Caged

The life of Timothy, potentially the world's most advanced human.

The one thing Timothy had always been was a skeptic. From birth he refused the trappings of an average upbringing, scoffed at his toys, refused regular food, and abhorred the Sippy Cup. His mother assured him that blocks were safe, that strained peas were good for him, that it was actually better to get more of that horrible pasty green substance into his mouth than any other part. What limited imagination his parents had.

Timothy was an artist, from the earliest of ages. His desire to make strained peas into abstract expression was only the tip of the iceberg. The walls were his favorite canvas. He scribbled shapes and constructs that would be entirely incoherent to anyone not on his unique wavelength, yet in his eyes were vast tapestries of awe inducing beauty. He was prolific, he was brilliant, and he never coloured inside the lines.

One morning while Timothy was deep in thought his mother approached him and looked him in the eyes. She spoke slowly to him, asking him a question. His mother’s inquiry fell on deaf ears, such was the singularity of his mind while meditating on the deeper questions. Although possibly one of the greatest minds of our time, Timothy’s mother interpreted his lack of response as a developmental problem. As a mental deficiency. Soon, she sought help.

A battery of tests were launched at our intrepid hero. He was poked, prodded, scanned, analyzed, interrogated and given nap time. He was given every toy imaginable, viewed through glass, and carefully scrutinized. When he was told to put the square peg into the square hole, Timothy simply refused to move. He didn’t see the point.

Try as they might, the so-called professionals were ill-equipped to handle Timothy. He was the next step, the next evolution, the future. The doctors were living in the past, thinking inside the same boundaries, referring to the same case studies. Soon the next step became a family’s next big problem. Timothy was diagnosed with an extremely unique form of autism. So unique, in fact, that a board of medical professionals had to deliberate for hours just to create a suitable name. The official name for Timothy’s current condition is still not publicly known.

After every test was run the medical community simply lost interest. Diagnosis, although extremely wrong, had been delivered. Time to move on. Bigger fish to fry, pills to hand out, charts to check. Timothy was sent back to the care of his loving, but now understandably burdened family.

From that point on his family handled him as if he were made of fine china. He was not allowed to go out, to play with friends, or to go anywhere unsupervised. This child, this creature better equipped for survival than any step of human evolution before him, was being handled with padded gloves. Luckily, Timothy didn’t seem to notice. Realistically, Timothy simply didn’t care.

On a certain level, Timothy knew what he was. He sensed he was special. Nobody ever knew it, but he held the answers to a lot of the bigger questions in life. He was sent to us to be a guide, to help us transcend, to expand our knowledge and change our archaic way of thinking. Our thoughts were never wrong, but our processes couldn’t be further from the mark. If he could speak now he would tell us that evolution is always the goal, regardless of the consequences. He would tell us that as a species we fear change because it always occurs violently. That if we removed the fear and accepted the natural order of things then everything would be okay. That we are a creature that fights evolution at every turn while embracing the results of it. We are inherently focused on the end, and ignore the means.

He would say all this, if he were still alive. For Timothy, the set messenger of all our answers, his tragic end came on the business end of a brutal mountain gorilla beat-down. Ironic even, that the next step in the evolutionary ladder would be cut down by something a number of steps below him. Sometimes the past doesn’t let the future forget.

One day, Timothy was taken to the zoo. This was not customary, as he rarely was allowed outside, and he took in all of the information with a sense of awe and absolute bliss. He marveled at the animals as they lived their simplified existence. He empathized with the plight of these magnificent beasts, all caged and put on display for the benefit of human entertainment. He reflected on the fact that often times humans would rather not travel far for this kind of splendor, so their solution was to pack them all into a park and charge admission. Problem solved. Life made easier.

This is when Timothy saw it, the huge mountain gorilla. The look on the face of the gorilla was one of absolute depression. In the grand scheme of things, this gorilla had no reason to be depressed. He had as much food as he could eat, someone was there to clean up his feces (but not the good stuff - that was hidden and reserved for throwing), and as much fake jungle backdrop as he could handle. Despite all this luxury, Bobo (as Timothy aptly named him) was sad. You can take the gorilla out of the jungle, but not the jungle out of the gorilla.

Immediately Timothy knew the answer. This gorilla needed to roam free, it needed to escape and return to the lush greenery of his home. While nobody was looking, and with the dexterity that only an advanced human is capable, he swiftly climbed the cage and jumped within reaching distance of Bobo. The gorilla showed no sign of noticing him.

Looking behind him, he noticed a little door, most likely leading to the feed and staging area. All he needs to do is pull the door open, and let Bobo walk through. He knows that this venture into the great unknown will make Bobo happier, will bring this great beast the fulfillment it truly wants, but simply isn’t used to. All it has to do is look up, take the risk, and walk through the door (and realistically probably attack a zookeeper and some pedestrians - a loose gorilla that doesn’t go on a rampage gets made fun of the next day around the water cooler).

Timothy opens the door, and waves his hands violently, trying to get Bobo’s attention. The gorilla sends a short glance of lazy recognition, and then continues to look depressed, unmoving. Timothy takes a step closer, still waving his arms. The gorilla looks again, with no more interest, and then resumes his unmoving sadness.

Come on, Timothy thinks, you’re free! He wills the gorilla to move, and takes another step forward. Bobo isn’t moving. He’s been caged too long. The world outside might be wonderful and new, it might be the answer to all of his problems, but he fears the unknown. Like everyone else. Bobo doesn’t understand Timothy’s insistence to leave, doesn’t realize how much better it is outside the cage, and just sits there.

Timothy takes one last step forward, and lowers his arms. He learns a valuable lesson at this point, one that would have carried with him throughout his career as the savior of all mankind, that would have grounded him and given him wisdom. He realizes that you can’t rush someone that isn’t ready to be free. That you have to be patient. You can open the door, you can show them it’s there, you can tell them of all the wonders that await them - but you can’t push them through it. They have to be ready. Most people, Timothy thinks, simply don’t realize that they’ve been ready the whole time. That their own self doubt is what is holding them back, that taking the plunge is sometimes the only way to prove that life is worth living. That evolution is natural, necessary, and absolutely the right choice. It’s better than sitting in a cage.

He wants to tell Bobo all of this, but despite the language barrier, Timothy has yet to speak a single coherent word his entire life. He now stands right next to the gorilla, surveying the sad beast as it exists in this cage, both it’s prison and it’s home.

The gorilla turns to look at Timothy, and their eyes meet. Bobo wants to tell Timothy that life is just a string of disappointments. That one minute you’re picking insects off the backs of your family and the next you’re sitting in a fake jungle made of plaster. That the only joys you can expect out of life is throwing feces into the face of a tourist wearing a sweater-vest. He wants to say this, but the language barrier is too great. So he does the next best thing he can think of, and beats Timothy to death.