Calling All Humans And Able Volunteers

Originally published at The Revolution Will Be Monetized. You can comment here or there.

Large, proud, vulnerable.

Yeah, just like that. We registered. We breed. We collect.

Are we bitter? Shouldn’t we be? Should we be articulate about it — perhaps listing out in simplest form, one by one the crimes committed against our humble newly christened sub-species?

Yeah, the girl was mental. Put her off into the little room. Snuff her out early — push her further and further into the darkness and hopefully she’ll just slip away. Problem solved. The little girl will trouble unwanted parents no more.

The drama was common. That’s what the books say. The isolation was a result of modern living. A more connected sociopolitical environment lead to easy access of information. When Mommy’s head was buried in information and floating on chemicals, who then will notice little Shi’s pretty new hair? Or Shi’s pretty little bands or ribbons that she put on just for Mommy to notice? Or daddy?

Who was daddy? That was the nickname of the man who showed up late at night able to talk only of how tired he was and talk of some faraway world of a large organization unfathomable to a little girl.

He wouldn’t notice ribbons either. He would hug and then push her away to get at the keyboard and the information. It was an addiction. The pushing was just a side effect. We’d gotten used to it, all of us, the forgotten.

The pets had it worse. They didn’t have enough awareness to take a really nasty fucking fall, draw a little blood, and get those few moments of interaction — tribute of a sort, a brief psychic return of the mother or father to older times where children were unsafe and needed more protection. Children now weren’t vulnerable. There weren’t men out there who collected pictures of little fannies. No of course not.

Don’t be bitter, Shi.

We do all of this for you.

Several times they tried that response. Then they moved on to not caring. They accepted what the counselors told them — Shi was just too goddamn smart. What could she do about it? What could they do? This was how the world worked? One couldn’t step out of the world could they? Could they? Wouldn’t it be like a sailor encased in lead stepping off of a ship’s stern, descending into frigid night time water, black like the world of dreams and sleep, and like the finest sleep increasing in blackness and chill with each passing moment? How long outside of the proper world of air could that sailor live? How long could the parents?

No, better to play along and live within that world. The new breed of soldier was one who could adopt and absorb the flows of information in ever widening circles of knowledge. We, as a race, knew more with each flicker of a quantum clock. Or did it flicker? It did. It didn’t.

It’s all statistical.

Just like her parent’s parenting skillz.

She made it to sixteen. That was certainly worth some percentage points towards young Shi’s success ratio. She passed the right tests. There was something strange in the way she thought though.

The neurologists didn’t find any anomalies.

The psychiatrists however took her in for more study.

Sub-species — she decided it herself sitting in her own piss beside the hospital bed in the ward where they kept people like her. They shaved her head. They drugged the Christ out of her… not that a sensible family would’ve attempted to put the Christ into her in the first place. No, the only reason to instill Christ in the modern age was to prepare the child for a career as a professional panderer or politician as they’re occasionally called by the lesser more homey papers. That wasn’t her problem.

She was just too smart. The television didn’t numb her senses. She was too perceptive — Shi was! Too smart. Too quick. There were places for that, but the numbers had lied. Her parents were statistically wrong to provide the proper genetic makeup and intelligence potential to account for her success.

There was nothing worse in society than an anomaly. Do you know why? Because it makes the statistically average feel bad. Fuck Ayn Rand — this is real. Don’t invoke her name in this. She was really a man named Irving Mahkovich. This isn’t about Irving — this is Corporate America.

The sounds of her room, the dark room (why waste electricity on something that had a high probability of just being recycled anyway?), bounced and danced along the narrow black-bricked slime-covered walls of the tunnel that lead down to her head.

Mental.

Yeah. No shit.

Bitter.

You think?

Her hand in front of her face — Shi’s hand — a creaking set of long lines slowly dancing and spidering down to a filthy paw.  For days she watched it.  She found an answer there or at least solace. The dancing lines of fingers, moving rhythmically. She felt her heart, far below the tower holding her brain, beneath several layers of soil and then wrapped off its own cell of ancient granite blocks start to move in time with the hands. Faster faster. Slower slower.

How slow could I make it go? Shi wondered.

Slower. Slower.

Then she willed it to stop — little Shi’s heart buried down down down.

Stop!

It did.

The tower was quiet. The room was quiet. Her mouth stretched. It hurt a little. Who moved it. Teeth were exposed to cold bare air.

A gasp from somewhere underneath, miles deep, but inside.

Her lungs, hidden from her by centuries of planning and misdirection, filled. There was a flapping sound then as the linens of the lungs shuddered under the gust.

Cold concrete struck against her forehead. Hands slapped down beside head. Dark almond eyes, hidden always in shadow, moved of their own accord to show the Lady Shi what a hand was.

She remembered it. It wasn’t dancing now. No lines. No motion. Her heart was beating but she couldn’t hear it. She just knew. The hand in front of her was filthy. The smell of piss and shit and sweat filled her nostrils.

Her body shuddered, starting in the middle and running in equal waves out towards either end — top and bottom. Her neck twitched sending her view of the world up, down, around, then to concrete.

A heavy clang sounded off to one side of her. A click. She knew this. A creak and a small zephyr danced across her nose bearing the smell of ammonia, of clean.

“Welcome back, Shi,” said an anonymous male voice.

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Words: ship’s, pushing, collect, picture, several, gotten, week, registered, breed, prompted, early, tribute, mental, souls, diffuse, times, bitter, vulnerable, large, proud