Bug Rules
By David Grace
As soon as Merritt Kell walked through the door he knew something was wrong.
Mavis just stood there, frightened and staring. Wordlessly she held out the Red Envelope. He opened it with a trembling hand:
"Merritt
Kell, you have been selected by random lottery to participate in next month's Citizen's Militia Public Service Program. Please report
to Hangar 14 one week from today for transport to Camp 3. Failure to report for any reason whatsoever carries an automatic sentence
of two years confinement."
Kell carefully dropped the notice on the end table, his face a blank mask.
"Oh, Merritt!"
"It
won't be so bad, dear," he told her in an unconvincing voice. "It's only for a month."
"But people die out there! Remember Charlotte
Granger? She was killed by a bear or fell off a cliff or whatever when they made her go."
"I'm sure the dangers are blown all out of proportion," Kell said, giving Mavis a hug. "Really, how bad could it be?"
At the appointed
time Kell presented himself at Hangar 14 and was promptly herded into an old transport with four hundred other inductees, each clutching
their Red Envelopes. Kell had barely gotten strapped in when he noticed a faint hissing. He had a brief moment of panic before he
lost consciousness. It was nothing compared to what he felt when he woke up.
* * *
The transport was big and old and stank of sweat and fear. On the outside it was huge, a thousand feet long by one-fifty
wide and one-fifty high, but after subtracting space for mechanicals, corridors, engines, supplies, crew and fuel that left only about
seventy five cubic feet for each item of cargo, that is to say for each of the fifty thousand human beings on board. The Bugs didn't
care.
The door to Kell's room bore the legend: J-II-4 followed by a list of rules and a notice that bathroom visits were allowed only
during the twelve minute period between :37 and :48. The first rule was:
THE PENALTY FOR VIOLATION OF
ANY OF THE
RULES IS DEATH.
A slash of red text across the door warned:
ANY PERSON FOUND OUTSIDE THIS ROOM
AT
OTHER THAN THE APPROVED TIME
WILL BE IMMEDIATELY KILLED
The first day three J-II-4 residents attempted to use the
bathroom at an unauthorized time and were summarily executed by a Bug stationed at the end of corridor II. The following day a resident
entered the bathroom during the approved period but attempted to return to the room at :53 and was killed by a passing Bug after a
quick glance at his badge revealed his transgression.
The Rules resulted in the J-II-4 residents dividing themselves into an initial
set of two groups then shortly thereafter into a different set of two groups and then finally coalescing into a unified whole. In
the beginning the residents could be classified either as those who more or less ignored the Rules and those who didn't.
Kell stared
blankly at the warning on the dormitory wall:
THE PENALTY FOR VIOLATION OF
ANY OF THE RULES IS DEATH
In
something akin to a mental haze Merritt diligently read them and committed them all to memory. After the first four people were executed,
the irrational importance of the Rules to the Bugs became clear to everyone and the remaining residents promptly memorized them as
well. This led to the second schism between the passengers.
Rule Six warned:
DISTURBANCES ARE
FORBIDDEN."
"What's 'fighting' mean?" a thin, black-haired man whose coverall bore the designation C-7-2 demanded. "If
I slap your hand, is that fighting? If I step on your toe and you shout 'Ow!' is that noise?" C-7-2's point of view summarized the
position of Group One.
"If you don't slap anybody and if, when someone steps on your toe, you bite your tongue," a muscular black-skinned
man designated E-9-1, suggested, "the problem disappears."
The two groups might have been labeled as those who looked for uncertainty
in any situation and those who didn't, but such labels were unwieldy and the population quickly dubbed the two camps: the "Theorists"
and the "Common Sensers." By the fifth day eleven Theorists had been executed for violating the Rules.
"How was I supposed to
know that running up and down the aisles was a disturbance?" C-7-2 asked the Bug with the yellow stripe. If you want people to follow
your rules then you-"
The rest of his argument was lost when the Bug pulled out his machete and cut off C-7-2's head. Yellow Stripe
then picked up the body and the disarticulated skull and, on the way out, pointed at Rule 2:
"THE ROOM MUST BE KEPT CLEAN
AND ORDERLY AT ALL TIMES."
Kell stared at the body and something seemed to snap inside his brain. The room lazily receded
into a gray blur. When he came-to five minutes later all traces of C-7-2's blood had been removed and all of the remaining residents
had quickly re-designated themselves as devotees of Common Sense.
On the ninth day, the ship reached its destination, a burned-out
cinder of a planet fifty light years down the arm. One hundred twenty-five bugs marched through the corridors and positioned themselves
in front of each of the ship's one hundred twenty-five cargo rooms. In response to a tone each entered the chamber in front of them
and held up a speaker from which a voice in Standard issued a terse set of orders:
"Line up in orderly ranks and quietly follow the
Moland Supervisor." The message ended without explanation or warning of the consequences of disobedience. None were needed.
Merritt
Kell and the other 44,987 remaining humans quietly marched to new quarters barely different from those on the ship. Kell was assigned
to dormitory R7634. New coveralls with different designations were issued and a new set of Rules adorned the wall. In addition to
the ship's Rules a second, more complicated collection had been added. Prominent among them were:
"1. Apply common sense to all
situations. . . 2. Do what is necessary and reasonable without being ordered. . . 4. Pay careful attention to instructions. . . .
6. Ask only necessary questions. . . . . 14. When a decision is required, make it promptly. . . 27. Do not ask others to make decisions
you are capable of making yourself. . . . 31. You will be held accountable for your own failures."
