Chapter 1

She had another dream of the woman with the red hair...

She sang her a song, and it sounded like a siren’s call. All Aven knew was her tedious life of meeting the scheduled times, or else she would suffer the consequences of Demerits and potential S.P.—the looming threat of learned pain. Learned pain was implanted experience of memories from other (most likely deceased) citizens from generations past. They served as reminders of what actions caused, teaching them what not to do. Their memories were cautionary tales, and they felt just as they were called—filled with pain and sometimes even torture. Time was variable and hard to discern. Sometimes it felt like days, and sometimes it felt like minutes or seconds.

Sometimes she saw the results of catastrophic climate wars, or other demise of populations through illness and plagues that swept the earth. Famine was the worst one, and this was usually a past timeline memory. That’s how it felt for her, at least. She wasn’t sure why. You would think it would be getting stabbed or shot. Those were horrible too, but famine…Aven could not describe the intensity of the anguish—empty excruciating desire and stabbing stomach pangs. It turned angry inside for her. Yet, she had just eaten recently. She was recalling the last time right now. That didn’t matter, because the implant went to the brain, and it connected and affected everything else. She felt that she could go into ketosis, and she thought of how connected the body and brain were, and it really freaked her out.

Aven had a best friend, Koral. Koral just two years older than her, and she understood how to get away with things. Aven really looked up to her. She felt more like a sister than a friend.

Aven - N1, Sector 5

They were an isolated nation by choice, so they had to rely on their own production and supplies. Their plans and negotiations in the beginning years had worked—Nations 2 and 3 in one fell swoop in their coup. From Aven’s perspective, they were no longer so reliant on other nations, because they were now a larger nation. They were made up of the old smaller ones. Aven got nonsensical sometimes, and she wondered if it was from the daily pills, but she had no way of knowing that—all she knew was that she took had to her pill every day on schedule, except for the days that she forgot it. On those forgetful days, she got Demerits, which was how she met Koral. It was in passing, actually, on the way to her hearing. She had a mini hearing for getting too many Demerits, and her supervisor Wenchall Thomas, thought the S.P.’s were hard enough. “Clearly you enjoy correction Aven, because you continue to miss the Schedule and forget your dose. That is not a good way now, is it? We will have to raise the Correction to a

level 2, a bit unusual for your age…but it has been done before.” Under his breath, he said, “I’m sorry.”

That night, Aven tried her best to drown out the noises of her own calls in her nightare, but she could not keep them down. She was dreaming of the red-haired woman again.

This time, she was lying on her back and looking at the stars. Aven lied next to her, feeling calm and at peace. The woman was pointing out the constellations. She was very graceful and had a sweet lulling voice. Then, the red-haired woman pulled out a knife from under her, and Aven screeched a lout yell in terror. She was very young in this dream. Then she woke up.

** Koral was dead, and it was all her fault. She knew it in the depth of her stomach and the sharp creeping up her spine. Today was the day she would make the escape. Koral’s idea was to escape through the Growing Room.

She had to go. The voices were too much, and she believed it was coming from the pills. She had too many Demerits, and she was afraid of the consequences. She had noticed something strange when she missed doses. She made a leaf come back to life when she touched it, and her hand glowed with a greenish white light. So, Sami would hack the program of the security system to get in the room and escape that night. She would try to stack the plants to get through the vents. After that, she wasn’t sure, but there was no way to tell what was beyond her Sector. **

*Sami works from the inside, but Aven didn’t know it. She reported the brain changes when Aven stopped taking her dose. *

It didn’t even feel like it existed, and the memory was faded—only threads left hanging in her mind that she saw over and over again.

The main one her favorite: She was cradled on her mother’s lap (the woman with ice blonde hair that she assumed was her mother). She was lightly bouncing; she was just a toddler. She laughed gaily. Her laughter was like wind chimes streaming across the breeze. It was vibrant and beautiful to look at –gold colors, sultry red and purples—not at all like the Underground, which was mostly grey and boring neutral tones. She clung to that memory during the worst LP’s, and they kept her full during the famine lessons/memories, and the wars and the natural disasters…an hour of time stretched for days…the memory kept her sane. Time was only an illusion after all, she thought to herself. They learned about time from Prophet Ihsen during their lessons. All of the greatest intellectuals, thinkers, political leaders, they were known as prophets. It was just as it was.

The seedling production had declined in quality in the last two years. Only 15 percent had yielded any sprouts. The Cardinals, the head political leaders of the Sole Commerce Commons could not let anyone know that they were losing control of production. They took it out on their workers, too.

