Not all ONEs were the same in terms of proportion. For instance, there were the Touchy-Feely ONEs, who expressed communication via close touch. However, they were so massive that even a slight brush was enough to flatten hundreds of us at once.
The Upside-Down ONEs insisted that we could see well enough in the dark, even as all the blood rushed to our heads. They kept saying it was bright enough for them, and we simply weren’t trying hard enough.
The Tasteless ONEs served us unappetizing meals. We thought they were giving us the dregs and saving all the good stuff to themself. Our stomachs were crying out in constant pain, so in a daring raid, we decided to brave our chances and gain access to their storeroom. When we got there, we found to our disappointment that the high quality food they’d been gorging themselves on was no better than what we were given. I later found out that they’d landed a great deal in unsavory waste, taking it off other planets and dumping it in our laps.
When you have no sense of smell, you can’t tell whether you’re eating sub-par food or not. And the stuff that nourished them wouldn’t fill us up at all. For the most part, we never saw any ONEs engage in consumption of food. They seemed to feed off our misery.
Then there were the Skinless ONEs who were extremely unnerving with their unblinking eyes, their perpetual smiles and their visible muscles. I thought I would’ve been exempt because of my small mouth, but that wasn’t the case. They devised creative ways to widen my orifices to meet their expectations. I’m sure you can imagine what techniques they used.
They made our faces as translucent as theirs.
To this day, I still have difficulty when someone talks to me while smiling because all I can see are teeth. It’s so ingrained in us to flash a friendly smile, and being told NOT to smile when nervous is a hard habit to break. I might as well have asked myself to stop having so many nervous tics.
The Skinless ONEs were just as sensitive to stimuli from the outside world as we were, and gave us refractive glasses to help us cope. These components reduced the confusing collection of objects and symbols down to their most basic elements, helping us see past the illusions behind the world and seeing reality for what it really was. I appreciate the lore behind exotic landscapes and worlds as much as anybody, but I like to keep things simple.
But sometimes these glasses could simplify things too much. For instance, a large body of water with waves lapping upon the distant shore would be simply labeled as “WET”. And we kept these glasses throughout the revolving roulette of incoming ONEs, which helped immensely in some ways, not as helpfully in others.
Most distressing was finding out the matronly mother who’d been looking after us for years was nothing more than a large hand (or what looked like a hand) all this time.
Then there were the Hot/Cold ONEs who talked only in temperatures. Their language would change depending on the warmth or coolness of their bodies. They mainly communicated by breaths of smoke, fluctuating between hot and cold when talking, depending on which direction the smoke was blowing, sometimes from both sides of the mouth. The only way we could naturally blow smoke was in sub-zero temperatures, so we were always cold.
Alternately, we had to inhale fumes from burned leaves so we could pump out hot smoke. To this day, I still can’t properly blow a smoke ring, no matter how hard I try. My mouth simply isn’t properly formed enough.
To compensate for our body temperatures, they used winged creatures that lives by sucking all the coldness out of the victim’s body. It sounds good, but it leaves your central cooling system a wreck, making you overheat all the time. I suffered from hot flashes at an early age that still haven’t gone away to this day.
Then there were the Dancing ONEs who communicated via interpretive dance through ritualized motions that had to be coordinated, lest we’d be forced to do it all over again. Our limbs were twisted and turned in new and uncomfortable positions well past their breaking point and bent in ways they shouldn’t normally be.
At the end of the day, our whole bodies were sore, and we couldn’t really relax, knowing that we’d be up for even harsher training. And there wasn’t even any accompanying scores to coordinate our movements. It was a matter of rote memorization - we were essentially dancing without music.
Instead of sounds, we were surrounded by geometric shapes that whirled about in a manner that was positively hypnotizing. And that was when the Dancing ONEs were present. When there were multiples of them dancing in union, it was a sight to behold. We had absolutely no idea what they were trying to convey, but they looked amazing while doing it.
Everything was symbolized through dance. Asking to pass the spices involved an elaborate ritual involving a complicated series of twirls. Going to bed had an upside-down motion of walking on a slanted ceiling. In a hurry, these motions could be substituted for motions in miniature, but these were frowned upon - using the whole body was encouraged.
Trying to imitate these masters at their art was an exercise in futility. For starters, we couldn’t detach our body parts as easily as they could. And stretching our limbs at uncomfortable angles wasn’t possible without years of practice. There was no way we could possibly match their flexibility of body parts.
But we were nothing if not resourceful. We found a way to circumvent this inability through unconventional means. Instead of trying to separate our arms and limbs, we used glow-in-the-dark objects, then used these as the backdrop while moving them in the dark while dressed up all in black.
Our ‘Mascot’, if one could be called that, was a dancer only visible via a cane, gloves, shoes and a top hat. His actions were minimalist as best, but could be easily determined by filling in the gaps.
He would dance across the stage, twirling his cane and tipping his hat at odd intervals. Nothing terribly difficult other than the occasional high kick. Then he would swivel his body wider and wider to the point that he was arcing back and forth wildly.
And then for the finale, after tap-dancing a routine throughout the majority of the show, acting as a kind of chorus between various acts, he would spread himself all across the stage.
The cane and gloves would spread their hands out taking place in the center stage, the shoes dangling midair stage left and the upturned hat raised stage right. Then the lights would turn on, and reveal that the tap-dancer was actually three different people controlling his motions. This was our contribution to the Dancing Ones.
There were other acts involving other glow-in-the-dark objects, but that was the one that stuck out the most in my mind. Seeing how the illusion worked was important to us.
We should’ve enjoyed those free times more, because the very next visitors weren’t so accommodating. When the Senseless ONEs came, they upped the severity to an unprecedented level we’d never experienced. EVERY single one of our senses was simply shut off.
This wasn’t like closing our eyes in the dark and plugging our ears. The only sight approaching our eyes was a blackness darker than dark. Our hearing went from receiving all timbres to dead silence. Our sense of touch became numb, as if someone injected novocaine all over our bodies. Bodies that could still move, but were completely unaware of where they were located in space. Our tongues were lolling about helplessly in our mouths, since they too lost the sensation of taste. Same went for our sense of smell, which I’d always considered the lesser of our senses, until I realized what I’d lost. The sensation of any feeling was just... gone.
We couldn’t see, we couldn’t hear, we couldn’t feel. If it weren’t for the fact that we could still think, we would’ve thought we were dead. But in that state, we might as well have been. Deprived of any external stimuli for who knows how long, our minds were expanded in ways that we couldn’t possibly imagined. I have no idea how we managed to survive.
In that state of unbeing, our minds were simultaneously expanded beyond our limits, and paradoxically, also diminished. We started hearing high pitched sounds that weren’t there, feeling phantom sensations that didn’t exist, trying to make sense of our surroundings with no possible outlet or comprehensible input.
When the Senseless ONEs left, there was a tingling sensation all over our bodies as feeling started to come back into focus, having been deprived of sensation for so long. In the presence of our new caregivers, we would’ve preferred not to feel anything at all.
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