11-26-2005, 06:30 AM
Author's note: I have Aspergers, and am a writer. I decided to post this short story I wrote recently - it is from an imagined NT's point of view, after society has progressed to a stage where people on the Autistic Spectrum are the majority in the population. In fact, the old NT who is the main character could very well be the last of his kind left on earth. I wanted to look at how he might cope with the knowledge. I hope you enjoy the story.
Majority Rules
Alison Venugoban
Old Colin Rankin sat on his porch, sipped his beer and stared out over the children’s playing field directly across from his house. Although it was a fine summer’s day, the area was deserted. Now and then a slight breeze managed enough energy to ripple the parched grass and set the children’s swings rocking to and fro in a faded semblance of life.
“Call incoming,” a voice whispered in his ear, and Col focused attention on the mobile implant. His sight of the park was overlaid by a 3-D image of his daughter Rebecca.
“Dad, I won’t be able to get up to see you this weekend. Lisa’s Facilitator’s gone down with some tummy-bug and I can’t get another one at such short notice. And you know I can’t bring her and Russ with me – they can’t take that sort of disruption to their routine.”
Colin frowned. His daughter’s Sunday visits were a bright spot in his otherwise dull existence; he hated having to miss one. “What about getting Shawn to stay with them?” he suggested. “He’s pretty good at Facilitation – couldn’t he manage them both for a couple of hours?”
“Shawn’s gone up to a school conference in Sydney for the day,” Rebecca answered. Although her expression never changed, Col knew her well enough to pick up a hint of pride in her voice. “He’s guest speaker on Neurotypical Culture as seen from an Aspie’s point of view.” She paused, then added, “He’s using you as his NT model, Dad!”
Colin felt unimpressed. There were few enough Neurotypicals left on Earth nowadays; most had shipped out to the colonies years ago, leaving the old and the ill and the stubborn behind. “Neurotypical” was a misnomer anyway: the Autistics were the majority population of the earth nowadays.
“Well, if you can’t make it, I s’pose you can’t,” he answered. He didn’t bother to hide the disappointment in his voice; it was doubtful Rebecca would even notice, and if she did, she wouldn’t understand his reaction.
He knew better than to suggest he visit her. With a Savant husband and daughter, and only Rebecca Facilitating, he’d be as good as by himself anyway. While the Savants were the geniuses of the Autistic Spectrum, undoubtedly brilliant, they were so deeply immersed in the abstract that they could not take care of the many small details of living. They even needed help going to the toilet, Colin thought with a shudder. Rebecca would be just too busy to sit and talk to him.
“I’ll see you next Sunday, Dad. Gotta go, the family needs feeding. They’re getting restive.” She turned and shared the sight of her husband and her daughter with Colin; the adult man was staring into space, idly flapping his hands as he downloaded his thoughts directly into a computer via his implant. Beside him, seven year old Lisa rocked back and forwards, humming in a monotone as she fitted together a 3-D fractal jigsaw without apparently needing to do more than glance at each piece for a second. The multi-layered complexity of the thing threatened to give Colin a headache just by looking at it.
Col’s stomach clenched with the familiar creeped-out feeling. Unbidden, a long-buried fragment of memory arose in his mind, a prayer his old Scottish grandmother used to say to ward off the terror of things she didn’t understand: “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, from things that go bump in the night, may the Good Lord protect us…”
“Bye ’Beccy,” Col muttered, but the image on his retina had mercifully faded as his daughter cut the connection to care for the two Savants.
Col took another sip from his can, scowling. Things that go bump in the night, indeed. He could kid himself that Rebecca and his grandson Shawn were “normal”. People with Aspergers were the high-functioning members of the autistic spectrum, they would at least talk to Colin, instead of acting as if he were invisible. But Russ and Lisa? Colin didn’t even know if they registered his existence at all.
Huh! Shawn was only thirteen years old, Colin thought. Being a guest speaker at a conference, even for school, just seemed to him wrong. He knew he was being hopelessly old-fashioned, but Shawn should have been playing on that field across the road, kicking a ball with his father while Lisa played on the swing, flying in high arcs in the air and shrieking with childish laughter as Col pushed her. And then he would have bought the kids an ice-cream cone each from the Mr Whippy van when the familiar strains of “Greensleaves” rang out over the hot summer afternoon…
He suddenly didn’t care that it was genius Savants like his son-in-law that had made development of the antimatter drive and the colonies possible; he should have been playing with his children, with a ball, in the park. That would have been normal, at least as Colin understood it. But no, he needed Rebecca, his high-functioning Autistic wife, to feed and bathe and clothe his body while his mind considered the infinite possibilities of the universe.
