The Five Unnecessaries

Chapter 16

"You know, this is the life. The great outdoors, the sounds of the forest, the beauty of nature with no one around... except the four cameras representing the horribly critical teachers and Head Trainers waiting for you to mess up."

"Eva?" I said. I had to listen to every word from Eva, which was starting to annoy me, despite my laughter. Eva was playing my Vessel for the field test. She rubbed her enlarged belly but seemed disinterested. It was a synthetic birth kit set at twenty-five weeks, simulating a baby's vitals. True to the name, it would eventually simulate a birth as well.

"You're supposed to be making this a little more realistic," I stated. Since the beginning of the test five hours ago, we'd made past the "Zone 2" border, according to the simulation map on my MCU. Being one mile from an EE zone pickup spot for the next day, we could stop where we were instead of having to travel closer. So, we made camp. I used the small knife in my pack to hunt a rabbit. Eva realistically reacted to having to eat the animal in a way someone in the Republic would.

"How could you kill an innocent, living creature?" she cried dramatically.

To calm her down, I explained that it was the only way we could survive, and used some other phrases I had memorized. It wasn't until ten minutes later that I told Eva how I'd actually love to answer the question.

"You live in a culture that abducts children, burns babies, and kills pregnant women. This is a rabbit. Eat it."

Eva cracked up laughing, but said she was glad that was not my official response, as it would have meant a repeat field test and she was tired of being pregnant.

The Society Party's new campaign for a vegetarian diet meant that when we ordered food in the Republic, we'd often be ordering only vegetables. When I asked Liam about it, he'd said that there had been recent shortages in the meat market. Because they wanted to make sure that no one felt deprived or unhappy, they had just reinvented "happy" again.

When I asked Sam which theory he thought was correct, he had said, "Efficiency in all things. The Society probably did it to solve two problems we know about and three we don't."

"Oh!" Eva interrupted my thoughts with emotionless acting. "I feel the baby kick. How amazing." She checked her clock and took another bite while rubbing her belly again.

"What do you think we will talk about?" I asked. "With them? Even with Unnecessaries? I know we have to say things from our script and from our therapy book, but..."

Eva must have already pondered this, because she had an answer ready. "I want to tell them they're brave. Brave enough to walk away from everything they've ever known because they want to do the right thing—in a world that doesn't even teach them that there is a right thing. I couldn't imagine that."

Eva shook her head, not giving me time to respond before jumping back into character. "Will I get to keep my baby when we get there?"

"Yes," I answered, getting back into character myself. "There are homes already provided for you, and you will have a year to get settled. Some retired Protectors will check in on you daily, to help you assimilate to our culture. You will love it. Really. Everyone there believes in this mission." I could hear my great tone change to uncertainty at the end.

"Well, that almost convinced me," Eva said. "What happened at the end?"

I had still been thinking about my conversation with Liam and Sam. They had told me that no Protector had ever defected.

"I guess I'm always afraid. Afraid that one day, a Protector won't buy the truth and trade it back for the lie. That a Protector will, or already has, bought that lie. That one day, we will be betrayed because we had the audacity to think all Protectors were guiltless." There was a pause. To lighten the mood, I added, "Too bad no one ever rebels in the Republic."