Wretched by Offer Reish (best free ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📖

Fairness, equality, protecting our rights. And most of all- justice.

"I haven't seen your family at church for a while", Father Lockworth said gravely several minutes later when it was time to part ways, producing a meek and entirely not reassuring smile.

"Oh yes, Father… Steve has been very busy lately and… we haven't had the chance. But we will be going soon. Very soon", Hailey said apologetically, petting the boys on the head as though to show that they were good boys although they didn't go to church as often as they should.

"Hello", Leonardo called as they entered the apartment, as he always did even when he knew there was nobody there to greet. And as always when there was nobody to greet, he received no reply.

A sweeping sound came from one of the apartment's two bathrooms, then some clanking sounds and a flush of the toilet. The bathroom was being cleaned. There was the sound of footsteps- not the swish or thud of shoes against the floor, but a soft tap of bare feet against the tiles- and then more sweeping and flushing from the second bathroom.

"That's enough. Go somewhere else", Fred's voice emerged from his bedroom, to which he'd retired immediately upon entering the apartment. He valued his privacy, and was willing to fight for it if anyone dared challenge it. There was no need to fight in this case, however, as the trespasser immediately retreated. There were some more thumps and thuds of things being put back in their places, and then the increasing sound of uneven footsteps as the servant reached the living room for further instructions.

462 was the name of the family's servant. Like all servants, it was rather small in size (not much larger than the lean Hailey), and was extremely ugly. Its entire body was covered in dark brown hair, it moved awkwardly and without the least bit of grace, and it had a terrible limp in its left leg (these were all common attributes of all servants). Its small eyes were almost the same color as the hair on its face, so that they were almost impossible to make out from a distance. Aside from 462's repulsive appearance, one also had to be wary of remaining at its close presence for a prolonged period of time, since the hard skin under its hair emitted an unbearable stench. It was said that if you somehow got under the hair and touched the skin, you couldn't get the stench off your body for two weeks, and even then only by bathing in lemon juice three times a day.

Claims had been made that many of these defects were intentionally induced by their producers in order to cause servants to be especially unpleasing, but with all the rumors and fabrications that one heard on the grapevine regarding servants, it was impossible to tell truth from fantasy. Moreover, why would the Industry intentionally reduce the quality of its own product?

Every household in the city was entitled to the full services of one servant free of charge as part of the government's social welfare program. Except for many government officials and anyone with sufficient political clout or connections with the Industry- they always had at least two servants. It was all subsidized by the government, to the smug satisfaction of the Industry. This glaring corruption was one of the things The Existents were fighting against- this, the exorbitant tax benefits conferred to the Industry, the fact that the crippled and the elderly didn't receive free night servant services (all servants left at nightfall), and the holding and transporting conditions of servants to and from the people's households. These four major demands were known as the Four Pillars on which the fight was based. An example of the effect one of these injustices had on the people was the lacking safety conditions during transport that led to an extremely high expiration rate among servants, which resulted in a high turnover frequency and required families to get used to a new servant every three to four months on average. Needless to say, this was a considerable inconvenience for most families, whose household relied on the industrious services of their servant. This last point was part of a larger demand for more transparency in the regulations that governed the Industry's operation and in Protocols that summarized the content of different policymaking Committees in the Industry.

Indeed, The Existents despised politicians and the Industry, and now that people's eyes were beginning to open to these transgressions, despise was fermenting in them as well. That's all they were asking for: fairness, equality, rights, justice. And they weren't going to stop until they had it!

462 was a bit of an anomaly among servants (any variation among them was quite rare, since the production line was strict, meticulous and very homogenous), and he'd been with the family for over a year. It was more intelligent than most servants, and it understood almost everything anyone in the family said to it, except for Fred who sometimes enjoyed flustering it with some complex or specialized word that it couldn't comprehend. If you kept your language simple and your instructions clear, it would perform just what you asked of it, and indeed the family was very satisfied with its performance. At present it stood at the small open space in front of the kitchen, grunting softly as it always did to inform the family that it was awaiting further instructions. Its small brown eyes alternated between Hailey, who was in the kitchen preparing dinner with her back to it, and Leonardo, who was sitting in the small niche in the wall whose one half bordered the kitchen and the other bordered the open space 462 was standing in. There, under the dim lights that came from the kitchen and from above the entrance door (which was right in front of the niche, no more than five meters away) and penetrated the niche, he was moving the white pieces of a glass chessboard around the board.

