The bust had begun so abruptly—a bang, swearing and sudden torrents of gunfire. I hadn’t expected it…I don’t think anyone really did. We’d charged into this blindly, like the cavalry on a battlefield, and only stopped to consider what could happen next when we realized that the enemy had bayonets…but this is a war. It’s a war, and we all knew it.

As the sounds of firefighting and pain rose all around, I looked around and began gathering the poleepkwa near me together. Many of us had hidden behind the crates, wincing and crying out when a child hissed and shrieked in pain. To think that even now, we were hiding behind the next generation to save ourselves…something shriveled up inside me as I looked out at the fighting.

The one next to me had been shot and blood leaked out from cracks in his plating—I tore off my jacket and pressed it to the wound, clumsily tying it with fear-benumbed fingers into a tourniquet. The cracks and scarring were visible on my torso as I turned to face the others around me. They blinked back at me, silent and petrified, waiting…waiting for something. Death perhaps, or freedom. Whichever came first, or was reached first. As terrified as I was, I laughed a bit, thinking morbidly of Braveheart. “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom.” We had to fight for both, or lose both. Right now, right here.

Too many had died…too many would still die even after this. There was no way I would let this continue, as long as I could do something.

“Come on! We’re getting the hell out of here!” I rasped and tugged the wounded one—Sirius, I think. I knew him, he’d tried to kill me when I was being rented—to his feet, pushing him towards the door, the night air, freedom. “Down low! Out the door to that truck!”

“Is this the police?” Betelgeuse looked up at me. “Where are we going?”
Too urgent to explain; I picked him up and bolted the distance to the truck. He was handed roughly off to one of the poleepkwa already there as I ran off inside. We all ran out, but I continued to double back—the sound of gunfire was like thunder, the muzzle-flashes like lightening. A storm, if there ever was one. Turbulent, vicious…

After aeons it was over…we were at the base. Jake was standing off on his own, a bandage clumsily wrapped around his leg. He turned away when I spoke to him, face pale. I knew why…I could say nothing. People filed past me—the ones who’d pledged to help ARFA. I couldn’t look at them. They’d stood by as we were killed, and I wanted…I didn’t want them dead. I just couldn’t talk to them. I was too tired to hate.

It was as if Vishnu Himself was with me right then; it was as if He’d put a hand on my shoulder and turned me so that I could see the light ahead. At the very edge of my hearing, I could hear His voice…”You’ve done well. Good job.” I let myself feel a warm glow of pride, just a bit, then quietly let it drift off into the night and began to cry.

Phone Call

The phone rings, the tone vibrating down the stairs to where we’re resting and waiting; everyone immediately tenses and stares around warily at those near their space. Any second now, someone’s going to answer that phone, and soon after that one of us will be called out and sent off to another john. Maybe they’ll die—most likely they’ll be dragged back an hour or so later, tired and beaten. Hopefully it won’t be you, or anyone you especially liked, but most likely it will be. That’s the way it is, after all. Things don’t work out the way you want them to.

A child starts crying from across the room. It’s a whipped, whimpering sequence of choked sobs. They try to restrain themselves—after all, it messes with the john’s head and they don’t pay as much if you’re crying—and fail miserably; an older poleepkwa smacks them across the head and hisses at them to shut up.

The ringing abruptly cuts out and a muffled “hello?” can be heard. Collectively we all flinch in unison, thoughts swirling with the same fear—a grotesque parody of the hive mind that almost nobody’s heard of here. More speech, direct and flat. You strain your antennae, catch only a few words, a number—is that the amount being paid or the number in the catalogue? Is it an address? What’s going on, and how is it going to hurt you? You’ve got to know beforehand...that gives you an advantage. It gives you time to brace yourself.

The talking goes on for a few more moments and trails off. You can hear the small click of the receiver being hung up. It’s silent upstairs...you hope for something that’s hopeless.

“Rigel.”

The name’s called out and everyone turns to you. For a brief moment you consider turning to face somebody else, or a wall—anything other than the glances of relief. A wave of tired happiness rises: hey, at least somebody else isn’t getting hurt because of this phone call. Bile comes up next. Well, that’s because you’re the one that got called.

You swallow down the fear, horror and twisted gratitude and follow the runner who traipses down the stairs to escort you to the car. He’s whistling a bit, and smoking a cigarette; nothing seems to be going wrong for him. He isn’t perturbed that he’s bringing somebody to a place where pain awaits, ready to scratch at the plating and claw into the soft inner flesh, growling in pleasure while you choke and whimper quietly. Why should he worry? He’s never encountered it on the “business end” of the call-prawn system. It’s just another night at the office for him.

It is for you, too.

Reunion.

Sometimes it’s useful, having experienced the conditions of the egg trade and become accustomed to its varying miseries. You begin to recognize the main symptoms of common sicknesses and figure out some basic, hopefully effective remedies. So when I heard about the shipment of eggs that came in, I immediately set to work pointing out things that were wrong and helping to fix them.

“See? That’s egg rot. They get that when they’ve been in a crate too long. That needs to be cleaned off, please, and you have to check and make sure the fungus didn’t go inside…”

“This one is dehydrated. It’s going to need to sit in some water. At the trade, we filled a bathtub with warm water and let it sit, halfway submerged. Don’t leave it in too long, though.”

And, now and then…“That one’s dead.”

It’s triage, except this isn’t a battlefield, this isn’t an all-out fight. Or maybe it is...there certainly are enough casualties here, in the rows upon rows of crates and eggs, swarming with ARFA nurses and volunteers. There’s enough pain and trauma for this to be a war, if not one for a direct cause. It’s a fight for life; trying to save as many as you can, however you can.

Jake walked up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Look, you don’t have to be here...they know what they’re doing.” His eyes were tired and wary. For a moment I remembered that he was barely an adult—a teen, shouldering a workload that few men or women can even imagine. Almost instantly the thought was pushed aside by necessity. Even if we are too young or small for the burden, we have to carry it if there’s nobody else willing to. At least for now, anyway.

“I know that they know what they’re doing. They just…they just don’t know how to do it.” I didn’t bother elaborating on what I meant, instead moving on to the next row of crates and continuing my self-appointed task. Nearby, a nurse was trying to give some food to a tiny Poleepkwa—the child was squirming and glancing around, confused. As they twisted, their back faced me and I caught a brilliant splotch of glossy red on the plating there. That kind of marking would fetch a high price, I thought sadly. That poor kid would have been sold as a pet it they hadn’t hatched and hid away—

Hatched. Observations connected quickly like tinder and a match and an idea flamed; quickly I strode over, plucked the baby Poleepkwa from the young woman’s grip and began walking to where Vega slept. Markings like those weren’t very common here, so that meant that this child would have had a parent with markings just like that. I knew someone who had them. My steps quickened to a run and I dashed the last distance, ignoring Jake as he ran after me.

“Vega.” I carefully set the little one down, brushing some of the dirt off their plating. “Vega, look…do you recognize this child?” Hope was there—I could feel it like a breeze or draft in the room. It was possible that this was a coincidence, but what where the chances? Things could be finally shaping up for us, and all it had taken was a blot of red.

She crept over to the little one, who blinked bewilderedly back at her. “I-I…I don’t…” As they wobbled around on tired, undeveloped legs, mewling for food, her expression flattened. “I…” She had noticed the red markings, that small byproduct of genes that had persuaded Blue Fly to keep her as a breeder in the first place, so very long ago. Her mandibles began to twitch and tears came to her eyes.

Jake puffed up from behind me and watched silently as Vega picked up the child and gently held them close to her. “What…?”

“My…child of mine…” Vega was beginning to cry openly now, eagerly looking over the little one and matching marking for marking, antennae to antennae, bright innocent eyes to tired, older ones. They were alike, kith and kin.

“So what’s their name?” Jake smiled. “Do you have any idea of what you’d like them to be called?”

“Sadal. Her name is Sadal.” Vega reached out blindly and awkwardly crushed the Commander of ARFA in a one-armed hug. “You…you said you would bring my children back…and you did. You brought one…thank you…” She smiled quickly and turned back to her child, her “lucky star,” and began cleaning off the muck and offering them some water.

After a few moments of stunned happiness, Jake grinned widely and leaned against the doorframe. “Yes.”

That single word, spoken quietly and quickly, described the feeling of victory that hovered in the room right then and there. Our friends and brethren may have died and may still be dying, but if one child was able . This is a war that may not be won soon, but we can still experience a victory time and again.

Docks

Things clicked into place so quickly and unexpectedly that I had to go: why hadn’t I noticed that “cactus” and “fish market” were used a little too much by Blue Fly and the dealers to be a coincidence? They’re talking about places; they have been this entire time. “Apple” means New York City, “cactus” is New Mexico, “fish market” is Clearwater….I’ve wasted so much energy and time trying to figure out where the eggs were being traded—but they were talking about the biggest distribution centers all the time! Maybe I was still reeling from getting out of the trade, and it just took this long to finally sink in. Damnit, we could have done so much to stop this! Why didn’t I remember sooner?

When I got to the harbor I hid behind some crates, knowing that the dragonfly still painted on my hip could either keep me alive or get me killed. Getting there had been strangely easy; the routes I learned when going to and from customers’ houses enabled me to sneak through the city while remaining almost unnoticed. Just another call-prawn, coming back from a job…nothing to look at here. I finally got to the salty openness of the docks and crouched down behind a crate. I could feel my heart in my throat and the cold on my limbs—everything was monotone and I didn’t know exactly where I was. What mattered was what I was seeing.

