Forbidden Thoughts

by Milo Yiannopoulos

  Two years after my hack a data query that I thought was a criminal investigation turned out to be a DNA search for red hair and green eyes. I was surprised any female would consider me a suitable donor because scientists were still unable to remove the CRuSH Gene (Cisgender, Racist, Sexist and Homophobic) from white male DNA. A red-haired, green-eyed white woman selected my sperm because she wanted a red-haired, green-eyed daughter.

  Thirty years ago was the only time I viewed my daughter’s mother. It was during the delivery and the following week because the Afterbirth Abortion Activists live-streamed the event. They also streamed their attempts to convince the mother to terminate the parasitical growth that for nine months stole nourishment from her body before it escaped from her womb. Nine months of reproductive slavery is mild compared to the twenty-one years of child-rearing slavery that follows a birth. The mother of my daughter resisted their demands for an abortion. She hired bodyguards to protect herself and my child.

  Any male that impregnates a female without asking her for permission is guilty of rape. Since I hadn’t asked her for permission to violate the sanctity of her ovum when she selected my sperm sample without my permission, the government ruled me guilty of rape and had sent enforcers to execute me. In addition, the Afterbirth Abortion Activists placed a reward for my death to prevent me from ever raping another woman again.

  I was running out of time, so I found a government drone hovering above the center of the campus quad. Piles of rocks were placed around the quad for when women, gays or infidels needed to be stoned to death. Non-white men with scimitars wandered around the campus. The camera was focused on the inspirational school motto carved into the sidewalk, “Free Speech Is Too Valuable To Waste On People Who Disagree With Us.” On the sidewalk nearby someone had chalked messages for the students. “Kill Jews.” “Kill White People.” “Kill Pigs.” I was glad to see that even though diversity of thought was encouraged no one had written anything hateful.

  As I hopped among the drones looking for my daughter, I noticed a man of color, wearing robes of many colors, stalking across the quad wielding a bloody scimitar. He screamed, “Allahu Akbar” and then beheaded a woman who was not of color. I switched to another drone because I didn’t want to invade his privacy. Once I started running I’d never have a chance to check the government news sources to find out what the sword wielder’s motives were.

  Before I hopped to another drone I spotted my daughter, her red hair bright in the morning light. She was talking with another white woman. Both of them turned to face away from the beheading. The other woman pulled out a hand gun and held it in her open palm like it was a snake about to strike. I jumped to a closer drone and zoomed in to read the engraving on the side. “Use this gun to force the greedy 1% to share their wealth.”

  I boosted the volume and filtered out the other sounds to hear their conversation.

  My daughter said, “How can you hold that thing? Guns are scary and evil.”

  “I know. I don’t want it, but I have no choice. Since I received my participation trophy in community activism and wealth distribution, it is my duty to use this thing to fight the greedy oppressive patriarchal society. It is unfortunate that the wealthy don’t understand that this is for their own good and the good of society.”

  Like all good citizens I supported sharing the wealth. It was unfair for any person who wasn’t a contributor to political campaigns or a hereditary member of the government to own more than anyone else.

  “My drone hasn’t arrived yet. I wonder what my career will be.”

  “I’m sure whatever career the government selects for you will be the right one. The government never makes mistakes.”

  “That makes me feel better.”

  The other female looked around, whispered, “Today I’m self-identifying as a lesbian Hispanic female. What race and gender are you today?”

  If I didn’t know better, I would think she was scared. But with police, guns and white males banned from campus, I knew there was nothing for her to be afraid of. I slapped my head and mentally apologized for providing them with CRuSH motives when they were only being sensitive to the privacy needs of the other individuals on campus.

  My daughter looked around and whispered, “Today I’m self-identifying as a gay black male.”

  White males are prohibited from self-identifying as anything other than themselves because of their White Privilege and defective DNA.

  “Do be careful about cultural appropriation.”

  “I will.”

  They hugged each other without asking for permission. I shivered. If a white man hugged any female without written consent he would be rightfully arrested and charged with rape.

