The Squeezing Game

Once every six months, one of the NeedleNose men arrives with a mind tap and inserts a probe up my nose and asks the same question with a husky voice, "What say you this time Galyo, would you advise someone young to be a writer?"

I say "No". They never ask for explanation. They download the probe read outs showing that according to all of my brain wave and other physical data, I believe I speak truth. They are silent, avoiding my eyes. They turn and walk off.

I sniff the bloody clot down my nostril, gagging as I swallow it. I blink back tears. I know what is coming next. My mail doesn't arrive. The hologramoids waver and turn green when I turn on PlayMe televisions. Once, a saucer came buzzing through my plate glass front window and the Greenie spit on my reroot carpet.

What I speak to them is Truth, not NewMangerDraw. They know it. The count on it. But what I mean is there is artful writing and there are great works of communication requiring years of study and preparation. But since the dawn of humankind, the one feature that makes our race stand out from others is the ability to communicate our thoughts and emotions. Some do it with pictographical nonsense. Some do it with the red self-correcto lightpens failing to find on switches or flashing out on the tablet with overload pain. But we all do it. We're wired to do it. It is not in itself art.

Slypho grins every time, it flashes over the PhOTNEt. He thinks I don't tell them what they want to hear because I just can't resist defying the Horerverlodes of Conventions. Don't ask me which ones, they all have their own particular BoxMinds.

Once, I swear I'm not making this up, they blindfolded me, hauled me out of my HomoidConvenience Cublicle and kicked me all the way to my cell, where they shoved me into a flagstone floored room on my newly scabbed over nose and I got to lick blood from inside and out. I think the place was called Guano or Gutmo or Gotanmo or something.

Intellectually, this physical contact is sort of fascinating. I hardly ever interface with reality when I have the electron-soup to stew through. You see, I share this bad DNA. I know this compulsion. I know. Believe me I know.

I hurriedly grab my MirrorFloamer and scoot down the shuffleways to Slypho's pad, kissing the carpet fragments that once touched his feet and evading his ten arms. He shoves me out the back door, whispering, ssshhhshh!

No genderslupping today with me, I see, and see, and see in his arms. But much to my surprise, it's not the NeedleNose men.

"We need her," I hear the PhyingleMinder say. I feel a tug at my belly. I knew it. I just bloody well knew it. I want to cry. I want to flee. I want to type. What to do?

Slypho is one of their kind so he lets them through to the back, tripping on the HeadFed in his second arm. He knows I will wait.

I am tempted to leave. The PhyingleMinders stole my NumberMapperSw, they withheld the SecretBase key, a veggo-protein hook that got you back into the other source of NumberMapperSw. They had plotted their own torture, plugging into the BirdieMeisters and have them throw MethaneBulbs on my doorstep and then cranked up the BullDuggie I'm forced to weed for a Healthtuppance to a level where I have to wear my knees down to pustules.

It's because of GreenFlipTizzies in the belly that they do this. I know. Believe me I KNOW.

They wish they were me. They wished that they spent seven years on the HUNGTRE using their teeth to sweep out arcs of sand that spelled the perfect pictogram while hanging by the toesies. They wished they had given all their children for the sake of decrypting the DNAFlakes of speech compulsion instead of writing. The wished that the TRUTH I found could be edited from our minds even if we went back to ChimpanzeeSoup.

I wish they'd use hemlock and just get it over with. Corrupting youth, bah!

But the PhingleMinders are wearing their MockHands held up in a ... could it be? Peace offering?

Serious trouble must be going down. The health of the state, terrorist attacks, crash of the marketplace, nukes in China, what was it this time? No. No. Got the wrong Horerverlodes. Really, they are all the same. Really. No, the PhingleMinders only cared about the StarWagon due out next week. Could it be? No. Not that. Not a compromise shipment.

Needleless to say, they'd caught me.

Slypho's grin spread to both sides and ends when he saw me waiting. I love it and hate it about the man, that and the BrainFeed.

"Galyo, dear, dear Galyo. Might we have a moment. A small request. Tiny."

I lift my nose in the air, avoiding meeting their gaze. I'd learned something from the NeedleNose men after all.

"Oh, come on. Be fair to us, Galyo. The Glyphs (otherwise known as the NeedleNose men) have held up our shipment with red ink. Please, please help us through this."

I clear my throat. Wait. "The NumberMapperSw?"

"Yours, yours, anytime. I'm booting it to your place right this minute."

I shuddered, couldn't they do something kinder with it? "Fine."

I let them shackle me to the keyboard, truth to tell my hands shook even as my body cringed. You can see perhaps why I tell you the truth that I have in me. It's the only thing they respect when the chips fall on the table. And when they have me to "Eat Peter to pay Paul", who am I to tell them wrong?

I shuffle out of Slypho's backyard, expecting the mind shredding to come later, after all there's a strange glint to his eyes above his cigar and his clenching, clenching, clenching fists. Sigh.

Time to earn my Healthtuppence. More later. I hope, because they may have Hemlock. They may let me write. And Sylpho may just remove this ... this tweety bird thing out of my stories. I swore that I'd never let him creep through the PhOTNEt into my mind for safe keeping. He's the only one that truly knows me for our shared crime. But more on that later, maybe. Even worse may happen. I may get EDITED.