Prologue: Page 1 and 2
It had happened again, pain beyond pain, me having the shit beat out of me just because I was different. The names, the constant names being yelled at me before I was even hit, Siri told me later that they kept them up while I was being beat, but the pain had made me go deaf. I don’t remember thinking anything except to block my head for fear of death. Looking back they probably thought my weak self wanted to fight back because they beat me harder and I almost passed out.
But I didn’t. This, at the ripe old age of 8 years old, seemed to be the turning point in my life. I turned on my side, and remembered in my pain finding piece, I thought I was going to die. I found resolve in this, I almost found pleasure. Then I saw my best friend Siri, the pod man. He stood there at a distance watching me. Since he had been made into a thing other than a child, other than my friend, I had no idea what he was thinking. Looking back I’m sure he was calculating each and every possibility of what was about to happen. I’m sure multiple thoughts of just walking away or running for help calculatingly marched through his impeccable mind. But he did neither he just stood there for a few moments, but for me a lifetime, staring.
In the moments that stood before the massacre, I thought more of our fate. Why the hell hadn’t my parents made me like the other boys, in all of my naturalness I have been made an unnatural beast compared to the genetically modified perfection as the boys who were certainly going to kill me. Man, and maybe I don’t have it so bad, sure I might die, sure I’m in pain. But my pain was nothing compared to the abomination staring at me from across the school yard. He wasn’t even a boy anymore. He was teased and called names, but no one even got close to him. He was feared, at least in my naturalness I could be touched. Right as a foot broke my ribs.
The crunch of my ribcase was accented by a crunch from above, I thought I must be dead at this point as blood was everywhere. Only later did I realize that this wasn’t my own blood but the blood from two of the boys after, Pod Man, zapped them both in the head. Dave down, Samuel down.
CRUNCH!
This one came from a tiny fist that moved with an unimaginable calculated speed into the face of another of the boy, Jacob. I watched his face cave in, even though Jacob was not even a second ago trying to kill me, I felt sympathy for him. It was wondrous and horrible.
After this I passed out. I thought for sure for the third time today I was dead. I dreamed of a place where I could live without this kind of pain and torture. I didn’t want to be a zombie mindlessly meandering through the hatred of mankind, but someone useful and respected. When I awoke to my crying parents, I vowed that I would enhance myself to stop this from happening again.