The afternoon my youth ended, and I found out my true purpose in this world, I had been fixing the shelves in my parents cottage, in a village near the shores of Lake Geneva. It was a hot day in late summer, and my fingers were worn numb from screwing the planks together. I took a much-needed break, and opened a bottle of beer with my teeth.

This was to be my last summer at home – I planned to leave for University in the autumn, hoping that maybe I could put the unhappy memories of my childhood and adolescence behind me. Memories of the village, where I could not leave the house without yells of derision and cruel taunts following me everywhere I went. “Can you whittle this stick for us, Johan,” they’d cry, or sometimes, “has anybody got a toothpick?” And then they would throw things at me.

Mostly, I stayed at home. I could no longer go to school, and word had spread to the neighbouring villages of my strangeness, so no tutor could be found who was willing to come and educate me. So I was left to my own devices. I devoured what learning I could get from the books in the house, often reading them with my torch into the small hours of the morning, and when I had exhausted the books in the house I asked for more to be bought. My parents reasoned that the savings they made on handymen’s bills would cover my appetite for reading, and so I remained in the house. I fixed things by day, filing wood and stripping wires, and in the evenings I would bury myself in whichever new tome had arrived for me. Great works of literature, philosophy, treatises on politics and faraway tribes and galaxies and music. There were never any works on engineering, biology or recent national history, but I put this down to my parents having a clear set of goals for me.

These were diversions, nothing more, and despite all my parents’ love I could never forget for too long that I was despised and feared. That I was considered unusual, and that I was mocked for it, that much I knew – but when I sat in the attic with my simple pleasures, cutting a length of hosing or marking points on a dovetail joint, I simply could not understand why. Until that afternoon.

It was as I sat back to enjoy my beer, and admire the shelves, that I heard a knocking on the door downstairs. I heard my mother answer, and a mumble of conversation, and then raised voices. There were sounds – high-pitched sounds – that sounded like my mother crying, and then running footsteps, urgent muttering between two men, and then back to quiet. Concerned, I was getting up to see what was happening when my father appeared at the foot of the stairs. His face was grave.

“Johan. There’s someone here to see you.”

*     *     *

I used to be a happy child, before the other kids noticed that I was… different. I can still remember the day it all changed, cutting as sharp as a three-inch blade through the clouds of confusion and misery. A school trip to the Educational Farm, and little Marie was being shown how to sit on a horse. Dear Marie – the sole, perfect object of my seven-year old self’s affection. She was giggling with giddy, frightened pleasure as she sat on the grey stallion’s back and the farmer’s son showed her how to hold the reins, children laughing and squealing with delight around her.

With the encouragement of the farmer’s son, she slowly trotted the horse forward – when, in an instant, something in its eyes changed, and its hooves kicked out wildly. The son was caught square in the chest, and he flew back unconscious. Marie was still sat in the saddle, desperately trying to hold on as the horse bucked and kicked beneath her, crazy with pain. Far away, the farmer was running across the field towards us, shouting frantically; Marie was grabbing the reins in sheer terror, being flung back and forth. The teacher stood ineffectually by, bewildered, and everywhere children were crying, screaming, running. In an instant – without even knowing quite what I was doing – I jumped forward and flipped open my elbow. As if by instinct, in one movement, I deftly removed the sharp, wicked stone from the horse’s hoof.

Almost as quickly as it had started, the horse calmed down and limped to a stop, breathing heavily. As a sobbing, hysterical Marie was helped down from the horses back, and the farmer tended to his son, I snapped the tool back into my arm and turned around to face the other children. They were staring back at me in horror.

I should have been a hero. Instead, I was a freak.

*    *     *

I came downstairs. My parents stood by, looking more uncomfortable than I had ever seen them before, even more than the time I showed Great Aunt Helga my special bottle opener. My mother’s eyes were red rimmed, and my father stood with his arm around her shoulder.

The man sat down opposite me, his dark green eyes peering at me through thin-framed glasses. He was, perhaps, not even ten years older than me, but he had the bearing of someone who had lived far longer. He opened a briefcase.

