My entire body aches as though my blood has been replaced by a concentrated solution of grouchiness and lactic acid. It’s a painful feeling I suppose, but a familiar one. An ugly buzzing sound penetrates my skull, forcing me out of bed and into a cold, unforgiving shower. From the shower I survey my station: it is a small, gray room containing a bed, a metal bureau in the corner for my uniforms, and a small tiled area with the basic necessities of an excrement processing room.
The room is perfect and spotless, as is everything on Level Two, where my life has transpired for as long as I can remember. Level Two isn’t a floor level containing perfect and spotless rooms. I wish it was, but it isn’t. Level Two is a life level containing perfect and spotless people. I am a perfect and spotless person, otherwise I wouldn’t have made it through Level One.
Level One begins when human organisms are produced in a laboratory and inserted into a human female incubator—just the incubator part of her is used of course. Our society isn’t big on keeping around extra parts, especially the kind that vomit, excrete wastes, form opinions, and otherwise make Earth a less perfectly wonderful place. Level One lasts until the child has survived nine years, upon which a time they are allowed to leave the Level One Dome.
I don’t remember much of the Dome other than the day I left it. I recall the strange feeling of seeing it from the outside for the first time, how small it looked against the endless expanse of grey tundra and greyer sky. The Dome was the last time I was ever warm and the last time I felt air in my lungs that didn’t rip up the soft tissue and fuzzy my brain. They say it had the temperature and atmosphere of the old Earth. For some reason until we reach the magic age of nine we can only survive in these conditions.
Most titles never make it out of the Dome. A certain level of cognitive brain activity, obedience, discipline, aesthetics, willpower and the list goes on, must be achieved to go on to Level Two. Those who do not qualify are disassembled and no longer act as a single organism, but as a set of body parts to be used as the officials see fit.
Once my flesh is thoroughly laden with goosebumps I switch off the shower. I step out and put on a plain black uniform, adorned only by a simple white seven. In Level Two, I am Title Seven. I take a brief look in my tiny mirror before heading out the door. Everything is up to female regulation: every strand of my black hair has been bound and gagged, and my pale skin is as spotless as the world around me. My eyes are the only thing that do not meet the standard: blue. Color of any kind is frowned upon. Most don’t even make it to Level Two unless they have brown, grey, or black eyes. Occasionally there are exceptions due to other superior traits. I am intelligent—I think. I open the cold metal door and start my morning run across the tundra to school. The cold fills my lungs as the early morning darkness greets my eyes. Everyone on Level Two must wake up at 4:00AM and run to school before the sunrise pokes through the smog. This way we don’t risk receiving unregulated dopamine from the warmth and colors.
Six miles later and I am walking into the tall grey school building. This is the only building in Level Two with the exception of our individual living stations. The large metal doors are enveloped by students with black uniforms, numbers, and regulation haircuts. Each maintains identical stoic silence. Above the door is a sign solidifying this behavior: “Motive for affiliation exists only as a symptom of weakness, the plague that lays waste to society.” Perhaps it’s not the sign, but the government monitored security cameras that do the trick. All I know is that only once in my life have I ever heard a person talk on the way into school: he “disappeared” shortly afterward.
I walk through the hallway quickly and deliberately, as does everyone else. The floor is grey concrete and the walls are smooth grey metal. Today is my first day in the North Wing, where Titles go upon reaching 18 years. After a brief journey I have reached the auditorium where I sit on bleachers surrounded by an ocean of bodies who, like myself, are in the final year of Level Two. We sit in straight postured silence waiting to discover what exactly the next—and likely final—year of our lives will entail. Only one more year and we are disassembled or go on to the unknown: Level Three. Not many make it to Level Three.
