Sameness

By K. Weikel

Nine months of sleep, three months of being awake, that's how the year goes for us. Half of us wake up tired and sore while all of us wake up smelling of either lotion or bleach. But during the nine month period of hibernation, I woke up.

And now I know why I always wake up sore and reeking of bleach.

> SAMENESS, WHAT WE STRIVED FOR SO LONG TO ACHIEVE. BUT WHAT IF YOU'RE DESTINED TO BE DIFFERENT? <

Humans have always strived for equality, for everyone to be treated equal. We finally reached the point of this harmony, this level of sameness--and everyone is happy. Many, many generations later.

But what happens when, in a wold of people knocked down and stood up to be exactly alike, a person wants to be different? What if they're destined to be unique in a world of strict equality?

• Language: English
• Publisher: K. Weikel Publishing
• Release date: Oct 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370728688

K. Weikel

K. Weikel uses her three-dimensional characters to tell stories of life and adventure and magic."The One-Hundred" won the Wattys Award in 2015 and has reached over two million reads. Weikel has also won the 2017 Writers Awards for Building Monsters. She has written 60 books, including her first manga, "Katharsis". To learn more, visit her website: http://www.kweikel.comSERIES:Underdogs (4)Replay (13)Katharsis (1)The One-Hundred (6 Books, 1 Short Story, 1 Novella)The Haunted Mansion (4)The Blood Room [3 Alternate Endings]TRILOGIES:Dead MenMaskless TrilogyTrapped TrilogyCOMING SOON (1)DUOLOGIES:The Unnamed DuologyStop; GoSTAND-ALONES:WaterloggedThrough the Dimension of NightmaresWhen the Sky EatsCreatures of the BelowNord and the BordSamenessBuilding MonstersDollhouseThe Vampire's CarnivalKrystal's WorldLabyrinthFiguresMatchCagedList X

Book preview

CHAPTER 0

In the Society, we were one. We did not say I, we did not utter the word me, but instead we said we, as if one person had hundreds of others inside of their head, inside their body. The only reason why, in these letters, I will be saying I, is because I am no longer part of the we. I am an individual and this was my journey.

My eyes fluttered open, the florescent lights above me beating down on my frame. It had been nine months since I last opened them. The tubes attached in my arms and placed all over my body were being removed one by one by a machine called a Waker. It was filled with three types of liquid: yellow, clear, and blue. The difference in them had always been unclear, but it never mattered to me, nor occurred that they each might have done something different, something maybe damaging to our bodies.

The bed holding my body lifted and sat me up, making my torso rise like the sun in the morning.

Welcome back, the soft metallic voice of the Waker cooed. How was our Hibernation?

Rejuvenating, I said, my body still as it ached.

The government, the only ones who weren’t the same and weren’t incorporated in the we, would tell us it’s because of laying so still for such a long time. They reassured us it’s because of the Hibernation.

Our clothes are beside us, the machine said again, plugging itself into the wall to charge. Put them on and go out into the world. We will see us again in three months.

I nodded and stood slowly, everything in pain. The soreness would soon disappear, but only right before my three months were up.

I changed into the loose gray T-shirt that fell to my knees and the baggy black pants that dragged beneath my heels. The bland, white shoes slipped over my feet easily, fitting snugly. I ran my hand over my scalp. Cleanly shaven to match everyone else’s.

I moved to the door, a final goodbye uttered from the machine as I opened the slab of wood and stepped out into the brightly lit hallway. Many others did the same. A familiar face walked up to me and smiled. This person lived next door to me in or little complexes, where we spent the three months we would be awake. We didn’t talk as much as we could have, but we did consider each other ‘friends’.

How are we? It spoke.

We are sore, I smiled back. Keep in mind that I am only expressing the selfish words of me and I, as well as it to express inner and outer happenings without confusion for you who reads this note in the remains of the Society.

Yes, we are, it smiled again, and we fell into line with the rest of the bodies crowding the hallways of the Hibernation Complex.

Once we reached the large entrance of the Complex, we were stopped at the front doors, the air mixing with the smells of bleach and lotion. I always wondered why those smells were the ones that were the most prominent after waking, but I never asked the people of the government. We weren’t allowed to question anything, considering all that could be asked. Some questions weren’t meant to be answered.

Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t have gone looking.

Welcome back, a robotic voice echoed out over the audience. A hologram, glowing blue-green, hovered above the doors. The words being spoken show brightly against the blackness of its surface.

