To the last street sweeper on the eve of the apocalypse
Whose life partner is beauty
Who makes more sense in a minute of listening
Then we do in a lifetime of talking
Who paints olive trees and cypresses
And now knows it's not called crazy
It's called pain, and it will pass

To the last street sweeper on the eve of the apocalypse
Who wakes up an hour before he falls asleep
And yet, never stops dreaming
Who rewrites morality with every fraction of information intake
And remixes truth until we're left bobbing our heads
With no other choice than to just feel it

To the last street sweeper on the eve of the apocalypse
Whose children are freedom
Who walks in the rain while we plain get wet
Who wants nothing more than to want nothing more
Who only makes routine out of celebration
And love

To the last street sweeper on the eve of the apocalypse
Who ties masterpieces to rogue kites
And whispers nonsense into researcher's ears
Who knows that nobody is perfect
And takes the words "meant to be" very very seriously
Who exists
And is **** proud of that

To the last street sweeper on the eve of the apocalypse
Who revises his rewrites of morality
When information intake is remixed by reality
Until we're left shaking our heads
With no other choice than to think

Wait for me
And save me a glass

Hush my love, your night has fallen
feel it's cool embrace, feel your heat beat
fall into my eyes, no need to weep
for I am the dream maker
the mind sweeper

I will sing to you a sweet lullaby
at night I will always be by your side
coaxing you into the realms of make believe
worry not, I am not a soul taker
I'm that of kind things, a mind sweeper

I stand over you, like a black cloaked guardian
I make sure all your dreams are full of joy
so rest in the arms of Morpheus
I am something of the night my love
keeper of dark secrets, a mind sweeper

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

She is a sweeper
She swept everything
Under the brown fuzzy rug
In her living room.

Old magazines
books
newspapers
Old photographs
records
love letters.

She swept them all
Under the brown fuzzy rug
In her living room.

One day
It turned into a hill.
All the things she swept
under the brown fuzzy rug
in her living room
turned into a hill.

But she didn't mind.
She kept sweeping
old friendships
romantic relationships
truth
lies
feelings
regrets
mistakes
apologies
forg­iveness
into the hill
under the brown fuzzy rug
in her living room.

The next day
The hill turned into a mountain
She didn't mind
And kept sweeping
Until it exploded

Broken hardwood floor
Burnt brown fuzzy rug
Everything scattered
In her living room.

She stood there
In the middle of the aftermath
Thinking
“Do i throw these all away?"

But she's a sweeper.
So she cleaned the mess
Swept everything back again
Under a new brown fuzzy rug
Laying on her basement floor.

You are like
the smoke left
on my clothes
after a bonfire

summer’s salty sweet
taste still sticky on
warm skin

you-
are the last breath
of autumn sunset
so pink
once orange
slow to disappear
off the horizon

