Happily Smiling

A beautiful day, in a beautiful week, beautiful month, beautiful year, beautiful life. The breeze whipped my hair around my face, getting it in my eyes and mouth, mostly blinding me. I smiled on as I walked my way to work, the torrent of rain making my clothes so wet they probably weighed more than the slight frame I owned. It had been brought forth by the famine that was at least as old as I am. At least I wasn’t cold, as it hadn’t dropped below seventy degrees since the sun changed color to a dark blue, moving further into its process of dying. It was about eighty-seven today, and the rain was starting to eat through my clothes due to long exposure. The rain didn’t used to eat through my clothes and skin when I went outside, but the dying Earth had changed that recently. I would have to tend to burns tonight if I could afford the equipment. My eyes gleamed and my smile stayed plastered on as I walked into my place of employment.

The white walls were being freshly scrubbed by other employees, also with smiles of joy on their faces as they worked fiercely in the boiling hot room that caused sweat to run into their eyes so that they were also working mostly blind. It looked like they too, would have to try and find something for burns tonight. I nodded to them in greeting, and though they could not see me, they could hear my sodden footsteps as I walked pass them to the hallway in the back of the room, I saw them nod back with the same wide, bright smiles just before they vanished from my peripheral vision.

I walked down the hall, each door a unique and interestingly beautiful color: lilac, rose, silver, gold, and a dark red, before I walked into the room one door from the end of the long hall, on the left, the beautiful baby blue door. The dark red door was just across the way, and I could hear faint sounds from within, screams and whimpers I was sure. They must be busy today making wonderful things. I turned and gleefully opened my own door, slightly disappointed in myself for being distracted, until I saw that I was to have a very long day ahead. That was wonderful for me though, as that meant I was being an extra-productive member of society.

The tags carefully taped to the outside of each tiny drawer were in alphabetical order, so I started with the A’s. Abigale’s mistake sat inside, weakly still crying to call out despite being in the airtight drawer and having not eaten for at least a day. Silly little thing I thought to myself and I pulled it out by the nearest limb, which happened to be an arm. It wasn’t smiling, and that just wasn’t right, but it was clearly beautiful, and strong, so it deserved a chance. I placed the thing on the table and went to the long table full of thoughtfully placed syringes. I grabbed the first one labeled A, and swiftly crossed the room and put it in the thing’s thigh. It squirmed furiously and then stopped. A blissful smile came across its face and I knew it would be fine, it had been given Smile.

I went with it to the set of two doors in the back wall of the room and opened the green one. A woman greeted me in a freshly cleaned white dress, and a smile. No words were needed as I dropped the thing into her waiting arms and she said with as much seriousness as can be had while still wearing a broad smile, “Her name is Seraphina.” Those four words made this beautiful little thing with a wonderful smile a human to me, and to everyone else. She had been given a second chance due to her strength, and now she could be anything, even an extra-productive member of society.

I don’t know why the people of our quaint city decide to make little mistakes anyway. It wasn’t much work at all to get a form, set up a timeline with the allowed amount of time to become pregnant, get pregnant in that time, and have a perfectly healthy baby which you can take home for just a small fee. Of course, the perfect mistakes get sent to the red door, where the doctors use them to make wonderful things for the rest of us. It was a win-win situation as I could see it, but, judging by my heavy workload, most people didn’t agree and decided to have a mistake, one that would only get a second chance if the needle assigned to their letter contained something to make them perfect. If they got the other needle, they went through the other door in the back of my room, and we all got to eat. Again, a win-win situation, but it would be much easier if everyone just followed the rules in the first place. Why, the glorious rules are the reason we have heat, and rain, and assigned homes, and diminishing populations, and famines that last decades. We live the dream life because of the rules, and we are rewarded with food and water and sometimes even medications if we obey every rule for long enough.

The next mistake was also an A, I pull this one up by the head, as it is screaming so loud that I had heard it when I had taken Seraphina out of her drawer. I dropped it on the table hard enough it stopped screaming to whimper in pain. It doesn’t have the right to feel anything yet though, so I don’t give it a second thought as I grab the needle assigned to it. I put the needle into its stomach, the only place I can see a vein that isn’t too dried up to be of use. I notice the it curiously watches me, so I push it back so it can’t see. As soon as the needle is done, I pull it out and watch. Its face, scrunched up from all the nonsensical screaming, relaxed, and I felt a second of joy for the little mistake, before it took its last breath and started to relieve itself as it completely lost control of its body. I wrapped it in paper to contain the mess and walked to the other back door, it was such a clean and metallic black that I could see my own reflection it its surface. I opened the door and dropped the thing in my hands inside, and shut the door with haste. I did not know what was on the other side of that door, other than I had lost a coworker who got too curious for his own good.

