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Contemporary Science Fiction Speculative

Who are you? Maybe that may seem like probably the most used rhetorical question humans have ever asked each other but what is so hard answering a three-word question? Every individual used to have their own identity, their own opinions and beliefs, and their very own way of living life. Now? In this modern world, what do we have? Thrown ashes of who we used to be, at the moment replaced with who we must be. We consider robots underneath our level, after all, they don't have a mind of their own, do they? Do they have feelings, like sadness, happiness, and anger, all the things that make our species superior in comparison with animals, robots, plants, and so on? No, they don't and that is one of the very few differences between the human species and robots, excluding, of course, the way the human body works and the perpetuation of our species.  

In our very modern, political, and capitalist world, where we are influenced by the latest currents, by people, by the way, we live, by advertising. by others' opinions, by the superior power guiding us, you change who you are to intentionally fit in or not but once you are hit with information, opinions, beliefs, lifestyles, endless arguments all around the world, your mind is shaped in such a way that at the end of the day, you are just like the other 8 billion people on this planet.  

In my world, we are all considered numbers. I am number 0618, my former name was Cleopatra. It didn't use to be that way until I was probably five and a half when both I and the rest of the world were called for the M.F.L.D, which stands for Must Follow Life Directions to be inserted in our brains. Once into the back of your head, you will never be the same because you will be a human-robot just like everybody else. A lifestyle is going to be set out for you- wake up at 7 am, go to work until 5-6 pm, go home eat while listening to the lies called news then go to sleep only to wake up in the same rabbit hole as every mediocre number in this world. These "directions" which could have been easily called straightforward rules are the only directions you can choose. You are almost like a horse that can't see the sides of the road, obedient, every single day, until your very last breath. This never-ending cycle is unchangeable. Babies born in the world nowadays are inserted the M.F.L.D in their brains right after making contact with life. Now, the M.F.L.D is more like a small device that deletes your normal special way of being and replaces it with work and obedience to the rules which are never ever broken. Until I decided to change that. 

Seeing people so focused on these rules, pre-set lifestyles they have to follow, and pre-set beliefs about everything changed my vision of us. Even if we may be the most intelligent species out there, we are so easy to be lied to and shaped by everything and anything. We lost our human senses. Empathy for others? Deleted. Revolting for our rights? Deleted. Wondering about this illusion called life? Deleted. Socializing with others? Deleted. We were brainwashed into following these directions that would eventually lead us to the cycle called the mouse wheel. The only thing that ever mattered to the most powerful was to make us their human robots. You only have to work; work is your life and the only thing that has ever mattered. You mustn't ask questions, you mustn't feel empathy for others, and you mustn't have a mind of your own because you don't know how to control your mind but, thankfully, we will make the most out of your silly innocent mind.

It was 12 pm and my cereal began to get cold. Sitting in my room by myself with a couple of surgical knives on my desk and all curtains closed. Everyone was asleep, except for me. The smell of alcohol was beginning to hurt the insides of my nose. I had everything I needed in my locked bedroom. It was time to begin the procedure. My mind was shifting between confusion and confidence about what I was going to do. In the back of my mind, I could hear voices telling me to stop before I cross the limit, to go back to bed and watch some irrelevant crap on my computer but I wasn't going to listen anymore. I wasn't going to obey the rules any longer. It was time to make a change and change begins with yourself. 

In my hand, I had scissors to cut my ponytail off. After a couple of seconds, my hair couldn't touch my shoulders like it used to do. The clipper machine in my hand was ready to make me bald but for a second, I stopped. Do I really want to do this? I asked myself in the mirror, losing my body, my soul, my energy, and myself into a mirror in which I couldn't see who I was. Who am I? That question was going to be answered as soon as the device in the back of my brain was going to be taken out. Endless hair was falling on the floor and on my clothes. The easiest steps had been accomplished successfully.  