  After they separated and wiped the tears from their eyes, an official Gulag delivery drone paused in front of my daughter. It dropped a note and a participation trophy into her hands along with a gun. I zoomed in on the gun. “Use this gun to eliminate White Privilege by eliminating all whites.”

  The trophy was inscribed with the following words. “Congratulations. This trophy honors your occasional presence on campus while enrolled in the eight-year course of study on the evils of the CRuSH white oppressors.”

  She opened the note. “You are assigned to the Afterbirth Abortion Activists to provide post-birth abortions to evil oppressive white men. Your first assignment is the sperm donor rapist of your mother.”

  While I accepted the rightness of her career and assignment, I was unhappy that it applied to me. My monitor caught the reflection of a tear rolling down my white face into my red beard. With my go bag on my shoulder, I rolled up my monitor and keyboard and stuffed them in my pocket. My daughter had grown up to be just like I imagined her mother was. I was so proud of her.

  HYMNS OF THE MOTHERS

  By

  Brad R. Torgersen

  Do the mothers always know best?

  The trog’s body was both pale and stiff, as he lay at the base of the southwestern wall. He’d fallen a long way, onto the boulders and debris heaped in either direction. Dinah had never seen a dead person before. The mothers talked of death as if it were a disease, long since vanquished by medicine. The oldest of the mothers was said to have lived for hundreds of years. Dinah herself was just a lyte—in the latter half of her second decade. She and her classmates were on a rare field trip skirting the wall’s perimeter. It was only her second time seeing the outside. In the distance was the vast, green bulwark of endless forest, extending up to the foothills of the far mountains. Also in the distance—in the opposite direction—was the shattered hulk of one of the dead cities. The mothers knew about those too. The dead cities had been made by people, long ago. Before the war that ruined the world—so that the Earth could be made whole again.

  Dinah turned her eyes from the poor trog, and gazed up the hundred-meter face of the wall proper. There were several balconies two-thirds of the way to the top. Only the mothers were allowed to visit those perches. The trog must have been called to perform some chore for a mother in need of manual work. How or why he’d gone over the edge... well, it didn’t matter. According to Mother Eilan, a trog’s life wasn’t worth much. Dogs and cats possessed more value. They at least provided pleasant company. Trogs were boorish, and kept apart from lytes and mothers alike. When they were seen, it was only for short periods. Either lugging furniture and hardware, or trooping in a tidy column to their next task—with a watchful beta standing over them, its punishment flail at the ready.

  “Do you think he jumped?” asked a voice to Dinah’s left.

  “Why would any creature do that!?” Dinah exclaimed.

  Shervet—also a lyte, and Dinah’s best friend—was still looking at the trog’s body.

  “It’s unlikely he tripped,” Shervet said. “The railing on each balcony is at least a meter or more high. The trog would have had to climb up on top, and push off. Look how far the body is from the wall. He was moving forward as he dropped.”

  “So many broken b
ones,” Dinah said, shuddering—her eyes still averted. “I hope his end was quick.”

  “Sympathy for a trog?” Shervet chided.

  “Even a trog deserves at least a modicum of compassion,” Dinah replied.

  “Don’t let the mothers hear that,” Shervet said, turning and walking to Dinah’s side. “You know what they say about trogs.”

  “Short-tempered, short-sighted, short-lived,” Dinah said, in a somewhat mocking tone—repeating the line from the hymn which had been taught to them since Dinah had been old enough to grasp the meaning of words. Until this unpleasant discovery, it had never occurred to her what that particular hymn really meant. The trogs were almost always out of sight, and out of mind. But now? Now, one of them lay smashed and lifeless at her feet. Even he had been a child once, albeit following in the footsteps of his elders—from the moment he was deemed capable of using tools.

  “We should tell the others,” Dinah said.

  “What for?” Shervet asked. “Not like it’ll do him any good at this point. Besides, a trog ground crew will be around eventually. They can collect the body, and put it through the crematorium. Come on, let’s keep walking. We’ve only got two hours left in the morning. Mother Eilan will be upset with us if we’re late returning to the rendezvous point.”

