text: I am Julie, I am useful, I am cattle. The three pills I take every night before I lay in my bed and remain restless for hours. I am Julie; the nourishment pill, it's the sugary sweet green pill that quickly becomes bland and leaves a foul taste in my mouth. It reminds me of the memories I still have of a life. This is my life... Was my life. I am useful; the light blue pill, it pops with an explosion of sweet juice and gives me all the required energy to live. It reminds me that I am needed, needed alive. I am cattle; the preparation pill, a really big awful tasting red pill that prepares my organs to be harvested, it reminds me of my only use, I hate that damn pill... Why do I think this? As a reminder, a reminder of what I am. An awful thing to think but the only thing that works for me now. When I was young I was told that I was very special, I was smart, really smart. I passed all my classes as well as classes three grades ahead of me. I was turning sixteen when I found out I was going to go to university. Three days in and I started having problems. First started the stress. Normal for a college student especially in my position, but soon after I started not being able to sleep at night, it was as though nothing could calm my mind, thinking thinking thinking, repeat repeat repeat, never getting tired, never falling asleep, mulling over the same thoughts, again again and again, such a useless thing, never got things done, just thinking. Some nights I could though, happening near three in the morning I could pass out and have nightmares. The depression was worse, hitting me like a giant blanket, slowly descending upon me but once it hit I was completely pinned. I would sit there and not be able to function, trying to think of how to be happy, was I happy in the moment? No. Then how could I be happy in the future? You would think I would be tired all the time but I wasn't, sometimes I would have all the energy in the world, the next it would be gone and I would curl up into a ball and want nothing more than death. Grades started to fail. I couldn't focus on any sort of work. My family had planned a trip to get a much needed break. I thought “good a vacation to lighten up the mood and relax.” Three days in and I found myself crying on my bed in the room, unable to sleep, unable to stop thinking yet I could never hold onto a single thought. The only thing I could do was to be occupied, play a game, write, anything that kept my attention and occupied me enough so that I could make the long hours of night pass quicker, but I had few of those outlets there so all I could do was think. Mostly about happiness, I will be moving through life soon and I have no idea what makes me happy and what doesn't, I could work to see what made me happy, but how am I supposed to when it is never the same. After the trip was over I thought again that I might have a moment to breath, but I was only thrown into more and more problems, staying up all night thinking about things that made no difference. Acting like a child, I would think that someone didn't like me because they did respond to me right away, fearing the worst, that they did not like me anymore. The most childish things I obsessed over for hours, unable to change the topic in my mind, always afraid. I would bounce between a few different moods, depression, hyperactive mania, a feeling that nothing mattered at all, and a balanced peace, in which I could just be happy in the moment. This one was rare but my favorite. After midterms I hit an all time low, everything hitting me at once I could not sleep at night yet once I finally was able to sleep I would oversleep, after getting me several Fs. My mom took me to a doctor, I was diagnosed with Bipolar depression and an extreme anxiety disorder. My mother and I both froze in out spots. She tried to say something, but all she did was choke on her words before falling silent again, I think she fell in other ways too. This world I am in is very different from how it has been in the past. The world in 2067 witnessed the rise of an empire that threatened to wipe out all that oppose it. The empire was more than capable of doing it too. To defeat them the rest of the world all had to unite as one, and all perform at military efficiency. Anything without a use was destroyed, or recycled into something with one, only all working as one could they able to stop the empire. After the war that claimed a billion lives the world was left with a highly efficient new people, no one had problems like depression, or problems with the body like cerebral palsy, they were either killed, or the problems fixed. People were born into what they would stay in for the rest of their life, and they were good at what they did. Humanity grew ten fold, technology advanced exponentially, life spans ran 25% longer at 170% efficiency. The higher ups gave command to all the lessors, the lessors all did what they were told. No crime, no hunger, no money, no fighting. We even found a way to get nutrients and substance from things other than plants and animals, eliminating the Need to raise and kill animals. this all came at a cost though. No one could live a life with any choice, you did what you did no more, no