Holographic Memories of the Heart

Cinta’s memory flexes backwards, landing at 8 years. She is perusing adult insights on anything televised through her mother’s news story translations in trending child-level terminology. “But Mama, what will happen if they don’t just kill those bad men?” she asks of a report of violent criminals being imprisoned, like in ancient times.

Cinta, now 28, is staring up at flickering filtered news casting 24/7 on a ceiling screen. In these maximal mechanized security enclosures there is no indication of day or night, or what day it even is, irrelevant anyway in perpetual limbo. Everything is automated. Information flows in. No messages are allowed out. Robots deliver food and essentials through tiny sliding slots. Human passage is sealed over on initial entry. Cinta’s thoughts again reach for her mother, all she can do as awareness of time has been displaced. Given up on evoking escape.

Giselle, her mama, informs Cinta that morning, “Dear, you will learn all the new systems in school this year. It was decided by the honorable Baba Vladix, that long drawn-out punishment in jail will help criminals reincarnate as better people.”

Cinta replies, “But mama, why these robo-mates? They look like real girls! It’s scary!”

The projection screen in their modern 2249 kitchen depicts life-like companion robots being rolled out of factories to accompany prisoners. Partners designed for the world’s worst criminal loners.

Giselle goes on. “The more progress made on bad men, the faster way to a better planet. Imaginary women have proven to calm them in experiments." She continues as if to herself, although Cinta can still hear. “They can’t have real ones! Psychopaths inflict terrible harm on real girls…”

Cinta’s mind wanders on around her life, her body still. At 16 she had a schoolfriend, Venus, whose father worked for the Vladix Facilities. Venus would impart lurid stories of men admitted into facilities. Talk so terrifying, the teachers would frequently shut her down, even in this era when freedom of speech was encouraged at any age. Her obsessive ramblings over inmate processing passed along at home were legal, besides criminals were public property until the walls of a facility clamped around them. No humans worked beyond the impossible prison walls, as proposed by their founder Baba Vladix - likelihood of escapes would then be reduced to 0%.

Venus’s stories were shocking enough. Her transparent amusement made some kids stomachs churn even more. It was through her however that Cinta and class were allowed insight into the fascinating history of robo-mate manufacturing. One specific day when a class group were lunching together in a dining pod, lights up a signal on recall…

“They were originally called compassion girls.” Venus explained to the group, “Back in 2035. The historic pandemic outbreaks had risen so overwhelmingly, animals were eventually rendered pointless as test models for cures. Additionally, the Baba Lineage was gaining power, starting the civil wars, demanding an end to cruelty, to any belief-based crimes. So, test humans were started from real human skin and other parts put together - producing more effective models.”

A few of the group offer their thoughts. Leona agreeably adds, “I heard that before.” Another kid, Awan, says “I heard that’s a lie! They were just cosmetic models…”

In this time known as the 23rd century, past was considered ever distant so not always accurately recorded. If it ever had been, records could have been frequently deleted, followed by restoration attempts. All of this was common as differing parties rose and fell with their own interests in how to shape a populace. It was widely believed that humans were generally an evolving product of the past, tumbling towards spiritual climax which would save them from not knowing exactly who or what they were.

Zagger catches Cinta’s eye as he takes his turn to add, “Our girls now need not be made up with chemicals, since Babas divined how real beauty shines!”

Cinta feels a sensation she knows is perhaps her first realization of love - as fabled and told all her life would one day be. Venus throws her a blatant cold glance. Zagger was widely acknowledged as the most desirable boy in school, although he rarely talked. It was considered a spiritual moment when he did speak. Everyone keeps the air clear, awaiting more.

He ruminates, then, “It was perhaps found there was no need for any testing - as origins of many fatal diseases were discovered. Spreading wild birds’ natural nutritive sources provide them immunity, which then was lost with the removal of their instinctive foods back when land was stripped of plant-life, even before any necessity…”

Cinta agrees, “Yes, I believe in this story from the planting ceremonies!”

Venus tries to be acknowledged again, “Zagger, you know so much!”

Zagger can’t help not hearing her as he’s focused on asking Cinta, “Do you want to accompany me on the next ceremony?”

That night, Cinta had danced and joyously shared her day of the New Moon with her video diary. A gift from Mama Giselle on her 16th birthday, diary entries were concealed inside this antique jewellery box which had traditionally been used to keep treasures safe. Innermost feelings were the sacred items stored in this evolved box, upcycled as a video device to record important personal data each month. Impenetrable security was integrated in the design. It would seem like any other jewellery box, only accessible by key. But Cinta’s inventor father, absent for many years on an exploratory space mission, added some touches to this magical device before leaving. Only opening the diary with a special supercharged crystal heart-shaped locket allows playback of the video entries. Where a ballet dancer would be expected, a holographic Cinta comes to life - dancing, singing, and telling tales of her times in tune with her deepest emotional energies.