you’re winter’s
chilly breath
all the way to
the center of
my feeble heart

thump thump thump
like the springtime
again and again

pierce me with your sweet
green dagger

dragonfly wings
unnatural beauty

you my
slow season
breath

my wanton
unforgetting

8 month
long lost
lullaby

sweet girl
how I missed you

late summer
solstace

soul sweeper
secret
goodnight

Which takes us on a direct path to:
THE  INCIDENT.
Say you are a normal man—whatever that means—
But say it’s late June of 1993 and you’re laying on the couch,
Scratching your *****, trying to intuit your LDL level
Based on the two bowls of the Old Lady’s Cholesterol Chowder.
The Old Lady-- you can call her Peg or Mrs. Bundy—
Served it up in her special legacy china,
An assortment of recycled tin foil casserole dishes &
Vintage melmac handed down by your mother-in-law.
You are on the couch giving digestion your best shot,
Still scratching your agates when Peg comes
In from the kitchen with your second glass of
Two-buck chuck and a smoking fatty she’s just ignited,
Miraculously without burning the house down.
The TV is on—the TV is always on because
The TV has had no off button since 1984
You are tuned to the CNN evening news &
A report comes on that makes you sit up,
Snap to attention, straight up and take notice:
"WOMAN CUTS OFF HUSBAND'S *****!"
The media shrikes in Atlanta have your attention now,
Your complete attention;
Your eyes are riveted to the telescreen &
Your blood pressure spiking at 240 over 140.
During the previous night of June 23, 1993,
John Wayne Bobbitt arrives at the
Couple's apartment in Manassas, Virginia,
Highly intoxicated after a night of partying.
According to testimony given by Lorena Bobbitt
In a 1994 court hearing, he then rapes her.
Afterwards, Lorena Bobbitt gets out of bed,
Goes to the kitchen for a drink of water.
According to a journal article in the
National Women's Justice & Defense
League of Psychotic Castrating *******,
While in the kitchen she notices,
A carving knife on the counter & "memories of
Past domestic abuse races through her head."
Grabbing the knife, Lorena Bobbitt enters the bedroom
Where John is sleeping & proceeds to
Cut off nearly half his *****,
Half his Johnson,
In this instance aptly named.
So you have some schnook who’s named
After the iconic Hollywood superstar John Wayne . . .
Now understand something, John Wayne—
The ******* Duke of Earl--
Personifies everything alpha male:
Physique, animal magnetism & a pair of
Huge ***** swinging in his chaps as
He sashays across the screen.
In real life he’s a bullfight & cigar aficionado,
A big game hunter and sport fisherman, &
A hard drinking Hemingway hero
Who spends most of his time aboard
A customized WWII U.S. mine sweeper
******* to a pier behind his house in
Newport Harbor, California.
He’s the proverbial man’s man, &
There’s no one like him in America
Until maybe Eastwood or Willis comes along.
There’s a statue of him out in front of
The Orange County Airport that bears his name.
I have a photograph of him hanging in my garage
Next to a Mad-Dog 20-20 poster.
But I digress.
We return to the Bobbitt story because
It gets better, keeps getting crazier.
After assaulting her husband,
Lorena leaves the apartment with the severed *****,
Drives around aimlessly for a short while,
Then rolls down the car window &
Throws the ***** into a field.
Only then does the loony ***** realize
The severity of the incident.
She stops and calls 911.
After an exhaustive search by
Volunteers from the local Humane Society,
The ***** is located, packed in the ice-slurry of
A banana-flavored 7/11 Slurpee, &
Taken to the hospital where half-**** John Bobbitt
Gets a short-arm inspection and treated,
Mostly for shock and awe.
His ***** is later reattached by Drs. James T. Sehn &
David Berman during a nine-and-a-half-hour surgery
Filmed by Ken Burns and broadcast in its entirety by
WGBH Boston, a stunning illustration of
Your tax dollars hard at work
At the National Endowment for the Arts.
An abridged version later becomes the season premier of
"Girls Gone ******* ******, Manassas!"
Lorena goes on Oprah to explain herself.