  Dinah took a final look over her shoulder, her mouth turned down in a slight frown, then nodded her head in acquiescence. She and Shervet slowly resumed picking their way through the rocks.

  It was a relief, stepping back inside the wall. Everything was clean, and in its designated place. Trees, green lawns, walking boulevards, the various sculpture-like buildings that the mothers had created over the centuries. All of it intimately familiar. Dinah and twenty other lytes all moved in a relaxed, orderly formation, with Mother Eilan gliding at their side. It was said that Eilan was over two hundred years old. She possessed the stately grace of one who had long ago become accustomed to authority. Her movements were fluid, yet strong. On her shoulders were the straps of her day pack—a somewhat more robust version of the smaller packs each of the lytes had carried outside. Presently, Eilan steered the formation into one of the circular vestibules that accessed their school house. While Shervet and the others went to store their packs in the cubbyholes that lined the vestibule’s walls, Mother Eilan approached Dinah and bade the young woman to have a seat at Eilan’s side.

  The polished, symmetrical stone bench was cold to the touch. A huge, transparent skylight allowed the sun’s rays to flood down into the vestibule, where the white marble floor reflected that light to every part of the space.

  “Your brow is creased,” Mother Eilan said quietly. “I would know your thoughts, Lyte Dinah.”

  Dinah shifted uncomfortably. “It’s just good to be back in,” she said.

  “Does the outer world disturb you?”

  “Yes,” Dinah admitted. “More than I thought it would—even having been outside before.”

  “You saw something unusual this time?”

  Dinah hesitated. Neither she nor Shervet had told anyone about the dead trog.

  “I saw... I saw enough, to know that the outer world is dangerous.”

  “Indeed,” Mother Eilan said, patting a hand on Dinah’s thigh. “That’s why the wall exists. It was the first thing the original mothers created, when the great rebuilding commenced—after fighting had stopped, and many decades of silence passed. You also saw the dead city?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s nowhere visible from inside the wall—for a reason. We don’t need a corpse from the past reminding us of the terribleness from before true civilization was born. Occasionally, I voice the opinion that we should make the effort to go and tear down the dead city. Completely. But then I am reminded by my seniors that time will do the work, as surely as anything else. Besides, we don’t have enough trogs for the job. And that’s a good thing.”

  “Trogs... ” Dinah said, and swallowed hard, remembering the body. One thing suddenly occurred to her. Why had the trog been naked? All trogs wore the customary, dull coveralls of their kind. The one outside the wall hadn’t had so much as a napkin to cover himself with, nor boots on his feet. Only the silvery collar of obedience around his neck.

  “You’re not giving me the full truth,” Mother Eilan suddenly said, in a sharp tone. “Out with it, girl. Now.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Dinah said dutifully, and swallowed hard a second time; before continuing. “When we paired off to explore outside, Shervet and myself wound up finding... well, we found... I’m so sorry, Mother Eilan. It was a trog!”

  “A trog? Beyond the wall? Did the trog molest you in any way!?”

  “He was dead,” Dinah quickly blurted. “And no, this wasn’t one of the wild trogs rumored to still be living outside. I know, because all he had on, was the collar. Nothing else.”

  Mother Eilan suddenly stiffened, her gaze turning from Dinah’s eyes—to stare into space just in front of their feet.

  “You’re sure it was dead?”

  “Lifeless as a stick in winter,” Dinah replied. “And so broken from the fall, I doubt even a strong beta could have survived a similar accident. We came across the body under one of the balconies.”

  “Yes,” Eilan said, “I imagine you did.”

  “What does it mean?” Dinah asked, suddenly sensing that it was Mother Eilan who wasn’t divulging the full truth.

  “It means nothing,” Mother Eilan snapped. Then, seeming to remember herself, her posture softened, and she placed a comforting hand on Dinah’s shoulder. “Or at least, it means nothing of concern to you. Trogs are, as you know, a necessary component of our society. But their uses are limited. My seniors would be alarmed to learn of a feral trog from the subterranean stables, wandering around outside. But a deceased trog? That seems to be the kind of problem which has neatly solved itself.”

