Several days after the vad, “What A Crazy World” began its debut at District 5’s TAR54186, 8:00 PM, local district time. The colonial administration granted the district a special moratorium on curfew and encouraged humans to attend, because most of the Apiary’s officials had confidence that the play would placate the restlessness in the region. Depending on its success, the production of entertainment based off creative fiction could become a new method of suppression against resistance.

The account of what happened that night of the play was written and distributed as a special report modigram – by the critic who attended the showing’s debut Amena Gorkem Tovi – for the local entertainment reviewing firm Der Kenner:

Der Kenner

Sonderbericht!

“What A Crazy World” Wildly Spectacular!

By Amena Gorkem Tovi

The debut of “What A Crazy World,” the Apiary’s first fictional comedy in history, was a spectacular experience! Let me give a rundown on how it was for me:

I start off my time in a long line of humans, waiting in the humid night city air outside of TAR54186, leading to its service entrance. Meanwhile, the worms and botches are flown in by their personal transport vehicles to the front of the main entrance. They disembark from their rides, have their tickets scanned by the awaiting A.I. units, and enter the building to likely enjoy refreshments and mingle amongst each other during which, their vehicles go into valet mode and park themselves. When the A.I. are given the go ahead for our turn to enter, we slog our way to the units waiting to scan our tickets. For one reason or another, which I still don’t fully understand, some people didn’t get to go inside, despite having to shell out hard-earned money to acquire their tickets days earlier. Anyone caught arguing with the robots, were assailed by the flips working security, freeing the line to slowly move forward again.

Once tickets were scanned, we were immediately ushered to our segregated seating by security. If there was a positive aspect compared to how theater seating was reputably handled in the olden times, the best seats were on the ground level and the closer the better, so we now get the formerly coveted. Worms prefer the upper-level seating further back due to their ability to use their telescopic vision, but that’s where the positives end. Other than that, those of us below tend to receive whatever ill-treatments those above choose to rain down on us, which is probably one of the reasons why botches choose to sit up there too; that and their want to fit in with the worms. Luckily, when we humans are seated, we get to take off our rebreathers, enjoy the ground level’s air conditioning, (used to be none only a few years ago,) and take time to relax and talk before the theater gives all the worms and botches the signal to begin seating.

When everyone of the upper level settled into their seats, the lights soon dimmed, the music began, and the curtains on stage lifted, causing the whole audience to become silent. The main character of the story, inches onto the stage while blurting out the first of the production’s many wonky lyrics, which I guess you could say is okay enough for the worms’ autotuned universal translators. The human audience didn’t get much of the jokes, and the ones we did get only elicited confused, awkward laughter. The worms and botches on the other hand, laughed at each comedic beat without fail throughout the show’s first fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of largely unrelatable humor, which on the most part seemed harmless. Then came the part when the human characters were introduced.

The protagonist lands on the island to explore. Soon after, the music queue kicked in, and the jaws of the ground-level audience dropped once the human characters made their way onto stage. Foremost, none of the human characters were played by real humans, but worms in costume. Actually, the word “costume” is far too generous for the situation. Each one’s face was caked in different stark-coloured pancake makeup to reflect an exaggerated version of human skin; blackface, whiteface, brownface, yellowface, and redface to be exact. They didn’t stop there, as they wore eyewear that had horizontal slits to imitate human eyelids. In addition, they wore what appeared to be a large wax lips-and-cheeks piece over their baleen-like mouths, and terrible wigs on their bald heads.

What proceeded for over the next forty-five minutes, were some of the most horrendously insulting performances I’m sure anyone of the ground-level seats had ever sat through. Hypothetically, the play is to point out the flaws of the Anuh-Kaj and Humans alike, but for every one criticism made of the worms, there were almost ten made against us. Granted, there were perhaps a couple songs that did bring up valid points of humans, like our nostalgia for a nonexistent or narrow view of the past, in where the chorus for one goes:

“Rose coloured glasses

And lack of empathy

Rose coloured glasses

Ignorance for me.”

The rest of the songs’ critiques against humanity were unfair and downright false. One of the worst was a song that is a prayer to the fake humans’ deity, Jeffrey Dahmer, which goes:

“Oh Jeffrey

You are the one for me

You are far above all the other Albert Fish in the sea.”

Why do they worship him? I don’t know, maybe because it’s commentary on how humans have this historically bad habit, wanting to turn some of our species worst individuals into celebrities and icons of reverence. If without regard to knowing who was behind this play, it would still be a sure bet it’s because he was a rapist and cannibal, which neatly fits a vile and persistent stereotype levied against humans to this day. Were there human cannibals? Rarely, and usually during times of extreme desperation. Were there human rapists? Not often, and it always has been a shameful act. It’d be funny if so many of the Apiary didn’t believe it to be true. Like with many of the other, what I presume were, “jokes,” it only works to validate their treatment of us, to the point where it's been known that rowdy juvenile fish would actively hunt down lone or small groups of defenseless humans at night to murder them in the name of “protecting the young.”

For the criticisms against the worms, whether they were actual or completely made up, there was always some vindication ready to be presented, or an obvious enough wink and nudge for everyone to get it was a joke. Nothing like that was ever there when it came to criticisms against humans. Thinking about it that’s not entirely true. There were winks and nudges whenever there was something positive said about us, or when our people’s claims of mistreatment and tribulation were being mocked.

This is where the problem lies. There are two ways to make a joke at someone else’s expense: “laughing with” and “laughing at.” When “laughing with,” it’s made so everyone involved is intended to be in on the joke from the beginning. When “laughing at,” it’s made so that everyone, except for the target of the joke, are the only ones in on it. The target can choose to laugh with the others, but they were never the intended audience. If the joke is founded on fair observations, both “laughing with” and “laughing at” can encourage self-reflection and improvement. In this case, there was very little fair observation to be founded on.

