50 in 50

He sat, unmoving, and his thoughts went back through the years and a number of things that had been bothering him were made clear. His attitudes so subtly different from his friends', and that time with the plane when one of the rotors had killed a squirrel. Little puzzling things, and sometimes worrying ones that had kept him awake long after the rest of the house was asleep. It was true, he knew it without a shadow of a doubt, and wondered why he had never realized it before. But, like a hideous statue buried in the ground beneath one's feet, it had always been there but had never been visible until he had dug down and reached it. But it was visible now, all the earth scraped from its vile face and all the lineaments of evil clearly revealed.

"You want me to kill Barre?" he asked.

"You're the only one who can. . Davy. . and it must be done. For all these years I have hoped against hope that it would not be needed, that the. . ability you have would not be used. But Barre lives. For all our sakes he must die."

"There is one thing I don't understand," David said, rising and looking out the window and the familiar view of the trees and the distant, glass-canopied highway.

"How was this change made? How could I miss the conditioning that I thought was a normal part of existence in this world?"

"It was your teddy bear.” Eigg explained. "It is not publicized, but the reaction to killing is established at a very early age by the tapes in the machine that every child has. Later education is just reinforcement, valueless without the earlier indoctrination."

"Then my teddy. . I"

"I altered its tapes, in just that one way, so this part of your education would be missed. Nothing else was changed."

"It was enough Doctor." There was a coldness to his voice that had never existed before. "How is Barre supposed to be killed?"

"With this." Eigg removed a package from the table drawer and opened it. "This is a primitive weapon removed from a museum. I have repaired it and charged it with the projectile devices that are called shells." He held the sleek, ugly, black thing in his hand. "It is fully automatic in operation. When this device, the trigger, is depressed a chemical reaction propels a copper-and-lead weight named a bullet directly from the front orifice. The line of flight of the bullet is along an imaginary path extended from these two niches on the top of the device. The bullet of course falls by gravity but in a minimum distance, say a meter, this fall is negligible." He put it down suddenly on the table. "It is called a gun."

David reached over slowly and picked it up. How well it fitted into his hand, sitting with such precise balance. He raised it slowly, sighted across the niches and pulled the trigger. It exploded with an immense roar and jumped in his hand. The bullet plunged into Eigg's chest just over his heart with such a great impact that the man and the chair he had been sitting in were hurled backwards to the floor. The bullet also tore a great hole in his flesh and Eigg's throat choked with blood and he died.

"David! What are you doing?" His father's voice cracked with uncomprehending horror.

David turned away from the thing on the floor, still apparently unmoved by what he had done.

"Don't you understand, Father? Barre and his Panstentialists are a terrible weight and many suffer and freedom is abridged and all the other things that are wrong, that we know should not be. But don't you see the difference? You yourself said that things will change after Barre's death. The world will move on. So how is his crime to be compared to the crime of bringing this back into existence?"

He shot his father quickly and efficiently before the older man could realize the import of his words and suffer with the knowledge of what was coming. Torrence screamed and ran to the door, fumbling with terrified fingers for the lock. David shot him too, but not very well since he was so far away, and the bullet lodged in his body and made him fall. David walked over and ignoring the screamings and bubbled words, took careful aim at the twisting head and blew out the man's brains.

Now the gun was heavy and he was very tired. The lift shaft took him up to his room and he had to stand on a chair to take Teddy down from behind the books on the high shelf. The little furry animal sat in the middle of the large bed and rolled its eyes and wagged its stubby arms.

"Teddy.” he said, "I'm going to pull up flowers from the flowerbed."

"No, Davy. . pulling up flowers is naughty. . don't pull up the flowers…" The little voice squeaked and the arms waved.

"Teddy, I'm going to break a window."

"No, Davy. . breaking windows is naughty. . don't break any windows…"

"Teddy, I'm going to kill a man."

Silence, just silence. Even the eyes and arms were still. The roar of the gun broke the silence and blew a ruin of gears, wires and bent metal from the back of the destroyed teddy bear.