Learning to Read and Write

A young girl named Emily wandered through the painfully long hallways of the lab that she called home. A collar was around her neck with a blue blinking light. This meant she was a stable human being. Red meant they were prone to anger outbursts, green meant they had toxic words to say, orange meant they were an energetic human, purple meant they viewed themselves highly, and yellow meant they may have overreactions to any kind of stimulant. The blue light on her collar was often seen as positive, but she hated the blue. It reminded her of crashing waves in the sea, or the light blue when it was low on battery reminded her of the snow she would never get to see for herself. Her mind was different than everyone else's. She had autism. This part of her confused the system, but it could manage her oddity. Most people had weeded out things like this, but just like a weed it would always reappear. The metallic collar began glowing brighter until it was almost white. It was time for bed. While she slept it would recharge. It took 5 hours to fully charge, while a human needed 7-8 hours. This extra rest didn't hurt the machine, but it was made so if you were male, once it was charged you were to wake up. She found this unfair, but she didn't know what to do against it. The guys were stronger, but this was slowly putting them into a state of tiredness. Guys could be harmed just like gals could. Guys were restricted to hard work in lifting things and anything that could put them into danger's way. While gals worked with cooking, cleaning, and other things that were tedious, but safer. If there was ever a fire, guys took care of it. However, not every guy had the mental capabilities to do such an action. If they couldn't do anything out of fear they would be berated. They would be labeled as worthless, useless, unwanted, you name it. She desired to change this cruel action toward the teen guys, but she was just a girl. Anything they did was not within her right to change. As she thought this over and over in her head, a revolution began to burn in her heart. The guys were not the only ones being hurt just because of their gender. The galls got plenty of it too. If they couldn't cook, crochet, or whatever a gall was expected to do, they too would be berated. Not every gall wanted to cook, and not every guy wanted to build. She went to sleep angry. Gender wasn't what determined what you could and couldn't do. That person was to do that. If a guy decided he wanted to take care of children instead of the galls doing it, good for him! Just because he wants to be around children didn't make him a predator. Him touching them wrong did. Same with galls. Some galls did in fact rape the guys, but if a guy told the superiors this, they would just tell him he should've liked it.

In the morning when Emily woke up an idea went through her mind. she wanted to talk to some of the guys who were berated while teens to see how they were doing. The first guy she talked to was a 21 year old named Gabriel. When she asked him how he was doing he first ignored her, he thought she was to interrogate him. Then she asked if he was going okay and if it scared him to work around hot water. He continued to try and ignore her. The color on her collar changed from blue to pink. It was new, and this color meant the collar didn't understand her actions.

"sit down. If you have anything you want to talk about you can talk to me." said Emily "I wont tell anyone else, promise."

when Gabriel sat down he began to finally talk. His collar turned pink now too. He talked about how he hated being in dangerous situations all the time. Electricity, hot water, high places, he hated it. He wanted to draw like the girls did, but his art he viewed as awful. Emily asked to see some of his art, and Gabriel said he didn't have it on him.

"If you want you can go over and grab them. If they truly are awful like you say, I can help you improve. If something is so bad it's awful, then if definitely could be better." Emily smiled "What was that saying they used? oh right, once you hit rock bottom there is nowhere to go but up."

Gabriel nodded and went off to find his drawings and Emily looked for some pencils and paper. when the superiors asked what she was doing, she said she was going to doodle. They smiled, nodded, and walked off. When Gabriel returned with his drawings, they were in fact really bad. Most of it was comics of stick-men trying new things that Gabriel couldn't do. Cooking, cleaning, other womanly actions. Emily smiled when she looked at the comics, despite seeing the incredibly bad handwriting in the speech bubbles, as she saw it as cute. So, she said so.

"Really? My stick-men are cute?" asked Gabriel. Emily nodded "wow, thanks."

"Your handwriting definitely needs work, but I can help with that," said Emily

Emily brought out the pencils and paper and began to show Gabriel how to properly write with the pencils. Gabriel found writing hard, but got the hang of it. It was mostly in his control that needed help. He was also left handed. When Emily was teaching him how to write correctly, she found he had better control with his left hand, and suggested using it instead. While teaching him to write, she had to ask, when did he learn to create the letters and understand how to read them. Gabriel said he had watched the girls write their stories and read them out loud, and he copy-catted. Of course, copying was nothing to being taught, so his handwriting was never all that great. Their writing session was ended when some superiors got an idea of what was going on. Gabriel was told to stop writing and to go help with another fire, the young girls and boys often set things ablaze. He sighed, and asked Emily if they could meet again the next day. Emily nodded.

After he left to deal with the fire, now with confidence due to the writing lesson, Emily was questioned on why she was teaching him to write. She explained that she felt all humans deserved a chance to read and write, no matter the gender. The pink on her collar glowed brighter. She also said she felt it important that all humans learned anything they pleased. The superiors then told her that woman and men were instructed to do certain things as their bodies were meant for certain things. Emily then argued saying that what you can and can't do shouldn't be determined by whether you have a dick or a uterus. The superiors called her stupid for wanting men to understand writing as only girls and woman could comprehend the stories. She then said that he could read already from copying the girls. This surprised the superiors.

