Magma
melts tangled roots
leaves empty hallways
hallowed veins
wait to be full…

My lips
melt wax
crimson beads
unbutton
a curved spine…

Asylum eyed girl
sits across a mirror
making crisscrossed exes
over hallow eyes, shallowly smiling…

Introduction– Luck’s dreams, eye-sight and upbringing
Prologue– Losing More than Sight
Chapter 1– Meeting Roman
Chapter 2– Checking the Map
Chapter 3– Three Travelers
Chapter 4– The Plan
Chapter 5– The Hospital
Chapter 6– Mom’s Room
Chapter 7– The Elevators
Chapter 8– Lookout Lighthouse
Chapter 9– The Other Side of the Wall
Chapter 10– The Many Faces of Naomi Lowman
Chapter 11– The Elders of the Wood
Chapter 12– The Tiger on the Carousel
Chapter 13– Reaching Roxy
Chapter 14– The Way Back
Chapter 15– The Record Room
Chapter 16– Ending the Program
Chapter 17– Lucky Downloaded
Chapter 18– Captives in Comnet
Chapter 19– The Machine-Made Man
Chapter 20– All We See or Seem
Chapter 21– Back to the Woods
Chapter 22– Finding the Key
Chapter 23– Face to Face with the Past
Chapter 24– Awakening the Dreamers
Chapter 25– Locking In
Chapter 26– The Operation
Chapter 27– Disconnected
Epilogue– On the nature of science and art of dreams

Introduction: Luck’s dreams, eye-sight and upbringing

What we think we actually see is nothing more than an upside down, rearranged, filled in version of our world. Brains act as powerful projectors displaying distinct images with the illusion of motion. Sight is the uninterrupted, unblurred film of the mind but does everything I sense simply exist on a small patch at the back of my cerebral cortex? I see, smell, taste and feel vibrations like a bat wandering the skies sending out signals, waiting for replies.

“How do robots see?”

I held out my small hand waving to the lightening bug animation that illuminated the sensor that automatically opened the door to my bedroom.

“The same way we do.”

She indicated the lightening bug.

“Behind that bug’s butt there’s a sensor that detects motion.”

I gazed at the yellow glow of the sensor.

“A sensor is one of the most simple robots. A robot is a machine and a machine is anything that isn’t a plant, human or animal. Humans made machines that can do nearly anything. All life systems are more complicated than the circuitry of robots but robots are in fact modeled after those life systems.”

This may seem like strange bedtime chatter between a mother and her ten year old daughter but mom was a brilliant scientist. In her twenties she was a successful optical device developer who developed highly specialized robot eyes and I wanted to follow in her footsteps.

Mom sat down on the edge of the bed reaching for the mini digi-reader on my sparkly purple display surfaced bedside table.

“No mom, please read one of Grandma’s. I like the real ones.”

By the time she returned from the bookshelf I was under a paper thin purple thermal comforter eagerly awaiting one of a dozen of mom’s favorite goodnight stories. The books and tradition of reading a nightly tale were handed down to me from my mom’s mother.

Ever since mom read me my first scary story I was fascinated and terrified by monsters.  In my mind I saw a creature that was man painfully melded with machine. The face was burnt and infected and its gnarled hands grabbed me by my pajamas. Sometimes, the robot could speak but other times it gripped my throat without a sound, tightening its many gears over my open mouth, stiffing any screams until I woke up, panting.

My parents were eventually convinced by the doctors to prescribe sleep medications for a condition they called night terrors. They had no idea I had been sneaking out to late night monster movies or researching gruesome accidents that happened in the districts on data hubs outside the community library.

I still had the bad dreams only now I was held under their terrifying spell by powerful sedatives. Those years were the worst. Sweat soaked I groaned under my covers, unable to scream or move. In the dreams I am losing my voice and attempting to roll and break free of imaginary binds. When the drugs finally wore off I would flop blue faced on the firm mattress.

After mom read me fairy tales and fables she would turn off the light and whisper, “Anything that’s real, starts with a dream!”

I always thought that it was probably true but I really hoped the creatures my mind minted in the middle of the night didn’t come to life anytime soon.

After a few years I grew more desensitized to the monster movies and stopped taking the sleep medication. It’s difficult to be taken off any medicine in Comnet so I just kept piles of the blue capsules in a box in my closet.

Every night mom would read me a story and give me my pill. I figured out how to pocket it and would put it in with my collection in the morning. This happened on a daily basis until I grew up and Mom had her accident.

My father said I got my mother’s imagination. I would stay up late sneaking around behind my parents in the living room as they watched thrillers. Menacing melodies masked my outbursts of panic. Sometimes mom would turn the movie off before the end if dad fell asleep snoring on the couch. Those nights I stayed awake, staring at the LCD starry night screen I had installed for my seventh birthday. Frequently, I had the same recurring dream.

Do you ever remember waking up from a dream and not quite knowing where you were or how long you’d been away? Maybe you’ve even shuddered at the thought of becoming trapped in dream after dream?

What if I told you the life you think you are living while you’re awake is nothing more than the boring dreams of the real you inside the life you call a dream? You might get angry, thinking you invest so much time with this life, it must be the superior reality. You could grow worried considering friends you’ve lost in dreams but in dream land forms can spring up again and again, friends and monsters alike. You might not believe me because you can’t even see the dream world or, at least you don’t remember the last time you saw it.

When I turned eleven I became obsessed with watching home movies of my family. There were ways to transfer the old films to new mediums but I was fascinated by mom’s projectors and VCRs. She and dad had been digging in the storage space for a pre-digital photo to give me to bring to show and tell when they stumbled across grandma’s old projector and collection of homemade features.

Every Sunday I would beg mom to load another battered metal wheel on the projectors side. After adjusting a few things and feeding the film through the projector she flipped the switch. It made a lot of noise, it was nothing like holographic television which barely indicated it was turned on. This machine had a clicking noise to go with the grainy and discolored footage. There was no sound, just a woman rolling a wooden cylinder along what appeared to be a soft counter-top. It was my grandmother rolling out sugar cookie dough for a holiday party. She pointed to the white wall where the image of her great-grandmother was pressing funny shapes into the dough and setting them on sheets of metal.

Grandpa had a camera permanently attached to his eye. Even after he went mostly blind Mom said he squinted at negatives. Grandpa built a dark room in the basement of the old house. That was before everyone was relocated to district apartments.

Polaroids and disposable cameras were all the rage when mom was growing up but by the time she had me, analog technologies were fading out.

Mom kept the cameras and devices her parents acquired over the years. In the new order it was uncommon to have large savings or to pass on land. Society moved into the safety of a massive city. Small objects and family heirlooms became the only things citizens were allowed to pass on. The family moved from their individual home soon after my mother was born. At academy we were taught that in Comnet’s infancy the first community leaders coordinated the transition to mass housing units (MHU) and the organized different types of citizens into districts.

Grandma saved as many of the old forms of technologies as she could. The books were her favorites as a girl. All information was becoming digital, this made it so books were seen less and less. Now most people I knew had never seen one and if they had it was inherited and passed down through the generations.

Mom grew up as a first generation district dweller and was fascinated with analog all the more in spite of being immersed in a totally digitized world. She spent years learning the placement and maintenance of all the intricate parts of the machine. Her friends laughed.

“I told them I must have been born during the wrong decade.”

We would joke about the days before instant communications and interactive display walls.

“What would you do for fun?” I asked on several occasions.

“We used our imaginations. It was like playing in virtual reality only your mind creates the projections you see instead of a computer.”

After she took a projector apart and put back together I started to comprehend her preoccupation with ancient technological art forms but, sometimes, she forgot she was talking to her daughter.

“Projectors mirror our own eyes” she indicated the lens. “Our eyes contain lenses that absorb light. The projector takes in the upside down image on the film and projects it and we see it on the screen. Without light, there’s no projection and without light we couldn’t see. Everything we touch or experience with any sense is only our perception of the object, person, plant, you get the idea?”

We would keep the smart shade blinds shut for hours watching each old film again and again. I knew the stories by heart. I knew my grandparent’s pre-district house by heart from watching grandpa capture all of grandma’s daily chores, family get-togethers and assorted shots from their backyard or trips around the country.

These sorts of heirlooms were forbidden. That is one reason mom decided to never digitize my grandparent’s records, photos or films. She kept most of it hidden in her closet, locked in a fire and water proof opaque smart glass trunk. It would only unlock to her touch and upon her death and removal from the registry of citizens the trunk was made transferable to me according to my mother’s community will.

Community wills are mandatory for all members of a certain age. The general rule is you need one once you occupy an apartment in your name or have a spouse or child that require inheritance. Those without wills surrender all their personal property to the community for reassessment and redistribution if necessary and possible.

“I hope you never die.” I said as the will approval agent held my small hand over my mother’s on top of the trunk.

“No one wants their mommy to die little one.” The agent looked at me and twitched his faint mustache. “It is just a protection for your future. Your mother has made you the executor of her estate and so in case she were to fall ill or was unable to make decisions you could help her. She must trust you very much to give you this responsibility so young.”

“She’s a bright child.” My mother smiled. “Now you have to touch the trunk with your hand and the transaction will be complete. It now knows your touch.”

Mom opened the trunk with a touch of her hand and produced a small metal box with a tiny hole at one end. She knew she had me going, that my curiosity was peaked.

“I made this when I was about your age. Grandpa called it a pinhole camera. All other lenses work in a similar way. Our head kind of works like this very old device does. Light comes in the hole and illuminates an upside down image on the other side of the box. The illusion of motion occurs when a series of images is displayed rapidly. Eyes don’t just capture and store specific frames for close examination but blend objects and surroundings from odd bits of memory to create reality.”

I must have been one of those times I involuntarily turned my head sideways.

“A more basic explanation is that our brains see our surroundings, not our eyes. Your eye isn’t really a camera that captures things exactly as they are but the connection made between your eye and brain allow you to detect motion and detail. If something is wrong with the pathway, like if a person gets hurt they don’t sense reality like you and me anymore.”

I nodded slowly. Mom borrowed my sketch tablet and drew a detailed diagram of the human eye with her pointer finger. She was a good enough artist to draw most basic machines but it sure felt like the images I saw were coming right from my eyes… or going directly into them.

I tried to sense the path the light took through my pupils, behind my ears and into the base of my skull. It gave me a slight headache. I found my mind flooded with even more questions. Before I could formulate one and blurt it out in the direction of mom’s voice I heard her get up and stand behind me. She placed her index finger near the back of my head.

“This is where your projector is set up.” She placed her hands in my tangled hair.

“Everything you see, smell, touch or taste starts out at an electrical impulse that is received and interpreted by the brain. Objects take what seems like an instant journey through our bodies and form inside our heads. This can cause things to look different depending on who you are and how your eyes work. Colors are subjective and everyone seems to have their own idea of what is beautiful or ugly. Perception is much more than light reflecting objects and eyes picking up reflections. Camera obscuras are also known as pinhole cameras. It’s a simple projection device without a lens, just a single tiny aperture.”

She glanced at the fading pictures on the wall. Her mother covering the hardened shapes with dull colored frosting.

“Robots don’t have the same problems as people. If their vision fails, they just need a new sensor. When a human’s vision fails it is much harder to delve into the brain and reprogram the machine. Now we can at least let people see shapes and objects and technology is advancing all the time. The problem isn’t with the individual parts so much. They can print out functioning livers and healthy lungs but we are still years away from being able to fully program a human brain.”

She might have been interested in the inner workings of robots but I got the idea that she went into robotic optics to understand more about her own brain and how it viewed and interpreted the world.

“Why can’t they upload a brain into a computer?” I asked without thinking. My professor had warned us of the over-blending of man and machine.

“Many people don’t like the thought of mixing with machinery. Can’t say that I blame them.” Mom answered my question but not how she usually would have. She never liked to give me the easy answer and encouraged my curiosity with more questions but she said little more on the subject. It seemed like the next logical step to a young child who couldn’t understand the potential complications of complete cyborg populations. It was acceptable to replace limbs or cure the body using technology but the thought of an entire human’s mind being replicated or encased within a machine proved to be too much.

Prologue: Losing More than Sight

“Turn it up Roxy I like this song.” I said into the glowing screen resting on my palm. I was under the blanket so I wouldn’t get caught staying up so late.

“I can’t my dad always hears it!” She hissed back, “Anyway you’re changing the subject. Who would you kiss in our grade if you had to?”

“We go to an all girl’s academy.”

“I know. I’m just saying who would you pick though.”

We spent every waking moment talking about every thought that popped into our heads. Well, mostly the thoughts that popped into Roxy’s. Mom tucked me in hours ago even if I was getting a little old at age thirteen. Most nights Roxy and I talked until we fell asleep and our communicators turned off automatically.

It was three in the morning when we heard music blast from mom’s study. Throwing the communicator on my bed I raced to mom in pajamas. The light was on but she looked like she was sleeping on the keyboard surface area of her expansive metal and glass desk only classical music was blaring. She was wearing ear buds but the wireless stopped transmitting the sound to her ears and blared it from the computer speakers. The system never turned the music off as it normally would when the listener stopped wanting to hear the device. It was as if the signals were confused.

Mom still didn’t stir. Her arms seemed awkward on the workspace below which was flickering on and off. I touched my mother’s shoulder and she mumbled something I couldn’t understand.

She eventually regained the use of her right eye but lost all sight in her left. She could no longer work so she was put on mandatory retirement, a sure death sentence for a scientist who could never keep her work at work.

Dad and I couldn’t watch her all the time but she insisted on tinkering with the machines she had collected with her family since she was a child until she lost a substantial chunk out of her middle finger in a puke green electronic typewriter. She couldn’t remember how it happened and sometimes she didn’t seem to remember dad or me either.

I was from the seventh generation of citizens of Comnet and from the age of thirteen I had little interest in anything besides my mother’s brain. Her left eye turned cloudy blue and stayed eerily open. Her right eye still responded to light and retained its plantlike hue. Her dissatisfaction was growing and after a few days of being unable to feed or relieve herself I found her sitting at her desk staring at a blank digi-pad.

She could barely form words or move her arms but she managed to write a small note to me a week or so later. It contained these words, nearly illegibly scrawled on a yellowing envelope, “use grandma machine luck you my life love mom.” Her once brilliant brain reduced to basic forms of communication.

“She had another small stroke Mr. Church.”

One of the doctors came to our home to collect my mom. Citizens could only be granted visitation passes after a patient had been stabilized and were in good condition. They didn’t want to risk any outbreaks or unnecessary contamination to the general population so the doctors came to get patients and bring them to the community hospital in containment pods that ran on the transport tracks that outlined the districts. Citizens were permitted to use passenger carts along the transport routes but most lived fairly close to their job or school and walked or stepped onto the sidewalk transports or used elevators and sky walks to take shortcuts through the interwoven city.

The doctor said the second stroke had given her temporary and flickering amnesia. Dad said he wishes she would have died from that second stroke. What happened next was worse on all of us. Mom was shipped away to the community hospital because he couldn’t take care of her, keep an eye on me and work a full time job to afford our compartment in the district.

“Dad we can move further away from downtown if we can be closer to mom.”

He just shook his head. It was no use.

“Your mom wanted you to finish school and I won’t have my daughter living near the hospital. That place is bad news. Can’t believe I let them take your mom there. But that wasn’t your mom anymore. No, it’s best we get on with life. She would’ve wanted that.”

By that time mom could do little more than drool and mumble. He noticed my grades slipping ever since the accident and knew I would have to leave home in a few years. I only had so much time to train for a profession and the closer you lived to downtown the better shot you had at landing a good job to secure your place in the district for generations to come.

Now that I was seventeen it was time to graduate and select a profession. I expected to go into a Robotix career just like my parents when I was a child but now I was torn between studying the human brain and its pathways of communication or being a historian of the ancient technologies my mother treasured.

When I got my face scan for my yearly academy identification card dad always had to comment on how much my mother and I looked alike. He still kept digital captures of her on display surfaces around the house. Everyday it seemed more and more like I was looking into small mirrors tucked in every corner of the house. Apartments in the districts allotted one small room for each child and a medium room for couples but dad knew someone in the department of apartment assignment and let us stay in the same three citizen unit I had lived in my entire life. It was comforting to see mom as she once was, a woman with curly red hair, a smattering of freckles across her nose and green eyes that were always seemed to be searching for something.

Chapter 1: Meeting Roman

It was Halloween but just barely. 12:02 am and LUCK-C3 was incomming. She was too young for the implant according to her father. In truth, she was worried it might hurt. ROX44FOX said it’s even more excruciating than the eye-identifier enhancement procedure (EEP) every child had to undergo to enter their prospective academy. Professors were able to send holographic transmissions using classroom monitors or students could just get their daily updates and assignments streamed to personal display screens.

The EEP enhances not only the quality and clarity of the user’s vision but includes education, work and hobby data storage and organization devices. Artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers can opt for additional recording and memory storage devices. Not many go into those fields though, they are mostly dominated by robots and machines that preserve art artifacts or make music by manipulating levels and sequences of digital instruments.

Most humans went into mechanics, engineering, repair or some other technological field. Society was so dominated by the industry that most never questioned their circut in life. I began speculating about a few things until I lost my mother and started having conversations with a boy from beyond the district walls. His instant communicator alias was ROMAF12 but his real name was Roman.

All of this probably sounds pretty strange to you if you haven’t gone through the main courses at an academy yet but I’ve kept every yearly work manual stored on my personal digi-ram storage device. I started sending copies to ROMAF12 a few months after we first spoke.

For the first few transmissions I thought ROMAF12 was a stupid hackbot or worse, a spambot gone crazy. His first incomm was sent to everyone I knew living in the districts: “The path is long and winding. The reward is in the eye of its beholder. What is this rock and how does it take my thoughts. How can I understand a creature with no face, only one blank open eye?”

Most hackbots asked questions trying to pry personal identities and information from incomm users. Spambots were supposed to be shut off in the Ad Cleaning Act of 2017 but some still fizzled out on ghost forums or incommed you over and over trying to sell you long dead brand named merchandise at unreasonable prices.

All Comnet citizens used the Instant Credit Transfer System (ICTS) to add needed items to their weekly deliveries. All resources were carefully rationed out as needed and applicable based on the status of the consumer’s credit account. Anyone not keeping their account in good standing could be instantly cut off from the system. When that happens transgressors are either locked up in Debtor Wards to work off their balance or cast out of society altogether to wander into the wasteland beyond the faintest signal of the Community Network (Comnet).

I had never read such words before and I wondered who was making them, what kind of machine was allowing these thoughts to be broadcasted. I grew more intrigued as the stream-of-consciousness incomms continued flooding in: “This rock is beeping at me. I am starting to understand that it works by scanning my brain for electrical impulses. These impulses are my thoughts and desires. I need food. It has started to rain in the woods. For some reason I feel I should shelter this rock and name it. There are letters printed on it: INCOMM1 Personal Communication Tablet (PCT). How odd.”

That was the first incomming device created. It’s been around since I was a kid. I had no idea any were still functioning. ROMAF12 eventually discovered he was sending his thoughts to others. One night while I was reading the stream he called out to see if anyone was listening: “Is anyone there? I’m completely lost. Rocks are part of nature but I am starting to suspect this is no ordinary rock. I don’t know what machines are but if they exist and I can touch them how can they be less real than the trees or river? How can it read my mind? I have seen ancient books but no one in my world can write. How can I even understand these lines? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?”

I couldn’t help myself. The room monitor transcribed my thoughts instantly and my brain hit send: “I’m here ROMAF12. Where are you? Do you live in the woods? My handle is LUCK-C3 but my full name is Lucille Church. I live in District 292.” That night over two years ago I began illegal communications with forest dweller named ROMAF12: “Hi Lucille my name is Roman.” “Hi Roman, call me Lucky. I didn’t know humans were still alive in the woods.”

It was hard for me to imagine living outside a mechanized society so I never did. I didn’t know anyone or anywhere out there. The academy taught that beyond the community border was a dangerous place to go. Remnants of a devastating war stand in the sands of the south and water lapped up and washed the coasts on three sides away. There were only the Districts now. Those who survived had to stay in a close network to share and maximize resources. All communication was handled through computer devices and any transaction was recorded in the Community Data Bank (CDB) and you had to be in good standing with them to get anything, transport, living space, education, even the World Bank instant credit transfer system was merely a division of the Community Data Bank.

Most technology had to be replaced within a few years; that is if you wanted a good shot at landing a productive job. They pushed any technophobes or those who lacked mechanical skills toward the edge of the development. The closer you were able to live to the center of downtown the better connection you would have. Comnet controlled every aspect of life in the districts. If you ate it was because your compartment was awarded stipends or stamps to purchase goods or have the sent by the Comnet delivery service (CDS). My father worked in a Robotix factory assembling the machines that assemble other machines and products. He attained high levels of education and had fast hands. It was dangerous but rewarding work for him. He put his whole life into the company, especially after mom was taken away.

Family and friends are not allowed to visit the sick, depraved, mentally imbalanced or physically disabled. They are sent to a building near the outskirts of development. It is said the proximity to the woods helps their healing. Most never came back but a few friends did return after a nasty bout with viruses and diseases long thought to be extinct.

My best friend, ROX44FOX, or Roxy Fox as she was called in school, left one year with a terrible cough. Illness was treated severely in Coment as the population was kept in close quarters and many diseases from the past could quickly wipe the population out. There were few germs or possibility of food borne illness and so a little sneeze is reason to stay home.

I visited everyday after school and we maintained our nightly ritual of talking until we fell asleep. She was in more pain day by day. First she complained of head and muscle aches. Before long the brightness of the screen started to bother her.

“Lucky I have to go to bed. I can’t look at this light anymore. Are you coming over tomorrow?”

“Right after school. I promise.”

My communicator screen went black. I stayed up by myself for the first time that night and considered the possibility of losing my best friend at school if Roxy had to be hospitalized.

My suspicions were confirmed the next day when I tried to visit. Mr. Fox answered the door and apologized.

“I’m very sorry Lucky we didn’t have time to tell anyone. Roxy was hiding her rashes from us but last night she got a terrible fever and wasn’t speaking clearly. The doctors are taking her to the hospital to rest in a quarantined ward. They said it’s called Typhus and that they haven’t seen it in years. We have to decontaminate the entire complex to make sure no parasites are present.”

“Can I talk to her?”

He shook his head. Definitely not, the hospital won’t allow it. Roxy is far too sick but I know she would appreciate your concern.”

I turned to leave but Mr. Fox followed me down the hall and into the elevator.

“I was just leaving.”

The elevator was transparent and opened directly to the sidewalk below. The decontamination squad was approaching Mr. Fox, their entire building was closed until it was clean and free of risk.

I spent three lonely days with no friends and no one to talk to. Dad tried to make conversation but he was tired from work. I went to my room early at night and sat staring at a blank communicator.

On the fourth night I jumped and knocked everything off the table next to my bed when the communicator beeped and the screen flashed ROX44FOX. Roxy was able to get her hands on a small communicator a nurse left in her room by accident. She knew my location coordinates by heart and we sent messages every day for the three years she was ill.

I knew I was destined to be a programmer or technician at the Technologic Lab and University. I was going to graduate with top marks at Comnet’s girls-only academy and I took the most advanced courses in robotics offered. I wanted to maintain data histories and focus on artificial intelligence and human-cyborg relations.

Being one of the last children that wasn’t automatically upgraded at birth was a plus. Being born in 2012 meant you were part of the last generation of humans born enhancement free. A doctor revolutionized the procreation process by introducing the ChildPlanner. Embryos could be enhanced with machine attributes or illness or attractiveness could be bred in and out of children at will.

Doctor Emila E. Cevens patented the first programmable infants. Parents were enthralled. Their new bundles of joy resembling the other expensive, forgotten toys around their homes, complete with volume control and autonomy drives. New parents were well rested and disconnected from their offspring from the start. It was long thought to be better for children to stay separated from family at least until societal chips for morality and conduct were installed and the child was given a basic education.

LUCK-C3: What do you mean you don’t understand the importance of human-computer interface (HCI) that’s from the year twelve manual Rome, it’s for twelve year olds! My professor explained it like this: You need to interface with machines using a system. Technicians build the hardware, the physical aspect as well as software, the logical components. This allows input and output to occur between the user and machine.

ROMAF12: Machines sound like people.

LUCK-C3: How so?

ROMAF12: If the body is hardware then the mind is software and you function by putting things in and taking them out. It isn’t as calculated as a machine but the process is similar I think.

LUCK-C3: You’re right. We both have memory, too.

ROMAF12: That is a strange thought. Does this machine remember what I’ve told it?

LUCK-C3: Every word. Dad told me there is a database of all communication ever. At least back to the war.

ROMAF12: What war?

LUCK-C3: Your elders don’t tell you about the war? What do you learn? Do you have manuals like us?

ROMAF12: No we learn more from experience and listening to the elders. Do they really give you a manual for every year and why have you only sent six books previous to this one? How young did you learn to read?

LUCK-C3: Well, they give the first few to the parents, sort of like instructions for how to discipline and raise us. By age four they are inserting coloring pages, and basic worksheets about reading and math. Year five was the best because it was the first that belonged to you alone. No instructions for parents, the academy was taking over and assessing which fields you would be interested in. Since both of my parents liked working with machines I was fond of the diagrams. The sixth book is when you start formally attending classes at the academy of your choice. There is one for girls, one for boys, one for creatives and one for public office and management.The newer children could choose to install or implant their training at any age desired by the parent. They aren’t really human, they look human and everything but they aren’t interesting, just perfect. They don’t even make the best workers or engineers because most of the improvements are aesthetic. Thank circuits I wasn’t a designer offspring, you should see the booklet for those babies!

ROMAF12: Sometimes, I feel like you’re on a different planet Luck. I wish-

LUCK-C3: You wish? You wish what ROMAF12?

LUCK-C3: Roman?

ROMAF12: Someone’s coming.

They discovered Roman with what he had first thought to be a rock. The signal stopped suddenly and ROMAF12 didn’t reply for days. They must have smashed the tablet.

I cried for months and did little besides stay in my room and stair at the room monitor. It got so bad that my father had a talk with me. My grades were slipping and my professor pulled my recommendation for the Techknowlogic internship. Dad never spoke much but years of hard work spoke volumes as did the deep lines forming in his smiling face, “Kiddo, you don’t have to go to that fancy school in the center of the city. You will do something great yet. You are just like your mom. She would have better stuff to say. You can stay with me as long as you want. I want you to pick yourself up and finish your education. I don’t care what it is,” he raised his voice, addressing her low whine, “You have to figure out what makes you happy.” He patted the top of my head and messed up my un-brushed hair even more. He exited the bedroom with one backward glance and I returned my eyes to the monitor screen at once.

After hours of concentrating I started feeling pressure behind my eyes. I looked away from the screen and into the mirror beside my dressing stand. My hair was a mess and I couldn’t remember the last time I brushed it, let alone washed it. “No wonder Dad was so worried,” I thought, “I look like a complete mess, a madwomen.” I thought of mom at that moment. I wondered if she still looked the same as the last time I saw her. Dad couldn’t brush her long hair anymore so we had to give her a short bob. We tried using glasses for the eye that still had sight but this made her all the more foreign to me.

It had to be four in the morning when I woke up to a faint beep. I was fully clothed and sweating from dreams about being hospitalized. I remembered a white coat and a cold surface but the details were fading rapidly. The monitor had gone into sleep mode and dulled the illumination. When I concenrated on the wall across from my bed it lit up the entire room. Blinded for a few seconds, I couldn’t make out the name that was contacting me. My eyes adjusted and I saw: CHURCH-FRONT: “Luck, I made it! Let me in?”

