Because of Isaac and the mission he entrusted me with, it is the third time in a row that Mistress Salvi occupies for me the role of Weekmistress. As she does not like me much, it is the third time in a row that on a Saturday evening, around eight o'clock, I wait in the rain outside of – as a slave I am not permitted to set foot inside – the pharmacy on 8th Avenue, while she is getting her treatment for her rheumatisms.

Crouching in front of the glass door, I watch another cab stop to let a Master off. He immediately takes shelter under an umbrella. He smiles at me, a little sorry, before entering the pharmacy. Masters' pity is worse than their cruelty, but I do not have the right to let my annoyance show. I shake my head and turn my attention back to the road. The cab starts up again in a hurry, rolls over a puddle raising a wave of water that falls heavily on the pavement.

The raindrops have been coming through the thin layer of tissue, covering my body, as if I was wearing nothing. I can no longer keep the coughing fit tickling my throat, but I know that I am being watched by my Mistress, through the pharmacy window. I clear my throat and swallow the wave of nausea that accompanies the cough. Shivering, I sneeze again into my elbow and notice that I do not feel my left arm, completely uncovered, too much anymore. I wipe my nose with a less dirty part of the jacket and then resume the fight against the pain caused by the numbness in my fingers, focusing my attention on my wrists. I tap the metal bracelets – my chains – with my nails to reproduce the melody of a BTS song Imane made me listen to. To make matters worse, lightning struck regularly over the last few days. I hate lightning, but thunder is terrifying.

These apocalyptic weather conditions were still not enough to impress the BLM protesters, whose parade still left traces on the sidewalks – I struggled to find somewhere clean enough to put Mistress Salvi's shopping bags –, although the movement somewhat struggles to find new supporters, compared to its beginnings. Forbidden by the government to the slaves under the stoning threat, and to the Masters-Activists under the enslavement ultimatum, President Trump's response to the riots has lived up to the expectations of its electorate. Ho-Jin, who disobeyed our father to go to the protest said that the police were ruthless. Especially with the slaves.

I lift one of my Mistress' bags to bring it closer to the small space that I am occupying and shelter it from the rain. But someone pushes me and the bag, which slips out of my sore hands, falls heavily on the others. The slave, a little white boy whom I met several times in Freetown without knowing his name, interrupts his excuses when he sees the tattoo on my left arm. I avoid lingering on his face, recently disfigured by some Masters-Avengers, but a feeling of disgust raises in my throat again. He throws a horrified look over my shoulder.

"They're coming! They're mean ones! Go away!" he articulates breathlessly.

He resumes his run. I turn around to check for what he is escaping from and meet a look that I know only too well – that of a Master in need of sensation. I curse this little boy for being such a bad omen. Today, unlike the day before, has so far gone smoothly, except for the sharp remarks of Mistress Salvi and a few citizens who bumped into me. The usual, the minimum, but now comes another egotist dilemma; I have to think of my family first.

"What do you want? Why are you looking at me, you dirty Object? Isn't it enough for you to be black and a slave? You want me to make you handicapped too, like that white Thing? Or would you rather be emasculated?" the black Master apostrophes me, waving his iPhone in front of me.

I exert by the force of habit, the assiduousness of the training, a control contorting my features in a sincere indifference and motionlessness. Only my clenched fists betray me. The Master is followed by a little group of adolescents around my age. He gives his phone to one of the two girls who records us as he keeps pushing me around. Adrenalin hits me; I am scared, and in this situation, any of my movements will be interpreted as disobedience. I am afraid, not of the Master, but of what I want to do to him and the consequences that these actions will have afterwards. Often, as Sunday approaches, when I lose control of my emotions more easily, my body no longer follows my will.

"You and your sub-race were looking for exposure, right? With your little #StopSlaveViolence, and your threats to attack the Capitol? Well, smile, everyone's going to see you!" the Master adds, grabbing my neck and turning my face to the phone.

