These words scorched the sky above now, hanging overheard in a twisted neon font. They lingered in more than the mere air however, emblazoned on the sides of towering structures, from office buildings to hospitals to recreational centers. Jane paid them no mind as she traipsed along the sidewalk, too used to their overwhelming embrace to process them as words with meaning; instead they were symbols of a larger magnitude, a manifesto of sorts that united the population more than even its intended denotation ever could. She crossed paths with a gentlemanly stranger as she went, catching his eye through the glass barrier and giving the faintest of smiles as she did so. He gave a subtle bow in response, tipping the brim of his bowler hat simultaneously, and then turned his attention back to his lane. Jane thought that she might have detected a wink in between the gestures, but really, it was hard to tell given the glare of his screen. The sunlight, possibly, reflecting from the barrier—one of the few natural phenomena left that the tinkers hadn’t managed to adjust to. The man who went by her was, in fact, some six meters away, too far to distinguish anything from if not for the screen that floated above his head, magnifying his expression and mannerisms. The image had been clear and consistent, she was sure, as one would expect from a newer model of Projector, easily identified as such by the shape of it--Jane had the standard model; square, black, too large actually, nearly thrice the size of her head rather than the standard two and and two-fifths ratio. Her fellow citizen must have been a man of reasonable taste to have tailored a screen so perfectly to his shape and, indeed, their distance apart. He was gone now though, and so Jane thought little else of him, turning her attention forward once more, where the bustling avenue greeted her with the expansive roads ahead. She was in the middle of perhaps one of a dozen or so walking lanes, which lay to the left of the driving lanes, where other pedestrians sat leisurely as they moved, their automobiles streaking forward at roughly thrice the average walking rate, while their passengers stared aimlessly through the side windows of their made-for-one vehicles. These individuals had their projectors tucked into the machines, an act that, while practical, conveyed a sense of intentional isolation. Jane was not affronted by it in particular, yet she did admit that those who still used automobiles to get around were of a suspicious sort. After all, no one was racing anywhere; everything that anyone needed was at their disposal, on hand. Jane resumed her walk candidly, wondering if it was her anticipation for the day’s endeavors that had her overthinking the minute details of their city. While it was true that what everyone needed was immediately available, what they wanted was quite a different story. Comforts and pleasures had entered into the role of the former, but experiences, new, fresh ones, were hard to come by. Jane’s appointment was scheduled for within the hour, and so she picked up the pace of her walk slightly, unwilling to take the risk of missing it; her ticket, after all, was not only non-refundable, but was unlikely to exist this time next year. This was the last year before tinkering would occur in utero. She began to jog slightly, and almost at once a gentle breeze danced at her ankles; her lane had detected her increased activity, and had responded accordingly by doing its best to simulate the conditions of a standard run. Feeling somewhat self-conscious, she turned her head to each side of the glass barrier, blinking a few times and allocating the slightest of thought power towards her intentions. She felt her body vibrate as it usually did, and within seconds the entirety of her lane had morphed into a peaceful, park-like environment, images of majestic, rustling trees replacing the glass at her sides, the road beneath her now resembling a dirt track, despite being as smooth as before to the touch. Up ahead she could still see her destination, but fellow travelers would not be able to see her from their respective pathways. With a small grimace, she realized that she was now probably as dubious a sight as those who were in the driving lanes. She hoped that no one would bother to investigate, but almost on cue, she felt an indecipherable message pass through her body. It was like lowering herself into warm water one inch at a time, the energy working its way through her toes, then her legs, swirling about briefly in her belly before rocketing into the confines of her head. Then, her projector rattled above her, and the message took its proper form. “Do you mind if I cut across?” her projector blurted in its crisp, feminine voice. Jane sighed. Not at all, she thought back, and then, following a pause, she confirmed her response with a twitch of her lips. She halted her jog then, crossing her arms and gazing off in front of her, in her little park-path, as her projector transferred her message along. A moment later a figure emerged in the distance, far enough along that even the screen above their head failed to reveal anything of their appearance. Only a few seconds later, and the shape had disappeared, indicating that her lane