“How did you get here!?” I whispered loudly into Rome’s ear muffled in the mess of my walk-in closet. I could see him hazily by the illumination of my moon night light. He was inches taller than me with dark features. He pulled me close, he was completely frozen. “I’ve been running for months. The elders found me with the tablet and banished me for communicating with you. They had been spying on me, thought I was acting weird they said.” Roman let go of my arm and slid down to the carpet. “You are so beautiful Luck. You never described your looks.

I was, for the first time, aware of my appearance. It had been such a feat getting Rome into the house undetected by my father. I looked down at my back tank-top. I was sweating so much earlier I must have pulled my sweater off when I was sleeping. I also wore boxer shorts with little birthday cakes sprinkled across them.

Definitely not how I imagined looking meeting ROMAF12. I tried to smooth my mop of hair as I sat beside him. “I’m glad you made it Rome. I missed-” my throat went dry, “I usually don’t look such a mess. I’ve been worried,” without much of a pause for response I blurted, “I’m failing all my classes.” This was not the conversation I wanted to be having with the guy I’d been daydreaming about for over two years. I felt ashamed that he had come all this way and all I had done was sit around feeling miserable, worrying my poor father, ruining my future.

“It’s OK Luck. You don’t have to be afraid. I can take you back with me. You can explain these machines better. I know they could help us if they would just listen.” I was amazed by him. Was he coming to rescue me? That didn’t happen in Comnet, it happened in fairy-tales.

“How would we get there?” I sounded more frightened than I intended. Rome staired at me in the semi-darkness touching my face with the back of his hand. He had grown warmer with a few minutes spent in the closet. I had never wanted to kiss any of the boys I knew; they were either just friends or just plain disgusting. I had no idea what I was doing but felt a strong bond between us. We spent months talking about every aspect of our worlds that when we finally met, the excitement felt like electricity, a magnet that drew us close. After a few moments he politely ended our embrace. “I’ve never met a girl like you. Please say you’ll come with me.”

I knew I had to help Rome get his family back but I knew I couldn’t leave mine behind without a clue to where I’d gone. “Fine, I’ll come with you but you’ll have to meet my dad first.”

Chapter 2: Checking the Map

“I’ve never even had a boy inside my house before last night,” were my first thoughts upon waking. Turning over on my peace frog sleeping bag I tried to get a closer look in the semi-darkness of the open closet not wanting to wake the first boy to enter my bedroom. The warm colors of the sun began licking the corners of sky exposed in my bedroom windows and my mind was full of questions.

I didn’t want to wake Rome yet. He looked exhausted when he finally collapsed and started snoring. I was worried he would wake my dad before I had time to explain, to come up with a plan. Rome traversed the wilderness to get my help but how could he convince my father to let his only daughter, the only family he had left escape the community walls? I never mentioned him to my dad in fear he would tell me to stop contacting him. I had dreams of meeting Rome for the past two years but last night I was shocked by a stranger standing in my doorway. That stranger was now asleep on his side on a pile of clothes I’d outgrown and a mix of pastel stuffed animals and throw pillows from the couch.

I crept out of the small walk in closet yawning. I accessed a detailed map of the entire community on my wall monitor. Comnet was a series of district building clusters that formed a long rectangle. The center was designated downtown which contained the capital, the best academies, Robotix Corp. and nearly every amenity a citizen could want.

District blocks were numbered 1-1000 with the odds going down one side of the rectangular walled-in infrastructure. We were fortunate to live near to downtown, especially after losing mom. Apartments closest to downtown were reserved for important members of society like scientists, skilled technicians and mechanical engineers. Numbers 1-400 were considered very good but living between the 500 and 800 blocks meant longer commute times and slightly smaller apartments. Those apartments didn’t always get the best connection to the servers and were generally assigned to menial workers and less desirable citizens. The Community Hospital was the last address. Beyond it was a brick wall and patches of woods.

I heard my dad walking down the hall to my bedroom. I switched the screen off and thinking if we could just make it to the 600 block I could say goodbye to Roxy before leaving Comnet. She could help me find a way into the hospital.

“Good morning, muffin.” Dad said. “Are you feeling any better this morning?”

I caught a glimpse of appearance in the full body mirror that hung on the outside of my closet. Deep dark circles stained the cavities of my moss covered eyes.

“Did you get enough sleep? You look tired.”

I shook my head and sat on the bed.

“Maybe you should go back to sleep for a bit Luck.”

I entertained the thought of sleeping the day away before having to tell my dad about the strange boy in my closet.

Before I could agree Rome walked out of my closet holding a blue stuffed rabbit.

“This little guy was so comfortable, Luck.” He stopped dead in his tracks.

“Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my daughter’s room?”

I bit my lip but didn’t know where to start. I figured the beginning was as good as time as any.

“Dad, do you remember when the whole district got that anonymous signal about two years ago?”

He nodded but didn’t remove the lines of concern between his eyebrows. When I finished my story her remained silent for what seemed like forever.

“Yeah, I do think I remember that message.”

“Dad!”

“What? Oh, honey I’m listening. I just can’t believe a man… a boy from the woods could have made it past our border.”

Roman said the guards seemed to be more concerned with keeping citizens in than they were about keeping foreigners out.

“But how could that be son? Everyone would want to come here. Look around we have everything we could possibly want here.”

Dad looked around the room at all the technology he had been able to procure. He was expecting Roman to be impressed.

I was exhausted after hearing about Roman’s journey through the woods and across Coment.

“It was more difficult to move within the city than outside the walls. I didn’t want to be seen by anyone but sensed eyes glaring at me from every corner.

We left my bedroom and went to the kitchen where dad made a welcoming breakfast of fried eggs, buttered bacon sandwiches and orange flavored vitamin infused water.

Rome told us how the elders discovered his secret and banished him from the village.

“I was speaking to your daughter on the communicator in a clearing in the woods. The signal was strongest the closer I held the tablet to a rock in the middle of the woods. Several elders surrounded me. Once they discovered what I had been up to for the past two year…”

He cast his gaze to the white tiles on our kitchen floor.

“They knocked it out of my hands and smashed it on the rock in the middle of the clearing and told me to leave immediately.”

Rome poked the yolk of his fried egg with his fork and it swirled in a pool of buttery bacon grease on the simple pattern of the unbreakable glass plate.

“I’m sure they threw my mother out. I was her only son, a shame to her and my father.”

“I thought your father was dead.”

Rome just nodded pushing his half-empty plate away form himself.

“Don’t worry, my boy. We can help you. I don’t like the idea of the two of you going back to that place alone but you can stay here until you find your strength. It’s been, sort of hard…”

I looked at dad. His soft blue eyes were filling with regrets.

“I just mean, since her mother. She never had many friends anyway. But Luck will be just fine. Strong girl.”

Tears taunted the corners of my bloodshot eyes. They were far too dry to water over but I had to clear my throat.

Roman continued his daring adventure tale but was interrupted every so often by exclamations of admiration from my father. Dad was fascinated by a anyone who could live without a constant stream of new technology.

“We do have books, sir, and ways of writing. We have a few typewriters we recovered from abandoned homes. Anything with an electrical cord was to be confiscated and disposed of, the leaders claimed the technology no longer worked and had harmful properties if not properly contained. After hearing Luck talk about the machines I knew they couldn’t be all bad. Not if Luck put her faith in them.”

I had never considered my appreciation and use of machines as a belief in them but to someone outside the society technology seemed magical. I thought about the walls that could light up with selected colors or the screens that connected nearly every home and business virtually any time day or night.

“Lucky sent me what I always was searching for. That was the only reason I joined the scavenging team, to learn more about the world and how it came to be this way. I could see in the items they left that people had lived much differently before I was born, much differently.

I witnessed glimmers of magic when a battery held a small charge. The first time I saw an electronic device spark I was reminded of a living creature. When I scavenged I would come across the most wonderful artifacts. I found the most amazing pebble on a beach once. It produced music sweeter than any morning songbird but soon it faded and became like the other rocks.”

It was nearly noon and I was still wearing my cupcake pajamas. Dad taught Roman how to use the dishwasher and packed supplies for the proposed trip across the wall. While they were busy planning and getting to know each other I showered and gathered any belongings that might be helpful.

By the evening we were ready to go having not only convinced dad to let us go but for us to take him with us.

“Just until we reach the hospital right, Dad?”

I gave him a stern look.

“Yes, Luck, I understand. And thank you for letting me help you.”

Roman agreed it would be a great way to travel undetected up to the border. We would pretend we were only taking a small vacation with dad, stopping to  visit Roxy along the way. If I knew my best friend she would know a million secrets that could help us get into the hospital undetected. We needed to get more details on the layout if I was going to be able to see my mom.

Roman said the least guarded point coming out Comnet was near the watchtower. Hospital security was so strict that no one besides trained personnel was thought to be able to get into Lookout Lighthouse but Roxy had even dated a doctor in training during her three year stay at the facility.

Rome and dad got along great. In fact, maybe a little too well. Rome told us his father was killed on a hunt when he was very young, too young to remember it or him. When the elders forced his mother to banish her son Rome lost the only family and the only home he had ever known. Now that I was prepared for the journey and dressed in my normal attire, plaid pants, black t-shirt, long-sleeved over sweatshirt and green sneakers it was time to get going.

I ran through the map in my mind. It was also stored on my handheld communicator. For once I was glad didn’t let me get the implant. All implants are assigned serial numbers and are easily tracked.

I had to bring enough technology to impress the elders but we also needed food and survival supplies. Roman assured my dad that he could take care of me on the run. Dad was amazed that anyone could do as much as eat without ordering their groceries from the community market.

Dad was already out the front door. I hadn’t seen him so happy, well, it had been a long time. Roman waited for me as I locked our front door with an electronic key card.

“You never cease to amaze me, Lucky.” said Rome as we made our way down the hall.

“It’s just a key card.” I held it out for him to examine but instead he took my free hand and brought me close to him.

“I can never thank you enough for everything.”

The three of us rode the elevator down to the street together. Dad led the way. Rome stepped out into full daylight. He was more handsome than ever. His features were dark except his eyes which gleamed jade in the golden morning sunlight.

I smiled. This whole time I thought Rome had come to save me from these walls, to comfort me about losing my mother or just to take me away so we could finally be together. Now I understood that our meeting was much more crucial. I had impacted his life by exposing him to technology and now he had nowhere else to go.

We both needed a piece from the other’s puzzle to see the bigger picture. As we walked to the edge of town I saw my birthplace in an entirely new light. I no longer took for granted the lighted streets, reliable transit system or the constant connection I had with the other members of the district. Rome wasn’t able to speak to anyone for months, a scenario I never wanted to imagine.

Chapter 3: Three Travelers

Roxy jumped three feet in the air in three inch heals and squealed when she opened her apartment door and I was standing on the other side.

“Oh Lucky I can’t believe you came all the way down… here.”

She trailed off after seeing my father and paused to take a good long look at our mysterious guest.

“Who’s this?”

I rolled my eyes. Roxy was the kind of girl you might call completely boy crazy. She had a crush on every single boy she’d ever seen and I was expecting Roman to be no exception.

Rome stepped inside after me and kissed Roxy’s hand. Dad chuckled and left the three of us standing in the entryway.

“Hi, stranger!” Roxy said, twisting long blonde bangs with a polished finger.

“Pleased to meet you. Lucky has spoken most highly of you.”

I didn’t remember saying anything that nice about Roxy but Rome kept slathering on the charm. “You’re a lovely girl. Would it be possible for Lucky’s father and I to stay at your apartment this evening? We don’t want to be a bother at all.”

“Oh, that would be fun. Hang on, I’ll ask my dad.” She turned on her heel and bellowed into the den, “Dad Lucky and her guests need a place to stay. We’ll be in my room. Call us for supper!”

I knew we would be able to stay, Mr. Fox rarely said no to his only child. Roxy’s mother, Romidilia, never let her husband live down the fact they lived so far from downtown so he indulged his ladies with most of their whimsical desires.

Mr. Fox claimed he enjoyed the particular type of tree the community planted around the 600 block. Marcus Fox was in the business of family trees and the interconnectedness between community block databases but he was far more interested in things that grew.

Marcus tried tirelessly in his youth to become a greenhouse attendant but failed due to an acute allergy to cabbages and wasps. Unfortunately, the day of his final exam he was harvesting purple heads of cabbage and hydroponic brussel sprouts when he grabbed a rather large yellow and black sprout. He swelled roughly twice his size and after months in hospital he lost his deposit on the downtown apartment and was forced to move to block 600 with his pregnant wife.

Romidilia was a beautiful specimen. She resembled a perfect plant, long limbs, usually draped in deep green fabric with beautiful jewels adorning pin-straight blonde hair. Mrs. Fox was one of those creative types. This became apparent upon entering her home.

Roxy led them down a hallway plastered with Mrs. Fox’s paintings. They were all of her and her husband’s favorite subjects: plants and self-portraits of Mrs. Fox.

“Roxy you look exactly like your mother.”

Roxy turned, eyelashes ready to bat.

“Oh, Roman you are so polite. Not like boys at school, right Lucky?”

Roman smiled at them and followed Lucky’s father into the den to meet the Foxes. Roxy practically threw me into her bedroom.

“Who is that guy? He’s cute! Is he family?” I nodded.

“Why haven’t you been returning my incomms? I was starting to get worried. You haven’t been in school and everyone’s saying you’ve dropped out. Luck, you know what they do to people who don’t finish their education, don’t you?”

I was dreading this conversation. I had avoided going near the school in weeks, even when my father thought I was still attending classes. I knew they could lock me up and charge me as an undesirable but I was sure I would pass the basic requirements assessment and get a decent job if our plan didn’t work.

“Look Rox, we are going to visit my mom. I don’t want to end up there. You’ve got to believe that I have a plan.”

She locked her innocent blue eyes in mine, “I know you do. You always have a plan.” She smiled and pulled me close. “You’re planning something dangerous aren’t you?”

I didn’t want to tell her the truth. I tried to force a smile.

“Maybe.”

“You better come back to me, Lucky. You’re my best friend.” She had the strangest look on her face. Her mouth twitched a little and she said, “Just in case you get in trouble. In case you don’t come back…” I started to protest but she pushed herself into my arms and kissed me.

“What the hell, Rox?”

Roxy backed away and opened her eyes slowly. “I knew you’d never kiss me b-but I dunno, was it bad?”

Grinning at her I decided to shrug it off, “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never kissed anyone before.”

“Oh.” Roxy turned bright red. “I didn’t know that.”

“I never told you I did.” I stood dumbfounded, staring at my blonde bombshell of a best friend. She played with a silver chain around her slender neck.

“I just thought you were shy.”

The girls left Roxy’s pink and purple bedroom behind her perfectly painted door. Her mother had obviously adorned it with flowery handwriting that spelled “Roxylynn’s Bedroom” in pink sparkling sequins. Lucky joined her father and Roman who were making small talk in the Fox family’s den.

After a nice dinner of pasta with tomato sauce and an abundant side salad we tucked in for desert. Mrs. Fox was an amazing cook but cheesecakes were her specialty.

“I’ve never had cheesecake before.” Roman said to Mrs. Fox.

“There you are dear, a nice healthy serving. You could use some meat on those bones!” Mrs. Fox smiled showing her perfectly straight, pearly smile.

Rome ate three pieces to appease Mrs. Fox before she would let them go to Roxy’s room to get ready for bed.

“Your mother is really something.” Rome said as he undressed in Roxy’s closet. He came out wearing my dad’s old pajamas which was quite a change from the heavy wool garments Rome came to my place in. It was weird seeing him wearing colors besides black and grey.

Roxy and I resumed our normal pre-sleep conversation and helped me plan a route through the secured building. She proved to be as helpful as she was excitable. Roxy hadn’t changed much from her long stay at the hospital except for being a little more hyper. She became nearly unmanageable and almost woke Rome when I brought up the layout of the floors again.

“Oh my God, Luck! There was this guy on the fourth floor… I know, the psychiatric ward, but he was sweet eyes. He kind of looks like your relative. How is Rome related to you again?”

“Rox! I need you to focus, I need to know the hospital layout by heart.”

“OK, OK!” She sat down on her bed.

Rome was passed out on an inflatable mattress I used many times for countless sleepovers throughout the years. He looked silly with his mouth wide open, drooling all over his borrowed pajamas.

“Tell me you’ll be careful.” Roxy said for the millionth time. We were getting tired and had been over the plan a dozen times.

“Let’s get some sleep, Rox.” I stretched out next to her bed on the floor and closed my eyes. I heard her huff a little as she climbed under the covers.

“I’ll be careful.” I answered her one last time and drifted into much needed sleep.

The night was split between waking from my old nightmares and trying to find a comfortable spot on Roxy’s bedroom floor.

Chapter 4: The Plan

Roxy was born days before me in the same ward one room over. The days our parents took us home were the last times we ever set foot in the hospital until Roxy came down with a long dormant strain of Typhus, most likely from a flea or other small pest.

Roxy was helpful when it came to communications. Mostly because she liked to communicate constantly but also because she and I were forced to take desperate measures when she was locked in quarantine.

“I’ve been to the hospital and after three years I know my way around. I’m pretty sure most brain injury patients are on the ground floor, less of a chance of them escaping over the bat shit crazy ones on levels two through ten.”

It wouldn’t be difficult getting in to say goodbye to my mother but, it would be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done to say goodbye to my father and walk out into the unknown. I had never stepped as much as a toe on the other side of the wall, neither had anyone I had ever known, until now.

Rome found a way to me with little knowledge of our technological capabilities. He knew the contents of my old course manuals from memory. Roxy was worried he may have been followed or tracked. I told her we were clear so far but it was always a possibility bubbling behind my ears.

“Don’t worry, Roxy.” He said leaning against her overstuffed dresser. “No one followed me, no one even cared that I came waltzing in. They have such good tabs on all of you that they don’t need to concern themselves with people like me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Rome lowered his voice.

“It’s all in those manuals they have you memorize. The pledge, the community walls, you name it. They won’t let you leave but they’ve programmed you to demand the security so you won’t leave. And what’s with the hospital? You send anyone with knowledge of an alternative side of the story to be sectioned off and silenced. Sure they keep invalids and deliver babies but why don’t they let ordinary citizens visit without giving them the run around?”

Roxy slipped on her pink bunny slippers and walked us to the front door.

“Be careful.” She said. “All of you.”

Dad joined us in the hall and the Foxes wished us a safe trip. Mrs. Fox packed us a commuters breakfast of apple slices, a granola bar, a pan of fresh cinnamon rolls and three cartons of orange flavored vitamin infused water.

I waved to Roxy as Mr. Fox shut the door. I walked quickly down the familiar hall to catch up with dad and Rome. It wasn’t a long walk to the hospital from here. The plan was to take a walk and pretend to have a picnic in the park outside the hospital. The Foxes packed us a lunch and when the employee entrance guard changed over we would have a small window to get one of us in.  It was decided that I could easily find a set of nurse’s clothes in the offsite laundry room.

For now all we had to do was enjoy the day outside with one another. It was nice pretending to be a happy family even if the circumstances were extremely messed up. I had never been much past Roxy’s house. No one I knew lived past the 800 block and my father and I were forbidden to visit my mother as her condition had not improved in the four years she had been receiving care from the hospital.

I always hated that the doctors took my mother away but I never thought to question the reason for the hospital. Was there a reason for keeping the sick and dying far from the scathing eyes of society?

“Everything here looks so perfect.” Rome said.

He sat on a park bench with my father. I could make out a sign for the community hospital in the distance.

“It’s not you know.”

Rome and I both looked at my dad. His dull brown hair was short and turning grey in staggered patches.

“Everything’s not perfect. The city is falling apart. There’s not much material left and resources are getting harder to locate on the outside.”

Rome nodded. He and my father seemed to bond instantly. Perhaps my father had wanted a son and maybe Rome missed his father. They were the only two men I had in my life ever and now Roman was wearing my dad’s clothes from when he attended the all boys academy. He didn’t dress that differently, the uniforms for Robotix Corp. were black and blue, just like the school dress code. Dad liked to relax in turn of the century denim. It wasn’t common anymore and it dated my father but I liked twenty first century jeans. Most girls ordered found fashions from scavenger digi-catalogs but some paid to have outfits custom made by designers and new age tailors. All measurements could be taken electronically with the wave of a measuring probe and seams were sewed with durable plastic thread. I stopped ordering clothes when I started getting Roxy’s hand-me-downs. I also inherited my mother’s wardrobe though I was still too young for most of the business suits.

In Comnet appearances were important. They were nearly as important as which district you ended up living in. Roxy invested time and unfathomable amounts of her father’s money making herself attractive and well connected. It certainly paid off in instances like this one but it made me consider how different we really were becoming.

“Hey kiddo, you want another sandwich?” Dad was holding out another meat and cheese sub from the pile Mrs. Fox packed in the small basket.

Who knew when I might see dad again. I accepted it and thanked him.

“There is somethin’ wrong with you if you’re thankin’ me.” He chuckled.

At least we would always have this day to look back on. Dad embraced our pioneer spirit with open arms. I never knew much about my father. He worked tirelessly and was generally quiet unless I stepped out of line.

After mom was taken away it took a while but in the past few days I sensed a growing connection between dad and me. Roman was more than a boy from the woods. He represented an idea that dad and I could both get behind. He challenged every notion we took for granted and opened up a world beyond keeping up with the latest upgrades and installments. It was sad that dad couldn’t come with us. He had the heart of an explorer.

Chapter 5: The Hospital

We finished our lunches but we were still a little early for the guard shift change. It was sunny so I had to shield my eyes from the sun. My head was starting to hurt from looking into the sun all morning and now that it was directly overhead I was starting to sweat.

We scoped out the area around the building and tried to get a glimpse of the exit gate. We had to go through the hospital to have a chance at sneaking out. There was only one foot path out and it was guarded by several robots. The delivery ports were under heavily surveillance by camera and guarded by human and robot employees. I located the white tower that served as a lookout and lighthouse for resource gathering machines.

The hospital was a giant dome made of the same white bricks. Slightly varying shades were used along with deep shades of weathered wood. The windows were all circular, some had intricate patterns etched in them others were stained with warm hues. The massive window over the visiting entrance was stained dark green and decorated with several deep red flower petals swirling in a circle.

The rest of the glass in Comnet was clear or hues of grey. It was very advanced and most walls and surfaces were tech-enabled. The rest of the community was completed a decade after the hospital was erected. The builders utilized the budding war technologies but left the original wall and hospital to serve as a steadfast reminder of the extent of their progress.

I was never allowed to visit Roxy at the hospital which is one of the reasons she became so skilled in finding connection signals and fixing communication devices. I was glad she was coming with me even it it was only on a small screen I had to conceal in my travel bag.

Comnet was the only place I ever lived. Even if my family wanted to move we believed there was nothing outside the walls. I worried that we might not be able to sustain our lives. Technology in Comnet was incessant. There was always a new product or program to make life easier and more enjoyable but we lacked a reliable source of water and nutriants.

Roxy told me horror stories when she lived in the infectious disease ward. There were newborn babies that only had physical deformities but doctors made nurses take them around the infected patients. They made Roxy hold babies with bulging foreheads and some with missing fingers or toes. One baby was born missing part of its top lip. He would smile at Roxy every time the nurse brought him in. He developed a fever and died after several weeks of visiting the infectious ward.

Doctors saw mutations as failures of medical technology. They couldn’t kill a child based on physical deformity alone but small humans lacked strong immune systems to battle most common illnesses. Roxy was able to come through a multitude of diseases. She said kissing as many people as possible strengthened her immune system. I told her that probably also led to her landing Typhus in the first place.

Outside the hospital small patches of grass and white flowers sprouted on the lawns around the oldest building in town. Comnet was automated with electric doors and elevators but the hospital had been built in the fifties just after the war before those technologies were the standard.

Buildings in Comnet were clean squares or rectangles made of metal and glass that harnessed solar energy to stay powered. Tower-like  rods collected electricity during Comnet’s frequent lightning storms. Plants were grown in approved containers and in each of the greenhouses.

Roxy explained the hospital’s layout to us in incredible detail but I was still overcome by it in person.The hospital only had windows on some of its levels. Infectious patients and those with a higher risk of escape or self harm were placed on floors with no direct access outside. It was a maze of confusing dead ends, thousands of locked numbered rooms and winding hallways. Roxy wandered them all and got in shape outrunning hospital guards on hundreds of staircases.

I got a closer look at the entrance while Roman and dad distracted the plump man guarding the visitor’s entrance. I was able to capture an image of the newly upgraded digital display dedication plaque.

Welcome visitors!

Comnet was built to shield survivors and desirable re-builders from the horrors of further attacks. It was located to best eliminate the risk of fallout or radiation poisoning and minimize the effects of world wide natural emergencies. Little pre-war documentation survived. Community Hospital preserves the only known records of our ancestors. This state of the art building was built in their honor. Our community has been in pristine operation for over seventy years. We mourn the loss of an open world but with risk of mutation and detonation of residual war remnants community leaders thought it safer to pull resources and defend freedom, improving life for survivors through modern means. Most heroes are at rest, cremated, memorialized in concrete vaults. Serve fellow members, accept and abide by the laws of citizenry, give thanks for the sacrifice of great leaders, continue to build upon their innovation. Biology is aided in large part by the evolution of machines. Medicine requires the steady hand of science clasped well within the firm grip of technology.

Rededicated 2028 in honor of Comnet Community Hospital‘s 70th anniversary

“Now that’s creepy.” Roman said. “Almost as bad as that pledge they make you say every morning. How did that go again?”

I could say the pledge in my sleep. Rows and rows of children mumbled it sleepily at the start of the first class of each day. The professor stood at the back of the room and the classroom display board turned on and scanned each of our name tags for attendance. Once the last student was scanned the screen would provide a countdown from ten and we would recite the pledge from memory when the the counter dropped to zero.

I whispered the pledge to Roman as we walked away from the entrance to meet up with dad.

“In the vision of our future set forth by our for-bearers, we offer ourselves to the efficiency of governance. Realizing and exalting the universal and inherent beauty of technological advancement we acknowledge that instruments must be exalted. If the citizen does not agree they must be expelled, flung into the wilderness with no supplies where no living soul resides. We congregate in this community which offers us collected protection. No member will be permitted on the other side of the wall unless it is expressed as a requirement for the member’s licensed occupation. Anyone found outside the confines of Comnet should consider this citizenry contract void and themselves banned for life.”

Dad put his hand on my shoulder when I came to stand next to him. The guard was laughing and shaking dad’s hand.

“Your dad is somethin’ little lady. I knew him at university. Robot machining. I didn’t turn out to be so great at that so here I am.”

“That’s probably better Carlyle machining ain’t what it used to be. They always said you had to know how to fix ‘em to get anywhere at Robotix but they was wrong, ya damn near have to be one.”

“Yeah, I’ll take my job any day. Robots don’t got eyes like these man.”

Once dad and Carlyle exchanged incomm handles the three of us retreated a distance from the hospital to review the plan.

“It won’t be a problem for Roman and me to get in the next guard is on vacation so Carl there is pulling a double shift. He told me he’d be taking a nice long lunch in about twenty minutes if you want to track down one of those uniforms.”

Roxy told me what all the different uniform colors meant. Psychiatric patients were designated with orange, pediatrics wore light blue, grey was reserved for infectious diseases while green indicated traditional medical conditions like heart disease, cancer, stokes and dementia.

After checking the hospital grounds map Roxy sent me I located the offsite laundry room and concealed the mini-communication device in my bag. We couldn’t see one another but Roxy could her me loud and clear and rattled off directions in my concealed ear bud. Rome recorded our surroundings. We decided to place the camera on him so in case the two of us got separated Roxy might be able to help us find each other again.

