‘Architecture is its bones, its brain, its body. It wears our infrastructure the way we wear clothes. Do you understand,' he asked her, 'why this is the only way we can speak?'
He typed furiously into the GRID computer, unaware how long this channel of communication would remain open to her. 'All it has to do is reroute traffic, or plug a wire into a different outlet, and all the pathways change again. I'm doing my best. Make sure you are, too.'
Her car pulled over to the side of the roadway. What does he want now? she thought to herself, already familiar with the danger of too many vocalized reactions. She looked around her surroundings. The water glistened outside her car window. She looked at the reflection, and then, noticing a pattern, took a closer glance.
Incoming Personnel the message signaled. A series of coordinates followed, and her car began moving again.
Back at home, she sat down on her couch. With an altered arrangement of pillows, it was also her bed. He had moved her to another Sector of Society. One more private. It had been modified, so he could speak more plainly. The glow on the wall intensified and the panels projected a series of holographic renderings. It reflected a video on the window, so anyone passing by or observing would think the apartment’s occupant was immersed in entertainment. What she saw on the wall was different. It read Stay Inside.
‘That much I gathered,’ she responded, ‘When you drove my car directly home.’
The screen quickly changed, in response. It showed a series of Anomalies in the Area, with incoming car crashes. The screen changed again. You’re safer here. It’s the best I can do. The gridded rods along the wall dimmed, and all she could see was the video playing now.
I put my faith in the Machine, she wrote to him. If Manifest Destiny is a series of Coordinates, surely it can assist US. It can use your math, and my math - and map US A better reality, through Space and through Time.
‘The war's already done, Johnny. Those people comin’ in -’ he leaned in closer. ‘They ain't people. No one knows who created ‘em, but they come off the boat, they look like people, they soun’ like people - but they ain't people.’ He sighed, then continued, ‘I think they jus’ here to keep up the illusion, for everyone. So no one panics.’
‘They come in waves?’
‘Yea,’ he nodded. ‘They come in waves.’
No one ever understood her here. She didn’t even bother to try and make friends anymore. Just typed at him in the phone once in a while, the way he did to her when he was bored.
Everything is timing, she muttered to herself. I just need to work out more of how it works. She knew it was like a watch. A watch that changed how it counted time multiple times a day. The traffic lights counted cars going, and colors coming. Then it switched to birds flying overhead, and that matched the street sign at the next corner. Every day it was different, every day it was something new. Even though nothing changes, she sighed, even though everything is always the same.
She marked time at the traffic light. Everyone thought everything was automated now. AI and oh so evil. Oh so controlling. She knew better. She knew it was still humans controlling one another. Just another secret veil, another costume worn, another-
BEEP. She put her foot on the gas and made the right turn. Another pile of bull to obscure reality, she fumed.
She stirred the water with her foot. It always pissed him off. She knew he tracked her through his equipment, and ripples where humans weren’t supposed to be always set off alarms. She did it so frequently now he disabled the alarms in her sector, just so he could keep talking to her without drawing attention from the others.
“STOP IT” he spelled out faintly in the clouds, faint enough so only she would see.
She looked up and smiled, pretending to be happy for a moment. She assumed he looked down and did the same thing for her.
TIme ticked onwards. Once in a while he’d message her. He’d gotten out. Or been born out. They taunted their pets once in a while. But they had been so isolated for so many generations themselves, even they didn’t know their true purpose anymore. They thought they were sky angels. The very thought sickened her. More like terrified flying mice, desperate for something to stay grounded. Desperate for something they could still fly over and taunt.
Nothing grows wings, first, she typed into her phone, knowing he’d read it later. Nothing evolves with wings first. Even you came from somewhere. She put down her phone and put her sunglasses on. She knew the real sun would be releasing another plasma blast soon, As if mad at having created such ignorant children, she thought to herself.
Everyone had forgotten, She stared at her phone, almost wildly. A feeling of betrayal surged over her.
It retracted. She could hear it every night. Try as they might to alter time and the sky, magnetic fields and biometric currents, somehow her circadian rhythm stayed tethered to its natural state. It hummed in the distance. Then a locking noise, like bolts whirring and clicking into place. More replacements she muttered to herself. I wonder who they killed this time.
She looked up at the sky. Holodome she corrected herself. It looked like a sky. Or at least, it matched the ones she had seen in pictures in books and drawings growing up. She sighed. I wonder what’s really up there.
GRID
Everything is mirrored. Safe guarded, they say. But nothing is ‘safe,’ as in protected well-being. Everything is recorded, stored. Altered.
It was supposed to be for AltEarth. But that was back when Mom was in charge. She always had the best intentions. “The kids will be safer that way” and “This way, even if the men die, nothing bad will happen to the children.” But the men didn’t all die. The worst of the worst survived. And then the children were trapped with them.
Welcome to the Grid
#GRID
Geospatial
Realignment
Infrastructural
Dimension
You are Motionless,
but Where and When We Propel You.