was clear again. And with that, she resumed. How terrible, she thought. Trying to get a look at someone who wants privacy. These comments she kept to herself however, her facial muscles quite relaxed to prevent both personal and broadcast communication. No sooner had she thought these things however then did a real invasion of privacy manifest itself, though this one was far less personal. “Serwyn Industries has a question for you,” a voice blared from her left, this one masculine, confident. “Why inhabit a world you didn’t create?” The advertisement projected itself into her left visual field then, one-part holographic, one-park hallucinogenic. The park setting had split itself, keeping its place in one half of existence, though on the other side now overlain with a handsome, square shouldered man, who waved his large arms demonstratively as various other locales swirled around him. “Serwyn Industries has been the leading enterprise in sensory replication technology for over a century, with a business model that prioritizes authentic world-building over throw-away, repetitive narratives. You’ve swam in our oceans, dug through our deserts, and lodged in our cabins when things got a little too cold. But now? We want you to have your own world at your disposal.” “What do you mean, Tom?” asked an almost infantile voice, though from the right, a bespectacled woman had emerged, her dark hair wound tightly back and her arms crossed over. “Why would anyone want to take the time to do that?” Jane frowned as she came to yet another halt. The commercial had completely enveloped her now, to the point that attempting to jog through it would be disconcerting. Instead, she breathed a sigh and allowed the display to continue; if she skipped it, she’d be forced to watch two later, and she didn’t want to risk the sleep. “Well Tracy,” Tom started, and his toothy grin required so much processing power than he briefly glitched out, only to reappear on Tracy’s other side, “not even Serwyn can tailor their experiences to what the people want on a whim—but we know that, and that’s okay. Rather than try, our next project aims to trust the consumer. With our incredible tech, and your incredible imagination,” he continued, now turning and making eye contact with Jane, “you’ll be able to browse an infinite number of options, and to build the world that you want, from scratch.” At this point, random, psuedo-physical objects fell from the sky around her, while Tom laughed and pointed to them at random. “Palm trees, automobiles, snow-spitters, life orbs, trains, cats, dogs, kangaroos, ancient tigarons and whales, see it, smell it, hold it all!” he added, as an elephant the size of a globe landed in his arms, squirming. “Amazing!” Tracy said, and her enthusiasm was such that her next few words skipped out of order. “True but that Serwyn another step, Tom, has taken but is it?” “Why, whatever do you mean, Tracy?” her male companion asked, as the cascade of random items came to a halt, though its contents now littered Jane’s park. “Well,” Tracy started, back on track, now also facing Jane, “I heard that Serwyn has been developing technology for the simulation of human contact as well.” Jane felt a shiver go up her spine at this, suddenly feeling that two commercials later on would not be so bad. But then Tom gave another chortle, and tiny, illegible white font had flashed in front of Jane’s eyes, signalling that the promotion was nearing its end. “Well Tracy,” he started, and then he placed his hand on her shoulder, causing her eyes to swell to the size of olden coins. “We’ll have to see; Serwyn Personal Immersion Software will be rolling out its new updates at the start of next year, so if your Projector doesn’t have us installed, you’ll never find out!” They both vanished then, along with the items and creatures strewn about Jane’s standard V1-park, which suddenly felt rather inadequate. The image of virtual, staticky Tom touching Tracy’s equally blurred torso lingered however, moreso today than on most days, given the rather scandalous nature of her upcoming appointment. It had been a long time since any two human beings had touched in the way those digital phantoms had, let alone been closer to one another than 13.4 (approximately) ft. away. Such a sight wasn’t foreign an idea of course—human contact had been the norm for virtually all of human history prior to a few centuries ago, and it didn’t take longer than a few hours of digging back into the archives to find all sorts of media that depicted it. It was the standard in visual entertainment and conventional literature both, and a complete necessity to understanding nearly all of human culture and its development. Jane was certain that if the last of her skin-to-skin ancestors had been told what the world would look like a little less than a millennium later, they would have scoffed not only at the practicality of it, but at the audacity as well. The world. That’s all that it was Jane, and to everyone else, but one needn’t go nearly as far back as the films and books of so long ago to known that the way that society operated now had, at first, had its detractors. “Magnetopia” it had been called, or “Tinkertopolis”, or any other term meant to deride the idea of