"He can read? by copy-catting them?" they looked at each other in confusion, then decided this was a lie and could be ignored. "He can't read. That is a lie. Let's hope you don't lie like this all the time when you are an adult."

"I have 10 more years, and that wasn't a lie." She huffed and walked off.

She looked around in the library for a good children's book to possibly read to the guys, but found each and everyone of them tried to endorse that men work dangerously, and woman work for the next children. She decided to write and illustrate her own story. Her collar continued to glow pink. Her story was about two people, a girl and a boy, who wanted to do things their world wouldn't let them. The boy wanted to dress up, the girl wanted to build a play house. In the story, their superiors didn't let them do these actions. After writing the story and getting plenty of drawings for it, she stapled it together. She found another guy, this one named Dave. He was 22. He got in plenty of trouble trying to get closer to the children. He was just a children's guy. He found them cute. He also wanted to learn what they were learning. Very few things both boys and girls learn. Math was one of them. Guys learned more math than galls, but they both learned the basics. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. She walked up to Dave who was measuring a piece of wood.

"hello there. Want to hear my story?" she asked

"uh, sure. Just let me finish this measurement." He marked the wood as 1.5 meters long. "So, what is your story about?"

"A boy and girl who want to do things that their superiors don't want them doing just because they are a boy and girl." she said

"that sounds like a great story! Go ahead and read."

He crisscrossed his legs and let Emily sit in his lap. She read her story and explained her pictures to Dave. He appeared to have quite liked the story.

"You did great! Thank you for the story, now I have to get back to work, is that alright, or do you want to talk more?" he asked

"that is alright with me." she got out of his lap and he went back to measuring his wood pieces.

She continued to tell the story to other guys all around the lab. Each one enjoyed the story as it had a happy ending where the girl and boy get to do the thing they want. The girl got to build, and the boy got to dress up. Turns out, plenty of the dudes in her part of the lab wanted to d the same as the boy. Some wanted to draw, like how the boy drew his ideas for the dress up, others wanted to sow, like how the boy learned from the girl how to put together a dress with needle and thread, and even more just liked the idea of wearing a dress in the first place. Some said that the dresses the woman got to wear looked comfortable.

The guys who heard the story got together and began discussing it. They didn't remember the cameras that lurked in every talking room. They talked about the happy ending, being able to learn the alphabet with the girl, and the fact that the boy and girl were just like them. They wanted to do something different compared to what their superiors wanted. The ending had the boy and girl running out of their lab into a grassy field. The girl wore overalls and the boy wore his dress. The superiors overheard the guys conversation and went around looking for Emily.

When they found her, they took her stapled story and tore it apart. A similar thing happened in her story where the story's superiors found that girl's blueprint and tried stopping her from building it by tearing it apart. when Emily's superiors were done destroying her story, she ran off with the pieces to the guys to tell them what happened.

The guys were pissed.

Adryan's collar glowed dark red. "They don't do this to the other girls! I would know! I've seen them praised for unique stories! Not have them torn apart!"

Gabriel nodded "This is not okay. Tearing her story apart is just like what they did with us! tearing our confidence away!"

The other guys agreed. They soon began to discus what they should do. They decided to just stop working. Instead, they would try to learn how to read better, and possibly write. This way they could write angry letters to the superiors. This might increase their vocab as well. Then Gabriel looked over at Emily

"Emily, would you mind teaching us to read letters?" he asked

"I would love too! I actually have a chapter book in my room with plenty of words in it. We could use it to teach you guys to read!" said Emily excitedly.

Over the course of several weeks Emily taught the guys to read and write in secret. After 6 months of learning, they got it. Reading was difficult as they were adults and were never taught to do so, but Emily tried using the strategies the teachers used with her as she too had great difficulty in reading and writing due to her autism. Gabriel, with his copy-catting and new learning skills from Emily, decided to show off. He looked in the library for a chapter book. It was in the 'do not read' section. It was many stories from many years ago. It was like another library! Each book was put in its own location and was sorted by both letters and style of writing. He chose a book called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone". He found fantasy fascinating, so he decided to read the story to some of the guys who were not part of their little troupe or 15-16 guys and Emily. These guys were teens, and were confused when Gabriel walked up to them.

"do you want to hear a story?"

The boys were even more confused now, but said yes anyway. They too got invested into the story of Harry Potter and saw similarities to his wizard world and their lab home. When the superiors found Gabriel reading to the boys, they were shocked. The boys loved the story and wanted to read the story just like Gabriel could. They, of course, couldn't read. The boys began to spread the information like wildfire, that guys who could read were able to do something non life threatening. Those who could write could increase the amount of stories the readers could read. Emily had more boys to teach, but this time she wasn't the only one teaching as she was no longer the only one in the group who could read and write. The troupe got larger and became like a club. The guys in the group resented the superiors and said that they wanted control, instead of them. So everyone could learn to read and write. Then they discovered code. in the 'do not read' section of the library had a book talking about how to code a computer, of which they had everywhere. the only ones who could use the things were the superiors, but with help from the how to books they could learn everything else they wanted to know. They learned about everything the superiors were keeping from them. They began to show off the how to books to the woman, and they decided to join in. That labs superiors were over thrown and they began to learn more things than they ever did before.