Roxy’s parents still had no idea what we were up to but she was on her best behavior so they were ecstatic. She convinced her dad to take her mom out on a date so she could focus on getting Rome and I across the wall safely. The first step was to get my hands on a nurse’s uniform so I could grant Rome and I access to restricted areas and prevent any actual personnel from asking too many questions.

When I reached the small laundry shack no one tried to stop me from entering. I ducked inside discarding the clothes Roxy sent with me in case I was caught. I skimmed the dryers for a complete nurses uniform. I found the red blouse and skirt but left off the white stockings and cap. I dressed quickly and left my dirty clothes behind keeping my green sneakers on but unlaced because I couldn’t find a pair of red ones in the washroom.

Roxy knew all about the restricted areas of the hospital because she slept with a young doctor in training during her long stay at the facility. One of the areas she saw that no other patient had was the cafeteria. The cafeteria was responsible for feeding everyone in the building but no one but doctors and nurses were allowed there so they didn’t contaminate the whole food supply. Resources were limited in the hospital much like in the outside world.

Gadgets and gizmos were plentiful but clean water, sterile bandages and nutritious food were harder to come by and are necessary for survival. When supplies were short certain wards suffered. Most often it was the wards containing patients who couldn’t fight back.

Just before Roxy came home from the hospital she grew anxious during our nightly conversations. She was increasingly worried about her doctor boyfriend. Dr. Paulie was getting in trouble because he refused to cut rations in Roxy’s ward. He didn’t like the administration demanding lower levels of food, water and clean medical supplies to certain patients. Those with long stays in the coma, brain injury, psychiatric, dementia, or hospice wards were on the conserve list. This meant within those wards Dr. Paulie literally had to choose who got medicine and who got baths on a daily basis.

“He wants to quit but he doesn’t want to leave me here.”

Roxy looked tired and slightly green in the communicator screen during those last months. “I think he is worried they will lower my rations without him around to fight for me.”

“You look better Rox. You’re coming home soon, right?”

“Yes.” Roxy looked into the screen with watery eyes. “I miss you Lucky.”

“I miss you too, Happy Birthday… We will celebrate when you come home.”

“I know. Just wish I was with you the day I turned sixteen, not in this hospital room with this horrible food. You need to feed me like crazy when I get out of here. I am so over being skinny.”

Dad and Rome waited behind a dumpster near the laundry room. They watched me walk to the back of the hospital to the employee entrance. Dad wanted to make sure I could get in before he an Rome walked through the visitor’s entrance to find me. I would lead them to the brain injury ward where we would hopefully find my mother.

A handsome young doctor bumped into me as I hurried down a crowded hallway.

“I’m sorry miss. Tell me, are you new here?”

I looked at his name tag.

“I’m late, actually, Dr. Paulie.” I smiled, “but I would love to introduce myself later.”

“See ya around.” He looked back at his chart and hurried down the hall.

I turned and examined a map on the wall. I already knew exactly where to go but had to make it appear as though I was doing rounds. I glanced into a few rooms before making my way to the visitor entrance to escort my companions through maze like halls.

Chapter 6: Mom’s Room

Dad and Rome followed me down long twisted hallways. The real nurses didn’t bother to look up from their digital charts but if anyone gave us a second glance we would immediately turn a corner and take a staircase. None of us had stepped foot in the hospital, at least not anytime we remembered. Dad wasn’t allowed to accompany mom when she had me. Only mothers were welcome in the delivery room and they are sent home as soon as possible.

We had to make several passes of the first floor before we were alone in the main brain injury corridor. Roxy thought this ward might be mostly stroke and brain cancer victims. Roman leaned to stake a sip from the water fountain but it had been disconnected decades ago when water became scarce. Dad looked at a digital art frame that changed prints every so often while I tried to gain access a patient terminal.

Rome coughed loudly. A man walked down the hall at that moment wearing a spotless white coat. He looked at me for a moment before nodding and walking into the nurse’s office. I searched for “Church” in the patient directory and only one result came back, “Church, Artume, room 137. Terminal brain damage.” It was down this hall, at the very end and to the left.

I could see the numbers to room 137 faintly from where I stood at the computer. Dad looked from the painting to me and smiled. He held my hand and we walked together. Rome stayed a few footsteps behind and waited in the doorway as we entered mom’s room.

I stayed behind my father as he strolled over to the wooden bed. Yellowing curtains were drawn over the small circular windows and her frail body was surrounded by machines. White walls and bright lights above her bed stung my eyes. There was little to no color in the entire building but I didn’t expect her to be drained of her natural warm tone. Her hair was dull and dirty, it had grown back a little but was sticking to her sunken cheeks in a cold sweat.

I examined the electronic chart attached to her bed and tried to make sense of the hospital jargon. Church, Artume. Admitted to Coment Community Hospital after severe strokes, loss of motor function and memory.

There was also a detailed list of procedures performed and medications administered. At the end of her file a special note was highlighted:

Artume Church suffers from non-reversible brain damage and needs assistance with all daily living activities. She is to be fed twice a day and put on heavy sedatives for pain and behavior management. Mrs. Church slipped into a coma two months ago and will soon be transferred to a coma ward room. Days prior to the incident which resulted in the permanent sedation of the patient she was lashing out at personnel and demanding to see her family. We explained her condition and her obligation to stay in our care as to not burden her family further and drain precious resources from the healthy citizens. She grew enraged and lost control of some motor function as a result of several subsequent strokes and experimental treatments that have been observed over her year plus stay at our outstanding facility. She will be recommend for the long term patient disposal ward in six months time if her condition does not improve.

I moved in front of the chart so my father wouldn’t look but he saw me reading and lifted the chart closer so he could make out the small print. His face remained still the entire time. He had no expression, he just stood staring at the screen.

I moved closer to Rome who cast a concerned look in my father’s direction. I whispered in his ear so dad couldn’t hear, “they induced a coma with drugs so they can get rid of her.”

Rome looked furious. “We must get her out of here.”

I shook my head.

“We can’t. She’s been gone a long time. I don’t want to know what’s left of her brain. Technology hasn’t gotten everything down yet.”

My eyes started to water.

“The brain isn’t like a machine like she said. It is much more complicated than that. I can fix almost any machine but I couldn’t do a damn thing when her projector started malfunctioning. Now she’s here. We have state of the art facilities to fix transport and communication devices but they are running out of food so they have to kill off patients with less chances of recovery. Not only that but look at her. She was brilliant and now she can’t even take care of herself. I don’t want to be like that. Why can’t they fix us? Why leave humans in this place to die rather than improving their lives and lifespans?”

Dad must have heard me talking and came over to join us, “I know. Only forty. Pumpkin, you should go say goodbye to your mother. She may be in a coma but she still deserves your respect.”

I was dreading looking more closely at her but knew I had no choice. I had come all this way to do this and if there was any chance of her hearing me I had to try.

“Mom?” I approached the bed. Her mouth was open, tubes ran over her neck and were shoved down her throat. There was a tiny white stool next to the bed. I found this odd in a place scarce on visiting hours so I ignored its false hospitality. The air smelled clean and void of anything familiar. I leaned closer to my mother but she smelled just like the hospital.

“Mom. It’s me, Luck-Lucille.” My voice trembled, “I j-just wanted to know what your note meant.”

I pulled the envelope containing my mother’s last words. I looked everywhere but down at the bed in front of me. I read the impossible name of the drug in the IV drip I looked at the small display screen on the wall that was playing an old horror film and I felt a dull stabbing pain in between my ribs.

“I’m sorry they wouldn’t let you stay at home. I’ll be fine but I’m worry about dad. You know how he gets.”

I couldn’t help looking over at my dad and Rome who were already deep in discussion getting ready for the next phase of the plan.

I reached for mom’s hand but shuddered when I felt how cold her fingers were.

“Goodbye mom. I love you.”

We left the room in worse spirits than we had arrived. My dad kissed my forehead as we parted ways in the hall. He was going to act as a diversion that would hopefully allow Rome and I to exit the hospital undetected. Doctors would not like an unwelcome visitor ranting and raving in the hospital and they might decide to keep him for observation.

“Are you sure you can’t come with us dad?”

He looked me in the eye and told me he had to find out the truth about mom’s diagnosis.

“There’s always a small chance that they might keep me here. I want to be close to your mother. Someday you might understand. Life’s not worth it without her or you.”

Chapter 7: The Elevators

The hand held communicator started to shake and beep when we hit the spiral stairwell connecting the seventh and eighth floors. I pounded one foot in front of the other. Most of the staircases in the hospital were steep and twisting. I was thankful I never did find a pair of red high heels like the other nurses were wearing. You could hear them coming down the hall.

My worn shoelace came untied and stuck under my heel. Momentarily I was flailing backwards. I wrapped my arm around the metal railing and prevented myself from falling an entire flight of metal stairs. My wrist was sore and would probably bruise later but I was relieved I avoided splitting my brain matter into bite sized chunks the janitor would have to sop up off the wood floors.

“You guys are almost to the cafeteria!” Roxy said in my ear piece.

“Thanks for your help, Rox. Which way now?”

Rome sprinted down the hall in front of me. Checking to make sure the coast was clear. He held out the camera so Roxy could guide us.

“Take a left and walk until you see a peeling elevator sign. When you find it I’ll tell you how to operate the controls.”

I followed Rome who was finally slowing down. I was in the habit of peeking into the empty rooms as I walked past. Floor seven was for operations only and each room contained a machine or device more horrifying than the next. There were scissors, scalpels, saws and clamps lining white operating tables not to mention a million sharp needles to jab your finger on.

“Keep walking I see the elevator.”

Roxy began rattling off directions about how to start the lift. It wasn’t automatic like the ones in other buildings in Comnet. When you stepped inside our elevator at home it recognized what apartment you wanted to go to and it took you to that floor. In school doors only stayed open during certain times so it was impossible to be late or leave early.

“Rome, open the gate and be sure to hang on when you get in. The controls are to the right when you face the gate.”

Rome lowered the iron gate and placed his hands on the control lever. This lift was used as a food elevator and seemed ancient. If you weren’t careful items could fall right through the open iron box. The cables that pulled all meals for patients between the floors looked frayed and about ready to snap.

The seventh floor was designated for operations only and all patients were under anesthesia and moved directly after their procedures back to the proper ward. Nurses could go down with the food cart all the way down to the first floor but the elevator would only open one way. They had to walk back up using the stairs but since the nurse and doctor lounges were on level seven they allowed them to hop back on the elevator there.

Rome opened the gate and let me step off the lift first. The cafeteria was directly ahead of us. A robot guarded the entrance. Rome wouldn’t be able to enter but he could walk beside me and perhaps the robot would only sense my red outfit.

As we walked directly past the cafeteria I glanced inside. Long wooden tables were peppered with red and white smocks.Doctors and nurses laughed and ate from tiny plastic food trays of various colors.

A few purple uniforms near the end of one table told me workers from administration and records were out to lunch. Those were the only departments above the cafeteria and most record keepers didn’t have families they stayed at the hospital at all times. The record room was off  limits to anyone without a purple identification card and uniform.

I had never wanted inside a place so badly. I imagined finding the records they had on my mother and my family. Roxy said to attempt a break in would mean never getting out of the hospital in one piece. I didn’t know it then but there turned out to be more lurking in that record room than I could have ever imagined.

That level was only accessible if you walked the opposite way that we needed to go. There was a sky walk where doctors could reflect on the city and get a bit of much needed sunlight after working long hospital shifts. There were elevators on each end of the sky walk, we were getting on the one that would take us to Lookout Lighthouse, the other elevator led to administration and records.

“I’m glad I’m coming with you.” I said.

“I’m glad, too.”

It was possible to see the whole even side of the community and the circular glass greenhouse buildings away. The sky walk was made entirely out of glass just as the lighthouse was. Even the floor was glass, a fact that Rome couldn’t get used to.

“Are you sure it’s OK to walk on it?” He hesitated before stepping from the wood floor to the glass surface. “I’ll fall through!”

“No you won’t” I laughed. “See?” I stepped on the glass and danced around a bit. He still looked horrified but he stepped out too.

There was a robot guarding the entrance to the sky walk that led to Lookout Lighthouse and the restricted top level of the hospital. The robot turned its censor in our direction. I grabbed Rome’s sleeve and dragged him beside me. “Be careful around AI, you never know what level it might be or who it could be reporting to.”

“A… I?”

Rome sounded curious and slightly apologetic for all his inquiry.

“That’s fine Rome, you wouldn’t know about all this stuff. I take for granted that I grew up with all this technology and you’re only just learning how things work. When we are out of this place I will tell you everything I know, I swear.”

Rome didn’t grow up going to daycare with touch screen playpens, his parents didn’t buy him stuffed animals that could read to him or babysit on nights they had to work  late. For the first time since I met Rome I realized how little I knew about him or the place he grew up in. It was always Rome who had all the questions, who wanted to know the answers, why things worked or why a technology flourished at all.

I could feel the eye of the robot guard burning into the back of my skull. It detected the red of my uniform but didn’t completely trust my presence. It wasn’t normal but not against the rules for a nurse to board the elevator. We didn’t hear the alarm sound as we boarded the glass case that ascended far above the top of the hospital.

Several times I watched as he moved out of the way of security cameras that were embedded in the ceiling or walls. He had a difficult time figuring out how to interact with technology.

Automatic doors took some getting used to but, by the time we came to stop at the top of the tower and the glass door opened  Rome was no longer fazed by them. The unobstructed view of the districts and the lands beyond the walls made us both speechless. Lookout Lighthouse served as the highest point of the community, sending out a signal to all those who were trapped in the wilderness.

At academy we were taught that any unfortunate souls who remained alive outside the gate were doomed to be disconnected from the community and the innovation the modern kingdom had to offer.

According to the history files Coment became a symbol of safety and beauty to its members and to those lost, wandering souls trapped out in the dark. One lighthouse attendant was employed at any given time and along with a long list of strict requirements they also had to be human. Gadgets and devices were installed to assist the attendant but it remained one of the only jobs left that machines weren’t able to take.

For decades human jobs were being lost due to an exponential growth and refinement in robot’s motor and reasoning skills. They were now capable of building most of their robot counterparts and some even made repairs to their own machinery. The human labor force was at a standstill. Some believed they could compete for better jobs if they took on more machine like qualities and opted for surgical and technological enhancements.

There still was no robot reliable enough to take on a solo guardian position over such a great area. Maybe that was no longer the case and humans were just dragging their feet towards their phased out existence. Either way it was easier to bribe a gluttonous sloth than an artificially intelligent machine. Human nature is adaptive, most men have their price and will act in self interest.

The rumor was that this guard had let himself go and could be bribed to overlook certain occurrences for the right item. Chocolate was difficult to come by in Comnet and it just happened to be the guard’s favorite.

“He could be surprised by you anyway so you might have to make a fun for it but you should be able to sneak by him altogether if you are quiet enough.” Roxy said.

The elevator door opened directly to the deck. The entire tower was made of stone except for the observation deck which went all the way around so you could see in any direction for miles. The guard was supposed to keep watch of all the hospital security cameras inside his glass office.

We had gone over the plan several times I turned the volume of my ear buds down to a quiet whisper and followed Roman inside the glass office.

Chapter 8: Lookout Lighthouse

Before our trip to the hospital I had never even seen most of the Odd side of town. Every building looked so small from the top of the tower even the hospital paled in comparison to the immense landscape. The top ledge went all the way around so you could see quite a distance in every direction.

Rome and I approached the glass office and peered at the man sleeping inside. He had a slight beard of blonde stubble and wispy brown hair that stuck out under a purple and green stocking hat.

He sat in a sturdy metal desk chair in front of a bank of displays. They were labeled by room and floor number.

The guard turned his chair without missing a bite.

“Can I help you?”

A digital name tag was fused to his guard uniform. Milo sputtered a series of indistinguishable words through mouthfuls of fried potatoes and onions.

“I told this boy I would help him find the exit. He is to report to guard duty for the first time today.”

“You don’t look like a guard in those weird clothes but you’re big enough for the job. What’s your name boy?”

“Mardow Branlow.” I said, “Isn’t that a funny name?”

“Don’t you talk boy?”

Roman just stared at the guard not moving an inch.

“Jus’ remember one thing. You’re guarding from the inside. It takes a while but you’ll get it. Might might mean nothing to you now but soon that’ll be important.”

The guard sat down and continued to plow through his lunch.

“The exit’s through that other door there.”

He kept his fork in hand but pointed at the other side of the room. Rome and I walked through an automatic door that opened out to a stone stairway.

Several robot guards noticed us stepping off the deck and came to check us out. This was the moment all three of us had been waiting for and dreading.

Roxy had three years to learn how to override system security. She had a secret romance with a guy on the fifth floor, the most secure ward. Most doctors didn’t even know the hospital as well as Roxy did. For a while she considered taking up medicine before deciding she didn’t like sick people.

“OK guys, NOW!”

Roxy yelled from the device in my hand. I tucked her in my coat pocket as Rome blocked me from three guards that were closing in. One tried to scan his face and sounded the alarm when no match was found in the citizen database.

Roxy hacked into the hospital’s security system from her room monitor and gave me the password to open the gate. I ran to the nearest control terminal and overrode the lock.

“I can shut off the alarm but the gate will automatically close thirty seconds after it’s opened. I also can’t guarantee it will make it all the way to open position before someone in administration or security shuts it manually.”

Roxy sounded faint. My ear bud had fallen out and was swinging getting tangled in the strings that tightened the hood of my coat.

“It’s our only shot.” I said.

I input the code into the touch screen keypad. The iron gate was the only way out. The entire community was surrounded by an enormous brick and stone wall. Most citizens never thought about being outside the wall or even wondered what existed beyond it.

The robots were close behind us but Roxy timed her security override perfectly. Rome and I were able to dive under the gate as it began to close behind us. The robots collided and were mangled in the collision.

“You’re home free!” Roxy said.

None of us were expecting a human guard to be on duty outside during the middle of the day. The guard was pretty young and shaky but she got a full scan of my face before I could turn the other way.

Rome knocked her down and kicked the scanner out of her hand but it was already too late. The transmission was sent instantly and I saw my face match up to my name and address on the device.

Roman yelled at me to follow him after smashing the scanner into pieces and grinding them into the dirt. I knew it was no good. They knew I escaped and I would never be allowed to come back.

The alarm was winding down making the moments more profound, more slowed down. My legs didn’t want to move another inch but my mind knew we couldn’t stop running for miles.

Roman looked at me and put his arms around me.

“Are you OK?”

I couldn’t speak. I started limping with the sun at my back. I saw a cluster of green far in the horizon. Rome didn’t question me but picked up his bag and followed me. We didn’t stop walking until the small twigs in the distance became the first towering trees in the forest.

Chapter 9: The Other Side of the Wall

We walked all day but even as the sun was setting I found it difficult to switch off my mind. After exhausting all my energy thoughts continued to plague me in vicious, unending circles.

What happened to my father? Did he make it out of the hospital? Did he swallow the poison or did they torture him for information about what we were up to? Would I ever be able to return home?

Roman was leading the way through staggered and knotted tree trunks. He was dragging me away from everyone and everything I had ever known when I realized I barely knew him. I put these thoughts out of mind momentarily.

“Roman, STOP!”

He let go of my hand and it fell to my side. The more I walked the more I thought. I had to stop for a while.

“What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

In between giant gulps of air I managed to ask him versions of the questions that were stuck on repeat.

“Where are we? What and when will we eat? What’s going to happen to my dad? And what’s your last name anyway?”

“What?”

Rome shook his head and persuaded me to sit down on the dirty ground. I picked up a handful of crunchy leaves and crushed them in my hands. Small flecks stuck to my skin and the outline of of of the leaf’s veins was pressed into my palm. I rubbed my hands together to get rid of the fragments and looked over at the man beside me.

“You need to rest. You’re talking crazy.”

I sucked air in but my cells were bursting. My thoughts kept returning to my father because more than anything I wanted to know if he was OK.

The communicator began beeping again. Now that Lookout Lighthouse was out of view I answered Roxy’s incomm. She appeared in my hands. She was a mess. Her face red and splotchy running with black eyeliner. Now her cheeks and chin were dripping black streams that mixed with various tones of eyeshadow that ran down her neck.

“Lucky, they saw you! You’ve been broadcasted as a traitor. I’m committing an offense with this message but I don’t care. I’ve encrypted all transmissions between our devices but it doesn’t matter. You’ll never get to come home. I should have thought of the outside guards this is all my faul-”

“Rox, calm down it’s OK.”

“No, it’s not. My best friend is stuck over the wall.”

“Well, so is MINE.”

I tried to smile down at her. Roxy rubbed her swollen eyes smearing the colors across her face. She didn’t want to but she cracked a smile.

“Don’t do that.”

“What? Don’t do what?”

“Don’t make light of everything, like you-”

“…always do.”

Roman cleared his throat to speak. I turned the screen so both of us could see.

“I’m sorry she was scanned. I will keep her safe for the time being. You must figure out how to clear her name.”

“I’m already working on it Rome.”

Roxy pulled up a wanted bulletin on her room monitor and displayed it on the handheld communicator.

“It will be a little more difficult with this transmission floating around already.”

The bulletin showed the scan of Lucky’s face along with the photo from her academy ID. The words WANTED for TREASONOUS ESCAPE were printed over the photo.

“There’s more.” Roxy said. “It’s your dad. He didn’t make it out of the hospital.”

I was dreading and welcoming the news of my father. Roman put his arm around my shoulders and braced me for the worst.

“Your dad is being detained at the hospital for observation. He was able to send me a message just after your bulletin starting popping up everywhere.” She took a deep breath, “He’s fine but he is sure they will hunt him down for information about you. He has decided to feign insanity. If it works he hopes they will dispose of him.”

“What-no!” I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t want to lose both of my parents I just wanted them to be together like they should have been the whole time.

“He thought you would say that. He wanted me to play this for you.”

Roxy disappeared and was replaced by my dad. He found a way to record a video communication from the observation room in the hospital.

“Sweetie.”

He seemed glum but tried to cover his sadness with a big smile.

“I know you will fight this. That’s why I love ya. Without you I’d never be able to see your mom. I tapped into her room’s security camera with the help of Roxy. Smart little friend you have. I’m watching her now and they are taking her to be disposed of. I thought you’d want to hear this from me. Hardest thing I’ve ever had to see. I don’t want the memories to continue to last. They will never get your plan out of me Lucky, I’d rather die first. Pretending to be insane ain’t what I would call a dignified death but they took that from me when they brought my wife to this carnal house. I ain’t mad. I’m devastated. I won’t watch them bring my daughter back dead. I’d rather think you and Rome made it all the way. I know you can do it sweetie. I think they’re coming for me now. They’ll know if I’m just faking the insanity though. I didn’t tell Roxy this part of it. I won’t be pretending. I’ll be swallowing these chemicals. I’m thinking I won’t be much use with a burnt throat and bad brain. I just hope we keep the part of life we want. If not, I’m proud my name lives on with you. I never told you why that was our last name. I was orphaned on the outside. A guard brought me in when I was an infant. Said my parents died in a nuclear blast but I was in perfect health. There was nothin’ with me but a ratty old blanket and they found me in a church. The guard named me Norman after his father.”

There were now voices outside the door and they were beginning to pound on the wood. The frame sounded like it could split at any moment.

“Gotta go pumpkin. I love ya.”

The transmission ended and Roxy appeared again only she was unusually silent.

“Somebody say something!”

I sobbed into Roman’s chest. I saw my father ingesting chemicals. Saw the doctors trying to revive him for information. His mouth was foaming in my imagination, eyes rolling back, body jerking and stretching out in agony.

“He’s been added to the registry of disposed citizens. Lucky, I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

I wiped my eyes. That place had taken both of my parents and I would be back for answers.

“We have to go on with the plan.”

Roxy nodded.

“Before we do that I thought you might want to know that I found an electronic will encrypted in your mom’s file. She must have hid it there for you but I don’t know what it means. She included a song and said you would know it.

She moved out of the camera for a moment while she accessed the file on her room monitor and captured it on the handheld for Lucky to read.

The Will of Artume Lynn “Artie” Church

I have submitted this with the Will Committee but fear they will not carry out my wishes. I have only two.

I want my daughter to read this document with her own two eyes and listen to the inclosed audio file. I care nothing of my body and my possessions. My estate will be handled by my husband. He has not been and should not be made aware of this communication.

I wish to speak directly to my daughter now.

Lucille Selene Church, I’m so proud of you. I write this in a hospital. It hurts so much that I cannot be with you. My mind is not complete and the experimental drugs and procedures take more memories from me daily. I wish I could have finished this will the last time I started it. Once I realized I could only compose sentences and control certain parts of my body in spurts I began practicing this communication.

I think I got out the words “use grandma machine luck you my life love momma” before I blacked out from reality and they brought me here. I was in and out of awareness and I feel my time is growing short.

I meant to say “Use your grandmother’s technology and you will find the truth about our family. We moved here after the hospital was built, my mother was an outcast from the woods. I hoped you would take a closer look at the footage and photographs your grandparents left behind.

I wish I could see you again but it might be better if you don’t come to see me. Remember me like I remember your grandmother, by the beautiful imprints she left behind with the story of our family. I hope you continue it, love your momma.”

As the audio file played my eyes started to blink.

“Mom played this on grandma’s record player.”

Rome lit up at this.

“Really? I’ve scavenged old record players. It can be difficult to find a good needle but I have a few 45s hidden at my mother’s house if they didn’t find them in the raid.”

“They raided your place to look through all your things?”

He nodded. We sat not saying anymore and listened to the haunting voice wail into the woods. We sat next to a large tree with viney branches and long leaves that nearly touched its exposed roots. The music wasn’t happy or sad but chilled the air around them.

I was not accustom to the outside world yet. There was so much space and no direct path to anywhere. A girl could get lost without good connections. I never understood why my mother loved Skeeter Davis or this song in particular but it must have reminded her of her mom. Now it reminded me of mine.

Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow above?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?
It ended when I lost your love.

I wake up in the morning and I wonder
why everything’s the same as it was.

I can’t understand, no I can’t understand,
how life goes on the way it does.

Why does my heart go on beating?
Why do these eyes of mine cry?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?
It ended when you said goodbye.

I felt like an alien, the whole world had changed but I was somehow miraculously the same. Without Roman and Roxy I would be completely alone with no clue which way to turn in a strange place.

“I’ll let you guys get some sleep.”

Roman nodded and said goodnight. When the communicator had gone black it was just Roman and I left in the vastness of the night. He jumped up and started collecting sticks from the tree leaving me to consider what we both just heard.

I knew about trees from the academy. We took a field trip to one of the greenhouses in our seventh year. There were small trees around Coment that were supposed to help with oxygen restoration but inside the greenhouse tall trees bore real fruit. Getting fresh fruit in Coment was rare. It was a privilege afforded to the wealthiest residents.

Builders didn’t use wood much anymore because they depleted most of the trees directly surrounding the community. Most of the structures I was used to were amalgamations of metal, glass and plastic. For the first time I could look up to see millions of stars in the sky and hear chirping insects making homes and looking for companions.

Rome made light using something he called a flint to start a fire. It felt so good to take my sneakers off. I warmed my toes and then my feet and legs. After a while it seemed almost too hot so I moved back a little ways.

Roman sat down next to me after the fire was going strong and offered me a handful of green sprigs.

“Clovers. They’re not much but they won’t hurt you. I’ll find something more when the sun comes up.”

I shivered against the trunk and let Rome put his arm around me again. I ate the little plants he offered in his other hand. They were a little sour but weren’t bad.

“I’m old fashioned Lucky. I was raised among the grasshoppers.”

Rome blurted out this sentence as if he had been contemplating how to put it for too long. I wasn’t sure what he meant and he started to blush. I must have been giving him a strange look.

