Chapter 1: EVE

    These are different times, so different from the stories I was told about our history. Mama Nancy used to tell tales of people filled with hopes and dreams to conquer the odds and seemly achieve the impossible. Her description of what was sounded so beautiful. It left me wishing I was born during those times. Truthfully, it sounded like a fairy tale, and we all know what they say about fairy tales; they never existed.

    Apparently, there was once equality among us. I was told we once lived in a sect-less society where the family unit was sacred and valued. Kids were shown unconditional love; they weren’t exploited and valued based on their usefulness. They could dream and be filled with so much hope for their future, encouraged to love and be loved by friends and family. Sadly, things changed.

    This is Urania, and things are completely different now. For one, kids aren’t allowed to grow up with their families anymore. They are groomed in the children's halls until they come of age for an outing ceremony.

     Each time I think about my time in those halls, I don’t seem to recall any memory. The first-ever memory I recall was of the day I was outed. I was 10 years old at the time, which is the normal age for the outing ceremony. It was the first and worst day of my life.

    It’s been 11years since that day and I still have nightmares about it. I have never stopped asking myself if there was something I could have done differently to change the result of my reading. I remember hoping it was a wrong reading altogether. I even tried to convince myself that a second reading would give a different result. I just needed to be tested again and everything would be fine.

    As they dragged me out me of the hall, I hoped my screams would save me from the doom they had sentenced me to, but they paid me no mind. They just went on with the reading of the next child. I guess I wasn’t the first child they heard screaming like their life depended on it.

    They called me a parasite, meaning I had no value. I existed at the mercy of others. Since I had no natural gifts, the least I could do was to serve the ones that had, so they said. People like me were called an abomination to Urania. I wasn’t even given a birth name. No one tagged a parasite was. We could keep the serial numbers given to us at the children’s hall, but that was the only means of identification granted us.

    They assigned me to the fields, to labour on a Royal’s farm. It took me seven years of extra labour to have enough money to buy a name for myself. I chose Evelyn Bolt. There is no hidden meaning to why I choose the name. It just sounded right at the time.

    There are many others like me, “Parasites”. We are the most populated sect in Urania. I heard it bothered the royals that the number of abominations kept increasing yearly and the thought of this always gladdens my heart. I should at this point establish that any discomfort to the royals gladdens my heart.

* * *

    It was a horrible day, as usual. That was nothing new. Aside from the fact that my slave driver was meaner than usual, everything else remained the same. He seems to be the new lead actor in my nightmares, but with his current decline in character, these nightmares are just going to get worse.

    Although life as a parasite was hard, I quit complaining about it when I turned 16. As parasites, we were the labour force of Urania. We are the builders, cleaners, guards, farmers, gardeners, tailors and providers of all other menial services. We offer these services to the families we are assigned to serve. It would have been fine if we are paid for our labour, but as parasites, we are regarded as slaves. We are forced to serve without pay. The little stipend granted to us at the end of each year is said to be undeserved. They make us work tirelessly daily, control us with the help of the slave drivers assigned to us, and deprive us of the Zeluxe pill leaving us to decay.

    Some families are kinder than others and provide their parasites with the pill to slow down the decay process, but very few families provide enough and no parasite could afford the pill, so decaying was inevitable.

    My slave driver has never been a nice man, but his attitude towards me and the seven others assigned to him has worsened considerably over time. There was a cruelty to him I had never seen before. I avoided him as much as I could because of this. I didn’t want to be at the receiving end of his next angry outburst. I had no proof of my suspicions at first, but the foul smell that soon began to ooze off of him confirmed to me his decay process had accelerated rapidly. No one else seemed to smell the odour, but my senses had never been wrong.    

    Even though there were no physical symptoms of decay on him which was the reddening of the eyes and the darker colouration of the skin coupled with disgusting-looking sores, I knew he had lost control of his decaying process the same way I knew something bad was going to happen to Mama Nancy. It had been a gut-wrenching feeling I just couldn’t ignore at the time. I haven’t been able to put my fingers around what made me so sure, but I hadn’t been wrong.

