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  “What happened to you to make you look like… like THAT?”

  “Oh surely, I don’t look that bad. My Assistant even prompted me to comb my beard when I woke. I’m assuming that you mean how did I get to be so tall, dashingly handsome and well dressed?”

  Boy 57 shrugged his shoulders and looked around the room for guidance from his peers. All of the other Boys looked equally confused.

  “Well,” 71 replied without waiting for an answer from the group, “It’s simple. I grew up, just as each of you is bound to do sooner or later. Oh, don’t you worry,” he winked one eye at 57, “It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a very long time for you to reach your full potential as a Man. We humans have been given a talent that none of the machines around us has learned to mimic – we change in time. Yes, we will stay in our assigned careers and follow the Community directive throughout our life span. But we will do so as we grow taller, bigger, stronger, weaker, smaller, smarter, sillier and any other number of things that we can be.”

  The blinking on the wall behind the old human never ceased, even increasing as he moved on to new questions. “94, what would you like to add to the discussion?”

  “How many careers are there? Which ones are the best ones? How do we get a good one?”

  “Oh, my,” the Man rubbed the facial hair he had referred to as a ‘beard’ and scratched where a chin would be. “Three questions from you. Well, let’s see if we can answer them before we run out of time. First, there are hundreds of careers available to humans, but generally they fall into three categories. Education, Defense and Labor. As far as which one is the best, that is something that Men continue to debate even until they are living their final cycle. In truth, all of them are essential to the Community, and so each of them can easily be argued as being the best. As far as getting a career, it will be assigned to you by the Head Machine at the end of your time at C.A.T. based on the talents and strengths that are uncovered during testing.”

  Although easily apparent that the Boys were still bursting with questions, the tone signaling that testing had not started on time rang through the air. “This discussion has, I trust, been enlightening. Let us resume our testing. If you have any questions that have not been answered, please hold them until our next opportunity to speak as a class. It helps to keep me from having to repeat myself twenty times.” The Man made a series of motions on his tablet and in unison the wall behind him and the tablet in the hands of each Boy began to shift and change.

  The tests intrigued 62. There had not been any instruction on what to do with them during any of the classes since he arrived at C.A.T. and for the first two cycles all he did was stare at the shifting images on the wall. In time, he noticed patterns in the designs and began to select and manipulate them on the tablet in front of him. He found that pushing some of them together created a variety of reactions. Whether a change in color, a sporadic explosion of lines and curves, or simply an enlarging of the image, he quickly discovered he could get an effect with nearly every stroke of his hand upon the screen.

  As abruptly as the shifting shapes appeared on the tablets, when class ended the images on the wall and all of the individual tablets in the room went dark. By the time the Boys realized that their tablets had turned off, the tones signaling the end of class were echoing through the halls and the Man had already tucked his tablet into his robe and exited the room.

  Boy 62 pushed his tablet into the drawer marked Student Tablet and rushed into the tunnel to follow his teacher. 2871 strode forcefully against a sea of Boys pouring out of classrooms, and 62 did his best to push through the crowd. He hoped to see where the Man went at the end of class. He was filled with an overwhelming urge to discover if there were more Men in the compound, and to know if they lived freely or if they were bound to the same cramped cubes as the Boys.

  Although 2871 was several heads taller than the crowd pushing past him, he quickly vanished into the sea of faces. Unable to make any headway against the strength of his brothers, 62 had no choice but to reverse course and follow the flow of bodies back to their pods. He sighed in resignation as he realized there was nothing to do but swallow down dinner and wait for tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 2

  Time passed in a blur of Machines, testing, and dark hours spent confined. It took many cycles for 62 to adjust to his new surroundings but he finally learned to quiet his mind enough to sleep when the lights dimmed. 62 found that as the thickness of dinner filled his belly, slumber came quickly. He could now sleep until the sounds of breakfast rolling through the steel tubes above welcomed a new cycle.

  As much as he missed the Nursery, 62 looked forward to going to class. In the cycles following the classroom discussion with 71, there had been no further talk about the role of humans in the Community or instruction on how Boys could become Men. 62 hoped that his teacher would open the floor to questions again.

  In the meantime, the tests changed from shifting shapes and lines to long lists of simple problems. At least, 62 thought they were simple. Regardless of the type of problem: terminology questions, equations or detailed schematics, the answers seemed to leap out at him. It was almost as if the solutions were being handed to him. Neither the tablet nor the teacher ever told the Boys if they had completed the tests correctly, but 62 rarely worried about whether or not he was making mistakes. While he selected answer after answer without pause, most of the other Boys in the class seemed to scratch their heads and look around the room anxiously between questions.

  The time spent sitting at his tablet surrounded by the silence of other Boys deep in thought allowed 62’s mind to wander from the task at hand. His head frequently flooded with questions that he ached to ask his teacher. He didn’t have a way to record his inquiries as they arrived though, so he repeated them over and over to himself until he was sure he had them memorized.