a world where you couldn’t have sex or strangle one another—two terms that, the more Jane thought about it, she probably couldn’t fully grasp anyway. But that had been in the early days of the tinker, the days of asking “why”, rather than “why not”, back when the prospect of rebuilding from the ground up seemed too long-sighted, too rooted in idealism and overly concerned with the conversion over the finished product. The tinker was, at its core, a simple device; it was the world that needed to be complex, so as to facilitate its function. It was the acme of integrated man-machine technology, the refined culmination of what had probably been decades or more of clunky, encumbering contraptions, the likes of which would not have been worth the dramatic overhaul of civilization that followed it. It was situated just behind the sternum, lodged in the flesh of nearly every living human, less than four inches in diameter, and completely unfelt physically. It was capable of broadcasting wirelessly, but for most tasks, it required the wires that had been woven into the veins, seamlessly connecting it to the central nervous system and permitting interactions with technology that would have made the enthusiasts of the old world weep with delight. In the old days, Jane knew, people had learned how to interact by doing—using their mouths to communicate, their hands to draw and write and press buttons. Now, early childhood was devoted to thinking. Properly organizing your internal speech, that others might hear it, learning to direct the muscles in ones body to interact with the outside world from afar. With the tinker, sending a message might be instantaneous, turning a machine on or off from a centimeter away took only a second longer than would from a mile. The Projectors were neat conduits—essential devices, in truth—but they were secondary nonetheless. The lone cost, of course, was that tinkers were still physical things, and that like all physical things lodged in the body, they posed a great risk of bodily harm. This was the concern that had brought about the eventual transition from a skin-to-skin world to a thought-to-thought one. To prevent it from moving and damaging anything vital, tinkers were held in place by more than mere flesh; they were each connected to a magnet, which pulled at it ever so slightly at all times, never letting it find its way to something like, say, the human heart. The result, of course, was that any two people who possessed the device were, quite literally, repelled away from one another. Jane was sure that when proposed the magnet idea had, much like the idea of the tinker itself, been met with disapproval, and presumably recurring attempts to circumvent, but ultimately, there was no keeping the good without the bad, of the pull of magnets without the push. And so, over time, the world had been recreated around the idea of no two human beings ever being in contact, the apparently unthinkable. Cities were built upwards, stacked on top (even the ground that Jane jogged on at present was situated atop another city, buildings and all—for all she knew, she was treading the top of a skyscraper), and as a result the boundaries of the atmosphere were effectively illusionary, which enabled the sprawling slogans that Congress had such an affinity for, such as the one that bared down upon her now. The additional, horizontal space provided by the sky, in all its infinite glory, permitted wide lanes of travel that ensured two paths need hardly ever cross, and projectors essentially did the rest. Even procreation, once the primary reason to touch one another, had been revolutionized long ago, with two individuals providing the necessary sex cells from a distance, leaving the child to develop in a perfectly reasonable, artificial environment prior to birth. It wasn’t supposed to work. If all of the criticisms had been true, it was supposed to have fallen apart. Even if the cities had managed to last when built atop one another, and with tinkering granting access to equal, unprecedented information, not to mention the ability to change the channel with the literal blink of an eye, there was supposed to be some inherent flaw, some aspect of human nature, hardwired through evolution, that made touch more than a tool, but the foundation of society. People were supposed to not interact at all if they couldn’t have sex. Crime and exploitation were supposed to rule without the threat of human violence. Parental bonding was supposed to vanish without holding, friendships to deteriorate without the handshake and hug, games and recreation to lose their luster without athletic involvement. But it didn’t. So far as Jane could tell, the dystopia never came. She loved her mother, even if she didn’t really like her, she was courteous to others, even without threat of being choked (or strangled—were they different?); everyone was educated and healthy and free and happy, and things weren’t perfect but they were better than they’d been, at least it seemed when looking back. Sports and games had transitioned to those that involved cooperative play at a distance, and the arts, having always been a private affair for the most part, remained thoroughly untouched. There had been concerns that