A few words from a mostly sane person

                I have a disease. I am tired.

             I suffer from severe Internet exhaustion. I don’t mean to sound like an old fogey, I don’t mean to be anti-progressive and I realize I’m part of the generation that expanded the internet into the Leviathan it has become. But the Internet is no longer a place for cute cat videos, sharing pictures with your grandma or questionable and regrettable pornography surfing. The internet is a battle ground, and every single one of us is on the frontlines. In fact, unlike any other battlefront in history, there are ONLY frontlines. Allow me to explain.

                Recently, I made the mistake of downloading the Click2Houston, FoxNews, and CNN apps on my phone. Now every time I look at the screen for a new notification, instead of a funny comment or FB message, I receive news which reads a little like this:

“Click2Houston: Woman shot in southwest Houston, killer still at large. Is he coming straight for you?”

“CNN: England, Russia, France and USA join in coalition to bomb the bejeesus out of (insert middle eastern country name here).”

“FoxNews: Baby murdered in your back yard and left there. Police wonder: did you do it?”

                I understand these may seem ridiculous and exaggerated, but they are only slightly. All day, every day I am bombarded with this type of news, and it gives me the suffocating feeling that this world is closing in around my throat. So, I try to go to Facebook to get away from the horror in the news, only to come across something even more vile: The Never-ending Dodgeball Game of Political Polarization. I don’t even see a feed anymore, all I see is a distinct and worn field, with progressives lined up on one side and conservatives on the other, each hurling muddy balls as hard as they can from either end of the field. No one is talking, there is no meeting in the middle to discuss a cessation of fire. There is only the hurling and the snarling. Generally these two aggressive teams are arguing whatever I just received a notification about. Even though the news clearly only came through for the first time two minutes ago, people already have an opinion. This seems strange to me, and frankly makes me feel a little slow, which I am not used to.

                How could they have already formed an opinion? Do I have the wrong information? I haven’t even been able to finish reading the article fully or researching other news agencies and finding the most unbiased account of what really happened. How can I have an opinion based on so little untrustworthy information?

                It’s simple. Those people are lined up on their side of the field and they look to their “team” for what they should feel. Instead of looking inside, weighing their own compassion, their personal experiences, their love for other humans and their own countrymen, the desire to make America and the world better, the consequences of their choices, and especially the validity of the information, they choose whatever their side believes and go to the mattresses. Simply because they have agreed with it in the past, they must agree with it now or look like a fraud.

               Imagine that information is a spring. The source of the spring is crystal clear and fresh, the information of those at ground zero. If we are to use the Paris attacks as an example, the source is the mouths of the people at Bataclan, those who stared down the barrel of the gun. They are the only ones who TRULY know what happened in that room, no matter how many debriefings and TV interviews they do. As you follow the stream, it first passes through the rushing, frothing, rocky rapids of the first responders, police, medical personnel, authorities on the ground, who are less concerned with the details of information and their political implications, and more about saving lives. As they should be. Then we pass through the sloshy bogs of media vultures, swarming down on the scene like hungry, blind parasites, clutching to every bit of gossip they can grasp in their groping hands and using it as a supposition. The water grows murkier, yet the spring still carves its way forward, until it hits the concrete dam of politicians. They filter and compress and bend the stream to suit their needs and release it on the other side at 30% volume.  So at this point we have probably 25% of the original spring and the rest is murky, dirty, over processed information, which then flows directly to a stagnant, putrid, mosquito infested retention pond, called the internet from which we pick up the glass and drink freely.

                It’s from this diseased water that we form our opinions and tout them as fact backed up by information that is a lot closer to fiction than to the original story.

                Great thinkers from the past would be very disappointed in us. We take fragments of truth and make our proverbial mountains out of them. And what kills me is our certainty. We are firm in our belief that whatever we’re saying is right, and anyone who is against us will be defeated by the flood of internet articles we can find that support our opinion. The truth is we’re just throwing dirty water on each other and saying we’re clean. There are people who spend their entire lives studying something and never know the full extent of the thing. People like DaVinci, Einstein, Plato and Descartes will tell you that the more you learn about anything, the more you realize you know so very little. In our lifetime we can maybe become experts in one, if you’re lucky two areas. I could study literature for the rest of my life, read a book every second I’m alive and still not know the cannon. An astronomer could spend every second of their life staring through a lens and making calculations and they will still only know a minuscule fraction of the universe. But after reading the headlines and a four paragraph article on the page of our news agency of choice, we are unequivocal experts on that current event and nothing can dissuade us.

