“What if they’re right?”
“What if who’s right?”
“The Naturalists,” Pierre replied. “Could we be making a huge mistake?”
Mr. Blue fidgeted in his seat and crossed his muscled arms. He was the epitome of the perfect twenty-eight year old male. “Superstition? From you?”
Pierre shook his head. “No. Not Superstition. Just ‘what if?’”
“I don’t follow. You’ve been involved with this from—“
“We don’t really know, do we? What if they evolve? Become independent?”
“And how, Pierre, would that work exactly?”
“What do you mean how?”
“I mean,” Mr. Blue said, “I’d like you to explain how they’ll do that. Please. All ears. Tell me how and I’ll call it all off.”
“Johnathon, I—“
“Mr. Blue.”
“Mr. Blue. Right.” Pierre shivered in spite of himself.
“Even I was afraid of communion when I was a kid. If my mother hadn’t applied the perfect level of guilt, I probably would have spit out the wine in the Priest’s face. But Pierre, I was a child. I had no idea what was good for me or what was possible.”
“But you’re an atheist.”
“Yes. That doesn’t mean I don’t see the value in the orderly structure of it all.” Mr. Blue sighed and stood, walking around the desk to Pierre’s side. “Aren’t you tired of watching our citizens wither away in pain when they don’t have to? All because of silly superstition? We can change all that?”
“I know, trust me, I know.”
“Right. Sorry. Your wife.”
“Nothing to do with that. At all. I don’t have a rational argument to give you. It’s just . . .”
“Go ahead. You’ve already crossed the line. You’re really only two places to go now.”
Pierre stiffened. “Haven’t you even considered that we might be losing something? Not being able to die?”
“Like what?” Mr. Blue asked.
“Wisdom. Just hear me out. We don’t have to worry about death, you and I. We can chose to live as long as we want. A hundred, two hundred, a thousand years . . .”
“And you don’t want that for others?”
“I understand. I do. But what if it isn’t age that brings wisdom? What if it’s the nearing of death? Knowing that we have fewer years ahead than behind? Finding out what’s really important what we love and what we want to embrace with what time we have left? I mean, what if, what if all the years do is populate the planet with a never-ending and increasing number of petulant, perpetual adolescents with nothing to do, nothing to desire and nothing to want? What kind of world is that?”
Mr. Blue looked away and stepped away from Pierre with a frown. “I see. Well that answers that.”
“Answers what?”
“Which of the two places you’ve decided to go.”
“You’re recording?”
“Have been. All the time.”
“I see.”
“I’m sorry, my friend.”
“Well, at least it’s on record. Somewhere. Maybe a thousand years from now, someone will hear it and listen.”
“I can guarantee you that will not be the case.”
“Johnathon? I doubt you’ll be able to guarantee anything, my friend.”
And then, like that, there was no Pierre.
THE DIRECTIVES: CLASSIFIED ARCHIVE
In the world of The Optimised Future, the State demands perfection. The population is neatly divided into ten Categories. At the top, the elite are rewarded with the suffocating, biological permanence of the Sacrament. At the bottom, the working classes are quietly recycled, their memories wiped to keep the machinery of Central running.
You are entering the shadows of that machinery.
These Directives are weekly dispatches from the unseen corners of the State. They are not the grand political struggles of the Bureau. They are intercepted transmissions from the periphery; micro-tragedies, analog rebellions, and the quiet, devastating cost of surviving in a world that has weaponized human biology.
New dispatches are unsealed every Saturday. Read them carefully. Central is always watching.
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