The images of my family's smiles that I try to invoke are no longer enough to channel my anger. I lose my train of thought; my sensations get confused. I am dizzy, feverish. My jaw tightens, my breathing quickens, my eyes fill with tears and I feel myself sliding into this trance. I cannot fight against this old anger that welcomes me with open arms, in which I melt into. My composed face twists into a grimace. The girl steps back and the master starts laughing.

"Now, here's a fun show! What are you going to do, Object? Insult me? Hit me? Show me what your little insignificant body can do!"

The last time a Master told me this, it cost me a finger and a half. In the new life I will lead once we run away, a life where these Masters will no longer exist, I will need all the fingers that I have left. My family will need me as functional as possible. Nevertheless, this thought is insufficient to redirect my body thrown at full strength against the Master. My hands close on the emptiness that separates us, and I stumble over one of my mistress' bags. 

The Master is right: I am not a good fighter. My body is weak, and it is without any difficulty that he crushes me against the ground, dragging me by the leg for a few meters, in the direction of the road. The incessant dance of the cabs becomes threatening and it is the laughter of the group that takes its place in the background, a little muffled by the noise of the rain. I break my vow of immobility and struggle. The Master stops, goes around me and grabs my hands in a grip. With the other, he presses on my neck. He carries my arm close to his and seems to compare our tattoos, satisfied. He is amused as he shows his friends the disgusting sight of his hand filling in the gaps of my amputated fingers. The tip of the one where I was wearing my wedding ring had been cut off when I was eight, because I thought stealing the glasses of an American citizen was a clever way to revenge him kicking my future ex-wife – at the time, simply my friend Karen.

"Ridiculous! You can't even flip a finger! Where did this go? What happened to you, Object?" the young Master asks, pulling at my nails.

I lost the other finger on my right hand because I refused to apologize to the citizen whose glasses I stole. I have been taught this lesson a hundred times, the soft way, the hard way and everything in between: to rebel is to suffer or die.

The young Master keeps twisting my fingers and I hold back a cry.

"I own you, why can't you slaves understand that? My parents' taxes bought you, and mine will probably buy your kids too, okay? Hey, look at me! I'm talking to you! Did they cut your tongue too? You must really be a nasty one!"

Still seated on my chest, he gauges my expression. Pain is easier to manage than anger. Remaining as still as I can, in spite of his knees sinking into my ribs, I plunge my gaze into his. For a moment, destabilized, he looks for his group and the girl with the phone. With a quick gesture, he beckons her to come closer to our faces.

To them, I am an Object, and as an Object, I am expected to appear versatile, yet constant in my mood. At no time, under any pretext, can my existence amount to more than being that Object, which executes and obeys.

"You should be ashamed that you let those whites do this to you," the Master whispers in my ear. "I don't care about those statistics that say that the large majority of the slaves are white and that BC19, because of its randomized and random-based selection, is not racist or whatever. It's white people who created this system."

He smiles and tightens his grip on my neck.

"Slaves like you are deviant, they take pleasure in the pain that is inflicted on them every day so that they don't have to pay for anything. So that we have to feel bad for you. If you wanted to, you could have put this situation to an end. But you prefer living like the parasites!" he recites, turning to the phone. "Jen, please tell me that you got that on the video? Bruh, this Object's stupid face inspired me, I never sounded so... what is it again... pertinent! Pertinent, you don't know what it means, Object?"

I fight with all my strength the wave of anger regaining possession of my body, but my fist is already gone. My hand animated by itself strikes the air near the Master's face. He dodged it, but in the brawl, I manage to slide on my belly and start to crawl. I get up to run, but I am held back by the collar. The Master's knee hits my stomach and I collapse again. Bent in half on the floor, I vomit all my guts.

"Oh my God, this is disgusting! Move, don't touch him, Darrell! You might just get COVID-19 and BC19 will enslave you too!" the girl with the phone says.

"Don't be stupid, we received the vaccine, and he didn't! I mean, his parents were probably slaves too... or criminals!" the citizen argues.

In spite of everything, he takes care to put a few meters between us. I keep my head down, as I should have done from the beginning, convincing myself that the safety of my family was worth more than my ego or my persona.