Lorena Bobbitt ((née Gallo) was born in Ecuador.
Her maiden name, ironically,
Means **** in English.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix had this to say:
“Deport the *****. She may have an INS green card
But there’s no way she had a government permit to
Go around lopping ***** off in Virginia or any other state.
Who does she think she is, Janet Napolitano?”
Napolitano could not be reached for comment.
Shortly after the incident, episodes of "Bobbittmania,"
Or copycat crimes, were reported.
The name Lorena Bobbitt eventually became
Synonymous with ***** removal.
The terms "Bobbitt Punishment" and "Bobbitt Procedure" gained
Social cache with a radical break-away sect of N.O.W.
COPYCAT Catherine Kieu Becker, 48 (Garden Grove P.D.)  
Woman Accused of Cutting Off Husband's *****
Pleads Not Guilty/ VIDEO: Watch Jennifer Gould's Report
KTLA News   10:40 a.m. PST, February 3, 2012 /SANTA ANA, Calif.
"A 48-year-old woman accused of cutting off
Her husband's ***** and putting it
In the garbage disposal has pleaded
Not guilty to all the charges against her.
Catherine Kieu, of Garden Grove,
Was indicted earlier this month on
One felony count of torture &
One felony count of aggravated mayhem.
She also faces a sentencing enhancement for
Practicing surgical medicine without a license."
Sign up for KTLA 5 Breaking News Email Alerts
Comments (130) Add / View comments | Discussion FAQ
Happy627 at 10:35 PM January 18, 2012
"So my x-wife is a violent drunken *****?
Never once did I ever think of hurting her
But now I see I was wrong.
Vengeance's is the true answer & payback is hell.
So basically I should put an M-40
In her *** and light the fuse.
I should be acquitted from any wrong doing
Because she was a violent drunken *****.
Maybe all men should do this to their
Violent wives/girlfriends & teach them a lesson.
Cyanmanta at 1:10 AM January 11, 2012
In response to Doreen Meyer:
"So you're assuming that because he was the victim
He must have done something to deserve it
In some small way?
Typical of convenient feminism:
Assume all female victims are innocent &
Pure as driven snow,
While dismissing all male victims
With the idea that 'he had it coming.'
I wish I could pander shamelessly
To the media for preferential treatment,
But sadly, I am male (or as feminists would say)
The Evil Gender."
Westfield at 5:47 PM Jan.09, 2012
She should get her own show on the ***** channel.
(Bravo). KABC radio's John Phillips & his girlfriend
Nathan Baker would love to watch it."
Sluff it off, take a load off, baby.
Take a load off?
“Take a load off Annie,
Take a load for free;
Take a load off Annie, and
Bom bom bom bom
Bom be bom— & Dddddddddd,
You can put the load right on me.”
Send “The Weight” Ringtone to Your Cell

. . . Snipped, fixed, neutered, gelded,
Emasculated, eunuchized, or castrated?
(Castrating Forceps  (www.alibaba.com/
Showroom/castration-tool.html).
Bobbittized!

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep,
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lambs back was shav’d, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head’s bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair

And so he was quiet. & that very night.
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight
That thousands of sweepers ****, Joe, Ned, & Jack
Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black,

And by came an Angel who had a bright key
And he open’d the coffins & set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind.
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

A little black thing among the snow:
Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe!
Where are thy father & mother? say?
They are both gone up to the church to pray.

Because I was happy upon the heath.
And smil’d among the winters snow:
They clothed me in the clothes of death.
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

And because I am happy. & dance & sing.
They think they have done me no injury:
And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King,
Who made up a heaven of our misery.

A slow walk up Centennial
and I still can’t find the place
it's menacing cold, and muted
and the street sweeper and winter breeze
move the Turkish blend and dust pack

A novice mixed duet plays
Brahms on broken strings
the erhu and overcoat
veiling a blue heeler and sphinx

Maggianos is settled in the center block’s
luminance and seasonal drape
it's festive warmth bringing home Bedford Falls;
the flavour and character and social circles

Annie’s playing and the keeper's singing
(his word pool and slander
raising everyone in arms!)
the crowd chants and mayhem breaks
as crawlers and contemporaries
smash their steins

Dark alleys and dripping holes
hold a grim reminder of the pierced underside
paddies flutter and forge their words
with a broad manifesto

Night gardens come alive
(slowly sapping the respite)
hunched figures and ladies in lace
shuffle inside the big orange door

Chapter one:

  The strange entanglement of the sun, twisted in kooky bedlam with The Great King Moon in winter.

Have you ever looked down at yr feet on the long walk home & wondered if you’re really moving forward any more or if all your really doing is just moving the ground? Don’t answer that, its a rhetorical question. Of course you have. We all have. You think you’re moving in the right direction, following the north star or the compass in your brain or maybe just your nose or your thumb and fore finger. You  believe that you’re gonna make it somewhere, you have to believe. What else is there. The truth is, you’re going nowhere, we are all going nowhere, we just spin on the slanted axis & never really go anywhere. We have been conditioned to believe that this is the way the world works but I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t, you gotta buck up, **** up or ******* ‘*** let me tell you, yr ‘dreams’ mean nothing to anybody ‘*** living, real living is not connected to REM. That’s all just more ******* you’re gonna have to put up with people trying to sell you. Lick the boot, get over the barrel & bite down on your watch strap. That’s all there is to it. The mind is a magnet. If you find yourself staring in to the abyss: Jump right in. Swan dive. Hold your breath & wait. Everything will be OK. I promise you.

