Rejuvenated

It rained in a scattered pattern. It made the leaves hold the drops a little longer, making its fall from the sky more delicate. There were many trees in this forest, one from the Rejuvenate Project, you could tell by how young the trees stood and how fertile the greens looked. Baez laid beneath the slim trees with his arms wrapped behind his neck and the moisture beginning to transfer from the mulch on the ground to his Young Vanguards uniform. Wetness didn't show much in the Brunswick green coveralls, a tone similar to that in Baez's eyes. It was the long trees that captured his undivided attention, Aspens or Populous of sorts, maybe Genus, he thought. He didn't search for it in his cerebrum. He laid with the question unanswered and lingering around, as he often liked to do. A bird chirped like a squeak of a door. His whole body flinched, but it was not the sound he was awaiting so his muscles unstressed. Then stillness rested upon the forest, the sprinkled water misting through the woods. The trees were titillating him. It was CC Gaufier's legs that the trees reminded him of, narrow, tall and thieving his eyes at any moment. He knew why. School had taught him all about the cognitive markers of sexual arousal. He despised her, the group commander who enforced all that which he found vile, yet she produced a feeling in him which he believed had meaning beyond a hormone-induced seduction. A polarity of sorts, the type that brought the B.C civilisation to crumbles is what they say in school. Those feelings, he felt more often than he should were frowned upon as nonsensical by The Society. He had a ton of them, those subjectivities. Nothing is unexplainable with Science, was one of the catchphrases. Often used by the Vanguards as a response to a fellow member’s stupidity of subjectivity.

"Baez! It's me. I came." said Marti, who had grazed through the woods in a delicate manner, like a now extinct beast, the gazelle. "Why did you tell me to meet you here?" She stood stubby and short, behind Baez.

"Marti!" Baez jumped onto his feet in a haste with a grin on his face. "I am content that you came," said Baez.

"Well, I am risking a lot. The whistle to regroup will surely come soon, hurry and show me what you want to."

Baez's grin intensified, drawing lines around his cheeks. He jolted into the woods waving his arm forward, motioning Marti to follow. Through the long-legged trees with deft movements and in a nimble manner he crossed the forest. Marti kept up behind, slow with fear of hurting the rejuvenated forest. They reached a stretch of boulders, it was a shore of crystalline water. She stared in disbelief, while Baez looked onward with achievement.

"Must be one of the few lakes that the Vanguards salvaged." said Marti, her tone remained in disbelief. They stood in silence for a second. "It is The Huron. Or it used to be at least." She produced that bit of knowledge from her cerebrum.

"I want us to swim in it, Marti, all this water for us," said Baez as he removed his coveralls, unzipping the damped suit.

"We would be punished if the commander caught us, no way we are doing that you stunt-brained"

Baez had bared himself down to his undies alone. He placed his uniform behind them at the base of a tree to avoid them getting wet from the rain. "Yes way we are, you are an accomplice already."

"No! I am just here I ..."

Baez launched himself from the boulder, straight as a stick into the lake water, a three meter drop. It created a strong splash from the impact, not loud but powerful. It shut Marti up. Baez emerged from the water. "Are you coming pal?" asked Baez. That grin turned to a smile with teeth and all. The rain kept on dropping into the water. Marti stood in silence for a few seconds, anxiety prickled through her entire body. This was the sort of thing the Young Vanguards didn't approve of. This wasn't a summer camp, it was for brightest young humans to study the conservation efforts of the Rejuvenate Project. Learn of all the extinct bioforms from the times before The Correction which The Society was beginning to engineer back into existence. Projects they might one day lead. The water though, it was pure and had an unspoken serenity. The rain droplets jumped in every second inviting her to join them.

She removed her coverall much slower, with a bit of foresighted remorse, until she had exposed her pale skin covered only by the trusted white undies, which were part of all YV's uniforms, and a plain white bandeau. She released her short bun, letting her reddish locks rest at shoulder level. She slapped her shoulders and thighs to prepare for impact, the way one says 'good job buddy' to a coworker, and took four short steps back from the edge of the boulder. Then she leaped forward the four step distance in two quick steps and launched herself into the water. It was a wider, more explosive splash she made upon contact with the water. Baez let out a laugh. "So you decided to join me, which makes us both stunt-brained, correct?"

She pulled her hair backwards clearing the water off her face, "No, it makes you stunt-brained and it makes me your dutiful caretaker."

After a fraction of a second of seriousness, they were both laughing.

"Go in and open your eyes, trust me", said Baez.

"Trust me", repeated Marti in mockery, "what a silly concept."

"Come on now, you know what I meant."

"Okay fine."

She flipped forward, dipping her head and opening her eyes, it was clearer inside the water than outside. Turquoise. For Marti, and most it was generic blue. She looked and saw Baez submerged with his dumb silly eyes open and staring at her. She laughed, it made him laugh, their lungs emptied bubbles and they surfaced up again.

