The System.

The System:

I sat in my bare crème room. Socking up the short-lived calm after another day of chaos. Somewhere outside another protest was probably going on about another rebel group. Just another evening in central London. I slid off my hard bed and onto the harsh cold concreate floor. A bitter wind was blowing in from the half open window but I wasn’t really thinking about it. Numbly I staggered towards the window ledge and let the breeze engulf me.

Three more days. I thought. That’s all. Just three more days of this wretched pain.

Very soon all of this would not matter. In just three days I would be moving to the first training camp. It would be my chance to prove my worth in the suffocating pressure of this seemingly everlasting war. My brother was also a candidate and a good one too. I leaned out over the window ledge, just another shadowed face watching the commotion below. From up there in my small apartment I could watch the world go by, unseen. Dad had said that my brother would be down there in amongst the throng. The brother that I hardly knew. At twelve he was one year younger than me. I wondered what he would look like now. I leaned so far over the ledge that my entire upper body was dangling over the crowd, six floors below, but I knew I wouldn’t fall. Heights never really scared me. Not much did. At school they used to call me ‘fearless Phin’. That was when they called me anything. That was before I was picked for training. Then I was just another face, another person to send off. I knew that those who went to camp never came home. The Instructors that visited said that it was because it gave the candidates a real purpose, something worth fighting for. The other pupils just saw the camps as places to avoid. Like a prison or a slaughter hut. I didn’t know which to believe.

Down below a temporary structure had been erected in the middle of the street, a sort of podium thing. People from the flats around poured out onto the street in a never ending torrent. The many people were jammed into the platform like waves on a rock. A small black dot of a micro phone was being set up on the top of the wooden grey platform. I wondered what was going on. A speech maybe? Or an execution? Far more likely.

Suddenly, I felt something on my shoulder. A hand.

“What’s going on?” I asked. My voice sounded so much more timid and weak than I had meant it to be. I was just thirteen after all.

He pulled me round so that my back now faced the window. My dad - of course it was him – grabbed my hand and before I was able to say anything he was running down our stairs with me flailing along behind him.

“Artis is about to make a speech. Something to do with everything. They say it’s about the system.” My dad muttered up to me as we half ran, half fell, down the stairs.

Artis was my dad’s brother. Rumer had it that he was working on a drug that could make us ‘perfect’. They called it The System. All that I knew was that he was a scientist that worked for the government, part of the ‘War Intelligence Department’ whatever the hell that meant. My dad was sprinting now down all six flights of stairs we tumbled.

Suddenly we were swallowed by the crowd and my dad let his hand slip from mine and I was alone. I always hated crowds. I was not claustrophobic or anything I just, I suppose, hated being with people. I hated the way people shouted and grew angry, I hated the way that people became drugged, hyper and drunk but most of all I hated the way that other people were so unpredictable and uncontrollable and I hated being clamped in such close quarters with them. I stopped pushing and allowed them to push me forward.

“Hello everyone.” I heard Artis say from up on his high platform. Artis was a lofty sort of man with the fiery red hair and constellations of freckles all over his face that identified our family. He dressed in a simple crème shirt with faded grey jeans. It was almost as if he was trying to identify with the poorer parts of the city by wearing our distinct clothing. The man was a power hoarder who would usually where flash outfits in lime green, bright yellow and red. My father had seen him for who he really was and I did not doubt my dad.

Around me people stopped dead in their tracks and I could have heard a pin drop. The only noise except Artis’s voice was the sound of a hundred or more people breathing together in almost complete unison. It felt like I was part of one living machine. The faces of the people around me showed curiosity for the unknown and a bit of pride perhaps? All I was really paying attention to was the strange feel of fear on the air. I could smell it and almost taste it in a strange sort of subconscious way. People feared Artis. He was part of the government, the government had power and people feared power that they could not control.

“Uh hmm…” and so Artis began his speech “Today I have come to talk to you about the future and how we can forget our past.

Greed, they say, is one of our many Weaknesses. As the director of the ‘War Intelligence Department it is my job and duty” He added slyly “to understand our weaknesses. The W.I.D’s job is to categorize and abolish weaknesses which is why, on this very day, we are publishing the Eleven List. This list is split into two sections; emotional and physical qualities. Each of the Eleven is one of humanities weaknesses. Hate, Anger, Selfishness, Sadness, Dishonesty, Cowardice, Greed, Overconfidence, Jealousy, Physical pain and uncontrolled aggression are all of the qualities that work together to corrupt us and therefor create The Eleven list.

Within every one of us is the potential to wreak havoc across our country, our world.” Artis was really getting into his speech and the first droplet of sweat rolled down his freckled face. “Our weaknesses and dark desires have ruled us and slowly led us to destroy ourselves and the world surrounding us. But no more.” Around me people had begun to murmur and whisper but Artis continued his speech. “Those of you who stand before me today join me in a time of crisis. The world as we know it has fallen. Only the brave or utterly stupid remain in our pitiful city. War has been unleashed upon us all. But it does not have to be this way!”

Artis’s face was gleaming, hot and sticky. He was almost shouting the words. The crowd was silent and for the first time since Artis had begun his speech I realised that I had no idea where my dad had gone.

A figure was pulled up onto the stage. He – it was quite obvious that the person was a man – had a paper bag shoved over his head and his hands were tied behind his back. He was quivering all over and, try as he might, he could not break free of the grip of two thick set women behind him. As I watched this man struggling I realised that this man, this ‘random’ man, was in fact my dad. I felt sick. My dad was the only person who had always stood by me. In recent weeks I had come to think that he was the only one that cared.

If there was one thing that I knew about Artis was that my dad would be there for a reason and not a good one. Like most siblings Artis and my father were separated at birth to stop their love for each other from ‘distracting them from the greater good ’. That’s why most parents were sensible and only had one child so that they never need go through the trauma that some parents had to go through, my parents. Or perhaps more precisely, parent. My mum was killed by the ‘rebels’ in a battle that is now known today as ‘the siege of London’. My dad brought me up but my younger brother was sent away to some sort of children’s home. Or something. All I really know is that he had to swap houses due to his ‘unruly behaviour’. Three times.

“This man is a traitor to the government.” Artis screamed, his face riddled with revulsion.

I sank back into the crowd letting the emotion of Artis’s speech wash over me. I did not want to be there yet I could not tear my eyes off him. I was petrified. He could not harm his own brother? Could he?

I guess he could.

Artis pulled a silver syringe out of seemingly nowhere.

“This!” He triumphantly held the syringe up into the light. “This is the answer to the dreadful curse of the Eleven list. This is the System. Once this traitor has been released from his weaknesses he will be the ultimate peace maker and the ultimate human.”

My dad was going wild. I could not watch. He struggled in an impossible battle but the women held him fast while Artis pressed the needle to the side of my dad’s neck. Artis leant over to whisper something into his ear and I saw my dad stop shaking and instead just occasionally shudder.

Artis injected my dad and I saw him flop as he was pulled off stage and into a van waiting on the other side of the street. Waiting like an eagle does in the sky before it drops to grab it’s pray.

I tried to scream but I found no words in my throat. There was no point in chasing the van. It would be well on its way by now. My dad, my only dad, was gone. I collapsed with the frustration onto the street and let the crowd disperse around me.

My Dad…