Men were moving about, their faces covered by dark cloth like burglars in the night. It was impossible to pick out their identities. The men hauled crates off of a gigantic cargo boat, one after another, and lined them up like dominoes. When the two men nearest me wandered back into the warm, covered area of the cargo ship for a smoke break, I crept over to one of the splintering wooden crates and whispered through a gap on the side. No answer came…and why did I expect one? I should have known then, and stepped back into the ignorant darkness. But I didn’t—something in me must have still hoped, or ignored the truth.

I pried the top off of the crate, ignoring the blast of blistering, fetid air…and stepped back, swearing to myself and blinking back tears. The inside of the wooden box was coated with waste and sawdust; the stench that drifted up from it is beyond my words to describe. It reeked of waste and blood, of death and the last stale breaths of suffocated Poleepkwa…of my people, my brethren.

Inside, sprawled amongst the filth…my eyes were drawn to the children. Children, with bruises and cuts adorning their bodies, almost torn limb from limb, or even worse just staring up at me with glassy eyes, like fish. No laughter, no light—nothing was left but these hollow, battered bundles of plating. Everything…everything was taken from them. They were dead, and their corpses had been left lying around in the crate, like firewood or trash. Not the remains of living things…of children…

They’d been left to die as if they were worthless, not even of much value to the dealers themselves. These people had sat back and let them claw each other to death, out of sheer helplessness and fear, in crates without water or air. Had they heard their cries and chosen to ignore them, or had the crates muffled their screams? I didn't know, and it no longer mattered almost as soon as I thought it. Of the twenty inside, only one still kicked out blindly at the heat, eyes sick and glassy…I will always remember their muttering. “So hot, so hot.”

I tried to help, but what could I have done? This little child was too far gone, and there was nothing I could do…the most I managed was holding the poor broken body close and praying silently to Vishnu, God, whoever watched this scene unfold and did nothing to stop it. The feeling of something dying very close to you...it makes something deep inside you die as well. You know something has departed, something that can never be caught and slid back into place; it leaves a hollow inside you.

After, I pushed the crate off the dock and tried not to cry out as the splashes came and I saw shapes sink into the inky water. Better a burial at sea then having your corpse sold as food. I crept off before anyone noriced, slinking back into the city that slept, unaware of the horror unfolding within it.

I want them dead. All of them—Blue Fly, Mistress Pike, all of them. There’s nothing more you can do for people—they aren’t even people, no person could casually kill another or put them in conditions like this. These dealers are monsters, and only fit to die. Now. This has to stop, it has to, and there can’t be any more crates, or pipes, or phones…it has to go, all of it.

Message.

I would like to start by introducing myself. I am not a “prawn,” as you may have been told, but a “Poleepkwa,” an “Outlander.” These are the proper terms for us. We are not simply “non-humans,” not a group sorely defined by its exclusion from your species, but a proud race with achievements all its own.

But all classifications aside, my name is Olo, Olo Lamna, and I am here on my own, to speak with you as an equal—and an individual. I’m not here to represent every Poleepkwa on this planet and beyond the stars…the honor and responsibility is too great for someone such as me. All I have are my own experiences and beliefs, and the drive to tell you what is going on in this world. That is all I have—I pray that you will listen to me and take what you hear to heart.

All of you have heard of District 9 and the illegal genetic experimentation that was revealed late last August. Perhaps not all of you have heard of MNU’s continued solution of the “prawn problem,” a horrible place called District 10 where hopes and thoughts are not only crushed, but discouraged from ever developing.

Very few of you are aware of what may be an evil on par with D-10, if not greater: the black-market egg trade. Our children are sold, snatched away from their mothers and stolen away, never to be seen again. They become guards, servants, prostitutes, test subjects. Back and forth we are traded, from owner to owner, all will and pride beaten out of us with pipes and words and blood-money. Each customer teaches us what the Poleepkwa trade is all about, and the lessons are painful beyond all description.

This happens to your own children, your fellow humans as well—humans are bartered and sold for monetary gain alongside us. In our shared misery, we are the same…this is not the way equality should be achieved. We must not be equals because we are both in the mud; we must not be equals because we are similarly wretched and desperate. No, we must—and can!—be equal in our drive to better ourselves. We both can accomplish so much on our own…we can be proud of that, but always we can look forward to better things and reach for them.

Leave this “speciesism” and fear behind; look past our radically different exteriors and realize that the same blood runs through our veins. The appearances may be different, but my heart still beats the same as yours do. I have a heart, and all Poleepkwa do.

It freezes when we fear for our lives—the same as you!

It warms when we are near the ones we love, our siblings, friends, and family—the same as you!

It beats in anguish when we gaze upon the injustices of the world and sinks in indescribable misery when we see our loved ones hurt, killed and stolen from us—the same as you!

We are the same! Can you not see that? Can you not see that we share so much, our mindsets and emotions so alike that it is only the outside, the shells—figurative and literal—that keep us separate. We are not trash, mindless bottom-feeders without intention or emotion, but neither are we a chosen race. We are not perfect…but then again humans are not perfect. One day we can both be greater then what we are now. The potential is in us all…someday, I believe, we will work together and our capabilities for achievement and greatness will be unfathomable. But that will never happen unless we decide, as two kinds sharing one cause, to stop lying down in the mud and stand upright.

Thank you for your time.

Nightmare

The pipe bears down on me slowly; I duck and narrowly miss it. It buries itself in the ground. It’s reddened exterior flakes off like tiny bits of rust, showing the surface underneath to be a faded green. Jack and Jill are here: cowering, haggard children who clutch at catfood cans and hiss warily at me. “No space—fuck off! You’ll just get him mad at us!”
I try to reach for them with a painted arm, but the stripes peel off and become like cloth in texture—a jailbird uniform—and finally crumble away to grey dust. My children scurry off…I know not where…they’re gone.
I’m alone, stranded on my piece of tarp with no escape. I’m petrified, I can’t move…the pipe comes down again, its red cover restored, and although it inches through the air so slowly I can’t do anything to stop it. I can’t flee. It hits—and keeps pressing down, tearing through me until there is no resistance and it touches the tarp.
Blue Fly’s voice is at my ear, repeating the words that concluded every beating.
“Remember prawnie—no matter who buys you, no matter what you do. No matter what you think, I own you. You are mine.”
I believe him.

I know that I must look awful…the others here are heavily bruised and scarred, and it would be stupid of me to assume that I look any better. You grow callous to the pain of wounds quickly; you learn to ignore when a limb goes numb or figure out ways to get around its immobility. Even now I’m typing this with my sub-arms…there’s something wrong with the main ones. They’ll heal if I let them rest, I think. But I can’t rest, so they’ve only gotten worse.

It’s not just that. It’s not just the bruises that make a trade Poleepkwa stand out; it’s their expression. Flat, masklike grin, hollow eyes above, half-dead…or weak and afraid from too many nights with nothing but a pipe, cat food and endless phone calls for company. You get “shop-worn” so quickly—all the energy, all the hope gets ground out of you, bit by bit. Each “john” is twenty, fifty dollars worth of pain and helplessness, teaching you what this is all about. It’s a gigantic machine, the egg trade, and we’re caught in the cogs. If we’re trapped like this for much longer we’ll be nothing but shattered plating and bloody flesh.

I haven’t tried teaching any of the kids here about math, science or space—what’s the use? Civilization isn’t here, except for the buildings you pass by and the blood money that you’re traded for. Fundamental things, basic animal things are what’s demanded; not education. The only thing possible at this point is simply giving them your food, cleaning their wounds, getting them out of a beating by getting in trouble just after they do…Blue Fly always picks the adults first, and that tires him out. They don’t ask for anything else—they don’t ask for that either. You do what you can, knowing that it won’t be returned or appreciated openly, at least not for now. Maybe, out of this place, it will…I don’t know.

Take Betelgeuse; half my age, one-third my size and more scarred then any of us. He’s one of the ones who have been here for over a year—I think he’s always getting into trouble because he feels that the only way out is at the end of that pipe. Betelgeuse has been here too long to not know the rules…he’s had no life but this. Even now, the only name he’s ever had is his “shop name.” It’s perverse…how can I tell this child about the universe and our home beyond this planet when the names of stars are equated with slavery and pain? How can I give him hope when he’s told me to “lay off the talk of outside; it won’t happen anytime soon?”

You can’t. You can try…but you can’t do it. Not in a week. Not in a month, or maybe even a year—but I’ll keep trying. There has to be hope.

Our group will be getting moved soon—several “breeders”, prostitutes, and guards. I can tell because Blue Fly has slacked somewhat in bruising us with his taped pipe; he wants us to look as good as possible for the buyer. I don’t know exactly where we’ll be going, but I caught a peek at Blue Fly’s list of names and saw, “De Oro.” My best guess is that we’re going to end up somewhere where Spanish is spoken, but I may be wrong. I’m probably wrong…these names were designed to be misleading and snazzy. When we get there we’ll find out, I guess, and I’ll tell you as soon as I can.

Vega—the “breeder” who sleeps near me—laid her egg today, two weeks early. Blue Fly snatched it away almost right after it was laid. It’s gone now. We all saw it wheeled out, an innocent little bundle of life and potential…it won’t stay that way forever. It won’t stay that way for more than a month.

Of all the grief here—out of all the pain, loneliness, and fear here in this business—there’s nothing worse than that of a parent whose child has been taken away. Not only that, but stolen so that it can be sold to those who won’t love it, who will only mistreat the poor, poor thing…Vega’s inconsolable. Blue Fly wants her to get pregnant again as soon as she can, but I don’t think she will. You can tell…she’d rather be beaten to death than lose another egg.

