The Gear — Chapter 12 Part 3 Final

In the heat of the gymnasium, the clang of the weight machines filled the air. Major Tomas pulled the weight with force, sweat running down his face, his mind divided between the physical effort and the critical thinking that always accompanied him.

Beside him, Captain Masord completed his sets, with the crooked half-smile typical of someone carrying a joke ready to go. Between one exercise and another, he broke the silence:

— “Tomas, do you know why they don’t let us play hide-and-seek in my republic?”

The Major raised an eyebrow, curious despite his exhaustion.

— “Why?”

Masord smiled and fired back:

— “Because everyone would end up hiding in democracy!”

Tomas laughed loudly, surprised. It was rare, and the laughter escaped with a sincerity that disturbed Ceres’s hardness.

— “That was a good one, Masord. You really have a talent for this.”

The atmosphere became lighter, but soon the conversation returned to seriousness.

— “You know, Tomas,” Masord said, looking at the sweat running down his friend’s face, “even with all this rigidity of Ceres, this system of yours that I call ‘totalitarian and hypocritical,’ your Mother Ceres has something our republic doesn’t: the certainty that no one goes hungry, that no one dies without care.”

Tomas nodded.

— “But it doesn’t come without a cost. Here, freedom is a rare currency. Control is total, and the price is the soul.”

They continued exchanging ideas, weighing and learning, like two sides of the same coin. And even within the rigidity of their routine, they found in dialogue a space to breathe and grow.

— Knowledge is power — Tomas concluded —, and in Ceres, power is control. But at least here, we have a chance to survive. It isn’t perfect, Masord, but it’s what we have.

Masord smiled, agreeing:

— That’s right. Who said surviving would be easy?

The conversation continued among weights, sweat, and ideas — and a friendship born from adversity.

The Forbidden Tape

The room was large, cold, and white, with the faint hum of surveillance cameras always present, hanging in the corners. Each occupied his own desk: Major Tomas on the left, writing a dry report filled with numbers, forecasts, and agricultural statistics for space missions; Captain Masord on the right, surrounded by yellowed sheets, drafts, meteorological calculations, and, curiously, small decorative knickknacks — a miniature airplane, a little tin soldier, a globe with peeling paint.

Tomas never commented on the knickknacks; he merely looked at them from time to time, as if they were a minor detail compared to everything that truly mattered. They were the bones of the trade — reports, adjustments, recommendations, protocols. An inevitable bureaucratic weight.

When the silence had already become as heavy as lead, Masord stood up, with the same cynical confidence as always, and walked over to Tomas. He discreetly took a small cassette tape from his pocket and slid it across the Major’s desk.

— “Listen to this later, alone… not here. You’ll understand.”

Tomas raised his eyes, serious, looked at the tape, read the handwritten label: Imagine — John Lennon. Even without smiling, he merely nodded and put the tape in his pocket, aware of the cameras.

That night, in the quarters, Tomas listened. In absolute silence, headphones on, the tape turning. Ten times. Maybe more. Every word, every verse echoed differently with each repetition.

“Imagine all the people… living life in peace…”

The next day, they met in the same room. The desks were already covered with papers, but their eyes were different. The world outside was the same, but inside both of them, something had changed.

Masord approached again. Tomas already had the tape in his hand.

— “So, Major…?” Masord teased, with a half-smile.

— “I listened.” Tomas replied. “Ten times.”

— “And?”

— “You tell me first. I want to hear the explanation of someone who believes in an invisible god.”

Masord leaned against the desk, eloquent, firm:

— “This song is a manifesto, Tomas. It’s about imagining a world without borders, without flags, without countries, without wars invented to protect false interests. A world without gods and without hells, because all these things only serve to divide people. A world where everyone shares everything. This song… is about the only freedom worth having: living without fear and without masters. Even if it never happens, it is a dream worth dreaming.”

Tomas listened to him in silence, looking down. Then he stood, returned the tape to the desk between them.

— “I heard something else,” Tomas said. “I heard… Mother Ceres.”

Masord frowned, curious.

— “The song talks about freedom, yes. But freedom is expensive, Captain. If everyone does whatever they want, nothing will remain. All dreams can kill. Mother Ceres isn’t perfect, but she is safe. She feeds us, protects us and, if necessary, devours us to save the harvest. I… would rather see Ceres’s face every day and not see my son’s face… than lose both. Because without Ceres… nothing remains.”

Silence hung in the air. Tomas continued, more quietly:

— “You have a god you have never seen, but you can see your son whenever you want. I have no god at all. But I see Ceres every time I open my eyes. Here, we don’t need gods. Only her.”

Masord smiled slightly, without irony, only recognition.

