A Day of Normality
by Krystyn Poe
“It’s the end of the world as we know it...” The tired radio blared. It was a hot day in the middle of December, and at first glance, everything seemed normal. People were out in their tank tops and too-short shorts with flip flops lazing around the blood-green grass and staring up at the florescent yellow sun with their blue sunglasses on, desperately trying to turn bright pink before the end of winter.
Of course it was normal. Everything is normal, after all, since normality is objective and objectivity is relative and everything is relative. I once heard a Voice that said some guy with wild white hair and a big mustache proved that. Most would rather believe it was some bimbo named “Dr. Bambi” with long legs, a full chest, and a really short miniskirt that would even catch an officer’s eyes as he drove by flashing his silver strobe lights, who thought of it. I don’t care. All that really matters is that now the thought is out there, thanks to the Voice. Not that I actually pay attention to Voices, but every now and then one catches my knee, drags me down into the black mud, and shoves the truth down my ear canals. It usually happens once every winter, because that’s when most of them come out to play. So it goes, I suppose.
There was a Voice that pulled me aside the other day. I don’t know why they want to talk to me so much; I’m probably the least sympathetic ear out there. Then again, that in itself could be the reason. Perhaps they want to convince me that their cause, to fuck with the minds of the republic, is a noble one. But I know better. I know all that the Voices really do all day is sit around and laugh at the chaos they wreck by displaying half-truths and truths to the people. I mean, some even go so far as to jump into the vast purple sky and strip it off to show people who are busy trying to get as far away from work as plausible. At least they can get arrested and chained to the ground.
Still, being chained to the ground is pretty harsh. I mean, if you can’t fly, then what can you do? Flying is life here. You run away from work, not to it, and if you can’t fly, you can’t run. The ground, the grass, it’s all in the air. The actual ground would probably kill us if we ever bothered to touch it, but no one has ever trusted a Voice enough to follow them down there. One of the great lies accepted by the dictatorship of today’s republic is that the ground is real, and it’s deadly. Everyone has to trust the republic. After all, wasn’t it the republic that saved us from the truth that the Voices were trying to bring?
Not that anyone reading this would understand. It’s mixed up enough up here, how could I ever expect anyone down there to understand? I don’t even really understand this “message-in-a-bottle” concept, but that brings me back to the Voice that pulled me aside and spoke to me today. He was dressed all in white and had this big tilted gold squarish (or is that circular in your terms?) thing floating above his head. He had his glasses and the big eyes that allow him to see things that us normal people can’t see, and feathers. He had feathers. These long soft things that just stuck out from his arms and caught the wind as it whipped past, allowing him to fall and glide as he pleased. He told me that the lies were true and the truths were lies, that the ground below us would save us, not kill us, and that a dictatorship wasn’t a republic. I told him to fly back to wherever he had come from, and to leave me alone. I told him that he was insane, that what he said couldn’t be a lie. He told me that’s exactly what he wanted me to think. I had the words right, but the meaning was all wrong.
Then he flew off, disappeared just a like a cloud in the sky we fly through every day. And that got me thinking, what if Bambi wasn’t really Bambi and the republic had been telling the truth all along?
Oh well, none of that matters anyway. After all, the radio was blaring “It’s the end of the world as we know it...”, and everyone knows the radio never lies, so we’ll live another day. And life will go on, and the Voices will keep spreading their truths, and people like me will keep feeding lies back to them.
So it goes, I suppose.
At least December is the shortest month in the year. I couldn’t stand another long winter.
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