Natural Order
Title: Natural Order
Pairing(s): QMi
Genre(s): Romance, sci-fi!AU
Length: 4049 words
Rating: PG-18
Summary: In a world based on perfection and order, Kyuhyun learns that love is anything but perfect and orderly.
Inspiration(s): I just wanted to touch on what would be the “perfect world”, loosely based on John Lennon’s song Imagine. Written for leprixx's birthday! Hope you like it!
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i.
The world is a System, a large complex tightly coordinated system. Mistakes were immediately detected and deleted. Abnormities were scanned and fixed. Missing files were identified and replaced. Life on Earth was honed to perfection. There was no such thing as possession or injustice or Heaven, no such thing as love or anger or passion. There was order, nothing else.
That was the world Kyuhyun lived in a long time ago. But that time was long past, long gone. Because the world was not perfect and never would be no matter how many times people have tried to make it so. Even the largest, most complex, and most tightly coordinated systems had flaws. Perhaps not perceivable ones, but flaws nonetheless. And inevitably, the System failed.
ii.
Kyuhyun was three years old when he started taking pills. His mother told him that they were for the benefit of the System. “The System said that you must take them every Monday mornings,” she ordered in her monotonous voice, eyes blank and face expressionless.
“Why, Mommy?”
His mother’s stare went straight through him. “The System said that you must take them every Monday mornings,” she repeated in the exact same manner, holding out one small blue pill. The toddler eyed the tablet with childish inquisitiveness before putting it into his mouth without any more questions. Almost immediately his once-curious toddler eyes dulled and his previously ever-changing heart rate slowed to a steady fixed pulse.
And for the next eighteen years, the first thing he did every Monday morning after opening his eyes was swallow a small blue pill.
iii.
Twenty was the universal legal age. When a boy or girl turned twenty, they became men and women respectively under the laws of the System. And in becoming men and women, they became old enough to be separated from their caretakers and to enter the job market. It was the same process throughout the world. People were assigned jobs, people did their assigned jobs without question, and people continued doing their assigned jobs until retiring at the age of ninety. Some people were assigned positions in health care, some were assigned to raise children, some were assigned environmental cleanup duties. Kyuhyun, however, was chosen to work as a chemist, or more specifically, a drug manufacturer.
It was a wise choice. Kyuhyun had aced all of his science classes while in school, and although his skills in Mathematics were broad, his skills in Organic Chemistry were stellar. He had an inherent knack at understanding chemical reactions and figuring out which reagents would create a desired product.
Kyuhyun was given a detailed schedule that ran from 6:00AM to 10:00PM, all days of the week, and it was made clear that schedules were to be kept individually secret (to avoid bias) and followed down to the very last second (to avoid disorganization). The first hour looked like this:
6:00AM. Wake up.
6:05AM. Urinate.
6:06AM. Dental hygiene.
6:10AM. Shower.
6:20AM. Dry off.
6:25AM. Change.
6:30AM. Have breakfast.
6:43AM. Put on lab coat.
6:44AM. Walk out the door.
6:45AM. Arrive at bus stop. Number five in line.
7:00AM. Get on shuttle. Fourth row, left window seat.
It may not look like it, but Kyuhyun’s schedule was not the most rigid in terms of time allocation. He had plenty of time each morning to prepare, and none of his time gaps were less than one minute long which gave him several seconds extra to do what he pleased. Remnants of schedules were found a few years after the fall of the System, and Kyuhyun had glanced at a copy of a Nurse’s schedule to discover that the poor man or woman’s schedule was determined per thirty seconds.
Back then, however, Kyuhyun had no complaints and no comparisons. He had a schedule, he kept it individually secret, and he followed it down to the very last second. It was what all twenty-year-olds were supposed to do.
Although it was common knowledge that the System was structured and systematic, transportation was one of the key points of ultimate organization. No person had his or her own car, and bikes had long been out of use. So the main means of transportation in the whole world was the bus.
Busses had exactly twenty seats, divided into five rows with two sets of two-person seats separated by an aisle. Schedules were created so that each would person line up at a certain bus stop at a certain time every morning in an orderly fashion until there were exactly twenty people in line, after which a bus would arrive and let the twenty passengers on. These twenty people had assigned seats chosen so that the bus seats were filled from back to front for maximum efficiency-the bus had exactly one minute to stop, collect passengers, and drive off to the next stop.
Kyuhyun settled onto his seat nearest the window and was soon joined by a man named Zhou Mi. Zhou Mi was tall, lanky, and remarkably handsome, but what struck Kyuhyun as truly odd was the fact that he smiled. There was no physical need to smile, not any that Kyuhyun knew of, at least. And there was no footnote or extra commentary on Kyuhyun’s schedule that stated that he needed to make any conversation with the man he sat beside on the bus. Not to mention that Kyuhyun detected the slightest bout of inflection in his bus partner’s abnormally cheerful voice.
“Hello,” Zhou Mi greeted brightly, just loud enough for Kyuhyun to hear over the spluttering of the engine. “My name is Zhou Mi.”
“Kyuhyun,” came the automatic reply. Kyuhyun almost cringed at how dull his voice sounded in comparison.
“I am a children’s teacher.”
“I am a drug manufacturer.”