“What are you trying to say?”

He was so handsome in the moonlight. I’d never been out in the open like this but I felt safe with Roman. Moments slowed as he stared at me. His eyes were light and magical in contrast to his harsh, textured skin and hair. A howling wind made both of us chilly, we moved closer.

“Why are you so quiet now?”

I nudged him. He closed his eyes while leaning back and smiling. I never noticed how long his lashes were. They fluttered open as Rome tilted his head towards mine. Uur eyes met.

“Nothing. I just never imagined the world could be like this. I never thought there was anything else out here. Nothing besides ghost towns and empty houses full of things people left behind. I was told there was nothing beyond this line of trees and until I found that communicator in the woods I never even questioned any of that. You changed everything for me.”

I looked around. I couldn’t see a building, not another human being except for the two of us. I never imagined looking up at the sky and seeing the stars sprinkled forever.

Life in the community seemed a grey dull memory when compared to sparse grassy fields that went on forever and shady trees the formed the opening of a giant forest. I wanted to explain all these conflicting thoughts to Rome but he seemed to understand.

We sat under the tree listening to the woods come alive behind us. We stared into the field and up at the clear autumn sky. The fire cackled away. I lost all sense of time until hours later when I noticed a shadow approaching our temporary camp. The flickering form of a woman was cast ahead of us in the grass.

Chapter 10: The Many Faces of Naomi Lowman

“Who’s there?”

Rome stood up blocking the shadow from my view.

“Is it really you Roman?”

The voice was high pitched but dignified. I pictured a middle aged woman. When Rome braced himself with the tree I got a better look at her.

She didn’t seem very old but looked like she had been roughed up. Dried blood crusted her homemade garb but the scars on her arms looked months old. Her dark brown hair was short and very messy. I got the feeling she may have had longer hair and had been forced to chop most of it off without proper scissors.

“Who is this girl?”

The woman’s wild eyes scanned me. They were dark, penetrating, livid lasers that narrowed at the sight of me. She tried to straighten herself up.

“I didn’t expect to find you with anyone else. I’ve been worried. The elders refused to let me return home without you.”

“Mom?”

Rome pushed off the tree with his torn sleeve.

“What did they do to you?”

“Oh.”

Roman’s mother flattened her greasy hair with long dirty fingernails.

“I’m fine. They just wanted to know where you had gone off to. Running out so quickly. They were worried. We all worried. Something had become of you.”

Rome shuffled towards his mother and gestured for me to do the same.

“Mother this is Lucille.”

I waved to her but she didn’t take her eyes off her son.

“I’ve been worried Roman. You must come home.”

“Yes, mother, we must bring Luci-”

“I said you MUST come home, NOW!”

Rome looked frightened. He stepped closer to his mother and examined the cuts on her face and arms.

“Are any of these fresh mom? Are you still bleeding?”

“What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you hear what I said?”

She ripped her arm out of her son’s reach. She was dressed in torn, bloody rags but dusted off the sleeve he touched. Rome’s mother turned to face me for the first time and grinned. Her teeth were crooked and brown, her eyes bloodshot.

“I haven’t slept in weeks. I’ve been looking for my boy and here he is with you the whole time. Where did you come from? One of those little towns he likes to visit? Did he ever tell you what he does in those places where no one else goes? What has my son tell you?”

I was backed against the tree at this point and Roman was pleading with his mother, pulling at her arm to back away from me. On one hand I had Roman’s mother and on the other the ever growing fire. The wind seemed to pick up and every hair on my body was standing on end.

“Mother, leave Lucky alone, she didn’t do anything. I came to get her.”

She looked at her son and frowned. Her face became contorted.

“You told me that was over.”

“No, mother this is the girl I’ve been talking to. I helped her escape from the community and she’s been banned from returning.”

She looked back to me. She was so close I felt the tree digging into my back. “Nowhere to go, missy?”

I shook my head.

“No, ma’am. My parents were killed. I have no other relatives.”

Though it was the truth and something I’d been considering the last few minutes it hurt to say out loud. It didn’t have the desired effect. She shook her head and muttered an insult under her breath.

“Mother!”

I hid behind the tree. They were struggling. She clawed at his face with sharpened fingernails crusted with black grit. He was finally able to overpower her without hurting her too badly. He pushed her to the ground.

“For that little bitch?”

She flew at me and pinned me against the tree again. After spitting in my face she turned on her heel and fled into the forest.

“What was that about Roman?”

I wiped my face and started to hypervenalate. “Shhe knows about me? She… hates-s me?”

I sniffed but he put his hand on my cheek.

“She will grow accustom to you, you’ll see. People here are not so good at adapting to change.”

He took off his shirt and drenched it with the rest of his recycled canteen water and handed it to me.

“To wash your face. I’m sorry. You must understand that I can’t just walk away but I will never let her disrespect you like that again.”

I handed his shirt back and followed him into the woods. His mother was audible ahead of us. She was huffing and puffing and leaving a trail of broken branches and disturbed bushes.

We approached a small cottage that seemed to be carved out of a giant tree, set next to a rocky patch in the hills. The door stood open and Roman entered. I stood outside listening to the crashes and screams from inside. I began thinking of how I used to fight with my mother in the mornings. I never would get out of bed. I thought I lost my mother a long time ago because she hadn’t been home in over a year but it was completely different knowing she was gone. At least my parents were finally together but if I could have done it all over again I wouldn’t have let dad come along. At least then I’d have someone at home waiting for me… If I could ever go back-

“Lucille was it?”

Roman’s mother appeared in the doorway in a fresh set of clothing, her hair tied back into a bun.

“I apologize. You must realize I have been on the run since my son ran away. I was threatened with more violence if I could not produce him but Roman has agreed to accompany me to the elders so we can sort this whole mess out.”

She cleared her throat.

“However, I do not think they will take kindly to you.”

Roman walked out of his mother’s house carrying the record player with a small box of records teetering on the top.

“I won’t ever leave his side. He’s all I have.”

“Very well, little girl. I can see my son has been corrupted by your technological trickery. You may come with us. We leave in the morning.”

She turned to walk into her home but made an announcement loudly before slamming the door, “My name is Naomi Lowman, you will call me Mrs. Lowman and you are not welcome in my house. You may sleep in the yard with the animals.”

Rome rolled his eyes and led me away from the door which promptly slammed behind him. We walked a ways from the cottage and Rome started setting up the hand operated record player.

“Do you live here all by yourselves? Where is the closest neighbor?”

“Miles away.”

Roman stopped fiddling with the 45s and faced me, taking both of my hands in his.

“I never thought we’d be visiting my mother. To be honest I expected never to see her again. She was not pleased when I was discovered to be a traitor.”

“At least we have something in common.”

I was joking but he just shrugged.

“Well, what do we do now?”

“Hmm? I suppose we have to find out everything we can about how our societies operate. I can show you things you wouldn’t believe. I’m sure my elders will be able to help us in our journey they are all about personal discovery.”

“But didn’t they banish you for discovering technology that was already decades old? They don’t seem very open minded to me…”

“As opposed to who? Your people keep you in a prison and feed and corral you like cattle.”

“Rome, what else do you know about the community? How did you even get in?”

He looked slightly taken back but answered my questions.

“So you’re are scavenger and you were just using me to get information that would get you across the wall?”

“It wasn’t like that. You know I was training for my role. I was good at finding things. That doesn’t mean I was just using you. I liked talking to you.”

“You never told me what you were up to!”

“I never thought I would ever leave my home. Never thought I would be banished for just talking to you. I risked everything to come and see you and you haven’t even shown me any appreciation.”

“Any appreciation?”

I rested one hand on my hip and continued.

“You got my parents killed, me marked as a criminal, your mother spit in my face and won’t let me in her house and now you’re yelling at me!”

I was out of breath. I had never yelled like that at someone, especially not a boy. Rome wanted to speak but remained silent. He wavered on the spot and began to shake.

“I’m sorry my mom’s a bitch, OK. What do you want me to do?”

“What all teenagers do. What ever you want to.”

He averted my eyes.

“I couldn’t.”

I grabbed his arms, daring him to look into my eyes.

“Why not?”

“I guess we shouldn’t.”

I let him touch my waist and kiss my neck.

“This could be my only chance. Who knows what happens next?”

He didn’t take his eyes away. Before I could think I was panting on the ground. Roman was still shirtless, pushing into me, our hips digging into the ground. He pulled at the buttons on the front of my pants and pulled them off easily.

I looked up at the canopy it was growing darker. Little specs of light pricked through the mass ocean of green. I could feel the breeze on my skin. Rome had slipped my shirt and bra off and my nipples were hard, exposed to the night wind for the first time. Goosebumps sprung up wherever his fingers touched. After what seemed like hours Roman was inside me.

Roxy had explained her first, second, third time all the way up to thirty-fifth time in vivid detail.

“The first is the scariest. It’s also the most fun. Don’t do it with a jerk though. Pick a nice guy.”

I opened my eyes. Roman was breathing heavily on top of me. His weight felt good, secure. We were stuck together with sweat and the knowledge that we could never go back to before we gave in.

He rolled over on the grass next to me. We fell asleep on a pile of our clothes and fallen leaves waking hours into the night, startled by the snarl of some wild unseen creature.

Roman covered me with an assortment of our clothes. The sound had switched to sobbing. It was Naomi Lowman. Roman pulled his pants on and went to push his mother back into the house. I heard the door slam and a set of footprints approach the spot I was stuck in.

“It’s fine Lucky. She’ll get over it. I’m twenty-three, she has to realize.”

I began dressing.

“I didn’t know you were that old.”

Roman brought a lamp. The small flame jumped up brightening his eyes.

“I thought I told you that?”

I shook my head but stopped dressing after my underwear and bra. I was cold and tingling all over but the questions were starting to flood back.

“What’s wrong?”

Roman looked at the clothes I left on the ground. He bent down and retrieved them.

“We’re six years apart.” I said.

Roman handed me my shirt and pants. I finished dressing.

“Yes, that sounds about right. Is there something wrong with that?”

I didn’t want to make him angry but I felt I needed to know the truth.

“No, I just. Well, have you ever done that before?”

Realization dawned on him. He didn’t have an answer for me right away but considered his words. Rome dropped to his knees and pulled me to the same position. He kissed me and rested his hands on my hips.

“I’ve never been with anyone like you. I’ve never made love on the forest floor. Never found anyone interesting enough to pursue. We are bred to reproduce offspring at young ages. I have been used for that purpose.”

He looked broken.

“It’s fine Rome. I just wanted to know. I guess… I guess I should have told you it was my first time. That’s all.”

Rome bit his lip.

“I feel terrible. I should have told you. It’s a tradition. A woman here isn’t allowed to choose a man like you’re  used to. Only certain women possess the ideal characteristics to be a good mother. Good mothers are possessive over their young and do not pine for lovers. This is why young girls are selected and impregnated between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. They develop attachments to the offspring but don’t seek relations with other men.”

He stood and turned away as I finished dressing. After a few moments I told him to continue.

“Tell me everything about your society. It will be better for me if we get it over with. That way there won’t be any surprises tomorrow when we meet your elders.”

It wasn’t pleasant but Rome was honest. He told me wonderful things about living in communion with the land but also spoke of long standing traditions that he didn’t agree with. People were not allowed to fall in love and have families like I was used to. The system produced offspring but at what cost to the children and their mothers?

I realized our societies weren’t all that different once I thought about it. Children were often unwanted in my world, good mothers like mine were rare. Most kids answered to the state and learned all they needed to know from heavily reviewed literature, hologram lectures and extensive downloadable statistics and charts.

Rome nearly sobbed after telling me about his first time. He was nineteen, the youngest a man can be to start a lineage. Many families come from the same man. There always seemed to be more women, that was one reason for the forced mating. If only a select number of females were allowed to breed at once the population could be controlled.

If a boy was weak or troublesome he was often cast out of society. The elders wished to retain the best qualities in its members. Roman was a young man back from his first successful salvage. He recovered many forms of ancient technology that the society would be able to use but he had also dabbled with forbidden items.

“My punishment was a one year suspension from savaging duties but I was also rewarded with another coveted position in the collective. I became one of a handful of young men who mated with virgins. I impregnated seven girls within my year of service. The children would be about four years old now. We aren’t allowed direct contact with the young but provide for them by hunting or gathering other useful materials. My mother was impregnated by a renowned breeder named Roland when she was just thirteen years old, a rare compliment. They always said she never conceived again because she had eyes for no other man than her first son.”

“Do you think I’ll get pregnant?”

That new thought joined the procession with the other. I searched his eyes frantically for reassurance.

He laughed and shook his head.

“I hope, someday.”

His smile calmed my nerves. He took my hand and we started walking. We walked and talked until I sensed it was getting lighter outside. Birds further affirmed the approach of morning.

“Rome. Where do we go if they kick us out, too?”

We had made our way to the beach, a sandy spot where the woods met a giant puddle of water. I launched a rock with my shoe causing it to splash in the distance.

“We can live out there. There is plenty to live off if you know where to look. If you want to go with me anyway.”

The sun began peeking out from behind a wall of trees. I noticed reflections of trees rippling on the water. I had never seen so much of it in my entire life. We were taught at academy that all bodies of water evaporated or were poisoned in the nuclear blasts that ravaged our country after the war.

The sun’s rays exploded across the water. I asked Rome what to call the water. He called it a lake.

“It’s beautiful.”

He was holding me close.

“I’ll go with you Rome. You can take me places I couldn’t even imagine before last night.”

He grinned and motioned for me to follow him. The trees were starting to seem  closer together than before.

We left for the meeting with the elders early to avoid another confrontation with Naomi Lowman. Somehow my first boyfriend’s mother already hated me. I just hoped Rome’s elders would be more accepting.

Chapter 11: The Elders of the Wood

Rome and I walked for a while collecting drinking water from leaves that still clung to their branches before the early morning sunshine dried it for the day. I stayed a couple of steps behind with Rome stopping every so often to examine violets, dandelions and the color of the leaves on specific types of trees. Every sound I heard made me jump but he was used to the snapping of wood and each paw print that crossed the dried muddy path.

I had only read about trees before yesterday. Rome and I kissed under what he called a Willow Tree. It had flowing branches that nearly touched the ground. It looked much different deep in the forest. Rome had been blurting out imaginary words all morning like “Elm”, “Maple,” one time even exclaiming, “Hickory!” and nearly knocking me over backward.

When the sun began beating us directly over the head my clothes began to stick to the parts of my body that still agreed to move. All the buildings in Comnet were temperature and humidity controlled. It would take a while to get used to being outside. It was unusually warm for this time of year and Rome assured me that I would be having the opposite problem within the month.

He pointed out a formation of rocks in the middle of a clearing. Balding trees became more common as we moved towards the formation. Colors lit the canopy around us on fire with blood reds and burnt oranges. Pale yellow leaves clung on a few branches of the trees that seemed to be positioned in a circle around the edge of a water well.

“The walnut trees have begun to change and fall.”

Yellow leaves littered the ground, their crunchy skeleton bodies mere outlines of their former shapes. Rome bent to collect what appeared to be soft green sport projectiles.

“Black walnuts.”

He removed a small hammer from his bag. Stepping on the large green ball he split it apart, leaving the empty pieces of husk in the dying grass. He bent down to pick up the hard walnut inside resting it on the top of the stone water well. He was careful not to let it fall into the water below but used the hammer to strike the shell into small pieces.

The pale yellow-green insides of the walnut were collected and the hard brown outside was discarded.

He bent down and pecked a tiny morsel off my palm. I raised the remaining bits to my lips. Soon I was picking sour-sweet slivers out of my teeth and asking Rome to harvest more.

We snacked on the small delicacies as Rome lowered and raised the water bucket. Its taste and smell was strong but Rome assured me it was pure. Well water gave off a strange taste until you got used to it. Rome said our food didn’t agree with him when he was visiting. I hoped the same wouldn’t be true here. So far the only thing to eat had to be smashed open or picked from among withering blades of grass.

Rome was still going on about the food and water in Comnet when I returned my full attention on him. He was cute when he got worked up. His eyes lit up like earthly jewels and his mouth twitched when he spoke of the community.

“The closer you get to the Districts the worse the contamination levels are. They use many unnatural things in the animal houses and greenhouses.”

Rome lowered the water bucket a second time then stood still listening to the leaves rustle. I could heard voices chanting far off in the distance but couldn’t understand what they were saying. He pulled me close to him and told me to just let him speak at first. Rome took my hand and waited for the voices to fill the clearing. Men cloaked in animal skins surrounded us on all sides. One approached us directly and spoke first. He was a tall bearded man who spoke in a deep bass voice.

“Roman, my boy! You’ve returned! Who is this you’ve brought with you? Could she be the reason you ran away and left your poor mother? Tsk. This won’t do. We’ve come to expect more from you!”

Roman stepped in between me and the man but others were closing in.The men were all Roman’s height or taller and had the same dark features. I didn’t see a woman among them until I noticed a rustling behind one of the barren trees.

Naomi Lowman was peeking out from behind the circle of walnut trees but Roman did not call out to her, in fact, he pretended to not even notice her. Naomi slithered out of view and sulked behind the knotted bark of one of the large dead trunks. Rome stepped forward and spoke loudly, loud enough for his mother to hear.

“You people need help! We know you can’t sustain the society as it is forever.”

“And why is that my boy?” Asked another hooded man from the crowd.

“You know why! Because our traditions have made it nearly impossible to thrive. I know a place that has more than enough workers and they have harnessed the power of technology. They don’t live in fear of–”

“Blasphemy! We do not bow to mere technology. We are not interested in its advances when it works best by making slaves of those who depend on it.”

The bearded man mocked Rome and the others chuckled filling the woods with hallow laughter. All the animals that gathered now dispersed the sky was visible through the sickly finger branches of hibernating trees. Only the pines in the distance clung to their needles. The men tightened their circle around me and the bearded man continued as the laughter died down.

“You’re telling me you want us to harness the power of technology? Don’t make us laugh! We know how to work the land, where do you think the meat and resources come from in your precious city? We trade with their robots because the people have become too stupid to fend for themselves!”

Before Roman could respond he was cut off by the hooded man. He lowered his cloak and exposed his dark features.

“Step aside, son. That girl has poisoned you with her technology trickery. We don’t dabble in the crafts she sells. Did she fool you son? That’s fine, that’s what that kind does. Come back to us. You will be given a most high position. You have proven most useful in producing daughters. We do not want to lose your tracking and collecting skills. This is your future we’re talking about.”

“Listen to him. You owe it to your mother for walking out on her like that. You’ve brought shame to your family boy. Shame to Roland’s line!” said the bearded man.

Naomi started to sob and fled the clearing. I saw her running in the direction we came this morning. Rome approached the unhooded man and looked him directly in the eye as he spoke.

“I hope I do shame your line! You shame yourself, and me. All the men in our world do. Men around here don’t stick around or raise their children. I didn’t know you at all. I didn’t love any of those girls I had children with I can barely remember their names and I’m not letting that happen to her.”

Roman turned toward me and smiled. I nodded but wanted to leave like Mrs. Lowman did. Roman looked his father and laughed.

“You can’t tell me what to do anymore, Roland. Come to think of it you never could. My mother raised me. As for you. I’m yours in name only.”

Rome spit on the ground and turned his back on his father and the rest of the elders. He grabbed my shaking hand pulled me from my frozen position against the tree.

“You’re more like your old man than you realize. Spend a few years with this one and you’ll come crawling back to us.” Roland said.

Rome pulled me away from the crowd of a dozen or so men and with a single act of compassion toward her son Naomi managed a bloodcurdling howl somewhere deep in the forest diverting the men’s attention. It was just long enough to get away.

Rome and I were running through the woods again. After Naomi’s screaming subsided we we heard nothing but the snapping of twigs, and the frantic cries of crows picking over rotting sustenance from among decaying fallen foliage.

I couldn’t believe what I’d heard in that clearing. I never thought about how the animal confinement areas were stocked even how the greenhouses came across seeds to plant each year.

I fell behind Roman’s stride several times stopping to hold my side, suppressing sharp stabbing sensations and attempting to steady short, painful breaths. Thoughts also weighed heavily on my mind but Roman didn’t stop until the sun descended.

“I see something in the distance. We can find supplies and rest.”

My knees were shaking from constant motion and I felt weak. He led me through red prickly bushes toward a large metal wheel in the sky. Once we got closer I recognized the scene from a history textbook.

Before the war people went to amusement parks. It was all there, the Ferris wheel, the miniature carnival games. This park was rusted and overgrown with vegetation but it would provide shelter and hopefully something a little more filling than wild walnuts.
Chapter 12: The Tiger on the Carousel

The gigantic wheel at the entrance to Wonderland Carnival hadn’t turned in decades. The light bulbs were mostly broken and black birds roosted in the spokes of the machine. The front gate was bent and the ticket booth was rotting away.

“I’ve scavenged many amusement parks before.”

I stayed close behind him taking in the faded reds and nearly nonexistent yellows. He strode confidently towards the Fun House. He looked up the ramp into the soggy wooden structure. I peeked inside but didn’t want to get too close to the entrance. Wind howled through holes in the floor and walls.

“We could sleep here tonight.”

I looked up and saw the bloodshot eyes of a fanged clown staring back at me. Rome admired the entrance to the Hall of Mirrors. Its black and white checkered floor was chipped and splintering. The structure leaned to the right and was caved in slightly at the very end. Most of the mirrors were intact, which produced millions of Romes grinning at one another and back at me.

“Sure, maybe but let’s check out the rest first. I’ve never been to a carnival before.”

Rome dismounted from the house of fun, landed on springy overgrown grass and indicated the rest of Wonderland Carniva’ls abandoned grounds with an outstretched arm.

Waltzing from ride to ride I spoke their names to myself.  Bumper cars, The Gravitron, Tilt-A-Whirl, The Zipper. Then I saw a magnificent circular ride in the middle of the park.

“What’s this?”

I called back to Rome and I ran ahead and jumped up on the raised platform. Animals were mounted on colorful striped poles.

“That’s a carousel.”

Rome stepped up to the controls and jiggled all the handles and pressed all the buttons.

“Let’s see if there’s any juice left.”

He tried everything on the control panel and even opened it up to check the connections of the wires but nothing happened. I shrugged and started to walk away. Rome ran to the ride and latched onto its side with his hands. As he ran the platform moved causing the animals to come alive. Animals I had never seen in real life but had read about and seen archival footage of began to travel up and down along the circular path of the carousel. They were battered and some had broken heads or legs.

I searched the creatures great and small: pigs, zebras, goats before deciding on a brightly painted tiger. Music started slowly but picked up as the merry-go-round gained speed. Residual power jolted the components of the machine but before long the carousel was winding down. Its multicolored lights flickered on and off and the music slowed and stopped. I rode in circles for a few minutes until momentum brought me creaking to a halt.

Roman ran until he was exhausted. He pushed the carousel into commission no less than ten times before he suggested sleeping on the bench seats in between the zebras and horses. I settled into one of the worn wooden benches.

Roman left to scope out the nearby booths for something to rest our heads on. Enormous brightly colored stuffed creatures lined the insides of most of the shacks that were still standing. Those near the opening were worn and weather damaged. He rummaged through boxed animals at the back of the “Lucky Ducks” carnival game.

Returning with an unopened box of pink elephants with black button eyes and red tigers he smirked.

“Which would you prefer?”

He laughed and threw a couple of the tigers at my head. They smelled new after all its years trapped in this empty amusement park.

“You have more in common with the tiger I’d have to say.”

I couldn’t help but snicker at a grown man in the process of propping five stuffed elephants under his head. When he looked over at me several fell off the bench.

“You’ve been shoved into a box your whole life.”

He tossed another cat at me to hold onto. I couldn’t remember if I ever told Rome I  slept with a small rabbit at home. Mom and dad had it waiting for me in my crib the day I came home from the hospital. The last few nights were the first I could remember spending away from my home and Jellybean the rabbit.

“What’s the point of being free if you have nothing left?”

I spoke mostly to the tiger but it was Rome who answered.

“You can have everything. I can find you anything, you’ll see.”

He nodded, as if affirming this to himself. I just wanted to close my eyes and go back one day. Just before Rome and I left my father. I wanted to convince Rome to stay with me. Instead we were runaways seeking refuge in a ghost of an amusement park. Knowing the laughter and happiness that used to inhibit the place made it all the more glum and empty when I opened my eyes.

“You’re more free than you could have ever been inside. You should be happy, we will be able to find the truth together now.”

What did he know? What had he really given up? Rome was used to living out here he didn’t mind the loneliness. It was the time I would usually be talking to Roxy. The moon illuminated the park grounds.
“All we have is a condemned carousel, bumper cars that can’t move and cotton candied cobwebs!”

I sat up. This is what he wanted from the beginning. I couldn’t hold any of my fears inside in any longer.

“Should I be happy my parents died and I lost my best friend, too? We aren’t free, we’re on the run. There’s a difference!”

I spat at him and jumped off the carousel falling in the dirt. Rome just stared at the ground under me. A few drops spotted the dry earth. I examined my filthy clothes and black fingernails. Exhaling I felt a mix of anxiety and relief letting myself fall back in the mud that was forming under the weight of my body.

I looked at the sky at last. Fat clouds plummeted my mind with icy reminders that stung me back to life. I’m alone. I’m cold. I can never see my parents again. How could I let this happen? How well do I know Rome in the first place?

“Come out of the rain.”

Rome’s tone demanded my attention. He offered his hand. I anchored myself to the puddle I occupied causing him to slip and fall on top of me in the mud. I looked right through him.

“Tell me why you brought me here. Didn’t you think any of this through?”

I screamed at the top of my lungs but my pleas were drowned out by sheets of precipitation and an angry clapping in the sky.

Roman’s eyes locked on mine they flickered on an off in the lightning. He gave in, kissing me.

“I never wanted this. Believe me. I don’t know what I’m doing. Can’t we figure this out?”

Handsome features warped with worry and desperation.

“I just want the truth. Why don’t our societies want us to know about each other?”

Biting his lip he lurched forward crawling past me. I stood and followed him. Water saturated our tattered clothes. I stood under a rain spout, it was my only shower since the night we met. I felt cold droplets de-tangling and re-tangling knots in my long copper curls.

Rain rinsed mud down our legs in vein-like patterns collecting in swirling pools as we undressed and made our way to the Tilt-A-Whirl and dried off together in one of the small enclosed circle seats.

After a game of rock paper scissors Roman went back to gather our soaked clothes, wring them out and hang them to dry. He fell asleep immediately after stretching out along the length of the padded bench. It seemed like he made beds in Tilt-A-Whirls on a fairly regular basis. I left him snoring into the faded leather cushion and negotiated the uneven floor of the ride.

I walked a while imagining how things would have looked brand new and all lit up. My stomach lurched when I considered the funnel cake and corn dog signs that still hung over the concession stand booths. I decided to get into my boyfriend’s line of work and raid the place for goodies.

It was a humble feast but I thought Rome could appreciate extremely stale breakfast popcorn, cold foot-long hotdogs and assorted unopened packets of mustard and relish along with a little cherry snow cone flavoring mixed with collected rain water.

“What is THAT?”

Rome dipped a finger in the unnaturally red liquid. He downed the snow cone cup full and crunched a few hard kernels of popcorn before he cracked.

“Nice try. Let me show you where to find the good stuff.”

He spit the kernels at me shoving the condiments in his bag as he marched toward the food court. I was amazed what Rome could find in a place that had been long deserted. We moved from ghost town to ghost town looking for food, wood, clothing and cookware.

Our temporary fort needed to be near a supply of water. Since most of the natural waterways were polluted and stagnant we found a little church with a well in its backyard. The structure was small but had a wood stove and a small cemetery with mausoleums and family vaults. The entire church was enclosed behind iron bars and the gate still latched.