I’m writing, ah writing! Writing this worthless piece of *****// manuscript of means for you. For me, for the future, for love, for lust, for hatred of all things hating, for your mother & farther, for my friends, my beautiful angelic, clinically insane friends, for time, for the soles of my shoes with hundreds of miles under their laces, for your fat greedy pockets, for the moon, for the sun to spit on, for the wind to taunt, as he does like the great cowardly, perverted invisible fiend that he is, for nothing, for not quite everything, for your aching lovers, for your broken hearts, for the worlds water, may you always be clean & run free, for the great biblical liars, for the sorrowful wonder of the great homeless & may all their wants come to be wanted, for *******, for fumbling, for the vast oaken heavy doors on bars that keep us safe from the  horrors outside, for guilt, for sugar-blue smoke, for all the kids sitting in **** stained squat houses with half a horse embedded in their face, for my schools that gave up on a bored child, for warmth & fire & woollen clothing, for Paris where I can fulfil my great dream of becoming a sullen cliché, for the gravel-mounted marching marvel, may you never lose your way, for the Parthenon, for Aubergine, for The Firefly, the swan, bleeding,for growing up, for all the music makers,all people should play all instruments to any degree(rather than just, age & shrivel), for Howl for Carl Solomon, for every down & out that ever clawed his way up the street & through the yellow door, for all the animals that gave their lives to keep me fat & red faced, for Christ sake, for the invisible man in the sky, causing all war & so much death-thank you, for the wild west, for Bert & John, for the great literary mastodon to look down his reset nose at & ask me why. Why?

The way that old dial telephones look & feel. The questions that need no answers. Feeling down, down & out, upside down & inside out,upside in & downside out on the pavement at five am. Waking up in unknown beds & crawling down drain pipes. Getting lost in a place you have lived your whole life. Being in the woods simply to be in the woods. Drinking coffee even though you hate the taste. Never telling a stranger the truth. Living under a false name. Drinking yourself to death in the dark lonely-crowded corners of ***** stained wood floor warehouse floors. Feeling solid-sterling-gold for feeling so terribly horrifically half-corpse-like the only way you can really feel is completely statuesquely angelically magnificent and the only way is down(you really have no idea how far I fell that morning) , Only going out when it rains. Only going out in the dark. Staying up all night dreaming and sleeping all day. Remembering to forget, forgetting to remember to remember to be forgetful. Understanding that you and no one else understands nothing but eat-drink-sleep-****-death. Smoking until yr tongue bleeds and yr eyes burn like that fire in the sky in the fearful month of June. Wishing you knew how to tie a noose & writing ”suicide” on yr calender on a day you have no planned engagements. Shooting to the moon & back in the bee-bop-bo-bo-batter-batter-chitter-chatter like jazz on the neon streets of the earths mother. Crawling in to a stone cold bed after walking for six days & feeling bored & lonely again in ten minutes.

That’s why, I’m glad you asked. If I’m going out, then I’m out going with some steeze in a cloud of smoke, yr wife & I’m not taking you with me.

For all these things & more is the reason I write. To write for the sake of writing. For, some people write, just to write & they are truly the the lost meaning of it all.

Automatic travel rambles to plug up the holes in yr lonesome pockets. Blues.

Chapter two:  

Creeping moss-stick under-flowering the useless but grateful Tuesday poet, Jim Gravestone Sr.

The ghost of the monorail, living only in upturned memory sits slow & smooth/low against the Sunday evening rapture. You gotta know which way is down. Down. The dew on the grass & the creamy-green residue of the night before is just too close to a real drama. Absolute dahma. Down in the cold rising damp & the stain on your shirt.

