Muted

Imagine that you are watching your favorite T.V. show and someone walks in and hits the mute button.  The intensity flares up inside of you.  You are having a mini heart attack because all of the images are there.   You are witnessing what is happening, but the full effect is absent.  It’s like you’re being killed.  The knife is in your back because the d--- person muted the information you needed and now they forcing you to watch this mystery unfold and you cannot hear a sound!  This is my life. This is how I live.
My name is Evan.  I was born in 2,987.  I am 9 years old and I am the only person left on the planet who can speak.  I feel disconnected from everyone around me, but more connected to the world itself.  I know what you’re thinking.  You’re asking yourself, why is this kid the last kid on earth who can talk?  It is because with all of the rapid advancements in technology and the human body being hard wired for making life easier.  A combination of the two people lost the gene in the DNA to develop the parts of the body required for speech.  I’m not going to go into detail about these parts because I am not a doctor.  I’m only a nine-year-old kid, after all.   People stopped using their voices and began using email and text to communicate.  The maker of the iPhone Steve something or other, even removed the “Face Time” app on the iPhone.  There is a lot about this new world that nobody really understands.  For example, there is a perception that all of the technology that has become available in the United States has created a perfect society.  Everything and anything that people spoke about was recorded and saved, putting an end to criminal activity in the world, as we know it.  That is the reason I am wanted in all of the fifty states.  I can speak.  I am the only one left on the planet who still has a voice.  What I didn’t realize is that would be the cause of World War 5.
I am very intelligent for a nine-year-old kid.  I have spent thousands of days living on the road with my brother Ike and my dog Cody.  We have journeyed thousands of miles stealing food, trying to find places to sleep at night, basically just trying to stay alive.  We looked like a bunch of poor b------- out there.  My parents disowned me when I was four.  They should have turned me into the police when they realized that I could speak, but they didn’t have the guts.  They did not want anything to do with me because of my condition.  They couldn’t handle my “disability”.  They packed all of their stuff, including Ike and Cody’s, jumped in the car and drove away.   I stood there terrified.  I was completely alone.  When Ike realized they were leaving me behind he grabbed Cody and bolted out of the car.  My brother loved me and didn’t care that I could talk.  He ran toward me with only the clothes on his back and the dog by his side.  He promised that no matter what he would stay by my side.  He had sent me a text message and spelled the word “side” wrong.   Instead the text read, I’ll be right by your dide.  That totally freaked me out.  I thought my own brother was going to kill me, proving that texts can get lost in translation.
After five years on our own, the two of us became tough as nails.  I think that we were the only two homeless people in this “perfect society”.  I also think that’s why I am a wanted criminal.  Not because I could talk, but because we were living proof that there is no such thing as a perfect society.  That is what my story is really about.  Not about my ability, or what some may call my “gift”, or the fact that I was born three weeks prematurely and my only defect was my ability to talk.  My story is about how this technology that we praise is actually killing us, not helping us at all.  I may be the only person in this world that can speak, but I have muted myself from the society that is “perfect”.  This so called perfect society that refused to help me and my brother and my dog, this society that wouldn’t give us food or a place to live.  They ran us out of every town and city that we entered.  They were furious because a couple of homeless kids horrified the society and threatened the government.  We muted them, and that is where this story begins.