We are glad to have us back, the words changed out slowly for everyone to read. In three months, we will return, and we will Hibernate again. We may exit.

The crowd began to push through the doors, a calm eagerness washing over us. It was always a strange thing to see the subtle differences outside. When we woke, everything would be in full bloom and the weather would be perfect. Sometimes buildings were moved or altered, as if the world shifted without us living in it, or as if it was playing games with us.

I finally made my way through the doors, the headache from the harsh smell of lotion and bleach finally gone as the sweet scent of flowers took over the airways. Little kids ran around happily, playing in the fields of flowers. They weren’t old enough to Hibernate yet. Once they would hit their thirteenth year, most would officially join the Society and Hibernate with us, leaving school behind. I, myself, was eighteen. It became hard to keep track of your age as you Hibernated, but you began to make notes on anything you could find. I counted the years on my hand, for instance. We had permanent markers that lasted for about a year on skin if you avoided washing them multiple times a day. I still washed them, only using the marker when needed to redo what little was washed away each time.

What I did was I make a line for every year. They weren’t necessarily tallies as much as designs, but I would do one mark each time I woke. It had grown into sort of a broken glass pattern that made its way from my thumb to the middle of my palm.

Little things like that, we were allowed to get away with. We could be different, to a short extent. The inside of my left hand was something no one saw since I was right-handed like everyone else.

I made my way out into the field, walking up the hill that was tall enough to see over the colored trees filled with blossoms and lush, green leaves. I looked out over them, crystal blue lake water shining back at me as the wind picked up. The world was perfect. It was paradise until I went to Hibernate again.

Paradise, until I woke up to something screaming.

CHAPTER 1

I’d been walking back, finished with my Wakefulness and ready to shut my eyes once again. My eyes had wandered past the edge of our city to the destruction that began just after the rope, intertwined with the greenery of nature. Anyone who crossed it never returned, but instead of it sounding threatening to my intrigued ears, it sounded like a challenge. Once, when I was a Pre-hib (a child, before hibernation), I was walking along the rope like it was a tightrope. It wasn’t until I fell onto the other side that I became afraid of what lurked out there.

A creature that stood on four paws sauntered up to me and I stilled, unable to tear my eyes from its four. It had two heads, and, as it grumbled, a sound like crumbling rocks, I felt fear trickle into my veins and spread like a wildflower through my body. Its golden eyes were trained on me as my breath quivered past my lips. The breeze rustled its rough tangled fur as it moved a few steps closer, sizing me up.

One paw lifted, it stopped, one head shaking an insect away and the other flipping its ears.

It placed its face-sized paw down and stared at me for a little longer, and then it sat, still focused on my eyes. My chest moved as I panted, adrenaline and the fear of death tingling in my fingertips. It wasn’t attacking, though it looked nearly starved.

Slowly, I moved backwards, dreading the beast would follow me into the city. The rope passed beneath me and I felt the dry brown grass turn green and lush beneath my palms, the animal watching me curiously with its two sets of eyes. It seemed strong enough to attack, so why didn’t it?

A chill passed through me as it got up and simply walked away. Curiosity filled my insides. What lied on the other side of the rope, and why were we kept from going there, aside from the obvious predatory reasons? Could there be something else out there that we shouldn’t know about?

Two other people talked in happy tones as I passed them by, returning to the present, waving to me as they fell in line too. I returned the gesture and continued my march ahead to the thick white building where we spent ninety-nine percent of our lives. People trickled in one by one, saying their goodbyes to the Pre-hibs around them, telling them to be safe in our equal tones and perfect speech. A path formed as the Af-hibs (those who had reached ages forty-five and over) and Pre-hibs gathered ‘round. They watched and cheered as we Hibernators herded into the building, the Workers slightly quieter as they clapped. Hibernation was what every Pre-hib aspired for and every Af-hib looked back on with honor. Those Pre-hibs that wouldn’t get to go through the Hibernation Process would go on to be workers, or clinicians, or physicians, or possibly a scientist. The government would make these positions seem like they all had equal importance in our world, but everyone knew, but never said, that the clinicians, physicians, and scientists were the highest on the priority list. Sure, workers had more titles and branches than the doctor’s ever had, but more most never meant better. Of course, Hibernators were put highest on the list too, but because of that, we were coddled and treated like Pre-hibs, which never surprised me, considering our brain functioned on a lower level than everybody else. I could feel it every time I walked out. I was different in a world of things of the same, something we’d strived for generation after generation—but… I never understood why we had to be the same. Of course, I kept this to myself. Equality apparently worked.

