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All the other guys, they had life so good. That big circle of friends laughing at every word, stars at athletics, girlfriend hanging off their arm. Garage bands in their million dollar homes. Eating dinner with their happy, loving, caring, family every night. Every one of them, all the same. The prefect life.
The room illuminates, an iron bed and desk exposed from the darkness. One of the rats gives a startled squeek at the thunder that follows.
I hear my mom and older sister Jane laughing in the kitchen downstairs. Probably at somehting crazy her group of friends did, or at the cheesy ceremony that had been held at school today for her soccer team’s fifth district championship.
I wish I was more like Jane. Everyone does. But since she prefers to pretend otherwise, hardly anyone at school knows that im her younger brother. Heck, they probably wouldn’t even believe us. Me, tall, geeky, with the pitch black hair that I hid behind related to her, the beautiful blonde homecoming queen?
Jane was the child parents dreamed about, I was the one that never had his own place on the fridge.
The only person i’ve ever felt truly loved by was my dad. He knew how I was when I was younger, never wanting to be the center of attention, content to sit and study the world as it went bye.  You could say I was happy. Then.
My dad left us four years ago. I was ten. The family pretty much shattered. My mom and sister blamed—blame—it on me. We were so alike, it was only natural. My fault, my fault, my fault.

            The night before dad left has been replayed like a favorite video, over and over again, in my mind. Constantly trying to decipher it, searching, sifting for clues. For a reason.
            I had been crying over ‘bullies’ who had teased me at school that day.
“Mark”, says he, quietly at first, “Think of how the world would be if everything, everyone, was the same”.
I had looked into those pale, pale eyes, mirror images of my own, and repiled “the perfect world”.
Next morning, he was gone. Leaving me to years of abuse by family and peers for being different. I know that that night was the reason he left. It had been me. We didn’t live in a perfect world.

The rats. Two, white, red eyed, animals. A gift from my father for my 9th birthday.
I had come bounding down the stairs, expecting a shiny blue bike like everyone else had on my street. Instead, there was a wire cadge. I felt tears welling up in my eyes, how could he do this to me? I had been to every bike store in town, picking out the perfect one. I swallowed, biting my lip to make the lump in my throught go away, and said “thanks dad”.
“I want to prove something to you”, he said. “See how much better things would be if we were all alike”?
I looked down at the rats, identical. They would never have real feelings, never e left out. Never be different from each other. Their life would be handed to them, without any work. No worries. Perfect.
It was like our little experiment. From the start, my mom and Jane wanted nothing to do with them, so the cadge was set up in my room. The rats lived together, didn’t have names, and were both female. Sameness. From my nine-year old viewpoint, I was envious. I wanted the world to be like the rats cadge. No expectations to live up to.
After five years, they’re both still happy. Food delivered at the same time everyday, the same amount. Each recieces the exact same amount of attention, never without the other one sharing it too. No surprises, no differences to be singled out. Sure, they were only animals, but it could work for humans too. It would.

The rest of my childhood was a blur, sitting in the corner at school dances, watching with envy at how effortlessly they seemed to move, talk, all beautiful, rich, smart... taunts on the bus, and the ever dependable sound of laughter downstairs, lulling me to sleep.


           


            The bartender was eyeing me, probably wondering what a twenty-four year old was doing all alone on a Friday night. I squinted through the darkness, full of bodies swaying with the rhythm and thick with smoke. Was this just another dead end?
           
            I graduated from your standard, community collage, with a degree in business. But that wasn’t really the reason I was there. My four years were spent with feverous planning and observing.
            Students, thousands of them. Some watching in envy at others in their glory. Sports stars hearts crushed when they didn’t make the school team, fights over girls. A mistake in the lab costing one man his life. Would all of this happen if no one made mistakes? It everyone was the same?
            I had my plan, I knew how it had to be done, the only way. Small scale at first, but big enough to make an impact.

            I’d contacted anyone and everyone that could help me. Rarely, someone responded. We talked further, but they had always refused—sometimes in horror, others who couldn’t believe the sheer magnitude and expense of this project—when I told them exactly what I wanted to do.
            But one man seemed interested. I found his name on a website, saying that he would provide partnership, and more importantly, funding, for anyone who needed it.
            I told him what I wanted to do, and miraculously he agreed, saying that it was an idea he had been toying with when he was younger. Finially, it was time to meet, face to face, for the first time.

