Anyone Who Walks Into Omelas

Every SFF author eventually writes an asinine response to Ursula K. Le Guin's famous short story. This is mine.

Anyone who walks into Omelas needs an entry visa. The city’s elders decreed it after immense deliberation. An obstacle, for sure, but not unsurmountable. Papers were easy enough to procure from Omelian emigrants, portraits swapped with razors and glue, text corrected with a few flicks of ink. The hard part was fitting in. Hendrick spent months training. He lived with a refugee and shadowed her movements, learned to glide lethargically in the loose, bright garments of an Omelian, learned to drawl without fully opening or closing his mouth. He altered his exercise regimen--lower weight, more reps, more cardio--to get that lean, sinewy look. He sprawled under a sun lamp. It took surgery to install an insipid half-smile on his face so that he could never give himself away by frowning in concentration, not even in his sleep.

The guard at the entry gate peered at the fake identity card, then at Hendrick’s portrait, then at the card again. “Where do you hail from, friend?” she asked.

Hendrick knew not to answer with a precise address. That would be a very un-Omelian response. “I hail from the South End,” he said, and then added, based on the details of the map he’d memorized, “not too far from the best little juice joint with the yummiest acai bowls in all of Omelas.” One had to say as little as possible with the maximum number of words. That was their way.

“Is that girl with the unicorn tattoo still slinging wheatgrass shots there?”

“She was when I left. She’s a beautiful soul.”

“Send her all my kindness and empathy.”

“I will, friend.”

And Hendrick was in. He immediately headed toward the center of the city, but not near enough to arouse suspicion. He knew he could not reach the Child himself. The way down was narrow and well-observed. All the hypocrites of Omelas who wept with pity for the creature would wedge themselves into the stairwell and say, “Hey, man, I totally get what you’re doing, but this violence is not the way.” He could beat one Omelian in melee combat easily, or two, maybe three, but four was too many, and the city had no guns. They could not even be smuggled in. They dissolved in your holster when you crossed the threshold. Bombs dropped on the city burst impotently in the troposphere, radiation scattering to anywhere but the target. Even the sound dampened to a tolerable level. All Omelas experienced was the clap of pretty fireworks. Such is the magic of suffering.

So the Child could not be rescued. Mercy killing was no good, either: there was always a designated replacement to be snatched from its mother’s arms and dragged down to the cell when necessary. It had happened before and would happen again.

Hendrick found a residential building whose superintendent had recently sashayed away from his duties to follow his bliss on a fishing boat. Hendrick was willing and able to do the work of maintenance. Even in paradise, someone has to fix the toilet. He preferred to labor indoors, away from the relentless sun, with objects rather than people, though one can never escape idle chatter in Omelas. When people summoned him to their dwellings, they would not let him mend a hinge or change a bulb without first inviting him for herbal tea and pastries and then engaging him in a protracted confabulation about their respective hopes and dreams. They talked about their upbringings in the other boroughs of the city, their complicated labyrinthian relationship webs, previous orgies and orgies to come, the daily horse parades that made the streets always smell a bit like shit, and always, always, they talked about the Child: whose it was, how old, how long it would last, where they’d get the next one. They always talked about what stage they were on of recovery from the trauma of seeing it for the first time. In proper Omelian fashion, they had six stages, beyond Kübler-Ross’s five. After acceptance came gratitude.

Hendrick endured these conversations and confessed that at times he, even at his age, sometimes wavered between anger and bargaining. “I can see that you carry the burden of anger,” they would say, caressing his face without asking. “It’s written in your skin. Thank you for sharing your truth with me. I know it took courage.”

Only one occupant of the building did not inflict these dialogs upon Hendrick. That was the quiet woman in the Skymost Room Which Greets the Dawn. (Omelians are too precious to just call a room “Apartment 4B” or anything normal—it must be a whimsical description rife with euphemism, and this particular unit was on the top floor and its windows faced east). Hendrick kept watch on her. She had the look of one who dreamed of walking. She made hardly any talk in common spaces, and she didn’t dance much in the great outdoor festivals, and her consumption of the ambulatory fuck souffles was perfunctory and joyless. Hendrick followed her to work once and saw, to his elation, that she entered that one particular building in that one particular neighborhood.

But the quality that endeared her to him—her quiet—made it difficult to approach her. He waited, but not too patiently. If she walked before he could get to her, he’d lose a perfect asset. So once, while she was out, he let himself into the apartment—for there are no locks in Omelas—and fished a corn cob out of the trash and crammed it down the kitchen sink.

