Dwindle

“I can even remember the hour, on some quiet, restless nights. When the dead are hushed and in their graves. It’s such a loud existence now. Never a dull moment. I haven’t heard silence since…well. I honestly can’t remember a time. The world was quieter then. I can remember that. It was easier to live by the rules, and there were so many rules. Following became second nature, and those who led were kind of outcast. At least, it seemed like they were. People like my family, leaders, they tended to stick out a little bit more. The leaders demanded order. The order made it easy. For me, it was, anyway. For others, I’m not so sure. I was selfish then. I wasn’t like my mom.

  My mom was one of the very first Bad People. The people called them Deviants – but she was special. She was called a High Deviant. She used to be proud of what that meant, that she and my father were the first and last. Until computers ruined everything. The High Council, she called it. A group of very powerful minds that could make words on a screen. Computers were once common. They told people where to go and when. They summoned people and made people go. Computers ruled the world.

  And they decided that people like my mom, people like me, my mom said, shouldn’t be around anymore. My mom could never really tell me why, probably because she didn’t know. But computers were different from us, she said, different from all of us, and that was all that mattered.

  She worked for the good of the people because she loved the people. My father too. He loved people. Likewise, he was also a Deviant, a High Deviant, like her. They’d learned to live together, and they learned to love each other. They learned to have me.

  We weren’t allowed to talk about it, of course, what I was and what they were. Not in public. The High Council wouldn’t let us. They’d made sure of that. My mom told me never to speak the name of my uncle, and even now I shudder to write it. I do not think I will. But he was one of the very first aggressors in the war against the computers.

  Before my mom stopped letting us talk to him, he was angry all the time and frightening. He loved my mother very much, of that I learned only far later, and he wanted her to run away with him back to the government, back the place it all started, he said. He wanted her to help him with his “Little Deviants,” he called them. He began to call himself Victor Snow, the name of a popular movie actor. It was, apparently, the first movie he’d ever seen.

  So he…very strange, to say the least. Of that, I can remember.

  Whatever it was, it scared my mom – and my dad. I sensed that he was insane, and I guess my mom did too.

  We ran away from the likes of him but, because of it, we had to stay hidden and secret. My mom told us he was going to do something horrible in the name of what we were, and she knew we didn’t want to be a part of it, even if he would make us have our part, in the end. He would alienate us from the people, make us hide and lie to our closest friends, humans and Deviants alike.

  I used to think they were paranoid, my parents, that no one could be that bad, that it was an unnecessary precaution to hide what we were. I thought that the actions of one man, surely, could not represent the judgment of an entire race like ours. But, like I said, I was young, and I was naïve.

  One day, my mother came home, and she told me that we were to play ‘the game.’ This was a game we often practiced, but that day we were to play for real. She told me that I was to hide in the board under the closet, in a hole my father and she had made. We were to hide there – my siblings and I – until all was quiet, no matter what we heard, and to be absolutely still. When we’d win the game, come out, my mother and father would buy us ice cream and exchange uneasy glances and tense laughter between them.

  I see now that they were hiding us from people who were looking for us. They were pretending to be human, like the rest, and Deviants like us were being rounded up and slaughtered because some computer in a hole somewhere told people to.

  But people always did what computers said.

  This time, the noise did not pass for a very long time. I became frightened and wanted to emerge, but then I knew that if I did so that I would lose. So I stayed hidden, straining my ears to hear, but my parents had made the boards just thick enough to prevent me from understanding the conversations of the walls above our feet.

  The voices were of many different men, I remember. And when they went away and we came out it was very, very dark. My mom suggested that we sleep in the hide-and-seek room that night, and for a few nights afterwards. I’d thought it was fun, but I’m sure I missed the way my mother’s lips pursed when she was nervous. I’m sure she was terrified they’d find us and kill us.

  Then, on the radio, I saw my uncle’s name, displayed across a screen on which they normally listed celebrity names. His name was in capital letters, and we began to see very frightening pictures of his face in the street. His name was in bold letters in harsh colors, and people were told to watch over their backs because Deviants, Filthy Deviants, could be lurking behind every corner. It was the first time I remembered being ashamed of what I was, and I didn’t know why.

