Collected Accounts | After He Went to the Second Health Station, He Was Not Quite the Same

(These are reader messages, compiled. The content has not been verified, and the senders do not know one another.)

We received several messages. The senders do not know each other and live in different districts, yet they describe the same thing, down to the wording. We are setting them side by side; judge for yourself.

A classmate of mine was called in to the health station for an assessment. Afterwards he was still him, the same grades, the same habits. But when he smiles, that smile is very standard, standard to the point — I don't know how to put it — that it is as if someone taught him how to smile.

My brother went in once, and afterwards he stopped bringing up those strange things. He used to say he could see things other people could not, and we all put it down to stress. Now he does not say it. He is fine. A little too neatly fine.

After my girlfriend came back she threw out the sketchbook she had been drawing in for 6 years. She said she could not make sense of the drawings herself, and only tore the cover off and kept it. She is fine now.

My flatmate's walking rhythm changed. He used to walk slowly and the pedestrian light strip was always pushing him to the outside. Now he walks straight down the middle and is never pushed once. He has not noticed.

My grandmother has the nape implant kind. Since coming back from the health station she still reaches up every few seconds to touch behind her ear. The rhythm of her tremor and the rhythm of the touching do not line up. She is fine.

The day my father came back from the health station, he stopped halfway through dinner, looked at my mother for a long time, and then asked her where she had got to. My mother had not been speaking. He is fine. He has been fine every day since.

The assessment room on the third floor at school gave my classmate three options, all of them about when to install. He asked whether there was another one, and the screen did not answer. He chose this week. He is fine now.

I was called in once myself. They were very polite and wanted me to have a small thing installed, said it was to help me line up. I did not. Afterwards a line came up on the screen putting me into some category, saying the follow-up handling does not require my consent. I am writing this down while I still can.

We cannot verify any of them. Not one comes with a complete time and place, and not one sender left an address we could reply to.

The health stations mean well, and on that we agree. People with a high perception deviation value get headaches and cannot sleep, and going back in is the right thing.

We tried only the fourth account, once. Last Wednesday afternoon we stood by the pedestrian light strip on the Seventh Ring Road for 10 minutes and counted the people walking down the middle who were never pushed once: 4 out of 60. We did not go up and ask them where they had been.