![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Clarion Write-a-thon: Entry 1
Jul. 5th, 2014 06:56 pmIn 1993, I was fortunate enough to win a scholarship to Clarion West. Anything I know about writing, I learned there.
This year, I'm participating in Clarion's summer Write-a-Thon fundraiser.
I'll be working on the story below through August 1.
-------
The Evaluator assigned to Barry Atman for his fourth performance review was the same model that had been used for his third: an android designed to look like a 15-year-old girl with dark hair and an enigmatic smile.
“Why are they recycling you?” Atman asked toward the end of the session.
“This prototype is irresistible to heterosexual males affected by pathological empathy,” the android said. It held its palms up, tilted its head slightly to the right, and fixed Atman with enormous, slightly slanted eyes. “Prexalo would help,” it said soothingly.
“I don’t want Prexalo,” Atman said.
The Evaluator widened its eyes and nodded, smiling sadly. “The boy disturbed you.”
Atman snorted. “The boy would disturb anyone.”
“But we aren’t talking about anyone. We’re talking about you. In fact, the boy did more than disturb you. The boy scared you.”
“The dreams are bad,” Atman admitted reluctantly. Waking up after the dreams in a panic, though. That was the worst. The panic was always about loneliness and lost opportunities and the human condition, which so far as Atman could tell was a boundless world of bad possibilities, a giant swath of uncertainty that inevitably resolved itself into something bad.
Look at me, he thought. I’m sharing my nightmares with a mechanical doll.
“Prexalo eliminates self-loathing,” the Evaluator told him sweetly.
“I told you – no Prexalo,” Atman said.
The Evaluator folded its hands on its lap. “We can’t make you take Prexalo. You have to want to feel better.”
“But if I don’t take it, eventually I’ll get fired, right?”
The Evaluator giggled charmingly. “Of course not. Why would you think that? You’re one of our most effective field workers, Barry Atman. We’ll get what we need out of you whether you’re happy giving it to us or not. We’re done here. You may go.”
“I passed?”
“Purple. Green. Magenta. Which flying color would you like?”
Atman did not take the bait. He rose warily from the chair and headed toward the door. But before he stepped through, he turned back toward the thing in the chair. “I’ve never heard of them assigning the same prototype more than once –“
“It happens,” the Evaluator said. “In complex cases.”
“So… Will I see you again in three months?”
“You’re not seeing me now. At least, as you define ‘me’. Tell us something. You like whimsy. Why didn’t you laugh when we made a whimsical joke about flying colors?”
“You’re a machine,” said Atman. “Machines don’t have senses of humor.”
The Evaluator held up one slender, manicured finger. “You don’t suspend disbelief. That’s what makes you valuable. But of course, you could still hold onto your disbelief if you were happy.”
“I’m not taking Prexalo,” Atman said. But even to himself, his voice sounded overly loud.
The waiting room was empty except for the janitor, an old man using the same oversized broom on the same invisible dust he’d been chasing around the floor every time Atman had left a performance review. The old man beamed at him now, and winked slowly and deliberately.
“How’s it going, Atman?” the old man asked.
Had there been pleasantries? A ritual exchange of names? Atman thought there might have been because how else could the old man know his name? He didn’t remember, though, and this made him feel vaguely ashamed because he believed in remembering people’s names no matter how tangentially those people impinged upon his life.
“Hanging in there,” Atman said, trying to smile.
The old man wore robe-like orange pajamas imprinted with the Aphar logo. He had a wide-planed face and Eurasian features, rather like this last Evaluator’s, Atman thought. Atman was seized with a sudden impulse to ask the old man, Are you human?
It occurred to him, though, that the answer to this particular question was increasingly irrelevant.
###
The boy was human, at least in the sense that he inhabited a body that had been extrapolated from human DNA.
Even before the Incident, the kid had been more than just another number in Atman’s ineffective caseload cataloging system because he was just so damn beautiful. Mostly, Atman’s clients were ugly. Their mental disabilities had too many disturbing parallels with their physical appearances. As within, so without.
But this kid, Tyree Coley, was a veritable Bernini angel with cocoa-colored skin, golden hair, startlingly blue eyes, the longest eyelashes Altman had ever seen outside a portrait of a Renaissance princeling.
He had a diagnosis, too: autism spectrum disorder or maybe schizoaffective disorder. Both conditions were exceedingly rare in a six-year-old, but without a diagnosis, the kid couldn’t be medicated and this kid needed to be medicated.
They gave him Prexalo, of course.
Tyree Coley was toilet trained – mostly – but he didn’t talk. Couldn’t or wouldn’t. He appeared to be profoundly retarded – the operative bureaucratic euphemism these days was intellectually disabled. He had episodes where his body shuddered and jerked spasmodically as though he was fending off invisible assailants. The episodes didn’t track as seizures on an EEG though there seemed to be a distinct post-ictal state associated with them, an aftermath during which the kid seemed to be calmer, more responsive.