— “Yeah… I can see my son. But my son will inherit a world that I myself destroyed… perhaps I’m the one who needs a Mother Ceres after all.”

Both stared at the tape, now lying on the desk between them. Tomas’s eyes hardened again.

— “The world, Captain, is always at war. Peace is only an accident.”

And this time Masord laughed. He laughed the way only he knew how: with a cutting humor and, at the same time, lightness.

— “Major… with that sentence, you beat me. But…”

He paused, then added, with a joke that even Tomas could not keep himself from laughing at:

— “…just tell me Mother Ceres doesn’t have PMS, or we’re all screwed.”

Tomas burst out laughing. Sincerely. Perhaps for the first time in years.

And for a moment, the cameras recorded nothing more than two men laughing quietly, sharing a forbidden tape and two irreconcilable ideologies.

Deep down, both knew: knowledge was power.

And power would always be absolute control.

But in that moment, there was only justice — and the beginning of reconciliation.

Confidential Notes — Observers of Mother Ceres

Date: 00—112—CE
Location: Advanced Studies Room — Astronautics Sector
Report No.: 947—C
Classification: ULTRA—CONFIDENTIAL

Observed Summary:

• The interaction between Major Tomas (Ceres) and Captain Masord (Alliance) continues in a respectful and intellectually productive atmosphere.

• Neither demonstrates explicit hostility.

• Neither has yielded their convictions.

• Neither has sought to defeat the other.

The cassette tape containing the song Imagine was used as a catalyst for a philosophical conversation about borders, deities, freedom, and social responsibility.

Major Tomas interpreted the song as a metaphor for the dangers of absolute freedom and the importance of the security offered by Ceres.

Captain Masord interpreted the same song as a manifesto for liberation from ideological and institutional shackles.

Notable Behavior:

• Genuine smiles were recorded.

• Major Tomas laughed out loud for the first time since the beginning of the program.

• Both used irony in moderation and allowed themselves to laugh at one another.

• No evidence of sabotage, insults, or challenges to the other’s integrity was identified.

Preliminary Conclusion:

The test does not aim to prove who is “better” in their convictions.

It is not a matter of defending Mother Ceres as though she were fragile, nor of attacking her as an enemy.

These men are expected to achieve mutual understanding — because no political system, no matter how perfect, survives without dialogue.

The true test lies in learning to listen to the enemy without becoming an enemy, and finding justice without annihilating the other side.

Mother Ceres has already understood:

• Both are useful.

• Both have value.

• Both proved that knowledge is not only power — it is also a bridge.

• And, when necessary, it is a shield.

Forward to Central Command for archiving and possible use in future diplomatic instruction.

End of Report.

Internal Note — Central Command of Ceres

Ultra confidential — restricted reading for devoured personnel level Omega or higher

Date: 00—113—CE
Sector: Central Command — Front Room

Everyone present wore full dark masks, with opaque lenses covering their entire faces.

No name was spoken aloud.

The only identity relevant here is that of Mother Ceres.

Subject: Report 947—C (Interaction between Major Tomas & Captain Masord)

Summary Presented:

• The two candidates demonstrated behavior aligned with the strategic values of the City—Mother.

• They knew how to exchange ideas without attempting to colonize the other’s thoughts.

• They understood that true diplomacy does not arise from crushing, but from balance and vigilance.

• They remain devoted to their causes, yet lucid enough to recognize merit in the other.

Major Tomas reaffirmed his loyalty to Mother Ceres, defending collective borders and security above individual fantasies, viewing freedom as a dangerous luxury.

Captain Masord presented rational and coherent criticism, reminding them that freedom and spirituality can flourish even in hostile environments.

Central Command Decision:

• Neither will be removed or replaced at this time.

• Both will continue in their assigned positions, serving as models for future diplomatic instruction.

• The recording of the song (Imagine) will be archived for educational use in seminars on indoctrination.

• Report 947—C will be cited as an example of cooperation without ideological surrender.

General Note on the State of the City—Mother:

• All devoured personnel remain integrated into the gear, as expected.

• No one knows names.

• No one possesses a history of their own.

• No one escapes their function with impunity.

In the quarters, discipline is rigorously maintained:

• Service hours from 08:00 to 17:30.

• Sunday reserved for sports, physical exercise, and controlled forms of leisure.

• Military training remains as a behavioral bonus and enrichment of the internal curriculum.

Sex is tolerated, but strictly controlled, because Mother Ceres needs children.

Contraceptive methods are taught to women to reduce risks, but human failures still occur.

Children born are sent to specific quarters; the mothers return after 10 years, reintegrated into the system as devoured personnel.

Clandestine abortions continue to be identified and punished with the loss of one’s name, conversion to an alphanumeric number, and subsequent public burning in the city squares, serving as a general example.