       I still remember the slap I received when I told her that her serial number was going to be called on the next roll call. How could I ever forget it? Aside from my slave driver, no one else had had the pleasure of hitting me. You see, fighting was prohibited in the halls. And even if it wasn’t, no one had any energy left to engage in any physical alteration at the end of a full day work.

    After that incident, she never spoke another word to me. A week later, her serial number was called, and that was the last time I saw her. Her expression when she was being dragged out of the hall has hunted me ever since. I saw great fear in her eyes, one I had never seen from her before, she was usually so composed, her expression unreadable making it impossible to figure out what she was thinking. The most alarming thing was that her fear wasn’t directed at the guards, it was directed at me. It’s been five years since the incident and I still haven’t been able to figure out what was so scary about me. I had nightmares about it the first couple of months after it happened. Honestly, I still do sometimes. The actors in my nightmares changes with the season, the only constant in these dreams is me.

* * *

    The cold winter breeze gushed into the room from the opened window, causing me to shiver. I reached for my cover sheet and hugged it more tightly. As usual, a nightmare woke me up from sleep. I never seem to be able to recollect the dream when I wake. The only things I remember are the emotions I felt in the dream, which are usually “fear and despair”. It keeps me awake the rest of the night and the fear of having another nightmare keeps me awake at night a couple more nights until I succumb to my body and sleep again. Then the cycle begins all over again.

    Sighing deeply, I try to turn over to my left as I laid on my bed. Lying on my back wasn’t working out for me anymore. Wrong move. My attempt at moving only multiplied the pains I was feeling all over my body, courtesy of the day’s work.

    My slave driver worked me like crazy today even though I tried my best not to provoke him. I hope he is in a better mood tomorrow, even though I doubt he would. His mood seems to worsen daily because of his accelerated decay process in my personal opinion and I, unfortunately, have had to deal with it.

     Begrudgingly, I made another attempt to turn over to my right. Grunting through the painful and slow process, I successfully turn this time.

    Looking out through the opened window, I noticed it was pitch black outside. Not even a single star could be seen in the sky. More surprising to me was the noticeable silence. I spent most of my nights wishing sleep away thanks to my nightmares, so am always awake at this time of night and am quite familiar with the sounds of the night. The usual chipping sounds of the birds were gone, so were the quiet sobs and morphed screams.

    I try to ignore does every single time, and I must admit that am quite good at it now. It never does me any good pondering on what or who was crying or why they were crying. These are questions that are best left unanswered.

    On very few occasions, the sobs are from my hall mates and I know what was being done to them. Each time the slave drivers came into our hall at night, I snored louder. Everyone did. It was a failed attempt to convince ourselves that we could do nothing to help because we were fast asleep, but the shame it brought the next morning was undeniable.

    As long as I did not know who was abused, I didn’t have to avoid anyone’s gaze. I can pretend it never happened, but at the back of my mind, am hoping I wouldn’t be next to be visited. Thankfully, I was unusually healthy, so they stayed away from me. They always went for the deteriorating ones because no one would question why they spiralled so low so quickly during the monthly screening. That was expected from someone who had lost control of their decay process.

    The mate lying beside me suddenly whispered something in her sleep. She must be having a pleasant dream with that grin on her face. Don’t ask how I know she grinning, I just do. I fought the urge to wake her up. Being green with envy was clouding my judgement because even if I woke her up, it still wouldn’t help me sleep. Her ability to sleep so peacefully was a superpower I wished I had. Sleep was the only relief we got in this terrible place. After an entire day filled with hard labour, the six hours of sleep are our most valued treasure, but for obvious reason, I couldn’t sleep, and it wasn’t because of lack of trying.

    I have tried every trick there is in the book to chase away nightmares, but to no avail. All my attempts have failed miserably, leaving me very frustrated with myself. But tonight was very different. The dream felt different as well. So was the fear. It was more intense, more personal, and more real. I tried to wish it away, but I couldn’t. It was that knowing feeling all over again. Something bad was about to happen and this time, it was about to happen to me.

