Triumph of the Freaks

by Tom Ball (October 2023)

The Intrigue, James Ensor, 1890

It was Halloween, A.D. 2134, and most humans had been changed into freaks who didn’t even look human; they rather looked like hideous monsters. The freaks could hardly wait for Halloween parties in which they could all wear a mask of new age monsters, that looked cleverer than they did. Cleverness was merged with hideousness. They were all Alien types of beauty.

I was one of the few human survivors, and we decided on a 10-year trip to Star Sirius System, to get away from the monstrous freaks, but it was just a stepping-stone. We planned on a much longer voyage, to try and get away. We all wanted to go, but we picked only the top 1,000 humans for the trip. Most of us knew that the freaks would follow us and ruin our civilization, but we pretended otherwise.

The trip to Sirius didn’t go well from the start, and everyone seemed to hate everyone else. When we finally arrived on Sirius, 200 had killed themselves and 155 had been murdered. The murderers were 41 in number and were all executed, so that left us only 604 survivors. I went to the main Earth-like Moon, along with 599 others where we all had our own freehold. And we had 600 kids in total in that first year, all born as adults.

It seemed that everyone wanted to spend time at masquerade balls. The masks obscured people’s voices and costumes obscured their bodies. We played mind games with one another, but we usually knew who it was, although some were great actors and actresses. It made me think that many of the humans were tainted by freakiness.

As time passed, some had ugly faces of freaks. They had been hypnotized to be so, by a few freaks in human clothing. But we didn’t know who were freaks and warned the people not to let themselves be hypnotized—but it seemed that they were hypnotized while they slept. Finally, we were all freak minds, and everyone adopted a monstrous face. And they kept changing their faces, so no one knew who they originally were, including they, themselves. We built “beautiful buildings” which were actually quite disgusting, and all the children were converted to freakdom. Although I was now a freak, part of me wished it was otherwise, and life made me nauseous. But the freaks had triumphed, no doubt about it. But it seemed strange that they had won so quickly and easily. But of course, it was a strange World. And the strangest of all freaks were our leaders. The strangeness was not limited to looks, but also included strange ways of thinking. The leaders, figured ugliness was beauty and vice versa and this included ugly deeds or just plain weirdness. For example, they thought science was only useful to help them gain control and now that they had control, they eliminated new science. Spacecraft went fast enough, and their leaders were maximum IQ, no need for more science.

I bred with the females, even though they made me sick. And I had strange dreams of abstract art-faced freaks. I figured this was the future. And these freaks in the dream just used MRT (Mind Reading Technology) to communicate and it was easy to see who was the strangest and therefore born to lead. My thoughts, however, were not so strange compared to the leaders.

The freak women all gave birth after a pregnancy of just 1-4 months and these offspring were born fully grown and their minds reached adulthood after just 1 year, so the population was growing fast and, now in the year 2145 A.D., there were 40 billion freaks and no humans left, not even in zoos. Humans had disappeared without a trace and most freaks forgot all about them.

But I remembered being human and the good times I’d had. Now, good times involved taking drugs to warp one’s mind and make it strange and listening to bizarre music and watching bizarre movies that had no rhyme or reason and, of course, breeding. The idea of sex was to create freak children, but we did gain some pleasure from it. But not like human sex.

I had some freak friends who I tried to talk with, but their minds were abstract, and they didn’t want to do things for pleasure. But at least my friends could talk in a semi-sane way about art and movies. Nearly all the freaks I regarded as insane. Some went too far with their insane behavior and were destructive and had to be put in a “rebirth” in which they kept their body and memories but were not so destructively crazy in their conscious mind.

It must be noted that the freaks came to power without much violence. They called it “The Golden Revolution” and they all really liked gold and peace. Of course, one could argue that the takeover of human brains was violent, but they all seemed to agree it was peaceful and was what humans wanted.

Our babies were all taught to be peaceful. Murder was punished with a forced rebirth, and one had to be a slave to the mother of the murdered persona. Indeed, there were classes of freak society. At the bottom were slaves, who couldn’t create strange art or weren’t interested in breeding. Then there was the middle class with an average IQ of B+. I was included in this group. And the elite 1 in 1000, were the leaders. The leaders wanted to replace all those who had previously been human with fresh freaks with a clean memory. This included me, of course. But they were phasing us out. Only the leaders had eternal youth. Everyone else died around 80 years old. And I was 60 already and could die at any time. I didn’t get much enjoyment from life and so didn’t worry about death. In fact, I kind of looked forward to dying.

And … so that’s what happened. I am writing this account for future humanoids who might benefit from my story.

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Tom Ball has published novels, novellas, short stories, poetry and flash fiction and has appeared in 41 publications. His website is https://tomballbooks.com

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