“So,” asked the teacher, “Who can solve the equation?” one thousand seven hundred and forty two hands shot up in unison, and, at the teacher’s request, one thousand seven hundred and forty two voices chimed out the answer in a perfect unity. And, with their identical voices, the one thousand seven hundred and forty two bodies, grew into one, all-encompassing being, to which all of the miniscule, identical cells contributed their voice, no one missing a word, a syllable, or sound down to a billionth of a millisecond with their brothers. The Teacher smiled. This truly was the perfect masterpiece of the modern age, with the one thousand seven hundred and forty two prototypes and a hundred-billion more soon to be born. The perfect human being, strong, smart, and fast, never sinning, never questioning, and moving with the pulsing of their ever-moving, collective heart. When the bell rung the Great Being would rise onto its many feet and swarm out onto the streets, in a perfect rhythm, each footfall dropping in unison upon the pavement of the streets. The Living Body would approach one thousand seven hundred and forty two identical houses and each doorknob would twist to the exact same angle before one thousand seven hundred and forty two identical doors would slide open and the many-brothers would walk up sets of identical steps to collapse into identical beds. They would have to be put down, of course, as all prototypes did. Tomorrow their hundred billion brothers were borne from the tanks and the chemicals and a trillion strands of interwoven DNA, created, no sculpted by a thousand identical scientists. On that day the one thousand seven hundred and forty two would be older than the others of their model and that could not be. This was the last day of their lives, but the perfect human beings could never be afraid. The teacher envied this new bed, and could only wonder how perfect the future ones would be. Each bed was more perfect than the last and was built to replace the previous. Her race would have to die off for this new generation to live, but that did not sadden her, how could it. Her bed had dominated the face of the Earth for a thousand years, wasn’t it time for them to be replaced by a new generation. The teacher new in her heart that it was her time had come.

“What,” she asked, “is the greatest generation?” She smiled in anticipation of the answer.

“The greatest generation,” the creatures chimed out words memorized in a day, “Is the one that falls at the very end of time. There is no generation greater than the one to come after it and each generation takes a stride forward to form a more perfect one after it. Only without unity can a generation retrogress and become less perfect that the one before it.”

“What is the most holy of all doctrine?”

“The Great Armistice of the ancient world.” They answered, “The declaration of peace between a thousand disunited nations to band together for a common good. The great words of love that bound a dying world together. For only through unity can perfection be achieved.”

“What is the greatest achievement of the modern world?”

One thousand seven hundred and forty two smiles broke out across the crowd. They answered simply: “Us.”

“And who,” the teacher couldn’t help but shed a tear at this last question. “is God?”

“God is whatever we make it. The ancients made their God out of hatred and intolerance. The ancients formed their idol out of the torn meat of other worshipers for the great and terrible crime of difference. They chose to bow their heads in prayer to violence and greed. We, however, have made our God of unity. We have sculpted a deity to which we are all a part but never the whole. We serve the great God of the common good and at his alter we lay down all that we are.”

The teacher had never been more proud in all of her life. The entire future danced itself out for her on the pallet of things yet to be written. A beautiful new world sung its song on the horizon and her only regret was that she would not be there to see the unified song break over the landscape of cities and skyscrapers. She would live just long enough to see the new generation erupt from the tanks of chemicals, before happily meeting a sharp knife and returning with joy to an Earth that had not borne her. But she would be buried with a smile on her face that would never rot away. Tomorrow the Great Being would encompass the planet with ten billion identical vessels, each of whom would work and labor, and sleep and wake, and build cities and worlds, and make love and make war with a central unified perception. It was a poem, written out over a thousand years by the seamless movements of a billion bodies. It was everything that the human race had dreamed of since it first erupted forth from its animal ancestors. And it was good.

“My students… my successors, there is nothing,” the teacher sobbed, “nothing that I can say that can describe how my generation feels at this moment. There is nothing more beautiful than seeing your children grow up to become what you have always aspired to be. This is something beautiful. This is something that…”
The monologue was interrupted by gasps of shock that sounded out from one thousand seven hundred and forty two mouths, and one thousand seven hundred and forty two eyes now shot to where stood a young boy. They sat frozen in a silent breath of lurid horror as the child approached the stage on which the teacher spoke. She watched in terror as the boy stopped right below the shadow of her podium, shaking and shivering between the unrepressed sobs. And the teacher cried. She cried because now before her stood one thousand seven hundred and forty three identical boys, but among one thousand seven hundred and forty two identical blue jackets… was one of red.
The no-longer-great-being reeled back in revulsion at this unforgivable sin, this intolerable trespasser that dared to prance his way in front of them. And among the hatred that grew within the body, the living organism managed to choke out one, nearly inaudible word: “Why…”
The boy turned to look back into the stands, individually eyeing each of his many brothers. “Because,” he chocked out, “Because I cannot die forgotten.”
The children stared in hatred at the monstrous abomination they had once mistakenly called their brother, and like a wave the boys rose onto their identical feet, rushing upon the infidel that dared to stand in their presence. They threw themselves upon him, clawing into the unforgivable one with claws that were once hands. One thousand seven hundred and forty two mouths bit down into the bitter flesh of the youth’s throat and spat out chunks of red meat, tainted with his impure blood. With their makeshift they made pure the impure and cleansed what had not been clean before. And then like a great wave, they all rose up onto their wet red feet, granting what was no longer recognizable as a child the great gift of forgiveness. They were proud of each other for the blemish that they had removed but they knew in their hearts what had to be done.
All this time the teacher sat, collapsed to the floor of the podium, tears streaming down red cheeks. She cursed and cursed again at the monster that now lay in pieces on the floor for the horrible crime of condemning her to live another hundred years. Tomorrow ten billion of the future generation would be massacred in their tanks, for fear that they might all be like the untouchable whose blood had been rightfully spilled upon the floor. Tomorrow they would begin from scratch what they had come so close to achieving. Tomorrow the monster would lie buried in a field surrounded by one thousand seven hundred and forty two of his tainted brothers.