            He appeared, looking vaguely familiar, like someone I had known from another life, as he sat down noiselessly besides me.
            “Please call me Hans”, he said, and I had the fleeting thought that he looked like a vampire, blending in with the smoke in his dark clothes.
            “Im so glad you came... you’re the first one... I’ve wanted this for so long...” my thoughts rushed by, I couldn’t grab them long enough. Finially, finially…
            Hans raised one hand in silence. I not iced there wasn’t a ring.
            “Our paths crossed, our passion shared, our ambition the same”, he said in a deep voice. “I will help you”.
            With that, the shadows engulfed him, leaving only an address, time and date written on a napkin. June 14th, tomorrow, at one.

            As I lay in bed that night, my mind was upside down. Like a giant tsunami had come in and destroyed everything or an egg, supposed to be whole, was scrambled.
            Who is he? Why does he want to hemp me? Will the experiment work? When will it start? And, more importantly, what will others think?
            When I was about five, my family—had it ever been a real one?—went to watch a NASCAR race. I was so awed, that, as I sat still, the cars went past me hundreds of times. Kind of like now, me lying down, as my thoughts raced around me, leaving only pieces, clues, as they sped by.




            The unwelcome sunshine, forcing itself through the curtains, woke me up. I showered, got dressed, and tried to gather my thoughts. A quick sandwich for lunch, and I was off. Was this how Dorothy felt before she met Oz?
            The address was only a few blocks away from my apartment, so I walked.
            ‘Department of Research’, small black letters spelled out, looking lost in the endless pattern of bricks that covered the building. As my finger was hovering over the bell, the door opened, sweeping me inside.
            “Im so glad you could make it”, Hans said, (vampire, I thought).
            “Right this way”, and he led me, my eyes still adjusting to the dim lighting, down a long hallway. Jogging to keep up with his stride, I was unable to read the signs on the doors as we passed them. I realized that the hallway was new steeply sloping downhill.
            Finially, Hans stopped. We were in front of a small, nondescript gray door. It had no sign. He opened it, and, holding my breath, I followed.

            Imagine you’re getting ready to walk into, say, a store. Without realizing it, you’ve mentally estimated about how big it would be inside, given by the surroundings, outside, past experiences, excreta. Then imagine you looked up, and found out the store was thirty stories high.
            Shock suspended me, frozen, words caught in my throught. Hans looked over, probably to gauge my reaction. Our eyes met his searching mine. For what?
            “We need to talk”, he said.







We were standing on some sort of a balcony, high above, looking out onto a city. So this was what Hans ment by ‘toying around’ when he was younger.
“Welcome to Project X”, he said, with a hint of proudness, “I trust that you will become my partner and not mention details of this to anyone on the outside, or you will suffer consequences”. From the look on his face, I knew this wasnt a lie.
“Here, have a seat”. He gestured to two wooden chairs, “and I will explain”
“Years ago, I was a young man like you. Already I had some thoughts and ideas, and the money to be able to do something with them. After some… ‘Complications’, (he unconsciously rubbed is ring finger) I found this building. It used to be a huge factory, with a room, a square mile, underground, which is what you’re looking at right now. I bought it, and (he gestured to the buildings, roads and parks), ‘devolved’ it. The construction took five years”.
“Are there… people?” I asked.
Hans hesitated. “This is the perfect world”.
“I don’t know if you remember this or not”, he continued, “but a couple years ago there were some… ‘Mixed feelings’, over a new kind of technology. ‘Implants’, you could say, put into the brain, to prevent certain emotions”.
I was shocked. What had Hans done to these people? But now they would never know sadness, envy, depression, anger, loneliness… My doubts were erased before they fully even formed. Surely this was the way to live. But there was one more thing…
“How did you get the people?”
Hans saw the fear on my face. “No, no, it’s not what you think. These people came willingly, happily. I gave them a better life, Mark”, he said gently. “Single moms, I gave them and their children shelter. Prisoners, I paid their bail. I adopted kids that wouldn’t have a home anywhere else”.
I relaxed. What he’s doing is so… good. So… nice. But I still don’t understand how it is perfect.
“So now I had the land, the buildings, and the people, he continued, “There is a third ingredient. What makes our world imperfect?”
“Differences”, I said, “Emotions”.
Hans held up his hand. “Differences. Everyone wears the same clothes, has the same skin and hair color, the same homes, same amount of money, and no one is of higher status than the other”.
This was exactly how I envisioned the world.
“And lastly”. Hans continued, “Emotions”. He stared at me. “Like I said before, implants were put into these peoples brains, to prevent feelings. They still can be angry, but it’s not raw, all-consuming. And of course they can still be happy. Their emotions just don’t… define them. Force them to make the wrong decision.
I was stunned. Never, ever, had I even dreamed it would be this real.
“Why me”, perhaps I was talking more to myself, because Hans just smiled, and we sat there in silence.
Finially Hans spoke. “I think that you’ve had enough for one afternoon”.
I looked at my watch, it was past five.
“Go home, rest, and come here again in the morning”. We started walking up the hallway.
“Oh, and don’t mention this. They don’t exactly agree”. With that, Hans was gone, leaving me to open the door and walk out into the sunshine, overwhelmed with thoughts.




