Subject 5

Today is April 31.

“Now say it out loud.” Marcus had heard somewhere a very long time ago that talking to oneself was a sign of intelligence.

He assumed some facet of that was true, given the profession he found himself in. Or perhaps he was desperate for a vote of confidence these days, even if it was from a factually unsupported claim.

His tongue felt leaden, but he pushed the words out, each one heavier than the last. “Today is…is…”

All it took was one more pitiful attempt before he tore off his glasses, fingers pinching the inner corners of his aching eyes. He loosed a sigh, seizing a pen from the glass organizer on his desk with no shortage of impatience.

Furious scribbling filled the lab, covering the faint tick of the mechanical clock sitting on the table by the door.

April 30th. Subject: Marcus Freedman. Attempt: 462. Results: Unsuccessful.

Marcus was half-inclined to close the file and pack it up for the day. To head back up to his office–which had doubled as his room for the past year and a bit–and crack open the beer he'd been saving.

But alas, he grabbed the console microphone before him, glancing at the line of glass cells and pressing the corresponding button.

“Number 7.” His voice sounded hollow. Hopeless. So at odds with who he had once been.

Within the cell, the lump on the bed shifted but did not sit up. Marcus scoffed and began scribbling.

Uncooperative. What’s new?

He stared at the words he had written, sniffing at the informal tone that had slowly crept into his notes these past few months.

“Number 7,” he barked a tad louder. Enough for it to be obnoxious.

The lump sat up, blankets falling away to reveal the weathered face Marcus had come to know a little too well.

The old man, number 7, gave him a phony smile, tilting his head to the side consideringly. It was always 7, never a name. And it had been that way since the day he had come here from a volunteer penitentiary when the disease broke out. What he had done to end up in there, Marcus had no idea. He didn’t exactly have the desire to find out as the old man’s eyes roved over him.

“What is it gonna be today, mister Mic Marc?” His voice crackled. Marcus scribbled, ignoring the nickname. If 7’s presbyphonia progressed, he’d have to talk to Maria about finding a substitute.

When he was done writing, he merely pointed the pen over his shoulder to the whiteboard that rested directly behind him. He had written out the line as soon as he came in.

Number 7’s eyes squinted until Marcus was sure they were closed and the old man was sleeping. A few seconds later, they flew open, enraged.

“Now, who on God's green earth would think that’s a lie. You think I’m simple?”

Marcus focused on the ticking of the clock, if only to prevent him from saying he thought just that. Those words could definitely pass his lips with no problem. “I can assure you, it is a lie.”

“Yesterday was April 30.” 7 stood with a grimace, arms flailing.

“And today is May 1.”

The old man rested his hands on the cell glass, his mouth open to let out a gravelly laugh. Marcus cringed at the gaps where teeth ought to be.

Number 7 scratched his balding head. “April has 31 days, it does.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes, she does.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes.” The ssss sound escaped through the open gaps in his mouth, desharpening it.

With any other test subject, Marcus would’ve paused to consider if they truly let a lie get passed their lips by claiming there were thirty-one days in April. But with number 7, he knew not to get too excited.

Lies weren’t lies at all if you truly believed in them.

Without moving from his chair, Marcus grabbed the small paper calendar propped on his desk and chucked it at 7’s cell, letting it skid until it smacked into the glass with a soft pang.

When the old man didn’t bend to read it, Marcus gestured to the lump of paper. “Want to put a pack of Marlboro’s and a Sleeman on it?”

He had known 7 long enough to know what incentivized him. Given how rare those things were nowadays, it would likely incentivize anyone. Hell, he could practically taste that beer waiting for him up in his office.

The subject made a show of hesitantly accepting the offer before dropping to all fours like a dog, head dipping to make out the fine print of the calendar.

“Wouldya look at that, Mic Marc.” Another laugh, this time with saliva droplets spraying on the glass divide. “There is no Apil 31. Maybe there used to be, ya think?”

Marcus fought the urge to roll his eyes, instead jabbing his pen at the whiteboard once again. “On with it.”

7 fell onto his backside, arms wrapping around his legs and head resting on his bony knees. He raised a bushy brow. “Do I get the Sleeman and the darts if I can say it?”

Marcus let out a puff of air that might’ve been a laugh. “You manage to say it and I’ll–”

Let you out of that cell.

