//------------------------------//
// Chapter II 
// Story: Blank Slate 
// by Integral Archer 
//------------------------------//

	Of what does the existence of the stable dweller consist? Two words describe it entirely.

Finiteness is one of those words. From the moment she is born, the stable dweller is constrained. The ones who look down upon her while she lies in her crib are dressed the same, talk the same, and are the same ones she will see for the rest of her life. Those specific individuals will die, but their offspring will replace them, in the same manner, in the same clothing. They will be emulations of their parents. The essence of the stable dweller is preserved from generation to generation, and it does not lose its austerity. Or, to speak more accurately, the power of the stable drains the inherent diversity of those whom it swallows in its folds.

Her job is the same. She takes her aptitude test; it gives her a profession; and she works it, whatever it is, until she dies. There is no hope for a promotion. There is no hope for a change of locale or scenery. The stable dweller awaits the pronouncement of the results of the aptitude test in the exact same manner a defendant awaits the pronouncement of guilty or not guilty by the jury. Celestia help the one whom the aptitude test places falsely!

Colors? For the stable dweller, there are none but gray and white. The fluorescent lighting of the stable casts a harsh white in all its corridors, illuminating entirely the endless sheets of gray. No other colors exist. Perhaps had the uniforms been varied in color, instead of that constant, unremitting dull blue, perhaps had the bodies that occupied those uniforms been versatile, free, jocund, the stable dweller would have distinguished the color blue from the gray and white. But the blue of the uniforms fade, the colors smear, and the stable dweller swears that they are all dressed in gray. Black, the color the stable dweller might see should she go to the sparsely lighted basement, should she close her eyes as firmly as possible and put both her hooves over them, is not a color; it is the absence of color, nothingness, leaving in her mind only the vague notion of what could have been.

Music? The same. It is mostly electronic, synthesized sounds, the grotesque emulations of those pure notes whose recipes had died a long time ago, those notes that spoke of wonderful time, a beautiful time, a time that is long since dead. The few pieces of equipment in the stable that can play the recordings of such music slowly fall into disrepair, dying along with their creators and maintainers, as if they were connected by an unseen wire, a single heartbeat, the death of one causing the signal to travel down the ethereal cord, arresting the heart of the other; it fights back, and it manages to survive a little longer, but, slowly, it withers; and, slowly, it dies. What remains? Mockery. The parakeets of music build machines, lifeless and unthinking, in order to, with all good intentions, resurrect those joyous of sounds; but their memories are imperfect, the machines limited, and the result is an eerie one, a corpse flailing its limbs in the attempt to fool others that it is alive. But the stable dweller sways her head along with these songs; she converses with the corpse as she would with her fellows. She knows all their lyrics by heart. Why? The crude emulation of life is better than death.

Space? The killing blow. The stable dweller is taught about the planets. She knows the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars. One travels around the other, another around that, all spinning together in an incomprehensible amalgam of light. That is what she is told, but she understands nothing. “What does it mean?” she cries. “What is a sky? What is a planet? How can anything be bigger than the stable? The sun? Light without electricity, without combustion? Impossible!” The lessons of her teacher are as believable as the fantasies she reads in her spare time. For the stable dweller, space starts at the back at of the stable and ends at the door. It is impossible to convey the feeling of having no windows, no entrances, no cameras, no possible way to view the space outside the metal of the stable. The tobacco in the middle of a cigar sees more light and breathes more freely. Those thrown into the depth of a dungeon go mad, for they know what is outside, what is waiting for them; they feel themselves confined. They feel their souls trying to burst free and failing. Though the mental state of the prisoner is unbearable, despairing, it cannot be compared to the mental state of the stable dweller; for the former has been deprived, while the latter never had. She touches her hoof at the back—the beginning; she touches her face against the door—the end. All of matter is between two walls. “What is beyond the back wall?” you may ask her. She will laugh and respond: “You mean to ask me: what is before the beginning? A non sequitur!” You may ask her: “What is beyond the door?” She will look at you as if you are crazy and say: “You mean to ask me: what is after the end? A contradiction!” What does the word “universe?” mean? Ask her to look it up in a dictionary. Mark the expression on her face when she comes across it and reads its definition. “The ‘universe’? Meaning ‘everything that exists’?” she will say, incredulous. “What a lofty word for so insignificant a thing!”

Finiteness is one of the two words that describe the life of the stable dweller. The other is monotony. This second word, by its very nature, does not require us to elaborate further in order for its essence to be understood.

Is there any virtue to be had in this forsaken dungeon? There is but one: the stable dweller has never committed suicide. Very few objects lend themselves to lethality in the stable. Knives are blunt. Guns are kept under a constant lock. There is no central atrium; the greatest height that can be seen is from the second floor to the first floor; jumping to one’s death is out of the question. The medications are only available through the psychiatrist, who supplies a pill each time it is needed and no more. The only strings that exist are bonnet laces, which would snap instantly under the weight of any body. The remaining options of suicide are all ugly, shameful, the most ignominious ways to die imaginable, and the stable dweller refuses to take them. Though she has been stripped of her honor, her pride, her wishes, her joys, her optimism, her aspirations, her dreams, her pleasures, her sentimentalities, the stable dweller still holds onto one, refusing to let it go. It is the most important one, for it is the virtue from which all other virtues are derived.

The stable dweller still has her dignity.

With dignity intact, the rest can be restored. All it takes is a spark.

What is that spark?