Goodbye Unit 527

Pressure constricted around the girl’s chest as she gazed outside the sedan window. Hands clasped tight in her lap, she couldn’t help but feel the insignificance of her being. A tiny bundle of beige against a canvas of the black leather as she sat in her standard play clothes in the back of the interior of the car. Cut off by the windows around her, including the pitch dark divider that separated her from the front driver she never saw, she felt like a puddle, unseen in the rain.

The girl couldn’t recall how many times she had stared out the window of her passenger seat. Seeing the same empty houses, undisturbed polished yards, and the occasional black unmarked car. Yet today, it was the other children blurring past her window who had ensnared her attention. Just released from their classes, they ran through the green astroturfed courtyard, moving faster as the car sped up. The girl’s stare bounced around the blissful faces of her classmates before landing on the soft doe eyes of her Teacher saying goodbye to them all.

Their eyes locked tight and her Teacher’s smile faltered, giving way to something raw and blemished underneath. She called out to her, something the girl would never hear, and began waving almost frantically at her. But the girl sank deeper into her seat, until her head dipped below the window seal and she could no longer see the outside world.

She’d skipped school that day, as she had done many days now.

Why?

She wasn’t sure.

Nor was she sure why it was she had been allowed to fake an illness she knew the Caretakers were aware of being impossible. Though they had let her stay at the Facility while the other children continued to go to School, the Caretakers had never questioned her much about her ill symptoms.

But today was different. They had bothered asking her how she felt. Simply escorted her to get a check-up. Something the girl hadn’t done in what felt like a long time. It had upset her at first, though her face did not move and she did not cry as they took from her blood, skin, and even bone. Then it was done before it had even started and with smiling faces she knew to be wrong, her Caretakers told her she would be returning to school tomorrow.

It felled her. Those words.

Leaving her with only that sinking sensation that had been haunting her for the past week. That feeling of something foreboding that had compelled her to fake being sick and stay to the confines of her bed. As if sorrow crept closer, inching its way to her with each passing day.

On instinct she turned from it, an attempt to step away from the mountain’s edge. Yet it stalked her still, passing through the shadows of School and reflected in the sullen face of her favorite Teacher.

The girl knew she could not skip again, not anymore, and with eyes heavy on the ground, she returned to School the next day. Pulled by some magnetic force she found herself standing before her Teacher. A place she had always felt warmed by, now weaved regret and guilt through her like embroidered stitches on her…

Her…

“Hello.” Teacher’s smile warmed the girl. “What’s wrong?”

The girl didn’t know what to say, so she shrugged. Lost was the thought she had never experienced before. Never formed, thus never existing.

Her Teacher’s smile wavered and she reached forward as if to touch the girl’s head. Halting midair, her Teacher withdrew her hand, the act erased almost entirely. But not forgotten. No. Not when the girl held it like a secret she had stolen. The Teachers were not supposed to touch them. Everyone knew that. But this was her Teacher, and the girl often found herself longing to be closer to the woman whose smile was something not meant to be feared.

Another Teacher walked by then and stopped, blinking as if in surprise to have noticed them at all. “You better get going, child. You have a busy day today. It’s Graduation day after all.”

For a moment the girl’s eyes fell to the floor, controlled by a pitfall of indescribable feeling. But she nodded obediently and scurried away with the others, followed only by the weight of her Teacher’s eyes on her as she went. Everyone was so excited. It was Graduation day today. The best day of their lives. A day where they got to eat their favorite foods, do their favorite things, and be celebrated by all. A day she had once looked forward to with all her heart.

The girl liked to draw. So she joined her classmates who chose crafts for their activity. Expecting their Teachers’ usual unforgiving critique of any flaws that may appear in their artwork, the children grew cheerful as praises left the Teacher’s lips. But it did not sit well with the girl, as the Teachers smiled fondly down at her and her classmates.

“Good job.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“How pretty.”

Their words were kind, if not manufactured in nature, and the other children ate them up like ants to sugar. Desperate for what they’d been denied all their lives. The girl cared little of what the other Teachers said though and instead only had eyes for one other person.

She watched her Teacher, as she made her way around the circle of children. Her compliments, the same as the others, until she stopped by the girl’s side. The girl looked up at the woman she so adored. At her immobile form, as she was pulled into that same unreadable expression on her Teacher’s. The girl wasn’t sure when she had first noticed it. Only that, she saw it every time now, her Teacher looked at her. Gone was her Teacher’s smile, replaced only by an emptiness that had the girl’s chest aching.

“Is something wrong?” The girl asked, expecting – maybe even wanting – the softer critique that her Teacher usually gave her on any other day.

Eyes fluttering, her Teacher shook her head in a quick uneven jerk of motion. “No. Everything is fine. I just… what made you draw that?”

