Peripheral Visions: Your Gentle Heart

They coalesce in the shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. Peripheral Visions: You won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Your Gentle Heart

Lisbeth shuffled along, her mind wandering as the tour guide droned on about disinfection techniques and wastewater and all the different sorts of equipment that went into slicing the flesh, removing the organs, and processing the offal. Her knees were aching, and so was her lower back; her purse felt heavy, and her shoulder throbbed. She wasn't sure why she'd even come on this tour. The rooms the group walked through – proceeding all too slowly – were blank and white; illumination came mostly from banks of harsh white lights situated up against the ceiling, and even when the rooms had windows they were set high up. Spots of sunlight splashed across the walls, but not a glimpse of the outside was visible.

Splashes of sunlight, she mused to herself, her eyes wandering over smears of blood on the gleaming chrome machinery and scarlet stains on the rubber aprons and white cotton smocks of the workers that bustled all around them.

Lisbeth had never been especially squeamish; the sight of raw meat or gutted deer never bothered her. She had captured, killed, plucked, and cleaned plenty of chickens, and even a few rabbits, when she was a girl; she had grown up poor, and her family ate their livestock for Sunday supper. Hunting season had always meant the carcasses of deer hung up for a few days in the chilly autumn air before she and her brothers joined their parents in the task of cutting and wrapping the meat, the carcasses divided into handy parcels that stacked easily in the freezer and fed the family through the winter.

The little operation had been nothing like what Lisbeth was seeing around her. This was all so industrialized, so mechanized; even the workers seemed like automatons, their brisk movements honed and choreographed. Everyone moved at top speed, as if there wasn't a moment to lose.

"How many do you process in a day?" someone asked, and the tour guide interrupted his monologue to turn to the group and answer the question.

"A lot," he said. "The company has ninety installations like this one across thirty-seven states. All together, the company's facilities process more than fifty million per year. On average, that works out to about 1,500 per day per facility."

"Where do they all come from?" someone else asked, just as another voice inquired, "How much do the providers get for each sale?"

The tour guide raised his hands, chuckling. "So many questions!" he said. "You are a curious lot. Yes..." He looked around the group, which consisted of around 45 people. "A curious lot," he said, his voice suddenly cooler.

Everyone shifted nervously. That was strange, Lisbeth thought; they were the public, after all. They had every right to know. The company had thrown its doors open for such tours, hadn't they? Why shouldn't members of the public ask questions?

But the tour guide turned his back at that point and started walking once again. The group followed him.

It was a little suspect, Lisbeth thought, that the guide didn't just come out and tell them how much the farmers got for each one of their... She frowned. What was it again? Cows? Hogs? Or was it maybe buffalo? Or even... alpaca? She shook her head, sighing to herself. She'd been getting forgetful lately. She was in her seventies now, and that was to be expected, just as were the aching knees and weary back. But forgetting something as simple and even obvious as what sort of meat processing plant this was... Oh, well, she told herself, there was perfectly simple reason she'd forgotten. They probably handled all sorts of meat.

Still, she wondered what they processed in this section of the plant. She squinted at the moist red gobs of flesh that moved along the conveyor belt; she watched as a worker hurried by, a metal tub hoisted over one shoulder like a waiter bearing a tray of food. The meat was dark and bloody, but she had no idea what sort of animal it came from.

The tour guide was saying something about industrial microwaves that incinerated everything that couldn't be used. He'd been talking about all the different applications that the animals had – not just food, or fertilizer, of course, but also chemicals and... and something to do with medicine. Vaccines, maybe? Or stem cells? And he'd said something about parchment, which Lisbeth though was quaint. Evidently everything old really was new again. Sooner or later, the most primitive things became a stylish novelty for a world that relied on technology but daydreamed about golden fields of wheat and simple pastimes.

Lisbeth thought back to her own girlhood. Her brothers had toys made out of metal, she remembered: Cars and trucks, and Evan had a robot. Few if any of their possessions and everyday goods were plastic. Now, of course, everything was plastic, even cars. Lisbeth shook her head to herself. All that plastic ending up in landfills, she thought, and in the oceans. And wasn't it bad for human health? Didn't her granddaughter say something just the other day about how plastic was causing illness somehow? They were bad for a person's hormones, maybe?

Hormones, Lisbeth thought. That was something the tour guide had talked about – one of the medical needs that the processing plant met. Doctors needed hormones... for... something. She didn't recall what. Maybe he didn't say. It couldn't have been for people switching gender – not now that gender-switching was illegal. Not now that men who claimed to be women were illegal. And women claiming to be men! Lisbeth shuddered in revulsion.