  My mother told me that we were never to walk to school anymore. We were to always drive with her.

  After that, we heard on the radio that all Deviants were to report to places with which I was very familiar, places I felt were safe. School, at the gymnasium, my favorite subject in class. Government buildings. Post Offices. Anywhere the government was.

  I asked my mom why we didn’t report to these places, why we were breaking the rules. And she told me that I was never to go there, no matter what. It got to a point where I wasn’t allowed outside anymore without my mother’s firm hand.

  I’ve heard many stories about the end of the world, but one more than all the rest, so I assume this one must be accurate. So, even if my family never learns of this little book, someone will know what happened to the human species or what I know to have happened. When I think about it, it’s moving I might be one of the only people left on this earth that does know the truth…about everything.

  It all began with computers. The High Council was made to be autonomously cognizant. They were tasked with sheer thinking. Process. Think. Create. Perfect. That was their job. And as such, they became aware that people were fragile. They died easily. They grew old and sick. They aged too quickly.

  They set out to design my mother and father and, unfortunately, also my uncle. On a genetic level, my mother and father were technically superior. They were a deviation from the norm. Thus, Deviants. There were five, originally. And those five built others. And those five built others. Until finally it was that there was an entire species of thinkers and doers and testers that allowed people, who otherwise would have wasted away for their efforts, to lead normal lives.

  My mother was a scientist, practicing in the now forbidden arts. She was on a team that apparently was creating a virus that could eat another virus. She said they designed it to destroy other sicknesses that killed many people. She said that it was called Necrosis.

  And such advances were made. Pretty soon, our species became world renowned, and my mother’s reputation for perfection – and those of the first generation – was unmatched.

  And then, one of the Deviants in China lost their temper. It was a man, I think, and he attacked another man. A human. And suddenly, we were not seen as perfect. We were not seen as infallible. People like my mother became shameful, dangerous creatures, and any and all successes were considered flukes of nature, not skills. In all levels of government were Deviants monitored. We were called Third Races. Naturally, this led some, like my uncle, to…lose touch. With reality or the world. It is hard to be brought into the world, designed to do good, and then told thereafter that you are, and will always ever be, bad.

  Production of the Deviants was ceased entirely, and everyone was told that we were to be collected and ‘put away.’ Almost as soon as that man had done it, the government went down with an iron fist. People were set into castes, ranks, jobs, everything, because of the chaos joblessness caused. If Deviants di
d everything, what was there left to do? Money no longer had any value, and neither did morality.

  People quickly learned to hate us. And I felt so sad to have to hide in my own skin.

  But they didn’t go unopposed. The People Snatchers were called terrorists, but I knew better, for my own parents were among them. Their job was to force humans and High Deviants alike to look behind this image of order and force them to see the chaos the world was coming into.

  And the computers, which were the sole advisors for our world governments, fought their order endlessly, assassinated brutally, regardless of collateral damage. They were without mercy. They recalled millions of Highers to a secret place to be slaughtered without cause. Even innocents were asked for, children and women, some of them even human, I heard.

  This sparked my uncle to rebel. He’d been working in the public eye instead of behind the scenes like my parents and our friends. My uncle called the People Snatchers cowards behind closed doors, but, unfortunately, due to my uncle’s publicity, my parents and their order were blamed for what was to happen next.

  My uncle and his followers decided to unleash their new Necrosis. Their defense mechanism to kill off the humans. The computers, which had designed Deviants to have better immune systems, were supposed to be immune.

  He’d altered it, and the first casualty was in Washington D.C. The capitol. To make a point, I guess. A few died. Then Deviants died. Deviants and humans alike. Then thousands. Millions. It spread like wildfire across the nation. It was a pandemic unlike any the world had ever seen, and our city – this place – was the genesis of it all.

  Then, people began to turn instead of die.

