#are we really choosing to sit at our desk jobs instead of delving into the million colors that the sky paints for us every day????

[ocean-glint]

i think the world would begin to heal if we all committed to watching sunsets every evening instead of whatever they call capitalism

[coffee-n-some-cream]

Fair is Foul - Chapter 2: I Have Love in Me the Likes of Which You Can Scarecly Imagine

“Do not be fooled,” my father says as we speak of my entrance into the human world, “The scum that walk this earth are far beneath the likes of you or any other creation I blessed with existence. They will act like they’re equal to you, but it is not true. You are better than them.”

I walk into my first day of being a human school teacher with apprehension. I worry for silly reasons. Acceptance, likability, social standing, these are all things I have no reason to fret over, and yet my heart beats rapidly and my stomach feels as though it is trying to digest itself from the inside out. My hands shake and my palms sweat.

The interview was easy enough. My forged credentials were enough to get the most unappealing creature a job at this establishment, and the added bonus of my alias, Adrian Seidelman, being a white man only made the choice that much easier. The first day of my new job, however, seems ridiculously daunting. I am not prepared for all the throes that come with teaching a group of human children the intricacies of literature, nor am I prepared for maintaining a false air of normalcy and humanity when I have never understood or experienced either of the two in my life. But I must steal my heart and push myself through the day. Father barely accepted my chosen profession due to its lack of influence and low pay. If I cannot make it work, then I am doomed to doing whatever Father chooses, and that something will inevitably be something that makes me loathe to rise from bed in the morning.

As the first group of children files into the classroom and take their seats, I look to the book sitting on the desk beside me. Macbeth, by Shakespeare. A classic, full of murder and secrecy, tainted morality and good intentions gone too far. I’ve always felt a connection with the story, each new page I drank up giving me more a sense of belonging than the very world I live in ever did, the reason for which never being entirely clear to me.

I look to the students sitting before me, their blank stares windows that reveal blank minds, and suddenly I lose my fear. I forget my true purpose, I forget that I am here as an agent of my father, to infiltrate the human world, to support his plan. As I look at the students, my students, I am filled with a conviction. This is a book I can delve deep into and draw insight from. This was a book I can teach. And these are students I can reach.

I lift the book from its place on my desk and open to the first page.

“Hello, students. I am Mr. Seidelman, your new English teacher. This year, we are all going to read Shakespeare’s Macbeth . It is a play about a man who is very ambitious, and, because of his desires, he brings unimaginable pain to others. You can all come up and take a copy from the pile on my desk, and we’ll begin reading.”

*

It is on my second day of working at the human school that I encounter a problem. I decided that my alias would be male simply for the sake of ensuring I would never be recognized when performing my nighttime duties. However, I never anticipated that being a male teacher could bring such difficulties in regards to female students during their transformative years of becoming women. One such student, Lori, is particularly insistent on forming a relationship with me, despite my repeated protest and rejections and the fact that it is completely illegal under the current laws regarding consent.

Today in class, she gave me yet another inappropriate love note, which I, in my utter exasperation with her, threw away.

In hindsight, that was not a wise decisions, considering the snarling, spitting group of boys standing before me now. They managed to corner me on my way home from a day of work, backing me against an alley wall.

“You’re gonna pay for what you did to Lori, Seidelman,” one of the boys snaps, making my name sound like a bad word.

I, a monster with superior strength and intellect whose experience and capabilities far surpass theirs, am suitably unimpressed. I set my body in a ready stance, prepared to take on the gangly group who are naive enough to think they are anything more than mere children.

One boy’s face seems to shift entirely to the side of his head as a hand strikes him from the side in an admirably solid punch. The rest of the boy’s body follows, and he flies to my left and sprawls on the ground. I turn to look at my defender, and immediately recognize him as one of the teachers I’ve seen lurking around the coffee machine in the teachers’ lounge.

He is a large man, muscular, with hair hanging from his head in unkempt yet not unappealing strands of gold, and his eyes are narrowed in anger at the small group of boys.

My initial reaction is surprise, quickly followed by indignation. I am not weak, despite my small stature in comparison to his admittedly substantial build. Who was he to presume that I needed his unprompted intervention?

The boys, surely and unfairly startled by his showy bravado and daunting physique, scatter as quickly as they can from the alleyway. I turn to the man.

“You shouldn’t have let them go,” I say, frowning, “They’ll never learn their lesson that way.”

A startled laugh escapes the man, and his eyes turn to me, wide and without a single shred of anger left. “I can’t just beat them all up, Seidelman, they’re just kids. I’d get fired!”

I consider this strange statement. They instigated the fight. It does not seem plausible to lose one’s job for self defense.

“They started it,” I answer, “Why should either of us get in trouble for finishing it?”

This time, his laugh is a hearty one, full of what I consider undue merth. “You said it, pal! But that’s just the way it is, eh? Lil’ brats get away with anything in this damn system.”

I turn to where the children fled the scene, and I contemplate this new information. The realization enters my mind like a creeping doom. I have no idea how one is supposed to behave when one is a school teacher. I have no idea what I am doing in this position, so much so that the very notion of what I just suggested to this man caused him to laugh at me.