“Is this about my University funding?” I ventured, trying to get a glimpse of his papers. I had applied – against the wishes of my parents – for a government scholarship to study the history of melancholy, but had yet to hear back from them. He looked up.

“No, Johan. It is not about your University funding. You will not be going to University.” His voice was terse, his face stern.

“What?” I was shocked, and looked questioningly up to my parents. They looked down at their feet. The man saw this, and a change – a realisation – came over him. He seemed to soften, and he spoke incredulously to my parents.

“Do you mean…do you mean that you’ve not told him?”

My mother pushed father’s arm from her shoulders, and stepped forward, tears flowing freely. “We couldn’t… we meant to, we tried, we were going to so many times but we just… we didn’t have the heart, and you can’t take him away from us, you can’t...” She broke off, sobbing, and my father drew her close to him, looking accusingly at out visitor. The man turned back to face me. I was confused, and frightened, and I tweezed myself nervously as he spoke.

“Johan, there is no easy way to say this. You are effectively owned – no, I will not put it that way. I shall say, you are indentured to the Swiss government. This is why you will not be going to University. Instead, you will be going somewhere else. Somewhere… special.”

“What… what?” I could barely even think of any questions to ask. I turned to my parents, pleading. “Father... Mother…” That my mother turned away, putting her head in her hands, was enough to answer my unasked question. A sick feeling blossomed inside me, and I gasped for air.

Quitely, the man said to me, “They are not really your parents, Johan.”

I shook my head, eyes closed tight, and my knuckles rubbing so hard against my nail file that I almost sobbed in pain.

“Allow me to explain. They should have told you this long ago; it was part of the agreement. Please, let me explain.”

Slowly, unwillingly, I opened my eyes.

“Many years ago – almost three decades, now – the government determined that the neutral state of Switzerland should commit to a secret military research project. A project to strengthen the capability of the army, the better to enforce neutrality and provide a rapid-response force for tactical pragmatism strikes. Our country’s greatest scientists made the breakthrough with astonishing speed, many years sooner than anybody had predicted, and it was at that point that the government advertised for volunteer couples. For people who otherwise could not have children… people like your parents, to help them raise an army. An army that would be purely practical; multiskilled, devastatingly effective and above all, inoffensively useful. Johan,” he said, staring at me with his intense green eyes, “do you know what the term ‘chromosomal synthesiser’ means?”

“No,” I said, baffled.

“What about ‘bio-metallic phenogenisis’?”

“No,” I whispered again.

He looked at me, weighing up his options, before deciding on a different tack.

“How about ‘knife’?” he asked.

*     *     *

I ran. There were shouts before I fled, and tears. You used me, I yelled at my parents – who were not my parents – and they tried to tell me that what I had was a gift. Why didn’t you tell me, I asked; we tried, they said, but you seemed so happy not knowing. No I bloody wasn’t, I screamed back. The green-eyed man tried to intervene, to calm me down, but I pushed him aside and backed towards the door, waving my fish-gutting knife to keep them away. And then I was out, and turned, and running, running as hard as I could for high ground, my implements flapping and clacking about me. I must have run for half a day, not feeling the pain or tiredness, up away from the green lake shores towards the rocky peaks of the mountains where the air grew thin and cold.

I had no destination. All I knew was that I wanted to get away from my house, my past, from all human contact and all memory of what I was. On the way, I removed the toothpick from my chest – the damned toothpick, with its haunting memories of childhood jeers – and cast it into the void off the edge of a cliff.

The weeks passed; I survived on the small mountain animals I was able to kill, either slitting their throats with my double-edged slicing blade, or skewering them with my corkscrew. Sometimes, I would hear human voices, as hiking tourists or local farmers passed close below me. I would hide, frightened, my tweezers always at the ready in case of a confrontation.

