The Life of Koru, Chapter 26
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Brazil was large but not large enough to hide such a smelly truck as "the Stinker". Chief Tariq's hounds were able to locate it with utmost precision.
The rescue team entered the small forest where the Hukunta was gathered. As soon as they approached the camp, a few dogs ran towards them, growling and attacking. Peon and Smasher hit them with the clubs and they retreated.
"Who visits us on such a special day?" Witchdoctor said.
"Release the stolen property immediately!" Chief Tariq said.
"I gather you are the owner of the pigs?"
"I am the Chief overseer of the chain gang. The owner is Reginald Nnamani, a very influential man. You don't want to enrage him by stealing his livestock!"
"Too bad that it is ours now and we do to it as we see fit!"
Chief Tariq, Sir Jared, Miss Faraja, Sir Cane, Smasher and Peon looked around. The gathering was indeed large, with many people hooded to protect their identities. There were a few campfires as well, which enveloped the ceremony in ominous lights and shadows, making it look otherworldly and surreal.
Scattered here and there, you could see koru slaves in the process of being whipped and beaten, or hanging already from the trees, waiting for their demise.
"Listen here, chud!" Sir Jared intervened. "You waste both our time and yours, lynching koru indiscriminately! Even a fool knows that a koru is better alive than dead, as he can be turned into your cash cow to work for profit! Killing them like that is non-sensical!"
"And who might you be, calling me a chud and speaking with such disrespect?" Witchdoctor inquired.
"Witchdoctor, I recognize your voice from miles away! Take off that silly mask, your name is Judge Sayid!" Miss Faraja said.
"What the fuck?! How did you figure that out?" Witchdoctor said.
"Is there anyone in the Province of Brazil with a more preachy tone and more overly dramatic language, while simultaneously having a lisp?" she asked.
"Fuck you, stranger!" Witchdoctor showed his anger.
"I recognize you but you don't recognize me!" Miss Faraja said. "I am the daughter of Governor Hayatudeen and you have to answer to my father! Release the apes now or face the consequences!"
"Well... I see... If you put it this way then..." Witchdoctor said.
The silence was embarrassing. For a few seconds, no one had anything to add and you could only hear a koru vomiting in the distance.
"Very well then! I think the koru have suffered enough for today!" Witchdoctor decided.
And with a loud clap he gave the signal for all the members of the Hukunta to be ready to depart. They took all their guns and whips, their knives and hammers and jumped into their expensive cars, leaving behind all the chaos they had provoked.
The forest clearing was full of koru slaves lingering in a limbo of pain, covered in their own blood and vomit. Peon and Smasher untied these slaves and used their backs to carry the wounded slaves to the truck.
"Truly horrifying!" said Miss Faraja who, among the four Black rescuers, seemed most affected.
Peon looked desperately for Mulo. Where was Mulo? He even cried out his name, but he heard no answer. Was he dead? Peon was overwhelmed by all the misery around him. He saw bruises, backs torn to shreds by the whips, slaves tied with barbed wire and realized that Mulo went through something similar.
He found Mulo under a tree, with his neck hanging tightly from a branch. His bare feet could barely touch the ground in order to prevent him from being strangled to death. Mulo's face was swollen from so much beating. He even had five nails in his skull. His back was striped with terrible whip cuts. He was half-conscious and resigned to his fate.
Peon cut the rope immediately and helped Mulo lie down on the ground. He was happy to see that Mulo was still alive and coughing.
"Mulo, I'se thought I'se lost ye!"
"Pe-Peon..." Mulo mumbled.
Peon took Mulo on his back, a place where Mulo always liked to climb playfully, only this time Peon had to drag Mulo's body along as if he were a heavy sack. Mulo was placed in the cage of the truck and Peon climbed next to him, caressing him and looking carefully at his body to make sure nothing was missing -- he had all his fingers, his eyes, his ears, his balls and his cock!
"What's that on yer ass, Mulo?"
"I'se been branded..." Mulo said.
His left buttock had a fresh mark on it, the symbol of the Hukunta, a monkey skull and two daggers.
"His chest is like stone!" Prof. Kumbaba said, slapping Whitey's pectorals loudly.
"Stones don't have nipples as fragile as his, though!" Sir Gada laughed.
To demonstrate this, the overseer squeezed Whitey's nipples, which were as elastic as gummy bears.
"Breathe in, boy!" Prof. Kumbaba said as he pressed his stethoscope to Whitey's chest.
He listened to the sound of his heart and his lungs and declared himself satisfied. Intensive workout had improved Whitey's lung capacity and the efficiency of his respiratory muscles, including the diaphragm and intercostal muscles. The rhythmic beating of his heart was now stronger and more resilient than before. Each thump echoed the dedication he poured into his training, a testament to his commitment to peak physical fitness. And as Prof. Kumbaba put it, Whitey functioned and breathed like a real koru.