“I can see that,” he smiled, eyeing Kyuhyun’s lab coat. “You must be very good at Chemistry.”
“Of course I am. Just like you are very good with children.”
Zhou Mi shrugged. “I have my way with them.”
And that was the start of the first day of Kyuhyun’s slow descent to complete disarray.
iv.
It became a routine for Kyuhyun to sit in his seat in the fourth row on the left every morning at exactly 7:00:15AM. It also became a routine for Zhou Mi to start a conversation with him once the bus was well on its way. What bothered Kyuhyun most was the fact that Zhou Mi tended to start conversations at random times during the bus rides. Sometimes he started talking at 7:02AM, sometimes at 7:15AM, sometimes he only greeted Kyuhyun with a simple hello before staying silent for the rest of the trip. It unnerved the chemist, who was strongly accustomed to the exactness and predictability that System offered him.
“I like bus rides,” Zhou Mi kicked off the conversation one Thursday morning, making Kyuhyun jump beside him. “They give me time to think. Do you think during bus rides?”
“Everybody thinks all the time.”
“Untrue. Thinking requires intellect and effort, and it is next to impossible to really think all twenty-four hours of the day. It depends when people decide to think that matters. So, I ask you again, do you manage to take the time to think during bus rides?”
Kyuhyun analyzed the question for a moment before replying. “No, I suppose not.”
“I suspected as much. What do you do during these twenty minutes, then? Just out of curiosity.”
Knitting his eyebrows together, Kyuhyun thought back to his schedule that he memorized down to the very last second, only to realize that there was a gap between 7:00AM and 7:20AM.
7:00AM. Get on shuttle. Fourth row, left window seat.
7:20AM. Get off shuttle.
“I don’t really know,” Kyuhyun finally responded. “Talk to you, I suppose.”
Zhou Mi laughed quietly, and the sound made Kyuhyun jump. He had never heard anybody laugh before. “You must be so bored with everything.”
“Bored?”
“Yah. Bored.”
“I don’t know,” Kyuhyun answered again. “I never thought about that.”
“That’s a funny thing in life,” Zhou Mi chirped. “There are so many possibilities out there, but hardly anybody takes the time to really think about them and wonder why they happen.”
“What possibilities?”
“I don’t know,” Zhou Mi shrugged. “Why do birds fly? Why is the sky blue? Is there life after death?”
Kyuhyun was taken aback, and wondered how a man could come up with so many questions that did not directly concern him. “Do you do that?” the chemist asked, completely perplexed. “Do you think often?”
Zhou Mi’s bright eyes darkened somewhat. “Yes, I think very often.” And just like that, he said no more.
All throughout work that day, Kyuhyun experimented with his ability to "really think", only to find that the more he thought, the more confused he became. He had no idea why birds flew or why the sky was blue. He knew how, but not why, which he ultimately found was radically different. He had no idea if there was life after death-before Zhou Mi, he had never thought about the concept of death at all!
But no amount of thinking was rewarded with an answer. He only knew that his thoughts, no matter how radical they were, never strayed too far from a certain man with bright eyes and an expressive voice.
v.
Eventually Kyuhyun found a predictable pattern to Zhou Mi’s seemingly random conversations. It was a highly flexible and fickle pattern, but it was a pattern nonetheless. Kyuhyun noticed that Zhou Mi hardly ever went past a simple gentlemanly hello, how are you doing this morning? on Monday mornings; however, he was always enthusiastic to start long and lengthy discussions about life and destiny and the universe during the weekends. Initially, Kyuhyun believed that it had something to do with Zhou Mi’s own schedule. It was only on a fateful Sunday when he learned the true reason.
“What about life?” Kyuhyun probed, hungry for answers after Zhou Mi left him with a cliffhanger the morning before. “Do you think there is any meaning to it?”
“I firmly believe that there is a meaning to everything, and that it is individual to the person. One person’s meaning of life can be the opposite of another.”
“Like our schedules?”
Zhou Mi scowled. “Yah. Just like our schedules.”
“You don’t seem pleased.”
“I’m not.”
“Why not?”
Zhou Mi stared at the chemist. “Haven’t you noticed that everything is planned out for you?”
“Of course. That is part of the System.”
“But don’t you sometimes wish that you could pave your own path? Plan your own future?”
Kyuhyun almost stopped breathing. “What?”
The teacher sighed, exasperated. “It didn’t even cross your mind for a second, didn’t it? Look around, Kyuhyun! Everybody in this world is nothing but a walking meat suit!”
“B-but the System-”
“Forget about the System for just a second!” Zhou Mi pressed his fingers into his temples. “Kyuhyun, are you happy like this? Are you happy not being able to choose what your career path is, or what time you wake up, or even what seat you sit in on the bus?”
Kyuhyun thought and thought and thought. And then he realized: he had absolutely no idea. He knew nothing, not even whether he was happy or not! “I don't know,” he whispered, breath contracting as the truth fully sunk into his mind. He knew nothing.
“Of course you don’t,” Zhou Mi grimaced. “You’re not immune.”
“Immune? To what?”
“Kyuhyun, what exactly do you do as a drug manufacturer?”
“I make drugs,” the chemist replied lamely.
“What kind of drugs?”
“Pills, mostly. Little blue pills.”
“And what do these ‘little blue pills’ do, exactly?” Zhou Mi challenged.
