Please press the button to indicate your choice.
Tahara looked down at the blue and yellow lights. The electric voice reverberated through her mind, a robotic repetition of itself, relentless, forcing her to make the the decision.
Please press the button to indicate your choice.
Tahara looked at the surrounding cubicles. The maze of decisions. She watched as other people left their stations. They had all decided.
Please press the button to indicate your choice.
She watched as Subject 72 fell to their knees. Anguish weakened their balance and weighed upon their conscience.
Her hand hovered over yellow.
Then over blue.
Sweat pricked and itched as it dangled off the tip of her nose.
Please press the button to indicate—
She pushed down full palmed on the button. The incessant voice paused, and then recalibrated.
Thank you. Your choice has been recorded. Please exit to your right.
Tahara let out the breath she had been holding. It never got easier.
She exited as instructed. Her palm showed the imprinted circle of the button’s rough plastic, proof that she had changed the course of another’s life.
Thank you for completing your civic duty.
A hologram of a woman, slender and poised, appeared before Tahara at the end of the hall.
Please accept this lunch ticket as a symbol of our gratitude.
A ticket appeared at the base of the woman, and as Tahara bent down and grabbed the ticket, she witnessed a glitch which made the woman’s shoes vary through shades of blue, shattering the illusion of a human interaction. The woman vanished.
Taharah entered the cafeteria and chose from an array of sandwiches, turkey on rye, and soup containers, chicken noodle, before she awkwardly scanned the room for an open seat. She saw one opened next to Subject 72, his shoulders slumped over his tray, the large numbers that emblazoned his back seemed to engulf him, taking over any other identity that once existed.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Tahara, Subject 89.”
“Penn,” he replied. “Subject 72.”
Tahara nodded, and took the seat across from him. It was the only interaction time during their mandatory six hour shift that they were allowed to speak.
“What’d you get in your first session?” she asked
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said warily.
“First time being called on?” she guessed.
“Yes,” he snipped as his shoulders dipped deeper.
“Well it gets easier,” she lied, “and now that you’ve been called once, you’ll be called again. It’s like an algorithm or something. Today was my fifth time in the past two months,” she said.
“I don’t want to do this again.” He hung his head low and did not meet her eyes, the steam from his paper cup clouded him for just a moment. She remembered that feeling. The crippling anxiety of having to return. But like all things in the world, they had broken life down systematically to buttons.
“You just have to think of the people as characters, if you read a book, or watched a movie with them, how do you think they deserve to be punished? You just have to learn to disconnect, it’s your civic duty,” she spoke loudly for the cameras that were above her, the microphones that were under the table, the holograms that recorded their movements.
“But they aren’t characters, they are people. It doesn’t seem right for me to control something—something so important.” He was angry, they warn people about defiants like him.
“I guess, but they are criminals, too,” she said, her response confident and pleading.
He huffed in response, “We don’t know why people do what they do.” He said, “haven’t you ever felt desperate?” He lowered his voice to a hushed whisper, “People are just trying to survive, the only difference between me and a lot of them is they got caught.” He kept his eyes on Tahara and she let the words sink low into her.
“I hope you are joking,” she said as she shifted uncomfortably in her seat, as she eyed him with an air of wariness, a reminder that they were not alone.
Please take your trays to the receptacle. Please continue to your next indicated location.
Please take your trays to the receptacle. Please continue to your next indicated location.
He smiled sadly at her as he got up and left the cafeteria, she placed her tray on the belt and walked to her assigned cubicle. Once inside she scanned her wrist, her name and photo card appeared on the screen in front of her.
Welcome, Tahara. Thank you for your participation in The Trials. You will be shown a video of a subject on trial for a crime. You will be given only the most relevant information. Please watch the video carefully. It will dictate your choice.
Tahara zoned out of the usual drone of instructions. She was very used to the process by now, and so she thought of Penn, his weathered face, and tired young body. She caught a quick reflection of herself in the black screened mirror and noticed too how her youth had been stripped of her in this box, and the others just like it. She wondered what choice Penn had to make. She wondered if he would be able to live with it, or if he’d shove it to the back of his consciousness, where hers lived.
38-year-old male. Sentencing for his involvement in the vandalism of the Health Clinic.
Evidentiary support: Video showing the subject at the location at the time of vandalism.
Evidentiary support: Wristband verification of identity at the time and location of the vandalism.
Vandalism includes $45,000 of damage to health equipment.
Vandalism includes $10,000 of damage to property.
Vandalism includes $25,000 of damage to health workers’ personal property.
Blue: 38-year-old male will live and work in the factory penitentiary for a minimum of sixteen years.
