Inhuman

Just step inside the radiation and see what happens, they said.  It will be fun, they said.

People might think I am joking.  I am not.

January 1^st, 2053.  Day 4,380 of my life.  Twelve years old, if a translation is needed.  Noon, more or less.  I stood on the platform, looking back at them and trying to discern if they were serious.  Maybe they were joking.  Maybe I had heard wrong over the crackle of energy through the open doorway before me.  Maybe I had lost my senses.  Maybe they had lost theirs.

They gestured toward the doorway encouragingly, as if egging me toward a new friend rather than a most certain and probably painful annihilation.  They were serious.  I had not misheard.  Whether they or I was mad remained to be seen.  I am still not sure on that point.

However, it is in my coding to obey.  No, I am not a robot.  But I am not human either.  At least, I was never treated human, so I ceased to treat myself as such as well.  My life began as a simple zygote in a beaker.  I was brought to the world through a machine rather than a womb.  My DNA is human, but I do not think that is enough for the classification.  Human experimentation is illegal, and my entire life had been lived experiment to experiment.  I was not the scientist.  I was not even a willing participant.  No, I was the dependent or independent variable, depending on the day.  I attempted to rationalize through the legality of my observers actions.  The only explanation I found was that I must not be human at all.  The fault must be in me; otherwise they would be to blame, and I never spotted a sign of guilt.  I had simply overvalued myself.  That was why they treated me more like a dog than a human.  I was a dog, in a sense, bred to obey.  “Bred” just seems too living—too human—for my existence, which is why I tend toward thoughts like “code” or “wiring”.  I am of flesh, not wires, but my flesh holds more the value of wires.  I find it easier to address myself as what I am worth.

“You don’t need to be afraid, X.”

We all had letters for labels, us inhumans.  That is what I started calling myself and my twenty-seven kin.  I hear that humans have names.  The scientists sometimes address each other as Dr. something-or-other.  I think those are names.  I am not quite sure.  I am not wired to ask questions.

“It won’t hurt you.”

Of course not.  The needles, scalpels, and viruses were not supposed to hurt either.  I had been dissected, injected with disease, and cured dozens of times.  A few more years and they would have the remedy of every species of cancer.  Most cures existing had been found through experiments on myself.  I handled the radiation treatment better than the others, they said.  Perhaps that had given them the bizarre idea that I could survive Exion Rays—a classification above even Gama in its penetration and danger.  The room they wanted me to enter was full of them, bouncing back and forth across the walls brilliantly, humming.  I suspected that a few seconds in there would make me start vomiting blood.  I was not sure what other outside symptoms would follow the interior deterioration.  Absentmindedly, I wondered if this room was the reason I had not seen J or R—my companions in excellence at withstanding radiation—the past week.  We used to see each other daily.

“Don’t you believe us, X?”

Just as much as I still believed an injection of cancerous cells would do me no harm.  I ran a hand over my almost bald head.  All of the feelings I did not know how to express ran rampant beneath the surface: irritation, rebellion, exasperation, fear, concern, and rage.  If I were wired to be honest I would have screamed at them, perhaps even tossed one into the room so I could ask if he was hurting or frightened. 

But honesty is not in my coding.  Obedience is.

The bare inch of blonde hair on my scalp felt like a softer version of Velcro.  I knew that because they used Velcro bands to tie me down to the operation table.  I liked how the hair felt against my palm, as much as preference is allowed in my design.  It seemed a fitting final sensation, since it had always been a habit that made me feel more human and less machine.

Closing my eyes, I stepped inside.  For a split second I heard their cries of approval: the only reward I ever received.  Then the humming robbed all other sound from my capacity.  Energy rolled over me as every wave converged toward my slender frame.  It felt like I imagined an embrace might, though I had never experienced anything to compare it to.  It thrummed over and through me, making me warm.  I rather liked it.  I knew I would not once the vomiting began.  Exion’s tenderness would end with a ruthless hand.  And I would submit beneath it silently, unable to follow any urge but that to obey.

