The Lecturer

by Jacob Cox

If he was totally honest with himself, John never wanted to be a professor. Of course he lived on Seonggwak Daussy, so his own wants and desires were nothing in the face of the power of the Kingdom. Even if he had wanted the job in the first place, there were far too many people to teach and nowhere near enough time in which to teach them. Every time he looked at one of their fifteen- or sixteen-year-old faces, he saw another soul doomed by the King, another piece of his soul splintering off and getting carried away by cold mountain winds. They were still nine or ten years from their majority. The King cared little for collateral damage as far as John’s own soul was concerned.

 “Doctor Stone? Can you elaborate on that please?” a young girl’s voice sounded from the auditorium.

“Certainly Miss?” John paused.

“Er, Bo-Bae sir,” she said.

“Right then, Miss Bo-Bae. Perhaps I was overly technical in my wording. My point is that crime creates poverty rather than the commonly held belief it is the other way around,” John answered as he took a seat at the desk in the middle of the room.

Assignment to a Foreign Post is what it was known as. He knew better. Everyone on the planet knew better. There was a much more apt word for it; illegal to say or to even think. Though there was no real way for the military police to know what precisely someone thought, there were plenty of instances where they whisked away some poor, confused sap for thought crimes unspecified never to be seen again. It really was a word best left unthought.

The windows closed and the lights dimmed as he pressed a button. The projector in the back of the room lit up and a pair of images with captions below them appeared on the wall to his back. Grabbing what he called the “whippy thing” from a receptacle in the desk, he got up, extended it and placed the tip of the whippy pointer on the image on the right.

“This is a shopping complex in the Brahmaputra Borough five years ago. There are trees, a number of thriving businesses, and families enjoying a day in the sun.”

He adjusted the whippy thing so it rested on the left image.

“This is that same complex two years ago. Notice how the windows are boarded up, glass is smashed, there is graffiti everywhere, and all the trees have been turned into stumps. If you know what happened in the borough please raise your hand,” he said.

At first, they were quite hesitant looking around the room with nervous glances as though the military police would bust down the door at any moment, but as the first hands slowly rose, other students grew more confident and raised their own. By the end, most of the room had their hands raised.

“Good, good. Yes, there was a riot. A riot so prolonged and so violent that it is known as the Battle of the Joseon Mall. King Mahmoud and his inner council were touring the area and found it to be a “dull and uninspired place”. Curiously, after that, police response times began to grow lethargic, and Joe Juice addled vagrants moved in uninvited. Crime dramatically spiked. Robberies, murders, and all manner of acts unbecoming of civilized folk ensued,” John explained.

He pressed a button on his clicker and the images changed. His pointer moved to the right photo.

“A protest formed decrying police for their inability or unwillingness to do the job they had been performing admirably for years before that time. The police cracked down on the protest and it turned into the riot.”

The pointer shifted to the left image.

“Fire engulfed entire neighborhoods and mercantile zones. People lost everything. After the riot, the police response dwindled to near nothing. This area of the borough became a lawless zone. Those who were initially unaffected by the riot and the crime grew afraid to leave their homes. Businesses that had closed down not only never reopened, but were also never replaced, and as people began to fear more and more for their safety, yet more businesses closed. Those who had the ability to do so, left. Those who remained behind if they were not already destitute became so.”

Another pair of images appeared on the wall.

“Let us compare to the Gangnam Borough now. It is a very similar story. A protest was crushed only to turn into a riot. Again, neighborhoods and mercantile districts burned down. Except this time, after the fact, the police performed arrests, and the courts prosecuted the rampant criminals. Even though the borough was scarred, people felt safe leaving their homes. Buildings were rebuilt and business moved back in. Today it is one of the most prosperous boroughs in the city ranking fifteenth of three thousand two hundred and thirty-two.

“Now why do I emphasize this? Well, you have all been chosen for Assignment to a Foreign Post, specifically as political advisors. In your role, you will be required to advise those nobles to whom you’re assigned as to what will make them look good in the eyes of their own people. In this era, criminals of any and every world do not discriminate. Criminal activity leads to poverty. Poverty leads to discontent. Discontent leads to violence. And from violence springs rebellion,” he concluded.

His mind continued to wander. What did he want to be though? John had turned fifty this year. He had been enlisted within The Program for his entire life, but only for the last thirty-five had he actively participated in it. It was a lot of time for him to forget his childish whims and fancies. There was something there though. It was on the tip of his tongue, as the likeness of a phantom flavor from memories long past. There was some red object there. It was loud. Nothing about it was subtle. Yet all the same it eluded him. Oh well. He might remember someday.

