Robby's dream

From chapter 25 of Glass Chimera:

" Robby had a dream.

It was the hammer and sickle thing. Freedom verses Slavery: Embryos crying out for personhood, but being herded instead into chimeric concentration camps under glass, their chromatic hammers swinging with molecular blacksmithery, forging the plasmidic implements of a bogus new world.

Eggs of Women crying out for fertility and progeny, but instead being scythed into Auschwitzian abyss.

And he heard their singing:

Hmphh .. . Ah .. .Hmphh .. . Ah .. .

That’s the sound of the men working on the chain

gang.

That’s the sound of the men working on the chain

gang.

And he knew the grunts of thousands of men a-groanin’; he heard the songs of millions of women a-moanin’, giving birth. He heard the cries of their wounds, the pangs of their wombs. Slaves, they were. He heard them singing. Don’t ya hear Jerusalem moan? Don’t ya hear Jerusalem moan? No, it weren’t all voluntary. No, Virginia, it weren’t all voluntary. Hmphh .. . Ah .. . Hmphh .. . Ah .. . Pull that barge. Tote that bale. He saw the burlap cotton sacks dragged upon the ground. Hmphh .. . Ah .. . Hmphh .. . Ah .. . He heard Moses demanding of the pharaoh, Let my people go. He heard Moses demanding of the pharaoh, Let my people go. He heard America singing, follow the drinking gourd, follow the drinking gourd.

He saw the strong brown arm of Washington Jones pull his great grandfather from the flood that swirled about a faltering riverboat. He felt the loss of footing as the boat careened upon raging waters, felt the lurch as the boat hit the mama oak and came to a sloshing, creaking crashing halt.

He saw, beyond the torrential horizon, the sod ripped from prairies by oxen teams, and he heard their bellowing, the cracking of the whips as Herculean animals strained and primordial prairie grasses became torn, the black earth turning up its wormy, smarmy loam to be kissed by the sun and drenched by the spring rains, the winter snows, the corn’s roots, the wheat’s shoots. He heard America singing, strains of music born of the resolve of freedmen, homesteaders, pioneers, farmers, Scandinavians, Scotch, Irish, African, indentured to the soil, and to their hopes for promised land.

Oklahoma! He heard Oklahoma, thousands of homesteaders spread in expectation across the dawning prairie horizon, buckboard wagons, horses, mules in anticipation of that great sounding signal from Uncle Sam, brought forth beneath the billowing skirts of fertile farming women, freckle-faced children in the shaded wagons, oxen in the sun, horses on the run.

Freedom? Yes, some were free, but ‘t’weren’t all that sweat dripping into from free brows, Virginia. Much of it had come slitherin’ in wet slavery drops of toil and blood and tears.

He heard low, slow, insidious munching of the dreaded boll weevil, chomping into oblivion acres upon millions of acres of lily-white wads of forced servitude.

He heard, like God, innocent blood crying out from the ground.

He heard the clanking of chains, the clashing of cultures and civilizations. Can you hear the Cherokee moan? Can you hear the Chickasaw moan?. He felt the tearing of their platted cords, the stomping of their ancestral hordes. It was a mournful cry heard round the world.

He heard the low, slow voice of Willie’s embryonic call, Freedom!

He heard the high, spry response of Bo’s ironic refrain, Freedom! blasting forth in totipotent nuclear song. The strains were there, ringing in his dream, clear as a splitting bell, bringing forth the clarion knell. He knew he heard the song; then it was gone.

"