Chapter Text
“So, what’s your name?”
“I am B2184569O”
“That’s what you are called?”
“Yes. When I am called, that is how they call me.”
“Well...alrighty then. Do you have a nickname? Something, uh, a little easier to say, perhaps?”
“I don’t know”
“Okay. No worries, um, B18-”
“He calls me Marco”
“Marco then. Good. Marco’s good. So Marco, I’m just going to ask you a few questions. You just have to answer them honestly. It’s quite an honor for me to be the first permitted to speak with you. Quite an honor. Just remember, everyone watching wants to be your friend. There’s no reason to be afraid.”
“I do not think I’m afraid.”
“Good. Neither are we. We won’t hurt you, as long as you promise us the same.”
“I can’t hurt you.”
“That’s right.”
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”
“Now why’s that, Marco? The reports told us you are strong. And powerful. Very powerful. We were quite impressed.”
“I was strong.”
“What changed?”
“They cut me off.”
“Who’s they?”
"..."
“You need to answer the question, Marco.”
“The Foundation.”
You don’t see us. But we are there. Always there. If you are alone, there is one of us with you. If you are with a friend, there are two. And so the pattern continues. But we are always there.
We’re obligated to watch you at all times. 24/7 surveillance. Everyday, everynight, we watch.
Our eyes must be on your face. That is priority. We must not disobey. None of us really know what happens if we do. None of us have ever tried. The Opaques seem to think the worst punishment a criminal can be sentenced to is death. We know they’re wrong. There are so many things, all so much worse. Things that are indescribable.
Which is a paradox in itself, I suppose, because when you label a thing as indescribable you are, in fact, describing it. I’m sorry. I digress. But we live for paradoxes, us Translucents. Maybe that’s because we are, in fact, paradoxes ourselves.
I am B2184569O.
This is a translation of course, in a language you can understand. If I said my name to you in my own tongue, you would not hear it. If I wrote it down, your eyes would see only blank paper.
B2184569O is a direct translation; if you were to translate the meaning it would be something like “He whose face has been kissed by the butterflies,”. When I told this to him, he laughed. He cupped my cheek in his hand.
But the full translation’s rather long, so I will use the direct one, as a time saver.
I’ve always been B2184569O. Since I was formed. It seems so long ago. Everything before him does. My memories before are like a story described in passing, a conversation I happen to overhear. They don’t feel real. Not like something I lived, something I experienced. Only stories.
Just words, really.
I felt nothing back then.
For two thousand years, I felt nothing. I watched, like I was supposed to. I watched, I recorded. I made final judgements. At the end, I greeted and I consoled. I was whatever was needed of me, a shoulder for crying, a bag for punching, an answer to the neverending questions. At the end, I carried them away, to whichever place I felt they should go. And there were so many differents ends. So many different faces whose stories and secrets belonged to me as well as them.
I knew each soul better than they knew themselves, easily. Better than I know myself, even. I watched hearts break, I watched them struggle to mend. I saw loss, I saw tragedy, I saw joy. I watched all that happens between the beginning and the end of a life. Over and over.
But I never felt anything.
Not once.
That’s against our code, after all.
I feel I’m being rude. Chances are, you are a little confused. Normally, you meet us only after your soul has left your lifeless corpse, so we are doing things a bit out of order here. I’m sorry for the mix up.
If it’s any comfort, it’s still a bit bewildering for me as well. You’re in your body, and yet you can hear me. And you’re not him. How odd. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to this.
We’ll just soldier through it together, I suppose.
Let’s see. I’ll do my best to explain. You are one of the Opaques. You are real, you are solid, you are there. You live and you die.
I am a Translucent. I am not, and I do not.
Sometimes, It takes a moment for people process this. I do seem like I’m there when they finally see me, I suppose. They tell me this, they touch me, they say I am solid and they can feel me. They say that means I’m wrong. I explain to them, I only seem like I am real because they no longer are.
That usually silences them.
Sometimes they ask me how long I’ve been with them. I say I’ve never left.
And then of course I leave them.
To me that’s sort of ironic, but maybe I’m reading too much into it. I don’t know.
Sometimes, they call us ghosts. They call us reapers, or angels. I’ve been addressed as God a few times. These are all human concepts, and frankly, they are bullshit. None of those exist.
There is only the Foundation.
You may also be wondering; why are we here? What is our purpose?
Well, why are any of us here?
My belief is we are here to choose for you, in the end. We watch you grow. We learn you. We study you. Eventually, we know you. Better than you know you. When all is over, we take what we have learned and we pick out a door.
We are here to help, in the end.
Anyway. Now you know what I am. Now you know what you are to me. Now, I can begin my story.
It started with a baby. A baby boy. I was with him, from the second his skin touched the cool air of the world. I analyzed him, apathetic.
He was an average baby. Average length, average height, average features. Wet curls snaked their way around his skull. His face was red, scrunched, and screaming.
The dark haired nurse held him a foot or so away from her body, looking down at him. Scrutinizing. Checking for cracks, maybe. The mother was gasping, panting, staring up at the messy little figure held above her. The father was talking, asking questions, congratulating. Every word that escaped from his mouth was saturated with relief. The baby just screamed.
Births are so noisy. They're chaotic. Death is quiet.
I stood, watching, beside the doorway. I acknowledged the other Translucents crowded into the small hospital room. There were four others, one for each Opaque. The mom, the dad, and two nurses. Four.
I looked one to my left in the face, and covered my eyes with my palms. My fingers were spread, triangles of hospital between them. Through them I could see the other Translucent mirroring my gesture. A second passed. I brought my hands back down to my sides. So did she.
Repeat three more times, a greeting for each of the watching figures.
This is a gesture of respect, older than even the oldest Translucent. Older than time, some say. It means peace. It means you are not seen, continue watching. Continue watching, in peace and unseen.
