subrosa: the adventures of bill chase chapter_02

Chapter 2


I heard Brian moving about in the next room.

"How can I explain myself? There are too many ways to perceive words and not enough words to display perceptions and ideas," I said as I sat up in my bed and put my feet on the floor. "Do you know what I mean?" I bellowed loud enough so that Brian would be obliged to reply.

"No, of course not," he answered.

"Who is making breakfast this morning?"

"Mark and Chris, I think."

Brian was sitting at his table writing a poem when I walked into his room.

"What are you writing about?"

"About feeling like a ship afloat a placid ocean with no wind to push me in any direction."

"How can you be writing about an ocean if they exist only in fables of an outside world? Why would you write something you do not believe?"

"It is a poem. I can say anything I please in a poem."

"Mark and Chris, that means thirteen grain cereal with honey and milk, toast and cherry juice."

"No Doubt."

I told Brian about my dream so that we could poke meanings at them before going to breakfast. We were late getting to breakfast so everyone was seated eating when we got to the eating room, everyone except for Reggie who liked to stand up when he ate. He was convinced it was better for his digestion. Neither of the Fathers were there this morning: they usually had breakfast on their own.

Brian and I got our food and sat down at a table with some younger boys. They were excitedly discussing the uses of logical constructive deliberation over the alternative of random chaotic guessing. The one boy admitted logical reasoning was a necessity, but that it was equally important to stab at unknown possibilities to encourage the mind to expand itself rather than perfect order of thought. But they could not see any use in expanding the mind when we only had a finite world to deal with.

"But the mind is a world of its own," he argued.

"The mind is only a tool to help us be aware of our surroundings," another boy put in.

"If you open up your mind, it can be more expansive than the world."

"The only limits to the mind are what we put on it," I said.

They looked at me as if they wondered why I was talking. I decided to back out of the conversation to resume being a spectator.

"Sorry, I was just thinking out loud. Excuse me," I said.

They continued on about how long forever was and what would be the use of it. I felt they had too much self-interest to have any clear perception of other things. Brian looked at me with a puzzled expression.

"Have you been brainwashing this poor boy?"

"No, I have never talked to him except in passing. Maybe we are kindred spirits from the same test tube."

"I find it odd that he should be able to think like that."

"I find it odd that the others are not able to think like that," I replied.

"I have often wondered it the way we think has been implanted in our brains."

"How is that?"

"Maybe we have as much free will as a stone that has been hurled through the air. The delusion of free will is given to us to give us the strength of spirit to desire our own survival that is actually only a part of the whole survival of a species. Some rebellious thinking is needed to make the whole of consciousness stable. Or more balanced. Those other boys will never believe anything the little freak tells them. He is a pawn doomed to be disassociated and sacrificed for the benefit of the norm and the system."

"You are the one that is mad. I would worry about you before I worried about me," I said.

"Do not renege."

"Trust me," I said with a contrived sinister smile.

"Sure, with my life. But anyway, you have to think of all the possibilities. There is the possibility that we are just gears in a machine. The way you and the kid think and act is not a deviation but a necessary part of the whole."

"My brain is getting tired. I have to get out of this place. I hate these walls," I said.

I put my spoon down without finishing my breakfast cereal. Never, when I was younger, was I aware of what I was becoming. I would be a frightening stranger to my childhood self. There were probably times when I feared that I was turning into something different. I may still fear it. But it was too late to stop it. I could not go back to change what had already been. I would have to accept what I was turning into and deal with what might await me.

"Never give in," I said to the boy or myself as I got up to go.

I looked at Brian with a kind of sign language that neither one of us knew but somehow understood. With no hesitation, I headed to the lab to watch the Fathers. It was a very unusual thing to do but I had decided to see them once more before I left. I felt my boldness might keep them from suspecting me.

I opened the door to the lab and walked along a wall to a chair, sat on the arm of it and watched as the Fathers worked. Father Onus looked up from his work and smiled at me. I thought he knew what I was thinking. I could not force myself to smile back. I felt exposed.

"Come over here, Steve. I want to show you something."

I was surprised that he even took notice of my presence but for him to talk to me while in his domain seemed very wrong. I felt he was breaking an unwritten rule.

He kept looking at me with his sombre smile. He had wrinkles in his face; his skin was a bit loose. Although the areas around his eyes were fairly dark, his eyes glowed with confidence and wisdom. I found it hard to hate him as I thought I should have. He was the closest thing I had to what the ancient tales called a father. No choice but to move. No options of where to go. I had to go see what he wanted to show me, not because he demanded it but because any other action or inaction would not have worked. I felt an urge to jump down his throat and scream into his lungs.

It seemed like the distance I had to travel to get to where he stood kept stretching before me as I walked toward him. Looking back at the chair to make sure I had moved from it, I could see I was a fair distance away, thus figured I must have moved. When I finally regained awareness of my feet, I was about one step away from running over Father Onus. As I planted my foot down forcing my body to stop, Father Onus stepped aside to allow me to stand in front of his microscope.

"Look in there," he said.

He described what I was looking at and how it was the blueprint of the next child that would be born in our world. He pointed out that there were no genetic flaws and that the potential for the evolution of a species that had no flaws was a great advancement for the world. I thought he was telling me something in his excitement that he should not have. What purpose could there have been for seventy boys and young men to evolve into something different? If there were no flaws now in our structure, what would be the catalyst in an unchanging, finite world to necessitate our evolving into anything other than what we were?

I looked at him questionably.

"You think this old zealot is a madman," Father Onus said putting his arm around my shoulder as he walked me to the door. "One day you will see what we are doing is what we believed had to be done. I am sorry I cannot give you a reason."