Every so often, there were members from the ground level audience who tried leaving, mostly because it became too much for them to stomach. It didn’t matter if they tried to keep quiet or not, whenever they tried leaving, a spotlight would shine on them. Then, the play comes to a screeching halt, the music switches and the performers sing a matching song that goes:

“Sensitive runaway, into tears one broke,

Hide in a safe space, cannot take a joke,

The world is so cruel in your mind,

What is the next offense to find?”

While that occurs, the invective worms and botches of the upper level would begin berating the people attempting to leave, occasionally bombarding them with fruits and vegetables if the target dared to talk back; food we’re charged exuberant prices for, because they’re so limited in supply, are used as missiles aplenty if we drew any ire. What made this extra disheartening was that there were even a bunch of humans on the ground level, who joined in on the bullying of those people.

As the performers played and the applause of the upper-level audience made it abundantly clear, the show was pushed as something meant for everyone to enjoy, but it was never intended for humans. We were here, not to laugh along with them, but to be interactive objects of bigoted ridicule, personally witnessing and experiencing our humiliation by them. It created a miasma of fear and spiteful principle, which had many opt to stick around. It was undeniable that we were the proverbial whipping boys of the dominant. Then everything took a turn.

It was towards the end of a number where the fake human characters were musically arguing over whether to boil or bake the protagonist or change their minds to rather eat a baby instead. When they reached their crescendo, someone offstage yelled out, “Stop!”

That was when a worm moved out onto the stage, operating a human skeleton like a puppet. There was something off about the skeleton though, and it didn’t take long for us to realize. The skull was missing its face and right then, I found myself still hoping it wasn’t what I figured it was. The other performers asked, “Who are you?”

The puppeteer replied in a machine-produced high-pitched voice, “I’m the ghost of Willie Egerton!”

As the performers continued with their line, the ground level audience began to gradually grow in the number and intensity of booing and jeering, until whatever laughter of heckling against us from the upper level was drowned in a cacophony of our discontented indignation.

Prior to this, someone apparently saved one of the produce that happened to stay mostly intact, after it was tossed from the upper level. When the music started and the puppeteer began its autotuned song with the words, “I was an idiot…” a perfectly timed thrown tomato flew out of our general seating area and splattered on the puppeteer’s face. In a sudden panic, all the worms rushed off the stage, with the puppeteer yelling in autotune, “Help, I’ve been struck!”

Whether it was the sound of panicky autotuned voices combined with the sight of the performers scrambling in a clownish fashion, or the satisfaction of seeing the worms taken down a peg, we humans of the ground level erupted into uproarious laughter. It was the most any of us had laughed during the entire production.

The music stopped, the lights brightened, then the flips came out onto the stage and faced us. They demanded the one who tossed the tomato to stand and come forward, but instead different people stood up, defying the authorities, and airing their objections against society’s maltreatment of us. The upper-level audience was trying to shout us down, and we defied them too. One person of the ground level seemed like he wanted to keep the peace when he called for calm on our side. Soon as he got everyone quieted down, they looked up at the upper level and did the most insulting gesture you could possibly do to the worms, by belching loudly for long as possible. The worms and botches above hissed and heckled at us, but we burst into laughter and applause not caring.

The flips threatened to declare our presence as a civil disturbance if we continued to disrupt the theater production. This caused the ground level to swell in chanting, “Silent No More!” and continued to do so while security prepared to charge us. Unbeknownst to everyone, one of the audience members bullied out of the theater earlier, snuck their way to the suspended catwalk over the stage and was sabotaging the lighting. Before security could make their charge, the lighting fell on top of them, pinning them all to the stage floor. Everyone then looked up at the saboteur, who yelled out with fist raised, “Fuck the Apiary!”

“Fuck the Apiary!” the ground floor repeated in jubilant rage, before making a frenzied dash in all directions.

Most made their way onto the stage to get to the pinned flips, while some chased down and cornered those within our audience who heckled the bullied, and others ran out of the theater when they noticed the upper-level audience was making a break for it. I followed the crowd that pursued the worms and botches to see how it would turn out. On our way through the lobbies and corridors, people were either looting the kitchen, or destroying the building’s decorations and setting fires, but many headed for the parking lot where we were sure to find who we were looking for.

By the time we made it outside, less than half of the worms and botches were still trying to take off in the vehicles still parked. It didn’t matter if there were occupants inside, people attacked them and even set a bunch on fire. A few vehicles that did have owners inside, had them pulled out and beaten. One that was occupied tried taking off with humans hanging on, and something happened resulting in where it spun out control and smashed into a nearby building, exploding on impact. Surrounded by fire, smoke, and bloodied worms and botches, we all cheered and chanted anti-Apiary and pro-human/pro-Earth slogans.

While we demonstrated on the lot, several of the people who I noticed from the rush to the stage earlier, exited the theater splattered with blood and machine fluids. They then commandeered a couple of activated functional vehicles and flew away, while the crowd split off to continue demonstrating or rioting around the city. I left the crowds when I saw the flips encircling the area at large, off in the distant sky. Didn’t stay for the rest of the night but from what I’ve experienced after the play up to that point was spectacular!

Oh wait, did you originally think I was calling the play itself “spectacular”? Hell no! That play deserves nothing more than to be used to wipe the messiest of shitty assholes and putrid privates. Fuck that play, fuck its playwrights, fuck anyone who likes it, and fuck the Apiary! Fight or die, for the blue and green!

“What A Crazy World”: 💩0/5

The Riot after “What A Crazy World”: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 5/5