With my newest chapter update, I have also edited my previous chapters.
Changes made: Changed words consisting of all capital letters to simply italics. Condensed smaller chapters together to create a couple big chapters with two "parts". Fixed spelling and removed the old reviewer responses.
Hear No Evil . . .(1)
PART ONE: Retirement Plans and Fetal Cadavers
He checked the clipboard one last time.
This was supposed to be the hard part for most doctors.
Mostdoctors.
Behind the soundproof glass, with the parents staring hopefully at his back, he practiced his speach.
Should I be kind this time, or lay it on thick? Really draw it out?
The clipboard held no answers
Name: Feltman, infant (un-specified)
Sex: Male
Status: Deceased
Condit: Unrepairable Handicap
Mother: Feltman, Regina May
Father: Feltman, Jonathon Timothy
DoD: consequential
He smirked as he perused the father's profile, handily in a folder nearby. Jewish last name and completely Anglo-Saxon first name. Hmmph. Ridiculous. They think that giving themour names makes them equal?
"Damn Jews . . ." He muttered.
Unsurprisingly, the child in the crib did not stir at this curse.
Well, never hurts to be sure.
He crept up to the baby again, clapping his hands loudly and yelling in the infant's ear.
He watched carefully. The last thing the hospital needed was another lawsuit. The punishments for "Unlawful Denial of Male Heir to Household" were staggering nowadays. Change . . . he hated it.
He smiled at the child, slumbering peacefully.
"Name: my little nest egg." he whispered.
Wiping the smile off his face, he proceeded into the waiting room.
Every time, it's gets better. The parents, searching his eyes for the blow before delivered. The quiet falling over the other patients, bored of their "Your Faith" and "Emerging Warfare Technology's" magazines. By law, placed in every high-financial place of business, such as this. Now the other patients leaned to overhear this mother's tragedy.
He had front row seat.
The man stood stiffly. "Doctor . . ." his voice trailed off.
"Sir, I afraid your son shall be classified as 'handicapped.' He is completely-"
The sudden wail of the mother cut him off.
The man looked embarrassed. "Now, Regina compose yourself!"
She shook her head back and forth manically. "I tried this time! I did! Please John!"
He grabbed her arm and shook her violently. "Get a hold of yourself, damnnit! Or I'll take care of your bawling myself!"
The mother stifled and silenced.
The doctor smiled condescendingly at the mother. The father, flustered, tried to apologize.
"Doctor, she don't know better. Just a little frazzled, seeing it's been ten years trying andthis woman don't know better than to pop out females, left and right!" He said the word "females" with a sneer. "I was just looking forward to having an heir. Ain't gettin' younger, Doc." he chuckled. He looked tersely at his shaking wife, daring her with his eyes.
"Well, then," Doctor Standish continued quickly, "As I was saying, the boy is completely deaf. You should know, the New York Handicapped Human Product Act of 1982 clearly states: "Any government health care provider who freely-"
The man cut the speech with a wave of his hand. "Don't you worry about it, I know your rights."
"Then you also know that you will not be billed for this consultation as compensation?"
The man just turned and lead his whimpering wife out the door.
Doctor Standish was disappointed, to say the least.
Oh well, I'll crack the next father. he thought.
He motioned a nearby Aide to push the crib in the direction of his office.
Behind his desk, alone again. He considered the child for a moment before retrieving the
paperwork from his desk drawer.
He slapped the "Handicapped Slave Procurement for Private Ownership form" onto the desktop.
So many deals, called upon favors, money slipping hand to hand.
With this one, it was eight children.
Sixteen parents were told their children were being kept . . . and eight notices of Fetal DeathSyndrome were sent to the accounting floor.
This was actually quite common in the Americas. While frowned upon, as underage mating was, and illegal, again like underage mating, no one really noticed or cared.
As Russia had the coal trade, the Colonies of India had the Black Market . . . The Americas and China had the slave trade.
