Playing Blind Man’s Buff with Helen Keller…
1.

Playing Blind Man’s Buff with Helen Keller…

David Estrada

1. Such are the Fortunes of the Game,

Harold Lyman Osborn is sitting in a Manhattan movie theater. The year is 2022 CE. Harry is forty-years-old…and has the same unique genetic affliction as his father, Norman, and his deceased grandfather, Amberson Osborn.

Upon the first public broadcast of Television on July seven, 1936 NBC and RCA broadcast their first attempt at programming to over two hundred of the RCA licensees. And it was not the content but the technology of radio waves that opened something up and evil trickled through. Like his father and grandfather, Harry’s disfigurement grew upon his skin and internal organs with each passing day but only the olive drab green patches on his skin caught the attention and the contempt of anyone who had eyes to see…Harry heard whispering that someone caught him in the shower at the gym and the strange green patches on his skin seemed to grow, not just by each passing day, but depending on his mood this man with a cellphone camera had shown these patches of green on Harry’s skin expanded and contracted. The closest thing to refer to is vitiligo, a condition of the pigmentation of the skin…but where others might have skin dark skin and white vitiligo patches where there is a stark contrast to the amount of melanin…Harry had light beige skin with olive drab green patches. Melanin isn’t green and the Zeds don’t turn green except for their eyes. The whites of their eyes are green and the colored portion of their irises has a green hue. But the Melanin mixed with the chlorophyll in their cells only makes the Zeds look like they have been out in the sun…the darker a Zeds’ skin the more difficult it is to identify them by their skin and if the whites of their eyes are a light green color, they are Zeds. But not for Harry or any of the children descended from Amberson Osborn after who might have been conceived after this fateful RCA/NBC broadcast.

For years both Amberson and Norman were able to use concealer makeup to hide this…other than their desire to go after any human-related to the two-hundred twenty-five RCA licensees, they would have no idea their genetic metamorphosis was the result of some side effect of television signals being broadcast using radio waves. Amberson’s obsession with these licensees waxed and waned thought his life. He was never suspected of any of their murders but he tried to limit himself to one family name off the list each year of his life after that day in 1936 and when he began to hear the voices telling him the names of the licensees and then being able to smell their progeny conceived after July 7, 1936, or children who lived in the same home as the licensee. It both rubbed off and was carried upon the chromosomes…the alleles…both genetic and spiritual or mystical…

Leeching into the skin with each loving hug by a father who helped put an RCA television set in almost every American home. Hugging his wife from behind to surprise her with some roses when she is cooking dinner. A husband, father, and head of the household who is not only ahead of the times working in Television but also breaking stereotypes by vocally appreciating his spouse and all the hard work it takes to be the homemaker. She’s so intent on the family meal, he pours some Gallo white wine for the lady and Budweiser for the man.

“Pour that in a glass,” she suggested overly concerned about her modern forward-thinking man not cutting his lip on the edge of a tin can filled with beer.