                I firmly believe the internet is making us stupid because it is taking away our ability to discern truth from lie and fact from fiction. A perfect example of this can be found in the most recent episode of South Park (who I follow like a blind dog as my political compass) entitled “Sponsored Content.” They state that people have lost the ability to tell the difference between news and ads. I have to agree. Those who follow CNN, Fox, etc. do you know what part of the news is being sponsored by what company? Do you know who is paying for the spin on the information you are using as irrefutable fact? Because I don’t.

               Now that my feet are hurting up on this soap box, I will end with this. I am tired of being placed in a category, of following the dirty stream of sludge thinking I’m at Sandals on the lazy river. I’m cleaning my hands, I am getting informed, and I am finding the truth from now on, no matter how hard it is to discover. I don’t want to grandstand anymore for things other people believe in, I don’t want to put others down for what they believe, and I don’t want to stand on a crumbling foundation anymore trying to find my balance.

                In closing, fuck you Internet.

                Fuck you.

The Adventures of Barton Miller, Jr. -Middle Grade Fiction

THE ADVENTURES OF BARTON MILLER, JR.

By Adi Teodoru

I’m just sitting down to breakfast, when the alarm goes off and my limited supply of air begins to leak out. My name is Barton Miller, Jr. and today is my thirteenth birthday.

               

Two hours earlier…

                I wake up at eight o’clock like I do every morning since I can remember. I like routine, it makes me feel safe.

                “Morning, sir,” the disembodied voice welcomes me, as it always does. I run my hand through the mop of shaggy black hair which is sticking out at odd angles from my head, and try to remember the last time I cared enough to comb it.

                “What’s on the agenda today, STAG?” I ask, only mildly interested. Nothing new ever happens to me.

                “Daily checklist,” STAG begins in his nasal, robotic voice. “O-eight hundred hours, wake up routine and exercise. O-nine hundred hours, full body cleansing. Nine thirty, medication and marrow injections in the MedSec. Ten AM, breakfast. Ten-thirty-“

                “What’s for breakfast?” Anything but trail mix, I silently pray.

                “Fruit and nut trail mix bars,” STAG answers, ruining all my hopes. I’m so sick of the taste of nuts and berries I would eat tree bark if it was available. Unfortunately, all that is available is what my dad stockpiled in the food stores all those years ago and it was designed to last. Taste wasn’t really a part of the consideration. “Shall I continue the schedule, Barton?”

                I sometimes find it strange when STAG calls me by my first name. I have to remind myself over and over that STAG is only a computer program, designed to keep me fed, watered and give me some form of company. Though STAG’s not what you would call a real friend, I’m afraid I can’t remember any other voice but his. Not even my mother’s.

                “Status report?” I continue, too depressed to listen to more inane activities planned for the day, and refusing to give into thoughts about a family I can’t remember having.

                “Sector?” STAG responds, as I make my way to the command center at the back of the main room.

                “Food supply.” The two widescreens come to life, displaying a thousand different numbers, most of which are unimportant to me at the moment. I wait for STAG to bring up the proper statistics, while I think about how to make fruit and nuts taste like a steak. I can’t even recall the last time I smelled meat. That went first.

                “Nutrition back-stock at thirty three percent,” STAG says, and I feel a strange chill in my bones. Just a third of my original stock left. That’s a daunting number.  

                It had only been eight years since my dad, Barton Miller, Sr.- or as I called him, Pops-had stocked the food and water supplies to keep me going. Even being a brilliant engineer, it had taken him a year to build and program STAG, to prep the supply bunker and fill it. It would be the final year of his life.

                Now here I was, eight years later, and I’d gone through two thirds of Pops’ hard work. The first few years, STAG had managed my portions, oxygen rations and battery usage. When I turned eight, he started giving me more and more responsibility, the way I assume a parent should. I wouldn’t know.