Weeks turned to months; the air became sharp and chill. Snow fell; using my scissors, I attempted to make a coat from the pelts of mountain hares, but it did nothing to keep out the biting wind. The small mammals I fed on became scarce. I lost horrifying amounts of weight. The joints on my attachments began to freeze up, my skin developed frostbite and my shins began to rust. My uncleaned teeth started to decay; I tried in vain to find my toothpick again, but it was futile.

As winter gripped hard, gales whipped fiercely around the peaks and the snow made it almost impossible to move. I began to freeze to death, the bitter cold taking me quicker than the starvation. I should have returned home, but it was not my home any more; my shame was more deadly than the horrors of the mountain. I decided instead that I all I wanted was to kill myself.

The wind was screaming as I staggered to the edge of the precipice, and in my delirium I half-thought that I heard it calling my name. As I stood above the chasm, swaying back and forth, I calmly snapped all my devices shut, slid my tweezers back into my spine for the final time, and plunged forwards into nothingness. As I toppled, my vision lost to the snow-blindness, I thought I heard my name called once more. Then I saw an arm shoot out from the blizzard, grasping for my clothes but surely too far away to catch me. But I heard a click, a swoosh, and my fall was snapped back. I felt cold metal pressing against my skin, snaring me. As darkness took hold of me, I looked up, and the last thing I saw was a pair of deep green eyes staring back down at me.

*     *    *

I woke to the sound of running water. The green eyed man was looking down at me. I jerked upright, and looked about. I was back in the green fields of the lakeside, lying wrapped in a silver blanket, and in the near distance stood a number of large, bright white buildings.

“Welcome back, Johan,” said the man, propping me up. “Do you think you can stand? Let me show you your new home.”

Unsteadily, my body aching, I rose to my feet. Agonisingly slowly, I walked with him across the fields to the buildings, saying nothing. We approached the complex, passing through a gate where a security guard saluted the man with an unusual motion, accompanied by clicking sounds. We paused by steel double doors to the largest building, and the man pressed his hand against my shoulder.

“I understand exactly what you feel, I want you to know that,” he said, squeezing my shoulder tight. A note of sorrow entered his voice. “I was one of the very first, you know.” Looking down, I saw that in his other hand, he held a pair of tweezers.

He patted me on the back, and swung the doors open.

 

Inside the room were a vast crowd of young men and women, of all shapes and sizes. Some were small, compact, and lightweight; others were enormous, bulky and with numerous limbs splayed out in all directions. On one side of the room, two lines of them stood rigidly, snapping their implements open and shut in time with astonishing precision. On the other side, they were more casual, standing around with their attachments hanging out, or lounging in chairs with elbows and knees at improbable angles. Everywhere I looked, I saw knives, screwdrivers, lockpicks, spurting from torsos and legs and arms like crazed flower arrangements. Some of the younger ones – perhaps no older than fourteen, bright-faced and grinning – trailed cables and sockets, or had bright blue flames emerging from their heads.

“This is our training academy,” the man said, turning to me. He smiled. “We’re all alike here, you know.” I looked around at the faces of the people, all staring at me as I stood there, just like the children stared at me all those years ago. But I noticed something different. They weren’t staring at me in disgust, or fear, or pity. Every single one of them, from the smallest to the largest, was smiling at me.

I breathed in, deeply. And then, tentatively, I smiled back.

I am now approaching the end of my second year at the academy. I have made many wonderful friends here, and I have learnt so much about myself – I have even discovered a ballpoint pen in my thigh I knew nothing about. We practise retracting, and whittling, and we learn about the varieties of screw and different staple-removal techniques. We’re comrades, and we all help to maintain and oil each other; every Wednesday, we have a whole afternoon of tweezing. Every minute of my time here is a joy, and I grow more practical and more versatile every day. Most of all, I have come to terms with my nature; I am now contented, even proud, about who and what I am. I am a Utility Child. An All-Purpose Man. It is my sole function in life to be useful to humanity, and that is a noble calling for anyone. Furthermore, it turns out I have three distinct types of sexual organ, which I may extend or retract depending on the situation. I can tell you, the chicks go crazy for that kind of stuff.

 

*     *    *     *    *

- by Tom Phillips

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