This was all once a dark, polluted, monstrous, world. She read. Two legged animals ruled the world and thought it would last forever; the world would always be glorious, while they killed, and raped, and robbed, and caused each other pain and depression. But their realities were dwindling. Worst of all were their eyes... they gleamed underneath, like fireballs, similar to the one that danced above them in the sky. These animals, although they fought, they also loved. But their love would control them, and the two legged animals would lust for it, and for each other. Eventually, they over populated, eating their resources and consuming their crops. They killed other species of animals... even when they did not need to. Life grew more and more difficult and some two legged animals would go nights without sleep. They did not see anything wrong with that, yet some even resorted to a thing called... suicide.

“Abby?” She got her husband's message. It interrupted her story. She was expecting him to message. Today would be the day their daughter, Anna would be given her goggles. After today she would be able to think and use her brain. Abby was excited. Today was the day she would read her daughter for the first time.

Two years ago she gave birth. Abby remembers, after the pain, the blinking red dot appearing her screen. She pondered what her first word would be.

“Ya, Ethan?”

“It’s time. They are here.”

Ethan and Abby got into the vehicle sent to get them and read instructions given to them along the way. The driver was a robot programed to take people from one place to the facility where all newborns are sent and cared for until they are given goggles at the age of two. This was an exciting time for all parents because it was the second time they would leave the house. Even when they were children and their little siblings were born, they stayed home while their parents left the house. It was a rare thing; to leave the house. Only done when a married give birth, and two years after that. When they pick up their child. When two people decide to marry a house is then given two them and the pills for food and water are sent to them every month. The goggles tell you when you are hungry or thirsty.


Children were kept in a facility for the first two years of their lives. They needed to be monitored while they did not have the goggles. We are born without the goggles, yet they cannot live without them. The goggles are what allows them to think.

? ? ?


Stories are told about a time before there were goggles. The land was inhabited with these two legged animals and this place was a giant garbage dump, but they did write stories and the most famous today are the fictional stories being discovered as we speak. Every now and then a new story mysteriously finds itself online. These new stories are usually fictional and from the two legged animals point of view.
In a lot of the older storied nobody can easily breath and everything is dark and grey. These things called plants are said to provide everyone with food, and clean air, and these other creatures, some with more hair, some swimming, some with scales, some big, some small, some flying, some crawling, are really just like us.
These stories are most likely discoveries from the savage age. Nobody knew what to do or how to think so the two legged animals ruled the world till they died out. Nobody has record of how, because we were all savages, yet they had wonderful imagination. They are still stories. Written, mysterious, stories, most about a strange and kind of nerve racking place nobody can simulate in there goggles. There are pictures of these stories. Believe to be all drawn by the most magnificent of artists, called photographers.

As time went on. These settings grew dark, getting closer and closer to what seemed to be the end of the two legged animals domination. But the most recently discovered stories are about a beautiful, glorious, world outside of our imagination


? ? ? 1 years later ? ? ?


As time went on... the world began to heal itself. With the two legged animals all in a mass hibernation, the world caught up to time. All the garbage began to compost. The land became rich once again, and the plants learned to grow bigger, and stronger, providing the most vibrant of fruits imaginable; and it kept growing, and rotting, and composting, and growing, and the plants grew more and more abundantly, and the animals who were not hibernating lived on; growing bigger, and stronger. And the two legged animals were silent. Blind to the world they once ruled, eating the final resources they could control... the dead.

“Ethan, honey what are you up to?” Abby texted in curiosity.

“Oh, just reading. How is Anna?”

“She’s fine. She is watching her school just as she should be, but -”

“But what?”

“You remember what the facilitator said?”

“Abby, you do not need to worry about that. I have told you. Anna did not have her goggles yet, how could she have talked anyway? Most of the newborns do not talk.”

“Yes, but - not a sound? They said she did not even cry like the others. As if she were muted.”

“So? She is not a newborn anymore. She has no need to talk now that she can think.”

“Okay. I guess you’re right. But it still concerns me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess you can’t carry any other user for nine months without wanting them to be perfect. And I wonder if it has anything to do with why she cannot keep up with the other student users watching her school.”

“Yes, but they are only in preschool. She will catch up soon. I promise.” Ethan closed with that and switched tabs back to his book.

? ? ? 13 years later ? ? ?


The scores were all listed in front of the eyes of all the students in Anna’s class. Next to every name was a 100%, as expected, but one figure stood out. It was Anna’s 82%.

“Look at Anna’s score! It’s like she does not know how to take a test.” A student claimed, and rather enjoyably.

“I am not good at science.” Anna retrieved, “You know that”.

“And math, and English, and Spanish, and -”

“Ya. Why can you not think like the rest of us, Anna?” One asked. “The information is always there to study. What do you do all day?”

“I do not know. It is just so boring to do nothing but think and study!” Anna explained.

“You just do not know how to think!”

