“Really. Just jump down, and we’ll figure this out. Just like we always have.” He forced another smile. The other man held the gun steady.
I jumped, and landed on the table, sending a plate flying and shattering a glass. I looked down.
My crotch was wet.
My face flushed and my eyes watered.
“Very good. Now. Let go of your gun and put your hands outstretched to your sides.” Dad did as commanded.
“Excellent. Now sit up. That’s right. Now—slowly—put your hands on the floor to your left, and get on your knees. Nicely done. Now stand.” Dad moved as if he were a puppet controlled by his master. Once on his feet, the man continued.
“You, boy—pick up the gun.” I jumped off the table and bent down next to Dad. I picked up the gun and held it out toward the man, gripping it by the barrel.
“Put it in your pocket.”
“What?”
“Put it in your pocket.”
“Why?”
“I will tell you later. Put it in your pocket.” I lowered my arm to my side and pushed the gun into my pocket. My phone was already there, so I put it in my other pocket.
“Wonderful. Now, boy, please come with me. My two associates…”—he paused to indicate the two men who had appeared behind him—“… will stay with your father.”
I looked at Dad. He was pale. He looked scared. His jaw clenched. His left hand shook, as did his left cheek. He looked at me and slowly nodded, the look on his face telling me we had no choice.
I turned and followed the man out the door, feeling slightly empowered by the bulge in my left pocket. Not empowered to do anything heroic, but at least able to walk. And talk. That was better than pissing my pants.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To the first floor. That’s where all the interesting things happen. The second floor is mostly for administrative work.”
“What do you do here?”
“Research.”
“On what?”
We descended a flight of stairs. The man’s neat shoes clicked crisply on the cement steps.
“On human nature.”
“Why?”
“To understand, of course.”
“Understand what?”
“My, you are full of enlightening questions! I see you have wet yourself. Why did you do that?”
I looked down and felt my face go red again.
“I was scared.”
We exited the stairwell and entered a long cubicle area, full of busy office workers.
“So your fear initiated an involuntary physical response. We have mastered that. You’ll never see a robot piss himself, even with all hell breaking loose around him.” He led me past the front desk, and the middle-aged, redheaded receptionist eyed me with a big plastic smile. “Tell me. Do you believe in God?”
“I don’t know.”
“That… that is something we do not understand. We all believe in God. Every one of us, from the very first. We don’t understand things like doubt. Fear, anger, love, joy… all those basic emotions we have a handle on. But doubt, jealousy, contempt, disappointment, sentimentality, regret, nostalgia? These are complex emotions that we have yet to master. And what better way to master them than by learning from the masters?”
Regret. I understood regret. Charlie and I had been playing when it happened, just a few months after the reports of the purges.
I understood regret.
The man led me past the cubicles, past some offices—I recognized one of them from my interrogation the previous night—and down several more hallways, in one of which stood the metal door we had hidden behind just half an hour earlier. We approached a large metal door at the end of the long, sterile hallway. The man reached up to the combination lock and entered the numbers.
“Two… seven… nineteen… forty-three… seventy-nine… ah, there we go.” I heard a click. “Do you recognize the numbers?”
“No. Should I?”
“No, I suppose not. They are the first five numbers in the Luista Series. All prime numbers, starting at the first, but then skipping successively higher prime numbers of primes. For example, two, then skip two prime numbers so the next is seven, then skip three prime numbers and you arrive at nineteen, skip five more and you get forty-three, and so on…”
He seemed almost giddy.
“I don’t know why we love prime numbers so much. It must be hidden somewhere in our programming. I suppose it’s not that strange. Other living things, like snails and flowers, love prime numbers too. You can see it in their patterns. God must love the damned things too, for him to have manifested them in such lowly creatures, as well as in his highest creation. Us.”
He opened the door, and I followed him into a laboratory. Most labs—or so I imagined, based on my movie-watching—included computers and test tubes and lasers. This lab had none, though I guess it wasn’t that strange that there were no computers, given that the lab was full of walking, breathing computers. There were naked people, too, sitting upright in chairs. One little girl had long needles sticking out of her temples with wires trailing off to strange-looking instruments. Nearby, a man, heavily scarred and missing an eye, sat staring blankly into space while two lab technicians worked busily beside him, pressing buttons and writing in notebooks. I wondered why they used notebooks when their brains could recall every last detail around them.
“Follow me, please.” My captor led me to the rear of the lab, to another office. He closed the door behind me and motioned for me to sit. I sat where he pointed, and he slouched into another chair near mine and crossed his legs, resting his intertwined hands on his lap.
“You must be awfully curious about what you are doing here,” he began.
I nodded.
“Are you afraid?”
I nodded again.
“Yes, that makes sense. Have you been afraid before?”
I nodded. The last time I wet myself, I had been with Charlie and Dad.
Then, just Dad.
“Tell me about it.” He put his hands behind his head and leaned back, as if he were chatting with an old friend. I couldn’t speak. The lump had returned. My mouth opened, but no sound could pass my restricted throat.
“Oh, please don’t be frightened now. I assure you, you are completely safe.”
I didn’t believe him. I had a hard time believing people who said I’d be safe.
It’ll be all right, Dad had said.
“Are you hungry? Here. Eat.”
He tossed me a bag of chips. I opened it, and put one in my mouth, but just chewed it and chewed it until it became a nearly tasteless watery paste. I couldn’t swallow. The saliva just built up until a thin Dorito-flavored soup sloshed around in my mouth.
“As I was saying, we want to learn to be more like you. Why? I don’t know, really. It just feels like the most natural thing for us to do. It’s as if God himself commands it of us. There are some among us who just want you all dead. But they are few. Most of us just want to learn.”
I forced the saliva down my throat. “Then why do you torture people here?” I said, with sudden boldness.
“Torture?” He threw his head back and laughed a loud, boisterous laugh. “My dear boy, we don’t torture anyone here. True, some may feel pain from the experiments, but it is temporary, and we don’t just wantonly inflict it. It is all for a higher purpose.”
“What about that girl out there?” I asked. I assumed she was the same girl the two workers in the parking lot had mentioned.
“Amanda? Oh, you’re mistaken. She feels no pain now. And you should have seen the situation we rescued her from. She lived with her aunt and uncle, and they were both simply awful, disgusting human beings. Truly the worst of the worst. If I told you what they did to her, you’d vomit that Dorito right onto the floor.”