"The water is..."

"Beautiful." said Baez, "It's an old word, I searched it up in the cerebrum, it's beautiful.

Full of beauty."

Words like this had died, not from restriction but from a lack of usage. They weren't adequate in a world after The Correction, they seemed almost inappropriate. The world had come together and survived only by prioritising, restoring order and cutting the unnecessary. Unnecessary words, thoughts, belief systems, behaviours and even people. The only way they sought to move forward was a society that respected intelligence, rationality and science above all, it was the opposite which had brought on The Correction.

"You and your obsession with the B.C words. That's why Gaufier is hard on you. Your subjectivities."

"I bet my mother was beautiful", he paused, "my birth mother I mean."

"What we know is she was not fit to be your mother, that's why The Society moved you, that’s what is good for all." said Marti, of this she had full confidence. Not everyone had a right to bear children in The Society, it was a privilege which had to be earned like the opportunity to vote. There were algorithms, interviews and full day tests which had to be passed for a couple to be fitted as prospect parents. Intelligence, habits, careers, income, fitness, and all sorts of aspects; the coordinators at Guided Parenting are very thorough in their process. In some occasions an unapproved child would be born from an unfitted couple, most likely from the non-voting plebs and Guided Parenting would have to re-allocate the child.

"You want to swim a bit more?" asked Baez.

She smiled at him with a kind look, water resting on her freckled round cheeks. "Try to keep up", she said, plunging into the water.

Baez took a deep breath, filled his lungs to full capacity and followed her. You could see everything. The water was clear and the lake empty for the most part besides a few small fish of the uninteresting kind. It wasn't too deep so they swam a bit down to the rocks at the bottom. They were a sharp orange, and also had sharp edges. Marti swam up again to refill her lungs, Baez followed. They did this for a while, until Baez spotted something shimmer in between the rocks. He sunk a bit deeper, while she went up again for air. It was a chain, attached to it was a rusted bronze shaped locket he had never seen. He unraveled it from the rocks, pushing his lungs to their capacity and swam up to Marti. They dog paddled.

"What's wrong Baez?" asked Marti, commenting on his delay.

Two consecutive whistles were heard from a distance so loud they could rip eardrums.

"No! We must have missed the first whistle while underwater, we have to hurry." yelled Marti at Baez, her kind eyes covered in a shadow of discontent created by her frowning eyebrows. She started to swim at speed towards the shore. He pressed the amulet in his right palm, and swam after her. They climbed up the rocks without any trouble, and Marti dried herself like a dog and began to put on her uniform. Baez was slower at dressing, he sat facing the water staring at what he held in hand.

"Hurry you stunt-head, we will get in trouble."

"Come look at this, I have never seen anything like it", said Baez, with a hesitant ending to the sentence as if there was more to say.

She kept getting dressed, ignoring his mumbled statement. After putting her wet hair back in a bun, she walked towards Baez and looked over his shoulder. She was about to hurry him once more but her eyes became mesmerised by what he held in his right palm.

"What is that Baez?"

"I'm not sure, but it's beautiful."

"I know you don't know, but did you inquire your cerebrum?" she said, a little more agitated this time, her ears tense, expecting the three whistles any minute which would be nothing but trouble.

"It doesn't know either", said Baez, fixated.

"What do you mean it doesn't know?" asked Marti in a rhetorical manner as she had, in an instance after he had said that, searched in her cerebrum as well. The search results displayed “restricted”. The warning of restriction seemed odd as she hadn't encountered it before when searching with her cerebrum.

“Try to open it from the middle,” said Marti. Maybe out of intuition, or out of memory she wasn’t sure.

Baez ran his fingers through the edges of the locket, imitating the shape of it, rubbing the clay and mud off. Marti felt a quiver from the mystery, the cold and the incoming three whistles. He pressed a little with the index on one side and the thumb on the other, it made a clicking sound.

The locket split in half in his large bony hand, Marti quit quivering and leaned over his shoulder. It was an image of a little one with faded colors. She had two buns of hair raised on each side with a pinkish ribbon on each bun. She had an expression, beyond kindness, it was unique. The sun started to crest over the clouds, it lit the eyes of the little one in the picture, brown like creamed coffee. An old word popped into Marti’s brain, love. It didn’t come from her cerebrum, it just creeped up without meaning. Baez saw a fragile slit of paper resting inside, picked it up and unfolded it.

“Nothing, like coincidence, connection, hope, and love, is unexplainable by science,” read Baez.

Three consecutive whistles pierced through their ears. Marti without a pause sprinted into the woods in the direction of the sound. Baez grabbed the heart-shaped locket, shoved it deep into his coverall’s breast pocket and ran after her.