Col drained the last of the beer with an unhappy grimace. Without Rebecca’s expected visit he was at a loose end. He glanced down at Barney, wondering if he was up for a walk, but the old dog lay panting in the shade, clearly not interested. Truth be told, Col didn’t particularly want to venture out into the hot sun either. The baking playing field was unappealing with no others using it. He remembered the days when it had been full of people, sometimes several games going on at once, a wonderful kaleidoscope of shouting, cheering, heckling, competitive people.
Shawn had never shown any interest in sport, Col thought, his mind returning to his grandson. He was an Aspie after all, just like his mother. When Rebecca was a child, she would accompany Col to the park, then sit – just sit! – on a swing and watch him kick the ball around, never joining in, never playing with the other kids in the park, just patiently waiting for him to finish so they could go back home and she could immerse herself once more in her drawings.
Col remembered his disappointment. Rebecca had been one of the many in the early part of the century diagnosed as the so-called “Autism Epidemic” swept the world. He felt that he’d somehow failed her. If he could have done something, anything, to find a cure…but as Rebecca herself said, there was nothing to cure. She was who she was, and all Col could do was accept it.
At least she wasn’t a Savant. Col repressed a shudder. He tried not to be prejudiced, he really did, but they just freaked him out. The way they didn’t make eye contact ever, their silence, their helplessness in everyday living, yes and even their genius, it all made Col feel like an outsider. So different from when Col was a boy.
He grinned reminiscently. Ah now, when he was a boy! What a footy player he’d been, and when it wasn’t footy, it was cricket. He’d been one of the best junior bowlers North Griffith Primary School had seen!
And Josh had been as good. The smile disappeared from Col’s face. His Neurotypical son, his pride and joy, who couldn’t understand or fit into the rising tide of Autie culture. The deep depression had led him to suicide at age twenty.
“He could have become a Facilitator,” Col whispered to himself, but it was an old refrain, one worn threadbare from overuse. The ache never left him, not really. His son had been so like him. Col knew Josh would never have managed as an NT-Savant Facilitator. He’d never had the patience, the calm understanding needed to guide the deeply autistic through their day-to-day routines. He’d never even understood his older sister, not really, and she had a relatively mild form of Aspergers.
The sound from across the road had been going on for several minutes, but Col had been too deeply immersed in painful memory to really hear it. But the familiar refrain called to him. The repeated thwack, thud, thwack thud of a ball hitting a wall…
Col’s head came up as he scanned the area across the road. For a moment he felt that he’d imagined it, but then the steady thwack, thud started again. The sound was coming from the high brick wall bordering the park.
Handball! He could see a pair of kids playing handball over there!
He stood so suddenly that Barney jumped and opened one eye reproachfully, but Col didn’t pay him any attention. It had been so long since he’d seen an honest-to-God sport played, even if it was only handball! When the majority of NT’s left, they’d taken their sports with them.
Col left the shade of his porch and walked across the road, feeling happier than he had in a long while. They weren’t very good at the game, he thought, they were fumbling the ball quite a bit, but at least they were playing. Perhaps he’d watch for a bit, he told himself, maybe join in, he could show the kiddies a thing or two about how it should be played…
“Gidday guys,” he hailed as he got closer. “Mind if I watch?”
The handball rolled to a halt in the dust as the pair turned at his approach. Col felt his heart sink into his stomach; his steps faltered.
One of the kids stared past him, through him. As if Colin was not there, he calmly picked up the ball and began again to hit it, inexpertly but with utter concentration, against the wall.
The other child was a girl, Colin realised. Her baggy jeans and top had effectively camouflaged her from the back. She looked at him but never once met his eyes, an eerie echo of Rebecca and Shawn’s behaviour when they were with Colin.
“You can watch,” the girl conceded after a moment.
“I…didn’t think you Auties played sport,” Col said, knowing that Aspies would engage in talk with an NT so long as it was kept strictly logical. He suddenly desperately needed to know why they were playing handball.
The girl appeared to think about his statement. “That’s true,” she affirmed. “We’re not interested.”
“But…but you’re playing handball…” Col’s voice trailed off.