And with that the students laughed and continued their torment. Anna finally decided to switch tabs and to ignore what everyone was saying, but the damage was still there. Even the thought of them still laughing and making jokes was tearing her apart inside. The worst was that it was not the first, and Anna thought it would not be the last.
Anna wanted her parents. But there is nothing more painful than tasting the disappointment of your own parents. She tabbed over; expecting comfort and mental support. But before they could see her on their radar, they began.

“I just do not know what to do, Ethan.” Whine Abby.

“So she is not as smart as the other students -”

“A 82... a 82... she is only 82% of what she needs to be. Why can she not be like all the other kids? Why does she have to be so difficult?” At this point Anna began to cry, but no noises came. “Even at the institution, before she was able to think. She never spoke. They are supposed to be able to speak a little without the goggles. Aren’t they?”

“Yes, I know. She is less intelligent. I do not know what to do either, but-”


This is all Anna heard before she ran. The thought of her always being dumb, even when she was born. I will always be dumb. She thought. She ran. Her thinking was flustered and she did not think, or care, about the outside world. She opened the door and ran out.

Her parents hears the door slam, but did not know what it was. Ethan checked for Anna on the radar, but saw her dot was moving. Moving fast. Eventually too far to be detected.


“Anna?”

They did not know what to do.

? ? ?


Anna was running through the fields, passed fallen signs of street names that have not been read for centuries. Her goggles, sensed her leaving the house (assuming she was going to the hospital) and pulled a maze up, telling her where to turn. She saw the maze, but did not listen to the directions.

“Turn left now” “Turn back now” “Make a u-turn now”

It just kept going and going and would not stop or giver her a break. The goggles were becoming her worst enemy, because she thought it was her brain doing this and telling her she is stupid for leaving. Anna no longer cared if what she was doing was stupid or not. Still, she hated herself.

“Stupid brain! Stop! Just Stop!” She tried to say.

She kept running. Trying to get away from everything. Trying to escape her reality. Not knowing that the real world does not change if you are not as smart as the others. The world only changes if actions speak up and make it change.


When the radar no longer showed her the map maze, she stopped running.

“You are no longer on any road; turn around now”

“Shut up! Please, please, just shut up!” She mumbles but was mute.

The goggles would not. They could not hear Anna’s words. Only the thoughts she would send directly to them.

But one thought was too big to not be sent.

“Stop. Stay where you are. Contacting suicide hotline.”
Anna did not know what that was. At that moment she only knew she wanted to die. She was to too much emotional pain to concentrate. If only she could focus on a physical pain, to block out the emotional pain. But no such devices were heard of, nor did she know how to end her life.

Stupid goggles. She though. I wish you were never on me. Anna then realized. The goggles! They are life. If I take them off I will die.

The goggles continued to beg her. Having no actual effect in making her stop. The goggles could not keep themselves on her. She was the only thing holding them up.


Anna chucked them off her face and threw them over the buff. Her eyes were squinted closed. Suddenly she was afraid for her life. All the fear rushed down her throat and she could not move.

A short while passing informed her of her life. She was not dead. Slowly she opened her eyes. Seeing the buff before her. And the sky and the ground and the trees and the sun and the clouds and the grass and the birds and all the vibrant colors beyond her eyes. Never before has she fathomed such beauty. Mountains laid the horizon and a caterpillar fell from the tree above her and onto her finger. She looked down and examined it. She knew it was a caterpillar because she recognized it from her textbook. Her fingers looked like that of the two legged animals who once ruled the land.

At first she was confused. Thought this was death. But the air romeing her hair was too real to be death. The empty feeling in her stomach was also a good indicator. There were fruits all over the place among trees, brushed, and other crops. Above her head was a monkey in the tree, picking, peeling, and eating a bananas. A fruit usually grown in tropical regions, but the world was short of becoming one tropical forest and a banana tree was now right over her head.

The monkey looked down and saw Anna. He calmly climbed down and examined her. The monkey looked at her like another animals. Interested in her as he has never seen a hairless mammal. Walking on two legges and all. She looked friend though. Defenseless actually. Nothing but a white synthetic shirt and black shorts. Her feet even looked cold. The monkey determined she was a friend and gave her a banana.

Anna ate it. Examining herself and discovering she was a two-legged animals. Like the ones she read about. Then looking out at the land, still eating the banana. This is the world. The land once ruled and trashed. It’s not trashed. It’s beautiful.

The monkey left as he needed to return to his children. Creatures like the monkey had nothing to ever fear. The fruit grew in abundance... as the centuries have passed; animals who were once carnivores had evolved, and were now either herbivores, or omnivores who still have not made the full evolutionary trip. With humans not interfering, everything was able to balance itself out. Abundance of fruits and vegetables and no pollution favored everyone.

Anna even noted how still ancient plant, the banana, tasted much sweeter than her every three hour food tablet.



This is the world. The world is beautiful. And I am not a monster. We are not monsters. Life is better without the goggles. Life is better when you are capable of your own discoveries.

And she never went back.