She wouldn’t be, though. That’s not the way it is here. Here you’re beaten to the point in which you can’t get up, you’re about to die, but you don’t. Your owner keeps you alive, bandaging your wounds with ripped cloth, administering cat food as both your food and pain medication, letting you rest on your square of tarp for the rest of the night. He does all this, if only to keep you healthy enough to survive the next round of customers and the next time you’re thrown to the ground and struck with that pipe until your back is bloody, your shell-plates cracked, your body shivering violently even when it feel s like it’s on fire.

You’re worthless dead, and you’re worth keeping only when you’re making money. That’s why I can’t decide which is worse—the egg trade or D-10. They’re just as horrible, but in different ways. Radically different ways…but both need to be shut down for good.

The majority of eggs are sent to major cities, I’ve found out. A crate of eggs is easy to hide on board a cargo ship, retrieve after, and sell…cities are where most of the trafficking takes place. New York’s Chinatown, Houston, Las Vegas—check the major cities, search for the “call-prawn” numbers and you’ll find us.

It’s getting hard to show kindness to the others here with me. It can be so easy falling into the steady, unyielding rhythm of the phone calls, caring only about your own bruises, your own hunger and fear. I’ve been trying to avoid this and help as many as I can, however I can. But nobody trusts anybody here! Even the little ones, the ones barely Jack and Jill’s age. They’ve been beaten and starved and bound into this existence and can’t imagine anything else…I would talk to them more about the outside world if I wasn’t working all the time or getting beaten with that bloodstained pipe for “talking about leaving.” Talking about leaving—that’s all there is to talk about! No family, no friends, nothing to occupy your mind but those damn phones, the hordes of people willing to pay by the hour, the cat food that’s keeping you alive but just barely.

It’s heartbreaking trying to tend to their wounds when they are hurt, or trying to comfort them when they cry out at night, and having them strike out at you. They think you’re going to hit them…it’s like trying to pet a badly-treated dog. Their eyes…oh Vishnu, if you could only see their eyes you would understand. There’s no curiosity or light behind them, just wariness and sorrow. Elder eyes, in Poleepkwa that haven’t even seen ten years.

I keep thinking about Jill and Jack, all of you guys, and it helps. Knowing there’s someone who gives a damn about if you live or die, not because of the money they’ll lose but because they love you—that helps you keep a smile on your face even when you’re getting hurt. You have to keep smiling; you can’t cry because it messes with the john’s head and wrecks their fantasy. They won’t buy you, and you pay for it after. You make them happy and they make you happy.

I see children like Jack and Jill all the time here. I see them bought and sold like furniture, I see them beaten like dogs when they disobey—no, dogs are better treated. At least with a dog someone will try to stop it. Here we all just look the other way…we can’t do anything when Blue Fly hurts someone. I see my fellow Poleepkwa taken out behind the building and shot when they’re too sick to work; Blue Fly’s final method of dealing with the “rough trade” that isn’t making money. It happened to the Poleepkwa who had the sleeping spot next to me—I saw them handing the corpse off to another customer. The bodies are sold as exotic meat…there are people who eat us like we are cattle.

To Jake, Sherry and everyone: I read your comments on my blog post and Jake’s post. I can’t deny that what is going on here is immoral and horrible, but I don’t believe that there’s no hope in humanity as a group. I can’t believe that. If humanity is nothing but “the species that rapes,” then why the hell am I getting these people out?! If the majority truly is as corrupt as the people who buy us, willing to believe that labor and sex are commodities, exchanged and bought fairly with our consent…then there’s nothing beyond this but a place with different telephones, different owners.
You are better then this, not just individually but as a collective, and you WILL overcome this; we’ll all work together if we have to and things will be better someday. Giving up your kind for lost will do nothing but prevent that day from ever coming and justify more of these awful sales. Just do what you can, how you can and you’ll prove that humans are good.

These Poleepkwa need to have a better life then this, just as much as air and food, and they have to have hope. There has to be hope…

Egg Trade.

The best way to learn about the egg trade, I decided, was to rejoin it and find out who runs things from the inside. ARFA got the clutch of ten eggs, plus the three extra that were thrown in when I was sold. I didn’t know I’d be worth the lives of three children, but I was. At least I’m getting three of the unborn out of this awful system.

I was given a new name as soon as I arrived: now I’m expected to answer to Rigel instead of Olo. There seems to be a “star” theme with everyone here. My picture was taken (for the catalogue) and I was marked with a spray painted logo on my hip. Blue Fly’s logo is put on every Poleepkwa under his control, in order to identify us and tell any other dealers in the area that we’re his property. At least the MNU tags are gone from those who had them—Blue Fly has told us over and over again that MNU can’t touch us, that we’ll be dead before they get their hands on us again. It sounds comforting before you realize what he means when he says this and how true it is.

I’m housed in a small building with many other Poleepkwa. People call a number or go straight to the building, pick us out of the catalogue, and we go with them to their houses. The phones were ringing off the hook the first night I started work; I don’t think I will ever listen to a telephone again and feel anything but indescribable revulsion. Knowing what you’ll have to do as soon as your name is called but not being able to change things…it’s horrible. You’re being sold and exploited and there’s nothing you can do, nothing you want to do because you know that there’s only a beating waiting if you try to escape or cheat someone out of their “good time.”

Once we’re at the house of whoever bought us we either work like dogs, lifting heavy objects and performing menial labor, or we work at satisfying the sick fantasies of whoever rented us. Whatever the customer (or “john”) tells us to do, we have to do it without question, or else we aren’t paid or beaten by the person. Oftentimes it’s both. Sometimes the Poleepkwa don’t come back, and nobody asks where they went. Most likely they were sold…I hope they were sold. That’s better then the alternatives. I’ve heard awful things about what people do to us on the streets…

So far I’ve learned the faces and stories of three of my fellow “rough trade;” the “newest” ones. Everyone else comes and goes so quickly that it’s almost impossible to learn their name or their past.

Generally the adults are tricked out of the safe house network with promises of finding loved ones, safer areas or work, while some are stolen right out of D-10 and sent to the US, Brazil and other countries. There are others here who lay eggs so Blue Fly can sell them, and they get cat food in return. None of them have done more then mutter at me not to take their sleeping-space, which consists of a small square of tarp for bedding and another bit of cloth to use as a covering. I’m the only one who was born a trade egg. The life expectancy isn’t very long here.

That’s all I’ve been able to learn thus far, as well as the fact that every person who was willing to talk about their past has only been in this system for a few months at the most. The ones that have been here for over a year are too traumatized, high on cat food or apathetic to listen to me or tell me anything besides their NAP: Name, Age, Price.

Cat food is abundant here; we are paid meagerly with it if we pull in enough customers. If we don’t make enough money we aren’t fed. I’ve been beaten twice for not following the rules and for “holding out;” Blue Fly uses a piece of taped metal pipe for this and makes the others watch. The second beating was much, much worse then the first…obviously I have to learn what to do and what not to do if I’m going to stay here and find out more about who’s running this. Blue Fly knows how to cause pain, and he makes sure we know it. Even now I’m scared of what he’d do if he found out I’m posting this. Everyone’s scared here...there’s nothing to trust but those telephone calls and what they mean.

Posts will have to be sporadic from now on—all of the things I had with me were pawned. I own nothing, not even my body, but that simply makes me like everyone else in here. Right now this post is being made on a customer’s computer; I promised him a few extra minutes of sex if I got some computer time in exchange. I know that you may be alarmed at what’s going on here, and to be frank you should be. This is happening in America, the “home of the free,” to Poleepkwa and humans alike. This SHOULD NOT happen to anyone, and it has to end, as soon as possible.

To Jake and everyone at the ARFA base. Please send Jack and Jill my love and, if possible, continue to read Romeo and Juliet with them from where we left off. (Jill should have the book with her.) If Jack paints his or Jill’s plating with paint, that’s normal. Just ask him to wash it off when he’s done and not make a mess, and remind him that some people may not appreciate being painted different colors. I hope they aren’t too rambunctious for Xenrop and the rest of you, and I thank you so much for taking them in while I’m away. Knowing that they’ll be well taken care of makes it a lot easier to rest when work is over for the night. I’ll be back with them as soon as I can…I love them so very much and I’m already missing them.

To Sherry, Ryan, Dayna, Seth, Christian, and Kris. This is redundant, but please be careful and watch yourselves. D10 has enough danger from MNU; having dealers and traders hanging around the area, waiting to swipe Poleepkwa away and buy eggs from people like Kurt, doesn’t really help things. Otherwise, I hope the schools are going great now that everyone’s aboveground and pray that nothing bad happens to you.

To everyone. I hope you’re doing well, and wish you a good night and the best of luck. Don’t worry about me—I’m fine. Please work towards ending the atrocities of MNU and these egg dealers; nobody should be bought, sold, abused or killed. However, don’t lose hope. People are inherently good, IMHO, and the actions of a few depraved individuals shouldn’t ruin your hopes for an entire species.
As soon as I can, I’ll get at a computer and keep you updated.

Sales.

There's a point that you reach in which your past somehow hooks onto the present and refuses to be torn away and thrown back into a corner of your mind. Not to be cliche or melodramatic, but I've reached that point.
Poleepkwa eggs. They're sold, like property--I know that all too well, and I know without a doubt that it has to stop. After searching and guessing, I've managed to find a man who sells them. For the sake of keeping this post reasonably reader-friendly and short, I won't say how. All I'll say is that it wasn't easy or pleasing.
I don't know his real name, only his "trade name," Blue Fly. Apparently all these dealers and handlers create bizarre pseudonyms in order to evade authorities and other dealers. He runs an escort agency; people call in and pick from a catalogue containing pictures of everyone in the "stable", then wire money to him and receive poleepkwan eggs, adults, and services. Yes, a catalogue--the first thing he did when I contacted him was send my a digital copy.
This has to stop. This can't go on. I'm doing something to end this.

