Dissolution

Chapter 11 - The Hall of Dead Things

The main screens on every building faded back into a run of Ads, but nobody was watching anymore. The crowd seethed like a wave. Someone was shouting excitedly into their UConn. A man tried to squeeze through a gap and everyone pushed back. I stood immobilized amidst the chaos, staring at the screen that had held my face. The world had gone translucent. I didn't feel dangerous, I felt unreal.

A sudden scream jarred me from my stupor. I looked up. A girl with long hair—the same shade of brown as the hair now dissolving in the river—had backed up against a window. A man was holding her, yelling as she struggled. Then a whole group converged on them both and I watched in horror as they started to fight. Please report immediately to ANRON Life Limited for a two thousand credit bonus. I took a shaky breath and backed away slowly from the central Promenade and its seething insanity, trying to squash down the urge to bolt. Nobody watched me go. I didn't look like myself anymore. It was like I was invisible, reduced to an imaginary number, a ghost.

The girl screamed again. Glass shattered. I swallowed back tears and kept walking. I didn't know who I hated more at that moment: the announcer or the people trying to rip her apart. The people who would rip me apart if they found me. I couldn't help her now. I just hoped that she and I would both come out of this alive.

Alive. Yes. I had to stay alive, and I had to know what I was. The emergency announcement echoed in my skull. Her full serial number is XKC2501PT1211. Years of memory tests made it simple for me to run it over and over, to turn it around and examine it. It felt like stumbling across a long forgotten sock. I knew XKC2501 was my citizen code and product number and that PT12 was my grade of license. And since I'd been born into ANRON, 11 was the number I'd been decanted in.

XKC2501PT1211. I could have looked up the record for 2501PT12 licenses in an instant if I could use my UConn. But that wasn't an option. So where else would they keep it? It wasn't as if I could just saunter back into my house or into ANRON Tower to ask for a copy . . .

It hit me about the same time that a fresh rush of nausea did. It would be in the Library. It had to be.

And so would Jake.

The University wasn't that far from the Promenade. But it was further away than ANRON Tower, which I was constantly aware of, and even MERCE. It was smaller than either of them, just a complex of worn buildings and weathered stone huddling together for shelter. Jake had told me it was old. Much older than the rest of the city. I believed him.

Jake. I closed my eyes briefly and took a breath. I wasn't going to try and find him. The temptation was so strong it was almost agonizing, an insistent hammering on my ribs, but I didn't want to drag him into this. And if I was honest with myself, there was another reason too. A reason that made me feel sick even just thinking about it. Jake was studying to be a lawyer with Gaudron & Mason. He would have seen the emergency transmission—everyone would have. Criminal. He might have even recognized what my serial number meant. And he was smart. He'd always been smart. He would put two and two together and then he'd realize that he was only a month away from swearing himself to the law of Unilox, the same law that allowed ANRON to revoke my license and make my continued existence illegal. And on top of all that, my assets were frozen. I had nothing left to offer him. Nothing but me.

I didn't think he'd sell me out, but I was afraid.

With that terrible knowledge in me, I walked up to the stairs of the University's main building. It was a squat thing, shaped like a box, solid and tired. I assumed that the Library would be somewhere inside. I honestly had no idea. I'd never needed to visit the Library. I'd never even been quite sure why one still existed when we all carried around the world's knowledge in our arms.