John collapsed the whippy thing and slotted it back into the desk. The lights came back on and the window shutters reopened. In the now brightly lit room, he could see his charges glancing at the wall with the still displayed images and taking notes. Styluses danced across their university issued flats jotting down the citations of the images and whatever else they thought appropriate.

After a few moments to allow them to finish their notetaking, he spoke up once again with his deep voice commanding attention.

“Before we adjourn for the day, your reading is chapters eleven and twelve. When we next see each other, I want all of you to submit a paper identifying other examples of places where crime struck and rendered the location destitute. No less than three examples mind you, at least two of which must be on planet. I want a further two examples of places where the community recovered after a spree of rampant criminality. In all of these, tell me exactly what happened leading up to the crime spike, the damages inflicted, and the state of that community as it stands today. Cite your sources; do not use the repository for information. That is something I have planned for us coming up next week. No page requirement, but I will know if you were lazy about it. Are there any questions at this time?”

Nobody spoke.

“Very well then,” he said glancing at the clock in the wall, “All rise for the pledge of servitude to His Royal Majesty Mahmoud al-Fulani of House Hwangbo, King of Seonggwak Daussy, of Seoul, of Goguryeo, of Haeburu, of Habaek, of Mireuk, Lord Sovereign of the Ducal Demesnes of Albuquerque, of San Andreas, of Cortez, of Mayor León, of Baja León, of High Hermitage, of Lincoln, and of Belen’s Deep. Praise be unto the Empire of Man, unto the Emperor! All hail!”

“Hail!” the students chanted not missing a beat. They were smart, shrewd little warriors, all of them. They would have to be if they were to survive Assignment to a Foreign Post.

From the loudspeaker the pledge sounded with the background accompaniment swelling of horns. The students by this age knew the five-and-a-half-minute recitation of servitude by heart. All the same, they imitated the inflection of the University’s Dean of Students as she spoke. Derivation of the pledge in any capacity was something to be discouraged, and if repeated… well, there were oh so very many things that just weren’t worth thinking about.

Doctor John Stone’s mouth may have been speaking, his left and right hands in the picture-perfect salute, but as his body praised the King his mind returned to that errant thought. He still wondered what it was he wanted to be.

XXXXX

The air was clean today, John noted as he stepped off the train and began to walk home. The filtration systems must have been serviced while he was at the Seulgi Hwangbo University of Political Sciences. Around him he saw people putting tissues to their noses as the suddenly very dry air broke blood vessels within their nostrils.

The reality of living within a cave borough was that condensation from human breathing collected on the cave ceilings and created a humid, almost perpetual mist. When the mist turned to fog, that meant rain was near. It was considered to be sound advice to be indoors when the rain struck. Being outside was how you would contract any number of respiratory illnesses like black lung.

Neon lights flashed advertising all manner of products, legitimate and questionable as hover cars zipped from landing pad to landing pad with their spinning rotors. Cobblestone streets were overlooked by gargoyles and saints on every building. Buttresses extended to the ceiling in steep angles to shed water and condensation. On seemingly every street corner, pairs of men dressed in the duty uniform of military police with rifles in hand watched the public. Many of them had eyes full of suspicion, others boredom, and yet more sympathy. John ignored them all, far too used to the display of power the King had been projecting for about five or six years at this point.

Rounding a corner, the buildings abruptly vanished in favor of the small lake dominating the right side of the street. On ground level that was. Up above, a wide variety of structures hung from the ceiling like stalactites, their reflections glimmering in the artificial light cast upon the lake. As he crossed the foot bridge over the lake, he stepped to the side as a woman carrying a burlap sack in her hands sprinted toward him being chased by a screaming man. John snorted. The couple did this every week in their strange interpretation of a free man’s courtship.

He wondered what it was like to be among the lucky people who were not part of The Program. Being able to choose one’s own partner sounded nice, but it also sounded like an obnoxious amount of work. Was such a love worth it? He didn’t know. He would never know.

He reached the other side of the bridge, turned left, continued to the nearest intersection, then turned right making sure to avoid the bar where fights were all too common. Up a set of stairs with railings laid over a set of stalagmites, he entered a small park where trees engineered to thrive underground provided some natural color to the world. He did not linger though as he passed through and underneath an arch labeled Oxford Square.

