Here's another Silly Story, created using
https://app.inferkit.com/demo combined with my own words, and then edited. I wanted this one to be more Permie related.
THE APPLE OF APPRECIATION
by Lif Strand
The irony of it all was that Brianna, who desperately longed for a life of solitude, worked alongside Brooke, Bridget, Brenda, and Brandi all day long. It was the lot of a clone, but Brianna didn't feel like she had to like it.
And that wasn't her idea of a way to start a new life, not when she was already in the midst of so much heartache.
She was the clone that shouldn't be alive. She couldn’t stop wanting to be a regular human.
She was a cryogenically frozen package, not so much an individual with personal wants and desires, but an identical copy of someone she'd never met and never would meet. It wasn’t something she could change. It was a fact of her life, such as her life was.
Brianna should have been content to work the farm – the reason she’d been cloned -- but she wasn't. She hadn't been ever since she'd crawled out of the vat where she'd grown, fully adult with a brain already programmed to be just like Britney, Brisa, Brazille, and Bri'Elle. All of whom had climbed from their own vats and stood naked, dripping and shivering, on the cement floor at the same time she had. Waiting for instructions.
She didn’t want to wait for instructions. She'd wanted to run away right then, but there had been no choice but to stay, of course.
If she'd been older, maybe. More experienced. If she'd been legally capable. She hadn't been, and the mere sight of the others had made her feel angry.
She was meant for more than pulling weeds and hauling wheelbarrows of manure. She'd come to hate every pile of horse poop in the pens.
"It's a fine work," said Brooke, as she shoved Brianna back into the garden. Brook added, "Time to pull, missy."
With that, Brooke started shouting orders to the rest of the girls, all of whom willingly complied. Their programming had stuck. Brianna, though -- she stood there, unmoving, as if she was deaf. Pretending she had a choice.
Brooke knew the girl could understand most of the words even if she didn't talk much, so the majority of their conversation was carried on with nods and shoves and the occasional shrug. Brianna watched the others as they bent to their tasks -- today digging a ditch that later they'd pile rotten logs into, and then branches, and then sticks, alternating with horse manure.
They were building a hugelkultur pile. A raised garden bed. An autumnal stew pot. And for some reason, Brianna could think of nothing worse that she could be doing on this beautiful day.
And so, she waited, and she watched, and she hoped they wouldn't turn their attention to her as she took sneaky steps away from the garden. But of course the boss clone noticed. At first Brooke just gestured for Brianna to get her butt back to work, but Brianna pretended she didn't see.
Finally, Brooke, exasperated, yelled. "If you don't get to work I'll have you sent back to the vats!"
That was a threat Brianna couldn't ignore. She grabbed a long-handled lopper that had been left on the ground and made her way to a tall tree that hadn't been tended in the year or so she'd been conscious. Since the last time Brooke -- or maybe it had been Brisa that time -- had made good on the vats threat.
Brianna reached her hand out to the bark. It felt rough, rough like sandpaper. "She's gonna send me to the vats. I'm just a worthless piece of crap to her," she thought, thoughtfully. "At least here in the woods I’m alone. I can pretend I have a chance to be someone."
She hacked off a good-sized piece of the tree and watched it tumble to the ground. She trimmed it so it would be easier to haul to the hugelkultur mound. Then she lopped off another branch.
Just then, a dark shape loomed over Brianna and something dropped from the branches onto her head and splatted.
A tingle of electricity zapped her neck, across her shoulders, down her back, and up her spine. A pulse of electricity smacked her in the forehead. Her fingers flew to her temple. "Ow, ow, ow!"
She looked up. A raven laughed at her silently. Her hair was full of rotten apple. She'd received the splat of the Magic Apple of Appreciation.
Brianna laughed, too, so hard she couldn't breathe. A stream of apple juice ran down the side of her face, past her ear, down her neck and cleavage, and dripped from the end of her chemise, forming a puddle suspiciously like urine at her feet.
"What exactly am I supposed to appreciate, oh wise raven?" she asked the bird.
"Nothing! You should appreciate that you're still alive! You could be dead and rotting away in the middle of that pile of horse manure, and you're better off than that!"
Brianna was surprised that the bird could talk. Still, the raven was right. If she got sent to the vats one more time she'd probably end up as fertilizer for the hugelkultur hill.
The raven cawed its opinion of humans as it launched itself off the branch. Brianna sighed and picked up her branches. She left the lopper where it was. She’d come back here again. Maybe the raven would, too.
THE END
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