The girl looked down at her picture. It was an array of clouded colors. Of yellow, orange, and white. All laying atop a layer of mixed blues.

She frowned. Her picture wasn’t anything at all. Nonsense. Ugly even. So very different from her other classmates’ perfect snapshot images of toys and portraits they had seen before.

“I don’t know.” The girl whispered, and felt smaller than she had felt before. “I saw it in my sleep.”

“You… saw it in your sleep?” Her Teacher’s eyes widened. “Like in a dream?”

“What’s a dream?” Another child piped in next to the girl.

The bell rang and the children were up and racing out into the hall, before her Teacher could respond.

It was time for the goodbye parade and the girl couldn’t be late, since she was one of the graduates that would be in it this time. But as she moved to the exit, tugged along by her classmates, the girl couldn’t help but turn back to look at her Teacher. She was still standing there, holding her drawing, gazing at it with that strange look again.

The girl lined up with her other classmates and the younger children circled around them. Dressing them in colored paper crowns and makeshift sashes of glittered ribbon, each adorned with their own farewells and good wishes, they said their goodbyes with jealous faces. Then the dance began and soon even the girl held a smile on her face. Giggling, she found herself spinning, leaping, and hopping in her first dance. Its foreign movements quickly learned in her excitement. With her younger friends cheering her on, the girl did something she had never done before.

She laughed. An awkward giggle at first. That grew contagious in its repetition.

Until her sides hurt and she couldn’t laugh anymore.

Then, like all good things, it came to an end and exhaustion weighed on the graduates as they lined back into their classrooms. Except now the room was different. Emptied of all the furniture, teaching supplies, and toys, the class was wiped clean of any and all evidence of their time there.

Instead little hospital beds filled its space. One for each of the graduates.

With little step stools, they climbed into their beds and lay in sheets as white as snow as their teachers came around to insert the IVs into their arms. It was her Teacher who was there to do her insertion. Not that the girl ever doubted it would be anyone else. Somehow she always knew her Teacher would be the one to Graduate her.

They were going to sleep. That’s what the principal had told them. To sleep and go to a place filled only with sunshine and play. A beautiful place, they said. A final rest all the children eventually Graduated to.

But the girl trembled.

“I don’t want to fall asleep.” She admitted to her Teacher, her throat swelling with that unbearable tightness. “I want to grow up.”

Once before, she had heard the principal talk about a child he called his son. The term confused the girl even still, as no one at the School responded to the word son.

“He says he wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.” He’d said and smiled in a way she had never seen him do before. Later she looked for the one named son, but never found the child her principal was talking about.

And because she knew her Teacher would not lie to her, the girl had asked on one sunny day, “What does it mean to grow up?”

“I guess it means to get bigger. Like me and the other teachers. To no longer be a kid.”

Now her Teacher stared down at the girl, her own hands shaking and water pooling in the depths of her hazel green eyes. The colors swirled together in a way the girl had never seen before, making her want to draw them. Just once.

“Don’t worry.” Teacher whispered. “Everything will be ok.”

The girl did not look away from her Teacher’s swimming gaze. She did not feel the prick of the needle. Nor watch the clear liquid travel down the plastic tubing, disappearing into the flesh of her arm. But she did feel the warmth that filled her veins and against her own will, her eyes grew heavy.

Before they dropped shut that one final time, the girl watched as her younger classmates, the next graduates to be, came by her bed and waved at her with smiling, proud faces.

“Goodbye Unit 527. We’ll miss you.”

&

Warm. Cool.

The two sensations tangled together in a dance.

So heavy.

With all the strength the girl could muster she opened her eyes. But her vision was blurry and after what felt like eternity, she finally mustered the strength to blink.

Once, twice, then again. Until she could move her eyes back and forth. Up and down.

The cloudy pastel colors brightened and finally she was able to make out shapes.

A hospital room. That’s where she was. Except this time it was a real one. And there was … was that … it was.

It was a leaf. A real leaf.

Not the fake finely created plastic imitations she used too.But something glossier and textured.

And the light on it. Was that, the sun?

The girl, Unit 527, wished, longed to touch it. But she couldn’t move, paralyzed by some unseen force. Or rather, it was weak. So weak, all she could manage was to rube her finger tips back and forth across the pink knitted blanket on top of her and–

Teacher. Sitting next to the bed with her head laid down next to her side was her Teacher. Holding her hand. Touching her. Finally the girl knew the sensation of her skin in contact with the woman’s and she reveled in it.

It was warm. Warmer than the liquid that put her to sleep. Then the sun kissed her face from the open window above her head. Warmer than anything she had ever felt in her whole life.

Unit 527 wiggled her fingers in her Teacher’s hand, delighted in the action. With a jerk her Teacher woke, sitting upright as if she had never been asleep at all.

