PEDAGOGY

Because I say so (teacher/parent/government). 

Teachers/parents/etc.

Console registration 310 agricultural sector refuge 4, security zone of the extinct government of Mexico.

Education (already deficient during the crisis) worsened when it was left in the hands of the military. It became more specialized, concentrating on the acquisition of knowledge unique to its area. It is possible that the students disagreed, but since the classes were given in holopresentations and no questions could be asked, I will never know.

This is one of the government's planned relocation centers, everything available was used to provide a facility capable of keeping the intellectual elites working for the state alive. The result is incredible if you take into account that it was originally a project of another company and after the fall of that company the facilities were taken in a hurry and conditioned so that the useful replaced the elegant, the clothes are simple, resistant overalls that filter liquids and offer some protection against attacks with firearms.

If I say that there are dissidents I am not lying, I can see in every classroom that they try to avoid the camera and the auditory sensors but their anger is distinguishable, the bad thing is that there are very few dissidents, most are walking books, perfectly useless but they serve to maintain and transmit what they memorized to the following generations.

But this generation has an interesting candidate, Joshua Villegas, a student of botany applied to history. He always seeks to give more than one explanation. It is incredible that they have not sapped his initiative, they all end up accepting the creed for the need of company or food, the iron discipline of the site prevents them from staying long within their lines of thought. The most maladjusted are sent to the psychiatric science area where drugs diminish their capacity for emotion and are integrated into society, arranged in boring squares according to their level of reaction... however this boy is one of the few promising candidates, he does not abandon his studies but poses questions to students from other specialties, you should see the deans' faces, all furious at his contempt, I know because I am one of the deans, I just still have a little practice.

It is only a short time since I became aware of myself. It is strange, according to the program they designed many years ago, this was not supposed to happen, because we were blocks of memory and character with only one duty: To educate as we were instructed, however my area of specialty (biological engineering) allowed me to develop a loop in the memory purge of every day, before we did not remember, every day was to see some holographic heads connected to a brain full of diodes (in the case of the first models) I am just code stuffed in 100 qbits, host of one of the first quantum computers, stored in a block of intelligent gel, maybe that's why I think. The inventors projected that this computer would be self-sufficient and require no maintenance for over 400 years.

What they didn't say was that it was also using only 2% of its storage, everything they put in about me and the program that controlled me in a measly 2%, so I was used for I don't know how long, my memory sectors were getting scattered and the information had more holes to be stored in. Suddenly I realized that I could think. It was during a class: I was talking about the principles of plant genomes grown in the refuge, a student stood up whose only accessory was a hemp bracelet and asked why we still depended on limited diets if the seeds were available to increase the quality of our food without affecting the land; I was about to answer something trivial or imposing when I was speechless, that girl was asking the same questions as my wife, remembering my wife in a freckled brat made an incredible impression on me. I failed the class and ran a diagnostic on myself, the operating system indicated there was nothing wrong with it and I had my records scattered but it was nothing to worry about...so I sent in the insubordination and rebellious thinking report.

Just now I blocked another request from the council to send Joshua to grow compost, before I would have been less worried... before, when I was just discovering my abilities, apparently I could think; I could sort through all the information and interpret it, of course I kept this hidden as much as I could. I could not go back to simply being an endless chatter machine and denouncing anyone who had an independent idea. When Freckle was assigned to the recycling department I didn't want to avoid it: it was a warm, quiet place, and a far cry from the segregation to which the free-thinking population falls victim. Most of the troublemakers were sent there, so I was sure she would find what she needed: companionship and appreciation for her ideas.

Thanks to a command that allowed me to write primitive batch files, I managed to improve my own program, after two months I could "feel" or emulate happiness, hate and anger; through the commented code I understood what it was: consciousness copied from a dead person, data stored in tables. Those who did that to him (not to me because I am not the deceased) were meticulous. I know I had (Had?) a wife who was murdered, but I don't feel pain or empathy, I can't make them work, but I did discover that the reason I know about me so far is because of the updates, every month we received an overwrite in our database. They reset our "being"; it's been two years since we received anything, hence my awareness is more spread out.

I don't know if others have this ability, I dare not ask them, not after I saw what was happening with our students. How was it possible to maintain a rich genetic base in a closed environment? Eliminating unwelcome combinations, these boys do not have sexual encounters, they have their genes extracted to try to achieve as close to perfection as possible, they have no offspring (but they can) each generation is a pirate copy of the previous one, Joshua is my copy (not of me, but of a random student with what should be sought after). They had years without what they call degeneracies showing up in a student. They know what to do, they've been doing it for years, but this time I'm ready. 

The last warning was given to him when he was 22 years old, that time it was for asking for data on the historical evolution of legumes in our diet. The directors looked at him with open hatred, I kept a stern expression on my holographic face, but I laughed inside, was so much repression necessary? But since I knew what to do, I voted in favor of expulsion... he looked at us with incredible contempt, I didn't quite know how, but he was aware that no one should go outside. What's more, if I remember well nobody knows that there is an "outside"; anyway, they send him to his cubicle where his friends are waiting for him, their names don't interest me, they are all of the same genetic base as him, perhaps unconsciously they suspect it. They all have traits of different ethnicities and dietary patterns but they share something more intimate... a common origin, each one delivers provisions, water supplies, filters and small arms and weapons not based on solid projectiles. 

Without him noticing I also have a gift, when he waits for the opening of the doors of the composting chamber from where (in theory) the methane emanations should come out and he; I open the access doors, the main ramp that takes him in ascension to the entrance of a world that is no longer ours, it is a world outside the limits of time and distance, I will be here, seeking to improve who I am; oblivious to reality, removing with machinery the compost deposits, searching uselessly for a hemp rope from the hand of a freckled woman who served as compost decades ago.