When I was young, the world was divided into two places- the City and the Outside. The Outside was scary and filled with people who wanted to hurt me, but had enough food and water and electricity for everyone. My home, Terminal City, was populated with transgenics- my family- but could be said to be little more than an oversized slum.
I remember walking along with Justin and Steel and some of the neighbours' children. We lived close to the perimeter fence of Terminal City. Although the initial shock of our existance had died down years ago, you could often find sector police, scattered protestors and a fair few looking for a cheap thrill.
We got into a shouting match with some of the protestors, who began throwing things at us.
It is a clear memory... Steel's hand in mine, Justin and his friends yelling and my confusion. Why did these people want to hurt us, to make us feel bad? We hadn't done anything to them...
That incident was the first of many clear messages that we were ungodly, unwanted savages... inhuman, with no purpose but as a diversion for these Ordinaries in their facile little lives. We were better dead than alive, no matter how much we tried to prove that transgenics were just as intelligent and moral and, well, ordinary as anybody who lived on the Outside.
Ghastly rumours circulated about us on the Outside. They said we practiced cannibalism and worshipped animal gods. This was utter crap, of course. There were supporters, but they were few.
From the first days of the freak nation until around the time that Steel was born, there were newspaper articles about us in tabloids almost every day. Reporters would clamour by the perimeter, begging for the chance to take pictures of us, talk to us for just a moment... they were more like ravenous beasts than we could ever dream of being. Mom or Justin or whoever was with us would hurry us along, saying don't talk to them, just keep walking, don't look scared or embarrassed, don't give them the satisfaction.
We didn't have much technology in there. There are no pictures of me before the age of ten. I had an incredibly strong stomach and could easily digest undercooked food, and healed quickly from things like colds or viruses. What meagre funds were donated to us in secret by supporters were always spent on buying enormous amounts of Trytophan on the black market for the X-classes. Steel had seizures brought on by psychological conditions: stress, grief or intense fear and also needed the drug regularly to control them.
The saddest cases to pass on the street were anomalies kept locked in the Manticore basement for most of their lives, reindoctrinated and 'simplified' X-series or X7s, who couldn't talk. Some X7s willingly learnt sign language to communicate with other citizens, but others stubbornly stuck with their own class.
Another memory comes to me when I think of my early years- Cora, the animal-human girl who was my next door neighbour. She looked catlike, had an X6 father and an even more catlike mother, although her mother was not furred or carnivorous. She seemed to be named for Manticore, which I thought an extremely strange choice for a name but her mother explained to me in purring tones one night that she was actually named for the incredible feeling they got as they watched Manticore burn from a hill. Cora's parents had always been more independent that Manticore had liked, and had had to hide it so they wouldn't get into trouble.
It was night. I was about four or five, Cora was a year older. As per usual for Seattle, it was raining, and we were sitting on the front steps to a building. On clear nights children would play in the streets, although the adults frowned upon it.
The rain finally slowed to a drizzle and then stopped completely. We were ankle-deep in water as the two of us climbed off the steps to jump in the puddles, something we did because we didn't mind the cold and the wet (I didn't, Cora did but copied me anyway) and because it was something we'd seen Ordinary children do as they lingered outside the fence on their way home from school.
Cora stopped because she could hear something. I slowed down and listened.
There was something happening in the next street. A fight. Some anti-transgenics had gotten through the perimeter fence and were caught vandalising one of the houses. The transgenics were outraged and made no move to rescue them when they were beaten up by some X8s. The vandals were released as a warning to what would happen to over-the-top anti-transgenics, but their 'heroic story' complete with such quotes as, "... the two brave young men were brutally attacked by the Terminal City transgenics..." and "... they escaped using cunning and phenomenal intelligence..."
I remember watching them get beaten up and feel both afraid and thrilled by the scene of violence in front of me. In a way, the tabloids were right. We transgenics tend to thrive on scary situations. It's the way we were made.
I grew apart from Cora as the years went by, but grieved for her when I learnt she'd been tortured and killed in the riot where my father also died. Cora was only nine years old when she died, and was killed because she wouldn't let the rioters into her home. She was a wonderful person.
We accepted the fact that our parents were not entirely human and in turn, neither were we. We asked innocent questions such as, "If my father is an X5 and so is my mother, what class does that make me?" We clamoured with questions our parents didn't know how to answer.
There wasn't an awful lot of history for the freak nation if you really considered it. Our parents and relatives had been born in Manticore. Twelve members of the X5 class had escaped in 2009. Then four of them- our leader Max Guevara, her brothers Zack and Krit and her sister Syl- had taken down the Manticore facility. And some time later, the transgenics had made their home inside Terminal City. That was basically it.
I can truly say I stopped acting young one day when I was six. Justin, then eight years old, was dared by a friend to climb over the fence. I begged him not to, but Justin, while our protector, was at heart a reckless little boy. He scaled a part of the fence unguarded by Ordinaries, but was seen and chased up and down the perimeter while Steel and I stood, terrified, wondering if we'd ever see him again.
He scrambled over the fence a nerve-wracking fifteen minutes later, covered in bruises and nicks and sporting a nasty black eye. Luckily he'd gotten some X8s to teach him the self-defence moves they'd been learned in Manticore so he was able to escape the Ordinaries. Barely. And so Steel and I ushered him home, shaken and angry, both at our brother and at the entire Outside. Truly assuming the role of protector for perhaps the first ever time, I lost my naive, unquestioning innocence and became a true child of the freak nation.
