Falling Cities

V-e-r-i-s

You are so beautiful Veris.
You are so talented Veris.
Please Veris! Please! You can't let them take me away from you, I'm here to protect you!

You need to do better Veris, try harder! You are failing me.
You are ugly Veris, they have shaved off your hair! Why are you letting them do this!?
Why Veris! I'LL NOT STOP VERIS! NOT UNTIL YOU LAY DEAD IN THE GARBAGE PILE WAITING TO BE INCINERATED!!!

"Look out my dears!"
Lucinda ushers us (well, grabs us by our collars and yanks us around a corner before I hear about seventeen rounds go off.)
Luckily I find myself unscathed. Lucinda smiles.
"Bulletproof. Do you like them?"
"What?" The strange boy asks, finally finding his voice, although it sounds strange.
"Your coats, bulletproof, at least from the pistols we carry." She begins to run agian, as we start to follow she adds, "I can't promise safety from machine guns, rifle rounds or AK-47's"
"And?" The boy asks.
"And.. watch your head and your legs."
He speeds his labored jog to a sprint, and undoubtedly I follow.
"Hurry!" Lucinda yells.
"Where are we going?!" I demand, although it sounds more like hffh hffha.
"Someplace without bullets!"
That's. Wait.
"Not outside?"
We skid to a stop as Lucinda begins to unlock a door.
"Damit! What key is it!"
"What's a key?" I ask frantically.
"It's an old-fashioned way of opening a locked door. I decided locking the dome this way would keep us safe from hackers and such."
"They're coming!"
Barks and footfalls echo throughout the long white hallway. The blank faces of the controlled are glaring at us. Intent not to capture, but to kill.
"Foster!" Lucinda yells. "Come with me!" She hands him a pistol.
"What's this for?" He asks, voice wary and wavering.
"Distraction, they're suits aren't exactly bulletproof."
"But what about the door?" I inquire. "We still need to escape!"
She throws me the wad of keys.
"If anything happens, remember; 228846, got it?"
228846.
"I think so..."
"Just scream when its open!"
"But i-" don't know how.
"Go!" Her and Foster sprint back, toward the danger, the guns, the death.
Here I am. Trying to open a damn door!
I shove in the keys, there's about thirty.
Please!
Most are gold, but some are silver.
But one is bronze.
I grab it and shove it inside the slit.
"Come on!"
Upside down...
I flick it around and hear a staisfying click as the mechanisms, however ancient they are, work their magic. I push the door open. Finally, I take a deep breath and at the top of my lungs I scream,
"LUCINDA!'
They return, Foster limps and crimson stains Lucinda's hand.
"Are you alright?" I ask them both.
They stare.
"Let's go! NOW!"
We rush out the door and I am overwhelmed by the sunlight. It dances through the white clouds like a ballerina on her finale. I've never seen such a sky.
Lucinda collapses, panting.
"Hurry!" I call.
"No... We are... Safe."
In that case... I let myself dip not-so-gracefully into the grass.
Grass. It's soft and warm and prickly. A soft yet particularly sharp bedding.
Foster is standing, staring upward.
"Wonderful isn't it? I actually haven't seen it in a few months." Lucinda says.
"It's - I've never." He replies, almost sounding lost.
"Your bleeding." Take my advice. Don't ever say that to anyone. Maybe state the fact a little more subtly, try this, "you... Might, be. You know! Bleeding a tiny bit."
But that's not what I said and I couldn't take it back.
Foster looks down at his ankle, caked in crimson and nods his head.
"What happened to bulletproof?"
"It grazed you."
"Grazed?"
"It... Scratched you."
She sighs and tears off the pocket of her jacket, then begin tying it around his ankle.
"I can still run?"
"I sure hope so, otherwise you'll be a metal pincushion."
I look up. "What's a pincushion?"
She laughs.
"I'm beginning to rethink my entire outlook on the future. No keys, no pincushions and probably no blue-"
She looks up.
"Skies."
There's a long silence.
Foster slowly settles into his back, then closes his eyes. I can't tell if he's fainted or just exhausted.. or both.
"You. I thought our governor was born inside TIB center."
"I was born in Nashville."
"What's-?"
"It's a very musical place."
Music. Like poetry? Or music, like, with voices?
"Music? Writing?"
"No. Notes, beats, and all that."
"Violin?" Foster croaks.
Lucinda stares at him for a moment, then at me. Her eyes are still grey, although out here in the sunshine they look almost.. silver.
"How'd you know about those?"
No answer.
"Foster?" I ask.
"I know about them, I've seen them."
"Where?"
"No idea."
"This makes no sense." Lucinda stands and begins to pace in the grass.
"You where born in our center right? You both?" We sit up and nod.
"Maybe.. maybe you know because it's programmed. Has TIB showed you? No, couldn't be." She gasps.
"I got it!"
"Yes?"
"You know because without the chips.. you have memories agian."
"Whose?"
"The human ones. The ones we put inside everyone, behind all millisecond happenings, behind the insignificant long-term and the eye-socket radio pickups."
"What the HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!"
Foster clamps a hand over his mouth.
"What did I just say?"
Lucinda giggles.
"See? Human!"
"But what does it mean Lucinda?"
"In case something went wrong with the chips, we had a backup plan. We inserted the smallest amount of human memory inside everyone at TIB. It was our failsafe, our brainchild and my masterpiece, even one greater then TIB herself.
It was in case we needed to broadcast these memories, in case of an uprising, a disease.. anything.
The memories of being a person, not a human, not a piece of information."
I thought about it for a long time. Long ago I realized that I was just a combination of ones and zeros, now I was free.
If you don't control your mind, someone else will.