Mother Ceres abandons no one — but demands total sacrifice.

Conclusion:

The mechanism works.

Both candidates demonstrated that the devoured are still capable of producing new gears, thoughts, and weapons to keep Ceres safe.

Every spark of humanity that remains in them will be converted into fuel for the City—Mother.

Signed:

Central Command

(No names. Only masks. Only Ceres.)

The hall was vast, cold, without windows.

The metallic sound of footsteps echoed across the black marble as the figures took their places around the circular table.

Everyone wore dark masks that completely covered their faces, like great dark sunglasses melted over flesh.

From each mask hung a discreet breathing tube — part aesthetic, part symbol, part punishment.

No one said a name.

No one would dare.

At the center of the table, a glass sphere rotated slowly.

Inside it, a gear moved — made of human bones, polished ivory, and strips of muscle still pulsing.

The living machine groaned softly with every complete rotation, as if it felt the pain of serving.

One of them — perhaps the oldest — activated the terminal, and an electronic voice filled the air with surgical neutrality:

— Report 947—C. Candidates: Major Tomas and Captain Masord.

— Both remain devoured. Both have proven useful to the gear.

— Both were tested. Both understood: this is not about winning. It is about serving.

— The gear does not care who thinks they are right. The gear only demands that they keep turning.

Some of the masked members leaned forward slightly in approval, like teeth of a cogwheel fitting against one another.

Others remained motionless, making it clear that, there, no one truly chose anything.

It was Mother Ceres who turned.

They only creaked.

The living machine at the center of the hall made another rotation.

A crack of bone sounded as a femur split and reattached itself to the gear.

Fresh blood ran across the marble, without anyone showing a reaction.

— Unanimous approval — announced the electronic voice.

— Report archived. Candidates retained. Machine intact.

— The children continue feeding the Mother.

A ritualistic silence dominated the hall for several seconds.

Then, one by one, the masked devoured rose, turned mechanically, and walked out, their boots creaking in unison against the cold floor.

The last one to leave switched off the rotating sphere, suffocating the groans of the gear.

In the darkness, the hall breathed on its own, like a lung of steel and bones, waiting for the next meeting.

Night fell over the Astronaut Base quarters.

The sky of Ceres, gray even at night, allowed only a handful of pale stars through, looking more like the eyes of sentinels than promises of freedom.

Tomas sat on his narrow bed, still dressed in his immaculate uniform.

In the pocket of his tunic, he kept the Imagine tape, as forbidden as the idea it carried.

But that night, he did not listen to it. Not yet.

He did not dare.

The words of the electronic voice echoed in his mind like nails being hammered:

— The children continue feeding the Mother.

— The machine intact.

He closed his eyes for a moment, trying not to think about the sound of the living gear grinding bones and weeping blood.

Was that what they were?

All of them?

Teeth and vertebrae in a hungry gear?

He opened his eyes and, across the collective room, caught sight of a small detail that drew his attention:

a newly arrived devoured was arranging his belongings on the neighboring bed. He also wore a mask, and his movements were gentle, almost servile.

When he noticed Tomas looking at him, he merely bowed slightly, in a silent gesture of greeting.

Then he returned to his task, as though nothing had happened.

Tomas leaned back on the bed, staring at the concrete ceiling.

The sound of boots marching outside, always the same.

The timer on the wall marked the hours until the next watch.

In the air, a metallic smell — iron, sweat, and perhaps blood.

And then he thought of the song.

And of the sentence Masord had said the day before, almost as a joke:

— Here there are no gods… only gears. But it is comforting to know that, at least, we are necessary to the Mother.

At the time, Tomas had laughed.

Now, alone, he did not know whether that laughter still made sense.

He took the tape between his fingers.

Looked at it for a long time.

Sighed.

And murmured to himself:

— May turning in the machine… be less painful than being spat out of it.

Then he put the tape back in his pocket.

Closed his eyes.

And, like a gear, fell asleep.

The room was immense, illuminated by white lamps that hissed, cold as a morgue.

At the center, isolated by a reinforced glass dome, the Machine rotated.

Toothed wheels, steel cylinders, belts snapping with cruel precision.

The “Gear—Mother,” as the devoured called it, fed by human energy, by the labor of every one of them.

Tomas was already there, standing before the glass, when Masord arrived with his clipboard of notes.

The captain looked at the structure with a light sigh, as if looking at any ordinary engine.

— It’s… impressive, for such an old system — he commented casually. — Good maintenance, I’d say. I heard it’s been running for more than a hundred years. Without a single collapse.

Tomas did not answer immediately.

His eyes did not blink, fixed on the machine turning.

— It looks at us… — he murmured, as if to himself. — Looks inside us… and knows exactly who we are.

