Writers Bloc Journal 35: Dystopia x Utopia

dystopia x utopia

Editor's Note,

For this issue I wanted to do something different. As writers, it's easy for us to write the personal, to take our internal lives and craft them into something beautiful. However, for this issue I wanted us to look outside of ourselves, to seek inspiration from the world around us, from reality and fiction. I wanted us to stretch our imaginations and see what we could come up with.

I must apologize for taking so long to finish this. I'm a perfectionist, and I got ahead of myself because I wanted this issue to be as good as it could be. Also, I was overwhelmed with the demands of school, and couldn't finish it in time. But none of that matters, because it's ready, and it's here.

I want to thank everyone who submitted for this. I was impressed by our work and your imagination. I want to thank Matt, who led the workshop session with me, and submitted two great poems. I also want to thank the other members of committee for not freaking out when I told them the journal would be delayed.

I'm happy with what we've created, and I present it to the world. Thank you.

Kene

Contents

The Simulation

...perfect world...

Grace Davies

Yousra Hassan

Eden Evie Wright

sparkles/splinters

The Paradoxical Cube

Dawn

Over Dinner

The Timeless Sin

Sam Hadley

Natalia Podolec

Rani Jadfa

Lana Donovan

Radha Kandola

Guilt is what air freshener can't get rid of

Marta Console Camprini

Auto

Two Poems

Lucy Corrigan

Matt Sowerby

The Simulation Grace Davies

This is it: the world ending. It started slowly, always slowly, people, animals, buildings going missing. Then streets, towns, cities, dissolving into a darkness that no one could see. But I see it now. I believe I am the last one left, floating, fighting, on the last slab of Earth that hasn’t been taken by the simulation.

It was all a simulation, by the way: Earth. Deja vu and optical illusions make more sense, but the beauty of it all is now heartbreaking. I fled civilisation a while ago, but I cannot recall the time. Days can pass like a shooting star as the Sun streaks across the sky, burning the heavens only for a few seconds. Sometimes the hovering, lingering, burning ball of gas makes me pray that the darkness would come sooner.

I’m in the mountains now; streams, swathes of grass, snowy caps and craggy alcoves stretching out around me like points on a compass. The huge, black peaks of the mountains carve the skyline and are occasionally humbled with a dusting of artificial snow. They look like piles of ashes, designed by a god with a lazy finger like a child in a sandpit. Water trickles down from the peaks, tumbling and accumulating, trembling and bounding down the side of the mountain. It falls catastrophically from a jut of rock into a river, which then worms its way through the feet of the trees. The forest itself swarms the base of the mountain, standing like a crowd in veneration, dispersing as the inclines become steeper. The green of the forest bleeds into a field, the river pooling into a small lake in a clearing between the trees and the tall grass.

It is Arcadian, undisturbed and insurmountably beautiful, like something from a painting or a photograph. And it is. A digital creation from the powers that be which is slowly being stripped away, like the cities. Slivers of the mountain fall away, leaving cross sections that are as easy to view as artwork: I can see the fissures and cave systems, slabs of rock with an illusion of history squeezed between the layers. The world is glitching and throbbing, leaving gaping wounds in the earth as trees are being plucked from their beds and the waterfall flows into nothingness. Everything broken off by the growing void, daring to fall, but never having the faith.

I feel strangely powerful in a world that is dissolving and weaking, yet I am still alive.

Today, the sun is setting slowly. In the field, it is calmer, solid. A trope of a quixotic pasture with the setting sun dipping the tips of grass in golden sunlight, like paintbrushes that have dashed the sky in strokes of amber and hues of peach. The sunset burns the field in its fiery light; the grass itself rippling haphazardly as breaths of wind suddenly die in the air, its programming cut short.

The sky begins to darken eventually as the sun is sucked into the horizon. A cool breeze slips past me, the grass nudging my back as a long breath of wind floats across the field. In the nothingness and nowhere behind me, the mountains are gone. The trees devolve into saplings before collapsing in on themselves. The water, however, is growing. It floods the nothingness, a shallow, constant pool trickling towards me. Another breeze inhales, tugging the grass towards me, and when it exhales, it crashes as a wave, the rolling fields flooding with water, cascading against my back.

