The Fuck Hamster isn’t really a hamster.
It sort of looks like one, and I guess in some ways it behaves like one, but it’s not really. People just call it that. It’s convenient. It does mean that it’s now really hard to talk about any other kind of hamster without people thinking you mean specifically the Fuck Hamster, but the distinction seems to have become kind of unimportant to most people anyway.
We had some other hamsters in school before we got the Fuck Hamster, and those were OK. Some of them were even pretty useful. There was one that could eat test sheets and indicate whether the answers were correct, which saved some of the teachers a lot of time on work that was, you know, boring and kind of meaningless.
But nobody really uses those hamsters anymore, even though they did some good stuff and didn’t need too much looking after.
Because now we have the Fuck Hamster.
And everyone must use the Fuck Hamster for everything, because it’s here and we can’t do anything about it. And so, it apparently follows somehow, we have to use it or we’ll fall behind all the people who are running around getting it to do everything for them.
My dad told Ms Manolt one time that he didn’t agree with the Fuck Hamster getting used so much. She didn’t like that. Something about “are you trying to tell me how to do my job?!”
He said no, he wasn’t trying to tell her how to do her job, just that he would like her to actually do her job rather than pass it off to the Fuck Hamster, because if she couldn’t be bothered to teach then why should anyone be bothered to learn?
She didn’t like that either.
The next morning, my dad got a message, apparently from Ms Manolt but pretty obviously written by the Fuck Hamster, about how it’s actually not only justified but ethically and professionally required for teachers to make the most of modern tools such as the Fuck Hamster to best prepare students for life and the world and stuff. He put in a complaint to the head, but the response he got was also pretty obviously the Fuck Hamster talking about how deeply great and necessary the Fuck Hamster is.
It’s funny. I used to think I’d do almost anything to get out of school and learning and tests and stuff. Now that everyone - kids, teachers, the whole school system - is fully committed to having students and teachers use the Fuck Hamster instead of doing anything themselves, I think I’d do almost anything just to sit and learn one real thing from a real person.
Our latest assignment is a visual artwork about what “being a responsible citizen” means to us. So I sit in the classroom while all the other kids clutch the Fuck Hamster by the scruff of its neck and shout loose ideas at it: “maximising profit in an anime aesthetic”, “a 3D image of a muscled wolf man protecting corporate interests”, “retro-style waifu raising un-woke kids”. The Fuck Hamster digests these concepts. It opens its maw and inhales, greedily sucking in air and bits of detritus and the folds of its hosts’ brains, leaving them placid and tinged with nauseous pale green.
Then it shits out what they’ve asked for, or a kind of edges-filed-off version of it that has some basis in their request but got filtered and pulped and reformed and pulped and reformed again until it’s as if someone covered Michalangelo’s David in a thick layer of chewing gum. You can sort of see the original intention underneath, but most of it’s just mush. Like reclaimed meat, or whatever it’s called.
There’s a kind of delight on their faces when they see what the Fuck Hamster’s made for them. A thrill at having “created” something with such ease.
It genuinely makes me want to be sick.
So that’s what I channel into my piece. Art’s supposed to be about expressing your feelings, right? Well, that’s what I do. I create an approximation of the Fuck Hamster with coloured paper, cut up and folded and glued together for texture, and then I draw myself standing over it, and I make myself some rainbow-crepe-paper vomit.
It’s imperfect, sure. It’s kind of messy. The lines are rough. The depiction of the Fuck Hamster, and of me, is more an abstract blob than something true to life. But I’m actually proud of it. It feels honest.
When I hand it to Ms Manolt, she just scoffs at me. “I see,” she says.
“I put effort into this.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have. You should have used the Fuck Hamster like everyone else. You’re falling behind if you don’t.”
I look at my piece. Then at everyone else’s. There’s an argument to be made that theirs look more polished, more professional, or something. But we’re kids. And I flatter myself to think that mine actually says something, and none of theirs do.
And I actually made mine.
“But why?” I ask eventually.
Ms Manolt sighs heavily, as if she’s explaining to a senile person for the twentieth time why they can’t have another chocolate pot. “Because the Fuck Hamster is here. It’s the future. If you don’t embrace it, everyone else will leave you behind.”
There’s no point arguing. That much is obvious.
I turn away from her, which brings the Fuck Hamster into my eyeline. It’s skittering over desks, gouging claw marks in the wood, tearing books apart with its teeth. Stealing lunches, scratching faces, shitting everywhere.
I wish I understood why it’s so self-evident to everyone else that the fact that this thing is here automatically means it’s inevitable and good.
I spend a while wishing that, and then I realise it’s useless. I’m never going to get it. Maybe I am backwards and wrong and anti-progress or something. But if I started shitting all over the floor and calling it progress just because it was a new and different thing for me to be doing, I feel like people would be justified in not being keen on things changing in that direction.
So I sneak into school in the night, when everyone else is gone. I fill a tank with water, and I find the Fuck Hamster. I grab it by its abominable neck. Its eyes bulge; it screams a scream that sounds like every scream you’ve ever heard, and becomes kind of pathetic for being so average and flat and devoid of real terror; it shits and vomits out things that resemble ideas but that have been so indiscriminately and repeatedly digested that they’re just gloop and swill.
I submerge it in the tank until it goes quiet and still.
Then I throw it on the ground. It slaps wetly down, all straggly fur and loose, empty skin, the oil-sheen remnants of half-ingested concepts leaking from its pores and orifices.
The next day, there are ten more Fuck Hamsters in school. We’re reminded how wonderful it is that we all get to a) have access to the ability to create whatever we want with no effort whatsoever, and b) feed our original work and ideas into a centralised hamster that will use them all to further humanity as a whole (the details on how this is going to happen aren’t forthcoming, but it’s something to do with stock prices and shareholders, I think).
We’re asked to write an essay on how Shakespeare presents the theme of autonomy and decision-making in a play of our choice. I hear a lot of instructions yelled into the ears of the Fuck Hamster: “essay on plays and autometrics”, “write about how a Shakespeare talks about choices”. No mention of any specific plays, because of course we don’t need to know the details. We just ask the Fuck Hamster to regurgitate them, and we smile at how clever and accomplished we are.
Through the noise, I hear something else. A pen scratching. I turn my head and see another student scribbling something on an honest-to-goodness piece of actual paper, occasionally glaring with frustration at her hand and shaking out what I assume are cramps from not having used those muscles in a long time.
I sidle over.
“You’re writing,” I whisper.
She nods.
“Why not just use the Fuck Hamsters?”
A shrug. Then, quietly: “I saw you make that art.”
I blink in surprise. “Oh?”
She writes a few more laborious letters, then turns to look at me. “I don’t know,” she says. “I just thought it looked like it might feel nice. To actually do something yourself.”
I glance at her paper. The writing’s misformed, the grammar’s dodgy, but there’s an actual point being made about how Macbeth’s ultimate fate is entirely down to his own freely made choices. I might not be the one who’ll be doing the grading, but I’d give that infinitely better marks than anything the Fuck Hamster could churn out.
Perhaps I should tell her I admire the effort or something. It’d be sincere, but it’d feel weird. So instead, I just sit there and start writing something of my own. It won’t be a great essay, probably, but it’ll be mine. Black ink on white paper, new words nobody’s ever said in that order before.
The Fuck Hamster might be here to stay, but so am I.
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