She called upon him that evening. He found her at the earliest stage of cooking—washing produce and rice—interrupted, with a sink full of brackish swill. “I’m sorry,” she said. An apology, not a thank you for your patience, friend or an I have bestowed upon you a significant challenge. He liked her immediately. “I know it’s an annoying time. I tried using drain cleaner.” For they do have drain cleaner in Omelas, and can you imagine, friend, that it is far less toxic than ours but just as effective?

“All is well,” he replied, as noncommittal as an Omelian can get without arousing suspicion. He set to work with the plunger, though he knew it wouldn’t help. To do otherwise might give him away.

She sat at a polite distance and watched him work. She did not crowd the air with chatter, so he had to spark up a conversation, which troubled him greatly. He would not ask her where she worked; it was too direct and might arouse suspicion. “I see an unusually simple assortment of foodstuffs,” he said. “Root vegetables. Basic grains. Tell me, friend, are you embarking on a cleanse for health or spiritual reasons?”

“Cooking does not fill me with bliss as it once did.”

“Well, the plunger isn’t doing it. Whatever it is, it’s really jammed in there. Let’s use the auger.” Hendrick fed the metal snake down the shaft, knowing well that it would not solve the problem, either. “Thank you for sharing your truth with me, friend. I kind of get the general vibe that you are on the fourth stage, that of depression. That’s where I’ll be next. I admit my path in life twisted and turned so that I did not get my cherry popped until a couple of years ago. Is that the case for you, friend?”

“I appreciate you overcoming your shame. But no. I lost it young. I reached stage six before adulthood. But then…” No Omelian can leave a sentence unfinished, so after a great sigh she continued, “I got a job at the Gratitude Center.”

“I truly appreciate you and all that you do,” Hendrick said. “To sacrifice your emotional placidity for the good of the city takes great strength.”

“I’m not one of the torturers,” she said. No one ever was. “I mix the gruel. That’s all. But still. Most people are able to compartmentalize. Put it in the back of their mind. But I have to face it every day.”

“You provide nourishment with great care. Is that not a kindness?”

“Not enough. They design the gruel so that the Child gets just malnourished enough to suffer, but not enough to starve to death.”

Hendrick withdrew the snake. “I’m hitting something solid in the U-bend. I’m going to have to open up the pipe. Do you have a bucket?”

She found one and gave it to him. She told him her name was Moon. Not Moonlight or Moonbeam or Rabbit-on-the-Moon. Just Moon. A tolerable name for an Omelian. He gave her his cover name, which was River, happy to have found someone who would not demand a long explanation as to how he came by it.

Hendrick fixed the wrench in place and turned it. Cloudy water thick with grains of rice and scraps of carrot peel gushed into the bucket. It occurred to him that the gray soup was overall more nutritious than the gruel Moon prepared for the Child every day. “Moon,” he said,” perhaps your heart will lead you to a profession that gives you more joy. A chef at one of the city’s fine eateries.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Everything in Omelas reminds me of the Child. I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t think I’ll ever get back to stage six.”

“Are you thinking of walking?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes.”

“Where would you go? The Outer World?”

“Of course not. Only one Child suffers in Omelas. In the Outer World, millions suffer, and the results are much poorer. No, the Outer World is objectively worse than Omelas. I was thinking of Adañacal.”

To hear that city’s name, even with its vowels stretched to breaking in that Omelian drawl, made Hendrick’s heart ache. “They have a Child too,” he said, cautiously. The pipe was unscrewed. He tugged the p-trap down.

“Yes, but at least it’s outside in the sunshine and fresh air! Not cooped up in a hole!”

With a plunk, the corn cob dislodged itself and splashed into the bucket. A maelstrom of churning wastewater followed. “Got it!” Hendrick held up the culprit so that Moon could see it.

“I must have thrown it in with the dishes,” she said.

Screwing the pipe back in place, Hendrick said, “You know, I visited Adañacal some years ago, before the war.”

“Oh! What was it like? You have to tell me!”

Hendrick felt a tug on his fishing line. Time to set the hook. “I’ve got a bunch of pictures and souvenirs in my room. Would you like me to bring them up, friend?”

“Oh, that would thrill and delight me!” She clasped her hands in performative joy. “I’m going to make dinner. I’ll cook something delightful. Let me just borrow a couple of ingredients from one of my wonderful neighbors.”

