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.