     I lay silently, hoping the morning never came. There was a certainty, unlike anything I had ever experienced before, that it was going to be my worst nightmare manifesting itself in real life. There was going to be another roll call, and my number was going to be on it. My instincts have never been wrong, it was what has kept me alive all this while.

    In the eleven years I’ve been here, there have been 120 roll calls. There has never been a fixed date for it. It could happen any day of the week, but it was usually within a 4-6 weeks interval. Living in constant fear of being called, especially when you had no idea when it was going to be, was exhausting.

  Glancing at my hall mate lying beside me. I try to recall her number, but fail. I try to recall anyone’s number, anyone at all, but come up with nothing. Everyone here is a step away from death. Names and numbers are irrelevant. Speech itself was a waste of strength.

  I haven’t spoken to anyone ever since Mama Nancy was taken away, well, except arguing with my slave drivers, which happens a lot. This is probably why he has been so cruel to me lately. Added to the fact that he was on a downward spiral. I was a nuisance to the slave drivers, and I did that because I knew they couldn’t hurt me. Not as much as they do the others. I hadn’t begun decaying, and the council knew that. If any unusual spike showed up in my reading, it would be easy to detect, and my slave driver would have to answer for it.    

    I wondered if I would be missed after I’m gone. Would anyone remember me? I still remember Mama Nancy. She had been my only friend here. I had literarily forced her to start speaking to me. These days, I miss her more than ever. On nights like this, when I couldn’t sleep, she usually sang me lullabies. They never helped, but the gesture was appreciated.

    I concluded a while ago that my slave driver had been right when he said befriending one another was a bad idea. They usually discouraged inmate conversations and punished us if they found us communicating with one another for too long. Making friends was a horrible idea, because when they are taken away, you are left with all these memories to deal with, which was why I stayed away from any and everybody after Mama Nancy was taken. I had learnt my lesson the hard way. But now that my end was arriving, a small part of me wished I had made more friends. At least, I wouldn’t be forgotten too soon. There would be someone silently grieving for me the same way I was grieving for Mama Nancy.

    I hope her death came quickly enough, even though I know having your organs harvested couldn’t have been pleasurable, I choose to believe she died blissfully and painlessly and I will take this belief with me to my grave, which is not so far away anymore, for my own sanity.

    I doubt they found any healthy enough organ to harvest from her anyway. She was already so weak. Considering the unfavourable condition we were kept in., her organs were most likely irredeemable.

* * *

   The sound of multiple footsteps approaching coupled with a familiar stench of decay stopped my line of thought.

    My slave driver was close, and he wasn’t alone. The day must have broken.

    My hall mates began stirring up as a result of the noise coming from outside. I sat up slowly. Stricken with fear, I watched closely as the door opened gradually, each second adding to my anxiety. My slave driver walked in first, the other slave drivers followed, and then the 12^th Leaders walk in last. I was right after all, this was my last day

    The Leaders were the judges in the Uranian council. You could call them a living lie detector, as it was impossible to lie to them without being found out. They were the governors overseeing the affairs of the state.

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    By now, everyone knew what the deal was. It was very obvious it was a roll call. The smell of terror coming off from my hall mates only made mine worsen. While they were hoping their names would not be called, I was certain mine would.   

    “Take positions, you retched fools,” my slave driver shouted in his most condescending voice. There was scrambling everywhere as everyone tried to look presentable. The leader waited patiently as we knelt by our bed waiting for the numbers to be called, while our slave drivers tried to hurry us, accusing us of wasting the Leader's time.

    The hall quieted soon enough, with everyone kneeling by their beds looking down as a sign of respect. A parasite never looks at a Leader in the eye, and never speaks to them unless spoken to.

    Leaders are the second most esteemed creatures to walk on the Uranian soil, the royals are the most supreme. Well there are the gods and then the seers which are considered myths. I was told a seer was born every five hundred years, but even that was left to chance.