Hendrick retrieved the items from the Building Wellness Minder room where he lived. He kept them in a hiding place he’d sawed into the floor beneath the paisley carpet. Quickly he scanned them for anything Moon might find too objectionable. The souvenirs were not contraband, but the sight of them could raise difficult questions, so he bundled them carefully against his chest under his voluminous dining robe. The sturdy texture of them, the smell of barley that clung to them, made him long for home. He considered the virtues of sacrifice. He, too, suffered for his city’s sake.

When he returned to the apartment, he found Moon in a flurry of activity, vigorously whisking and chopping and sauteing an assortment of dishes: steamed custard, spicy noodles, braised turnips and cabbage. The air reeked of numbing peppers. Hendrick had spent months building a tolerance to them.

They sat and ate. Hendrick dined slowly and sipped the sickeningly sweet tea, fearful that the peppers would turn his face suspiciously red. Moon chewed noisily with her mouth open; to fit in, Hendrick practiced the nauseating custom too.

“It’s really quiet there,” he said. “People are very reserved. Visitors find their ways cold, but to them, it’s a sign of affection to be able to spend time with someone without saying a word.”

“Is it cold there up in the mountains?”

“Yes, but the thermal springs are wonderful.”

He showed her the photographs he’d brought with them. Yes, they have analog photography in Adañacal and in Omelas, but not digital, for utopia has no internet. The pictures were eight years old, carefully selected for a time period from before the travel ban. Here were Adañacalis lounging in hot springs, team rising from their pale, muscular bodies. Hendrick grieved for his lost pecs. Here was a table set for a grand feast. He named and described all the foods to Moon: kefir and chai, the traditional sesame bread braided in a gigantic ring, roast lamb, goat cheese, hearty lentil stew. Here was one of the falcons that hunted mountain hare and delivered messages. Hendrick produced a brown feather which Moon caressed with her finger. Here was a stunning aerial photograph of the city jutting up from the mountainside, a crystal labyrinth.

“Glimmering and transparent,” he said.

“Is that what I think it is?” Moon jabbed a bronze finger at a pale dot on a cliff looming over the city.

“Adañacal’s Child,” Hendrick said. “The city does not hide it as this one does. Theirs suffers from exposure, not obscurity.”

“That’s so much more honest,” Moon said.

Hendrick did not tell her the photo was out of date. That was not complete dishonesty on his part—an Omelian would not know how things had changed. The city had installed a wire cage around the Child’s platform. He remembered fondly hurling stones and ice balls at the cliff with his friends, hoping to land a hit, listening to the Child try miserably to dodge these missiles at the end of her short chain. Young Adañacalis would never again know the joy. Such a loss.

The next photograph sent an icepick into his heart.

“Is that a party?”

“At the Great Hall. They dance differently over there. It’s very slow and meditative, not fast like it is here. And the music isn’t rhythmic. It’s more about the layering of tones and ethereal harmonies. The Hall was built to have very special acoustics. Everything resonates just so. When you’re in there and the music is playing, you feel like you’re going to vibrate into another dimension. It’s transcendent.”

His voice cracked. He hoped she wouldn’t notice. The photograph of the Hall was for Hendrick, not for the mark. The Hall no longer existed. It was the first casualty, when an Omelian tourist—or, they suspected, an Omelian agent disguised as a tourist—lobbed a dumpling at the Child’s open-air cell. Adañacal was unprepared for such an act of war. Before they could issue a hawk to snatch it up, the Child had already devoured it, and as the meat rumbled in her stomach the Great Hall shook in its foundations. Hendrick was there. He’d stepped outside with another boy, arms round each other’s waists, breath steaming in the Solstice night air, stumbling home together. And the Great Hall, cut from living rock, collapsed impossibly in upon itself. His friends’ screams echoed through the city. He heard them now.

“Their clothes are all black.”

“It’s a special fabric,” Hendrick said. “It shimmers when it moves. It doesn’t show up well in photos. Here.” He produced the jacket. It was outdated, too. With shortages, no one wore floor-length garments anymore. “I got this as a souvenir but I kind of feel weird wearing it here. See how it shines in the light?”

Moon put it on. It fit her like a tent. “They’re huge over there,” she said. She twisted and turned in the mirror to see how the coat gleamed one color, then another when she moved faster. Elegant hues, not the garish ones they wore in Omelas. “It’s like a rainbow.”