All of that nonsense had gotten to be too much, she thought to herself. Men dressing like women. Men marrying men. It all started when they banned prayer in schools. Well, now that school prayer was a legal requirement – and not that bowing on rugs prayer, real prayer – there was an end to all that business. Men didn't marry men any more. Women didn't marry women. And they said that the economy was even getting better. Lisbeth wasn't sure. But it didn't really matter much to them; she and Harrison had always done all right for themselves, and they had raised four children into the bargain.

The tour group had moved to the far wall of the vast room and now they were passing into a new area. Lisbeth took fresh interest in the tour. These animals hadn't been chopped up yet. This was where they were skinned and...

Her eyes widened at what she saw the workers were doing.

The bodies weren't just skinned. They were stripped – they came in wearing clothes.

Lisbeth looked around her in disbelief.

The conveyor belts and carts and palettes were stacked with human bodies.

"But we don't eat them, do we?" someone nearby asked, echoing the question Lisbeth was thinking to herself.

The tour guide laughed. "No, of course not! We're not liberals. We're not atheists or socialists. No, we don't eat these criminals, but we do give them the chance to do something they never chose to do in life: Contribute something to the greater good of society as a whole."

Lisbeth wondered what he meant by that.

"Because you take their organs and stem cells," the same man who'd asked about eating them piped up.

"Yes, that, and also in other ways. Many of them show up here still wearing wedding rings – or, I should say, rings from their fake marriages. Ever hear the one about the faggot liberal who said, 'You can have my wedding ring when you pry it from my cold, dead finger?' "

A wave of laugher rippled through the tour group.

"Well," the tour guide said jovially, "that's exactly what we do!"

"And how about the gold in their teeth?" another man asked, sounding judgmental. "Do you also take that?"

The tour guide turned toward him, his affect suddenly hard. "Yes," he said. "Of course we do. We don't waste."

"Of course not," the man said. "Except for human life. The most essential resource of all. Human talent, human drive. What use do we have for any of that?"

"What we have no use for," the tour guide said loudly, "is dissent!"

The tour group had been buzzing with murmurs as the exchange continued, but everyone fell silent now – even the man who had challenged the guide.

"Why don't we all take a moment to look around us," the tour guide said, his voice smooth and fulsome once more. "Every specimen you see being processed here today is someone who thought that he or she could do what he or she... please notice I don't say 'they,' that's a filthy liberal code word for deviance... each of them thought he or she could do as he or she pleased, and there would be no consequences for it. But as you see, there is always a price to be paid. God is watching. And God is watching through us."

The group stood still, not uttering a sound. No one commented or whispered. A man next to Lisbeth shifted uncomfortably and audibly swallowed. She glanced at him and then saw that several pople were glaring at him with expressions of contempt and anger. The man's eyes flickered toward the people glaring at him and then returned to the floor.

"Continuing our tour," the guide's voice rang out, "we'll now look through the windows at the extermination rooms."

The group moved forward. Lisbeth moved forward, too, feeling unmoored from reality. Was this all some sort of poorly judged surprise? She was certain no one had mentioned anything about the meat processing pant dealing with human corpses... or, for that matter, producing the corpses...

The group came to a standstill again and the people at the head of the crowd pressed against large panes of glass that were set into the walls – not windows looking outside, but rather observation ports offering a glimpse into another room. Lisbeth couldn't see clearly due to distance and the crowd. The room beyond seemed dimly lit. Murmurs started up again in the crowd, and the people toward the front pressed closer to the glass.

"Yes, they're filing in now," the tour guide told them.

"I thought there'd be more blacks," a man said. "And more yellows. And reds, too."

"At the start, there were," the tour guide told them. "But these days what we're getting in are white people."

"That doesn't seem right," someone said, and Lisbeth wondered if the tour guide would take the same hard approach with him as he'd shown the man who'd given voice to criticism.

But the tour guide merely shrugged. "It's disappointing," he said. "But there you see it. Many white people fail to live up to the racial excellence that's expected of them. Some are lazy. Some are addicted to drugs. Some are weak, and some are moronic."

Moronic. Lisbeth hadn't hard that word in a long time. She didn't think people used it any longer.

"Of course, we got rid of the gender traitors and the deviants and the atheists long ago," the tour guide was saying. "Right after we took care of all the POCs."