The Slave Auction, by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

The sale began—young girls were there,
Defenseless in their wretchedness,
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair
Revealed their anguish and distress.

And mothers stood, with streaming eyes,
And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
While tyrants bartered them for gold.

And woman, with her love and truth—
For these in sable forms may dwell—
Gazed on the husband of her youth,
With anguish none may paint or tell.

And men, whose sole crime was their hue,
The impress of their Maker’s hand,
And frail and shrinking children too,
Were gathered in that mournful band.

Ye who have laid your loved to rest,
And wept above their lifeless clay,
Know not the anguish of that breast,
Whose loved are rudely torn away.

Ye may not know how desolate
Are bosoms rudely forced to part,
And how a dull and heavy weight
Will press the life-drops from the heart.

Past, part 2

I honestly don't know why my mind continues to turn this way, anxiously twisting its neck to check behind itself, to look back down the road. There is nothing following me; I am separate and walk alone on this trail of memory...
It happened so suddenly, and yet with such a clarity that it lingers still, a flash-frozen moment in time. I was reading, thinking, as usual, when the voices of my Mother and Father came rumbling through the walls from the Outside.
"We've got to get rid of it! Don't you understand? Look at the news--what do you think they'll do to us if they find we've got one in our home--"
"They'll fine us, hon. Nothing more. There are others who bought them, remember Gertrude was thinking about getting an egg herself after seeing this guy--"
"A fine? We've got no money as it is, with that damn thing eating us out of house and home! We've got to get rid of it, and fast!"
A quavering sound of confusion came from me as I looked up from the pages. The voices instantly quieted, fading into incoherence. After a few moments of this awkward silence I turned back to the book, only to be disturbed again as crashing noises came from the stair-Wall. Father's voice roared down the structure, filled with a wrath that was usually saved for my gravest transgressions. It had been accompanied with discipline and pain of the highest degree, and I instantly dropped the book and pushed myself back against the Wall. What had I done wrong? I had done nothing wrong--
"Get up. Get up now." When I hesitated, I was dragged up into a crouching position. "Get the hell up! Go--up the stairs!"
The stair-Wall? I wasn't allowed to go there, wasn't I? I itched for a page and something to scrawl with, but received a blow to the face instead. Pain bloomed like a flower and my limbs warmed, and I scurried up the stair-Wall in a dash of fear. The stairs extended out in empty space, little floors set higher and higher and connected with tiny Walls. This was madness! There were only four Walls...oh, I'd have to measure them, I'd have to figure out what was going on--
"Go! Get moving!" Again with the roar of rage. My vision blurred with the sudden abundance of light and the tears in my eyes, splitting into multiple prismatic images. Blindly I scampered on through endless, bewildering space, bumping into odd shapes and structures that lasted only as dark blots in my sight. The ground changed under my feet, raising up for a second and then becoming...soft...furry, like the blanket I had slept on. More light was around me--where was it coming from? Were there thousands of light bulbs illuminating this giant space?
"Outside! Go!"
NO! No, the Outside--I was never to go there, I was never supposed to flee into its womb! Only Mother and father were strong enough to venture into its clutches and live; I would surely die if I was to so much as reach out and touch it...
I was there. Outside. It had swallowed me, I knew it. The light and the strange warmth were its insides, the soft floor its innards. I was dead, i was surely dead...I had done something terrible to be subjected to such a fate. "Go on! Scat!" Scat? What was that? Was scat being dead? No--please no!I reversed direction, tried to double back and was pushed along by an unyielding force.
Another blow to the head, this time landing even though the voice was faraway. That was the final bizarre straw; everything was too new, too strange for me to stand. I was in the Outside--fine! Let it consume me so that I wouldn't be afraid, I wouldn't be without Mother and Father! I turned and ran, the prisms still stuck in my eyes, like little diamonds, like ice. Flash-frozen fear.

The Lockless Door, by Robert Frost.

It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I thought of the door
With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door.

But the knock came again
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside.

Back over the sill
I bade a “Come in”
To whoever the knock
At the door may have been.

So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age.

Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Frost.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Sonnet, by Olo Doorbell Lamna.

O Freedom, thy mother of open sky!
Wherefore hast thine children flown?
Trapped on Earth reap they, with heavy sigh,
the bitter crop which hast been sown.
With prideful hearts came, from yonder star,
we, from the wide heavens, our souls untamed!
But how such pride is death-marked! Far
have we fallen, flames cooled, hearts lamed.
Cold fear doth runith through our veins, a shade
of the old spirit, our rightful hope!
Keepith some, the embers--they shalt not fade
and for three years hence so shall we cope.
Until then we shall reach out from behind these bars
and dream of our lives among the stars.

Past.

I normally don’t think about the past; what happened may (or may not have) happened and things can’t really change when it comes to that. Still, we have to look back on what we’ve gone through in order to continue on with the present and future. My story…well, it was a lot less bloody then the stories of my kith and kin, and for that I am grateful. There are others who lived through worse, or didn’t live through them at all. But even with that gratitude fresh in my mind I can still smell the dank mold of the past, seeping through past the coolness and out into the open. My past is better then others, but it wasn’t fun and games.
The first few snatches of memory I have are of the four Walls and a blanket. I’ve talked about the Walls before; their comfort and existence as boundaries to my blissfully small, peaceful little world. Up and down the stair-Wall my mother and father would come, bringing food, water, and sometimes small rectangular things called “books.” The food and water would be happily consumed by me, while the “books” would be split apart into smaller, wafer-pieces called “pages’ and held open while a parent rumbled words at me. Over time it became clear that the books spoke a different language, a silent tongue called “reading” that I could speak too, if I scratched odd lines and curves called “letters” on the pages. Even though no sound came from me I could talk, and I loved it as much as I loved sleep and thinking. The books gave me new things to dream and wonder about—I didn’t have to just measure cracks in the wall and try to guess how long they’d be later, I could read about “philosophy” and “words” and all sorts of strange things!
Life went on—food, water, thinking, reading, sleeping—for some time, I knew not how long. My world was safe from the Outside, that strange thing that threatened me and I was never to try to go near. I had mother and Father. I was happy. Then, a new addition came to my little world—a structure with not four Walls, but six! One could move, in and out, and I bounced inside, kicking at the movable Wall and having a great time. I heard the rumble of approval from Father just as the Wall moved in and things got black. “Good boy.”
When the wall opened again, I clambered out. I was sleepy, and there was an odd feeling on the lower part of me. It hurt like a scrape or a cut, yet stung like when I jumped up and touched the “light bulb” that hung from the ceiling. A quick look revealed a long, thin cut to the area close to my legs, black lines and a hollow ache. The six-walled thing was taken away to the Outside. Though I had the means to ask about the strange wound, I never did. There was something shameful about it—the rumination of a part of me that Mother and Father seemed concerned and yet nonchalant about. A part of me that was not like them…but then again so much of me was not like them.
Whatever I was, it was not like Father or Mother, and I knew it. Only much, much later did I find out why I was different. At that point, I was simply freakish, a strange quirk that was rightfully guarded and kept away from the Outside. “Poleepkwa” or “prawns” were things I had never read or heard of, while “human” was a thing I read about but shirked for more fun things like “religions” or “isms.”
It makes me laugh a bit, how I figured things out when I was younger. All of it was assumption, little to no given, provable information available to the imaginary laws and standards I created. It’s funny how it was all upended when I was thrust out into the Outside…but then that’s another story I guess. I’ve droned on about the past enough; there’s the present here calling for me, in the form of two little poleepkwa called Jack and Jill. They’re much more important then the memory of what happened.

Paradox.

"The statement below is false."
"The statement above is true."
Paradox. Again--that wonderful, confounding, euphonic term. The logic is endless: if the above statement is true, then the second sentence is false. The second statement is true, which makes the above concept false...ad infinum, turtles all the way down, circular logic. A seemingly pointless couplet, isn't it? Absolutely irrelevant to everyday life, completely unnecessary and useless. Yet even when I stare at the collection of syllables, I can't help but find it relevant to our lives.
Is it right to prevent violence by killing the violent? Can you promote equality between species by raising up one of the two? We all live our own little paradoxes, striving to figure out an answer and finding only more questions, more logic chains repeating on and on until we are consumed by the search for a solution. There may be one; there may not be one, and maybe that's not the point. Maybe it's the question that matters and not the answer, like the old saying that life is a journey and not a destination. By attempting to figure things out we shape ourselves and the groups we are a part of. I guess, then, that the only thing there is to hope for is that people are willing to spend time thinking in circles...

quasi-Nirvana

When you meditate, the key is to ignore everything around you and inside you. It's rather odd, but the concept is simple; find a quiet space, sit down and relax. Steady breathing, not focusing on anything but allowing your mind to drift from one tentative train of logic to another, trickles of emotion and thought relinquishing their grip on the brain like a sleeper's grip. Over time--if you have the patience--the senses quietly flick off, their continued functioning useless in the stillness and unchangingness of the environment. All that you have is the self. You see it, but at the same time you're blind; you can hear the beating of your heart, so faint like a drumbeat and just as impersonal. It turns from a vital, private function to a meaningless whisper through what? Limbs? I can't feel them, I don't need to--I'm not locomotive, not sluggishly dragging myself around space, through time, like quicksand, like a snake through closely woven grass...
Nothing matters; nothing beyond you being can bother you. Time and space: meaningless theories that only serve to tie the world and its inhabitants--if the two are separate; how can one ever tell, if we are all Brahman, we are all one?--together. Restrictive ties on a bundle of straws, but without them there wouldn't be order or community. It's worth it, in the long run, to be limited to one moment and place at a time. Everything is a lot more simple then.
Simplicity. That's it. No details or qualities or actions here; I am. Nothing else is necessary. Pain or time or even the gradual wearing-down of age are, at this moment--this one endless, nonexistent moment, forever and never at once--pointless and beyond me. There is nothing, and for that it is everything.

