The Detoxification

I try not to think too intensely about The Detoxification. From what I hear, it’s not wise to dwell on thoughts that are outside your range of comprehension. Take, for example, our thoughts of death. We don’t know where we are going or who we’ll be, so when you start to think about it, your mind gets all wrapped up in a vast nothingness.

So, since we don’t think about the end, it’s so tough to think about the beginning.

The Detoxification was our beginning. I only know this because it’s what Alphaeus tells me. Without him I am blind. We all are. 

It has recently been decided that I become, what Alphaeus calls, a Booster. It’s because of this decision that I write this now. It’s because of this decision that I can write this now. You see, since The Detoxification, what they call “literacy” has been something of a rarity. I was taught to speak and read and write and learn quite early on in my life, and I have since been taught more vigorously than any others in the colony, and I never understood why.

I guess, now, I understand.

My first day as a Becoming Booster, I was told things. I would be told many things over the next few weeks. Alphaeus says they are things nobody in the colony knows -- he says they are things nobody is allowed to know.

It was a beautiful day, that first day. Beautiful -- as the colony usually was. The light of the day drew a path along the fields that allowed one to see as far as the imagination would take them. Through the fields and the flowers, past the water and the fish, you wondered how far that sky went. Was it truly as big as the colony -- or were there other colonies out there somewhere. The questions, they were infinite.

Beautiful as that day was, I just can’t remember if it was truly so perfect, or if it just seems that way in my memory because it was the last day that I could enjoy this colony as it was. 

You see, that first day, as I learned so much from Alphaeus, I would begin realize that knowledge is both a blessing and a curse. We all have these infinite questions, but the truth is: nobody wants the answers. We all wonder whether there is any happiness in death, right. But, tell me, what if we knew for sure that death brought us eternal salvation and glory. What would Earth become? A waiting game, a stop on the way to something better, free of despair but free of joy -- I think they used to call that purgatory. The world would lose its depth. Skies would be light gray and oceans would be dark gray. We would not be living, we would be waiting -- anticipating.

Nope. Answers do you no good. Questions, they keep us going.

So, as I learned about the beginning, I began to wish that I was, once again, ignorant.   

I begged to shed the darkness that was taking shelter in my mind, small as it was at the time, it still burdened the part of my soul that craved its previous innocence. If only I could toss some of this darkness onto someone with a little light, maybe at least we could both turn gray. 

But there was only one person in the whole colony that I could share any information with, and he was barely capable of understanding the words that would come out of my mouth. You see, the only person I could share this information with was the next Booster, of course, and the next Booster was meant to be my son. And then his son, and his son’s son after that. And at the time, my son was only four years old.

Thus, I was indefinitely cursed. Cursed with what they call a gift. That’s laughable -- if knowledge was such a gift, wouldn’t they grant it to everyone?

           

At first, it was actually kind of exciting to learn. My first day as a Becoming Booster, I was filled with anxiety -- but, you know, the good kind. I learned, what Alphaeus called, the basics on that first day.

“There was once a world. It was right here. The ground we walk on, others once walked on. Our sky used to be their sky. A completely different world,” Alphaeus tells me.

“About eight billion people lived in this world. And if you can even think that high, I would be impressed.” I hated to disappoint, but he was correct, I could not think that high. Even after I was taught mathematics, I had never heard of a number billion.

“In becoming a Booster, your fundamental capability will be learning and understanding just what happened to this world.”

In this old world, he told me, elation was a lost emotion. Happiness, well that was still available, but it was hard to find. But even happiness, he assured, is not elation.

He began to tell me all about the turmoil that the old world had become. How it was once a place that held such treasure and incomparable mystery, but how its people had become so blind to these treasures that the world lost its appeal, and how its inhabitants saw the place to be fairly obsolete. How nobody appreciated the world anymore, and they all reached for something more.

They built, what he calls, computers, trying to create something with a brain that had more intellect than themselves.

They invented ships to leave this world -- spaceships, he says -- in search of a different world, maybe one that had more of an allure than what they saw here.

They killed each other for power, because if they must be stuck in this world, they wanted, at least, to rule it.

He told me about disease and about murder. He told me about war and about hunger. He told me about greed.

“You have greed,” he tells me, “yes, you have it, as do your sons. Each person in the colony has greed. I have greed. It is something that is trapped inside of you. Look, when you are born, you are gifted with skills and positivity, of course, but you are also cursed with negativity and incompetence. And sometimes negativity comes in the form of greed.

“Greed ruined the old world. In so many ways, greed had the ability to control a person and turn them from a friend to an enemy. Right now, you may not recognize the greed inside yourself, but this is only because you have never experienced knowledge to such an extent. Knowledge precipitates greed, so it is your job now to make sure that this greed does not take over your mind. You must fight it.”

From what he tells me, I am sure I do not want greed. But I guess since it is inside of me, I must be aware. I am quite strong, if I must brag, so I can fight. I think I can battle this greed if it does come near.                

I continued to learn, and I must say that was a long first day. My mind was expanding to make room for the knowledge it was meant to capture. I didn’t even feel like myself. The darkness crept slowly into my mind, building its new home, where I felt it would be ready to nest for the rest of my life. But still, I felt that jolt of excitement.