“Oh thank god.” Her Teacher exclaimed in a voice Unit 527 had never heard her use. Her Teacher nearly collapsed over her as she pressed her lips to the girl’s head and wrapped her in arms that shook. Was she crying?

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for waking up.”

She was. And the Unit 527 marveled at the wet tears that dripped onto her cheeks and slid into her mouth. They were salty. These tears she had never shed herself.

As she pulled away, Unit 527 noticed her Teacher no longer looked like a teacher. Her neat pencil skirt and silk blouse was replaced with scrubs and her tightly pinned up hair was now in a messy bun, revealing loose curls Unit 527 hadn’t known she possessed. They scattered about her face in a wild array of friz and disorder.

Pretty.

Her Teacher gazed upon Unit 527 with such relief it made her chest tighten. Yet it didn’t hurt like before on Graduation day. Rather it felt strangely pleasant this time. She wanted to ask her Teacher why she was crying or where her other classmates were. But her tongue was like lead in her mouth, preventing her from uttering even a sound. So she laid merely in the comfort of her Teacher’s face, noticing for the first time the pretty brown freckles that littered her makeupless nose and dotted over her cheeks.

“It’s going to be ok. You’re going to be ok. But you have to trust me, ok. I know you can’t speak yet. But once you can, just let me do all the talking. I’m going to take care of you now. I promise.”

After that Teacher stopped being the Unit 527’s Teacher and instead became her Nurse. She talked to the doctors, asking questions in a way the girl had never heard her dare ask the principal. But in a way her Nurse was nothing like her Teacher. Her Nurse was stronger, braver, and when asked what her name was, she answered. “Lara.”, and when in front of the doctor’s would call Unit 527 “Lucía.”

That was how the girl got a name. No longer was she Unit 527. She was Lucía.

Slowly Lucía got stronger. Faster than the doctors thought was normal. It made her wonder what normal meant to the doctors and if the reason she was not so was why Lara bit her lip when they would run tests on her. So it didn’t surprise Lucía when one day Lara woke her before the breaking of the dawn and silently dressed her out of her hospital gown and into clothes with colors and textures Lucía had only ever seen during craft time at the School.

Hand in hand they walked out of the building, never to look back.

It was too cloudy to see the stars, but as the sun rose for the new day, Lucía was able to make out the blue. She had watched it incessantly since opening her eyes, entranced by the vastness that the dome which encapsulated her Facility and School could only attempt to replicate.

But never had the sky seemed to grow so bright as it did that morning.

Lucía jumped when a creature hovered past her face. It was a butterfly she realized. With ornate fluttering wings of yellow and black, it bounced through the air, like a balloon set loose. Unable to stop herself, Lucía took off, jogging after it down the platform they had been walking along, as a tube of metal sped past her. The train, she recognized now, stopped to a screeching halt, and sliding doors opened as if for Lucía.

Allowing her curious mind to urge her through.

Before shutting closed behind her.

And separating Lucía from her Nurse.

&

Lara

Something deep and ominous crawled inside the woman as she watched the sliding train doors shut close behind the child. In the next breath she was racing to them, waiting in threatening anticipation for them to open for her. Yet they did not budge.

“Lucía.” Her voice trembled..

Only silence answered. The orange painted glass of the doors obstructed the woman’s view of the inside of the train and horror pooled in her gut.

Desperation clawed at her now as her fingers dove into the seam metal, working to pry the doors open. Fast and heavy, her breathing was a storm she could not reign in. She could feel it. Could feel them taking her. Silencing her.

Euthanizing–

“Ma’am?” A voice called from over the woman’s shoulder, freezing her in her frenzy. Her face fell into a practiced expression. “Here, let me help you with that.”

A soft casual smile plastered over her lips, pressed like finely ironed clothes against the muscles of her face even as a throbbing pain beat against her forehead. A rhythm in time with the pounding of her heart. “Ah, thank you. It seems my child got away from me.”

The owner of the voice, a station worker, jogged up to her, their demeanor light and apologetic. “These old doors are always sticking. Wish they would hurry up and replace them but you know how it is with the Reconstruction.” The station worker typed in a code in a nearby panel, usually hidden away from civilian eyes. “There.”

The doors slid open with a woosh and the girl appeared. Standing there as if she had never moved from the spot she looked up at the woman.

Against her will she collapsed before the girl and drew her into her arms.

Safe.

“Thank you.” The woman said with a wobbly smile that was holy to her own. “We must get going now.” She said, scooping the child up and hurrying onto the train, now about to depart.

She had drawn too much attention. An error she would need to avoid in the future if they were going to continue going unnoticed.

“I’m sorry.” The girl’s voice was soft, a tiny squeak of a thing. “Did I do something wrong?”

Remorse sliced through her like a sickle of ice through her skin. “No. I was just worried I’d lost you. That’s all.”

“Oh.” The girl seemed to ponder over this. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere far away.”

“Why?”

