In the Late afternoon of June 21st, 2037, Felix Oberlander was late for dinner. His wife and a few of his children, in annoyance, had come to the fence to call him. She stood with a hand at the top of a fence post and shouted for him to get on home. His dinner was on the table, and his rabbit soup was getting cold. Felix, who was usually of an even temper, called back that he had finished his day’s work and was already on his way home.

“I’m coming, woman, can’t you see?”

Instead of his usual circumnavigation of the little granite outcropping at the very center of his asparagus field, he walked up and over it so that they might see that he, indeed, was on his way. It also served to emphasize his irritation.

That was what he intended. However, as he gained the top of the mound, his image seemed to oscillate, then shudder. Then his whole frame vibrated violently. His body turned into a diminishing blur. Then, with his wife’s and the children’s eyes on him, he disappeared completely. At first, they thought he had fallen, and they ducked under the fence, ran across the ground, trampling new asparagus shoots and circled the cairn, but Felix was nowhere to be found. He seemed to have evaporated into space. And that, in a sense, is just what he did.

Felix Oberlander was a successful asparagus farmer. His farm had the light soils and easy drainage that asparagus likes so much, and Felix worked asparagus well. His main field was very large, flat and cleared of stones. The only difficulty lay in the fact that it had an occasional abundance of rabbits descending on it, and the little outcropping of bedrock, almost at its dead center.

The ancient Paleolithic granite was worn by the elements to a small crumble of rocks and single pinnacle rising from its core. The outcropping inclined upwards about four feet above the sounding dirt of the field. Felix never tried to remove this little cairn simply because it would cost more than the removal was worth, and so he worked his planting around it. During the growing season in mid-spring, it looked like a small, rocky island in the sea of asparagus. Felix never gave the outcropping much thought, it had always been there, like the mole on his left shoulder. When he was working the far side of the field at the end of the day, he always walked around it to get home.

Long ago, when he purchased the property, he had been told that the original inhabitants of the valley had used the cairn as some sort of reliquary for their kindred relics. Felix didn’t much bother with such things. If nothing else, he was an exceedingly practical man and not much given to fable.

However, on this occasion, he was left with no easy answers. To his family, he had simply disappeared into the firmament. But to Felix, he was still very much there and hurting. After the violent attack, he lay unmoving on the ground at the edge of the cairn. He had been shaken so intensely, he had momentarily lost his vision. Everything seemed smeared together. His legs and arms shuddered and twitched. His teeth hurt. He was lying on his side, crushing his new asparagus shoots. He must have had a stroke, or aneurysm under his skull, but it apparently was gone now. Was he dead? Felix sat up with his back against the little outcropping. He looked down at his hands, they looked solid. His fingernails were ringed with grime, as always.

He was a little weak, but he seemed, to himself, to be alive.

Felix turned his head to the fence where his family waited for him, but they were gone, as was the fence, as was his new asparagus crop just coming out of the ground. It was no longer daytime. A stunted tree had appeared next to his right shoulder coming out of the ground by the rocks. The outcropping was there by his other side, just as it had been when he had fallen. Now there was a low, iron railing surrounding the cairn, the tree and him. Beyond the railing was a cement sidewalk, streetlights and beyond that, there was a mammoth wall of human dwelling units.

For the first time in his life, Felix was left without his sense of logic. He looked down at his overalls and boots. They were the same. Had he been transported into another realm? The only constant remaining was the cairn and his own body. His family was gone. His asparagus farm was gone. With effort, Felix stood, wobbled, leaned against the small tree and looked around. His farm had become a city. Day had become night. Had he somehow stumbled through the boundary of time, while remaining on his own land, and on what used to be his asparagus field?

Felix began to realize that in this newly arisen city, the little granite outcropping, still in-place, had been set aside from its surrounding, enclosed by a small iron fence, that now enclosed him off as well.

It was a monument of sorts. Felix scanned the street. There were no people about. He lifted the gate latch to step outside the enclosure. If nothing else, Felix was a steady man capable of assimilating almost anything, even this.

“No! Not allowed. Not allowed.”, said the gate.

“Who said that?”

“No one to pass without a signed release form,” said the gate.

“This is my property”, said Felix Oberlander.