less. Either one of those brought you only death. It's a perfectly functioning closed system, but humans are not gears to be just used then replaced and thrown away, at least we use to not be. Soon after the war they found a way to reuse useless people too, anyone dysfunctional would be harvested for parts. Kidneys for people who needed them, blood, liver, hearts... Even the brain was thrown into new age AIs. Those who were old enough were immediately taken to be harvested, youth were taken to be raised until ready. They use to raise them pretty well, giving them plenty of time to play and have fun, but that was seen as both inefficient and useless, so now we are given little rooms with small beds to live in, fed only what is needed to keep us healthy, and only go outside to get vitamin D. It's cheaper to get it from the sun than pill form. As one of the dysfunctional I was taken away from my family and thrown into a room to be raised until I was ready to be harvested. There are others here, some as close as a concrete wall away from me, but I have never had an interaction with any of them, the most human interaction I've had since I was taken was with the guard that drove me and escorted me to this place. I know of only about twenty of others, but the facility from the outside looked much bigger. Most of the dysfunctional people were taken twenty years ago when they first started to harvest. Most of this place is probably for the actual act of harvesting itself. Is this really the pinnacle of human society, we are the most advanced we have ever been, but that's like saying I am the oldest right now that I have ever been. We perform as a machine, at one point we put pleasure before all else, eating not for nutrients but for the pleasure of it, we did things like play games, we had useless talents such as ping pong. Years and years before that and you have to fight to survive, we didn't have time for fun, we had to survive. Fast forward centuries and you get what we have now, neither. No fun, no trying to survive. This is all different, not natural. This Is not natural. The first week here is the worst, having the pain of being up all night, and nothing to look forward to during the day it feels infinite, infinite time, infinite pain. After two weeks it starts to not matter anymore, you accept the fact that this is how it is and nothing will change. It's depressing but it makes you feel better, not caring is better than pain. Even in life I had to accept this fact, I constantly looked forward to what I wanted in the future, the problem was I felt just as bad when I got to those points as I did before. I just need to make it till our next vacation I told myself. Halfway through the vacation and I wanted only to be back home. Back home and the pressure of school came back. I had to Learn that what ever situation I was in I had to make the best of it. And in the end nothing matters. I open my eyes to look up at the ceiling, it's the same color white, and the same texture as the walls. Unable to sleep I just lay there, afraid. Afraid of what will happen, afraid of how I will do in the future. I remind myself I need to remain in the moment. Suddenly I have an idea. I walk over to my door, a movable piece of glass in a entire wall of glass. I peer out to see if there are any guards near me. None, I look down find the paper bag that my pills arrived in, I also grab the old pen I found a year ago from under my bed and I start to write. I use to write because I was assigned to do so but this was not for anyone else's purpose but my own. I write about what is happening, how I feel, the past. It helps, gives me something to do, and makes me somewhat tired, I'm actually able to fall asleep at two AM. When nothing matters to you, you do not care for yourself. Not only had I stopped sleeping but I also stopped caring that I wasn't sleeping, I didn't care about what it was doing to me. At the end of the day my mom would ask me If I had eaten, my answers shocked me, most days the answer would be no, or one meal. It's not even that I denied myself food it was that I completely forgot I needed to eat, I didn't get the sensation that I was hungry. I didn't care anymore, the one thing I did care for though was other people, and to hear the fear, anger, and sadness in their voice when they said to eat, to hear that they were worried, hurt like knives being plunged into my side. The one thing I could care for was others, and to hear that I had done something to hurt others sickened me. I rarely cry anymore, I use to a lot, but even before I was put in this place I has stopped. It maybe due to desensitization, nothing matters anymore, nothing is certain, all you know are feelings. But I find myself at night crying. I don't know what for, nothing in particular is happening, I'm not thinking about something sad it just happens. It's like my body is crying for my mind, crying for what is has become what is is going through. From personal experience nothing is useless, no matter how inefficient something is it can still have a use, even if it was not intended for that use. The boy with the broken leg that can't travel very fast can still hold a few sticks at a time to bring back to his