Love as it should be

It was a beautiful day, but nobody in the metropole could see it. Between the sky and the people hanged dark clouds; and even though they poured rain on millions, only one was feeling it.

Cya was running under the rain crying and soaking wet. A little holoboard was hovering in circles around her. She tried to hide her face from its sensors, but her jacket could only hid her tears, though not her elevated heartbeat and low pressure.

The A.I. had a lock on her distress. If she could calm down the drone would go away, but she could not. The world Cya lived in now treated emotions as if they were some kind of dangerous illness.

They were showing red signs and playing recorded messages like: ’’Please note that any behavior outside of your jurisdiction is prohibited’’; and ’’Try ‘Xonos’ new and improve emoregulators’’. She screamed at them to go away, to no avail.

Unfortunately, while the emotionless drones were deaf to her plea, people were not. The citizens were cramming on the dank sidewalk looking at her with fear, while others recorded what she was doing. It was too late.

She clasped the pendant she was wearing around her neck. Her phalanges were whitening, but Cya could only gaze upon the wooden jewelry wore on her ring finger. The holoboards where now spinning around her indicating to the population to stay away for their safety. ''Their safety. When it's convenient, the emoregulators allowed them to feel fear and aggression'', she thought.

Cya's vision blurred. She didn’t know if it was the rain or the tears or simply her grasp on herself slipping as she grasped the pendant with even more force, but in one swift move, she ripped her necklace and punched one of the machines.

She barely took the time to look at the broken holoboard. People stared at her terrorized, already sending live feed to the ‘’Emotions Social Reactions and Behaviors’’ or ‘’ESRB’’; a wide array of satellites monitoring every living heart and every soul in the city. They said it was for the good of the people.

Cya ran as fast as she could. Her hand was bleeding from the punch she threw. She stopped to look at it and saw that the silver heart-shaped locket she wore a minute ago sat in her palm as if it was bleeding. She burst in tears and threw the thing behind her. The police was closing in on her. In a futile effort, Cya continued to run, though she could not get far.

The police had the clearance from the ESRB to help prevent public or private disturbances. They could take control of their systems to pinpoint any abnormal emotivity and prevent chaos from spreading more effectively. They easily spotted Cya on the edge of a bridge. As she was going to jump, a patrol car swooped from behind and an officer shocked her with a taser. She fell unconscious.

 Cya woke up with heavy eyes; in a chair and feeling cold. She tried to remove the wet hairs in her face, but something prevented it. She startled at the sight of handcuffs around her wrists and ankles.

She heard a door. As her sight adjusted to the bright light pointing towards her face, she perceived the dirty concrete walls surrounding her, a metallic table where the handcuffs on her wrists were magnetized and a bandage on her wound.

A large silhouette had taken seat in front of her. It appeared to be a man in his fifties. He wore a thick grey mustache that covered his upper lip. A badge on his uniform spelled : ‘’Inspector Stall’’.

Stall pressed a button on his side of the table. Then an holoscreen appeared between them and displayed Cya's files. The inspector began enumerating her felonies with his deep voice on a monotonous tone; tone that everybody bore nowadays.

- ‘’Public disturbances, destruction of private property, resisting arrests. You made people feared for their lives, Mrs. Micro-Sharp’’.

- She kept herself to spit in his face. ‘’My name is Cya’’. She saw him take a little rectangle - not more than two fingers in size - out of his front pocket.

- ‘’My Data-Link indicates that you are having bad physical responses to your last name’’.

- ‘’That's not my name. It's the name they gave us when I made the Big-Sync with Izhar’’, she said angrily.

- ‘’Yes Izhar, your husband. It says here that you are thirty-three, but you were not part of the ESRB before twenty-nine, correct?’’

- ‘’ Again with that nonsense... It's fake!’’

- ‘’You see, people who are from less fortunate areas do not have the chance to grow up with the ESRB in their life. As you probably know, the process of integration can take a long time. Sometime years.’’

- ‘’It's a lie!’’, she shouted. Stall was not fazed at all, no surprise. The emoregulators for the police were designed to keep them calm even if a bomb exploded next to them.