* * *
DISCLAIMER: 'Dark Angel' belongs to Fox and James Cameron. Not me. So don't sue.
I remember walking along with Justin and Steel and some of the neighbours' children. We lived close to the perimeter fence of Terminal City. Although the initial shock of our existance had died down years ago, you could often find sector police, scattered protestors and a fair few looking for a cheap thrill.
We got into a shouting match with some of the protestors, who began throwing things at us.
It is a clear memory... Steel's hand in mine, Justin and his friends yelling and my confusion. Why did these people want to hurt us, to make us feel bad? We hadn't done anything to them...
That incident was the first of many clear messages that we were ungodly, unwanted savages... inhuman, with no purpose but as a diversion for these Ordinaries in their facile little lives. We were better dead than alive, no matter how much we tried to prove that transgenics were just as intelligent and moral and, well, ordinary as anybody who lived on the Outside.
Ghastly rumours circulated about us on the Outside. They said we practiced cannibalism and worshipped animal gods. This was utter crap, of course. There were supporters, but they were few.
From the first days of the freak nation until around the time that Steel was born, there were newspaper articles about us in tabloids almost every day. Reporters would clamour by the perimeter, begging for the chance to take pictures of us, talk to us for just a moment... they were more like ravenous beasts than we could ever dream of being. Mom or Justin or whoever was with us would hurry us along, saying don't talk to them, just keep walking, don't look scared or embarrassed, don't give them the satisfaction.
We didn't have much technology in there. There are no pictures of me before the age of ten. I had an incredibly strong stomach and could easily digest undercooked food, and healed quickly from things like colds or viruses. What meagre funds were donated to us in secret by supporters were always spent on buying enormous amounts of Trytophan on the black market for the X-classes. Steel had seizures brought on by psychological conditions: stress, grief or intense fear and also needed the drug regularly to control them.
The saddest cases to pass on the street were anomalies kept locked in the Manticore basement for most of their lives, reindoctrinated and 'simplified' X-series or X7s, who couldn't talk. Some X7s willingly learnt sign language to communicate with other citizens, but others stubbornly stuck with their own class.
Another memory comes to me when I think of my early years- Cora, the animal-human girl who was my next door neighbour. She looked catlike, had an X6 father and an even more catlike mother, although her mother was not furred or carnivorous. She seemed to be named for Manticore, which I thought an extremely strange choice for a name but her mother explained to me in purring tones one night that she was actually named for the incredible feeling they got as they watched Manticore burn from a hill. Cora's parents had always been more independent that Manticore had liked, and had had to hide it so they wouldn't get into trouble.
It was night. I was about four or five, Cora was a year older. As per usual for Seattle, it was raining, and we were sitting on the front steps to a building. On clear nights children would play in the streets, although the adults frowned upon it.
The rain finally slowed to a drizzle and then stopped completely. We were ankle-deep in water as the two of us climbed off the steps to jump in the puddles, something we did because we didn't mind the cold and the wet (I didn't, Cora did but copied me anyway) and because it was something we'd seen Ordinary children do as they lingered outside the fence on their way home from school.
Cora stopped because she could hear something. I slowed down and listened.
There was something happening in the next street. A fight. Some anti-transgenics had gotten through the perimeter fence and were caught vandalising one of the houses. The transgenics were outraged and made no move to rescue them when they were beaten up by some X8s. The vandals were released as a warning to what would happen to over-the-top anti-transgenics, but their 'heroic story' complete with such quotes as, "... the two brave young men were brutally attacked by the Terminal City transgenics..." and "... they escaped using cunning and phenomenal intelligence..."
I remember watching them get beaten up and feel both afraid and thrilled by the scene of violence in front of me. In a way, the tabloids were right. We transgenics tend to thrive on scary situations. It's the way we were made.
I grew apart from Cora as the years went by, but grieved for her when I learnt she'd been tortured and killed in the riot where my father also died. Cora was only nine years old when she died, and was killed because she wouldn't let the rioters into her home. She was a wonderful person.
We accepted the fact that our parents were not entirely human and in turn, neither were we. We asked innocent questions such as, "If my father is an X5 and so is my mother, what class does that make me?" We clamoured with questions our parents didn't know how to answer.
There wasn't an awful lot of history for the freak nation if you really considered it. Our parents and relatives had been born in Manticore. Twelve members of the X5 class had escaped in 2009. Then four of them- our leader Max Guevara, her brothers Zack and Krit and her sister Syl- had taken down the Manticore facility. And some time later, the transgenics had made their home inside Terminal City. That was basically it.
I can truly say I stopped acting young one day when I was six. Justin, then eight years old, was dared by a friend to climb over the fence. I begged him not to, but Justin, while our protector, was at heart a reckless little boy. He scaled a part of the fence unguarded by Ordinaries, but was seen and chased up and down the perimeter while Steel and I stood, terrified, wondering if we'd ever see him again.
He scrambled over the fence a nerve-wracking fifteen minutes later, covered in bruises and nicks and sporting a nasty black eye. Luckily he'd gotten some X8s to teach him the self-defence moves they'd been learned in Manticore so he was able to escape the Ordinaries. Barely. And so Steel and I ushered him home, shaken and angry, both at our brother and at the entire Outside. Truly assuming the role of protector for perhaps the first ever time, I lost my naive, unquestioning innocence and became a true child of the freak nation.
* * *
DISCLAIMER: 'Dark Angel' belongs to Fox and James Cameron. Not me. So don't sue.