(no subject)

[ladyfirestarter]

It's late at night on August 14th, 2006, and the stars are brilliant in the desert sky outside.

Charlie McGee sits alone at her desk, and writes in blue pen on blank printer paper.

It's been a year. A year ago today.

The last panic attack was Leon, over three months ago. The last incident of unprovoked violence was Sarai, nearly five months ago. They're all speaking more directly and comprehensibly, especially with the staff; with each other, they speak a kind of shorthand that they all seem to understand. Sometimes one will "translate" for another when an adult asks for clarification, in the way of siblings (though in a strange inversion of typical sibling-translation, it's the younger ones -- the ones who were in the Academy for the shortest amount of time -- who more often speak for the older ones).

They're all doing better. They are. Better than some of us thought possible.

But they're never going to be normal.



I keep thinking about what my father said thought about, that last month at Granther's. That it might be necessary for me to be in custody of some kind my whole life, for my own protection; unfair, but necessary.

He was wrong about that, in the end, and he would have been glad to be wrong.

But I'm wondering the same thing, with these kids. It's not just their condition that presents problems; it's their level of anachronism. How many of us could step into the fifteenth century and expect to function in society? These kids know an appalling amount about the future -- a future, and it scarcely matters that it isn't our future per se, because it affects everything. Not just history: Physics. Medicine. All the hard sciences. A lot of the soft ones too; sociology, psychology, etcetera. Literary theory, for god's sake.

This isn't their world, and I don't know if it ever will be.



What's the next step for them? Is there a next step, or do we just go on as we've been?

Where do we go from here?