                “Life support systems?” I ask. It’s part of my daily routine to check the life support, because it’s by far the most important. My condition requires that the oxygen and nitrogen in the air be kept at a specific level and any fluctuations could mean a tear in the line. If that should happen, the entire system would collapse leaving me exposed to bacteria and infection.

                “Life support systems normal, sir.” STAG responds, though I feel like he’s hesitating. Can robots hesitate?

                “What’s up?” I ask, feeling a warm prickle on the back of my neck.

                “The systems register normal, sir, but there is a discrepancy in the seal sensor. It seems to be malfunctioning.”

                “Are we leaking air?”

                “No, levels are steady. But with the sensor damaged, there is no way to be certain it will remain that way.”

                “Can it be repaired?” I watch the lights flicker across the screen as STAG thinks about it.

                “I’ll send the RoboTech right now, sir.  It should take no longer than two hours.”

                I feel the panic recede like a wave and try to calm myself. We’ve had a few of these scares over the years, moments when minor malfunctions could mean the end of my way of life. STAG had handled them marvelously every time, however the danger still existed. Without the safety of my enclosure, my compromised immune system wouldn’t be able to deal with the bacteria and viruses outside. This is why I’ve spent all of my thirteen years in this plastic room. 

                I let the RoboTech do its work and go through my morning routine without much enthusiasm. I wish I had someone to complain to, really, someone I could shout at when I’m frustrated or who could witness my tantrums and actually feel something. Unfortunately, STAG always responds to my temper outbreaks by knocking me out with sleeping gas. One minute I’m yelling at the top of my lungs and the next-thump.  My least favorite of the “parenting modules” in his mainframe, but it works, I guess.

                My morning exercise routine has changed over the years. When I was five, I was always running around, so there was no need to set aside time for physical fitness. A few years after my parents’ death, I went through what STAG calls “my dark times”, and I became languid and lazy. My robotic caretaker decided it was time to add physical activity to my routine, before I lost all use of my muscles except the fingers I used on my game controller. At first, I whined and threw tantrums like any child, which mostly ended with my being knocked out every day. After a while, I realized I was tired of spending half my time asleep, so I decided to follow STAG’s advice.

                A few weeks into a specially designed physical training program, mirrored after the former Navy Seal boot camp exercises, I realized I actually liked it. With STAG’s help, I designed my own PT which included kickboxing, karate, jiu jitsu and tai-chi. I had reached the equivalent of a brown-belt by the time I was ten, so we advanced to weapons training. I always wondered what I would do with these skills, but no answer had ever come.   

                Today I’m working with the staff in the Rec-Room, a large circular offshoot of my main living quarters. I favor the staff over any of my other training, I have a natural talent for it. The robotic targets STAG had designed come equipped with extension arms which counter my attacks and give me a more realistic combat situation. It’s my favorite part of the day.

                I go a little over my allotted time today, and STAG rushes me. For a week I’ve been working on perfecting a strike technique where I feint to the left and, balancing on the staff, throw myself into an upward spin to strike the enemy from the right. I still haven’t been able to get off the ground with enough momentum to complete the three-sixty spin. Today, I’m sure I’ll get it right.

                I don’t. Frustrated with my failure and STAG’s constant badgering, I break my training staff in two. Great! Now the RoboTech will have to find and process a new one. Add that to the list of tasks they have to complete on their next run outside the perimeter. The RoboTech devices are like sophisticated remote cars that STAG controls whenever we need something from the outside world. I’m often jealous of them. It seems like they’re the only ones with any freedom around here.

                “We’re behind schedule, Barton,” STAG prods, sounding almost human.

                “Who cares?” I spit back, feeling the familiar surge of anger rising from the pit of my stomach. I’d been getting testier and testier over the last year. STAG had been monitoring my emotional spikes and recording the data, but none of that felt like he was listening to me.

                “I do, sir,” STAG answers back. I hate how he never gets ruffled. No matter what happens, he’s still even and I wish Pops had programmed a personality in. If I had to talk to only one “person” for the rest of my life, I wish they would at least be interesting.

                “Any chance the water will be warm today?” I ask, dumping my clothes on the ground as I move through the enclosure to the sanitary section.

                “The temperature outside has increased by three units. Today’s tank temp reads eighty degrees.”