I need to find out more, need to glean some information on how I must act before I do something too noticeable and lose my position that I so strongly wish to maintain.

“Hey, you wanna go get something to eat? I know this great-”

“Yes,” I say, cutting the man off mid-sentence. I decide I must glean as much information from him as I possibly can, considering he is a teacher such as myself who knows the ins and outs of performing properly in the role.

“Alright, then let’s go,” he says, “I’m Lucas, by the way, Lucas Amato.”

The restaurant he leads me to is indeed great. It has some of the best coffee I’ve ever had, even better than the concoction the ridiculously expensive machine we have at home produces. Lucas Amato, despite the opportunity to indulge in the fantastic drink, chooses instead to order a pasta dish.

I open my mouth, wondering how I am going to make interrogating him about how to be a teacher seem normal, when he begins talking.

“So, Adrian. Mind if I call you Adrian?”

I do. It seems unprofessional. “No.”

“Great. I want to show you something.” He pulls out a folder and flips it open. “Take a look at these.”

The folder is filled with nothing but photographs and I pick one up. My heart freezes. The photograph is of me. Not of me as Adrian Seidelman, but of me as Cybersix, as my true self. As the monster, and not the human.

I first steady my hand. I must keep it from trembling lest he become concerned. Then I make sure I can speak without my voice betraying how shaken I am.

“What is this?” I ask, as if I don’t know already.

Amato smiles, and the smile is so knowing, so confident that I feel my whole body tense, the fear filling my chest that I will have to kill him to keep what he has discovered silent.

“I have no idea,” he answers.

I stare at him with incredulous exasperation.

“But I sure would like to find out,” he says, sitting back in his seat with a wistful sigh from which I can feel the intense longing. “She’s amazing, Adrian. Just look at her. I’ve been photographing her for a while now, and the things I’ve seen…” He shakes his head in disbelief. “She wanders the buildings of our city, performing inhuman feats. Unless parkour suddenly got a lot more advanced than when I last checked. She’s almost inhuman. No, no she is inhuman!”

I stare at the photograph I am holding as he talks. He is correct. I am not human. It only makes sense that I would be fascinating to him, like a freak in the circus.

“She’s beautiful!” he exclaims, startling me.

“Beautiful?” I ask, not able to comprehend what he just said.

“Of course! She’s like the pinnacle of human evolution, a genetic miracle! The things she can do, Adrian! She’s… she’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen!” He turns his eyes to me, filled to the very brim with excitement and passion.

Never have I heard anyone speak of me this way. With such admiration. With such adoration. With such, dare I say it, love.

“And, I mean, she’s really attractive too,” he adds in the gap of my stunned silence.

I shake my head. What am I thinking? I cannot allow the fantastical obsessions of a human to cloud my thinking. So what if he thinks these things about me? He is obviously mentally deranged, and I cannot allow him to pursue this disturbing hobby of photographing me while I do my father’s work.

“Okay, this is insane. There’s no way this girl is what you say she is. A genetic miracle? It’s impossible,” I insist, feeling wrong as the enthusiasm drains from his expression, only to be frustrated as the look is replaced by steady defiance.

“I thought you literary types were supposed to have good imaginations,” he intones, and the taunt makes my hackles raise.

“You cannot suggest that my love of literature requires me to believe the unbelievable and fantastical,” I retort.

“Oh no? You guys read about aliens and witches all day long, but you won’t even entertain the idea of a woman who jumps skyscrapers? I thought this was right up your alley. Kind of hypocritical if you ask me.”

I find myself flabbergasted by his complete lack of understanding of the mind of a literature lover, and my grip on the photograph tightens enough to crinkle the thick, glossy paper.

“Mr. Amato, if this woman is indeed real and she can jump skyscrapers, then I will bet everything I own that she is not the creation of a writer’s imagination, but the creation of a scientist’s imagination that has gone too far.”

As I try to keep my breath steady and my temper in check, his mouth stretches into a grin, and the obstinate look leaves his eyes to be replaced with delighted surprise as a low chuckle shakes his broad shoulders. My eyebrows knit in confusion.

“I like you, Adrian. You’re pretty alright,” he says, leaning back into his chair.

I realize with a start that I completely forgot my original objective of convincing him that Cybersix did not exist in the face of being insulted as a literary scholar.

“And call me Lucas, by the way,” he mentions as he takes another bite of his pasta. “Now, tell me more about how scientists play God. Some call that scientific advancement.”

*

I come home late that evening to find Data 7 waiting for me in the kitchen. He looks tired from waiting up so long, and guilt flashes through me only briefly before I kneel down and begin telling him of the truly singular, truly exhilarating, truly electrifying, truly dreamlike dinner I had just had with Lucas Amato.

We do not stay up for our usual coffee, but instead head to my room for much needed rest. I, however, cannot seem to sleep. I remain awake to all hours of the night, running my fingers over Data 7’s fur and murmuring to him all the terribly wonderful things that make up this man named Lucas.

“And he said I was beautiful, Data 7,” I almost whisper, “he said I was beautiful.”

AO3