The Bone Society

“We believe in happiness and equality. We are perfect and that is why we rule the world.”1

I stare up at the blinking billboard stretched out 20 miles in all its technicolour gory. The bile rises in my throat and I stick my finger in to shove it back down. 2

I swallow. The phlegm remains. I pull my mouth open and spit onto the green walkway. 3

“Frankee! Fran-kee!” my annoying digital mouse beeps like the state watchdog he is. “No littering! Fine is—” I yank the strap off my wrist and crush the whole thing under my Nikeee-clad foot in one second flat. 4

He gives a pathetic whimper. I scowl.5

“I wasn’t littering. I was spitting.” 6

“I’m up! Up and about!” The mouse really gets up and does a little jig, out there on the sidewalk. 7

I am flabbergasted.8

I turn and hurry away. Now that I have gotten him off me, I do not want to wear him ever again. 9

***10


“Frankee! Frankee!”11

The voice follows me all the way from the Megamall to the Glut Bulletin to the Sunset Walk… where you can really watch the sun set—on a giant chrome screen rotating the views of the “sun” as it changes across all eight continents of the world, that is. It is an actual walkway too. You stand on the travelator and it carries you along on an interstellar journey where the sun sets and the stars meet it to form a perfect picture of orange-pink dusk and…12

I step onto the Walk, and prepare myself for that spectacular panorama that re-enacts itself every second of every day… Oh no, I am talking in the ways of the old again. I cannot speak of time. There is no “time”. There is only… 13

“Now!” the little mouse jumps onto me. “Frankee!”14

I scream.15

He leeches onto the back of my neck and stays fastened until I peel him off my hair and feel bits of it come off with him too. I scream some more. Some bloody vulgarities too. My ancestors would have been proud. 16

“Put me on! Put me on!” I stick my finger into my eardrum and feel the falsetto reverberate within the tiny cell hairs. Now, why ever did I change the default voice of my personal assistant to that of an opera singer’s?17

“Okay,” I grumble, and strap him back on. “Now, let’s watch the sunset.” 18

***19

I walk to the Control Station after one round on the travelator. Night is falling and the papery stars are all out in their sky-high ceiling. The air is cold and still, and no one is out on the streets. Except for me, of course. But they cannot see me.20

I do a little dance on the sidewalk, just for the hell of it. 21

I stick out my tongue and pretend to taste rain. 22

I sit down on the green cement and imagine I am meditating on a field of grass. 23

The mouse berates me. 24

I get up and move on my way again. 25

***26


“Oh hello, Frankee!” The Bone smiles at me. I try not to look at her/him/it (okay, fine, it is a her. I mean, she is a her. Was. Before… okay, you will know the story soon enough). 27

“Hello,” I say, with about one over zero the amount of enthusiasm as her. 28

She is still chirpy and airheaded. “Get strapped in! We’re starting soon!” I wonder whether she is for real. “Tonight we’ll be visiting Eurasia!” I think not. “You know where that is right? That place in the…” Oh hell, no, please. Ancestors, save me please. I don’t want to—29

“Frankee! Naughty!” He is so annoying. I bang on my wrist to make him shut up. 30


***31

The trip to Lala-land is over as soon as it begins. I mean, there is no time, no space, no—32

The digital mouse squeezes itself around my wrist. I howl out a bloody expletive. I am on a roll tonight. 33

I stop my thoughts. Try to think of nothingness. Oh wait, is that a thought too?34

The mouse squirms itself reassuringly against my skin. Okay, apparently not.35

I sigh. He sighs. I move. He moves. 36

I am so irritated. I am going to—the Bone comes towards me and smiles. I look into the empty space of her mouth cavity and direct my smile at it. 37

“Frankee,” she squeaks in her motherly manner. “Are you excited? When are you turning eighteen again? Two more weeks’ time?” 38

No, I am not. Yes, I am. I wish to be dead before then. 39

“Yes,” I make my voice perfectly neutral.40

She suddenly holds a mirror up to my face. “Look at it! Soon, all this ugliness will be gone! You’ll become just like us! Beautiful… and perfect!” 41

I stare at my pale, gaunt reflection. No… I do like my face, I realize. I like my eyes, my nose, my mouth, my hair… but soon, all these will be gone.42

“You’ll look the same as us, Frankee! Soon!”43

Soon. I’ll be just like them.44

“No more imperfections! No more differences! No more…”45

“No more face.” I complete her sentence. Skeleton, I could have added. 46

***47


I climb over the parapet of the Control Station whilst everyone is asleep in their snug little pods, dreaming empty dreams and living lifeless lives. 48

A flattened Cokeee can is lying like an abandoned toy on the pavement. The red-on-green hits me with its abstract beauty. I wonder whether there were ever any real things with those colours. 49

The paper stars flutter and smile down happily at me. I think the technician must have been sleeping on the job again—the fluorescent glow is turned on just a tad too high.50

