* * *
Aries closes the book, holds it in her hands for a while longer. She feels the worn leather cover under her fingers, traces the remnants of the now undecipherable title. The outline of three feathers in its center is almost completely gone, so are the two eyes of the Lioness above it. Only slight indentations are left. But when Aries closes her eyes she can still see them. Sometimes she thinks she can almost feel her presence through the pages. But the reason for that might be a logical one: She had read the book close to a dozen times. Not that she is allowed to do that. If she were to be caught with it, there would be rather serious repercussions for her. The L.O.C.—the ‘Law of the Corporation’—demands house arrest and additional work hours for first-time offenders. But she isn't a first-time offender. She isn't even a second-time offender. For her it would be the third time. She would be in prison for up to a month.
For this kind of crime
children under 16 years of age are punished more drastically than adults. Aries
could never figure out the logic behind this but she assumed it was because
children were still thought to be more open to ideas that were out of the
ordinary and didn't fit into the ‘educational schedule’ of the Corporation. And
to think that this book was considered part of the history of her people and
was taught in what had been called ‘schools’ for the first 800 years after her
civilization arose from the ashes when the beacon was activated on the other
side of a worm hole, far across the space time continuum.
Her wrist watch begins
to flash and vibrate slightly. 90 seconds. A touch on the screen of the watch
changes the walls of her room from an image of a forest to a regular room with
a large window showing the skyline of what looks like the high rises of a city
in the distance.
83 seconds. In truth
there are no windows in her room. She crouches down to the ground, moves her
futon over what, right now, still looks like the forest floor. In one of the
corners she lifts up a thin plate that covers a larger, rectangular opening.
She crawls inside. She had wondered in the past, like she does now, how long
she would still fit in there. She is slim for a fifteen-year-old but knows that
one day the ducts will not allow her to roam the building any longer. 60
seconds. The high resolution display of her watch begins to pulsate in one
second increments. About eight feet into the air duct she turns on her back
looking up. The secondary air duct, perpendicular to this one, disappears into
its self reflecting mirror image far up in the building.
Two hundred and twenty
two stories high. Nearly sixty thousand souls. Aries lives in the first tier,
the inner core of the cylindrically shaped building. Too warm in the summer and
freezing cold in the winter. The sixth tier has natural light coming through small
openings in the outer shell. No normal person can afford it. Her parents
couldn’t. They lived in the fifth tier for five years. Aries often feels that
natural light will always be out of reach for her. When her parents died two
years ago—four days before her 12th birthday—she became a ‘Ward of
the State’. Of course this is an ancient expression long since abandoned as
antiquated. There are no more states. For over 200 years now, this city, this
country and the world she lives in, has been owned, managed, and run, by corporations.
36 seconds. She pries
open a panel in the secondary air duct. Behind it sits the Raytheon, a digital
conductor generating the power to sterilize the air duct every so often. It kills bacteria and any viruses that are in the air supply in four
seconds. As a side effect it kills any life form that is still in the duct
system when the random generator activates the conductor. It has been rumored
that the primary function of the air duct sterilizers is to prevent the
inhabitants of the 2900 foot high building from escaping to the outside world.
But those are rumors and as such open to interpretation.
28 seconds. She pushes
the book behind the conductor, closes the panel. After she had lived in tier
one for nine months she had accomplished two things: first, she hacked into the
main frame computer of her complex and, from the room cameras that records
everyone’s life 24/7 (for security purposes, of course) she had found a way to
create a loop each day for exactly one hour. For one hour per day she does not
have to be in her room or in any of the parts of the building that are under constant surveillance. She can roam the air ducts. Secondly,
she figured out how to calculate the intervals between the cleanings of the
ducts and manage to be a few minutes ahead of it. Of course there is no guarantee.
Her calculations are 99.7% accurate. The other 0.3% is a risk she is willing to
take. In her estimation, there are six hours and 32 minutes to the next
‘cleaning’. But the video loop will hold only for 18 more seconds. She turns on
her stomach slides backwards pushing off with her hands. The green screen of
her watch pulsates in the semi darkness of the duct. Her feet reach the
opening. Seven seconds. Her knees come out. She lifts up her stomach to not get
caught on her belt lock.
Three seconds. Her head
is out. She closes the panel, pushes the futon back into the corner and slumps
down on it. Zero seconds. Her wrist watch goes dark. She is ‘live’. She grabs
her pad. There is still homework to do. “The Moral Code” being one of the
subjects. Even though she calls it “The Immoral Code” as it follows from the
basic premise that there cannot be privacy (again for security purposes) and
there cannot be choice when it comes to education, food, clothing, and social
contacts. Those are things from the past, a past that approaches its 200th
year anniversary. That was the time when ‘freedom for all’ had lost its final
battle with ‘power to a few’.
She had found ‘The Three
Feathers’ in one of the black markets that began to establish themselves after
the book ban about 175 years ago. In order to get it she needed to trade two
AI/RSC-13 chips. They weren’t just any chips. They were Artificial
Intelligence/Retina Scanner chips. Built into a small case of, let’s say, a
wrist watch, you could reach places in the building normal people would never
be able to go to. With a device that has the AI/RSC-13 chip in it, you could even
reach the outer most tier. To be caught with the chips would mean death
penalty. But she never actually was in possession of them. They were hidden
away in one of the air ducts and she just provided the location to the book
dealer in exchange for it.
Since she had read the
book for the first time, Aries had felt something that she had never allowed
herself to feel in the past. Since her parents’ death, she was on manage mode.
‘Do not show any weakness whatsoever’. The AI computer analyses each frame of
video surveillance and decides what steps need to be taken. Weakness will not
be tolerated. Especially in kids. Strength and pride are two of the pillars of
the C.E.S., short for Corporate Education System. She gives them what they want.
She never, ever, ever shows them her
weakness. For 23 hours a day she is strong for them. But for one hour per day
she allows herself to feel. And sometimes—mostly after reading—she cries. She
cries for her mother and her father and she cries for her freedom and she cries
for all the other children with her that are Wards of the State and that landed
on the outskirts of a society that had gone too far in the wrong direction. She
knows something needs to change. She can feel it in every fiber of her being.
How can the human spirit
be captured? How can it be diminished almost to extinction? How can it be made
so small and almost insignificant that the thought of fighting for it is
nothing but an idea and easily dismissed as foolish? She had asked herself
these questions many times over. She knows the answer. She knows that whoever,
whatever stands behind the Corporations has perfected it and has made it their
goal, pursuing it with any means necessary: To break the human spirit. To hold
it prisoner. And eventually to extinguish it completely. And suddenly she knows
she needs to do something about it.
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