Sara Weston calmly walked up to the test bench. A crowd of men, most bespectacled and all adorned in crisp white lab coats, stood nearby; their hands, pens at the ready, poised above sheets of paper supported by clean clipboards. Sara tried to remain calm, she tried not to shrink away from the dozens of stern gazes cast her way.
On top of the test bench, there was a pan, dirtied from cooking; grease and oil sat in the pan, congealed. A small bit of water pooled in one corner. Across from the test bench, a sink sat; cleaning supplies and a bright yellow sponge sat next to the sink. The task was simple, to clean the pan, without incident. The test group before Sara had failed dramatically, somehow setting fire to the laboratory.
But, this failure would not follow Sara Weston. The woman was different, otherworldly even. She’d been discovered, one day, by the elite group of scientists as they went house to house, recruiting lab subjects; they were desperately attempting to cure the simpleminded clumsiness that appeared to be plaguing the denizens of the Earth.
It was then, as they moved on from a house suffering a rather tragic grease fire, to the humble abode of Sara Weston. Her house had seemed miraculously in one piece; her car in perfect working order. When they had rung the doorbell, they’d been surprised by Sara’s lack of commotion or accident as she’d opened the door, and easily let them inside. They had stared in wonder as they noticed a lack of fire marks, stains, or other such damages to her home. They’d instantly asked her join in their research, offering a hefty sum of money as incentive. Sara had agreed instantly, desperate for money and self-motivated to help human society in any way possible.
That was how Sara found herself, carefully picking up the pan, ringed by dozens of middle-aged men furiously writing notes. Several nodes and wires covered her body, recording data on her vitals every second.
Sara walked the pan over to the sink. In determination, she turned on the hot water and squeezed out some detergent into the pan and then onto the sponge. A steady stream of hot water fell into the sink, falling onto the dirty pan and down the drain. After an application of solid elbow grease, Sara easily cleaned the dirty pan. She placed the hunk of cast iron on the drying rack, and turned back to face the scientists.
A collective mutter of disbelief filled the room as the scientists looked up from their notes. A few of the clipboards were dropped, soft swears accompanied their descent. They were not dropped from surprise, but merely from a clumsiness that even the greatest scientists of the world were not immune to. They were amazed, there hadn’t been a fire. The first instance of a fireless experiment in over three years. The men were completely baffled, utterly amazed.
They ushered Sara out of the testing room, and began another test, and then another one after that. These men spent over half a year putting Sara Weston through all of their trials. She took out the garbage, washed the car, properly used a hose, stored food in the fridge, and many, many other activities. All the while, the scientists stared in amazement, recording every detail and discernible piece of data.
After this period of experiment, the men turned to their data. They fell upon the numbers and calculations like vultures, tearing into their science. With only the slight office fire, or spilt coffee on their keyboards or computers, they worked with an earnest. These men were the brightest minds the world had to offer, assembled by the governments of the world to create a cure for this uncanny clumsiness which seemed to permeate throughout the people, despite any sort of cultural or political barriers.
It was after years of research, of experimenting and data analysis, that the scientists finally had assembled an answer; a harrowing answer at that. Presented at a special conference, holding all of the world’s leaders, were the results of the scientists’ years of efforts. It seemed to them that the denizens of the Earth, barring Sara Weston, suffered from a distinct mental disability. It was a flaw, a rewiring in their brains caused by a seemingly insignificant genetic flaw, which created a motor-cognitive failure. It was not that the denizens of the world were simply clumsy, they were genetically programmed to be accident prone.
There was a collective sigh of disappointment from the leaders of the world. The councilmen from China accidentally fell out of their chairs during the sigh, the president of the United States accidentally slapped himself in the face when he’d meant to grab his pen.
The scientists, the presenters, felt nothing but fear for the human race. They’d lost contact with Sara Weston, their key to the future, and hadn’t been able to contact her. Some speculated that her existence in their world had, in itself, been an accident; the ultimate act of clumsiness acted on by the universe itself. Whatever the reason, it seemed that Sara Weston no longer existed in this world, or if she did, then she was able to avoid the greatest governments in the world as they searched for her.
It was with a heavy heart that the leaders of the world revealed this news to their citizens, and of their inability to find a cure. There would have been pandemonium on the streets from the outrage of the citizens, but if had been any, it had been indistinguishable from the usual chaos of crashes, fires, accidents, and other chaos caused by simple clumsiness.
To the despair of the scientists, their work had been for naught, and the world continued to turn, filled with the accidental chaos which now, to them, seemed to be the work of nature, or of God himself.
Some of the scientists, when drunk, liked to joke that it was all a sick fucking joke, made by some mysterious sadist lurking behind the thin veil of the fabric of reality. They would drink, and cry, and usually break a bottle or two, much to their pained anguish. They cried out against their years wasted, searching for their foolish fountain of youth.
Such was the pained existence of ones who’d learned the secret futilities of their lives.
Submitted December 25, 2016 at 10:00AM by Impossibear94 http://ift.tt/2hoSEYk
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