  In spite of this curiosity, or perhaps because of it, Boy 62 fell into a pattern of rushing through his tests. Finishing long before the other Boys, he spent the rest of the time in class tracing his finger across the tablet while he thought about the questions mulling around in his mind. A soft grey line followed his finger as he dragged it across the smooth surface, staying for only a few moments before fading back into the tablet's white background. It didn’t take long for 62 to begin moving his finger wildly across the tablet. He found that by moving quickly enough, he could create whole shapes. He began filling the tablet with pictures so quickly that there would be no more room on the screen and he would have to wait for the lines to fade before he could make any more.

  Some of the shapes he created made him feel excited and happy. He fought the urge to show them to the Boys sitting near him. The fear that he would be disciplined for misbehaving outweighed the want to share his creations. So, instead of sharing he smiled to himself and did his best to memorize each image before it disappeared.

  When the tone sounded for class to end, 62 sighed in disappointment. He loved everything about class; the mystery of his teacher, the varying complexity of his tests and the chance to play with the subtle images on his tablet. He began to hope that his tests would place him in Education so that he could become a teacher like 71.

  A full seven cycles after the teacher initially opened the floor for questions, 71 again sat in his high-backed chair facing the Boys. His long beard wagged back and forth as he turned his head, his gaze following each Boy’s path as he entered the room and sat behind his tablet. Once the door slid closed and the distinct clicking of the locks was heard, the teacher’s eyes twinkled wildly. He cleared his throat and asked, “Well, what have we learned?”

  Lights flashed on the wall behind the old human, but he didn’t turn to look at the numbers displayed behind him or glance down to see who had indicated their answer on the tablet on the desk in front of him. Instead, 2871 got up slowly from his seat and began walking up and down the rows between the Boys. “I trust that you’ve learned a few things about the testing. First, that there are no corr
ect answers; or even if there are correct answers you won’t be disciplined for answering incorrectly.”

  2871 stopped by a Boy two rows over from 62 and gazed at him knowingly. “In fact, it seems that at least one of you has purposefully answered every problem incorrectly just to find out what will happen.”

  The Boy beside the teacher flushed a deep red, embarrassment easily read on his face before he ducked his head and looked at his feet.

  71 laughed loudly, louder than any of the Boys had heard laughter before. He slapped the Boy beside him heartily on the back and cheered, “It is always a joy when I find the ones who push the limits!” 2871 turned to the rest of the room with a stern and warning glare, “But be warned, my brothers, you will find that purposefully failing your tests will not end well for you. These tests lay out the course of your future in its entirety. None of you want to be stuck cleaning old manuals and dusting off gears for the rest of your lives. You are all much too bright for that!”

  He patted the head of the blushing Boy as he continued to pace the room, and the Boy exhaled a deep sigh of relief as the teacher moved on. The Man fell silent as he allowed his warning to sink into the young minds.

  “So what else have we learned?” 2871 asked the question more to himself than to the students as he continued his lecture. “Perhaps we have learned that we are able to solve problems we have never had to solve before? Some of you have shown considerable proficiency in diagnosing programming issues, which is a skill that comes in handy no matter what career you are chosen for.” The teacher nodded towards 62 and the Boy sitting in front of him as he spoke these words. “And the rest of you,” he opened his arms wide as if he were going to embrace the entire room, “You each will show your talents in the many cycles to come.”

  The Man smiled at the room, his thick eyebrows and long beard rearranging themselves with the changes in his expression. “So, that brings us to what I know you’re all holding back. Are there any questions?”

  Lights flashed, covering the tablet projection with blinking indicators for every Boy. “Well, I suppose that should keep us busy for the rest of the cycle,” the Man said emphatically as he gestured to the wall. “Let’s get started, shall we? In order of appearance on the screen, ask your question. Starting with 94. Go ahead, Brother.”

  The Boy looked at his teacher with a look of deep concentration, “Last time, you said we are animated all the same but we have different talents. How can we be the same as well as different?”

  “Excellent question, 94. What better place to start to learn about ourselves than at the beginning! How many of you know what the animation process is?” The teacher paused for just a moment until he was sure none of the Boys had an answer. “Of course, I didn’t expect any of you to know the process. Your Nannies would have no reason to educate you. So let us begin.

  “In order to animate a human, two forms of matter are joined. This combining of matter results in the simultaneous division of cells that are so small that they cannot be seen outside of the Laboratory. The Laboratory, of course, is where animation is conducted.

  "Over time, the cells divide and grow so much that they begin to form a body and that body grows until it is about the size of your fist.” At this he folded the long slender fingers of his right hand until his hand resembled a tight ball of flesh and raised it in the air for the whole class to see. “At this point, the being is not able to breathe or feed on its own. In fact, it is completely dependent on the Animators to keep it alive.

  “All of the organs and essential tissues continue to form inside this body and the being grows at an incredible rate until it is roughly the size of your head.” Instinctively, all of the Boys began to look around the room, judging the sizes of their brother’s identical heads and trying to imagine a body so small.

  “Eventually, the body is fully formed and able to function independent of the Animator's assistance so they cease feeding it, expel it from its protective casing and ship it to the Nursery where it grows and becomes…” the teacher waved his hands wildly around the room, “one of you. Now, because of this process; the indistinguishable tissue used and identical procedures for each Boy’s creation, physically we all appear very much the same. We each have the same brown hair, same pink skin, same brown eyes and same bone and muscle structure. But that is where the similarities end. Each of us has our own mind, our own likes and dislikes, our own strengths and weaknesses, our own wants and desires. So therefore, we are all the same. But we are each different as well.”