He sits , sits like you, like me & like old Tom Mooney the prison king. If you ever saw such a sad sight as he, I do believe you would roll out your tongue on the pavement right there & then & wait for the road sweeper & all his secret, early morning charms & the great wolf man, pork chop sideburns (lupine dreams)to clean you up & clean you out. I do declare!

For he knows-for he has seen. Seen the sun rise from his pearly throne up on the dark side of the moon, the very face of Bowie, right there in the eye socket. He sees all. You can live your life, & you do, & you should, but he, O’ he, he has really been there & where & back again. You carry on with your sleepy routine of mule-back coffee office doom death jobs(you sleepy Bohemian, you)  & in you spare time trying to keep your nose from filling up with water & your private parts entwined with somebody else’s most private of parts, & on the side lines of you spare time you can deal with your family & all the friends that you’re sick of but hold on to, only for the fear of being left alone in the dark with nothing but all of the above. Then again you always have your studies(STDS)all of the ologies, of course.

Sleepology, cocaineology,rainolgy, sunology, lonleyology, depressionology, suicideology, talkology,empypocketsology, meaninglessology, masterbationology, coutntingyourmoneyinpintsology,walkology, onenightstandology, jumpthetaxiology, begology, borrowology, stealology,feelology, upallnightology, sleepalldayology, Xology, ologyology, etcology etc…ology etc.

Just find something you can care for ‘*** [insert atheist god/idol] knows that nobody is going to do your caring for you, even I they do in fact care for you.

I have been beginning to notice,that I(and I may not be alone)

always look at the past through a marigold monocle.

This, meaning nothing now ever seems to be joyous or gay or splendiferous until it is a past memory.

A cobweb. A rafter. A leaf on the ground. …I guess.

         Chapter three:

I know you know it but people that you don’t know, really are a funny, funny thing…

I stand outside the rain & watch the people passing by; really the most depressing experience of my ever increasing years. Un-jolly fat men with whiskey-nose & scuffle-feet stanzas of gibberish, talking gibberish & gibberish being their inner most self. Pre-war women with Arctic-blue hair, faces melting, everything pointing down, shuffle. Kids pushing prams full of ugly babies towards a house of who-gives-a-**** & ******* & I’m-gonna-die-here and what of it. Is there really no more to life. Listen to the top 40 on the radio, clueless, oblivious. Cogs. All cogs. Military troglodytes following them back in a dead eyed daze, dreaming of killing in the real and virtual. No you may not have a cigarette. Leave me alone, please. Let me listen to my watch ticking in peace & at least pretend that you don’t exist.

The human body is comprised of several ‘substances’

including..

Mercury,

hydrogen hydroxide,

fountain pens,

the lost dates of calenders,

various small woodland animals,

including…

Voles,

rabbits & field mice.

Other such things as…

Misplaced birthmarks(of the brain)

feelings of remorse and regret,

the stolen trinkets of past lovers,

and of course,

white blood cells,

pesticides,

and the second hand

from a 1956 ’Hamilton Rail road’ pocket watch.

E.L August 7th

           Chapter four:

Last night, last night was the last night it was the night last

Picasso raincoat. Imagelessness. Bottomlessness. I lost my umbrella & my Holden Caulfield head-wear, again. I was skipping on a rain cloud, corduroy boy and scarecrow girl, reunited in a soft entanglement sticky in the senses. Hoof! The only way is up when you walk down these stairs, snakes and blisters, but you’ll sweat it all out in babble cream conversation and love in your eyes. Tell me a story, tell me a story, tell me something to prop my chin up in this brown tunnel. Your name it is something I cant care to remember but of course I never really had a name of my own either, so we shall be the great wonder of the nameless masses, the ones born to no name and never wanted one anyway. A name is nothing but a label, a calling card, call me anything, call me king Charles II just as long as you do call me, the sound of a voice, your voice, any voice reeling off a comprised anagram of the alphabet is enough to get my short attentive ears to perk up and twist my noggin backwards towards the direction of my inbuilt gypsy sonar. So anyway, I was going to talk about something, something great… but now its gone and all I have is bloodshot eyes and sweaty liars palms to prove to the world that I had an idea once, I swear I did.

