Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,90

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From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

When vision fails

Direction is lost.

When direction is lost

Purpose may be forgotten.

When purpose is forgotten

Emotion rules alone.

When emotion rules alone,

Destruction…destruction.

FROM ACORN, I WAS taken to a reeducation camp that was housed in an old maximum-security prison in Del Norte County, just north of Humboldt County. Pelican Bay State Prison, the thing had been called. It became Pelican Bay Christian Reeducation Camp. I have no memory of it, I’m glad to say, but people who spent time there as adults and older kids have told me that even though it was no longer called a prison, it reeked of suffering. Because of its prison structure, it lent itself more easily than did Acorn to isolating people, not only from society but from one another. It also provided enough room for a nursery that was completely separate from the heathen inmates who might contaminate the children. I was cared for at the Pelican Bay nursery for several months. I know this because I was fingerprinted, footprinted, and geneprinted there, and my records were stored at the Christian American Church of Crescent City. They were supposed to be accessible only to camp authorities, who were to prevent me from being adopted by my heathen biological parents, and to whoever did adopt me. Also, there I was given my name: Asha Vere. Asha Vere was the name of a character in a popular Dreamask program.

Dreamasks—also known as head cages, dream books, or simply, Masks—were new then, and were beginning to edge out some of the virtual-reality stuff. Even the early ones were cheap—big ski-mask-like devices with goggles over the eyes. Wearing them made people look not-quite-human. But the masks made computer-stimulated and guided dreams available to the public, and people loved them. Dreamasks were related to old-fashioned lie detectors, to slave collars, and to a frighteningly efficient form of audiovisual subliminal suggestion. In spite of the way they looked, Dreamasks were lightweight, clothlike, and comfortable. Each one offered wearers a whole series of adventures in which they could identify with any of several characters. They could live their character’s fictional life complete with realistic sensation. They could submerge themselves in other, simpler, happier lives. The poor could enjoy the illusion of wealth, the ugly could be beautiful, the sick could be healthy, the timid could be bold…

Jarret’s people worried that this new entertainment would be like a drug to the “morally weak.” To avoid their censure, Dreamasks International made a number of religious programs—programs that particularly featured Christian American characters. Asha Vere was one of those characters.

Asha Vere was a tall, beautiful, Amazon-like Black Christian American woman who ran around rescuing people from heathen cults, anti-Christian plots, and squatter-camp pimps. I suppose someone thought that naming me after such an upright character might stifle any hereditary inclination in me toward heathenism. So I was stuck with the name. And so, by the way, were a lot of other women. Strong female characters were out of fashion in the fiction of the time. President Jarret and his followers in Christian America believed that one of the things that had gone wrong with the country was the intrusion of women into “men’s business.” I’ve seen recordings of him saying this and large audiences of both men and women cheering and applauding wildly. In fact, I’ve discovered that Asha Vere was originally intended to be a man, Aaron Vere, but a Dreamask executive convinced his colleagues that it was time for a hit series starring a tough-tender, Christian American female. He was right. There was such a hunger for interesting female characters that, as silly as the Asha Vere stories were, people liked them. And surprising numbers of people named their girl children “Asha” or “Vere” or “Asha Vere.”

My name, eventually, was Asha Vere Alexander, daughter of Madison Alexander and Kayce Guest Alexander. These were middle-class Black members of the Church of Christian America in Seattle. They adopted me during the Al-Can war when they moved from Seattle—which had been hit by several missiles—down to Crescent City, where Kayce’s mother Layla Guest lived. Ironically, Layla Guest was a refugee from Los Angeles. But she was a much richer refugee than my mother had been. Crescent City, a big, booming town among the redwoods, was so near Pelican Bay that Layla volunteered at the Pelican Bay nursery. It was Layla who brought Kayce and me together. Kayce didn’t really want me. I was a big, dark-skinned, solemn baby, and she didn’t like my