I thought the sentiment was unnecessary. I’d never lived any other way.
Throughout the entire interaction, I’d kept one eye trained on the baby. One of the relatively few physical differences between you and me is my ability to move my eyes separately from each other. It really is more convenient, I’d imagine. One eye must always be on our Opaque.
No exceptions. Always.
For me it’s always my right eye, but that’s just a personal preference.
The baby was still screaming. It was earsplitting. Earthshaking. That was the first record I made since the Assignment; Jean Kirstein was a noisy baby.
It was also the first crack in my perception that the boy was average. Someone so small having lungs so large cannot be normal.
It cracked again when I saw his eyes. They were nicer than most Opaque eyes. The color of gingerbread.
My last Opaque had liked gingerbread. She’d kept a jar filled with it in her kitchen. Each morning, the women twisted the lid of the jar open with arthritic hands, taking out a smiling cookie. Every day, she had one with her oatmeal. When her grandchildren came to visit her, she would shuffle over to where they sat and silently place a gingerbread man into each tiny palm.
She did not cry when she met me. She had looked up into my face with wise eyes framed with sagging skin. They were old eyes. Something about her unnerved me. Despite my age, I was a child standing before her.
Usually, you are all so young.
I had led her by the hand to the door I had picked out for her. A simple door, painted eggshell. An iron latch held it closed. The scent of mowed lawns hung in the air.
I had been confident with my decision.
One of the nurses, the one with the dark hair and the dark circles, was leaving. In her arms she cradled the baby with the gingerbread eyes.
I followed them.
I did not recognize the nurse’s Translucent. We walked beside each other, behind our Opaques. Neither of us spoke, of course. Speaking is not permitted outside the Foundation.
It was a companionable silence, I thought.
For your sake, I will summarize the next few months for you. The details are not so important. I watched the baby. The baby did baby things. You have all watched babies before, I’ll bet.
Someone was watching you watching that baby.
Someone is watching you right now.
Don’t look over your shoulder, they are probably not behind you. They need to see your face. Smile a little more, perhaps. If we had feelings, I think seeing you happy would make us happy.
We don’t though, so if you don’t smile it’s probably fine.
So the baby did baby things, one thing being growing and learning to do different baby things. I have watched many babies grow. An uncountable number of babies. None of this was new for me.
For the most part, Jean Kirstein was well behaved. He cried when he was hungry or tired or when he wanted a clean diaper, but most babies seem to do that. It’s sort of embarrassing, really. I’m glad I never was one.
The mother and father were not bad people. They were cowardly. Opaques have the tendency of labeling people who are scared of doing what is right as people who want what is wrong.
Mr. and Mrs. Kirstein were scared of being parents, so they avoided the task altogether.
Luckily for them, they were very wealthy and they found they could replace their presence in their son’s life with piles of money. Nannies were hired. The best toys were ordered from the best catalogues. A room the size of the first floor of your house was christened the nursery.
I would look into those sleepy gingerbread eyes and I would think to myself that this child would grow up alone. All alone in an empty mansion. An empty mansion full of empty-minded people. Empty-minded people with empty hearts.
I remember wondering if he would notice. Many don’t.
I think that I thought I pitied him, before I realized I could not feel.
At five months old, the words “Jean” and “average” were antonyms.
His features were neat and well proportioned, yet unexceptional. The gingerbread eyes were warmer than most eyes, but that was not unprecedented. He did look average.
To all the nannies, maids, and servants who made their way into the nursery, he was a healthy little boy who was not yet capable of understanding how rich he was, and therefore worthy of their respect. A sweet boy with a bit of a temper, but a controllable one. His health was fine. Unremarkable. He did act average.
I quaked in my boots.
I knew there was something wrong.
Why?
What?
I had no idea.
Tearing at my hair, pacing back and forth, debating with myself, I watched him with one eye. This was a change for me. I am usually calm. Stationary. I watch impassively. At the Foundation, I am praised for this.
I was not being impassive.
I think back and wonder if the uncertainty drove me mad. Maybe I was mad, and that is why I am where I am. And he is where he is. And you are where you are.
If I had been sane, I would have handled things differently.
The Translucents of the servants and the nannies were in the nursery often, trailing after their Opaques. I would greet them, they would greet me. We would watch together. When they were there, I would try to keep still. I would try to look calm and in control. I did not want to be reported.
I often felt eyes on me.
I will never forget the day I realized.
It was a stormy day, a cold one. Sheets of snow were dropped from the sky, unfolding and billowing to the ground, painting the world outside the nursery window a pearly white. The window was impressive, more of a glass wall than a window, really. Elegant white curtains were drawn back to show us the storm. A white frame on a white painting. I thought it was beautiful.
The nannies and the servants did not agree. They worried, huddling together. Penguins, shielding themselves from the cold. They murmured quiet concerns about road conditions.
I remember thinking it was a shame Opaques so often miss the beauty in beautiful things. You have such little time to appreciate it.
I focused back on the boy. I knew that in no time at all he would be just like them, consumed in superficiality and trivial problems which never really amounted to anything. So was the life of an Opaque.
I gazed at him. Vaguely wondering what he would become.
Warm gingerbread eyes.
It struck me.
I stumbled, stumbled backwards. Backed up against the wall. My heart pounded in my chest, filling my eardrums with loud crashes. I felt. I felt fear. It ran in my veins like a drug, flowing through my body. My nerves where igniting, they were burning. Something had broken. Or maybe something was fixed. I still don't know.
This was new, it was all so new. I was petrified. I wanted, so badly, to tear my gaze from his. Five months, and it never registered. I had always overlooked it. But now I saw.
It was not the gaze of the other Translucents that had been on me.
Gingerbread eyes seared into my own.
He did not look away.