Whatever it was that we did while we were sleeping, we were told that it was important. Maybe they were doing tests on us—only I couldn’t guess what for. I felt as if I was the only one who questioned it, really, and that’s why I couldn’t keep friends. It’s why I was closed off and… different.

There’s that word again.

No one wanted to question. They didn’t want to know the truth and were happy in their blissful state of ignorance. They said life was too short to ask questions. Yet I couldn’t help but ask myself why it was I started inquiring all those things. And… was it so bad to be different, when everyone around you screamed to be the same?

I was assigned to a room: number 451. The same one I’d walked to the past five Hibernations in the Hibernation area. When I woke again, I’d be a year older, and that’s all I knew. I could hardly remember what it was like being awake for a full year like I had done when I was a Pre-hib. But I guess that was what it was like to miss something after years of not having it and finally realizing you wanted it back. That you didn’t want to be a Hibernator, no matter how important they told you it was. Hindsight tends to hurt, I guess, and not to mention the messed-up memory you got from sleeping all the time; you forget. It happens to the best of us.

Closing the door behind me, I stripped down to my unmentionables, the white room seeming suddenly freezing and uninviting, as it always did. Only the stiff bed and the Waker stood frozen, suspended in time, waiting for me to lay down for Hibernation. And just like always, the pull in my heart that was present, telling me to walk away and leave grew stronger.

I gripped my trembling, goose-bumped shoulders with my bony fingers, covering my shivering torso as the chilliness reached beneath my skin and clawed at my muscles. That would be the sixth time I’d be crawling in that bed, drifting into a coma-like state for nine months, and being awake, living, for only three months after. As I stiffly unfolded myself beneath the covers of the benumbed bed, cold metal tubes began to hook themselves beneath my skin; tubes that would keep me alive while I Hibernated.

Welcome back, the Waker cooed. How was our Wakefulness?

Refreshing, I responded, cringing as the needles from the tubes found my veins. Six of them latched to my scalp, two on each side. The last one that connected to the back-center of my skull missed and fell to the floor, the specially placed hole in the bed vibrating from where it had hit.

Up, I began, nausea hitting me like a wall. Ungh.

We will now sleep for nine months. The metallic voice warbles around me as I began to fall off the edge of consciousness, unable to explain something was wrong. We will wake when the Hibernation is complete.

I didn’t notice the darkness until my eyes opened, pain blossoming through me like a pulse of electricity in the sky. Three people in blue clothing stood at my spread feet, eyes wide as I attempted to sit up.

I was restrained.

I felt my body squeeze as pain like never before ran hot through my body.

The people began to shout, but nothing made any sense when their noises reached my ears.

I focused my lazy eyes on the doctor rushing out, and, in its arms, it held a small, dark, screaming being, its wails cutting through my body like a burning knife.

What is—

Darkness.

CHAPTER 2

My eyes flung open like a stretched rubber band. Everything came back to me, the sound of the tiny squeal ringing in my ears, making my heart race. I sat up abruptly, the Waker erupting to life with a startled beep. The room looked as if the strange happening never occurred, as if it was all a freakish dream.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d have believed that lie.

Welcome back, the metallic voice cooed, my eyes finally finding it and focusing on its metal square body. It began to remove the tubes jutting from my skin: the blue, yellow, and clear. Suddenly, for once in my life, curiosity from inexplicable fear formed on my tongue and it dried my mouth.

What’s in those?

The Waker beeped, freezing as it tried to process my out-of-place question. Repeat the question, please.

What are the tubes filled with?

The Waker seemed to hesitate as it removed the needles from my head, one falling to the pillow below me. I noticed blue liquid had tainted the white cloth where my head had rested and covered, the tube that had missed its place before I was put under. Is that what caused me to wake?

We are terribly sorry, it replied, two green lights flashing slowly beneath the white plastic covering the metal centerpiece of the robot. I stared at the rectangular block of metal, the holographic square at the top floating just above it smiling and blinking as I tried to catch my breath. The words it spoke were written out across the face of the hologram, the friendly face disappearing while they appeared momentarily. The question we have asked does not fit in any of the categories we have pre-programmed. Perhaps sleep is required; we believe we woke too soon.

No, that’s okay, I responded, moving