“No we’re not. We’re researching. Luke’s developed a new form of polymer and we’re testing the compressibility of the material manually.” She paused, then said, “You’re a Neurotypical, aren’t you? Why are you here? Why didn’t you go to the colonies with the other NTs?”
Colin stared at her. The candour of the Aspies, he thought wretchedly. Straight to the point, no matter what. “My family…my daughter lives here. She’s all I’ve got left. I stayed because of her.”
“But wouldn’t you be more comfortable with your own kind?”
The girl’s eyes suddenly locked onto his, and as her clear blue gaze met his, he had a disorienting moment, a wrenching déjà vu…
He was the Aztec watching the Spanish Conquistadors disembarking, he was the Austalian Aborigine apprehensively watching the white sails approaching over the ocean, he was the Zulu warrior waiting for the battle against the Boers.
But no, it was more than that, for no matter their racial differences, those people were still people. This was different. The memory rolled on, like a film in his head, and he saw what he truly was.
He was the last Neanderthal watching the Cro-Magnon take over the lands where once he had reigned supreme. People, yes, but not just racially different, more than merely skin-deep. These were a new kind of people. And the fact that it was a bloodless coup made it no less painful: he would have preferred emotion, anger, hatred even. Not this calm negation of his very existence. The distant thwack thud of the ball was the echo of the lonely beating of his heart…
With a sick rush he was back in his own body. The child was still just a kid with freckles and orthodontic braces. But Colin knew that she was not, could never be, his kind. For the first time in his life, he understood. Rebecca didn’t need him, not since she’d become an adult. And he hadn’t stayed for her.
He’d stayed out of pure ***-mindedness, a sense of: this is my land too! I belong here as much as you do!
The girl turned away from him back to the Savant and began murmuring notes into her implant about bounce, height, estimated trajectory…
Col felt his shoulders slump in defeat. He’d known it intellectually all along, but he hadn’t felt it like this before, not really. He was kidding himself that these people were only a little different from him, just a bit removed. The gulf was huge and uncrossable and Col could finally see that.
He left the pair and walked slowly back to his porch, dropping into his chair with a sense of bone weariness. His life was pointless; he was useless baggage just along for the ride as the next wave of human evolution powered ahead.
Barney opened one eye and whined.
“You and me both, mate,” Col agreed heavily.
The tear trickled unheeded down his cheek.
The End.
Majority Rules
Alison Venugoban
Old Colin Rankin sat on his porch, sipped his beer and stared out over the children’s playing field directly across from his house. Although it was a fine summer’s day, the area was deserted. Now and then a slight breeze managed enough energy to ripple the parched grass and set the children’s swings rocking to and fro in a faded semblance of life.
“Call incoming,” a voice whispered in his ear, and Col focused attention on the mobile implant. His sight of the park was overlaid by a 3-D image of his daughter Rebecca.
“Dad, I won’t be able to get up to see you this weekend. Lisa’s Facilitator’s gone down with some tummy-bug and I can’t get another one at such short notice. And you know I can’t bring her and Russ with me – they can’t take that sort of disruption to their routine.”
Colin frowned. His daughter’s Sunday visits were a bright spot in his otherwise dull existence; he hated having to miss one. “What about getting Shawn to stay with them?” he suggested. “He’s pretty good at Facilitation – couldn’t he manage them both for a couple of hours?”
“Shawn’s gone up to a school conference in Sydney for the day,” Rebecca answered. Although her expression never changed, Col knew her well enough to pick up a hint of pride in her voice. “He’s guest speaker on Neurotypical Culture as seen from an Aspie’s point of view.” She paused, then added, “He’s using you as his NT model, Dad!”
Colin felt unimpressed. There were few enough Neurotypicals left on Earth nowadays; most had shipped out to the colonies years ago, leaving the old and the ill and the stubborn behind. “Neurotypical” was a misnomer anyway: the Autistics were the majority population of the earth nowadays.
“Well, if you can’t make it, I s’pose you can’t,” he answered. He didn’t bother to hide the disappointment in his voice; it was doubtful Rebecca would even notice, and if she did, she wouldn’t understand his reaction.
He knew better than to suggest he visit her. With a Savant husband and daughter, and only Rebecca Facilitating, he’d be as good as by himself anyway. While the Savants were the geniuses of the Autistic Spectrum, undoubtedly brilliant, they were so deeply immersed in the abstract that they could not take care of the many small details of living. They even needed help going to the toilet, Colin thought with a shudder. Rebecca would be just too busy to sit and talk to him.
