“Look to me” shouted The Woman.

  The Children all immediately raised their heads lightly and their eyes effortlessly looking for some grace or direction from their teacher, their nurturer, their protector, their Mother. The ghastly look on The Woman´s face was formidable to The Children. They longed for assurance; instead they were welcomed by sheer panic.

  The Children shuffled closer to The Woman as a tsunami of abhorrent tenacity scathed at their ears and pestered their inner selves.

  “Look to me” she screamed as a blanket of thick smoke encircled the group.

  Canisters of gas rattled about the floor, their hissing sound penetrating through the children´s screams and unsettling the group further.

  The Children, now coughing incessantly, passed around a bottle of water to dampen their shirts and pin them to their faces. Their eyes burned horrendously but still they guarded their stare in the direction of The Woman who still held in her hand a card with the image of a cloaked man.

  “I am what I do, I am where I´ve been, I am what I have, I am what I´ve seen. Repeat after me” she pleaded.

  The Children all nodded in frail acceptance. They pulled away the soaked clothes filtering the air to their lungs and screamed “I am what I do, I am where I´ve been, I am what I have, I am what I´ve seen.”

  The Woman continued, “look in my eyes and see what I see, The Collector is you, The Collector is me. Repeat.”

  The Children did as she asked, opening their mouths to the choking fumes; tears pouring down their cheeks and the conceding urge to cry hysterically swallowed as a ball in the back of their throats; to scream out in solicitous unison, “look in my eyes and see what I see, The Collector is you, The Collector is me”. Their voices broke in the sing of this song, the weight of their fear and sadness crushing them.

  “Look to me” The Woman screamed once more.

  Even she, now, was starting to lose colour and vanish in the cloud of dust and smoke that engulfed the classroom. The children fastened their stare once more as The Woman this time shuffled through a selection of cards second by second, exposing The Children to an array of contemptuous imagery.

  First came a Mirror, below it the word I.

  Following that came a card with solely the word ‘Identity’, then ‘I am’, ‘I am’, ‘I am’, ‘I am’, then The Collector card; his frightful form gnawing at The Children´s sight, next an image of a turbine, under it the word ‘Vacation’, then a factory and the word ‘Home’, next a baby being born and the word ‘Thank-you’, then The Collector with the word ‘Pride’, then a mirror with the words ‘I am’, then three cards with no image, just the words ‘Desire’, ‘Want’, ‘Self’, The Collector again, a car, a gun, a calendar, The Collector, a mirror and finally the words; ‘Who Are You?’

  The Woman threw the card to the centre of the group screaming ferociously into the black smoke. The image seared in the children´s eyes.

  “Mother” screamed The Children, to no reply.

  Their hearts pounded, their stomachs fell to their feet.

  “Mother”, this time feebly and in apparent surrender.

  “Father” they thought, “please protect us.”

  The Children clung to the floor and to each other, their hands intertwined, their hearts beating rampantly. Suddenly a thunderous whooshing sound filled the room and in an instant, the thick blanket of smoke vanished and the air was light and clear again. The Children filled their lungs deeply.

  The wave of violence had retarded into an eerie silence. The Children opened their eyes sheepishly, still clinging in sheer desperation to one another. There stood in their sight, a Father; a man of great height and infinite strength whose hands alone could choke the life out of a sun and of whose reach could extend for an eternity; his eyes at the same time, maleficent and allaying.

  He extended his hand to his front willing The Children to turn their heads to the rear of the room. As they did, they were warmed with a sensation of love, belonging and surety as all around them, to the left and to the right, to their front and their behind, in a circular fashion, in each direction of sight, stood many Fathers, shoulder to shoulder, their heaving chests lifted to the ceiling, their calloused fists clenched and stern, their eyes unflinching, looking always into the vulnerableness while the composition they exuded spilled over into The Children´s collective state.

  “You are never alone, we The Collective are many, but we are as one. Love as one, live as you love” said The Father at the front of the room.

  The Children, overcome with love and beating their feet on the floor and clapping their hands emphatically, responded in harmony;

  “Father my father who watches above, we love of your reason, we live as we love” they sang.

  Then, as the group of Fathers left the room one by one, The Children continued in song;

  “Love as one; live as you love, love as one; live as you love.”

  As the door closed, a familiar shape swished back into sight. The Woman swept back into the centre of the room floating about like incense in the still light air; moving about from child to child gently caressing the head of each and embedding the warmth of belonging in their now tempered souls.

  “You were never alone” she said as she ushered The Children to their seats.

  Their faces lit up like candles once more as their smiles danced about the room. They all started clapping their hands and singing fancifully. One child though stayed unmoved by the uproar of jubilation. He seemed heavy in thought; pinned to his chair, his head hung low, the life in his eyes visibly extinguished. The Woman moved by his side gently pulling a lock of hair from his eyes. She whispered something into his ear and the defeated boy slowly lifted from his seat a walked unguided out of the room. The Children all looked on, sniggering to one another and finding comfort in another´s difference as the child, greeted by a White Heart was taken for disposal.

