THE GIFT

Feel behind the ear, the small hole (left for women, right for men). Now insert the wire until a cold

sensation comes beneath the eye. See how twirling the wire makes you smile?

When it feels like sunshine on your face, raise your hand. In a little while a friend will come to calibrate. Solace will be yours another year. Just

turn the wire until it feels like sun; that’s good. Another year of trust.

No fear. Loving peace for everyone.

I take the wire and bend it till it breaks!

They can’t do this! Can’t you see it makes us into simple blobs of happy clay?

Most of us can think back to a day when living wasn’t easy. There was pain and trouble in the world—but then again, at least it all was real. What they destroy is not just pain, but love, and awe, and joy.

One unit fails to comprehend this can’t be done unless it’s done for all.

His childish need for pain could end

this heaven that we’ve made for you. You called for us in desperate need. You prayed that somehow we could save you from your fate.

An so we came in answer. But we said

you’d have to change your nature. It’s too late to turn you into angels. Now the best that we can do is try to make you harmless. Don’t ask how.

Trust in us. We do it for your sake.

So long as one man lives who won’t submit, then all your words and wires won’t work. That’s it.

Right? For all your talk, you just want slaves.

I can’t believe that no one else is brave enough to break the wire and take the world as it was given us—a clashing whirl of good and bad in nearly equal parts.

Not turned to harmless pap by your black arts.

We will not argue. But we care

how this experiment turns out. Let’s try a kind of vote. If there is only on in ten who’ll take your side then we will go. And take along

these wires and words you think will make you slaves.

Ready? Counting. Sorry. Wrong. We counted every one and found that they’ve decided we were right. You’re wrong.

So you must go. Take your broken wire

and twisted heart. Your pagan song:

Your empty merely human angry fire.

Done. Now you are at peace. Not slaves.

We ask for nothing. If you just don’t pull the wires, your world’s forever saved.

Forever happy. If a little dull.

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