I arrived at the lab the next morning at twelve o’clock sharp. Hans opened the door—how did he always know I was there?—and handed me a while lab coat. I slipped it on over my jeans and T-shirt, as he led the way down the hall.
“Today I want you to observe some of the citizens. I have other work to do, so you’ll be alone. There are various observation points throughout the community. One-way mirrors and speakers, you will not be seen.”
Hans pointed to a different door than yesterday, a small sign that read ‘point A- schoolroom’. Holding my breath, I opened the door and walked inside.

I was back in elementary school, doodling on the margins of my paper, trying not to think about the fight my parents had the night before.
“Mark”. The teachers’ voice bringing me back to reality like a slap on the face. “Could you please tell the class what you are doing instead of listening?” Snickering filled the room…

            I’m standing, it seems, in a small box, about five by five feet. Looking out onto a class of students, sitting in rows of neatly arranged desks, ranging in ages from about six to fourteen. All blonde, the girls in braids and the boys a shaggy cut just below their ears. All in plaid shorts and a dark blue polo, paying close attention. Their teacher, a women looking to be about thirty, stood in front of the class, a green chalkboard with evenly spaced handwriting behind her. 
            “8-A”, she said, “What is one hundred divided by four?”
            A girl in the second row stood up, “Twenty-five, teacher”.
            I watched in awe as all the children did their sums without a single mistake, all speaking in a clear, alert voice. This was exactly the opposite of my school years. After about an hour, class was dismissed, they stood up and filed into an orderly line to walk out the door.
            I, too, exited the room.

            Hans was waiting in the hall, a smile across his face. “Well, what did you think?”
            “It was amazing”, I said honestly. “They never got a question wrong”.
            He nodded and pointed to another door. ‘Point B- living area’.

           
            Jane and my mom were in the kitchen, baking cupcakes for her 10th birthday. My dad and I just had come back from the park, I loved to watch everyone—families having picnics, men jogging and women walking their dogs, even artists painting. I bounded over to a plate of cupcakes Jane had just finished icing. She screamed at me when I reached out to take one, my seven year old self not understanding that they weren’t for me. Oh no, not after she so meticulously placed heart and star shaped sprinkles in the shape of the number ten. I started crying, dropping the cupcake on the floor, and ran to hide behind my dad…

            The perfect, happy family. A mom, in jeans and a T-shirt, carried a steaming casserole to the table. Two kids—an older boy, about twelve, and a girl about nine—carefully placed silverware, placemats, plates, cups and napkins, while the dad brought in a roasted chicken. They all sat down and reached for the others hands, forming a tight circle. I circle I was never, would never be, part of.
            “Thank you provider for this meal we are about to receive”, they murmured in unison.
            The kids put their napkins in their laps without being asked, the dad served everyone an equal helping of food, and they began to eat.
            “So, Dee and Bee, how was school today?” the dad asked.
            “Father”, the boy said, “You know you’re not supposed to call me by my nickname anymore”.
            That must be Bee, I decided.
            “I’m 12-B, you know that”.
            “I know, I know”, he replied, “Now that you’ve entered twelve full numbers must be used at all times, even by us”.
            The boy—12-B—looked up solemnly. “Anyways, school was good. But 12-G was five minuets late. He apologized, but we were off schedule for the rest of the day, and were unable to finish reciting history. I certainly do hope we catch up by tomorrow”.
            The little girl nodded.
            “Father, how was work?” The mom asked.
            “It was an interesting day. One of the pipes burst at the water center, so the whole repair crew had to spend the rest of the day fixing it”.
            “Nothing broken, nothing wrong” the girl chanted, Dee, and her mom smiled at her.
            “Lets clear the table”, she said, and I noticed that no one asked her how her day was.
           
