Language in Obscurity 7

Not all of us escaped from these experiences unscathed. Meeting my old friends again, it was clear how much they’d changed.

Cory was always squirrellry, but now he was a nervous wreck.

Tory had a persistent ringing in his ears that made it impossible for him to sleep more than 2 hours a night. A cure for relieving his tinnitus was found by chance. What you do is place the palms of your hands against your ears, then drum your fingers alongside the base of your skull. It helps give a different Phantom sound to focus on.

Bobby was once chubby, but had grown to associate food with displeasure and was now skinny as a rail. I recall how he always gave me half his dessert during lunch. I never thanked him for that.

Not like Lisa who before being shunted away to another school gave me her collection of children's toys which I still treasure to this day.

Rajesh was assaulted by SoundBiters so often that he could only utter 2 letters, earning him the nickname R.J.

Danny was reduced to selling homemade cards saying he was handicapped, asking for assistance, relying on the generosity of complete strangers on the street just to get by.

Dimitra had a nervous breakdown from the overreaction from a coworker who had an outburst over declining his invitation to a birthday party.

Candace is no longer on speaking terms.

Melissa had beautiful natural curly hair, but now it was a tangled mess. Her brother who was the closest family she had was also killed by a random ONE. The perpetrator was never found. That was the grim reality for us. We could be struck down at any time, our bodies left undiscovered for all time. We would be walking lethargedly in groups, when various people would be randomly snatched away and eaten by looming figures towering over us. None of us thought this was unusual.

As for Godfrey... well, Godfrey was always difficult to deal with, even in the best of times. He thought he was smarter than everybody else, trying to figure things out before waiting for the rest of the instructions. He coasted by by looking ahead and jumping to conclusions, which got him in plenty of trouble. No matter the punishment, he never seemed to learn from the lesson, always managing to wriggle out of it, either through cunning or dumb luck. Oftentimes it was difficult to tell the difference between the two.

Godfrey was one of the few gifted students chosen to represent us, and his schooling made him suited only for that school, and his skills weren’t applicable anywhere else. All the credentials he earned were completely useless outside the school walls.

This difficulty in communicating with ONEs was detrimental in more ways than one. We would be involved with menial tasks such as preparing decorations for an annual ritual we had no knowledge of. These repetitive chores were some of the most pleasant times we had. They were consistent assembly lines that required creative setups to produce maximum output with minimal thought. And then when the festival passed, we wanted to continue with the contribution, not knowing or understanding that the preparation for the ritual was over.

There was the time we were trying to raise school funds by shining shoes, and the head monitor settled on the bright idea of having the best speaker among us make the sales pitch while the rest of us did the actual job. As it turned out, that was the worst possible decision that could’ve been made, since our best speaker barely had a rudimentary handle on language. Think about it, you’re going about your day with nary a thought, when this strange unkempt kid comes up to you asking without explanation, “Yew went shoozs?”

“...yes?”

The deal with the prospective client confirmed, our ‘best speaker’ would assign us the job, leaving out the keyword ‘shined’, where we’d swarm upon our unsuspecting targets, cleaning dozens of shoes without the clients’ permission or compensation. This wasn’t discovered by our head monitor until much later when we figured out why we weren’t getting paid. Our knowledge of salesmanship and anatomy was so ignorant that in one instance, we wound up shining someONE’s nose instead. That was an experience I’d sooner rather forget.

Something very interesting I didn’t know of until after I left - the Institution we were in was the same agency regulated for prisons and mental hospitals. That alone could explain why it felt very much like being in one, but it wasn’t the only reason. Very often, in order to avoid overcrowding, prisoners and mental patients would be shuffled over to our classes. As a result, their presence greatly disrupted our lessons, and the Teachers would spend more time trying to control them than focus on the class. The transfer patients were impervious to threats or punishments, and would take out their frustrations on us, because really, what could we do?

We were labeled as being criminals despite never having been convicted of a crime.

What we WERE taught were menial tasks that were already outdated in the workforce, and totally useless to anyone who would’ve reluctantly hired us. All other jobs were outright rejected for us, even the undesirable ones, like cleaning garbage scows, collecting predator excrement, or deep radiation mining. When you’re passed over for professions with a high fatality rate, that’s not a good sign.

We were woefully unequipped to handle the world outside of the school that was supposed to prepare us how to cope. It was a choice between being integrated into a wider world that continuously rejected us, or staying within a small group of survivors against a hostile world. Many of us opted for the latter.

Just as there was the unspoken rule that we were not to rat out on each other, there was also the unspoken assumption that since we weren’t as talented as everybody else, we should be subjected to a series of handouts supporting us for the rest of our lives without contributing to the rest of society. Superiority through inferiority, if you will.

There was a lot of haranguing from multiple societies putting pressure on us for limiting our potential, mainly preferring to mingle among our kind, but so what? For all the lessons we were taught, we were never able to be fully integrated with the ONEs. And even if we had, I doubt THEY would ever fully accept us.

Those of us who found jobs didn’t have much work ethic, since they got paid the same way regardless of how many hours they worked. I still put in my time, terrified of what might happen if I didn’t pick up the slack, leaving everybody at the merciless mercy of the ONEs. And the jobs they gave us were more time-wasters than anything meaningful. We were to haul water up a hill, then bring the water back down the hill, or dig an irrigation ditch, which would take all day, only to fill in the ditch again at night. When put that way, it’s the same principle as running laps. Why run so fast just to wind up back where you started?

I never wanted to use my handicap as an excuse. I always wanted to prove I could function within the limits of my ability. But I could tell that the treatment of these who simply couldn’t function was simply wrong. Exposure of abuse only works if you have a sympathetic audience. At school, I was able to parlay my young looks to give voice to those who were voiceless. Now, I didn’t even have that. The only place that made use of this outdated employment I was taught was in the school, teaching new students how to do obsolete jobs.

What else could I do? In the end, I went back to the Institution I swore I would never return to again. With my lack of education or references, I was totally unqualified for anything, which made me perfect for being a Teacher. What really counted more than having references was having years of experience around children when most of them barely understood humans.

I had always prided myself in my mastery of speech, being an eloquent speaker. So it came as a huge shock when found out that my grasp of language was notoriously bad. In all my time growing up, no one had ever bothered to correct me. We were stuck in an echo chamber, screaming into an abyss that didn't echo.

My first language I used turned out to be very basic, and could be easily picked up. However, it was very free-ranging when I needed specifics. For instance, one could say, ‘up sky’, to mean ‘look up’, but it didn’t differentiate between looking at the clouds or what was on the ceiling. All the times that I asked to be excused to go to the bathroom was basically, ‘I go potty’.

I’ve also been told that after everything I’ve gone through, I’m surprisingly erudite. Well, don’t be fooled. This was only after the result of much intervention and meetings with speech therapists to reshape my bad habits into something resembling human language. Early on, they started cutting our tongues in order to vocalize certain sounds properly. I still have trouble speaking.

bEfyore ai tawked nermally, dwai tawked dwright tzis beefcause sofa ull t’lessens fry hetcha unlurn dat wux fyixd bye fpweech shcpeshalishts. Heefen n’ow, mai axcent ‘tis kqwight streng, und hes tu beee wevized skynn urder tchoo mae s’ense fera waider audiense.

Okay, that’s enough, let’s talk normally now.