Yellow: 38-year-old male will be sent to prison for a minimum of ten years.
Please press the button to indicate your choice.
There are never easy choices. Press the button that seems the fairest to fit the crime. But now she thought of Penn. Tarnished and tired. He could not disconnect. She heard his voice, they are people. And for a moment she allowed herself to reconnect, to consider the life in her hands, about the 38-year old man; what did he look like? Does he have a family? We don’t know why people do what they do. Was his loved one dying in the health center? Was he sick himself, a dead man walking in his final days?
Please press the button to indicate your choice.
Tahara stared at the screen ahead. Slowly, and without thought, she backed out of the cubicle. The blue and yellow buttons flashed against the smooth sterile walls.
Please press the button to indicate your choice.
She stepped onto the hallway of cubes, and realized she was looking for him. She wandered away further, she could hear the voice of her monitor still repeating itself, unsatisfied with a lack of response. Her pace quickened. She looked at the backs of patrons, their number, their lives hunched over their screens. 46 pressed a yellow as she walked by. 17 was crying.
Please press the button to indicate your choice.
99 stared ahead, hands in pockets, zombielike.
72. His hands were in his hair, his back crouched over, stress seeped deep through his layers.
She tapped his shoulder. He turned, a look, one of possible reprieve, then turned to confusion.
She waved her hand for him to follow. He hesitated only slightly, before doing so.
“Tahara, what—” Penn began quietly.
“Shh, come.” She walked confidently through the maze of cubicles as a hologram appeared at the Exit.
Thank you for completing your civic duty. Please scan your wrist before exiting.
Tahara lifted her wrist as she indistinguishably avoided the scanner. Penn followed her lead.
The hologram disappeared with their presence evacuated. They walked quicker once outside. The wind was sticky, and the glare from the bright sun off the buildings burned their eyes. They slinked to the cool alleyway and pressed themselves against the metal scaled walls.
“What are we doing, Tahara?” Penn asked the severity of the situation settled over them like a thick fog.
“I just needed to get out of there—” she said. She met his gaze and realized how his eyes were gray with flecks of blue. As the stress left his furrowed brows his face softened.
“But what do we do now?” he asked.
The ramifications for skipping out on civic duty was, yellow: five years in prison, or blue: ten public lashings. But she didn’t say any of that, she just took his hand and pulled him further down the alley, their shoes slightly scuffed against the perfectly paved roads and when they reached the large concrete wall that bordered the ocean, they witnessed the No Trespassing Sign pristine and steadfast, never challenged. Nothing ever was. They’d heard what happened when people tried. Tahara looked at Penn, who took the first step. He tightly pressed his foot against the stone wall, and hoisted himself up. When he was atop, he leaned down close to help Tahara. They straddled the wall and could smell the salt they were forbidden to know. They stripped off their shirts and let them fall to the sand below as their numbers were lost, if just for that moment.
“I never really disconnected,” she admitted as she looked out across the horizon, and she witnessed the freedom of the water, the way it moved without calculation. “But then you said all the things I’d felt and it suddenly was too much.” She looked back at him as a tear formed and threatened to fall. She put her face in her hands. Then she felt Penn, his hands on her hands as he pulled them away and looked into her eyes.
“Thank you,” he said, still holding her fingertips with his fingertips.
She looked at him. “For what? I could’ve possibly just ruined your life,” she said with a sad severity.
“It isn’t my life, not really.” He looked out over the unpredictable ocean and said, “We can’t control everything, but we can control this.” He released one of her fingertips and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. He closed in to kiss her, she moved in to meet him. His lips were soft and relaxed as she matched herself to him. They heard the sirens of disobedience as they called in the distance. Their chips had disloyally given up their location, but they didn’t break from the kiss. It was a kiss of gratitude, of understanding, of tarnished minds and unpushed buttons. They hugged tight.
They knew they’d never see each other again, so they stayed as long as they could in the defining and immovable moment.
Reached. Subject 72.
Reached. Subject 89.
The tinny voice bellowed before them.
They were separated from each other, but Penn’s eyes stayed fixed on Tahara, as she felt an unimaginable emptiness for something she nearly never had.
She touched her lips as the car drove away, her eyes positioned out the back window as the yellow and blue lights of the car reflected off skylines.
Meaghan McDavitt is a high school teacher for a specialized creative writing academy in New Jersey. Her work considers and reflects on the behaviors of human nature and the unexpected journeys in life. When she is not writing, or teaching about writing, you can find her with a book, or child on her lap, and a fluffy dog at her feet. Her previous works have been published in Poet’s Choice and New Note anthologies.
Image: shutterstock.com
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Heavy Feather Review 