How My Brain Ended Up Inside This Box

Chapter Twenty One

I was in a frenzy as I ran. I didn't know where to go so I just told myself to keep going downhill, down down down until I couldn't go down anymore. I raced through street after street, twisting and turning to follow the slope. I didn't dare pause or stop or look back and I didn't know if Stan had seen me or Itchy had seen me and just because I didn't hear any yelling or barking didn't mean they weren't right on my tail, so I ran and ran and ran. All the time there were thoughts going off in my head like miniature bombs, thoughts that were new and had never been in there before.

I'm really not one of THEM, was the central idea. I realized for the first time that I was not a boy and not a girl, I was neither. Gender had no meaning in my case and I wondered if this was also true for my batch-mates, although I'd always thought of Random and Joker and Lindley as male and the others, including myself, as female. It meant nothing. I had none of the reproductive organs and none of the chemicals either – somehow I knew there were chemicals involved! I had had the long hair until June Lee cut it but that didn't signify anything either. I could pass for either one. I had to get rid of that outfit. I had to disguise myself. I had to get lost and stay lost but at the same time I knew I needed help. I was going to have to make contact somehow with some one or some thing.

The other main thought was that I had no real understanding of how it was they were able to control me. Marta had paralyzed me with that needle, and even Stan was able to give me orders which somehow I had to obey. How did that even work? Did they have to be within sight of me, or could they control me from a distance? Could one of them make me return to them any moment? Could they make me chop my own self into pieces? I didn't know and I was terrified. What I did know is that they considered me their property. They had bought me with money, a hundred kay (whatever that meant), and were planning to sell me for more. Since people-people are all about buying and selling, according to Midgerette, they weren't going to let me go so easily. They would be coming after me, hunting me down, just like Mother always said.

All of these thoughts bursting in my brain and all the while I was trying to avoid the cars that were zooming about all around me and zigzagging around the occasional people and dogs I saw on the sidewalks.

Eventually I found myself at the bottom of the hill. I was on a busy street, not one of the ones filled with houses but one filled with stores, and many more people on the sidewalks everywhere. I stopped running and looked around. Most of the people paid no attention to me or to each other. They were busy enough with their own concerns. Some people did notice me, though, and that brought another alarming thought shooting through my skull. Any one of them could be friends of Marta or Stan or both. I could see some of them talking on little boxes they held up to their ears and mouth. They could be talking to Marta or Stan or both. They could be telling them about me, where I was, and what I was doing. What I was doing was panicking. I had practically paralyzed my own self with fear. It was growing darker by the minute but with the many streetlights in that district I was open and vulnerable. An old woman came walking directly toward me, attached by leash to a small white dog. The dog looked right at me, bared his teeth, growled and said,
"Don't you just love Ileen? Isn't Ileen great?"

I could only stare. What was it about these creatures?

"Oh, don't mind Willy," the old lady said to me, "He's harmless."

I knew better, but I didn't say so, only nodded. I was reminded of something Midgerette once told me.

"Everyone in the world hates dogs," she said. "Except people-people. And dogs hate everyone in the world too, except for them. If it was up to us birds, there'd be no dogs. We'd kill them all if we could."

I started walking slowly up the street, staying as much out of the lights as I could. I looked into windows of the buildings as I passed, and saw that many of them were filled with clothing. The clothes all had number tags on them and I understood it was about money, about buying and selling, and I had no money and I knew of no way to get any. I yearned to rush in and grab something and run, but I was afraid of getting caught. One window in particular caught my attention and I found myself standing in front of it, staring in. There was a pale blue dress on a fake people-person statue, with daisies up and down the sides. It reminded me so much of my old yellow dress which I'd only just lost that day. I really wanted it, and the little cap on top of the fake person's head also looked nice. How was I going to get them?

I remained frozen in place for I don't know how long, until a couple of small children came barreling around the corner and smacked right into me, knocking me down. They didn't stop for even a moment, but kept on running, and I was just starting to get up when some crazed woman also blasted into me and knocked me down again. I understood how little I understood about these animals. My stranger-anxiety returned full force and I decided I had to get away from that street and away from all the buildings and the people and everything. I could smell the ocean close by but that was no solution. How could I hide on the ocean? But I had already run all the way down the mountain and didn't want to go back up again! I settled for another way – to keep going the way Marta had brought me. South, as the seagulls called it, keeping the ocean closer to me than the cars going the other direction. Maybe there would be an end to the buildings in that direction and I could find somewhere else to be, at least for a while until I had a better idea.

I followed the smell of the ocean and found a road that went alongside it, so I went that way. The road didn't seem to be made for walking on. There were lots of cars going my way and they were going very fast. I stayed as far off to the side of the road as I could and felt relieved at least that the number of streetlights soon diminished until there were hardly any at all, and the number of buildings dwindled too, and soon I was alone with the cars and the road and the night and the stars and the sound of the waves crashing ferociously in the dark.

No, I reminded myself, I am not one of THEM. I don't have to do the things they do. I don't have the same needs or concerns or problems. I don't need food or drink. Do I even need to sleep? Just because they had always put us to bed didn't mean it was physically necessary for us. There was so much I didn't know about myself, about my kind. They had kept me ignorant on purpose. They only taught me what they wanted me to learn. They had their reasons and their plans and none of it involved MY reasons or MY plans. I was not supposed to be alone in the world like this. I was not programmed for independence, but only for obedience and calculation. At that moment I was ninety nine percent certain that the people-people never intended for me to be out in the wild on my own, and would do whatever they had to do to put me back where I "belonged".