Police officer 175 from Delta Division picked up his handgun, rolled it over in his black gloved hands and then, with routine expertise, flicked out the ammunition cartridge and placed it slowly on the metallic table by the side of his bunk.

He then put the gun back down again, like he had so many times before that evening, and pulled his black combat-trousered legs up onto the bed, so that he could rest his helmeted head upon his knees.

He glanced through his visor at the weapon.

“No,” he told himself. “Not yet.”

His black leathered gloves fumbled at the latch underneath his neck and, with a struggling tug, he pulled the helmet from his head and placed it next to the gun. The tearstained eye piece stared back at him, empty, ominous.

It knew.

Just like his black pistol. And just like the black leather boots that he had begun to pull off from his legs knew. He had worn them for so long they now felt like an unavoidable part of him – his very existence was his uniform.

He didn’t exist without it and he knew it. And resented it.

And, for the first time in his life, he wanted rid of them.

He whipped the gloves off, scattering them across the room, and then, undoing his gunbelt, he quickly relieved himself of his trousers and shirt. He threw them over the helmet, to hide its scrutinising glare, and felt better. He no longer felt he was being observed.

Fully naked, he picked up the gun and reloaded, the oddness of holding it next to skin hitting him instantly – a momentary pang of alarm and uncertainty flickering across his mind and urging him to redress.

‘The gloves, I need my gloves,’ he panicked and was about to retrieve them from the metal floor when he remembered.

He was no longer PO175 from Delta Division.

He unloaded the gun and put it back on the table, nervously passing the cartridge backwards and forwards between his fingers.

“Your manchild has been selected by The State,” he told the woman through the electronic voicebox in his helmet, officers never being allowed to project their natural voices for reasons of security.

“Where is it? Where is child 3?”

Three of them had entered through the front entrance, a hole in a brick wall caused by some ancient explosion, a few planks of wood strewn haphazardly across for a door. Such were the living conditions in the slums of Delta Division, where the “parasites of humanity” (The Book, page 306, paragraph 2, line 7) bred, with the sole purpose of insurrection.

“It is time for its re-education.”

The woman, dressed in rags and covered in filth and dust, had remained mute, blood trickling down her chin from the bit cut on her lip, staring at the three black, emotionless statues towering before her like armed sentinels.

PO175 had scanned the immediate vicinity – a sink, disconnected from the wall, propped up by a rubble of bricks to the left, a few ripped and badly worn chairs in the centre, the aged woman crouching nervously, bent double, near a curtained partition. 

All four knew.

“Move away from the curtain,” his robotic voice barked, slowly advancing towards her, his arm extended and his weapon aimed at her head.

“You are expendable. You know that. If you do not cooperate, your procreation duties will be terminated.”

The gun barrel rested between her eyes.

“Step aside… NOW.”

The cry of a baby started up from behind the barrier and the woman snapped.

“No, please, don’t, please,” she sobbed, helplessly pawing at PO175’s sleeve as the other two officers ripped back the curtain and lifted the infant from its basic cot of bricks and cloth. PO92 picked it up and placed it inside the metal carrier-case attached to his gunbelt.

“Accomplished” he communicated, PO63 backing slowly towards the ‘door’, his gun aimed at the mother’s head.

“No, please, not, anything but him, not him,” she screamed. Now she was hysterical, down on her knees, choking on her tears and clinging to PO175’s leather clad boot.

“Please. He’s my third. You’ve taken them all.”

PO175 yanked his leg from her grip and kicked her forcibly in the face, sending her crashing through the partition.

“Another procreation partner will be supplied shortly,” he said, turning to tramp across the ‘living room’ towards his departing colleagues. “You must be strong. For your own sake. Everything will be alright. The State provides for those who are strong.”

He put the cartridge down and ran his fingers across his shaven head, one solitary tear trickling down his cheek onto the bed.

“Everything will be alright,” he said dispassionately and smiled.

Once back in The Collector, the child locked in storage, he had written his report: ‘Woman No. 1,973: Clinger. Emotionally inadequate. No further benefit to The State. Termination desirable”, and thought no more about it.

Because that was his job.

Not to think.

“The Minority are dangerous to the wellbeing of The Majority: riot fodder, uncontrollable, dangerous riot fodder. To eliminate insubordination among The Minority towards The Majority it has hereby been decreed thus, by The State, that all manchilds of the aforesaid class are to be retrieved immediately upon creation to be re-educated in the ways of The State, its laws, its customs, its standards, its morals and to be thus trained to protect it against its own kind. All female species of the aforesaid class to be charged with supplying The State with future protectors. Adult males of the aforesaid class to be terminated immediately. Both expendable. The Minority is to be permitted to exist for one reason and one reason alone – for the benefit of The Majority. They have no other purpose for existence.” (The Book, page 1, paragraph 1, lines 1-11).

That was The Law.

It was the task of the Divisional Police to ensure this was upheld.

Peacefully.

But PO175 was no longer at peace.

He had been troubled, for the first time in his life, by thoughts, alien ideas that had begun to diffuse themselves into his consciousness.

He blamed the ambush. He had never been the same since.

“Your manchild has been selected by The State,” the routine procedure began. “Give me the manchild.”

“Fuck you,” came the snarling voice. “You ain’t fuckin’ taking this one.”

“You are expendable,” PO175 had started to say, “if you do not co-operate – ”, but he had not had chance to finish before PO63 had opened fire at something jumping from the rafters above them.

The form of a woman, gripping an unidentifiable object in her right hand, fell on him, the serrated edge of the now clear knife severing into his throat.

Before PO92 had chance to aim his weapon, he was suddenly grabbed by a swarm of bodiless arms and dragged, screaming, out of the room.

PO175 slowly lifted his gun to number 971’s head.

“Give it to me. Or I will terminate you personally.”

The fated woman lifted her face from the child swaddled in her arms and smiled.

“Like I said…fuck you.”

After the shot, PO175 had picked the blood splattered child from its dead mother’s arms and carried it outside, shooting PO63 several times in the back of the head to make sure.

PO92 was nowhere to be seen, but a small group of women huddled together in the doorway of one of the long-ago demolished houses spied him with hostility. He ignored them, and tramped towards The Collector.

“Bastard,” one of them cried from behind. “You ain’t human. You can’t be.”

He placed the child in the vehicle’s storage compartment, locked the doors, and slowly walked around to the driver’s side.

“You deaf or something? You’re not following orders. There is no re-education you fucking murderer. It’s fucking brainwashing,” and a large stone clipped his helmet, denting it. 

PO175 swung round, aimed, and shot one of the women between the eyes, her head exploding over her colleagues.

“You are all expendable.” His electronic voice cut the air like steel knives.

“Unless you all wish to be terminated, leave the area immediately and return to State duties.”

There was a deathly silence as he entered the van, the pairs of eyes watching, judging him as he drove out of the area.

For the first time in his life, on that lonely drive back to Divisional Headquarters, he no longer felt like an officer.

A strange image of a woman, a woman he had only ever seen in dreams, passed before his eyes, her arms outstretched, her eyes tearful, her face bloody, her voice pleading…

“My son…”

He picked up the gun for the last time and reloaded it, no longer as an officer of The State, but as a member of a race long since extinct.

It was as a human being that he put the gun to his temple and blew his brains across the wall.

THE END

David Maguire is a UK-based writer, script editor, film programmer, and author of the Columbia University Press book on the 1978 film I Spit On Your Grave.