- ‘’There are no lies. Only facts’’. He showed the silver heart-shaped locket that she threw away.



- ‘’This is mine. You can't have that.’’

- ‘’Right now, Mrs. Micro-Sharp, this is evidence.’’ He opened the heart that revealed a little triangular plug and connected it to a slot on the table directly under the holoscreen. ‘’This is your biorhythm with your husband since your Big-Sync. Everything seems fine. The probability of an error could've happened when the ESRB started a hundred years ago. Now, this is impossible. The A.I.s do not make mistakes.’’

- ‘’ I was happy, before.’’

- ‘’Everything was in perfect sync except in the last three weeks. You stop taking your supplements and emoregulators. Why?’’

- Cya had a crazy laugh. ‘’ Regulators, more like suppressors. This is not love. You think that because you know how the physiology of the body works you can manipulate it like you want? I knew true love.’’ She looked at her wooden ring still at her finger. ‘’We live in a simulacrum; a false world. We are letting machines decide what we want to do. We take pills to fit in.’’

- ‘’Answer the question.’’

- ‘’You just don’t listen, do you?’’ Cya threw her head backward and looked at the ceiling with empty eyes. ‘’I forgot’’, she muttered.

- ‘’It says here that you were involved in an 'unsafe union' prior to your Big-Sync. Is it right?’’

- She had a little laugh again. Her eyes were filled with sadness. ‘’Is this how you say it? When two people are not enslaved to the ESRB? I loved him so much. I am the one who killed him.’’

- ‘’Who did you killed ?’’

- ‘’We swore on our life that we would love each other for ever. One morning, he seemed so happy. He said ‘good morning my love’. It seemed so unreal... I don't know why. I got scared and I ran away. I ran too close from the city and the police found me wandering near the city. They took me and I don't remember.'' Cya started crying and looked at the ceiling again. ‘’ When the effects of the emoregulators wore off, I felt him again. I went back in secret hoping to find where he was. It was too late. My Data-Link said that his heart had stopped years ago; it broke. He died alone and broken and I can't even remember his name.’’

Cya sobbed as she was looking at her chained feet. Someone called Stall still unfazed by her story and he left her alone. She wondered what was going to happened to her, but soon she didn’t care. Her thought brought her back to the words her once lover whispered when he gave her the wooden ring :

‘’ The essence of the soul is something that is felt without being touched. A cry that falls deaf except to your ears. It is what the eyes cannot perceive, yet, they see it. It is without sent or taste, but gives flavor to everything. This unsolvable mysterious emotion at the center of human existence. I have it for you. I love you, Cya.’’

She hoped to see her true love barging and take her away. Where it is not fake; where there is true love.

The door opened but Stall was the one who came in.

- ‘’You are lucky’’, said Stall stoically. ‘’Normally, it would be too dangerous to put you back in society as is. Good for you, your husband makes enough money to cover for the reinsertion procedure. You will be able to take your normal life back’’

Cya panicked, she couldn't scream. She felt needles in the handcuffs prick her skin. Already, her consciousness was slipping away and soon everything that made her who she was would follow.

Cya woke up in a hospital, not sure of what happened. She was plugged to a solute on one side and Izhar sat on the other side of the bed. He was smiling naively

- ‘’What happened honey?’’, asked Cya.

- ‘’There was an accident’’, answered Izhar. ‘’Something went wrong with your medication, but everything is perfect now.’’

- Cya looked her hand. ‘’Honey? Where is my wooden ring?’’

- ‘’It was old my dear, the splinters prove to be quite dangerous’’, as he pointed her bandages.

- ‘’I guess... So... Everything will be perfect now? Will it?’’

- ‘’Yes, my love. Everything is perfect. Isn't it?’’

From the hospital room, the two lovers were looking by the window. The sun was setting on one of the biggest human achievement; a world of order and logic, where the chaos of every heart would not risk to sway it.

Izhar put his hand on shoulder. Cya reached for her silver heart-shaped locket and gently pressed it against her chest. The one proof that nothing beats true love. Love as it should be.