The New World

The only thing I have from the Old World is the locket he gave me, dangling on a silver chain and hiding beneath my shirt. We’re not supposed to keep anything from our past life, because objects contain memories, and they don’t want us to remember.

They tell us the Old World is too painful, and we need to focus on the now. But something in my gut tells me to hang onto this heart-shaped locket, containing a picture of the man with the kind eyes and dark hair, and an inscription on the inside front that says, “Come find me - Peter.”

I run my thumb over the words; I’ve done it so many times in the past two months I’m afraid I’ll wear it right off. So far, I haven’t remembered a thing.

I was in a cryogenic sleep for one-hundred and twenty years. We all were. Every person on the street, going about their programmed lives. A new group is woken up each day, adding to the rat race, slowly rebuilding society a few dozen humans at a time. That’s what the movie that played across the large screen when we were brought out of our sleep told us, anyway.

“A group of scientists in the Old World built us humanoids with the purpose of saving Earth. Your kind were facing threats of nuclear warfare, famine, and global climate crisis,” a cheerful robotic woman’s voice announced as black-and-white images of bombs blowing up, oceans spilling over onto land, and animals dying flashed across the screen. “Enthusiastic volunteers - that’s you - were used in this experiment, and since you’re watching this video, it has been successful! The scientists wanted you all to have a peaceful sleep while we rid the planet of its toxicity, and wake you up to a wonderful New World.”

I’m in Group 183. I don’t remember my old name, but they assigned me a new one: Maria. It didn’t feel right falling off my tongue when I repeated it for the first time, but the silver robot smiled at me with its cerulean digital face as it stamped my papers, and I continued to the next booth. It still doesn’t feel right.

The monotony of moving through lines, which started when I was woken up two months ago and hasn’t ceased yet, is a vague echo of something from my past life, and I doubt I enjoyed it then either. We march through lines on the street, only stopping at our scheduled destinations.

Everything in the New World is steely greys, stark whites, and brilliant blue lights, endlessly blinking and flashing and beeping. It was confusing at first. We were ushered through a lab, out a door, and onto the streets of this busy city with a tablet that told us where to go, shielding our eyes from the sun we hadn’t been exposed to in over a century. The sunglasses they provided us did nothing.

I was given an apartment, I was assigned friends, and I was placed at a jewelry store job. I don’t have to worry. Everything is taken care of. Everything is set.

I’ve gone through these motions every day. I don’t know if this is better than the Old World. Was it even that bad back then? I wish I could remember. I wish it wasn’t a blank slate every time I close my eyes and try to picture it.

Even if I can never remember, I’m still aware this life is bland and dreadful.

I need to find Peter. Or whatever his name is now. I search for him in every person I pass by, but cannot find him. The humanoids watch you, and you’ll be reprimanded if you get out of line. Even something as simple as mingling with a stranger on the street that you haven’t been assigned to interact with. We move by each other, cogs and gears turning in a machine, like we’re the robots.

I try to be inconspicuous. I’m not sure what happens when you’re reprimanded, but my assigned friend Gary told me sometimes people are pulled from the line on the sidewalk and never return. Maybe it’s a silly rumour. Maybe not.

I’m inside for curfew tonight, watching TV as I thumb the locket, flipping through channels full of content designed to be appealing to robots, not us humans, when I see him. Peter.

He’s doing a broadcast from the lab downtown, in the core of the city where the robots govern from, donning a white lab coat. His hair is shaggier than in his picture, but it is undoubtedly him. The eyes give him away if nothing else.

The banner across the bottom of the screen reads that he’s the head scientist.

Wow. I have a connection to the head scientist of this place?

He must be part of the group that created the robots that fixed and now control our world. If I know him from the Old World, maybe that’s why I was part of the experiment.

I don’t know what to make of this, but every cell in my body tells me that I miss him, that I long for him. Feelings of hope and desire are stirring stronger than anything I’ve felt since I woke up. I kneel in front of the screen, reach up, and brush my fingers along his strangely familiar face.

“I’m Dr. Edwin Howser, goodnight everyone.”

Edwin is his new name. It doesn’t suit him. But his deep, buttery soft voice does.

I must find him.

Checking the time, I see it’s well past curfew. Still, I grab my jacket and keys and head out the door. One of my assigned friends says hello as we pass in the hall, and I give her a quick nod and forced smile. I wonder if she is content with these dull lives we’ve been given. I am not.

