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"Other" Love

Heart of Gold

By Jenna PinkstonPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
7

Smooth, shiny, I couldn't see the locket. But it was etched in my mind’s eye. Paralysis had set in everywhere, but I still felt it dangle. It was still around my neck. I hadn’t slept in days, so dreaming was welcome, and the locket was still with me in this “real” world.

I will start earlier...before my capture.

Life... after the fall of humanity, but before my capture was an exhaustive pursuit, without any day having a true end. It perplexed me that there was ever a dawn to a new day. No more rhythmic conclusions of climbing wearily into a dream at day’s end, and then rising from said dream in the morning. I was always running; and never escaping across a barren landscape of death, which reminded me of my inevitable fate once I finally stopped running.

My clothes rippled angrily in the wind. I mused at a curse disguised as blessing: I had a rock-hard body of flesh, protruding bone, with zero pesky fat reserves. The golden locket dripping down a cascading chain across my clavicles was certainly the stuff of Calvin Klein haute couture. I was a sardonic living embodiment of an extinct consciousness. The millions of fools, with screens in their faces, would have coveted my dark and obscure “look” as they scrolled mindlessly through social media feeds, growing fat on all of the starving artists they “fed” upon.

Funny how nothing really changes.

They found me again...or rather their machines did, my coordinates shared with headquarters. Drones were dispatched. Others were once UnModified like myself, before a superficial evolution of homo sapien had been launched on a global scale. It was a massive extinction event Others called the “Evolution”. The unholy union of nano-tech enhancements merged into organic flesh, yielding an unrecognizable being no longer in need of air, sunlight, or sustenance...at least not “food” as we knew it.

Emotional Wavelength Emissions (EWEs) emerged as the new currency, and enslavement of weaker, UnModified humans drastically shifted economic & physical landscapes. Others found themselves void of emotions. They quickly gave up feeling in exchange for enhancements. What these enhancements removed, revealed everything they craved. Others were those that accepted the Transformation. Others were now the majority. Our UnModified minority had chosen instead to think for ourselves, to resist, and we're now at the bottom of this strange new “food” chain. Despite our determination to remain human, we were on the wrong side of history, now hunted by those who so easily tossed aside their humanity.

EWEs were harvested for Others to supplement all they had recently lost. Their harvesting was the reason for my capture. I’m now physically paralyzed with EWE-harvesting syringes puncturing my energy field and collecting my emissions for Others to consume. With eyes forced shut, my Optic nerve fed a stream of images and virtual reality scenarios. All to induce a dream-like state, giving me an emotional experience: typically fear, guilt, pain, or anger.

They validated harvesting EWEs, justifying that we could finally be of use. They dismissed Our resistance and shamed Us as inferior. Others possessed more cohesion amongst themselves; more proficient at strategy; A “hive mind” intelligence. Our lack of organization and constant fighting amongst ourselves increased proportionally with the stress of becoming outnumbered. So it came to pass that we UnModified, who refused the Transformation, became the hunted and enslaved. The ultimate outcome: Our EWEs of anger, worry, fear, sorrow, doubt and despair were purchased and “felt” by millions, in this existential Hell.

Alex told me before his capture, that high-frequency EWEs, such as love and gratitude do not interface with the machines delivering Our EWEs to Others.

“This is why high-frequency EWEs are never harvested.” He had a nerdy tone of intrigue. He annoyed me as he recalled the “The Evolution...” a subject most interesting to him. Alex was an enthusiastic cog in the wheel of science that had gotten us here. He viewed Others as a “spectacular creation”. Alex would ramble, “Higher-frequency EWEs... love, gratitude, joy, peace...anything above anger at 150hz is undetectable by the current interface software...”

He means the machines.

“...and it actually results in the multi-syncing operations malfunctioning when they are ingested by the enhanced homo sapien.”

He means Others.

He took this intel as confirmation of a “new approach” that he believed to be our “way forward”. I wasn’t buying it. So idealistic, Alex... naive and delusional despite his high IQ. He insisted UnModified were capable of storing high-frequency EWEs within objects that conducted electricity, and that the machines are not designed to detect those...blah blah blah. It was why he carried the tiny gold locket. He never spoke about the person in the picture...and I never asked. He cherished it, thumbing at it lovingly whether we were running or resting. It was as though he was charging it with all of his hope as we ran.

Alex acquired a small cut that grew to a festering wound, and he could no longer walk on his afflicted foot. He wailed at the pain in his foot clutching the heart, as he lamented at how different his fate would have been if they had approved him for the foot and hand project...how if his now-infected flesh had never existed, this never would have happened. I cringed, disgusted by his logic, which made me blind and deaf to how badly he suffered. He said to go on without him. “It will be good for my research” he said through a forced smile, as though he were trying to convince himself. I had to abandon him. As I gathered my things, he pushed the locket into my hand.

I don’t know why I kept it. I felt a sense of wholeness when I wore it. Curious and strange. When They collected me, the locket was, like the rest of my body, covered in a thick layer of grime. No dignity or care was given to my body before They synced me to the machines. Others could no longer empathetically feel our pain. They could only experience low-frequency EWEs harvested from Our energy fields.