*** Koral, at 15, had misbehaved enough that she was changed Sections—a notable thing, since it had happened 3 times in the last generation cycle. Every sixth generation, there was a full rotation, and workers were switched to a new department (the workers referred to it as a scramble), but a full section scramble happened when the last of all the Aged died out. They lived in sections but were assigned to different departments.

They timed the births of the youngest generation, which meant that the Aged had to die on- schedule, and the births could not be delayed for any reason. Births could only occur for a specified reason. The window of human production. They had no parents, no siblings…these were antiquated concepts, but the superimposed lessons betrayed that there had been other ways, a different construction of society as a whole. Death and taxes, Koral had hears Old Man Dylan say.

He had learned of the saying from a now-extinct lesson, one that came from a book, something of the Before Times. That was before he died mysteriously in a synthetic lumberyard accident. The synthetic lumberyard was an incredible sight to see—a massive and vast mini forest of trees that came from synthetic seedlings. This was always a curiosity to Koral—how were those material used? It looked like wood, was it chemical or herbal? She couldn’t remember the science lesson right now that went into the difference. She thought that it was all biochemically…could it be made and fed with electricity and petroleum?

It was a higher level department, the synthetic lumberyard. The HLD’s were made up of curated scientific teams of workers, most likely the children of Cardinals. There were no children theoretically, but the Cardinals bent the rules because they held the most power. The children

deemed the most special often rose up to the Master Level—the breeding ground for the Cardinals. The Underground Cardinals worked with the Above-ground Officials, but dissemination of the orders was not always carried out effectively, Koral reflected. There was also an undisclosed and unofficial faction divide. Within the Cardinals there were the Lowers and the Uppers (officially titled Raised Lefts). The Lowers came from the defunct Industrious class, which had risen to political prominence in the 13th year of the Underground’s making. The actual date was never said in their lessons.

Old man Dylan had been around the longest in her world, and he knew much about the Before Times. Someone had to carry on the message, he told her often. He was a bit forgetful, but told wonderful stories. He referred often to the missing Chronicles, which talked of a long-held prophecy, which spoke of impending doom—a war that could end all wars or destroy humanity altogether. This would be done with a collective of chosen individuals, all the age of 13. The first to be found would neither be a chosen one or a faceless individual.

“The prophecy isn’t any good with no context,” he told her gruffly. Old Man Dylan was always upset about the loss of the books. He only had been able to save a few in his closet after they were taken out.

Koral knew that the prophecy had been altered, but she never had the chance to tell Aven about it. She would meet with the Oracle Crone, faced with a choice—to lead alone as the one or to stay with the collective.

The latter choice meant more uncertainty for the war, and more rising tides of the revolts from

A.I. colonies –the Masters of Intelligent Machines, who had obtained their codes and altered them—leading to>>access denied to the N5 leaders, where the most revolts were occurring. Even bots were corrupt as controlled by the revolting A.I., and a deal had been struck between N3. Thus, some of the MIM had higher positions in the state with full access, in exchange for the colonies, which were essentially internment camps for bots. The A.I. were more evolved than humans, just the next generation, and the “humans” were trying to take control back, depending on which nation it was.

This wasn’t known to Koral, but it would be. Sammi knew, and she would tell Aven later.

Aven had a blue bird in her room that sang to her at night and in the morning. She had to make sure the bird did not get too loud, or else she could get caught. What would happen if she got caught? They would ask her where she found the little blue bird, whom she named Fluff.

She thought of his name after she saw his feather, a little blue-grey tuft floating to the floor. Koral had found him in the storage discard room near her department, and introduced him to

Aven. He sang immediately little sqeaky notes. Koral liked the name Pipsqueak, but Aven

didn’t—“He’s Fluff, darn it.”

Koral had suggested that Aven and she leave schedule early to meet him. She had been hiding him in there for the morning.

It was one of the riskiest things they had done in a long time. The could have gotten 3 Demerits from it.

**Maybe: Aven hits a guard to protect Koral, but Koral covers it up in a flicker. Aven becomes confused, but Koral takes the fall in questioning. Koral ends up going to the gallows. What if insead of dying, she is sent to the camps in Nation 5 as a Discard?**

*The gallows are an old remnant of corrections from the Before-Times. It is either a form of “eliminating” a worker, or it is sending them away as a Discard to Nation 5. Leaning towards the latter.*

They had finished their initial work for the first quota mark early, but it seemed usually that their work was never done, because the quota was always changing throughout the day. They were always trying to keep up with the shortages and compensate for their lack of plant production. They toiled constantly, and what were they really but zero’s and one’s, when it was put in perspective…Aven felt the oppressive hum and the static of daily life, and Koral and she talked about it in code sometimes. The days melded into each other; it hung heavy in their stale air and sank into their DNA.