Masord frowned and raised his eyes toward Tomas. Then he turned back to the machine, looking at it more carefully.

— Hm? I don’t see anything. Just gears, Major. Just steel. Metal doesn’t look at anyone.

Tomas finally shifted his gaze from the glass to him.

— It’s because you weren’t born here, Captain. We, in Ceres… feel it. When we stand before it… we feel that the Mother is inside. Watching. Weighing every thought of ours. Every sin.

Masord gave a dry little laugh and shook his head.

— Superstition. State folklore, that’s all. A well-rehearsed psychological trick, implanted since childhood. — He gave the glass a light tap. — That’s all this is, Major: iron, grease, and glass. There is nothing beyond that. No spirit. No “mother.” Just… clicks.

The silence became heavier than the mechanical noise.

Tomas kept his eyes on Masord, thoughtful.

It was not anger he felt — it was more like envy. Or perhaps pity.

The lightness with which Masord could call it “nothing” was inconceivable to someone who had grown up beneath the shadow of Mother Ceres.

— Perhaps you are right — Tomas finally said. — Perhaps it is only iron and clicks… for you. But for us… she is everything. She is here. She is always here. And it is better to believe… than to discover otherwise.

Masord raised his clipboard, wrote something without haste, and replied:

— That is why outsiders always have an advantage. Because we do not hear those… clicks of conscience. Only the ones from the gear.

— He raised his eyes and smiled at one corner of his mouth. — But that does not mean I do not respect your faith. I won’t pretend to understand it, but… I respect it. After all, even gods have their uses, when they help maintain order.

Tomas let out a sigh, a nervous laugh, almost resigned.

— And in the end, that is all she wants, isn’t it? Order.

The two stood side by side before the glass, listening to the dry clicks of the machine and the hum of the lamps.

Masord looked at Tomas again.

— You do not need to believe that the machine is alive, Major. But there is nothing wrong with feeling… that it is part of you.

And, for the first time in a long time, Tomas smiled a little more sincerely.

— Perhaps that is what… makes us devoured.

And both returned to their clipboards, the sound of the machine filling everything around them, each with his own way of understanding that metallic heart of Ceres.

The two stood side by side before the glass, the sound of the machine’s clicks filling the room like a cruel mantra.

Masord adjusted his dark glasses, watching the mechanism turn, indifferent to what Tomas felt.

— For me — Masord said calmly — it is just a well-built machine. Nothing more.

— He sighed, and added, almost as a polite provocation: — Why do you let yourselves be affected so much?

Tomas took a long time to answer. He stared fixedly at the Gear—Mother, motionless, his eyes clouded by a dense emotion.

He took a deep breath, raised his eyes to Masord, and said in a calm but unquestionable tone:

— Explaining the emotion of belonging to Mother Ceres… to a citizen of Ceres… is completely unnecessary.

— And to someone who does not belong to Mother Ceres…

— …it is simply impossible.

The room fell into a heavy silence after that.

Masord lowered his eyes to the clipboard and, for the first time, said nothing.

The machine continued to click, indifferent to the two of them.

When he left the room, Masord slowly removed his dark glasses, feeling the cold air of the corridor cut across his skin like a razor.

The clicking of the machine still echoed in his mind — that dry, rhythmic sound, like bones breaking and reassembling.

He repeated Major Tomas’s sentence mentally:

“Explaining the emotion of belonging to Mother Ceres… to a citizen of Ceres… is completely unnecessary. And to someone who does not belong to Mother Ceres… it is simply impossible.”

Impossible.

And yet… fascinating.

Ceres was perfect, of that he could no longer doubt.

It was a mechanical, mathematical, absolute perfection — but there was something damaged within it.

As though its own perfection had corroded it from the inside, like a cracked mirror that still reflected.

A miracle… or a plague?

He could not say.

He only knew that the poison of Ceres was contagious. And, like all poison, dangerous.

“A nest of snakes,” he thought.

“Without wings, but with a body long enough to embrace everything. And the venom… ah, the venom can be studied. You can even make an antidote.”

A fascist regime — of that there was no doubt — but he could not tear from his eyes the images he had seen in the streets when he arrived.

Lines for bread, children in clean uniforms, no one begging on the street corners.

And he himself had already known hunger, real hunger, in the war of his own country.

A man who has known hunger does not wish it upon anyone.

“Perhaps that is the only thing keeping Ceres standing,” he concluded silently, as he walked down the white and silent corridor.

“Not starving to death. The Mother cares, educates… and devours. So that others do not go hungry.”

For a moment, he stopped beside a tall window and looked at the city outside, with its cold lights and immaculate streets.

He smiled at one corner of his mouth, almost ironically — but with a respect he did not want to admit.

“Beautiful, this serpent.”

And he continued on.