"Anyway, let's go before we're late for the Jayden's party, I'm tired of playing with this Thing. It disgusted me. I'll probably need to take a shower and disinfect. Remind me next time to bring masks," the citizen says after a few seconds. "I just hope that no police officer saw us, my parents would kill me if I brought them another vandalism fine."

I stay on the floor until I no longer hear their chat. The cabs take over in the background again. I feel empty, dirty, but I do not have the luxury of exploring the damage to my ego. I take a look at the transparent windows to check that Mistress Salvi did not see anything. I wipe the vomit off the bags, but she will notice. I glance at my uncovered left arm, which the citizen had looked at so contentedly, and whose tattoo Mistress Salvi qualifies as a "pale copy" compared to that of the Masters. Beyond the chains, hidden among symbolic drawings, "Produced in 2002" as well as "New York's property" are inscribed in lighter ink. Made on January 17, 2002 — a date commemorated by the Masters for the third Abolition of the slaves' Liberation —, I am indeed owned by the American government and remain the State of New York's property. Those Masters should have had to pay a fine for damaging a public property, but it would not have mattered if the police had been there. Officers are "more severe when acts of vandalism are committed on public roadside garbage cans than on slaves," once wrote Mohamed in a column of The New York Times, as one of his most famous article titled "Slave Street Harassment's Etiquette".

The BC19 program enslaved Mohamed, the man who was, in all senses other than legally, my adoptive father, for refusing to exercise his duties as an American citizen. He was a talented journalist, an intellectual. He was free, and in order to remain so, he should have behaved as a Master. He sacrificed everything for his values. In a way, he acted like my parents. I run my hand over the scar that erased their names from my tattoo. Mohamed inflicted it on me so that no one could recognize me anymore.

My biological parents, who were also slaves, suffered from COVID-19 and were HIV positive. They were murderers, unfit to take care of a state good, which justified that I had started, so early, to serve for the Masters. Enduring and complying with slave street harassment. And thanks to the #StopSlaveViolence, which had just surpassed this week the #MeTootweets, although the pro-slaverists and segregationists are still as many in number, they are more resentful and prone to cruelty.

Mistress Salvi knocks on the window to draw my attention to the other bags. She shakes her head to show her disapproval, before turning to the stall behind her. I watch her bend down to pet a customer's pet. I squint my eyes and guess that she presents the animal with her iciest smile that I myself am not worthy of. Slaves have few rights, some duties, and many obligations. According to the Constitution, I have as much market value as a bench in Central Park. I also have as many civil rights as this bench, which is still less than most of the Masters' pets.

Following the accusations brought against them, in connection with the 9/11 attacks, during the most challenging moments of their lives, my parents' civil rights got reduced to one-quarter of the bench. Slipping my hand in one of my wet pockets, I remember the precious property, which I stole earlier.

Despite what had been said, I felt, for my parents, infinite compassion. While Mistress Salvi and I were in a Barnes & Noble, I saw a memoir about the 9/11 attacks. I had a hard time recognizing my parents on the cover of the book because since those events, it is forbidden in Freetown to keep anything reminiscent of the traitors who helped Al-Qaida's terrorists. The traitors who caused the embargo on Freetown. Mistress Salvi, as most Masters, believes that I cannot read, so she always lets me go with her into the bookstores. Since no one was paying attention to me, I managed to tear out another page with the photo of my parents. The most famous one taken at the time of their arrest.

I struggle getting the picture out of my pocket in one bit. It is torn right between my father's cold face and my mother's stern expression. That's how they've always been presented to me, unavailable for anything that was not related to their ideology. Conceived while they were on the run, I was an accident. I cluttered them up. I close my eyes, letting my fingers slide over the image. I adjust those indifferent faces to the mold of tenderness, into which my imagination forces them to enter. Without much effort, I create, I make excuses for them; they had certainly struggled all their lives to elevate themselves, but also to allow me to transcend.

"They had committed themselves to be disobedient and had loved you so sincerely, with all the depth of their affection," I utter, like a prayer, these words Mohamed used to pronounce at the moment of tucking me in.

