Prologue
12944 woke up. It was 7:19am. It creaked up from its bed and marched its way out of its apartment. The room was bare, consisting of only a bed, a toilet and a showerhead contained in grey concrete, but 12944 didn’t mind at all. It was the same room everyone else had, and it was everything it could ever want or need.
12944 passed through the hallway, its stride excited by the cold bare floor, and made its way down five flights of stairs to the communal canteen. The canteen was designed as a large hall; symmetrical, with singular desks accompanied by singular chairs evenly spaced across the room. At both ends, where the staircases led from the apartments, there were dispensers where breakfast, a mixture of vitamins and minerals suspended in a thick concoction of water and grains, was served. 12944 picked up a metal bowl and metal spoon and realised how hungry it was. It stood in front of the dispenser and after a healthy serving of the gloop squeezed out of the pipe and onto its bowl, it made its way to its table, next to 12943’s table and behind 12934’s table. Five mouthfuls into its meal, 12945 sat down next to it and began eating as well. The gooey mix was delicious, tickling 12934’s tastebuds as it slithered through its mouth and down its throat. The room, though there were a hundred or so people eating in it was silent as it was every day, apart from the scrape of spoon on bowl and the rhythm of the footsteps of those descending from the stairs above. No-one said a word. No-one ever said a word. 12944 finished its breakfast, placed the bowl into the square chute which led into the washrooms and made its way to work, its hunger satiated.
Today was a big day for 12944. It was a day for both the implantation of the babies and the end of its own life. At its workplace in the hospital, 12944 made its way to the incubation room on the third floor. There, it opened the glass lids of the incubators that sat on table, and took the babies out one by one. 21 millilitres of anaesthetic into each of them, and their cries were silenced. They were placed gently on a conveyor belt that swept through the centre of the room on which they were moved through to the implanting room. At 1:19, 12944 ate its lunch in the work canteen on the ground floor, then began its shift as a watcher in the implanting room. Its duty here was to catch any problem, any mistake that occurred in the implantation process and fix it. With everything running with quotidian smoothness, 12944 was not called to action; for most of its shift it sat and stared at the precise dance of the arm and the penetration of the babies by the needle. There was nothing that needed to be done.
Then, through impossible chance, 12944’s chair gave way and it fell, crashing on top of the upturned seat. It got up as quickly as it could. Too slow. In the moment it lost sight of the implanting machine, the arm froze, leaving a baby untouched. By the time it stood up, the arm had started again; evidence of its malfunctioning now non-existent. 12944 walked backwards into the wall, keeping its eye on the implantation machine as it continued to work. It arched a hand over a shoulder and pressed a button on the wall. Then, it announced to the empty room, “New chair.” Within minutes, another human appeared from the door behind it, and the broken stool was replaced.
12944 sat down and continued watching. By the end of the working day, every single baby had been implanted; every single baby except one. 12944 marched down to the ground floor. Opposite the dining room was a door that led to a small chamber that was empty, apart from a little box on one side. It was a curious box; wooden, with a slot underneath, and a button on top. The button was pressed, a needle was dispensed and soon the poison flowed free through its bloodstream, swirling through the various arteries and veins and seeping into its brain. There had been no regrets. Everything had been perfect. In a few moments, 12944 was dead. The floor opened and it fell into the incineration pit. The floor closed and 12945 came in. The same process ensued. By the end of the day, one thousand workers had fallen into the pit. Nine hundred and ninety-nine babies were ready for their new lives. Out with the old and in with the new.