“How did you get in there? I never let you in. Not allowed. You are not authorized. I’m getting in touch with Central right now,” said the gate.

With his long legs, Felix stepped over the fence and went two paces into the empty street.

“The inquisitor is on the way. You violated.”, said the gate.

Felix ran across the street into an alley and around the corner. In the distance, the inquisitor’s warning device sounded through the empty streets. Lights came on in several windows, then went off again. Felix leaned against the side of the cement block building, pulling air into his lungs. A door behind him opened a crack, and a bearded face showed.

“You in trouble, mate?" Get on in here, quick.”

“Oh no you don’t! Nothing like that around here” said the old metal door and pushed itself closed. “I’m getting the inquisitor right now. Not allowed. You violated. You’re not authorized.”

You do that and you are going to live in misery the rest of your natural life, got me?”, said the bearded man.

“I hate my job,” said the door.

“What the devil are you doing out there at night? You’re really nuts,” said the beard, “I shouldn’t be doing this, but I don’t want the agents nosing around here tonight. Get on in here.”

“I just…I’m not sure,” said Felix as he stumbled into the dingy flat.

“Look,” said the beard, “the auditors have already been here twice this month, and I had to spend the last week sanitizing the place. Got my upstairs neighbor, ya know.”

“What did you to him?”, asked Felix as he leaned against a cluttered kitchen table. His head was beginning to throb.

“She was trying to shop at an unauthorized time, you know, her virtue/security belt turned her in, right there in the store. They come to get her. Family will never see her again. They chasing you, mate?”

“They don’t know a thing about me. Don’t know I even exist,” said the completely depleted farmer.

“Oh, that’s a good one alright. Look mate, there is nothing they don’t know about you, nothing, nothing. Here. Where’s your armband? You get it removed? You get an implant? Bet they implanted you. Maybe you’re monitoring me right now?”

The beard started to hustle Felix out the door, which opened wide by itself.

“No, no,” said Felix, “Nothing like that, I’ve got nothing on me. Nothing. Please believe me.”

He was pushing against the beard.

“Alert Central! Alert Central!” screamed the door.

After the scuffle, the beard let go of Felix and slammed the door shut. “Now look what you’ve gone and one, rushed the whole ward. OK, you got nothing. I’ll accept that, OK.”, he said to Felix.

He turned to the door. “You send anything, or say anything, and you are scrap metal.”

The beard turned the light off, and they sat in the dark. “Now, you tell me your story or I might get nasty,” he said, “Go!”.

As best he could, Felix told of his brief but massive life shift. The beard sat opposite him in the near dark of the dank kitchen, slowly nodding his head as Felix went on about his family and his asparagus farm. He knew full well there was nothing simple to accept.

“This is all my property. This building sits on my asparagus patch. I don’t know what authority you think you have to be here on my land, but it’s mine.”, Felix concluded.

“Look,” said the beard, “if I accept your story, you are now in another world and no longer a person, get that in your head. You have no right to own anything, you have no right to an opinion, you have no right to be anywhere, time is not yours, nor is food, nor your body. You are not allowed to make any decisions. You have no right to raise your own children. You have no family. You may not have any friends. And I have no right to talk to you, and you have no right to listen.”

The beard opened his mouth wide to display four rows of yellow teeth. “Uuk ot this uth, right here,” said the beard as he pointed to a molar in the right lower back. “It’s a reporting device. It’s sending information to Central right now. At least it should be, I disabled it.”, said the beard with his mouth mostly closed.

“Here, look at these shoes.” The beard lifted his foot to exhibit a nondescript piece of footwear. “In that heel is a small motor, a transmitter, a receiver, a transponder, a gyroscope and IMU. This shoe not only informs Central where I am and where I am going, but it also directs me to go where Central wants me to go. See that mirror behind the bath sink? It’s a screen for Central to observe me. My toothbrush tells secrets, as does my belt, jacket, bedside clock and the chair you are now sitting on. The doors are the worst.”

As all this was streaming out of beard’s mouth, he was pulling on his jacket.

