Wretched, Offer Reish [novels for teenagers .TXT] 📗

Sue laughed- she had a very beautiful laugh, and was well accustomed to Leonardo's frequent lapses in concentration- and repeated the question.

"Did you see the last demonstration of The Existents? Did you see it?"

"Ha! Ha ha!" Leonardo burst out in a rolling laughter that made his friends laugh along with him though there was nothing to really laugh about. "I was at the demonstration. And Jessica saw me!"

Francis slipped off his mask urgently and looked at Leonardo with big dark eyes shining with fascination. "I don't believe it!" He blurted out hoarsely.

"Why don't you believe it? I'm telling the truth", Leonardo said, pouting. Why would he lie about it? He'd never do it!

"I'm only kidding", Francis said, and he and Sue couldn't suppress a chuckle that grew into another unrestrained guffaw when they saw an awkward smile form at the edge of Leonardo's lips.

Soon the kids' mothers appeared, as if having materialized from thin air, beside them. Straggling behind were the three husbands and Fred. After the mothers exchanged pleasantries (Leonardo didn't understand the point of all the hugging and kissing. He found it very fake), Sandra, Sue's short, pretty mother who wore funny glasses, patted Leonardo's head. His smooth brown hair was so thick that her small hand almost sunk inside it.

"Leo! It's so wonderful to see you", she cried in such an adoring, high-pitched voice that he knew she wouldn't use with someone normal.

"It's Leonardo!"

"It's Leonardo, mom", Sue whispered reprehensively, pulling her mother's arm as if to emphasize the gravity of the transgression.

"Oh that's right. I'm sorry, honey."

"That's okay", he said reluctantly. He forgave Sandra because he liked her. From this point the mothers took over the conversation, speaking of this and that and mentioning this guy and that girl and so on. Steve said some kind words to Sandra, which made Leonardo chuckle since he knew his father was very impatient to go home.

Dennis, who was Francis's father and Sandra's sister (though he looked nothing like her and just about the only thing they had in common was that Leonardo was fond of them both), joined the group and swayed the conversation in the direction everybody had been waiting for it to go in:

"So who went to the demonstration last week?"

Leonardo grinned at the stocky man who was standing at the other end of the improvised circle that the group was positioned in, and his eyes widened in an expression of complete joy. Dennis had called it The Demonstration!

TheDemonstration!

Even with the large space between the two upper teeth at the front of his mouth, Leonardo had a charming smile that his mother said one day would melt the hearts of many girls (which Leonardo never understood). Dennis winked at him and grinned back. His yellow teeth and the wrinkles that formed at the sides of his eyes and on his forehead were quite an eyesore, but it made Leonardo's grin spread even wider and his eyes spark with joy.

"Oh, we couldn't make it", Sue, standing behind Francis, who was almost the same height as she, deplored with her hand on his shoulder. "He wanted to go so much. But we did get a mask!"

Francis whipped out his black mask again as if on queue and stretched it over his head again to the cheers of the others. Sue appeared to be disheartened since she'd neither gone to The Demonstration nor did she have a black mask to prove her support of The Existents, while Leonardo gladly assumed the spotlight for once as the boy whose connection and loyalty to The Existents was the greatest of all (since he'd gone to The Demonstration and had a mask). And Sue's temporary dejection didn't discourage him in the least.

"What these Existents are doing is very ambitious", said the tallest man in the group, Sue's father, Paul. He was so much taller than his wife that whenever he saw him Leonardo stared at him with a puzzled look that sent his eyebrows flying in a hundred different directions. Paul was a very serious man, and whenever Leonardo saw him he was wearing a black suit and that useless fabric band that was called a tie. "But it's not as easy as it seems. I would be careful to celebrate their victory just yet."

A brilliant though sparked in Leonardo's mind even before Paul had finished speaking, and without hesitating he declared proudly:

"Justice. She is sneaky and evasive, but here we have tracked her down. Her captors are still holding her hostage, but we will tolerate it no longer. Only once we have caught her with our own two hands will we be deserving of her!"

He was trembling with excitement, but nonetheless pronounced the words in a perfect flow of energy and with profound faith in them. A silence fell over the group, which was utterly stunned by this little performance. Though they all understood the allusion, nobody else in the group remembered this passage with nearly the same precision as Leonardo did.

Hailey stared at her son with complete fixation. Her right hand had, as if of its own accord, risen and pressed against the left part of her chest. She'd never seen Leonardo speak with such confidence. Especially- this was what made the occasion so absolutely incredible- in front of such a crowd. Steve, on the other hand, stared from the outside of the circle with unmistakable concern on his face. There was something about the way he viewed things that was different from the others.

Leonardo was the star of the day.