He would do nothing of the sort. Marcus, his own tongue, and 7 all knew it, too. The old man glowered, but the promise of those luxuries weighed on him.

“Today is…”

Marcus blinked.

“Now just hold on a minute there.” 7’s brows furrowed with a determined focus. “Today is–”

The old man stood abruptly and began pacing, jumping up and down every few steps as though he could shake the words out of him. He let out a disconcerting laugh as he stretched his arms out wide, jumping. “Now hear me, denizens from far and wide.” He cupped his hands over his mouth to make a makeshift megaphone and flung his head dramatically from side to side. “This here blessed day is no other than–”

7 screamed into the glass divide, banging his head off of it. He tugged at his hair, jumped around, laughed, and began saying something so profane that Marcus lifted his finger off the button labelled 7.

He looked away from the weathered old man whose mouth was still open in soundless agony.

April 30th. Subject: Number 7. Attempt: 385. Results: Unsuccessful. Serum 18, rejected.

Marcus loosed a sigh and pushed down on the console.

“Afternoon, number 6.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say good afternoon. Come to think of it, he hadn’t heard anyone say good afternoon in a long while. They couldn’t bring themselves to.

6 was already sitting up, uniform crisp and neat, just like the neatly folded bed behind him. He stared at the wall to his left as if he could see 7 screaming and throwing his belongings around.

“Afternoon, Marcus,” he replied, shifting his blue eyes forward. “I’m afraid I’ve already tried it.”

“Mind saying one for the record?”

A timid nod.

“Today is…” A shake of the head. “It’s…”

“You can stop.” Scrible, scrible.

Before Marcus took his finger off the button, 6 stood, leaning against the glass divide between them with an air of despair hanging around him. “No luck today?”

He nudged his head to the old man who was now sobbing into the pile of rumpled blankets on his twin sized bed. “No luck for 7, either. He just lost out on Malboro’s and a Sleeman.”

6 didn’t appear amused by that. His gaze was far away, as if looking into a different world entirely. Marcus was content to let him think for a moment. If anything, the peace and quiet was a blessed reprieve from the fiasco that was 7. He always did like 6. As much as you can like someone who wound up in a penitentiary for God knows what reason.

The younger man turned to him at long last. “Do you think it’s a curse to not be able to lie, or a blessing?”

Usually, Marcus didn’t entertain philosophical debates, even if he did peruse the odd philosophical book sometimes. He was a man of numbers and equations, after all. But for a reason he couldn’t fathom, he found himself leaning back in his chair, pulling the microphone with him.

He considered his words carefully. He always did, starting from 462 days ago. He never realized how much he used to speak without thinking. How many little white lies he let pass his lips without stopping to contemplate if it even was a lie or not.

And then that day…he found a lot of his sentences being cut short before he could finish them. The whole world did. It went on the news and was printed in the papers, but for all their awareness of the issue, they had yet to find a solution. Marcus had yet to find a solution.

Suddenly, his aspirations for finding cures for deadly diseases had shifted out of necessity to finding a cure for the inability to lie.

For all of his studying, he could never have known that the inability to lie was just as deadly as any disease that could render a body useless. Relationships ruined, secrets brought to light. Politics–with its foundation being lies and deceit in itself–set the world on fire. First, metaphorically, with news headings and debates, and then literally.

The world had turned on its head. There were no more lies.

Marcus set down his pen. “I think it’s morally correct not to lie, even if anyone you asked would figure it a curse.”

6 shrugged his shoulders. “I think the consequentialists would argue that lying is for the greater good sometimes.”

Marcus glanced at the books lining the young man’s desk, no doubt the source of 6’s moral turmoil. He snorted. “Remind me to get you some Kant next time. Maybe then your opinion will change.”

He let go of the button on the console and sat forward, picking up his pen and writing the twin to 7’s analysis except for the subject and serum number.

He glanced at 5’s report.

Subject: Number 5. Attempts: 0, Results: n/a, no serum administered.

Right, the new volunteer replacement. The last 5 had been even more tiresome than 7, if it were even possible.

Marcus sighed, inclined to skip over the test subject until a new serum had been administered. He would’ve been inclined, had he not glanced up to see the middle-aged woman pressed against the glass.

Her mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear the words. Just see them.

Today is April 31.

The pen clattered to the table. Marcus lunged for the console so fast that he nearly flung himself over the table. The organizer fsoared of the wooden desk and shattered on the cement floor, shards shooting every which way to form a spiderweb of glass.

