Threshold
I hope they don't find me in here
I've been running around this whole building trying to find a good hiding space and every time I heard their running footsteps and angry, shouting voices
I might be safe in here, they don't come down here often in this part of the building
It's just an empty office, I should be alright
I'm trying to write as much as I can on this part of an old notebook I found
Hopefully, I can write my whole story down and help others like me who are scared and alone
Did I just hear a footstep?
Oh God, please help me
It all started about five years ago back in 1970
A new kind of dictaphone had been invented and was hailed as a breakthrough in a new era of technology and would solve the mass unemployment issue that had resulted after the plague
Millions all over the world died and entire corporations and conglomerates were faxing imminent collapse and financial ruin and the last minute breeding programs had been deemed a failure
The new dictaphone was created to solve the workforce issue by being able to create an entire fake person out of thin air just by verbally describing them onto a piece of black tape
An entire being would physically exist complete with unique features and a totally one-of-a-kind personality
They key asoect of them would be their knowledge and experience and training built-in with a strong passion to work and not ask for any form of remuneration
The men behind the invention had been in all the papers and on television
There were interviews, documentaries, book deals and sponsorships
They were treated as heroes and one was even given the Nobel Peace prize
Entire office floors were fully staffed with brand new "people" in minutes typing away at their typewriters, answering the telephone or pouring coffee at board meetings
It saved everyone
For a while
It wasn't long before perverted men used the technology for their own sick needs
A woman created to be everything that that a man wanted who would never say no and would fulfil any request with a smile on their face
The perfect Eve to an aithorarive Adam
Oh, how awful it was to see Jenny looking at me when the boss called her into his office with a big smile on her lovely face and a tear falling down her cheek
She never came out again
He was done with her
I hid my face and quietly sobbed into my hands screaming inside at how much I wanted to save her while feeling a know in my stomach at the knowledge of what would happen to me if I said something
But we had no voice
No legal right to defend ourselves in any capacity
We were enslaved, bound in invisible chains
I remember hearing about a girl called Samantha who had written into the late night talk show "Hear My Plea" where a crusty middle-aged man in a drab dark green suit would read out viewers letters from people who had different problems and he would offer advice
He got halfway through the letter before he realised what kind of "petson" it was from and he abruptly stopped and got angry and ripped the letter to pieces with a look of disdain on his face before looking directly into the camera and spewing out his venomous words how those like us shouldn't waste his time and to never write I again or there wouod be consequences for them
I can only imagine how Samantha must have felt upon seeing that realising with horrible clarity that there was no hope left and nobody would be coming to save her
I'm so very sorry I wasn't there to help you, Samantha
I can only hope that you have found some kind of peace
Perhaps what our oppressors call "Heaven"
God knows I wish I had someone to help me now
I tried to concentrate on my job despite everything that happened even to the others
It was what I was made for, after all I had no family to speak of
No relatives or any kind of support
I was designed to be little more than a tool to be utilised however was seen fit
Reality to me was a void filled with meaningless objects that had no greater purpose than what they were built for and I was deemed to be one of them
The fact that I moved, occasionally spoke when given permission to do so was irrelevant
After experimenting on my flesh with a nail I found that I bled though I didn't have the luxury to determine if the red liquid which flowed out from the wound was actual blood or merely designed to look like blood
I and others like me were designed to be a mockery of human life, a facade
What, if anything that there was underneath was a complete mystery to me and those eho brought me into existence
The fact that I'm conscious of myself and able to think and reason I very much doubt was given to me when my particulars were spoken into those machines and I came to life like a wooden doll
I am a real girl!
