Mutation

by Antique Doll

We see monster everyday, killers, violent, sadistic people. We vilify them and and covet our own normality, writing them off as a complete different creature from us. But where do they come from? This story is set thousands of years into the future, in a digital world. It tells a chilling story meant for children - saying that sometimes, we create the very monsters that eat us.

It is 6183; the earth has become so overrun and stripped bare that the human race instead, plugs in and lives within Galatea. Their bodies lie safe in skyscraping structures in the world of the real while their avatars inhabit a limitless utopia.

Each structure houses millions of boxes, and in one particular box, lay the living flesh of the avatar known as Shino, or #505727036575 in Galatea's identification system.

Shino is sweet-tempered and kind, but deeply introverted. She finds people her age to be strange; they find her strange right back and respond as humans typically do to strange things. They tele-post about her while hiding their ID codes – judging her avatar's cloud of hair and pre-codec clothing. They tease her and swarm her with insulting pings programed to pester her like the insects of a bygone age. "Analogue," they call her, laughing at her frantic attempts to dislodge stray pings. Shino's code distresses, but instead of reporting her tormentors, she bottles the distressed code inside her. She tells no one, so the hurt continues.

They don't hate her, some perhaps even admire her, but oh, how her helplessness makes them feel powerful and make them feel like they belong.

As for Shino, her distress builds up and over time, begins to overwhelm her avatar's Galatean code. How can something as six-sided as hexacode, process something as deep and endless as Shino's hurt into something as small as her avatar. Galatea tries to subliminally influence Shino into letting it go. It sets up opportunities for Shino to dump the distressed code, but Shino ignores them. Galatea concedes to growing out Shino's hair to accommodate the excess, growing it longer and longer until it was longer than Shino was tall.

The others notice Shino's strange new hair and during another session of bullying, one of them grabs Shino's hair and cuts through the coding. Hexacode spills out everywhere and before the damage can be repaired, the code mutates. The back of Shino's head splits into a hungry, gaping maw edged in pointed teeth while the cut ends of her hair sprout long appendages ending in claws. The mouth glistens with saliva and the arms of hair writhe. Shino's tormentors disappear that day, and a new mutant is born in Galatea.