You Don't Exist
A Story about Utopia
Part Two
Jack was surprised when they drove outside the city, down past the wharf to a row of gray cinder buildings. The hovercar parked outside one of them and he was marched inside and taken to what appeared to be a holding cell. It was only then that he noticed the laser pistols on the officers’ hips.
He was made to sit in a chair and a smiling man with a white mustache came into the room and sat opposite him. The officers remained standing.
“Do you know why you are here?” asked the man with the mustache. He added that his name was Yencl…
“Because of the man who had a heart attack the other day,” said Jack.
“Yes. Most unfortunate. Our investigation, of course, turned up that his heart had been preparing to give way for some time and the sight of the laser picks caused him to panic. I think you know your profession has that effect on people.”
“Nobody has ever died before. We did have one woman who urinated on herself. But we didn’t do anything to this man. I was working on an impacted canine and I heard a crash. I turned around and he’d fallen forward into the chair. Danya was with him.”
“Danya is one of your colleages?” asked Yencl.
“Yes. He was her patient.”
“I see.” Yencl frowned. He placed his hands together. “Our investigation turned up no malfeasance, but the public and the family are still upset. This is bad press for your practice and for the town. The community wishes the responsible party to be punished.”
“Well, there was no responsible party. Unless you mean the man himself. It wasn’t really his fault, and besides, he’s not here anymore anyway.”
“I don’t think you understand my meaning,” replied Yencl. “It is important to the community that a sacrifice be made and a punishment be meted out. It will restore a sense of justice and provide a resolution.”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Yencl stared at him. He took a deep breath and held it for a moment. Then he let it out. He smiled. He unclasped his hands.
“Well,” he said.
And suddenly, Jack knew. He knew why he was there. He knew what Yencl was talking about. And he knew a terror he had never known before. He had always believed that he would be taken care of. He had never imagined something like this could happen.
“You can’t do this,” he started to say.
“Someone will need to serve a prison sentence,” said Yencl. “It will do the community good to know that the sentence is being served. The penalty for manslaughter is thirty years. We usually cut that to twenty for good behavior. You will find our prisons are quite reasonable, and that you will be taken care of.”
“But what about my wife?” asked Jack.
“A new husband will be found for her. She will be taken care of.”
“But…”
“But what? But you were chosen for her? A husband was chosen for her. You were simply serving as her husband. Another man can be chosen for that role.”
“But what about my…?”
Yencl cut him off. “What about nothing?” he asked. “Who are you? Who do you think you are? Do you think your life has value in and of itself? Do you think your life has meaning? Your value is to the community. Your meaning is what the community says it is. You will be valuable to the community in prison. The meaning of your life will be to sacrifice so that others can be made safe and happy.”
“But I…”
“I?” asked Yencl. “Who is I? You don’t exist. You are nothing. You were the roles you served in, and nothing more. You have no identity apart from those roles. You think we can’t find other orthodontists? That is quite easily done. You think the mother and father who raised you don’t have other children? You think your church can’t be given another member? You think your wife can’t be given another husband? Your body and mind were the vehicle which occupied those roles, and those roles can be filled without you. Did you imagine that the name ‘Jack’ meant anything? We merely need something to identify you. We didn’t mean for it to go to your head.”
Jack couldn’t speak. He was no longer sure if he was hot or cold.
“Do you believe that?” he finally managed.
“I?” asked Yencl. “I could be anybody. I don’t matter. It doesn’t matter who I am. I don’t exist, just like you don’t exist. We exist. The community exists. But you don’t exist and I don’t exist. Do you imagine that any of us could be understood apart from the community? Do you imagine that any of us could have lives apart from the community? You and I are finite. We will die, but the community will go on. And the nation will go on. The nation will go on forever and by comparison our lives are merely a blip. And so brief in fact that our coming and going will barely be noticed. Anything finite when compared to anything which goes on without end cannot really be said to exist at all. Here today, gone tomorrow. What does it matter what you think about what happens to you?”
“This isn’t fair,” said Jack.
“Fair?” asked Yencl. “There is no fairness outside of social context. Fairness is entirely contextual. Right and wrong are contextual. They only make sense against the backdrop of a stable moral and social order. That is what destroyed the people of the twenty-first century. You should be careful with your line of thinking. If we decide you harbor some stray bit of selfishness or privacy, we will be forced to take more drastic measures. You should be grateful to us that we are letting you off with twenty years. You should be grateful to us for the opportunity you are being given – to serve your community with great sacrifice. Don’t you know that suffering for the sake of something larger than yourself is the key to all morality and happiness?”
“Do other people take it better than me?” asked Jack. Jack had inferred that this wasn’t the first time Yencl had given these short speeches.
“No. No,” said Yencl. “Most people complain that it’s unfair. A few understand. But most people put up a fight. The saddest thing about this job has been realizing that, deep down, most people still harbor some selfishness. Even the most community-minded, selfless persons, who have known nothing but holistic caring their entire lives, manage to find some low bit of personal vanity inside themselves when it comes time for them to make their most important sacrifice.”
Jack had never thought about any of this before. He struggled for a moment. He stared at the white-mustached man.
"But I..." he began.
"But you, nothing," said his arbiter. "Don't you understand? You don't exist. You are nothing more than a body for filling in roles. You are what has been read into you by your neighbors and colleagues. You think that you want something, but you don't. That is only an illusion. You have no consciousness. That is only a figment of your imagination, an evolutionary trick designed to establish an instinct for self-preservation. What does it matter if you are gone tomorrow? It doesn't matter that you are here now. Our nation will go on. Your community will go on. The world will go on."