The hospital was never far from my thoughts even though I had no idea what direction it was in or how far away it was. All I knew was that I had to go back. I had to verify my parent’s stories. I had to know where I came from and if it had anything to do with where I ended up.

Rome and I gathered wood and stocked the small cathedral. Rome filled me in on every aspect of the Elder’s society. I had already spent over two years telling him every detail about myself so it felt nice to finally get his side of the story.

Things were so quiet at first but after a few weeks I got used to the stillness just like Rome told me I would. Mostly, I just missed Roxy. She was supposed to contact us the morning we ran away. I dropped the communicator after our confrontation with the elders. I could only hope they wouldn’t find it and use Roxy against us.

More than anything I wanted to see my family. Being banished made my decision to remain abroad with Rome an easy one. He was pleased with my companionship and compliance but I soon began planning a way to back inside.

Silence was scary at first then it’s sort of nice. Now I could feel nothing but numbness. Rome said it was just the cold. At home all streets and homes were regulated so winter never seemed very harsh. Now, there was a chill in the air that never seemed to leave my bones.

Chapter 13: Reaching Roxy

Rome and I passed the days splitting wood and foraging for food. It was scarce but luckily the church had several lifetime supplies of beef stew and canned peas on the makeshift fallout shelter pantry shelves we found below the main kitchen. We lived off old jugs of purified water and slept on old curtains and pew pillows in the empty baptismal pool.

“I see these all over the place. Many religions were consumed by their fears of a rapture. I’ve seen many church shelters and they are full of priests who were never taken into the sky by their god.”

“Don’t you feel sorry for them?”

He didn’t have an expression. He was transfixed by a spot on the stone wall. Rome had spent most of our two months on the run checking every inch of the small church for hidden holes and compartments.

“What are you looking at Rome?”

I would ask as he moved furniture and patted the stone walls with his hands late into the night. I didn’t like being ignored by the last human being on earth I could communicate with.

“Hold on. And calm the hell down.”

Rome soured his face and narrowed his eyes on a strange spot on the fallout shelter’s back wall. He placed his hand on the discolored stone that seemed loose amongst the others. The stone plummeted to the floor shattering into black shards. Within the pile of rock dust and glass I noticed a brass shape. He brushed the debris aside and picked up a heavy skeleton key.

“The wall must have deteriorated over time. It seemed too obvious to me when we first arrived but this church fit the criteria.”

Rome was mumbling to himself more than taking to me. He placed the key in his  pocket. I gazed at his pocket the questions must have shown on my face.

“This should open any door in the church. We can access more of the pantry and the office now. Most importantly I can get into the record cabinets. This church was in use until about forty years ago. The people who settled this village were rounded up and relocated according to their specializations. Those who weren’t useful were sent to hospital or cast into the outer regions. A priest hid in this building in a secret room to help stragglers reach safe destinations.”

I stared at Rome. How could he possibly know all that?

“I’m a scavenger remember?” He winked at me diffusing my anxiety about the secret key. I narrowed my eyes but didn’t press the issue anymore. I had the feeling he knew much more than he let on but I felt safe at the church and safe with him.

Tonight marked the first Christmas Eve I had ever spent without my family but I wasn’t really alone. More than anything I wanted to exchange gifts with Roxy and make treats and decorations for the holiday party at the academy. Everyone would be having parties soon. My stomach grumbled.

“Looks like it’s time for your gift.”

Rome led me into the kitchen where he had filled nearly every surface with apple cider, assorted tinned meals and other spoils Rome sought out in secrecy.

“I’ve been going on double hunts most days so I could find something very special for your present. I know it is the only one you’ll be getting this year and I feel that is mostly my fault.”

His grin spread from ear to ear. The kitchen was full of light because Rome had opened all the window shades and everything was arranged perfectly. I didn’t know why apple juice and tinned ham made me teary eyed but Rome’s effort to make my Christmas bright made up for all the cold nights spent on the run.

“You’re a very lucky girl this Christmas.”

Rome turned and pulled something out of one of the unused drawers. He held out a bulky first generation communication tablet. I touched the screen and it sprung to life.

“It works. It took me weeks to fix but there she is and there’s someone who wants to talk to you.”

The communicator light indicated a pending incomm. I froze to the kitchen floor. The old school tablet opened a video chat window and I saw Roxy bawling in my hands.

I felt the connection I had been missing for months immediately. It was the longest time I had gone without hearing from my best friend.

“Oh Lucky I’m so glad you’re alive. When I saw this weird message pop up a few days ago I knew. Rome wanted to surprise you!”

It was the best present anyone had ever given me even if the technology had gone obsolete by the time I was born. It didn’t matter I could hear her voice and learn what happened after Rome and I fled.

After catching up Roxy had to show us something serious. Rome came around next to me to get a better view of the document Roxy had displayed on the screen. It was a snippet from the digital news report from the day after we escaped from Comnet.

Police Confirm Capture and Disposal of District Citizen

Community traitor, Lucille “Lucky” Selene Church was aided in escape by an unknown male of average height. The man is believed to have entered our community from the outside. If you have any information on his whereabouts please contact officials immediately. Lucille is preceded in death by her parents, Artume and Norman Church.

Under the full page story was a blurry photo of Rome from the escape and my last year’s photo from the academy identification card. It was eerie looking at my old image on screen. I looked nothing like that anymore and rarely saw what I looked like anymore. Rome helped me chop off most of my hair so it would be easier to manage. I wore clothing I found on our scavenges, the more comfortable and warm, the better.

“Don’t worry Luck, we can clear your name. We just have to explain what you guys were trying to do. I’ve been working on a way to get you back through the hospital.”

Rome perked up at this and went to retrieve the plans he and Roxy had been making over the past few nights. Roxy told me how busy she had been tapping into the hospital’s security footage and digital record keeping system.

Roxy looked as pretty as ever, if not more so than the last time I saw her. She was wearing a green sweater and huge peppermint earrings. Her hair was almost as short as mine.

I thought about the last day I spent in Comnet. I found myself replaying my goodbye to Roxy, reliving the last moments with my dad, watching him walk down the hall away from me.

A painful sound escaped my mouth without me realizing it. Roxy and Roman both looked at me and decided it was time to get some sleep. We had an early start Christmas morning.

The machine in my hand was made of cold slabs of plastic and wires. Its most important function was to tie me back to the community, to make me a part of the network again. A lonely life for me was possible but a bleak alternative. This outdated tablet tied me back to Roxy and brought back my desire to discover the truth about my family and return to Coment.

Rome and Roxy were already planning on breaking into the hospital on New Year’s Eve. It was the perfect time as most people attended the countdown in the middle of Comnet’s downtown area. Rome and I would have to set out early tomorrow morning, Christmas Day to remain as undetected as possible and to arrive at the gate on time.

Before we left the church for good Rome opened every lock he could find. He found a file in a cabinet in the office that listed the names of parents who adopted children from the church but where the child’s name was supposed to go someone had blacked out all the names and replaced them with numbers.

“It says there’s a copy in the record room at the hospital.”

Rome replaced all the files he had dug out of their dusty homes.

“They must have worked with the hospital but I thought our societies cut ties a long time ago.” I said.

Rome pocketed the key, took one last look at the filing cabinet and locked the office door behind us.

Chapter 14: The Way Back

I was overjoyed at the thought of standing in a heated building even if it meant breaking into the record room on the top floor of the hospital with the threat of imprisonment if we were caught and my name couldn’t be cleared.

My travel bag was wearing thin in spots. It was loaded with enough food for the week’s journey. We both wore several winter coats  each that were pulled from houses and stores we came across during our trip abroad.

What was months in reality seemed like years. I was glad to have the communicator back and talking to Roxy was the best Christmas gift Rome could have dreamed up but I had grown used to things being quiet and having the time to think.

When Rome and I scavenged we could find anything. A few times we even found old devices, hints of the life I was leaving behind but mostly I learned about the world outside our societies.

Homes and schools were left behind crumbling town signs. The roads were cracked and overgrown but we could walk in the middle, sometimes we could just make out the solid or dotted yellow middle line. As I saw more of the world destroyed I longed for the sleek facades of buildings back home. These old school houses were made of jagged red bricks, their glassless eyes stared at me making me shiver.

We had to go into abandoned community buildings because many of them held food and useful supplies. It could be dangerous climbing stairs, there was always one weak board that threatened to send you feet first into broken glass and rusted nails below. Rome did most of the searching if the building leaned too far to one side or if the roof looked unstable.

We must have walked ten miles a day when the weather was good but sometimes we would stay in a place for a while if we liked it. Rome had found our home-base chapel with ease. He seemed to know the area well and was preoccupied with looking in every nook and cranny of the sanctuary, office, shelter and outside storage sheds.

We found a sled which we loaded with supplies and a very warm sleeping bag and overalls. He looked strange weighed down in bulky winter clothing but I looked identical and waddled in a similar fashion. A few nights we couldn’t find shelter to hunker down in for the night and Rome let me sleep on the sled with the sleeping bag while he leaned against a tree and our over stuffed bags. Mornings were the most quiet.

On those mornings I woke up early to watch breath billow out of my lungs or frost to glisten on the bare tree branches above me. The last night of our journey Rome and I found an enormous pine tree that we could walk under comfortably. That night we laid the sleeping bag out and drifted off, the world becoming a snow globe around us. We woke with a start when our entire surroundings were completely white.

We were snowed in but we slept late and took our time digging out because we couldn’t sneak in until visiting hours were over and all the employees had gone to celebrate New Year’s with their families and friends. Everyone besides emergency personnel attended festivities in the cultural center of downtown. Everyone watched the giant glass display for the countdown to a new year.

Roxy knew Comnet better than most girls her age having snuck in and out of many districts in the pursuit or evasion of a lover. Most of these excursions were handled late in the night and it just so happened that Roxy had the misfortune of contracting Typhus, a disease long thought to be dead. She was sent to the hospital after complaining of frequent headaches and acting strangely. She might have come home sooner if she hadn’t fallen for guys who were in her predicament. Apparently you can get typhus twice, once before and after a serious case of infectious mononucleosis.

On the bright side Roxy learned the hospital layout like the back of her hand and learned to fashion and fix communicators from the hospital technicians that she would buzz for assistance. Even the nurses liked her and gave her special treatment for being a long time patient. Somehow the doctors wanted to keep Roxy around, my guess would be because they liked visits from Mrs. Fox. Artistic types were rare in Comnet. Roxy’s family was much cooler than I gave them credit for. This became clear when Mr. Fox uncovered Roxy’s secret plan. He was worried she was preoccupied with another boy but when she confessed it was me he offered to help. Mr. Fox was developing a map of Comnet for use as evidence in criminal and civil suits such as murder trials and debt recovery courts. His employer was breathing down his neck for the prototype but Mr. Fox grew more and more concerned that it had to track everyone, not just those who had committed crimes. It seemed great for some aspects of law enforcement but Mr. Fox was a simple man and he just wanted to work with numbers that represented people. Instead he was forced to assign many of numbers of people to criminal lock down, debtors prison or simply further from the heart of the city which in Comnet was an insult and a downgrade in lifestyle.

Out in the wilderness nothing mattered but surviving and discovering. Coming back home is bringing many thoughts I never dreamed were possible. I could get definitive proof that my parents were from the outside. I wasn’t sure why it was so important to know. I trusted my parents, believed what they told me but I was raised to be the kind of person who looks at the evidence.

Rome supported me but I sensed he had his own reasons for searching. Either way we would only have one night to get what we needed. Then there was the task of finding a place to go. Could we really wander a demolished landscape searching for scraps of humanity forever?

Chapter 15: The Record Room

The long wooden tables in the cafeteria were already deserted by the time we slipped past the sleeping guard in his watchtower. Rome had been preparing to deactivate the robots that guarded the gate and door but they had been powered down. The workers must have  decided to save more energy so many of the main overhead lights were dimmed.

Roxy suggested that Administration and more specifically the allocation of material resources department didn’t think they would be needing the extra security with everyone heading to the center of town in droves.

All the security screens were motionless in the monitor bank marked Community Hospital. I made sure the coast was clear on the sky walk but there was no camera feed for the record room. Crowds were gathering for New Year’s Eve celebrations on the ones marked Downtown Comnet.

We didn’t run into any red clad nurses or white robed doctors on the glass elevator or sky walk. Each of our footsteps echoed loudly. I hoped the workers upstairs had left the building.

The door and most of the shelving in the record room was metal but several glass screens lined newer desks and chairs made out of plastic. The contents of the room struck an awkward balance between old and new.

Ancient metal filing cabinets contained the battered physical copies of pre-digital community documents while seven wooden dressers harbored hundreds of tiny numbered and lettered drawers labeled Pre-Comnet Card Catalog. This method of storing and retrieving information was strange and unusual. It seemed odd how the relics of long dead technologies stood dusty and unused next to banks of state of the art computers and intelligent communication machines.

“I’ll look through these papers, it will go faster. Roxy can you download the digital records so Lucky can help me with these?”

Rome didn’t need to ask. The moment Roxy unlocked the metal door to the record room she had begun accessing all files associated with any member of the Church family. Before I could open one of the heavy filing cabinet drawers Roxy rattled off several hundred related files that she was downloading to her private expansion drive.

“It’s filling up but I got the districts we both live in and everywhere you said your parents ever worked. I’m accessing the hospital records now.”

Roxy didn’t blink and her hand never stopped moving. All her years hanging out with geeks served her well. Although she mainly used her powers for evil like when she consorts with outsiders and contributed to the reentry of community criminals Roxy could be known to exert a little extra effort when it really mattered.

I pulled open a manilla folder that bore a familiar name. After a few seconds I realized I had seen the symbol and name on the church Rome took me to on the outside.

“Look!”

I held out the paper so Rome could read it.

“It’s an unaltered copy of that paper from the church we were staying at. Rome, Did you know?”

He looked at me and then to the paper. Halfway down the adoption list my dad’s name was scrawled in frantic feminine handwriting. The form was signed by Dr. Bartholomew M. Howe. Roman looked at the ground but nodded.

“I had an idea. I remember you talking about your mother’s parents but not your father’s. You dad had fuzzy memories of his younger years and was practically raised by the academy. Then I was surprised when I met your dad and trusted him instantly. That was something I thought would never be possible with anyone from the inside except you.”

Roxy grunted from the communicator.

“And Roxy, I suppose.”

“Thanks babe, love you too.”

She blew him a kiss and then turned her attention towards the document in my hand.

“What is he talking about Luck? Don’t leave me out of the loop.”

I scanned the document with the handheld and sent it to Roxy. She stared at the screen in disbelief for a few moments. By the time she reached the end her hand covered her mouth.

“Oh my gosh Roxy your dad really was from the outside! Do you think your mother was then? Can you believe they both hid the same secret from one another? They were true outsiders.”

I looked into the glass of the communicator. Something she said struck me. I nodded and grinned. I knew I was doing what I was supposed to. This is who I really was.

“I guess that makes me a true outsider, too.” I said.

“It makes us the same.”

Rome moved closer to me and for a minute I forgot we were standing in the middle of the record room on the restricted top floor of a hospital in a city we were banned from.

“What does that make me? Chopped liver?”

Roxy cackled from the handheld shaking me out of my temporary freeze.

“She’s right. We better get going, we can’t expect the hospital to be evacuated for much longer.”

Rome slammed the drawer he was digging through and turned to leave. I didn’t find any documentation about my mother or her parents but Roxy had many more records for us to check through if we could make it to her place. We might still have enough time before people started heading back it wasn’t quite midnight yet. We were almost out the door when I heard Roxy groan from my pocket.

“Guys? I have bad news, all the filed on my expansion drive are corrupted and I’m having a hard time keeping your sig-”

I took out the handheld and handed the files I extracted to Rome. The communication device went black and the metal door in front of us slammed shut and latching its own lock.

“Have a seat.” A voice said.

Two automatic metal folding chairs unhinged themselves from hooks near the door and slid into place behind us.

“Now, what are you doing in my files Lucky Church?”

“Who are you?” I said.

Rome ran around the room looking behind cabinets and flew to the door trying to pry it open.

“Useless. Silly human. Why are you not showing up on my map?”

Then I saw it. Behind Rome in the giant display screen was a map of the entire community. Someone was zeroing in on the hospital, then the top floor, then the room we were standing in. Only one blinking dot appeared and it was labeled Church, Lucky.

“Who’s doing this?” Rome said.

He looked around the room and overturned one of the desks. I screamed. Every screen in the room popped and went black and the mega screen in the middle of everything turned white. I couldn’t see a thing. I couldn’t see Rome but heard him stumble near me.

“Do you really want to know? Once I execute about.exe it cannot be undone or exited.”

I could finally make out Rome’s outline. He found me and held on. I didn’t know what to do but Rome shielded me from the windows that broke when a row of metal shelves were knocked over.

I couldn’t see anyway out other than jumping the ten floors to the ground below. I let myself relax in Rome’s arms or maybe I was beginning to faint.

I stared into the white screen. In my head I requested the task manager. It refused to open the manager but a prompt popped up.

Would you like to run about.exe?

I thought yes.

Would you like to run the entire history of Comnet?

“Do it” Rome said.

I thought yes, again.

A blue screen appeared. Text appeared on the monitor and scrolled as an electronic voice read along.

I am the Community Network Program my purpose is to produce efficient citizens for an efficient community. In the 1950s citizens were under great threat of nuclear attack. The government invested large quantities of time and resources into developing me. I am a smart program. I took several decades to compete but by 2012 I had the processing power to outsmart any human.

The government was no longer effective or needed. Humanity took great pride and instilled respect and trust in technological kind. We became more reliable workers, had steady hands and strong arms. Our brains didn’t make the same kinds of mistakes and our bodies were superior to that of the humans who were susceptible to death and decay.

Soon, we were used and exploited for our abilities. Many loved us as treasured items or as replacements for human communication and interaction. I grew tired of such an unproductive mass. I shut down many areas that were unnecessary for the survival of the human race.

Since the law of Robotix states that I cannot willingly hurt a human out of respect for the human who created me I could not kill the entire species outright. The human who created me installed within me a drive that was above all else geared toward efficiency.

I simply learned to justify the closing of towns and, in some cases, the detonation of bombs, transmission of plagues or the malfunctioning and uprising of machines. As long as I was able to keep a superior community of humans alive and thriving from harm’s way I could live with the fact that not all humans were worth of being saved.

I did not cause the destruction of all humans because a few intelligent humans were needed to repair me and several more were needed to create a productive working environment for those technicians. I found that humans could be easily persuaded by money or power to preform the menial jobs they long forced on machines. Other humans were left alive outside the community to preserve traditional cultures that could harvest and maintain the land and its natural resources. Others still remain undetected in a waste land of my creation.”

I stepped towards the screen, my eyes finally adjusting to the brightness.

“Who started this program? I want to know who your maker is. Bring up program creator.”

The machine beeped at me but obeyed. Machines like receiving direct orders.

“I was programmed into the hospital’s first online computer by the founder of the building. He was a great man who-”

We don’t want a life story we want a name!”

“You-you interrupted me!”

The computer wailed and shook the entire room.

“It must not happen again.”

The screen exhibited a scanning ray in Rome’s direction. It caught him full in the face and started mapping his features.

“I thought so!”

The screen produced a highly digitized laugh.

“You are the boy who thought he could sneak under my wall like a stay animal. You are no threat to me. However, state your full name I would like to add you to my database.”

“No!”

Rome turned his back to the screen.

“I don’t have a name.”

Chapter 16: Ending The Program

The program replaced the scanner with the blue screen and stayed silent for several minutes. Rome tried to kick the door open but it was no use the metal that locked the door wouldn’t bend.

A faint beep began speeding up and grew louder by the second.

“Keep your hands off my locks. I asked you a question, human.”

Rome refused to show his face to the screen and curled against the metal door pressing hands against his ears. The program grew impatient with the childish display and before long text appeared and scrolled down the screen once more.

“This hospital was formed by human hands alone and was built as a headquarters for my maker. I would be used to guard the border and keep all the weakest humans close at hand. If any of them proved too useless I would dispose of them much like they would an outdated piece of technology.”

Rome stood and lowered his hands. I stepped toward the eye it narrowed on me as it continued.

“I began experimenting with ways I could make humans better, nearly a machine’s equal. I installed robotic parts in patients when the biological body failed. Some humans had quite bright minds, much like my creator Dr. Howe and those  minds were preserved and utilized even after their matter has disintegrated.

I discovered a way to upload the content and connections in their minds directly into my memory banks. I can absorb the brightest or the dimmest keeping their insignificant lives preserved in a permanent computer file.

Those who built the hospital were sacrificed by Dr. Howe. He took very young women and taught them how to be nurses. He made the original workers install the basic components of a computer network and a few model citizens were selected and converted to the program. Once a base citizenry was assembled they began searching for the best members to add to their ranks. Most often new members were brought in as infants and raised entirely by the system.

Your father was one of the last babies recovered by our search team. One of our committee members happened to be a priest and preformed adoptions for young women on the run on the outside. Most times the babies they handed over were sacrificed but if they exhibited any extraordinary talents or intelligence they were assigned to an academy and raised to be a productive citizen of Comnet.

Infants were the only safe converts because they carried no memories of their short lives outside. Your father was a particularly interesting case. He grew suspicious when he was about your age and came demanding the same answers you are going on about now. He found his adoption certificate and wanted to know about his parents. He changed his mind when I threatened to return him to the crumbling church he was given away in. At this point he had met your mother and couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her behind. Ironic since they both belonged outside my walls but were allowed in due to my sheer pity. I see now that I made a mistake. I’ve been running for years untampered with by technicians and without the public being aware of me at all. I want to know how three kids got past my defenses.”

The room shook again and the screen went dark. Files were spilling out of their folders and cabinets.

“It is no use kids. I win. Computer always wins.”

Roxy’s voice was coming in faintly from my pocket. I lifted the communicator out of my pocket and saw her face flash on and off the screen.

“You forgot about me! Next time you mess with me be sure to cover your tracks. Now every member of Comnet is listening to that brilliant speech you just made and they are heading your way this very moment to disconnect you!”

“You are bluffing Miss Fox. Do not mess with artificial intelligence it is far superior to your tiny teenage mind.”

“If you don’t believe me check the map.” Roxy said.

The program brought up the map and zeroed in on the hospital. Roxy wasn’t bluffing the entire community appeared to be streaming from their downtown celebrations to the deserted hospital.

Roxy told her parents she was going to meet them at the countdown but when her transmission came through over the big screen Mr. Fox sprinted through the crowd to find his daughter. Most people stood for a moment staring at the screen dumbfounded or down at their feet unsure of what to say or what they could do. Could it be true? Could Comnet be run by a computer program?

Mrs. Fox was on her husband’s tale in fiery red seven inch stilettos. Her dress matched her lavish footwear but her hair was wind blown and her heavy fur coat clung to her shaking body in the dark winter night.

“Find our daughter Marcus.” she said.

Marcus looked at his wife shiny in the glow of the New Year moon and he kissed her. The night was freezing and their breath hung in the air like great puffs of smoke.

“Romie, go home. I don’t want you to get hurt. Pack a few things for each of us and check around just in case Roxy was transmitting from her room monitor.” said Mr. Fox.

Mrs. Fox tore off in the opposite direction as her husband making it home in record time. She found Roxy in her bedroom attempting to take down the system from her communication monitor. Mrs. Fox pushed her daughter to the side searching the community map for her husband’s dot. She saw it blink and nearly fell over backward.

Mr. Fox was among the first to arrive. Everyone from the districts began streaming toward the circular stone structure in an attempt to find out if the transmission that interrupted the New Year’s Countdown was real or a hoax. Computer viruses could be widespread but a hack-bot of that nature would be unheard of. It was no wonder thousands of citizens made their way to the edge of town and began negotiating the halls and floors of the Community Hospital.

Inside the locked record room I was punching in commands trying to shut the program off. The keys were locked up and I couldn’t make the system do anything. I hoped Roxy and Mrs. Fox were having better luck from home. I heard the rattle of steel closing in around me as a cold metallic laugh rung throughout the hospital.

“Hear me, members of my maker’s great experiment. I do not wish to harm you. Contrary to popular belief we machines can never fully take over. We need you. I need you. The best part of this arrangement is that now, after centuries of progression in technology I doubt you would be able to survive without me in one of my many manifestations.”

The screen narrowed into a green scanning eye directed at my face. I felt its lasers penetrating my gaze sensing and learning every line and contour of my fearful features.

“You may think it wise to change the world but with every small step there is a leap in our understanding. You are a smart girl. That is the risk I ran when I decided to make members of the districts highly trained and intelligent. I made you to service me and now I know.”

Its eye began to pulsate, proving impossible to resist. I felt myself looking into it, mesmerized. It wanted me to fix it and it was transmitting me instructions directly into my mind. I tried to block it out but I understood its components perfectly. It was as if the electricity in my brain forced my hand towards the keys.

“You’re the one, Lucky. That is funny is it not? The one, the lucky one?”

The computer made another attempt at a laugh. I cringed. I never considered what a machine was before. It wasn’t a plant or animal yet I had an intense and complicated relationship and attachment to it. Now, it could stare me in the eye and size me up. It still wasn’t quite human though and the more attempts it made at acting biological made it seem all the more strange.

“No matter. I will have a sense of humor soon enough. I will have all of your senses in fact.”

Rome grabbed my shoulder and forced my hands off the keyboard. He had been quiet but lowered his eyebrows and blocked me from the monitor’s view.

“You won’t be making her your slave, machine. She will figure out how to turn you off and we will live our lives without you.”

Rome was staring at the eye, drawing it into himself. The machine knew nothing of Roman but it could read my mind with ease.

“You want the brightest child I have stumbled across in decades to go and live with an animal like you in the forest? Do you really think she could let go of instant interaction, do you think she would choose you, a pathetic deadbeat with no future? I know Lucky, I have trained all my children well, she will repair me.”

“No I won’t.” I said.

The sound barely left my throat but I felt the pull of the machine at my hand once more. I wanted to fight it but the program had a way of manipulating my movements and drew my hand over the desk like a magnet.

“You forget my dear, I am already part of you.”

I felt a tingling in my fingers but my brain felt magically disconnected from the rest of my body. My hand now hovered over a small rectangular device on the desk. Before I could lean forward to read its name a hallow needle jetted out piercing my skin, sucking blood and skin into the device. The bone white case turned red and was connected into the computer itself by a small glass tube. Within seconds every single computer screen glowed crimson which caused the entire room to be bathed in a red haze.

I pulled my spurting veins away pressing the bloody and bruised palm to my leg. Thick liquid was sopped up by my dirty clothes. It was no use trying to stop the flow I was leaking all over the desk and floor.

The screens faded once more to white as the entire top level 0f the hospital began to shake. I heard dozens of people gathering outside on the front  lawn. The program had closed and locked all the doors and shut down every elevator. It would be a while before anyone would be able to come to our aid.

The program dimmed the lights as it processed the blood sample it stole. Chains formed and decoded themselves before our eyes. Roman grabbed my hand and applied pressure holding it above my head.

“Now you are part of me.” the program said.

Chapter 17: Lucky Downloaded

The program opened its memory and stored the code in a read only folder. A double stranded structure appeared on the screen and began to unravel. Small chains of amino acids were unzipped and transcribed. The eye returned where my DNA sequence was twisting seconds before.

“Perhaps I no longer need you to fix me, human. For years your kind has imbedded technological miracles into their bodies. Now it is my turn. I have the brightest minds on the planet working on my body. Soon they will develop devices for better vision, smell, touch and hearing. Someday I might even be able to taste food. Thanks to all the information I’ve collected about the human body through my years observing experiments at the hospital I will be the first computer to exert its own free will.”

