed the children´s pent anticipation as her eyes widened, magnetising the room. When she smiled, The Children could hold back their joy no more. They threw their arms in the air and beat their palms together in a deafening thunder.

  “Fonafon, Fonafon, Fonafon” they screamed and chanted.

  “OK children” she said in a calming tone.

  “We don´t want to disturb The Fathers next door. Everyone put on their listening mouths and their seeing ears, and set your soul at ease” she said.

  The Children all ritually wriggled their entire bodies as to exercise their untempered souls, shaking them free of their rigid corporal bindings to move like water from an open stream to the ocean of their waiting minds where their consciousness lit up like solar flares; exploding in bursts of colour, waves, spectrums, atoms, particles and frequencies.

  The zeros and ones that spoke to them every moment of their lives, those plain white everything numbers etched on that black nothing canvass vanished down the drain of imagination and in their place, rainbows, mushroom clouds, super novae and in finale, the formation of an orange crest, the warm sunrise which accompanied their dreams.

  Calm washed over the children as they sank away from their bodies and into the viewing theatre of their mind´s eye, submitting to the will of their sub conscious. When corporal stillness commanded pensive silence, The Woman opened the book, lifted her eyebrows in wonder, widened her eyes, outstretched her index finger, gently licked her fingertip, pressed down on the course paper and slid it across to the first page.

  The sound of the paper turning under her fingertips made the children smile. Their ears pricked and twitched in effort to cling to the familiarity that passed under a momentary breath, emptying their cerebral stage of its props and actors, erasing the stencilled lines and colours they thought of in anticipation of this moment, clearing the table so to speak, in preparation for the main course.

  “Jonathon and The Collector” she said

  Once upon a time, there lived a boy named Jonathon who loved nothing more than playing in the wild forests of his imagination.

  He had a mother and father who loved him so dearly and friends of plenty of whom he danced with so freely.

  But one day whilst playing by himself in snow, dear Jonathon met a man he quite surely didn´t know. The man said to him: “My boy, have you the time, for if you have none you can make haste with mine.”

  Jonathon thought what a strange thing to say, for why would a man count existence away? “A second, a day or a week or a year, are treasures to keep, my boy, nothing to fear.” Jonathon knew that his musings were wrong, that time only is, in each note of a song. And just as a note may be grandiose and vast, a song that´s been sung cannot sing in the past.

  “My boy you´re so clever, then care you a treat? I have in this bag a prize for your feat.” Jonathon smiled and ran to his side and tugged at the bag to peer deep inside. “My child if you will, reach as far as you can, a surprise for you waits at the stretch of your hand. Wiggle your fingers and tip on your toes, the deserve you desire is beyond your nose.” Jonathon did as the strange man had said, he stood on his toes and he buried his head. When balance was lost there then came a mute cry from a brown hesham bag with a young boy inside.

  How did I fail? Stranger please tell me why.

  “You won me with logic but I fooled you with pride.”

  The Collector moved on and he vanished from sight; into the darkness, away from the light. And inside his bag a collectable toy, with movable parts, a collectable boy.

  Fear then sprang upon The Children, plucking at their nerve endings as The Woman calmly closed the book over and laid it neatly on the floor beside her.

  “Keep your eyes closed” she said as she moved over to open the large curtains which had been negating the light.

  The dull morning light flooded the room and with a click of her fingers, The Children reacted by opening their eyes in the direction of the board at the front of the classroom. The Woman was standing with large boards in her clutch and on each board a horrific image and under each image, a word or phrase.

  The first image was of a tall man in a dark coat or cloak. The material was torn in many places and it disguised the man´s form completely, transforming him into an aboding tower of darkness. The face too was blackened out by a hood that covered his head and its empty centre acted as a worm hole to nothingness; a vacuum directed into a void that locked onto one´s eyes and from them, extracted one´s soul in a whirlwind of emotional and self-dissipation. Inside the black centre one could see the faintest flickering of light.

  Should one look longingly and with sustenance, they would see that the flicker was in fact the light in their own eye, for in the heart of vacuity; in that black core of despair and desire, were two tiny mirrors; blackened out, but with the most miniscule of scratches on the paintwork inviting wandering eyes and wondering souls to their peril.

  00110100

  “My concern is that very soon their numbers will be somewhat overwhelming inasmuch as, well…. As it is, our resources are seemingly stretched beyond their limits so to speak and well I’m not sure if an increase of any value will sufficiently…”

  “No! Shut up and speak the truth. Tell me what is” said Marcos abruptly. “And that goes for the rest of you. I don’t mix sugar with my salt. Don’t waste my time here. It either is or it is not. If you have a doubt, say it. Now, you, what is your concern?” he said sternly, looking angrily at one of the generals seated to his right.

