READ THE STORY

“These aren’t going to work. I don’t know why I even bother.”

Despite his apprehensions, the man sitting at a small, battered table persisted. Something deep in his core-being drove him to keep trying. Something he had never understood. Something even they couldn’t get to.

Manning Tate sat alone at his work table. His apartment was sparsely populated. There was his table- which doubled as a dining table, his chair- which doubled as an easy chair, and a frameless mattress laying five feet away on the floor. The blankets cast over the mattress were streaked with various paints, because they too doubled. They kept him warm at night, but were also his drop cloths- when he could afford to be moved to paint. Manning, like the vast majority of others, typically only had enough to pay for various levels of apathy. If he carefully watched his income, or had a good sale of proposals, he could, on occasion, drastically reduce his level of apathy. There had been one time he had actually been able to afford happiness. The whole of his apartment was adorned by a lone painting. He had started it while under the effects of happiness. It hung on the wall across from his bed, unfinished.

What had been heralded as the ultimate connection between science and medicine had terraformed the human race. Before sufficient testing could be conducted, half the population had received The Chip. By the time it was found to cause brain deterioration it was too late. A global marketing scheme, previously undreamt of, was conducted leading to a 98% usage in all living humans. Emotion marketing and supply became the Earth’s leading commodity. Now, if you could not afford to purchase an emotion download, you defaulted to blank. A living, breathing human incapable of feeling anything. Blanks made perfect employees in remedial tasks. They lived in The Hives, quarters constructed specifically for Blanks, replete with alarms reminding them when to work, eat, and sleep.

Being of low income meant you could afford apathy. Manning’s apathetic art materialized mostly in being paid to create digital marketing codes for people with more money. He often stared at his unfinished painting, it somehow seemed to lift something in him, even though he knew that to be impossible.

Manning methodically uploaded his design proposals to The Hub, in hopes of multiple approvals so he could afford a reduced setting for the next couple of days. He left his apartment to retrieve his evening’s rations from The Commissary.

This evening’s offerings from The Commissary- 1,000 Calorie Nutrition Bars. Companies had realized the more apathetic people are, the less they had to spend on making things taste good. When no one truly cares what they eat, they’ll eat whatever is on hand. Thus, Nutrition Bars were formed. 

While in line, Manning’s phone dinged and he glanced at it to find an email from The Hub. He was being called in to review his designs. This had never happened before, any design proposals were met with a simple “accepted” or “rejected” notification. The e-mail ended requesting his arrival with no delay. He ate his nutrition bar on public transit as it hurtled toward the city’s center-, The Hub. 

Upon arriving, retinal scans got him escorted upstairs and seated alone in a large office clad in concrete and black. After waiting for seventy-seven seconds one woman, dressed in a professional black suit, entered the room and slowly closed the door behind her. She sat in a chair directly across from Manning.

“Manning Tate?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My name is Felicity Rosales and I want to talk to you about your design proposals.”

“Yes, ma’am. Are they rejected or accepted?”

“Neither.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I want to talk to you about their content.”

“Their content, ma’am?”

“Yes, you see here,” the intimidating woman three-dimensionally projected Manning’s proposals between the two of them. “You used an exclamation mark in this design denoting enhanced emotion. Why would you do that? The price of downloads this week are what they are. We do not need to emphasize anything.”

Manning did not remember using an exclamation mark and he certainly did not remember submitting it that way. Any instance of evoking emotion in proposals was frowned upon and always led to rejection. 

“Ma’am, I do not remember submitting those designs in that way.” 

“But here is your verification code at the bottom, right here.” 

Manning was perplexed as to how it had occurred. 

“I do see that, I apologize for the misleading content. I won’t let it happen again.”

“I’ve seen this before, Mr. Tate. Ever since the first use of unnecessary punctuation came to my attention, I’ve had all cases sent directly to me.”

The woman rose from her chair and pressed a button concealed behind a black marble block. Opaque barriers lowered to cover all of the windows and doors, save for one in the back of the room. 

