The Administrator walked past an endless row of two-way mirrors. In the first section, the cubicles held young mothers coddling infants. He stopped for a moment at a window where a fail signal had activated; the baby was showing some defect. He read his tablet: substandard cardiac stats. He knew what came next. He involuntarily winced as the woman held the baby’s head firmly, then quickly, expertly, snapped its neck. She put the now-still bundle back into the cot. Her face showed no emotion whatsoever. All the women here were high-functioning sociopaths; they had to be, to be able to raise babies that might be euthanized at any moment if they showed some inadequacy. In any case, she would get a new ward soon enough. He continued on, passing through the toddler section and so on. A graduation ceremony was on his calendar tomorrow. The youths would be presented with a rare treat of aroma-infused yeast meal before being sent out to do what they had been created for.

The world had run out of slack long ago, and things were getting ever tighter. The planet now could support less than a hundredth of a percent of the billions of past centuries. Everyone had a role to play, and if they couldn’t play a role, they had no reason, no right, to exist. His job was to ensure that every new human fit into one of the required roles: worker, scientist, security, or administration, and excelled at that role. Everyone was a hero, or they weren’t at all. The Birthing Administration made sure that there was a steady stream of new Heroes ready to replace the ones that passed away. He himself had been born and raised here, of course. He recalled the face of his "mother", her smile. Now he knew, of course, that it was all a fake, a facade, an act by a perfectly trained actor whose whole purpose in life was to play a loving mother. It had felt real enough to him then, up to the point where he’d been taken away to the toddler section. He’d cried for a bit, but not for long. (Administrators had to be logical, capable of hard decisions without the distraction of emotions.) He knew she didn’t waste a single tear on him; was incapable of it, in fact. When he’d first been made Administrator he trawled through the databases to find her. It was highly illegal, of course. He’d never been sure why he did it. Why risk everything? He unlocked the triple password checks he’d installed and opened the image, the one photo of her face that existed. Dark, thin hair. A blank expression. Eyes that seemed to have nothing behind them. He wished they’d photographed her smile, that wonderful, beatific fake that kept him going even now. He thought maybe someday people would have real mothers again. He closed the file and went home.