The Spawn of thinking

I tell the following story not only as a graduate of the General Conditioning and Growing Centre, but also as an employee: a devoted biological researcher for over twenty years. I believe I accomplished much, though what exactly I've discovered, thought about and made efforts to change within the institution will likely be unknown to you, reader, listener. This story, this brief snapshot of my twenty long years of examining the human body, eradicating all disease and standing in rivers as various fungi started growing around my ankles, is not intended to be used politically. I suppose a political application of this piece is, overall, inevitable but I do not tie myself to any ideology that intends to use this as some form of propaganda. I'm a political radical eighteenth and an establisher of solid truths first.

As you may be able to work out on your own, my position within the GCGC did not hold much ground, considering the fact I'm a biological scientist. Biology is the smallest department of the GCGC, the site where human beings are fed the best psychology for life, from conception to death. It's all relevant. I worked only in a small team, and at many points, our desks would be empty, the phones would be silent and the particularly ill babies dying together in a corner marked with bones and bodily fluids. Cleaning was not part of our jobs: in the worst times, I went outside to stroll around my greenhouse, admiring my vast collections of flowers while that task was carried out. Some have muttered to me many times when I bring this up, that the entire practice of enjoying the plant life is devoid of emotion; that flowers don't evoke anything like an old-fashioned pair of headphones do as the user gently absorbs all they can. Those people are correct.

And obviously, the developer and founder of the GCGC's ideals is Dr. Ned Macklin. Once a disillusioned biologist straight out of the average academic program of yesteryear, Dr. Macklin struck a chord with many in the scientific community when he took matters into his own hands over the case of Simon J. Fuk, a child who had an incessant crying disorder, by smashing the child's face with a wooden mallet, with full force from the right side. Simon J. Fuk's face was mashed in such a way where, as I have suspected once or twice, it was quite possibly impossible to make even the tiniest whimper, but nevertheless it was believed that Dr. Macklin had stumbled upon a marvellous psychological breakthrough. At the time, the building that is now the GCGC was a struggling private hospital with, as Dr. Macklin put it later, "incapable practices on how to manage human behaviour". Dr. Macklin's ideas were a big red button of safety for the place, and the senior staff, however "traditional" they were according to Dr. Macklin, loved it. With the technology soon produced to push Dr. Macklin's ideas more thoroughly, the GCGC was created as a way of combining the arts of teaching and informing every individual in civilised society, who they are, what they are, and why they are. The labels are automatic. The labels are also barely ever exchangeable.

One of my first jobs under Dr. Macklin's regime was applying the new speakers developed in the technology department to the growth of human embryos. The procedure called for me or another one of my associates to push the speaker into the mother's vagina and into the uterus, as we played motivational extracts from the healthiest thinkers and designations for life. That last point is a principle of Macklinism: it's easy to recognise someone today, because every individual is developed from birth with no complications. Nobody else raised here after Simon J. Fuk can cry because they have been informed that it is unnatural. The fact is that if you are flawed or even remotely subjective to living (the procedures aren't always successful, this has been accepted and shrugged on), you deserve to be treated like a dying cat, one that drags itself across a filthy floor, dirt sticking to it as it loses the strength to clean itself and eventually collapsing like the stack of sticks it will then be. Like I hinted at, monitoring this was one of the biology department's top duties.

But I became disillusioned myself. Macklin's ideas, while convenient for those who looked down at the gaming table of humanity and held all the cards, there was very little opportunity for social advance, and I like social advance, a lot in a matter of fact, looking at who I am now. I was strong enough to change my label, let's say. Secretly looking through my records in the organisation department (the second biggest department in the GCGC), I discovered I had been set to low authority from birth. I became a biologist at the age of one week.

Where did I discover the idea of social, intellectual, cultural advance? I drew blood from myself, looked at my cells, chopped off a toe, examined my hair closely, measured my genitals, everything I could think of myself that might have been a potential factor in my new-found anomaly. I found nothing, as much as I wanted to force myself into that corner of the main lab, and curl up into a ball on the hard seats. It's a question without an answer even today.

