Susie Paine - Selected Writings

I am just a ballerina. I am just an extremely beautiful ballerina who wears a hideous mask and weights around my appendages. This system is designed so that everyone is equal, but I feel tired all the time. The equality system ought to improve life but I just feel sick of living. My childhood was filled with ancestral stories about life without handicaps, when dancers could dance better than other people and musicians could play well. When inequality still existed, I am sure that no one ever felt so tired of living, so tired of getting up and putting on the infernal devices which hold us on the same level. They are keeping us equal, but I am starting to believe that equality is a curse.

My mother told me stories in my crib at night, stories of how my ancestors had been beautiful dancers and soared across the stage. I remember the tears in her eyes when she told these stories because she would never soar. She was weighted down, fastened to the Earth and unable to create the beauty that had been possible years ago. I remember crying too when I was older. I can never soar or fly or create beauty with just my body. I can never paint beautiful pictures or write astonishing words. Everyone is equal so nothing I do will be special. Nothing I do will ever be special because every other human being on the face of the Earth and elsewhere in the galaxy can do everything I can. I am not special.

I barely know what that word means. The way my father explained it to me was that special people are different. I want to be different. I want to die differently than everyone else. I want to be remembered. Being the same as the rest of my species is wearing, it hangs on my bones and hurts my head. Nothing I do will be remembered. That is worse than death. It takes all my energy to get up, to put on my mask and my weights, to walk downstairs. Every action I take wears on me, chips me down to my bones. I walk to work, wincing as I go because of the extraordinary torture that lurks in every step. I wonder why they did not give me a mental impediment. Probably next month.

After reaching the television studio, I dance as I do every day. It’s not really dancing, more like blundering about with these blasted bags of birdshot on my limbs. Nothing is special about today, just as nothing is special about any other day. I am reflecting on the intense monotony of life when an announcer runs in. He tries for a very long time, an infinitely long time, it seems, to say, “Ladies and Gentlemen” until he gives up and hands the paper to me to read. I read in a clear voice before remembering I should try to sound ugly, so I make my voice scratchy and unappealing. I read the bulletin without the words registering. Except for a few phrases, “ ... escaped from jail ... extremely dangerous.”

0This day is different. After a long silence, a great clanking ensues and the boy from the photograph appears. I crouch, not knowing what he will do. He shouts0a lot of nonsense about being Emperor and then tells0the women in the studio that the first that rose to her feet would be his Empress.

Should I do it? I will be remembered for it. I am not likely to survive the day if I stand, but my memory will not die. I will be remembered. I will die. I will be remembered. A fight between two different voices clamors within my head as I notice that the Emperor has no handicaps. I will be remembered and not only by my handicaps0but by my face. My face will be remembered. I stand and face my death because I can show my face. He commanded the musicians and we danced until the ceiling, danced and danced. Then, two bangs and no more.

Being the Handicapper-General is not easy. It was just the perfect job for a Glampers. My mother had told me that I would be great because she and my father had sowed the seeds of greatness in me. The seeds of greatness through equality. I would be great because I was equal and because I helped everyone else become equal. Equality is a wonderful thing. When I was old enough to distinguish between reality and stories, Mother told me horror-filled tales of people taking their lives because they were not as beautiful as their neighbors. Tales of inequality and the horrible effects it had on society. It then became my dream to make everyone equal so no one would know that pain. The pain of being insufficient. I have always been self-reliant because I am a Glampers ,and I know how to use only my own resources.

The Harrison Bergeron affair was a time when I had to be particularly self-reliant because I could rely on no one else. From his birth, that boy thwarted my every attempt to make him equal, my every attempt to bring him down from his bizarre natural state of genius. He simply would not be equal though. His brain outwitted every handicap known to man and a few more invented just for him. I should have shot him, worse situations could have been avoided. Instead I sent him to jail. Jail should have humbled him and brought him to humanity’s level. It made him stronger. He could resist all handicaps and he just stayed in jail where he belonged. The boy could not be contained, however. He could not help but escape to spread his corrupt teachings of inequality. He would spread his evil throughout the cosmos, poisoning everything it touched. I should have starved him when he was in jail.

I did not however, and he escaped. He went to a television studio where an announcement to beware of him was playing. He0took off all his handicaps. At that point, I knew he had to die. He had chosen his place of insurrection well, the entire country could see him. I had to bow to his strategic genius if not his motives. He chose an Empress and, by this point, I was being driven to the studio with a shotgun in my hands. I knew that when I saw Harrison Bergeron I would shoot him and his little Empress. too. They were dancing, as if they hadn’t a care in the world when I arrived, holding my shotgun. I raised it and pulled the trigger twice. The bodies hit the floor with a thump as the television power was cut from this studio forever. I ordered cleanup and hoped I could make the public forget about what they had seen. But I am Diana Moon Glampers, so of course I can.

This speech is quite good. It will convince my lackeys and the government. To the public we can spin it off as a television drama rehearsal that had been accidentally aired. I burned the studio in which the insurrection took place0with the bodies inside. My new policy is to start killing children like Harrison at ten. It will be safer for all. Equality must be preserved. That is the thought I must keep in my head until this sickening remembrance of the fact that those were my first kills. They felt like murder. All for equality. This must become my mantra, until no other thoughts exist. All for equality. Murder. Equality. This mantra will last a long time. Equality.