Picture Day (William’s class; taught this week by Madeline and Liam) By Peri Gordon, 11

“I don’t think you understand,” sighed the principal. “If a child misses Picture Day, there will be no makeup date. And Picture Day is not optional.” The principal shook his head at the parent’s ignorance, although he knew that there was no way that she could be better informed. He himself did not know exactly why Picture Day was so essential, but he knew that it must happen every year and could only happen on one day of the year. The mother protested. “If I drive Robbie to Picture Day, then neither of us will be home to take care of his little sister, and the daycare is not open on Picture Day, as you know.” “That’s alright, the little girl can come along, too,” the principal said. “The younger a child gets their first picture taken, the better.” His own words intrigued and somewhat confused him, but that was alright; he was not in the government, so he had no right to know why these things were, just to know these things. The principal could tell that the little girl, lingering behind her mother’s back with the slightly older boy, was not yet in school. But her picture would be taken nevertheless.

***

On Picture Day, the brother and sister, Robbie and Sophie, after some protest, put on their finest clothing for their pictures and headed off to the Picture Dome, a black building with a curved roof that let in no sunlight, which would interfere with the process. Instead, the cool building was awash with electric light. Sophie, new to Picture Day, bit her fingernails, ruining the fancy, polished look they had been forced to take on for this day. The girl declared, “I’m nervous.” Her mother scolded her, pulling Sophie’s nails out of her mouth and hissing, “There is no time for nervousness.” But the woman herself was wondering why Sophie’s picture should be taken already. Not many people knew the answer to the woman’s question. But the president, huddled in the corner with his fellow government members, knew everything. He watched as a fellow leader of his, slightly less important but still in the know, used the machine everyone thought was a camera to scan each child’s mind. Of course, it served as a camera, too, so that people would see the pictures and suspect nothing. But the school’s yearbook was a frivolous thing, a distraction. The president himself had not invented mind scanning, but he had figured out why and how it must be used. Each child’s intellectual ability affected how they must be taught to interact with others and how others must be taught to interact with them. It was all carefully planned by top scientists and politicians, so that no one would know of the well-off government members’ secret. As long as the citizens were not in charge, the president would feel pleasure. As long as the people did not control a thing, the government would control everything. And when, in a few weeks, they performed the experiment the government had planned for centuries—the one involving cloning and killing off the original, cloning the clone and killing off the original, so that scientists could make huge advancements—no one would even be aware until it happened.

It was all for the best.