Illusion of Choice
The screen flickered between the two choices, stuttering like it couldn’t decide which was worse. The images blinked in and out, an ugly pulse of light that made my eyes ache. Behind me, the murmurs thickened into a low tide of impatience, pressing against my back.
Neither.
I wanted neither.
The ballot was cold in my hands as I lifted it from the steel table. The scanner’s red light blinked steadily, patiently, eternally. I managed to walk away a few steps before a voice from the line barked at me.
“Hey! The screen’s still stuck on your serial. You’ve got to make a choice.”
“I don’t want either!” My voice cracked sharper than I meant it to. “There are more than just those two.” The line hushed, then shuffled, pulling away from me as if my defiance were contagious.
That was when the wards came. Four of them, hooded, their porcelain masks gleaming beneath the lights. Each mask was a face, and yet not a face at all—blank porcelain, hollow of anything human. They encircled me until whichever way I turned, I met only that emptiness, a void that stared back without blinking.
“You must return and select,” said one, voice without accent, without soul.
“Can’t you bypass me?” I asked, feigning calm, though the heat under my skin betrayed me.
“That is not possible. You must select.”
They seized me. Their hands were clamps of bone and iron, dragging me back to the scanner. The ballot was thrust beneath the red light again. The screen blinked the same two choices—slower now, like it relished my hesitation.
The wards shoved me forward.
“Make a choice,” they commanded, their voices braided into one.
The line behind me groaned. The air thickened with their resentment.
“Please choose one,” the machine urged, in a voice too soft to belong to anything human.
“I choose not to choose.” My lips curled into a smile that I wanted to believe was clever.
“That is not one of the options.” Wards and machines spoke together, their tones seamless and inhuman.
“Then let someone else decide,” I said. A plea disguised as defiance.
A pause. Silence so deep it rang in my ears.
A man behind me surged forward, anger driving him like hunger. “Then I’ll do it for you.” His hand reached for the screen.
The crack of the baton split the air. His scream followed, jagged and raw. He fell, clutching his arm, spasms wracking his body.
“You do not have the clearance to make a choice for another,” the Ward intoned.
He staggered back into line, eyes burning holes through me as though I had struck him down myself.
The nearest ward leaned close. Its porcelain face darkened, white drowning to shadow, blot by blot.
I turned to the waiting line, voices hushed, eyes averted.
“What is the point of this?” My voice cut through the silence, but no one answered. They stared at the floor, at their shoes, anywhere but at me.
The wards’ masks were all black now. All of them.
I was out of time.
“What is the point?” I whispered, though I knew no one would answer.
“What will this change?” I asked again, softer now, the words folding inward. My reflection stared back from the glassy screen, pale and tired, a stranger bound by a choice that wasn’t a choice at all.
I pressed my finger to the screen.
It flared white. For a moment, I thought the world had opened. But when the light dimmed, there was no ballot, no reflection.
The line shuffled forward.
The screen flickered back to its two choices.
The murmurs resumed, as though I had never stood there at all.