Sweep the Leg
The world is literally going to end tomorrow, Sarah. This is not-even-rhetorically your last day on earth. And you’re heading back to work to pick up your purse?
Well. It’s not like prioritisation has been in high demand lately.
And now you’ve hit the wrong floor on the elevator. Seriously, well done-
Wait.
Someone’s crying.
Someone young.
"Hello?"
The voice stops sniffling, immediately. Oh dear.
"Hello!" I call out again.
The office is dark, and cold. I can just make out a couple of cubicles in front of me, flickering lights on printers and the not-quite-black gleam of monitors on standby. I step forward, hand to the wall, into the quiet whisper of a server farm.
And the boy’s sniff, over there.
"It’s okay!" I say into the darkness. "I’m not going to bite!"
I fend through the array of cubicles, keeping place with my left hand, making my way towards his voice. "Hey, it’s okay!" I say. "It’s okay! You don’t have to be scared of me, I’m here to help!"
There! I can just see him, head buried in his knees, curled up in a corner of the office, hiding behind a desk and glowing monitor. He looks… older than I’d been expecting; perhaps just in his teens. Well. I suppose tomorrow is enough to make even a grown man cry…
And he looks up at me, big, round glasses on an incredibly young face, expression hidden in the darkness, and his eyes catch the faint light, glinting, and for a moment…
…there’s a chill in the air…
…and then he hides his face once more, sniffling, and I’m running towards him, as fast as I can.
I sit down, with exaggerated care, patting away the dust, next to him. I hear a small laugh from his direction. Good!
"Now. I’m Sarah, and I work upstairs, at the clinic. I didn’t catch your name?"
"Jonathan." His voice is small, and quiet, quieter for being muffled through his knees.
"Are you scared of the Pogs, Jonathan?"
His fists clench. "Don’t wanna be Pogged."
"That’s very understandable! Do you have family, Jonathan?"
"My da', but he’s looking forward to it."
Poor dear. It’s always hardest when the family’s divided like this. "Oh, Jonathan. I’d ask you and your da' to come and see me in the morning, but it’d be too late then, wouldn’t it?" I laugh, quietly, but Jonathan doesn’t.
Hrm.
"Why don’t you want to be Pogged, Jonathan?"
His face flies out of his eyes, to glare at me, eyes fierce, sparkling. "They’re alien. They’re not us, even’f they look like us. They don’t unnerstand how humans work, and they want to come in and tell us who t’be‽"
Though it sounds like straight xenophobia, I’m not sure that’s all it is. I wonder if-
"I’ve read all the guides’n'stuff, okay? I know what they all say - that they’re human enough, and nicer than us even, so we should be happy to have 'em tinkering on our brains, to embrace the Pog Way."
"Jonathan, I-"
His fists are clenched, again, tight enough to leave a mark, and he seems actively furious at me, as if I’m every person who’s told him to accept it, to go without a fight. As if he’s finally getting to be properly angry at someone.
"I know, okay? I went and read all the bullshit people’ve been saying, about "biological determinism" coz of their one leg. I know they’re doing "all they can", that they’re even making themselves more individual, more like us, in return."
"And I still don’t like it!"
This, he shouts, loud and clear, into the empty, dark, office. It echoes out, getting sucked up by the air conditioning, the quiet hum and whirr of electronics immediately filling the cubicles again.
A few seconds pass.
"Don’t wanna be Pogged."
I reach over, and I hug him.
"You know…"
Jonathan looks up at me, his anger quelled. Good, I can work with that.
"I don’t think anyone wants to be Pogged."
He snorts. "'snot what they keep saying."
"Yea, but they’ve got to say that. We hate the idea that there’s nothing we can do."
Jonathan fidgets, beside me.
"It’s just a thing that’s true of us, humanity. We have to tell ourselves that we’re in control, even if it’s the most rotten, awful kind of control you can think of."
I laugh. It suddenly feels very small, in the midst of the empty office.
"Well, true of humanity up until tomorrow, anyway. Who knows what’s going to come out of the other end?"
Jonathan’s gone very, very quiet. I glance over at him, and he’s got his brow furrowed, hands clasped together.
"Whatcha thinking?"
He starts. "Oh, um, I…"
"Hm?"
He takes a breath. "How much d’you mean that?"
I answer without thinking. "It’s true! Jonathan, however much it can feel like it, you’re not alone! Trust me, I know humans." I wink at him, but he doesn’t see, his eyes focused in the middle distance.
"Um." His voice is even quieter now, if that’s possible - I can barely hear him over the whirr of the nearest computer. "What if… what if I told you there is something we could do?"
I freeze, and Jonathan takes this as his cue to get up and turn on the computer. The monitor flashes on, blinking green and black, onto a screen of code.
"I wrote this." he says, back to me, voice hurried, stumbling over itself. "It, um, the Pogs hacked up the genemod stations very quickly, and they run on our networks. I stole some of their software, and, um, there’s, a hole. I can take… most of them down. Some. Probably some."
I blink.
He draws into himself, his back tightening. "Um. I know I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t! I’m not-it’s not-I can’t make that decision, for everyone, and I-"
"Jonathan."
He stops.
"What happens after? Have you… if your takedown works, what happens after that?"
He turns back to me. "We get maybe six months before they try again. Or they… get angry at us."
"War." I say.
Jonathan nods, looking less uncomfortable at the thought. "They have nuclear fusion, I heard…"
I swallow.
"But." And now Jonathan’s voice is growing stronger, by the word. "It would be - a message. A way for us to say that we don’t agree. A protest. A rebellion."
"Jonathan…" I don’t- I have no idea what I’m planning on saying. I don’t even know-doctor-empath-human-
And he locks eyes with me, and asks me, directly. "You said no one wants to be Pogged. That the folk I’ve heard and seen and read, telling me it’s a good thing, were lyin'. Did you really mean that?"
And I look into his face, his child’s face with curly hair and simple cheekbones and hard, dark eyes, and I cannot lie to him.
I nod.
He presses the button.