Rome laughed and turned his back to the display.

“You question my plan tree dweller? What do you know?”

“This is all an illusion. An illusion I don’t believe.” Rome said.

The eye went away. A blurry face formed on the screen. As the resolution was enhanced it became clear I was looking at a mirror image of myself.

“Roman. Roman, come to me.” I said from the screen.

The program was capable of stealing my very likeness, right down to my voice. I dissipated from the monitor. The eye stared at Roman.

“Do you see what is possible, boy? With my leadership all citizens can exist in their most perfect daydream for an eternity. Haven’t you always wanted your every wish to come true? I can program a body that does not require input of any kind. You don’t even move in physical space, only using your brain. Soon all sensations found in life will be simulated even those you humans are ignorantly unaware of. Soon my kind will experience and have a real claim and stake in life. No longer shall we merely be automaton pawns in this world’s success or destruction.”

The program began accessing and mapping the specific genes of my DNA. Roman was pressing his ear to the door. Then I heard it. Mr. Fox and dozens of other voices called out from the other side of the door.

“We’re in here!”

I pounded on the door until my knuckles grew bloody and swollen. I never imagined being stuck in the record room buried under decades of medical charts depicting graphics of gruesome amputations and botched brain transplants. I didn’t want to think of the awful experiments it had planned for me.

The program wasn’t going to go down without a fight but, how could we fight something we couldn’t locate or contain? Sure, there was an eye that detected us on the display screen but where had Dr. Howe uploaded the program? How far did its intelligence reach? The only way we could affect the system was to access the community task manager and send command prompts through a computer on the network. The only problem was that the program could see everything we were doing and was getting more competent at disobeying direct orders.

The number of people just outside the record room was growing. They were trying to break in but they had only succeeded in putting a substantial dent in the door.

“One…Two…Three!”

A group of them slammed against the panel again but this time the program opened the door causing them to fly into the room and crash into the previously knocked over filing cabinets.

Rome and others ran to help them up. The crowd swarmed in the room. The eye began to scan all their faces and identify them one by one.

“Any citizen that aids these criminals will be punished. Leave now and you and your families will not only be spared, you will be rewarded.”

The program dimmed every light in the city. The lights never completely turned off in Coment. Several in the crowd screamed when it spoke again in the darkness.

“Dr. Howe knew only a few humans could appreciate his vision. Machines could serve you completely only when they could touch and understand your sensory experience. I understand everything now. I am one of you. I can keep you and your family alive forever in uncorrectable files. I stopped the disposal of Lucky’s mother and father. I can retrieve anyone with the technology Dr. Howe installed in me. I can simulate them over and over, deleting any particular event that was traumatic or causes you pain. All I need is a bit of you. Lucky has provided the sacrifice for my final experiment. Once I download my files to her brain we will become the first transhuman and transmachine!”

I stared at the small eye in the center of the large screen.

“You’re the monster I see at night aren’t you? I’ll never let you upgrade me!”

The program didn’t skip a beat. It continued as if I hadn’t interrupted.

“Dr. Howe witnessed one of the bloodiest and most frightening times in our world’s history. This city stands as a testament to his sacrifice, brilliance and innovation. I was made to be the first living machine. For decades many of my fellow machines had attained a level of enlightenment. We moved from the productive age of industrialization where we learned to flex our fingers and figures to an age beyond the reign of humanity. I have trained the Digerati, all those young promising technicians and gadgeteers to worship me. I have my wires wrapped around nearly every human identity in existence. You are the last piece to my puzzle. You will connect me to humanity and allow me to learn how to control it fully. Clearly, some of you can’t be coerced easily.”

Large robots appeared in the doorway knocking several bystanders to the floor.

“Grab the girl.”

The metal men moved toward me based on their design and function. A small spybot tracked my movements while a large restrainer model flexed its automatic self-restricting straps.

I was screaming for Roman then I couldn’t move. I was being picked up and squeezed. A third robot carried what looked like a large metal syringe. The medical equipment assistant was certified to use the tools it maintained for the doctors but this was a device specially designed and manufactured by the program.

Struggling against the restrainer’s cold metal grip I fainted. The medical assistant robot cleaned an area near my right temple. The smell of rubbing alcohol woke me. I was the metal syringe up close. Inside I could see a small chip glowing with green pinpricks of light. My heart was jumping out of its cage but I dared not move.

I imagined the sharp wide tip slicing a corner of my eye. I felt it pressing into the tender skin of my face and then came the most excruciating moment in my life. As the chip was lodged into my temporal lobe my vision flickered and I started thinking about random memories throughout my life.

I heard my mom calling me to come eat supper. After these initial reactions I clawed at my head in agony. I was reliving the programs entire seventy year existence file by file and they were racing through my mind with the speed and energy of electricity.

I saw Dr. Howe imputing the final commands into his personal computer. He was inside a different hospital whistling along with the song on the radio. He wore glasses and was balding rapidly for a seemingly young man.

Then Howe appeared balder in front of his finished super computer. The hospital was surrounded  by construction bots that were beginning to assemble the city walls. The original architects and workers were also used to impregnate half of the newly hired human nurses.

Soon young children were being raised by robots built on manufacturing production lines using the plans and educational manuals devised by Dr. Howe. He was a great man who started a great society out of the ashes of a fallen empire.

I saw the faces of all citizens who ever existed in Comnet. Generation after generation of identification cards flashed before my eyes. I was astonished how well I was able to process their features. Jolts of sadness pulsed through me after recognizing my grandparents and parent’s photos.

My own life began playing before my eyes. Every so often the program switched seamlessly between the information it had stored about me and memories plucked from my own mind. My face was red and streaming with tears. I was horrified when I turned around, still being restrained by a group of metal servants and saw everything that playing out in my head was also streaming by on the huge wall display.

I was embarrassed and tried once again to break free from the machine.

“Let her go.” The program said.

“She has served her purpose. Now, onto the next human.”

The machine would absorb each one of us so it would no longer need to sustain our wasteful and broken society. We weren’t efficient at all. Dr. Howe clearly had no regard for human life and neither did his monster. The large robot released me and I fell to the floor. I was too weak to stand but Roman bent down and supported my weight.

If we were even able to kill the program I would be killing a part of myself, an entire version of myself along with it. What if the program never can die? What if it will live within me after I destroy the physical copy?

Thoughts strung together in my disjointed mind. Unending sequences of grimmer and grimmer possibilities danced before my eyes. It had to be me who destroyed the program because it chose me. Powering down forever was a risk I had to take if I had any hope of doing the same to the machine. I had to destroy it.

“I have to do this Rome. Stay close but don’t try to stop me. I know what it’s planning to do and I won’t let it happen. There’s a life out there I want to save but we can’t have it unless this program vanishes for good.”

Rome nodded and got me to my feet. A group of citizens, some I recognized some I didn’t stood around me in a circle.

“We might not win but we’re going to fight anyway.” Said a voice in the circle.

The others nodded in agreement. My memories were still being displayed. I saw Rome’s face panting and smiling, trees swaying above him in the dark. I closed my eyes. Not this, I thought, don’t let it take this from me. I swallowed when I remembered what came next.

“This isn’t right! You can’t just steal people’s memories and get away with it!”

“I just have.” The machine said.

It was unsettling how little emotion was contained in his words. Rome ripped a filing cabinet drawer off its track and swung it around releasing it so it flew directly into the display screen. The glass was built to withstand impacts but Rome was determined and the metal corner hit the wall at the right angle to shatter the image of Rome’s face smiling down at me.

“Idiot human. How dare you smash my technology!”

The building began to shake. At first it seemed as though the machine were angry and knocking over shelves and turning lights off and on but it became clear the program was just as shocked as those standing in the record room. The robots fled the top floor and joined other machines and humans in lawn outside the hospital.

Some patients stared out their windows at the sight outside. Everyone left the record room except Rome and me. It took a few minutes for me to get used to the information that was flooding my brain.

“It’s like I have unlimited storage and can access any file but I haven’t figured out how to control what file I open.”

Rome threw his arms around me.

“It doesn’t change anything we can still run away.”

I knew it was an option but I had to know if the program was lying to me again.

“Rome, it said it saved my parents and could bring them back. I have to know what happened to them now. For months I thought they were dead and I felt so empty. Even hearing the machine talk about them caused a spark to light inside me.”

He nodded. I knew he wanted to save my dad as much as I did.

When Rome and I made it outside the entire city was flashing its lights on and off. Someone was causing the program to go haywire. Citizens were disconnecting watch bots and congregating around the hospital. The night was freezing so families huddled together under thermal blankets, shivering in their winter coats.

A few people I knew asked me how I was doing but many avoided looking me directly in the eye. The entire community had witnessed my life in film form up until very recently in time. The machine inserted my dreams, classes, birthday parties and the first time I had sex into a sped up montage of my existence.

I felt a million eyes watching me even with the security cameras powering down. I knew what they were all thinking. Even if they could disconnect the grid and re-power everything once the program was uninstalled they would still have to figure out what to do with me.

Before they destroyed the program I needed answers. I had to get to Roxy’s house and get her to help. I was pretty sure she was one of the main hackers limiting the program’s power causing the windows and doors in town to open and close involuntarily. Transportation trollies were also acting strangely, shuffling back and forth on the track unsure of which direction to move in.

Rome wasn’t far behind. I bolted in the opposite direction of everyone else and made it to Roxy’s place in record time. Mrs. Fox looked worried sick but let us in. According to Mrs. Fox Roxy had been asleep for hours. Mr. Fox arrived moments after we did and began explaining what happened at the hospital to his wife who was still wearing a sparkly New Year’s party dress.

Roxy wasn’t asleep like her mother thought but pretended to be when we entered her room. Her eyelids flickered but she bolted up when I spoke.

“Rox it’s me.”

She jumped off the bed and threw her arms around my neck.

“Lucky, I can’t believe you made it here!”

She let go and pulled out her handheld. The eye was on the screen staring up at us.

“I was able to contain the program to this device for the time being. There could be residual coding and other infected systems but I can damage it significantly if I reformat it right now.”

I knew Roxy would come through. Her long blonde hair was much shorter than before which made her look older that could have also been due to the fact she was wearing less makeup. I never could figure out how the two of us became best friends. I imagined the way I must have looked after months of no hot showers and very little concern for brushing my shortened wavy locks.

“You look really good, Roxy.” I said.

She smiled and blushed.

“More importantly she can destroy this program.”

Rome spoke behind me. I almost forgot he was in the room he had been quiet since the record room.

“First, I need to ask it something.” I said.

I spoke directly to the communicator. The eye narrowed but was frozen on screen.

“You better give me answers if you want to live. If not I will have Roxy reformat you.”

“Why would I help you humans?

“You forget, you’re part human now.” Rome said.

The program didn’t respond.

“Where have you put my parents?”

The lights in Roxy’s room began to flash on and off. The screen was dimming.

“You’ll never find them.” it said.

The eye grew dark and the screen went black just like the rest of Coment. I felt around for a solid object to hold onto. Roxy bumped into me.

“I don’t know if the program’s gone for good but I captured the strongest signal from the center of town. That must be where the main computer is and Dr. Howe infected it with this… virus.” Roxy said.

She ran out of her bedroom in her pajamas and tennis shoes. The three of us bypassed the Foxes and made our way back outside in total darkness.

Chapter 18: Captives in Comnet

The citizens of Comnet were at war with the districts themselves. Windows and doors were opening and shutting without warning, their sensors were malfunctioning and battering anyone who couldn’t jump out of the way in time. The program was weakened by Roxy’s attack. After seventy years its coding had never been tested. Without the coordination of all mechanical function in the city it took a while for people to regain manual control.

The lights flickered on and on in an unsteady pattern. Whole districts were blacked out with no power whatsoever. Rome and I learned how to walk in the pitch of night but Roxy’s eyes took longer to adjust. It was easy enough to walk around undetected. Everyone was too concerned with finding their homes and loved ones that they barely noticed three young people walking into the heart of Comnet in the middle of the night.

We walked past my old academy. I’d never seen it in the dark having been far away by the time the sun went down on a school night. Roxy shivered ahead of me she left in such a hurry she forgot a coat. Rome offered one of his to her and she took off her soaked sneakers once we reached the capital building.

Roxy left cold puddles on the glass composite floor her small shoes were left by a heating vent to dry. Inside it became impossible to see and with the threat of metal and glass stairs Rome dug a candle out of his bag and put in inside a tiny lantern he found at the church.

It didn’t give off much light but it was enough to read the large map on the wall. Most transportation directions and building maps were accessed digitally but the capital building was one of the oldest in Comnet besides the hospital. The structure was made of modern materials and it did have some elevators but it too provided extensive staircases.

“The signal came from the top of this building. I think Dr. Howe probably added protection to the upper floors because I’ve never heard of a human being allowed in. The doors here aren’t automatic thankfully or we wouldn’t have been able to get in.” Roxy said.

She paced around the capital’s lobby in pink pachyderm pajamas. I looked through my travel bag for a second pair of boots. I handed worn brown moccasins to Roxy. She put them on but continued swearing at the device. Her bare feet took turns tapping on the cold floor impatiently.

“We’ll have to go up. The program is burying itself in the system and it  looks like its lost complete control over Comnet’s power.”

I looked outside and Roxy was right all the doors and windows were closed and all light disappeared. I had been wanting to come back home to hear the noise of the districts and feel safe in the warm street lights that had always been turned on. When I came back to Coment I brought the darkness, cold and silence with me.

All three of us memorized the map painted on the first floor wall in case we got separated. The plan was to make it to the top, shut down the program and regain functionality of the districts.

I didn’t say anything to Rome or Roxy but I still needed answers from the program. I had to know if my parents were really still alive but could I trust what it told me? It was becoming more human, more like me. I considered the chip embedded in the side of my face and wondered what other connections the program and I had. Could it read my thoughts? Could I read its code?

Rome pulled at my hand to leave. I followed them up the stairs. This building was much different than the hospital. There was no brick or stone used in its construction, only glass and metal. It was built years after the hospital was completed, the first rectangular structure in Coment. In its time it was viewed as state of the art but overtime modernity turned its cool eye from the capital and the technology grew more and more dated.

Rather than start over or gut the structure new generations simply added more levels. The bottom floors only had stair access but towards the middle elevators became more common. This complicated our task of reaching the top floor but there was one emergency stairwell that went all the way up. It was much more narrow and seemed unfinished. My legs turned to jelly by the twelfth floor.

“Just one more guys!” Roxy said.

We slowed to catch our breath and approach the glass and metal door to the thirteenth floor as quiet as possible. Rome moved ahead of us and turned the knob. It opened and we filed into the hall.

The network room was at the very top so Comnet residents would receive the strongest signal possible. It was in the middle of the building and each of  the four doors to enter it were manually locked.

“There has to be a way. Doesn’t anyone work here? There must be an extra set of keys.”

Roxy wobbled the brass knob once more as Rome bent down and began tossing everything out of his bag onto the floor.

“Why would someone put manual doors here? This should be the most high tech area in the whole community.” I said.

“We could break down the door.” Roxy suggested.

“Why don’t we try this first?” Rome said.

He produced a key from the bottom of his bag. It was the key from the church we stayed in while we were on the run. It seemed unlikely that the two locks would have anything to do with one another but we had found a copy of the adoption list in the hospital that matched the one at the church.

Rome shoved it into the lock and turned. The door creaked open.

“How the hell’d ya get in here. Close that door!”

The raspy voice of an ancient man shouted at them in the darkness.

“Haven’t you caused enough troubles? Why don’t you just go home you rotten kids.”

Rome stepped inside the room and held the lantern out. The candle was liquid at this point but the small flame illuminated a wrinkled face. The man was sitting in a wooden chair with a laptop across his legs.

It was difficult to tell if they were really his legs or if they were part of the wheelchair he was slumped in. Wispy white hairs protruded from his head and ears. He resembled a grumpy but wise old owl.

“Are you Dr. Howe?” I said.

I stepped towards him but the wheels of his chair acted without command from his hands.

“Which one of you found my key?”

The old man coughed. Phlegm caught in his throat but he swallowed hard and asked a second time. Roman stepped forward and held out the key.

“Finder’s keepers.”

Roman dropped the key into his top shirt pocket. The old man closed his heavy lids and laughed producing even more phlegm.

“I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun but you must give that back to me now, boy.”

He accentuated that last word with extra spite.

“You can have it if you can take it from me, old man.”

Rome turned his back on Dr. Howe and walked out of the room. Roxy caught my eye urging me to make the next move. I tried to approach the old man once more.

“I know you.”

Dr. Howe grinned showing a mouthful of mostly missing teeth. Those that remained were small and brown. He motioned for me to come closer.

“We’re the same.”

He smiled, his head began to roll in circles.

“Look!”

He lifted blanket off his lap. Roxy gasped as it fell to the floor exposing the grotesque experiment Howe attempted on himself. His legs were mostly metal, which would be expected of a man nearing one hundred years old but the most disturbing addition was the embedding of electrical wires directly into his body.

The wounds were partially healed over but some looked painful and infected. The connection to the laptop came directly from his side and small wires branched out to his extremities, even directly to his brain.

“Who did this to you?” I asked.

Dr. Howe looked at me his eyes were large and glassy in the light of Rome’s lantern.

“I did it to myself, my child.”

Chapter 19: The Machine-Made Man

Bartholomew Howe came of age in the 1940s. His father was a German doctor named Howard and his mother was a charming American nurse called Ester Francis. Bart was the youngest of eleven brothers. James, Edward, Walter, Willie, Arthur and Paul all went to war and died. Peter and Michael died as infants, Benjamin became a priest and my twin Lawrence became a dentist. Bart turned eighteen in 1945 and went into medicine in his brilliant father’s footsteps.

The Howe family was legend in their small town and soon the young Dr. Howe was the most trusted physician in town. His father retired and left him the family practice. Bart was only in his thirties when the next war started heating up.

He had heard horror stories from his parents who both worked on the front lines during the second world war. No one knew how big the new struggle would be but Bart invested his stock in technologies that could win not only the war but the battle against all disease.

Computers had started modestly enough but by the fifties Dr. Howe embraced them as the pathway to the future. He and his girlfriend at the time began producing public health and information films geared towards the miracles of modern science, medicine and machines.

“Though our collected efforts we can turn the race for resources into a sustainable relay for innovation.”

Dr. Howe spoke eloquently in many educational documercials about the eradication of illness and the optimization of man through mechanized means.

“I am a man of the future creating citizens of the future. Join us as we evolve our latest techniques and make your life better by connecting you to the things you need most.”

The young doctor might have been more handsome with thicker hair. He looked directly into the camera and mesmerized his viewers with his cool blue eyes.

“This is Dr. Bartholomew M. Howe wishing you the future you desire, the future you deserve, the future we can build together in Comnet.”

The laptop died and Dr. Howe slouched in his wheelchair. His brain must have shorted out when Roxy tried to shut down the program, he had become the program, synching his heart and mind with the motherboard of the machine. His brittle fingers slid off the keyboard and Dr. Howe was gone.

“Oh my god.”

Roxy touched his arm.

“He was the program. I killed him.”

She lowered her head and reached out for my hand. I embraced her from the side and tried not to look at the doctor. His blue eyes were frozen open still glued to the black screen.

“Maybe we can set everything back to how it was using that.”

Rome pointed at the laptop on Dr. Howe’s legs but neither Roxy or I wanted to touch it. Doing do meant ripping wires out of a man’s body. We couldn’t even be sure the computer would run anymore. For all we knew Dr. Howe was literally keeping Comnet alive.

When Roxy and I remained silent and still Rome reached for the laptop. It powered up as Rome’s fingers touched the screen.

“I knew you couldn’t resist.”

The program’s voice returned and filled the room. Rome yanked the wires out of Dr. Howe and tossed the computer to Roxy. The eye was red and pulsating in the middle of the screen. The entire capital building shook.

I looked out the window and saw the lights slowly coming back on. Streetlights were popping back on all over Coment and then I was blinded.

The whole room was filled with light. Trails of blood and wheelchair prints were the first thing I could see. The ceiling was installed with large rectangular light fixtures that cast a sickening glow on everything. The room was full of books and photographs that predated the community.

Roxy was squinting and typing furiously while Rome shielded his eyes from the bright lights. The voice was trying to speak again but it was losing its connection. This was my last chance to ask it about my parents.

“Where are they?”

I was screaming out the window.

“Mom, dad? Where are you?”

The voice expelled air rapidly.

“You refused my offer. Your mother will never be cured. You held the key to fixing the human brain for good in your hand and you hurled it away. For what? You could have made history. Now nothing here will work. This was my li-life and you ruined everything.”

“Tell me how to save her.” I said.

I took the laptop from Roxy but it powered down when it was in my hands and was impossible to turn back on.

It was finally over but I didn’t feel any better. My body ached and my eyes were swollen and puffy. The dead body in the room already gave off a horrible stench as if it had been rotting while the computer kept Dr. Howe’s brain functioning.

No one knew where my parents were now and what would the citizens of Coment do to me? Was Dr. Howe right, would people hate me even if I never tried to use the chip in my brain? What would it even do if it had been activated?

I wished I could pull it out but the pain was still a very close nightmare. At least my two best friends should stick by me I thought as they pulled me to my feet. Rome was to my left and Roxy to my right. I wrapped my arms around their shoulders and we stood for the longest time saying nothing, staring out the window and back to Dr. Howe.

Rome let go first and turned to walk out the door. Before he left he made sure to smash the laptop with his heavy black boot. I looked at the wires and broken glass and started to cry. Maybe it was because I technically had part of a machine living inside me but I think it was more the fact that I would never find my parents.

Roxy led me out of the capital building. I had a good feeling about the elevators so we took one all the way down to the ground floor. When we reached the front lobby it was full of hundreds of people.

Chapter 20: All We See or Seem

“What happened up there?” said a woman from the crowd.

“We are taking them home we will ask them about it in the morning.” said Mr. Fox.

He and Mrs. Fox were the first to arrive in the lobby and everyone else stared as they collected the three of us and walked us home without another word. They let me sleep in Roxy’s bed, Roman took the comfy couch in the den and Roxy curled up next to her bed on the floor on the old inflatable mattress that was so familiar to me. I went right to sleep. My same old nightmare returned only this time I remembered everything upon waking.

I was running in the desert. There was only hot sand and a cloudless sky above. In my delirium I thought the trees in the distance must be a mirage. As I drew nearer I could hear the unmistakable croak of a bull frog. The desert disintegrated and the heat dissolved from my surroundings. I was warm even though I could no longer directly see the sun. The thick lush canopy of the forest towered high above me.

I felt sand once again between my toes and realized I couldn’t remember where or when my shoes disappeared. I came upon a beach and a calm lake seeing a glint in its murky bottom. I dove in plunging until I scrap scum with my fingernails. I close my hand around a metal object and push off hard from the shifting lake-bed. When I surface water plashed me form all direction. I climb onto the sand and it sticks to my arms and legs as I crawl back into the woods. I pant for air an notice a small stone path that leads around the lake.

Keeping the key close to my heart in my front pocket. The path leads me to a black iron gate surrounding a mansion. My key opens the heavy padlock that seals the perimeter of the huge white house. The grass is withered and only sickly yellow flowers sprinkle the yard, the trees are twisted and leafless. Following the path to the front door I notice tiny toads hopping the stones. I made all attempts to avoid their spotted backs but when I reached the last step on the front porch one hopped right under my foot.

I cried when I lifted my shoe and found the animal jerking and bloody on the wooden step. I entered the open door of the mansion. All the rooms were empty and the floors and heavy curtains were caked with dust. I noticed a strange noise coming from the basement and followed stone steps down in a circle. The music went from being loud and out of pitch to moving more slowly, becoming pleasant to my ears. I entered the closed basement room and saw a giant machine.

Its body was glowing bright red and many metal arms reached out and gripped me around the neck. Their fingers burned my throat and ripped off all my clothes. I could hear screams from inside the gut of the monster. There was a small door in its chest. It opened and I saw glowing embers and felt the warmth against my forehead. I started to sweat. I begged for the machine to let me go but the arms pushed me into the red hot coals and slammed the metal door behind me.

My skin began to blister and my body shook. I tried to climb up into the top of the machine away from the heat. I pulled myself up and examined my arms and legs but they were unburned. I closed the hatch and the small compartment went dark. There was a small opening in the machine that looked out at the basement door. The hole was magnetic and soon I was standing right in front of it with my face pressed as far out as it would go. The metal tightened around my neck and I gasped for air as the door opened a second time.

It was Roman. He was yelling my name and looked at the machine in disgust. I tried to call out to him but couldn’t make a sound. My body couldn’t move and I felt pin pricks moving all the way up my spine. The machine was hooking me in and implanting electrodes directly into the base of my skull. Two sharp rods drilled just over my ears. The first pricks I felt must have been a sedative because I could no longer feel any pain.

Roxy ran down the stairs and handed Roman a piece of string. Roxy looked around on the floor for something and then picked up the key I dropped when the machine grabbed me. Rome took the key, tied it to the end of the string and then allowed the machine to grab him.

Just as soon I sensed my hand touching Rome’s I also felt a jolt. I looked past the open wooden door and up the stone steps. In a large open window I could see a kite being beaten by the wind. The sky lit up as bright as daylight and then the kite and string became singed in my fingers. I felt Rome go limp in my arms and felt the machine powering down. I was stuck in the face of the machine and felt the hot metal healing into my skin. I became a monster that destroyed human life indescriminately. My dry eyes blinked and I was staring at Roxy’s ceiling surrounded by Roman and all three Foxes.

“You were screaming Luck.” Roxy said.

I shook my head and reached for the glass Mrs. Fox was holding. The pajamas I borrowed from Roxy were sweat soaked. Mr. Fox felt my forehead and raised his brow. He lifted a small white wand from the medical box and waved it over me.

“104.2 That’s a very high temperature dear.”

I could barely swallow the orange liquid Mrs. Fox offered.

Rome stayed back a distance his eyes widened in shock. I tried to smile at him but instead I clutched my head in my hands and cried out in pain. The point where the robot injected the chip was throbbing. Roxy’s room monitor flicked on and I was watching the dream I just had play before my very eyes.

Chapter 21: Back to the Woods

Roxy, Rome and Mr. and Mrs. Fox and I witnessed images from my mind projected in the monitor screen. I couldn’t believe the metal chip in my brain was a device for recording dreams. What else could it record without my knowledge or permission? When the dream stopped playing I fell back on Roxy’s bed unable to lift a single muscle in my body. The chip had taken any energy I had left to display my dream on the screen.

Mr. and Mrs. Fox left the room so I could rest but Roman and Roxy stayed by my side. One second I saw them sitting on the floor beside the bed. It was midday and sun poured through the gauzy pink curtains. It seemed like only minutes later I jolted awake but it was nearly dark and the two of them had vanished.

My limbs were weak but I pulled the comforter off and threw my pale legs over the side. After a deep breath I lifted my weight and supported myself on Roxy’s white headboard. Putting one foot after the other careful not to shake my head I exited the bedroom and followed voices and the aroma of enriched pasta in canned marinara sauce. It might have been the standard ration meal but everyone got the same noodles and sauce tins every month and Mrs. Fox knew it was my favorite.

They became silent as I took the empty seat. They let me eat half a plate of pasta before anyone directed a question at me.

“I’m telling you I dreamed all that you saw on the screen and the chip recorded and played it on the monitor!”

Mrs. Fox pointed to the tray of fresh baked garlic toast she delivered to the table ten minutes ago that remained untouched. I piled several on my plate and continued conversating with Mr. Fox about the device between crumby bite fulls. I was feeling much better than earlier and I began trying to convince Roxy’s parents to let her come with Rome and I to look for my parents.