  Marcos sat at the head of a grand rectangular oak table and to his front and to his sides sat the heads of states, the senior representatives of the states of War, Peace, Love and Work. Behind each man stood a White Heart, their hands pressed to their sides, their chests still and heaving, their breath unrecognisable, their stare; severe and unappeasable and the nature of their intention; as plain as the employment of fire.

  The length of the table spread out from Marcos’ direction with each man seated to his left or his right. At the far end of the room sat a beast of a man who looked only upon Marcos. His hands never moved from where they lay on the table in front and his look never strayed about the room. There were seven representatives seated at the table; one speaking for each state, one for administration, one a man of science in a white coat with a black heart resplendent on the sleeve and the final, sitting quiet with his head high; his face hidden under the cover of a black cloth hood which pulled from a black cloak which draped his entire body and hid his strangely shaped fingers and skeletal frame from the other men, a Teller.

  “Sir, more are coming every day. And I think… No, I believe that in the coming days, if these trends continue, we will have a problem. We cannot contain them. It’s simple. We just don’t have the resources. Maybe if The Children were cultivated but they haven’t aged for picking, at least this is what I have seen and what I believe” said the administrator.

  “What you believe?” said The War General.

  The Administrator sank back into his chair as The War General slammed his calloused fist on the table startling the other generals.

  “Let me tell you what I believe. I believe you were the nut that had no screw, an oddly shaped left over when the engine was put together; unnecessary, but kept, just in case. You serve absolutely no purpose. You don’t fit. You don’t do anything. You don’t belong. Yet, you want to tell me what you believe? You think you can judge the quality of the earth from up in the clouds? Fuck you. Marcos, sir, my sons are ready for war. They are war. They have war etched into the fibres of their souls. This imbecile in front of me, he can’t judge war, he bites like an infant. He can’t judge love, for his heart is like that of an intestinal worm. He can’t judge work. What would an amoeba know of work? His labour is to impregnate doubt into the womb of every mind. He’s a fucking parasite. And I vote that his say be expropriated, here and now. All in concordance?” exclaimed The War General standing to attention and glaring The Administrator dead in the eye.

  “Here, here” said The Love General hitting his palm on the table in concurrence.

  “Put him on a spit. We’ll have him for supper. He’ll cook well. He has no spine” said The Peace General in a heavy laugh.

  “Not much meat on this one though. He could barely feed a new born” said The Love General.

  The Generals laughed heartily at the expense of The Administrator who sat fatuously; his sheepish eyes first looking for some grievant support from Marcos, then falling to the table where his fingers twitched under the oppressive laughter and name calling. Marcos sat staring into the eyes of the bearded man at the far end of the table. Neither man spoke or engaged in obvious communication. The White Hearts around the room were unmoved and unattended by the uproar that disquieted the democracy. The Administrator called upon Marcos’ attention.

  “Sir and sirs, this is in no way productive; this infantile shouting and insulting. I have numbers and the numbers say that…”

  “I have a number for you, zero. Zero is your worth. Zero is your potential. Zero is where your weak pessimistic fastidiously doubt ridden asinine brain wants to subtract each and every one of us just so you can say, you were right, that you knew it all along, that numbers never lie, and I fucking told you so. Fuck you. Fuck your doubt. Fuck your clever observations. Fuck your big picture. Fuck your statistics. And fuck you” screamed The War General.

  “Gentlemen” said Marcos, “contain yourselves. Kiss on your own time. Love, report on the learning?” he asked.

  The War General retreated back into his skin. He sat perched on the edge of his seat, his hands outstretched on the table, his breath coarse like a resting steed, his stare directed straight at The Administrator, abhorrence billowing from his eyes.

  The Administrator fought to keep his trembling chin still, gritting his jaw and extenuated the might of his force from his core through his limbs to heavy his hands on the table so as to extinguish their desire to shake uncontrollably and make visible his tremendous panic. He played dead mouse. The Love General shuffled some papers and cleared his throat.

  “Sir and sirs. Firstly I would like to make a request. We have lost six children in the recent days. Some to sickness, yes, but also we lost one or two during the learning. Now, I firmly believe they came to us unusable. There was sufficient cracking and well, it didn’t take much fright to break the shell. And there’s been quite a few like this, especially the naturals. You know, they´re more brittle, less…… mouldable. As a result, we are losing steady numbers. I would like to request more children. We haven’t had a delivery for over six weeks now. Is there a collection planned in the near future?” asked The Love General.

