Confession Released

This is the transcript of my life, Zerilius, number twelve of twelve clone brothers. I offer this to you not as a tale, but a confession; not in the past, but in the now. For time does not hold us captive. Everything that was...is, and everything that is...continues; not a circle, not a chain, just simply existence.

Try to stay with me because I have something to say, something you need to hear.
I am born in need and helpless. I don't know this word “helpless” but I know the frustration and anger of it and I am aware, always aware. I lay in my glass crib, snuggled by an intuitive surface meant to be as comforting as a true mother. I don't have a mother. I am Elite, the highest, Higher human, genetically engineered. The birth of my clan of brothers, happened on January 1, 2660, on schedule, entirely unnatural. We are humanity’s fullest expression. We are above nature. We create ourselves. But even now, I know, there is something different about me, something unplanned. I sleep, but in the morning I discover, I'm not the only one with this conclusion.

I awake to pressure on my throat and the smell of pungent ginger; Jephnah’s breath. His fingers clamp around my tender windpipe. I try to understand how this person who feeds me, cares for me, tucks the blanket around me, desires to kill me. Hatred enflames his face, spittle on his lips, droplets of sour sweat squeeze from his forehead as he hovers over me. Yet he is not my worst enemy. I am special but not so much that I don't need oxygen and with every second my awakened brain is starved. My enemy is death and it will not snuff me out.

Jephnah drops to the floor. I breath. Two men in white rush into the nursery. My brothers wail. Halor comes in. I smile. He has an aura of light about him.  He looks down at Jephnah prostrate on the floor, attendants checking for a heart beat, a breath, a sign that the unthinkable didn't happen. Elite do not drop dead. Disease is unheard of, imperfection and weakness not possible, any physical injury is quickly self-healed by the ultimate control of the brain over the body. There are only two ways an Elite dies before his ten century lifespan, catastrophic accident or murder. Halor’s eyes open wide when the medical assessment comes back that Jephnah is surely dead. He looks in on my brother Versailles but his glance is on me. He checks another crib then comes to me. He touches my neck. I am bruised. He pulls the blanket up to my chin. Medigo arrives. Halor looks around at the attendants typing notes in their tablets. He nods to Medigo who then speaks to the attendants. I see him press the palm of his hand against their foreheads. He takes their tablets.
“Jephnah is on leave,” Medigo says.
“Yes”, the attendants answer in unison.
“The nourish schedule was off by a minute earlier today due to a maintenance worker who made a mistake.”
“A minute off, 2260 off schedule feeding, the distress alarm from all the babies at once, brought us in here.”
“We attended to them immediately,” one says.
“The schedule has been amended,” the other says.
“And the defective worker?” Medigo points to the body.
“We will take care him as per protocol.”
“Very good,” Medigo says. I hear one grunting as he hoists Jephnah’s body up over his shoulder. Jephnah is an inanimate object. He cannot be an agent of death anymore. I have set things right.

I am moved to a separate nursery, a closet sized room with a lock that engages with a quiet, definite click. Walls barren. No screens flashing pictures and words. I don't see my brothers. I don't see anyone but Halor and Medigo. They tell me over and over “be good Zerilius.” It is a command without instruction. What is good?

There is a problem. I am supposed to be taught immense amounts of information, what all my brothers are being taught. The solution nearly ruins me. “It is required,” Halor says when he straps me into a reclining seat in a white room. I squirm and twist certain I can escape from this chair, escape from my white life. But then a screen comes on and I am captivated by sound and color and streaming data. At first my stimulus starved mind laps up every bit as though I am in a race for my life. I am ready for these hours long sessions. But then one day, I overtake what the creators of this program designed. I go beyond it. I go into it.  The screen appears, the session begins. But this day, I see something new in the pause between the screen coming on and the image appearing. Have I ever seen that pause before? The pixels arrive, join, become. How can I do this? I am lost in the fragmentation of the image, pulling it together, breaking it apart, fast, slow, seeing even smaller particles following like a celestial trail back and forth. I play this game till the screen goes blank. The white returns except I am still lost. No matter which way I turn, streaks of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet stretch into infinity. I am lost in layers of colors. Where am I? I feel a vibration on my lips, but I cannot hear the droning sound I make. A hand on my shoulder is like a hot iron pressed on my bare skin. I push it away. No, no, no, don’t touch me. You are not with me here. Your static, one dimension life invades like a dark smoke absorbing the atmosphere of light. Go away! I fight until suddenly, abruptly as if a switch has been flipped, I am soothed. The smoke is gone. The lights diffuse. I perceive total darkness. I find my voice and cry. Halor tells me I have been away two days.

They are worried. They do not know where I went. They do not know how to keep me from going back there. Medigo says he will protect me. Protect me from what? Beauty, unsurpassing? I want to play again. I try to make it happen. I spend an entire night revisting that moment when it began looking for a correlation, a cause to link to this effect. Frustration makes me angry. I kick and scream and throw my food across the room. If my muscles were more developed the trajectory would have met with Medigo’s face. It lands at his feet. The next time I see him, he approaches with a needle that pierces my skin before I can pull away.

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