Agatha

She stared at the dirty, rusted locket in her hands with a yearning. The heart-shaped contraption must have been a product of the long-ago days, a time when her grandfather’s grandfather may have walked the earth with freedom—nothing so beautiful had been created since those times—but how it had survived so long in this plot of land, hidden from all who would seek to destroy it, she did not know. The rust was too thick to allow her to open it, but the name “Agatha” was carved onto its surface. Without a name herself, only the designation Human 6294639W2, she decided that Agatha was a lovely name.

Agatha’s wits came back to her, and she hurriedly stuffed the locket into one of the pockets on her regulation work coat before resuming her duties. The grimy coat was weighted to ensure its wearer couldn’t run away, and it was riddled with pockets to store food that the field workers were otherwise not allowed to leave their posts to get. Glancing around to make sure none of the machines had seen her, she went back to working the land, preparing it for harvest. The machines didn’t need to eat, of course, but the machines’ masters did.

The work came to her automatically, unthinkingly, tasks borne of repetition and dull-minded labor. But her mind was anything but dull at that moment, and her heart pounded in her chest, so that she feared the machines, with their superhuman senses, would discover her, find the locket, and terminate her, like they had so many others. Her work went on undisturbed, though. She cast furtive glances about her, taking in the ever-darkened sky, the grungy buildings, the beaten down people. None of them spared her a second glance, too absorbed in their labor to do anything but despair. The too-clean machines were a contrast that never sat right with Agatha, and she suspected that the machines’ masters kept them like that on purpose. Another glance up toward the eternally gloomy sky, desperately trying to put the locket from her mind. Could the machines hear thoughts? She did not know, but she dared not risk it.

Agatha jolted and resumed her work before any of the machines detected her, hoping her brief pause had gone unnoticed. Thoughts continued to mull in her head as she worked. The locket in her coat seemed to pulse with some forbidden magic. A true relic of the long-ago days! A reminder that beauty had once existed. That people had once striven to be more than . . . this.

Suddenly, one of the machines flashed red from a light atop its monstrous head, and a blaring sound echoed across the field as the machine hovered over to a man who had collapsed. It moved in an unearthly fashion, and it flowed as it crept across the field, changing its shape so that it skittered like an insect in one moment, and then prowled like a hunting cat the next. A heavier silence descended over the field, so much that Agatha was able to make out the man’s pleadings. “Please, I just . . . I can’t . . . I . . .”

“HUMAN 5926485W7. YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF YOUR WORK AGREEMENT. VIOLATION RESULTS IN TERMINATION OF DUTY. FOLLOW.”

Agatha masked a sneer, possibly the first time she’d ever done so, as the monstrous machine, made even more fearsome by the loathsome red light, picked up Human 5926485W7 with a sometimes-claw, sometimes-tentacle and carried him away for termination. Agatha felt a pang of sadness and anger strike through her, a match coursing along its striker strip. She wished she knew what Human 5926485W7’s name was. He had a name, even if he didn’t know it. She had a sudden urge, a need, to know his hopes, his dreams, his aspirations. Never mind the fact that in this place, he likely had none. She wanted to know them, anyway.

It did not take long for the workers to return to duty. Agatha’s thoughts turned inward again, following down thought-paths that hadn’t been tread in eons, stumbling around her own brain like a sleeper awakening to a world and remembering how to walk. What was different? Why was she suddenly so much more aware, so much more . . . full of life?

The day wore on, and the machines detected no abnormalities, so Agatha relaxed by degrees. She dreamed of all kinds of possible scenarios to explain the appearance of the locket. A present from a woman to her lover, tragically killed in the war that ended the long-ago days, the locket lost on the rain-drenched battlefield. A sacred and powerful object, containing unknown and mighty magic, entrusted to an order of guardians for safekeeping. Or sometimes nothing more than a child’s favorite reminder of her mother. Occasionally, she pictured herself in those roles.

The remainder of the work day passed much faster than usual, as Agatha distracted herself with pictures she painted vividly in her mind, but as she did, she gradually became aware of something. She hated the machines and those they represented. The realization shocked her. Emotions, like names, were things of the long-ago days, a danger to everyone they touched. But she didn’t discard her hate. Instead, she let it fuel her, she nursed it and cared for it. She hated the machines for what they took away from her people (her people! she thought, gazing around at the other workers with a sense of camaraderie they likely didn’t feel or were too afraid to), she hated the machines for depriving her people of what made them human, and she hated the machines for killing and enslaving all of these humans that were not even given names, that were stripped of emotion and thought. Agatha knew in her heart, with sudden and undeniable conviction, that her people could be great if given the chance. These machines and their masters weren’t just trying to take away her present, they were trying to prevent her future.