The sun has retreated so dramatically, it has taken all the warmth and light from my surroundings, leaving a coal sky with no moon. The water is constantly rushing towards and away from me, flowing to and from nowhere, occasionally flinching, recoiling back, and hesitating for a second, before exhaling once more and charging back into the nothingness.

A sudden lurch in the waves drags me to the ground. My hands and knees meet the sodden soil underneath the water, my face so close to the surface that I can see my own reflection in the waves. My face is pale, eyes heavy and cheeks wet. I am shaking too. But the waves don’t waiver; they keep pushing me despite my desperate efforts to claw onto the remnants of reality, scratching at the synthetic stone and soil.

But it isn’t enough. A final breath, a push, an aqueous net wrapping around me, scooping my limbs and weak body from the firm ground and tumbling them into the waves. I bound unceremoniously through the gushing water, slamming against the floor, cascades of waves smothering me, dissolving into foam or deleted by the simulation, I do not know. My instincts are still real in this moment; the fear, gasping, gulping, guttural breaths, an inky above, an obsidian below. And I am forsaken to the below, falling into the above, so distant and small that it’s like I never fell.

Yousra Hassan

in a perfect world, sickness does not exist peace of mind runs rampant and healthy bodies sail the land loving and caring and swimming freely through the wild difficulty and tears are foreign concepts only the dead have access to fairness and happiness over-pollute the air hope so thick candy crystallises on the tongue it tastes of pink watermelons

in a perfect world, bodies born of carbon-copy moulds occupy all the same monotonous boring, perhaps but so similar there is no room for judgment so similar, there is no room for violence that never has a justification so similar, ignorance isn’t a disease of its own in a perfect world, this world does not exist

I wonder if a perfect world could possibly, hopefully, ever be?

Eden Evie Wright

Your voice is dipping low into the sunset, Time isn’t on our side anymore

And I resent it for that, for taking back what it lent to me

But I think we have it now, In your front garden

The one you carved by hand

When you show me your plants

And we feed the birds, your birds. You let me know all the dreams you have for me, And I’m not sure we’ll always agree. My youth tends to blind me, and your experience does the same. You often forget I am a clean slate, and I forget you are not.

Your hand is in mine and sometimes, when you doze off, I watch you through a watery lens

I can’t believe in God, when things work out like this (Even though it would probably help) But I do think I’ve found Eden, When every bittersweet feeling for us gathers itself in a runny nose I refuse to let you see

And I am desperate to burn the image of you, Sunhats and reading glasses and the fresh air, So deep into my memory that it takes root in my body

Grows around my heart, my bones, rose thorns bound into me for an eternity.

I am greedy to want this forever

But this moment, the time we have to know one another, has to be enough.

So I’ll take it.

The inevitable emptiness, The hours that would’ve been spent on the phone to you, It’ll be a wasteland

None of your flowers growing here anymore,

But maybe I’ll spend it writing, I’ll write the flowers you used to plant

Try growing something new I think you’d like that

And I’ll know we made it then, Our fleeting Eden

In the garden when your flowers were in full bloom (And you made sure I was wearing sun cream).

sparkles/splinters Sam Hadley

You see an ice palace, Iridescent heaven, Glimmering from the sunlight Which caresses it.

You see a girl with her brothers Laughing into the sky, A girl who is easy to love And hard to let go of. You see a family, So symmetrical and soothing You almost look twice - but you don’t. You don’t want to shatter the vision.

You told me this was utopia, But I never saw that.

I followed that girl into her bedroom

And watched her exhale as she put down that perfect little dollhouse she had to hold together, Pressing so hard to conceal the thunderous cracks

The wood splintered and snapped into her skin.

You never had to hear her wince as she slowly, carefully pulled out the fragments, Or look at her as she scrubbed the bloodstains tangled with guilt off her skin.

Do you see her now?

Crawling towards the mirror, Her and I meet, One girl, two lives -

The actress and the spectator inside of us, Who is begging to be set free, Who knows that this heaven is just hell disguised in a cavernous heart,

That those open arms are cruel liars just waiting to give us scars. We touch the glass.

We cannot escape the gilded cage,

So instead we tidy our pretty pink dress And fix up a sweet smile, Ready to face our family once again. Are you sure this is utopia?

