This Mockery of Light || A Collection of Stories

Welcome to Utopia

"Are you aware of why you are here, sir?" the Tester asked. He had light grey clothes, a light grey voice, and a light grey expression. If you replaced a Tester with a robot, no one would have ever known the difference.

I wanted to tell him yes just to save myself the lecture, but they already had me hooked up to the polygraph, so I didn't bother. "What did I mess up this time?"

The Tester gave a humorless chuckle that bore no semblance to humanity. It bounced off the light grey walls of the Testing Room and into my head like an empty echo of passion. "Don't sound so resigned, sir. The Testing Committee has not given up all hope for you yet, and we would like you to be committed to fitting in wherever we place you next." His smile was a piece of plastic he'd probably memorized from some Testing handbook. "So, you are here today because we received complaints from a few people in your Community of you 'disagreeing' with them. Do you recall such incidents?"

I shifted in my chair. "I simply expressed my opinion. There's no law against that."

"No, sir, no, sir, of course not. Just so long as those opinions are shared by your respective Community." The plastic smile popped back on his face as he shuffled through the notes on the table. "Let's see, we have you currently placed in Industrious, subgroup agnostic, subgroup Caucasian, subgroup heterosexual, subgroup conservative ideologies, subgroup introvert, subgroup IQ Range 120-140." He glanced up from his notes. "That's as far as we can subgroup you, sir, without creating a clone for you."

I didn't laugh at the joke, if that's what it was supposed to be. The Testers existed to make other people feel at ease, not the other way around.

He set his papers down. "So you see the difficult position your recent actions have put the Testing Committee in. Prior to this, every group we've placed you in, your one defining characteristic has been disagreeableness, and disagreeableness is the only quality Society cannot tolerate. Now, it is possible you've been placed in the wrong group this entire time. While the Personality Test is highly accurate, and the polygraph protects from intentional mistakes on the Test, it cannot protect from carelessness or thoughtlessness.

"So, sir," the Tester powered up a tablet and slid it over to me, "please consider your answers carefully this time. Your perfect placement is of utmost importance to your happiness and the survival of Society. Disagreements only arise when people are unalike; where people are alike, there is harmony; and harmony builds utopias." The mantra of Society.

The screen in front of me was light grey with rotating letters that read, "WELCOME TO THE COMPREHENSIVE PERSONALITY TEST: THE BUILDING BLOCK OF UTOPIA." Those words had been my enemy for as long as I could remember. Behind them waited an hours long questionnaire that demanded every detail of your life, an explanation of your soul, and a mind-numbing amount of patience. Seeing it now, I hated it with a fierce and sudden fury the likes of which this plastic, pretend-person in front of me could never feel. I would have given my left hand so as not to take that Test again. It was the bane of my existence and everything that I hated about Society and life.

Fire simmering in my soul, my eyes snapped up to the Tester's. "Have you ever thought that maybe we don't need to be in groups? That we all would be better together, in a wild mix of dispositions and opinions. Why, imagine, when someone dared disagree with us, we could—what, what then? Why, I suppose we'd be forced to have an actual discussion. Wouldn't that be terrifying. Perhaps we'd be forced to change. And that's the greatest fear of all, isn't it?" The polygraph beeped louder with my rising heartbeat, but I ignored it, focusing on this plastic mold of a man in front of me. With a mock calmness, I asked, "Now, sir. Have you ever considered that?"

Cold fear crept into the Tester's eyes. It was the first real expression I'd seen on him, and a thrill ran through me.

He rose. "No. No, sir, I had not considered that. Please, let me discuss it with my superiors." He gathered his notes and hurried out of the room.