The Girl Without Hands

Once upon a time, and the time was now, there lived and still lives a poor farmer in the American Midwest. This farmer's name was Josiah and he was once married to a beautiful woman named Juliet, but she died several years earlier when a meteor hit her while she was walking back home from the cattle barn.

While you'd think losing your beloved partner would be the worst part of that story, it gets worse. You see, this story takes place in a day and age where truth and reality don't really exist anymore and people believe if you say something enough, it will become true.

"So," his neighbor asked Josiah on the day the meteor hit his wife, "you wish to use my phone to call for help? Man, how do I know you were even married? Hit by a meteor, yeah right. Maybe you just dreamed this girl up."

"But I didn't!" Josiah shouted in disbelief. "You know we have 6 children. Where did they come from if Juliet was never real?"

"Simple, test tubes, sperm banks, egg banks, etcetera, and so on," his neighbor shrugged and slammed his door. Josiah stood there in disbelief, staring at the wood patterns of his neighbor's door.

Maybe he was right. What if his wife was never real and he just used a donor or something? How would he ever know?

I know this must sound ludicrous to the reader, but this is just the reality of the world in which Josiah lived. The news and media outlets discussed daily the disputes about the world, what was and was not real, and whether humans could even ever know what was real. Computers and AI worked overtime to spit out new images and stories generated by their artificial minds, warping the fleshy and weaker minds of humanity, and drafting the script of the world they wanted to see rather than the one that was already there.

And everyone kept saying it was such a wonderful thing. What an amazing time to be alive, people said to one another.

"But," Josiah said to himself as a tear slipped through his eyes, "I don't want to live in a world where Juliet never existed."

He was wrong, though, wasn't he? There was no way he was right when everyone else said otherwise. He had to be wrong. So, he stuck his hands in his pockets and started the long walk home, saddened by the realization that Juliet never existed.

When Josiah arrived home he saw his 6 small children looking up at him from their shabby living room couch, eyes full of hope and tears.

"Could our neighbor call the police for help?" asked his eldest daughter, Lucy. Of all his children, Lucy looked the most like the wife Juliet he made up in his head. He was happy that somehow, the image lived on in his daughter.

"Honey, we were mistaken," Josiah told her sadly. "You see, children, we never had a woman living here named Juliet. She wasn't your mother, and she never actually existed. I'm sorry my delusions have impacted all of you so much. But, from this day forward, I will try to be less delusional."

And so things moved forward. At first, his children resisted and insisted that their mother was real and was killed, but eventually, they forgot her. Every single child forgot their mother, except for Lucy. She could not forget because every time she looked in the mirror, she saw Juliet in her reflection. But she knew no one else would believe her, so she kept this to herself. But she swore that one day, she'd find her mother's body and prove that she was real and she was her real daughter.

Years passed and Lucy was now 16 years old. Her father unfortunately continued to struggle financially and emotionally and began to have trouble putting food on the table. His children tried to help him, but because the world was currently ruled by about 10 super-wealthy tech giants, it became harder and harder for working people to pay for their needs, let alone the needs of their children.

So that was when people started a game they liked to call "the deal with the devil." And one day, Josiah got a chance to play.

While he was out working in the field one day, a strange-looking man in a suit and sunglasses approached him.

"Hi," Josiah hollered from his plow because environmental laws prohibited small farmers from using tractors even though larger corporate farms were given exemptions.

"Good afternoon, sir," the man greeted him without emotion or