The Paradoxical Cube

Natalia Podolec

Tiny yet monumental, hollow yet solid, Such is the cube, that day in, day out,

engulfs me, a human being, Though I know the secret of the paradoxical cube, Why do they not?

Teach us they did that birds of the cage believe flying to be an illness,

Though who are they that teach us?

Human beings of the cube, whose edges axe so deep in the fortress of their minds, that they reach up merely to grasp its edges in for a merciful hug and a brotherly kiss, as if they themselves long to burst into a thousand cubes, Though I know the secret of the paradoxical cube, Why do they not?

Only in the darkness have I seen its face, For afraid of its own shadows, it lays awake at night, Warm on the surface, though cold on the inside, Flat at first glance, though deeper than the ocean, Perception, though, they did not teach, For perception to them is not of the square, nor of its brother: the triangle, but of the circle, and a sphere I long to be, Across the stars I would dash, faster than the speed of light, Speed through into its celestial grip, so that in a millisecond it would shatter,

Freeing entity of its chains for eternity, Though I know the secret of the paradoxical cube, Why do they not?

I hear its name is Paradoxis of the clan of the Paradoxians, My name? I know it not. For true names are born from deeds, not by birth, and deeds I have none, for out of a labyrinth I was born,

I am like an empty vessel waiting to be lit up, Though I know the secret of the paradoxical cube, Why do they not?

Tell me Socrates, tell me Plato, do you hear me when I contemplate life this way?

Tell me Pythagoras, Tell me Euclid, What is the square root of this cube?

Tell me Aurelius, Tell me Epictetus,

Am I all a human being ought to be? Perhaps I know not many things, Though I know the secret of the paradoxical cube, Why do they not?

Come, come tiger, fire of my soul, Teach me your wisdom, the wisdom of the warrior, so that we may blend into one, and that I may paint its six faces, with the power of your stripes. For I have heard that art and poetry are great healers of mankind.

So come tiger, my true king, may we blend into one, Invisible yet Invincible, blunt yet sharp, Tiny yet monumental, hollow yet solid, Do I Indeed know the secret of the paradoxical cube? Or do I not?

Dawn Rani Jadfa

I was born here

But I am not from here. I go there

And I am too modern too different I have changed I am not an original. I can’t speak my own language enough to blend in over there, But my skin isn’t clean enough here to be another face in the crowd.

I am the sore thumb. But there are so many of us and we are all so so sore.

Sore in ways even I am not sore: they are more sore than them but they are not as sore as those. We are all so so sore, and we are so so tired of being sore. I am so so tired.

A notification pings within me. A reminder. A new dawn. I am not living the worst. I live.

Others did not.

I am not living the worst. All I receive are rare comments odd looks

cruse assumptions. They received shouts of bruises and dark purple bigotry. I am not living the worst. My mother’s beautiful silver tongue condemned. My father; who spoke good, who spoke little, who told me stories I wish were truth and ruthless truths I begged not to be.

They lived worse. They did not live the worst. I do not live the worst.

They came here for better.

Was it better?

Is this better?

Are we better?

Us denim-wearing, saak-tasting, english-speaking, prayer-giving, sari-wrapping, pizza-cooking, rain-despising, over-sleeping, air-breathing sore thumbs.

We live the better life they so tiresomely sought out. The life they fought for bled for for

Where some see darkness and dystopia, they would have seen the dawn’s light.

Over Dinner

Lana Donovan

Licking the chalkboard clean- what a fantastic solution. A conclusion reached as he ponders sustainability fuss A hypothetical doctor and judge who just discovered pollution. His grace has a degree and a mortgage at 23 so theorises thus: “We can protect school funding by cutting board eraser costsJust have the poorer kids' lunch be English and numeracy dust As it’s sustainable and affordable and yet the head still accosts Me as I fear he’s jealous of my sustained passion and lust

For the kind of salary he didn’t work hard enough to earnI’ll truly never understand these men with such little ambition Shooting me down in aiding the next generation as they learn And the nerve in supposing that I’m asking their permission.” killed two birds and burned the nest with one stone from a pinyon

Wise pebbles over dinner and a bottle of 1990s Cabernet sauvignon.