“I am not sure. The System deals with them once they are manufactured. I take one every Monday morning. It’s the first thing I do when I wake up.”
Zhou Mi slumped in defeat. “That explains a lot.”
“Explains what?”
“You’re always so distant on Mondays. You don’t make eye contact, your voice is robotic, and I just can’t get through to you like I do right now. It breaks my heart seeing you like that.”
“What are you talking about? You’re the one who is distant on Mondays!” Kyuhyun retorted, a muted feeling of anger bubbling up from his chest. “You only say hello and stop there.”
The schoolteacher laughed brokenly. “No, Kyuhyun, it’s because you don’t hear me.”
“How can I hear you now, then?”
“The effects of the drug have almost completely worn off.” Then Zhou Mi growled, literally growled. “But I know that tomorrow, you’ll just be another one of the System’s human robots.”
The next morning, Monday, Kyuhyun reached into his cabinet where he kept his bottle of blue tablets. And like every Monday morning, he unscrewed the cap, plucked out one delicate little pill, and popped it into his mouth. But then he remembered Zhou Mi’s words from the morning before, and wondered if they were true. Did those little blue pills really turn him into nothing but a walking meat suit? Did they really make him deaf to Zhou Mi’s words? Kyuhyun shook his head. No, the System gave him a strict order, and orders were meant to be followed.
But then Kyuhyun thought of the pained expression on Zhou Mi’s face, and realized that he was the one causing it. So he spat out the pill, threw it in his toilet, and flushed.
At exactly 7:00AM, he boarded the shuttle, knowing full well Zhou Mi was right behind him. And at exactly 7:15AM, once he was certain that the bus’s engine was loud enough for none of the passengers to hear him: “Hello, Zhou Mi,” he whispered, barely above a whisper.
Zhou Mi’s head spun around so fast he almost broke it. “W-What?”
Breathe. Swallow. Breathe. Swallow. “Hello, Zhou Mi,” Kyuhyun replied more forcefully this time, locking their eyes together.
And Kyuhyun knew he made the right decision when he saw the brightest smile spread across Zhou Mi’s face. He never took another little blue pill ever again.
vi.
The world had possibilities. Endless possibilities. The idea both scared and excited Kyuhyun, but it also made Kyuhyun restless. Because if there were so many possibilities out there, why was he going through with the one given to him?
“Because you think you have no choice,” Zhou Mi answered when the question came up during one of their Friday conversations. “You think that because there is a schedule given to you by the System, you are obligated to follow through with it.”
“Aren’t I?”
“In a way, yes. But in theory, you have free will. Every human is born with the right to free will. Not all are necessarily granted free will, though.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The right to free will is only the potential of being able to make one’s own choices,” Zhou Mi explained. “However, whether such potential is fulfilled is another story.”
“So you think that I have the potential to explore the possibilities?”
“Yes. I do.”
“How?”
“That’s for you to decide.”
Kyuhyun nodded. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Explore your possibilities?”
“By singing.”
Kyuhyun frowned. “What’s that?”
Zhou Mi smiled softly. “It’s called music. When I sing, I make music. Music makes up some of the most beautiful sounds in the whole world.”
“Show me.”
And, just like Zhou Mi said, Kyuhyun heard for the first time the most beautiful sounds in the whole world, and the last of his faith in the System crashed right in front of his eyes. Because the System was all about order; without order, it was not the System anymore.
But Kyuhyun wanted anything but order. Every time he thought of Zhou Mi, he felt his stomach churn and his heart rate quicken, and he frequently found himself short of breath. He could hardly concentrate while he worked anymore, and once or twice a day he would find himself wondering what life would be like without a bloody schedule to follow. Suddenly, order was arbitrary.
Kyuhyun did not want order anymore. He wanted Zhou Mi. Nothing else could compare to the precious twenty minutes he spent in the fourth row of the bus with the man he wanted to be with more than anything else in the world. Unknown to him, Kyuhyun was experiencing what would later be rediscovered to be the process of falling in love.
vii.
Love was spontaneous. It came out of nowhere sometimes. It made people act irrational. This was the primary reason why the System banned love altogether. The blue pills were designed for this very purpose, and its highly effective use in muting emotion and libido worked wonders in regulating the human population growth rate. Schedules, on the other hand, were used as a means to control the environmentally rash actions that every human had the potential of carrying out, thus governing the consumption of limited resources. Rash actions almost always stemmed from hyper-passionate feelings and emotions-the most powerful of which was love.
The problem with banning love, however, was that love could never be banned and no amount of emotional resilience would even come close to changing that.
Somewhere in the world, there was a mother who could not fight the unbreakable bond towards her unborn child; a little boy who could not see his life without his canine companion; a teenaged girl who could not help but want what was best for her little sister.
A man who could not stop himself from falling in love with the very man who freed him.
“Unfortunately, the only thing that affects this world is time,” Zhou Mi said, a sad distant look in his eyes. Kyuhyun wanted nothing but to wipe it off. “The System is a ticking time bomb. Nothing can destroy it but itself, and destroy itself it will.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“You’re the scientist. You should know about the natural law of entropy.”
Kyuhyun widened his eyes in understanding. “Disorder is inevitable.”
“Exactly.”
