People evolved. They grew bald and hairless: after all, when you lived in a controlled environment, you didn’t need to trap warmth when it came to you unbidden. Their eyes were large and somewhat protrusive, like a rabbit’s, and could absorb information from two electronic screens, which each was bestowed with once they’d come of age, at once. They spent most of their adult lives gazing intently at messages that these screens portrayed, trying to decipher their life’s meaning, for the fate of each was bound by words and text. They were slim-limbed and long-fingered, and kept indoors whenever possible; if they went outside they screwed up their eyes and their faces crinkled because the daylight, to which they were unattuned, was too bright for comfort, and their pasty faces quickly reddened in the sun’s rays. They worked hard and long, and ate with their hands. Occasionally they felt a moiling doubt in the pits of their stomach’s, and anxiously questioned their purpose. This itself was expected and, indeed, seen as a rite of passage, and they took solace in the thought that they were not alone. Whenever each tired of their own search, they paused to compare notes and stories with others. Sometimes they looked to the prescient past for their answers, and shed tears at the tale of the death of a martyr who epitomised the faith and pain of their search.
Postscript: I found this rather odd story while looking for a picture to go with this – http://metro.co.uk/2009/09/17/gollum-like-monster-emerges-from-lake-416004/ – an illustration, I suppose, of why Quasimodo kept to the shadows (or, at least, why he had the good sense not to startle gangs of teenagers…). The title is nicked from Rue Royale’s eponymous song.
from apathy to poetry 