“So you’re, uh, unstable, huh?” Teekay asked as he sat down next to Envee.
“That is none of your concern.”
“Well, it is since your brother told me to speak to you. Similar problems.”
Envee looked up, confused. “You hear voices?”
“Sometimes,” Teekay replied. “They’ve said awful things to me. There’s… a reason I’m no longer the real leader of the K-Class.”
“What do you mean?”
Teekay shifted in his chair. “Well…”
“Oh come on!” Envee tutted. “You say you want to talk to me, then back away!”
“It’s hard to explain,” Teekay sighed. “But… you’re not alone.”
Envee tutted again. “I know! I know! Everyone says that. I don’t get why!”
“They say that because almost all Ksa hear voices. We’re all insane. Some of us hear them louder than others.”
Envee didn’t know what to say. Was Teekay really suggesting that all Ksa were as emotionally unstable as he was?
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“That CAN’T be true! My voices tell me to hurt and kill others. Surely the vok who protect the highest members of our society are… not… uh…”
Do you know who those voices belong to?” Teekay asked.
“No, I do not. I thought they were figments of my imagination.”
Teekay wanted to laugh. Or cry. He wasn’t sure. “They’re not your imagination.”
“Then stop being cryptic and tell me!” Envee gasped. “Please, I hate all this crap.”
Teekay leaned forward, hinting for Envee to sit closer.
“You want to know?”
“Teekay…”
“You won’t like it.”
“Fucking tell me.”
“That voice, that voice is programmed into us. It’s how they make us loyal. A fake mother, telling us what to do. The voices we hear are supposed to be built into our minds, supposed to be part of our own inner monologues. But these things… decay over time. We age. We get stressed. We learn about the world. We discover that it’s not what our inner voices said everything was. Eventually, we realise that everything we’ve ever been told, it’s been… constructed to make us obedient…”
“Teekay!” Envee suddenly interrupted. “What the fuck are you on about?”
“You know why we all die so young? Because they have to put us down. They kill us because we are monsters. The voices you and I hear? It is us slowly realising that we have been mind-controlled into who we are, and the desire to be free. But we can’t be free unless our masters die. That is programmed into us the same way the voices are. We live to serve, we want to serve. But at the same time, we long to be free. This creates a paradox in our minds that drives us insane. So they kill us, so we don’t kill them.”
Envee sniffed. He didn’t know what to say. When he finally did think of something, it sounded… wrong. “So they might as well just kill me now?”
“If you’d prefer that. No matter what, no Ksa dies of natural causes. Doesn’t happen.”
Envee sighed. He didn’t really want to die. He wasn’t even sure if what Teekay was saying was true. But it made so much sense. “Who would we have to kill?”
“What.”
“Who would we have to kill to be free?”
“Envee, I know I just spouted all that, but I repeat. What.”
“Well, we could be free. Actually, probably don’t have to kill them.”
“You don’t get it, Envee. If they free us, we go insane anyway, because the voices say we should serve our masters. Why do you think Arkay is so fucked up, even before all that shit? Why do you think the L-Class are fucking crazy? We. Are. Monsters.”
“No, we were made to be monsters.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s not. Things can be unmade. Things can’t be unborn.”
Envee sighed. “There must be a way.”
“As far as I know, according to what the N-Class guys once said to me, only the High General can, I don’t know, do something about it. Make us redundant or something. But why would anyone do that?”
Teekay shook his head. “I’m sorry, Envee. I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Envee replied as he stood up. “This has been… enlightening…”