Episode 4: Cull (Asa)

Asa tried to sleep with half his mind alert. His ears, his sense of his body and where it was in the world – those he kept awake as much as he could.

He heard nothing.

That was what bothered him the most, after. There was silence, and then there was the bell and the lights turned on. For a minute, he couldn’t see.

When he could, his mind raced to find an explanation he could stomach, survive, grow from.

There were thirty beds in this bunk room. Last night, a person occupied each bed. Now, many of them, too many of them, were empty. Asa scanned the room, subitizing.

His neck wrenched around for his best friend. Thayer sat on his bunk, a sock in his hands. Ten, including the two of them?

“Where is everyone?” Asa couldn’t help but ask.

He knew they were watched – everyone knew they were watched. This conversation would probably be analyzed later so someone could decide which one of them should live.

“I don’t know.” Thayer slid his sock onto his foot and buckled the flexishoe around it. “Why don’t you ask someone.”

Asa just had, but Thayer knew that. Thayer meant, ask someone who would have an answer. Like the little orphan Oliver, asking for more food right before they killed him. Everyone died in the stories. Don’t stand out, don’t slack, never step out of line…survive.

Asa laughed under his breath. “Why don’t you.”

Thayer’s eyes strayed to the room’s one door, in the center of the wall. “Maybe that’s where they all went.” He looked back at Asa. “I didn’t hear anything last night.”

Asa ignored the chill down his neck. “That is legitimately terrifying,” he admitted. He pulled his shirt on and started toward the door. Because they’d talked, they were the last ones leaving the room. They’d need to be early for their next activity to make up for it.

While he walked, Asa studied the abandoned beds. The blankets were crumpled, the pillows indented. When they’d left the room, they hadn’t made their beds.

Asa looked back at his bed, which he made by habit every morning – tight corners, flat blanket, smooth pillow.

“Maybe we’re getting more space,” Thayer commented.

The last time a cull had happened – they’d originally been a group of one hundred boys, reduced to thirty when Asa was eight – they’d gotten tables and chairs and board games in their room for free play.

“Notice who’s left?” Thayer added.

Asa hadn’t thought of that. Chen, Tsung, De’Ton, Akihiko, Jean-Claude, Rashid…gone.
Everyone left was caucasian with lighter skin tones.

“Yeah,” Asa joked, ever-aware of the cameras. “Brendan.”

Thayer laughed, but curbed it in the doorway. While the room had cameras, the hall had adults that might pass by. He and Asa fell into habitual silence as they walked.

They reached the main room of this wing, where their class ate meals and met every morning to start their day.

A new teacher stood at the front of the room, dressed in a combination of leather and linked chain. His short blonde ponytail swished when he turned his head to look at them. “You’re late,” he said.

“Sorry, sir,” Thayer offered quickly.

The teacher ran his thumb over the hilt of a sheathed sword that hung from his belt. He looked away from them and addressed the room at large. “All of you have passed the intellectual portion of your training. Your classmates have been reassigned.”

Asa wondered what part of being Asian or Haitian or any other non-caucasian counted as a failure at intellectual training.

The teacher unsheathed his sword.

For an instant, Asa wondered if maybe the missing students were the ones who would get to live. Maybe this man was about to kill them all.

The door to the hall was open. Asa debated how far he could get, if he ran. If it was even worth running, when death would be inevitable once it was decided.

He stood his ground. Either the man would kill them, or he wouldn’t.

The man folded his arms, still holding the sword. “Now we’ll be combining physical with what you’ve learned.” 

Apparently years of running, weight-training, and having mock strategy wars with teams, didn’t count as physical. Asa had more fitness and survival skills than most ordinary people who claimed to be gurus of either subject.

The teacher flipped the sword in his hands, and the blade caught the fluorescent light from above and reflected it out. Asa thought of an old poem, a translation of Dionysus…We knew thee of old, o divinely restored, by the light of thine eyes and the light of thy sword.

He realized with a startle, that this new teacher was here because their group was moving to a new task. They’d been assigned a mission, somewhere, and their leaders needed someone caucasian for the mission.

If they’d needed to do a mission in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asa knew, he would be dead by now. They’d chosen the ones with bodies best-suited to the task they had in mind.

“Only one of you can pass this training,” the teacher told them, a confirmation of Asa’s thoughts. “I’m your new teacher, Cecil, and I’ll be deciding which of you passes.” He re-sheathed his sword. “You’ll need broadswords, if you think you can manage to find those.

