From: Dr. Christian Knight <CKnight@NIDS.org>
Sent: Monday, May 7, 2035 9:00 AM
To: Clara Smith <Rainbowgirl23@cmail.com>
Subject: With respect to your request filed on April 30, 2035
Hello Clara,
First, we are sorry for your loss. Your grandfather was a great man. We understand why you would want to know what went through his mind the last time you saw him.
Attached is the information you requested, parsed together by our Neuro-Implant Thought Decoder System. It used both historical data from your grandfather’s memory banks and images his brain generated on the day in question. The system determined the actions you witnessed were driven by a “Keystone Event”, meaning an event that had a disproportionate influence on his developing mind. Mavis, our AI system, put it in text format, as you requested, with your grandfather as narrator. Please let us know if there’s anything further we can do to help you in this difficult time.
Dr. Christian Knight
Disclaimer: Neuro-Implanted Thought Decoder Systems provide thought decoding and interpretation services. Interpretations contained herein may contain inaccuracies. Imagery details viewed in the human mind are open to semantic interpretation. It’s estimated that 95% of the below is an accurate depiction of the processed thoughts of the individual. Our AI system uses a custom profile of the individual to fill in details to make the explanation plausible.
If you’d like to view the NIDS imagery files of this event, please make arrangements with our administrative bots in the next 90 days. Data will be deleted from our storage database if no contact is made prior to the deadline.
Clara,
I want you to understand what happened the last time you came.
My mind is not under my conscious control. There are many things I can’t recall. I don’t remember the day I moved to Prosperous Pines Assisted Living. The doctors say I have spells of lucidity but live in confusion. It’s written on the sheet of paper taped to my door. At the bottom of the page is a list of my triggers; the known things and events that cause my emotional outbursts. They’ve added dogs since you came.
I understand the nurse was feeding me Jello and you were tinkering on your phone when they brought it in. They call it a support animal; meant to make us feel better. Apparently, I tried to smack the dog over the head with my tray and when you tried to calm me down, I hit you too. I’m sorry about that. I thought you were someone else. What went through my mind in that moment is from a long time ago.
I think cheap paint held together the farmhouse I grew up in. If my mother’s family were poor farmers, we were something lower, something undignified: inheritors using up the last life left in the house before nature could reclaim it. My father hated the farm, at least that’s what Mom said. He left before I turned five. At night I could hear her crying sometimes and it made me hate him. Kids teased you then for not having a dad; called you a bastard and did other mean things. I spent a lot of time alone in the woods around our farm.
One day, after school, I found blood and feathers strewn along the bank of our crick. It used to be a small family of turkeys; I’d seen them walking the fields that spring.
I jumped when I heard something rustling in the dried leaves. Before I could run, I realized the sound was coming out of a half rotten log too small to house anything dangerous. When I bent down to look, I found a baby turkey hidden away in the dark of the hollow. Mom let me keep him in the barn. I called him Tom.
I fed him milk-soaked bread out of my hand until I could buy proper feed. He started following me everywhere, and he went crazy the first time I got on the bus. Mom said he chirped about it for an hour after I’d left.
Watching Tom teach himself to fly intrigued me. I wondered where that drive came from, how he knew he was built to fly. As a baby he’d flap his mostly featherless wings to little effect. As he grew, he could stir the dust around the farm easily. Then he started to run as he flapped. Once, during what I’d call his teenage years, he crashed into Mom while she was hauling in groceries. The collision sent them both to the ground. She swore and told him she’d turn him into Thanksgiving dinner if he didn’t get away from her. He just walked around bewildered. I noticed he stayed away from Mom for a while after that. By the next spring his chirps turned into gobbles, and he had a beard, albeit a little one. He’d puff up and strut around the yard showing off for anybody or nobody, it was hard to tell. At night, I locked him up in the barn to keep him safe.
Then, one day, I saw him fly. He must’ve been working on it in secret because he looked like a pro. He got running, like he always did, and then, instead of slowing down, he took off like he got shot out of a cannon. You wouldn’t believe a turkey can fly like that unless you’ve seen it. After that, he didn’t roost in the barn anymore. He started sleeping in the giant white pine by the house. I could watch him from my bedroom window. I always leaned my head out to tell him goodnight.
