GARY J. SHIPLEY The Family DietOther / text
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The Family Diet by Gary J. Shipley
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This family is parasitic exclusively on other families. There are species of family it finds more
attractive than others, but it does not limit itself only to these. All families and their subvariants are seen as potential resource. This expansion of interests to include all family fauna
is directly correlative to specific over-developments in physical make up: the father-part’s
immoderately amplified seed (each with protruding spinelets and thick, hooked combs of
metanotum, a useful side-effect of which is strategic choking), the mother-part’s inverted
sinus and vented breast tissue, the daughter-part’s deep circular depression situated between
her eyes, the collective’s near-translucent heads and lighted brain activity (the codec of which
is known only to them). There are more. Families with 2-3 children and pets, where
contentment levels regularly exceed mid-range, are enough to sustain this family for a
minimum of six months, but can if approached with due economy last anything up to a year.
Such is their rarity, however, that it invariably has to make do with larger quantities, less rich
in their nutrient base. This lean but proliferate diet has obvious downsides, made all too clear
when calculating optimum unit-expenditure:unit-capture ratios for families of commensurate
size. Any one of the two son-parts can survive with no distress to its mother and father parts
on no more than 1.6 versions of itself per month. For this family such goals prove consistently
doable. Five or six small-scale extractions every week are enough to sustain the entire
working unit. The most successful family will remain inward-looking at all times, erected
codes ceasing to be cognizable beyond its perimeter. Son-love or mother-love or father-love
or daughter-love must be restricted to the parts of which they are also part. If any of these
configurations exceed the unit-limit, the future integrity of the family will risk potential lifethreatening compromise. But a balance must be struck. To see a recognisably similar family
sucked clean of its haecceity-as-family and not experience some degree of emotive anomaly
directly associated with ordinarily inward-looking practices is itself hazardous to the internal
structures of the family body. Balances of this kind, when successful, act themselves out
beneath the surface of household behaviour. The younger and more female parts of the unit
may use up an allowance of tears on the debilitations felt by those outside only as long as
their root cause remains largely inexplicable. These techniques are perfected in absentia, by
the zeros’ family-parts, when functioning at or close to full capacity. Casualty-families may for
a time appear to continue as if unaffected by their being fed on by another predator-family.
This is good for spirits within the unsubdued predator-family, but the façade will eventually
break down. The father-part will molest and attempt to impregnate the younger family-parts,
while the mother-part will promote suffocation as a remedy to those same parts. All parts will
become progressively dissipated until death occurs. The best family is able to cultivate a highorder disgust for such familial implosion. This family is almost a template for one that will with
due diligence from its parts soon become best. When the father-part looks at his wife-part,
his son-parts and his daughter-part, he sees only himself, a thing too large for any fewer
bodies. This way of seeing is instilled into all eyed-parts until even distribution, or its nearest
approximation, is achieved. The family’s sight is to be considered almost as a part itself, and
must in lieu of this status be closely monitored. The daughter-part should be able to feed
from another (alien) family’s daughter-part without reservation, the father-part from alien
child-parts, the mother-part on those same parts. The sight must survive itself. The identities
must expand and contract to accommodate the demands, nay the necessities, of seeing—of
sight as family-member, as household entity. It’s required that the daughter-part know the
outcome: the alien father-part in her likewise daughter-part, the alien mother-part encasing
all alien breathing-parts in increasing thicknesses of towel. It’s required she know and know
by seeing. The family that cannot embody its defeated versions, through sight, cannot move
beyond them. The destruction of those inferior versions of themselves stimulates growth in