Post by goldenmyst on May 16, 2019 8:28:17 GMT -6
Dorm Rules
Under the leader, a proper order was arranged. The mentally ill on disability were separated by sex with men housed with other men and women collected in dormitories for women. This was true even for couples. It served to prevent pregnancies from occurring. After all, we didn’t want those genes passed on to new generations.
I haven’t seen my true love Marsha in over a month. We no longer have disability checks and are sent to a commodity warehouse for our personal food. I catch a glimpse of Marsha walking towards the bus. She has a black eye from one of her sisters in a situation which she dares not tell me about since it would heap criticism upon the system our rational governance has created for our benefit.
We board our separate buses and head out. Upon arrival, we see the recreational area for swimming at the creek. But we have caught the last bus and it is too late to take a swim. Marsha gets her tray and follows me around the dispensary to gather her food. I tell her, “I Love you.”
She says, “I love you so much. Let me sneak into your room one night while your bunkmate is out on vacation. I miss you so very much.”
“Then you would lose your commodity privileges for a month darling. I’ll always love you no matter how long and by what distance we are separated.”
She says, “One day we’ll be free.”
As we gather our food she drops her tray spilling her granola. We approach the accountant. I whisper into Marsha’s ear, “Don’t tell anyone but you can have my granola. In fact, you can have any of my food.”
She exclaims, “Really! You are a gentleman.”
I say, “For you, my love, I’ll eat cafeteria grub for the rest of my life.”
I finally get the courage to ask her. “How did you get that black eye?”
She protects both her and me from the risk of loose lips. She says, “It is a badge of honor for our lordship on high. A woman insulted our king of kings. We brawled and by defending the honor of our leader I earned a citizen of the month with extra trips to the food warehouse.”
“You are brave to follow the party line in a cat fight. But I’ve always known you could hold your own when faced with danger.” My praise serves to demonstrate both hers and my loyalty to the master of our universe. “I have become a lapsed patriot. Perhaps in the name of re-education, we would be granted a dispensation to spend days together.”
Marsha says, “Yes, the commissar of our district would surely appreciate the value of your relearning the perfection of our order. Then it is decided. I will expedite our request. But until then I need a kiss to confirm the sincerity of your intent.”
She takes my hand and we hide behind the produce stalls. To our joy, the request is allowed without supervision which Marsha’s petition asserted would inhibit the spontaneity of the lessons. And so what transpired was unrestrained love made in the forests outside the city. But a bittersweet pregnancy came upon Marsha. Yet the administrators decided to let the child see the light of day. But I would never see Marsha again.
Then the calamity comes. Any semblance of world order fell apart in the ruins of cities where I roamed.
My search for Marsha takes me to a likely place to find survivors which might be in the outpatient clinic for daughters of the republic where mentally ill women were liberated from their parents to live the lives they were destined to as wards of the state where they were taught the politics of liberation and freedom. I stand still as the afternoon sunlight peeks through the shattered glass. The room is deathly quiet. All around me are chairs in a circle. I look down and spot a paper mache figurine. The quiet is deafening.
In my mind, I can imagine the laughter and pain, which were shared here so many years ago. The air is humid and cool. I feel a breeze through the gaping window hole. The Venetian blinds lay on the floor bent and broken. I stand in silent remembrance of those souls who have disappeared.
There is no way for me to know for sure where they went. I wander out into the hallway. The floor is coated in dust. The paint on the walls is peeling. No one has been here in years, except maybe a wandering vagrant looking for a place to sleep. I see empty cigarette packs and beer cans littering a corner. I pass the offices. The doors are off their hinges and hanging ajar. Inside the desks are scattered with pens and papers, all records of people who are long gone.
The rumors couldn’t be verified. The government didn’t leak any info about their fate before the TV screens went static. Then there was no news to report their fate. However the final media reports, though rumors, were disturbing, to say the least. The last terrorist attack and the annihilation of Washington D.C. had destroyed the national budget. We simply didn’t have the funds to take care of people like Marsha and me anymore. The number crunchers were at a loss. So the decision was made in secret.
Kevorkian was released to head the team. Those at risk suicidal patients were given the right to die. Those who hung on to life were sent to a secret place in the Rocky Mountains. They too perished. It was something incomprehensible in more civilized times. However, in the wake of a national disaster of that magnitude nobody had any answers. Should these people be allowed to starve on the streets? Or was euthanasia more humane? I will never know with any certitude what the fate of these millions was. I can only wonder. But my search for Marsha is an obsession.