Jack looked around the room. He hated the spare men in their dark uniforms watching him blankly. He hated the beige paint, already peeling below the only window.
"Alice..." he said.
"Will be given someone new. She will understand. That is how it is done. She knows that. She has been brought up to know that. She will be happy. I keep having to repeat myself, I see."
"But what if...?"
"What if she doesn't? Then she will be brought here like you."
Jack was struck with horror and he realized for perhaps the first time that he felt something more than affection for Alice. They had been happy together, he realized. He didn't want her to suffer. Perhaps if he stayed quiet they wouldn't hurt her.
"Your friends will understand, too," said his arbiter. "You know it as well as they. It doesn't do to grow too close with anyone. Private friendship cannot be a threat to the public friendship we all share."
Jack made the mistake of shaking his head. Yencl frowned.
“You’re wasting time,” he said. “And that’s an unforgivable sin. Your time is not your own. It belongs rightfully to us, to we.”
“I think if I’m going to spend the next twenty years in prison,” said Jack with a boldness that surprised him, “I ought to be able to have a little time to myself to think about it beforehand.”
Yencl crossed his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking down for a change, “I thought your case would be easier. I was mistaken.” His voice took on a distant tone, as if he was already thinking about something else. “I’ll have to recommend a change of punishment. You’ll understand of course. It isn’t just because you won’t go quietly. The community would be putting a lot of resources into your care for the coming, even if you did have to do hard labor. We can’t afford to give resources to anyone who thinks only of himself and his own situation. I’ll make a note and your case will be changed. It’s sometimes done this way. Nothing entirely out of the ordinary. On the bright side, you won’t have to worry about spending the next twenty or thirty years behind bars.
Jack’s stomach seized up. He had never thought about this before, either. He had never imagined it could come to this. He was going to die. And for what?
He realized now that he didn't want to die. He tried to console himself by recalling that Alice would go on, that his friends would still be there, that his practice would survive, that his patients would be cared for, that his community and his nation and all the people he had ever known would go on. He remembered how little sorrow he had felt when he'd been informed that other members of the community had died. Too much sorrow was, of course, a sign of particularism and privatism, like close friendships. It was a threat to the cohesion of an integral society. He tried to imagine feeling the same lack of sorrow at his own passing. After all, his life mattered no more than theirs. It was irrational and selfish to have such a strong emotional reaction to anticipation of his own passing compared to the passing of fellow citizens. He tried to imagine that it was much the same to him, whether he went on or not.
But he failed. He wanted to live. He couldn’t help it.
He knew that they would be sad, his friends and Alice, perhaps for a day or two. But they would go on. But somehow it wasn't any consolation to him to know that they would go on. Somehow, he couldn't imagine them going on without him. He thought this must be a mistake – some last trick in his evolutionary wiring. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't convince himself that he wasn't afraid of dying.
His arbiter was smiling slightly. He was watching Jack carefully. "You don't have anything else to say," he said.
Jack nodded.
"You see now that there is nothing you can say. You have no recourse against me. The arguments I have made are unassailable. You have only your personal feelings, which you know as well as I are merely the product of poor digestion and superstition, if they are a product of anything at all. You could be imagining them of course."
And Jack nodded. Though he did not have the words to express it, he knew that he had no ground upon which to stand. He knew that he had nothing against which he could indict his interlocuter. There was no argument he could make, nothing to which he could appeal.
And yet he knew just as strongly, in fact as strongly as he had ever known anything, that what was happening to him was wrong. He didn't know how he knew this, but he felt that it wasn't just a trick of his imagination. It was as real and solid as the world he had known and – now that he realized it – loved. He didn't know why it was wrong, but he knew.
Jack thought back to all the other times someone a little odd or different had been taken away. Sometimes they had stayed away. He had never thought much about it. He had always thought that this was simply the ordinary course of things, that this was right and just. And now he recognized that what was happening to him had happened so many times before, and no doubt was happening still in communities and villages all across the land. And his horror grew as he realized that each of them must have felt what he felt now. They hadn't wanted to die either.
Jack saw the smile deepen on his interlocuter's face and he knew that the man could see in his face all that was going on inside his head. And that made him sad, too.
"Yes," said his arbiter. "It is as you realize. It is right and just that it be so. Justice demands it in fact. Don't you see now?"
And Jack did see, and there was nothing more he could say. So he said nothing as they took him away and he said nothing when they placed him in a cell and gave him a small ration of cheese and bread. And he did not sleep that night, but stared at the cracked ceiling of his cell and thought it the most beautiful ceiling he had ever seen in his life, for it would be the last ceiling he ever saw.
And in the morning more dark-uniformed men took him from his cell and led him to a room with white tiled walls and a drain in the floor. The white-mustached man was there. He smiled again. "You won't even feel it," he said. "It will be over before you know. You don't think we would prolong your suffering cruelly, do you? We are a humane society."
Jack was told to turn his back and face towards one of the walls. It was no different from any other wall in the white-tiled room, but Jack knew it was the last thing he would ever see, so he stared at it as he had never stared at anything in his life and tried to hold fast to it.
He couldn't see the pistol raised, but he knew it had been. He never even heard the shot.