Here’s an idea for you to dig you heels into:

The world keeps making mistakes, everybody makes mistakes, its natural, nothing to fear, it happens all day every day. BUT, with every mistake we make, we then proceed to learn from that mistake, so.. stay with me here… Once the world, the whole world meaning everyone in it, has made every mistake they can make and of course and one would hope of course, that they have also learned from all of these mistakes; once this has happened, there will be no more mistakes to make, right? Therefore leaving the world perfect as a whole, no mistakes to make, learnt their lessons on every lesson and we can all go on with living a perfect existence, yes?…

No.

I’ve really thought long and hard about it -could never happen, people are not perfect, they never will be, if they were I wouldn’t want to know any of them, and the world, well the world is an imperfect place, and the same rule applies.

But let me hit you with another bit of knowledge to round things off and maybe put a positive spin on things. Hoist ye marrow-thumbs around this;

One of the many few early times that my legs forgot how to use them selves, I was sitting on the pavement, trying for one to reattach these two now useless appendages stuck like butter to my lower torso, but foremost trying to light a cigarette with my useless cold hands and equally useless matches, fearful of the sneaky clear coward, invisible old Mr wind, when a kindly stranger, half my size, red my hair, opposite my *** and now opposite my broken legs appeared like a person will appear when you mind is in other minds, a smile, a sympathetic look and two working hands to fire up the stick in my mouth. I said my thanks, babbled about babble and the generation of gibberish and im sure many other things inconceivable to the sober ear of a dame such as she, the bringer of flame and enlightenment, not of the smoke but of the simple mind, an idea is what she left with me and it never left. She stopped my rambling typewriter of a tongue and said ‘shush’ she held my head in her hands, looked at me straight,so I thought she might be death or god or that I was passing out,she all green eyed and like the woods, looked at my eyes like they were tethered together and dropped the bomb on me, she said ”if you are looking at the moon, then everything is alright” kissed my warm on frozen forehead and was gone into the night, never to be seen again.

That’s all the advice you will ever need, & so ll I will leave you with.

You never left a name, but I never wanted one anyway.

Midnight moment

beautiful rags

midnight joy.


Nevermind your little light,

set apart your golden dreams

that offen break,

& come to play.


Chapter five: There are things I want to write but I am not going to write them.

The End.

‘Stay gold, Pony Boy’

some mornings
i see the sweeper-man,
doing his job quietly,
picking up the dirt the rains left behind.
and i am reminded of the simple truth:
there is a nobility in working,
in doing a task that must be done
but no one wants to do.
nobody says, 'thank-you' to him,
nobody stops to consider how the path they use
has been cleared by a man simply doing his job,
but he continues on,
sweeping away the dirt the rains left behind.

