The Shadows Behind the Truth

Professor Gabriel Roth looked across the small, dim room at his seven students. He could still send them all home. He hadn’t technically broken the law. But they were taking a risk too, and they deserved better than to be abandoned by yet another teacher.

He waited a few seconds and then said, “I’m going to give each of you the chance to leave.”

They all looked around at each other, and then Susan, a wealthy young woman who had been one of the first to agree to study with him, said, “None of us are leaving. We want to learn. To really learn.”

“OK. I assume you’ve all had general education implants,” the professor said. The implants were the problem, but they had their uses. The biggest was that their base knowledge would be identical.

There were some nods from the students, and he said, “Great. I want you to do your best to forget it. The first step to true knowledge is to admit our ignorance.”

There was some murmuring. Most of these students were here because they wanted to know more than everyone else. And while Gabriel believed he could give them an advantage, just telling them there were biases in the implanted knowledge wouldn’t work. He needed to help them discover that on their own.

“So we’re starting over?” Susan asked.

“If only it were that easy. We have a lot of work to do before we can start over.”

* * *

For the first week of his classes, Professor Roth spent every day waiting to be arrested. On the second day, he walked down a busy street, just as he had done hundreds of times before. It was a pleasant day. The streets were busy but organized. People moved together, no one pushing through or slowing the flow. It felt as though society’s rough edges had been smoothed away.

Then he saw a protector robot and almost panicked. As it passed by, it nodded and said, “Greetings, Professor. I trust you are having a productive day.”

Gabriel muttered a vague response, too afraid to speak clearly. He feared he might blurt out that he was running an underground classroom. That he was trying to create minds that would disrupt the perfect order of society.

The robot just walked past. By the end of the week, he had convinced himself that the greatest danger was over. None of the students had turned him in. They spent their time discussing philosophy, history, religion—subjects that, while taboo, weren’t technically illegal. Almost every day, he found another gap in their knowledge, or a bias worse than ignorance.

He couldn’t remove the implanted information, but he could add context. Maybe they’d use it to challenge the lies. But unlearning was always harder than learning something correct.

Then, one Thursday, almost a month into his classes, Susan rushed in. She’d become a leader in the class—smart, articulate, always put together.

But today, she was a mess. Her hair was out of place. No makeup. Clothes that didn’t match. Her eyes were red as she said, “I think I made a mistake.”

One of the other students glanced down the long, empty hallway, checking if anyone was following her. Gabriel asked, “What did you do?”

“My mother asked where I was going, and I told her I was going to class. I’m sorry. I just forgot it was a secret for a minute.”

Gabriel had known this would happen. He didn’t like his students lying to their parents, but the fewer people who knew about his classes, the safer it was for all of them.

Instead of dwelling on it, he said, “Everyone go home and act normal. Susan, you’ll stay here with me.”

In seconds, everyone was gone. Being a student was less illegal than teaching, but they’d still get knowledge implants to counteract what they had learned. The standard implants were biased, but the supplementary ones were nothing more than propaganda.

Susan stood there awkwardly for a few minutes and then asked, “What are we doing?”

“If your parents turned you in, the robots already know who you are. If they didn’t, nothing will happen. So, we’ll have class until they show up.”

Susan sat at one of the empty desks, and the professor sat across from her. She asked, “But won’t they catch you?”

“And I’ll convince them you were my only student. Maybe I can even convince them we just started, so they won’t punish you,” the professor said.

Susan nodded meekly, but there were tears in her eyes. Rather than let her dwell on her mistake, he asked, “Would you care to go over what you read about the Underground Railroad and the Civil Rights Movement?”

She swallowed. “I’m confused. The implanted memories say slavery was a minor part of our past. But your book says the Civil War was about slavery. I thought it was about states’ rights. And aren’t the real racists the ones who keep talking about racism?”

That was one of the complicated problems with the knowledge implants. It was impossible to write without bias. And the people who designed them hadn’t tried. They designed the implants to make people think what they wanted. The belief that the wealthy and powerful should give up any power was the most taboo, but any subject that might lead to an egalitarian society was undercut, avoided, or altered.

Professor Roth was about to explain slavery when he heard the familiar footsteps of a protector robot entering the building.

He wanted to run, but hiding from thousands of robots was impossible. Every robot, camera, phone, and device with a camera would search for him. They wouldn’t need to chase him down. They’d just wait until he stepped outside and then send the machines to pick him up.

So instead, he said, “This is your first lesson, and it was my idea. You were just curious and didn’t like it. Do you understand?”

Susan nodded. It wasn’t likely to work. Knowledge implants weren’t considered a punishment, so they didn’t need proof. That was how society had moved beyond prisons. There was no reason to sentence someone to prison when you could implant knowledge to keep them from committing those crimes. But if this was her first class, they might not implant much.

Either way, he would get the book thrown at him. Not just the basic knowledge implants that he had avoided because he had an advanced degree, but supplemental knowledge as well. And while he wanted to convince himself that he wouldn’t be fooled and controlled, he knew that wasn’t how it worked.