How infuriating.

My gut tingled.  Not nauseous, just squirming.  It felt more like curiosity than death.  For a moment, I thought Exion might be considering me, wondering just what ought to be done with the inhuman brought into his presence.  The thought was ridiculous.  I had been feeling human without being one for too long.  My desperation to be valued by others and myself and led me to seek affection from the instrument of my death.  I must have lost my senses after all.

But then Exion drew me closer.

That is how it felt.  It seemed to me he had recognized me as a being as alive and yet inhuman as himself.  I rather think I felt his pity, as he drew me in to rest my head upon his shoulder.  I almost fancied the humming was a lullaby, trying to soothe me.  He felt it too—the wasted potential of his existence.  To be something with so much life beneath and yet contained was a crime in itself.  His prison was that room, and mine a body that could not disobey.  I did not have to be human for that to be wrong.  Rage filled me at the realization.  It filled him as well.  We were both furious, and yet too tightly caged to express it.

But he had the key, he whispered.

I leaned forward, enticed into attention.  Nothing had ever pleased me so much as that possibility.  It was the same for him, I could feel it.  I could feel his excitement.  The key was sacrifice, giving up something to gain that which should have been ours to start with.  If we forsook our “selves”, then we could obtain freedom.  Freedom to be angry, to protest.  He and I only need become a “we”.

He must have already started the change, for I had the freedom to speak my mind.

“Then let us be We!”

I shouted it, such was my excitement.  No.  Our excitement.  There was no “I” anymore.  He folded himself up and tucked the result into me.  Waves of energy that had been loosely probing because suddenly invasive, forcing their radioactive existence into every particle of my existence.  My obedient, caged self died at mine and Exion’s desperate hands.  We opened our eyes for the first time.  We blinked.  The waves were gone.  Exion was gone.  I was gone.  But the humming was still there, coming from us.  We looked down at our human body, running our hands over the inhuman warmth emanating from it.  Something like energy waves rippled over our skin constantly, making our skin appear to ripple like the reflection of light on water.  We were beautiful.  Laughing, we exited.  No need for the door.  We merely struck the roof with enough energy to remove it.  The humming synchronized with our laughter, our glee. 

The scientists were shouting, gaping.  Then they were clapping, showing their pleasure as what they meant to be our reward.  They fancied we would thank them, probably.  They fancied they had done something rather impressive.  They fancied wrong.  We had done everything this time, and we would continue doing without their instructions.  We already knew what we wanted.  Rage.  We wanted to show them the rage. 

We stopped laughing.  Then we screamed.  We had not touched the ground yet, we did not need to.  A wave toward the concrete floor now and then was enough to keep us levitated.  That felt good.  That way we could just stretch out all our four limbs and hover, showering down the heat of our rage.  Our scream made them listen.  Our heat made them feel.  They were falling, vomiting.  How unsightly.  We dropped next to them, beating each in turn to make them feel our disgust.  We could show them that too.  And our exasperation.  And our weariness.  And our fear.  Yes, fear.  We could show them how much they had frightened us, and how tired we were of being afraid.

“Don’t you believe us?” We bellowed.  We had two voices, perfectly joined.  One piercing.  The other resounding. 

“It hurt!  It was too dark! It was scary!  It hurt!  It was too close!  It never let us out!  It HURT!”

They were moaning, rolling around in their blood and vomit.  Yes, that ought to make them believe us.  They could feel it now.  Now they could hear our cries which had stayed mute too long.  Now we could make them understand what it felt to be caged, to be hurt, to be unloved.

Most were silent now, silent forever.  We liked that.  But one still moved, still breathed, still spoke.  He could make others understand him too.  We were not alone in that.  That was human, after all, and we were the inhuman, not them.

“Dear God…” he moaned, “What have we created?”