They say that only the good die young; that isn't true, is it? Maybe one dies at a young numerical age, but by the time they are finally struck down they've seen so much, done so much, that they've aged internally. they die young of body, but old of soul and mind. Life sure has some quirks. What Vishnu does for His followers...
George laughs bitterly. I can hear the cynicism in his voice even as I type his words...the tones hover by my antennae for whole moments after they are uttered. It would be beautiful if it weren't so sharp at my thoughts, like a sculpting tool at the malleable clay of myself.
"Vishnu? The preserver? Preserver of what, Olo? Hate? Fear? Injustice? What gods would let their followers suffer and die, or continue to punish their comrades who don't follow them? Face it, you've been following a shadow."
Shadow. The shadow of evil? I don't knowingly believe in a deity that causes pain and preserves the negative way of things...but that is what Vishnu does: preserve the world until Shiva comes and brings the cycle back to Brahman...
No. Not that kind of shadow. A reflection, a fleeting ghost. That's what I've been following; not a flesh-and-blood being but a concept, an idea. One that doesn't act on its own to begin, preserve, or end, but exists to drive others to do just those things. How many wars were fought for Shiva? How many good deeds for Brahman? How many--oh dear--how many ideas struck down in order to keep the norm, to preserve and please Vishnu? This wasn't what I wanted, I didn't expect--
"Expect what? Somebody to save us all and end MNU? Nothing will ever do that; only those who walk this earth can ever change things here. You are alone here, and there is nothing else."
Nothing else? But wait--by simply believing in these gods and acting either in their stead or to please them, we make them real to us. Vishnu doesn't exist in the flesh anyway, except for when avatars manefest. that's the point of a god, is it not? Having a being that exists in some way that is better then mortals, higher then physical existance. that way we have something more reliable that we can trust in, something that won't fail even when we do.
What about the afterlife? Everyone that's died knows what happens after death, too. They just haven't gotten back here and spoken with the living about it. In that respect we are alone; we must guess about what we don't know and we won't find out if we're right until it's too late.
I guess it doesn't matter anyway. Even if Vishnu doesn't exist, I still think that he does, in some way, which is great for me. But does that prove the existance of a god for any other world but mine? Can a god exist subjectively?
I need to think this one over.

"Caged Bird", by Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.


But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.


The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.


The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.


The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

"Writ on the Streets of Puerto Rican Harlem", by Gregory Corso

There’s a truth limits man
A truth prevents his going any farther
The world is changing
The world knows it’s changing
Heavy is the sorrow of the day
The old have the look of doom
The young mistake their fate in that look
That is truth
But it isn’t all truth


Life has meaning
And I do not know the meaning
Even when I felt it were meaningless
I hoped and prayed and sought a meaning
It wasn’t all frolic poesy
There were dues to pay
Summoning Death and God
I’d a wild dare to tackle Them
Death proved meaningless without Life
Yes the world is changing
But Death remains the same
It takes man away from Life
The only meaning he knows
And usually it is a sad business
This Death


I’d an innocence I’d a seriousness
I’d a humor save me from amateur philosophy
I am able to contradict my beliefs
I am able able
Because I want to know the meaning of everything
Yet sit I like a brokenness
Moaning: Oh what responsibility
I put on thee Gregory
Death and God
Hard hard it’s hard


I learned life were no dream
I learned truth deceived
Man is not God
Life is a century
Death an instant

The language we were conversing in wasn’t English, Poleepkwan, or even Latin, as I’d experienced in previous trips and dreams. What it was…I don’t know, but it was basic and yet eloquent for it, a raw transmission of words and feelings back and forth without need for words. You’d think it, the other person would just know it, without any explanation on your part. On a whim, I glanced up at my antennae--had they changed?
Yes. The small, stubby feelers of flesh were gone. In their stead were two inflexible, silver-grey radio antennae, vibrating ever so slightly with transmissions. There would be a shiver down the length of one--somehow I felt this, even though the new additions were strangely numb--and an instant later, a sentence or emotion. Oh, so that was why I had such good reception: I’d gotten an upgrade in my equipment.
“Alright, you’ve gotten the main hang of it. Now to business.” George flickered blue and green and happily gestured to the surroundings with a sweep of his analogous arm. “This…is the inside of your head. Welcome to your own mind, Olo Doorbell Lamna.”
The landscape was complex and seemed to shift slightly in my peripheral vision, fading away and dissolving into vague shapes and blurs only to spring back into sharp focus as I looked out the corner of my eye. This must be my own doing, I think, I must be forming all of this so I can understand what I’m looking at. My brain is forming the world for my mind to explore in…jeez, this blew the homunculi thought experiment out of the water.
“Give the poleepkwa in the back a cigar!” George laughed, and I realized that I must have been transmitting the entire train of thought by mistake. Ah well…
…a forest. That seemed to be the main thing here. A forest, with large trees--some “regular”, others more bizarre and alien in shape, texture, and color. Occasionally one would turn to dust and become part of the rubbery, slightly spongy ground; another, smaller tree would sprout and set to work growing. And constantly, there was the swimming of things in the corner of my vision, that strange blurriness, a pounding of blood in my head…but was that just me? Something seemed off, and suddenly I figured out what that something was.
“Wait…we’re upside down. We are upside down.” The trees were jutting out into a turquoise and mauve sky like teeth from the top jaw of some massive beast. How were we possibly holding on to the floor--er, ceiling? Any moment now we’d fall out into the wide expanse of emptiness. That kind of fall would never end!
I quickly flattened myself on the square of turf that I stood on and held on tight. Quietly I began to pray.
That was a mistake on my part; the landscape went topsy-turvy and began to twist in all directions. The turf began to shorten, leaving me less to hold on to--frantically I tightened my grip and prayed even more. This process might have continued on for a while had not everything abruptly stopped spinning. Something inside told me that it was okay to stand up now, that I wouldn’t fall out of my own head. However, I didn’t stand up, simply lying on the ground and enjoying what odd version of gravity I had inside my mind.
George again. “Get up. Get up now.” .
I oblige, and suddenly my head is covered in smoke that clings to every centimeter of my plating and wisps down into my lungs, assimilating into the blood that’s still, sort of, I think, pumping through that network of veins and arteries and making me a little bit closer to it in composition. An idea blooms, bright as a flower and just as appealing. I‘d been looking at it wrong the entire time, oh Vishnu, oh deity, this was the solution--
George drags me out of the cloud. I writhe away and try to escape into the heady mist--the idea! The idea! I knew it--I knew it and I could…I could what? What was I talking about? Odd…
“I told you to get out of that fog. You stay in there too long and there won’t be anything left in a while.”
I cough, hack out a puff of grey air. Already the rush of concept and understanding was fading, the flower dimming and wilting in on itself. In a few seconds it was gone entirely and I had no idea of what the original idea had been. Turning to George, I blinked. “What was that?”
“Pure thought, unfocused and open to anything. It can form and interact with anything here, but when it’s in a cloud like that it usually stays static.“ His plates flicked red for a moment, then lightened to tangerine. “Your inspiration.” He snorted and beat at some of it that was inching out tentatively towards us like a tentacle, driving it away. “The stuff that drives you, makes you write and draw and indulge in all manners of philosophical contemplation.”
“So…why wouldn’t I want to stay in the cloud? If I was inside there…wouldn’t I become enlightened?” There was a temptation worthy of Eve and Adam…knowing that the potential for comprehending everything there was lurked inside your mind, but being told not to actually take advantage of it. Why wouldn’t George let me stay there…wasn’t his ulterior goal to make me understand things and find the Truth?
My friend chuckled and pointed to my head. “Check out your antennae, Olo.”
I looked up. The smooth metal had corroded and melted partway, turning a blotchy rust-red. The pulses and vibrations had decreased tenfold; I could barely hear George, much less the rest of my inner world. “What--”
“The longer you spend in that mist, the more you understand, that’s true. But at the same time, it eats away at you. If you give in to inspiration too long, you’ll be corroded beyond recognition and there won’t be anything left to communicate those ideas to the rest of the world. You’ll be trapped inside your own head, without any way out or a method to contacting the outside.”
He wasn’t just talking about my mind. I remember all those thought-jags I’ve gone on before, where I don’t eat or sleep but just think and write, think and write. My escape when I was small, alone and unaware of the fact I was part of a different species then human--had I really gotten that close to oblivion? Yes, I had; I’d be completely off my rocker now if I wasn’t booted out the door. Not the benevolent crazy, either…strange, incomprehensible, rotten insanity would have been the main focus of my thoughts. Would have been my thoughts.

Rhyming Couplet I

The solution seems within my grasp, O answer, O Truth sublime!
Such wonder permeates my soul; will you ever be mine?

Sides.

There's no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going;
There's no knowing where we're going, or which way the river's flowing...
There really is no way of knowing where our actions will take us. It's nice to think that the resistance and all of the efforts of the ARFA, Versus Novus, and Miss Miss' own little organization have been for the right reasons. It's nice to think that MNU and District 10 are "bad" and that freeing all of the poleepkwa and going home is "good."
Really, though, it can't be proven. There are no "good" or "bad" actions in this frame of existence, this moment in time, this universe; there are only actions that appear to be beneficial or disadvantageous to a certain group. To us, the poleepkwa and fighters for freedom, MNU is evil and must be stopped. I believed that MNU's atrocities were one of the certain things in my short life--it was only by talking to someone on the opposite side as me that I actually realised that morals are subjective. To MNU, we are evil, we are the bad guys who must be halted in our efforts. No doubt that if we were to go to thrid, fourth, even fifth parties the viewpoints would change. It is all subjective, all of it.
I am not going to give up--don't think that for a moment. However, as I continue to do my small part to stop the processes and ideas that created and sustain MNU and others like it, I will keep in mind that I may--most likely, in fact--be considered the "bad guy." I will also keep in mind that this cannot be proven false.

