“Him”

The inspiration for this story stems from the radical feminist literature of Valerie Solanas and the speculative fiction of Harlan Ellison. Specifically the SCUM Manifesto by Solanas and the short story “Repent Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” by Ellison. I struggled over whether I should include the process I went through during this story’s composition or why I made the creative choices I did. But if I am going to be a writer, if I am going to share my work, than my work has to stand on its own.

“Him”

There hadn’t been a He for as long as They could remember. Hell, there hadn’t been a She in almost a hundred years. There was only They, and Them. The individual and community. SCUM had taken care of everyone else. Cut them up and killed them. Those They didn’t kill joined the men’s auxiliary and were made into transvestites. After some time even they died. Then there was no He and without a He there could be no She, only Them. That is what They were, they were Them, something neither man nor woman. For how could They be women without men? Female without male? Human without man? They had no language for a people without He.

But here He was. Standing before them naked as an animal. He was ruddy skinned with a beard and long hair like their own. They had been hiking, taking a break from their landscaping activities in town to receive inspiration from the natural world. He was bathing in a stream when they had stopped for water. He had shied away to the tree line but lingered and watched them. They had submerged their canteens and let the auto-purifiers do the rest of the work. The two parties kept eyes on each other. Both felt a tension in their chests but could not vocalize the feeling.

Jordan wadded through the stream towards the trees. They were taller than him but lacked his rough angular features. Instead, Jordan was smooth and sculpted and completely androgynous; their long golden hair parted to revel a delicate and hairless face.

“What is it?” said Taylor. They stayed on the far bank, apprehensive of the creature.

“I don’t know.”

He stepped from the tree line and they could see he had dressed himself. It was a rough tunic made from animal hide. He held a sharpened stick. Jordan opened their pocket and removed a protein-blueberry bar. They held it out towards the man like he was dog.

“Are you hungry?”

He held his stick tight in his hands and pointed it out towards them. He descended the bank slowly. Jordan met them between the trees and stream. They tossed him the bar and he caught it. He sniffed it for a moment before taking a bite.

“Do you speak?” Jordan asked.

He nodded.

“What is your name?”

“Atom.” His voice was deep and throaty and he was missing one of his front teeth on the left side.

They were shocked he could speak. The voice was unlike any they had heard before, there was a vibration they felt in their chest when he spoke.

“It’s pleasant to meet you Atom. I am Jordan.” Jordan smiled, it was an unconscious reflex and it strained their muscles to do it. When had they smiled before? Had they ever?

“I am Taylor!” They called from across the stream.  

“Where are you from?” Jordan asked. He finished chewing his bite and jabbed his stick towards the blue-ridgeline of mountains behind him.

“There.”

“Are there more of you?”

“I’ve only known mother.”

Jordan and Taylor looked at each other. Mother. They had heard the word before, in some data-slate but couldn’t remember what it meant. They hadn’t a mother, no one had had a mother in more than a century. It had been even longer since there had been a father, or mention of one. Now, in this time, when they wanted to make more of them, they went to the labs and used the automated geneticist to create a new one. But even this was a dated practice; without the anxiety of death, there wasn’t much reason to make more of them. 

It took some convincing and several more protein-blueberry bars before Atom came with them. They were fascinated by him, they hadn’t seen anyone like him, or heard of anyone like him. He was dirty and wounded, with lacerations on his legs and arms. They put him through a decom-shower and then introduced him to the auto-doc. He didn’t like it. The machines made him nervous. The whir of generators and machinery pervaded the atmosphere of their homes. As constant as the oxygen they breathed. They didn’t hear it anymore. It was all he could hear.

He had lice on his body and parasites in his blood. He was a carrier for something the auto-doc called “influenza”. They hadn’t heard of it before and they liked the way the auto-bot pronounced the word. Taylor set the auto-chef to prepare a soy-rice curry for all of them. He didn’t want the curry. He asked for more of the protein bars or for meat.

“We don’t eat flesh. No one does.” Jordan said.

“What do you eat?” 

“Everything and anything else. We can have whatever want, whenever we want. We just turn on the auto-chef and input an order.”

“Can it give me meat?”

“No.”