“Look, I hate to do this to you, you seem like a nice guy, a bit looney, but OK. You see, I am a Channel. Central sometimes calls me an Extractor, you know, as in pulling a rotten tooth. Some people call me a rat. That’s OK, I make good money. You should bring in a good sum for me tonight. I do piece work, you know. You will find that during the struggle, I implanted a very small device in your hand, which means you now have no free-will. If you try to remove it, it will only make matters worse.”

“Then in a more conversational tone, “They’re really fine devices. I use them all the time. We would use them on the soup, but it would be far too expensive to use those billions of implants. Can’t do too much with the soup, you know.”

“The soup?”, Felix was feeling a languor he’d never experienced before. He was ready to do anything the beard wanted.

“Yeah, the soup, that’s what Central calls what you still think of as a population of humans.”

They walked out the door, which opened for them. The beard gave his door a little pat as he passed through. “Nice job, guy, as usual.”

“Thanks. Sorry, I get a little emotional sometimes,” said the door.

A van was waiting on the street. The beard and what used to be Felix, the farmer, got in and the van sped toward Central. Several hours later, he was seated in front of Control, a steely woman of an unknown age, and of some note. Her office was decorated with attractive furnishings, and she was well turned out in a uniform denoting her substantial importance.

Control started speaking.

“I don’t really know where you come from, why you are here or your purpose in being here. We have no record of you anywhere. Your DNA has no precedent. Your lineage seems to have no connection at all. There seems to be no order of heritage for you.”

Felix opened his mouth, “No! I am not ready for you to speak,” said Control, with a raised hand.

“You have told our Extractor you think you ‘own’ a section of property in the Western Addition, which includes some of our most dense warrens. And I understand you were trespassing on our little Nature Shrine there.”

“I really am not too sure just what to do with you.”, she continued. “You’re something of a bother. I’m a bit afraid to place you into the soup, it might spoil the flavor.”

Control smiled to herself. She was amused at this thought and liked her clever analogy. The whole of this little speech was directed more inwardly than to the creature before her, who was scarcely worth her time. Yet, there was just the slightest bit of curiosity lingering in her mind.

“Before I send you off, I’ll give you the opportunity to make on statement, if you have the where-for-all to say something other than just a silly plea.”

Felix straightened his chair, raised his head, and said, “I would like to ask a simple question that should not take too much of your time to answer. ‘Why do you use such force of rule over your people?’”

Control turned and smiled. She was pleased that she had this homeless mouse so firmly between her claws for play, before its final disposition. She closed her eyes and placed the ends of her fingers together, forming a cathedral-like cage with her hands.

“If you have a rabbit as a pet,” she said as she leaned back in her big chair and ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, “as a good pet owner, you give the little one free range. A big cage, a backyard, or even the run of the house. Feed and comfort is always available.”

“If you have two rabbits, that freedom is curtailed somewhat, is it not? It must be.”

“If you have a dozen rabbits, you must have a large hutch. They must be fed on schedule from a formula and controlled to a greater degree, otherwise, they would eat up everything in the backyard.”

“If you had a million rabbits, you must have bulk housing, vast warrens, means of sanitation and enormous fields to produce volumes of food. You must have many hundreds of overseers to keep control. The mass must be treated with forethought that they could starve or fight among themselves. Enormous care must be provided, lest some dissident might arise and cause chaos.”

“If you have several billion rabbits, you must treat them as a homologous mass, a single organism of vast proportions. If the attendants are inattentive, this living, breathing soup can inflict great harm on itself and to others. An entity so large must have a strict program of care, feeding, sanitation, a curtailing of movement, strict discipline and monitoring of activities, emotion and thought. Paramount is a moral obligation to the cadre in charge to put down any thought of rebellion.”

“It would be negligent for those entrusted with this task to neglect their very clear duties.”

“To even contemplate that this living stew would, or could, have any free will would be preposterous on the face of it.”

“The individual in this homologous mass does not exist. It has no value.”

In uttering this last sentence, Control had risen from her seat, leaned forward toward Felix and momentarily suffered a slight loss of composure, hence, a bit of spittle misted the farmer’s face. But of course, she regained her equanimity almost immediately.

Back in her chair, and fully contained, Control moved her head over so slightly, in such a way as to notify her attendant that she was finished with this.

Felix Oberlander was removed.