Fiction

Implant

by Gary Ritter
10/20/14
Not For Sale
Author requests article critique

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James rubbed his ear lobe, which held the implant.  He repeated the mantra learned as a child: “I am good through the goodness of technology.”  In the darkness of the cave he needed a lifeline, something to which he could cling to mitigate his fears.  At sixteen James, along with every other youth of that age, was required to prove himself in society.  Most of his peers and those who had gone before him chose something less risky and more in keeping with the theme of their social order: Do good deeds, help others in their need, show yourself worthy of taking your rightful place among the adults who guided and shaped their civilization.

Crawling on his belly through a tight spot he wriggled through to a place he could creep on hands and knees, then, eventually stand as he entered a voluminous cavern filled with light.  He breathed a sigh of relief.  He hated the darkness, one of the reasons he’d chosen this place as his rite of passage.  His plan was to find a treasure and bring it back for the good of mankind.  What that good might be, he had no idea.  His parents had urged him to abandon this silly notion that he could discover something no one else had and bless people with it.  But James was determined.  He’d had a dream and he clung to its reality.  He would find the object his dream had foretold.

He skipped around huge boulders and avoided tripping over stones as he crossed the cavern.  The light softly illuminating the room seemed to have no direct source, but James was grateful for it.  He headed directly toward what he’d seen in his dream.  At the far side stood a wooden cross.  It fascinated him in a way he couldn’t define.  He reached his destination, and as in the dream he began removing a pile of rocks.  He found the heavy metal box and nodded to himself.  The box opened easily and inside was the book.  Never having seen a book before he carefully lifted it.  He raised it to his nose and smelled the age of the leather.  It was good.  He tucked it into his backpack and began retreating toward the passageway out.

It was almost at the entrance to the tunnel that he stumbled and fell.  His ear struck a sharp rock and he felt the tearing of flesh and cartilage.  Crying out he grabbed at his ear; the lobe was gone!  His hand returned bloody; in the light of the cavern he saw the tissue lying on the rock-strewn floor.  In panic he scrambled through the tunnel.

At home he bandaged the wound and pleaded fatigue to his mother when she called him for dinner.  When he awoke in the morning from his dreamless sleep his head ached where the earlobe had been.  But he felt different.  Then he realized: the implant was gone!  It had been embedded in his earlobe where everyone’s chip was placed.

The sensation that washed over him was guilt.  He felt so unclean!  No one he’d ever known had expressed having guilt, but he knew it instantly.  Mankind had evolved; all were good and principled people.  There was no reason for guilt.  The mantra popped into his head: “I am good through the goodness of technology.”  As though a veil lifted from his mind he knew what he’d never known: the implant created his goodness; the drug in the implant eradicated it.  He was morally good because of the technology implanted in every single person.

His loss of goodness almost paralyzed James.  The weight of his stricken conscience caused him to fall to his knees.  He removed the book from his backpack.  Written in gold letters were the words: Holy Bible.  His breath came in gasps.  He fumbled with the unfamiliar pages.  Somehow he focused on the words before him: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  Then a couple pages later: “For the wages of sin is death.”

He bowed his head to the floor, cradling it in his hands.  All his life he’d been lied to.  He wasn’t good; no one was.  He and everyone around him were subject to death.  The technology of the implant didn’t provide a good, moral life.

James cradled the book.  It held truth, yet he needed more.  With that understanding he knew what he must do to be a man.