Super Ottawa: The Miscarriages of Evolution
Did you know, most serial killers have a higher than average IQ?
Then there are those who can be so brilliant, but They Don't Speak Our Language.
Our society don't cope well with those that are different. Those that are different don't cope well with our society. Our own bodies and our own minds don't cope well with differences, mutation leads to cancer.
So we go slow. Eons, with our planet, we crawled from the mud when all that were land were only islands, when the world was sea and swamps. We separated and we crossed and we mix and matched genes, we've formed bones, we've laid eggs and we've gestated our youngs from tadpoles to primates.
Change, so slow, we don't know, we haven't always been Exactly The Same, we don't know it. "Miss, the people in the Mid Ages sure are short!" Our tastes change, our cravings, our brains are differently patterned.
Then one night in the nineties the northern skies are showered with tailed stars, and the film geek who was watching them with the astrology nerd, jokes that, "I hope that we don't get zombies."
Humanity is composed of individuals with differences great and small, everyone knows that though most had chosen to ignore it. Governments use it, use them, as scapegoats, as dirty hands. When you write diversity into your laws and preach it, they will come.
Then one night in the nineties, they became "ours", they became people we know, people we know becomes them. Too many to hide, too many too close.
The boy who could start fires when he was mad was the neighbourhood's Frankenstein, but it was his parents that scared those that was scared of the boy even more.
So he burnt himself up before anyone could burn his house down, his brain was fever-fried and he died delirious. Everyone sent flowers and prayers, thinking it's for the best and telling his parents that he couldn't have suffered "he wasn't in the right mind to".
Slowly the fear turned from what the Others could do, and became, What If It Happened To Us? What if I couldn't keep other people out of my head? What if I break everything I touch? If my baby has a super metabolism, how do I keep her from starving?
Telepathy and/or Empathy was the most common affliction, people who couldn't keep other people out. Intellectuals note that it's the next step in our collective evolution, to be able to truly connect from within with each other, at last, but there was no coherent link and there are no teachers. People killed themselves, people went on rampages, tried to shut the voices up, overdosed on drugs, tried to numb the feelings. People reduced to trembling catatonics, immobilized by sensory overload, and in the crowded wings of hospitals and clinics and insane asylums, disturbed doctors injected them full of downers, trying to ease the grimace of pain from their faces.
The trouble with telepathy and empathy is that we don't know where the 'off switch' is, the noise doesn't go away when we cover our ears, we don't know how to 'cover our ears', most of us. The 'Super Affliction' brought back common human experimentation, of questionable ethics, of understandable desperation, of the doctors, of the patients. Sometimes some of them find a drug that can dull the voices, most time all that can be done is to drug the patient into a coma. "I'm sorry sir it's all we could do, and we have to keep him down for now or his mind will be gone for good."
Across the nations of the North, hospital rooms full of catatonics. Sometimes someone jokingly tapes up a note, "Please turn off your cellphones and keep your thoughts quiet.". The ones who have money or know those who could provide the way, left Civilization to search for a place with almost no one else, the deserts and the tundras, but there were so many telepaths, it's better with each other but it's still so loud.
The headlines begin to ask The Question, "Euthanasia or Genocide?"
Then there are those who can be so brilliant, but They Don't Speak Our Language.
Our society don't cope well with those that are different. Those that are different don't cope well with our society. Our own bodies and our own minds don't cope well with differences, mutation leads to cancer.
So we go slow. Eons, with our planet, we crawled from the mud when all that were land were only islands, when the world was sea and swamps. We separated and we crossed and we mix and matched genes, we've formed bones, we've laid eggs and we've gestated our youngs from tadpoles to primates.
Change, so slow, we don't know, we haven't always been Exactly The Same, we don't know it. "Miss, the people in the Mid Ages sure are short!" Our tastes change, our cravings, our brains are differently patterned.
Then one night in the nineties the northern skies are showered with tailed stars, and the film geek who was watching them with the astrology nerd, jokes that, "I hope that we don't get zombies."
Humanity is composed of individuals with differences great and small, everyone knows that though most had chosen to ignore it. Governments use it, use them, as scapegoats, as dirty hands. When you write diversity into your laws and preach it, they will come.
Then one night in the nineties, they became "ours", they became people we know, people we know becomes them. Too many to hide, too many too close.
The boy who could start fires when he was mad was the neighbourhood's Frankenstein, but it was his parents that scared those that was scared of the boy even more.
So he burnt himself up before anyone could burn his house down, his brain was fever-fried and he died delirious. Everyone sent flowers and prayers, thinking it's for the best and telling his parents that he couldn't have suffered "he wasn't in the right mind to".
Slowly the fear turned from what the Others could do, and became, What If It Happened To Us? What if I couldn't keep other people out of my head? What if I break everything I touch? If my baby has a super metabolism, how do I keep her from starving?
Telepathy and/or Empathy was the most common affliction, people who couldn't keep other people out. Intellectuals note that it's the next step in our collective evolution, to be able to truly connect from within with each other, at last, but there was no coherent link and there are no teachers. People killed themselves, people went on rampages, tried to shut the voices up, overdosed on drugs, tried to numb the feelings. People reduced to trembling catatonics, immobilized by sensory overload, and in the crowded wings of hospitals and clinics and insane asylums, disturbed doctors injected them full of downers, trying to ease the grimace of pain from their faces.
The trouble with telepathy and empathy is that we don't know where the 'off switch' is, the noise doesn't go away when we cover our ears, we don't know how to 'cover our ears', most of us. The 'Super Affliction' brought back common human experimentation, of questionable ethics, of understandable desperation, of the doctors, of the patients. Sometimes some of them find a drug that can dull the voices, most time all that can be done is to drug the patient into a coma. "I'm sorry sir it's all we could do, and we have to keep him down for now or his mind will be gone for good."
Across the nations of the North, hospital rooms full of catatonics. Sometimes someone jokingly tapes up a note, "Please turn off your cellphones and keep your thoughts quiet.". The ones who have money or know those who could provide the way, left Civilization to search for a place with almost no one else, the deserts and the tundras, but there were so many telepaths, it's better with each other but it's still so loud.
The headlines begin to ask The Question, "Euthanasia or Genocide?"