End of last post: 

 Answer me! What’s a sardine? What’s a sardine?

“Your first victim’s consciousness to be implanted into your sub-conscious immediately.  Searching for first victim … Number Eight five five five … Consciousness found in storage … Downloading.” 

What’s a sardine? God damn it … And while I’m at it, what’s a God?

“Download complete … Preparing to install into the guilty sub-conscious of Nine six six six.”

What’s a God? What’s a God?

Another bright light and another more prolonged pain, but this time only in my head. The pain! Questions forgotten.

“Installation complete.”

The light vanished back along the tunnel and the wall with a swoosh, snapped shut.

I was left alone.  And I still don’t know what a sardine is.

I’ve always thought that, said a voice in my head, a voice that was definitely not mine, a feminine voice.

I looked into the dirty mirror on the tin wall.

Hey, you’re my neighbour ... Treb-six, right? The last time I saw you. You looked like you were going to…

The voice suddenly stopped. I knew the voice was shocked to see her killer looking back from the mirror. I could feel her shock. Could she feel mine?

It looks like I wasn’t completely alone after all. And I thought my tin-can-room was crowded enough as it is, with me. My head was another matter.  

Fishy questions, Part 2

 
The domicile door’s automated lock clicked open. It seems I was free, once again, to roam the city.

‘What’s going on? Where am I?’ The voice in my head was frightened. I turned towards the door, looking away from my reflection in the mirror.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. The only time I had laughed since first seeing this retirement room a month ago. The laughter seemed to calm my head’s … ‘guest.’

‘What’s funny?’ she asked.

“You being frightened is funny.” I spoke aloud, but wondered at the same time if I had to.

She wondered the same. So I guess I didn’t have to but the thought of conversing with her through some sort of inner telepathy made my head hurt even more.

‘Why’s my fear funny?’ she repeated, ‘And where am I?’

“It’s funny because you’re already dead. It’s also funny that I know you’re a woman from your thoughts alone.” I decided to speak to her only out loud. I might look like I was talking to myself, but that wasn’t too abnormal in Sardine City.

‘Wha?... What do you mean, Treb Six … my thoughts? Where am I?’

“That’s a good question and one I don’t fully understand. But I’ll try … I murdered you about a month ago. You were my first time.” I could feel her panic again. “Try to calm down and I’ll explain.” I felt her determination to do as I asked, it seemed to work.

“Good girl.” She felt patronised. I laughed again and this made her angry, a strong emotion. Suddenly I felt angry too. She felt scared, and then she struggled again. Calm.

“Good girl,” I repeated kindly, understandingly.  She felt warmth. My God that was beautiful! I felt empathy, but I wasn’t sure if she did. There was an emotion there I couldn’t quite comprehend, envy maybe? No, that couldn’t be right.

‘I’m just scared, that’s all,’ she said. I felt the truth in this but there was still something else. I couldn’t quite grasp it. That glimpse of warmth and the resulting empathy had made all else fuzzy, second. -- I wondered if this was my rehabilitation.

‘You were going to explain what’s going on here, and where I am? For a moment I thought you said you murdered me.’

“You were a day away from the matter recyclers. It was a mercy. I was quick, painless. You’ve heard the rumours about those recycle-orbs. We all have.”

‘Please tell me what’s going on?’

My ceiling light started to flash green. That was normal, anti-radz time. I heard the clunk as the daily pills fell into the trough. Yet, there was something else when I opened the trough door. It was a lobe-load, labelled ‘for victim’s consciousness, to be uploaded immediately.’

‘What’s that? What does it mean? My ‘guest’ was as curious as me.

“Let’s find out, shall we?”

The lobe-load: That tube of metal that you insert slightly into your ear, before clicking the end, much like a click top pen, but with a quick burst of knowledge and the skills needed for any task. The last time I had used a lobe-load was a year before my retirement. The line-orbs needed someone to recalibrate the incinerators after the machine’s designated worker was accidently turned to ash.  My foreman-orb allotted me the task and a lobe-load gave me the skills.  I still remembered all there was to know about, second gen, plasmatic grade, co-efficient incinerators, for all the use that was now.

‘Can you stop that work dodging day dream crap and just insert the lobe-load already.’

Pushy bitch!

‘I heard … felt … or whatever … that remark.’

“Sorry.” I inserted the metal gently into my right ear and took a deep breath…

‘Pussy!’

Ignored her, scrunched my eyes into two tight balls, and then clicked the end.