    In order of hierarchy, the Royals came first. They have no obligation to society, their existence was payment enough. A few of them were born into the title, while the majority were adopted into it. Royals could be governors if they wanted to, but they never contested. It was beneath them to do so. Their blood was superior to everyone else because it never decayed. Everyone else does, including the Leaders, but at a much slower rate than anyone else.

    Decaying of the human body was a natural process. I was told it hadn’t always been so, but this was our present reality. Thankfully, the process can be controlled by the continuous intake of the Zeluxe pill. Parasites like us were not privileged to take the pill. We relied on our bodies to control the decay process, which was no good. After a couple of years, our body breaks down because of the decay, sooner than later, they harvest us. The process naturally starts after the age of adulthood, which is18-19 for men and 20-21 for females.   

    After the Leaders, there are the Healers. The Healers as the name implies can heal others from any kind of infirmity using their gifts. They are also responsible for producing the Zeluxe pill to control decay. Except for the royals, everyone else depends on the pill, making an immense fortune for the healers as the pills are overpriced and could only be afforded by the rich.

    Then we have the Electrics. Electrics have a high affinity to technology. They are usually the electricians and engineers. They performed any task related to technology and anything technical. Some of them venture into business and are usually very successful businessmen.

    The last and the least are the parasites. We are the most populated members of society. We make up one-third of the entire population. We have no special gifts. The Royals call us an abomination. I call them delusional. They act like the universe revolves around them. But In all honesty, it does. Even the leaders couldn’t make a decree without their permission. That was actual power.

    Reeling in my wandering thoughts, I try to pay attention to the numbers been called so as not to miss mine when it was called and soon enough; I heard it.       

    “No 914 batch no 4055, step forward,” the 12^th Leader called out.

    I make a move to stand, but my slave driver drags me by my hair so forcefully, with a satisfying smile on his face. I had been so absent-minded, I hadn’t realised he had gotten so close to me. I swallow my screams as that would make him even more excited.

    I was dragged to the harvesting grounds by my slave driver, and he taunted me all the way. This fool has it coming for him. I tell myself to make me feel better about my situation. Sooner than later, he would be dragged here to be harvested by the healers for their experiments as well. He let me go abruptly on reaching the entrance of the harvesting ground and is rewarded by my painful grunt as I fall to the ground. The satisfaction on his face is unbelievable. I had tried to not give him the satisfaction that he was of inflicting pain on me, but a girl could dream.

    A guard by the door pulled me up and dragged me to the stage. I knew this was going to happen, but now that it was happening, my mind still couldn't accept it. It’s just a bad dream, I whispered to myself repeatedly.  Clutching my chest tightly, I tried to control my breath.    

    Silent sobs beside me drew me back to reality. I looked and saw other people on the floor with me, decaying people. There were at least, a 100 of us from my brief observation. Male and female. The skins of some had already dropped off, leaving parts of their skeleton on full display. For others, their stench gave them away. I had always been able to smell decay on a person even when they were no physical symptoms on them. It was my superpower. There were also those like me, as healthy as a parasite could be, but still brought to be harvested.

    I had been too engrossed in my grief, I hadn’t even noticed anything else. I watched as more people were dragged in. I recognised some of them as hall mates of mine but most of them I had never seen before. They were many other parasites halls so they could have been selected from any of them.

    Shortly after, the hall quieted down as a very beautiful lady walked to the stage. The audience seats was filled up with thousands of people, more Uranians than I have seen in my entire life. Did all these people come here to watch the harvest? They seemed so excited to watch what was about to take place. I could feel their excitement. The realization that these people saw the harvesting of human organs as entertainment was appalling.

    “Parasites, you are brought here today to contribute to the advancement of our society” the beautiful lady began speaking. Turning to us, she continued “the findings from this research would be used for the betterment of Urania. It would lead to the emergence of better healers. This is a heroic act of service to Urania at large, and you are honoured to take part in it…..”