And if those words were not to be a fantasy he created for me, it would have been a grand gesture from my parents because what is unofficially forbidden to us — happiness, in all its forms — is comparable to water that rots wood, alters, and lowers our market value. It is intrinsically embarrassed by our condition of servitude, incompatible, and unwilling to compromise. Central Park benches suffer from the rain and slaves do not need to be jovial; joy softens their flesh. They need to function.

However, this love, which I like to proclaim myself to inherit, must compensate for the desolation and vice also transmitted in their blood. My fingers close on the photo and it wrinkles. I finish tearing it up completely and put the soaked pieces back in my pocket. If I am caught with it, Mohamed will be in trouble.

In addition to the weight of their crime, my parents left me the infected blood that justified my enslavement. I am SRAS-CoV-2 positive and have not been tested for HIV yet. In any case, I will never have access to the necessary class of care. Masters like Mistress Salvi refuse me entry to pharmacies since the story of this slave who killed his Mistress by poisoning her with a stolen bottle. I now need the signature and authorization of my Weekmaster or Weekmistress in my slave file to legally enter shops like pharmacies. I turn again to the transparent windows overlooking the stalls that are closest to the cash register; Mistress Salvi is still discussing with the pet's owner, waiting in line to pay her bill.

"Aren't you finally going to leave?" another voice calls behind me.

I pivot slowly toward the bus shelter near which I dropped Mistress Salvi's other shopping bags.

"Don't you see this sign? Oh yes, it's true, you surely don't know how to read."

The voice is threatening now. I recognize the bored accent and mean tone of the Hispanic-Masters. As I hesitate to answer him, the man finally takes a few steps towards me, in the rain, leaving the porch of the grocery store, separated from the pharmacy by another kiosk. He throws his scarcely consumed cigarette on my fake Converse shoes. The sign, at this point, perfectly legible on the front window of the grocery store, indicates that the presence of slaves is strictly prohibited, even outside the shop. However, Masters hate literate slaves and do not like to be contradicted in their beliefs. I pretend not to understand what I have just seen. It is a poisoned gift that Mohamed gave us with this education.

"I don't want Objects like you near my business, you understand?"

"I am waiting for my Mistress, sir. She entered the pharmacy."

"You think I didn't see you? You've been causing trouble for the passers-by all this time! I'll have a word with your Mistress anyway. Go wait for her further. You've been here for quite some time; you're scaring away my customers."

I am heading to the bus shelter, but he stops me with a quick gesture. This time, instead of letting myself be consumed by anger, I anticipate better what will happen next. I fill my mind with more lighter, more solid thoughts. I rummage through the memories that I made of my parents, through those that were merged with the peaceful moments Mohamed, Imane, Ho-Jin, and I truly shared.

Mohamed's voice begins to enumerate in my mind our C. P. D. T., my lips quivering in tune: first of all, get into condition, then parcel the emotions out, denature them, transforming the fear into a source of rejoicing. One must also take advantage of this moment, to be thankful for managing, hiding those feelings so well, because the greatest strength of a slave is perhaps that of "being able to lie perfectly to himself," he always says. Brutalizing your emotions is a little price to pay for the persona to remain intact, safe, and, more importantly, functional.

Nevertheless, as the grip tightens around my fingers, I lower my eyes, for a brief moment, to the bare Master's left arm. Mine, also revealed by the same type of jacket, sleeveless on the left side, moves to protect my neck, making the light metal circles on my wrist tinkle.

I wish that the raindrops sliding on our skins would turn into blades, making these inscriptions that sealed our fates invisible. I would have made this sacrifice of blood; I would have cut my flesh so that the tattoo of the slaves would disappear from my body, so that the silver chains on my wrists would be broken.

I would have cut this man's skin erasing from his body, the Americans' tattoo, which gave him all the rights over me.

Hettaare!

But the citizen's fist falls on my face, pulling me away from this bloody dream.

Hettaare!