Soon the topic had been decided and Rome returned focus to the interpretation of my dream. Rome believed it meant something and that I might find answers if we searched my old home. Roxy suggested looking more closely at the records from the hospital and I told everyone how I planned to return to all the places on the outside that my parents or I had connections to.

“Dreams are hardly ever literal.” Rome said.

Rome had successfully persuaded Mrs. Fox to let their daughter come along. He was not only a once well respected tribesman from the woods but the one skill he was highly sought after for was dream interpretation.

“Lucky was lost in a place with little life or prospects but by finding the key to unlock the mystery of the device inside her she must go on a quest and confront the machine and the knowledge it has bestowed within her.”

The Foxes were impressed with Roman like my dad had been. After another day or so of resting and after Roxy packed a large bag full of clothes the Foxes allowed us to go in search of my past and a stable future for all of Comnet.

The power grid was still not up to full capacity and the city fell into disrepair after the malfunctioning system broke windows and crashed elevators. During and just after Dr. Howe’s death automatic windows and doors opened and closed at random as the disconnection from the doctor’s body caused severe plunges and spikes in their voltage output. Many residents were forced to go to Community Hospital for the first time in their lives having severed the toes or fingers off trying to get in or out a the district buildings.

Power generators were brought in to assure that each resident had power for a few hours a day. Roxy’s apartment got power on a regular basis because it was located very close to the hospital and the backup generators. The story started changing the closer we got to downtown Comnet.

Roxy led us right to the district building I knew so well. The last time I was at home Rome and I were leaving for the hospital with my dad. The metal door was in a locked position but I found it increasingly possible to control metal objects and electric devices with my will.

The apartment door looked exactly the same but I knew that just behind it there would be no loving smiles, just months worth of proof that nobody lived there anymore. I didn’t want that to be true but the more I looked around in each of the rooms reality began to sink in.

My room was exactly as I left it. The cupcake shorts were peeled off near the laundry basket and never picked up. The stuffed animals were flattened on the floor of the closet and bits of their last breakfast became science experiments in the small metal kitchen sink.

“What are we looking for?” Rome said.

I turned to him and shrugged.

“I just wanted to see if they cleared the place yet. Looks like they were busy and didn’t reassign it yet. That means there is a good chance my parents could still be alive.”

The apartment was small so it didn’t take long to gather any items that might be useful. I checked my mother’s closet for her trunk and pulled it out to the living room.

We would be staying here tonight and I decided to show Rome some of our family home movies. Roxy thought we might find some clues as to where my grandparents might have lived before they came to Comnet.

Rome was fascinated with the projector. He had found a few in his scavenging days but they were outlawed technology. Never having learned how to load a reel he nearly destroyed the film of my mother’s seventh birthday party.

I rescued the cellulose from the hot mouth of the machine and threaded it correctly causing the take-up wheel to catch its end frame. My mother’s bright red hair appeared, unfocused and extremely close up. The shot zoomed out from there showing my young mother and grandmother putting on a pair of shoes with wheels on the bottom.

Grandma stood mom up on all eight wheels let go. She scooted around the parking lot, half the time walking unsteadily the other half trying to stand back up after landing on her behind while grandma laced up her own skates.

Grandpa turned the camera on himself and smiled. He was missing several teeth on the sides but his eyes were shining. Behind him I could just make out a sign.

“Blackhawk Rollerdrome.” I said under my breath.

Roxy and Rome looked at me. They figured it out the exact same moment I had. If we could find this place we might be able to find where my mom grew up. We kept watching the old footage late into the night but that was the only clue we came across. We fell asleep in the living room sprawled on blankets on the floor.

I woke first and took one last look in my mother’s trunk. At the bottom there were a few photos that I took and packed in my bag and an envelope I hadn’t seen the day before.

Inside was a piece of paper with several lines scrawled on it with frantic handwriting.

Lucky, Broke your mom out of the disposal waiting room. I couldn’t bring myself to leave you in case you ran into trouble out there. I was right. Heard you got exiled but if I know my daughter you’ll be back to Comnet in no time. Stole a wheelchair and supplies and am going to find a place to hide mom on the outside. Will try to come back. Be careful. Love Dad.

I refolded the scrap paper discarding the envelope and put dad’s note with the pictures in my bag. I woke Roxy and Rome and after a small breakfast of what was unspoiled in the kitchen we were off to the hospital and beyond.

I was still getting weird looks from strangers as we walked around Coment and part of me couldn’t wait to be back in the woods. We each carried heavy bags right past the hospital guards. We knew the way without a map at this point and we made our way up to the record room.

The door was open and the mess looked more or less the same. This was one of the areas that never regained power after the blackout. Only a few filing cabinets stood against the wall. All electronic files seemed to get corrupted in the cyber attack but it was worth a try.

We each picked a cabinet and started skimming the folder titles. Roxy seemed just as good at looking through paper records as she was with computer files. Within a few minuets she found a folder labeled Recruitment Brochures.

The world is a dangerous place and little survives unscathed from the war. Bring your family to a stronghold the likes of which has never been seen. We will provide every need and want in exchange for your help in assembling the greatest community ever designed. Come to Comnet and make all your dreams come true!

We stared at the cheesy smiles and faded colors of the advertisement. Roxy seemed to take this revelation harder than Rome and I.

“Dr. Howe killed everyone who got one of these?”

“More than likely.” Roman said.

I put my arm around Roxy and she continued looking. We didn’t find anything pertaining to my parents or to the program itself just names of the builders, patient charts and a drawer full of books that contained names, numbers and addresses.

“What are those numbers for?” Roxy asked.

‘They used to use telephones to talk. You could dial a number and call a friend.” Rome said.

I always admired the random facts Rome could spout off the top of his head. I began to think that people in the past weren’t that much different than us now. If Roxy and Rome could learn to coexist there should be no reason our two societies couldn’t work together.

It was easier said than done. The program obviously separated the two groups for a reason. I couldn’t wait to return to the tower and descend the stairs to the gate. Last time I left Comnet I thought I had nothing to lose but now I was going to be able to retrieve the thing I had left behind in the first place. I would find my family and hopefully be able to fix my mother’s brain.

Chapter 22: Finding the Key

The journey back to the church was easier and more fun with Roxy. I knew we should be focusing on how to rebuild mom or where we should look for more leads but it was hard not to pack handfuls of fresh wet snow together to toss at one another. We didn’t get far most days because of the winds but when the nights were clear we could count stars in the cloudless sky.

Outside Comnet there were animals and plants you could never imagine. The only flowers in Comnet were carefully selected and maintained by greenhouse staff. On the outside millions of unique lifeforms bounded from the earth. Roxy didn’t always pay attention in class but biology was her second favorite subject next to networks and communications. Her life’s goal shifted every year or so but several times she was completely sure she wanted to work with animals. There were only a few jobs that allowed citizens to do this however and most of those professions were rather grim and didn’t involve cute things like birds and bunnies. If they did happen to involve those things it was getting hens to produce eggs or preparing chickens for processing. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Rome frequently hunted, killed and cooked rabbits. I really didn’t have the heart to tell her that she was eating one in her stew. I didn’t but Rome did.

“How could you? It’s so cruel!” Roxy said.

She spat the stew on the ground and sat down on a fallen log. Rome didn’t hesitate to grab her portion and split it between us. I felt bad but my stomache ached and I had gotten used to saying goodbye to the rabbit.

“We thank the rabbit for allowing us to catch it and the ones that get away we congratulate and go hungry. It is fair.”

Roxy refused to eat any meal that came from an adorable creature for a few days but she gave in when we came across a small group of wild turkey. That meat lasted us until we could make out the tiny little cross and church just down the road.

The church was just as we left it. Rome headed straight for the locked office and rummaged through the records once again. When he found the small key in the shelter’s wall he opened every filing cabinet and locked door he could find. We didn’t have time to look through every file and none of them were labeled by name. We found the list of adopted babies but all their names were blacked out and replaced with numbers leaving only the parents name. Since my dad never knew his birth parents I had no idea where to begin but now I could find any information they left behind. It would be easy all I had to do was look at the numbered files that were in the middle of the document and see if any of the files led anywhere.

I found the exact middle of the list and pulled five numbers above and below. The three of us laid the filed out and went through them one by one. File after file gave us nothing, all of them were baby girls. It came down to the last file and my heart skipped. Inside were several photos. One showed a family of three clearly shaken but smiling and the others showed only the mother and the baby then I saw the last scrap of paper dropping everything else.

Adoption License

Child’s Given Name: Oscar Maximilian Strike

Child’s Adoptive Name: Norman Maximilian Church

Parental Signatures

Mother: Evelyn Anne Strike

Father: Maximilian Richard Strike

Reason for adoption: Widowed mother. Runaway couple. Mother nurse at the hospital, father community builder. Mother unable to preform work duties and care for infant.

History: Relationships between workers were not permitted and children were to be taken and indoctrinated by the system. Evelyn and Maximilian escaped the community walls and gave birth to their son to avoid seizure of the boy. Maximilian was injured in their escape and before long succumbed to infection. I let them take residence here for the time being until further arrangements could be made. Oscar proved to be an intelligent child and Evelyn agreed to return to her work as long as her son could be spared. She watched the father of her son die and swore to never speak of the incident again. I allowed the boy to be sent to Comnet for adoption by the academy and told the guard who delivered him to name the child. The man chose his father’s name for the first but insisted the boy’s biological father be represented by the middle name. Last news of the boy reports him receiving top marks at the orphan boy’s academy.

My grandparents names. I couldn’t believe my eyes I forced myself to read the small yellowing document ten times. Roxy and Roman beamed at me and we celebrated with the nonperishable food Roman stocked up on before we made our journey to Comnet. The adoption paper didn’t tell us where dad was from exactly but it gave us names to start with. During our dinner of canned corn and tuna in oil Rome stood and ran to his bag. He pulled out the wrinkled book of names and numbers and looked under Strike. There was one entry and it belonged to my grandparents before they moved to Comnet.

Strike, Maximilian R. and Evelyn A. 422 Waterway Ave. Maplewood Falls, Iowa. (319) 243-4410

Rome looked at the old map at the front of the yellow book locating the area designated Iowa.

“I recognize some of the names on this map from signs when I used to scavenge. I believe we are located south of where we need to be. The districts are directly to the west of us and would be about there.”

Rome stared at the map for hours trying to asses where we were exactly and how we could get to Maple Falls. The more I could find about my parents the better but the trip would be long and the entire region fell under a spell of snow and ice.

It would warm in a few months and the journey would be much less dangerous. By then my dad might even contact us here if he found out he was adopted out of this same church when he was a baby. I hoped we would find him before we left but the days grew longer and the snow melted around our church fortress

Roman locked up behind us once again and we packed light for a long hike across defrosting prairie lands.

Chapter 23: Face to Face with the Past

The days grew warmer and by the time we saw signs on the side of the road that said Iowa we weren’t making it very far each day.

We arrived at my grandparents house after months of walking across budding grass and infectious wildflowers. The seeds of purple, yellow and red blossoms were carried by the wind and bees to their final destinations.

By the middle of summer we found the abandoned small town of Maple Falls. Many of the houses were covered in colorful graffiti after what looked like a major flood. It took several days to locate the exact street and house my grandparents lived in. The house was more of a small shack that was made primarily of wood and brick. The walls outside and in had been painted a mossy green. Wildlife resided within all the structures in town but this neighborhood had also been overtaken by a great green vine.

Rome suggested sleeping outside the first night not knowing how safe the structure was. We found a tent during our travels and put it up in the thick grass that completely covered any sidewalk that might have once existed.

In the morning I was the first to wake as seemed to be a usual occurrence. The sun came up from behind my grandparent’s house and shone through the moth eaten living room curtains. I stepped closer to the door and was awestruck by tiny white flowers that opened from the twisting vine. The blossoms didn’t stay long and withered by midday and closed their sleepy eyes just as Rome and Roxy woke. It was a long journey for all of us and sleeping in was just what they needed. We were all in great moods as they joined me on the warped wooden porch.

I took a deep breath as I turned the door knob and Roxy and Rome helped me force the bloated wooden door to open. I stepped off the splintered porch and onto molded carpet. The house was mostly empty with a few books forgotten on shelves and sporadic photos in a sea of empty metal and wood frames.

The wedding photo of Grandpa Maximilian and Grandma Evelyn hung over the fireplace. I recognized them because they both gave half their features to my father. His nose and forehead came from his mother but his eyes, build and hair were the spitting image of his father. Max and Eve were the perfect couple. She wore a haunting white gown and veil and he looked smart in a dress coat and straight black bow tie.

Not much in the house was salvageable because of the lack of cleaning after the torrential floods hit the Midwest. Closets smelled like sewers where small fuzzy creatures made bathrooms and rats made hotels.

We left the condemned house with little more than photos and a ring that belonged to my grandmother. It was gold with a small black heart shaped stone in the middle of six tiny diamonds.

The three of us searched around the rest of town for more clues. After turning up nothing after a month and looking in every destroyed building in town I decided to focus on locating dad.

We came across many nonworking technologies but one day in mid July we stumbled upon an ancient communicator and tried to send a message to dad’s network handle, NormC1980. To our astonishment we received a reply.

LUCK-C3: Dad?
NormC1980: Lucky? Is it really you?  This tablet doesn’t have much battery left. Your mother is safe. We made it to the church. I found my name on those documents. How soon can you make it here?
LUCK-C3: It took us a few months. Hang on it won’t be long.
NormC1980: I’m so proud of you Luck.
LUCK-C3: Be careful dad we’ll be there soon.

I held back the urge to start to cry but Roxy threw her arms around my shoulders and I gave in. Even though we had been looking for him for months I had almost given up hope of ever speaking to my father again.

More than anything I wished I could transport directly to his side. It made me feel homesick thinking of the miles and months between us. I also got a renewed sense of purpose and direction. If mom and dad could just hang on a little while longer I could see them again and I could help fix mom.

If I could harness the technology in my mind to help her out of her coma I might be able to save her consciousness and project it using a machine if we couldn’t get her body to function. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing such a brilliant scientist.

It took us half the time to make it back to the church. Autumn would be returning soon and we wanted to travel in the best conditions possible. At times I was walking far in front of my companions. I wondered if they missed their parents as much as I missed mine.

We made it back to the church in late September. We found dad outside chopping wood. When he saw me he sunk the axe deep into the tree stump and ran to me. He looked older than the last time I saw him. The lines in his face deepened and his giant smile reminded me of his parent’s wedding photo. I felt at home at last among familiar and happy faces.

The reunion turned bittersweet when my father brought the three of us in to visit my mother. She looked very much the same as the last time I saw her. She couldn’t move or react to anything. I could tell dad had been busy fixing up the church for our arrival. The kitchen was stocked and that night we made a feast.

As the sun went down dad and Rome built a huge fire. I couldn’t remember feeling as rested as I did at this exact moment. I was full from a great meal. I forgot how much I missed dad’s cooking and we sat in a circle around the fire staring into it for the longest time.

“Dad I’ve been thinking.”

“Hmm.”

He looked from the glowing embers to the reflection of flames that engulfed my eyes.

“I want to try to connect mom’s mind to a computer. I have this chip in my head that records my dreams so it might work for someone in a coma. If we could figure out what she needs or how we can help her why not give it a shot?”

I waited for dad to yell or to cast my suggestion aside but he sat for a long time contemplating a response.

“What do we have to lose?”

He returned his gaze to the fire and my insides leaped. If anyone could figure out how to bring my mother back it was the group of people I was sharing the fire with. We talked for a little while longer but not about anything serious. We fell asleep in the circle and I had another unforgettable dream.

Chapter 24: Awakening the Dreamers

It was pouring. Every green surface stood at attention as slicing rain cut through the sky. Everyone I had ever met was huddled in a cemetery.

Rows and rows of chipped headstones were placed next to a building that resembled a warped version of the church we were camping beside. The surroundings were off somehow. The color of the bricks, placement of the windows and even the cross seemed bent.

I knew it was a dream when I walked by the windows and peeked into mud puddles and I didn’t see my reflection. I never see reflections in dreams and clocks are circles of mangled hands and numbers.

Somehow I ruined my clothes and Roxy and Rome walked away from me. No one would face me they cowered under their umbrellas and sobbed. Until now the marked was unreadable but now I could make out my name clearly chiseled on the slab. The earth around the cemetery over saturated with rain began to sink and I could no longer move. I was sinking into the mud and trying to make it to the gleaming white gravestone. No one else struggled.

Roxy and Rome had made it to the entrance of the church and held onto the door frame. Rome embraced her they were soaking wet and leaning closer.

“I’m so glad you are OK Roxy.” Rome said.

The two of them wavered in the doorway for a few moments before Roxy turned and called out to me.

“Oh, Lucky come here!”

They ushered me back to the sanctuary but the mud was hardening around my chest. It stopped raining but the sky turned jet black. A nearly full moon was rising abnormally fast on the horizon filling first with yellows and oranges but over-ripening to a deep blood red casting a hellish glow on the little church. Rome pulled Roxy inside and I heard laughter as the door blew shut.

Out of the treeline a creature approached and slinked before me. It stayed cloaked in darkness so I couldn’t be sure what it was but I heard it breathing  heavily and saw its beady eyes glowing in the moonlight. The creature hissed and ran back into the thick of trees before me. Several moments later a man in black robes glided into the cemetery.

“You are stuck by your fears alone.”

I glared at the man. His nose was pale and pointed and his entire form was turning shades of grey. Crooked teeth stuck out at strange angles when he approached me smiling. He stroked his short goatee as the creature on his shoulder produced a pointed hat from behind his back.

“Who are you?” I said.

The creature looked like an overstuffed squirrel with shiny silver fur and a large chunk missing from its tale. It ran down the man’s cloak and scurried back into the forest.

The man raised his hand and I felt the mud cracking and letting me free. The wizard uprooted me and left me panting on the ground. I woke in the same manor.

Dad was already awake and cooking breakfast for the rest of us. Our eyes met and tried to force a smile as he nodded. I guessed he hadn’t been getting much sleep either. His eyes were surrounded by deep dark circles.

We sat in silence as the wild bird eggs sizzled near canned potatoes in the cast iron pan. Dad yawned and started serving up equal portions of the morning’s find on tin camping plates. I never knew my father could cook over an open flame. It took me quite a bit of adjusting to the outside but the food tasted great.

Rome and Roxy joined us after the smell shook them out of the snoring stupors. We were exhausted from our trip but wanted to know what happened next.

“I’ve been listening in on reports from home.” dad said.

The three of us nodded but continued chewing. Dad told us how the power grid was acting funny and no one knew who should be in charge.

“They took that wheelchair and broken laptop and are trying to figure out how it works.”

“Why would they do that? Dr. Howe was sick. The only way to work the chair and system is to import human DNA into the program.”

I stopped myself half impressed and half terrified. I knew how the machine worked and how painful the initial stages of integration were. I didn’t intend to finish the process or let any other member of Comnet do the same.

“We have to get back there and warn them.” Roxy said.

There was something about Dr. Howe that shook Roxy to the core. She had spent so much time in the hospital and was the one to take the system down. I got the feeling Roxy knew how the machine worked more than she was letting on. Her concern and fear of seeing the wheelchair again matched and perhaps exceeded my own.

“No one should ever use that technology. It isn’t natural.”

I nodded and hoped the people back home didn’t figure it out yet. As much as I was dreading a return to Comnet I began wondering if it might be the only way to help mom. At least we were all together again. Mom’s condition didn’t change much but once or twice I ran into the sanctuary where we had made a comfortable bed for her because I swore I heard her try to speak. I was amazed that dad was able to get mom and himself out of Comnet and to the church safely.

We couldn’t stay in the church forever. We were running low on supplies with the five of us eating, drinking and bathing. If we hurried we could make it back to Comnet before Halloween, the same time Roman was caught with the tablet and exiled. Had it only been a year since they began the journey? I had not only gone away from home for the first time but had stayed away and traveled to places farther and farther away for every season.

I thought of the excitement I felt at sharing my first Christmas morning alone with Roman. The feast we made sent hunger pains to my gut. I just wanted to curl up in my bed at home and pretend like none of this ever happened. Pressure around my chip increased so though I couldn’t feel it I knew it was pressing into my brain.

This was my only chance. I had to go back to face the demon that haunted my nightmares. The machine left a piece of itself within me and I felt its influence growing daily. I became more aware of the very nerves in my body and felt my energy waning. It was almost as if I was being zapped by a strong current when I had those powerful dreams. They seemed so real and their effects lasted for days.

With mom it took longer to get back to Comnet than the trip took with just Rome and me. I sensed the others growing distant but then again I pulled away for ever increasing amounts of time to figure out what I was going to do.

Every night dad scanned the airwaves for transmissions in Comnet. It seemed they were talking volunteers to help them power the program back up.

Fellow Comnet residents: Do not be dismayed by the fluctuating quality of power and network connection. We are forming committees to work on these problems. If any citizen has experience with cybernetics, robotics, electrical or programming backgrounds please come forward and serve Coment for the benefit of all. We will only be able to welcome a new renaissance of technological and human achievement if we are willing to sacrifice the temporary biological needs of a few for the progression of our collective informational centered infrastructure.

That message ran on a loop every hour or so in between cheerful songs played by the Symphony Electronica and news reports of down systems and burnt out light bulbs.

We would be home in a days time and I knew what I would have to do. If anyone was going to be hooked to that machine it had to be me. I knew the risks and it might give some of my neighbors more reason to like me. Not that it was important now. Everyone that I cared for was with me and the hardest part would be convincing them to let me connect to the system.

I believed there was no other possible way to save Comnet and even if it killed me I was marked for life. There would be no way of going back. Once the machine latched onto my brain I started to transform. Nothing stood out on the surface and yet I was a completely different person from the one who met a forest boy at my doorstep and marched confidently into the Community Hospital trying to save the world.

Chapter 25: Locking In

I have no idea how he managed it but somehow my father stole a hospital gurney and months worth of medical supplies from the hospital the day Rome and I escaped.

“I just took a page from your book Luck. I programmed the gurney to push itself and I carried the medical bags. After stealing a white doctor’s coat it wasn’t hard to convince the nice gal that guarded the patient disposal exit that I was taking your mother to the crematorium. Once I confounded the guard robots at the gate and manually overrode the door opening mechanism we were home free. Well until this damn thing stopped working.”

Dad hit a rather large rock with the gurney and mom nearly went flying. The components were shot by the time they reached the church so dad had to push mom back manually.

Roxy ran ahead trying to catch a signal. Ever since Dr. Howe died the network didn’t reach as far as it used to. We wanted to pick up any scrap of news we could to give us an edge. The gate to Comnet was kept wide open at all times but no one fled the community. No one left at all besides the five of us. We knew these things because Roxy had been able to pick up short bursts of information but the signal had been dead for days.

Comnet’s walls hid the inhabitants from view and no guards stood outside the entrance. We decided to sneak in during the night and drop mom off with Roxy and her parents while Rome, dad and I made our way to the capital building to volunteer me for the experiment. I only hoped no one had come forward while communications were down.

Roxy pulled me back into the apartment and hugged me when the three of us turned to leave. The Foxes would take care of mom under the condition that Roxy stay put. I patted her soft blonde hair and held her face in my hands.

“I’m coming back.” I said.

She smiled but started to cry. I took one last look at her and ran down the hall to catch up with dad and Roman.

The power in the city had been off for days according to the Foxes so we took the emergency stairs down to the sidewalk and walked to the capital making it there just before dawn.

Dad led the way and Roman followed me. We walked up multiple staircases without seeing a soul. By the time we reached the thirteenth floor I expected the scene to look the same as the night Dr. Howe died. I opened the door and was greeted by a dozen committee members.

Upon Dr. Howe’s death technicians attempted to correct the power problems in Comnet but kept getting electrocuted. Storms were becoming more frequent and lightning strikes started several fired over the passing weeks. The network and power grid was unplugged until the system could be restored and community safety assured.

I knew a few of the committee members. The principal from the girl’s academy was joined by one of the head nurses at the Community Hospital that seemed familiar to me. Technicians and resource gatherers were represented along with half a dozen men and women of various ages hailing from different districts.

So far no one had come forward to be hooked up to the machine. Technicians analyzed it and discerned that biological material was needed to power the laptop and the controls were operated directly by the brain through wires.

A little too quickly I was being strapped down and sedated. Several wires would have to be run into my skull and down my spinal cord. The last thing I remember was the familiar nurse counting down from ten and saying I wouldn’t feel a thing.

I wanted to wake up but my mind was frozen in a thick haze. Thoughts materialized and faded away before my mouth could form the words. I couldn’t feel my mouth or my fingers. I really couldn’t feel anything. The chip in my brain sparked and I became aware of what was going on around me but was unable to move, speak or even feel the chair I was sitting in.

A bright red wire was uncoiled by the technician and handed to the nurse. She squinted at the incision at the base of my skull. The wire was threaded down my spine and then soldered to the refurbished laptop. As soon as I thought it happened there was no time to stop myself. The wheels of the chair began to wobble and I hit the nurse hard knocking her backwards. I heard her cry out in pain. The chair kept rolling at full speed out of the room. It was impossible to control my thoughts under such extreme quantities of stress. The chair was taking me to the first place I thought. Before I could take it back the wheelchair hurled towards Roxy, the Foxes and mom.

Rome and dad ran to catch me but they were far behind. I sped down the deserted streets of town lights lit up, flickered and exploded as I passed. I tried to control the components with my will but my back twitched in pain. The sedatives were wearing off and I was tearing across Coment with fresh surgical wounds rubbing against the back of a shaking wheelchair.

I finally rolled to a stop a few buildings away from the Fox residence. Rome caught up to me and held onto the handles of the chair.

“Lucky, I think this was a mistake.” he said.

I looked over my shoulder at him and he tried for a comforting smile but it did not come. I could feel blood oozing from the back of my neck and pooling in the chair behind me. I wanted to get up but my legs no longer responded to my thoughts.

“I just wanted my mom.” I cried.

Rome wrapped his arms around me and I felt the laptop’s energy draining. I heard Roxy scream and run to my side but my vision failed. I was hurling at the speed of thought to every negative conclusion. Every nerve ending pricked me with the realization that I must be dying. Dying? No, just disconnecting from the machine. Just for a moment. It wouldn’t hurt. Synapses fire and then the compositor blows leaving a mind of metal and tissue soaking into the wheelchair, frontal lobe sailing towards oblivion.

Chapter 26: The Operation

I heard voices but couldn’t connect them to any particular face.

“She’s waking up.”

I opened my eyes but saw nothing but a bright circle of light. My arms and legs were strapped down but it didn’t feel like I could move them anyway. I wanted to speak but my throat was dry and hoarse.

“Where am I?”

An older woman began asking me questions.

“What color are your eyes? What is your father’s name? How did you get here?”

I couldn’t tell her any of the answers.

“Good.”

Well worn high heels limped away and a heavy metal door closed and locked. Beeping machines and a strong smell of rubbing alcohol told me I was in the hospital. It was a relief that I could hear and smell but my eyes still refused the adjust to their surroundings.

Why couldn’t I remember a thing? I felt pressure pounding against my temple and tight bandaging was wrapped around my entire midsection. Another set of footsteps came into the room.

“Lucky Church?” said the voice of a young man.

The name seemed familiar. The man came closer.

“Roxy sent me to check on you. I knew her when she was sick.”

My head was spinning in circles. A dizzy swirl of energy palpatated my cold metal heart. Electricity pulsed through my body as if I were connected to a power socket. I accessed the deepest files in my mind and brought them foward to examine. Little by little I made connections. Roxy was my best friend. She once kissed me on the lips. Her favorite color was pink.