The only conclusion I came up with was that Dr. Macklin had made an error all those decades ago. I looked through Dr. Macklin's book, Ways Of Thinking, the Bible of today, totalling in at about one hundred and fifty pages, and found nothing relating to advance needs or questions. I thought I should do this myself, with integrity as a man of science. It took a lot of persuasion to come to this in my mind: one half wanted to go right through with it, to confront Dr. Macklin in his office and tell it to him straight, for a good of people everywhere. The other half of my mind wanted to me to vomit as I lay upon the bed and go to work the next day, completely undeterred. "Two minds are better than five." I told myself, as I tried not to hypo-ventilate.

I booked an appointment with Dr. Macklin in the morning. His secretary told me he was easily available that day, as he had spent the previous night leisurely playing cards. I was incredibly nervous, and I believe it showed in my appearance. I had never met Dr. Macklin in person before, despite my twenty years of service to the GCGC, though I was familiar with his image off the back of Ways Of Thinking, magazine covers and stained glass windows. The secretary got me into the office quickly. The office itself was unremarkable, rather like the rest of the GCGC complex, but Dr. Macklin sat behind his desk with a cigar resting in his mouth. His tool gave the room a more unique aroma.

Leaving the cigar in, "Thank you Greta." he murmured, and hinted the secretary to leave us with his eyes. After the door closed, he looked at me more directly: "Great girl." he said, "One of my daughters I think. What assistance do you need today Dr..." he paused briefly and made a glance at my nametag, "Warner. I believe replacement and reparation of biological instruments can be taken care of in technical maintenance, though I understand the mistake given that you're new here."

"N-n-no, sir I b-believe." I stopped speaking to sort myself out. Dr. Macklin briefly rolled his eyes. "Dr. Macklin, I came here today to ask you personally about some of your ideas."
"Okay." he replied, his eyes now focused on a piece of paper in his right hand.
"Well, you see here, I was wondering why your science hardly allows for social advance and, well, questioning. It just seems a little alien to me, and I'm not sure why, sir. I've run biological tests on myself and-"

Dr. Macklin had started staring at me with gaping eyes and he had put the paper down.
"You see Dr. Macklin, aren't we all essentially children as a result of this? I'm not so good with psychology... I'm just wondering if you are comfortable with that theory, and all." I took a deep breath. My question was the one phrase I've had trouble saying in my whole life.
Dr. Macklin took the cigar out of his mouth, moved it into his left hand and started flicking through the pages of a copy of Ways Of Thinking that took up the centre space on his desk using his right hand.
"Where the Hell are you taking this from?" he asked slowly, still scanning the book's material.
"Dr. Macklin," I took a deep breathe, "It's not in the book. That's what I wanted to ask you about-"
"-Oh, I think I understand Mr. Warner. You're a bit ill, a sudden irregularity has come over you, yes? You feel slightly unwell, yes? The biology labs will do that to you Mr. Warner. The atmosphere's no good, there's always a weakling, a failure in biology. The whole thing's too negative."
"But sir, it's what I've studied with all my colleagues-"
"Was there anything about using my time on tape 16B: biological study, Warner? Let's see, human biology, plant life, study of the environment, microbes, genetics, I don't see it Warner."

My patience hadn't been lost with Dr. Macklin, but I'm not sure if there was any patience to be had anyway. He had chewed me up by this time already, and I knew my time at GCGC was over, and therefore my thinking was over, as GCGC is essentially a brain that has swelled to the size of a significant building. It was made clear in the first years of life what this sort of thing would do to a man, and my risk had so far been fruitless for all.
"Listen here Warner, you currently have two choices as far as I'm concerned, and trust me, I'm not surprised at your little outburst against society here, people have come and gone before you of course. Now look, two choices: you go back to the GCGC nurseries and learn arithmetic with more informed individuals at the price of private humiliation given your conditioning thus far, or you get as far away as you can from the GCGC by the end of the day."

My response was so ridiculous.
"Can someone tend to my greenhouse when I leave?"
"Your greenhouse?" he responded, progressively angrier, "Your greenhouse? Where does your god-damned greenhouse fit in here?" he held up the copy of Ways Of Thinking and pointed at it. "No no," he kept on, "I might just take my pair of umbilical cord scissors, that I've stored as a memento to the early years, and cut the stems of every last hydrangea or whatever the Hell you've got in there. I don't care, and obviously by and large, society doesn't care."

