Oh, to be a Teacher

I feel lonely.
The living quarters I have leave me nothing to desire. I can get meals from the arcology stock. I can get materials to make the meals and put what I haven't eaten in the arcology stock. When I move food, I would bring the uneaten food and put it in the arcology bank. I wonder if I have ever eaten the dishes I bring, but it's unlikely.

If I get bored I can use the simulator or listen to any of the books. I do it sometimes, it helps me sleep. A deep voice with neutral tones relaxes me just as much as any medicine, and I have a story to think about later. I wish I had somebody to talk about it.

Teachers can talk to so many people. They have a sort of fame, but they can interact with the ones they cater to. Movers of knowledge, but also makers of it. The students may even become friends, collaborators.

I think I don't regret what I did, even if the loneliness is harsh. Maybe in some years people will forget. Maybe I will be able to be a Teacher and I will talk to many people, have some friends. until someone recognises me. And then I'll have to be alone again for a long period of time. Maybe until I die.

07

I sometimes wish I had been chosen as a monk. There ia something appealing about living one's life to the complete pursuit of one of the five virtues. On the other hand, how terrible it must be for the Clean to always face tje filth, for Order to unceasingly keep Chaos at bay, for Health to be amongst Disease. Triumph, so fleeting, defeat already there from the start.

06

I hear my mother's voice on the transport, speakers on my way to Moving. Is this a trick of my mind? Was my mom ever a Teacher in this city, before she went to where she met my dad and became my mom? I had never. realised. it was. her, her voice is much younger, and she rarely spoke in her native tongue when she eas with us. How alien our parents are before they belong to us.

Maybe it was not her. I haven't heard her voice in years. Maybe I long for a familiar sound, and I accept any message directed to me. Yes mom, I will be careful and walk on the appropriate lanes. Yes, I will adjust my PPE before alighting. The Transport System wishes me a good day? You too mum. I love you too.

05

The people who ask for our services doesn't want to recognize us as a person.
They want a human, in case they need to complain, in case they get angry.
But you must not have any kind of emotion apart from happy. Almost excited that you are moving shit for people who don't care about you and are very rude. You can't look tired. That will affect your "presentation." I do find comfort in having my personhood unacknowledged. I find comfort in my small, almost rural house. As I sit down and boil my tea I remember yesterday's job. Not today's. Today was simple. Today was easy. Today all we moved was bricks. Not yesterday though. Yesterday we moved something else. A package. Within the boundaries of our services, but a special package anyway. It was a transparent plastic box filled to the brim with open envelopes, letters sticking out from them and words forming against the clear walls of the cube.
There was one letter on top, just below the address label. It read "but I do not for one second believe you believed you really wanted this. I do not. I truly don't and I don't understand how you," the rest of the letter covered by another envelope.
The package was addressed to a small residential address, no name, nothing. When I arrived and knocked on the door, a man in a robe came out and grabbed it. Without looking at me, he grabbed the box and closed the door. In some cases we ask for a signature, but this wasn't one of them.
Steam keeps floating off my cup. I fear, I always have, that all forms of steam end up stuck on the roof, blotching, spotting, bleaching the unreachable. I drink.

04

When I come back from the night shift, there are no people in the streets, no transports.
It is beautiful and relaxing, the only sound is the ventilation of the arcologies, a frame for the silence. Sometimes a quick bird chirp.

03

I was in a restaurant, and I remembered. I tried to find the waitress to ask her for the bill, but I couldn't remember which waitress had served me. It was not important to remember her face, and now all the uniforms blended her into the others. Which is what uniforms are meant to do. You are a function. A soldier, a student, a cleaning monk, a cook, a waitress like any other.
And I realised this was the way to hide for as long as I needed.
I have been a mover for three months. I sent a CV lying about my experience, saying that I had worked in moving back in the country I was born in according to my passport. After a quick induction I started as mover.

We move almost everything. The buses and trains are our responsibility. When someone wants a letter or parcel delivered, it is us who take it from them where it needs to go. We take the furniture from the store to your house and from old house to new house. We move the recreational drugs from outside the city to the distributors and move the bricks and sacks of cement in construction sites.
There are things we do not move. We do not move food, which is the realm of waitresses. We do not move weapons which is the realm of soldiers.
We do not move the sick, the dead, the filth nor the rubbish. That is the realm of the monks.

02

Part of the billboards in the train are in English, but only the main idea. The details and whatever is the funny or exciting message is in this language that I cannot read. It's funny, you feel so bad for the people that can't read and then you discover that you can't read in most languages. But it's not so funny because you live here now.

The travel in the train is nice. The movement is nice and soft. I always look for the seat under the stairs that has only one seat and faces the back of the next seat. I travel hidden. I imagine most people find this seat uncomfortable, they like the windows, the sun, all the people doing their daily activities. I find comfort in the piece of metal next to me. I wish the ride was longer, but the stations go quickly and I get down. I hear two people from my country talking. I look away, afraid that they will recognise me. I walk faster, the dread of recognition overcoming the fear of braving the world.

I look at the map. My destination is not far.