“Guilty.”
The metallic ring of the judge’s gavel still haunts my
dreams. I still have a hard time
wrapping my brain around it. I’d gotten
the turkey. Not that bird that people
used to eat a long time ago. Three
strikes kind of turkey. You used to get
a turkey in bowling. That’s what my
grandparents said. We don’t get to play
games like that anymore. Now turkey is
more like the baseball rule – three strikes and you’re out.
It means you’re sent to live outside the walls. There’s no shelter, no food provided, no
medical care and, most importantly, no walls or weapons for safety. Ya see, everything here has evolved way too
fast. Scientists say it took only one
hundred years to get to this point when it should have been thousands, if not
millions.
What point is that?
Just about everything on this planet has evolved to prey on us
humans. We used to be at the top of the
food chain, but that ain't so no more.
We outrank very little life on this planet now. That’s why the walls and weapons are so
important. Everything has poison, teeth,
claws, thorns or something else that is designed to kill us and eat us. Not always in that order.
People getting sent outside the walls have romantic notions
that once enough of us are out there, we will create this big uprising and the
system will change and life will go on happily ever after. I hate to break it to ya, but that ain't
happening either. Most people who get
the turkey, unlike a bowling turkey, don’t win.
They don’t survive long beyond the walls. Those that do are too preoccupied with surviving
to think about fighting back.
That judge’s gavel fell for me about four months ago. It’s hard to keep track of the days out
here. They all blur together into one
long hunt for food while trying to avoid becoming food. It gets old real fast.