I worked quickly and efficiently, the smile on my face flecked with blood from a few mistakes with the needles (Note: eyes are not good for injection) and soon I was done with the day. I was glad I had worked hard and I walked out with as much joy as my wonderfully exhausted body would allow me without collapsing. Once in the room with the way out, I looked over to where the workers had been, one was gone, one lay, unmoving, and the other still yet worked. Their backs curved, their heads obviously working hard to stay supported by their body. Good for them. The one who wasn’t moving, however, had better get to work. Why wasn’t she working for this great building? I walked over and gently shook her. Nothing. I kicked her over, so she was on her back. The swelling of her stomach was quite obvious, and I knew that she had been perfectly legal, or she wouldn’t have been allowed in. I picked her up, and took her to the lilac door. I layed her body in front and knocked. A man much taller, and much paler than was usual, opened it. He smiled at me and took the body inside. Hopefully the mother’s waste wouldn’t waste the baby as well. He would cut the baby out, and if the father was fit, he would get to keep it… if not, it simply went to the red door. And if it turned out to be dead, I would find it in a drawer in my room tomorrow, with a black smear on its forehead so I could bring it to the black door in the back of my room.

I left the building then, the rain was still going, and I walked into the home that I shared with a few dozen others. I shared one room with three people. Samuel had one corner, Nick had one, Abigale had the third, and I had the last. The middle of the room is where we kept any belongings that might help the others in the room, meaning that other than each of our pillows and threadbare blankets, the corners were mostly empty, and the middle of the room stood as a tower. Abigale was smiling, but it did not reach her eyes. I walked over and gave her my dosage of Smile, which wasn’t not allowed, but it definitely wasn’t encouraged. Her smile crept up the rest of her face, and soon even her color was better. I felt my own smile slip that night, for the first time in my (wonderful?) life, when I thought about the day’s work.

The next morning I woke up, and my burns from the rain… hurt. That wasn’t right, this wasn’t right. I shouldn’t feel pain, I should just see the marks and fix them whenever I could. It had to be the missed dosage. I wouldn’t get other dose until next week… could I make it until then? If anyone saw my smile slip, they would tell the guardians of the golden door. I walked to work, with the sun beating down the spring in my step. It was in the nineties today, I was sure of it, as by the time I got to work, I was soaked through again, this time with sticky sweat that made me want to scrub myself clean. I only got to shower three times a week though, I thought, and when I looked back on the thought, I was now only slightly surprised to find it heavily tinged with bitterness. Smile, everyone’s happiness, must wear off much quicker than I thought. The people from yesterday were working as hard as it was to look at them. Sweat mixed with tears of pain from the hours, and I remembered… they were people who had broken laws, and they didn’t get to stop. They didn’t go home. They were to smile and scrub the walls that are freshly soaked through with grime and blood from the atmosphere of this horrific existence every second. I was appalled at my own thoughts, once freed from the Smile, that same fast and honest. I turned around to leave this place, afraid of what my brain would utter at my conscience when I walked into the room I worked in. Those poor babies, so many lives, gone. I had tears and sweat mixing on my person just like the workers now, and I started to move faster toward the exit, when I ran into someone. I looked up slightly, to see a silver smile, and a silver suit. This tall man belonged to the silver door… to our version of the police that I had read about long ago, and I wasn’t smiling.

He looked, if possible, even more pleased when he saw my expression. They used people that had come out of the red room to work in the silver room. They had happiness, but no mercy. He grabbed me by my shoulders and led me to the silver room. I tried to fight, but even as pieces of his face became buried under my nails and his eye hit the ground behind him, he did not slow. Already I had forgotten that Smile gave you a pleasant indifference to pain. I was sat in a chair that had winding straps that snapped over every part of me mercilessly, as it had been designed, while they debated what to do.

They tried first, to just give me more Smile , but it was ineffective. They muttered that maybe I was too aware of life to be ‘saved.’ Then the one that had caught me smiled so broadly that I could see his teeth shining from behind the holes in his cheeks I had created. He quickly typed a date and time… today, two hours from now. I knew what this was, had watched with joy as it happened to three others in my lifetime. I was to be publicly executed. I sat there, thinking, in the time I had left to live, and I tried to search. I tried to search my brain for anything that was actually good in this life, any actual reason to smile. I could find nothing. I was taken to the golden door and the people in charge of killing the wrong and the old took me to the red room. They tried again to give me Smile , but this was so others didn’t have to see me when I was defective. They shorned what the rain hadn’t eaten of my hair. They put me in all black, the color of death. I wanted to scream, but they gave me something that made me unable to call out, to tell them what I now knew.

I knew now, that I was wrong. That this was wrong. This was not a wonderful or beautiful day, it was not even a good day. It was an awful day and I was the only one that knew it. The smiling people from the gold door grabbed my arms tightly, their abnormally long nails cutting into my flesh and dropping small pieces of it to the floor, and I felt it. This was not okay, and I knew that, but they were still happily smiling as they led me into the golden room. The walls were all glass, and I was on display. The people looked in at me with happily smiling faces as I was strapped to a chair so tightly I couldn’t feel my limbs. Their grins were wide and unflinching as they slowly filled the needle with the liquid I had so ignorantly put into so many little babies deserving life. And the people, the people laughed as the people in the golden clothes jammed the needle into my neck, and the people who were happily laughing continued to not know that this wasn’t okay. This wasn’t natural. People should have opinions, people should have feelings. People shouldn’t be put into little, tiny, happy boxes. Those people, those happily living people, watched a tear fall down my cheek before my eyes closed for good.