The homilies continued for several
paragraphs and were amplified by examples contained in small electronic readers distributed to the subjects.
Rule Number 20 provided:
"If there are two possible answers, use common sense to pick the more likely alternative." It was keyed to the explanatory paragraph:
"You
are instructed to turn left at the end of a hallway and pass through the third door on the right. After you turn left you pass two
doors on the right, then you reach a corridor that branches off to the right which corridor itself holds several doors. Beyond the
entrance to this corridor is another door. Overly complicated thinking might lead one to question which is the third door on the right.
There is no need for confusion. The third door on the right is the next door on the right immediately past the entrance to the corridor
to the right."
There were a total of one hundred and twelve Rules which took up most of the front wall. No one was specifically instructed
to study the Rules or read the examples. Had the list been shorter virtually all of Kell's roommates would have read them but, given
their length, generality and tedious nature, only 89% of the occupants reviewed them completely, 8% read half of them and skimmed
the rest and 3% quit reading at or before rule 51. Of the 89% who read the rules completely, 74% of them also read the examples and
gained a fair to good understanding of most of them. The remainder either didn't read the examples or were intellectually incapable
of understanding more than 25% of them.
Eighteen hours after their arrival the occupants of R7634 were marched into a massive complex
and lined up under the unblinking gaze of a Bug with two red stripes across his carapace. Two Red Stripes touched a button on a small
device. A voice in Standard issued from hidden speakers.
"This is a performance exercise for Rule Number 4 which is: "Pay careful attention
to instructions", and Rule Number 6 which is: "Ask only necessary questions."
"Here is your assignment: Find an elevator in this complex.
Press a floor number on the elevator control panel that is three floors above the floor currently indicated on the elevator control
panel. Upon reaching that floor, exit. Find a different elevator. Ride it down three floors below the currently indicated floor and
exit. Return to this location. The allotted time is eight minutes. Your eight minutes begin now." A tone sounded.
Two Red Stripes fidgeted
uneasily at the babble of sighs and whispers and half pulled his blade. Immediately the humans grew silent and spread out across the
floor. Kell dived into a corridor directly across the lobby and turned left at the end. Immediately to his right was an old-fashioned
elevator with the doors standing open and a flashing red arrow pointing up. Next to it a lighted sign in Standard announced: "This
Car Up."
Kell jumped inside. The number "3" glowed on the control panel next to the door. Kell paused for half a second then
punched the 6. Five more passengers entered the car and it waited for each of them to individually enter their destinations. Before
the doors could close a wheezing, overweight man arrived, glanced at the glowing up-pointed arrow and at the sign that said "This
Car UP" and asked Kell: "Is this car going up?" Merritt was just about to answer when a Bug with one red stripe took the man's head.
An instant later the doors closed. The elevator first stopped on 5. A voice announced, "Fifth Floor." Two people jumped into
the hallway and immediately lost their heads. Kell carefully checked that the number 6 was glowing before he exited a moment later.
He
quickly boarded another elevator. The number 7 was illuminated. One of his fellow passengers entered a "2" as the destination instead
of "4". She lost her head as soon as she stepped out of the car. The rest lined up in front of Two Red Stripes. No one asked any unnecessary
questions. The surviving three hundred and seventeen people were led to the mess hall for their
The tests continued
for ten days, each session dealing with different rules. The remaining participants read and re-read the examples. The phrase "Common
Sense" became a mantra along with "Pay Attention" and "Don't Ask Unnecessary Questions." Performance times became shorter and the
number of daily drills increased. At the end of the tenth day 29,429 people were loaded onto the transport. Nine days later the ship
landed in the middle of an eye-searing desert on the planet
"In one hour you will be transported back to your initial
embarkation point. During the return voyage you have been treated with psychoactive drugs and hypnosis therapy. Most of you will have
neither the desire nor the ability to disclose what you have experienced. These procedures have proven 92.3% effective. For those
who find that they are still able to discuss these events, be advised that the penalty for doing so is death. After you leave this
ship do not discuss, disclose or mention anything that you have seen or heard on pain of immediate execution."
The Bugs left without
a word.
"What do you think this was all about?" Elaine Lewiston asked Kell. "Why did they do it?"
"I don't know any more than you do."
"But
there has to be a reason. All of this costs money," Elaine swept her hand around the walls but Kell knew that she meant not only the
ship but also the Bugs and the huge installation to which they had been transported.
"When I woke up here," Kell told her, "I thought
that we had been kidnapped for slave labor in the Beyond. Then I thought that the Bugs ate people and that we were going to end up
like a herd of cattle or pigs, butchered to be the Bugs' dinner. Then I thought the Bugs were training us for some job for which humans
were specially suited like soldiers or mechanics or something. Then I thought that the Bugs were all crazy and that running us through
mazes and then slicing off our heads was sport or entertainment for them."
"And now?"
"Now I don't know and, to tell you the truth,
I don't care. I just want to go home and forget the whole thing."
"That's just the drugs talking," Elaine said in an angry whisper,
pausing to glance nervously around. "That's just what they want us to do, forget all about this. We need to fight back. Who knows
how many people this has happened to. Thousands at least."
Kell just smiled.
"You think that's funny?"
"Not thousands."
"What?"
"Millions,
tens of millions."
"Someone has to do something, tell someone. The government--"
Without a word Kell turned and walked away. From the
direction of the ceiling he heard a faint hissing sound and the world around him disappeared into a gray mist.