I squint. Wink. Do all sorts of things with my eyes. Soon, I will not have any eyes to do anything with. I will not—51

“Pssst!” My head snaps back. “You! Yes, you with the face and the hair—turn… slowly…” 52

I turn myself fully around. I wonder whether I am going to meet a serial-Bone-killer (they have a lot of those locked up in the Prisoners’ Room and are always warning us about them during some of the more educational virtual visits) and am regretting leaving my sleeping mouse back in my pod… 53

“Ahh!” I cannot help myself. I have to scream. He is a human being! A… okay, I am sorry—the Bones are human beings too, but… they are not really, too. But this… human being standing in front of me—he is a human being! He has skin and flesh and… a face. I could have done a little dance on the parapet. 54

“What is wrong with you?” his eyes are growing wider and wider and…55

“I am so happy!” I tell him.56

“Well, don’t be.” The boy gets up from his crouch and moves towards me. 57

I back away suddenly. “Hey, wait,” I wave at him. “What do you want?” I cannot help it. My reflexes are kicking in. 58

“Nothing.” He is still walking towards me. 59

I wave at him some more. “No…” 60

“I just need some Dust Pellets.” He suddenly collapses on the ground. 61

I alt-walk, alt-run towards him. When I reach his limp form, I gingerly hold up his wrist. It is small and thin and… bare. He does not have a mouse. 62

Mouseless people are dangerous too, I have been told. (But you know how I feel about mine.) 63

I reach into my pocket and draw out a tiny sachet. 64

My hands tremble whenever I am nervous, and now, I can hardly get the microscopic pills out and into the injector. 65

I finally do so, and feeling for a vein in his pale skin, I hold the tip of the needle against his wrist. Then, I pull back and release.66

***67


The Dust of Life, they call it. 68

They administer the injections to us during our virtual fun rides. With it, we never eat and we never sleep. At least, not in the nominal sense. 69

When we turn eighteen, we are then given an operation to become Bones. 70

Then we become perfect because we have all become the same—we are equal now! Even though we might not have a regime, it is not an anarchic society. Because we are all equal. There is only one guideline governing the Bone society—equality. Without variations, there can only be either perfection or imperfection. We are perfect because the operation will have corrected all our imperfections…71

No one’s ever heard of a fat skeleton, have they? 72

***73


“We are on the lookout for a runaway. He is an escaped patient aged seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty-nine days old. His medical condition entails us to find him immediately. Anyone with information, please visit the Police Post during your nightly fun ride. Thank you.” -The Glut Bulletin. 74

I freeze. Then I remember to breathe. Kenneth—that was his name—has run away from his Control Station, and abandoned his mouse there. They are on a statewide manhunt for him right about now. “Aren’t you scared?” I ask him. 75

He scoffs. “Scared? Of what?” 76

“Them… The Bones...”77

“Nah, Frankee.” He grins at me. “I can run. They can’t catch me.” I hope so too. 78

“Do you want a Snickeees Bar?” he tears open the familiar brown wrapper and offers me a bite. We might not be able to taste it, but sometimes, it is nice just to imagine how it used to be. 79

“I need to go back.” I do not want to. “My mouse might wake up soon…”80

“Ah, your mouse,” he winks at me. 81

I shrug, and feel warm all over. I wonder whether it might be the fault of the technician again. Kenneth stares up at the sky. “I need to leave… before the sun comes up.”82

I blink at him. “Okay… where will you go?” Will I see you again? I bite my lip. 83

It is Kenneth’s turn now to shrug. “I don’t know. Out of this place I guess. I’m probably crossing the border.”84

“B-but… you’re—” 85

“What? A Bone?” he laughs. “No. At least, not yet. I plan to keep it that way.”86

I feel my face grow hot again. “No, I mean…” Well, what did I mean? He had hit the nail right on its head, like how I had slid the Dust Pellet right into his vein… I blush as I remember how he had opened his eyes and smiled when I had injected him with the Dust of Life. “I mean… you’re so young. What are you going to do out there?” Out there is frankly an appalling prospect. We have lived our entire lives in the Bone Society and grown so used to—87

“Do you want to be perfect, Frankee?”88

“Huh?” 89

He turns and points his thin finger at the dull yellow squares of glass of the Control Station—through which we can see the still silhouettes of the sleeping Bones in their pods. “Them. They think they’re perfect. Because they all look the same. Act the same. Talk the same. Cold, white bone. No flesh, no nothing. Empty. Perfect.” 90

My eyes widen. 91

“It is said that our scientists are the best in the world—because one, they discovered the cure for mass starvation. The Dust Pellets. Two, they discovered the fat gene. Therefore, they could manipulate stem cells to turn into anti-fat ones. Right. Bones. Perfection. Frankee, do you want to be like them? Perfect?” 92