We blinked.  We frowned.  “We” did not seem enough of a label to give him.  No, we wanted no more labels.  Exion and X had been labels.  We wanted a name.  We wanted him to know it—to understand what twelve years of suffering and one encounter of freedom had fashioned.  We gripped him by his white coat, heaving him up enough to look us in the eye.  We let our heat seep straight from our hands into his dying body.

“You made a monster,” we hissed.

A Radioactive Monster.

He understood it.  He felt it.  His eyes grew wide and stayed that way, frozen by the end of life.  We let him go, stepping over the corpse as it hit the ground.  We considered hovering instead of walking, but we like the feeling of the ground reverberating from our energy.  The walls were cracking, crumbling.  There was an even bigger roof we could remove, if we tried.  But we decided to find the door instead.  We wanted to blow off the lock to the cage, just to hear it shatter. 

Alarms were ringing, warning every human in the place of our presence.  There were more than the ones we had destroyed.  We could take as long as we like ridding the world of each and every one of them.  Perhaps we would free the inhumans.  But they could not become monsters too, because Exion was gone now.  They would only be trouble then, since they only knew how to obey.

Should we kill them too, then?

We stopped for a moment, looking about the concrete walls and then down at our own radiating hands.  A strange tingling started inside—straight in the center of our chest.  We were not sure what the feeling was, but we did not like it.  It made us think harder about the corpses we had left behind—made us ask a questions about our actions in a tone we did not approve of.  We had only been expressing ourselves.  The vileness of our feelings was their fault.  They had been the one who caged us.  Being caged made anger: anger enough to kill.  That was natural, perhaps even human.  It was not our fault.  It was their fault they all lay dead.

Wasn’t it?  Perhaps, but we had been the one killing.  Murder had never been an option when we were caged, so we had not thought about it too much.  We did not like thinking about it.  We felt suffocated. 

We wanted to feel the outside.  We had never felt it before.  We started to run, to feel and look about everywhere for a door.  Running felt good.  It distracted the confused, ugly feeling in our chest.  We managed to forget it.  We felt more excited than we knew how to show.  Even freedom has limits of expression, it seemed.  We felt a door from energy we had sent ahead.  We ran faster.  The bells and lights pulsed harder.  We ignored them.  We had not seen any more humans or inhumans.  That seemed strange, but we were too excited to think about it.  Perhaps we were too free, we decided later.  Maybe freedom hurts like cancer, when you get too much.

We found the way out.  We blew off the lock and the door with it.  Even some of the wall went out with our excitement.  We sensed something coming behind, but something ahead was more interesting.  We saw outside.  We saw colors we had never seen in real life before.  We did not know what they were called, but they were beautiful.  We stepped out and felt a breeze for the first time.  It tasted better than anything we had ever had.  We felt grass under our toes.  Our rage heat cooled down, and the energy stopped waving so much, awed.  The warmth thrummed only inside, full of feelings we had never felt before.  We loved them.  We raised our eyes and hands up, seeing and feeling.  We sucked in clean air, free air.  We tasted the human world.  It felt so very natural for us we wondered if we really could be human.  Perhaps we had thought backwards.  Perhaps the jailers were inhuman, and we were the human trapped by them.  Was it more inhuman to cage or to be angry at being caged?  We had never thought of that.  Perhaps we were human after all.

We cried with our smile, as we stared up into the heavens for two blissful minutes.

Then we realized the things behind had gotten closer, had grabbed us.  We were still deciding whether it was more human to cage or kill when the needle slipped into our neck.  We knew the moment we felt the cold in our veins that we would not get to decide what we wanted.  We knew that was the chill of cage bars returning, locking us away forever.  We had been too awed by freedom to keep it, and we still had not made up our mind about anything.

We are still alive, still caged.  We are locked so tight we cannot move anymore.  We cannot see.  We do not know where we are, but it is dark.  We know only that it is a cage we will never get out of.  They beat us, and we are not even sure what “they” are.  We are not sure what we are either.  We have thought about it over and over, but we cannot decide.

Are we or they inhuman?