"Team," she began, and we all looked at each other with more or less sleepy eyes and brains. We weren't much of a team. I, for one, was shivering from the cold and shaking from anxiety. I was sitting on the end of one side of the table. Next to me was Random Williams, boyishly cute with his billion freckles, big blue eyes and shaggy brown hair. He was still wearing his Superman pajamas. Next to him was Hellen Duane, a hefty near-sighted girl who still had a very thick lisp when she spoke, which wasn't very often because it was so embarrassing for her. Across from Hellen sat Margaux Santa Fe, a pretty and dark girl with bright black eyes and masses of fine black curls on her head. Lindley MacAdoo was across from Random. They were rivals of a sort, always competing for 'cutest boy'. Lindley was strong and fast, tall and blond, while Random was nearly the opposite, but smarter and much, much funnier. A girl could go back and forth between those two forever. Finally, Parsnip Caravan was sitting across from me and giving her speech.
"Team," she was saying, "The time is now. I know that most of you are nowhere near ready, but that can't be helped. What I know right now is what the rest of you will be able to know soon, when you're more fully settled. I just happened to get here first, so it's up to me to tell you what is really going on."
"What if I don't want to know?" Margaux interrupted. She stood up and leaned over, propping herself up with her hands on the table.
"I mean," she continued, "what if I already know?"
"Then you'll understand better than some of the others," Parsnip said, inspecting her closely.
"You don't know everything," Margaux snapped rudely. She straightened up and started to walk away.
"It's not that she knows," Lindley spoke up, "I mean, not exactly. It's that she KNOWS, if you know what I mean."
"Nobody ever knows what you mean," Random snickered.
"You might as well forget it," Margaux turned back and said to Parsnip. "It's not going to work. It's never going to work. It never has, and it never will. I'm going back to bed," and with that she simply walked off while the rest of us sat and stared after her.
"What is going on?" Hellen asked.
"With her? I have no idea," Parsnip said.
"She can see the future," Lindley said. "Not every little thing, but in general. She knows how it's all going to end and she doesn't have any hope."
"She told you that?" Parsnip asked.
"I could read it in her mind," Lindley replied. "I can do that now. Since, like, yesterday."
"Right," Random laughed, "So tell me what I'm thinking right now, bird-brain."
"What you do isn't what I'd call 'thinking'," Lindley scoffed. "But your friend over there is thinking about a seagull."
He was right. I was thinking about Midgerette, and what she told me.
"Midgerette says that we're for sale," I said.
"That's what I've been trying to tell you all," said Parsnip.
"Who's Midgerette?" Hellen wanted to know.
"The seagull!" Lindley said. "She named her seagull and she talks to it!"
"You talk to seagulls?" Random turned to me.
"Of course," I said, "Doesn't everyone?"
"Oh right," Lindley said, "they're so fucking interesting, aren't they? If it isn't SQUAAA it's SQUEEE and if it isn't SQUEEE it's SQWOAH."
"I never heard a seagull going SQWOAH," Random argued, "if anything, it's more like KRAWUUAAYEE."
"Stop it!" I said. "Midgerette's my friend and she doesn't go like that. She knows English and she even knows some Spanish. She knows all about everything. She's the smartest person I know."
"Oh, God," Parsnip moaned, "this is even worse than I thought. Can you all just listen to me? Just for a minute? It's very important and we're running out of time."
"You're going to say that we have to get out of here, but you don't know where we have to go, just somewhere else, right?" said Lindley.
"Will you let me? Will you just let me talk?" Parsnip countered.
"Go right ahead," Lindley sat back, "but I already know what you're going to say." He had never been more insufferable.
"Like Candles said, we're for sale. Not only that, we're going to be sold soon, probably today. I don't know who is going to buy us or where they're going to take us or what they're going to do with us, but this is the thing. We've been manufactured, grown and programmed, and now we're going to be harvested."
"Mother says she can get a hundred kay for Parsnip," I volunteered, "but not nearly as much for me.
"Oh yeah?" Lindley said, "what makes her so special? Or is she even that? How much did Mother say she was going to get for me?"
"She never talks about you," I countered.
"Some of us," Parsnip continued after pounding her fist on the table to get us to shut up, "some of us are worth more than others because we were not all created equal. Or I mean we haven't all turned out. Do you really talk to seagulls?"
"Of course," I said, "and all the animal-people. Can't you? Can't everyone?" I looked around the table. They were all shaking their heads.
"I think you're making it up," Lindley said.
"I'm not sure," Parsnip said and turning to Lindley she said, "so you say you can sort of read minds, and Margaux can sort of see the future?"
"If you don't believe me," Lindley said, "think of a number between four and thirteen."
"I believe you," Parsnip said.
"Thirteen!" he announced triumphantly.
"Defects," she murmured. "But intentional or by accident, I wonder?"
"Margaux was right," Lindley said, "you don't know everything, but you think you know more than anybody else. You think you're more advanced, more settled, like ninety five percent, but how do you know for sure? You don't. Maybe Margaux's way ahead of you. Maybe I am too. Maybe we ought to get sold. Maybe that's the best thing for us. Maybe we'll all be better off, did you ever think of that? Oh yeah, I can see you did but you decided against it. Why did you decide against it? You can't see the whole picture."
"Midgerette said I should kill Mother," I said, trying to change the subject.
"Your seagull is a murderer. Nice," Random said.
"Midgerette says all people-people are murderers," I replied. "And that Mother will kill any one of us she can't sell. We're no use to her then."
"I don't know about your bird," Parsnip sighed, "but you're on to something. The whole settling business. They need to sell us before it's too late, before we're whole, before we become self-aware, but it's too late now. They should have sold us off yesterday, because now we know, and now we're ready. We have to get out of here."
"I'm sleepy," Hellen announced. "I'm going back to bed. But don't worry. I won't tell anyone about your plan. I'm just sleepy, okay?"
"Wow," Parsnip shook her head as Hellen wandered off. "I thought Joker would be the last one to grow up, but it looks like a race between those two."
"You think we're better off without Hellen or Joker," Lindley said, "but we're not. Margaux doesn't think so. She says it's all of us or nothing, and it's not going to be all of us. As soon as Margaux quit, this little charade was over. You've got nowhere to go and you know it. And I don't even care. You think what's going to happen is going to be bad, but you don't know that for sure. You're only guessing. To me, it's fifty fifty, so I'm going to go with the easy fifty. I'll see you all later, or never. Whatever."
Lindley got up and left too. That left only me and Random and Parsnip remaining at the table. Pretty soon the sun was going to come up, and none of us knew what was going to happen next.
YOU ARE READING
How My Brain Ended Up Inside This Box
Science Fiction"When I was born I was so small I was mistaken for a french fry. I was never an ordinary child. My best friend was a seagull. I was also illegal. Artificially intelligent people like me had been banned ever since that thing with the Twelve Elevens...
