Wednesday, June 4, 2008 |
— Fiction —
Stand and Evolve
Good morning, Hector, Zola, Fiskadoro. The name’s Mr. Piper, thank you. Playtime over: Mandibles closed.
You want to know what happened to Mr. Escalante, huh? Well, he quit, like the eight guys before him. Maybe it had to do with the radioactive cave spider he found in his desk? Sent him crying all the way up to the Surface. Hope you had your fun, ’cause that’s the last Teach Under America greenhorn you’ll see in this classroom.
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Your principal tells me you mutantes can’t be taught. Says this sorry collection of extra limbs couldn’t learn to chew without their own hairy growths to practice on. I don’t buy it. Know what I see? I see bright young minds ready to tackle Pre-Nuclear Politics. I see the pride of Tunnel Town High. So that’s what you’re gonna be. You will all work hard. At the end of this semester, you will all take the 1986 edition of the A.P. U.S. History exam, which is all we could recover from the rubble of the testing center in Trenton. And you will all pass.
Bring your Geiger counters, ’cause there will be fallout.
Already you’ve got two strikes against you: mutant heritage and debilitating photosensitivity. Should you beat the system and rise out of this catacomb ghetto to live on the Surface, the Nukeproof Normies up there won’t want to hear how hard it is to live with a bifurcated anus. So neither do I.
Yes, that’s the same thing as a double butthole.
Lovebirds: Save tentacle-twisting for the coal shaft off Limestone Avenue. That’s right—probably thought it was your secret spot. You don’t want to know what the survivalist cult does there on Monday nights.
Started your own cult, did you, Hector? All of you? Good a place as any to start. Bet you go topside, get into bomb shelters, knock out Normals with their own canned beans. Nothing to do with Pre-Nuke Politics, right? Wrong. What’s your cult’s name?
Discord in the ranks, contested leadership! That’s a two-party system for you—it can have some ugly consequences. Hector and Zola, the “Stankbloods,” have a conservative majority, it sounds like, and over here, Fiskadoro represents a minority: the “Gills.” The organization as a whole shares broad goals … exactly, like beaning Normies. Yet we see shades of policy disagreement. No, that’s a good thing—Henry Clay had a way of defusing—Hey! Let go of him! Put your stinger away this minute! For Oppenheimer’s sakes! Let’s just accept that you’ve all got poison delivery systems and have deterrence theory work for once.
You know what, Zola, since you’re such a self-assured bundle of misaligned DNA, let’s hear your political message. Know what happens to rebels with no cause? Sure, Hector, they get all the pussy, but what else? They get crushed like bugs being made into bug-paste. And your parents didn’t slave away putting bug paste on the table to have their children end up a part of this balanced breakfast.
Don’t you even start. Mr. Escalante brought in those excavated Rolling Stone magazines so you could study a secondary source on Pre-Nuke American elections, not go around calling people “buzzkills.” As long as we’re on the subject, did anyone finish the article on John McCain’s 2000 primary campai—Coldplay is not underrated, mister. You guys are better than this. You want to learn the mechanics of the democratic regime that failed us or be considered Darwin’s trash your whole life?
I get it, guys, really I do. I’m from the muddy side of the Underground, didn’t even shed my baby fins till after night vision kicked in! I was angry, thought school was a waste, got in plenty of fights. Sorry, Fisk, I’m gonna have to leave you hangin’ on your high-six this once—not too proud of that time in my life. Because I started to ask myself: how many dear friends have died in cult turf wars over the shiniest stalagmites while Normals lounge upstairs on stockpiles of novelty astronaut food?
Isn’t it obvious what’s going on? They want you to turn against each other. Every aristocracy in history, right up through today’s bunker nobility, has encouraged conflict among the lower estates. That dialectic is alive and kicking today!
Yes, not fair, exactly my point! Oppression—now we’re getting somewhere!
You’re all destined for higher things. I feel it right here, between my second and third stomachs. But you’ve got to trust, to believe it’s possible. Don’t listen to the naysayers—the world is your green zone. Watch: by the time we’re done, it’ll be as though that government of the people, by the people, for the people, never perished from the earth.