“I’ll see you next Sunday, Dad. Gotta go, the family needs feeding. They’re getting restive.” She turned and shared the sight of her husband and her daughter with Colin; the adult man was staring into space, idly flapping his hands as he downloaded his thoughts directly into a computer via his implant. Beside him, seven year old Lisa rocked back and forwards, humming in a monotone as she fitted together a 3-D fractal jigsaw without apparently needing to do more than glance at each piece for a second. The multi-layered complexity of the thing threatened to give Colin a headache just by looking at it.
Col’s stomach clenched with the familiar creeped-out feeling. Unbidden, a long-buried fragment of memory arose in his mind, a prayer his old Scottish grandmother used to say to ward off the terror of things she didn’t understand: “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, from things that go bump in the night, may the Good Lord protect us…”
“Bye ’Beccy,” Col muttered, but the image on his retina had mercifully faded as his daughter cut the connection to care for the two Savants.
Col took another sip from his can, scowling. Things that go bump in the night, indeed. He could kid himself that Rebecca and his grandson Shawn were “normal”. People with Aspergers were the high-functioning members of the autistic spectrum, they would at least talk to Colin, instead of acting as if he were invisible. But Russ and Lisa? Colin didn’t even know if they registered his existence at all.
Huh! Shawn was only thirteen years old, Colin thought. Being a guest speaker at a conference, even for school, just seemed to him wrong. He knew he was being hopelessly old-fashioned, but Shawn should have been playing on that field across the road, kicking a ball with his father while Lisa played on the swing, flying in high arcs in the air and shrieking with childish laughter as Col pushed her. And then he would have bought the kids an ice-cream cone each from the Mr Whippy van when the familiar strains of “Greensleaves” rang out over the hot summer afternoon…
He suddenly didn’t care that it was genius Savants like his son-in-law that had made development of the antimatter drive and the colonies possible; he should have been playing with his children, with a ball, in the park. That would have been normal, at least as Colin understood it. But no, he needed Rebecca, his high-functioning Autistic wife, to feed and bathe and clothe his body while his mind considered the infinite possibilities of the universe.
Col drained the last of the beer with an unhappy grimace. Without Rebecca’s expected visit he was at a loose end. He glanced down at Barney, wondering if he was up for a walk, but the old dog lay panting in the shade, clearly not interested. Truth be told, Col didn’t particularly want to venture out into the hot sun either. The baking playing field was unappealing with no others using it. He remembered the days when it had been full of people, sometimes several games going on at once, a wonderful kaleidoscope of shouting, cheering, heckling, competitive people.
Shawn had never shown any interest in sport, Col thought, his mind returning to his grandson. He was an Aspie after all, just like his mother. When Rebecca was a child, she would accompany Col to the park, then sit – just sit! – on a swing and watch him kick the ball around, never joining in, never playing with the other kids in the park, just patiently waiting for him to finish so they could go back home and she could immerse herself once more in her drawings.
Col remembered his disappointment. Rebecca had been one of the many in the early part of the century diagnosed as the so-called “Autism Epidemic” swept the world. He felt that he’d somehow failed her. If he could have done something, anything, to find a cure…but as Rebecca herself said, there was nothing to cure. She was who she was, and all Col could do was accept it.
At least she wasn’t a Savant. Col repressed a shudder. He tried not to be prejudiced, he really did, but they just freaked him out. The way they didn’t make eye contact ever, their silence, their helplessness in everyday living, yes and even their genius, it all made Col feel like an outsider. So different from when Col was a boy.
He grinned reminiscently. Ah now, when he was a boy! What a footy player he’d been, and when it wasn’t footy, it was cricket. He’d been one of the best junior bowlers North Griffith Primary School had seen!
And Josh had been as good. The smile disappeared from Col’s face. His Neurotypical son, his pride and joy, who couldn’t understand or fit into the rising tide of Autie culture. The deep depression had led him to suicide at age twenty.
“He could have become a Facilitator,” Col whispered to himself, but it was an old refrain, one worn threadbare from overuse. The ache never left him, not really. His son had been so like him. Col knew Josh would never have managed as an NT-Savant Facilitator. He’d never had the patience, the calm understanding needed to guide the deeply autistic through their day-to-day routines. He’d never even understood his older sister, not really, and she had a relatively mild form of Aspergers.
