Gregor Trnka had not applied for a transfer, yet the notice arrived in an envelope without seal or stamp, slipped under his apartment door during the night. It read:
You are hereby reassigned to District 87’s
Report immediately. Failure to comply will result in pedagogical
suspension.
He didn’t know what “pedagogical suspension” meant. No one did. There was no District 87 on the maps, at least none updated since the last cartographic freeze. Still, the tone was final, and the language bore the impersonal authority Gregor had learned to obey without question during his 19 years as a certified instructor of Applied Literacies and Civic Poise.
He arrived at the Center on a fog-heavy morning. The building, once a high school or perhaps a courthouse, was crumbling at the edges—its banners still declared EXCELLENCE THROUGH OBEDIENCE. Inside, no students could be seen, only corridors lined with locked filing cabinets and bulletin boards curling at the corners.
A man in a coat too long for his arms greeted him at the front desk.
“You’re late,” he said, not asking for a name.
“I was not told—” Gregor began, but the man waved him into silence with a clipboard.
“You’ll begin with Curriculum Reconciliation in Sublevel D. Bring no materials. Bring no assumptions.”
Gregor descended. The stairwell flickered under fluorescent tubes that hummed with the sound of forgotten policies. Sublevel D was neither warm nor cold, simply absent—like a room in a dream where you remember what you never knew.
There were others already there: educators, or former ones, seated in mismatched chairs, holding papers they didn’t write. Some wept silently. One mumbled, “I taught civics once. They called it subversive.” Another whispered, “My students passed every test, and they still sent me here.”
A voice from the intercom crackled to life.
“All units: begin Self-Evaluation Module 9. Question 1: Have you ever
questioned the curriculum you were given? If so, explain why.”
Gregor had no pen. The others seemed to write without ink, moving their hands as if it mattered. He tried to mimic them, though his answers felt like guesses to questions he’d never ask.
At lunch, a gray tray appeared through a hatch in the wall. It contained only a form titled Meal Intake Report and a packet of theoretical nutrients. He signed the report without tasting the food.
Days passed. Or hours. Or semesters.
Once, he asked a custodian in the hallway, “When will the students return?”
“There haven’t been students in years,” the man said, without stopping. “They graduated themselves.”
“But why are we still here?”
The man paused, blinking at Gregor as if the question had never been posed before. “Someone has to verify the outcomes,” he said.
One day, Gregor was summoned to the Assessment Chamber. A tribunal sat at a
table high above, their faces shadowed by bureaucracy. A voice boomed:
“Gregor Trnka, you are hereby approved for Conditional Reinstatement Pending
Further Review.”
He blinked. “Reinstatement to where?”
“To the Role of Interim Educator for the Department of Legacy Learning.”
“But what am I supposed to teach?”
The tribunal conferred. One voice answered:
“Your subject is Defunct Systems and Their Inevitable Return. Use
whatever resources you imagine.”
He never left the building again. In time, Gregor developed a full curriculum on the disappearance of learning, the decay of memory, and the philosophy of endless assessment. He had no students, only reviews—papers written by others, evaluating lessons that were never taught.
And still, each week, a new Transfer Notice would appear beneath his door.
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