  The next Boy on the screen, 75, quietly asked his question as the others excitedly poked and pulled at their skin and hair, realizing for the first time that each of them looked identical to the Boys sitting around them. Even 62 was so caught up in the excitement of comparing his bare toes to those of his neighbor that he missed it.

  “Fantastic question, 75!” The teacher’s exclamation prompted the Boys to break away from their inspection of one another. “The reason that you must sleep alone in your own cube is that you are growing to become Men. Studies have shown time and again that Men are the most productive if they are kept alone during rest, and come together as a group to solve problems. I know it is lonely, little one, but you will eventually get used to it.”

  62 now had his turn to ask the teacher a question, and he sorted through the dozens of possibilities saved in his mind. He quickly identified the one that bothered him the most. “What happens to the Boys in our pod who misbehave and then never come back from their discipline?”

  The room fell silent, each of the Boys freezing in the many odd poses they'd configured during their comparison of one another. Regardless of their odd position, each Boy turned eyes full of burning desire and sorrow towards the teacher.

  Someone near the door chimed in, “Yes, what happens to them?”

  A Boy in the back of the room added, “Are they all right?”

  A tentative voice near the teacher whispered, “Will they ever come back?”

  The teacher’s expression changed from enthusiasm to sadness and he turned his back quickly on the Boys. “This is not a question that I have the answer to. Boys and Men will disappear from your lives when they are found to be acting against the best interest of the Community. No one knows why they decide to no longer work beside their brothers, but when they make that choice they are taken from us and we must learn to continue on without them.”

  A somber grief filled the room as the group mourned the loss of brothers who would never again return to their pod. The teacher remained standing with his back to the class for many long minutes. Finally he cleared his throat loudly and addressed the class again, a slight crack in his voice. “Enough of such talk. Let us think on more cheerful things. 18, what is your question?”

  The questions and answers continued on until the end of the class but 62 didn’t hear the other Boys or his teacher any longer. The sound that rang between his ears was the sobbing cries of the Boys he would never see again. His chest ached as he thought of them being sprayed with the sticky fog of sleep and taken away forever.

  Although he didn’t know much about the differences between humans and Machines, he was sure that it must be difficult or impossible to reprogram a malfunctioning human. 62 had seen dozens of Machines repaired in the Nursery and at C.A.T. Machines were worked on out in the open when they broke down, it being easier for repairs to be done at the site of the problem than to lug broken equipment somewhere else to fix. But 62 had never seen repairs done on a human before. He realized that the organs and tissue 71 described during the explanation of animation must take specialized equipment to handle. He had heard of broken Machines being disassembled and discarded. He hoped that this was not the way that the misbehaving Boys and Men were handled.

  The thought of his brothers being ripped apart or reprogrammed troubled 62 deeply, and for the rest of the cycle he was lost in thought over the concept. He was relieved when the quiet tones signaled it was time to return to the pods. It would take
a long time alone for him to clear his head.

  Sleep did not come for 62 that night, and he wondered how his brothers in the adjacent cubicles were able to close their eyes and drift off to sleep without worry. Fear coursed through his veins, and each time his eyes did grow heavy enough for sleep to overtake him he was soon jolted awake by the images of angry Nurses flickering behind his eyelids.

  As he had when he first arrived at C.A.T., 62 rolled onto his side and looked up at the scrolling sign above the doorway of the cube across the walkway. Cycles since animation… 2,937… Height… 117.3 centimeters… Weight… 26.012 kilograms … C.A.T. Result: unknown.

  CHAPTER 3

  It took many cycles for 62’s concern for the missing Boys to fade, but eventually the mind numbing schedule of continuous testing drowned out the feeling of sadness. The fear that he might do something bad and be pulled out of his pod was present enough, however, to cause him to behave as perfectly as he could. The fear of being taken away also caused a new curiosity. He began to wonder about what might exist beyond C.A.T.

  No longer so grief-stricken that he stared at his feet, he began to steal lengthy glances at his teacher. He thought about the old Man moving down the halls of a pod as a Boy thousands of cycles ago. It was strange to think that the hair on 62’s own head would migrate down to cover his chin and cheeks the way that they masked his teacher’s face. But, as 2871 pointed out during the last classroom discussion, each Boy and Man were created equally and from the same synthesized matter. None would ever rise above the station of any of the others, and all would grow to be grey Men; tall and lean under their bristly white facial hair. He spread out his thick, chubby hand and couldn’t imagine it turning into slender fingers and folds of loose skin.

  Although he was still too young to fully understand the complications and simplicities brought on by the sameness he shared with his brothers, he did feel a familiar connection with them and a new desire to understand why they were each created the same. He found himself not only in awe of his masterful teacher, but also suddenly interested in finding the other teachers that tutored the thousands of Boys in C.A.T. He discovered that finding other Men was difficult at best, and getting close enough to speak to them was impossible.