The GOD Box by Melissa Horan

normal was the closeness of the houses. Approximately ten feet lay between them each. What was absurd was that they all looked unfinished. Some of the distances were larger between the houses, not for spacing reasons, but because the plots were defined, the foundations laid, and clearly the houses were supposed to reach to the end of the plot, but they didn’t. Open foundations filled the space or unfinished walls showing corners of a room that might someday be. At least one room of every house was finished, some had two or three.
    Knowing already that they were going to restart the society - w hich was never planned for, but prepared for, Gabe made what seemed like the only decision. Before that, though, and what made his anticipation about the gate cease was the strange entanglement of strings going to and from the houses – not touching each other and at varying heights and lengths, one look at it gave the appearance of a giant human-eating spider’s web. He asked what they were to the man he was walking next to – a phone system of weakly made aluminum “cans”.
    Gabe took the risk of sneaking out the first night to look around and take mental notes.
    They were trying to imitate everything they knew before – this is why he disappeared that evening, out of curiosity to see what else they tried. Never before in his life had he felt such imminent doom as he remembered that day. A doom at his and Jonathan’s hands, thinking literally – but a necessary one – a duty to save posterity from this idiocy. Not even doom during the war felt the same as this felt. This was supposed to be the hope.
    They considered it obvious that people would do what was necessary for survival, and even when they discovered the uselessness of their twenty second century habits, surely they would have been submissive to the circumstance, to nature. Now he saw, clearly not – this inspired his lack of faith each of the succeeding times they were cloned.
    …
    Memories like these were deplorable things to have – horrifyingly obtrusive to all the hope that his research wasn’t in vain.
    Gabe looked at the faces around him now. Their gaze and countenance were mostly untarnished and non-repulsed by the world. Lifted and enlightened comparatively with their predecessors, but they were still not free. Throughout his lifetime Gabe studied the bondage of cultures and individuals. It was like he could now see it; feel it in each of them. Why were they not free?
    It was every effort to be thorough and unbiased to teach the people they were leaving behind what they would need to know – they did enough background check s for sanity and stability. Test after test could not erase habits, addictions, and desires. Even though they could test for it; it would have been useless to hold out for a person who had not given in to getting everything with immediacy; who had some miraculous way avoided unhealthy physical, emotional and mental addiction. It just wasn’t possible…
    The memories still seeped through…
    …
    When Jonathan popped his medication that first time of cloning, Gabe knew he was anxious – when he took a second, Gabe knew very well how his compulsion was rendering him incapable of dealing with all of this. Gabe wouldn’t claim that it made him nervous to watch Jonathan slip downward. More so, it was a verification of their expected mental dissolution. The ultimate loss of self.
    His anxiety felt like a balloon on a vacuum. Before long he would be helplessly sucked into the system. Memories became choppy, dark, and stoic. Fire lit streets. Thick fog. A prostitution house… or five... Rows and rows of cotton plants in the back ground where many people had been at work earlier that day. A large wooden cage filled with hundreds of chickens. People attending to their social life walked about him.
    A girl was holding her stomach and looked wary. She gave a polite nod and wave to a friend, who took a second glance, waved with a smile,