Outside, robots fly between the skyscrapers a few miles up in the air, where us humans cannot go. They blink above like stars. The streets down here are empty, except for the humanoids that are working. They scan every surface for miscreants like me with their blue laser eyes. I dash past the few who take the night shift seriously, hiding behind corners and cars, zipping this way and that to dodge the lights and their keen mechanical eyes.

It takes twenty minutes at a near jog to make it down to the labs, but I’m successful. It’s easier than I thought it would be since the humanoids are more lax past curfew. Some of them aren’t at their posts, and instead congregate in groups, slacking off. Like they wouldn’t dream of us little humans rebelling and sneaking around the city long after dark.

I wait until a distracted pair of robots leave the lab so I can slip through the open door into a white foyer with every surface shining. A robot at a desk watches TV, one of the slackers. I skirt over to the elevators, scan the shiny buttons, and hit the top floor. Peter seems important. I make a gamble that he’s way up there, where only robots get to go.

The elevator opens into a sleek silver waiting area, with large windows covering the opposing wall and showcasing the glittering humanoid-controlled city. I creep forward and peer down, my stomach churning as the ground stretches miles below me, the swirling and blinking lights dizzying. Robots soar past, flashing blue and white, twinkling constellations right in the atmosphere. There’s a lively nighttime hub up here in the sky, with whole skyscraper floors open for business. The robots move wherever they please, no orderly fashion to their routes.

I can’t believe my eyes. They have all the freedom we don’t down below.

I could stare at this all night, but I have to keep moving, and push through a looming door to the right without hesitation. Here goes nothing.

I’m met with a white laboratory housing a giant screen, currently projecting surveillance of humans filing through our metropolis. Peter stands in the centre with his hands behind his back, scouring the video. Even from behind, he is more alive than anyone I’ve encountered.

“Peter,” I whisper. I imagine he hasn’t heard his name since he woke up, and that would be more than a year ago for him. If he’s the head scientist then he's in the first group.

He turns to me quickly, and my heart is in my throat. The desire to run and embrace him is so tangible it chokes me.

The kind eyes I’ve been staring at in the photo crinkle at the corners.

“Diane,” he says wistfully. “You found me.”

The name hits me like a bucket of ice water to the face. It’s so familiar, and yet no one has called me anything but Maria in my memory.

“Is that my name?” I say, tears straining my voice. I’m clutching the locket in my hand, like some sort of evidence, but I don’t need any. His eyes are watering as he takes me in.

Peter nods, gesturing to the screen. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” That’s what he was doing moments ago, scanning the footage of today’s streets for me. Same thing I’ve been doing down below.

He turns back, smiles softly, and closes the distance in a few short strides to clutch me. His embrace feels like coming home, warm in this hollow, metallic world where everything is forced and synthetic.

“You’re the head scientist?” I ask breathlessly as we pull apart, still holding each other by the arms.

He nods.

“Then why didn’t you come find me?” He should have all the power to search for me, when he lives up here in his tower with the humanoids that rule us. Why did he leave it to me?

“Diane, there’s something you should know.” He swallows, glances around even though no one is here, and leans forward, his voice dropping to a frenzied hush. “I’m not in control here. They never erased my memories, because they needed my scientific knowledge when they woke me.”

“You have your memories? You remember me?” I just assumed he has his own locket.

“I can tell you all about the Old World. All about the old you.”

My smile is genuine for the first time I can remember, but something clicks in my head, and it quickly departs.

“Why do you go by Edwin?”

“That’s the name they gave me.”

I narrow my eyes. “But you remember your real name.”

He gives one small shake of his head. “I’m not in charge here,” he repeats, and a chill goes up my spine.

“What do we do now?”

He grabs my hand. “I don’t know.” His disappointing answer hangs in the air for a couple beats. He glances over his shoulder at the screen showing the people moving mechanically through the city, his voice sounding far away. “I’ve made a grave mistake, I’m afraid, putting my trust in these machines. In the process of healing the world, I destroyed it in another way.”

I drop his hand to pull him into another hug, the locket pressed between our chests. “At least we’re in this ruined world together.”

I have something to look forward to when I wake up now. I have more than the miserable life I was presented with on the ground.

I found him with only a locket and a forgotten name. This is my new world, here in this room. Everything else can go up in flames for all I care. Saving the world didn’t work out last time, but we made our way back to each other. That’s all that matters. Those machines can’t take that from me.

“Diane,” he says again, and I close my eyes in contentment, listening to his heart beating against the locket that led me to him.