The woman didn’t know what to say. Her eyes drifted to where the girl’s exposed wrist lay in her lap. Somehow the girl hadn’t seemed to notice or perhaps she had and simply chose to ignore it for now. But where her Unit number had been was now a faded burn scar, delivered when she had been fast asleep. It had killed the woman to do it, but the evidence had to go and the girl, like all the children, had healed miraculously from the wound in a mere day. She was left with only a faint white rough patch of skin that could be explained off as an accident received years prior.

But the woman knew she couldn’t hide the truth from the girl forever. She deserved to know. Needed to know.

Someday, when the last of the students who knew of Unit 527 and her classmates ‘graduated’, there would be a new student entering the School. Identical in looks to Unit 527, she would be just another clone in a long line of replicated girls, used for genetic testing of the most sought after traits. That’s all Lucía had been to the School. To the government. To the wealthy. A means to solve the population’s growing genetic illnesses and infertility issues.

But they were not seen as regular children.

It was never seen as cruel or inhumane to terminate the students after an appropriate amount of testing had been done. After all, the students were inherently flawed. Doomed to develop aggressive and destructive traits, theorized to be due to their overly passive younger years. Purposefully designed to have underdeveloped emotional characteristics, the students were meant to be docile and forever happy. Frozen in a state of compliance and acceptance, they never questioned the skyless, plantless School or what happens after graduation day.

None of them, except Lucía.

Until she met Unit 527, the women had never once thought deeply about what they were doing at the School. The children were just experiments. Lessons to be learned from. And she was just their Teacher.

At least, that’s what she told herself each time the children closed their eyes for that final rest and the School’s staff roughly lifted their little bodies from their hospital beds, tossing them into shiny bins that would be taken to the incinerator just out of site of the School and Facility the children dwelled in.

She was there to contribute. Not to think, nor question. Not to change, nor care. The woman was a mistake. Just as much if not more than these children were and she was there to repent for her miserable existence. For the things she had done.

Stupid. Stupid and so very selfish she was.

To think she could erase herself, let alone her crimes, was probably the most selfish thing she had ever done. And she hated herself for it. Almost as much as she hated the feeling of the children’s cooling forms as she wept over the bin that night, trying painfully hard to move each little body aside, dreading what she would find underneath.

Then, agony broke through her and for the first time since taking that job at the School, she sobbed. Flushed, still warm to the touch was Unit 527.

Lucía.

She didn’t know when she had made the decision to try and save this child. Only that, she could not leave this child behind. Not again. Not this one. This girl who dreamed of things she couldn’t possibly know about. Who saw through people’s lies and experienced sadness, frustration even in her art. Art that was deemed her weakest skill, due to its dated abstract style, an abnormality among the children.

Not Lucía.

“Lara? The girl’s squeak of a voice pulled the woman back from her regrets and failings. Lara was her mother’s name. Back when she still had a mother to call her own. It was the first thing she thought of when creating their new names. Her mother had been loving, caring, and honest. Everything she was not. So it only seemed right that she take her mother’s name, the name that meant something and forget her own, a name that meant nothing at all.

“Can I still call you that? Lara, I mean.”

“Yes. You can call me Lara if you want. But… ” An idea came to Lara, but hesitation caught it in her throat. “What if you called me Mom instead.”

“Mom?”

“Yes. It’s a title like Teacher. But instead of other people calling me Mom, only you can. If you want.” The woman brushed her fingers through the girl’s hair. An action she’d always wanted to do. It stirred a confusing feeling in Lara that she would not confront anytime soon.

“You asked why we are going far away and it’s so that you can grow up.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Mmhm.”

This excited the girl, but then she frowned. A thought setting in. “I’m never going to see my classmates again. Am I?”

The woman’s hand stilled, woven through the girl’s hair. With a slow inhale, she proceeded with her grooming. “No.”

The girl rubbed the pads of her finger together in a worrying motion. “I don’t want to Graduate and go to sleep again.”

“You won’t. But in order to do that, we will have to become a family. You and I. I’ll be your mommy and you can be my daughter. We’ll be like other families are. Only then you can grow up.”

“Are there other families?”

“Yes. Each one is special and different.” The girl’s eyes grew droopy and she swayed a bit in her seat, until with a thud her head landed against the woman’s side. “I like that. I want to be a family. With you. Mom.”

The title was terrifying, but necessary. They needed to blend in and Lara wouldn’t let anyone take Lucía from her.

She ceased stroking Lucía’s head when finding she had fallen into a deep sleep. Her face was peaceful then. As calm and relaxed as the other children were after the drugs had entered their system.

Lucía didn’t see Lara’s tears as she bit into her lip so hard it left indents of red. Nor did she see the scene that blew by the window as the train zoomed along the tracks.

A scene of yellow, orange, and white, resting on endless blues.

A sun rising over the ocean.