stronger involvement with technology would also lead to laziness, and the physical breakdowns of the body, but even Jane’s pleasant jog was sufficient enough to rebuke this notion. The tinker was a tool, not the be-all, it could help you steer a vehicle, but wasn’t going to propel you faster than light. Physical activity was still as needed as any other time in human history, despite what one might intuitively think. Indeed, the only valid criticism of the tinker, this many generations down the line, seemed to be that the world was occasionally too connected. Kissing and clawing and bumping were all simple enough concepts to grab once one had a picture or video at their disposal, but there were some terms—autonomy, privacy, sovereignty—that remained rather elusive in their definitions. Jane recalled her grandmother recounting stories that her grandmother had passed on to her, tales of homes built right alongside one another, where invisible lines separated living space, and forms of travel where it was courtesy to be quiet, as others were so close. For some reason, even without having experienced it, Jane felt as though she would have preferred such obligations—now, anyone could intrude from anywhere, and it seemed that, even after so long, proper etiquette on when to engage someone else had yet to be fully established. No sooner had she thought such a thing than did a rather ironically timed message begin its trek through her nervous system. Another moment later, and her projector had announced it aloud. “Happen to know where 869th and Lux Crossing is?” her projector said, its voice the same as before. You’re on 869th now, Crossing is two lanes over, she answered, her eyes darting around to find the source of her conversation partner, who was nowhere in sight. A moment later and another message hit. “Appreciate it,” her projector uttered shortly, and that was it. Jane waited a few seconds to see if the individual ever materialized, then realized the person must have been heading in the right direction as was. She would never know who she’d spoken to. The rest of her journey went, very surprisingly, uninterrupted, which was good, as the closer she neared to her destination, the less control she knew she’d have over managing her thoughts accordingly. She ended her jog just as the building came into sight, looking exactly as it had in the simulation walk she’d taken the previous day. It was silver and windowless, large but not as towering as its neighbors, standing a modest 20, maybe 25 stories tall, and it somehow, despite its plainness, did not look very welcoming. The doors slid open as she neared it, revealing an antechamber that was very cramped compared to most other businesses, and lacking any real decorum as well. This was not unusual though, given the nature of this particular enterprise, though even knowing this, Jane felt her comfort level drop as she entered, the doors closing behind her with a loud skhh that signaled they’d been sealed rather tightly. “Please remain still while you are scanned for identifiable information” echoed a standard, masculine voice all around her. The next voice was so robotic it was hard to ascribe any humanity to it, let alone gender. “If your projector uses any of the following processing chips-” the voice changed back to the previous male’s for a moment —“KAZ-1, DuxUltra, Fujituva” — the voice returned to the genderless one — “please temporarily disable your projector before the scan commences, to ensure that your device is not affected.” Jane’s projector contained no such chips, and so she simply stood motionless for a minute, no visible signs of examination noted, though eventually, the robotic voice confirmed her presence. “Your identity scan is complete. Name: Jane 2-6-5-1-1-1-3. Age: thirty-three. Blood type: A-Positive.” The voice then switched over to the human male. “If any of this information is incorrect, please ask for additional assistance. Otherwise, respond with ‘This information is correct’.” This information is correct, Jane thought. Her projector echoed it a second later, though it was most unnecessary; she was positive that her thoughts had been conveyed sufficiently. “Thank you for your participation in Rockwilder Incorporated’s Inanna project. Currently, there are, “ — next came the robotic “four” , followed by the male again — “participants in front of you. Please wait to be called. In the meanwhile, enjoy our free local network browsing.” The voice cut off abruptly then, leaving Jane to stand in silence, the only company at her disposal the floating screen above her and, of course, the entirety of civilization from afar. Unsure as to the duration of her wait, she closed her eyes and decided to peruse some programs. At the simplest, almost unintelligible of thoughts, she found herself tuning in to a sitcom with rather long—nearly two minutes a piece—episodes, the images swirling in her head so vividly it was as though she were a member of the narrative herself. She found it difficult to focus though, her mind firmly attuned to the stories but her body quite aware of its current location, and so after the fifth installment she opened her eyes widely, severing the connection at once, returning her to the silver chamber, which