The Future Is in the Past
by K. Ralph Bray
part 1
Six months before my first killing, The Committee of Adjustment assigned me to a new project named Consumption of Meat. Pork and beef were my priorities, although transgressions against fowl and fish were considered. “The chicken and turkey eaters we’ll call the ‘cluckers’,” my supervisor joked, “and the red meat eaters will henceforth be known as ‘Sweeney Todds’.”
I registered my protest. I knew nothing about carnivorous habits — I’d been a vegetarian since I was ten, and my work on Abusive Parenting Practices had yielded impressive results. A dozen prominent citizens, including four politicians, a writer, and a pop musician, had already been Remediated. Every one of them had embraced the common practice in the ’60s and ’70s of parents punishing their children by hitting them, even for minor transgressions. Their kids had received bare-bottomed smacks and bruises, both physical and emotional.
“I just finished with a mom whose child had rushed off on their brand new bike to visit a friend so he could watch the first Moon landing. The kid’s bike chain came off, his brake failed, and he smashed the bike into a tree and ripped his jeans. As soon as he got back from seeing Neil Armstrong, she smacked him around the house for ruining the bike and pants.”
“Brutal behaviour,” my supervisor confirmed. “Was she fully Redacted? Is she famous or rich?”
“Well-known writer. We removed every book she published from every public library in the country, and we just finished updating her Wiki entry. No one will ever know she won a prize or a fellowship.”
“Well done.”
I’d worked for the Committee since graduating from university with a degree in Restorative Justice Studies and started as a summer intern before landing a coveted full-time position in Adjudication and Adjustment. Initially. I was assigned to Data Collection and Interpretation, a desultory task since Absolute Integrity (A.I.) did most of my work, spitting out results with a speed and confidence that I couldn’t match.
I would read A.I.’s conclusions and make recommendations, deciding which of the three Rs — Reconciliation, Remediation, or Retribution — was an appropriate response to the noted transgression. It didn’t matter if the transgressor committed their sin in the distant past or in a different social milieu; they had to be judged by the current habits of humanity, habits that had evolved into a higher plane of understanding and empathy.
My professors had discussed Stalinism, the Cultural Revolution, Vietnam and Watergate, Columbus, Trump’s third term as President, and the collapse of Israel, the usual litany of candidates for historical revision, and the professors emphasized that historical negation, the purposeful elimination of the past to suit the aims of government or business or wealthy families, was not our goal. Gathering new information about a historical event, reinterpreting it with a modern view, this was within the wheelhouse of applied history, the kind of work I did. My work was important because I rebalanced the power between the oppressed and the oppressor.
“We also want you to work on the Elitism file. It’s a brand-new project, and we think someone with your background and outlook is perfect for the task.”
True, I did attend Harvard under the open enrolment window — in my defence, I should point out that I had a near-perfect GPA in high school — and in my freshman year I camped on the lawn of that hallowed institution to protest the abuse of imported sex dolls, but I thought the Committee could do better by employing the great-grandson of Charles Murray — the guy who wrote that book about IQ and race — who was doing his best to swing off the family tree. He’d even written an article about why those with high-IQs should pay higher taxes to fund a reconciliation payment to “normalized people.”
“The Meat file is pretty demanding,” I said. “What about the Murray kid? He’s motivated.”
“Too radical for us. We need finesse on this one.”
Last year, the Committee posted their upcoming campaigns on the staff portal and we pinned our name to any three we wanted to pursue, and A.I. selected candidates. I’d chosen Smoking, Pornography and Parental Abuse. A.I. recommended me for the latter, probably because my mom and dad were in prison for fraud and murder.
“What does A.I. say about me?”
“That you’re uncomplicated and essentially the midpoint of any distribution we can create for human attributes.”
“Sounds like me,” I said. “Exactly what my girlfriend might say.”
“Excellent. Elitism it is then.”
“And Meat,” my supervisor added. “Your parents were butchers, so that pedigree gives authenticity to your work.”
* * *
“You definitely aren’t a gold-medalist in bed,” my girlfriend said when I told her about the Committee’s decision. “And your fashion sense is pretty basic. If they resurrect the Soviet Union circa 1955, you’ll fit right in. I think they made a good choice.”
I was looking forward to my new duties. The Committee had run brain scans on all candidates, and mine showed heightened neural activation in my brain’s reward centre, anticipatory pleasure from the chance to punish people for violating social norms. I was enthusiastic about “altruistic punishment.”
“I’m average by intent, not design,” I said.
She is fifteen years older than I and remembers exclusive health clubs, five-star hotels and Michelin restaurants, gated communities, regressive taxes, unintelligible novels awarded literary prizes, and prestige TV with small audiences and rave reviews from obscure critics.
“I’m also prosecuting the Meat file,” I said. “Some of those people are pretty scary. They ate double cheeseburgers, bloody steaks, bacon, which, by the way, they put in salads. All of it flesh stripped from sentient animals.”
“Why did they add bacon to their salads?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to humiliate vegetarians?”
“The Thals are doing it,” she said. “Ripping bone and gristle.”
“So I hear,” I said.
I imagined naked Thals gathered around a fire, hefting chunks of meat into their hands and mouths, slathering their lips with slippery fat, separating tendons from bone, peeling fascia from pork ribs.