Images of terror streamed as horrific wars, rapes, pestilence, famine, and fatalities, yet somehow I could discern the unreality of it all. Certainly it was all very awful: french bayonets thrust into me, tricking my nervous system with sharp shooting pain. There were moments of believing it. Dark alleyways incited a fear of something I couldn’t see but knew was there. Intense losses of dying loved ones whose faces were extracted from my memory and pasted on unfamiliar moments of gruesome death. My mom told me she loved me with her dying breath. It was convincing and painful, but because the gold locket remained with me, I had a touchstone reminder that it wasn’t real. Some intuition inside me warned me to feign reactions, to appear as though I believed. If I were to scoff, “Is this the best you’ve got?”, it would prompt an inquiry into why I wasn’t emitting EWEs, resulting in the locket’s removal, and I would lose my grip on reality. Keeping this locket close, camouflaged by dirt, was my only edge. I screamed at things lurking in darkness. I moaned at being impaled, and I crumpled in tears as I suffered from debilitating grief.

My EWEs were genuine! Cathartic tears streamed down my dirt-caked cheeks as I looked upon my dying parents' faces. My body convulsed as I surrendered to the pain induced by sharp objects impaling my chest, blunt objects bludgeoning my skull, and wet, red rubies dripping from this violence in dream after dream. I was indeed a captive audience.

The locket atop my breastbone was detectable by me on my actual skin, so that each and every scene remained exactly what it was...fake. My tears and movements never betrayed me to my captors. They were harvesting my many EWEs.

I suddenly noticed Alex was present in every scene. He first appeared in the background, and gave me a wave down a dirt road as I witnessed a pickup truck crush a huddled group of screaming children. I shuddered as I watched the carnage, but when I opened my eyes again, Alex was standing off in the distance smiling at me. He edged closer, careful not to disturb my experience.

“It’s working” he whispered in my ear as I stared in horror into a backyard kiddie pool at my own hands (of which I did not control) systematically drowning a litter of newborn kittens.

With Alex’s cameo appearances, it occurred to me: the locket had linked us somehow. We were connected in this fabricated reality by something stronger. The Collective Consciousness of our ancestors was still present and very much in the psyche of those that were open and able to “sync” with it.

He whispered “... Others are not unlike ourselves. They just made different choices. We will reconcile. They will remember, and so will you.”

I realized that Alex had been onto something all along. I had judged him for stroking that locket, and all the while he had a plan. He knew we would eventually be captured, and he had prepared us for it. He had been harvesting his own higher frequency EWEs, and infusing them into the locket.

Alex and I found ourselves huddled in a dark damp cave with a large serpentine creature, glowing eyes and an unsettling “hiss”. It slithered menacingly towards us. We clutched each other, awaiting the injury that would bleed us into the next movie. Alex consoled me as I trembled.

“We’re infusing our fear, pain, worry and doubt with universal love and compassion for one another. I told you, the machines don’t detect high-frequency EWEs, and they will malfunction when they feed it to our lost brothers and sisters.”

The snake struck us as we clasped each other closely, and we felt it crush our spines and squeeze the air from our lungs. Flash. We found ourselves tossed around on a ship at sea sinking rapidly. Frightened sailors on board with us were screaming in panic, clawing at Alex and I, who wore the only life jackets aboard. I lashed at him. He had crossed a line.

“You mean Others?!” I screamed at him, “Those who betrayed our species and now feed on those who fought to protect it?! Are those your Brothers and Sisters?!”

Alex raised his voice at me. Perhaps it was the unrelenting tempest, forcing us to yell, but I also detected his impatience with my inability to understand him. We went overboard.

“You forget! They are no different than us. When the machines malfunction from the high frequency EWEs, our Brothers and Sisters will remember what love is. They’re still human.”

Water filled our lungs, and we sank deeper into the darkness with the shipwreck. Flash. We were in a brightly lit amphitheater bound by ropes connected to a crank and tightened around our wrists and ankles. With each turn, it pulled tighter and tighter. We shouted in pain as thousands of Others shouted for more carnage.

I screamed in anger, and gestured my head towards the crowd of Others excited by our agony, thirsting for our blood and hungry for our anguish.

“You think THAT is like us?! I will NEVER call THAT a brother or a sister. How can you be so STUPID???” I began to cry.

Alex vomited, his vertebrae had separated from each other and even if some merciful event had released him from this medieval torture, he would never walk again and would beg to be released of his misery...if any of this were real.

He leaned towards me and spoke,

“You MUST love them. Or all of this is for nothing. You wear the locket. It carries vibrations that you must share with them.”

“ Your love…”

Another turn. Louder cheers.

“Is the only way…”

Blood drenches the ground.

“... we ever awaken.”

Rip. Cheers. Flash.

science fiction
7

About the Creator

Jenna Pinkston

Jenna is an intuitive writer who serves as a Mom, caregiver, and volunteer in the Texas Hill Country; married to her best friend and editor, Michael. A survivor of suicide loss, she finds inspiration in challenging aspects of being human.

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