"Pocks?" someone asked. "Is that what you said? What are pocks? Scarred people?"

"No," the tour guide laughed. "It stands for 'people of color.' "

More laughed rippled through the tour group now.

Suddenly, there were gasps from up front. People behind Lisbeth began to shove forward, and she found herself being propelled along. She thought she saw wisps of smoke though the windows. As she drew closer, reluctant but forced by the mass of the crowd, she saw that the room was now full of a white vapor.

Lisbeth came to rest a few feet from the glass. There were people between her and the window, but even if there hadn't been she doubted she could have seen much – not with the thick white mist that now filled the room on the other side of the glass.

"Looks like we missed the action," a man near her grumbled.

"Are they screaming?" another man asked. "Why can't we hear them?"

"There are some screams, at first, but the gas acts quickly," the tour guide said. "Most of them are dead in thirty seconds. But we leave the room full of the gas for six minutes to be sure. Then we vent the gas and allow the bodies to stay put for half an hour – time for the remnants of the gas to dissipate fully. We still have to undress them you see, and the gas could linger in their clothes."

"Why don't you just strip them before they die?" someone asked.

The tour guide frowned in the direction of the woman who had asked. "Don't be perverse," he said. "Nudity is never allowed in the process."

"But you take their clothes when they're dead," the woman said.

"That's not nudity," the tour guide told her. "Only living people can be nude."

Lisbeth suddenly felt light-headed. She stood in place as the tour guide started moving on, and the crowd with him – where to next, she couldn't begin to imagine.

Suddenly the tour guide was at her side, his hand on her elbow. "Are you all right, ma'am?" he inquired, his manners impeccable, his blue eyes concerned, his blond hair perfectly arranged, and his white smock not blemished with the least speck of blood.

Lisbeth wanted to tell him that she was fine, just a little dizzy, but she found herself saying instead: "What is this place? Why are we here?"

"You came with your church group," the tour guide told her. "You came to see the righteous work of the church elders and remember why they now run the government."

"That's right," Lisbeth said, a whisper of memory coming back to her. "This was mandatory... the week's extra devotional..."

"Do you need a glass of water?" The tour guide tugged at Lisbeth's arm. "Let's find a place for you to sit down for a moment."

"I never imagined," Lisbeth said.

"No, I know," the tour guide agreed. "It's shocking, isn't it?"

Her head was swimming, but Lisbeth hesitated to say anything in response, wondering if the tour guide was attempting to trick her into saying something incendiary or even criminal. It was a felony, after all, to express any support or sympathy for gay people now, or to speak of non-whites as having rights or being citizens, as if they were fully human.

"It's shocking to see how many white people have chosen to forsake virtue," the tour guide continued. "How many are rejected by the Lord through the offices of His representatives on Earth."

Lisbeth felt him still tugging on her arm, but she couldn't move. A tremor moved deeply through her and she wondered if she were about to vomit. But then a loud sub erupted from the core of her being.

"Now, there," the tour guide said soothingly. "All of this is hard to take in, but all of it is for the greater good and the glory of God."

"But why?" Lisbeth asked him.

"Why? Why is God's judgment harsh? Why, because His way is narrow," the tour guide told her. His insistent tugging had grown for forceful, and now Lisbeth was walking slowly, not seeing where she was headed, the tour guide shepherding her across the great white room, busy with its many workers and gleaming machines and black moving conveyor belts.

"Why are we here?" Lisbeth cried out. "Why must we see this?"

The tour guide stopped, then slapped her across the face. Shocked, Lisbeth looked at him with wide eyes, suddenly seeing him as if for the first time.

There was something different about the tour guide now. Something... familiar, perhaps... Then she recognized him: It was her cousin, Charles.

"Charlie?" she asked. "You're here? You're... you're giving a tour through this horrible place? But... but I thought they..."

"Why," Charlie interrupted her coldly, in the same hard tone he'd taken with the others who displeased him. "Why are you here? Why? Why must you see these things? Maybe the question you need to ask is, Why were we subjected to them?"

"Subjected...?" Lisbeth stared at him, her breath coming quickly, her body starting to shake.

"We. Us. Me. People like me. People like Jeffrey. You do remember Jeffrey?"

Charlie's husband. He'd married a Black man. Lisbeth never understood why, but she'd told herself that at least they would not have any children, would not mix the races in defiance of the church and the Lord.

"Why these horrors? You tell me, Liz," Charlie said to her, his voice angry, his hands still on her elbows. He gave her a hard shake and she cried out. "You tell me!!"

