BOOKS

alright guys. heres the deal.
i fail at blogging…in case you haven’t noticed.
and i’ve been having one of my slumps, as i so often do.
but i just got some new books from the library, hopefully i’ll be inspired to write reviews and make comparisons and have you all eating out of the palm of my hand again.
the reason why i’ve been slacking is because i’ve been busy.
busy as in, i barely have time to breathe, my body is falling apart at the seams, my mind is in tatters, and i’m still trying to function as a normal human in society. i’ve had a lot going on.
i’m whining, i’m sorry.
ANYWAY. heres one of the things i’ve been working on, its for my writing class, we were asked to write a short fiction story based using a description of an object that we had already written, and a slip of paper that gave us a character to focus on. my object that i chose was a leaf, and the character was a rebellious student.
and because i don’t have the energy to write anything remotely productive here, i’ll post it.
its set in the future. just for your information.

and its called…

“What kind of world would that be?”

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The school bell keeps ringing, ringing, ringing, as if calling me out of my self-induced stupor. I watch as all of the other happy students practically skip with joy into the school, all while I sit outside on a lonely bench where no one will see me. Not that they notice me to begin with, but caution is always a good idea. How anyone can want to enter that building of boredom and brick is entirely beyond me, but then, I’ve always been told that I’m missing that elusive obedience gene.

I watch as the leaves fall from the trees around me, their suicidal desire for change is something I understand completely. I’ve been called strange, stupid, and any number of slang terms used to describe a natural-born like me.

A crimson leaf flutters down, its veins already turning dark with the hopefulness of death and the peace that accompanies it. I envy its abstract edges and odd points, all the decorations that its genetic mutations allowed for it to have. The once emerald stem curls around itself, as if trying to embrace death. The sad truth of it all is that I have much more in common with that single, dying organism than I do with the rest of the student population, not to mention the other 95% of the country that’s genetically engineered and the 78% of the world who went and jumped on the band wagon.

Blonde hair, azure blue eyes, the sickening pure white glow of the skin…if Hitler were still around, he’d figure that this was all part of some bizarre heaven. Everything so precisely created to emphasize our purity as a nation, our efficiency as human beings. The government-approved gene-splice embryos ripening in some plastic dish somewhere, just waiting to grow up and become the same society-dependent brat that the rest of them are. Every brain washed civilian carrying out his or her job happily and quietly, even if they got stuck being a garbage man for the rest of their lives. The quiet undertone of brainwashing that runs in currents through the school system. Apparently I’m the only one who has a problem with this.

Not that my opinion counts.

According to their laws and books and medical experts, I shouldn’t exist. According to them, I’m some strange anomaly that wouldn’t have happened had someone’s perfect wife not slept with someone else’s perfect husband. The story goes that I’m some miracle, that I defied medicine, but everyone knows that that’s just code for “I was someone’s unwanted baby that got dropped in a dumpster.” Back in the days of Sparta, I would have just been tossed off a cliff like a coin in a wishing well, but the government officials can’t bring themselves to do that, trying to fake some sort of virtue that they can never hope to actually have. The real reason why they refuse to off me is the fact that they know that I could be their daughter, a fact which would be discovered once my dead body was found and autopsied. Instead of facing political scandal, they would much rather feign righteousness and toss me into the alien world I’m supposed to assimilate into, each while thanking their separate Gods that they no longer have to deal with me.

Not that it bothers me anymore, I’ve pretty much been passed around like a hot potato for the past 17 years of my life, until I could be let loose into the world as an adult of 18. It was then that I was released into the clutches of college, which is basically just a glorified version of High school; except that the students get to find out what job we’ll be expected to do for the rest of our lives. Teachers spent the first day of class passing out a computerized prophecy to all the students, a slip of paper letting each person know what sort of monotony they would be expected to endure for the rest of their lives. Mostly those things are determined at birth and kept secret until you enter college, but people usually have a general idea of what they’ll be given, just judging by their parents and their social rank.

Now, where does that leave me? Assembly-line worker, of course. Anyone who isn’t in the database from birth is given the default job of an assembly-line worker, the jobs that none of the good little gene-splices want to do. Not that I expected anything better than that.

So that’s how I found myself outside on the second day of school, staring at the leaves on a bench outside. Technically I was still at school, because the scanners don’t care where you are on campus, as long as you’re on it. The people who write the programs and policies for places like this don’t give much thought to freaks like me with a tendency to break rules, so there’s about a thousand loopholes to slip through if you’re determined enough to find them. The only loophole I haven’t found is the one that lets you escape your future of monotony and grey machines. The scanners make sure you’re where you’re supposed to be, be it at work or at home or at school. If you aren’t where you’re supposed to be…you don’t go anywhere for a long time.

