It wasn't exactly easy to tell from her pale, blanched face or her brilliant hazel eyes. But everyone's face was pale, and as a result everyone's eyes stood out. Her deceiving appearance was thus everyone's deceiving appearance, and it was difficult to tell who had wit and who lacked it until they opened their mouths and spoke their minds.
Aurana was forced to listen as Tavisha, with bubbling excitement, rambled on about the wonders of waste management from behind her pink encasement. This "encasement"- a sphere that surrounded her as closely as a personal space bubble would- was standard for everyone since birth. It was efficiency technology, the greatest advancement in human history, and not one sentient being on the entire planet was without one.
At the moment, Aurana vacillated between enduring Tavisha's elocution or retreating to another table. If it weren't for the fact that Tavisha was the only other human unit on this floor also contained in the pink sphere, she would have chosen the latter. But this was not the case, and Aurana sighed, attempting to make the best it.
"...that, and n-not havin' ta use a toilet," Tavisha gurgled quickly. She spoke much faster than her brain seemed capable of thinking, and as a result her tongue stumbled over the simplest of words.
"What's a toilet?" Aurana asked, though not particularly interested in hearing about the primordial objects of the past.
Tavisha's mouth spoke; Aurana's eyes wandered. She surveyed the snack room: orange spheres huddled into a corner on her left, green to the right; through the middle of them pushed a man encased in blue, rushing up the stairs. She stopped to stare at him; or rather, his bubble. Blue was a rare color around this building and she was fond of color, secretly wishing that her own bubble bore the mysterious hue. But that was impossible, because blue was four entire class levels higher than pink, and would be impossible to reach- especially in the business field assigned to her at birth.
Tavisha stopped talking when the break bell rang; the snack room quickly emptied out as the people and returned to their desks for work. Aurana glanced behind her to where the blue-sphered man had disappeared up the steps. She hadn't seen his face- everyone's faces, as a result of their spheres' quality of blocking UV rays- were pale and barely discernible from behind the variously colored encasements. Faces rarely mattered, anyway- it was the color of the bubble that dictated all.
Aurana returned to her seat and began to type furiously into her computer, copying letters from a given page of text to the monitor. The letters were clumped together into things called 'words', and the words were spaced and streamed into a group called 'sentences'. Beyond this information, Aurana knew nothing of what she was copying, much less how to decipher it. To her, a letter was a shape, and nothing more. The task was tedious, and to pass the time Aurana would pretend to imagine what she was typing out- maybe a children's story about humanity's chilling past, or a fantasy novel about a world without spheres. Frequent words, spelled out by the letters 't-h-e', 'a', and 'a-n-d', she assumed to be names, and she enjoyed imaging entire series of stories of their adventures.
In this way time passed quickly, and when the final bell sounded at the day's end, Aurana hurried off towards home.
By the time she had left her work building she became aware of the dull void in her stomach. She was hungry, and quickly scanned the sidewalk for a Rejuvenation Block. The RB's accompanied human spheres in efficiency technology, for they allowed the simultaneous transfer of energy and human waste. Once Aurana found one she stretched her hand forward into the box and allowed the wires in her hand to disconnect from her and connect to the RB. RB's resembled IV's of humanity's past- they transferred into humans necessary vitamins and provisions while extracting the waste collected inside their bodies. With this unit, using a mouth to eat food became meaningless, as did using a restroom to get rid of waste. This allowed humans to perform work at greater lengths of time, and the sphere technology was praised for its ingenuity.
The sphere was frequently upgraded for maximum efficiency: first, it was made transparent so humans could continue to work without having an obnoxious bubble hinder their abilities; then, humans were wired to their spheres, forever cemented to their prison encasements so that the spheres became their second houses. Hands, arms, backs- even necks all sported unsightly wires protruding from beneath their skin, snaking out into the bubble. The last upgrade was the development of bubble "classes". The transparent spheres were tinted to classify humans into separate groups, and so began one of the greatest steps in human history- isolation.
Presently, Aurana sighed. It was the world's way of being, and everyone seemed content. Everyone, even the lowest of sphere classes- those in black bubbles- had food, shelter, and a stable job; enough to live satisfactorily.
The wires in the RB detached and reattached themselves to her hand; revitalized, she set off towards her home. The day was rare, untainted with the usual fog. Clouds blanketed the world in patches and holes like dissipating foam on the edge of ocean waves, a tattered, disunified blanket of floating water.
The city before her was bustling; people were either on their way home or to work for the nighttime shifts. Most everyone ignored each other; the only ones halting a moment on the busy sidewalk to utter a 'hello' were those sharing same-colored spheres. And then they were off again, flowing through the city by wind of their air of purpose, an empty importance lost but still striven for.