If knowledge is acid, at least for me, then love is like heroin. The intitial blast of pleasure at being a parent is overwhelmingly wonderful and blissful; the content and utter happiness that follows soon after is even better. I may not be Jack and Jill's birth parent, but I'll try my best to be a good foster parent to them. They know that too, I think--and that makes it even better. The two of them could have decided not to trust me or simply chosen to hate my guts, but they didn't, and we're together now, a family, a freakin' family! It's great.

It seems like there'll be solace
for every tear we've shed...
it looks like there's an answer--
alas! it's gone! our hope is dead!

What makes things real? What separates the mundane and proven from the uncertain and fantastic? Is it the majority that decides; the viewpoint shared by the most people declared true? Would that make a delusion real, then, to the population of an asylum?
Who decides what is real, and how can you tell if they actually exist or not?
Senses, logic, faith? They don’t prove a thing. There’s no way of being certain if what you see, along with everyone else, is true. Still, there is a point to be made. If I—along with everyone else— “saw” a chair where there was none, it wouldn’t matter. Yes, we could smell it, touch it, taste it, hear it—presumably…and I would still fall down if I tried to sit in it.
There’s got to be something that can be taken for granted, some given information in the proof. Without it, you can’t ground the assumptions; you can’t ever hope to find a true solution…
So are we all drifting, then, since we don’t know exactly what the given information is? Even the ideas of gravity and the ideas behind the stars are still theories—there just hasn’t been anything to disprove them yet. All we have is mist that we’ve been able to cup in our hands, separating it from the fog around us. Until something more solid comes along, that’s it.
What am I trying to say here? I honestly don’t know; I’ve forgotten, or maybe I didn’t know where this was going to begin with. But what I keep thinking is…you can’t be certain what you see is what everyone else sees. Even if it’s real to you—even if you’re the only sane one and the rest of the world is sharing the same madness, it can’t be real.
If we do give in to another reality, though, we lose. Isn’t that what MNU has done for all these years? Created a world populated by humans and bizarre, violent monsters called prawns? That isn’t true—not to me, since I am a “prawn” and I would never harm someone—but goddamnit! How am I right either? Both ideas could be madness, just a different delusion masking a truth we can’t understand. The Truth…the given information, the perfect, undeniable facts that give sense to all the ethereal worlds out there. If we are to find ‘real”, we must find truth then! Yes, yes we must…but can we?
That’s for another day, I guess. Another wild jag of thought and doubt…this post is too long already and I have other things to do; the “real” world and all its responsibilities are beckoning and I have no choice but to answer the call. If I didn’t--haha!--I’d be considered insane.
It’s true that we can’t live in our own dream worlds, I know that, but we can’t sunder our thoughts and observations from our interactions with the outside world. Without madness, I believe, there wouldn’t be insight—there wouldn’t be those jolts of understanding and creativity that provide for advancement and change. There’s got to be some kind of diffusion between worlds—perhaps not equilibrium, not even a dynamic one, but some form of balance.
We can dream, we can ponder, we can doubt and ask for other opinions, but there’s still got to be a happy medium.

I don't know what's going on...am I asleep and dreaming of typing this, or am I typing this and dreaming of sleeping? I swallowed a few tranquilizer pills, enough to knock out something at least my size, if not more, but I'm awake now and still thinking. I'm seeing, in some odd way that makes no sense. George is next to me, maybe he knows.
"You know I don't. I’m here, but I know what you know. Nothing more, nothing less.” He grins and flickers out of sight, pops back in so I can see him, vanishes again. “I just look at it differently.”
What is it? “Everything. Life, un-life, the things between.” Things between? "Of course. There's black and white, then the shades in between. Not just grey, everything."
Thomas said you were a "muse". A part of a process, along with a vision and a message. Messages. That’s why you’re here, and that’s it. If there was no message, there wouldn’t be you.
“Of course. The same goes for you, too. If you didn’t have a reason to be, you wouldn’t be. The only problem is finding out why you’re here.”
The ideas. The loa, they use me like a horse, a draft animal for labor. The ideas need to escape. That’s why I’m here, to…what? Capture them? Inform others? Teach--guess--live--prophesize?
“No. Provide a viewpoint. Prophecy is misleading--the future never changes, it just repeats, so as long as you understand the pattern you can see what lies ahead.”
What lies ahead? We’re in a war, aren’t we? People on two differing sides, fighting and killing each other to prove that their idea is better, more right then the other. What comes next…a ceasefire? No…no, that wouldn’t make sense, the ratio is too uneven. Maybe if one side loses followers, or the other side gains fighters, it may happen, but for the time being there is only one thing.
“Persecution. The ones on the smaller idea’s side will be tracked, killed, followed to the best of their opponent’s ability.”
So we have to hide. “No. That would let the foe win. We cannot hide or back down, but must continue forward.”
But that will lead to our doom. If we continue to fight, we will die, we will be struck down.
“Yes, but remember what happens next in the pattern; the ‘renegade’ idea takes hold, gains followers, and there’s a revolution. What happens next you know.”
Yes, yes I do know…don’t I?

After a long time using acid, you get used to the feeling of going off on a trip. You learn to recognise the signs; sight and hearing blending together, touch fading, everything feeling too far away. Finally the world drops beneath you and you begin to drift...
My feet met solid ground--cold tile, to be exact. A whiff of cool, air-conditioned air caressed my antennae and I looked around. People dressed in suits and formal clothing bustled down the hallway, ducking into cubicles, trading papers, chatting around a water cooler that bubbled like a plastic cauldron. Where was I?
"Welcome to MNU. Or, at least, an MNU building." George jumped up and sat down on a fax machine, ignoring the human who passed through him as she went about her work sending some sort of a document. "See everybody?"
"Uh..." I looked around, analyzing the faces swarming in the hallways. "Yes."
"Alright." George held up a hand and began counting down with his fingers, ignoring my bewildered gaze. "Three...Two...One."
A resonating bang exploded somewhere underneath me and orange bloomed all around. Like the last time I'd been "spirited away", it was sensed only as a mild, dim warmth--a fraction of what others felt around me. I had time to count to two before the walls shook and smoke billowed out, blocking the view. The flames roared and there came loud crashing, banging, shattering--
Scream. One scream, choked, gurgling, female. It was the fax machine girl, her document now just ash. Most of her was ash, too; a leg, an arm, half of the twisted, reddened lump of flesh that had once been a torso. Black, charcoaled meat, cooked well done.
I could feel her pain, I really could. The struggling boom-boom of her heart as the pauses between got longer and longer. Boom-Boom Boom. Boom. Boom...Boom. Boom...
What's going on? A voice at my ear, sibilant and quiet. I don't understand--what's going ON? She seemed to understand what had happened and dull panic set in, pushing into my heart like a butter knife instead of a razor. Funny how everyone says that pain cuts clean; it really crushes your organs and thoughts, drawing them in and compressing, compressing, smaller smaller smaller...
No. Nononononononono. Was it the prawns? The--prawns? Did this? No. John-- I saw a man, blond hair, laughing. --alive? Pleasegod let him be okay...ohgod. ohgod.I didn't ask--badbadbadwhy? whybadwhybadwhybadwhybad--
"Shut up!" I couldn't take it, the sluggish trickle of thoughts, so i started to yell at her. "Shut up! I can't--I can't listen to you! Shut--"
The stream of thought cut off, the trickle of emotion and pain died down. I froze and stared at her as she stopped moving. I'd told her to shut up, but not like this. "No--no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--!"
Others joined in my screaming, as if the one cry of pain had broken the ice and everyone was free to give voice to their agony. I could hear them too. All of it, the thoughts, the straining of lungs and hearts as they struggled to work. Most gave out without completing what they set out to do.
I turned away, facing George, who was still glowing and outshining the embers. "Get me out of here."
"That's not the way it works, bud." George snickered. "You're here now, and you'll never leave. You can't kill a ghost, and this will stay with you wherever you are."
"Are you a ghost? Is this a ghost?" I wanted to strike out at him, but I somehow knew it would do nothing. My blow would pass through him like a blade through mist, or would hit him and not damage him; a feather against steel. "Or are you just another hallucination, like those people--" The memory of their strained thoughts
what'sgoingonohgodohGODpleasehelpIdon'twantthis
flooded my brain again and I sobbed.
George's antennae flicked, but he did nothing to quell my lamenting. "It doesn't matter if it was a hallucination--nobody knows what happened, and most likely nobody cares much. Ryan sure as hell doesn't." George's words pierced into me like bullets, or the shrapnel that had most likely pierced those people when the bomb went off. "Only you know what happened. Does that make it real? I don't know."
"But--" This was Ryan's doing? This is when he blew up the building? I'd known it had happened, but I hadn't thought of the pain this had caused--
"Do the technicalities matter? Stuff like this happens on both sides. The specifics aren't important, what matters is the idea."
The idea. The idea that there are casualites on both sides? No. There are casualites, but there are also families left behind. That was the point George had tried to make. These people worked for MNU, and did awful things, but they weren't bad. They just had bills to pay, mouths to feed. They helped kill poleepkwa, both indirectly and directly, for good reasons--as good as reasons could be--and we kill them for it. We still do.