  “War, how many times have you collected in the last 6 weeks?” asked Marcos.

  “Sir” he said, looking to his left at the bearded behemoth of a man. “Sir, we have collected many times, but, that is to say we have collected nothing. There are none, at least none that are not drenched with famine” he continued.

  “And of your sons At War, what of their numbers?” asked Marcos.

  The War General looked away from Marcos and at The Administrator disapprovingly once more, then to the bearded behemoth of a man, then back to Marcos.

  “Sir, we have some empty bunks. We harvest four in every five. These are great numbers. And what can’t live as a fist, can always get by as a heart. That one in five, they go on to be At Love, so I don’t see this wastage that our esteemed administrator keeps hinting at. We are stronger than we have ever been and we are the front of the Nest so when there is a child to collect; obviously, the child will be first nurtured as a fist and failing that, will be run off to Love or Work. If he or she proves infinitely useless and non-mouldable; a complete mockery of flesh on bone, then we’ll send them on to our administrative friend here, you could use some more high ranking number crunchers” said The War General smiling at The Administrator.

  “This has been the last of our deliverables? Your run-off? It’s no wonder these children show no empathic growth, they’ve already had their hearts ripped out by you and your thugs. How are you even collecting? How do you measure? What, are you judging? Compatible or combatable? I mean, you said it yourself; you’re collecting with a war perspective. You’re just picking for yourself. That’s not just. Marcos, it’s not just. You´re sending a carnivore to pick fruit” yelled The Love General in outright protest.

  “Just? What are we here discussing, famine, DeDMeN, yes? What do you plan to do, hug them into submission? You think you can sing your way out of a fight? The right of this nest is to serve its own survival and right now, that means more security. When you can show me an immediate lessened threat; a justifiable reason to unclench the collective fist; for the good of our people and for the salvation of our species, then and only then can we talk about even pickings, hell, I’ll even sing a few bars with ya” said The War General leaning back into his chair, cracking his knuckles and turning back to The Administrator with a dismissive glare.

  “There is a collection scheduled for mid-morning. We will be joining the team and I will make my own evaluation of the child harvest” said Marcos pointing to The Behemoth at the end of the room.

  The Behemoth didn’t shift his stare as he hadn’t the entire of the meeting.

  “Love, how are the children in the learning? I believe today we have something extra planned for the morning’s fear classes, yes? Listen, it’s important that the message remain simple and clear. Love, I don’t want your writers to complicate the ideology or the images. Keep the stories simple. Make them rhyme. Children love rhyme. Remember we’ve only been doing this for ten years. It’s gonna take some time to get a real feel for what we’re doing. Any connection that we can build, any trace of empathy whatsoever that we can grow and help flourish is more than mankind has managed in the last hundred years. It is not in their instinct to be loved. They are children, not animals. But that doesn’t mean they can’t learn how to be loved and for us; men and women, to learn how to care, how to feel and how to grow a child. Ten years. And we are closer than we have ever been, on our path to recovery. I want to hear now from Love and then Science” he said taking his seat once again and casting his glare about the room.

  The Love General moved to speak first. He and The War General were the least patient of all in the room and more infantile in their democracy. Each part of the collective functioned on its own, independent of the other, but in theory The Collective as a sum, was all parts moving in unison; collective individualism.

  The two generals; Love and War, shared the same sense of self assessed worth, believing each was more fundamental to the ideology than the other and the core value of The Nest. Where they did come to terms was their dislike for the men of science, the surgeons of sadism they would joke, and they would never let them speak first.

  “I believe it’s only right that I have my say and then let the magician here pull on his strings while we generals discuss. This morning we do have a special activity planned in conjunction with our learned colleagues in the state of war. Fear like we’ve never taught before” said Love.

  00110101

  The Children huddled together fraught with trepidation, looking to the form as a whole but willing themselves to keep long from the reflection in its eyes. Suddenly, thunder cracked against the silence as screaming protruded from the open windows and a barrage of stones and rocks flew from the courtyard into the centre of the room. The Children screamed violently as The Woman dived to the floor, cringing and foetal with glass shattering and falling upon their tiny bodies as they cowered together in fright.

  The noise became louder and the sound of pounding fists could be heard against the thin walls of the class. All about them, chaos was enclosing, stamping its godforsaken boot onto their quiet consciousness.