“But we can speed up the process, can’t we? We don’t need to exclusively depend on time.”
Zhou Mi shook his head. “I’m afraid not. The System is quick at mistakes. Any mistake is deleted, repaired, or replaced. And the human population is unable to compete against such speed. What we can do, however, is make it adjust. Slowly and steadily, we can ‘assimilate’ out of the System’s grasp and it won’t even notice.”
“The System won’t notice?”
“Yes.”
“What exactly is the System, Zhou Mi?” Kyuhyun asked suddenly. “In school, I learned that the System is the way we live the world and how peace is obtained and how the human race continues. I asked the teachers during the hourly Question Sessions but they never gave a direct definition-only recited what I already knew.”
“The System is us.”
“What do you mean, us?”
Zhou Mi smiled. “The human population makes up the System. There is no supercomputer or secret alien plotting to take over the world. It’s just us.”
“So we are the ones who made the world like this?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“That I am not sure. I just know that we did.” Zhou Mi shrugged. “Well, a Chinese proverb I read a long time ago did state that your worst enemy is yourself. Proverbs are usually true.”
“And the only way to end it is to wait it out?”
“Yes.”
“There is nothing else we can do?”
Zhou Mi snorted. “You seem determined to speed things up. May I ask why?”
Kyuhyun scowled. “Zhou Mi, the only time I spend time with you are these twenty minutes on this blasted bus every morning. Is it foolish to think that the possibility of charting my own path and creating my own schedule may perhaps allow me to stay with you more often?”
“You want to spend more time with me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why?”
Kyuhyun felt his cheeks heat up. “Not particularly. I just know I want to. I think about you all the time.”
And, with a sad smile on his pointy face, Zhou Mi took Kyuhyun’s hand in his. “Me too, Kyuhyun. Me too.”
“Why are you holding my hand?”
“That’s what people do when they are in love.”
“Love?” Kyuhyun wrinkled his forehead. “What is love?”
Zhou Mi sighed slowly. “It’s something that this world needs. You know how I told you that the only weapon against the System is time? The reason is because love will overpower it eventually.”
“How?”
“It’s a powerful feeling. Tell me, Kyuhyun: would you give up your life just to spend a whole day with me?”
“Yes,” Kyuhyun replied without hesitation. “I would do anything just to spend more time with you.”
Zhou Mi beamed. “Well, if every human in the world felt this way at least once in their life, the System will stand no chance. And only time will allow love to work its magical powers. You just have to be patient.” His hand travelled in between the folds of Kyuhyun’s laboratory coat and underneath the waistband of his jeans.
Kyuhyun flushed at the sudden contact. “What are you doing?”
“I’m showing you how we can pass the time.”
And Kyuhyun fought to keep his voice down for the rest of the ride.
viii.
“Zhou Mi, you seem to know a lot about the time before the System came to being.”
“I only know what my mom told me.”
“She lived before the System?”
“No, the System has been in place for a hundred-forty-three years. My great-great-great-great-grandmother lived before the System. I was just lucky to be born into a family who preserved the past.”
“So the things you talk about-love, freedom, happiness-they were real hundreds of years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Kyuhyun nodded, remembering his own mother’s dull eyes and robotic voice. “Okay.”
“What about your family?”
“My mother was a System robot all the time. She took a blue pill every Friday, and it never wore off on her. The earliest memory I have of her is when I was three years old and she put one of the blue pills into my hand.”
“I’m sorry.”
Kyuhyun shook his head, suddenly weary from the swarm of emotions. “I never knew her at all. She was always just walking around, doing the exact same thing every day. I don’t even remember what she looks like anymore.”
Zhou Mi wrapped his arm around Kyuhyun’s shaking frame and closed his eyes.
ix.
The Silent Revolutions were as described: silent. They were hardly noticeable, only affecting a handful of people at a time. It was natural order, the law of entropy. Kyuhyun played his part by lessening the effects of the blue pills he made in his laboratory. Zhou Mi played his part by teaching his students how to sing.
Blue pills started to have less effect on the younger generations. Schedules were followed but not down to the exact second. Sooner or later schedules became merely guidelines. And eventually, Freedom started to assimilate itself back into society. It was a slow process, but Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi were patient.
The day the bus had an extra passenger was the day they knew they were finally free. Both were eighty years old, still in the same bus in the same row for the exactly same twenty minutes. But there was no trace of order in how much they loved and still loved each other.
x.
The world is an imperfect specimen-imperfect but beautiful. There were mistakes that could not be detected and deleted. There were abnormities that could not be scanned and fixed. There were missing files that could not be identified and replaced. Life on Earth could never be rid of its inherent flaws. Possession and injustice and Heaven were natural concepts, love and anger and passion were natural feelings. There was life and human nature, and so much more.
Kyuhyun lived fourteen years in that world, dying at the age of ninety-four. Zhou Mi died two weeks later.
Despite never being mentioned in any history books or encyclopedias, they were two of the very few people who were ahead of their time when the System was in place. They knew what love was long before it was finally rediscovered. They knew what freedom was before it finally returned to civilization. They knew what happiness was before the blue pills were finally discarded. They would have thrived in a later generation, a generation of Freedom, and were grateful for the extra fourteen years free from schedules and pills and order and the System.
For Kyuhyun, fourteen years of happiness was more than enough.