Hans opened the door, startling me. “There are ten living areas such as this, each with four people”.
“Do they ever get mad at each other?” I asked.
“Mark. They don’t know how too”. We walked down the hallway towards the door to leave.
I stepped outside. Was that how the kids I had been envious of during my school years ate dinner? No yelling, perfectly good table manners and everyone discussing their day? It just seemed so… robotic. Was that what you had to trade?
I decided to cut through the park on the way back to my apartment.
It was similar to the one my dad and I had spent so much time at when I was younger; it brought back a flood of memories. That had been happening a lot lately, memories I worked so hard to conceal after he left.
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. Why were we not good enough? Dads are supposed to love you forever. They’re supposed to teach you how to ride a bike, and later take you to back roads at night and teach you how to drive. They coach your baseball and football teams, help you catch your first fish and cook it for dinner. They should be your best friend, tell you that you can achieve anything. They should be your idol, a super hero, the person you want to grow up and be. They shouldn’t leave you.
A single tear ran down my cheek as I saw a father holding the hand of his little girl, who was picking a bouquet of flowers. Probably as a surprise for her mom.
Upon seeing me, she scampered over and shyly handed me a small white daisy, then ran back to the protection of her daddy.



I knew I was in for another sleepless night. Feeling sorry for myself, then mad at the fact I was sorry for myself, I flipped channels on the TV, and landed on the news.
“Man shot ex-wife and daughter, then shot himself” the perfectly-made up newscaster lady was saying. “They died on the scene”.
A led weight had been dropped on my chest, surely… no. of course not.
“He left them fourteen years ago… sources say there is a son…”
No. no no no no. I don’t know if I was screaming aloud or yelling inside my head. What was real? What was not? I was falling. I was numb. I was dead. No. they were dead. I was alive. They deserved to be alive. I didn’t. I should be dead. Unaware of what I was doing, I found myself in the kitchen holding a knife. Red glistening cuts beading up with blood covered my arm. I dropped the knife in shock. Had I done that? No. no no no no.
Jane had been perfect. Jane was dead. My mom was dead. My father had killed them. My father the murderer. My father the maniac.
Memories I had worked so hard to suppress flooded my head... my body... my soul.
My mom yelling at my dad to get out of the house… Jane telling him and me that we were a disappointment… My dad coming home late drunk trying to find me as I hid in my room… Sick games he played with me when I was little, saying they were harmless… Laughter… Laughter downstairs. Laughter no one would ever hear again…
Because of my father, my dad. I thought he loved me. I thought he loved us. I thought we were on a “team”, that we believed in the same thing. But Jane was perfect. He wanted a perfect world. Why would he kill her?

            As soon as I was eighteen I moved out. I wonder if they remembered me. I wonder what my dad had been doing the whole time. Planning…? No. I had not contacted my mom and Jane since then. I had not planned on it either. They didn’t even know where I lived.
            Then another blow hit me, but softer this time. When I had met Hans… there was a small light in the back of my mind. Hope, that maybe… possibly… that he was my dead. Now that spark, just like three others, had been extinguished. Snuffed out. Gone.
By now the news lady had moved on to another topic. Apparently there was a search going on for a missing teenage girl. I felt a dull ache throughout my body, knowing that so many lives were lost or destroyed every day, but that so many more are thrown away.


The sky the next morning seemed to be mourning my families lost too.
My dad was the murderer, but it was he, in a twisted way, that I missed the most. I had hoped so long he would come back to me. Sometimes… it was what kept me going. Kept me trying, researching, experimenting to make the perfect world a reality. Now there was nothing, no point in doing it. It was not me I had been living for all this time. It was my dad. I had sacrificed so much for him, always trying to make him proud.
Somebody had hammered and hit and cut my body untill I couldn’t feel anything anymore. It felt like I wasn’t even me. Just an observer, watching from the sidelines. I could feel, sadness, or hate what was happening to me, but it was like I was watching someone else go through it. To click my tongue and offer a helping hand. To say “it will be ok”, then to go back to my life. I was floating; the only thing that had kept me to myself didn’t even matter anymore.
My dad had been lying to himself, to me. I had been lying to myself, kidding myself, with this perfect world.

