Read Some Werdz in Print Funeral!

A Mortality Event
Werdz by Ted Crumski

     “Crumski!”
     Shit. Incoming. I do not respond.
     “Crumski!” Jensen calls again. He glides toward my workstation, footfalls silent in the visibly effortless locomotion his kind possess, carrying a face that is so aesthetically and mathematically perfect that it is practically featureless. All his impeccable proportions and physical traits, however, belie his repugnant personality.
     He eases to a stop in front of me. “Are you not hearing me, Ted?”
     “Sorry, I’m really concentrating on finishing this piece of the project,” I say, not really sorry. Not really concentrating, either.
     “That’s the problem.” He stiffens and upsets the symmetry of his face with the faintest hint of a glower. “You’re still behind. On top of that, your last build was riddled with errors. You are becoming increasingly without purpose to me.”
     “I don’t know what to say.” I really don’t know what to say.
     “I’m not surprised. It’s a marvel that you manage to dress yourself… in the same clothes again, I see.”
     I glance down at my shabby sweater and threadbare slacks. I don’t care, and my outward appearance doesn’t disguise it. I am trapped, as I often am, between focusing on something other than the conversation in front of me and simply not giving even a tepid fuck. Thus, I continue to sit in silence, stewing over “riddled with errors,” which is a goddamn lie.
     “Do you understand me?” Jensen says. The rise in his voice gives it an odd, chordal quality.
     “Yes,” I mutter, not lifting my head to gaze into his stupid, mesmerizingly splendid eyeballs.
     “No…” He shakes his head. “I mean, can you understand what I’m saying? I rarely vocalize anymore, and when I do it’s to one of you people. I want to make sure I’m dumbing it down enough to sound like one of your blithering type.”
     “Yes.” I sigh, peek at his face—but not at those glimmering, ice-blue eyes—and say, “You’re coming across perfectly clear.”
     “Good. Back to it. This must be finished today. Don’t make me come back over here.”
     I nod and turn to my terminal. Fuck you, Jensen, you beautiful bastard.
     I try not to think about how badly I used to carp about my previous employment. Back then, before the boom of the Beaker Babies, there were elitists and prejudiced jerkwads aplenty. In a distinct way, though, it was harder to tell them apart from the just-well-adjusted-enough-to-coexist. Then we developed perfection one nucleotide at a time, and the “us” and “them” sticky name tags were slapped plainly on the chests of every humanoid walking the streets.
     Alliance against the Synths (or, more colloquially, “SYNTs”) was not as universal as early rhetoric postulated. On one end of the dissent spectrum were violence-obsessed lunatics frothing at the mouth for all manner of heinous “solutions.” On the other were those who didn’t really care in an active way, but had a slightly more than vague distrust of and dislike for our better-looking, better-performing counterparts. This left the rest of natural-born society in two camps: sycophants stumbling over themselves in fawning adoration of their new masters, and nincompoops so oblivious to goings-on outside their self-obsessed social media cocoons that the glowing screens of the digital devices implanted in their palms were the only light sources to illuminate their own cavernous rectums enshrouding their heads. I felt alone as a part of none of these factions. I didn’t much care for people in general, regardless of genetics or birth method; I just wanted to be left the hell alone by everyone.