The land is pockmarked in trees ripped from their roots and tangled in clumps. If there is a future it has to be somewhere further down the wasteland of what once was America. No crops can be grown to sustain us in the plutonium tilled land which greets us ahead.
But appearances can be deceiving. I aim my pocket particle beam projector at the contorted earth and voila a beautiful lake appears. The cloaked land reveals itself as an oasis of water out here in this radioactive wasteland. The holo fields which carpet the surviving bodies of water and forest are designed to keep the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow out of reach. Hence, the deception would cause us to give up on the ark called earth. This would drive the last nail in the coffin of the extinction of the lost tribe of America.
Low and behold running up the lakeshore are two young people in blue jeans. Not only had the cloak obscured the lake but also a young man and woman who apparently had hidden in this remnant of the earth’s once verdant country. They join me and my new wife up on the hillside.
The woman’s face is that of my Marsha having tricked Charon with the ruse of her being a deliverer of souls instead of a passenger to Hades. The maiden embraces me with the words, “Daddy, Mom told me all about you. She showed me your picture.”
I replied, “God, you are made in her image. Fatherhood eluded me since your Mom and I were separated. What happened to your Mom? I am dying to know.”
“My name is Samantha. My Mom raised me until the calamity. When the guardians of the state scattered she took me with her looking for you. She couldn’t keep pace with me and told me to go ahead. My last memory of her is that she made me promise to seek you out. Now I’ve found you.”
My new spouse and I are too old to have babies. But my daughter and her boyfriend are just the right age at the springtime of their lives.
But the couple bickers and argues like spouses in a marriage on the verge of divorce. How can they procreate with such animosity toward each other? So I put on the new hat of couple’s counselor. But my tact is to explain to them what is at stake for humanity and why they have to at least feign getting along. If there is to be a new generation they will be the progenitors. For God sake, make love, not discord. My wife and I may not survive to parent your children so you two are in it for the long haul I admonish them.
So our motley crew heads out into the ruins of a city. There I come upon the broken down house in which I’d lived with my wife before the calamity. The photo albums from our trips are there mostly intact. There is a picture of us bathing in a hot spring in British Columbia. Then there is my LP collection. A Japanese jazz record catches my eye and excites me with nostalgia. But sadly this is the past and we have to move on to our future wherever that may lie.
So our young friends who will hopefully repopulate this land follow us into the wilderness in search of a place to grow crops and bravely face a future, after all, is lost except hope.
Under the leader, a proper order was arranged. The mentally ill on disability were separated by sex with men housed with other men and women collected in dormitories for women. This was true even for couples. It served to prevent pregnancies from occurring. After all, we didn’t want those genes passed on to new generations.
I haven’t seen my true love Marsha in over a month. We no longer have disability checks and are sent to a commodity warehouse for our personal food. I catch a glimpse of Marsha walking towards the bus. She has a black eye from one of her sisters in a situation which she dares not tell me about since it would heap criticism upon the system our rational governance has created for our benefit.
We board our separate buses and head out. Upon arrival, we see the recreational area for swimming at the creek. But we have caught the last bus and it is too late to take a swim. Marsha gets her tray and follows me around the dispensary to gather her food. I tell her, “I Love you.”
She says, “I love you so much. Let me sneak into your room one night while your bunkmate is out on vacation. I miss you so very much.”
“Then you would lose your commodity privileges for a month darling. I’ll always love you no matter how long and by what distance we are separated.”
She says, “One day we’ll be free.”
As we gather our food she drops her tray spilling her granola. We approach the accountant. I whisper into Marsha’s ear, “Don’t tell anyone but you can have my granola. In fact, you can have any of my food.”
She exclaims, “Really! You are a gentleman.”
I say, “For you, my love, I’ll eat cafeteria grub for the rest of my life.”
I finally get the courage to ask her. “How did you get that black eye?”
She protects both her and me from the risk of loose lips. She says, “It is a badge of honor for our lordship on high. A woman insulted our king of kings. We brawled and by defending the honor of our leader I earned a citizen of the month with extra trips to the food warehouse.”
“You are brave to follow the party line in a cat fight. But I’ve always known you could hold your own when faced with danger.” My praise serves to demonstrate both hers and my loyalty to the master of our universe. “I have become a lapsed patriot. Perhaps in the name of re-education, we would be granted a dispensation to spend days together.”
Marsha says, “Yes, the commissar of our district would surely appreciate the value of your relearning the perfection of our order. Then it is decided. I will expedite our request. But until then I need a kiss to confirm the sincerity of your intent.”
