I have no job, no money to pay for food or rent, and yet these people... are just letting me stay in this apartment for...for FREE! Why? They even make sure I have a weekly stipend for food, and care for my health condition. I've... never had anything like this before. Why? I don't understand. -- Anon Guest
It was another day without authority telling hir what to do. Another day without sirens and notices and twenty managers telling hir to step up, work harder, and pull hirself up by hir bootlaces.
Not that they ever gave hir boots. That would be too expensive for a trolley case.
This situation was too expensive. Ze could feel the bills racking up. A full-sized sleeping niche. A hygeine booth with all the trimmings. Hot and cold water if so desired. Soap that did not burn holes in hir skin. Three meals a day, all nutritionally balanced and varied in flavour. And hir choices of medical care. For free. So they said.
There had to be a reckoning. A bill. A surcharge. A membership fee. But they kept plying hir with amenities. Assistance. Affirmations.
There were some stuck to hir mirror - a real mirror with glass! Not a polished piece of metal with the words VANITY IS EVIL etched into the tiny square. And they made sure ze said these things every day.
"I am allowed to have a name," ze read. Inside hir head, hir own voice whispered, I am designated SN-DWDP-258-679-34M. "It is my right to choose what I want, given information available to me." I don't choose. The boss chooses. I just do my job. "I am allowed medical care according to my needs and complaints." I am lucky to be alive.
They gave hir an interim name derived from hir serial number. Giggit-a-bub a-methra Sinderwidip. Which they needed for their forms. The other numbers were part of it, but ze understood how that could get too complicated.
Hir rescuers said it was a numeric system for counting important things. Ze told them that ze wasn't important.
Given a choice of breakfasts, ze chose the safest, most reassuring of the options. A bowl of tepid gruel, but nothing like the stuff they had back home. This stuff had flavours. Vanilla. Strawberry. Banana. Chocolate. It never came flavourless, they said. That was against hir rights.
Ze had never had rights before. It was dizzying.
Next on the range of choices was how ze was going to move about, today. There was the familiar trolley, but unfamiliar since they added cushioning. There were artificial legs and a bizarre wheeled chair that honestly frightened hir. And an exoskeleton that ze could pilot via a helmet added to hir head.
Ze got the impression that ze earned demerits from using the trolley. Therefore, ze carefully weighed which apparatus frightened hir the least, today.
The legs won out. They still gave hir vertigo, but they also took the least getting used to. Cane in hand, ze risked joining the working throng.
I must earn my keep. Which, in this very strange land, meant talking to the therapists and sharing hir fears in Group, and then going to watch an educational movie before sorting the recycling.
At least ze could relax at sorting the recycling. It was familiar. It was homey.
Except for the fact that nobody told hir to work harder, faster, or longer. There were no bosses lining up to yell at hir to do a better job.
And worse than anything else these Galactics kept pushing on hir, was The Question.
"What do you want to do?"
It was horrifying.
Ze had never been allowed to have wants before. It had to be a trap.
What ze continually could not work out was, what kind of trap it had to be.
[Image by Markus Winkler on Unsplash]
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