He pointed behind him to a table full of metal combat tools.  Unlike the polished sheen of Cecil’s sword, these were a dull oily color and the edges of some were jagged from use and damage.

Thayer stood beside him while they sorted through the pile of maces and daggers and longswords and short swords and some kind of serrated thing that looked extra painful. “Is this the other intellectual test?” Thayer joked.

“Just as long as your skin is pale and your eyes are round.” 

Asa picked up a sword he thought looked like Cecil’s sword, just as the teacher barked, “Why are the two of you talking?”

Asa hated this. He didn’t know what this teacher wanted from them yet, so he didn’t know how to respond. He met the teacher’s eyes. “No one said we couldn’t. Sir.”

“That’s right,” Cecil told the room. “No one did.”

“It won’t happen again, sir,” Thayer promised.

“Anything can be a resource,” Cecil lectured everyone, “including classmates. Why didn’t anyone ask me what a broadsword is?” He scanned the room, eyes taking in each student’s weapon. He paused at Thackery. “What is that?”

“A sword, sir,” Thackery said.

Asa turned to get a look at it. It was similar to the serrated one, but it had a curved tip and looked like a pirate costume piece. 

Cecil shook his head. “You’ll have to use it today.” He shoved a few tables to the side of the room, clearing an open area. “When you play with swords, what you do with your feet is more important than what you do with your swords.” Someone in the room sniggered, but Cecil ignored it. “Basic defensive position,” he demonstrated a knees-bent stance. “Basic offensive position.” He looked up from his feet. “Pair off. Try not to get yourselves killed.”

Asa grinned at Thayer. They squared off in a little open area of their own, and experimented with the different sounds swords made as they clanged together. Asa tried to pay attention to his feet. He could feel the difference between the two stances, the driving-forward of offensive and the extra force supplied by bending the knees in defensive.

Cecil went around the room correcting people. He stopped at Asa. “Don’t turn your foot out,” he said. “Sword-fighting is about precision.”

Asa straightened his foot. Cecil snaked his hand out and gripped Asa’s hair, tilting his head upward. “You have blue eyes,” he commented. “Natural, or artificial?”

Asa wished he could laugh. Of course he had time to pop some contacts in between getting up, discovering two-thirds of his classmates were dead, and coming here. 

He hadn’t even gone to the bathroom yet.

“Natural, sir.”

He was about to die. Every other kid in this room had brown or hazel eyes.

Cecil stared at his eyes and then released his hair with a shove. “Get back to training,” he told him. He moved on to the next group without any criticism or advice for Thayer.

Asa kept his eyes on the task as they trained. He didn’t want to look at Thayer’s safe brown eyes or think too hard about what his blue eyes meant.

Instead he thought about which muscles this training strained. His triceps got tired the fastest, but he realized that after just a few minutes of training both he and Thayer were exhausted and sweating.

When Cecil blew the whistle to stop, Asa dropped his sword on the table with relief.

“You should shower now,” Cecil instructed. “There are new clothes on the bench outside the bathroom, which you’ll wear from now on.” He smiled at them all. “The water heaters have been turned off to save money.”

Brendan groaned, and Thayer rolled his eyes, but everyone else just started the walk down the hall to the showers. There was a basket for discarded clothes today. Asa dropped his jeans and white tank top, his boxers and socks and shoes into it. He wondered what the new clothes would be like.

“Do you think that means we’re allowed to talk between classes now?” Asa asked Thayer. The group shower was a line of shower heads. Normally, they shared, but today there was room for everyone to have his own space.

“As long as it’s strategic?” Thayer guessed. “What did he talk to you about?”

“My eyes are blue,” Asa joked, “so if I’m dead tomorrow, don’t get blue contacts.”

“If you’re dead tomorrow, they’ll tell us you were reassigned.” Thayer rinsed his face before asking, “Is dead an assignment now?”

Asa grinned at the thought. “Duties include not moving, and rotting.”

“Duration: infinite.”

Asa laughed. “Pay: dirt.”

Thayer laughed too, and for a second the weight of this place lifted off them.

They couldn’t afford to be carefree. He pointed above himself, to the shower head and the icy water. “This is awful.”

“Cold meat cuts cleaner,” Thayer joked. 

Asa tried not to think of the implications of that. They’d eat again eventually and the cafeteria staff served meat at every meal.

“Yum,” he said.

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