    I tried my best to stop listening. I just couldn’t anymore. She just referred to my death as research for the betterment of Uranians. I would laugh at the irony of the situation if I could afford to. Never, ever, have I been regarded as a Uranian before now. I have always been “an abomination or a parasite” but suddenly, am supposed to die a proud Uranian. The irony.

    Not too far away from us, young healers stood giggling excitedly. I identified them with their blue-collar. Every sect had a different collar for easy identification at official gatherings.

    There was a huge table before us with all kinds of equipment arranged on it. I had gotten a glance at the top of the table while I was being brought in. A huge screen was set above the table and I could see a couple more screens distributed around the arena. It must be to ensure everyone had a good view of what was happening on stage.

The young healers were ushered onto the stage and arranged themselves around the table. The beautiful lady began explaining what procedures they were going to be trying out on us. The excitement on their faces broke my heart. I could tell they couldn’t wait to get their hands on us.

They were going to be learning to take their first reading. I sighed in relief when I realized my organs would not be harvested, but my despair returned almost immediately when she said the possibility of success the first time was almost impossible. Whoever was successful would be handsomely rewarded. I knew the result of a failed reading. I had seen it happen a couple of times during our monthly check-ups. If a reading went wrong, the brain of the person being read exploded.

I had always imagined what the harvesting grounds were like, and what events took place there, but I had never expected it to be a training class. I only heard of organs being harvested. I guess that was the lesson for that day.

Having a brain explosion was less painful than having my organs removed while I still breathed, right? Right?

My mates were getting more hysterical. After hearing all that, who wouldn’t? Their sobs were getting louder. They were terrified. I was too. But as terrified as we were, no one tried to run. We knew it would be a waste, anyway. The least I could do was die with pride.

     The beautiful lady made a disgusted face at us, then made a hand gesture to the guards. Horridly, they offered each of us a little bowl filled with a colourless liquid.

    “Drink” she ordered

With shaky hands, I drank. A bitter taste hits the tip of my tongue. Too scared to spit it out, I swallowed quickly. The guard that had offered me the bowl still stood in front of me, so I handed over the empty bowl to him as I wiped my mouth.

    A surprised look appeared on his face almost immediately and he drew closer, looking at me closely. Looked like I finally caught his attention, I dressed backwards, perplexed by his reaction. He was intruding my personal space. I might be a parasite, but I had some pride. What was so strange about returning a bowl he offered me? I dressed farther away from his scrutinizing gaze and glanced at my colleagues. They all still had their cup in their hands, but there was something different about their countenance. They looked dazed. It seemed as if a spell had been cast on them suddenly. The sobs had stopped even though their mouths were still open. They just knelt there, silently moping.

    What in the world was going on here? Could there be something wrong with the drink we were given?

    I could feel everyone’s attention on me. I stared back at them, more confused than they ever could imagine.

    “The girl is immune to the relaxant, how is that possible?!” someone asked.

    “She’s obviously not a parasite”, someone else replied. “The question should be, how she ended up there”   

    Arguments erupt all around me. They all seemed to have their own opinion on the matter. I was just as confused. One thing seemed certain. I wasn’t supposed to be on this stage and if everything walks out fine, I would not die today. I sighed in relief.

    Shortly after, I was led out of the harvesting ground. On my way out, I sight my slave driver being dragged in. I knew he was going to end up here, but I hadn’t expected it to be this soon. That karma was working on overdrive today.

    I smile at him, returning the smug look he gave me when he dragged me here a few minutes ago. It was the least I could do. Believe it or not, that man was the closest thing I had to family in my life. Except for Mama Nancy, no one else spoke a word to me. After Mama Nancy died, he was all I got. As dysfunctional as our relationship was, I would miss him in my own weird way.

    I was led into a white room with beds arranged along the walls and asked to lie down on a bed by the corner, so I did. Everyone in the room was hovering around me, trying to figure out the puzzle that was me, but no one said a word to me. Someone was poking at my ribs, while someone else was flashing light into my eyes. I hoped they found what they were looking for because my life depended on it. I laid there quietly, staring at the ceiling until I drifted off to sleep.                                             

 

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