  Dinah looked into Mother Eilan’s eyes—bright with purpose and intelligence—but dared not probe with further questions. Dinah had learned, as all lytes must learn, that knowledge was not the same thing as wisdom. Wisdom would come with time, and patience. All would be revealed, so that by the year Dinah herself was of age to ascend to motherhood, much that now seemed opaque, would be clear.

  If any of the other lytes had been paying attention to Mother Eilan’s sidebar, the lytes didn’t show it. Eavesdropping was a punishable offense. When a mother pulled a lyte aside for one-on-one counseling, this was for that specific lyte, and her alone.

  “Now, we have more classwork for today,” Mother Eilan said, quickly standing. “Was there anything else you needed to tell me, before you walk to your desk?”

  “No, ma’am,” Dinah said.

  “Good. Put the poor trog out of your mind. Its time on this Earth was going to be quick, regardless. Like fallen snow melting in a spring afternoon.”

  Dinah nodded, and trailed the rest of the lytes flowing out of the vestibule. The comforting blanket of routine would do much to soothe her nerves. But the image of the dead trog—face down, on the stones, his body twisted—could not be easily banished from Dinah’s mind.

  The opening hymn of class now concluded, Mother Qez was at the lightboard, using her fingertips to call up imagery from the school computer. All of the lytes in Dinah’s age bracket were now receiving weekly inservices on motherhood—the life soon to be—since they were just a few years shy of achieving true maturity. At twenty, every person would take up the mantle of adulthood. To include participating in the procreation lottery.

  “As you can see,” Mother Qez said in an academic tone, “the total number of lottery selections is, annually, very small. This is one of the most important aspects of our society, and I cannot stress it enough. We will not grow our nation beyond the confines of the wall. It is an artifact erected to protect us, yes—to ensure that our country is now, and always will be, a safe space. But it’s also a reminder, that procreation without limits was one of the reasons the old war occurred. We now limit ourselves, so that our f
ootprint on the surface of the Earth remains modest. People will never again spread over the land, consuming everything in sight—like a plague of crickets.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Dinah could see Mother Eilan nodding her head—an affirmation of Mother Qez’s statement. Doubtless Mother Eilan knew the rote texts of history as well as any school instructor, but this particular aspect of a lyte’s education was always reserved for Mother Qez. Who was rumored to be over three centuries in age; though her body had achieved that timeless quality all senior mothers seemed to have. Not young, but also not old. She was seasoned. Polished. Like the use-worn wooden handle on an artist’s paint brush.

  The question light over Shervet’s desk flicked on.

  “Yes, Lyte Shervet?” Mother Qez asked.

  “Knowing what the lottery is, and why we need it, is one thing, ma’am. What I’d like to know is, just how are babies made?”

  A hushed bubbling of giggles quickly went through the lytes—Shervet had put words to what they’d all been thinking, but had been too sheepish to ask. A pregnant mother was a rare thing indeed, and pregnancy brought with it a tremendous amount of deference, as well as veneration. But the pregnant mothers never talked about how they became pregnant. And once a child was born, she was immediately placed into the communal nursery, where all mothers would function as one—to rear the next generation of lytes.

  Mother Qez’s ordinarily small mouth, cinched itself up into a tight knot. She absently rapped a knuckle on the lightboard, considering Shervet’s pertinent question.

  “You know that menstruation is the body’s monthly way of cycling,” Mother Qez said. “You’ve also been taught that pregnancy is impossible, through much of that cycle. And that, for a short time every thirty days—give or take—there is a window during which a mother can conceive. What’s not shared with you until you actually achieve maturity, is the precise process whereby the eggs each of you carry, are fertilized. It is not secret, so much as it is sacrosanct. A lesson you will each have to wait to learn, in the fullness of time. Suffice to say that, once you have given birth—as a selectee of the lottery—you will then receive your companion; to keep with you for the rest of your life.”