  That was when the High Council was given total control and what little mercy was granted to our people was now expended. We were to be hunted and slaughtered, and it was fight, hide, or die.

  The first hydrogen bombs came down in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Omaha. The next day, D.C., New York, and Miami fell.

  And I thought the World Wars were over.

  The refugees still tell us that humans all over are being exterminated, that Deviants are doing it, and that the Great Deviants, people like me, the second generations, are corrupt and telling them to.

  The logistics didn’t matter to me really though. It was what the war meant to us…my mom and dad and my brothers and I. The war made us forbidden. There was no Higher and Lower Deviant, not anymore. There was Deviant and there was human. There was no longer any in-between. The High Council made sure of that.

  Hide, fight, or die.

  People are saying that the Deviants speak of us like prophets, like we are supposed to come out of hiding and help with the genocide from both ends. I suppose that was probably what the High Council thought we would do when they went too far, when they banned our existence.

  But that was the logic of brutality. Expect violence because of violence.

  But the High Council’s arrogance and conceit and it’s selfish lack of feeling for us, my family and I, has led me to hate them far more than the surviving humans I pretend to be kin with. He has brought me into a war my children, my children’s children, and all of them after me will never come out of. He has brought me into a war that will lead every human everywhere to hate me and everyone like me for the rest of our days on this planet. And I don’t even know why.

  And I haven’t even done anything.

  My mom said before it all happened that it was because people hated things that were different and that we were different. She said they didn’t want us to be alive, but that didn’t mean it was wrong that we were. She said the reason they hid, the reason I should never hate people, is because I am like them.

  I am just the opposite side of the coin. The High Council doesn’t don’t know us. We’re not gods. We’re just people. We weren’t prophets. We’re just…different. We don’t hate humans. We’re like them in every way.

  I was seventeen when the thing hit my house. I had three brothers too, an unheard of number. I was among one of those families. Therefore, the government gave us the title everyone then wanted.

  But perhaps I get ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.”

  Ollie looked up from the book and stared into my eyes with a steadiness that reminded me painfully of Chess.

  “Do you know who wrote this?” he asked.

  “Is there a name?”

  “Yeah, one…at the beginning. Halo Reliant.”

  “They called my First Mother this,” I said, perking up.

  “What do you mean ‘they called?’”

  “You don’t get to name your own children?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, “such a thing was forbidden, it was said.”

  “That was my First Mother’s name,” I whispered quietly. “Halo. It was her name.”

  I looked up at him with curiosity so deep it was a necessity to lean forward and look. He pointed to markings I could not understand.

  “What says that?” I asked quietly.

  “Halo Reliant,” he responded quickly.

  “She was my most important ancestor. She had stayed alive during the Final Hour. We call her our First Mother.”

  I looked down at the black little letters in awe and disbelief. My First Mother, who had been gone for years and years, had written a diary – a journal – an account of her life – for my Second Mother. For my Third…For however many Mothers there were in between. And then for me. Evergreen must have had it from my own mother; she was with me for a while before my mom died. She must have kept it for me. She and Skate must have been looking for it. I felt the first itchings of excitement.

  When I looked into Ollie’s eyes, he looked to be in agony, and some of that strange fury had returned.

  The familiar distrust clouded his eyes again. I looked away first, wishing I could see myself the way he did, wishing I could know what I had done to make him doubt me so adamantly. I wished I could understand my offense against him so that I could correct everything I had done. I wanted him to be my friend, I realized (with pathetic bitterness,) because I had nothing else to make of my life. Ollie was my new goal, and I had to abide by it.

  “This is an amazing story,” he told me sincerely, almost like it pained him.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because it’s a perspective I’ve never heard before.”

  “Is that bad?” I asked.

  He tightened his mouth.

  “No,” he finally said. “I’m just afraid of what it might mean.”

  Chapter Twenty-three: The Name Game

  I began to read to her again and her eyes took on an expression of disbelief and awed exhilaration. My heart raced. Something was coming. I could feel it, but I had to read the story to know.