"Charlie, Charlie, stop!" Lisbeth begged. "I'm an old woman, I – I can't take it. My heart, it's weak, I have medicine..."

Charlie laughed. "Ah, yes. Your weak heart. Your tender heart. You told me how sorry you were after the election – you remember it? We'd had years enough to see where it was all going, we had time to take a good look and ask ourselves if the future looming ahead of us was really what we wanted. And I guess we did. 'We!' The greatest democracy in the world! Now nothing but a police state!"

"Charlie, please..."

"And you patted my hand and said not to worry, but I didn't believe a word of it. You'd been making excuses, you'd been minimizing our fears for years. And you kept right on voting for the monsters who ushered us to the edge of the precipice and then strong-armed us right over. All of this in front of your eyes, all of this filling your gentle heart – except, of course, dear cousin, your heart was never so gentle or tender to start with. Your heart was just as full of hatred and murder as everyone else. If the government you elected killed us... if the church you bowed to killed us... well, that was fine! It wasn't you, not your fault. You had nothing to do with it, did you?"

"Charlie, stop!" Lisbeth cried, gasping, clutching at her chest. Her fingers caught in the strands of pearls she wore around her neck. "I'm going to have a heart attack! Don't you see – you'll kill me – "

Charlie laughed at that, a jagged, bitter laugh. "It's a little bit late to worry about that, isn't it?" He tugged again at her arm, then pulled at her with ferocious force, almost yanking Lisbeth off her feet.

As she staggered to keep up with him. Lisbeth suddenly understood what he was saying. Yes, he was right. She had woken up one night... briefly, urgently, a sense of terrible pain and pressure in her chest, a sense of black doom upon her –

And then –

And then she was here.

'I'm in Hell," Lisbeth whispered. Then: "Charlie? Am I in Hell?"

"Not yet you're not," he said. "You want Hell? You want to see the Hell that others suffered while you talked about God and God's mercy and making the world a better place... a better place for all the children? The children you're killing with cancer, war, starvation, misery, rejection...?"

Charlie lapsed into furious silence and pulled her along even more rapidly. They approached a large double door. Charlie delivered a kick to the door and it flew open. Beyond it was a large area – a parking lot or a loading bay. Concrete was underfoot and trucks and buses were scattered around, parked at random angles. A crowd of people was ahead of them – a milling crowd being herded and clubbed by police in riot gear...

Police? No – private security of some sort, maybe...

A handgun cracked loudly nearby, startling Lisbeth. A woman began screaming a man's name. Harsh male voices rose in chorus, shouting instructions, shouting threats. The crowd swirled. Charlie seemed not to notice. He dragged Lisbeth to the very edge of the human river and paused. He pointed at the people – thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands. Lisbeth looked to see where they were all coming from and saw that they were emerging from trucks and buses at the far end of the loading area. Trucks and buses that sat parked in parallel ranks, shimmering in the sun and heat. They must have been at least half a mile away. Beyond them were more trucks and buses... trucks and buses glittering in the afternoon sun, wavering like mirages, stretching to the horizon. Trucks and buses as far as the eye could see.

"You said something about Hell?" Charlie said. "Well, we're here! You brought us here! You did this!"

"But I didn't," Lisbeth gasped.

Charlie stared at her, silent, accusation burning in the air around him.

"But I didn't!" she insisted. "How? What? What did I do?"

"Nothing," Charlie said. "Nothing at all. You agreed, you justified, you denied. The most unforgivable sin of all – you just stood back and let it happen. You and your compassionate God, your compassionate Jesus, your gentle heart." He stared at her, then shook his head.

"Charlie – I never – "

He shoved her then, cutting her off. Lisbeth staggered into the moving crowd, and staggered in the direction they were moving, struggling to keep on her feet. She looked ahead to see great doors yawning open – like hangar doors – and the back river of people, terrified people, wailing people flowing into those doors.

And a gate, she saw now, even as she was almost passing through it. A tall gate, a broad gate – a gate surmounted with an arch, and set in the arch steel letter spelling out...

Spelling out...

Lisbeth squinted and made out the words with a shock of horror. They glittered in the mad sunlight of a diabolical world:

FAITH AND FREEDOM

The crowd carried Lisbeth through the gate and forward, sweeping her on toward the great gaping doors and the inferno of blood and horror beyond.

Next time we board the starship Olympia as its brave crew come to the assistance of a colony planet threatened by a trio of supernovae... and, even more dangerous, official government denial that there's any such thing...