Sasha

Kandiran was a simple, yet well-organized city located in the only island, following the Final Day. Since the beginning every citizen was implanted on the back of their neck a heart-shaped locket chip that will only open when true love was found. The locket was also a way to find understanding and unity among the survivors. The founders of the new city created the locket to bring people together and make them more in tuned with their fellow humans and mother nature “we ought to learn from the destruction of the old world” they said. Then they started organizing the new world based on open and closed lockets, houses were built by those who found their love and small apartments to those who were still in the search. Nonetheless having a closed locket was not seem like singleness, but openness to opportunities and interactions among closed and open lockets were part of a regular day in the city. It was not rare to find two open lockets opening a third or a fourth one. Sometimes a locket was opened by interacting with a tree or a dog, or a book. Lockets also changed color expressing what was felt during an interaction. Was not atypical to witness an argument followed by the opening of the lockets of those involved in it, like it was not unusual for open lockets to closed out on each other.

Sasha was one of the city’s explorers, a job of high importance given that after the Final Day no one knew of any other cities in the island or outside, all airplanes, drones, satellites, and travel devices seemed to have disappear as well as coal fueled energy. They had however saved electricity and electronics, those were fueled by solar power, wind, and a small hydroelectric fed by a local natural waterfall. Back to Lockets as were a big part of their lives, since they were connected to the limbic system, it is to say they helped to visibly showed when someone was sad, happy, anxious and by opening, in love. That way kardiranians learned about anyone’s state of mind and feelings, without having to recur to body language readings or any other pre-Final Day methods. Also to say, however, that everyone had the right, by law, not to show their lockets if they so decided. Still, it was a great tool to get to know someone and to understand the impact of their actions and words on others. So, relationships were based on respect and empathy. It was also normal for citizens to show their lockets in response to events they were not comfortable speaking about, rather than passive aggressively awake dark sentiments on the other person.

When Sasha was twenty-four, while exploring the north side of the island, she encountered something unusual. Joly, was seating at the beach, looking to the horizon and did not see her coming. When walking to him she noticed he did not have a locket embedded, she also noticed his swimmer built and his naked body and by every step she took towards him she felt something was changing on herself, her heartbeat accelerated, her stomach contracted and expanded at a rate she never experienced before, and more importantly, she noticed a happy change on her mood. She could not understand why this strange man had provoked all this on her while she did not even know, how he looked like. Then, while he was turning to her, she stared feeling something was itching, burning, almost erupting on the back of her neck and as he turns, she reached the back of her neck and felt. What was erupting, burning was her locket, open. Happy, but out of strength she managed to get to Joly who held her and while tenderly caresses her face, slept his hand to the back of her neck and slowly locks her locket.