*Their DNA was altered anyways by the morning dose*

*The doses were multipurpose—for one, to suppress any rebellious streaks or qualities of noncompliance (qualities deemed noncompliant, rather). It also was to suppress psychic and supernatural abilities, which helped them to discern who was a Next One—one of the thirteen- year old’s from the prophecy. An uprising in Nation 1 was brewing and a gasket was going to blow off any second.

They put things in the pills to change the DNA. Also, the abilities had started popping up in citizens when long ago in the Before-Times, there was a contamination in their water filtration system from the materials and plants that made the pills. The pills used (at that time) ore that was mined from another timeline and crossed over. That is where and how most of the bot colonies were established, because they could survive the uninhabitable terrain to send back raw materials—materials to harvest and help with the pill and food production. The ore had similar organic properties to the seedlings and they could replicate their food supply. But once they started to replicate the ore with synthetic materials, the contamination hit with a strong force.

When the contamination hit after the ore production had gone awry, and abilities had started to come about, they did research into the DNA code, of the Liminals. That was the term they used for them. Yet, no DNA code had been found with any differences at all. No change to the mRNA (research)—nothing could be detected that revealed how some of the population was born differently. The truth was more complex than one simple contamination, but that was not widely publicized of course, not even in the Above-Ground world. Only the Select knew a piece of it, and even then, the information was divided into parts, so that no one person or party had all of it.

The little bluebird sang its airy chirp, the little staccato notes joined together like a romance language of the Before-Times. It was sweet and it made Aven feel just like felt when she thought of the red-haired woman (the good parts anyway). When she felt the notes inside, she felt jubilant, vibrant, free, alive…

When she met little Fluff, she knew something so beautiful should belong in the underground. She vowed to set him free when she and Koral made their escape.

It was terrible that it was went wrong—Koral would go to the Gallows for a mistake she made, along with the other tried Deviants. And she was a Deviant, all right.

Koral had assaulted a guard, a level 3 crime. There was no coming back from a Level 3.

**Aven thought Koral hit the guard but Koral switched it so that she would take the fall for Aven.** The glitches were too quick to catch, but it was true that Koral switched it right before Aven struck the guard.

She was dead as they knew it after the trial—sentencing had not been given, a decision by the Cardinal judge had not yet been made, but both girls knew that it was coming—imminent expiration for Koral.

“What are we to do, Fluff? One day you’ll understand, and one day you will tell me why, why you got stuck in the underground.” Fluff squeaked a mousey chirp in agreement.

On the night before the trial, Koral covered up Aven’t mouth. It held in her scream.

“We’re going to do it, now.” She winked at Aven, and it was a serious one. Koral cut the line to the room with her mind, and they jettisoned out.

Koral made the doors to the Grow Room whoosh open. Koral covered the room while Aven tried to make the plants grow, but she choked. She failed on the last part of the plant, and the light went out. Wham! The doors flew open again two male guards burst past the threshold. Koral was fighting them both and telling Aven to go, but Aven came in fast and struck the shorter guard. She struck him hard and she struck below the belt, and that’s when Koral glitched the whole program.

That was all Aven could remember when the trial happened. Koral was being tried and Aven wasn’t, and Aven was too cowardly to turn herself in. Telepathically, Koral told Aven to just leave, and leave tonight. Koral became an Eliminated just as they both knew she would be.

**Koral and Aven had hatched the plan long before the trial. Koral basically come up with the whole thing, but Aven had filled her in on her life-bringing abilities. She brought little Tuff back to life, who Sammi had killed as a threat after the incident that got Koral her Level 3.**

Koral was the bold one, and Aven was the impulsive one. Was her control-malfunctioning a byproduct of the daily dose, or did it help her? It was becoming more common, workers who had control-malfunctioning. In turn, enforcement was getting harder and stricter.

Koral had asked these and other questions in a note, which was found right around the time of the incident, the fight in the meal room. Were the workers actually dead and/or were they collected for testing? What was done with them and what was done with the information? What would they do about the dose? Koral knew why the harvest was so important for creating the medicine used for their daily dose. She knew that it had to do with the original ore contamination and the Selects.

Aven stroked Fluff with her front two fingers. He was so soft and she could feel his heart thud light and fast. A tear leaked form the corner of her eye, and she felt strange. There wasn’t supposed to be sadness in the Underground. It wasn’t just abilities they suppressed; it was emotions as well. She had missed the dose that day though, and they had not caught on fast enough to compensate for the half-life in her bloodstream.