The Timeless Sin

Radha Kandola

There’s a forest where the universe bleeds through the skyline. Where Venus, Mars and the rings belonging to Neptune make the ground constantly iridescent. The sky scattered with stars, day, and night. The sun, warm against their skin in both winter and summer, their skin is easily covered in glitter that drifts along with the wind and falls onto the surface of the neverending river. The river that, quite impossibly, flows off their world and into deep, well, space.

Except, today, those trees have never seemed duller.

Andra has been waiting forever for today. In her hundreds of years of life - not of living, she can’t say with confidence that she’s ever lived - she’s always been waiting for today. Today could have been any day. It could have been yesterday, or tomorrow, or the second day of the third month next year. Oddly specific, she knows, but it’s comforting to create an illusion of knowledge when all she knows is uncertainty. Today could have been a split second, or a tortuous twenty-four hours. Instead, today is the agonising ache that comes with the collapse of her home.

Children have spent all morning running, fleeing from the forests that have been their haven. Andra herself has guided them onto countless ships, running her hands through her children’s hair and whispering assurances that she can’t - and really shouldn’tpromise their parents. She’s spent hundreds of years nurturing this community as if they were her own babies. Caring for families of strangers and growing flowers in the garden’s outside of the palace she and they had been abandoned in.

Now, she stands, her heart heavy on the fields she’d sworn to herself she would never breach. Coming here has always meant that she knows it’s over. Her eyes scarcely water and, when they do, she brushes the tears away with the back of her golden jewelled hand. The ring belonging to Meditrina winds itself

around her middle finger like a golden vein from Aphrodite’s own heart. There’s a bow in her other hand and a sheath full of arrows on her back. For someone who cannot stand to see bodies fall by her own hand, Andra has always been a perfect shot. But, she guesses, that is part of the curse.

The children of the seven original sins stand together, eyes youthful, hearts exhausted. Their faces glowing with children’s button noses and snowflake glow, their skin flawless, their bodies barely having left puberty. For hundreds of years, they have lived in bodies that should be beaten with age and sickness. Yet their faces are still the same as those teenagers who had woken up in the dirt, staring at the planets above their heads, skin scratched raw from how much they ached to be held by the creators who had abandoned them. Abandoned them with no recollection of their past, but the shattering knowledge that the world was their responsibility. It was on them to nurture the babies dropped in the dirt around them like seeds. On them to protect humanity from falling apart. As long as they existed in perfect harmony and protected their world, no harm could come. They were only left with this instruction and one more fact: the world that they will dedicate centuries to will fall. Life as they know it is not timeless, in fact, it will be the thing to destroy them.

Unlike Theodore, Andra refuses to accept their defeat. Her brother’s heart lives in isolation - he has never allowed himself to love the angels they swore to protect. With a heart of stone, he barely allowed himself the nature of loving his siblings. Andra sees his heartache every time she meets his eyes and, as she looks to where he is sat beneath a crying willow, running his bleeding finger down the blade of his sword, she knows he has no fight in him. Nor does Chyler, who has tears running down her cheeks as she shakes her hands at her sides. She had fallen too much in love with their world and cannot bear to see it burn. And then there is Mattheo - she can scarcely remember his name, given how silent he has become in these last hundred years. Today may be their last day, and he still hasn’t said a word.

Holding up a universe is one thing - accepting its destruction is another.

Andra acknowledges that they have been hunted their whole lives. She, the warrior child, has spent countless nights sleeping on Jupiter’s rings, her bow and arrow clutched in her hands as she watched the bridge between realms shake, the planets in their sky glitching for split seconds at a time and the sky freezing. She’s watched and waited for the moment where someone breaks through, tearing apart the only beauty left in this universe. In recent years it had trembled more violently than she’d ever allow herself to admit and when Meditrina had traced her thumb under her eyes and whispered, “It’s time, my love, isn’t it?” she had only smiled and kissed her in a way that could only say goodnight.

Goodnight, not goodbye.

It’s Theodore’s mutter that distracts her from her pounding heart. “What are we waiting for? I don’t see why we’re here. I’ve never understood why we have to be here, today.”