                Well that’s better than I’d hoped for. I relieve myself in the toilet which immediately begins to filter and recycle the water once I flush. The shower has a motion sensor and temperature regulator with a default setting. Of course our heating coils had malfunctioned a few years ago, and we haven’t been able to get the right parts to fix them. So, my showers depend on whether or not the sun’s out. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, thankfully that’s often.

                Once I’m done with my shower I wait for the full-body dryer to complete its function and I throw on whatever clothes STAG has prepared for me. Today it’s a red, checkered button-up with acid stained jeans. I haven’t bothered with shoes in years. I brush my teeth quickly and head to the MedSec.

                MedSec is the place I like least out of my entire enclosure, because it reminds me of a horror movie. It’s a small room in the back, filled with terrifying instruments I have no interest in understanding. I’d learned when I was an infant that this is the room where pain happens and it’s the place I feel the weakest. The needles and probes glimmer like a villain’s smile at me when I walk in. I know, logically, that this is for my own good. The shots, the transfusions, the tests, are all an attempt at curing the disease keeping me trapped in this place. The disease that saved my life.

                The virus struck when I was four years old. It spread across the world like wildfire, killing everyone in its path. In six months, more than half the population of Earth was dead, my mother along with them. After he watched her die, Pops went to work. Due to my condition, Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, or SCID, Pops knew I’d be safe in my sterile, air-tight environment. He wanted to make sure I had every chance of survival after he was gone. He was a brilliant man, or so STAG tells me, and he knew the chances of his survival were non-existent, nor could he hide in my enclosure with me without risk to my health. So, he worked day and night to build an everlasting battery which would run the entire system and created STAG to take his place when he was gone. I was five when he finally went.

                I try to shut out the images of that time. This room, above all else, brings back those ugly memories; that’s probably why I hate it so much. I strap myself down to the examination chair and the robotic arms begin to move on their own. I try to concentrate on my staff training while they work, anything to ignore the pain. Even though I’ve received these shots every day of my life since I was diagnosed, the pain is still as bad as that first time.

                The bodiless arms lift my shirt from my back and I feel the cold spray of disinfectant on my spine. I breathe evenly like I’ve been taught to do, and try to focus on my tai-chi lessons. Those are the most helpful in dealing with pain and stress, and they’ve taught me how to keep calm. The pain is blinding when the needle digs into my vertebrae, sending ripples down my back and making me want to curl in around myself.      

                I remain motionless. I know that if I shift even a fraction of an inch, it’s likely that the machine will sever my nerves and leave me paralyzed. I dread that more than anything else in the world. Everything already seems so stifling and oppressive; I can’t imagine being stuck in a chair for the rest of my life. I don’t move.

                The machines are well programmed and they finish much quicker than a human would. Soon the excruciating pain is only a dull ache and I feel the needle retract. I release a loud sigh when I’m given the all clear and once again my thoughts turn to the upcoming breakfast.

                “Well done today, Barton,” STAG encourages me, in his pre-programmed way.

                “Any chance I can get a brownie as a reward?” I try.

                “All sugar based products have been consumed, sir,” is the only answer I receive.

                “Let’s get it over with, then. What’s the deal with the RoboTech?”

                “They’ve isolated the sensor and are currently working on replacing it. Another fifteen minutes and it should be up and running.”

                I drop into the chair at my computer and type my log-in password. I sometimes think how ridiculous it is to even have a password, when there’s no one left to break into your computer anyway. It’s like locking your door when you live on top of Mount Everest.

Other than STAG, my computer has been the one thing keeping me sane over the last eight years. In the beginning, I had the “dark times”, moments when I wanted everything to just end, especially the loneliness. Not normal thoughts for a six year old, according to STAG, so he taught me how to use the computer. It opened up my tiny little world into one of infinite possibility. Though there’s no one to create new pages or update anymore, the archives still exist. The entire history of the universe is right at my fingertips in the form of e-books, articles, dissertations, forums, blogs, and a million other mediums I can explore. I can’t imagine who found “food blogs” interesting back in the day, but now, they’re my favorite. I’ll spend hours reading the posts and longer going through people’s comments, Sometimes, I’ll even post my own. I always check back to see if somehow, someone has answered me, but it never happens. Still, it feels like I’m actually having a conversation with a person, something I can never remember doing for real. 