family. Writing for anything besides recording useful information was banned a long time ago. It's not always about bringing things to a point, I am writing right here right now for me, not to tell a point or for someone else's enjoyment, but to help me. It is the silent tear shed, not for any usefulness, but just because it helps. Pain is an odd thing, meant as a signal for the body to tell the brain that something is wrong, this it is not enjoyable. I open my mouth and bite onto the side of my thumb, and count to twenty, I let go. It hurts, but it's a feeling. It reminds me that I am actually human, it's reminds me that I can feel. My brain works so much differently than everyone else's. This has always been the case, even before my diagnosis told me that my brain was wrong, I knew I thought differently from other people. Is this really wrong though, is being different such a problem? I was told many times as a kid that I was really nice, really smart. Different doesn't have to be good or bad, it's neutral until given an assessment, in many situations it's a good thing to a certain extent, to our government it's the worst thing imaginable, you need clean cut lines, conformity is key, thus I am a problem. A problem with a solution. I only have a few more months left before my time here ends. I can't say that I want to die, but I know I want this to stop, and if there is nothing afters this then maybe I do want to die. I could try to kill myself, but one it's pointless, just a waste, and two I don't think I could, security is too tight. At one point I could have said that I don't want to die for the sake of others, this was the only thing that kept me going during a difficult time. Telling myself that not only would people be sad if I were gone, but also they would be miss what I gave to their life. I always lived life thinking that no matter what struggles I go through, I could still help out others, even if it was just a small compliment that boosted someone confidence for a little while, or being there to help comfort somebody when they needed it, I lived for this and now I may die for it. All I can do in this moment to be there for others is to let myself be harvested, and hope that my blood saves someone who was in an accident, or my liver may give a recovering alcoholic a way to live and see his family again. My last gift, my body, my life. Today is the day, I'm not excited, but I am ready. The guards that escorted me to the big white room I am in now didn't seem to care about me writing, so I decided to bring it. It's a habit now, to write everything down. There are more of us here than I thought, the twenty or so that arrived with me I would assume, and just about sixty more. All the same age. Half of us seem to know exactly what is going to happen for we are solemn faced and empty, I can tell that a few have just arrived, for they are fearful, they haven't dealt with these thoughts for as long as we have, they have not given up yet. Others seem to be completely oblivious. Just looking at the new surrounding with wonder in their eyes, what's wrong with them? We were all taught about this in school, they should know what's going to happen. A big door opens revealing a long well lit hallway, we shuffle into it while the door slides closed behind us. There is another door at the end that remains closed. The hall has ceiling lights and rounded corners with a black glass like walls. Suddenly the room shifts, not very much but we can all feel the sensation of moment. An elevator? I must have said this aloud because the boy next to me look at me with a very confused look in his eye, but before I can say anything the hall stops and the door opens again to a completely white room. I can tell that the people are stepping out onto something but I can't see yet. Stepping out it opens up into a massive hangar sized room, the conveyor we are on seems to be floating in the air as we head towards the middle of the room. On the sides I can see glass walls with what seem to be nurseries inside, automated arms pick and move babies around. All of us are in shock at the sheer amount of information hitting us. Closer and closer to the center of the room the nurseries change to maternity wards, all maintained by robots. A baby is born, taken to the nursery, then the mother sent out. Oh god. Another conveyor belt intersects this one and on it are the mothers that just left the ward. A boy ahead of me screams in terror as he gets closer to our destination, I try to call to him, to tell him, but a woman stops me. “It doesn't matter, most of them were never taught a language.” The woman tells me. All I can do is fall to the ground as the scream is drowned out by the shutting of a door. “It all turns out the same, it always will, this same thing happened to my grandma, and will happen to my daughter. A whole line of a family, born, raised. Berth a child, then sent to be harvested. Are you ready to see God?” At the end there is a cylindrical tube that one person goes into at a time, it is sound proof so the screams are suddenly stopped by the closing of the door. I'm third in line. I am sitting on the ground crying in terror and all I can do is write. I am Julie, I am useful, I am cattle.