**The variance—everyone’s bloodstream was not yet standardized, but the chemistry teams and mechanical/biotechnicians/biomachinery engineers and tech doctors were working on changing it. The debate over biodiversity, had been ongoing for what seemed like a millenia. Would the blood standardization have too great of an impact on adaptability, and evolution for survival? How could they attain complete control over the condition of their environment: food supply, water, weather condition—the argument for advancement through struggle (the same one for old capitalism) asserted that too much controlled comfort and ease and would lead to stagnation). **

What happened when an inevitable catastrophe ruined that comfort and stability that they had worked so hard to create? But what if they could change the “inevitable?” Given that they could guarantee survival, leisure, pleasure for the selected population. They could always jump timelines, was one theory. How would they even know if the inevitable catastrophe occurred down the line? They were not trying to create eternal youth or life, just a solution to constant warfare and suffering, something that would last them, the Cardinals. Wasn’t that the ongoing goal from millenia past? Anyway, this was why it was a debate. Not all parties agreed nor had vested interests; this was nothing new. Standardizing the ideals was not the solution, either. Not that they were even trying. “Communism—” the word was so ancient, it was barely more than a whisper of a rumor now. Something that they wouldn’t dare say aloud—it was an outlawed word. There were a few words on the Outlawed list, and they were the very worst to get caught saying. Communism was one of them, republican another, democrat another, and socialism another. Getting caught for saying those words was at least two Demerits. Two Demerits for one action, that was a serious offense. It was as it were.

But that was history long ago from before the Before-Times, barely knowable today. And that was something Old Man Dylan had shown Koral, when he had lent her an old tome to study. “Got to be prepared for the war of wars, young worker.” Gender had been eradicated socio-cultrually and politically, but it still officially existed among them, stuck from the Before-Times. This was more so common among the older workers from certain Wards, Wards that had different ideals and ideas about the world, past down through the generations. These families were not biological, they were Bretheren.

She woke up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat. The nightmare again, the one where the woman was handing her a gold plate filled with food. Then she slid out her knife from underneath the plate and killed her father. In the dream, they donned black for the funeral procession. She played with her sister in the rain puddles while the adults projected a life memorium outside by the grass.

Aven went to get her porridge that next dreadful day, and she remembered what she had wanted to tell Koral. That she thought it would get better, but she didn’t know what better was. How could she, except that she had her handful of memories, memories that informed her of those invisible times that she could not reach.

Where did they come from? They couldn’t be real. There had not been mothers or daughters for so may years, generations up on generations. So why did she believe that they were real, and why did she cling to them like air to breathe?

After the fateful decision when she saw her best friend rushed away, she knew it was time to go. She talked with Sammi, who agreed to hack the system for her. On that night, she threw up her last dose.

When Calinda went to see the old crone, she was shaking. She had seen her before—the day before her husband, E, died. He had been killed by the red-haired woman. She knew because she had hired her to do it. She had watched in terror as the prophecy came to life—her prophecy, that she would marry a great leader and ascend they throne by way of his death.

She hadn’t expected the feeling though, the stab to her heart as the old crone told her she would have to kill her own child—the one who would overthrow her if she did not. She could lead herself, or the child could take over--and start the Faceless Crowd, to help carry the ancient torch.

*The caveat was that to get the utopia they desired, all of humanity would end—on the highest note of their creation. But Calinda could not bear that idea, so she decided to “bury” her daughter underground and hide her. She would fulfill the prophecy, while also disallowing it.*

Her fingers trembled against her legs as she watched the old crone roll the runes on the dusty table.

“Two children…one choice, which will it be?” Her voice croaked out like a choking frog. It was eery and it rolled in a thrum that scratched Calinda’s throat.

The sacrifice. She chose Aven, the one who cried like a lamb at night. She hated the weakness, but she did comfort her with what little light she had left inside her. More light went to the other daughter, whom she created in her likeness. She was the older one by three minutes. She thought Navea was prettier, but she would never say it out loud.

One of the runes had a wave pictogram on one, and a fish on the other. She held the thired rune behind her back. She knew in her heart she could not tell Calinda the trught—Calinda would be killed by her own daughter. It was already written in fate.

So, Caliinda made her choice, and she brought Aven down the steps herself—one gut wrenching stomp at a time—the steps echoed thunderous in her mind and ears.

She saw ancient blood spilled on the walls. The steps disappeared as she broke through the timeline, back to the ancient days, even before the Before-Times, then back to the present day. She could not discern the break into the future, because it was too quick for her eyes.

It looked bleak in front of that threshold—electric blue lights blinded her eyes and lit up the rings of her irises…lightning. She was a Liminal, and she was giving her Liminal child to the underground.