remained quite unchanged. She elected to spend the rest of her wait in silence, though she considered downloading a sedative in the meanwhile, only to decide against it; she wanted no interference with the day's venture, even if the mere thought of it made her restless. It was a most peculiar form of dissonance she endured now, trying to reason that what she was doing was not wrong, despite her clear awareness that her behavior suggested the opposite. What she was doing was in no way illegal, and yet, she was certain it one day would be, and that brought her discomfort. Projects like Inanna were not advertised by conventional means, and Jane had really only heard of it off-hand due to the hubbub on the news about the dawn of in-utero tinkering. She had actually paid it little mind at first, but her interest had been piqued without her realizing it, it seemed, and as she considered herself the adventurous type, she’d purchased the ticket via a secondary server not long after. No matter what the experience brought her, she knew, the rarity would be worth it—very few alive these days had ever touched another human being, and indeed, most probably didn’t want to. It wasn’t the touch itself that she expected to have merit, of course. Jane felt skin all time, as she felt her own, and was quite capable of scratching an itch and wiping at sweat, or even running her hands along her body, which, in truth, felt as good as described in those now obsolete depictions of interaction. No, the allure here was more the knowledge that something else would be feeling her, as strange as that seemed. It was the idea of eliciting a bodily response from someone else without having some complicated machine as an intermediary, knowing that the slightest of movements could produce a monumental psychophysiological reaction in another body, and mind, even, that truly was the source of fascination that rendered underground projects like Inanna still a vital part of modern living. And that was something that she felt might be worth the price of admission, and indeed, the uncomfortable thoughts she had now, all on its own. “Thank you for your patience”, blared the masculine voice from before, and Jane nearly jumped. “Your interaction is now being prepared. Please enter into the main corridor when you are ready to begin, and remember to follow the instructions provided prior to engaging. Enjoy your experience!” There was another skhh and a door directly in front of her opened, its outline in the silver wall having been hidden before. Jane straightened up and cleared her throat rather foolishly before stepping through it, her projector lowering itself automatically to enter along after her. She next found herself in a corridor as expressionless as the waiting room, narrow and long, still silver and extremely polished. She’d barely begun to move through it when holograms burst throughout the passage, swarming her just as how the Serwyn commercial from earlier had. This time, however, it was the same person on all sides of her, a flickering woman of large height, fiery hair, and a stern expression on her face. “Welcome” she and her dozen counterparts said in unison, her voice unapologetically robotic—there was no attempt here at making the instructions section personable. Jane slowed her pace as the holograms continued their chorus. “Rockwilder Incorporated is pleased to have your participation in this program. Prior to your appointment you were asked to download a waiver document that informed you of your rights and the rights of the subjects involved in this project. Your identity scan confirms that this document was searchfinded. In a moment, you will be permitted into the Interaction Chamber.” Jane felt the hair on the back of her neck rise sharply, though she continued at the same pace, her projector floating alongside her absently. “Please make note of the following rules and stipulations prior to engaging the subject: You may use only one or two fingers to touch the subject at a time. Do not not grab, pull, or apply any unnecessary physical force to the subject. You may only touch the skin of the subject that has been marked as interactable. Do not under any circumstances touch the subject’s head or face. If you are confused by any of these terms, please access our network prior to entering and utilize our training modules to your contentedness. “The subject may laugh, cry, squirm, drool, or excrete unexpectedly. These behaviors are normal and are not typically produced by human touch. However, the subject may react to your touch and demonstrate feelings such as surprise, discomfort, or agitation. If the interaction with the subject is proving too strenuous, you will see a red light flash. If the red light flashes, you are to cease touching the subject immediately and withdraw your hand from the contact area. If you are confused by any of these terms, please access our network prior to entering and utilize our training modules to your contentedness.” The holograms lingered for a moment before vanishing on the spot, their absence now showing Jane that she had reached the door at the end of the corridor. It was far more protected than its predecessors, looking extremely thick and with an oval design on it that Jane knew