Pairing(s): QMi
Genre(s): Romance, sci-fi!AU
Length: 4049 words
Rating: PG-18
Summary: In a world based on perfection and order, Kyuhyun learns that love is anything but perfect and orderly.
Inspiration(s): I just wanted to touch on what would be the “perfect world”, loosely based on John Lennon’s song Imagine. Written for leprixx's birthday! Hope you like it!
```
i.
The world is a System, a large complex tightly coordinated system. Mistakes were immediately detected and deleted. Abnormities were scanned and fixed. Missing files were identified and replaced. Life on Earth was honed to perfection. There was no such thing as possession or injustice or Heaven, no such thing as love or anger or passion. There was order, nothing else.
That was the world Kyuhyun lived in a long time ago. But that time was long past, long gone. Because the world was not perfect and never would be no matter how many times people have tried to make it so. Even the largest, most complex, and most tightly coordinated systems had flaws. Perhaps not perceivable ones, but flaws nonetheless. And inevitably, the System failed.
ii.
Kyuhyun was three years old when he started taking pills. His mother told him that they were for the benefit of the System. “The System said that you must take them every Monday mornings,” she ordered in her monotonous voice, eyes blank and face expressionless.
“Why, Mommy?”
His mother’s stare went straight through him. “The System said that you must take them every Monday mornings,” she repeated in the exact same manner, holding out one small blue pill. The toddler eyed the tablet with childish inquisitiveness before putting it into his mouth without any more questions. Almost immediately his once-curious toddler eyes dulled and his previously ever-changing heart rate slowed to a steady fixed pulse.
And for the next eighteen years, the first thing he did every Monday morning after opening his eyes was swallow a small blue pill.
iii.
Twenty was the universal legal age. When a boy or girl turned twenty, they became men and women respectively under the laws of the System. And in becoming men and women, they became old enough to be separated from their caretakers and to enter the job market. It was the same process throughout the world. People were assigned jobs, people did their assigned jobs without question, and people continued doing their assigned jobs until retiring at the age of ninety. Some people were assigned positions in health care, some were assigned to raise children, some were assigned environmental cleanup duties. Kyuhyun, however, was chosen to work as a chemist, or more specifically, a drug manufacturer.
It was a wise choice. Kyuhyun had aced all of his science classes while in school, and although his skills in Mathematics were broad, his skills in Organic Chemistry were stellar. He had an inherent knack at understanding chemical reactions and figuring out which reagents would create a desired product.
Kyuhyun was given a detailed schedule that ran from 6:00AM to 10:00PM, all days of the week, and it was made clear that schedules were to be kept individually secret (to avoid bias) and followed down to the very last second (to avoid disorganization). The first hour looked like this:
6:00AM. Wake up.
6:05AM. Urinate.
6:06AM. Dental hygiene.
6:10AM. Shower.
6:20AM. Dry off.
6:25AM. Change.
6:30AM. Have breakfast.
6:43AM. Put on lab coat.
6:44AM. Walk out the door.
6:45AM. Arrive at bus stop. Number five in line.
7:00AM. Get on shuttle. Fourth row, left window seat.
It may not look like it, but Kyuhyun’s schedule was not the most rigid in terms of time allocation. He had plenty of time each morning to prepare, and none of his time gaps were less than one minute long which gave him several seconds extra to do what he pleased. Remnants of schedules were found a few years after the fall of the System, and Kyuhyun had glanced at a copy of a Nurse’s schedule to discover that the poor man or woman’s schedule was determined per thirty seconds.
Back then, however, Kyuhyun had no complaints and no comparisons. He had a schedule, he kept it individually secret, and he followed it down to the very last second. It was what all twenty-year-olds were supposed to do.
Although it was common knowledge that the System was structured and systematic, transportation was one of the key points of ultimate organization. No person had his or her own car, and bikes had long been out of use. So the main means of transportation in the whole world was the bus.
Busses had exactly twenty seats, divided into five rows with two sets of two-person seats separated by an aisle. Schedules were created so that each would person line up at a certain bus stop at a certain time every morning in an orderly fashion until there were exactly twenty people in line, after which a bus would arrive and let the twenty passengers on. These twenty people had assigned seats chosen so that the bus seats were filled from back to front for maximum efficiency-the bus had exactly one minute to stop, collect passengers, and drive off to the next stop.
Kyuhyun settled onto his seat nearest the window and was soon joined by a man named Zhou Mi. Zhou Mi was tall, lanky, and remarkably handsome, but what struck Kyuhyun as truly odd was the fact that he smiled. There was no physical need to smile, not any that Kyuhyun knew of, at least. And there was no footnote or extra commentary on Kyuhyun’s schedule that stated that he needed to make any conversation with the man he sat beside on the bus. Not to mention that Kyuhyun detected the slightest bout of inflection in his bus partner’s abnormally cheerful voice.
“Hello,” Zhou Mi greeted brightly, just loud enough for Kyuhyun to hear over the spluttering of the engine. “My name is Zhou Mi.”
“Kyuhyun,” came the automatic reply. Kyuhyun almost cringed at how dull his voice sounded in comparison.
“I am a children’s teacher.”
“I am a drug manufacturer.”
“I can see that,” he smiled, eyeing Kyuhyun’s lab coat. “You must be very good at Chemistry.”