Giselle is desperate to remember the song her husband told her would call family in any emergency. If only her space traveller switchboard job didn’t fill her head with distraction.

If Cinta wasn’t wearing her locket three weeks earlier when she disappeared, there was a chance to trace her last movements. Hope dissipates though as Giselle searches her daughter’s apartment desperately for the locket. The song was the only portal to a shared information space. On the night of the new moon, she meditates alone on Cinta’s rooftop. In whispered unconsciousness, words emerge in the shape of song… “It is from me / already within you / an open heart/ where we did start?...”. Giselle’s pager signals incoming communications. She is already on her way, back to the house, grabbing the holographic diary box, and straight into her husband Mile’s empty office.

Everything has been intact since the day he left. It had been Cinta’s job to enter intermittently to monitor any possible calls from her father lost in space. A series of numbers appear on the comms box connecting to her pager. The safe. Zapped open with this sent code, pure energy radiates instantly from the locket. A switch to faith is flicked. At Mile’s desk the resounding comms device set solely for messages from his mission, stops. Contact has reached briefly, after 7 long years of silence.

Giselle begins scanning the diary entries from the latest recording, where Cinta is excitedly relaying a new opportunity – an interview at Vladix Industries. She rewinds to the beginning of the diary for as many potential clues that can be scrounged.

Classroom romance between Cinta and Zagger had bloomed, while a phase of bullying by Venus matched up to this time. Cinta’s last mention of Venus is a report on being approached by her at graduation, and being told – “You’re gone, forever!” Such a threat was unfulfilled it seemed, but just as she and Zagger were engaged, her fiancé died in an accident.

Cinta had thrown her full mind and body that was previously reserved for starting a family, into study, becoming a highly skilled personality designer of nanny-mates. It was just after a televised profile highlighting her role in creating Illume Incorporated Nanny-Mates, adored by children and their busy mamas everywhere, that an exorbitantly lucrative new job offer found it’s way to her.

Cinta, staring at the cell’s ceiling, now remembers Venus as perhaps the last human she saw before being somehow trapped with this soul master; who, thanks to good old-fashioned luck from the old world, is actually scared of her - a human in his cell. He leers occasionally from a corner he’s been in since her display of unexpected programming straight from her emergence out of shock on arrival. He even lets her eat first, demanding she leave him half, sliding it to him carefully, and without talking like a human.

The sudden recall of Venus being the last person she saw is setting up an even stronger shock than the strange landing, that had only really seemed like a surrealist nightmare. Those illogical screened images in her eyes begin to blur with tears. I want my mama...Cinta cries.

Giselle is viewing the holographic scroll with an advanced intelligence detective, the best possible.

It seems that shortly after Cinta’s moment of career fame Venus turned up from nowhere. Apparently a lot nicer after all the years gone by, also highly successful – practically running an official robo-mate design studio. She has invited Cinta for a private studio session interview, promising a high fee just to see example characters for a new line of soul mate models, then an extravagant salary if chosen for the role.

“Base them on your own sweet nature to succeed! Then I will pay you 3 times more than the nanny company!” Venus had promised. “Only I need you to be ready ASAP?”

Her exact words. Cinta visualizes light emerging from clouded confusion now. She has arrived for the interview, up a lift to a secluded level of Vladix Industries. Venus gives a tour of the lab, and a concentrated wake up tea. But something is wrong now, as if some foggy effect started here. Cinta sees Venus clearly, unexpectedly calling to her, demanding her eyes lock with hers as she walks towards her – and then slips. Zoning on this moment, Cinta can see and feel her body flounder and flipping into the air.

I must have been knocked out! Awakening in an automated truck full of robo-mates. Each of them is encircled by a glassy cubicle, which one by one, is lifted by a mechanism like a garbage truck scooping up bins, dropping them into a circular opening on a roof. These are the high cell walls of the prisoners. Cinta has spent weeks since protesting to any robo guards encountered, but they do not understand – this is impossible they say – they do not know this program. These don’t even look human, just basic metal monsters. Despairing in a valley trapped by mountains of looming gloomy truths now, she wonders if she will live to disclose a new awareness - that corruption will always fail perfect systems, reducing ideal worlds to a dystopia for some, or even all.

Giselle is demanding the detective submits Venus to torture tactics to access truth, but he is hesitant. Her father was now in a mega-powerful position at Vladix. Persistence finally pays and they are on their way to the facility that Venus had Giselle strapped up in a robo-mate cubicle and sent to.

A screeching alarm sounds. The ceiling is vibrating. The criminal crouched in the corner appears glued down, an arm band he wears is flashing red light.

A camera is manoeuvred through the ceiling, twirls, then slides back up. An official human detective is next, appearing the same way Cinta had landed there, followed by a team of rescuers. She sees here mama waiting on the roof, the heart-shaped locket glowing from her cleavage as she is elevated upwards to freedom.