His apartment complex was a simple affair, made of granite and limestone as were most buildings in the Clear Lake Borough. He entered the main entrance and marched to the elevators. Up two floors he went before seeing his apartment’s door labeled 301 when the elevator opened. He fished his card out of the pocket of his black trench coat and unlocked the door.

The scent of gochujang in the frying pan wafted through the door the moment he opened it. If there was one benefit to being wed to Mun-Hee, it was that she was an exceptional cook. Closing the door, John placed his trench coat on the coat rack, removed his shoes, and slipped into a pair of sandals.

“Evening,” he greeted as he walked to the bedroom to set down his backpack and briefcase. Taking out his lunchbox from the backpack, he returned to the kitchen and washed his hands.

“Welcome back,” Mun-Hee said cordially with a brief smile before she returned her focus to their dinner.

Opening the fridge, John grabbed a container of rice, some leftover ground lamb, Greek yogurt, and some chopped red pepper with some lovely char on them. Into a new container, he scooped some of everything into it before closing it and vigorously shaking it. After putting everything back in the fridge, he grabbed a knife and chopped up a single serving of fruit salad which he coated in lemon juice before putting it into another container and placing that next to his lunch for the next day.

Dinner was coming along nicely. Eyeing the pan his wife labored over, he saw more red and yellow peppers, kudzu leaves, onions, beef, and two-centimeter-wide rice noodles in a bubbly red and brown sauce. He patted her on the back in silent thanks and entered the dining and living space.

At the dining table, two young teenagers sat silently, diligently doing schoolwork. In less than a year, the twins would be shipped off to one of the many Institutes, Universities, Academies, or Colleges scattered across the city of Seonggwak Daussy. In less than a year, John and Mun-Hee Stone will have completed their duty to The Program.

John suppressed an ugly sound from emerging. Instead, he clapped his hands, and the two teenagers looked at him.

“Welcome back father,” Joo said, her voice lacking all tone.

“Hullo,” Shik mumbled, his face dour as always.

John cleared his throat and said, “Clear off the table and wash up, dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”

Shik nodded and got up while Joo said, “Of course father.”

As the twins walked into their bedroom with their papers and books and flats in hand, that same ugly sound crawled out unbidden from John’s lips. He stood there, shaking involuntarily for a moment with clenched fists before clamping down on it hard. His hands relaxed and opened.

Opening a nearby cabinet, he pulled out four plates and four sets of chopsticks and set them on the table. Running water sounded from the bathroom at the same moment the sizzling of the pan stopped in the kitchen. Metal clanked as Mun-Hee set the pan on the granite countertop to cool for a minute or two. John entered the kitchen and washed his hands a bit more thoroughly than normal, yet they continued to feel dirty.

By the time he was done, Mun-Hee had moved the pan once again to the dining table where it sat atop an oven mitt. Joo and Shik were scooting their chairs in. John prepared four glasses of palan son juice and brought them to the table. Mun-Hee had since finished dishing food onto their plates.

Sitting down, John clasped his hands and was joined by the others.

“Our father Elohim, hallowed be thy name. Among these blooded stars, we of faith thank you for your love, and we remember your house, your basilica. Blessed is our daily bread o’ lord, for what is ours is yours, and yours is the Earth and the Kingdom of Heaven. Praise be. Amen,” John prayed.

“Amen,” finished Shik and Joo and Mun-Hee.

And they partook in the Lord’s feast.

When John lay in bed that night staring at the cave wall that formed the back of not just their apartment, but all of those on the south wall, he found no sleep. In less than a year, John and Mun-Hee will have completed their duty to The Program.

Six children. That was the price. That was what was demanded for Assignment to a Foreign Post. Six children for every couple selected for The Program. When their education was complete when they hit the age of twenty-five, they would be shipped off to corners of the Empire unknown.

Just like Stacey…

Just like Lee…

Charles was set to age out in three months’ time.

James had another six years before he would join his older siblings.

It really was considered to be most advisable to not think of that word. It was how most coped. But John was not most people. He knew what they were. They knew what they were.

When John wondered what it was that he wanted to be, he knew that this wasn’t it.

He stood up to go to the bathroom. Dunking his head in the sink and drying his face off with a towel, he was somewhat surprised to see his pale skin flushed red, his brow furrowed, and his teeth clenched.

Crime creates poverty and poverty creates discontent true, but that was not the only such thing to create discontent. From discontent comes violence, and from violence comes rebellion.

And what better cause of discontent could there be than to know what it was they were.

One word. One unthinkable word.

Slave.