  “We live as one” said The Woman, “and when we do not, we return to zero” she added.

  The Woman crossed out a name from her roll call and returned to The Children with her arms wide and her smile inviting upon it, theirs. “My children”, she said, “go together as one and play.”

  The Children jumped from behind their desks, shuffling through the shards of broken glass and wood splinters that lay strewn about the floor and made their way down the winding corridors out into the courtyard where they sang songs of Fathers and Mothers and gave praise to The Collective.

  The Woman took to removing the class of its theatrical preserve. She swept away the glass fragments and prepared the mid morning´s activities; building and painting. A bead of sweat escaped from her brow and ran down her cheek, physically drained and emotionally spent; she sat in tranquil silence to compose herself before The Children returned.

  “What madness” she thought, “takes refuge in our genius?”

  When The Children returned she would greet them in song and they would commence the day´s positive activities, The Mathematics of Love, The Understanding of One.

  In theory they would be exhausted of their fear and ripe for pure learning. They would return to hear how Jonathon used his logic to free himself from the abyssal clutching of The Collector. She would be spirited and fashion an environment of purity where The Children would build upon their subconscious foundation of love so as to strengthen their emotional reservoir so, as their conscious minds navigated through logical solutions, they would be fed by love as opposed to aboding fear. They would in one day experience the spectrum of existence that all things were zero or one; fear and love; right and wrong; void and eternity, The Collector and The Collective, the endless dark or the orange hue of the Forever New Dawn.

  The Woman stared at the list of names on her table. She erased the name of the young boy, writing, besides the marking, the word transferred. A peculiar sensation overcame her as she picked tiny fragments of glass from her strawish hair. Her skin felt a tinge of warmth as her blood flushed the cold cynical rationale from her veins and nestled a great weight beneath her eyes.

  She thought about the boy and how infinitely fragile he was and how she, had broken him, how her love was not strong enough to carry him through. She thought about all the other children, the ones that had come and gone, that had been under her loving and who had suffered a greater defeat than the one they carried with them when they were rescued from those famished vagrant ferals outside of the Collective heart. She thought about the word vagrant in her mind and she didn’t feel so sure at that moment.

  She pictured one of the Famined, although she was a woman, and she had a name, and she hungered for more than her conscious tidings; she hungered for the child that was ripped from her womb. Beside her too, one, then four, then hundreds and thousands of hollow faces with pained haggard expressions; mouths aghast and screaming primal desperation, arms reaching out, hands clenching at the cruel cold air, their legs bloodied, their stomachs sewn, unable to walk, falling over one another; and a locked door that was black and all the women cared to say was sorry.

  The thousands of faces came together as one, a young child, his arms out, the strength gone from his body; his heart beating, but empty; his blood pumping, but cold. The young boy whimpered lightly, ‘please’ before he was swept up by a figure in white; a woman, The Woman, who held the child to her breast, forcing his face into her bosom and bracing the back of his head so he could not pull away.

  The Woman looked at The Woman in such a callous emptiness, swishing her body left and right and squeezing the child tighter against her breast until the child’s flailing arms fell limp. Two men dressed in black with white hearts then stepped out of the shadows pushing a stretcher up to The Woman holding the child and wrenched the hushed boy from her arms, wheeling the child off into the distance. The Woman vanished into the darkness of her delusion as she could see now the body of the young boy lying inert on a horrendous pile of thousands more just like him; used, discarded and loved.

  A single tear ran down her cheek. Her vision returned to her as she sat with her hands on her knees holding up her tired heavy body that longed to collapse under the weight of something she had never known, something she had never felt, something she would struggle to explain; remorse. The single tear clung for a moment to her chin before escaping to the floor.

  The Woman felt a wave of sickness become her and she rushed for a basket into which she could vomit. She sat on her knees with one hand pulling back the hair from her eyes. Her vision swayed deliciously as the rush of warmth pulsed from her heart through to her fingertips.

  Under heavy panting breath, she smiled to herself as the sight of her own hand drew upon and apart her focus, and she felt not scared, she felt not uneven, she felt no less human, no less affecting; and as she sat in the void with her senses fragmented she felt not, unsafe.

  00110110

  “I would like to second my concern relating to the absence of children. Now forgive me if I’m mistaken but, we had been promised that the nest would start its own breeding program” said Love interjectionally.

  “We’ve been hearing about this for years” interjected The War General.

  “As I was saying, I’d like to know how far off a realistic breeding model we are. If War is right and what they’re collecting is the pick of the bunch then we have a serious problem. As it is, I say we either extend our reaches, or, we move the Nest. It’s not that unfeasible but it is the only option we have” said The Love General to a mixed reception.

  “The Nest will not move, not now” spoke The Behemoth in the far end of the room breaking his uneasy silence.

  “We are not ready” continued Marcos.

  “But when? We can’t sit here forever. We haven’t the population that we need and yet we haven’t sufficient food to maintain the population that we have. And all of it is dependent on him” said The Work General pointing to The Scientist.