*Back to the Escape*

Aven crept into the Grow Room surreptitiously. She wasn’t sure why she was being so careful, oh heck, but she was scared then to get caught, too. She thought, and then unthought, that Sammi rewrote the code. But the whole Grow Room was in a no-fly zone. Nothing came in and nothing came out. Sammi was a genius in Aven’s opinion. Aven always went to her for tech advice during her hours in the Grow Room.

She didn’t have to do the controls, she just had one job: to get the plants to grow up to the vents. Then she would rip out her tracker and swallow it. No…that wouldn’t work. Why did she even think that? She shook her head in dismay at herself. The trade had been her bird, Fluff. Sammi would give Fluff to Meerya—she didn’t have the patience for birds.

Aven held the first stalk with her small, squarish hand. She saw a glimmer of whitish green light. She focused on growing the light in her mind. It took a while, maybe an hour. She was getting very nervous. Finally, it started working. The stalk grew a leaf that was greener than the decaying brown it had originally been. The stalk grew skywards and the leaves spread out. It was about twenty yards up into the glass-paneled ceiling. She put a little more mental effort into it. Her temples were starting to ache. Another plant grew and intertwined with the first. They conjoined and wrapped around, furling into one another. They spiraled up with a whoosh.

The luminosity of the green hurt her eyes. She hopped on like it was a Gym rope and climbed up, up. She almost fell and her body scrambled back on as she swayed. She scraped her hand on the scratchy vine.

When she got to the vent, she cut herself against a screw to the panel. A laser beam shot out at her from the top, but she pushed herself away right in time. One drop of green blood fell down, down below and struck the leaf of the plant she had originally held onto. Crap, she was scared of heights, and her lip trembled and her hands shook.

As if by pure magic, the leaf with her blood sprouted further out at the sides, growing into a stalk, then creating more vines.

She swung her leg up (no easy feat) and kicked in the glass paneling. She pushed back again. Shards of glass flew past her and she froze them. They hovered around her, buzzing in place. She swung up and in the hole. Fuck, she realized the alarm went off…LOUD.

She swung up and dove inside with a flash off of the stalk. She was surprised; she was usually the clumsiest one in the Grow Room.

She crawled back up and noticed she was in a large air shaft. She started sprinting. She ran for a while until she heard loud echoes that sounded like it was coming from machinery. Bing-cling-clang-THUD-BOOM. They repeated as if on a loop. She listened for a little while.

She dropped down from the shaft and landed in a large tunnelway. She looked up and the ceiling flashed green for a second, so that she barely had time to register it. She looked around. No, nothing available to help her get back up.

She noticed one thing—a large boulder. She launched herself onto the boulder and looked around—almost completely dark. Her tracker gave her some light, whitish blue through that translucent part of her skin. The bright green light flashed again against the onyx walls and ceiling.

She heard footsteps, but she couldn’t find the source. It sounded like two men, whispering.

She heard the cocking of a gun. She looked left and she looked right, and she didn’t know which way to choose. She kept sprinting, until she realized she hadn’t moved at all and she was on the boulder. She lept up like a cat to the top of the wall clinging to the edge of jutting-out rock.

“Don’t worry about that one,” one man said. The laser gun was laid down, and another put into the holster of the second man, but she couldn’t see it.

She found the source of machinery, humming, thrumming. It sounded like a lullaby to her. There was a lantern against the wall and she lit it up with her mind. The wall slid open into a factory room.

It stretched on for a mile it seemed, all metal and acrylic plastic. A.I. machinery was pressing medicine into capsules. A capsule flew off into a pile within a bin—error. There were other bins that had clearly been changed out, emptied, dumped and exchanged by A.I.

She had never seen a pill like this before: empty. She wanted to taste it to see if it was the same, but she didn’t. She heard a bang!

Quickly, she hid. It was a person coming to collect the bins. She jumped into the large pill collector filled with empty capsules. She dove underneath the top layer and held her breath, stifled in.

The worker took the bin—and her—out of the room. She couldn’t breathe, and she struggled to quiet herself. She heard a ringing in her ears. They stopped short of the designated stop, noticing her movement. The A.I. man pulled out a laser gun and bam! He was shot. She couldn’t tell the direction it was coming from. A second worker dashed in and took cover for them. She was out of it now, capsules cascading around her down to the ground with a thick tin tin tin-ticking. She saw where the shot came from, a woman holding her smoking laser gun.

Aven had never seen anyone so fast before—lightning quick kicks shooting out…she knocked his gun right out of his hand, so fast that it was a blur.

The grabbed her, the anonymous rescuers, and laser shots kept firing off as they fled the building.

They sprinted and rushed into a hovership.