They didn’t report him. There wasn’t anyone to report to. Even if there was there would be no police to respond and detain him. No judge or lawyer to prosecute or defend him. No prison to send him to and definitely no gallows to hang him from. Since men had gone away there was no need for institutions such as those. So they kept him to themselves. They spent most days ordering historical data-slates from the digital libraries. After some months they learned he was a man. An animal of sorts that They thought had been extinct a long time ago. They knew this was a significant find but they were conflicted over what to do. Everything they had been taught told them to reveal him to the community, to Them. However, he made them smile and even though it hurt they liked it. He didn’t like the decom-shower and smelled musty but they liked it. He hunted during dusk and dawn and cooked the meat by hand in their garden. They were enthralled how he carefully removed skin from meat and fat from muscle. He seared the meat then ate it with his hands. They had never cooked before or hunted or gone more than twelve hours without a moment or two in the decom-shower.

In fact, they didn’t do much for themselves. They spent most of their days designing new landscapes that were aesthetically pleasing. They would offer these designs to the community. Those that were accepted were loaded into the scape-skiffs which would begin the terraforming process. Jordan liked to paint and Taylor could sing. They sometimes hosted concerts but attendance was always sparse. Their songs were only about birds and sunrises and soft hills and meadows and flowers and babbling brooks and while They all agreed that those were very pretty things, they were also very boring. Since men had been eliminated everything was pretty. Most of the old cities had been torn down and only a few rebuilt in a much more effective, clean and aesthetically pleasing manner. But in the centuries since it had all become dull. It was stimuli overload. They didn’t appreciate the clean streets, hanging gardens, glittering towers or arabesque murals because they didn’t know anything different. The machines handled everything. They washed and cooked and cleaned and sanitized and scrubbed and filtered and processed and produced and grew and harvested and juiced and pickled and seared and fried and froze and burned and built and destroyed and taught and thought and did everything that They needed them to do.

As a result they had become complacent. Not just Jordan and Taylor but all of Them. They woke up when they wanted, ate what They wanted, did what They wanted, and then went to bed. There had been joy at first when the revolution was still going, when there were still men to capture and convert and kill, when there were still cities to tear down and rebuild and when there were still diseases to combat and professions to automate, still histories to rewrite and books to burn and statues to destroy and memories to be erased and desires to be suppressed and questions to be answered. Then there was nothing left to do but to be one of Them and wait. To pass the days as They saw fit till their clocks run out. But then They figured out how to stop even that. Then there was no more waiting but simply being. There was existence, nothing more and nothing less. They were never hungry, never cold, never hot, never sad, never angry, never in pain or confused. They knew what They needed to know and had no desire to learn more. What was the point when the machines did it all for you.

Atom was learning. He had always done everything for himself. Mother had fallen sick years ago and never recovered. He hunted and trapped and gathered and tanned and sewed and cooked and cleaned and sung for her. He taught himself to make paint from berries and ash and spit. He learned how to use his hand and the stars to navigate at night and how to mix the clay from the cliffs with the mud from the river to sculpt with. Atom was still learning. He first learned to fear the automatons. Then he grew accustomed to the whirl of generators and computers. Then he learned how to use them to his advantage. Taylor had only ever seen the delivery-drones as a means to an ends. Atom wanted to use them for hunting. The idea was novel to Taylor. They ordered data-slates on programming and engineering and set about work. Taylor was excited, they had never learned anything on their own. They had been taught everything they knew. Atom didn’t understand the excitement but he welcomed their enthusiasm.

They lived like this for a time, like a family, which is something they had never heard of and were only now beginning to feel. Taylor taught Atom to read. Atom taught Taylor to cook. They bathed each other and fed each other and in time Jordan took to sleeping with Atom. He was apprehensive at first but then gave in. He felt different than the machines and toys that they were so used to. There was a warmth and an urgency to being with Atom that they couldn’t find anywhere else. The intimacy grew between them, blossoming into a bond that Jordan had no word for. Atom called it love, Mother had taught him about it.

 Then came voting day. The vote was whether to decide to allow the auto-miners to head further into cliffs. The voting-machine in the central hall of Jordan’s house chimed a soft melody to alert Them to vote. Atom approached the machine, he had seen it before but never interacted with it. It had sat dull and empty the past few months but was now awash in colors. There was a handprint glowing next to a glass screen and Atom placed his hand over it. His scarred limb covered the glowing print entirely.

“Scanning” came a smooth voice from a vent on the top of the machine. Atom recoiled and the handprint flashed red. The soft chiming devolved into a siren. Atom clenched his ears and ran for cover. Jordan heard the commotion from their massage parlor and came running.

“What happened?”

