When they took the hood off again, I was in a cell.

Looking down at the rough skin on the top of my hand I could see the faint sheen of a marking of some sort. I could hardly tell what it was, but from the looks of it, only a blacklight could reveal that mystery. A loud clang quickly turned my attention away from my hand and I spun around to see what had happened.

There she was, a young white woman with a severe haircut who barely looked older than me. She wore a tight-fitting gray shirt and black pants that led all the way down to her thick black military-style black boots. She pressed her finger against a keypad next to the cell door and a small drawer pulled out. She placed white linens in the drawer and closed it. The drawer opened up to the other side and I pulled the linens out. “Put these on and join the others,” she commanded.

Wearing my white scrubs, I filed out of my cell and lined up behind a group of kids who looked to be my age. No one said a word. We marched down the corridor of cells, and stopped abruptly at a door.  One by one we stepped up to a machine and placed our hand beneath a scanner. From where I stood at the back of the line I couldn’t tell what the scanner did, but from the quick yelp let out by each person, I knew it wasn’t good.

When it was my turn, I looked up with worried eyes at the severe haircut woman standing over me. I placed my hand on the pad where the glow of a blacklight shone over the marking on my hand which had a barcode and words above that read, “Treasure Island Hatchery and Conditioning Center.”


I could hardly finish reading the label when a sharp sting poked the underside of my hand. I too yelped and jerked my hand out from the scanner, turning it to see a gray square beneath my skin. My worried look turned to confusion as I looked up at the severe haircut woman. “Tracker. We see and know everything here,” she said. Just then, the door slid open and I stepped inside.

“And this,” said a man in a lab coat to the group of students who had entered ahead of me, “is the Fertilizing Room.” Bent over their instruments, three hundred people who I later learned were called Fertilizers were plunged in the scarcely breathing silence, the hum of machines in the background.
   
“Tomorrow you begin work here,” he instructed us, “But for now, you must learn the operations of this fine establishment. Here we operate under the motto: Progress, Stability, Control. Out there in the outside world, you see, they hardly have rules. The people do whatever they want whenever they want and where does that get them? War! Terrorism! The people fighting against the regime!” His voice got louder and angrier and with each word he spoke, sprays of saliva rained down on the faces of us kids who stood in awe, listening intently.

“Here we’ve learned to do things the right way. Here you are one number in a system. You are no longer an individual but an integral piece of a high functioning machine. Everything you will ever need is provided for you. As long as you follow all instructions by your superiors, you will never have to compete with or compare yourself to others.”
   
He paused to collect himself before beckoning for us to follow him. He turned around and no sooner did an alarm sound, like the low moan of a San Francisco foghorn. “File out. To the auditorium!” the man called out.

The next thing I knew, we were sitting in an enormous multi-level auditorium. It was an entire room of people exactly like me, parts of the machine, sitting in deafening silence. I wonder if they felt as uneasy as I did. Closing my eyes made it feel like I was alone in an empty room, as empty as I was feeling inside. I opened my eyes and the lights had dimmed.

Onto the stage far below was the Controller, the single most powerful operator of this giant machine. He cleared his throat and began speaking, welcoming us to this new place. When it was over, I raised myself from my seat, and followed the lines of people back to my station and immediately returned to work.