“What did you say?”

The woman took a step away from the divide, a knowing smile on her thin lips.

“What did you say?” Marcus’ scientific decorum was second to his desperation. It often was these days.

She cocked her blonde head to the side, smile expanding to reveal the neat line of teeth, so at odds with 7’s two cells over. Even the old man looked curiously at Marcus' expression, tapping a finger on his head with an air of dramaticism.

“What?” she cooed. Her voice was as smooth as butter. She pointed a lazy finger at the whiteboard behind him. “That?”

“I’m not in the mood for beating around the bush, so I suggest you answer yes or no.”

“No.”

Marcus stood so fast his chair flew out from under him, hands grasping the microphone. “You’re lying.”

The tone was by no means accusatory, but rather awe-struck.

And the fact that those words could get out of his mouth, the fact that he was so sure, was enough to make him perspire.

She tilted her head in that same feline fashion.

Marcus willed the desperation to settle and his face to smooth. She didn’t strike him as the type to give answers just because she was behind a cell and he wore a lab coat. Her eyes trailed over that same coat now, a hint of amusement in them.

“And if I was?” She picked at her long nails.

Marcus sat down and straightened his spine. “I would ask you how.”

A glance at his jacket. “As a man of science, you quantify and observe things.”

It took him a moment to realize she was waiting for him to confirm. He gave a shallow nod.

“You break it down, down, down, until it is in its naked and shivering. You look at it and see the truth, when in fact it’s a lie.”

She began pacing. “Numbers, particles, compounds, letters on a page. On a whiteboard.” She gestured to the notebook before him and then the words written behind him. “All of it is a lie.”

He braced his elbows on the table. “Let’s pretend it is all a lie. How are you able to say any of it?”

Her blue eyes dipped to the nametag on his left breast pocket. “We used to live in a modern world, Marcus.” His name on her tongue sent a shiver up his spine. “We had become so damned aware of facts and truths and theories. So aware and supposedly understanding of our perceptual reality that we’d subconsciously become unable to lie about it. Everything was quantifiable. Everything understood.”

Marcus raised a brow. “I think it’s safe to say that everyone on this planet isn’t aware of things on the same level. How is a toddler unable to lie if it can’t tell me how something as simple as photosynthesis works?”

5 raised her hands in the air in a defensive manner. “I don’t pretend to have all the answers, doc. Perhaps it was some horrid disease, the way scientists like you claimed it was. Or perhaps it is a cruel punishment from God because he saw that the smarter we got, the further we strayed.”

Marcus blinked. “God? That’s the answer?”

She shrugged. “Either way, here we are. The only reason you find the suggestion absurd is because it's something you can’t quantify or observe." She ran those assessing eyes over him. “Silly little man in a silly little lab coat. Thinking you know all the answers because of all the money and time you pumped into a Ph.D.”

He sketched a brow. “So?”

Her brows lowered, eyes sharpened. “So, stop thinking so much. What color is my jumpsuit?”

“Orange.”

“It’s pink. What color are my eyes?”

“Blue.”

“Brown.” She shook her head, ever the teacher disappointed at the students. “Stop. Thinking. So. Much. Lie because everything is a lie. Lie because you know it’s true that everything is a lie. Your senses are a lie. Your perceptions, observations, numbers. Everything.”

His mouth dropped open of its own accord. Even if he wanted to counter what she was saying, he couldn’t. For she had just let not one, but two lies slip out of her mouth as if it were nothing.

Everything he thought he knew was what he had read in school, written in his notebook, and what he saw before him. All of it tangible and sensical. All of it catered to the part of his mind that wanted to understand, that needed to understand. Perhaps it was true that things existed, but it was assigned a meaning. And that meaning changed from person to person. From culture to culture. A meaning that transcends any bounds of understanding.

Hell, 7 had believed so much that there was an April 31 that it wasn't a lie to him. And what were days, but made-up numbers assigned to change with the rising and setting of the sun. The point was that it existed in 7's mind, the same way a pink jumpsuit existed in 5's mind. And if it existed in someone's mind, was that not a truth in itself?

It was like she could hear the thoughts in his head. “Let it go.”

“It is true that there is no objective truth.”

She lifted her head and took a step forward. Slow and steady.

“So Doc, what day is it?”

“Today is April 31.”