Manifest

Mary Rose Devine stepped out of her comfortable, undeniably bland life the day she bought her locket. Most everyone had one by now, how could you not- everyone wanted love, in fact everyone needed love. Especially at a time of distress in California. Mary’s conversation with the locket seller was a prime example of why she never got a locket until now.

“Hey, I was curious as to a locket?” Mary stuttered her words in a truly painful concurrence with the cashier.

“I’m sorry?-“

“A locket, a heart one with the necklace thing an-“

“A locke-“

“Yeah that one, there, can I have that one?” Mary pointed to a silver heart shaped necklace, it's jeweled outline let way to a red ruby in its center. Mary came from wealth, but her father never lent her any money, even as a kid. She worked for everything she had, just as she worked so hard to find her soul mate. But working for money is often more forgiving than working to find love.

Mary was handed the locket, in exchange three crisp one hundred dollar bills. Little did she know this exchange would lead to a deadly path.

At this time California, which was seceding from the United States, was in serious turmoil. Fires would erupt randomly by some not so random people. Much of the time it was the Federates from Texas and Nevada that would cross the border to start mischief. Mary tried not to be involved in politics, her love for California was what kept her there, but if she lived in California she had to agree with the government. It was rather easy however, the government, to Mary, seemed to be very agreeable. Ever since they harvested what scientists called the manifest molecule, California had seemed to get everything they wanted. The citizens seemed to love the state more and more every day. They wanted to fight for their land, because their land gave them everything they needed. Good soil, good jobs, and a good community. With such a strong presence, California was beating the odds, and actually winning in the fight of secession.

As Mary called her rideshare, she noticed a man get shoved into a rather small car. Black, with a shortened license plate identifier. The car seemed to be tainted with an energy that Mary once knew. Grief was very far and in between these days, but that car seemed to give Mary the feeling of grief, even when she looked away. The presence of the man yelling, now causing a scene, and the other two men muffling him and shutting the door, seemed to be something archaic to Mary.

She opened her locket to find a picture of that very man. Her soulmate. Could it really be, the man she has longed for now being shoved into a car and driving away? She began to walk to the car, but the engine started and the vehicle was set into motion.

She looked at the apartment building the man was seized from, and saw a woman walking up to the front. She ran to the women and asked if she saw what had just happened.

“Oh that man, I’ve heard he had some shady ties” the women responded

“He was a scientist- he lived on the top penthouse floor, some say he worked on the project”

“What project?” Mary asked

“You know, all that molecule gibberish that’s been on the news” The women’s voice was now lowered

What Mary did next could only be described as divine intervention, as a car pulled up next to her and scolded,

“Get in, we have to catch him” Mary had no second thought when she jumped in the car with that stranger. They speeded past lights, cars tailing the next in a frenzy of breaking metal. Crashing to avoid this devious driver. They soon caught up to the black car. But the man did not slow down, he pulled to the side of the car and when the metal of the two cars collided the black car spun out, crashing into a wall.

Mary got out of the car, and ran to the man in her heart shaped locket. She looked at him and yelled for help. But the man shushed her, and his dying breath gave way to words Mary would never forget.

“The molecule is not real, that is what makes it work, we manifest its power for it to exist, it's a collective belief”

Immediately Mary’s locket started to spark, and as she ripped it off the screen in the locket went dark.

“Tell this to the world” the man’s words dwindled in her ears.

“If you do not tell the people, we will live in a world where we are god. We are not meant to be gods, we are meant to let the universe work it's own gears.”

Mary looked behind her to find someone to help this dying man, but she noticed instead that the car she was in was gone.