“Of course I am. Just like you are very good with children.”
Zhou Mi shrugged. “I have my way with them.”
And that was the start of the first day of Kyuhyun’s slow descent to complete disarray.
iv.
It became a routine for Kyuhyun to sit in his seat in the fourth row on the left every morning at exactly 7:00:15AM. It also became a routine for Zhou Mi to start a conversation with him once the bus was well on its way. What bothered Kyuhyun most was the fact that Zhou Mi tended to start conversations at random times during the bus rides. Sometimes he started talking at 7:02AM, sometimes at 7:15AM, sometimes he only greeted Kyuhyun with a simple hello before staying silent for the rest of the trip. It unnerved the chemist, who was strongly accustomed to the exactness and predictability that System offered him.
“I like bus rides,” Zhou Mi kicked off the conversation one Thursday morning, making Kyuhyun jump beside him. “They give me time to think. Do you think during bus rides?”
“Everybody thinks all the time.”
“Untrue. Thinking requires intellect and effort, and it is next to impossible to really think all twenty-four hours of the day. It depends when people decide to think that matters. So, I ask you again, do you manage to take the time to think during bus rides?”
Kyuhyun analyzed the question for a moment before replying. “No, I suppose not.”
“I suspected as much. What do you do during these twenty minutes, then? Just out of curiosity.”
Knitting his eyebrows together, Kyuhyun thought back to his schedule that he memorized down to the very last second, only to realize that there was a gap between 7:00AM and 7:20AM.
7:00AM. Get on shuttle. Fourth row, left window seat.
7:20AM. Get off shuttle.
“I don’t really know,” Kyuhyun finally responded. “Talk to you, I suppose.”
Zhou Mi laughed quietly, and the sound made Kyuhyun jump. He had never heard anybody laugh before. “You must be so bored with everything.”
“Bored?”
“Yah. Bored.”
“I don’t know,” Kyuhyun answered again. “I never thought about that.”
“That’s a funny thing in life,” Zhou Mi chirped. “There are so many possibilities out there, but hardly anybody takes the time to really think about them and wonder why they happen.”
“What possibilities?”
“I don’t know,” Zhou Mi shrugged. “Why do birds fly? Why is the sky blue? Is there life after death?”
Kyuhyun was taken aback, and wondered how a man could come up with so many questions that did not directly concern him. “Do you do that?” the chemist asked, completely perplexed. “Do you think often?”
Zhou Mi’s bright eyes darkened somewhat. “Yes, I think very often.” And just like that, he said no more.
All throughout work that day, Kyuhyun experimented with his ability to "really think", only to find that the more he thought, the more confused he became. He had no idea why birds flew or why the sky was blue. He knew how, but not why, which he ultimately found was radically different. He had no idea if there was life after death-before Zhou Mi, he had never thought about the concept of death at all!
But no amount of thinking was rewarded with an answer. He only knew that his thoughts, no matter how radical they were, never strayed too far from a certain man with bright eyes and an expressive voice.
v.
Eventually Kyuhyun found a predictable pattern to Zhou Mi’s seemingly random conversations. It was a highly flexible and fickle pattern, but it was a pattern nonetheless. Kyuhyun noticed that Zhou Mi hardly ever went past a simple gentlemanly hello, how are you doing this morning? on Monday mornings; however, he was always enthusiastic to start long and lengthy discussions about life and destiny and the universe during the weekends. Initially, Kyuhyun believed that it had something to do with Zhou Mi’s own schedule. It was only on a fateful Sunday when he learned the true reason.
“What about life?” Kyuhyun probed, hungry for answers after Zhou Mi left him with a cliffhanger the morning before. “Do you think there is any meaning to it?”
“I firmly believe that there is a meaning to everything, and that it is individual to the person. One person’s meaning of life can be the opposite of another.”
“Like our schedules?”
Zhou Mi scowled. “Yah. Just like our schedules.”
“You don’t seem pleased.”
“I’m not.”
“Why not?”
Zhou Mi stared at the chemist. “Haven’t you noticed that everything is planned out for you?”
“Of course. That is part of the System.”
“But don’t you sometimes wish that you could pave your own path? Plan your own future?”
Kyuhyun almost stopped breathing. “What?”
The teacher sighed, exasperated. “It didn’t even cross your mind for a second, didn’t it? Look around, Kyuhyun! Everybody in this world is nothing but a walking meat suit!”
“B-but the System-”
“Forget about the System for just a second!” Zhou Mi pressed his fingers into his temples. “Kyuhyun, are you happy like this? Are you happy not being able to choose what your career path is, or what time you wake up, or even what seat you sit in on the bus?”
Kyuhyun thought and thought and thought. And then he realized: he had absolutely no idea. He knew nothing, not even whether he was happy or not! “I don't know,” he whispered, breath contracting as the truth fully sunk into his mind. He knew nothing.
“Of course you don’t,” Zhou Mi grimaced. “You’re not immune.”
“Immune? To what?”
“Kyuhyun, what exactly do you do as a drug manufacturer?”
“I make drugs,” the chemist replied lamely.
“What kind of drugs?”
“Pills, mostly. Little blue pills.”
“And what do these ‘little blue pills’ do, exactly?” Zhou Mi challenged.