                “I’ll eat here,” I mumble to STAG, who I imagine nods to himself. There is a moment of silence before he speaks.

                “I could make you some chocolate milk, if you’d like.”   

                I feel something squeeze painfully in the center of my chest. That’s exactly what my mother used to say. I don’t remember much about her, but I remember that she made the most amazing desserts. She had a knack in the kitchen, STAG’s told me, a real iron chef. Every time I have to swallow down another mouthful of sludge that tastes like cardboard, I miss her even more.

                “How are you going to do that?” I ask STAG. “All sugar based products have been consumed.”

                “I have powdered milk stock and chocolate cereal. The combination should produce the desired results.” He pauses. “Would you like some chocolate milk, Barton?”

                I feel strangely hollow, empty, like I don’t, nor will I ever, want anything again. I feel an anger rising from the void, and I wonder if this will be one of those days when I end up unconscious.

                I’m trying to calm myself using every technique I know, when the alarm blares to life behind me. 

               

* * *

               

Prologue of Autobiography

                I was born in a world of chaos, very different from the one I live in today. So different, in fact, that it’s almost inconceivable for two such places to share the same atmosphere. As such, after a great deal of introspection in my formative years, I find myself fractured in two separate entities which are constantly vying for control inside my mind. One half was nurtured in an environment of freedom, opportunity, plied and molded with the arrogance and blind naivety of prosperity. This half is hopeful, a believer, and she still trusts that in this world dreams can come true. The other half was hammered and twisted into shape by the chaos.

                The setting of a story is comprised of two parts: place and time. The place will take this entire novel to illustrate and even then you may not fully comprehend it. I lived it and I still don’t. The time?

                I came into this world a silent, gaunt figure, on January fifteenth, nineteen eighty-five, four years before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of Communism.  I was not a gurgling, squalling baby, with pudgy cheeks and bright eyes locked on the future. Though I was born on time, I only weighed five and a half pounds and had a sallow, yellow tint to my skin. I was not the first baby born underweight and with dark circles that year, nor would I be the last. After my first few breaths, I was rushed from the birthing room before my mother had a chance to see me, and I joined the other incubated children who had little hope.

                Many women in that place would suffer the same fear as my mother, unable to hold or even see their newborns because of our medical conditions. And of course the greater fear of how to feed their children if they did survive. Most likely, nine months before, when my parents shared the news of their pregnancy, the most popular statement had been a heartfelt: “Oh I’m sorry. Did you want it?” There was little joy in bringing a new life into such a place.

                The place was Bucharest, Romania, the capitol of a third world country, the last hold out against the force of Soviet influence we have come to know as the Iron Curtain. Communism still reigned supreme, and the cult of personality was a way of life for us. The situation outside my little birthing room was an uncertain and dangerous thing, ripe for violence. It would take four more years for the cauldron to boil and burst, and when it did, the fate of a nation was altered and my life would never be the same.  

                Yet, I knew none of this as my tiny body was prodded with needles and tubes, and neither did the thin, blond woman who awaited my return. She had been a gymnast in her younger days, lithe, tall and graceful even years later. The chaos had stolen a spark from her wild eyes and robbed the thrill of hope from her heart, though her beauty could never be completely erased. The nurses would have described her as giving, mostly because she had money to bribe them with, and more than a little scary. Sometimes, she resembled a feral animal, pacing the shared room like a caged beast. There was a constant restlessness about her, as though some inner fire would not give her peace. She was a doer, in a world standing still.

                If I could comprehend such things, I would have missed my mother in that first month. She and my father had paid a good deal of under the table money to keep her in the hospital that long. It was a bitter, record-breaking winter, and most days there was no heat or water in the city. Children and elderly died by the dozens, victims of the cruel cold and substandard conditions. They were expendable, only the workforce mattered.    

                This is only a small glimpse into the chaos. The horrors that I will enumerate here will sometimes seem ludicrous to you, impossible that anyone could accept them, much less live them for twenty-five years. Yet this is not a story about those horrors, of defeat, a story about the side of me ruled by chaos. This is a story about survival, about thriving and rising above the odds. This is a story about how that other half was born. A story about a hero.