“Open your mouth, please.”
The nurse’s gloved hand held Muthomi by the jaw, turned his head this way and that, shining a light inside his mouth.
“Please follow my finger with your eyes, don’t turn your head.”
Muthomi knew the drill. He had undergone the mandatory fitness check when he had wanted to join the Kirimara Defence Force, its barracks based in Ndoro Town.It would have been as good a trade as any other, but he had been deemed too short for service. At least this time, a gentle nurse did the check-up, and he was grateful for the privacy and the friendly face. She moved swiftly, checking his blood pressure, weight, height, temperature, typing the numbers into the student medical database on her Silvertouch tablet, explaining every action to Muthomi as she worked.
“Thank you, that’s all,” said the nurse, leading him out of the consultation room. “You’re in good shape Joseph, but in case of anything, find your way back to me, alright?”
“Yes, Madam.”
“Please, call me Helen.”
Helen was in her early thirties, a slight woman with wide set eyes and an open smile, who flowed easily from English to Native. She could put anyone at ease in seconds.
“Don’t get friendly with them,” warned Mr. Omondi, as he sat next to the three other boys, fuming. He had to wait out the obligatory medical check-up process for all four boys. Helen was sure that it was not his job description to attend to the villagers, but someone had to do it. She felt sorry for the man.
“Patience is a virtue,” she said. “I believe we’re done.”
Helen watched the boys trail behind Mr. Omondi, out of the white light of the waiting room into the lamps of the campus walkways.
“Sheep to the slaughter,” said Helen. Her hands shook as she shut the door. She kept her back to the reception desk—there was a wide-angle surveillance camera hidden in the ceiling overhead. She had discovered it when she first reported to her job at Clarence University four years ago. There were cameras everywhere across the campus, she had learned, except for two places: the student and staff washrooms, and the medical consultation room, which quickly became her sanctuary.
Helen was a natural caregiver and loved her nursing profession, but nothing could have prepared her for Clarence University.
She had been ready for a change, having completed her residency at the Four Peaks General Hospital in the Capital. It was understaffed, undersupplied and overstretched well past its capacity for years. Any medical trainees that survived the nightmare of FP General had more than enough mettle to work in the frontlines of war. Clarence University had seemed a godsend.
But it had turned out to be a perpetual barrage of overdosed addicts, anorexics, manic depressives, self-harmers, alcoholics, near-suicides, unwanted pregnancies, rampant venereal complications, violent assaults, rape victims… It was amazing that any learning took place at the campus. Many were repeat cases, no matter how many prescriptions she wrote, how many mental health professionals she recommended, how many secret abortions she organised, or how many times she sent them off to Crescent Referral in an ambulance to fight for their lives. More than once, they had begged her to let them die.
It simply did not add up. Helen learned that a great many of her patients came from some of the wealthiest, most influential families in the Capital, possibly in all of Kirimara. They had everything: money, power, secure futures, all the comforts of life at their beck and call. Why were they so eager to give all that up for their next fix that would probably kill them? Why would they give her bribes worth triple her salary just to get them a painkiller prescription?
Why was the Clarence University student body so sick?
Such depravity must have a source. All of her patients’ problems seemed avoidable: she knew from experience that many times, a change of perspective was an effective cure-all, and the Creator knew that she herself could use it, too. All her requests to Management for assistance had received no response, and after several months of asking, she was convinced that there would be no Management intervention. So, Helen began digging.
Information was hard to come by. CU Public Relations was watertight, nothing but positivity radiated from the press about the institution. There was no crack in the fortress, and this fuelled her doubts.
Then one night, a year later, Helen had still gone nowhere in her search when received an encrypted message on her Silvertouch.
We have the Answers you Seek.
Helen reported to work the next day with a new pair of eyes.
The fight had been long. It had begun long before and would continue long after she was gone. Still, the Union needed every truth-seeker, every soldier. She was close to the heart of the system, said the Leader. Her medical skills made her invaluable. It would take immense strength to work under the enemy’s nose and maintain her dignity.
