Zone 23 by Hopkins C. J

Author:Hopkins, C. J. [Hopkins, C. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant
Published: 2017-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

3.

Mister Normal

All right ... here comes the horrible part. Part Three, that is. Or a lot of it, anyway. This is the part where Valentina and Taylor, each in their own horrific way, indulge in some seriously deviant behavior, which neither my publisher, nor its parent company, nor any of its agents, subsidiaries, assigns, affiliates, or employees, promotes or condones. Nevertheless, it is what happened, so I need to tell you about it somehow.

First, though, we need to get something else straight.

That something else concerns “normality,” and the Normals, and what it meant to be normal, and the way things worked in normal society (i.e., 27th Century normal society), which was weirder than I’ve probably been able to convey. I may have even given you the false impression that being “normal” was something akin to being a member of a political party, or something that was printed on your ID card, or coded into your subdermal chip. It wasn’t.

Actually, it was just the opposite.

In the 27th Century H.C.S.T., despite the fact that Normatology was an established field of academic study, which various august and elite universities offered a smattering of extremely competitive and insanely expensive post-graduate degrees in, “normality” was not some rigidly defined, or in any way officially codified, concept. There weren’t any rules or sets of guidelines articulating what made one “normal.” There certainly wasn’t any Ministry of Normality issuing edicts on individual behavior, or arresting people for non-conformance, or any other type of nonsense like that.

On the contrary, the meaning of the term “normality” (as well as that of its various derivatives), which the normatologists were still debating, was of negligible to zero interest to the Normals, most of whom never even gave it a thought, as it didn’t directly affect their lives, which, all things considered, were pretty darn good.

The Normals, for example, didn’t call themselves “Normals,” or think of themselves, and their families and friends, and everyone else they knew as “Normals.” Most of them had never even heard the term, which was mostly used by Anti-Socials in a pejorative and flagrantly aggressive way. Variant-Positives referred to themselves as “Variant-Positives” in contrast to Clears, and Clears the other way around, naturally, but this was strictly a medical distinction, as opposed to any kind of caste system thing. * The Normals referred to the Anti-Socials as “Anti-Socials” or “A.S.P.s,” but they didn’t refer to themselves as anything (i.e., in contrast to Anti-Socials). Being the overwhelming majority, and the unarticulated normative standard, which no individual could ever attain, and which the Anti-Socials deviated from, they thought of themselves as ... well, as normal.

Now, of course, there were varying degrees of normal, which the Normals semi-consciously perceived, and instinctively recognized in themselves, and each other, and measured each other, and themselves, naturally, and everything else, in relation to. The way this worked was, more often than not, they would see some Content on their All-in-One Viewers that would somehow start them questioning whether what they were doing (not

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