Dr. Joshua was older than Leonardo's parents, as the black wig on his head suggested. It was sometimes a little strange to see the contrast between his gray sideburns and the black hair. Once when Leonardo had seen the wig come off accidentally after Dr. Joshua had bumped his head into the mailbox he couldn't stop laughing for an entire week- or at least that's how he remembered it. The glasses Dr. Joshua always wore were too big, and his nose was too small. Sometimes the glasses would slide down the nose and he would have to adjust them carefully on the bridge. He was big and chubby, and he was much fonder of smiling than of scowling. They didn't see him very often, but every time someone from the family ran into him he would ramble on almost incessantly. He always had something interesting to say about his job.

He worked as a senior science advisor for the Industry. It'd taken Leonardo a long time to understand what this meant, especially to manage to comprehend something as vast, invisible and mysterious as the Industry.

The Industry Dr. Joshua worked for was the same one The Existents had been bashing recently. It had never been in the spotlight before simply because tremendous efforts had always been made to keep it under the radar, and nobody had incentive to put it under the microscope. But now everybody knew about the Industry, and whenever somebody used that term- the Industry- there could be no doubt that they were referring to the same one (just like The Demonstration, but with a completely opposite connotation). The Industry's job was to produce, train, raise and supply Wretches to the people. Wretches were the creatures (a more accurate definition would be not 'creatures' but 'things', as the Industry had made clear long ago) that provided services for the people. Servants, like 462, were one kind of Wretches. Many kinds of Wretches were produced for various different ends- there were those that helped with clearing waste, there were Disaster Wretches who specialized in securing, testing and clearing disaster zones, there were Wretches that helped in the production of other Wretches, there were Wretches that helped with conducting experiments to help produce better Wretches in the future, Wretches that took part in food production, and so on- but what they all had in common was that they were all produced by the Industry and belonged to it. Whenever someone requested to acquire the services of any number of Wretches, they contacted the Industry and requested the necessary service be provided; the Wretches always remained in the ownership of the Industry (this was true even for servants) and were stored in special Storage Camps. One couldn't buy a Wretch, but only hire its services. Nobody knew why this was the case, but the Industry claimed it saved on operational costs. Wretches were a vital resource- a public commodity, perhaps- and their privatization was to be adamantly avoided. All Wretches came in four sizes: large, medium, small and petit. 462 was a small, which was most common for servants.

All Wretches originated from the same place- no one knew for sure where and when it was, but it was believed that they used to be wild savages so hopeless that they were going to disappear when they were found by some of the earliest inhabitants of the city thousands of years ago. Wishing to save the Wretches from their misery, the people took them in and began to teach and instruct them so that they would serve some purpose, overcome their cultureless nature and simply become better.

And with time they succeeded. They made the Wretches suitable to fill certain tasks and specialized in certain skills (they'd had no skills before). They taught them, raised them, kept them safe from each other and from the outside environment; they started producing better Wretches that were far superior to the first unworthy ones they'd found. Basically, they turned them from something useless without a purpose in the world to something meaningful, capable and safe. Of course over time there was no point in everyone taking part in the production and care of the Wretches, so the Industry was formed and assumed complete responsibility for all the Wretches in the city. Today, the Wretches were so successful that there were far more Wretches than people in the city and they played a vital part in the people's daily lives. They really owed the people everything. It was this fact- that their existence was possible only thanks to the people, and that the purpose of their existence was to serve the people- that had procured them their other common designation: Nonexistents. And it was in reference to this designation that the group of young men and women fighting for justice had chosen the name The Existents. It implied that, unlike the Nonexistents, they as part of the people were entitled to justice and in fact their existence depended on it (as did all of the people, whom they represented). At least that's what the media said.

All the Industry's facilities were located at the outskirts of the city so as not to disturb the people. After all, Wretches were inferior creatures (or actually things, or products- whatever an industry churns out is its product, which in this case was of course Wretches) and nobody wanted to live next to a Storage Camp filled with noisy, foul Wretches or work in the vicinity of a Training Camp with the most uncultured ones, and so on. Trucks transported Wretches into the city at an early morning hour, and back to their Storage Camps after dark so as to minimize unnecessary contact between them and the people. So the separation was almost complete- the people had their own space and the Wretches had theirs.

That's pretty much all one needed to know about it, and that's what Leonardo had managed to grasp after repeated explanations from his mom and classes at school about the vitality of the Industry and its immeasurable contribution to the people and to the Wretches. So far there could be no complaints, since the people were happy and were being provided a fine service without being overcharged for it (everyone knew that all families were provided one servant free of charge). But when the voice of The Existents first rose from among the people, things suddenly changed. Suddenly people's eyes were opened to the corruption and