Night wasn’t much different than day with the perpetual darkness hovering about, but that night before she went to sleep, Agatha took out the heart-shaped locket and cradled it for a while, making up fanciful stories for herself and exercising her newfound imagination, thrilling in it. She kept the locket hidden from everyone, taking it out only when she was sure that all the huddled forms around her had fallen asleep. It was not something she wanted to risk; she didn’t blame them, but any of them might turn her in to get the barest hint of mercy or leniency or reward. Yet another reason to hate the machines and what they had turned her people into.

Mentally exhausted from the constant daydreaming, it didn’t take Agatha long to fall asleep. The next morning, she woke up with something almost, but not quite, like eagerness. During the work day, she stole moments where she would sneak her hand into her pocket, just to feel the contours of her locket beneath her fingers. It gave her visions of forbidden dreams, of a hero saving the day, destroying the machines and overthrowing their masters in their lofty towers. Sometimes, she even pictured herself as that hero. And sometimes, she—

Wait.

Panic gripped at her, constricting her throat and turning her stomach to ice. It combined with the fear that now engulfed her, as she glanced behind her, her eyes sweeping the indistinguishable lines of dirt.

The heart-shaped locket was not in her coat; in its place, only a hole remained.

Agatha put her head down and started running her fingers through the dirt in front of her. It must be here! It had to be! If the locket was discovered, if she was discovered . . .

And then one of the machines colored the field in red. Agatha could barely breathe, she didn’t want to see where it was going, didn’t want to know the truth, but nor could she stop herself. The machine drifted closer, closer . . . and stopped a few rows from her. She let out a barely audible breath. Someone else must have caught its attention.

Agatha frowned. The machine did not address any of the humans. Instead, it leaned down, cocking its head peculiarly at something on the ground, looking like some metallic, alien bird. One limb snaked down and the sometimes-claw gingerly picked something up, and Agatha almost fainted from the sudden rush of blood through her body. It was her locket.

“CONTRABAND DISCOVERED. TO WHICH HUMAN DOES THIS BELONG?”

The machine gazed around. No one, of course, said anything, so the machine went along the row, flashing its red light directly at all the humans it came to, as if considering their guilt or innocence based solely on their reaction. Perhaps it was. Perhaps the stories were right, and the machines could see into minds.

One by one, each of the humans averted their gazes, that terrible, baleful light too strong to withstand for long. And when the machine came to her, Agatha made special care to only return the steely gaze for exactly as long as everyone else had, and just as demurely turn her head away. Did it know the truth? Could it extract the thoughts from her head?

It lumbered away, continuing down the line and eventually stopping and addressing the humans once more. “CONTRABAND WILL BE TERMINATED. PROCEED WITH REGULARLY SCHEDULED LABOR.”

Could Agatha proceed? She felt like something had just been ripped away from her soul. The locket was going to be destroyed. Another crucial piece of humanity discarded, one less trace of the long-ago days left to decorate the world. With it, Agatha felt a part of her wither and die. All the dreams of a hero arriving, all the fantasies of past lovers and daring escapades, all of them became as ash scattered to the wind, dissolving into the aether from which they should never have been borne. What a fool she had been! What a childish little girl! How could she have entertained those daydreams? They only ever brought destruction and danger. These were not the long-ago days, when heroes slayed monsters. These were the now-days, when monsters ruled the world.

Everyone else had returned to their work, Agatha knew. But not her. She stared at her dirtied hands, clutching at a prize she no longer possessed. Had she ever truly possessed it? She had only borrowed it for a bit, and then lost it. Forever.

Tears welled up in Agatha’s eyes. She was used to tears, but these tears were different. They stung more, they cut deeper. They welled up from somewhere deep inside, so far inside that Agatha didn’t have a word for the place they came from, because before that moment, she didn’t know that place existed. She knew she needed to get back to work before the machines came to terminate her, but a part of her couldn’t bring herself to care anymore. All that that part of her knew was soul-crushing defeat.

Gradually—she didn’t know how long, but it couldn’t have been too long, or the ever-vigilant machines would have caught her—she began to work her hands through the soil. But these were not the motions of subservience, no. Agatha knew that as soon as she began moving. Never again would she do anything out of subservience or submission. The sense of loss from the heart-shaped locket became replaced by something else, something harder, something more determined. It was another emotion that Agatha had no name for, so she decided to name it “indestructibility.” Regardless, she knew what to do with it perfectly well. Her hands resumed their normal pace of operation, but this was no longer a labor of slavery. It was a labor of resistance, of challenge.

Of revolution.