Against the Tide - A New Elysium Story [Complete]

Epilogue: Premonition

New Elysium was a paradise.

The planet was one of those rare blue-and-green jewels, scattered so scarcely onto the velvet cushion that was outer space that few could deny feeling a sense of awe when they came across one. Plant life, clean water, a breathable atmosphere – it was a perfect little world, even without any terraforming. Some might have found it ironic that a world so close to the natural, original habitat of the human species had become the last safe resort of those who were so distinct from humans, so different, that some even considered their mere existence a crime against nature.

Unnatural.

Enhanced.

Augmented.

And yet they were just human.

The people of New Elysium were smiling, reveling in every day they got to live in freedom and peace, far away from Neo-Tokyo and the atrocious madness that was the Purge. The children of New Elysium were laughing, spending their days in joyful innocence, and without worries about hunger or pain.

But underneath the smiles and laughter, there was pain and grief. Many preferred to forget, but just as many could not. They would always remember those whom they had lost, and those whom they had left behind. There were those who had witnessed unspeakable horror, and had to turn away and run to save themselves. And there were those who had suffered themselves, and barely made it to New Elysium alive. Most of them carried their scars deep within, but few of them carried marks on the outside, too.

The girl was one of the latter kind.

She was walking along the streets of New Elysium alone, as usual. She had not been allowed to stay with her uncle, and he was busy with work, so she did not get to see him often. And the other children did not like her all that much. Her teachers and the caregivers at the orphan ward kept telling her she was supposed to talk to the others more. But what was there to say? They were happy, and the only words she would have had would have just made them sad. So she kept quiet.

She rubbed a hand over her temple, where a tingling sensation crept up from time to time. It was as if something was poking against her skin from underneath it with a tiny but dull needle. It was not exactly painful, but unpleasant. She had not brought it up with the doctors during one of the checkups. She felt like she had no words to describe the sensation. So she kept quiet.

There was no visible scar, Doctor Harper and Doctor Doron had made sure of that. Her only friend, Dex, had once explained to her how the eye augment worked. She knew that there were no wires under her skin, they were all deep inside her skull. And yet that tickling was there occasionally, not behind her eye, but next to it. She could have asked Dex about it, but he was so busy these days. She was only distracting him, and he was usually too polite to tell her if she was annoying him or getting in the way. So she kept quiet.

The tingling was different this time. It increased in intensity, and then seemed to spread over to her eye. She stopped in her tracks, blinking a few times as she tried to focus her sight again. She looked up to where the sun set over the flat, white rooftops of New Elysium. It tinged the sky in vibrant hues of pink and orange, and made the clouds look like purple candy floss. But the colors quickly began to blur into a whirling flurry, and the rays of light from the setting sun pierced her eye painfully.

With a wince of pain, she closed her eye entirely, and pressed her hand against her temple. By now, it felt as if something was crawling and shifting under her skin, pressing against the bones of her skull from behind her face.

The light of the sun was still there, penetrating through the reconstructed skin of her eyelid and stimulating the photosensitive membrane at the back of the augment. Red and orange speckles flitted across the dark red canopy that was the backside of her eyelid, flickering and shifting in an enigmatic dance that was too fast for her gaze to follow. The shapes almost seemed like letters to her. Illegible and foreign, they were always shifting out of sight, but still seemed to carry a deeper meaning. A message, like a greeting from the sun itself.