The Harvest

The old men walked beneath banners snapping in the wind. Red silk and golden thread. The young one behind them, watching. Always watching.

They spoke of organs like fruit to be plucked. Hearts and livers. Kidneys pale as river stones. The translator’s voice flat as hammered metal in the thin air.

Perhaps even immortal, he said.

The youngest smiled. Thirty years their junior and patient as winter. He knew what the old men did not know. That the harvest had already begun.

In the white rooms beneath the city they kept the donors. Row upon row of them. The disappeared. The dissidents. The faithful who had prayed to the wrong gods. Their organs mapped and catalogued. Blood typed. Tissue matched.

The old men believed in science. In progress. In the terrible arithmetic of power.

They did not know about the empty beds. The quotas. The lists with their names circled in red ink.

The parade continued below them. Missiles on trucks. Soldiers marching in perfect rows. The crowd cheering as they had been taught to cheer.

One hundred and fifty years, the eastern one said. By century’s end.

But the young one knew better. He had studied history. Studied the old men’s own words. Their promises. Their methods.

The harvest was patient. The harvest was eternal. The harvest came for everyone.