A White and Black World

It was 3013. Everyone was smart and looked the same. Thanks to the U.S. Public Intelligence Integrity Council, it was against the law for people to have an IQ below 140. Only one educational institution remained: The Omniversity of America. The Omniversity was a public institution in the sense that the entire public attended; it was private in the sense that the government taxed all students and alumni heavily to pay for all tuition and maintenance costs of the institution. Nevertheless, learning – whether one wanted it or not – took place.

Binter Feron, dressed in an all white jumpsuit, approached his nearby Ominversity geodesic dome. It had many triangular windows. Depending on the position of the sun and the angle at which one looked at the dome, it looked either remarkably white or ominously black.

Binter entered and approached a white, ovoid, natural intelligence pod in the center. It was pulsating white on and off. As Binter walked towards the pod, its door quietly slid up. A gaunt, young man in a white jumpsuit, remarkably similar to him in height, complexion, and body shape, carefully ducked his head as he exited the pod. It was his best friend and dear podmate, Cazorp Enitex.

"How are you, Binter?" Cazorp asked concerned.

Binter looked down for a moment, like a child telling a white lie. "Fine, Cazorp. And yourself?"

"Everything seems fine," Cazorp said with a sigh at the end. "I heard there are unannounced, random screenings today," he paused, looked back at the glowing pod, then back at Binter, “but I wasn’t tested. Good luck, I’m sure things will be okay.”

Binter gave Cazorp half a smile and walked towards the entrance of the pod. The pores in his forehead opened up and small beads of sweat perspired and began to trickle down the side of his face. In the middle was a minimalist, white leather Barcalounger. On the right side of the chair was small, shiny, surgical tray. The pod continued pulsating white.

³³³

All Binter wanted to do was learn naturally. Why must the government get in the way of that? He proceeded into the glowing pod. He sat down tensely. The door behind him had already shut.

"Hello, Binter Feron 1A," the smooth, female voice began. "Has your mental state seemed optimal, recently?"

Binter’s head nodded, as if the voice was sentient and could see him. His voice fluttered with anxiety, "I… believe so, yes… quite optimal."

"Good. Today, there will be a screening to affirm your Alpha GPC, Huperzine A, Vinpocetine, Phosphatidylserine, Bacopa, L-Tyrosine, L-Theanine, and Vitamin B-6 are at the legal levels," said the robotic female voice perfectly arrhythmic. "As well, there will be an IQ test following your lesson on nuclear physics. Proceed?”

Binter thought it silly that the pod asked him to proceed, as if he had another option. "Proceed," Binter said after a long, heart-pounding pause. A white, hydrocarbon-framed monitor came up from the floor, with a live graph of his blood pressure, heart rate. There was also a line for each blood medication level: they read "testing."

His heart rate was a sky-high 142 – a shame it wasn’t his IQ. A robotic arm holding a hypodermic needle came out from behind the left side of the Barcalounger. Binter closed his eyes and breathed heavily, coming to terms with his inevitable fate.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash with dust, and falling pieces of the glowing, white hydrocarbon fiber. Cazorp jumped down into the pod, quickly pressed some buttons on the monitor, turning off the pod’s robotic arm off.

"What in the name of all black holes are you doing?" Binter said sitting in his Barcalounger in shock.

"Saving you from being caught a normalhead," Cazorp said out of breath.

An alarm started going off, making the pod pulsate red.

³³³

A “normalhead” was a person whose IQ was below 140. Anyone caught a normalhead was given a swift execution or life sentence in prison, whichever the government thought more fitting. Binter was not a genius, so by law he had to take medication just like everyone else. He felt life was much too drab though if there was no challenge to learning, so he chose the risky life of a normalhead. He cleverly had many vials of “legal” blood refrigerated at home for screenings. Tragically, since the screening was unannounced, he left his vials at home. Such is the risky life of a normalhead.

“We’re going to get caught, you know!” Binter shouted angrily, “Everything is recorded! We’re both going to be arrested or killed!” His own words turned him into a state of panic. “We have less than three minutes before security will be here,” he said with a lump in his throat.
            “Plenty of time for you to take this,” Cazorp flashed Binter a medication container in his jumpsuit’s right pocket.

“How did you know that I was being screened?”

“I listened behind the pod door,” Cazorp explained, "and I brought enough for myself just in case."
            Just then, Binter got an idea only his normal epistemic state of affairs could have allowed him to think of. He put out his hand and Cazorp handed him the pill bottle. Binter opened it and poured out all the pills on the surgical tray. He picked out the GPC pill and made a line with its powdery white inside. He removed an alcohol pad on the surgical tray from its paper wrapper, rolled it, put it up to his right nostril and quickly snorted the line. Cazorp looked in amazement and guffawed as Binter finished without so much as a slight cough. Binter sat up in the Barcalounger as if he was a newborn Frankenstein and began using the heart-rate monitor as a computer terminal. He pressed buttons and swiped boxes left and right on the monitor like a mad scientist.

“We should be escaping, Binter! We don’t have time!”

“That’s precisely the plan, my dear friend,” Binter responded calmly, still at work.

The dome and pod stopped pulsating red and switched to white again. Binter continued swiping and poking the screen as fast as his skinny white fingers could go.
            “There, that should do it.” Binter poked the screen one last time, as if it were an archaic enter key on a mechanical keyboard from last millenium. “Crisis averted.”

“Security mainframe disabled. Security database reformatted,” the pod’s female voice said soothingly.

“Okay, genius! Now can we get out of here?” Cazorp asked panicked.
“Yes, let’s go now – quickly.”
“I’ll boost you up through the hole in the roof –”

“IQ violator detected. Execution commencing,” the female voice chimed in once more.

Cazorp stood silent in front of Binter, looking sorrowfully into his eyes. “Farewell, Binter, my dear –” A look of agony spread across his face. A white, odorless gas quickly dispersed from the pod as quickly as it had filled it. He collapsed into Binter’s arms quietly.

It took a moment for Binter to realize what had just happened. He gently laid Cazorp down in the white Barcalounger as tears filled his eyes. Cazorp laid in the Barcalounger lifeless. The heart rate on the monitor showed a flat line.

“Sleep well, my dear normalhead companion.”

The white pulse of the pod filled Cazorp’s empty, black pupils – it turned on, then off, then on again.