Your grandmother moved to our school in the spring of my sixth-grade year. I’ll always remember those pigtails, that red and white checkered dress, and her smile. The teacher sat her next to me, and she asked if she could borrow a pencil. I said yes and gave her my only one.
We were talking at recess when Joshua Blanks decided to come over and show off in front of the pretty new girl. He beat me up worse than normal that time. I came back into our classroom with a bloody lip and a red eye, and your grandma told the teacher what happened when I refused to say. Well, tattling didn’t sit well with Joshua, and he might not have been a morally upstanding kid, but he still wouldn’t hit a girl. When we all went out to the bus, he whispered that I was going to pay. I thought he’d just beat me up extra the next time.
It wasn’t until I was home and saw him walking up the road with his dog that I considered he had worse things in mind. Joshua and his nasty barking dog held by a rope at the end of our driveway is a crystal-clear image in my mind even after all these years. My Mom didn’t come home from work until after dinner then; I was alone. Once that dog saw Tom walking around it went crazy, and I thought it’d pull Joshua’s arm off. My mind knew what Joshua was thinking before he did it, and I yelled, please no and started to herd Tom to safety. He turned the rope loose before I could get Tom in the barn. Now Tom seemed to know what was going on and he took off running and flew up into his white pine. I thought we were safe.
After that day, I dreamed of that dog regularly all the rest of my life. Most of the time the dog is chasing me through the woods behind the farm. His head too big for his body; a hide that shows too much skeleton. I run fast, but it doesn’t matter. Savage guttural sounds keep getting closer and closer, and as I glance over my shoulder, I see him: a brown and white Pitbull with way too many teeth. He jumps at me as I trip over something, and I jerk awake.
In reality, after Tom took off, the dog angled to me, bit into my arm, and started shaking his head. I cried for Joshua to help, thinking he couldn’t have meant this, that this was too far, that I’d see him with an oh my God look on his face. He stood there at the end of my driveway, smiling.
I started swinging my fist wildly at the dog’s face and we fell together as he continued ragging my arm back and forth. Bright lights squiggled through my vision and my whole body jerked as the dog continued his violent shaking. Everything got fuzzy and started to fade. The dog stopped shaking for a second and I could hear him breathing hard through his nose, little bits of snot blowing across my face, but he didn’t release my arm. As things got fuzzy, a dark bronze ball began to form behind the dog. Round shaped with a red ball in the center. I could feel blood coming down my forearm onto my fingers and I couldn’t swing my other arm anymore. A loud fwap, fwap, fwap sound brought me back to reality. I saw Tom standing behind the dog; puffed chest, fanned tail, sharp spurs. He beat his wings on the dog’s flanks and then tucked them back to his sides; ready to fight. The dog let me go and growled at Tom, teeth bared. He cowered back for a second when Tom jumped at him. Joshua yelled something from the road, and I sat up.
Later in life I read that some native warriors wore turkey feathers as a symbol of courage and willingness to protect their people. I knew that was right. Tom stood in the dog’s face, as big as he could make himself, spurs at the ready, eyes focused on that beast of a dog. The dog lunged, grabbed Tom’s head, and began violently shaking as he had done to me. Tom’s body wilted and he started convulsing. The dog seemed recharged at the ease in which he tore Tom’s flesh away from bone and he began to shake his head faster. I stood up. The dog let Tom go for a second to look over at me before going back to his desecration. Tears blurred my vision, and my t-shirt was covered in blood. I looked at the door of my house and I knew that I could make it if I snuck away. Tom’s feathers were spread around the yard. We heated with firewood then, and my hand fell on a wayward piece of white oak. The first time I hit the dog his eyes bulged, he released my friend, and started to try and drag himself back towards the road. The second time I hit him he stopped moving. All the other times were probably overkill. Joshua started coming towards me, looking concerned for the first time, but decided better of it when I stood up; that firewood dangling at the end of my good arm. He ran away. I never had issues with him again. There were lots of other things that came from that day, but I’ve hit all the important parts, all the one’s you wanted to know.
I buried Tom by the creek, where his family died. I think his blood soaked through my skin and hardened my heart.