The sound from across the road had been going on for several minutes, but Col had been too deeply immersed in painful memory to really hear it. But the familiar refrain called to him. The repeated thwack, thud, thwack thud of a ball hitting a wall…
Col’s head came up as he scanned the area across the road. For a moment he felt that he’d imagined it, but then the steady thwack, thud started again. The sound was coming from the high brick wall bordering the park.
Handball! He could see a pair of kids playing handball over there!
He stood so suddenly that Barney jumped and opened one eye reproachfully, but Col didn’t pay him any attention. It had been so long since he’d seen an honest-to-God sport played, even if it was only handball! When the majority of NT’s left, they’d taken their sports with them.
Col left the shade of his porch and walked across the road, feeling happier than he had in a long while. They weren’t very good at the game, he thought, they were fumbling the ball quite a bit, but at least they were playing. Perhaps he’d watch for a bit, he told himself, maybe join in, he could show the kiddies a thing or two about how it should be played…
“Gidday guys,” he hailed as he got closer. “Mind if I watch?”
The handball rolled to a halt in the dust as the pair turned at his approach. Col felt his heart sink into his stomach; his steps faltered.
One of the kids stared past him, through him. As if Colin was not there, he calmly picked up the ball and began again to hit it, inexpertly but with utter concentration, against the wall.
The other child was a girl, Colin realised. Her baggy jeans and top had effectively camouflaged her from the back. She looked at him but never once met his eyes, an eerie echo of Rebecca and Shawn’s behaviour when they were with Colin.
“You can watch,” the girl conceded after a moment.
“I…didn’t think you Auties played sport,” Col said, knowing that Aspies would engage in talk with an NT so long as it was kept strictly logical. He suddenly desperately needed to know why they were playing handball.
The girl appeared to think about his statement. “That’s true,” she affirmed. “We’re not interested.”
“But…but you’re playing handball…” Col’s voice trailed off.
“No we’re not. We’re researching. Luke’s developed a new form of polymer and we’re testing the compressibility of the material manually.” She paused, then said, “You’re a Neurotypical, aren’t you? Why are you here? Why didn’t you go to the colonies with the other NTs?”
Colin stared at her. The candour of the Aspies, he thought wretchedly. Straight to the point, no matter what. “My family…my daughter lives here. She’s all I’ve got left. I stayed because of her.”
“But wouldn’t you be more comfortable with your own kind?”
The girl’s eyes suddenly locked onto his, and as her clear blue gaze met his, he had a disorienting moment, a wrenching déjà vu…
He was the Aztec watching the Spanish Conquistadors disembarking, he was the Austalian Aborigine apprehensively watching the white sails approaching over the ocean, he was the Zulu warrior waiting for the battle against the Boers.
But no, it was more than that, for no matter their racial differences, those people were still people. This was different. The memory rolled on, like a film in his head, and he saw what he truly was.
He was the last Neanderthal watching the Cro-Magnon take over the lands where once he had reigned supreme. People, yes, but not just racially different, more than merely skin-deep. These were a new kind of people. And the fact that it was a bloodless coup made it no less painful: he would have preferred emotion, anger, hatred even. Not this calm negation of his very existence. The distant thwack thud of the ball was the echo of the lonely beating of his heart…
With a sick rush he was back in his own body. The child was still just a kid with freckles and orthodontic braces. But Colin knew that she was not, could never be, his kind. For the first time in his life, he understood. Rebecca didn’t need him, not since she’d become an adult. And he hadn’t stayed for her.
He’d stayed out of pure ***-mindedness, a sense of: this is my land too! I belong here as much as you do!
The girl turned away from him back to the Savant and began murmuring notes into her implant about bounce, height, estimated trajectory…
Col felt his shoulders slump in defeat. He’d known it intellectually all along, but he hadn’t felt it like this before, not really. He was kidding himself that these people were only a little different from him, just a bit removed. The gulf was huge and uncrossable and Col could finally see that.
He left the pair and walked slowly back to his porch, dropping into his chair with a sense of bone weariness. His life was pointless; he was useless baggage just along for the ride as the next wave of human evolution powered ahead.
Barney opened one eye and whined.
“You and me both, mate,” Col agreed heavily.
The tear trickled unheeded down his cheek.
The End.