I put numbing cream all over my head and took all the painkillers I could find to numb the pain of cutting my head open. All the pills were having the same side effects on me, which were written on the instruction box, throwing up, extreme dizziness, shaky hands, and it felt like my head was spinning and I couldn't feel my tongue anymore. I grabbed a surgical knife and began slightly cutting the side of my head where the device was inserted in. It was pretty easy because I just had to re-open the scar I had when they inserted the device in years ago. My breaths were constant, trying to ignore all the alarms in my head. What was I doing?! God, this is so against everything I have obeyed for! I should stop right now? What is happening!?? The M.F.L.D began to notice that something was wrong and immediately sent more and more of these sentences to stop me. The cut wasn't wide enough so I had to cut upper and under the scar to get the wideness I needed until something stopped me. The M.F.L.D reacted and responded to my disobedience by sending electric shocks thru my body until I dropped the knife full of blood. My entire body started shaking but I wasn't going to give up. I snatched the knife again to cut just a few inches more even if my body was uncontrollable. 

After I cut thru my skin, it was time for me to use the manual cranial drill to cut thru the skull. The pain was unbearable but I had to keep going. Blood was coming out of the cut I had just made everywhere, so I took a white towel and wiped it off the most I could. The manual cranial drill was on and right into the back of my head it went. Howls of pain were killing the silence in the bedroom. The device wasn't supposed to be too deep into the skull. With the drill in my hand, I surrounded the device and made a little hole to take out the M.F.L.D with a stronger pair of surgical tweezers. The M.F.L.D wasn't large, it was actually quite tiny, the half of a long USB. I was guiding myself with my mirror to see what I was doing behind my head. To be able to put the tweezers inside, I had to wipe the blood once again with a towel wet with alcohol. Tears were falling from my eyes and down my cheeks.  

With the tweezers, I was ready to set myself free. Very carefully, I inserted the tweezers inside my skull and took hold of the device to pull it out. The device instantly reacted and made my body paralyzed, falling off the chair and dropping the tweezers on the carpet. Somebody out here stopped me from waking up to reality. Laying on the floor, with my face on the bloody carpet, I could somehow make my arm and hand move again. It took some time until my fingers began moving again and, very slowly, I could get closer to the tweezers. I got hold of them and it was time to pick up where I left from. That time, I didn't have a mirror to see what I was doing, so I just touched my head until I re-inserted the tweezers inside of my skull. The edge of the device was held onto strongly until I pulled half of it out of my skull. A sensation of stressed relief shivered in my body. Even if half of it was out of my head, it was still connected with my brain. In conclusion, I had to take it all out. 

As more of it was coming out of my skull, I could feel the pain of it detaching from my brain and the membrane surrounding the brain. I ended up cutting way deeper than I thought I would. I almost fainted in the process because of the endless pain and the loss of blood. In a minute or two, it was all out.  

I was sitting on the carpet, blood all over my back with the M.F.L.D in my hands. I made it. After a few seconds, I covered the cut with two bandages after wiping all the blood off living the moment of coming back to life. It was like I traveled to space and returned into back into this house in the present moment. My eyes were wandering the wall of my room, looking curiously without a blindfold put on their sides. I have seen nature, the sky, all the things that have been kept hidden, and the things that I had never seen or heard of before. Moments in history, the beginning of the world, the discovery of fire, the evolution, the disappearance of the dinosaurs, Adam and Eve, The World-Wide Wars, women fighting, for their rights, cults, tornadoes, rain, animals in their natural environment, The Universe, I have seen all of that sitting in the corner of my room, living the beginning of the past until the present moment and then everything became black and noiseless.  

I was everything and then nothing. 

June 11, 2022 11:49

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3 comments

Ioan Neamtu
04:41 Jun 12, 2022

Just like the world we are living in already...and „they„ did not have to insert some USB device type in our brains. We did it on our own, don't we ? Now we just have to find a way out...of who we became. Well done ! P.S. Do „the liberation„ next and see where it can get you.

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Anne-Marie B.
13:05 Jun 11, 2022

Great work, keep it up👍♡

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Aura Aura
12:04 Jun 11, 2022

❤️

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