One of my friends from grade-school, a kid named Ryan, decided early on that he needed to get away from the agonizing tedium that had already permeated our lives and minds. Ryan was one of those “genetic anomalies” that I’m supposed to be, only he was the real deal. Not looks-wise, he was just as much of an Aryan race prototype as anyone else, but he refused to believe all the lies we were fed about our “perfect society,” and sought to break that image as often as possible. Even as a 6^th grader, he knew how to push the buttons of those in charge, and he was sedated more than once, as a sort of passive punishment that suited our passive and cowardly laws. Instead of encouraging obedience, these punishment sessions (they are formally known as social classes or lessons, but everyone knows what that means.) prompted Ryan to pull his most drastic prank ever: leaving.

At birth, each baby has a microchip inserted into their wrist. The chip stores everything about you, like an ID card back in the old days, and it is hooked up to the nation-wide database, which is how they keep track of you. If the scanners find you someplace you aren’t supposed to be, your chip sends you an electric shock, enough voltage to cause discomfort, but not enough to kill you. If you don’t immediately leave the premises, you get a second shock, this time more painful, and potentially fatal if you have a weak heart, or are too young or too old. Still not leaving? You’re shot. Straight and simple. The gun blast is meant to be heard so as to warn people of what can happen to them. Supposedly this is an antiterrorism system that also functions to help prevent school shootings, or at least that’s what the government officials and politicians told the tax-payers. Same with the chip, which was designed to be used to stop kidnappings and murders. People will throw away any freedom as long as they think they get something in return.

Anyway, Ryan knew damn well what would happen to him, and he did it anyway. I don’t know if it was suicide or just his mistaken belief in his own immortality, all I know is that in the summer before 7^th grade, Ryan walked out of the housing division we lived in, and a few minutes later I heard a gunshot. News reports said that it was some senile old man who was well past his time anyway and wasn’t aware of what he was doing, and Ryan’s parents laughed in my face when I tried to tell them what really happened. “Don’t worry, dear.” They told me. “He’s off visiting his grandparents; he’ll write to you, we’re sure of it.”

Letters did come, they were in Ryan’s handwriting, which was strange in and of itself, because no one wrote letters in our day and age. No one except for Ryan and I, who as 6^th graders thought we were breaking so many rules by not using the computerized communication system. Even I was fooled for a short while, until I got a letter at the start of the school year talking about how great his new school was, and all the friends he was making. The lies they feed us are so easy to digest when you don’t look too hard. The fact of the matter was that Ryan had had the courage to fight the lies, while I merely sat there, wallowing in the falsehoods and filth, waiting for deliverance as if it would fall in my lap like the cherry and cinnamon leaves from the maple tree next to the bench I sat on. Who was I kidding, thinking that I was so much better and different from the people I despised, all the while I did nothing to oppose their rules except exist against their theories and scientific facts.

The truth, or close enough to it, was that I had no place to go. With no courage to die, I was stuck with the slate-colored buildings and cold machines I was born to. Had a leaf not fallen into my lap, begging me to stay with all of its jagged, tattered edges, like the ragged sides of a wound, I very well might have gotten up and walked inside, resigned to my life of constructing toothbrushes or microwaves.

But I didn’t.

The leaf looked so fragile, yet so defiant, so brave. It skittered off of my lap and fell to the ground, the wind pushing it along the asphalt as the leaf tried desperately to grab at the obsidian-colored path. It was then that I heard rustling in the bushes.
Another thing the scanners had helped to do was to rid all schools and office buildings and their grounds of wild animals. Simulated bird calls floated down from the trees, but actual birds were deemed a distraction to those esteemed citizens who were working to better the country. That being said, the rustle in the bushes couldn’t have been wild life. That theory was further disproved when those same bushes began talking to me.

“Hey, Lice. Get down here.

Trust me, I thought I was going nuts just as much as you probably do.
“Lyssa! Come on, we don’t have time for the uncertainty here.”

Then I remembered where I had heard that nickname before. As casually as I could, I walked over to the bushes and began pushing the branches around, as if pruning the leaves. If anyone was watching (which, while doubtful, was possible) I would just appear to be a nature-lover, instead of the treasonous conspirator I was about to become.