It groaned three- four- five times, frozen in place, when Hailey finally turned and noticed it. She paused, pondering whether there was any more work to be done, then (knowing instinctively that Leonardo was there) called:

"Leonardo, do you want 462 to play with you? Leonardo!"

But it was of no use- her son was fixated on the board in front of him, though he was merely moving the pieces around randomly. Then, suddenly, he turned his body to the left in the direction of the kitchen and said:

"Mom, can 462 come play with me before it leaves?" He didn't understand why his mom and 462 were standing there, his mom staring at him and 462 with its ugly face turned downward, but in any case 462 was instructed to sit in the chair opposite him and play the black pieces. The game proceeded as expected, 462 coming out of the opening ahead and going on to win a significant amount of material. The white pieces were picked off one by one, the queen was being chased around the board and the king was completely exposed. The white side attempted a counterattack, but it was feeble and was easily rebuffed by the strong black pawn formation. Leonardo came to the verge of tears, and a tear began to form at the corner of his right brown eye with the realization of his impending first loss ever to 462. In fact, his eyes weren't the same opaque brown of his mom's and of most brown-eyed people, but had a kind of transparency that made you feel you could see right through them but at the same time reflected with tremendous clarity what was in front of them. When his eyes watered, they gleamed as brilliantly as a star in a dark night, and his whole face took on a melancholy beauty that could rarely be seen even in the purest expression of a child. But in the very moment the glint started to flash in Leonardo's right eye, and as the little niche seemed to be lit anew with a new mysterious source of light, the black side made a fatal blunder, suffocating its own king at the down-left corner of the board and allowing a rogue white knight to leap over its rival knight and land on the 7th row, turning the game around in a single move and delivering a whopping checkmate!

"Yes! You almost beat me! Again! But you never defend your king well enough against my lethal attacks." Leonardo exclaimed, jumping from his chair in a terrific mix of relief and exhilaration. (To Hailey, who easily overheard Leonardo's blaring cries of triumph, this was a very insignificant occurrence, since victory over a servant was hardly a worthy cause for celebration). Then, standing over his chair, he extended a hand for his rival to shake, as his father taught him was the way of any respectable chess player. If you won and didn't offer your rival your hand, then your victory was meaningless. So Leonardo did it every time, as though momentarily forgetting the identity of his opponent in the heat of the victory. And 462 reacted in the same manner it did every time: since servants weren't allowed, of course, to initiate any direct physical contact with any person, least of all with a child, it bowed its head down, congratulated its victor, and…

A repetitive beeping sound suddenly came forth, discontinuing the ceremony and cutting short Leonardo's celebration. It was the same sound that came every day from within 462's abdomen, and judging by the repeating involuntary jerking movements it prompted 462 to make, the discomfort it caused it was far greater than it caused the people around. Nobody really knew what caused it, but it was presumed that it originated in some device installed in the servants' bodies. The reason it was there was to force them to leave the houses of the people and make it to the rendezvous point on time, at which point they would be loaded to vehicles that transported them back to their holding places where they would spend the night known as Storage Camps. This happened after nightfall and from a remote, well-hidden location so as to minimize the inconvenience caused to the people (nobody wanted to run into servants in the middle of the street or be disturbed by the whole commotion at the transport area). The sound increased in volume and in pitch gradually until they were outdoors, so that within minutes it would become unbearable. This guaranteed that the servants wouldn't stay in the houses any later than permitted.

For a moment Leonardo thought he saw 462's well-camouflaged eyes staring into his own, which had never happened before. He chuckled in amusement of the thought of a servant looking into a boy's eyes- it was unheard of- and watched 462 leave the apartment in silence except for the increasing beeping sound. On its back, covering a large area where hair didn't grow stood out three large, black digits: 462.

"What did she mean by that- justice is sneaky and evasive?" Leonardo asked suddenly, having himself tried and failed to comprehend this complex analogy Jessica had made in her speech. His parents, half-reading half-watching Television (his mom was reading a psychology textbook edited by a colleague, his father the morning paper) in the living room, exchanged an uneven glance before his mom rose to her feet and marched over to the niche in the wall. Steve's eyes followed her with a disgruntled expression until she turned to the open space in front of the niche, when she left his line of vision. Hailey took the seat in front of her son's, studied what looked to her like a disorganized formation of the black pieces though she wasn't familiar with the rules of the game, and said softly:

"I think what she meant is that sometimes it's not easy to achieve justice, so you have