Andra wishes nothing more than to be quiet, but it seems her siblings are all looking her way with hopeless and desperate eyes. “You could leave.” They still at her words, she stares longingly at the last phoenix leaving the forest. The one that Meditrina had surely left on. She hadn’t said goodbye and the ring on her finger feels heavy, burdened. “No one is making you stay.”

“Why would we leave?” Chyler’s voice is quiet, broken, and Andra can’t let herself feel pity for the girl who had gotten too attached. Not when her own heart belongs to the constellation obsessed girl who had fled under Andra’s very own orders. Orders her siblings couldn’t ever bring themselves to make. “Why would we leave our home? Are you sick enough with love to abandon what we’re meant for?”

“Like they abandoned us?”

“Theodore!” Snaps Chyler. Her tears fall down her cheeks loudly. She has always been too vulnerable. “That was so long ago that you can hardly remember it, surely!”

Andra’s eyes fall on Mattheo, who’s silence speaks volumes more than the vines wrapped around his feet, rooting him steadily to the ground. They belong more to this forest than they ever had to each other. And, as much as Chyler tries to wish upon a star, they all know forgetting the morning they had woken up in their own dirt and blood and instructed to protect a world they knew nothing of is impossible. That morning is all that has ever defined them.

“I am far from sick with love.” Andra absently twirls the ring on her finger. “I was merely suggesting that you could leave if you wanted. I spent nights alone watching over these forests. I didn’t expect you three to stay until today.”

“You expected us to leave you?”

His voice is hoarse, and only then does Andra notice the tears on his cheeks and the tremble in his shoulders. She’s stunned into silence, watching him with wide eyes. Chyler sobs, wrapping her arms around herself – she doesn’t know if she’s capable of hugging him, but she would if only she’d been taught to. Theodore tosses his sword at the dirt, impaling their home with the poisoned curse that runs through his blood. The ground shakes, but neither of his siblings are phased.

Andra hesitates, the ring on her finger suddenly ice cold. “I expected you to leave after you found out what we were protecting.”

Mattheo snorts, a cruel sound from a person so silent. “Don’t worry, Andra, none of us were ever planning on sticking a dagger through Meditrina’s heart. Your precious little diamond. The purpose of this planet – and the monster you fell in love with. Does she even know? Have you even accepted what you have to do? It has to be you. It can’t be one of us.”

She feels herself still, her heart plummeting to her stomach. “It isn’t her that’s coming for us. This planet will tear itself apart vine after vine and it still won’t be her that stands on those blasted rings and throws a dagger straight for our hearts.”

“How sure are you?” Whispers Chyler, her stunned eyes looking tearily at her. She coughs, standing straighter and lifting her head to make herself heard. “How sure are you that it isn’t her? We’ve all seen you. She has you wrapped around her finger. You love her more than you’ve ever loved any of us.”

Theodore whistles, mocking, loathing, as always. Her stomach drops, sickened with guilt.

“Don’t for a second think that!” Andra snaps, then takes a breath. She stretches her finger, wincing as the ring suddenly feels heavy. A frown makes its way to her face, but she shakes it off and draws an arrow from her back. Something feels unnerving and uneasy and she doesn’t particularly want to wait and find out what. “Look, I’m sure-“

“You’re sure?” The voice makes her still. “It’s time, my love, isn’t it?”

Andra falls. She folds in on herself, heart pounding. In a split second her bow and arrow are discarded to the floor with an echoing clatter and the gold veins of her ring are piercing through her skin, working towards her arteries. A searing pain causes her to cry out. Her siblings stand, stunned for a moment to silence. She sees Theodore running toward her and scooping her into his laps before her head hits the floor. She sees Chyler pull herself into the trees, grabbing her sister’s discarded bow, knowing she has a better shot from up there. Not that she’s ever been a good shot – but what other choice does she have? She sees Mattheo heading straight for the heart of the girl she loves. The monster that she’d been warned about hundreds of years ago. Blood spills down her wrist, her arm shaking numbly, the gold metal reaching her heart and squeezing, cutting off circulation. The veins from what she had thought to be a ring carved with Aphrodite’s love pleading for her to sleep hellishly. Air seems awfully hard to grasp and she can barely hear Theodore swearing at her that he can’t get the fucking ring off of her finger.

And so she’s left to wonder how ironic it is that she, the warrior, had fallen first.

