The Institute- Dust darkened

Chapter 6: Perfection for future

I stand in front of the one way glass, and stare at what I see behind it with astonishment. It is a big hall, obviously used as a training center, because I see about 20 rows of each 40 teenagers standing in perfect alignment, facing the front, where I can see a man in the same white outfit as my guide is wearing.

He shouts: “DOWN!” and every single kid drops to the ground without a sound and all at the exact same time.

“Achieving perfection in all ways is one of our goals,” my guide tells me. She had been watching me. Meanwhile the teenagers are in push-up positions, all of their bodies in perfect straight lines and their arms bent at 90 percent angles, my sport teacher would sell his soul to get even a tenth of the discipline in his sport lessons that I see here. “

UP!” The instructor jells and all the kids push their arms through, all seemingly without effort and all perfectly in tune.

“This here is a general fitness session, in which we aim to give each subject a good general level of fitness. Also the class strengthens the sense of discipline and belonging as a group.” I stare at the rows and rows of teens, all with concentrated expressions on and all following the instructor commands perfectly. Nit was mesmerizing, the way they worked as one closed group. There wasn’t a single missing link, they were all joined together like the most mesmerizing and complicated machine. None of them tried to be cool by not doing as he or she was told- they all seemed to find peace and challenge in what they were doing. The feeling of wanting to be one of them, wanting to join this unity of discipline and organization was overpowering. Never before had I wanted to part of something so badly, probably because I had never seen anything so simple and complete, and in is stern way so strangely captivating and beautiful. This must be the reason people go to the army. That feel of a huge group acting as one, that overwhelming feeling of bei8ng a part of something bigger better… The lady smiles at me and I reluctantly follow her past the long expanse of one way glass.

The next hall that comes into view is just like the other one, obviously designed for training purposes. Just that this hall is laid out with black leather mats and the walls are also padded with some black material up to a certain height. The children here all wear some strange black gear over their white uniforms that look a strange lot like exoskeletons. They stand in pairs of two, completely stiff and silent, facing one another. Then a charm rings and without warning the pairs start attacking each other, full scale. I gasp and step foreward, pressing my hands to the glass, unable to look away. Their fights look brutal- they hit and kick and further down the hall I can see children actually fighting with clubs and swords. “What are they doing?” I shriek. The woman puts a soft hand on my shoulder.

“Oh don’t you worry dear, nobody here gets hurt in any way.” She says just as a girl in one of the lines screams and cripples to the floor, her leg buckling under her. I scream and hit at the glass, trying desperately to get into the hall to help the girl. Her opponent is still attacking her, even though she’s defenseless on the ground. What kind of sick game is this? I think still beating at the glass. Now the girl’s opponent sits on her, her knees pinning down the girl’s arms and she reaches out to place her hands at both sides of the girl’s masked head. And suddenly I realize that she’s going to kill the girl. I scream and beat on the glass.

“She’s going to kill her!” I yell. “Do something, she’s going to kill her!” but the woman just stands there and faintly smiles at the people behind the glass. Suddenly the girl that was poised to kill her victim gets up, laughs and stretches her hand out to the other girl. This one presses a button of her outfit and suddenly relaxes, also laughing now, she takes the girls hand and gets up. They bow to each other formally and then walk to the side of the hall, where they stand and wait. “