Is integration possible anymore, in both this world and the one we left behind? We've become different then the race that touched down almost three decades ago, bewildered and confused. The years have given us time to adapt and understand this new land we've found ourselves in, but it's also robbed us of what we once were. All the conflict and knowledge and pain our race has experienced has impacted us, not for the better. Whether we like it or not, we've become "prawns".
Maybe that's the wrong term to use; it's not just the hate, but trying to fit in and become part of a different culture--hell, a different planet--that has made us something different. Prawn, along with Outlander, Non-human, and Alien are just names the humans have given us in an attempt to understand what we are; to put us in easy-to-define, commonly known terms. Even "poleepkwa", the "correct" term for us, is a human attempt to pronounce our native tongue. We've been lost in translation, so to speak...something not-quite poleepkwan, but definately not human.
We'll never be humans, and that's a good thing, but will we ever be "poleepkwa" either?

Names.

What’s in a name? It’s a title to distinguish yourself from the masses, but what happens when you have the same name as others? What if there are crowds of people who share your name, but not your looks or manners or memories? Are you a separate thing that happened to be classified under an umbrella term—it’s a “Jill!”, it’s a “Jack”!—or are you doomed to conform, to slowly sink into the grooves left behind by the ones who came before you so that when you state your name people say “oh yes, you look like a—” and pay no more mind to your self, who you really are.
That seems to have been one of the ways MNU drags us down, or at least it has become that. Never mind the names being in a foreign tongue; humans simply cannot speak our language, even if they tried and wanted to. But by being grouped in with the mobs of Johns or Alices or Roberts or Christines, even though we are drastically different in both appearance and mindset, we lose our identities. We become “just another”, just as the stamps poleepkwa are forced to wear classify us by numbers and “behavioral classes” instead of our viewpoints and feelings as sentient, emotional beings.
But will it be enough to wash off the tags and pick new names? No. No, because choosing who you are to prove someone else wrong isn’t choosing at all. You can’t choose your self—that is something that evolves over time, with everything you go through and think and ponder every moment in your life. “You”, who you are, is never static, but dynamic and quick to change as the earth and the living things on it. The only time you will ever know for sure, I think, is death, and then it may not do much.
Jack, Jill, don’t be so quick to give up your names and your lives. I will help you the best I can to overcome what D10 has taught you and shown you…admittedly that is not much. But don’t think for a minute—for a second—that you can walk away from the past unscathed. The tags can be taken away, but the mark they leave takes much longer to heal and be gone. It will take time for you to figure out who you are and what you want to do; remember, it took Odysseus twenty years. Hopefully, it won't be as long, but it won't be instant.

A trip to D10.

When I realized that my consciousness was separate from my body the first thing I felt was irritation, like when you drop something because you had too much in your hands and you can’t pick it up without letting other things fall. My hands sunk through the plates of my corporeal body as if through quicksand and I pulled them out, annoyed and vaguely horrified at the feeling of my own organs at my fingertips. So much for that.
Then logic set in and I realized I was having another trip. That was great, as long as my physical body didn’t do anything stupid. I stared at it, sitting there as if in a coma or asleep. Highly unlikely, unless you counted not doing anything as stupid. Then I was an imbecile.
“Well, long time no see, if there is time and you are seeing this.” George snickered from behind me. My friend clapped a glowing hand on my shoulder and smiled. “How are you?” He froze and cocked his head to the side; it seemed like he was listening to something--or someone--I couldn’t hear. “Oh--right--” He looked at me. “No time for swapping stories. I’ve got to show you something.”
“Show what--” Time and space warped and shivered into multiple images before reforming into a totally different scene. Skeletal trees had been replaced with an open space, dirt ground and row upon row of uniform white tents. An air of hatred and bewilderment hung over the uniform grid like a fog. I knew where this was.
“Yeah, it’s D-10.” George blinked and swished his antennae at me. “Also known as Awshitz, also known as District 10, also known as despair. Like the view?” He pointed to the tents and an MNU guard tower in the distance. “It’s best from there.”
Nearby, a poleepkwa with plates painted grey was scrounging through a trash pile. He looked up for a moment, as if sensing our presence, then went back to his search. An MNU truck rolled by, the driver and passengers silent and immobile from what I could see. Immediately the poleepkwa bolted, scurrying off and running through me. I felt the brush of a heartbeat, a twinge of fear--he didn’t seem to notice anything.
George snorted. “Weird, huh? I never seem to get used to that, even with you.” He gestured to other places. “Here, let me give you a tour.”
We continued in this fashion, George showing the injustices and cruelties of D-10 while I followed him and watched. Each second there made me understand more and more why Sherry and the others are so adamant about leaving--it was hell, it was a shithole, and above all it was a place of terror. You didn’t know what could or would or might happen next; poleepkwa and people were slowly beaten down into more fundamental codes, more basic needs. Strikingly, horrifyingly, I could understand how MNU made drones out of our people--living in the chaos, coupled with the “education“, would break even the best of us if given enough time. If I was actually there in a physical sense there’s no doubt I would have died from my stupidity.
“Oh. Oh shit…’ George paused as we walked past a tent. MNU guards swarmed the thing like black flies on a carcass, chatting and arguing. They seemed to be waiting for someone.
I saw the tongue of flame slither inside the tent, hiss in pleasure and explode outward into a sheet of orange that covered the eggs inside. The white skin of the tent was lit from within and very object inside was visible, silhouettes against the orange and yellow. I could dimly feel the heat, but it was too much for the small sacs of life within--I could hear the young onesalready broiling and getting ready to pop out of life. Damnit--I tried to put the fire out, I really did, but how could I? I didn’t exist on a level that could do anything.
“That’s what happens to us, every day.” George gently yanked me away from the flames and guided me out of the shack, his plates never being outshone by the firelight. “You had to know. You believe that we can coexist with humans, no matter what? Try being civil to Kurt after seeing this.”
“You know about Kurt?” was the question almost on my tongue, but then I realized George had probably noticed when I was near-death. Besides, that wasn’t important--Kurt and I were individuals, and a race was at stake. Instead, I sighed. “I hoped--”
“Hope has nothing to do with it. Get to work, otherwise all those born prawns will die as prawns. I don’t know what you plan to do, but you’ve gotta implement it fast.” George waved. “Until then--”
Feeling returned. I let the shutters over my eyes lift up, relieved that I was home. But when the world focused I didn’t see the familiar walls of my place in the warehouse where I lived; there were walls, alright, but they were grey, dank, and cracked as the foundations had settled over the years. I remembered measuring the cracks every day, charting and keeping track of their growth and wondering how long it would take for the house to collapse.
I was smaller, the green of my plates paler and the plates themselves somehow ill-fitting, like a suit of armor that was much too big for the wearer. I knew this place, too.

Plea to the Elders.

With blackened eyes and beaten soul do we look on our fate;
Quite possible the chance may be that it’s been a mistake.
But even still, the spirit yearns for something it can’t grasp,
That it may break the fettered chains and may be free at last.
Trying to break a mold made tight with everlasting shame;
Whose constrains have broken, beaten; thoughts struggle, ever lame.
Never to live the life that lurks inside the lusting mind;
A life open to joy and pain, to instincts that entwine
with the base of our being, yet we cannot show this side--
Like ivy climbing towards the sun to be removed in time.
So now do we put on faces that will never be thine,
and go out to this world we know and leave our dreams behind.

Differences.