“Ryan? Is that really you?” I whispered into the bushes. I felt rather insane talking to bushes, but I had to know I wasn’t hearing things.
“Yeah, its me!” a joyous voice called, before a hand shot out and dragged me into the perfectly rounded bush. I felt momentarily sorry for whoever’s perfect pruning work I had just ruined, but upon seeing my long lost friend I forgot that thought.
“How are you still alive? I heard you die!” I said, pushing leaves and branches out of my face.

“No, you heard me get shot in the forearm.”

Suddenly it all made sense. If aimed right, the bullet would take out the chip, therefore making Ryan invisible to the sensors. Whoever was sent out to collect the body would just assume that it was someone’s lost dog that got shot and ran away.
“But…How did you survive?” I spoke incredulously, as if talking to a god.

“Simple. I found the rest of them.”

“The rest of who?”

“People like you, only older. Mostly bad-genes, though there are a few like me who wizened up and got out. They all took me in. I can’t much use my right arm anymore, but that’s nothing compared to staying here.”

Still entirely baffled, I kept trying to stutter out sentences, none of which made any sense. The whole idea seemed way too good to be true. An entire society where I could live how I wanted? Definitely too good to be true. My life never worked out to be a happy little cliché like that; I was full of too much bad luck and ill-will.

I finally managed coherency, and mumbled out something like “So why did you come back?”
“I had to find you, Lyssa. I told them about you and they want you to come back with me. You’ve been one of us since the beginning.”

I threw my arms around him; my first human contact in almost a decade.

“There’s one catch,” Ryan said, his body tensing slightly, as if afraid of my response.

Uh-oh.
My brain started instantly coming up with a thousand different things that I would have to do to gain access to this secret society, initiation rituals, blood promises, suicidal missions that I wouldn’t come home from. The thoughts and fears all piled up in my head with every passing second, my mind racing toward the final moment of self-destruction when my brain exploded in unwanted feelings and confused emotions. The alarms sounded in my head, screaming at me to leave, to run, anything to get away. Warning, Self-Destruct has been activated. Prepare for impact in 5…4…3…

“What is it…” I managed to say, even though my brain was trying to say a thousand other things all at once.

2…

Brandishing a switchblade, which he then flicked open, Ryan sighed. “We have to cut the chip out of your arm.”

1…Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for the impact of all of my hopes and dreams imploding.
“Oh…um…do I get anesthetic or anything?” I coughed out.
With a pained look on his face, Ryan shook his head no.
“It’s now or never, Lyssa. We have to go now. It’s too dangerous for me and the others to be in bad territory for this long. The pack is leaving tomorrow morning.”

“Is it…will it…am I…” Visions of suicides, stab wounds, sliced veins and arteries surged through my brain, short circuiting it. We had been indoctrinated from a young age to never injure ourselves, both to discourage later suicides and to prevent people from taking out the chips. Mostly the latter, the former is just a cover-up. No matter how much I disagreed with that society of genetically enhanced infants, that part of my training stayed strong. I focused on my breathing to keep from freaking out too much more.

“It’s the only way, Lyssa. You have to. It won’t hurt bad at all, I promise. You’ll probably pass out & not feel a thing.”

I eyed his jagged scar, the skin puckered and discolored from healing on its own. I cringed to myself at what I was about to do, but there was no other option. Holding out my arm, I whispered “Anything so I don’t have to shoot it off.”
His gleaming silver blade was ice cold as it touched my skin, drawing a line of oozing red down my arm. And then…

“And then I woke up.” I said, popping a bite of the latest school lunch creation into my mouth and instantly regretting it. “Jeez, what did they cook for lunch, cement and bad-genes?” I asked, my friends all giggling with me. I looked over at my boyfriend, Ryan, who still seemed troubled by my dream.
“What’s wrong honey? You seem out of it.”
“I guess I’m just thinking too much. I mean, do you ever think about how we treat the few bad-genes at school?” He looked down and started picking at the charcoal-gray mush, moving it around the tray.
“If I didn’t know better, Ryan, I’d say you felt guilty.” I said, an incredulous note in my voice.
“Well…Yeah, I guess I do feel guilty. Just because they weren’t engineered doesn’t mean they aren’t people like you and me, Lyssa.”

The whole table burst out laughing.
“Just like you and me? Ha ha! Oh, Ryan, you’re always so funny!”
“Whatever. I’ll see you later.” He grumbled, before shoving away from the table and walking away, all in a huff.

I looked at my friends remaining around the table and sighed. Cracking a smile, I said “Maybe someone should have given him a better humor gene. Just imagine those bad-genes being considered our equals! Ha ha! What kind of world would that be?”

so there you have it.
let me know what you think!