“I am not sure. The System deals with them once they are manufactured. I take one every Monday morning. It’s the first thing I do when I wake up.”
Zhou Mi slumped in defeat. “That explains a lot.”
“Explains what?”
“You’re always so distant on Mondays. You don’t make eye contact, your voice is robotic, and I just can’t get through to you like I do right now. It breaks my heart seeing you like that.”
“What are you talking about? You’re the one who is distant on Mondays!” Kyuhyun retorted, a muted feeling of anger bubbling up from his chest. “You only say hello and stop there.”
The schoolteacher laughed brokenly. “No, Kyuhyun, it’s because you don’t hear me.”
“How can I hear you now, then?”
“The effects of the drug have almost completely worn off.” Then Zhou Mi growled, literally growled. “But I know that tomorrow, you’ll just be another one of the System’s human robots.”
The next morning, Monday, Kyuhyun reached into his cabinet where he kept his bottle of blue tablets. And like every Monday morning, he unscrewed the cap, plucked out one delicate little pill, and popped it into his mouth. But then he remembered Zhou Mi’s words from the morning before, and wondered if they were true. Did those little blue pills really turn him into nothing but a walking meat suit? Did they really make him deaf to Zhou Mi’s words? Kyuhyun shook his head. No, the System gave him a strict order, and orders were meant to be followed.
But then Kyuhyun thought of the pained expression on Zhou Mi’s face, and realized that he was the one causing it. So he spat out the pill, threw it in his toilet, and flushed.
At exactly 7:00AM, he boarded the shuttle, knowing full well Zhou Mi was right behind him. And at exactly 7:15AM, once he was certain that the bus’s engine was loud enough for none of the passengers to hear him: “Hello, Zhou Mi,” he whispered, barely above a whisper.
Zhou Mi’s head spun around so fast he almost broke it. “W-What?”
Breathe. Swallow. Breathe. Swallow. “Hello, Zhou Mi,” Kyuhyun replied more forcefully this time, locking their eyes together.
And Kyuhyun knew he made the right decision when he saw the brightest smile spread across Zhou Mi’s face. He never took another little blue pill ever again.
vi.
The world had possibilities. Endless possibilities. The idea both scared and excited Kyuhyun, but it also made Kyuhyun restless. Because if there were so many possibilities out there, why was he going through with the one given to him?
“Because you think you have no choice,” Zhou Mi answered when the question came up during one of their Friday conversations. “You think that because there is a schedule given to you by the System, you are obligated to follow through with it.”
“Aren’t I?”
“In a way, yes. But in theory, you have free will. Every human is born with the right to free will. Not all are necessarily granted free will, though.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The right to free will is only the potential of being able to make one’s own choices,” Zhou Mi explained. “However, whether such potential is fulfilled is another story.”
“So you think that I have the potential to explore the possibilities?”
“Yes. I do.”
“How?”
“That’s for you to decide.”
Kyuhyun nodded. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Explore your possibilities?”
“By singing.”
Kyuhyun frowned. “What’s that?”
Zhou Mi smiled softly. “It’s called music. When I sing, I make music. Music makes up some of the most beautiful sounds in the whole world.”
“Show me.”
And, just like Zhou Mi said, Kyuhyun heard for the first time the most beautiful sounds in the whole world, and the last of his faith in the System crashed right in front of his eyes. Because the System was all about order; without order, it was not the System anymore.
But Kyuhyun wanted anything but order. Every time he thought of Zhou Mi, he felt his stomach churn and his heart rate quicken, and he frequently found himself short of breath. He could hardly concentrate while he worked anymore, and once or twice a day he would find himself wondering what life would be like without a bloody schedule to follow. Suddenly, order was arbitrary.
Kyuhyun did not want order anymore. He wanted Zhou Mi. Nothing else could compare to the precious twenty minutes he spent in the fourth row of the bus with the man he wanted to be with more than anything else in the world. Unknown to him, Kyuhyun was experiencing what would later be rediscovered to be the process of falling in love.
vii.
Love was spontaneous. It came out of nowhere sometimes. It made people act irrational. This was the primary reason why the System banned love altogether. The blue pills were designed for this very purpose, and its highly effective use in muting emotion and libido worked wonders in regulating the human population growth rate. Schedules, on the other hand, were used as a means to control the environmentally rash actions that every human had the potential of carrying out, thus governing the consumption of limited resources. Rash actions almost always stemmed from hyper-passionate feelings and emotions-the most powerful of which was love.
The problem with banning love, however, was that love could never be banned and no amount of emotional resilience would even come close to changing that.
Somewhere in the world, there was a mother who could not fight the unbreakable bond towards her unborn child; a little boy who could not see his life without his canine companion; a teenaged girl who could not help but want what was best for her little sister.
A man who could not stop himself from falling in love with the very man who freed him.
“Unfortunately, the only thing that affects this world is time,” Zhou Mi said, a sad distant look in his eyes. Kyuhyun wanted nothing but to wipe it off. “The System is a ticking time bomb. Nothing can destroy it but itself, and destroy itself it will.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“You’re the scientist. You should know about the natural law of entropy.”
Kyuhyun widened his eyes in understanding. “Disorder is inevitable.”
“Exactly.”
“But we can speed up the process, can’t we? We don’t need to exclusively depend on time.”