You see, I was special. I had never been special; nobody in the colony really had. Alphaeus was above all, but every body under him existed as one. As if the colony was a body, and we were all one brain, operating it with perfect fluency. And, honestly, it was easy to be excited as I learned the basics. The basics were broad; they were not penetrating. No, rather they coated the mind, preparing it for the details. The details came seventeen days in -- if my math is correct.

By this day, I began to learn about bombs. He told me about guns and swords and knives. He called them weapons. What I had learned about murder was being built upon. It was no longer an unapproachable subject; it had gone from abstract and incomprehensible to significantly concrete. So significant, you see, that I felt as if I was experiencing murder. It was not that I was being murdered so much as I was witnessing it. As I was being fed these details, I was watching people in front of me being murdered by guns and knives and bombs and weapons. Murder never took place in the colony, but somehow it took form in my mind, as if I had seen it plenty of times. People being murdered. Pleading, screaming, crying -- I could see it.                

“Your mind is a weapon,” he says.

“That’s one weapon that we have in common with the old world. One’s mind is the strongest weapon possible, and those could never vanish.                

“There was talk of handicapping” he says. He says this would impair our thoughts, so we could not use our minds to their full ability. He says it would be like taking apart a gun or disarming a bomb or dulling a knife’s blade, our minds would become benign weapons. It would’ve been a tedious, but simple. These people in the old world -- Alphaeus calls them scientists -- they could handicap with ease. 

“But it was always just talk."                

So, they let us keep our minds, with all its greed and power, and happiness and innocence.                

So, that day, I was taught about weapons and how murder was much more capable with weapons. I was told about their destructive use. How some weapons were stronger than others -- some were used for mass destruction and some were used to murder one at a time. Some to murder thousands. Some to murder billions.

And the darkness grew. Taking form, building its new home in my brain -- like those bugs that latch onto your skin and never let go, you know, the ones from down by the water.

It was not until the 41^st day that my life had been changed completely. It was not until the 41^st day that I could no longer enjoy the light of the day as I used to, because all I could see was the darkness of the night, maybe the same darkness that used to fill the old world. The 41^st day, I was no longer a Becoming Booster. I was a true Booster -- knowledgeable but confused, powerful yet powerless, a king and a peasant.

Alphaeus told me of the beauties of the old world. Beautiful, but horrible, he would say. Paradise and misery all mixed up in one beautiful place, a Utopian Hell --I think they used to call that purgatory.                

I envisioned this place, with all its beauty. The bluest skies you could ever see, he would say, but heaviest air you will ever breathe. He told me all about pollution and how these chemicals filled the world. How they could instantly destroy even the healthiest, greenest of grass. How the grass represented life, and that pollution could eventually do the same to people.                

And the trees, the ones that we see, they were phone lines -- no green and brown and red leaves, just black wires attaching the world, so that all eight billion people could be connected. Because they saw this to be necessary, rather than detrimental.                

And grass was manufactured instead of grown. Flowers were made of plastic so that people could give them to each other as gifts. Crops and bushes, they were no longer needed, as machines made food, not nature. The people all wore disguises, to hide their insecurities from the world. And all the nature that was left, all the nature that was still real and pure began to die.

I could see this happening -- the grass turning gray and old and dead. Not like murder. Not as awful, but in some sense, more disturbing. A person’s life is more valuable, but is it more precious? Even in the old world, I can’t picture a human that could compare to the beauty of the world.

And that idea, he says, that’s what ruined it all. The earth had lost its beauty, and so a human became more precious. People saw themselves as one -- as individuals, rather than a product of the earth and all its beauty and all its mystery and all its innocence. Innocence -- he chuckled as he uttered the word. He says there was no such thing anymore.                

And I began to realize that Alphaeus had seen this old world. He had endured the pain and anguish that he spoke so passionately about. The blind admiration I had always felt was now coupled with sympathy as I tried to think about the disasters he must have faced.                

And I wondered, how did he get here?                

And he told me, “There are more colonies like this, you know.”                

And another question answered.

“And there are more people like me. People who have seen both sides.”               

And as the answers continued to come to me, I tried to look to the sky. Through the fields and past the water. Find some type of light, for no reason other than to see beauty, of some kind.                

“You know why you can envision this all, don’t you?”

Envision what? The real light of day -- the skies and the grass and the water and the people of the old world. The murder and the bombs and the knives and the guns.

“You are not as ignorant as you may want to be. Just think.

“You see because you saw. You were not picked at random to be a Booster, you must know this. Why do you think it must be your son, and your son’s son after that? If it were to run through a bloodline, don’t you think it would start at my son, as well?”

Why did he get to ask questions? I just wanted my ignorance back.                

“You were young. Just young enough to forget, but just old enough to remember " it could have gone either way. To our luck, you forgot, but I’m sure those memories are stored somewhere. Reach for them.”

And I saw knives and I saw the guns. The skies that just wanted to be blue again. The grass that just wanted to be green. The people that refused to believe what was happening to the beautiful world.                

Oh yes, I saw it all.

And how beautiful it all was.

“What did we do?” I asked.

He chuckled, glad to see that I was beginning to recover the memories that had fled my mind for so long.

And he answered.

"We took control.”

Author's Note

Reviews appreciated!!

Reviews

[Stan Lee]

Fantastic! That was a meritorious and thought provoking story. They say ignorance is bliss so why do most of us have such a yearning for learning? I particularly liked this line: " People saw themselves as one - as individuals, rather than a product of the earth and all its beauty and all its mystery and all its innocence." Excellent write - stay inspired! :)