“Mr. Tate, this kind of infraction has to be dealt with severely.”

Something began to creep over Manning. A crawling sensation began in his stomach and extended throughout his entire body. So used to apathy, he couldn’t quite place what was happening to him. The woman bent at the waist and lowered her face to his until they were eye to eye. 

“The thing that’s happening to you right now, Mr. Manning, I can tell from your pupil dilation, that is called fear.”

It was true. Manning had only experienced it once, in school, before they eradicated the curriculum, all emotions had been taught at a young age. Manning began to sweat as she continued.

“And fear, my dear, is a rational human emotion, meant to keep us from harm. But fear no longer. I am not here to harm you.” She pulled a phone from her pocket unlike any he had seen, and spoke into it, “he’s feeling.”

The single door that had remained uncovered by the opaque barriers slid open and a man emerged. He was dressed in a black suit similar to Felicity’s, and holding a metallic, half dome device.

“Manning, I’m going to propose something to you which, now that you’re experiencing authentic human fear, may induce another emotion. Are you familiar with anxiety?”

“We studied it in school, but I’ve never purchased it,” Manning apprehensively responded.

“Count yourself lucky. Manning, this is Diego and Diego can disable your chip, if you so choose.”

Fear faded from Manning’s blood stream and was overtaken by a jittery feeling, one of uncertainty. It made him want to get out of his chair and pace the floor while simultaneously knowing it would do nothing to help his situation.

“That would be anxiety taking hold,” Diego noted.

“This is not possible. Chips can not be disabled. It’s against the law,” Manning fretted.

“Mine is disabled. Diego’s is disabled. Many others are as well. It’s the reason I have all punctuation cases sent to me. The Company thinks I’m turning all infractors into Blanks. What I’m actually doing, what we’re actually doing, is setting them free,” Felicity divulged. “I have experienced the vast array of human emotion for five years now, and it has been worth every single second. If you accept my proposition, you’ll find that anything is possible.”

Manning weighed the logic in the safety of maintaining a baseline existence versus the opportunity for something completely unknown, but with great potential. 

~

He noted the colors around him as he awoke from the procedure. Everything was markedly more vivid. What once was a world painted in muted tones had become technicolor. 

“This is incredible- what did you do to me,” Manning exclaimed in jubilation before laughing aloud.

“Quiet!” Both Felicity and Diego hushed him.

“You must be very careful now. They are always watching. As I said, they believe I’m turning out Blanks. You have to keep up appearances. Lay low for a while until you start to understand how emotions can fluctuate. Here,“ Felicity produced a phone identical to the one he had seen her use before. “Take this. It’s completely untraceable. I will send instruction and guidance on how to deal with your newly evolving emotions.”

“You’re going to start feeling things very differently now,” Diego said. “You’re going to start feeling in general- so you have to get very good at pretending. We are going to start a happiness account for you.” 

Manning’s heart leapt- happiness downloads were the most coveted and expensive emotion.

“Now,” Diego continued, “you can use them however you wish. You can either black market them to improve your own life- which no one would fault you for. There’s so much of the world you haven’t experienced and money will help you do that. Or you could give them to your friends. While they’re under the influence of happiness you can then explain what happened here and we can start to disable more chips.” 

“Reclaiming more of humanity,” Felicity reverberated.

“The choice is yours.”

~

Manning stepped off the elevator onto the eleventh floor and walked down the hall to his apartment door. He paused and watched all the others who exited with him robotically walk directly to their own doors, unacknowledging of one another. He felt an overwhelming rush of sadness witnessing this. He entered his own door and looked around his drab gray apartment. He shook his head.

“I just never cared… How could it possibly feel this different?…” 

He then noticed the only bit of color in the room- his unfinished painting. He stared at it. It was so bright. Had he forgotten just how colorful it was, or had he written it off to the effects of the happiness? The lone female eye was shedding a tear, evoking one from him as well. He knew in his gut what he must do with the new cache of happiness downloads. But first he removed the painting from the wall and sat down to finish.