“You are not special.”
We are not special.
“You are the same as any other person.”
We are the same.
“Science says you are the same.”
If science has proven it, it must be true.
We walk with the Clan.
We breathe with the Clan.
We are Clan.
###
The science is truth.
The science is all.
Repetition, repetition, repetition.
We were born to work.
We were born to serve the Clan.
We must work so we may survive.
The Clan must survive.
###
We gaze into the gray wall.
The clouds are unmoving, unyielding.
The light-globes reveal the path home, to sleep, so we may rise again to serve the Clan.
The logic is clear.
We must serve the Clan if we are to survive.
We must survive so we may serve the Clan.
More techniques are needed, more ways to harness the Unseen.
Only the Exalted may witness it, for all others who were not chosen for it would perish in its fiery embrace.
We must work.
We must work.
Work.
###
Each day leads to the next.
Each street leads to the next.
The path is clear.
Work until nothing is left.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
We have worked well today.
The new project is finished.
A vague, fuzzy part of the brain attempts to resurface, but it is squelched easily.
We will eat well tonight.
###
“We are not special.”
This day, a new project.
This day, a new group.
This day, a Sweeper tripped off the skyway and splattered in front of me.
It is of no consequence.
Another will be cleaning the refuse by tomorrow.
###
“We are the same.”
The long walk home.
Work on the latest project is finished; another will be brought in tomorrow.
The Unseen is being harvested well, but only for a time.
Various other gray shapes shuffle past, heading home.
The school is on the left, the eating center is on the right.
Suddenly, a commotion erupts.
A siren wails, and people scramble from the front of the school; a flash of black is visible among the masses.
The crowd breaks, an Enforcer visibly seen in the center, beating a boy with a concussion-rod.
“What were you thinking?” The Enforcer screeches, “Do you wish the Clan to fail? Do you wish the Clan to starve?”
“No!” The boy of perhaps eight winter’s old wails, “I just want to go home!”
“You are nothing! There is only the Clan!”
The Enforcer, of perhaps sixteen winter’s old, descended upon the boy, shouting, “You are worthless without the Clan! You had your chance, and you threw it all away!”
The Enforcer beat the boy for several minutes, until the Enforcer realized that it was pointless to further beat the mass of pulp in the street.
The Enforcer rose, exclaiming, “This is unacceptable! The Clan does not tolerate insubordination! And we are all Clan!”
“We are all Clan,” we repeated.
“We are all the same!”
“We are all the same.”
“The logic is truth! The logic is law!”
“We follow the logic. We follow the truth. We follow the law.”
“Now, go home. There is work to be done tomorrow.”
As one, the gray shapes huddle towards home, avoiding the mess in the street.
Maybe the new Sweeper will clean it.
###
“Science says we are the same.”
We work for hours, days, weeks, months.
The day of rest is approaching, and final preparations are being made.
The parade of the Exalted, in all their glory, will feature our new project to harvest the Unseen.
Again, a faint buzzing at the base of the skull, but it is ignored.
Models are built of the various projects of the scientific departments.
We build a Collector, another builds a Transporter, and another is working on a model of DNA.
It is not known why DNA is still being researched with so much else to do, but we do not question orders.
After all, it is said that DNA proves we are ninety-nine percent the same, so perhaps they are studying the remainder.
The parade approaches, we must prepare.
###
The day has arrived.
No laboring for one day, so we may enjoy the work of the year and prepare for the next.
The building-sized models are rolled through the streets, to display the Clan’s capabilities.
Vaguely, a sound is heard from the back of the procession.
A model of a giant metal orb has broken its restraints and is rolling down the street.
The crowd scatters like vermin before the light, and many take refuge in a building next to the skylift.
The skylift is near and the mob approaches, so we bolt for the skylift.
We rush inside the glass box and the door hisses closed behind us.
A blur of motion is visible outside, but suddenly the skylight begins ascending!
We begin to panic, since we are forbidden to travel to the home of the Exalted, but it is too late now.
The gray wall approaches closer and closer, as we huddle in fear upon the floor.
Nothing is outside except the gray, impenetrable wall.
Then, with a sudden jolt, a brilliant flash of radiance enters the small glass box.
The sensation is overwhelming and nothing can be seen nor heard for a time.
Slowly, the brightness dims, and we look about the box we rode in.
Outside, great floating towers with Collector arrays seem suspended in time, slowly revolving to follow the radiance.
The doors open with a whoosh and we find ourselves on a smoothly polished deck that is abundant with bright benches and plants that grow without hydroponics.
These sights are a mystery, but thoughts are scattered as suddenly we notice two figures standing before us to the side of the skylift.
The glow emanating from the beings themselves glistened and rippled with a silvery sheen.
We stared in awe at the raw perfection of their features; the smooth bronze skin, the clear eyes that pierced deep.
“What is this? Why are these Workers here?” one Exalted questioned another with a deep, booming voice.
“I don’t know. Perhaps the Enforcers know of this?” the other Exalted responded in a clear, trebled voice.
The Exalted snorted, “I doubt it. Those children are full of themselves. They are just bitter because they cannot join us until they pass their Ordeal.”
I? What is I?
“It is no matter. Let’s just stick it back in the skylift and let the Enforcers take care of this,” the Exalted continued.
The Exalted approached us and fear overcame our senses.
We backed up into the skylift and watched as the doors closed before the Exalted could touch us.
We watched as the wonderful plants and buildings flashed past, until we descended into the gray wall.