She takes my hand and we hide behind the produce stalls. To our joy, the request is allowed without supervision which Marsha’s petition asserted would inhibit the spontaneity of the lessons. And so what transpired was unrestrained love made in the forests outside the city. But a bittersweet pregnancy came upon Marsha. Yet the administrators decided to let the child see the light of day. But I would never see Marsha again.
Then the calamity comes. Any semblance of world order fell apart in the ruins of cities where I roamed.
My search for Marsha takes me to a likely place to find survivors which might be in the outpatient clinic for daughters of the republic where mentally ill women were liberated from their parents to live the lives they were destined to as wards of the state where they were taught the politics of liberation and freedom. I stand still as the afternoon sunlight peeks through the shattered glass. The room is deathly quiet. All around me are chairs in a circle. I look down and spot a paper mache figurine. The quiet is deafening.
In my mind, I can imagine the laughter and pain, which were shared here so many years ago. The air is humid and cool. I feel a breeze through the gaping window hole. The Venetian blinds lay on the floor bent and broken. I stand in silent remembrance of those souls who have disappeared.
There is no way for me to know for sure where they went. I wander out into the hallway. The floor is coated in dust. The paint on the walls is peeling. No one has been here in years, except maybe a wandering vagrant looking for a place to sleep. I see empty cigarette packs and beer cans littering a corner. I pass the offices. The doors are off their hinges and hanging ajar. Inside the desks are scattered with pens and papers, all records of people who are long gone.
The rumors couldn’t be verified. The government didn’t leak any info about their fate before the TV screens went static. Then there was no news to report their fate. However the final media reports, though rumors, were disturbing, to say the least. The last terrorist attack and the annihilation of Washington D.C. had destroyed the national budget. We simply didn’t have the funds to take care of people like Marsha and me anymore. The number crunchers were at a loss. So the decision was made in secret.
Kevorkian was released to head the team. Those at risk suicidal patients were given the right to die. Those who hung on to life were sent to a secret place in the Rocky Mountains. They too perished. It was something incomprehensible in more civilized times. However, in the wake of a national disaster of that magnitude nobody had any answers. Should these people be allowed to starve on the streets? Or was euthanasia more humane? I will never know with any certitude what the fate of these millions was. I can only wonder. But my search for Marsha is an obsession.
The land is pockmarked in trees ripped from their roots and tangled in clumps. If there is a future it has to be somewhere further down the wasteland of what once was America. No crops can be grown to sustain us in the plutonium tilled land which greets us ahead.
But appearances can be deceiving. I aim my pocket particle beam projector at the contorted earth and voila a beautiful lake appears. The cloaked land reveals itself as an oasis of water out here in this radioactive wasteland. The holo fields which carpet the surviving bodies of water and forest are designed to keep the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow out of reach. Hence, the deception would cause us to give up on the ark called earth. This would drive the last nail in the coffin of the extinction of the lost tribe of America.
Low and behold running up the lakeshore are two young people in blue jeans. Not only had the cloak obscured the lake but also a young man and woman who apparently had hidden in this remnant of the earth’s once verdant country. They join me and my new wife up on the hillside.
The woman’s face is that of my Marsha having tricked Charon with the ruse of her being a deliverer of souls instead of a passenger to Hades. The maiden embraces me with the words, “Daddy, Mom told me all about you. She showed me your picture.”
I replied, “God, you are made in her image. Fatherhood eluded me since your Mom and I were separated. What happened to your Mom? I am dying to know.”
“My name is Samantha. My Mom raised me until the calamity. When the guardians of the state scattered she took me with her looking for you. She couldn’t keep pace with me and told me to go ahead. My last memory of her is that she made me promise to seek you out. Now I’ve found you.”
My new spouse and I are too old to have babies. But my daughter and her boyfriend are just the right age at the springtime of their lives.
But the couple bickers and argues like spouses in a marriage on the verge of divorce. How can they procreate with such animosity toward each other? So I put on the new hat of couple’s counselor. But my tact is to explain to them what is at stake for humanity and why they have to at least feign getting along. If there is to be a new generation they will be the progenitors. For God sake, make love, not discord. My wife and I may not survive to parent your children so you two are in it for the long haul I admonish them.
So our motley crew heads out into the ruins of a city. There I come upon the broken down house in which I’d lived with my wife before the calamity. The photo albums from our trips are there mostly intact. There is a picture of us bathing in a hot spring in British Columbia. Then there is my LP collection. A Japanese jazz record catches my eye and excites me with nostalgia. But sadly this is the past and we have to move on to our future wherever that may lie.
So our young friends who will hopefully repopulate this land follow us into the wilderness in search of a place to grow crops and bravely face a future, after all, is lost except hope.
