In a futuristic society where people are differentiated and valued based on the purity of their genes, can a person define for themselves who they really are? Or does The Gene Test provide the answer for them?
Depression... Addiction... Criminality...
I just walk. And think. I have a lot to think about, and a far way to walk.
So much has happened in the span of one day, and I'm feeling so weary, but I continue to walk. I need to walk. I need to sort all these things out in my head.
First: The girl.
She had long dark hair, and big blue-grey eyes.
I had wandered off from the group again to explore. I knew I'd get told off by the facilitator again when I got back, but I couldn't bring myself to care. I didn't feel like participating in their Wonderful Race or whatever it was called. We were in an area with beautiful flora that you don't get to see in the city, and I wanted to explore all of it.
I heard there was a school somewhere near the chalet venue. Those students must be so lucky to go to school in such a beautiful area, without all the air pollution, loud traffic and people suffocating them all the time.
I stumbled upon one student, taking a leisurely walk through the hiking trail on the way to her school. I watched her from afar, as she stopped to admire the flowers and looked at the birds flying overhead. She looked so carefree, and happy, and... familiar.
I walked closer to take a better look. She had dark hair like mine, and those light eyes were big and clear. Why were those eyes so familiar, yet distant like an old dream? Maybe I'd seen her before at one of those dumb social events I'm forced to attend on a regular basis. Although, if she lived near here, in a more rural area away from the city, I doubted it. Most of my father's relations are in the urban sectors. But I really felt like I'd seen her before, a long time ago. I knew I'd at least seen those eyes.
She looked a few years younger than me, and was wearing her school uniform. Upon closer inspection, I noticed something around her neck, resting on her collarbone. A necklace. As she moved, the pendant caught the sunlight and glimmered. It was a phoenix pendant. But not just any phoenix pendant, it was an intricately-carved silver phoenix with jewels encrusted along its wings in the colors of fire. That same pendant. The exact one. I'm sure of it. I'd memorized every detail of it as my fingers traced over its surface while my mother sang me lullabies. It's the necklace my mother used to wear, one-of-a-kind.
It's the same phoenix as the glass figurine she gave me. I still remember her words so vividly as she placed it into my hands: "It's a phoenix. No matter how much you try to tear it down and extinguish it, it always rises again." And I remember so vividly how my father shattered it to pieces during one of our past altercations.
It's the same phoenix that I had inked to the left side of my body, because that phoenix wouldn't disappear until I did. My father couldn't kill that phoenix until he'd ripped me open and left me bleeding out on the floor.
And now that phoenix was hanging from this girl's neck.
I looked on with shock.
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