###

We thought.
We saw.
We felt.
Nothing was the same.
Our thoughts clouded, our mind scrambled.
Our work was pitiful, the reprimand was fierce.
Still, this question remained.
What is I?
We thought and thought, but nothing made sense.
We made the trip finally, to search the Records.
We requested a definition of I.
Thousands of responses came, overloading the senses.
We read and read.
It was wonderful!
It was spectacular!
But it still went against the rational mind, our thoughts, the Clan’s thoughts.
How can we be I?
How could our ancestors have been so blind?
Could they not see that to not be one was to be nothing?
But then, there was still the doubt.
There is always that doubt.

###

We moved through life, slippery as soap.
No one must suspect that things were not as they seem.
Every day, we viewed the skylift with envy and curiosity.
Every day, we approached it to ascend through the gray wall.
Every day, we turned away and went home.
Finally, the day arrived.
We resolved to enter the skylift no matter what.
We boldly entered and stood as the doors shut.
As we rose, our knees swayed.
We did not know precisely what awaited us at the top, but we knew that we must see it again.
The Unseen must be seen.
We rose and rose, and so did our spirits.
The pounding in the ears, the raw feeling of energy overcame us.
Now, rising through the gray wall towards the Unseen.
Now, rising towards salvation.
The wall was coming to an end, the freedom was coming.
The radiance burst in again, no less dizzyingly than the last time.
Once we stopped at the flat level again, we tentatively looked around, searching for signs of any of the Exalted.
With none in sight, we bent over and sprinted to the nearest cover, which was a large, fruit-bearing tree.
Now, this was an oddity, since the only plants we ever saw were grown in factories, and they were suspended in water.
We reached up and plucked the nearest fruit, which was about the size of our hand and had a smooth, red exterior.
We split it open, to find that within, it was moist and somewhat white inside.
Slowly, carefully, we placed a bit of the fruit in our mouth and chewed.
How delightful!
It was sweet, moist, crunchy!
We proceeded to devour the rest of the fruit, except the seeds, which were hard and small, and the small twig atop the strange, amazing fruit.
Once finished, we cautiously walked down the central path around the curious, floating buildings that radiated gold light, and pondered the burning questions in our mind.
What if our ancestors had something?
Was their downfall because of individuality, or was it the lack of it?
What if that one percent difference is what matters?
We did not know for certain, but eventually, we had to turn back, because the radiance began to fade and night would soon come.

###

You are not special.
“We aren’t?”
You are the same as any other person.
“Are we really?”
Science says you are the same.
“Is science really so infallible?”

###

So it became routine, to leave work and go up the skylift, to eat the globe-shaped fruit, which we discovered were called “apples”, and think.
Things below the gray, misty wall became less clear, less defined.
We saw the people around us, but it was as if they did not see us.
The gray walls, the gray shapes shifting from home to work, home to work.
Are they blind?
Was this how life has been?
It was uncertain, but thoughts began to form.
The others must know.
They cannot remain ignorant.
All the things they must know.
Above the gray wall, it was clear.
The purpose was clear.
We must leave, gather the knowledge, and teach the others.
We must plan.
We must prepare.

###

We thought, and we knew.
I am unique. I am not the same as everyone else. I think, breathe, eat, and exist for my reasons and purpose, nobody else’s. I will not submit to the will of others. I think clearly and for myself. I will be set free.

###

On the final day, it really wasn’t that difficult.
After work, I began to walk, and never looked back. I approached the edge of civilization. No one stopped me. No one even looked at me. Only the blankness was there. Before me, an endless, barren landscape, devoid of life. Behind me, the same.
I vowed to return, however; the people behind me would know what it was to feel, what it was to see, what it was to live. The Exalted were not so special as to leave the rest of us in the waste and filth. People would be given a chance for redemption.
Time grows short; I must hurry.