But not in death. No, she fell last after watching them all bleed out around her, their last breaths shaking the grounds of the broken home they’d tried so desperately to love despite how far from peace it was. They were children of sin, after all.

No. She fell first. In love.

Quite possibly the most dangerous thing in her broken world.

Guilt is what air freshener can't get rid of Marta Console Camprini

What is a house if not a home?

An interrogation room, a spotlight so bright you can’t hide your sins, with three officers hungry for disappointment, and one, much younger, whose innocence breaks your heart because she just can't understand what they're doing to you.

A house is a box of words so heavy they leave stains on the carpet,

photos on the walls taunt the humanity out of you but you're just too tired.

Dear diary,

when I got to the house today, mum was crying, she said she didn’t know what I was doing with my life.

Dad was silent, and I think that hurt more.

He came to my room and begged me to tell him I hadn’t done it.

I had to lie,

but as he hugged me for the first time in months, and breathed in my betrayal, I knew, he knew, and it broke me.

What is a life if not your own?

A boa constrictor tightening its grip, until you're drowning in a pool of guilt.

Life is an unapologetic mirror.

How can you escape from the thing that helps you escape?

You’ve stooped so low, you found Hell and there are no stairs, stuck in a limbo between defence and denial.

I hate lying.

Dear diary,

today, as I walked home, I sat on the edge of the pavement and cried,

as the house two doors down echoed the laughter of the little girl who used to live there.

They were so proud of her.

Auto Lucy

Corrigan

(CW – injury, violent crime mention, slight implication of suicidal thoughts)

“Here at Metanoia, we value your wellbeing and comfort. Our modifications are made of the finest cyberware available and tested rigorously to provide you with durable and safe enhancements. Remember: change is necessary for a bright future.”

Veda blinked furiously, attempting to clear her blurry vision. Her apertures were faulty, she would have to get them checked out when she got a chance, but they were acceptable for the moment. The various neons in this room weren’t helping, the oscillating gleam of the lights was wearing out her lenses causing cautionary messages to ping across her sight.

She huffed, crossing her arms tighter across her chest as she stared at the door in apprehension. The guard glanced at her occasionally before turning his attention back to the ground. Whenever Veda shifted in her seat, the guard would tense, and his eyes would flash orange before quickly flickering back to brown. The woman resisted the urge to roll her eyes at his actions and instead focused on the sliding door, bordered with vines and dahlias that stretched onto the mirrored ceiling, casting an array of colours, courtesy of the luminous vascular system.

“Here at Metanoia-”

The hologram was cut off as the door slid open to reveal an imposing figure dressed in a sharp black business suit contrasted with white neon lining. Veda craned her neck to gaze up at them as they leered down at her, yellow eyes flashing from dark circles and circuits.

“Salutations BL #105-377, my designation is Metanoia Employee_ #34.” The clarion call of their voice broke the tense silence, and a smile strained across their face, causing the corners of their eyes to wrinkle and the yellow irises to flare dangerously. “I apologise for the delay there was an unexpected workplace incident, you know how it is.” The chrome lines on their face bristled. “Now, let this interview commence.”

More like interrogation. Veda thought, eyes following the employee as they walked around to the desk in the centre of the room.

She was transfixed by how their sharp footsteps lacerated the tense silence between them. When ME_ #34 reached the desk, they gracefully sat down on the chair and smiled at the woman. She tentatively smiled up at them, those marauding eyes scorching her.

Suddenly, door slammed shut behind them and Veda flinched. She swivelled her head around to note that the guard had left them. She was isolated with the cyborg.

“Don’t be scared, BL #105-377, I don’t bite.” ME_ #34 purred, flexing the mandible plating that split their wicked smirk. Veda sat up in her chair, placing her hands on her lap and pushing her shoulders back. The employee observed her actions briefly and then placed their hands on the desk. Their eyes faded into a faint green and a projection was emitted on the desk. Veda noticed it was her portfolio of evidence about the correlation between criminal offences and Metanoia’s brain implants.

“So, is this why you wanted to ‘interview’ me?” Veda questioned, nails digging into her leather trousers. “I’ve got dirt on you, and your higher-ups are scared and now you’ve got to shut me up somehow?”

ME_ #34 remained stoic.