I wasn’t planning on necessarily going to the lab, but my feet guided me there.
Hans didn’t open the door today, there was a note taped there. ‘I had to go away on business. Feel free to observe.’
I knew that this would be the last time here. In the lab. I think Hans knew too. I wanted to be able to spend it alone.




‘Point C-Park’. It looked like those brochures, the ones at the front of hotels, stacked somewhere in your house, teasing you. The perfect green carefully mowed grass, the happy, smiling people. The little boy throwing a stick to his dog, couples sitting on park benches holding hands…
I was standing inside a box, just like all the other observation stations, but this one was different. It had a door. A door to the perfect life.
I hesitated, but only slightly, Hans wasn’t here. And why would there be a door if it wasn’t supposed to be used?
I pushed it open and took a step. A women walked up too me, she looked about forty.
“Hi. My name is 42-D. Welcome.”
I smiled and shook her hand.
She—42-d—pointed to a walking trail. “Take a look around our community”. It didn’t seem odd that she knew I didn’t belong.
I started walking on the path. There were no cracks. When I was little I used to step on them, chanting. The kids here couldn’t do that. I passed a family having a picnic, a little boy staring me, then saying something I couldn’t catch to his mom, who glanced at me, slightly afraid, then tried to reassure him. I was different. Here there was no different.
The path led out of the park, to the towns square. There was a bakery, and I walked inside.
It looked like a regular, cheery bakery, the smell of fresh bread enough to fill you up by itself.
I watched a man walk in and look at the baskets that lined the walls. Surprisingly, he didn’t look at different breads and ponder which one. I looked closer. They were all the same. No choices. He took one and walked outside. He didn’t pay.
I followed him out, and walked again on the path, passing colorful carts handing balloons to kids. The parents never said no.
The air was the perfect temperature, the sky—it looked like a sky, but of course it wasn’t—the brightest blue. It was everything I had imagined perfect to be.
But… but something wasn’t right. Of course something wasn’t right. Something’s always wrong. Always. You think that everything’s going good, you’re actually happy, then bam. Another ball thrown your way, to hit you, or be hit aside.
Everyone moved meticulously. Careful, like they had to watch every thing they did. So they didn’t do anything wrong, it seemed. But, since they were perfect, wouldn’t they not have to worry about that? The adult men and women walked side by side. The children didn’t run or skip. In a store, out a store. Buy a balloon, but never let it go, to watch it float up away, up…up…up…
In between a bike store, row after row of what I had wanted to badly, and a pet store, puppies and kittens with bows tied around their necks, was a narrow alleyway. I saw a small gray door in the back, almost blending in with the side of the buildings. Walking up to it, I tried the handle. Exposing a dark room, it opened.

It looked like a broom closet, but I could tell, somehow, that none of the citizens had ever been in there. The only piece of furniture was a small chair with a black notebook and pen on top of it.
I quietly walked over, knowing that—I don’t know how—in the back of my head, I was supposed to open it.
The first page was blank, except ‘Project X’ printed in small black letters. Hans handwriting, I recognized, from the napkin he had left that night at the bar. What seemed like a lifetime had only been days.
I turned the page. ‘Mr. Randolph Hays’, it said above a picture of a young man with a clean shaven face with piercing blue-green eyes. Underneath the picture, ‘1990, first patient. later became doctor’. That was seventeen years ago.
I turned it again. ‘Miss Sally Brinks, 1994’. A girl in her late teens with sharp braids. ‘Working on her teaching masters’.
I slowly flipped through his journal. Faces. Everywhere. Staring back at me, showing off their accomplishes. I saw a pair of eyes that looked somewhat like my own. The year was the same year I turned ten. The face was my dads. My eyes blurred and I quickly adverted them. What was on the caption? Murderer? Committed suicide? Left his family? I didn’t want to know.
But he had been here. Hans had done for him what he had done for all of us. Given us exactly what we thought we wanted, showing, teaching, that it wasn’t what we hadn’t ever really wanted it at all.
It was time to go, but first...
Holding my breath, I turned to the last page in the book.
Pitch black hair. Pale eyes looking elsewhere. An expression of determination. Defiance. Dated this year, there wasn’t a caption.
I had the rest of my life for that.