Dear Dystopian Circus Pacification Unit SR378: 

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For years now the government has been paying us to entertain the masses. The Romans had their Bread and Circuses and now, close to the turn of the 23rd century, we are harnessing the power of complacency yet again. 

 

What does it mean to entertain? It's more than a sex-show between two (or more) genetic anomalies--it's about the moment a viewer crosses over from the visual to the visceral, the moment when what is seen becomes lived and breathed and consumed--like the food from whence one draws their full energy of being. In other words, we provide the audience a window into the life they would otherwise hide away. 

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I'll never forget my first performance. I was chained at the nipples to a cage. In it was the last known rhinoceros. It didn't matter if the crowd was oohing about the blood dripping from my areolas or the majestic beast tied to them because I was literally chained to an extinct past and linking each onlooker to my experience. After the parade, outside my dressing room, I was confronted by a man so overwhelmed with his own sobbing that he could hardly speak. All he offered was this one phrase, "I am rhino." Imagine that, so convinced was he by my performance that he too felt connected to the plight of this beast. 

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Do I know for sure if this young man decided not to join forces against the government? Yes, I do, because our database has followed him every day for the last two decades. While he has visited some known rebel recruitment sites, his purchasing history suggests that he has chosen the life of material goods over rebellion. My first satisfied customer. 

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Over my many years of service to the Circus Corps, I've ridden a cryogenically restored lion, received 3rd degree burns as a human cannonball (that led to my 2-month stint in the anatomic anomaly booth while flesh-eating cockroaches ate my necrotic tissues), I drank a gallon of milk straight from the teat of a lactating moose whilst bottle feeding her calf, had cartilage from my knees implanted at my hips so I could adequately hula a hoop, and spent two years salary on a hormonal treatment to build enough muscle to pull a caged rhino with my nipples.

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I have lived the circus for two decades and I'll never forget that first young man who came to my dressing room--SAR219703 was his name, he was blonde I think, and he died in an industrial accident three years ago. He NEVER joined the rebellion. 

 

This is our work. Keep the complacency. Keep the peace. All hail Circus Maximus!

 

 

Yours in circusry, 

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Ronald T. Bertrand III

CEO, Bread and Circuses LLC

New Milwaukee, Wi

USA