M
Michael
Guest
After the riots of 2073, when I was in the academy, there was a senior mentor whose very name inspired our admiration. Even among the older andrones who were so thoroughly programmed as not to be so magically entranced by such a counterculture mask, Shay’s notoriety was still prevalent. The jarring and pale face, with dark protruding eyes, and the soft hints of facial hair, all of this seemed magical. Because, out of all the bald, androgynous, and cloned students in our genetically closed society, he was the only one impure enough to grow those wispy brown patches of hair. Our guardian’s cloning program was shown to be less than perfect the day they created this animate and fuzzy face that came to be known as Telemachus Shay.
Shay considered himself to be much more natural, and less of a hybrid clone than the rest of us – not only in the way he dressed himself, but also in the way he mocked our surrogates, our programming, and mutinied every time their backs were turned. Everybody thought that was pretty wicked. Once he even won a look-alike contest pretending to be a local senator (the very senator who forced a gun ban triggering what journalists later dubbed, ‘the redneck riots of 73’). He padded a cheap suit, which he had gotten from a thrift store, and painted a mustache under his nose – then strutted about like a car salesman pretending to be everyone’s best friend. He won first place. It was on the local news the next day.
But, the senator apparently felt that having an androne compared to him was a testament to the dullness of his character and political convictions. And the fatality of our contest didn’t seem to matter at all to a natural-born liberal bureaucrat whose constituents, that his political career depended on, didn’t care either. So, the institutional funding of our academy was threatened and Shay was no longer a “senator”, but among andrones throughout the academy Shay would always be our liaison to the natural-born.
Though Shay represented our sense of normalcy, the providence of our interactions with the natural-born was of a secondary concern to our more pigmented surrogates. Overeducated and under-burdened, they held telemetric response measurements to be of the greatest importance. To them our desire to relate to a populace concept of what was normal, no matter how it was projected, was seen as a flaw in our programming. How well we communicated with our machines was what our surrogates were really interested in. Our ‘telemetric response measurements’ were a major part of what determined salaries and advancement at our little academy on the hill. So, whenever Shay interrupted their testing, it only served to fuel their animosity towards him. Though, seldom would he do anything directly to counter their loathing. No apologies made – just that wide Riddler’s smile ridden by a pair of bulging cheeks. Our hearts seemed to lift whenever we saw that comical smile.
Nevertheless, the effect of Shay’s mockery was absolute – the adoration, the repulsion, and all the nippy little one-liners that he blurted, all the scratching that he evoked, and all the people that he ridiculed, all of these things helped prepare us for the stoning to come. The Academy’s obsessive focus on militant learning programs fed his defiant passion. That was why his eyes bulged with such determination. His outlandish immaturity was a sign of the internal conflict that kept our self-pity at bay. The comedic relief helped us forget, if only for a moment, our regimented servitude.
Shay considered himself to be much more natural, and less of a hybrid clone than the rest of us – not only in the way he dressed himself, but also in the way he mocked our surrogates, our programming, and mutinied every time their backs were turned. Everybody thought that was pretty wicked. Once he even won a look-alike contest pretending to be a local senator (the very senator who forced a gun ban triggering what journalists later dubbed, ‘the redneck riots of 73’). He padded a cheap suit, which he had gotten from a thrift store, and painted a mustache under his nose – then strutted about like a car salesman pretending to be everyone’s best friend. He won first place. It was on the local news the next day.
But, the senator apparently felt that having an androne compared to him was a testament to the dullness of his character and political convictions. And the fatality of our contest didn’t seem to matter at all to a natural-born liberal bureaucrat whose constituents, that his political career depended on, didn’t care either. So, the institutional funding of our academy was threatened and Shay was no longer a “senator”, but among andrones throughout the academy Shay would always be our liaison to the natural-born.
Though Shay represented our sense of normalcy, the providence of our interactions with the natural-born was of a secondary concern to our more pigmented surrogates. Overeducated and under-burdened, they held telemetric response measurements to be of the greatest importance. To them our desire to relate to a populace concept of what was normal, no matter how it was projected, was seen as a flaw in our programming. How well we communicated with our machines was what our surrogates were really interested in. Our ‘telemetric response measurements’ were a major part of what determined salaries and advancement at our little academy on the hill. So, whenever Shay interrupted their testing, it only served to fuel their animosity towards him. Though, seldom would he do anything directly to counter their loathing. No apologies made – just that wide Riddler’s smile ridden by a pair of bulging cheeks. Our hearts seemed to lift whenever we saw that comical smile.
Nevertheless, the effect of Shay’s mockery was absolute – the adoration, the repulsion, and all the nippy little one-liners that he blurted, all the scratching that he evoked, and all the people that he ridiculed, all of these things helped prepare us for the stoning to come. The Academy’s obsessive focus on militant learning programs fed his defiant passion. That was why his eyes bulged with such determination. His outlandish immaturity was a sign of the internal conflict that kept our self-pity at bay. The comedic relief helped us forget, if only for a moment, our regimented servitude.
