We were now given permission to speak, but after being under the influence of the Silent ONEs for so long, we were hesitant to do so out of fear of reprisal. Only after controlled whispers increasing in volume within their presence did we muster the courage to speak out openly.
Apart from demanding silence from us during class, the way the Ocular ONEs went about teaching us was to present a Colourful light show with accompanying noise. It looked interesting, but without any frame of reference, there was no way we could garner any form of meaning from these I could reasonably see.
It wasn’t until much later that we found out that these were intense close-ups of images projected too fast for our eyes to even capture or even be aware. But, none of us knew that at the time. And the Teachers only grew further frustrated when we failed to see what was obvious to them. When we tried to voice our complaints, we received similar brutal punishments from the last visitors, only, instead of covering up our holes, they added holes to our body.
By that, I mean they increased the number of eyes, ears and mouths all over, until we were barraged by a deluge of senses from new openings we could barely control in the first place. We were seeing, hearing and tasting things from multiple angles all over, including some places that we’d prefer be left unknown.
It was a very confusing time.
It continued on like this for several months, when the Ocular ONEs suddenly ran off, fearful for their lives. For a brief moment, we had a feeling of respite. That whatever it was must’ve been big enough to scare them off. We didn’t know it at the time, but they only stayed long enough for the Nasal ONEs to come in place.
They took over from where the Ocular ONEs left off, where we were told that everything we had been taught was wrong. Basic propaganda, and these Nasal ONEs were the true liberators. We were to forget these falsehoods and focus on these new truths.
And these truths were to be relayed via the medium of powerful smells, containing hundreds of details ranging from the age of the messenger, location of future services and meetings, upcoming weather patterns, the growth rate of foliage, advertisements on where to find the best food, and catch up on the latest gossip.
But memories are a subjective thing. You can only be aware of certain locations if you’ve already been in a place that had a memorable environmental scent. You might be able to imagine being in a dense woods sandland if you’ve been there, but without a frame of reference, you wouldn’t know what that smells like. And very often, we were surrounded by smells that we had no way of identifying. If they’d bothered to bring us to these specific places, we might’ve understood something. Instead, we were given sniff-it-books that smelt nothing like what they were supposed to smell like.
It didn’t help that the more confused we were, the stronger the smells became. And the smells kept mixing with each other, creating a new smell that was impossible to tell from all the rest. Vacuum tubes were used extensively, and they were notoriously noisy. Not to mention that in order to heighten our senses, our nostrils would be prodded and flushed out with a kind of liquid that reached all the way back to our necks.
I should remind you that we had extra noses at the time. So when we had a nose on our feet, and could feel the smell all the way up to our necks, that was how far-reaching the probes went.
The hierarchy was constantly shifting, with none of us remaining at the top for very long. The best we could hope for was not to be below the bottom. I say none remained at the top for long, but that’s not true. The ONEs in charge, obviously, and those who knew how to game the system. I was always in awe of those who still had enough daring to tease out the gaps wherever they existed.
My friends were always involved in outlandish schemes that I turned down out of fear of retaliation, something that secretly bothered me. I was always an observer, never a participant. I still remember the day that a student committed a prank on a Teacher they’d had a personal grievance with. (And no, I’m not naming names) What they did was place a call over a receiver that was then fed back into another, creating a feedback loop. That Teacher spent the rest of the afternoon talking to themselves. That was when I realized the ONEs were not as smart as I thought.
The older you got, the more respect you got, more likely from being able to survive for so long. The ironic part was the elders we were supposed to respect were some of the most disrespected people around, since they had access to things that were rightfully denied us, as if their age made them qualified for such things.
Then there were the Singing ONEs, who produced high-pitched notes that were beyond our comprehension. They were of such high quality that they defied all rational attempts to analyze it. There are those who say that such noise can’t possibly be music, since it reaches levels of octaves that makes eardrums burst and doesn’t even rhyme. But really, in the realm of art, who can be subjective? And isn’t all music just noise anyways?
Then there were the Colourful ONEs. You’d think that having ONEs that communicated with sight would be easy to deal with. Only, the way they talked was by changing the colour on their skin. And the only way we could do that was in extreme temperature conditions. It took a lot of us suffering from Heat Stroke and Freeze Burns for them to discover this wasn’t very helpful. Especially since it only limited our potential colours to two. And rapidly switching temperatures too much caused our body parts to fall off.
To compensate, they used paints on our bodies instead. They weren’t as fast-acting as their colour-shifting tones, but it was a start. We had loads of fun mixing and matching colours in a messy way, not caring how much we were mangling the language. That was until we started getting sick. Turned out the paints were toxic when applied to our skin.
Then there were the Playful ONEs. They were strict like all the others, but unlike most ONEs, we at least got our toys back. But our toys came back wrong. At the time, it was difficult to articulate just what was wrong about these toys, but looking back, I can better express it now. The colours were garish, giving off an uneasy feeling, the faces were representative of a typical face, but contorted in ways that no real face should be able to emulate. The games played were of a sadistic variety where it didn’t matter who won or lost, just as long as you remained on top. Now I better understand why the toys felt off - these toys were how THEY saw us.
Many of us grew lax in our studies. There was no consistency other than the lack of consistency. We would be told indisputable truths that it would turn out that everything we’d been told was wrong, so what was the point of memorizing all this stuff if we were going to have to forget it later? Not me, though - I always kept just enough material in my mind to recall for later. You never knew when it might come in handy. I always had perfect recall, only needing to review the material before a big test the next day.
I also had to remember which material was relevant for which ONEs, since some of them kept coming back. You thought that the arrival of one ONE kept them away? Wishful thinking. Some ONEs kept watch over us just long enough for other ONEs to take over.
We had to be careful about what we knew. So much of what we were taught were anathema to other ONEs. It was also helpful to know what the ONEs could and couldn’t sense. For instance, the Silent ONEs couldn’t see the colour blue, so we cheated by writing shared answers in blue. That lasted until we were in the company of the Ocular ONEs, so we compensated by raised fingers and tapping.
It just occurs to me now, all the ONEs who came after the next - they all came during the night, never the day. The best way to hide their activities was when no one was looking. Anytime they moved us was done when we were too tired to resist. This should’ve been obvious when we were put in custody of the Bright ONEs. They were made out of pure light, and communicated via illumination. They were impossible to look at without protection, and staring at them for too long caused our eyes to bleed from exposure.
Because of my young looks, I was constantly held back, repeating early grades, which helped me relearn the basics of whatever new language I was being taught. And every time a ONE rotated in, the previous ONEs deleted their records, making me eligible for the early grades all over again. But it was insulting having to be told the difference between a potato and a tomato, when I already knew what they were and how to differentiate them. Not to mention there were things I was more interested in, and wasn’t allowed to pursue any of them. When they say I never received more than a 3rd grade education, they’re not far off the mark. I repeated third grade a LOT.
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