A million lights dazzled all around on a field of blackness. The pain was bad but the light’s beauty eased its passing. It reminded me of a picture I once saw called, ‘night sky’ I knew what a 'night' was of course: A unit of time marked by a shift change on the lines. But to this day I didn’t know what a sky was and neither did anyone else, and I asked everyone. Just another question I should have put to the rehabilitation-unit. Another question it would have ignored.

The lights started to fade. I felt sad to see them go when my domicile again boxed me in.

‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ I could feel her confusion; she didn’t know why I felt sad.

Then the lobe-load started to spread. It felt like warm oil running over fingers as they stoked my brain from within. I removed the metal from my ear and placed the now empty load back in the trough.

She gasped. ‘You murdered me. You bastard!’

The lobe-load had brought her up to speed. “I told you it was a mercy.”

‘What gives you the right? Look in the mirror, Treb-Six.’

I wanted to refuse but it seemed she also had some power over my movement, like a request that was hard to deny. I knew with effort I could have refused, but I felt that would exacerbate an already … sticky relationship. So I looked in the mirror.

‘This is too weird. I’m just thoughts in another’s head, your ugly head.’

“You’re more than thoughts. You’re a complete consciousness, the entire person in my sub-conscious. Frankly you’re what a psych-orb would call a self-reinforcing delusion, if you weren’t real of course.”

‘Like I said … or thought … this is too weird.’

“You’re nothing but an uninvited guest, a squatter, a parasite.”

She laughed, felt amused. It was my turn to ask, “What’s funny?”

‘I’ll tell you what’s funny. You forget I can feel all your strong feelings. And you felt my moment of warmth for you, my moment of weakness. It made you feel empathy, and it was the greatest joy, the only joy you have ever felt. You would do anything to feel it again.”

She was right. It wasn’t even worth denying.

‘I want to feel it too. And I know how.’ I felt her excitement, but also that something else, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Envy, no, not envy, definitely not envy.

“Why don’t I believe you?”

‘You want to know why I wasn’t ready to die,’ She changed the subject, diverted my doubt.

“You were a day away from matter-recycle. Why would you want to live for just one more day? What did you have to live for?”

‘Because, I never got to say good bye to my babies.”

“What? What’s a babi?”

‘B - A - B - Y, baby … Is … I’ll show you if you want. And together we’ll feel that feeling again. Get changed and we’ll go. It takes all day to get down to the lower levels.’
 
I opened the room’s only wardrobe, cunningly concealed in the tin metal walls. A space barely big enough for one hanger and one garment at a time. All the space I would ever need.

First I pulled the plastic tube from my sleep suit reservoir and transferred my water over to my day suit. The suits were mini recycle factories and none of the body’s waste was ever … wasted. I wondered then why they call it waste?

‘You ask yourself a lot of silly questions. Well you used to ask, ‘yourself,’ now you get to annoy me. Your rehabilitation is turning into my punishment.’

“I suspose it’s a good job you’re only staying with me for one day then.”

‘We’ll see.’

I ignored her and just continued to change into my ‘still-suit.’ The moment of empathy I felt was starting to fade. She was just like everyone else, willing to accept this world and unwilling to ask any questions, questions that burnt so fiercely in me. Still, that need was secondary to this new desire, this need for another glimpse of empathy. Even if that need faded to a mere fraction of what it was it would still be greater than anything else.

I zipped up the still-suit right to the neck. But as usual I left the hood down and the mouth piece out. It cost me about a thimble full of water a day, sometimes more depending upon the amount of ‘retiring’ I did. But it was a small price to pay for easy breathing. I had noticed a few others around the city that thought the same as me. But most still wore hoods and mouth pieces at all times, only taking them out to speak their subservience.

Looking back in the mirror, “Ready to go,” I spluttered with a chuckle, It did look like I was talking to myself.

‘Don’t worry about that, most of the loners that don’t wear hoods talk to themselves. I suppose it’s because they’ve got no one else to talk to. Hey! Maybe they all ask themselves silly questions too.’

“They don’t mores the pity. I’ve checked. They’re all just mad.”

I felt sad. She felt warmth. So beautiful! Pure, shared elation!

‘Just you wait until you see my babies.’ That feeling again, envy, no not envy, yes envy … don’t know can’t quite grasp it. It’s like she’s hiding it from me. I shrugged, it didn’t matter. I just wanted that beauty, that high.

“What are we waiting for? Lead the way.”

‘Head for the north corners main floor-descender and hitch a lift.’

“You got it.” I opened my domicile door and stepped out into Sardine City, along the labyrinth and about the hustle and bustle of the biggest lie. The lie that only I seemed to see through.   

Author Notes

pic from Google images.