“What about them?” she asked. “Are they exempt from the Meat and Elitism campaigns?”
“Not completely. They are allowed to be carnivores if they process the meat themselves. And wrestling, the shot-put, and the hammer throw are designated Thal-only sports so they can hold competitions and award medals. But no martial arts.”
“Really? Why?”
I remembered learning in one of my courses about the Soviets’ banning its citizens from learning karate. “First you take away the guns, then you take away the body. Can’t have anyone using the body as a weapon against the state,” I explained to her.
She punched my chest hard enough to bend me backwards.
“Five percent is the threshold, right? That seems low.” She wrapped her arms around me and kissed my forehead. “You’re all Sapien,” she said.
“Yep, but I’ve heard of a few outliers, near ten,” I said. “You can see it in them. Wide nostrils, fender foreheads, puffed chests.”
“Red hair, too,” she added. She shuffled my hair with her right hand, a loving gesture.
“I still think the DNA is wrong,” she said. “I heard that the lab is under quarantine, and the Thals are demanding the government turn over the data and records.”
A year ago, a group of Sapiens had organized to legitimize the Thals’ claims. They had DNA that was more than five percent Neanderthal, and they argued that this was high enough to claim status as “separate and unique,” and that they had been oppressed by Sapiens, that their lineage and culture and land was stolen.
The Thals quickly coalesced into a political and social group who threatened violence if their demands were not met. And their numbers had been rapidly increasing as more Sapiens presented their DNA test results and jumped across the divide into Thal society.
“The Thals want to run the lab, own it,” I said. “It’s happening everywhere. Absolute Integrity suggests that the least divisive and corrosive solution is to embrace them, give Thals exemptions to select campaigns, and maybe isolate them in two or three places in the country.”
“As long as it’s not Florida or California,” my girlfriend said. “I’d hate to see those bodies in bathing suits.”
“They aren’t any worse to look at than old people,” I said.
“Old Sapiens, sure. That’s our fate. But the Thals go from awkward to awful as they age. No thanks.”
I fantasized about Thal women. One of my colleagues had the DNA test done and she’d surpassed the five percent threshold for Thal status. She had Red Rose tea-coloured hair falling straight to her collar bone, high cheekbones and thick lips, deep-set eyes framed by caterpillar eyebrows, a forehead framed into a half-moon by her hair, and an aquiline nose. I imagined sleeping with her, recreating the first contact between Neanderthals and Sapiens 100,000 years ago.
* * *
I worked on Elitism for two days each week and Meat for the remaining three days. The Elitism file was easy, because so many people left clear evidence that they had supported meritocracy and hierarchy.
They’d left social media posts favouring SAT’s and grade cut-offs for law or medical school. Some of them had bought rare first-edition books that they locked into glass cases in homes large enough to shelter everyone who spent a night in the Good Shepherd. Their files contained photographs of their Jaguars and Lincoln Navigators and purple Cybertrucks. This was cross-referenced to my colleague who was working on the Climate Change Deniers/Offenders file.
We had photos of closets filled with designer clothes and shoes, hardcopies of balance statements from now-incarcerated investment advisors, receipts for trips to exclusive far-flung boutique hotels that stood on stilts over water, or stilts perched on a cliff — also cross-referenced with Climate — and portraits of children dressed in private-school uniforms. I had evidence of their memberships in private clubs and private health-care facilities.
Too easy. Almost every one of them I recommended for Remediation, a five-month cleansing and calibration which, by the end, they’d understand equity and equality and atone for their privileged past.
“Is this a yacht?” I asked one of my clients, pointing to a photo of his relinquished boat. “I don’t see these often.”
“Yes. Fifty feet. Slept twelve.”
“Twelve high-worth-and-educated Masters of the Universe, I bet.”
“Two of them are Thals now,” he said. “I should become one, too. Avoid this nonsense.”
“You’d need a strong DNA result to overcome any skepticism,” I said.
The client swept pieces of white lint off his lapels and placed one black dress shoe onto the other. “Do you read?” he asked. “I mean, anything other than policy manuals or whatever is in the files about us?”
“I don’t read to make myself sound better or smarter,” I said. He might be laying a trap.
He flicked a piece of the lint onto my desk:
“The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.”
“Yeah, I read that at Harvard,” I said. “Whitman, right?”
“Very good,” he said. “You’re different.” The interview had flipped, and I needed to assert myself.
“Unless you have a DNA report to support a claim,” I said, “I’m afraid my next problem is unavoidable.” I gave him time to uncross his legs and move forward on his chair towards my desk.
“You were a meat-eater,” I claimed. “And, worse, you used your money to have a butcher render an entire side of beef for you.”
I asked him how he cooked the meat, how it smelled on the barbecue, and if he gnawed on the bone like a dog would. No one had dogs anymore, but I’d watched videos.
“It tastes like an orgasm feels,” he said. “Even if you have a partner, you’d prefer the thrill of a T-bone to passionate sex.”
I recommended Reconciliation for him. He’d have to write a letter admitting his past injuries to animals and to the lowest decile of the income distribution, and donate two weeks of his time to a local legume farm.
“Good luck with the DNA test, if you do it,” I said.
“Depends on which result I’m hoping for, I guess,” he answered. “Looking for the better side of the coin, for sure.”
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by K. Ralph Bray