“Imagine a hall full of people wearing these, fires blazing in the hearth, everyone moving and shining like stars.”

Moon sat back down, still wearing the coat. She hugged herself in it. “I wish I could go. I hate this place.”

“They don’t let Omelians visit anymore, unfortunately. You can get refugee status, but there are no more tourist visas. If you go, you can’t come back. I could not leave our little utopia forever. Omelas is my home. It always will be. The forms are gathering dust.”

Moon moved to the mirror again. She admired herself in the glimmering jacket. She tried to puff out her chest and hold her neck stiff like an Adañacali, a girl playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes. “Do you still have them?” Straight to the point, like a proper Adañacali. She could integrate, given time.

“Yes, somewhere.” And in a whisper he said, “I trust you will not speak of this, for both our sakes. I believe it might be contraband.”

Omelas had no officially designated police force, but since the start of the war they had formed a squadron of so-called Social Workers whose duty was to hunt down anyone rendered toxic by exposure to Adañacal or the ideas of the Outer World and “bring them to harmony,” a task they carried out with the application of a sharp pike to the offender’s spine. Exposure meant death for Hendrick as well as for Moon.

“I can take them off your hands.”

“You know that’s dangerous.”

“You’ve become a good friend to me, River, and I will happily accept that risk to protect you.”

“I appreciate you and all that you do, Moon.”

Again, he returned to the hiding place beneath the paisley carpet in his room. He found the little bundle wrapped in parchment and brought it back to Moon. “It’s a package,” he said. “It looks like it’s sort of a complicated process, so it might take a while, unfortunately. Would you like to borrow the coat?”

Cocooning herself in the black shroud, Moon said, “I would like that very much.”

Hendrick left her there to unravel the package. The process was out of his hands. He’d baited the fish; now his associates would reel it in. They’d planned it carefully. Moon would fill out the forms and submit them to Adañacal by means of a carrier hawk. The hawk would return with a bag of tablets and instructions on how to use them.

Moon worked in the Gratitude Center kitchen with predetermined ingredients in predetermined quantities so that she could not accidentally provide the Child with unauthorized nourishment or pleasure. A carer (they were not called guards) hauled the gruel bucket down to the cell, so whatever Moon smuggled in needed to be discreet, invisible at the bottom of a heap of gray sludge.

She would think them candy. They certainly looked like it: bright colors, fanciful shapes of funny little men and animals. If she dared to taste one, she would find it sweet. Here was the cost of entering Adañacal: give the child a series of going away presents, just one of these little things every day while Adañacal’s Entrance Bureau processed her request and the hawk flew.

Moon would not see the harm. One little morsel of pleasure would hardly do a thing. The child was too traumatized to enjoy itself, too feral to savor its dubious treat.

But there was another, greater danger, one no Omelian—not even Moon—could imagine. For the package was not candy. Omelas picks whimsical weapons with a high-yield short-term payload: a slice of honey cake to crash a funicular, a stuffed animal to collapse a bridge, and, in one terrible incident, an Outer World device called a ‘Nintendo DS’ to make all the geothermal vents in Adañacal run cold. Deadly though they were, the city’s guardians could quickly detect them and smash them.

But Adañacal played the long game, slow and subtle. The danger in those tablets was not how they tasted. A field agent brought them back from the Outer World, where many children suffered with a much lower yield. Each tablet contained a day’s worth of vitamins and minerals designed to mitigate a child’s malnourishment. As the days went on, the little wretch in Omelas would feel its bones mend, its eyes clear, its gums stop bleeding. And somewhere in the outskirts of the city the crops would wither; somewhere at the center of an orgy a protein strand would rewrite itself and a horrible new illness would pass from one body to another. They’d done it before. A pair of knit socks had caused a sewage pipe to leak into the drinking water undetected, causing a massive cholera outbreak. In the days of unregulated visitations, an agent had smuggled in baby aspirin, one dose every day for a month; during that time the leaders of Omelas got the mad idea to allow a subset of citizens to own multiple dwellings and rent them out in exchange for profit. The city still hadn’t recovered from that.

Hendrick climbed into his sleeping hammock. Tomorrow, he would pack for a trip to the outskirts—to visit the vineyards, he would say. But in truth, he would watch for the passage of hawks, and listen for signs of decay from the core. And when he was certain his plan had borne fruit, he would walk away from Omelas and climb back to his beloved Adañacal.