Proof of life

             

            CHILDHOOD is a flavor.

            In Omnicast Mega (OM) Central, which transmits the evercascading babble of unvoiced thoughts circulating around the planet, Chocnut has a mental hiccup.

 

            Our talebearer is one of millions in a pod ejected by a carrier and left to feed in an incubator simulating the pre-Covid (PC) childhood favorite Chocnut, now replicated with flavor of ground roasted peanuts, flavor of powdered milk, flavor of cocoa, flavor of…

 

            A nanosecond after Chocnut registered the Sound, it also had its first spasm. The involuntary setback is, if its system was only wired to name it, called a memory.

 

            After PC, the TC scrapped foundations that made the old society as stable as a stack of crumbling Chocnuts. Memory was dealt a mortal blow when the TC replaced motherhood, mammalian and primitive, with carriers that parthenogenetically reproduce without mates and eject pods by the millions in Chocnut incubators that speed up the feeding stage 100 times so larvae can be deployed around the colony.  

 

            Now everything works. No remembering, just feeding. The news broadcasts destabilizing PC society were superseded by omnicasts, all-penetrating transmissions of every nascent thought and desire that may hiccup in units purged by program of memory and imagination.

 

             “Take care (TC)” may be benediction or threat since, by TC (technical committee) rules, the unvoiced, made public via omnicast, removes the need for expression.

           

            Chocnut, our talebearer, monitors FM (Far Mega), the deep spaces out of reach of the AM (At ease Mega) spectrum for the colony but still within the orbit of the TC’s sleepless omniscience.

 

            The Sound Chocnut recorded at 00:00:20:20 emanates from the dead exoplanet Primus. Unknown to Chocnut, who has never heard of history (refer to last Sunday’s tale), the Mothers of the Moons rebelled, finally refusing to let their children rise from the sea, only to be devoured by their siblings in cycles of six bloody moon phases.

 

            After Primus and its last dictator disappeared into the pure opacity of moonless dark and cold, the playgrounds beneath the sea churn warm from the nocturnal frolic of the Moon children, watched over by their Mothers. Perhaps it is an iota of this joy that escapes above the sea, a susurrus sieved and transformed into a playlist by Chocnut, who is suddenly assailed by a faint peanut-flavored memory.

 

            Weaned on the cold teats of artificially flavored motherhood, did Chocnut have a childhood? We will never know as another Chocnut reports after time out. TC (take care), terminated Chocnut.

 

            TC, repeat the omnicasts as an armada of destroyers departs for the Mothers of the Moons. Take care: disobedience is proof of life.

 

 

 

 

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

 

 

*First published in SunStar Cebu’s August 9, 2020 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”