“Y’know it was pretty obvious you guys were up to something.” Veda continued. “With the whole ‘violence only happened against members of rival companies or politicians that criticised Metanoia’ shit. For a commercial empire that has manufactured all these enhancements and is so intelligent, you guys are quite stupid-”

“September 9th, 2169.” ME_ #34 silenced her. “You investigated a homicide, recording what you found at the scene and what you heard from the Enforcers on the premises.”

“What?” Veda’s face dropped and she felt for the recording chip insert under her jaw.

“The chips are not required.” They stated, their eyes flashing. They switched off the projection, their eyes darkened and then reignited with those blazing irises. Veda sunk back into her seat, mind and heart racing in apprehension as the employee rose from their chair and rounded the desk to station themself before her.

“You are very perceptive BL #105-377.”

“It’s Veda.”

“You could prove a valuable asset to Metanoia.”

Veda frowned and met ME_ #34’s scrutinising, yellow gaze. They stared back, unblinking; their pupils constricting and dilating frequently, subtly darting around Veda’s face.

“I know what being an ‘asset’ for your company entails.” Veda hissed, curling her lip in an ugly sneer.

ME_ #34 remained unfazed.

“You could prove a valuable asset to Metanoia.” They reinstated. Veda opened her mouth to retort but ME_ #34 held up a hand.

“Working for Metanoia would greatly improve your current living condition, and you would gain recognition for your journalism with the association. You could shed light on many aspects of society, maybe even convince the higher ups to change their ways, although, that would take some time, but you know what they say, ‘work hard, play hard’.”

Veda scrunched up her nose and chewed her lip. ME_ #34 remained motionless.

Metanoia was a corrupt organisation; they wouldn’t change unless there was significant commercial benefit. Succeeding in influencing their policies was a utopian delusion. But Veda couldn’t ignore that utopia, the human mind couldn’t stop wishing for what it couldn’t have. She envisioned a society where people were not categorised by ‘Base’, ‘Mid’ and ‘High’. It may be possible, through persistent endeavours, that she could make the administrators revise their outlooks, if only a minute extent.

Veda puffed her cheeks out before exhaling abruptly. ME_ #34 titled their head slightly, observing Veda with their large, unblinking eyes.

“Y’know,” Veda sighed. “I’m honoured with your proposal, and I would be inclined to accept.” Veda tensed and frantically grasped her throat plating as she choked in glitch and varying pitches. She gaped at ME_ #34 with horri fi ed, glassy eyes, simultaneously, ME_ #34 smiled warmly down at Veda with those predatory optics.

“Wha- What did you do to me?” Veda gasped, voice glitching. ME_ #34 continued to glower at her causing her to spring out of her seat, seizing their suit collar and yanking them downwards. “What the hell did you do, anti-pattern?”

ME_ #34 smirked. “My, my, what foul language.” Their hands darted out and wrapped around her wrists, squeezing them. Veda growled at them. “And a bit of a temper that results in

impulsivity.” Their crushing grip made Veda grit her teeth and tighten her grip on reflex. “Metanoia employees must remain composed in all situations; your disposition requires correcting.”

“You freaks have no emotions, you’re just a hive mind!” Veda spat through her teeth, wincing as ME_ #34 compressed her wrists.

“Emotions cause impulsivity, impulsivity leads to unfavourable consequences, and unfavourable consequences hinder Metanoia.” ME_ #34 hissed, their eyes blinding Veda’s constricting apertures. She tensed her lips and her pupils darted from ME_ #34’s burning eyes to her burning wrists and released their collar and ME_ #34 liberated her wrists immediately. Veda stepped back and delicately rubbed her abused skin, attempting to ignore the imposing cyborg towering over her.

“Was it your choice?” She murmured, glaring at the floor.

ME_ #34 tilted their head, the yellow irises flaring. “Elaborate.”

“To become this. Or did they force you?”

ME_ #34 remained impassive but their pupils became unfocused.

“So, it’s a cyclical structure. Figures.” Veda mused bitterly.

ME_ #34 straightened their head and rolled their shoulders back. They abruptly turned away from Veda and stalked towards the desk. Veda sighed dejectedly, she raised her eyes towards the window and furrowed her brow. She knew she wouldn’t be fast enough, ME_ #34 most likely had speed implants, they definitely had strength implants and their face was garnished with chrome. Besides, the window would be heavily reinforced.