Helen devoted her nights to studying the Manifesto, learning about the System. She finally understood, even though it broke her heart, the pain that her patients dealt with every day. No amount of power or money or influence could heal the unwanted children of the middle-class, born to feed the System, stripped of will and choice.
The villagers, however, were her undoing.
They were the sons and daughters of hardworking, innocent folk, just as she was. Helen was from Kanyiri Village, which was just at the outskirts of the Capital. She had been lucky: her parents had scraped up every coin to send her to a small vocational nursing school, and her posting to Four Peaks had thrown her into the heart of the city. Had she been born farther down the plains…
Helen’s only relief was that fewer villagers were discovered with every recruitment drive—only four this time; there were eight in the last intake—but they were still too many, and she mourned the loss of each one. She had never witnessed or even heard of a single scholarship recipient making it to graduation. How could they? From their first day at CU, the drastic change overwhelmed the villagers, and in no time, they were bullied into narcotics and promiscuity and depression and the Creator-knew-what-else. Or, they would altogether disappear from the campus, never to be heard from again. Obviously, CU Public Relations would never follow up or even mention this. As far as they were concerned, the villagers had gone on to “do great things in their newfound careers”.
Some days would be too much for Helen. She was the first to meet the new recruits, and all their faces haunted her. Insomnia plagued her for months after the reporting day of every academic year. On such days, she would rather have the entire arrogant, spoiled, ungrateful student body die of the plague than lose any more innocents. The burning words of the Manifesto, the Union’s creed of secrecy, the endless addicts that swept in and out of consultation at all hours of the day and night of every semester…
The Leader had told her, and all his followers, that soon, it would all end, and the Union would be victorious, that the ultimate weapon against the System would soon be among them, and they would know him by his name.
She climbed onto the examination table of her sanctuary and wept.
Maybe she was insane to believe in such words, mere words. Yes, it was obvious that something horribly wrong was going on at the campus, and yes, the people of Kirimara had lost all faith in the Authorities, but then, what country didn’t complain about its regime? Why should she believe in a mutinous book and an anonymous Leader, who only passed on cryptic messages to his unwitting fanatics through the dark web? Did she so badly need validation to resort to this?
…they would know him by his name…
Helen sat up. Impossible, she thought.
She swung off the examination table and scrambled for her Silvertouch on the consultation desk.
Helen choked.
There it was, that name. It had niggled at the back of her mind throughout the assessment session, but she brushed it off as coincidence. Still… Joseph Muthomi Njema…
The boy was unremarkable, no physical markers, no noticeable spark of intelligence, no… tells. But he carried the name. It must mean something.
Helen pulled up her encrypted messenger and typed cautiously.
What is his name?
The Leader must know. He had been her strength when her faith in the Union failed, and it failed more often than she would admit.
The answer came. Helen screamed into her palm.
There was, finally, a Njema at the heart of the war, at Clarence University, and she had been the first of the Union to lay eyes and hands upon him. Helen was ashamed of her doubt: the Leader had been right all along.
Helen glanced at the clock on the wall: 21:19. She keyed in an elaborate code on her device, an impressive feat given her trembling fingers, and signed into the Union portal.
Well over a thousand members were live, online, thousands more yet to sign in to their daily web meeting, and there was still over an hour to go. But Helen could not wait. She began a new forum chat, with a title that she never thought she would ever write.
Our war is finally over.
Responses pinged almost immediately. Helen laughed through her tears.
Patience really was a virtue.
***
Mr. Omondi had been very glad to hand the boys over to the Matron, from the way he bolted from the dormitory.
The Matron was a large, middle-aged, dark woman with a harassed face and matching voice; accompanying her were two sinewy workmen who carried rolled-up mattresses, sheets and towels, and an assortment of buckets and basins and toiletries, all CU branded. The Matron herself carried a large cardboard box, but it did not stop her from prodding and barking at the troupe.
The dormitory was a long hall, partitioned into cubicles on either side of the aisle and furnished with narrow metal bunk beds and small wooden lockers. The cubicles were allocated by rank: the newest students slept all the way at the back, near the bathrooms, while the seniors occupied the cubicles nearest to the front door.
Muthomi counted thirty-two beds as he and his mates made their way towards the end of the hall. Some...