As for the rest of the body, there was nothing to complain about. His broad brawny shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist, accentuating his V-shaped torso. He had a chiseled abdomen with rippling six-pack abs and a muscular back that ended in two hard, well-defined buttocks. His legs were thick pillars of muscle, from his massive hamstrings to his powerful calves, and even his neck, his ankles and his wrists had become thicker.
"He will be a helluva good worker on a plantation, if we put him under a whip!" Prof. Kumbaba said.
But there was something more he wanted to add and he told Whitey:
"I heard your tongue is giving you trouble, boy! You talk non-sense and you can't even pronounce `Yessuh' properly, so I'm going to cut it!"
This was too much for Sir Ishmael. He could not bear to hear this, so he exploded:
"No! You can't, Professor! Stop this!"
"What's up with this insolence, slave?" Sir Gada said.
"I'm not a slave! I'm a free Black citizen..."
"Yeah, I heard that one before. I think he's a bit crazy from so much isolation in the lab!" Sir Gada said.
"That's why I recommend cutting his tongue off!" Prof. Kumbaba said. "That way, nobody has to listed to his non-sense anymore!"
"Please, Professor, don't cut my tongue!" Sir Ishmael said, trying a more plaintive approach.
But the Professor seemed to ignore him, so Whitey reached the point of falling on his knees, begging like a slave:
"Professor! Please, Professor!"
"Get up, you groveling dog!" Prof. Kumbaba said.
"Cutting his tongue will lower his price on the market a lot, though!" Sir Gada said.
"I don't care!" Prof. Kumbaba said. "I'm only selling him to teach him a lesson!"
"Please, Professor!" Whitey said on his knees.
That night, Sir Ishmael couldn't sleep in his cardboard box at all. Prof. Kumbaba's threat of cutting off his tongue was a level of dehumanization he was not expecting.
He had to escape, he had to do it! Now or never!
For months he had tried to memorize the password codes that were needed to navigate through the incredible maze of the laboratory. The overseer Sir Gada had been really careless in front of Ishmael, not hiding the passwords properly, because he thought Ishmael didn't know how to read. Well, Ishmael could read very well, even though he had been forced into this new identity, Whitey.
As Whitey, he often carried out the scrubbing of the floor in such a way that he was very close to Sir Gada whenever the overseer typed a code somewhere. In these situations, Whitey pretended that there was "a spot on the floor that he missed" and he was there. The overseer didn't suspect a thing as he thought Whitey was dumb and illiterate like every other koru. Ishmael quickly memorized the important passwords that were needed to access different parts of the facility.
This was a problem with the overseer: he underestimated Whitey. Whitey had three times the IQ that the overseer thought he had. The average IQ of a koru was 50, while Ishmael's IQ stood at an impressive 150. His intelligence was something that "The Changer" couldn't rob him of. He was still a Black gentleman, despite having the looks of a koru.
Sir Ishmael started typing the passwords at the entrance of each room, but he didn't head for the exit. He headed for the room with "The Changer" as he knew that escaping as a koru meant that he was basically dead. Sir Ishmael needed to reclaim his Black identity, he needed to reverse the process that transformed him into a koru.
And there he was, in that awful room where it all started.
Ishmael went to the control board and from "Black to white", he inverted the algorithm to "white to Black" and stepped inside the box of the machine.
The machine charged up well, but after a few minutes, it started emitting some very strange and contorted sounds.
"There's something wrong!" Sir Ishmael thought.
Soon enough, the air inside became hot and unbreathable. The machine overheated.
"Procedure aborted! Procedure aborted!" the machine yelled.
Dressed in his nightgown, Prof. Kumbaba emerged from one of the doors:
"My creation! My creation!" he yelled.
His creation was quite visibly on fire and thick smoke was coming out. Prof. Kumbaba grabbed an extinguisher and started smothering the fire with foam. The machine was shaking in all directions at once, creaking, screeching, clattering, hissing, then it shut down a sudden bang.
Sir Ishmael emerged from the machine as dizzy as he was the first time when he was changed by it.
His body was neither Black nor white. It was checkered with both colors in equal squares like a chessboard. He was, quite literally, both races at the same time! And he had glowing hands and levitated. He was a superhero now!
"What the heck? What did you do to yourself, boy?" Prof. Kumbaba asked.
"Begone!" Sir Ishmael screamed with an otherworldly voice, throwing Prof. Kumbaba into the wall with his telekinetic powers.
He grabbed the first lab coat that he could find and vanished into the night.