Well, at least he was quazi-compassionate. China had such an over-population, children there were usuallyintentionally handicapped to insure legal sale in other countries. While China had the sale of Legally Fit Citizens, Unfit Citizens sold better in other countries. Less chance of escape, you see.
There was three classifications in the Neo-American Slave Trade:
1. Fit: This is a captured human. Prisoners hoping to work off sentences, captured Savages, or
illegally sold Chinese. The last beinghighly dangerous to maintain.
2. Retarded: These slaves are sold to laboratory's and NBC(Nuclear, Biological, Chemical)
Military Testing centers. Obviously, too mentally or physically disabled to perform strenuous or
even mundane tasks. These, quite fairly sell for less than:
3. UnFit Citizens: These are Americans who, through accident or birth, become, or are
born, handicapped. Their handicaps are far too severe for them to be placed in polite society.
As a service, the government provides low or noincome hospitals. Not out of the grand
kindness of their hearts, but because of all the people in America, the poorest were the sickest.
And the believed most unable to refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage. This made them
patsies.
With sickness rampant in the Ghetto, studies showed that the most UnFit Citizens could be found
here.
Not even born yet, and they were targeted.
But with everyone so distracted by the most recent war, no one had seemed to notice a few very small black bags labeled "Cadaver: Fetal" just not show up.
The hospital pays for slaves, they get empty bags.
Dr. Standish had been storing his new arrivals in a trap door under his home. An old bunker from the Russo-American war.
It's all about where the stock goes. Someday you're up, some days you're down, He thought to himself.
He peered at the baby again. "It's all about guess-work, Ears!" the nickname popped into his head suddenly. "Everyone wants thedumb slaves! Why? Fear of rebellion? There hasn't been a free state in the Americas since the crash of '32!"
He jumped from his desk, shooting up like a rocket, full of exuberant energy. "The future, my young Ears, is in intelligent slaves. Trained slaves. And that's where I come in. Right now, all I have is a basement full of babies, but in fourteen years, I'll have my retirement!"
He stopped pacing and looked at his hands. "What am I doing? I'm talking to a baby. Baby's can't understand." He blinked. "Let alone, deaf ones."
His pacing eventually brought him back to his chair. Slumping down into it, he slid the form aside and pulled from his jacket "The Little Pocket-Book of Baby Names."
"Hmmph. Let's see now. Iwould like to stick to tradition . . ."
"Now, I'm partial to Ears as a nickname, but I can't very well sell a slave named "Ears" a decade from now." He flipped through the book until he reached the "E" section and smiled when he found his prize.
"Why hello, Ethan."
Hear No Evil . . . (2)
PART TWO: Red Trucks and Cement
Ethan took one desperate, final pull off the machine.
Breathe . . . One . . . two . . . three . . .
He released the bar and collapsed in exaustion, actually rolling off the bench and onto the floor.
He felt a tapping on his shoulder and weakly batted away the offending finger. The person grabbed his arms and turned him over so he was now on his back. As he turned, faces came into view, blocking the dreary, steel-beam infested ceiling of the warehouse. His home.
Michelle spoke up,or didn't, rather, saying as she was mute.
Ethan, are you all right, she mouthed.
He flashed his hand-speak at her.
Cupping both hands in front of him and pulling them inward . . . thumbing at his chest . . . holding up his index finger . . . placing both fists together, thumb to thumb, extending the fingers quickly then closing them.
She nodded.
Okay, you hurry. Boss is coming today. Gotta look your best.
He signed again: He not go here in two week-S. He not go here now.
She and a few concerned others wandered away.
He took the moment to examine his surroundings. The warehouse, his home for the past ten years or maybe more, had no inner walls, no privacy, no electric light. Not that a slave worried of these things.
He had once looked at himself in a shiney piece of the roof that had fallen one day. How old was he? He had counted ten years at the warehouse, but remembered a time before. In a house, learning the alphabet and running errands for Boss. Back in the time when they used to call him "Doc". How old would he have had to have been to learn his letters and cook breakfast? Five? Six maybe? Geeze, he didn't even know his own birthday.