Zhou Mi shook his head. “I’m afraid not. The System is quick at mistakes. Any mistake is deleted, repaired, or replaced. And the human population is unable to compete against such speed. What we can do, however, is make it adjust. Slowly and steadily, we can ‘assimilate’ out of the System’s grasp and it won’t even notice.”
“The System won’t notice?”
“Yes.”
“What exactly is the System, Zhou Mi?” Kyuhyun asked suddenly. “In school, I learned that the System is the way we live the world and how peace is obtained and how the human race continues. I asked the teachers during the hourly Question Sessions but they never gave a direct definition-only recited what I already knew.”
“The System is us.”
“What do you mean, us?”
Zhou Mi smiled. “The human population makes up the System. There is no supercomputer or secret alien plotting to take over the world. It’s just us.”
“So we are the ones who made the world like this?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“That I am not sure. I just know that we did.” Zhou Mi shrugged. “Well, a Chinese proverb I read a long time ago did state that your worst enemy is yourself. Proverbs are usually true.”
“And the only way to end it is to wait it out?”
“Yes.”
“There is nothing else we can do?”
Zhou Mi snorted. “You seem determined to speed things up. May I ask why?”
Kyuhyun scowled. “Zhou Mi, the only time I spend time with you are these twenty minutes on this blasted bus every morning. Is it foolish to think that the possibility of charting my own path and creating my own schedule may perhaps allow me to stay with you more often?”
“You want to spend more time with me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why?”
Kyuhyun felt his cheeks heat up. “Not particularly. I just know I want to. I think about you all the time.”
And, with a sad smile on his pointy face, Zhou Mi took Kyuhyun’s hand in his. “Me too, Kyuhyun. Me too.”
“Why are you holding my hand?”
“That’s what people do when they are in love.”
“Love?” Kyuhyun wrinkled his forehead. “What is love?”
Zhou Mi sighed slowly. “It’s something that this world needs. You know how I told you that the only weapon against the System is time? The reason is because love will overpower it eventually.”
“How?”
“It’s a powerful feeling. Tell me, Kyuhyun: would you give up your life just to spend a whole day with me?”
“Yes,” Kyuhyun replied without hesitation. “I would do anything just to spend more time with you.”
Zhou Mi beamed. “Well, if every human in the world felt this way at least once in their life, the System will stand no chance. And only time will allow love to work its magical powers. You just have to be patient.” His hand travelled in between the folds of Kyuhyun’s laboratory coat and underneath the waistband of his jeans.
Kyuhyun flushed at the sudden contact. “What are you doing?”
“I’m showing you how we can pass the time.”
And Kyuhyun fought to keep his voice down for the rest of the ride.
viii.
“Zhou Mi, you seem to know a lot about the time before the System came to being.”
“I only know what my mom told me.”
“She lived before the System?”
“No, the System has been in place for a hundred-forty-three years. My great-great-great-great-grandmother lived before the System. I was just lucky to be born into a family who preserved the past.”
“So the things you talk about-love, freedom, happiness-they were real hundreds of years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Kyuhyun nodded, remembering his own mother’s dull eyes and robotic voice. “Okay.”
“What about your family?”
“My mother was a System robot all the time. She took a blue pill every Friday, and it never wore off on her. The earliest memory I have of her is when I was three years old and she put one of the blue pills into my hand.”
“I’m sorry.”
Kyuhyun shook his head, suddenly weary from the swarm of emotions. “I never knew her at all. She was always just walking around, doing the exact same thing every day. I don’t even remember what she looks like anymore.”
Zhou Mi wrapped his arm around Kyuhyun’s shaking frame and closed his eyes.
ix.
The Silent Revolutions were as described: silent. They were hardly noticeable, only affecting a handful of people at a time. It was natural order, the law of entropy. Kyuhyun played his part by lessening the effects of the blue pills he made in his laboratory. Zhou Mi played his part by teaching his students how to sing.
Blue pills started to have less effect on the younger generations. Schedules were followed but not down to the exact second. Sooner or later schedules became merely guidelines. And eventually, Freedom started to assimilate itself back into society. It was a slow process, but Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi were patient.
The day the bus had an extra passenger was the day they knew they were finally free. Both were eighty years old, still in the same bus in the same row for the exactly same twenty minutes. But there was no trace of order in how much they loved and still loved each other.
x.
The world is an imperfect specimen-imperfect but beautiful. There were mistakes that could not be detected and deleted. There were abnormities that could not be scanned and fixed. There were missing files that could not be identified and replaced. Life on Earth could never be rid of its inherent flaws. Possession and injustice and Heaven were natural concepts, love and anger and passion were natural feelings. There was life and human nature, and so much more.
Kyuhyun lived fourteen years in that world, dying at the age of ninety-four. Zhou Mi died two weeks later.
Despite never being mentioned in any history books or encyclopedias, they were two of the very few people who were ahead of their time when the System was in place. They knew what love was long before it was finally rediscovered. They knew what freedom was before it finally returned to civilization. They knew what happiness was before the blue pills were finally discarded. They would have thrived in a later generation, a generation of Freedom, and were grateful for the extra fourteen years free from schedules and pills and order and the System.
For Kyuhyun, fourteen years of happiness was more than enough.