Aurana was so busy observing how the sea of colorful spheres matched the sea of colors in the sun-setting sky that she did not see the girl until she promptly ran into her. They were both flung to the ground and Aurana prepared to utter an apology when she realized she had tripped into a First Class- a blue sphere. Aurana shut her mouth, stood, and walked away, wishing that she could have at least helped the stunned girl up.
But there was something familiar about her; Aurana glanced back and found the girl staring at her with inquisitive, grey eyes. With her inquisitive, grey eyes. For the girl in the blue bubble was, in every physicality outside of sphere class, her twin.
To Be Continued.
Looks from Pitiful Eyes
By: Norma O. [Verbalartistjr]
As I walk down the block with my dog I am able to "see" the heavy traffic. It is six o'clock in the morning and it is freezing! I am glad that I listened to the radio in the morning.
When I get to work I fall trying to go up the steps. I am surprised that I fall; I thought that I would have memorized the way up the stairs since I had been working for this company for 37 years. Everyone rushes up to me, trying to help me, but they only serve to annoy me. Ever since the accident everyone has been treating me like a fragile porcelain doll.
All at once, I have a flashback of what happened two months ago, on my 59th birthday. I was coming home from a party that my 32 year-old daughter had organized for me. Suddenly, a car made a right turn. I tried to stop my car, but since the rain was pouring, the car slides. That's when it happens. I can see blood splattered all over the 1992 Ford Explorer, but somehow I don't realize that the blood is mine. I cannot feel the pain. I worry more about my car than myself. Everything goes white.
The next thing I know I am at the hospital. I cannot see a solid thing. I hear the doctor say that I may need an operation. It isn't until the next day that I found out that I have permanently lost my vision. When the doctor breaks the news to me, I burst into tears. My daughter was there, and she tried to console me, saying that I am lucky to be alive, but that only makes me cry harder.
A couple of days later I think about the man that crashed into me. He was not so fortunate. I later found out that he died a couple of hours after the accident. It was then that I learned my lesson. Now I am happy to say that I am starting a new life and that the crash has shown me how to be thankful for what I have. However, I have to admit that I still get just a little miserable when someone looks at me with pity.
THE WRITE POETRY
Rain Girl
StraightRazor99
In the spaces between raindrops, I see her eyes
Shining like promises, holding galaxies
She kisses each droplet as it runs off her lips
Her fingers dance with the water
As her laughter flies like a rainbow
I want to feel the flow of the rain down her skin
To share in the feel of the shower
And she will forever dance in my memory
Even as the puddles turn to dust
She will always be my Rain Girl
And never will my heart run dry.
The Leaves were Pointing Down
[emmikate2@hotmail.com]
I woke up this morning,
And the leaves were pointing down.
The sun wasnt shining,
The world was wearing a frown.
All of the birds were silent,
And the trees were standing still.
Frost was on the windows,
The cold wind gave me a chill.
The floorboards didnt creak,
And no sweet scent crept up the stairs.
The fire wouldnt light,
And comfort my despairs.
My tears wouldnt come,
When I remembered what happened before.
The pain wouldnt come,
When I thought I couldnt cry anymore.
I woke up this morning,
And the leaves were pointing down.
Yesterday we fought,
And now youre not around.
Please God
How do I get rid of all this pain?
All this pain I keep inside,
And tell nobody about.
What do I do,
To get it out?
Please help me, God.
Some get it out by getting fresh air,
Some write, some listen, some talk;
None of these fits me,
Even though I like to do them all.
When I do them,
My feelings come right back to the surface in the end.
Please God,
Tell me what I can do,
To get rid of all this grief, pain, and sadness,
And feel loved once again;
Please.
~Devilish_angel1108~
Promises Broken
[no_zd124@hotmail.com]
Promises are broken.
Yes, all those sweet lies you told.
Everything I came to believe,
Every faith I put in you,
Has now disappeared.
Every word you spoke to me
Has turned out to be false,
But I was a fool for believing
In those delicious little lies.
And now you've moved onto your next victim,
But perhaps she'll be the one to make you pay.
LEARN FROM THE MASTERS
Emily Dickinson was a woman of spirit, independence, and immense literary talent. She very eloquently expressed the emotions of her heart, and she made a lasting impression on the face of literature as we know it. Here is one of her poems:
SHE laid her docile crescent down,
And this mechanic stone
Still states, to dates that have forgot,
The news that she is gone.
So constant to its stolid trust,
The shaft that never knew,
It shames the constancy that fled
Before its emblem flew.