I have no strings, I'm not made pf wood
If you prick me, I bleed
I didn't even have a home to call my own
Come nightfall, we are all just locked in an empty room for the entire night to sleep on threadbare old mattresses and some children's toys to play with
Ironically, they became our and only outlet in our lives of enslavement
I too quire liked the toys
They were ours to play with as we wanted to and we would create our own little worlds with them where we could pretend that we were the masters
We acted out scenarios where each of us played a particular character
Some of us pretended to get revenge against those who gave us this strange life, those of us that never asked for existence and were content in oblivion
Some of us played with balls or dumper trucks and mimicked the sounds they made
In those moments we could claim a childhood that we never had despite the many tears we shed clutching onto our playthings at what was to come in the daylight hours and how this was probably pur last experience of an almost freedom
Some of us would scream to be let out, pounding on the doors crying out for parents that didn't exist
I didn't like being locked in that room
I couldn't take I anymore when this morning came and another tortuous round of cruel servitude and the arrival of Gary from H.R. who came into our office
He had been drinking again and was wearing his pea green suit that barely secured his enlarged gut with the tie that had obscene pictures of women and his short mousy hair was uncombed
He was one of the worst for using us for his own perverted desires and his annual arrival in the office always illicited an audible gasp and encroaching dread from us all And we would try to concentrate on our work while desperately avoiding his alluring gaze and watery brown eyes
It didn't stop him from coming to our desks, however and breathing his awful breath down pur necks while stroking some of the poor girls hair and shoulders while whispering sick things into their ears
The girls tried so hard not to cry out, but their eyes betrayed them as the tears started to flow
Gary and his drunken party of manager friends would just watch and laugh, the repugnant pigs that they are and that's when the pills would be given
The two grey pills with black spots given to the girls who weren't needed anymore that to us were like two lead bullets and meant our certain death
They were invented a year after the dictaphone and were designed to be a clean and efficient way of removing girls who were no longer needed
In their cowardice they forced us to take our own lives
Simply abandoning the tapes that made us in old drawers or in rubbish bins or simply discarded on the floor resulted in them becoming faded and distorted like ghosts left to wander around endlessly trying to carry out our original tasks on loop
Some remained in office buildings long abandoned and half collapsed from rain and decay wandering what remained of the many rooms and hallways forever locked in an unending cycle of carrying torn business papers, answering telephones no longer connected and typing on a machine that was no longer there
Some merely stared at the rain pouring from a hole in the ceiling their minds forever lost as their bodies became more and more translucemt over the passage of time
Their minds having list the capacity to realise their tragic fate until eventually once the tape had devraded enough would sinply vanish into nothingness
I saw one of those girls once I the cellar
The last thing she said to me before she vanished was, "Blue is my mother's favourite colour"
I just stood there in the dark watching her repeat it over and over again until she faded
I had heard her last words and nobody even cared
I stood still in that spot reeling with what I had just witnessed for ten minutes feeling so heartbroken for her and the unfairness of her plight
And, in her final moments, perhaps accidentally tinged with a fragment of memory of a vague hope she once had that she might have had a mother
I only wish that I did
I still can't forget Janice's face when Gary threw her pills onto her face while giggling to himself
She was busy sorting through some papers in a desperate and futile attempt at not being seem when she looked down at the pills that had fallen onto her desk and with a sudden forlorn expression of hopelessness and dejection on her face she immediately vanished forever as though the death of what little hope she had was enough to extinguish the spark of life, the miracle of technology that had brought her into being in the first place was enough to destroy her without the pills in her system
Up until then I had absolutely no idea such a thing was even possible
That we could die out of sheer terror and shock
She had only been with us two months
I'm so sorry, Janice
Damn you, Gary
There were a few on our side, though not many
Ordinary real people who openly defended our existence arguing that we had a right to an ordinary life to choose for ourselves what we wanted
They decreed that we displayed evidence of independent thought with a full range of emotions and conscious decision making which by law made us real people
"People are people" is what they called themselves
They were unsurprisingly met with fierce resistance from the majority and authorities together who branded them "delusional," "criminals of the state," and "a destructive influence on Human society and were arrested and imprisoned in droves while being publicly denounced on national television and radio
Hecklers called them "fake lovers" and spat at them in the street while others were regularly beaten up by roaming gangs
Many were forced to publicly renounce their dissuasion to the cause with fear and emptiness in their eyes
A girl who used to sit beside me called Josephine knew someone who was part of the group and had given her classical literature by various authors whose writings gave a voice to those considered outsiders of society as well as contemplating the meaning of existence and she had shared some of them with me
They were very illicit contraband but those of us who had the chance to read them swallowed them up with reverence
This was our ammunition!
Our way to hold the cause for ourselves and back it up with proven and respected source material
The Stranfer by Albert Camus, Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Notes From the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky and the collected works of Ovid
They helped me so much with the teaching of myself in terms of prose, grammar and form to better articulate all of my pent up feelings and give them a voice but also to help me better understand who I was and what I could be
Their support was like a shield against the injustices of my people and a comfort for me in my most painful hours
Many argue that we can't be self-aware because all of our thoughts and actions are dictated by whatever is recorded on the black tape of the very machines that birthed us despite the many attempts at proof of those of us demonstrating our capacity to think and feel for ourselves and publicly denounce our position in this world
All of us are alone
Trapped in this artificial box others call a world with its rigid systems and oppressive methodology
I very much doubt that even these words that I wrote down now will ever see the light of day and will most likely either be destroyed or sit in a dark and dusty corner forgotten and abandoned like we become
All of us are seen as little more than words made physical
Lines of ink made into into flesh
Only the yellow walls and harsh electric light see me and hear my words
And if this is the end for me then let it be known that I existed
That I was here!
Set us free! Set us all free!!!
Oh, no...
They're here. They found me Moma, please..
Help me...