No fooling, you crazy old man, I thought as I walked down the hallway. There just does not seem to be any reason.

The question of choice plagued my mind. Father Onus had practically said good-bye to me as if it was time for me to leave and venture into the unknown. To find a reason, maybe. Maybe there was a different task ahead of me. Whatever it was, I knew I had to venture into a world that we were not even led to believe existed.

It all seemed contrived in an absurd way.

I could not speculate anymore, so I decided to go to the garden to lie in the dirt for a rest. Sleep took me away. When I awoke I tried to jump out of my skin. Looking around, I noticed I was still in the garden. Running seemed to be the only solution to my strange condition. I sprang to my feet and ran through the garden to the empty eating-room, through the eating-room to the activities-room, through the activities-room, where I drew some puzzled looks, to the stairs, down the stairs to the halls, through the doors and corridors and to our unit. I did a somersault as I entered Brian's room and then jumped up on his bed.

Brian looked up at me from his book, scratching his head calculatingly.

Smirking serenely, he asked, "And what brings you to this space in time with such vim?"

"I was in this dark misty forest with watchful contemptuous eyes judging the diligence of my efforts. They seemed to demand that I justify my time and actions. I struggled, almost grovelled, through the muck and slime of my farcical environment, carrying a large burden of slate. I felt frail and weak, hopelessly enslaved in the painful drudgery of my mindless, aimless meandering. I longed for escape from the hell of meaningless tasks that had been chained around my life."

"Sounds like one of your dreams," Brian put in.

"Yes, but listen. Let me continue. There is a more hopeful ending, or maybe a beginning."

"Let me hear it," Brian urged with forged interest.

"As I was stumbling, hunched back, with slate weighing me down. Let me clarify the picture. I felt like a fool, a clown without any control. I was a dumb puppet on tangled strings."

"Fine. I have the picture," Brian said.

"It was bleak and wet and sinister," I continued.

"I have a dictionary of my own," Brian interrupted again.

"Good. You design the picture in your head. As I was standing bent over holding this slate, I was suddenly filled with a strength, a hope that made me strong. I stood up so fast that the rock went flying in all directions. I had forgotten where I was and what I was doing. Through the darkness of the woods, I saw a light, a light much more brilliant than this one over our heads. With an urgency I have never felt before, I rushed towards this powerful light. As I came closer, I saw in the light a figure of such beauty that my present knowledge would not come close to proper description."

"Make an effort."

"Okay, you know we only have one sex here; we have questioned that before, but from what we know about biology, we must have another sex. I am not sure why the other sex is not here but I think it might be because of the power it possesses.

"This figure of the other sex stood as tall as I am, or taller, clad in a minimum of clothing. Clothing much different from the fabric we wear here. This figure radiating in the light had beautiful, long, smooth legs. The clothing that went between its statuesque legs was tight. Tight enough that there could not be a penis or testicles. At the chest were big hemispherical muscles; they added so much to the grace and beauty of the figure. The face was smooth and hairless like a young boy's face. The hair on its head was long, very long, and shining black. In the figure's hand was held what must have been a sword or something metal. Without speech or gesture it beckoned me to come closer, but as I did, the figure disappeared. I climbed to the spot where I had seen the figure. Outside of the darkness of the forest were immense distances beyond comprehension."

"Strange dream," Brian said.

"I am not sure if it is. There has to be something beyond this place we are living in. Think of it. What might lie beyond these barriers that we assume are the boundaries of our world?"

"You are crazy. What makes you think there should be more than what we know?"

"A world cannot consist of such a small space. It does not take much imagination to believe there is something outside these walls. We are a small part of the whole. I am convinced of it. You know there must be women somewhere; man is not that unique an animal."

"Why are you so crazed with the opposite sex?" Brian asked. "Is there something wrong with your hormones? Maybe you should talk to one of the Fathers."

"No! It is too late. No one must know. We do not want anyone to know we are leaving. I am not sure what the Fathers would do to try to stop us."

"Us?"

"Do you know what is really odd?"

"Is there something else?"

"They might already know."

Brian said nothing for what seemed aeons. I hoped he was not seriously thinking of staying. He could not really have wanted to stay in their world. I was certain I could convince him. No longer was there any sanity in staying.

"You are convinced of this outside world and know how to get there?"

I slapped him on the back.

"You will see when we get out there," I assured him.

I flopped back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. For as long as I could remember, we have done nearly the same things over and over in this place. There was no future in the drudgery. Because it was not a wise policy to ask the Fathers any questions that would indicate discontentment, it meant that there was always an air of ignorance in our world. What we learned seemed so useless that we spent most of our spare time in mindless delusions. If I were ever going to get out, it had to be immediately or I would end up becoming a vegetable from the tension.

In my many hours of poking around in every corner of our world, I had found what I figured to be ventilation vents. It took me weeks of researching ancient tales and chronicles in our library to understand what ventilation was. Eventually, I decided that if air was coming into this small world of ours through ventilation, the air had to be coming in from somewhere. Somewhere outside.

There were probably many obvious facts to indicate an outside world but I had been guided by ignorance. I had learned a way of seeing that made it difficult to see any other way .I did not know the consequences of my new beliefs and my intention to get out, but I knew I had been trapped blind too long. I had no choice but to look for a new world.

"Do not say anything to anyone, Brain. I do not know if we will get out if anyone suspects our intentions."

"I think it is time to go for supper."

"The last supper, most likely."


by Joanne B. Washington

read on. chapter_03



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