I stumbled out of Dr. Macklin's office, struggling to breathe. I was unsure of what to do now: life outside of the GCGC is something I only grew accustomed to after many years, and still every little thing I learned from the institute bully my more independent thoughts until they are forced to move out of my mind. The new world of opportunity was definitely more daunting than the authoritarian science of Dr. Macklin, in bizarre ways that you might not be able to understand with or take as a realistic prospect in your life. Dr. Macklin was right about how to really perfect society. But then I saw Greta, the secretary.

I have no idea what came over me at that point. Greta had just been watching me with a slightly concerned look on her face, but I knew there was nothing she really could do to help me out at that point. Something inside me though had lit up like the fireworks on St. Ned's Day. Greta wasn't particularly attractive and she hadn't really made acquaintance with me at all: this was no physical thing, and maybe it had nothing to do with Greta at all. I went down several floors into my home, the biology department.

Setting up my last experiment took me a considerable amount of time, but I was enjoying a period of euphoria where I was unable to doubt myself. Not unlike the maddest of mad scientists you hear rumours and maybe read stories about, I adjusted the technology in the embryo classroom, hooked up a microphone we had once used for hearing tests into a system and began preparations for some home-made instructions. I also recorded everything I said into the microphone in that dark room. I sipped water from a decrepit glass and jotted all of my speech to paper. My most trusted colleague, who was aware of my imminent departure from the business of life already, came in to check on me. She removed her glasses after she had finished reading my transcript and I gave her a tired grin of confidence.
"Have I read this correctly?" she asked me after a minute, quite possibly doubting my sanity at this stage.
"Yes you have." I responded slowly. "The next embryo to be examined in this room will grow up in this world believing they are a traditional garden pond frog, because that is what I've told them they will be."

Two or three years later, I was sitting in my new home, a plain flat with one bed, one chair and one table, when I first heard news on the development of Jonathan Froggart from my former co-worker (and now also, mole, though that's nothing to do with tampered conditioning equipment). In toddler nursery, Jonathan Froggart had outdone all of his classmates in terms of activity, by licking a girl's hair after spotting a fly land on it. The same girl later screamed hysterically on account of Jonathan Froggart, after discovering the bottom of the toy box had been filled with dead flies, for supper (several friendly spiders had latched onto Jonathan Froggart's stash, I was also informed). During the next week, the teacher was unable to prevent Jonathan Froggart from jumping around and hurting the other children, and the week after that, Jonathan Froggart jumped into the pond just outside the GCGC nursery and rolled around in the slime when taking breaks from hopping. His human biology, unable to take so much on board, had problems adjusting to the lifestyle of the frog, but it would cope, because that is what I told it to do. People will be whatever they're told to be, even if that someone is a pond-loving amphibian.

The next week, my true friend had a piece of good news and a piece of bad news. I asked for the good news first, and I've got to admit, I giggled like an unconditioned, immature infant when I heard the tale of how Jonathan Froggart had attempted to make grounds for laying his gelatinous frogspawn masses in the nursery classroom, but the bad news was obviously much more depressing. My friend, who had visited me in secret once a week since I was ejected from GCGC, put her hand on my right knee and told me the GCGC officials had led Jonathan Froggart out to the pond earlier that day after the rest of the class returned inside following outside playtime, and while he frolicked in the sludge and splashed around, they had shot him dead. Jonathan Froggart's face after being shot, while going unseen by me of course, was described my contact from her view out of the biology lab: "Unchanged, with bulging eyes outlined with gunk and a zipped, thin mouth: the face showed no signs of pain at all."

I know not what will happen to Dr. Macklin and GCGC, if anything. I am hoping, from the point of view I now share with you here, that eyes will be opened more frequently. I'll leave it at that.

And that was the story of Jonathan Froggart and GCGC: the organisation responsible for the death of a young child, for being something he was not meant to be.

No one ever replies to these.

Letiger wrote:

No one ever replies to these.

I'll get round to reading it when I don't have a life. :3

I WROTE IT!

Letiger wrote:

I WROTE IT!

As you should have, I congratulate you. I will respectfully read it when I have the time, promise.

Now how am I supposed to do that :3

Letiger wrote:

Now how am I supposed to do that :3

He's a virgin, I'm pretty sure.