“Greetings, Susan Walch. Please step aside,” the robot said, its voice the same pleasant tone as always. But the last name sent the professor reeling a bit. He had intentionally not learned the full names of his students. That way, it would be impossible for him to turn them in. He had known her family was well above average wealth, but not that she was one of the elite families.

At least she wouldn’t be punished, he thought. Most laws didn’t apply to people with as much power as the Walch family. Those with enough power were encouraged to study and learn. But he didn’t have time to think about that, as the robot turned to him and said, “Professor Gabriel Roth. You are charged with corruption of a minor and teaching antisocial behavior and knowledge. How do you plead?”

He glanced at Susan and realized that the knowledge implants likely didn’t include information on how to act when arrested. Why would the government teach people how to make their jobs more difficult?

The robot didn’t wait for an answer. It simply reached out and touched his shoulder. There was a small, sharp jab. A few seconds later, he was asleep.

He woke up in the private study of someone wealthy. He tried to turn, but something was attached to his head, and his wrists were bound to the metal chair.

It was one of the memory implant machines. He began to search his mind for any new knowledge. He knew the new knowledge would feel the same as if he had always believed it. He tried to root out the implanted information, but he failed to find anything that seemed unusual.

So he gave up and scanned the books on the shelves. The room was filled with classics. Many of those books were considered dangerous, but rather than ban them, they included commentaries that avoided any interpretation that didn’t fit their agenda and then altered them to better fit their worldview.

“Do you like my library, Professor?” a woman asked. She was taller than the average woman, with a few gray hairs and glasses. Those were the first glasses Gabriel had seen in years.

“I’m sure I could spend half a lifetime in this room. But tell me, are these the authentic versions, or have they been edited for public consumption?”

“They are almost all first printings. A couple of decades ago, that would have cost a small fortune, but nobody collects books anymore. The biggest expense is finding them,” the woman said.

“But you read them,” the professor said.

“So you don’t know who I am. I’m Professor Bell. But you can call me Margo.”

He hadn’t expected it to go this high. Professor Bell was among the top scholars in the country. That wasn’t the same as being a billionaire, but being in charge of education and reeducation gave her almost as much power.

“What do you want, Professor Bell?”

“Fine. We can keep this formal if that makes it easier for you. I want you to work with me to help create the next generation of implanted education. A chance to shape the minds of billions of students instead of just a handful,” Professor Bell said.

“Sure. Shape them to the form you want,” Gabriel said.

“And why not? It’s the new industrial revolution. Education, mass-produced to eliminate the friction and frustration of the past. I understand it’s new, and there will always be those afraid of advancement. But it’s better this way. No more revolutions or wars. We don’t even have hunger anymore.”

“We also don’t have people. Not in the way we used to,” the professor said.

“Which is why I don’t want to be forced to use the implants on you. You know, the world has always been filled with people living lives of quiet desperation. But we can make those people useful. And I believe they are happier for it.”

“I won’t join you,” the professor said.

“I expected as much. Some people have always been bad at looking out for themselves. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

As she stepped out of the room, the professor felt the first of hundreds of tiny, prickly sparks against his head. They weren’t painful or even uncomfortable. They were just the implantation process.

It wasn’t what he had expected. And he began to understand. The world was filled with two types of people. The smart, the wealthy, and the powerful were on one side. And the poor, lazy, and ignorant were on the other. But there was no wall. No forced gap. Anyone who worked hard enough could become part of the elite. Most people just didn’t work hard enough.

It all seemed so obvious. It was like the many times when he had read a book, and something he had never quite understood came into focus, and the world was clearer.

A few minutes later, Margo came into the room. She smiled at him and said, “I trust you will cooperate now.”

“Of course,” Gabriel said, looking at her with more critical eyes than before. This was the type of person he had often seen when he was in school. She was far better at the politics of education than at learning.

“Then all I’ll need is a list of your students’ names so that we can help undo any damage you may have done.”

Professor Roth considered it for a moment and then said, “I’m happy to work with Susan. And I understand the desire to get more names. It would make you look good. But she really was my only student.”

Margo looked at Gabriel for a moment and said, “That’s what Susan said as well. But I had to verify it.”

Gabriel smiled at her, knowing that she believed she had him under her full control. There were hundreds of small ways that the information shoved into his brain suggested that she was his superior. Those who rose to power deserved it. But only if they could keep it.

He would adjust the implant to serve his needs. But keeping his students secret guaranteed that whichever side won the war that would eventually come, he would be at the top.

Author’s Note

We all get ideas implanted into our minds every day. Sometimes it is people on social media exaggerating to get views, or the news trying to scare us into staying tuned. Other times it’s a movie or TV show that cares far more about being entertaining than it does about being accurate, or a history book that just leaves out a few key details to make the story a bit more palatable. And none of us are immune.

All we can do is try not to take in too much garbage and try to remember that the real danger aren’t the people who you hate, but the people who tell you what you want to hear, because while I’d love to believe that everyone I agree with is telling the truth out of a noble sense of altruism and everyone I disagree with is a grifter that isn’t how things works.

So, we have no choice but to remain aware not only of other people’s biases but of our own, which is much harder.

Elton Gahr

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