I am already shaking my head before I even know what I am doing. “No…”93

“Do you want to come with me, Frankee?”94

***95

Kenneth walks really fast.96

I am struggling just to keep up with him. I notice he is barefooted. I bend down and pull off my Nikeee shoes. I find out I can walk faster this way. Oh my, I can even run too! I do a little jiggle and skip along behind him. 97

He laughs. “What are you doing now…” 98

“Frankee! Frankee!” I freeze.99

“Kenneth…” 100

“Yes, I heard that.” He slows down and waits for me to reach him. We cannot see much in the darkness. (The technician seems to have woken up and is doing his job properly now. Right when we do not need him to. It figures.) I have been following the bob of Kenneth’s light brown hair glowing faintly in the dark like the stars itself. If stars were brown. 101

He moves again. “We’ve to keep going… it’s still quite some way till there…” 102

I start jogging after him. My stupid mouse had better not catch up with us… 103

Kenneth is moving way too fast. I am about to open my mouth to call out to him, when I feel a sticky little paw attach itself to the back of my head. I scream. I regret it immediately. 104

“Naughty Frankee! Naughty Frankee!” the annoying soprano’s voice stabs into my brain like a million pinpricks of Dust Pellets ingestion. 105

Kenneth is over by my side in a flash. He grabs for the mouse and yanks its tail. He refuses to let go, and I have to shout at Kenneth to stop pulling in case half of my scalp comes off right along with the mouse. 106

“Okay. Cool. Guys. Stop.” I pant, and breathe easier now that the mouse is back where it belonged—unfortunately, on my wrist. 107

Kenneth stares at it. “We’ve to go, Frankee. There is no time…”108

“Kenneth? Are you okay?” The darkness has lifted a little since the whole mêlée with the mouse. I can see that Kenneth is pale and breathing heavily now too. 109

The light grows a little brighter.110

I squint. Blink. “Kenneth…” 111

He drops onto his knees. I drop onto mine right alongside him. “Don’t frighten me! What is happening to you?” 112

His eyes roll back and I can see the whites blinking my glassy reflection back at me. I look away. “Kenneth…” 113

His head swivels to the side. And up. He is looking up. I look up too. The sky… what is it with the sky? It is getting lighter… brighter… paler… I am mixing up all my colours. The paper stars have long disappeared. Back to their starry pods. The technician is sleeping again… 114

“Kenneth? Kenneth…” my voice is a whimper. I feel tears clawing at the back of my eyes. 115

My digital mouse starts cawing away again. “Frankee. Frankee!” I really feel like crying now.116

Kenneth is saying something. “What is it?” I hold my head close to him.117

“Daylight…” he points. I look. Yes, daylight. Something is not right… The day seems to be… “Eighteen.”118

“Huh?”119

“I’m eighteen.”120

“Yes?”121

Kenneth wheezes a little. I am holding his head now. “I haven’t had the operation yet…” 122

“Yes…” The desire to weep is suddenly overwhelming. “Yes?” 123

“I think…”124

“Yes…” I whisper. 125

“I am going to die.”126

“Why?” 127

“We’re on a dune…” I look. Yes. It is in every shade of brown and it feels soft and carpety, almost sand-like (if I knew how sand feels like; I imagine it to be soft and well, sandy). 128

“Kenneth…” I think. “You can’t die. We’re going to cross the border and…”129

“No.”130

“What?”131

“Go back, Frankee.” 132

“What?” The sense of despair at such a sudden change of mind, and loyalties, threw me into the deepest recesses of the universe. 133

Kenneth is silent. I look down at him with fear and fascination. Finally, one word slips from his mouth, “Bone.”134

“What?” I feel retarded saying the same word for the third time in a row. 135

“You’ve to be a Bone, Frankee. No matter what. Go back.” 136

The amount of talking leaves Kenneth in a coughing fit that seems to last for an eternity. “But I don’t want to become a Bone, Kenneth…” I am muttering like a mad witch. “I want my face, my hair, and…” 137

“Yes… no.” Kenneth gives another violent shudder and throws up all over me. 138

“The Dust Pellets!” I shriek. 139

“I can’t keep them down,” he smiles weakly at me.140

I am so stupid. “Do you want some more? Do you…” 141

He shakes his head, and his eyes slide shut. 142

I shake him. “Kenneth? Keeeennneth?? Ken—”143

“Frankee! Frankee!” A wide beam of light arcs across me. I look up. I recognize the emblem of the Prisoners’ Room on the side of the police van. 144

“Frankee 54321?” The blue-coat asks me.145

I nod numbly. 146

“Is that the runaway?”147

I refuse to look at him. 148

“Kenneth 123—”149

“Yes, yes!” I choke. I hold out both my wrists to him. “Arrest me if you want! Sentence me to dea—”150

“Naughty Frankee!” my mouse chirps. 151