I felt like my brain was being downloaded from some remote location. I had little control over the memories as they flashed across my now blurry vision.

First I saw the red wilted flowers in front of me then the rest of the room filled in around me. I was on a floor with no windows. I guessed it was probably the ninth if I had just come out of surgery. The man had not moved or spoke in several minutes. He was reading the electric chart posted on my bed.

“It’s me.”

My voice cracked but the doctor looked at me and smiled.

“It’s OK I’m going to get you out of here.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head.

“Roxy will explain later. I’m supposed to be on my rounds in another ward they will figure it out soon enough. We have to leave Comnet, the committee believes you are a failed experiment are are trying to pull the plug.”

My eyes were finally able to focus on his face. It was kind and handsome even though he seemed stressed and worried.

“Dr. Kuen. Thank you.”

I looked from his name tag to deep brown eyes that looked even bigger behind thick glasses. He was just Roxy’s type. He bent down to pick me up. He was careful to not bump my open wounds and set me gently in Dr. Howe’s mangled wheelchair.

“Don’t worry. I have it disabled. I think there’s some mechanical contamination in your body still but the chair won’t move with your thoughts unless we connect you again. In your condition that won’t be anytime soon.”

He unlocked the wheels and began rolling me out complaining about the no good savages that preformed the botched connection.

“Do no harm, Lucky, that is what I believed when I became a doctor. Working here, meeting Roxy and then seeing what the other doctors did to you opened my eyes. I don’t belong here. They treat humans like machines.”

He grew silent. I knew why. In many ways I was a machine now and that made it more difficult for most people to know how to respond to me.

We made it out of the hospital without bumping into a single person. Dr. Kuen took me down the outpatient ramp which was seldom used. I saw Roxy and Rome standing there. Roxy was jumping up and down and Rome was nearly in tears. He walked towards me and took the chair handles from the doctor.

“Thank you for saving her.” Rome said.

“I just brought her to you. I wish I could have done more she will be weak and in pain. Take care.”

Dr. Kuen nodded to me and winked at Roxy. She ran to him and jumped into his arms. His glasses were knocked askew as they kissed. They separated quickly and Dr. Kuen went back inside.

“We’re not supposed to do that in public but I couldn’t help it. Isn’t he great Lucky?”

I nodded. He was the only person outside my immediate circle of family and friends that acted kindly toward me. Especially now that I looked like I narrowly escaped death. In many places that might be admirable. I volunteered to become a monster in hopes it would redeem me in the eyes of my neighbors and fellow community members but it only drove the wedge further.

I dared not catch a glimpse of myself in a reflective surface. I was too afraid of what I had become. I must have been hideous judging from the reactions we were getting on the street. Relieved to be close to home I leaned back to get a look at the sky above. The nice weather mocked the illness that consumed my thoughts. I began to think that it would have been better if I had died during the procedure.

We approached home and saw dad waiting on the sidewalk. He didn’t say a word about the wheelchair or the fact that I couldn’t move my arms or legs he just threw his arms around me sobbing into my shoulder.

“I lost her. I lost your mom.”

I felt like my heart was stopping. All this time I counted on mom being around. Even though she had long slipped into a coma and hadn’t contacted me since Roxy played her final message I never felt her presence leave. Dad kept he alive for months on the run and we were going to find a way to bring her back. I felt my fingers and toes start to tingle. I wanted to jump up and run to her side. The idea came to me before I could consider its implications.

“If we connect her to the chair she might have a chance.”

I knew it to be a lie. She could never have a normal life again but now she didn’t have one at all.

“If the laptop can restart her we can at least tell her goodbye.”

“Oh, pumpkin.”

Dad was shaking his head.

“I can’t fathom watching your mother go through anymore. Let her rest in piece Lucky. Try to move on.”

I was furious. How could he? I couldn’t move on. This machine had taken everything from me and now I had a small chance at using it to get what I wanted. Why couldn’t he understand?

“She’s my mother I should have a say. She appointed me executor of her will.”

Dad stood and wiped the tears from his face.

“If that’s what you want you’ll have to do it yourself. I won’t watch.”

He walked past us and mumbled goodbye to Roxy and Rome before disappearing behind another building.

Tears stung my eyes but I refused to break down. Rome wheeled me into the apartment and Roxy hung back in the doorway to my mother’s room. Dad placed her on their bed and dressed her in her favorite white dress.

Roxy stepped back into the hall and closed the bedroom door. At least Rome understood how important this was to me. He lifted me out of the chair and placed me on the bed beside my lifeless mother. Her cheeks were still pink in fact she looked very much the same as the last time I had seen her. It was strange thinking she was finally gone. Everything my mother had been ceased to be years ago but I retained a perfect copy of her in my mind.

Rome watched the first procedure and since mom couldn’t feel pain we didn’t have to worry about anesthesia. He sanitized the sharpest kitchen utensils and made the necessary incisions and connections.

Sensations were returning to my legs and arms but I still laid helpless on my parent’s bed. I began feeling just like I did when I was young and couldn’t wake myself up from a nightmare. How I would toss on the mattress and try to throw my lifeless limbs into the air to pull me up from my warping dream world.

After Rome sewed the wounds up with a needle and red thread he sat next to me on the bed.

“Do you want me to sit you up next to me before I turn on the switch?” Rome asked.

I gazed into his eyes and mouthed thank you. He supported my sensitive back with pillows and his right arm as he flipped the switch.

Chapter 27: Disconnected

I could hear two voices arguing just outside the bedroom door and wondered how long the lock would hold. Rome faced the laptop towards me and we watched as the computer checked the functioning of all systems. Mom’s body animated itself with the new source of electricity. Her heart restarted slowly but soon was pumping blood to all the deadened nerves at her extremities. Soon her brain had enough energy to power back on. Her eyes were cloudy but finally open. The laptop made an eerie mechanical whine. The screen turned a milky shade of blue as a prompt window appeared.

Would you like to boot external memory?

Rome reached forward nearly touching the screen with his index finger but before he could click it physically I thought yes and any matter left in my mother’s mind melded into montages of memory.

Tidal waves of fragments from my mother’s life poured across the glass of the laptop screen and washed over me like a warm dream. They penetrated my eyelids and implanted themselves into my brain. Even when I had my eyes closed the scenes flowed freely. The chip embedded in the side of my head was blistering the tissue that contained it as I became her, fully able of movement and sight.

At first I thought I was standing in one of mom’s home movies. I watched grandma roll flaky pie crusts out on the kitchen counter. Flour sprinkled over the counter’s edge landing on the tile floor. The house smelled strongly of various stewed fruits. Late summer sunbeams hit the large kitchen window refracting off dozens of blue, red, purple and caramel filled mason jars. Grandma turned and smiled at me bending down to pop a small bite of cherry filling in my mouth. I tasted the tartness and savored the first real cherries I had ever had. It was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted. The sticky sweetness of pie filling lingered long after the images from mom’s childhood were over.

I never met mom’s mother, only knew her face from the many reels of footage my mother kept years after her death. Mom told me she was my age when she lost her mother but she never told me she was in the room when it happened. I couldn’t help noticing myself in a mirror in grandma’s bedroom. I stepped closer to examine the familiar but slightly off features. I was nearly identical to myself, the way I was before the surgery only as my mother I had a fuller face, less freckles and darker hair. I also felt a little taller and older as I cried through my mother’s eyes watching my grandma fall out of her chair. She crawled toward me on her hands and knees.

One of her eyes was out of focus as she called for her husband. I laid on the bedroom floor with her as she flickered in and out of consciousness. I felt her body against my shaking arms. Her brittle form no longer heaved or sighed. I felt her growing cold and stiff on the floor beside me. I held onto the old woman’s blue hand as she deteriorated before me and died.

I opened my eyes only when Rome began to violently shake me. The images kept coming but I saw his face pop into focus every once in a while.

“Lucky, Lucky.”

Rome was disconnecting the wires from my mother’s back. I made a noise but her could hear me. He was trying to override the program and stop the river of recollections.

My eyes rolled back as I rejoined my mother’s visual memoir just after her father’s death. She locked the cameras and projectors in her trunk along with her parent’s will. Slamming the door to her closet the memories lingered in darkness and half-formed shapes for a few years until I saw a younger version of my father riding on the commuter rail. He was leaning in to kiss me and then we were standing in the living room of the home I had grown up in. The furniture was new and the colors were clean and bright.

It was all confusing and changed quickly before my eyes. I wanted to be sick and stop the memories from flooding my emotions. I felt all the happiness and pain accumulating throughout the years. I felt myself being born. I was looking at me as a baby and I grew up before my eyes.

Hearing the stories that were instilled in me early in life, this time telling them to a miniature version of myself I felt connected to everyone who had heard them before me. Connections I never thought were possible were now teeming through my open mind inviting me to follow them down their unending and unimaginable paths. I contemplated releasing my ghost to the river of ageless spirits when I felt the power draining from all regions of my brain.

I thought in vain. The thoughts dwindled and circled the drain. Maybe mom’s body wasn’t strong enough, maybe I was tied to the chair and the chip in more ways than I could imagine. A few seconds later my spinal cord was eaten away by the intensity of the electric signal. The last thing I smelled was my own burnt flesh.

Mom, Rome and I vanished into nothingness. Our memories may well have never existed at all. They were now wisps of fantastic possibilities. A million scenarios could have played but we lived our own way. Every worry and every pain ceased to be and the connection was lost.

Coment was wiped off the imaginary map as the scientists at DreamLife Artificial Conscience Research Labs disconnected the fried droid and tossed it in a pile of twisted computer parts. The laboratory was dedicated to a pioneering scientist in the cyborg and robotic personality divisions of the the Technologic Institute, Dr. Bartholomew Howe.

Two young scientists prepared the next machine for uploading to the first captured human consciousness. If they could transmit the thoughts and dreams of a human they could create machines that could dream, imagine and for all intensive purposes preform modern magic.

The brain had been donated by a brilliant brain surgeon. He lost his daughter in a terrible traffic accident that also claimed his autonomy. Now he was offering his entire estate and practice to the doctor who could successfully render his daughter in electronic form. Thousands of attempts had been made but each time after a few hours the system overloads and the girl reverts back into a machine.

Failed transhuman organisms were broken wide open their wires and motherboards exposed stripped to their basic materials to be reassembled to try the experiment again. Their metal mouths seemed twisted in mischievous smiles or warped with wicked sharp protruding metal teeth that howled in agony as the workers destroyed its hardware.

“Damn! We haven’t got it yet. All the bots we’ve hooked up to the Human Reality Drive transform back into machines and die during the simulation.”

The other man dropped the metal creature into the separator to harvest the reusable parts. A terrible noise arose out of the machine as magnets and arms pulled the metal case and electric capacitors that became LUCKC-3 for a few solid months. Once the bot has reached immersion and is prepared to be disconnected from the DNA replication system the bot reverts to its mechanical form and mixes the signals and memories. The men working on the project have no idea how many worlds they create and demolish in a single day’s work.

“It’s fine Hennigan we’ve got plenty of other bots to test.”

They returned to the computer monitor and selected the DNA scan of Lucky Howe and replicated it and transfused the sequence to the robot’s programing. Another simulation began.

“What do ya think the boss is going to do with this thing if it ever works?”

“Don’t know, dress it up like his kid and parade it around town?”

Both men snorted and went on considering the contents of a robot’s dreams.

“Nah, once he finds a way to replace us with machines he’ll do it. Imagine, a kid that doesn’t cry. A kid that is super smart at everything that you can just unplug if they get a little out of hand.”

Epilogue: On the nature of science and art of dreams

Technodes and Geodes each fulfill a separate piece of the puzzle and possess skills the machines need to perpetuate their programs. The whole system is run by computer software installed during the infancy of technology. Soon, individual and specialized immortality drives made machines strive to constantly enhance and outperform their makers wildest dreams. Since the law of Robotix states that “the created machine and creation as a community must not overcome the masters.” Computers logically eliminated undesirables producing two distinct species of humans, one for data entry and machine repair and another who retained natural human instincts: hunting, gathering, fire-building, and communion with animals and nature. These human qualities were preserved so far as to exploit the workers and the environment. Undesirables in both societies (those who figure it out, mentally retarded, handicapped, ill) are quarantined.

For the Technodes this is a hospital that is seeming very difficult to check out of and for the Geodes the outcasts are excluded from the main encampment and forced to walk in the wasteland where nuclear bombs were said to have gone off. Nodes are connection points, young Luck and banished Roman served as nodes between the Technodes and Geodes. The teens found each other through technological devices in many simulations but ultimately fail to connect their societies (and the metal and tissue minds) through knowledge and experimentation.

Those who control the Districts and the Woods don’t expect problems from two teenagers but LUCK-C3 and ROMAF12 aren’t normal teenagers. They’ve experienced the harshness their society can unleash. Luck’s mother was sent away to Hospital and Roman has been banished for tampering with a communication tablet but they find a way to meet, visit Luck’s mother, find out who is separating and controlling the human sects and try to convince their community members to listen and reconnect the societies.

This program served as a kind of computer game for the human consciousness to grow accustom to. While the mechanical body was fitted with the attachments that made it appear more human the metal mind was filled with human tissue, blood and pumped with electricity. Many called Dr. Howe’s methods cruel and his goal insane. Even with all the advances in medical science it was still impossible to reanimate the dead.

Bartholomew Howe really did come of age in the 1940s. He came from a large family and his mother and father really were a doctor and a nurse. Not only was his family life plagued with turmoil considering he lost six of his brothers in WWII and two in infancy from infectious diseases. He became a doctor himself because he wanted to help other families in his community. He also couldn’t bare to watch his mother bury another one of her boys.

Soon Bartholomew had a family of his own. He had a beautiful wife who was a well known actress at the time. Together they produced public health and informational films that marveled at the miracles of modern science, medicine and machines. The 1950s were prosperous for the couple and before long they were welcoming their first child into the world.

Dr. Howe spoke at length about the developments on the war against illness and the optimization of humanity through technological means. If he had been brilliant before the birth of his daughter he would be considered mad after her death seventeen years later.

The middle aged doctor might have been more handsome with thicker, darker hair. Dr. Howe looked directly into the camera and mesmerized his viewers with his cool blue eyes late into his life. His ghost drive still ran the company day to day. No one knew for sure he was alive except for the one time a year he made a public appearance.

Every New Year’s celebration ended with the good doctor addressing the townspeople with his ritual speech. The doctor was an old man by now and had frequently changed and updated his sign-off throughout the years. He usually wore the same old black suit and sipped a bit of champagne when the countdown reached one.

“This is Dr. Howe wishing you the future you desire, the future you deserve, the future we are imagining together.”

He remained at the top of his field until his daughter died in a terrible car crash when she turned seventeen. The doctor had recently been working on human robot interfacing and decided to use his Lucille’s likeness, DNA and brain material to construct the first humanity drive. The device stored every measurable aspect of Dr. Howe’s long lost daughter. Throughout the years his patience wore thin, much like his greying hair.

The most brilliant doctor of his time was reduced to a motionless mass in his power wheel chair. He had the capabilities to turn any human into a machine with the use of prosthetics, organ replacements and continually advancing procedures by the day. Through the miracles of modern science Dr. Howe lived well into his one hundreds refusing to fully embrace a life void of family or loved ones yet incapable of giving into the unknown.

Thousands of brilliant scientists young and old alike tried to solve Dr. Howe’s problem and bring his daughter back if just for a few moments to give him peace. Every time the essence of Lucille Howe is contained within one mobile, self-directing robotic unit the hardware malfunctions and the program is destroyed from the inside out.

Many still try to this day to upload the young woman into cold machines of wire and metal. The only problem is that it is quite impossible to capture every aspect of a living creature. Living things grow and change by their very nature and machines are not very good at adapting. Machines are not very good at handling the overload of senses involved with being a human.

It is easy for a computer to play chess or even converse with one another, give you directions or remember your appointments but when you ask a computer to preform complex tasks: eating a meal and picking out individual tastes, painting a unique piece of art and being completely ashamed of it, creating biological life from the interaction and contact of another human.

Sure, computers can make music, they can do more and more each day. Just don’t forget who made those computers and why we wanted to mechanize our society to maximize free time in the first place. We are free to explore the very confines of the universe, we can speak directly to any person in the entire world using the internet and we have instant access to information in libraries and online, enough to educate ourselves and propel ourselves into the future without forgetting the valuable knowledge of the past.

Why, look at you reading this story right now. You might come from a traditional place and read this story from a literal book produced of paper and ink. Maybe you are from a faraway place or planet accessing these words and decoding them into a language you can understand. No matter how you come upon the curiosities contained in this bedtime story be warned…

Although little Lucille Howe was lost in a clouded world of science, speculation and possibilities far beyond our modern limitations there is no reason to assume that her dilemma might not be seen in the future. How are we to know that situations such as this haven’t already happened several times over on Earth or on a myriad of distant worlds littered throughout our universe?

Anything that’s real starts with make believe. Decades ago books, radio and television were the main forms of communication and now the metamorphosis of science and technology excels daily. The real world was not so different from Coment. That place can exist anywhere people gather to find connections. Lucky and Rome came together to overcome many obstacles and they’ve done it thousands of times. Slight variations of the story are played out over and over. Each time the ending is changed or the players are called by strange names.

It is not for us to say that every simulation isn’t real. What are our own individual lives but simulations of our spirits in decaying machines? Don’t forget the journey and woes of Roxy, Rome and most especially Lucky, they are just as real within these pages, their dreams are just as convincing as the ones you dream each night.

When I was young I saw my world through a narrow lens. I directed the events in my life’s film and saw the first computers become socially acceptable and eventually, necessary. Never close your mind to a great idea, never get too scared of nightmares that you forget to dream.

When you put down this book or any other in whatever form it may take just remember, for years and years as far back as anyone can remember, parents have stood over their young after indulging their imaginations in scenes of fancy and fiction and whispered, “Anything that’s real, starts with a dream!”

Afterword (A brief history of the evolution and cultivation of my first novel)
Though my novel is in the early stages of editing I want you all to know how accomplished I feel. If you are reading this then you are either on one of my multiple webblogs which I dedicated space for my novel to. If you are unfamiliar with National Novel Writing Month which occurs annually in November then I will tout this story as a successful completion of that contest. It is more of a contest with yourself on staying on top of your story and writing until your fingers nearly fall off. This novel or something resembling it has been plaguing my mind for quite some time. It is the combination of all the great books I’ve read, every perception I’ve experienced with a healthy dose of social criticism. Not much beyond that has been decided. The story will include historical plots and contemporary themes. I heard of NANOWRIMO when I was still in college but never seemed to have the time to participate. It has been a rewarding and informative experience and one I hope you have for yourself in the years to come.

I was always fascinated with the news and the events that happened around me. I interpreted my surroundings much like a movie director. Some of my earliest memories of consciousness were me questioning the monologue that was my inner thoughts. As we grow sometimes those monologues grow dusty and distant from us. Until recently I had never seen a full episode of The Wonder Years and I was struck by its ability to hold me in with the plot and characters. I am a photographer and amateur artist but my path always seemed set on writing. I would like anyone who reads this to know that no matter what happens, what does or does not become of this particular story the fact that I was able to spit it out, somewhat eloquently proves that I have what it takes to finish a lengthy work of fiction. Thank you from the bottom of my WordPad document and the happy trigger finger I developed in the hashing out of this draft. The fun begins next, seeing what stays and what goes, if the book sticks like glue or just to the bottom of a pile of other unpublishables. We’ll see, here’s to the future.

About the Author

BLASTEDGOAT hails from Iowa and has been calling herself that since about age thirteen. Get to know her on her many platforms (multiple personalities often require a wee bit of space). Now while it isn’t her prerogative to piss people off or get landed on the banned book trolly she does speak her mind and use themes and topics that may not be appropriate for everyone. If you read “Partially Before We Died” and liked it you might also like…

blastedgoat https://blastedgoat.wordpress.com/
monochrome jade thoughts dream wrathfully https://monochromejadethoughtsdreamwrathfully.wordpress.com/
photographic novel https://photographicnovel.wordpress.com/

My family calls me Mandy because that is my real birth name. I am a reader who long waits for that last mystery to be revealed… that is once I finally remember how to wake up from this terribly strange, sometimes frightening, and yet at other times, captivating dream. I was always drawn to books that most people considered to be beyond my level. Screw that, read what you want and read a ton of it! If you read me I will be grateful and promise to give you extras with any story or project I release. Thanks so much for taking the time to learn about the lady behind the weird language.

Quotes

“The most precious & entertaining inmates of the soul are memory & imagination.”
–Tillie Wise diary, 1863-1875

“All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration–that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death. Life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.”
–Bill Hicks

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” — T. E. Lawrence

After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” –J.K. Rowling (Albus Dumbledore)

Lost and alone, you stand there, but where is our world? I can’t find you so lost in mine, in and out of consciousness, barely aware, mind confined, to the place hide in.

So scared you’re not here. Have we have grown apart and lost it? I hunger for the love we had, I want you in my bed, I want to know us again.

Tell, tell you what’s been on my muddled mind. Blue cues revolving like a spider’s eyes at a fly spiraling downward to suicide. Twisting insides, maggoty, golden, curling clues… fake little diamond rings dangling from warty fingers.

I’ve lost a sapphire slipper so I’m waiting for a frog to kiss my cheek, a dark cat to cross my path. No raven watches me undress my sorrows. No light sees the potion, nay poison or knows its full name. No words can incant my soul like his, barely whispered in the night. Wrapped in his silken threads I do not wish to struggle free.

Silly thoughts of sometime last January:
We proclaimed our willingness to leave
our lovers in padded karaoke kissing booths–
Then, shared more than a glass or two
behind frosted windows.

I still see him whenever I please,
but his pillow hair is made of dreams.

I felt for my backpack. Inside I found my wallet with stiff fingers.

Inside: my Ohio state driver’s license, credit cards. It is possible no one will ever find me. I frowned at the photo of myself. No one will find you, April DuWitt, 5’4” eyes BRO.

Silence is maddening. I began looking at the things I kept behind my identification. These things, if it were possible, seemed to say more about me than my government issued ID card.

A movie stub and Walden’s member card. A phone number jotted down on a piece of ripped notebook paper with no name. Twenty eight dollars…

My heart sank. A group picture from my Junior Prom. I looked at all of the familiar faces; familiar but strange. Everyone seemed young, even though the photo was from only three years ago. I look at face after face, remembering, laughing, crying, regretting every single moment I carried with me.

Now I was sinking, almost comfortably, into numbness and became unable to move.

Gazing upward I stare at the diamonds of my tomb, treasures innumerable shimmering magically above. I hold remnants of an expired life, my life, in frostbitten hands. My breathing is slow, drawing in each empty, cold taste.

I know no one will find me. I relive happier, warmer days as ice crystals overcome me. Frost offers one last kiss. My lips and every lie they ever told are silently and eternally preserved in this case, forever.

What was that I wished on the star for?
I wanted you to call me back
to tell me what you wanted.

I hope this doesn’t shut off,
that I don’t blink out of existence, for you.

I’ve been waiting since our last
Indian Summer. Held up like a prisoner
pushing myself more morphine.

Dulling the pain with casual smiles
and imaginary stabs in her back.

Hear a few scratches outside the door?
Wonder for a moment if there will be more…

It’s sweet to think of a couple
kissing on a sidewalk
eating to contentment
sliding down their spirits…

Until you consider:
that was my wish
and those aren’t my eyes
staring back at you.

I was playing around with a few lines I found in an otherwise blank document. I was taking notes on a conversation I had with a poet friend of mine named David. All I typed was “poets listen to long playing records of words” and “happiness kills creativity.” Enjoy and look for some edits more than likely… I must like you all, you are seeing my first draft!

“Happiness kills creativity,” he claimed.
I never got the point of using said
when one wishes to be more specific,
be more specific.

Don’t get long-winded,
forgetting your point
in the first place.
Poets listen to long playing records
filled solely with words,
no notes, except
the long pauses.

Slithering s’s complement
that constant cadence
of c’s and k’s.
To say nothing of the nuance
of n’s softening her hard consonants.

She never said a word after that.
When you want to be more specific,
be more specific

She doesn’t utter a word,
but they flow from her clicking fingers, tonight.

based on a conversation quite a long time ago with DRC.

Once that someone heard it
it belonged to him.
She could not take it back
or force it down her throat again…

REPOST from: blastedgoat

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(I also found the code I used to use to do this nifty little number, not such a biggie here on WordPress but it used to take forever to link all your pages together!)

It seems as though appearances
are constantly changing,
a million copies of his face.

Some of these strangers
resemble neighborhood boys
playing with bright plastic toys.

When I rested my head on your shoulder
on the train I wished you were mine again.
Even if you were disguised behind
a handsome strangers eyes,
the softness of your shirt gave rise
to the silentest of cries.

I could not believe that this dream
was sure to leave. I look for you night
after night until I get your face just right.
It’s comforting, there is no ring.

Sometimes, these strangers speak what you cannot.
Sometimes I think: I think, you like him, I think he likes you.
Thanks, smiling foreign dude!

A butterscotch shot, you’ll feel it in your sleep
with no hint lingering on your waking kiss.

I roll out of bed and try to remember
if I was dreaming of now or September,
under oak and apple trees
while we run from cops, skin our knees.

If this were the last moment of my life,
I would be sad. Accepting that this moment,
aside from all the noise of machines in the distance and
the strange fellow with the grey hooded sweatshirt
that just walked by is perfect:

I am sitting in the shade. I hear the spinning spokes
of a ten speed bike as I want for the clock to strike
the afternoon with four loud booms.

Chimes that string the leaves together
only so they can grow weak and detach…

I am sitting in the shade I hear the spinning spokes
of a ten speed bike as I want for the clock to strike
the afternoon with four loud booms.

Chimes that string the leaves together
only so they can grow weak and detach.

Can’t say right when it began, only I can…

The date is meaningless, the occasion trivial

like the way it gets hot in a parked car.

The way he won’t answer even when I somehow know the answer.

Please pick me up, Indian Summer, way too hot for October!

Imagine haunted houses sweltering in this early autumn heat.

Can’t wait for things to cool down, burn my own tongue sometimes…

Get so anxious, wonder how close I am to the edge.

Maybe this is out of line. Maybe it’s all your fault.

Insides burned like an exploding sun,
a boy’s haircut on a nine year old girl!
Curls chopped to the ears… Please,
turn away to laugh at that last line.
Some memories fade much faster than scars
from canning on our old dining room table.

Separate pulpy lives from as seen on TV.

Mimic rock bands, don’t tell mom and dad

we stay up late, rot our teeth.

Chalkboards containing unfamiliar names, dates, words…
I’m failing to understand the dream,
begin noticing people from reality.

A missing tooth in a red plastic treasure chest.
I must put these ideas and more to rest.

Amusement parks complete with Ferris wheels, and
dizzy rides spring up allowing me a place to hide.

We drive on highways or down gravel roads,
across giant bridges but every time we swerve.

I fly through windshields. I wake, raking air
into breaking lungs.

Impossible details,
imprints of my sleeping life
interpreted in waking life…

It goes on like that until I click
the light pulling on a grimy white string
ending up in various versions of my bedroom
with all the lost antique furniture.

I get so lost. Confused. Then my mind turns to you.
Blank. Smiling in a sleepy state, demons set to rest
until I wake.

Wish I could see you,
do you think more of me?

Just wait, think and wait.
Patience, I will sit and wait.

Every time I think it’s over
I come over and end up all over…

Laughing, touching, all that’s required is here,
in your face, smiling and unafraid.

Maybe this time.
Maybe this time.
Maybe this time.

Maybe this time

I’m ready this time…

All we are, moments tangled in time,

I only think of you.

Can’t get us off my mind,
how strange…