  “I want to take up the point of Love; the children I receive are useless. They cannot attend the process of farming. They don’t rationalise and commit to action. It’s almost becoming impossible to contain them and we’re losing great numbers” said Work.

  “That’s true” said The Administrator. “If I could just…”

  “Shut up” yelled the generals in unison.

  “The Children we have At Work are finding it impossible to stay At Focus. Their condition demands a result of effort immediately. They put a seed in the ground and expect to see a full harvest within the hour and when it doesn’t happen they start fighting. They get desperate and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to purge this desperation. Man has been separated form labour for aeons. With the state of these children, it’s impossible to expect anything more than the futility we’re trying to reign in. Unless he solves this problem”, he said pointing to the man of science, “we will all starve very soon and without rations, we will lose our control on these children; we’ll lose control of ourselves. Give me a cure for the famine or give me some magic beans, that’s all I ask for” said The Work General.

  The Scientist shuffled some papers in front of him and tied them to his clipboard. He fixed his spectacles which had slid down his nose thanks to the thick beads of sweat dripping from his forehead just above his eyes, which on a freezing cold grey August morning would be odd to anyone else other than him.

  This was another peeve that laboured the generals’ patience with the man and as he slipped the glasses forward with the tip of his index finger, the generals all sighed and groaned in unison being hushed into silence by the satellite stare of Marcos at the head and the Behemoth at the foot of the table. The generals, like disciplined dogs, pouted ruefully and bid their attention to The Scientist.

  “I would like to say that we have found the cure for the famine and that we are ready to start inoculations. I would like to, but I cannot. At the moment we are no closer to finding a cure to this famine than you are to reaping a full harvest” he said pointing to The Work General.

  “What I can say is that in our experiments so far to date we can unquestionably prove that currently, rehumanisation is more than highly possible, it’s probably possible” said The Scientist.

  “Can you tell us about your experiments?” asked The Work General.

  “Yes. What exactly are you doing down there” said The War General being obviously more suspicious and outspoken than the other generals could possibly be.

  “I shall give in layman then, the gist of our trials. And please, if there is struggle in your comprehension, then refrain from latching on to other’s concentration and dragging them to the murky depths of your schoolboy sagacity. There is no grace in drowning so if you must; be quiet about it” said The Scientist.

  The generals all looked at each other and in a moment of unspoken concordance, all thought about taking The Scientist by his scrawny neck, out of The Nest, down through the sprawl of towers and bridges, past the safe zone where on the edge of The City centre near the cobblestone bridge that lead to perdition, there passed; under the weight of its malefic presage, the black river, where one bathed in Famine.

  Each eye dreamt of the same sight, holding The Scientist’s head under the water until his scrawny legs and dainty fingers stopped twitching. Neither man cared for intellectualism and neither for his insolence.

  “If ever I’m sinking, I’ll use your lungs as a float” said The Love General.

  The other generals laughed together. Marcos slammed his fist on the table and The Behemoth cleared his throat. Silence returned to the board room.

  “As I was saying, the bulk of our work focuses on understanding the subconscious model and how best to re-establish physical and metaphysical balance. We are not looking at the famine as the problem as such. More so we attribute the famine to being a red flag, it’s the proverbial fever. If you want to stop the heat then follow the smoke to the fire. And that is precisely what we are doing now. We are following the smoke through every field of scientific research. We have the finest philosophers, mathematicians, physicists, scientists, neurologists, astrologists and immunologists. I have though made a request to our esteemed leader here Marcos for one more resource which I think is fundamental to our negotiating with nature; from a truly remarkable perennial science long thought extinct, a midwife; an order I think difficult but not impossible I’m sure. I know that when we have every intellectual and emotional component working concertedly to comprehend the logic and fallaciousness of this conundrum, we will undoubtedly identify the physical dials necessary that we can transpose to re-assign what we believe is the core of the human crises; the absence of the empathy gene” said The Scientist pushing his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose and snorting in mild self-approval.

  “Ridiculous. You think you’re better than us. You think you’re smarter than us” said The War General.

  “I am not handicapped as to whether you think that I think I am smarter than you, or whether you think you are less smart than I” replied the scientist.

  “Can you cure the famine?” asked The Love General interrupting.

  “Yes” replied The Scientist.

  “When?” demanded The War General masking his insult with anger.

  “And what about food?” added The Work General.

  “The famine will be cured when the equation is complete. A sad day for you I assume my violent friend. As for food production, the contamination levels in the soil for now; are untreatable. You have to be better with the resources you have. Talk to them. Plants respond to sentiment you know. They have the empathy gene. Funny really, how aborted from nature we found ourselves” said The Scientist ecstatically.

  “When can we expect some informal result?” asked Marcos.

  “For now, I would suggest focusing on your activities in the four states. If we can replicate at least the extremity of emotion; this fear and love, and we can recite this process procedurally, eventually it will inseminate some subconscious instinctive learning and we will see gradual change in comportment. Now until we understand better the genetics of this conundrum, we will be a while yet from a natural child and our own breeding program. Without the empathy gene, women will not lactate, and without a woman’s breast milk, our species just cannot continue” spoke The Scientist.