Welcome back to Chained Soul, my new serialised novel that I’m releasing right here on my blog, as well as on Tapas and Wattpad. Quick warning: this series does contain strong language, so if that’s not your thing, you’re free to skip this one!
Check out Part One, including a synopsis for the whole series, here!
If you missed Part Nineteen, you can read that here!
Day Twenty
I’m starting to remember all that shit that people used to say about kids and iPads. It sounds stupid, but I actually think they might be onto something. Give a little toddler access to the whole entire world on a rubber-encased slate of metal and they might just go off wandering into it and never come back.
I know that’s not true, to be fair. I know parental controls exist and all that. What am I doing talking about kids, anyway, when I don’t have any?
Well, the only truth to it is that I kinda feel like the kid who’s been given the iPad, except mine is a huge ATM-looking thing and the parental controls are on steroids. I don’t get all the funny little Youtube videos about cartoon animals and floating fruit and all that.
Instead, there are pings, and then there is me jumping up and running across the room – as best I can, given how fucking tiny it is – to wrangle the machine into showing me the newest email. Some of them are complete nonsense, rendered completely incoherent by the censoring, which must be working overtime.
I have a theory that they’ve gone overboard on that too, because some words are appearing half-censored and giving me a sneaky suspicion that their system isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
For example, I have this one, which I can only guess actually was sent by one of those iPad kids who’s just been taught a shit ton of animals in their nursery class:
‘The Animals Email’
hi Robbin!! u hav a animel name and i do too! My name is ##### what is yours? I like doggs and cats and cows and sheep and especialy burds like robins. The wurld has lots of burds like crows and owls and blue ##### and coal ##### and grate ##### and there’s big burds like emus and ostriches and even fancy pea#####!!!! please tell me your favorrite burds and your favorrite animels and also what you like to eat I like choclat and sweets and pizza and also will you be my friend??
That was… somewhat enlightening, I suppose. It brightened my day a bit, compared to the absolute rubbish that’s been coming through the inbox. Now that I’ve got it, part of me wishes I didn’t have it.
I’ve gathered that some people seem to quite strongly dislike me, through no fault of my own (I assume) as I still have no idea what I did to end up in here. I’ve also figured out that, unfortunately, this whole place is probably above board, at least in terms of existing, with how much people are referencing taxes and all of that.
I mean, surely I should be the most pissed about that? I used to pay taxes. I had a job. So theoretically, my taxes are being used to keep me in here, and I don’t fucking want to be in here! If they all hate me so much, which is very much what I’m picking up the vibe of, then they should be happy that just a small donation of their taxes is keeping me miserable in a little box.
I don’t know. I feel like I’m going insane again. Nothing from Helen today. Just pinging. I can’t even hear the footsteps from the corridor outside any more. My brain has replaced everything with silence or pinging. Long, excruciating stretches of nothing, while my ears are primed and ready to hear the ping – then a rush of excitement, even though I know, by now, that excitement is really the wrong feeling – and then disappointment as I have to wade through hashtags and people being quite confused about whether my name is Robin or not, just to decipher that it’s more confusing hatemail.
Maybe I’m a minor celebrity or something. But then why would I be working in a supermarket?
At least everyone else seems to be puzzled by the name, like me. Something that made a bit of sense, when I was thinking about it, was whether people might think I’m in witness protection or something. They change your name for that, don’t they? So maybe everyone thinks I did something horrible but I’m being protected by the government for it.
Like, I hope they’re wrong. But all of this communication has been pretty useless for actually giving me any real answers for all of the questions I have. All I know for certain is that some kid out there really likes animals, and can’t spell for shit.
This place must also be pretty rubbish at communicating to anyone, not just me, since everyone seems to assume that I’ll be able to reply to their messages. I’ve scoured the admittedly very basic computer and all of the buttons, and there’s nothing that seems like a ‘reply’ button.
It’s weird, because the presence of a keyboard implies that I should be able to type things out, and I could type in the sign-in details and everything, but why would I not be able to reply to people?
Privacy issues, maybe. I don’t know. Maybe I’m so dangerous that I can murder people through emails. That’d be kinda funny, and also pretty terrifying. ‘The Psychic Email Murderer’ – I can already see the headlines. If that was the case, then people would be right to dislike me, but I also think it would be wonderfully stupid for this place to then give me a computer with emails on it. What if the mere sight of an email sent me into a psychotic break or something?
Well, nothing they’ve ever done has seemed like a good idea to me, including locking me in here in the first place, so perhaps that would just be on-brand. Who gives a fuck?
In conclusion, my new privilege sucks and is completely pointless, but what else should I have really expected from a place where salt is considered a fucking delicacy?
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Oskar Leonard 