ME_ #34’s slender hands glided over the holographic keyboard as they typed. Veda saw their eyes reflect on the window shade.

That damn yellow still managed to taunt her even when she tried to escape it.

“This room is the highest inhabitable location in the City.” ME_ #34 stated.

“Wow. Couldn’t have known that.” Veda muttered.

“As you know, the pollution caused by previous generations has resulted in the ‘darkness’ smothering the City for the last 147 years. The sun has not been visible for those 147 years.” They persisted, disregarding her comment. “This room is situated on level 451. From the ground level, you are unable to see past floor 54.”

Veda turned to face them, raising her brow.

“I admire your tenacity and dedication to your craft. The diligence you exhibit is rare for a Street Rat.” ME_ #34 retracted their hands and gestured to the window. “You deserve compensation.”

At their words, the room gradually became brighter and warmer. Veda spun around to see that the window shade had been deactivated and her breath caught in her throat.

The sun’s rays bathed the floor in a soft, golden glow. Veda inhaled shakily and placed her hand gingerly on the glass, gasping faintly as she felt the warmth of the sun against the panes. A smile crept onto her face, and she gazed out of the window at the blue sky and sun that had been obscured by the heavy clouds and artificiality that engulfed the sky of the City. As her eyes flickered towards the sun, her apertures constricted to accommodate the brightness as she continued her awed gaze at the star.

“It’s time.” ME_ #34’s voice violated the serenity.

Veda stiffened as she heard them approach, along with other footsteps of varying weight. In the reflection of the windowpane, she could see ME_#34 flanked by armed security guards and a doctor. She pressed her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes, soaking up the natural warmth in a vain attempt to prolong the experience.

“BL_#105-377.”

Veda ignored the authoritarian cadence of ME_#34. The woman envied the humans of centuries ago who could experience the authentic nature whenever they wanted. They were not forced to improvise with artificial substitutes of cybernetic nerves and coding which pulsed brightly throughout the structure of their imitation.

The sound of fabric rustling accompanied the impatient command of “Take her.”

Veda heard heavy footsteps nearing and opened her eyes to see the security guards begin to approach her through the reflection. She sighed dejectedly and let her hand fall away from the glass and straightened her back, composing herself, and turning around to face the guards. They held her biceps and led her away from the penthouse towards the elevator. When they passed ME_#34, Veda met their gaze with a defiant sneer which the employee raised an eyebrow at.

The guards gripped her arms tighter and forced her into the elevator and turned around to face the door. Veda kept her gaze on the grey metal floor of the elevator, flinching at the chime of a floor button being pressed. As the doors slid closed, she looked up, hopeful to catch a glimpse of the sun one last time. Her pupils flashed a dim red, voraciously archiving the soft blue of the sky and the light reflecting on the floor and various items in the room. A small, content smile graced Veda’s face as the converging metal restricted her vision.

However, through the incision of the elevator doors, she observed the windowpane shimmer with sequences of code. The doors sealed, overriding her widened optical sensors with fluorescent golden neons that incinerated her.

Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair Matt

Sowerby

It’s OK. After the last of us have gone— the last poets, or the last people who remember there were poets— things will begin to get better. Some animals will survive. Some monuments will be swallowed by deserts or oceans and that's fine. The world is not ending, only us. and you, you’ll be made immortal by a plastic whale the same size as a baby’s fist, trapped somewhere that once had a name — remember it? The Earth won’t stop spinning, it’s the one thing it knows how to do.

Lullaby Matt Sowerby

--Hush baby go to sleep—----------

—--------------our planet’s dying but—--------------

—--------------you cannot know that just—-----—-------yet.

I will protect—--------

—------------you the rest of my life—----------------

—-------------I have since the day—----------

—------that we met. Everything’s—------

—--------different now you’re in the—-------------

—-------------world—what ever the—---------

—--------future may bring.—------

—-----I would burn rainforests—--------

—-------------to keep you warm——---------------

—-------------silence the birds if they—--------

—-----sing.

I have found—--—---------hope in the glow—-----------—-----------in your eyes— my constant—-----------—-------------whatever may change.—---