.fear.

I sat there. Mystified. Why was this happening to me? My heart was pounding against my chest. Thud Thud Thud. My mind was screaming at me to run, Run, RUN. Kick, yell, cry for help. But evolution had killed off whatever self-preservation I had left. There was no fighting or fleeing going on only me in a the room, paralyzed with fear.1

It had happened slowly, science being perfected. There was no more discrimination, no more hate, no more crime. Fear was something we had read about in textbooks. The early humans had lived in fear of everything. Vehicles with rubber, grounded wheels would hit the pedestrians, husbands would beat their wives and child, children would shoot their peers, mass epidemics of deadly diseases would spread through the over crowded cities, people would slowly kill themselves through mass amounts of drugs.2

They lived in fear of everyday.3

The mad drew near me, my pulse quickened. I waited for my heart to spring out of my chest. My teeth were chattering as my hands gripped the table. I prayed to the God I had read about. Because of the daily fear humans had made God(s) in order to live out their lives otherwise they would remain terrified in a corner. Scientists now scoffed at this idea. If it couldn’t be proven, it couldn’t exist. 4

I took deep breaths of the sticky air around me. My head felt funny, fuzzy. As if the neurons were firing back and forth, hitting the walls of my brain too hard. The man smiled, mockingly, gently, “We are so sorry. This should have been done earlier. I promise this won’t hurt a bit,” he came closer and lifted the silver instrument in his hand.5

“Why? a voice called out.6

My voice.7

“You’re a mistake. You got lost in the system. We were just beginning. We thought perhaps you would adapt, learn to catch up to your peers. But, people don’t change, people don’t adapt. We make them adapt. And we failed with you,” he tiled his head to the side in sympathy for me. But for what? “This is the best course of action, you wouldn’t be productive in the community.”8

He pushed up my sleeve and pressed the metal pointer into my skin. It stung. I could feel the flesh being pushed apart. The pressure from the man as the capsule emptied of its liquid. The metal withdrew from my skin. I still felt faint. It’s didn’t make sense. We had learned about this feeling at school.9

I was sick.10

And that’s what the man had told me. They failed with me, that’s why I felt this way. Why I wasn’t going to school anymore, why I was always slower, why I was so different. But they weren’t doing anything. The community helped each other succeed. Was I not important?11

“Why?” my throat was thick with what every the man had injected into me. This was unheard of, was I being ‘vaccinated’? No one got shots anymore. No one got sick anymore. This wasn’t fair, I looked down at my arm, the red dripped out of the torn flesh. People would see this, I would stand out even more. Everyone had come in contact with a needle before, when they were weeks old and still in the chamber. But the chamber fixed any trace of the needle, people would see this.12

“You were a mistake. Your genetic test showed that, but you got lost in the system. Everything was so new. We’re sorry,” the man’s mouth continued to move but I heard nothing. My vision was going, flashing to the slowing rhythm of my heart. The rumors were true. I knew what would happen now. 13

The town would send out a flash message tonight to everyone. It would appear as a prank flash but it would erase every memory anyone ever had of me. The world just couldn’t handle a mistake like me.14