Priorities
Aaron Novick
(2005)
Once upon a time, a man was born in the Sahara desert in
Africa. He was to become the last member of an ancient tribe that
had inhabited the far corner of the Sahara since the beginning of time
itself. This tribe formed the basis of all Africans. They
came from the members of the tribe who had left at some point or
another.
The man was not a happy man, who was born to parents who were not
happy. So, when the man grew up into an adult capable of making
decisions, he decided that he hated everything about the Sahara
desert. He hated the weather. He hated the people of his
tribe. He just hated everything.
As it was, he was only happy at one point in his life.
This man who hated everything about the place and culture in which he
lived moved to a larger city in Africa. He was able to
communicate because most African languages came from the language of
his tribe. Two weeks after he moved to the city, a plane carrying
an atomic bomb crashed in the middle of the village from which he had
come. All of the inhabitants were killed. And thus did the man
become the last member of his tribe.
While in the city, the man asked people about what the best place to
live was. Almost all of the people agreed that it was the United
States of America. The man enrolled in English classes, and soon
had a rudimentary knowledge of English. He was able ask important
questions, like where the bathroom was.
The man made plans to immigrate to America. However, he did not
know that he was carrying a deadly virus, which brown-skinned people
all had immunity to, but which was devastating for people of other
colors. So this man unwittingly brought the disease to America.
He ended up infecting and killing the man who performed the immigration
test on him. The autopsy showed that the same disease that killed
the tester was present in the man. The man was put in quarantine,
where he would have to stay until the disease left him or until he
died. There was no reason, however, why the disease would want to leave
him. It infected a man who was in perfect shape, and his immune
system had accepted the disease when the disease had spent years doing
absolutely nothing harmful to the body, except for destroying the cells
that attacked it.
So the man was doomed to spend the rest of his life in quarantine. The
man hated quarantine less than he hated the Sahara desert. Living
conditions were much different in quarantine. Five days into
quarantine, his mother's ghost came to him, telling him to get out of
quarantine or he would meet the same fate as her. The man asked her
what that fate was. He did not know or care about what happened
to his old village.
His mother told him that if he did not get out, he would be bombed. The
man was put in a ward for the mentally ill when he tried to exit the
quarantine using that reasoning. While in the ward for the mentally
ill, he infected and killed every doctor who tried to discover
both the disease that was in him and the state of his mental
health. All the while, the man knew what was going on. A
translator had told him what was happening to him, and explained to him
the difference between sane and insane. So, along with the man's
rudimentary knowledge of English, he knew the words sane and insane, as
well as their meanings.
The man kept complaining about how he wasn't insane, that the ghost of
his mother did come to see him, and that he wanted out of the
quarantine. All the while, he kept infecting and killing,
infecting and killing. Eventually, the infecting and killing got so bad
that the U.S. government was notified. They were worried that
others in the quarantine could be infected, and that the entire
facility must be neutron bombed. When the guards responded that nobody
in the actual quarantine had died from the disease, a U.S. spokesperson
blew up, saying, "It doesn't seem to be killing him, does it?"
A guard gathered the entire quarantine together and announced to them
that in ten days time, the entire quarantine would be neutron
bombed. The guard then explained the beauties of the neutron
bomb, that the property would be undamaged, that there would be no
radiation, and that the quarantine could be reused within two weeks of
the bombing. There were a bunch of angry yells from the crowd.
However, there was one overjoyed voice that came from the back and
overwhelmed all of the others. The man who had been visited by his
mother's ghost was doing a little jig and exclaiming with joy every few
seconds, "I am sane. I am sane." It was the only time that man
was ever happy.
Ten days later, the entire facility was bombed. Every guard,
doctor, and resident who had been there at all while the man was there
was killed. There was no radiation leftover, and all of the property
was left untouched by the bomb. And so, two weeks after the bomb
was dropped, twenty-four days after the man learned that he was sane,
the quarantine was populated by a new influx of sick immigrants.
And they lived happily ever after.
The End
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Last modified: December, 2005