was an elaborate locking mechanism. She eyed it with trepidation while it began to emit a low whirring noise, then actually stepped back when it opened from the center with an enormous rumble. She practically leapt through it then, as though afraid it would seal and she would miss her opportunity, her projector gliding just over her shoulder. She heard it close behind her with another thunderous clang, then absorbed the sight in front of her. She was in a circular room, light blue and packed with various technological instruments that she didn’t recognize. To her immediate right she saw what looked like a fuse box on the wall, a long tube dangling from it like an elephant trunk. The left side of the room was cluttered with large control panels attached to the curved walls, blinking an assortment of colors and looking like they would electrocute anyone who approached. In the center, however, was a large vertical tube, a pillar of light almost, coated in metal at the lower portion. Jane approached it cautiously, finding that the sheen of the cylinder gradually decreased as she did so, revealing the contents inside. Once close enough, she gazed downward at the infant within. It was a wrinkly little thing, pockets of fat hanging off its limbs oddly, other portions of its body scrunched or stretched. Completely naked, it lay on a silver cushion perched atop an opaque plinth with edges that extended upwards only slightly, holding the pillow in place; on close inspection, she could see minute red writing on various parts of it, presumably the areas she was permitted to touch. It was hard to identify such places exactly though, for the infant was squirming, kicking its pink legs arbitrarily, one little fist stretched outward and the other banging against its swollen belly. There was barely a hair atop its head, and its eyes were jammed shut, the opposite of its mouth, with seemed incapable of closing. And yet, it was making little in the way of noise, merely a soft gurgling that accompanied each tap of his chest. There was nothing unexpected in any of it. Like everything else ostensibly nullified by the tinker, Jane had experienced it through enough media—and with enough realism—that her proximity to the creature next to her wasn’t nearly as surreal as the idea that she was supposed to be getting some grand experience from it. Almost the entirety of history had unfolded in a certain way, and now, here at its apex, she felt as though she had been elected to holler down the mountain to let her ancestors know whether or not they had been overrating human contact all along. Jane kept that image in mind as she inspected the containment tube for signs of an entryway, finding to her right a small door attached. She wouldn’t allow herself to overthink it; she quickly pulled it open and reached inside. She felt her hand pass through a viscous substance; it was being sterilized, she knew. And at the next moment, she saw it emerge within the tube, mere inches from the side of the infant’s torso. The standard man’s voice filled her ears. “You have now entered into target proximity of the subject. Please remember the instructions provided to you prior to your admittance into the Interaction Chamber. This interaction may be monitored for quality assurance purposes. Your projector has not been affected. If you would like to participate in a brief survey following your interaction, please respond with ‘I would like to participate in a brief survey’. Otherwise, say nothing.” Jane did her very best to think nothing—always difficult, and one of the worst components of technopathic communication—so that she could devote the entirety of her focus to the writhing creature in front of her. It was shifting about as it had been, paying her no mind as she inched her hand further along, her oleaginous digits now slipping off of one another as she tried to optimally position them. How hard was she supposed to press? It didn’t matter. As though it possessed its own tinker, the infant’s hand shot forward, wrapping its entire fist around her middle finger. Jane gave a jump, startled at its warmth, and then watched as the infant turned its head towards her, the rest of its body frozen in place, its eyes now open, two shallow, dark pools boring into her own. It felt normal. A little waxy, glabrous, and warm, but nothing so far removed from her own experiences that she might have taken notice if she’d encountered it in a different context. The infant’s grip wasn’t particularly strong either, Jane finding it rather easy to maneuver herself within its grasp, now that the initial shock had worn off. But there was no spark, no shiver that ran through her spine, nothing that made her want to thrust her other hand into the tube and hold the little one close, or bring her lips to its belly in some attempt to make it laugh. It was merely skin. Yes, she was touching someone—or being touched, or, maybe, both. But that was a mere fact, nothing more. Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to realize, she wondered, while her projector produced static above her, trying to discern just how personal her inquiry had been. It was something that she had considered before, all the way back to when she’d first heard talk of the project. Perhaps the true amazement came from knowing that so many people, for so long, had constructed their whole lives, and indeed, entire great groups of people their entire worldviews, around some contrived, almost anthropic misunderstanding that connections were rooted, arbitrarily, in only one of the many important and ubiquitous human senses. If her earliest thinking-ancestors had been born with tinkers, would they have ever wondered what it was like to link fingers with another human being, as she was now? The infant was still gripping her, and she eyed its blotchy fist through the tube warily, suddenly almost repulsed by it, now realizing that something could be epiphanic without being humbling. She gave a sharp tug to pry away her finger, a little relieved actually at her newfound disinterest, but then tightened her body at the next second, for the infant’s eyes, already so stretched across its face, had welled up, and its mouth had mutated from a mere crevice to an endless pit, from which a shriek like no other had materialized, a desperate, almost eldritch wail of discomfort. “No no no no no-” Jane found herself crooning out loud, with her own mouth now, and she registered briefly the taste of blood, for her lips had been so stuck together that she had peeled the flesh from both of them, unthinking. It took her a moment to even recognize the voice as her own, but she set that idea aside as she focused her attention. She tightened her grip, now looking on in horror as the baby thrashed about in a nightmarish fashion, the tears bursting from its eyes so powerfully that she could almost count the drops. “It’s okay!” she yelled, only slightly noticing that yelling sounded very different out loud than in her head. She went to thrust her other hand into the tube, but at that very moment the room blinked, a shade of crimson enveloping her. The man’s voice echoed all around her. “Your interaction is over. Please remove your hand from the interaction zone and proceed to the decontamination shower in the left-most corner of the room. Thank you for your participation in Rockwilder Incorporated’s Inanna Project.” She wasn’t listening. The red light was flashing every three or four seconds or so, but she had not yet removed her hand from the tube, partially because it was still being gripped and partially because she felt very much as though she’d lost control of her body. The infant had hold of her in more ways than she could count. Either her body had gone limp or its hand had received a surge of immense strength, and it’s twisted form had captivated her in a way that the programs from earlier never could have. But even more, she longed to end its torture, to mollify and appease it, and that desire in itself felt awful, for she suddenly felt exceedingly vulnerable, powerless even. The infant was feeling something—agitation, maybe even pain—and though she knew it would soon subside she wanted desperately for it to end at that very moment. It was as though now there were two of her in some ways, an extra body that she needed to tend to, to protect and provide for, but her double was not her equal at all. It was some piteous, altricial extension of herself, and it was now, in this moment, dependent on her to end its suffering, and she was oblivious as to how. The room was still flashing. The voice had started to blare something, but she couldn’t hear it, she remained transfixed by the infant, never hating something more and yet wanting beyond all else to abate its discomfort and bring it absolute security. She felt something tug at her then, on her other arm, and for a wild moment she thought that another one had materialized and grabbed her, and she nearly burst into tears of despair, but then she felt a light shock jolt through her body, and she finally turned to face her aggressor, a collection of black rectangles and cylinders, crudely humanoid in its assembly, bearing down on her with a single menacing lens; a security bot. Its voice was by far the most mechanical of the day. “Extract your limb from the chamber immediately. You are being removed from the premises.” She stared blankly at it, then made to turn back at the unrelenting infant, but then the bot gave an almighty pull, and her finger slipped from her abductor’s clutches, though it continued to cry as though undisturbed by the change. The security bot escorted her out then, pulling her with such force she needed to keep her eyes on her feet to prevent falling, her projector trailing along after her in a frenetic fashion, still unable to conjure whatever words she was searching for. She was unable to cast even a single glance back at the tube, but the cries continued to ring out behind her as she left them, through the decontamination chamber actually, as well as the double doors that the bot pushed her through and slammed after her, and even out of the building as she exited. She continued to hear them the whole walk home, and then for many days after that as well.
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About MeVekin87 is the author of the Albus Potter Series, a 7-book continuation of the J.K Rowling's Harry Potter books. The Things I Write While You're Asleep |
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