#

End of trailer — Advertising message from Cogito™ Entertainment

Information to the users of the E.R.G.O. Prospect Technology and the Cogito™ Entertainment Home Simulators:

Read this package insert carefully. There, you will find all the important information about this product and this particular thought experiment. This simulation is brought to you by Cogito™ Entertainment, in collaboration with the Ergosummit Studios, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the E.R.G.O. Prospect Technology's use and discovery. To get the most benefit from it, please utilize the Orbiculus Rift VR and other accessories according to the package insert. Keep this package insert so that you can reread it later if necessary. 

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459908

Because of its crude nature, this thought experiment might be shocking to some users whose discretion is advised.

The E.R.G.O. Prospect Technology offered humanity a chance at spiritual and empathetic development, virtuous enlightenment, improvement of emotional intelligence, and open-mindedness of its benefactors ever since its creation in Max Young's garage in 2080, almost ten years ago. Its rapid success allowed her to build her empire, the Cogito™ Entertainment companies. Widely acclaimed by sociologists, doctors and politicians, to contribute to a better understanding of the human mind, Young's technology allowed her to obtain a first Nobel Prize in 2084, and a second one in 2087. Through the thought experiments first proposed in special playrooms on the Gosul Console, "a rather cumbersome machine" confessed Young, she fulfilled the wish to literally put humans in the place of others to improve their communication skills and conception of their deep nature.

Today, after years of work combining the expertise of designers, engineers, artists, and philosophers, among other amazing and enthusiastic creators who contributed to this project, millions of households around the world are benefiting from the E.R.G.O. Prospect Technology on the latest portable simulator. This, totaling a thousand hours of connections per day and valued experiments, helping at all times, make humanity better, and aligning us with the year 2100 peace objectives formulated by the UN in its post-World War III revival program; Utopia.

It's from the same perspective, driven by the same vision, that Young decided to join forces with Ergosummit Studios and their multiple times Oscar winner, director L. W. Olade, to produce a simulation that is particularly close to the heart of our C.E.O. Having committed herself to stem all forms of discrimination, she hopes that the story of the young Kanoa's avatar who you'll be impersonating, will make us attentive and collaborative to fight against the injustices committed by our fellow human beings; and the unconscious biases from which we suffer, just like the previous thought experiments managed to do so far.

As with every simulation, mandatory personality, psychological, humanity and kindness tests will follow the end of the experiment. Their results will be compared with the ones obtained by our sales specialists when the experiment was purchased. This will allow us to adjust upwards the E.M.P.A.T.H.Y. doses delivered by the agents of the Federal Bureau of Inner Peace, an organism of the state with which we work.

We would like to remind you that the experiments proposed by Cogito™ Entertainment are a new, less restrictive and yet just as effective alternative to the compulsory hours of community service imposed by the Utopia international security program that the UN launched in 2040, following the third World War, aimed at guaranteeing absolute peace within states but also between states. The E.M.P.A.T.H.Y. doses obtained as a result of these hours of work, as well as that obtained from the complete realization of Cogito™ Entertainment's experiments, make it possible to maintain fit and peaceful individuals in a society working for absolute peace. The UN recently renewed the agreement signed with Young concerning the substitution of communal work hours by experiments on Cogito Entertainment's simulators, as long as it will keep on having a true and safe effect on the behavior of our users. We are proud to continue to remain the only company that has earned the trust of the Member States to make our own distribution of E.M.P.A.T.H.Y. doses, ever since the Utopia program was launched.

Moreover, the same Cogito™ Entertainment simulators are used in rehabilitation centers, reintegrating and reteaching how to share, understand and empathize to individuals who have unfortunately refused or missed their E.M.P.A.T.H.Y. doses. We share with the UN and all its member states a vision of the future of humanity where the word "war" and the pain it causes will no longer exist.

Check again that your hardware has been installed as per the application manual, or call our customer service to help you test and adjust your Orbiculus Rift VR to your software. Our hotline is available 24/7.

It's now time for you to put on your Orbiculus Rift VR and become a better version of yourself. We wish you an excellent escapade and look forward to meeting you for new experiments in the Cogito™ Entertainment simulators.

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Maya Park, Product Designer, and Yoon Hee-Chul, Projects Manager, responsible for European and African content