She was beautiful, that's true, but it was that kind of odd, otherworldly beauty that seems so far away; the person possessing it somehow is unappealing and plain to you, only to bloom and flower in radiant wonder as they leave your field of vision. Out the corner of your eye, you see them in all their glory--try to look again and its gone. That kind of beauty blends into a crowd so easily, one fish among hundreds in the big sea. She was stocky, expressive, built out of a single block of smooth ivory, marble; seamless and impervious to the wear and tear of the world. I don't know what she saw in me. Perhaps it was the novelty of something different. I was the geode to her marble; unappealing and likely to be ignored, yet, hopefully, when inspected and shattered...
It was night when we left the seemingly vacant warehouse. The lights and sound and goodwill inside were muffled and insulated by the silent metal and mortar. You'd never guess there was a party going on if it weren't for the sporadic trickle of tired ravers, sweating even in the cold air. The clouds hung over the sky, visible and pale against the dull gloss of the space beyond the atmosphere, like wisps of cotton lint on a funeral gown. It was strange, I told her, to look at the stars. I was glad they didn't show tonight.
Of course, she responded. It would be strange for her to stare at the stars now that she was going to be with one of their people. 'With' was the word she used. I liked the complete absence of intimacy; if she had said 'sleeping with' I would have left her on the spot. The idea was too unknown to both of us to be spoken aloud, too vulgar for words or even direct thought.
Her car was nice. I think it was a 'Bug' or something of the sort. Small, compact, and curved, a nice powder-blue color that stood out, I assumed, only as it drove past. I tried not to think of the similarities between the vehicle and the woman as she turned the key with an expert flick of the wrist and drove off. The windows were tinted, so I didn't have to hide; the only issue would be getting pulled over, and she told me that wouldn't be an issue. She hadn't gotten a ticket since 1990. That sudden comment alerted me to a rough estimate of her age and I panicked. This was, without a doubt, the most stupid thing I would ever do, and Vishnu almighty it was going to get me killed. It had to be a trap, or a trick, and any second now an MNU truck would appear out of nowhere and I'd be yanked away and deported--
We arrived at her house, a modest one-story affair with a postage-stamp of grass in the front and a veritable woods in the backyard. All four knees quaking, I scrambled out of the car and bolted inside so her neighbors wouldn't see.
Silently she steered me through the house, occasionally chuckling at some knickknack or appliance that caught my eye and giving a short description. I knew half of the things she told me but it was such a pleasure to listen to her talk, the self-assured tone resonating, just a bit lower then pride. Down a hallway, past a table, over a small black-and-white cat that was stretched out on the red carpet like a speed bump, until at last—at last!--the bedroom, with its decent bed and clean sheets. Wasting no time, she removed her outer clothing; I took off the tattered phat pants, held together with duct tape and safety pins to accommodate my unusual legs and hip structures. The two of us were on opposite sides of the bed. It took mental steel on her part, no doubt, to actually clamber onto the damn thing.
I could understand the idea of lust right then and there--there was something about her that I desired and needed and would fight plate and mandible and fist for, if need be. By all gods, human, poleepkwan and otherwise, I wanted her. A thin trill managed to work its way up my throat, contrasting the raspy rhythm of her breathing. I put one leg on the bed and leaned in, closer, so I could see the brown pigment of her eyes, the skin of her lips, the shining porousness of her skin. One mandible lifted up to slide against her cheek, against my judgement--I wanted to do that, but hadn't willed myself to do it yet. Another joined it, and another. She brushed my antennae with a delicate finger, rubbing along the base and tapping the tip. After a few moments we drew back. Preliminaries done--now we'd actually get started. I bent the leg resting on the bed and readied myself for the leap into the unknown, that figurative, literal, all-emcompassing unknown.
Something held me in place, freezing all of my muscles and petrifying me. It was like quicksand had been flowing around us all this time, sucking us deeper and deeper in only to harden into hard glass. We could see each other, we could feel each other, but we could never be close in the way we wanted to be. I let my leg slide off of the bed and rejoin its partner in supporting my weight. It wouldn't happen, ever, despite the emotion throbbing still in the room like a swollen heart; a heart that now skipped a beat and burst. We weren't the same, and because of that we'd always be separate. I would be acting in love when my people knew only hate...she would be giving up her gift of blending in. It was stupid, it was sentimental, but the fact was there and we couldn't ignore it now.
It was okay, she said. She understood. I knew she did--we'd been close enough for me to sense it, smell it on her skin. But that didn't help with the guilt; I felt like I had betrayed her and myself. So much effort was taken in getting our paths to cross, so much time spent in negotiating what was to occur, and nothing was actually happened.
The drive to an area close to Miss Miss' place was short and silent. There was nothing to say--everything we both could have thought of wouldn't have been adequate. Quiet was the best thing to describe the feeling of a bond severed, a bond that hadn't even formed but was broken, like a leech before it has attached to a vein, sucking and sucking at the empty air that provides no nourishment. Finally we arrived at the spot alongside the highway--"my neck of the woods", I told her. We embraced one last time, then I gathered my few possessions from the backseat and left. The little blue car stayed there for a moment, a wordless gesture of 'goodbye, godspeed', and it was gone.
I still don't know her name.

Radio.

Radio. That was it; a radio. There was a radio in my head; the static so rough and loud, irritating the membranes of whatever brain cells I had left at the moment. I could have coped with it if it was music I was hearing, but the constant meaningless noise wore at my nerves like sandpaper. Have you ever been so angry at a thing that you want to destroy it? I have. I hated static, I hated the idea of static, I wanted the static to end.
But it persisted anyway--the volume even turned up and garbled outside voices. Snow buzzed in my vision, like a broken monitor had been stuck in the space behind my eyes and left with the power on, operating but not working. Blocking out sight, sound, movement, anything--there was the static and there was me and that was all. If the two of us occupied an entire universe on our own, it couldn't be measured or proven. We may have been in a world full of matter or consciousness; trillions of other lifeforms living all around...I couldn't tell. You could almost feel the brush of their little bodies against you sometimes; a moment later you'd find that you've gone numb and there's no way for you to feel anything.
The radiowaves changed in tone, sliding from higher to lower pitch as if someone was tuning it. Finally, all the backround noise coalesced into a few syllables, then a word, then a voice.
After contemplating the complete and utter fallibility of his life thus far, Olo Lamna, commonly known as Olo "Doorbell" Lamna, decided it was in the best interest of those around him to off himself. He hadn't accomplished much in his life yet, and with things the way they were it was highly unlikely he would ever do so.
The voice, so rough and jagged, narrating my thoughts along with lies. But were they lies, or were they things that were going to happen? Time was absent here along with the senses; the future blended into the past into the present into what would never happen. Was this voice a product of my own thoughts or another thing entirely?
In the course of his travels into the bowels of his own mind, he had uncovered a simple truth; even if things were not real to begin with it was still possible for them to impact three-dimensional corporeal beings, existing in an environment called space and time.
Well, that was true...ideas did more damage then blows or bullets. A cut or a broken bone would heal in time, naturally. An injury to the mind would take far more to go away. It may never go away--that was why we all had to be careful while fighting for or freedom. What if, in the process, we become slaves to our own actions and thirst for revenge? Then we'll have lost.
The incorporeal and corporeal fed off of each other every day, waxing and waning in unison to achieve equilibrium. Following this train of thought, Olo came to the conclusion that destroying the ideas of MNU would not be enough; the employees would carry the concepts away to re-create the company.
We couldn't kill, though. That would make us no better then them...would it? Was it okay to kill those who have killed innocents? The scars that action would leave are unimaginable. They'd never leave, so that meant--
His beliefs had been wrong all this time; he had assumed that things were better then they actually were. Ideas never die, but they could kill, quite easily in fact.
That was it. I wanted to walk away from this voice, but where would I run to? Nevermind that my legs were somewhere out of reach...I couldn't run away. It had taken root in my brain, digging into the tissue and sparks of thoughts like a tapeworm, seeking the warmth and spinning out accounts of my actions, my wrongdoings, what I failed to do and what I failed at doing. Little offspring, little mini-worms to repeat the process. Would they chew their way out of me to infect others, or would I just carry them along inside until they ate up everything and left a shell? A shell...that was interesting...an organic puppet to hide their lithe bodies from the world. Could they actually do this--would they do it? There was no way I could know, no way I could ever know.

Kurt Jackson, the one who kidnapped me, has outdone himself. This...he's not a person, this thing...captured and interrogated several poleepkwan refugees and finally killed them after extracting the information it needed. What it found is not important--what matters is that innocents were mindlessly killed; not just that, but innocent children! Nobody should be killed out of malice or ill will, but children are our future...by killing them, MNU deprives us of a chance to move on and change. It's awful...this should never happen to any race. No parent or friend should have to watch a young life torn away from the earth.
Many of my friends want to see this pawn of MNU dead, but would it help? I can't condone violence--I can't, it's in my nature, but I'll try to reason this out. Killing him would make him a martyr at the worst, another excuse to crack down on the poleepkwa in one of the best cases. Not only that...would it be adequate punishment? A quick death to pay for the deaths of many? No. No, he has to be kept alive, if only as a maimed,scarred, withered shadow of a person, to experience the suffering he's brought on us all.

Hope, by Olo Lamna

The time has gone and passed us by;
the clock has struck the hour.
We've yet to break these cursed chains
and see our freedom flower.
Many before us have closed their eyes
and left us all behind,
and many more will do this still--
it's a quality of the times.
But while our breath still sobs from lips
and cries of protest ring,
and the bullets flow, from guns and clips
to mangle everything;
As long as we have life in us
we'll fight, at any cost
for we are not beaten, we are not broken--
and the battle has not been lost.

Freedom, by Helen Hunt Jackson

What freeman knoweth freedom? Never he
Whose father's father through long lives have reigned
O'er kingdoms which mere heritage attained.
Though from his youth to age he roam as free
As winds, he dreams not freedom's ecstacy.
But he whose birth was in a nation chained
For centuries; where every breath was drained
From breasts of slaves which knew not there could be
Such thing as freedom,--he beholds the light
Burst, dazzling; though the glory blind his sight
He knows the joy. Fools laugh because he reels
And weilds confusedly his infant will;
The wise man watching with a heart that feels
Says: "Cure for freedom's harms is freedom still."

Reading.

We need to teach our children how to read and write--not only in our own language, but in others. So much knowledge can be found in books if only one can read them...for most of my life the only sources of knowledge I had were abandoned books that I would find, and (please let me not be vain in saying this) I'm intelligent today. That's not it though. Books can be teachers, but they offer something else; other viewpoints. With a good book and a good mind you can see through other's eyes and understand the world as they do. This may be a sentimental thing to say, but I believe it to be true, and I believe that we poleepkwa have plenty of good minds. The only problem is supplying them with books and works of literature.
I can guess what some of you may be thinking...'why read works by humans?' 'Why should we see the world as they do?' 'How would they know what we have suffered through?' and many variations of this. I understand that MNU tries to suppress our minds by feeding us human ways and forbidding us from learning of our own culture. This cannot go on...we have to know who and what we are and where we came from; that's a right that everyone should, could and must have. But being proud of your people shouldn't mean you deny the knowledge of other cultures--that's the viewpoint MNU seems to have, and it's thinking like that that has gotten us here in the first place.
By reading and learning of others you can understand them; by understanding them you can make peace with them; by making peace with them you prevent war and bloodshed. Too many have died for us to not jump at the chance to make things right.
We need to read and write in as many languages as we can--human, poleepkwa, or others alike. Reading may not come easily to everyone, but it must be done. The cries of the poleepkwa for freedom can be found not only on our lips, but in the written words of the humans that suffered before us. We are not the only ones who've been through this, and we can learn from them.
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/thematic_poems/freedom_poems.html
http://www.poemhunter.com/poems/freedom/
http://www.poets.org/
http://www.everypoet.net/poetry/