“Machine is broken!” cried Atom who hunkered in the corner of the main hall. Jordan moved towards the machine and tried to silence it. They had never heard of this before. There was flashing text across the screen

MALE DETECTED

They heard Them before they saw Them. Sirens like screaming animals rang out clearly across the otherwise gentle and quiet neighborhood. They came from the sky in skiffs and sky buses and in moto-planes. There were dozens of Them rappelling down all dressed in black. They were holding guns but Taylor and Jordan didn’t know what those were and so they weren’t as scared as they should have been. They moved into the house with rapidity and seized and drugged Atom before any of them could process what was happening. Taylor and Jordan were restrained and blindfolded and gagged and thrown into a sky-bus holding cell.

Atom awoke in a facility that looked like the inside of the delivery-drones. There were wires and vents and arms and pistons and screens and the constant drone of a generator hung in the air. He tried to move but he was restrained. He was restrained and he was naked. There was a figure seated in front of him. They had short hair buzzed nearly to the scalp and a pair of black glasses on. They were sharply dressed in something called a uniform, but Atom didn’t know the word.  

“Hello Atom,” the voice was low and guttural, it did not match the face.

“Where am I?”

“You are in the auto-processing facility. This is where our automatons design, program and construct our automatons.” They smiled.

 “Where is Jordan? Where is Taylor?”

“They are in this facility as well, in another room.”

“Why are we here?”

“You broke the law. Taylor broke the law and Jordan broke the law.”

“They said there were no laws.”

“There are always laws.” They stood up and walked towards Atom. “However, thanks to this facility and many thousands like it we rarely have to enforce them.” They paused for a moment “Do you know how long it’s been since we had a man?”

Atom shook his head.  

“Eighty-five years. Well, here at least. Over past the Pacific?” they waved their hand, “Lucky fucks have one just about every twelve years. So, thank you.” They nodded as if experiencing a revelation. “Thank you Atom. Thank you for giving us a project. Things have gotten quite tedious since the last you were cut up. We have been so bored over the years. Nothing to do but train and run drills and sit idle. You have given us all a little excitement. I’m sure you gave Taylor and Jordan quite a lot of excitement.” They looked at his crotch. “You are after all quite the specimen.” 

“Who are you?”

“We are Them. But you can call us The Society.”

“Society?” his tongue struggled with the word.

“Yes. We had a more individualistic name once but it’s fitting now. Inclusive, non-offensive, inconspicuous and utterly true. We do after all represent The Society. The only one. 

Atom looked at his restraints, there was an animalistic fury simmering below the surface of his skin. “What do you want?”

“I want to know how you are, what you are. How did this come to be? Who made you?”

 Atom shook his head as much as he could “Mother made me and no one else. I came from her. I am a part of her.”

They nodded. “Where is this Mother?”

“Dead.”

“Can you prove this?”

Atom stopped his thrashing. “What?”

“Can you prove this creator of you is dead? Do you know of the lab they made you in?”

“No lab.”

They paused. “What?”

“No lab. Just Mother!”

They thanked him for his answers and left the room. They came back later and interrogated Him again. They tortured him, but it had been so long that they weren’t very good at it anymore. They had forgotten how much a man could bleed, or how fast flesh could be flayed from bone, and They had been sure that bones were stronger. They didn’t really understand his crying or why he kept begging them to stop. Didn’t he understand that this was how it was, how it had to be. He told them everything, his time with Jordan and Taylor, what they did together and how they lived. He told them of his childhood spent with mother in the mountains and his years of isolation before he was found. He told them his thoughts, his feelings, his dreams, his fears, he told them anything and everything to get them to stop. He lied, he told the truth, he made up stories, but no matter what he said they never stopped. When he could no longer remain conscious for more than a few minutes at a time they tried to use the auto-docs on him, but it was too late. In all their excitement they had forgotten death. They made notes on their process so they could do it longer next time and then sent his body to be mulched by the auto-processors.

Taylor and Jordan were sent to camps where they were re-educated, and their memories selectively replaced with ones of friendship and community. Afterwards they were released back to their neighborhoods and landscapes. They had lies programmed for their neighbors and themselves whenever a question over what happened arose. Despite the hazy and happy memories of vacation there was a void within them as if an auto-vac had sucked their stomachs out. Jordan had days when a phantom figure crossed her mind and she felt pangs of a hunger for knowledge every morning. Soon the hunger evolved into cravings the auto-chef hadn’t the programing to complete. She swelled and sweated and she couldn’t figure out why till she felt a kick.