All around him, his brothers and sisters were working. Some jogging in place, some warming up with cardio-vascular, but most, like him, were tackling the large weight machines. The Boss insisted on it. Which seemed like a pretty dumb idea to Ethan.
While endurance was a fine thing to have, most masters-to-be were fooled by the mass and bulk of a slave, automatically assuming "the bigger, the better." More informedinvestersknew that the larger slaves were more powerful but didn't last as long as the lean, muscular ones.
Ethan was no beast in size, but he could do ninty-four pushups in a row, jogfive miles, and then stand all day in the hot sun with low water consumption and still not collapse from heat exaustion. All of these feats near to impossible for the generically average handicapped
slave.
A cloud shifted in the sky, allowing the sun to peak through the broken windows. One particularbeam landing directly in his eyes. Which wouldn't have been a problem if he were Benny, but unfortunately he was deaf not blind.
Annoyed, he rolled away from the light and slowly clambered to his feet. He checked the clock on the wall.
0756
Hmmm. Still four minutes of P.T. left. He glanced at the schedule next to the clock. It was a chalkboard with plastic strips running across it, acting as event dividers. It was old, grimy and showing some serious wear and tear.
Much like everything else in this place. Including him.
First Formation 0545-0600
Physical Training 0600-0800
Food 0800-0810
Class One(Trade) 0810-1200
Class Two(Math VII) 1200-1400
Class Three(General)1400-1600
Food 1600-1610
Job 1610-?
Food ?-?
Free-Time ?-1900
Sleep 1900-0530
He smiled. To the envy of his brothers, he had been assigned a trade that allowed him to be outside all morning. He had been learning the nuances of masonry and general engineering from a "friend" of the Boss's.
The Boss was very tight-lipped about operations around here.
Of course, most people that can hear seem to assume that if they're out of hearing range, theconversation is private. After ease-dropping on a few conversations, Ethan lip-read from the Boss and was able to report back a few facts to his siblings.
The slave trade had become a serious political platform as of late. No, not abolitionists versus slave-holders, but laborer versus employer. The Labor Unionist Party (aka "Laborers") had accused slaves of stealing citizens jobs. An employer could buy a slave, instead of hiring a laborer, and in a few months the slave pays for itself. A new and extremely controversial law was passed giving rights of slave ownershiponly to the Government and Private Slave Holders. Corporations could no longer hire slaves.
Aparently, the Boss gave out his kids as free laborers every day. The various employers would simply write them off the books. Instead of pay to the Boss, however, they used the slaves as apprentices teaching them the profession.
Also, some heated arguments had been flaring lately between the Boss and a man who spoke to him regularly. The slaves pieced together snatches of conversation and peeked-at documentsto determine this man must be giving loans to Boss. The Eggs called him "Shark" because of hisprofession and the killer glint in his eye.
Ethan's train of thought was disrupted when he noticed the others suddenly breaking from their various activities and converging at the table in the corner.
The buzzer must have sounded, signaling a change in the shifts. He jogged over to the table, tapping Dougie on the way.
He gulped down his glass of water and grabbed his bagel on the go. Joe was awfully mad when Ethan showed up late.
Mad enough to punish him without asking Boss's permission first.
He raced out the open side-door of the warehouse into the bare patch of dirt used as a parking lot.
"Well, hop in already!" Joe yelled out the window. Ethan "hopped" into the cab of the truck and Joe pulled out.
Four hours on the worksite, and four more to go. While the schedule outlined general times, it really differed from slave-to-slave depending on trades assigned. So far, Ethan had learned gardening, landscaping, wilderness survival, hunting, fishing and was now almost finished in masonry. The idea being that he would be an outdoors slave who worked the lawns, could be taken on hunting and camping trips and also could build fountains, ponds and other large masonry projects. If the buyer was smart, they would use this resource to save on some serious cash.
Today, Ethan was working the cement mixer on a simple paving job. The company he worked for was setting up a patterned walkway from the driveway to the front door.
