Refer to "Harness the Spark" - 3/19"“And… now. The procedure shall begin. The preparation has been completed and Shawn has his shirt on in the control room and appears to be ready to begin the short, painful bursts that will enter your face through this conduit.”
The conduit is shown to me and appears to be the same one that was once attached to my head. The thought of painful bursts at this point only reminded me that this was the only way out.
“In the mainframe room, let me check to make sure, it appears that Percy has been writing on the wall with the box of crayons that I gave him to keep the charts good and proper. Hmmm, it appears that he has also thrown his dinner all over the floor and filled his shoes with that potato salad. This isn’t necessarily out of the ordinary Jerry, so don’t worry. However, it appears that the program will now be slightly altered to accommodate the given circumstance. Percy, please ready the power supply… don’t you worry about the mess in there, I have a guy to take care of that. Oh, what’s this? A knife? Hmm, I think it is. Sharp too, by the look of its sparkling edge. Percy entered the program several years back after he changed careers. He danced a little too close to the danger zone if you understand my symbolics. Grandmother walked by my side with her usual confident, well-postured gait. She was, as usual, reading as she walked. The World Almanac if memory serves me correctly. She enjoyed general statistics and the like. Keeping her head down was all part of her beautiful style. Normally you don’t describe your grandmother in this manner, but you wouldn’t understand our relationship; nor would you want to, lest you will wish for the same. Percy, whom I did not know at the time, approached us entering our walking area at an even pace from the opposite direction. Notification of grandma usually occurred by a light tug on the liver spot and a whistle. This time it was too late. Percy stopped and began his safety rant. “Walking with your head down has been shown to be the leading cause of senseless accident. I hate to be the one to inform you, but such is the way of my occupation. Now put those items away,” he said, and then proceeded to rip grandma’s book and arm away, throwing it violently to the ground and shouting obscenities that she had not heard in ages. Nor had I. I hired him on the spot, with his sparkling, charismatic motivation sense and work ethic. Later his notebook revealed other important methods: throwing cold water on people that weren’t dressed well for the cold, stabbing people with objects in order to show them the dangers of walking with said objects without caution, smashing knee caps when people failed to show proper regard for their knees, shoving people out of trees and off roofs for not having proper safety equipment, and holding heads under water of those who choose not to obey water-safety rules. Freelance safety work with great success, all with not a dime in profits. We discovered his talent as he was performing for grandma I like to say, and employed him while he was in the performance peak of his life.”
Prior to telling Percy’s secret story, Torque yelled the commands and passive threats with great force into the special wall device that still perplexed me. Post-story, he pounded on the two way mirror and gave Percy the cut-neck sign. He had many faces. “You see, they are also on their rightful way to the help they need. I keep them in those rooms “on call” for days straight. It’s no wonder they get disgusted with their food.” I was approached with the conduit in hand, slathered in the rightful way with the rightful ointments, ready for my forehead.
My confined existence in this confining office made me not care any longer. The machines were in tune with one another and the pulsating could be felt down my spine, although the active signal by the doctor had not yet been given. The procedure should go on whether my mind was activated or not…
… my powering down is like biting into acid soaked aluminum foil. Heavy head, but light brain activity. My feet itched. The lights burned holes in my retinas… I’m no expert, but the piercing made me put the anatomical pieces together. A warm pasta meal sat steaming on the tray, or so it appeared. The bones are currently under immeasurable pressure internally. The acid runs from my mouth to my organs. A quick inspection leads me to believe that the spleen, stomach, and liver have finally combined to form a super organ. The corrosive feeling means that processes are beginning in the super organ. I’m at home, but the sweet smell of baked pumpkin seeds is all I smell. I have no seeds roasting at this time. Unusual. My head contains impressions, or maybe light dents. I knew I could fix that later with a fine-toothed comb and some special body creams.
Hours passed in my own exile. Who knew how things went down in the office or even how long I’d been there. Simply waking up with a bill for $800 taped to your left forearm explains nothing. I’m billed for only, “eye check, elbow probe and medical waste fee.” It’s more than slight possibility that I passed out from my anxiety or sleepiness, and was simply taken back here for a good “pull the wool over my eyes” type scam. Sometimes my physical feeling of burning face, bone pain, etc. are simply the normal set of afflictions my old job warned me of. “Internal bone pain means that you’ve worked just a bit too hard, and the muscles are attaching to the bones for extra leverage,” I was told by a recording on a cassette tape at work. My bones felt as if they’d been scraped with a jagged steel plate. I guess that makes sense, and I didn’t take the precious time out of my day off (at the zoo) to go checking that. I pulled the tape off my arm and watched the TV, which was tuned into The 700 Club again. Pat Robertson prayed for some people in my situation and they got healed. We have our own evangelical prophet around here and I’m sure some people are putting in their prayers for me now. Oh, wait, that’s right, I didn’t tell anyone… no wait, I mean, I had nobody to tell of the procedure. Hardly makes headlines when considering that I was once present at the outcast farm. Right then and there, I had no more insight.