The kid had to be watched. He suffered from pica, a compulsive craving to eat things like dirt and bugs and animal feces.
...
This year, I'm participating in Clarion's summer Write-a-Thon fundraiser.
I'll be working on the story below through August 1.
-------
The Evaluator assigned to Barry Atman for his fourth performance review was the same model that had been used for his third: an android designed to look like a 15-year-old girl with dark hair and an enigmatic smile.
“Why are they recycling you?” Atman asked toward the end of the session.
“This prototype is irresistible to heterosexual males affected by pathological empathy,” the android said. It held its palms up, tilted its head slightly to the right, and fixed Atman with enormous, slightly slanted eyes. “Prexalo would help,” it said soothingly.
“I don’t want Prexalo,” Atman said.
The Evaluator widened its eyes and nodded, smiling sadly. “The boy disturbed you.”
Atman snorted. “The boy would disturb anyone.”
“But we aren’t talking about anyone. We’re talking about you. In fact, the boy did more than disturb you. The boy scared you.”
“The dreams are bad,” Atman admitted reluctantly. Waking up after the dreams in a panic, though. That was the worst. The panic was always about loneliness and lost opportunities and the human condition, which so far as Atman could tell was a boundless world of bad possibilities, a giant swath of uncertainty that inevitably resolved itself into something bad.
Look at me, he thought. I’m sharing my nightmares with a mechanical doll.
“Prexalo eliminates self-loathing,” the Evaluator told him sweetly.
“I told you – no Prexalo,” Atman said.
The Evaluator folded its hands on its lap. “We can’t make you take Prexalo. You have to want to feel better.”
“But if I don’t take it, eventually I’ll get fired, right?”
The Evaluator giggled charmingly. “Of course not. Why would you think that? You’re one of our most effective field workers, Barry Atman. We’ll get what we need out of you whether you’re happy giving it to us or not. We’re done here. You may go.”
“I passed?”
“Purple. Green. Magenta. Which flying color would you like?”
Atman did not take the bait. He rose warily from the chair and headed toward the door. But before he stepped through, he turned back toward the thing in the chair. “I’ve never heard of them assigning the same prototype more than once –“
“It happens,” the Evaluator said. “In complex cases.”
“So… Will I see you again in three months?”
“You’re not seeing me now. At least, as you define ‘me’. Tell us something. You like whimsy. Why didn’t you laugh when we made a whimsical joke about flying colors?”
“You’re a machine,” said Atman. “Machines don’t have senses of humor.”
The Evaluator held up one slender, manicured finger. “You don’t suspend disbelief. That’s what makes you valuable. But of course, you could still hold onto your disbelief if you were happy.”
“I’m not taking Prexalo,” Atman said. But even to himself, his voice sounded overly loud.
The waiting room was empty except for the janitor, an old man using the same oversized broom on the same invisible dust he’d been chasing around the floor every time Atman had left a performance review. The old man beamed at him now, and winked slowly and deliberately.
“How’s it going, Atman?” the old man asked.
Had there been pleasantries? A ritual exchange of names? Atman thought there might have been because how else could the old man know his name? He didn’t remember, though, and this made him feel vaguely ashamed because he believed in remembering people’s names no matter how tangentially those people impinged upon his life.
“Hanging in there,” Atman said, trying to smile.
The old man wore robe-like orange pajamas imprinted with the Aphar logo. He had a wide-planed face and Eurasian features, rather like this last Evaluator’s, Atman thought. Atman was seized with a sudden impulse to ask the old man, Are you human?
It occurred to him, though, that the answer to this particular question was increasingly irrelevant.
###
The boy was human, at least in the sense that he inhabited a body that had been extrapolated from human DNA.
Even before the Incident, the kid had been more than just another number in Atman’s ineffective caseload cataloging system because he was just so damn beautiful. Mostly, Atman’s clients were ugly. Their mental disabilities had too many disturbing parallels with their physical appearances. As within, so without.
But this kid, Tyree Coley, was a veritable Bernini angel with cocoa-colored skin, golden hair, startlingly blue eyes, the longest eyelashes Altman had ever seen outside a portrait of a Renaissance princeling.
He had a diagnosis, too: autism spectrum disorder or maybe schizoaffective disorder. Both conditions were exceedingly rare in a six-year-old, but without a diagnosis, the kid couldn’t be medicated and this kid needed to be medicated.
They gave him Prexalo, of course.
Tyree Coley was toilet trained – mostly – but he didn’t talk. Couldn’t or wouldn’t. He appeared to be profoundly retarded – the operative bureaucratic euphemism these days was intellectually disabled. He had episodes where his body shuddered and jerked spasmodically as though he was fending off invisible assailants. The episodes didn’t track as seizures on an EEG though there seemed to be a distinct post-ictal state associated with them, an aftermath during which the kid seemed to be calmer, more responsive.
The kid had to be watched. He suffered from pica, a compulsive craving to eat things like dirt and bugs and animal feces.
...