The cement mixer reminded Ethan of some pictures he had seen in a magazine once. In the photo, muddy Primitives of the South American Humid-Lands were gathered around a fire, staring at an unidentifiable animal roasting on a spit. He knew this was a fake photo. Just pro-war propoganda. If the citizen's enemy was thatbackwards, they would not have survived, resisted and killed so many soldiers.
The cement mixer was, if put VERY simply, two thick poles with a bell swinging between. On the left pole, a large lever for tipping the bell down and releasing the contents. On the right, a series of pulleys and gears which rotated the bell, mixing the cement.
Ethan pushed the large wheelbarrow under the bell. He released the safety lockor "oops switch" as the laborers called it. Then used the lever to tip it slowly forward. Joe always kept him in back jobs such as this. If the laborers knew that the new kid who "don't talk much, but 'e's an okay guy" was actually a slave? He would probably be lynched on the spot.
He shivered at the thought.
When the wheelbarrow was completely filled, he pulled up on the lever and snapped the bell back to it's upright position. Distractedly, he pondered the intelligence of Boss. Why did the man continue this way knowing how heated things were getting. Wouldn't it be safer to just sell us now? Before laws change even more?
As he grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow and began to muscle his heavy load uphill towards the house, he felt a hard vibration in the ground.
Oh no, please no.
Slowly, he lowered the handles and turned around.
Of course. He had forgotten to flip the safety.
The bell swung from it's pivot back and forth, like a church bell. Underneath, a half-hour's hard work, puddled on the ground and flowing downhill into the street, like a slow muddy river.
He stood there.
Just watch the cement pour.
There was nothing to do now.
Just wait for it.
SLAM!
The pain reverberated through his body, down to the marrow in his bones.
Joe had come out nowhere, the shock increasing the pain, somewhat.
The hand gripping his hair forced his head downward again.
SLAM!
Ethan assumed Joe was yelling and cursing incoherantly, but he couldn't be sure, unless he was looking right at his face.
Blurrily, he noticed the blood stain on the back of the truck and a small, vaguely Ethan-shaped dent underneath.
As his head came down again, it was if something snapped in his brain. Or maybe in his inner ear, according to that year of Biology he was given in 1998. Up became down and the world spun around his head, interrupted by flashes of light. Grass, truck and sun all became one mass of dazed color.
Ethan almost smiled, watching the dent rush towards him, as if the truck was backing up into his skull.
He felt a rumbling in the lower part of his throat and knew that for the first time in his life, he was laughing out loud.
A wetness trickled from his hairline, down his chin and neck, staining his shirt.
Blood.
Maybe he'll kill me this time. That would be great.
He felt a light CRUNCH from somewhere in his body, that made him stop laughing with a sharp grunt of pain, and the world grew slightly dimmer. The sun wasn't as stingingly bright. The grass became a faded green. The pale yellow truck was completely grey.
All except the bloodstain. It was even brighter. And in the pale hue of the sun, it seemed to refect light that wasn't even there. No longer a smuge but now a laden pool, dripping down the truck.
He wondered if someone could lose that much blood and survive. Or if he was just imagining the red rivulets, tearing down the back end.
With a start, he realized he was no longer feeling pain.
Ethan's muscles relaxed one-by-one as he sank to the ground, feeling the numb THUD as Joe kicked him in the ribs, while still in mid-fall. Like a drop-kicked soccerball.
How can you kick a man when he's down? he asked no one in particular.
Hard to believe in God.
He answered himself before he lost consciousness. Or who knows, maybe it was God.
Who says you're a man?
Ethan's last feeling, before the lights went out, was of relief. Maybe he was dead.
Endof Chapter 1
BEHIND THE SCENES: What Ethan said in the warehouse was: "Give me one moment". No, it is not
American sign language. I believe that the slaves would be so disorganized that they would NOT
have a universal sign language. So I sorta created my own sign language that would make sense
to Ethan and the other slaves. Or I just didn't feel like learning sign language.